The Tourists Guide to the Realm of the Avatar
(The Voyage of Eduard)
Chapter 2
Eduard sobbed softly in his dark cell. The breeze through the window chilled him to the bone and he felt pain.
Azula had tortured him over three days and yet failed to break Eduard. She had questioned him about secret matters he knew nothing about and about plots that didn't exist. He couldn't even work out a lie to satisfy her and she grew more intent, angrier and more determined to place Eduard at the center of schemes and plots.
During her first interrogation, she lost her temper and scraped his left eye out with some sharp object as three guards held him up.
He felt the phantom pain of his eye and the open socket had dried out and a scab had formed inside the socket. When Azula had scraped out his eye, the swiftness of its departure softened the pain but a few days later, the pain had become unbearable. Eduard wondered if his brain had waited until he was alone to report all the pain and damage done to his eye. He found it odd that he could feel his eye and he felt like he had salt and grit rubbed into it but he could tell he had no left eye by the way the left side of his face had collapsed around the empty socket.
She had him placed in a cell and ordered the guards to let him have no visitors. She had made certain he had an eye-patch, good clothes and decent food but if he dared speak, the guards tending to his needs slugged him in the stomach shoved the butt end of a spear into his stomach.
Eduard lay in the dark and wondered if he had died and entered some kind of a hell although he had never taken religion seriously. The cell had a small window which gave him some light during the day but the black basalt of the prison soaked light like a sponge. He knew he would have been better off to find himself sent off to the Boiling Rock. The Fire Nation sent prisoners there to rot for the rest of their sad lives. He found himself in a prison near the capitol in a cell which meant Azula had more torments in store for him before his execution.
Exhaustion and shock took hold and Eduard fell fast asleep.
He woke up with a duller pain that verged on a migraine. He worried about the ever present threat of an infection in his eye socket and knew that it would prove fatal as it had such a short trip to his brain. The light blinded him for a moment and pain shot through his head.
"I understand that you may go blind," Azula spoke through a narrow slot in the door. "If you had only proved more loyal. The day after The Day of Black Sun will prove glorious as I will see my foes vanquished and I will rejoice in the death of my rivals"
Eduard sat up in his cell. The metal cells had a design meant to humiliate their prisoners. Eduard was one of the few who could stand in the metal cages. "I haven't gone blind," Eduard had nothing to lose in defiance and he spoke confidently. "Many have made plans to rejoice in the death of their enemies but the future doesn't always come out as planned."
Azula found Eduard's calmness in the face of torment an aggravating personality characteristic. She came into the room with two guards and stood up before the sitting Eduard. "You know you won't see the light of day until the time of your death." Azula snapped her fingers and a young woman in the dress of a servant came in with a tray of bandages and ointments. "I came to make sure you don't get an infection." She motioned the guards in face masks and full helms forward and they unlocked the small metal door on Eduard's cage and dragged him out and shackled him. "We can't have you looking rough – people will think I mistreat my prisoners."
"How kind of you," Eduard smiled sarcastically. "I don't suppose you have a replacement for my eye?"
Azula stifled the urge to injure this small man. The guards held him tightly.
The servant said nothing and looked as if she found nothing pleasing in her duties as she worked at cleaning out Eduard's eye socket. Eduard squirmed but the two guards held him still. He found the entire ordeal immensely painful as the young woman rinsed his eye socket with iodine and rubbing alcohol. He could hear the sound of scraping from inside his skull and this made him sick to his stomach. She finished and Eduard let out a soft sigh of relief.
"Please get our prisoner his new clothes." Azula ordered the servant. "I want you to dress well.. I plan to have you executed in public at noon and I want you to look every bit the fine Fire Nation public servant. People will take this as a lesson that displeasing me can have unspeakable consequences."
The servant returned, bowed and placed the clothes on the top of Eduard's cage along with a cup of tea and one day's dose of his heart medication. She stepped back and then left the room quickly.
Eduard said nothing for a few seconds. "I don't think I like this plan."
"I don't care if it meets with your approval." Azula snapped and fed him his medication and then lukewarm tea.
"We are such things as dreams are made on and each of our little lives are rounded by a sleep," Eduard said softly. "I have a dream – do you care to hear about it?"
"Tell me!"
Eduard summoned his courage although his arms ached from the strong grip of the guards and the weight of the shackles. He had a headache that pounded with his heart and he had no idea if he would even survive long enough to attend his execution. He had nothing to lose. "I hope you will one day wake up from your long nightmare. I hope you will wake up from your little dream before you destroy yourself."
Azula slapped him and left.
A neat package of clothes lay next to Eduard in his cell. The weeks had passed and the conversations with Azula had not become any more coherent; the routine of tea and medication hadn't changed either. The cell remained dark and he lost track of the date. Azula had made sure he remained neat and clean and he had a small bucket for his business that a guard changed everyday. He had no idea how long he had to live or how he would die. One day Azula didn't show up to speak with him. Only the little servant girl turned up to clean up his wounds and shave him and she seemed sadder than usual. He watched the light from the narrow slit of a window grow dim, turn blood red and then the room grew as dark and dim as night. The Day of Black Sun had arrived. Eduard wept from terror and from grief since he had lost all hope of seeing his home.
