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Trying to shake matters both international and lexicographical from her head, Ayika moved past the moat of the Exclusion and quickened her pace. She was now actually worried about being late to work and began silently cursing her father for causing her extra errand. She was in fact so busy trying to catch sight of the elevated track through some gap in the roofs and clothes lines that she did not notice the ever increasing number of people she was passing. She was just considering running flat out all the way down Temple Street to the tram station when she bumped face first into someone's back. Mumbling her apology she became aware that running on Temple Street was not an option today as it appeared the entire population of the city had suddenly decided itself in desperate need of religion.
The street lined with holy buildings was packed, but she was a city girl. However, soon even the vigorous use of elbows ceased to allow headway. The crowd here was strange, not the usual churning sea of pedestrians and shoppers. No, there was very little motion, and where there was some small movement it revealed a palpable tension rising from the mob like a flock of disturbed sparrows. Standing on her toes Ayika peered up over the wall of shoulders in front of her, looking for a weakness to exploit. There. Ahead of her was the crested hat of a guard and behind him some open street-space. The guards were a species that this low in the city normally possessed the ability to close storefronts by simply stepping onto a street. However here his field of repulsion seemed to have failed and while none of the harbor folk in front of him were touching any part of his green uniform, a single deep breath on the guard's part would land half a dozen counts of accosting a watchman on the docket. Still, that way looked better than any other direction so she began a boot-assisted foot stamping assault through the thickening crowd.
Success! Ayika surged forward at the sight of open space in front of her only to screech to a halt as she realized that her targeted guardsman was not alone. In fact the blessed stretch of empty street was being kept so by a wall of lawmen, more than any resident of the Lower City could be comfortable with. Across that narrow exposed strip of fitted stone a similar horde of compacted citizenry stared back past an identical row of green jerkins. Over the yellow tiled roofs and through the gently drifting clouds of smoke from temple incense she could see the arched stone pillars that supported the tram track, tauntingly peeking past curled eaves.
Looking for some clue as to the cause of this roadblock more elucidating than the incessant grumbling of the crowd around her, Ayika leaned out to see if there were any answers hidden by the curve of the road and got a smack on the shoulder by a sheathed sword hilt for her efforts.
"Hey Grassy! I was just looking!" She snapped, offended and frustrated. Turning to the guard she said "What's the deal anyway? I need to get to the transport line for my job! We going to be allowed to get through or are you planning on nabbing half the Bed today?"
A blank and stony expression under that folded fabric fan shaped crest was her only answer. However Ayika was encouraged by the grumblings from behind echoing her roughly voiced sentiment. Changing tack she slid across the skin of the barricade over to the next guard in line. In a sickeningly soft voice she called out "Oh, officer! Could you please tell me perhaps how long we will be held up here? I really need to get through to the Merchant's Wall, of you could?"
"Sorry, mam." This guard said, scratching at the stubble on his young chin. Of course the man responded to the silk and lilies voice, ugh. "Temple street is closed down all the way from the Exclusion bridge. It should be open soon but I can't tell you when."
Ayika was not mollified. "Come on! I have to get to the station for my tram! What could be so important that you close all of Temple street?"
She felt a jab in her back from one of the citizens behind her. "Mouthy tribals don't know a damn thing. You live in a tree, girl? The Ambassador is dead."
She spun to deliver the insults back in alley-trained asymmetric retaliation, when what the man had said sank in. Suddenly the indistinct mutters of the crowd separated into audible words. "Foreigners", "War", "Concessions", "Spirits", and again "Foreigners". Swallowing the defense of her pride, Ayika began a quick calculation that if the Ambassador really had died, then all the little hurts of imports and lost jobs that so often came to surface amongst the working folk of the lower ring and beyond would be fresh again today, meaning that the middle of a dense and irritated crowd was not the best place for a foreign looking girl linger. City folk were not necessarily known for their geographical aptitude or tough concepts like foreigners coming in two varieties.
Keenly feeling her dark skin, Ayika rocked from her heels to her toes and eyed a weakness between two distracted guards. Somewhere in the distance she could hear a rhythmic stamping of feet, and her heart began to beat faster. Thoughts that a city-reared girl had long since considered ridiculous paranoia began to prick the back of her mind as she felt eyes from the crowd on the back of her neck. Suddenly a shift in the wind brought a dense cloud of incense smoke down into the street sending half the guards into a fit of coughing.
This was her chance to slip through.
Ayika darted forward into the cleared street. Taking her first step into the empty passage she smiled, seeing the oblivious backs of the officers on the other side. But then she heard an indistinct yell and felt a tug on the back of her collar. The hand from the crowd brought her down hard onto the ground with an angry thud. Now her jostled bones were complaining while angry voices shouted at her and the green-wrapped arm of a guard pulled her up, shoving her back into the sidelines as a new cloud of smoke boiled up around the corner of the street.
