4

My mother had told me of the Peng Guang many times. I was a restless child, sleep always troubled, days spent fretting over a bad feeling in the air. The tales of a spirit dispelling evil and returning life to the world calmed my troubled mind. It was only after she passed that I came to believe it just a legend.

A brilliant, iridescent bird whose sun-licked feathers cleared the world of bad energy. Peng Guang was said to have the body of an oriole, but the size of a wolfbat. The bird bent energy, and left spheres of light in her wake. Dark energy purified. My mother had said the spirit would visit traumatized land, or correct spoiled energy after another spirit's rampage. Our village, she said, had been cured by the spirit in the years after that first raid. I'd always tried to picture that bird, shut my eyes as tight as they'd go and dreamed of that bird swooping down to my level and singing to me, lending me its light. But it had only ever been a dream.

Perhaps this was why I stopped believing. Nothing about my village had ever felt healed. Like wrapping gauze over broken ribs. The internal damage never righted.

"Zuko?" I called, hoping that across the veil he might hear me. "Zuko," I repeated, "I'll find a way to you." And then to myself, "there must be a passage somewhere."

The world was littered with natural portals into the Spirit World, openings in the seam. This I had learned from Grandmaster Tao, from my time at the academy. So many years had passed, but I would never shake his teaching. I would never forget my comrades, even if they had forgotten, rejected me.

I leapt over the fallen limbs and broken trunks of the trees, wishing to lay eyes on the bird again. The light, itself emitting a delicate trill, bobbed around me. An orb descended into my chest, and I felt warmth, smelled cedar and roasted corn: home. That energy was the closest thing to peace I had ever felt. Already, its power was gone. I wanted to collect every particle and sink it into my skin, just to feel that relief again.

"Zuko!" I shouted, remembering my purpose. I spotted a flit of feathered tail and sprinted, nicking my shins against the splintered wood. If I could only catch up to it, I might find its point of entry, pass over into the Spirit World and free Zuko and the villagers from Hei Bai's prison.

I was within twenty feet of the bird, pleading, grabbing for its tail, running blindly. Before I could register it, the ground stopped, I was airborne. I had sprinted right off a cliff, and was feet from the ground below before I realized my mistake. I hit the floor and blacked out.

When I came to, the sky was black-dark, stars the only indicator that I was awake, alive, and most certainly not in the Spirit World. Everything ached. I sat up and noted a twinge in my ribs, likely bruising. My legs, thankfully, were unbroken. Ankles twisted and sore, but not totally useless. More than anything, I mourned that I had missed my chance to pass over. Peng Guang was likely long gone.

Still, I stood. Traversed the near-black of the prairie before me. I heard the chirp of nearby badgerfrogs and whirr of fire-cicadas, dotting the horizon with their light. I moved in their direction, because it was the most natural life I had encountered since entering the valley.

Eventually, a pond appeared, noticeable only by the sliver-of-a-moon's light reflecting against its water. The wind here was fierce, flattening the knee-high grass spreading out from the shore. I don't know how to explain it, other than that the earth below me felt active, churning, and carried on that wind was an unfamiliar whistle, the roaring off-pitch, akin to thunder.

And then, I crossed over.

It was a sudden change. The wind stilled. The sky brightened to a rusted brown, and a fog settled around me. The landscape swelled and sloped, and to one side a forest, not too different from that of the natural world, stretched toward the clouds.

I expected to feel relief, knowing that I was mere minutes away from finding Zuko and the villagers, from reuniting with my oldest friend, often my only friend, and assisting him in salvaging his throne. And yet, my heart pounded, muscles tensed up. I hadn't seen Zuko in over five years. The last time we had been together, the day I left my role as his advisor, discarded any hope that our friendship could recover, he had told me exactly what he thought of me.


"You. You dare tell me my intention is misplaced."

Two years into his reign, and the colonies were still yet to be returned to the locals. Fire Nation governors remained in power. Local attempts at reclaiming their villages were met with guiltless brutality under the name of law and order. Zuko had agreed with me. They must be handed back to the Earth Kingdom. Power handed over to trusted community members already living in the region.

And yet, he couldn't devote the time or energy to it. He pored over the unrest rattling the capitol. Aristocrats unhappy with their business being cut off: military gear no longer needed or Earth Kingdom plantations disabled through our negotiations with provincial leaders. Recently, Zuko had been on edge, growing colder, more suspicious of those around him. Rumors that a secret order was forming to overthrow him consumed him.

"There are too many issues here for us to worry about the colonies."

"With due respect, those displaced from the colonies have been waiting for our help for two years."

Zuko had slammed his palm against the table between us, toppling a cup of tea I had poured for him.

"If you can't take our crises at home seriously, perhaps I need to find new counsel."

"Zuko," I said, sidestepping the table to approach him. "You know I care about—,"

"And with a target on my head, I can't be careless. I can't leave the palace, let alone travel to the colonies.

"I'm not asking that of you. Please, allow me to take a small crew to begin the decolonization process. The initial agreements wouldn't take long. I could be back within the month."

Zuko backed away from me, and I took to mopping up the spilled tea.

"So ready to flee when our country is crumbling. I have to wonder where your allegiance lies."

This enraged me. I burned myself on the tea. Gave up the rag and tossed it across the room. How could he? I had given up everything to move here, lost the respect of my comrades from the academy. Discarded hope of rebuilding my village. I had sacrificed so much to serve him, even after he had broken my heart, not long before the war ended. Still, I had followed him everywhere since. Calmed his critics, quelled insurgents, mended his mistakes. Cleaned his messes.

I couldn't say anything. I couldn't tell him how he had hurt me. And so, I left. I packed up my belongings, departed the capitol, and set sail for the Earth Kingdom.


And so, as I stood in the Spirit World, conscious of how unlikely a warm reunion would be, I closed my eyes, imagined that ball of light, tender, absorbing into me. Cleansing me. And then I marched on.