Chapter 17

As the girl scrambled for a cloth to mop up the spill, she felt like a beetle ant skittering across the floor to avoid the feet trying to trample her. Her world was filled with people who would stomp on her, crush her, rip away the things she held dear. All she could do was find a place to hide, curl up within herself, trembling and afraid. Helpless.

She heard the boy thank Ling and Yi Tai Tai for their assistance.

"By the way, what's your name?" Ling asked him. "I have the feeling I've seen you around before."

The girl froze. She slowly turned her head to peer over her shoulder.

The boy chuckled nervously and ran a hand through his short hair. "I'm Takit. You must have me mixed up with someone else. Our errand boy, probably. He usually handles the laundry, but he's down with a cold this week."

Ling nodded and seemed to accept his answer. "Thank you for coming to Yi Shan Laundry House," she said brightly as the boy headed for the door. "Please come again!"

After the boy left, the girl repeated his name to herself.

Takit. Takit. Takit.

Over and over she repeated those syllables, sealing the memory of the Dai Li seizing her father with the name of the boy who had framed him.


Aang stared at Katara. From the way his eyes flicked back and forth, she could tell that he was working toward the same conclusion that she had reached just moments before.

"Takit and Sakari," he finally said. "One of them is the waterbender!"

Katara nodded. "That's what I'm thinking, too. But it can't be Takit. The day I saw the waterbender for the first time was the day he arrived in the South Pole. His ship was still docking in the harbor when I caught sight of the waterbender throwing ice daggers."

"Then it's gotta be Sakari."

But Sakari was a timid sparrow wren who shrank back from things that wouldn't make anyone else flinch. Katara had a hard time imagining the girl as the mystery waterbender who practiced throwing ice daggers in secret, let alone trapped her and Aang in the caverns.

"I don't know," Katara said. "Sakari is so mild-mannered and shy. She's a sweet girl. Nervous, but sweet."

Aang tapped a finger against his chin. "I've never met Sakari before today. She did seem really anxious when we were in the snow fields."

Katara shrugged. "That's typical Sakari."

"She seemed scared, too," Aang said with a little frown. "Really scared. I thought she was afraid because we were about to go after the spirit, but…"

Katara waited for him to finish, but he trailed off with his eyebrows furrowed, deep in thought.

"That makes sense," she said when Aang didn't continue. "It doesn't take much to spook Sakari. And she was the one who had the creepy dream about the spirit, so I don't blame her for being scared."

"Hm. Yeah," he grunted. "But if the waterbender isn't Sakari or Takit, who could it be?"

Katara started to picture the villagers who might be likely suspects when she suddenly gasped. "I know why Sakari is so scared."

Aang looked at her with surprise. "You do?"

"She's not the waterbender, but I bet she knows who they are. They must be someone powerful and dangerous." Dread filled the pit of Katara's stomach. She could still feel the hard-packed snow beneath her pounding feet as she ran through a darkened maze of tents several nights ago, fleeing from a pursuer who had mysteriously evaded every one of her ice barriers. "It's Amarak," she said.

But Aang shook his head. "No, it's definitely not Amarak."

The emphatic tone in his answer surprised her. "How do you know?"

"Uh…" He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away, embarrassment coloring his face. "Let's just say it's a feeling I have."

"Okay…"

Did something happen between Aang and Amarak? Katara wondered.

But now was not the time to dig into what might have happened. She could always ask Aang later.

Only there wasn't going to be a later.

Katara tightened her arms around herself, trying to ward off a sudden chill. She didn't want to think about that. She couldn't think about that.

"The waterbender is probably someone else, then," she said, forcing herself to focus on the task at hand. "But why did Sakari and Takit disappear together? And what about the dream Sakari had about the spirit?"

"What if there was never any spirit to begin with?" Aang wondered. "I searched high and low in the spirit world, but I couldn't find any sign of a spirit who would live in the ice caves."

But Katara wasn't entirely convinced. "I don't know, Aang. Our legends talk about shadow spirits that live among the people in the village. They're invisible to the eye, but sometimes you can see their shadows. But if you look too closely, they disappear completely."

"Like the spirit in Sakari's dream."

Katara nodded. "I think she really did have the dream, from the way she talked about it. I don't think she was lying."

Aang stepped back and surveyed the massive wall of ice blocking off the cave entrance. "So a spirit could have created these walls..."

Katara eyed the craters dotting the walls and ceiling of the cave. "Or a waterbender."

