Chapter Two: Into the West
Grandmother Bao lost no time in informing Sozin of her success, and his parents lost no time in informing him of their conditions for his trip. He just nodded, with the occasional "yes", as his mother and father—mostly his mother—talked to him in their private chambers. Bao sat by one corner, glancing at him once in a while as his parents told him to always obey his grandmother and to remember all sorts of things he was already forgetting, between one nod and another.
'Don't worry about doing something wrong,' Bao told him once they were out of the rooms.
'I'm not worried.'
She ignored him. 'Doing things wrong is what youth is for. Now go practice your firebending, it may prove useful.'
He didn't need to be told to practice; he already did, and his other fighting skills as well, until he was gleaming with sweat and each move was a muscle memory, precise and immediate. Later he found out that Ta Min's family had sent a message accepting his invitation during one of the times when he had been practising unarmed combat, and wished he'd been there to receive it; Ta Min hadn't come, but her family had made sure the message arrived with a great deal of pomp, and he was pretty sure that beat learning how to take blows by being slammed repeatedly against the walls and floor of the dojo.
He only saw Ta Min again on the day of their departure. She greeted him formally at the palace, and only spoke again when their carriage was crossing the Royal Plaza and several people cheered and waved at them as they drove past: 'They certainly seem glad to see the last of us.'
'Very droll,' Bao said in a completely flat tone, then nodded at Sozin. 'Wave back, child.'
It seemed to take forever for the dragon-moose to canter out of the city spread below the crater, and finally into the Western Road. Sozin looked out the window at the sea until it was only a radiant silver-blue line in the horizon, beyond the sprawl of red tile rooftops. Now they had been travelling for almost two hours and there were fewer and fewer buildings, rocky islands in a sea of grass, and the din of the city was lost in the distance, muffled by the clip-clop of hooves. Bao's maid took a basket from underneath their forward-facing seat and retrieved a piece of half-finished embroidery. Her mistress nodded in approval, then glanced out the window. 'You two, take a look at that.'
Sozin and Ta Min looked out. He couldn't help but feel a little disappointed; there was only a tree-covered hill rising from the forest, looking rather dry under the summer heat.
'That's a cursed place,' Bao said. Sozin leaned a little further out the window—he felt Ta Min press against him to get a closer look—but the hill remained unremarkable. Even at that distance, the trees weren't dense enough to picture ghosts hiding underneath. 'Oh, don't bother looking too closely,' Bao went on. 'The ghosts only come out in the moonlight, I'm sure.'
Sozin leaned back in his seat. 'Are there really ghosts?'
Bao's expression remained unchanged. 'Maybe. That's where Fire Lord Mizuka's children died. Probably.'
'She was Fire Lord before my grandfather,' Sozin said to Ta Min, but her attention was wholly focused on Bao.
'Lady Bao—what do you mean by "probably"?'
'Call me Bao, child. If we're going to be just ordinary travellers, we'd better not stand too much on ceremony. As for what happened over there…' She cocked her head slightly towards the hill, which was now almost out of sight of the road. 'Well, you two are old enough to know. You must have learned about the crisis of succession—the last one, I mean—in your history lessons. I was a young girl when it happened. A little younger than you, in fact.' She paused and her maid raised her head, then resumed her embroidering like an elephant-rat hurrying back into its hole. 'You must be familiar with the main events. If you're not, Ta Min, I'm sure my grandson has memorised them. Both of Fire Lord Mizuka's children died young—the oldest was just a few years younger than you—and the country nearly tore itself apart before she was succeeded by her cousin, Sozin's grandfather. This is the part they don't tell you in the history books: that's where it happened. That's where they vanished.'
Sozin glanced back at the hill. Only the very edge of its tree line was visible now. 'That's not a very big place. How could they have vanished? And besides, I always heard—' He fell silent.
'As I said: history is not always truthful about its subjects. One moment they were walking under the trees, not far from some other members of the court. And the next they had vanished off the face of the earth. It was as though they stepped out of sight and the hill itself swallowed them up.'
An icy spot formed between Sozin's shoulder blades. 'Can we go there?'
'Don't be absurd. I told you, it's a cursed place. Nobody goes any closer than the foot of the hill, and only to leave offerings at that. Whatever is there is best left asleep, and pacified.'
'They never found them?' Ta Min asked.
'Oh, they tried. Their mother combed the whole country looking for them. They went over every inch of that hill and those woods. Not a trace. There were all sorts of rumours flying around, of course. That they had been kidnapped, that they had offended a forest spirit, that Prince Ren—your grandfather, Sozin—had done away with them. And then—'
'He didn't,' Sozin said, 'did he?'
Bao shrugged. 'How should I know? But I doubt he would stoop to that sort of thing. He would probably find it lowering, and crass to boot.' Her eyes misted with memory. 'A scoundrel of a man, but one with standards. And a good Fire Lord, which is what matters. A great dancer too, which helps.'
'How can you say that being a good Fire Lord makes up for being a scoundrel?' Sozin said.
'Well, which one are you aware of? The folks in the Outer Islands do not care if the Fire Lord is nice to his mother, I assure you.'
'But his mother probably does,' he said. In his etiquette lessons, he had been taught to never raise his voice in polite conversation, and had been made to recite and debate for hours so that he'd be able to always speak with knowledge, refinement, and authority. But right now his years of lessons had gone out the window, and his grandmother's stare made him feel like a five-year-old throwing a tantrum. He spoke again, and couldn't help but let the volume of his voice creep up a little. 'Being a good Fire Lord doesn't make it all right to be a terrible person.'
