& brand the ground with storm and song — iii
The gravel of Gopher Road has been darkened by the aborted tempest; wide, shallow puddles pockmark the uneven path, their mirror surfaces grey beneath the clouds. The fact that there are any puddles at all after so brief a storm is a testament to how heavy the rain had been. The air flowing through the car's open windows is cool and misty, heavy with moisture and the heady smells of a pine forest doused with fresh water.
Grunkle Stan pulls the car up next to the Shack and everyone climbs out. The grass of the lawn is sodden and slick, and the house windows are beaded with rainwater. Dipper runs around to the other side and finds Soos and Ford still working on disassembling the old air conditioner; they are both rain-spotted. Soos is wearing a trash bag poncho, while Ford's usual coat serves as his protection.
"Back already?" Ford says when he sees Dipper. "Can't say I blame you. This sudden temperature differential is highly unusual; it might even be a record."
Dipper holds out the staff. "Have you ever seen anything like this before?"
Ford takes it with obvious fascination. "Where on earth did you get this?"
As Ford turns the staff over in his hands, Dipper quickly summarizes the events at the pool. "And then he had a smaller version of this, it was just one bone. But it still made him fly," he finishes.
"Incredible. I've read about these, but I've never seen one myself." Ford flips the staff over and examines the crystal at its tip. "I believe this is a form of shamanistic witchcraft, though I'm hesitant to assign a specific school to it. You see this carving in the crystal? It's a rune: Hagalaz. It means 'hail.'"
"Not 'storm?'"
"In this context we can certainly take it that way," Ford muses, rubbing a finger along the crystal's smooth edges. "I'd like to ask this 'Windigo' how he cut this crystal. It looks machined."
"I don't know if you can really talk to this guy," Dipper cautions. "He seems pretty unhinged."
"You'd have to be to get into this kind of magic. You'd be just as likely to get struck by lightning as you are to fly. You might call for a windstorm and get a tornado!" Ford shakes his head. "Nature is a dangerous thing, Dipper, and it rarely cooperates with the whims of human beings. Our helmeted friend is playing with powerful forces."
Dipper can't say he's surprised. "He did fly straight into a tree today…"
"If he keeps this up, he'll be lucky to survive the week. We need to find him." Ford grips the staff decisively. "Come with me."
Soos has been watching the conversation the way one would an engrossing television drama; he holds up a hand. "Is this one of those quests that could use an amiable sidekick, or is it more of a family-based episodic adventure…?"
Ford turns, his expression making it clear he had forgotten Soos is there. "Yes, of course you're welcome to assist. If the Windigo is as unstable as Dipper says, we'll need all hands to deal with him. There's no time to waste, gentlemen. To the lab!"
The inside of the Shack has cooled off due to the Windigo's interference in the valley's weather. When Dipper follows Ford and Soos towards the hidden entrance to the lower levels, Mabel comes darting out of the living room and intercepts him.
"So what's the deal, Dip?" she asks.
"Ford's got a plan to find the Windigo," Dipper explains. "Or at least I think he does."
"Just keep us in the know-know, bro-bro!" Mabel says with a thumbs up.
Ford's renovations of his semi-secret laboratory have been coming together nicely. Equipment is neatly stacked against the walls of the control room and everything broken has been repaired or replaced. There are obvious signs of an ongoing tech upgrade—a modern laptop and a few new monitors sit on top of an old console. The Quantum Generator emits a steady blue light and a deep hum that runs beneath all other sounds.
Ford takes the staff and carries it into the high-vaulted room that had once housed the portal. After a month's worth of cleaning, it's mostly bare concrete and a few workbenches, along with some mobile equipment that's draped with heavy canvas, outlining strange mechanical silhouettes.
"I've had my eye out for a chance to test this equipment," Ford says. He places the staff on a workbench and connects several leads to it. They run back to what Dipper recognizes as a Weirdness Emission Spectrometer. "I have yet to isolate and identify any particular particles related to Weirdness, but I've theorized that Weirdness exists at differing wavelengths. It's only just recently that I've developed the capability to test that theory. If I can measure the wavelength of this artifact, we may be able to track down similar anomalies."
"The spare staff!" Dipper says excitedly.
"Precisely. The data we collected in Piedmont was critical to this development. Here's hoping it pays off." Great-Uncle Ford presses a few buttons and the familiar green readout on the screen dissolves into scanlines; a minute or so later, they resolve into a long number with constantly shifting decimal places. "It's working! I can't attest to its accuracy, but that should be our nanometer range."
"Wow!" Dipper stares at the green number with fascination, aware he is witnessing some of the first quantitative data ever gathered on Weirdness.
"I don't know what we're excited about, dudes, but I'm way on board!" Soos says somewhere behind them.
