I recently went back and retagged this story with Infinite Eyerolls. It wasn't where I expected things to go when I first started out, and it's still far from the plot focus, but more and more it's starting to play a role in characterization, so I might as well own up to it.
This chapter is dedicated lovingly to MY DAD'S CAT, who, during its writing, was always there for me when I needed her least. When I wanted to sit down with my coffee and focus, she was ready to beg me to go outside, or in, or back out again; when I was finally getting productive work done, she was perpetually on hand to walk across the keyboard and show me her butthole. So here's to you, Squeaker: you made writing this even more of a chore than it already was, and got fur everywhere in the process. Bless.
4
"Wake up, Bluebird."
Beatrice screwed up her face as the words jolted her kicking and moaning from sleep, and her first waking sensation was awareness of the unpleasant pit already sitting heavy in her stomach. Through her eyelids, she could tell that the sun had risen, but her heart was heavy and her limbs stiff; she wasn't prepared to face another day just yet. She lolled her head to the side, resolute not to open her eyes, and tried to settle back down into unconsciousness as she huddled down inside her cold arms.
"Now, don't be that way. I know you can hear me," the disembodied voice said again, crackly as wheat kernels in a grinder. She cracked an eye open and squinted at the heavy, brilliant beams of sunlight which lanced down through the tree canopy, swaddled in pink dawn mist. The leaves on the ground glistened, and she felt unpleasantly damp.
"Up here," the voice said once again. In the branches of the tree against which she lay was perched a large white crow, dark-eyed and looking straight at her. "Good morning, child," it said, fluttering its wings. It carried a mischievous smile in its demeanor. "How did you sleep?"
Beatrice did not answer at first. She sat up and looked around warily to see if any of her companions were awake to hear this. Wirt and Greg lay together under the former's big blue cloak, breathing deeply, and Sara was curled up in a small ball a few feet away. Their unwanted tag-alongs from the night before, the attack twins, slept back-to-back near the dead cold fire. For a minute she waited to see if any of them would stir, and then shot her gaze back up at the crow, pulling her dirty three-day nightdress tight around her chilly legs. "How do you know who I am?" she asked warily. She was forced to listen to birds' inane chatter often enough, but they rarely acknowledged her, and never before had she been purposefully sought out.
The white crow bobbed its head in some approximation of a shrug. "Crows are very wise birds," it said, skipping one branch lower and dropping a fine dewy mist on everything below it, Beatrice included. "We know lots of things. Things you and yours would be very interested in knowing, Bluebird."
"Don't call me that," she snapped, and then stopped herself to watch her companions for a reaction to the outburst. When none came, she pulled her knees in a little tighter and added in a lower voice, "And I don't take favors from anyone. Birds least of all. You're all tricky, vengeful little animals."
"Ohh, now that's some projection if I've ever heard it," the crow said, cocking its head to the side to fix her with one milky brown eye. Despite the snowy brilliance of its feathers, its beak was coal-black, so deep that it looked almost blue in the sunlight. "Why do you keep checking on your cohorts?" it asked, as she did just that once again. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were afraid to have them see you talking to a bird." It blinked the one eye at her, and she had never seen an expression so full of self-satisfaction.
A little spear of annoyance and fear pierced her throat. "Have you been following me?" she demanded, sitting up fully and setting her feet on the ground. Her toes felt wrinkled and swollen in the strange shoes Sara had given her. "Who do you think you are?"
"Just a crow," it said innocently, splitting a sunbeam as it spread its sharp white wings into the light. "A simple crow who likes to keep track of the goings-on in these wilds." Once again it jumped, and fluttered down to a low fir branch only a few yards from her. "You and your friends don't belong here."
"We know that," she said, squinting at the pale bird. "Where is here?"
"The Unknown," the crow said to her.
"That's impossible," she insisted. "I know the Unknown. I've lived there my whole life –"
"Or something of the sort."
"– and none of this is right. There would be roads and fields. There would be people." She spared a glance at her still-sleeping companions. "Or people other than these bozos, anyway."
"Bluebird, you of all people should know the Unknown of late is not the place it's always been," said the white crow. She stared at her hands, colored brown with travel, and was unable to argue. It trotted down a length of its branch and said, "These woods are still a very small piece of infinity, but they've just grown much larger. You shouldn't be so certain you would recognize them any longer."
"Where's my family?" she asked, clutching the front of her nightdress. The once-fine fabric was slick with dirt. "Why did things change like this? How can he be –" She cast her eyes over at Wirt, his tall form wrapped protectively around Greg's, but was cut off as the crow laughed.
"Oh, no," it said as it preened its back. "I'd hate to do you any favors, Bluebird. I'm a tricky, vengeful little animal, after all."
Beatrice flushed pink and opened her mouth to say that there's a difference between doing someone a favor and having common decency, but was cut off as one of the twins – the boy, named after a spoon – curled up tight on the ground and moaned thickly, "Ohh my God, will someone shut that bird up?" Beatrice bit her lip and turned away from the crow as he sat upright, half of his face dusted with dry earth and leafy debris. He looked to have some on his forehead as well, but the first thing he did was brush his hair down over it, almost instinctively. He squinted around, puffy-eyed, and settled on the big white bird in the tree not far from where Beatrice sat. "Shoo," he said, waving a hand at it. "No squawking. Some of us are trying to sleep."