'No—sometimes it merely requires it. After all, one does not rule by meditating on the sacredness of all life, child. I'd think you'd know that, at the very least.'
'My father is the best person I know,' he said rather huffily. 'That doesn't stop him from being a good Fire Lord.'
'That was not the point. The point is that rank—power—demands choices. And sacrifices.'
A flash of the Crown Prince headpiece sitting on Roku's palm, gleaming in the light from the oil lamps. The Fire Sages told me I won't need any worldly possessions anymore. He knew that power came with responsibility, and that it demanded sacrifices, but he also knew something was wrong about his grandmother's logic. 'Well, maybe some people don't have what it takes to be both a good ruler and a good person. But my father does, and I hope I do too.'
'Do you have what it takes to be a great dancer as well?' Ta Min asked. The sideways glance was back.
'Sozin is an excellent dancer,' Bao said before he could think of a reply. 'May we all be as thoroughly competent at everything as he is.'
He was sure she was mocking him, but she sounded absolutely sincere. Then Ta Min spoke again and whatever terseness there had been in the air dissipated.
'Lady Bao—Bao, I mean,' she added, 'what happened next? You were going to say that something happened after all those rumours, when Fire Lord Mizuka's children disappeared.'
'Oh, yes. Two children went to the hill—I believed they said they were trying to catch rabbaroos, but I think they went there on a dare, seeing how long they'd last on the haunted hill before they lost their nerve and ran—and there was a landslide. Nothing serious, just enough for them to find a small hole boring deep into the hill. They said they threw stones into it and couldn't hear them hit the bottom, no matter how long they waited. Soon after that, the story made its way to the palace and Fire Lord Mizuka sent people to the hill again; she even hired some earthbenders to open up the hole and see what was inside.'
She paused. A chill trickled down the back of Sozin's neck and he told himself he was just being silly. 'What did they find?'
'Bones.'
'Bones?'
'A cavern deep in the ground and covered in bones. Some animal, some human, a great assembly of remains carpeting the ground. No one could tell how long they had been there. Some looked fresh. Some were crumbling into dust. As for the prince and the princess, maybe they were in there, maybe they were not. But the easiest thing was to say they had fallen into the cave like so many others before, it seemed, and died there. And after that, no one went into the hill anymore. Only to the foot of it, and even then only to keep restless spirits at bay. Better to leave the place forgotten, and to leave whatever lies there, to lie alone.'
For a moment no one spoke. Even Bao's maid had stopped her motions with the needle. The carriage hit a shallow pothole and kicked up a cloud of dust.
'That can't really be the ending,' Sozin said. 'What happened to the prince and princess? And did they really find a cave full of bones? It just sounds like a—a ghost story.'
'Of course it's a ghost story,' Bao said. 'But that doesn't mean it didn't really happen. Though it must have been embellished in the telling. Tales always grow fast, like kudzu and children, and this one has had over sixty years to do so. As for the prince and the princess… who knows? Maybe they really did die from a fall. Maybe they never fell into that hole at all. Maybe all those bones were carried there.'
'By someone?' Ta Min's eyes had the same spark Sozin had seen at her house.
'Or something,' Bao said. 'Or maybe they just died in an accident and whoever was there covered it up. Accidents that befall princes tend to be bad for other people's health too.'
'Maybe someone did kidnap them,' Sozin said, 'and all that stuff about haunted hills and caves of bones is just some story.' At eleven he and Roku had dared each other to walk at midnight across one of the corridors in the west wing, the one that was supposed to be haunted. The dark had whispered and rustled and then he'd grabbed Roku's hand and rushed across the corridor with him. See? His heart had been pounding his ribcage. No ghosts here. 'I'd go into that hill. Even into that cave. I wouldn't be afraid—it's just a bunch of bones.'
'Maybe they ran away,' Ta Min said. 'The prince and the princess, I mean. They saw their chance when they were in the woods and ran. Maybe that's why nobody ever found them: because they didn't want to be found.'
Sozin looked at his seat-mate. 'Why would they do that?'
'I don't know.' Ta Min's face was blank. 'Maybe they just didn't like the kind of life they had to lead, being heirs to the throne. So they ran away to become someone else. Someone they wanted to be.'
Sozin tried to make sense of what she was saying. 'Like what?'
'I don't know.' A pause. 'Something different.'
'Well, who knows?' Bao said. Her maid was absorbed in the embroidery again, needle moving to and fro in her fingers, and they were back to being just a few travellers passing the time with stories as they moved along the Western Road. 'They wouldn't be the first in that family to be born under an unlucky star. Fire Lord Ren's uncle—' She fell silent, her lips suddenly pursing.
'Uncle?' Sozin rifled through his memory of his father's family tree. Roku was the one with the real talent for genealogy; he had one full sister and four half-siblings, and they all came with their own gaggle of relations. 'I don't remember ever coming across—'
'No, you wouldn't. We don't speak about him. They certainly don't in your father's family, but then that's hardly—look, let me tell you another story,' she added before Sozin could say anything. 'This one really is just a story, though it may have also happened, who knows? It's about a man who thought the flame of his love would never dim, but who forgot that a blaze can become a firestorm. What had been a dance turned into a battle. He and his beloved fought and fought, and after words that can't be taken back were spoken, he went in the dead of night to saddle his dragon-moose.
