Chapter 11: Council of Elders

One year before the Great Comet. Southern Air Temple.

The Council chamber was a circular room with five stone seats arranged in a half-moon. Light came through carved vents in the ceiling, and the bars it made on the floor moved with the sun. I’d stood in this room once before, three years ago, when the bars had been in different positions and I’d walked out with everything I wanted. Today my hands were damp against my robes.

Tashi was standing. He always stood when others sat, arms folded, chin up, taking vertical space. Pasang sat in the center with his hands on his knees. Gyatso sat to Pasang’s right with his beads still against his chest. Wada had his fingers laced in his lap, thumbs circling in that small rhythm they always kept. Morioka held his tea cup with both hands even though the nearest table was three feet away.

The chamber door was closed behind me.

Tashi held a folded piece of paper in his right hand. His eyes were on me.

“Young Choedon came to this Council four days ago,” he said. His voice was clipped and level. “She was concerned after witnessing a group of novices practicing forbidden techniques under this boy’s orders.” Tashi looked at me. “He instructed them to force air into a compressed current, one hard enough to pierce skin.”

Choedon had confronted me months ago and I’d been waiting for this ever since. Gyatso and I had a plan, and I was wearing my poker face.

“It is heresy,” Tashi said. “All life is sacred. That is the foundation of everything we teach in this temple. Avatar Yangchen removed these techniques because they exist to harm living beings, and people who harm living beings have lost their way.” He turned to the Council. “This boy has been manipulating our children to lose theirs.”

I’d rehearsed my opening line with Gyatso a dozen times. It came out clean.

“Avatar Yangchen fought Old Iron through the night to protect the people who needed her,” I said. “The warrior monks existed before her for the same reason. She retired them because the threat was gone. But the world is no longer at peace. If we cannot protect ourselves, who will be left to practice restraint?”

Wada’s thumbs stopped circling. “We are not here to debate the validity of Avatar Yangchen’s decisions, Sonam.” He looked at me steadily. “Tell us the truth. Where did you learn these forms?”

“The restricted archive,” I said. There was no point lying. The Council knew what the forms looked like and there was only one place in this temple where they were documented.

Wada looked at Pasang. “It is as I suspected. Allowing access to the restricted archive above tier fifteen was a mistake. If a child can walk in and teach himself these techniques, we have a bigger problem than just one boy.”

Pasang nodded slowly. “We will discuss the archive another time, Monk Wada. Let us finish the present matter first.”

Tashi unfolded the paper and held it up so the Council could see. I recognized my own handwriting on the page.

“Choedon found this among her friend’s belongings,” Tashi said. “It contains the coordinates of a location this Council has never approved, distributed by the boy to other children in his group.”

Pasang held out his hand and Tashi brought the paper to him. He read it for a long time.

“Three years ago you came before this Council, afraid for our safety, and asked us to consider evacuation drills,” Pasang said. “We agreed, once a season, to teach the children how to reach shelter and come back when it is safe. The other temples even followed our example.” He looked at the paper. “And yet you went ahead on your own, telling them our drills are not enough.”

He let the paper sit on his knee and waited.

“Elder Pasang, you say come back when it is safe. But what if it is never safe? What if there is nothing to come back to?”

Tashi cut in before Pasang could answer. “There. See. The boy is preparing for the end of the Air Temples. He is telling the children that our home will fail them.”

This was the part of the plan that scared me. Gyatso had said the visions were the only card I had. If they worked, the Council might soften. If they didn’t, I was just a boy who needed a counselor.

“I’ve had visions,” I said.

The room went quiet.

“In all of them our temple burns.” I let my voice shake. It wasn’t hard. “The sky turns the wrong color. Fire comes from everywhere and melts the stone. I can hear children screaming in the corridors and smell burning flesh.” I looked at Pasang. “I see the Great Comet in the sky, granting firebenders unimaginable power. I see it every time I close my eyes. The whole mountain on fire and there being nowhere to go.”

Tashi spoke first. “Many children have troubled sleep. The boy must have read about the comet in the archives and built a terror around it.” He looked at me. “What you are describing are nightmares, boy. They do not belong before this Council as evidence.”

