The dawn of yangchen, p.22
The Dawn of Yangchen, page 22
Jetsun’s previous visits to the Spirit World had prepared her well to guide Yangchen through her first. The older nun stepped sure-footed across a brook of flowing crystal. Yangchen just had to walk where she walked.
“The Spirit World is different things to different people at different times,” Jetsun said. “But it’s safe as long as you keep respect in your heart. The more you can ask, listen, and give thanks to your surroundings before your impact is felt, the better. Even holding the intention in your mind is good.”
Yangchen looked down at the odd cross between earth and water swirling around their ankles, liquid jewels cool to the touch. “Can we bend here?”
“No. That’s because our bodies are back in the physical world; the abbess and Tsering are looking after them. If we feel the need, we can remember where we are, think about waking up, and we will.”
Jetsun did not slip the word “simply” into her explanation. She knew Yangchen had problems with waking up, bringing herself to the right moment in time and space. Yangchen glanced down at her hands, the ones that could open or close. They looked like her flesh and blood, down to the calluses. If all of her senses were telling her that her body was here, amid these shining, swirling colors, she would have to defy her own mind to escape.
The thought made her a bit nervous, and the waters around her flickered, threatened to change, but she saw Jetsun standing on the other bank of the brook and knew nothing would go wrong as long as they were together. Yangchen gathered her robes and stepped onto firmer ground. Neither of them realized the warning that Jetsun had spoken aloud. Different things to different people.
Oblivious, they walked toward a lonesome forest, the edges visible over the flat land like a cake sitting on a table. Maybe that was the mistake. Air Nomads didn’t fear the woods in their bones. Airbenders peered down at the tree lines below them from the tops of their mountains, and no beast with claws or fangs really had the ability to climb a peak.
They’d gone only a little way when Yangchen heard a deep huff. The expulsion of air from a powerful set of lungs, bigger than a human’s. She’d grown up around the bellowing of sky bison, but this wasn’t the sleepy grumble of a herbivore. This was a swift clearing of the nostrils, to better taste the air for prey.
Yangchen’s breath clouded in frost, even though it had been perfectly warm seconds ago. As if the trees were not far away, and were only pieces of dressing for a stage, a creature stepped out from behind them. It looked like a tiger-dillo, clothed in blue. Either it wore a pointed hat on its head, or it possessed a horn that looked exactly like one. Painted red lips curled back to reveal rows of jagged white fangs, curving in random directions, more hedge thorns than teeth.
A second spirit, and a third appeared. “Shishi,” Jetsun said, gazing at them. “They look intimidating but they’re playful.” When she didn’t get a response, she turned around.
The Avatar had frozen in place.
“What’s wrong?” Jetsun asked. “You’re not afraid of beasts. You had the Southern Chieftain’s polar bear–dog eating out of your hand when you were eight.”
True. Yangchen was not afraid of animals. Animals loved her and she loved them back. But Yangchen wasn’t the person whose terror the shishi were smelling.
The nuns of the Western Temple had erred. Dagmola, Tsering, Jetsun, and even Yangchen herself. They all believed a visit to the Spirit World could help her establish a solid identity, bolster her young mind against the ancient anguish. An extra tether she could rely on when the ghosts of the Four Nations became too strong.
But they’d never considered an overwhelming memory occurring inside the Spirit World, brought on by a previous Avatar’s fear of the realm beyond the physical. The shishi licked their slavering lips. Their eyes, which at first had seemed mere daubs on a flat scroll, gained depth and focus. Their faces wrinkled with humanlike, malevolent contours.
“Yangchen,” Jetsun said calmly, firmly. “You don’t have to stay. You can wake up.”
She tasted flowing blood. She’d bitten a chunk out of the inside of her cheek. Her knees locked up. The pack of spirits fanned out into a hunting formation.
Jetsun grabbed the Avatar, tossed her over her shoulder, and ran.
