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It was only a few days past the new moon. The light from the thin slice visible in the sky shone wanly on endless mounds of snow and ice and the very air seemed dark.
Aang waited at the door to the hut, his breath leaving him in a shocked wheeze when Katara came to the door. He chastised himself silently for his reaction, but he couldn't help it. Katara's hair was askew, purplish shadows made her eyes look like blue smudges in her beautiful face, and worry lines bracketed her frowning lips.
"You don't have to tell me I look a mess," she said wearily. "Things … are not going as planned."
That much was obvious to Aang at a glance. She had been gone since the previous night, and he could tell she was at the brink of exhaustion. His mind shrieked at him to carry her away and tuck her into a nice, warm bed until she could regain her strength. But he knew better. Katara was a Healer and she was needed. Even if it took her to the very edge of her strength. She considered it a sacred duty to those who needed her. And wasn't it the same with him, as the Avatar?
So Aang forced himself to stand quietly and listen as Katara spoke in a hushed, hurried tone. It looked as if it was going to be a very hard birth. The baby was poised to enter the world feet first and the mother was built so sparely that to allow the labor to progress as it was could be disastrous for her and the child.
Katara explained that inside the hut, Gran-Gran and her assistant – a middle-aged woman called Akna who was going to take over as the village's chief midwife when Kanna fully retired – were attempting to turn the baby inside the womb – which, for the mother, could be an excruciating process, since she was not permitted to take a calming draught to help ease any discomfort.
It was very dark in the birthing hut – Aang could see almost nothing over Katara's shoulder. But the sharp, metallic scent of blood wafted out to him like a trembling hand and he could hear animalistic pants broken only by deep, anguished sobs. The sounds were interspersed with gentle commands. Aang could just make out Kanna's quietly authoritative voice telling the young woman that she couldn't push – not yet. She had to resist, dig down deep for strength to see herself and her child through this ordeal.
"Gran-Gran wanted me here with Spirit Water … if I have to use it, that means things went very wrong but that maybe a life can be saved." Katara gave him a pained look laden with meaning. "One."
"Can I do anything?" Aang kept his voice low, swallowing around the sudden lump in his throat. "Do you need anything? Or …"
"Thank you, Sweetie, but … it's down to time and luck, now. I'm just hoping we haven't run out of either of those things."
Katara shook her head sadly and began to retreat back into the hut, then stopped.
"Wait – there is one thing you could help me with." She studied his face. "Do you know the igloo behind Dad's? The one with the little arctic hen coop right at the back?"
Aang nodded. He and Katara had passed closely by that hut and that coop a few days earlier when first arriving at the South Pole, taking a shortcut to the Royal Palace. It was a little too close for comfort for some: One of the hens had escaped and had pecked at Aang's cape in outrage of having her turf encroached on.
"Pukkeenegak has a very young daughter. She's in their igloo by herself." Katara inclined her head toward the darkness. "I was going to stay with her until the baby was born, but we're at too delicate a point for me to leave Gran-Gran and Akna. Could you check on the little girl? Sit with her for awhile? We should have some news soon." Katara sighed softly and wiped at her face. "One way or another."
Aang leaned in and kissed her cheek, feeling wetness beneath his lips and tasting salt. He said nothing as Katara closed the door on the sounds, the scent, the darkness. He stayed only for a moment, pressing his fingertips to the closed door and asking the Spirits to spare the woman and her child, or, if it was their destiny to leave earthly existence to dwell with the Spirits forever, to make the passage as painless as possible.
Then he turned and headed for the small igloo with the little hen coop almost directly in back.
Aang knocked on the door to the small igloo and received no answer, which made him nervous. It was possible that the little girl, exhausted from waiting for news of her mother, had taken herself to bed, but this was not a time to be alone. Even if the girl had been older, he sensed Katara would have asked the same favor of him, and he would have still been happy to oblige.
