Chapter 8
Mon held Frisk by the hand as she dragged her back to the front of the town. So much for going straight to Papyrus's house, Frisk thought. It was probably a good thing Frisk had to wear a mask – it was far easier to act like she knew what she was doing when she didn't have to worry about her demeanor giving anything away. However, she still had to make sure her voice didn't crack or waver. Finding a way to free herself from Mon was not going to go too well if she acted as if she couldn't get away from the other girl fast enough.
"This is the inn," Mon proudly declared as she pointed out the first building past the town entry. "It's run by Ms. Beatrix, and her sister Ms. Honey runs the shop next door. My friend Alice is Ms. Beatrix's daughter. Hey, I know! Why don't we go in and invite Alice to join us?"
The question must have been rhetorical, because before Frisk could open her mouth to answer, Mon pushed the inn door open and dragged Frisk inside.
"Yo, Alice!" Mon called as they walked towards the front counter. "Are you busy? Do you want to help me show the new girl around?"
"Mon, indoor voices," scolded a girl about Mon's age as she walked down the stairs. Her mask was that of a white rabbit. The girl wore a beige sweater that looked two sizes too big and a maroon skirt that just barely touched the floor. Her hair – snow white like Toriel's – was tied into two braids that fell over both shoulders.
"Yo, Alice," Mon repeated, speaking softer this time. "Are you busy? Do you want to help me show the new girl around?"
Alice crossed her arms, nodded, and said, "That's better. Anyway, I'm not terribly busy at the moment. Is this the normal tour you give to every visitor who happens to cross paths with you, or is this one of those in-depth tours that scares people?"
"Scares people?" Chara wondered aloud.
Frisk repeated Chara's words. "Wait, scares people? What kind of tour scares people?"
Snorting, Alice said, "Whenever someone from New Woods considers moving here, Mon tries to show them all the scary parts of Snowdin Lane. Like the chasm and the slippery frozen over ponds and that fishing pole set out by the river with a picture of a creepy-looking guy on it. I think you can be spared of those things if you are not from New Woods."
"She's not from New Woods," Mon replied. "Frisk is from the Ruined Woods."
"Oh?" Alice sounded interested. Her arms dropped. "You don't meet a lot of people from the Ruined Woods."
"You don't?" Frisk questioned.
"Well, yeah. Not a lot of people go there, either. It's almost as if that part of the forest is cut off from the rest of society. People there are very private, and they dislike outsiders more than we do." Tilting her head to the side, Alice added, "How do you not know this? Didn't you just say that you're from the Ruined Woods?"
"You walked yourself into that corner," Chara felt the need to say. Then, "Come on, I know you can save this."
Frisk only hesitated a second before she admitted, "Well, I wasn't actually born in the Ruined Woods. I only lived there for a brief period. It's just easier to say that I'm from the Ruined Woods since that is the last place I lived."
"Well, I suppose that makes sense," Alice replied.
"Born there or not, Frisk still lived there," Mon commented as if the technicalities of Frisk being from the Ruined Woods didn't matter. "In exchange for giving Frisk a tour of Snowdin Town, she's going to give me a tour of the Ruined Woods!"
"Did she make this deal with you," Alice challenged, "or did you make the deal for the both of you?"
"Oh, uh," Mon stuttered, "of course, Frisk, um . . . Dang it. I guess you're right, Alice."
Giggling, Alice turned to Frisk and said, "Please excuse Mon. She has a problem with getting ahead of herself. This isn't the first time she's made a deal with someone without necessarily getting their agreement, and it won't be the last."
"It's okay," Frisk said, relieved that she was going to find her way out of this situation sooner than she thought. "No harm done, right? Now, I guess I should—"
"Don't worry, I'll still give you a tour, even if you don't ever return the favor!" Mon declared. "How about we go next door to your aunt's shop, Alice? I thought I smelt cinnamon bunnies not too long ago."
"Aunt Honey was making a batch just now!" Alice exclaimed.
Not entirely sure how she ended up in this situation, Frisk was dragged with the girls next door to the shop. Two women – one with a pink rabbit mask and the other with a purple rabbit mask – were talking over the counter. When they noticed the younger girls walking in, the woman with the pink rabbit mask turned around and greeted Alice.
"Hey, Mom," Alice returned. Pointing at Frisk, she said, "This is Frisk. She's new to town."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Frisk," the woman said. "I'm Beatrix."
"And I'm Honey, her sister," said the woman with the purple rabbit mask. To all three girls, "Would any of your care for a cinnamon bunny?"
"Don't mind if I yes!" Mon exclaimed, greedily taking the largest pastry off the tray Honey presented to the girls. Alice also took one, and seeing Frisk hesitate, Alice grabbed a second to hand to Frisk.
Frisk held onto the cinnamon bunny – it was no different from a regular cinnamon roll, except the pastry was somehow shaped to resemble a rabbit – and watched Alice and Mon. Neither girl bit into her pastry. If living with Toriel and traveling with Sans and Papyrus taught Frisk anything about eating standards in Ebott Forest, it was that monsters needed to go someplace private to remove their masks as they ate. When she lived with Toriel, Frisk was always in a different room than Toriel when they had meals. Now that she was traveling with other monsters, Sans and Papyrus would split off after the food was done to eat alone. Eating together was such a big part of the culture in Frisk's village, she could barely get used to having to spend every meal eating alone. This made her wonder if the monsters never showed each other their faceless features, even amongst their own family.
