Archive of Our Own ^beta

for one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

- Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

On the backend of autumn, Taako unsticks his heel from the mud of the walk. Overhead, the sky promises slates of rainfall. He heaves a bag across one shoulder, the other hand tugging along a suitcase. The funeral march up the road was wet and deadly; the glum sides of a broken fence tailing his steps. Behind him is Angus, ghostly, nearly transparent, and looking as sullen as he has normally looked this past week.

Before them, rising in a gloom of warped wood, its windows like black eye sockets, is the farmhouse Angus’ grandfather abandoned in death. The winter seems to stick to it, a second skin of chill, the chimney raised and unlit like a frozen off limb. The front doors are dark and unwelcoming. A hollow wind erupts across the surrounding field, turned a somber blue from the evening, and catches Taako’s velvet cloak in a strangled twist.

“Hello , Monster House,” Taako says gravely. He gives a cautionary look behind his shoulder to see that, yes, Angus is still there with his mouth set in a firm, unyielding frown. He’s picking sourly at a hangnail. Taako prompts, “Your grandad lived here?”

Angus shrugs. The collar of his shirt flashes up from the cold wind. “Sure, I guess.”

“It’s pretty spooky,” Taako tries. 

Angus stares blankly at Taako. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Alright, then,” Taako says, half-smile sliding off his face and hitting the muddy walkway. “You’re fucking chipper.”

“This is stupid,” Angus says.

Taako lifts the bag higher on his shoulder and struggles forward, dragging the suitcase behind him. “Look, kid,” he says, “I’m in agreement. I’m on the committee team to renounce this whole stupid idea, but it’s either this, or, I dunno, you live out Oliver Twist and die.”

“Oliver Twist doesn’t die,” Angus responds, his words laced with a bitter, annoyed acid, far too vehement for Taako’s liking, who clenches his jaw and doesn’t glance back.

“What about Gavroche, hm? He dies. Does that work?”

“For what?”

Taako takes a breath, feels it scratch its way down his throat. “For you. Does that work for you?”

“Why can’t I stay with Magnus?”

“Because Magnus is staying with Merle,” Taako says with forced patience. He’s at the front steps; they’re crooked and hungry looking, sunken in the middle from mildew. He stares at them, considering, before magicking the bags up to the porch. It’s wasteful, without the Umbra Staff. Clumsy. The magic is all sludgy along his skin. One of the wheels catches on the last step, slings forward, and hits the deck with a pitiful thump.

“Why can’t I stay with Merle?” Angus asks, now at Taako’s side. He also watches the stairs.

“Because Merle already has two kids and about a town’s worth of rebuilding to do,” Taako says, then asks, “do these look safe?”

Angus is already walking up them and he turns, when he’s reached the porch, and asks, predictably, because this conversation has been repeated upwards of ten times, “Lup and Barry?”

“Literal liches and practically homeless.”

“Lucretia and Davenport?”

“Busy.”

“Carey and Kill—”

Taako moves up the stairs and shoves Angus aside. “Gee, you’re making me feel real fucking wanted, asshole. I’m sorry you’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future, truly I am, but if we could lighten up the endless moaning about it, that’d be a de-fucking-light, kapeesh?”

Angus picks at his hangnail. “Yeah, whatever.”

Taako’s fists tighten and he closes his eyes to swallow back the sudden urge to jump the sparse five feet between them and murder Angus. “Great,” he says instead, through his teeth. “Is there a key or something I’m meant to…” Taako trails off, looking, without much intention, around the porch. There’s a soggy spider web in a corner and an empty hornet nest just above the door.

“I don’t know,” Angus says. He rubs at his nose, glancing wearily up at the spiderweb, then down at his shoe wear he tries to kick off a grass patch stuck to the sole. “Wouldn’t Lucretia have told you?”

Taako skims his fingers along a window’s edge, damp wood chips flicking away. Inside, the farmhouse is shadowy with ominous shrouded furniture. One of the window panes has been busted through.

“Taako.”

“Hm?”

“What did Lucretia say?” Angus asks, pulling off his backpack and dropping it beside him. “About the key.”

“I don’t think she said anything,” Taako says lightly. He reaches for the door handle, “Maybe it’s—”

Taako pulls the front door and they both scramble back as it unceremoniously snaps off its hinges and crashes through the porch paneling, right into the dusty wet foundation beneath. 

“Can you fix that?” Angus says.

Taako sighs, but he holds it together, just barely enough to say dryly, “I know a carpenter.”

Angus sort of scoffs, says, “This place doesn’t have heating. How are we meant to stay warm with the door gone and half the windows broken—”

“I will figure it out—”

“And the roof has fallen through, are you going to figure that out too?” Angus cuts in, brows raised. “What about our beds? Do we even have any blankets or pillows or anything at all—”

“For fuck’s sake, Angus, shut up,” snaps Taako. His voice lashes out, cutting against the winter air like a steaming blade. Angus’ mouth clicks closed. “On and fucking on. It never ends!” Taako exasperates. “‘Can you do this,’ ‘can you do that,’ ‘why can’t I stay on the base,’ ‘where’s Magnus, where’s Merle’ — blah blah blah. I’m sick of it. Can I just have one tiny moment of blissful silence without you bitching and moaning?”

Angus' face pinches, an amalgamation of shock and hurt and anger that strikes Taako with such force it makes him nauseated with shame. Taako presses the heel of his palms into his eyes until he sees neon shapes. “Angus,” he says, slowly, tilting towards worrisomely plaintive, like chipping ice before an avalanche. “Angus— I’m sorry. I’m only, it’s just, we’ve all been—”

Angus grabs the arm of his backpack and scrambles past the fallen door, stumbling briefly on one of the slick window panes, before vanishing inside the mouth of the farmhouse.

Taako closes his eyes and rolls his head back. He’d feel more sorry for Angus if he didn’t already feel terrible for himself. This whole ordeal. This damnation. Lucretia might’ve told him about a key, but he was far too busy, standing in that god awful office, staring at the god awful star-dotted carpet, to even bother listening to her. Take care of Angus, Taako. Get him settled in. He doesn’t have anyone— basically an orphan, Taako. He has nowhere to go .

Taako is stuck as babysitter while everyone: Magnus and Merle and the rest of the seven, all the sloppy remnants of the Bureau, are out reconstructing the mutilated ruins of the planet.

When he opens his eyes, there’s a discernible bat shape hung upside down in the rafters. He groans, slips out his Stone of Farspeech and looks at it, round and smooth in the center of his hand. He rolls it in his palm before deciding that Lup is off doing something mildly more important than, say, upsetting the fragile sensitivity of a middle schooler. Taako stuffs it back into his cloak and hopes, with as much as he can muster, that Angus hasn’t fallen into a hole or been eaten by rats, or something else dreadful. He really tries to muster it.

The smell of rotting wood and animal permeates the inside. Taako is careful to maneuver around mysterious stains on the slackened floor, hands trailing over the sheet-covered furniture. The front doors open into a living area: decrepit couch, cold fireplace, a shadowed staircase leading up to the second level, the hallway above lit by nothing but the eel-slick light from outside. There’s a dismal pinaoforte by the fireplace, beside it, a dusty victrola cabinet. A curving set of doors across from the foyer must lead to the kitchen.

Angus isn’t in sight, but overhead, Taako can hear rummaging and footsteps. The movement sends dust motes down over the room, muffly fog caught in the purple-blue of the setting November sun, casting everything in a haze, like a dream or someplace deep, deep underwater. Taako turns to face the cavity where the front door stood. He rubs a hand down his face and calls up, wearily, like dragging sopping clothes from a freezing river, whatever magic he can. He fixes back the door, now crooked on its hinges, and realigns the fallen porch until his bones twinge with ache and his fingers go numb. That’ll be the remainder of his magic for the day. He slumps his shoulders and slips into the kitchen to start boiling the meager can of soup he brought.

Eventually, Angus comes back down, staircase creaking under him, and they sit in silence at a tiny pine table over their respective bowls. Taako stares at the torn screen door leading into a small sunroom. Angus scrapes his spoon against the bottom of the bowl, but does not eat. 

“Did you pick out your room?” Taako asks through the silence.

“I think there’s something in the attic,” he says.

Taako raises a brow. “A monster?”

“Probably a raccoon,” Angus says, he turns his spoon a little harshly and a bit of soup sloshes over the side of the bowl. Angus mops it up with his shirtsleeve.

Taako looks away from him. He’s so — nothing, all of the sudden. As if someone’s switched a light off or snatched the blinds down. Taako watches remembers the brilliant, exhilarating moment before boarding the Starblaster. How Angus ran from one to the next, grin full on his face, eyes bright and assertive like he had no doubt, like there was no scenario in which Taako, Magnus, and Merle would not come back. Now it’s all this. This being snappish and evasive. This being silent, humorless, sour like a stomped crabapple. Taako isn’t sure what to do with this Angus. They’ve stepped into someplace frozen over. He wants to find Lup, wherever she is, in whatever city her and Barry have been located. He wants it enough it’s like a sickness, tingling up his arms and through his legs, right down to his rabbit heart. He can’t stay here, his body cinched tight and bound, he can’t be made to stay here. 

“I’m done,” Angus says, pushing back his bowl. He stands up and vanishes through the swinging kitchen doors and up the stairs.

Taako collects the dishes and places them in the sink, both still full and untouched. Above the sink, through the window, the kitchen looks out into a gray moor. The silvery line of the ocean churns restlessly in the distance, dashing itself against cliff faces just barely visible from the evening fog. A spider the size of a dust mite crawls across the pane and Taako, feeling spiteful, blots it out with his thumb. 

Later that evening, he finds Angus in a lonely little room with a stripped bed frame. He’s gutted his backpack and several books are scattered in a corner, alongside a pile of unfolded clothes, and his B.O.B. gauntlet. It’s rolled over to reveal its split side: a jagged, unfair cut from when it was removed. Taako doesn’t even remember where his went and the sight of it twists his stomach.

He sets down the pillow and blankets he was carrying to scoop the gauntlet up. “What are you doing with this?” Taako says, spinning it between his fingers. The silver flashes in the cold darkness. 

Angus rushes up from where he’d been organizing his Caleb Cleveland collection and makes a go for it. Taako raises it higher with a goading uh uh uh!

“Give it back, Taako,” Angus hisses, jumping, and he just nearly snags it, but Taako takes a few hurried steps back. “I’m serious.” He crosses his arms. “It’s mine.”

“It was,” Taako says. “It’s trash now.”

“It’s not trash.”

“Kid, it doesn’t do anything anymore. It’s just, like,” Taako tosses it in his hand, then shrugs and throws it to Angus, who awkwardly catches it against his chest, “a bit of jewelry now.”

Angus turns away and stuffs the gauntlet back into his bag. “What do you even want?”

“Nothing,” Taako bites. “Just giving you some blankets so you don’t freeze your skinny ass off; you’re welcome.”

Angus looks to the blankets, a set of thick quilted covers Taako was able to shove into his suitcase.

“I can do a heating charm, you know,” Angus says, giving Taako a very serious glower. 

“Okay, big man.” Taako begins to leave, says with dripping, indifferent sarcasm, “don’t burn the fucking house down.”

“Whatever,” is Angus’ carried response through the door.

Taako, under his breath, grounds out, “Pick a new word.”

He finds the master bedroom at the end of the hall. The mattress’ stitching is coming undone, spilling out in feathery tufts. The curtains are moth eaten and the wardrobe, once he removes the white sheet from it, stands with a lacquer of moroseness, like something dying, that Taako hastily covers it up again. He lays out his own thin blankets, scrunching up loose clothes for a pillow, and stares blankly at the ceiling. He rolls the Stone across his chest, and after a lost staring contest with the suspicious hole above him, brings it up to his face. He jumps halfway out of his skin when it gives an alarming buzz. Across the interface, thrumming, is Kravitz, a scrolling stream of KravtizKravitzKravitz and something like a flight of birds takes off in Taako’s chest. Breath caught somewhere in his throat, he swipes the call away and lies back down. 

A cold rush of wind carves through the farmhouse, its empty rooms shuttering like a starved stomach. From somewhere above his head, in the splintered black hole, there’s a pair of sharp yellow eyes.

Taako wakes with a jolt, stomach tunneling through the floorboards.

His lungs are lodged in his throat. There’s the taste of sharp, stinging blood in the corners of his jaw, a buzzing in his ears. Panic — hot white and explosive — sparks behind his eyes, sleep slipping like water through his fingers, and he’s grasping around his clothes-pillow until he finds the smooth line of the Stone. 

With slippery fingers he dials; there’s a hushing, waves against rocks, from somewhere outside, but the distance from his body and the room is infinite. It stretches, yawns and unfolds in a swimming, dazed-out line. Taako tastes the dream in the very center of his chest; hears the emptiness, sees the fluorescent shapes, molten, against the back of his skull. Something about a road, or maybe a dark pool; something about a twig-snap flinch inside his gut, a whisper, a miserable dripping and a cave mouth. Something dead, or forgotten or maybe—

“Hello ?”

Taako swallows a gallon of air, hand to his sweating face.

“Taako? Idiot,” Lup says, adoringly. “Idiot brother? Hello?”

“Lup,” says Taako and it must not sound very recipcorally adoring because there’s a long, dangerous pause.

“Taako?” Her voice has lowered, the Stone catches it like a moth, fuzzy.

“It’s fine,” he says, vision collecting again, dream slithering backwards down his spine. The room is cold. It smells like rot and dirt. Taako’s heart slows; he feels childish. “I just had.” He stops there, watches the large window above the bed, how the moon curves into a yellow-toothed grin over the sky.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Taako—”

“Where are you? Is Barry there— where are you?”

“Barry is here, he’s. Barry is, hold on.” There’s a shuffling, the muffled sound of speaking, quiet and intimate. What time is it? He feels childish. Then Lup’s voice again, more clear, “We were sleeping. We’re at, uh, God— forget the name. Place by Goldcliff. Are you okay, seriously?”

“I’m fine,” Taako says. He closes his eyes, falls back against his bed. “Weird dream, is all.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What sort of weird dream?” Lup asks. She’s careful, knowing. Kid-gloves voice; sad brother. 

“I don’t remember it,” he says. He doesn’t. He does. He’s always swung between those two polar points. 

“How was the big move-in day?” she prompts after a moment.

“Alright,” he says. The moon casts a sickly glow across him.

There’s a beat of silence where he hears her breathe and he feels a coppery want slice through his abdomen. He misses her, like crazy, like mad; he misses her like he’ll forget her tomorrow, which is the point. The crux of all his dreams and the foundation of his body and the slow promise steeping into every new day. Lup is fading like mist, always, somehow. There are times when he’ll forget the crinkle in the corner of her eye or her favorite meal, and he’ll have to walk his thoughts backwards to recall them, to remind himself that he knows. That she’s real. Sometimes, in the mirror, he’ll only see himself. It’s a sort of guilt like no other.

“Well,” Lup says, leadingly. “Well. This was a— this was a chat.”

“Okay,” Taako says, his voice just above a whisper, as if it might tear if he speaks louder. 

“Taako,” she begins.

“I’ll see—talk to you later,” he cuts in with a clearing of his throat. “Sorry about the late-night call, but to my credit, I wasn’t aware you became such a wet rag. Did you enjoy your warm milk and evening television before bed, darling?”

“Clever,” Lup says. “I’m in stitches. Tell the kiddo I said hi.”

He says, “Bye, goofus.”

“Dingus.” And the call ends.

Taako sets the Stone down. His hands are still a bit clammy. He waits, lets the dust of the previous day settle around him, before he grouses himself up and meanders down towards the kitchen. It’s pre-dawn, cold and still. The hallway from the bedroom creaks beneath his socked feet, swallows him forward, eyes of old portraits follow him. He pauses at Angus’ door. The crack of it is dark, unrelenting. The handle flashes against his outstretched palm. He hesitates, feels sorry, and decides against it.

He misses Lup. It’s new and frightening; it’s a decades worth of a feeling, stored up in the lost corridors of his mind until it broke loose from the Voidfish’s bind and jumped out at him. And it’s so much — the missing. It’s so much and so many and he isn’t sure where to put it, how to hold it, how to soothe the static electricity shocks it gives him whenever he brushes against it. There is Lup in the crease of the walls; in the jingling of a store front; in the passing laughter of a stranger. There she is in the doll binding of Taako’s heart; teen-tiny, imperceptible, present and again, again he thinks: there you are, there you are, oh how could I have forgotten?

how could I have forgotten any of it, any of them where is the line that separates Lup, or Magnus or Merle or Barry or Davenport or — he misses all of them, all the time, in a way that feels unsalvable like how a mouth misses a tooth in your palm or someone misses a train just departing. He misses them, they’re right there, he misses them. 

In the kitchen, the shaky sun is spilling over the horizon from the window. 

He’ll go shopping at the market they passed down the road. It’ll be easy. He won’t call Lup. It’ll be easy.

In the yellow linoleum aisle, Angus is saying, “It’s going to rain,” while Taako grabs two cereal boxes from the shelf. Something from the tone of his voice makes Taako aware Angus is annoyed at being here; or it might have been something about his insistent complaining on the walk down, or maybe his very telling do I have to? when Taako offered the trip up.

“Don’t worry yourself,” Taako says absently. “I won’t let you dissolve.”

The town is small. It’s a village, really, with one pub and one store and a pharmacy that puts aspirin and potions of healing on the same counter. The buildings are half-baked and slumping, pavement slick with rain. A few people recognize Taako, stare openly, but he’s awful and he’s tired and he doesn’t smile, so they turn away. It only makes him angry. Makes him more aware of how silent and lonely everything is.

Their cart is full of miscellaneous items — spreadable butter, bread, macaroni boxes; conditioner and shampoo, stain remover; a carton of milk and a pack of half-off canned beer with a brand name Taako has never heard of. Angus trails listlessly behind him, sometimes taking his glasses off to rub against his sweater or else squint up at the flickering fluorescent lights.

“What do you want to do today?” Taako asks, catching the cart as one wobbly wheel decenters its course. 

Angus shrugs. “I dunno. Nothing.”

Taako says, “Fine. You can help me unpack, then.” Taako catches Angus’ eyes roll and respectfully ignores it, instead he says, “What else do you want?”

Angus looks between the aisles and shrugs again. He rubs a knuckle at some sleep in the corner of his eye. “I don’t know.”

“I’m not coming back here again because you suddenly remember something,” Taako warns.

“O kay ,” Angus says. “I told you, I don’t want anything.”

Taako shakes his head, turning the cart towards the tills. “Let’s go.”

“I can walk down here by myself, by the way. I don’t even know why you wanted me to come,” Angus mutters, face set.

“I didn’t want you to come,” Taako says through his teeth. “I asked you to come and you came , so don’t bitch at me.”

“Okay, well, if I need something I can just walk down here by myself. It’s not a big deal,” Angus presses. “There’s always, like, a thing with you.”

Taako snaps to him. “What does that mean? A thing with me. I asked if you wanted to come with me to town, you said yes, we went. There’s no thing.”

Angus shrugs and Taako has to look away in case he combust in this very tiny, very run-down grocery store and paint it red with his anger, with his bleeding annoyance.

“Nevermind,” Angus says.

Taako starts layering things on the conveyor; the attendant averts her eyes. “If you’re so put off,” Taako says, beneath his breath, “about walking around a store with me, Angus, then how about you go wait outside. Kick some rocks, vandalize an alleyway. Whatever it is you want.”

“I don’t want anything,” Angus says. “Stop saying—”

“Go,” Taako snaps. “Before I make a crime scene.”

Angus scowls and stalks off, the front door swung open and closed behind him with a disgruntled bell sounding in his wake. Taako sighs through his nose and helps the attendant bag. He levels the grocery bags up his arms and pockets his loose coins.

Outside, it’s raining. Soft rain, fluttering against his cheeks as he scans from one sloping cobbled building to the next until he spots coiled black hair and a brown, too-big sweater. Angus, staring at his feet, scuffing his tennis shoe against the ground. 

Taako whistles, harsh, and Angus gives a jolt, head snapping up. Angus ducks his head as Taako meets him halfway.

He doesn’t wait for a greeting before he unloads the bags into Angus’ arms.

