Chapter 7:The Forest Song (Winter Solstice, part 1)
"Uncle! It's time to leave! Where are you? Uncle Iroh!" Zuko yelled. I shot him an annoyed look, covering my ears to block out his loud mouth.
"Shut up Zuko!" I complain, jabbing his back with a fan. He gave me my golden fans back after we left the prison ship. "Look, Uncles' Uniform." I pointed out with the other fan. Behind the branches was a hot tub made from water streaming into a bath of rocks.
"Over here." Iroh pointed himself out happily.
"Uncle? We need to move on, we're closing in on the Avatar's trail and I don't want to lose him!" closing in on him, I think to myself all we've got is Katara's necklace. I'm still a little mad at Zuko about it because no matter how much I protest he won't let me carry it.
"You look tired, Prince Zuko, as does Lucy. Why don't you two join me in these hot springs and soak away your troubles."
"My troubles cannot be soaked away. It's time to go!" Zuko said angrily.
"Aw, but Zuko I wanted to try the hot spring." I gave him my pout-y face and best puppy dog eyes. Of course it didn't work.
"Don't be stupid Lucy, hot water wouldn't be good for your burn."
"I wasn't going to put my arm in the water Zuko!" I defended.
"You should take your teacher's advice and relax a little. The temperature's just right. I heated it myself." Iroh demonstrated by breathing steam into the tub through his nose. The steam rose out from the hot tub, blocking our view. I used the fans to blow it away from my face as Zuko attempts to swat it away with his hand.
"Enough!" he yelled, "We need to leave now! Get out of the water!"
"Very well." Iroh starts to rise from the tub. Expecting this I'm already turned away, blocking my peripherals with a fan.
"On second thought, why don't you take another few minutes, but be back at the ship in half an hour or I'm leaving without you." I laugh at Zuko's disgusted face and hallow threat. "Where do you think you're going?" Zuko stops me from walking any closer to the empty bath next to Iroh than I already have.
"What does it look like? I'm going to enjoy nature's hot tub." I start to move towards the spring, but Zuko grabs me by the shoulder to stop me again.
"Oh no, you're not. Knowing you, you'd get bored in the first ten seconds, wander around the forest, get lost and never be found. You're coming with me where I can see you." My instincts say to fight him on the subject, but I can't. I'm too elated at the prospect that he may actually feel the need to protect me. You don't want to keep an eye on someone you could care less about. I glance back to Iroh relaxing in his spa to see if he noticed it too. But he wasn't paying any attention; he might have even fallen asleep already.
While Zuko insisted on waiting by the ship for half an hour I insisted we take a stroll through the forest. That stroll didn't last very long, because I got too excited about the trees.
"Ugh," Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose in his frustration, "Why do you like the forest so much?" He spoke up to me. I could barely hear him through my laughter and the blood rushing to my head.
I was hanging upside down on a tree branch. Half my water tribe dress was covering a quarter of my face. It was a bit annoying but I was having too much fun to care.
"There aren't nearly this many trees back home in the city."
"Where you lived in that other world you were talking about?" he asked.
"Other world, dimension, realm, whatever… yeah." I nodded, my hair swinging wildly with the motion. My water tribe headband covered my forehead, until it fell off. Quickly, a little too quickly actually, I swung back around to sit on the branch, my bangs once again falling against my face. "Can you please get that for me Prince Zuko?" I asked as nicely as possible.
"No. Come down and get it yourself." I begrudgingly got down, my hair a wild mess, my dress askew, and my head pounding.
"Ow…" I held the sides of my head in an attempt to make it stop.
"Serves you right, you shouldn't have been hanging in that tree."
"Meanie…" I mumbled.
"What'd you say?"
"I said you are mean!" I jokingly yelled to make sure he heard. He didn't say anything in return; he just turned around and started walking away. I picked up my headband real quick and followed after him.
"Wait! Where are you going?!"
"Why do you care? Apparently I'm mean." He kept moving back towards the ship, refusing to look at me. He's got to be messing with me.
"I was joking!" I grabbed onto his arm to try to turn him towards me. "Don't take it to heart Zuko. I now you can be nice… sometimes."
"Ok," he faced me, his lips curved into a smirk. I knew it, he wasn't serious. "What do you say we go on that stroll now?" he paused, thinking about something, "Just don't climb any more trees, ok?"
"Ok!" I agreed, looping our arms together despite his mild protest. This time we really will go on a stroll.
After several long minutes I get bored, so I start skipping with my arms still looped in Zuko's. And I start singing.
