I Am Not the Last Airbender {ON HOLD}

Chapter Four

            So we were going to meet him.  I couldn’t get over the fact that I, little unimportant Jalia, was going to go meet the Fire Lord.  The same Fire Lord who was once burned by his own father, the previous Fire Lord.  The same Father who almost destroyed the world.  But this is the Fire Lord who tried to kill my parents and their friends.  But this Fire Lord was the one who helped save the world.

            Zuko.

            How was one supposed to prepare themselves to meet an emperor?  Especially one so powerful.  It was said he could redirect lightning with the flick of his wrist and set a field on fire with a single breath.  I was Jalia.  Just Jalia, the amateur waterbender who couldn’t live up to her mom’s skill or please her dad.

            Gliding over the waters surrounding her former home.  Now my living quarters consisted of a saddle onboard a floating bison.  And my family herself, Macco, and Appa.  Our furry ship had set sail on the wind about a week ago.  Thoughts of my worried family plagued my mind from time to time, but they should have seen this coming.  At least Mum should have.  Macco buried himself in his studying, carefully docking our progress on a map.  I knew he didn’t only do it to keep us on track, he did it so he couldn’t remember.  Poor Macco was homesick.

I felt kind of bad.  I had dragged him along into this whole ordeal.  It was me who had wanted to get away from my family, and he the faithful sidekick grudgingly obliged.  Turning around from my post at the reigns, I watched Macco for a moment in the saddle, flipping through pages, completely engaged with his work. 

I spun back around, fighting back tears.  Why was I crying?  Macco would be okay; he’d get over it.  And it wasn’t that I was homesick—no!  My family meant nothing to me.  Father was always away on “important business” and when he was home he only paid attention to Remmy, my younger brother.  And Remmy had let the fame of being the only airbender in the Southern Watertribe get to his head, not bothering to even look at me most of the time.  Mum was only ever present in my life to scold me.  No, I didn’t miss them.  I was better off without them.

We rode on into the dawn.  Wiping sleep from my eyes, I peered at the rising sun.  At the horizon lay the land we were looking for: the Fire Nation.  Turning around on Appa’s neck I saw Macco was now sleeping in the saddle.

“Macco, we’re almost there!”  I said, excitedly.  The boy didn’t stir.  “MACCO!!!” I screamed this time.  He jumped with a start.

“What?!  What is it?  Are we being followed?  Shot at?  Chased…”

“No, it’s all good, Macco,” I interrupted.  “We’re almost to the Fire Nation!  It should only be another hour before we’re on new soil.”

Macco groaned.  “Then couldn’t you wait another hour before you woke me up?”

I laughed at him, trying to keep from bouncing with excitement.  I’d never left my ice-covered home before.  I was terrified, but ready.  Long I had waited to leave the nest, and now I was finally doing it.

For the remainder of the trip, I decided to compose what I was going to say to the Fire Lord.  There was no way I could tell him Macco and I had run away from home.  Zuko would just send us back with an army of Fire Bender escorts.  He and Father still remained in close contact and were good friends.  If he learned we were sneaking about without the Avatar’s permission…we’d be in for it.  The only option was to lie.  I wouldn’t lie about everything, just the…important things.

I would tell him Father had sent Macco and me to come get some experience in the real world.  We were looking for practice in combat and to observe the other styles of bending and fighting.  If Mr. Powerful Fire Lord could please direct us in the direction of a master, that would be great!

That seemed good enough to me.  Mum had told me that I had met Zuko once when I was a baby, but even with such a superior brain as mine I couldn’t remember it.  Perhaps he would remember my name…I wasn’t sure.  Whatever the case, I would try and dispel my outspoken nature for an hour or two.  Sure he and my dad were buds, but his fabled uncanny ability with flames still scared me just a bit.

And then we were landing in a boat yard by the docks of the Fire Nation Navy.  Macco jolted awake as Appa, in his tired state, landed roughly.

“I’m up, I’m up!” Macco cried in surprise.

I laughed, giddy with nervousness and joy.  We soon found a patch of grass for Appa to graze on and began on our way to the Palace.  I slipped Dad’s bison whistle in my pocket just in case.

Looking at Macco, striding purposefully beside me, I asked him if he was nervous.

“Of course,” he said, not looking at me.  “There are so many things that could go wrong.  But right now I’m just focusing on walking in a straight line.”

At this I laughed, thankful for his humor in a time of anxiety.  We marched through the rows of boats until we came to the base of a volcano.

Cursing, I realized we’d forgotten about this obstacle.

“Dang it,” Macco mumbled.  “Sorry Jay, I kinda forgot…”

But then I saw a line of people in front of us, and I ran over to them, cutting Macco off.  Following me, we both peered up at masses of people boarding a sort of carriage that was attached to a track that went all the way up the side of the volcano.

“Whoa…” I said in awe, my head all the way back staring at the top.

“Whoa…” Macco echoed.  I punched him in the shoulder.

Walking to be in line, I saw we could be waiting here for quite a while.  Tapping the shoulder of the man in front of me I asked him a few questions.

“Excuse me, sir, but is this safe?”

“Ah, newcomers,” he said with a smile.  “Yes, it is perfectly safe.  When it was first set up, Fire Lord Zuko tested it himself.”  He said the name with deep reverence.

“How long has this been here?”

“Pretty soon after the Fire Lord took over his father’s position.  You see, King Zuko is more open to allowing citizens to enter and leave the Capital so he had the Elevator built.”

“Thank you,” I said nodding, processing this new information.  Anything new Macco and I could learn would be treasured, our brains our best weapon.

As we waited in line, I began to figure out just how much time before someone came to get us.  Assuming someone did.  A part of me almost wanted to wish it would be Dad, but that almost made it worse because he would find us so much faster than anyone else.  It would probably take about a week for whoever was coming to find us.  Macco and I had been saving table scraps for months. Rations were always short in the Southern Water Tribe.  But, if they departed about a week from yesterday, it would take them about half a day to fly to the nearest land mass: the Southern Air Temple.

There they would probably search for the rest of the day and probably move on the after that.  It was my guess that they would go to the nearby Earth Kingdom first because that is where Uncle Sokka and Aunt Suki live.  They’d think we were stupid enough to go stay with our relatives.  Searching the coast of the Earth Kingdom would take a few weeks, probably about a month at the least.

“I think we have just over a month,” I whispered to Macco as we neared the front of the line.

“Until they come—”

“Shh!” I cut him off.  “Yeah.”

Macco nodded solemnly.  The line began to move again, and we soon found ourselves packed tightly into a metal box, squished like sardines.  As the tin death trap began scaling the mountain, I looked upward towards the fire that would take me out of the ashes of my old life.  And into the flame.