The next week passes. The sun makes a turn around the sky. Angus eats the food Taako throws together. Taako finds a rat in the shower and opens the windows to air the house, only to shut them again when the rain doesn’t lessen, but pours and pours in floods, seeps through the cracked ceiling and dampens the molding wood until everything smells like decay. Taako gets sick and sniffly around the fourth day. He sleeps for hours and rarely moves. He buys a mattress for Angus; they don’t speak. He removes the sheets from the furniture; they don’t speak. Dust suffocates the air; they don’t speak. The farmhouse looms in shadows and the rain sinks into Taako’s bones.

One afternoon, he presses a long finger into a key of the piano and watches Angus slip up the stairs, like a ghost, like a premonition of a boy, and wonders, vaguely and half-heartedly and with a numbed-out, comatosed fear, where Lup is. He should call her again, have a proper conversation. One that isn’t so slanted. One with momentum, with fuel in the engine, emitting sparks.

He uses his knuckles to crunch a line of ivory keys and the sound, a half musical scream, scatters across the dank living space. He scoops out his Stone of Farspeech and dials. 

Magnus’ voice comes charging through; there’s something very large happening around him that sounds threatening. “What’s up— can you hear me?”

“I can hear you,” Taako says. He kneels down to inspect the floor and, yes, those are mice droppings. He gathers himself into the peeling leather bench of the piano. “Are you tearing up the world? What’s going on?”

“Construction!” Magnus says. “Or mostly. It’s, like, reverse construction. We’re tearing down the old, beat-up shit. Laying a new foundation; it’s very metaphorical. The new world, etcetera etcetera. Merle, he keeps — well, he’s there and then he’s fucking not, you know? I’m always searching and searching for him, right? Are you there?”

“Yup.” Taako presses his palm to his forehead, wants to hang up and sleep. Magnus talks so loud; he takes up so much space, so much energy, so much of what Taako has little to give. It sounds brilliant and bright on the other line, as if Magnus has wrangled the sun, as if Taako is hearing him from far down a dark, deserted hole.

“So he’s gone. I’m upset. It’s very laborious being on a construction site. Anyway, Merle’s been — you know what he’s been doing?— he’s tail-gating the construction then almost nailing folks’ thumbs to posts and whatnot. Total safety hazard.”

Taako hums. He should start lunch. He thinks about making sandwiches, but no, even the idea is too exhausting. It makes him bone-weary, now, even the thought. He’ll just reheat something in the oven.

“I’m hanging up,” says Taako.

“What? Wait— how’s Ango? How’s the house?” Magnus jumps in.

“They’re both charming, but, really, I should be going,” Taako says. He closes his eyes. “Lots to do.”

“Oh, for sure,” Magnus says. “Well, you know, maybe when everything’s set up, you can throw a house-warming party? Yeah? We can bring you gifts — I have a Steely Dan record.”

“Oh, good, we can smash it in celebration.” Taako pulls himself to his feet, steps around the mice droppings, tries not to feel dizzy and tired and bored. 

“Talking Heads?”

“I’m not throwing a house-warming party,” Taako says, sharp. The ends of himself feel fried. A circuit blown; his breath a match stick against his throat.

“You like Talking Heads,” Magnus argues. “What’s that thing— the, kiss-kissy?”

“Qu’est-ce que c’est,” Taako scowls. “And it isn’t my house to warm, so, no. No party, no gifts, no— no, nothing. Fuck, you know, I was told to get the kid into the house. Check. My work is done. It’s over; mission accomplished, gold-fucking-star. How long am I meant to play house?”

There’s the sound of wind on Magnus’ end, then, “Maybe, you know, well — it’s only been a week, right? You’ve got cabin fever, is all.”

“Magnus, I’m serious,” Taako says. “I’m pulling out my hair here. The walls are speaking to me. It’s all very Jack Torrance.”

“You just need to spruce up the place! You know, invest in a rug,” Magnus says earnestly. “A really well-placed rug makes a home, I’m telling you.”

“This isn’t my home,” says Taako through his teeth. 

Magnus doesn’t say anything. Then, “You can be a real fucking hardass sometimes, Taako.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean,” Magnus says, “I don’t hear from you for weeks and suddenly you call, to what? What do you want me to say to that? I’m trying to do my job—”

“You’re job?” Taako rolls his eyes. “What, your litter-picker duties?”

“It’s just so typical,” Magnus says and he doesn’t bite, not at the bait, not at Taako, but speaks with a sudden, forceful knowledge that can only be wielded after a century. It frightens Taako; it makes him want to lie down. “You’re always your own island. Everything’s a fight.”

Taako presses a palm to the piano keys, glances up the stairs, tries to reign his annoyance in. If Magnus were here; if Taako could only be away, in movement, doing something . “This isn’t my — my area of expertise ,” Taako says. “Merle, for God's sake — and listen to this, you know I’ve hit a low point if it comes to this: Merle is far better equipped than me.”

“Taako,” Magnus says leadingly, in that off-hand way of his, like he’s balancing on a tightrope between honesty and comfort.

“Magnus,” Taako says.

“Lucretia said—”

Taako cuts in, tone dark and warning, “You know what, fine. Fine — fucking enjoy yourself. Have a blast. And you know,” he adds, vicious, a serrated knife, “I don’t see why it’s my issue that nobody wants him.”

“Taako,” Magnus says with warning, but Taako slams the Stone down on the top of the piano.

When he looks up, Angus has appeared at the bottom of the stairs; hand still on the railing, his face a storm. He swivels around and races back up. Taako breathes through his nose, biting through his cheek, as upstairs a door slams and shakes the ceiling into a torrent of dust. 

The farmhouse sits at the top of an incline between a forest that leads down to the village and a spread of moors that tapper out into barren cliffs, bit at by a seaside. 

November suspends itself here. It hovers, mercurially, like a bad spell, over the gambrel roof; drips from the gutters in half-frozen spikes; shuffles itself under the hatched wraparound porch. The foundation creaks and yawns against the wind. Angus wanders the quiet, lonely halls. Taako catches him at the edge of his eyesight, haunting the stretch of the foyer, flitting inside the darkened sunroom, moving around in the silence of the abandoned study. No heating charm is full or angry enough to chase off the chill of the farmhouse, as if set in rigor mortis, slowly declining into itself like a sunken chest. Taako locks himself behind the dark, grim face of his bedroom door, so as not to see Angus. Not to watch him and his gray, frightening shadow drag around the empty spaces. Guilt pecks at his shoulder, supplicates itself with every drip-drip of the leaking roof, but Taako stays in bed and he does not eat and he tries to sleep. He makes a compulsive study of the window above the headboard: a ticking countdown. The grainy sun douses itself in the sealine. It drags its way back up like a zombie, a beam of light, a rotting hand from the horizon floor. And it does it again, and again, ceaselessly reaching at the somber, uncaring sky.

Taako sits in his room or he paces the length of it. He watches the chipped moon at night and listens to the heavy beat, like a horse galloping, of the tide roll in, roll out, roll in. Sometimes, as if in a trance, he will wander down the hallway for something to do, something to keep his body in movement. The length of it will stretch, fill with doors, and the tiny sliver of golden light beneath Angus’ room will flicker, an anxious candle on its last lick of wax, then blacken, and the faces on the walls — Angus’ ancestors, old oil paintings of men and women with umber brown skin and jaws like lances — will move from their frames. And something will rattle through the house and he’ll jump from his bed to find he was asleep. Breath hot in his chest. Body cold with sweat. His eyes rolling in their sockets, frantic: wardrobe, shut door, gray window — until his dream will flatten into nothing but the remnants of fear. 

Then, Lucretia visits. From the sky, a white-blind glass sphere, a fallen chip of space. It wakes him from something foggy and with crusty eyes he stumbles out of the room, sees Angus already turning the corner down the stairs. He’s dressed. Watery sunlight pools through the windows once Taako reaches the first floor, which means it’s morning or maybe noon, it’s hard to tell when the days condense into the same ball of wet air and rainfall. 

“What was that?” Taako says, clears his throat, as Angus peers through a window in the living room. A cold wind brushes through and Taako shivers, tugs the blanket he brought with him around his shoulders. 

“It’s Lucretia,” Angus says. He lets the ratty curtain fall shut. “She’s coming up the walk.”

Taako’s heart turns itself around in his chest. “It’s who? What is she—”

A knock at the door. Angus glances at Taako, quickly and maybe unnoticeable to anyone else, but Taako catches it and feels a defensive slice across his abdomen. “Well, open it,” he hisses and Angus moves towards the door while Taako tosses the blanket onto the couch and tries to look presentable and not like he was just pulled from a river and left to dry. He combs his fingers through his hair; it’s knotted, it’s very badly knotted. 

The door swings open, a square of light, and in steps Lucretia. Taako goes still; he can’t look at her, he can’t bear it — he is the size of an ant, he is pinched tightly. She gives a cursory glance around. Taako is made conscious of the torn curtains, the fireplace with the mantel fallen into it, the couch with its clawfoot sunken in the floorboard. A mouse dances across her foot and Lucretia takes a step back, one dark brow raised.

“Out of the blue. What a surprise,” Taako says in his well-practiced, indifferential way. But his mouth is dry and the words turn suddenly accusatory, like a condemnation. what do you want, what do you want now, his mind flashes. thief, a swarm of locus memories clashing forward behind his eyes. 

Lucretia straightens out her cloak, a dark, velvety ensemble with gold buttons to the collared throat. “Hello, Taako,” she says, nods at Angus with a small smile, “Angus.”

“Hi, Madam,” Angus says. Taako picks at a bleeding nail to douse his flash of irritation. liar , he tries to grasp at his thoughts, what does she want now, what will she take next, hold them down, how can you stand in a room with her? tie them up and pack them away.

“Well,” Lucretia says, following a pregnant conversational pause.

“Do you want, er,” Angus says into the silence. He shrugs. “Tea?”

Lucretia bows her head. “That would be lovely, yes.”

They walk to the kitchen. The floorboard whines.

Taako’s hands are too shaky, mind revolving around some point he can’t see, that he fails at a levitation cantrip and a mug slams itself onto the roof of the cabinet. He doesn’t turn around, back stiff, but instead draws the iron kettle to the stove, grabs the tea bags from a dirty grouted corner. “It’s only chamomile,” he says to the kettle. “No—” black tea, Taako finishes silently, uneasily. A memory sparks behind his eyes. Polished marble table. Lucretia is reading by a floor-to-ceiling window as darkness and space swim past. Taako is placing a hot mug beside her book, patting her shoulder as he passes. He feels the ship’s movement in his navel. A funny phantom recognition as the fabric of time crunches up like a ruffled ribbon and Taako is there, at the Starblaster, and here, in the kitchen. A steady migraine is building behind his eyes.

“Oh, that’s fine,” Lucretia says from somewhere down a tunnel. 

Taako sets down three mugs. Finds himself sitting across from Lucretia and Angus, off-set and othered, like a troubled school boy, and when hasn’t Lucretia made him feel as such? Like something in need of fixing, of straightening-out, or maybe he’s thinking of the training head at I.P.R.E. who snapped Lup’s hand with a ruler and made her cry. Memories can be an unfolding thing, he isn’t sure where one ends and another begins. After his memory came back, it was as if he fell through a crack of earth. A deep ravine that blurred any sense of connection, all the years and years of everything unraveling into a vanished ground and the swoop of his stomach. Lucretia only emphasizes how little he’s held onto anything, scrambling at every minute detail of a century, until he’s just the plummet, just the endless fall.

And maybe that’s why, with nothing else to grasp, Taako latches onto his anger. He watches Lucretia bring the mug to her lips and says, cuttingly, “Are you here for something? Or are we still under your surveillance, Madam Director?”

Angus says, “Stop—”

Lucretia sets down the mug unevenly. The sound of it, ceramic against soft wood, jumps out in Taako’s chest, revs the engine of his heart until it’s driving into his throat. “It’s all right, Angus. Taako’s comment is well-served—”

“Oh brother.” Taako rolls his eyes. “Don’t act so wounded. If you needed a fresh audience for your suffering martyrhood, I’d’ve found you Mary fucking Magdalene.”

Angus slams his own cup down, scraping his chair back from the table in a rush. “You’re the one acting all wounded,” he snaps. “You won’t even let her speak!”

“Angus,” Lucretia says carefully.

Taako glances at his cuticles as Angus leaves the kitchen in a storm, clattering up the stairs. “He’s learned several new tricks since you last saw him,” Taako notes. “Primarily, the benefits of a dramatic exit.”

“You’ve certainly rubbed off on him,” offers Lucretia, but Taako does not reciprocate her moment of fondness. She clears her throat and says, “Angus is actually what I’ve come here to talk about, in fact.”

Taako traces a finger around the rim of his mug; heat wafting into his skin. He doesn’t say anything, brows raised. Something scratches in the back of his mind. She’s here to take Angus away. She’s realized her mistake.

“I know this wasn’t your ideal role in the reconstruction effort,” Lucretia starts.

“What do you mean? I’m a regular Donna Reed.”

Lucretia breathes in and touches her mouth with three fingers, stares at the warped tabletop, before saying, “It’s an unfortunate circumstance that Angus’ family relations are so far and few between. From what I’ve gathered, he had been, ostensibly, on his own for the better part of two years before being inaugurated. And considering his attachment to you, I thought the best course of—”

Taako scoops the three mug handles between his fingers and stands. They’re still full and the tea spills across the dirty tile as he drops them in the sink. He says, “You’ve explained all this.” He turns the tap on, dark, ugly water pouring from the faucet until it turns a clear white. “What I’m struggling to understand,” he continues, “is why you’re still in the control seat. You say jump, and what, we follow hook-line-and-sinker into your next botched plan?”

There’s a lengthy pause while Taako stares out the window. Over the hills, the clouds are smeared like charcoal. “I know you’d prefer to be out in the action,” Lucretia says, but Taako laughs, sharp like it’s being dragged from him. 

“Look, all I’m saying is there isn’t any reason I can’t ‘be out in the action’,” he says. He turns to watch her. The edge of the counter bites into his palms as he leans back. “Skip town. The kid can handle himself.”

“I don’t think you’d do that.”

“You seem to be pretty sure of myself, Creesh.” There’s a special emphasis he places on her name: acidic, overly familiar. “Any other secret, self-revelations that you’ve kept from me?”

Lucretia stands up, flattens her hands across her cloak, a nervous tick and there — again, the tunneling memory, elongating backwards like a hypnotic spiral. Lucretia in the I.P.R.E. training room; blood-red sweats; her face, her young face, sharp with perspiration and triumph, flattened hands down her slacks. A frantic something tightens a fist around his heart, his throat. 

“School,” Lucretia says and how has he never stopped to think of how old she’s gotten? It makes him realize his glamour is down. What must he look like to her? Unstable, fucked-up, incapable. “He’ll be starting late, but he’s precocious enough to catch up with the others. There’s a schoolhouse down the way, in town. I’m sure you’ve seen it.”

Taako blinks. “Sorry, wait — school? You want him in school?”

She raises a brow. “No,” she says and steeples her fingers. Something catches her eye and she glances at it; he knows she’s looking at the gathering of cobwebs in the wall corner. “I only came to suggest it as an option for Angus. A little normalcy might be good for him.” They match each other’s gaze. Lucretia opens her mouth, aborts, then says, “Thank you for the tea.”

She walks herself out from the swinging doors of the kitchen. As they close, Taako catches one glimpse of the front doors turning into cold, gray air, before she’s gone. He’s antsy and unsettled, and he thinks about calling Lup, but what would he say to her — that he’s miserable? That he’s needy, that almost all his dreams involve her, and almost all of them end before she’s back safe in his line of sight? That he’s angry at her, for eloping with Barry to a place he can’t follow, and angry with the rest for leaving him here, in this farmhouse with its nothing?

What would she say to any of that? What would she think of him threatening to leave; a tactless jibe at Lucretia, but a truthful one, nonetheless? He’s done it before, countless times, with and without Lup. It’s an urge, like an animal caught in a trap, limb between its teeth. Taako does not stay still. Taako does not sit and wait. Taako does not go back to normal. If he stays here, he will die.

But his Stone is upstairs. Angus is upstairs. And the guilt of that alone is enough to capsize any desire to leave. The loathing he would feel for himself. The shame he would wear, like a second skin. 

He tries to summon his glamour, soft-gossamer against his face, but his magic recedes as a tide does, and he stays pallid and blemished.

Shadows stretch against the hallway as Taako knocks gently at Angus’ door before creaking it open. “Hey,” he says, uncomfortably, “buddy.”

Angus, seated on his bed, and fiddling with something in his lap, gives Taako a well-deserved look. It’s sullen and terrible. The past month they have not spoken. There’s been an exchange of food. The sound of doors shutting. The cracked groan of pipes. Taako has started to wonder who is haunting who: if it’s possible he’s imagined Angus, if Angus has imagined him, if the farmhouse has captured them in its splintered fingers and taken them hostage, horror-style.

They don’t know what to do with each other. Taako would rather cocoon himself in his room, but his nerves are still popping with excess anxiety and memory, so he’s here instead: in the arch of Angus’ room, an intruder. 

“Lucretia left,” Taako says. He steps through the threshold. Angus’ collection of books are strewn across the floor. His sheets are piled on his bed.

“Oh good,” Angus says, “Your pitchfork and torch came in handy, then? Did you make sure to sanitize the places she touched?”

“Oh-kay,” Taako whistles. “Got it, understood. But you know, she’s— she’s not exactly.” Taako scowls. “You know what? It doesn’t matter; it’d take some emotional intelligence to understand—”

“Emotional intelligence?” Angus scoffs. “You’re kidding, you acted like a complete toddler—”

“I’m not gonna be lectured by you, Angus,” Taako says, low enough that it cuts through Angus’ complaints. “And you’re going to school.”

Angus bolts up. “What?”

“You’re going to school. I’m registering you tomorrow and, no—” Taako holds up a hand just as Angus opens his mouth, and he feels it, the simmering, shiny static, like warping metal, dazzle between his fingers. He shakes out his hand, effacing the sudden pins and needles. His frustration is like a hot rod. Lucretia, his out of fritz magic, the farmhouse, Angus. “No,” he says, slower, more careful. “You’re going. This house has enough doom and gloom without your sorry self stumbling around in it twenty-four-seven, seven days a week.”

“Fine,” Angus bites out. “Not like you’ll notice that I’m gone.”

A rattle-snake lurch of a flinch passes through Taako. “And that,” he points to the bed, to the broken gauntlet Angus had been messing with when he came in. “Throw that out. You’re not a part of the Bureau; you’re not a part of anything, anymore.”

Angus face folds. “Get out,” he says, snatching the gauntlet from the covers.

“And your little shtick back there?” Taako continues, the words crawling their way up his throat like bile. “Your tantrum? Really fucking uncool, man — what do you want her to think—”

“Getoutgetoutgetout—”

Taako throws up his hands. “That I can’t do this — that she had to drop in and tell me how to handle—”

“You don’t! You don’t,” Angus snaps. “You don’t know how to do anything — all you do all day is sleep and complain— the front doors aren’t even properly connected to the house!”

Taako’s defense flashes inside him. “I’m working on that—”

Angus rolls his eyes, jaw working. “Whatever, sure you are. You’re too busy working on how to get rid of me.”

A cold, thickening silence accumulates between them. Taako feels the pressure of the door behind him, an omnipresence tickling at his neck. 

“I heard you talking to Magnus,” Angus says, his voice gone all tight and choking. His hands iron-gripped around the gauntlet. “You can just go if it’s so horrible. I don’t need a babysitter. I don’t need you. You might as well not even be here. You’re useless. I hate you.”

Taako fumbles for the handle, rips the door open. “Real nice, Angus,” he forces out.

“And I’m not,” says Angus, breath coming fast and frantic. “Not going to school.”

“Well, I’m not your fucking keeper, am I?” Taako spits, slamming the door shut behind him.

Behind the door, as he strides to the master, Angus calls, vicious, “And I like Lucretia!”

Taako very nearly stomps his foot, letting out a frustrated growl, and yells back: “Congratulations!”

He storms into the master bedroom. His eyes stare out through the window. He had meant to pitch the school idea to Angus. He didn’t need Lucretia micromanaging his affairs; he could take care of Angus if he wanted, but.

