"No, absolutely not, they can wait. We cannot afford for either us to be fired."
"Be reasonable, Dimu. Kenji won't fire you for one absence. One day off should give you plenty of time to go through the scrolls."
"But what can we tell him? Sorry, Kenji, couldn't help you clean up all the animals' poop or fuss with the baby tigerdillo because I sat at home all day reading scrolls."
"He doesn't have to know what you are doing. I'll just tell him that there are some family issues that you needed to sort out. I am sure he will understand. Remember, Kenji use to run the zoo on his own, he can handle one day without you."
"But you will be working your chores and mine today. I'll make you a deal. If you go through with this, then tomorrow, I will work and you can take the day off. Just tell Kenji that I will make up all of my work tomorrow."
Yuan considered this a moment before nodding. "It's agreed then you take today off to go through the scrolls and I'll take tomorrow off, probably to do the same."
After her brother left for work, Jia Li closed their room's door and disappeared into the small closet in corner of her side of the room. Dimu peaked over her mother's shoulder into the shady closet. From under a pile of extra clothes she brought out the box of Earthbender scrolls. It was a magnificent copper box the Earthbender had never seen before. It had an exquisite carving of twin Dragons mirroring one another around an oval with dark green gems lining the inside, and a lovely crystal in the center, framed by a raised oval around it. It was such a handsome box that could fetch enough money to feed their family for years. So why did her parents possess such a treasure? And why hadn't her mother sold it when they came to the city? It could help pay for a house here.
"This crest belongs to your father's family."
"We have a family crest? So we did have nobles in our family?"
"We still do in Gaoling, but they will never admit to being related to us. But there are more than nobles in the Song family."
Jia Li handed her daughter the curiosity, then proceeded to take Ling and leave the room. Dimu was not sure if she should be excited or fearful. What would these scrolls contain about her family? Dark secrets of lies and betrayal? Mysterious relatives and disappearances? What about her family would keep her father from showing her these scrolls until she was older? Was she ready to find out? The Earthbender unfastened the copper latch and opened the box. There were three scrolls. She picked up the one in the middle and carefully unrolled the archaic document. It was labeled, The Song Family Curse.
There was a long pause as the Earthbender debated whether or not she should read on. The title of the scroll was intimidating enough without knowing what was on it. "The Song Family Curse" she mouthed absently. Her eyes traveled further down the document against her will.
'An account of the Song Family and their curse as told by Qin Song, the third King of Taku.
When the Song Family was made the ruling family of city Taku, a woman Avatar of Water Tribe descent, Pamuya offered the family's patron, Hakira, the first King of Taku, eight dark green gems and one clear crystal from a mystical cave of unknown origins. The Avatar promised that as long as the Song Family controlled the gems, the city of Taku would flourish. With this great blessing, the nobles of the city gossiped that the loss of the gems would bring about ruin to the family and the city. This became the Song Family Curse.'
'An account of the Song Family Curse as told by Deshi Song, the thirty-sixth and final King of Taku.
I have failed my city and my people. A man who is known as Chin the Conquerer, but is known by his followers as Chin the Great, has taken Taku and dethroned me. The King of Omashu, a jealous shrew by the name of Xiaobo, who is said to often shout slander and curse the city of Taku, swore vengeance for the Great Challenge. He conspired with Chin the Conquerer, agreeing to submit to Chin as long as he could keep his throne and power. In return, Xiaobo provided infomation that would allow Chin the advantage in attacking my city, a grevious crime against not just Taku, but the entire Earth Kingdom. Now, Taku and all her riches have fallend into the hands of Chin the Conquerer. My sister, Princess Diayu, has deserted me and taken much of the Song Family fortune with her. In my days of withering, I had thought our city untouchable and that I would pass the throne to my eldest son, Hakira the second, named for his greater grandfather who first ruled Taku, but now I see that peace has made us vulnerable, and Taku will pay with the blood of our people.
I was abed when the invasion began. When I was awakened by the twenty-third Guardian of Taku, Tao, who told me that soldiers of Chin had infiltrated the city and made it ready for invasion, I was in deep denial. I robed myself and grabbed from the drawer next to my bed, the copper box containing the three family scrolls. My crown sat uselessly atop my drawer, and I noted as Tao rushed me out that the gems were missing. As we rushed down the hall, to one of the secret passages that led out of the royal palace, I asked after the sacred gems that had been a great gift to my family from the Waterbending Avatar, Pamuya. Tao told me that Diayu, who had been warned by her lady in waiting of the attack, had stolen the gems and already fled the city. I have never been so ashamed of my sister and the rumored curse that has befallen our family.
The only hope I have left is to help as many as I can flee the city to the pennisula where Kyoshi lives. She has been kind to the Song Family, gifted the city with two great stone carvings of badgermoles, the teachers of the first Earthbenders, and has always been of assistance in helping with political squabbles among the pety nobles who have, in their own way, tried to conquer Taku as they have Ba Sing Se and Omashu. She was the last hope in preserving the Song Family and the inheritance of the once great city of Taku. It saddens me to watch the Taku library burn, with historical accounts of the city's great success. All that remains now are the three family scrolls, which shall be the only remnants of Taku's true history. Hopefully, she can prot..."
