Chapter 32

Soft tendrils of grass brush Azula's cheek, and the wind rustles in a wave through the grasses. A swoop, mournful bird cry joins the wind's melody. Without opening her eyes, Azula breathes in deeply. She feels more whole than she has in months.

"Azula?"

Azula's eyes snap open. A child Zuko is crouched by her head. He pokes her face lightly, looking concerned. She pushes him away.

When Azula stands, her body responds far more quickly than it has recently. She looks herself over. Instead of Fire Nation armor, she's wearing a fitted green tunic and blousy red trousers. The bones in her hands no longer stand out; when she flexes her arms, she recognizes the muscle tone she had when she was still a Princess of the Fire Nation. Her hair is done in a high ponytail, without even the two tendrils of hair she usually leaves down to frame her face. Azula smiles when she touches her own cheeks. The hollowness is gone.

Zuko is watching her self-examination with a slight smile.

"Your self-image has changed," he remarks.

Azula scowls. "Where have you been?" she demands. "All those times I tried to contact you, you were silent. You can't just tell me I have a future and then disappear." To Azula's horror, her eyes well up, and she stabs an accusatory finger at the child, hoping anger will mask her weakness. "And how can you even bea spirit if Zuko is still alive?"

Zuko's eyes fill with a sadness is far older and deeper than his young face.

"Who are you?" Azula's voice shakes. "Just tell me. I'm so tired."

Zuko sighs. His white funeral robes grow brighter and brighter, until Azula has to hold up a hand to block the light. The spirit flashes. The child version of Zuko disappears, and in its place stands an old man. He is tall, with a long white beard and hair pulled up into a topknot. He wears sweeping red robes lined with gold, and despite his obvious age he does not look feeble. For a second, Azula thinks it is her father. And then she notices the red, ropy burn scar on the old man's left eye.

"Zuko?" Azula says. "What—"

"I am Zuko, but not the one you know," the old man says. His voice is more gravelly as an old man.

"How to explain this…this is why I thought it would be easier to appear as a child." He rubs his forehead with one hand, such a characteristically Zuko move that Azula finds herself believing, somehow, that this is her brother.

"Oh spit it out, Zuzu," she says scathingly. "Enlighten me. How are you alive—I hope—in the Fire Nation and also an old man in the Spirit World? Or am I dead, and all time has collapsed?"

"Time is different in the Spirit World," Zuko says. "That's how I'm talking to you. You see, I'm alive. In your future. I was meditating when I first saw you by the side of some dusty Colonial road—"

"That was the day I killed on those bandits," Azula says. Her mind shudders away from the horror of that day, of the burnt faces and collapsing houses.

"The next time I entered the Spirit World, I couldn't find you. I wandered for hours. You were never there. But then—"

"The yapian den."

"Yes," the older Zuko says sadly. "I wanted to give you hope, Azula. I told you that you're destined to help me, that the Fire Nation cannot survive without the two of us working together to heal your ancestors' wrongs, all so you wouldn't despair. To give you hope that you can redeem yourself.

"But instead of encouraging you, I see my words only tormented you. I'm sorry, Azula."

"So you didn't mean it?" Azula asks, horrified.

"I did mean it!" Zuko says hastily. "You do help me in your future. I would never lie to you, Azula."

"I don't know how I could help you," Azula says. "Everything I touch—everyone I touch—breaks." She thinks of the blood running down Altan's face and feels a growing despair.

"Perhaps the best way to help us is first to help yourself."

Suddenly, Azula is soaring through the air on the back of a scarlet dragon. All she can do is grab Zuko's robes in front of her, eyes wide as she watches the flower meadow beneath them get smaller and smaller. They fly over a river bubbling with purple, rounded spirits, a thick forest teeming with tiny yellow fireflies that blink in unison, and lake with waves as high as houses. The dragon doesn't seem to flap its wings, but rather swims through the air like a serpent. Azula places her hand on the warm, dry scales of Zuko's dragon and can't prevent a smile from curving her lips. As a child she always wanted to ride a dragon.

Below and to the right, an ugly red stain splits the ground. Rocks like scorpion tails curve up around a pit full of mist. As they fly over the expanse, the chill of the fog makes Azula's toes curl up in her boots. Faint screams and wails float up from the darkness.

"What is that?" Azula yells over the rush of the wind.

"The Fog of Lost Souls," Zuko says grimly. He tightens his grip on one of the dragon's ivory spikes. "It's a prison for humans lost in the Spirit World. Every day, every hour, those poor souls relive their worst memories. Eventually, the prisoners go mad."

Azula is silent. The moans echo in her mind, and unwillingly she considers her worst memories. With a shiver, she realizes that all her worst memories are of what she has done. She hunted Zuko across the Earth Kingdom, and killed her half-brother without warning or mercy. She kidnapped children in the Fire Nation capital to try and manipulate Zuko. And most recently, she tried to save Altan, but only ended up with his blood on her hands, pooling on the dusty street…no. She pushes the thought away, locks in the back of her mind where she keeps her darkest thoughts. She can't think of him now.

Leaving the Fog of Lost Souls behind, the dragon flies towards a cluster of miniature mountains resembling the ones outside Bahasa. The mountaintops are rounded, covered in green, and a thatched building perches atop the stone.

