Work Text:
Even though Mabel and Dipper had been dealing with weird occurrences and the paranormal all summer, it took them a while to realize the swan was Pacifica. They didn’t realize it when it first showed up, banging at their window with Pacifica’s recognizable sweater in hand. They just thought a swan had stolen Pacifica’s sweater. Or when the swan made wild gestures and almost bit Dipper’s hand—that was typical swan behavior. At last it returned to the store at the front door with a cardboard sign in hand, painted with the words, “I AM PACIFICA.”
The words were very sloppy, as if they had been painted by someone holding the brush in their mouth. The swan was splattered with purple paint the same color as the lettering.
“Okay, but, the sign says, ‘I am Pacifica’, not ‘This swan is Pacifica.’ It’s still possible it stole the sign,” Dipper insisted.
“Listen. Bro. She’s literally been trying to get our attention all day. Now she shows up saying she’s Pacifica. I’m just saying, maybe we should hear her out.”
The swan flapped its wings emphatically. Unfortunately, it seemed that while it had been able to paint the sign, it was not so adept at writing with a pencil in her mouth. To be fair, Mabel had sometimes tried to write with her mouth too, and it was not easy.
“This is completely illegible,” Dipper said flatly.
“No! That’s definitely a… B?” Mabel looked at the swan. There was definitely something that looked like a B. The rest was incomprehensible squiggles.
The swan threw up its wings in exasperation.
Dipper pinched his nose. “Well, if you’re Pacifica, maybe you should go talk to someone else about your issues. Because you aren’t making any sense right now.”
Mabel punched him in the arm. “Don’t listen to him,” she said to the swan. “We’re going to figure it out! Uhhh… Wait. What about the handbook?”
“There are no swans in the handbook.”
“Okay, but if she’s turned into a swan, someone did it to her, right? Someone or something. Anything that paranormal has gotta be in there.”
“Okay. We’ll give it a try.”
He fetched the handbook and they laid it on the floor. They flipped through page after page, with the swan looking on skeptically. Occasionally it honked, but when Mabel asked it if they’d found something, it shook its head, leading her to assume it was just in a bad mood.
Until at last they reached a page with a woman in a brightly tie-dyed bandana on it, and the swan stuck its leg in the middle of the page, stopping Dipper from turning it. When it removed its foot, Mabel read the page aloud.
“The Lake Witch. That seems pretty straightforward. Curses people with spells ranging from petty to deadly. Be careful not to offend. Relatively civil if treated politely.” Mabel looked at the swan. “Oh geez. You insulted her bandana, didn’t you?”
The swan honked. It was unclear if that was a yes or a no.
“Look, if Pacifica insulted a witch, it’s her own fault,” Dipper pointed out.
The swan honked louder, and this time it shook its head fiercely.
“So… you didn’t offend the witch, but she just turned you into a swan anyway?” Mabel asked.
The swan shrugged.
Mabel and Dipper turned back to the handbook. Counterspells… cures… nothing here, but the author did note in the middle of the page that the Lake Witch was “traditional, in a way” and often based her spells off the works of Hans Christian Andersen.
“Guess we have some reading to do,” Mabel said cheerfully. “Do we have a copy of his stories? I think we had one at home.”
“I don’t think we do, but we can probably get them at the library,” Dipper pointed out.
“To the library then.”
“And you stay here,” Dipper said to the swan. “We can’t bring in animals.”
The swan scowled, but it settled up on the counter of the store next to Wendy. Wendy gave Mabel and Dipper a questioning look, but when Mabel explained, “It’s Pacifica. She’s turned into a swan”, she shrugged and went back to texting.
“We’ll be right back!” Mabel called as they headed out the door.
As it turned out, there was only one Hans Christian Andersen story that seemed to have much to do with swans. It was called “The Wild Swans” and was a relatively quick read. In it, the cure to the individual being turned into a swan was for someone to sew them a shirt made out of nettles, taking a vow of silence during the time that the sewing was being done.
“Well, that’s kind of weird and arbitrary,” Dipper remarked.