The crow blinked impassively at him once, and then turned back to Beatrice to continue speaking like nothing had happened. "You're certainly of a temper, but I suppose bluebirds usually are," it said, and ruffled its feathers as if shaking off the damp. "I'll give you one piece for free, child, just to show goodwill. Keep an eye on your Pilgrim. He's going to need it more than any of you know."
Beatrice swallowed, but stolidly did not respond to the bird, while the newcomer sighed, exhausted, and put his face in his hands. "Jesus," he said under his breath. "Stupid animal. It looks like it's trying to talk to you."
"No kidding," Beatrice croaked from her little nook in the tree trunk. "The, uh… dumb thing woke me up, too." She spared the white crow another glance before looking quickly away. It pulled its head back as if affronted.
"Right," it said to Beatrice, voice full of disaffected injury, "you just go on pretending you can't understand me, then." It spread its wings to glide to a more distant tree, calling behind, "I'm sure keeping secrets from your travelling companions will serve you as well this time as the last, Bluebird!" Beatrice's stomach seared with the question of how it knew about that, but she bit her tongue and did not react.
The stranger – his name was Dipper, she remembered now – watched it go with sleepy but interested eyes. "I've never seen a white crow before," he yawned as it soared off. He looked over at Beatrice, then looked away, and finally made another effort to establish solid eye contact, a noble thing to do when one party has made a fairly serious attempt on the other's life in the last twelve hours. "Morning, I guess," he said, voice strained.
"Morning," she said, equally stiffly. Their gaze maintained itself only a few seconds longer before breaking, and Beatrice curled herself into a little ball, eyeballing the shifting sunlight on the ground. Her stomach roiled with anxiety. She knew she was right not to accept help from the crow, but felt wrong-footed by its unsolicited advice. She wondered what it would have told her had she decided to listen. Probably nothing important, she told herself; birds rarely have ought worth listening to.
Even though the crow had gone, the forest canopy was far from quiet. Other birds were waking in the early morning and beginning to call out to one another, all the usual chatter that she'd gotten pretty good at ignoring these last three years: food and eggs and mates, and angry insults hurled between rival males. She hated it, not just for its incessancy, but for being the last remainder of the bluebird's bitter curse; speaking as a bird, apparently, is a skill not easily forgotten. A small family of chickadees was being particularly raucous this morning. "The teeth!" they chirped in chorus, feeding one another's hysterics. "The teeth are near!" Birds were full of nonsense like that. Beatrice closed her ears to it and looked back up.
Dipper's sister was starting to stir, yawning widely and then having to spit to get her long brown hair out of her mouth. "G'mornin' Dip," she said as she rolled over toward her twin, grinning sleepily. Then her eyes landed on Beatrice and she sat up the rest of the way. "Aaand good morning to you too, friend!" she said, holding out a hand, though they were too far from one another to attempt a handshake. "Tell me your name again, though? Because last night was preeetty crazy and honestly I don't remember."
Beatrice looked from her hand to her face to her hand, and back to her face. "Beatrice," she said finally.
"That's a really pretty name," said the girl, whose own name was Mabel, if memory served. Beatrice made a small noise of acknowledgment, which she tried not to let sound too gracious, at the same time that Sara, too, finally rose, hunched up inside her strange puffy men's jacket with the garish flag on its sleeve. She didn't speak to any of them, but stared at the ground with half-lidded eyes, her skin startlingly dark against the piercing sunlight. As much now as the first night they'd met, Beatrice felt a little staggered by it.
Everyone was awake now but Wirt and Greg, the former propped up halfway against a tree and the latter curled under his arm, head resting on his brother's stomach. Greg had a little smile on his face, and Wirt was snoring inelegantly open-mouthed, just as he'd always used to. Beatrice started to stand, thinking that she would wake them, but Sara was closer, and seemed to have the same idea. She got to them first.
"Wirt?" she whispered as she crouched down next to them. "Greg?" She hesitated, and touched Wirt's shoulder.
"He's sleepin'," Greg said without opening his eyes. "But I've been awake for a long time." He squeezed one eye closed tighter and opened the other, and looked at Beatrice with a grin. "You were talking to that bird!"
Beatrice felt a heavy drop in her stomach, but fortunately, no one seemed to be paying much attention to what Greg said. Dipper was up scouting around the trees for who-knew-what, while Mabel fished around in her pocket for last night's second fruit snack and ate it with relish. Sara booped Greg's nose affectionately and then reached out, with much greater tenderness, to brush Wirt's hair from his face, the gesture speaking to years of history that Beatrice could only guess at, and did, constantly, whether she liked it or not.
To distract herself from it, she instead let her eyes drift down to Greg as he sat up with Wirt's cloak draped across one shoulder. In the space behind him, inside the little tent the cloak made, there sat a copper-bottomed saucepan where Jason Funderburker slept, only to give a startled croak and leap away as Greg picked the pot back up and placed it upside-down on his head. "All dressed," he said triumphantly as he came bouncing up to her through the early morning mist, oversized sweater sleeves concealing his hands as he scrabbled at the bag of candy he'd been carrying around since that first night. "Good morning, Beatrice," he said formally, peeking inside the bag with a lofty air. "What can I get you for breakfast on this fine day?"
"Mm." She crouched down to look inside the bag herself. "What about one of those little cookie things?"
