Chapter 22 Dreamland （Really, This Time）
Dreamland (Really, This Time)
“Barbie?”
Sunshine heats my frigid skin. The pink-hued rainbow blinks back at me.
Lune is back. She grips my shoulders.
There is a well behind Lune. Only now, the sign above it is a fluffy pink cloud again that says, Wishing Well.
“Thank goodness,” Lune says, hugging me. “I thought you might—” She shakes her head as though to will away the thought. “But you’re back. I’ve never seen someone break out of a nightmare’s hold so quickly.”
“I didn’t think I would,” I say honestly.
I feel shaky from my little trip into Nightmareland, but also renewed in some way. Conviction settles in my bones. I can’t change what happened, or the lies Robin has fed me my whole life, but I can control what I do with all this newfound information.
My mother had magic. I have magic. Maybe I can learn how to use it.
“Will you teach me?” I ask, the words coming slowly. “Magic?”
Lune stares for a beat. “Of course,” she says, but she frowns slightly. “Does that mean you want to stay here?”
This was never part of the plan. I was supposed to meet the Fates, claim a future, and go back home to Heartland.
Be just like my other classmates—have a role, a purpose.
But this whole journey hasn’t been part of the plan. Meeting Ken, watching a sunset, flying with Posey, dancing with mermaids, and besting an evil lord in a dress woven by talking spiders.
Now I know the Fates aren’t real, but there’s so much more that is. Maybe Posey was right about the worst moments turning into gifts.
Maybe… maybe this magic, my magic, is what I was always meant to find. “Is that possible?” I ask.
“Of course. There is always a place for you here,” Lune says.
So it’s settled.
I’m staying.
There’s a magic school here called Dreamlake—the grand, multitiered dark pink structure built into an isle across Dreamland’s glimmering pink body of water that I noticed when I first arrived.
It’s where my mother learned to hone her craft.
A cherry-blossom-hued unicorn takes us across, galloping over the surface of the lake. Once we reach the shore, the unicorn trots through the school gates, which are wide open, unlike at Swancrest. The walls are simple arches. Nothing is meant to be kept in.
Lune helps me off the unicorn and leads me through the arch into the courtyard, where I look around, eyes wide. Students spill out of every one of the many entrances. Some take boats across the lake. Others simply float on clouds of glimmering magic, in every shade of pink imaginable.
“I could learn how to do that?” I ask Lune as I drink in my surroundings, lips parted in wonder.
Lune smiles. “You could learn so much more than just that,” she tells me. She presses her lips together in contemplation. “It’s been a while since I’ve taken on a student… but I’ll teach you everything I once taught your mother.”
Lune is Headmistress of Dreamlake. She also used to be my mother’s teacher.
It isn’t lost on me that I’m about to enter a new stage of study, not so different from the one I just exited. That I’m entrusting my well-being to yet another Headmistress, after the first left me heartbroken.
But Swancrest was a school for learning how to fit into the perfect puzzle Robin made. It was a means of control.
Dreamlake is a place to free my magic.
There’s a flash and a scream ahead—a pink lightning bolt has ripped through the school’s arch, crumbling it apart.
I gasp, but Lune looks unfazed. And as soon as the last stone falls… it’s all raised back up and righted. The mistake isn’t permanent.
“Does anything ever go wrong here?” I ask, looking up in wonder. The bricks are perfectly fixed, not a crack to be seen.
“No,” Lune says simply. “Anything that does is exiled to Nightmareland.”
She leads me through another arch inside the school. Two curling pink marble staircases welcome us like open arms. Students are scurrying—or flying—down them on their way to classes.
I think about Lune’s words, feeling a spot of pity for anything in Dreamland that’s not deemed fit to stay. Including a young Robin, who surely would have ended up in that dark abyss forever had my mother not helped her back into the light.
I shake the thought away. No. I won’t think of Robin. Not when she lied to me and tried the best she could to keep me naive.
“What are those?” I point to a glowing ring on the hand of a girl who scoots past us. I’ve noticed that nearly every student is either wearing or holding something that glows just as much as the charms on my necklaces.
“Magic accessories,” Lune says. “Every student claims one at the beginning of the term from the Treasure Trove, once they find their magic. It’s called ‘sparking’—the student forms a connection to an object that helps them filter and channel their magic.”
I clench my teeth, thinking about Robin’s glowing staff.
Our own accessories—gifted from the supposed Fates—don’t glow at all, even though they contain whispers of magic.
It’s all clear to me now: Our accessories in Heartland were just enchanted by Robin, her magic doled out in minute portions while she kept most of it for herself.
They were just another way to control us. To make us grateful… for receiving scraps, while she ruled in secret as a seemingly benevolent Headmistress.
Stop thinking about Robin. She’s in the past.
“You must be starving,” Lune says, and now that she mentions it… of course I am. The food in the dungeons wasn’t all that filling. I nod, relieved.