Ford quickly takes the leads off the staff and switches the spectrometer's input to its built-in sensor. "Now to filter for the correct wavelength…"
At first, the readout is completely bright green—unsurprising, given they are in Gravity Falls. Gradually, layers of green begin to disappear, stripped away like coats of paint. The process is slow.
"I intend to get everything up to speed eventually," Ford explains somewhat sheepishly. "My old equipment has barely a fraction of the computing power of your phone."
Dipper knows that's something he can help with, but for now there are other matters at hand. The spectrometer finally finishes its work and shows a distinct green tinge on the side of the screen representing north.
"North! We saw him go that way," Dipper tells his great-uncle.
Ford nods in satisfaction. "If we're still detecting him, then he can't have gone too far. I'll need a minute to program a filter into my handheld spectrometer. Of course, he may out of range for such a small receiver… Soos, we'll need to load some of this into the back of your truck."
"Sure thing, Mr. Pines," Soos says eagerly.
Dipper turns to run back upstairs and inform the others, but Ford catches him by the shoulder before he can leave. "Hold on a minute, Dipper. There's something I'd like to try."
Ford takes the leads from the spectrometer and clips them to Dipper's fingers. A moment later, he attaches them to his own. Dipper watches with confusion, not sure what's going on.
After a couple minutes, Ford leans back from the readout with a triumphant gleam in his eye. "Have a look," he says.
Dippers sees two long numbers on the screen. "What is it?"
"It's us." Ford points to each in turn. The numbers are not identical but are very similar. "Yours and mine. Our own personal Weirdness."
It takes Dipper a second to digest all the implications. "Whoa…"
Ford places his hands on Dipper's shoulders, beaming with pride. "You were right, my boy. You were right!"
Dipper is stunned by the sudden verification of at least part of his pet theory, but he doesn't have much time to dwell on it. When he returns to the upper levels, he finds everyone gathered in front of the television, watching a Duck-tective rerun. To Dipper's surprise, they've received reinforcements: Wendy is slouched on the floor between Mabel and Candy.
"Hey, Dipper," she says when he walks in. "I heard we've got a wizard to punch."
"Mabel texted you?" Dipper guesses.
"Someone had to," Wendy says with joking censure.
"Yeah, sorry," he apologizes. "I should have told you."
"It's cool," she says easily. "So, we ready to roll, or what?"
By this point there really are too many people to fit into Grunkle Stan's car, regardless of who sits on whose lap. The Windigo-hunting party encompasses pretty much everyone who would be interested in something like this, give or take a McGucket. Dipper climbs into the back of Soos' truck to help Great-Uncle Ford plug everything in and strap it all down well enough to survive the trip. The rest of the group splits up between the truck cab and Stan's car.
High fives are exchanged along with jokes and some convivial teasing. Dipper is surrounded by a close cadre of like-minded friends and family, on the cusp of adventure. He ties some cables together and grins as Wendy, riding shotgun with Soos, leans out her window and shouts something to Stan about his lack of driving skills, daring him to race. Mabel, Grenda, and Candy are drawing who knows what on Stan's car in the film of dirt left by the waterspout. Soos walks around the side of the truck bed with another armful of car batteries for Ford's spectrometer; he gives Dipper a double thumbs up after making his delivery, enthusiastic and ready to go.
The only person missing is Pacifica. When Dipper finishes connecting the last ribbon cable (Ford really needs to upgrade) he hops down from the truck and runs inside to retrieve her. As he suspected, she's in her bathroom. The door is open and she's in front of the mirror, brushing her hair back into its usual impeccable state.
"It's just going to get messed up again," he points out.
"Then I'll brush it again." She sets the brush down and looks at him. "Is everyone ready?"
"Yeah, pretty much." He's excited, buzzing with the energy of the hunt. "What do you think: Is this guy gonna run when he sees all of us, or will he want to fight it out?"
"He'll be a jerk about it," Pacifica predicts. "Anyone who dresses like that has to be crazy."
With everything and everyone in place, the two-car convoy takes off down Gopher Road. The weather is still windy, and the occasional low cloud goes scudding overhead. Still, with the heat banished and the humidity blown away, it's pretty nice out. The sun flickers around obstructions, winking in and out among the clouds and the swaying treetops. The whole forest rustles loudly with every spate of wind, the sound rising in a hissing organic clatter and then falling as the gust passes by, the sonic waves of an evergreen sea.
Dipper sits on the hard bed of Soos' truck, swaying with every bump and divot on the gravel road, waving to Mabel when she leans out of Stan's car, grinning at Soos in the rearview mirror. He couldn't have asked for a better mission, or a better crew.
He can see the back of Pacifica's head through the rear window of the truck; when they pull over so Ford can consult his readings, she leaves the cab and comes around to the back. She climbs up and sits in the space between Dipper's legs as the truck lurches into gear and drives back onto the road.
"I thought you didn't want to mess your hair up," he says.
She only shrugs. "Like I said, I'll just brush it again."