"A Crookery?" he asked, pulling out a little silver package which advertised its sheer quantity of chocolate chips as being 'positively criminal.'
"No, the ones with the strawberry in them."
"Okay, but we're running kinda low on those," he said, and handed her another candy which called itself a Straw-very. Beatrice opened the thing and took an eager bite, its sweet crunchy innards dancing on her tongue like happiness itself. Wirt and Sara had long started to complain about eating the foods Greg had in his bag; Beatrice thought they were crazy. She'd never tasted treats like this in all her life, and couldn't imagine growing tired of them.
Sara was still at Wirt's side, now leaned up against the same tree as him. Their bodies were very close, but she didn't touch him. Personally, if Beatrice was in her place she would have been shaking his collar and telling him to wake up already – but what did she know? She was just their tag-along. Wirt was still apparently sleeping, arms folded under his cloak and ankles crossed. Beatrice caught herself staring at his face, and looked quickly away.
Dipper shimmied out from behind a tree and settled his own eyes on Wirt, brows knit. He cleared his throat and Sara and Beatrice both looked up. "Um," he said, and waved a hand vaguely in their direction. "You should. You know. Probably wake him up. Make sure he isn't, uh… Make sure he's okay."
"I'm sure you're very concerned about that," Beatrice said acidly.
Dipper frowned. "Look, I don't want people to get hurt," he argued, rubbing the back of his head where she'd grazed him with the bat the night before. "Nobody tried to kill anyone else while we were all sleeping, which means none of us are probably man-eating monsters or self-interested apocalypse opportunists, and, you know, that's… that's good..."
Mabel popped up next to her brother and took him by the shoulders. "This is Sir Dippingsauce's way of saying he's sorry," she explained, pressing her cheek against his.
"Is not!" he said hotly, and pushed her away. "We had plenty of reason to be suspicious of the motives of a bunch of strangers in a very stressful and resource-limited environment –"
"We forgive you!" Greg said, and threw a handful of candy at Dipper to show it. One hit him above the eye.
"Ow."
"Who're we forgiving?" asked a new voice, muddy with sleep. Wirt had opened his eyes finally, and Beatrice couldn't help feeling a little gratified to see Sara move quickly away as he sat up. "What happened?"
"We're all friends now," Mabel said, and Greg piped up, "Yeah!"
"What," Wirt said flatly as Dipper simultaneously protested, "Well, come on, that's a little premature –"
"Don't try to fight it, boys!" Mabel sat cross-legged on the ground and picked up one of the candies that had bounced off of her brother. "No more bad feelings. This morning, we dine like kings!" Sara and Wirt groaned, but the rest of them dug into the sugary breakfast with vigor. Even Beatrice couldn't pretend to be grumpy about that.
As she ate, though, she kept her eye on the two of them not partaking. Wirt and Sara sat together at the edge of the small clearing, speaking quietly to one another. He still had blood on his face from the night before, and she licked her thumb and wiped at it gently. Sunlight lit up the end of his ridiculous nose; it had always been on the big side, even back when he and Beatrice first met, but it and all of his proportions seemed to have grown only more absurd since then. He had several inches on her now, and stood a good foot taller than Sara; his feet were a tripping hazard and his ears wouldn't have looked out of place on a phonograph. She had never really imagined that a person could change so much in so little time, especially when she compared him to herself - but that, she supposed, was an agony for another day. She looked back at the candy in her hands with troubled thoughts. Her stomach was going queasy.
The time after they'd parted, three years back, had been uneventful for the most part. Life in the Unknown had a very steady way about it, and that showed in how quickly routine had returned to her life once she and her family reacquired their opposable thumbs. The wheel of the year turned slow and steady as ever, river burbling, mill churning, and for longer than she would have liked to admit, she'd kept half an eye on the road running up to the grist mill, wondering if and when she might see a couple of behatted boys marching up the path with a bullfrog on hand. She didn't know where Wirt and Greg called home, but knew they'd see each other again someday; the Unknown knew very few true endings, after all, and they had all the time in the world. She told herself that for a very long time, as she gradually imagined Wirt's odd half-smile and the tunes to Gregory's songs with less and less frequency; her mind went back to helping Mother cook and clean, to helping Father keep the mill gears oiled. Forgetting, it turned out, was a wonderful balm for loneliness's ache. On the rare occasions in autumn when the smell of dry leaves or light rain were inextricable from her memories of a blue cloak and silly red hat, she was able to look back on them with a dispassionate perspective toward her fervor and yearning. They were creatures of the past, but she had the future looming forever before her. She wouldn't be hung up on those who had left her behind. Life, quite simply, went on.
And gone on it had, until the hateful night that she'd gone to sleep warm and safe in bed with her sisters, and woken up cold and damp at a gravestone's foot. She was unsure of what was going on or why it had happened, but since the moment she'd first laid eyes on Wirt as he doubled over a marker with a curse on his breath, she'd been certain that she must be dreaming. The sight of his face was a lightning strike, painful and wide, the years between them suddenly impassably vast. "Beatrice?" he'd said, and it was his voice, but not his visage; not a stubborn kid in a stupid hat like she remembered, but a man older than her now. It was impossible, but here he was anyway, and there she was too, sitting on the ground in her nightgown like an idiot while her oldest friend stared at her like she was a ghost.