"Hai!" A many-voiced yell pierced throughout the commotion and left murmuring in its wake. Heads began to gravitate towards the smoke smothered bend in the road, one by one until the many-faced monster of the populace slowly turned. The stamping was louder.
Ayika found her feet under her and brushed herself off, angrily turning to look for the arm that had pulled her down for the guard to catch her. But her scowl swiftly faded as she noticed every public eye aimed towards and past her. Slowly she turned down the street in time to see the figures leap through the smokey haze into the light.
Stamp! Six dancers landed on the dirty flagstones. Their feet touched down in perfect synchronicity, lithe figures in strange swaths of pink and red. Then they sprang into motion again, forward down the street. Their dance was intense and sharp, smooth undulations changing to violent jabs in a blink. Ayika caught her breath as they leaped again, impossibly far, alighting with the fierceness of a striking eagle. It was like watching fire dance.
Now there were more voices and crash of ringing metal. More figures emerged from the drifting smoke. Lines of dancers in crimson cloth, moving in unison. A movement of hips that with the exposed stomachs and trousers verged close enough to obscenity to elicit a gasp from the crowd. The dancers spun again and the cymbals crashed again, small disks of metal tied to the inside of their knees artfully struck together with each leap and lunge. Behind the performers walked a number of stately men in long dark robes. They were in orderly rows and though those at the edges were benders who held balls of floating flame hovering above their hands somehow attention bowed towards the figures in the center of the group who simply walked along.
Beside Ayika, an elderly onlooker pursed her lips at a tall figure leading the procession of ranked equals. "Why, doesn't he look happy the Ambassador is dead. Yeah, keep your nose up you sneak, see what you get. I just hope all you'll do yourselves in. Foreigners, pah!"
The target of this did not appear to mind this lack of support. The man was strong and tall and though the mouth above his pointed black beard was somber, his eyes glittered at something beyond the events in front of him. His wake pulled with him a dark wrinkled man in the red cloth hat of a foreign priest. Despite his age and the pace of the parade, this hunched sage looked less likely to give up than the virile ranks of Islander notables who filed behind, who were directing frustrated glares at the swirling dancers who orbited them. The leapers paid no mind as they clashed and surged.
As she followed the dancers Ayika's eyes were full of flesh and silk so it was not until the collective intake of breath alerted her that she became aware of the focal point of the parade emerging from the cover of the street-bend. There were torches and incense, dancers and figures in dark robes, but above all it was the pavilion. It had the form of a covered sedan chair held aloft by twelve men. Gauzy red cloth disguised the contents and ribbons drifted in the air. The canopy glittered with dark feathers. She stared raptly as a breath of wind flared the torches and lifted aside the thin curtain. Inside there was the shape of a seated figure, knees clutched in front, but all over wrapped in a thick, dense cloth, a solid mass of fiber and knots. Above its chest there sat a wooden mask, massive and ornate, staring out with a powerful intensity. Ayika looked on at the stern features wrot in dark wood and as she looked she felt she could see something in the graven eyes, embers burning in the distance.
Then the air shifted and the curtain fell back into place, turning the grotesque shape back into a dark silhouette. Ayika found her chest heaving to recapture the breath she didn't know she had lost. Behind her people were jostling, but it was a meaningless tumult of noise. As the procession passed the guards were opening the street, creating a flow of traffic opposite the direction of the dancers. Ayika just looked back at the palanquin, wondering at the man who's former body occupied it, and wondering what would happen to the balance he had spent his life establishing between the two nations.
The last dancer of the parade startled her, appearing with a twirling stop at the end of the procession. A continuation of her graceful lunge brought the figure so close Ayika could have touched her. For an instant their eyes met and they breathed in together. And then the dancer was gone again, spinning and vaulting across the street, leaving Ayika blinking behind her. In an instant the street was open again, and filled with people going across their business. Foreigners and foreign gods seemed forgotten in favor of the local gods of Commerce and The Deal.
Ayika was not used to being reminded of the Islanders in the city. She knew that hundreds or more lived down here in the port town but since they all by law resided in the Exclusion it was easy to forget. She shook herself back to attention and pushed her way forward through the thinning crowd. It was now just two streets to the tram station and she refused to let anything stop her. Several vendors discovered this to their surprise as their attempts to waylay her for random purchases left them disoriented facing her suddenly departing back, wondering how she had spun them around like a top with one fluid movement.
Ayika ran. There, across the square was the huge structure of the immigration building, planted squarely across the mouth of the passenger docks, and behind it the end of one of the transport lines that allowed the massive city to feed itself, a row of carriages set on enchanted stone rollers still sitting in its place. As she started up the stairs Ayika pumped her fist in victory, which quickly turned to panic as she heard the departure bell ring.