Not wanting to breach the integrity of the hut, but looking with a sharp eye for other ways of entry, he knocked again with the same result. Silence. Sighing softly, he wondered if the best way to gain access to the hut was to melt one of the solid-ice walls and then reconstruct it after he was inside. It might take some time to make the wall exactly as it was, but that was an option.
But just as he was getting in position to waterbend, there was a slight noise and the door creaked open.
"Hello?"
Aang took an unconscious step back as a small face appeared in the aperture of the doorway. Blue eyes went huge in startled recognition and the door opened a bit wider. Aang could now make out the tiny figure of a girl with sharp cheekbones and heavy, black hair tied back in two braids.
"Avatar Aang!"
"Hi!" Aang crouched down a little and gave the girl his best smile. "Is it okay if I come in?"
The girl nodded vigorously, and the door swung inward, opening almost completely.
The hut was bigger on the inside than it appeared, and scrupulously neat. A warm fire crackled in the fire pit and there were bowls and jugs on a table nearby. In a far corner of the igloo was a sealskin partition that separated sleeping quarters from the rest of the living space. Animal pelts of different sizes and types were scattered across the bamboo flooring.
A battle club, rusted with age, sat unobtrusively in a nearby corner. Aang remembered Sokka telling him that in Southern Water Tribe tradition, a deceased person's most prized possession was often placed where it would be among the first things a visitor saw when entering.
Eyeing the club, Aang recalled that the laboring woman was a young widow, so the weapon had likely belonged to her husband.
The little girl hadn't been idle during Aang's quick appraisal of her home. She'd taken a bowl from the table and filled it with something from a nearby pot. Sticking a spoon into the bowl, the young girl approached Aang and held it up for his inspection.
"Would you have some? It's good."
"Oh! Er …" Aang peered into the bowl, which contained a milky substance dotted with unidentifiable golden lumps. "It looks interesting … what is it, exactly?"
"It's frybread in yak milk sweetened with syrup," the girl answered. "We have it for snacks sometimes. Mama was about to start the cooking fire, but … then the baby started coming and she couldn't make supper." Aang heard a slight waver in the young voice. "I made this for myself but I made a lot of it. There's no meat in it, I promise. I know you don't eat any."
"Thank you, it sounds tasty." Aang took the bowl and bowed politely to the girl in thanks. "And I love frybread."
She bent her lips in a small smile, bowing back. Aang followed her to the table, where they both got comfortable on cushions and took up their spoons to eat in silence. He was surprised at how hungry he was – the girl was right that this was the traditional supper hour for the tribe – but although he and Sokka had a fairly heavy lunch earlier at the Palace with Head Chieftain Hakoda, he found an appetite for his snack. The dish was hearty, creamy, and not overly sweet. He made a note to add this to the rotation of their meals when they returned to their temporary home in Cranefish Town.
The girl was done eating before Aang, and put her bowl aside, a grave, thoughtful look making her seem quite a bit older than she likely was. Aang was about to praise the dish and ask if it had a specific name, but something in the girl's eyes stopped him, and he put his bowl aside, too. And waited.
After a moment, it came.
"Is Mama going to die?"
The young girl's tone wasn't accusatory or distressed. The blue eyes weren't shiny with tears, the brow not constricted with pain. It was a straightforward question asked, Aang realized suddenly, by a young girl who had already lost her father, thus having already experienced one of the worst things that could happen in a young life. She wanted the truth, not platitudes or soft words that were little more than lies wrapped in a sweet tone.
"Head Midwife Kanna, Midwife Akna and Master Katara are all working hard to make sure that doesn't happen." He paused under the solemn blue stare. "It's a hard birth … they're going to do everything they can."
"Mama shouldn't have gotten pregnant again," the girl said with the somewhat stilted tone of someone repeating what she'd heard from someone considerably older. "That's what Aunt Uki said before she went back North. Aunt Uki was Papa's sister and she said Papa should have been more careful. Mama was very sick when I was born, but then Papa went to war and Mama said if the Spirits listened to her prayers and brought him home, then maybe they'd grant her another prayer to have a baby."
