Chapter 2
"Can you run?"
The old man looked at her with tired eyes. Deep bags sagged under a desperate, pleading stare. He had been coughing from the smoke, but the stranger managed to say those words and shove a handful of coins into her small, shaking hands.
Kuvira didn't the know the man's name, but she'd seen him countless times in the village. When she went to the market for fabric she passed him on his morning walks. Her father was the man's tailor- but her father was everyone's tailor- it made him no more memorable. He was a stranger.
But when she ran that night from her family's burning home, his was the only familiar face she'd found. Panicked, terrified, she spotted him coughing in his home and pounded on the door, desperate for somewhere, anywhere to hide. He had answered coughing, limping, in no state to go anywhere or do anything.
But he told her to run.
Kuvira glanced down at the coins he'd placed in her hands. Voices screamed and blades clashed in the distance. Most of the village homes were burning and the old man's had begun to catch fire. It was obvious he intended to die there.
"Hey!" he barked. "Did you hear me?"
The man let out a violent cough. "They're coming!"
Kuvira shook in fear as the screams grew louder. She couldn't think, couldn't move.
The man crouched to her height, eye to eye, and yelled so aggressively that beads of spit flecked onto her face.
"RUN!"
He gave her shoulder a harsh shove and she fell, stumbling down his porch steps into the dirt road. Without thinking, she'd made the ground cave for her, softening the fall. The blunt force had flipped a switch. She found her footing. Kuvira gathered her scattered coins and scrambled to her feet.
She ran.
Everything after was a blur.
Her small legs ached from the exertion, but she ran, weaving between buildings, dodging bloody clashes in the streets, running so long and so far that finally the village became a smoking heap in the distance, but she ran. Her legs carried her down a long trade route, passing small caravans in the night. She cut through wheat fields, through a stable and into a thick woods, running until the trees became so many and their cover so dense that she could no longer run by the light of the moon.
Her legs buckled. This time the ground did not cave for her.
When Kuvira woke, the sun hung high in the sky, piercing through the overgrowth in clusters of dappled light. Outside the forest it was blazingly warm, the kind of mid-summer day that could make a firebender wish the sun didn't shine. But here, under thick cover, speckles of light danced over Kuvira's face. The ground was cool, moist from a morning rain.
She lay there, watching a sparrowkeet fly from branch to branch. It was brilliant green, a male, judging from the plume of its feathers. The bird chirped and chirped, calling to some companion Kuvira couldn't see. She took a deep breath and turned her attention to the trees. They had grown so tightly their branches were almost interlaced, a gently rocking web of wood and leaves in the wind. They were nearing summer's end and every so often a single leaf would release its hold and tumble to the ground. Kuvira was sure she was covered in them. She didn't care.
For this moment, everything was ok.
A leaf landed on her face and she raised her arm to shove it away. Then it hit her:
A dull throb of pain that coursed down her arm and into her fingers. If moving her arm hurt that much she couldn't imagine standing. Slowly, limb by limb, Kuvira coaxed her body into a seated position. Cross-legged, still aching with pain, she closed her eyes to steady herself- and her thoughts.
Memories of the night before crawled into her brain and with them came the feelings. The anger. The hurt. She felt moisture well up in the corner of her eye and fought it. No.
Kuvira had promised herself not to cry again. She wasn't going to cry.
Even though life had aged her, Kuvira was still a child. Seven years of age. In happier, better places, a seven-year-old would be going to school, playing games, meeting friends. Instead, she was mostly self-taught. There was little time for games, working day in and day out for the family business. And friends? Kuvira knew what the word meant, but she had never experienced a friend.
Life in the her village had been short and hard. The people labored to live, so life was labor. Bandits lorded over the town as long as Kuvira could remember, demanding sizable portions of their food and resources, threatening violence.
Last night they'd made good on their threats. She always knew they would.
She just never imagined how it would end. Her home, burnt to the ground. Her parents, what they said before they were killed. What they did. She shuddered at the thought and forced it out of her mind. They would never. It wasn't real.
