A fire was crackling somewhere nearby, its warmth causing Dipper's nearly frostbitten face and hands to tingle and burn. He touched his forehead and felt horns. Disoriented for a moment, he realized he was still in his Puck costume. The party. Kissing Wendy. Wendy!
Dipper's eyes flew open and he sat bolt upright, then grabbed his bruised ribs, wincing. He was in a cave, which was dimly lit by only the small fire burning a few feet from him.
"Ah, Dipper Pines, I'm glad you are finally awake. I was beginning to worry," a gruff, but pleasant voice said from behind him.
Dipper turned, and a welcome sight greeted him—the Multibear slowly ambled toward him from the entrance of the cave, most of his faces wearing expressions of kindly concern.
"Multibear! How did I end up in your cave? The last thing I remember was…" Dipper trailed off.
"I heard quite a commotion in forest in the middle of the night. I went to investigate, and found you unconscious, lying in a small clearing," explained the Multibear. "When I was unable to rouse you, I brought you here. You were dangerously cold for one without fur. How did you come to be there, Dipper Pines? And why are you dressed like the Trickster?"
"You mean my Puck costume? It was for a party I went to last night. As for why I was lying unconscious in the middle of the woods…" Dipper stared at his hands for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. "Do you know anything about a place called The Green Realm?" he inquired.
All of the Multibear's heads cocked to the side at once. "I do, but you should not. Humans are not permitted there. It is the dominion of The Green Man."
"That must be who 'He' is," muttered Dipper. "Multibear, my fr-girlfriend, Wendy Corduroy and I were attacked last night on our way back to her house from the Mystery Shack. These cloaked humanoid creatures with tree bark for skin came out of nowhere and demanded that Wendy accompany them to The Green Realm. They said she was a daughter of the Green, and 'He' required her presence. I tried to fight them so Wendy could run, but they caught her and…" Dipper's voice quivered with emotion at the memory. "They wrapped her in vines, and then she just disappeared. Their leader told me I'd never see her again."
The Multibear's main head frowned. "They called her a 'daughter of the Green?'"
"Yeah. And her name is Wendy, but they called her 'Wyn Dahlia,'" added Dipper.
"This may seem like a strange question, but are you acquainted with your girlfriend's parents?" asked the Multibear.
"Her dad, yeah. But her mom disappeared when Wendy was only like ten years old," supplied Dipper.
"Oh dear," murmured the Multibear.
"Why 'oh dear'?" asked Dipper. "Oh dear sounds bad."
"Dipper, I want to help you find your Wendy, but I do not think I can help you unless I have some answers—answers which you will have to obtain from Wendy's father," said the Multibear, apologetically.
Dipper gulped. "Are… are you sure I have to get the answers from him? I can't, like, look them up in city hall, or ask around town? Because I was reallyhoping to rescue Wendy without Manly Dan even finding out she was ever gone."
"I am sorry, but her father is the only one who would be able to provide the answers you seek," said the Multibear. "You must talk to him before I am able to offer you any assistance."
"Fine," sighed Dipper. "I let his only daughter get kidnapped by creepy bark men, and I have to ask him about his wife, all traces of whom he got rid of after she disappeared six years ago. This could only go well." He crossed his arms in front of his chest. "What am I supposed to ask him?"
"I believe you will first have to explain what happened to Wendy. Then you must ask him who his wife was, and what he knows about her family." The Multibear took in Dipper's resigned expression. "This is all very important. I would not ask it of you if it wasn't."
"Oh, believe me, I am fully aware of how important it is," said Dipper. "My girlfriend is trapped in… is it another dimension…? Anyway, she's trapped where humans are supposedly forbidden. She only just became my girlfriend last night. I'm not losing her now."
"Very well," said the Multibear, nodding its heads. "If you feel the need, you may rest in my cave awhile longer before beginning your task. You appear to be in pain."
Dipper stood up slowly, wincing as his bruised ribs ached. "Thanks, but I'll be okay. I just want to get this part over with so I can get Wendy back." He began to make his way to the cave entrance.
