run in all directions — ii
Dipper slowly leans forward, poking his head around the corner of the wall. Pacifica grabs the straps of his backpack, ready to pull him away in case something happens. At least he's on level ground and can't fall down again. Though if anyone could figure out how…
"Hey!" Dipper says, his face lighting up. He straightens and walks out into the open as if nothing is wrong.
Pacifica trails after him, very confused by his sudden change in mood. She understands a second later.
Mabel is standing just ahead, waving at them. "What's up fellow maze runners?" she calls out. "Glad you could make it!"
Relieved as she is to see that Mabel is fine, Pacifica remains cautious. The clearing they enter is large and covered in gravel that glitters oddly in the sparse sunlight; the open space is wide and rectangular, stretching on ahead for what must be about two hundred feet. It's dominated by the hollow tree in the middle, a structure about the size of one of the forest's biggest pines. It's not a real tree: It's made of the same stone as the walls, and its green branches are thick and smooth, bare of carvings or leaves. They twist sinuously above the shadowy entrance at the base of its trunk like the limbs of some vast octopus. Between the enormous tree statue—its sinister shape so strangely compelling that it almost seems to writhe—and the glittering gravel, Pacifica feels like she's standing in an alien aquarium.
"Check out this huge carving! Wild. This has to lead to the center of the maze," Dipper says, already sketching the bizarre edifice in his journal.
"Behold the mighty squid tree!" Mabel intones. "Beautiful, in its creepy, squid-like way."
Pacifica feels like they're overlooking something important. "But what was that noise? There's no way that was Mabel."
"Nope, I heard it too," Mabel confirms. "It sounded like Grunkle Stan trying to get out of bed."
As if on cue, the sound rumbles out from the dark entrance at the base of the stone tree, grating and deep. Now that she's closer to it, Pacifica thinks it sounds more like an earthquake than an animal.
Dipper holds out his compass. The needle is pointing directly towards the twisted tree. He mumbles something to himself and continues scribbling in his journal. Pacifica is a bit surprised he hasn't declared it time to press onward into the heart of darkness or something equally grandiose. Of course, it would just be a formality at this point. Nobody's wondering what the next step is. Besides, even she thinks it would be nuts to just walk away now. This is the center of the maze—there has to be something neat in there.
Not that running away is completely off the table, depending on what they find.
"Ready?" Dipper asks.
"Ready," Pacifica says.
Mabel gives Dipper a thumbs up with her Serious Face on.
He takes a single step forward and the ground drops out from beneath them.
A whole section of floor turns into a steep ramp. They skid uncontrollably downward, and it's a bumpy, painful ride.
"Not ready! Not ready!" Pacifica rescinds with a shriek as she plummets into the shadowy core of the maze.
They hit the bottom in a flurry of dust, rolling across huge black stones. It's quiet and cool, and Pacifica has the impression that the room is quite large. The light from above doesn't reach far, so she isn't sure. She sits up and brushes herself off, feeling bruised.
"This maze plays rough," Mabel notes from behind the hair covering her face.
"Yeah, I kind of thought a maze would be more of a mental exercise…" Dipper groans.
Pacifica is about to voice her own rather negative opinion of the maze when she sees the eyes. Two huge green eyes glaring out of the darkness—as her vision adjusts, the rest of the figure comes into view.
"Guys!" she says, scrambling backwards.
Dipper spots it a second later. "Whoa!" He springs to his feet, one hand dipping into the pocket of his vest because a dumb book is his ideal defense.
The creature facing them is maybe twenty feet tall and made of blueish stone. Its features aren't quite human, and there's something about the angles of it that makes Pacifica think of felines. Its green eyes look calmly down at them, while the rest of it seems immobile, two huge clawed hands resting folded in front of it. There's something very familiar about its pose…
Its voice comes booming out of its stone mouth in, for no apparent reason, a very prim and feminine English accent. "Shall you enter the maze's—"
"Wait, are you some kind of sphinx?" Mabel interjects.
What might be irritation passes briefly across the creature's face. "…Yes. Shall you enter the maze's heart?"
Mabel tilts her head in question. "Aren't you supposed to rhyme?"
