That afternoon, when Tate set off towards town, the kids hurried outside after him.
"Can we come with you?" Mabel asked eagerly.
Tate seemed surprised, but at last gave a little nod. "If ya want. Probably a good idea for both of you ta get outta the house anyway."
Mabel beamed, and slipped one of her hands into his, skipping along at his side as they headed down the path towards the main part of Gravity Falls.
For a while they walked in silence, aside from the crunching of their shoes in the dirt.
And then, out of the blue, Tate asked, "So, how you two settlin' in?"
It was the first time since they arrived that they'd been asked that question; both children were a little surprised. Finally Dipper answered, "...We're doing good. Thanks."
"Yeah, we're glad Grunkle Ford agreed to let us stay with him," Mabel agreed. "This place is pretty cool."
Tate nodded, and offered them one of his little half-smiles. But then he asked, more seriously, something else that was even more unexpected: "How about what happened? With your folks, I mean. How're you handling that?"
Dipper had managed to mostly avoid thinking about that all week, except late at night when he was having trouble sleeping; hearing it be mentioned aloud by an adult was kind of like a sucker-punch to the chest. He was mortified to feel his eyes growing hot, and had to stop and blink the feeling back down. He could see that Mabel looked equally shocked by the question.
"You don't haveta talk about it if ya don't want to," Tate said with unusual gentleness. "But if you decide you want to, and your uncle's still got his head in his research so he doesn't realize you want to, you can come talk to me. Kay?"
Dipper felt a sudden rush of tight anger in his chest. What did he know about something like this, huh? What gave him the right to think he could-
"I lost my mom when I wasn't much older than you," the man's voice interrupted his thoughts, as if he'd been reading them. "Me and Dad-neither of us ever really recovered from it."
...Oh.
Even though he hadn't said what he'd been thinking aloud, Dipper looked up at Tate apologetically. Tate just squeezed his shoulder, and the little group slowly resumed walking.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
The town of Gravity Falls was just as small as Mabel remembered-everything looked more or less the same as it had been when they first arrived. And, as they wandered into the main shopping area, they could see a lot of the same people they remembered out on the streets, selling their wares and saying good morning to each other.
"Howdy, Tate!" the baker hollered after him as they walked past his shop, "Out runnin' errands for the wizards again?"
"Yup. Just lookin' for a place that sells eye of newt," Tate muttered sarcastically.
The baker laughed, not in a very nice way, and went back to hocking his wares.
Tate glanced at the children, rubbing the back of his neck. "There's a reason why I try to grow as much of our own food as possible."
Mabel gave his hand a sympathetic squeeze, and stuck her tongue out at the baker when he wasn't looking.
"So, what do we need to buy?" Dipper asked.
"Dad needs more oil for the automaton, and I was gonna get some pie for dinner."
Mabel blinked. "Pie?"
"There's one place left in town that'll sell already-cooked meals to us at a decent price," Tate said, pointing to a red building nearby. "Lazy Susan's tavern. She makes the best pies in the world." He dug a few coins out of his pocket and handed them over to her. "How about you go pick some up for me while I get the oil? This should be enough to get us two big ones, so there'll be enough for everyone."
"Really?" Mabel gave him one of her wide, crooked smiles.
Tate nodded. "I'll meet you both back in front of the store when I'm done."
Mabel made a delighted squeaking noise, and then grabbed Dipper's hand, towing him off towards the tavern.
The inside was louder, and more crowded, than they'd been expecting; everywhere they turned people were talking, yelling, eating and singing-often one or two of those things at once.
The children tentatively slipped around a table where two men were arm wrestling, and another one where one man was shoveling pancakes into his mouth while the one next to him cheered him on, until they reached the main counter, where a woman whose eye seemed to be permanently shut was wiping the top with a dish towel.
"Um, excuse us?" Dipper piped up as best he could above the noise.
The woman looked over the counter at them, and her face lit up in a bright smile. The closer view allowed them to see that she had a name tag pinned to the front of her dress with "SUSAN" written on it in big block letters.
"Well, hello there, sweeties! What can I do for you?"
They each climbed up onto a stool, and placed the money on the counter.
"Two big pies, please. We got a reliable tip that you make the best kind in the world."
Susan blushed, and waved a hand. "Oh, I wouldn't say they're the best…" Then she leaned in close. "But if you wanna tell people that, I certainly won't complain." She lifted up her drooping eyelid, and then lowered it again. "Wink!"
Mabel giggled; she liked this lady's style.