"Good luck, Dipper Pines," the Multibear called to him as he left. "I will remain here, awaiting your return with the answers you seek."
/
Dipper blinked, his eyes watering as he stepped from the dimness of the Multibear's cave into the bright morning light. A thin dusting of snow covered the grass and trees, sparkling in the sun and crunching underfoot as he made his way slowly through the woods toward the Corduroy family cabin.
When Dipper was about halfway there, he came upon a small clearing. "This is where it happened," he murmured to himself.
He walked to the edge of the clearing, where he had last seen Wendy. There he found a large pile of withered vines, and a few feet away, the woven circlet of flowers and reeds that Wendy had been wearing for the party. It must have fallen off during the struggle.
He held his ribs as he slowly bent down to pick the crown up, the words of the leader of the Green Guard echoing through his head: "You need not concern yourself with her anymore. No human may enter the Green Realm. You will never see her again."
You're wrong about that, thought Dipper, as he wiped a single, angry tear from his cheek. He gripped the floral crown tightly as he made his way to the Corduroy cabin, steeling himself for the uncomfortable conversation ahead of him.
/
Dipper arrived back at Wendy's house and let himself in. Wendy hadn't bothered to lock the door before they left for the party. The cabin seemed so empty. Dipper's footsteps echoed off the walls as he made his way to the kitchen.
Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, Dipper frowned. The battery was dead. He slipped it back into his pocket, and grabbed the cordless house phone off its cradle. He dialed the number to Manly Dan's satellite phone that was written on the fridge. Dipper's heart was pounding in his ears as the phone rang twice.
"Hi sweetie!" Manly Dan greeted the only person who had the number to his satellite phone.
Dipper tried to speak, but his voice caught in his throat. He coughed.
"…Wendy, are you okay?" asked Manly Dan with concern. Static crackled quietly on the line.
"It-it's not Wendy, Mr. Corduroy. It's Dipper."
"Dipper? Why are you—is Wendy okay? Is she hurt or sick?"
"No... she—I was told she would be safe, but I have no way of knowing…" Dipper trailed off. He couldn't bring himself to say that Wendy was gone.
"Dipper," growled Manly Dan quietly, "Where is my daughter?"
"She was t-taken, Mr. Corduroy." Now that it was out in the open, the story just flowed out of Dipper. He barely paused to breathe, as he said "We were attacked in the woods by these weird creatures that resembled people, but with bark for skin. They called her Wyn Dahlia; they said she was 'a daughter of the Green' and said 'He' required her presence. I tried to fight them but they caught her and disappeared with her and their leader said they took her to the 'Green Realm' and that humans can't go there and I'll never see her again and—" Dipper cut himself off because he ran out of wind. He took a deep breath and began again. "The Multibear found me passed out in the woods, and when I woke up he said the only way he'd be able to help me is if I got you to tell me about your wife and her family." Dipper sat down at the kitchen table, clenching and unclenching his fist, waiting to be verbally executed by Manly Dan.
There was a pause. The background static hissed between the phone lines.
"Dammit."
Dipper had expected to be berated, yelled at, and blamed. What he didn't expect was the tone of resignation in Manly Dan's voice.
"Mr. Corduroy, what—"
"I should have expected this," said Manly Dan, his gruff voice unusually quiet. "I got overconfident after all these years, let my guard down. Goddammit, I should never have left her by herself."
"You… should have expected this? Why would you expect this?" asked Dipper incredulously.
"Dipper, Wendy isn't entirely human," Manly Dan stated plainly.
Dipper sat quietly for a moment, letting Manly Dan's words sink in.
"I… I beg your what?"
"My wife, Beithe, was a dryad," said Manly Dan.
"I—I think I'm gonna need details," stammered Dipper. "Tell. Me. Everything."
Manly Dan sighed, and began his tale.
/
"I met Beithe in the forest. I mean, where else would you meet a dryad, I guess? I didn't know at the time that she was a dryad, though. She appeared human. She was this beautiful, tall, slender girl, with long, auburn hair. Wendy looks a lot like her.