He folded his arms across his chest. "Or we could be dealing with both. Just because a waterbender has been here doesn't rule out a spirit."

The two of them were trapped deep below the surface in a maze of caves, surrounded by nothing but darkness and cold. Only the fragile barrier of airbending and fire separated them from an icy death, as they had come too close to discovering the previous day. And now their friends had disappeared, and they were facing a spirit or a waterbender who lurked in the shadows.

Even though Katara was standing within the halo of Aang's warmth, a shiver went through her body. "I don't like this, whatever is going on," she said.

Aang cocked his head to the side. "And I can't figure out what any of this has to do with Takit or Sakari."

When her gaze snapped up to meet his, she knew they shared the same thought. "They're in danger!" they both exclaimed.

There was no time to waste. She and Aang planted their hands on the barrier of ice, his bare hands next to her own mittened ones. The wall burst apart, shards and fragments of ice exploding into the tunnel on the other side. They picked their way through the debris and dashed up the tunnel, which ended in another ice wall that hadn't been there before. After they shattered this one, they charged into the cavern beyond.

The cavern was empty. No one was there. Another barricade blocked the tunnel leading out of the cave.

Aang leaped forward, almost bounding across the icy floor, the lift of airbending gracing his every step. Katara tried to follow, but her feet dragged behind her.

While she and Aang were talking in the cavern they had just left, she stood close enough to him that the heated air around his body had warmed her up. But now that they had separated, the frigid cold wrapped around her and crept deep inside her bones.

Up ahead, Aang came to a halt. He had noticed Katara falling behind. As she limped to catch up to him, the pain of the cold needling her feet, he jogged back to meet her.

He skidded to a stop so close to her that the air traveling with him wafted by, stirring the fur trim of her parka. "Are you all right?" he asked.

Katara hugged her arms around herself and stamped her feet on the ground. "I can barely feel my toes anymore."

Aang stepped closer, as if sensing what she needed without her having to ask. As warm air enveloped her, she understood that he wasn't trying to recreate the intimacy that had laced the moments between them earlier. She was cold, and he was simply warming her up.

Katara loosened her arms, letting the heated air filter in through the weave of his carmine cloak around her shoulders and the seams of her parka. She glanced up and flashed him a grateful smile. "Thanks, Aang."

The flame in his hand—which he held with arm outstretched, off to the side—cast his gray eyes in an orange, flickering glow. "We need to get you back to the surface," he said.

She shook her head. "But Takit and Sakari are in danger. And…" As she gazed up at Aang, her eyes traced the arrow on his forehead to where it curved over his crown and out of sight. She followed the path that she'd memorized down the back of his neck, then between his shoulder blades to the rupture where she had almost lost him three years ago. "…you could use someone to watch your back."

Aang sighed. "You can't watch my back if you're so cold that you can't even walk."

He had a point. Ice and snow were her element in more ways than one. They were her home, too. She knew the dangers of prolonged cold exposure—and her own limits.

But she couldn't leave Aang. She had argued with him earlier because she wanted to stay in the caves to help him find the spirit. She didn't want to be the reason why he cut his mission short. The spirit was an important discovery. She knew how vital it was for the Avatar to cultivate relationships between the spirit world and the human world. And for all his boyish antics, she knew that Aang took that responsibility seriously.

Now that this was more than a spirit mystery, though, with a potentially hostile waterbender involved, the idea of leaving Aang to face them alone made her even more uneasy. She knew that he was capable of handling himself in any situation. He was a fully realized Avatar, after all. Trusting him to return after a battle or a mission was something that his fateful confrontation with Ozai had taught her to do.

But then she had discovered that his attachment to her could weaken him.

But he had let go of his attachment to her already. He had let go of her today. Not four months ago, as she had previously believed. Katara still reeled from the shock of seeing her ribbon in his hand, unburned and whole. The sight of that strand of cloth, looped innocently around his fingers, had stolen her breath and torn her heart open for a second time. She never dreamed she would have to relive the pain of witnessing Aang sever his attachment to her—again. But she had. And she was so shattered that it took everything she had to keep the broken pieces locked within her chest as she struggled to remain whole.

Her mind scrabbled with questions about that night in Ba Sing Se, when she had glimpsed him lowering a strip of cloth into the fire in his hand. The event that was the catalyst for her to break up with him and let him go.

