Avatar, The Last Airbender: The Rise of Kyoshi

by F. C. Yee

  There was a harsh scrape of clay from above. A whole section of roof tiles sloughed off and came crashing down at their heels as they ran. Reaching Pengpeng meant running along the edge of the square, seeking one outlet from the many cramped alleyways branching and forking in different directions like the veins of a leaf.

  Kyoshi caught sight of the reason why they hadn’t been swarmed by more lawmen. Lao Ge was tangling with a whole platoon of them by the main entrance. They slashed wildly at the air he occupied only to come up empty every time. He folded and rolled his body like the wine still fogged his mind, dodging and flipping, his movements seemingly designed to taunt and frustrate them. Kyoshi saw him leaning over at impossible angles nearly parallel to the ground and realized he was subtly earthbending supports underneath his torso, changing his center of gravity to confound his opponents.

  “We can’t leave him!” she shouted to the others.

  Apparently they could, because no one else gave Lao Ge a second thought. “This one!” Rangi said, darting down a passage into the darkness. But before anyone had a chance to follow, a thick stone wall shot up from the ground, reaching the height of the neighboring roofs, closing the exit off. The police force had brought Earthbenders of their own.

  Lek kept running after her as if he were oblivious to the obstacle in his path. Kyoshi though he was going to dash his brains out against the wall. And then he did one of the most amazing things she had ever seen.

  He stepped up into the thin air.

  Lek ran higher and higher on invisible stairs. It was only after he’d gone above eye-level that she saw how. The thinnest columns of earth she’d seen anyone earthbend shot up from the ground with each of his steps, anticipating where his foot would land next. They provided a moment’s support and then crumbled into dust immediately once his weight shifted off them. His rising path left no trace behind him.

  Kyoshi had watched children around the village play by bending the ground they stood on into the air. It was sometimes a test of courage, who could make their pillar the highest, or a game of coordination, taking turns with a partner to see-saw back and forth. But it was always highly destructive to the ground, leaving jagged markers of what had happened. And the players had to remain still, or they’d fall off their platforms.

  Lek had none of those concerns. He floated, weightless, free of the earth’s pull. He stepped over the top of the wall and onto a rooftop before disappearing.

  The feat wasn’t limited to Earthbenders. Kirima uncorked a small pouch at her waist and wisps of water spilled forth, gathering under her feet. She stepped higher into nothingness much as Lek had, only her stairs were powerful, thin little jets that provided the same resistance as earth. If the timing was more difficult for her, or the water less stable, she compensated with supreme grace.

  Wong glanced at Kyoshi as if to check what she was thinking. You can’t possibly, was what.

  He shrugged at her skepticism and followed his teammates skyward, using earth and dust as Lek had, like it was no big deal. The sight of the gigantic man defying all notions of gravity made her jaw drop. It looked less like bending and more like spiritual chicanery, an invisible hawk lifting Wong’s bulk over the roofline. Kyoshi watched him and Kirima run over eaves and windowsills and the blank spaces of alley gaps with equal ease.

  The whole show had happened in less than seconds. It was a mind-blowing stunt. And highly unfortunate.

  Because no one had taken into consideration that Kyoshi could not do that. She expressly, with utmost certainty, could not do that.

  “Cut her off!” a policeman shouted behind her. A second slab of rock shot up to her right.

  Left, then. She sprinted for the nearest remaining avenue and made it out of the square before it was blocked shut. Immediately she knew it was a mistake. The alley veered sharply away from the direction the others had gone. The forks in the narrowing street had no markers, and each subsequent guess she made only got her more lost. The houses squeezed in on her as she ran, promising to throttle her by the gills like a fish in a net.

  A blast of flame shot into the darkening sky. And then another, the source slightly to the right. Rangi was signaling to her where to go. Kyoshi felt her heart skip a beat for her friend. It was either that or a conniption from running at full speed for so long.

  She followed the upcoming bend in the direction of the fire, but so did the lawmen. In fact, they used their knowledge of the town layout to steal a march on her, suddenly popping into view closer behind her. She couldn’t double back. And up ahead, a dead end loomed. The alley had been walled up with bricks.

