Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“We’re expected. We did call ahead.”

“Well, yes, but the admissions office is closed for the season. We’re only taking tour requests. I’d be happy to show you ar—”

“There must be someone we can talk to. Go back and tell whoever that the Kannars are here.” Sruthi’s mother repeats the name, enunciating as if she were addressing a half-wit. “The Kan-NARS.”

The poor attendant’s face takes on a familiar expression, a tight-lipped grimace paired with a squint in an approximation of an agreeable smile. Sruthi hasn’t actually looked up from her holograph to confirm this, but she can tell from the way the attendant says, “Let me just see what I can do,” before scampering off. This is the effect her mother has on people. At least her father hasn’t started thowing his weight around. Yet.

Sruthi’s busy flipping through entertainment options on her Unagi. She holds it like an open book, tucked behind the curtain of her bangs so that the holo-display nearly projects its diffracted light directly into her eyes. Three-dimensional figments flicker just past her nose as she debates what she should distract herself with. Nothing interactive, since she needs to keep her wits about her. No music, since she wouldn’t be able to enjoy it at such a low volume anyway. Even on mute, it’s fun to watch the idols dance, though.

“I thought you checked,” Mother snaps. In her peripheral vision, Sruthi see the man in front of her straighten up. That would be Father.

He steps forward to join Mother, just out of sight. “The pamphlet did say year-round enrollment. That woman must’ve just been confused.”

“I can’t believe we came all this way for nothing.” Now she’s pouting, with a full-on sulk ready to drop as soon as she’s certain she’s not getting her way.

“We don’t know that yet. A place with such a fine reputation must be managed by reasonable people.” The implication being, of course, that reasonable people can always be persuaded with a big wad of cash. They really are determined to dump Sruthi here, aren’t they?

Nothing in the Unagi’s catalog appeals to her, yet she keeps flipping through because at least the morphing icons are something to focus on. They almost keep her from noticing the way her little brother stands at attention between her and their parents, like a dog waiting for a treat. She flips faster.

Footsteps approach from the direction the attendant fled a few minutes ago. Two people, or maybe more. Everyone here walks so quietly it’s hard to be sure. Sruthi doesn’t look up.

“Ah, the Kannar family! I’m the one you spoke to on the phone. My name is Shuo Fa, he/him. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you when you arrived.”

“Deepak, he/him.”

“Lavanya, she/her.”

“These are our— Sruthi.” At the sound of her name, she snaps the Unagi shut and peers up at the adults. “Put that away. I won’t tell you again.” Father sighs and starts over. “These are our two children. Smrithik, he/him.” Her brother bows politely. “Sruthi, she/her.” She manages a head bob as she slips her handheld into a back pocket.

“Oh, such a handsome family. And you’re looking into enrollment for…?”

“Sruthi.” Father beckons, so she steps forward for appraisal. He rests a heavy hand on her shoulder and begins talking about her like she’s not here, one of his favorite hobbies. “We’ve heard such great things about the work your company does, especially for borderline cases. Our Sruthi is a firebender, but she hasn’t been able to express it for over a year now.” He tosses in a friendly chuckle. “Frankly, she has everyone stumped back home.”

“I see.” Shuo Fa is considering her, so she does it right back at him. He’s a sallow man with deep blue eyes and dark hair pulled into a bun. Not particularly impressive, but he is a little older and taller than the poor, unnamed attendant, which lends him an air of relative authority.

Father presses on. “We were hoping to see about getting her a spot here.” He pauses, gauging Shuo Fa’s reaction. “To make up for the trouble, we’re happy to make a monetary contribution. Whatever amount you think would be appropriate.” How much is she worth, Sruthi wonders? She almost asks.

“We’ve come such a long way,” adds Mother.

Shuo Fa turns to the attendant and half-whispers something about tracking down one of the floating clerks before turning back to the family. “Soth will find someone who can help you in that regard,” he says, indicating the retreating woman. “In the meantime, please allow me to show you what we have to offer here at Patola Lungta.”

They’ve been waiting in the reception hall this whole time. It’s a modest size and not too dissimilar from their neighborhood temple back home in Pittala, aside from all the cultural artifacts. They’re museum-quality pieces from the four Old Nations, displayed with little informative plaques. Sruthi’s intrigued by a row of Air Nomad prayer wheels against the western wall.

Not that she’s had a chance to examine them. Her parents keep her on a short leash.

As schools go, this one at least has the potential to be interesting. Mundane as this area is, it’s probably nothing like the facilities where people actually live, study, and train. Sruthi remembers passing through several layers of tiered gardens on the drive up, so she’s really not sure what to expect as she follows a narrating Shou Fa with the rest of her family, up to a set of double doors.

“Patola Lungta was first founded 100 years ago as a temple and school, a place of harmony between all styles of bending, as well as benders and non-benders. To that end, we’ve been honored to assist two Avatars in their missions of peace, and hope to help many more.” Their guide gestures at the two tall painted portraits on either side of the doors. To the left is Avatar Korra, fierce and wise in her middle age, while Avatar Xirang is on the right, the very image of youth. In many ways, the new Avatar is the total opposite of her predecessor: pale, feminine, willowy, but the strength of her gaze is the same.

Her brother Thik gasps at the picture of Xirang and actually speaks out of turn. “Is she here? Is she here now?”

Mother cooes and ruffles his hair. “Oh, kutti, is that the one you have a crush on?” Thik wilts under her hand, and Sruthi stifles a snort at his sudden discomfort.

“The last I heard, she’s appearing at the dedication of that fancy new arcology in the Spirit World,” says Father. “Putting on a concert, or something. That’s what they said on the news, anyway. Not sure I see the point myself…”

“Yes, but she does come around on occasion,” assures Shuo Fa. “This is where they located her, you know. The geomancers. She was a novitiate, younger even than you.” He nods at nine year-old Thik, who perks back up a bit.

Their guide pushes open the double doors and leads them up a stone staircase to a yawning moongate. With a practiced smile and a little dramatic flourish, he steps aside to reveal a wide courtyard, green and dappled in late-morning sunlight filtering through the century-old ginkgo trees. A paved walkway meanders up to an ornate pagoda in that flowing local style, dodging around a life-sized bronze statue of a rearing dragon-horse, the temple’s mascot. It’s all pretty, sure, but Sruthi can’t help but be a little underwhelmed.

“Where are all the people?” asks Mother, with the same cadence you might use to ask, “What’s that weird smell?”

“This is where we usually entertain guests, including visiting dignitaries.” Credit where credit’s due; this guy knows how to appeal to the egos of rich parents. “Currently, you’re getting an exclusive tour. Just up this way, you’ll find—”

“But shouldn’t there be monks out here doing exercises? Or sparring?”

“Well, this is a temple and school, not a monastery.”

Mother scoffs. “I knew that, of course.” When she glances around and continues to not see any bald men in robes practicing jump kicks at each other, or whatever she was expecting, she asks, “But where are they?”

“Classes and training are conducted elsewhere, so they won’t be disturbed by visitors shuffling in and out.” Sensing displeasure, Shuo Fa pivots. “Ah, but we do have regular demonstrations in this showcase area.” He’s trotting up to the pagoda’s entrance now, where another set of double doors awaits. These are two full stories tall, made of dark wood and carved with a matching set of images that Sruthi can’t quite make out. Not without brushing her hair out of her eyes, anyway.

“Is there anyone in there right now?” It’s Father this time.

“I… don’t believe so.”

Another chuckle from Father, but this one isn’t so friendly, like a smile showing too many teeth. “Okay, Shofar. You said you’d show us what this place has to offer, but you’re not really dazzling me.”

“If you’ll step inside, I’m sure you’ll be impressed by the artful decor. The glasswork mosaics alone have won praise from—”

“With all due respect, we came here to see results, not this artsy-fartsy. Take us to where the people are.”

“As I said, classes aren’t to be interrupted. It’s essential to our methods that students are guaranteed periods of focused activity.”

Father nods and inhales deeply, gravely. “Consider my perspective. I’m a businessman. In my position, if you were asked to invest in a workshop, you’d need to see the craftsmen at work to have confidence in the operation. All we’re getting is the showroom.”

Poor Shuo Fa gives a strangled gasp and stands ramrod straight. It seems a bit early for that kind of terror, thinks Sruthi. Father hasn’t even gotten warmed up yet. Then she realizes their guide is staring past her parents, straight over her head.

She pricks up her ears. There weren’t any footsteps to indicate someone approaching from behind, and yet…

“Oh,” says Shuo Fa in a small, high voice. “Guru Inari.”

Chapter Text

The wagon-train keeps a brisk pace through the tunnel. The fresh stone pavement is smooth, and so with no obstacles or crossings to worry about, the ostrich-horses can keep up a steady canter. These trips must’ve taken a lot longer before these new sections got built. Still, it would’ve been fastest to travel by ship to get to Kyoshi Island.

Dad must’ve gotten a sweet deal on my ticket, Grit thinks hazily.

She should probably be asleep by now. The tunnel’s dim lighting, the regular clicking of claws on stone, the gentle whoosh of air in the confined space. It’s all very nap-inducing. Even the knapsack she’s trying to use as a pillow is comfortable enough.

Stupid chatty brain.

In lieu of sleep, Grit opens her eyes a crack and spies on her fellow passengers from her spot in the corner. Sure enough, most of them are asleep sitting up. There’s a family across from her, their two young children sprawled across the parents’ laps. Down the bench, a couple of middle-aged women are resting their feet on stout, scuffed suitcases. Traveling saleswomen, Grit decides with no evidence whatsoever.

In the corner crosswise from her, a creaky old man peels the top off of a hardboiled egg and sucks it right out of the shell, swallowing it whole like a snake or something. She’d really prefer if she hadn’t just seen that.

Grit’s just closing her eyes again and snuggling stubbornly against her knapsack when they’re out of the tunnel. She sits up sharply as the sudden change in air pressure makes her ears pop. She isn’t loving this sunlight, either.

“Mama, look!” The older child in the seats across from her sits up and points directly at her. “Shiny water!”

She turns to look behind her, at the glittering ocean below. Is that the Mo Ce Sea, or have they left that behind by now? In any case, it’s pretty but nothing new. Grit grew up by the sea, after all, in the scenic town of Tonglo in the shade of the Kolau Mountains. Not the most exciting place, but home for all her thirteen years of life.

Until now.

Now she’s on her way to the family farm, of all places. It’s like a mean joke, the sort of thing you’d tell a crying child about the fate of their sick sparrowkeet that suddenly disappeared.

Grit perks up when she studies the view across from her, craning her neck to get a better look at what must be the biggest tree she’s ever seen. It’s several miles away, at least, rising above its surroundings like a giant green mushroom. That’s something new.

“Hullo there, young miss!” says a man to her immediate left. His voice isn’t too loud, but it’s so unexpected that he may as well have shouted in her ear. She manages to keep from yelping, only sucking in a sharp breath through her nose.

How did she not notice the scruffy carpetbagger lounging right next to her? He’s the sort of spry, middle-aged guy she’s seen passing through downtown Tonglo for as long as she can remember. He wears an outfit that was probably dapper before months of travel took their toll. One skinny foot’s stuck through the handles of the signature carpet bag beneath him. Just another soul looking for opportunity in these modern times.

“Hah! Didn’t mean to scare ya!” His smile is wide and friendly, but with his broad-brimmed hat down over his eyes, it’s hard to tell if he really means it. “Just noticed ya starin’ at the Banyan-Grove Tree over yonder.”

“Banyan-Grove Tree?”

“Yep! It’s the beatin’ heart of Foggy Bottom Swamp. Never been in there myself. Never had the need. But I’ve heard plenty of uncanny tales about the place.” He pauses, and she can’t tell if he’s looking at her or out at the swamp. “Wouldja care to hear some...?”

“I don’t have any money on me,” she lies.

The man barks out a laugh. “Ahh, don’t mistake me, miss. While storytelling is in fact my primary stock-in-trade,” he says, waggling the handle of his bag with an ankle, “I only mean to pass the time, and you look like someone who enjoys a good spook. All I ask in payment is a smile.”

“What...?” It’s a credit to the guy’s charisma that Grit is only confused by his attention, instead of clambering into the next wagon over, seating order be damned.

“Hey, mister! I can smile for you!” says one of the kids across from them. It’s the older girl again, beaming away and propping her baby brother’s cheeks into an awkward grin to sweeten the deal.

The carpetbagger gives his head a little shake. “Much obliged, but there’s supply and demand to consider. You kids are full of easy smiles, y’see, but others are harder to come by. I’m a bit of a connoisseur.” He glances back at Grit. “Pay on delivery. Satisfaction guaranteed.”

I should probably be offended at the guy’s tone, right? But this is easily the most interesting thing to happen on this trip so far. Other than the old man and the egg, maybe. Yuck. Now I'm thinking about it again.

“Okay, fine. Whatever.”

The Swamp beckons. As the last of the Spirit Wilds, it teems with magic. (Or what most people would call magic, anyway.) Time and space have their own funny ways in the shade of the Banyan-Grove Tree, and would-be adventurers enter at their peril…

New people arrive. Lost brethren of the Southern Water Tribe, they come north again, seeking as their ancestors once did. They find neither gold nor glory, but a precious home and kindred spirits…

A tree spirit falls in love with a man. He may be a waterbender, but all humans have such brief lives. When he inevitably dies, his spirit lover flees to the moon with his body and part of the Banyan-Grove Tree, where it still grows as a testament to their love…

A proud young prince seeks a vision of his true love. A red thread only visible on the darkest night of the year leads him to a spirit who grants his wish, but he won't accept the truth of his heart and has the poor boy killed. Only as an old man, full of regret, does he meet his love in his next life and get a glimpse of the happiness they might have shared…

Witches meet under the light of the full moon. They bend a clever youth to their will through his very blood. With just his wits and a little help from a friendly spirit, he manages to escape a terrible fate…

Young Avatar Aang and his friends are pulled into the Swamp by a freak tornado. They see visions of loved ones, past and future. From a humble wiseman, they find guidance in their quest to defeat the Fire Lord…

Poachers encroach, drawn by the riches to be made from the Swamp’s abundant wildlife. The foggy pea-pecker is particularly prized, as its resplendent tail feathers have gained sudden popularity as hair accessories with the wealthy ladies of Ba Sing Se. Only the Vines That Walk manage to drive the poachers out…

“How was that?”

Grit blinks and realizes it’s been at least an hour since the man started his stories. His voice is noticeably more hoarse than it was when he first introduced himself. Accordingly, he pulls out a half-full waterskin and sucks it dry.

“...Are those all true?”

He leans in and says in a hushed conspiratorial tone, “True enough.” Grit feels herself smile, and the storyteller offers his hand. “You shake it,” he instructs after a long moment of confusion. She does, and he’s kind enough to keep his grip gentle. “They call me Sunpoh.”

“They call me Grit,” says Grit.

“Do they now?”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

They arrive at a rest stop not long after, where the team of six ostrich-horses is switched out for a fresh set and the passengers are allowed to stretch their legs. They mingle and chat while admiring the view and helping themselves to fresh water from a natural spring near the top of the ridge.

Grit drinks her fill and tops off her canteen before retreating to a shady spot above the throng of strangers. She’s not in the mood to answer questions about herself, even after Sunpoh’s pleasant diversions.

She makes her way to the ridge’s peak and steadies herself against a crooked tree while she peers down into the swamp, mind swimming with visions of witches and vine monsters. The version Sunpoh painted for her is surely too wondrous to be real.

What might she find there? Visions of her destiny, of true love?

She takes a step forward.

Kyoshi Island feels so small and cold in comparison. What does she have to look forward to there? Scrabbling around in the dirt on the family farm while her uncles watch her with scorn. Or worse, pity. Poor thing can’t even move a pebble.

“Just let me be,” she wants to scream, but it comes out as a whisper. A howl rises from the swamp, as if in answer. A dog or wolf? In a swamp? Maybe it’s just the wind.

Grit takes another step forward and closes her eyes, hoping to catch another howl…

Naturally, her foot slips.

“Wha-nah-nah!” babbles Grit, her arms pinwheeling helplessly. There’s nothing to grab onto but a few tufts of loose grass, but even those are out of her reach in seconds. She’s careening over the lip of the hill separating the rest stop from the swamp’s edge. It’s all she can do to go into a fetal position before she slams into a muddy incline shoulder-first. The pain of it is distant, unreal.

She tumbles down, ass over teakettle, into the unknown.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

It's harmless-looking, as stumps go.

Of course, the last one looked harmless, too, until it started trying to buck her off. You can't take these things for granted in a mystical swamp. A quick kick reassures her that this one is what it seems to be.

“Gnah!” It also reminds her, painfully, of her missing shoes, lost in the muck more than an hour back. She hops around on one foot, squawking like some kind of insane ostrich-horse.

Grit's drenched, of course. Everything below the waste is caked in foul-smelling mud, and her pants squelch when she does finally sit.

At least her provisions are intact and relatively dry, a bit of food Mom packed her and a full canteen. The water should last a while, as long as she takes little sips. It's a minor miracle that her knapsack made it down with her without bursting open.

She's staring at her poor feet, debating the pros and cons of keeping her socks on versus going barefoot, when she hears a noise from the woods like a slithery clicking.

Sssssslllkktktt…

Her head whips around, but it’s impossible to figure out where the noise came from with all these trees and other growth in the way. Even in a normal forest, acoustics can be tricky.

After waiting a few long minutes without an encore, she gets moving again, happy to leave this section of swamp behind her.

Just stick to the plan. It should work, in theory.

She’s skirting around the edge of the swamp, going south until she finds some kind of path she can take back to the road. Unfortunately, it was hopeless trying to get back up from where she landed. Even if the slope’s angle hadn’t been so steep, it was too slippery to climb. Upper body strength was never a talent of hers, anyway.

With her improvised system of scuttling between patches of dry ground and throwing pebbles and sticks into the water ahead to check for mud monsters, she figures she has to make it out eventually. The question is, how long is eventually? It was early afternoon when she landed down here, and the air was murky even then. Now sunlight is fading fast.

It’s a battle between wits and instinct as she presses on. Her bookworm brain wants to find a climbable tree to hide in for the night, but her reptile brain is screaming a single command: KEEP MOVING.

Ssssssslllllkkkktkttkkktkk…

There’s that awful slithering noise again, somewhere behind her. Maybe it’s just moss sloughing off a tree trunk or something. Nothing to worry about.

KEEP MOVING.

Still putting one foot in front of the other, Grit pulls the last flower cake out of her bag, thankful that she missed one when she tore through her sweets in the first hour of her trip. It’s only a little smooshed, still in its wrapping, and she can just barely make out her mom’s handwriting as she rips into it.

“Flowers for my little girl.”

It should taste wonderful, the semi-sweet pastry and its red bean filling. It’s her favorite, after all. Mom must’ve bought a pack of them for her at the corner store the morning she left. Had all of them had little notes on them, and she just hadn’t noticed before she tossed the wrappers out?

A sob wells up out of nowhere, and she almost chokes on a half-chewed bite. She stops by a relatively non-threatening tree and lets the feeling pass. The cake is small, so she scarfs it down in two more bites instead of nibbling it as she’d intended. It tastes like mud.

KEEP MOVING.

Grit takes a step, wobbles, and falls back against the tree. Her chest and throat ache, and it’s making her feel dizzy.

What if the cake is stuck in my throat? What if I choke to death here? No one would ever know.

My parents would think I was stolen away by bandits, or worse.

Oh, they’d be so upset. She can see them now, holding each other and weeping hysterically. Why had they sent her away? Why oh why had they put her on a wagon-train to go live on a stupid farm with relatives she’d never even met? Why hadn’t she been good enough to keep? Now she’s gone forever!

Imagining their despair almost feels good. They deserve to suffer for doing this to her.

No, that’s terrible! Grit winces and screws her eyes shut. I’m a useless, ungrateful brat.

“HWAAH!" She only realizes she’s not actually choking when she sucks in an involuntary gasp of air. She just hasn’t been breathing, apparently. Wow.

KEEP MOVING.

“Stand your ground,” says Dad.

Grit opens her eyes, and she’s somewhere else entirely. It’s a sunny spring day in one of the public parks back home. In the distance, she can see a troupe of Water Tribesmen practicing their forms by a lake, but Dad is trying to instill an entirely different art in her, here in the dirt.

For a moment, she’s afraid he’s going to fling pebbles at her, to “activate self-defense mode,” but he’s very carefully moving a single rock back and forth between two spots on the ground. It’s bigger than her entire body. “Widen your stance, like me.”

She obeys, focusing all her intention on the fist-sized rock in front of her.

Breathe in. Feel the rock. Extend your arms, curl your hands into fists. Bend earth as you bend your elbows, lifting your fists over your head. Breathe out.

The rock sits there like, well, a rock. Nary a grain of sand is out of place.

She slumps in exaggerated defeat, her arms dangling like overcooked noodles. This would get a laugh out of most people, but not Dad. He sets his rock down and turns to her, wiping sweat from his brow.

“Dad, it’s not—” He holds up a hand, and she falls silent.

“Your will is as weak as your form, Grit. How do you expect to earthbend if you crumble at the slightest setback?”

“It’s not a setback if I just can’t do it!”

“Yes, you can.” This is just a statement of fact, as far as he’s concerned. Birds fly, fish swim, and his daughter bends earth. “Now, Tame the Tigerdillo for me. Run through the stances.”

“All of them?” she whines.

“I’ll tell you when to stop. If I can find the flaw in your form—”

“Dad, I’m not a bender!”

His face darkens at the interruption, and he turns away from her, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Then what good are you to me?”

“What…?”

The sunny park falls away, and Grit remembers where she is. She’s cowering against a mossy tree in a dark, stinking swamp, clutching a snack cake wrapper to her chest like a protective talisman.

But Dad is still here, turning back to her with his freckled face a deep red. He looks like an angry apple.

“What good are you to me?”

No, he’s never said this to me. Not in words. He thinks it, though.

“Buh… I—I’ll be good! I can do other stuff!”

“You mean bury yourself in books? Run around in the street with your head in the clouds? No, you’ll never learn if you stay in Tonglo. Go far away and harden your heart. Then maybe…”

Mom is here, too, standing dutifully at her husband’s elbow. At least her eyes are sad, in contrast to his. They’re a warm, comforting hazel. “Mom…?” The woman covers her face and turns away, flickering out of existence.

A wind whips up as Dad begins scolding her again, his voice drowned out by the noise of it. It’s blowing right in his face, strong enough to puff out his cheeks and mash his lips against his teeth. This would normally be a hilarious sight, but right now it makes her father’s face look grotesquely distorted, like a hungry spirit imitating a human man.

The wind becomes a gale, and the gale becomes a squall. Finally, even her sure-footed father stumbles and blows away into the dark. Somehow, Grit herself is unfazed.

Just as the wind dies down, she hears it again, that long, sad howl that drew her here in the first place. Grit looks up. Defying all logic, there's a wolf in the tree branches above her.

That’s the direction the wind was coming from. Did the wolf make the wind…?

Now that the cranky man is gone and he’s gotten her attention, the wind-wolf wags his tail, gives a little “wuf,” and glides away, hopping from tree to tree until she loses sight of him. It’s definitely a him, Grit intuits. Not that he got close enough for her to check and see what was between his legs.

Well, that was an interesting, what, 20 minutes? The sunlight’s completely faded, and now the swamp is lit by dancing fireflies. It’s beautiful and hypnotic and extremely disorienting.

KEEP MOVING.

Still, she’s looking south, she’s pretty sure, and the fireflies illuminate well enough for her to navigate, as long as she doesn’t focus on them. If only she had a glass jar or something she could stuff a few in, that’d be—

Sssssslllkkkttttkktktt...

Slithering. Chittering. Up ahead, something looms. Something big. She can tell from the way its bulk blocks the fireflies’ light. It sloshes in her direction, and she gets a glimpse of its green slimy skin, corded like vines…

The Vines That Walk.

KEEP MOVING, AS LONG AS IT’S VERY QUICKLY AWAY FROM THAT THING.

“EEEEYAAGGGHH!” she hears herself scream.

She runs like the wind, back the way she came, boldly splashing through pools she avoided completely before. She can swear she feels swamp creatures snapping at her ankles, but she’s too fast for them. Suddenly, losing a few toes seems like a reasonable proposition, compared to whatever that thing has planned.

She hears it chasing her, slower than she is but not by much. It sloshes and plops through the muck, the very same stuff holding its body together.

“Byyuurrghuhuhhh!”

It’s making deep, wet chortling noises, like a sick elderly man remembering a dirty joke. Is it actually laughing? Why is that so much worse than roaring? Monsters should roar, not laugh!

Once she has a bit of distance from the vine monster, Grit darts from tree to tree, searching their branches for a friendly face. “Wolf?! Wolf buddy?!”

Please come back. Please save me. Blow that pile of weeds back into the Spirit World.

She sees a grand old tree up ahead, tall and proud with great skirts of gnarled roots. It’s a longshot, but maybe there’s a place for her to hide in there. It’s not like she has a lot of options at the moment.

“Wow, it sure—haahhh—would be great if I haah-had a protective wolf spirit—haahhh—right now!”

Grit’s nearly there when the horrible laughing and splashes of her pursuer dissolve into a farty-sounding squelch. When she looks behind, there’s no more Vine Thing. The ripples it left in the water and pattern of fireflies are the only evidence it even existed.

Was that another vision? Is this place just messing with me for fun? Am I going insane from huffing swamp gas?

She freezes in place, more terrified than she’s ever been. It is here, she’s certain. Somewhere. A move in any direction could spell her doom.

“NYYYAARRRGGGHHHHLLLLL!”

The Vines That Walk lunge out of a dark pool, off to her left and terribly close. Her body moves without her having to command it, carrying her full-tilt up the side of the giant tree. She gets further up in her panic than she has any right to, given the laws of physics, but it’s far too big to scale. Her adrenaline-fueled acrobatics only take her so far up before she tumbles back to earth.

Some cat-like instinct twists her body around mid-fall, just in time for Grit to land on both feet along one thick root.

A chorus of meaty snaps. Then agony.

“HWWWAAAAAAANNNNGGHH!”

The monster is nearly on her now, as she bellows in pain and defiance. She gets a brief glimpse of a skinny tan-skinned hand reaching out of its collapsing body before her world goes black.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Grit comes to and immediately wishes she hadn’t.

Her body is wrapped in glistening vines from the shoulders down to her ankles. From what she can see in the dim light, she’s being carried deeper into the swamp. Those familiar sloshing plods confirm the worst.

The thought that she’s been half-swallowed by the Vines That Walk and probably carried back to its lair doesn’t bother her much. It’s stupid and unfair, but it’s a reality she can deal with.

But spirits above! Her feet! She’s never felt pain like this, like a hot poker’s been shoved through each one. Every little jostle sends a line of fire searing up her legs.

She cries, hating herself but unable to do anything else.

“You awake?” asks a small raspy voice.

“Nghh-hh-hhhyyuuh…”

“Oh, hush. S’not so bad.” A moment of quiet, then a sigh. “Sorry. I didn’t mean… I messed you up good. Sorry.”

Grit snorts and tries to control her hitching breath. Snot and tears are running down her face, with her unable to wipe them. She shakes her head, but only manages to get it in her hair.

They slither to a stop—whatever “they” actually are—and the thin figure of a girl around Grit’s age comes around the side of this clump of walking vines she’s trapped in. The girl has long black hair, half-matted with twigs, which she’s pulling aside to show the biggest, turquoisiest eyes Grit’s ever seen. They almost seem to glow in the dark.

The girl twiddles her fingers, and Grit’s snot and tears lift off of her face along with a few flecks of mud, gathering into a little ball of grime. The girl makes a face and flicks it to the side, where it lands with a plerp.

“I’ma get you to my auntie, y’hear? She can patch you up, give ya somethin’ fer the pain. Almost there. Just don’t wiggle.” The girl nods and turns to walk back to her previous spot, before she shrugs and turns back to Grit

“You may address me as O Great Swamp Witch,” she declares. She enunciates like she’s been waiting to use that on someone for a while. Practiced in the mirror, probably.

Do swamp people have mirrors?

“Fuh?” replies Grit. The girl rolls her eyes, flicks away the fresh tears and snot from Grit’s face, and walks out of sight. Then they’re on the move again.

At least she doesn’t feel like crying anymore.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

O Great Swamp Witch caught hell from her auntie once they arrived back at her home village. There was a mini-lecture about “draggin’ home another stray,” interspersed with excuses from her ...captor? Savior? Tormentor?

Grit was too delirious from pain for her brain to process very much of her introduction to Auntie. She remembers a stout female figure barking orders at the witch-girl and a group of other kids within earshot. They undressed her down to her skivvies and took her muddy clothes off to get “warshed.” They then helped her into a well-worn but clean pair of dungarees and set her out on the house’s raised porch.

She passed out as Auntie got down to splinting up her broken feet with bamboo slips and strips of blue cloth.

After snapping her awake, Auntie gave Grit some willow bark to chew on and a jar of warm, sweet water that burned her throat. The bark was horribly bitter, but it did seem to get the pain in her feet down to a moderate throb.

Now she’s propped up on the porch in an unpleasantly moist armchair, watching some local kids play a game called scoopstick on a precious patch of dry ground. It seems to involve a small rubber ball, hollowed-out coconuts mounted on pole handles, and a lot of running and yelling.

“Go git a switch, ya hardheaded girl! ‘Less ya want me ta do it for ya!” Auntie reappears from the front door, yelling over her shoulder at some unseen sinner while carrying a hot bowl of soup. She turns to Grit and purses her lips at the sight of her feet. “Broughtcha some supper.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

Auntie nods and sets the bowl down on a wooden slat she’s propped up on the arms of the chair. “Take care. It’s hot.” It’s some thick sort of noodle soup, spicy with chunks of okra and possum-chicken. Before Grit can dig in, Auntie crunches something together in her hands and sprinkles what looks like crushed up eggshells on top.

“S’good fer the bones,” she says before marching back into the house.

Grit’s forced down half the bowl when the witch-girl finally shows herself. She sits a few feet away at the edge of the porch, hissing in pain as her skinny butt touches down.

Despite her obvious need to talk, O Great Swamp Witch sits sullenly, avoiding eye contact. This is fine with Grit, who’s really not sure how to feel about the other girl anyway. She can break the ice when she feels like it.

Once you get past the eggshell, the soup’s actually very good. It sure beats the hell out of willow bark. If only Grit’s stomach would settle.

“Likin’ the phumbo?” asks the witch-girl.

Grit slurps up some noodles and briefly considers not answering. “Yeah.”

“Well, you’re eatin’ my share, Auntie says. You’re my ‘sponsibility, after that… mess…”

“Mess,” says Grit, keeping her voice as deadpan as possible.

“The vine trick,” she responds. “Never got to try it out on a person before.” A shrug. “It’s a thing I learnt how ta do with swamp plants, since I’m a waterbender ‘n’ all.”

“I kind of assumed.” Grit imitates pulling a clump of tears and snot off her own face and flicking it away with a little raspberry noise. The witch-girl tries not to smile, staring at the floor.

“Before ya ask, I’m not a healer or nothin’. You needa sifu fer that, and I’m pretty much totally self-taught.”

“Some swamp witch you are.”

A stormy expression crosses the witch-girl’s face, then passes. “Yeah… ‘Bout sums it up.” She glances over at Grit. “Ya don’t hafta call me ‘O Great Swamp Witch’ if ya don’t wanna. Name’s Quyt.”

“‘Kweet?’”

“Quyt.”

“Oh. Um. I’m Grit.” Quyt gives her a perplexed look. “Short for ‘Grits Her Teeth,’” she adds, like that makes any more sense.

“Where’re ya from, Grits ‘Er Teeth?”

“Tonglo.”

“Where’zat?”

“Kinda close to Omashu?”

“City slicker, huh?”

“Not anymore. Parents sent me off to work on a farm. Then I fell off a cliff.” That’s about as much as she can bear to share about her very stupid predicament.

“Must be nice, havin’ parents…”

Icy shame stabs Grit in the gut. Here she is, complaining about her parents while she’s being sheltered at some sort of group home for kids. There are at least a dozen of them between ages five and fifteen, but ‘Auntie’ is the only adult around. The implication is obvious. She just had to go open her big mouth...

“Ahaha! Just messin’! Shoulda seen yer face!”

Grit clanks the nearly empty soup bowl against the serving board. “Ohh, you… witch!” She glares at Quyt not very convincingly and sucks back the last of the phumbo.

“So what d’ya do?”

Grit swallows and wipes her mouth on a sleeve. “Read books and draw, mostly.”

“You c’n read?”

“Yeah?”

“Neat! I mean, I c’n read a bit, but Auntie dudn’t have time ta teach me past the basics…”

“It’s not hard once you get the hang of it.”

“Easy fer you t’say, city girl.” Quyt smirks, then hops to her feet. “Be right back!” she calls as she runs inside. She comes back out a few minutes later with an oversized storybook, which she swaps for the soup bowl.

“‘Adventuresome Tales for Young Warriors,’” reads Grit. It’s a surprisingly heavy book with a deep red leather cover, decorated with old-fashioned gilt filigree and block lettering. It must’ve been impressive once, but those days are behind it. Now it’s wrinkled and stained with mildew. “How old is this book…?”

“Dunno. S’been sittin’ in a trunk. Looks Fire Imperium.”

“So pretty old.” The book crackles unpleasantly as Grit eases it open. The interior pages have fared better than the cover, at least. It looks to be an illustrated collection of classic folktales.

“HEY, YA’LL!” calls Quyt over the porch. “NEW GIRL HERE’S GONNA READ SOME STORIES TO US!” The game of stickball is quickly abandoned. The quicker kids get up to the porch in time to find a seat on the floor, leaving the rest to stand on the stairs and against the walls.

They must be pretty hard-up for entertainment around here. No pressure.

Grit clears her throat. “Okay. Um. The first one’s about dragons.” She turns the book around and shows the first full-page illustration, a sumptuous watercolor print of four different dragon breeds. One of them is the familiar endangered kind, but the others she’s never seen before.

Like the three dragons, this story is totally new to her, a fairy tale from a different world. It tells the legend of the four dragon races that ruled the Earth at the Dawn of Time. One for each element, of course.

There are good reasons, it claims, why only Dragons of Fire remain when the others have gone. The mystical Dragons of Water were foolish and ventured too deep into the ocean, where they were eaten in the dark by sea monsters. The secretive Dragons of Earth fell to laziness in their underground burrows, where they were crushed in a terrible earthquake. The mighty Dragons of Air, with their manes of thunderclouds, grew arrogant in their majesty and flew too close to the sun, which burnt them to ash and scattered them to the Four Winds.

The Dragons of Fire outlasted their cousins, so clever and fierce were they, but even their time must end.

Grit turns to the final illustration of a Fire Nation warrior facing down an enraged dragon. He bristles with weapons, but his true advantage is in his ability to bend the dragon’s flame away, wreathing himself with a battle aura.

For Man is the cleverest and fiercest of all.

“Hrm. I don’t think I like this story very much.” She flips through the rest of the book, noting similar morals in other tales about the supremacy of mankind over nature and fire over all other elements. She aches with jealousy of the illustrator’s skill while wishing it’d been put to better use.

“Save some fer later. It takes a coupla months fer bones to knit back up, so there’s plenty—”

“A couple of months?!”

“Nearabout. But it’s fine. You c’n stay here ‘n’ read for us. Teach a bit.”

“NO! No, no, no, no! I can’t stay here!”

Quyt looks mildly insulted. “S’not that bad...” Meanwhile, the other kids clear out now that storytime is apparently over.

“No, I mean… No one knows where I am. My family will FREAK. OUT.” Grit leans forward for emphasis, and pain shoots up her legs from the slight shift of her broken feet. She yelps like a kicked puppy.

“Relax, dummy! You’ll hurt yerself again.” The witch-girl pulls up some murky water from a puddle under the porch and makes a small ice pack for Grit’s throbbing feet. Tears obscure her vision, but she can hear the defeat in Quyt’s voice when she says, “It is whut it is.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Grit’s stuck sleeping on the porch, due to the impracticality of moving her with such tender injuries. The sleeping areas are all spoken for inside the house, anyway, according to Quyt. The witch-girl has decided to join her, judging by the bamboo roll she’s laying out next to Grit’s chair.