Eduard heard the sound of guards running urgently down the hall. He heard sounds that to him sounded like firm body checks against the walls of the prison.
A burly guard fell through his door headfirst jamming the steel door open with his helmet. The guard slumped on the floor unconscious. Eduard saw a rush of guards fly past him and then fly back striking the wall. An elderly man with unkempt white hair looked into his cell, picked up a guard, tossed him to one side and entered the room. Eduard looked up at him.
"Flee! You don't have much time!" The old man said as he smashed the chain holding the cage of his cell closed in one blow. The man saw that they had not shackled Eduard and he turned and left in a flash.
"Thank..." Eduard picked up his bundle of clothing as if that would help him and walked out of his cell.
He walked cautiously down the hall expecting an ambush and clutching his bundle of clothes. The prison formed a semi circle and so he couldn't see far down the dim hall and with one eye he had trouble seeing depth and kept worrying about bumbling into someone on his blind side.
"Ah!" Eduard screamed as he bumped into Zuko running up the dim hallway.
"Have you seen my uncle!" Zuko asked urgently as he grabbed Eduard's shirt and shook him. "He wasn't in his cell!"
"Uh," Eduard reeled, "Old, short stocky man? He freed me after he tore up this place. I have no idea where he went!"
"Did he say anything!"
"No!" Eduard knew eclipses didn't last long and felt a sense of rising panic. "Zuko! We must leave now! Your sister plans to have both of us executed tomorrow. She has gone quite mad. She ripped out my left eye and she wants to rid herself of the burdens in her life."
"I have a place to go!" The sight of Eduard's scarred left eye removed all doubt in Zuko's mind. Zuko dragged Eduard by his shirt. "Follow me!"
Eduard ran along with Zuko through the deserted and dark streets of the Fire Nation capitol and struggled with his package. Zuko kept having to grab him to keep him from blundering into things. They followed a narrow path that led out of the city, along the outer rim of the crater that rimmed the city and into a cave.
"If I asked you where were going, what would you say?" Eduard gasped.
Zuko looked back at Eduard, "I know where they store the war balloons so we can steal one and make our escape."
"Escape to where?"
They emerged above a large cut made in the outer wall of the crater. Eduard could see a large field and three large buildings like warehouses that didn't appear to be guarded.
"I plan to follow my destiny and teach the Avatar fire bending so I can defeat my father and restore peace and balance to the world!" Zuko led Eduard down a narrow set of steps to a gravel path behind one of the warehouses. No guards were present but Zuko kept a wary eye out for them. "I had planned to go alone but I could use your help and I can't leave you to face my sister." He peered around the edge of the stucco wall of the warehouse. "See those red balloons? Help me steal one of them and we can fly away from here."
Eduard saw three hot air balloons with wicker baskets with a large Fire Nation symbol on their sides. He had wished for a stealthier means of escape and one that looked less frail.
Zuko led and Eduard followed him along the side of the warehouse ducking under windows and yet moving quickly toward a fully inflated red balloon with the Fire Nation emblem on it. The first searing rays of bright sun began to poke out from behind the moon. The eclipse had ended and fire benders had their skills back. Zuko motioned Eduard forward and they rushed for the balloon. Two men in the balloon looked like they had seen an unidentified flying object as Zuko jumped in the basket. Eduard saw one man fly out and land with his helmet taking a crazy bounce along the ground. Eduard struggled into the basket and found the second man trying to line up a shot at Zuko. Eduard jumped up and aimed his hip at the man's should and sent him flying off out of the basket. He had rotten depth perception and found himself almost toppling out of the basket and felt his shoulder twist as he slammed the guard over the side. Zuko cut the ropes that tied the balloon down to large steel stakes and they began to rise and move forward. Fire bolts flew past Zuko who deflected them with his skill. As they rose in the air, the bolts became less accurate and then missed wildly. Soon the balloon had risen out of sigh in the sky and become a speck too small to fire at.
"Can you fire bend?" Zuko asked Eduard.
Azula had taught Eduard some skills and Eduard had the talent but knew little of the fine art of combat. "Sort of."
"Keep the fire going while I steer!" Zuko commanded.
Eduard opened the door to the fire box, squatted down on the wooden floor of the basket and began pumping flames into it. The balloon had a small engine driven by the heat that inflated the envelope and as Eduard fed it flames, the balloon moved forward at about twenty knots and began to rise rapidly in the air as Eduard felt his ears pop.
Zuko seemed to know where he wanted to go and Eduard said nothing for many minutes.
"Why did my uncle free you?" Zuko asked after some minutes of uncomfortable quietness.
Eduard shook his head. "He busted down a door with a guard and freed me. I have no idea why."
"Do you have an eye patch?" Zuko asked nervously, "you're eye looks awful."
"Azula may have many skills, surgery doesn't number among them." Eduard said distantly. "She used some kind of throwing knife to gouge out my eyeball; at least I thought it was a throwing knife. I didn't have a chance to see it for long." Eduard took a break from his fire bending and looked through his clothing bundle on the off chance Azula had included an eye patch tp hide her nasty work for those viewing the executions. He found she had left him with five changes of clothing and five eye patches. He imagined she had some very odd issues in her life that would require a very skilled therapist to work out. He laced the patch over his left eye and could only imagine how stupid he looked. "My eye itches. How long until I find you vastly more irritating than my missing left eye?"
