by F. C. Yee
The Firebender recoiled like she’d been struck by a whip. The order wasn’t one of Yun’s jokes. It was an exploitation of Rangi’s oath to protect and obey the Avatar. An attack on her honor.
Rangi blew a long strand of black hair out of her face. It didn’t go very far, the end of it sticking to her mouth. “I suppose I have to get used to you saying that.”
There was an agonizing distance in her voice, and Kyoshi despised it. She didn’t want a professional bodyguard obeying her orders. She wanted her Rangi, who scolded her without hesitation and never backed down.
They spent a long time in silence, listening to the breeze pick up.
“Yun is gone,” Rangi said. “He’s really gone.” Her voice seemed thin, drawn out by the passing wind, like the notes of a flute. She sounded hollow inside.
Kyoshi had no comfort to give her. Both of their lives had centered around duty. Kyoshi’s for the sake of survival, Rangi’s for pride and glory. But Yun had managed to pierce both their shells. Their friend had been stolen, and as far as Kyoshi was concerned, there was a single path laid out before her that she could take in response, lit by the clean, bright fires of hatred.
“I’m not ready to confront Jianzhu,” Kyoshi said. “I’m not nearly strong enough yet. I have to find bending masters who can teach me to fight and who aren’t in his pocket.”
In fact, it was more than that. She’d need teachers who were completely unknown to Jianzhu. If he suspected she was after training, he’d look for her in schools around the Four Nations.
And she’d have to conceal she was the Avatar. That news would spread so fast it would act as a beacon for Jianzhu, allowing him to close in on her before she was prepared. She didn’t have a good idea how she’d obtain instruction in all four elements without giving the game up, but she’d make it work somehow.
The idea sounded ludicrous in her head. It was ludicrous. And yet Kyoshi knew she would walk off this cliff without hesitation. She would stick both hands into a dragon’s mouth if it meant the slightest chance she could pay back Jianzhu what she owed him.
Rangi dragged her hand down her face. “Fine. Bending masters. Where do you want to look first? You’re talking like you have a plan, so let’s hear it.”
“You’re not coming with me,” Kyoshi said. “I have to do this alone.”
The Firebender gave her a look of such utter contempt for that notion that it could have been grounds for an Agni Kai. Kyoshi was afraid this might happen. Rangi’s powerful faith, her need to fulfill her duty, would spiral around with no spot to land on but her.
She had to stand strong. She’d lost so much already, and she wasn’t going to risk her one remaining connection to this world on a fool’s quest. “You’re not coming with me,” Kyoshi repeated. “As your Avatar I command you to stay behind. Rangi, I’m serious.”
She wanted to sound angry, but the effect was ruined by the overwhelming tide of relief she felt at Rangi’s rejection of her demand. A strictly professional servant of the Avatar couldn’t disobey her, but a companion might.
“I have no idea how long this journey will take,” Kyoshi said. “And there are secrets about me that I haven’t told you.”
“Oh no, Kyoshi’s keeping a secret from me,” Rangi moaned an octave lower than normal. “I think I’ll be okay with whatever your little revelation is, given the last thing you sprung on me was only the most important piece of information ON THE PLANET.”
The crag passed them by, a silent onlooker that wanted no part of the conversation. The last marker of reason in an ocean of uncertainty. From this point onward there was nothing but trouble ahead.
But at least Kyoshi had her friend back.
“We need rest, or we’ll lose effectiveness,” Rangi declared, nestling herself under the corner of a tarp that had come loose. “If you’ve got a destination in mind then I’m taking the first sleep shift. You owe me that much.”
“Rangi.” Kyoshi tried one last time to growl in threat. Instead the name came out like a dedication of thanks to the spirits for this fiery blessing of a girl. It was futile trying to mask how Kyoshi felt toward her.
“Where you go, I go.” The Firebender rolled to her side and yawned. “Besides, there’s only one bison, rocks-for-brains. We can’t split up now.”
