Prologue: Ice and Smoke

She was born on one of the longest nights of the year. It was a full moon, though only Gran-Gran saw any significance in that fact. And she was perfect, a healthy brown-skinned baby with shockingly blue eyes and a head full of dark hair. Even her brother, too young to speak his opinion, seemed pleased with little Katara.

Until her second summer, Katara was perfectly ordinary. She was quick on her feet and full of chatter, though even her mother could rarely understand more than half of what her daughter said. She was cheerful and stubborn, and while she had clear opinions of her own, Katara was not above mimicking her brother when his mischief took a more interesting turn. It was no surprise to Kya, then, when Katara seemed fascinated by the tantrum her brother threw before his bath. When Katara's turn came, she kicked and screamed louder than her brother, putting up a fight that even her father's most fearless warriors might have balked at. Kya was unfazed, however, and she scooped Katara up over the basin of warm water, not noticing when the toddler went abruptly still. Her short legs met the surface of the water, and slid across the top of the now-frozen basin until she was sitting on the block of ice, plump hands pressed to her mouth and giggling hysterically. No one was particularly surprised to discover that Katara was a waterbender, but only Gran-Gran had been certain of it since the day she was born.

When Katara was three, a series of small fires broke out around the village. It began with patches of snow turning glossy and sunken, then there were places where the snow was gone completely, exposing stones that hadn't come to the surface in more than a decade, leaving them blackened on one side. While it was troubling to find evidence of unexplained fires, few considered it to be much of a threat—after all, in their frozen landscape, there was very little to burn. Most of the villagers believed that it was some strange accident of the weather, that perhaps crystals of ice in the air focused the sunlight in such a way that it melted the snow. Kya and Hakoda believed it, and although Gran-Gran had never seen anything quite like the blackened patches that now dotted the village, she had to admit that nothing else came close to explaining the phenomenon. Then one morning, while Hakoda took her brother fishing, Katara inadvertently set fire to Sokka's bedroll in full view of both her mother and grandmother. In an instant, both women knew that no freak accident of the weather had caused the fires. The rest of the village had celebrated Katara's waterbending, but this was different, this was dangerous. Without speaking a word, the women agreed that no one else could know.

As time went on and Katara grew, it became almost possible for her mother to forget that the little girl was anything more than a waterbender. The series of fires ended, and the village moved on. Under her mother's instruction, Katara learned to cook and sew, under her grandmother's, she learned the stories of their tribe, and under her father's, she learned to row a canoe. In the autumn when she was six, Sokka decided that he and his sister needed a pet, so he caught a tiny fox-rabbit kit and brought it home in the pocket of his coat. He told his sister sternly that the kit had to be their secret, but Katara was too enthralled with the kit's large eyes and silky white coat to listen. Despite her brother's insistence that their new pet stay hidden in the supply hut, Katara slipped in a few hours later and smuggled out the sleeping kit in the hood of her coat. For most of the afternoon, the kit remained still and unnoticed, although Kya grew suspicious when her daughter began to sniffle and rub at her eyes. When at last Katara gave in and let out a sneeze so forceful that her feet lifted off of the ground and the tent flaps unlaced from top to bottom, the kit finally poked its nose out of her hood, and was promptly banished from the tent.

And then, when Katara was eight, her world fell apart. She saw the smoke before it reached them. There was nothing to be done. The men were all gone hunting, and every boy old enough to hold a spear had gone with them. All that remained for the women and children was to decide whether it was best to run, to hide, or to face the invaders.

When the bow of the steel ship sliced through the wall of ice at the edge of the village, Katara ran for the safety of the tent as fast as her small legs could carry her. The figures in red seemed to ignore the little girl as she pushed her way past them, too occupied with the women defending their own children to notice Katara. She burst through the open flaps of the tent to find yet another red-clad form standing over her mother.

The man looked back at Katara for an instant, then turned his attention back to her mother. Kya looked around the man and whispered to her daughter to hide.

Too frightened to argue, the little girl obeyed. She ran outside and cowered out of sight between the inner and outer layers of the tent wall. From her hiding place, Katara heard the soldier ask her mother which one of the villagers was the waterbender. They had orders, he told her, to burn the village to the ground if they couldn't find the one they were looking for. And then, as Katara squeezed her eyes shut, she heard her mother's voice, calm and steady. It's me. I'm the waterbender.

There was a sound that Katara couldn't identify, and then silence. As quickly as the chaos had begun, it was over. She wasn't certain of how long she hid, wanting to find her mother and yet too frightened to move. When she finally emerged, the soldiers and the ship were gone.