Kuvira closed her eyes. She could lay there listening to the birds forever, feeling the breeze on her face, pretending she was anyone else. And she might have- if it weren't for the sound of wheels splashing in mud.
She froze. Kuvira was no stranger to being quiet when she needed to be. When the bandits made their usual rounds, her parents had told her to hide- behind curtains, chairs, doors, whatever she could find. She'd become practiced at holding her breath, stilling her heart.
The wheels began to grind through the mud, struggling to turn. The sound faded. Was the thing, whatever it was, moving away from her? Stopping? Kuvira laid her hands flat on the dirt beside her, pressing to hear. When nothing came, she dug her fingers deeper into the ground. Kuvira never questioned why she did this, only that it worked- occasionally anyway.
The shape was square, large, and heavy- a blur in her mind- but she was guessing it was some sort of carriage.
Slowly Kuvira flipped onto her stomach and pressed into the ground, angling herself upwards. With one hand she gently pressed aside a few branches from the bush in front on her. Through their leaves she could see it was wooden- that she could tell, with large wheels deeply entrenched in the mud. Whoever they were, they weren't going anywhere soon.
"Spirits- I told you this was the wrong way!" A man's voice.
"It didn't have to be!" Another man, older than the first. Kuvira could hear him leaping down from the carriage. "If you didn't have to stop in Zhufan, we would have beaten the rain. None of this...garbage." A hand slammed the wood- most likely his.
"You know why…"
"Oh I know why! That girl of yours- total waste of time!"
"Hey, don't start with her. We'll be engaged soon, I swear-"
"Soon? Real soon. You've been saying that for how long?" He sighed. "We have to move before all this spoils."
Spoils. One word and suddenly Kuvira's gnawing hunger that had sat low and ignored was the loudest voice in her brain. Spoils. Spoils could mean food. Real food was worth the risk. While the men bickered, Kuvira slowly crawled through the brush, taking care to make her movements quiet and slight. But if she'd snapped a twig they wouldn't have heard. The men were going at it now, slinging insults left and right. Their conversation didn't interest her anymore. They were distracted- that was all that mattered.
Just as their shouting reached a crescendo- she could have sworn one of them threw something- Kuvira poked her head from the brush. Her senses had been right. It was carriage- a shipping one, more or less identical to the others she'd passed the night before. Kuvira had often seen them in her village, passing through to deliver produce or leather or other wares. Her home had been ill-suited for farming, so they'd depended on shipments for just about everything.
If this one was like the others...
Kuvira had helped a trader unload once or twice for spare coin. She knew exactly where to go, exactly how to bend the trailer's lock and sneak her way in. This would be simple, she told herself. Easy in and out.
Kuvira stole one last look at the traders- she couldn't see their faces, but they were arguing by the front of the carriage. As long as they kept their heads turned, she'd be out of sight.
She took a deep breath. Clenched her first.
And ran, coaxing the mud beneath her feet to the side and ensuring it wouldn't slow her. In seconds she was behind the carriage. Kuvira grabbed the end of the wagon and scrambled up on a small ledge by the back doors. Back flat against the wood, she moved her fingers in a slow circular motion- clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise- feeling the inner workings of the door's metal lock and nudging its pins into position. At first they resisted her and a small panic built in her chest as she begged the metal to cooperate. One more turn. Another.
Then it clicked. A small sigh of relief escaped Kuvira's lips and she grabbed the doors to pull it open. The faster she worked, the better. The men's tone had lowered now. Whatever was happening, their fight was coming to an end. Anytime they could come around to free their carriage. Kuvira thrust her hand on the right hand door and pulled.
CREEEEEAK.
No, no, no. A hideous noise wailed from rusty hinges. How hadn't she thought of the hinges?
"Did you hear that?" One of the men, the younger one, began walking to the back of the carriage. She could hear his footsteps in the mud.
"Hear what?"
"Spirits, you never hear anything."
