Gravity Rises (S1)

VV: Part Six

Dipper folded his arms. "Those fairies were jerks," he said.

"Yeah." Mabel sighed, grimacing as she touched her stinging bite marks. She turned a sideways glance to Dipper. "Why did you wait so long?"

"What do you mean?"

"They wanted us to leave. They could've hurt us a lot worse — they would've if we'd stuck around, I think. Why didn't you just leave?"

"Why didn't you?"

"I was waiting for you." Now that she thought about it, she should've pulled Dipper away from the fairies a lot sooner; but she was so taken aback by the attacks that it had taken her some time to pull up the courage. "So?" she prompted her brother.

Dipper shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "Grunkle Ford kept us away from this place. But then we finally got out here, and we found fairies, just like we wanted. I guess I thought they would be as excited about that as we were. So when they weren't. . . I guess I got stubborn."

"A little bit," Mabel agreed with a small smile.

Dipper approached the tree and ran his fingers around the crack that marked the secret compartment. "So, how are we gonna get this open?"

"Dunno." She peered at it. "Maybe if we found something we could use to pry it open?"

"Like a stick?" Dipper suggested. Mabel shrugged — it was worth a try — and Dipper went to look for one around the nearby trees.

"Who do you think that boy was?" he asked as he looked. "And why would the fairies talk to him, but not us?"

Mabel shrugged again. The boy was definitely acting strange, but she couldn't make heads or tails of it. He was looking for something, she thought — the Northwest's Relief, whatever that was — and had enlisted the fairies to help him. But hadn't the fairy called him Northwest? Was it his last name? What kind of relief were they talking about, then? And who or what was the Cipher they had mentioned?

"Did you see him fly away?" Dipper added. "I think that's what I saw when I first caught sight of him and the fairy. That blue glow around him."

"That was pretty amazing," Mabel said. Watching the fairies fly was one thing — they were graceful and quick, even as they attacked the twins — but watching that boy jump into the air and soar away on nothing but light was something else entirely.

"Yeah, it was awesome." Dipper frowned at the evergreen by which he stood. "Here, let's just try this." He broke a thin branch off the trunk and brought it over, pine needles still attached. Shoving the end into the compartment edge, he tried to lever the door open — but the branch simply bent, then snapped.

"Huh." He dropped the broken branch and headed into the trees, out of sight. Mabel was about to call after him when he returned, holding another branch that was clearly from a different kind of tree (though Mabel couldn't begin to guess which). "Maybe this one'll work," he said.

It didn't work, not the first time — but it didn't break, either. Dipper kept at it, Mabel standing anxiously to the side. She wanted to help, but she didn't know if she could without getting in the way.

Soon, Dipper's eyes widened. "I think it moved a bit!"

"Really?"

"Yeah — grab the top corner and pull on it."

So Mabel took off her glove and slipped her fingers in the freezing metal crack, pulling on it from the opposite side as Dipper pushed with the branch and his own hands. The process hurt her fingers — the tiny ledge dug into her skin, and the cold was close to unbearable — but Mabel was too excited to really care. They were getting close!