How Is the Weather


(February 2019)

6-The Weight of Power

"You're sure you don't mind?" Wendy asked Dipper.

He rested his hands on her shoulders. "I've always called you my Magic Girl. So if this is something you have to do, then do it with my blessing. I'll drive back for you tomorrow morning around ten. We'll want to leave for Crescent City as soon after noon as we can make it."

"Thanks for understanding."

In the car, Mabel warned, "Hey, you're forgetting your wife, Dipdop!"

"No, she's spending the night with her aunt," Dipper said, starting the engine. "I'll come and get her tomorrow morning."

As they rolled out onto the highway, in an anxious voice Mabel asked, "Uh, you—you two aren't having—have you guys been fighting or something?"

"No," Dipper said. "Wendy and I are fine and we love each other more than ever. She's got—I guess kind of an inherited family problem that she has to talk over with Sallie, that's all. We are not splitting up, Mabel. Get that out of your head."

"OK," Mabel said.

But all the way back to the Shack she was squirmy and worried. The highway had partly thawed and refrozen, and it took patience and occasional maneuvering to get the car back to Stan's house. When they got out, Mabel said, "Dip, you ought to stay here tonight. The Shack's gonna be awfully . . . cold."

"I think I can deal with being apart from Wendy better up in the attic than anywhere else," Dipper said.

Both dogs caught Mabel's mood and stayed close to her, giving her anxious looks. They became a little less stressed as the twins had dinner with Stan, Sheila, Ford, and Lorena. It was a hearty beef stew with lots of veggies. Nobody pried very much after Dipper said Wendy was spending the night up at the farm, dealing with some Corduroy business—except Ford, who, like Dipper, tended to worry. He asked if Wendy had any medical issue—no, she didn't—and a few minutes later if there was a paranormal problem.

Dipper, by that time working on a slice of apple pie, smiled. "It's sort of a paranormal issue," he said. "But it's private, so if she wants to talk about it later—"

"Understood," Ford said.

Up in the attic—it was cold up there, even with the thermostat cranked up a bit—Dipper got under blanket and quilts and fleetingly wished that the kind of telepathy he and Wendy had first experienced would let him visit her mentally, at least to wish her goodnight and to send his love. He could have phoned or texted—but they'd agreed that if she needed to speak to him, she would call him, not vice-versa.

So that night he lay awake for a long, long time, wishing—and hoping—that everything would turn out all right.


"Now let's get down to business," Sallie said, once the animals had all been taken care of for the night and she and Wendy had eaten a simple dinner—cold cooked veggie salad, a chickpea dish, and cornbread, plus cold icy water.

They cleaned up in the kitchen before going into the parlor. There Sallie turned off all the lights. The fire on the hearth gave them a ruddy glow and heat. "Sit tight just for a minute," Sallie told her niece. She bustled around in the pantry and came back with a candle holder in which she had stuck a tall white taper. "Business like this is best done by natural light," she said, leaning down to set a splinter of kindling alight and then touching the flame to the candle wick. She tossed the splinter into the fireplace and set the candle up on the mantlepiece.

She had Wendy move one armchair so it faced the other one. Sallie took the first chair and said, "Scoot the chair closer. Sit and face me, Wendy. I know you've got a weight on your shoulders, and you have to deal with it. You can. First, I want you to relax and just take deep breaths. I'll know when the time comes."

"Time for what?" Wendy asked.

"For teaching." Sallie smiled, her expression uncannily close to a mirror of Wendy's normal smile. "Not for preaching, child. Let's say I'm passing along the lore, same way you might have to do one day. Danny can't—he's not a woman. Your mama couldn't have done it, either—not born a Corduroy. So what you have, child, comes from the Corduroy side of the family and goes back, oh, ages and ages, back to the wild hills of Scotland and the green meadows of Ireland. Just sit for a time and breathe deep and try to let your mind clear."

Easy advice to give, harder to take. After some minutes, Sallie said, "You're troubled about what this is going to mean for Dipper."