Once Auntie announced it was bedtime, it was like she flipped a switch. Even the most rambunctious kids out in the yard toddled inside without a fuss. Within 15 minutes, all the children were settled in, some of them already asleep.

Not for the first time, Grit wonders how she’ll ever get any rest like this, but once Quyt’s let down and secured the porch screens against “night critters,” she feels surprisingly cozy under her thin blanket.

“Lemme know if ya wake up from pain or whatever,” whispers Quyt as she reclines just out of Grit’s peripheral vision.

“Oh, you can count on it.”

Grit hears an amused little snort, but no actual retort. After a few moments of heavy, humid silence, she starts giggling herself, trying to keep as still as she can so she doesn’t aggravate her broken feet again.

“What’s up?”

“PFFFT! Heehee… That was— That was a really good prank. With the vines. You really got me, hahaha!” She settles down after some annoyed shushes from nearby kids and takes a deep breath. “I’ll have to tell Sunpoh about it, if I ever see him again…”

“Sunpoh?” comes Quyt’s voice out of the dark.

“I met him on the—”

“SSSHHHHHHHHHH!” An older boy’s ducked his head out onto the porch, his outline just barely visible.

“Sorry,” mumbles Grit. The boy goes back to his spot, and she holds her tongue, suddenly full of things she wants to talk about. Hopefully she’ll still remember them in the morning.

Sleep comes on swift wings.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Grit sleeps like the dead. No pain. No dreams. Just blissful nothingness.

She wakes up to dull throbbing feet and has a moment of panic before she remembers the events of yesterday. With that cleared up, she panics some more. One of the kids rolling up the porch screens eyes her warily. Quyt’s nowhere to be seen.

“I don’t like it. Yer a slip of a girl, fixin’ ta head inta the wilds all on yer lonesome,” comes Auntie’s voice from below.

“I won’t be alone! Grit’ll be there.”

“That poor crippled ragbaby can’t even look after ‘erself, much less have yer back in the bayou.” Grit doesn’t think she likes being referred to as a “ragbaby,” no matter how apt it may be.

“But, Auntie—”

“That’s enough backtalk. Get to yer chores.”

“Yes, Auntie…”

Quyt huffs up the stairs, not looking at Grit as she passes, then comes out a few minutes later with breakfast on a big waxy leaf. It’s some sort of sticky mass of rice, eggs, and mixed vegetables, with half a banana on the side. The witch-girl sulks against the porch railing and nibbles the other banana half.

“Am I your chore for the day?” Grit takes a bite of the sticky rice thing. It doesn’t look like much, but it tastes like heaven.

Quyt smirks. “You ‘n’ the weavin’. Auntie prob’ly just wants to keep me around since I’m the only one who c’n work the water loom.”

“Where’d you wanna take me?” asks Grit, her mouth still half-full in her impatience.

“Oh. Uh. T’see a healer. You were so tore up last night about bein’ stuck here, I thought… But Auntie knows best.”

“You guys have a healer?! And you’re just telling me now?!”

Quyt shoots her a look. “Yeah, but she’s out there a ways, in the Blackwater. Suong’s an old friend of Auntie’s. Met ‘er once, when I was small.” She sighs into her banana.

“Well, you have to take me! You’re supposed to help me, right?”

“Naw, Auntie’s right. S’too dangerous.”

“What?! You chased me around with a giant vine monster! You’re way more dangerous than anything out there!”

Quyt blushes and bites her lip, like Grit’s just paid her a particularly flattering compliment. “...Y’think so?”

Grit points to her feet as she chews her breakfast, nodding her head emphatically.

Quyt seems to take her point, glancing around them and closing in on her with a gleam of mischief in her eye. “Finish up yer food. I need’ta grab a few things,” she whispers before scampering off.

So she finishes eating and waits, not that she can really go anywhere without help. Grit feels like a strange piece of furniture with kids navigating around her on the porch as they go about their morning chores. The younger ones smile at her shyly while the older ones act like she’s not there. Maybe this is their way of being polite.

Two kids a year or two younger than Grit, a boy and a girl, are beating rugs they’ve slung over the porch railing. They look up at a series of squelching thuds. Grit cranes her neck but can’t see the source of the noise.

“What is it?” she asks the rug-beaters.

The girl is dumbstruck, but the boy rolls his eyes and drawls, “Jus’ Quyt showin’ off.”

Oh, good! My ride is here.

More kids are gathering in front of the house as a great soggy mass makes its approach.

“Nhi-nhi! Quitcher gawpin’!” Auntie comes out onto the other end of the porch to order her little workers back to their posts but stops when she sees their resident waterbender in all her swampy glory. “Well. Wouldja lookie here.”

“I’m takin’ Grit to Blackwater, Auntie. I c’n take care of myself.”

“I c’n see that.” This woman is unflappable, facing down a mass of walking vines from the top of the stairs like an unwelcome solicitor.

Maybe Quyt does it just to drive the point home, Grit isn’t sure, but a bundle of vines slithers up and over the railing. She manages not to scream when it grabs her, but she does feel her bladder let go. It’s surprisingly gentle as it lifts her and swaddles her into a little nest, but its slimy texture manages to make the moist cloth of the seat she slept in feel luxurious in comparison.

Auntie shakes her head like “kids these days” and throws her hands up in defeat. “Jus’ take care, girl. The swamp’s gotta mind of its own, and Suong’s not to be trifled with.” She narrows her eyes and adds in an ominous tone, “And when ya see’r, ask about Ol’ Blue.”

“I will, Auntie. You take care, too.”

Some of the braver kids follow them a few paces out of the yard before getting back to their assigned tasks. In the village proper, others go about their own morning rituals, trafficking the complex of walkways that serve this community in place of streets. A pair of young men turn their heads to watch the walking vines pass, then snicker and turn away to continue with their conversation. In the distance, shops open for the day, selling wares Grit can only guess at. As glad as she is to be on her way to a healer, she can’t help but mourn the missed opportunity to explore this place. Auntie’s group home was only one corner of it, as much as it felt like a world of its own.

They trudge back out the main gate, which closes up behind them with a layer of greenery so cunningly engineered that you’d think it was just a grove of scrubby trees. So many wonders in such a strange place.

“O Great Swamp Witch?”

“Heh. Yeah?”

“I kinda sorta peed myself when you grabbed me with the vines back there? Thought you should know.”

“Aw, that’s no biggie. I c’n bend it right out—”

“IALSOHAFTAPOOP.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

This isn’t so bad. Grit reclines in relative comfort as her vehicle slogs through the mud at Quyt’s command. It seems to mimic the witch-girl’s own gait, she notes with interest, but not entirely. Odd number of legs, for one thing.

She gazes up into the trees as they pass by like clouds. The real sky is only visible in scant patches, leaving this part of the swamp in a gentle twilight. She imagines herself as one of the many animals in the Spirit Wild’s commotion. Really, anything is preferable to dwelling on their nasty little predicament a few hours back. After several minutes of careful vine rearranging and assistance with her wardrobe, Grit was at least able to relieve herself without making a mess of it.

No one ever writes about those parts in the fantasy adventure serials. You never see descriptions of wandering heroes trying not to look upon their injured companions as they flop around with their butts hanging out. Fictional characters have it made. All eating, no pooping.

In any case, she’s decided to just hold it from now until they get to the Blackwater.

“Daddle-laddle dee-dum…” It’s a man’s voice, quietly singing nonsense.

The girls exchange a glance, and Grit makes an executive decision. “Hello?”

“Chào, cousin!” The trees are a bit thinner here, so it only takes a minute to locate the source of the voice. A man smiles at them from the edge of a river. He’s standing in a hollowed-out log, holding a bamboo pole and wearing clothes of leaves and bark over a simple loincloth.

“And who might ya’ll be?” he asks, his voice dripping with good cheer.

Quyt steps forward. “I’m Quyt, from Rungap.” Rungap must be the name of her village. Grit can’t believe she never even asked. “Takin’ this girl to a healer in Blackwater.”

Grit raises her hand in awkward greeting. “Yo.”

“That’s quite a distance on foot! Wouldja like a ride?” He gestures at his personal skiff. “Can’t take ya all the way there, but could maybe shave off a few hours if you’d be willin’ ta help me out with some bendin’.”

“Yeah, alright.” Grit’s surprised at Quyt’s automatic trust of this stranger, no questions asked. She doesn’t get a choice, as she’s deposited in the center of the skiff. The two tribesmen perch on front and back, shaking hands over her head. Did Sunpoh learn that greeting from a swamp person? Such a strange thing, clasping hands with someone you’ve only just met.

“Pardon my manners, cousins. I’m Tam.” Grit waits for him to correct himself, as she’s obviously not Water Tribe, but he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

They’re making good time down the river, now that Quyt’s learned how to push the skiff through the water properly instead of just paddling her arms in the air like a dog. This guy Tam isn’t a bender himself, but he must know a few to be able to give decent pointers like that.

He’s apparently harmless but very odd—even compared to Quyt—not even wearing proper clothes. Finally, Grit’s curiosity gets the better of her. “Why’re you dressed like that?”

Instead of being annoyed at such a rude question from a girl half his age, he seems genuinely pleased. “Why, I happen ta be a Huuman,” he answers cheerfully. “I choose ta dress traditionally ta advertise the fact.”

“Uh. Yeah, we’re human, too?”

“Glad t’hear it!” He’s perched on the front of the skiff, facing back at her. Considering his lack of pants, she’s careful to keep her eyes up, lest she see something she shouldn’t.

“Do you meet a lot of non-human people around here?” In Foggy Bottom, you never know.

“Yup, a fair number, but I’ve managed ta spread the Good Word amongst ‘em. It’s my callin’, you could say.” He leans forward. “I confess I assumed you weren’t one of us, by the look o’ ya.”

“I’m definitely human. Do I not look… human...?”

“Not close kin, no. Heh. No offense meant. Were you adopted? Again, no offense meant.”

“...I’m so, so confused.”

Quyt giggles, an unsettling froggy sound. “Sorry, she’s not from ‘round here.”

Tam has a chuckle at his mistake and Grit’s flushed face. Then he squares his shoulders and takes a deep breath, putting on a more noble air for this next part. “I’m a Man of Huu, he who saw through the Veil of Illusion and grasped the True Meaning of Life. And what’s that, you may ask? To you, I say, ‘Look around! Just look around you!’”

Grit looks, convinced she’s not doing it right.

“And what do you see, cousin?”

She hesitates, wondering if he’s addressing Quyt, but he’s making eye-contact with her, expectant. “The swamp?”

“Yes, the swamp! The trees! The moss! The vines!” He gesticulates, jiggling the skiff enough that Grit grabs the edges to keep from bumping her feet. “Critters that crawl! Critters that fly! Critters that swim! Us! A veritable menagerie!”

She just nods, hoping he’ll get to the point sooner rather than later.

“But that’s the trick, y’see. These shapes ‘n’ labels are but illusions that distract us from our shared heritage. If you could look with yer heart, you’d see the energy flowin’ through every livin’ thing, gatherin’ in pools ‘n’ eddies but all connected throughout time and space.”

Grit stares, puzzled but somewhat charmed by how much Tam is obviously relishing this captive audience.

“Consider the river.”

“Okay.” She looks over at the water and tries to look thoughtful, knitting her brows and wrinkling her nose.

“At first glance, we have the water and the bank, a clear division, but look closely and realize the error of yer assumptions. Right here, what appears to be land is, in fact,” he says as he sweeps his bamboo pole along the river’s edge, “just some soggy weeds.”

He’s right. The pole lifts leaves as they pass, revealing stems growing straight out of the swamp. The river they’re riding is only a flowing lane of water slightly deeper and faster than the rest.

“The river has no edge. Even where there’s earth, water still flows in a swamp. And so it is everywhere. Rivers, oceans of life energy. We all live ‘n’ flow ‘n’ breathe together, as Huu understood upon his Awakening in the shade of the Banyan-Grove Tree. We Huumen share in his Enlightenment and endeavor ta teach others to take joy in this fact, so that Creation may know ‘n’ love itself.”

“That’s why you call me ‘cousin,’ right?”

Tam grins wide, showing off his flawless set of teeth. “So it is.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

It wasn’t long after Tam’s sermon that they reached the bend in the not-a-river where they parted ways. A fresh throne of vines carried Grit south into a new section of the swamp. It’s less mucky here, with more distinct areas of land and water. The water itself is clear but dark, a sure sign they’re near the Blackwater. At least, that’s what Grit assumes.

“Sorry ‘bout that fella. Huumen’re trustworthy, but they do go on,” says Quyt as they trudge along. “‘Pants are an illusion, and so is death,’” she adds in a mocking tone.

“I didn’t mind.” She contemplates the True Meaning of Life, which she wishes Tam had been more specific about. “Wait, what?”

“This’s as good a spot as any,” says the witch-girl, ignoring Grit’s last question. She’s referring to a cozy thicket on a relatively dry patch of land. There’s even enough of a clearing where they can build a fire. It’s late afternoon now, so one of those will be a good idea very soon.

Quyt sets her down, along with their supplies. “Prob’ly a good idea fer you to take a nap. Might take me awhile to catch enough supper fer the both of us.”

The witch-girl’s equipped herself with a sharpened bamboo rod, a net, and a bucket. As Grit watches her check her tools with practiced confidence, she’s struck by how different the two of them are. Their homes are both in the Earth Kingdom, not even that far from each other as the lizard-crow flies, but they may as well be from different planets. What would Quyt think if she took her to Tonglo?

Quyt grins. “I’ll keep an eye out, so you won’t get got by a catgator or nothin’.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Grit lies back in the clearing, carefully elevating her feet on a log and resting her head on her knapsack. It’s strange how sore she is from the traveling, like she’s been walking the whole way instead of kicking back. Well, not kicking, but…

A river, wide and deep, snaking through a thick forest.

Flowing away, up to a silver disc. Huge. Perched on the horizon just beyond the forest

The moon. The end of all rivers, the other side of the ocean’s coin.

No, not a moon but a peach. Not a river but a dribble of juice on a mossy rock.

Hungry. Thirsty. Biting the peach.

Snap. Crack.

She wakes to the sound of a crackling fire. The witch-girl is chewing at some dried green bundles and leaning over the bucket she’s set to boil. When she sees that Grit’s awake, she hands some of her snack over.

It’s dried duckweed, as Quyt explains. “Like seaweed, but not.” For their actual meal, Quyt’s boiled up some crawdads, which they have with leftover rice. It’s simple and filling and wonderful.

For dessert, Quyt unwraps a bundle of two precious macaroons and holds one out to her. They nibble in companionable silence.

“Since ya had a nap, you get first watch.”

“Watch?”

“Someone’s gotta stay awake, ‘less we wanna get eaten.”

“I guess.” This is the best cookie I’ve ever tasted. “What do I do if I see something? Not much good in a fight right now.” As opposed to the rest of the time?

“I’unno. Holler?”

“...What if I see something really weird?”

“Weird, like how?”

“Like people I know. Or flying wolves. Unless that stuff was you messing with me, too.”

“Ohh. Hah, no.” Grit glares, but Quyt is adamant in her innocence. “All I did was the vine trick! Cross m’heart!”

“Hrm.”

“You’re talkin’ ‘bout moonshines. Ain’t no bender that c’n conjure those up. It’s more like…” She twirls the hand holding her last bit of macaroon, searching for the right words. “It’s like the swamp talkin’ to ya. Gettin’ in yer head.”

“Hallucinations?” It’s the most logical conclusion, of course, but not very satisfying.

“Kinda-sorta. Not really.” She laughs at Grit’s confused expression. “It’s the spiritual energy of the swamp makin’ the invisible visible. Whatever you see is what’s already in yer heart. Mostly people ya care about. I hear tell you c’n see people you haven’t even met yet, if they’re important enough.”

“I’ve heard that, too.”

“Whatever you saw, it was fer you only. I didn’t see any wolf, or whoever it was you were yellin’ at.” Quyt yawns and curls up next to the embers, her voice thick with sleep. “I’ve seen stuff, too. They can’t hurtcha, ‘less ya let ‘em…” Her breathing slows as she drifts off, and despite Grit’s ever-hungry curiosity, she doesn’t have the heart to prod her for more.

She looks up, surprised that she can see satisfying patches of sky through the tree cover here. No moon yet, just a few dim stars. It must not be very late.

She’s not sure how much time passes before she hears it, an animal padding around the edge of the thicket, unseen but obviously large. Before she has a chance to alert Quyt, it gives a little “wuf” and beds down somewhere in the dark underbrush.

“Oh, it’s you,” she whispers. Then, not knowing what to say to a moonshine, “I’ve always wanted a dog.”

No response, but the sound of his deep, relaxed breathing comforts her.

“I think I’ll name you Genroh.”

She sits and feels the swamp pulsating with life and energy, keeping watch with her phantom wolf for the face of the peach-ripe moon.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

“Needs more work.” Quyt clicks her tongue in thought.

“It’s fine. We just need to get across the bayou, not ride it down the river.”

“You saw the teeth on them things. One good chomp, an’ we’re good as chum.”

“Can’t you fend them off? With bending?” Grit wiggles her fingers like angry spiders.

“Firstly, I’m no good at fightin’. Secondly, those’re Suong’s critters! They could be spirits fer all we know!”

“Bluh. Fine, I’ll help tie more vines, but we can’t spend all day on this.”

Quyt nods and bends a bundle of vines out of the trees. Once she’s done twisting and drying it into roughspun rope, both she and Grit get to work looping and knotting it throughout the bundle of sticks they’re calling a raft. It doesn’t seem likely to fall apart, at least, but Grit doesn’t know how extra sturdiness is supposed to keep them safe from angry spirits. Still, it seems best not to argue.

It turns out they camped only a couple of hours from Suong’s hut. (This had better be her hut, anyway. There aren’t exactly any signs.) It’s something Quyt called a crannog, a kind of stilt house out on its own little artificial island. This one must’ve been around for a while because there’s a decent-sized tree incorporated into the structure.

It’s sitting out in the middle of a misty leech-infested bayou, guarded by a squad of catgators stationed between the crannog stilts. They look docile now, but who knows how frisky they’ll get once they notice a potential meal coming their way.

“That’ll have to do ‘er,” says Quyt as she sets down some waxy palm leaves on top of their creation. Grit eases onto it, keeping her precious knapsack strapped to her front. The witch-girl takes a slow breath, crouches next to her, and bends the Blackwater into scooping them up.

Perspective is tricky without a frame of reference.

They approach the crannog without any problems, but the structure’s twice as tall as it looked from the shore. And then there are the catgators. Having never seen one before, Grit takes them at face value, but she gets worried when she sees Quyt’s eyes go wide.

“What’s wrong?” she whispers, just in case a human voice sounds like a dinner bell to these things.

“Not. Catgators.” Quyt gulps. “Crocoswine.” Grit decides not to ask any follow-up questions and just loses her mind quietly.

They can see the creatures clearly now. They’re huge, nasty looking masses of fat and muscle combining the least lovely aspects of crocodiles and warthogs. Their skin makes her queasy, bristles and scales competing for space in chaotic patterns. Somehow, the worst part is that they seem smart, sitting and watching the two of them through racks of tusks with their spooky yellow eyes.

Weren’t there more of them when they counted earlier?

A bulky something glides through the water behind them. Grit feels it more than hears it, and the voice of her survival instincts commands her once more: KEEP MOVING.

But there’s nowhere to move! She can’t stand up. Even if she could possibly swim, that wouldn’t save her. She’s a sitting turtle-duck.

KEEP MOVING.

She flails.

“Calm yer ass down! It’s just mindin’ us!”

“If you didn’t have magic freakin’ powers, you’d be panicking, too!”

Two more crocoswine are circling now, nudging and nipping at the girls’ poor excuse for a watercraft. The extra vines were a good idea after all.

“We’re almost there! Hold sti—”

Grit does it without thinking. Her foot shoots out and cracks one of the monsters right in its eyeball. She watches it happen in disbelief and braces herself for the pain. She and the crocoswine shriek in unison as broken ends of bone grind against each other in fresh, red hot agony.

Thanks, instinct!

KEEP MOVING.

Shut up, shut up!

Quyt’s yanking their raft around, the brute force of her waterbending doing more damage to it than the crocoswine did. A dark squealing blur crashes down where they were floating just a second ago. Now the water’s churning, and there’s yelling. Some of it might still be hers.

Just eat me and get it over with! But all at once, please! I prefer a minimum of suffering!

With a screaming grunt from Quyt, they’re launched into the air. The water beneath them crackles, and Grit feels frost on her cheeks as she lands on a walkway at the crannog’s edge.

It’s a welcome distraction when the impact of her knapsack knocks the wind out of her. She gets a moment to think without the pain of broken bones getting in the way. She’s safe. She’s wet but not hurt too badly. She’s… alone.

Quyt’s skinny little hands are just a few feet away, scrambling for purchase on the walkway but finding none.

All instinct, Grit twists around on her side and gets a firm grip on Quyt’s forearm right before it slips out of reach. A quick peek over the edge reveals the witch-girl’s feet slipping on the remains of their raft atop a twisted column of ice. Halfway up, a partially encased crocoswine is trying to thrash itself free, sending the whole thing teetering wildly.

Better not to think about what’d happen to Quyt if she slipped. Just yank.

Quyt’s a skinny thing, and she vaults over the edge, landing on top of her rescuer. The girls sling their arms around each other, just in case, and lie there in a shuddering heap.

“Made... an ice... column…” pants Quyt after a few moments. “First… time I did… that…”

“At least it… wasn’t the… last…”

“Purdy good, I’d say,” says a voice like a creaky door hinge. “Fer a soggy little whelp.”

An old woman who can only be Blackwater Suong stands a few feet away, hands at her hips in a stance of utter vexation. Seeing as she doesn’t seem about to murder them, Grit greets her with a thumbs-up, the universal signal of goodwill.

The woman huffs over to the railing. “Oh! Look what they done t’ya! Oh, Flotilla!” She gestures, and Grit hears a splash below them and the bellowing of grumpy crocoswine. Some more gesturing and gentle shushing from Suong quiets them down.

She turns back to them and starts barking orders as Quyt stands up. “You grab ‘er feet, and I’ll git t’other end. Hop to it.” Yes, this lady and Auntie probably get along just fine.

Grit surrenders herself to the situation, just hoping that they don’t drop her. The pain is a fact of life now, and her ears are ringing with it. It’s inevitable, not something worth fearing. They cart her around to the opposite side of the hut, where they enter a narrow doorway covered with a flap of fabric.

Leading up to the door is a convenient walkway from the edge of the bayou.

“Can’t imagine why ya’ll didn’t jus’ use the ding-dang bridge.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Neither Quyt nor Grit had thought to scout out the location before making their approach. They’d just push straight ahead, not even stopping to think that even a witch would have some way to walk to shore from her home.

At least Suong seemed impressed at the fact that they survived. After she helped Quyt drop Grit onto a cot, she bustled back out the door. The several minutes since then have stretched on for hours, interrupted from down below by occasional screeching and splashing.

Quyt’s holding her hand, Grit realizes, as she kneels at the side of her cot. Grit gives a little squeeze, hoping to ease whatever’s making the other girl scowl so deeply. When did they become friends?

Suong reappears through the hut’s main door and scuttles past the two girls to a shelf in the corner. There she picks up a black orb the size of a grapefruit, mutters something that sounds like a question, and turns the object over in her knobbly hands. Apparently satisfied, she sets it back down next to some cutesy porcelain knick-knacks.

“State yer purpose,” she says, twirling around to look at them.

“Yyuuuunnngghhh,” moans Grit.

Quyt clears her throat, stands, and bows low to the old woman. “S-Suong o’ the Blackwater. We come seekin’ healin’ fer my friend here, if you’d be so kind—”

The witch doesn’t even wait for her to finish before she’s kneeling at Grit’s feet. Even through the pain, Grit’s amazed at how spry Suong is for someone her age. Her puffy joints have the look of advanced arthritis, but she moves like a dancer.

Suong tuts. “Woulda got to ya sooner, but somebuddy popped poor Cletus in the peeper.” She doesn’t unwrap Grit’s feet, but instead lays her cool palms oh-so-gently on the skin of her ankles. Her eyes dart here and there beneath closed lids, and Grit has the unnerving thought that the old woman’s fallen asleep in the middle of healing.

Her feet tingle and go blessedly numb.

“Feet’re broke.”

“I know,” snaps Grit, to her immediate regret. Suong opens one eye to look at her. Grit worries that the old woman will un-numb her feet as punishment, or even make it hurt worse, but she just sighs and lets go. “S-sorry.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’re both sorry. Fer the trouble.”

“Thank you, ma’am!”

“Yes, thank you!”

“Well, bless yer little hearts,” creaks Suong with a smirk, which softens into something like a smile as Quyt kneels back at Grit’s side.

“Oh, and I’m Quyt. You know my Auntie, from up in Rungap.” She reaches into her own bundle a pulls out a modest jar of pickled eggs as an offering. “This here’s my friend Grit.” She pauses, then adds, “It’s, uh, my fault her feet’re broke.”

“Hoowee! I thoughtcha looked familiar! One o’ Nguyet’s li’l helpers.” Suong relaxes, takes the jar, and gives a friendly chuckle before walking over to a corner of the hut that could charitibly be described as a kitchen nook. “Care ta wetcher whistle? Should still have some Kickapoo sodie pop in the icebox.”

“Uh. Sure,” says Quyt.

“Sorry, ma’am, but do you have any water? Just plain water?” Grit doesn’t think she can handle anything sugary, with her stomach in knots the way it is. For all she knows, the numbness could wear off any second.

“Huh. None you’d wanna drink. S’pose I could wring somethin’ potable outta my warsh water, but it’s like ta taste o’ socks.”

“Kickapoo’s fine!”

Suong carries two frosty bottles over on a tray next to two little pots of cream and jam. “Trifle?”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

The healing has turned out to be an all-day affair. Not because it’s a difficult process but because Suong insists she does her best work after sundown. Something to do with the power of the moon. So they kill time.

The old woman seems more than happy to visit with them as they wait for nightfall. Grit’s mostly just listened as the two waterbenders chat, only interrupting to let Suong know when she’s getting feeling back in her feet. A little ankle touch, and they’re dead asleep.

Once you get past the prickly exterior, Suong’s like so many old ladies Grit’s known in her life that she almost feels more embarrassed about being scared of her than not using the bridge. Kooky, nostalgic, and starved for company.

Right now, she’s studying Quyt’s form as the girl levitates a blob of murky water and morphs it into simple shapes. Suong stands what Grit would think is uncomfortably close, taking note of the movement of Quyt’s hands as much as the water itself.

“And y’say yer self-taught?”

“Until now,” says Quyt with an edge of giddiness.

“Well, I know yer not lyin’ ‘cuz ya got no clue ‘bout the fundamentals.”

“...Oh.”

“Yer all tensed up! Surprised yer able to bend vines. The ice pillar, that you c’n do on instinct, but workin’ the vines’s intentional. You got some real gumption.”

“Oh?”

“Yessiree, a little guidance’s all ya need.” She pauses to suck her teeth. “Hm. S’been a while since I taught.” She seems reluctant until she sees Quyt’s eager eyes, huge and irresistible. “Aw, hell.”

Suong produces a shallow bowl and lowers the water blob into it before handing it to Quyt. “I’ma show ya somethin’. Jus’ stand there and focus on keepin’ the water in the dish.”

She circles Quyt at a meditative pace.

“Yer the Sea,” she declares, “and I’m the Moon.” The water splashes over the side of the bowl, right at Suong. “Girl, did I not say ta keep the water in the bowl?!”

“Oh, you meant… Got it, pardon.”

Suong sighs and twirls her hand above the bowl, sucking back in every drop that was spilled. “Yer fine, yer fine...”

She starts circling again, and again the water seeks her. Now its movement is sluggish, and Grit realizes what she’s watching. They’re both bending the same water, with Quyt trying to keep it still as Suong tugs at it.

Sea and Moon.

“This’s where it starts,” says Suong. “Every drop o’ water that ya see, and every one ya don’t see, is in that dish. Always caught in a tug o’ war. You’d never know it, ‘cept fer the tides. This’s the heart o’ water, its dyn-o-mism, ‘cuz water ain’t never still. Now, when I count ta three, let go yer bendin’. One…”

“Ma’am, do ya mean on three or after three?”

“On three.” Quyt nods.

“One, two, three.” Both benders release their hold simultaneously, and the water comes alive with released tension. It ripples in swirls, and two miniature waves rear up and threaten to spill over the sides before reversing direction and crashing into each other, sending spray into Quyt’s captivated face.

“When waterbendin’ masters say ‘push and pull,’ this’s what they really mean. The pull o’ the moon and the push o’ the water ‘gainst itself. Y’get waves, currents, cascades...” Suong stops circling and spins on her heel, drawing the water into her orbit, where she sculpts it into a series of beautiful shapes. They flow into each other effortlessly, naturally: stream, spout, spray. “All bendin’ is dancin’, but waterbendin’ most of all. Feel the rhythm of yer partner, learn the steps, and before long you c’n lead.”

She winks and flicks the water at Quyt. “Catch!”

The witch-girl nearly fumbles it. It looks to Grit like she’s trying to catch the water in an invisible bucket, but the inertia of Suong’s toss sloshes it out of her grip. Grit bites her tongue to keep herself from shouting advice and ruining her friend’s concentration, such as it is.

“Flow! Don’t try ‘n’ stop it! Flow!” Half the water’s in freefall now, with the rest soon to follow.

Grit watches Quyt as something clicks into place and her whole stance changes. She loosens up from her shoulders down, bobbing on the balls of her feet. Then she dips, extends her arms, and redirects the falling water just before it hits the floor. It flows past her open legs and back over her shoulder, where she catches it and lets it expend the last of its momentum into a lovely spiral shape.

It shudders for a moment in the air before it crystallizes. The freezing process is almost instantaneous, and it takes nearly a full second before it explodes.

“Aaaaheheheh! Jus’ had ta show off, didja?” Apparently genuinely delighted, Suong slaps her knee. It jiggles.

Grit laughs and applauds, not caring if the ice was supposed to explode or not. “That was so cool! Oh, wow!” Quyt glances back at her with flushed cheeks. “Really! I’ve seen waterbending, but never anything like that!”

Suong blinks back at Grit and seems to remember where she is. “You.”

Grit has that sinking feeling of being in trouble for breaking a rule that was obvious to everyone but her. If her feet weren’t broken, she’d stand at attention as the old woman approached, but sitting at attention will have to do.

“Yer not any sorta Water Tribe, I reckon,” she declares, appraising Grit above the ankles for the first time. She sniffs, as if a little whiff will tell her all she needs to know about the girl in front of her. Maybe it does. “You’ve got that Earthy look aboutcha… But there’s somethin’ else. Hmm…”

The old woman leans in and grabs a hank of Grit’s hair, which she rubs between her gnarled fingers like a bit of yarn she’s thinking of splurging on. There’s nothing interesting about it, straight and mousy brown. Her mussed pageboy hairstyle is a bit unconventional for a girl, but that’s not what Suong’s interested in.

“Freckles, eh? Don’t see that too much.” She mushes Grit’s cheek up, then pulls it down and stares right into her eye. “Green, but muted, grayish. Hmm.”

Grit’s reminded unpleasantly of long-ago visits with grabby elderly relatives. It’s her turn to blush when she sees Quyt watching her examination with amused interest.

“Yeah, I—” Grit tries to pull away gently, suppressing the urge to slap away Suong’s hands. “I take after my dad’s side. Except for the important stuff.”

“And yer travelin’ ta see ‘em?”

“Yeah. I mean, uh… Yes, ma’am.”

“Kyoshi Island?”

“Yeah, actually.”

“Heh. ‘Splains the freckles. Ever since the Big Gal made ‘erself at home, folks down there’ve thought ‘em lucky. Y’see it more there than jus’ about anywhere.”

Grit looks down at her bare arms, dappled in faint specks like little constellations. Mom always called them her sparrow spots. Lucky, huh?

“Wouldja lookit the time,” says Suong, glaring up through a little skylight at the deepening dusk. She looks at Quyt and jerks her thumb at Grit’s feet. “You git ‘er prepped while I collect m’self.”

Quyt does as she’s told, and the girls pretend not to watch Suong as she pulls containers out of her jumbled cabinets, muttering some words that Grit doesn’t understand but make Quyt snicker.

With a triumphant cackle, the old woman finds a scratched up old tin and pulls out a bundle of dried purple herbs the size of her thumb. After stuffing it in her cheek, she turns her back to them and commences a set of breathing and stretching exercises, accompanied by a symphony of deep popping noises. It sounds like she’s cracking her knuckles, but if her whole body were made of knuckles. Is this an old person thing or a witch thing? Grit shudders and files this memory away in the same place as the egg-sucker, under “OLD PEOPLE ARE WEIRD AND/OR GROSS.”

“Keep still.” Grit’s surprised to see her feet mostly unwrapped now. Quyt’s leaving just enough of the binding on to keep her feet stuck to the bamboo splints. The sight of the angry red swelling renews her gratitude for Suong’s miraculous painkilling touch.

“Okey-doke!” says Suong. She sidles up like a crab, pushing Quyt to the side. “Gonna hafta bring the feelin’ back into yer tootsies fer me ta do this proper-like.” She doesn’t look up from Grit’s feet, but she senses her panic all the same. “Don’t get all hepped up now. I’ll be gentle.”

She flashes a purple-edged grin. “And no kickin’ me in the kisser, if’n ya don’t mind.”

Suong places her hands on Grit’s ankles again. As the pins and needles of returning sensation make way for the inevitable pain, the old woman gives a gentle pat. “Shhh, shh, shh. Let ol’ Suong work ‘er magic.”

The pain isn’t as bad as she was expecting, but surely that could change any second. Grit does her best to relax as Suong gesticulates around the wounds like she’s kneading invisible dough. Deep calming breaths.

“Uh,” says Quyt.

“Yes, li’l miss whasserface?” asks Suong without pausing.

“Don’tcha need water fer this?”

“There’s plenty ‘nuff ta work with.”

Quyt and Grit exchange confused looks. “Wait, yeah! Don’t healers need special glowy water?”

Suong scoffs. “Pure water, ya mean. Heh. Good luck findin’ any o’ that in the bayou. The bit I do have is fer drinkin’, not healin’.” She leans over and hacks a gob of herb-stained spit through a knothole in the floorboards.

“So…?”

“Blood, girl! Best thing fer broken bones, anyhow.”

“You’re bloodbending me?!” Oh, this was a mistake. Grit let herself get dragged through miles of swamp, past a family of pissed off crocoswine, right into the lair of a friggin’ bloodbender. She’s read about these types before. How did she not see the signs?!

“Don’t make me hold ya down.”

“Hold me down, huh?! Like with my blood?!” She can feel it already, the blood writhing in her veins like gruesome worms. It’s vile, this dark art of—

“No, with yer friend! M’not some pervert puppetin’ people ‘round fer laughs.” Suong sighs. “Lemme put it this way. Bloodbendin’s jus’ a tool.”

Both girls are curious, despite themselves.

“Some people might use a tool as a weapon, but that ain’t the tool’s fault. You c’n stick a needle in a feller’s eyeball instead o’ mendin’ his shirt, but no one says needles’re evil. ‘Sides, how d’ya think I made yer feet numb? Wishin’ real hard?”

Grit opens her mouth to retort but thinks better of it.

“Thass what I thought,” replies Suong with no small amount of satisfaction.

“S-sorry again, ma’am.”

“Hmph.” She takes one of Quyt’s little hands and places it on Grit’s ankle. “Let this be a lesson, girlie. Don’t let nobuddy shame ya jus’ fer bein’ diff’rent. Y’feel me workin’?”

“Y-yuh-huh.”

“This here’s yer birthright, an’ no mistake. Not even the highest falutin’est healer in Agna Qel’a c’n do it. Us Foggy Swamp benders gotsta be resourceful, like you ‘n’ yer walkin’ vines. Jus’ don’t do that with people, and yer right as rain.”

“Yes, Suong. Ma’am.”

