The Woman with the Cipher Tattoo

All Roads Lead to Gnomes

From the Journals of Dipper Pines:
Wednesday, June 19:
        Since yesterday afternoon, Mabel has been trying to cheer me up. I guess I should be grateful. Still, her idea of a happy surprise was to hide a live chicken under my pillow last night. The peck marks on my face should clear up in a few days. I hope.
Mabel was off with her friends for most of yesterday. All that afternoon, I just hung around the Shack, talking to Wendy and Melody, who's really nice. I've also noticed some changes. Soos is running the Shack as if it were a church and he were the high priest, and he takes way better care of things than Grunkle Stan ever did. I mean, it's the same old place, but Soos and Melody worked all through the winter sprucing up, repairing, painting - the bathrooms for tourists now look modern instead of something from the 1920's, for example, and the stairs up to the attic have been put in pretty good shape, no broken boards or big splinters or gaping holes any more, though they still creak like crazy. "Wouldn't be the same if I made them quiet, dawg," Soos told me cheerfully.
I suppose that since he's not saving up money to repair a trans-dimentional portal like Grunkle Stan was, Soos can put a big part of the profits right back into improving the Shack. Grunkles Stan and Ford aren't charging him any rent at all - Grunkle Ford technically owns it, but Soos carries the insurance of the place and shows Ford the account books, but I don't think either Ford or Stan much cares. Grunkle Ford found out last fall that he's actually rich because a lot of his patents from the eighties paid fat royalties into an account all the years he was away, and Grunkle Stan unearthed some kind of treasure on their voyage last winter - he says he'll tell me all about it once the statue of limitations runs out, whatever that means. But I'm off the subject, avoiding it because I've been so depressed about my bungling the investigation. Let me face up to it now.
So okay, this morning when Mabel came dashing up the stairs - I had skipped breakfast because I'm still mad at myself for mishandling my interview with McGucket, and anyway I don't have Mabel's appetite (of course nobody but Gompers the Goat does, either - last winter, Mabel tried to eat a feather duster), so I was sort of brooding in bed, just lying back with my pillow covering my face, shutting out the light but smelling like a mad hen.
And then came the creakity-clomp of Mabel's approach. The door slammed open and she yelled, "Broseph! C'mon! The Chit just got real!"
"WHAT?" I asked, tossing the pillow aside. "Did you just say-"
"Chit's the chicken's name, dummy! I got back from taking her back to the farmer's flock and was talking to Wendy, and now I think I may have found some witnesses who were the last to see Fiddleford's wife! and nobody's ever interviewed them! C'mon!"
So I got into my sneakers, grabbed my phone, and pounded down the stairs after her. to my surprise, we headed deep into the western forest...

"Mabel!" Dipper yelled, his eye stinging and watering from where a silk-tassel twig she'd pushed aside had sprung back and lashed across it. "Are you out of your mind? We're heading right for-"
"I know, I know!" she called back over her shoulder. "Turns out Wendy's dad built a little house for the McGuckets out this way, not knowing what lived just behind their place. This could be crucial! Ooh, look! Butterflies!"
Dipper wiped his streaming eye, ran into Mabel's back - she had stopped dead in her tracks - and then tugged her away from a whole cloud of fluttering, brown-speckled orange Pacific Fritillaries. "Mabel! Don't get distracted. You're talking about the Gnomes, aren't you? Are you sure they'd help us?"
"Am I what for the which now?"
With a deep sigh, Dipper said, "Give it up. If you mean the Gnomes, you know they're never gonna help us. Let's just go home."
To his surprise, she caught his arm. "No! This is our chance! Yes, you're right - the McGucket house was nearly in Gnome territory, right at the very edge of their borders. And one thing we know about Gnomes is that they're nosy! They must've spied on their neighbors! C'mon, let's at least ask them."
Hesitantly, Dipper replied, "I don't know. Gnomes aren't exactly trustworthy."
Mabel's eyes narrowed. "Right. but we can get the truth out of them if we ask the right way. And remember one thing."
"Which is?"
She grabbed his vest and put her face right up in his. "It's Gnome man's land, Dipper."
He blinked as he smelled the cedar-like scent of her breath. "What have you been eating?"
She looked somewhat embarrassed. "Number two pencils. They're so yellow! C'mon, let me at least find where the house was."
However, as it turned out, Dipper was the one who first spotted the remains of the cabin - now all that was left was just a squarish depression in the earth and a few rotting logs overgrown with twining nightshade vines. Part of a stone chimney still stood, a brick well, boarded over, was past that, and you could sort of see where a driveway had been bulldozed through the forest, though now saplings ten feet tall and more were reclaiming it. "Up this hill," Mabel said. "Gnome territory starts up there."