"Can't help it," Wendy said sadly. "I mean, ever since he was like twelve, Gravity Falls weirdness has kept after him, and now—me?"

"Your man is going to understand, Wendy," Sallie said in a kind tone. "What you've got is real and it's lasting and nothing is going to change it. All right. Ask me questions if what I tell you's not clear, but just let me talk for a spell. I know how you feel, 'cause I've been there. When I got my first flash of Second Sight, it scared me half to death. And then I thought I'd been touched by something wicked and that I'd never be happy, but as it turned out, that was wrong.

"Wendy, the gift you've just received can be a blessing or a curse. Listen close now, because it's hard to explain and hard to understand. Let's start with the why of it, for God knows the how, I don't. Listen, now."


Sallie Corduroy talked them clear through to midnight, with Wendy listening and trying to take it all in. This is what she talked about.

Magic—maybe not the best name for what Corduroy women sometimes had, whatever it might be, because it differed with different women, but as a term for mystical understanding, ability, or power, the handiest term—magic—came with its own conditions and its own rules, which were never written down but had to be learned new by each generation, the way a baby learned to walk.

"Now," Sallie said, "from what you've said, I gather that every time you changed the weather you were in a state of nerves. Am I right?"

Wendy chewed her lip for a moment. "I'm—not real sure what you mean. When we saw that brushfire, I was mad as hell, 'cause I knew for sure that the bastards with the firecrackers started it. And I guess I yelled out in frustration. Uh—sorry for the language."

Sallie chuckled. "Land, girl, that's not a patch on Danny's cussin' when somebody crosses him or he clumsies himself into an accident. And it's just you and me here, nobody else to hear. I'm old enough to have heard it all and yes, said most of it myself! All right, you were boiling inside because you knew those sons-of-bitches had started the fire, not so much from meanness, though there was some of that, but just from sheer jackassery. What about the next time? Fog, was it?"

"I was driving Dipper to a track meet on a Saturday," Wendy said. "Fog rolled in, I mean real heavy. You see 'em more in the Central Valley of California, but this was about as bad as any I've seen here or elsewhere. Closed right in, everything a deep gray, headlights almost no help. If a car was coming toward us in the other lane, the first we'd even see of its lights was when it was maybe half a football field away."

"How did you feel?"

"Worried. Anxious. And then like I told you, the bus pulled off at a roadside park, and I stopped behind it, and then this car roars past us—if it'd smashed into us, Dip and me probably would've died, because I'd bet anything we'd have plunged off the cliff there. So I was scared out of my mind. And I just—wished the fog would go away."

"But it didn't?"

Wendy shrugged. "For us it did." She talked about driving through the bizarrely clear tunnel through the shroud of gray. "It wasn't natural."

"How about the lightning storm?"

So Wendy told about that in detail. "Power was out," she said. "Poor dog was crying. I just wanted to do something to help, and then this bolt struck a tree back of our fence—it's a tall lodge-pole pine, but it's dying, all the needles stripped off halfway to the ground, the bark peeled clear to the roots. And the house shook, it was so loud. Another lightning bolt flashed, looked like outside the window, and I hated it for scaring little Tripper and Mabel, and I was angry and scared, so I told it to stop—and that was the last of the lightning."

"So now you know," Sallie said gently. "Anger. Fear. Hate. That's the battery that powers your gift. Strong feelings. Yours is different from mine. My Second Sight just comes on like a visitation. Sometimes the visitor is welcome, other times not. If I sit really still and focus my mind, I can get little flickers. But times like, oh, when you introduced me to Dipper, it just comes of itself. In my mind I saw so clearly the two of you happy and married and loving. But supposing I'd seen you hateful and fighting each other?"

"Oh, God," Wendy said.

