He starts reading The Classic of Tea again, partly to distract himself from his misery and partly out of true curiosity about its author. What shreds and snippets of personality can he glean from between those neatly written lines?
The treatise begins with an appraisal of best horticultural practices for growing tea plants. Aang learns that they like a humid, moist climate with plenty of water and immediately despairs. The nearest large body of water is miles away, the Qiantang River that flows eastward for miles to the sea.[1] Most of the farms under Zuodu's jurisdiction are clustered to the north and east of the town, nearer the river. He wonders how the plantation got watered in the past. Rui Jing had waxed eloquent to him numerous times during his one day of employ about the general climate and topography of the area. Rain is inconsistent, even in the summer, and farmers had to turn to complex irrigation schemes involving the rivers and lakes.
If I had Appa, I could pull up a giant bubble of water from miles away and fly back with it, water all the crops, fly back and get more, he thinks morosely.
If I had Appa… if I had any of my friends and family from Before…
Oh, bother. What's the point of ruminating on what he doesn't have? He abandons the scroll and listlessly wanders out of the house in search of something else to do.
He ends up taking a nap in the field, nestled among fallen brambles and rumpled tea leaves. The elders at the Southern Air Temple would be horrified. Napping, when there is so much spiritual gain to be found in doing anything else—meditating, practicing bending, studying the ancient texts, and so forth. They'd all been scandalized by Gyatso's more relaxed approach to his education, which allowed time for playing games, reading for pleasure, cooking, food for the soul, and so forth.
Did it make a difference, in the end? His dour dream-mentality invades his nightly excursion, and Gyatso's peaceful expression dissipates into smoke as he reaches for his mentor, only to fall short. In the end, everything I touch dies.
Not this time, a different voice reproves. You haven't started: how can you know you will fail?
The hazy dreamscape around him separates to reveal himself standing in the field, as if awake, gazing upon countless rows of skeletal tea plants, starved of water and care. Where do I even start?
The voice calls to him, and it sounds like the sweet murmur of fresh water somewhere nearby. Don't be afraid. Follow me.
It does not occur to him to disobey. Sluggishly, with the drugged feet of the half-dreaming, half-waking, he trudges towards the apex of the hill, a molehill in the shadow of a greater, forested knoll beyond it. He reaches the edge of the terraced rows of tea plants, but the voice guides him farther into the wooded areas, and then bids him stop.
What do you feel?
"Lost, mostly," he remarks, awake enough now to summon sarcasm. "What am I supposed to be feeling?"
Use all your senses. What do you feel?
He lets his consciousness seek out the environment, closing his eyes and probing his surroundings. He should do this more often, per the monks' teachings: after all, how is he to find peace within himself if he cannot even find peace in the world around him? He slips into a meditative moment and relaxes, and deep within him, he senses a pool of chi, placid and stagnant, hidden away from his consciousness.
Aang blinks his eyes open. The pool isn't within him, but deep under his feet. He gives himself over completely to his waterbending sense, working the unseen water from above. It's a sizable pool, enough to have supplied the entire tea plantation in days gone by. Combining his earthbending and waterbending, he pushes and pulls, the thrill of hidden treasures spurring him on until with a splash, the ground yields and a mighty spigot of water issues forth, drenching Aang in a joyous patina of mud.
Longjing, the voice intones, seeming to blossom from the fine spray of water and the bubble of the underground spring, newly unearthed. The ancient Dragon Well of old—I discovered it in the early days of my confinement here. Legend has it that a dragon blessed this water long ago to always run pure and fresh.[2]
He peers down into the spring, its bounty some fifteen feet below the surface. He cannot see his reflection from here, but he does not need to, cracked as it is into a wide smile. Finally, a turn for the better.
A spate of industriousness follows; the elders would be proud. There is so much to do! He flits between his tasks, spirit alight with energy, enamored of the moment and utterly failing to recognize how he is less at peace than ever. Who needs peace when there is work to be done? He scrawls his tasks on a scrap of paper he's dug up from somewhere, eager to breeze through them and get right to his new business as a professional tea master.