 Angus was meant to like learning, wasn’t he? Wasn’t that his whole thing?

But now, mind swirling with anger, Taako feels he doesn’t know anything at all about Angus. Angus is just a boy he met on a train: sure, a goofy and endearing boy, but a strange and alone one, who attached himself to the coattails of the B.O.B. He thinks back to several months ago, after returning from Lucas’ ship, and seeing Angus, half-asleep in the corner, give the trio a cheesy thumbs-up. He tries to reconcile this image with the Angus living in this farmhouse: not half so little, not half so innocuous and inconsequential. 

Taako presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, watches sluggish shapes blur past his vision. Something about Angus — about his resolve and stubbornness, his bottled fury corked tight inside the thin line of his mouth — makes Taako want to scream. Want to take Angus by the boyish frames of his shoulders and shake him, hard, and say: I know this, I know you, you poor thing, you’re me! you’re me!

When Taako removes his hands, they’re slick with hot tears, and he makes an aggravated sound at the back of his throat, roughly wiping the wet from his cheeks. Useless, cowardly, stuck.

Taako curls himself up on his mattress and thinks, for the first time in a long while, of Kravitz. Their kiss, caught between the end of the world and a heat-of-the-moment love confession. Taako, then, was full of rejoice and memories like a flood of sunlight down his throat, and what could he do but laugh into the mouth of this stranger in helpless relief? He did not count on living very long afterwards; he had never counted on anything, really. He let Kravitz go. He returned the Umbra Staff to Lup. He sleeps and complains. The solidified mess of every relationship he’s touched — Lup, Lucretia, Angus, Kravitz — lies heavy in the base of his chest. At times, it feels as though Taako doesn’t know how to hold anything, but only gives things up out of fear he can not keep them anyway. 

It was easier, he thinks, not knowing anything. When he only had to be sure of himself. Now, there’s all these doors he opened when he thought there was still time to close them, and they’re waiting to be chosen or shut or bulldozed. But Taako just wants to lie in bed and not worry about any of it because he does not worry, he never has, and now that the worry is there, lichen grown along the rungs of his ribs, he isn’t sure what to do about it other than let it disperse across his body until he’s another rotten feature of this dying farmhouse.

Taako wakes up hours later. His eyes burn from the strain of crying and he rubs at them, frowning as he props himself up on one elbow to look around the darkened room. A cold shaft of wind shutters itself through the creaky window, pushing at the closed door until the hinges let out a troubled squeak and settle more firmly against the frame. From somewhere above, the roof groans; something skitters across the ceiling.

Taako lugs himself up into a sitting position and his stomach gives an upset gurgle. He hasn’t eaten at all. Through the window, the sky is purple and streamy, and he surmises that it’s very early the next day. He drags a hand down his face. You don’t know how to do anything.

In the hallway, he braces himself for something surreal — like the length doubling or portrait figures speaking — to know if he’s dreaming, but the hallway remains stagnant and the portraits, lit by nothing but their own shiny oil, say nothing. He passes by Angus’ room, past the empty study and the dirty, grouted bathroom. His own deep shadow walks before Taako, a circus mirror of proportions tendrilling out, spilling down the steep stairs.

In the kitchen, he watches himself in the window reflection while he brings the kettle to the tap. He’s pale and hollowed out. Deep blue trenches press thumb-sized marks beneath his eyes and his hair, dull against the morning blue, is cowlicked and tangled around his face. He reaches up with two fingers, as if taking his pulse, and places them beneath his jaw. A half-done glamour beautifies him. The points of his ears sharpen; the sleep lines against his cheek fade; everything lifts, subtly. Yet there’s still something off and other about his eyes: a hard creature, a very self-sufficient creature. A terribly tired creature. Taako drops his hand, the glamour slips off, and he looks away to set the kettle on the stove and turns the dial to high heat. 

He wanders back up the stairs in a sleepy daze. He waits outside Angus’ door, debating, before wrapping his knuckles on the wood. When he doesn’t respond, Taako remembers how early it is and eases it open. Dawn slips in, cutting across the floor and Taako’s eyes follow the line through the books, the crumpled papers, up to the bed. The empty bed. It does not happen suddenly, but when it does, his fear is like a body hitting pavement. Nothing but horror and shock and the flash of blood behind his eyes.

Hand still stretched behind him to the door, his eyes scan the length of the room. “Angus?” he asks, half-whispered. 

He steps further in. The window is shut. He kneels down; nothing under the bed. A quick-catching panic fires up his body. Frenzied, Taako throws open the dresser drawers thoughtlessly. Scant clothes. In his haste, he knocks over a Rubix cube and it clatters to the floor, making him jump.

“Angus?” he says again, louder, ears straining.

With wide strides, Taako exits the room, stopping in the middle of the hallway. “Angus?”

The word seems to dissolve in the chilled air; his breath puffs out in a fog. “Angus,” he says again, soft, hands finding their way to his hair and pulling at the roots.

I don’t need you.

A high-pitched scream lances through the house, ear-splitting, and Taako whips to it, clambers down the stairs, fear clutching at his throat, when he remembers: the kettle. Boiled water. But his breath has already doubled; in-out in-out in-out, a knife twist, ripped from him. His vision goes a funny, off-color and the taste in his mouth dries, sticky with discomfort. His thoughts turn cannibalistic. Blood-thirsty. Angus, gone, Angus, too busy working on how to get rid of me. Panic, like a pack of wild dogs, circle. Jowl-licking, slobbering.

Look what you did.

He tears across the living room, ripping aside curtains; he throws open the door to the sunroom, finds only the world looking back, as if he’s trapped in a translucent eyeball. Dead yellow plants crunch beneath his bare feet.

Look how easily you lose things:

Back into the kitchen; the water pops and hisses in the kettle. Taako shoves it off the stove, jumps when it scalds his palm. He calls for Angus again, but it’s a distorted sound, like he’s forgotten how to work his mouth. 

Glamour Springs.

Back on the second landing, Angus’ room is still empty. He goes to the next door, tosses it open on its hinges. 

Lup.

He rips the curtains of the bathtub down. Spiders crawl out of the drain. The mirror, a cobweb crack through it, sends his image into fragments. He doesn’t stop to look.

Angus.

Taako, vision sharpening into a thimble point, startles at a noise from his bedroom, something muffled. He uses the back of his hand to swipe messily at his cheeks, says shakily, “Angus?”

He pushes the door wider, steps inside, dreary morning sunlight falls across the bed. He hears it again and swings his head around. A blur of orange crashes from the hole in the ceiling.

“Shit,” Taako says, jumping back as something scrambles at him, barreling past his legs and out the door. It skids across the floorboard, spitting, and Taako’s eyes follow it out the hallway where he sees Angus, grocery bag in one hand, framed in the center. 

“I told you something was in the attic,” he says dryly. He points down the hall and says, “Cat.”

Taako brings a hand to cover his mouth and very slowly sits down on the floor to cradle his face. He calcifies. Freezes over. The wild dogs recede.

“You left the stove on,” Angus says. His voice is faraway. Taako can only hear the drumming of his own blood; hot, heavy, overflowing in the arteries of his heart. 

A touch at his shoulder and Taako pulls back sharply, looking up to find Angus closer. 

“Taako, did you hear me, I said you left—” Angus flinches back at Taako's face.

Taako, swallowing hard, says lowly, “Where were you?”

Something in his voice must set a siren off in Angus because the boy steps back, stiffens. “Out.”

“Out,” Taako repeats, pulling himself up, hands shaking. His shadow falls over Angus. “You were out?”

Angus raises his arm weakly. “I was getting—”

Taako grabs his forearm and wrenches the bag from his fingers. “Go to your room,” he says, dark with anger. 

“What?”

Taako shoves him backwards. “Now.”

Angus stumbles, throws Taako a confused look, and slips down the hallway. He watches Angus enter his bedroom, door clicking shut. Taako’s breath drains out, stretched and thin with nerves. Robotically, he looks inside the grocery bag: candy bars, a magazine with a sorcerer on it. It drops mutely to the floor.

Taako sits in the living room, legs pulled up against his chest, and watches the movement of the wind outside. It rattles the windows and makes a valiant attempt at breaking down the charm Taako placed on the front doors. It’s nothing but gray out. The farmhouse has an energy about it. It always does around this time, when the clouds knot against the sky and the evening sinks steadily to night: it’s as if it’s sleeping. There’s duct tape on a window pane Taako didn’t place. Angus must have done it. The sight twists Taako’s insides.

A creak sounds behind him. Taako looks around to see Angus at the stairs’ landing. He’d been in his room most of the day while Taako wandered through the house, unsure how to retract the sudden cold in his body. At one point, he called Lup, and when she didn’t pick-up, he called her again and again and again, obsessively, seeded panic growing again. When she did answer, he hung up, feeling ridiculous and small, and ignored her following calls. He settled down in the living room for a change of scenery, but had to tug his legs up to stop the left one from jittering. The sound of the wind through the chimney is the loneliest thing he’s ever heard.

“Is there,” Angus begins. The room swallows his voice. He clears his throat and starts again. “Do you want anything… or.”

Taako follows the route of his eyes to the kitchen. “No,” Taako says. He shrugs. “There’s nothing there.”

After a pause, Angus asks, “Why don’t you cook anymore?” His shuffling feet drag Taako’s gaze back to him.

“I don’t know,” he says. Taako imagines going through the grocery aisles and buying bags of flour and sugar; a carton of eggs; vegetable and olive oil. He imagines checking out, placing things in paper brown bags, and walking them back up the path to the house. Organizing them into cupboards. Scooping things into bowls. Cutting things on counters. He imagines the smell, the heat from hot pans, the sound of something sizzling. It makes him want to cry; it makes him so tired. He adds, “I don’t want to.”

“Oh,” is all Angus says. Then, “Do you know where the cat went?”

Taako stares at him. “What?”

“The cat. You know, from the attic.”

“Oh, uh.” Taako glances around. “No.”

“I should’ve left a note.”

“Angus—”

“No, really, I should’ve left a note or woken you up—”

Taako shakes his head, covers his face, and says, “Stop. Stop. This isn’t— you didn’t do anything. It’s me, there’s something — not right with me.” Taako pulls his legs down, looking away from Angus and at the fireplace; old charcoal and wood chips dust the floor in front of it. “I should’ve, I don’t know. God, I’m meant to be putting duct tape on the windows and shit, not. Not you.”

When he looks up, he sees Angus staring at his feet.

He says, “C’mere, kid.”

Angus goes to sit beside him and Taako reaches over, places a hand on top of his head, and then his shoulder. Neither of them move.

“I’ve made a real mess of it, haven’t I?” Taako says, dropping his hand back into his lap.

Angus shrugs and fiddles with a loose thread on his jeans. “This place freaks me out,” he says. 

Taako angles his head at the ceiling, at the cobwebs and the cold air. “It does give me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Monster House,” Angus nods.

“Monster House,” repeats Taako. “How’d that end? Maybe we have to unbury your grandpa from the foundation—”

Angus’ eyes go wide. “Don’t say that.”

A laugh is shocked out of Taako. “Woah, what? I thought we didn’t ‘believe in ghosts’?”

“Well, my grandfather isn’t buried in the foundation,” Angus says. “He’s… he’s, I don’t know.”

“You know, I have this really spooky wardrobe in my room. He might be in there,” Taako offers and Angus’ face pales. Taako amends quickly: “I’m kidding, Jeez -us. You’re granddad’s probably trapped in one of those oil paintings and only comes out when we’re sleeping.”

Angus stands up. “Thanks,” he says. “That’s horrible.”

“Maybe there’s a family blood curse you’re meant to be solving, boy detective,” continues Taako, waving his hand and quoting, “Murder most foul or what have you.”

“My grandfather died of completely natural causes.”

“How suspiciously phrased,” Taako says, half-grinning, and watches Angus let out a frustrated breath. “Okay, okay. You’re released.”

Angus makes a move towards the kitchen. “Maybe,” Angus says, frowning in a way that reminds Taako of a folded back smile. “Maybe he’s the cat.”

Taako laughs, voice scratchy and worn. “Maybe he’s the cat. Brilliant, Angus. The pitch of the century.”

Angus lifts his shoulders and slips into the kitchen. Taako falls back against the couch cushions, picking at a knot in the fabric, eyes roaming over the old walls and ratty curtains. He reaches up and untangles a bit of his hair, eyes tracking the twisted, wet-damp ends of the curtains as they dance along to the wind. 

He flinches when something crashes, followed by a distracted, “Sorry!”

Taako stands and goes to peek through the entryway. The doors creak. “What are you doing?”

Angus is picking up a fallen bowl. “Mac and cheese,” he answers, setting it back on the counter and drawing the noodle box from where it’d been shoved alongside the soap. 

Taako glances at the window, out into the moors, then back to Angus, then down at how his hands are wringing. This feels important, whatever this is, inside him. Like a frightening cave mouth. The wind whistles outside and the house gives a great, shuttering sigh, tense bones readjusting.

“Wait,” Taako says, and Angus pauses from where he’s about to put the pot on the stove. “Wait, just. Give me ten minutes. And we’ll go somewhere.”

“Go somewhere?” Angus frowns. He looks out the window, at the windy moors. “Any second Miss Gulch is gonna blow by.”

“We’ll put weights in our shoes, it’ll be fine,” Taako says.

After a moment, Angus makes a careless gesture with his open palms. “I’ll find the weights, I guess,” he says. Taako races up the stairs.

The wind becomes a maelstrom. It uproots trees, knocks down signs, tears half the veranda down on the back porch so, in the insidiously quiet morning, Angus and Taako stand outside of the house to stare at it. 

Taako brings his mug of coffee to his lips. “That is a problem,” he says acutely. “For sure.”

“This might be the right time to tell you that I found termites in my room,” Angus responds. He also has a mug, though it’s full of orange juice. Then he squints up at the pale white sky. He says, “It’s snowing.”

Taako feels it. A cold flutter along his cheeks; the bite of something fresh and sharp in the air. The waves a few miles behind them crash, and after its muted thunder, the flutter turns to dark, heavy flakes. Taako takes Angus by the shoulder and steers them around the side of the farmhouse to the front doors.

“What are you gonna do?” Angus asks. Taako isn’t sure if he’s asking about the day or just generally, but either way, he says resolutely,

“I’m going to fix it.”

After they’re both inside, still cold despite the measly heating charms Taako has tried to muster, Angus dumps himself on the couch. He lets a moment pass silently, but then: “Do I have to?” he asks as Taako steals his mug from him and walks it to the kitchen sink.

“I could help you!” Angus offers, calling over the faucet. “I could, I don’t know, hold the nails.”

Taako snorts. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Bob the Builder.”

They’d decided, after their trip to the village, that Angus would have a go at the schoolhouse. A trial week. Angus half-heartedly agreed. After eating, they’d sat in the empty space between the couch and the fireplace. The steam of hot tea sifting upwards as the first day of December slowly carved its way up the sky. They have been trying a little too hard to be accommodating. They don’t, at least, eat alone anymore. 

“What about three days instead?” Angus says, now at Taako’s shoulder. He takes a wet mug and uses a hand towel to dry it. 

“How about you put on your big boy pants and get ready?” Taako says.

“I’m not a child,” Angus snaps, places the mug down hard enough that it clangs, and disappears upstairs.

Taako pours the dregs of his coffee down the drain, sighing.

The snow comes down like a pulled blind — a clean white wall dispersed by beams of winter-yellow sunshine. The house breathes and groans under Taako’s feet as he wanders over to the sunroom and stares through its screen door. It’s bright, it hurts to look at, but Taako just leans his head against the frame and lets his eyes adjust to the snow, to the December rolling upon them, all the gray moors and barren trees softened to a blur and stolen away to someplace else. 

With the outside glinting like quartz, Taako has the acute feeling of being placed in a snowglobe. Half-shaken, uprooted, and aware of something unearthed resettling into little crevices around the world. It’s not unfamiliar. It reminds Taako of dying and reawakening in the Starblaster, on his cot, changed and the same. The memory of it startles him out of his gazeless watching. His breath does an up-hitch at it, like he’s been caught or stabbed, as camera-reel flashes spin out before his eyes — stars and training and fungi and laughter and Lup and Lup and he hasn’t thought about Lup in two days, how can that be? How can he have forgotten her again ? Dread guilt spikes its way up his body. 

“Okay.” Taako turns and sees Angus with his backpack in one hand. “I’m leaving.”

“Do you want me to come with?” Taako asks.

Angus frowns. “Do I want you to come to school with me?”

“Walk you there,” shrugs Taako.

“I know where it is,” Angus says, annoyed.

“Then goodbye.” Taako looks back into the sunroom, stomach churning. He should call Lup. He doesn’t remember where she is — near Goldcliff, is that what she said? But that was nearly half a month ago, Barry and her might’ve been relocated, but, no, she would’ve called him. Wouldn’t she have?

“Yeah, bye.”

Taako hears the front doors creak open and slam shut. He puts a shaky hand to his throat, cold fingertips tapping out the erratic jump of his heart, that great blood-heavy muscle scrambling along his ribs. It stretches against his chest, and then, like a sinkhole, it crashes beneath the weight of Taako’s fret and he realizes — it has been so long, so long since he has had Lup, that she is more memory than person now, like a photo in a basement. It has been so long and he has been so alone that being a brother is much the same. He doesn’t know how to think of her as anything other than a ghost he keeps reanimating. He misses Lup and he’s grieved Lup and he wants her back, the way she was. He wants his life back, the way it was.

It’s like a thousand losses.

It’s like running through frigid, thick-churning water, working against the current to the very beginning of his life. Being exhausted and overcome, drowned under, still grasping at the foam. Forced to this: a farmhouse, a boy, a sister who never stops dying and Taako, who rewinds the tape to the moment of fallout and rewinds the tape.

A wind blows and the snow parts, turns sideways, to reveal the beginning of a forestline. Austere trees. Columns of darkness between their trunks. Ice is already forming teeth outside the sunroom’s glass. There is December in the act of burial. 

The snow lets off in the afternoon when Angus, face flushed with the cold, comes in through the doors, stomping off his snow-crusted shoes. Taako is lying on the couch, wrapping a thread he pulled from the couch around his index finger.

He leans up on an elbow to peer at Angus from over the couch’s back. “How was your first day?”

“Fine,” he says and before Taako can press him further, he’s bounding up the stairs, backpack thump-thumping against his side.

Taako buys plywood and screwdrivers and debates calling Magnus before his resolve hardens and he thinks, if they want me here so bad, then I’ll do it on my own. But the thought resurfaces every time he cuts himself on a splinter or discovers another mouse hole, another broken thing, another casualty of the farmhouse’s age and its tenacity to aggravate. But the radiator gets fixed. It shudders out hot, bleeding air into the dampness and Taako steps back to watch, a rush of pleasure thrumming through him. He cleans out the bathtub drain, he replaces the shattered mirror, he sweeps the hardwood floor and knocks down the frozen-white hornets nest from the porch. The cat, a dash of orange, disappears behind corners and slinks into shadows with watchful, black-set eyes. 

The exertion keeps Taako’s teeth from grinding. It lets him sleep full nights. Yet the feeling of dread still burdens itself on his shoulders. Dread like anxiety, like an unrepentant itching. His chest, always tightly screwed shut. He can’t name it. For several days, he can’t comprehend the quiet of it, crouched deep inside him.

One night, Taako starts a flimsy fire in the fireplace. Its shadows cast long, black fingers over the walls. Taako stares at the flames, licking themselves into orange-hot smiles, while Angus eats a dinner of microwaved mashed potatoes in the kitchen. He’s rereading a beaten copy of Caleb Cleveland and the Race to Cityhall and, sometimes, he’ll read a bit of dialogue under his breath and Taako will go very still to listen.

Suddenly, Angus speaks through the cracked kitchen doors, “Taako! Your stone! It’s Kravtiz!”

Taako bolts upright and hurries into the kitchen. “Don’t,” he says and snatches the Stone from Angus’ curious hand, “answer that.”

“What, why?” Angus says. Then his face does that thing. Taako nearly forgot about it, it’s been ages since he’s seen it. His little interrogative face, his bright-lamp detective stare.

Taako turns away from it, slipping the Stone into his pocket. “Because I’m busy.”

