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Dipper couldn’t believe it; He had, at once, the best and worst luck of anyone on the planet.
Mabel had teased him for weeks, ever since the first awkward kiss on the cheek had become a peck on the lips, since they had both blushed and turned away. Dipper had been wrestling with how to broach the subject for months, since shortly after they visited the Mystery Shack for their 15th birthdays, but when he’d seen her face after the kiss, the words came tumbling out.
Turns out, while Dipper was quite sure of the depths of his affection for his twin, Mabel wasn’t so sure.
She’d been unsure, and her reaction had made Dip wish for a nearby pit in the ground he could jump in and live with the mole people for shame, but as he was sinking into his despondency, Mabel said quietly “Well, Sir Dippingsauce, maybe you could prove yourself with a token of your affection?”
She had said it jokingly, with a little smile, but behind it he could feel her anxiety. She isn’t sure I was being serious, he realized with a shock, and so maybe she’s worried about reciprocating if this is a big joke?
He felt a bit miffed, and was about to go and internally sulk in a mental corner when he remembered the Whippy Cream Incident. All right, I do have a pretty crappy taste when it comes to trying to set up pranks for Mabes, he admitted grudgingly.
After a moment of silence, he smiled back at his sister, giving her a salute. “Lady Mabelton, I would be honored to grant you a favor as a token of my love.”
He immediately regretted using the word love again, so quickly after their talk before, as her smile notably shrank, but she nodded with tight lips and pointedly turned back to knitting her sweater. Dipper turned to the third Journal, his notes exactly where Grunkle Ford had left them, and began to plan for the perfect gift for his sister.
“Absolutely not, Dipper. The mines were closed for a good reason, and I don’t want you getting hurt for this…’Wendy’ individual,” Grunkle Ford said with a scowl.
“But Grunka Foooord-” Dipper had begin to groan, frustrated but unsurprised with the rejection before Ford cut him off. “Listen, Dipper, wishing-eggs are dangerous objects, and they’re well guarded for a reason; You, and possibly the entire world could be in danger if used improperly,” he said, waving his hands in the air, before turning to his brother. “Lee, help me out here.”
Grunkle Stan took another sip of his coffee, before looking over the edge of his paper at his twin, rolling his eyes, and saying “Fine” as he folded the paper to set aside.
“Dipper, as a responsible adult, I need to tell you that this is a bad idea,” he said dutifully. Next to him Ford smiled and nodded for emphasis. “There’s a lot of risk here, and lots of chances you could really hurt Wendy, or yourself, or the town and this family.” Ford continued to nod sagely.
“But as your Grunkle, I’m telling you to grab life by the balls, and make the world remember your name!” he said with a grin, pumping a fist forward for a fistbump. Ford nodded, then stopped, spluttering “Wait, what-Dammit Lee, that’s not at all what I said-” Dipper returned the fistbump, grinning like a madman as he scooted out of the kitchen before the Grunkles began to bicker again.
After him, Ford called out loudly and with a distinct sound of frustration “Make sure to bring a weapon or something should the guardians prove hostile. I’ve got a stun cannon you can-” Before he could finish, a loud triumphant cry could be heard from the top of the stairs: “CROSSBOW!”
Mabel bounded down the stairs as Dipper winced, internally kicking himself for asking his Grunkle’s advice in the first place. Mabel scooted to a stop, punching him the arm and saying “So, what’s today’s adventure brobro?”
He could tell she was being a bit more forcibly cheerful than usual, but Ford, standing in the doorway, seemed oblivious, and with a shrug their Grunkle said grudgingly “Well, the guardian is suspected to be fae, so the cold iron arrowheads should do the trick.”
Mabel gave her brother a wide grin, saying “Oooooh, a fairy guardian? What’s it guarding?”
As Ford opened his mouth to respond, Dipper spun Mabel around and steered her through the door, mumbling out in a torrent “Superawesometreasurestuff;I’lltellyouontheway.ByeGrunkles!” before closing the door behind them with a slam and dragging Mabel in the direction of the mine entrance.
