Page 76 of Barbie: Dreamscape

Robin always said she was the only one with the natural ability to use magic.

She said my mother’s lack of magic was why she died. It was why the monsters beyond the mists were able to kill her during the battle to defend Heartland.

She lied.

Why?

What else was she hiding?

My eyes are burning. My throat feels like it’s closing up. My chest is locked with panic. It’s getting—it’s getting hard to breathe. I turn to Lune, heart racing, tears spilling, world roaring around me. This is too much. Too much, too soon, and I can’t—

I can’t deal with it all. I can’t accept it.

I just need—I just need to get what I came here for. Then everything will be okay. Everything will make sense.

“Take me to the Fates. Please. I need to speak to them, about giving me a future.” Lune seemed confused when I brought them up before, and said they don’t live here—but that was when she was trying to push me out, keep me away. She probably has to keep them secret to protect them.

Lune’s look is almost pitying. “There are no Fates, Barbie,” she says softly.

And that’s when my heart finally breaks.

Dreams and Nightmares Are Not-So-Distant Cousins, Apparently

This can’t be real.

Robin—the closest person to me in the world, the only family I’ve ever known—couldn’t have lied to me about this. And everything else.

But she did.

The Fates that the people of Heartland, the students of Swancrest, live and breathe by… aren’t real.

Which means one person in control has decided every citizen of Heartland’s future, hiding behind the false idea of the Fates.

One person refused to give one to me.

Robin.

Lune parts her lips, but I can’t listen to her placating words anymore.

I just run.

I bolt through the town square, past the sputtering fountain, gripping the necklaces to make my clicking heels become sneakers far more suited to having a crisis of faith and running away.

I shoulder past crowds wearing pastel pinks, everything perfectly in place, hearing protests of “Hey!” and “Watch where you’re going!” trailing in my wake.

But I don’t care.

My tears are distorting this world into a kaleidoscope of pink, my heart is pulsing like it’s trying to beat me in a race, my legs are boneless beneath me, panic is rising up my throat like a tidal wave, choking me, overcoming everything, and I—

I can’t breathe.

I whirl around a corner, almost tripping over myself in the process, and finally stop, pressing my spine to a wall. My lungs are contracting. My throat feels like a clogged straw. I gasp for breath, but it sounds too fast, too wrong.

Everything is wrong.

The sky is spinning. My mind is tumbling. I shut my eyes against the thoughts, willing them to quiet, but they only grow louder, more insistent. At first, I think I’m falling into another world, that I’ve somehow gotten hold of another key, but when I lower to the ground, sinking my fingers into the dirt beneath me as if I could root my being into this moment, keep myself from running adrift, I finally open my eyes again and—

I’m still here, in Dreamland.