“Busy avoiding the question.”

Taako serves him a sharp glare. “Smartass. I don’t have to answer to you.”

“Apparently,” Angus says, flipping a page in his book, “you don’t answer to Mr. Kravtiz either. Does he call a lot?”

“I don’t notice,” Taako says and turns away. Taako catches sight of the sink and sees the slowly rising pile of dirty plates. He frowns; why does it seem he’s always doing the dishes? He turns the tap on, thinks, he doesn’t, and plunges his hand into the water. Which is fine, yet Taako is always expecting a call, he realizes. He’s always expecting something: a knock, an asteroid, a ship.

“Hm,” is all Angus says. “Interesting.”

“Hem and haw all you want.”

Angus puts his chin in his palm and sounds, with more emphasis, “Hmm. Haaaw.”

Taako puts his thumb at the faucet and shoots a stream of water at Angus, but something has been unsettled inside him. The dread spiking up his spine. He feels the weight of the Stone in his pocket. The dread, it’s an anticipation. He’s been waiting. For something. For something to be finished, for something to be ticked off the list and set aside, to be moved along. Waiting to leave. But this is it.

His hands are soggy in the sink water and he thinks again: this is it . The Hunger is gone. No more cycles. No more reclaiming. No more packing up and ditching. The thought sinks inside him like a heavy rock. This is all he has left now. And it’s odd, because what he does have left is a larger sum than he’s ever held: a hillside and a house and a sleepy town. A cat, somewhere, who eats the mice from their traps. And Angus.

Taako opens all the windows and draws back all the curtains and the winter moves through the farmhouse. It hangs its coat in the foyer. Unlaces its boots. Sits by the glowing fireplace. The fresh air eases between the cracks of the farmhouse and lifts it, imperceptibly, with a lightness Taako feels just at the soles of his feet, as if he’s walking on clouds. He declines Magnus’ various calls; and then Lup’s; and then Merle’s and the rest, until his Stone is a silent rock in the corner of his room and it doesn’t bother him with its jittering. 

The winter makes him jumpy. With Angus gone to school, the house is full of sounds he hasn’t noticed and things he hasn’t seen. Sounds like the low, husky creak of old pipes as he turns the shower on; like the whispering laugh of dried plants in the sunroom; like the thrum, the slow and delicate song, of morning birds. He sees the winter trees cast maze-like shadows over the white snow, sees the clouds, like cupped palms, hold the yolk of the sun in the sky and lower it to sleep over a deep twilight. And the farmhouse seems to relax its shoulders and Taako notices the peonies carved into the staircase railing. The golden, curved handles of each door. The octagonal roof, cut by green beams, of the sunroom. The soft, worn tiles and the imprints of footprints beside the kitchen sink.

In the small study, he finds old, cloth-bound books. Their pages are yellowed and dog-eared. He stacks them in the living room, on the window seat he only just discovered, for Angus to sort through. With the afternoon sun slashing in through the windows, Angus flips through them, runs his fingers over their spines and opens them halfway through the middle to skim. He watches, so much like the portraits Taako has spent countless hours walking past, with round, brown eyes as Taako collects forgotten robes from closets and wardrobes and drawers, piles them by the fireplace. A hot mug of tea steams from an end table as Taako sorts. He raises a gauzy white blouse to Angus, who is at the window seat, scribbling in a journal.

“Curtain material?” Taako prompts.

Angus folds his brows critically. “Definitely.”

Taako tosses it to the keep pile. “Is that homework?” he asks.

“Is what?”

“The thing you’re writing. Is that homework?”

“Oh,” says Angus, staring down at the journal in his lap as if he forgot it were there. “Uh, no.”

Taako grabs a deep velvet skirt and runs his fingers through it, his nails catching at tiny moth-eaten holes. “How is school, by the bye?”

“It’s fine. You know. The usual.”

Taako cocks a brow. “Well, don’t waste your breath, darling,” he says.

But, Taako enjoys the sunroom most. It’s attached to the kitchen through a screen door, the archway of it carved with bright wood into a peak. Taako stares out into it while he washes up. The sunroom collects warmth and Taako spends whole afternoons upturning terra-cotta pots and pulling dead vines from their spiderweb tangles. He sits, cross-legged, sifting between the pots he likes and the ones he doesn’t with an overly critical, yet listless eye.

While he works, he thinks of Lup and he loves her, he still loves her, but it’s muted in a way he finds uneasy, like a shadow casted by an open door, beckoning inwards to a dark silent room. He thinks of Magnus and Merle. He’s known them for a century; for a little over a year. Barry, the Red Robe, his friend. Davenport and the Starblaster. Kravtiz, Lucretia, the Bureau. Everything tumbling, moving around the sunroom, rearranging itself until the sun falls bright and orange over the dirt-lined tile. He stands and brushes his hands off against the soft linen of his trousers. Glittering ceramics, glazed to a shining wax, collect along shelves. They send back the sun, pointed like a triangle, becoming more and more blinding as the sun recedes.

Sometimes, while he wipes the soot from the fireplace or readjusts the faulty leg of the couch; as he scrapes the drudge from the hardened carpet until it teeters on partly clean, as he busies himself and thinks and busies himself and thinks again, his eyes will drift towards the kitchen. At the right angle, during the evening, which is so early now and turns Taako into a comfortable, lazy creature, the window above the sink is a box of light. It slides down across the silver of the sink basin and drips onto the beige orange tiles. The cupboards are warm, a light brown, and the chill of the winter turns everything tissue-soft, as if a very thin, very fine chiffon had balanced itself over Taako’s eyes. Mugs and plates hang to dry on a rack. A mat Taako made from clothes scraps, knotted and mushy, soaks in the sunbeams.

The narrow, homely, tiny little kitchen and Taako thinks, maybe. Maybe he isn’t so tired anymore; maybe his boredom has an itch. 

Mid-December comes. The winter is a harsh, brilliant light and they close the curtains, let the sun melt in quietly, like a descending fog over the floorboards and delicate walls. Taako lays away in the living room, napping, until a burst of cold introduces itself and Angus stomps in. He shakes himself off like a dog, snowflakes flying, and pounces upstairs with a quick, jarring hello! that ruptures Taako’s laziness like a slap. 

In the evenings, Taako makes canned broth some nights, other nights popping a refrigerated lasagna in the oven, Angus will curl up at the table, snuggled against the mismatched cushions they acquired from the store in town, and read aloud a chapter of Caleb Cleveland. They’re on the third book. Caleb, for whatever reason Taako can’t bring himself to question, is currently trapped in a dungeon.

“C'est la vie,” Taako shrugs as a mysterious cavern appears before Caleb. “Seen one, seen ‘em all. Now, I don’t see why this is our dear Caleb’s problem. Where’s the mayor; it’s his city for God's sake?”

“He’s looking for the mayor. That’s why he’s in the dungeon,” Angus says. He huffs.

Taako huffs back at him.

It begins to snow outside. Angus reads the last chapter and the mayor lives and the snow doesn’t stop. 

“Taako.”

“Lup,” Taako says with the same intonation. 

“I haven’t seen you in months. It’s Candlenights,” she says.

“Lup, I can’t see five feet in front of me,” Taako says. He presses the Stone between his shoulder and his ear, pulling the kettle from the stove and pouring boiling water over a bag of tea. “And he’s sick.”

“Can’t you come alone?” she insists. “I doubt he’d be thrilled to come to a Candlenights wine and dine. And he’s old enough now, isn’t he, to be left alone for a bit?”

“Oh, certainly. He doesn’t chew on the furniture when I dip out,” Taako says.

“You could lay out a few loose newspapers.”

“I do think I have some rawhides that’ll keep him busy.”

“So, yes? You’ll come.”

“If I had enough power in my arcana to melt the man-sized snow pile outside the door, darling, I would’ve already been there,” Taako says. He stops at the stairs’ landing, hot mug in hand. “Lup, I promise you, I’ll see you soon and it’ll be grand. We’ll burn something. You can wax rhapsodic about Barold’s ass, or whatever it is you like about him—”

“Though both of those sound appealing, are you sure this isn’t about Lucretia?”

“It’s always going to be about her,” he says. “Look, Lu, I gotta go— I’ll make it up to you—”

“But I have a gift—”

“I love you,” Taako says and shifts to grab the Stone from the crook of his shoulder.

“I miss you,” Lup says, her voice strung out and earnest. “Like crazy. You have no idea.”

“I have some,” says Taako quietly. 

The Stone hums with soft, undulating static in their shared silence. “All of this is so,” Lup begins, she sighs, and Taako knows that sigh. Her confused and unfocused sigh, like she’s staring mournfully out of a rain-splattered window in a soap opera. “New. I don’t know if I’m doing this right, Taako. If I’m doing right by you.”

“Lup—”

“I give you space and I feel like I’m losing you all over again.”

There’s another blot of quiet, an unspooling over the line. Taako listens to the snow outside, coming down in dark curtains and smearing the black sky in streaks. The fireplace smolders warm and bronze. “I’m sorry,” Taako says because what else is there?

“I am too,” she says. It’s a struggle to even hear her and Taako’s body is weighted in lead, cold and sharp like metal. Everything has changed, he thinks; everything has shifted, as if the world has been realigned slightly to the left, and he keeps cutting himself on unfamiliar edges. He traces a finger along a peony on the railing.

Something, small as a hummingbird, beats in the center of his chest. After saying goodbye to Lup, he tries to place the feeling as he walks up the creaking stairs, but it slips from his grasp. He knocks on Angus’ door and eases it open.

“Hello, sickling,” he says into the dark room. There’s a nightlight in a plug that casts a shimmery glow over the lumps of blankets that is Angus. 

Said blankets let out a grumble. Taako sits at the edge of the bed, taps a finger on one of the folds, and Angus’ drowsy face peeks out. The hummingbird feeling rises into his throat. 

“Tea,” Taako says, raising the mug. Angus pulls himself to a sitting position and holds the mug with both hands. “Citrus. It’s good for you.”

Angus doesn’t respond for a moment, sipping idly at the tea and rubbing at his eyes. “Did I ruin Candlenights?” he asks.

Taako rolls his eyes. “Oh, don’t bother with the flagellation, Angus,” he says in a soft voice, matching the sleepiness of the room. Taako tuts; he shifts onto the bed, legs crossed. “So dramatic.”

Angus sets his mug down on the window ledge above his bed. He peers out the window pane into the night. Taako crawls further up the bed until he’s sat beside Angus, also looking out the window. It’s too dark to see much, but the blackness, the nothing and the quick flurry of snow and the nighttime and the warmth of the hearth downstairs and the feverish hotness of Angus at his shoulder, makes Taako feel small, like a mouse sticking its head out of its hidey-hole. It’s a nice feeling. He imagines struggling through the snow outside and forcing himself into a train compartment; of sitting in a pod and being shot off to the Bureau moon. Walking among straight lines and ovals, stumbling his way through conversation, trying not to appear disaffected or lonely or AWOL.

Taako maneuvers himself under the blankets with Angus, who scoots over, drawing a rudimentary gift shape in the fog of the glass. Taako’s eye catches a glint on the window ledge. He picks up the broken gauntlet.

Angus goes still.

“What’s your obsession with this thing?” Taako asks, not unkindly.

Angus shrugs. His voice is scratchy and strained, lost of energy. This morning he’d woken up with a fever and nearly collapsed down the stairs, he was so faint. Then he’d thrown up in the toilet, and with his flushed, dreadful face against the porcelain seat, he’d urged Taako to go to the Candlenights party and he could handle himself and he wasn’t so bad, and Taako, leaning against the bathroom sink with his brows raised had only thought, our own little islands, aren’t we?

Taako doesn’t remember a time when anyone took care of him while he was sick. There was Lup, of course, but she had usually caught his bug and they’d mold away together in mutual sickness until it passed. And on the Starblaster, it was almost impossible to get sick — they were too busy dying. 

“It’s like,” Angus starts. He touches his knuckles to the hot mug, watching the steam smoke from the top. “It’s like, sometimes, you don’t get it.”

“Don’t get what?”

Angus shrugs again, rests his arms and face on the ledge as he looks out into the night. “Like none of it matters now that you know. Now that you know why you were there to begin with.” Taako runs his thumb over the deep engravings of the gauntlet; the hatched triangles. He feels the weight of it, a phantom, on his own wrist. “Just because it’s over,” Angus says, “doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or it’s not important.”

Taako reaches over, very carefully touches Angus’ cheek.

Angus looks to him. He sniffs. “The Bureau made me feel useful. It was like — it meant something to me. And you don’t even care about it anymore.”

Taako closes his eyes and takes a breath and turns Angus’ shoulder to face him fully. “Angus,” he says. “There’s a lot… there’s things I regret about the Bureau. But you are not one of them. Not at all.”

Angus turns away, looks out the window again.

Taako puts the gauntlet back on the ledge, standing it up. “And what I— to Magnus, Angus, what I said,” Taako struggles, grasping. “You don’t have to be useful or, I don’t know.”

Angus sniffles, wipes at his nose with the back of his hand and doesn’t speak for a moment.

Taako thinks of everything he’d never been told as a kid, hopping from one town to the next like hot coals were attached to his feet, and he says, “There isn’t anything you have to do and I’d still — I’d still want you around. Of course I would.” 

There’s another silence with which Angus sips from his mug. He shrugs his shoulders. “I just want things to go back to the way they were,” Angus says. He swallows hard. He flicks his eyes to Taako. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t but. It was — it was better and everyone was there, and now, you’re all— you all are together, but it’s. There isn’t any space.” Angus shrugs, rubs at his eyes. “It’s stupid. I don’t know. I want to go back to before.”

“You know, things are going to change,” Taako says, letting the quiet stretch between them for another moment. The fierce little hummingbird feeling is back, nectarine sweet, heavy and full like fragrant blossoms. He thinks of the moon, the false one, the one where his friends mingle now and exchange gifts and battle through the thick sludge of memories and disconnect, towards something. “The people you love are going to leave,” he says. He pauses, adds, “Or say things they don’t mean or do things you never thought they were capable of — and you just have to let it happen. You have to let it go.”

Taako smooths a palm down Angus’ back, watches him watch the snow fall.

“Not because,” Taako continues, taking a breath, “it isn’t important or you don’t care.” He sees Lucretia in the dark reflection of the window; the space of time between Lup’s umbrella point and Lucretia’s heart. “But because if you hold on too tightly to one thing, you can’t hold on to anything else.”

And there — the winter downpour, the fireplace, the moon — the hummingbird in his chest expands and Taako captures the feeling in his hands, so light. So delicate, so easily misplaced and forgotten. Through the memories, through the hurt and loss and countless reenacting of past pain, and into the farmhouse towards hope, towards love, towards a mounting crescendo.

Taako scratches his fingers on Angus’ head. “Do you get what I’m laying down?”

Angus turns over, cheek smushed against his arm, eyes bright with fever and tears and sleep. “I don’t want you to leave. And before, when I got angry — I didn’t really mean it.”

Taako rests his head too and pinches Angus’ nose. Angus makes a face. “Happy Candlenights, goofus.”

January wears itself out into a gentle thaw. Taako makes homemade cocoa and rolls his own cinnamon sticks, and the windows remain half-open to let in a soft, refreshing breeze. Angus traps the feral cat in the sunroom, much to Taako’s annoyance, and now it prowls back and forth among the shattered pots. It watches with yellow eyes as Taako moves about the kitchen, tail flicking, waiting for Angus to return from school and shove a plate of wet food through the screen door. The cat, to which Taako refers to as either that thing or your pest to Angus, always makes a valiant and violent attempt to slit Angus’ throat every feeding time.

Angus reads aloud the final book of the Caleb Cleveland series while Taako cuts vegetables and boils water and makes real broth. And then, on a whim and mostly encouraged by Angus who was waving a windchime he found in clearance at Taako’s face, he buys a pasta maker. He works the dough through the grind, wrist turning, other hand outstretched to draw the strings out. Taako bakes souffles. He kneads bread. He crimps the edges of pies while Angus licks the batter from the mixture, legs swinging from the counter, flushed from his walk back from school. At the start of February, Taako receives a letter while he’s preparing a lunch of orange chicken and rice, and tears it open with one sufficient finger.

He skims it, raises his brows, and sets it on the counter behind the salt.

Angus, around three, barrels in the kitchen, dumps his backpack on the table and leans over the stove to get a look at the steaming rice. Taako waves him off, makes him sit and wait.

“How was school?” he asks, scooping Angus out a portion and setting it before him. He pushes a small bowl of peanut sauce towards him, leaning on his elbows to watch Angus.

Angus shrugs, situating himself at the kitchen island. Taako found some red-painted barstools in the attic and lined them along the pale olive counter. “Alright, I guess,” Angus says. “Nothing out of the usual.”

“Hm,” Taako says. “And what did you learn?”

Angus glances to Taako, mouth half-full. “What did I learn?” he repeats.

“Yeah. What’d you get up to, you know?”

Angus shrugs. “Oh, well, I don’t know — we did some pre-algebra and it was pretty easy, and then we talked about an essay we’ve got to write.”

“Oh, and what’s that on, then?”

“Huckleberry Finn,” Angus replies easily. 

Taako turns away and busies himself with the used dishes, setting them in the sink for a later wash. “And Ms. Marianne — how is she? She isn’t giving you a hard time?”

“No, not all. She’s really nice, actually.”

Taako whirls around, triumphant, finger pointing out an arrow towards Angus. “Ah ha!” he shouts. “You little shit, there is no Ms. Marianne — you’ve been playing hooky!”

A bit of rice is at the corner of Angus’ mouth. His eyes widen. “Did you say Marianne — I thought you meant, uh—”

“No no no,” Taako butts in. He snatches the letter from behind the salt container and waves it. “No getting out of this, delinquent, I have undeniable proof . Five weeks of absences! A whole failed trimester!” Taako slides the letter to Angus, who catches it before it flies off the other side. Taako is nearly gleeful. “Here I was, thinking you were Mr. Fucking Academic with your little backpack and Huckleberry Finn — and the whole time you’ve been, what, smoking behind the bleachers?”

Angus reads over the letter uncomfortably.

Taako puts his hands on his hips, brows raised. The afternoon sun turns everything golden and bright. “Well?” he prompts. “Last chance to pull one final, all-winner lie, boy genius.” 

“This is,” Angus begins, stalling. He looks down at the letter again, back up at Taako: “blatant defamation of character?”

“Uh huh,” Taako preens. He spins back around to the sink and pours dish soap over the collection before turning on the hot tap. “Five weeks,” says Taako, shaking his head. “What could you have possibly been doing for five weeks?”

Angus scrapes his fork over his plate, creating a rice mountain with a chicken crown. “I went for the first week, you know, our trial run,” he says. “But then… I got bored, I guess? And everybody’s awful there.”

“Don’t you have little friends to talk to?” Taako asks.

“I don’t really have any friends,” he says. “I’m a loser.”

Taako turns to him. “Excuse me?”

Angus shrugs. “I don’t know. I just am. I don’t like any of them and they don’t like me.”

“That doesn’t make you a loser,” muses Taako. “That makes you practical. That makes you a very sensible person because, I’ll have you know, from very personal experience, that thirteen year olds are the absolute scum of the earth. Just horrible.”

Angus rolls his eyes, half-grinning like his smile is stuck on a fish hook and he’s making a valiant attempt at stopping it from being reeled. 

“See, look at that,” Taako says. “With the eye-rolling. I’d consider it a fantastic compliment to be hated by a group of middle schoolers. It means you’re doing something right.”

“Yeah, well, I still don’t have any friends. So.”

“So?” Taako asks. “You’ll make them eventually. Jesus. You don’t have to be brilliant at everything immediately, kid. The right middle schoolers will come around someday and it’ll be a breeze.”

“Is that what happened with you?”

“Well, I grew up on an entirely different planet where, actually, I was brilliant at everything.”

“Har-har.”

“Angus, my only friend was my sister. Needless to say, no, I wasn’t Mr. Popularity or anything. In fact, I preferred people to hate me. I was smoking behind the bleachers. I thought it made me cool.”

“And did it?” Angus asks.

“What are you, writing up a fucking report?” Taako snorts. The sink turns to a bubbly boil, tumbling out from the sides, and Taako turns the tap off.

