Chapter 1 – Chrysanthemum Floating on a Current
Nine months of the year the South Pole was a spectacular, glistening, pure white snowfield hedged between blue waterways, but for Katara the three months of summer were the most precious. In late spring the ground would thaw enough that fresh yellow-green blades of grass dotted through, climbing higher each day as the snow melted off inch by inch, and finished in a carpet of soft lichen in every hue from saffron to ochre to mellow blue-sage. At the summer solstice they had twenty hours of sunlight a day and small blue and white flowers erupted across the fields. Katara, flanked by a dozen small children, led them through the fields showing them what could be harvested, what could be dried for later and what had to be eaten fresh, what was medicinal, and what was poisonous. She let her body overflow with the energy of the long span of daylight and, in her light summer outfit, savored the warmth of the sun. In the winter she could sleep as much as she wanted, but in the short bliss of summer she pined to see every minute of her homeland in its peak beauty. Inland, through the hills, her brother hunted meat for them in summer—but that had ended two years ago when Sokka went to the mainland to find paying work, and she hadn't seen him since.
Seated with a bowl of stew in the summer tent she had always shared with her family, only she and Gran-gran ate together. Her father was still off at war and sent only periodic letters home, her brother was swallowed by the unknown on the coast of the Earth Kingdom, and her mother had long since passed. Sunlight still filtered through the canvas of the driftwood-framed tent when, at that moment closer to the equator, it would have already been dark.
This summer Katara had been the one to go on a hunting excursion. Alone and armed with a hunting bow, which she still struggled to wield, she had climbed the hills and tried to refind the hunting grounds her brother had mentioned, which their father had told him about, but hadn't, just as she hadn't last summer. Again the girl dragged home a sledge piled with small game and wildfowl instead of the arctic yak they as the village desperately needed. In her bowl there was fish instead of meat, which made the sea prunes overpowering by comparison, as the delicate flavor of the fish wasn't robust enough to compliment them.
Gran-gran, watching her and intuiting what she was worried about, set her own bowl down. "We still have some of the money Sokka sent back for us. There's three weeks left in the hunting season. But whatever you do, don't hunt after the snowfall—I forbid it. Some of the predators here are smart enough to follow your tracks in the snow, just as you could follow the snowhares and arctic hens."
"I know, Gran-gran," she replied. "I'll find us something to hold the village over before the three weeks are up."
"In a few years some of the other children will be big enough to hunt. Jomi is eleven now. Given the circumstance, I was going to send him with you next summer—twelve might be enough, and it's the age your brother started at." When she didn't reply, the matron was prompted to ask, "What's wrong?"
"I don't think I'll be here next summer. We've never eaten better than during the year Sokka was sending back money. I don't think we can support ourselves without it anymore, not with the men gone. Gran-gran, I'm trying, I'm trying with the bow and I can't hit the prey at a long enough range, and the range I can hit them in they hear me and spook. I tried with waterbending and I can't. If I had a teacher it might be different, but I don't."
"So what will you do?"
"What Sokka did—I'll find work in the Earth Kingdom. But unlike him the money I send back won't stop after one year. I'll make sure everyone can eat their fill, and we can afford medicine again, and fabric, and new tools."
In a gentle voice, her grandmother replied, "You don't need to do that. We'll get by somehow. I'd rather have you than money."
"I know, but it's not just the money. It isn't like Sokka to abandon us. I want to find him. I'm leaving at the end of summer, before the seas get too rough."
Meal abandoned at the table, her grandmother walked over to her and wrapped her in her arms. "If that's your decision, I'll have your supplies packed in time to make the late-season trade ship."
With two tigerseals and ten geese stacked for their larder, Katara, a heavy pack weighing her shoulders, prepared to board the wooden trading vessel. The village handed over ivory tusks, furs, and dried fish in return for grain and lentils and what other provisions they could still afford. There had been a time when their trade profits ensured them a good quality of life, but that was before her father and the other men had been forced to join the war effort, and for half of her life she'd known hunger and poverty more so than a full stomach. Standing on the deck, she watched the villagers lined up at the coast to give their farewell, and she wondered if they had already decided she, too, would disappear without a trace as her brother had.
