Anakin's Quest Read online

  Star Wars

  Junior Jedi Knights

  4

  Anakin's Quest

  by Rebecca Moesta

  OCR: Ãîëîäíûé Ýâîê Ãðûçëè

  upload: 29.XII.2005

  Anakin pushed a fringe of dark hair away from his ice blue eyes and

  looked around. Something felt different here at the Jedi academy. The

  ancient stone walls of his student quarters still looked the same. After

  all, he had only been gone three months. The room seemed no different than

  it had on the day he had left. Everything was in its place: the wooden

  chest that held his clothes, the small table and chair in the corner near

  the window slit, the narrow but comfortable sleeping pallet. The room was

  not large, but it held everything he needed, and he had always found

  comfort here. But today it all seemed strange somehow.

  Anakin walked to the window and leaned against the thick stone ledge.

  He looked out to where the lush green jungles crept close to the Jedi

  academy. He wondered if Ikrit was somewhere out there right now. Ikrit was

  a white furry creature with floppy ears whom Anakin and his friend Tahiri

  had found sleeping beside a golden globe in a nearby temple ruin. With

  Ikrit's help, Anakin and Tahiri had discovered the secret necessary to free

  a group of trapped spirits from the mysterious globe. So far, only Anakin,

  his uncle Luke, and Tahiri knew that Anakin's "pet" was really a Jedi

  Master.

  Ikrit was not ready to tell everyone who he was, so he had decided not

  to go home with Anakin for his visit. After their adventures, Ikrit had

  chosen to stay on Yavin 4.

  "I have much to consider," the furry Jedi Master had said. "I will

  stay here and think."

  Anakin sighed and shook his head. He felt restless and strange, but

  the jungle didn't seem to hold the answer to what was bothering him. Maybe

  he only felt odd because he was back at the Jedi academy and he hadn't seen

  his friend Tahiri yet. Tahiri was two years younger than Anakin and had

  been adopted at the age of three by Sand People on the desert planet

  Tatooine after her parents were killed in a raid. About a year ago, the

  Jedi instructor Tionne had met Tahiri, discovered she was strong in the

  Force, and brought her to study at the Jedi academy. Anakin sat down on his

  sleeping pallet, his back against the wall, knees pulled up to his chin.

  Letting his eyes fall half shut, he reached out with the Force, trying

  to find the source of his worry. He clasped his hands around his legs and

  rested his chin on one knee. Maybe Master Ikrit would be able to sense the

  cause of his anxiety. Or Uncle Luke.

  Maybe... Darkness. Light. White mist rising against inky black, as it

  might in a swamp at nighttime. The air around him crackled with energy.

  Maybe his eyes had adjusted, for there was no light, but suddenly he saw

  the figures. Although they had never met, he knew who they were: Emperor

  Palpatine, and Darth Vader. The Emperor's face was wrinkled and marked by

  the dark powers he loved to use. Shrouded in shadowy robes, the Emperor's

  face showed a sickly, greenish white.

  The shriveled lips moved, and Anakin heard a rasping voice say, "Come,

  my child."

  Darth Vader stepped forward and threw a black cloak around Anakin's

  shoulders. Vader's mechanical breathing echoed in Anakin's ears, but he

  could not take his eyes off the Emperor.

  A story. He had heard a story-or was it only a story? - about the

  Emperor. According to the tale, the Emperor's clone had touched Leia's

  stomach not long before Anakin was born and had claimed the child for the

  dark side of the Force.... Now, Darth Vader pressed a lightsaber into

  Anakin's hand. Vader's cape swirled about him as he lifted something high,

  high over Anakin, as if to place a crown on his head.

  Anakin looked up.

  A helmet. A dark helmet. Black as a starless night. Anakin backed

  away, wordlessly shaking his head. He threw the lightsaber with a clatter

  to the floor and tore the dark folds of billowing cloth from his shoulders.

  "Come, my child," the Emperor rasped again. "You cannot resist your

  destiny. It will always be inside you."

  Anakin opened his mouth and tried to say, "No, I'll never follow you!"

  but no sound came out.

  Vader stretched out his arms. The fallen cloak and lightsaber sprang

  to his hands, as though they were pets beckoned by their master.

  Anakin wanted to run, but his feet would not move.

  The Emperor motioned with one finger, and a wave of sleepiness swept

  over Anakin.

  "Take what your grandfather has to offer," the raspy voice said. "We

  have always been a part of you...."

  Darth Vader flung the black cape at Anakin, but this time not around

  his shoulders. The dark cloth covered his head completely. Anakin grappled

  with it, trying to fling it aside. It fought back, as if it had a life of

  its own. Still struggling, Anakin fell down, down, down into blackness.

  "Anakin," a voice said. Not the voice of the Emperor.