'"If you don't come back in three days," his lover told him, "you can never come back. Mark my words. I will be gone." Still angry, the man rode away into the jungle. The noise of their arguments was replaced by the sounds of lizard-parrots and badgerfrogs and the solitude soothed him. But after just two days in the forest, he was filled with regret. He wanted to return to the one he loved, and he wanted to return to the life he missed. So he found a shortcut through the jungle and took it, desperate to return, desperate to make his way back before it was too late, not knowing if someone would be waiting for him or if he would find only empty rooms in an empty house. His lover's threat hung around his head—and who can know when someone will be true to their word? He could feel his mount losing speed, as though it wouldn't make it through the night.
'The man came to the edge of a swamp, dark and unknown, and so large he couldn't even see the trees and vines on the other side. He had to make a decision: should he go around the swamp, or ride into it?
'Next to the swamp stood a boy. Maybe he was a ghost or a spirit of the forest or, more likely, he just lived nearby. Whatever he was, the man asked him: "Tell me—does the swamp have a hard bottom?" And the boy told him, "It does." So the man guided his dragon-moose into the swamp. And as he began to sink, deeper and deeper into the swamp, he said to the boy, "I thought you said it had a hard bottom!" and the boy replied, "It does. You're just not there yet."'
She fell silent. The dragon-moose continued to canter.
'So the man didn't make it back,' Ta Min said. She didn't sound entirely disappointed.
'He might have,' Sozin said, and turned to Bao. 'If he was a good enough firebender, he could have got out of the swamp. Or he could have swam across. Or maybe the swamp's bottom was just some inches below. Right?'
'I don't know,' Bao said with a shrug. Sozin couldn't help but feel a little annoyed at all these stories, their dangling ends itching like a pebble in his shoe. What was the point of a story without an ending? It was like having a sword with only half a blade: it didn't make it half-effective; it made it downright useless.
Bao looked through the window again. 'Look, children, it's the tower of Biao Yan. See how wonderful it looks in the sun.'
They stopped a little after midday, after riding past a stretch of farmland. Bao sat under a parasol and the two drivers, who had unhitched the four dragon-moose so they could graze, were now leaning back on their seat and chatting. Ta Min sat next to Bao, not a fold of her travel clothes out of place, staring at some undetermined spot in the horizon. Sozin wandered into the field, grass crunching underfoot, happy that for once he was just a traveller and not a prince. At the palace no one except his parents would have sat down before he did, much less ignore him while he wandered off.
He looked around him. They were far away enough from the city for the air not to have a sea tang anymore, and the road meandered through an ocean of grass and rolling wooded hills that stretched as far as the eye could see. Beyond the snatches of conversation there was only the rhythmic murmur of insects and the weight of the sunlight, warm and thick as molasses; he closed his eyes so he could feel its tide in his blood.
When he opened them again, he stepped closer to Ta Min. 'Do you want to go for a walk?'
'Excellent idea, grandson,' Bao said, placing a sliver of fire ginger back into her bowl. 'Better still, ask Lee and Shou to saddle a pair of the dragon-moose.' She turned to the two drivers. 'That's all right, isn't it? And Ta Min—I assume you ride, child?'
'Yes.' The spark was back and she was the first on the saddle once the dragon-moose were ready. They headed north at a morose canter, after Sozin had promised his grandmother they wouldn't go far and to take something to eat and to be careful, though he really didn't know what they had to worry about; he was a master firebender and he had his sword with him, for all that he didn't much care for it. 'What do you think so far?' he said to Ta Min.
'I like your grandmother,' she said, then looked ahead, to where the field sloped upwards into a tree-lined plateau. 'Her stories are a little… weird.'
'She's always a little weird,' he said. 'But I'm liking it. It's nice not to be treated like a prince all the time, you know? Not having everyone waiting on you hand and foot.'
'I can see that.' She was back to being her polished self, handling her dragon-moose as tightly as someone who feared failing a riding lesson. He had never had any trouble reading Roku's moods—sometimes he could even feel them in his own flesh. But Ta Min still reminded him of the clock at her house: someone who would come alive once in a while, but whose gears were an intricate puzzle kept out of sight.
'You're really good with that dragon-moose,' he said.
She blushed, but this time didn't lower her eyes. 'Thank you. My parents made sure I learned.'
'Yeah, but you're better than most. Want to go faster?'
'Sure.'
Dragon-moose were heavy animals, but some of their distant ancestors had raced across the skies and a part of them seemed to remember it; they ran to the top of the plateau at a trot so fast it sent Sozin's heart racing and they only stopped when the trees became too thick to run through. Ta Min laughed and drew in her mount, who shook its neck ridge and let out a smoky snort.
'That was fun,' Sozin said, and jumped down from his dragon-moose. Above him, the canopy rustled. 'Do you want to see what's beyond these woods?'
'That sounds good,' she said. He saw the tip of a short scabbard peeking out from under her hem as she dismounted. 'Dagger?'
'What? Oh.' She reached for the scabbard with her free hand, looking a little embarrassed. 'It's a pair of butterfly swords, actually.' She unsheathed the two blades single-handedly. The steel's edge caught the light even in the gloom of the woods. 'See? I'm not very good at firebending, so my parents had me learn other things as well.' She swung the knives in a semi-circle and sheathed them again in a smooth motion. When she spoke again her tone was a little bitter. 'With Sifu On Yan. He's supposed to be the best, and my family always has the best.'
'I bet you're really good with them,' he said. The forest grew thicker around them and the sound of the dragon-moose's hooves made the birds quiet. 'I don't like weapons very much. Firebending is so much easier.'
'Easy for you!' She shook a few tendrils of long brown hair off her face.