Anyway, I'm out in a pretty remote part of the forest, cutting down some old growth trees to sell to the lumber company. I start to swing my axe into this one particularly majestic redwood, when I hear a woman's voice behind me scream 'No, not that one!' It startles me so much I drop my axe on my foot. (Nearly severed my big toe; there was blood everywhere). She runs up to me, in this flowing white sundress, her hair blowing in the breeze, and I forget about my foot—she was that beautiful.
She's all apologies. She sits me down, and rips strips of fabric from the hem of her dress so she can bandage my foot. I ask her why she yelled, and she blushes and tells me that the particular tree I intended to cut down has a soul, and is her friend. I just figure she's a hippy, so I go along with it.
She helps me back to town, and it's getting dark, so I ask her where she's staying. She says she was just staying in the woods (camping, I figured), but since it's already getting dark I ask her if she wants to stay at my cabin for the night. She agrees.
So we stay up all night talking, and I'm just enamored with how genuine and kind she is. She just radiates happiness when she talks about trees, and nature. I ask her why she's being so nice to me when she knows I cut down trees for a living. She tells me that nature provides for us, so being a lumberjack isn't an inherently bad thing. She just wants me to be more careful about which trees I cut down. And she makes me promise to, once a year, plants a new grove of trees to 'atone' for all the ones I've cut down. (I still do this, by the way. Every year).
I ask her how to tell which trees are okay to cut down from those that aren't, and she gives me all sorts of signs to look for…certain formations in the bark, how high up the branches start, weird stuff like that. I start thinking she may not be just your average tree hugger.
Anyway, I fall asleep as the sun's coming up, and when I wake up she's gone. My foot doesn't hurt, so I take the bandage off, and it's fully healed. This is when I decide I have to find her again.
It doesn't take long. In fact, she finds me. She appears the next time I go out logging…which is strange, because I'm in a completely different part of the woods, miles from where we met. She comes up to me all happy, says she saw me checking that the trees were okay to cut before I cut them. I ask her how she found me. She just smiles and says 'magic.' I start laughing, and say 'No, really.'
Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, she changes. She still looks like her, but she's even taller, and her skin looks like papery thin birch bark. Twigs with leaves on them are poking out of her hair… 'I am a dryad,' she tells me. 'A Daughter of the Green.'
I just sink to the ground, flabbergasted. As quick as she went all barky on me, she changes back to the human Beithe. Says she didn't mean to scare me. Wants to explain. I just kinda nod.
Turns out she's from a place called the Green Realm, which is sort of like another dimension, connected to ours through plant life. She tells me she can travel between our dimensions with no problem, but her daddy prefers she stay in the Green, as she calls it. Oh yeah, and her daddy is the Green Man, who is apparently some type of forest god, and also happens to reign as king over the whole Green Realm. So basically, she is a forest-nymph-princess-goddess thing (I never really could define it).
Now I'm not going to go into all the details of our courtship; suffice to say we had a whirlwind romance. A few months after our first meeting, and with some of her dryad friends in attendance, we handfast in a sacred grove in the forest. (We couldn't legally get married, since Beithe didn't legally exist in human record).
Beithe tells me, after the ceremony, that she's chosen me over the Green—now that we're handfasted, she can't go back. Her daddy doesn't know about us, and would be furious if he finds out, seeing as I cut down trees for a living. (He's apparently pretty strict about which trees humans should be allowed to cut… he wants us to only cut trees that are already dead from disease or somesuch nonsense). She says she's left her old life behind, and wants to live in human form, with me—and with our child. That's when I find out she's pregnant.
She also tells me that any daughter born of a dryad and a human is also considered a Daughter of the Green, and can be taught, by her mother, to travel to the Green Realm, where her nature magic will manifest itself. If we have a son, she says, he will be a normal human.