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Stumbling backwards with the sudden shove, Katara failed to break her fall and impacted the hard ground with a thud that knocked her breath out. "I told you we have no work for women," shouted the firstmate of the fishing operation. Spittle erupted from his thin, chapped lips and stuck to his scraggy beard. "No one wants a woman defiling the ship. Every time you menstruate you'll scare the fish away and you're damned fucking useless at a hundred pounds soaking wet to lift fifty pounds of catch. How the fuck could you be any use?"
Burning with humiliation, she stood and wiped the dirt from her clothing as passerby watched the altercation. The fuming man was giving back the cursing-out she'd given him ten-fold as he continued a barrage of vulgarities, eluding as to the only use a woman might be on a ship full of men weeks away from port, and she thought of how much she'd like him to lose a few teeth, but stayed her fist knowing she'd be the one going to jail if she did. The crewmate slipped back inside the fishing company's office and grabbed up something that had been just inside the door, screamed, "You stinking whore," then flung a bucket at her. Water slick with remnants of fish-guts hurtled toward her. In a frantic effort to dodge, she twisted to the side and felt a pull at her fingertips and wrist; a split-second from complete disgrace, she indulged in the sensation of bending, leading the bucket contents just aside of her, where they passed her by and splattered against the ground. The man, baffled, stared at her. Katara spun on her heel and took up her bag to leave.
Sunlight was diminishing after a long day of inquiries and she'd exhausted every establishment in the coastal fishing town. No one had work for her, no one had heard of a young Water Tribe man by the name of 'Sokka,' and she had no money and no food left. Fuming, she hiked to the edge of town and out into the scrubby woodland, searching for a place to roll out her sleeping sack, and settled for a clearing near a small, rocky stream. Not two months ago she'd hauled tigerseals and other game back through twenty miles of backcountry in the tundra, completely alone at the mercy of the polar wild, she'd fished since the age of five in water cold enough to kill a person in three minutes, and now she wasn't good enough to help reel in nets and sort catch.
"Ugh!" she shouted, and strode to the creek. Dropping into what seemed like a good beginning stance, she closed her eyes and calmed her breathing down, still feeling the bite of her heartbeat drumming in her throat with unexpressed rage. Through her fingertips, wrists, elbows, shoulders, back, spine, and crown, the connection to the water presented itself. Lifting slowly and carefully, she shaped a trickle of diverted water into a sphere, globby and uneven, and swirled it around back and forth through figure eights, through ribbons, and felt herself grounded on the earth with the water as an extension of her body. An hour had passed and the sun set by the time she felt calm enough to sleep. Hungry and exhausted, she cleaned up and crawled into the bedding, minding to keep her arm looped through a strap of her bag so she wouldn't be robbed, aware that there were many gaunt faces in that town and she wasn't yet out of walking distance.
Having begun her search in autumn, by the time spring arrived she had exhausted every fishing village on the southern coast without finding even a trace of her brother. The only employment she could gain was cleaning. Her fingers ached from scrubbing floors and washing dishes and the pay barely covered food expenses. At the last village and looking north, she stood in a shop as the merchant assessed her winter parka, testing the seams and inspecting the quality of the fur. Reluctant to part with a token of her home, she needed the money but didn't need the parka until next winter, so the decision was inevitable to sell it. Saying he would be unable to move it off the shelf due to the season, the merchant deducted half its value as a holding fee, going on and on about how limited the room in his warehouse was and how important it was to sell things in-season, and handed over a meager sum that left her feeling swindled. Bitterly she laid down two copper pieces for a hot meal only a few shops down the avenue, finding it under-salted and the noodles overcooked, and with too few chunks of meat than there should have been for the portion size.
Now sixteen, she was awash in offers for work, all of a type she could never subject herself to, but at least she had the summer ahead and promise of better foraging along her way.
