Who Wants to Get Badgered?
(June 1-3, 2012)
8-Irresistible
Near the Shack driveway, Jeff said, "Uh, Mabel, could I see you later?"
"Sure, anytime!" Mabel said. "I like talking to you. How about this evening? We can go for a long walk. Maybe hold hands! Ooh, you rascal! But OK, I accept!"
"We'll see you later."
"What?"
"Well!" Jeff hastily corrected. "Well, see you later!"
Mabel puckered, but then thought I shouldn't look too eager and instead of kissing him, she whistled. "Anytime you want to see me, just whistle!" she said.
"Whoa!" Jeff said as "Norman" teetered for balance. "I have to go now." He walked off, reeling unsteadily.
Mabel waved and then went skipping up the driveway.
In the forest, Jeff grabbed hold of a tree. "Guys! Guys! Disassemble!"
They broke apart and struggled out of the black hoodie. "Shmebulock!" said Shmebulock.
"What's that mean?" Steve asked.
Jeff let himself slip down to earth. "He says we're not coordinated enough," Jeff explained.
"The jam was wearing off," Carson complained. "I was feeling weak."
"Anybody else?" Jeff asked. "I was up top, not supporting somebody on my shoulders, so I couldn't tell. Anybody else need another spoonful of jam?"
They all did.
"OK, we'll go back to the woods outside the house and wait. And then when the time is right, we'll each have a spoonful of jam and go take Mabel for a walk."
So they agreed. And until the time came to reassemble, they lay in the underbrush, watched the house, and rested.
As for Mabel, she was in such high spirits that she didn't want to go back inside right at that moment, so she continued to skip down the Mystery Trail. Past a stand of big trees off to the left was a tall hill, and just for fun she climbed up it and then rolled down. In Piedmont, the grass was sort of scratchy in texture, but Oregon grass felt soft and cool—Yay, grass!
She rambled a little more, and then she began to notice arrows nailed to the trees. Dipper was somewhere around. She sniffed the air and thought she caught his scent—oh, yeah, he'd forgotten all about that shower. Finally she spotted him, leaning against a fallen tree and immersed in a book. Mischievously, she snuck up on him and as Dipper mumbled, "Trust no one," she popped up behind the log. "Hello!"
Dipper squeaked and tried to hide the book behind him. Barely suppressing a giggle, Mabel gurgled, "What'cha reading, some nerd thing?"
The goat had followed either Mabel or Dipper and, creeping up behind Dipper, began to nibble at the book. Dipper, obviously flustered, said, "Ah, uh—it's nothing!"
Mabel spread her hands and imitated him: "Uh, uh, it's nothing! Are you actually not gonna show me?"
Dipper squirmed, suggested they go somewhere to talk it over, and together they walked back to the Shack, Dipper carrying the book, Mabel the hammer, the goat just following.
"First that shower," Mabel said firmly as they came in by the family entrance.
Dipper finally gave up and they went to the attic. Dipper didn't want her to look at the book, so he took it into the bathroom with him. Mabel opened the door while he was in the shower and tossed in fresh underwear, socks, and clothes. Then except for Dipper's brown baseball cap, she raked his dirty clothes out of the bathroom with a golf club, one of several that had stood in the attic bedroom when she and Dipper had moved in. She hooked the putter under the soiled clothes and dumped them on the floor at the foot of his bed.
When Dipper came out, dressed in clean clothes, they went downstairs to the living room. Dipper started to explain the mysterious book—which showed that Gravity Falls had a dark side, after all. And strangest of all, the book didn't conclude, but after a certain point, it just stopped, "like the guy who was writing it... mysteriously disappeared!"
The doorbell rang, and Mabel said it was time to spill the beans. "This girl's got a date! Woot woot!"
Dipper couldn't believe that in the half hour they were apart she'd found a boyfriend.
"What can I say?" Mabel asked. "I guess I'm just irresistible!" She pulled her hands inside her sleeves and waved them, then ran to answer the doorbell.
When she came back, her new friend was with her. He seemed a little steadier on his feet, and he greeted Dipper and Grunkle Stan with "'Sup?"
When Dipper asked, "So what's your name?" Jeff panicked.
What was it, what was it? "Uh—Normal . . . Man," he said, hoping for the best.
"He means Norman," Mabel said, coming in for the save.
Dipper asked anxiously, "Are you bleeding?"
Jeff, suddenly aware of something red oozing down his cheek, said quite truthfully, "It's jam!"
Mabel gasped in a delighted way. "I love jam! Look at this!"
Eager to get away from suspicious eyes, Jeff asked, "So, you want to go . . . hold hands . . . or whatever?"
And they did.
Over the next evening and night and morning, several things happened. Mabel practiced kissing with the leaf blower, clicked to reverse—she had some trouble with that. Dipper pored through the Journal and found a sketch that looked a lot like Norman, but labeled "Gravity Falls' nefarious zombie." And the five Gnomes who had made up Norman met with a big group of their people.
". . . Mabel loves animals," Jeff told everyone. "She's got tons of energy. She believes in things like ghosts and mutants and elves and fairies and things, so learning we're Gnomes shouldn't bother her. She's accepting. And she's beautiful."
"Shmebulock!" agreed a voice.
"Will she marry us?" asked a Gnome woman.*
"Yes!" Jeff said. He had not asked Mabel, but he simply thought that any female would instantly agree to the loyalty ceremony in order to be called Queen of the Gnomes.