Eduard hummed and whistled. Zuko found his endless strings of melodies that followed a strange logic a very annoying trait. As the balloon crossed the Fire Nation coast and left out to sea; Zuko wondered if fate or bad luck had led him to travel with Eduard.
"Why did Azula have you jailed?" Zuko asked in order to stop the stream of endless whistling.
Eduard sat against the wall of the balloon basket and gave some thought to the question. "She thought I would side with you and she believed you would betray the Fire Nation," Eduard pointed at Zuko as he spoke. "An amazingly accurate guess on her part given that you are betraying the Fire Nation and I have come along. Do you think telepathy might be a family trait?"
"Our nation has become corrupt and lost its way," Zuko said sadly as he took a rest and sat next to Eduard. "I have to do my part to help the Avatar defeat my father."
"She planned to have you executed tomorrow as a traitor."
Zuko pondered this. "I should be surprised but I'm not. Azula almost killed the Avatar and almost killed me on many occasions. She won't stop until she has absolute power and she lives for war. She will stand by my father and destroy the world pursuing total power."
"Sibling rivalry," Eduard laughed for a moment then realized it was rude. "Didn't you have a role to play in defeating the Avatar and having your uncle arrested or did Azula lie to me?"
"I took her side in Ba Sing Se when we battled the Avatar." Zuko looked off into the sky of fluffy clouds, "I hesitated because I wanted my honor back and I have regretted my decision every moment since. My uncle won't talk to me and I don't know what to say."
Eduard had nothing to say at first: he didn't understand what honor meant to Zuko. Eduard had come to regard honor as not cheating on taxes, paying bills on time and all those things that made you a trustworthy person to deal with in financial transactions. Eduard knew Zuko meant something much deeper. "Our lives are taking a dead cat bounce." Eduard said grimly as he made a pathetic attempt to change the topic. "I have no reason to be optimistic about this new direction in your life."
"Dead cat bounce?"
"What do we do if the Avatar refuses your help? We can't expect a warm reception in the Fire Nation."
"You can fire bend." Zuko looked to Eduard.
Eduard tried to scratch his eye but the eye patch stopped him. "I have some skill but with one eye I keep having problems with depth perception. You haven't got your All Star hero here. Azula taught me some fire bending but she gave away none of her secrets."
"What did you do before you came to the Fire Nation?"
"I was a college student training to become a computer technician and I made a modest amount of money as a hockey referee." Eduard said slowly as he yawned. "Does the Avatar have any interest in hockey?"
"What's hockey?" Zuko said with an expression of confusion in his voice.
"I'm in hell."
"Hell's bells!" Eduard exclaimed at the top of his lungs as a frog the size of a breadbox landed at his feet. He had taken a walk through the thick forest because Zuko had become cranky and wanted to be left alone.
"I wonder if I should have tied him to a tree?" Zuko murmured to himself as he set up camp and heard his cry of distress. He had spent more time with Eduard than justice systems would have permitted and decided to let the irritating little man wander around the area and stumble into trees hoping he could have some quiet from the non stop stream of unending whistling.
"Do we have a toxic waste dump near by?" Eduard shouted, "or is my depth perception so messed up that I have mistaken a frog for a raccoon?"
"Badger frogs!" Zuko yelled through the trees. "The Island of the Western Air Temple has a lot of them."
"You see," Eduard yelled back, "until today I haven't seen anything wilder than the Metro and my idea of wilderness is the row of trees on the side of a road. Our country had the good sense to kill off the dangerous wildlife hundreds of years before I came on the scene." Eduard bumped into another tree. "Those frogs aren't dangerous?"
"No!" Zuko snapped. "You can fire bend so you can defend yourself!"
Eduard watched the frog leap off into the woods as he walked close to them. They acted cautious but not afraid of humans. "I think killing a frog sounds a little unsportsmanlike. Eduard then changed topic abruptly as he pushed a bush with white berries to one side. "In my homeland, we like our wilderness tame and our wildlife in zoos. We like our medicine socialized and our taxes high. We once had an Earth shattering war and yet our countries came together to impede each others progress. We call this the European Union or Peace through Mediocrity." Eduard began heading back toward Zuko knowing Zuko would still be cranky. "We never knew about bending but we had television and if I wanted a snack in the middle of the night after watching television then I could go down to a convenience store and buy snacks."
"I have bigger problems than snacks, Eduard," Zuko said as Eduard sat down on a large stone.
Eduard swatted a mosquito that had landed in his arm. "Bigger than living in a squatters camp in the middle of freaking no where with nothing but a tent over our heads and something you found in the balloon called Fire Nation Marine Rations and a sack of Fire Flakes?" Eduard shook his head. "How do you even know the Avatar will show up?"
Zuko paced the little camp. "He left on his flying bison on a heading that took him to the Western Air Temple. He's going to show up – I just know it."
"We don't have a set of dog tags," murmured Eduard, "so they won't be able to identify our remains when they find us. In six weeks before we reach the stage where we're drinking each others urine and discovered that bush with the red berries was toxic, you'll give up?"