“Animals, neither! Not even if it’d be real hoot, t’see a buncha frog-squirrels dancin’ on a log. Or a fanaconda tie itself all up in knots.” Suong shakes her head and chuckles nostalgically, a bit of purple dribbling from one corner of her mouth. “...I hear tell that some folk think bloodbendin’ turns ya loony. C’n you believe that?”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

There’s a spring in her step as Grit returns from the outhouse. She’s practically skipping down the walkway to Suong’s hut, unbothered by the creaking of the old wooden slats. No way will she ever take mobility for granted ever again. Nor the satisfaction of an unassisted poop.

She’s not sure what to think when she pushes the door flap aside and finds Suong and Quyt feeling up the tree that juts through the witch’s home. Their eyes are closed, like they’re trying to read secret messages in the mossy bark with their fingertips.

“Now think o’ somebuddy ya know, a ways away,” instructs Suong.

“Like Auntie?”

“Sure. Don’t matter who, long as ya got a feel fer their personal mojo. Jus’ let the flow o’ the swamp’s life force carry ya to ‘er…”

After a few moments, Quyt tenses up and shakes her head. “S’not workin’, ma’am.”

“Yer tryin’ too hard!”

“I shouldn’t try...?”

“Stop tryin’ ta take control. Y’can’t redirect the flow, so jus’ keep yer goal in mind an’ trust the Way.” Suong gives a little scoff, then jerks her head right in Grit’s direction, her eyes still closed. “You give it a try, Freckles.”

“I’m not a waterbender. What am I supposed to do?” Grit’s not overly fond of the nickname that Suong’s settled on for her, but it could be much worse. At least she’s not calling her a “ragbaby,” whatever that is.

“Heh. S’not a bender thing. Yer connected to the flow of life jus’ as much as we are. Anybuddy c’n do it if they c’n keep an open mind. Now quitcher dawdlin’ an’ git over here.”

Grit shrugs and sidles up behind Quyt. Standing this close, it strikes her how tiny her friend is. This girl, who can sling vines like they’re extensions of her body and fight off monsters with ice, only comes up to her chin. On top of that, she’s so thin that Grit could probably lift her over her head if she really tried. After asking first, of course.

“The ‘Witchin’ Way’ is mostly jus’ a name, ta help gitcher mind around the wayfindin’ aspect. Truth is—”

“The what what?” asks Grit, pressing her palm against a relatively dry patch of bark.

Before Suong can respond, Quyt pipes up, “It’s so we c’n find yer missin’ ride.”

“So it’s best if’n you c’n find the Way yerself. It’s jus’ a means o’ followin’ yer connection t’others. When ya meet folk out in the world, a lick o’ energy passes ‘tween ya. All those bits’re still you, even as they’re flowin’ through the heart of another. S’all the same.”

“Consider the river,” whispers Grit. Behind her lids, she sees Tam, the kindly Huuman they met two days ago. It could be one of her usual daydreams, but it feels real, like he’s right in the room with her. Or she’s out in the swamp with him, watching him preach to a flock of birds.

His voice is muffled, and she strains to parse his words. Remembering the sound of his voice seems to help, like she’s tuning into the exact frequency of a weak radio station. Then one of the birds SHRIEKS, and Grit stumbles away from the tree in shock.

“Didja see Tam?” asks Quyt, wild-eyed.

“Y-yeah. You, too?” Her friend nods.

Suong beams at them both with her eerie purple teeth. “Took to it like a hog in slop! Heh, I had a feelin’! Now, find that wagon, Freckles.”

Grit slaps her hand back against the tree in her excitement, conjuring the image of a middle-aged storyteller in a battered suit, armed with just a carpet bag and an infectious grin.

“They call me Sunpoh.”

There he is, still on the wagon-train to her tremendous relief. She can’t see him as clearly as she did Tam, but she can feel him well enough. It’s like tugging on a string and feeling the resistance at the other end. There’s so much information in that simple sensation.

She points with dead reckoning. “Southwest, moving east. Not too far. Closer than Rungap, anyway. If we head straight south, we should be able to meet them.”

Suong shoves Grit’s knapsack into her arms. “Best hurry, then.” When Quyt goes to gather her own things, she says off-handedly, “I c’n watch ‘em fer ya.”

“Huh?”

“You’ll be comin’ back, right? Jus’ gittin’ on a roll with the teachin’...”

“I… Oh. Oh! Yes, ma’am! I c’n come right back!”

Grit taps her on the shoulder, jerking her friend out of her elation. “Weren’t we supposed to ask her about something?”

“Fer Auntie. Yup. It sounded… forebodin’.” Quyt winces. “Don’t wanna make ‘er cross with me…”

“Guess I gotta take one for the team, then.”

“Wait, you—”

“Suong, ma’am! I almost forgot!” Grit ignores the daggers Quyt’s glaring at her and summons her best “don’t upset grandma” tone. She’s in too good of a mood to let the other girl make her second-guess herself. “Nguyet told us to ask you about an Ol’ Blue…?”

Suong has to think for a moment before she guffaws and struts over to her knick-knack shelf in one corner. “Yer Auntie lost it to me in a round o’ Mahjong, fair ‘n’ square! She’s welcome t’come try an’ win it back! Pfah!” She takes that grapefruit-sized black orb she consulted when they first arrived and brings it over. On closer inspection, it looks like it was made from a coconut, smoothed out and painted black except for a white circle on top decorated with a black infinity symbol.

“Y’ask it questions.”

“Um. What’s the Meaning of Life?”

“S’gotta be a yes or no.”

“Okay, but why’s it called ‘Ol’ Blue’?”

Looking down at the strange object, Suong asks, “Will these two make it in time if they leave now an’ stop piddlin’ around?”

She turns it over to reveal a little glass window on the bottom, full of a dark blue liquid. White words float up and press themselves against the viewport. “BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW.” Suong twitches a finger, and that message rolls away to be replaced by, “YOU MAY RELY ON IT.”

“See? Never fails! Quite the magical divination tool, Ol’ Blue.”

“But you messed with it!” Quyt tugs on her arm, afraid of getting in trouble by association with such disrespect to an elder.

“Them’s the breaks! Now git!”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

If the trip from Quyt’s village down to see Suong was a slog, this is the opposite. The girls romp through the forest like wild things, running where it’s safe and swinging on vines where it’s not. Quyt was an accomplished vinebender before, but something in the lessons Suong gave her yesterday have taken them to a whole new level. She’s found her flow.

As much as she enjoys putting her feet to good use, Grit wishes they could swing the whole way there. It’s like flying.

They make it back to the road with time to spare, so they wait atop the exit to one of the transit tunnels. With vines wrapped around her waist, Grit can feel Sunpoh heading right at them. When his wagon pops out in about 15 minutes, Quyt can use the vines to plunk her down right where she needs to be.

It’s a relief, but it’s also a good-bye.

“Why’re you smirkin’ at me like that?”

Grit didn’t realize she was smirking, but there’s no point in denying it. “I was just thinking, y’know. You took me to a healer, but now you’ve got what you really wanted.”

Quyt puts her hand to her chest in mock-offense. “Are you suggestin’ I had ulterior motives, Freckles?”

“It just. It makes sense. I’m happy for you, really. We all got what we wanted.”

“Yeah…”

Grit’s chest feels tight, and she reminds herself to breathe. “It was still nice of you. It’s not like you really needed to carry a lame nerd all that way.”

“Heh. Yeah.”

“I think I’ll miss you, O Great Swamp Witch.”

“Yeah.”

Grit puts an arm around the smaller girl, who grabs her around the waist with all her strength. Grit hugs back as best she can, politely ignoring the way Quyt’s sniffling right into her boobs.

They stand there awhile in the noon sun, until the tunnel beneath them starts gently rumbling with the approach of the fated wagon-train. Quyt lets go and turns away as she wicks the tears off her face.

“Okay. I was in the seventh wagon, up at the front on the right side.” Grit stands at attention, letting the vines get a firm grip. “It’ll be here any second. Just remember, seventh wagon.”

“Uh-huh. Got it.”

The vines lift her up a little, not quite all the way off her feet. Then the team of ostrich-horses emerges. They bolt out of the tunnel two-by-two, much faster than Grit had anticipated.

Maybe this is a bad idea. ...No. No, Quyt’s got me. I trust her.

“Hey!” Grit looks over her shoulder and catches Quyt’s eye as she winds up for the approach. “You’re gonna do great!” She’s not sure if she means training with Suong or just getting her on-board the wagon without breaking her neck. Hopefully both.

Quyt nods. “You, too.” Her eyes flick back down to the line of wagons, counting to seven.

“Yeah, don’t hold your bre—”

Quyt thrusts her arms out before the seventh wagon emerges. Grit has a moment of doubt as she surges around in the air. Then the train catches up just as the vines level out, depositing her in her assigned seat with impressive precision, aside from being upside down.

The only witness to her reappearance is the toddler in the seat across from her, who goggles as she rights herself. Everyone else is blissfully asleep.

Grit whips around, accidentally wapping Sunpoh with her knapsack, and leans out the side to wave good-bye. The witch-girl waves back, vines and all, as she shrinks into the distance.

Sunpoh grumbles and clears his throat as Grit pulls off her knapsack and settles in. “Young miss? I thought you’d gone, on account of the forwardness of my introduction.”

She smiles an easy smile and whispers, “Shh! Pretend like I’ve been here the whole time!”

He snickers. “I’ll see about playin’ along if you tell me a good story. How you lost your shoes f’r instance?”

“Oh, I have got a hum-dinger.” It’s still a few days until they reach her stop, after all. That should be long enough.

Chapter Text

“’Twas a dark and stormy night,’” says Akiya, her face pressed against the window.

“Still?” Her girlfriend Quyt is distractedly tucking their things away in their satchels. They don’t have much. A few changes of clothes, road snacks, a couple of blankets, some camping supplies in case they need to rough it. And a tidy little purse of coins buried under it all, of course.

Akiya turns away from the window, wobbling slightly on her perch, and shrugs. “Well, not really. I just thought that sounded dramatic.”

“Is the coast clear?”

“I mean, probably? Everyone here’s a farmer, so they’re all still asleep, right?” Quyt gives her a cool stare with those powerful turquoise eyes, so Akiya creaks a shutter open for a better look. She only pops her head out for a quick glance up and down the alley running behind the inn, but her short brown hair is already plastered to her skull by the time she backs away, wiping at her face. “Pwah! Dint— Didn’t see anything. It’s really coming down, though. No one’s gonna be out in that.”

Quyt flicks the worst of the rainwater off of the other girl and sets the satchels by her feet. “Good. Now let’s skedaddle ‘fore it gets too muddy.”

Akiya grins back over her shoulder as she adjusts the books she’s stacked on their room’s one chair in a more stable configuration. “Since when’re you afraid of a little mud?”

“Y’wanna get followed again?”

“Can’t you hide our tracks?”

“If I can see ‘em, maybe, but I’d ruther try ‘n’ keep us dry.”

“On that note,” replies Akiya as she steps aside, “after you.”

Quyt always goes first, since she’s the smaller of the two. Once she’s standing on the books, Akiya grabs her legs and hoists her the rest of the way onto the sill. She slips into the dark like a frog off a log and lands outside with a muted squish. Akiya sighs and takes one last look at their cozy little room before mounting their makeshift pedestal, tossing the satchels over, and clambering out the window herself. There’s a moment before she enters Quyt’s rain-free bubble when she bears the full brunt of the weather, but she’s dry again as soon as she lands. Just one of the many perks of dating a master waterbender.

They dash out of the alley hand-in-hand, stifling their giggles as they pass darkened cottages. The world outside Quyt’s sphere of influence looks unreal in the downpour, distorted through a shell of water that seethes like molten glass. It’s only appropriate. This isn’t their world, after all. It’s just another drowsy hamlet, not much more than a small cluster of shops and houses at the confluence of some family-owned farms. Not a bad place, but their business here is done, and they’ve got big plans. Far too big for the local economy to support.

Only once they’ve cleared the edge of the community do they relax, slowing their pace and admiring their handiwork. There’s little-to-no danger of their being spotted on this dark country road. It cuts through mulberry fields as far as the eye can see, which isn’t very far at the moment. It’s almost dawn, and sheets of warm rain are still drenching everything in sight. Just a day ago, these crops were parched and withered, a step or two above kindling, but now they tremble in their rows like the sea at storm. The rainclouds will disperse once the sun rises, but the soil here has gotten a much-needed drink. It’ll see this community through the rest of the dry season, with any luck.

The road they’re following climbs steadily, rain tapering off as they leave the valley. When they reach the crest of the first hill, they can look back and practically trace the rainstorm’s edge with their fingers, but they don’t bother. Seen it once, seen it a thousand times.

Quyt skips ahead now that she doesn’t have to play magical umbrella, veering onto a wooded path. Akiya follows just a few paces in, far enough to get some shelter from the whipping wind. She knows better than to try to trace her girlfriend’s steps, though. Born and bred in Foggy Bottom Swamp, Quyt has the night vision of a cat-owl while Akiya would be stumbling around in—to her—pitch black woods and getting whapped in the face by every piece of greenery Quyt bent out of her way. She’ll help when it’s her turn.

A few minutes later, she hears Quyt’s cute little grunts as she struggles with the weight of their nest egg. A heavier grunt, and a sack of coins the size of a cantaloupe lands at Akiya’s feet. It goes in her satchel, probably crushing all her snacks.

Quyt emerges from the murk, hauling a second sack of loot in both arms. Akiya shakes her head. “You didn’t have to stash it so deep in.”

“Only way— t’be sure,” huffs the smaller girl. She lets her sack drop to the ground and leans against a tree.

With a little spare water, Quyt can hide just about anything under some tree roots, and you can’t argue with results. In all the months they’ve been doing this, none of her hiding spots have been discovered. (Except for that one time they disturbed a chipskunk burrow, but that doesn’t count. It makes a great story, though.) And that’s despite their personal hoard’s constant growth. It’s long past time to cash it all in.

“You need me to carry that?”

“If I did, I’d ask.”

“Pfft. No, you wouldn’t.”

“You wanna carry it?” Quyt asks with a smirk.

“I want to make it to the next town before dinner time. If you collapse on the way, I can’t carry both you and the money.”

Quyt wheezes and flaps her hand at the lump by her feet. Akiya takes the satchel from her and loads it in, whistling in her appreciation of its jingling mass. This is more money than she’s ever had in her life. Both their lives combined, to be honest.

The burden of the extra sack knocks the wind out of her when she first stands up, but Akiya knows she can manage. She’s really only athletic compared to her girlfriend, who seems to carry most of her strength outside of her slim body. A full-grown man could probably haul twice this weight without breaking a sweat, but experience has imbued Akiya with her own stubborn tenacity most able-bodied men could never dream of. At least once they get a ride, she’ll be able to take it easy. Until then, lift with the legs and put one foot in front of the other.

Dawn is just breaking as they get back on the road. While the sun still hides on the other side of the Kolau Mountains, the stars have mostly faded from view, and orange and gold streak the horizon past those shaded peaks. It’s a sight that promises good fortune for those who dare to seek it. Good fortune for them both, at last.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

One sack of coins clatters against the metal bars of the bank teller’s window, followed by the other. “Reverse change, please.”

The teller, a bloated man with spectacles perched on rosy cheeks, rises from his stool and leans forward to get a better look at both the sacks and the young pair mostly hidden behind said sacks. The top half of the spiked logo for the Sixth Bank of Omashu mounted on the wall peeks over his thinning hair like a lopsided crown. “Pardon, miss…?”

“Reverse change,” repeats Akiya. “Y’know, exchange this pile of money for something a little easier to carry.” She watches the man’s eyes flick between her and Quyt and their money, then back to her, as he does some quick calculations, and not the financial kind. She smiles back in the calm, casual manner of a law-abiding citizen just going about her day. To her left, Quyt’s already shuffling her feet like a scolded child. She’s never done well in establishments like this, so Akiya picks up the slack in making them seem like they belong here. Which they do. If she flinches, this guy could get suspicious enough to call in the manager, which is not a headache she feels like dealing with today.

The teller’s gaze focuses on her, and something clicks into place. “This is… quite a sum. I can have one of our bankers tally it up for you, if that would be…?”

Akiya shrugs and takes Quyt’s hand under the counter. “Sure. That’d be fine.”

With a nod, the teller raises the little barred hatch and scoots the sacks onto a cart behind him. The girls follow him as he wheels their money past the other windows and into a semi-private room away from the lobby, where he leaves them to fetch a banker. Akiya pulls Quyt with her onto a couch at one side of a wide, partitioned table. The furniture is all simple, utilitarian, and crafted from the finest materials. The table is a dark hardwood while the couches and chairs are coated in a deep bronze lacquer, with pale green cushions. It’s the sort of feng shui that makes people talk in hushed voices.

Quyt’s still tense, so Akiya squeezes her hand and says, “It’s okay. We’re allowed to be here.”

The other girl sighs. “I know. Jus’ feels like there’s a thousand eyes watchin’ me. Judgin’.”

“That’s just ‘cuz you’re so purdy.”

Akiya watches with delight as Quyt’s face turns bright red and contorts like she’s experiencing a sudden cramp. She lays her left hand over her eyes and burning cheeks but holds fast to Akiya’s hand with her right. “Yer windier than a jar o’ farts.”

“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.” That gets a giggle. Akiya’s waiting for Quyt’s retort when their banker arrives.

“Howdy-doo! I’m Yim-Sing, and I’ll be your banker today,” says a woman in a tone much too jolly for the space they’re in. She bows slightly, strides over to the cart with the two sacks, and tugs them open for a quick check. Apparently satisfied that the sacks aren’t full of toy money, she places them on one end of the table like they weigh next to nothing and pulls out a small abacus and writing slate from her blazer pockets.

Yim-Sing is approaching middle age and homely in a pleasant way, but she moves with that quality Akiya thinks of as “inevitability”, the sober poise of a master earthbender. A small octagonal pin shining on the breast of her blazer marks her as a metalbender, as well. The girls both dip their heads in her direction.

“Nice to meet you, Yim-Sing. I’m Akiya, and this is my girlfriend Quyt. Please pardon her current agitation. She’s having an allergic reaction to something I said.” She only winces slightly as Quyt’s elbow jabs her in the ribs.

“Oh, aren’t you just the cutest!” Yim-Sing’s eyes twinkle before she turns her attention to the work ahead of her. She lifts a portion of the first bag’s contents, an untidy heap of various denominations and vintages, which she sets down in one medium-sized partition and begins sorting. Her eyes flick between coins and calculator as her hands twitch, fingers moving nearly independently of each other like they’re being tugged by invisible strings. Her left hand works the pegs of the abacus almost faster than the eye can track while her right sorts all the different coins in their collection into short stacks.

This woman wields her metalbending with mechanical precision and a contented expression on her face, like weaving order out of chaos is second nature.

“I remember what it was like, saving up for that special something with my gal pals,” she continues, jolly as ever. Akiya wonders how she can perform such quick calculation and speak coherently at the same time. “So what’s the occasion?”

“Well, we’ve been travelin’, and it’s real heavy,” offers Quyt.

“Oohhh, I know that twang anywhere! You know, the second cousin of my little brother’s old roommate—or was it the third cousin—nearly married a man from Foggy Swamp.” The banker finishes sorting the second portion and makes a few cryptic marks on her slate before emptying out the rest of sack number one and starting again. “He was always trying to disguise his accent, the poor thing. Some people think it sounds crude, but I think it’s lovely!”

Quyt looks like she wishes the couch would swallow her whole. Yim-Sing doesn’t notice.

“We’re, uh, going on a trip,” says Akiya. “We’ve been talking for years about visiting Ba Sing Se, so we thought why not, right?”

“So you won’t be opening an account with us?”

“No, sorry. I know we’ll have to pay a fee to get all this sorted, but we’re just passing through.” She nudges Quyt with her shoulder. “After we take in a few sights.”

“That’s a shame. Ba Sing Se just doesn’t stack up to Omashu, in my humble opinion.”

“Omashu’s great, but new horizons, y’know?”

Fwip-clink, fwip-clink. Tiktiktiktiktik.

Coins continue to fly as Yim-Sing drains the contents of the second sack. Akiya finally has a good idea of how much they really saved. Once they had enough money to necessitate hiding it away, there was never a time and place they felt safe enough to pull everything out and count it up properly, so they only kept a rough tally. The volume of it isn’t as impressive when stacked on the table, but quite a lot of it is in higher denominations. About half of it is loose yellow and red cash, probably pulled from the ancient cellar caches of desperate farmers. Even older are the knife and spade money and heavy stone billets.

One partition is reserved for katamari, each one composed of eight small coins strung on a square peg and secured with caps on either end. It’s an old method of storage, designed so they can easily be strung and worn around the neck or hung from a belt, which was much handier when a single kata coin was actually worth anything. Nowadays, you can use one katamari to just about cover the cost of a single comic book.

The newer currencies in copper, silver, and gold have a warm sheen, always seeming polished even when coated in dust. They aren’t actually made from those metals, of course, unlike the old cash. The colors are symbolic. In the wake of the invention of metalbending, Earth King Kuei retired the use of those pure precious metals and had them switched for clever alloys to discourage their being destroyed to use as bullion.

They managed to gather some cash from outside the Earth Kingdom, as well. The southwest may not be as cosmopolitan as the United Republic, but there were plenty of families who immigrated here after the end of the 100-Year War. Yim-Sing has organized them in their own partitions. Solid coins of pure silver from the Northern Water Tribe and blue rings and bronze cowries from the Southern Water Tribe share one. There are the distinctive angular ban pieces of the Fire Nation, roughly equivalent in value to their Earth Kingdom counterparts, and even some Republican chump change. All the higher amounts in the United Republic are distributed as paper notes, after all, which few rural people outside of their territory are willing to trust.

“So… why’s it called the ‘sixth bank’?”

“Oh, the first five didn’t work out,” says Yim-Sing. She makes another note on her slate before bending the last little heap out of their second sack. She spares a glance across the table before she does the final sorting and mouths “exploded”.

“They exploded?!”

“Shh!” warns Quyt.

“Sorry, it’s just—”

Yim-Sing chuckles. “Well, everything does eventually, darlings. This is Omashu, after all.”

Suddenly alarmed, Quyt turns to Akiya, who shrugs and says, “Alchemists.”

Then the rhythm of Yim-Sing’s counting stops. She waves her hands like a cheap fortuneteller over the organized cash, and Akiya hears the stacks of metal shiver and settle back into place. “Just double-checking,” she says. The banker then pulls a bamboo slip inked with tiny, precise symbols out of a pocket and makes a few more notes on her slate. “Alrighty, with current conversion rates, minus a 5% service fee, that adds up to 13,466 shie. Now, how would you girls like that divided?”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Akiya’s ears are still ringing as she and Quyt exit the bank. Large unexpected numbers apparently make her blood pressure spike. She’s thankful as her girlfriend rubs the small of her back, bending her blood with tender care.

“So thassa lot, huh?” asks Quyt.

“Yeah. I— Can we sit down?” They find a corner in the bank’s small courtyard, shaded from the noonday sun. “We have enough to buy a whole-ass Satomobile, if we wanted. A new one.”

“I can’t drive a dang car! You?”

“No, no, it was just an example.” Akiya reaches in her satchel and fishes out the ingot they got in exchange for the bulk of their hoard. It’s maybe not the wisest thing to do in the heart of downtown Omashu, but she has to confirm the reality of the thing. It’s small enough to sit in the palm of her hand but heavy enough to make actually doing that uncomfortable. It’s heavier than lead or even gold, in fact, composed of titanium so highly refined it’s impervious to bending. Yim-Sing had to physically hand it to them.

Both girls run their fingers over it, this little totem. It’s in the approximate shape of a stack of spade money, styled to look like a badgermole as viewed from the front. Its markings and labels are intricate and precise, to discourage counterfeiters. Very, very Official.

“I better put this—” says Akiya.

“Yuh-huh.”

She opens her satchel back up and finds a loose sock, mostly clean. The ingot gets dropped into it, rolled up, and stuffed down inside a ball of spare underwear. Even with that hidden away, they have plenty of spare cash in their purse: three jin, five yin, and four tong, with the rest in small pewter change on a cord around Quyt’s neck.

Quyt smiles and says, “Now that we’re livin’ in high cotton, whaddya wanna do?”

“Not sure. Haven’t been to Omashu since I was a kid. Not too much has probably changed, though.”

“Hmmm…” Quyt snuggles up—a bold move in broad daylight—and puts her chin on Akiya’s shoulder. “Seems t’me you could use a lie down. How ‘bout we find an inn?” Her sultry tone of voice promises much more than a simple nap, and makes Akiya’s toes curl.

“You soggy temptress.” Quyt snorts laughter right in her ear. Then, inspiration. “Oh! I know, I know!”

Quyt blinks as Akiya cranes her neck to make close-quarters eye contact.

“How’d you like to meet the King of Omashu?”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

The button depresses with a ka-chunk, and the speaker above it crackles to life in the voice of an old, old man, recorded some 50 years in the past. “—like you said. Hm? It’s recording? They can hear this?” There’s the sound of a throat being cleared of phlegm, followed by shuffling papers. “Hmmm… Ah. Welcome, travelers, to the Hall of Kings! With me, King Bumi, as your guide, you’ll go on a journey of knowledge as we follow in the footsteps of Omashu’s legendary leaders! Due to the delicate nature of the terracotta figures herein, please refrain from touching the exhibits. For insurance purposes, please do not proceed if any of the following conditions apply to you: a diagnosis of high blood pressure or heart trouble, pregnancy or nursing, glitter allergies, fear of clowns, medical sensitivity to strobing lights, vertigo or tinnitus, having no feet—” More shuffling papers. “Just goes on like this, huh? Who wrote this gibberish? And where’s my old gibberish writer? I’ve always— Pfah!” The sound of papers being swept away is garbled, like the recording device was disturbed in the process. “You there! My best buddy Aang and I worked really hard on this place because we wanted to show everyone that Omashu’s always been the Bad-Ass Capital of the World! This is cutting edge technology, even! Now go on in and don’t break anything. I will know.”

Quyt looks at Akiya, who winces. “This place is great! I swear!” She takes her hand and exits the emerald-green lobby through an archway labeled “THE AGE OF HEROES”. Aside from the terracotta statues of ancient monarchs, they appear to have the place to themselves. It’s a cool, quiet space, a welcome break from the midday metropolitan hustle and bustle. “Honestly, one of the things I love about this museum is that it’s never crowded. I mean, I dunno about you, but I’ve used up all my charisma for the day.”

“S’not bad so far,” says Quyt with a little hand squeeze. “King Bumi was crazier’n a bessie bug, but he knew how ta keep things interestin’.”

“He was crazy awesome, if that’s what you mean!”

The statues in this first section are larger than life, reflecting their near-mythical status as the very first Kings of Omashu. Each one is posed within a diorama representing their greatest achievement. Akiya presses another button.

“After Oma, who first founded the city, passed on, it was handed down from protector to protector,” continues King Bumi from the next recording. “These early kings earned their titles by serving the city, usually with great feats of earthbending. Records are sparse, but some of them are said to have ruled for hundreds of years. After several of these leaders came and went, the city elite began formally electing candidates based on their worthiness and plans for the city. The first Earth Kingdom democracy! It wasn’t the Earth Kingdom yet, of course, but don’t tell that to a Ba Sing Se historian, heh heh.”

The girls stroll past the statues as their narrator continues. “This first guy is Enki. He built the original royal palace at the mountain’s peak, and once you do something like that, you’re basically king by default.” Enki’s perched on top of a miniature mountain half-transformed into the palace, torso and arms tensed in a complicated earthbending stance. Akiya rolls her shoulders in sympathy.

The next statue stands at attention, arms crossed and eyes cast down upon his spectators. The man’s expression is severe, less like he’s angry and more like he’s incredibly disappointed. Behind him looms a column of dark stone inscribed with three sets of ancient characters, only one of which is remotely comprehensible. “Next came Kazu. This giant sourpuss was the first to record the city’s laws and make them available to every citizen. Of course, their laws were a lot harsher back then, and ignorance was no excuse for breaking them. If you couldn’t read, too bad!”

Peering closely at semi-familiar writing in the middle section of the column, Akiya thinks she can make out a line about a disobedient slave deserving to have his ear cut off. Or maybe that’s the character for “canoe”? She decides to assume the latter.

The next figure is a woman, her hands held out like she’s carrying an invisible burden against her chest. Behind her is a section of wall.

“Bet you didn’t expect to see a lady up here! It’s true! There’ve been plenty of female kings in ol’ Omashu. ‘King’ is just a title, after all. We remember Kishar for building the walls around the city, so citizens would stop falling off the edge. Apparently that was a big problem.”

After Kishar is a man in a full suit of armor smashing a block of tofu with his right foot. “Some jerks came along eventually, but our guy Ekuro fought them off. They must’ve been jealous of Omashu’s gorgeous view. Fitting that that’s where they ended up. The gorge, I mean. We don’t actually know much about the invaders, other than they were powerful enough earthbenders to be a threat and they ate a diet heavy in tofu and tempeh, so we just call them the Soy Peoples.”

Quyt glances at Akiya, who shrugs.

“Some years after the invasion, Omashu suffered a freak thunderstorm. Lightning obliterated the old palace, and the rain itself nearly drowned people in their own homes. It was Duranki who put it all back together again,” says King Bumi, referring to the impressive statue of another woman, this one squat and muscular. She stands on a platform of rough-hewn bricks with a thick pipe slung over one shoulder. “The experience inspired her to install Omashu’s very first drainage and sewer system. Before that time, I guess everyone just tossed their pee-poops into the gorge.”

Both girls snicker like little children.

The final two figures in this hall are locked in an earthbending duel. Despite the ferocity of their combat, the men wear expressions of great sorrow on their identical faces. “Then you had the twins Yama and Yima, who co-ruled as kings for several years before politics turned them against each other. They finally fought to see who deserved to lead, but it ended in tragedy when Yima slew his brother Yama. The histories say Yima only sat on the throne for a month before dying of grief. Or he was poisoned. In any case, this ended the Golden Age of Omashu and ushered in a Dark Age, when kingship was won through violence.”

Akiya grins at Quyt and steps through the next archway, labeled “THE AGE OF VILLAINS”. It’s dimmer in the next hall, with footlights rendering the statues’ features in eerie contrast. They stop by a rack of disembodied terracotta heads, which have been artfully arranged to resemble a brick wall. In front of it is another button.

“Do you know why a Dark Age is called that?” asks a fresh recording. “It’s not ‘dark’ because it was night all the time or it was an awful time to be alive, but because it’s obscured to us in the present. The thing about these kings—who were probably pretty awful, actually—is that they destroyed all official records of whoever came before once they got the position. So we know the legends of the first kings and have records of the kings who came after, but this era is mostly lost.

“Nearly everything we do know about them comes from a bunch of clay tablets that were pulled from crumbling walls of an old house. Writing clay didn’t usually last, since it was kept soft for eventual reuse, but near the end of this period, there was another invasion, this time from bandits all the way from the Fire Islands. When they set the city on fire, some of it burned hot enough to bake a collection of those soft tablets hard as bricks. Then during reconstruction, some cheapskate actually used them as bricks, where they were eventually recovered. It's a funny old world, huh?”

“Oh,” says Quyt. “That’s… I never hearda that.”

“Toldja,” replies Akiya with exaggerated smugness.

King Bumi continues on. “Anyway, the tablets were the ancient equivalents of gossip rags, and they paint a pretty colorful picture. These folks were as wacky as they were violent, and most of them didn’t reign for long. One of them only made it two weeks before he got knocked off! Another wrote a law that court business had to be conducted in baby talk, on penalty of death. Then there was Laal, who spent his entire reign claiming he could drink lava and be unharmed. But, uh, he was wrong. Very, very wrong.

“After a century or two of this nonsense, there was a coup, and a new elite took over. They were dominated by the Ham-Zeng Clan, who founded Omashu’s first and only royal dynasty.”

These terracotta figures are nearly life-sized, unlike the titans of the first hall, and they line the space from end to end so that visitors can appreciate just how long these people had Omashu under their collective thumb. “They probably seemed like saviors at first, after ousting those old bricks-for-brains brawlers. The first few weren’t so bad, but with kingship being something you inherited instead of earned, that wouldn’t last. And while they weren’t as overtly murderous as their predecessors, that just meant they were more careful in their scheming. These were the days of intrigue, blades in the dark. By its end, the Ham-Zeng would be undone by their inevitable corruption and decadence. They really put the ‘nasty’ in dynasty.”

Quyt groans offhandedly.

“As you can see, there were a lot of them. They had hundreds and hundreds of years on the throne, all of which I will tell you about right now.” King Bumi clears his throat again and takes a long, deep slurp of water. Then he smacks his lips for an uncomfortably long period of time. “The dynasty’s founder was this guy, Ming-Zyu,” says the recording, referring to the figure of a sober-looking man with a long, braided mustache and deep-set eyes. “The histories say it was his mommy who set the whole thing up, but…”

The girls saunter down the hall, fingers braided together, as the recording drones on. Quyt smiles. “You were right. Place’s perfect. Never woulda known about it ‘cept fer you.”

Akiya shrugs. “Family vacationed here once or twice a year. I know all the fun stuff. Oh! We should go on an Omashu Underground tour! They take you through some old buried parts of the city, and some of the tunnels.”

“Maybe later.”

“Oh, uh. Not today, I guess…” Akiya deflates a bit, then perks back up. “A’Tsang!”

“Bless you.”

“A’Tsang Ghost Park! Pretty sure it’s still there. We have to go.”

“Whyzat?” Akiya can tell her girlfriend is humoring her, but whatever, she’s right.

“It’s this model city they built in a cave system, based on the underworld. You enter through a big gate shaped like a monster mouth, and they have these galleries where they show how different sinners get punished in the afterlife. Employees walk around dressed like demons who—” She sees Quyt’s skeptical look. “It’s not like that! It’s super hokey and hilarious!”

At the halfway point of the hall, two men appear from a rest area. It’s recessed into the wall for a bit of privacy, with some benches and a drinking fountain, so once they spot them, they’re practically on top of them. The men pause whatever conversation they were having to watch the girls pass, not quite glaring.

“Thirsty?” asks Quyt.

“A little, but—”

Right before they pass beyond the rest area and out of the men’s sight, Quyt reaches out to the fountain. With a beckoning gesture, she draws a pint of water right out of the tap and past their observers. She hurries Akiya along, giggling and trailing liquid behind them until they’re nearly at the end of the dynasty hall.

“What was that about?”

“Don’t care fer fellas actin’ like they own the place, and you were thirsty…”

They giggle some more and sip from the water blob while they wait for King Bumi’s narration to catch up with them. These last few Ham-Zeng kings are real pieces of work, so hunched and dripping with grotesque finery that they seem more like villains out of a fairy tale than men who actually existed once upon a time. The final king is surrounded by an impressive set of traps and obstacles including pits, pendulums, spikes, and snakes, but a smaller figure is poised to face the challenge, his back to the audience.

“…We come to Lo-Pun. He wasn’t the worst of his line, not by half, but he was probably the most paranoid. And he was right to be! He lived a long, unhappy life trapped in the palace, which he had fortified with every manner of security device available to him. Many would-be heroes lost their lives trying to oust him, until a warrior named Hanuman bested his gauntlet and took his place on the throne as his reward. It was Lo-Pun’s gauntlet that became the basis for the traditional Royal Trials, which I passed with flying colors, I’ll just say.”

Ahead of them, there’s an archway labeled “THE AGE OF BAD-ASSES”.

Quyt turns, eyebrows raised. “Aki? How long is this?”

“Not that long,” she replies with a lazy shrug. “We’re probably like halfway through.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Two hours later, they’re still shaking glitter out of their hair, but at least they’re doing it in the final chamber. Akiya glances behind them and follows their trail through the last archway, past the terracotta figures of Kings Buro, Bora, Bayan, Byoran, Kuro, Kiri, Giri, and Biru. Quyt grumbles at the shiny flecks still embedded in her perpetually tangled mane, and she cringes with guilt.

“Okay, the Clown Maze of Doom was not as fun as I remembered, I admit.”

“Did it even have anything to do with Omashu? Or kings?”

“I’ve always thought of it more as a metaphor for life.”