Spring in the Earth Kingdom brought more vegetation and warmth than she'd ever experienced in her life. Katara hurriedly dug a canvas sack from her bag and gathered everything she found edible along the way as she followed a road north, towards bigger cities and better prospects. By evening she had as much as she could ever want to eat. Herbs and salads and early-season fruit taught her a new range of flavors. Hare bounded and the trees were thick with birds. Bereft of any hunting bow, Katara had fashioned a water-pouch to sling across her hips. The first week she could barely hit anything and spent evenings bitterly slicing blades of ice at trees. The second week she could hit a target but made a botched mess of the animal, wasting half the meat to contamination with grime from the innards. With no medicine and uneven campfire-style cooking methods, she was hesitant and picked over what was left of the catch, leaving behind what was too tattered and fractured to be safe. The third week she celebrated clean kills and filling meals. That was for the best, because the interior was even poorer than the coast, and all she found were destitute farmers and ghost towns.
Seated on the weather-worn front porch of an abandoned building, the empty town felt more lonely than the wild had. Using their facilities, she found an outdoor kitchen in a country style out back and a usable stewpot in the kitchen. Having a vessel to cook in was luxurious and the pot would remain a great boon to her venture in the old town. As she laid down on a mostly intact bed inside a building with a roof and closeable doors, she decided, with a full stomach, to take a few days and see if there was anything else around she could use. Drifting to sleep, her body felt weightless on the cushioning of the old straw mattress. In the morning the sun was high when Katara woke up. It was the latest she'd slept in for a long time. Already she felt lazy from the luxuries of a real structure and a real kitchen. Yawning, she went to wash her face, then decided to do laundry. With her garments drying over a railing of the empty house, she left her pack inside behind the bed and headed outside to check the other buildings. Self-conscious to be walking around in nothing but undergarments, she tried to reason that there was not another person within ten miles. She was still in the southern part of the continent, where forest intermixed with prairie and occasional farmland. Far from the coast, the only water at hand came from small lakes and the occasional river. She wondered if her mother had ever had the chance to see such scenery.
It was a warm day and the sun felt good on her skin, a feeling she could certainly get used to, and Katara glowed in a pleasant aura which put at bay her worries for a time. Vast squares of land were cordoned off with stiff, splintered wooden posts and wattle fencing. There were no remaining animals, but they must have been ranching, and she wondered why everyone had left. The ground seemed fertile enough, perfectly at bloom with healthy, green grasses and wildflowers. Much of the area was overgrown in weeds, some of which were edible. The groundwater still provided for several wells and looked and tasted clean. Overhead the sky was a rich, empty blue.
She came to the end of the path farmers once paced and returned to search through the houses one by one, looking for anything useful that might have been left behind. In the third house a rug had been torn apart by the claws of small animals, revealing a moveable cut-out in the floor. Kneeling to examine it, Katara smeared her fingers through a thick layer of dust and fragments of dried grass. The section of boards lifted easily and she moved it aside. Below, in concealment, was a small velvet bag and a carved wooden box which contained an elaborate hair ornament of mother-of-pearl and jade. She lifted the treasure and took it out to the sunlight, turned it around in her hands, and held it up to the light, admiring the gleam in the clear green stonework. She returned it to the box and sat it on her lap. In the pouch she found money and nearly cried in relief. Whoever had left hadn't known about the cache—perhaps it had been set there by a predecessor who hadn't communicated its existence in time, or maybe it had been overlooked in the rush to clear the area. For Katara it meant her first success since leaving home, and she took the treasures back to her travel pack and carefully set them inside. The day closed peacefully.