"It's late Eduard," Zuko decided not to argue as he had long concluded Eduard enjoyed complaining and he had suffered in prison. Zuko decided to lett the little man vent. "The Avatar will arrive tomorrow so let's get some rest."
"We have three of those badger frogs in our tent."
"One, two, three..." Eduard stood at the edge of a vast, deep canyon and counted. He had decided to check the depth of the canyon as he had no depth perception and first thing in the morning, his sense of curiosity got the better of him.
"What are you doing?" Zuko looked at Eduard with a puzzled look as Eduard held up his hand.
Clank!
Eduard lowered his hand. "Assuming that the acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared; I absolutely refuse to climb down with you on a rope to investigate the Western Air Temple given that I would do a header into a vast canyon deeper than the Eiffel Tower is tall."
"I want to check out this place." Zuko said in a determined voice. "My uncle and I came here just after my dad banished me."
"In my world, we had a tribe of people living in what is now America," Eduard began professorially, "and they lived in the cliffs of canyons. They built a great civilization and then vanished utterly from the face of the planet."
"Why did they vanish?"
"Lived in the cliffs of canyons?" Eduard ventured. "They were an ancient and wise race known as the - well I forget. They built great cities but didn't have knowledge of the railing. One little misstep and you wound up being an obituary."
"The Air Nomads had four temples – the Northern Air Temple, the Southern Air Temple, the Eastern Air Temple and the Western Air Temple." Zuko looked over the cliff edge. "They built them in places where only the Air Nomads could reach them easily."
"I've got wonky depth perception," Eduard said as he watched Zuko tie a rope around a sturdy tree.
"Whatever," Zuko said as he fed out the rope. "Keep an eye on things. I'll be back."
Zuko grabbed the rope and began repelling down the cliff face. Eduard watched him vanish below the lip of the canyon and began pacing. A few minutes passed as Eduard cursed his life, his misfortune and began wondering if that dull squishy thump was Zuko when he saw a speck flying on a level line heading toward him. He squinted and tiled his head to try and bring the speck into focus. He saw a six legged creature flying toward him. Eduard decided to hide among the trees in case what he saw was not the product of his weary imagination and was actually someone or something hostile. He crouched behind the large tree Zuko had tied to rope onto and waited. The huge creature slid past. Eduard gaped as he watched a furry something the size of a house and the mass of a whale defy gravity as if the laws of physics were unenforced bylaws. The creature had a group of people sitting in a large wooden basket not unlike that of the war balloon Zuko had stolen but strapped on top of the ten ton monster. Eduard had the kind of mind that expected a flying object the size of a house to make loud roaring noises but this thing slid silently through the air. The glided softly below the rim of the canyon leaving Eduard to scratch his head when he badly wanted to scratch his eye.
"Eduard!"
Eduard jumped back. "Zuko – what the hell was that!"
"A sky bison," Zuko said as if Eduard had seen nothing as exceptional as a groundhog, "the Avatar's companion."
"Thanks for clearing that up." Eduard looked down at Zuko. "Should I pull you up now?"
"The Air Temple has a number of a secret back passages that leads into into the temple far from here. " Zuko pointed behind him into the forest. "You see that large tree with the wide base that has the wooden buttresses?"
Eduard nodded.
"One of the passageways is underneath it. You'll find a stone tunnel with steps that will lead you to a place called the Hall of Echoes."
"Why did you take a rope down?" Eduard wanted to say 'moron' but that seemed uncalled for. "Given that the place has a perfectly serviceable fire escape why didn't you use it? Are you one of those adrenaline junkies that enjoys taking a risk for the shear thrill of facing death? When we go to greet the Avatar and he tries to kill us, do I have your promise that we will use the serviceable fire escape and not the rope? I have no desire to become a dead and forgotten pile of bleached bones on this godforsaken heap of granite in the middle of nowhere."
"What would you say Eduard?" Zuko sat on a log outside of their red tent that evening and tormented himself with doubt.
"We have far more frogs this evening. Have you been feeding them?" Eduard had a stick and tried to herd a badger frog in a square.
"To the Avatar!"
"Not that," Eduard tapped the bloated green and black body of the huge yellow eyed frog. "I suggest more care and diplomacy..."
Zuko walked around and held a kind of town hall while Eduard followed the badger frog into the forest for a moment to investigate whether these things had a nest. Eduard came back with the stick over his shoulder and found Zuko muttering to himself.
"Iroh talks like that?" Eduard poked at another badger frog to goad it into moving. "Does he walk into the living room and ask you why he came into the room?" For some reason the frog fell asleep rather than moving when Eduard tapped it. "That won't help you because most of the things you see inside yourself are of little or no use in a moral dilemma unless the spleen has some role in ethics."
"I mean it!" Zuko protested. "I have to talk to these people."
"In the event everything else fails, you could try the truth." Eduard said as he looked at the badger frog now sleeping where he wanted to sleep. "Hello – Zuko here." Eduard gestured as if playing Zuko. "I have tried to repent and I came to help the Avatar learn fire bending. I know I have done wrong but I have turned over a new page in my sad life."
"How do I explain you?"