“Yer nuts,” says Quyt with a coy little smirk. “Can’t believe I actually love you.”

Akiya blushes and pushes the button at the base of the next display, which is only gently back-lit for dramatic effect. A spotlight snaps on as soon as the recording plays, revealing the absurd figure of a hunched elderly man rippling with muscles. If not for his human face, he could be mistaken for some species of hairless ape with those unnaturally long arms. His manic, cockeyed expression gives the impression he’s enjoying the startling effect of his sudden appearance.

Quyt jumps at the reveal and grabs Akiya’s hand again.

“I know what you’re thinking! How did I, King Bumi, become the legend you see before you? Most importantly, I always kept my mind open to all the possibilities around me. If I’d kept my head down, I’d’ve ended up a stonemason like my father. A dignified trade, to be sure, but I knew it wasn’t for me. I’ve never been satisfied with the straight and narrow. When something wasn’t working, I’d always look for a way to turn the situation to my advantage, usually by doing things no one had ever even thought of before. They called me crazy, and maybe they were right, but better crazy than conquered! I never broke! Not once! I made my own path, and here I am, King of Omashu for a full century! That’s a feat that hasn’t been matched since Omashu’s Golden Age! Heh. Just like those old heroes, I learned to preserve my essence and never lose an ounce of vitality. Most people could never do it, but that mushy stuff never tempted me a bit. Not only has it kept me fit as a fiddle, but it’s how I won the throne as such a young man. Amazing what you can accomplish when you’re not distracted by primitive urges. I’m told I shouldn’t go into further detail, since there might be children in attendance.”

Lights come on over the two final figures. “Check out these guys! Not half as delightful as your old pal Bumi, I bet, but they won their thrones same as I did, so they’re probably pretty alright. But what do I know? You’re in the fuuutuuurree, and I’m dead!” The man immediately after Bumi wears loose robes over a protruding belly, a warm smile showing through his great bushy beard. Next to him is a thin man of unassuming height reading from a scroll while holding a thick book under his arm. These are Adri and Dith, fine leaders from what Akiya can recall, but nowhere near as inspiring as King Bumi. Then again, Dith has only been in charge for 15 years, so he still has time to get wacky.

“Well, that’s about it for me,” says King Bumi. Akiya follows the tug on her hand. Quyt leads her to the exit, the old man’s voice still going, “It’s been nice jabbering at ya! As you exit through the gift shop, remember the official motto of Omashu: ‘don’t let the exit hit ya where the spirits split ya! ’” He laughs and hoots, only to be interrupted by some muttering in the background. “Well, it is now! Where’s my p—”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Akiya’s practically bouncing down the street as she and her girlfriend make for the hospitality district. She wears her souvenir proudly, a t-shirt printed with “MAD GENIUS” in garish characters. It’s a few sizes too big, but it’ll make for decent pajamas. For her part, Quyt carries a miniature goatrilla doll in the hand not holding onto hers.

“What’re you smirking at?” asks Akiya when she finally slows down, a bit out of breath.

“Yer just cute when you get excited, like a li’l pup.”

“I’m a stone-cold fox. Ask anybody.”

Quyt tilts her head, as if considering, but her lip is bitten, eyes beguiling. “Hmmm…”

“So, uh, we should find a place to stay, then food..? I know where we can get a great hot pot…”

Without another word, Quyt’s tugging her into a nearby alley, the tall and narrow sort woven throughout the whole city. An experienced traveler can navigate Omashu swiftly with alleys and hidden lanes, but it’s not a shortcut she’s interested in. Away from the mid-afternoon traffic, the smaller girl presses Akiya against a wall and buries her face in her neck. Akiya bites back giggles as Quyt makes her way up and behind her jaw with tiny, wet kisses. When she goes on tiptoe to get at her ear, Akiya turns her head and meets Quyt’s lips with her own.

For a few sweet moments, it’s just the two of them, lost in their enjoyment of each other. The press of their bodies, the intimate exchange of taste and smell, the little vibrations of their muffled moans…

The rest happens too fast, another layer of reality intruding on theirs. Shuffling feet, a dimness in the sunlight through her eyelids. A man’s voice saying, “Get the little one first.”

The kiss ends in a thwack, and Akiya barely has time to register Quyt’s head bouncing off the wall before the men are on them. One of them’s grabbed Quyt by her bag strap—Quyt who’s gone limp, blood trickling from her scalp—to wrest her out of Akiya’s arms. The other throws a fist at her face. She jerks away instinctively, so he only manages a glancing blow against her ear. The man, whoever he is, grunts in pain as his knuckles crunch against the hard stone wall.

Pumped with adrenaline, Akiya digs her fingers into the fabric of her girlfriend’s clothes and ducks to the side. Quyt’s bag slips off in the first assailant’s grip, which is fine by her. The most important things are in hers, and if these guys are just muggers looking for an easy mark, that might be enough to satisfy them. She’s more bothered by the fact that there’s no time to snatch up Quyt’s museum keepsake before making a run for it.

But this isn’t a mugging. The men are snapping orders at each other, getting closer. The words are just noise, incomprehensible to Akiya past the thud of her heart and slap of her feet against stone. All she knows is that they’re in pursuit. There’s no time to pause and hoist Quyt’s limp body across her back, so she’s forced to haul her as fast as she can, feet dragging behind like an oversized doll, to the far exit of the alley. It telescopes ahead of her, an impossible distance.

Then she’s tumbling. She twists around in time to keep from landing on her girlfriend, but Quyt’s well-worn clothing rips from the force of it, sending her rolling across the pavement and into the clutches of one of their attackers.

While Akiya’s mind registers the two men as little more than shadows in her confusion, she can tell them apart just a bit. The man hauling Quyt up by her armpits is thinner, the strap-grabber. That means her legs are under the weight of the thick one who tried to pound her skull in. As this computes, she can feel his meaty hands trying to get a grip on her waist. She twists again, starting at her rib cage and rippling down into her legs to give her the leverage she needs to maneuver.

One leg comes free. There’s a ripping sound as she rears it up as high as she can, but it’s not from her. Out of the corner of her eye, Akiya sees Strap-Grabber tearing a length of fabric off the hem of Quyt’s tunic as she slumps against the far wall.

Akiya snarls and brings down her foot with all the force she can muster in this compromised position, right into the middle of Skull-Pounder’s startled face. The crunch is satisfying, like biting into a fatty steak. She abhors violence normally, but in this moment, she feels no pity. If she could kill these men with a thought, she would.

Strap-Grabber is gagging Quyt with the strip of her hem. Adrenaline—red rage tinged with panic—stabs her in the gut again. She’s unconscious, you goon! What if she can’t breathe?!

“Diu nei lo—” Skull-Pounder’s cursing is cut off by a second impact with the heel of Akiya’s boot. Again, she needs the leverage. With her foot against his head and her palms flat against the ground, she springs up and away. She gets enough vertical momentum to swing her legs underneath her as she launches herself directly at Strap-Grabber.

There’s actual fear on his face as she closes in, and he almost falls on his ass trying to back away. Out for blood now, Akiya rears back to take a swing at him, but she’s yanked away by his partner, who’s grabbed a fistful of her hair. Short as it is for a girl, it’s twisted painfully tight for him to be able to have such a firm grip. It’s only with this physical shock that she finally screams. A knee connects with her gut, forcing the rest of her cry out as a wheeze.

I knew I shouldn’t have let it grow out, she thinks helplessly as she’s hauled off her feet. Before she can form another thought or even breathe, a dripping fist crashes into the side of her face. The tremendous weight of the strike is horrible in the way it seems to distort her body. She feels the bones in her face turn to rubber for a long, long moment and then snap back. More than the pain, this violation is what banishes all other sensation, except for the brightness of her skin splitting across her eyebrow.

A rush of air, more weight, then nothing.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

The sound of wheels trundling over brick smells like musty hemp, prickling Akiya’s lips with specks of green and orange in the warm and the dark. Her bloated senses throb with her pulse. Her head swims. Pain is in here with her, but muffled, unimportant.

Her legs seem to be somewhere else. That void is worse than any pain. She struggles meekly and feels her bonds push back against her. Rough-spun rope and rags around her head. Gagged but not blindfolded. Dim light filters through the cloth around her—a sack?—and she sees her knees pressed against her chest. Visual confirmation that her lower body still exists makes her head rush and calls something like rational thought back into it.

She’s in a fetal position, her whole body wrapped in several loops of rope and legs fully asleep from her awkward posture. Her wrists cuffed are together at the small of her back with more rope and rags. Her ankles are probably bound, too, but she can’t see or feel them currently. She still has her satchel, though, as she can feel from the strap tugging at her neck. Good to know.

The cart she’s in turns and moves off the brick onto smooth stone. It must be a cart, and probably an old one from the way it shudders over every little dip. Her back is pressed against some boards that flex periodically with weight on the other side. She must be at the head of the cart, against the back of the front seat. One of the men who snatched them—maybe both—is separated from her by an inch of wood.

That’s fine and dandy, but where’s Quyt? If they’ve been separated, the situation is truly dire. As long as they’ve got each other, nothing can keep them down. They promised. Without Quyt, though, she’s just a girl in a sack.

Akiya closes her eyes and sinks into her other senses. She takes notes of every sensation, every bit of precious information, moving methodically from hearing—children’s voices, a passing school or playground—to smell—dust and the distinctly fruity starch of lotus root—to touch. Other than the boards at her back, she’s pressed on all sides by other sacks. That and the smell mean vegetable cart.

I’m being kidnapped in a friggin’ vegetable cart.

The sack on her right, also against the boards, feels different from the others. It’s top-heavy and leaning on her in a familiar way.

Oh, thank the stars, it’s her.

She has enough slack to jiggle her shoulder, nudging Quyt in what the thinks is probably her cheek. Normally, she’d worry about aggravating her head wound, but if a bit of pain could wake her up, they’d be much better off. Her girlfriend remains stubbornly unconscious, but Akiya takes some comfort in feeling her shift her weight slightly.

She’s alive. We’re alive and together, and I have all my body parts.

It can’t have been long since they were knocked out, if the sun’s still up, and she can hear the bustle of Omashu all around them. Yeah, she can work with this.

Akiya braces herself to start thrashing and takes a long, slow, deep breath—as deep as her pose will allow, anyway—but as soon as she opens her throat to yell for help, she can only retch. The dry rag in her mouth seems to crawl down her tongue, and it’s suddenly all she can do to keep from choking on it. She clamps down hard and breathes through her nose slowly and very intentionally.

The boards creak behind her. “D-don’t move,” hisses a voice from the front seat. “I’ve got a knife. I can hurt you, if I wanna.” Akiya goes still. “Nod if you understand.”

She’d snort if she weren’t afraid of choking. He may have the advantage right now, but she’ll be damned if she’s going to nod along like a good little captive. She leans forward, then taps the back of her head against the boards, despite the pain that shoots up the right side of her face. She does it again and again. Two regular taps, followed by three quick ones. Even if he doesn’t understand morse code, it’s worth it just for spite.

“Okay, so… behave.” Dick.

She nearly swallows the rag again when she hears the patter of the city guards, specifically the ones guarding the only gate in or out of Omashu. They ask you about your business, what sensitive items you might be carrying, the usual. It’s distant. They must be a dozen spots back from the exit, but checking out is always faster than checking in.

Willing herself not to panic, Akiya tests her bonds again and makes the miraculous discovery that, whoever these jerks are, they can’t cinch a small knot for crap. The ropework around her is thorough but messy, but best of all, they left plenty of room in their improvised cuffs for her to move her wrists. She leans away from Quyt, which gives her enough slack to pull one hand free without too much rope burn. Once that’s done, she’s off to the races. One hand frees the other, and leaning forward into the other sacks presses her still-numb legs harder against her chest, loosening the thickest ropes enough to wriggle her arms free.

It’s hard not to rush after that. If she goes too fast, she’ll get that guy’s attention again, and she doesn’t want that until she’s ready for him.

The ropes around her middle are drawn and knotted under her knees. It’s a mess she doesn’t trust herself to disentangle quickly without alerting their minder, but she doesn’t really need to. With her arms free, she can relax enough to take the pressure off the nerves in her thighs. Next is her gag, which takes long enough to work loose that the pins and needles in her legs have nearly faded by the time she’s able to breathe freely. They must be nearing the city gate by now.

“Ah, gentlemen,” rumbles a very masculine voice, “I hate to see merchants leaving our city with nearly a full cart of produce. The farmer’s market wasn’t too receptive this week, eh?”

Akiya slips a hand into her satchel, grinning as she winds a certain sock around her fist. Wait for it…

“It was, uh, our fault,” says the man with the knife. “Bad batch. Fresh lotus doesn’t stay fresh for long, am I right?”

“That so?” asks the deep-voiced man. He walks closer, and Akiya hears the shift of armor. Definitely a guard. Good. “In that case, maybe I oughta have a look. You’d be better off letting the city dispose of it instead of lugging it elsewhere and spreading—”

The cart shifts. Its rear-end thuds to the ground, like whoever was holding it level suddenly let go.

“Oh, no, no, sshir!” comes a third male voice. It has to be Skull-Pounder, judging from the way he slurs. Hard to talk through busted lips.

“Holy Shu, what happened to you?” asks a woman’s gravely voice. Another guard, hopefully. The more surrounded they are, the better.

“It’s nothing! He, uh— He, uh, tripped on the way down here,” says Knife Guy, a.k.a. Strap-Grabber. Then he makes the mistake of climbing down from his perch…

“Help! They’ve got us tied up! Please! ” Akiya rocks her body and claws at the sackcloth as she yells. She hears the crowd shift and gasp. “Help us, please!”

“Those’re just, uh, a batch of Makapu jumping melons, sir!”

“I’m not a melon! I’m a person!”

“Makapu lying melons?” corrects Strap-Grabber.

“Kidnappers!” screeches an elderly voice at their rear. Akiya can’t tell if it’s a man or woman, but it cuts through the murmur like a saw blade. That seems to get everyone moving. There’s a scuffle, and a chorus of cries goes up ahead of them as the cart shifts again and lurches forward.

“Halt!”

“We’ll be searching that cart!”

“I said ‘halt’!”

There’s the heavy slam of the city walls sealing shut, but they’re still moving. A heavy body lands in the load of lotus root with a wet squish, followed by another. Akiya and Quyt escape getting crushed only by being at the very front of the load. It occurs to Akiya that all this weight is likely to collapse the cart, especially with it still being yanked around. She’s strangely okay with that, now that they’re not in danger of being taken out of the city.

Quyt stirs and groans. Afraid of what she might do in a panic, Akiya wraps her body around her. “Don’t try to talk,” she whispers. “It’s okay. I won’t let them—”

One of the men in the cart with them grunts with victory, then half-trips, half-lunges to their spot in the corner. He’s breathing heavily as he grabs the top of Akiya’s sack and pulls it taught. “Don’t. Move.”

A metal edge rasps against sackcloth right over her head. More shouting around them, guards closing in. Quyt gasps.

Akiya’s arm is already swinging when the sack splits open. She puts the muscles of her waist and stomach to work so that her fist, and the titanium ingot in a sock, launches at the head of the man above her like a spring-loaded weapon.

She catches the guard by surprise, and the force of the impact against his helmet is enough to jerk his head around and send him toppling over the edge of the cart. Someone off to the side catches her wrist before she can pull it back, pinning her on top of Quyt, who’s started squirming. At the feel of the guard’s firm but gentle grip and Quyt’s small movements, Akiya’s survival instincts retract, like claws into a cat’s paw. Everything’s going to be alright now.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

“Where’d they put us?” drawls Quyt. She’s still slumped against the back of her chair, but at least she doesn’t look boneless anymore. The glowing water swirling around her head obscures half her face. Their assigned healer, the only other person in the room, twirls his hands above her like he’s washing her hair. He doesn’t seem to register the question.

They’ve been sitting in the same small, plain box of a room for nearly two hours now. It’s big enough for a table and four chairs, all of it formed out of the same stone as the floor, like they grew out of it. The outline of the door is still visible in the wall, probably as a courtesy to calm their nerves as non-earthbenders. Glowing crystals in wall sconces cast it all in a sickly green light that’s somehow too bright and too dim at the same time. It makes Akiya’s head throb, but at least they keep the room cool. Across from them is a large pane of dark, mirrored glass, where she can see Quyt studying the healer’s every little movement.

This is an interrogation room.

“Not too sure. Wish I knew what they did with our stuff.”

Quyt takes a deep breath and sits up straighter. “We were pretty messed up when we got here, right? They’re holdin’ it someplace safe.”

“Mm. Hope so.”

The door opens, and a new pair of faces enters. Their uniforms are mismatched, one an officer of the law and the other a city guard, but a high-ranking one.

The officer is a dark-skinned man with thick, black eyebrows and muttonchops while the guard is a stout woman on the older side of middle-aged, tanned and tired-looking with short, steel-gray curls. She carries her helmet under her arm like she expects to be called into action at any moment. Both their faces are carefully neutral, which makes Akiya nervous.

“Ladies, I’m Officer Deng-Sek, and this is Sergeant Tsog,” says the man. “How are you feeling?”

“Glad t’be alive,” answers Quyt.

“Could I have an aspirin?” asks Akiya.

Deng-Sek looks to the healer, who shakes his head. “Not right now.”

“How about some water? The drinking kind?”

His eyes flit between her and Quyt. “Maybe later.” He looks again at the nameless healer, who draws his own water into a heavy-looking flask and goes to stand by the door. Akiya gets the sense this has some specific troubling implications, but it’s hard to think with this headache. Even fully healed, her skull feels fragile. She imagines her girlfriend feels the same.

With no pain relief forthcoming, Akiya closes her eyes to at least give them a rest. She doesn’t care if it’s rude. While it doesn’t go away, the headache does stop pounding against her sinuses, but more importantly, she can think a little more clearly without the sickly light.

Tsog speaks next, and she recognizes her gravelly tone from their rescue earlier. “What are you doing in Omashu?”

“Went ta that Hall o’ Kings,” says Quyt. “An’ the bank.”

“Explains the glitter and the weapon,” says Deng-Sek.

Akiya pipes up, keeping her eyes closed, “Weapon?”

A heavy object thuds onto the table. She cracks one eye open to see Tsog’s helmet, which she now realizes is much too large for her. It’s also dented on one side, enough so that its interior has deformed. Then Deng-Sek’s comment clicks into place.

“Oh. That weapon.”

“Whadda they mean? Weapon?” asks Quyt, understandably confused.

“Your friend assaulted a city guard,” say Tsog.

“Self-defense,” says Akiya.

“Not from where I stand,” replies the sergeant. “I have a man down because of you. A good man injured in the line of duty.”

“How bad could it be? I’m not that strong.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Anger flashes across Sergeant Tsog’s face. “Titanium is a heavy metal. It’s not graded for use in weapons of self-defense, which is all you’d be legally allowed to carry without a permit. You assaulted a city guard with a titanium bludgeon.”

“Aki…?”

She forces open both her eyes, which immediately begin tearing up. Her first instinct is to blink them back, but maybe some sympathy-attracting tears wouldn’t be a terrible idea right now. “Wha— I didn’t know who that was! The other guy threatened to stab me!”

Quyt draws in a short, quick breath.

“Nevertheless,” says Deng-Sek in a far too reasonable tone.

“Nevertheless?! What about those creeps who tried to kidnap us?!”

“They’re being processed right now,” says Deng-Sek. “This is technically a separate case.”

“Case?” Quyt reaches for her hand, and she takes it gladly. It feels so cool compared to hers, Akiya wonders if she’s starting to run a fever.

Tsog’s back to her neutral expression when she jumps in, reciting her wishlist of charges, “Assaulting a city guard. Carrying an illegal concealed weapon. Impersonating fruit.”

“Then there’s this,” adds Deng-Sek, reaching into a vest pocket for his own prop. He pulls out a battered sheet of paper and unfolds and flattens it against the table.

Akiya’s certain at first that the green light and her watery eyes are distorting her vision. It’s a wanted poster, but other than that, the sheet in front of her makes no sense. She looks back up at Deng-Sek and Tsog, watching them watch her and Quyt’s reaction. Her own face is reflected darkly in the room’s only window, the one thinly disguised as a mirror. When it wobbles, a sense of unreality steals her breath, until she feels the tears fall.

The poster features reasonably accurate drawings of them—though Akiya’s hair is cropped much shorter. She looks like a boy.

WANTED: THE RAINMAKERS

The authorities of the former village of Dongting are offering 50 GOLD PIECES for the capture of these two young women. They are guilty of MASS DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY and five counts of MANSLAUGHTER after causing a devastating flash flood. One of them is a known waterbender of the Foggy Swamp style, and the other may or may not have some ability of her own. While they aren’t known to be violent, hunters should approach with caution.

Quyt takes the poster and makes confused little noises at it. “But— That’s us, but—”

Akiya slams her hand down on the paper and meets Deng-Sek’s gaze. “Don’t say anything else. Not until they get us a lawyer.”

“You have that right,” says the officer, rising from his seat. Tsog, who never actually sat down, sighs and tucks the dented helmet back under her arm.

“An’ some water!” says Quyt.

“Yeah! Water and aspirin!”

Tsog bends the door open herself and shoots a baffled look over her shoulder before marching out. Their healer shrugs at Deng-Sek and follows.

“Okay. Fine. Lawyer, water, and aspirin coming right up.” He takes his leave, too, bending away even the outline of the door once he’s gone.

Akiya’s surprised at how awkward it feels to be alone with Quyt now after all that. She’s been out of it since those two guys jumped them, pretty much, which means she really has no idea what’s going on. Should she even try to explain? There’s no telling how much time they have before someone comes back. Or who might be listening.

“Well, ain’t this a dilly of a pickle.”

Akiya snorts with laughter and immediately regrets it. Pressing both her hands over the right side of her face and groaning obnoxiously helps the stab of pain, but only a little.

“Lemme see,” says Quyt. She plucks Akiya’s hands away and studies her tender skin. Akiya lets her eyes close again to focus on the coolness of the fingers holding her chin. “…Didja get in a fight?”

“You should see the other guy.”

“Y’know, I… Last thing I remember ‘fore wakin’ up here is buyin’ that toy.”

“Oh. I think that got lost when we were… Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, dum-dum.” Akiya cracks an eye open to glare at her. Quyt frowns back. “You feel hot.”

“Mm, yeah, well…” She trails off before even constructing a rudimentary joke and just blows a lazy raspberry.

“There’s still a lotta bruisin’. I could—”

“Not here. Someone’s probably watching.”

“Oh. Yeah.” While bloodbending isn’t itself illegal in the Earth Kingdom, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to give these people more reasons to be suspicious. Quyt looks over at the wanted poster. “We’re in trouble, huh?”

“We didn’t do anything wrong.” Akiya’s sure of that, but while they’ve never set out to hurt anyone, you can’t protect yourself from unforeseen consequences. Just ask the guard she illegally bludgeoned.

The girls put their foreheads together, noses brushing, and Akiya lets Quyt run her cool fingers over her throbbing face, doing what little she can for her without giving herself away. After some time, the door bends open again.

A new person steps into the room with thudding footsteps and a scraping noise like bricks rubbing together. It’s a lanky man with a chubby face who can’t be much older than they are. The professional sort, he wears the brown jacket and domed hat of a junior lawyer and carries a leather binder under one arm. With his other, he sets down a small tray with their order: two mugs of water and two white pills.

They suck down water and painkillers gratefully as the man sits with a loud KLANK and pulls a file out of his binder. Akiya’s just leaning forward to ask him about the noise when he introduces himself. “Yes, I’m your lawyer. My name is Tao Bengo, and that noise comes from my apparatus.” He doesn’t say anything else, instead scanning the file’s contents like he’s just seeing them for the first time. Which he probably is.

“Uh. Apparatus?” asks Akiya.

“I was injured as a boy, which paralyzed me from the waist down,” he answers without lifting his eyes from the documents. His face is tense with concentration, and the creases this forms around his eyes and mouth—along with a tone of voice that hints at his having delivered this brief explanation many times—make Akiya doubt her initial estimate of his age. “To compensate, I wear an earthenware exoskeleton on my lower body.”

“So you walk around by, like, earthbending your legs?”

“Essentially.”

“Cool!” says Akiya before she can catch herself. “Wait. No. Um. Sorry?”

Tao smiles a bit at that. “No, you were right the first time.”

“Mr. Bengo, sir?” asks Quyt. “What’s gonna happen to us?”

He’s checking back over the documents now for details he might have skimmed. It’s a thin file. “Oh, they’re getting a cell ready for you. Can’t throw you in general lock-up.”

This time, it’s Akiya who grabs for Quyt’s hand. Tao finally looks back up at them, as if the spike in their anxiety got his attention.

“W-we’re not…?” Akiya can’t bear to say it.

The lawyer’s eyes soften, and he looks young again. A sign of sympathy is nice, but the idea of being defended by someone so inexperienced isn’t comforting. Not at all. “You are, technically, under arrest, but—”

Quyt’s breath hitches, and Akiya leans against her, letting the smaller girl drape her head across her shoulder. She bites back a swell of rage.

Akiya hisses through gritted teeth. “What. Is. Going. On.”

“Well, I don’t have many details of the other case aside from this arrest report and what I heard on the way in, but to start, you were grabbed by a couple of guys thinking they could get an easy payout on your bounty. I have to say, though,” says Tao, turning the wanted poster to face him, “50 gold is a very low reward, considering the severity of these charges.”

“We’re used to being underestimated.” Akiya replays the sensation of Skull-Pounder’s face crunching under her boot, but it’s cold comfort. In fact, it makes her feel more queasy than anything. She’s never hurt someone like that before. He had it coming, but still…

Tao studies them for a moment before tilting his head in a half-nod. “I believe it.”

“Would you also believe that we don’t know anything about a flash flood?”

“I’m sure you don’t, but if you were rainmaking in the vicinity, they’re legally justified in putting this out.”

“This is bullshit!”

Quyt pipes up, her voice raspier than usual, but stays huddled against Akiya’s side. “We never hurt nobody! We did good!”

“Like I said, I believe you. I’m not accusing you of anything, and my jurisdiction only covers Omashu proper, not the state as a whole. This,” he says, waving the poster, “isn’t why you’re talking to me.”

“Oh. Yeah. I hit that guard.”

“Mm-hm.” Tao turns one of his papers to face them and taps on the section headed with “CASUALTIES” in blocky clerical script. She knocked that guard a good one, alright. They had to bring a healer out to him where he fell, to avoid possibly causing spinal damage. Akiya’s queasiness deepens, and she grabs hold of her empty mug. Hopefully she won’t need it.

“He’ll be fine.” Akiya’s simultaneously filled with relief at the news and frustration that he didn’t tell her that at the start. “Looks like he’ll have a mild concussion out of it, but that just means he gets to take the rest of the week off.” Quyt sighs and sits up, and Akiya settles back into her own seat.

“Is he pressing charges?”

“No, but the city guard is on his behalf.”

“If he’s gonna be fine an’ it was an honest slip-up, couldn’t ya talk to ‘em?”

“I dunno. That Tsog lady seemed pretty pissed.”

Tao shrugs and leans forward with a creak, clasping his hands in front of him. “Truthfully, yes. I could probably get the charges thrown out tomorrow. Considering that you weren’t even conscious for the incident, Miss, uh, Quyt, I bet they’d drop the accessory charge without a fight. You have options. Both of you.” He takes a deep breath, and Akiya can see the “but” in his expression before he says, “But I don’t think I should. This could be a blessing in disguise.”

Akiya feels her face twist into a scowl.

“You’re safe here. Maybe not very comfortable, but safe. If you go free now, there could be ten more thugs waiting to make some quick cash out of you.”

“I’d like to see them try,” Akiya snarls.

“No. You wouldn’t.”

He’s right, Akiya realizes. She put up a good fight, but more than anything, the two of them were just lucky. Lucky she had just enough time to avoid that first punch. Lucky those idiots didn’t expect resistance. Lucky they weren’t benders. Lucky they didn’t decide to have a little fun with their unconscious bodies.

Quyt looks over at her, like she has any idea how to handle a situation like this. She can only shake her head. Her street smarts only go so far. They’re mostly good for getting around, avoiding trouble, and the like. Now they’re both out of their depth, and there’s nothing she can do. She thinks furiously, grasping for any bit of leverage they might have, but it’s fruitless.

That awful wanted poster stares back at her, driving a hot poker through her chest and drowning the edges of her vision in gray. Five counts of manslaughter.

People are dead.

People are dead.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Their shared cell is in an otherwise empty hall of the courthouse jail. It’s clean enough, but residual dust had them both in sneezing fits until Quyt used a bit of water from their evening meal to improvise an air-filtering fog. It’s still better than getting thrown in the drunk tank. Akiya wonders if that’s where they would’ve ended up, had they not been girls.

Lights out now, they huddle together on the bottom bunk. Stacked with both of the thin straw mattresses, it almost feels as cozy as the bed they left behind at that country inn, not even a full day ago.

That sweet little hamlet. The last she saw of it was through the downpour she and Quyt had engineered. Is it still there? How many people have we drowned? Do we deserve this?

Akiya shivers, and Quyt gives her a squeeze.

“I’m sorry,” says Akiya.

“Fer what?”

“Being useless.”

Quyt sits up a bit, and Akiya can see those spooky eyes of hers through the gloom, faint silver rings. “Yer not. Not any more’n me.”

“But you’re—”

“Always useless?”

Akiya laughs despite herself. “Yeah, right. Like I’d ever think that about you.”

“Yer doin’ a fine job of keepin’ me warm. That’s somethin’.”

“You can buy a hot water bottle, y’know.”

Those eyes float closer. “Bet they don’t kiss back.” Her lips are cool and familiar, exactly the kind of comfort she needs right now, but it’s not… It wasn’t supposed to be like this. There was going to be a nice hotel and nice food. Nothing too fancy. Enough time to breathe, and space to linger. Just a little. Just a little…

Quyt pulls away from her, and Akiya realizes she’s gone rigid in her anxiety. With a few deep breaths, she wills her muscles to relax, but the moment has passed.

“S’not yer fault. I know yer thinkin’ it.”

“I was supposed to know Omashu. What to do.” Lying on her back, her eyes brim with tears that won’t quite fall. From the dust, of course. “They came, and I saw them hit you. I tried, I swear, but I couldn’t…”

“Hush.” Quyt settles back down, curling against Akiya’s side and wedging her head under her jaw. Her hair is thick and tangled, and it smells like sweet moss, as a swamp witch should. “It’ll be okay. Mr. Bengo seems like a smart fella.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Akiya pokes at the last few spongy grains of congee at the bottom of her bowl, silently lamenting the fact that she’ll never get that hot pot she wanted. The cafeteria porridge barely had any flavor to it, much less spice, but it’s better that the half-stale bread they were served in their cell. With Tao as their escort, they have enough freedom to roam the facility, at least.

“We just have to wait and see,” says their lawyer as he wipes a drip of egg yolk off his tunic. “It’s all happening very fast. The bounty-brokers are rushing to get here by lunchtime so they can be at the first hearing.”

“And you’re defending us from them, right?”

“I can try, since they’re coming here. If they make their case in an Omashu court, that gives me jurisdiction.” Tao’s grin is boyish in his soft face. “This is going to be interesting.”

“Glad somebody’s havin’ fun,” says Quyt, which makes Akiya smirk.

“I mean, it’s far more layered than my first two cases. A trespasser and a shoplifter, both caught red-handed. Didn’t give me much to work with.”

The girls exchange a look. “You mean yer last two, right, Mr. Bengo?”

“Same thing.”

“Wait,” says Akiya. “Waitwaitwait, that means we’re only your third case?”

“Third time’s the charm, right?”

“You haven’t won a case yet?!”

“Like I said, I drew the short straw on those. I still tried my best.”

Akiya rubs her temples. “Not inspiring confidence.”

Tao crosses his arms. “At least I’m being honest. A lot of my colleagues would just tell you what you want to hear and collect their token fee. Public defenders don’t actually make much less if they lose a case, as long as they put in a minimum of effort. There are some old-timers who’ve sleep-walked through their entire careers so they can make a living without putting themselves at risk.” He shakes his head. “Bottom-feeders.”

“S’not right,” says Quyt. Akiya nods in agreement.

“Lucky for you ladies, I actually give a damn. If anyone tries to steamroll you, they’ll have to get through me first.” He stamps one pottery-clad foot just heavily enough that a woman walking past startles and fumbles her tray. “And I go down hard.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

The opposing lawyer paces the courtroom floor between the judge’s bench and the counsel tables, the heels of his shiny black shoes clicking against granite like the report of an ancient clock. He’s definitely not from the public defender pool, Mr. Golgor. “And what did you do next, after you encountered them in the Hall of Kings?”

“Well, uh, we followed ‘em. Wanted to make sure, since it was dark inside, an’ all,” answers Strap-Grabber. He’s sweaty and twitching up on the witness stand, and it’s no wonder. Two professional lie detectors sit in their own compartment directly behind him, divided by a wall so neither can see the other. Eyes closed, they both nod gently along as the man testifies in his own defense. Any untruth from him, and they’ll alert the court immediately. “Once we saw ‘em in daylight, we knew it hadta be the ones from that ad we saw on the way in.”

“Is this the ad you’re referring to?” asks Mr. Golgor, unfolding his own copy of the bounty poster for both his witness and the judge.

“Yeah, that’s it. Hair’s shorter on the mean one, but definitely them.”

Sitting between Tao and Quyt, Akiya bites her cheek to keep from reacting to the barb. Mean? Because she fought back? She’d think this guy had some nerve, but he’s spineless as they come. She reminds herself of the way his eyes widened when he saw her being led into court. It took all her willpower then to keep from lunging at him, just to get a bigger reaction.

Mr. Golgor pretends to study the poster and looks slightly aghast. “Oh my! Five counts of manslaughter? Didn’t you worry they might be dangerous?”

“They were just a coupla girls, right? Figured if we could knock out the waterbender, we could gra— apprehend ‘em easy.”

“Did you?”

“The first part, yeah, but the other girl, she was like a wild animal. They wouldn’t’ve gotten so roughed up, maybe, if she’d come quietly.”

“Considering what happened to that poor guard, you were lucky to get out of that situation with as little injury as you did.”

At Akiya’s left, Tao stands and says, “Objection, Your Honor.”

The judge nods and declares, “Mr. Golgor, you’re here to ask clarifying questions, not provide color commentary. I won’t be swayed by melodrama.”

“Your Honor, I simply want to make sure everyone understands the circumstances surrounding the alleged ‘attack’.”

The judge turns to the stenographer at his left, between the bench and the empty jury box. “Strike that last remark.” She nods, and the judge faces the lawyer once again. “Keep it relevant, and no more speculation.”

Mr. Golgor bows his head in the judge’s direction and turns back to Strap-Grabber, whose real name Akiya’s already forgotten. “And why did you decide to apprehend them?”

“Seemed like an easy 50—”

“Aside from the reward?”

“Oh. Oh, yeah… They were criminals, right? Dangerous. It’d be good to get ‘em off the street. The right thing to do as responsible citizens, you could say.”

One of the lie detectors stops nodding for just a moment, raising an eyebrow but not speaking up. Bending the truth isn’t technically lying.

“Excellent. No more questions.”

“So they’re admitting they’re guilty?” whispers Akiya to Tao.

Tao shrugs. “Yes and no. No sane judge is going to believe they didn’t do it, so they’re trying to make themselves look better before they go for a plea deal.”

“…So they can get a slap on the wrist.”

“Correct.”

“Where’s that leav—”

Before Quyt can finish her question, the main doors swing open on a group of four newcomers. Leading the charge is a petite woman in a business-chic high-necked qipao and rectangular reading glasses, thin and sharp as razors. The man following immediately behind her looks similarly moneyed, in contrast to the other man and woman. Their court clothes are out-of-style and slightly rumpled, like they were just pulled out of storage and thrown on without a chance to iron them first. The rumpled man carries a small chest in both arms.

The chic woman strides right up to the defendants’ desk and sets her briefcase on top of Mr. Golgor’s papers. “Your Honor, we apologize for the delay. My name is Sai-Lei Nga, and I’ll be representing these two men alongside the interests of the citizens of the former village of Dongting.” Mr. Golgor, who’s been sizing her up, goes pale. Meanwhile, one of the bailiffs is shooing her companions back behind the bar, where they settle huffily into a row in the gallery. Akiya turns her head just enough to watch them in the corner of her eye without being too obvious.

