When the Wind was Reborn
Chapter Nine
It had been days since the skirmish with the Avatar and his firebender companion, and they had left the frozen tundra of the pole. The salt spray, the wind and the rain were still bitterly cold but there was no ice around them now, just open water for as far as the eye could see.
"You had him," Sokka muttered sourly, not for the first time. The weather seemed to match his mood - the sky was grey, the open ocean was grey, the rain was grey and the two siblings on the Skua's Flight were grey and miserable. He sat in the shelter of the bow of the ship, the wind and rain falling at a diagonal that just missed him. Katara stood nearby, hands braced on the edge as she looked out across the sea and into the thick mist beyond - she wasn't really looking for anything, she just didn't want to meet Sokka's eye.
"The firebender hit me before I could finish him," Katara lied. Sokka was right, she'd been stood above the Avatar and he'd been helpless, incapacitated, and what had she done? She'd choked. She had stood there and did nothing and didn't have the grit to take a life. She had never felt so weak, but she would be damned if she would admit that.
"I still have one eye left," Sokka said with a flat look. "You had him. I saw. You let him go."
"Well, what about you on the Fire Nation ship, huh?" She whirled on him, growling. "You were in the same room with him and you couldn't do it!"
"I nearly got myself killed but at least I tried," he snapped. "I didn't just let him go."
"I'll get him next time, I swear it," Katara growled. She suspected that her words were empty, though.
"If there ever is a next time," Sokka muttered.
"There will be a next time," Katara replied. Of that, she was sure. She looked off into the mists towards the north - she couldn't see anything but the bison had went that way, and the two would be out there somewhere.
"They'll be going to Nan Ko," Sokka said dispassionately, as he had before.
"You said," she reminded him. "I just wonder why."
"The Avatar's a kid, the firebender's conning him," Sokka said dismissively, as though he hadn't even considered the possibility that he might be wrong. Katara ground her teeth. "He's going to take him to Nan Ko and hand him in to the Fire Nation, and the kid will go with him because he trusts him."
"I don't think it's that simple," Katara said. "He didn't look like a bad person, the firebender." There had been something in that firebender's eyes - she had expected to see rage and hatred but instead she had seen simple hardness and determination tempered by something more thoughtful and introspective. The same way that Katara couldn't bring herself to take the Avatar's life, she wasn't sure this firebender would be able to drive a knife into a child's back.
"You're reading too much into it, sis," Sokka dismissed her, and she continued to grind her teeth. "You saw the guy for all of ten seconds."
"Do you ever get tired of being a know-it-all?"
"Can't help being right all the time," Sokka replied with a shrug.
"Ever get tired of being an ass then?"
"Not really."
"Ugh." Katara rolled her eyes. She peered down at the miserable grey surf and swayed her hands just slightly, correcting the ship's flow - one of the perks of being a waterbender, she supposed, was that she could single-handedly sail a ship that would ordinarily be crewed by half a dozen men.
Their journey wasn't uncomfortable, they had shelter on their vessel, thanks to Katara they always had drinking water and below decks they had food, furs, even weapons, and anything else they could need. They didn't even notice the rocking of the boat - they were Water Tribe, they had been on boats for as long they could remember. Katara would even say that their journey was comfortable, but there was a constant nagging in the back of her mind that made her miserable - they had stolen their father's boat and, for all intents and purposes, betrayed their family and tribe. No matter how good their reasons seemed at the time, Katara couldn't be at ease with herself.
"Do you think maybe we should have gone back to dad?" Katara asked eventually, staring into the water with a sad look on her face.
"No," Sokka said without a moment's hesitation. She envied his self-assuredness. "He would rather waste his time fighting Water Tribe civil wars and raiding the coastlines for scraps. He doesn't think big enough - maybe he used to, that's why they call him the Skua's Eye, I guess, but not anymore."
"How can you say that?" Katara asked, mouth agape. "He's our father!" Sokka shurgged, as though it was no big deal.
"Because it's true," he said, looking up at her with that one, dark eye of his. "The Water Tribes need to change. It's only a matter of time until the Fire Nation or the Earth Kingdoms crush the other. Once that happens they'll come for us, and we won't stand a chance because we'll be too busy fighting amongst ourselves."
