Katara grabbed Aang's arm once it was safe to touch him and pulled him back protectively. "Who are you!?" she asked accusingly, stare cold and suspicious.

Tears welled in Ren's eyes as she shook, completely awestruck and petrified. "I—I don't know. I'm not an Airbender. I'm a Waterbender."

"I—It must have been some—some freak thing," Kaida tried to reason. "It has to have been him doing the Bending, not us. I mean, I can't Bend fire. Look, just look!"

Taking a deep breath and drawing strength from the earth, Kaida slammed both fists down as if against an invisible force, then opened them and drew her hands together. The crack that had opened in the ground has been slowly filling with sand, but now it drew itself closed. The girl responsible looked up at them all desperately. "See? Earth. I'm an Earthbender. You can't Bend more than one element unless you're the Avatar!"

"And I'm only a Waterbender!" Ren said desperately. "I wouldn't even begin to know how to Bend air! Only the Avatar can bend Air, and I'm obviously not the Avatar because you are!"

"We saw you Bend fire!" Sokka accused.

"Wait, wait, let's all calm down," Aang said reasonably. "Maybe there's a good explanation for all this."

Kaida wanted to think that too, but she couldn't get the image of fire burning on her palms out of her mind. Even if Aang had conjured that fire, only a Bender would have been able to hold it. Suddenly feeling a little sick, she whispered, "I—I need Mom."

Ren grabbed her cousin's hand, seeking some sort of comfort. "I'll go with you. Come on."

Sokka's eyes narrowed and he leaped forward, pointing at them both and shouting: "Oh no! You're going back to warn Fire Nation troops!"

Aang frowned. "Sokka, what do you want to do, kidnap them?"

"We have no idea what just happened and we need to talk to her mother," Ren said quietly. "She might know what's going on."

"Your mother could be a Firebender!" Sokka accused.

Kaida clenched her fists and the earth below her trembled. "My mother is a tailor!" she snapped, but her eyes were too wide for anger and her voice laced with fear. "Come with us and see if you want. I just – I don't know – what, do you have a better idea!?"

Katara nodded. "We'll come with you. Sokka, stop it! They seem just as shocked as we are."

"So your mother isn't an Earthbender?" Aang asked as they started off for town, looking a little disappointed. "I'm going to need an Earthbending master after I learn Waterbending…"

Kaida swallowed hard and shook her head. "No, just my father. He and Ren's father were brothers but Uncle Daisuke wasn't a Bender. Most people assume Ren and I aren't either, so please don't tell anyone otherwise. It's… still not safe to have an accusation like that over your head around here."

Katara nodded her understanding. "You have our word. We won't tell anyone—as long as you don't tell anyone about us. There's a very angry Fire Nation guy looking for Aang right now."

"And you have our word," Ren said. "We won't tell anyone about any of you."

"Except Mom, but she would never betray a Bender," Kaida added as they entered the village square. She nodded toward a small wooden hut with plain, long shifts hanging in front of it, all in shades of green and blue. "This is her shop."

When Ren opened the door, warm red light streamed in. A petite woman with straight black hair like Kaida's sat in a rocking chair behind a counter, and she looked up from the seams of a dress she was taking in with surprise.

"Kaida, dear," she said with concern in her golden-brown eyes. "Ren, you girls are home early; it's barely sunset. You know it isn't safe for you to be in the city during the day. What if one of the travelers notices something?"

Ren sighed. "Something's happened. It's kind of hard to explain, but we have no idea what's going on. Aunt Kosuke, this is Aang, Katara, and Sokka," she added, gesturing to each of them. "They were there when it happened."

Now Kaida's mother looked really confused and if possible, even more alarmed. "Well, I'm pleased to meet you, I'm sure, but—" Then her eyes landed on Aang's forehead and she stood straight up, dropping the clothes in her lap on the floor. "Are… are those Airbender tattoos?"

Aang smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, kind of."

The tailor put a hand to her mouth and Kaida said slowly, "That's kind of what we wanted to talk to you about, Mom. Something really strange happened when we met Aang."

"He was showing us an Airbending trick," Ren explained slowly. "And well, I don't even know how to explain it. I'm a Waterbender, but suddenly I was an Airbender too. And Kaida… well, she's an Earthbender but suddenly she—well, she was a Firebender too."

"Sozin's throne!" Kosuke whispered, stepping forward and looking from Aang to Kaida to Ren and back to Kaida. "You… You can't be. The only way that could be is if you were the Avatar."

"That's what we keep saying," Kaida said helplessly. "So you don't know anything? I mean, this is impossible, right?"

Kosuke swallowed hard and wrapped her arms around herself as if suddenly cold. "Kaida, dear… All of you… please, sit down." She nodded toward the bench normally reserved for customers and as they arranged themselves on it, she opened the door of her shop just long enough to flip the sign to closed.

"I'm so sorry I never told you," the woman said quietly as she closed and locked the door. She came to stand before the children with the imploring eyes of someone that knew she should have spoken her secrets long ago. "Kaida, my little lark, understand I just didn't know how to tell you. When I was a young girl about your age… when I met your father… it was in the Fire Nation."

Kaida's mouth fell open, her tone halfway between unbelieving and accusatory as she asked, "You're a Firebender!?"

"No!" Kosuke said firmly, holding up a hand as if to forestall another outburst. "No, I was never a Bender. But I was born into a fairly well-to-do family in the Fire Nation. Your father…" The ghost of a smile crossed her face but was gone before Kaida could be sure it was really there. "He was a freedom fighter trying to stir up unrest in the outlying cities. He was good at it, too. He won me over."

Kaida's mother twisted the plain gold band she wore on her wrist and sighed softly. "When my parents found out, they sent me away to a boarding school. An academy just for young girls. But Keji came and found me. We ran away to the Earth Kingdom… and on the way, we met this woman named Wu.

"She called herself a fortuneteller, and I don't even know if she was from the Earth Kingdom or the Fire Nation, but she didn't turn us in. She said she was very interested in our fate. I just thought she was crazy, even more so when she told my fortune."

Kosuke paused to check the shutters were fully closed before continuing, "She told me that I was with child – a child of more than one element. Of course, I told her; Keji was an Earthbender and I of the Fire Nation. But she said she meant a child who could Bend more than one element."

She looked at Aang and said honestly, "I didn't believe her. How could I? It was insane. Until I discovered she was right, that my Kaida would be born. Then you must understand, my first thought was that somehow the Avatar had died with the Air Nomads, that the Waterbender he had been reincarnated into had since died as well. But there was no way to know for certain, not without the Fire Lord learning of the possibility and taking my baby girl away from me."

Tears shone in Kosuke's eyes as she looked back to her daughter. "And when Izumi… and then your father…"

Kaida looked like she had been asked to swallow a mango whole, but she finally forced herself to breathe and whispered, "It was bad enough I was an Earthbender."

"No," Kosuke said firmly, squeezing Kaida's hand. "That was never bad. It's a piece of your father. But you were a precocious little girl and it was so hard already keeping both you and Ren secret. I fooled myself into believing that was what Wu meant – I had one daughter but two Benders."

"But it wasn't," Aang said unnecessarily. "Kaida couldn't have held fire unless she was a Firebender. Somehow she can Bend two elements, and Ren too."

Ren closed her eyes and let out a low breath, then said what everyone was thinking: "And just normal Bending is enough to get us killed. They'll raze the whole village for this and we don't even know why."