Chapter 8 – Somewhere Undiscovered, Somewhere Beautiful

Katara returned to the campsite with a bundle of dried grass as starting fuel. Sokka hadn't spoken of food for three days, Aang hadn't spoken at all, and they all felt shocked by the scale of the assault. They'd had few interactions since leaving the city abandoned to its destruction, saw no other people out of doors at the farming villages they passed, and were bedding down at the base of a hill for the night.

Sokka chipped sparkrocks against the bed of tinder. The campfire took light just as twilight settled through the valley. Nestled between fields which hadn't been tended since the attack, they felt as alone as if they were in a deep forest. Her brother stared into the fire for a long time. Aang and she pulled together something to put into the cooking pot, reluctant to disturb him. When a stew was prepared and heating, he said, with a kind of finality to his tone, "I don't think the earthbenders are what caused that ship to explode."

Neither of them quite knew what he meant in that moment. They shuffled through the motions of dinner and clean-up, then, later, when it was pitch-black with heavy clouds obscuring the moon and stars alike, Katara awoke in the dead silence with a thought bothering her that if it hadn't been the earthbenders, it must have been the other Fire Nation troops. She was aware of things like civil wars and succession struggles having occurred through history, though not in lived memory as the aggressions of the Fire Nation had blotted out all other conflict—they held the monopoly on violence—but she'd been a long time in coming to the realization which had been bothering Sokka for the past days. There was trouble within the foreigners' nation. They had traded one underpowered enemy willing to negotiate for a much larger, more threatening, more capable one. Her brother, more attuned to the subtleties of war than she, had sensed that first. It would be relevent to report to their father and the allied forces, but that report would have to wait as they were half a continent away.

'I'm being merciful, and you should be grateful,' he had said, and she realized he'd been honest then, and the Gao Ling invasion was what a lack of mercy looked like.

She didn't want her father to fight the people who had bombed a city while simultaneously detonating their own ally as he sat helpless in the water, and she didn't want Sokka to join that fight, either, nor Aang. But when they reached Chameleon Bay they would be drafted into doing so eventually and it was out of her power to stop it.

#

Zuko limped onto the paddle-like tail of the air bison and was lifted onto the saddle. He took his seat, grateful that the air bison liked him, no matter how mistaken the animal was in that judgement, and went with the bison's whims. It wanted to flee the scene of Gao Ling, which even at distance stung the air with the pollution of a city burned to ash. In flight he found the animal kept low over the treeline, probably from exhaustion, which kept them both more concealed. He looked around at the landlay and reasoned they were heading southeast towards the coast. In an hour they landed about fifteen miles from where they'd taken off. A freshwater stream tumbled out of the forest in a seaside meadow. The air bison began rummaging around in the bushes eating foliage. Zuko slipped from the saddle, landed painfully, and fell to the ground. In the stream he cleaned out his injuries, bracing through the sting, and rinsed the oil contamination from his clothing. The cliffs were high at that location but, along the coastline, varied. An area a mile east declined to sealevel into a beach with a few houses and flimsy wooden fishing docks. He watched, wondering if they knew what had happened at Gao Ling, but didn't see anyone outdoors. They might have evacuated as well.

Wringing his clothes out as best he could, he laid them over a rock and heated the stone up with his palm pressed against it. Carefully elevating the temperature, he could dry the clothing faster by evaporating the water out. He tested the fabric with his fingertip, then gingerly picked it up at the corners and waved out the heat and remaining moisture. It was still warm when he put it on, but didn't smell too bad, though the garments were severely ripped and burned.

The bison was nosing into a bush with dark indigo berries. Zuko recognized it as something his uncle had pointed out to be edible, then ate what he could, sharing the supply with the bison. With something like a meal in his stomach he glanced at the bison then made for the village he'd spotted. The animal would be content remaining there. Every step hurt and he limped awkwardly, but the path down was an easy slope through grass, and he made it to the settlement without incident. Panting for the effort, he took a breather against a tree and listened. His hearing was still damaged and the ringing incessant. Deciding to chance it, he entered the path, wandering in full sunlight through the handful of houses. "Hello?" he called.

