Avatar, The Last Airbender: The Shadow of Kyoshi (The Kyoshi Novels #2)(11)
If Kyoshi missed anything from those days after she fled Yokoya on Pengpeng’s back, it was these little in-between moments of travel. Most people would have assumed that floating on a bison with the breeze against her face was calming, but for Kyoshi, the upside was very different. Taking to the air gave her the assurance that for once, by default, she was doing the best she could. There weren’t any faster ways to get from one point to another than a sky bison. She had no other options to fret over.
An unsecured bag began to slide from one edge of the saddle to the other. Jinpa gave the reins another little yank, and Yingyong righted himself. Kyoshi caught the sack and tucked it under a lashing. “Is he okay?” she asked. “Does he need to rest?”
“Nah, he’s fine,” Jinpa said. “Lazy boy got distracted by a school of winged eels. Didn’t you, boy? Who’s a lazy, distracted boy with a poor attention span?” He gave Yingyong an affectionate scratch behind the ear. “But if you do want to stop, there’s an opportunity up ahead with an interesting piece of history. A small island where it’s said that Avatar Yangchen performed her first act of waterbending. Want to see it?”
She did, honestly. Kyoshi held an intense curiosity about one of the greatest Avatars in history, her predecessor from two generations ago. Yangchen was the woman who’d done everything right. She was the Avatar whom, to this day, was still invoked by people for protection and luck. Kyoshi often wished she understood Yangchen’s leadership like a real scholar. She’d been making do with her commoner’s knowledge of the blessed Air Avatar who’d successfully kept the world in balance and harmony.
She would study Yangchen’s work more the next time she returned to Yokoya. There had to be useful materials in the mansion’s great libraries. Right now, though, she was in a hurry. “We don’t need to land. I’ll take a look from above.”
“Of course, Avatar. I’ll let you know when it comes up.”
Kyoshi settled back into her seat. The letter under her jacket made a slight rasp against the fabric and a loud scrape against her nerves.
She hadn’t communicated with Rangi in a long time. Messenger hawks had trouble withstanding the extreme cold of the north, where her mother Hei-Ran had been recovering. As a new Avatar, Kyoshi was always on the move. The mansion was as far away from the Northern Water Tribe as a point in the Earth Kingdom could be. It seemed like the world had conspired to keep them apart and mute their voices.
She wanted to think about something else. Or talk to someone else. She still found it hard to make casual conversation with Jinpa, and a bison saddle was a large, empty seat for one person. She was more accustomed to fighting for space with at least four other people, jostling shoulders, complaining about whose breath stank from eating too much pungent food.
After a while she felt Yingyong turning into another roll, sharper this time. “So . . . where’s this island?” she asked Jinpa as she balanced herself against the rail. The sea was a flat sheet with nowhere to hide for a landmass.
Jinpa leaned into the circle and examined the water. “Hmm.
Everything I’ve read said it should be around here. I don’t see anything but that dark patch under the surface.”
“Look, if we can’t find it, we can just go. It’s not important—”
KYOSHI.
She screamed as a bolt of pain drove into her skull from temple to temple. It seized her by the neck and scoured her vision into a blur. Her hands went limp and lost their grip on the saddle. Kyoshi keeled over the edge and fell off the bison, her ears filled with the sound of her own name.
She hurt the entire way down. A sharpness like daggers bounced from one side of her head to the other. It found an outlet down her spine where it could ransack her body. She was barely aware of how fast and far she was plummeting.
KYOSHI.
A man with a deep voice called to her, his words shredded by the wind speeding past her ears. It wasn’t Jinpa.
KYOSHI.
The shock of cold salt water as she hit the ocean was a relief from the heated agony. She lost her sense of up and down. Her limbs drifted weightlessly. When she opened her eyes, there was no sting.
Out of the endless blue, a figure drifted in front of her, mirroring her slackness in the water, as much of a prisoner as she. The shape of it was hazy, an ink painting dipped in a river, but she knew who the apparition clad in Water Tribe furs was.
Avatar Kuruk.
—KYOSHI—NEED YOUR HELP TO—
The voice of Kyoshi’s immediate predecessor in the Avatar cycle was much louder in the water, his native-born element. It thundered between her ears.
—KYOSHI—YOU MUST—I CAN’T—IT CAN PASS—
A hand plunged through Kuruk’s body, dissolving it into the surrounding liquid like thin syrup. It grabbed Kyoshi’s lapels and tugged her toward the surface. The salt water, which hadn’t bothered her until now, dug into her eyes with a vengeance. Forgetting she was still below the surface, she gasped for air and got her throat splashed for her troubles. If Kuruk’s spell could have kept her from drowning indefinitely, it was broken now.
Jinpa kicked toward the rippling sunlight, holding tightly to her with one hand. At first Kyoshi tried to help him by swimming upward herself. It took her an embarrassingly long time floundering like that to remember she was a Waterbender surrounded by water. A quick raise of her arms and a rolling bubble carried her and Jinpa to the surface.