Mabel probed him a couple times for answers as they walked, but each time Dipper deflected her questions, saying “It’s just an interesting old artifact. I wanted to see if it was actually here or not.” Mabel, not believing him for a moment, crossed her arms and “Hmph!”ed her way into a sulk. The one time Dipper had to pull out the Journal for a look at the map, he had to veer it around like he was swatting a fly to avoid Mabel’s head, following him like an inquisitive vulture over his shoulder as she tried to get a peek of what destination he was looking for.
Finally, they got up to the mine entrance. The last time they had been near here, Gideon was busy trying to mash them to paste with an improbably large robot, but now nothing more than a few crows occupied the ledge. Mabel “Ooh”ed appreciatively at the imposing “DEAD END” stenciled onto one board, but her brother just ignored it, pulling away a rotten board to one side.
His flashlight clicked on, and it illuminated a wide, dusty shaft into the hillside. He ducked underneath, and began heading determinedly towards the far end. Mabel ducked under after him, swivelling an invisible hat as she squinted and cocking her crossbow, to be held at the ready should they be attacked.
The shaft was long, tunneling deep into the hills. The signs of any life having existed here were absent, besides the presence of the mine itself. Surely there would need to be lanterns, or pickaxes, or shovels, he thought nervously. Heck, even a mining cart for these rails we’ve been walking between would be nice.
After what seemed like hours of walking, they arrived at the end of the mined tunnel. Dipper glanced down at his watch, and stared; No way in hell that was only fifteen minutes. They had stopped at least three different times, snacking from some trail mix and Gummy Koalas he’d brought along, and one of the two water bottles he brought was nearly empty.
The mineshaft abruptly felt far less reliably physical and grounded than Dipper had thought; They had used enough supplies to travel ten times as long as they had apparently been gone. Gravitational and even temporal anomalies were nothing new to the Mystery Twins, but adding claustrophobia into the mix suddenly made him wish they were messing with Blendin in a nice secluded above-ground glade instead.
He brushed his hands carefully along the walls, muttering “Ngis yna ,ngis a emmig, ngis yna ,ngis a emmig” from an incantation written in the book. Ford had showed it to him a few weeks back, and assured him that using it on rare occasions would almost-certainly not risk the attentions of extraplanar entities.
Still, Dipper let out a breath of relief as his fingers tingled passing over one area of stone, and he stopped chanting. The tingle faded, but as he began digging with his fingers into the soft dirt, he quickly hit a piece of smooth stone. An egg? Already? He hadn’t been expecting it to be this easy.
It wasn’t. As they cleared more dirt away, the stone was revealed to be part of a wide wall of dark grey granite, covered in thin traceries of carvings in a language Dipper didn’t recognize and couldn’t translate. The stonework was impeccable, lines between blocks so thin that he was suspicious it wasn’t just a single continuous wall of stone.
In the center of the wall, at about chest-height, were a pair of milky-white stone handles, carved roughly and seamlessly from the rest of the wall. He looked towards them, and gave one an experimental poke but receiving no reaction in reply. Flipping open the Journal, he quickly skipped to the page in question, finding a symbol that was carved above the handles on the page, and written beneath Ford had noted “Seems to require the user to hold both handles, thus completing a harmless electrical circuit. This apparently ‘opens the path,’ presumably by unlocking a hidden door or somesuch.”
He popped the journal closed, as Mabel was starting to peer over a shoulder again. Normally, he would have double-checked it with a blacklight just to make sure there weren’t additional notes, but his sister was already getting too curious, and he didn’t want her to see the descriptions of the wishing-eggs on the opposite page.
Taking a deep breath, Dipper grabbed the handles at the same time. For a brief moment, nothing happened beyond a mild tingle, almost a tickle to his palms.
