Page 101 of Barbie: Dreamscape

Now, with a flick of that hand, she forces the metal around my wrists even tighter, winding around my bones, tearing a gasp from my lungs, pinning me in place. Making me powerless to do anything but watch in horror as Robin reaches out again—and tears both necklaces right off my throat.

“No!” I say, feeling the immediate coldness in the absence of the charms’ magic. Tears prick my cheeks. The necklaces.

My reminder of my mother.

She took them.

The moment both necklaces are clutched in her palms, the shadows seep darker. They expand in a flash, sharpening into dozens of blades, scraping against the walls of the armory.

The building begins to tremble again. I can feel the school constricting, her magic like a fist around us all.

Robin keeps speaking. Her voice is louder, resonant and wrong. “Magic is the real danger. It’s why I must control it. It’s to protect you all. For choice leads to chaos. Unchecked, magic leads to death.” She lifts her chin. “One day, you’ll see. You’ll understand. You’ll be grateful.”

She walks around me, as if to leave me here. The shadows around her bleed across the floor.

They’re poisoning her mind. Telling her this is the only way to save me. To keep all of Heartland safe.

I remember the shadows in Rock Bottom and their poisonous whispers in Nightmareland. I remember how they tried to control me. They’re crawling toward me now, as if to latch on to another target.

The shadows want me to turn against her. They want me to hate her.

But I won’t give up on her.

If my journey taught me anything, it’s that this world is full of opposites, and contradictions, and light and darkness. Still, we have the power to forge our own paths through the mayhem. We have the choice to see wonder in chaos—and to find light through darkness.

“I saw you,” I say, my words punching through the shadows, my neck straining as I look over my shoulder at her. She pauses. “I saw you, as a child, in Dreamland. Sad and alone, in a haunted house, with a storm cloud above your head. I saw—I saw my mother pull you out of that sorrow.”

Slowly, Robin turns toward me, pain twisting her features. As if she’s reliving those moments in her own mind.

“And I… I’ve been to Nightmareland. And back. I know what it feels like to be sitting at the bottom of a well, I know it feels impossible to crawl out, I know it seems like darkness always wins, but here I am, offering a hand. Here to remind you of all the good you’ve done, and all the good you are, because it outshines any of the bad. It always has.”

Robin grimaces, unconvinced. “Any true light I had… it died with your mother,” she says, and the shadows around her… they begin to burn like flames.

An earsplitting crash sounds from above, and then rain is spilling down into the stairwell I just came from, as if the ceiling has been ripped away, letting in the storm.

Winds rush down the turret in a howl. They wrap around Robin, lifting her higher, rain sputtering, thunder roaring from outside, rattling the walls.

The shadows and fell magic are growing stronger. The shackles tighten, digging into my skin.

But I stay firm. I shake my head. “That’s not true. Her light lives on. In me… and in you.”

Robin laughs, the sound distorted. The shadows seeping from her flare, as if laughing with her.

Hail cracks against the stone staircase. I look around, remembering the school as it was before this fell magic took over.

“When I saw Dreamland, and you and my mom as children… I figured out why everything in Heartland is pink.”

From the canals, to the school, to Robin’s own clothing. All the same color.

“It’s not your favorite color… It was hers.”

Robin’s dark eyes turn suddenly glassy. She does not deny it.

All this pink wasn’t a nod to Dreamland. It was a tribute to her best friend.

“I know you made this world for the two of you. Best friends, joining their magic together, strong enough to create an entire land.”

“No,” Robin says sharply, and those shadows loom even larger. I flinch, wondering if this is the moment her fell magic finally fully takes over.