Letters from the Falling Sky
.19.
Her steps were uneven and carried her with a pace comparable to a cloud.
When she was a child—around Lynnie's age, perhaps older—she wouldn't walk anywhere without holding her mother's hand. She remembers with a distinct clarity the size of their village then. It was ornate and lovely, with the repressed ability of becoming something great. It was, in her mother's words, "Full of promise."
She would also add, squeezing on Katara's hand a little tighter, that the South Pole would one day also be full of waterbenders.
In hindsight Katara can recall even the smallest details. There was a missing stitch in her mother's black and white gloves…right hand, index finger, near the top. She remembers the exact color of the sky and—had she ever taken an interest in the arts—would have gladly painted this scene flawlessly, because the sky was beautiful alongside her mother, who also taught her to see beauty in everything—even the missing stitches.
She remembers the size of the older woman's footprints in the snow compared to her own. The fear of one day not being able to fill them. Her mother's laugh lines –not because she was old but because she was happy. And her mother's name.
Kya. Hakoda often described his wife's nature, as well as her name, to be both abrupt and lasting. It was abrupt because he fell in love with her instantaneously, and it was lasting because—even after her death—he couldn't bring himself to any other woman.
It is upsetting to think that, had it not been for Gran Gran's recommendation, Katara would have never included the "Kya" part in "Kya Lynn."
Now Lynnie was dragging her mother along, and Katara suddenly asked herself if her own daughter would remember details such as this. Lynnie never seemed to be paying attention to anyone, much less to Katara, who appeared to be more of a hassle than a parental unit.
Lynnie liked Aang. His sudden appearance in her life, as well as his tattoos, gifts, and airbending, made him a new thing for Lynnie to adore. He was the Gran Gran now. The story-teller, toy-maker, wisdom-provider. And Katara…Katara was the woman who held her hand when things went dangerous. Katara was the one who made the food and washed the clothes and sat in a room alone writing letters and not sending them.
They had reached a narrower street with cherry trees to either side. It was the blossoming season, and the apparent pinkness of the trees meshed so flawlessly with the characteristic red of the Fire Nation buildings that Katara nearly forgot she was awake. Lynnie had released her hand and skipped about two paces ahead. She bent down and retrieved a small cherry blossom and handed it to her mother, who smiled warmly and put it in her hair, behind her ear.
"What are these?" the child wanted to know. "How come Gran Gran never told me about them?"
Katara tried to cover the strain in her voice. "Cherry blossoms, darling," she replied, picking a fresh one from a neighboring tree. "They produce fruit when the season gets warmer. But for now they are all still little flowers."
"Fruit!" Lynnie chortled. "How?"
The difficulties of explanation became all too apparent, and Katara feared—for the first time in what felt like years—not giving Lynnie enough information, or even overdoing it. The explanation game was always Gran Gran's job.
Katara sighed gently and picked up an older blossom, and held it between her finger and thumb, and knelt down to Lynnie's level and touched her daughter's shoulder.
"You see the center, Lynnie darling?"
"Okay."
"You see those little stubs?"
Lynnie pointed to the pollinated center of the flower.
"Yes, dearest. The stubs grow into a cherry. Okay?"
Kya Lynn nodded with grateful agreement, although it was obvious to Katara that Lynnie didn't know what a cherry was. Her daughter instead turned her attention back to the narrowing, winding walkway. She had acquired a cherry tree twig and slapped this mercilessly across either side of her as she skipped. Katara stared at the back of the girl's head blankly.
Maybe things were going to be okay.
They could walk like this forever, and the void that Gran Gran had left would eventually become a distant, tattered memory—the sort of thing that children Lynnie's age immediately forgot. Katara would fill the white, glowing space. She owed it to Lynnie to at least try again. She had committed a series of mistakes and, instead of working them through, she had blamed them on Kya Lynn. And Aang. And maybe also a little bit on Kana.
Introspection was necessary. Reflection was immediate. She had made a promise to Gran Gran to be a good mother, and here she was. A good mother? Hardly. But she was just about to get the mother part.
One crawled before one walked.
The path became twisty, and the cherry trees faded into maple trees, which were high and frightening and gave the walk a distinct somber look. Katara searched the edge of the path for the hotel address, and found the entrance next to a set of decorative outdoor lanterns.
