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LINK: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14216768/1/Long-Time-Gone

Moomin Valley -- Long Time Gone

Nuuska (Snufkin) finally meets his father and hears the strange tale of what kept him away for sixteen long years. //TW: Dissociation, alcohol, drowning.

CHAPTER FOUR (4/4)

Circe sat at the gilded table on the veranda and looked to be enjoying xeir wine tremendously as Juksu walked in. Xe stood, silken robe falling around xeir broad, beautiful shoulders, and bent down to plant a kiss on his head. Xeir rubies tinkled against each other.

“Broken into the cellar early, have we?” he asked chipperly, and xe nodded.

“After last night, I couldn’t help myself. It’s strange—I’ve never felt so hungry, so thirsty before! And it’s all so delicious!”

Xe licked her lips and bent down against to kiss his cheeks: “Delicious…”

Xe kissed his mouth: “Delicious… Here! Have a drink with me!”

Circe turned clumsily back to the table and poured a crystal goblet over-full with golden, bubbling cider, thrusting it toward him with a toothy grin. He took it and smiled as if nothing were the matter. Circe held up xeir own glass, clinking them together: “To our continued happiness!”

“And a silent volcano!” Juksu added.

They drank deeply. Circe made delighted noises of joy at the flavor, smacking xeir lips. There was strange hunger in xeir eyes, a mischief, as Juksu swirled his glass and watched the liquid cling to the walls.

“It’s very strong,” he mused, and Circe nodded, putting xeir empty glass down on the table.

“Yes,” xe said, coming closer. “I hope it is.”

Xe struck quick as a serpent, grasping his skull between xeir palms. But instead of the icy drowsiness of xeir mesmer, there was only the hot excitement of xeir lips against his, the sharpness of xeir teeth, and the alcohol on xeir breath.

“I’m starved, dear one,” xe sighed against his face. “Let’s feast.”

Xe gave no time to answer, grabbing him around the middle and forcing him to the floor, his glass falling and cracking. Xe did not tease his hesitation, did not mention his trembling as xe had the night before. Xeir talons dug into his skin with no mercy. Xeir teeth bit into his flesh without a second thought. He struggled to breathe, to think, with xeir full weight on top of him, and Circe took his hands and pressed them firmly to either side of xeir bare chest. Under the rubies. His finger brushed something embedded into the skin and bone.

He wanted to go home.

With a heave, he rolled xem on to xeir back, straddling xeir thin hips. He trailed his fingers across xeir chest, and xe giggled drunkenly as he pulled his face away. Silently and in one swift movement, he sank his claws into the flesh around the ridge of the ruby heart and ripped it out.

Circe screamed, grasping his arm and shirt. The horror in xeir face stretched down against xeir skull, xeir dazzling eyes collapsing into xeir sockets. Xeir body bloated and shrank and withered, the skin drying to leather in an instant, and the whole of the palace shuddered as the ground beneath it stretched awake.

Juksu clutched the ruby heart tightly in one bloody hand and ran.

The golden arches were bending under the shaking marble ceiling, their silver fruit bluing with verdigris. The stained glass windows popped and shattered and rained down into the halls. As Juksu slid into the east wing, Fredriksson and Muddler ran headlong into him.

“Hey!”

“What are you doing here?!” Fredriksson asked, holding his arms.

“I came to get you!” The rumbling worsened, and Juksu shoved the ruby heart into his right pocket. “This way! Hurry!”

The three raced back through the palace, the marble floor cracking beneath them. They climbed over the railing of the veranda and bolted across the growing grass, shoving past new shrubs and sprouting saplings. Juksu looked behind them and past the palace—the volcano was belching smoke and fire, birds fleeing the shuddering, stretching trees. Suddenly, the mouth of the dome cracked, and an explosion of gray cloud raced down the slope and was well into the forest by the time the clap thundered out. They all shut their ears and stumbled as the air snapped around them.

“That’s not just smoke!” Fredriksson shouted, grabbing on to the Muddler. “We’ll be incinerated!”

The cloud flowed toward them like a storm, and they ran through the orchard, batting fruit away as it fell, skirting the stones that tumbled down from the palace columns. The edge of the steep cliff was ahead.

“Oh no,” said Muddler, though he did not stop. “Oh no, oh no, oh—!”

They leapt.

The water hit hard, cold and dense, and bubbled up around them as they kicked back to the surface, gasping. The grey cloud rounding the cliff above them lost its footing and tumbled gently down in flurries of hot ash.

“Are you alright?!” Juksu shouted, glimpsing the other two heads between the waves.

“We’re fine!” said Muddler with a weak laugh. “We’re okay!”

“Hell of a ‘good morning’, boy!” joked Fredriksson as they swam closer together. “What on earth did you do?!”

Juksu hesitated, coughing at the taste of saltwater: “I found it. I got what the old witch wanted.”

No sooner had he said it did a strange current pass under their feet. The surface of the water shifted nearby. Juksu felt his blood run cold. It was too late to swim, the shore too far away. The Muddler looked to him and saw he’d gone pale, staring down into the dark water. He swallowed hard and looped his arm through his, and they met eyes for only a moment before being yanked under.

