Blood Runs Thicker than Water

       Snufkin woke to the sound of a guitar and, for a moment, couldn’t place the cluttered room around him—shelves crammed with trinkets, dried flowers in porcelain vases. Ah, yes. The unknown hemulen’s house. Joxter sat cross-legged and hatless on the floor, plucking strings, the last of that dubious stew scraped from the pan. The ceiling lamp glowed warmly on his dark hair with grey strands. "Isn’t it risky," Snufkin mumbled, rubbing his eyes, "making noise and leaving the light on? Won’t the neighbours notice?" "They’d notice darkness and silence sooner. Old girl always played her gramophone at this hour," Joxter said, nodding toward the horned contraption behind the sideboard. Outside the curtains, dusk deepened into blue. A couple of moths fluttered around the lamp; a couple of their bolder pals were dotting the table beneath. Poor buggers. "Care to play along? " Joxter suggested. "I’ve left my harmonica in Moominvalley," Snufkin said, feeling a bit silly about it now. He should’ve just written in his note that he would be visiting his dad, and Moomin would understand. To hide embarrassment, he padded off to the kitchen to cobble together dinner from his own supplies of hardtack and a handful of grain. Yes, and there were always apples outside. Piles of. Later, they hunched over plans. Joxter attempted scratching a rough map into the tabletop with his claw. With a sigh, Snufkin unfolded the tourist map from the customs, its printed lines neat but not very informative. "Oh. Great. Spares the efforts." His father looked around for something to write, and he obliged. Ink, quills and pencils were stored on a high old-fashioned writing desk, together with familiar scented paper used for the help message. While at it, Snufkin tested the new skill but failed to protract one single claw; they would only come out all at once. Probably, it required much more practice. “The plane is stored in a shed here,” Joxter dropped an ink blot into a large white space in the map with rare, irregular squares of buildings, then drew a cross at the opposite edge of the town, over a dull gray area. “And guarded. So first we raise hell here to have all police crazy busy somewhere away from our path. And then there’s also a regulating sign workshop…" *** Beyond the town’s edge their first objective stood. Power station. "Shut this down," Joxter explained, "and the streetlights die. So do the alarms. The telephones. Everything." From the outskirts, they could see the town’s sickly yellow glow, a dome of artificial dawn. No wonder nobody looks up anymore, Snufkin thought. "Poor sods might finally see the stars," Joxter mused, as if reading his mind. "If they remember to look." The dim light of thin moon crescent was enough for their work. Along the road between fields, darker gardens, and solitary homesteads, the mumriks wrenched some wooden "Private Property" signs from the earth, tossed them into ditches. A tin "Beware the Dog" plaque, wired to a gate, came loose with a twist, while the dog itself, after a few growled words from Joxter, sat wagging its tail behind the fence. But the power station’s "No Entry" warning at a side lane was welded to a steel post, cemented deep. It didn’t waver at all when Snufkin leant heavy on. That was really frustrating and just asked for revenge. "Look what I have to deal with," Joxter grumbled. "Can’t even knock ’em down properly without good old Edward the Booble. And he emigrated long ago." From his coat, he produced a pouch of stove soot and hoisted his son up to smear the sign into illegibility. Snufkin obliged with pleasure. Back on earth, Joxter studied his face, then dabbed charcoal across his nose and forehead. "There. If they spot you, they’ll think it’s me. Wash it off later, and you’re just another stranger in town." Snufkin touched his sooty forehead. It felt strange to impersonate some other being, not himself, but hey, that’s his father, they were not so different. They couldn’t be. Beyond the cypress-lined lane, where the mumriks left the backpack and the guitar in the shadows, the humming power station loomed, its pavilion blazing with electric light. A thick, acrid smoke belched from its chimney. To one side, under a corrugated awning, great iron contraptions hulked, their wires strung away on poles across the countryside. Inside, a watchman in a peaked cap, a schnaps or a fillyjonk, dozed by the window. The whole area was paved in concrete and fenced with chain-link. Not even the most robust dandelion or plantain could break through that desert. That was even worse than low-cut lawns and shaped bush in regular parks. If the intensity of anger counted for anything, Snufkin would have easily busted this crust. But it didn’t count. He was still calculating the watchman’s blind spot when Joxter slithered into position and produced another pouch, this time full of very familiar small white beads. Hattifattener seeds! “But they only sprout on the summer solstice night,” Snufkin whispered. “Or any night of the year,” Joxter corrected, “if you soak them in saltwater and vinegar, then give ’em a light roast.” Snufkin shook his head. How much stranger would this day get? It was already worth some months of his usual travels in terms of new information. Using hollow reeds like blowpipes, they sent the seeds toward the iron machines, the wires, the coal-dusted concrete by the gates. The thin claw of the moon was enough. Soon, spindly white shoots writhed up from the concrete like living cracks. A spark, then