"We're off to see the Wizard, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz."
"What are you doing?" Zuko asks perplexed.
"Singing, now skip with me." He doesn't but I continue to sing anyway. "You'll find he is a whiz of a Wiz! If ever a Wiz there was! The Wizard of Oz is one because, because, because, because, because, because. Because of the wonderful things he does."
"They have Wizards in your world?" Zuko asks, letting go of my arm. I burst out laughing.
"No!" I cry, still laughing, "It's a song from a musical, The Wizard of Oz, pretty popular where I'm from. Don't you have musicals in this world?"
"Not in the Fire Nation."
"Well the Fire Nation sounds boring then." I think about another song to sing and start, "Where have all the good men gone /And where are all the gods? /Where's the streetwise Hercules / to fight the rising odds?" As I sing, I dance around dramatically, focusing on Zuko. I climb on rocks and spin around tree trunks, and all the while I keep his gaze.
"Please don't do that." Zuko pleads.
"Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?" I put all my voice and passion in the song, I can tell from Zuko's face it doesn't make me sound any better. It probably just sounds like I'm screaming. "Late at night I toss and I turn/ And I dream of what I need."
"You're scaring the birds away Lucy!" Zuko interrupts, the sound of wings flapping away emphasize his point. But I carry on.
"I need a hero!" I pause for a second for when there's an instrumental break in the song. Zuko looks content that I've stopped, but flinched when I start again. "Somewhere after midnight in my wildest fantasy/Somewhere just beyond my reach/ There's someone reaching back for me…" My mind meanders and my voice drifts off, the lyrics stirring something in me that I should remember something. Something about a dream… a weird dream I had that might mean something now that this world isn't a dream as well.
What was it? For the life of me I can't remember. I must have been really spacing out because the next thing I know Zuko's waving his hand in my face to get my attention.
"So was that from that musical thing too? What was it? The Wizard of Boz?" Zuko's voice enters through the fog in my head, distracting me.
"Wizard of Oz." I reply absentmindedly then I snap back to the forest with a shake of my head. "And no, it's a song from a different musical, Footloose."
"How can your foot be loose?" I laugh at Zuko's confusion, the dream now completely forgotten.
"It's talking about dancing Zuko, because it's set in a town where dancing is illegal. Kind of like the Fire Nation now that I think about it, which is such a shame, a 100 years ago your people were famous for their dances."
"How do you know that? That's not even something they teach in school." Zuko looks at me with earnest curiosity.
"I told you this is just a story where I come from, so I know some of the history, not that I know all of it, because I don't." I look at Zuko, thinking about how much I know about him and how little he really knows about me, even if he is one of two people in this entire world that know the most about me. He looks back at me like I'm some sort of enigma, which I guess I kind of am.
"Come on Zuko," I say cheerily, "let's keep walking. I promise I won't burn your ears with any more singing." He agrees, on the condition that I keep my promise, and we link arms again.
I don't know how long we had walked, but we'd gotten pretty far inland. We were nearing a clearing up ahead. I could almost see it.
The second we reached the clearing I dropped Zuko's arm like a rock. It was the part of the forest that was burned away. The scar. For some reason I was angry.
I twirled around to face Zuko accusingly. "See what your father's soldiers have done? They burned this forest! They turned it into another ugly scar!" I could see him flinch at 'ugly scar', oops.
"Why are you getting mad at me for this? I didn't do it!" I know I was angry at the fire benders for doing this. I just couldn't understand why I was so angry, I usually wouldn't care. I could rationalize that it would eventually grow back, but for some reason I wasn't thinking about that, this was just pure agonizing rage that I was feeling. It wasn't mine though. It was like I was feeling for someone else. Now that I recognized these emotions as alien, I forced myself to put them away.
"I'm sorry Zuko." I apologized. "I don't know what's wrong with me. We should probably be getting back" we were too close to the village Aang was staying at anyway.
When we got back it was well past the deadline Zuko had set for his Uncle to return. Yet Uncle was nowhere to be found.
We went back to the site Uncle was relaxing at. One of the soldiers followed us. Zuko thought Iroh might have fallen asleep in the tub.
"Uncle! Uncle, where are you?" He called, but there wasn't any reply from beyond the branches.
"Sir, maybe he thought you left without him?" The soldier offered. I didn't say anything despite the fact that I knew why Uncle wasn't around.
"Something's not right here." He examined the rocks now embedded in the stone tub. "That pile of rocks..."
