Chapter 4 – Secure in Museum Diamond for the Stare

A/n: Uncanonic enhancements have been made.

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"Amazing. It's all as Zhao described." Zuko circled the tower then said, "There's a window about fifteen feet up, but we have no way to get the chickens up there," referring to the ostrich-horses, who had bitten him three times so far into the trip, which he wasn't on friendly terms with. "They'll roast alive or be eaten by a sand-shark if we leave them out here."

Katara kicked at the sand around the base. "Look at the architecture. If there is a window up there, where will the next one be?" She peered down at the sand.

Zuko produced a small shovel, used for making camp to weight down the screens, and they took turns. A few feet below the sand they found the next one and began excavating. The heat of day increased from early to mid morning, burning the backs of their necks, and they were on a time limit before the intense exercise in that heat would sicken them. However, the sand was easy to shovel out and before long they had a workable tunnel and broke through. Zuko crawled down to inspect it, then reported back to her, swiping sand from his knees. "It's weird, but just like Zhao said—the windows have some type of invisible barrier. It keeps the sand out, but I was able to stick an arm through it. Let's bring the chickens down."

Upon that cue a swear-laden bitter fight broke out as Zuko tried to wrangle the animals down for their own safety and they resisted with every muscle and feather and nipping beak they could wield against him. With enough shoving, pulling, and shouting, they managed to bring them inside, then followed in, sliding down the sandy slope and landing a few feet below to the ground. The ostrich horses flapped their stunted wings, cackled, and clacked their talons in outrage to the brutality. He stood up and brushed the sand off his clothing with a deep frown of disdain. "Next time I'll leave you damned feather-brains out there to turn into roast chicken-horse."

"Zuko, look," she said, peering over the stone railing at the abyss below. They were in a massive atrium staring down into a drop of more than a dozen floors. At the lowest level an indoor garden expanded green and fresh against the stone and she could hear and sense the flowing water keeping it irrigated. The upper levels were stacked in bookshelves floor-to-ceiling. The air above was scented aged-paper and binding-leather, and below exotic flowers and herbs like a jungle. The interior structure was flawless, kept clean and swept like it wasn't at all abandoned, and the stonework shone with craftsman's detail and polish. "It's beautiful."

Staircases wrapped around the external walls bordering the atrium and led level to level with cool marble of white and light-grey traced with veins of copper. Every inch was ornate with an architectural style she'd never encountered, more opulent than even the palaces of the world's national leaders. It was large enough to be a city in itself. Waterfalls fell in a narrow band through the empty space, cascading down to collection pools at the lower level. She looked up but couldn't understand the water's origin.

The space was cool and the sound of the trickling water echoed up and down through the central atrium shaft. The interior space was completely discontiguous from the desert scorching outside—it truly belonged to another world.

"Hello?" called a soft voice somewhat apprehensive. A young woman approached the atrium from behind a bookshelf. Her black hair was pinned up and she wore a white linen jeogori with a flowing dusk-pink chima. She looked frightened and clutched her hands in front of her chest.

Katara replied, "Sorry, we didn't mean to startle you. The animals won't hurt you, they're just in a bad mood. My name is Katara, and this is Zuko. We were here to visit the library. Who are you?"

"You should leave quickly." She crossed the narrow stone bridge across the atrium and climbed up to the excavated windowsill, but when she tried to reach a hand through she was repelled like pressing against solid glass. Katara moved beside her and tried, but the same happened to her. The woman said, "No, it's already too late. There's a protective barrier around this library that keeps the sand out but also keeps visitors in."

"Why?"

"The owl—" she began saying, but a loud flapping and ear-splitting screech filled the air and sunk Katara's stomach with dread.

A horrific black shape descended, looming tall over them, and the two ostrich-horses paled away and folded their legs in submission. Before them perched an enormous owl with jet-black feathers offsetting a snow-white face. In a voice not quite human, he looked them over and said, "Well, I see two new marauders have arrived to destroy my collection. And one of you is a firebender." He bit the last word sharp and accusatory and Zuko stumbled backwards terrified. The owl, his voice rumbling with shallowly suppressed anger, said, "I truly despise firebenders after the mess the last one made here, thousands of volumes burned to ash in one night to repay my goodwill towards that human for taking him in exhausted and dying of thirst, and I will not allow that event to be repeated." Its neck stretched out, elongating like a seamonster, and its black wings pelted to either side turning the air into storm-wind.

"Wait, please, we aren't here to harm your collection," said Katara. "We came to find knowledge to help the world."

"You, like all other humans of this era, seek to weaponize the knowledge you find here to construct weapons. I won't allow it. I will destroy you both and devour these animals at my leisure."

