Page 40 of Barbie: Dreamscape

There’s a woman sitting on the opposite side of the trench, almost completely bathed in shadows.

“Are you—are you real?” I ask, wondering if this is just another illusion, another thing that is not what it seems.

She laughs. “I sure hope so.”

Yes. Real. “How—how did you get down here?”

She shrugs. “Everyone visits Rock Bottom at least once in their life, don’t they?”

I blink. “You don’t seem too torn up about it,” I say.

Then I tense. Should I be afraid? She’s the first person I’ve come across in this land… and she’s here in a pit, with me.

Ken in Summerland was friendly. So was the Archivist. Still…

I reach toward a rock, as if I could use it to defend myself…

But the woman just sighs deeply, stretching her long legs. Her entire outfit is dark gray, like the rocks around us. She practically blends in. Her skin is covered in freckles. Dark brown waves frame her oval face. “The way I see it, things must have once been pretty good for them to go pretty bad. If not… Rock Bottom wouldn’t even exist. It would just be your whole life.” She shrugs. “And if things were good once… they can be good again.”

If only that were true. If only I could go back to how things were before Boxing Day, when my life was a dream, and I was actually excited for my future.

If only I’d received a Fate. Right now, I would be working in Heartland, fulfilling the role I was always meant for. Having a purpose.

I definitely wouldn’t be miles deep in a trench in a mysterious land far from home.

“I hope you’re right,” I say. “But right now… good feels impossible. Hope feels stupid.”

“I know what you mean.” She looks up at the trench. “Things aren’t looking good, are they?”

That’s an understatement. The walls definitely seem to have grown taller in the last few minutes, like Rock Bottom is some sort of amorphous prison, able to change just like everything else in this place.

How wonderful.

“Things are awful,” I say, kicking up rocks with my dust-covered sneaker. “This is the worst place I’ve ever been in my life.”

“Rock Bottom?”

“All of it! This entire land.”

With that, she scoots partly out of the shadows. I see her freckled face more clearly. “It isn’t all bad.”

I scoff. “This place is a living nightmare. Nothing is fixed. Everything is constantly transforming.”

She lifts a shoulder. “Well, change can be a good thing.”

Sure. But not lately. Not here.

I didn’t want the rainbow to become a slide. I didn’t want to go from top of the class to a cautionary tale.

The woman looks me over. “Something pretty bad happened to you, didn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I mumble. “That’s one way of putting it.”

She looks at me expectantly.

She’s a stranger. I’m not about to go spilling the worst thing that’s ever happened to me to some woman trapped in the bottom of a trench.

She just shrugs. “Well, I fell in here looking for something.”