“You just never really talk about your past, is all.”

“There’s nothing really to know about it,” Taako says.

“You literally went on a one hundred year adventure through space, Taako.”

“Literally,” Taako mimics. “Aren’t you meant to use a higher lexicon than that?”

“Using ‘literally’ or ‘like’ shows thought processing and doesn’t mitigate the content of what I’m saying—”

“Yeah, well, you’re a dork and a half.”

“Mature.”

The next day, Taako goes to town to pick Angus up from school. Angus exits the schoolhouse doors, catches sight of Taako, and does a sort of almost half turn before he rethinks and stalks towards Taako with his head down.

“What are you doing here?” Angus asks, when he’s close enough. Kids are streaming out around them, like a parted sea of shrill laughter and overused fragrance. It’s a warm day for February; Taako is wearing an atrocious orange and purple patterned blouse he found in the farmhouse, and it flutters and puffs out dramatically with the light breeze. “I told you I’d start going. Here I am,” Angus says, gesturing at himself.

Taako reaches over and thwaps his ear. “Don’t be rude,” he scolds. “I’ve been letting you off easy as a guardian — but no more. This is me, you know, guarding.”

“Great, so is this gonna be a daily thing, or?” Angus asks as Taako wraps an arm around his shoulder. He digs his knuckles into Angus’ neck pointedly and is just able to recapture him when Angus attempts an escape.

“Stop that!” Taako says. “I thought we’d go somewhere. Or rather, that you’d take me somewhere, hm?”

Angus looks up at him, squinting against the sun.

They start heading towards the main town road. The streets are a blazing brick red and emit a clatter as children race past. The buildings have thatched roofs and old, crawling moss stone walls and behind every townhouse there’s a hideaway garden, all mushed and brown-streaked from melted snow. But Taako can already see it — the spring, her feathered little fingerprints prodding away at dirt and slouching flowerbeds, twisting the harsh rays of winter sun into something pink and glazed. 

“Your proto-bleachers,” reminds Taako. He looks both ways before stepping off the curb and guiding them towards the pathway to the woods. “Your cliffs.”

The farmhouse comes rising out of the hill as they walk up the dirt drag. Its shutters are thrown open. The chimney sticks its thumb out from the roof. The wind chimes on the front porch sing a cheery note in greeting. Taako pushes Angus forward once they reach the front steps.

“Go put your things away.”

While Taako waits, leaning lazily against the porch railings, he watches the wind blow over the treetops, graze the long grass of the rolling moors. He brushes some pollen from his cuff and thinks of tonight, the leftover cookies sitting on the kitchen table. They’ll try to rewire the janky Victrola for the umpteenth time; try to get the Jim Croce record they found to spin properly. It only scratches out one discordant note that makes the cat yowl from the sunroom like a dying thing. Angus has named him Caleb; Taako doesn’t know who should be more offended, the cat or Caleb Cleveland.

Then Angus comes rushing out the doors with a clatter and creak as the farmhouse adjusts itself around his wake, all limbs and energy. He still has his backpack, though it looks lighter. He jumps down the stairs, two at a time.

“Ready?” Angus asks and Taako is struck by the fact that he’s older now. Just by a year, but the realization spikes its way between Taako’s ribs. When did that happen? he wonders. No alarms or anything, only time and the stomping ground of their tiny, ticking life. 

The coast is rocky and slick with ocean foam. The light glints off the horizon in warps and Taako has to turn his eyes from it to keep from being blinded. He follows Angus down a bumpy footpath, cringing and holding back admonishments as Angus skids and slides his way down. 

Angus, over the past weeks, has been sneaking off here — to the coast a mile off from the back of the farmhouse — and returning around the evening, wind-flushed and hungry and at Taako’s kitchen table. The sea is guarded by a line of sun-bleached white cliffs, their faces jagged, painted by the setting orange of the sun; the hills flatten out and sink back in favor of hard sandstone. Taako can see the line of the cliffs, how they draw a line between the earth and the deep blue sky. It’s a bit dizzying, and he feels a tad small, here in the sloping sand dunes, caught on one side by the salt-fresh sea and the other — the teeth of rocks, brittle and straight like a whale’s bristled mouth. 

The wind off the sea is colder, charging through them and sending Taako’s hair off his shoulder. The salt of it fills him up and Taako doesn’t half suspect those dusty Austen books were right: there is something rather healing about the sea, cathartic, maybe.

Their feet sink into the ground as they walk along the small sliver of damp sand that separates the cliff from the water. Angus, with robustness and urgency, leads Taako around — to this particular sprout of tall grass, to that odd, face-shaped rock, to the receding waves where he uses a stick to point out hidden sand crabs. He has a notebook, and it’s full of jottings, black black ink, and he lists all the fauna; describes the difference between high and low tide; discusses the merits of sea-faring and how he thinks, a ways away, that a plodding of rocks a few feet in the water, would be an ideal spot for a lighthouse. Sometimes, Angus will reach out his hand behind him, to get Taako’s attention. Sometimes, he’ll glance up mid-speech to check that Taako is listening. And Taako thinks, and with a little more force: no, he isn’t old at all. 

An hour later, after Angus tripped into a prickly bush on the hike back up, they’re in the kitchen. Angus is sitting on the island eating an ice cream sandwich that, Taako notes miserably, is getting all over his face.

“Stop,” Taako says, off-hand, grabbing at one of Angus’ swinging legs. “Keep still.”

“Do you think we can go back again tomorrow?” Angus says, licking his lips and wiping them with the back of his hand. “I think I saw a cove—”

“You’re not going into any sort of cove.”

“Why not?” Angus scoffs.

Taako applies a bit of antiseptic to his knee scrape, glancing up to give him a dour, deadly look. “Because it will cave-in and you’ll die.”

Angus rolls his eyes. “You say that to everything.”

“I don’t say that to every thing,” Taako says. “Don’t generalize, Angus.”

“I’m not generalizing. You literally say that to everything,” Angus says pedantically. He starts listing on his fingers. “‘You can’t eat the batter or you’ll die,’ ‘you can’t bathe Caleb or you’ll die’ —”

“That feline,” Taako says, tapping his knee affirmatively so Angus can jump off the counter, fresh bandaid in place, “is a strange, rabid thing and, frankly, and I mean this with all ill-intent, fucking frightening.”

Pointedly, Caleb lets out a disgruntled hiss from the sunroom. He’s curled up by the door, watching them with half-lidded eyes. 

Angus crosses the kitchen to kneel by the screen door. He puts his finger to the cat’s nose. “ You were strange and frightening when I first met you,” Angus says.

“Yes, well, you nearly died, didn’t you?”

“No, you all nearly died. I was in complete control of the situation the entire time.”

Taako throws the used ice cream wrapper away, one hand on his hip. “Okay, smartass, why don’t you go wash up before I beat you over the head with a pan, yeah?”

“This is why I knew it was Jenkins — I’m above baseless violence,” Angus grins.

Taako swipes a dirty rag at him as he passes to the archway. “Angus, I’m going to throttle you. Go and clean that mess off your face, please and thank you.”

Angus scampers out of the rag’s way, calling out, “And on the record, I’d totally beat you in a fight! Easy.”

Taako wastes a cantrip to hit Angus backwards with an invisible force.

“Ow, Taako,” complains Angus, rubbing at his chest.

“Easy,” Taako says and shakes out his hand.

“You fold it,” Taako is saying, reaching around Angus, the tips of his long fingers sprinkled with flour, “like a towel, see.”

Taako takes the flattened bread, soft and doughy and warm, and brings the bottom third to the center. Taako leans back, momentarily, wrist balanced on his hip, and nods as Angus takes the top third and folds it over Taako’s. Jim Croce gently sings from the Victrola, like the pine trees linin’ the windin’ road / I’ve got a name, I’ve got a name.

“That’s how it gets flaky,” continues Taako. He points to the folded lines, tapping out the sections. “Dough, butter, dough, butter; makes it light.”

Sunday breathes into the kitchen. The window is cracked open with a mug and it smells like yeast and the newly sprouting flowers from outside. Patches of hyacinth; golden little honeysuckles; bell-shaped snowdrops. The dirt path to the village is wet from morning dew. Spring has made the world soft, as if it might mold itself around the farmhouse, hide them away in earth-damp sunspots. They’re making blackberry danishes today. Angus, in his explorations around the back hills, found a bushel of them, just growing, and the two had grabbed tiny hand towels to collect them. Angus’ fingernails are still stained a ripe red from the juices. 

“Alright,” Taako says. He leverages the parchment paper holding the dough onto a pan, tidies it away in their overstocked refrigerator. “This will set for a few minutes, then we’ll do it again.”

Angus lifts himself up onto the counter, pressing his fingers on crumbs of loose dough and flicking it into the sink. “It’s so much waiting,” he says. “What do you do when you have to wait?”

Taako brushes off his hands, wiping them succinctly on the soft blue cloth of his apron. He catches sight of the cat prowling around the sunroom. It hops onto a wooden table, paws crushing dried and fallen leaves; its mouth is still drippy from the wet food Angus fed it, like a beard of raw brown meat. 

“Talk to you,” shrugs Taako.

Angus makes a face, though he looks slightly pleased. “But what if I wasn’t here. Like on the Starblaster or at the Bureau?”

“There was always someone to talk to; baking is a very social activity, Angus,” Taako says. He stretches his hand, fingers spider webbing out. He feels the bread beneath the heel of his palm, the cold clean counter sparking against his fingers as he pressed and pulled the dough. Angus’ tinier, clumsier hands struggling to knead it — you’ll get better, he’d said, it becomes instinct .

“And if no one else was around, what did you do then?” Angus asks. He turns around when the cat knocks over a plastic watering jug. 

“Then I spoke to myself. I tend to keep the best company,” Taako says. “Though, you aren’t half-bad, kid.”

Angus gives him a cheesy grin. 

Oh, I know I could share it if you’d want me too / If you’re going my way, I’ll go with you.

They fold the dough one more time before rolling it out, flat and thin, against the kitchen island. Taako lets Angus use the wheel cutter and divide it into squares before they dollop the centers with cream filling and blackberry jam they made yesterday evening, smashing with forks and spoons until everything smelled sharp and tangy. Then, with a red argyle mitt, Taako slides it into the oven, switching on the light so Angus can kneel down and peer through the glass to watch the bread crisp and curve upwards, holding the blackberry cream filling like a bowl. 

“There’s this thing at school,” Angus says, unprompted, as Taako organizes the dirty dishes in the sink. “It’s kind of stupid, but I thought I’d do it. Just to see.”

“And what’s that?”

From the corner of his eye, he sees Angus shrug and roll his eyes. Taako gave him the glass bowl they used to mix the cream in, and he uses a thumb to collect the excess and pop it in his mouth. “It’s this play, sort of.”

Taako raises his brows. “I never pegged you for an actor.”

“I know, well, I’m not — but there were other kids doing it and, I thought,” Angus shrugs again. “Well, anyway, I tried out and I got in.”

Taako spins around, says, “Look at you! That’s wonderful, darling, well done.”

Angus scuffs his socked feet against the tile. “It’s whatever, I guess.”

Taako snorts and sticks out his tongue. “Quit with the humility crap. You only have to turn that shit on when the cameras are rolling, kid.”

An hour later, after Angus has flipped the record and Taako has cleaned up, they pull the danishes from the oven and cool them by the window. Angus, careful not to touch the hot pan, leans over them and points out the ones that look the best, hot jam steaming upwards into his glasses. 

Taako arranges them on a serving plate and sets them on the center of the pine table. Angus takes a bite of the nearest one he can reach, jam spreading across his mouth.

“Worth all the waiting?” Taako asks, sitting across from him, knabbing one of his own.

Angus nods enthusiastically, and says around his bite, “So good.”

The flaky body of the danish dissolves on Taako’s tongue, buttery and light, while the blackberry introduces itself with an exploding tartness. “Unfortunately,” says Taako, half-smiling, “danishes really shouldn’t be left out for too long, so… it seems we’ll have to eat all of them before they go cold.”

Angus’ eyes light up.

“Of course, little broadway ingenue, if you need to be watching your figure…”

“Shut up,” Angus laughs, and takes another danish.

They eat the danishes with milky tea. A breeze slips in through the window and catches at a Valentine’s card on the fridge, stuck beneath a jewel magnet. It’s hand-made, from Angus’ class, with his scrawling, boy script cluttered on the page. Taped to the left sleeve is a small, ziplock baggy of starter seeds shaped into tiny pink hearts. Taako stares at it and thinks of the blackberry bush. The sun had poured, like a broken and overflowing spout, over the moors, somehow squeezed its way into Taako’s skin, glowing and glowing.

The cat scratches at the sunroom door.

“We have to do something about that silly, fanged thing,” Taako notes.

Angus watches the cat, chin in palm. “He just needs us to care for him.”

The days become lazy and indolent. Spring tends fondly over them.

During the night, the moon like a silver blossom, Taako and Angus stand out in the hills. The constant lap of the sea in the distance creates a steady, languid sound. Strings of moonbeams on their faces; gentle sleep-songs of birds; the quick lightning swish of a snake in the brush. The air becomes its own entity — heavy with patience, rested between their shoulder blades, twisting patterns in the grass.

Taako cups a firefly between his palms. The thin creases between his fingers glow red, flittering, the whisper-soft kiss of wings, and Angus leans in, his breath held like a promise in his chest, as Taako parts his thumbs. He puts his hands on Taako’s to peer in closer; they’re cold from the night. The cracked entry of his palm, the bead of light that bumps along, looks like the pink peach shells down on the shore. Golden light pearl in the center. Ocean-worked curves of his knuckles. 

“That’s its bioluminescence,” Angus says. He is hushed and reverent and Taako watches him carefully as Angus watches the firefly. Could this go on forever? he thinks.

“It’s the chemicals,” Angus is saying. “It’s all these funny sounding chemicals and elements and things that make them glow like that. They probably don’t even realize. That they’re glowing, I mean.”

“Or know they’re just chemicals, either,” Taako says. “Here,” he says, and moves his hands and Angus makes a bowl of his palms and in a suspended space of a spring night moment, Taako passes the firefly to Angus.

“They probably think it’s magic,” says Angus. He brings his curved hands to the tip of his nose, peaking an eye into the oval of two thumbs.

In the distance, the farmhouse’s lights are on and they glow like the tiny little firefly, flickering and watchful and waiting. Angus opens his hands, bird wing hands, and the firefly rises slowly into the night with the rest of his sparkling friends. The wind sounds tender and sweet and full, lifting up the ends of their shirts, and Taako is struck with how much time there really is, how it’s everywhere, and he is in it, finally.

Not apart, not adjacent, not off running from or ignoring it. There is this, right now, here at night in the springtime. And there is tomorrow. And after that, all the rest, forever spinning itself out in the cat’s cradle weave of time’s dainty, methodic fingers. 

Taako rubs his knuckles into Angus’ head; Angus’ annoyed laughter echoes against the bubble of the sky that seems to hold itself up only for their pleasure. They walk back down to the farmhouse, careful of the groundhog holes and the anthills, and greet the brush of hearth-warm air as they enter through the doors. 

“Maybe we could invite a few folks,” offers Taako. “For your play.”

Angus stops his ascent up the stairs. “Really?”

“Well, I can’t throw tomatoes all by myself. I only have so many hands, Angus.”

Angus grins. “Okay. Yeah. I’d like that,” he says.

“It’s a deal.”

While Angus heads up, Taako looks around. The floral couch with the blue, frizzing afghan and the walls, stripped of their rotting paper, to reveal honey-toned panels. The orange fire, humming sleepily among its smoldering wood. The drowsy kitchen lit by a single lamp for the cat. Taako wanders over, kneels next to the door of the sunroom and taps his finger against it. The cat blinks open its eyes, peels back its lips to hiss silently.

“Silly thing,” Taako says. “You don’t even know why you’re angry.”

The cat watches him.

Taako watches him back. Taako stands and curves his fingers around the door handle. “If you bite me,” he warns as the door creaks open, “I swear to God, I’ll drown you in the sink.”

The cat stretches itself out, still watching Taako, before it slinks out the door. It disappears into the living room with a flick of a tail.

Taako calls up Lup.

“Hello,” she says. “You know, you only call me at night.”

“What’s your opinion on theater?”

“As in theatrics and high-drama?”

“As in a middle school play.”

“Taako,” she says with sincerity. “There is nowhere else I’d rather be than a badly ventilated middle school auditorium right now.”

When he lies in bed, passing the cat curled up outside Angus’ door, Taako feels the bum-bump of his heart flowering between his lungs. The spring comes in through the window. There’s a great rise starting at the base of his chest, swelling and swelling, as he falls asleep and dreams of nothing.

“What sorta venue is this— are the drinks provided?”

“It’s a middle school,” Barry cuts in, looking astonished at Merle, who is in the process of pulling out a flask of his own.

“Turn up, Merle!” Lup cheers. “You great, wonderful, borderline alcoholic, you!”

She makes a go for the flask after Merle takes a swig, and Magnus is leaning in close to Lucretia and saying, “I took an improv class once. Totally aced it, I was all like ‘of course, yes’ — wait no, ‘ and yes’!”

“Yes and?” Lucretia says, her brows raised. 

“Yes, and I was great at it,” Magnus says.

“No, I mean, the saying is—”

Meanwhile, Davenport is counting out the change for tickets, sometimes whipping around to shush the group, which does little to quiet their intersecting conversations. The night is sweet, full of blossoms and stars and the orange street lamps outside the school. Out front, where they stand in line, the fence railings are wrapped in floral vines. Merle makes them speak through their soft, waxy petals to Lup’s outrageous delight. In front of the cracked front doors is a sign with swirling letters, announcing: “Spring Play: The Secret Garden!”

Taako is off aways, near the auditorium fire exits.

“Think of it like this,” he says, hushed and quickly, “if you completely flop, and I mean, absolute humiliation — puking, freezing, etcetera etcetera — I will never make you come back. Genuine. Cross my heart.” And he crosses it. 

Angus stares at him, wide-eyed. “That doesn’t change the fact that everyone will have seen me — and they’ll know I’m embarrassed and they’ll feel all bad and that’s worse, you know it’s worse.”

Taako waves him off. “We’re working in hypotheticals right now. You’ll walk on stage and you won’t even realize you spoke until you’re off it.” Taako snaps his fingers. “Like that. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Stop,” Taako hisses. He thwaps Angus’ ear and Angus jumps back, affronted. “Stop being sullen. If you flub your lines I will cough so loudly and no one will notice.”

There’s raucous laughter behind them. Turning around, Taako sees that Barry has his hand trapped in the mouth of a pink flower.

“There are worse people to be embarrassed in front of,” Taako says.

Taako sends Angus off through the exit doors. As he walks back, Lup calls out:

“How’s the primadonna?”

“Spiraling,” Taako says. 

She reaches out her arm and takes Taako around the neck and he curves towards her hug. She smells like apricots and bland soap and fire. She ruffles his hair, grins at him, pretends like there isn’t a lobed off part in each of their stomachs that got lost somewhere, that fell out like the rubber of a truck wheel, curling backwards into the heat-black pavement of time away.

It’s odd, having them all here. Taako has gotten so used to the quiet, undisturbed town. It’s like having a sudden bullrun down mainstreet. Taako feels out of sync for a moment and then Magnus will elbow jostle him or Barry will adjust his glasses with a knuckle, and Taako’ll return to himself, as a soul settles back into a body after near-death. And he’ll go on thinking, this will be easy, this will be the easiest thing in the world. 

They vanish into the dark entrance of the school doors, the sweet stick of mown glass dissipating into the smell of bleach and sweat. Hallways are cut off with grates and they’re led, clattering and whispering with the other guests, into the foggy mouth of the auditorium. They shove themselves into stained red-plush seats, Lup saying extravagantly as she fixes the folds of her black silk dress: “now, this is high-class.”

Merle presses himself into the aisle seat. He has a bouquet of fat, fragrant flowers he crumbles in his lap. 

“What are those for?” Taako asks, brushing off a loose petal from his lap.

“For the kid!” Merle says, voice lowered as the lights of the room begin to dim. “Magnus brought him one of those fucking ducks.”

“Are these from the fences outside?”

