11

Despite the fact that the little house looked like a tiny speck, miles away from the mouth of the cave, it only took us a few minutes to reach it. I don't know if Bolin noticed, but it gave me a queasy, uncertain feeling, like I was in a dream and just couldn't wake up.

I pushed the feeling away though, and focused on the task at hand. After my interactions with An Zhu, I was confident we could communicate with whatever spirits we found.

I knocked on the door of the little white stone house and waited. Bolin clasped his hands behind his back and scuffed his shoe on the ground, clearly impatient.

A moment later the door opened to reveal a little old lady who looked like the epitome of little old ladies everywhere. She was short and chubby, with sparkling black eyes buried inside folds and folds of wrinkled skin. She had on a faded brown dress and an apron with flowers embroidered on it and a matching scarf tied over her head.

"Oh my! What fine young boys! Come in, come in. I was just making a pot of tea to go with the fruit pie. Come, have a slice while you tell me about yourselves." Without even giving us time to say hello, the little old lady shuffled away, her slippers slipping and her cane tapping against the smooth stone floor.

I gave Bolin a look, trying to gauge whether he thought we should trust her or not.

"C'mon, Mako. Pie. I can't say no to pie."

I relented. I was suspicious—a harmless old lady giving away pie seemed too good to be true—but we had to start somewhere in our investigation.

The old lady's house was like an extension of the old lady herself. Tiny, tidy and ancient. Bolin and I sat down on a pair of well-used chairs that creaked and threatened to fall apart under our weight, while the little old lady bustled in the next room, chattering away.

"And that nice Mr. Radikio grows them in his garden. Don't let his grumpy face get to you, he's just a big old sweetheart on the inside. But in the springtime-"

Bolin leaned over on his creaky chair. "Is she talking to us?" he whispered.

I shrugged. "Do you think she's even a spirit?" I whispered back. She looked awfully human, but who knew what she was hiding under that scarf and apron.

"She's like somebody's grandma," Bolin hushed, then sat up straight in his chair again as the old lady came back, a tea tray rattling precariously in her arms. I jumped up and took the tray before anything spilled and set it on the low table next to her chair.

"Such a thoughtful young man," she mumbled as she sat, and began pouring the tea.

Just like she'd promised, there was tea and slices of cold fruit pie, as well as a lacquered box full of dried up gummy candies, and a delicate glass bowl of water with a single lily floating in it. The last I guessed was just for decoration.

"I had another thoughtful young man in, just the other day," the old lady said, handing me a cup and saucer. "He didn't like my cakes at all, but he was far too considerate to tell me so. I found him later eating up all the flies in my flower garden later that afternoon, and I could hardly begrudge him that, now could I?"

She said it like it was a question, but she went on chatting away without even waiting for a response. I sipped my tea, waiting anxiously for an opportunity.

"You should try it, Mako. It's really good," Bolin said, his mouth full of pie.

Maybe it was because I had eaten nothing except dry noodles all day, but Sun and Moon, that fruit pie was one of the best things I'd ever tasted. Calories replenished and confidence restored, I found the courage to butt in on the old lady's monologue without waiting for an appropriate pause.

"This is delicious, Mrs..."

"Oh, don't thank me, thank the bees from Mr. Radikio's garden. They make the best honey," she said, and then she was off again, talking about how to care for bees.

I glanced at Bolin, trying to motion with my eyes that he should speak up, which he countered by stuffing his mouth with a gummy candy. I rolled my eyes and leaned forward, trying to get the old lady's attention.

"Ma'am? Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

Immediately, the old lady dropped her talk of bees. "Oh, of course not, dear. Why, just the other day my friend Dahlia asked me-"

"Good, because my brother and I," I waved at Bolin, "could use some help. See, we're looking for the Avatar."

"Oh, the Avatar!" The old lady set her tea down on the tray so she could clap her gnarled hands together. "He came through here just the other day, looking for his girlfriend. I do hope he's alright, he was such a serious young man."

"Avatar Aang?" I asked, confused.

"Aang? No, that wasn't it." For the first time since our arrival, the little old lady paused, but I didn't dare interject.

"Kuruk! That was his name."

"Kuruk?" I repeated, the name lost on me.

"The one before Kyoshi," Bolin supplied.

"But that was like, more than four hundred years ago," I said, panic rising in my chest.

Ever since entering the spirit world, my conversation with Tenzin about the nature of time in the two worlds had never been far from my mind. And now the little old lady was saying she'd seen Avatar Kuruk a few days ago? If a few days here was the same as nearly half a millennium in our world... I couldn't do the math in my head, but I knew we had to get out of there. For every minute that passed, hours or even days were slipping by. Bolin would lose his job, Hyen would get reassigned to another case, or get himself in trouble with the possessed or Special Forces or both.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was on my feet, headed for the door. Thunder crashed outside and Bolin grabbed my arm.

