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Every . . . single . . . time.
The results of her meditations were always the same. She would reach inwardly, attempt to harmonize with her past, and be met by the blotchy form of the Water Avatar spitting garbled nonsense. It was as reliable as a dropped stone hitting the bottom of a well. She tried deciphering his mysterious request, but whatever connection they shared wasn’t strong enough for her to figure it out.
And the sessions often hurt in a teeth-rattling, convulsive way. That was why she’d never asked a sage who’d been to the Spirit World to guide her in meditation. She feared the same reaction as Jinpa’s if anyone saw her fail so loudly and painfully. An Avatar who struggled to reach her past lives was one thing, but an Avatar who was violently rejected and roughed up by the process like a thief caught sneaking into the wrong house was another. Kyoshi didn’t need her legitimacy doubted more than it already was.
Eventually she’d stopped trying to commune. She hadn’t been the greatest admirer of Kuruk anyway, and if he was the only past life out of a thousand generations willing to make contact with her, then she could do without. But sometimes her predecessor forced the issue and appeared unbidden.
“It’s not a big deal,” she said to Jinpa. “Occasionally, I’ll have a vision of Kuruk, or hear his voice. I can never tell what he’s trying to say.”
Jinpa couldn’t believe she was talking about it like a bad knee aching before it rained. “Kyoshi,” he said, summoning the tranquility of his ancestors to keep from breaking down and weeping at her ineptness. “If an Avatar of the past has a message for you, it’s usually of the utmost importance.”
“Fine!” she yelled. “The first chance we get, we’ll find a great enlightened master and I’ll learn how to talk to Kuruk! Now can we please get back to our other top-priority mission? Or are you somehow going to fix everything that’s wrong with me all at once?”
The look of hurt and disappointment on the monk’s face confirmed it. Kyoshi might have been a bad Avatar, but she was also a bad master to her secretary, one who not only yelled, but insulted. Not even Jianzhu put his staff down to their faces. She would have thought her experience on the other end of the relationship would have made her better at this.
And Jinpa had saved her from drowning. Had she been wearing her heavy robes and bracers instead of a light traveling outfit, she might have sunk too fast for him to reach.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Jinpa, I’m really sorry. I’ve no right to speak to you like that.” He would have gotten along better with Yun. The two of them would have become fast friends and played Pai Sho from sunup to sundown. “I . . . I wish you were serving a worthier Avatar.”
Her apology didn’t seem to be quite what he was looking for, but he acquiesced with his usual gentle smile. Jinpa clambered onto Yingyong’s withers and began wringing out his wet robes. Kyoshi sighed and plunged her face back below the surface, hoping the shame would rinse away.
She saw something under the water that hardened her spirit again.
The dark patch Jinpa had spotted from above was a wrecked and sunken atoll, an island blown apart and scarred by what could only be bending of the highest power. The reef structure was split and pitted, giant chunks of earth scattered like marbles, and swathes of coral had been ground smooth by unimaginably intense waterbending.
Kyoshi recognized the telltale marks of destruction well. This was Yangchen’s island. It was the same place where Kuruk and his companions had gone so he could practice going into the Avatar State for the first time. Maybe they didn’t know. Or maybe they’d chosen a location associated with Yangchen to receive spiritual assistance from the great Air Avatar. But Kuruk, in his lapse of control, had destroyed the atoll and sunk it below the waves.
A spot holy to Yangchen and the Air Nomads was gone because of his carelessness. As she pulled herself back onto the saddle, Kyoshi tried to model herself after Jinpa’s calm. Some very unkind opinions were running through her head, and right now, the less she thought about Kuruk, the better.
THE REUNION
It was strange to think that getting closer to a string of active volcanoes would make them feel better, but here they were, approaching the Fire Nation.
Jinpa wisely avoided the plumes of noxious smoke emanating from the active peaks but wove Yingyong over the thermals in between, riding bumps of heated air in a playful, winding course. It was enough to make Kyoshi forget herself and smile.
Clumps of settlements could be seen on the smaller islands, usually by the coasts but sometimes higher up in the mountains, where level pastures and shade-grown tea farms dotted the slopes. The landmasses formed a thickening tail that led them to the body of Capital Island, where the earth doubled over on itself to form First Lord’s Harbor.
They swooped lower to see the city that had formed around the Fire Nation’s largest port already preparin
g for the upcoming celebration. Strings of red paper lanterns crisscrossed the streets, in some places thick enough to completely obscure the carts and sidewalks below. The sharp clack of vendors hammering their wooden stalls together filled the air. Kyoshi spotted one alley overtaken by a half-finished parade float. A team of dancers practiced their moves in rigorous unison atop the platform.
“This seems like a serious party,” Kyoshi said. She secretly wished she could be down there, among her fellow commoners for the celebrations, instead of attending a state function. There’d certainly be less pressure on her.
“You know how Fire Nationals are,” Jinpa said as he waved at a bunch of gawking children on a rooftop who were thrilled to see a bison fly overhead. “Buttoned up until the moment they let loose.”
They left Harbor City behind and continued flying up the slope of the caldera that dominated the big island. Trees and vines clung tenaciously to the steep, rocky surfaces, and the humidity grew heavy like a blanket.
“Should we stop here and announce ourselves?” Jinpa said. He pointed to the stone watchtowers and bunkers built into the lip of the dead volcano.
Kyoshi shook her head. Impatience was rising in her chest, tidewater threatening to spill over its levees. “The letter said we should head straight to the palace.”
Sure enough, the pointy-armored guards watched them fly by with hardly a reaction on their unmoving faces. Yingyong crested the edge, and the capital of the Fire Nation revealed itself like the burst of a firework.
Royal Caldera City. The home of the Fire Lord and the highest ranks of nobility in the country. Where Ba Sing Se equated power with expansiveness, Caldera City concentrated its status like the point of a spear. Towers rose into the air, brushing shoulders with their red-shingled neighbors. They reminded Kyoshi of plants competing for sunlight, stretching ever higher lest they fall behind and perish.
Several glossy, shining lakes lay in the bowl of the caldera, one much larger than the others. She’d forgotten their official names, but outside the Fire Nation they were often referred to as the Queen and Her Daughters, renowned for their crystalline beauty. It was said that no boat disturbed them on pain of death, but Kyoshi now knew that to be a silly rumor. Lantern barges were already paddling across the mirror surfaces to set up for the festival.
In the center of the depression was the royal palace, stern and barren. It was surrounded by a wide ring of naked beige stone that would force anyone who approached on foot to be unsettlingly exposed to the ramparts and watchtowers. Only within the inner walls did a garden dare to take root, and it was as sparse as a young man’s beard. Kyoshi knew that was likely a security measure to prevent thieves and assassins from moving from tree to tree undetected.
