“You know,” the doctor began conversationally to his team nurses and assistants, “we may very well loose our jobs for this.”

In the bright, white room, where a woman lay quite dead upon an operating table, a newborn baby was giving its first wails to the world. The child, although a bit early and taken unwillingly from the womb of its dying mother, was obviously healthy by the sound of that scream, of the flush and lively parlor of the skin. A senior nurse, her graying hair tucked away under the green sterile cap, was cleaning the baby while the rest of the team watched, some with grim faces beneath their masks.

They had known they would loose the mother as soon as she was rushed into the emergency room. Airship crashes were not a common occurrence, especially not crashes from such a height and with a pregnant woman on board. Her husband had been informed for her condition quickly and discreetly, and he had arrived at the hospital to make the difficult decision: to save his unborn child’s life or risk loosing both forever. So it was not the mother’s death they worried now about. No, what they worried about now was something royal physicians had worried about since ancient times.

“A girl is a girl.”

The senior nurse said with firmness, bouncing the child in her arms as the newborn girl wailed to the spirits and the gods above. “There is nothing that could or can be done about it.”

The doctor closed his eyes and prayed for the future of the tiny Water heir he’d helped bring into the world.

--

Something like Blue Tulips

--

1

Mother

--

My mother was a bright woman.

Not, you know, bright in the intelligent sense. No, she was really a floozy when it came down to it. I bet she couldn’t have found her way out a box if she’d been put into one. She was a lot like a pretty little mouse to be kept in a man’s pocket, petted and lavished until her entertainment value ran out and her neck had to be snapped.

Or you could say she got into a helicopter crash while coming home from her favorite salon. It happens.

My mother was bright as in she was literally bright. She always wore flashy clothes, did flashy things, and had flashy parties, gifting people who attended with flashy jewelry. There was always a shiny little mirror in her purse, and her lips were always made up into a light, catching sheen. I have even been told her eyes shone like the twinkling lights on the towers, that her loveliness made her so brilliantly bright it would have blinded the sun god himself.

But my mother is dead and gone and I don’t really remember her so I can’t comment on this myself. Thus it happens.

--

I’m also constantly reminded that my mother was terribly pretty. You know, every time some tells me that, I always think of that asinine ditty that my father used to try to teach me. It went something like:

There was a man
And his name was Sam
If Sam was a man
And he ate no ham
Was he really a lamb?

And I would always stare back at my father and think: are all fathers as stupid as this?

I mean, they must have thought me terribly stupid and ugly to throw my mother at me like that. A dead woman can’t convince someone of anything. Except that she’s dead and people die. Thus it happens.

--

Everybody dies. That’s one of the first things you’ll learn when you exit childhood.

I suppose I exited childhood when I was about seven. It was the day that Zuko entered my life.

Zuko, you see, was to be my husband. We met at a dinner party—not as flashy or shiny as my mother’s but with nice enough gifts to get people to stay past dessert. Father had made me dress in a little red and white party dress, and I was expected to sit still for an hour while everyone discussed everyone else.

“Oh, Aang is getting along wonderfully, thank you for asking.”

“I dare say, Bei Fong-san, the company is doing wonderfully.”

“Yes, yes, the bathrooms are to your right and down the hall. Do try the raspberry sherry; it’s delicious.”

And so on and so forth.

He was eight when we met that evening. He was dressed in a smart, no-nonsense suit with a properly done sash and a silk collar. My father and his father talked for a while before my father turned to me. I opened my mouth to ask him why the Fire Nation ambassador’s son looked so unhappy. But Father faithfully answered my question with his telekinetic powers.

“Katara, this is Zuko. When you turn fourteen you two will be married.”

Thus it happens.

--

I’ve also been told many, many, many times that my mother was such an agreeable and proper woman.

She didn’t argue with her tutors. She didn’t have screaming matches with her father. She didn’t command ships or play with knives, and she definitely never shot an arrow from a crossbow. No, my mother was perfectly agreeable and proper and perfect.

Have I mentioned I hate my mother?

I hate her so much.

--

Zuko had a particular way of speaking. He always started off with a deep breath and a lengthy pause before launching into a speech or asking a question. He was doing that just then on the beach of the Earth Nation. I was ten and he was eleven.

“I didn’t want to marry you, you know.”

He sat out in the sun, arms crossed and legs crossed. He looked like a tan and lean Buddha with his lips pursed in that way he had. I stretched milky legs out over the towel, wiggled my toes in the sand creeping up the shadowed edges.

Crabs scuttled along the sand at this time. I wasn’t allowed to go near to the water. I was more valuable the paler my skin was, so I sat there underneath the umbrella and on the useless towel like some sapling beneath a great pine.

“You don’t have to. You are, after all, the heir to the Fire Throne.”

Zuko did that pause again. “But then what would become of you? You’ve been bred for this marriage.”

I shrugged. The crabs scuttled. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a crab, scuttling and burrowing my life away.

“I would probably just be married off again,” I answered. “I have a uterus. There is always want for a uterus.”

--

Of course, we got married as planned.

Father gave me away on my wedding day. He had to wear gloves because I had dug my nails so deep into his hand on the rehearsal day that I had broken skin. I wore a tight bandage around my torso to hold my broken rib together through the day. I wore a tight smile on my face to hold the publicity photos up through the day. I was a good bride, yes. Not as pretty or perfect as my mother but a good bride nonetheless.

Zuko kissed me for the first time that day. He was fifteen and had kissed several other girls before. I was fourteen and had never kissed or been kissed before in my life. So I kissed him back and we sealed a pact made in greed and gold.

Thus it happens.

--

End of Chapter 1