Chapter 26: The Lion Turtle

The choice before was excruciating. Whatever I did, I would hurt someone and hurt myself in so doing. It would sting more than a hundred wasp stingers in my skin. It would ache more than all the battle bruises I had acquired over the last four and a half years. But worse than the pain, I knew the Burden would drag me down like a prisoner's weighted ball and chain. The responsibility to make these two men happy was all on me. But how could I satisfy them both? How could I make them see that all I wanted was to ease their emotional torment?

Aang. He was my husband. I owed him something. If I didn't stay with him, I'd be breaking a promise…and breaking his heart.

But Zuko! How cold I turn my back on him when I wanted so desperately to be his friend? Maybe it was only an infatuation. Maybe if I stayed away from Zuko, I'd get over him. But no—I'd tried that before. I'd tried to make Zuko my enemy. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, though, and I wanted him now more than ever.

I tried to sort through my confused feelings. Who deserved more love? Who did I feel the strongest attraction for? Odd—I'd always imaged my romantic life to be full of passion. But there was startlingly little physical pleasure in being with Aang, and even less so with Zuko. I felt firmly that any sexual attraction to Zuko was pitifully weak; but I was deeply in love with his heart and personality.

Four and half years ago when I was only focused on defeating the Fire Nation, I always pictured Zuko as an enemy. I hated his face, so scarred and angry. At that time I too was scarred and angry—at the Fire Nation, at my Dad, at any one who resisted my control. Then when I married Aang, I became emotionally distant and focused on palace duties; Zuko, to me, seemed distant too. Zuko accepted me even after I worked with Azula, and that was when I was just beginning to accept myself too. He mirrored everything I felt, somehow; despite all the ridiculously drastic differences in our personalities. Zuko was a part of me. A part of my soul. A chain of fire linked our deepest selves, something almost palpable. Zuko was the answer. It was he who saved me from the jaws of death so many times.

But where did that leave Aang? If I spent my life with him, we had the potential to become a very dysfunctional couple. He couldn't even bring himself to say no to me, and I would frequently use this to my advantage. A relationship in which I was the boss, in which I was the lone caretaker of a sheepish husband, sounded deliciously tempting to me. But that was a harmful pattern, I now knew, and one I could identify as:

"CODEPENDENT."

My relationship with Aang would be like a bossy, pushy queen and a cowardly king. There would be a constant dance of stress and betrayal, some of which I'd already seen in Aang's small affairs with the palace women. My relationship with Zuko would be another extreme—our tempers were both so fiery we would push each other away like the opposing sides of a magnet. We constantly had blow-ups as it was; lots of yelling and storming angrily away.

"Katara?"

I jumped, startled. I had been sitting at the dressing table in my room, my head in my hands. I turned around to see Aang in the doorway. His face filled with sympathy as he saw the tears on my dark cheeks.

"Katara. I want to talk—"

Aang was interrupted as Zuko barged in while saying, "Katara, we need to talk."

The two young men stared at each other for a second, surprised. Then they both started talking at the same time and I couldn't make out a word they were saying.

"Whoa, guys! Slow down!" I exclaimed.

"See?" Aang snapped at Zuko. "You're bothering her! Leave her alone."

"No way! I was coming here first!" Zuko growled back.

"Well I got here first!"

"I thought of it first!"

"Just stop yelling!" Aang barked, unconscious that his own voice was raised too loud for me to talk over.

"You're just here to sway her your way!" the Fire Lord shouted. "Why don't you let her make up her own mind?"

"Be quiet! I'm the Avatar, and if you don't shut up I'll knock you into next spring!"

"Ha! You? You're just a pansy!"

"I'm not a flower!" Aang protested in injured tones.

The argument continued as I walked out of the room. The men were too busy squabbling to notice me, and I was too overwhelmed to make them. Right now, I just needed to be alone.

*******************

I walked slowly alone the quiet beachfront. The smooth sand was strewn with rocks in places, and this far down there were no tourists. The grey, cloudy weather, teased by light breezes that hinted about the coming rain, was a further cause for the lack of people here. It was just me and the wheeling, crying gulls.

Or was it? Staring out into the deep blue, I remembered the island a few hundred feet off shore was actually the Lion Turtle. I grew angry and I wanted to fight the great beast, but a strange feeling over me suddenly. I heard a soothing voice in my head calling, "Come to me. Come to me, Katara." And without quite knowing why, I swam out into the water towards the Turtle. I went like one in a dream, looking the way Aang probably did the night he joined the Lion Turtle. In a moment I was treading water as close to the beast's gigantic head as I dared. He lifted a claw and I climbed onto it.