This isn’t so bad-
Then the tickle became a burning brand, the shock forcing him to clench his hands, as the stone walldisintegrated outwards into a hail of razor-sharp gravel. Dipper turned his head, squeezing his eyes shut, but he could feel the shards cut him in a hundred places at once.
A second later, the rumbling had stopped. Mabel emerged from behind one of the support beams, where she had been forced to retreat. Her hands had several cuts from where she had reached for Dipper, which made his throat tighten a bit. Aw man, Mabes, the idea was never to let you get hurt on my account.
The open path ahead of them was markedly different; The twin’s parents had taken them on a family trip up to the Lava Beds national park up north, and this tunnel looked like it was carved in the same way, by molten stone rather than human hands.
And yet… Dipper traced his hands idly along the carvings, covering the entire surface of the tube-like corridor. The air had gotten notably colder, icy almost, and he could swear he felt the occasional snowflake on his cheek. The hell? It’s the middle of June, and we’re in the middle of Oregon, not Alaska.
Still, Dipper was a bit taken aback when he looked around the corner, following a shimmering blue light reflected off the walls, and saw a pool of blue fire blocking the path.
Okay, that’s definitely not natural, he thought, before rummaging around in his pack. His years of experience playing DD&MD, mostly by himself but lately with Grunkle Ford and Mabel, had taught him that a “10-foot pole” was an invaluable treasure for checking for traps and poking dangerous things to see if it would make them angry.
Dipper didn’t think carrying a room-sized length of wood was practical, but he’d brought along the next-best thing: An extendable hiking pole. With a sliding click, he ratcheted the pole out to its full length, and cautiously poked the fire.
Within seconds, the metal had a frosted sheen, and an experimental tap on one of the walls broke off part of the metal tip like it was glass. Staying out of the fire at all costs, right then. Still, he frowned; The distance was too far to jump, and a brief look back around the corner of the corridor revealed that the “door” had silently reformed itself, forming a flat, featureless stone wall again, but this time without any visible handles.
No place to go but forward, he thought, and gave Mabel a small apologetic smile. She grinned and shrugged, a bit of nervousness in her tone as she said “Well, let’s just make sure we get across that ice-fire nice and quicklike.”
Dipper nodded, an alternative plan forming in his mind. As he and his sister approached the edge of the burning-cold fire, he summoned his strength, and grabbed Mabel around the waist, hoisting her onto his shoulder with a grunt as he began to sprint across the pool of flames.
Dipper had been working out, and while it hadn’t made him muscular, it at least gave him limited endurance enough to do something like this. Mabel was screaming “NO! Dip, let me-” and by then it was close enough that he was able to throw her clear, the pain catching up as he stumbled and fell, one hand catching him and immediately beginning to burn with the awful numbness he was feeling around his legs and feet.
He shivered with pain, but looked up aghast when he felt Mabel grab under his arm to help hoist him to his feet. She was gritting her teeth, but managed to pull him to stumble and collapse on the ground next to her.
He groaned, and looked over to see Mabel panting and holding the foot she’d had to place in the cold fire to grab him. It was red, swollen, but luckily not the sickly purple of frostbite Dipper had seen in pictures once. He shuddered, and futilely tried to massage some feeling back into his own legs; Both legs were awash with a reassuring fiery pain as they slowly warmed back up, but he could feel several toes on his left foot remained horribly numb.
Just…just don’t look, we’ll deal with that later. The egg is the important thing; There’s probably a bunch of them, and we can just vanquish the guardian and each take one and get fixed up. Yeah, that should work, he thought, more than a little fervent hope tinging his wishes.
He limped to his feet, and Mabel put a hand to her mouth in shock. He waved it away, muttering “Ah, it’s nothing,” and she lowered her hand, her face still worried as he hobbled forward, careful to walk on his left heel as they walked.