"Mako!"

I caught where he was looking. Not out the window at the sudden storm, but at the little old lady. She had changed. She was taller, much taller, and the lines in her face were deeper, darker, more like cracks than laugh lines. Her dress had turned black and there was an awareness and strength in her voice that hadn't been there before.

"How rude! I invite you into my house, and this is what you do to thank me?"

I yanked Bolin from his chair, pulled him to the exit.

"For years I've kept the Mutable Plains in peace! Out! Get out of here!"

I was already through the door by the time she finished her sentence, dragging Bolin behind me. Rain lashed at us sideways and thunder roared not too far away. Behind us I could see the cute little cottage had transformed into a ruined fort, with crumbling walls and a menacing tower that looked out over the plains.

"Now where?" I shouted over the wind and thunder.

"The trees!" Bolin shouted.

We ran for it. Down a gully, across a stream and over a low stone wall into the shelter of the trees.

"What was that?" Bolin said before we had finished catching our breath. "One minute she's giving us free tea and snacks, and the next..." he snapped his fingers. "Nutso! You don't think she changed the weather, do you?"

"I really don't know." I ran my hands through my hair, trying to squeeze the water out. We were still getting dripped on, and overhead the trees shook and groaned in the wind, but we were definitely safer and drier here than out in the open. "Did you catch what she said, at the very end there?" I asked.

"No, I was a little distracted," Bolin said. "You know, with the thunder and lightning and the get out of my house!"

"She called this place the Mutable Plains."

"Mute, like quiet?"

I shook my head. "No, like changeable." I peered between the trees, watching the fields we had just left.

"The Changeable Plains. Yeah, that makes sense."

"No, it doesn't," I said, shaking a little now from the cold and the wet. "None of this makes sense. Thunder storms don't just appear out of nowhere and cottages don't turn into castles, even in a place called Mutable." I folded my arms across my chest for warmth, only to be reminded of the cold metal snake still wrapped around me.

"Bro," Bolin said, "we're in the spirit world. There's gonna be all kinds of wacky spirit magic shenanigans going on. We're just going to have to roll with it."

For an answer, I just groaned. No wonder Korra and Asami hadn't come back yet. Between the time weirdness and the general craziness of this place, they must have gotten lost ages ago.

"So, we had a couple setbacks. But look at it like this. Neither of us has gotten hurt, and we only just started looking. There's gotta be some spirit that's willing to help us. Like that pear thing."

"Thanks, Bo." I gave him a smile. I was still frustrated and scared of this place, but he was right. We had no right to give up so soon—not that giving up was even an option.

"Yep. Good old Bolin. Always saves the day. Now, let's say you make a fire and we wait for the rain to stop?"

I looked at the trees—big ancient leafy things that looked like they'd been there for millennia.

"No. You remember the story Korra's dad told us, about destroying that forest? I'm gonna bet burning anything in a spirit forest is a good way to get the spirits mad at us."

"Maybe just a little fire?" Bolin cupped his hands in front of him, pretending to firebend.

I shook my head. I was cold—not so cold I couldn't bend—but I didn't want to risk making anything mad after what had happened with the old lady. "Let's keep walking." I looked up, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun so I could tell which way was was north, but between the branches and the clouds, it could have been anywhere.

Bolin griped until he must have realized I didn't find his complaints amusing, after which we walked through the dripping forest in silence. I wasn't so cold now that we were moving and the rain had stopped, but I was getting more and more frustrated at our meaningless progress. It was just like my trip with Hyen into the quarantine: wandering around, hoping we would run into someone useful. I wondered again if he was okay.

For the rest of the day Bolin and I wandered through the forest. We found a path after a little while, and ran across a few plant spirits that could talk, but weren't especially helpful.

"How do you even know she wants to be found?" One particularly pugnacious daisy asked us, its little leaf arms curled up into fists.

Night fell and Bolin and I buried ourselves under a pile of dry leaves. It wasn't very comfortable, and for me at least it brought back memories of our time on the streets, but we did eventually sleep.

I woke up early the next morning just as the sun rose, stiff and sore and cold. I shook Bolin awake and we went on walking.

The path I found out was taking us east, not north, but I would rather follow a path going the wrong way than get utterly lost wandering through the trees. Not that we weren't lost at the moment—I had no clue how to get back to the Republic City portal and neither did Bolin. We only broached the topic once, and Spikes gave me a very clear warning that we shouldn't even talk about going back until we'd found Korra.