  “No way out, girl!” an officer with admirable lung capacity bellowed.

  Step, she thought to herself. Do the thing like they did. Her self-berating voice sounded a lot like Rangi in her head.

  It should be easier with more speed, right? She hurled herself toward the wall, praying that she could Avatar herself into picking up a technique she’d only seen once. Her on-the-run attempt to bend the necessary struts without destroying the whole town resulted in only pitiful bumps of earth appearing before her. They collapsed under her weight, tripping her up. She fell forward uncontrollably, face-first. She wasn’t able to cross her arms in front of her before she made impact.

  Kyoshi shut her eyes as she slammed into the wall. There was a terrible crash, an explosion of snapping bricks and tearing mortar. When she opened them again, she was on the other side, still running.

  She’d plowed straight through without feeling a thing. She must have bent reflexively, flinched and wrapped herself in her own power like a cloak. A quick glance back showed a Kyoshi-sized hole in the wall and surprised guards trying to decide whether to leap through or go over the top.

  In her distraction she collided with the corner of a house. Fear of broken bones caused her to force her way through the clay structure the instant she felt the pain of impact on her shoulder. The building stayed standing, a neat chunk of it ripped off like a sampled loaf of bread.

  Ahead of her the spaces between closed-up merchant shops were so narrow that a person smaller than her would have had to stop and wedge through sideways. Rangi sent up another beacon. The only way to get there was as the bird flew. Kyoshi sent an apology into the cosmos for the damage she was about to cause and barreled straight into the cluster of buildings. If she couldn’t be a creature of grace, then she’d be a battering ram.

  She smashed through the first wall like it was rice paper. Inside, she crossed the floor in a few steps and burst into the neighboring section, boring a passageway through the cluster of storerooms. Each section she stampeded through offered a momentary glimpse of different merchandise. Dry goods, wet goods, weapons, ivory that was certainly illegal, fancy hats. She was glad that she was only ruining inventory and not harming living occupants with flying debris.

  Her face felt tight and she wondered if she’d injured herself, ripped her skin open. But no, she determined. She was grinning with a locked, maddened expression, mindlessly exulting in her own power and destruction. Once she realized it, she quickly worked her jaw back into a grim frown and splashed through the next wall.

  An unfamiliar sensation caused her to flail after hitting the last barrier. It was freedom. She was in a broad street, going the right way for once. Up above her on the rooftops, the whole crew sprang deftly from surface to surface, bolstering themselves with their element when necessary.

  “I see you made your own shortcut,” Kirima shouted. The water lifting her up sparkled prettily in the moonlight, making her look like a lunar fairy.

  Kyoshi checked behind her to see if anyone had followed the trail of utter devastation she’d left through the town. “Where’s Rangi?”

  “Still in the lead. That’s quite a companion you’ve got.”

  There was another blaze of light that resembled a rocket climbing into the night. Rangi had joined the daofei on their level. She ran as nimbly as they did on the roof tiles, and when there was a leap too great
to make naturally, she stepped on jets of fire that blasted out of her feet, bounding in propulsive arcs across the sky.

  The sight made Kyoshi’s breath come to a standstill at the very time she needed it flowing. Rangi was so beautiful, illuminated by moon and fire, that it hurt. She was strength and skill and determination wrapped around an unshakable heart.

  Kyoshi had always admired Rangi. But right now, it felt as if she were gazing at her friend through a pane of glass freshly cleaned. Some mighty and loving spirit had reached down from the heavens and outlined the Firebender in new strokes of color and vibrance.

  There was a struggle in Kyoshi’s chest that had nothing to do with how hard she was running, notes of longing and fear played in one chord. She tamped the feeling down, not wanting to confront what it meant right now. In any case, it was a poor time to be distracted.

  Soon they exhausted their supply of houses to leap over. They reached the shanties in the outskirts, causing more confusion for the residents who’d seen Kyoshi and Rangi head inward for the night but now flee for their lives in the opposite direction with three other people in tow.

