Chapter One
The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well.
It has been seventy-three years since the Council identified bending as a disease, and fifty-one since the scientists perfected a cure. Everyone else in my family has had the procedure already. My older brother, Sokka, has been disease free for three years now. He's been safe from bending for so long, he says he can't even remember its symptoms. I'm scheduled to have my procedure in exactly ninety-five days, on September 5.. My birthday.
Many people are afraid of the procedure. Some people even resist. But I'm not afraid. I can't wait. I would have it done tomorrow, if I could, but you have to be at least eighteen, sometimes a little older, before the scientists will cure you. Otherwise the procedure won't work correctly. People end up with brain damage, partial paralysis, blindness, or worse.
I don't like to think that I'm still walking around with the disease running through my blood. Sometimes I swear I can feel it writhing in my veins like something spoiled, like sour milk. It makes me feel dirty. It reminds me of witches, of old, grey haired women manipulating people like puppets, cackling the entire time, their mouths dripping spit.
And of course it reminds me of my mother.
After the procedure I will be happy and safe forever. That's what everybody says, the scientists and my brother and Gran-Gran. I will have the procedure and then I'll be assigned an occupation the evaluators choose for me. In a few years, maybe I'll even get promoted. Recently, I've started having dreams about life after my procedure. In them I'm standing near a river without feeling the urge to move the water or become a part of it. My fingers don't twitch at the sight of it, they remain by my side.
Still, and free of the haunting call to bend.
Things weren't always as good as they are now. In school we learned that in the old days, people didn't realize how deadly a disease bending was. For a long time they even viewed it as a good thing, something to be celebrated and developed. Of course that's one of the reasons it's so dangerous: It affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational decisions about your own well-being. (That's symptom number five listed in the bending section of the fifteenth edition of The Phoenix Empire's Guide to Being a Productive Member of Society, or the Guide, as we call it.)
Of course we aren't totally free from bending in the Empire. Until the procedure has been perfected, until it has been made safe from under-eighteens, we will never be totally protected. It still moves around us with invisible, sweeping tentacles, choking us. I've seen countless uncureds dragged to their procedures, so controlled by their desire to bend that they would rather tear their eyes out, or try to impale themselves on the barbed-wire fences outside of the laboratories, than be without it.
Several years ago, on the day of her procedure, one girl managed to slip from her restraints and find her way to the laboratory roof. She dropped quickly, without screaming. For days afterward, they broadcast the girl's face on television to remind us of the dangers of bending. Her eyes were open and her neck was twisted at an angle, but from the way her cheek was resting against the pavement you might otherwise think she had lain down to take a nap. Surprisingly, there was very little blood-just a small dark trickle at the corners of her mouth.
Ninety-five days, and then I'll be safe. I'm nervous, or course. I wonder whether the procedure will hurt. I want to get it over with. It's hard to be patient. It's hard not to be afraid while I'm still uncured, though so far the illness hasn't really touched me yet.
Still, I worry. They say in the old days, bending drove people to madness. Society was divided and constantly at war. People used it to kill and maim and injure and control. There were even those that became completely consumed by it, people willing to die for the power. That's bad enough. But the Guide tells us of people born without it who died trying to get it, which is what terrifies me the most.
The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don't.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Hope you liked chapter one! Reviews are appreciated! :D