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The first year, Scrooge came alone.
Downy and Fergus were surprised. Every five years, the fog surrounding Dismal Downs lifted, and, within hours, the children were scrambling up the driveway to bang the heavy door knocker a few too many times. Scrooge would drag himself up the path behind them, swinging his cane and grumbling to keep a smile off the corner of his mouth.
Even that last time they’d seen the three, the twins, now looking very nearly like adults with twenty-one years under their belts, had filled the vast castle as best as they could with their laughter and arguments, and had managed to pull at least one prank that they were much too old for. Scrooge had leaned back in his chair at the dinner table, watching them, and his parents had leaned back in their chairs, watching him smile when he didn’t think anyone was looking.
Now he was alone - and running behind his usual schedule; already, this was a bad sign. The fog would only lift for a few days at most, or maybe even a week, if Fergus really pushed the runes. Anyway, Scrooge had a whole thing about keeping a tight schedule making him the richest man on Earth and whatnot (this was a regimen that he stuck firmly to if his arguments with Fergus got a little too personal, and one that miraculously seemed to stop existing if he was enjoying himself enough).
This year he dragged days behind, and when he finally came trudging up the drive, Downy could see he was not going to face her with any of the usual acquiescence to being doted on, nor would he face his father with his usual fiery independence. His head hung low, and the walking stick was less for show now than it had ever been.
He didn’t stay long. Fergus asked about the twins over dinner, and Scrooge brushed the question off with a sharp, “They’re not coming”. Downy presumed that traveling with one infant this young would be exhausting, let alone three.
Scrooge did not give any speeches about hard work or cooperation, or even complain about children or any new twin antics. He poked at his plate with his fork as though he were 14 years old and not ten times that age, and barely spoke. He resisted speaking about home life, though his parents could not help but notice the flash of anger in his eyes when Donald was mentioned.
Scrooge did not stay long. He left abruptly, citing some vague excuse about a meeting with his exec board, and nearly stormed out of the castle when his mother tried to hug him goodbye.
After he left, Fergus looked at the photo of the three baby boys they’d received with a short letter from Donald, and noticed now more than ever that Della was absent from all mention.
The fifth year seemed for a time as though it would pass by without any visit at all. Scrooge came hardly a day before the mists began to close again.
As she embraced him, he seemed to Downy to be colder, more distant. His eyes were far away, and he seemed lost. It was the kind of look people have when they haven't even realized they've gone off the path.
Fergus, in his usual fashion, interpreted his son's airs as uncaring, nonchalant, and utterly above it all. This made him feel very, very discarded. he regarded his son from a distance the whole evening.
"We thought ye might not come this year," Downy said later as she set a platter down at the long table. "I don't have anything special planned for dinner. Oh, ye won't be able to stay for long, ye know, but I suppose we can make it through dessert at least before ye have to leave."
"Yes, well," Scrooge said from his usual far seat at the table, "I wasnae sure I would be able to get away at all. Things have been... tense, of late, in the office."
"Could ye not convince them to hold off for awhile while ye get away on a wee trip?" asked his mother. "You are the head of the company, after all."
"Afraid not. This was the most I could get away with," he said, but he had that particular tilt to his head that he always had when he was lying, and it did not escape Fergus' notice. "The corporate world is surprisingly fickle."
"You'd think," Fergus said sourly, "that you'd prioritize your dear parents over your business." His fork scraped on his plate. "There are some things more important than your little money-making schemes."
"My schemes," Scrooge started, his eyes narrowing, "are a multi-trillion dollar business that relies on me to keep it in -"
"Oh, so we're up to trillions, then?" Fergus asked sarcastically. He suddenly felt very angry indeed, for reasons he didn't quite understand. "That's what years of missing family dinners gets you. I'm sure ye can name all the little markets and numbers and profits and losses off the top of yer head, but can ye even remember when yer supposed to come visit yer poor old family for the barest minimum three days twice a decade?"
Scrooge was beginning to turn red. "I told you, I had an emergency-"
"But family ones don't count," Fergus accused. "You avoid us for all it's worth. At least the other children have the good sense and the hearts to check in on their parents. They must not be ashamed of us."