A muffled noise to the side caught his attention. A woman around forty-five emerged from the cottage nearest him. She looked uncertain, was dressed in plain clothing in a faded sage color, and her hair was messily done, like she hadn't had time to properly fix it. "I just needed, if you had medicine, or," he mumbled, finding it difficult to speak when he heard his own voice through a layer of distortion. She said something to him that he didn't catch. Woozy, he grabbed onto the dock post next to him, and the woman hurried over to him. With one arm under his shoulder she helped him to a house and had him sit down on the cot.

As she went through her storage cabinet he thought she was saying something, but he couldn't make it out until she returned in front of him, holding bandages and a jar, and he could read her lips. "Were you injured in the battle?"

"Yes. I can't hear well," he said. "Explosions."

She treated his injuries, a kindness for which he had nothing to repay her with, and the next time she spoke she looked him in the eyes so he could see her talking. "Are you a soldier?" She was looking at his scar—obviously caused by a firebender—and must have thought he was with the Earth Kingdom army. Taking it, he nodded yes and let her help him. "My husband went to check the city. He'll be back tonight."

He fell asleep at one point. By the time he awoke, the husband was back and it was growing dark. Dinner of vegetables and grilled fish with rice was waiting on the table, and they gave him a set, letting him stay on the bed to eat.

After dinner the husband, letting him read his lips, said the city had fallen to the Fire Nation. The woman returned a while later with an elderly grandmother who examined Zuko's injuries, said his hearing would return in a few days, and gave him a jar of medicinal salve to keep. He thanked her sincerely, knowing that she probably had relatives killed in the attack he and his sister were responsible for starting, and knew he didn't deserve their help. They let him sleep there as he was. It seemed that the other two houses were empty. Their neighbors had evacuated, but they had stayed, gambling that the force wouldn't care about a few fishing huts at that distance from the city.

Zuko wondered what the air bison was doing, but none of them acted like they had seen a strange animal, so it might have stayed in place, or maybe left him and gone looking for the airbender. Sick with guilt, he made a point to leave as soon as the sun was up. At the edge of the village he turned back, bowed regardless of the pain, and lifted his head. The woman waved from her window to him, barely visible in the small gap, and Zuko departed back to where he'd left the bison, unsure of what he would find. There, near the emptied bush, it was relaxed drowsing on the grass and rose as he approached. Excited, the animal, having stayed put the entire night, greeted him like a friend.

He'd spent six years studying the atlas in every fine detail and no longer needed a physical map. Eager to get away from Azula lest she find out he survived, he took the bison through the forested coast heading towards the only place he thought the Avatar might have fled to, if he had evaded Zhao after all. Deep conifer forests blanketed the region between the coast and the mountains. There were no towns, only a few hunting and fishing villages. In the next week the only group of people more than a household they passed was a logging camp with large, flat barges docked in the harbor, unwilling to set out until the army gave the clear.

Rough grey mountains eroded the land at the eastern extent. Aridity from the vast interior desert leeched out through a gap in the mountain range, spilling coarse sand across the area with every storm, until it had withered the forest down into shrubland and bare hills. In strong gusts the wind could carry the desert sand off over the sea, scattering it across the waves so that it glittered pale amber in the sunlight. Standing next to the bison at the edge of the cliff, with the ocean battering far below them, he watched for a sign of recognition on the face of the animal but found none. To the east were mountainous islands, uninhabited since the time of the Air Nomads, containing their eastern temple. Zuko had once made a visit while touring the world in search of the Avatar, and now he intended to return.

It was a long stretch of sea and he didn't know what they would find on the other side. "We'll set off tomorrow," he said to the bison, and turned to find a place to set camp. At a plateau was an abandoned house, once grandiose but now decayed, built atop a high stone foundation with steps leading up. A dead tree was all that decorated what had been its yard. In a valley below he saw the remains of a ghost town built in a square of walls, dusted with the arid sand as it faded back to nature. The bison nestled nearby while Zuko dragged a tattered rug out over the bare wooden floorboards, which were brittle and splintered. The ceiling had partially collapsed so that he had a clear view to the stars.

