Hauntings
The Southern Air Temple was unlike any place Kyoshi had ever seen. White towers extended past the tops of swirling strands of mist. Long paths wound like meditation mazes up the slopes to the earthbound entrances. Bison calves frolicked in the air, adorable, grunting little clouds of fur and horn. She didn’t understand how a people could wish to be nomads when they had a home so full of beauty and peace.
Kyoshi waited in a garden distinguished by its simplicity and open spaces rather than density and expensive details, like the mansions she was accustomed to. The breeze, unhindered by the grass and raked sand, was a crisp bite against her skin. The garden abutted a temple wall with large wooden doors. Each entrance was covered by metal tubing that spiraled into knots and terminated in a wide, open end that resembled a tsungi horn.
She was alone.
Her friends had gone their separate ways. Kirima and Wong wanted to take a break from smuggling and lie low for a while, living off the injection of loot they’d pilfered from Jianzhu’s mansion. They promised to keep in touch and show their faces once Kyoshi had established herself. They were the Avatar’s companions, after all. No doubt she could pardon them for whatever trouble they got up to.
Lao Ge declined to go with them, claiming he needed to rest his weary bones. In private, he told Kyoshi that as the Avatar and an important world leader, she was now on his watch list. He was only half joking. But she didn’t mind. She was pretty sure she could take the old man in a fight to the death now.
Hei-Ran had woken up. Rangi, fighting through each word, told Kyoshi that she needed to take her mother to the North Pole, where the best healers in the world lived. If there was a chance for her to recover fully, it would be found among the experts of the Water Tribe.
That meant saying goodbye for who knew how long. They could and would find each other again in the future. But as Lao Ge had foreboded, they wouldn’t be the same people when it happened. As much as Kyoshi wanted to stay with her, in a single, frozen pool of moments, the current carrying them forward was too strong.
Kyoshi had waited until her friends left before making her move, wanting to spare them of the chaos that would ensue after her unveiling. The Air Nomads often accepted pilgrims from the other nations, letting them stay at the monasteries and nunneries on a temporary basis. With Jianzhu no longer darkening her life, she simply joined a group of ragged travelers hiking up the mountain to the Southern Air Temple.
During the orientation for her fellow laypeople, she’d introduced herself by asking everyone to stand back. In front of the monks, she’d summoned a tornado of fire and air. The blazing, dual-element vortex proved her identity beyond a shadow of a doubt—though the fact that she’d nearly burned down a sacred tree reminded her it was still a good idea to rely on her fans for a bit longer.
As she’d expected, there was a commotion. Many of the senior abbots had known Jianzhu and met Yun. Her existence caused an overturning of the agreed-upon order. She was not the vaunted prodigy of the Earth Kingdom, the boy who’d publicly been credited with destroying the menace of the Fifth Nation pirates.
But there was a reason why she’d gone to the Airbenders instead of a sage from her homeland. The isolation and sanctity of the temple provided a measure of protection as the storm of her arrival howled outside its walls. Though she was a native Earthbender, the Air Nomads took her outrageous account of events as simple truth, told by the Avatar. They bore the anger and blustering of Earth sages who saw her as illegitimate, like she’d somehow usurped her position by being born, and relayed messages to her with calmness and grace.
The council of elders at the Southern Air Temple were not interested in profiting from her presence, nor in dictating what she should do next. They seemed content to listen to her and fulfill what requests they could.
Plus, Pengpeng enjoyed being back with a herd. Kyoshi owed the girl some time off with her own kind.
“Avatar Kyoshi!” someone shouted, breaking her reverie. She looked up.
High above her on a balcony, a tall young monk waved. She stepped back to give him space to land, and he vaulted over the railing. A gust of wind slowed his descent, billowing his orange-and-yellow robes. He touched down beside her as lightly as Kirima had in Madam Qiji’s, long ago.
“Apologies, Avatar,” Monk Jinpa said. “The tower stairs take forever.”