'Not just me, Roku is just the same. He's a bit clumsy but not when he's bending. He's pretty amazing when he's bending. I mean, not just because he's the Avatar, he was really good even before we—' He paused. 'He likes you, you know.'
The sideways glance again, this time with a half-smile. 'He doesn't even know me. I don't even know him.'
'You'd like him. When he gets back we're going to tell him all about our trip. If the all-powerful Avatar is interested, that is,' he said with a grin.
'You two are really close, aren't you?'
This time it was his turn to blush. 'Yeah. Well, he's my doushun, you know. We've been together since we were little kids. Since he came to live at the palace, we weren't apart even for one day. When our parents were drawing up our contract, the matchmakers told them it's pretty rare, to have such auspicious signs around a doushun pair. He was born just a few minutes after me. I guess that makes us really lucky.' He fell silent and for a moment the woods were full of shadows and the smell of damp undergrowth and mossy tree stumps.
'I'm sorry he had to leave,' Ta Min said.
'It's all right. We—hey, look at that.'
There was a small stone structure half-hidden by the trees, the stucco crumbled off in patches and overrun by climbing plants. Birds had made their nest on the roof.
'What's that?'
Sozin walked his dragon-moose closer to the structure. 'It looks like an abandoned shrine. People must have lived nearby.' He dusted cobwebs off the pillars holding up the small roof. Inside all that remained from the spirit figurines were a few shards of stained pottery, but the stone bowl for the flame was still mostly intact, filled with about an inch of dirty rainwater and a mass of leaves turning to mulch. A few flies buzzed in the syrupy air.
'Who do you think built it?' Ta Min said. She touched one of the shrine's sides and stucco crumbled under her fingers.
'I don't know. It must be really old.' The rounded shape of the roof looked distinctly old-fashioned. 'Maybe there used to be a village here.' He cleared away the leaves hanging off the sides of the fire bowl and lit a small flame with the tips of his fingers. The contents of the bowl were damp, but his fire was hot enough to make them burn, and in a few seconds a flame was crackling in the shrine again.
'It'll go out in a bit,' Ta Min said.
Sozin shrugged. 'I know. Maybe someone else will light it again.' He turned away. Something about the abandoned shrine still made him a little uneasy, even if it was a little better with a flame inside. 'Come on, let's see what else is out here.'
A few yards out, the woods grew thinner and thinner until they ended entirely and the plateau sloped down again into a vast grass plain where a river shone like polished silver in the sun. A herd of cow-hippos grazed by the water and beyond them lay stretches of farmland, nestled at the foot of a range of purple hills.
Neither of them moved for a while. Maybe this was silly, some part of Sozin thought, standing here staring at fields and a stretch of pasture. But this was his land, he realised with a shiver that went all the way to the bone; not something he owned, but something that was going to be placed in his hands, meant for him to cradle and watch over as though it were a tiny flame. He was bound to it, to the cotton fields and the rice paddies, to the far-away village and the river with its herd and moss-hung trees. Right now this was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, this bowl of jewel-bright world under a sky so blue it made his eyes hurt.
Ta Min spoke first. 'It looks wonderful.'
'Yeah—let's go down.'
This time they didn't ride on the dragon-moose, but just walked them by their reins down the slope leading to the plain. 'How about you?' Sozin said.
'I'm sorry?'
'I've told you about Roku and me, so you don't you tell me about yourself?'
'Well, there's not much to tell. My mother's people made a fortune in trade. My father is from one of the Five-Fold Flame families. I expect you know all that.'
They were getting closer to the herd now. The cow-hippos towered taller than a man and grazed or dozed in place while their tails shooed away flies.
'Yes, sure,' he said, but it wasn't entirely true. As the Crown Prince, he had had to learn the names of the scions of the Five-Fold Flame, the landed nobility, the provincial governors, but they had been just names on paper, or Pai Sho tiles sliding back and forth across a board. Not living, breathing people standing so close to him their arm brushed his. 'You don't have any brothers or sisters, do you?'
Her dragon-moose grew skittish and she turned towards it as she reined it in. 'No. Maybe we shouldn't get too close to the cow-hippos. I think these are half-wild. Probably not too fond of strangers.'
He halted his own dragon-moose, who huffed and shook its wide ears. 'How can you tell?'
'They're skinnier than the domestic ones and their horns haven't been filed down—you can tell by the yellow tinge. And they have too many little ones. If they were on a farm, the weaned calves would have been separated from the rest of the herd. With these, the villagers just have to cull a few for meat as needed; there aren't any really wild ones anymore, so they aren't very territorial. It's cheaper to raise them like this, even if the meat isn't as good.'
'You know a lot about cow-hippos.'
She turned her gaze away, but when she spoke again the confidence wasn't entirely gone from her voice. 'My mother's family made a lot of money in cow-hippos. I learned a few things.'
They walked up to a copse of magnolia trees that hid the river out of sight and tied the dragon-moose to a fallen trunk so they could graze without wandering off. Moss hung off the branches like silvery beards and bird calls filled the moist air.
'Do you want to sit down?' Sozin said. He flopped down onto a sunny spot in the grass. Ta Min sat down, smoothing down the folds of her travel tunic. Even her sash didn't have a thread out of place.
'I want to thank you for inviting me,' she said. 'I hadn't had a chance to do it personally.'
'It's all right,' he said, and then they sat quietly for a while. A bird cawed and moved above them in a flurry of feathers.
