What came the next day was the stuff of nightmares.
Zuko stood on the deck of his boat and roared fire into the air. "Aaaaaagggghhh! You have GOT to be kidding me!"
The boat was frozen.
Iroh rushed out onto the deck. "What is-"
"The boat is frozen, Uncle!" Zuko took him up to the bow. "Look!"
The vessel, which had been making solid progress south just a few hours before, was now run aground on a reef of ice. For several feet away from every part of the hull, ice covered the waves, and reports from the dawn watch indicated that it was growing. The ice had only been directly beneath the boat and thin before; now, the ice was easily visible over the side and thick enough to raise the bottom of the boat several inches from the waves.
"Oh dear," Iroh whispered.
"This is just completely perfect," Zuko snarled.
"Prince Zuko! General Iroh!" A crew member came running up to the front from the side. He dropped to his knees in a respectful kneel. "I just witnessed a wave reaching the side of the ship and freezing on contact!"
Zuko commanded he show them. The crew member, and everyone who had been within earshot, rushed to the port side of the ship and looked down. A patch of ice that did indeed look like a frozen wave was attached to the side of the boat. Zuko shivered. The ice wave began to grow.
The crew members present jumped back. "It's spreading up the sides of the ship!" one of them cried.
Zuko raised his hand, and they all fell silent. "If you spread panic onboard my boat, I will personally throw you down to the ice!" The crewman gulped and pressed his mouth firmly shut.
I almost wish we'd stayed in port with the zoo. Zuko glared and drove that traitorous thought from his mind. No he did not. All he wanted was to get home. It was all he had ever wanted.
"You!" He pointed to the lieutenant. "Set up monitoring stations all around the boat. I want to know what the ice is doing at all times. Reports every half hour, double reports from whoever ends up watching the back, where the raft launches. As long as the launch door stays usable, I also want a patrol using it to check on the ice up close."
Every crew member present immediately began volunteering for various positions around the deck. Zuko was quite sure he heard at least one person admit to just not wanting to have to approach the "evil ice," but when he looked he could see nobody. He stalked away from the group, grumbling under his breath. Doesn't technically count as spreading panic. Doesn't technically count.
He stopped to grip the railing and take deep breaths, attempt to relax. Iroh joined him, shaking his head. "This confirms it, Prince Zuko. We're in very warm waters. Only a spirit can be doing this. Not even waterbenders have the ability to make ice creep like that."
It felt like ice was creeping into Zuko's blood. He summoned his anger back to warm himself. "Wonderful, Uncle. That's wonderful news! We're being held hostage, by an ice spirit, who isn't going to ever let go of this boat unless we go back north! What am I supposed to do about that, Uncle?!"
Iroh glanced at him sideways. "Why do you say that?"
"Because I have exactly zero options now and I don't like it?!"
Iroh chuckled. He looked like he would have laughed if the situation hadn't been so dire. "No, the part before that! 'Unless we go back north.' Why did you say that?"
"Because it doesn't want us to go back to the Fire Nation, obviously," Zuko answered.
Iroh looked at him very curiously. "That's a reasonable thing to think. But why would the spirit want to keep us away from the Fire Nation?"
Zuko scowled. Because it spent the first week of exile celebrating nonstop. I could feel it dancing while I sat in my room and recovered from my eye being burned. I should've known…
"Zuko," Iroh asked slowly, "Did you personally anger a spirit?"
"No." It's never done this before! Why is it being so cruel now? It didn't hate the Fire Nation or try to get me kicked out before. But when I got kicked out, it started celebrating. What changed? Did it just...get used to the freedom of the open ocean and decide not to give that up? Actually, that would explain everything. If that was the reason, it meant there was nothing to do. Zuko couldn't make the water spirit change its mind; he had never been successful at that. He didn't have the power to make it do something against its will. There was nothing he could offer to bribe it. It could just do whatever it wanted.
The amount of possible futures Zuko could see for himself was now exactly none.
But he had to try. He had to try to make the water spirit let him go. There was no way anyone deserving of the title of Firelord would just roll over and surrender without a fight.