  Lek raced for the copse of trees without being told, perhaps understanding that there were only a few places you could hide a ten-ton bison. Kyoshi reached the copse in time to catch the boy as Pengpeng roared and blasted him backward with wind.

  “Easy, girl!” She coughed, her lungs burning from the run and inhaled building dust. “They’re with us.”

  Walking across the sky must have been a highly efficient technique, because no one else seemed as tired as she. Rangi leaped onto Pengpeng’s neck and unwound the reins from the saddle horn. The daofei climbed onto the bison’s back, gripping her fur with strange familiarity. Once they were settled, Rangi took Pengpeng up above the treeline.

  Lek was ecstatic. “A bison!” he screamed, drumming on the saddle floor. “A real bison!”

  “Calm down!” Rangi said. “It’s not like you can’t see them near any Air Temple.”

  “He’s just excited because we used to have one of our own,” Wong said. “Cute little fella named Longyan.”

  Despite their need to move quickly, Rangi paused, leaving Pengpeng swooping around in a gentle, idling circle. “Wait, how?” she said. “Only Air Nomads can tame bison. The animals won’t listen to strangers if they’re stolen.”

  “We didn’t steal Longyan,” Kirima said. “He was Jesa’s bison.”

  Rangi squinted in confusion and turned to Kyoshi. “But wasn’t Jesa . . . your mother?”

  Kyoshi winced. She spotted a reprieve from the awkward conversation, albeit only a temporary one. On the ground below them, waving his hands, was Lao Ge. He’d managed to escape the dozens of men who had him surrounded and made it to the hiding spot in better time than anyone else.

  The daofei didn’t look one bit surprised to see him. Rangi took Pengpeng low and Wong leaned over, clasping hands with Lao Ge and swinging him onto the saddle, again with the smooth ease of practice. “I thought we might finally be rid of your stinking hide,” Lek yelled.

  “Not quite so easy,” Lao Ge said. “Is anyone else thirsty? I could use—”

  “Shut up,” Rangi snapped. She fixed Kyoshi with her gaze again. “Does that mean what I think it means? About your mother?”

  She looked hurt at another secret being kept from her. But Kyoshi had honestly, sincerely forgotten to bring it up. It hadn’t been relevant until now.

  “Yes,” Kyoshi said sheepishly. “My mother was an Airbender. I’m half Air Nomad.”

  She felt terribly guilty. She’d forced Rangi to absorb a lot in the past day. Finding out that Kyoshi wasn’t the fully Earth Kingdom girl that Rangi had assumed this whole time was yet another small weight added to the pile.

  But hearing that a despicable criminal and gang boss was an Air Nomad would have been enough to shock and confuse anyone. People around the world looked up to Airbenders as enlightened paragons who were free of worldly concerns. They belonged to a benign, peaceful, monastic culture that was so spiritually pure that every single member had bending ability.

  Rangi resembled a child who’d just been told that the sweets tucked underneath her pillow had been left by her parents instead of the Great Harvest Spirit. Kirima and Wong detected the awkwardness between them and remained silent. Lek wasn’t so observant.

  “What’s everyone looking sour for?” he said, slapping Rangi and Kyoshi on their backs. “We finally have a bison again! Our best days are ahead of us!” He thrust his fists into the air and let out a whoop. “The Flying Opera Company is back in business!”

  They camped along the bank of a dried-up creek, hiding themselves by virtue of being way out in the middle of nowhere. If the officers in Chameleon Bay knew what direction they’d gone in, it still would have taken at least a day by ostrich horse to catch up. They didn’t bother hiding the fire Rangi blasted into the ground for them. It burned larger than they needed, sputtering and crackling from unseasoned fuel. They ate the last of the dried food.

  Kirima and Wong fell asleep first, without asking about shifts. Lek waded in the waterless creek, picking up a few polished stones that caught his fancy before he settled in for the night.

  Rangi was holding a grudge over how badly the day’s events had gone—almost getting arrested by the local police, the daofei insinuating themselves into their camp, the revelations about Kyoshi’s heritage—so the two of them engaged in a silent, petty contest of wills to see who would fall asleep next. Kyoshi had the advantage, knowing that there was probably a nightmare waiting for her. She made sure Rangi was truly out cold before laying the good blanket they’d kept hidden from the others over the Firebender’s shoulders.

