Chapter 19
Altan watches Temurin's outline through the filmy filter of the paper walls as the older man tugs on his boots and heads off. A silence falls. Without Temurin to argue with, Altan is left miserably alone with his thoughts. Out here in the country, the quiet is punctuated only when Jirou flips a page of the thick medical text he's reading. Altan glances at the gazette on the table: Bahasa Under Siege! He's already read the article twice with the desperate hunger of a guilty man, searching each line for clues about Nekana's fate, all the while knowing that he could have easily kept an eye on her by staying. Coward.
A gust of early winter wind blows through the open door. The paper walls rattle slightly, and the gazette flutters to the edge of the table. Annoyed, Altan slams his fist down on the newsletter before it can fly off. The wood-and-paper style of Temurin's family home baffles him; where he grew up, the dust storms would have blown this entire structure to the ground. Altan would take the solid, thick cloth of his childhood tents over these Fire Nation-style homes any day. Another breeze sweeps through, and the gazette flaps weakly under Altan's palm. This place is ridiculous. He wonders if Nekana grew up in a house like this. He wonders if she's alive.
"I'm going to go chop us some firewood," Altan says, rising suddenly. He shoves the newsletter into his coat pocket.
"Okay," Jirou says absently, squinting at a diagram in his book. The boy shivers, but says nothing else as Altan slips on his shoes and slides the door shut.
Temurin's house is only ten minute's walk away from Qima's main street, where a small cluster of shops huddle around the dirt road. But instead of heading into town, Altan walks east, farther out from the settlement. Every few hundred meters, he passes another house like Temurin's, built in the Fire Nation style: peaked roof, wood-and-paper walls resting on a wooden platform, surrounded by clotheslines and a small garden plot. The homes are tucked into the countryside, some perched on top of hills or half-hidden behind copses of trees. Outside one home, a small girl shrieks in delight as her small lizard-dog bounds up and licks her face. In an empty field, a young boy moves deliberately through what seems to be improvised firebending stances. In a way, rural Qima is beautiful. But the peaked roofs—the paper walls—none of it should be here. It's Fire Nation.
Still, the forest is spectacular. Tall oaks spread their branches wide over the smaller bushes and scraggly trees on the forest floor, and Altan can't help but marvel. New Azulon, where he's spent the past eight years, is mostly a plains city with sparse trees. And before that, when he camped with his mother and clan on the edge of the Si Wong desert, wood was a luxury.
Water was a luxury too. But the deep and slow-moving river that runs alongside this part of the road surely provides enough water for everyone in Qima. Altan treads carefully across the slimy logs to cross the river; on the other side, he finds himself surrounded by a wild evergreen forest. Water and wood in abundance. No wonder the Fire Nation doesn't want to return Qima to the Earth Kingdom.
Altan hefts the axe in his hand. Given his childhood in a treeless desert, he's actually the last person who should be cutting firewood. But he learned early on that in order to survive, he has to be amiable. Useful. And how hard can chopping down a tree be? Standing in front of a smallish pine, Altan grasps the wooden handle of his axe and swings. Thud. The impact shudders up the length of Altan's arm, in a way that hurts but not entirely unpleasantly. He wrenches the axe out and tries again. Thud. Altan slams the blunt metal again and again into the wood, his half-healed hand starting to throb. But no matter.
His elbows go slightly tingly from the repeated effort, and, unbidden, his mind drifts to all those times he tried to bend Earth, but was left only with numb and bleeding hands.
"Try again!" Mother says. "Take a firm stance. Feel the power in your chest, and then let it out. Move the stone!"
Altan breathes in, settles his weight down into his heels. Then punches with all his might at the stone. He overshoots, and instead of moving the rock, he feels a sharp pain as his knuckles meet unyielding sandstone.
"He's not a bender, Xi Ching," says an elder passing by. The older woman tugs her cloth veil off her face with a sun-wrinkled hand, and places her hand on Altan's back. He sniffs, trying not to cry.
"How can my son not be a sandbender?" Mother snaps. "It's our way!"
"Your way, perhaps," says the elder. "But I suspect Altan will have to find a different way."
Shouts break out from a few tents over.
"They're here-from the outpost-where's Xi Ching?" someone shouts. Wordlessly, Altan's mother rises and leaves, her cloth boots sending up puffs of sand.
"Who's here?" Altan asks, his hand still smarting.
"The Royal Army from Ba Sing Se," the elder says. "You see, Altan, your mother is very special..."