This time, there's no mistaking the annoyance in the sphinx's countenance. "Then here, quester, you must start," she adds in a rapid monotone. "Answer me these questions three, ere the other side you see. But I'm a bit knackered, so there'll be just one. …Something something something, I don't know, 'fun.' There you are."
Pacifica and Mabel trade a dubious glance. Dipper is too busy frantically writing everything down to notice.
"Are sphinxes suddenly from England?" Mabel says, tapping a finger on her chin.
"No, they're from Egypt. Everyone knows that," Pacifica says.
The sphinx sighs heavily. "Look, you've come all this way, does it really matter if I'm from bloody Egypt? Just answer the riddle. It's not even that hard, it's rubbish. You lot don't look that daft."
"A riddle! That's classic dungeoning," Dipper says with relish. "Okay, let's hear it."
The sphinx's tone turns more formal. "What is the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space, the beginning of every end, and the end of every place?"
"The… beginning…" Dipper mumbles as he copies it down. "One more time?"
The sphinx repeats the riddle. Dipper finishes writing and holds out his journal so the girls can see. The three of them gather around, peering down at the page.
"How many guesses do you think we get?" Mabel wonders.
The sphinx hears her. "Oh, let's say three. That's the usual number for everything," she says, sounding bored. "If you need more than that, you're quite hopeless."
"It could be a cipher. Here, let me check my decoding page," Dipper says, beginning to flip the parchment back.
"There's no way it's that hard," Pacifica says. "Nobody would get through without a whole codebook and only you are a big enough dork to have one."
Mabel nods in agreement. "Yeah, this sounds like a riddle from a candy wrapper."
"I guess you would know," Dipper concedes. "Still, maybe I should check for Caeser substitution…"
But Pacifica has the feeling that Mabel is right. It's going to be an answer that's dumb and obvious. Even the sphinx seems confident they'll figure it out.
And just like that, Pacifica does.
"Oh my gosh," she says, rolling her eyes. "You're right, Mabel. Candy wrapper."
Dipper blinks, his head clearly full of ciphers. "Huh?"
"It's the letter E. See? It's just the stupid letter E."
Dipper's eyes run over the riddle again. "…Oh, yeah," he says. "It totally is."
"Uh-oh, Dipper got outsmartied by Pacifica," Mabel says slyly. "Guess you'd better hand the journal over, bro-bro. You had a good run!"
"Like I'd even want his dumb book," Pacifica scoffs.
"Well done, I suppose," the sphinx interrupts. "You've sussed it out. Another minute and it would have been rather pathetic, but at least you got there somewhat sharpish. I shan't have to kill you after all."
Pacifica blanches. "Wait, what?"
"Uh, nope, no killing necessary," Dipper says, laughing nervously. "Kind of wish that had been made clear beforehand, but…"
The sphinx's expression shifts from regal boredom to something more mysterious. "Thus the maze's heart is bare—but what, quester, seek you there? What you seek, you may not find… treasure comes in many kinds."
With that, the sphinx vanishes. In her place is another staircase descending even deeper.
Pacifica had sort of assumed the sphinx would be the end of the maze. It just goes on forever, apparently. The rumbling sound from earlier comes growling out of the new entryway, vibrating through their feet.
"So it's treasure… that's not treasure?" Dipper muses.
"Grunkle Stan is gonna be disappointed," Mabel predicts.
"I won't tell him if you won't," Dipper says as he starts for the stairs.
As they descend, the sound of grinding builds from all directions. When they reach the bottom, they stand in a tight cluster, staring in wonder at the room ahead.
It's an enormous cavern that seems to stretch back for infinity, its features disappearing into darkness. Every surface—walls, floor, and ceiling—is made of a dark green, glittering stone that looks almost translucent, glossy and marbled with swirls of black. The stone is divided into hexagons about a foot wide like a symmetrical honeycomb. The grinding sound comes from its constant motion; as they watch, the hexagonal plinths rise and fall, pushing out and pulling in, sliding around each other in a pulsing, shifting sea of rock. Geometric waves surge randomly—walls form and disappear, the ceiling sometimes meeting with the floor, the walls extending outward to create archways and bridges. Somehow, the hexagons never get stuck or impede each other.