  Kyoshi walked along the river, wobbling over pavestone-sized rocks that had once been underwater, until she found Lao Ge sitting under a gnarled tree. Half its roots had been washed clean in some long-ago flash flood, while the rest clung tightly to the bank. The tree’s efforts were in vain. It was dying.

  Lao Ge’s eyes were closed in meditation. “You’re very loud,” he said.

  She frowned. She’d practiced stepping lightly for years as a servant, to move like a whisper so as not to distract guests.

  “I mean your spirit is loud,” the old man said. “It rings in the air. Sometimes it screams. Like right now—your body may be all the way over there, but your spirit is grabbing me by the shoulders and howling in my face. If you went to the Spirit World in your current condition, you’d cause a typhoon the size of Ba Sing Se.”

  “I know who you are,” Kyoshi said. “It took me a while to figure it out, but after seeing you fight so many men at once, it was clear.”

  He opened one eye a crack. Kyoshi had a theory that people who liked meditating practiced that gesture to look good-humored and wise.

  “You’re Tieguai the Immortal,” Kyoshi said.

  “Oh?” Lao Ge said, fully interested now. “I suppose there was a description of me in Jesa’s journal? Long white hair, great dancer, devastatingly handsome?”

  “It didn’t have that much detail. It said you were an underworld legend rumored to be two hundred years old, but that’s obviously a tall tale.”

  “Of course. I’m a man, not a spirit, after all.”

  “I know it’s you because of a different description,” Kyoshi said. “Tieguai fights with a crutch. I was looking for someone with a wooden crutch or a bad leg. Then I saw you leaning on your earthbending while you fought the lawmen in the square.”

  Lao Ge sighed, as if he pitied her for putting two and two together. He put his hands on his knees and raised himself to his feet. Then he tiptoed down the web of roots until he was in Kyoshi’s face.

  “Why would one such as yourself seek out Immortal Tieguai?” he said, no longer an old man but a human-headed monster asking a riddle in exchange for safe passage. “After all, your mother never did. She only called me Lao Ge.”

  The root he perched on shouldn’t have been able to support a bird let alone
a human being. Kyoshi swallowed hard. She had a sense of tumbling downhill, her inner ears roiling like choppy seas. An inability to go back to the harbor.

  “Because she was afraid of you,” Kyoshi said. “She didn’t know when you first joined the group, but her suspicions grew over time that you were Tieguai the Assassin. Tieguai who killed the fortieth Earth King. She figured out that you were using her smuggling gang as cover, to travel from place to place as you eliminated targets for your own purposes. She was too scared to confront you.”

  The entries in her mother’s hand had been completely fearless while describing dangerous smuggling jobs, burglaries, and skirmishes with local militias. They were the musings of someone who’d thrilled to the life of a daofei. But the journal also had patches that were rife with criminal superstition, none more so than the scattered stories about a shadow who moved across the Earth Kingdom, snuffing out lives both exalted and lowly according to some unknowable design.

  Jesa the smuggler had pieced together the pattern. Whenever the silly old man in her gang slipped away by himself, a death would happen nearby. Sometimes it would be a prominent noble who should have been safe behind thick walls and numerous guards.

  Lao Ge—the name had stuck hard—lowered his head and mouthed a quick prayer for the dead. “That woman always was very observant. I’m surprised I didn’t catch her catching me. So what is it that her daughter wants? To bring me to justice?”

  “No,” Kyoshi said. “I want you to teach me how to kill someone.”

  If Lao Ge was surprised by her answer, he didn’t show it. “Hit them in the head really hard with a rock.”

  “No,” Kyoshi repeated. “Bending and killing are not the same thing.” The image raced through her mind, the way Jianzhu had so casually done the unspeakable, first to Yun and then to Kelsang. As easy as breathing.

  It needed to be that easy for her. She could afford no mental block, no hesitation when it came to taking his life. She had to be ready in all regards when she next saw Jianzhu.