Page 33 of Barbie: Dreamscape

No. When I look down at my necklaces, I see that the shell has shrunken to become another charm, nestled right beside the “B” I’ve always worn.

All at once, the butterflies disperse, flying in every direction, and the trees transform. Giant glittering bows adorn the branches. Thick velvet fabric curls in the wind. Golden glitter rains toward the ground. This world isn’t so bad. It’s magical. I reach for one of the ribbons—

Only for it to turn into a snake, lashing out at my face.

I gasp and stumble, tripping on a rock. I start to fall backward…

Then somehow I go through the ground, all the way around, and land upright, somewhere else entirely.

No.

Not somewhere else. The same woods… now completely transformed.

Now it’s a dark forest, the inverse of all the beauty and bounty I just saw. The trees are skeletal. The ground is cinder. Instead of butterflies, there are bats, screeching, rushing toward me in a wave of ink.

I try to take cover against the hard ground, arms over my head, panic flaming through my veins. They surround me just like the flowers did, their cries echoing through my skull.

I scream, but the sound is swallowed by their shrieks. Scratch what I said. This world is not magical; it is horrible. More bats join, until they’re all I can hear, all I can sense, and it’s all I can do to not just run.

Finally, they stop.

It takes a few moments for me to peek my head up. But when I do, I’m in another forest again, entirely different from the last: This one is an enchanted, ancient wood, brimming with mushrooms, and moss, and footprints from creatures I can’t begin to name.

I’m not fooled by its peaceful facade. Any moment now, it will turn into a nightmare.

The key. I just have to find it and get to the world with the leaf symbol, and then to Dreamland. But how, when nothing here is what it seems?

I breathe through the panic.

The key will glow. I know that now. I just have to keep moving, and maybe it will reveal itself to me, like the shell in the sand.

So I do. I begin to run through these ancient woods before they can transform again beneath my feet.

A babbling river is just ahead, with a stone path across it. I run down the way, only to hear a chorus of “Ow!” “Ow!” “Ow!” “Ow!” “Ow!”

I whirl around, and one by one the rocks begin to rise—revealing heads beneath them.

The rocks are top hats. Attached to a group of disgruntled forest trolls, who look exactly like the ones in a picture book Robin used to read me as a child.

“Watch where you’re going!” the trolls say in singsong unison before they bury themselves back down into the riverbed.

Right.

“Sorry.”

I look everywhere, searching wildly.

I part the limp branches of a light green willow like a curtain, only for it to become the long hair of a giant, who bares her teeth at me.

I look through a hole in a tree, only to suddenly find myself peeking up from underwater, faced with a giant goldfish. I gasp, then fall back, spitting water everywhere.

Then—music.

I follow it to a towering oak, with a giant bell hanging from one of its branches.

Maybe… the key is there? I peer inside the giant bell, hoping for that pink glow.

There are dozens of tiny bells inside instead, all moving in sync. At once, they go still.