As we walked, the forest changed. The trees grew taller and taller, and the undergrowth faded away, until it almost felt like we were walking through some massive temple.

"What if that flower yesterday was right?" Bolin asked after a failed attempt to talk with a fungus spirit that turned out to be a mundane mushroom.

"The one that said maybe Korra doesn't want to be found?"

"Yeah, that one. Jinora's been looking for her, but she hasn't had any luck. I know you think it's because she's lost, but what if she and Asami are just fooling around, having a good time?"

"Maybe," I said, thinking again of the time differences. "So, what do you think? Look for someplace that'd be a good vacation spot?"

"White sandy beaches, grass skirts... There's gotta be a place like that here. I mean, they exist in the real world, so they have to here too, right?"

"We'll ask the next spirit."

####

"Spirits are stupid!" I shouted, tearing at my hair. It was late in the day and we were still in the forest—now dry and hilly, populated by stunted pine trees.

"Uh, Mako..."

I kicked at a tree root. "If they're not complete idiots, then they act like it's their job to spout cryptic bull-pig nonsense. Like that mouse thing. Look in to look out. What is that supposed to mean? And that bug with the hat! Of course I know you have to go downhill to get to the beach, but we just came from down there, and I know there's nothing but more trees that way!"

I continued to vent, pacing back and forth on the trail.

"Mako, stop!" A rock pinged off my head, hurting just enough to interrupt my train of thought. I stopped dead in my tracks as I realized what was going on. In the past minute or so, the woods had grown dark, and not in the sense that the sun was hiding behind a cloud. The trees themselves had changed color and had drawn closer together, the sun blotted out by branches like fierce, grasping claws.

A few steps down the trail, Bolin stood in a ray of sunshine, the trees around him frail-looking and thin.

"Look." He gestured at the trees. "You're the one who's doing this. Well, I guess we both are, but you're the one who keeps getting angry all the time, and when you do, everything else gets angry too."

For a split second I wanted to argue with him, but the evidence behind his words was staring me in the face. His patch of woods was sunny and calm, if tired, while mine was dark, menacing and angry.

I stood there on the trail, the anger draining away, replaced by stunned embarrassment. Had the thunderstorm on the plains been my fault? Had I made Bolin and I fall down that hole underground? How were we ever supposed to get anywhere if our surroundings changed with whatever random thoughts and feelings we had moment to moment?

I sat down and Bolin came and sat next to me.

"Sorry I hit you with a rock."

I rubbed at the spot where he'd hit me. "It's okay," I said, determined not to get mad or laugh about it.

"I know you can do this. You used to get angry over everything. But now it's been ages since you set anything on fire. I mean, set anything on fire because you were mad, not because you were cold or defending yourself or-"

"Bo. I get it." I rubbed my face, feeling the scruff there under the dirt and grease. "Lemme sit for a minute."

Bolin pursed his lips, but he nodded, willing to wait for me. I breathed, staring at the ground in front of me, searching for a familiar emptiness. Not because I wanted to summon up lightning right now, but because that cold, detached feeling was as close as I could get to no emotions at all.

So, I focused on my breathing and on the fact that I was insignificant. The universe was huge and full of energy and I was the merest of specks, wildly tossed around by the currents because I was too proud to let them flow through me instead. I was nothing. Not even a speck.

I looked up. The trees were gone, leaving us alone on a bare, brown hilltop, the sun beating down. Bolin sat next to me, weaving a pebble between his fingers, his eyes glazed.

"Where do we go from here?" I asked, my voice flat and numb.

Bolin dropped his pebble, then picked it up again. "Walking north probably isn't going to work. Maybe feeling north?"

I didn't answer, knowing that neither of us knew what north "felt" like. But he was on the right track. If the physical act of walking wasn't going to get us anywhere, maybe the feeling of moving forward would. But to have that feeling, we needed direction, a goal.

No, that wasn't right. We had goals, plenty of them. Find Korra and Asami, find the northern portal, find a spirit who could help us.

"Maybe they don't want to be found," I said, grasping at an idea that I still hadn't wrapped my head around. "If places are emotions, and they entered the portal because they wanted to escape..."

"That's where they'd end up," Bolin said, finishing my thought. "In an escaping place! And that's why no one can find them!"

"Right. Because if we're looking for them we have to be feeling the feeling of wanting to find someone—if that even is an emotion—we literally can't get to a place associated with the feeling of wanting not to be found."

I don't know if it was from my excitement or Bolin's but just in the past few seconds, grass had sprung up in a little circle around us, so green and bright I wouldn't have thought it was real just looking at it.