In two days she took the road out and continued north, pausing at the boundary of the village. A stone shrine was partially enveloped in overgrown vines. Brushing them aside, she looked into the face of the deity, a spirit she did not know the name of. There was a blend of serpentine and primate features which chilled her spine. She dropped the vines back over it and continued down the road in morning light, finding the path gradually narrowing. They had cut the grazingfields out of the forest, and now in abandonment the forest was growing back. With only the sound of her footsteps and the occasional cricket, the path washed into a narrow trail and the treecover thickened, so that as the day wore on the light diminished. By what should have been noon she had less light than she'd started with upon leaving that morning. Pausing a moment, Katara listened, thinking she heard a creek nearby. A swirling chill from the shaded undercanopy set upon her skin, reminiscent of the winter, and she heard no creek after all and so resumed walking. An hour passed with no abatement of the forest and the light and air were stagnant with claustrophobia. Looking backwards, the path looked identical to what lay ahead, and the sun gave no measure of direction as it filtered through the dense, tight canopy. By the time it reached her it was a diffuse, cold grey tone. Her legs were tired and she missed the comfort of the village, of the bed and furnishings, and of reassuring walls around her. The pack felt unusually heavy, although she hadn't added anything but the thin copper pot, coins, and ornament. Having caught her breath, she turned back ahead.
Standing in the center of the trail was an enormous animal waiting silently. Its breath puffed in steaming clouds from a red bulbous nose and either cheek was a blue, fleshy mound with skin like rubber. Its beady eyes were trained on her as it waited. Its thick hind legs were muscular, its forepaws powerful, and its length and height, as it perched squared before her, were a canoe-length each, placing its chest well above her head. Katara felt enormous pressure in her stomach and her knees bucked. Twitching, the elephant mandrill took half a pace forward, bent its head down towards her, and furiously sniffed in great sucking snorts, slackening its mouth. Inside of its jaws were jagged canines as long as her hand, and its eyes bored into her as it loomed above, savoring her scent.
Trembling, she took a step back and knew she'd made a mistake. The beast took it as a cue and reared up, displaying its full height, equal to that of a small tree, and opened its jaws with wads of spittle webbing between. The roar it emitted stung her ears and echoes reverberated between the trees. Katara's paralysis broke into flight and she raced off into the forest with a blanketing white fear driving her as fast as possible.
It wasted no time in tearing after her, sweeping half the path up in a cloud of dust as its broad paws eviscerated the ground. Katara weaved between the most densely packed trees trying to find protection. Beating at her heels, the beast tore those same trees apart. Splintered bark exploded with a deafening crack that rocked the canopy and sent the light quavering around her. As she sprinted breathlessly the mandrill kept pace with her. Its bounding advancement in open areas evened out when it halted to shoulder apart the undergrowth and forge through. Legspans over the uneven terrain trod across rocks and roots. Stumbling and grasping forward, each step brought a thrill of near-tripping and her ears were filled with the sound of what was just behind her. She broke into a clearing five yards wide where the downfall of an elderly tree had knocked over its neighbors. Vaulting across the felled tree, she was almost to the other side of the clearing when a premonition forced her hand to catch the tree and swing herself aside. She stumbled and fell to her knees, cutting her skin open on the stony ground, and behind her the beast crashed into the forest's opening she had meant to enter. Katara staggered up and raced off as the mandrill was reorienting itself, then she plunged back into the woods and flew down a hillside, each step dodging new-growth trees packed into tight groups.
The elephant mandrill continued to rip apart the trees in its pursuit, huffing furiously and emitting a simian gargling that approached a growl. She skid down the tilted slope and hurtled through the trees. The sky quaked as the canopy was ripped down and the fragmented trunks were hurled out of the beast's path. Ahead was a flash of clear sky and the gleam of a river below. Katara plunged calf-deep into the water and felt her ankle twist to the side between algae-slick riverstones. She fell sideways, cracking her ribcage and shoulder against exposed rocks. The river splashed up around her, soaking her clothing. On her knees and coughing water struggling to get up, she felt an exploding impact at her back as the paw of the beast slammed against her rucksack. Katara flew off her feet and impacted the riverbed a dozen feet upstream hard enough to bounce. Blinding pain overwhelmed her. After swallowing the turbid water and feeling the mineral sting down her throat and nasal cavity, she crawled up to get her head and chest out of the rushing current.