“Yeah, but it’s not impossible! Because we have the Secret Weapon Mabel! I know how to knit. Not that I’ve ever made anything with nettles…”
“Easier than true love’s kiss. Imagine having to find someone who would love Pacifica.”
Mabel laughed nervously. “Haha, yeah. I guess that would be tough, because she’s… mean… and… not attractive… totally.”
“Still, it sounds like a lot of work.” Dipper shut the book of fairy tales they were referencing. “Soos’ grandmother knows how to knit, right? Anyways, there are probably plenty of people in the town. The Northwests are rich—they can pay someone to do it.”
“Dipper! Pacifica came to us.”
“Yeah, well, stupid idea. We’re not exactly friends.”
“We’re not really not friends either,” Mabel pointed out. “And knitting is basically my specialty. I have to do it.”
“But you won’t be able to talk the whole time. And it kind of sounds like sewing or knitting with nettles sucks. They sting your fingers.”
“Pssh! It’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me, bro-bro. Now let’s get back to Pacifica.”
Pacifica had not been sitting around as peacefully as Mabel and Dipper had hoped. When they got back, the store was in disarray. A couple racks had been knocked over, and Pacifica herself was now sitting at the top of a shelf with an offended look on her swan face, while Grunkle Stan was trying to reach her with a broom and Wendy was sitting back in the corner, slightly annoyed.
“Grunkle Stan, don’t! That’s Pacifica!” Mabel yelled.
Pacifica, seeing backup had arrived, flapped to the ground and honked loudly.
“It looks like a swan,” Grunkle Stan said.
“Okay, I know, but it really is Pacifica. She’s been cursed by a witch to look like a swan until someone makes her a shirt out of nettles. That’s the cure,” she said as an aside to Pacifica. “So you can’t swat her, and we need to get started on gathering some nettles! We’ll need a lot of them.”
Grunkle Stan grumbled about not even knowing what nettles looked like, but eventually Mabel marshaled at least Soos and Wendy to help her and Dipper go seek out some nettles in the woods. Pacifica went along with them, sometimes waddling and sometimes flying a few steps to catch up. A swan on land was not as graceful as one might hope.
There were nettles here and there. They stung the hand when you picked them up, though. Dipper had brought gloves for himself and Mabel but not for anyone else, and as a result, Wendy and Soos mostly scouted out the nettles, while Dipper and Mabel did the picking, dumping the nettles into a backpack as they gathered them.
“Not quite sure how I’m going to knit them when they’re so short,” Mabel mused to Pacifica. “But don’t worry too much about it. Maybe it’ll be kind of like striping, constantly adding in a new string to change colors—except basically every ten stitches. I’m sure it’ll be fun.” Actually the thought of it made her wince. But she had committed to the project, and she’d never back down from a knitting challenge.
Pacifica honked. Maybe apologetically, maybe encouragingly. It was kind of hard to tell, sometimes.
Dipper appeared beside Mabel with wide eyes. “Mabel. You’ll never guess what I just found. Look at this.” He held out, not nettles, but a huge four-leaf clover with golden edges. “There is definitely something wrong—or right?—about this.”
“Yeah, that’s really cool, bro, but I’m kind of trying to focus on my nettles.”
“Right, right.” Dipper nodded. “I’ll focus.”
He found about five more clovers of a similar kind by the end of the evening, though he still did pick a lot of nettles. They filled the backpack. Mabel hoped it would be enough. It was already hard to tell how much yarn a project would need, without the material being a leafy, stingy plant.
“I think it’ll be fine. You can do it,” Dipper said.
Mabel shrugged. “Well, we’ll see. I’ll be starting tomorrow.”
So they headed off for bed.
Pacifica waddled upstairs with them. Mabel cleared her throat. “Pacifica, um, we’re kind of done for the evening.”
Pacifica cocked her head.
“…So…you can go home if you want, you know. I’m sure your parents are worried about you. You can tell them that we’ll have it all sorted out soon. Actually, you don’t even need to be around here while I’m doing the knitting, it’ll probably be pretty boring.”
