The Woman with the Cipher Tattoo

Mabel's Morning

On Thursday morning, Mabel came bouncing downstairs and into the dining room, where Grunkle Ford, Grunkle Stan, Soos, his Abuelita, and Melody were just sitting down for breakfast.
Grunkle Stan chuckled. "Full of pep this morning, Pumpkin?"
"You betcha!" Mabel trilled. "Don't get up, Melody, I'll get my own cereal."
She bustled into the kitchen, hesitated between a box of Overly Sensitive Owl coca clusters and Paranoid Panda choco-vanilla doubles, and then poured a bowl of half and half of each. She splashed in some milk, poured herself some juice, and went back to claim her place next to Stan.
"You look especially pretty today. New sweater, Mabel?" Melody asked.
"Yeah, thanks for noticing!" Mabel hopped up onto her chair, held out her arms, and modeled. The sweater was a deep purple, the orange butterfly design on it contrasting nicely.
"Good job, dawg," Soos said. "You're, like, aces at knitting!"
"You certainly have an eye for detail. Very accurate depiction of Boloria chariclea," Ford observed.
Mabel curtsied before sitting down again. "Thank you, Grunkle Ford." She tilted her head and made a face of bewilderment. "Also, whaaat?"
"Poindexter always uses French to show off," Stan said with a grin.
"Stanley, it isn't French. That's the scientific name of the Gravity Falls variety of Pacific fritillary," Ford said in a huffy voice. "It's a species of butterfly. Hmm. Odd. Dipper brought up the subject of those insects just yesterday."
"Speaking of which, where is he?" Grunkle Stan asked. "Not like him to miss breakfast."
Mabel had been industriously shoveling sweet cereal into her mouth. She paused, chewed crunchily, and swallowed. "He's sleeping in, I think. He was up to crazy late last night writing in his-" she crooked her fingers into air quotes- "journal."
"He's takin' this investigation of his really serious," Stan said. "Maybe we should go on a family outgoing to get his mind off it. Trust me, noting good's gonna come of his tryin' to learn what happened to Mrs. McGucket."
"Oh," Soos' grandmother said, "that poor woman."
Mabel blinked. "Do you know something about her, Abuelita?"
The old woman sadly shook her head. "I did not know her, but I heard about her. Mr. McGucket, he went wrong in the head. They fought over nothings. And then one day she just vanished from their house. So sad."
Ford sighed and poked at his scrambled egg with a ford. "I blame myself. After Fiddleford walked out on his job, I should have followed up. But I was just so obsessed with my work then - I'll never ignore a friend's pain again."
Dipper still had not come downstairs when they finished breakfast, and Melody and Soos' Abuelita wouldn't hear of Mabel's offer to wash or dry the dishes. "Okay," she said. "Then I'm gonna go out for a little bit. Soos, if Dipper asks, tell him I'm gonna be where we went yesterday."
"Will do, Hambone," Soos said. "Have fun."
As she sped toward the gift shop door, Mabel almost collided with Wendy, who took a step back, laughing. "Hey, Mabel, chill, girl! Don't mow me down!"
"Sorry!" Mabel said, skidding to a halt. "Hey, Wendy, if Soos forgets, tell Dipper I'm going to the same place we went yesterday, okay?"
"You got it. Nice threads, dude!"
"Thank you!" Mabel said, holding the front of her sweater out and looking down admiringly at the butterfly. "It's a Boloney very ti-ti!"
"Coulda fooled me, man. I thought it was a butterfly. Ciao!"
"No thanks, already ate!" Full of sugar and pep, Mabel sped off around the corner and into the woods near the Shack.
It was a fine cool morning, with the sun shining down through a thin, high overcast, so that shadows lay blurred and soft beneath the trees. The birds were busy - chirps and cheeps rang out on all sides, and a few squirrels skittered off the path ahead of her now and then. One of them completely lost his little furry mind and couldn't decide which side of the path would be safest, so he spun in an insane little circle, increasingly frantic, until Mabel just stopped and pointed to the right. "That way!"
The squirrel stopped, looked at her, and immediately ran off to the left. Mabel laughed. "Good for you! Always choose your own path!"