Her hair flutters over his face, tickling him when the wind catches it just right. He puts his arms around her and takes her hands in his own, letting the motion of the vehicle rock her more closely against him. She leans her head back on his shoulder and looks up at the treetops scrolling by.
As expected, Ford's spectrometer takes them towards the fractured cliffs which form the entrance to the valley. For Pacifica's benefit, Dipper points out the distinct UFO shape punched through the rock face, just as Ford had once shown him. He's probably mentioned it before, but it still gets to him sometimes how incredible it is. A real alien spacecraft; Dipper's favorite place on earth created by something utterly unearthly. The shadow of the old rail trestle flits across the truck, a sunless line that goes by in a blink.
But just as they are about to turn out onto the highway, Ford leans towards the open rear window of the truck cab and shouts, "Pull over here!"
Soos parks on the shoulder of the road. Grunkle Stan pulls up behind them, one arm dangling out his window. "What's the hold up?" he calls impatiently.
"I believe we may have passed our objective," Great-Uncle Ford yells back. "I'll need a minute!"
Dipper goes over to look. If he's reading it right, the spectrometer is showing a hit back in the direction they came from. "When did it switch?" he asks.
"The refresh rate is too low to be certain. We were headed in the right direction prior to passing beneath the cliffs, so we might be close enough to utilize the handheld spectrometer." Ford unpacks the handheld Weirdness Emission Spectrometer from its plastic case and turns it on. "Excellent! I've got a reading: south-east."
Dipper looks back down the road. There are no obvious hiding places this close to the highway; the roadsides are mostly clear, and past the dense forest on either side of the road the cliffs loom like enormous stone gates. It's always a bit dizzying to be this close to Gravity Falls' most unique landmark. It's such a natural (well, artificial, technically) wonder that it's strange it doesn't attract more tourists. Once again, Dipper is left to ponder the true nature of the valley and its zoning of reality.
He cranes his neck back and looks all the way up to where the railroad trestle spans the precipice. It makes him slightly queasy to realize just how high up he and Mabel had been while trying to overcome Gideon's gigantic robot and equally gigantic sense of entitlement. However, thinking about the confrontation on the rail bridge also brings to mind what that rail is connected to.
"Could he be hiding in the old tunnels?" Dipper wonders.
"It's possible," Ford confirms. "That railroad was built to service the mines. Most of the mines in the valley were abandoned around the turn of the century, though a few are still worked by a handful of local prospectors."
"What were they digging for?"
"Gold, usually, though they'd settle for silver."
Dipper immediately thinks of Stan. "I'm surprised Grunkle Stan doesn't have us out looking for gold."
"Any placer gold in the valley is long gone. There may still be veins of it somewhere deep in the earth, but anything accessible was mined years ago. Gold fever didn't last long in Gravity Falls, for obvious reasons. Which, ultimately, is for the best."
"What do you mean?"
"Gravity Falls' real mineral wealth isn't in gold or silver," Ford explains. "The Law of Weirdness Magnetism has made this place a hotspot for meteorites over millions of years, along with who knows how many forms of alien or extradimensional objects. As a result, the valley is rich in rare elements and minerals, most notably platinum. There's a fortune of the stuff in the soil."
Dipper immediately grasps what that would mean for Gravity Falls. "They'd tear the valley apart…"
"Indeed," Ford says grimly. "I had a few ideas for preventing such a catastrophe. I considered running for mayor and passing protective legislation, or perhaps getting the valley a state or national park status. But anything I might do would bring unwanted attention and should probably be a last resort. The Weirdness here seems to protect itself perfectly well, after all."
The valley of Gravity Falls has somehow transitioned intact into an age of cellphones and satellites, so Ford has a point. Still, it's hard to accept the idea of the cliffs and forests overrun by industry. The town and its surrounds are special. They should stay what they are.
Ford adjusts his handheld spectrometer and points it back towards the cliffs. "Definitely that way. We should move more slowly this time."
Dipper pokes his head into the truck cab. "Hey, we need to go back the way we came, but go slow."
"You got it, dude," Soos says, shifting into drive.
"Are we close?" Wendy asks.
"We can't be too far off if the handheld sensor is working," Dipper tells her. "We think he might be up in the old tunnels."
"No way, me and Tambry used to sneak in there," Wendy says. "I know a killer shortcut."
"What's inside?"
"Honestly, not much. It's just a lot of rocks and old train stuff." Wendy shrugs.
The truck grumbles back up the empty road, tires buzzing across the cracked asphalt. It's strange to see Gravity Falls from this side, from the outside looking in. Its entrance towers over the surrounding forest like a fortress, its rocky gates opened wide. Only the distant mountains can match its grandeur, and even they aren't nearly as interesting as the uniquely fractured cliffs. Like it is in everything else, Gravity Falls is weird in its natural majesty.
Somewhere in that splendor lies their quarry. Dipper is certain of it.