"You don't," Eduard shrugged, "I will explain me. I will say that I came to – you know I have absolutely no reason for being here. You have great fire bending power, the Avatar according to Azula has a circle of friends he has met that have great talents. I have one eye and can put badger frogs to sleep." Eduard could see Zuko looking somewhat annoyed. "We're screwed."
"You don't like out chances of convincing the Avatar to accept us?" Zuko asked earnestly.
Eduard threw up his hands. "I admit to being excess baggage on this trip."
Zuko shook his head, "uh – huh, you're less than helpful Eduard."
"We can return to the Fire Nation and try to appeal to Azula's kind side," Eduard replied. "Sorry sis'; all been a glorious cockup. We had a little too much beer and things kind of got out of control. Let's get back to work on ruining the planet and killing people."
"I have decided to go alone!" Zuko announced as Eduard emerged from the tent fully dressed in his Fire Nation finest. "You speak your mind and might say something unfortunate."
"What's wrong with that?" Eduard brushed off his vest. "Given my circumstances, everything I say is unfortunate."
"They don't know you and so I want to go alone." Zuko straightened up his clothes. He had taken until late in the afternoon to work up his courage to go and see the Avatar and his friends and decided he could live without Eduard saying something to make his diplomatic efforts more difficult.
"What if they take you captive?" Eduard followed along with Zuko. "I can't fly the balloon and we're almost out of rations. We have a sack of Fire Flakes but I'm willing to drink my urine before going that far. In a few weeks the malaria tablets run out and this island seems to lack a pharmacy."
"I will make sure they know about you if worst comes to worst," Zuko promised, "so go back to the camp and wait."
Eduard wished Zuko 'good luck' and went back to pacing about the small camp staying hidden and studying the badger frogs. Eduard pondered how Zuko might fare since he knew something of the tense history between Prince Zuko and the Avatar. Eduard sat down and pulled out a sack of rancid Fire Flakes and waited for Zuko to return. Eduard decided he hated this place – the heat beat down on him but he got no sun - the forest seemed to defy the daylight and the dense tree canopy held in the humidity and gloom.
Eduard sat on a log outside of the tent and a half hour later he heard Zuko tromping back through the forest and grumbling to himself. He came from behind at tree and looked at Eduard.
"They refused to let me join the group!" Zuko scowled.
Eduard stood up and noticed that Zuko was drenched. "Ew! You're all wet. What happened?"
"Katara drove me away with a water bending attack." Zuko said softly.
"Did you tell them about me?" Eduard asked selfishly. "I'm eating these Fire Flakes which means I'm probably going to snap. I've spent two nights in a sleeping bag sleeping next to you and if this goes on I'm going to beat you to death with a rock in the middle of the night!"
"What did I do?"
Eduard put his hands on his hips then pointed at Zuko with his right hand. "You mumble in your sleep. Last night you mumbled something about Mai's sweet lips and made kissing noises."
"Oh," Zuko said apologetically. "I miss her so much and left her with a broken heart."
"I sleep less than a meter from you!" Eduard went on, "Lip wise, can I trust you won't confuse mine with hers?"
"You're hardly an easy person to get along with!" Zuko said in a huff, "I've heard you whistling for the better part of three days!"
"I think we need some time apart from each other," Eduard said as he walked away. "If you want me, I'll be hucking things off the edge of the cliff."
"Why?" Zuko asked.
Eduard waved as he walked toward the edge of the canyon, "I need to know physics still works. I saw that sky thing fly past a while back and if the physics gods have gone on strike or taken a day at the beach; we could find the Sun blowing up or worse."
Eduard knew the Avatar world had the same physical dimensions as Earth as the Moon had exactly the same behavior and so he knew how to calculate the distance falling objects fell. The Fire Nation divided time into the same hours, minutes and seconds but Eduard had no watch and had not the vaguest idea whether the figure he had for the depth of the canyon was at least in the ball park. After tossing the umteenth stone off the side of the canyon; his figures converged on 480 meters as the depth of the canyon.
Eduard grew bored and began to wander at the side of the canyon but he didn't feel bored enough to go back to Zuko. As evening crept in, Eduard wondered whether he had arrived in a place where the mass of bugs exceeded the mass of air. Small insects seemed to swarm in the air, frogs the size of toasters swarmed the ground and he still didn't venture a look over the edge for fear of losing his balance and toppling over.
A scuffle in the bushes caught his attention as he paced the side of the canyon.
Eduard found Zuko sulking as he sat on the ground.
"I smell something like burned fur!" Eduard said in a less than comforting tone of voice.
"The Avatar's friend the Earth bending girl tried to talk to me!"
"So you set her on fire?" Eduard looked around at the haze of smoke settling in around the camp. "A direct approach if ever there was one."
"No!" Zuko yelled. "I reacted in surprise because she sneaked up on me."
Eduard thought for a moment. "So we're on an island where you thought we'd be safe and could meet up with the Avatar and the white hats?" When you get a chance to meet one of the good guys you set them on fire? We're screwed."
Zuko held his chest, "she fired a rock into my stomach." He held back his feelings of pain.
"Can I say something?"
"Zuko pulled himself up to stand. "What?"
"We're screwed!" Edaurd said emphatically, "and I mean that in the making my will and checking it twice because I will die on this rock way."