another. Joxter tugged Snufkin’s sleeve. “Time to go.” Wow, that was smooth, Snufkin thought as they picked up their belongings. Easy work, clean escape. Maybe his father didn’t really need help that much and invited him just to have fun, to redeem the missed winter? Behind them, electrical cracking gave way to shouts, surprised at first, then indignant, alarmed... By the time the two reached the road, the station erupted in a whump of flame. The town’s glow ahead vanished within some seconds; in its place, firelight danced on their backs. All Snufkin’s excitement evaporated at once. “The workers—” he began. “Had all the chances to run,” Joxter said. “If they’ve a brain between ’em.” He admired the blaze. “Like a proper volcano, eh? Locals’d never have seen one without us.” Probably he was right, as he had been right in so many things, so Snufkin chased away the nagging feeling. And with that, they trotted toward the newly darkened town. Twice, Snufkin and Joxter had to dive into the long grass beyond the roadside to avoid rumbling lorries and a clanging fire engine racing toward the power station. The thrill of the chase thrummed back in Snufkin’s chest. Each forbidden sign they passed, bolted and welded as it was, felt like a personal challenge. Well, Joxter still had some charcoals left. At some No Smoking sign, they even stopped and made a couple of roll-up cigarettes out of an ad to defy the sign before tearing it down and leaving the butts lie on its fragments. It was so fun that both giggled as if there was some other herb inside, not the plain tobacco. The darkness in the town was not absolute. Kerosene lamps and candles flickered in some windows, but many houses lay in deep slumber, their panes black and silent. Halfway between their next target and the park where the Ocean Orchestra waited in its hangar, they stashed their belongings behind someone’s picket fence. “Could just steal the plane now,” Joxter mused, eyes glinting. Snufkin snorted; they both knew it was a joke. The workshop where the town’s metal signs were made lay temptingly close, tucked in a courtyard between the town hall and the police station. And together they’d succeed for sure. “This one’s trickier,” Joxter warned as they approached the block. He led Snufkin down a narrow alley, stopping just shy of the corner. “Careful now. Peek.” Snufkin edged forward. The perimeter was fenced, with barbed wire over the top, the only entrances through the buildings or a guarded rear gate. A sentry booth stood by the gate, lit by a no-nonsense kerosene lantern. Inside, the guard was no drowsy hemulen or gaffsie. This was a weasling. Sleek, tall, sharp-muzzled creature akin to weasels, with short fawn fur, deceptively short paws and a predator’s stillness. Snufkin had met their kind before: some villagers had tried to corner a single weasling for mauling their chicken, but it had ended up very messy. For the villagers. The critter had been quick and vicious. And not very negotiation-friendly. Who and how managed to make this one stand guard remained a small-scale mystery. “I’ve been napping on the roofs around a lot, studied their schedules and habits. We could get over the fence by a pine tree at the other side,” Joxter whispered, “but he’d hear us. Need to neutralise him first. That’s where you’ll come handy. Any ideas how to move him away for a speck of time?” “A chicken?” “Clever lad.” The plan was simple: Joxter would mimic a hen’s clucking to lure the weasling into the shadows, while Snufkin slipped into the booth to lace the guard’s mug with Fru Hemulsen’s sleeping tincture. Joxter produced an ember glass vial from his coat, and then a pepperbox—how much of that house had he stuffed into his pockets?—powdering Snufkin’s boots and hands carefully. To mask his scent, he explained and vanished. Snufkin waited, pulse jumping. Weaslings could snap a neck in one bite. Mumriks were capable of moving almost as swift, but only for a very short time. And Joxter wasn’t getting any younger. A minute later, a distant cluck-cluck sounded. The weasling’s ears twitched. With a furtive glance, he abandoned his post. Snufkin waited for the agreed minute and then moved like lightning. In, dose the mug, out. He melted back into the alley and crouched with a sinking heart, exhaling only when Joxter materialised beside him. They waited. The weasling returned, muttering curses, swaying and sneezing. Some minutes passed after he disappeared in the booth before a weak thud followed by silence. When they approached the post, the beast curled up on the floor, his paws twitching. “Dreaming of chickens now,” Joxter whispered, reaching for a spare lantern in a corner. The workshop was a sturdy shed, its doors bolted and padlocked. But the lock gave easily. Joxter motioned for Snufkin to help swing one door wide until it nearly touched the neighbouring house of the police station. “Escape route,” he murmured. “Up the door, onto the roof, then to the pine branch over the fence, down and out.” Inside, their stolen lantern revealed stacks of tin sheets, metal posts, and paint cans. Working quietly, they pried the cans open by the sign plates (when lids resisted, at least they dented the metal instead) and poured glossy black, red and white pools across the floor. Some paper instructions for the staff made a good kindling material for veneer stencils, and the paint caught with a whoosh. Time to go before it got too light and stinky. But as the mumriks turned toward the exit, voices and police whistles cut through the night.