"What's that got to do with dad?" Katara narrowed her eyes at him.
"We're fighting each other because of dad and every other chief in the south pole," Sokka said, and Katara thought she could detect a hint of sadness in his voice. "I know he tries his best, but we need a change, something big to unite us, something that can make real change possible, and a Water Tribe Avatar could be just that," he explained, then looked up at her with a fierce resolve in his eye. "That's why we have to kill the Avatar. No more hesitation, our people can't afford it."
"I'm going inside," Katara muttered after a silence. "I need to dry off and sleep for a few hours, steer the ship while I'm gone."
"You got it," Sokka agreed.
She trudged below decks and bended the rainwater out of her clothes with a shiver. It had been a while since she had eaten but she didn't feel hungry all of a sudden, so instead she made her way over to what had become her corner of the space, curled up beneath the warm skin of a polar bear dog that she had claimed, closed her eyes and slept.
Katara slept fitfully. Her dreams were filled with smoke, thick and cloying, stinging her eyes, creeping down her throat, blinding and choking her. She walked and stumbled, coughing all the while, and battered her head and limbs on obstacles unseen, fear pervading her body and mind as she realized that she didn't know where she was or how to get out. She hit something, tripped and tumbled to the ground, hot coals and sparks flying everywhere, and that's when she realized it was Ikiaq's healing hut - Katara's healing hut, now. Through the smoke and tears in her eyes she saw a face, inches from her own, staring up at her, a pair of bright eyes pleading with her for mercy. There was no mercy to be had, though, for when she looked down she saw that his chest was already filled with shards of ice and his wounds were running red with blood, so much that she could taste it on the air mingled in with the fire and smoke.
When she looked back up his skin was pale and his eyes wide and unblinking. She put two trembling fingers to his neck. No pulse. She held her hand over his nose and mouth. No breath. She touched the back of his hand. Cold as ice. The Avatar was dead.
"You did it," he wheezed breathlessly, dead mouth moving like a horror show puppet's, and Katara fell back and screamed. She scrambled backwards, frantic and hysterical, through the ruins of the fire pit, feeling the hot coals burning her palms but caring little - she had to get away from that thing, that not-corpse, that was all that mattered. She backed away until she couldn't see it, him, but still she heard the rattle of the voice. "You did it! For the Water Tribe! Haha!" The voice echoed in her ears even after she awoke sweating and gasping.
Katara calmed her breaths and looked around, her eyes feeling red and raw, her mind sluggish and hazy, her body aching like she'd just returned from a hike - if anything she felt more tired than when she lay her head down and twice as anxious. She struggled up with a groan, rubbed at her eyes and stumbled for the stairs that led to the deck. She felt tired, and dirty, and her mind was abuzz with so many thoughts and feelings that she could barely think straight.
When she emerged into the sunlight she cringed away and scrunched her eyes shut for a few moments before cracking them open again and braving the daylight. She looked around blearily, seeing double of everything for a few moments. The sun was bright, now, light refracting off the emerald ocean and breaking across the sky, having found a crack in the grey clouds above through which to shine, and it looked like it was chasing the grey misery of the day off - for everyone but Katara, it seemed.
"You okay?" Sokka asked. He was sitting by the tiller, his eye lazily sliding between the water, the sky and the distance northward.
"No," Katara grumbled, leaning over the edge of the boat - it was as good a place to stand as any.
"Have another one of your freaky dreams?" Sokka pressed.
"Think so," she muttered, still rubbing at her sore eyes.
"Sucks," her brother said mildly. "What happened?"
"I saw the Avatar, dead," she said simply. She didn't feel like delving into the more intimate details - the stifling heat of the hut, the clammy coldness of his corpse, the words he spoke that even now crawled uncomfortably beneath her skin.
"Encouraging, at least," he remarked. "Makes me wish I believed in it."
"The dreams are real," Katara muttered, gazing off into the grey.
"Sure, they're real," Sokka said. "But they're just dreams, Katara. Nothing magical about them, nothing worth worrying over." He wasn't much help, but he was trying.
