Chapter 19: A Fantasy?
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"I'm telling you, we haven't gotten any new workers here for a month or so." The young manager of the mines looked tired and stressed. But he was still as polite as possible. "I'm very sorry, my lord, but I'm telling the truth."
"He is," Toph reassured her friends.
"I have lists!" The manager brought out a scroll. "All these people on the list are under my command."
Zuko's arm lashed out to grab the scroll from the manager's hands. His eyes hungrily scanned the list. No Mai.
"Thank you for your time," Aang said. "Would you mind if we looked around?"
"Not at all." The manager sighed. "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to take a nap while you do it. I don't remember the last time I slept."
"Of course." Zuko turned away, but quickly turned back. "How much do they pay you?"
The manager shrugged. "I got promoted so now I get breaks occasionally during the day. I consider that payment enough."
Zuko gritted his teeth. "Take this." He handed the man a pouch of gold coins. Then he walked away to search the mines.
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"I'll need you to take this, this, and this," said the woman in charge of laundry.
She gave Lin several large bundles of clothes, each smelling faintly of sandalwood (from the soap used to wash the clothes) and ash (from the drying process, which used firebending). It was a comforting smell to Lin, and, for some reason, it made her feel like she wasn't alone as she walked from the washroom to each of the drop-off rooms. The more she thought about it, the woody, fiery smell brought back dim flashes of memory. She remembered a voice. She couldn't make out what it was saying, but the sound of it was enough. She nearly tripped, surrounded by so much laundry that her vision was cut off, but it didn't matter. Her arms were getting stiff from holding them out, but that didn't matter, either. She was becoming intoxicated by the smell. It was like there was a presence standing next to her, walking alongside her. It was a companionable presence, one that seemed to care about her. She found herself feeling increasingly lonely as she dropped off more of the laundry. She finally noticed how tired she was getting once her attention wasn't on the smell and her imaginary friend. She realized she'd been walking around most of the east wing of the complex. When her arms were finally empty, she leaned against the wall. "Where'd you go?" she whispered. "I didn't even get to ask who you were."
"Standing around, Lin Qiang? I thought you knew better than that!" a sharp voice called. It echoed through the hall.
Lin straightened up, and then bowed deeply. "I'm sorry, sir. I ran out of things to do."
"We'll have to find you something."
Lin cringed.
The man caught her look. "Scared, are you? Well, I'll give you reason enough to be so. Come this way."
Lin kicked herself. Literally. Then she followed.
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Sura was getting worried. She hadn't seen Lin in hours. She'd searched the entire west wing while dusting it. Nobody had seen anyone new, and she was starting to wonder if Lin had found some way to stay in bed all day. Wouldn't that be the life.
Footsteps approached from just around the corner. Sura could make out labored breathing. It was as if someone were about ready to collapse.
Sura jumped around the corner, just in time to catch Lin as she fell forward.
"Whoa!" Sura looked around, and laughed casually to dissipate any attention. "That was a nice one. I almost missed catching you. Come on, you prankster, let's get you to your room."
The few servants who'd looked up turned away, shrugging at each other.
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Sura herself was getting sore from dragging Lin along with her. They finally reached the door to Lin's room.
"Come on, wake up, please!" Sura said. She shook Lin's shoulder. "You're really something. One day of work and you pass out! What did you do back home, anyway? Order servants around and ride a palanquin? Toughen up!"
Mai twitched. "Sura?" she asked.
"What?" Sura was feeling testy. She didn't want to deal with Miss Priss any more. She knew it wasn't quite fair, but she was feeling a sense of jealousy compounded with frustration.
"Is the bear still hungry?"
Sura blinked. The bear? Oh. So they'd put Lin on menagerie duty. Well, that couldn't have been any fun. "I'm sure the bear is just fine, M-Lin."
Lin sighed. Then her face twitched. "Where is he?"
Sura huffed. "The bear is in his cage, silly. You left him behind a long time ago."
