by F. C. Yee
The girl wound up her foot and stomped on the stuffed animal as hard as she could.
“Die!” she screamed in her tiny little treble. She ground it under her heel, the stitches audibly ripping.
The light went out of Kelsang’s face. He looked like he’d witnessed a murder.
“Ten silvers,” the farmer said.
“Get out,” Jianzhu snapped.
“Come on, Suzu,” the farmer called. “Let’s get.”
After wresting the other toys away from the Butcher of Hog Monkeys, he scooped the girl up and walked out the door, the whole escapade nothing but a business transaction. In doing so he nearly bowled over another child who’d been spying on the proceedings from the outside.
“Hey!” Jianzhu said. “You forgot your other daughter!”
“That one ain’t mine,” the farmer said as he thumped down the steps into the street. “That one ain’t anyone’s.”
An orphan then? Jianzhu hadn’t spotted the unchaperoned girl around town in the days before, but maybe he’d glossed over her, thinking she was too old to be a candidate. She was much, much taller than any of the other children who’d been brought in by their parents.
As Jianzhu walked over to examine what he’d missed, the girl quavered, threatening to flee, but her curiosity won over her fright. She remained where she was.
Underfed, Jianzhu thought with a frown as he looked over the girl’s hollow cheeks and cracked lips. And definitely an orphan. He’d seen hundreds of children like her in the inner provinces where outlaw daofei ran unchecked, their parents slain by whatever bandit group was ascendant in the territory. She must have wandered far into the relatively peaceable area of Yokoya.
Upon hearing about the Avatar test, the families of the village had dressed their eligible children in their finest garments as if it were a festival day. But this child was wearing a threadbare coat with her elbows poking through the holes in the sleeves. Her oversized feet threatened to burst the straps of her too-small sandals. None of the local farmers were feeding or clothing her.
Kelsang, who despite his fearsome appearance was always better with children, joined them and stooped down. With a smile he transformed from an intimidating orange mountain into a giant-sized version of the stuffed toys behind him.
“Why, hello there,” he said, putting an extra layer of friendliness into his booming rumble. “What’s your name?”
The girl took a long, guarded moment, sizing them up.
“Kyoshi,” she whispered. Her eyebrows knotted as if revealing her name was a painful concession.
Kelsang took in her tattered state and avoided the subject of her parents for now. “Kyoshi, would you like a toy?”
“Are you sure she isn’t too old?” Jianzhu said. “She’s bigger than some of the teenagers.”
“Hush, you,” Kelsang said. He made a sweeping gesture at the hall festooned with relics, for Kyoshi’s benefit.
The unveiling of so many playthings at once had an entrancing effect on most of the children. But Kyoshi didn’t gasp, or smile, or move a muscle. Instead she maintained eye contact with Kelsang until he blinked.
As quick as a whip, she scampered by him, snagged an object off the floor, and ran back to where she was standing on the porch. She gauged Kelsang and Jianzhu for their response as intently as they watched her.
Kelsang glanced at Jianzhu and tilted his head at the clay turtle Kyoshi clutched to her chest. One of the four true relics. Not a single candidate had come anywhere near it today.
They should have been as excited for her as they’d been for evil little Suzu, but Jianzhu’s heart was clouded with doubt. It was hard to believe they’d be so lucky after that previous head-fake.
“Good choice,” Kelsang said. “But I’ve got a surprise for you. You can have three more! Four whole toys, to yourself! Wouldn’t you like that?”
Jianzhu sensed a shift in the girl’s stance, a tremor in her foundation that was obvious through the wooden floorboards.
Yes, she would like three more toys very much. What child wouldn’t? But in her mind, the promise of more was dangerous. A lie designed to hurt her. If she loosened her grip on the single prize she held right now, she would end up with nothing. Punished for believing in the kindness of this stranger.
Kyoshi shook her head. Her knuckles whitened around the clay turtle.
“It’s okay,” Kelsang said. “You don’t have to put that down. That’s the whole point; you can choose different . . . Hey!”