And in a way, that was how she'd felt ever since: like a ghost, lost in a living world which she couldn't hope to understand. It wasn't enough that she was confused and wanted answers about where she was – it was that Wirt seemed just as baffled as she was, and far more concerned with keeping Greg within arm's reach at all times than he was with taking time to speak to her openly. It was that he was accompanied by one of the strangest girls Beatrice had ever seen, the selfsame Sara he'd spoken of so fondly in the past, and that she was achingly beautiful in a way that was almost hard to stomach, even beneath the ridiculous paint on her face. It was that Sara had grown quiet when Wirt said Beatrice's name, and looked at her like an exotic animal in a zoo: "You're Beatrice?" she'd whispered, as if coming face-to-face with a notorious villain, and Beatrice didn't know how to respond to that. What had Wirt said about her that could provoke such a reaction?
And Greg had started chattering to her about something nonsensical and Wirt and Sara had started talking, half-arguing, about what they needed to do, what this meant, what in heaven and hell had happened, and Beatrice was just left there sitting with her back to a tombstone, numb and overwhelmed and a little angry at herself for feeling so incredibly distressed. Three years she'd had dreams about what it could be like to see the brothers again one day, about what a reunion they might have when Wirt came marching back up the path to the mill door in his same old hat and cloak, as unchanged as everything else in her life. Their reconciliation should have been something wonderful, not a moment of fear and uncertainty laid bare for everyone to see, and the pain of it throbbed to this day. She thought that she and Wirt had parted ways as friends, once upon a time; now, when he looked at her with his perpetually-concerned eyes, she could only feel that she was a symptom of some great disruption in his life, not a victim suffering it alongside him. In the morning sunlight, Beatrice stared down at the silvery pink candy wrapper in her hands and felt its sugar turn bitter in her mouth. Greg offered her another, but she suddenly wasn't hungry anymore.
She'd been walking with the brothers again for three full days now, and it seemed as though she and Wirt had barely spoken to one another beyond what was necessary, like he didn't know what to say to her, like he still didn't fully believe she could be there with him. Sara, of all people, was almost more accommodating, regularly taking time to ask polite questions and having offered her from her home a pair of walking shoes and the wooden bat (which Beatrice had since privately named after her dog, for its pleasant appearance and ability to pack a wallop when necessary) – but Sara too seemed to regard her as an impossibility that might collapse under the weight of heavy scrutiny, and maintained a noticeable distance. Greg was the only one who acted as she could have hoped, like no time had passed between them, but she only understood a small portion of everything he said. Things about tellyvisions, and star wars, and school friends of his whom she didn't know and didn't care about. This place looked so like the Unknown, but somehow she felt far more a stranger in it than any of the others, cut out of her companions' collective past and floating timelessly alongside them. She was an alien in her own world.
And she would never say so to anybody else, but damned if it didn't hurt.
She saw that Wirt was finally making to stand up, and watched him stealthily out of the corner of her eye. His legs were clearly stiff and weak and he leaned heavily on the tree behind him, but he didn't pass out and didn't look any more affected than usual, so she considered his prognosis good, probably. The crow had told her to keep an eye on him, 'her' Pilgrim, but he hadn't done much in the last few days to inspire that sort of loyalty or possessiveness, so she wasn't sure why she should care. He could keep his own ass out of the fire from here on.
Greg turned when he saw his brother. "Are you okay, Wirt?" the little boy asked, standing up.
"Yeah, I think so," Wirt said, taking another step forward with a hand against his temple. He winced. Dipper seemed to be avoiding his eyes, and ate a caramel with his gaze resolutely on the fire pit. There was a palpable discomfort in the air that Beatrice bitterly wished someone would break. She was so terribly tired of awkward silences, but still too ill-tempered to make her own attempt at playing nice. The birds that she had been working hard to ignore were starting to chirp ever more excitedly in the trees above them. "The teeth!" they said. "The teeth are coming!" Beatrice couldn't help looking upward. They were still saying that same thing. What on earth did it mean?
"So," Wirt said finally as he sat down next to Greg, still holding his head. "I guess we're really doing this, huh?" He sounded terribly resigned.
"Sure are," Mabel said cheerfully. "Gravity Falls, ho!" She lifted a fist into the air and looked around. Nobody responded to her enthusiasm, but Sara offered her a small smile.
Dipper chewed on the inside of his lip and finally grabbed a stick to begin scrawling a picture in the dirt. "Alright," he said, "then the plan for today is just to keep going due north as well as we can." Beatrice felt like she could hardly hear him over the birds' hysterical chorus. "I have a compass that should keep us in the right direction -"
"North?" Wirt asked. He looked like he thought he must have misheard, while the birds kept screeching, "The teeth, the teeth!" Beatrice squared her jaw.
Dipper looked up at him, equally unsure. "Uh, yeah?"
Sara spoke up as well. "I'm pretty sure we need to go west, actually," she said, voice very carefully polite. Beatrice dug a finger in her ear in the hopes that it might clear up her hearing.
"The teeth, the teeth!"