"It looks like there's been a landslide, sir." The stupid soldier said.
"Land doesn't slide uphill, idiot." It may have come out more aggravated sounding than I intended. But I didn't want this soldier here.
"She's right. Those rocks didn't move naturally. My uncle's been captured by earth benders!"
"Are you sure they went this way." Zuko asked behind his shoulders. We were both riding on his war rhinoceros. He didn't trust me with my own since I lost the last one.
"Pretty sure, the tracks from their ostrich horses led this way." My eyes meandered back up the road. "Look Zuko, Uncle's sandal!" Zuko hopped off the rhino and went to pick up the sandal. I could practically see the smell radiating off it.
"Yup, that's Uncle Iroh." Zuko took it with him back to the rhino.
"Do we have to bring that stinky thing with us?" I ask, protecting my nose from the stench of Iroh that was already trying to infiltrate it. Whether or not Zuko answered I couldn't say because I was distracted by Aang flying on Fang. I followed it with my eyes.
"What are you looking at?" I snapped back to Zuko. I grew nervous and started playing with my bangs.
"Nothing, just—um—looking at a butterfly see!" I pointed upward in a random direction.
"I don't see anything."
"That's because it flew away." He shook his head at me as he got back on the rhino.
We carried on in our pursuit of the earth benders that took Iroh, following the clear trail of their ostriches.
After awhile Zuko looks over his shoulder, I don't have to look to know what he's seen.
"The Avatar!" He yanks the reigns to turn the beast back.
"Zuko!" I scream disapprovingly, "Remember Iroh? Your Uncle!"
He looks back and forth between the trail to Uncle and the direction Appa went. "But the Avatar…"
"What's more important Zuko? The avatar or your family, your real family?" I had to specify because I'm not sure I'd consider Fire Lord Ozai family and his sister's a bit questionable too. Zuko thinks for a second before taking up the reigns again, for a split second I fear he may have changed his mind and was going to go after Appa, but he led the rhino forward. I smiled with pride, glad he couldn't see it.
We could see them in the earth pit. Iroh had his hands stretched out in front of him on a large rock at the center of the pit.
"These dangerous hands must be crushed." The captain raised a huge boulder, hovering it over Iroh's hands. Zuko hops off the rhino running towards the scene, making it just in time to kick away the boulder before it crushes Iroh's hands and arms. With another kick he breaks the chains binding Uncle's hands.
"Excellent form, Prince Zuko." Uncle stands with a smile.
"You taught me well."
"Surrender yourselves, it's five against two. You're clearly outnumbered." The captain sounded confident. Iroh and Zuko, back to back, are surrounded by their would-be captors. I hop off the war rhino, prepping my fans to aid them.
"Uh, that's true, but you are clearly outmatched!" Iroh comebacks.
All five earth benders launch stones at them. Iroh breaks them to pieces mid-flight with a swing of his chains, while Zuko blasts the two closest to him with fire. I sneak behind one of the soldiers to Zuko's back, using my fans to knock him out by hitting the points Uncle had shown me the day before. The other nearby soldier notices me and shoots a large rock in my direction simultaneously shooting another at Zuko's back. Uncle was able to wrap his chains around the one headed for Zuko, swinging the rock around and sending it back at the soldier. The guy was knocked out. Meanwhile, my instincts, mislead as they are, tell me to hit back the rock racing towards my face instead of doing the smart thing and dodging it. Not wanting to hurt another arm, I jump up and kick at the boulder, again in hindsight that probably didn't seem like the right thing to do, but instead of painfully hitting my foot like it should have, the rock broke to pieces on contact.
That was weird, but with all the excitement around me I don't think much of it.
Back to the fight, the Captain launches several rocks at Zuko, which he easily dodges and blasts back. The Captain cleverly uses his helmet to block the fire before raising two huge sheets of rock. At first it appears that he as the upper hand, but then chains wrap around the Captain's feet and Iroh pulls him to the ground, the rocks land on top of him.
All around the Earth Kingdom soldiers are groaning and buried in dirt. I stand by Zuko's side at the middle of the pit. There's a moment where we all look at each other and just smile. Zuko puts his hand on his uncle's shoulder.
"Now would you please put on some clothes!?" He complains. I start bawling out laughing. Zuko snaps to me, "What! Do you want to see Uncle naked?"
It takes me a moment to calm down enough to form words. "NO!" I chortled, "You're just funny Zuko." I walk back to the war rhino, which is thankfully still there, laughing. The other two follow behind silently.