“I’ve used my fair share of architectural shortcuts,” Kyoshi said. She and Jinpa began to walk around the garden as they talked. “What’s the latest?”
Monk Jinpa had been assigned to her as a chamberlain of sorts. He was the leader of the temple’s administrative group, handling logistics and finance when the Air Nomads were forced to deal with the material world. Even monks needed someone to look after what little money ended up in their possession.
“The latest is ... well, still a mess,” Jinpa said. “The tragedy at Yokoya is worse than we feared. Two score of the Earth Kingdom’s elite murdered by poison. And some of the household as well.”
Kyoshi closed her eyes against the deep ache. She’d only found out by proxy what had happened at the mansion. “Are there more details?”
“The investigators sent by the Earth King believe that it was an act of revenge by a daofei group. Somehow they found out about an important gathering of sages and decided to strike with a level of brazenness that has never been seen before.”
Rangi’s mother had to have fallen by the same means. And Kyoshi didn’t know who among her former coworkers was still alive. She didn’t know if Auntie Mui was alive. She had to go back to Yokoya as soon as possible.
“What have you heard from Qinchao?” she asked.
Jinpa scrunched his face. The poor monk was taxed by having so much bad news pass through his ears. As a pacifist, he wasn’t used to this level of death and mayhem. “The officers found Master Jianzhu’s body. A couple of witnesses have corroborated your story, that a young man killed him in cold blood. But many of the townsfolk aren’t convinced of your innocence. Nearly all of them maintain that you destroyed the teahouse.”
Kyoshi hadn’t told anyone that it was Yun who’d avenged his own death. Looking back, she was barely certain of it herself. The encounter had been as surreal as the one in the mining town where she thought he’d perished. In both cases she’d seen an entity she had no hope of understanding.
“That’s all right,” she said. “I doubt I’ll be bothering the Chins again anytime soon. Is that the last of the news?”
“Ah, no. Master Jianzhu’s death came with a complication.”
Although it would have been entirely inappropriate, she nearly burst out laughing. Sure. What was another complication, added to the pile?
“It seems that several close associates, including the Earth King and the King of Omashu, held copies of his sealed last will and testament to be opened on the event of his death. It named the Avatar as the inheritor of his entire estate.”
Kyoshi brushed the revelation off. “He was training Yun to be his successor in protecting the Earth Kingdom. It makes sense.”
The monk shook his head. “The will refers to you by name, Avatar Kyoshi. Master Jianzhu sent the copies by messenger hawks only a few weeks ago. In the documents he confesses to his great mistake in wrongly identifying the Avatar and beseeches his colleagues to give you their full support, as he posthumously does. His lands, his riches, his house—they’re yours now.”
Kyoshi had to stop and marvel at how Jianzhu persisted in his methods from beyond the grave. It was so like him to assume the privilege of a sudden course reversal, to think correcting a mistake was the same thing as making amends. In his will, Jianzhu expected that, at his behest, the world would see events the way he did.
“Let me guess,” Kyoshi said. “While those documents completely settled the matter of whether or not I’m the Avatar, now people think I murdered him to inherit his wealth.”
Jinpa could only raise his arms in helplessness. “It is unusual that he was with you in Qinchao instead of his home so soon after the poisoning.”
The other members of the Flying Opera Company would have found it funny. At least getting bequeathed the mansion didn’t violate the daofei oaths she’d taken. She had every intention of keeping to the same Code as her sworn family members, living and dead.
She went silent as they resumed their walk. It was said that each Avatar was born in fitting times, to an era that needed them.
Judging by its start, the era of Kyoshi would be marred by uncertainty, fear, and death, the only gifts she seemed capable of producing for the world. The people would never revere her like they did Yangchen or smile at her like they did Kuruk.
Then let it be so,she thought. She would fight her ill fortune, her bad stars, and protect those who might despise her to the very end of her days.