Susan accepted their coins and bustled off towards the back part of the kitchen; while she was gone, Dipper pulled out the journal and turned to the picture of the castle. He looked around the room, examining the different patrons and (Mabel suspected) trying to decide if any of them was a suitable candidate for asking about it. Whatever he saw didn't seem to satisfy him, because his nose wrinkled and he muttered to himself in annoyance.
Susan suddenly returned, balancing two enormous, delicious-looking pies whose smell alone was like music to Mabel's nose, before setting them down on the counter in front of them. "What you got there, hun?" she asked Dipper curiously.
His expression brightened. "Oh, um, just wondering-have you ever heard anything about there being an old castle around here somewhere?"
Susan's smile abruptly faded, and she made a small gesture like she was warding off the evil eye.
The kids looked at each other, and then back at her worriedly.
"...What?"
Susan sighed, leaning an arm on the counter. "There is a castle out in the woods somewhere, but trust me, hun, you don't wanna go looking for it."
"Why not?" Mabel asked.
"There's all kindsa bad stories about that place." She looked down uncomfortably. "They say that there's people who've gone in to explore it, and never come out. Or that it used to belong to an insane wizard who did something horrible to that nice Mr. Pines who lives just outside of town, and now he has trouble remembering things."
The niece and nephew of that nice Mr. Pines naturally felt their curiosity increase.
Susan shook herself, and pushed a lock of silver hair out of her face. "Either way, though, I don't wanna hear about either of you going poking around looking for it, you hear me?" She shook a long-nailed finger at them. "You're too young to be lost to such foolishness!"
Dipper smiled...but Mabel knew it wasn't his sincere smile.
It was his "I'm definitely going to do that thing you just told me not to, but I'm going to smile and nod and pretend to agree with you so you won't get upset with me" smile.
And despite the amount of danger they were probably going to get into, Mabel knew she was going to do the exact same thing.
There was a chance that going there would help Grunkle Ford with whatever was messing up his brain-and if nothing else, the thrill of the mystery was helping her get her brother back.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
No, Dipper hadn't forgotten about that creature he'd heard in the night, in case you were wondering.
It was kind of difficult to; there had been several nights when he was awakened by the sound of its cries echoing through the forest, and they never ceased to give him chills.
But, he mused as they headed back home after Tate came to collect them, he had only ever heard them at night, so perhaps the beast responsible for them was nocturnal. If that was the case, as long as he and Mabel searched for the castle during the day, and got back to their grunkle's house before dark, they would have (comparatively) nothing to worry about.
And as he continued to think about it through the rest of the day, he developed some ideas about how to make it work.
Taking a page from one of the more intelligent fairy tales, he and Mabel spent some time gathering the brightest, most colorful rocks and pebbles that they could find and putting them in a bag, in case they needed to make a trail they could follow later.
Then, once they had an ample supply, Dipper climbed onto the roof of the house, high above the treeline, and scanned the forest for some sign of where this supposed castle might be.
To his disappointment he couldn't see any turrets or signs of a wall, which would have been a big help...but he was able to make out a path.
It was connected to the road they had rode on to get to town in the first place, and now that he was seeing it from this high angle, he remembered that he'd actually noticed it on the way here in the first place.
It was a tiny little thing that branched off of the main road into the trees, which even then had struck him as kind of odd. And he remembered that there had been what looked like a broken-off signpost next to it.
It might be a bit of a long shot, but it was still a good place to start.
So the next morning, once Grunkle Ford had gone off to research and Tate and McGucket were distracted by working on their automaton, he and Mabel packed some leftover pie and a waterskin for lunch, and made their way down the road towards the mysterious path.
Oh yeah.
This was definitely a good plan.
Seriously, Hansel and Gretel is one of the few classic fairy tales in which the characters actually act intelligently for the most part.
Find out they're going to be abandoned in the woods to die? Leave a trail of pebbles so they can find their way home.
Find out the woman they've been staying with is actually a cannibal? Take advantage of her poor eyesight using a chicken bone so she won't realize her plan to fatten Hansel up is working.
Realize Gretel is going to be pushed into the oven? Trick the witch into sticking her head in so she can get pushed in instead.
And these are CHILDREN, for crying out loud, but they're STILL more sensible than, say, the original Snow White, who keeps forgetting that she's not supposed to let anyone in the house while the dwarves are gone and gets poisoned three times in a row by the same person!
...This is a rant that could go on for ages if I don't cut myself off.
I know it might seem a little out of character for Dipper, of everyone in the Pines family, to be the one eagerly charging off into danger, but let us not forget who it was that went tearing off into the forest to catch an amazing attraction for the Shack armed with only a mace and chain, or who broke into a haunted convenience store just to impress a girl and her friends. Dipper can be quite the mad lad when he wants to be.