“And yet he came to us with this, Monk Tashi,” Morioka said. “If we dismiss him without hearing him out, what does that teach our children about coming to their elders with what troubles them?”

Pasang’s voice was gentler. “He is here now, and this is our answer. Dreams are the mind’s way of processing what frightens us. We must be careful when naming what we dream as prophecy.”

I’d come closer to the truth than I had in twelve years, and it hadn’t mattered at all.

I looked at Gyatso. This was where he was supposed to help.

Gyatso spoke carefully. “I have spent time with Sonam. His visions are vivid and consistent in ways that trouble me. I knew a Spirit Seer once, a monk named Chegu, who described his experiences in similar terms.” He looked around the room. “I have wondered for some time whether Sonam may carry that same attunement.”

Tashi shook his head. “A Spirit Seer is recognized young, Monk Gyatso. The attunement shows itself early and requires years of guided study. This boy has shown no spiritual sensitivity in his twelve years at the temple. He has avoided meditation, neglected the higher tiers, and spent his time on the south terrace instead of the shrine. Whatever he is experiencing, it is not spirit sight.”

Gyatso let that pass. “Seer or not, the Great Comet is real. It appears in our astronomical tables and its effect on firebending is well documented in the archive.” He paused. “The comet returns within the year. Its timing should worry us all.”

Pasang stroked his beard. “Fear has never been a reliable guide for our people. Air requires freedom, clarity, and spiritual centeredness. An airbender who trains from a place of fear will find his bending weakened by it.” He looked at me. “If the boy is afraid, then we must help him process that fear through meditation and through trust in the spiritual order that has sustained our people for centuries.”

“We were working on that together,” Gyatso said. “I taught Sonam to bend while carrying his fear, to let the air flow around what frightens him. It is a lesson I once had to learn myself.”

Tashi folded his arms. “While teaching the boy to manage his fear is admirable, it does not excuse what he has done. If he wished to defend himself, there are thirty-six tiers of airbending that teach exactly that. Every form he would need is already in the training he chose to abandon.”

I took my chance. “The thirty-six tiers won’t stop comet-enhanced firebenders. Evasion and redirection assume you can outrun what’s coming, but you can’t outrun a fire that big.”

Tashi’s expression didn’t change.

“Elder Tashi, you pushed to reveal Aang as the Avatar before his sixteenth birthday. You broke a tradition that has stood for generations because you decided that protecting the temples was more important.” I kept my voice even. “I’m asking you to stay consistent. If one boy can be trained to fight for us, the rest of us should be allowed to fight for ourselves.”

Tashi looked at me for a long time. When he spoke his voice was quiet and precise.

“Our people strive to be spiritually detached from worldly concerns. That is our path. It has always been our path. But the Avatar’s duty is different. To maintain balance in the world, the Avatar must learn all the elements, no matter how combative. This burden was placed upon the Avatar by the spirits, and it has nothing to do with you.” He stepped forward. “You are not the Avatar, Sonam. You would do well to never compare yourself to Aang or to his destiny.”

He was right about one thing. I wasn’t the Avatar. But I was the only person who knew exactly how everyone in this room was going to die and couldn’t convince them I was telling the truth. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to tell all five of them that their bones would be buried in rubble when Aang came back a hundred years too late. But I kept my hands at my sides and my face still, because that was all I could do without sounding even crazier.

Morioka set his cup down. “The boy’s comparison was fair, Monk Tashi, even if his conclusion was wrong. We did break tradition to reveal the Avatar early. We should be honest about why.”

“If we are this concerned about the Fire Nation,” Wada interjected, “why not contact them directly? Monk Gyatso led the Fire and Air Center of Learning in the capital for years. He must know many people there.”

Pasang picked it up. “There is wisdom in that. We could write to old friends and sympathetic nobles. The Center’s legacy alone should remind the Fire Nation that we are their partners.” He nodded at Wada, then looked at me. “This is the kind of thinking we should encourage.”

They wanted to write letters. The comet was less than a year away and the Council of Elders wanted to write letters to people Gyatso hadn’t spoken to in decades.

Gyatso answered before I could.

