Work Text:
He'd been wanting to do this for a good long time. It took some doing to get the Director to let him go down there again, but Taako could be real persistent (and irritating) about something he wanted. So she'd caved, as he knew she would, and he got his wish.
Taako sauntered through the streets of Goldcliff, umbrella dangling from his wrist. It was a beautiful day, and he'd dressed appropriately—his big wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, a small bag, leggings with a matching summer-pastel tunic, and a nice and airy robe with big sleeves fit for buckling swashes. He had told the Director there were a few places he wanted to go, so the Bureau's transportation had dropped him outside the city. But there was only one that really mattered to him, and so headed straight for the square at the top of the cliff.
There was an air of celebration everywhere he went—whole streets were closed off, wagons forced to putter around and get caught up in the few lanes of traffic allowed, while people talked and laughed and danced and sang beneath streamers and banners hung above every street and from nearly every window. Merchants had set up shop on every corner and intersection, little stands selling food or treats or souvenirs, and musicians and bands played on makeshift stages while people tossed coppers and silvers and the occasional gold coin into small chests at their feet. Not even the alleys were safe; the few that Taako took were festooned with just as many decorations, visibly hand-crafted and decorated with images of blackbirds and ram heads, and the people in them just as jubilant—carrying on conversations from windows across from each other while children ran up and down the tiny streets playing hoop-and-stick, or stick-and-ball, or stick-and-stick (which was really just children hitting each other with sticks, now that he really looked at it).
It took him almost an hour to reach the square at the top of Goldcliff, one of the city's biggest centers of commerce that ran right up to the edge of the yellow-orange cliff that gave the city its name. There had been a railing there, once, so people didn't fall into the deep canyon below. But now there was something else, and the plaza was full of people coming just to see it.
The tree was still among the largest Taako had ever seen, with a thick trunk full of knots and tangling roots that stretched the open expanse at the edge of the cliff as high as the railing had been before. The canopy was big and wide, branches stretching out over the edge and into the square, providing shade for its many visitors and numerous places for children to climb. Its leaves were a hardy green, and its flowers had been blooming since spring and would bloom until the very end of fall, even as reddish-pink petals fell from the tree in waves with every breeze.
Taako walked around the stone fountain in the center of the square—he remembered how cold the water was when he'd landed in it—and skirted around the edge of the crowd, which was largely composed of couples of all ages and configurations. In pairs they'd go up to the tree, usually holding hands, and together tie a ribbon around one of its many branches, or hang a mask from a hanging bough. Kids were here, too, running to and fro in small masks of their own, usually chasing each other.
There were wooden stalls around the whole square, and Taako walked up to one and leaned against a post. The merchant, a thick but genial-looking human man, got up from where he was gathering something behind the counter.
"Oh, hey," he said with a salesman's smile. "Lookin' for some food?"
"I guess I'm a little peckish," Taako said without looking at him. "Whatcha got?"
The man ducked back down again, then emerged with a platter full of paper bags, each filled to the brim with roasted peanuts.
"Made fresh!" he said proudly. "A Goldcliff staple! Genuine famous recipe!"
"For... roasted peanuts."
"Yup!" the man said proudly.
Taako couldn't help his sneer, nor did he want to. Then he shrugged. "What the hey. Lovely legume weather, after all."
He reached into his bag, reaching for his coins, then asked casually, "Hey, peanut, what's this festival all about, huh?"
His smile faltered, just a little. "You, uh, never heard of Summerfest?"
"Nope, not a ding-dang thing."
"You must be from out of town," he said. "How far?"
Taako looked up from his bag and lowered his sunglasses. He scanned the sky until he found it. "About ten thousand feet."
"What?"
"I said about ten leagues." Taako took off his sunglasses put them on his hat—there was plenty of shade here.
"Really? Because it sounded a lot like you said—"
"Still waiting on that answer, bubeleh."
"Uh. Well." The man scratched the back of his head and glanced around. There was no line for his peanuts. Taako got the impression he'd missed the lunch rush. "I... guess a got a few minutes for a history lesson."