'This is a lovely place,' she said, but he could tell that she'd retreated back into herself and the moment they'd shared in the hill was gone. He felt like slapping his forehead in frustration—why was this so difficult? He thought back to when he and Roku had met for the first time, when they were nine, and his friend had been a shy, frightened child parted from his family by fate so he could be the Crown Prince's companion. Then Sozin had told him 'Do you have any brothers or sisters? I don't have any, but you can be my brother now', and had taken him everywhere in the palace, even places they weren't supposed to go, and soon they were laughing and playing together. He looked around. He could see the black and white shapes of cow-hippos looming outside the trees and there was a sound of rushing water.
'Does that sound like a waterfall to you?' he said. Ta Min looked up, suddenly alert. He got back on his feet. 'Hey, I bet I can walk right up to it.'
'The cow-hippos are in the way,' She didn't sound like she was particularly concerned.
'Well, of course. Otherwise it wouldn't be a very interesting bet.'
She got up and glanced at the herd. 'How much?'
He shrugged. 'A silver piece?'
'You're on.'
He slipped his sword off his back and handed it to Ta Min, then started walking towards the edge of the copse. The cow-hippos grazing and dozing by the stream looked bigger than ever, their heads half his size, their legs massive like tree trunks. For a moment he thought he must have gone insane: Ta Min had made them sound as skittish as mongoose-dragons, but at least those wouldn't stomp you flat if they panicked or decided you were threatening their calves. And they probably wouldn't eat you afterwards.
'Try not to be crushed by them,' Ta Min whispered. She sounded a little amused.
'Killed and eaten by lunch. How humiliating,' he said, but somehow her words decided it. He was Crown Prince Sozin and he wasn't going to be intimidated by a herd of animals, even boar-q-pines or tiger-crocodiles. He looked above the sea of black and white—there was the waterfall, a streak of white down a moss-covered cliff.
He stepped towards the herd. Its acrid smell filled up the air and he was so close to the cow-hippos he could see the splotches of mud on their hides. He edged closer to the river, moving stealthily between the animals. They carried on munching grass and any grasshoppers that didn't run away fast enough, or dozing placidly while their tails shooed dragonflies away. Their eyes didn't even turn towards him, even though he was walking right through the middle of the herd, where there were so many of them they made the ground cool with shadow.
Ha—they probably wouldn't notice me if I went up to them and said boo, he thought, and moved with more confidence through the tall grass bordering the river. He was getting close to the waterfall now; it was bigger than he'd thought at first and a cloud of mist rose from where it hit the river below.
There was a loud splash. A calf, already almost as tall as Sozin, wadded out of the river and onto the muddy bank, water dripping off its flanks. Sozin stopped. The calf stood right in front of him, eyes turned towards the intruder. It sniffed the air—Sozin suddenly realised just how huge their heads were—and let out a distressed moo.
The herd stirred.
'No, no, shush!' Sozin said, and stepped towards the calf, trying to calm it down. The calf took a step back and let out an even louder moo.
The herd panicked. Bellowing filled the air as the mass of animals started rushing downriver. Suddenly all around him there was kicked-up dust, horns, a press of massive bodies moving faster than he could have imagined. Three adults bore down on the calf and dragged it along as they rushed towards Sozin. For a moment that seemed to stretch forever he saw only the white in their rolled eyes, the foam flecking mouths larger than his head.
Then two white-hot jets of flame burst from his hands and he jumped off the bank, flew a few yards into the air, rolled his body forward and dove into the water.
River-silt stung his eyes. His arms scrapped on the rocky bottom. He swam back up and coughed up a little water as he broke the surface. There was a river weed hanging over his face. He shook it off.
Well, he was going to finish this. He wadded towards the waterfall. The river bottom rose up to meet it, so he soon emerged fully from the water. His clothes felt like they had soaked up half the river. His bangs dripped a month's worth of rain onto his face. He glanced around—the cow-hippos had moved downriver and were now back to their grazing, the whole incident seemingly forgotten; apparently they had the memory of a stunted carp—and saw Ta Min at the edge of the tree line. She had watched the whole thing from the safety of the copse. He stepped up to the waterfall, barely feeling the spray on his already-wet face, and slapped the roaring water.
He couldn't stop a satisfied grin. It didn't matter how often it happened—winning was wonderful.
He walked back to Ta Min's side, his clothes sloshing with every step, then hurried when he realised she was holding her face in her hands. Worry hit him—she had just seen him almost get squished by a herd of cow-hippos.
'I'm all right,' he said.
She looked up and he realised she was wheezing with laughter, not distress. He tried to look as dignified as possible, which wasn't easy when you still had river weeds in your hair and possibly a goldfish in your pants.
'I know,' she said, her body still quaking with laughter. She wiped away tears of mirth and cleared her throat. 'Here.' She reached into her coin purse and handed him a silver piece. 'It was so worth it.' Another eruption of laughter. 'Oh—you should have seen yourself.'
'Always glad to be amusing,' he snapped as he took the proffered coin, then started taking off his soaked vest and water-logged shoes. It was summer, and firebenders dried out quickly in any case. 'So you weren't betting to win, you were betting on an entertainment bargain.'
She blushed a little, but her eyes still met his. 'Well, I was sure it would be worth watching.'
'Well, I was sure I was going to win,' he said, serious, and shook out his vest. A tiny slug-frog dropped down onto the grass, let out a glum croak, and scampered away.
Sozin and Ta Min looked at it, then looked at each other and burst out laughing.
