Episode Forty-Seven: What Happened in the '20s

In which old actors tell a new story. Right? Featuring: two girls in a haunted house on a hill.

Episode description: Have you heard this story before?

Episode Overview
A shadow tells a faery tale.

Trigger Warnings

 * Unreality, distortion, arguing, screaming.

Episode Summary
The episode begins with Mabel? reciting a nursery-rhyme like poem about a king and a queen (presumably, by description, representing Luna Thorne and the King). She begins to tell a story about two girls-- Katriona and Res-- who have broken into the Martin House in the 1920s. Katriona is an heiress of some fortune and is prone to strange fantasies. Res is her friend who takes care of her; we are introduced to these girls by Res telling Kat to be careful due to strange noises in the house.

The two of them discuss their friend Betsy, who puts on fake haunted parties. Kat calls herself a connoisseur of the dead, and Res asks Kat if they're going to eat the dead. They find a vine of brugsmansia, which spells something out. Kat begins to sketch it and breaks something. Res says they're going to be caught as delinquents, and Kat tells her what happened in the House: the family fled, presumably due to a scandal. They find a strange painting, which both of them see very differently. Kat sees a woman laughing with a cicada in her throat and a man "green like the summer" looking at her. Res sees a woman with a silk moth in her throat looking solemn, and a man made of shadows. These two seem to represent Mabel and Anna's views of Luna and the King, seeing as Kat is played by Maybell Marten and Res is played by Becca De La Rosa.

They discuss spiders and death, and Kat says she feels like she knows the people in the painting, as if they are a footpath in and out of the House. After the girls fight, Kat threathens to stay in the house alone, interrupting Res by yelling "three, seven, ace!" Kat screams that the door is going to open, and both girls become scared, Res saying that she takes it back before a swarm of insect noises overwhelm the soundscape. Mabel? returns, asking if the story was something like that.

Continuity
''' Please note that this section contains spoilers for later episodes of Mabel. Continue at your own risk. '''


 * This episode continues the trend of the seventh episode of each full season taking place outside the normal realm of the season (see Mabel's appearances in King in the Labyrinth and Killing the Moon, Anna's appearance in Bull in the Maze, the King's possession of Anna in The King Speaks, and the multiverse expansion in Reverie). Kat and Res may thus be read as other versions of Mabel and Anna.
 * Kat's King being "green like the summer" continues the canon facet of the King's transformation according to the seasons.
 * "The door is going to open!" relates to both Thomas and Jonathan's death monologues, along with mirroring Anna's riddles in Underworld.
 * Kat sees a looping brugmansia vine, and the two girls mimic Jonathan and Brandon's exchange in Ashes, Ashes.

Trivia
'''Please note that this section contains spoilers for later episodes of Mabel. Continue at your own risk.'''


 * "Three, seven, ace!" is a line from the book The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin. It concerns a man who wishes to obtain a secret to win at gambling, and thus works with a ghost to find it. Kat says it often, and appears to enjoy the book.
 * Kat's name means "pure"; it comes from the same root as Ekaterina. Res means "red-headed".
 * We never really learn what exactly happened in the twenties, but it can be assumed that Kat and Res went missing in the "real world."