Because Jetsun was holding her charge so close, she was unable to see the child Yangchen had become. Yangchen’s sleeves had turned an undyed color. Her hands had shrunk to a younger, smaller size and she cried out in an unfamiliar pattern. Aam, aam. Not ma or mama or am-ma. The spirits were black flames licking along the grass, chasing them, closing in.
The growling and panting grew louder. Was there ever such an oft-repeated story? A woman racing for safety, holding a child, chased by predators. “Wake up,” Jetsun murmured into her ear. Yangchen didn’t know how she had breath to flee and speak at the same time. “I won’t leave you here. Wake up for me first, and then I’ll be right behind you.”
They came to a halt. The brook had turned into a river, raging, churning. Deliverance might have lain on the other side, but the beaded jewels had been replaced by a syrupy dark tar that hissed when it spattered along the bank.
They would never make it across. Jetsun decided on something. Yangchen could feel her determination pass through their chests, two bodies skewered by the same spear.
In one swift motion, Jetsun ripped her orange shawl from her shoulders and bundled it over Yangchen’s head. She didn’t want the Avatar to see her fate. She took Yangchen under the arms and shoved her as hard as she could into the air. “WAKE UP!” Jetsun screamed.
Yangchen fell and fell but never landed. Not on the riverbank or in the bilious flow. She opened her eyes, back in her own skin. She saw Abbess Dagmola cradling Jetsun’s slumped-over body, trying to rouse her. Tsering stared at Yangchen like a musician who’d left the last note of the piece unplayed.
Yangchen would forever remember the moment as the first time she was asked a question beyond her years, begged for an answer she couldn’t provide. “Avatar,” Tsering whispered. “What—What happened?”
BASIC TRADECRAFT
A body empty of its spirit couldn’t survive long, not even with the best healing.
Wake up, she’d sobbed at Jetsun’s bedside. Wake up. Please. I’m sorry I was afraid. I’m sorry.
When it was over, they’d honored her sister as a temple elder and companion of the Avatar who’d laid down her life to protect the bridge between humans and spirits. Future Avatars might look at the name Jetsun with awe and respect. Or they’d close the book they’d found it in and go back to their lives.
Yangchen sometimes felt like she still hadn’t touched down in the physical world after being thrown into the air by her sister, that she’d been subjected to a twisted version of Guru Laghima’s famous feat of weightlessness, cursed to never have a stable footing again. After she’d recovered from the ordeal of Jetsun’s funeral, she’d spent two weeks in the library’s history wing to understand which of her past lives had been so averse to one side of the bridge—with the goal of what, lambasting the dead for cowardice?—and found nothing.
When she was finally able to get back to the Spirit World, there were no shishi. The location she’d meditated to with Jetsun was neither her entry point nor a place she could find, and she walked many a maddeningly similar dream landscape in search of beastly spirits. No success. She never had the chance to definitively prove that it hadn’t been her fault, that Yangchen could stand up to the exact same creature her past life could not.
The vision the phoenix-eels had shown her, the view purportedly from Jetsun’s eyes—a double impossibility. That howling mist. Yangchen had personally never heard of such a place, and if its secrets lay buried deeper in a musty archive or reincarnated memory, then a painful search lay ahead. Was it possible for a human being’s spirit to survive onward, long after the body had perished? There were stories, tales of gurus who had departed from their physical forms peacefully, but of course no firsthand testimonies. Finding the answer would require more time and strength than she could spare right now.
The easiest thing would be to assume the vision was a trick. A lie. Because if it wasn’t, then her sister had been trapped, still was trapped, in a place of never-ending torment.
She would find Jetsun if there was a Jetsun to be found, she vowed.
She didn’t sleep the rest of the way to Port Tuugaq. She was running out of route and she still hadn’t spotted the ship she was looking for.
The only vessels Yangchen had seen going the opposite way were smaller boats that would be subject to the snarls of docking long enough where she was able to make peace with letting them pass. She would likely have to reveal herself to confront the shipment, and she had to make sure she didn’t waste the chance checking out lesser possibilities.
