The Music of the World
When they saw light again – when the Day of Black Sun had faded into true night and finally lifted into morning – nothing was left of the Emperor's distant palace but a billowing cloud of smoke.
Onji, the polite young girl whose cowardly compassionate leanings had often gotten her in trouble at the training academy, was one of the first to see that fateful sunrise; she was one of the few who climbed up from the town, scaling the surrounding mountain precipices to greet the dawn, to look out westward and find out how much the world had changed. She was the very first human being in the Fire archipelago to see the aftermath of the Black Sun, because she was the only person who had watched the explosions and firebursts in the darkness instead of going into hiding during the double-long night.
(Everyone in the village agreed that ever since that Kuzon kid had come and gone, Onji had not been herself. She remained as polite and obedient as ever, but she was prone to strange bouts of daydreaming and – what set her apart from the rest of village, the rest of the Fire Nation – she was no longer afraid.)
As the sun rose, Onji stood on the tip of the highest mountain in the range that crowned the island's shores, staring into the horizon-distant spark of orange and white despite the stinging in her eyes. As the light lapped further and further up the mountain's face, Onji could feel the terrible cold weakness of the Black Sun vanishing from her soul; the warm, bright strength of Firebending returned to her limbs, life coursed through her veins again, and she clapped her hands together, shooting a spurt of fire up into the burning sky in celebration.
With the sun rose a sea-borne breeze that caressed Onji's bare, bronze-burned arms (sending shivers up her spine) and pressed a stray lock of chestnut hair back from her eyes. And with the breeze, underneath the taste of salt and the shimmer of sun, there came the first flakes of blood-flecked soot and the unmistakable, unendurable stench of death.
The Emperor's Island, which had been a magnificent ruby crown on the western horizon for as long as Onji could remember, was gone. The landmass itself was still there, she could see its silhouette, but its shape – the rearing palaces, the skyward-thrusting prison spires, the signal towers with their tops lit like a quivering string of low-hovering stars – all of that had been flattened, razed. Judging by the thick, oily cloud of smoke that had mushroomed out to cover the entire island and was still spreading, threatening to bring the Day of Black Sun back again, the awe-inspiring city had most probably been burned.
All was silence. Onji stood high above the village and the training academy, balancing herself with one hand on the mountain face beside which her ledge jutted out over the ocean. She stood ramrod-straight, with the posture that her teachers had tried over and over again to beat out of her but had never achieved; she looked timeless, wise and steady beyond her fourteen years as she surveyed the fall of kingdom, her home. She did not smile. She did not cry.
Below and behind her, she could hear the town beginning to stir. Gone were the screaming, hysterical riots of the sunless day; gone were the wailing, weeping, despairing howls of the endless night. The looting had stopped a few hours before dawn, when there were no more windows left to smash and no more valuables left to take; the rioting had stopped even earlier, as the people were seized by a mind-stilling panic and those who could retreated indoors, beating back the strange darkness with a darkness that was closed-in by walls, more familiar and more safe.
Now, with light returning to their stricken world, the townspeople were daring to brave the open air again. From her exalted perch, Onji could hear them spilling out into the streets, slamming doors behind them, calling out in broken voices for loved ones to return and sobbing in sheer relief at the return of the blessed sun.
Then, much nearer, another sound; the clacking together of rocks, the scrape of a leather boot on stone, a quiet curse. Onji turned her head and lifted a hand to shade her eyes against the strengthening glare; she just managed to catch sight of a short, chubby boy sidling up the narrow mountain path to where she stood. As he crossed out of the summit's shadow, she could see that his collar was turned up almost to his ears, and his head was scrunched down into his shirt as though he was trying to hide from the world.
She smiled at him as he scrambled up onto her ledge, flopping onto his stomach with a groan of relief. She sat down next to him, hanging her legs out over oblivion, swinging them now and them as she tried to ignore the gathering clouds of soot that scarred the morning.
"What do you want?" she asked, a little more harshly than she had intended, looking away from him out over the glimmering ocean.
A month ago, the boy would have huddled down into himself in terror at her tone; but now he answered, without a moment's hesitation and with a smile in his voice, "I only want to dance."