Pacifica shook her wings out, then settled in a corner to preen on a pillow that was usually Waddles’.
“…You’re just going to stay the night?”
Pacifica didn’t even look up.
“…well…okay.” Mabel got in bed. Dipper muttered, “Creepy,” and then got in bed himself.
The day came to a close.
Pacifica stayed awake while the Pines twins slept.
Well, for a while at least.
It had not been a very good day for her. She worried that if she fell asleep she would have nightmares. More than that, she was afraid that as soon as she left herself unprotected, vulnerable, the Lake Witch would come back to get her. Say turning her into a swan hadn’t been bad enough, and turn her into something else, or make her disappear entirely.
It hadn’t been her fault, though. It wasn’t fair that the Lake Witch had taken vengeance on her when it was all because of her parents. They’d been the ones who, seeing a woman in dirty clothes standing at the gate, had refused to let her in. Then, when her eyes had turned red and she had levitated and begun to list the number of curses she would wreak upon their family…
“No, not me!” Her father hid behind a brick pillar. “It’s not—you can’t do it to me!”
“It’s not my fault!” Her mother squealed. “I do everything for my daughter. I was only trying to protect her!”
“Yes, it was for our daughter! We can’t just let riffraff into the house to influence her! You can’t blame us!”
And the witch frowned and said, “Very well then. If the fault is your daughter’s, let the punishment fall upon her head too.”
And then she’d turned Pacifica into a swan.
Pacifica knew her family probably hadn’t meant for the spell to end up affecting her and only her, but the instant the witch had left, they’d looked so relieved, hugging each other and saying that they’d had a close escape. As if what had happened to her hadn’t mattered. She was just the scapegoat.
They’d barely noticed when she’d flown away. She wasn’t ready to go back again. She didn’t want to see if they tried to apologize or not, and what if they decided they couldn’t have the Pines twins interfering in family business? Then Pacifica might end up being a swan forever.
The Pines twins. She’d known she had to turn to them for help. They were the only two in Gravity Falls who seemed to know what to do when stuff like this happened. And there was something about the Mystery Shack too… it was just a house, really, but it felt safer than anywhere else. Everyone here had so much energy and was so friendly. Especially…
She could swear, even though she was a swan, she felt herself blushing.
Yes, it was safe here, in theory. She was still nervous, though, even if it was illogical. Nervous and cold. Could she… She got off the pillow where she was sitting and quietly flew onto Mabel’s bed, where she nested in the extra blanket at her feet. There. For some reason this felt safer.
At last she fell asleep.
When Mabel got up the next day, she knew it was time for business. First things first: she had a huge breakfast, talked herself out to Grunkle Stan and Dipper, and drew rainbows on the boring gray gloves Dipper had found for her. Then she went into the living room and got out the backpack full of nettles, a pair of large knitting needles (she wanted this project to go by fast, the sooner it was done the better) and a roll of packaging tape.
With Dipper as her witness and Pacifica perched on the sofa next to her, she put a hand over her heart. “I solemnly swear that through the duration of this knitting project, which I am completing for the sake of breaking the spell on Pacifica Northwest to turn her back into a person, I will not speak.”
Dipper nodded solemnly, and Pacifica approvingly poked her in the side. She almost squealed, which reminded her of what she had decided was the next step. She took out a piece of packing tape, cut it, and slapped it vertically across her mouth.
There. Now she wouldn’t speak.
“Cool. Great. How about I get Candy and Grenda? They’ll make this, uh, less boring,” Dipper said.
Mabel raised her eyebrows. Hadn’t Dipper said he would stick with her and talk to her and read her books? She was sure he’d said that at breakfast.
Dipper scratched the back of his neck. “I really want to go see if I can find leprechauns where we saw all those four-leaf clovers. Kay, I’ll go get your friends, see ya!”
He ran out.
Leaving Mabel sitting with Pacifica in awkward silence.
Mabel took a deep breath. Well, she had a project to work on. She put on her gloves and cast on the first row. Already she was using up quite a few of the nettles. Each would only suffice for maybe ten stitches before the stem ran out. At least she wasn’t crocheting—that used up yarn even faster.