Fire Nation Palace City Welcomes You! Nation's End Hotel offers only the most exquisite services for our most valuable patrons.
"Is this where we're going to stay?" Lynnie asked, stuffing her bison dolls into the Little Miss Mai travel set.
"Yes. Hold my hand now, dear. I don't want to lose you."
To the healer's surprise, Lynnie did as she was told and grasped her mother's fingers. Katara began to walk to the hotel nervously. She couldn't explain what it was, but something about the location of the building and the setting didn't compute. "Nation's End Hotel" seemed a little too generic, and the pathway and lanterns…their physical appearance was new. It was the kind of place that Katara expected would have an old world setting to it.
When she walked in and looked at the small lobby desk, however, she began to think that her uncertainty was unnecessary. There was a lovely young miss behind the counter, with honey hazel eyes, and long straight hair the color of night, and a smile that immediately communicated trust.
Katara sighed in relief. Lynnie took advantage of this and let go of her mother's hand.
The woman's nametag read simply, "Ming," and her primary interest appeared to be Katara's daughter. She stared at the child with a sort of glazed look, and then—as though comparing parent to offspring—looked up at the healer and then back down to Lynnie.
"Your daughter is gorgeous," said the woman in a hushed, confidential murmur. "How old is she?"
Katara signed the paper that had been prepared for her and answered, without thinking, "Almost five."
Ming grinned with all of her teeth. Her lips were full, and her facial features were moderately feminine. Katara asked, out of curiosity and also because she thought it was true, "Have I seen you before?"
"Me? Have you?" Ming shrugged in a distracted manner and took the signed paper behind her desk. "Maybe…I mean—I don't know. I have a really common face."
"You seem familiar."
"A lot of people say that."
"And you live in the Fire Nation?"
She answered, a little too loudly, "Yes!" before changing her mind and adding, "I mean—I live in…what used to be a colony. It's not a colony anymore. But it used to be."
Katara had placed her leather bag on the floor and had grabbed on to Lynnie's coat hood. "How is it like, in the colonies?"
Ming began sweating. Katara noticed because in the South Pole, no one ever sweats. It is too cold to sweat. And so when the first small bead accumulated on Ming's brow, Katara began to question the young woman's intentions. She seemed anxious. Her hands had left a small damp spot on the signed papers Katara had handed her.
Ming's attention was unequally divided against Katara and her daughter.
"It's nice, for a colony. But it got dangerous. My father was a mayor, actually. He had to deal with a lot of trouble." She stated, almost as an afterthought, "Not exactly the nicest place to grow up."
"Goodness." Katara tightened her grip on a fidgeting Lynnie. "What kind of trouble?"
"Mostly gangs…sometimes there was drug trouble too. It all depended. But it's better now." She hesitated. She handed Katara a folded brochure and laughed sweetly—almost embarrassed—before reaching for a towel to wipe her face. "How about you? You're obviously not from the Fire Nation."
Katara smiled and nodded. "What gave it away?" she wanted to know. "The skin? Or the coat?"
"A little bit of both." Ming watched Lynnie from the corner of her eyes. "But your daughter is lighter than you are."
"She takes after her father." The healer also studied Lynnie briefly, suddenly aware of the differences that set them apart, before picking up her bag and heading for the stairs. "It was nice meeting you, Ming."
Ming was preoccupied. She shuffled a set of papers behind her desk and responded, without looking up, "Enjoy your stay."
"Thank you."
Then she half-shouted, "Take care! Please take care!" before returning to the mundane duties of her desk, her eyes wavering momentarily on the sudden emptiness of the lobby. She made a small noise that Katara couldn't decipher because she had already placed considerable distance between them.
Katara led Lynnie up the twisted stairway to the third floor, where the pink walls and narrow hallway reminded her of the cherry blossom path she had just shared with her daughter moments before.
She let Lynnie put the key in and turn it, as it was the first time the child had seen a door decorated with such detailed and ornate features. And also because Katara was trying to build the kind of intricate memories that one don't just lose overnight.
Incredulously, and in her defense, she thought it was going well. Lynnie had already gotten into the habit of looking up to her mother when she addressed her. The intimacy of that simple movement must have surely meant that things were going according to plan.