The girl took a step back, and then another, and then, before they could react, she was sprinting down the hill with the one-of-a-kind, centuries-old Avatar relic in her hands. Halfway along the street, she took a sharp turn like an experienced fugitive throwing off a pursuer and disappeared in the space between two houses.
Jianzhu closed his eyelids against the sun. The light came through them in scarlet blots. He could feel his own pulse. His mind was somewhere else right now.
Instead of Yokoya, he stood in the center of an unnamed village deep in the interior of the Earth Kingdom, newly “liberated” by Xu Ping An and the Yellow Necks. In this waking dream, the stench of rotting flesh soaked through his clothes and the cries of survivors haunted the wind. Next to him, an official messenger who’d been carried there by palanquin read from a scroll, spending minute after minute listing the Earth King’s honorifics only to end by telling Jianzhu that reinforcements from His Majesty’s army would not be coming to help.
He tried to shake free of the memory, but the past had set its jagged hooks into him. Now he sat at a negotiating table made of pure ice, and on the other side was Tulok, lord of the Fifth Nation pirates. The elderly corsair laughed his consumptive laugh at the notion he might honor his grandfather’s promise to leave the southern coastlines of the continent in peace. His convulsions spattered blood and phlegm over the accords drafted by Avatar Yangchen in her own holy hand, while his daughter-lieutenant watched by his side, her soulless gaze boring into Jianzhu like he was so much prey.
In these times, and in many others, he should have been at the right hand of the Avatar. The ultimate authority who could bend the world to their will. Instead he was alone. Facing down great beasts of land and sea, their jaws closing in, encasing the kingdom in darkness.
Kelsang yanked him back into the present with a bruising slap on the back.
“Come on,” he said. “With the way you look, people would think you just lost your nation’s most important cultural artifact.”
The Airbender’s good humor and ability to take setbacks in stride was normally a great comfort to Jianzhu, but right now he wanted to punch his friend in his stupid bearded face. He composed his own features.
“We need to go after her,” he said.
Kelsang pursed his lips. “Eh, it would feel bad to take the relic away from a child who has so little. She can hang on to it. I’ll go back to the temple and face Dorje’s wrath alone. There’s no need for you to implicate yourself.”
Jianzhu didn’t know what counted for wrath among Airbenders, but that wasn’t the issue here. “You’d ruin the Air Nomad test to make a child happy?” he said incredulously.
“It’ll find its way back to where it belongs.” Kelsang looked around and paused.
Then his smile faded, as if this little blot of a town were a harsh dose of reality that was only now taking effect.
“Eventually.” He sighed. “Maybe.”
NINE YEARS LATER
To Kyoshi, it was very clear—this was a hostage situation.
Silence was the key to making it through to the other side. Waiting with complete and total passivity. Neutral jing.
Kyoshi walked calmly down the path through the fallow field, ignoring the covergrass that leaned over and tickled her ankles, the sweat beading on her forehead that stung her eyes. She kept quiet and pretended that the three people who’d fallen in beside her like muggers in an alley weren’t a threat.
“So like I was telling the others,
my mom and dad think we’ll have to dredge the peakside canals earlier this year,” Aoma said, drawing out the mom and dad intentionally, dangling what Kyoshi lacked in front of her. She crooked her hands into the Crowding Bridge position while slamming her feet into the ground with solid whumps. “One of the terraces collapsed in the last storm.”
Above them, floating high out of reach, was the last, precious jar of pickled spicy kelp that the entire village would see this year. The one that Kyoshi had been charged with delivering to Jianzhu’s mansion. The one that Aoma had earthbent out of Kyoshi’s hands and was now promising to drop at any second. The large clay vessel bobbed up and down, sloshing the brine against the waxed paper seal.
Kyoshi had to stifle a yelp every time the jar lurched against the limits of Aoma’s control. No noise. Wait it out. Don’t give them anything to latch on to. Talking will only make it worse.
“She doesn’t care,” Suzu said. “Precious servant girl doesn’t give a lick about farming matters. She’s got her cushy job in the fancy house. She’s too good to get her hands dirty.”