"Ikiaq thought they were something more than just dreams. Dad thinks they're prophetic."
"Just because they're superstitious doesn't mean they're right," Sokka insisted. Katara sighed.
"I wish you believed in them," she said. If he did, she would have someone to talk to about the things that she saw in her dreams, someone who would listen with an open mind instead of a dismissive one. "And I wish dad was like you, and thought they were just nonsense." If he didn't believe in all this then maybe he'd not have insisted on Katara taking up Ikiaq's role as healer and seer, maybe then she'd have got to live her life her way, as she saw fit, rather than resorting to betrayal and abandonment just to taste freedom.
Katara began to miss the South Pole. It was a cold and cruel place that didn't know mercy but she began to miss its harsh beauty, the way the landscape seemed to have its different moods - rain would drink up all the light and turn the ice to mournful stone while evening sun would make it shine like an endless plain of bronze, freshly fallen snow made the surface pale and soft like shorn wool and the dry cold froze it, bled it of its colour, turned it hard and sharp, painful to the touch and almost painful to the eye. She missed the way the ruthless land would yield and reveal its secrets to those who knew it well, the way it would almost shyly unseal warm caves and springs, show one where to find warmth, shelter, food, and clean water untainted by the sea, but only to those who knew its ways. Out here on the open ocean everything was the same every day, and that everything was composed of nothing at all for as far as the eye could see.
"Look," Sokka said one evening. It wasn't too late, the sun was still a pale, lightless disc against the featureless stretch of smoke-grey sky overhead. Sokka pointed off into the distance and Katara squinted to see what he meant. "Come on, you have two of those bad boys, surely you can see it."
As the ship drifted closer and closer a shape emerged, barely visible against the sky, a charcoal silhouette against smoke. Tall and pointed, a tower, perhaps, Katara thought. As they drew closer still more shadows slunk out of the darkness behind the structure, towers and spires spreading out in both directions behind it, the outline becoming sharper by the second. A skyline, like jagged, broken teeth, with pools of yellow, flickering light in windows and on streets. Fire Nation architecture, Katara realized once they were close enough that details and colours started to bleed in, dark pagodas in reds, browns and blacks, with their square tiers and sharp, tapering eaves reminiscent of tongues of flame. One cluster of towers rose higher than the rest, though, sitting atop the island like a crown, a different kind that were pale and slim, joined to one another by high, arching bridges and covered in crawling vines that spread out like cracks in the stone.
"The Air Temple," Katara said quietly.
"Hm? Oh, yeah, that." Sokka didn't sound interested in the abandoned temple. His eye was fixed nearer the shoreline, scanning it back and forth methodically.
"Looking for a port?" Katara guessed, one eyebrow raised.
"Bingo," Sokka said without taking his eye off the island.
"Will they take us?" Katara asked. "We are flying Water Tribe sails, after all."
"Not anymore we're not." Sokka pointed up at the sails without looking. They were solid black with no markings. "I replaced the old ones with the spares while you were asleep."
"Is that any better? Not announcing who we are?"
"Merchants fly black sails, neutral colour," Sokka said distractedly, still scouring the coastline for somewhere to dock. "We have enough goods below decks, we'll just say we're merchants doing a little business."
"Huh." Clever, Katara thought, not that she'd admit that to him - his ego didn't need inflated any more than it already was.
"There, there's the port, I see it." Sokka pointed and Katara pushed the ship towards it, dread settling in the pit of her stomach. When she had fought the Avatar she hadn't been scared, and when she'd stolen her father's ship she hadn't been either - nervous, maybe, but not like this. If Katara had to fight that was fine, she knew how to do that, but this? This was new, unknown, and she felt out of her depth.
"Might want to lose the Water Tribe colours, sis," Sokka said airily - if he felt similarly to her he didn't show it, he lounged there like a reptile basking in the heat, loose and relaxed. It was only then that she noticed he'd changed clothes and now wore neutral colours, grey breeches and a black vest.
"No," Katara said automatically. She was Water Tribe, and she'd never hid that before. Why would she? She loved her tribe and her home, and displaying those colours was a way of showing her pride. How could her brother so easily cast that off, as though it meant nothing?