“I led the Center a very long time ago,” he said. His voice was quieter now. “I spent many years teaching airbending philosophies and I knew the families who sent their children to learn from us.” He turned a bead between his thumb and forefinger. “Sozin took it all away and when the nobles complained, he gave them the Dragon Hunts. He told them to hunt the very creatures who taught them to bend, and called it an honor.” He paused. “They were good people, Monk Pasang, Monk Wada, but I would struggle to recognize them now.”

The bead turned and nobody spoke.

“The world you are asking me to reach out to does not exist anymore,” Gyatso said.

The room was quiet for a long time after that. Then Gyatso looked at the elders.

“How many of you have sat with Sonam?”

Nobody answered.

“I have. Every afternoon for a year, I have watched him teach a younger student with more patience than most of our junior monks show. I have watched him correct a stance six times without raising his voice.” He was looking at his hands, folded in his lap. “I have watched him carry the burden of something I do not fully understand, and carry it without complaint, without cruelty, and without asking anyone for help.”

He looked up.

“Whatever he has done wrong, he has done it out of loyalty to our people. I am asking you to see that before you see his failures.”

My throat tightened and I kept my face steady.

Tashi had gone very still. “You watched him teach?” He said it slowly. “You watched him correct a stance? These are the forbidden forms, Gyatso. You sat and watched a child practice forbidden techniques, and you did nothing?”

My stomach dropped. We’d agreed Gyatso would only reveal his involvement if the Council moved toward exile. Tashi had pulled it out of him early.

“The boy was going to train with or without me,” Gyatso said. “I believed it was necessary that a monk was present to guide him.”

“It is heresy,” Tashi said. “You allowed heresy.”

Gyatso looked at him. “If sitting with a frightened child and protecting him from hurting himself and those around him is a failure of judgment, then it was my failure and mine alone to bear. Reprimand me if you must. But do not punish Sonam for the choices of his elders.”

Tashi turned to Pasang. “This is not the first time Gyatso has done this. He was entrusted to train the Avatar, but he chose to be the boy’s friend rather than his teacher. Now he has done the same here. He has let personal attachment cloud his duty to this temple with two children who needed proper guidance.” His voice was steady. “I say enough. Gyatso’s judgment is clearly compromised. He must be removed from the Council.”

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Pasang’s eyes went to Morioka, and Morioka met them.

“Those in favor of Monk Gyatso’s removal,” Pasang said.

Tashi’s hand went up and Wada’s followed.

“Those opposed.”

Morioka raised his hand. Gyatso sat still rather than vote on his own fate.

Pasang stroked his beard once and his hand settled back to his knee.

“Monk Gyatso will remain on this Council,” he said. “We will not revisit this.”

Tashi lowered his hand and his jaw tightened. He looked at Gyatso for a long moment before looking away.

“Then at the very least the boy should be transferred,” Tashi said. “Sending him to the Northern or Eastern Temple would remove him from the other children.”

Wada nodded. Morioka did not, and his eyes went to Gyatso and stayed there.

Pasang was quiet.

Gyatso spoke one last time. His voice was level and his eyes were on Pasang.

“If you send him away, you confirm everything he fears about us. You prove to him that the temples will not help their own.” He let the words sit. “And he will carry that belief wherever he goes.”

The chamber door swung inward. A current of air so gentle I almost missed it pushed it open from the outside, and Youdron walked in.

Every elder straightened. Even Tashi went quiet.

He walked to the center of the chamber, beside me, at the same measured pace he used in the garden. He stood there for a moment looking at the Council he had once sat on.

“I have been mentoring this boy myself,” he said. “I know his temperament. He is stubborn, and he is afraid, but he is also one of the most dedicated students I have ever seen.” He looked around the room. “Exile is never the right choice. Now more than ever, he needs the guidance of the monks who know him best.”

Tashi started to speak. Youdron continued without pausing.

“I recommend that the training cease, the boy apologize to all parties involved, and that Monk Gyatso be made personally responsible for correcting the boy’s training.” He folded his hands in front of his robes. “Do not let your biases cloud your decisions. You must treat this as a child’s error in judgment. If he were an adult we would be having a different conversation.”