"History, huh?"
"Oh, yeah. Old tale. Can't believe you never heard it before." He smiled again, and Taako couldn't tell if it was condescension or if he was really that excited to tell him. "Story goes, there was this elvish thief people called the Raven. Famous all over, the best there ever was. Nobody could catch her."
"Go on," Taako drawled, reaching over and taking a peanut from one of the bags.
"Well, the militia had finally had it, so they assigned their very best to hunt her down, this halfling. People called her the Ram, because she was stubborn as all hell. She and the Raven crossed paths a buncha times, but she always got away, and the Ram always chased after her."
Taako calmly ate his peanut, flicking the shell into a little bin next to the stall.
"But the Raven wasn't just famous for her thieving," the man said. "She was also one of the best battle-wagon racers that ever ran the circuit." He stopped, suddenly, and his smile faltered again. "You uh, know about battle-wagon racing, right?"
"Oh hell yeah, brother," Taako said, reaching for another peanut. "What do I look like, some kinda rube?"
He smiled again—Taako still couldn't tell if it was about him or not—and continued. "Came out of nowhere, she did, with a wagon like a flying longboat, wings on the side, the whole deal."
"She ever cheat?"
"No! Not ever. That, and the fact that she only stole from rich folk, made the crowds treat her like a hero. The Ram had been after her for months, and eventually she figured that the only way to get close to her was to compete in the races herself. Not technically legal, y'know, which is why everyone wears the animal masks. So, she enters the circuit. Does well for herself. And before long, she and the Raven are working together."
"Together? You're kidding!" Taako said with a gasp, reaching for the bag he'd been eating out of.
"So it goes," the man said with a shrug. "Lots of stories about how it happened, but they ended up racing the same car. The Raven and the Ram. No one could touch 'em. They had a string of wins that made everybody jealous. And they fell in love! Lots of stories about that, too, but only part that matters is that eventually, things went bad. The Raven started getting colder, more violent on the track. One day she casts a spell, takes out an opposing wagon. No one's safety bubbles saved 'em. People died, and the Ram never raced with her again."
"But she was still part of the militia," Taako prompted, eating another peanut. "She had to take her in."
"She couldn't, though—the Raven had been cursed, see? No one knows how or why, but she had some real bad juju about her, and it was eating her up. The Ram wanted to save her. And then she meets these three strangers—"
Taako's ears perk up, just a bit. "Strangers? From where?"
"Nobody knows. They said they knew about the curse, had chased it there, and wanted to put an end to it. The Ram wanted to help them, and they figured the best way would be to beat her at the thing she was best at, even more than thieving."
With a hand to his cheek, Taako feigned shock. "You don't mean...?"
The man grinned again, big and wide. Taako was becoming surer that he just liked the story. "Yep. They raced her. Figured the curse would be broken if they could prove that she wasn't better off with it. The Ram gave her companions their own masks. Let's see..." He starts counting off fingers. "There was the Owl, for the wise but childish one, the Bear, for the strong but gentle protector, and... uh..." He trails off, looking lost.
"The Mongoose?"
The peanut salesman blinked and looked up at Taako. "Uh. Yeah. That was it. The—"
"Cute but dangerous one?"
He narrowed his eyes a little. "You sure you haven't heard this story before?"
Taako laughed and spread his hands with a shrug. "Total lucky guess. What are the odds, right?"
"I mean, that was a really specific guess—"
"Keep talking, peanut, I don't got all day."
The salesman regarded him a little skeptically. "Well, anyway, they raced in the Ram's own wagon; big horns on the front and fire shooting out the back, one of the fastest wagons anyone had ever seen. It was a race to remember, there's all sorts of crazy tales about that race—"
"Yeah?" Taako asked with a smile, looking forward to asking about his favorite part.
"—and not a one of 'em is true, far as I'm concerned."
His ears drooped, and he blew some hair out of his eyes. Typical.
"But they won."
"Huzzah!" Taako cheered, spilling peanuts as he lifted his arms into the air. "What an ending!"