Fortify well so doesn't collapse again — finish reading book — follow up rudimentary irrigation system proposed in chapter six — water plants LOTS — prune ALL bushes to waist level — compost clippings for veg garden — shore up old woks for steaming leaves — chop more bamboo to weave into rolling pans — chop more firewood, can't subsist on water, air, and hypothetical vegetables —
And so forth. The Classic of Tea is Aang's constant companion in the fields, along with the voice that once gave it life, and gives him life now.
Love the enthusiasm, it remarks. But Zuodu wasn't built in a day; neither will these fields return to fertile pliancy as quickly as you might wish. They've stood barren for so long.
"Yes, but the sooner I get things started, the sooner they'll have an inkling of returning," Aang follows logically, elbow-deep in clippings from the tea bushes. It's dusk, nearly dark out with no moon in the sky, but he finds his way between the rows of plants with his feet. There's no sense in bringing a candle or a torch out to light his way; too much risk of burning down everything he's worked for already.
The months pass in this unsustainable cycle. Aang rises before dawn to tend to the plants, not satisfied until the entire place is misted over in dewdrops. Occasional trips into town for food and other necessities punctuate his otherwise single-minded devotion to the tea, but even these become less frequent as the weather changes. The long-neglected fields take shape under Aang's prudent hand, and slowly, the verdure of lush tea fills the hillside. The tender green leaves won't be ready in time for spring's first flush, before Qingming Festival, but they should reach maturity by late spring, when the season just starts to turn torrid.[3]
The distribution of work on a tea farm is an inverted mountain. Preparing the fields in the beginning, then a long, idle slump while waiting for the leaf buds to mature, watering them all the while. And finally, the busywork of harvest, which can be spread out across three to four cycles over the summer and early autumn, followed by the dormancy of winter.
He is approaching the waiting period now, and soon, the work of the fields will no longer occupy his time, leaving him to the maw of his grief once more. Zuko knows this from experience, having been in the same position long ago as he struggled to reconcile his innumerable sorrows: losing Uncle Iroh, being scarred in his Agni Kai, banished from his home, and left to anonymity far away. Their coping methods are not meant to stand in for true acceptance and resolution of their grief. Nonetheless, Aang labors nonstop throughout the lengthening days and all too often the whole night through as well. Helpless to stop him, Zuko accompanies him, watching over his activities with growing fondness.
Aang spends one evening on a little gazebo he's constructed for himself amid a clearing in the fields, open to the air and pleasingly shady. He revisits The Classic of Tea at length for the proper manner of harvesting and preparing tea. According to the instructions, he should pluck only stalks with undamaged leaves: two leaves and a bud per stalk. The leaves should be set out in the sun on rolling pans, which he's made using thin bamboo strips interwoven to form flat, round wicker baskets, the leaves spread out as much as possible across their wide circumference to facilitate their drying. They should then be roasted in the large wok outside the cottage and rolled by hand in the baskets to crush them and release their leafy substance.
"'The bridge to success requires pressure, as this author knows from experience,'" Aang reads from the manuscript.[4] "What a nonchalant way of saying, 'My father burned and humiliated me, then banished me to the farthest reaches of the land so that I could alight on the bridge to success in tea making.'"
Reading through The Classic of Tea and stumbling upon such witticisms makes him feel oddly closer to Zuko. Sometimes it even seems to embolden the voice and bring it close at hand.
More like a trial by fire, in hindsight, it remarks drily. But it's unprofessional to disclose too much personal business in a manuscript intended for publication.
Aang is soberingly reminded of the success that was decidedly not achieved by Zuko here, as well as the failure that he himself is doomed to undergo, the last wavering remnant of his people. Even now, the candle of his spirit flickers, buffeted endlessly by the crushing gales of his ruined destiny.
"You know, I can't even firebend." He sets the scroll aside, feeling nauseated all of a sudden. "I'm not much of an Avatar."
One day you will learn. I know you will.
"How?" he demands. "How do you suppose I find someone who will believe that I'm just a late-blooming firebender and teach me, no questions asked?"
You will find a way, the voice soothes. It is your destiny.
He watches Aang's flame wavering, if it could be called watching, this disembodied sensation of the energy around him. Watching does not exist without sight; at best, he can gravitate towards the pull of Aang's spirit, lambent and welcoming, and feel the world grow a little warmer and closer. But he now senses the edges of that radiant spirit crumbling, like a candle melted through and through. His immaterial heart aches for Aang's.