Carson nudged him and raised his eyebrows in a silent question: "Will she?"
Jeff nodded, but he thought We may have to persuade her.
That evening they conferred about human ceremonies. They had eavesdropped on human conversations and television shows. "You'll need to give her a rink," a Gnome woman said.
"A what?" Jeff asked.
"On your hands, on a finger, it goes round. A stone is in it. A gem. You know, a faine."
"A ring!" Jeff said.
"Yes!" an old woman said. "A faine!" She used the Gnome word for a ring. Gnomes wore faines not in token of engagement or marriage, but as a sign of how many enemies they had felled in battle. Many Gnomes had them in their families, even though the old days were gone, those times of open combat between Gnome factions, or between Gnomes and external threats like the Mole Men. No battles had been fought for a hundred years, no new faines forged in that time.
Jeff had one of the keepsake faines, though that had belonged to one of his ancestors. It was a plain gold band that might be enlarged enough to fit Mabel's finger. And with a stone set in it—they had a huge assortment of minor gemstones, like rubies, sapphires, emeralds, or even quartz—it would serve as an engagement ring.
Jeff and his cousin Gobha, who had a talent for metalwork, stayed up late creating Mabel's ring. When they finished, Jeff thought the ring would do. The gold band now held an enormous quartz crystal that gleamed just like diamond.
Jeff was sure things were going well.
The next morning, the badger was so subdued that Jeff risked climbing down into the trap. She edged away from him but did not attack. Jeff pushed the water bowl toward her. Her nostrils twitched.
He held out a fish. "Hungry, aren't you?"
She stared at the fish with hungry eyes. Jeff sat on the floor, holding out the fish and deliberately not looking directly at the badger.
She took one tentative step forward, nose twitching.
"Come on," Jeff said softly. "I know you're hungry."
Another tentative step. The badger whimpered.
"Come on," Jeff cooed again. "I won't hurt you. Take it and eat."
Two more steps and then the badger extended her neck as far as she could and delicately took the fish between her teeth. She retreated and eagerly devoured it.
Jeff stood. "Good girl. I'll be back tomorrow. You have to learn not to attack any Gnome. There's your water. I'll be back."
Well, as it happened, things did not go exactly as Jeff had hoped. "Norman" and Mabel had a good day of frolicking, hand-holding, and dancing. She seemed to like him a lot.
He thought her acceptance was in the bag. Jeff and the others planned to ask Mabel the big question on the third day.
Now, Gnome weddings and the ceremony of lamlaim alike were not solemnized by any complex ritual. Gnomes did not have priests as such. There was no standing before a crowd and then agreeing to a written or recited formula. The husband and wife merely agreed to join in holy matrimony, and that was it. Bada-bing, bada-boom, they were married.
Though rings were not always or even usually a part of it, the two typically would exchange trinkets. She gave something of hers to him, he gave something of his to her. It might be a buckle and a ribbon, a treasured childhood toy and the finest gem in the other's collection, just anything. In this case, Jeff felt confident that Mabel would accept the Gnomes' ring. Perhaps she'd offer her hair ribbon. Something.
But she would become Queen, the one who cared for, made decisions for, and gave orders to all Civilized Gnomes. And life, once more, would be right.
In the end, as he flew through the air after having been blasted out of a leaf blower, Jeff thought, I may have to reconsider this whole thing.
The human wind device blew him surprisingly far, way across the river, and though it didn't hurt him—Gnomes were really sturdy—it jarred and disoriented him, and it took him most of that afternoon to find his way back to Gnome Man's Land.
Where everyone was angry with him. Jason reported that many-many Gnomes had already left, heading for the wild or the burrows, going to be Feral or to be Deep Gnomes.
Weary though he was, Jeff called everyone together and spoke into the evening, apologizing for his mistake. "But the Queen that was orders you not to give up!" he said.
That swayed the majority of them. Orders were orders, and every Gnome was used to obeying an order. A few Gnomes who had been on the verge of leaving grudgingly decided to remain.
However—"We need a Queen!" many of them reminded Jeff.
"We'll have one," Jeff said. "I swear it. The Queen that was ordered me to find a new Queen, and I'll do it. It's just—she's going to be—different."
There was more grumbling. The Gnomes reluctantly accepted the old Queen's proviso that her replacement was not to be a Gnome—but Jeff sensed that none of them would accept a human. Not now.
Time for Plan B.
So Jeff walked out alone to sit through the night and come up with a Plan B.
He sat at the trap in which the badger still paced sleeplessly.
"This is your fault," he told her, though no anger edged his voice.
She whimpered.
"I'll give you food in the morning," he promised her, even though she couldn't possibly understand his words. "Thanks to what you did, I have to try and tame you. But what I really need to do is find a Queen. And you can't help with that."
*"Marry" is one way that the Gnomish word lamlaim can be translated into English. It might also be translated "exchange vows with," "promise alliance to," or "be faithful to." It's a complex word. Gnomes did marry—usually a Gnome man to a Gnome woman, though variants were tolerated—but it was a tradition that before a new Queen was crowned, she and all the Gnomes would exchange a lamlaim promise of mutual loyalty and support. A queen was married to her people—but that did not imply or include carnal activity. If a Gnome Queen did marry in the ordinary sense, her husband did not become king of the Gnomes—they were a matriarchy—but rather became the Queen's chief advisor.