A rainbow of sparkling light motes colored another bend in the tunnel, and as they rounded it, Dipper could hear Mabel gasp in a way that matched his own. The room before them was massive, resembling an auditorium, but instead of seats, there were thousands upon thousands of glittering crystalline eggs, elongated to almost cylindrical shapes and glowing with warm inner lights.
Without thinking, Dipper took a step forward into the ankle-deep cloying black fog in the chamber, his eyes focused on the nearest cluster of eggs. Immediately, he stopped, and he could feel something was wrong as the fog spilled out into the tunnel like an invisible dam had been sundered.
Near the center of the room, a shape he had dismissed as a narrow, eggless stalagmite pivoted turning to face him with wide, pupil-less white orbs where eyes would have been, the creature standing three times Dipper’s height. It was hunched, and reminded him of an owl as much as it resembled most of the waking nightmares he could ever recall having.
“CROSSBOW!”
He started at Mabel’s triumphant and firm yell, and watched as she fired, the shaft whistling through the air before punching a hole through the middle of the creature’s chest.
It shattered, falling to the floor in a thousand scrap-like black pieces of-Of fog, just like the one you’re standing in.
With a voice that grated on the back of his teeth like a metal rasp, Dipper could hear a voice behind them accompanying a terrible presence: “‘Ullo, child-thieves.”
They both spun, and staggered backwards; The creature, a huge shaggy humanoid covered in a regal, greasy coat of enormous feathers, had been so close it was nearly touching them. Dipper choked back a gag at the smell, the scent of rotten meat palpable even in the cold, brisk air of the cavern.
Mabel was trying to load another bolt into her crossbow when the creature swiped its hand, scattering the crossbow one direction while Mabel was thrown back heavily. “NO! Mabel!” he called, starting to take a step towards her when the creature spun. The sightless eyes transfixed him, white orbs looking more like pustules than a natural formation, and the creature leaned over Dipper. With a terrifying certainty, he could feel the eyes assess his thoughts as well, and he felt utterly naked before its gaze.
It took in a shuddering breath, feathers along the back flaring and dripping a black oily mucus that evaporated as it hit the fog below. “Oh-ho, little child-thief is seeking. Little child-thief is wooing” it said in a glutinous and raspy tone, looking towards Mabel’s still form. Dipper followed its gaze, as Mabel let out a moan and stirred slightly, before the sickly ivory gaze caught him, the head snapping to face him as the rest of the body slowly swiveled to place the inky head in the middle of the bulky form.
“Little child-thief will make a trade?”
The voice, which to this point had, if anything, sounded dismissive and mocking, took on an air of both questioning as well as firmness. I suppose, Dipper thought, It can already read my mind, to some degree, so it’s probably no surprise that I’m going to say- “Yes”
“What does the child-thief offer for such treasure?”
Dipper thought for a moment; It was difficult, under the direct scrutiny of the guardian before him, but after a moment he recalled Bill Cypher’s particular fascination, and hoped it would hold for other horrible noncorporeal nightmares.
“A tooth!” he rushed out, before slwoing and repeating himself. “I offer a tooth.”
He stood, and clenched his eyes shut before hearing a hissing gurgle. “Acceptable.”
The monster darted forward with a clawed hand, the feathers dangled from the arm, dripping into the fog as the clawed hand clenched his shoulder.
Dipper let out a scream, as he could feel the cold from before, searing his flesh faster and deeper than he thought possible. He was lifted into the air by his shoulder, and the agony spread throughout his body, while the burning throughout his form. The other hand came up, and with the tips of its claws, withdrew one of Dipper’s front teeth in a single fluid motion.
With a bit of a shock, Dipper realized that despite the agony in his shoulder, the tooth hadn’t hurt a bit and he couldn’t taste any blood in his mouth. The grip on his shoulder was firm, but brief, and after a second the monstrosity let Dipper go, and he fell to the ground in a heap.
Dipper struggled to get to his feet and stumbled towards his sister, watching as the monster scrutinized the tooth between two greased claws. It opened a gaping fleshy maw, dropping the tooth in as it landed with a dink on a pile of what must have been thousands of other teeth, before the maw snapped shut and the white milky eyes beheld Dipper once again.