  A hand grasped his shoulder. Not the hand of Darth Vader.

  "Anakin, wake up. It's me!"

  Covers were yanked aside and Anakin found himself blinking up at a

  pair of sparkling green eyes surrounded by a fall of silky pale yellow

  hair.

  "Tahiri!"

  "Well, it's not much of a greeting for your best friend, but I suppose

  at least it's something," Tahiri said, pretending to be insulted.

  "Oh, uh-hi!" Anakin pushed himself up to a sitting position, feeling a

  bit sheepish. "What are you doing here?"

  "Well, our ship just landed. Tionne and I had been out exploring-you

  remember, looking for old Jedi records? Well, Anyway, we just got back from

  this strange planet where there were little spiky weeds all over the

  ground. I even had to wear shoes." She made a terrible face. "You know how

  I hate that. We went into a treasure vault. There was no treasure, but we

  did find some holo cubes and some written records. Anyway, we brought them

  back here, and who should come out to meet our ship but Ikrit? He said you

  needed me right away, so naturally I had to come, and Tionne said said..."

  Anakin felt a warm glow as the girl's words rushed past him. She could

  be quite a chatterbox and terribly exasperating sometimes, but Tahiri was,

  without a doubt, his best friend.

  "... and so I told her that I would bring you with me and we could

  start training again right away. Well, aren't you going to say anything?

  Tionne is waiting for us."

  Patches of mist still clung to Anakin's mind.

  "What? Who?" Tahiri giggled.

  "Tionne. You know-long silver hair, big pearly eyes, Jedi historian?

  The one who found me on Tatooine?"

  "Yes.. I know who Tionne is," Anakin said, his groggy mind not

  catching her point.

  "Well, she's waiting for us. Ikrit is with her. We're starting lessons

  again right away."r />
  Anakin let Tahiri grab his hand and drag him off the sleeping pallet.

  He'd been napping in his clothes. But he made Tahiri wait while he put his

  shoes on. Then she hurried him out the door.

  "Are you feeling okay, Anakin? You don't look too good. I guess that's

  to be expected, though. After all, Ikrit did say you needed me. Well, I'm

  here now, and I think everything is going to be just fine. Anyway, remember

  that treasure vault I was telling you about? It seems that..."

  Anakin had to admit that he did feel a little bit better as he

  followed his friend down the passageway, watching her bare feet pad softly

  on the cool flagstones. As the dream faded, he realized it had served a

  purpose. At least now he knew what was wrong.

  A light breeze blew from across the river toward the Jedi academy,

  carrying with it the cool moistness of early evening. A thick blanket of

  white mist clung to the riverbank and swirled around Anakin's and Tahiri's

  knees as they walked. The mist was so thick, in fact, that it hid nearly

  all of Master Ikrit except for his head and floppy ears. The white-furred

  creature waited patiently beside Tionne.

  Ikrit was obviously as pleased to see Anakin as Anakin was to see the

  little Jedi Master. He climbed nimbly onto Anakin's shoulder and draped his

  tail around Anakin's neck.

  "I think he's glad to see you," Tionne said in her beautiful musical

  voice.

  "We all are."

  The breeze blew around them and stirred the white vapor so that

  Tionne's fine silvery hair looked as though it might have been spun from

  the mist itself.

  "So what are we going to learn tonight?" Tahiri asked.

  She sounded excited. She grinned at Anakin.

  "I've been begging Tionne for three months to give me more lessons,

  but she wouldn't. She said I was too young to study all the time and that I

  needed to take a break." Tahiri snorted. "As if I wanted to take a break

  from studying the Force."

  Tionne said nothing. She lit a torch that she had brought with her

  from the Great Temple and then winked at Anakin as if they shared a secret-

  that sometimes it was best not to answer Tahiri, that it was enough just to

  listen. The Jedi instructor's huge mother-of-pearl eyes shimmered in the

  flickering light of the torch she held.

  Tionne closed her eyes halfway and Anakin could sense the Force

  flowing through her. Then, to his amazement, the ground mist wrapped itself

  around her, spiraling and climbing upward. The mist wound itself like a

  vine around her arm and the base of the torch.

  Finally, the mist circled the tip of the torch in a glowing white

  halo. As the fire burned away the water vapor, more mist drifted up to join

  the hazy ring. Anakin found himself fascinated by this display. It wasn't

  until Tahiri said,

  "Wow!" that he realized it was over.

  "Now it's your turn," Tionne said. "This may be a bit new and strange

  to you. It might surprise you how hard it can be. You've practiced lifting

  objects before, heavy things and light things. But mist is not an object."

  Ikrit jumped down from Anakin's shoulder and sat near Tionne, swirling

  the mist with one small paw.