"So," Bolin said a grin spreading across his face, "all we have to do is feel like not wanting to be found, and then we'll find them. So, all we really need is... the power... of acting." He placed a fist over his heart and looked towards the sky.

I frowned, then reached for the emptiness again, trying to fend off any strong emotions, negative or positive. Something in the back of my mind told me this probably wasn't healthy, spiritually speaking, but for now, I was afraid of the alternative.

"I don't think I can just make myself feel like not wanting to be found," I said. "Or trick the spirit world into thinking that's how I'm feeling." Does the spirit world even think? I wondered to myself. How does it know what I'm feeling?

"Acting isn't about tricking people, it's about forgetting who you are and being someone else for a little while," Bolin said, like he thought this was the most obvious thing ever.

"I don't think I can do that either."

Bolin sighed, rested his head on his fist. "So, if where we go depends on how we feel, and we can't really control how we feel, does that mean we're stuck?"

"I don't think so," I said after a moment's consideration. "Everyone can control their emotions. It's just hard, and the feeling of not wanting to be found is really specific, not like being happy or angry or whatever. But," I said, allowing myself to smile just a little, "I remember working for Wu, and there were plenty of times I managed to slip away and I didn't want to be found."

"Oh yeah?" Bolin said, a little light coming on in his eyes. "Like when?"

"Well, one time I was supposed to take him shopping for hair treatment, and I pretended I had eaten some bad oysters. You know, ooh, my stomach. I can't hold it in." I held my stomach as though in pain.

"And?"

"I read a whole magazine in Wu's bathroom while he figured out how to work the phone and call his doctor to make sure he wasn't sick as well."

Bolin laughed at that way harder than I'd expected, wiping his eyes and holding a hand to his side. "You know, that reminds me of when I was dating Eska..."

We kept on swapping stories for a good couple of hours, and bit by bit, spirits came creeping in close. Most of them stayed well back, but some sat with us, and they hung on our every word, laughing at the funny parts, gasping at the scary parts and asking for more every time a story ended.

Eventually it got dark, and we found ourselves sitting on cushions around a campfire, eating rice and fried eggs out of chipped ceramic bowls. I wasn't sure where the bowls or the cushions or any of it had come from, but it was nice, and even pleasant once I got over the fact that I was sitting next to a giant bipedal lizard.

"So, you are trying to find the Avatar," the lizard said, tilting its head to look at me with one unsettling eye, while Bolin took a turn in the storytelling spotlight.

"Yes," I said, and explained what Bolin had figured out about feelings and the spirit world.

"And you are thinking stories of hiding and escaping and of pleasant times will help you find her?" the lizard asked.

"It was just a thought," I said, a little defensive. "I didn't know if it would work."

"It was a good idea, but you did not get what you were looking for. Instead of escape, you found comradarie and solidarity. You have made new friends, but you have not found the old."

I would hesitate to call the random spirits that had found us friends, but I wasn't going to argue. "Do you know what we should do?" I asked.

The lizard flicked its tongue and got itself another egg from the pan before it answered. "You should not presume to know how others feel." It tapped its head and then its chest with one long, clawed finger. "Accept that what is up here is never wholly correct, and what is in here is always, in some way, right."

I nodded. Despite the fact that we were veering down the path of poetic nonsense, this was by far the most enlightening conversation I'd had with a spirit yet, and I took it to mean that I couldn't completely trust the things I thought I knew. Troubling, but definitely good to know.

"Thank you," I said. "Is there anything else I need to know?"

"Many things. But above all else, remember your friends, even the ones who are not here, because they are all important."

I blinked, trying to read between the lines of the lizard's statement while I formulated my next question, but somehow in that moment, hours had passed. Bolin lay on his back next to the embers of the fire, his arms wrapped around a spirit dog on his chest. Other spirits dozed nearby, and overhead a single cloud passed in front of the moon.

I got out my logbook to note the lizard's words next to those of all the other spirits we'd questioned, and a thin slip of rice paper fell out from between the pages. I unfolded it and held it up to the moonlight to read the words written on it.

Everything is connected.

As I examined the message, the cloud moved away from the moon and I found I could see through the thin paper. The words had been printed twice, once on the front and once on the back. I flipped it around and squinted, making sure I was reading it right.

"Huh."

I folded the note and slipped it back inside the book, wondering if it was just a trick of the dim light that made the overlapping characters look like a figure standing on a tower.

A/N: A little artistic license perhaps with the optical illusion with the characters on the note, but I figure everything's pretty trippy in the spirit world, so it doesn't matter a heck of a lot :)