"I hired an assassin to kill the Avatar." Zuko added solemnly. "I don't know where he is right now - maybe he cant find us. When I came back from Ba Sing Se I worried that my father would find the Avatar alive and do something unspeakable to me. I thought this guy could do away with the Avatar and no one would be the wiser."
Eduard swore for a few minutes. "We have to communicate!"
"I deserve that!" Zuko said sadly. "You got dragged into all of this. I'm sorry."
Eduard began to collect sticks to set a fire in the small camp. "You chase the mightiest being in all this world down with a hired gun? He won't take that as a sign of friendship." Eduard sat down next to fire and in the cloud of bugs it attracted. "We are screwed."
"I know." Zuko almost seemed to cry.
"If you want sympathy, you won't get it!" Eduard said severely. "Let me get this straight. You nearly killed the Avatar but when you failed; you hired someone to kill him to protect your reputation. You changed your mind and decided to help the Avatar but you didn't tell the killer under your employ about this crucial change? You met with the Avatar and friends and today and they told you to sod off and die. They send someone from their group as a diplomatic envoy – an olive branch – but you get strumpy and set her on fire? Now we have pissed off the Avatar, his friends and you still have some killer out to bump him off." Eduard paced angrily but then his tone changed and grew more sullen. "Do we have a chisel?"
"No?" Zuko sounded confused.
"Drat!" Eduard threw up his arms in frustration. "I wanted to get working on my headstone."
Zuko was stubborn; Eduard had to give him that.
Eduard decided to pace the campsite after Zuko had decided to try his luck again. Eduard had listened as Zuko rehearsed his speech and try to explain about his destiny and gave it a minimal passing grade: Zuko lacked the eloquence required to suck up to those he had tried to kill. Eduard dressed and washed up to prepare for the coming day – Eduard believed he could not face the day without a cup or two of tea, fresh clothes and a clean face. He sat down to enjoy a cup of tea and a bowl of Fire Flakes when a loud series of dull booms shook the forest. Birds flew off in a panicked manner that Eduard took as a bad sign. Eduard ran to the edge of the cliff and saw clouds of stone dust and smoke billowing out of the vast canyon that hid the Western Air Temple. Eduard ran back for the secret tunnel that lead down to the depths of the temple but never made it.
"Where in God's Name did that hole come from!" Eduard found himself careening down a hole cut through the ground – he swore he had never seen it before but a few weeks under Azula's care had left him a little unsure of his mental faculties. He felt great relief when he felt the tunnel level out and saw daylight at the end of it. He fell feet first and tried to grip the sides of the wall with his feet to slow down. He slowed down, felt a series of loud concussions and rocks shaken loose from the side of the tunnel struck him on the head. He fell out of the hole and slid head first into a pile of rubble at the bottom with ringing ears and the smell of pulverized limestone in his nostrils. Small pieces of sharp stone make a clattering sound against the walls and Eduard covered his head. Eduard looked up as his eyes watered from the acrid smoke and stone dust that hung in the air.
"What did that moron Zuko do!" Eduard exclaimed.
Sokka drew his sword and pointed it at Eduard's chest. Eduard stood up and raised his hands.
"Crap!" Eduard exclaimed.
"Zuko send another assassin after us!" Sokka exclaimed.
Eduard shook his head in disbelief. "What makes me look like an assassin? I remember taking that class where they taught us stealthy assassins to fall down holes and use as many rude words as possible! May I ask who dug that freaking hole!"
"Combustion man blew up," Sokka poked with his sword in a gesture that told Eduard to stand up.
Eduard's ears rang like a gong, he felt dizzy and he had no idea what had taken place. "What just blew up?" Eduard tried to steady his vision because even though he had one eye; it seemed out of focus. "You'll have to forgive me because I have no clue what just happened." He looked to Sokka and then the remarkably scary water bending girl and then to the three ton rocks that had fallen around the strange balcony. He had fallen down a tunnel into the midst of a group of people who wanted to kill him and so his body decided the best course of action given the threat level was to faint like a stone. Eduard's vision dimmed as he thought about having not carved his name into a rock. Sokka watched the strange blond haired man in fine Fire Nation clothes crumple like he had taken a blow to the jaw.
Eduard woke up in a small room carved out of the living rock. It let in daylight through three windows shaped in arabesque arches. They had no glass and green ivy grew into the room through them, spiders tracked across the ceiling and Eduard wondered how much he would have to pay each night or if such squalid conditions came at a monthly rate. He wondered to himself as he looked at the blue blankets how long anything stayed clean in such a place. The water tribe girl in the blue robes tended to him and walked up to him as he regained consciousness.
"Did Zuko survive?" Eduard asked as he lay back.
The girl gritted her teeth, "yes...he did. Aang has decided to let him join the group but we have no idea what to do about you. Zuko told us you once worked for Princess Azula."
Eduard looked around the room and then to the girl as she seated him up on his bed. "She took out my left eye as a retirement present. She thought I had planned with her brother to betray her and decided to have me executed."
"I know – Zuko explained this. You have a bad infection in your left eye." The girl in the blue robes said as she peeled back Eduard's eye patch. "The back of the socket is really bleeding badly."
Azula scraped my eye out with some kind of knife," Eduard said sadly as he sat on the bed and let the young woman tend to his eye. "I only saw it for a moment." He made a scraping gesture with his hand. "Then I felt a good deal of pain."