Then she hurried on, humming a tune. She passed the glade where, if you did the right chant in the right low-register voice, you could visit the unicorns. She didn't even give a passing glance, but muttered, "Jerks!" under her breath as she passed by.
Once the unicorns had been her absolute favorite animals, but after having talked to them, bargained with them, been fooled by them, and fought them, her admiration for them had faded. At the moment she thought the orange butterflies were much cooler.
She came to the sight of the old McGucket house and walked over to the edge of the depression. Looking down through the tangled vines that had twined around fallen timbers, she could glimpse evidence of the old fire, nearly shapeless charred remains of crisscross beams and joists, crumbly-black and streaked with white ash. Pale white toadstools had sprouted on some, and under it all was the greenish surface of stagnant standing water.
Mabel closed her eyes and tried to imagine the house as it must have looked before the fire. It would have been small - but foundations of ruined houses always look smaller than the buildings themselves. She pictured it as two-storied, or maybe a lower floor and an upper loft. That would be where Tate McGucket would have slept. Maybe as a little boy he'd spent anxious frightened nights up there, hearing his parents furious tones as they fought. Maybe he'd pulled the covered over his head and wept and shivered in the dark.
Mabel sighed. She'd been there when Fiddleford McGucket had begun to recover his lost memories. She remembered how he just stood there, just starting to understand his past and the fears he had been desperate to forget. She had felt the waves of despair radiating off the poor old man like heat.
The sun broke through the high clouds, and a warming beam struck her. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes - and the laughed her gurgling chuckle. The orange butterflies, a whole flock of them, air-danced up on the crown of the ridge behind the house, right of the edge of Gnome territory.
She hurried up, her feet slipping in the dewy grass, until she stood in the midst of the whirling cloud. "Hello, baloney very ti-tis!" she yelled, raising her arms and spreading her fingers.
To her delight, the butterflies seemed to be attracted to her sweater. Some alighted on the sleeves, one on her shoulder, and five or six on the big knitted image of their kind. "That's right!" she said. "I made a picture of you! Who's the cutest little butterfly species in Gravity Falls? You are!"
She felt a tickle. One of the butterflies had lit on her left hand, on the tip of her index finger. Cautiously, slowly, she lowered her hand so she could look at it close up. It had long, string-like proboscis, deep purple faceted eyes - nearly the same shad as her sweater!- and wings that lazily folded and unfolded. It began to creep along her finger and then down the back of her hand, and Mabel leveled it so she could continue to study the insect.
Even more of them were landing on her now. She could feel some clinging to her hair, and her sweater was almost completely orange with a coating of life butterflies. "There are a lot of you, aren't there- ouch!"
Involuntarily she shook her hand, and the butterfly on it flew off. At the same time all the others leaped into the air and bobbed away in an orange airborne stream winding into the forest. The back of her hand throbbed a little. Had the butterfly bitten her? How could it have? It didn't have a real mouth, just that tube-like proboscis for slurping up nectar!
But the back of her hand had an angry pink welt on it.
'Maybe I'd better go back to the Shack for some antibiotic,' she thought.
She ought to go. And yet she didn't want to go. the sun felt warm, the air made her pleasantly drowsy, the woods were shady, a good place for a quick nap. She'd feel better if she just went into the forest and fund a nice mossy back to lie on. Just a little way in-
"Mabel!"
"Hmm?" It was as if someone in a dream had called her name. she looked down the hill. A boy was climbing toward her. She frowned and then after a short metal struggle recognized him. "Dipper," she murmured.
He caught up to her. "Are you out of your mind? You heard Jeff - it's dangerous to go that way. What's wrong with you?"
She hid her left hand behind her back. "I- nothing. Want to go find the Gack of Doom? I feel like going there."
"Not today!" Dipper snapped. "We'd have to prepare! I need to make a checklist, get supplies and weapons ready- hey, where's your grappling hook?"
"Hmm?"
"You never go into the woods without it! Why are you so pale? Have you got a fever? Come on - I think you might be a little sick."
"Umm- okay."
Dipper took her right hand and led her downhill. She kept her left concealed from him, without really knowing why.
But as they made their way back to the path that led to the Mystery Shack, as the pain eased into a kind of tingle, she took a quick look at it.
The pink mark was fading, but it was leaving a sort of dark purple-black outline.
A little... triangle.