Despite how tired they were, Rangi only dozed fitfully, shivering though it was no longer cold. Watching her from a distance, Kyoshi had an answer regarding the little snips of breath she’d listened to for so long in their shared tent on the iceberg. It was how Rangi cried in her sleep. Every so often, she would burrow her face into her shoulders to wipe her tears.
With their eyes on each other, it was easy to be brave. Maybe that’s the only way we get through this, Kyoshi thought. Just never look away.
She stared at the water until the sun’s reflection became too much, and then reached for her single bag of belongings. Digging around, she found the clay turtle. It was made of earth. It was tiny. She could use it for practice.
Small, she thought as she cradled it with both hands. Precise. Silent. Small.
She curled her lips in concentration. It was like crooking the tip of her pinky while wiggling her opposite ear. She needed a whole-body effort to keep her focus sufficiently narrow.
There was another reason why she didn’t want to seek instruction from a famous bending master with a sterling reputation and wisdom to spare. Such a teacher would never let her kill Jianzhu in cold blood. Her hunger to learn all four elements had nothing to do with becoming a fully realized Avatar. Fire, Air, and Water were simply more weapons she could bring to bear on a single target.
And she had to bring her earthbending up to speed too.
Small. Precise.
The turtle floated upward, trembling in the air.
It wasn’t steady the way bent earth should be, more of a wobbling top on its last few spins. But she was bending it. The smallest piece of earth she’d ever managed to control.
A minor victory. This was only the beginning of her path. She would need much more practice to see Jianzhu broken in pieces before her feet, to steal his world away from him the way he had stolen hers, to make him suffer as much as possible before she ended his miserable worthless life—
There was a sharp crack.
The turtle fractured along innumerable fault lines. The smallest parts, the blunt little tail and squat legs, crumbled first. The head fell off and bounced over the edge of the saddle. She tried to close her grip around the rest of it and caught only dust. The powdered clay slipped between her fingers and was taken by the breeze.
Her only keepsake of Kelsang flew away on the wind.
ADAPTATION
Jianzhu pushed open the doors of his house to find it in static, silent chaos.
The servants lined up in rows to the left and right, bowing as the master entered, forming a human aisle of deference for him to walk through. It was overly formal, a practice he’d dismissed long ago.
He hadn’t bothered to clean himself before entering, so he left a trail of dust and rubble in his wake. There was an ache in his chest as he passed the bashed-in door to his study, a testament to his Airbender friend’s great strength and personal conviction.
He had no time to grieve for what had happened to Kelsang. He went straight to the Avatar’s room in the staff quarters, followed the path of damage outside to the empty bison pen and then back to his cowering servants in a loop.
“Can someone tell me what happened here?” he said in what he thought was an admirably neutral, collected tone given the circumstances.
Instead of answering they shrank further into their shoulders, quaking. Whoever spoke up first was sure to take the blame.
They’re afraid of me, he thought. To the point they can’t do their jobs properly. He cursed the fact that the girl had no official supervisor watching her, and pointed at his head cook, Mui. He’d seen the Avatar doing favors for the woman in the kitchen.
“Where is Kyoshi?” he said
, snapping his fingers.
Mui went crimson. “I don’t know. I’m so sorry, Master. None of us had ever seen her act that way before. She—she had a weapon. By the time we could find a guardsman, she was gone.”
“Did any of the guests see her leave?”
Mui shook her head. “Most of them left early to try and beat the storm, and the others were in their rooms in the far wing.”
He supposed it wasn’t the middle-aged cook’s fault that she was unable to stop a rampaging, axe-wielding teenager who could break a mountain whenever she remembered she had the ability. Jianzhu dismissed the staff without another word. Better to have them uncertain, fearing his next command.
He drifted through the halls of the house until he found himself in an aisle of the gallery, staring at some of his artwork but not seeing it. That was where Hei-Ran found him after she returned from an offshore meeting with the delegation from the Fire Navy.
She frowned at his appearance, ever the disciplinarian. “You look like you were spat out by a badgermole,” she said.