When Wendy—Wyn Dahlia—is born, we have to discuss what to do about her being a forest nymph. Beithe says that she wants to raise her as a human, and once she reaches an age mature enough to understand the ramifications, give her a choice to enter the Green. She has a special pendant, imbued with magic, which would act as a sort of guide for Wendy when she entered the Green; since, having married me, Beithe is too afraid of the wrath of the Green Man to accompany her.
Well, fast forward to six years ago. Beithe has been uneasy for a bit, telling me she keeps seeing things out of the corner of her eye when she's in the forest—she says she feels like she's being watched. She tells me that she thinks somehow the Green Man has found her, even though she's been careful to never use her magic. I tell Beithe she's just being paranoid. He hasn't come after her in all the years we've been together, so why would he now? Beithe reluctantly tells me that the magical pendant she'd been saving for Wendy has gone missing, and she is afraid it has somehow been activated.
One night, after the kids have gone to sleep, our front door bangs open, and in barges this, well, literally Green Man. He's got all manner of foliage sprouting from him, leaves all around his head, and vines snaking out from him in all directions. The arrogant bastard just glares at me, and says 'I'll be taking back what's mine now.' And his vines wrap around Beithe and pull her to him, quicker than either of us can react. 'My daughter,' he says to her, sneering, 'say goodbye to your dear Romeo.' And then they vanish.
I don't know what to do. I have no way to get to her. And I'm suddenly a single father. So I do the best I know to do, and get rid of all of Beithe's stuff. All of it. Not only can I not handle seeing reminders of her every day, but the magical pendant she had been saving for Wendy must be somewhere among her things. I can't risk Wendy finding it and activating it. So everything goes.
The kids, of course, are completely torn up. They keep asking where mom went, when will she be back? I think Wendy is the only one who understands her mom won't be back. I try to be a good dad to her and the boys, but I have this one big secret always hanging over my head that I can never tell them—especially not Wendy. But it looks like somehow the Green Man got wind that he had another 'Daughter of the Green' roaming around Gravity Falls. I wish I knew how…
Well, Dipper, that's pretty much it. I don't know how your friend the Multibear can use my story to rescue Wendy, but I hope it helps."
/
Dipper's jaw had been hanging open so long that his mouth felt like cotton.
"I… I know how they found her," he rasped. Still holding the phone to his ear, he got up and got a glass of water.
"Really?" asked Manly Dan. "How?"
Dipper took a couple quick gulps of water and sat the glass down. "Was the pendant gold, and had a tree on it with emerald shards for leaves?"
"How could you possibly know that?"
"Mr. Corduroy, Wendy has had it this whole time," explained Dipper. "She showed it to me last night. She wore it as part of (ironically) a forest nymph costume that she made for a party we went to. She said it was the only thing she had left of her mom's."
Manly Dan was quiet for a moment. "Sonofabitch."
"I'm gonna go now," said Dipper. "I want to get back up to Multibear's cave so I can tell him what you told me."
"Good luck, Dipper."
"Thanks."
/
As soon as Dipper hung up the phone, he went back to Wendy's brothers' room, where he plugged his cell phone in to charge. He grabbed his backpack, checked to make sure his pocket knife was still inside, and threw in clean boxers, socks, a couple shirts, and a pair of jeans. He emptied the tepid, old water from the bottom of his water bottle, and filled it with fresh from the bathroom sink. He didn't have any idea what kind of plan Multibear had in mind, but he didn't plan on sleeping in the Corduroy cabin again until he had Wendy safely back.
Dipper walked to Wendy's room, and paused in front of her door. He wanted to grab some snacks from her stash to take with him, but he didn't want to invade her privacy. He smiled, as he imagined what she would say. Dude, relax. It's totally okay. Grab all the noms you need.
"Thanks, Wendy," Dipper whispered, as he pushed her door open.
Dipper opened her top dresser drawer, and grabbed a few granola bars and packs of peanut butter crackers. As he was leaving the room, something red poking out from underneath Wendy's pillow caught his eye. It was an envelope. He picked it up and turned it over. His name was scrawled on the back in big, loopy handwriting. Hands shaking, he tore the top of the envelope open, and pulled out a letter.