He didn't know whether his uncle had survived the explosion, and even if he had, he would, like everyone else, assume Zuko was dead. His sister hadn't discriminated—it was likely his entire crew had perished. However, if anyone could survive that kind of disaster, it would be his uncle; with that thread of hope, Zuko delayed grieving for someone he didn't yet know the fate of. Iroh had been skeptical of Azula's plan from the beginning. If he was dead, it was, like everything else lately, Zuko's fault, but despite that he wanted to have tea with him again, somewhere beautiful the Fire Nation hadn't yet touched.

#

The coast was gentle and easy. She and her brother felt at home beside the water and were afforded plenty by fishing and gathering shellfish and crabs, all of which Aang refused to eat. "A clam is no different than a rock," chided Sokka as their dinner simmered. "Look, they don't even have a brain."

"It's alive, though," said Aang as he stared down at his own salad.

"Those leaves used to be alive, but you have no problem eating those."

Katara let the stirring spoon clatter to the side of the pot. "Oh, leave him alone, Sokka. He isn't bothering anyone."

"I'm just saying, the clam doesn't even know you're going to eat it. They're about as smart as a tree is."

"Aang, in Ba Sing Se there are a lot of other people who don't eat meat. They have entire restaurants for vegetarian cuisine. Don't listen to my brother—he's as smart as a clam."

Her brother loured at her, finished ripping up his herbs, and plopped them into the water-rice mixture. In his opinion, leaves were only good for flavoring meat. "Katara Fancy-pants over here knows all about the city. She spent six months living in a fancy hotel eating fancy dinners and drinking fancy tea in her fancy dress and fancy hairpin. Well, I need to find a lot of fancy leaves to put in our unfancy dinner to please Miss Fancy—"

She flung a splash of water at his face. "Would you stop it?"

He wiped his face off and sulked. "Aang, did the monks ever take you to the city? Was it even a city back then?"

"I've never been there. The monks told me their way of life went against our teachings."

"What, not eating meat?"

"No, like living equally in peace, sharing with each other. In the city some people have a lot of money and most people have nothing."

"That's just how things are everywhere," said her brother. He took up the spoon and gave the pot a stir, shouldering her out of the way, to admire his well seasoned clams. She knocked her hip into him, causing him to drop the spoon into the pot. "The Earth King has a lot of money and he's the guy we're trying to get to help us. Armies are paid for with money. Food is bought with money."

"Your father isn't getting paid to go to war, though. He's doing it to protect his home."

"Of course. Crushing Fire Nation soldiers is done out of pure love and charitable intent."

They would be arriving at their father's camp by the next day. He wouldn't admit it to them, but her brother was nervous. She felt a different kind of anxiety as it would be impossible to hide the fact that she'd lost her mother's necklace. Their father would never blame her, but he would be disappointed that another token of his wife was gone from the world, and it was the last thing he needed to mourn when he'd already been away to war for years with no victory and no improvement of their circumstances. The meal was served out, with clam-free rice for Aang, and they sat to eat. Momo took a shell from the discard plate and toyed with it, opening and snapping it shut rapidly to make a clacking noise. Aang beat a hand against his knee in a rhythm, which the lemur copied with the shell.

The next day was overcast, and in the grey atmosphere they first saw the cleft in the bay and the Water Tribe ships anchored in the harbor. "What's your father like?" asked Aang.

Sokka replied, "The strongest. He taught me how to fight and took me on my first hunt." Katara didn't have as many memories of him. Hers were with their mother—her happy memories had ended long before their father had left for the campaign. Sokka regaled them with hunting stories, to which she could only imagine the airbender's internal horror, while they crossed the last distance before coming in line of sight of their scouts. The man recognized the siblings at once and ran over to greet them. Sokka remembered him, but Katara did not.

At camp they watched their father drop his basket of corded netting in surprise. Wordlessly he pulled them both into a hug. Against her will her eyes watered, and as he pulled away she wiped them quickly. "We have a lot of catching up to do. Come inside. Who is your friend?"