That night they stayed at an inn in a town whose sole claim to importance seemed to be the fact that it lay where two major roads crossed. The inn was nearly full with travellers going about their business and Sozin liked the dining room with its constant din of conversation, and simple dishes served by two women who managed to balance five bowls on each arm at once and carry out three conversations at the same time. It was all so different from what he was used to, gold-tipped chopsticks and an intricate dance of manners while servants glided about in silence; he even liked the way the dining room smelled of lime and pepper flakes and hot sesame oil.
Bao—just plain Bao here, just like they were just plain Sozin and Ta Min, she'd reminded them as they'd entered the town—sent them to their rooms right after dinner. 'We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow,' she said as she sipped some plain ginseng tea.
Sozin's bedroom was the smallest he had ever seen in his life, but he liked it as much as the dining room. The bedclothes were cotton, not the silk he was used to, the furniture was minimal, and he only had to take six steps to cross the whole width of the bedroom, but when he opened the window he looked at the clearest night sky he had ever seen, and the air outside was warm and full of the smell of night-blooming flowers and the song of crickets.
He leaned over the windowsill until all he could see were stars and the dark fields around the town. If he wanted to, he could climb out of the window and step into a road, any road, with only a sliver of moon to watch him… He wondered if the stars were different wherever Roku was, and if maybe he was looking at them too.
He stepped back into the room and stripped off his travel clothes until he was bare-chested, then started to wash. At the palace there was always someone to help him with his clothes, to bring him scented water and hot towels, but since he was going to be Fire Lord some day, he had to know more about how his people lived than just numbers and dates in ledgers and scrolls—wasn't that part of the point of this journey? Besides, he thought, splashing cool water on his face, he rather enjoyed taking care of himself. Like the little room and the plain travel clothes and the unmemorable town, it made him feel that, just for a moment, he could pretend to be anyone at all, just another person in the anonymous mass of travellers.
Once he was finished, he stepped into the patch of floor in front of the bed and sat down on the floorboards. One of his firebending instructors had told him often that calligraphy was the best preparation for a firebending session: the balance and clarity of mind required by each brush stroke, the precision of motion, even the smell of the ink, all put one's thoughts and the flow of one's chi in the perfect state for firebending. Their instructor had made him and Roku copy so many classics that they had started joking that calligraphy was indeed perfect for firebending, since after a while you started wanting to set all the brushes and paper on fire.
Still, it was certainly true that mastering firebending required a certain state of mind. He closed his eyes and focused on his breath and heartbeat until there was nothing else: not the night air, not the sounds of creaking wood and distant voices, not the soreness from travelling in a carriage all day. There was only the flow of air and blood, the little sun in his chest pumping out heat to every inch of his body. He rose to his feet and went through a series of forms; he couldn't do real firebending, not indoors in such a small room, but small orange flames bloomed from his hands with every motion and dissipated into the air. He was the fire, the living thing that flowed and rose and twisted, quick like a flame speeding over oil, precise and deadly like lightning. The Short Strike. The Fire Lily. The Dragon Cross-Step.
A knock on the door cut in halfway through one of the forms and he stopped in mid-twist. The flames in his hands went out. The knock came again, more insistent.
His grandmother's maid was standing in the corridor, looking even more elephant-rat-like than she had in the carriage. 'Prince Sozin,' she said. Even her voice was squeaky. 'Your grandmother requests your presence.'
A flash of annoyance. Hasn't she run out of stories yet? 'Did she—no, never mind.' His grandmother might not insist on strict formality during their journey, but he knew she would consider him appallingly rude if he did not follow proper etiquette when the two of them were alone. 'Please tell her I'll be with her right away.'
The girl bowed and scurried down the corridor.
A few minutes later, his topknot redone and not a stitch of clothing out of place, Sozin knocked on the door to his grandmother's bedroom, wedged between his own and Ta Min's.
'Come in, child.' He stepped into a room considerably larger and better appointed than his own. His grandmother sat at a small low table covered with playing cards, and her maid was tending to a teapot that filled the room with the smell of white lotus tea. A grey cat—he thought it was just a shadow until he saw its tail twitch—sprawled on the floor next to the little fire. 'Tea?' Bao said.
'No, thank you. You wished to see me.'
Bao placed another card on the table. 'Yes. Sit. Are you sure you don't want some tea?'
He took a place on the floor mat and glanced at the table while his grandmother studied the cards in her hands. 'Doesn't this game need more than one person?'
'Nonsense. All you need is the ability to make it interesting enough.' She took another card from the stack on one corner of the table, then took the cup proffered by the girl, who had silently materialised by her side. 'Now—we have things to discuss.' She folded up the fan of cards and turned her gaze towards him. 'Namely, your education. It is the purpose of this journey, after all.'
'Yes, grandmother.' He braced himself for whatever bizarre exercise was sure to come next. Maybe this time he was supposed to herd a flock of wild sparrowkeets, or teach arithmetic to the inn's cat. He would have laughed if it weren't for his grandmother's gaze; it punctured any hilarity as effectively as a well-aimed arrow.
She took a sip of tea. 'Please describe the people here to me.'
He blinked. 'You mean, the three of us?'
'No, no, I mean our fellow guests. The ones you've seen. Any detail you may remember.'
Ah, so it was to be a memory test. He couldn't help but smile, then thought back to the front of the inn when they had arrived, the setting sun striking red and gold sparks off the glass panes. He had never been able to explain to Roku how he did it, no matter how much he tried, because he simply couldn't understand how other people remembered things. For him, a memory was a picture; you just needed to glance back at it to see the details. He counted the windows in the front of the inn and did a quick calculation. 'There are a lot of people here: the place is more than three quarters full. When we were dining there were—' He thought back to the dining room. '—about twenty people there. Twenty-six, if you count us.'
