She had expected to be swallowed in blackness. The purple rocks of the mountain actually glowed, and streaks of neon scribbled through the waters as Anakin and Lyric dragged her downward.
“Kick with your feet,” a soft gurgling voice said from behind Tahiri. Tahiri turned her head and saw an elder, his blond hair, as long as her own, floating in tendrils around his face. His tail was a darker shade of pink than Lyric’s, and it sparkled in the waters.
“Kick with your feet,” the elder said again.
Tahiri began to kick.
“Let her go for a moment,” the Melodie instructed Lyric and Anakin. Slowly they unwound their arms from Tahiri’s waist.
“Use your arms like this,” the Melodie said as he demonstrated how to move through the waters by pulling his arms from his head to his side.
Tahiri tried. And, although she didn’t shoot through the water as he did, she did move, all by herself.
“Am I swimming?” Tahiri gurgled from beneath her mask.
“Yes,” the Melodie said with a large smile and a laugh that sounded like a waterfall.
“This is my father,” Lyric sang out to Tahiri and Anakin. “His name is Gyle.” Lyric floated over to the elder, and he wrapped her in an embrace.
“You have helped bring me my daughter. Thank you,” Gyle said.
Just then a school of silver - backed fish streamed through the Jedi candidates. Tahiri panicked, and tried to thrash her way back to the surface. Several of the elders encircled her and swam her back down to Anakin and Lyric.
“There is nothing to fear down here, little one,” Gyle said when Tahiri was back in their midst. “Come, there is not much time, we must go farther. Tahiri, hold my hand. Anakin, hold Lyric’s.”
Gyle and Lyric led the Jedi candidates swiftly through their world. Tahiri and Anakin took in its beauty as they streamed through the waters. There were glowing caverns, vibrant-colored fish striped with shades of blues, greens, and yellows, and elders everywhere, playing in the liquid of their world. Gyle came to a stop before the mouth of a purple cavern whose surface was lined with stones that glistened red.
“Aragon!” Gyle called into the cave.
There was a rush of water, and then the elder floated gently out. He was smaller than Gyle, and his long hair flowed in a cloud of white around his face. His yellow eyes were large as he studied Anakin and Tahiri, who floated in front of him in their orange academy jumpsuits.
“Aragon, these children are Jedi candidates from the academy we sent Lyric to on Yavin 4,” Gyle began. “They have come to ask about the strange symbols that are carved in some of the tunnels and on the rock wall of an avril’s lair. Since you’re the keeper of legends, and the oldest of us, I thought you might know of these things.”
“I think I have seen the symbols you speak of,” Aragon gurgled. “But I can no longer remember where, or what they mean. Ask something else of me-I can tell you legends about almost anything beneath these waters, but the old story you ask about was told to me more than a hundred years ago. It is a mere whisper in my ancient mind.”
Anakin and Tahiri couldn’t hide the disappointment in their eyes.
“I am sorry,” Aragon said sadly. “I see that I have failed you.”
Tahiri let Aragon’s words sink in. Aragon hadn’t failed them, she thought. It was she and Anakin who had failed, who had been unable to discover a way to decipher the strange symbols. And in failing, they had given up any chance to destroy the evil that held children trapped within the golden globe.
Tahiri thought about the Jedi Code. Luke Skywalker had said that there was no try, only do. But she and Anakin had tried. Or had they?
“Anakin, Aragon once knew the information we need,” Tahiri thought out loud.
“So the memory is somewhere in his mind, he just can’t find it, right? ” Anakin nodded. He saw at once what Tahiri meant.
“Aragon,” he said, “would you let us try to help you remember where the symbols are and what they mean?”
The elder met the boy’s ice blue gaze. It was clear to him that the children’s request was not one of idle curiosity; they truly needed to know.
“Yes,” he replied gravely. “Help me to remember if you can.”
Anakin floated before the elder named Aragon as he struggled to put into words a skill he’d always had. He could remember when he was two years old and took apart his first droid with his siblings, Jaina and Jacen. He could remember the first time he’d seen a lightsaber, heard about the Force, learned about good and evil. But how did he travel through his mind, picking up memories as easily as he’d drawn the symbols carved in the Palace of the Woolamander?