Onji almost smiled herself. "How are you, Turtle?" she asked quietly, as the boy beside her huffed and coughed and panted to catch his breath after the strenuous climb. He struggled up into a sitting position and leaned back against the stone, looking at Onji rather than the disturbing vista of sun and smoke.
"I'm fine," he finally managed to gasp, and then he seemed to be able to talk easier, more swiftly. "I checked on the rest of the Flame-ee-o's, and they're all fine, too," he added, ignoring Onji's groan at the name. "Everyone's got their headbands out," he continued blithely, staring into Onji's eyes with a piercing strength he'd never known he had. "They want to know whether to put them on, where to go, what to do. They want you to tell them." She looked away, ashamed, but she could still feel Turtle's eyes on her, burning like the heat of the newborn sun. "They – we – want to know what you want us to do next."
"What about the academy?" Onji asked, ignoring his pleading. "I heard some explosions last night that sounded almost… musical."
"That was the music room," Turtle answered promptly, and this time Onji could hear the grin that split his expression from ear to ear and raised his voice from a low command into a merrier pitch. "Surprisingly enough, it wasn't us, though – I mean, we always knew Master Yan was a little unbalanced, but –"
"He destroyed his own music room?" Onji gapsed, feeling the surprise only faintly, a slight haze over the surface of her mind that quickly vanished (there were deeper things, real emotions, that tore and melded with each other in the depths of her mind, and they left no room for trifles).
"Yeah. He snuck in through the window and smashed all the instruments apart. I heard him yelling that he'd been a slave of those horns and battle hymns for his entire life, and that if he was going to die he wasn't going to die in chains." Turtle's voice was still light, almost merry, as he recounted this speech; Onji wondered absently when the shy, withdrawn boy had developed the knack of irony.
"Things are changing, Onji," Turtle said quietly, following her gaze for the first time to the dark smudge of soot on the horizon. "I heard my parents talking about some of the signals that came in this morning from the working signal towers nearest the Imperial Island. They're saying that the Fire Lord is dead – the whole royal family is dead. The Avatar killed them."
Turtle paused, whether out of personal grief or mere respect for the dead, Onji didn't know. She was faintly shocked to discover that, even though she had been raised to love and revere the royal family as children of the exalted sun, she felt only a slight ring of hollowness at their death. She thought of the forbidding portraits of Fire Lord Ozai, and tried to summon up some hint of mourning for that noble visage; but the only things she could think about were Turtle beside her and the taste of ash in her mouth.
Turtle hesitated a moment longer, then spoke again, mumbling and jumbling his syllables like the cowering boy he had used to be. "Onji, I heard my parents say that… some people think… I mean… that maybe the Avatar was Kuzon."
That thought lit the first real emotion Onji had felt since the sun had disappeared; a sudden, violent rage flared up in her, for the briefest of moments. "No," she said firmly. "I know Kuzon, and he would never cause this kind of… destruction. This is something Hide would do, not Kuzon…" sweet, gentle Kuzon, Kuzon who shot to miss when they played Firebending games, Kuzon who knew hundred-year-old dances and wasn't afraid to be laughed at when he showed them off.
The sound from the town grew louder, more frantic. Turtle sighed, peeking his head out of his collar a little bit to crane around and peer down at the people below. "We need your help, Onji," he said, resorting to pleading again. "The Flame-ee-o's need you! You're our leader!"
"I'm not your leader," Onji said dreamily, still staring off at the horizon, evidently lost deep in her own thoughts. "You don't need a leader. That's what Kuzon taught us – you don't need a leader to tell you what to do. And there are some things that a leader can never make you do, can never take away from you." She stared fiercely into the heart of the sun which now perched on the horizon like a hole in the sky; she stared it down, as though hoping to overpower it with the fire in her eyes.
"Come on, Onji," Turtle begged. The calm steady lieutenant in him was starting to crumble, caving under the pressure of real life that was more menacing than anything he ever could have imagined. "Please, don't be like that – you're so brave, we need your help – the Flame-ee-o's are nervous, the adults are scared –" his voice cracked, and Onji turned to look at him, startled. "I'm scared!"