The dreamlike condition faded. I was aware that I was in the power of this beats, and resentment filled my heart. The giant Lion's unmoving head looked strict and powerful, its glowing eyes ferocious.

But the voice was strangely soft. "Katara, why are you so angry at me?"

"You took Aang away," I answered in a hurt, trembling voice. "You hurt him."

"I only knocked a little sense into his head," the voice replied, deep and full of fondness. "I was looking out for him. He stayed in an air bubble until we were far out to sea, and then I took him on my back."

"Aha!" I exclaimed, getting even more furious. "So you kept him away! He was gone three seasons because he was your prisoner!"

"I'll leave you and Aang to discuss that. All I will say us that the Avatar was kept alive riding on the very island you see before you now."

"But you were dead," I argued, rather faintly. "How can a dead beast save a man's life?"

"Death is a small obstacle in the scheme of things."

My rage was getting bigger by the second. "How dare you make light of something so horrible! Nothing impacts history as much as death and war. I should know—" I fought back tears—"I caused so much of it!"

"Indeed," the voice agreed sternly. "What you did will live on in the world's history for centuries and millennia. You killed me and you killed hundreds of others. But you are forgiven. What you did served the purposes of the Great forces very well."

At this I could stare in bafflement. I wanted to understand this Lion Turtle and what he believed, but I only felt confused. This was Avatar stuff—spiritual, not having any thing to with a girl like me. I didn't even know what the Lion turtle was. Obviously he wasn't just an animal; but he wasn't a spirit either, was he? He claimed to have died but had the ability to come back. He was hundreds and even thousands of years old. I imagined a creature of his age to speak in riddles, but he was as frank with me as Guru Pathik or Hu from the south swamps.

In fact his words sounded very much like Hu's. The old swamp bender had talked about death being an illusion; how we were all one people, just different shoots off the same tree. "I know I'm the Avatar's wife and I should understand more," I admitted guiltily. "But I just don't get any of this."

"Would you like me to show you?" asked the Lion turtle patiently.

The casual tone of his voice baffled my mind. "And that's another thing." I huffed at the animal indignantly. "If you're so terrible and mighty, why are you talking to me like I'm an old buddy?"

"If you see me as terrible and mighty, it's just an illusion your mind made up," the voice replied. "Different people see me in different ways. Aang saw me as a super-solemn creature who spouted out poetic proverbs of ancient, sacred wisdom. In your sight I'm a ferocious beast ready to tear this city to pieces. But what I truly am is a Friend."

I definitely didn't ant a castle-sized animal as my friend—Appa was enough to deal with! But still, I should give this intelligent animal a chance to explain things I needed to know. "How can you make me understand all that Avatar stuff?" I inquired politely.

"I can use space and time and other-dimensional travel. It shouldn't be too hard to show you some history first-hand."

He spoke so calmly is stunned me. "Whoa, hold it!" I exclaimed. "You're a time bender? So death doesn't bother you, you've been around longer than the Avatar, you can bend space and time, and you can go to other worlds?!" I couldn't help wondering, though, that if this was true, the Lion turtle could have the power to end the Bender's Plague. Almost every great bender was suffering now, and my own Chi spells were getting worse by the day. Soon it would be an accomplishment to bend at all. But no—of the course an animal couldn't cure a spirit disease! The idea was ridiculous—preposterous—insane!

"Maybe you get an inkling of the stress Aang's been suffering. He was upset too when he discovered the Great Forces."

I stared, completely lost.

The Turtle's voice carried amusement. "Don't you remember what Guru Pathik told you? Aang's affairs with Toph and Beka were the result of stress and shame. I'm not excusing him; I'm just saying the facts. I'm the reason Aang was so overwhelmed."

"I thought it was the Great Forces that stressed him out."

"Yes."

I folded my arms, irritated. "Well you're being as clear as mud."

"I shall endeavor to afford you less mud now." Still holding me in his fore claw, the Lion Turtle delved under the water. We were swept up in a weird kind of current and there was a loud whirring sound. I become conscious that we were moving through some kind of portal or vortex.

"Where are you taking me?" I shouted.

"To understand Aang," the beast replied.