"Well I - technically it's sort of a northwest-ish direction, I suppose, but –"
"The teeth, the teeth, the teeth –"
"I mean, though, don't – don't you mean southwestish –?" Wirt said. He looked torn between his desire not to ruffle any feathers and his clear want to assert himself against someone who had handily assaulted him and had yet to apologize for it. "'Cause I'm, you know, really sure it's more southwest to get to –"
Dipper's brow creased a little bit. "I don't know how to properly explain how much sense that doesn't make –"
"THE TEETH, THE TEETH, THE TEETH –"
And Beatrice blurted out, "Shut UP," unable to help herself. The birds paid her no heed, but the rest of the group did, and she found five sets of eyes drawn to her as she clapped her hands over her ears. Stupid goddamn birds, she thought angrily, face turning red. She looked past her companions toward the deep of the woods, determined not to justify herself, but as her eyes locked on a faraway shape through the morning mist the birdsong went quiet all at once, and the unexpected silence dropped a cold shiver down her spine. Everyone else noticed the same, but they all looked upward, while she still had her eyes trained on the foggy distance. She squinted, and then froze. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. "Shut up because -" She licked her dry lips. "Because I think those things can hear us."
Everyone turned to follow her gaze. Some several hundred yards away in the thick morning gloom there slunk a shape between the trees, unidentifiable but distinct. It was hunched and bristled, smaller than a bear but far bigger than any of them were prepared to deal with. It passed between two trees and was followed by another, and more behind them. Momentarily, a hushed howl went up from a far distance, thin and strident. It sounded distinctly lupine.
Beatrice turned back to her companions with her heart in her throat. They looked as anxious as she felt.
"Whichever direction we're going," she said, "please just tell me it's away from those things."
Dipper looked at his sister, while Wirt put a hand on Greg's shoulder and bade him to stand. There was no camp for them to break, and they did no more to argue about compass directions; the birds were still silent in the trees as the group stood up and began walking away without a sound, their first morning together outlined by the sort of shared, unspoken fear that was, in Beatrice's experience, the basis for most relationships.
Maybe this alliance wasn't going to be entirely artificial after all.
–
The day grew bright and rounder as six bodies trudged through the deep of the woods, silent, but watching their surroundings very closely. Progress was slow in the thick underbrush and the terrain was treacherously uneven, but nobody complained; the long trek was more than form of habit by this point. Morning turned leisurely to early afternoon on the beat of their footfalls, the forest was full to the brim with birdsong and the heady smells of cedar and moss, and Mabel was falling behind the group just because she wanted a little more time to take it all in. She stopped while the rest of them moved ahead and lifted her chin into a sunbeam, quietly worshipping the warmth on her face. She knew it couldn't be a coincidence that this strange world's first real moment of peace and beauty stood in line with her and Dipper having made new friends. They might not think they were friends yet, but give it time. Mabel had never failed to eventually cotton with anyone, and that was even before she was only one of a half-dozen people in the whole world left to socialize with.
"Mabel!" Dipper called from a dozen yards north, gesturing at her to move up with him. "Hurry up. We have no idea what might be out here."
"Aah, you worrywart," she called back, sticking a tongue out at him. "You oughta slow down and smell the flowers a little!"
"Seriously," her brother emphasized, and began to walk back toward her. "I think those were wolves we saw back at the campsite. They'll pick off any stragglers they can find if they're following us." He held out a hand.
There were no further sounds of danger from the woods around, and had not been for hours. Mabel pulled a face, but conceded to take her twin's hand and catch up. The canopy up ahead was thin, and through it golden lances of sunlight poured thickly to the ground, turning green and brown alike to brilliant white. Mabel could viscerally feel the group's tension slowly evaporate like mist from the earth. She reveled in it, hunched her shoulders up and shivered, gave herself congratulatory hugs that finally, finally people were at least a little bit at peace. Or most of them, anyway. The tall boy called Wirt had a troubled expression on his face as he worked to keep pace with his much slower little brother.
Mabel sidled up to the two of them expectantly. Greg waved at her, and lifted one of his frog's forelegs to wave as well. "Heyy," she said as she fell into step with them. Wirt looked startled, having not seemed to notice her drawing close. "You alright, friend? Lookin' a little upset over here."
"Me?" he asked, apparently surprised she was talking to him. She looked around to see if anyone else was near, and gave him a self-evident shrug. "Oh. No. I'm fine. Just, uh… No, I'm fine."
"Wirt hates it when people say worrywart," Greg piped up from next to his brother's knees.
Wirt started to say, "Greg…"
"Oh. Did someone say that?" Mabel asked, tilting her head at him.
Wirt turned a little pink, and Greg said in his stead, "You did, just now."
"Aw, man," Mabel straightened back up and kicked at a pinecone like a soccer ball. "I'm sorry. I didn't know it bothered you. I won't do it again."
"'Cause it sounds too much like his name and sometimes people tease–" Greg started to clarify further, but Wirt finally put a hand on top of his copper-bottomed head and said, "Okay, shush."
"Aah, I get it," Mabel said, and made an attempt to fling a sympathetic arm around Wirt's shoulder, though this turned out not to work so well given their height difference. She had to jump to make the reach. "Y'know," she added, withdrawing the arm and tapping her chin pensively as she contemplated an opportunity to try and mend last night's wounds, "if trouble with weird names is your game, you really oughta talk to Dipper. He knows your pain, I promise." Dipper shot her a concerned look when he heard his name spoken. "I bet you and him have a lot in common, actually, you know? Maybe you should chill sometime and just kinda..." She circled her hands, open-palmed, a few times, and then slipped her fingers together. "...talk it out. Ya know?"
"Mabel," Dipper said, pulling his mouth to the side with a doubtful look.