"I have no idea what this is supposed to be," Mabel says, "but it sure is cool!"
Dipper is at a loss. "Maybe it's generating patterns. It could be some kind of analog computer. Or it's like an obstacle course, you can make it be whatever you want."
"I don't think we can make it be anything," Pacifica says as the roiling room reshapes itself.
"Maybe someone else can." Dipper draws a few hexagons in his journal. "I'm not really sure how to record this…"
Without warning, every hexagonal pillar retracts at the same instant. The sound of them simultaneously thudding into place is deafening, and then the room goes still and silent.
"Ha ha ha! That's not ominous," Mabel says.
The long rectangular room shimmers in the dark, the pattern of the hexagons somehow more menacing in stillness.
"See if you can find controls," Dipper says, kneeling. He runs his hands over the unlined section of stone that stands in the entryway.
Pacifica places her palm on the wall near her, not expecting to find anything. The stone is cool to the touch and feels polished, like the expensive marble countertops at the Malibu house. She leans back from the surface, imagining it sprouting a hexagonal column right into her face.
"Nothing," Mabel summarizes, dropping her hands from her section of wall.
Pacifica squints into the gloom; maybe she's imagining it, but it looks like there's something far ahead, like a platform. "I think there's something in the middle," she says, pointing.
Dipper follows her line of sight. "I think you're right."
"I bet that's what we're supposed to grab," Mabel says.
"Yeah, but this is a trap. I mean, come on," Pacifica says, waving her hand at the hexagons. "You know something's going to happen when we go out there."
"What choice do we have?" Dipper asks rhetorically.
Pacifica turns to him, ready to eviscerate with a screamingly sarcastic retort; probably something along the lines of 'Gee, I don't know—maybe go back, you dummy!' The words never reach her mouth.
She doesn't want to go back.
This is hers. As much as it is Dipper's and Mabel's, it's hers. The maze, the treasure, the doing—the walking, the falling, the finding. Not as two plus one, as the three of them. They've come this far, and she brought herself.
It's hers, too.
"Here, hold hands," she says, raising her arms out towards the twins. "Let's at least try to stay together this time."
"Buddy check!" Mabel says, grabbing Pacifica's left hand.
Dipper takes her other hand and edges up to the point where the hexagon pattern starts. "Let's take it slow. If they start to move our best bet might be to try and stay on the same group." He looks upwards. "Uh, unless another one comes down from the ceiling. That would be bad."
Pacifica is trying to hold on to her newfound sense of ownership regarding this particular journey, which means not thinking about how easily this room could kill them.
The tension is high when they step out into the silent space. They creep forward, necks stiff with the anticipation of a sudden change, ready to dodge or jump or run. The only sound is their footsteps echoing softly on the stone. Moving forward, Pacifica can now more clearly see what lies in the center of the long room. There's a raised section of stone that looks square, with two ramps descending from either side. Something appears to be resting on the dais, though she's too far away to tell what.
It happens without warning: One second, Pacifica has a firm grip on the twins' hands—in the next instant, the hexagon pillars beneath them fly upwards. One column comes up directly between Mabel and Pacifica, severing their connection. As Pacifica jumps away in shock, a full wall two rows thick shoots towards the ceiling, carrying Dipper up into the darkness. He holds on to Pacifica's hand long enough to lift her off the floor, but her fingers slip from his and she tumbles back down.
She finds herself alone in a narrow corridor of angles that zigzags off into the dimness. Her left arm aches from the impact of the pillar that separated her from Mabel; she rubs at her wrist, wincing. The only good news is it seems the room isn't interested in killing anyone. If it had wanted to turn them all into jelly, it could have done it already.
She shivers in the gloom, not at all happy to be alone again. "Dipper? Mabel?" she shouts, pausing as the reverberations of her voice gradually diminish. She thinks she might hear a faint reply from somewhere to her left, but she can't be positive she isn't imagining it.
Now she's all turned around. She's not sure which way is forward. This would be the perfect moment to utilize Dipper's compass, and he's gone. She decides to start moving in the direction she's already facing.