"Oh, that ain't the end," the man said, his tone turning somber.
Taako lowered his hands. "Oh."
"The curse only got worse. The sky turned pitch black, lightning started shooting everywhere, a big cyclone appears out of nowhere and carries the Raven away with a giant flock of blackbirds and it starts moving towards Goldcliff proper."
"That sounds bad," Taako said flatly. The story wasn't so much fun anymore—the ending had always been a bummer.
"Sure was. Would have destroyed the whole city, so the story goes. But the Ram and her friends, they leap straight into that cyclone. They find the Raven in there, on this floating piece of rock picked up from the canyon, and she tells 'em in a voice not her own that if any one of them touches her, they'd be struck dead."
Taako turned his attention away from the peanut seller and cracked open another peanut while he regarded the square around them. He motioned for him to continue, but he got the impression that at this point, he would have finished the story regardless.
"The Ram turns around, thanks her new friends, and throws them off the rock. They get caught up in the cyclone and thrown to safety, and she turns around and leaps at the Raven."
The peanut man hesitated, and when Taako looked back, he wasn't really smiling anymore. He sighed, and Taako knew he'd have to be prompted. "And?"
"And... they landed right there." He pointed at the tree. "The Raven is free of the curse, and she's holding the dying Ram in her arms. And the Raven, with the last of her power, she... turns 'em into the tree. They say you can still see 'em, if you look hard enough."
Taako stared at the tree, as big and beautiful as he remembered it. He looked near the base and found the twining roots that took the shape of Sloane, with Hurley in her arms. He remembered their final moments, as he stood in the fountain with Merle and Magnus by his side, powerless to help. ("Horseshit! Hooooorse-shit!") And he remembered the burst of light and force, and the tree with two masks at its base. It's a sad, beautiful memory, and he'd never forget it no matter how long he lived.
"So Summerfest is about that tree?" Taako asked.
"It's about all of it," the salesman replied. "There's masquerades, picnics, and traveling carnivals that come through and perform. They hold the biggest battle-wagon races of the year this week. The whole city gets into it, couples especially—they tie those ribbons on the tree to ask for a blessing."
Taako munched on another peanut. He had turned almost fully away from the peanut man, and faced the fountain. Two little girls jumped into the fountain and splashed each other while their parents laughed and tried to haul them out.
"Any excuse for a party, right?" Taako said. "So when did all this happen?"
"Oh, who knows if it even did?" the peanut man said with a forced laugh—like he was afraid of being mocked by a foreigner for believing it happened at all. "But, I mean, if it did? It was a long time ago. Way before my time. Or my pop-pop's time!"
Well. Taako threw away another shell and tapped his lip with a painted nail. Unless the peanut man and his pop-pop were only two months old, that said a lot about the powers of the voidfish. He had always wondered how it worked for the big situations, the ones with lots of witnesses and evidence laying around. If there were some things that people could never forget, it simply worked around them. Taako wondered if he shouldn't let Johan or the Director know, if they shouldn't come up with some other way to make people forget absolutely everything that happened.
"Hell naw, son," he said with a smile.
"Sorry?"
Taako turned and threw his last shell into the container at his feet, then smiled and backed away from the stand. "Thanks for the story, kemosabe. I sure won't forget it!"
"You're w—hey." The peanut man frowned as Taako turned away. "Hey, wait a minute! You have to pay for those!"
After he ducked into the crowd, Taako made his way back towards the tree. He finished his peanuts, threw the last shell into the paper bag, crumpled it up, and vaporized it with a puff of produced flame. As he stepped towards the roots, a pair of kids ran past and nearly sent him stumbling. A girl in a raven mask being chased by a boy in a ram mask, wielding a small fallen branch from the tree, leaves still green and flowers still streaming petals as he gave chase. They were both laughing, and it struck Taako that he had never heard so much laughter in so short a time.
Taako approached the tree, ducked around a pair of masks hung from a low branch, and took a knee by the roots he recognized. He glanced behind him—no peanut man, no kids, no one else approaching the tree at the moment—and turned back with a sigh.