Zuko let go of the railing while Iroh was still searching his mind for possible explanations. "I'm going to my room, Uncle."
Iroh sighed. "Might as well, while we're trapped. I finally have a chance to teach you how to play Pai Sho!"
"No," Zuko said automatically. He softened his tone. "Not now. Just not now."
"Later, then." Iroh looked as if he'd never heard of evil ice in his life. Ice? What ice? It was just another day of playing Pai Sho and enjoying his retirement on the open sea.
Zuko walked away shaking his head. Uncle's priorities were really weird.
.
As soon as Zuko left, Iroh went down to collect the food for the captives. He had been walking up to the deck for a bit of early morning stretching when Zuko's screaming fire display interrupted him. It was now past breakfast time, and they must be hungry.
"What took you so long?" asked the waterbending girl - Katara - as he closed the door. She, more than any of the others, had a very persistent distrust of him. He wondered what experiences she had with firebenders before.
Iroh smiled at the Avatar. "I bring good news!"
"You mean besides the food?" Sokka asked. "I'm starving!"
He laughed. "Yes, in addition to the food." He picked up one of the plates he and a crew member had set down on the floor before and walked over to Sokka, setting fire to a pile of disposable wood placed against the remaining wall. There was a problem with having one person feed captives in a completely dark room: he would have needed three hands to do so, or forced the children to eat by shoving their faces into the plate. He wasn't about to force anyone to give up so much of their dignity.
"What's the good news?" Aang asked as Sokka moaned in pleasure.
Iroh held up another serving of unnamed delicious mush. "It is what delayed me this morning: the boat is frozen!"
Sokka paused. "Frrm?"
"Indeed." He held up another serving, which the hungry boy accepted. "The ocean around the boat is all frozen. There is ice beneath, enough to lift us off the water, and ice is creeping up the sides."
"Yes!" Aang cheered. "See Sokka? I told you it was friendly!" Sokka rolled his eyes.
"It sounds like waterbending…" Katara said.
"No waterbender could do this," Iroh replied. "The ice is growing in all directions at an even and slow rate. It looks just as if the water was freezing naturally, except that it can't possibly be."
Sokka was soon finished, so he moved over to Aang. "I've tried," the Avatar said before taking his first mouthful. "I trrd gng d shpir wrl."
Katara shot him a look, but Iroh answered, "The spirit world? Interesting! What happened?"
Aang swallowed and shook his head. "I asked every spirit I could find if there was a spirit anywhere that could grab a boat and slow it down without making a sign."
"What did they say?"
"Nothing! The spirits I talked to didn't know anything! Or they refused to tell me," Aang added. "Apparently the ocean spirit is in the mortal world, but it's not really in the ocean anymore, so it's not the one. One of the spirits paused in a funny way, like he knew the answer, but he said if I was asking that question it meant I couldn't do anything. So they know, but it's not the ocean spirit, and they won't tell me what spirit it is."
"Hmm." Iroh filed that strange response away for later decoding. He was pretty good at decoding strange sayings, being so often the speaker of said sayings, but this one mystified him. "Oh, well. Thank you for trying to help, Avatar. But I suspect that nobody can convince the spirit to stop."
.
The boat shuddered. Seconds later, Zuko came storming out of his quarters. He'd tried everything he could think of. He'd tried threatening, even though it wasn't likely to work. He'd tried pleading. He'd tried a heartfelt speech about how much he wanted to go home after 3 long years of banishment and aloneness. He'd tried offering all kinds of bribes. He'd even tried promising it Ember Island, knowing it loved the beaches there. Nothing worked.
Admittedly, he could have worded almost everything better, less angrily. And he had been the one to throw the first insult, starting an exchange of ice for words, culminating in large waves slamming into both sides of the ship and freezing on impact, which was something he couldn't afford to top. But the stupid spirit had started everything by freezing the boat!
He dragged his palm slowly down his face, and went to the Avatar's room. He caught Uncle Iroh coming out of the room, 3 empty plates balanced in one arm and the door still open, looking around. "What was that?"
