Chapter 23
After the most uncomfortable dinner of his life, Temurin needs a drink. But he has something more important to do first.
"Sleep well," he says to Haojun as he bundles her into her blankets. He kisses her cheek. There are only two rooms besides the main room and the kitchen, and Haojun and his mother are sleeping in the bigger one. The straw woven floor is hard but springy, with cotton bedrolls that can be rolled up and put to the side during the daytime. Haojun is wrapped in her small green blankets, only the tip of her nose peeking out.
"I drew a maze today," she says, voice muffled. "Want to see?"
"I—okay. But then you need to go to sleep." Temurin reaches over to Haojun's small satchel, looking for the drawing. He draws out a small piece of rough paper that is completely covered in a twisting black maze. The charcoal is smudged, but Haojun doesn't seem to care. She crawls over so she can place one finger on the map.
"You start here," she says. "And you have to find your way to the star."
Temurin tries to complete the maze with his finger, but it's actually very hard. Where did she learn this? When he finally reaches the star, he glows with real satisfaction.
"I got, it Haojun!" he says.
"This one is easy, I think," his daughter says. "How about…"
"No," Temurin says firmly. "It's time for bed. But I love your mazes, Haojun. They are really incredible."
"Life is a maze," Haojun says as she wriggles into her blankets.
"What!" Temurin laughs. Does she even know what she's saying? "Why is it like a maze, Haojun?"
"My fingers got black," she says sadly. She wipes them off on her blanket, leaving charcoal stains.
"It's okay," Temurin says. "We can wash them in the morning." He hesitates. "Did you like having Mama over for dinner?"
Haojun nods. "When will she live here again?" she asks.
"Oh honey," Temurin says. He had told her before he left for Taiyang, but she must not have believed him. "Mama isn't going to live here anymore. She—she has a new house now." Haojun's face falls, and he adds hastily "But she can visit here. And you can visit her new house in town." Jinlian and I should have had this conversation with her together. Six months ago.
"We aren't going to be husband and wife anymore," he continues. "And I'm so, so sorry." Haojun looks more confused than anything.
"But we will always love you, and we will always be your parents."
Rain patters on the roof, and in the silence Temurin can hear every drop. How to explain this to a child? Where is the solution to Haojun's maze?
"Are you sad, Ba?"
"I'm very sad, Haojun."
He holds her hand until she falls asleep.
Out in the main room, Jirou and Altan are whispering in a corner about something, but Temurin is too tired to care. He heads to the kitchen, where he finds Nekana and his mother already drinking. Wordlessly, Ma pours him a full cup of strong rice wine.
"What do you have to drink about?" he asks Nekana. She raises her cup to him.
"As your mother and I were just discussing, I'm very far from home."
Jinlian snaps her fingers, and Temurin is trapped in a room of fire. The walls are flames, roaring higher and higher, and Temurin scrambles away from their brilliant heat. The fire pops. Sparks burst in a shower of golden fireworks, and red-gold embers land on Temurin's pants. He brushes them off, swearing. The heat is unbearable. He has to get out. Jinlian must have left a way out. But the fire is merely swirling tighter and tighter around him, and soon he'll be devoured—
The flames part for a slender figure. Nekana. Temurin blinks the water out of his eyes and reaches out for her.
"Nekana, thank the spirits, you can…" his voice trails off. Nekana is wearing her Fire Nation clothes again, and something in her posture is different. Her head is high, her gaze haughty. And then she laughs.
"Nekana," Temurin says weakly again, falling to his knees. But Nekana is monstrous now, she's controlling the flames, her chest heaves as she breathes fire. Wordlessly, she stalks towards him, lifting her hands so the fire rises.
"Nekana, what are you—" Temurin says, standing and backing away. "Nekana, it's me!" But he's blocked by the rippling wall of flame behind him.
Nekana's hands are on fire, her golden eyes glitter with reflected flames. She stops before him and looks up into his face. Temurin can't speak, her eyes are so hungry and her lips are so red.
"Temurin," she murmurs. Palms still smoking, she strokes his face with her left hand, her right arm snaking around his waist. "Temurin, don't be scared."
He's burning. Wherever she touches him, he can feel his skin melting, the flesh blackening, and he wants to scream but he can't, Nekana has him pinned like a bug against a card. She brushes her full red lips against his collarbone, and the softness of her skin is quickly followed by a searing pain. She kisses up his neck, to the place behind his ear, still whispering his name, and Temurin finds that even though she's burning him alive he's holding her tighter. His head throbs with a crimson headache. Because Nekana's body is muscular and soft and how long has he wanted to touch her like this? All his thoughts have been cleared away, and all that's left is Nekana, and pain, and ecstasy.
"Nekana," he sighs. She's going to kill him, but he doesn't care. Her hair is long and loose, and she looks up at him with half-lidded eyes. She'll burn him and eat him, but before she does…she pulls his head down, scorching the skin of his neck, and her lips meet his. Temurin's eyes close. Her lips are cruel, her tongue is taunting, and her hands, her hands are still everywhere, narrowing the world to pain and her touch. He can feel her fingernails piercing his skin, ready to tear him apart. And even as everything fades into blackness, even as he's dying, Temurin still clutches Nekana to him as if they could melt together in this fiery hell she's created. Finally, finally….
Temurin wakes with a start, panting. The rain has stopped, and next to him Jirou and Altan sleep peacefully. Even though the night air outside his blankets is frigid, Temurin is covered in sweat. He presses his hands to his face. What is wrong with him? He tries to regulate his breathing, but his heart is still pounding fiercely. There is no way he is falling back asleep.
It's fine, he tells himself, slipping out from the thick blankets on the floor. It was a hard day. You're just tense. Temurin strips off his sweat-soaked shirt, throwing it into the twisted mess of his sheets, and prowls into the main room. He steps into his boots and slips out the front door, rolling his shoulders, trying to work out all the energy that seems trapped inside him. It's natural that he's wound up and anxious after moving back to Qima. After dealing with the stress and pain of Jinlian again. And after spending so much time with a woman who is both intimidating and painfully beautiful…no.
Temurin kicks a pebble, and it bounces across the grassy plain. What a twisted thing to conjure up. Nekana's far too young and she's with Altan; his stress and loneliness have clearly just run away with him. He closes his eyes, but that won't do, because when he does he sees Nekana, reaching up to kiss him even as she burns him alive…
"Temurin?"
For a second, Temurin imagines it's Nekana, here to make his dream a reality…but the voice is young and cracked. Jirou approaches him, his thin face confused. He's wrapped in a fur blanket. "Why are you up? And aren't you cold?"
The boy's concern cuts through Temurin's aching blush. "I'm fine, Jirou," he says, putting his hand on his nephew's shoulder. He breathes deeply. "I just…had a nightmare." Jirou nods hesitantly.
"Well…you should come back," he says. "We're making house visits tomorrow, right?"
Temurin glances up at the stars. In the cool of the night, and with Jirou here, the details of his dream are slipping away. It was just the result of an overactive imagination. Nothing more. He smiles weakly at his nephew, and follows Jirou back inside. But when he passes the room where Nekana is sleeping, he flushes, his neck turning as scarlet as it was in the dream, where Nekana blistered his skin with her mouth.