Katara felt no surprise at the sight of her neighbors' smoldering tents, no terror at the sight of the blood-streaked snow. When she found Gran-Gran lying in the snow outside of their tent, there was no horror when the old woman didn't respond to her voice, no relief when she discovered that her grandmother was still breathing. And when at last Katara gathered the courage to return to her own tent, there was no confusion at the sight of her mother's unmoving eyes or the deep line of red across her throat. Too numb to feel anything at all, Katara sat. There was no use in doing anything else. Her mother was gone.

Katara didn't remember her father's return. She couldn't remember the sound of his footsteps growing louder as he raced back to camp, Sokka clinging to his back, and she couldn't remember the moment of horrified silence that passed before Hakoda shoved Sokka back from the tent and scooped Katara up like an infant and carried her outside. She didn't remember Sokka's confusion or the way that her father knelt in the snow, holding both of his children so tight that it almost became hard to breathe. The sight of her mother's body blotted out everything else.

In the end, almost twenty women and children died in the attack. Gran-Gran, along with most of the wounded, recovered. And slowly, the tribe began to heal.

Nightmares became Katara's inescapable companion—most nights, she could count on seeing her mother's lifeless body, every bit as vivid as the day she died. Some nights, it was worse. Then, when Katara was exactly eight and a half years old, she had a dream that made all the others pale by comparison. She couldn't seem to wake, and the whole tent shook around her, waking both her brother and her grandmother. Sokka was terrified and tried to pull his little sister outside, where they would be safer from the earthquake, but Gran-Gran seemed unsurprised. She merely shook her head at her grandson and then woke Katara. The ground stopped shaking, and Katara cried for hours, nestled between her brother and her grandmother.

When Katara was nearly eleven, she came back from playing with the other children to hear her father and grandmother arguing. Gran-Gran insisted that the tribe needed its men, and Hakoda replied that the tribe could hardly be more vulnerable than it already was. The Fire Nation could attack at any time, and the only way to prevent it was to draw their attention elsewhere. It seemed odd to Katara—until that moment, she had given the invaders no identity in her mind. Though she had seen the attack and the soldiers in their red uniforms, she had never been able to see them as anything more than forces of nature.

The children had to be protected, Gran-Gran insisted, and when Hakoda refused to sway, the old woman turned to pleading.

If you have to leave, take the children.
Take your children.
Take Katara.

And when her father again refused to yield, Katara sank against the wall of the tent and cried.

As the days grew longer, the men packed the ships to leave. They all agreed with Hakoda—there was nothing to be gained by waiting for the next attack. To protect the tribe, they needed to keep the Fire Nation occupied, and if possible, to bring them down entirely. So as soon as the ice began to clear from the main channels, the warriors left, along with every old man still strong enough to fight and every boy over the age of thirteen. Sokka was twelve years old.

Though it was impossible to know for certain in the years that passed, it seemed that Hakoda's plan was working. Katara and her brother grew up in peace. Gran-Gran taught Katara all she knew of their tribe, of the waterbenders who had preceded her. Under her grandmother's instruction, Katara learned midwifery and medicine, while Sokka, without teachers of his own, took his sister on as his own student. By the time that she was thirteen, Katara was nearly as good at hunting and fishing as her brother, though she understood better than Sokka that neither of them would ever be much good at fighting without a real teacher. Such was the cost of war, Gran-Gran told her. Sokka may be an inelegant fighter, and Katara may have to be satisfied with teaching herself to waterbend, but at least they were safe. At least, Gran-Gran whispered to her, the invaders hadn't found the waterbender they had come for.

And then Katara was fourteen. Too old to cling to Gran-Gran's skirts, too young to seek her own path, and too restless to remain in camp where she was safe for another instant. On a cold, bright spring morning, she went fishing with her brother—to keep him out of trouble, she told Gran-Gran. And from clear across the field of icebergs, Katara saw a nearly perfect ball of ice, as large as a ship and as blue as the sky.

Author's Note:

I'm incredibly grateful to all of you reading my story! It's kind of a slow start, but I'm hoping I grabbed enough interest to keep you coming back as I update. I am and always have been a Zutara supporter, so consider yourself warned: it'll be a long time before we get there, but Zutara is coming. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the prologue (or at least found it interesting enough to visit again when there's more to read). I have some pretty high hopes for where this little story is going, so I hope you all come along for the ride.

Thanks again for reading,

SooperSara