"Look, I've gotta try, alright?" she responded, stopping again and dropping her arms dramatically. Everyone stopped walking to look. "I can't stand it when everyone's mad at each other, Dip. You especially."
Greg said, "I'm not mad."
"See this kid here?" Mabel asked, taking one of Greg's arms and lifting it into the air. "This kid gets it. He's not mad. Can't we all be like Greg here?"
"Wearing saucepans on our heads?" Dipper asked dryly.
"It's not a saucepan," Greg said with infinite patience. "I have a metal head, because I'm a robot, because it's Halloween. Puh-lease."
"It hasn't been Halloween for a few days now, Greg," Sara said kindly. "You can see why the poor man would be confused."
But Greg said, very equitably, "No, it's still Halloween." His brother gave him a little look that told him to be quiet, but the kid continued, "I mean, the last time we went into the Unknown it was for weeks and weeks, but it still never stopped being Halloween the whole time, so -"
Mabel looked at her brother with pursed lips; he was wearing an expression very much like hers. "What's the unknown?" she asked, stepping forward with an eyebrow raised at the elementary schooler. "You said something about it last night, too."
Greg started to say, "It's -"
"A really long story," Wirt interrupted, bending down to give Greg a little push and get him walking again. "A, uh - kid's thing. Made up. Hard to explain. Something for another day." He gave Sara a pointed look and she raised her hands plaintively. "We should just go."
"But Wirt," the child protested.
"No, he's right," said Dipper, who looked even jumpier than usual. "I really want to keep moving. We've got a long way to go and only a fraction of the supplies needed to get there, so we shouldn't waste any time." Wirt gave him a grateful look, but Dipper didn't appear to be watching him. They all began moving again, tromping carefully through the deep sea of sword ferns and cedar mulch – all of them but Beatrice, who stood stationary and watched Wirt's slow withdrawal with a hard expression, and clear hurt in her eyes. He glanced back at her once before looking quickly away, and alarm bells went off in Mabel's head. She sidled up next to the tall redhead with a grin and began talking, anything to keep the mood light.
"Sooo," she said casually, examining the shine on her fingernails and trying hard to make like their conversation was not being precipitated by the fear that people would start arguing again. "How was your Halloween this year? Aside from the part where the world ended."
Beatrice tore her eyes from Wirt and looked down at Mabel, who, at five-foot-six, was still a good few inches shorter than her. She said, "I don't understand the question."
"Oh. Um, okay?" Mabel rubbed the back of her head as the two of them started to walk together, slightly separated from the rest. "If you say so." She chewed on the inside of her lip and decided to try a different tack. "You know, it's really nice of you and your friends to –"
"They're not my friends."
Once again, Mabel was caught off-guard. "Oh. You… Didn't you all come from the same place together? Aberdale?"
"I'm not from Aberdale," Beatrice said stiffly, staring straight ahead with her bat slung over her shoulder. Her coolness was intimidating. "I don't even know where that is."
"Oh." Mabel let her hands fall limp at her sides. "I thought you all knew each other."
"We did," Beatrice said. She was looking at Wirt again. "Or most of us did. But we're not friends." There was a twitch in her freckled jaw. "I used to think we were, but I was wrong."
Mabel was starting to feel like she'd wandered out of her depth. She pushed forward with, "Well, I just wanted to say that it's really nice of you and your fr– you and your group, to let us come with you. And share your food. After we attacked you and all. Because we did. And, uh –" she bounced a little on the balls of her feet "– if any of your people don't think you're a good friend, you should tell 'em they're crazy. 'Cause I got a real good view when you came in with that bat last night, and I'd be lucky to have someone who'd defend my life like that."
"Your brother wouldn't?" Beatrice asked. She stopped and turned up to the trees. A particularly harsh birdcall sounded, and a frown crossed her face. Mabel was struck by the shape of her, standing in a sunbeam, loose nightdress billowing slightly away from her thin form. The dress looked curiously old, the fabric a rough weave, the seams hand-stitched. It certainly seemed like part of a Halloween costume.
"He would," Mabel admitted.
"Well, there you go," Beatrice said flippantly, and tossed the bat up into the air with a little spin. "It's not so special."
"That's the kind of thing siblings have to do for each other," Mabel insisted. "It's not the same and – and that's not the point, anyway. I just wanna say –" She hoisted her elbow up onto the other girl's shoulder with an effort "– I'd sure be your friend, if these dopes can't appreciate you."
And Beatrice turned to look at her, sunlight gold on her wild hair and a slightly crumpled expression on her face. She opened her mouth to say something and then stopped. "I don't really do friends," she said, and crossed her arms across her chest in a defensive gesture.
"Okay," Mabel said understandingly. "You can't stop me from liking you, though." The taller girl offered her a half-smile paired with skeptical brows. "Especially your hair. Would it be weird if I asked to touch your hair?"
Beatrice thought about it for a minute. "No," she said finally, and reached up to pull out the blue scrunchie that kept it piled atop her head. The coppery locks fell in a heap around her shoulders and Mabel made a noise of awe.
"So pretty," she whispered as she ran her fingers over and through the curls.
"I hate it," Beatrice said.
"Noo!" Mabel insisted. "I hate my hair, it's so brown and boring."
"But easy to comb, I'll bet."
A voice called, "Mabel!" and the two of them looked up to where Dipper stood distantly between the trees. "Come on!"