"No!" Lin sat up, cringing at the ache of her muscles. "I don't mean the bear; I mean that man!"
Sura noticed that Lin's eyes were close to glassy. She had to be hallucinating or something. "Man? Which one? There are a lot of them…"
"The one who smells like wood and walks wherever I go and has such a nice voice!" Lin demanded. She was getting anxious to see him again. She couldn't remember if she really ever had seen him, but something told her that she hadn't made everything up. Maybe the bear, the catgator, the cowhippo, and the small herd of komodorhinoceroses had dulled her memory a bit, but she could distinctly remember his presence. And she wanted it back.
"Calm down. All firebenders sort of smell like wood, I guess. Who's the one you're—" It suddenly became plain to Sura. Laid out like a map in front of her, she saw the reason for all the puzzling things Lin had been saying. "You're lonely for your husband, aren't you?" Now Sura could do nothing short of pity Lin. Lin didn't even know who she was missing, otherwise she would have specified.
Lin blinked. Now Sura was just talking nonsense. "I'm not married." She indicated her empty ring finger.
Sura threw up her hands. "Don't you think they would have taken all your jewelry? M-Lin! You miss your husband! That's who you're asking me for."
Lin's eyes watered. "A hallucination. That's what I'm asking for, isn't it?" The tears spilled over.
Sura stared. Hadn't she heard rumors that the Fire Lady never felt anything? Hadn't General Chao often commented on her stony face that only betrayed boredom? This didn't match up. "Hey, it's okay. He'll find you."
Lin looked up at Sura fiercely. "He doesn't exist. I want him so badly and he doesn't exist!" Lin could hear her own voice getting shrill.
There was a knock on the door. "Lin, you'd better be decent in there!"
Lin stuck out her lower lip. "Or what?"
Sura briefly noted that maybe the Fire Lady was just a bit childish before the door was thrown open.
"Or you would have been embarrassed. Come on; it's time for another round of treatment."
Lin leapt from her cot, and to the other side of the room. "You're not taking me back there!" she yelled.
The soldiers looked at each other, rolling their eyes. "Come on now; there's no need to get so worked up. It's only treatment!"
Lin flicked her wrist and aimed for the guards' shoulders. She didn't know what she had expected to happen, but laughter from those she'd meant to disable was certainly not it. She stared blankly at her wrist as the soldiers approached. Was she expecting them to be closer so she could have punched them? Had she thought she had some sort of rope around her wrist to flick at them like a whip? No… An image flashed through her mind of tiny arrows strapped around her wrist, which were supposed to… Her mind hit a fuzzy wall. She couldn't remember what was supposed to happen.
"Come on, and none of your fussing. This is just our job, remember."
Sura watched all of this. She was as puzzled by Lin's wrist flicking just as much as Lin was herself. Then Sura remembered the rumors about the Fire Lady's expert aim with shurikens, knives and flying daggers. That would line up with the compulsory flick and the gleam in her eyes that had accompanied it. She had expected to see her enemies pinned to the wall, where they could no longer harm her. But here she was, being dragged off.
Sura shook her head. Maybe next time she'd be able to help. But she couldn't make herself look like an obstacle, or there'd be no possible way of helping Lin at all.
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That night, Sura entered Mai's room long after the guards had left. She had heard some distressed cries coming from that room, and knew it was probably time to help out. She opened the door to find Mai on the floor, clawing around as if trying to find something to hold on to.
"Don't leave me," she sobbed.
Sura sighed. An idea occurred to her, and she took water from a wash basin, bending it into a heavy mist, which soundproofed the room. Then she cautiously approached Mai. "Fire Lady Mai? Are you all right?"
"No! I am not all right!"
Sura noticed that Mai was sweating, and her face was red. She touched the other woman's forehead. "You're burning up!" she exclaimed.
"Not surprising." The sudden deadpan was startling. "He left me. I'm alone. It was bound to happen sometime."