Abruptly, the dragon swoops down, dropping Azula's throat into the pit of her stomach, and she grips Zuko's fluttering outer robe again. It's a thrilling elation not unlike the high of yapian or the power in her veins after a fight. Or the warmth of Altan's skin.

The dragon twists. Azula nearly tips off before the dragon lands smoothly on a clearing on the nearest mountain. Heart beating fast, Azula slides down the scaly side, relieved to plant her feet on solid ground. Her curve-toed boots meet earth.

Up ahead, smoke rises from a small cottage like the tormenting fog they left behind. The shelter looks hand-made and unlike anything else she's seen in the Spirit World. In fact, it resembles the lean-to Azula built in the forest outside Qima to hide her yapian habit, comprising a straw roof, pine logs, and a small hole to let out the noxious fumes. Azula is stricken by a sudden terror. Who-or what—is living there?

Could it be Altan? Here to accuse her in the Spirit Realm?

"Why did you take me here?" Azula rounds on Zuko. He swings his leg over the side of the dragon and slides down. His maroon outer layer balloons gracefully as he lands on the stone and lichen mountaintop.

"There is someone I want you to talk to." Zuko gestures to the smoky cottage.

"You're from the future. Just tell me what happens! What should I do?"

"I can't tell you the future," Zuko says. "There is no shortcut to regaining your honor, Azula. And even though you've come very far, if you want to help me, if you want to help your friends, you still need to change!"

"I've already changed so much I hardly recognize myself!" Azula spits. "Princess Azula is dead, Zuko!"

"You are not who you once were, but neither have you decided who you will become," says Zuko heatedly.

Azula's lip curls. Who is this bizarre future-Zuko to force her into anything? She opens her mouth, ready to reject him.

Unbidden, Altan's body floats to the forefront of her mind. So does the look of betrayal in Temurin's eyes when she attacked him in his own house. Even though she's tried to live by love, like Zuko said, she feels even more lost than when she left the Fire Nation. Back in the physical realm her body and mind are fragile, weakened by insanity and yapian; even when she tried to do good by taking over Bahasa, the Avatar still rejected her.

If she doesn't change, she might as well walk into the Fog of Lost Souls right now.

"I have one more question," Azula asks Zuko, who stands waiting patiently. "How did you first find me in the Spirit World? If you weren't even looking for me?"

Zuko smiles. His dragon curls behind him like a languid cat.

"Is it really so strange that our spirits will always seek each other out?" he asks. "Whether we are in the physical realm or in the Spirit World, we are bound by blood. Our legacy is one."

Azula nods. Then she turns on her heel and strides with false confidence into the dark, misty hut.

The inside seems larger than the outside, and smoke billows around her like an entrance to that cursed fog. She tries to summon a flame, but can't, and fear curls at the base of her spine.

Ahead of her, through spirals of teasing smoke, the wiry outline of a figure emerges. He sits shirtless and cross-legged before the fire, skin a dark nut-brown, wearing nothing but a raggedy loincloth. As she creeps forward, his eyes pop open, the whites bright in the darkness.

"Princess!" he exclaims. "Welcome to my humble abode in the Spirit World!"

Oh no, Azula thinks. This can't possibly be…

"I am Guru Pathik," the man says without moving from his meditative pose. "Lord Zuko has enlisted me to guide you in this next part of your journey."

"I know who you are," Azula says wearily. "I had a friend named Ty Lee, and she wouldn't shut up about you."

"Ty Lee!" Pathik exclaims. "The young acrobat so interested in chi! How is she?"

"I don't know." Reluctantly, Azula sits cross-legged, keeping the fire between Guru Pathik and herself. "She betrayed me, so I tried to kill her, and we haven't spoken in three years."

"Oh my." Pathik closes his eyes as if thinking deeply.

"People say true friends must always hold hands, but true friends don't need to hold hands because they know the other hand will always be there," he intones.

Azula frowns. "Well, I wasn't a true friend to her. Obviously."

"One of your many defects, Princess," Pathik opens one eye. "So. If you know who am I, do you know how I mean to help you?"

"Will you show me the energy of the universe?" Azula says scathingly.

"With that attitude, you will never change." Guru Pathik turns his back to her and then, inexplicably, places his head onto the ground and raises himself into a headstand. The tips of his toes brush the thatched roof.

"You may go," he says.

"What? No!" Azula walks around to address Pathik, but finds that his white beard has flipped to cover his face. A small mole-butterfly nests in the tangled hair.

"I know I need to change," Azula says to the beard. "I just don't like any of this…spirit nonsense."

"Accept my methods, or leave."

"But—"

"Accept! Or leave."

Azula seethes. But only emptiness waits for her in the physical realm.

"Fine!" Azula yells. "I accept! I'm sorry!"

Pathik flips to his feet.

"Then sit, Princess," he says. Azula obliges, and Pathik takes her hands.

"You are the most stopped-up person I've ever met," he says in genuine wonder. "I have never met someone who needs to clear their chakras so badly. It's impressive you can even bend with all these fears and emotions blocking your chi."

"I've always been remarkable," Azula says wryly.

"For you to have peace, you must confront what blocks your chi, your inner energy and the source of your power," Pathik instructs her. "Will you take this journey with me?"

Azula nods.