Eventually the clouds parted to reveal Port Tuugaq, the southernmost shang city. The Shimsom Islands had always been home to trading posts and temporary fairs nestled along its rivers, but the Platinum Affair had forced the locals to choose a permanent victor. Big Island’s deepest harbor won, and a town was quickly raised from logs and stone.
Southern Water Tribe traders avoided the trap of “clearance” by staying away from the newly declared city limits and using small numbers of go-betweens to handle the movement of valuable ivory, hides, and nigh-imperishable dried cod-flounder. They came and left the lands around Port Tuugaq as they pleased, which meant the city was neither as big as Bin-Er nor as unhappy. Its zongdu, Ashoona, was in Agna Qel’a for a constitutional that had lasted the better part of a year, and Yangchen had decided he was unlikely to be a player in the current game. If she ran into trouble here, it would be from the agents of Chaisee and Henshe.
Using the cover of a cloud, Yangchen circled Nujian in the air at a distance from the unimaginative blocks of Port Tuugaq, which were scored into the gravel coast like a baker would divide flour. Her bison’s path wobbled. Nujian was weakening and needed to forage after the hard journey. She had already given him her remaining rations to keep him airborne up to this point, and she herself felt like a reed drawn through the fingers until the sides touched.
She couldn’t stay here in the air indefinitely to wait for a ship matching the Sunbeam’s description to leave. She would approach the docks from inside the city itself, she decided. She just had to figure out an entry strategy.
Port Tuugaq, due to its smaller size, had a stockade wall around it. One end opened to the water, and the other bulged around a massive lumberyard containing stacks of logs as big as houses. She had few options for getting inside, none of them good. She could be spotted by moonlight as easily as the sun, caught approaching from the water just as well as land. The guard stations had excellent fields of view over the lands surrounding the city.
She had the urge to simply leap off Nujian’s back, to catch herself with nothing but wind like she’d done so many times on the airball court, and land in the middle of the city. It was a foolish notion, would blow her cover, but she could taste the hours, the minutes she might save, more than the food her body was crying out for. No, she reminded herself. You’re so close. You’re so close. Play this smart. Play this right.
Despite the very act being painful, she turned Nujian around to land farther away from the city.
Yangchen crouched behind the reverse slope of a small hill, out of sight from the guard stations posted along the lumberyard end of Port Tuugaq.
She chopped sideways with the edge of her hand, earth-bending the frozen ground loose along the breadth of the open field—but not moving it. Not yet. Dust and soil moving on its own was a sure sign of bending at work.
But dust on the wind? Just the weather. Once Yangchen had enough earth prepared, she began drawing air to her.
The breeze blowing against the city turned into a gale. The dirt became flying grit. Handily, there were thick trails of wooden splinters and bark shavings outside the walls, adding to the mix of debris.
Yangchen saw the guards in their stations turn their heads away, shield their faces, pull their hoods tighter. As generous a gift as she would get. Yangchen crested the hill and applied more wind to her back.
She ran, barely touching the ground, her feet acting only as nudges to keep her stable. She crossed the distance to the wall in the blink of an eye and sped through the lumberyard gate.
Yangchen didn’t stop running until she reached the cover of a massive log pile. She skidded to a halt, gouging small trenches into the ground with her heels, and checked behind her to see if she’d been made.
The pair guards above the gate rubbed their faces and swore at the sky. One of them cursed the spirits, and the other laughed. Yangchen stared at them for a moment before pulling her hood over her head and skulking away.
Port Tuugaq was built out of unsanded Yesso timbers still bleeding sap. Houses were double-walled with sod for insulation. The streets were paved with little splinters of bark, trampled down by countless footsteps.
From the safety of a corner, Yangchen peered into a large avenue, presumably one of the arteries that fed the international sector. The odd clerk scurried from house to house, their shoulders hunched against the wind, but there weren’t as many people about as she’d expected.
She needed to get to a spot where she could see the docks. And ideally rest. Eat. The technique of air-assisted speed used up so much energy. If she acknowledged that she was on the verge of collapse after her journey, she would surely teeter over the edge.
