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Most people only have two. But Mommy says their family is complicated, which must mean special and hard to explain because she won’t say anything else after that. That makes Izumi even more curious because she already knows her family is special. She is different from every other little girl in the whole Fire Nation. But she also knows she’s not the only princess the Fire Nation has ever had, and she’s asked everyone she can think of how many grandfathers all the other princesses had, and Izumi is still the only one with four.
One grandfather lives far away in a corner of the Fire Nation that she can only remember visiting once. He’s technically her step-grandfather, which is like half a grandfather, but since he’s fully married to Daddy’s mother, Izumi supposes that’s close enough to a whole grandfather, so she doesn’t bother with the distinction. She is smaller when she meets Grandpa Ikem and Grandma Ursa (she only has two grandmothers) and Aunt Kiyi, and Izumi holds on to her mother’s robes, wide-eyed at how different everything looks. The houses are small and there are more trees than she’s ever seen in one place, and people stare more than she’s used to, but Mommy says they’re just not as used to seeing princesses as the people back home and to pay them no mind.
After dinner, they all sit around a bonfire in the backyard and this newest grandfather tells stories, some Izumi already knows and some she doesn’t. She watches the sparks fly upward, her tiny fingers itching to catch one and make it dance. But Daddy says it’s important that she concentrate when she bends and she can’t fully concentrate now, not when the legend of the first dragon tamer is so exciting and Grandpa Ikem does all the voices better than anyone else.
Two of them she’s never met. Both her parents’ fathers live in prison because they did very bad, dangerous things during and shortly after the war. No one talks about them much, and their names feel foreign on her tongue. One day she asks her parents how long they’ll stay there, and their faces become very serious when they answer “Hopefully always, turtleduck.” She wants to know exactly what these two grandfathers have done, what could be so terrible that her parents, who forgive Izumi for everything, would want their own fathers to stay in prison always, but no one will say. This scares her somehow, so she eventually stops asking. Daddy promises to tell her “When you’re older,” and she pouts a little because that may as well mean “Maybe not ever,” but she notices how even though her father’s voice is firm in a way she rarely hears, he sounds mostly sad all the same.
It’s not fair that her favorite grandfather lives all the way in Ba Sing Se and not in the Fire Nation at all. She sees him maybe three times a year, whenever she’s able to come along on Daddy’s work trips or when he comes to visit the palace for a couple weeks, full of stories and jokes and new blends of tea for Izumi to try (“It’s never too early to learn how to appreciate the finer things in life,” he says with a wink).
Daddy calls him Uncle, but Izumi calls him Grandpa. That’s the way it’s always been. It makes sense to her because Grandpa Iroh has the longest beard and the biggest lap and enjoys games (He plays Pai Sho with Daddy and Daddy always loses and Mommy always laughs), just like the grandpas in her storybooks. He listens patiently to Izumi’s questions, considering each answer, and never laughing when she doesn’t mean to be funny. And during their most recent visit, she notices how the way his eyes shine when he goes to hug Daddy hello is exactly the same way Daddy looks when he hugs her, and this, she thinks, this must be what a father is, grand or otherwise.
On the airship ride back, she watches wisps of clouds drifting over the ocean and asks her father how she came to have four grandfathers when most people only have two. He thinks for a moment before explaining that that’s the way families are, they grow and split apart and find each other again, sometimes all at the same time.
“They change,” he says with a smile. “And sometimes you pick up extra people along the way.”
Later, she will tell you how lucky she is that hers was able to change enough. But for now, it’s an answer, a good one, and she shifts back to the window, her mind turning to thoughts of home.