Onji stared at him for a moment, amazed. The world was changing, she realized, in ways so big they were impossible for her to comprehend; but she could comprehend right now, this moment, with Turtle almost quaking beside her and the townspeople in a half-panic down below. They were scared of the sudden shift, she realized; they didn't know that for her, the change had occurred weeks ago, when a young boy in a scarlet headband had vanished into the night sky.
She twisted halfway around to look back at the town, at the soldiers and schoolteachers and state officials running frantically back and forth like scattered ants through the neat, well-kept streets of their neat, formulated little town. Even from this height, she could see that not one of them was capable of thinking straight without the pressure of the Fire Nation, regal and all-knowing, bearing down from above; not one of them would be able to speak, to lead, to smile or to reassure.
The music of the world had changed, Onji realized; there had been a day of darkness, a beat of silence, and now the universe was repositioning itself, ready to move to a different tune. And not a single person on the island knew how to dance.
She pushed herself up onto her feet, extending a hand to Turtle, who looked up at her with wide eyes and a quivering lip. "Come on," she scolded gently, leaning over and grabbing his elbows, pulling him gently to his feet. "You know better than that. Remember the dance party? Remember what it felt like to stare the Headmaster right in the face and tie that headband on and smile? Well, it's like that now, only bigger. It's much bigger this time, but we'll be okay; we just have to remember not to be afraid." She was pulling him down and away, along the path leading back to the town and its terror, but she could see Turtle gaining courage with every step.
"Remember what that felt like?" she asked again, giving him an encouraging smile. "Kuzon wasn't scared at all, remember? And then, when we helped him, how good that felt – remember, they can't take that away from us. They can't take anything away from us unless we give it to them, and when you're afraid, when you hide, you just give them everything they want. Well, we know better than that." She skidded down a rough patch, sending pebbles clattering down the side of the mountain, and their rhythmic clacking made her smile; Turtle smiled, hesitatingly, in return.
They reached the bottom of the mountain, crossing into the cobbled streets of the town; adults rushed past them in both directions, focused on distant goals of pride or panic, too busy to notice the two calm children who moved with silent confidence into the new-kindled morning.
"The music of the world," Onji whispered, listening to the varied pounding of boots, the high-pitched shouts, the crashing and roaring of life. She still pulled Turtle by the hand; now she turned to face him, grinning down at the top of his head (the noise and people had scared him into his shell again). "Come on," she half-whispered so only he could hear. "Let's teach them how not to be afraid."
She took off again, only this time she didn't walk; she half-hopped, half-skipped, moving her feet in a one-two-three rhythm, spinning, laughing, and free.
Now the adults paused in their hysterics, staring at this obviously ill or insane child making her spasmodic skip-jump way down the main street; some of them stared, and some of them followed, wondering who she was, where she was going, and why.
Turtle had huddled back into his shell when Onji took off and leaped away; but now, seeing the curious, wary stares of the adults who had been reduced to nationless beasts overnight, he gathered his courage and raised his head. As his ears rose from the muffling confines of his collar, he swore he could hear it, thrumming in his veins, to the drumming of his heartbeat. The music of the world.
The Flame-ee-o's, the children who had once danced at an underground party and knew what it was like to move with the force of the flames inside them, had been waiting. In windows and in doorways, under tables and beneath clotheslines, they had been watching the chaos and the panic and waiting for the time to be right; now, as they saw their fearless unofficial leader waltzing past with little Turtle waddle-hopping in her wake, they came pouring out into the new dawn like a lava flow, like a kindling hearth. As one, they started singing, carrying the stunned and soul-scarred adults along in their wake.
The Fire Nation -- at least, the royal family and the government palaces -- had burned down under a shadowed sky; but in this small corner of the changing world, the streets were flooded with headbands of scarlet and gold as the children swayed and cartwheeled and laughed into the morning.
At the head of the strange procession, one teenage girl grabbed a scarlet headband from one of her compatriots. She looped it around her forehead, threw her head back, and shouted, past the fires and the fears:
"Let's teach them how to dance!"