"Dad, this is Aang. He's an airbender, and he's the Avatar," announced Sokka. The men all gathered to watch as Aang proved himself with a demonstration of the two elements he knew. Katara had been teaching him, but he still held only a shaky ability of waterbending. If only they had anyone there who was an experienced waterbender he could receive proper training, and she felt furious at the denial of that. Looking to the boats, with their wood and canvas construction, she remembered the canoe they'd been in when that prince had nearly incinerated them, and his ship as it was wrapped in flames and sinking. It serves him right.

The tent was arrayed with all the comforts of home she desperately missed. A large bear hide softened the floor while owl-wolf pelts were hung from the side framing for insulation. Aang bit his lip as he looked around at all the furs and instruments made of horn and tusk. Airbenders made no weapons, and perhaps that was how the Fire Nation had genocided them with such ease. They recounted everything to him, a strange story unbelievable if not coming from his own children. By the end it was agreed that the Earth Kingdom would be the best chance at getting him the training he needed to reach fulfillment of his potential, and Hakoda finished by saying, "I'll escort him to Ba Sing Se and meet with the generals myself. I'm already acquainted with a few of them."

"The generals, not the Earth King?"

"Their king doesn't see anyone," replied her father. "Besides which, the time for diplomacy is long since over. The generals will be who you will want to meet with, Avatar." To this Aang looked devastated. He must still have not come to terms with the need to fight in a war, and really, she couldn't imagine that he could, but her father had spoken truly and understood the state of affairs better than anyone.

Later her father and brother went out to discuss new weapons they were developing, and she and Aang were left alone in the tent. "Katara, I don't know if I can do this."

"You can. You have to. Aang, things are really bad. You saw what those monsters did to Gao Ling and to the South Pole. You're our last hope."

He looked conflicted, and she was reminded how painfully young he was, but eventually he replied, "I'll try my best."

After dark Katara woke and snuck out of the tent. She was surprised by her father, who was outside seated on a crate with his hands folded. "Did I wake you?" he asked.

"No. I didn't even know you were up."

"How have you been? Sokka told me you're become talented with healing. Did the Northern Tribe teach you?"

"I taught myself. When has the North ever helped us?"

He laughed at her sudden anger, then replied, "Do you still have Kya's necklace?" She looked to the ground with her hand to her neck, hiding her face from him. "I see. It's okay. You've been through a lot. Why don't you tell me about the places you've been?"

She sat down next to him, wiping her eyes, and thought of where to begin. "One time there was a really beautiful grotto, and all through it were growing water lilies," she said. "No one else had been there, and I was all alone. Their fragrance was amazing. I stayed after dark so I could see the moonlight reflecting on the surface, but I forgot it was a new moon. Even when I couldn't see anything, I waded into the water so I could feel them. Without my sight the fragrance had only become sweeter."

#

The pair were still five miles from the coast of the main island when the rain began falling. Zuko huddled in the saddle and let the bison take charge. Their altitude dropped so as to avoid the lightning storm brewing in the clouds. The sea churned violently and spray blew across the bison's underside and up to the sides of the saddle, while above the drizzle became a cloudburst. They persevered in that fashion with the sea and sky indistinguishable until reaching solid ground, and the bison touched down on the first opportunity. The mountains were hidden behind dense mist so that all Zuko saw were their bases, formed of rounded sand-beige stone overgrown in the same jungle that took the entire island chain.

They were both drenched and shelter was hard won, but after a half hour's search he pulled the air bison into an overhang where a sheet of stone above them kept the rain off. Torrents poured down the slopes, washing along leaves and sticks from the jungle in small rivers. Despite the warm day the rain was terribly cold and he shivered in his light clothing. The air bison looked equally miserable, and the rain was not going to let up anytime soon. He ventured out again, returned with an armful of wet wood, and assembled a campfire. With his back turned to the bison, Zuko lit it gently with the smallest flame he could stabilize, hoping the bison was accustomed to small, controlled campfires and would not react in the same terror with which it beheld firebending. Smoke wafted, and he encouraged the fire along as it took the saturated wood. The water trapped inside the fuel popped and spurted, cracking the sticks apart, but with his continued concentration in manipulating the infant flames he was successful at maintaining it until the steam evaporated. The bison rested contently nearby, not bothered, and Zuko took his clothes off to let them dry.