"The war is over!" she shouted. "Great spirit, please, we came seeking knowledge in order to help the world's recovery. The war has ended and we are at peace now."

His glossy black eyes peered at her, emotionless and obscuring his thoughts. "A waterbender is traveling with a firebender?" He clacked his beak several times, like he was in thought, then retracted his neck. She tried to keep her legs from shaking. "How did you find this library, little waterbender?"

"We, we followed a rumor, we found a tower in the sand," she stuttered. What on Earth did Zhao do during his visit? If the owl-spirit learns we know him, he's going to slaughter us both!

"This library is quite a bit harder to find than that."

Behind the owl, the girl was pantomining something with desperation. She smoothed a hand back and forth, as if passing over a level surface, outlined a rectangular shape's dimensions, and then pulled her hands apart as if opening a—

"A book! We read it in a book. It was recently published."

"Oh?" The owl blinked, then settled. "This girl also told me she learned of my location from a book printed recently. I will have to find this Professor Zei and discourage him from spreading this rumor." She wondered if he could tell she was lying from her rapid heartrate like Toph, as, somehow, the owl-spirit was well aware of their respective elemental affiliations with just a glance. However, he seemed to buy their lie. "Very well. I will allow you two to live. However, I cannot let you take my knowledge out of this library. You may say this war is over, but I doubt that, as periods of peace for humans are always only temporary. Soon enough you'll begin a new war and begin again to murder and destroy your perceived enemies. You three can remain here together for the rest of your natural lifespans. I will hold off eating these animals for the time being as a favor to you."

"Wait, please, we can't stay here forever, we have families to return to."

"So does she. You will all be reunited with your families in the afterlife, don't worry. You should be thankful for this much mercy, little waterbender. As for the firebender, if you burn so much as one scroll here, I will rip out your liver and devour it while your companion watches you die."

Finished with the conversation, he kicked his great wings out and stepped onto the railing like a perch, then swooped downward at high speed through the levels, weaving between the cataracts of water, and departed somewhere below.

Zuko, who had the look in his eyes of fear of imminent death, exhaled in relief and walked to her, wrapping her in a hug. "I think that bastard set us up to be killed." He turned to the girl and said, "Thank you for saving us. What's your name?"

"Song. I've been trapped here for three years."

If a way out existed, she would have found it in all that time. Katara's eyes watered. Sokka will think I'm dead. Beside her, Zuko clenched his fists. After all we've survived, we're going to die here at the whim of a spirit.

The ostrich-horses were freed of the luggage and left to wander as they pleased. They followed Song to a seating area buried in the stacks of books where a grouping of four deeply cushioned chairs surrounded a small table. She had a travel stove nearby, elevated on a piece of slate as to not damage the floor. It was large enough to heat water or a small pot on and she set to making tea for them. It looked as if she lived there and a pile of her possessions was tidily lined against the wall. She had a jug of water and jars of various plants. "I harvest these from the garden. It has preternatural abundance and anything harvested will regrow within a week. This place is deeply spiritual. I'm sorry about your fate. I wish I could have warned you not to enter."

"No, you did what you could. Thank you for helping us," said Katara. "I thought he would kill us."

"He has a bad temper, but he's been wronged much in the past. A firebender came about a decade ago, shortly after Professor Zei published his theory. He was with the Fire Nation military and must have come here to destroy all knowledge of their nation to inhibit the Earth military from using the collection against them. Wan Shi Tong, the owl-spirit, was greatly saddened by this as the books in this collection are of great value and rarity. Some of the volumes that firebender burned were over a thousand years old. Wan Shi Tong has been busy since then trying to replicate them from memory, but not even a great spirit's memory is eidetic."

"How did you find this library?"

"Well, I didn't. I got close, I suppose, within twenty or twenty-five miles, but I collapsed of thirst in the sand. The foxes found me and brought me here. They nursed me back to health. When I awakened, the owl-spirit told me I may stay and live here, but I can never leave." She measured out the tea leaves into the pot and poured the heated water in. Her way of speaking was elegant, perhaps from having nothing to do for three years but read books. "I'll show you the gardens later. You'll enjoy them. The library is so vast that I haven't been bored, and there's always something new to discover. The foxes bring me sand-pheasants and other small game to cook and I've been able to eat well. They'll be back soon, but the owl's anger has scared them away for now."

"Just what are these foxes? Are they also spirits?"

"Somewhat. I believe they're enchanted animals, as they have equals in the mortal world and do not speak, but they have unnatural abilities as well as eternal life, as the owl does. They carry out his errands and bring him new books and other items he has interest in. Wan Shi Tong sometimes leaves—he likes to hunt in the desert, and is fond of killing buzzard wasps for sport—but he's usually here somewhere, purusing his collection. Sometimes we have conversations. It's been good to have someone to talk to."