“I had to act quickly— oh, look,” Merle says and snags something from the center of a dark flower. “Stole Barry’s ring. Neat, right?”

“Oh, very nice, Merle,” Taako says. “The manifestation of Barry’s love for my sister is currently in your domain. I’m thrilled.”

“Well, don’t get all tetchy.” Merle slips it onto his thumb and wiggles his fingers. 

Then the red velvet curtains are being tugged back and a chorus of off-pitch students sing:

Mary Mary quite contrary

how does your garden grow?

With silver bells, and cockle shells

and pretty maids all in a row.

Afterwards, Angus finds them waiting outside. He runs into Taako’s arms in a suffocating hug. There’s a lot of noise after that. Magnus scoops Angus up into a flying embrace and tousles his hair and steals his glasses and presents a nice, wood-carven duck for Angus’ inspection. Angus takes Merle’s flowers, then returns them after a sneezing fit. There’s congratulations all around.

While they’re heading back, a buzzing lively group, a girl catches up with Angus and stops him. 

“Here!” she says and Angus turns ten shades darker as she hands him a journal. “You forgot this backstage.”

Angus wipes his hands on his slacks, takes the journal and laughs like he’s on the verge of crying. Taako watches this all narrowly, before Angus says, “Right, yeah. That’s — yup. That’s thanks. I mean: thanks.”

The girl smiles, says, “You did great! See you Monday!”

Then she’s off back into the departing school crowd, tail of hair flying out behind her. There’s a beat of silence.

“Oh ho ho,” Merle begins, loud and abrasive, his hands rubbing together, all raised brows. 

Quickly and succinctly, Taako cuts a pointed look at Merle, before drawing Angus back into a walk. He says, ever casual, “She seemed nice.”

Angus does not respond to this comment, but holds his journal tightly to his chest.

At the farmhouse, they gather in the living room. Merle and Barry crowd around the wooden crate of vinyls. Magnus throws himself on the couch, stretches out and cracks all his joints at once, while Lucretia sits herself politely in the window seat. Lup and Davenport follow Angus as he shows them to his room, excess energy and nerve overflowing into rushed, breathless commentary.

Taako hides himself in the kitchen and takes a big breath. The smell of several simmering pots of curry tickle his nose and he snatches up a ladle to stir one, steam rising into his face. This will be easy, he thinks. He knows how to talk to these people; he’s talked to them for one hundred years. He’s talked to them when he’s had nothing to say. Lup is here — like that, lupishere. A punch, tripping up his breath.

Lup is here. 

Lucretia is here.

The world, the cramped swollen porthole of it, is here, in the living room, in his house. It’s clattering around with his Victrola. It’s stepping on his rugs. It’s talking to his Angus. Suddenly, Magnus is in the kitchen, asking:

“Why the fuck do you only have Jim Croce?”

Taako thumbs salt into a pot. “Because that is what the house came with. There aren't many record shops around. If you haven’t noticed, I live in a moorland.”

Magnus groans and leaves, calling out: “You’d be fucking grateful for Steely Dan, is what you’d be.” In the living room, Magnus cheers, “Acapella!” followed by Merle’s reciprocal cheer, and Lucretia and Barry’s disgruntled objections.

Only last week, he was holding a firefly in his palm and his heart between his teeth. Only five months ago, Angus would not speak to him. And before that: static, loss, love like a broken tap, like something that was too big and slobbering to hold with anything but nails, a crucifix, a sacrifice. He’s gotten used to the farmhouse, to Angus, to a quiet, domestic little life with tea bags and homework and spring rain. How does he tell them they can’t stay too late? That Angus likes to sleep in? That Taako uses his Saturday mornings to knead risen bread and wander listlessly, and that he loves them, really there is no question of that, but they can’t stay and they can’t drink too much around Angus and this is Taako’s life. He isn’t lonely enough to need them all the time anymore.

How does he say any of that to Lup?

You’re a bleeding light. You’re my sister. I don’t know you anymore. I wish you never left. Please shut the door when you go. Stop leaving me.

“Phew! Smells like some future bathroom trouble in here!” Merle whistles, meandering in, hands robustly on his hips. “You gotta make a plain one for me. Old men can’t handle spice.”

Taako covers a vat, eyes rolling. “You have a shit constitution.”

“I have a sensitive constitution — I’m very aware of tastes and things.”

“Alright, buddy.”

Merle pops a stray onion slice in his mouth and chews. He says, “That’s just a waste.”

Taako follows his eyes to the sunroom. “I like it in there,” he says.

“Has nothing in it,” shrugs Merle. His brows go all the way up his forehead and Taako looks skyward, sighing.

“Merle, would you like to give me some—”

“So,” Merle begins. “I’ll get you some very nice starter tulips. They’re the easiest thing in the world, of course, you’ll need to water them, do you think you can handle—”

“Yes, Merle,” Taako laughs. “I’m not a fucking imbecile.”

Angus comes barrelling through the archway and they both spin around. “Taako! Can I take Lucretia out back and show her that old bird’s nest we found?”

Taako waves him off. “Sure, whatever, kid,” he says and Angus turns on his heels to crash outside again.

Taako returns to one of his curry pots, spinning the dial to increase the heat. Through the kitchen archway, Magnus is singing Bad, Bad Leroy Brown very loudly and very off-tune with the Victrola. 

“You did good with him,” Merle says after a drag of comfortable silence. That’s the thing with Merle, Taako remembers, he’s always so good at letting a room be silent, so natural and easy with nothing.

Taako flicks his eyes to Merle. “Who, Angus?”

“Hm.”

“He can be snotty,” says Taako vaguely.

“Well, he dresses himself and walks around on his own two legs, so I’d say you’ve done an alright job, overall.”

“Christ,” Taako says. “Is the bar that low?”

“When it comes to raising kids, man, any iota of success is a medal of gold fucking honor.”

Taako snorts. “I’m not raising him.”

“You aren’t?” There go his brows, up up up.

“No. I mean,” Taako shakes his head, dices a tomato against a cutting board. “God, he’s already thirteen. He’s raised, past-tense. He’s like a little adult.”

“Were you done growing at thirteen?” Merle cuts in.

Taako runs the tomatoes into a pot with the edge of his hand; the juices are cool against his skin. “I don’t even remember being thirteen.”

“I don’t know— I just,” Merle says. “I don’t think you should be undermining yourself here. It’s not about keeping him alive, or anything, that’s not raising someone, I mean, first it is, but then — it’s, you know. It’s getting him to do his homework and listening to him talk your ear off and letting him know you love him, right? That’s what being a parent is about. Being there for them.”

Taako sort of cringes. Parent. “Okie-dokie.”

“I don’t wanna embarrass you.”

“You’re not embarrassing me.”

“I think you should be proud, Taako. Honestly. Angus was a great kid before, but after a few months with you? Phew . Kid’s a whiplash. I mean, he’s as sharp as a tack, always has been, but he’s got this fullness about him now, you know? He’s walkin’ around out there giving his how-d’ye-dos and thanking everyone for coming and showing them around the place. He’s comfortable, God, he’s just so pleased and everything to have a place to show — and that’s all you, pointy hat. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” he says, watching a green, tangy curry swirl under his ladle.

“Okay. Well, as long as you do.” Merle heads for the living room. “Now remember, don’t make the curry too spicy, I don’t want my asshole to burn for the next—”

“Goodbye, Merle.”

“Yeah, alright alright!”

The night settles down. They crowd into the living room. Taako has separated out the curries, each paired with different toppings and sides, and he keeps busy entering and exiting the kitchen with plates and glasses. Sometimes Magnus will follow him to finish a story, or Angus will trail after, holding onto the edge of Taako’s shirttail as he talks. Taako has been avoiding Lucretia, but sometimes their eyes lock over the others’ heads and Taako is shocked to find his anger is a sleeping beast, drowsy and unperturbed.

“It’s ‘frying pan,’” Magnus is saying, covering his face.

“I think I know what I’m talking about—”

“Merle,” Lup intercedes, “what even is a drying pan? It’s not a thing.”

“It is a thing!” Merle stands. “'I like the sushi because it’s never touched a drying pan.' Perfect sense.”

“I’m going to snap you in half like a glowstick,” Magnus says seriously. 

Taako spins his finger, all idle-like. “Merle, just do it from the top. I need to hear the flow again to remember.”

“I swear to God, if you sing this again,” Barry starts and Merle opens his mouth as Lup lets out an enthused cackle.

Taako sweeps himself up with a few dirty plates in his hands. “Okay, dessert! A very tasteful—”

There’s a knock at the door. Davenport frowns, counts their heads with his fingers and says, “Seven. Eight with Ang—”

Angus is already on his feet, saying, “Go get the cake and ice cream, Taako. I’ll answer the door. I think I forgot I invited Carey and Killian, you can just go ahead—”

“Jesus, don’t capsize,” Taako says lazily and vanishes into the kitchen.

He hears Merle say, “Okay, maybe it is frying pan.”

“Thank you!” Magnus shouts. 

In the kitchen, Taako separates out bowls of round-scooped ice cream and carrot cake, organizing them onto a porcelain platter. Taako hears the room go quiet. Balancing everything in one hand, curiosity piqued, Taako shoulders open the swinging doors. The blood drains from his body. His heart gives a nervous half-drumbeat inside the rungs of his ribs.

Across the room, over the heads of his friends who all have varying looks of confusion and concern on their faces, is Angus holding the door open, looking at his feet. At the entrance, dressed all in black, is Kravitz.

Taako turns around and reenters the kitchen. There is only so much he can handle in a night.

“I’m sorry.”

“Angus, it’s fine.”

“No, really, Taako, I am sorry,” Angus says. He’s wringing his hands by the island table, watching as Taako cuts another piece from the carrot cake. “I just thought, it’s been so long since— and you always seemed to like—”

“Angus, stop,” Taako says with force. “I’m not upset.”

Angus watches him.

“I’m not.”

Angus pinches his face awkwardly.

“You little shit,” Taako says and whips a loose napkin at him. “Go. Enjoy your party. Ask Kravtiz if he takes cream or sugar in his coffee. Or whip cream,” Taako adds, pulling out the carton of vanilla ice cream from the freezer.

“Okay,” Angus says, head hung.

“I also have maraschino cherries.”

“Okay—”

“Don’t ask him all of that,” Taako says quickly. “I’m not a maid.”

Angus eases towards the doors. “Okay.”

“This is my house,” says Taako. “I don’t just take orders.”

“I know.”

“He’ll have maraschino cherries and he’ll like them.” Taako rips open the lid of the ice cream and begins scooping it beside the crumbly cake. 

“I’m leaving,” Angus says.

“Do actually ask him about the cream and sugar.”

Angus presses his lips down, eyes glittering. “I’m glad you’re not upset.”

And before Taako can check his tone, the swinging doors whine and Angus has vanished. Taako stabs a clean spoon into the ice cream with a frown.

When Taako hands Kravtiz his plate, the conversation goes:

“Hello,” says Kravtiz.

“Hi,” Taako says. There is low chatter happening, led deftly by Lup, her voice a resonant bell. “How’s the, uh, underworld?”

Kravtiz’s eyes crinkle, just at the corners. “Full of dead people,” he says.

“Classic,” Taako says. And that’s about that.

For not having addressed Kravtiz for the past hour, Taako has a very good idea about what he’s doing. He’s sitting in the lounge chair by the fire with his legs apart, dark, clean slacks wrinkled slightly where he’s resting his elbows on his knees and holding his plate. His dreads are pulled back and tied at the nape of his neck. He’s wearing a red tie. He hasn’t spoken to Taako. It’s going fine.

When he’s washing up the dishes, everyone gathering their things and mingling by the doorway, Lup waylays Taako in the kitchen. She pops herself upon the island counter and swings her legs, her eyes like a radar beam on his back. 

“Spill,” Taako sighs, finally turning around. “Go on. Speak.”

She grins, a flash, and shrugs her shoulders. She’s wearing Barry’s blazer. “A little dull.”

Taako slumps, mouth parting. “What, the curry? Did you say that to hurt my feelings—”

“No, goofus, the man. The man who you can’t stop staring at.”

Taako guffaws. “I have not been staring! I don’t even — there are multiple men in the room. I could be — it could be Magnus, for all you know.” Taako scowls, arms crossed. “Don’t you have a Barry throat to be sticking your tongue down, right about now?”

“No, we’re talking about your tongue and how it’s salivating over that nice, sexy slice of suited-up skeleton.”

“Hoorah for alliteration.”

Lup rolls her eyes. “Cut it out, Taako. You’re so into him. You said you were so into him seven months ago and suddenly, what? You’re acting like he has the goddamn plague. Did he break up with you?”

“Break up with me?” Taako scoffs. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she drawls. “I forgot that no one would ever dare to dump Taako.”

“Correct, but—”

“What, so you broke up with him? What’d he do? Did he absolutely bore you to death? I think he’s talking about referral mortgage rates with Magnus out there. I dipped out like fucking that.” She snaps her finger. It sparks like a flint and steel; she’s like that, everywhere magic. 

“He’s not boring,” Taako says shortly. His voice is like a tight vase.

Lup pauses, swings her legs idly. “Ohhh-kay, then. So what happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Like shit nothing happened. It was all Kravitz, Kravitz, Kravitz — isn’t he swell, Lup? Isn’t he just? And now you won’t touch him with a five foot pole.”

“Will you quit it?” Taako snaps, slashing the sink tap on. “You don’t have to be privy to every modicum of my life.”

The faucet roars for a moment, crashing off the dirtied pots. Taako takes a breath. He turns the tap off. Folds a hand across his brow.

Lup says, “I just wanted to catch up… we haven’t spoken in a while.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I know.”

The sound of soft voices by the front door coils itself around them. Angus laughs. Taako says: “You should come over more often. All of you, I mean. But.” He turns to her, their eyes catch across the tile. Her hair is pulled into an elegant bun that’s begun to frizz; her eyeliner smudged, a freckle by her nose, her tired smile. His sister. 

Lup nods. “Yeah, that sounds nice. It’s… good here, I think.”

Taako looks around, to see what she means. The kitchen lights are soapy and golden. He thinks of the pancakes he’ll make in the morning, when everything’s over. He’ll spell out u suck in chocolate chips and watch Angus roll his eyes like a teenager; it’ll be nice, he’s really looking forward to it.

“It grows on you,” Taako says. 

She slips off the counter and reaches for him, and he reaches back. They hug and hold still and hug. When they pull back, she says, “The curry was not dull . You’re ridiculous and such an attention whore.”

Taako shoves her back, laughing.

“The curry?” she mimics in his voice. “You asshole.”

“And what about the cake?”

“Well, darling, it was far too dry,” she says, uppity and prim, chin tilted.

“You have a lot of nerve,” he says.

And she hugs him again, hard. “You are so stupid and horrible,” she says against his shoulder. “I love you so much, Taako.”

Taako swallows, wraps his arms around her. He closes his eyes. “I love you,” he says back.

The words roll off the wet slope of his heart. He remembers when she wasn’t here and how a big, rubber balloon seemed to rent out a space in the center of his chest and he didn’t know what it was, where it came from, why it never popped but grew and grew and grew. He loved her, was why; he loved her and it stored itself inside him, and he’s pulling out the pin and he’s taking back the space to fit other things now. Because Lup is back. 

“I love you,” he says again.

As everyone files out into the night, Taako counts out a steady, rising beat in his stomach, as if his large intestine is hitting itself against his skin. Lup is the second to last, and as she passes him, she mouths: play nice.

Then Kravtiz is in front of him. 

“I’m going to go clean up,” Angus says importantly, but Taako hooks a finger against the collar of his shirt and pulls him back. Angus coughs.

“No, you aren’t,” Taako says. “Say goodbye to your guest.”

Kravtiz has his hands in his pockets. He is nothing but dark lines and shadows. Taako can feel the cold. He gives Angus a pointed shove.

“Goodbye, Mr. Kravtiz,” Angus says. “Thank you for coming.”

“It was my pleasure, Angus,” Kravtiz says. Taako stares at the banister of the front door; had his voice always been that deep? Certainly not. “The food was very good.”

Taako realizes a half a moment too late that that was directed at him . He says, a bit snippish, “Of course it was.”

Kravtiz laughs, a warm, full sound.

They stare at each other. Taako has a vice grip on Angus’ arm. Kravtiz shifts his eyes away and takes a step outside.

“Thanks again,” he says; their gaze snags again, like bramble catching on clothes. Taako looks away first, down at the floorboards.

The door shuts and Kravtiz is gone. Taako lets out the longest breath of his life.

Angus weasels his way out of his grip and rubs at his arm ruefully. “I’m gonna yark.”

Taako jumps at him and Angus bolts across the room and into the kitchen, laughing.

Lup is lounged about on a wicker chair when she says, “I still have your Candlenight’s gift.”

They’re in the sunroom. With Merle’s guidance, and a few garden planters Magnus made, it’s loud with the fresh, tickling smell of flowers and crawling vines. The gray tile has been covered over with mismatched woven rugs, soft underfoot. The cherry red of the setting sun slips in through the glass. From where Taako is standing, spraying an ugly looking wax flower with water, he can see the dark flurry of Angus in the field.

He just arrived home from school, stopping in briefly to greet Taako and Lup, before vanishing outside with the cat. Caleb has taken to following him like a shadow, tail swinging in the dark green of the high gras as Angus stoops and sails against the evening wind. 

Taako glances to her. “I couldn’t swing a gift this year,” he says.

Lup stretches out against the sun-bleached blue cushions. Her dark gold hair tumbles out over the armrest and she grins up at him. “Now, don’t tell me you forgot,” she winks. “What a lousy excuse.”

Taako sprays her with the bottle. “Ha-ha,” he scowls. “So what is it then?”

“Hold on,” she says, swooping up, “I’ve hid it in my robes.”

Taako takes a seat. He runs his fingers over the woven, brittle vines of the wicker couch and remembers dragging it in with Magnus and Merle. Merle collapsed on it for a siesta while Magnus busied himself in the attic, sealing up a hole that’d been leaking in morning rain. They’d stayed for lunch and when they left, Taako cracked the front doors open to wait for Angus to come in with the spring breeze, backpack jostling against his hip. That’d been happening more and more frequently: visitors staying for lunch or stopping in for a late breakfast.

One day, Merle had come by unannounced with a black garbage bag of Mavis’ hand-me-down clothes. Angus had sat on the floor before the fireplace and sorted through sweaters and T-shirts while Merle had surveyed the sunroom’s progress. Other times it’s Davenport or Barry and Lup; Lucretia, but only as a pair, always careful and distant and polite like the hard, glancing lines of her sable buttons. But never Kravtiz. Taako breathes very slowly every time he opens the front doors, but it’s never Kravtiz. His heart remains a nervous pulse in his throat, though, and it keeps him up late into the night, anxious like running along the edge of a cliff.

Lup comes back through the propped sunroom door. Her red robes are in her arms and she’s smiling. 

“Alright, come here,” she says. When Taako is before her, she lets the robes fall to the ground, and in her outstretched palms, like a saber, is the dark frills and curved mahogany handle of the Umbra Staff.

“Oh,” Taako says. He glances back to Lup’s searching look.

“Let’s be real, you rocked it way better than I ever did,” she says.

Taako smiles haltingly. He reaches out and touches the point of it, then grabs the handle and lifts it from her hands. “This is a straight-up regift,” he says.

“Okay, but, like, it’s a re-regift because I gave it to you first.”

“That’s a stretch. Your dead body was holding it, sure.”

Lup waves this off. Her dead body, of course, is just a technicality to Lup. Taako isn’t sure he’ll ever get used to that. “Go on,” she says, bouncing on her feet. “Give it a little turn.”

He flexes his fingers around the smiling U of the handle. It’s cool and empty-feeling. Magic is like a pitcher of water; it’s the sound of dripping, it’s the hard, thundering face of a waterfall. Without a focus it’s like trying to catch a single raindrop.

Taako moves the umbrella and something tumbles out from his chest. The end of the staff snaps into violent, purple sparks. Lup stomps out a steaming rug tassel.

Taako is out of breath. The hand holding the handle is molten.

“You might need to reacclimate yourself,” Lup says.