He does not know the metaphysics of it; he knows only that within the tea bushes that Aang has so lovingly rescued from the brink of death is stored the essence of their original cultivator—Zuko himself. As long as that energy remains, Aang shall have succor from his weariness.
You will find a way, he repeats, infusing the words this time with a little energy that he musters from the soil and the water and the plants, the only material existence he now knows. He's done it a few times without Aang noticing, too heartbroken by the airbender's cruel burdens to stand by and do nothing.
The tiny finger of Aang's flame flutters and redoubles its radiance, but that momentary joy quickly sours. "Don't," Aang says sharply. "Whatever you're doing, stop."
Why? Why won't Aang accept his help?
"I tend to sleep without dreaming if I'm exhausted," Aang admits, a quiet shame creeping into his voice. "Why do you think I put my nose to the grind like this every day? —To forget the past at night. Plus, the more energy you put into me, the less you shine. Your voice starts to fade, and I don't want to lose the only friend I have here."
Zuko can think of nothing to say to that.
"I like your voice," Aang confesses.
Silence. Well, that didn't have the intended effect—quite the opposite. Zuko's been rather tightlipped since last night. Maybe he was offended by Aang's refusal to accept what little energy he could spare. He wonders if Zuko's ever tried to do that for anyone else, whether other people can even hear him.
"Your voice is like… an endless sea of serenity," he elaborates haltingly. "If I listen to you, I can believe that everything's going to be alright. I remember listening to the monks leading meditation sessions when I was a child. Their voices were like the unflappable face of the mountain: unchangeable but perfect in themselves."
A lone breeze tickles Aang's scalp as he bends over a tea plant that's got an inkling of letting leaf rot spoil its glorious foliage, how dare.
Mountains can be moved, though: tunneled through or eroded by wind and rain. Nothing is immutable, least of all a voice in the wind.
Aang lies down, long accustomed as an Air Nomad to making do with the nearest flat surface as a bed. The fields welcome him, the empty spaces between rows lined with hay to prevent weeds from putting down roots. "I know," he tells Zuko tiredly. "Everything's changed. But the more I stay out here, the clearer I can hear your voice and feel your presence. I don't want that to change."
"Is there some kind of tea ceremony I should observe?" Aang wonders halfway through harvesting the third row of tea bushes. "I don't even have a decent tea set or a proper infuser or anything."
To be honest with you, the best tea tastes delicious whether it comes in a porcelain pot or a tin cup. Don't worry about ceremony.[5]
"But I want to do it properly," he protests. "If there are rites and ceremonies to be performed, I want to preserve them for…" For whom? He asks himself in vain. Who under the reign of Fire Lord Ozai is going to care about tea ceremonies and all their pomp and circumstance, as detailed by his disgraced, dead son?
"I just don't want another cultural tradition extinguished," he says, a whisper barely audible to his own ears. Zuko listens to his soul, though; sound is merely an artifact. Not when I've let all the traditions of my own people die with them, remains unspoken on the back of his tongue.
I understand. But the purpose of making tea is for your own enjoyment, Zuko says without judgment. Much has been lost these past years, but your passion and devotion has rekindled a new flame. You need not shine too bright.
The day is bright and sunny, and Aang does not feel like waiting any longer. He begins the process of preparing the leaves by shaking them out to lie in a single layer on the bamboo-woven round pans constructed for this purpose. The sun dries them expediently; he has only harvested about a quarter of the mature tea leaves so far.
"You will tell me if I'm doing something egregiously wrong?" he asks of the heavy, humid air.
Longjing is not the nectar of the gods, the voice reproves gently. As long as you follow the instructions to the best of your ability, you should be able to produce something drinkable. Don't worry so much about getting it right on the first try.
"That's not what I was asking."
Sometimes, Aang wonders if he's only this flippant and familiar with the voice because he's not entirely certain that it's real. He could be insane. People have lost their minds over much less than the purging of their entire race from the face of the earth and the heavenly expanse. Imaginary friends have their uses; imaginary strangers, much less so.