"Well," he said quietly. "Feel like I didn't really get to say goodbye last time. So here I am. Saying... goodbye."
There was no answer from the tree. He hadn't expected one.
"I wish there was something we could have done. Something more. I still wonder if there was, and we just missed it, but... well, no use crying about it now, right?" Taako smiled, a bit forced.
The tree did nothing but sit there and be a tree. The roots before him didn't move or change, and nothing happened.
"Y'know... I don't actually know if you remember me or not," he said. "I don't know if the voidfish works that way. I hope you do. But even if you don't—"
Taako reached into his bag and pulled out a mask.
"—can't have an adventure without Weasel Man, right?"
He stood and hung the mongoose mask from an unoccupied branch, close to the trunk. It was, as far as he could tell, the only one of its kind on the entire tree. Taako shouldered his bag and shrugged.
"I guess... I just wanted to know if you were happy, is all," he said.
There was a strong gust of wind. It rustled the leaves all throughout the tree and released another wave of petals. They billowed up and around Taako before floating off the cliff.
Taako blinked. Then he smiled again, the self-satisfied half-lidded smile he used when he was happy to be right.
"Yeah," he said, nodding at the tree. "I would have put money on it."
Then he pulled his sunglasses off his hat, put them on, and turned away.
Taako made a few other stops before he finally made he was out of Goldcliff; a few knickknacks, a magnet that said "Goldcliff!" for Magnus, a skirt he simply had to have, a fancy snowglobe that said "Goldcliff Summerfest!" along the bottom with pink 'snow' and the tree at the center, and a nice cookbook for Angus (no biggie, the kid had talent and liked books, that's all, it's not like he went looking for it or anything). The outskirts were almost as crowded as the city center with all the traveling carnivals mister peanut had mentioned, magicians shooting fire and sparks everywhere while crowds ooh-ed and aah-ed and gave up their coin. It almost made Taako homesick, in a weird way.
The sun was setting fast, and it didn't take too much longer to find a secluded spot. He stood in the shadow between an inn and a stable and pressed his finger to the silver bracer on his wrist. It took a couple minutes for the four-seater glass ball showed up, flying fast and halting immediately before Taako with the precision that only magic provided. He pressed his bracer to the glass and an unseen door opened, and he stepped inside and set his shopping in the shotgun seat. He pressed the big button on the inside and the balloon released from the top and inflated, and he began to rise almost immediately.
Not for the first time, Taako wondered if they cast a camouflage spell on these things, because no one seemed to notice him floating overhead as the ball began its return trip to the Bureau. Up in the sky, the circuses below him looked like one massive party, and it didn't seem to have any intention of stopping. Summerfest only lasted a week and damned if the people of Goldcliff weren't making the most of it.
The ball seemed to catch a current as it rose higher, and Taako found himself flying around the city. The taller buildings of Goldcliff in the city proper were all lit up with lanterns and alchemical lights. Even the tallest spire of the Goldcliff Bank and Trust was touched by light. The trip back to the Bureau usually took the better part of an hour, and Taako liked to use the time to catch a power-nap, but as night began to fall he found himself enthralled by the view.
As the ball completed nearly a full circuit of the city, he started to get bored. He reached into his bag and pulled out his sleep mask (his favorite, the one that Merle gave him with "JUST CHILLIN" embroidered on the front) but just as he was going to put it on, there was a series of loud bangs.
They were shooting off fireworks outside the city. Big ones, too—massive blue and green and red starbursts, full spheres of light that flickered and crashed. Taako had a perfect view of all of them.
He couldn't help the laugh that turned into a snort on its way out. "Alright, you two," he said, looking for the tree beneath him. "This is getting a little absurd, don't you think?"
And then he saw the lanterns. Paper ones in every color were being released from the square at the edge of the cliff. They rose fast on the current, faster than perhaps was natural, and it wasn't long before the glass bubble was surrounded by them.
Taako laughed so hard he cried. Just a few tears, of course. Only a couple. But then, he was never very good at goodbyes.