"I never said that I was ashamed of you!" Scrooge exclaimed.
Fergus wasn't done. "Even your baby sister and her husband have, I dare say, spent a net total more time with us than you have, and they've been dead for twenty years!"
Downy didn't often intervene in these arguments, but this one had escalated so sharply that she felt she had no choice. "Now, Fergus," she started, "you know that's not fair-"
"You know, even Donald sends me letters a few times a year, at least."
Scrooge seethed.
"But he never seems to mention you, does he?" Fergus went on, his voice rising in pitch.
"Do not mention that thankless turncoat to me-"
"I don't think you've truly thought about your family in years. Can ye even remember the day yer great-nephews were born?"
"Fergus," Downy said warningly.
“Or were ye even there?” he continued, unable to stop himself. “Ye weren’t, were ye? Ye know all about stocks and shares, because that's what's important to ye, but do you even know the wee ones’ names?”
Scrooge slammed his silverware down on the table with a crash. “Do not preach to me about family!” he shouted. “Everything I have done has been for this family, and ye never
appreciate it! I will not be treated like a common vagabond when everything I have given has been thrown back at me without so much as a thank you!”
With that, he stormed out of the hall and out of the castle. The violent crack of the front door slamming echoed through the vaults until it finally faded to silence.
Fergus made the mistake of looking over at Downy. She was looking at him with a kicked-puppy disappointment in her eyes; this had to be a record for the fastest time chasing Scrooge out of the castle. He folded his arms gruffly.
“He doesn’t treat us with the respect a boy ought to treat his parents with,” he said, recognizing it to be an inadequate explanation as he did so. “Children ought to value their elders.”
“He's grown now, Fergus, you can't treat him like a child anymore, even if he still is yours. But nevermind that,” Downy said. “He left without his coat. Ye’ve got to go after him.
Fergus did not want to do this.
“I dinnae have a choice, do I?” he asked miserably.
She shook her head.
He hoped that by the time he got outside, Scrooge would already have driven off, and they wouldn’t have to speak for five more years. But the car was still parked out front. The normally shiny black and chrome of the exterior seemed dull and lonely in the darkness. Above him the moon hung high, glowing clear and bright in the dark night, and the sky shone with a thousand stars. But the landscape around the castle was growing blurrier, the rolling hills thickening and blending into the sky as the fog began to roll in.
It was then that Fergus realized Scrooge had stormed off with nary a coat or lantern into the moors of Dismal Downs, which would be very soon be covered with a bone-crackingly cold, dense-as-stone mist so thick an army of industrial torches couldn’t dream of piercing it.
He ran into the castle then, fetching his own heavy coat and lighting a great old torch, and set off into the night, fire clutched in his fist.
By some miracle, he found Scrooge within the hour, despite the lack of responses to the shouts of the latter's name. But perhaps Scrooge had been listening and silently following the sound of his voice. Either way, he stumbled upon him standing on a boulder with his fists shoved deep into his pockets, staring at the sky.
"There ye are," Fergus said, feeling a heavy relief wash over him. "You've got to come with me now, or we won't be able to get you back to the castle in time to get you out of Dismal Downs before the road is overtaken. The fog came earlier than I thought this year."
Scrooge turned very slowly to face him.
"I can't go home," he said.
"You have to," his father said.
He shook his head absently. "I can't," he said. "I don't have one anymore. It left me."
The moonlight illuminated his profile, sharp and cold. He looked gaunt as a wraith in the dark.
"You're talkin' nonsense," Fergus insisted. "The mansion didn't just walk away. It'll still be there when ye get back. Now, come on, we need to get back to the castle and send ye off."
"I can't just go back," Scrooge said, his voice rising, although it seemed he was talking to himself as much as Fergus. "I ruin the family name if I take a step in that place without fixing it. They won't take me anymore. I've gotten too far away." He was almost raving, now, and Fergus wondered suddenly how long it had been since he'd last slept.
"Whatever ye think ye've done can't be as bad as all that," he retorted. "Yer cosmic punishment from claimin' the castle as yer own while thinkin' too little of yer family would pale in comparison to mine if I let ya die out here on the moors by yourself. And it's getting late, so we need to go."