And Ming had noticed that Lynnie was Katara's daughter, despite the physical skin difference, or the hue of the eyes. Maybe everything would unfold swiftly from here. She would marry Aang and they would blossom into a traditional family, and people would ask about them and she would have a man alongside her to justify the sex and the babies—the shame would disappear.
Her guilt would leave her alone.
Although Katara knew, from the death of her own mother, and her father, and then her mother's mother, that one of Fate's talents was to alter plans for the better—sometimes also for the worse.
When she said, "Is this some kind of joke?" she didn't mean to sound offended. But perhaps the notion of not sounding offended was impossible. She had married Zuko a little more than four years ago.
The topic was untouchable. Sensitive. And the questions destroyed her. The comments were worse. When noblewomen visited the palace to finalize laws or gossip over tea, she had to clench her fists at her sides to prevent herself from sticking a silver spoon through their eye sockets.
"Why not, Mai?" they would ask. "You're still young, and all of the finances of the world are available to you."
"Who shall we place the blame on?" another would inquire nasally. "Is Zuko too busy? Or do you just deny him?"
"Babies make a family," observed a voice. "One can't have a family without children."
There were more. Warnings of growing too old, warnings of losing Zuko to a whore who would promise him a son, fears of losing one's mind—as a woman should surely know her place in a marriage and should also know the devastating outcome if she could not reproduce.
Mai was strong and fierce and stubborn; she taught herself to ignore them. If a baby was necessary, then it would come on its own. As far as she knew, she and Zuko were doing everything right. These things took time and effort. And frankly, she was in no hurry. So long as these women were simply talking, she saw no reason to punish them or pay attention. Or gouge their eyes out with a spoon. They were just bloated spinsters and widows and divorcees with too much time to consider the sex lives of others as a way of projecting their own lacking sex lives.
It was all about the sex. The touchable idea of holding a child scarcely had anything to do with it.
Yet Mai—who had so carefully defended herself against venomous noblewomen, who had held her temperament down to save face—was honestly shocked and extremely disgusted when the Avatar kissed her hand and stated, in the way of custom, "Congratulations, Mai. May the spirits lead you into a safe delivery."
Because there had to be limits on what she could stand. And this form of mockery was intolerable. Her throat felt tight. She clenched and unclenched her hand and searched the Avatar's face.
"Is this some kind of joke?"
Aang blinked and straightened his back.
"Aang," Zuko started, taking a small step forward, "what are you talking about?"
He had busied himself with removing the folded invitation from his tunic. He looked at Sokka. Toph's lips had parted slightly, showing off part of her top row of teeth, a questioning look. Perhaps the dawn of realization.
"No," the earthbender mumbled, giving flesh to the incomprehension of thought. "God. No."
"It was all a trap," Sokka hissed crossly. "It was set up. A trap. The invitation."
Aang said quietly and slowly, as though pronouncing her name for the first time, "Katara," and looked past Zuko, where a gardener was bent over a fence pulling weeds and throwing them behind his shoulders. And it was then that he realized the virtual unimportance and relative simplicity of death.
He thought he turned around. He thought maybe he could hear Zuko and Mai and Sokka behind him, shouting questions and "Hurry! Hurry!" in high, breathless tones. Toph was in front, running back the way they had came. There was no time to process the infraction, no time to go back and save the rootless dandelions sprawled over a marbled courtyard, speckled with the dirt and pebbles that used to hold them stable.
In the washroom mirror Katara's reflection stood as motionlessly as Katara did. Lynnie had fallen fast asleep as soon as they had arrived in their large, seemingly over-decorated hotel room. Her breathing was even but fast, with the occasional cough, a result of the stressed sweetened tobacco smoking Katara had fallen prone to during her pregnancy. Kya Lynn coughed twice and then fell silent again, before coughing once more and turning noisily on the bed.
Just moments ago Katara had unpacked Lynnie's dolls, including the newest pregnant one, and placed them on the desk adjacent to one of the beds. She wished Lynnie hadn't fallen asleep so soon. Her dolls were dirty—or at least, they seemed to be covered with a sort of dust or grey powder—and Katara was sure that her child was, in addition to her toys, in need of a thorough washing.
The healer removed her coat and threw it behind her. She stepped out of her kimono. In her bindings she turned on the hot water tap and felt it with her left hand. Running water was still—ironically enough, for a waterbending nation—a distant luxury in the Southern Water Tribe. People were expected to bend it themselves, or pay someone to bend it.