Her clothes, the same heavy quilted coat and skirt she’d worn in Bin-Er, blended in well enough. Keeping her chin tucked, she walked down the main street toward the water. After a minute she snapped her fingers in the air, miming the act of forgetting something important. She glanced over her shoulder, wondering if she should go back for it, then waved the idea away and continued walking.
Yangchen turned at the next corner and pressed her back to the wall, staying in the angle of a shadow. One person strolled by, oblivious to anything but the shallot flatbread he was eating, and Yangchen nearly lost count at one, so distracted was she by the smell. Then a second person passed, and a third. The third person, a woman carrying a bale of empty burlap sacks, noticed Yangchen loitering for no reason and gave her a strange look. But that was of no concern.
The fourth person she’d seen behind her walking in the same direction never materialized, even though there were no doors he could have plausibly gone into on her side of the street. Which meant he’d paused after losing sight of her. He was hanging back a safe distance.
I’ve got a tail, Yangchen thought.
Based on the quick glimpse she had when she’d “forgotten something,” combined with the process of elimination, it was the short man with the patch on his parka. Normally she would have been thrilled. Tails were for people who were on the right track.
Yangchen went to the other end of the block and kept heading in the same direction along the parallel avenue. If Patch showed up again then she could be sure he was following her. But to do so would be clumsy of him, and she expected better.
There was a group on the opposite side of the street, huddled around an outdoor fire and a steaming cauldron of hot fermented rice drink. She passed the gathering as closely as she could, enough to scrape coats, which caught them by surprise. Sure enough, she immediately overheard two of the men telling their friends goodbye. In their haste they burned their tongues on their final sips and said the names of the people they wanted to give their regards to a little too loud.
So. A pair behind her and one roaming. She’d been marked as suspicious for sure, by men who were likely in Chaisee’s or Henshe’s pocket. But did they know who she really was? There was no plausible reason for them to guess she was the Avatar. Regardless, her plans had fallen apart. Any hope of recovery was going to require some quick surgery.
She detoured again, her pattern now a zigzag no reasonable person would take. She caught sight of Patch again, in front of her this time. Well, that’s just sloppy.
Yangchen stalked toward him, expecting the man to slide out of her way in the hope she hadn’t made him yet. But he stood his ground. She frowned under her hood and slowed at an intersection to get her bearings. Only one of the drinks stand patrons was behind her, to the south. The other had swung around to close off the street to the west.
She wasn’t being tailed. She was being herded.
Flee east. They wanted her to move east; they probably had a trap waiting. Flee over the rooftops. Making her escape with airbending would have been trivial. It would also tip them off that an Air Nomad willing to put on a disguise and sneak around their employer’s secret project was here.
She would have to pick one element, not air, and stick with it. Water? None at hand. Fire? It was getting darker fast, and she didn’t want to draw more attention. Or even worse, light up her face. It would have to be earth.
She must have given away a tell when she decided, glanced down at the ground without realizing it, because Patch did too, lowering his eyes. He was an Earthbender, and now he assumed she was one as well. He would wait and listen as they approached, probably attempt to counteract any moves she made using the earth between them while his partners attacked from the left and right.
Pack tactics. A glint of metal in one of their hands. The three men closed in. The nearest house was dark, no one inside who might come if she yelled.
The urge to run filled her body; Yangchen’s breath turned to mist in the dropping temperature. Maybe the reason she hadn’t been able to find shishi during her meditations into the Spirit World beyond the first was because she’d crossed over with selfishness in her heart, failing at Jetsun’s challenge to only exist, and not seek. She’d wanted to prove she was braver than her past lives, and the Spirit World, knowing, had forever denied her that opportunity.
The physical world, however, was content to give her plenty of chances to face her fears.
She stamped hard upon the ground, letting her head drift down and to the left. The Earthbender’s gaze followed, thinking the attack would come from that section of the street. But the glance was a fake. Yangchen had sought out different earth.