But what really happened on that night didn't matter. Just like it didn't matter that Aang had draped his cloak around her shoulders only moments ago, as if he still felt something for her. Or that he'd almost said I care about you as he surrounded her with his hands, only to crush her when he took his words back. None of that mattered. Because earlier today, he had finally laid their bond to rest—just as she herself had done the day before, when she committed herself to serve the Southern Water Tribe for the rest of her life.

What did matter, though, was the problem in front of them. Takit and Sakari were missing. There was either a waterbender on the loose or a spirit prowling the ice caverns, or both.

Aang might need her help. He may be the Avatar, but she was a waterbender. The ice caves were her terrain. But these weren't the only reasons she wanted to stay by Aang's side.

Katara couldn't put her finger on exactly why, but she had a bad feeling about all of this.

"I don't know, Aang," she said. "We don't know what we're walking into. It doesn't feel right to leave you to deal with it on your own just because I can't handle the cold."

He gave her a long look, his eyes searching her face, as if trying to divine the reason for her stubborn insistence on staying with him.

Then he seemed to reach a decision. "There's only one way to warm you up," he said. He brought his hand—the one cupping the small fire—a little closer, but not too close. "Is this…" The flame in his hand wavered, uncertain. "Is this okay?"

Katara eyed the flame, her heart quickening as the memory of Aang burning her ribbon—no, a piece of cloth—surfaced in her mind. Her hand drifted to the sealskin pouch at her waist. She reminded herself that her black-and-white ribbon was curled up inside, undamaged as it was on the day she had given it to him.

She forced her breathing to slow. Then she nodded her head. "Yeah. This is okay."

Slowly, carefully, Aang brought the fire between them. The flames licked at the space that separated them, filling with light and warmth a place that had previously held only cold, empty air. He divided the fire so that each of his hands now bore its own flame.

As Katara soaked up the heat of the twin flames, the shivering in her chest and the numbness in her limbs began to melt away.

But Aang wasn't finished yet. He inhaled deeply, the flames in his hands shrinking with his inward breath. With his slow, measured exhale, the flames flared up again, larger and higher than before. But more than that, the air he breathed into the space around Katara was so warm that she pushed down her hood and took off her mittens.

Aang repeated this cycle of inhale-exhale until every trace of cold within Katara's body had been chased away. The warmth of his breath filled her to the brim. When she was ready to continue, she donned her mittens and pulled the hood of her parka back over her head.

They continued to make their way through the caverns, destroying the ice walls in their way. Explode the ice, dash down a tunnel, explode some more ice, charge into an empty cave. Search the walls for fist-sized craters as a trail to follow. Then repeat, over and over and over again.

The rhythm of their pounding boots and labored breaths filled her ears. Every step they took without finding their friends was one step closer to losing them to their fate. Whoever or whatever had snatched Sakari and Takit was not going to wait for her and Aang.

And every breath that left Katara's body was one breath less of the heat that kept her alive. The warmth that Aang had filled her with was slowly trickling away.

Down a tunnel, through the ice, into another cave. Many of the caves had more than one entrance and exit, and some of the tunnels branched deeper into the ice than she had ever explored. After they shattered yet another wall, they stumbled into a cavern that was empty, just like the others. Aang held the fire out in front of him, leading the way as they trotted along the wall and searched for craters in the ice and the next barrier to destroy.

But instead of finding another rugged ice barricade, they almost fell into a tunnel that sloped sharply downward.

A tunnel that they had blasted open before.

Aang yelped and jumped back from the edge. Katara barely caught herself from sliding down the steep tunnel floor, her feet slipping among the fragments of ice littering the ground.

"Monkeyfeathers!" Aang exclaimed, huffing from the effort of running. "We've made so many turns that we doubled back on ourselves."

Katara hunched over with her hands on her knees, trying to stay warm—or less cold—and catch her breath. "We'll never find them at this rate," she gasped between breaths. "We've taken too long already. What if they're hurt? What if we're too late?"

They had blasted through so many ice barriers and searched so many caverns that she had lost count. She wasn't even sure where they were anymore, except that they were buried somewhere deep within the ice.

The warren of caverns ran far into the massive ice sheet covering the South Pole. The ice on this stretch of the continent extended far below sea level. Pakku had determined—after nearly half an hour of gauging its depth with his hand flat against the surface—that the ice reached all the way down to the ocean floor.

There was no telling how deep the caverns went, or how far she and Aang could lose themselves beneath the surface.

"The more we run around, the more turned around we get," Aang said. He smacked the cavern wall in frustration. "If only we had a clue about which way they went!"