She’d done about a row in complete focus when Pacifica waddled up in front of her.
She cocked her head. Yes?
Pacifica did a small bow. Then, awkwardly, she began to do a dance, as much as a swan could dance. She waved her wings and pushed her head in and out, in and out. It was not all that elegant.
Mabel stifled a laugh. It would break the tape. Seeing Pacifica be awkward was funny. Honestly, she considered Pacifica to be a very graceful, beautiful girl. It was one reason it was so easy to believe she’d been turned into a swan—because if she was going to turn into anything…
Apparently done with the dance, Pacifica looked at Mabel for approval.
Clearly she was hoping to make Mabel less bored. Mabel almost told her not to dance—Mabel needed to look at her knitting anyways, and if anything Pacifica was being distracting, and the more distracted Mabel got, the longer this would take. But it was sweet Pacifica had thought to do it in the first place, and it really was funny. So instead, Mabel gave her the thumbs up.
Pacifica began to dance again. When she got tired of all this, she got back on the sofa with Mabel and leaned against her side. Oddly close—maybe it was the fact that she was a swan that made it feel like it was okay. No sides touching sides, just feathers grazing jeans. Mabel had to be careful not to elbow her.
After an interval she got up again. Instead of dancing now, she sang. The way that swans sing, when they are trying to attract a mate. Or at least, that was how it sounded—Mabel didn’t know much about swans, after all. But it was beautiful.
She wondered how Pacifica was at singing in real life. She’d never heard her sing. But she knew Pacifica’s family wanted her to be good at all kinds of things. She probably did extracurriculars—maybe a jazz choir or an a capella group. She was probably really good. That was the vibe you got from Pacifica—that she was good at everything.
It made her intimidating most of the time; that and her bad attitude. But when she was done singing today, she sat back down with Mabel again, and it was comfortable.
Candy and Grenda didn’t show up until midway through the afternoon. It was good to have them around, working on their own crafts projects and chattering on about the latest gossip. But in a way, Mabel missed the silence. They sat on the sofa with her, and Pacifica got up and wandered out into the Mystery Shack, and Mabel didn’t see her again until evening.
Three more days passed like this.
Dipper was in and out. He’d found leprechauns but they didn’t like him very much, and he came back with a huge grudge and a determination to find the chest at the end of the rainbow the next time it rained. Grunkle Stan, Soos, and Wendy were busy in the shop for the most part, but they came in and talked to Mabel occasionally. Candy and Grenda came by when they were free.
When no one else was around, though, Mabel and Pacifica had started watching movies. They couldn’t marathon Disney, Mabel’s first choice, because Mabel would be too tempted to sing along with the music. So they went with detective noir films and adventure, with Pacifica honking derisively at the implausible bits, and occasionally hiding her head behind Mabel’s back when things got scary, and afterwards pretending she hadn’t.
It was kind of cute. Mabel wanted to tell her so, but she couldn’t speak. They’d started communicating through gestures and Mabel occasionally writing things on a notepad, but that wasn’t good enough. She knew if she just wrote down the words, all it would do was embarrass Pacifica. No, she couldn’t… but she wished she could.
The emotional, romantic frustration of it all drove her to knit very fast, which was probably good. She was making a lot of progress on the shirt.
Until on the fourth day, Mabel ran out of nettles.
She wrote out a note to Dipper about it, and he nodded and said she could come out with him on his leprechaun-observing mission and they would both have a side quest of collecting nettles.
Pacifica walked along with them. She honked. Dipper talked. Mabel was silent.
“…fortunate that the nettles and the leprechauns are in the same area,” Dipper concluded as they arrived in a nettle and clover filled clearing. “Pacifica, are you able to pick nettles, or no?”
Pacifica made a face and began to pull at the nettles with her beak. One of them was uprooted.
“Okay, that’s a yes. All right then. You take that corner, I’ll take the one near this stump, and Mabel, you can take the rest.”
Mabel saluted.