Kuvira's heart was bursting through her chest now. She squeezed through the crack of the carriage, eased it shut- thankfully it didn't squeak in the opposite direction- and worked the lock as quickly as she could, struggling to feel the metal through the wooden door. The footsteps were louder now, seconds away. Thank spirits the mud had slowed them. Kuvira was quicker with the lock her second time around; she eased it closed and then half-darted, half-stumbled her way to the front of the carriage, grasping in the dark for somewhere to hide.
Metal! There was a box in the very back, a shipping container thicker and stronger than the others. Besides small locks and toying with utensils, Kuvira had scarcely bent metal, but this was her only option.
She heard hands begin to work with the lock outside. Voices.
Sloppily she wrenched open the lid of the box. It was filled with miscellaneous tools - no time to think about those. She tossed a few away to make room for herself and crawled in.
With another ear-splitting creak, the door opened. Her breath stilled.
"See? Nothing in here. You worry too much."
"You didn't even look!"
She heard a man- the second voice, she assumed, clamber into the storage compartment. Footsteps. And then-
Clunk, clunk, clunk. A hard knock on her container. The lid swung upon. A young man, early 20s at most, stared down at her with a look of total bewilderment. His hair was shoulder length, ink black and shaggy, skin tanner than she'd ever seen, eyes blue and piercing. Kuvira had never seen a man like him before. He was dressed in a fur-trimmed vest with ragged arm holes- the garment's sleeves had been carelessly cut.
They were both a mess- sweaty, tired, caked in dirt. Kuvira was huddled in a ball, arms wrapped tightly around her legs. She stared back at the man who stared back at her, dumbfounded and silent.
A voice came from outside the carriage. "Come on kid, what is it? Some frog squirrel or something? You've seen one before."
The man swallowed, shook his head as if to steady himself.
"Ah...not a frog squirrel." He looked away, presumably at his partner. Kuvira's mind raced, calculating a dozen different plans of escape but none of them made sense.
"It's a girl."
Kuvira scraped the bottom of her bowl, scooping up every last drop of stew her spoon could coax from the clay.
The men watched her from the opposite side of the table, eyeing the strange little girl as she devoured the last of her meal. The younger one- his name was Kallik, she'd learned- leaned in to whisper in his partner's ear.
"She's something else Alor, I tell you. A little low on the charm, but she tore that box open. On her own."
Alor rolled his eyes, clearly unimpressed. Alor was a larger man, tan-skinned like his partner, a bit heavy at the waist but still muscular from years of work. He wore a dirty tunic rolled up at the sleeves; a long-brimmed hat covered his head. On the entire journey he'd been- in a word- unpleasant.
"I can hear you." Kuvira dropped her spoon in the bowl with a ceremonial clank. She crossed her arms and learned back in her seat. Kallik and Alor sat up in attention. She had never spoken before.
The girl had been silent on their entire ride to Gansu. Kallik tried asking her where she'd come from, who her parents were, if she was lost and where she was going. Alor had tried harder- bribing and threatening- he wasn't a subtle man. But Kuvira was in no mood to share anything with the men and she had nothing to share.
Where she'd come from? Destroyed. Her parents? Dead. Was she lost? You can only be lost if you have a place to be. Where was she going? Nowhere.
No point in questions without answers. So she'd been silent- and Alor resolved to take her to the nearest city, set her up with someone who could help more than they could. Anyway, Gansu was on their trade route; the detour wouldn't cost them time or money.
Kallik had noticed things along the ride, things that told him Kuvira was different. Of course she wrenched a box open with her bending- that torn crate was an image he'd replayed in his mind more than a few times over the past few days. But there were little things about her that struck him as strange, things Alor missed because he was never paying attention.
At one pitstop, Kuvira had wandered to the side of the road and sculpted a small temple from the dirt. Just playing, Alor had called it, but it wasn't child's play. Her dirt sculpture had been detailed, beautiful, the kind of work only an experienced bender would be able to muster.
