Earth, August 1st, 2012
Edward Northwest III had added a few books to the Northwest family library, though not nearly as many as most others in the family. The library was a vast maze at the heart of the mansion, full of glass-covered shelves of first editions and sometimes copies of ancient works thought lost. There was a whole case full of Roman classics from Lucan to Suetonius, and even a copy of Agrippina the Younger's memoir. Another case full of Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, all the way to Menander. There was a grand marble pedestal in the center of the room, covered with intricate carvings and now displaying a 12th century illuminated bible in a glass case. It was technically designed for the Book of Kells. The Northwests had been trying to get that book from Ireland for years.
It took Pacifica a while to find Edward Northwest III's books, but the Northwest family had a long shelf list (kept on hard copy in the front of the library and regularly updated) telling them where their books were in case they wanted to temporarily exchange some with a university or a museum. Pacifica passed bookcase after bookcase covered with curling gold leaf until she got to the glass-covered shelves of notebooks written by Northwests throughout the ages.
Edward Northwest III's notebook, something old enough to warrant the use of gloves to leaf through, was probably the only way she would figure out exactly where the ivory mirror came from.
Pacifica sat on the floor with her back to the shelves, reluctant to read anything the man wrote. It was one thing to know that she had a murderer in the family (multiple, actually, but they all had their own stories), but it was another to read his words. She hoped he didn't describe any plans in here.
Edward Northwest III was a hobby poet and portrait artist. Pacifica hadn't known that before, but the first pages of his notebook were covered with amateur pictures of a woman's face. She had dark curly hair and his pen always zeroed in on her dark eyes, and snippets of bad poetry were shoved in the corners of the pages. The poetry usually went on and on about her 'chocolate orbs' and 'velvet flower', which just made Pacifica cringe, but she didn't really want to focus on the portrait any more than the poetry.
Pacifica wondered if that was the face of the woman he murdered. She shuddered and turned the pages until finally the portraits and poetry were gone.
Now, there was just a list, written with such a heavy hand that the pen had occasionally punched through the paper. Various items on the list had little notes added in red, clearly after they had been originally added.
Holy palm kernels – Africa (Protects females, not likely)
Mummy – Africa (Rituals are complicated)
Black cat – North America (I can't read the bones)
Sealed Pot – Europe (Need a female present, can't do it alone)
Ivory Mirror – North America
And of course, the mirror didn't get a single extra note. Pacifica sighed, checking the next pages just to see an address all the way in Maine written down. After that, nothing.
Pacifica had a list of all the books Edward Northwest III had contributed to the library. All of them came during his period of 'declining health', and all of them dealt with divination and mysticism.
An awful thought lurked in the back of Pacifica's brain. Had he used that mirror to find his ex-mistress? Was that room of artifacts full of tools of divination, discarded and dismissed until he finally found one that he could use?
Pacifica shut the notebook with a shudder. Ugh. Her family history never failed to find new ways to disturb her.
(Was it really possible for her to be good when she came from so much bad?)
With a quick shake, Pacifica pushed herself to her feet and put the notebook away. Alright, it didn't tell her how to use the mirror, but she now had a strong suspicion that the mirror was hunted down specifically for its scrying abilities. Maybe one of the books he gathered would tell her how to use it.
She wasn't sure if it would have any details about looking beyond dimensions, but she had to try.
School was grueling, and her tutors more so, so she knew how to tackle the dusty old tomes of divination. That was with a notebook and a sharp pencil.
To any passerby, it looked like she was working on homework. She kept her gloves on to keep her finger oils from marring the aging pages, and she skimmed through the books, reading the first and last paragraphs of every section to check if they were relevant and taking careful notes if they might be.
After two hours, her notebook stayed depressingly blank.
Two books in, Pacifica massaged the bridge of her nose. Most of this was just… theory. Not even theory that assumed the validity of divination, either. It was just stuffy academics discussing old superstitions and cultural quirks in regional mysticism. She tapped her eraser against the floor and flippe through the pages, looking for something, anything, that mentioned ivory mirrors with weird flying eyeball designs.
Hissing a sigh between her teeth, she flipped to another page, then another, then another… then something caught her eye.
It was the only mark in the whole book. One underlined line in a section about the theory of cultural development.
Of course, in most cultures where it appears, targeted divination and black magic is highly personalized. Many people believe that spells must involve using personal objects of the target, such as clothing or hair.
Pacifica slowly wrote down the line and its page number. Personal objects, huh?