The girl's face darkened suddenly. "But maybe the Spirits weren't listening? Or they thought she asked too much? Because Papa did come home but then he died when he fell overboard spear-fishing and no one could ever find him. And Mama did get a baby, but now …"
She trailed off and her head dipped forward. Tears fell silently onto the dull wood of the table.
Aang placed a hand over hers and waited. After a long sniffle, the girl lifted her head to look at him again.
"Little one," he said, suddenly feeling much older than his 18 years, "what's your name?"
The girl wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffled quietly.
"I'm Korra, Avatar Aang."
Aang's brow wrinkled. An odd sensation started at the base of his spine and crawled throughout his body before winking out as abruptly as a snuffed candle. It was not an unpleasant situation, but it caught Aang off guard, as he could see no reason for his body to react that way.
He saw Korra observing him with a somewhat befuddled look on her face.
"Avatar Aang, are you okay?"
"Fine!" He said brightly, shaking away the memory of the strange feeling. "How old are you, Korra?"
"Six years old. I was still in Mama's tummy when Master Katara got you out of the iceberg. But I heard all about it later."
Well, that answered one question. Aang wondered if maybe he'd met the child before, but that didn't seem likely. She hadn't been born when Katara and Sokka had set off to accompany him in what would be the adventure of their young lives. Little Korra might have been among the throng of toddlers at the inaugural Glacier Spirits festival a few years back, but he'd had larger issues on his plate that prevented him from meeting all the new generation of Southern Water Tribe inhabitants.
"Korra." He felt the feathery sensation race down his spine again like a thousand ghostly fingers. "That's a nice name."
"It was my Gran-Gran's sister's name," said Korra, toying with the spoon inside her empty bowl. "I never knew her. She was a Waterbender. She was taken by Fire Lord Sozin a long time ago."
Aang's mouth went dry. The kidnapping of Waterbenders from the Southern Water Tribe was an atrocity that could never be remedied. Zuko, attempting to right as many wrongs as the Fire Nation had perpetuated over the past century, had been told as such by Hakoda, and whenever the subject was brought up, Katara's eyes went furtive and she turned away, doubtless thinking of the ruined old woman they'd met during their wanderings through the Fire Nation, who had been a victim of these culling of Waterbenders and had escaped only to spend much of the ensuing years enacting an unspeakably cruel revenge.
He wondered if Korra's ancestress had ever known Hama.
"I was born too soon," Korra went on, not phased by or not noticing Aang's prolonged silence. "Mama was sick and I was too little and I was sick, too. But I got stronger and so did Mama. Papa was here then. I was going to be named Yuka after Mama's Mama, who died in the Deep Frost right after Mama and Papa married, but Papa said he'd always heard his Gran-Auntie fought the Fire Lord's soldiers, even as they dragged her on the ship, and I fought just as hard to stay alive and get stronger so I should be called Korra instead."
"... I'm so sorry, Korra, about what happened to all the Waterbenders. It was horrible."
"I'm sorry, too. Fire Lord Sozin was really evil." Her blue eyes softened suddenly. "And he hurt all of your people, too, didn't he, Avatar Aang?"
Aang bowed his head. The two shared a silent moment, thinking about their lost loved ones.
But Mama says there's peace now, so that's good." Korra gnawed her bottom lip. "I wish I'd known Great-Gran Auntie. She sounds like she was so fun. But I'm not a Waterbender. Neither is Mama, and Papa wasn't, either. But Mama said maybe one day when I'm a grownup and married and with my own compound, I might have a daughter who is a Waterbender. Do you think that might happen, Avatar Aang?"
"I think it's a definite possibility." Aang smiled gently. "There's a long way to go before that, though. You have a lot of time to enjoy being a little kid!"
"I know, but I like thinking about having a daughter someday. It's okay if she's not a Waterbender. I'll love her anyway." Korra's gaze turned inward. "I dream about having a daughter sometimes. It won't be for a long while, like you said, but … I think it's going to happen. And I think she will be a Waterbender. I just hope … I hope I won't have to name her after Mama."
