Page 56 of Barbie: Dreamscape

She just looks at me. “Well, you need to arrive on an enchanted creature to be let in.”

“You said anyone who’s dressed up can go!”

She purses her lips. “Did I? Must have slipped my mind…”

Frustration curls around my bones, but—fine.

“Well, how do I get an enchanted creature”—whatever that even means—“to go with me?”

“You must be chosen of course.”

“Chosen?”

She nods gravely. “They’re very picky, too.”

Of course.

Just when I think I’ve scaled the last challenge… a new one takes its place. But I can do this.

Because my mother wouldn’t have backed down at this additional challenge. No, she would have faced it head-on, just as she faced those spiders.

Just as I did.

I’ve made it through two worlds already. I will make it through this last one, too.

“Where do I go to be chosen?”

“All you have to do is walk the path to the castle. The creatures are waiting just beyond the trees, watching. If they find you worthy… they will join you and give you a mask.” She glances at me. “If you don’t find a match by the time you reach the castle gates… you don’t get in.”

That doesn’t sound too hard. “So I just… walk?”

“Well, usually, you demonstrate a skill. Something to make you seem worthy of a magical creature such as them.” She looks me over. “Do you have any specific talents?”

I wince. “Does studying count?”

She gives me a look. “Really? There’s nothing you’ve practiced, no craft you’ve honed, no discipline you’ve learned?”

Well…

“I used to paint,” I admit. For some reason, I feel small even saying the words out loud. Useless. I wasn’t very good at it. If I was, the role would have been given to me by the Fates.

But Evalyn’s face brightens. “Great! That’s your ticket in, then.”

I doubt my rusty painting skills are going to impress an enchanted creature—I may have tapped into that creativity in Anyland for a few moments, but using my imagination and actually painting it onto a canvas are two completely different things. And that reminds me… “I don’t have paint. Or a canvas.”

“Of course you do,” Evalyn insists.

A second later, a pair of long silk gloves falls from above, from the spiders. The fabric is glowing slightly silver, just like their webs.

“Here,” Evalyn says, catching the gloves, then handing them to me. “Magic now is confined to the creatures. The spiders have given you this to help execute your vision.” She motions for me to go on then… and I slip them on. My fingertips begin to glow with starlight. “Let the world be your palette. Let your mind be the magic.”

Let my mind be the magic.

I think again about the creativity and imagination of Anyland. Of creating anything.

Evalyn pulls a timepiece from her pocket and startles. “I have to get back to the shop, but there’s the way to Ever Manor.” She points to a road leading from the clearing, glowing through the incoming evening, speckled with glitter. “Remember. The creatures are watching.”

I give Evalyn a hug goodbye and thank her: for introducing me to the spiders, for sharing a piece of my mother with me, for all the kindness she’s shown me over the last day.