The room shifts around her as she walks. Whatever hidden mechanisms drive the columns rumble away beneath the floor as walls smoothly glide back into the ground, intersections appearing before her and then disappearing behind her. Is her path randomized by her choices or is it really choosing for her? It is strange beyond words to watch this green and black world morph around her, procedural and alien. At one point, she ducks and carefully steps her way past a room through which columns pierce through laterally and horizontally, an evenly spaced forest of thick, glossy tripwires. Maybe it really is an obstacle course.
Eventually, she finds herself in a box. The way she came in closes behind her and no new way opens. This is not the first time this has happened; she begins to wander the perimeter, running her hand along the polished stone in the hopes of triggering a response. Sometimes the hexagonal posts require some encouragement.
The wall to her right changes—half of its pillars recede into the ceiling, leaving the remaining half standing like the bars of a jail cell. Dipper is standing on the other side, his hand pressed to one of the posts, almost certainly doing exactly what Pacifica is.
"Hey!" His face lights up when he sees her. "What's a beautiful girl like you doing in a puzzle room like this?"
Pacifica's eyes narrow suspiciously. It would be just like a magic maze to confront her with a Faux-Dipper, and nothing he just said makes much sense. She crosses her arms and glares at him, Mabel's story of the glass dimension at the forefront of her mind.
"You're, what, trying to be smooth? Dipper isn't smooth! You're not convincing, at all. You're bad at this," she snaps at Faux-Dipper.
Faux-Dipper's shoulders slump as his expression turns dismayed. "Man, really?" he says plaintively. "What about the llama necklace, wasn't that… I mean, not that I'm trying to be, you know, like that, but I thought it was kind of romantic… right?"
"Oh geez," she sighs, dropping her defensive stance. "It's just you."
He tosses his hands up and turns away. "Alright! Sorry I'm not Mabel!"
"Stop being dramatic! I thought you were an alien or something. Why you picked right now, of all the times, to be weird…"
Dipper looks down at the floor, blushing. "I thought girls like that kind of stuff," he mumbles.
Pacifica did not start dating him because he's romantic; she started dating him because he's him. Not that she has any objection to being called beautiful. "Okay, you should tell me how hot I am all the time—but do it later and not when we're in the middle of whatever this is. What is it with you two? Like, this seriously isn't the time!"
"Two?" Dipper says.
"Mabel wanted to talk about my feelings," Pacifica says dismissively. "Like we don't have better things to do in a maze."
Dipper shrugs. "We kind of don't until it starts changing again. I've been meaning to talk to you anyway."
Pacifica closes her eyes tightly for a second, searching for patience she's pretty sure she doesn't have. "I don't know when you guys decided that today is the day to try and 'fix' me, but—"
Dipper shakes his head apologetically. "It's not that, I'm just worried; we both are. You were really messed up by what happened in the bunker and I totally get it—we should have said something."
The bunker? He's still stuck on that? Pacifica isn't exactly happy to have been scared half to death by a frozen version of her boyfriend, but that barely ranks on the horror meter compared to Weirdmageddon or even the dumb Boss-Lobster. Heck, it was pretty much a false alarm.
What she fears is a separation more permanent than the stone bars that currently stand between them. They'll figure out this puzzle and move on to the next, whatever it is—but there are only so many days in summer. It's not the adventures that are going to break her. It's what comes after.
"I don't care about the bunker, okay? I'm fine," she insists.
The look on his face makes it clear he's not buying it. "Pacifica, I get it if you don't want to talk about it, but… I was hoping you know you can always talk to me. When I got back after last summer—"
This again. Always this, always so understanding and trying to help and what is she? Is this what she is? Is she just a problem, is she just something for Dipper and Mabel to take care of, their little pity project, their pathetic pet? Why can't they just trust her to take care of herself? Talking about it isn't going to change a thing. The summer will still end and she's still going nowhere, gaining nothing. Mother or Father will take her back and try to change her back and she'll fight it; she'll fight them with everything she has… for how long? Until she turns eighteen?
Maybe she can do it. Maybe she's strong enough now, stubborn enough, to cling to who she's become and dig in her heels until she comes of age and can free herself. But four years away from the Pines is a crucible she can't seem to resign herself to. She doesn't want to think about it.