"Thank God," Sallie corrected. "Sometimes I can just guess at what might happen, and most often, like anybody else, I'm wrong. But when the feeling comes, I know it's right. If I'd seen you and Dipper being bad to each other, I would've kept my mouth shut. With what you have, it's a little different. My great-grandmother Corduroy had something similar to your gift. She could sense when the world was unsettled. Not Second Sight, exactly, but foreknowledge of storms and fires and earthquakes and such. She had to be worried about something, first. Once her husband was going to go from Boston to Halifax by ship. She stood in front of him and flat refused to let him go, although it was an important business trip. He gave it up finally, fussing and grumbling. And a nor'easter storm blew in and that steamer piled up on the rocks offshore of Vinalhaven Island, where it had no business to be, and one hundred and eighty-two people drowned. Would have been one hundred and eighty-three if my granddad had been aboard. Every passenger and every crew member was lost. Good thing for me Grannie had her gift."

"Because you wouldn't have been born otherwise?" Wendy guessed.

In the candlelight, Sallie smiled. "You're a smart girl. I won't say for certain sure that I'd never have been born, but I wouldn't have been born a Corduroy! Their children, including my own granddad, came after that night."

"Did you know your great-grandmother?" asked Wendy.

Sallie nodded. "The shipwreck happened when she was about your age, I suppose. She lived to be a hundred and five, and I knew her from when I was ten until I was twelve. She passed then. But she talked to me many times, the way I'm talking to you now. Let me tell you the rules."

For something like a power triggered by strong emotions, the rules were not complex. First, Sallie said, act out of positive emotions, not negative ones. Love yes, hate now. Concern was fine, fear was not. And so on. Second, the trick about using magic is not to use it. Third, if you absolutely must use it, be prepared to pay the price.

"Magic is like an axe," Sallie said. "It's a tool. You can use an axe to get materials for a house, or a fire to warm you or cook your food, or blaze a trail in a wilderness. But you can use it to attack your enemies, to spill blood. Like an axe, most of the time you just leave it on its hook, sharp and ready. The real secret, and the hard thing, is to use it only for good reasons, not for bad or selfish ones."

And the price? "It's not in money," Sallie said. "Nothing so easy as that. You felt bad every time you called the weather—and think about it. The time the rain put out the fire, that was good—but the firetrucks were already on the way. And what if that rain was needed somewhere else? What if you stole it from, oh, a farm somewheres with a dry well and thirsty animals? The fog, you did a good work for you and Dipper. But what about all the other roads? Maybe the clearing you created for yourself made it worse on other roads, where other drivers were trying to see what was ahead. The lightning? Well, there I think you acted out of compassion for little Tripper and Mabel. Did you feel as bad after?"

Wendy thought. "Not . . . as bad. But scared because I knew that something weird was happening with me."

"There you are. Mr. Hemingway said that if you feel good for having done something, it was a moral act. If you feel bad, it was immoral."

Sallie let Wendy think that over for a while and then said, "The cost gets too high when it's your soul, Wendy. People who use magic selfishly—it moves into their heart and takes over, you see. So you start using it all the time, and it eats away at your ability to know good from evil, right from wrong. It ends up corrupting you. Too high a price, Wendy. Far too high. Well, I've talked more than an old lady should. It's your turn now, Wendy. Tell me about how you mean to control this power of yours."

"First," Wendy said slowly, "I don't think I should ever plan to use it. Next, when there's something that makes me want to use it, I have to hold back and think about the consequences. Really think, and only use it if it's really for a good purpose."

Wendy's reflections were the longest part of their talk, and she went through them with Sallie for hours. Finally, when they were both sleepy-eyed and ready to drop, Sallie wound up: "Weather-calling is like a half-broken horse, Wendy. Never jump into the saddle before you know what mood it's in. And remember, you can ride it, but it's half-wild and it might take you places you don't want to go."

Wendy at last asked the question she had put off: "Can I get rid of it?"

Sallie leaned forward and took both of her hands again. "No," she said. "You'll have to bear with the burden, the weight of your power. You can't end it. But you can live with it."