[Galaxy Of Fear] - 12(16)

Zak nearly jumped out of his skin. He stumbled backward and fell into a muddy puddle. Propping himself up on his arms, he found himself at eye level with one of the strangest beings he’d ever seen.

The creature was less than one meter tall. Its skin was the color of the Dagobah mud, dry and cracked with age. Tufts of gray hair, grew in little bushes around its large, pointed ears. But its eyes were youthful and bright.

Those eyes were round, and soft, and deep, and they reminded Zak of nothing he’d ever seen before, except maybe the feeling he had when he looked up at night and saw the whole galaxy spread out across the sky.

“Deaf as well as blind, are you?” the creature said. It poked him in the ribs with a little cane it held in one hand.

“Wh-What?” Zak stammered.

“Asked a question, I did. Where are my seeds?” Zak was utterly confused.

“My seeds, my seeds. Ah, here! Hiding with you, they are!”

The creature struggled to push Zak aside and get at something beneath him. Zak rolled away, and the creature started to gather up a pile of round seeds it had been collecting, humming, “Good for the soup. Good for the bones, mm-hm.”

“You eat those?” Zak said doubtfully, staring at the seeds. Each one was about the size of his fingernail, but they all looked as hard as rocks.

“Eat them? Eat them, no,” the creature said. He looked at Zak and smiled. “Plant them, I do. Grow and bear fruit, they will. That is the way.”

“Who are you?” Zak asked.

The creature dropped the seeds into a little pouch at his side. Then he jabbed the stick into Zak’s ribs again. “Not important who I am. The question you should be asking is, Who are you?”

“I know who I am,” Zak replied.

“Do you?” asked the creature.

Zak wanted to laugh. The creature sounded silly and looked even sillier. But something about the way he asked the question made Zak pause. If there was one thing he’d learned after all his adventures with Uncle Hoole, it was that appearances could be deceiving.

“A good lesson!” the creature cackled, as though reading his thoughts.

Not knowing what else to do, Zak said, “My name is Zak Arranda. What’s yours?”

The creature cackled again gleefully. “I am Yoda.” Zak shook his head. “For a planet that’s supposed to be uninhabited, Dagobah sure is getting crowded.”

Yoda made a gurgling sound in his throat. “Uninhabited, do you say?” The little creature spread his small arms wide. “Have you no eyes? No ears? Life is all around.”

“Oh, right,” Zak said, surprised by the little creature’s suddenly serious tone. “I just meant, you know, intelligent life.”

“Intelligent, huh!” Yoda said with a grunt of disgust. “What is this intelligence?”

Zak opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. He thought of the most intelligent people he knew-Tash and Uncle Hoole.

“Intelligence means learning. Being able to figure things out. Knowing how the universe works,” Zak finally said.

“Ahhh,” the little creature said, nodding meaningfully. “Come here,” he said, shuffling toward a nearby tree. When Zak hesitated, Yoda waved his stick. “Come, come, come!”

Not knowing whether to be amused or frightened, Zak followed. Yoda stood next to a rotting log. With his stick he poked the log, and a chunk of dead wood fell away. Inside, hundreds of worms as thick as Zak’s finger wriggled and squirmed.

“Yuck,” Zak said.

“Rotworms,” Yoda said. “Are they intelligent?”

“No,” Zak answered, trying to explain. “You see-“

Yoda spoke again as the exposed rotworms burrowed into the soft, decaying wood and disappeared. “Rotworms learn that dead logs make the best homes. They figure out how to burrow into the wood. Burrowing, they help the log to rot, and the bits of dead wood enrich the soil, making good ground for new trees to grow.” The little creature stared at Zak. “That is how the universe works.”

Zak blinked. A moment ago this strange creature had seemed like a clown. Now he wasn’t so sure. “Who are you?” he asked again.

Yoda nodded mysteriously. “Someone you will meet again. Now go. Others await you.”

Zak started to ask another question, but Yoda chattered, “Go, go, go. Away with your questions!”

The little creature turned to leave. His movements were awkward, more like a waddle than a walk, but he was gone so quickly that Zak was half-convinced that Yoda had simply vanished into the misty air.

“That was prime,” Zak said aloud. “Weird. But prime.”

He turned to go. He felt confident about his directions now. In fact, the way back was so obvious, he wondered why he’d been worried. He started to jog. But his feet slowed down as he caught the dull glint of metal in the gloomy swamp.