“Child-thief is a fool.”
The beast turned from Dipper, ignoring him and slithering silently towards his sister, and Dipper felt his stomach drop. The creature leapt forward with a screeching howl, clawed hand outstretched. With a wordless cry, Dipper dove over Mabel, hearing her call his name once before he felt an indescribable stab of pain and the light of the eggs were snuffed like candles in a gale.
He awoke with a start, shuddering and moaning as Mabel awoke alongside him. They were both lying just on the inside of the mine tunnel, the light of the outside poking between the boarded-up slats. He grabbed her hand, pulling her as she got to her feet and they scrambled mindlessly into the sunlight.
He fell over, panting and laughing with wordless happiness at the feeling of warmth on his face. Mabel laughed as well, but when she rolled over towards him suddenly sat up, saying “Whoa, Dipper, your face-”
He quickly felt over his face, and the dozens of cuts from the stone door had vanished. He felt a bubbling laugh come up with relief as he felt his toe wiggle, but then he winced, the hope that this had all been a dream evaporating as his tongue explored a new, toothless gap where his front tooth had been. He yanked down his shirt, Mabel crawling over to him in worry, and Dipper let out a moan of despair as he saw a blue-white tracery of scar tissue on his aching shoulder, in the shape of four enormous clawed fingers.
Mabel was reaching over for him when something heavy fell from her sweater pocket and onto the mining rail with a clank! Looking down, the twins could see a shimmering golden wishing-egg, the surface looking like a sun-dappled geode while the interior burned with light.
He chuckled in disbelief: We-we did it, he thought, sighing as he leaned back. He pushed it towards Mabel, but as she grabbed it she looked towards his shoulder, and began to say “I wish-”
He leaned forward, yelling “Mabel, wait!” She stopped, and the blinding glow that had begun to suffuse the egg faded back to the light it was before. She sniffed, and began to say “Dipper, we need to fix your-”
“-My shoulder is going to be fine, Mabel,” he said soothingly. Truth be told, it stung like crazy still, but he didn’t want Mabel to accidentally waste the wish on him. “As for my tooth,” he said, giving her a grin as she shuddered with the recent memory, “It feels like it’s a clean gap, and I can just get an implant when we get home. We’ll tell them I fell and broke it on a tree or something.”
Besides, he wasn’t even sure the egg could fix him, if the descriptions of their abilities were right.
“Mabes, it can only transform into an object, once,” he said quietly. “Any object, though; If you wanted a car, or a puppy, or a cruise yacht painted with money and Smile Dip, it can do it.”
She smiled at his suggestions, but patted him on the knee. “I think I know what I want, then,” she said, and she grabbed the wishing-egg firmly between her hands.
As the light suffused her, Dipper could only make out her words as the glow drowned out all else. “I wish for -”
The light faded, and Dipper looked around. No yacht was in sight, he couldn’t see a new car, and when straining to hear a puppy, instead he heard a little noise.
The tinkling chime of a music box.
He looked in shock at Mabel, and she gave him a little smile, revealing a little old-fashioned crank music box in her hands, where the egg had once been.
“Mabel, what-what did you wish for?” he said, doubt tinging his voice.
“I wished that we would never forget our summers here, “ she said with sadness coloring her smile. He started to object, but listened to the tune. It meandered, encouraging, mysterious, but in the end oddly familiar. Sure enough, as he heard the last strains of the song, his mind was running back over their years here and the adventures they’d had.
His eyes were shut, but they flicked open when he felt Mabel’s hand on his. She looked at him, giving his hand a squeeze, as she spoke in a quiet but firm voice. “I love you Dipper.”
He felt his heart soar as the last note of the music box faded. “Love you too, Mabes.”
She rewound the music box, and they sat, hands and hearts entwined, as they looked down on the town below.