Her chin wobbled. "Because … because that would mean …"
Aang placed a hand over hers again and squeezed it softly. He knew. It would mean Korra's Mama was with the Spirits and no longer of this world. Katara had explained the Southern Water Tribe naming traditions to him when they'd had a long talk, nestled in each other's arms, about what they might name their children one day. It was considered bad luck to name a child after someone still living, because Tui and La might decide to cut short the life of one or the other. On the flip side, naming a child after an ancestor who walked with the Spirits was considered good manners – especially if that ancestor had done something remarkable in his or her life.
"Korra, I'd like to tell you a story," said Aang when he saw tears begin to flow down the child's face. "Is that okay?"
Korra nodded. "I like stories. Mama tells me one every night at bedtime."
"I think you'll like this one." Aang cleared his throat. "It's a story about something that happened when we were traveling in the Earth Kingdom – me, Master Katara, her brother Sokka, his betrothed, Suki –"
"– The Kyoshi Warrior?"
"The Kyoshi Warrior." Aang nodded. "But they weren't betrothed then. They were, um, figuring it out. Well, we were all trying to get to Ba Sing Se to find the Earth King. We had a plan to defeat the Fire Nation, but we needed to let King Kuei know about it. Along our journey, we met Than and Ying, an Earth Kingdom couple who had lost everything to the Fire Nation and were evacuating to Ba Sing Se. We were going to take a boat with them from one of the ferry stations, but … let's just say we ran into a lot of bad luck, so we had no choice but to take the most direct route, and that would mean going through The Serpent's Path …"
Korra's eyes were wide with excited anticipation as Aang told the tale of the journey, of coming face-to-snout with the fearsome serpent that guarded the waterway and how he and Katara defeated it. And of Ying going into labor as soon as they'd finished the crossing, with Katara taking charge to aid the young woman to a safe delivery.
"... And they decided to name their baby Hope," he said, winding things up. "Because they'd lost so much and had gone through so much hardship, but they were alive and together and had their beautiful baby girl, and it gave them hope for the future."
"Master Katara did all that?" Korra was astounded. "She's … amazing!"
"She is," said Aang, smiling.
"I'm glad she's with Mama," Korra said softly. "Maybe … maybe it'll come out okay. Like with Baby Hope."
Aang leaned across the table and stared into eyes that seemed so familiar to him, but he knew they could not possibly be. He felt small hands rest atop his, seeking comfort.
"I'm sorry I never had the chance to know your father," he said quietly. "But I know he was brave and strong. So is your mother. And so are you, Korra. You're brave and strong, too. I'm so happy I've gotten the chance to know you."
Korra smiled at him then. A genuine smile that showed the charming gap where her two front teeth were starting to grow in and made her eyes glow.
"I'm glad you're here, Avatar Aang. I'm sorry I never met Gran-Aunt Korra, but I'm really happy I met you, too."
Aang's throat constricted and he felt a rush of heat in his cheeks. He couldn't say why or what or even how, but this was a special little girl … somehow. One day, he was sure, it would become clear why, but he sensed as if it were being told to him directly by the Mother of Spirits herself, that it would be a long, long time before he understood why crossing paths with this girl … this girl … was special. Special to him. Somehow.
There was a soft knock on the door, and Aang turned as Katara entered the igloo, wrapped up tight in her parka.
Aang couldn't read anything in her face until she removed her hood. She still looked tired, but there was relief and joy in her expression, and Aang could just barely keep himself from jumping up and cheering.
"Well hello there," said Katara, her eyes sweeping the table before focusing on the little girl. "Korra, would you like to meet your new baby brother?"
The little girl jumped up with a shriek, her eyes dancing in the firelight.
"Baby brother? I have a baby brother? Really?!"
"Really. Healthy set of lungs on him. I'm surprised you didn't hear him way over here!"
"He's okay? He's not little and sick?"