The elephant mandrill paused huffing for breath downstream. Around Katara the tatters of her pack and belongings were swept by the current and littered the field between them. It must have been satisfied that she was caught, as it took its time to recover from the fatigue of the hunt, allowing her, bruised and bleeding, to stagger up, her legs shaking and balance interrupted by the rushing current and uneven, slimy ground of the riverbed. By the time it began pacing towards her with its fangs bared and hunger in its eyes, she had a large sum of water gathered. For one moment the current of the creek was entirely cut off and the stones were bared dry to air.
It glared at her salivating and sprung forwards just as she executed the largest attack she had ever attempted. The entire body of water, enough to drown a man in, froze into a spear and drove towards the animal's bulbous face like a knife. It was caught mid-stride leaping towards her. The ice struck apart its face and cracked its skull. As its motion arrested, the ice blasted apart from the impact and razor-sharp blades bombarded the riverbed and surrounding forest. She flinched and shielded herself with her arms. Looking up, she saw a smear of gore across its face as it emitted a stomach-piercing howl of agony. It reeled backwards, clawing at the air, and fell lengthwise down the riverbed. Its legs kicked and scraped at the rocks, rocketing stones larger than her fist in every direction. The current resumed and bore down on the animal.
Her possessions were clawed to shreds and crushed underneath its blood-mottled fur. The gigantic animal crawled downstream in shivering heaves, dragging its belly over the rocks, and the water foamed with crimson around its body. Its yowling wails petered out in volume, its motions drew to stillness, and its head lowered to the stones as the animal collapsed. Katara fell to the creekbed as her legs gave out. Her breath was rapid and pained. By the time she felt sure it was truly dead the water had begun building around its mass like a dam. She crawled up to the bank and began assessing her injuries. She thought of Sokka six years previously tending a large cut to her arm from an accident when they were younger. He had looked scared, and his hands were shaking as he stripped her jacket off to examine the wound. Alone in the forest and without a single issue of medicine or hope of aid, she shook of cold and wetness and pain and terror alike. "No, no, no," she murmured. With her clothing in scraps floating in the bloodied river she didn't even have anything to bandage herself with. From head to toe she was a mass of injuries major and minor. As the adrenaline of the flight wore down the pain swelled in.
Her right arm was the least injured of anything, and she could move enough to take a sample of clean water and bring it towards herself. She pressed the small volume around a laceration on her leg and muttered, "Anything, please just do anything." Against her panic, she tried to calm herself and trust the water, and she closed her eyes to concentrate.
Long ago she'd been told that there were some waterbenders who could heal wounds. By repeated disappointments to attempts at mending childhood injuries she had concluded she wasn't so gifted. Now, dripping riverwater and blood onto the silty bank, she felt a warm sensation and saw a soft glow in front of her closed eyelids. The water around her hand slowly coaxed her body to mend itself. Little by little, Katara spent the rest of that day undoing the damage. When she woke, sore and stiff from sleeping on the ground, the worst of the injuries were resolved.
She spent the next day recovering and repairing what few of her possessions she could wrest back. There was no removing the animal from where it had collapsed, and the soft soil of the embankment around it was disintegrating into the flow of water trying to forge a new channel. A glint in the water helped her find a sewing needle, which she later repaired her pack and a clothing with. The copper pot had been torn apart by powerful claws. Having been tied to the rear of her pack it had functioned as a shield for her, and its protection had been what had saved her from the initial blow. She found the hair ornament, its wooden box floating in the disgusting water near the remains of the beast, and cleaned it off upstream. Most of the money was gone, and she recovered only a single coin which had been wedged between stones nearby. Her sleeping bag and spare clothing were pinned beneath the mandrill and could not be recovered.
Wearing the exquisite hair ornament with heavily mended clothing in various states of tatters, Katara realized how discordant the difference was as she walked into the next village two days later. Her injuries were repaired but her clothing was bloodstained, which startled the residents. Using the last silver coin, she bought a new outfit in soft green and one meal to hold her over. Presentable and content that she was not starving, Katara began asking around if anyone nearby was injured. For all the elephant mandrill took from her it had granted one gift.