The judge, who’s been unflappable up to this point, takes a moment to find his voice. “I appreciate your… intensity, but this hearing is well und—”

“I think you’ll find everything you need in this file.” She’s too short to reach all the way up to the judge’s elevated desk, so she performs an undignified little hop and slaps her paperwork down just as he’s leaning forward to take it from her.

“I, uh, think now is the perfect time for a short recess,” says the judge, shaking his head.

Tao creaks his legs back under himself and meets Ms. Nga on her return. He towers over her very politely. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Nga. I’m Tao Bengo,” he says with a proper bow. She returns it with a barely perceptible head-bob. “I’ll be taking a copy of those documents, if you don’t mind.”

“I will, as well!” splutters Mr. Golgor.

“Of course.” She whips an identical-looking file out of her briefcase and hands it to Tao before turning on Mr. Golgor.

Akiya’s curiosity is torn between eavesdropping on the other lawyers’ vicious hissing, checking out Ms. Nga’s clients, and seeing what this file is about, but the file is, unfortunately, the most pressing matter. Tao opens it as soon as he sits back down and says something you never want to hear from your own lawyer: “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

It’s only five minutes before the hearing starts up again. Mr. Golgor and Ms. Nga have apparently agreed to a detente. He sits on the far side of the two attackers while she’s perched on a seat at the side closest to Tao. Mr. Golgor may not have been dismissed, but it’s obvious who’s in charge here.

A new court official, a round woman in conspicuous yellow gloves, has opened the chest Ms. Nga’s team brought in. The certificate inside was handed up to the judge, but the woman, one glove now removed, is taking her time touching each of the chest’s four items, almost reverentially.

“Why’s that lady feelin’ on hunks o’ rubble?”

“She’s, uh, what’s it called…?” Akiya taps her forehead. “Thingie meter…? No… Thigmometrist! ”

“Okay…?”

“A lot of Earth Kingdom courts use them. They’re sensitive to tiny impressions in earth, so they can tell you the recent history of an object or even a place.” She leans back in her seat, happily distracted for the moment. “They can get pretty dramatic readings in crime stories, but in real life, they can only tell enough to verify certain events. Like earthquakes, demolitions, flo— Oh.”

The gloved woman nods up to the judge, who’s reviewing the file again with a look of skepticism.

“This is impressive, Ms. Nga,” admits the judge.

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

“I think I see the direction this is heading, but I’d like to hear you make your case. Just so we’re all on the same page.” His smile is strained, like he’s not sure what to make of her. A snake with unfamiliar stripes he’s just seen in his path.

Ms. Nga nods and stands up to her full height, which Akiya’s sure can’t even be five feet. She makes Quyt look robust in comparison. “To be blunt, I don’t wish to waste any more of the court’s time. As Your Honor can see, these two men have been detained unfairly according to the common law regarding bounty-hunting. While they did make a nuisance of themselves, they applied what they believed to be reasonable force in subduing these fugitives.” She sweeps her hand in Akiya and Quyt’s direction without actually looking at them, her eyes keenly focused on the man in charge. “I’m not here to defend their methods, but I don’t need to. Justice must be served.”

“Very good, Ms. Nga.” The judge’s eyes flick to Tao, and the woman’s attention follows. “Mr. Bengo?”

“To be blunt,” retorts Tao as he stands, “this is ridiculous. No, that’s not fair. This is ludicrous.” He snatches a few sheets from the open file on his table. Maybe not the most relevant ones, but he apparently just wants a prop to wave around. “My clients have been convicted in absentia! How can Ms. Nga call for justice when this violates the basic concept of a fair hearing? The defendants’ assault of these two girls aside, the warrant for their capture never should’ve been issued in the first—”

“Trial in absentia is fair play when the accused continuously evade proceedings,” interrupts Ms. Nga. She again faces the judge, not Tao, with a stiff upper lip.

“Don’t interrupt the opposing counsel, Ms. Nga,” warns the judge. She nods, followed by a grimace and side-eye in Tao’s direction.

“My clients weren’t even aware they were in trouble until they were assaulted,” Tao fires back. “You can’t assign intent to evade justice when they’d have had no way to realize there was something to be evaded.”

“Then why did they run?”

“Their work necessitated constant travel. Being difficult to track down isn’t evidence of bad faith.”

“Hmmm…” For the first time since she made her entrance, Ms. Nga smiles. It’s chilling, the look of an apex predator going in for the kill. “Either you don’t know, or you’re counting on my not having done my homework. Sloppy.”

A shadow of doubt crosses Tao’s face.

“You see,” she continues as she pulls yet another bundle of papers out of her Briefcase from Hell, “your clients have a curious habit of skipping town as soon as a transaction is concluded, usually at night. Is that the behavior of two innocent young ladies?” She taps the papers with a manicured nail. “I have here the contact information of dozens of witnesses, if my two volunteers from old Dongting aren’t convincing enough.”

Akiya can’t help it. She glances over at the rest of Ms. Nga’s team, only to be greeted by furious glares from the rumpled pair. Something clicks into place in her mind, and she finally recognizes them. Their names escape her, but she’s always been good with faces. The woman runs—ran—a nostalgic little general store with big counter jars full of home-made sweets. The man had a modestly successful farm, enough to employ all five of his sons and a few extra hands. They were nice people, before the flood.

The other man, the one in the sleek tailored outfit, is still a stranger. If he’s from Dongting, she never saw him when she was there.

“If it pleases the court, I’m fully prepared to take the fugitives to immediately serve their sentences.”

“Which would be…?” asks the judge.

“Ten years of hard labor, each,” answers Ms. Nga. “Quite lenient for all the misery they’ve caused. Your Honor has copies of the relevant court documents in the file I handed over. Just sign on the dotted line.”

“Your Honor, this can’t be allowed,” says Tao, who looks more rattled than he ever has in the short time Akiya’s known him. He straightens his tunic before he continues, “My clients have their own hearing scheduled in two days. By the ancient Omashu tradition of dibs, they must face their accusers before they’re taken elsewhere.”

Ms. Nga scoffs. “Those flimsy assault charges?”

“Charges are charges,” says the judge.

“Surely they can be easily overturned?”

“That would be up to Mr. Bengo and his clients.” The judge turns to Tao. “Have your clients sought to have their charges overturned, Mr. Bengo?”

“They have not, Your Honor,” says Tao with a smug little grin.

Ms. Nga’s voice is more subdued, probing. “In that case, we’d be content to wait until local matters have been dealt with, if Your Honor would at least recognize the legitimacy of the county court’s rulings…”

“That would be fair enough,” says the judge, studying what must be the papers condemning Akiya and Quyt to a decade of slavery in all but name. He frowns, just a bit, and glances down at them. Akiya’s eyes meet his, and a terrible icy pang pierces her gut. If he signs those papers, it won’t really matter what happens to them here. Their lives will already be over.

“Hold it!” Akiya doesn’t realize she’s yelled until she’s on her feet and pointing dramatically at nothing in particular.

“Yes, Miss Akiya?” asks the judge without missing a beat.

“Well, I mean…” She looks to Quyt for help, but she’s a deer-dog in the headlights. “W-we should get to tell our side, right? Since we weren’t even there when they found us guilty?”

“Hmm… I’m inclined to agree.” The judge closes the file and leans forward attentively. “However, this hearing’s time is almost up, so if you want to speak in your own defense, make it snappy.”

Akiya has taken one shaky step from behind their table when Quyt pipes up, “I’ll do it.”

Tao blinks in surprise and leads her to the witness stand, keeping her at arm’s length to minimize the risk of stepping on her toes. She slips her thin jailhouse-issue shoes off before settling into the seat, where she’ll be resting her bare feet against a panel of vibrationally conductive stone. The lie detectors have their own feet pressed against identical panels, which are all just exposed facets of a single contiguous slab. Watching all this and knowing what she knows, Akiya’s too tense to sit back down, so she presses her palms against the table and keeps her breath steady. She can’t have Quyt see her freaking out.

“Your witness, Mr. Bengo.”

Tao nods and dutifully sets about establishing a baseline for the lie detectors. “What’s your name, miss?”

“Uh. Quyt.” She bites her lip. “Jus’ Quyt.”

“Where are you from?”

“Foggy Bottom Swamp. D’you need the village?”

“No, that’s fine. Just answer simply and honestly,” says Tao. “Are you a bender?”

“Yeah. Yessir.”

“Which element do you bend?”

“Water, sir.”

“And you’ve been using your bending to summon rain?”

“Yessir. Always had a knack fer humidity.”

The lie detectors start nodding to signal their readiness, and Tao changes tactics. If they verify Quyt’s story here, that won’t leave much ground for the old verdict to stand on, hopefully. “You and your companion Akiya have been traveling together up and down the western farmbelt near here, haven’t you?”

“Yessir.”

“Why did you take work as rainmakers?”

“Well, sir, it was middle o’ dry season when we set out a little over a year ago. Once we worked out the kinks, it was good money.”

“So the locals would pay you a fee to do this?”

“Yessir. Whatever they could muster.”

“Did you ever take money you hadn’t earned?”

Quyt shakes her head vigorously, sending her tangled hair flying. “No, sir! We played it fair ‘n’ square.”

“Did you or your companion ever hurt anyone or knowingly break a law?”

“No, sir.”

Tao scratches his cheek and glances briefly at Akiya before starting his next line of questioning. “Is it true that you two fled after every job?”

“Y-yessir.”

“If that’s true… If that’s true but you insist you never stole or hurt anyone, why did you flee?” They haven’t had time to discuss any of this. He’s putting a lot of trust in them.

Quyt gives a little shrug. “It was fun? Uh… Also, we didn’t want there to be a fuss once it was done. If we waited to leave, we’d be stuck someplace an extra day, at least. We also, uh, thought it’d help us keep a low profile.” She winces at the terrible irony.

“Before you were attacked, did you have any idea you were in legal trouble? That there was a bounty for your capture?”

“None whatsoever, sir.” The lie detectors are still nodding along, but out-of-sync, like they’re each listening to their own personal soundtrack.

“So you weren’t evading authorities?”

“No, sir! We’d never do that, or anythin’ else that smarm-monger said we—”

Ms. Nga shoots to her feet. “Objection!”

“Control your witness, Mr. Bengo,” says the judge.

“My apologies, Ms. Nga,” says Tao. He’s doing a brilliant job of twisting his smirk into a professional smile. He has every reason to be pleased, seeing as none of Quyt’s statements warranted even a head tilt from the lie detectors. Still, Akiya’s heart jumps into her throat when he says, “I have no more questions,” and clomps back to the seat next to her.

“Ms. Nga, your witness,” says the judge.

Akiya feels Tao touch her shoulder and whisper, “You should sit.” She can only shake her head and grit her teeth. Quyt needs her support. It feels so very literal, in a way she could never explain with words. If she relaxes, Quyt could fall. She can’t relax, not until this is over.

Instead of pacing theatrically, Ms. Nga folds her arms and looks Quyt dead in the eye. “What do you know about weather engineering?”

“A few tricks. Didn’t go to school for it, if that’s what ya mean.”

“It’s an advanced degree, I’ll say that much. Do you know why that is?”

“Snobbery?” For a split second, she and Akiya share a smile.

Ms. Nga, not taking the bait, retorts, “Because it is dangerous. Without meticulous knowledge of both meteorology and current weather patterns within a 100-mile radius, manipulating the atmosphere can have disastrous consequences. Did you know that rainmaking without a license is illegal in the United Republic?”

“Y-yes, ma’am.”

“And are you familiar with the Butterfly Effect?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So you—”

“Two minutes, Ms. Nga,” reminds the judge.

“So you admit to charging desperate people to perform a job you knew took expertise that you didn’t have, despite the risk to their safety?”

“Whu— No! Just ‘cuz I ain’t got a piece o’ paper says I—” Akiya can tell Quyt’s getting upset now. Her accent always deepens when she loses her cool.

“I’ll retract that question and rephrase, Miss Quyt. Did you know about the risks associated with rainmaking?”

“I knew things could go wrong, but we were careful! Nothin’ like a flood ever—” Both lie detectors are still nodding, but slowly. One of them is furrowing her eyebrows.

“And how would you know you never caused a flood if you always ran away at the first opportunity?”

Quyt clams up, and Akiya wonders if she’s just refusing to answer any more of this woman’s rude questions. Then she says, “I guess… I couldn’t know fer absolute certain…”

“Do you remember rainmaking in Dongting six months ago?”

“Yes, ma— Wait… No, that’s not right. We were there, yeah, but eight or nine months ago, not six.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“’Cuz it was last dry season. Six months ago, it was back ta wet.”

Ms. Nga hesitates. “That’s—”

“Time’s up, I’m afraid,” says the judge.

Akiya expects Ms. Nga to argue, but she just nods.

There’s a flurry of activity as everyone rushes to tie up loose ends and make way for the next set of unfortunates. Mr. Golgor rushes forward for a quick word with the judge while Ms. Nga converses with the well-dressed man on her team. Whatever else happens, Akiya doesn’t get to see it. She and Quyt are led back out the door they came in before Tao’s even finished scooping all his papers into his binder. He manages a cheerful thumbs-up before he’s out of sight. Akiya envies his confidence.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

It’s the first time they’ve seen the sky in two days. After being stuck in the dreary halls of Omashu’s courthouse jail, a sunny courtyard feels like a vision of another world. Akiya can barely restrain herself from running back and forth through the sunbeams and letting them lick her skin like clean white sheets hung out to dry.

“I thought you’d enjoy some fresh air,” says Tao. His voice is warm, like an indulgent uncle.

“Oh, thanks so much!” says Akiya.

“Thank you kindly, Mr. Bengo.”

He grins and pulls a few sheets from his binder and spreads them on the narrow metal table between them. “Should make some of this easier to swallow.”

Akiya sags. “Oh. Yeah. That stuff.”

“Don’t get discouraged already,” says Tao. “We did pretty well yesterday.”

“Least the judge didn’t sign those papers,” says Quyt.

“Oh, you’ll love this,” says Tao, presenting them with a smudged carbon copy of a form letter from the county court, stamped with “VERDICT OVERTURNED” in thick-bodied characters. “Wish I could’ve seen Ms. Nga’s face when she got her copy.”

Quyt cackles and grabs Akiya around the neck and shoulders. In return, she can only awkwardly hook one arm around her girlfriend’s waist. Not that it matters in a sweet moment like this.

“Hoowee! We showed ‘em what for!”

“How?!” asks Akiya, turning to stare at their lawyer.

“Can’t say for sure, but I think Quyt’s testimony did it. Once it was obvious you had no clue about what happened in Dongting, their justification for convicting you in absentia fell apart. This is a higher court than the one that found you guilty, so the judge just negated it.”

“I didn’t even know they could do that. The absentia thing.”

“It’s supposed to only be allowed under specific circumstances. That stuff at the hearing yesterday was the county trying to cover its ass.” Tao sighs and pulls a couple of caramels out of a pocket. The girls each take one, slightly puzzled but happy for the sugar. “Anyway, you’re not exonerated.”

“Wha’?” asks Akiya with a mouthful of caramel.

“Our opposition has been busy, too. As soon as their conviction was overturned, they filed a motion for a retrial. They also pulled some strings and got all the city’s charges against you dropped. I think they’re aiming to cart you back to the county court so they can pin this on you in person.”

“Lowdown weasel-snakes…”

“Good news is that the judge agreed to change tomorrow’s hearing to be about the Dongting charges, since we already had it scheduled. They can’t take you anywhere until after that.”

“But they’ll be able to take us after?”

Tao produces two more caramels. “They have grounds for it, if the hearing goes their way. It’s an old custom that trials should be held as near as possible to the place where the crime happened. Not a law, mind you, but a custom with a lot of sway. I’m hammering out my argument in favor of retrying you here.”

Working on her second candy, Quyt slurps a little when she speaks, “So custom says we gotta submit ourselves to th’ rabbaroo court that found us guilty in absentia on account of a buncha blather?”

“It’s ridiculous, I know. That’s one of the points I’ll be making.”

“Whole thing stinks,” continues Quyt. “Way I figger, ain’t no way a little rainmakin’ caused a flood months later. An’ in the wet season, too!”

“Yeah, I thought about it, and… Remember when I got my hair cut super short for my birthday? That’s about how long it was in that wanted poster. We definitely went there soon after, right at the tail-end of the season.” Akiya twiddles with a lock of hair behind her ear. “It doesn’t make sense. If that flood happened six months ago, why would they think we did it?”

“Somethin’s rotten in Dongting, y’ask me.”

“Funny you girls should say that. I got the identification of those three people who came in with Ms. Nga, and one of them stood out.”

“The fancy guy?”

“His name is Mollak Choi, and he’s not a lawyer or a former resident of Dongting. As far as I can tell, he’s a successful businessman who’s paying Ms. Nga to pursue the case, but I don’t know why.”

Fireworks go off in Akiya’s brain, and she blurts, “Construction! He’s in construction! I’ve heard about him, the way he underbids, builds something shoddy for half of what it should cost, and pockets the rest.”

“Huh,” says Quyt. “Did he build Dongting ‘n’ get pissed when it got wrecked?”

Tao’s taking notes on one of the sheets. “I’ll look into it, okay? Whatever his reasons, he’s got deep pockets.”

“D’you think we can get a fair shot if they try us here?”

Tao hands them each another caramel, and Akiya’s stomach clenches. “You’d be much better off, but their witnesses are just as convinced that you were there six months ago as you are that it was months earlier. I could point out inconsistencies, but it’d be your word against theirs. Then there’s the hard evidence.”

“The pieces the thigmometrist touched?”

“Yes, those,” says Tao, looking slightly impressed. “Circumstantial as it is, it still backs up their case. Unless you have a rock that can prove your whereabouts six months ago, it tips the scales heavily in their favor.”

Akiya just fiddles with her caramel as dark clouds gather in her mind.

“Unless…” says Tao.

“Unless?”

Their lawyer scratches the back of his neck, suddenly an overgrown bashful boy. “I was up late last night in the law library here, looking for any precedents that could help me convince the judge to keep you in Omashu, and, uh, you wouldn’t believe some of the old laws that are still on the books.” Tao reaches into his brown jacket and pulls out a small scroll case. When he opens it, it actually reveals a roll of antique bamboo slips, which he lays out carefully for them to read. “Back in Avatar Kyoshi’s day, there were a large number of rebel uprisings across the Earth Kingdom. Omashu passed this particular law when the courts got overwhelmed after five local ones happened in a single month.”

“‘Trial by bending’?”

“See the way it’s worded here?” His finger hovers over the relevant slip, not touching for fear that he might rub away some of the old ink. “This law was meant for earthbenders, but it uses an old-fashioned oblique tone that doesn’t actually specify that. You’re only guaranteed a physical trial in your native element within 48 hours.”

“So you’re thinkin’ I could…”

“They’d have to produce a waterbender willing to fight you on short notice. Odds are good that whoever they find won’t be prepared or particularly skilled.”

“An’ if they can’t?”

“All the charges will be dropped.”

“Hmm…”

Akiya shakes her head. “Quyt, you’re not a fighter. You could get hurt. Like, badly.”

“I’m a healer, ain’t I? ‘Sides, if I’ve got time t’plan, bet I could use some rainmakin’ tricks they’d never—”

“No!” Akiya grabs her arm, eyes wide. “No, I have an idea!” It’s one of those brilliant moment of inspiration, like being struck by lightning. She can practically feel her hair standing on end. She’s so excited, maybe it actually is.

“What’re ya thinkin’?” asks Quyt. Both she and Tao look taken aback, and she can’t blame them. Akiya knows how she gets sometimes.

She takes a moment to finally unwrap her last caramel, popping it in her cheek and grinning up at the square sky. “I’m thinking like a mad genius.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

“Remember what I told Mr. Golgor about melodrama,” says the judge. He blinks in the courtyard sunlight as his eyes adjust, doing his best to look dignified as a couple of clerks carry out a raised chair for him. Can’t have him presiding while sitting on the same level as the common rabble, after all.

“Oh, I promise I haven’t forgotten, Your Honor,” replies Tao with a bow. “We just thought a practical rainmaking demonstration on a smaller scale would be helpful before deciding how to proceed.”

Ms. Nga and her team are standing on the judge’s other side. The two Dongting villagers are wearing the same rumpled clothes from the hearing two days ago while Mollak Choi and Ms. Nga are both wearing impeccable new outfits. Once you notice the contrast, it’s honestly pathetic. Watching from the middle of the courtyard next to a hissing water barrel, Akiya wonders how the villagers feel being paraded around like this. It can’t be much fun for them if they don’t even have a decent change of clothes.

“Y’got the spark rocks?” asks Quyt.

Akiya jumps a bit. “Y-yeah. Got all the water you need?”

Quyt looks down into the bone-dry barrel and up at the fresh water vapor. She makes a few twisting gestures at it, like she’s fluffing a pillow, and the haze clumps up into something more like a real cloud, hovering maybe 30 feet overhead. “It’ll do. You light us up, an’ I’ll give the signal.”

It’s their usual rainmaking set-up in miniature. Instead of bonfires, they have three braziers of good dry kindling stacked over piles of scrap paper, wood shavings, and straw. It’s Akiya’s job to walk to each of them, light a kerosene-soaked twig, and tuck it where it’ll catch the whole bundle without burning itself out too quickly. Between the two of them, she’s the only one who manages not to burn herself every time.

Her chore done, Akiya shoves the spark rocks in a pocket and hurries to stand next to her girlfriend, where they watch Tao go into his prepared spiel.

His crashing footsteps echo in the enclosed space as he strides forward. Akiya’s sure he could walk around more quietly if he wanted to, but she’s grown fond of this little quirk of his. Beneath his mild manners, there’s a part of him that needs to remind everyone exactly who he is. His legs may not work like everyone else’s, but he stands tall and commands respect nonetheless. They really did luck out getting him as their advocate.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for indulging both my clients and me this afternoon. Your Honor, thank you again for your flexibility. To my distinguished opposition, we’re just as grateful. Both of your witnesses, Mrs. Tsan and Mr. Nung, have suffered much hardship, and we hope they’ll find satisfaction today. Ms. Nga, we thank you specially for bringing this case to the Omashu courts so that I could have the pleasure of defending my clients from the county’s charges.”

Ms. Nga says nothing, but nods.

Akiya pulls a metal fan, her secret weapon, from her rear waistband with one hand and squeezes Quyt’s hand with the other.

“Finally, we want to thank Mr. Mollak Choi for traveling here from his offices all the way in Tonglo. It’s touching when a man of means shows his devotion to others’ well-being. We wish you nothing but the best in your recent expansion into dam construction. Concrete’s a very tricky material to account for in wet conditions, unless you have your mix just right, but you’d obviously know much more about that than I ever would.”

Mr. Choi barely seems to be listening. He wears the same bored expression as always, but next to him, Ms. Nga’s eyes widen in dreadful comprehension.

“I now present the infamous Rainmakers,” finishes Tao.

Hands still clasped, Quyt and Akiya begin their routine as they always do, with a coordinated dance. Despite borrowing moves from Quyt’s Foggy Swamp-style waterbending, this part’s mostly for show. Whenever they were paid to do this, it only seemed polite to inject some pizazz.

Behind them, a curious audience has gathered on the other side of the courtyard. Don’t think about them, girl. Better yet, don’t think at all.

Akiya focuses on her breathing and the movement of her body, letting her mind go clear as water. Properly centered, she won’t get in her own way. As long as nothing goes wrong, she can perform mostly on autopilot.

She twirls to the side, yielding the spotlight to Quyt. The swampbender’s long, deliberate steps and reeling arm movements draw their personal cloud into a dense and stormy form directly above her. Sunlight dims, bringing the braziers to life in the gloom.

Far too soon, Quyt steps aside, and it’s Akiya’s turn to shine. Normally, the spectacle of Quyt’s waterbending lasts for much longer, since she has to take her time gathering as much local humidity as possible into viable cloud cover. With so much less to work with, the pacing is just wrong. Don’t dwell on it. Just go.

Heart hammering, Akiya jogs to center stage and performs a twirling leap. As she lands, she snaps her metal fan open with a loud ZACK, and whispers a modest prayer to whatever spirits might be listening, “Tenguri tasuke teyo.”

Spirits help me.

Her body moves to its own rhythm, leaving waterbending and all other forms behind. Her senses dissolve into the air around her, leaving her grounded solely by the solidity of the stone under her feet and the cool metal of her fan. She drives it in swoops and plunges, gathering energy around herself in thick waves. Then the stone floor recedes, and Akiya smiles. They’ve come to her aid, as they always have. The spirits and their sacred winds.

Spirit energy flows through the channels of her body, sending her heart soaring. She's an ecstatic conduit, a living whirlwind in skirts of dust and glowing sparks, which she feeds upward. The cloud above her ripens and splits. As always, the first few drops bring her back to herself, reminding her of skin and substance. The weight is bitter after tasting such freedom, but she doesn’t fight it. Before the spirit winds can fully disperse, she drifts back down to the safe, solid ground. There’s some light applause, which she doesn’t acknowledge.

The judge nods his approval. “Fine work. Very unique,” he says. “Thank you for the demonstration, Mr. Bengo. If there are no objections, we’ll reconvene indoors and begin the hearing proper after a brief recess.”

“I do have one more item, Your Honor. Rather, she does.”

Looking like a half-drowned elephant-rat, Akiya has walked up to stand beside Tao. Quyt could easily have dried her off, of course, but after a long discussion this morning, they agreed it would be more dramatic to present herself this way. “I demand a trial by bending. Sir.”

“I— Yes, you have that right, but—” The judge blinks and swallows as he realizes what he’s just witnessed.

“Is there a problem, Your Honor?” asks Tao.

“This girl is a…?”

Tao looks to Akiya, who bows low enough to hide her grin. “It’s true, Your Honor. I’m an airbender.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

The clerk at the property department scans the wall of lockers with no urgency whatsoever, like he’s looking for a nice book to read instead of performing a duty vital to the justice system. When he finally stops and unlocks the one with their stuff in it, Akiya could swear it’s one he’s walked past three times already. Who could blame her for being impatient? The sooner they can get out of here and back to their life, the better.

Their satchels and clothes are stuffed in a square basket just small enough to fit in the locker. The clerk hauls it over and sets it down on the other side of the glass, but instead of giving it to them, he pulls out a checklist and starts examining its contents item-by-item.

He looks up at the girls, bouncing on the balls of their feet on the other side of the counter, and says, “Can’t be too careful now.”

“Could we get our duds back first? This uniform’s itchin’ me all ta hell.”

The clerk has the audacity to sigh before very slowly fishing out a sack holding the clothes they were arrested in, looking over its contents, and checking a box. They both grab for it as soon as he drops it in the transfer tray and scamper off to the closest restroom to change.

Akiya pulls her MAD GENIUS souvenir t-shirt over her head. She’s noting the bloodstains when Quyt asks from the next stall, “Aki?”

“Yeah?”

“What if they’d called yer bluff?”

“Heh. No way were they ever gonna waste the resources it’d take to get that Tenzin guy out here for little ol’ me.”

“Humor me.”

“I guess I’d be dead?”

“Nuh-uh!”

“Oh, right!” says Akiya, snapping her fingers like she’s only just remembered. “Air Nomads are pacifists! Guess we win either way, then, huh?” She wads up the hemp-cloth uniform and stuffs it in the empty, torn sack before stepping out of the stall and splashing cool water on her face. Looking at her dripping reflection, she muses, “It would’ve been cool to meet him, though.”

In the mirror, Quyt steps out of her stall, the sack under one arm and a look of pure adoration on her face. “We c’n put it on the bucket list.”

“You ‘n’ me in Republic City?” ask Akiya, turning to face her.

Quyt leans in for a kiss, flicking away the excess water from Akiya’s chin as she does. Energy flows freely between them this time, dread and guilt replaced with silvery joy. “Yup,” she says once she finally pulls away. “After Ba Sing Se. Or before. Whatever.”

“I… I love you so much.”

Her girlfriend presses the tip of her nose against hers. “Love you, too, shug.”

By the time they get back to the property counter, Tao is signing a release for them with the basket holding all their worldly possessions next to his feet. They both snatch up their satchels with glee. Something is wrong, Akiya realizes immediately, but she isn’t sure what. Shouldn’t her bag be heavier? She sees Quyt tying their chump change around her neck, and it hits her.

“The ingot!” Akiya tosses her bag to the ground and starts digging through it like a crazed badger-mole. Supplies. Stale snacks. Spare socks.

An odd number of spare socks.

The one with their titanium ingot is nowhere to be found.

“AAAUUUGGHHHHH!”

“It’s all there!” insists the clerk. Akiya throws him a furious look that makes him flinch and pull down metal blinders painted with “OUT TO LUNCH!” in cheerful, mocking colors.

Before she can bang on the glass and probably get arrested again, Tao grinds to a crouch next to her. “It was seized as evidence. The bludgeon, remember?”

“But that was dropped, right?”

“It’s still a pile of paperwork to get it back. I could guide you through it, if you plan to stay in Omashu for a while.”

Akiya looks up at Quyt, who shakes her head. “Jus’ money, Aki. This ‘n’ what we still got in our purse are more’n enough,” she says, running her fingers over the necklace of pewter coins.

If she’s honest with herself, Akiya wants to get far away from Omashu, too. As soon as they can. She never wants to make rain again, either. What if that flood actually had been their doing? Even if it’s a remote one, any chance of that coming true is too much to bear. But without rainmaking, how could they ever possibly get that much money again? It’s not fair. Not fair at all.

She repacks her bag sulkily, suddenly aware of how crazy she must look.

“So you’re leaving?” Tao asks behind her.

“Looks like,” replies Quyt. “Yer still our lawyer, right, Mr. Bengo?”

“Until you walk out the front doors, yes.”

“Wouldja be able t’get the ingot back without us?”

“It’d be a bit of extra paperwork, but I could.”

“Then it’s yers, far as I’m concerned. Without you, we’d’ve been toast.”

“That’s— A titanium ingot? That’s, uh, not a small amount of money.”

“We’ve got a sayin’ back home. ‘More money ya got, more problems, too.’”

Akiya stands and slings her satchel back over her shoulder. As distraught as she was just a few minutes ago, she’s perfectly calm now. She feels silly, even, like she’s woken from a fever dream she was convinced was real. What is money, anyway, but an idea?

“That’s extremely generous, Miss Quyt.” He turns to Akiya again, incredulous. “Would you be okay with that? No take-backsies.”

She sniffs. “Only if you promise to nail that Choi guy’s ass to the wall.”

That makes Tao laugh, and Akiya realizes she’ll miss him. “Already working on it! You might be interested to know that since we last saw her, Ms. Nga has been surprisingly forthcoming. Seems she’s a woman who takes her professional reputation very seriously.”

Akiya smiles back. “Good luck.”

“You, too, you two.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

They push the doors open right around lunch time. The courthouse jail is high up on Omashu’s main peak, giving them a glorious view of the city and the surrounding valley. It’ll be a shame to leave it so soon, but who knows how many of those wanted posters are still floating around? It’s best for them to make themselves scarce, at least for a few months.

“Before we head out, let’s grab a meal, huh?” says Akiya, rubbing her hands together. “I’m thinking mapo tofu.”

“Restaurant or food cart?”

“Food cart would be faster…”

“Alright, but if we get butt spiders again, I can’t be held responsible fer my actions.”

“Oh, I know a—”

Quyt grabs Akiya by the back of her shirt, stopping her short. Then she sees them, Skull-Pounder and Strap-Grabber. Waiting for them. Smiling.

Akiya has just enough time to grab the reassuring weight of her fan before a Satomobile screeches to a halt on the narrow road behind their attackers and a second pair of goons wrestles them into the back seat. Within seconds, the doors slam shut, and it’s off again as abruptly as it arrived. A half-finished cigarette smolders on the pavement.

“Should we…?” Quyt points back at the courthouse.

Akiya shrugs and takes her hand. “Forget it, Quyt. It’s Omashu.”

Chapter Text

Hana’s foot hovers over the edge of the platform, just past the ramp threshold. She hasn’t really, truly arrived yet. Not until she’s touched land. Until that moment, she’s neither here nor there, like a ghost.

A shove from behind heaves her forward, and her foot touches down with a stomp. Not an auspicious beginning.

“Kid! Get a move on!” snarls a woman’s phlegmy voice. Flecks of spittle land on Hana’s sensitive scalp, right behind her ear. “Y’ain’t the only one with places ta be!”

She leaps out of the way like she’s been burned and stands to the side of the exit ramp, furiously rubbing the stranger’s saliva off of her head while her fellow airship passengers rush past. A few of them spare her knowing glances. While most of them wear smartly tailored city fashions, she sticks out like a sore thumb with her shabby farm clothes and shaved head.

Well, not completely shaved, but close enough. A few puffs of warm air from her open palm finishes drying out her peach fuzz, and she can relax again.

Some passengers shuffle down the platform to claim their checked luggage. Without even enough worldly possessions left to fill her knapsack, Hana takes a deep breath and follows the rest down a guilded staircase—under an overdesigned sign that reads “Future Industries Welcomes You to Republic City!”—and into the station’s arrivals lobby.

“Not a kid,” she mumbles to no one in particular.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

That suspended feeling stays with her during her hike through the station, all the way to the waiting area for the cable cars. Maybe it’s her view of the city, still distant and unreal from the mountain ridge, or maybe just the sheer height. But she can’t let heights bother her, not where she’s going.

If she squints, she can just make out the speck in Yue Bay that must be Air Temple Island.

It’s been more than four years since Harmonic Convergence, which should have been plenty of time to work through all the doubt. So why does she keep imagining marching right back to a ticket booth and catching the next flight home? Could she live with herself if she showed back up at Stonefruit with her tail between her legs? They’d welcome her back, she knows, and joyfully.

She could put it off another year, just to make sure she’s really ready. No one would blame her. It’s not like they’re expecting her at Air Temple Island, and there’s no shortage of baby airbenders, from what she’s heard…

But now a cable car is pulling up, and the time for doubt is over. At the front of the crowd, Hana gets a brief, disorienting look at her own reflection in a set of shiny glass doors before they swing open and the mob behind her surges forward. She gets ahead of the crush with a little tailwind and settles into a prime window seat facing out at the city.

This is it, she thinks while the car fills. A new life. A new me.

She stares past her reflection, keeping her eyes fixed on that little island in the distance, floating in sparkling morning sunlight. Absentmindedly, she runs a hand back and forth over the crown of her head and down to the nape of her neck. She feels so light without her big braid. By the time she chopped it off, it was long enough to sit on, as thick and red as sequoia vine. Too bad it had to go.

Not for any practical reason. The Air Nation would never force her to cut it. She just wasn’t that person anymore. She’s Hana now.

Hana, who doesn’t braid or dye her hair, or eat bacon no matter how wonderful it tastes, or have anywhere else to be but right here.

“You an airbender?”

Hana jumps a little. Right as the cable car starts grinding down the mountainside, she turns to see a school age boy in the seat next to her, grinning like he’s considering making fun of her for something but hasn’t made up his mind what yet.

“Uh. Y-yeah.”

The boy squints and wrinkles his nose. “Y’know, only the boy ones shave their heads. You a boy or a girl?”

“You tell me.”

He leans away from her and looks her up and down. “Girl,” he answers matter-of-factly. “Y’got boobs.”

Hana snorts with laughter and crosses her arms. “Well, ya found me out. Do I have to grant you a wish now, or something?”

His eyes light up, and he reaches into a pouch hanging from a belt loop, producing a marble of cheap swirled glass. “Do the spinny trick! You c’n borrow my aggie.”

“I haven’t gotten the hang of that one yet, sorry.” She hugs her arms tighter to her chest and shrugs awkwardly.

“Aww…” The boy pouts down at the aggie, like it’s been ruined, then looks back up at her somewhat bashfully. “Guess they’ll teach you that at the temple, huh?”

“A lot more than just that, I hope.” She looks back out the window, quietly shocked at how quickly they’ve descended. No wonder her ears hurt. She yawns to pop them and hears the boy do the same.