"I don't think I even care anymore," Scrooge told him. Something in him seemed to be waking up, suddenly. "He's never going to forgive me."
The relief was beginning to be overtaken by frustration. "Don't you understand how dangerous it is out here? Never mind the fog, never mind being on the moors after dark when the wolves come out, never mind the malicious things that play with your mind for fun. I cannae understand why yer being so obstinate about this , if ye would just come inside-”
“I lost her, aright?” Scrooge shouted.
Fergus faltered. He didn’t have to ask who she referred to - it was what they had been dancing around for hours - no, for five years. Of course it was Della, headstrong Della, wild Della. Della, who Fergus had realized was gone, though it had never been said in quite so many words to him. He reached his free hand out to his son, but couldn’t bring himself to move any further. The mist would be upon them soon. He didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t know how to save him. In his hand the torch burned powerlessly.
“I built her a ship, and there was an…. Accident. She disappeared.” The fog was kicking at his heels. “I spent almost five years searching for her, but the Board cut off my funding. Threatened to impeach me from my own company if I didn’t stop spending their money on hopeless search efforts - ha!” His voice was bitter. The air was thickening around him. “I let her get away.”
Fergus was reminded of a time, fifteen years before, when Della had vanished in the castle during a visit. Scrooge and Donald had started out annoyed, but when they hit hour two of searching, and still couldn’t find her in any of the castle’s vast, cold wings with all their nooks and crannies, they’d began to be concerned. It was time to leave, and besides, an 800-year-old magic castle is no place for a girl to be lost.
Downy finally found her coming out of the vaults, one particular set of isolated tunnels they’d all forgotten existed. She’d slyly refused to elaborate on what she’d been doing in there, but the mists were closing in, and it was time to leave before they were caught in Dismal Downs for the next five years, so there wasn’t time to press the subject.
“Keep a good eye on those two,” Fergus had said as Downy ushered the children and their bags into the car, despite Donald’s protests that he’d left a hat behind somewhere. “They’ll get away from you if you’re not careful.”
“I’m… sorry,” Fergus said now, his voice gruff and halted.
“ You’re sorry?” Scrooge yelled, taking a step forward. “I killed your only granddaughter, and you’re sorry for me?”
Fergus ground his teeth. “I am,” he said. “Curse me for it, but ye don’t have a patent on guilt, lad. She was my granddaughter, but she was your niece, too, and damn if ye weren’t as much of a father to her as her own, maybe more.”
“I couldn't –”
“You didnae have to,” Fergus said.
Words poured out of Scrooge's mouth, unfiltered, as though they were tripping over each other in their effort to escape before he pulled himself together and remembered who he was. “What good is all this – what good is all the treasure, all the adventure – what good am I if I don’t – if I can’t even–” He stumbled forward.
Fergus realized with a start that he could hardly see Scrooge in the swirling darkness, and he decided then and there that this would go no further. He grabbed his arm and began to pull him up the hill. The castle was far and small in the distance, lights burning like a lonely star on the horizon.
“I lost her,” Scrooge repeated almost to himself as his father dragged him along. “I lost Donald, too, and the babies, that’s the worst part of it.”
Fergus’s heart dropped then, and he stopped, whirling around to grip his son’s shoulder with his free hand. “Donald? And the bairns, too? What happened?”
“No, no, they’re alright,” Scrooge said. “But I haven’t even met them – don’t hardly know their names, you’re right – Donald willnae talk to me at all, the headstrong heathen.”
Fergus sighed and took off again, son in tow. “You’re a damn fool, ye know that?”
“I know,” Scrooge said miserably.
“Would ye just stop that - ye look like Whiskers left out in the rain when you make that face. Stop feelin’ so blasted sorry for yourself and get out there. Go find the boys. They need ye. Donald needs ye.”
Scrooge set his jaw. “He left me,” he spat. “He blames me for everything, and he won't let me forget it. He made his choice five years ago.”
