in the wake of giants — ii
The lowest basement level is chilly and damp, complete with the occasional small puddle in various corners, remnants of the recent rains. Obviously, Ford has some work to do on the walls and roof. There's a constant deep hum from the weird orb of the generator, and Pacifica is glad it isn't audible upstairs, because that would get old pretty quick. There's scientific-looking junk crammed into pretty much every available space in the first room, while the second, much larger room is mostly empty. There's a clear sense of a work in progress about the space, like Ford is still unpacking, and it's been almost a whole month since the summer started.
Then again, Ford clearly has a lot of stuff.
Pacifica has made her way down here once before, though that time the laboratory had been occupied by its owner. Now she's wondering if she and Mabel should be poking around Ford's space. "Are we supposed to be down here?" she asks.
Mabel seems unconcerned. "I'm sure it's fine. We can science just as well as the boys can!"
That is objectively false. Pacifica is no slouch in the smarts department, but she has no idea what any of these consoles do and very much doubts that Mabel has a clue, either. Unless Mabel is speaking generally and just means that girls can be equally skilled scientists. Which is true, but not particularly relevant.
"Just don't get us in trouble," Pacifica says.
Mabel only laughs. "Come on, Grunkle Ford will be cool! Why are you always so worried about—" She swallows her next word, stopping in her tracks. When she turns to face Pacifica, her eyes are apologetic. "Sorry… I forget sometimes."
There's the sliver of an instant—just a fraction of a fraction—where Pacifica is furious at Mabel for the reminder. Then it is wiped away by a sweet swell of recognition: She has a best friend who cares enough to remember, and to apologize.
Not that Pacifica is willing to express either emotion. Besides, they quickly pass and she's fine. It's fine. Everything's fine.
"What are we even doing down here?" she says, brushing off Mabel's concern.
"Grunkle Ford went over to the crystals to stop giant rats from happening, remember?" Mabel explains. "And I bet he took some science-y samples."
Pacifica tries to imagine how making things bigger is going to help them. They could make themselves huge and… what? Literally tear the Shack apart to find a phone?
Mabel rummages around through various drawers and boxes. She soon finds what she's looking for: a thick plastic bag about half-full of crystal segments. "Called it!" she says. She grabs a flashlight off a nearby workbench and turns back to Pacifica. "Who's ready for a Girls' Night adventure? These gals!"
"I don't think you should take your great-uncle's stuff," Pacifica says cautiously. Ford is a strange man and Pacifica isn't sure where she stands with him.
"I'm not! I'm borrowing one crystal. Just one." Mabel opens the bag and retrieves a medium-sized piece. "We'll put it back when we're done."
"Okay… done doing what?"
"We're gonna get your phone back or die trying! Come on!" Mabel rushes to the stairs.
"Wait, die?"
Back in the attic room, Mabel spends a few minutes fiddling with the flashlight, the crystal, and some tape and string. "I think this is how Dipper had it," she muses, her fingers moving with the deft motions of an arts and crafts master.
"What are we making bigger?" Pacifica says.
"Us! Well, not right away. First we'll make ourselves smaller so we can find your phone."
Pacifica belatedly remembers that the crystals can also shrink things, not just make huge gross rats. So, this will be interesting.
Especially since her phone may not want to be found.
But gosh darn it, she's got a really cute picture of Dipper on that phone. More than one, in fact, and she hasn't had a chance to print them out for the scrapbook. She wants those pictures. And, you know, the phone itself would be nice. She could buy a new one, but it would be such a hassle.
"I have to get those pictures of Dipper at the lake back. For the scrapbook," she quickly adds.
"Exactly," Mabel agrees.
Pacifica rocks back a step when Mabel suddenly forces something into her arms. She holds it out and sees it's a teal sweater and that Mabel has thrown on a matching one. On the front in gold yarn are two girls whose hairstyles identify them as Mabel and Pacifica; they're arm in arm while their free hands are raised triumphantly. The text above them reads, 'SLEEPOVER SISTERS.'
How long has Mabel had these?
"Now we're sweater-prepared," Mabel declares. "Do you want to go first, or should I?"
Pacifica points to the standing mirror. "Why not just use it on the mirror?"
Mabel grins at her. "Pacifica, you're a double genius!"
When they line up in front of the mirror and Mabel points the flashlight at it, Pacifica braces herself, perhaps subconsciously expecting it to hurt. There's no pain, though. It doesn't feel like falling, either. There's so little sensation involved that from her perspective it's as if the room is getting larger; she watches in awe as the bed swells to loom overhead, as the mirror becomes a long, vertical silver lake.