As the tea leaves sun themselves, he debates between harvesting more and focusing himself on other tasks. He decides to leave the rest of the rows for another day; after all, the sun is on its way to bed. He settles himself down in the wooded gazebo and fidgets with the weave of a basket that's starting to see wear.
"What do you miss most about being alive?"
He can almost feel the uncertain, musing quality of pondering encircle him, the voice's presence strongest here in the middle of the fields. He wonders what will follow, whether it's a product of a true departed soul bound to this place, or just the imaginations of his lonely mind. What's so great about being alive? Certainly not much, at present.
I'll get back to you on that, the voice says noncommittally.
Amazing. Even Aang's own imagination can't fabricate a good reason to live. Fortunately, there's the automaticity of existence—day in, day out, lifeless though not pulseless.
That evening, he pan-fires the leaves in a large, heavy wok that's built into a stone dais outside the house, with a recessed tray below the wok's belly to house fuel for the fire. He lights it and gets to work, pushing the leaves around the smooth sides of the wok as sweat rolls down his temples.
Try to not only roll them around, but also press down on them with your stirrer to crush them a little, the voice advises. A tea master would usually prepare the wok with some essential oils to roast the leaves, but since we don't have any, you'll have to make do with the leaves' own fragrance.
"What happened to not worrying about getting it right on the first try?" Aang retorts in recalcitrance. He starts to roll them around more vigorously as advised.
Well, I just mean, I just mean for you to… to, well, to succeed. The voice falters, the first hint of a nervous stammer that Aang's heard from it. This means a lot to me.
Aang listens to the meaning between those halting words and binds it to his heart with quiet devotion. He won't let Zuko down.
The next morning, he sets the leaves out to dry in the sun one final time and makes his way down to Zuodu with some purchases in mind. Zuko said that good tea tastes good even in a tin can, but the thing is, Aang can't even find a tin can in the house. There are a few wooden bowls left in the house, but if he ever owned any finer dining ware, it's long gone.
I didn't leave a will or anything. There wasn't time; it all happened so quickly, Zuko remarks, seemingly unperturbed when Aang brings up the absence of his personal effects. Some of the townspeople came by a few days afterwards, but I don't know if they were the ones to help themselves to any final bequests, or if it was thieves or travelers. The only thing of value in the house was The Classic of Tea. You're my heir, in that sense.
In town, Aang buys two clay tea bowls and a small teapot with the meager rewards he's earned from peddling firewood around town. Each shallow red bowl fits perfectly into his palm. The teapot has a length of twine wrapped around its handle to insulate his hand when he picks it up. The wares are porous but smooth, with a faint lustrous sheen gracing their curves. They're not fancy, but they'll do the job.
His errand done, he goes to the school to seek out Onji.
"Aang!" she greets him as he finds her in the main classroom. She's sweeping between the desks with a broom. "I haven't seen you in a while. I'll be with you in just a moment; the students usually clean up after themselves, but I still have to make sure they haven't missed anything. Cleanliness is next to godliness, so they say."
"I'll help you with that," he offers. She relinquishes the broom gratefully, and it strikes Aang that wrangling dozens of unruly children by herself every day must be exhausting.
"Godliness?" he inquires, not expecting much by way of an answer. It's just a saying, after all. The militaristic nature of the Fire Nation doesn't seem to have much patience for spirituality or any sort of worship, as much as he's managed to gather, that is.
Onji nods at the wall behind him. He turns to face an enormous portrait of a narrow-faced man with a pointed chin and beard, a flame-shaped crown set in his topknot. He doesn't look to be past the summer of his lifespan, perhaps in his fourth decade, but his eyes pierce Aang through wintry monochrome, cold as death.
At his puzzled glance, Onji sighs. "Fire Lord Ozai, Aang. The Son of Heaven, our sovereign. It wouldn't do to set a bad example by allowing to place to gather dust before his image."
Hm. "I see." Then, "How is your father? You'd mentioned a couple weeks ago that he'd been ill."
"He's well enough now. His mind is still confused sometimes; he'll ask me where my husband is when he knows very well that I've not yet married." She laughs a little self-consciously, but it sounds almost forced to Aang. "Seems like he's just projecting his wishes aloud. But don't let me rain on your spirits; old men's minds will wander. It's nothing—did you have anything specific in mind for us today?"