“So did she,” Fergus retorted. The castle was closer, now, the half-buried stones of the land growing larger and crueler as they approached, but the worst of the fog was nearly behind them.
“She’s– she was just a lass, Daddy, you can’t blame her.”
“Of course I can. You’re an adult who did somethin' downright idiotic, and she was an adult who did somethin' downright idiotic, and that’s that. Look, we’re nearly home, there’s your mother.”
In the golden light of the doorway, Downy stood waiting with Scrooge’s jacket thrown over her arm and a basket in her other hand.
“Think about what I said,” Fergus said as he shoved Scrooge into the car. Downy gently passed her husband the coat and basket, and Fergus fairly threw them into the passenger’s seat. “You’re killing yourself wasting away all alone like that.”
Scrooge scowled harder than ever. The sound of his teeth grinding was audible from feet away, and everyone pretended to ignore the shine in his eyes, because he never had liked people to see him cry. The car was down the road without so much as a goodbye.
“I don’t expect we’ll be seeing him in five years,” Downy said mournfully.
In the basket, Scrooge later discovered more treats than he could hope to eat without making himself sick and a small envelope. The envelope contained pictures of the triplets Donald had sent his grandparents over the years - a few of them as babies, some toddlers, and what was clearly the first day of kindergarten, in which two of them were fighting over backpacks while the third one looked at the camera with a comical exhaustion well past what his youth had earned him.
Scrooge locked the envelope in the back of a drawer and did not open it for five more years.
The Call came the eleventh year, just months after the third visit: that time, Scrooge had also called ahead, and Downy had been nearly knocked over by the warmth in his voice. He wasn’t so excited to speak to her as that, of course, but she could hear that life had to returned to him from the very first.
“We’ll be comin’ to visit this summer,” he’d said through an ocean of static.
“Oh, delightful!” she exclaimed, then added, hesitantly, “‘We?’”
“The children and I,” he said, as though it were the easiest thing in the world.
She didn’t try to hide her squeal. “Della’s triplets?”
If he was thrown by the mention of his niece, he didn’t show it. “Of course; Huey, Dewey, and Louie. And their friend, Webbigail.”
He knew them, then! Downy felt as though she had quite a bit to catch up on, as she hadn’t received anything from Donald in months, and this was her first time hearing from Scrooge since his last visit. He sounded like a new man.
The tenth year visit came and went, and he looked as much of a new man as he sounded. Scrooge and Fergus fought, as they always did, but they made up by the end of it, which they did not always do, and as Scrooge drove off with three exciting little reminders of the twins in the backseat of the station wagon - how domestic! - Downy and Fergus thought that Scrooge was finally letting himself live again.
Then there was The Call, nearly a year later. The old phone sparked somewhat as it rang. Between faulty wiring, the thing being older than most senior citizens, and the heavy magic aura surrounding the castle, it was hardly reliable.
Fergus was the one who picked up. The receiver zapped him as he did so, and he stifled a curse.
“Della’s back,” Scrooge said breathlessly on the other side of the line, without the usual reluctant “Hello, Daddy”, or “What do you want.”
“What?” The line was crackling with static, so Fergus thought he might have heard wrong. It was hard to decipher Scrooge’s tone.
“I said, Della’s come home.”
“Oh,” said Fergus, not really understanding. He thought this meant they had found her, finally – not that there would even be much to find by this time, but he assumed this was a call to see what they could do to part the fog long enough to gain access to the family crypt. His chest tightened like a vice at the thought, but he steeled himself. He tried to think what Downy would say; she was always the gentle one, not him, but Fergus knew from experience that approaching this conversation with his normal brashness would be like dropping a match in a gasoline factory, because the twins were dearer to Scrooge than his own heart. If he wasn’t careful, he would nudge Scrooge from grieved to angry (which was not difficult to do, even under normal circumstances), and then he would get hung up on, and who knew how long it would be before he heard his son’s voice again.
So he did something he rarely tried to do, and thought before he spoke.
“What can we do?” he asked, aware of how stiff his voice was.
“I’ve got to– hold on, I may have to dash in just a second. She’s threatenin’ to use the stove again, and Beakley already hid the fire extinguishers from her on Tuesday, so I’m not sure how we’d deal with that if I don’t nip it in the bud.”
