Chapter Twenty-One
The boulder came crashing down with an explosive thud. Toph sighed and let her legs drop out from under her. The rock below cracked when she sat down. "I spent too much time recovering. I'm out of practice."
"It'll come back to you," Iroh said. "A dog will always return to its master if they are a loving owner."
Her fingers traced the cracks in the ground, and she felt the area around her unfold under her seismic senses. Her feet were the most sensitive, able to pick up things from farther away, but pressing her hands to the rock sharpened her view of the world. With them, she could feel the house, sitting at the mountain peak. Two figures were moving inside now, one of them the lithe firebender who'd joined their group since she'd been asleep, and the other, lying down on the cot, belonging to Katara. "Katara's awake."
"You can tell from all the way out here?"
"Yeah." She'd told Iroh about how she used her affinity for earth to sense where everything was in relation to her, but it seemed she hadn't been clear on how far her range of detection spread. "We should head back. She's probably wondering where we are." She started toward the little hut, while Iroh's sandals crunched on the gravel behind her. I need a break anyway, after today. She shook her head, not quite willing to believe that, even after a debilitating injury, her earthbending was out of whack. It was bad enough to lose my bending in the Spirit World. I can't afford to lose it here, too.
"You seem troubled," Iroh noted as they walked.
"What makes you think so?"
"You're leaving cracks in the ground wherever you walk."
"Oh." Hmm. He's right. "I guess my body is still recovering. Katara was probably going to look at it, but then she ran off, so . . ." She shrugged.
"I have seen your earthbending in battle before. You aren't usually so tense."
"I've got a lot on my mind."
Iroh waited, not pushing her to explain as the rest of her friends might have. After a moment, she spoke again. "I had a dream, after that knife wound. At least, it seemed like a dream at first. I couldn't use my earthbending at all, so my feet couldn't see anything around me."
Iroh nodded, still not pushing for information. The amicable silence stretched on a few more seconds as she tried to rearrange her thoughts.
"It was so clear for a dream, though. I remember everything about it. I was in a swamp, without my bending. As I wandered, I heard voices singing in different languages: languages that don't even exist anymore, I think, but I could sort of pick up on their tone. After a while, they started to sound dark, like they wanted me out of there. I panicked and started calling for help, afraid I was just getting farther and farther from where I could get out.
"And then, I heard Aang's voice. He said he was going to help me get out of there, so I followed him. Except, it wasn't him, it was a monster using his voice. The way it moved, it sounded like a bug crawling over the trees, except huge." She threw her arms up in an expansive gesture. "It dragged me under the water and tried to drown me. And that was when I woke up."
She felt Iroh nod beside her. "I think you may have crossed over into the Spirit World. If it had been a dream, you would not be able to remember it so clearly."
"I thought it might've been. I don't know anything about the Spirit World, though."
"Few people ever see the Spirit World. It is not a place for the living."
She nodded emphatically.
They were near the hut now. This close, Toph could make out every detail of what was inside. Zuko sat at Katara's bedside, his hand resting in hers. The contact seemed out of place to her. A lot had happened in the time she'd been unconscious, but she hadn't thought it was enough for all the relationships of their team to slide around so much. Ty Lee's arrival had been a shock in and of itself, and since the acrobat had free reign of the area, apparently everyone had learned to trust her in the short time she'd been unconscious. Zuko had been welcomed with minimal fanfare. It seemed like half the major alliances had shifted around in the few days she'd been asleep.
Unsure if Katara wanted to be seen holding the exiled prince's hand, Toph turned the door handle as slowly as she could. Before she walked into the room, she felt the waterbender withdraw her hand and look up at the door.
"Nice to know you're awake," Toph said, approaching Katara's bedside. Zuko slid his chair away and stood up without a word. She plopped down on his chair. "Ready to fight the Fire Nation?"
Katara sat up. "How many days until the eclipse?"
"We've got a couple weeks; don't freak out. I'm sure you'll be on your feet by then, with your healing powers."
She felt the waterbender frown.
"You can heal bone, can't you?"
"Of course I can. It just takes longer, that's all."
Toph liked to think that, after twelve years of analyzing people's voices and picking up the different shades of emotion dripping from every word, she'd become very good at understanding tone. In Katara's response, a defensive note mingled with a worried pitch to create an odd chord of unease. Her seismic sense picked up on the rigid muscles of Katara's back, tightened with stress, perhaps pain.
Katara's unease made her bite her lip in worry.
Ty Lee
The blue butterfly had perched itself on the scarlet petals of a fire lily. Ty Lee watched its sculpted wings fold and unfold, the light dancing off the cobalt blue color, like sunshine hitting stained glass.