"Alright, suit yourself," Sokka said with a shrug. "Don't blame me when someone spots it and makes trouble for us though."
Katara didn't reply, she just went below decks to pack whatever she'd need for leaving the boat, which turned out to precious little. She took a canteen of water, a small purse of Water Tribe coins and a small knife, just in case. There was nothing else to take, yet she hesitated. She stood there, looking at the curving panels of the walls blankly, feeling like she was missing something. Her clothes, she thought, she knew that Sokka was right. She sighed and stripped off her parka, then her dress and everything else, and looked at the bundle of material in her arms for long seconds. It was only colours, she told herself, taking them off didn't make her any less Water Tribe. It felt like it did, though. She raked through the spare clothes in their stores and found a rather plain, nondescript, brown shift. She pulled it over her head and felt like she had lost - no, given away - a part of herself. As she fiddled with the neckline her fingers brushed the necklace around her throat, her mother's necklace. It was Water Tribe, she thought sadly, then that sadness turned to defiance. No, she wouldn't give it up, not that. She climbed the steps still wearing it.
"Looking merchant-y," Sokka remarked with a grin when she emerged. Katara smiled back but the smile was empty and went no deeper than the surface.
"We'll pick up Fire Nation colours when we can," he said. "You know, blend in, avoid trouble." Katara bit her tongue because she knew it was good sense, but she didn't want those colours anywhere near her.
The noise reached Katara soon after. The lapping of the water against the ship's hull and the whispering of the wind was pushed aside, first gradually then all at once, by the sounds of people - not words, there were too many voices for that, just a dissonant drone that had only the barest impression of conversation, thousands of voices all fighting one another until they died on top of each other and became this riotous hum. She'd never heard so many voices all at once or even know so many people in all her sixteen years as that which could be heard - she thought that there must be more people on this one island than there were in the entire South Pole.
By the time they pulled up to the docks it was night and the sky was a deep navy, the world being lit only by the pale glow of the moon and yellow halos of light cast by lamps mounted on posts. In these pockets of light she glimpsed ships of every design - luxurious Fire Nation barges and frightening warships, fat-bellied Earth Kingdom ferries and even a sleek, swift Water Tribe catamaran. In other pools of light she could make out the streets beyond the docks, the jostling crowds browsing the goods of merchants set up in leaning stalls or displaying their wares on the bare ground. Closer still, on the docks themselves, she saw tight, drawn faces looking their way. She gulped.
Sokka leaped across to the docks and moored the ship, tying the knot with quick, practised hands. Katara followed more carefully.
"How do we find him? Is he even here yet?" Katara asked quietly so as not to be overheard, looking up and around at the enormous city in front of her - the faces of the buildings loomed high over them like displeased gods. She didn't like the way they felt at all.
"He came here on a flying bison. I don't think this old hunk of wood is going to beat that," Sokka said, slapping the hull fondly.
"Hey!" An older man with a cragged face, rough, patchy facial hair and a battered, wide-brimmed had on his head limped across to them. His mouth was twisted and bent, like he was in pain and in a foul mood besides.
"What you want?" The old man sounded every bit as miserable as he looked. Katara froze, unsure what to do, but Sokka replied with easy confidence.
"We're merchants -"
"Didn't ask what you were, asked what you want," the old man snapped. Sokka took the man's attitude in stride.
"Just somewhere to park the boat for a couple of days while we sell our fine wares -"
"What you selling?" It was as though the old man wanted to accomplish everything with as few words as possible.
"Whatever you need, we got furs, weapons, food, you name it and -"
"Fine," the man grumbled.
"How much? You take Water Tribe money?" Sokka asked, reaching for a tiny purse of coins at his waist. Katara watched as they argued and haggled, but in the end Sokka handed over every penny he had in the pouch.
"I think you need to get better at negotiating," Katara remarked once the old man was gone. Sokka only smirked and slapped his pocket, which jangled with coins.
"I just let him think the purse was all I had," he said. "I only put a few coins in there and when he thought he had everything I had he settled."
"Huh." Once again, Katara wouldn't admit that it was clever.
"Let's go," Sokka said, making for the streets. "We have an Avatar to find."