"Giant waves slamming into both sides of the ship, covering them in ice!" Zuko did not care how much the Avatar and his friends knew. It wasn't like it mattered. "Gah! Stupid water spirit!"
Iroh finished closing the door, but only enough that it looked completely closed. He left a small crack. "Water spirit?"
"What else would you call it?" Zuko asked. Then, a great idea occurred to him. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go see if the launch door can still open, and if it can, I'll practice firebending on the ice."
He went to do just that. Unfortunately, the launch door could not open. "The hinges are so close to the bottom of the boat. Only one patrol was able to open the door before freezing waves reached it," one of the crew said. He sounded extremely happy to not have been on that patrol.
"The deck, then," Zuko declared. "I'm in the mood for firebending at some ice, and some tall waves just hit the ship. They might be within reach." The crewman sobered quickly. Zuko left just as another crewman came down from the deck and started to share this news.
Zuko was about to change into his short-sleeved exercise outfit as he usually did for firebending practice, but stopped. Would it be too cold for that? He went up on deck in his usual clothing. There, on one side of the boat (and no doubt the other as well) he found that there was ice within reach. He could touch it, in fact. He leaned over and held his hand just above the ice.
"Zuko? What are you doing?" Iroh asked.
"Testing to see if the ice is cold," Zuko replied. The air around it was not at all chilled, so he put his hand directly on the ice.
"Not-cold ice? Interesting idea." Iroh peered over the railing.
"It isn't." Zuko pulled his hand back and held his palm out for the sunlight to shine off of. His palm was dry. "The ice isn't melting. It's not absorbing any heat from the air, either. That's probably why it's not melting - absorbing heat and melting have to go together."
He moved aside to let Iroh touch the ice. Iroh stared at his hand in fascination. "This is unlike anything I've ever felt, Nephew. Ice that doesn't make my hand cold. I didn't know that was possible!"
"Yeah, well, that's a problem, because it means my firebending can't do anything to it," Zuko said. He blew a stream of fire down the hull of the boat. The ice was unchanged when he stopped.
"Erm…" The crewman on duty that Zuko had ignored, and who therefore hadn't said a single word, cleared his throat. He was shaking and pale, but he offered his sword. "Can it be broken?"
"Let's find out." Zuko took the sword and carefully, trying not to drop it, tapped its hilt against the ice with increasing force. The hilts of the crew's swords were solid and metal, useful in close range combat, which was a good quality to have onboard a ship. Zuko was pretty sure that if he tried to hit it any harder, the sword would fall out of his hands, so he handed it back to the crewman. The ice was cracked, but not shattered. Or rather, if it was shattered, it wasn't moving. "It can, but it's not falling off." He blew fire onto the ice. "Still not melting."
"This isn't normal ice or normal water," Iroh muttered. "It's been changed somehow. The water slowed the boat even though we had no problem with the waves, and now this ice won't melt. The spirit is changing the water, giving it unusual qualities."
"That was obvious, Uncle." Zuko gripped the railing, then threw himself away from it and started back towards his quarters. "Since we've established that it's not cold, I'm going to change into my regular exercising outfit. I still want to firebend at it."
.
Zuko spent the whole rest of the morning firebending at the ice, switching to different sides of the boat whenever the hull on one side got hot. Since the ice was useless at cooling anything down, that meant switching sides once, then just moving around to different spots. As usual, the more firebending he did the more he got into the flow of it, and the more flowful he got the more he thought. In this case, the more he thought the angrier he got. Every crewmember stationed along either side of the ship knew to avoid him from the scary look on his face. Crewman #1, on the forward end of the starboard side, pretended to be a statue. Crewman #2, on the middle of the starboard side, looked around like normal pretending he was deaf. Crewman #3, on the rear end of the starboard side, pretended there was always something interesting to look at on whichever part of his post Zuko wasn't on.
Crewman #4, on the forward end of the port side, decided that since the prince was so busy inspecting the ice himself, he could take a break and watch the clouds for any changes to the weather. Crewwoman #5, on the middle of the port side, practiced the Way of the Egret, as her firebending instructor had once recommended. Crewman #6, on the rear end of the port side, also pretended to be a statue, or maybe just mute since he wasn't very good at staying still.