"I have to tell you that I would rather not have Zuko join our group," the girl in the blue robes said as she tried to examine the empty eye socket. "He sent an assassin to kill Aang. You two turn up and he offers to help us – I don't trust either of you but you look too pathetic to do much harm." The girl paused, "My name is Katara of the Water Tribe."
"Eduard of the half blind tribe." Eduard said as a matter of introduction. He felt a surge of energy as Katara worked on his missing eye; an electric, almost joyful power flowed through his head and the pain he had grown so used to eased up. "Thank you." Eduard felt no pain in his missing eye for the first time in weeks. "You haven't an all star fire bender in me: Azula never trusted me and so only taught me a few basics. I haven't yet figured out whether my life has taken a turn for the better considering I saw a guy blow up this morning. Perhaps my life took a dead cat bounce."
"Hey!" Sokka sauntered into Eduard's room and patted him on the back, "sorry for trying to stab you but we're not used to evil fire bending types who have turned good and we didn't expect Prince Zuko to become a good guy."
Eduard held up his hand to scratch his missing eye and Katara gently pushed his hand away. "Sokka? Can this wait?" She asked.
"Azula took my girlfriend Suki prisoner," Sokka opened up. "I saw what she did to you and I worry about Suki. Can you tell me anything - anything at all?"
Eduard could hear Katara cleaning his empty eye socket and then lower his eye patch over his mangled eye socket and he struggled like a young child in a dental chair to keep from squirming. "I can't tell you anything." Eduard apologized. "Azula never told me anything about anyone named Suki." He shook his head sadly. "I will hope for the best."
Sokka squeezed Eduard's arm as Katara tended to his eye. "I miss her."
"As I sat rotting in my cell," Eduard said quietly as Katara tried to keep his head steady, "I cried because I didn't think anyone missed me and that was worse than the pain of imprisonment so please hope to be with her again." Katara pulled his eye patch back in place. She had thought often of her hate of Fire Nation soldiers and she disliked Zuko but the gentle and insightful Eduard gave her no real reason for resentment. She found some kind of gentle kindness in his face and he had suffered unspeakable torment at the hands of Princess Azula but wore no resentment. "Who was this Suki?"
"I met her on Kyoshi Island. She belongs to the Order of the Kyoshi Warriors." Sokka answered.
"I had heard of them. Azula had them tossed in prison to rot," Eduard said thoughtfully, "but I have no idea where. I was in a prison near the Fire Nation capitol where Uncle Iroh was held but they kept me in solitary confinement. Sorry Sokka." Eduard tilted his head like a parrot as he looked at Sokka. "I admit to being out of the loop."
The next day, Eduard liked his room but wished he could find a paper to read. He had rested and despite the news someone evil had exploded like a land mine, he felt in a good mood and decided to retrieve his things from the camp. The airy room felt nice, cool and the delicate spirals and light pastel shades of color on the walls told him these Air Nomads had a fine sense of humor. He felt in no hurry but sat up on his bed and sat for a few moments.
Toph came into the room and sat on his bed. "I'm the Blind Bandit – Toph Bei Fong!"
"Eduard," Eduard looked at the odd stocky girl. "What can I do for you?"
"Katara told me Azula plucked your eye out with a knife." She slugged his arm gently. "She says it itches. How can it itch if it isn't there?"
"My brain has always had my left eye hooked up and seeing things. In the normal course of events, the left eye doesn't go missing. I think my brain still thinks the eye should be there and it keeps trying to talk to it. Amputees often feel the same kind of thing in the limb that has gone missing." Eduard explained patiently. "I wish I had been unconscious at the time Azula took it out." Eduard raised his arms in resignation, "but there you go."
"The eye patch doesn't suit you," Toph said as she propped her arms on the bed, "Katara says you have lovely green eyes and that's such a loss. Jade green, she says."
Eduard stood up and stretched. "I need to go and retrieve our things. How do you get to the surface from here?"
"They have a series of tunnels behind the temples they used to get to the surface," Toph gently pushed Eduard in front of her. "The closest one takes you to the surface through an entrance in the ear of a huge statue of an air nomad."
Toph led Eduard down the dark hall and up to a central room that had a large fountain fed by gravity. Eduard had to admit the precarious statues and fine stone architecture had a certain playful style and with only one eye working, Eduard found the entire place vertigo inducing. He followed Toph up a narrow staircase carved out of the living white marble. Eduard hoped the rails had enough strength to keep him from toppling over from the vertigo inducing heights. The statue it led to had a head the size of a sky bison or modest house.
"Woah..." Eduard looked at the statue of a young monk. The artisans had given him an identity and to Eduard, looked like a bald Wayne Gretzky. "They did call him the Great One."
"Who?" Toph stopped and waited while Eduard admired the statue.
Eduard looked up and let his eyes follow the profile of the statue. "I could swear this monk looks like Wayne Gretzky. Who knew?"
"Who?"
"Master hockey player of great renown in our land."
Toph smiled and nodded and understood nothing but crawled into the two meter cavern that formed the ear canal of the statue.
A steep spiral stair case led up from what Eduard imagined was the cochlea. He held out his hand so he could find his way. In spite of the darkness, a cool breeze wafted through the narrow staircase.