"Have you tried to escape?"

"Yes, I've tried everything. I even damaged a wall trying to tunnel out. Wan Shi Tong was angry, but repaired it and forgave me. I think he's fond of me because I read so many of the books and can speak with him about them. He's lonely, too. There are kinds of knowledge that have never been written down into a book and he's been interested in stories I tell him."

Zuko looked distracted, and Katara reached her hand out towards his reassuringly. "We'll keep trying. We can figure something out."

Song, as if not believing it was possible to solve, replied nothing to this and only poured the tea, a light preparation of home-dried green she must have procured in the garden. Katara continued, "If you've been here three years, you must have entered the library around the time that Aang awakened from the iceburg. My brother and I found him frozen in a glacier—he's the Avatar, and was trapped one hundred years in ice. He's the bridge between our world and the spirit world. Maybe he can reason with the owl for us. If only there was a way to contact him."

"I don't think that will work," replied Song. "Many people have tried to find this library, some have led great expeditions of experienced adventurers, some hired the locals to guide them, but the Fire soldier and I have been the only ones to succeed, at least until you two arrived."

"How did you get so close, then?"

"I learned about this place from him, the soldier. When I was a young girl, he attacked my village. I was burned badly, screaming on the ground left behind in the chaos, and he found me. He thought I was pretty, and, while his regiment were taking quarter in what was left of my village, he used me as a servant and spoke to me for company. If I had been older, I think he would have taken me in further ways, but I had no development at the time. I remembered everything he said. Professor Zei's thesis provided a good approximation, but only the soldier figured out the exact location."

Zuko said, "I'm sorry that happened to you. Zhao is now in prison, and the war is over. He won't hurt you again."

"Still, that's amazing," said Katara. "You remembered the story in that much detail after so many years."

"It was a curse after all. My mother must think I'm dead. She lost my father when the village was raided, and now I've gone away as well."

They shared the tea in a solemn atmosphere. For Katara, since the time Aang had awakened she'd been thrown into ceaseless motion, rushing first to outpace Ozai and then to assist Zuko in creating a new post-war era, but altogether that time period had been just three short years, of which two had been peace. Song, who hadn't known a world with the Avatar in it let alone the end of the war, highlighted just how recent those events were. At the time she entered the library, the war had still been raging with no end in sight.

Several days passed. They assisted Song in gathering food from the garden and took up their own residential spot a few shelves away from her where they could have privacy, although neither of them was in the mood to make love. At first Zuko paced up and down, running a hand over every suspicious element of the walls, trying the windows even with firebending, which was a risky move given the hatred with which the owl beheld it, and went as far down and climbed as high as he could, all to no avail. Katara had already begun to give up hope and started taking up books to read. There were worse places to spend an eternity.

What they had thought of as being the lower level was only the base of the central tower and the start of the rest of the structure. It held the garden, which was adaptive as well as more wide and vast, taking up several stories interlaced with an irrigation system that didn't make sense no matter how she inspected it, like the water appeared and disappeared at convenience. Upon introduction of the pair of ostrich-horses, a new bed grew of the grasses and herbs they enjoyed most to eat and the two frequented it. After eating their fill it would replenish the next day. Staircases descended, level after level, through a verdant botanical garden, including at the true base level an arboretum of cedar and yew. They fleshed out the true base like a hall of a hundred pillars. She was certain it had been intended as a ground level, as there was a central doorway of mahogany majestic in scale, which would not open. The doorway was tall enough that the owl-spirit could have passed through.

There were a number of other atriums with their own domes and towers, all housing different collections of books, all buried far below ground. Where any window existed, sand pressed against it lightless and compacted kept out by the spirit's barrier. It was a long walk just to make it from one side to the other. The initial structure must have been more enormous than even the Earth King's palace, which was famed as the largest structure in the world. At the very highest part of where they had come in, the central tower, there was a planetarium. Zuko was still running himself ragged to the point of hardly speaking to either of them searching desperately for a way out, and, one night, Katara took him there and set the dials to his birthdate, to show him the stars as his mother would have seen them. He was quieted. On their backs in the planetarium gazing at artificial stars, they held hands and fell asleep.

Zuko had procured a blueprint of the building. Above it he'd set a partially transparent sheet of tissue paper, thin enough that he could see through it, and, with a piece of charcoal held in a wood casing, he drew out a map of the areas, adding sections one by one as he tried them for an escape route. The sheet filled gradually in the course of a month. He had not exposed any weakness to the defenses the owl-spirit had placed. He then sat a long while under the artificial sunstones which fed the garden, feeling the warmth of replicated sunlight on his skin. They varied in hue from pale yellow to vibrant orange and all sparkled with something like gold powder traced through in streaks, which seemed to pulse with solar energy and were warm to the touch. Song had not seen the sun or sky since arriving there.