Better to tear off this bandage quickly. He told her the version of events she needed to hear. Kyoshi being the true Avatar. The disappearance of both Yun and Kelsang, caused by a treacherous spirit. The Avatar holding a grudge against him for it.
She slapped him across the face. Which was about as good a result as he could get.
“How can you stand there like that?” she hissed, her bronze eyes darkening with fury. “How can you just stand there!?”
Jianzhu worked his jaw, making sure it wasn’t broken. “Would you rather I sit?”
A less-controlled person than Hei-Ran would have been tempted to scream her disbelief to the skies, letting the secret out. You had the wrong Avatar? You introduced a boy to the world as its savior and then got him killed? You let the real Avatar run off to who knows where? Our oldest and closest friend is dead because of you?
He was grateful for Hei-Ran’s iron character. She thought those things at him instead of saying them, fuming strategically. “How are you not going to lose face over this?” she whispered. “All of your credibility? What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned against the gallery wall, as surprised at his own response as she was. Out of Kuruk’s companions, he had been the planner. Normally Jianzhu had every contingency, every fork in the road mapped out to its logical end. He found the change of pace rather liberating.
Hei-Ran couldn’t believe he was drifting like this. She pulled her lips back over her teeth.
“We can minimize the damage if we get her back quickly,” she said. “She can’t have gone far on her own—she’s a maid, for crying out loud. I’ll send Rangi to hunt her down. The two of them are friends; she’ll know where Kyoshi would run to.”
Hei-Ran found the nearest summoning rope and gave it a yank. The soft yellow cables ran throughout the house, held by eyelets across certain walls. The bells at the other ends let the staff know where help was needed.
Given that his employees were busy avoiding him like the plague, it was a minute or two before someone answered. Rin or Lin or whatever. The girl was out of breath, and she limped slightly, like she’d stubbed her toe in her hurry to arrive.
“Rin, please fetch my daughter,” Hei-Ran said kindly. “Tell her it’s very important.”
“I’m so sorry!” Rin shrieked. She was trying so hard not to mince her words in fright that she erred on the side of earsplitting volume. “Miss Rangi’s disappeared! One of the stablehands said he saw her leave with Kyoshi last night!”
“Rin, please leave my sight immediately,” Hei-Ran said with warmth of a different kind this time.
The girl bowed and backed away, eyes lowered, her socked feet thumping a pattern down the hallway that was almost as fast and loud as her heartbeat. Jianzhu waited until she vanished around the corner.
“Before you hit me again,” he said to Hei-Ran. “I believe whatever Rangi does is your fault, not mine.”
Her face contorted like she was living a thousand lifetimes right then and there, in most of which she melted his eyeballs using his skull as a cauldron.
“This is a positive,” Jianzhu said. “Your daughter will keep her safe until we find them.”
“Until we find them?” Hei-Ran screamed in whisper. “My daughter is an elite warrior trained in escape and evasion! We can already forget about an easy chase!”
She thrashed in place, the waves of bad news buffeting her around, challenging her equilibrium. When she came to a stop, her face was lined with deep sorrow.
“Jianzhu, Kelsang is dead,” she said. “Our friend is dead. And instead of mourning him, we’re standing here, plotting how to maintain our grip on the Avatar. What has happened to us? What have we become?”
“We’ve grown old and become responsible, is what,” Jianzhu said. “Kelsang made the same promise to Kuruk that we did. We can honor his memory, both of their memories, by continuing on our path.”
He found his usual energy coming back, his dalliance with helplessness finished. There had been too many futures to consider before. The individual degrees of catastrophe were overwhelming. But really he only needed to focus on one solution. The piece that was critical to every scenario.
“We’ll get the Avatar back,” he said. “Finding her ourselves would be ideal, obviously, but it’ll be fine if she turns up on the doorstep of another sage to seek refuge. I’ll find out and respond quick enough to smother the news from traveling further.”
He wasn’t worried about the Avatar hiding in the other nations either. His personal networks extended further than the Earth King’s diplomacy. If anything, his foreign contacts would inform him faster and with more discretion, hoping to avoid an international incident.