Some time alone would do her wonders. She would smell lovely by the time Aang came back from his visit. And this thought warmed her almost as much as the running water did; she untied the bindings with a naïve, ignorant sort of smile—a look that she would have described before as stupid, or even unaware.
Her return to the South Pole with a bastard child still in her belly had altered her composition of thought. Katara had become a flawless pessimist. But things, she noticed now, had changed. Her process of thought—her world, her ideals—had been filtered though a different film, a different light. It was a little stupid, and maybe she was unaware, but it was the first time in a long time that she considered herself truly happy.
Their tub was old-world styled, with the traditional claw feet and curved lip. The water filled it almost instantly. Katara removed her boots and socks. She unpinned the earrings from the back and carefully slipped out of Aang's engagement necklace, placing it on a dry expanse above the sink.
She removed the wilting cherry blossom Lynnie had given her to wear. She kept this tucked safely in the folds of her kimono.
Then she slid into the bathwater seamlessly, without a ripple, almost like a fish.
"No," he was repeating. It became a chant.
They didn't know where to look. Aang had given Katara the directions, and he was left with nothing. People were stopping on the street to welcome the Fire Lord and his wife. They were wasting his time. He was running with his distinguishable twelve-year-old speed, faster than a whirlwind.
Toph and Sokka disappeared, but he was lost in a chain reaction, and it was deteriorating his ability to notice.
He turned the corners and crossed the streets and jumped in a number of treetop canopies and balconies.
A man was walking with his family. Aang stopped him and asked if he knew where Nation's End Hotel was located, and if it would take long to get there.
The man looked at the woman with him. "I'm sorry, mister," he answered pathetically. "Nation's End Hotel used to be on the southern border of the Fire Nation and the ocean. They closed it down nearly ten years ago."
She thought she slept.
It was hard to tell because her sleep cycles were flighty. She used to dream of her mother and father, and then of Aang, and then of Gran Gran. More recently she would see Suki in her dream, standing at the edge of a cliff. Katara would look at her and ask her to please not jump—she had a life with Sokka in the future and she needed to stay alive and make him happy. In the dream Katara was facing Suki, and Suki was screaming and pointing as though something was behind Katara, coming at her slowly. But in the dream she cannot turn around. She only sees a shadow casting before her. And then Suki turns into her next life cycle, a innocent girl with flushed cheeks and messy mahogany hair, holding on to a small, stuffed doll.
The sound of dropping water suddenly became all too noticeable, and she awoke to a grinding noise—something deep and rigorous. It sounded like the soft crushing of bone. And for that reason she opened her eyes wide and searched around the tub.
The dropping was coming from the sink she didn't remember turning on. The grinding was coming from behind the tub curtain, behind the partial wall that separated the tub and sink from the toilet and dresser.
She said aloud upon examination of the dripping sink from her spot, "That's strange." And then she tried to bend the water in the tub away from her to get out. But she was met with stubborn rejection of the element: it stayed peacefully where it was, and didn't move a centimeter.
Katara moved her hands again, this time with more concentration on the matter, and was yet again faced with motionless, stagnant water.
She grunted in detestation. Perhaps she was still dreaming. But there was a distinguishable grinding noise coming from behind the curtain—she could hear it. Her skin was prickling from the cool air of the large washroom. The sink was dripping. And the water, for whatever reason, was refusing her orders.
It was then the grinding stopped. Katara—master waterbender from the South Pole, top healer of the village, suddenly robbed of all of her abilities—Katara, soft woman naked in a bathtub far from home—mother separated from her daughter, child separated from her grandmother, young girl broken after her first love—with all of this, Katara felt helplessly exposed. Something was wrong. Someone was breathing in the room with her.
And the most frightening aspect was that it nearly felt familiar.
She stood out of the water and covered her chest, blinking at the warm, pink lantern light.
A voice said from behind the partial wall, "Bending isn't going to get you out of this one, Water Tribe girl."
Then a set of memorable large shoes turned the corner and stopped in front of the tub. She reached to cover herself with the red shower curtain, but her visitor's hand had grabbed hold of it, and his rugged, creased face had already searched the expanse of her naked body. Her jaw dropped; seconds became centuries. She tried again to cover her breasts with her arms.
"You must have missed me," Shu Orabi said. In his left hand he held one of Lynnie's dolls.