"He didn't leave you," Sura said reassuringly. She was raking her mind for any lesson she'd been taught back home about fevers. If the Fire Lady got sick here, there wouldn't be any guarantee of her ever recovering. None of the doctors would be taking care of her. That wasn't good news for Sura's new friend or the little prince or princess who may never have a chance at life.
"He did leave me," Mai insisted. "He left me the first time when his father made him. I wasn't as hurt then, because it hadn't been his choice. The second time, he left me with a letter, and decided that would be enough to keep me from being hurt. But he abandoned me nonetheless, so it didn't matter. He didn't trust me, and I could tell. This time, he's just gone. I don't know where he went, but I know he won't come back for me."
"Of course he will! He loves you!" Sura had never met the Fire Lord. She had no way of knowing how Mai had been captured. All she knew was that she cared about this other woman as a person and a friend, and if she was supposed to recover from this fever, she couldn't have a defeatist attitude.
"That's what I thought, too." The tears returned.
"Would he want you to talk like that? He's coming for you, I know it. They're trying to hide you from him. They're even trying to hide you from you, in fact."
"That's ridiculous."
Sura shrugged. She was talking to someone who was in a state of half-slumber. What was the point of getting into an argument about mental conditioning, anyway? Time to calm her down. "Mai, who am I?"
"You are Sura of the Northern Water Tribe."
"Good girl." Sura applied healing water to Mai's head. "Tell me about your family."
"I have a little brother whose name is Tom-Tom," Mai said. "He is so little. He doesn't talk much, because he doesn't have to. Everyone understands him and all he has to use is one word at a time."
"Is he cute?"
"I guess so. Everyone says he looks like I did."
"Maybe he looks the way your son will," Sura said gently.
"My son? Oh, Agni!" Mai jerked upright. "I'm pregnant!"
"Yes, I know. Calm down. I'm going to take care of you."
"For how long?" Mai's voice was getting shrill. "I'm going to have a baby!"
"Yes, yes, Mai. But your husband will save you before that happens." Sura started to apply the healing water to Mai's neck and chest. "Go back to sleep. You need the rest." Sura pulled some of the soundproofing water closer to cool down Mai's body. This seemed to help, and soon Mai was back asleep. Sura coaxed the fever down until it finally broke. Then she lay down where she was and went to sleep herself.
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As she slept, Sura's mind wandered, trying to think of anything that could bring Mai's memory back permanently. A swift blow to the head seemed the most favorable option. She planned out how she would do it the next day.
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Aang approached the pacing Fire Lord. "It's official, Zuko: Mai isn't here," Aang said gently. "We should move on."
"Move on?" Zuko yelled. "I'm not getting over this!"
"No, no, I mean, look for her somewhere else," Aang reassured him.
"Okay, but where?" Zuko looked up, staring into space.
"Well, where do you think Order members would hide her?"
"I thought they'd bring her here," Zuko growled.
"But what other place would they take her?" Aang leaned against the wall, trying to think more clearly, and hoping that Zuko would calm down a little.
"Well, wherever the place was, it would be some place they were sure they had complete control of. It would be some place they wouldn't expect me to care about…"
"Like maybe a summer home? Do they have some place on Ember Island?"
Zuko let out a bark of a laugh. "No. Someone would notice on Ember Island. But that's a good idea…" Zuko's mind sifted through the different places that the Order owned exclusively. "I've got it!"
"What is it?" Aang straightened excitedly.
"Governor Katsorou owns a mansion near the Eastern tip of the Fire Nation. I know he has a lot of dangerous animals in his menagerie, and I've heard that other Order members go there for meetings and stuff like that. I'll bet that's where they've got her!"
Aang smiled broadly. "I'll go find the others!"
Finally, Zuko allowed himself to feel some hope.
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Many thanks to our reviewers: gloomy maiko lover, Kimjuni2, Silvereyes12, and TheGobe.