Being small is beyond weird. The floor of the attic is an uneven, dusty plain, all the furniture in the room bigger than most buildings. It's hard to tell, but Pacifica thinks she's maybe six inches tall. The triangular window is so high above that it might as well be the moon. There are all sorts of nicks and scrapes and knotholes she never noticed before. Dipper has at least two pairs of socks wadded up beneath his bed, and she makes a mental note to tell him to wash them.
Mabel notices Pacifica's focus. "Only four?" she laughs. "Dating you is great for Dipper's laundry—there would have been a whole hamper under there before. Plus, he showers all the time now, so he's fifty percent more huggable!"
"More like a hundred percent, so he'd better keep it up," Pacifica says.
The door to the closet is a gate like a mountain, like the cliffs that bracket the road into the valley. There's a floorboard that noticeably hums beneath Pacifica's feet, and it takes her a second to realize there's a pipe beneath it. The girls enter the shadow of the closet and approach the gap between the wall and floor. The slot which had once seemed tiny now looks like the crevice of a cave. They lie down on the rough wood of the floor and peer into it.
"That's some quality mustiness," Mabel notes.
Pacifica squeezes her eyes shut for a second, preparing herself for a future of horrible grime. "Let's just get this over with."
They descend through the murk of the inner wall. This is the in-between, the spaces usually invisible laid bare. Pacifica is relieved to see it's mostly just dusty. No leaky water pipes or—god forbid—sewage. The path is clear, too; a multitude of little footprints in the dust lead the way, scattered along next to a long shiny tube of conduit. Studs and crossbeams fade in and out of the gloom. They're going down, descending deeper and deeper. Pacifica keeps expecting the path to end, confronting her with a sudden drop through the layers of the Shack, but it never happens. It's like the path was built for just this purpose.
Pacifica looks more closely at her feet. "Mabel, I don't think this is part of the wall."
The wood they're walking on is rougher than the studs of the wall and appears to be held in place by glue instead of nails. There's a distinctly slapdash quality to it and it doesn't look original to the house.
"That's kinda weird," Mabel says. "Maybe whoever built this took your phone."
It's starting to seem that way. And it makes a little more sense that her phone was carried off by something instead of suddenly sprouting legs.
A little more. Slightly.
Down they go for what feels like forever. The Shack is a mysterious building; Pacifica can usually navigate between her room, the living room, the gift shop, the kitchen, and the twins' room without difficulty, but every now and then she'll get lost in a way that doesn't seem possible in a place that isn't even that big. It's bigger than most houses, and Stan and Soos constantly change the layout of the museum area, but it's not exactly sprawling. Heck, she used to live in a mansion! And yet, there are routes that seem to defy memory, doors and dead ends perpetually unfamiliar.
From her newly diminutive perspective, it is this aspect of the Shack which has been amplified. Even being six inches tall, she thinks they should have reached the ground floor by now. There's a strange light beaming through the old slats; Pacifica presses her face to a hole and finds herself looking out over the living room, now an enormous vista from her lofty perch. Stan is asleep in front of the muted television, morphing colors and flickering brightness emanating from the screen. It's a tableau that would have been mundane, even funny, had she come across it under other circumstances. Viewed from inside the wall, the sleeping giant and the silent images take on an eerie cast.
At some point they reach what they think is the ground level. A string of Christmas lights glows in cheerful colors along the hidden corridor.
"Yeah… I don't think your phone did this," Mabel says.
"Great. So there's probably a whole lot of, I don't know, dumb golf ball people," Pacifica says.
"Nah, it'll be something else," Mabel says, confidently striding ahead. "It's always something new!"
"How is that better?" Pacifica mutters rhetorically as she follows.
The tunnel leads beneath what Pacifica assumes is the kitchen, judging by the dusty fork wedged in a floorboard crack. At this point it appears to exit the Shack; grass roots dangle down like a bead curtain where the tunnel suddenly turns to dirt. It would be pitch black if not for the Christmas lights that continue to stretch on ahead, leading the way.
There's also a spiderweb stretched between two boards above, and a fat spider which is, from Pacifica's tiny viewpoint, about the size of a small dog.
She stops dead in her tracks. "No. Nope. I'll buy a new phone."
"Aw, he's just a harmless, guts-eating spider-puppy," Mabel says, gesturing for Pacifica to continue. "He doesn't care about us, we're not bugs!"
Pacifica does not take a single step forward. "I. Am. Not going near that thing."
"Pacifica, think of the scrapbook!" Mabel says, her eyes huge and pleading. "Dipper might never be that cute again!"