Dipper would have plenty of Mabel's stuff. Pacifica would just need one of those tacky sweaters. Dipper would give her one in a heartbeat if he knew what it was for.
But what if it didn't work?
It was a possibility she was forced to consider. After all, Edward Northwest III hadn't hunted someone down across dimensions. What if the sweater wasn't enough to cover the distance? What if the sweater didn't work at all for the mirror? Dipper would be absolutely heartbroken if he got his hopes up.
No, she should stick to what she already decided. She wasn't going to tell him anything until she either knew the condition his sister was in or she knew the limits of the mirror. She didn't want to be the source of any more pain for him.
But that left the question of how she was going to get something belonging to Mabel.
Pacifica settled back to skim through the rest of the books, just to be sure, but she was due to visit the Mystery Shack soon.
Dimension ?, Day ?, 2012
World hopping could be pretty nice when monsters weren't trying to eat you.
The next time they passed between worlds, Ford did his best not to electrocute Mabel and Mabel did her best to not burn Ford. It was a good system. When they weren't being chased or confused or panicked, it was easier to dance around each other without being all-consuming. Neither of them were scared or worked up, so their presences weren't as intense. The words that skittered over the surface of Ford's six lightning prongs moved slower and didn't give Mabel a headache.
Better? Mabel thought in the wide expanse of space.
Definitely better, thought Ford, even though there was a constant dull roar of his thoughts flicking through data and making theories and taking in his experiences.
The next world was constant pouring rain.
Mabel looked up at the dark sky and held out her hands, letting the rain pool in her palms and soak through her braided hair. The rain made loud pounding on the ground, which seemed to be made of segmented metal tiles, and massive transparent tubes ran all the way from the ground back to the sky, carrying more water to constantly rain down. "This is fine," she said.
"We'll find someplace dry," Ford said as he pulled up his hood. "Or another portal. Whichever comes first."
"Wanna see how big I can make a splash?" Without waiting for a response, Mabel sprang forward and landed on a tile, splashing water everywhere. As her feet hit the metal, it glowed purple. The segment let out a high-pitched lyrical tone. Mabel jumped back in surprise, landing on another tile that glowed orange and let out a high but differently pitched tone. "Oh hey," Mabel giggled, "they're musical!"
"Fascinating." Ford's hands twitched towards his bag, probably to take notes, but he didn't take out his book. Mabel guessed it wasn't waterproof enough. "It looks like either someone built a massive water-powered musical instrument, or—whoa!"
Mabel had grabbed his hand and tugged him, making him stumble on two different tiles that intoned two low pitches. "Dance with me, Grunkle Ford!"
She was jumping in place, making the same tone sing over and over and flash blue like they were in a rave, giving him her best 'please please please' smile. It always worked on Grunkle Stan.
Ford faltered, but she could see his resolve crumble. "I'm not sure if…"
"Oh come on!" Mabel waggled her arm at the wide expanse of tiles. "When is the next time you'll be on a dance floor that sings?"
His shoulders slumped and she had him. "I haven't danced in decades. You'll have to teach me."
She got to teach her Grunkle how to dance. She pumped her fist with a soft, "Yesssssss," before tugging him into what she decided to call a waltz (even though she didn't know the difference between waltzing and any other kind of ballroom dance and was just doing what she saw on TV). The important thing was that they made music with their feet and Grunkle Ford twirled her until she was dizzy.
In the blur of bright colors and random notes and the slow curve of a smile on her grunkle's face, it was easy to forget that anything ever went wrong. Dipper and Stan weren't here, but Ford was, and he was fun and loving in his own way, even if he seemed grumpy and sad a lot of the time because he'd been all alone until now. He didn't need to be lonely anymore, though. Mabel was here.
She stumbled after the final twirl, keeling over to one side, and Ford caught her by her not-painted shoulder with a barked laugh. "I think that's enough."
"Once I can see straight, we're totally doing that again," Mabel giggled, grabbing onto the hem of his jacket to hold herself up.
Her grunkle barked another laugh. "Fine." Quieter, but with no less amusement, he said, "I'm getting soft in my old age."
That just gave Mabel another case of the giggles. "Grunkle Stan always says that."
The moment after she said it, she wondered if she shouldn't have, because talking about Stan always ruined Ford's mood. Instead of snapping shut like the cranky clam he was inside, he just shook his head with a chuckle. "Stanley is a liar. He was always soft." Ford patted her sopping wet head gently. "Especially for cute girls."
Mabel laughed and batted at his hand. "Oh, you." Maybe Ford wasn't a complete cranky clam.
