Chapter 7 Not Careful
Not Careful
When I return to Swancrest, I head straight for Robin’s office, ready to ask her about everything I learned.
But she isn’t there.
She must be in meetings. I sigh and sit down in the chair in front of her desk, ready to wait all afternoon if I have to.
My fingers brush over the thinly pounded silver of my necklace. It’s still warm. I think about how it glowed, how it moved me toward that map.
In all my years of wearing it, nothing like that has ever happened before.
It was like… something within it had been awoken.
Why do the stars on my necklace match the symbol for one of the lands on the map? A scratch interrupts my train of thought.
It’s followed by another, louder scraping.
It sounds like something is trying… to escape?
I crane my neck forward, leaning over the desk. It’s coming from the other side of it.
Robin might be my guardian, and the closest thing to family I’ve ever known, but she’s still the Headmistress of Swancrest. I probably shouldn’t be in her office alone.
I definitely shouldn’t be on the other side of her desk.
Or reaching toward the bottom drawer that is shaking so violently that the brass knob is trembling.
“Barbie.”
I jump up from my crouched position, and there is Robin. Standing in the doorway to her office. Frowning.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
I glance down toward the drawer. The jolting has, of course, stopped.
“Oh, I… I thought I…” I what? Heard a noise? Was about to break into her personal property? “Never mind.” I stagger back around the desk. Robin’s expression shifts from slightly irritated to concerned.
“Are you feeling okay?”
She reaches out as though to touch my forehead and test for fever, but I take a step back. No. I’m not okay. My mind is spinning with questions, and I think I might lose it if I don’t get answers. “Robin, what are the other lands outside Heartland, beyond the mists?”
At my words, the color seems to drain from Robin’s glowing skin. “Why would you ask such a thing?”
I frown. “Well, I—”
She steps forward. “Are you not happy here? Have I not given you a good enough life?”
“Of course you have,” I say quickly. “That’s not what I was saying, just—”
Before I can finish my thought, Robin is taking my clammy hands in her cool grasp. Her tone softens. “I’m sorry,” she says, squeezing my fingers. “There are dangers beyond the mists, Barbie, you know that. They… they’re the reason your mother…”
She doesn’t have to finish that sentence. I didn’t know my mother, but the memory of her is everywhere, from the statue of her in her armor to my face whenever I look in the mirror. I’ve been told our resemblance is uncanny.
But the land revealed on the wall didn’t look all that vicious. It looked almost like here, at least from all the pink I saw.
“What about Dreamland?” I ask before I lose my nerve.
And her eyes widen. “How did you—what—”
“I saw it in the library. There were pieces of some old map on a wall, and—”
I’ve never seen Robin look so terrified. “Don’t ever say that name again,” she says, a vein pulsing in her forehead. “Forget anything you saw.”
“But—”
“Please,” she says, and her voice is so full of emotion that I close my mouth.
Her office door swings open, and I jolt. Her birds are there, chirping in a language only she understands. Robin sighs before turning back to me. “I’m needed downstairs. Please, Barbie. Promise me. Don’t go looking for trouble.” She squeezes my hand one final time, then she’s gone.
I turn to follow her out of her office, not looking for trouble, just as she asked me to.
But something stops me, like a hook in my mind.
I’ve always been obedient.
I’ve always been cautious.
I’ve always been careful.
I’ve always tried my best to be perfect.
Just like Robin.
But this is my life. My future.
I draw in a deep breath and walk around the side of her desk again. I pull the drawer open.
Sitting there, atop a pile of papers, is a necklace just like the one around my neck.
Instead of a “B” at its center, it has a letter “R.”
The moment I lift the new necklace, my fingers grazing the chain, my own begins floating off my chest again. The two necklaces are like magnets, drawn toward each other, the pull between them so strong I can’t stop their coming together even if I wanted to.
Finally, with a click, the charms join and a bright pink light shines out from them both, like the glow from the map in the library glimmering out of Dreamland. I don’t breathe.
The pink shimmer reminds me of the light from Robin’s staff. Maybe whatever magic Robin keeps in there is infused in the necklaces, too.
Did Robin make them both? Why doesn’t she wear hers? Why wouldn’t she tell me she has a necklace that exactly matches my mother’s?
What else has she been keeping from me?
I think back to her reaction when I asked about Dreamland, her almost visceral response. I’ve never questioned anything she told me—I’ve followed every rule, every tradition. Now, that firm conviction is starting to crack.
That knowing feeling I had in the library washes over me again, like I’m just a few questions away from discovering something big.
Robin won’t talk about Dreamland. She won’t tell me if the Fates are there—and whether they can be persuaded to change my lack of one.
So I’ll just have to find those answers myself.
I search the drawer, riffling through a stack of documents to see if there are any other hidden pieces of information.
Nestled at the bottom of the drawer is a photograph.
I flip it over and—
Oh.
That ever-present tear in my heart is bleeding again.
Because this photo is of Robin… and my mother.
They must have been around my age. They’re both beaming, the happiness spilling out of them through time and space.
The image is in black and white, but the joy in their expressions is nearly its own vibrant splash of color.
And they’re wearing the necklaces.
The photo looks vaguely familiar, like something Robin might have shown me when I was younger.
But Robin doesn’t talk about my mother as much as I wish she would.