Dipper is supposed to be her distraction. He's supposed to hold her hand and kiss her and take her on crazy adventures and make her forget to worry. It was so much easier before her birthday; it had been amazing, but it also reminded her of what else is changing. Everything that's wonderful is everything that's temporary and it's not fair.
Resentment floods her chest, hot and bitter. "God, why can't you just leave it alone, leave me alone."
Dipper is taken aback by her vehemence. He stares at her with wide eyes, his mouth hanging open as she disintegrates.
"You can't do anything about it, okay? You always want to help but you can't. I'm going to leave and it might not even be at the end of summer, it could be any time, and I don't know where I'm going or what's going to happen! Why can't you both just shut up about it?! Nothing is going to change! I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to think about it, and I don't want either of you acting like we can make it better!"
Dipper is stunned. "…Pacifica—"
"No! Just stop!" Her voice breaks and she has to turn away, she can't look at him. "You need to understand, okay? You guys are always running around solving things, but this isn't one of those things. Don't pretend like you know what to do. There's not anything to say!"
"I like you so much that sometimes I think I'm going crazy," Dipper says.
Pacifica's mouth snaps shut, her train of thought derailed. She turns back around. "I—… What?"
"We spend so much time together and it never feels like enough," he says, coming closer to the columns that separate them. "I think about the same thing. Sometimes I think, maybe your parents will just forget to call, you know? Maybe they won't call or show up and you can just come back to Piedmont. But I know that won't happen. And knowing that I won't be able to… to just be with you is… I'm still trying to figure it out."
Pacifica wipes at her eyes. "So why do we have to talk about it? It just is."
"I know." He puts his arms through the gaps in the hexagon pillars and she takes his hands, holding them tightly. "But I don't think pretending helps much."
She drops her chin towards her chest, defeated. "…I guess not."
"Talking helped before, didn't it?" Dipper points out. "You didn't have to, but you did anyway."
He's wrong—she did have to. She couldn't have held it all in for another second that chilly night in Piedmont. This realization makes her uncomfortably self-aware. How long could she have pushed it down this time, before it ruptured her again? Maybe she just doesn't learn. Dipper and Mabel are right, and she's always running.
But she doesn't have to face it alone.
"I don't have to talk about it in this weirdo maze, do I?" she says with a watery attempt at a haughty sniff.
Dipper laughs, a sound which is more than a little relieved. "Yeah, fair enough," he says.
The hexagonal columns between them retract all at once with a concerted boom. Pacifica and Dipper instinctively jump apart before realizing they aren't in danger (yet). The perimeter of their small room begins to shift as columns move up and down seemingly at random. There's still no way out because only the first row of pillars moves—the second row which forms the walls remains immobile.
Dipper is watching the moving hexagons with a slight frown. "Does that look like a pattern?"
At first, Pacifica doesn't think so. But the longer she observes, the more it becomes apparent that the same pillars are moving on each wall, one wall at a time. The pattern is cycling around them.
"It's the same ones each time," Dipper notes. "One, one… Two, three, five, eight, thir— oh! It's the Fibonacci sequence!"
That doesn't ring a bell for Pacifica. "Meaning what?"
"Meaning we know what the next one should be. See? It stops at pillar thirteen. But there's twenty-five pillars in each wall." He approaches the nearest wall, counting his way across. "Twenty-one should be the next in the sequence, but it's not moving." He reaches out and touches the twenty-first pillar, and nothing happens. But when he touches it again in time with the sequence, it immediately slides into the floor and stays there. "Okay, get the others!"
Once all four of the right pillars have been selected, the room again morphs in earnest. One wall ripples aside and reveals a new passageway.
Dipper takes her hand with a smile. "Let's try this again."
Pacifica has long since lost track of where they are in relation to the center. They follow the hall as it continually opens in front of them, weaving side to side and sometimes doubling back. She's just about to doubt whether they're making any progress at all when there's a shout from above.
"HEYO!"
They look up to see Mabel standing amid a cluster of pillars at differing heights. She's on top of what is, to Pacifica and Dipper, a sizable wall.
"How'd you get up there?" Dipper hollers back.
"How'd you get down there?" Mabel retorts. "Keep going, the wall gets shorter!"
Sure enough, the wall gradually declines until it's about ten feet tall, though that could change quickly enough. Mabel takes off her sweater and lowers it as a makeshift rope.