"Zuko, look at this," Katara said one day, and approached him with a book held open to a certain page. He had been helping prepare a jackalope which the foxes had left for their use, set the knife down, and wiped his hands off on a rag. "This looks like the golden egg Kuei gave you."

"It does, down to every detail. It even describes the opal-like veins in the surface." He read further. "It's a dragon egg? How is that even possible? My family supposedly wiped them out, and I thought that included any eggs."

"He did say he thought it might yield to a firebender."

"That airhead! What was the Earth King doing walking around with a dragon egg?"

"Well, it says that here, too. Over ten generations ago it was gifted by the Firelord of that time to the Earth King as a token of friendship."

Zuko replied, "Kuei said a desert merchant gave it to his predecessor, not a previous Firelord. It must have been covered up when the war broke out, so they would forget Fire had ever been on friendly terms with them. What else does it say?"

She continued, "Locked in the royal treasury, it was forgotten there, lying inert waiting for a breath of life to come in a time of need for the dragons to arise."

"Breath of life?" He puzzled over it. "I need to firebend at it, but not just any fire, the fire of life that the dragons taught. Not even my uncle knew what the egg was, and he's met the dragons. This is amazing. There hasn't been a breeding pair in decades, but it seems like the eggs can lie dormant indefinitely and still hatch. There might be other eggs surviving, too. We have the ability to revive the dragons as a species." His face fell, and what was unsaid was that they couldn't inform anyone until and unless they found a means of escape. "What good is knowing that if I can't tell anyone. Or any of this, for that matter—all of this knowledge is useless if it's just hoarded up in here left to rot into dust."

Song, who had been starved of human contact, asked every story they could tell her with great interest. They learned more from her as well. With her legs folded under the billowing chima, she sat with tea and recounted why she had made the journey. "I met a boy with shattered legs who came to my family's practice seeking aid. We examined him, but his injuries were beyond our ability. His spine had been damaged in an accident when he was an infant. I could see exactly which vertebra had been crushed, which caused the spinal cord to be pinched and unable to function, but we had no way to help him. He begged us to operate, but no surgeon could handle that type of work and he would surely be killed if any attempted. He stayed with us a few months because he had nowhere to go, and merchants often came through our village seeking remedies for their ailments, whom he liked to speak with. He did well on his own given his condition, but he wanted to travel further than he ever realistically could. Constrained to a chair on wheels to move around, even a simple mountain road would have been beyond his ability to traverse and inherently dangerous to attempt. He had bright eyes and a kind heart, and loved to meet new people."

"His father had been killed recently, but he consoled me first for the loss of mine. Even without the ability to walk he helped around our medical practice for the chance to learn about the techniques, and he read every book we owned, saying he might be able to help someone someday." She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "I fell in love with him. Having remembered the story of this library from the Fire soldier, I sent Teo away under false pretense to seek help at Ba Sing Se, although he'd already been there and found no remedy. I insisted, and he prepared to travel back there once again. After he left, I embarked on the journey here. I was certain I could find a way to help him, but I've read every book in the medical wing and uncovered no means to heal his injury. I even begged Wan Shi Tong for a method, but he said it was impossible, even a special water found at something he called the Northern Oasis wouldn't be powerful enough. The only advice he could offer was that, if Teo gave up his mortal body, his spirit could ascend to the spirit world and there he would find an immaterial true body for himself and be free of the injury. In order gain a life free of it, Teo would have to die. It's too cruel."

"You were brave to come here just to help him," said Zuko. "I'd say he's been more blessed than most just to know you."

"He'll think I sent him away with a false lead just to abandon him and be rid of him. I've been gone three years, and I can only imagine what he must think. All I did was hurt him." She looked like she was trying not to cry.

Katara wanted to reassure her that they would find a way out of the library and she could reunite with him, but thought she wouldn't believe her until they had a real plan at hand, and until that point it would be just platitude. Spirits, however, were not known for their compassion, nor did they think the same way humans did or have the same worries about time passing and mortality. Without any solution visible, she felt helpless. Zuko had made his best attempt, and Katara wondered what she herself could do. A waterbender trapped in a desert didn't have many options, and a human fewer yet when faced against a spirit.

Lying next to Zuko on their rug, with their own possessions stacked against the shelves and the ostrich-horses left to wander where they pleased, she was awake a long time thinking about it, and, if she stayed as still as possible, she could sense that somewhere above them, outside the library and the sand of the desert, the same moon still tracked across the sky as if trying to connect to her over such a far distance.