I used to ask her all the time, but all it would do was create more quiet.
I get the sense that she locks her feelings and heart away, just as she did this photograph. And the necklace.
Maybe it helps her keep focused on her important role. Maybe she doesn’t want to fall into an endless pit of despair, like the one I’ve found myself in for the last few days.
Carefully, I press my finger against my mother’s hand in the picture, as if I could reach her somehow. What would she say if she saw me now?
Would she tell me to go find answers?
Yes. She would.
I know that like a message scrawled across my soul. My mother took risks. She fought for what she believed in. She didn’t hide inside thick walls… she went out and confronted dangers head-on.
And she must have believed in me. She wouldn’t have made so many outfits, for so many roles, if she didn’t.
For her—and for myself—I will swallow down my fear. I will take a risk.
Even if it means going against Robin for the first time in my life.
It’s still dark out when I slip out of the school and past the gates. The rational part of my brain is telling me I should take more time to think this through. More time to prepare.
But that part lost its say when I became Fateless. This bubbling in my chest, of hope and confusion and curiosity… I don’t want to let it fade away.
I’m going to do this afraid—or not at all.
So I use my new boat to go to the town garage, now with two necklaces draped around my throat, the “B” and “R” charms clinking together every now and then, echoing through the quiet night. My brain is humming as the boat glides soundlessly through the canals.
I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone. I’m not sure what I’ll face. That thought is as terrifying as it is thrilling.
I’ve always had my life perfectly planned for me. I’ve played the role of student my entire life, always listening, always learning, always following a track.
Now, everything is going off the rails. Nothing is as I thought it would be.
Except for when I reach the Heartland Garage at last, and, as I hoped, Sunny’s still inside.
“Oh, hey, Barbie,” he says casually, peeking up from beneath the outboard motor of a boat he’s working on, as if it’s a normal occurrence to see me in his workshop in the middle of the night. “You doing okay?”
“Sunny,” I burst out, ignoring his question, looking over my shoulder, ready for Robin to find me any minute. “Did you ever end up modifying your boat?”
He frowns. “Who’s asking? My parents?” He looks around me, as if they could be nearby.
“I’m asking,” I say quietly.
“Oh.” His posture loosens. “Yeah, of course I did.”
At least Sunny can always be depended on to bend the rules. “Mind if I… borrow it?”
In perfectly Sunny fashion, he doesn’t ask any questions. I just watch a slow smile overtake his face. “I’ve been waiting for this day.”
“What day?”
He shrugs a shoulder. “The day you learned perfection is boring. Chaos is a lot more interesting.”
I swallow. I am the least likely person to pursue chaos. And yet…
“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” I mutter, walking over to where Sunny’s boat is tied to a post, bobbing innocently in the water.
He joins me, helping me into the hull. “Probably,” he says brightly.
Right.
I draw in a breath. “Tell Callie goodbye for me, okay?”
I don’t know what I’m doing. Part of me just wants to go back to Swancrest with my tail between my legs and admit defeat.
But the other part, the one that is done crying, that is done waiting for the world to right things, knows that if I want my circumstances to change, I’m going to have to change a bit.
I can’t just keep doing the same thing I’ve done my entire life. Clearly, that hasn’t been working.
I’m going to take a risk.
I’m going… to fly.
I shriek as the boat lifts off the water. As Sunny gets farther and farther away, he just beams at me, arms crossed over his chest, looking impressed with his work.
“How—how safe is this?” I call down to him, panicked, white-knuckling the sides of the boat. I’m hovering just above the rooftop of the garage.
“Not very!” he says from below.
Wonderful.
“But how—”
The boat shoots forward before I can say another word, and my body slips down its center, before my back slams into the custom leather seat Sunny fitted onto the platform, almost like a pilot’s chair.
Oh. My. Fates.
I’m actually flying.
Sunny’s boat rides the breeze as easily as mine rode the canals, and I peer over the side, looking below at a dreamy, sleepy Heartland as I barrel straight through town.
I fly over the library. The deli. The shops. The fire station. The ribbons of sparkling waters between them. Every single place I’ve ever seen and known my whole life, until it all ends, and—
I can see the mist, pink and thick as a wall. I’m racing toward the edge. Toward the unknown. Farther than I’ve ever been in my life.
“Barbie!”
Panic eddies through my veins. I turn, only to see Robin, carried by a dozen birds, flying after me. Her eyes are wide with panic. Her glowing scepter is lifted. “Wait! Please!”
I open my mouth to reply, my heart fluttering with guilt at the distress I’m causing her, but no words come out. I can’t stop now.
I’ve appreciated everything she’s ever done for me.
But now it’s time I do something for myself.
“Faster!” I tell the boat as she closes in. But the motor just sputters, already at max speed.
Really? This is the time Sunny actually listened to Teacher?
I’m close, though. Nearly to the mists. And the closer I get… the more the necklaces I wear begin to glow, until the light cast from them is so bright it creates a halo around me. Then a shield. Then an orb.
I don’t know what’s happening. But Robin’s voice behind me is growing even more alarmed. I can’t hear what she’s saying through the sound of this magic’s shimmering hum.
“Barbie!”
Robin’s nearly next to me now. She reaches out, as if to pull me and the boat back—
But before she can, I crash right through the mist.