The last remainging sentences of the scroll were faded into black blotches. She picked up a new scroll. "This history of the Song Family and the City of Taku". Dimu had grown quite curious of this city. Why had she never heard of it? How could she have not known that her family once ruled this city? She carefully unravelled the ancient parchment and began to read.
'An account of the Beginning of the Song Family and the City of Taku as told by Bohai, a master scribe of the Taku Temple.
For many generations, the Song Family ruled the city of Taku as other cities were built, but collapsed. Eventually, there were only three great cities in the Earth Kingdom. Omashu, which had been built by the first Earthbenders and Ba Sing Se, which began as a small underground city that was mined for the crystals that produced light, but in the years of peace had become a great metropolis and the self-proclaimed capital of the Earth Kingdom. Ba Sing Se was the youngest of the three cities, so it did not have the same quarrels that Taku and Omashu had with one another.
The great city of Omashu was renowned for being built by the first Earthbenders, but their were Earthbenders who became followers of Lien, the first Avatar of the Earth Kingdom, and when she left Omashu, they left with her. Lien was tired of how lazy and apathetic the people of rich city of Omashu had become. There was poverty in many parts of the Earth Kingdom, and she wanted to help those people. She led her followers to north west, where the land was brittle and farmers yielded poor crops. Just south of the volcano Mount Mapaku, far enough away from the volcano that it would be of little danger and close to the ocean where fisherman could earn a living, Lien build the great city of Taku, and the land flourished under her careful instruction. With the success of the city, the King of Omashu became jealous of Taku and proclaimed his city greater and that...'
She could read no more, the ink had faded so badly that next next two accounts were illegible except for one small part: 'An account of...the Song Family Powers?...by Qiao the second head Herbalist at the Taku Herbalist Insitute and Houjin the third Guardian of Taku'. Dimu had to skip down to the fourth and final account on the scroll.
'An account of the fall of the City of Taku and the Fate of the Song Family as told by Chang, the fourth great grandson of the thirty-sixth King of Taku.
After Chin the Conquerer took over Taku, the Song Family joined Avatar Kyoshi. When Chin's conquest brought him to Avatar Kyoshi's homeland, he demanded the last free people of the Earth Kingdom surrender to his rule, but Avatar Kyoshi would not yield to his tyranny. In a magnificent display of her control over all four bending disciplines, Avatar Kyoshi parted the pennisula of her homeland from the Earth Kingdom and this quite literally and inadvertantly, led to the fall of Chin the Conquerer.
One generation of the Song Family remained on the newly established Kyoshi Island due to rumors of Xiaobo putting a 1,000 gold piece price on each head of the Song Family members that survived. After a new King of Omashu took the throne, the hunt for the Song Family was called off and many believed the family to be destroyed during Chin's campaign. The grandson of Deshi, Fang, was the first to brave the Earth Kingdom and return to Taku to see what had become of the city. The city was, again, proserous under the control of an Earthbending General, who was given the city as a gift by the King of Omashu. Fang found support within the city of those whose grandparents and parents had lived in the city before Chin the Conquer almost destroyed it. When Fang confronted the General about the Song family's rightful claim to the throne, he laughed and ordered the "Prince of the Fallen Song Family" to be arrested.
When word reached Kyoshi Island of the fate of Fang, the family was enraged. Fang's younger brother, Lei, began to conspire of ways to take back Taku and avenge his brother. He even went so far as to try and enlist Avatar Roku's support in the reclaiming of the city of Taku for the Song Family, but Roku did not know what Lei spoke of. Later, Lei would discover the great lengths Xiaobo went through to destroy the Song Family. Any information that spoke of the Song Family and the city of Taku-that-was had been destroyed in all parts of the Earth Kingdom, even Ba Sing Se surrendered the meager documentation it had on the Song Family, seeing the advantage of losing one less great city to challenge its claim of the Earth Kingdom capital, and mentioning the name of the Song Family was punishable by life imprisonment and even public execution for almost four hundred years.
Lei was killed by the Earthbending General who ruled Taku while attempting to save his brother, Fang. It would be left to Ying the Clever One, the youngest and only daughter left of the Song Family, the direct descendants of Lien, the first Earthbending Avatar, to carry on the heritage of the Song Family and the true origins of the city of Taku. When Avatar Roku died and the Fire Nation attacked and destroyed the thriving city of Taku as one of the first waves of attacks, Ying had the stongest men of the Song Family oblige their duties to the Earth Kingdom and to their fallen home, and they joined in the war effort. Afraid that the Fire Nation would attack Kyoshi and destroy the remaining Song Family members, Ying had the rest of her family move to a remote village by the Nan Shan river, where they could hide until the end of the war.'
For a long time, Dimu sat, reading and rereading the words on the scrolls over and over again until they were burned into the back of her mind. She had expected nobility in her family, not royalty! And...and Lien, the first Earthbender Avatar was the matron of her family! She was a direct descendant of the first Earthbender Avatar according to these documents. It was so much to absorb. She was particularly curious about the illegible paragraph labeled the 'Song Family Powers'. All this information was incredible. She finally glanced down at the third scroll...was she ready to learn what this scroll had to say? No, she would wait until Yuan returned home from work. This news was too big and she needed to discuss it with him immediately, but first, she wanted to confront her mother about consealing this information from them for so long.