Oh. A case of spirits, then. They weren’t uncommon, especially not with a family so old as the McDucks, and they were generally harmless. But they were always bittersweet, if not downright heartbreaking. “Do ye need me to recommend a medium? We’ve had experience with… lingerin’, here about the castle, and I know where to–”
“Ye aren’t listening ,” Scrooge said with the same annoyed, stubborn lilt he’d developed at age four and employed consistently ever since. “Della’s come home. She’s alive. She’s more than alive, she’s strong as a horse and still kickin’.”
“WHAT?”
“Sometimes literally, and she’s got a prosthetic robot leg now, so it’s a terror if you get on her bad side,” Scrooge laughed. It was a sound Fergus hadn’t heard in years and years. “My Della made it home, Daddy. She’s safe and healthy, and she’s more beautiful than ever. She’s alright. We’re all alright here.”
Fergus stared at nothing, unable to process. Then he dropped the phone receiver and ran down the hall, shouting for Downy. He was weak and stiff with age, but now he moved faster than he had in fifty years. He dragged her downstairs back to the study and picked up the phone to see if the call was still connected.
It was. By some miracle, the old phone was still alive, and Scrooge had waited patiently, correctly deducing what the sudden shock of banging and static meant. He’d had plenty of practice waiting, anyway.
His parents huddled around the handset, pressed cheek to cheek and listening – yes, Della was doing just fine, her health had been subpar upon her return, but that was to be expected; no, she couldn’t come to the phone but he’d try to get her next time; yes, he’d been trying to ring for half the week, but the magic in the fog distorted the signal and made it hard to get anything through, plus they had one decrepit seventy-year-old phone in the whole castle and were hardly ever in the same room as it. Yes, the boys were doing well, and were very pleased; she’d been on the moon, if you could believe it – At this point the signal began to crack, so he said they’d visit when they could before the call was finally disrupted.
Fergus put the phone back on the cradle while Downy dabbed at her face with her handkerchief. He thought that Della had come home just in time to see Scrooge having finally found his way home, too, despite how silly it sounded even in his own ears.
Della was home.
The year the castle went on the fritz – the twelfth year, and fourth visit – Downy and Fergus were disappointed to see the twins were absent from the excursion, but the visit, however tense it may have started out, was exciting nonetheless. After dinner the night before they left, Dewey made his way into the master bedroom and crawled into Downy’s bed.
“What can I do ye fer?” she asked from her rocking chair, peering over her glasses without slowing the steady click-clack of her knitting needles.
Dewey shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “Just saying hi.” He burrowed headfirst under the blankets.
“How are things at the Mansion McDuck?” she asked. She’d have to knit presents for the triplets next.
“They’re good!” he squirmed under the quilt joyfully. “We’ve been doing a lot of training lately. To fight and stuff. It’s pretty cool.”
She clucked her tongue. “I never did like you bairns learning all that violence, but from what I’ve heard it’s kept you children and the twins in good shape more than once, so I suppose I can excuse it.”
Dewey stuck his head out and nodded. “Mrs. Beakley and Webby teach us a lot. It’s mostly self-defense, don’t worry. I like training with Mom best, though.” He laughed. “She’s been showing me how to fly, too. Planes, I mean, not just in general, although that would be rad. She says I might be good enough to start at a flight school early. I’d be younger than everybody else there, but she was when she went, too, and if she can do it, so can I!”
Downy smiled at the thought of little Della sitting at a desk that was nearly too big for her, and of Dewey doing the same. “How is your mother?” she asked.
“Oh, she’s doing pretty good! She stayed home ‘cause she got another one of her migraines, but she really wanted to come.”
“Ach, we’ll catch her next time.”
Dewey rolled onto his back, kicking his feet out from under the blanket. “My mom,” he announced, half to the ceiling, “is the coolest person alive.” He threw his legs into the air, pedaling them absently. “She’s strong, and heroic, and she’s been all over the world. She’s even a cyborg.”
“What’s a cyborg?”