With a crack, the slender tree trunk sways, connected to the bottom stump by a sliver of wood. Tentatively, Altan kicks the upper tree trunk, hoping to topple the tree. Nothing. Fall, damn it. He kicks again. He might not be a powerful sandbender or Earth Kingdom general like his mother, but surely he can cut down a stupid, lifeless, piece of wood—
The tree falls, slowly and inexorably. Straight towards Altan. Shit.Throwing himself to the side, he lands heavily on a pile of dry, dead leaves. The tree misses him, instead crashing loudly across the dirt road. Altan knows he should get up, cut off the branches. But instead he stays on his back, panting. Dust and tiny leaf particles settle around him like the aftermath of a sandstorm, and the sky shines pale and blue through the holes in the forest canopy. What am I doing here?
Altan covers his face with the eye of his elbow and lets himself sink into the dirt. He had resolved to move to Bahasa or Ba Sing Se, somewhere, and make something of himself. But after meeting Nekana, his resolve to journey to stay in Bahasa had been shaken. Career and country had fallen away under the soft pressure of Nekana's lips, the fierce glare of her eyes. So why, why did I leave her? Eyes still closed, Altan presses a fist to his forehead. At least this time he did the leaving. For several long moments, Altan just lays there, postponing the time where he has to do anything. Leaves crunch in the distance, and an owl hoots. And then-
"Darling, don't tell me I walked all this way to find you dead."
Altan's eyes fly open. It's impossible. But there she is, standing smugly over him, tired and red-nosed but very much alive.
"Nekana—" He sits up, and then, without thinking about it, grabs Nekana's hand and pulls her down to him. With a huff of surprise, she crashes onto his chest, and the dust rises from the leaves again. Nekana coughs.
"What—"
Altan wraps both arms solidly around her, right hand tangling in Nekana's uncombed hair. Her face presses into the side of his neck.
"You came back," he says. Nekana places a hand on the ground and pushes herself up, settling herself more comfortably on his chest. Her eyelids are rimmed with red, and there are blue half-moons under her golden eyes. She brushes back his hair with a dirt-stained fingers, thumb trailing down the side of his face.
"I promised I would come back," she says. And then her mouth is on his, her hand on his hip, and she tastes both bitter and sweet. He tries to breathe her in, absorb every part of her. But as he inhales he's overwhelmed by the same bitter scent that coats her tongue, laced with a sickly sweetness. He pulls away. It can't be.
"Nekana. Did you…have you been smoking yapian?"
Her bottom lip protruding in an uncharacteristically childish way. "Who cares," she pouts. Her lips move to meet his collarbone as one hand slips under his coat.
"No, really," Altan moves to the side and props himself up on an elbow. "Nekana, why have you been smoking yapian? What to you happened in Bahasa? How did you get out?" She doesn't answer, but slides off him to the forest floor.
"I know what yapian smells like," Altan persists. "So why don't you—"
"Enough," snaps Nekana. "You're not my father." She stumbles unsteadily to her feet, and then, whipping her head around like someone has called her name, she stares into the dense underbrush on her left. "And that's enough from you, too," she spits.
Altan's stomach turns to icy lead. "Who are you talking to?" he demands. The sun has started to set, and Nekana casts a long, dark shadow. He shivers without knowing why.
Nekana slowly turns to meet Altan's eyes, face dead and blank. "Don't tell Temurin," she says. "Think what you will, but don't tell Temurin."
And with that, she heads back to the main road, leaving Altan alone in the woods.
At the sound of the bell, children pour out of Qima's lone schoolhouse. Temurin stands off to the side from the other parents, uncomfortably aware of their whispers and pointed stares. By the Spirits, I'm not the first man to get divorced, Temurin thinks bitterly. But he may be the first to get betrayed so publicly. He works hard to keep his lip from curling. This place brings back all his rotten memories, scenes piled up on one another like slops for rooster-pigs. Temurin only hopes the whispers haven't reached Haojun.
His daughter steps out of the schoolhouse last, her dark braids pinned neatly into buns on either side of her head. She clutches a slender exercise book and a leather satchel Temurin once brought back from a trip to Yu Dao. This is his third day picking her up, but her small face remains drawn and pinched when she spots him. Temurin waves. Haojun rewards him with a slight twitch of her lips that could approximate a smile.
"Hi Haojun," Temurin says, kneeling as she approaches. "How was your day?"
"I'm cold," she says. He takes her hands and covers them with his own. Her fingers are thin and delicate.
"Then let's get you home," he says. "I'll light a fire, and we can finish the book we started yesterday."
Haojun nods neutrally, and Temurin's heart constricts. But at least she isn't pulling away from him. But then Haojun's face lights up. She pulls her hands out of Temurin's grasp and runs past him.
"Mama!"
Temurin's breath catches. It's a double punch to the gut. For a moment that seems to last forever and not long enough, he stares dead ahead. Spirits help me.