He trailed his fingers over the glassy surface of the cavern wall before letting his hand drop to his side.

If only we had a clue…

Katara gasped. "Aang, that's it!"

"It is?"

"You were saying that we need a clue about where they went," she said. "You use earthbending to sense vibrations in the ground."

"But there's no earth or rock in these caverns. I've already checked."

"I know. The caverns are made of solid ice." She yanked off her mittens and touched her bare palms to the frozen wall. "But maybe we can use waterbending to feel vibrations…"

"…in the ice," Aang said, finishing her line of thought.

Katara pressed her hands against the wall and closed her eyes. She didn't know what she was looking for, exactly. The ice felt as it always had—cold and hard against her skin. But when she probed deeper, she saw that the ice was not solid and unbroken, but rather full of tiny crevices. She followed the lines and the ridges, the intricate patterns of water frozen into stillness, and she listened.

Then she felt it. A faint tremor. The slightest quiver shimmering through the ice crystals. She held her breath, freezing her own movement. Trying to catch another murmur, the whisper of hope that their search was coming to an end.

There it was again.

The shift of feet beside her told her that Aang had felt it, too.

She opened her eyes to find him with one hand on the ice, staring off into the pitch black that surrounded their small bubble of firelight. But she knew what he was looking at. "That way," he said, pointing in the direction of a tunnel that would lead them even deeper into the network of caverns.

Once again, they hurried from cave to cave, sometimes bursting through ice barriers and sometimes running through tunnels they had cleared before. They laid their hands on the walls of every cavern to read their friends' movements through the ice. Stopping to sense vibrations slowed them down, but knowing which way to go saved them time.

At least, Katara hoped that they were going the right way. And that their friends were the ones making the vibrations and not someone—or something—else.

Her fingers grew stiff from touching cavern wall after cavern wall. She kept her mittens off—the tremors in the ice were already hard enough to feel through her bare hands. The ice numbed her skin and the frozen air burned her lungs. She envied Aang, who moved with his usual grace, completely unaffected by the frigid temperatures of the caves.

They were in one of the caves they'd visited before when the tremors in the ice suddenly grew stronger. Katara exchanged a look with Aang, and they hurried over to the tunnel on the far end of the cave, where the opening was riddled with craters in the ice. The tremors here rattled through her fingers and traveled up her wrist.

They were close.

Touching their hands along the wall, they followed the tremors to the middle of the tunnel. The vibrations were the strongest in the smooth tunnel wall.

Katara stared at the blank section of wall, unwilling to believe that their search ended here. The wall seemed to mock her with frozen ripples that were identical to the walls of every other tunnel. Nothing to see here, it seemed to say.

"A dead end," she said, her voice as dull as the rest of her body. "How can this be? We were following the vibrations." The panic she had pushed aside earlier now began to well up. "What did we do wrong? How did we mess up? Did we miss something?"

Aang was staring at the wall, too, but instead of looking frustrated, he lifted his eyebrows in surprise. "No, we didn't. We're in the right place."

The flame in his hand flared brighter, revealing what darkness and disappointment had kept her from seeing before.

The glassy ripples of the wall were interrupted by a crack that started near the ground, curving upward and over before arching back down. A seam in the ice, as if someone had carved out and removed a chunk of the wall and then decided to put it back.

Suddenly, Katara knew what she was looking at.

"It's a door," Aang said.

Katara nodded. "And I bet Sakari and Takit are on the other side."

Aang released his flame, which hovered as a ball of fire between them. Together, they placed their hands on the door of ice. Katara's palms burned upon touching the frozen surface. The cold stung her skin and numbed the bones of her hands. A shudder from deep within her chest shook its way through her body and out to her fingertips.

Her hands had been exposed to ice and frigid air for too long. She was quickly losing heat from her core. The warmth she had borrowed from Aang and his cloak around her shoulders could only do so much.

Katara hoped she had enough heat left in her body to face what lay on the other side.

Instead of bursting their way through the ice this time, she and Aang leaned into the ice block carved into the tunnel wall. If they could get through undetected, they would have the element of surprise on their side. They heaved against the ice block, which moved smoothly along the floor even without waterbending. Together, they pushed the block like they were jamming a stopper through the neck of a bottle.

When the door of ice finally opened into the space beyond, a soft rush of air leaked out through the gap between the ice block and the wall, along with a familiar voice.

"I told you I grew up in the Middle Ring," Takit was saying. "Why are you asking me all this, anyway? We need to keep our voices down if we don't want to scare the spirit away."