It takes a moment for him to register that she means, "Where shall we go on our date today?" But unfortunately, two hearts that do not align may not tread the same path. He's here for something entirely different.
"Do you… that is, would you happen to know what Fire Lord Ozai's son, Zuko, looked like?" He clenches his teacups more tightly, nervously.
She looks at him a bit oddly. "No, in fact; we only get portraits of the current Fire Lord for the classroom. But I can tell you more about him, if you're interested."
"I'd like that." He nods vigorously.
"Well, we're certainly not going to stand around talking!" she declares, and the odd frown is gone, replaced by a familiar disarming enthusiasm. She snatches the broom out of Aang's idle hands. "I've been meaning to try something from the little dumpling stand that just opened at the end of the street; won't you come with me?"
Drat, another date. But if she can tell me more about Zuko… all right, then.
Evening has descended by the time he extracts himself from Onji and returns to the house. With a mounting sense of—of what? Doom? Certainly something more benign but no less stomach-turning—he bags up the leaves, their lush blades now flat and darkened. They are ready.
He doesn't know what Zuko looks like, but he thinks he understands a little better now, between Onji and his own tea field fever dreams-become-reality, what sort of a person he was. The passions that drove him, the battles that broke him, the father that fated him to die here, forgotten and alone. What he enjoyed about being alive.
All this and more are the details baked into the leaves by sunlight and fire, infused by the sparkling spring water. But Aang still does not know everything about Zuko, and so he does not know what to expect when the tea is poured.
Inside, he fills the teapot with water and places it over a tripod brazier, lighting the fire with spark rocks. The water is clear and fresh, drawn from the hidden Dragon Well upfield. From beside his bed, he drags a short stool and low side table, on which he places the shallow clay bowl. Into its broad curve, he sprinkles a few pinches of tea leaves. Their dry, rigid blades tinkle as they fall onto the smooth surface, like tiny, muted bells. The water boils beside him, bubbles disturbing the lid and flicking off tiny droplets that hiss as they plop onto the hot coals and sizzle into steam. The moment is electric, his ears primed to the minutest of sounds, his hair tufted and feeling like it's standing on end (he has grown it out enough for that to be feasible).
He lifts the teapot. The presence of the innocent dead is so thick in the air that his hand trembles with the scant weight of the clay, borne down by the intense energy above it. Despite his trepidation, as he pours the water into his bowl, the stream is constant and undisturbed by splashes. The tea leaves swirl in the eddy formed by the waterfall, frantic but also peaceful, finite and limited by the bowl's rounded rim.
Aang watches, breath sustained as the tea burbles and the water turns pale yellow-green with the substance of the leaves. Before they have even an inkling of settling down to the bottom of the bowl, a lone tendril of steam rises up from the surface. The water is as turbulent as the blood pumping through his heart now, but the steam is as steady and unbroken as the breath he exhales in anticipation. The air from his lungs seems to combine with the steam, encouraging it to wax and rise still higher, darker and thicker than any ordinary vapor, far more of it than warranted by one small bowl of tea. Aang dares not look away as the steam writhes and twists, finally coalescing into the ethereal but unmistakable form of a man.
"Zuko." A prayer, a blessing, a plea, all wrapped into one ragged whisper, uttered as if to a lover.
"Zuko."
1: The Qiantang River flows through Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province.
2: Longjing (which mean's Dragon's well) is one of the most highly prized Chinese teas, and originates from Hangzhou, the site of the eponymous dragon's well.
3: Qingming Festival is a day for spending with family, venerating ancestors, and sweeping graves; it takes place around April 4th. Tea plucked before Qingming Festival are called Mingqian tea, and the leaves are especially precious and tender.
4: "The bridge to success requires pressure": this is an inside joke with myself and anyone who watches TwoSetViolin. It sounds like something wise Uncle Iroh would say, but it's actually a pun made by the inimitable Eddy Chen in the context of making some very creative (and sacrilegious) modifications to a violin bridge.
5: As said by Uncle Iroh in "Avatar Day".