The little bug took off, flitting through the air in its unique dance. Ty Lee followed the delicate creature, keeping quiet so as not to startle the winged bug any more than necessary.
This was the right thing to do, she thought, feeling better than she had in weeks. Being cheerful had been a chore around Mai and Azula. Mai simply didn't inspire any sprightly behavior, and Azula was . . . scary. But here, up in the mountains, with no industrial towers in sight, and a sea of scarlet lilies fit for frolicking, being cheerful suddenly became a lot easier.
She was losing track of her butterfly; she had to run to catch up to it. As the butterfly disappeared over a raised ledge, she crested the hill.
The earth dropped off in a matter of feet, a sheer cliff on the mountainside. Ty Lee reeled back, her heart rate doubling as she saw how high up she was. Even tightrope walking hadn't banished her instinctive fear of heights. Beyond the sheer cliff, the cobalt blue ocean stretched out, shimmering just as the butterfly's wings had done. As she realized this, a flicker of motion drew her attention, and her eyes grazed across the butterfly.
She has no fear of heights, Ty Lee thought, only just now deciding to refer to the butterfly as a female. She's free to fly between every island, every nation. No one would ever reject her, if they crossed her path. Not like me. Abruptly, her good cheer vanished. She sat down on the edge of the cliff, her feet dangling over the side. If only every person was as free as a butterfly. There would be no war, no struggle. We could fly anywhere we wanted, even if we had to cross the whole world to get there.
"What are you doing out here?"
Her head whipped around, and some part of her brain waited for the resulting snap of her ponytail. The sound never came, but in spite of the lack of hair, her mood brightened. "Sokka, you're back." She leapt to her feet, landing silently on her toes. Sokka recoiled an inch, startled by her sudden movement. Slung over his shoulder, on a pair of metal hooks used for carrying various objects, hung two feathered creatures he'd brought down during his hunt. Their necks dangled at grotesque angles, twisted and snapped all at once; she looked away. "So it looks like the hunt went okay."
"Yeah. We'll be able to eat well tonight, I think."
"Are you on your way back now?"
He nodded. "You should probably come with. It's getting dark."
Her lips widened into a smile at the invitation, and she hopped over to his side. The muscles in his neck stiffened.
The other warriors were slipping out of the forest now, casting wary glances in her direction. Perhaps they thought it was foolish of their young companion to bring an old enemy into the group. Perhaps they found her unworthy of their trust, and too overwhelmingly Fire Nation. Whatever it was, the uneasy glances they favored her with irked her. In retaliation, she took Sokka's hand.
He glanced down, his face going red. As soon as he saw her hand, he pulled away. "Look, I um . . . I've kind of had a rough go at the whole . . . relationship thing. I've lost every girl I was ever involved with. I'm not sure I'm ready for another girlfriend, just yet."
The rejection stung, no matter how sound his reasoning was. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Do you even really trust me?"
"I trust you as much as I can afford to."
"That's not much of an answer."
He sighed. "All right, fine. I trust you more than I would trust a complete stranger, and I appreciate you coming out here to help us, but the fact is, you used to be an enemy, and I worry what the warriors will think of me if I put too much faith in you."
"You don't trust me because of public opinion. Is that what you're saying?"
"Hey, it's the truth. And honestly, I trust Zuko even less. But we need the numbers, and the only way we're going to win is if we have everyone we can possibly get on our side."
"It's all numbers to you, isn't it? You think that if you add one or two more to your ranks that you'll actually be able to break into the Fire Nation. But you're wrong. It doesn't matter how many troops you have, or how many individual soldiers. It matters how many of them are willing to follow you to their deaths to accomplish the goal you set for them."
"I understand that, but if we only have two dozen with us, we're not going to be able to get into the Fire Nation at all. We need Ba Sing Se behind us. We need the Earth Kingdom, and the water tribes. We need the Foggy Swamp, and the Freedom Fighters, and everyone else, otherwise there's no way we're getting in."
"You don't need to break into the Capital City, Sokka. There are boats that ferry tourist there every day."
He turned, stopping mid-stride. "What?"
"There are ferries to the city. It won't be hard to get in, if you're only bringing a few people. Then, the eclipse comes, we take out the Fire Lord, and Azula."
He stared at her for a very long moment, eyes wide with some emotion she couldn't identify. Then, without even giving her time to react, his hands came down on her shoulders and gave her body one quick jerk. "Ty Lee, you're a genius!"
"Thanks?" she said uncertainly. "What for?"
"You just gave me a great idea. Man, we've gotta get back. I have to write this down."
"Write what down?"
A wide smile dawned across his features. "I know how we're getting into the palace."