“It wasn’t me,” he said. “It was a different Airbender.”
Kyoshi snickered and grabbed the flour bead out of the air. It burst between her fingers. “Quit it before Auntie Mui throws us out of here.”
“Then quit looking troubled on my behalf,” he said, having read her mind. “It’s not so bad if I take a break from Avatar business. I’ll get to spend more time with you. We should go on a vacation, the two of us, perhaps to see the Air Nomad sacred sites.”
She would have liked that very much. Chances to share Kelsang’s company had gotten rarer as the Avatar and his teachers sank deeper into the mesh of world affairs. But as lowly as her own job was in comparison, she still had the same responsibility to show up every day.
“I can’t,” Kyoshi said. “I have work.” There’d be time enough in the future for traveling with Kelsang.
He rolled his eyes. “Bah. I’ve never seen someone so averse to fun since old Abbot ‘No-Fruit Pies’ Dorje.” He flicked another blob of flour at her, and she failed to flinch out of the way.
“I know how to have fun!” Kyoshi whispered indignantly as she wiped her nose with the back of her wrist.
From the head of the cutting board tables, Auntie Mui gave a tongue-curled whistle, interrupting their debate. “Poetry time!” she said.
Everyone groaned. She was always trying to enforce high culture on her workers, or at least her idea of it. “Lee!” she said, singling out an unfortunate wok handler. “You start us off.”
The poor line cook stumbled as he tried to compose on the spot while keeping count of his syllables. “Uh . . . the-weath-er-is-nice / sun-shin-ing-down-from-the-sky / birds-are-sing-ing . . . good?”
Auntie Mui made a face like she’d swigged pure lemon juice. “That was awful! Where’s your sense of balance? Symmetry? Contrast?”
Lee threw his hands in the air. He was paid to fry things, not perform in the Upper Ring of Ba Sing Se.
“Can’t someone give us a decent verse?” Auntie Mui complained. There were no volunteers.
“I’ve got cheeks like ripe round fruit,” Kelsang suddenly pitched forth. “They shake like boughs in the storm / I blush bright red when I see a bed / and leap at the sound of the horn.”
The room exploded in laughter. He’d picked a well-known shanty popular with sailors and field hands, where you improvised raunchy words from the perspective of your object of unrequited affection. It was a game for others to guess who you were singing about, and the simple rhythm made manual labor more pleasant.
“Brother Kelsang!” Auntie Mui said, scandalized. “Set an example!”
He had. The entire staff was already chopping, kneading, and scrubbing to the raucous tune. It was okay to misbehave if a monk did it first.
“I’ve got a nose like a dove-tailed deer / I run like a leaf on the wind,” Lee sang, evidently better at this than haiku. “My arms are slight and my waist is tight / and I don’t have a thought for my kin.”
“Mirai!” a dishwasher yelled out. “He’s got it bad for the greengrocer’s daughter!” The staff whooped over Lee’s protests, thinking it a good match. Sometimes it didn’t matter to the audience if they guessed right or not.
“Kyoshi next!” someone said. “She’s never here, so let’s make the most of it!”
Kyoshi was caught off guard. Normally she wasn’t included in household antics. She caught Kelsang’s eye and saw the challenge twinkling there. Fun, eh? Prove it.
Before she could stop herself, the rhythm launched her into song.
“I’ve got two knives that are cast in bronze / they pierce all the way to the soul / they draw you in with the promise of sin / like the moth to the flame to the coal.”
The kitchen howled. Auntie Mui clucked in disapproval. “Keep going, you naughty girl!” Lee shouted, glad that the attention was off him.
She’d even managed to throw off Kelsang, who looked at her curiously, as if he had a spark of recognition for whom she was describing. Kyoshi knew that wasn’t possible when she was simply tossing out the first words that came to her head. She thumped a length of dough onto the table in front of her, creating her own percussion.
“I’ve got hair like the starless night / it sticks t
o my lips when I smile / I’ll wind it with yours and we’ll drift off course / in a ship touching hearts all the while.”
Somehow the improvisation was easy, though she’d never considered herself a poet. Or a bawdy mind, for that matter. It was as if another person, someone much more at ease with their own desires, was feeding her the right lines to express herself. And to her surprise, she liked how the inelegant lines made her feel. Truthful and silly and raw.
“For the way I walk is a lantern lit / that leads you into the night / I’ll hold you close and love you the most / until our end is in sight.”
Kyoshi didn’t have time to ponder the darker turn her verse took before a sudden pain shot through her wrist.