Yet she was still a child somehow. One night, as they crossed a particularly long stretch of pasture, he'd caught her starting into the sky, huddled in burlap sack she'd found for a blanket. There was something heavy in eyes- and on her mind. He hadn't dared to ask what.
Now he stared at her, slouched in her seat across the table, sitting with them in a crowded noodle shop that smelled of fish and body odor. The place hadn't been his first choice- but Alor was cheap and predictable, so here they were.
Somehow nothing distracted the girl, not the clamor of voices at the next table or a plate that crashed in the kitchen. Eyes narrow, her gaze never left them. Kallik was sure she hadn't appreciated his comment, but it was an honest one.
She was something else. Would they just drop her at an orphanage, leave her for anyone to find?
Something didn't feel right.
"Ah, apologies," Kallik said, wiping his mouth with a cloth as he pushed his own bowl away from him. "I guess it's a little rude to whisper in front of you, but you know, it's true. Are you sure you can't tell us where you're from?"
She continued to stare, unamused- or just uninterested. A thin strand of black hair lay flat against her face. Kallik raised a hand and waved in her direction, sending a gentle stream of water from his glass to hers.
He'd hoped the waterbending would catch her attention, as it had a few times along the way. Kuvira never spoke, but she always took interest in watching the men gather water and wash the caravan wheels with their forms.
Her eyes didn't shift an inch.
"Alright, come on kid," Alor said as he stood to leave. "This is the last stop- we're taking you to a new friend around the block."
"A friend?" Kallik cocked his head, critical of such a gross exaggeration.
Alor let out a conspiratorial cough, a heavy hint to his partner. "Yes. A friend. Let's go- we're leaving."
He began to walk to the door without them, but Kuvira didn't budge. She watched Alor recede into the distance, who never once looked back to see if they followed. Her eyes turned to Kallik, who still sat on a bench across from her. His face was easier to trust, but still she thought of running, darting between patrons, slipping past Alor and running barefoot into the night. She'd gotten food from the men- that's all she'd really wanted anyway. Now, in a larger city, she had a true opportunity to disappear.
As Kallik raised from his seat, Kuvira dug a hand into her pocket and felt for the coins the man had given her in the village. They'd feed her for a few days- a week at most. From there she could steal if she had to. Kuvira hadn't stolen often- it never sat well with her- but when hunger spoke louder than honor she'd swiped from bandits and merchants alike. She could do it again. She could run.
But where? Kuvira knew no one here, trusted no one.
As she calculated her options, Kuvira hadn't noticed Kallik walk to her side. He placed a hand on her shoulder.
"It'll be okay."
There are times when you're reassured that everything will be alright. It will all turn out in the end, if you just hold on, if you wait. But then there are times when you hear this- and you believe it- and not a shed of it is true.
That year was her longest year. Days stretched into weeks and weeks stretched into months and no day could be distinguished from the day before.
They would rise early in the morning and make their way to the mess hall, a gray, featureless room with weathered dining tables. The food was always a soup of some sort, a mix of whatever rations the province supplied. Silence was mandatory in the morning, a way to "focus on the day", the headmaster told them. But Kuvira didn't mind the silence. She had nothing to say.
The morning meal was followed by lessons. All the children gathered in a single room- all ages and languages and intellects- learning, or attempting to learn, whatever the headmaster deemed important. Then they were sent off to chores- cleaning more than anything else- and Kuvira was always assigned sweeping.
Just the thought of it made her angry. Of course the floors would accumulate dirt and crumbs every day - it was inevitable- and sweeping daily did nothing to stop the tide of dirt and crumbs the next morning. She'd dreaded the whole tedious ordeal: sweeping each room for messes, sweeping again when someone charged through with dirty feet, awaiting the headmaster's inspection, and finally, depositing her dustpan in the backyard.
It was meaningless.
But it was better than the evening meal. Here the children were allowed to speak, to socialize, to gather in clusters like children do. It was Kuvira's least favorite time of the day.
