[Junior Jedi Knights] - 02
2
Lyric’s World
by Nancy Richardson
Anakin Skywalker studied the girl in the front row of the Grand Audience Chamber. She sat alone on one of the stone seats that circled the stage. She was a small girl, and he guessed she was about eleven years old. Her long hair cascaded down to her waist in thick red ringlets, and her eyes were a pale yellow color. Anakin had never seen the girl sit with any other candidates. Maybe she was a loner just like he was.
He knew what it felt like to be alone. Anakin had a brother and sister, twins named Jacen and Jaina, and parents, Leia Organa Solo and Han Solo. They all loved him very much, but ever since Anakin could remember, he’d been a loner. Even now that he was a candidate at Luke Skywalker’s Jedi academy, surrounded by Jedi students from across the galaxy, he spent a great deal of time alone. It wasn’t that he always wanted it that way, it was just that there was so much to think about.
Studying to become a Jedi Knight took peace and quiet, something that his new friend, a student at the academy named Tahiri, didn’t seem to understand. Only a week before, Tahiri and Anakin had almost been kicked out of the Jedi academy. They’d snuck away from the academy to raft the river that wound its way through the lush jungles of the moon, Yavin 4. A violent storm had struck. Anakin remembered the broiling green of the river crashing against his body as he and Tahiri shot through the water in a sleek silver raft.
His heart skipped a beat as he recalled the look of panic that contorted Tahiri’s face when she was thrown from their raft and had to struggle to survive in the cold waters. Without the help of the droid, Artoo-Detoo, he might not have been able to save his friend. If that had happened, he and Tahiri wouldn’t have uncovered the evil that lay hidden on Yavin 4 in an ancient palace. An evil that they were now both pledged to destroy.
Anakin heard Tahiri’s bare feet padding along the gray stone floor before he saw her. Tahiri was from Tatooine, a desert planet with two scorching suns. Ever since she’d arrived at the academy she’d refused to wear shoes. After living on a hot world filled with gritty sand, Tahiri loved to feel the cool stones of the Great Temple beneath her feet. Anakin’s only friend at the academy slid into the seat beside him. She pushed her long blonde hair behind her ears and fixed him with large, green eyes. Anakin could sense Tahiri’s impatience.
He knew that she wanted to talk. But Anakin wasn’t ready to talk about the evil they’d discovered deep in the jungles of Yavin 4. And he didn’t want to discuss the strange creature that had visited his room in the middle of the night. A creature named Ikrit that he’d learned was an ancient JediMaster. A Master who had drawn both him and Tahiri into the jungles to discover a giant golden globe hidden deep within the crumbling ruins of the Palace of the Woolamander.
A crystal sphere created by an evil curse, locked with a riddle, and filled with glittering golden sands and the cries of children trapped within its spell. Before Anakin could turn to Tahiri to tell her he wasn’t ready to talk, Luke Skywalker entered the chamber. Anakin was always amazed by the reaction he felt when his uncle Luke came into a room. The Jedi Master’s presence seemed to wash a sense of calm over all of the candidates. Human children and aliens alike stopped shuffling feet, picking through matted black fur, flapping wings.
“May the Force be with you,” Luke Skywalker said as his pale blue eyes, almost the same color as his nephew Anakin’s, scanned the room. “Today we will begin to learn how to use the Force to travel in our minds to places we have been, but cannot completely remember. In the time you have already spent at the academy, you’ve learned that training to become a Jedi cannot be taught with words, only with experience. So I won’t tell you how to recapture your lost memories. I will say only this: Believe and you succeed. That is part of the Jedi Code, and you must truly accept it if you are to triumph. Are there any questions?”
“What if we fail?” a large, blue-skinned, birdlike alien named Chitter squawked.
Luke Skywalker met Chitter’s concerned, beady black eyes with a patient gaze.
“Asking the question means that you have already accepted that possibility,” he said softly. “Remember, there is no try, only do, for a Jedi. In trying there is success, regardless of the outcome.”
Luke Skywalker stepped down from the stone stage and quietly left the chamber. The Jedi Knight Tionne, a humanoid woman with silvery hair and mother - of-pearl eyes, walked to the front of the room.
“Please choose partners,” Tionne said to the Jedi candidates.
Anakin watched as all of the candidates paired with each other. He and Tahiri were partners. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the girl in the front of the chamber still sat alone.