“No kidding,” he says, half-laughing. There’s a buzzing up and down his arms. He switches the Umbra Staff to his other hand, shakes out his right. He raises a brow. “Let’s go outside.”

“Hell yeah,” Lup grins.

In the moors, bordered by the back of the farmhouse and the cliffs of the beach, Taako sends out fireworks. Blue, red, purple — bright and popping into the clean blue sky. As the sparks fall, he swishes the Umbra Staff and they turn into blossoms; another, and they fold themselves into clouds, into small animals, the sun streaming through their hazy bodies like light through water. Lup wolfwhistles as he aims up and sends out a flurry of bright flames, so hot and dangerous and alive it’s neon blue. 

The magic flows out of him. He narrows the tunnels of his mind, rearranges the mazes of his veins, angles them towards the staff. It talks back to him, says look at this, look at what I can do, look how well you love me into existence.

The noise and excitement brings Angus out from the high grass. He dances around the cloud animals, passes his hands through them and they dissolve against the warmth of his fingertips, reform into glittering smoke that chases his heels as he runs around Lup and Taako.

When they’re back inside, all equally breathless and flushed, Angus goes to fill the cat’s water bowl while Taako and Lup flop onto the couch.

Lup pushes a sweaty curl of hair from her face. “Pretty stellar, yeah?”

 “And you’re sure you don’t want it?” Taako asks. He leans the staff up against the couch, handle caught on the back cushion. “It’d make an excellent mantel piece, wherever it is you’re living these days.”

Lup pulls herself up from a slouch, face suddenly nervous, and Taako shifts to follow her.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she starts, voice a bit lower. “At Angus’ little debut, Kravtiz caught up to us — Barry and I — when we were leaving and. Well, he offered us a job.”

“A job?”

“Sort of on a trial basis, I guess. Since we’re liches and all, and there’s really no dying for us, he thought it might be convenient if we jumped around with him. You know. Reaper hitmen, or whatever.”

“What does that,” Taako says faintly. He frowns. “What does that even mean?”

Lup shrugs. She pushes a stray hair behind her ear. “I’m not sure yet, really, but I don’t think — I don’t really think we’d be living in this plane, is all. Not most of the time, anyway.”

Taako’s stomach flips, lands wrong. “Oh, that’s.”

Lup touches his hand. “Taako, I swear, if you think it’s a bad idea, then I’ll—”

“No, it’s — that’s not my business—”

“Of course it’s your business, you’re my brother.” She says the word as if every other is sacrilegious, as if it were the very first, the root of all other words. 

Taako pulls away from her hand, unsure and off-kilter. His sister, a reaper? His sister, bouncing around in the Astral Plane. He stretches out for whatever feeling is growing inside him. “Lup, this isn’t — you don’t have to run this by me,” he says after a moment.

“I just,” she says with a sigh. They listen for a moment as Angus jostles around in the kitchen, speaking softly to the cat. “I just don’t want to make any rifts. Wider.” She shifts and reaches for him again, and he lets her, lets their hands link between their laps. “You’ve changed — and I don’t just mean,” she lifts her hand, “I don’t just mean the farmhouse or Angus, but everything. There’s so much I don’t know about you now and it scares me a little, Taako.”

He squeezes her hand. He sees the break, a thick, black line, between her disappearance and his time alone like a ravine in his history; he feels it like a physical mark.

He says, “I’ve known you too long, Lup, to think that’s ever stopped you from weaseling your way into every detail of my life.”

She laughs, tilts her head back. “Yeah, alright.”

“I mean, you know the basics,” he says.

She counts on her free hand, the other still holding Taako’s, a small little tether. “One, wicked horrible taste in music.”

“Well—”

“Two, can’t spell cinnamon—”

“That is a difficult word, and I was talking more along the lines of my favorite color or—”

“Oh, and three: awful social-romantic interactions,” she says. She gives him a pointed, careful look. “If Barry and I agree to this, you know Kravtiz will technically be my colleague, right?”

He twists her wrist and she gasps, flinching back. “He’ll be your boss.”

“He’ll be a constant person in my life, and therefore, yours,” Lup states with finality. She rubs at her wrist. “So, buck up, cowboy. I need to know if you mooning over him will affect my pay raise.”

“I don’t think you’re necessarily paid in this line of work.”

“I see you avoiding,” she says, “and I won’t push. But, as a moderately objective third party, I don’t think Kravtiz will be super ecstatic if every get-together turned out the way Angus’ did. Just an observation.”

“Thank you, third party,” Taako says dryly. “Your observation has been noted.”

She raises a brow and calls out: “Angus! Come say goodbye to me, goofus!”

Taako falls back against the couch, frowning, as Angus clatters from the kitchen and is swept into a tight hug.

A week later, Taako watches the whorls of milk sink into his coffee. Early light shines in through the kitchen window. The curtain flutters, all shy. Angus is still asleep; it’s a late Saturday morning and the farmhouse is sleepy, lazy, creaking and sighing into the soft ground. His spoon scrapes against the mug.

He’s thinking of Kravitz. Of his dark suit; the bleeding red tie; how the fork fit into the expanse of his hand as he picked at the carrot cake. The light of the fire against his skin. The shadows beneath the angle of his jaw. The way he bowed his head and looked at Angus when he said goodbye. His mouth around the word pleasure.

Taako groans and covers his face. It’s ridiculous. It’s been months; it’s been nearly a year. Taako thought he was through with this. That he had tossed this whole jittery feeling, like a pulsing vein, into the garbage. It’d been going brilliantly, too. The farmhouse and Angus had been a distraction and he’d barely thought of Kravtiz, of anything, really, outside of their little bubble. But now, it’s as if a wide door is swinging open, flooding in bright light. And the feeling is back. The scary, loud thundering of his chest. His face gone all hot and uncomfortable.

Kravitz Kravitz Kravitz. Like a flight of birds. A cliff rock crashing into explosions of ocean water. Like the wind, a gigantic hand, running itself over the long grass of the moors. It’s all: Kravitz in the pink crystal mirror. It’s his hands dealing cards. It’s the dark roll and turn of his voice. Taako remembers the flush of excitement, of curiosity like a wild animal in his stomach, at the sight of Kravitz in the shared common. Sitting at the couch, adjusting a cuff of his sleeve, the shadowy, flittering lines of his body as he rose in one smooth motion; that tiny imperceptible lift of his mouth. Something had roved between Taako’s ribs and settled itself into the tight entrance of his throat. And it’s back, gnashing its teeth, hungry and desperate after a long hibernation. He likes Kravtiz. He likes Kravitz as if he’s just discovered what liking is. It’s dreadful. It’s a risen corpse, really, ironically. 

Taako snaps his head up with a gasp. The memories come barrelling through his mind, one after another, and he thinks: Chug and Squeeze! Then he’s up and abandoning his coffee, taking the stairs two at a time. 

He throws open the wardrobe of his room. His shirts and cloaks and hats go flying out behind him. He searches a hand through the corners of it and curses. He reaches under the bed. He pulls open the end table drawers. Nothing nothing nothing. Where could he have possibly put it? That stupid, awful looking thing, like a balloon with the air gone out. 

He stomps downstairs again and rips out the couch cushions, claws out the corners of the kitchen cabinets, and comes up empty again. He snatches his Stone up and dials. It rings twice and then:

“Hiya!”

“Merle,” Taako says. “Merle, do you have this — it looks like. Nevermind. Remember when we were moving out of the Bureau? And we just tossed everything in the center of the room and took whatever, remember?”

“Yeah, I got Magnus’ left boot. It’s weird; it reminds me of my cousin’s boot that he had—”

Taako says, “Shut up. I don’t care. I need you to just grab all of it again, okay? And call Magnus. Bring everything you guys have over here. I can’t find something.” 

“Boy-howdy, slow your roll, man. What is it you’re looking for?”

Taako glances out the window and bites at the inside of his cheek. “I don’t want to say.”

“Ah. Personal use item?”

“God, it’s not—”

“It’s all cool. I don’t judge. I guess you can attach a sentimental value to those sorta things,” Merle continues idly. 

“Oh my God,” Taako says. He scrunches his face up. “I’m hanging up. And I hate you—”

“Free love, baby!”

Taako ends the call, scowling. A few hours later, when Angus is up and on the coast with Caleb, Magnus and Merle arrive with several bags stuffed full of miscellaneous items. They dump it in the center of the living room. Taako spots a silk scarf and pulls it out, limp and sad like a dead snake. It’s covered in blood.

“My scarf,” he frowns.

Magnus shrugs. “Nicked my thumb with a hammer.”

Taako lets it drop to the floor.

“Alright!” Magnus says, and claps his hands. “What’s this thing look like? Shape, size, girth?”

“I lost a bowl , for fuck’s sake,” Taako seethes. He slaps Merle around the head and Merle, for his part, looks only half sorry about it.

“Don’t you have bowls?” Magnus says. “I clearly remember eating food from bowls here.”

“It’s different. It’s a different sort of bowl,” Taako says evasively. His fingers stretch, feel around the phantom cold of clay. “I thought — I swore I must’ve packed it with me, but I don’t know. It was all so quick and now. Well, now I just want to. Look at it.”

“Okay, weirdo,” Magnus says and kneels down to begin to sort. 

Merle says, nodding his head knowingly at them, “You robbed the corpse of my cousin, didn’t you?”

Taako rolls his eyes. “Picking at old wounds much? Wasn’t like he was going to use them anytime soon.”

“Was he even your real cousin?” Magnus asks.

“Don’t tell me how to grieve,” Merle says.

An hour in, Taako gets frantic. He is back to pulling the cushions from the couch, snapping at Magnus and Merle, and picking up every single item carefully, then scornfully when it does not yield the bowl. 

Taako swoops his Umbra Staff from the rack by the door and the clutter blazes into bright blue fire. He catches Magnus and Merle glancing at one another, and Taako ceases the fire with a swish and says: “Stop that. Stop doing that.”

“Stop what?” Magnus asks. He toes at a smoldering piece of clothing.

“Looking at each other like I’m manic,” Taako hisses.

Merle and Magnus share a look.

Taako nearly screams. “It’s fine. This is normal. It’s not here, whatever.”

“What is this even for,” Merle says. “It’s a bowl, Taako. Buy a new one.”

“It’s not — I can’t buy one. I made this one. At that place.”

Magnus’ brows furrow. “That place?”

“On the Moon,” Taako says. He waves a hand, vague.

“The Chug and Squeeze?” says Merle and Magnus laughs, loud and joyous.

“Kravitz!” he cheers. “Your date. I completely forgot!”

Taako kicks over a stack of charcoaled fake coins and stomps to the couch. He throws himself onto it. “Please don’t,” he says, covering his face. “Please, really, don’t.”

Magnus reaches over and pats his head. “Poor wizard man. Poor, poor—”

“Aw, stop that, Maggie!” Merle says, grinning. “Don’t give him a hard time, he’s just got an itsy little crush.”

Taako presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until he sees shapes.

“He’s got a massive , royal fucking crush, is what you mean,” Magnus cuts in. “Did you see him at Angus’ party—”

“Red to the roots of his hair!” Merle shouts in laughter.

“Down bad—”

Taako sits up. “I will use every ounce of arcana in my blood to turn the both of you inside out and hang you out like a clothesline. I swear to God, the moment one of you even thinks about hinting at saying something—”

“Woah, what’s going on?” Angus says, appearing in the doorway and surveying the mess. The cat passes through his legs, hisses at Magnus and Merle, and disappears up the stairs. 

Taako raises a very high brow at the two.

Magnus covers his mouth away from Taako and says, “Avitz-kray.”

Taako makes a go for his Umbra Staff and both Merle and Magnus, in an act of complete and surprisingly deft synchronization, shove themselves out the front doors. Angus jumps away, watching them disappear down the dirt drive.

“I can’t find a thing I left at the Bureau,” Taako explains as Angus picks his way over the burnt items. He sits down by Taako’s feet and Taako pulls himself up, watching as Angus unzips his backpack.

“Maybe Lucretia has it,” Angus shrugs. Taako picks out a fallen blossom from Angus’ hair and flicks it over the side of the couch. “Look at these cool shells I found. I also found this rock, and I think it has a fossil imprint of a leaf or… hold on, is that my grandfather’s silverware set?”

In the cozy afterthought of dusk, Taako wanders downstairs and finds Angus curled up in the window seat. He’s making a thin, electric spark between his thumb and finger. Or trying, at least. It fades out the moment his fingers part. Angus frowns.

“Watcha doin?” Taako asks. He maneuvers himself into a seat beside Angus, curling his knees to his chest, so they’re facing each other. Angus’ journal lies between them and Taako picks it up to flip through. Doodle figures and school notes and the saccharine tang of pressed flowers, which stick in gooey remnants on the lined paper. 

“I’m trying to get,” Angus says, tongue caught between his teeth. Outside, a balmy spring storm is brewing. Taako can smell it in the air — like upturned rocks and heavy, guarded clouds. “To get lightning.”

Taako raises a brow. “Lightning? Do you want to strike us down?”

Angus looks up to him. He still has a dark, knotted furrow on his forehead from concentration. Taako grins and pokes him right between the brow. “You’ll get wrinkles,” he warns, then reaches forward and nuggies him. 

Angus pulls away, swiping at Taako’s hand and scoffing at his cackle. “Barry showed me this trick—”

“Barry?” Taako says. “What has Barry got to do with this?”

“A few days ago, when him and Lup came by, he was showing me how to do this lightning rope thing,” Angus explains. He pinches his fingers together, draws them apart slowly and a tiny bulb of electricity stretches out, then dissolves into the air. “Where, like, he drew it out from his hands, and it was all blue and stuff.”

“Barry?” Taako says again, watching this happen. He brushes the curtains to the side as Angus makes a frustrated sound and gets an arm stuck in a fold. “Careful,” says Taako, as an aside, before continuing: “What are you doing taking advice from Barry?”

“Because Barry said—”

“Barry is a litch,” Taako scoffs. “Barry doesn’t under stand magic. Don’t take advice from Barry. Take advice from me.”

Angus rolls his eyes. “What do you know?”

“Bitchy,” Taako tuts. “I know you used to take lessons with me, is what I know. Suddenly Barry comes tromping in all new and shiny, and I’ve, what, lost my charm? Been kicked to the curb like some old—”

Angus shoves a leg at him, rolling his eyes again, and Taako bites back a smile, still acting affronted and hurt. “Whatever,” Angus says, bright and happy.

“What’d he say, then? Did he make it boring as shit?” Taako prompts. “About the molecules and the energy—”

“I find that interesting, actually. Magical theory is an underappreciated—”

“Shut up, I’m teaching,” Taako says grandly. “Barry is full of lies and has no taste, Angus. He turns into a literal ball of uncontrolled, batshit crazy magic when he dies and he’s going to tell you some lame-o thing about atoms compressing?” Taako waves his hand. “You can learn about the theory later, the practical is where it’s all at. You won’t be able to get anything done if you’re too caught up in the logic of it.”

Taako peeks at Angus, waiting for an interruption, but Angus is sitting, quiet and rapt, hands in his lap. Taako straightens up. “Magic just is . It doesn’t owe you anything. You gotta let it be its own thing.”

“Like,” Angus says, a bit snotty. “It’s in me all along?”

“Gross, of course not. That’d make you a sorcerer; they’re awful people, don’t associate with them,” Taako says. “They think they’re God’s little gift. Entirely full of themselves.”

“What does that make you , then?”

Taako smarts, laughing. “When did you become such a horrible little boy?” he asks. “Did you always talk back this much?”

“Not aloud,” Angus says. Taako narrows his eyes.

“Alright, hot shot, give me your hand. Let me show you how real magic’s done.” Angus offers up his palm and Taako places his own just beneath. “Sorcerers and litches are made up of magic, but the rest of us sorry folk have to let the magic just pass through us. It’s why we need a focus.”

“Like your umbrella,” Angus says, voice upcurved academically.

“Like my umbrella,” Taako agrees, cutting off a teasing know-it-all remark. He’ll let the kid have it. “It’s a bit like a river. You don’t tell it where to go,” Taako says, and he feels it, soft and coiling as it circles from the atoms of the air into the cells of his skin, shocking like static as it runs up against Angus’ hand, “you guide it.”

Angus frowns, staring hard at his outstretched palm, and Taako says, “This isn’t a discovery, Angus. You aren’t ripping Excalibur from a rock. Just relax.”

Angus takes a slow breath.

The electricity dances along Angus’ palm. It’s all playful and joyous, fresh like clean water, like how magic is at the very beginning, when it’s just meeting someone new. Angus’ face lights up as the lightning pops and buzzes, a miniature storm in his hand.

“Mess it around a bit,” Taako says.

And Angus takes another big, gathering breath, closing his eyes. Taako smiles, imagines Angus reorganizing the furniture in his brain. The lightning contracts, twisting around into a small oblong shape, a clutter of nerves. It trips across his palm. Angus peaks an eye open.

“I wanted Caleb,” he frowns, watching the little flurry of sparks.

Taako raises his hand, grabbing onto Angus’ wrist. The shape redefines itself, sharp lines and points and a big, triangle of a tail. It stretches out, downward dog, and hisses a mouth full of tiny electric points. 

“It gets easier,” Taako says and lets his hand drop. The cat fades out. The window drums with gentle rain. “You need a focus, though. If you want to do big magic, not just cantrips.”

“How do I get that?” Angus asks.

“Can be anything you like,” says Taako. “Whatever’s easiest for you to carry around. I can get it magicked up for you.”

“Like a pencil?”

Taako rolls his eyes. “ Like a pencil ,” he mimics. “Yes, boy-nerd, you can have your wonderful magical wand be a pencil . God. And I was beginning to think I was making you cool.”

“Nope!” Angus says cheerfully. 

Taako pulls himself up. “Thoughts on evening pancakes?” he says, wandering towards the kitchen. “I’m starved.”

One day, Lucretia appears at his doorway. She is uncomfortable and pained, standing just outside the threshold of the farmhouse. Colored in dark purple robes, she says, passing a brightly glazed bowl over the boundary: “I’ve been putting my change in it.”

Taako takes it. It’s cool, heavy in his hands, and he can see the streaks of paintbrush so visibly it’s like they’re fresh. He turns it over and stares at the intricate and delicate lettering of his name, pressed in by the point of a toothpick. Kravitz had called it a signature and Taako had felt embarrassed and humiliated in an excitingly schoolboy way, the back of his neck hot with the need to impress. 

“Thanks,” Taako says. He peaks up at her, over the high mountain of tension between them. They haven’t spoken one-on-one for months; there was the kitchen scene, his sharp bursting anger, her penance like a soured meal in his stomach. “I didn’t know where I’d put it.”

“I would have given it back sooner,” Lucretia explains, “if I’d known you’d been looking for it. I thought you chose to leave it behind.”

Taako shrugs. He touches the cold center of it with a fingertip; he’d painted a slow white spiral in the plate. It’s an unsteady line. He’d been distracted. “I guess I did,” he says, tracing the spiral backwards. He pulls it back from him and surveys it, frowning. It’s too thin on one side and the glaze is soft and underpainted in spots, as if its color is balding. “And no wonder. I’m no good at DIY, am I?”

Lucretia smiles. “I thought it was a nice statement piece.”

“Pah, a statement piece is just an excuse to flaunt poor taste,” he says. He sets the bowl down on the table near the front doors, gesturing to himself. “I should know.”

Lucretia touches the doorframe with the tips of her fingers, almost like she’s balancing, then pulls the hand back to her side. She looks down the veranda, the outline of her profile backlit by the glow of forest green.

Taako drums his hand on his thigh. “Do you wanna come in, or?”

“Oh,” Lucretia says, eyes shooting back to him. “Oh. I’m sorry, I’ll just—”

“No, no,” says Taako, quick. “You should come in. You should, yeah. Why not?”

Lucretia doesn’t move. Had it ever been easy between them, he thinks. He remembers training alongside her. Remembers her being smart and quiet and unimpulsive. Then on the Starblaster, moving around like a ghost with her journals.

“Is Angus here?” she asks.

“School,” Taako says. “It’s only eleven.”

“How does he like it?”

“Like nothing,” Taako says, and adds, at the very tip of his proud tongue, “His teacher called him ‘exceptionally gifted.’ He’s brilliant, he’s a prodigy.”