"What's that on your face?"
Kuvira sat by the window, as she always did. She stared outside instead at the boys in front of her.
"Is it a bug or something?"
"I think it's a mole." This was another boy, his voice higher, eager to impress.
"Girls aren't supposed to have moles."
"I don't like it."
None of this was new. Kuvira continued to stare at her modest view: a small yard with a shed shaded by a tree. A black bird was building a nest there. She'd watched it for days now, but the nest was almost complete, a careful, delicate construction.
"Hey do you hear me? I said I don't like it."
"He says he doesn't like it."
Kuvira balled her fists as she watched the bird fly to the ground and return with a twig. It nestled the wood into the nest and hopped back on the branch, as if to get a final look. Maybe this was the last piece.
One of the boys sighed. "She can't talk anyway, it doesn't matter."
"Kinda stupid if she didn't know how to talk. Nobody wants that."
Kuvira's broke her gaze to look down at her hands. They had began to ache; her knuckles were white now. She hadn't realized how tight she'd be gripping. What she'd been holding back.
Kuvira sensed the two boys next to her. They had stepped closer. Too close.
"She'll be here forever." The two laughed. "Forever and ever."
The world went black.
"So the reports are true?"
A woman's voice drifted down the hall. It was late into the night, but Kuvira had been fighting sleep as she always did. Laying flat on her back, the girl stretched and squished a small metal bead between her fingers. Tonight she would form a perfect sphere- or she hoped.
Bending was something she could do when she slept alone. Kuvira always slept alone now.
"The reports are true." It was the headmaster- his droll voice unmistakable. "I understand if this affects your decision; we completely understand if-"
"Across the room? Fifty feet?" This was the woman again, her manner refined, if a tad impatient.
"Ah- ah yes." The discomfort in his voice was palpable. "Fifty feet...maybe sixty or so."
Kuvira sat up. She still toyed with the bead, but their conversation began to interest her.
"Incredible. And you never taught her this? No one ever taught her this?" The two were closer now and they weren't alone. She heard more pairs of feet than voices.
"No ma'am, we never taught her such a thing. Just some language, some mathematics, nothing unusual." He coughed to clear his throat. "Water tribe merchants found her in a forest. Most likely abandoned, or some kind of runaway. A poor upbringing, obviously. If you'd like, there's plenty of other children who-"
"The boy? Did he survive?"
"Oh- ah, a broken rib- nothing more." The man took a deep breath. "It was strange, the way it happened. The cart pushed him against him against the wall, should have crushed him. Solid iron! The momentum, you know? But it just stopped. Had to be painful, but he's certainly alright now."
"Control…" Her voice trailed off.
The group took a few more steps. A door opened down the hall.
"Listen ma'am, I'm sure this isn't what you're looking for-"
"It is."
Footsteps faded into a nearby room and the door shut behind them.
Kuvira wouldn't be sleeping tonight.
She slipped off of her cot and made her way to the front of the room. Her bedroom door had a small window, but it was covered by curtains on the outside. Easy to see in, impossible for her to see out. The floors were wooden here- useless- but she could lay by the crack of the door and listen. As Kuvira began to kneel, a pair of feet walked in her direction, a light clack, clack.
The door down the hall hadn't opened. Then who-?
A soft knock. She snapped to her feet and watched a hand brush aside the outside curtains. In the little square window was a face she'd never seen.
"So you're the one, huh?"
His crooked smile was framed by a long face, thin but defined and crowned with an unkempt tossle of brown hair. In his expression of surprise, thin, circular glasses had slid down the bridge of his nose.
Kuvira didn't move, trying to size up the stranger.
"It's alright, spirits know I'm quiet too sometimes. " He pressed his frames up with a finger. "They're having a meeting about bringing you home with us. I hope they don't mind me saying hello. Of course, I also hope you don't mind."
Kuvira would have found his smile unnerving if it wasn't so earnest.
"She's very excited to meet you Kuvira."