They climbed to the top of the wooded hill, and Mabel cupped her hands around her mouth. "Hey, Gnomes! Is Jeff around? We want to talk to you! It's Dipper and Mabel Pines!"
For a few minutes they stood there. The morning sun grew hot on their faces until they stepped into the cold shade of the trees. they heard the only drumming of a woodpecker somewhere deep in the woods, some scattered birdsong, and occasionally the distant whine of a truck changing gears as it toiled up the steep slope that led to the bluff tops and the main eat-west highway past town. The forest air smelled fresh and ferny, and underfoot the soil, made up of centuries-old leaf mold and dotted with the knots of whitish-tan pine mushrooms, feel soft and springy.
Then some underbrush rustled, and a brown-bearded humanoid creature who seemed to be constructed mostly of a conical red hat, a big head, two small arms, and two legs, sidled out. "Well, well, well! What fresh trouble are you bringing us, Pines twins? Gotta tell you up front, Mabel, the queen job has been filled."
"Oh, I'm so glad for you!" Mabel said. "Was it a big wedding?"
Jeff the Gnome shrugged, "Pas bien, pas mal."
"Wait, you speak French?" Dipper asked.
"Not really. I just sort of picked that up on the honeymoon. We all went to Paris."
"Oooh!" Mabel crooned. "Romantic! You guys went to France?"
"No, Paris, Texas," Jeff replied, looked puzzled. "Who wants to go to France? We'd have to travel in the baggage hold of the plane!"
"So how did you get to Texas?" Mabel asked.
"Rode in the baggage cars of Amtrak trains." A couple of squirrels came scuttling up to Jeff, but he waved them off. "Not right now, guys. Take an our off, okay?" They climbed into the tree canopy and vanished.
"This queen," Dipper cut in, trying to keep his voice neutral, "did she marry all thousand of you of her own free will? You didn't, like, kidnap her? She, uh, wouldn't be a human, would she?"
"Not hardly," Jeff shot back. "We learned our lesson. Humans are too handy with anti-Gnome air cannons if you ask us. yes, as far as we could tell, she married us willingly. and no, she's not human. We thought it through carefully. Our last queen was eaten by a badger. That meant the badger was tougher than the queen, and toughness is good in a leader, so instead of going after a human, we married the badger."
"Mazel tov!" Mabel shouted joyfully.
"Hold on, wait a minute," Dipper said, rubbing his eyes. "So a thousand of you Gnomes are married to one badger. Do- are you going to have- how can you- are you starting a, you know, family with her?"
"With a badger?" Jeff said, looking shocked. "Look, kid, this is real life. Our Queen is different." He dropped his voice to a confiding tone. "But since you asked, let me explain how it works. we marry the Queen so we can be sure her loyalty to us, that's all. See, most Gnomes aren't that good at independent thought. New, unfamiliar situations confuse them and they're apt to freeze up, unable to act, and just baulk until they perish. Most of us need to be given orders and direction, and the Queen is the one who leads us and makes all the important decisions. Because of our weakness at thinking outside of the baulks, we developed the tradition that a Gnome Queen is never a Gnome."
Dipper was still trying to wrap his head around it. "You married a badger."
"Sure. Badgers have very level heads. Nearly flat on top. And attractive facial markings."
Suspiciously, Dipper said, "She makes the decisions. So... how does that work?"
Jeff shrugged and looked surprisingly modest for a guy whose ego outweighed his body. "Well, through me. I'm her right-paw Gnome. Whenever we have a problem that requires action, I ask her for a decision. She communicates her commands to me, and I pass them along to the Gnomes."
"She talks to you?"
"She's a badger!" Jeff repeated, rolling his eyes. "Whoever heard of a talking badger? No, I read what she's thinking in her body language, the way she looks at me, and the way she swishes her tail. It's not words, and I have to interpret her meaning, of course."
"I... see." Dipper cleared his throat. 'Must be a nice job for Jeff,' he thought, but aloud he said, "And all the Gnomes follow the... badger queen's orders?"
"Well, all the civilized ones do, yes. There are a lot of feral Gnomes, you know. Loners who separate from the colony and live mostly as hermits out in the woods. We don't have much to do with them. they don't usually survive very long, to tell you the truth. A Gnome on his own is pretty dumb, I'm afraid."
Dipper thought, 'Gotta get back on track here.' "Uh, look, Jeff, we don't want to take up your time. Down the hill - right there where the old chimney is, see? - there used to be a cabin. Do you remember that?"
"Of course," Jeff replied. "That red-bearded giant built it. The inventor, his wife, and later their kid lived there. They abandoned it, it got hit by lightning and it burned to the ground, and that's all that's left of it now. So what?"
Dipper took out his phone and showed him the photo. "This the wife?"