We’re walking along a rounded corridor. Lune stops suddenly and reaches toward the smooth pink wall. Before her fingers brush the stone, a door appears with a massive ruby knob. She opens it easily, stepping onto open air that quickly turns into a curled balcony overlooking the lake.
With a wave of her hand, a table appears next, along with two scalloped chairs.
Then, one by one, items begin to pile onto the table: first plates, then a half dozen blueberry pancakes, then pads of maple butter, whipped cream, fruits, and finally, rivers of caramel syrup.
I stare at the unfolding scene in wonder, my stomach grumbling.
“Sit, sit,” Lune says, but when I do, I can’t help but think of Robin. We always have breakfast together.
No. Had.
Pink-tipped silverware appears in my hands, and I use it to carve out a piece of this pancake tower. I chew, my tongue smoothing across the sugar-crusted layer in my mouth. “So the things you relegate to Nightmareland… you just… banish them there? Forever?”
Lune nods, her hands curled around a teacup shaped like a blooming rose. “It was the only way to ultimately overcome the darkness that rose up before your mother and Robin left. It’s what saved us. Whenever something dark comes through, we trap it there so it can’t harm us.”
“Oh.”
I think about how I was trapped just an hour prior. And the other shrouded wisps of people, practically monsters, wandering those color-leached pathways.
If I hadn’t found the strength to leave, would I have been like those other people? Lost forever in my misery with no way out?
“You have nothing to worry about, Barbie,” Lune says, sensing my disquiet, putting her perfectly pink-manicured hand over mine. “Not anymore. Nothing goes wrong here, remember?”
That’s what I thought about Heartland. That nothing could go wrong there either, that my existence there was like a dream.
Only now do I realize it more resembled a nightmare.
But this is different. Finally, I know the truth of who I am. And I’m free to explore every inch of my magic, without being trapped in any boxes. Not following any rules except my own.
“So. Where do we start?” I ask, setting my silverware down after finishing the delicious meal.
Lune beams. “In the courtyard.”
With a flash of magic, the balcony falls away… and we’re suddenly back among the hordes of students on the grounds of Dreamlake. The pink waters glimmer all around us.
“Welcome to your first magic lesson, Barbie.”
My stomach flips with excitement.
“Before we do anything else, you’ll need to find the center of your magic.”
“The center?”
She nods. “It comes from a place concentrated in your body.” She motions toward her palm, where the pink glitter has been spiraling from. “Mine is here. Where do you feel yours?”
I chew the inside of my mouth, thinking. Searching for anything like that within my limbs. My necklaces generate magic, but those aren’t truly a part of me, not really…
Focus.
I do. I close my eyes, and I breathe deeply. I let the panic of this journey and the hurt from recent discoveries fall away, leaving behind…
Just me.
Who am I? I’m only just now starting to find out.
I go through every part of myself. My feet, which have normally been curled into heels that clicked musically along the halls of Swancrest. Now they’re in sturdy, flat shoes more suited for learning magic.
My legs, which were mostly accustomed to being folded nicely beneath a desk… but have taken me on this winding journey. Which have run faster than I ever thought I could. Which have leapt and climbed and flown.
My chest, which was once constricted by the weight of expectations and the constant need for perfection… which has opened to the idea of flailing, and failing, and existing in an ever-present state of change.
My hands, which once only held pencils and teacups and raised high in the air to answer questions… now strong from strain, from holding on atop a galloping horse, and trying to claw me up solid rock, and pounding against a golden barrier.
My head, which always rejected any sort of negative thinking before it started, which refused to think outside the boundaries it had been taught, now swims with ideas and creativity and passions that I was too afraid to ever express.
I go through all of it, breathing through my body that feels both exactly the same and irrevocably altered…
Yet. “I don’t feel anything.”
I open my eyes. There’s no spark. No magic hidden somewhere deep.
Lune just nods. “That’s not unheard of. Especially if your magic has been blocked.”
My brows inch together. “You think it’s been stifled?”
“Yes, of course. If not, you would have felt it a long time ago.”
Another echo of hurt rings through me. Robin must have found a way to keep my magic under lock and key.
Not any longer.
“How do I unblock it?”
“Well, magic needs to flow freely. You’ve been traveling all this time and now you’re here, and you still don’t feel it. Which makes me think it’s not an external force but perhaps something within you that’s blocking your magic.”
I frown. I was so quick to blame Robin, I didn’t consider I could be the one doing the blocking. “Like what?”
She purses her lips. “It could be anything. Doubt. Shame. Sadness. Anger.”
I swallow, wondering how this woman made her way into my mind.
“But the longer you’re here… the less of that you’ll feel.” She waves her hand as though dispelling my dark thoughts, as if they’re cobwebs she could take down with a broom. She smiles, gesturing around. “This is Dreamland. Everything is perfect. Always.”
I smile back at her. Right. I’ll be fixed before I know it.
“Now. Let’s start with some breathing exercises,” she says happily, motioning for me to close my eyes. Sit still. Breathe.
And I listen.