“Bending must be great. Wish I could.”

“Yeah,” replies Hana automatically. She catches sight of Air Temple Island again, almost directly in front of her, a few brief moments before Republic City rises up to swallow them.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Her map is laughably obsolete. Why she didn’t think to check its publication date before bringing it along, she’ll never know.

It served her well in the area around Central Station, but the closer she gets to downtown, the less it matches up with the real deal. Long stately avenues twist around and get new names, or just end altogether. Blocking foot traffic are sections of Spirit Wilds and highway support system, both theoretically traversable but treacherous. Even on foot, she should’ve been to Avatar Korra Park by now, but several detours have ruined that plan. Only the pillar of light from the downtown spirit portal has saved her from completely losing her way.

Hana shuffles through a dense residential area, sucking the juice from an overripe sun plum and considering her options.

She could just follow the water line, but she’d have to find it first. That would be the long way around, anyway. She could maybe catch a trolley, but her funds are limited. She needs to save something to pay for the ferry to her final destination. A taxi is out of the question, of course. Maybe she committed a little too hard to this “humble traveler” schtick.

She could hitch a ride, if only she didn’t look like such a ridiculous bumpkin. Her only clothes are the ones on her back, a tattered work shirt and dungarees tucked into well-worn brown boots, accessorized with her knapsack, a metal fan hanging from a belt loop, and a bamboo sun hat dangling behind her neck by a cord. Now add to that a face covered in plum juice, and no one’s giving her the time of day around here unless she pays them for their trouble.

The leftover plum pit gets buried in a sunny patch of grass next to what Hana’s pretty sure is a school. It seems like something an Air Nomad would do. She’s standing up and wiping her dirty hands on her legs when she spots the newsstand.

As she trots up, rubbing juice from her face, Hana doesn’t see any customers, just an old man and a young woman fighting behind the counter like a demented puppet show. At least, that’s what she assumes when she sees the woman—with short cropped hair so uneven she must’ve done it herself over the bathroom sink—smacking the flailing man on the face with a rolled up magazine. Then she sees the tiny spirits buzzing in a furious cloud around his head.

“Augh! There’s one in my ear!” The woman swings back her arm as far as she can in cramped quarters and smacks him on the side of the head. The man yelps and collapses, barely holding himself up with one gangly arm slung over the countertop. Newspapers tumble onto the pavement.

“Grampa! I’m sorry!” With a pained expression, she leans in and seems about to swat him again, but backs off. “It’s not helping!”

The grandfather lets loose a blistering string of obscenities that seems to further agitate the spirits. They don’t seem fully dark, just pissed.

“Uh.”

The two of them freeze and glare at Hana, who realizes she’s just been staring like an idiot this whole time instead of helping. With no water or salt at the ready, she has to improvise. Over the edge of the countertop, the old man’s eyes go wide when Hana reaches for her fan. It opens with a loud, satisfying ZAK.

Before anything else, she twists it in the air, letting the midday sun glint off its blades. Then she holds a vision of clear running water in her mind and waves the fan, slowly, above and around the man’s head, at least the part she can reach. Calmer now, the spirits drift up in a lazy swarm, which Hana circles and scoops toward her.

“Shhh, it’s okay…” If she were any good at whistling, she’d try that, but speaking gently is nearly as effective. The spirits seem to shed the last hint of negative tension, and she gets a good look at them in their natural state, like silvery one-eyed cuttlefish. That’s a type she’s never seen before, but the Spirit Wilds must be full of exotic species. She grins at the thought.

Hana lifts up her fan and softly blows the spirits into the sky, where they shimmer out of sight. “Go in peace, little guys.”

Still grinning, she hooks the fan back onto her belt loop and tries to remember what she was just doing.

“Did you see that, Grampa?!”

“A saw a bald girl with a muddy face banish a hundred tiny demons, if that’s what ya mean.”

Hana blushes and pulls up her collar to scrub the paste of dirt and plum juice from her face. “Does, uh, that happen a lot?” she asks when she’s done.

“Almost every day the past few weeks, but never that bad,” answers the woman as she helps her grandfather regain his balance.

“Damn things just seem to wanna torment me.”

“Well, they’re not demons.” Hana decides to skip the lecture about demons not being real. “Spirits are just attracted to some people, and they respond to human emotion. If they come back, keep a cool head, and they won’t get aggressive.”

The old man scowls. “You better not be hoping for a reward, smartass.”

“Grampa, be nice!” The woman smiles at Hana and gives a shallow bow. “I’m Zaji.”

Hana bobs her head. “Nice to meet you, Zaji. I’m lost.”

The old man scoffs and mutters, “I’ll say.” Hana starts regretting helping him out, before shame cuts in like a rusty razor. There’s no pleasing some people, but it was still the right thing to do.

“Yeah, I—” Hana starts gathering the loose papers that got flung off the countertop during the scuffle. “I’m heading to Air Temple Island, but trying to get downtown’s been a nightmare. My map’s old, I guess.”

“Ohh!” exclaims Zaji. “An airbender!”

“Why don’t you fly, then?” asks the old man.

Zaji smiles gratefully and apologetically while Hana deposits a loose pile of newspapers back on the counter. “I don’t know how yet,” she answers, some annoyance creeping into her tone. “I can just do little things, mostly.”

She turns to a copy of the United Daily News she missed, still crumpled on the ground. With a sweeping gesture, she tries to generate a little gust to bring it up to her. Instead, she blasts it apart. The front page of the business section lands on her head. She pulls it off to see Zaji laying a brand new map on the counter.

“On the house.”

“No freebies, Zaji!” snaps the old man. He looks Hana in the eye. “60 yuans.”

“But it’s the least we could do!”

While the two of them debate giving Hana the map, something on the loose page in her hands catches her eye. It’s a simple logo that looks like a snowy mountain top accompanying a short article entitled “AKIYAMA ENTERPRISES ENTERS PRICE WARS”:

…even after an eventful year bookended by two prestigious awards for their contributions to the Republic City skyline: the Glass and Brass and, more recently, Zaofu’s Silver Seal. Innovative and beautiful to behold, each Akiyama high-rise has remained property of the firm, but that may soon change if the ascendant architects succeed in winning over Republican administrative bigwigs to their vision of the future. While reconstruction has sped along at a breakneck pace in the year following Kuvira’s invasion, nearly all of it has been directed at infrastructure and housing. At the insistence of the ever-sensible President Moon, displaced government workers have been making do…

It has to be a coincidence. Hana blinks her watering eyes and skims ahead to the last section.

…determined to make a mark that will come to symbolize Republic City, and the United Republic as a whole, for generations to come. When asked for comment, Chairman Riku Akiyama eschewed such grand pronouncements and only insisted that “with [their] exclusive patents and hard-won expertise, [they’re] uniquely equipped to deliver on a reasonable budget without compromising on quality.” His wife and co-founder President Nari Akiyama declined to comment.

In that moment, you could push Hana over with a feather. No way in the world could that be a coincidence.

Those are her parents.

This is a sign.

Numbly, Hana finishes picking up the loose papers and drops them on the pile with the rest.

The old man waggles the new map in her face. “30 yuans. Take it or leave it.”

“Oh, okay. Sure.” Hana pulls a crumpled bill and a handful of coins out of a pocket and makes the exchange. She opens up the map and scans it without really seeing. “This is gonna sound a little weird, but do you know anything about Akiyama Enterprises?”

Zaji shrugs. “Heard of ‘em, but no more than that,” says her grandfather.

“Hmm.” Hana tugs out the page with the article. “I just saw this, and I thought… Do you have any back issues?”

“What’s this look like, a library?”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

The Republic City Central Library is a gorgeous mess, full of rare books and secret nooks. Exactly the sort of place Hana could spend weeks exploring. It was painful to leave, only soothed by the knowledge that she could come back eventually, once she had more money. Without a library card, everything aside from quietly reading in the library itself had a cost. Between quizzing the research desk and scanning through their state-of-the-art microfiche system, Hana was flat broke before she knew it.

But she got what she needed to tie off this last loose end. Sweet, sweet information.

Hana looks between a note-covered scrap of paper and her new map. Only a fool would mistake the shining skyscraper across the street for anything other than Akiyama Enterprises headquarters, but the terrified child in her insists that she be absolutely sure. Finally satisfied after locating the company logo embossed on a small sign and checking the address for the eleventh time, she makes her way across the street and through the front doors.

As soon as she’s over the threshold, she’s in a different world, as surely as if she’d stepped through a spirit portal. She ascends a short flight of broad steps, slipping past a pack of professional types on their way out. A couple of businessmen watch her curiously, but the rest don’t seem to notice in their hurry to leave. It’s just about the end of the workday now, she realizes.

Golden afternoon sunlight shines through the atrium windows, but the space feels cool and still, even with all the foot traffic. The structural design is perfectly imperfect, harmonious and soft around the edges like a man-made grotto. The deep blue and green stone floor enhances the effect. Vertical lines draw her gaze up and up and up until she’s gaping at the vaulted ceiling, hung with lights like glowing stalactites.

Hana catches herself spinning slowly in place as she takes it all in.

Stop acting like such a tourist.

Snapping her head back down, she starts scanning for more helpful signage. There’s a silvery placard that looks like a business directory mounted on the wall next to a bank of elevators. Hana shakes her head. Akiyama Enterprises obviously has their main offices here, but that’s not what she’s looking for.

She watches a middle-aged couple weave through the growing crowd, from the elevators to a set of doors under a sign that reads “Residential Suites”. The lobby she follows them into is warmer and smaller, with far fewer people, which makes Hana stand out all the more.

While Hana hangs back, the couple crosses the lobby and enters what looks like the entrance to a restaurant. On the lobby’s left side, two serious-looking men in tidy green suits flank another set of entrance doors that seems to lead out into a little garden. Then there’s the concierge desk to her right, which Hana saunters over to like she owns the place. Better to pretend she’s supposed to be here, if she’s going to get what she wants.

But she does belong here, doesn’t she?

The concierge desk is staffed by a silver-haired older woman—currently chatting on the fancy-looking desk phone in her sweetest granny voice—and a thin-faced man about Hana’s age. Both of them wear green suits like the ones on the doormen. Up close, she can see the Akiyama mountain logo embroidered on each shoulder in silky black and white thread.

“Uh, pardon me,” she says to the man, who looks like he immediately regrets making eye contact. “I’m here to see the Akiyamas.”

“They handle appointments next door,” he says, waving her back in the direction of the atrium.

“No, I don’t have an appointment. I…” She rubs the side of her head. “I’m not here on business. I’m their daughter.”

“They don’t have a daughter.” He raises an eyebrow and glances back over at the woman, who’s finished her phone call. “Do they?”

“Daughter?” asks the woman distractedly as she jots something down on a notepad.

“That’s me. Hi.”

“What’d you say your name was?” asks the man.

“Ak— I mean, Hana. Akiyama.” She watches him start flipping through a small ledger. “I, uh, I don’t think I’ll be in there. I’ve been gone a while.”

“Well, we can’t just let anyone up, honey,” says the woman.

“No, I know. But I’m their daughter. Can’t you just tell them Hana’s here?”

“Name’s not in here,” says the man. Hana fights the urge to roll her eyes.

Neither of them seem keen to use the phone. Her estranged family is just a few digits away, but they apparently can’t be bothered. They’d definitely be upset if she grabbed it and made the call herself. She would’ve called ahead if her family’s number had been listed. What would an Air Nomad do in this situation?

“They know who I am. Just— Please just call them.” She grips the edge of the desk. “I’m… I’m not leaving until you do!”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

It’s really a lovely garden, with the perfect amount of shade and enough distance from the street that it feels like a little sanctuary. Hana refuses to admire it, out of spite.

She paces the garden path in front of the doors. One of the doormen—Shubao, the burly one who actually shoved her outside—watches her through the tinted glass, practically daring her to do something stupid so they’ll have an excuse to call the police. As long as she’s not actually bothering anyone going in or out, or trying to get back inside, they seem content to leave her be.

She could try coming back in disguise. If she looked more respectable, she might have better luck talking her way in…

You’re getting distracted again. Eyes on the prize.

She stops pacing and looks around in the urban twilight. Nightfall is hours away, but a metropolitan skyline blocks sunlight just as well as any mountain. This really has been a waste of time. And money.

She barely registers the next person who brushes past her on their way inside, except that they have their face shoved in a book. When they come back a moment later, she’s pulling her map back out and almost doesn’t hear them say, “I’m sorry, but do I know you?”

“I’ve just got one of those faces, I guess.”

“Are you in any movers?”

“What? No.” Hana rattles the map, hoping they’ll take the hint.

“Ah. Well, sorry to bother you.”

“It’s fine, I just—” She glances up and sees him.

Turi Akiyama. 21 years-old and in his final year at Republic City University, according to her research. A stranger with her father’s husky build and her mother’s hazel eyes and creamy complexion. After all these years, her little brother. He must have a similar intuition, from the way he’s studying her over his reading glasses.

“I was actually…” She stuffs the map in a back pocket. “I was actually trying to visit someone here, but I wasn’t on the list, apparently.”

Turi glances inside and makes an expression between a smile and a wince. “Yeah, that sounds like them. Who’re you visiting?”

“I, ah—”

“Of course!” Turi raises his hands apologetically. “None of my business! But you know…” He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “I could get you in.”

“Oh, you’d do that?”

He nods and studies her some more, puzzled but pleasantly so. “Yeah. I guess I would.” He extends a hand. “Turi Akiyama.”

“Yeah.” Hana shakes, grateful when Turi doesn’t try to crush her hand.

“What should I call you…?”

“Uh! I’m, uh, Snarf,” she blurts, for no reason at all.

“Snarf.”

“It’s my, uh, new Air Nomad name.”

“Oh, that explains the—” He waves his other hand—and the book it’s holding—in circles over his own hair, which he keeps long and pulled back in an old-fashioned topknot.

“Yep. Totally explains everything.” Hana realizes she’s still shaking Turi’s hand, which is starting to get a little sweaty. She pulls it back and shoves it in a pocket. Smooth introduction so far.

“I’m heading up to see my folks. They insist I have dinner with them a couple times a week,” says Turi as he escorts her inside. He shrugs and adds, “Beats another night of instant noodles.”

“I bet it does.” As they pass through the lobby, Hana takes a moment to stick out her tongue at the staff, who have the courtesy to look nervous.

Turi leads them through a locked door to a row of elevators and presses the call button. “Would you like to join us?” he asks as he tucks his glasses in an inner pocket of his rumpled brown jacket.

“For dinner?” Hana rubs her stomach and feels it growl back. “I ate a plum. Five or six hours ago.”

“Is that a no? It’s okay if you—”

“No. Yeah. I’d like dinner. But would that be okay with your parents?”

“Oh, they’ll just be thrilled I finally brought a girl home.”

“Heh. Good thing I dressed up today.”

Turi nods pleasantly. “It’s a look.”

Hana watches the lights over the elevator door count down, and gulps. “Turi?”

“Yes?”

“…My name’s not actually Snarf.”

“Oh! You don’t say.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Pork. Beef. Beef stuffed with pork. Black bean sauce obviously cooked with lard.

They never ate this much meat when she was growing up, but they had far less money then. Dad’s favorite meal was always beef. He was served a thick, glistening steak every year on his birthday. Now that he’s rolling in cash, he must get it every day.

He doesn’t seem to be enjoying it much at the moment, though. Some bitterness can’t be drowned in plum sauce.

Mom’s still pale from shock, but a few sips of ginseng wine are starting to bring some color back into her cheeks.

Turi sits to Hana’s left, back ramrod straight while he eats little slices of marinated pork one-by-one. “Mm! You should try this,” he says, pushing the platter her way.

“I’m vegetarian.” And yet her traitor mouth waters at the smell.

“Oh. Right.”

Hana picks at her food, a simple bowl of white rice topped with pickled radish. She can’t trust anything else on the table.

The rice is fancy, too, she notices. It’s the kind they only ever had on special occasions, like New Year’s Day. Perfect sticky clumps, a subtle nutty scent, and the purest white. Not a grain of barley to be seen.

Of course the subject of meat is what gets Dad talking. “Vegetarian? What have you gotten yourself into?”

“Lots of people are vegetarian, Dad.”

“I’m just saying…” He gestures across the table at her like he’s swatting away a fly. “No meat, no hair. Are you in a cult now?”

Hana sighs. She may as well just tell them. “I’m joining the Air Nation. I thought I should—”

“So you’re not in a cult yet.”

“It’s not like that.”

Dad can barely conceal his sneer. “Oh, I’ve seen them around. A bunch of star-eyed loonies who left their families to put on uniforms and preach about making peace with the fairies. That’s a cult if I ever saw one.”

“It’s not a cult!” A breeze whips up around her, strong enough to ruffle her clothes.

Dad’s eyes widen, like he couldn’t believe in her airbending until he saw a demonstration. The look fades quickly, and he’s back to his normal cynical self. “Hrmph. It’s where you belong, it looks like. Whatever it is. You’ll be the best airbender they’ve got, if your hopeless earthbending is anything to go on.”

“I was never an earthbender at all,” says Hana through gritted teeth.

He looks away, sipping his tea. “Excuses.”

Hana looks over at Mom, who still can’t bring herself to speak up against her husband. She just watches with sad eyes. Same as it ever was.

She stands up too quickly, giving her knees a good whack on the underside of the table. “I have to use the restroom,” she says, and hobbles through the nearest door.

Turi finds her leaning against a wall in a dim hallway, definitely not about to cry.

“The restroom’s the other way.”

“I don’t actually have to go.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. I just need a moment.”

Turi leans next to her. “I know they’ve missed you,” he says, touching her shoulder. “I think they’re just, uh, surprised. Heh. I’m starting to think that maybe ‘ta-dah’ wasn’t the best way to break the ice.”

“Oh, ya think?”

“I was just… excited. I’ve always wondered what you were like, and then one day, there you were.”

“It’s not your fault. They’ve always been like this.” She smirks at her brother. “And the way you talk about meeting me, it’s like you ran into a celebrity.”

Turi grins and says, “Let me show you something.”

Hana follows him down the hallway, around a corner, and up a set of stairs to a loft with a cabinet beside a tall frosted window. After Turi opens it and steps aside, she’s not sure what to make of the contents for a moment. Then it all snaps into focus, and she cackles.

“It looks like I’m dead!”

“What?” asks Turi, a little worried.

“I just—” Hana kneels in front of the cabinet and its collection of keepsakes. “This is just a lot. Sorry for laughing.”

Front and center is a framed photo of her from more than two decades ago, in all her awkward teenage glory. She remembers Mom sitting her down one morning for an informal portrait with her new camera, an Omashu Owlcat. It was an event so mundane it never once occurred to her to wonder if the film had ever been developed. She doesn’t look that much different. Even her hair was boyishly short, though nowhere near as short as it is now. No wonder Turi recognized her.

Beside that photo is a family portrait from when she was around seven, judging by the huge gap where her front teeth should be. The rest of the pictures are childhood drawings, at various levels of skill, except for a single woodblock print of a Kyoshi Island schoolgirl riding a bicycle through a field of yellow canola flowers. Somehow, Hana notices the gleaming gold koban last of all, resting on a short stack of dog-eared books. Her stomach clenches.

She’s about to close up the cabinet again, but Turi stops her.

“Wait, wait,” he says, opening a little drawer she didn’t even see at the base of the shrine and pulling out a bundle of papers.

“My letters? All of my letters?”

“Oh yes.” He kneels beside her and flips through the collection of envelopes and postcards, not a single one of them with a return address. “I remember, I studied these when I was a kid, to see if I could figure out where you were going. My cool big sis.”

“I…” Her voice trembles. Something about that last comment struck a chord. “Lemme see.”

The postcards are self-explanatory—New Taku, Zaofu, the Great Divide, and even Whaletail Island—but the letters are deliberately opaque.

“I wrote this one in… Ji Nua. This one, too. This one—” She shakes a third envelope. “—Si Wong Desert somewhere. It’s still got sand in it.”

Turi claps his hands together softly, delighted despite the circumstances. Then he fishes out an envelope near the top of the pile. “What about this?”

It’s a fat one, humble and brown with a PLEASE FORWARD note scrawled under the crossed-out old address. She reaches through the neat slice along the top seam and pulls out a handwritten letter and another set of photos, about a dozen in all. They were the real message, she remembers, not the letter itself, which was just a long-winded way of saying, “Good news, I’m not dead.” The photos show her thriving, even without her appearing in any of them. There’s the house and the orchard. The greenhouse. Her attic bedroom with the big bay window. Her favorite spot to people watch by the canals. Tin and the kids. It’s only been a week since since she last saw them, but who knows how long it’ll be until the next time.

“Where are these from?” asks Turi. “I could never place it.”

“Stonefruit,” she says, stuffing everything back in the envelope. She’s not too gentle about it, and she feels the paper rip a little.

“I don’t…”

“It was my home. For a long time. Stonefruit, a… a commune, I guess. It was just me and a couple of friends to start, and it kinda grew from there…”

“Ah,” he says, like that explains everything.

She stares at the envelope for a long moment and says, finally, “In Bo Hee Min. North of here, near the Earth Nation border. Nice little city. Suits me.”

“Oh. Well, mystery solved,” replies Turi with an edge of forced cheer. “I hate to say it, but it sort of seemed like you didn’t want us to be able to find you.”

“Yeah.” She sighs and grips the letters. “It was nothing to do with you. It was Dad, mostly. I was never good enough for him. Earthbending was only part of it.”

“He is… expectant.”

Hana snickers. “At least he got the earthbender kid he always wanted.” Turi flinches at that, which immediately makes Hana feel like a jerk. “Sorry. Again. That wasn’t fair… Wow, I’m apologizing a lot.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

But she does. She can’t help it. She imagines a little boy sitting on the floor with her letters spread out in front of him. Not comic books or trading cards or even homework. Just the letters and postcards she only sent out of lingering familial guilt. How lonely that little boy must have been, having to bear the weight of Dad’s ambitions without her.

“I didn’t even know your name until I looked it up,” she admits.

“And I didn’t really know yours, apparently.”

“…If you call me ‘Snarf’ in front of our parents, I will kill you where you stand.”

“Ah, it’s nice having a sister.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Hana’s not really surprised to see dinner cleared away when they get back to the dining room. It makes the next part easier, at least.

As her parents finish their meal with an exquisite dessert of poached spiced pears, she kneels across from them and bows as low as the table allows. In her most pleasant tone, she says, “Mom. Dad. Thank you for dinner. It was good to see you again, but I have to go now. I hope you understand.”

“So soon?” asks Mom, the first words she’s spoken since they sat down to eat.

“Well, I have a ferry to catch. Turi’s going to walk me there.”

“I can arrange for a car if you—”

“Oh, let them go, honey,” grumbles Dad. Mom actually glares at him, not that he notices. “I’ve got more work to do, anyway, soon as I finish this.”

“I’ll be fine, Mom.” Hana stands and follows her brother to the door. Before stepping through, she turns and looks at her parents for what may be the last time in another long while. They look so ordinary from this angle. Ordinary and flawed. “I love you.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

“I love food,” groans Hana. She holds her stomach, where a heaping bowl of Yangchen’s delight, some cheesy tsampa flatbread, and a coconut cream egg waffle are getting churned into a homogeneous sludge. “Can’t believe I tried to survive today on a plum, pickles, and a handful of rice.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” says Turi. He gestures vaguely at the cluster of Air Nomad-fusion food stalls. “This is probably my favorite spot, but downtown is lousy with them. And they’re always changing.”

“Mm-hm,” replies Hana. Across the alley from where they’re sitting, a vendor twists sugar balloons into silly spirit shapes and mounts them on sticks. She licks her lips.

“Ready to move on?”

“Oof, yeah. Get me outta here before I make myself sick.” Hana heaves herself back onto her feet and grabs Turi’s arm to better follow him through the warren that is downtown. They’re on the outskirts of the big Spirit Wilds, where spirit vines run rampant. Plenty of them grow in natural-looking patterns like any other vine, but most seem to seek some kind of order. The few original buildings still standing are reinforced with them, and yet more vines have woven together into their own structures that resemble something between a treehouse and an anthill. From the ground, she can even see lights in some would-be windows.

“It’s crazy how much this place has changed since we moved here,” says Turi. “I was in high school. I actually got to see Avatar Korra wrestle Unalaq from the school roof, until they made us shelter in the basement.”

“Holy crap.”

“The mover was better.”

Hana laughs, then belches. “Urgh. ‘Scuse me.”

“Get it out now. We’re almost there.”

Two tall spirits that look like umbrellas with teeth hop past them in the opposite direction. They aren’t the only ones, though. Hana realizes the traffic around them is nearly half spirits now, more than she’s ever seen in her entire life. At least they seem friendly, in that city way where everyone’s just trying to get wherever they’re going with minimal fuss.

“Where’s ‘there’?”

“Well, the ferry. But we’ll cut through the Spirit Wilds.”

“Uh, is that allowed?”

“Not officially.”

Hana decides to stop asking questions and just trust her dear brother. A few minutes later, they step into an open area with a strange barrier, a jagged ridge of earth and shattered pavement slathered in even more vines. These grow so thick that they climb over each other and up into shapes like giant ferns, roughly following the ridge’s curvature. Above them is their first good view of the sky since they entered downtown, and the spirit portal.

They’re at the edge of the downtown crater, where just a year ago Avatar Korra defeated General Kuvira and blasted a hole into a parallel dimension.

Hana gasps and squeezes Turi arm. “Can we go in?!”

“The crater, yes. The portal, no.”

“I didn’t wanna go to the Spirit World. Yet.”

“There,” says Turi, pointing at a kiosk made of living vines a little further along the crater’s edge.

They approach just as a family of four shuffles away from the main window. Hana watches them descend a gentle slope into the crater, each with a white and green slip of paper pinned to their clothes. Tickets? No, that doesn’t make sense. She turns back to Turi to ask what that’s about and sees the sleepy Air Acolyte woman behind the counter open up a whole packet of slips.

“Is it just the two of you?” she asks.

“Yes,” replies Turi.

“The suggested donation for two amulets is 26 yuans,” says the Acolyte. “Names?”

“About that…”

Turi flashes what looks like a student I.D. When the Acolyte glances over at Hana, she pretends to check her pockets.

The Acolyte shrugs, suppresses a yawn, and opens a different packet with pale blue slips instead of green. “Names?”

“Turi and Snarf.”

Hana smacks her brother lightly on the arm.

The Acolyte doesn’t bat an eye. Both slips are signed, stamped, and handed over with a warning: “Keep these on you, and no sneaking past the warding stones. Go in peace.”

“Uh. You, too,” says Hana with a little bow.

The amulet slip reminds her of an ofuda. Up close, she can see the shapes of lucky constellations around its colored border and the ritual script that reads: “May I be welcomed by the spirits, and all trespasses forgiven.” Beneath that is the handwritten “Snarf” and a stamped symbol of the Air Nation. As silly as it is, it’s her first tangible connection to her newly adopted culture, and she pins it to the front of her dungarees with pride.

Hana skips along beside Turi, riding little gusts over the larger vines. Unlike the outskirts, the spirits here seem to give people a wide berth. Most of them huddle closer to the portal, beyond what she assumes must be the warding stones the Acolyte mentioned. An uneasy coexistence, but no less miraculous.

“You couldn’t afford 26 yuans?” she asks.

“I don’t like carrying small change.”

“Hrm. Speaking of money, how much does the ferry cost…?”

“Do you need me to cover you?”

“Heh. I might’ve blown all my spare cash at the library…”

“You’re my sister, alright.”

Hana cackles loud enough that a few other visitors jerk their heads in her direction, before realizing it’s just another silly airbender. They can think what they want. She feels lighter than she has in months, maybe years. She’s come so far, struggled so hard. Just one last hurdle.

“It wasn’t that funny,” says Turi, sounding almost offended.

“No, I’m just happy, I guess.”

“Oh. Yeah.” His smile is small and tight. “Me, too.”

“Wait, before I forget—” Hana lands on a knot of spirit vine. Ignoring its subtle writhing, she slings the knapsack off her back and digs through it. With so few personal items left inside, her fingers close around the wooden box within moments.

“What’s this?” asks Turi when she hands it over. It’s only about the size of his palm, simply made and securely latched.

“Open it.”

He pulls out a thin green crystal about the size of his pinkie and spins it in the air, the first earthbending she’s actually seen him do. He notices her staring and catches the crystal, looking slightly mortified.

Hana looks away as she shoulders her knapsack again. “It’s… It’s a punch shard from Dai Nam. Supposed to be worth something. Should cover the food and the ferry, at least.”

“…You really don’t owe me anything.”

“Please take it. I don’t even know if they’ll let me keep anything when I join up.” She shrugs. “I hear they’re not so keen on material possessions in the Air Nation.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Hana’s trotting straight for the ferry when Turi grabs her by the knapsack, nearly yanking her off of feet. “Hkk!”

“Car.”

She rolls her shoulders. “Wow, you’re strong. Wait, did you say car?” Traffic is surprisingly dead this close to the pier, which the Spirit Wilds probably have something to do with. Hana looks in both directions but doesn’t see anything coming their way. “Looks clear to me.”

He points across the street at a shiny black town car parked next to a warehouse that looks like it’s seen better days.

“Okay? So? Do you owe a triad money or something?”

“Let’s just go the long way around, to be s— Too late.”

A man in a familiar green suit is stepping out of the driver’s side. Hana’s never seen him before, but it’s obvious who he works for. He steps over to the passenger’s side, beckoning either to them or someone directly behind them.

“Hana and Turi Akiyama?” he calls.

Turi sighs. “Yes?”

Hana glances at her brother, wondering if this is a common occurrence.

“Your mother wishes to speak with you. Please step inside.” He opens the side door a crack.

Hana’s hackles go up automatically. “Why can’t she talk to us out here?” she calls back.

“She’s in a bit of a state, I’m sorry to say.”

That sounds bad. Hana turns to Turi again. “Should we…?”

“It’s Mom, so…” He shrugs.

Hana approaches the car but gives the driver a wide berth. “Okay, but I’m not going anywhere with you. We’ll talk, then I’ll leave for the ferry. No funny stuff.”

“I’ll wait right here if it makes you feel more comfortable,” says the driver, his voice more bored than offended. He opens the door a little wider, and Hana can see a familiar silhouette inside the cabin.

“Hi again, Mom,” she says as she slides inside.

“Oh, sweetheart, I was afraid I’d missed you…” Mom moves closer, and Hana’s sense of smell informs her that she’s had a little more of that ginseng wine since dinner. More than a little, probably. That’s a new development. Hana can’t remember Mom drinking at all in the bad ol’ days, but she must be under more pressure now. Her face is flushed, and her eyes are wet. Maybe not drunk, but tipsy, for sure.

Turi slides in behind her. Hana wishes he hadn’t, since now she’s caught in the middle, but she can hardly ask him to wait outside with the driver.

“Mom, what is it? I don’t wanna miss the ferry.”

“…I’m sorry about your father. At dinner. You know how he is.”

“It’s okay.” It definitely isn’t okay, but hopefully a pleasant lie will end this faster.

“I know you don’t mean that. I know you left us because of his stubbornness, and my…” She tears up, and Hana takes her hands to soothe her. Her palms tingle where their skin touches. “I’ll always stand by my husband, but I failed to protect you from him, and I’m sorry. When you left so quickly after dinner, I realized…”

“Mom…” says Turi. He reaches across Hana’s lap to touch Mom’s hands, as well.

“I realized I can’t let you go like that again. Your father won’t admit it, but he regrets it, too.”

“I’m still going.”

“I know, I know that. But at least this time, I get to say good-bye.”

Behind Hana, her brother lets out a soft, sad chuckle. Something about it makes her throat feel tight.

“C’mon, I’m not running away. I’ll be with the Air Nation. There’s no need for good-byes.”

“Can you be Air Nation and still an Akiyama?” asks Mom in a firmer tone.

“Mom. It’s not a cult. Gimme a little credit.” Hana pulls her hands back into her lap and glances out the window to check that the driver is still there. She relaxes a bit when she sees him standing right outside, his arms folded behind his back. She wonders idly if he’s ex-military. He has that air about him, the way he holds himself at ease yet seems ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. “Don’t be sad. You’ll see me again…”

Mom’s pulling something out of her purse. It’s dark enough in the cabin that Hana doesn’t recognize it until it’s in her hands.

“I’m a little old for this, aren’t I?” Hana holds a festive red envelope, fat with cash. She’s afraid to open it or ask how much is in it. It feels like a bribe.

“You’re my little girl. Take it for luck.”

“…What if they don’t let me keep it?”

“Are you so determined to join a group of people you think are going to steal from you?”

“They wouldn’t steal it. They’re just not… materialistic…” Her nervousness at taking this next step in her life is gathering in the pit of her stomach and curdling into dread. Or maybe it’s just indigestion. Either way, she feels sick.

Mom seems like she’s gathered herself. Her tears are wiped, and her eyes are clear. Suddenly, she doesn’t seem tipsy at all. “The truth is, that envelope is a just token of the years we’ve lost,” she says. “It’s a pittance compared to your earnings.”

“Earnings?”

“You’re a minority shareholder in Akiyama Enterprises. We set it up for you years ago.” Mom puts her hands over Hana’s this time, pressing her fingers more firmly around the envelope. “If you’ll just sign a few papers, I can set you up with an account for your dividends and access to your trust fund.”

“…So you’re saying I’m rich.”

“You’re very well-off,” says Mom, smiling like the spirit of generosity herself.

Hana hangs her head and laughs, bitterly. She let her guard down, and this is what it got her. Not a tearful heartfelt send-off, but a trick, a way for Mom to dig her claws in. If Hana stays for even one more day, she may never make it to Air Temple Island. Republic City would be her playground with that kind of money, and who wants give that up to go live like a monk?

“I— I don’t want it! I hafta go!” Hana leaps past Turi and out the door, scrambling to her feet and down the street in the direction of the ferry, heedless of the little traffic there is.

“Think about it, sweetheart! Please!” calls Mom after her.

The ferry platform is a little over a block away. Hana races there as fast as her legs and some clumsy airbending can carry her and ducks behind a low wall, waiting for the sound of an approaching car. For a minute or so, it’s just her and her pounding heart, and then heavy, hurried footsteps.

She hears her brother gasping for air and feels a fresh pang of guilt at leaving him behind. She just reacted, and her body moved like her life depended on it. No real harm done in a situation like this, but if they’d been fleeing a herd of lion-elephants, Turi would’ve been a smear in the dirt.

Hana peeks over the wall. “Turi…?”

“Oh—” He grins in the direction of her voice from where he’s doubled-over a few yards away, still trying to catch his breath. “You’re—GASP—you’re fast…”

She pushes herself to her feet and looks behind him for pursuers.

“Don’t… Don’t worry… It’s just me…” he says as he shuffles up to meet her. “Owww, my feet… Th-these aren’t… running shoes…”

“We’ve still got some time. Take it easy,” she says as she leads him to a nearby bench.

“A-alright… Okay… Yeah.” He collapses on the bench with his feet splayed out, hand on his stomach as it rises and falls.

Hana gives him a minute to collect himself before she asks, “Did you know about all that?” The question sounds more accusatory than she meant it to.

“The— The shares? No, no.” He takes another deep breath. “I thought she was just going to offer you an allowance, like mine.” Turi shakes his head like he’s clearing water out of his ears, then heaves himself back onto his feet and steps up to the ticket booth. “Here,” he says, turning back to her with a little green slip.

“Thanks,” she says. As she takes it, she realizes she’s still holding Mom’s red envelope, which she holds out to him.

He puts his hands up. “No, I couldn’t. I-it’s yours.”

“Hrmph.” Hana glances around before breaking the seal and counting the cash. 2,100 yuans, 100 for every year since she last saw her family. It’s not an obscene amount of money, but still. “What do I do with it?”

“If you ask me, hmm…” Turi scratches behind his ear. He’s still a little red-faced from the running, with livid dimples on either side of his nose where his glasses are usually perched. “If you really don’t want it, donate it to the temple, but a little nest egg never hurt anyone. I say keep it, just in case.”

“Just in case of what?”

“In case you have to make a getaway, I guess…”

“Okay, I’ll keep it,” she says, stuffing it in the deep chest pocket of her dungarees. “But no more getaways. I just got here.”