"I'm glad I didn't have to help these people move in," Eduard walked carefully up the stairs and discovered he couldn't spread out his arms and that the stairs differed in size in such a way to make Eduard stumbled. "Can you imagine trying to get a wardrobe down these stairs?"
Toph pushed cobwebs out of the way. "They used the sky bison for that."
"Do you need any help?" Eduard could tell the burns on her feet caused her some pain.
Toph stepped onto a carved landing. "It's okay. Katara did some quick healing on my feet. I'll be okay and besides that, I wanted to talk to you."
"About what?"
Toph shoved on a wall and it opened into the bright sunshine. Eduard squinted at first as his eyes took time to adjust to the sunlight and he extinguished the flame in his hand. Eduard could see the red tent in the distance through the forest.
"I wanted to see Zuko and try to talk to him but he attacked me," Toph followed Eduard back tot he camp.
Eduard nodded, "I know – sorry about that." Eduard opened the red tent.
"How are you coping?"
"Coping with what?" Eduard picked up a bag and stuffed clothes into it. "I have to cope – I have no other choice. When this is all over, I'll wake up screaming and I'll need years of counseling. Right now, I hope to survive." He searched through the red tent and found a badger frog sleeping contentedly in the far corner. Eduard gently evicted it. "Everyone thinks I should feel upset and mad about what Azula did to me. I don't. I can't say I feel anything at all right now. Nothing in my comfortable life ever prepared me for the events I've experienced in recent weeks." Eduard had found all of the things he would need and motioned to Toph to return to the air temple.
Toph patiently asked him. "How are you coping with the loss of your eye?"
"Vertigo constantly follows me around." Eduard held onto a red bag. "I can live without an eye and the loss of an eye brought me here. I worked for Azula for the better part of two years and as time went back I felt more and more misgivings about what the Fire Nation was doing to people. I began to get ill because I couldn't escape from my duties in the Fire Nation. I suppose I lost an eye but gained my freedom. Looking at it that way, I came out ahead in the bargain"
Toph trudged along Eduard and gently led him around a tree. "No regrets?"
"Plenty," Eduard looked at the curious stocky girl. "We have things to do and I can mourn for my loss later."
Zuko tracked down Eduard as he walked along the long, narrow stone bridge between their main camp and the other balconies enjoying the evening breezes. "Where have you been?" Zuko asked Eduard in an almost accusatory tone as he approached Eduard. "I've been working all day with Aang!"
"I went topside with Toph: I went to collect the rest of our stuff from the camp." Eduard glared at Zuko. "You don't need to yell at me!" Eduard said impatiently. "We needed clean skivies and socks because I refuse to wander around this 'shroom addicts vision of a cathedral in dirty clothes. I thought you spent the day training the Avatar in the arts of fire bending!"
Zuko looked over the edge of the stone bridge. "I've lost my touch." Zuko held out his hand and shot a small flame from it which fizzled and turned to a puff of smoke. "I have to teach Aang and I can't summon my fire bending."
Eduard gave a less than useful look of bewilderment as he considered what to say to Zuko. "Maybe you can't fire bend without summoning evil? Does fire bending have a dark side and a light side?" Eduard could fire bend, but compared to Azula and Zuko; he was a mere circus clown and knew almost nothing about the history and cultural traditions of fire bending and felt helpless to say anything intelligent.
"No!" Zuko said impatiently.
"Does yelling at me help?" Eduard reached the stone veranda and turned around to face Zuko and express his annoyance with Zuko's rudeness. "Perhaps you're nervous? Have you ever had to read something in front of your class and your tongue turns to rubber and you can't say anything without sounding like you have a mouth of cotton?"
"I can't summon my power," Zuko walked around the feet of a statue, "and if I can't summon my power, I can't help the Avatar defeat my dad."
"Oh?" Eduard scratched his head above his left eye. "Have you talked about this with anyone?"
"Only a fire bender could understand this," Zuko said as Eduard stared up at a statue. "I need to know why I can't summon my power." Zuko had no idea why he had chosen to talk to Eduard as the man seemed oblivious to anything around him but the others hadn't really accepted him and he could imagine their ridicule if he revealed his problem. "You have no clue..."
"None," Eduard shook his head as he pondered what name to give the statue. "I will admit I have no idea what's gone wrong. This explodes the theory that only a fire bender could understand this. Zuko, I can fire bend, but that doesn't mean I understand fire bending. Azula taught me a few parlor tricks and a fun way to start the stove but you know I don't have the heart of a fire bender and I never understood how Azula could unleash such a mad fury."
"I can't talk to the group," Zuko sighed, "Katara will find this so funny and the others will humiliate me. Sokka already makes fun of me and Katara hates me."
"You're delaying the inevitable. I know you think of me as a pest and you think I'm a scatterbrained twit and the reason you're telling me this is that you're trying to avoid talking to the others openly about this - not because I have anything useful to say." Eduard wrung his hand behind his back as a sign of growing frustration. Eduard looked at Zuko and tilted his head like a parrot as he looked at the puffs of smoke coming up from the far veranda as the group began cooking their evening dinner. "I'll let your newly discovered moral compass decide the best course of action."