“Won’t step in a boat, neither,” Jae said. In lieu of elaborating further, he spat on the ground, nearly missing Kyoshi’s heels.
Aoma never needed a reason to torment Kyoshi, but as for the others, genuine resentment worked just fine. It was true that Kyoshi spent her days under the roof of a powerful sage instead of breaking her nails against fieldstones. She’d certainly never risked the choppy waters of the Strait in pursuit of a catch.
But what Jae and Suzu conveniently neglected was that every plot of arable land near the village and every seaworthy boat down at the docks belonged to a family. Mothers and fathers, as Aoma was so fond of saying, passed along their trade to daughters and sons in an unbroken line, which meant there was no room for an outsider to inherit any means to survive. If it hadn’t been for Kelsang and Jianzhu, Kyoshi would have starved in the streets, right in front of everyone’s noses.
Hypocrites.
Kyoshi pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth as hard as she could. Today was not going to be the day. Someday, maybe, but not today.
“Lay off her,” Aoma said, shifting her stance into Dividing Bridge. “I hear that being a serving girl is hard work. That’s why we’re helping with the deliveries. Isn’t that right Kyoshi?”
For emphasis, she threaded the jar through a narrow gap in the branches of an overhanging tree. A reminder of who was in control here.
Kyoshi shuddered as the vessel dove toward the ground like a hawk before swooping back up to safety. Just a little farther, she thought as the path took a sharp turn around the hillside. A few more silent, wordless steps until—
There. They’d arrived at last. The Avatar’s estate, in all its glory.
The mansion that Master Jianzhu built to house the savior of the world was designed in the image of a miniature city. A high wall ran in a perfect square around the grounds, with a division in the middle to separate the austere training grounds from the vibrant living quarters. Each section had its own imposing, south-facing gatehouse that was larger than the Yokoya meeting hall. The massive iron-studded doors of the residential gate were flung open, offering a small windowed glimpse of the elaborate topiary inside. A herd of placid goat dogs grazed over the lawn, cropping the grass to an even length.
Foreign elements had been carefully integrated into the design of the complex, which meant that gilded dragons chased carved polar orcas around the edges of the walls. The placement of the Earth Kingdom–style roof tiles cleverly matched Air Nomad numerology principles. Authentic dyes and paints had been imported from around the world, ensuring that the colors of all four nations were on full, equitable display.
When Jianzhu had bought the land, he’d explained to the village elders that Yokoya was an ideal spot to settle down and educate the Avatar, a quiet, safe place far away from the outlaw-ravaged lands deeper in the Earth Kingdom and close enough to both the Southern Air Temple and Southern Water Tribe. The villagers had been happy enough to take his gold back then. But after the manor went up, they grumbled that it was an eyesore, an alien creature that had sprouted overnight from the native soil.
To Kyoshi it was the most beautiful sight she could ever imagine. It was a home.
Behind her, Suzu sniffed in disdain. “I don’t know what our parents were thinking, selling these fields to a Ganjinese.”
Kyoshi’s lips went tight. Master Jianzhu was indeed from the Gan Jin tribe up in the north, but it was the way Suzu had said it.
“Maybe they knew the land was as worthless and unproductive as their children,” Kyoshi muttered under her breath.
The others stopped walking and stared at her.
Whoops. She’d said that a bit too loud, hadn’t she?
Jae and Suzu balled their fists. It dawned on them, what they could do while Aoma had Kyoshi helpless. It had been years since any of the village kids could get within arm’s reach of her, but today was a special occasion, wasn’t it? Maybe a few bruises, in remembrance of old times.
Kyoshi steeled herself for the first blow, rising on her toes in the hope that she could at least keep her face out of the fray, so Auntie Mui wouldn’t notice. A few punches and kicks and they’d leave her in peace. Really, it was her own fault for letting her mask slip.
“What do you think you’re doing?” a familiar voice snarled.
Kyoshi grimaced and opened her eyes.