Turi smiles at her. His chubby cheeks make it too easy to see the little boy in him, that version of him she never got to know. Hana smiles back as sweetly as she can manage.

They walk across the platform together and down to the end of the dock. The wooden planks change color halfway down, like it was added onto recently. Hana glances back at the teeming Spirit Wilds, wondering how long it’ll be before they swallow this whole waterfront. Then they’re at the ferry, which seems just as quiet as the rest of the pier. Hana seems to be one of very few passengers for this leg of the trip, alongside a clique of whispering Acolytes.

“As promised,” he says, gesturing up the gangway.

From the ferry’s port deck, a dark-skinned man snarls through a megaphone, “ALL ABOARD! Last boat to Air Temple Island leaving in TWO MINUTES!”

Figuring it’s now or never, Hana hugs Turi, hopping up and hooking an arm around his neck to get a good grip. “I’m glad you’re my brother,” she mumbles into his jacket collar.

“I’m glad, too,” he says. He moves her arm from his neck with a wince. “Don’t be a stranger.”

“Write me, okay? I dunno how visits work, but I’ll ask when I—”

“ONE MINUTE!”

“I better—”

“Yeah. Go on.”

“Good-b— I mean, seeya later!”

“See you later, Snarf!”

Hana hustles up the gangway and whips around to stick out her tongue at him. They make stupid faces at each other as the ferry pulls away. Turi isn’t very good at it, but she appreciates the effort nonetheless. Soon, they’re too far apart to make out each other’s faces, stupid or not.

It took her all day, but she made it. Well, maybe not just yet, but close enough. Even now, the sun is setting. The last rays of sunlight glint off the airships docked at the mountain peaks and pave the surface of Yue Bay with a golden road.

Chapter Text

As soon as Akiya eases into the flap at the rear of Quyt’s tent, she realizes just how frazzled her senses are. She’s fresh off of a full shift in the ticket booth, quite the coveted assignment at the Kuanghuan Carnival. After months of mucking out animal pens and vending popcorn to sticky-fingered little kids, she hopes this means she’s passed some sort of test, proven her worth. Of course, she still has all her fingers and teeth, which does give her an advantage in dealing with the public. Townies have certain expectations, the Zaofu breed more than most. As nice as it was to spend a day sitting in a shady box, the noise and the lights still chip away at her composure after so long. Now the heavy blue fabric blocks out the cheerful chaos of the midway, and the deep stillness is like a cool cloth on her fevered brow. Slowly, her jaw unclenches.

Slightly muffled, she hears a man’s sullen voice from inside the murky tent. He sounds young, and annoying. “But why? It was a compliment!”

“She was havin’ a bad day. Didn’t feel much like smilin’, maybe.”

Akiya drops onto her hands and knees and crawls inside, right up to the tall scrying table where her girlfriend is serving her latest client. Neither of them notice as she slips under the tablecloth. On a hunch, she grips her metal fan in the dark.

“If I were a female, I’d love it if someone told me I was pretty. She acted like I insulted her.”

“Maybe you’d consider askin’ h—”

“She won’t talk to me!” Akiya hears a fist thump on the table right above her head. “You’re the fortuneteller! Tell me why!”

Quyt’s chair squeaks as she leans forward. “I, uh, see here that her heart belongs to another, but you’ll find love an’ have… three kid—”

Akiya thumps back with the butt of her fan, like a grumpy downstairs neighbor, and smirks when she hears the man yelp.

“What was— You waterbent the table!”

“Nuh-uh! It’s gotta be a... a spirit!”

“Yeah, ri—”

Akiya gives the table another thump.

“Go on, ask it a question. One thump fer yes, two fer no.”

Thump!

“Okay, ‘spirit’…” She can practically hear him making air quotes with his fingers. “What’s Ineem’s problem with me?”

Akiya doesn’t move. She could try tapping out an actual answer, but it’d be a waste of an hour. How many people actually know morse code, anyway?

“Well?!”

“S’a little open-ended…”

“Ugh!”

It’s tempting to smack this guy in the knee. She can see one of them—just barely—hovering inches from her face, but it’s probably not a great idea to give her girlfriend a reputation for abusing clients, no matter how insufferable they are.

“Does Ineem even like me?”

That’s an easy one. Thump thump!

“Yes-yes?”

“That’s a no.”

“Well, what’s a humbug table spirit know, anyway?!” Akiya almost doesn’t have enough time to get her head out of the way before a dark shape—this guy’s foot—leaps forward. She hugs the ground while he searches for something to kick. He only manages to smack a shin on a table leg. “Ow!”

“Hey! Watch it, buster!” warns Quyt.

The guy spits some insults that make Akiya’s face go red. Before she can stop herself, she’s tying his shoelaces together. He doesn’t seem to notice, too busy trying to flip the table. He must have the arm strength of a gnat because it barely shudders. Then she hears clanging metal and sloshing water, which can only mean he’s messing with Quyt’s scrying bowl. Big mistake.

Quyt slips down from her chair, and Akiya tugs the tablecloth out of the way just enough to watch her feet. From the way her stance shifts, Akiya knows the exact wind-up she’s performing, matched by the subtle sound of flowing water.

“You! Out!”

“I paid money for this! You can’t kick me out, you fil—”

Quyt steps toward the guy with a graceful jolt. Akiya hears the splash, followed by angry sputtering. A few drops of water trickle down the edge of the tablecloth and onto her fingers.

“Out!”

With the guy fully soaked in scrying water, Quyt lunges again and sends him flying out of the tent. Akiya crawls from her hiding place to watch him attempt to stand as fellow carnival-goers step around him, only to flop back over when his shoelaces trip him up. He lies panting in the dirt for a second before running a hand down the front of his muddy jacket.

“Ugh! What is this muck?” Left over from the scrying bowl, inky black oil mixes with the fresh mud. Ineem’s hopeless suitor flicks his hand, splattering his face and hair with it. “Augh!”

“Dunno!” chirps Quyt. “The ways o’ the spirits’re mysterious indeed!” With that, she grabs the THE SEER IS IN sign off of its hook and shuts the tent flap. As she secures its inner straps, Akiya sidles up to her, listening through the fabric with her fan at the ready. Quyt gives her powerful side-eye. “…What were—”

“Shh!”

Quyt grumbles and turns back to tidy up while Akiya lingers. If that jerk were planning to get back inside, he probably would’ve tried by now, but she isn’t satisfied until she hears his cursing fade into the murmur of the crowd. Finally, she relaxes and tucks her fan back in her belt. She turns around to see her girlfriend wiping up the rest of the oil with a stained rag.

“And I thought people in Zaofu were supposed to be classy,” she says, leaning against the table. The top of it comes up just under her boobs. “Good thing I showed up when I did.”

“Had it handled.”

“Yeah, I know you can defend yourself, but—”

“Wouldn’a needed to if ya hadn’t aggravated ‘im.”

“Mm.” Akiya looks away. “Still, glad I was here. You okay?”

“Fine ‘n’ dandy.” Quyt sniffs. “Not the first snake-bit townie t’call me names.”

“Oh. Uh. Does that happen… a lot…?”

One corner of Quyt’s mouth quirks up. “Only when I’m particularly lucky.” With all the oil mopped away, she folds the rag and packs her effects into a little satchel. All except the bowl, which she locks in a drawer hidden inside the tabletop.

Grinning, Akiya pulls two little envelopes out of her back pocket and slides them across the table. “I guess payday is pretty lucky, if you think about it.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

“So what’re ya thinkin’ fer supper?” asks Quyt into Akiya’s shoulder. Still in their work clothes, they’re snuggled up safely in their shared cot. Even without the security a door provides, it’s comfortable enough in the ladies’ bunkhouse. Shapes flicker like shadow puppets across the thin privacy curtain as other workers pass by, on their way to and from their own shifts. The evening is young, and there’s still plenty of money to be made, rubes to be had.

“Zaofu.”

“We’re better off savin’ up.”

“The monorail’s free while we’re in town. S’what I heard.”

“Hrmph…”

“C'mon! Zaofu has real food! Not just food; cuisine!” Akiya reaches up toward the ceiling with one hand, as if beseeching the heavens, and clenches her fist. “I swear, if I have one more deep-fried cabbage-on-a-stick, I'll barf myself to death.”

Quyt pushes herself up onto an elbow and smirks. “Fellas’d probably pay t’see that, actually.”

Akiya clenches her jaw to suppress a grimace. She doesn't do sideshows. Girls are always expected to get their tits out for extra cash, and hers have an exclusive engagement. Even shill work beats the sideshows. Before the ticket booth gig, her main job was tending the circus animals between sets. It was messy but straightforward, and none of the hog-monkeys ever asked her to take her shirt off.

“We can afford a night out. Look,” says Akiya, sitting up. She reaches into her jacket and pulls a tightly folded paper envelope from an inner pocket. As soon as it’s free, it pops open, sending loose change tumbling all over the cot. “Dangit!”

“Where’d ya get all that? Knock over a candy stand?”

Akiya snatches up a coin before it can roll off the edge and drops it back into the envelope. “Walk money, mostly. Not bad for a day’s work.”

“Mostly?”

“I found some of it on the ground.”

Quyt sits up and narrows her eyes.

“Hey, it’s not like I’m shortchanging anybody! If townies wanna leave a little cash lying around, it goes in my pocket, is all,” says Akiya. “Like a tip,” she adds with a shrug.

“Not so high ‘n’ mighty now, are ya?”

Akiya rolls her eyes. “I never said fortunetelling was wrong. I’d just feel weird lying to people like that.”

“You think that’s what I do all day?”

“You mean, what you do all day in the tent with the signs all over it proclaiming magical knowledge of the future?”

“That’s just some spooky showmanship. Gettin’ in their heads. Lettin’ their guards down.” Quyt cups her hands in front of her. “You think I’d get any customers if I walked up to ‘em holdin’ a bowl o’ oily water?”

“I dunno. I’d be curious.”

“Tell ya a secret,” says Quyt, leaning closer. Her big, turquoise eyes manage to gleam in the paltry light of their bunk. “The water’s the thing. The trick is gettin’ ‘em lookin’ at the shapes while I lookit them. You c’n tell a whole helluva lot about a fella if he doesn’t know he’s bein’ watched.” With a smirk, she leans back against the bunkhouse wall, and Akiya relishes the way her hair rustles like soft hay. “I tell ‘em what I see. Throw in a few educated guesses so they don’t feel cheated. They like it. They expect it.”

Akiya joins her girlfriend against the wall, shifting her weight carefully to avoid hurling loose coins off of the cot. “I seem to remember you telling that jerk-ass he was gonna have three kids. If that was an educated guess, then I’m a Dai Lee secret agent.”

Quyt giggles. “That was an outlier an’ shouldn’t be counted.”

“Hmmm…” Akiya twines her arm around Quyt’s, letting their palms tickle and fingers fiddle. She’s slipping into a rosy, contented daze when her stomach roars. A pitiful glance in Quyt’s direction makes her case better than any words.

“Okay, we c’n do Zaofu, but…” Quyt gestures at a dark shape hanging from a hook at the end of the bunk. “…I wanna see ya in that fancy frock I bought ya. May as well dress up a li’l bit.”

“I’ll agree to that, on the condition that you comb your hair.”

Quyt doesn’t say anything, but just grabs a tangled lock off her shoulder and splits it down the middle. It makes a violent ripping noise.

“Not all of it. Just, y’know, pick out the more obvious twigs and leaves.”

“Hrm. Deal.”

“Deal.” Akiya clasps Quyt’s hand and bounces it up and down. Not quite a handshake, but close enough.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Even taking a familiar shortcut to a side entrance, they’re fighting the flow of traffic on their way out. Akiya swallows the last bite of that rice ball she grabbed to tide her over and clutches at the spot on her hip where she always stashes her fan, but she only gets a fistful of air. Her bulky belt simply didn’t work for the ensemble, and without even a suitable purse to carry it in, she’s forced to go fanless for a few hours.

It’s mostly a comfort thing, she knows, but she could use a little comfort to make up for being stuck in this dress. Akiya suspects it’s something Quyt wanted to own but had no interest in actually wearing herself. It’s pretty enough—a cool green patterned with dark vines—but she feels slightly strangled by the high collar. And since she’s only ever worn it once before, the fabric is stiff and stubborn. It seems to fight her movements as she walks.

Quyt’s put in some effort, too. After freshening up her hopelessly tangled hair, she twisted it up in a loose bun and secured it with a forked hairpin. The back of her neck is noticeably paler than the rest of her, which Akiya finds oddly alluring.

“It’s the greatest show yer like ta see, folks!” shouts a barker beside one of the athletics tents. Akiya recognizes him out of the corner of her eye, a buck-toothed man in a battered porkpie hat, its brim stuffed with the rainbow of torn tickets that gave him the moniker Stubs. He’s one of Kuanghuan’s old hands, and the patter pours out of him like money down the drain. “Wrestlin’ galore! Stupendous feats o’ physical prowess! Hustle! Tussle! Civilized mayhem! Bring the kids!” Akiya and Quyt must look nice enough to not obviously be off-duty carnies because he starts trying to work them as they pass by. “And how would you lovely young ladies enjoy a demonstration of masculine might? S’all inside! Don’t be shy!” He taps the side of the tent with a cane, jiggling the muscular figures painted on the canvas. “It’s catch-as-catch-can! Catch a glimpse! Catch a beau! Just don’t catch a cold!”

The exit’s in sight now. Akiya’s determined to keep her head down, but Quyt cackles and turns back to him. “We’re all good, Stubs!” she calls. “Better luck next time!”

For a moment, Stubs drops the barker act. “Haint! Dottie!” Akiya rolls her eyes at the nicknames. “Don’t you look fine!”

“We’re headin’ up to Zaofu,” says Quyt. She gives Akiya’s arm a little tug. “Her idea!”

“Sure was!” says Akiya, keeping her voice bright. “Better get going!”

Stubs leans toward them and lowers his voice, giving it an edge of authority. “So’s ya know, Patch was lookin’ fer you two.”

“Did he say what for?” asks Akiya. She can take an educated guess.

He shrugs and flourishes his cane, narrowly missing the skull of a small, curious child. “Didn’t seem peeved. Not more’n usual, anyways.” Then he looks past them and perks up a little. “Ah, s’like callin’ a tigerdillo!”

If he’s spotted Patch, it’s already too late to get away. The man is quite short, about Akiya’s height, which means she and Quyt can’t just duck their heads to avoid his gaze. His frame is also wide but flat—like an elephant-rhino sat on him, and he didn’t bounce back all the way—which lets him swim through crowds like no one Akiya’s ever seen. Sure enough, she turns her head to see him heading right for them. He’s between them and the exit, so she pushes onward. May as well meet him on the way out and get this over with.

He corrals the two of them so expertly that Akiya doesn’t realize he’s even doing it until they’re huddled with him under the eaves of a soba stand. Firmly, he hooks his thumbs into the pockets of the apron drooping out of his respectable corduroy vest. Unlike Stubs, he didn’t get his nickname for his clothes. No, patching things up is his whole job. “Haint. Dottie,” he says. Akiya sighs, and he corrects himself, “Akiya.”

“Patch…?” asks Quyt.

“A young man came to me about an hour ago with beef about his mistreatment at a certain fortunetelling tent.”

“The only fortunetelling tent,” says Akiya.

His expression darkens. “Don’t get smart.” Then he studies their faces, and his shoulders relax. “Madame Chong-gu’s using that spot tonight. Do you think it’s fair for her to risk catching hell in your stead?”

“No, sir,” mumbles Quyt, her eyes cast downward.

Akiya’s face burns, suddenly and fiercely. “It… It was me. I messed up the act.” She wrinkles her nose, remembering the things that jerk said. “He was… nasty.”

“But I drenched him an’ tossed him out,” says Quyt. “Is he…?” She turns her head to watch the shuffling crowds.

“I smoothed it over,” says Patch. “A ducat for a girly show, and he was all smiles.”

Akiya snorts, imagining the guy leering at a sideshow, still covered in muck. Maybe they hosed him off, too.

“You aren’t in trouble.” Patch claps a meaty hand on each of their shoulders. “But you girls are still green, and I need you to understand… The Matriarch gives us a warm welcome every year, but that’s all the heat we want. As soon as we get a bad reputation, we’re out, and another company gets our spot. I don’t want that. You don’t want that.”

“No heat, sir,” says Quyt with a little smile.

“Yeah, we’ll be cool as cucumber-quats. No worries.”

Patch lets his hand slide off Quyt’s shoulder but grips Akiya’s just firmly enough to remind her how much stronger he is than her, despite their similar height. The look he gives her is gentle, almost paternal, which makes her squirm more than his grip. “I know you two can look after yourselves, but… you’ve got to be careful with these townies. And I don’t mean being nice to them. Keep your head on a swivel.”

Akiya nods. “I know. I will.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

“Truly, Zaofu’s splendor can’t be overstated,” says the tour guide. As he spreads his arms, a breeze flutters his loose green sleeves. “Simply look to the east, and you’ll understand why our Matriarch chose this place to found our city.” He gestures with his left hand, and Akiya turns to gawk with the rest of the group. “Immaculate snowy peaks, abundant rivers, fertile black soil, and most importantly, an auspicious geometric alignment for the flow of creativity and innovation. We’ve only just begun to realize our potential.”

Without really intending to, Akiya wanders away from the tour group to the eastern side of the observation deck. Leaning against the railing, she pokes her face past the metal bars and lets the sight wash over her. With the wind blocking out the guide’s voice, she can almost imagine she’s floating…

The four platforms laid out before her—not counting the one she’s currently on—look like they were plucked straight out of Shambala, with their elegant, gleaming spires. It’s like no other city she’s ever seen. The sunset glinting orange off of all that metal enhances the otherworldly effect. Still, it’s not a perfect illusion. At the base of two platforms are construction sites that seem to be in the process of working gigantic slabs of metal. Despite the propaganda, Zaofu’s very much a work in progress.

Akiya feels Quyt lean next to her, and the sounds of shuffling feet tell her the guide must have finished up.

“S’purdy, as cities go,” says Quyt.

Akiya leans back from the railing. “Yeah… Weird layout, though.”

“S’poseda be fer protection, once they get all the petal domes on.”

Akiya blinks. “Petal domes?”

“Yeah-huh. See?” Quyt points at one of the construction sites Akiya was just puzzling over. “Pure platinum. They’re all gonna get ‘em in the next year, like the ones on the Matriarch’s place.”

“Wait, how do you know that?”

Quyt grins and shakes her head. “I listened to the tour guide, dummy.”

“Pfft!” Akiya crosses her arms and strolls down the deck’s eastern side, stopping when she spots an informational plaque with diagrams depicting whole sections of the city surrounded by giant lotus petals. “Well, damn.”

“Toldja.”

“Wh— I believed you!”

“Sure.”

“Who do they need protecting from, though? Are there bandits around here?” Even if there are, she can’t imagine how they’d be any kind of threat, unless they came in airships.

Quyt shrugs. “Earth Queen?”

“C’mon, that’s ridiculous.”

“If ya say so.” Quyt shrugs again. “Hasn’t stopped her from tryna occupy Foggy Swamp. Needs everybody under her thumb, bless her heart.” She spits the last few words like venom.

“Oh. Yeah. I guess you’re right…” While Quyt steps up onto an elevated set of coin-operated binoculars, Akiya continues reading all the little plaques. It’s probably information the guide already covered, but she’s just slightly too embarrassed to quiz her girlfriend about it. “Zijia… Linlang… Weidaji… Huh.”

“What?” asks Quyt, peering through the binoculars. Then there’s a little metallic clunk, and she jerks her face away from it. “Thassit? S’a bigger ripoff than the ringtoss…”

“What were you lookin’ at?”

Quyt wrinkles her nose and flicks the binoculars with her middle finger. “Matriarch’s place.”

Akiya refers back to a plaque. “That’d be… Beifong Sang. The northern brow.”

“It’s east, not north.”

Akiya sighs. “That’s just what the name ‘Beifong’ means.” She taps a plaque with a miniature map of all the platforms and their names. “I think these are all chakras. We’re on Zijia right now, which would be the water chakra. The highest and lowest ones are missing, though.”

“No butt chakra?” says Quyt, before hopping down.

“Hah! No!” Akiya holds out her hand. “Gimme a coin. I wanna see.”

Quyt pulls one out of the money pouch hidden under her tunic and hands it over. “Gets ya ‘bout ten seconds.”

Akiya steps up onto a little ledge built into the binocular post and puts her face to the viewport before dropping the coin in. A turn of the crank, and a blind flips out of the way. “Whoa!” The Matriarch’s palace—because that’s the only word for it—appears in all its glory. Nestled in enormous segmented petals, it glows with the sunset, too, backed by snowy mountains remade in gold and cinnabar. Pinpricks of electric light flicker on as she watches, pushing back the approaching night and highlighting every column and waterfall and sculpted hillside. Another glimpse of Shambala.

It’s disorienting viewing it this way, magnified to perfectly fill her field of vision. It makes the Beifong estate look like the world’s most exquisite doll house, rendered more finely by distance than it could ever be in miniature. Something about that idea unsettles her. What are that palace and the rest of Zaofu but extensions of the Matriarch’s will? In some way, wouldn’t that mean Akiya’s standing inside another of her doll houses? But Akiya’s no doll. She could never live here in this perfect place, never wear those same green robes and metal jewelry. She’s her own person. She’s a mess, and proud of it. She’s—

Clunk. Show’s over.

The lights have come on around the observation deck, too, by the time Akiya backs off of the binoculars. She blinks stupidly for a few seconds as her eyes adjust.

“Got plenty more o’ yer walk money, if yer still feelin’ a looky-loo.”

“Hrm.” From her perch, Akiya peers over Quyt’s head and across the deck in search of more binocular stands, but her eyes snag on a trio of middle-aged women a few feet behind her girlfriend. Judging by their clothes, two of them are out-of-towners, one of whom is pointing at Quyt and whispering to her friends in a way that’s probably meant to be discrete. The one in Zaofu robes notices Akiya’s stare and feebly slaps the back of her friend’s hand.

Quyt must see something in her expression, too, because she starts to turn around. Akiya’s quick on her feet, hopping down and darting over to block her view.

“Let’s just get out of here,” hisses Akiya as she grabs Quyt’s wrist. “I just remembered I don’t like heights.”

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

Their next stop is the promenade. It fascinated them from above, but on the ground, it dazzles. In lieu of natural waterways, it features a number of large fountains. No doubt it’s beautiful in the daytime, but the Silver City sings with electricity. The blazing light puts the carnival’s carbide lanterns to shame.

They pass a shallow square pool where a cranefish statue at each corner spits water onto a featureless, mirror-like sphere at its center. Akiya hears her girlfriend sigh.

“Guess this really is the water chakra,” she says. “Purdy nice.”

Akiya nods and tugs at her collar. This discomfort doesn’t seem worth it anymore. Strolling through Zaofu’s swanky downtown, her nicest dress feels absurd and frumpy now, like she sewed a bow on a potato sack and wore it to the royal ball. And the more absurd she feels, the more her neck itches.

Her feet carry her to a needlessly elegant souvenir kiosk, where she plucks a postcard from the display rack. Its design features Zaofu’s downtown skyline in dark green silhouette against ivory mountains, and the thick, luxurious paper bends pleasingly in her hands. She fishes out a handful of pocket change and slides it across the counter to the long-nosed woman working the kiosk. With an entrepreneurial smile, the woman flicks the coins into the cash register and hands a pen to Akiya, who immediately hunches over the counter and starts scribbling.

“Who’re ya writin’ to?” asks Quyt as she peers around Akiya’s shoulder.

Akiya jerks the postcard away and slides further down the counter. “Nobody important. Don’t— Don’t worry about it. I’ll just be a sec.” She jots down an acknowledgment of her continued existence on the mortal plane along with vague well wishes, barely enough to justify paying for postage, and hands the postcard and pen back to the long-nosed woman. The postcard goes in a mail slot behind her. Her duty done, Akiya turns back to her girlfriend to see her staring out at the promenade, arms folded.

“Uh. Done. Sorry.”

Quyt sniffs. “So… what’s fer supper?”

“Hm.” Akiya scans the relatively modest buildings—as in, they top out at eight stories instead of 80—and wonders the same thing. This is apparently downtown’s main entertainment district. All around them, she can see what look like bars, cafés, dance halls, and theaters, plus an art gallery and a concert hall. There’s even a comedy club, judging by a sign advertising Laugh Your Teeth Out Lounge. No great dining prospects, though. “Beats me! But we’re bound to find something if we keep walking.”

With a quiet little chuckle, Quyt looks back at her and reaches out to take her hand. “M’glad we came.”

“Oh. Heh.” The cool touch of Quyt’s palm against hers soothes Akiya’s itchy neck, or at least make it seem less important. “I’m glad that you’re glad. I wasn’t so sure, but…”

“’Bout what?”

“Just that, y’know, this was actually a good idea. I think I liked Zaofu more from a distance, if that makes sense. Feels like I’m a tourist in somebody’s vanity project.” They approach another fountain, this one featuring a larger-than-life statue of a woman who could only be the Matriarch rising out of a lotus flower basin. Her arms are outstretched to either side and her head up-tilted to give the impression she’s ascending to the heavens, or something equally grandiose. Water cascades over her arms and down her sides, creating an impressively convincing illusion of a long, flowing robe with nothing beneath it.

Akiya snorts into her hand and nods in the fountain’s direction. “I mean, like this, for example. Who the hell does this?”

“Well, I think it’s sexy.”

“She is very wet. I’ll give ya that.”

“Aki! No!”

Akiya glances at her girlfriend’s expression, a grimace twitching into a reluctant grin, and feels her face flush hard enough to spill down her neck. Instead of saying something—anything—to redirect, she grabs Quyt’s hand and makes a run for it, far away from the Matriarch’s silly fountain and around a corner. They stop, finally, to lean against a wall, a pair of giggling messes.

They’ve made it to the edge of the promenade, notices Akiya as she composes herself. They’ve left the fountains behind, and there are regular stores among the entertainment venues. She spots some cart vendors selling street food—next to a public seating area, even—but she didn’t haul her ass up to Zaofu to fill up on fish cakes and roasted sweet potatoes.

Hand-in-hand, they stroll toward the sound of music.

“What was that, huh?” asks Quyt.

“…I didn’t want people to stare.”

“Aw, let ‘em.” She nudges Akiya’s shoulder with her own. “Didja think a buncha guards were gonna snatch us, or somethin’?”

“Call me crazy, but I don’t like strangers staring at me. Usually means something bad’s about to happen.” She takes a few steps before she realizes Quyt’s let go of her hand. “Oh, don’t be like that…”

“Aki.”

“What?” She turns to see her girlfriend standing a few feet away, looking at the ground. It’s strange, weren’t they following the music? It’s gone quiet now, except for the murmuring crowds. “Is someth—” From speakers hidden in nearby greenery, horns blares. Beneath Akiya’s feet, lights flash, bright as the sun to eyes adjusted to the night. Then, blind and deaf, she feels a jet of water shoot up the back of her skirt. “Waugh! Aa—” She stumbles backward and gets a mouthful. It tastes like metal. Probably smart not to swallow it. “Ptuh!”

It’s another fountain! She walked right into another damn fountain, this one built into the ground instead of statues and basins. All around her, jets of water and flashes of light synchronize to the music they followed to this spot. She moves on instinct, retreating to the fountain’s center as the action happens on the periphery. The music swells, sending water and light spiraling inward. Akiya braces for impact.

The waters part like a beaded curtain, and Quyt emerges, arms outstretched. They come together just in time to redirect the spray in a bubble around them, but it’s too late.

“I’m already soaked,” says Akiya, looking down at her dripping dress. It’s a good thing she didn’t bother with hair or make-up, not that she had any make-up to wear even if she wanted to.

Quyt grins. “I c’n work with that.” Grasping both of Akiya’s hands, she leans back and swings them around, assisted by an invisible tug on Akiya’s wet clothes. “Alley-oop?”

“What?! Here?!”

“Yep!” As the music quickens, Quyt spins them faster, bending the redirected water jets into a spiral. “One, two… Alley—”

On the “oop”, Akiya’s jerked into the air by the water in her clothes. She’s helpless as her girlfriend spins her this way and that and glides her over top of the jets, like they’re carrying her weight. Despite her lack of control, it feels wonderful, freeing. She plays along, spreading her arms and twisting her body in an imitation of flight. A few gasps and handclaps remind her that they have an audience. Hopefully she’s elevated enough that none of them can see up her skirt.

Akiya laughs as Quyt swing her upright. At the song’s climax, she tosses her into the air, and Akiya feels her let go. She hovers for just a moment longer than gravity should allow, which provides her first unobstructed view of the admirers they’ve attracted. Their faces and robes blur into a glittering ring. Then she falls, barely remembering to hold her skirt down to keep this from turning into a peep show. Quyt catches and sweeps her around the fountain’s edge, where Akiya skips over the water as the music fades, the fountain’s jets lowering with it. It almost feels wrong when it’s over and she’s standing on her own two feet again, like the weight of her body is an unfair burden.

That oppressive heaviness lifts somewhat as Quyt twirls her hands and arms around each other, drawing all the water out of their hair and clothes and reeling it up like a bolt of silk. She tosses that ring of water into the air, and Akiya has just enough time to strike a dramatic pose to mirror her girlfriend’s before Quyt slams it back down, dissolving it into a fine mist.

What was a smattering of applause becomes a storm, with a few whistles thrown in. They can leave the carnival any time they want, but there’s no escaping the ballyhoo.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

They end up at a restaurant called Peak and Sea, mainly because it was the first place that actually shared its prices when asked. Most places in Zaofu don’t advertise that sort of thing, apparently, like the mystery of the final bill is all part of the fun. As with everything, the world of fine dining has its own set of expectations, including those unspoken rules Akiya can always sense but never decipher in time.

Akiya smiles and tries to be subtle about tugging at her collar as their waiter retrieves their second-course plates.

“Thanks a bunch,” says Quyt, bobbing her head in the young man’s direction.

“Of course.” He smiles thinly and leans over the plates in his hands in the closest thing to a bow he can manage in the cramped space. The restaurant’s not that busy, but their section of the dining room is arranged to fold in as many customers as possible, like a cheap thrill ride.

As soon as their waiter retreats, Quyt’s face drops. “That was weird.”

“Which part?”

Quyt smacks her tongue in her mouth. “Cheese ‘n’ baked rice? Who’n the hell bakes rice?”

“Zaofuans do, I guess.” Akiya tilts her head. “Zaofuites? Zaofuese?”

“An’ what the hell is this?” asks Quyt, holding up a piece of silverware with bits of cheesy rice stuck to it.

“It’s called a fork.”

Quyt shrugs and gulps chrysanthemum tea from a four-sided aluminum goblet. Akiya sips hers, too, mouth puckering against the metal. Everything in this damn city is metal, she thinks. They’d eat metal if they could. Something about it makes her skin crawl, like all the beautiful metal furniture and fixtures are scraping against each other ever-so-slightly. Like every edge is a blade waiting to cut her if she makes a single careless move. Like the city itself is judging her. It makes her miss Omashu. Sure, Omashu’s nearly as lousy with earthbenders as Zaofu seems to be, but at least it feels organic. It’s messy and flawed in the way old cities are, a way she understands. Maybe they should’ve stayed, waited to collect their money. She wonders how Tao’s been doing in the year since they met him…

“Tea’s good, anyhow,” says Quyt. “Nice ‘n’ sweet.” She lifts her arm to wipe her mouth on a sleeve before stopping herself and dabbing with a napkin instead.

Akiya grins and leans forward, intending to take her girlfriend’s hand, but the sensation of her collar snugging around the front of her throat provokes something in her. With a snarl, she attacks the tiny buttons on her collar, yanking it open and folding it down in a style unbecoming of a lady. The fresh air on her skin is an instant relief. Suddenly, Zaofu feels a little friendlier. She sighs and slides down in her chair.

Quyt blinks at her and bends a few drops of Akiya’s drink her way with the flick of a finger. After a sniff, she pops it in her mouth. “Hrm.”

“There’s no alcohol in mine, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Akiya sits back up and sips more of her tea, finally able to savor the honey and cooling herbs their waiter described so glowingly. “This stupid dress was trying to strangle me, is all.”

“Stupid?”

Akiya freezes mid-sip. “Uh. I don’t mean it like… It’s not really my style. Pretty, though.”

“Oh…”

“Sorry. I mean, it’s fine.” She bites her lip. “It’s the collar, mostly,” she lies.

The click-clack of their waiter’s heels heralds the arrival of the main course. The silver platter he sets down takes up most of the table. On a bed of rock salt garnished with lemon wedges sit a dozen half-shell oysters, each one slathered in a rich green sauce. Mostly puréed kale, according to the menu.

“Oysters Beifong,” says their waiter.

Quyt perks up. “Oh! Northern oysters!”

Their waiter lean-bows again in her direction and grins indulgently. “Actually, it refers to the Beifong family. These oysters were sourced from the Zaofu Delta—”

“I, uh. I know. It was—”

“—Where the pure mountain streams mingle with the sea, which gives these oysters a most unique flavor.”

“It was a joke.”

He raises his eyebrows and nods, grin unwavering. “Ah. Yes. Excellent.” Straightening up, he glances back at Akiya. “Do you ladies require anything else?”

“More tea?” Akiya waggles the goblet she’s been holding in front of her face to hide her amusement.

“Right away, miss.” And he’s off again to fetch a pitcher.

As Akiya’s eyes follow the figure of their retreating waiter, she can’t help but notice the way Quyt’s staring into the side of her own goblet, turned just enough to catch Akiya’s reflection.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

“Dunno how you c’n stomach so much dairy,” says Quyt as they stroll back through downtown, straight for the set of fancy service elevators that serve as the city gates.

Akiya shrugs and scrapes the last of the avocado ice cream from the little lotus-shaped wafer cup. She pops it in her mouth along with the spoon and chews. The cup will be gone in a few bites. Local street vendors serve ice cream with edible utensils, and it’s a good thing, too. Trash cans are few and far between in Zaofu.

“You ate most of the oysters Beifong,” she says after swallowing.

“Only ‘cuz ya said it was like tryna eat giant boogers.”

“I don’t remember putting it like that.” Akiya shoves the last piece of dessert in her mouth and wipes her hands on her skirt. When she does, Quyt seems to startle and freeze in place, like she’s spotted a rat-viper. Akiya turns on her heel to see her girlfriend with her head hung, her long bangs hiding her eyes.

“Ya really don’t like the dress?” asks Quyt in a small, wounded voice.

“I like that you like it.”

“You keep sayin’ that…”

“I wore it for you.” Akiya puts her hands on Quyt’s shoulders and rests her forehead against her hair. “Because I love you. Don’t worry about the rest.”

“…An’ I came out here fer you.” Quyt sweeps her bangs out of her eyes and looks up at Akiya, brushing noses as she tilts her head back. Her little hands slip between Akiya’s arms to clasp her face. This is no gentle caress, but a firm grip. Firm and cold. But it’s not the chill of Quyt’s fingers that gives her goosebumps. Quyt’s searching her eyes for some unspoken thing and fogging her senses with her breath, smelling of dinner and girl. “Ya jus’ seemed all… outta sorts since we got here. Was it somethin’ I…?”

“No, no.” Akiya cups her hands over Quyt’s, willing warmth into them. “It’s me. And this place. It’s beautiful, but it reminds me that I’m…” She rubs a thumb along one of Quyt’s pinkies. “It wasn’t made for people like me. Us.”

“It could be.”

Akiya blinks. “What? You wanna stay here? Settle down?”

Quyt grins and takes Akiya’s hands in hers, still pressed against her cheeks. “I could be happy here, with you.”

“What about Republic City?”

Quyt’s grin twists into a smirk. “Betcha they don’t have any sexy fountains.”

“Wow, that really sold you, huh?”

“Heh.” She gives her head a gentle shake, city lights catching in her eyes. “Maybe we could jus’ stay up here ‘n’ watch the fireworks?”