That world was fun, but they couldn't stay there. Mabel's bandages were already soaked through and sagging on her leg. Ford tutted when he kneeled on the wet ground and checked on them.
"These are useless now," he said as he carefully unwrapped the dressing. Mabel focused on the top of his head. She didn't want to see her leg. She could already feel fresh warmth on her shin. Some of the dressing had reopened pieces of her cuts.
"I don't see any signs of infection. That's good." Ford frowned at her leg until she stopped bleeding again. "But we're not out of the woods yet. You've been pushing yourself too hard. If you feel weak, you have to tell me, okay?"
Mabel bit her cheek to hide her disappointment. "So no more dancing?"
He looked up at her face, raindrops peppering his glasses until it was hard to see his eyes. "Put your weight on your good leg and I can twirl you again."
That took the edge off of the disappointment. When she smiled, he smiled back.
After that world, they stepped into a rolling desert with sand made of glass so fine that it felt like silk. Mabel knew because she lay down and rolled in the sand dunes immediately after Ford gave her new bandages.
"Keep an eye out for hostiles, Mabel. And don't get sand in your cuts," Ford mumbled as he wrote in his journal. Mabel rolled down a mountain of sand. Translucent grains stuck to her wet hair and glimmered there, like she was a fairy princess, and as she picked up speed, the world became a blur of blue sky and glimmering white ground.
She landed in a massive shell, over twice her size and curving inwards at all ends. It was bright white with creases in all the right places. What to do was obvious.
"Grunkle Ford! Come sled with me!"
"Hmm?" Ford peered down the dune, then immediately slid down to meet her, adjusting his glasses like a movie scientist before crouching down next to the shell. The sand stuck to their wet clothes fast, but the sun was gently drying them off. "This seems to have been shed from an animal." He started writing in his notes again when Mabel put her fists on her hips.
"And it's big enough to go sledding. Which is totally what we should be doing."
"Yes, yes, give me a moment." He only spared her a glance, but it was enough time to flash him a big pout. He frowned, but it was one of those frowns he kept having, where it was like someone had given him a new puppy without warning and he'd never had a puppy before and didn't know what to do with one.
"Here," he said, pulling another book (although this one was blank, not even with his iconic hand on the front) and a pencil from his bag and offering it to her. "We can use this to practice drawing. You can look over my shoulder to see what I do."
"Oh! Okay." Mabel accepted the book (a little heavy for a sketchbook, but whatever) and flipped through the blank pages before settling next to her grunkle and biting her lip in concentration as he started to draw the shell and the landscape around them. This was a perfectly fine way to spend her time waiting for her grunkle to sled with her.
"Do you only draw things you find and places you see?" Mabel asked as she struggled to get Ford's level of precision.
"No. I'll sometimes draw the people or creatures I see too." Ford could draw amazing things so easily. Ugh, Mabel hoped she could do it like that someday. His frowned deepened all the lines in his face as he focused on getting the perspective right. "I have a few drawings of you in here, actually."
"Really?" Mabel perked, and Ford must have heard the interest in her voice because he was suddenly staring at her warily. "Can I see?"
"…Let me find a good one." Ford finished off the shading he was in the middle of and allowed the ink a moment to dry before flipping through his journal. Mabel got a glimpse of the musical tiles and one of the glassy bug aliens before Ford settled on one page.
It was just her, curled up in the ice planet burrow, hunched over and biting her tongue while she knit. There was something a little different about this picture next to all the others. Ford's art always had an attention to detail, but there was something a little more relaxed about this one. The lines seemed swoop-ier and the light softer.
Next to the picture was mostly commentary and observations on the society they found on the ice planet, but there was a little arrow pointing to Mabel attached to a coded message. Mabel would normally ask Ford what the message said, but she didn't need to. It was one of the easier ciphers he used in his third journal back home, one of the ones she and Dipper had been able to crack. She only needed a bit to decode the message in her head.
Niece still alive despite all odds. Praying she stays that way. No more forgetting to feed her. Also, I think I saw her knit a sweater in under five minutes. Supernatural?
Mabel had to stifle a little giggle. There was just something funny about seeing the almighty author's handwriting taking silly coded notes on her.
"You make me look really nice, Grunkle Ford," Mabel said, leaning against his shoulder. He stayed relaxed, which she decided was a victory, and gave her a small smile.
"I'm glad you think so." He flipped back to the unfinished page. "Now, the sooner we finish drawing this, the sooner we can go sledding." He snorted to himself. "I haven't been sledding in… ah, must be nearly fifty years now."