Peace was no longer an option. Because now Rangi was here.
Rangi must have seen them from afar and stalked across the entire great lawn unnoticed. Or lain in ambush for them all night. Or dropped out of a tree like a webbed leopard. Kyoshi wouldn’t have put any of those feats past the military-trained Firebender.
Jae and Suzu backed away, trying to swallow their hostile intent like children stuffing stolen candy into their mouths. It occurred to Kyoshi that this might have been the first time they’d ever seen a member of the Fire Nation up close, let alone one as intimidating as Rangi. In her formfitting armor the color of onyx and dried blood, she could have been a vengeful spirit come to cleanse a battlefield of the living.
Aoma, rather impressively, held her ground. “The Avatar’s bodyguard,” she said with a faint smile. “I thought you weren’t supposed to leave his side. Aren’t you slacking off?”
She glanced to the left and right. “Or is he here somewhere?”
Rangi looked at Aoma like she was a wad of foulness the Firebender had stepped in during the walk over.
“You’re not authorized to be on these grounds,” she said in her charred rasp. She pointed upward at the jar of kelp. “Nor to lay your hands on the Avatar’s property. Or accost his household staff, for that matter.”
Kyoshi noticed she personally landed a distant third in that list of considerations.
Aoma tried to play it cool. “This container is enormous,” she said, shrugging to emphasize her still-ongoing feat of elemental control. “It would take two grown men to lift it without earthbending. Kyoshi asked us to help her bring it inside the house. Right?”
She gave Kyoshi a radiant smile. One that said Tell on me and I’ll kill you. Kyoshi had seen that expression before countless times when they were younger, whenever a hapless adult blundered into the two of them “playing” around town, Kyoshi badly scraped up and Aoma with a rock in her hand.
But today she was off her game. Her normally flawless acting had a plaintive, genuine tone to it. Kyoshi suddenly understood what was going on.
Aoma really did want to help her with her delivery. She wanted to be invited inside the mansion and to see the Avatar up close, like Kyoshi got to every day. She was jealous.
A feeling akin to pity settled in Kyoshi’s throat. It wasn’t strong enough to hold Rangi back from doing her thing, though.
The Firebender stepped forward. Her fine jawline hardened, and her dark bronze eyes danced with aggression. The air around her body rippled like a living mirage, making the strands of jet-black
hair that escaped her topknot float upward in the heat.
“Put the jar down, walk away, and don’t come back,” she said. “Unless you want to know what the ashes of your eyebrows smell like.”
Aoma’s expression crumbled. She’d blundered into a predator with much larger fangs. And unlike the adults of the village, no amount of charm or misdirection would work on Rangi.
But that didn’t mean a parting shot was out of the question.
“Sure,” she said. “Thought you’d never ask.” With a fling of her hands, the jar rocketed straight up into the air, past the treetops.
“You’d better find someone who’s authorized to catch that.” She bolted down the path with Suzu and Jae close behind.
“You little—” Rangi made to go after them, fist reflexively cocked to serve a helping of flaming pain, but she checked herself. Fiery vengeance would have to wait.
She shook her hand out and peered up at the rapidly shrinking jar. Aoma had thrown it really, really hard. No one could claim the girl wasn’t talented.
Rangi elbowed Kyoshi sharply in the side. “Catch it,” she said. “Use earthbending and catch it.”
“I—I can’t,” Kyoshi said, quavering with dismay. Her poor doomed charge reached the apex of its flight. Auntie Mui was going to be furious. A disaster of this magnitude might get back to Master Jianzhu. Her pay would get cut. Or she’d be fired outright.
Rangi hadn’t given up on her. “What do you mean you can’t? The staff ledgers have you listed as an Earthbender! Catch it!”
“It’s not that simple!” Yes, Kyoshi was technically a bender, but Rangi didn’t know about her little problem.
“Do the thing with your hands like she did!” Rangi formed the dual claws of Crowding Bridge as if the only missing component were a crude visual reminder by a bender who wielded a different element entirely.