'Very well,' Bao said, distinctly unimpressed. 'Tell me about them.' She sounded like she was asking him to do something as simple as counting to ten.
'All of them?'
Another sip of tea. 'As many as you can remember.'
'Well, there were the three of us at one table. Lee and Shou and your maid—' He glanced at her but she had already retreated to one corner and was absorbed in her embroidery again. '—in the table behind us. Then a woman, alone. She looked…' He fumbled for an answer. He always had trouble figuring out adult ages other than "old" and "really old". 'About the same age as mother. Behind her there were two men, one fat, one thin. They talked all the way through dinner.' He thought back to his memory of the dining room, focusing upon it so hard he could almost feel the smell of the hot oil again. The words came quicker. 'On the next table there was a man and a woman and three children, I don't think any of them was older than ten. Then there was another man, but he left before we finished. There were four women in one corner. They laughed a lot. Then three men. They were playing dice and they kept drinking and talking to the serving women. Oh, and one of the kids started pestering them to join their game just before we left the room. And then an old man and a girl. She looked just like him, so I think he was her grandfather. Eighteen people,' he finished, and almost expected a round of applause. 'I was off by two. Would you like me to describe them more?'
'No, that is quite enough. You have a decent memory, grandson.'
He thought "decent" was rather faint praise, but he wasn't going to complain. 'Thank you.'
'Of course, that wasn't what I asked for.'
What? 'I don't understand—you asked me to describe the guests. That's what I did.'
'And if I asked you to describe a wall scroll, would you tell me about what kind of wood was used for the rods and where the ink in the swallow's wings came from? No. Aki, come here.' Bao set down her cup of tea as the maid tidied her embroidery away and stepped up to her mistress. 'Tell me who you saw in the dining room.'
The girl spoke in a voice as colourless as the rest of her. Sozin tried to guess her age, but there were no clues in her smooth oval face; he realised with a jolt that she might be much older than he was, even though he had thought of her as a young girl since he'd first seen her. 'There was a lady sitting behind my table. She was wearing plain cotton clothes but I could see embroidered silk hems underneath and the headpiece in her topknot was real gold. Her manners were impeccable. Lower rank nobility, I'd say. She wasn't very thorough changing her clothes, so she either doesn't do this very often or absolute discretion wasn't required. She paid attention to her dinner and didn't seem nervous, so I'd guess the latter. I saw a carriage other than our own when we were walking past the stables. Ours is unmarked, that one was rented. I couldn't make out the characters and the seal on the side, but I can go find out where the carriage was rented from.'
'That won't be necessary,' Bao said. 'Please go on.'
'Yes, Lady Bao,' the maid said, and continued to describe the dinner guests, each detail a life history, a revealed secret. Sozin listened with a mix of amazement and annoyance. She couldn't really know all that, could she? She must be making it up—but each new revelation came from a fact he too had noticed. He had just been unable to read it, like a koala-sheep staring at a page of calligraphy.
His grandmother continued her card game. Aki reached the last of the guests.
'Then the man and woman and the three children. They have spent a lot of time in the sun, they were fairly dusty but didn't seem tired and they ordered very efficiently; they are used to travelling. The man's hands moved like a magician's but there isn't a circus in town, I didn't notice any posters announcing a magic show and I didn't see any kind of cart with stage equipment. I'm guessing his sleight-of-hand is used for something else. Pick-pocketing, perhaps? Maybe the shell game? The woman is the brains of the group: she looked at everyone in the room to get their measure and she knew what the three men are; she waited until they were into their cups a bit before sending one of the children into their dice game; I expect the child is even now cleaning them out quite nicely.
'Speaking of the three men, they are someone's hired soldiers. They scanned the room when they walked in and picked a place where they could sit with their backs to a wall and see the whole of the room. They had leather padding under their clothes and the hands and posture of people used to handling weapons. I—' A moment's hesitation under the mask-like face. 'I am sorry, lady Bao, I do not know who they work for nor what they're doing here.'
Bao placed a Fire card on the table. 'No, that's my job. Is that everyone?'
'Yes, apart from us, that was everyone there, Lady Bao.'
'Thank you, Aki. You may sit.'
Before the maid could return to her seat, there was a knock on the door. Aki opened it. One of the serving women from before stood at the doorway, a tray in her hands. 'The sweets you ordered, Mrs Bao.'
'Oh yes. Please bring them in.' Bao turned to Sozin. 'Plum blossom jelly. Local speciality.'
The woman stepped into the room, the smell of caramelised sugar and ripe fruit wafting from the tray, but before she could set the tray down, the cat jumped past like a streak of grey lightning, swiped one of the sweets and upended the tray before padding out into the corridor with a triumphant meow. The woman kneeled to pick up the sweets while letting out a torrent of apologies. 'I'm sorry—I do beg your pardon. Stupid fleabag.'
'Never mind,' Bao said as she got up, and a second later the woman was out of the room, still muttering "a thousand pardons" as Aki closed the door behind her. 'We'll try them some other time, grandson,' Bao said as she tossed the ruined sweets on the little fire under the teapot. She made the fire a little bigger and it turned blue for a moment; his grandmother and his father were the only people Sozin knew who could make blue flames, the colour of summer lightning.
'Well, then,' she said, as she finished burning the sweets and let the fire go back to a thread of flame. The air in the room smelled smoky and sweet. 'Are you beginning to understand what is required of you, grandson?'