“She’s got a robot leg and she’s friends with aliens and even gods.” He spread his hands wide above him, drawing pictures in the air, and Downy stopped knitting, wholly drawn in by these testaments. “She’s gorgeous , and she’s super nice, and she tells us the craziest stories and gives me sugar past bedtime, and she knows all this cool stuff, like all about airplanes and engines–”
“Engineering is boring ,” said Louie from the doorway. He entered and flopped chest-first onto the bed next to his brother, hands still in his hoodie pockets.
“You’re just saying that because you don’t understand it,” Dewey said. “If you did, you’d think it was cool.”
“You don’t understand it either, dude.”
“Maybe not,” he conceded, “but I want to learn!”
“It’s cool that she knows boring stuff, I guess,” Louie said. “Just because she’s smart. Like, waaaay smart. She’s super good at puzzles and labyrinths.”
“Mom has even more Junior Woodchuck Badges than me,” Huey added, coming in from behind. “And I’m currently ranked second in our division.”
Dewey punched at the ceiling. “She can do anything .”
“Oh, so she’s learned to cook properly by now?” Downy asked.
“She can do anything except cook.”
“She can cook if she puts her mind to it,” Louie argued. “It’s just that she tends to leave stuff kind of a disaster when she does. And she always burns something or other.”
“I think she burned a bowl of cereal once,” Huey added. “I’m not really sure how she did that.”
To Downy’s surprise, he came and sat on the floor next to her chair, resting his head on her knee. “I miss her,” he said. “Uncle Donald, too.”
“Didnae ye see ‘em two days ago?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I still miss them, though. Mom would have been great for helping me find this Missing Mystery. I bet she knows all about the castle.”
“She knows all about how to get lost in the castle is more like it,” Downy laughed. “Go on! Tell me more about what ye’ve been up to.”
So she sat and listened as the boys regaled her with all the misadventures Della had already managed to fit in, all the big things and all the little things – how they’d fought the Gilded Man together; how they’d seen mermaids (which she HATED, Louie pointed out, almost rolling off the bed as he laughed about it); and how they’d fought the Beagle Boys and went to Goat’hool. They told her about her and Huey’s first mother-son camping trip, and the mug Dewey had painted her for the twins’ birthday (each had received a mug declaring them the better twin), and the marathons she and Louie had in which they watched movies with the lowest ratings and tore them to shreds (Downy didn’t really understand what old tomatoes had to do with moving pictures, but she found it best not to press). And she heard about the twins doing twin things, and their Halloween costume, and how they still fought constantly but more than once the kids had found the two of them asleep on the couch sharing a blanket as the end credits of some old film rolled. They described the way Della did her hair now and Uncle Donald’s new girlfriend and how Scrooge had tried to drink coffee instead of tea for a week on a dare and how Webby was perfecting a new horrifying type of martial arts and that she was considering painting her room a different color.
Downy listened to all of this with delight, throwing in her own anecdotes from time to time – how Della had disappeared in the tunnels under the castle once and Scrooge had threatened to handcuff her to himself to prevent it from happening again; that somewhere Downy had some absolutely adorable (read: embarrassing) photos of the twins' childhood Samhain costumes; and once she had let the twins help make cupcakes, with near disastrous results.
Louie countered this story with a description of his mother's return desserts, which did have Downy laughing quite a bit. She looked up as he was reaching the fizzy rocks part to see Fergus leaning against the doorframe and watching with an odd expression on his face. It wasn't quite a smile, because he wasn't partial to those, but Downy knew he was pleased all the same.
"I think Dewey's asleep," Huey said, sounding halfway there himself, on the floor leaning against the tall bed.
Dewey was most certainly sprawled haphazardly on the big bed. Louie was in the corner leaning against the head with his knees tucked up in his chest to avoid his brother.
"Oh, I suppose it's quite bedtime," Downy said, checking the grandfather clock on the other side of the room.
"Aye," agreed Scrooge, appearing in the doorway behind his father. He was taller than him, though in some ways his mother could still see him barely at shoulder height, standing in this doorway and announcing suddenly his plans to sail to a whole new continent. Now he had Webbigail on his shoulders, looking as sleepy as the boys. She rested her chin on the top of his head.