"Fifty years?" Mabel gaped. Who could go fifty years without sledding? That was longer than she had been alive! "We better finish this quick!"
"Drawing takes time." He was still smiling as he started to draw again. "Let that be my first tip. You need to be patient to get it right."
"Ugh, patience is a boring adult word." Mabel slumped against Ford's back, but he just laughed, and the motion in his shoulders made her bounce up and down.
For lack of anything better to do, Mabel kept drawing with him, and Ford didn't even seem to mind when she used his shoulders to prop up her new sketchbook. She tried to pay attention to the shell like he could, but the shell just got boring after a while. Instead, Mabel drew her grunkle's hands. They were always moving, so her pictures would always be sketchy, but it was better that way. If his hands always moved, then the pictures of his hands should be moving too.
Eventually, he was done shading his picture of the shell and writing notes in the margins, and he shifted just a little to peek at Mabel's page, now full of sketched six-fingered hands. "That doesn't look like a shell."
"It's easier to focus on interesting stuff, not shells."
The corners of his eyes softened a little. They did that whenever she said something about his fingers. Mabel had a feeling that not a lot of people had been nice about them when he was on Earth, but that was dumb. She thought they were super cool, like Dipper's birthmark, and the people who would make fun of either of those things were dumb.
"I think your drawing skills are coming along nicely," Ford said, standing up and giving the shell a gentle kick. "And this is a pretty sturdy sled. What do you say we give it a spin?"
Mabel rubbed her hands together, wiggling in place. "Yes!"
Ford started getting some cold feet when they were sitting in the shell on top of a dune, but Mabel drowned out anything he said by yelling really loudly and kicking them off. That always fixed her problems. Ford held her so tight that she felt like a squeaky toy, but the hot air rushed around them and sand flew in her hair and they were both yelling and it was amazing.
The sled was a great way to deal with dunes, and when they passed between worlds again, Mabel was bubbling with giddiness, and all the bubbles sloshed around between her and Ford in space until she could hear him laughing in her head and he sounded like a kid.
They stopped in a beautiful jungle area. The ground was soft and bouncy, thick with greenery, and the sky was wide and blue, almost completely obscured by a thick leafy canopy. It was almost like they were back on Earth, except Mabel was pretty sure she just saw a two-headed furry stick creature rush into the leaves to disappear.
"All these worlds are so pretty," Mabel said as she flopped on the ground and watched tiny ten-legged insects march over a rotting twig.
"Yes, the multiverse can be a true wonder to behold." Ford took out his journal and wandered around, taking notes and drawing things. The greenery Mabel sat on wasn't exactly grass, but it wasn't exactly any plant she'd seen before, either. It was spongey and shaped like little tubes, but it grew thick and dark. Mabel tore one of the tubes from the ground, and a sickly sweet smell punched her in the face as sticky golden liquid full of half-dissolved insects fell from the inside.
"Ew, gross," Mabel giggled as she watched the liquid drip on the ground.
"Fascinating. It seems to be carnivorous," Ford said as he crouched over the torn stem oozing sap. "I imagine that is digestive fluid, and it lures insects inside with the smell of particularly ripe nectar."
"Cool." Mabel slowly slid her nail up the tuber's surface and split it open so she could see all the dead bugs stuck to the inside. "Why don't the bugs catch on that these are going to eat them?"
"A popular evolutionary trick many carnivorous plants develop is closely mimicking a safer flower that is a staple of the insects' diet." Ford plucked another tube from the ground, letting it bleed half-digested insects. "Some of these might be safe, but the fact that we were able to pick two carnivorous plants at random surprises me."
He started scribbling in his book and mumbling to himself as he paced around like Dipper sometimes would when he was in the middle of one of his big puzzles, so Mabel settled in and started catching bugs to draw. Some had wings and some had pincers and some just had lots of eyes and hair, so she had plenty to work with.
Dipper would like to see all these worlds. Mabel had no doubt that they would destroy the portal as soon as she and Ford were home, though, so he probably never would. She scowled to herself, then started attempting to draw the scenery. Her lines were wobbly and her shading was inconsistent, not nearly as pretty and detailed as Ford's, but she tried, and she added notes about the adventures and worlds of the past few… days? Weeks? (She wasn't sure.)
Dear Dipper,
Surprise! We have a second grunkle. I bet Grunkle Stan explained everything after I was gone, but just in case, this one is Grunkle Stanford and Grunkle Stan is Grunkle Stanley. It sounds like they had a big fight and they stopped talking to each other before Grunkle Ford went into the portal, but don't worry. Mabel is on the case! I'm sure I'll have Ford ready to talk to Stan once we're home, so you have to do the groundwork with Stan.