"You think you can pull me up?" Dipper says doubtfully.
"Nah, but I bet me and Pacifica could," Mabel says.
Pacifica goes up first, and together the girls manage to get Dipper up to the top. Pausing to catch her breath, Pacifica is relieved to see the center isn't far away. One of the ramps to the dais rears up out of the hexagons nearby.
"Just let us get there already," she says to the unresponsive maze.
Maybe they get lucky; or maybe the maze is done impeding them, as they've bested every challenge so far. The ground remains stable until they reach the ramp and eagerly ascend to the very heart of the maze.
A beam of soft blue light shines down from an indistinct point overhead, illuminating the object resting on the middle of the raised platform. They gather around it, gazing on the promised treasure.
"The maze's heart is a heart!" Mabel gasps.
And it is: sort of. It's shaped like a human heart, but it's green and made of a thousand little cubes that shift constantly, always holding the general look of a heart but never fully solidifying. The air around it seems to hum with power.
"Gross," Pacifica says, wrinkling her nose.
"I think we're supposed to take it," Dipper says after a moment's consideration. "What else is there to do?"
"This is definitely the creepiest treasure," Mabel says with a grin that makes it clear she's way into it.
"So, what? Just grab it?" Pacifica says.
Dipper is drawing the heart in his journal. "I think so. The room hasn't changed, so I don't think just getting here is the goal. This must be the treasure the sphinx told us about."
"Fine." Pacifica reaches out and scoops up the heart, holding it away from herself in case it's slimy or something.
Mabel watches eagerly. "What does it feel like? Is it beating?"
"No. It's like a living Cubic's Cube," Pacifica replies.
An unbelievable noise begins building in the distance. The ground starts to shake, and Pacifica grabs the edge of the dais to keep from falling over. Her eyes widen in panic as she sees the hexagons all retracting, folding over and over like the giant fingers of a closing hand. The whole room is shrinking into itself.
Then everything goes black.
And Pacifica blinks.
She's lying on her back, looking up into the shifting branches of pine trees that rustle in the evening breeze, a dark blue sky almost completely hidden from view. There's soft moss beneath her arms and the back of her head, and something heavy is wiggling on her stomach.
Wait, something is wiggling on her stomach!
"Gah! Oh ick, no, get off!" She sits up, flailing at her shirt. The wiggling thing rolls off her stomach and settles into the crook of her legs.
It's the stone heart, still in constant motion. It's almost twice the size it had been on its pedestal. Pacifica looks down at it uncomprehendingly, then casts her gaze around the dark clearing. Where are Dipper and Mabel?
She hears a voice, not too far away—it sounds like Dipper. "Pacifica?" he calls. He's somewhere just ahead.
Picking up the heart, she kicks her way free of the sticks around her feet and climbs down a dry creek bed. "Dipper!" she yells. "I'm here!"
"She's up there," Dipper says, and Pacifica experiences a jolt of relief: He must be talking to Mabel.
Pacifica slides down a short embankment and spots Dipper and Mabel picking their way through the rocks in her direction. It takes her longer to get to them than she would like, hobbled by the heart. She is thinking about setting it down when Dipper gets close enough to speak.
"Don't drop the heart!" he says. "I think it made the maze. If you drop it, it might make another one."
"It grew bigger," Pacifica says, holding it up to show him.
"I bet it has something to do with it sucking the maze back in. We gotta show this thing to Great-Uncle Ford. I don't think it's the regular kind of magic… it might be alien."
They manage to make room for the engorged heart in Mabel's backpack (after Mabel insists on holding it for a second). With Dipper's compass working again, they set off on the hike back home. It's dark enough beneath the canopy that they have to break out their flashlights again, the bobbing beams darting through the encroaching night, lighting upon boulders and tree trunks.
Pacifica is in the place just prior to exhaustion, her legs moving mechanically. She's hungry and tired, sticky with old sweat, thinking longingly of a hot shower and her cool sheets. In the back of her mind, she knows she took the first step towards a conversation that will come, sooner or later.
It's not what she wanted, but it might be what she needs.
Run in All Directions by I Made You Myself (Not On Label, 2011)