Zuko appreciated all their efforts, and made a mental note to get to know their actual names if he had a chance to. Keeping an eye on who they were and what they were doing helped distract him from his own thoughts, which were increasingly bad.
What could he do? Fwoosh. Zhao was no doubt catching up, and would at any moment arrive. He couldn't hide the Avatar from Zhao when both of them were aboard his ship. The ice made them into sitting ducks. Fwoosh. The Avatar would be stolen, as well as every one of Zuko's dreams. He would be reduced to nothing. No purpose, no home, no family. Flommmm. Had the dream about being chased through the swamp with a pyre always just steps behind been a prophecy?
And even if Zhao didn't exist, Zuko couldn't help but feel helpless and trapped. Fwoosh. Not only was the Fire Nation closed to him by order of the Firelord, but it was also surrounded by a barrier of ice. Flommm. His father didn't want him there. The water spirit didn't want him there. It seemed as if he had been banished, not just legally, but existentially, as if the entirety of reality was declaring that he now had no home. Fwoosh.
Had that always been true? Had the water spirit always been able to do this? Had his father always wanted him gone? The entire past three years, the entire past three months, training and getting better and practicing and getting beaten and getting back up again, was all of that useless from the start?! Was he always the punchline of this joke?! Fwoooosh.
Would anyone listen to what he wanted? Dad didn't. Zhao didn't. The water spirit didn't. There was not a single thing Zuko could do to make a place for himself, anywhere. He was like a puzzle piece that would never fit. If he had never existed, what would change?
Zuko leaned over and roared fire down the side of the boat. The unmelted ice stared back up at him afterwards, taunting.
Were there no more options?
Zuko tensed his arms, gripping the railing and shifting his body in order to hide his forearms from the nearest crewperson. His forearms were rising with goosebumps. Firebending was not enough to keep him warm. The feeling of being iced over was only growing and growing. There was nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Trapped. Paralyzed. Useless. Couldn't head back to the Fire Nation because of the barriers, couldn't head away because going back was his only purpose for existing. Couldn't move to the side because there wasn't really a circle around the islands of the Fire Nation. As islands, the ice barrier was unbreachable; there was no landbound way home.
Where to go? What to do? The answer to both was looking a lot like nothing.
But he was a prince. He could not accept that. He wouldn't!
Zuko forced himself up. He'd been at this for several hours, and it was now past noon. He returned to his chambers to get warmer clothes, knowing that they would do nothing about the chill he felt. And still, after hours of firebending, he churned inside with inexpressible anger and rage. The fire spirit shot up from one of the candles in his room when he first entered, causing him to jump. Nothing happened, so he started to get dressed. Five minutes later, when he was almost royal looking, a candle exploded again, making him jump and scramble back against the bed. Before he could get his breathing back, two more went off in quick succession. The candles were unharmed by this, but Zuko's mind was not. He suddenly had a feeling like he was on the edge of going insane.
He gripped his head in both hands, groaning softly. There has to be a way out! What is it? What is it?!
.
A/N: I don't think we'll be seeing these characters again, so there's no harm in giving a few extra details about them here.
The crewman who was just fascinated by whatever side of his watch Zuko wasn't on has a sister back home that he sends most of his money to. He's almost absurdly dedicated to his job because of this, and does not mind. The crewwoman who practiced the Way of the Egret used to have a serious temper problem. She would go too fast, try to do too much, get frustrated, and give up. Her firebending teacher taught her the Way of the Egret (which is just standing very still) as a way of resolving her temper problem. Without him, she wouldn't have continued on to become a fully trained firebender. The crewman who watched the clouds likes to watch clouds in his spare time, too. He gets along with Iroh very well, and was very happy to find a position where his services as a soldier would rarely be needed. He wonders why he became a soldier sometimes. It seems like he might have done that just because it was the honorable patriotic thing to do. He wonders if the honor was worth it.