They reached her quarters. Kyoshi had told the monks she’d be perfectly fine sleeping in the same plain cells as the rest of the pilgrims, but they’d insisted on giving her the room reserved for the Avatar’s current incarnation. It was more of a vast hall by her standards. Orange columns held the ceiling up, giving it the impression of an indoor grove, and the dark wooden floor was carpeted with fine bison wool, naturally shed and woven into patterns of Air Nomad whorls. There were stations for meditative exercises, including a reflective pool and a blank stone surface surrounded by vials of colored sand.
“Is there anything else you need right now, Avatar Kyoshi?” Jinpa asked.
As a matter of fact, there was. “I noticed Master Kelsang’s name in various registers around the temple,” she said. “But in a lower place of honor than his experience would suggest.”
“Ah, apologies, Avatar, but that’s an issue of Air Nomad practices. You see, it’s customary to maintain a level of separation between those who’ve taken a life, directly or indirectly, and those who have remained spiritually pure. It applies to names and records as well.”
So it was a matter of Kelsang being unclean. That was how the Air Nomads had interpreted his efforts to save coastal villagers from the depredations of pirates. She wondered where her mother’s name would be in the Eastern Air Temple. Perhaps buried in the ground with the refuse.
She looked at Jinpa’s round, innocent expression. Her exploits at Zigan hadn’t reached here yet. She thought about how fully in control she’d been when she let Xu fall.
“I’d like Master Kelsang’s name restored to its regular esteemed status,” Kyoshi said. The casual imperiousness came so easy to her. She hated every inch it pushed her toward behaving like Jianzhu. But it was such an effective tool in her arsenal, enhanced by her dreadful reputation.
“The council of elders won’t be pleased,” Jinpa said, hoping that she’d back down.
“But I would be,” Kyoshi replied. “In fact, a statue would be nice.”
He was young and savvy enough to understand the level she was operating at. He chuckled in resignation. “As you wish, Avatar Kyoshi. And if you have further requests, let me know. It’s the least my compatriots and I can do after failing to come to your assistance for so long. We were unfortunately in the dark, along with the rest of the world.”
Kyoshi tilted her head. “The Air Nomads weren’t to blame for my troubles.”
“I’m, um, referring to a different ‘we.’” Jinpa scratched the back of his neck. “Do you play Pai Sho, by any chance?”
Kyoshi frowned at his cryptic statement and sudden tangent. “I do not,” she said. “I have no taste for the game.”
Jinpa took her declaration as the signal to leave. He bowed and left her to her solitude.
Kyoshi sighed deeply and walked over to the reflective pool, where a cushion lay at the head. She sat down in the pose Lao Ge had taught her and closed her eyes halfway, her lashes forming a curtain over her view. She’d spent much of her time at the Air Temple meditating in this spot.
It seemed wrong to call it her favorite place. “The only one where she could be at relative peace” was more apt. No one had warned her how empty it would feel to have a singular goal and see it achieved. Yun’s reappearance, his assistance, his new and utter contempt for innocent life, gnawed at her edges and kept her from sleeping.
It was cooler by the edge of the pool than the rest of the room. She knew it was from the evaporation, but today there was a downright chill. Her skin prickled with goosebumps and she shivered.
“Kyoshi,” she heard a man say.
Her eyes flew open. Where she should have seen her reflection in the water, she saw a changing outline, still of a person, but rippling between dozens of shapes, as if she’d dashed the surface of the pool.
“Kyoshi,” she heard the voice say again.
A gust of wind sent her hair flying. A shroud of mist rose from the pool. She blinked, and there was a man sitting on top of the water, facing her, mirroring her pose.
He was in his thirties and ruggedly handsome. He wore the regalia of a great Water Tribe chieftain, his dark blue furs offsetting the paleness of his eyes. His body was adorned with the trophies of a mighty hunter, the sharp teeth of beasts laced around his neck and wrists.
“Kyoshi, I need your help,” he pleaded.
She stared at the spirit of the man whom she knew was dead. The man who’d been Jianzhu and Hei-Ran and Kelsang’s friend. The man who’d been her predecessor in the Avatar cycle.
“Kuruk?”
TO BE CONTINUED ...