"Oh, no no no no no." She said as she rushed up the flights with her city passport held high, bursting out onto the platform panting and cursing the needlessly elevated chute-track. The loaders were already moving off the freight cars, she only had a few moments. She ran past the noble-class cars and began frantically examining the steerage compartments for a space. A frantic glance over her shoulder showed the government earthbenders sauntering out of their break rooms, the royal seals glittering on their uniforms. Seizing the nearest open door Ayika shoved herself into the pressed mass of commuters. The crowd resisted but she took advantage of her height to use her shoulders at chest level. People loudly complained and for an instant Ayika thought they were going to succeed at pushing her out, but then the car shook slightly on its rollers. The adepts were aboard.
Behind the ornate cars worn down by decades of use the earthbender adepts moved and the magic awoke. The grinding, scraping, rattling conveyance rumbled into action and they were off, carried through the air on the vaulted trackway of pale, weather stained stone. Beneath them passed the harbor town with the Exclusion looming in the distance behind and beyond that the outer ramparts where they passed over the river. Ahead, beside where the lace-like pattern of mighty canals teeming with boats joined to reform the Kuang river, between the factories and export docks on one side and the harbor town on the other, lay the muddied snake of the Bed that teemed with all the things and people the citizenry would rather not consider.
Ayika was in a fine position to enjoy these sights as her struggles to find a seat had secured space only for her seat. Most of her front half hung out a window where the young woman sighed wearily as she braced her arms on the outside of the car. A noise from above proved to be a gaggle of urchins riding for free on the roof, an illegal decision which appeared very appealing to someone who could feel what she hoped was only a bag of rice pressed up against her rear. Her mother was right; this commute was a chore. On the streets below streams of porters and beast-drawn wains converged into a flood on the main road towards the City gate, fighting the constant battle to keep the urban masses fed. The harbor town was bustling with industry and there were signs of a greater transformation coming. Here and there in missing gaps of houses the long line of ant-like chaos that was the Great Dig project surface. It was rumored that a foreign industrialist was planning it as a demonstration to replace the ancient earthbending tram system with metal machines on iron tracks that were supposedly already engirding the Fire Nation. People were naturally distrustful but at the moment Ayika was not feeling favorably disposed to the old methods.
A wordless cry from the benders stationed behind the last car rose above the clattering din and she looked up to see the Craftsman's wall standing before her like a flat and stony desert turned perpendicular. The tracked chute they rode in was at an even level with the rooftops of the town that peaked above the slowly grinding mass of carts and people flowing towards the lower gate, but still the wall stretched above her with seemingly infinite height. The protrusions of guard stations up its side, themselves fortresses fit for a small town, seemed as rocky anthills peaking out of cracks in brick-lain walkway. The train raced forward and Ayika was seized with a vertiginous sensation that she was falling from the sky towards the stony ground. She pressed back closer to the wall of the tram car and held her breath as they sky was abruptly swallowed by the tunnel mouth. The blackness stretched on, and as always her lungs gave out before the dark. So she burst gasping into the light and into the Impenetrable City.
The greatest settlement of mankind was something beyond comprehension, of a scale that it could only be perceived in parts. Before her in the lower ring, houses and compounds blended with markets, squares, temples, inns, houses, workshops, and apartments on and on in a never ending sea of humanity. Smoke rose from factories, beasts pawed the ground, boats navigated narrow waterways to form a tapestry that was less a construct man and more a terrain type, rising from the natural order just like a mountain or the plains. The City warped the land, and the lives of all those people with it. Ayika was helplessly caught in its web, and she smiled as the roofs stretched for miles.
After what seemed like ages of passing over the narrowest point of the lower ring the rocking and grinding tram neared a second wall, as high as the first, and once again passed into darkness, emerging into the light of another world. In the middle ring the buildings were at once smaller being private residences and more spread about, with most having small gardens surrounding them. As the tram rumbled past the carved bulge of the stone merchant-houses on the Fifth Hill that rose from the sea of rooftops like an errant marble wave capped in tile roofs Ayika began readying herself to escape at her stop. The cars ground to a halt above a neat square far from where the these rich people's buildings pressed up against that wall that denoted the residence of their supposed betters. Taking a steadying breath on the platform Ayika cast a glance at the artificial plateau of the Nobel's Wall in the distance where the golden-blooded lived with their vast gardens and mansions peeking out over the squalor beneath their feet. For herself, Ayika was glad for them to hide away, the lesser breed of condescension she dealt with daily was plenty sufficient. Sighing, she abandoned the vista of the tram station to descend the long steps back to her life of work.
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