"You're not answering my question," said a second voice.

Sakari. Katara had never heard her sound so insistent before.

But Takit must have spotted the light from Aang's fire through the opening in the wall, because he turned to look straight at her and Aang as they pushed the ice block further into the cave.

"Avatar Aang! Katara!" he said, relief flooding his features. "You found us!"

Now that she and Aang had pushed all the way through the tunnel wall, Katara found herself in a cavern that she had never seen before. Sakari and Takit stood facing each other in the middle of the space, several wary paces apart. The light from Aang's fire and the torches held by the other two Water Tribers revealed the entire cave, whose shape was long and flat, the far end nearly disappearing into darkness. The floor was dotted with long pillars of ice with pointed ends, like inverted icicles growing up from the ground. Some of the ice pillars almost touched the ceiling, which lay low above her head. The entire place gave Katara the uncomfortable feeling of being closed in, as if she had stepped into a sarcophagus.

"We were wondering where the two of you disappeared to," Katara said, trying to keep her tone light and casual. What in the world was going on? The conversation between Takit and Sakari was odd. Takit had said they didn't know each other when they were in Ba Sing Se. Asking about where the other person grew up was run-of-the-mill small talk, but it almost sounded like she was questioning him.

Besides, how did they get inside the cave? One of them must have known about the door and led the other one here. From what Takit was saying, they seemed to be waiting for the spirit. There was nothing strange about that, since the spirit was the reason why they had come to the caves in the first place.

But something was off. Takit and Sakari breaking off from the group without a word and the tension between them. The ice barriers blocking the tunnels and the door carved into the tunnel wall. And now, the two of them waiting for a spirit that still hadn't appeared.

Maybe Aang was right. Maybe there was never any spirit to begin with.

A shiver ran through Katara as the icy cold steadily drained her body of warmth. Aang must have noticed, because he said, "Why don't we wrap up here? We've spent too much time in the caves already. Let's head back before someone gets frostbite."

"That's a great idea!" Takit said, a little too brightly. He started walking toward Aang with a tight bounce in his step. One arm held his torch aloft, while the other swung at his side like a nervous pendulum. "Minister Shi's ship will be taking off soon, and he doesn't seem like the type to wait for stragglers."

If Sakari's behavior was unusual, Takit's entire demeanor was downright suspicious. His evasive attitude toward Sakari. The tension in his walk. His stilted movements, like he wanted to appear nonchalant when he was really trying to hurry.

Aang had raised the possibility that Sakari was the waterbender. But if she was the waterbender, why would she lure Takit into this cave? If she had nefarious intentions, why hadn't she done anything after all this time?

What was more, why was Takit acting like he had something to hide?

Sakari was the one who had dreamed about the spirit and sought out Takit. But she had also seemed nervous and scared. On the other hand, Takit had seemed eager to come to the ice caves with Sakari, Avatar or no Avatar. A little too eager, perhaps.

Something wasn't adding up.

Katara's gaze swept the length of the cavern. The ice pillars cast long clusters of shadows, and the far end of the cave disappeared into darkness. Anything could be lurking in the cave, unseen.

Like a waterbender lying in ambush, waiting for the right moment to strike.

Then the answer shot through Katara like a stab of ice. Or waiting for the right people to show up, she realized.

Aang was the Avatar. Katara was the daughter of the Southern Tribe's chieftain. Since they'd first arrived in the cavern, the air had grown more tense by the minute.

Her eyes darted between Takit and Sakari. Which one of them is it? Which one is working with the waterbender?

She surveyed the shadows that concealed the rest of the cavern, their long, jagged shapes like the teeth of a giant beast. And what do they want with me and Aang?

As Takit made his way toward Aang, Sakari tracked him with cold, suspicious eyes. She was a completely different person from the timid girl that Katara knew.

It's Sakari. It has to be her. She's the one working with the waterbender.

Takit threw a nervous glance back at Sakari and hunched his shoulders.

Or was he glancing at something in the shadows behind her?

Maybe Katara had it all wrong.

Maybe the waterbender isn't working with Sakari, after all.

Takit began to walk faster, clearly intent on getting out of the cave.

Maybe they're working with Takit.


Author's note: The shadow spirits mentioned by Katara are loosely based on the Tariaksuq, which are known as "shadow people" in Inuit mythology.

Next chapter update in one week!

If you liked this chapter, I would love to hear from you in a comment ❤️