“I guess it is almost time…” Involuntarily, Akiya’s attention flicks in the direction of some passersby, feeling the weight of their amused interest. Their curious eyes turn away from hers, except for the leer of a young man dressed in his Metal Clan finest, a silver smile around his neck. He’s out of sight in a moment, but that glimpse is enough to make Akiya shudder away from her girlfriend and grasp, again, at the air next to her hip where her fan should be. “I… I wanna go home. Please.”

“…’Kay.”

As they walk hand-in-hand to stand in line for the elevators, Akiya searches for the words to explain this urge to get away, this creeping dread and subtle menace. But it’s an animal feeling, without words of its own. If she had the time, she could cobble a sentence together, but the line is moving briskly. They’ll be out of this house of mirrors soon, back on friendly soil. The thought calms the goosebumps along her arms and shoulders. Sensing her agitation, Quyt bends the blood in her hand just the tiniest bit, like a subtle squeeze to let her know she’s still here.

They step into the elevator car, which is about as utilitarian as a structure gets in Zaofu, behind a couple of laughing families, an elderly man, and someone Akiya’s sure must be the leering guy, who’s standing next to the front doors with a couple of buddies in the same green-and-silver uniform. The three of them are near enough to the elevator girl that she’s leaning away but refusing to acknowledge them otherwise.

Akiya tilts her head back just enough to peer into the ceiling’s polished surface, giving her an unobstructed view of him. It reassures her just a little to be able to keep an eye on him this way, with him none the wiser. Then the rear doors shut, and the car descends.

“Hmm.” Quyt bumps her shoulder into Akiya’s. “I have been wonderin’ ‘bout the dirt,” she says in a voice louder than Akiya would prefer.

“What dirt?”

“S’what I mean. Every other city we’ve been to had some dirt or dust. Zaofu’s clean as a needle.”

“See? You wouldn’t wanna live here either.”

Quyt sputters. “What’s that s’posed ta—” Then she closes her eyes and takes a short, sharp breath. “No. Not here.”

The tone of her girlfriend’s voice makes Akiya tear her eyes away from her spy mirror. “Not what here?”

Quyt bends the blood in Akiya’s hand again, but it’s not reassuring this time. Pins and needles climb up her arm until she yanks it away to rub some life back into it.

There’s a slow whooshing sensation and a gentle clunk as they reach the ground. The front doors open, and the elevator girl steps aside—away from the gang of three—and chirps, “As you leave Zaofu, please remember that the Matriarch has extended the curfew until 2 AM, giving you six extra hours to enjoy the carnival!”

As if Akiya needed another reason to quit this place. A curfew? No thanks!

She shuffles out of the elevator as quickly as physics and politeness allow, warmth fluttering up her legs and into her soul the moment her feet touch earth. She pauses to savor the moment, but then Quyt’s grabbing her sleeve and pulling her down the road. Akiya doesn’t resist, just smiling at the rows of wheat as they pass through the stretch of farmland between the city and the fairgrounds. The spikes grow thick and haughty, still reared up to their full height, and even in the lanterns’ amber glow, they’re green as grass. They’ll have a fine harvest here in a couple of weeks, but the carnival will be long gone by then, of course.

“I c’n read, y’know,” grumbles Quyt.

“Weird brag, but okay.”

Quyt stops in her tracks. Akiya’s slightly too slow to react and feels a few stitches pop in the shoulder seam of her dress as Quyt holds on.

“It said ‘Mom ‘n’ Dad’.”

“Huh? What did?”

“Yer postcard. You said it wudn’t anybody important, but I saw. Didja think I wouldn’t know any better?”

“They’re… They’re not important, though.”

“Stars ‘n’ farts, Aki! They’re yer kin!”

“So?! What do you even care?!”

“I care that you’d keep it from me an’ lie to my face about it!” Quyt releases Akiya’s sleeve and crosses her arms. “An’ ya didn’t defend me at supper, neither. Ya laughed. I saw ya!”

“Wh— Defend you? From what?”

“You think yer better’n me just ‘cuz I’m from the sticks, but who made mosta the money we’ve been spendin’ tonight, huh? Me!”

Akiya staggers backward, more shocked by her girlfriend’s miserable expression than her words. “Whoa, what?! I do not think that! You know I think you’re—”

“A raggedy-ass mud-bun?! You c’n just say it, ‘steada pokin’ fun!”

“Urgh!” Suddenly horribly aware of the spectacle they’ve made of themselves yet again, Akiya grabs Quyt’s arm and drags her off the main road, down a side path between wheat fields.

“Leggo’a me!” Quyt flails hard enough she almost smacks Akiya, who releases her gladly.

“Stop turning us into a sideshow!” hisses Akiya.

“Well, I’m jus’ so sorry ya gotta be seen in public with yer bumpkin girlfriend!”

“I know you know that’s not what I me—”

“Is there a problem here, ladies?”

Like she always does when she’s pissed, Akiya let her sense of the world shrink down to a pinprick, just her and Quyt, so she struggles with the urge to lash out at this intruder. It’s probably just a city guard who wandered over to investigate the shouting. Akiya glances over her shoulder, but until her eyes adjust to the dim light, she can’t see much, just that there are three of them. She shakes her head, in an effort to clear her thoughts as much as to tell these guys to back off. There was something else worrying her—wasn’t there?—before the squabbling started.

Quyt answers before Akiya can gather her wits. “No, sirs. We’re jus’ peachy.”

“Sirs!” squawks one of the figures, scrawny even through his green robes. “Oh, I like that!”

“A-hyuk! Ya’ll ain’t from ‘round deese parts, are ya?” says another, taller one, in a hateful caricature of Quyt’s natural drawl.

Not guards. Definitely not.

“Who’re—”

The third one holds out his arms in front of his buddies, a commanding gesture. “Guys. Don’t be crude. We’re here to help, remember?” His voice is smooth and confident, the same one that first greeted them. Akiya feels her hackles rise as she squints into his face—too long to be handsome, but groomed well enough to fake it—and spots that leer, with a smirk to match. It widens as he says, “Let’s show them what we do with dirt in Zaofu.”

Akiya’s nerves are already blazing when the tall one lunges for her. On instinct, she lunges right back, grabs two fistfuls of green robe, and kicks out a leg. It’s not a clean toss. The damn dress gets in her way, and the last-second realization that she doesn’t want to accidentally clobber her girlfriend with this jerk’s body makes her hesitate on the follow-through. He grabs her skirt on the way down, and the loud ripping noise nearly makes her jump out of her skin. After shaking him off, he’s vulnerable just long enough for her to whip around and kick him in the side of the head, hard enough that it hurts her foot. He stops moving after that, which she doesn’t let herself think about too much.

“Hands off!” cries Quyt as the scrawny one tries to grapple her.

“Jian! This chick is weird!” the scrawny guy calls out. Quyt’s writhing like a snake while he tries to hook his arm around her skinny shoulders. “Her skin’s all—NGAH!” He yelps and jerks his hand away from her wrist, and Akiya knows exactly how that must have felt. Those pin and needles, a pain-edged numbness like brushing against a cranky jellynemone. It may not be a full moon, but a bloodbender is never helpless.

“Just use metal, moron,” says that confident voice from behind Akiya. And just like that, metal clamps around her right wrist, as cold and smooth as Jian himself.

“Oh yeah!” The scrawny one throws Quyt to the ground and whips off his metal neckband. She scrambles out of the way as he tries to grab her with it, bumping into the tall one’s crumpled body, which groans weakly.

Akiya struggles against Jian’s efforts to pull her left arm behind her back to meet her right one. If they let these guys cuff them, they’re though. They’ll kill them, or worse.

Jian snickers in Akiya’s ear as they watch Quyt dodge another attempt and then another before bending a bundle of wheat at the scrawny one’s face. Akiya tastes ice cream and bile at the back of her throat. “You can take the bitch out of the swamp, but not the swamp out of the bitch, right?” says Jian, his voice low and disturbingly pleasant.

Akiya sees red. “Screw you, asshole!” she snarls, struggling harder even as she feels the metal bite into the skin of her wrist.

“Calm your tits, carny gi—”

BWAAAAHH-RRLLLLLL-BUM-BUM-BUM-BUM-BWAAAAHHHHH-BADAH.

All of them—assailants and victims alike—startle and turn to stare at the carnival lights as horns wail and drums boom, rolling through the valley like thunder. The announcer’s voice that follows is a cricket chirp in comparison, too distant and garbled for Akiya to make out any words, but she doesn’t have to. She knows this preamble by heart.

It’s showtime.

Hissssssssssss. Fweeeeeeee. BOOM.

They’re launching the fireworks from the mountainside, even farther away than the carnival, but they’re still loud enough to rattle her bones and bright enough to burn new constellations behind her eyes. And if she’s disoriented…

“Peach!” shouts Akiya between bursts. “Grab the peach!”

Without stopping to acknowledge the command, Quyt obeys, just the way Akiya showed her months ago. In a few sweeping movements, she drops to one knee in front of her confused attacker, blocks his arm as he makes another foolish grab for her, thrusts her hand between his legs, and makes a fist. He lets out an unearthly shriek and drops to the ground next to his buddy, who’s beginning to stir.

For her part, Akiya manages to wrestle her left arm out of Jian’s grip and elbow him in the ribs as hard as she can, relishing the explosion above them when it connects. He doubles over in surprise and pain, and the metal binding her wrist loosens enough for her to slip out of it. Before he can recover, she jabs a knuckle into the base of his unprotected throat, in the soft hollow where his collar bones meet. He sputters and slumps forward, not quite falling but seeming to forget that she’s there, which is all she really needs.

Akiya feels that jellynemone sting of Quyt’s terror when she grabs her hand, but it’s a familiar sting, a bit of comfort in the chaos. Instead of repelling her, it welds them together. They hold on tight, and they run.

Together, they dive into the wall of green and dash straight for the safety of the carnival. Endless waves of wheat part before them, bending to Quyt’s will. The moans of their injured attackers are muffled quickly and then lost in the fireworks’ din. Above them, sparks chatter, and rockets scream. Flashes of red and green and blue and white paint the fields in roiling colors, like an aurora dragged out of the sky and pinned to the earth for Zaofu’s viewing pleasure.

Akiya has to remind herself to keep her eyes down, instead of letting the pretty lights ruin her night vision. She’s just thinking that the carnival doesn’t seem any closer than it did when they made their escape, like a scene in a bad dream, when she hears something whiz past them. The danger doesn’t register at first, not until she sees a spike of wheat tumble out of the air and land by her foot, cleanly decapitated. She tackles Quyt to the ground.

“Ak—”

Akiya covers Quyt’s mouth and points up. Sure enough, something whizzes by a few moments later, right above them this time. It’s moving too fast for Akiya to be absolutely sure, but it looks like a curved metal blade, spinning over the fields this way and that like a spirit-possessed scythe from an old folktale. It gleams like a fancy neckband, like Zaofu itself.

Quyt squirms her face from under Akiya’s hand and whispers, “Yer bleedin’.”

“Huh?” Akiya finally notices the blood oozing down the arm she’s still holding up for some reason. As she lowers it, she has a moment to mourn the dark ruin of her sleeve before her vision swims and the world tilts.

Quyt pinches Akiya’s cheek, making sure to put an extra sting into it.

“Sss!” Akiya clasps the side of her face, more alert than she’s been all day. Alert enough to notice that the whizzing blade of death isn’t searching for them anymore, which worries her.

“Lemme see it. Yer arm.”

“Are you okay?”

“Am I…?” Quyt smirks and shakes her head. “Lemme see.”

Akiya pulls her arm to her chest, almost possessively. “No, no. You gotta—”

“Give it up, carny bitches!” rasps a voice Akiya doesn’t immediately recognize. Their surroundings and the fireworks muffle it enough that she can’t tell how far away it is, but that rhythmic rustling must mean they’ve been followed into the wheat. “I’ll mow this whole—nngh—field down if I have to!”

“Jian? Wha’ happen?” asks another, slurred voice. It’s deeper, so it must be the tall one, whatever his name is. “Where’s Huei?”

“Crying for his mommy,” croaks Jian through his damaged throat. “Now shut—hhk—up.”

“Was just askin’…”

Akiya leans in close, pressing her bloody arm between their shivering bodies, and just barely whispers in Quyt’s ear, “Can you hide us?”

Quyt nods.

Akiya rolls off of her girlfriend and concentrates on wrapping the tatters of her sleeve around her wound. They don’t do a terrific job. To improvise functional bandages, she’d have to rip them up, but the noise would definitely give them away. Thankfully, the bleeding seems to be slowing, which means it’s a superficial cut, but it’s starting to hurt now that she’s putting pressure on it. It’d probably hurt a lot more if she weren’t still in fight-or-flight mode. There’s that silver lining!

“Really wish I had my fan right now,” hisses Akiya through gritted teeth.

Quyt shakes her head, her eyes closed in concentration and fingers stabbed into the dirt. “No, ya don’t.”

“Oh. Right. Metal.”

Right on cue, the whizzing starts up again, from two different directions. They both seem pretty far off the mark, but it’s hard to tell. Akiya and Quyt are still a pair of sitting turtle-ducks, anyway, and they’ll be found for sure if they don’t get moving soon.

“Any time now would be good,” whispers Akiya to her girlfriend, who just looks like she’s taking an angry nap.

“Shush!”

“Jian! I heard something!”

“Where?” asks Jian, much too close for comfort.

Quyt takes a long, deep breath and lets it out nice and slow, lifting her arms as she does. The earth breathes with her. The fertile black soil beneath them releases its moisture, first as smoky tendrils, then a billowing mist. Smothered in a cloud, the whole world goes quiet. Even the fireworks have slowed to a few measly pops, but of course, that’s just the lull before the big finish.

“Dammit!” screams Jian, followed by a round of wracking coughs, groans, and cursing. The sounds echo eerily in the wheat and the fog.

Akiya grabs Quyt’s shoulder as she starts to get up. “Wait for it,” she whispers. Heads down, they listen to the world outside their little bubble.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOMBOOMBOOMBABOOM.

And they’re off, tunneling through the foggy field and moving as fast as they can at a crouch, not so much running as scampering. With arcane gestures, Quyt keeps the wheat above them zipped together. Akiya follows as closely as she can without getting kicked in the chin. Soil crumbles under her feet now, instead of the pleasant squish from before. They’re dooming the same wheat that’s protecting them, and Akiya has the ridiculous urge to apologize as they pass by.

Long minutes pass as they approach the carnival grounds, following that familiar murmur now instead of the lights. Akiya knows they’re nearly home-free after the final BOOM BOOM BOOM, followed by more drums and horns and ecstatic applause that sounds like it’s right on top of them. She’s just about to stand up and walk the rest of the way when she hears that whizzing again, getting louder very quickly.

She only has enough time to scream Quyt’s name before the blades are almost on top of them.

Instantly—magnificently—her girlfriend swivels back around to face the threat, somehow switching places with Akiya, who scoots away like a frightened animal. Then there’s an eerie chorus of grinding metal and snapping strings. Quyt’s caught them, the blades, in a cage of wheat stalks, but they’re forcing their way through. Metal conquers wood, of course. That’s just the way of the world.

“W-we…” Akiya fights to control her voice, stop it from quivering. “We g-gotta go. W-we can make it if w-w-we…” But the thought ends there. She has no idea what to do next. Their pursuers must know where they are, if their weapons have honed in on them. Even now, she can hear the wheat rustling as they approach, following the path Quyt made and apparently forgot to unmake.

Quyt shakes her head, finally freeing her hair from its bun. Her hairpin makes a little puff of dust when it lands on the ground between them. “No. You go. I c’n hold ‘em.”

She digs her knees in the dirt and reels her arms around each other, working the length of both limbs in countless spirals from shoulder to fingertip. Drawing water. The fog comes to her first, then more wisps from the soil all around them. Wheat stalks bow to her, learning humility before their time. Akiya’s mouth goes dry as tears she didn’t realize she’d even shed lift off her cheeks and float away. Her own blood answers the call, too, slithering between the fingers she’s got clamped over her wound. She can feel it, almost hear it, but she doesn’t dare look. Quyt’s too busy to pinch her back to consciousness this time.

“I’m n-not—”

“I said t’go, dammit!” shouts Quyt over her shoulder.

Akiya doesn’t need any more convincing. She twists at the waist, plants both palms in the sad, gray soil, and springs to her feet. Ignoring the shouts of their pursuers, she runs full tilt toward the lights of the carnival. While she doesn’t have to slow down to let Quyt catch up, Quyt’s also not there to move the wheat out of her way, so she struggles through the last few yards of it. The stalks are nearly as tall as she is, perfect for slapping those bundles of grain right in her face. When the final section parts, she leaps with all her might, clearing the lip at the edge of the field with feet to spare. Right as she’s touching down in the no man’s land between the field and fairgrounds, a horrible metallic screech and a series of sharp pops ring out behind her.

She turns to look. She can’t help herself.

Instead of a bloody crater or more spinning death blades, she’s treated to the sight of her girlfriend sprinting out of the field, as beautiful as she’s ever been with cheeks glowing and hair flying in all directions. Wordlessly, they clasps hands again, and Akiya helps Quyt over the lip and out of the field. Grinning up at her, Quyt slides her hand up to clasp Akiya’s wounded wrist. Pleasure and relief thrum up her arm as Quyt works her healing magic, almost making her forget where they are. Then the wheat rustles behind them, and they see their pursuers again in the flesh, heads bobbing over the field as they struggle through the stalks Quyt froze behind her.

The tall one limps along, his expression dull and face pale under a swollen, blood-streaked brow, but Jian fixes his furious gaze on the girls as he shoves his way through the last of the wheat with one hand and presses down on a nasty cut on his shoulder with the other. If looks could kill, Quyt and Akiya would be dead where they stood. Stillborn in the next life, too, probably. “Carny bitches!” he spits.

For a moment, Akiya’s too stunned to move. “Quyt,” she whispers, “what did you do?”

“Broke their toys.” She tugs Akiya’s arm. “C’mon!”

They break into a run and nearly stumble over each other in their hurry. Hiking up her shredded skirt, Akiya reorients herself in time to brace for the final hurdle, the thick brambly hedge around the perimeter of the back lot, but Quyt opens the way, practically shooting them out the other side. Their pursuers have no such help, but that doesn’t deter them. Akiya can hear them grunting and growling as they rip their way through. She almost finds their determination admirable.

Quyt leads the way, darting between the wagons of the campsite, but they’re still exposed when Jian and his buddy emerge, blood welling up from a riot of fresh scratches and painting them red as a pair of oni.

“They’re still coming,” reports Akiya.

“Yer kiddin’ me!”

Akiya’s surprised by her own wild laughter. “I know! Some guys can’t take a hint, huh?”

“We’ll be safe in the bunk!”

“No, not the bunkhouse!” cries Akiya, yanking her girlfriend in a better direction, away from the closest thing they have to a home. “The animal tent! If they find us, you can put on a show.”

“What kinda show?”

Akiya grins. “Something spooky.”

Indignant shouting—from their fellow carnival workers, mostly—breaks out in their wake, giving Akiya hope they won’t need to hide for long. Even if their pursuers don’t turn tail in the face of carny wrath, they’ll surely get caught and tossed out. Surely.

But the look in Jian’s eyes…

They don’t get more than a few raised eyebrows from passersby on their way. They’re just a couple of silly girls, after all, green by carnival standards but still part of the club.

Lanterns flicker as they dart inside the tent and its comforting musk. The carnival itself has a few more hours before close, but with the fireworks done, all the big shows are over, which means it’s naptime for their motley herd of circus animals. Akiya knows their schedule well, having cleaned up after them more times than she’d care to admit. But she knows the animals, too, and they know her. Cookie Puss the elderly tigerdillo sniffs at Akiya through the bars of his cage as she passes by, grunts in recognition, and thrusts out a paw as far as his confines allow.

“Sorry, boy, no treats,” whispers Akiya. Gently, she pushes back the great grizzled paw and tugs Quyt along behind her as she sneaks behind the cage, where it nearly touches the tent wall. Hidden in the deepest shadows behind a tigerdillo, they’re safe as can be. A townie won’t know that Cookie’s the oldest, tamest cat they have, that he’s missing half his teeth.

Quyt slips her hand from Akiya’s wrist, which only throbs a little. “Need a better view.”

“Gotcha.”

Akiya feels Cookie tense up as this unfamiliar person moves around the other side of his cage. “She’s a friend,” she reassures him. She threads her hand through the bars and works her fingers into the warm, soft fur just under the tigerdillo’s armor, her fingertips brushing skin. “Safe.” She keeps her hand there, even after the tension leaves his shaggy body, for her own comfort as much as his. Peering around the cage at the tent’s entrance, she holds on and waits.

It’s not long before Jian staggers into the tent, worse for wear and apparently alone. He’s breathing hard, clinging to a flap of canvas to steady himself as he catches his breath. He wipes his forehead on a ragged sleeve and curses when it comes away wet, green fabric stained black with blood. Is he even looking for them, or did he come here to hide, finding them by pure chance? Akiya gets her answer when Quyt calls out to him, her voice like a breeze through a hollow bone.

“Oh, Jian…”

Akiya holds her breath. The lanterns dim.

He snarls, “I knew it!” and steps forward, reaching out an arm in search of a new bit of metal to hurt them with. All he does is rattle the nearest cage with his sloppy bending, disturbing Sandy the raven-eagle. She shrieks and flaps blindly at the bars, kept from throwing herself at Jian by the blindfold she wears. If he gets close enough, she’ll smell the blood on him and try anyway, but he has more sense than that, at least. He’s looking around now, curious about where he actually is for the first time, but it’s so dark. Akiya can only see him by the light from the yard outside, so the tent must be pitch black to him. “Where’s—” His voice cracks, making Akiya wonder how old he really is. He lowers his head and shakes it. “If you’re in here, I’ll find you. Nngh. Just sit tight, girls,” he says in a poor imitation of his smooth original tone.

Akiya’s hackles rise, and Cookie stirs under her hand. He knows as well as she does that this one isn’t a friend, isn’t safe.

“That’s an awful lotta blood, Jian.” Quyt snickers. Even knowing that laugh almost as well as her own, it still sends shivers down Akiya’s spine. “Yer gettin’ the critters worked up. Blood smells good ta them. Blood ‘n’ fear.”

“I’m not afraid of you.” But he’s barely moved from the entrance, only out to the edge of that tiny circle of light.

“Ya sure ‘bout that?”

Cookie growls so low and deep that Akiya feels it in her throat, too. It spreads from there, cage by cage until every animal’s voice joins in the jungle song. A song of hunger. A song of freedom.

Jian’s voice is almost drowned out as he croaks, “They’re— They’re in cages.”

“But I’m not,” says Quyt as she steps out of the gloom. Her voice cuts through the uproar, which seems to calm the animals. They can smell her rage as well as Jian’s fear, and rage they respect. “Not that that’d do ya much good.”

Akiya can smell his fear somehow, too, as sharp and rich as fresh urine. Quyt reaches for him like she’s greeting an old friend, and he staggers away from her, back towards the light. Droplets of blood hang in the air where he stood a moment ago, a terrible mask gleaming in the darkness. Quyt steps into it, pulls it over her face like it was meant for her all along. She says nothing more, only giggling while her face and neck run warm and red with gore.

Then she lunges. Jian’s own blood shoots off of her, landing back on him in a fine mist. He screams and then retches as it finds his open mouth. Instead of running, he twists away from her and reaches again for the safety of the tent flap, but the blood in his eyes blinds him. He tumbles to the ground and crawls away like the bug he is, still shrieking raggedly.

As if summoned, heavy footsteps approach in a sudden clamor.

“Found the other one!” a man’s voice calls out, and a burly shape snatches Jian out of the dirt by the back of his robe. “Shut up,” he orders, giving the pathetic creature a hard shake. Jian obeys.

“Haw!” comes another voice, high and reedy. “Idjit ran into the critter tent an’ got ‘imself chewed up!”

“Looks like,” agrees a third, rough and female. “Somebody get Patch.” Something inside Akiya unclenches at the sound of that name.

The lanterns come back to life as Akiya rushes to her girlfriend’s side. “Quyt! That was amazing!” she cries, taking her hand. “Hey, how’d you make the lights do that?”

Quyt doesn’t look at her, only watching the entrance as fellow carnies shuffle about. “Do what?” she replies too quietly.

“You know, go down? It was a cool effect. Did you use humidity or something?”

“I…” Quyt shakes her head, gently at first and then wildly. Akiya feels a fleck of something warm and wet land on her cheek.

“Are you o—” Quyt whirls around, grabs Akiya around the waist, and squeezes as tight as her skinny arms can manage. Quyt buries her face in Akiya’s neck, weeping more warmth and wetness into her skin. “Okay,” whispers Akiya as she pets her girlfriend’s mossy hair. “We’re okay. You saved us, like always.”

“I don’t— Don’t feel—”

“Shhh,” says Akiya. She searches for more comforting words as her own shock begins to take hold. “Sorry about the dress” is the best she can do.

Quyt laughs through her sobs. “Issalright…”

“Girls,” says a familiar voice from the entrance.

Akiya looks up to see Patch peering in at them, apparently the first person to think to check inside the tent. How long he’s been watching, she’s not sure, but by the look in his eyes, he has the measure of them. He puffs himself up and parts his lips, like he’s about to say something else, but seems to think better of it. They’re fine. Everything’s fine. What else is there to say?

Akiya nods, and he nods back before leaving them to their own devices, the way they’re meant to be.

Chapter Text

Sruthi turns to see a figure approaching. In a long red hooded robe, it glides their way, with no shadows moving beneath to indicate the shuffling of feet. She didn’t hear any footsteps because there were none to hear. That’s uncanny enough, but its sheer presence is what freezes her in place, unable to look away. The air trembles with its aura, and when it comes to a smooth stop a few feet from Sruthi and her family, it reminds her of standing too close to a bonfire, burning with awe instead of heat. Sruthi bows low, her knees buckling slightly as the gesture pushes back against the wall of energy.

“You may call me Inari, she/they,” says the figure—the guru—after reintroductions. The voice from within the cowl sounds feminine. Warm and old, but not elderly. Old the way a castle is old. Old and deep as a cave. “One of many names I have had. I hope this one pleases you as your names please me.” Slowly, Inari nods, and that overpowering aura finally recedes enough for Sruthi to take her eyes off the guru. She glances at Father, who’s pulled out a handkerchief to dab sweat from his brow in a way he probably thinks looks distinguished, and allows herself a little smirk. Her little brother looks genuinely terrified, which wipes the smirk away.

“Are you in charge here?” asks Mother, not missing a beat.

“I prefer to think of myself as first among equals,” replies Inari, “but the school is indeed mine in as much as I founded it alongside my husband’s temple.”

Mother shoots a glare at Father, probably annoyed that he never bothered to found a temple for her, and continues, “Well, we were just hoping for a proper tour. Sophie here says that—”

“Shou Fa,” says Shou Fa.

“—We have to wait until the school day is over to see the school, but we’ve waited nearly an hour already, and it’s important that we make arrangements for Sruthi if she’s to—”

Inari silences Mother by simply raising their hand, their most wondrous demonstration of power yet.

“I can certainly make an exception,” says Inari. They turn their head in Sruthi’s direction and ask, “Just the girl?”

Father clears his throat and tucks his kerchief away. “Ah, Smrithik is doing just fine. Advanced for his age, even. He’s already a better metalbender than half of my new apprentices.” He chuckles to himself but switches to a sterner tone when he moves to stand behind Sruthi again. His hands land heavily on her shoulders, holding her still for examination. “Sruthi here takes after her grandfather, a firebender, but she hasn’t, uh, performed for over a year. Her instructors back home are stumped. So are the many expensive specialists we’ve taken her to.” His grip tightens ever-so-slightly at the word “expensive”.

Face burning, Sruthi hangs her head and, on instinct, yanks the Unagi out of her back pocket. Before she can crack the handheld open, Father’s groaning and trying to snatch it from her, but Inari’s much quicker than he is. It seems to teleport from Sruthi’s hand to theirs, with a bright blur in her peripheral vision her only clue that the guru moved at all.

Father sputters, “I’m sorry, I swear I’ve told her ten thousand times, Mrs. Inari—”

“Just Inari!” proclaims the guru, their voice echoing in the open air.

Inari twiddles the handheld for a moment before tucking it in a sleeve. That should bother Sruthi. It should bother her very much, but she’s distracted by the geometric designs painted on those hands, week-old henna on delicate, speckled skin. In a gentler voice, Inari says, “Let me keep this safe for you, Sruthi. Just for a little while.” They lean down without seeming to bend at all, and she spies the glint of a grin in the red depths of the guru’s hood. “Sruthi is such a beautiful name. You must be an excellent listener.”

One corner of Sruthi’s mouth twitches up, but she’s not sure why. With nothing to say, she just nods.

Inari turns to Thik, who jumps a little. “And Smrithik, as well. You must have an excellent memory. You’re top of your class, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am!” he chirps, instantly soothed.

A snort and giggle erupt from the red cowl, and it’s suddenly like talking to their favorite auntie dressed in a silly costume. “Ah, forgive me. Just a bit of guru humor.” Then Inari clears their throat, and their presence returns, larger than life. “Now for a demonstration! Shou Fa, if you please.”

The pagoda’s huge doors open easily under Shou Fa’s hands. Father’s face lights up, more impressed by quality craftsmanship than anything else they’ve seen so far. The family follows the attendant and the guru up the deep stone steps and into a great room, lit only by sunlight streaming in through the open doors and the windows on its eight sides. The room is wide enough that the light doesn’t penetrate far, its center left in shadow. Sruthi’s parents pause at the threshold, but Shou Fa beckons, directing them to the lowest row in a sweep of tiered seating.

“Come!” booms Inari’s voice from the shadows. “Sit! BEHOLD!”

It’s gloomy once they sit and Shou Fa closes the doors. Then he opens a wall panel and flips some sort of switch—Sruthi can’t see him well at all—and shutters snap into place over all the windows, plunging them into pitch blackness. They sit in the dark for long enough for it to slip into an awkward silence. Next to Sruthi, Father shifts his weight, and on the other side of him, she can hear Mother softly shushing and stroking Thik, who still sleeps with a night light. Then music pipes in, flutes and drums that sound like they’re in the room with them. Even the floor vibrates with it.

Sruthi half expects the lights to come up and reveal a live musical band. That’s not what happens, but she isn’t disappointed.

The guru appears in the room’s dark heart, glowing like a flame themself as they bend a circle of fire around their body. Still floating inches above the ground, they spin slowly in place and feed the circle until it fans out like planetary rings. Then they’re flicking that fire all around the room and into more than a dozen lanterns, and Sruthi can finally see the beauty all around them. Mirrored floor tiles twinkle like stars under a heavenly vault, the pagoda’s columns and ceiling beams painted in swirls of red and yellow and blue and green.

With the lanterns lit, Inari matches the music’s rising tempo and whips her arms up and down, teasing that flaming ring into the shapes of magnificent creatures—a dragon, a phoenix, a qilin—but none of them fully emerge before melting into the air. They summon more fire from their hands, flinging arcs of flame that they spin and weave like nothing Sruthi’s ever seen before.

No, that’s not quite true. It doesn’t look like any firebending Sruthi’s ever seen, definitely nothing like the style she’s been taught, but it does remind her of a dance she saw once. Waterbenders, a special demonstration at a festival years ago, when she was about Thik’s age. They bent their element around themselves and each other with such finesse that the streams of water seemed almost alive, the dancers only coaxing them into the shapes they wanted through a bond of trust. But as beautiful as that was, it didn’t move her like this. Inari’s show fills her vision, her world. Her heart beats and leaps with their flames, like they’re inside of her, too, her lifeforce dancing to the guru’s will.

Inari spins again, quick as the wind, drawing back their flames. They don’t go out, but seem to feed into the guru’s body, and the power of it lifts them up, halfway to the ceiling. As the drums lull and the flutes take over, they stop spinning and press their palms together, summoning burning wisps from the air all around them. Intuitively, Sruthi understands that they aren’t actually appearing out of nowhere, but from Inari’s aura, the same one that made her breathless with awe. Closer to clouds than flames, the wisps billow in every direction. They smell of the sea and shimmer with every color of the sunset, dissolving into motes of light as they drift to the floor. Sruthi’s so distracted by them that she almost misses Inari’s final wind-up.

The drums pick up again, drowning out the flutes, and Sruthi feels the floor tremble again where her toes touch down. Squinting past the motes like a field of fireflies, she watches Inari move their arms in intricate spirals as they draw their fire back home once again, emptying even the lanterns. The guru reels it in tighter and tighter, brighter and brighter, glowing like a star. They fling out their arms, trailing white-hot sparks, and clap their hands back together above their head.

Thumbs and fingers pinch and kiss together. Index fingers meet. A diamond takes shape.

Mahavajra Mudra.

Eyes wide, Sruthi shoves fingers in her ears.

There’s a sizzling sound, followed by a terrible KRRRAAAAAKK as Inari launches a lightning bolt straight upward. Instead of blowing a hole in the rafters, it finds a long metal rod Sruthi didn’t notice before. It must be connected to the pagoda’s electrical wiring because nice bright light bulbs flicker to life as the guru sinks to the floor. By the time they land, the music has died away. It feels strange to clap after something like that, but the silence as Inari floats back over to them is much stranger. Of course, silence never lasts long around Sruthi’s parents.

“Consider me impressed!” says Father, dabbing now at his watering eyes.

“Sruthi could learn to do all that?” gasps Mother. “Our Sruthi?”

“Perhaps. It will be up to her…” says Inari. “As for today, you may leave your children with me, and I will take them on a personal tour of the school.”

Mother looks confused. “Leave them?”

“It is, of course, a simple matter to provide their lovely parents with a day’s worth of diversion,” says Inari. They reach into a sleeve, the one not holding Sruthi’s precious Unagi, and pull out three shiny paper vouchers. Sruthi wonders if they just carry those around all the time for an occasion like this.

“Both of them?” asks Father with a little head wobble. “But he’s—” Mother touches his shoulder, and he clams up when he realizes what’s really on offer here. A mini-holiday, free of both charge and children.

“Oh, we simply couldn’t,” says Mother, reaching for the vouchers. When she reads them, she actually blushes a little. Father’s eyebrows shoot halfway up his forehead when she flashes them his way. “Very generous of you.” Father nods in agreement, surely calculating the current market value of whatever they’ve just been gifted.

Inari simply nods and gestures to Shou Fa.

“Yes, we have many connections throughout Bo Hee Min, and we’d be happy for you to enjoy them as compensation for your… inconvenience,” explains their original guide. “I can certainly fill you in on the details if you’ll just come with me.”

Mother’s practically glowing as she gives Thik and Sruthi each a hard peck on the forehead. “Be good, kutti, maka. We love you very much.”

Father nods, beaming like he just won a prize at the World’s Fair. “Come along, dear,” he says.

“Coming!” she croons.

Arm in arm, they follow Shou Fa out the same doors they entered through. And just like that, they’re gone.

“…When will they be back?” asks Thik. It takes Sruthi a moment to realize he was talking to her.

“I don’t know,” she admits as her brother grasps for her hand. She’s considering shaking him off when she hears a clack behind them, like metal on tile.

“After the air polo match, probably,” says Inari. “Don’t worry, they’ll be back in time for dinner.”

“Air polo…?” Sruthi turns her head to see the Great Guru Inari stepping off of a hoverboard, wobbling on one leg with one of their feet stuck in its strap.

“Oh, y’know,” they continue as they unbuckle the stubborn strap, “air polo, rejuv spa, lunch at an organic bistro. Parents’re gaga for that kinda stuff.” Finally free, they stretch their arms and bend their knees with a chorus of disturbing pops. Then they throw back their hood. Which, at this point, is about as bizarre as taking their head off. “Fwah! This robe gets so stuffy when I bend in it. Oh. Hey, is my hair sticking up?” Indeed it is, as unruly as a dandelion, but Sruthi can only stare in shock. In her peripheral vision, she sees Thik nod his head. Chuckling, Inari ruffles their short white hair and throws off sparks until it lies more-or-less flat.

They finally notice Sruthi’s shocked expression then, snapping their fingers and pointing back at her. “Oh yeah. Right.” One of those fragile, ancient, painted hands reaches into a sleeve and pulls out the Unagi. “See? Safe ‘n’ sound.”