"Alright, off to bed with ye," Downy proclaimed, standing and putting a hand on one of the bedposts to give herself the leverage to help Huey up. Louie nudged Dewey awake with his foot. Scrooge let Webby down, and Fergus awkwardly ruffled her hair as Scrooge moved to the bed and held his arms out for Dewey to climb up. Dewey, of course, launched himself at Scrooge's torso, sending him staggering backward with a grunt and a laugh, but Scrooge managed to keep ahold of him.
"Goodnight, Mummy. Daddy," Scrooge said as he led his little line of children out the door and down the hall, looking longsuffering all the way. Webby nudged Louie with her shoulder as they walked, and Huey reached out to hit her lightly on the arm. Dewey was already half asleep again with his head on Scrooge's shoulder.
The year the castle went on the fritz, Della declined to join the rest of the family on the unplanned return to fix it; she claimed she wasn’t feeling well, and appeared carefully neutral about the prospect of missing seeing her grandparents again when asked about it. Donald had plans he couldn’t cancel with Daisy, anyway, so he offered to stay behind, too.
“I don’t need you to babysit me,” Della told him from the couch, swathed in blankets in the dark like an ancient goddess surrounded by rich pelts.
“No, that’s Mrs. B’s job,” he said.
As punishment for this, Della picked up the nearest object to her and threw it at him. Unfortunately that object was her phone. He ducked and it clattered on the ground.
“I’m fine,” she said. “My migraine’s pretty much gone, I can almost see straight again.”
“Right,” he said, unconvinced. He picked her undamaged phone up and handed it to her. “I’ll just be in the city for Daisy’s gala this weekend, so call me if you need anything.” He shouldered his bag and left.
“I won’t!” she shouted at his back. She stuck her tongue out at his retreating frame. He must have sensed her doing so, somehow, because he flipped her off without turning around before he shut the door, leaving the room in perfect cooling darkness.
Donald returned on Sunday to find her virtually unmoved since he’d left. She’d maintained dominion over the couch, and must have somehow beaten Beakley in a battle of wills, because the housekeeper had clearly cleaned in a defined circle around Della’s newfound turf. The recently-crowned queen of the sofa was curled up on it under an improbable amount of blankets and pillows, watching How It’s Made in her pajamas with a blanket pulled almost all the way over her face.
“You are a disaster,” Donald said by way of greeting.
“You are the worst person alive and I hate you,” Della responded without taking her eyes off the TV.
“Did you even shower while I was gone?”
“No comment.” Her gaze was still fully on the giant monster of a machine that was producing corrugated polyethylene pipe, according to the caption. Whatever that was. “I told you, I’m recovering from a migraine, I’m allowed to make questionable choices.”
Donald put his bag down and sat on the couch where her foot was presumably suffocating under enough throw blankets to smother a small orphanage. She yelped and curled her legs in.
“Remember when you had that horrible migraine, and Scrooge was trying to leave you behind from that trip to Egypt?” he asked.
“I was so mad at him,” she remembered. “So I stowed away.”
“Only it was so bad you couldn’t walk straight –”
“I’ve never walked straight in my life.” The joke was not deserving of the grin she gave it. Donald gave her a thumbs down.
“Low-hanging fruit. You can do better. Anyway, you were so sick you fell out of the compartment you were hiding in.” All because you couldn’t stand to be left behind on a trip. What happened to that Della? he wanted to ask, but he didn’t.
“Yeah,” she said, looking back at the television. People were slicing the pipes with giant shears now. “I’m grown up, now, though.”
He cleared his throat. “Speaking of Scrooge, he called. He said it’s a long story, but something was draining the magic on the castle. They got it fixed up.”
“Cool.”
“They also,” Donald added, “did some renovation on the runestones when they put them back so they’re a little more malleable. Grandad says he can clear the mists long enough for us to get in and out whenever we want to visit, so long as we call ahead.”
“Cool.”
The video had since ended, but Della was staring at the credits screen as though she hadn’t noticed. She probably hadn’t.
Donald sighed. He shut off the TV and sat back down.