Staring hard, Jeff screwed up his face in concentration. "No. That's a picture."
Mabel asked, "Does the picture look like the wife?"
Jeff shook his head. "Not really. She was very big and the picture's smaller than I am."
Dipper mentally counted to ten. "If the picture was the same size as a person, would it look like her then?"
"Oh, absolutely," Jeff said helpfully. "Yep, she's the woman who's the subject of the picture, no question. Shame about her."
Dipper felt his head thud. "What do you mean? What happened to her?"
Jeff squirmed. "I could get into big trouble if certain parties found out I talked to you about this."
"I love parties!" Mabel exclaimed. "Hey, that gives me an idea. Why don't you Gnomes have a party with us? There's a half a dozen of Lazy Susan's pies in it for you if you help us out."
Jeff's eyes got very round. "Pies? Uh- strawberry? Blueberry? Apple?"
"Two of each," Mabel said. Come to the Shack for the payoff tomorrow afternoon and we'll hand them over. Bring a few Gnomes to help carry them. About four per pie would do it."
"Make it a dozen and it's a deal," Jeff said with some show of crumbling reluctance.
"You got it!" Mabel said.
"Okay, I'll tell what I know. But you're not going to like it."
"Spill it," Dipper said, setting his phone to "record."
"Spill it?" Mabel yelped, giggling. "Pffbbbt! What, have you been watching old cop movies on TCM?"
"Mabel, just let him tell the story, okay? Jeff, what do you know about the woman's disappearance?"
"Well, I didn't see it myself. You want me to find you a witness?"
Dipper clicked the recorder off. "Please."
"Wait right here." Jeff bustled away into the underbrush.
Mabel started to ask questions, but Dipper just said, "Please, no. Not now. Let's just listen to the silence."
ten relatively quiet minutes passed, and then Mabel said, "Uh-oh."
"Oh, no," groaned Dipper as he recognized the white-bearded, wall-eyed Gnome trailing along behind Jeff.
Together, the twins moaned, "It's Shmebulock!"
Jeff came up to them and said, "This guy saw the whole thing. Tell 'em!"
"Shmebulock!"
"Dandy," dipper said. "That's all he ever says!"
"Yeah," Jeff replied, "I know what you mean. What we have here is failure to communicate, right? want me to interpret?"
"Can you?"
"Does a bear live in the woods? Watch where you're stepping, by the way, a bear went right there by your right foot yesterday. Anyhow, if I can translate for a badger, I can do it for a Gnome. Shmebulock, tell us about the last time you saw the inventor's wife. Used to live in a cabin down the hill, you know? What happened to her?"
"Shmebulock!"
Jeff nodded and thought for a second. "Okay, he says the family was in some kind of trouble. The parents used to quarrel at night. Then the dad went away somewhere on his own and was gone for like weeks. Months, maybe. Just visited now and then, sometimes took the boy off for a day. then one day the mom-"
"Wait," Mabel said. "What happened to the boy?"
"His dad had him for a day, we think. Like I said, sometimes he'd come and take the kid out places, fishing or picnics or whatever, and bring him back in the evening. Anyway, the last time any Gnome saw this woman, she walked into the forest alone. Nothing unusual there. She often did that when he just wanted to be by herself and think. We have even protected her if she'd stay in our territory, because we liked her. She glimpsed at us now and then but didn't freak out, and sometimes she left food out for us."
Dipper was recording again. "Did you see where she went?"
"Shmebulock!"
"Uh- he's scared," Jeff explained. "He doesn't want to say."
"Please," Mabel said softly, taking Shmebulock's tiny hand in hers. "It means a lot."
Shmebulock looked at her with big, sad eyes. then he sighed and said, "I am Groot."
"Wow, slow down!" Jeff said, waving his hands. "I've never heard you jabber like that before! No wonder you were scared! Okay, okay, he says the woman went through Gnome Grove to Wicked Creek - that's our western border - and crossed it on the Slippery Stones, then walked right on through Creepy Hollow - I'll tell you one thing, I wouldn't go near that place for a million pies - and Shmebulock heard later from a woodpecker that saw the whole thing that the woman seemed to want to explore. She went into the Gack of Doom and never came out again!"
"Wait, Gack of Doom?" Dipper questioned.
"It's like a crack in a stone cliff, but looks like a mouth going 'gack.' It's the opening to a cavern. Nobody knows what's inside."
"Why not?" Mabel asked.
"Because nobody who's gone into it has ever come out again, that's why!"
"Shmebulock," agreed Shmebulock, shivering with apparent fear as he nodded.
For a moment Dipper and Mabel just stared at each other. Then she said, "Dun-dun-DUNNNNNN!" and that seemed just about to sum it all up.