  "Mist has no top or bottom," Tionne continued. "There are no sides to

  hold on to with your mind. It has no real size that you can grasp. Mist is

  more difficult to move than an object, and much harder to control."

  When Anakin saw Tahiri's brows draw together in concentration and her

  lips press into a firm line, he rolled his eyes up and to one side, as he

  often did when he was thinking or solving a puzzle. He reached out with the

  Force, tried to sense the mist. He patted the mist with his mind, pushed

  it, swished it. Nothing happened. He heard a sound of surprise from Tahiri.

  "Did I do it? Oh. No, it was just the breeze."

  "Do not try to hold on to the mist," Tionne cautioned. "It cannot be

  held. You must use the Force. Trust the Force."

  Anakin took a deep breath and relaxed. His eyes fell half shut. He let

  himself feel the mist. Its moisture was in the cool air that touched his

  cheeks and in each breath that he took. It was all around him. It flowed.

  He found that his mind could flow with it. He heard Tahiri's voice beside

  him whisper,

  "Oh! Yes, I see," but he was too swept up in the flow of the mist to

  watch what she was doing. He let his mind flow into a pattern, the first

  one that came into his head-a small tree. Suddenly, there before him,

  through his half-open eyes, he could see it: a small, transparent, but

  perfectly formed tree. Then, beside his tree he saw a misty replica of the

  Great Temple appear. Tahiri had added her own mist picture next to his.

  Amused, Anakin let the mist flow again. This time he decided to form

  the shape of his father's ship, the Millennium Falcon. Within seconds

  Tahiri made a little X-wing fighter to hover beside the Falcon. Then her

  craft shifted and became a misty light - saber with a ghostly blade. Anakin

  let the Millennium Falcon flow and transform into a second phantomlike

  lightsaber beside Tahiri's.

  The two energy blades drifted toward each other and crossed. Anakin

  and Tahiri both made a misty streamer shoot out from the point where the

  "lightsabers" touched, as if the clash had released a crackle of energy.

  Mist swirled behind Anakin's blade as Tahiri's pulled back for another

  strike. But before they could cross their weapons again, Anakin's

  lightsaber dissolved and he cried out. He stumbled backward, slipped, and

  fell into the soft mud of the riverbank-for in the air in front of him, the

  mist had formed itself into the shriveled face of the Emperor himself,

  laughing at Anakin!

  The bench in his uncle's office felt hard and cold, Anakin thought.

  The stone walls seemed icy. Even though he was wrapped in a blanket, he

  shivered. Artoo-Detoo bumped softly against Anakin's knee and whistled a

  sad note. The R2 unit was designed to help pilots fly and make repairs in

  space. Artoo had helped Luke twenty years ago when Luke flew as a fighter

  pilot against the Empire's giant space station, the Death Star. The little

  droid became Luke's companion and still stayed with him now that Luke was a

  Jedi Master.

  "TYy to drink some soup; then we can talk," Luke Skywalker said,

  holding out a bowl of steaming liquid and sitting down beside Anakin.

  Anakin shut his eyes and shivered again. The steam reminded him of the

  river mist and of the laughing face of the Emperor. Without opening his

  eyes, he reached out, took the bowl, and drank the soup. Warmth flowed into

  him. Anakin calmed himself with a Jedi exercise that Luke had taught him.

  "All right," he said at last, "I'm ready, Uncle Luke."

  When he opened his eyes again, Luke Skywalker sat waiting, listening.

  "Is it-" Anakin swallowed hard. "Is it true that my mother was touched

  by the Emperor before I was born?"

  Luke Skywalker pursed his lips. A frown creased his forehead.

  "A clone of the Emperor touched her," he said carefully. "That clone

  was a copy of the Emperor's body."

  Anakin put down his soup b
owl and cleared his throat.

  "Sometimes I wonder if the Emperor didn't find a way to... infect me

  with the dark side of the Force."

  Luke Skywalker smiled at this. A kind smile.

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Dreams," Anakin said, pushing dark bangs out of his ice blue eyes.

  "Dreams that the Emperor and my grandfather are calling me to the dark side

  of the Force."

  "Your grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, was a good man-" Luke began. "But

  he became Darth Vader,"

  Anakin broke in.

  "Yes, he made that choice for a while. But at the end, and with his

  dying breath, Anakin Skywalker chose good over evil."

  "What if the same thing happens to me? I may be destined to make the

  same mistakes that he did."

  Artoo-Detoo swiveled his domed head and buzzed twice. It sounded to

  Anakin almost like "uh-uh." In the simple code that Anakin and Artoo had

  worked out, that meant he did not agree.

  "No one can force you to choose the dark side," Luke said.

  "But how will I know that I'll make the right choice? How do I know

  what's inside me?"

  "The Force is inside all of us. It flows through every living thing."

  "But the Force has a dark side and a light side," Anakin insisted.