Scents of peat and humus from the rich soil of the jungle fragranced the air through the downpour. Lightning struck. A few seconds later, thunder roared, echoing through the stone. Though without food, they were warm enough and dry with the heat of the campfire, and Zuko slept through the storm until the next morning. Continuous drips of water trickled off every vine and tree, and the ground was intermittantly mud and puddle with the only solid surface being treeroots. He rummaged through the area searching for anything edible, as they'd done on the trip he'd made there five years ago with his uncle and crew. Without a ship and from the perspective of the forest floor the island had a different quality, and seemed dense and impenetrable, a complex design of greenery and twisting branches. Thick bands of mist swirled through the valleys, obscuring the peaks. He'd lost track of their position when the storm hit, and finding a landmark or vantage point would have to be done from the air. The bison, however, was famished and plowed through the undergrowth to find grazing.

That afternoon he climbed into the saddle and took off. Dense fog pillowed around them until they gained enough altitude to surpass it. The mist spread as a level cloud swamping the entire jungle, while the air above it was perfectly clear. Clusters of peaks obscured their view, and even at great heights trees still clung to the slopes. Zuko crawled to the front and guided the bison by his reins, finding that it was intuitive, and they circled through the mountains heading north. Rivulets cascaded from high peaks creating thin courses of white falling precipitously. With the storm finished, the forest awakened with calls of birds and animals.

There were no settlements in the area, and he'd only seen or heard of a few hermits and adventurers ever navigating the thick jungle. From the ground it would have been too easy to get lost. The Air Nomads had chosen the location well—only someone on an air bison stood a chance of getting around the region.

They took another night at the forest floor by a series of waterpools fed through a channel in a deep cleft between two mountains. It was calm there, and he found a stone surface that was large and flat and set up a campfire. The area was worn in by human footsteps forming pathways through the stone, incrementally added by continuous use through generations, and he knew they must not be far from the main temple. In the channel he pulled a few fish and set them to roast. Though he offered one to the air bison, the large animal turned his nose away with the suggestion he was an herbivore, so Zuko finished them off by himself, wishing he had salt at least. He fell asleep with the sound of flowing water.

They had crossed to the northern extent by the the next day at noon. High in the air, the temperature was crisp and the sky was softly dotted with partial clouds. He'd seen the temple before, but not from the angle of flight, and realized what he had missed by scaling the peaks on foot. The Eastern Air Temple spanned a trio of peaks joined by stone archways with porticoes and arcades lining the campus, which overlooked untended gardens and cloud-drenched vistas. Each side mirrored the other, and he hadn't realized before how perfectly carved the symmetry was. They touched down in a landing area and he limped off the air bison to look around for himself, not quite knowing what to expect. The animal was excited—he must have recognized the temple. Zuko let him wander as he wanted.

On ground level the evidence of the Fire Nation's invasion was still clearly marked, but the jungle climbed up even to those heights and was overcoming the damage. He recalled that one ancient farming technique involved burning the field to revitilize the soil for the next season, and thought that it might not be his imagination that the jungle there was more healthy and vibrant than elsewhere for that reason. While the southern temple was sterile and lifeless, at the eastern there were wide, easy stairways winding up every nearby peak so that, in the wake of the Air Nomads, the wildlife continued to make use of them. At the gardens monkeys gathered, eating fruit from the trees the Air Nomads had once planted there, and in their fountains birds flitted to bathe and drink. The peaks to either side held dormitories and kitchens, but the central had the grand hypostyle with hundreds of square-cut columns supporting a wide palace-like room. A library was located at the side. It had once been paneled in wood and held a thousand or so books and scrolls in its shelving, but all of that had been nothing but tinder for the invasion. Only charcoal and ash remained of the collection. Zuko took up what had once been a volume but now crumbled apart in his hand.

This was the prosperity his great grandfather had brought the world. The airbender and his friends were not in the temple. Exhausted and still wary of Azula, he rested there while letting his injuries heal, thinking that the once magnificent temple was now an overgrown graveyard.