"That spider is the most horrible thing ever and it's going to eat us and suck out our bones."
"Come on, spiders don't even like bones. If he tried to eat us, he'd be like, 'oh no gross, they have bones!'"
Pacifica is not swayed. The spider hangs silently above, watching them through the glittery black beads of its eyes. It's truly unnerving to see up close; Pacifica is uncomfortably reminded of the Boss-Lobster and that's not an association she wants to make. She doesn't know how Mabel isn't equally upset.
Oh, right: Mabel is flipping crazy.
"He's probably more afraid of us anyway," Mabel predicts. "Watch this."
Mabel picks up a stone fragment and tosses it upward into the web. When it makes contact and the web vibrates, the spider quickly skitters upwards, disappearing into the shadows.
Mabel shrugs. "See? He's just a big ol' hairy baby. With fangs."
"Stop talking." Pacifica ducks her head, clenches her fists, and walks forward at a pace that's nearly a jog. She doesn't relax until she's well past the point where the Shack tunnel merges with the soil.
"I didn't know you're afraid of spiders," Mabel comments as they continue.
"I'm not, unless they're almost as big as me," Pacifica retorts with more than a little hyperbole.
The tunnel gradually slopes upwards. Tree roots pierce the roof before disappearing again into the dark earth. The character of the light has changed up ahead. It's brighter and seems to be shining inward from a larger space. Distant sounds are audible, what might be voices. Mabel and Pacifica crouch and move more slowly.
Mabel reaches the opening first. Her eyes widen—Pacifica scoots around her until she can see, and she is equally taken aback.
It's a small hollow, nestled in the roots of a tree. The chirr of the crickets can be heard from an opening that must be somewhere above; the room itself is honeycombed with additional exits, all of them dark tunnels in the dirt. Christmas lights wrap around the veiny-looking roof, draped amidst the roots. Along the packed-dirt floor and up against the walls is a bounty of junk: bottle caps, TV remotes, forks and spoons, a wine corkscrew, a roller-skate, bits and pieces of an old off-white keyboard, a controller for a game console, several light bulbs, and about a million soda pull tabs. In the middle of the room is a sort of raised dais made of twigs, upon which Pacifica immediately spots the turquoise case of her phone, stacked on top of another smartphone. Attached to the podium is a slide made from half-pieces of soda cans. It descends steeply and disappears somewhere below.
Two creatures are hard at work, wrapping a rope made from what looks like twined pieces of grass around both of the phones. They are humanoid with big black eyes and rainbow wings, wearing leafy clothing that doesn't hide the bristles on their limbs.
Pacifica grabs Mabel's shoulder and leans in close to whisper, "What are they?"
"I think they're some kind of fairy," Mabel whispers back.
"But what are they do—" Pacifica quickly shuts up when the fairies start to talk.
"You almost done?" the first one says. He's slightly taller than his compatriot; Pacifica mentally separates them that way.
"Just about," Short says. He tugs on the grass rope, then says, "So what do you think he wants these for?"
"I think it's none of our business," Tall says harshly. "Finish up and let's get these on the water, we've got to be at Gnasty's by sunrise to make the deal."
Mabel quietly gasps and Pacifica wishes she knew what was going on, because clearly Mabel has at least some idea. Still, it's obvious the fairies are up to no good. It looks like an illicit salvage operation, or something else Pacifica might see on a TV procedural.
Her phone within reach, Pacifica's reserves of courage are bolstered. That's her phone. "So, what, are we going to fight them?" she says quietly to Mabel.
But Mabel isn't watching the fairies anymore. She reaches out and pulls Pacifica deeper into the shadows, then points upwards. Pacifica follows Mabel's finger and sees a gap in the roof between two lengths of root. There, poised like a bird on a building ledge, stands a gnome. He's wearing sunglasses and some kind of jacket.
"Po-po!" Mabel hisses.
"There are gnome police?" Pacifica says incredulously.
"Yeah, Grenda told me about these guys."
Any question as to what the gnomes are doing there is answered scant seconds later when two squirrels with flashing red lights on their heads come skittering down from the roof, quickly followed by about half a dozen gnomes wielding pinecones.
"GPD! STAY WHERE YOU ARE, THIS IS A RAID!" one of them bellows.
Short gapes at them, frozen in place. "What is this, some kind of raid?"
Tall is quicker on the uptake. "Cheese it, the fuzz!" he shouts.
He kicks a nearby lever and a trap door concealed beneath a thin layer of dirt falls open. Tall dives into the opening with two gnomes and a squirrel hot on his tail. Short goes down beneath a pile of gnomes, kicking and shouting about police brutality.