“It’s been almost twenty years,” he said quietly. “They want to see you.”
“What about you?” Della said, a little bit harshly. “You haven’t seen them in decades, either.”
“That’s fair,” he conceded. “But I called a few times. And I sent postcards and letters. And, Dells, I wasn’t dead for ten years.”
She made a little sound at that and pulled a blanket over her head. Donald winced.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I don’t know how to go back,” she said, so softly he could barely hear her. “Look at me. They’ll be expecting twenty-year-old Della. I’m not twenty-year-old Della. I’m old and tired and fucked up.”
Donald sat on the ground in front of the couch. He had to dodge her metal leg, where it had been discarded on the ground next to a pile of old comics.
“Okay,” Donald said. “Sure.”
Della poked her face out of the blankets. “Excuse you?”
“Sure,” he repeated, reassured by the scowl directed his way. It meant she was still kicking in there. “So you’re old and tired and fucked up. Me, too. So what?”
“So, dipass , I can’t be old and tired and fucked up for them, because they’re elderly and fragile and can’t handle it. If I’m weird I’ll break them.”
“Della,” he told her, “everybody’s old and tired and fucked up. Grandma and Grandpa more than anybody. They’re older than, like, a lot of countries. They’ve seen stuff, okay? We’ve just got to be disasters together. Isn’t that the point of this whole family thing?”
Della didn’t say anything for a minute. She always hated it when he was right about things.
“I guess,” she finally grumbled. “Okay. I’ll go.”
Della picked at her sleeve with her head leaned against the window as Donald drove. The moors rolled with fog, but the road itself was clear as a Sunday morning despite it. The moon hung low and bright above them.
“Watcha thinking about?” Donald asked.
“Doritos,” she said. She was not.
“What flavor?”
“Sweet chili.” What she was actually thinking was how am I going to breathe in this castle. She turned her face away from the moon.
Returning home had been like going to heaven and hell at the same time. Mostly it felt like heaven these days. It had at least usually settled down to being like Earth, which was wonderfully mundane. But there were so many firsts. First time flying since It. First time going to the movies since It. First Christmas since It.
First time at the castle since It.
Here they crested a hill, and the castle came into view, gleaming like a shooting star at the end of the long drive. Donald tapped the steering wheel with his thumb rhythmically. “It’s not that big a deal, you know.”
Della loathed twin telepathy. Donald always seemed to develop it exactly when she didn’t want him to.
“It’s just Grandma and Grandpa,” he added. “They like you.”
“I know,” she said. “But it feels like a big deal to me. For reasons I can’t articulate. It’s just hard, okay?”
He nodded and didn’t say anything.
The building grew bigger and bigger, and the car seemed to get faster and faster, and the mist was closing the road behind them, as if it wanted their visit to last forever, and Della’s heartbeat picked up, and there were her grandparents, standing waiting on the porch.
They got out of the car. Her hands were shaking. Her legs shook all the way up the drive. Her heart shook violently, equal parts excited and afraid.
And Fergus had always scared her the tiniest bit as a child, because he was gruff and taller than her and always argued with Uncle Scrooge about everything under the sun. And Downy had always been so quick to smile, even when she was trying to be angry at the kids for flooding the bathroom while trying to recreate the sinking of the Titanic , and for some reason that felt out of place to her now, too.
Up until her grandfather took her hand in both of his, studying her face, and said, “My, how you’ve grown.”
Up until her grandmother reached up to take Donald’s face in her hands, and laughed, because he was so much taller than her.
Up until the greatest hugs in recorded history. Hugs were easy. They gathered up everything you were scared of, everything that had ever happened and ever would happen, and made them tangible.
Then everything felt like it was gonna be okay.
The Ghosts of Castle McDuck had seen a lot over the centuries. Battles, treaties, parties, arguments, death, laughter, sewing circles, naptime, family dinners, leavetakings and homecomings; just about everything under the sun. Uncounted lives had started and ended on this land, or in this family, or both. Uncounted stories had made their way through these walls. Yes, the Ghosts had seen their fair share of reunions.
But most of them agreed that this one in particular was their favorite.