"He's beautiful. He was a little lost. It took us a while to get him pointed in the right direction," said Katara with a short laugh. "But as soon as we did, he was eager to meet us as we were to meet him.
Korra stood still, her face suffusing red. "And – and Mama?"
"She's very tired, but she's going to be fine." Katara rested her hand on the young girl's shoulder. "She asked me to come and get you. Midwife Akna has already set up a pallet so you can spend the night in the hut with your Mama."
Aang indulged himself in watching Katara dress Korra for the cold, expertly getting the girl into her woolen leggings and long anorak in a matter of seconds. Staring at Katara, he knew – just like he'd known those years ago when she'd helped deliver Baby Hope – that he was watching his future wife, the mother of his future children. Katara was going to be as excellent at motherhood as she was at everything else.
Katara surveyed her handiwork, which involved Korra being wrapped up head to toe like a mackerel against the whipping winds.
"Ready?"
"Ready!"
Korra's voice was somewhat muffled by all the layers, but Aang could hear the excitement all the same, and he was happy to take one hand while Katara took the other and they escorted Korra to where her mother and new brother were waiting.
Kanna and Akna opted to stay in the birthing hut in case any complications arose during the night, and the two women smiled Aang and Katara out of the small hut before firmly closing the door in their faces.
Aang understood – it was warm and not built for a crowd, but he was able to duck inside long enough to congratulate Pukkeenegak and see her baby boy, a red-faced bundle of squirming muscle with deep blue eyes and pouting red lips. He would be named not Kallik, for her late husband, but Nukilik for her brother, who had been part of Hakoda's muster for war and had died over in the Earth Kingdom fighting the Fire Nation. They had decided on that name, should they have a boy, and Pukkeenegak said it was her pleasure to honor what had amounted to a final wish from her husband.
Korra had been fascinated by little Nukilik, who gurgled happily at his big sister and blinked his incredible eyes at her. Katara and Aang had left the small family with Pukkeenegak being fed broth by Akna and Korra telling the story of Baby Hope to the yawning little bundle in their mother's arms.
"You're amazing, Katara," said Aang as they walked through the town. "I'm reminded of that every day."
"You're sweet." She slipped her hand in his. "But it was a team effort. It took all three of us to get Nukilik to turn. It was touch and go for awhile … but it came out all right, thank the Spirits. It's possible Pukkeenegak will marry again. She's only 30 and she's beautiful and very intelligent. She'd be a great catch. But Gran-Gran is going to suggest to her that she not try to conceive again. She's had two close calls now. She'd been advised to stop after Korra."
"She told me – Korra, not Pukkeenegak."
Aang looked up at the sky. The moon seemed to be a little brighter now.
"Korra."
Katara looked over at him, puzzled.
"Yes? What about her?"
"Nothing." Aang paused. "It's an interesting name, but …"
"But …?"
Aang hesitated. He wasn't sure how to classify what he was feeling. The closest sensation to which he could liken it was the crawly feeling that occurred long ago in Foggy Swamp when he'd spotted what he thought was a young girl and turned out to be a vision of Toph Beifong, Earthbender extraordinaire … whom he'd not even met to that point.
"But … it's pretty." Aang hooked his arm around Katara's waist. "I was just thinking hat even though it sounds familiar to me, I don't think I've ever heard it before."
"It's a Northern name. Pukkeenegak's family came from the North a little before the war started, I think." Katara leaned her head on Aang's shoulder. "One of the Northern princesses was called that a long time ago, and it became very popular in both Poles, but sort of fell out of fashion."
Korra ... a name fit for a princess … and fit for a brave woman. And for a brave girl. And who knows ... maybe a century from now, there'll be another brave Southern Water Tribe girl named Korra ... and maybe she'll have heard the story of this night. Of little Korra waiting for her brother to be born. Of Katara. Of me.
Aang was smiling as the thought flitted briefly across his brain just as they crossed the threshold of the guest igloo in which they were staying.
"I really like it," he said almost dreamily, drawing Katara closer so he could kiss her forehead. "It has a ... certain ring to it."