"If they hide their skinless faces behind masks from each other on a day-to-day basis," Chara said as if he read Frisk's mind, "I don't think it is that unusual for them to eat in private either. Everyone in Ebott Forest knows that their friends and family and neighbors do not have faces, yet they still hide behind masks. It is almost as if everyone knows t\what the other's secret is but still pretends not to know for the sake of being polite."
When the three girls left the shop, they walked back into the inn. Without any explanation, Alice and Mon walked to separate rooms. Frisk could only assume it was to enjoy their cinnamon bunny without witnesses. Taking the unspoken cue, Frisk searched for an unoccupied room. As she closed and locked the door behind her, Frisk sighed with relief as she removed her mask.
Feeling the fresh air against her bare cheeks, Frisk inhaled deeply. Moments without her mask were few and far between. She was going to be sure to savor the cinnamon bunny in order to prolong her freedom from the mask she had to wear.
"Well," Chara said, "are you going to eat the dessert or keep holding it?"
"I'm going to try it," Frisk replied. "I wanted to enjoy the fresh air first. It's not often I get to take my mask off without fear of getting it back on before someone turns a corner and sees me without it."
With that said, Frisk held up the pastry to her face. It smelt sweet and delicious, the scent of cinnamon and sugar filling her nose with their heavenly aroma. Then Frisk bit into the cinnamon bunny, and the sweetness overwhelmed her senses. The soft, warm bread practically melted on her tongue, and the glazed icing and cinnamon coating blessed her tastebuds. It was as if Frisk bit into a dream.
"You know," Frisk began, licking the frosting from her lips, "if following those two leads me to treats such as this, I don't think getting a tour is that bad of an idea."
After the girls finished their cinnamon bunnies and met up again, Mon and Alice began showing Frisk the rest of the town. While the pointed out the library – which was misspelled as "librarby" on the sign – and the restaurant Grillby's, Frisk kept her eyes open for the house with the two mailboxes. As the girls came to the end of their tour, Frisk caught sight of what must have been Papyrus's home.
"The sun is going to set real soon," Chara warned as Mon and Alice argued over something. "You had best find a way to get away from those girls so you can get into the house, get what you need, and get out of here."
Trust me, I have been trying to come up with an excuse the past hour. Frisk opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, there was a commotion on the other side of town. She snapped her head in the direction of the noise to see a crowd quickly forming.
"Oh, dear." Alice held her hand over the mouth of her mask. "I wonder what's going on."
"Well, there's only one way to find out. C'mon!" Without wasting a second, Mon sprinted towards the crowd. Alice hesitated a moment before following. Neither girl checked to see if Frisk was behind them.
"Now is your chance!" Chara exclaimed.
Frisk didn't wait to be told twice. Pulling the key from her dress pocket, Frisk ran up the porch stairs and inserted the key into the lock. The door clicked without resistance.
Pushing herself inside and closing the door, Frisk lifted up her mask to help her see in the dark. It was a simply decorated home, set with nothing more than a couch, coffee table, and a painting of a bone hanging on the wall. Frisk rushed into the kitchen and searched the pantry. Inside were cans of spaghetti sauce and packages of spaghetti noodles. She grabbed all she could fit into her pack then began searching the drawers for a lighter.
Quick as a flash, Frisk ran up the stairs. The first room on the second floor was a bedroom with a table full of toys pressed against one of the walls. There was an orange hoodie in the closet Frisk took as nothing else in the room appeared to be immediately useful. After she left that bedroom, she went to the other door. This one was locked.
"Do you think I should search for anything else?" Frisk asked as she put her pack back around her shoulders.
"I do not believe you need much else," Chara answered. "After all, you already searched rather thoroughly. If there was anything specific Papyrus wanted that wouldn't be easy to find, I am sure he would have made a point to mention it."
"You're right. We should go then. The sun is already setting, and I don't know how long Papyrus is going to—"
Before Frisk could finish, she heard a loud noise. Looking over the railing, she saw that the front door had been kicked open. About five people wearing masks resembling dog faces walked inside.
Heart jumping to her throat, Frisk dropped to the ground. She peered over the railing and hoped they wouldn't look up. It was too dark in the house to see very far, but she still didn't trust she was very safe with these intruders here.
"All right, little girl, where are you?!" the man leading the pack called out.
Frisk sucked in a sharp breath. Her heart stopped. The world seemed to spin out of control.
Looking over his shoulder, the leader shouted, "You said there was a human in here. Well, where is she!"
"Who would know you were in here?" Chara wondered aloud. "Even if someone did see you enter this house, how would he know that you're human?"
Neither Frisk nor Chara had to wonder for long. A sixth figure stepped in behind them. Frisk suddenly lost the ability to breathe.
The sixth figure was tall and lanky. His normally crisp suit was wrinkled from nights spent sleeping in it. His mask was that of a human skull.
Frisk had to suppress the urge to throw up. She almost couldn't believe what she was seeing. Papyrus had betrayed her.