Mabel turns to Pacifica with an expression of determination. "This is our chance!"
Pacifica isn't so sure. "Mabel, there's a tree above us; if we try to grow ourselves, we'll just get stuck!"
"Do you trust me?" Mabel asks with that absolute sincerity only she can pull off.
Pacifica doesn't even have to consider it. "Yes!"
"Then come on!"
They don't try to hide. Mabel sprints out of the opening and makes a beeline for the phones. Pacifica stays close at her heels. In the confusion, they make it almost all the way to the platform before one of the gnomes spots them.
"Hey! You two stop right there!" someone yells.
Mabel throws herself onto Pacifica's phone, reaching out to grip the sides. At their current size, the phone is about as big as a small mattress. Pacifica piles onto the case next to her friend, gripping the rubber and hoping Mabel actually has a plan.
Mabel scoots backwards slightly and sets her feet against the back of the slide.
Pacifica can only watch as Mabel kicks against the platform. The phones teeter on the edge, and then begin to tip. "Oh, no, Mabel, what are we doing oh my god— aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH—"
The slide is wet and the phone on the bottom has been wrapped in slick plastic. The angle is unbelievably steep; this isn't a slide meant for people, but for packages. Within seconds, all light from the root room is left behind and they rush through absolute darkness. Pacifica presses her cheek to the back of her phone case and fervently wishes there to be no sudden obstructions.
Up ahead, light appears just as suddenly as it had vanished. Pacifica braces herself.
Her stomach lodges somewhere just below her neck as the phone raft comes shooting out of the makeshift pipe, getting several inches of air in the process. With a splash, it lands in a river that must be, by normal-sized standards, just a spring. The water is freezing cold and the phones only float due to their fairy packaging, and not very well at that. Pacifica's hands and feet quickly go numb.
"Paddle, Pacifica!" Mabel instructs, flailing at the water and doing more splashing than paddling by Pacifica's estimation. "Paddle like you mean it!"
The spring isn't wide, and the girls quickly manage to beach the phones on a rock. Jumping into the mud, they haul the phones onto relatively dry land and collapse, panting, on solid ground.
Mabel catches her breath first. "See? Easy peasy pizza cheesy!"
Pacifica tries not to think about how ruined her clothes are. "You know…" she says, still breathing hard, "…aren't you like, a hero after what happened? We probably could have just explained it was my phone."
"Maybe," Mabel says with an easy shrug. "But this was way more fun."
Pacifica looks upwards. The sky of the late evening is deep blue, slowly giving way to the dark blanket of night. She sucks in another lungful of sweet pine-scented air and smiles widely; wet, cold, lost, and so alive.
"It totally was," she says, and then laughs without really knowing why.
With the aid of Pacifica's cosmetic pocket mirror, the girls are soon back to their regular sizes. Mabel hands Pacifica her muddy phone and then looks more closely at the other one.
"Hey, this is Soos' phone!" Mabel exclaims. "Uh-oh. Twenty-six missed calls. He's so far behind!"
They aren't far from the Shack. It's only thirty feet, and maybe not even that, back to the yard. They cross the grass of the lawn, their shoes pressing the earth above the tunnel they traversed. Evening has brought with it a cooler breeze and a tint of violet that spreads across the cloud-free skies, banded with orange and darker purple. The moon, faded above that stratified eventide, rises past the tops of the pines that rustle and sigh as if they are restless for night.
Slipping through the door, they move silently past Stan as he slumbers before the television, by unspoken agreement splitting up to shower and change. They reconvene in the attic, worn out, accomplished, and content.
Mabel slumps backwards into her stuffed animals, letting out a tremendous sigh. "So, I know I said we would party all night…"
Pacifica is equally tired. The adrenaline of their adventure seemingly ran down the shower drain along with all the mud and sweat. She leans over and pillows her head on a stuffed manatee. "We could take a nap. I mean, that's not really sleeping, right? It's just for a little while."
"Pacifica, I like the way you think," Mabel says sleepily.
Mabel makes her lazy way over to turn out the lights. Pacifica sinks deeper into the mattress and her manatee pillow, blinking slowly. The light from the window fades by the minute, drenching the room ever more in shadow, a slow and steady accompaniment to encroaching rest. The weight behind Pacifica's eyes presses her deeper into the realm just above sleep, the cloudy place between awareness and the blissful dark.
"…Best sleepover ever," Mabel murmurs into the silence.
Pacifica laughs into the manatee, tired and full of victory. "Definitely."
Self-Titled by In the Wake of Giants (Not On Label, 2008)