Merry Christmas Dipper!
Sorry you're getting a Christmas letter instead of card, I know it's pretty lame of me. However, in my defense, I haven't done the whole "Christmas" deal in years. I forgot that Christmas cards are like, a thing.
I normally try not to get very sappy on you, because, you know, awkward. But since it's the holidays, I guess a little sap is okay.
I just want to let you know how much you mean to me, Dip. You're totally my best friend, man, even though you're younger than me. When we hang out I forget that there's an age difference between us at all. Whether that means you're mature for your age, or I'm immature, I'll leave up to you to decide.
I'm really sad your visit is going to end in just a little over a week. I've had so much fun. I wish you lived here. It would be good times, man.
Well, I need to wrap this up. You're telling me we need to get going to Mabel's party.
Thanks for being awesome, Dipper. I know you'll always be there for me, and that means a lot.
Love,
Wendy
Dipper took a shaky breath and folded the letter back up, carrying it back to his room and placing it in his backpack along with the snacks. He unplugged his phone and shoved it in his pocket, shouldered the backpack, and made his way to the front of the cabin, ready to face anything Multibear threw at him.
"I won't let you down, Wendy," he said quietly.
/
Dipper didn't even make it out of Wendy's yard before he was tackled by a flying hug.
"MERRY CHRISTMAS BRO-BRO!" cried Mabel, giving him a final squeeze, then disengaging. She looked him up and down, quizzically. "Uh, Dipper? Why are you still dressed as Puck?"
"Dammit," groaned Dipper. "I knew I was forgetting something."
"What's going on, Dipstick? Why has your phone been off all day? You look like crap. Where's Wendy?"
"Listen Mabel, I don't have time to give you the full version, so here is the short one: Wendy was kidnapped by tree people last night and taken to another dimension called the Green Realm because it turns out her mom's a dryad which means she is too and humans can't enter the Green so Multibear is trying to help me figure out how to rescue her."
Mabel stared at him for a second, then slowly began to giggle. "Ha…hahaha… so you're saying Wendy's a mythical woodland creature? Uh-huh. Bro-bro, be serious!" She punched him in the shoulder.
Dipper stared at her, his face completely deadpan. "Mabel, why would I make that up?"
"So… you're serious? Wendy's been spirited away to some other dimension?" asked Mabel, concern replacing the mirth in her voice.
"Yup. Multibear thinks he might be able to help me rescue her. I'm headed back to his cave right now."
"Then I'm coming with you," said Mabel.
"No, you're not, Mabel. I don't even know what he has planned yet," said Dipper. Mabel put her hands on her hips and opened her mouth to argue, but Dipper shushed her. "Look, I charged my cell phone. I will text you when I find out what his plan is. If you can be of any help, I'll let you know, I promise."
Mabel sighed. "Fine. I'll be at the Mystery Shack. I should let everyone know what happened. Be careful, Dip."
"I will, sis."
/
The sky was just becoming tinged with the velvety purple of twilight as Dipper made his way into the entrance of Multibear's cave.
"I'm back with answers, Multibear," called Dipper into the darkness beyond the small fire.
"Ah, welcome back, Dipper Pines," said Multibear as he ambled slowly out of the shadows. "The most important question I need you to answer is this: was Wendy's mother human, or something else?"
"She was a dryad," said Dipper wryly. "Which, I've been told, means that Wendy is also a dryad. She just hadn't been…is activated the right word?"
A chuckle echoed out of the shadows behind the Multibear.
Dipper stiffened. "Who's here with us?"
"Well, my friend, I had already guessed that your Wendy was born of a dryad mother, based on what you told me previously. I just needed you to confirm it," said the Multibear. "Getting her back from the clutches of the Green Man will be no easy task, so I called in, as you humans would say, 'the big guns.'"
Dipper cocked an eyebrow. "The big guns?"
A figure emerged from the shadows, dressed in khakis and a freshly ironed green button-down shirt, a grin spread across his unremarkable face.
"Hello, Dipper Pines!" said Tad Strange.