Writing to Dipper was more fun than just writing out what had happened like Ford did in his journals. Sometimes she wrote little notes addressed to Stan or Candy or Grenda or any other person who came to mind, but her letter to Dipper was the longest, meandering through descriptions of what she had seen and lingering on Ford and how much she thought Dipper would like him. She did her best to draw the lightning tree that Ford had struck on her shoulder between space with all the little leaves and flowers he helped paint on afterwards. If she ever got a tattoo (the idea made her giggle, since her poor mother would have a heart attack at the idea), a cool seasonal lightning tree like that would be neat.
"I'll set up traps for dinner." Ford's voice startled Mabel from her pictures and letters. At some point, he had finished his little nerdy freak out. "Do you want to see if you can do it with me?"
"Traps?" Mabel made a face as she put her journal away. "We're going to be killing animals?"
Ford gave her that weird 'I have a puppy and I don't know what to do with it' look. "That's how one gets meat, yes."
Mabel squirmed, pulling at the hem of her white sweater. She knew that meat came from dead animals, but the idea of killing the animals herself made her stomach turn.
"…I can do the slaughtering myself?" Ford offered, frowning at her. Mabel grimaced, wincing at the word 'slaughter' (it brought her mind to Waddles), but she forced a nod.
"That's probably best."
"Good." Her grunkle's shoulders relaxed. "In that case, how does your leg feel?"
Mabel hiked up her pant leg to show off her bandages, still white as driven snow. "It's doing okay!"
"Then why don't you forage instead? Look for fruits and nuts, but don't strain yourself and don't try to eat any of them. I'll check for edibility once we've made camp."
"Got it. Mabel, forager extraordinaire, is on the case." As long as she could avoid needing to kill animals.
"That's the spirit." Ford gently clapped her on the back. He wasn't touching the shoulder with the lightning tree. "Make sure you put on your gloves, and don't go so far that I can't hear you. Yell if you need me."
Mabel nodded and pulled her gloves on before wandering into the jungle. The tubers made squish-squash noises under her feet as she walked, and it wasn't long before little eyes peered out at her from the underbrush. Mabel gave the unseen wildlife a wave.
Something rustled in the trees. Paws jumped from one branch to another. The vines twisted. Insects crawled over the Mabel's boot. She hummed Sev'ral Timez songs as she climbed over massive, twisting roots covered in spongy tubes, keeping an eye out for anything that looked edible.
"Oh girl, you got me ackin' so cray cray…" Finally, there was a blue peach-shaped fruit hanging low on a tree, about the size of Mabel's fist. She picked through the brush, squinting at the canopy. There were a few speckles of blue, which were probably more fruit that she could get if she climbed the tree. There were plenty.
Her stomach clenched and growled as she approached the fruit. She hadn't eaten since she woke up that morning, and it had been nonstop moving since then. Mabel grimaced, kneading her stomach gently to work out the hunger cramps, but it did nothing. Her tummy kept on trying to clench around food that wasn't there, and it was like it was tying itself into knots until she could get something in it.
She never really knew what it meant to be hungry before falling in with her long lost grunkle, but while she was very tempted to gorge herself on alien food, Ford had warned her to wait for him. What if it was poison? Her stomach growled again, but she clenched her teeth and pinched her thigh to distract herself.
The fruit dangled in front of her face. She plucked it, careful to keep from bruising the skin. It was soft and spongey, and a sweet aroma wafted from it.
She rolled it in her palms. A fine layer of fuzz was on the skin, like a peach. She held it to her ear and shook it, listening for ripeness.
Click slosh click slosh click.
Mabel frowned and shook it again.
Click slosh click slosh click.
That didn't sound like a very fruity noise. Did it have a weird pit? Or maybe metal seeds? She should check before Ford tried to eat it. She didn't want him swallowing bad seeds.
Mabel fumbled to take out her grappling hook, her fingers getting less sure the more her stomach growled, and she dragged the hook lengthwise through the flesh, and yellow juice dripped onto her gloves. She bit her tongue, twisting the two halves and pulling.
Golden syrup burst from the core, pouring over her hand and dripping to the ground.
Washed up on her palm were six half-digested teeth.
No warnings for this chapter.
Thank you once again to Tsukara for betaing this. Also, thank you everyone who has reviewed. Comments, compliments, and critiques are all warmly welcomed, and I will try to go around responding to people soon.
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