She was getting very good at handling nettles, actually. When she’d first been picking them, she’d sometimes stung her wrists where her gloves and sleeves didn’t quite meet. But after knitting with the nettles for three days, she’d gotten good. She knew how to hold the nettles, how not to let them touch the skin.
(She still stung herself once or twice, but that was okay.)
They had almost filled the backpack up again—which was more nettles than Mabel actually thought they would need, since she was more than halfway done knitting the shirt—when the leprechauns attacked.
They were small people, about the same size as the gnomes—the main difference between the two people seemed to be that the leprechauns wore green and carried shillelaghs. Which they used to attack Mabel and Dipper with extreme prejudice.
Mabel zipped the backpack and hefted it onto her back. A shillelagh hit the back of her legs, and she suppressed a yelp, unsure if it would break her vow of silence. Dipper, meanwhile, was yelling. “Get back! All of you! We aren’t even bothering you—no, this isn’t your territory, I looked it up in the handbook and this is free range! BACK OFF.”
It wasn’t working. The leprechauns were swarming them. They were surrounded, and it was going to be hard to get out of the clearing…
Until Pacifica joined the fray.
She’d wandered off briefly, picking nettles a distance away, but now she swooped in ferociously. She snatched up leprechauns by the collar and hurled them away, using her beak. Other leprechauns she snapped at, others she beat at with her wings.
Squealing about how it wasn’t fair, the leprechauns were forced to retreat.
Mabel and Dipper grinned at Pacifica. As Dipper said something about how okay, maybe she wasn’t absolutely the worst, Mabel held up her hand for a high five. Pacifica brushed against it with her wing.
By the end of the week, Mabel was nearly done with the shirt. Pacifica, meanwhile, hadn’t gone home the entire time.
She had been through town a bit, to see if her parents were looking for her. She didn’t see any “Missing” posters up, or hear any gossip. So… were her parents trying to keep this quiet? Were they looking for her privately, maybe seeking out a PI or something, or had they just decided to let her take care of herself?
Well, she had taken care of herself, but it still stung. Like a nettle.
(She went into a store and stole a jar of ointment for Mabel’s hands and wrists before being chased out by an irritated clerk. Mabel was being careful, but there were still sores forming. For Pacifica’s sake, and she wasn’t sure how to feel about it.)
She would have to go back, when this was over. Maybe that was what stung. The Mystery Shack was even warmer than she had thought it would be. And she liked hanging out with Mabel, even though neither of them could actually talk to each other, which was really awkward. Would being able to talk to each other ruin it all, or make it better?
Pacifica didn’t know if she could say things that would make Mabel like her instead of making Mabel hate her again. Their sense of truce was always so tenuous. If they were friends right now, it might be just because Pacifica was a swan, and swans were cute.
Never mind the fact that Pacifica wasn’t even sure “friends” was what she wanted herself and Mabel to be. That was a whole other matter.
But what was there to be done about it? What would be would be. Pacifica couldn’t stay a swan forever. She would become a human again, and see if she could stand it.
Pacifica had slept in today.
Mabel had gotten up early and finished her shirt.
She’d known, last night, that she was getting close. She’d finished the sleeves, the front, the back. All that had been left was to sew it together—but she’d insisted on going to bed, and Pacifica hadn’t objected with honking or pecking or making a fuss. She hadn’t slept easily though.
She could convince herself the shirt needed more work. She could add a bow to the collar, or nicer fringes to the sleeves—but then, Pacifica would never really wear it. It was just to be placed on her back, and then she would turn back into a human. Probably after that they’d burn it or something, and with the way it had hurt Mabel’s hands even with the gloves, she wouldn’t mind. It was the most frustrating project she’d ever knitted.
Still. Always melancholy to finish a project, or say goodbye to a friend.
She carried the shirt back to the room. She woke Dipper up first, then Pacifica, and showed them both the shirt.
“Wow,” Dipper said, “you got that done really quick! Not that you don’t always knit fast.”
Pacifica honked, but not as enthusiastically as Mabel might have hoped.
“Well, uh, the fairy tale said Pacifica should just sit still and Mabel should just put the shirt on her. Nothing else to it.” Dipper shrugged. “So I guess just go for it.”
