Page 87 of Barbie: Dreamscape

Clover is standing just behind me, her eyes filled with delight as she gazes out toward the water. I turn back around, and that’s when I see something ripped from my own mind: a glittering fish flipping out of the lake, painted with various strokes of pink. It looks just like a piece of art I made when I was a kid, before I had ever seen a fish in real life.

I… made it real. With my magic.

“Make another one!” Clover says. And that’s how we spend the rest of the morning. Sitting side by side, me with my compact and her with her comb, using our magic to create various glittering creatures.

When she leaves for lunch, I stay by the shore for a few more moments.

This is a bad idea, I try to tell myself.

You’re going to regret it.

Maybe so. But the need is so thick it feels as if it’s choking me. So I give in to it for the first time in several days.

I click the compact open.

My chest aches with longing all over again, seeing Heartland. Seeing Swancrest. I—

I shut it closed before I can see anything else. That used to be my home. But I don’t belong there anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.

Besides… when I left, everyone seemed happy.

They don’t know the Fates aren’t real… and would they even care?

I’m not going to ruin the illusion that makes their lives perfect, just because I never fit within it.

It’s better for everyone if I stay away, even though I miss them.

Which means I need to stop looking inside the compact.

And who knows?

Maybe one day, I’ll look inside the mirror to see my heart has changed.

It hasn’t.

It’s three days later, in the middle of the night, and I lie completely awake, hand practically twitching. I can’t help it. I need to see how everyone is doing. I need to check in on the place that still has my heart.

A moment later, I’m seeing Heartland, and—

I drop the compact onto my pink foam bedding with a gasp. No. My—my mind is playing tricks on me. There’s no way what I just saw is real. Slowly, I reach back toward it again, desperate to see the familiar walls of the place I grew up in.

But Swancrest has transformed into a shadow of itself.

The brick has darkened. The windows have sharpened, growing bars like teeth. The gates are closed with a hundred locks. The rest of Heartland is changed, too. The canals have run dry. The majestic boats are all in a pile, like firewood ready to be burned.

Callie.

I see her, locked in her old room at Swancrest, banging against a closed door. Trying windows that are now just swaths of brick. I see Paige with her, arms crossed, and my heart gives a stutter—she might not have been a friend to me, but I don’t want her in danger.

Then I see Sunny. He’s trying to create contraptions to get himself out… but nothing is working. Not even his Fate-gifted tools. Not against the strongest magic. Robin’s. She controls all their accessories.

Why are my friends trapped in the school?

My mind flashes back to the little girl in black, living in the haunted house beneath the storm clouds.

As soon as I think of her, I see her reflected in the compact, for she still holds a shard of my heart.

And she isn’t in her office, the way I would imagine.