"Pity us for not listening to your brother before," Beatrice said dryly. "Now we're gonna get eaten by wolves."
But Mabel said, "Naah," and began steering both of them to catch up with the group. "Wolves go after lone stragglers, don't they? And we're not alone."
Beatrice looked away from her. Mabel liked to think it was because she didn't want anyone to see her smiling. They didn't speak again, but walked for a very long time together through the breathing woods, and however slow they went, neither let the other fall behind.
–
No matter how he tried, Dipper couldn't quite get himself to relax. Half his mind was occupied by the quiet voice in his head (always sounding a lot like Mabel's) which told him to calm down, accept that he was in good company, and enjoy the scenery a bit; the other half was exhausted by the impending sense of doom which had dogged him more or less constantly for upwards of five years now. He kept half an eye on the others, the brothers with the weird clothes being in the middle and Mabel and Bat-Crazy Beatrice taking up the lead. He and Sara walked close to one another at the front, and he thought the arrangement a good one. The girl had a serene air about her, rational and self-possessed. He barely knew her, but could tell she was a rock, and a rock was exactly what he needed right now.
Over the last few days, walking had turned from a halfway-enjoyable pastime, to an excruciating chore, to a numb automated process. Dipper couldn't feel the pain in his legs anymore, though it was always there when he woke in the morning and laid down to sleep at the end of the day; his whole lower body might as well have been made of clockwork for how robotic each step was, clunking along through the underbrush on a mechanical wind. The ache of the backpack on his shoulders came in waves each time his mind settled on it; Mabel would certainly have offered to trade it for her much lighter one had he asked, but she was smaller than him, and it would be even more of a burden on her, so he shouldered the straps up once again and muscled through the pain. Mabel seemed convinced they'd left any danger behind at the campsite, but Dipper couldn't shake the unfounded sense that they were being followed. Every once in a while he thought he heard something sounding from the trees around, like a muffled voice very far away, but it always eluded his full focus.
"Do you hear that?" he asked Sara once. She cocked her head at him with a curious expression that clearly said no, so he just shrugged and let it drop.
Afternoon bled into itself. The air warmed and the light grew rich and low. The landscape here all looked the same: trees, trees, and more trees, with a lot of moss sprinkled across the top for flavor. It was impossible to tell how far they had traveled today (ten miles? Twelve?), but they were definitely going slower than they had when it was only him and Mabel. Dipper tried to tell himself it was a reasonable tradeoff for safety in numbers, and that helped a little bit, but that rationale still stood defiantly in the face of his nasty feeling that he and his sister should have taken off in the middle of the night and left these strangers to their own devices. You can't trust them, he thought, and tried to shake it away as fast as it came. You're better off alone. These weren't really his thoughts. It was the anxiety talking. Things were going to be okay.
Mabel believed it, after all, and he had to be willing to trust her. She was his seeing-eye dog for this sort of thing.
"Do you think that's what we've been hearing at night?" Sara asked unexpectedly. Dipper did a double take as he looked up at her. She was staring at the forest floor that passed slowly under their feet.
"Huh?" he asked astutely.
"The howling every night," she said. She looked up, mouth twisted behind the skull makeup. "Could it be coming from wolves like we saw earlier?"
"Oh. I don't know." Dipper kicked mindlessly at a small rock in his path and furrowed his brows. "I've been thinking that the sounds at night might be something… different. Kinda…" He waved his hands and muttered, "'parasupernortural.' I guess. But that's not a word. I mean, they're always so close, but you never hear anything move. You never see anything." He shot her an awkward glance. "That is, if you can, uh… believe that sort of thing."
Sara shrugged listlessly. "I'd believe anything after the last few days I've had," she said. "Now I almost wish it was wolves. At least then you'd know what you're dealing with."
"I know the feeling." Dipper mentally flipped through the yellowed pages of three handwritten journals, which he hadn't seen in five years, looking for something which might match the description of those screaming shadows. Nothing. "I always kind of liked it, though. Dealing with the unknown."
"You've done a lot of that?"
"I used to, until –" He shrugged. "I was just a kid. Dangerous stuff never really sinks in when you're that young."
"Ah. I know what you mean." Independently, they raised their eyes to the trees and walked in silence again. Dipper felt a little calmer already. Sure, he hadn't lost that feeling of being watched, and he still kept hearing voices from far off, but that was nothing. He just needed some normal conversation with like-minded individuals. They were all perfectly normal people. They could trust each other.
"Dip!" Mabel called from behind. Dipper turned around and shielded his eyes from the low sun. His sister had stopped and was pointing off to the east. "There's another one!" Curiosity piqued, he followed her gaze. Nestled between the trees was a low cottage, slumping beneath the weight of the needles and leaves on its roof.
"Come on!" Mabel said as she dashed past Wirt and Greg. "Fourth time's the charm, Bro-bro!"
"There are buildings out here?!" Beatrice asked incredulously.
"A few," Dipper said as they drew closer together to watch Mabel scout around the base of the sagging hut. "They're all empty. I don't know where they came from."
Beatrice had a very odd look on her face. "I've gotta see this," she said under her breath, and Sara followed close behind, leaving Dipper, Wirt, and Greg standing alone on their path. The two older boys made brief eye contact and then looked away.
"Do you, uh… wanna go look, Greg?" Wirt asked.