Sozin shifted uncomfortably on his heels. Some part of him could scarcely believe that that girl who seemed as plain as uncooked dough and who blended so thoroughly into the background had done what he'd just seen her do. Another part of him, the bigger part, the one pounding every nerve ending, was saying what it always did when he saw someone—someone who wasn't Roku, at least—do something better than him: let me try, I can do it better! Except he had already been given his chance, and he hadn't done better. The thought made his skin feel too tight. 'I'm not sure I see the point,' he said, a little sullen.
'Don't you?' Bao sat down on the cushions with a rustle of cloth. She sounded a little disappointed, but Sozin was sure he saw a glint of amusement in her eyes. He got a little more annoyed; he was sure she was mocking him. 'You were meant to become the next Fire Lord since the day you drew your first breath. As such, certain things are demanded from you. The foremost of these is knowledge.'
'I can't know everything about everyone,' he said, but he was wondering about the people in the dining room as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He was still chagrined that he had been unable to put all the details he'd noticed together. He wondered if the grandfather managed to reconcile with his granddaughter, if the three little swindlers were even now relieving the soldiers from their money.
'No. Not every single detail. But it is your duty to know everything that matters. You are going to be Fire Lord for them all: the inn-keepers, the hired soldiers, the noblewomen, even, yes, the con artists. They will be required to obey you and be loyal to you, and in return you must always think first of what it best for them. What is best for everyone.' She laid more cards on the table: Water, Air. 'Power always demands responsibility.' She placed an Earth card next to the other two. 'You will have allies, you will have enemies. You will have a great mass of citizenry, all with their own goals and desires. You have power so that you may serve them. And all real power comes from knowledge.' She paused and turned her eyes towards him. 'Do you find all this a little intimidating, grandson?'
'No,' he said hurriedly, and only then realised it was true. He couldn't remember a time when he hadn't been training to become the Fire Lord. It was with him when he fell asleep, and with him when he woke up—but something about his grandmother's words made it real like nothing else before had, not even sitting at his father's side during a council. It was like he was expected to run through some complicated labyrinth full of hidden spikes and fire-blasting traps, and it was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
'Good,' she said, sounding like she didn't entirely believe him. 'A ruler must be a ruler in every situation. You must be in control even if other people don't realise it. In fact, it is often best if they don't realise it. And how do you gain control?'
'Uh…' He tried to think of something. 'Knowledge?' He grinned—in his studies, a good grin and confidence were often half the right answer—but most of him knew that wasn't going to work with his grandmother. His mouth drooped back into seriousness.
'Quite so. And where does knowledge come from?'
He tried to think. The weight of his grandmother's gaze and the smell of burnt sugar made it hard to think. 'Books. Reports. Other people.' He hesitated. The gaze continued to bore into him. 'Observation. Er…'
'Everywhere,' Bao said, and she tossed a handful of cards onto the table. Wood thudded on wood. 'Look at the cards.' Sozin glanced at the jumble. 'Knowledge comes from everywhere. Some of it is incomplete, some of it is unreliable. But good knowledge can come from anywhere. One ignores a source of information at one's peril. There—you've had enough time.'
Sozin looked back up. Bao was holding a strip of fabric in her hands. Enough time for what? 'Put the blindfold on. Now—why don't we begin?'
They had breakfast at the inn before they moved on. Ta Min crumbled the edges of her hot bean roll into her plate, her eyes glazed and a little puffy.
'Would you like some papaya?' Sozin said, hoping she wasn't homesick only two days out.
'What? Oh, I'm sorry—It's nothing. I didn't sleep very well.' She covered her mouth to suppress a yawn. 'Some sick cat spent all night yowling just outside my window.'
+/+/+
To Be Continued...
Notes: All the stuff about the Fire Nation's history and culture in this chapter (Sozin's ancestors, the Five-Fold Flame, the various firebending forms, etc) is my own invention, but based on suitable RL cultural elements as filtered by what we know about the Fire Nation's geography, society, fire bending philosophy, etc (I'll also say that, although of course personal interpretations are always going to vary, I got the strong feeling from canon that the Earth Kingdom was the unquestioned dominant power in AtLA-land probably up until Sozin's day, with the Fire Nation being deeply influenced by their culture, language, political organisation (until Sozin changed that) and so forth, but with a lot of the earlier indigenous Fire Nation aspects mixed in, of course). As you can probably tell, I've put waaay too much thought into this ;) and there will be more of that in subsequent chapters. Speaking of Fire Nation culture, I just have to add that, with regards to Ta Min's embarrassment when Bao asks her to drop the formal address, I was raised in a culture of shame (in the anthropological sense, not the shuuuuun the unbeliever sense ;)) where public face and correctly navigating social hierarchies are a big deal… and I'm squirming with sympathy over the thought of someone you're supposed to be deferential to perversely asking you to drop the formal way of address. My boring life: unexpectedly useful for fic-writing! :D The tale about the traveller and the swamp is taken more or less verbatim from the tale told by Rube in the Dead Like Me episode Ghost Story, which is in turn based on a passage from Henry Thoreau's Walden. Butterfly swords are actually about the same length as daggers, but they're usually called butterfly swords in English to avoid confusion with butterfly knives. If you do an image search for butterfly swords you'll find a bunch of illustrative pictures. I have assumed that cow-hippos are a lot more like cows than hippos, since hippos are a rather terrifying and not very domesticable (is that even a word?) animal. They do look completely adorable, though. ;)