“I’m glad you’ve both settled in.” Her hands are politely crossed behind her back.

Taako shifts. “I have, uh, lemonade. Freshly squeezed.”

“Of course,” Lucretia says. “I’ll get going.”

“No, just,” Taako says through a groan. He reaches across the threshold and grabs her retreating arm. “Just come in, Lucretia. You’re making me nervous.”

She’s pulled through the doorway. He drops her arm, steps back, and she brushes her hands down her robes. Nervous tick. She flits her gaze from the curtains made of cut up blouses, to the cluttered shelf pushed up against the back of the couch, to the Umbra Staff hung on the coat rack, black and silky like an eel. 

“Lup returned your umbrella,” she notes.

“It was always hers, really,” says Taako. Lucretia shifts, reaches around and clicks the door shut. Taako continues, “It’s weird. I thought— well, I thought I’d miss it, but I guess I don’t really use magic much, anymore. I’m not sure what to do with it; the Umbra Staff, I mean.”

“It’s a statement piece.”

Taako laughs, like a sigh through his nose, and he steps further back. Saying, “Lemonade, right.”

He feels Lucretia follow him into the kitchen. The click of her low inch heels against the wood is unfamiliar company and it rings into Taako’s own socked feet. In the kitchen, he pulls two glasses from the cabinet. They’re a glassy red with flower imprints. He pours the pitcher of lemonade into each, the ice tinkling. 

Lucretia takes his offered glass into the dark fold of her fingers. She stands in the middle of the kitchen, looking around, as she takes a careful sip.

“It’s brighter,” she says.

“It’s spring,” Taako says.

“It is.”

Taako sets his own glass on the counter with a clang. “This is ridiculous, Lucretia. Are we incapable of holding a conversation now? God, it’s like I’m dragging you through water.”

Lucretia reaches up to touch her brow. Everything she does: practical and sensible and silent. He sees the wrinkles along her forehead; the crows lines at her eyes; the shocks of white through her buzzed hair.

“I know,” she says. She looks to Taako, shaking her head. The reflection of the red glass turns her skin warm and sparkly, spotted with the dapples of sunlight through the sink window. “You make me nervous.”

Taako half-laughs.

“You do,” Lucretia says, and momentarily, her voice dips into a familiar tenor and Taako reels the onrush of memories back in before they explode outwards. “You always have. I don’t know. Taako, there isn’t anything I can say to you that isn’t—”

“Sorry,” he finishes. “I know.”

“And I am,” she says. 

He takes a breath, rubs at the corner of his eye. “If you keep apologizing,” Taako says, “you’re never going to stop. You’ll drive me insane.”

“Just tell me where to start,” Lucretia says.

Taako sits himself at the table, kicking out another chair for her. “Drink my very good lemonade. Maybe next time don’t come dressed as Angus’ child services agent; it freaks me out.”

Lucretia takes a seat across from him. She glances down at herself. “This is all I have,” she frowns.

“You don’t have any business casual robes? A pair of jeans? Flip flops?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Your home has a dress code?”

“No shoe household,” Taako shrugs, throwing up his feet onto another chair. He wiggles them. “Let the pigs breathe, babe.”

Lucretia plays with the precipitation on her lemonade glass, smiling down at her fingers. “So, do you enjoy it here?” she says. “The last time we really spoke…”

Taako lowers his legs. “I wouldn’t leave,” he says. “You knew that. I knew that.”

“The Bureau is doing an outreach program. If you need to spread your wings a bit,” she offers, brows raised. 

Taako finds himself uninterested in the proposition, staring at the light through the sunroom roof. “I’ve caught some sort of lazy bones disease,” he says and places his chin in his palm. “I’ll pass.”

“This is a nice home base,” Lucretia nods. She sips her lemonade. “And, really, it is very good lemonade.”

“My touch, gold. Etcetera,” Taako hums.

He takes her around the sunroom; gives a tour of the upstairs. They peek into Angus’ room, at his teenage clutter that Taako clucks at before clipping the door shut. They’re stilted and still fumbling over things to say, but Taako is reacquainting himself to her quiet nature, to the subtle downturns of her voice and her silent, appreciative responses. His anger at her, the stinging blade that twists and twists at every recollection of some forgotten memory, is bruised and tender. He pokes at it as they say goodbye, as he says, leaning against the frame:

“It’ll get easier.”

She smiles, hopeful as anything, and retreats down the stairs. He thinks of Lucretia and he thinks of her new age and her drawn shoulders and her face wreathed in the blurry edges of everything before. And he finds, like tugging back the hard skin of an orange rind, his love for her. Soft and sweet. Patient as the cool green sprouts of oncoming summer.

Angus’ summer break rises into the future and he becomes pent-up, a set of loose limbs about the house. He pesters Taako into countless magic lessons, which Taako accedes to with little remorse, though heaps of exaggerated annoyance. They sit out on the porch as the sun sets with bowls of ice cream and soda. Angus makes vibrant sparks and ribbons from the tips of his fingers. He casts bolts and makes tiny, blue-hot fires and nearly takes off a column of the veranda when Taako lends him the Umbra Staff. They stay up late into the night to see the great dome of stars circle in the sky. Angus falls asleep, neck scrunched up, on the porch swing and Taako guides him up to his bed with prods in the side. 

Barry comes and sits at the pianoforte, retuning it intermittently between chatter from the kitchen: the garish, exclusionary gossip of Taako and Lup. Magnus and Merle do not let up with their raised brows and hidden giggles. Angus, unsurprisingly, is no better, and he hops from Magnus and Merle with excitement before Taako shoves him up the stairs.

“We’re having grown-up conversations,” he hisses.

Angus jumps up three steps and rolls his eyes. “Bull.”

And Taako waves his hand, says, “Go be bothersome in your own room, loser.”

Davenport comes toting good news about reconstruction, about Carey and Killian, about his new racing car. Lup reworks Taako’s apple pie recipe. The cat bites Magnus. Taako makes a wonderful wetmeal for the cat. Lucretia is here and she’s there and they make uncertain steps towards friendship. There are a lot of dinners and various celebratory toasts and many days where nothing happens at all, and Taako waits for Angus to come home and talks to the cat and bakes until the farmhouse smells like it was made to be full of sweetness.

It’s on one of those days, in a dirty apron and covered in flour, thinking mostly of the cobbler he hopes won’t burn in the oven, Taako hears Angus run up the porch stairs. Taako wipes his hands down his front, turns for the kitchen doors, when he hears voices.

They’re indistinct, but as Taako nears, entering into the living room, his gut sinks.

“Hi!” Angus says, muffled from behind the front doors, teetering on the edge of awkward laughter. “Were you about to knock?”

“I was,” Kravtiz says. Taako spins around and begins undoing his apron.

Shit, he thinks Shitshitshit. He buries the apron beneath the afghan throw, drags a hand through his hair, gets a finger caught in a tangle where he discovers, yes, he has blackberry jam on his fingers. Now in his hair. 

Outside:

“I guess, I can just let you, uh, in?” Angus says. “Honestly, we don’t really lock the door. We don’t actually have a lock. People just come and go—” Taako hears the falsetto whine of the front door opening. He pushes his hair behind his ear. He’s going to be totally normal about this. 

Then: “Why don’t you run in and tell Taako, instead?”

Taako covers his face. It is already so hot and itchy. Angus says, “I will just run in and tell Taako,” and Taako wants to wring his neck. He sounds pleased and smug.

The door whines, Angus inserts himself into a sliver of a crack, and shuts it. Angus and Taako make eye contact.

“You won’t believe who’s here,” Angus says, grinning, half in whisper.

“Go,” Taako says. He points upstairs.

“You’re blushing so hard.”

Taako reaches over and grabs him by the collar, forcibly moving him towards the stairs. “Shut up, you weasel.”

Angus dips out of his hands, says, “You might want to hide that,” gestures to the glazed bowl on the coffee table and disappears upstairs. 

Taako hurries over, shoves the bowl under the couch cushion. He thinks, what does it matter that I have this? I made it. He places it back on the table. Stares at it for a moment, then stuffs it under the couch again with an aggravated sigh. It’s ugly anyway. Whatever.

He flattens his palms out, pulls his hair from his shoulders, puts it back on his shoulders, gets viciously angry, then opens the door with a scowl. Kravtiz. 

The summery world parts to make room for him. It reshapes itself, recedes, until Kravitz is there: shadow, sulfur, red tie. The knot of it is a deep blood red like a split pomegranate.

“Hi,” Taako says. He clears his throat. A hot wind dances through the doorway, twirls its curious hands around the ends of Taako’s untucked blue blouse. 

“Hi,” Kravtiz says.

Taako, still holding the door handle, can’t seem to fix his eyes on anything particular. There’s Kravtiz, who he can’t look at because he’s Kravitz , and all he can hear is the vulture laughter of Magnus and Merle in his head. “What are you doing here?” he asks. 

“I was going to call,” Kravtiz says, “but you don’t. You haven’t been very… receptive.”

Taako cringes. “My Stone’s been on the fritz.”

Kravtiz tilts his head. “Weird,” he says.

“Yeah, I’m getting it looked into.”

“Taako.”

Taako steps back. “Okay, come in. Harass me.”

Kravtiz glides through the doors. “I don’t want to harass you,” he says, stepping towards the coffee table. For one sick moment Taako thinks Kravitz has somehow, inexplicably, sussed out the bowl, and he says: “What is that?”

 Taako follows him until they’re shoulder to shoulder. Cold, empty air, like a shiver. “The couch.”

“You’re impossible,” Kravtiz says.

“It’s a cat,” Taako says. A hairy orange ball is curled up in the corner, soft head tucked into its chest. “Have you never seen a cat before?”

“I wasn’t aware you had a cat.”

“It’s not mine. It’s Angus’ cat. He’s called it Caleb after—”

“Caleb Cleveland,” nods Kravitz.

Taako raises a brow, mouth tilted. “Oh God, are you, like, a fan?”

“Is there something about me that screams Caleb Cleveland to you?” Kravtiz asks, grave and humored.

Taako shrugs, just one shoulder, and suddenly feels silly and brilliant. He has a crush; it’s no use. “You knew the name so suddenly,” Taako says. “It was like your eyes lit up.”

Kravitz smiles and shakes his head. “Angus was talking about it at the party. He gave it raving reviews.”

“Oh, don’t bother,” Taako gripes. “After the fifth book, it all goes to shit. He falls into an underground dungeon where a mob is and he turns over; you know, all bad. Completely changes his moral code, destroys his whole character development. Starts killing innocents. It’s a whole thing.”

Kravtiz stares at him. “Are you joking? I can never tell.”

Taako reaches over to pinch a bit of tuft fur from Caleb’s head. “He’s feral. I hate him,” Taako continues. He plucks at his shirt sleeve, leans to the side so his hair falls against his face. “He loves eating my tulips.”

Kravtiz frowns. Taako raises a brow.

“The cat, Kravitz.”

“Oh.”

Taako laughs and Kravtiz follows. His voice makes Taako giddy. He rubs at his wrist, his heartbeat jumping against his thumb in urgency. “Did you,” Taako starts, then aborts and says: “I don’t know why I never picked up.”

“You were busy,” Kravtiz says.

“I should’ve done something, at least.”

“Taako,” all gentle and slow, formality gone. “Taako, honestly. If you don’t want to see me anymore; if you want, I don’t know, for me to live in a well and not bother you, I will. I’ll do it.”

Taako bursts out a surprised, happy scoff. “That seems a bit drastic.”

Kravtiz doesn’t respond, pointedly, and Taako says, “Things were different. I thought I was someone else. The world was ending.”

“Now it’s not,” Kravitz prompts. “For all it’s worth, I’m still in love with you.”

Taako ducks his head. Fire through his face. “Stop being ridiculous.”

Kravtiz reaches over and grabs his hand, slides the loose circle of his fist up to Taako’s elbow, tugs until Taako glances at him, half-frowning. “I love you, Taako,” he says and Taako has the sensation of being ripped from the ground. “Just tell me where to put myself. Vis a vis a well.”

“We really don’t know each other,” Taako says. He slides his arm out of Kravtiz’s, but doesn’t let go when their fingers meet.

Kravitz says gravely, “I’ve heard of this new idea where, and bear with me,” Taako is already rolling his eyes, “you go out on dates with someone.”

“You think you’re so clever,” Taako says and realizes he’s whispering because they’re close now. Kravitz’s hand is cool, large, circling over Taako’s fingers, thumb stretched to the bone of his wrist. Their faces tilt towards each other. Noses brush. Taako places his other hand on the side of Kravitz’s face, leans upwards, smells smoke—

Taako turns around, sees a plume of dark clouds billowing out from the kitchen doors and cusses. “My cobbler. Goddamnit.”

“Should I—” Kravtiz begins as Taako disentangles himself.

“Sorry,” Taako says, “just hold on. Wait there.”

By the time Taako has pulled the pan from the oven, throwing his egregious, charred cobbler onto the counter, and pushed out the swinging doors again, Kravitz is talking to Angus.

Angus, at the bottom step of the stairs, glances over. “I smelled smoke,” he says.

“My cobbler,” Taako frowns.

Angus frowns back. “Bummer.”

Kravtiz looks to him, his eyes dip, and he smiles. Taako follows his gaze and rids himself of his oven mit. “Well,” he says after a pause.

Kravitz takes a step back. “I should be leaving anyway,” he says. Taako nods.

Angus widens his eyes. “Oh, are you not staying for lunch, sir?” he says, all innocent-like and casual. 

Taako cuts him a sharp warning glance which Angus pretends not to see.

“Better not,” Kravitz says. Their eyes meet again; Taako feels frozen in time, the oven mit worrying in his hands. Taako watches the front door swallow Kravitz away. The cool air sinks and vanishes.

Angus taps a rhythm on the banister. “Well, that was—”

Taako is at the door, throwing it back open, and racing down the beaten steps of the porch. He drops the oven mit on the ground. “Wait,” he says to Kravtiz’s back. “Wait, hold on.”

Kravitz turns. He has his scythe in his hand but it dissolves the instant Taako reaches for him, takes him by the square of his face, and kisses him soundly on the lips. Kravitz moves his hands to Taako’s waist. His lips are cold, but Taako thinks he’s holding him tightly enough that it doesn’t matter. It’s summer. It’s warm everywhere. 

“You can stay for lunch,” Taako says, breathless, as he pulls back. Their lips bump as he speaks. “It can be one of your date things.”

Kravitz laughs into his mouth. His eyes crinkle at the edges. “Yeah?”

Taako wraps a hand around the red knot of his tie, pulls him closer. “Yes, definitely,” he breathes out.

“Did you know,” Kravtiz says. He brushes a curl from Taako’s face, slips it behind his ear. “You have a bit of jam in your hair?”

“I like him,” Angus says offhandedly. They’re strolling up the road towards the farmhouse a few days later. Angus had wanted to hunt for crawdads. There’s a creek in the woods: a cleared, flushed white, flowing like a garden snake through the deep pines. So, they’d spent the morning under the bays of trees. “He’s kinda scary, with the whole, you know—” Angus makes a ghoulish face and Taako snorts, giving him a shove, “but I like him. He’s like a nice… coffin. Or something. Like one of those expensive ones no one can afford unless they’re super rich, and have, like, a bunch of money to waste on their funeral.”

Taako smiles. “How… thoughtful,” he hums. It’s heavy and fragrant today. The dark green of the trees throw everything into shades of olive. Songbirds are trilling; the dirt is dry and steady.

“It sounded less weird in my head,” Angus frowns. 

Taako lets out a small, laughing breath and holds open his arm for Angus, who falls into his embrace. It’s Sunday, the first weekend of Angus’ break, and Taako feels lulled, sleep-soft and pleasant. His dreams were a hazy, intangible thing, but they buzz in the back of his mind, bumbling around like the fat bumblebees jumping from one pollen-heavy flower to the next. The edges of his lips still taste like the syrup of the French toast they ate this morning. His fingers still bled with the juices of the fat summer currants Merle sourced at a local market. He has on clunky, overused wellies and a sun hat. Angus’ jeans are dark from wading through the creek barefoot.

As the road widens out from the woods, the sky burns a bright blue over the cusp of amber grass. The cool dappled sieve of the pines turn into a pouring wave of sun. Taako tilts his hat over his brow, squinting, and lifts one hand, as if the sun could collect itself in his palm. Taako is ready for summer. He’ll leave the windows open at night to let in the air. Angus will be home to entertain him. They’ll go to the cliffs of the beach; wander aimlessly around town; and there’ll be time for all of it. Every lazy, indolent idea. Sleeping in. Staying up. Laying about. The thought winds itself around his body and he places a hand on Angus’ head where he’s still leaning into Taako’s side.

Angus pulls away as the farmhouse greets them over the small incline. The half-fallen picket fence clambers its way to the porch, crowded in by overgrown thickets and bushels of flowers. At the eye of one window, Caleb sits and scowls at them. It’s only midday, Taako thinks, as the front door is opened, singing its silly supplicating whine, and Angus kneels down to scoop Caleb to his chest. The cat purrs and purrs.

“Do you think we can get one of Magnus’ puppies?” Angus asks. Magnus found a stray, pregnant dog a few weeks ago. He’d brought her over and Angus had sat by her side and patted her swollen stomach and asked Magnus millions of questions as she licked at his open palm.

Taako rolls his eyes. He hangs the Umbra Staff up on the rack. “The more you ask, Angus, the more inclined I am to say no. Never.”

“Well, not now,” Angus continues, unperturbed. Caleb jumps from his hold, rubs itself purring along Taako’s leg and slinks into the kitchen where he will inevitably knock over one of Taako’s sunroom pots. “Magnus says they need to stay with their mom for a while because they have to learn how to be puppies, you know? And play with each other.”

“And what about the poor cat?” Taako says. The kitchen doors are propped open with a stool and it brings in the fresh back field light, the wind-swept smell of the beach.

“Caleb wants a puppy,” says Angus knowingly.

“You’re very annoying.”

“You like Caleb. You’ll like the dog,” says Angus.

Taako reaches over and thwaps him on the ear. “Don’t say the dog like we’ve already agreed, you sneak.”

Angus’ eyes sparkle, he says, “Maybe I should ask Kravitz what he thinks.”

“Maybe I should cut your tongue out,” Taako teases and Angus just barely avoids another flick to the ear. 

Later today, Lup and Barry will arrive. Taako will wrap an arm around his sister’s shoulder; they’ll make noise and create raucous and have Barry laugh his duck-laugh. Then Merle and Magnus. Davenport and Lucretia. Eventually, in the blood orange of a receding sun, Kravitz. The farmhouse will be lit up from inside. The fireplace crackling under Davenport’s careful pokes; the upstairs creaking beneath the feet of Magnus; Merle’s bad singing voice and Lup finishing the chorus from the kitchen; Lucretia, who will come with worn books for Angus and slip off her shoes and be taken into the fold of their shared noise. There will be all of that later.

But for now, Taako washes the dishes left over from breakfast. The suds climb up his arms. Warm water to his elbows. He hears Angus throwing things in his room before he clatters down the steps again. For now, it’s only Angus at the table, methodically tabbing pages from a botany book. It’s only the sun through the green painted lattice of the window. Only the splash and clink of forks, the sound of a page flipped, the farmhouse with its great body of light, breathing out into the summer. He thinks of black tea, of the groaning staircase, of the sunroom, of tomorrow’s lunch and all the pointless, wonderful tasks of living. And he thinks of the corner of his sister’s eye, a star-shaped wrinkle, and he thinks of everything he has ever had and everything he has ever lost and the locket of his body, like a heart-shaped necklace opening.

Taako turns the tap off and wipes his hands on a dishtowel. He lets this settled warmth rise in him. There isn’t anything he has planned. There’s nothing to do.

Taako unlatches the window, slants it open with a drying mug. How lucky he must be, Taako wonders, after every tragedy, every lost planet, every long, angry winter. How lucky he is, to have nothing to do at all, but enjoy this surprising, indulgent joy. There and there and there. It’s everywhere, happening all at once. It’s in the ground and in the soles of his feet. It’s at the bottom of the ocean. You can find it beneath a kettle. And it can go on forever and forever, if it pleases; and it does. It does go on, forever and forever.