Mabel draped the shirt over Pacifica’s body, curling it over her back and wings. For a moment it sat there, embracing her feathered form. Then there was a poof of smoke, and when it cleared, Pacifica was squatting under the shirt instead. She was wearing only a tank top and legging, and immediately pushed the shirt off. Stings were already starting to form on her arms and back.
“Ow, ow, ow,” she said. “Mabel, do you still have that ointment?”
Mabel nodded.
Dipper cleared his throat. “Uh, Mabel, you can talk now.”
“Oh! Right.” Mabel smiled. “Yeah, it’s over here in the drawer. Do you want me to put it on you?”
She spread the ointment over Pacifica’s back and arms. It felt awkward touching skin to skin in ways it hadn’t when it was just feather to feather. She gave Pacifica her sweater back—they’d been keeping it here since the swan first showed up with it in its beak.
“Thanks,” Pacifica said. “And, uh. Thanks for everything.”
“Haha, no big deal! I love knitting anyways.” Mabel could feel herself blushing. “Wanna stay for breakfast?”
“If it’s all right.”
Over breakfast, Pacifica talked a lot, mostly complaining about how annoying being a swan had been and asking them whether they thought the Lake Witch would come back. Mabel, on the other hand, was quieter than usual. She had trained herself into silence, and it was hard to shrug that off.
“So, I guess I better go back home,” Pacifica said when breakfast was over.
Mabel cleared her throat. “Can I come with you?”
Pacifica shrugged. “If you want.”
They walked slowly. And silently, for the most part—the talk in Pacifica had dissolved when they left the Mystery Shack. When they were halfway through town, Pacifica abruptly said, “I never explained how I became a swan, did I?”
“No.”
“Well, I didn’t insult the Lake Witch. Really. My parents did, but they blamed it all on me… Well, I guess they didn’t mean it. Maybe they were even right.” Pacifica stared straight ahead. “But I don’t think they were really looking for me. I don’t know how they’ll react when I get back.”
“Do you want me to come in with you when we get there?”
Pacifica shook her head. “I don’t think I’ll tell them you were involved. I’ll just say it wore off. They don’t really like you.”
Mabel laughed. But Pacifica still looked tense. Impulsively, she grabbed her and hugged her. “Hey. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’ll all be fine.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“But when it’s all over, come back to the Mystery Shack! Candy and Grenda and I are making bracelets today. Grunkle Stan wants us to make a lot so he can try to sell them. You have good fashion sense, so I’m sure you’ll be great at it.”
“I wouldn’t want to intrude…”
“Come on! You hung out with us for the past week, and that was fun.”
“I was a swan. It’s different.”
“Even if you’re a human, I want you around. Well… especially if you’re human. Because you’re… well, you know.”
Pacifica looked at her.
She shrugged.
Pacifica said, “I really do appreciate you knitting me the shirt.”
She shrugged again.
“…I don’t know if I can come by this afternoon. But, maybe I could come by tonight? I can sneak out and my parents probably won’t notice.”
“Ooh, scandalous,” Mabel said. “A secret rendezvous.”
Pacifica looked away. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Wait, really?”
“Well…”
“Like, do you mean for us to meet up like a date? A secret date?”
“Yeah,” Pacifica repeated, “I guess so. But it’s whatever.”
Mabel laughed. “Okay, then! Cool!”
Pacifica stood at the gates to Northwest Mansion by herself. Mabel had already left. She would have to buzz so her parents would let her in. Hope they wouldn’t turn her away like the Lake Witch, spooked by her having been turned into a swan.
They wouldn’t, of course. They’d probably still say something insensitive. They might be upset she’d stayed away, or might try to pretend nothing ever happened. It would not be a fun conversation.
But she thought about Mabel. About the way Mabel had squeezed her hand before running off. About the date they had planned for later, and the thought that maybe after tonight things would be different.
And as she buzzed to be let in, she felt like she was floating. Whatever they said didn’t matter anymore; Mabel did, and Mabel was hers.