“And what if she falls in with one of Hui’s allies?” Hei-Ran asked.
Jianzhu grimaced at the mention of the chamberlain’s name. “I suppose that’s always a risk. But I’m fairly certain she wouldn’t know who he is or which masters he’s got his hooks into. I don’t even know who’s sided with him yet.”
Jianzhu got off the wall. “My reputation will certainly take an unavoidable hit once we have to reveal her identity to the world, but that won’t matter in the end,” he said. “As long as the girl is back here when we do it, under my roof, following my orders, it will all work out. I have capital to burn within the Earth Kingdom. Time to put it to good use.”
Hei-Ran grudgingly appreciated her friend’s return to his usual self. “It doesn’t sound like the girl wants to be here.”
“We’ll worry about that later. Besides, she’s still a child. She’ll learn what’s in her best interests.”
He dusted himself off, the first attempt he’d made to get rid of the filth of the mining town so far. The plan molded itself together in his head, like clay under the guidance of an invisible tool. “I need you to write a letter for me.”
Hei-Ran looked at him sideways.
“I know, I know,” he said. “You’re not my secretary. But there has to be a Fire Nation stamp on this message.”
“Fine. Who’s it to?”
“Professor Shaw, Head of Zoology at Ba Sing Se University. Tell him you’re interested in borrowing some specimens he brought back from his latest expedition. You want to display them in the Fire Nation, because they’re so very adorable and cuddly, as part of a goodwill tour between our countries.”
Jianzhu eyed the piece of art behind him, a painting of the Northern Lights on vellum by a master Water Tribe artist. He grabbed its wide frame with his outstretched hands and ripped it off its moorings. “Send him this as well, to butter him up. It’s worth more than what he makes in a year.”
Hei-Ran seemed slightly disgusted by his reliance on bribery, but that was an Earth Kingdom cultural quirk that people from the other three nations often had trouble getting used to. “Which adorable and cuddly animals are we talking about?” she said.
Jianzhu twisted his lips and sniffed. “The shirshus.�
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THE INTRODUCTION
Kyoshi struggled to open the small metal box. She’d opened the visible latch, yes, but no matter how hard she gripped and twisted the container, the false bottom that concealed the true contents wouldn’t budge.
“You can’t force it,” a gentle voice said. “Use too much strength, and it’s liable to break. The goods would spill everywhere. You don’t want to leave a trail behind, do you?”
Kyoshi looked up from the floor to see a tall, beautiful woman with freckles splashed across the tops of her cheeks and serpent tattoos running down her arms. Next to her was a man, stocky and strong, his face bedecked in red-and-white makeup. The streaks of crimson met each other to form a wild, animalistic pattern, but his expression underneath was warm and mirthful.
The metal box suddenly grew hot, singeing Kyoshi’s flesh, and she dropped it. She tried to shout and found her teeth loose and swimming in her mouth. The painted man wiped his face, and in the streaks between the colors, his features had turned into Jianzhu’s.
Kyoshi surged forward with rage but couldn’t close the distance. The woman found her helplessness amusing and winked at her with a green glowing eye. Her eyeball swelled and swelled, growing so large that it burst out of its socket and kept expanding until it consumed her other eye and then the entirety of her face and then the four corners of the world. Kyoshi flailed in terror inside the cavernous darkness of its pupil, trying to reach solid ground.
We’ll never leave you, Jianzhu whispered. You will always have us, in the distance, behind you, right next to you, watching you. The two of us will always be there for you.
At the height of her panic a hand gripped Kyoshi by the shoulder. The warmth and solidness of it told her not to flinch, not to worry. She sat up slowly and blinked in the fading daylight.
“Wake up,” Rangi said. “We’re here.”
Rangi insisted on making a single pass over Chameleon Bay before landing. She leaned off Pengpeng’s side, drawing in the layout of the ramshackle port town with the single-mindedness of a buzzard wasp, as if every trash-strewn alley and patchy roof were vitally important. Kyoshi let Rangi take her time. She needed a moment to make sure she’d fully climbed out of the depths of her nightmare.