"Really?" The boy looked up at his brother. "You aren't gonna tell me it's too dangerous or something?"
"Absolutely everything is dangerous right now," Wirt deadpanned. His tone was light, but there was something unspeakably weary underneath it. "No reason not to poke around the cool old building. Just be smart about it." The boy shrugged and followed the others happily. When he was gone, Wirt looked up and tried to say something at the exact same moment that Dipper spoke.
"This isn't the first time this has –"
"I just wanted to say I was s–"
And they both stopped. They looked away. Dipper swallowed. You can't trust them, the voice in his head repeated, and he stolidly ignored it.
"Look," he started again, and Wirt turned back. "I wanted to say I – I'm sorry for what happened last night." He rubbed self-consciously at the back of his head, still bruised. "It was rough. I overreacted. A-and I'm sorry you got hurt. You and your brother seem like good people." He meant most of it, but couldn't shake the feeling that if they had been ne'er-do-wells after all, he would have been very glad to act decisively.
"Oh. Th-thanks." Wirt fiddled with his hands under the weird cloak he wore. Dipper kept wanting to ask what costume it was supposed to be a part of, but the time never seemed quite right. " It's o– well, it's not really okay, I mean, my head still hurts a lot, but I guess I can't – can't blame you for being jumpy. These woods are even weirder than they used to be."
"Used to be?" Dipper asked, but Wirt ignored him. The taller boy raised his head so that his prominent nose cut across the mass of the trees around, and he said, "I keep feeling like I'm being watched. I don't know where it's coming from."
Dipper's heart caught in his throat, but he crossed his arms coolly and croaked, "Oh. Th-that's pretty weird." He hoped his expression didn't betray him, but he all of a sudden felt quite wrong-footed. Something far away whispered his name again, bouncing off the trees from no direction and all of them. His neck prickled. Both young men looked at one another for a minute longer until Dipper abruptly broke away and started to walk toward the cottage where most of their group had already congregated. A pool of molten dread bubbled in his stomach, but he did his best to ignore it; in a fit of denial, he swung around the corner of the building and called, "Mabel?"
"In here, Dipper." Mabel's voice floated from inside the doorless entrance. "It's even creepier than the others we found!" He ducked inside as Wirt came up behind him. The interior was awash in heavy gray light, untouched by the sun. It was more of a shack than the buildings he and Mabel had seen before, having only a single room and a cold hearth in the far wall, but seemed more structurally sound as well. Its ceiling support beams looked solid, at least. Mabel and Sara picked through the spare debris on the floor, while Beatrice swept the dusty mantle with her hand. The remains of a cooking spit were collapsed across the firebricks, and a rotten table lay upside-down against the south wall. A violent shiver went down Dipper's spine as he looked at it. He wasn't sure it had anything to do with the table.
"What are we looking for?" Greg asked from next to the hut's single grimy window.
"Food, mostly," Mabel said. She kicked at the cooking spit, but predictably there was no bread hiding underneath. Wirt ducked a little and became the last one to enter the shack.
And as he did, Dipper felt suddenly like he might be sick.
Cold fearful nausea hit him like a wave, inexplicable and overwhelming. This was nowhere near the sort of weakly paranoid fantasy that fueled most of his anxieties; it was certain, and hard, and very very real. He reeled slightly and leaned against the wooden wall. "Dipper?" someone asked, their voice fading in his ears. "Are you alright?" He couldn't answer; his jaw felt loose.
As his view of the dirt floor shrunk with darkness pushing at the edges, someone grabbed his shoulders. Mabel. His perception filtered wildly through all its possible avenues of elucidation, hearing, sight, smell, looking for a channel by which he could fully interpret this terrible dread, but none of them fit; it was some sixth sense, bone-deep and undeniable. Something was wrong. Something terrible was going to happen, and they needed to leave.
"Go," he croaked, trying to stand up as his head whirled. "We need to get out of here, go –"
But he'd taken too long to collect himself. Something in the woods outside of the shack thumped, and a branch cracked, and every one of the group grew silent. Beatrice tightened her grip on her bat, and Wirt instinctively reached for Greg's hand. For a second there was nothing; and then from the other side of the thin wall, only feet away, rose a sound, high and rasping, almost with a laugh in its breath, like it couldn't believe they could really be so incredibly stupid. Three others followed it, and their shadows fell across the entryway like creepers, inching forward to take them all in hand.
All day long, Dipper had had the feeling that they were being followed, and because he wanted to believe it wasn't true, he'd allowed them to enter a small building with only a single exit and nowhere to hide. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He reached out blindly and placed a shaking hand on Mabel's shoulder, and with the other, withdrew his knife. If he died for this mistake, it would be for the sake of protecting her from it.
"Stay behind me," was all he had time to say to his sister before a great hunched shape entered the doorway, mottled in silhouette, and snarling like a wolf.
So here you see the introduction of one of my weirder OTGW headcanons: that Beatrice can talk to birds, and hates it. I like to think the rest of her family retained this ability as well, and now the mill house is just pretty much constantly surrounded by birds of all shapes and sizes, flying freely in the windows, chatting friendly-like with her parents and siblings, roosting in the attic during wintertime, and Beatrice is the only one who thinks this is completely insane while everyone else is like "yo I guess we're the bird family now." That white crow seems like a pretty strange character, dunn'he? Ahh, I bet we're never gonna see him again...
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