The sea spat them unceremoniously on to the beach. Juksu lied face-down on the pebbles for a moment, breathing deep, gripping Muddler’s paw, and he turned his head just enough to see that he was in fact there. Fredriksson scrambled up from the ground to shake the both of them.

“Are you alright?! Are you alright?!”

“I’m fine,” Juksu groaned, pushing himself up. “I’m okay.”

The Muddler only gave a small whimper and clung to the ground beneath him as desperately as a life-preserver. It was only at the sound of footsteps approaching that any of them looked up and around.

Petroula came hobbling down, grinning her sharp teeth ear-to-ear: “Well done, boys! Well done! This is the first time anyone’s come back!”

Fredriksson was on his feet in a flash and stood between her and the others: “Now, you stay back! Did you summon that water creature?!”

Petroula raised a pale eyebrow: “Obviously. Or did you think you came to me by chance?”

“Why?!”

“Why?” Petroula repeated. “Well, because I was hungry, dear! I thought you would have figured that out if you survived, which you have. Oh, don’t look so angry, it’s unbecoming.”

Juksu wobbled to his feet, staring in disbelief: “You… it was you that sank our ship! You tried to kill us!”

“Oh no, my dear boy!” Petroula corrected, stepping closer. “Just one of you.”

Fredriksson kept himself between them, and Petroula pouted: “Honestly! It was only temporary! There’s no good way to get strapping young adventurers to make deals these days. How else am I supposed to eat? Besides, if you’d all failed, you wouldn’t have known the difference, now would you?”

“You tricked us,” Fredriksson growled at her.

“Not at all! You two accepted my price, and it was a fair deal, was it not? A life for a life. Now, please… hand over the ruby, and you will no longer be in my debt.”

The ground shuddered beneath them, and the volcano spat fiery stars into the sky, splashing into the sea with a hiss. Muddler clawed his way to his feet and held tight to Juksu’s arm as one of the comets crashed into the center of the town in front of them. There were no screams.

“You made a deal,” Petroula said more forcefully, baring her teeth as Circe would. “You agreed to my terms. Give me what I’m owed, or I’ll gladly put things back to how they were when you first landed on my beach.”

“Low-life!” shouted Fredriksson, stepping forward, but Juksu put out a hand to stop him. He shook his head. After a long moment, Juksu put his hand in his pocket. The red gem glimmered in the choking sunlight, and Petroula’s eyes grew wide with hunger. As she reached out, Juksu took it away.

“You like to make deals,” he said. “How about one more?”

Petroula licked her lips, her eyes on the gem: “What’s on your mind?”

“I give this to you—you let us go home. No traps, no magic, no tricks. We. Go. Home.”

Petroula grinned a toothy grin: “Alright, boy. You have a deal. You are free.”

Juksu held back out the gem, and she took it quickly with the tips of her yellowed claws, immediately popping it into her mouth. She swallowed. Her scaly fingers flexed, and she laughed. But the laughter stopped suddenly. She coughed. There was a smell like burning flesh, and she held her throat.

“What did you do? What did you do?!”

Juksu’s face was stone, his voice even as he replied, “I promised, didn’t I? You’d get what you were owed.”

Petroula’s face crinkled in horror and began to flake into ash, a hole burning through her belly and flame catching her wrinkled skin. There was a blood-curdling shriek, a flash of light and heat, and then she was gone. Ash fluttered down to the pebbled beach around the fiery red gem and a blue stone with white lines like waves. Juksu bent down to pick them up, cool to the touch. He placed them into Fredriksson’s hand, closing his fingers around them. They said nothing, could say nothing.

Muddler held tight to both of them, and the fire rained down on the long-empty town.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s go.”

And they did.

*

“It took a couple weeks to walk back to Dunsinane in the shape we were in,” said Juksu flatly. “I don’t know if it was obvious to you, but it wasn’t to us until we started walking—we’d gotten older. It was sudden. We couldn’t have been on the island more than a week or two, but years had gone by everywhere else. And when I took the ruby—”

“All that time fell on you,” Nuuska finished for him.

Juksu nodded slowly: “We didn’t know how much time had actually passed until… well, until Mumintyttö—er, Muminmama—said it.”

He stared at the grass in front of him, words bubbling in his throat. Finally, he managed: “It was never supposed to be so long. We were never supposed to be gone for so long.”

He turned to Nuuska with absolute and utter regret: “I was supposed to be here with you. I was supposed to be here, and I wasn’t. I wanted to be here. I promise, I wanted to be with you.”

Nuuska nodded, scooting toward him and taking one thin, scarred hand between his.

“I know.”

“All the things I’ve missed! Losing your baby teeth, learning to fish… your friends, your adventures, your first love—the Lights! We never went to see the Big Lights!”

“Then we will,” Nuuska said comfortingly. “Papa, we will. We have time.”

Juksu pressed his forehead to his and took a deep, deep breath. He looked his son in the face and gave a weak chuckle.

“You got so big,” he said. “You must take after your mother.”

“Perhaps,” grinned Nuuska, “or Muminmama feeds me too much. Dinner should be soon now… shall we head back?”

“Yes,” Juksu said, clearing his face, and they stood together. “Yes, I think that’s a splendid idea.”

*

THE END