He led her into one of the side rooms, a supply closet that had been hastily emptied of its contents. Straw dummies and earthbending discs had been tossed without care outside, irking her sense of organization. Inside, Hei-Ran waited for them.
“Kyoshi,” she said with a warm smile. “Thank you for humoring us. I know it’s been a trying past couple of days for you.”
Kyoshi felt like there would be no end to the awkwardness. Despite her friendship with Rangi, she and the headmistress were more distant than she and Jianzhu. Hei-Ran was acting much friendlier than she’d expected. But Kyoshi looked down and noticed that the woman had been pacing trails in the dusty floor. Rangi often did that when she was upset.
“I’ll help in any way I can,” Kyoshi said, her throat feeling suddenly parched. Her tonsils stuck to the back of her tongue, causing her words to catch in her mouth.
“Sorry, that’s my doing,” Hei-Ran said with a gentle laugh. “I dried the air out in this room for an exercise. Please, sit.”
There were two silk cushions borrowed from the meditation chamber on the floor. Kyoshi was horrified at the finery thrown on the dirty ground, but she took a position across from Hei-Ran anyway. She was keenly aware of Jianzhu standing behind her, watching like a bird of prey.
“We perform this test on newborns in the Fire Nation to see if they’re capable of firebending,” Hei-Ran said. “We have to know about our children quick, as you can imagine, or else they risk burning the neighborhood down.”
It was a joke, but it made Kyoshi more nervous. “What do I have to do?”
“Very little.” Hei-Ran reached into a pouch and pulled out what appeared to be a ball of tinder. “This is shredded birch bark and cotton mixed with some special oils.” She fluffed the material with her fingers until it was wispy and cloudlike. “You just need to breathe and feel your inner heat. If the tinder lights, you’re a Firebender.”
And therefore the Avatar. “You’re certain this will work?”
Hei-Ran raised an eyebrow. “Newborns, Kyoshi. It’s essentially impossible for a true Firebender not to make some indication with this method. Now hush. I need to get a little closer to you.”
She held the tinder puff under Kyoshi’s nose as if she was trying to revive her with smelling salts. “Relax and breathe, Kyoshi. Don’t put effort into it. Your natural fire, your source of life, is enough. Breathe.”
Kyoshi tried to do as she was told. She could feel strands of cotton tickling her lips. She took in deep lungfuls of air, over and over.
“I’ll help you along,” Hei-Ran said after two minutes without results. The air around them grew hotter, much hotter. Trickles of sweat ran down Kyoshi’s face, drying out before they reached her chin. She was desperately thirsty again.
“Just a tiny spark.” Hei-Ran sounded like she was pleading now. “I’ve done most of the work. L
et loose. The slightest push. That’s all I’m asking for. Your thumb on the scale.”
Kyoshi tried for ten more minutes straight before she collapsed forward, coughing and hacking. Hei-Ran crumpled the tinder in her fist. A puff of smoke drifted from between her fingers.
“It takes children, babies, a few seconds at most under these conditions,” she said to Jianzhu. Her voice was unreadable.
Kyoshi looked up at the two masters. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Didn’t Yun already pass this test?”
Jianzhu didn’t answer. He turned around and stormed out of the room, slamming his fist into the frame as he left. The earthbending discs stacked by the door exploded into dust.
Someone had seen Kyoshi coming and going from her new hiding place in the secondary library and ratted her out. There was no other way Yun would have found her, curled up beside a medicine chest that had over a hundred little drawers, each carved with the name of a different herb or tincture.
Yun sat down on the floor across from her, leaning his back against the wall. He scanned over the labels next to her head. “It feels like way too many of these are cures for baldness,” he said.
Despite herself, Kyoshi snorted.
Yun tugged on a strand of his own brown hair, perhaps thinking ahead to the day he’d have to join the Air Nomads for airbending training at the Northern or Southern Temple. They wouldn’t force him to shave it off, but Kyoshi knew he liked to honor other people’s traditions. And he’d still be good-looking anyway.
But then, maybe he would never get the chance, Kyoshi thought miserably. Maybe it would be stolen from him by a petty thief who’d burrowed into his house under the guise of being his friend.
He seemed to pick up on her swell of self-hatred. “Kyoshi, I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you never meant for this to happen.”
“Rangi doesn’t.” Saying it out loud made her feel ungrateful for his forgiveness. She could count on Yun’s easygoing nature and inability to hold a grudge. But if Rangi truly believed Kyoshi had wronged them, then there was no hope.
It was clear. Kyoshi needed both of them in order to feel whole. She wanted her paired set of friends put back into its original place, before the earthquake had knocked everything off the shelf. This state of not-knowing they were trapped in was a plane of spiritual punishment, separating them from their old lives like a sheet of ice over a lake.
“Rangi’ll come around,” Yun said. “She’s a person of faith, you know? A true believer. It’s hard for someone like her to deal with uncertainty. You have to be a little patient with her.” He caught himself and twisted his lips.
“What is it?” Kyoshi said.