“Close your eyes,” Anakin said to Aragon. “Think back to the one who told you the stories. To the one who was the keeper of legends before you.”
“That was my mother,” Aragon gurgled softly. “Her name was Esla. She was taught the legends from her father, and so on and so on, stretching back thousands of years.”
“Can you see her in your mind’s eye?” Anakin asked softly.
“She was beautiful,” Aragon replied. “Thick, long, black hair that reached well past her waist, lovely yellow eyes, lips the color of the palest pink webbing. She told me the stories every day of my life, until she passed away. We’d swim together in the waters and her pure voice would ring with legends… the legends of my people, and of the ones who came to ask our help.”
“Who were they?” Anakin asked, trying to control the tension in his voice. Trying to gently lead the elder down the path to remembrance.
“I cannot recall their names,” Aragon said thickly as he struggled through the dust-covered corridors of his memory. “Only that they came to Sistra in search of help for their children. Children who were enslaved by some unnamed darkness. Our own children found them wandering through the mountains and brought them to the elders. But we couldn’t help them!” Aragon cried, remembering his mother’s grief in the telling of the legend. “We could not leave our moon, the water. And so they left their messages carved in the rocks and tunnels of our world, in the hopes that someday someone might read them and come to their aid.”
“And the symbols?” Anakin asked. “Do you know what each one means?”
“I’m afraid I do not,” Aragon answered. “I saw some once, deep in the belly of the mountain where the purella dwell, and my mother told me what they meant. But it was so long ago, so long ago…”
Aragon fell silent, lost in his memories. Another dead end, Anakin thought wearily. He felt his breathing becoming more labored, and knew it was time to resurface.
“Thank you,” he said to Aragon. “The algae in our filters won’t last much longer,” he told Lyric. “We need to go back to the surface.”
Lyric looked sadly at her two friends.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she and Gyle propelled Anakin and Tahiri away from the elder.
“Wait,” Tahiri cried. She broke away from Gyle and clumsily kicked her way back to the elder.
“What is it, child?” Aragon asked. “You said that you couldn’t remember what each symbol meant,” Tahiri said breathlessly, her head pounding as the oxygen from the algae grew thinner, “but do you remember what the message was? Because if you do, we can find it in the bottom of the mountain, decipher what each symbol means from the whole message, and then use them to translate the carvings on our own moon!”
Aragon was quiet for a moment. He closed his eyes and dove into the dark recesses of his mind, searching for the information Tahiri asked.
“I saw the strange symbols at the base of the deepest tunnel of Sistra,” Aragon said slowly, wrenching the long-forgotten memory from a corner in his mind. “My mother told me the symbols read, `Peace to all. We are the Massassi. We beg the ones who read this message to travel to the fourth moon. Break the curse that the evil Jedi Knight Exar Kun made to enslave the Massassi and imprison our children. We cannot break the curse ourselves, but will leave a message in our palace to help those who can.”’
Aragon met Tahiri’s green eyes with his own. “Does that help you, child?” he asked.
“Yes,” Tahiri gasped. “Thank you.”
Gyle and Lyric grasped the hands of the Jedi candidates and quickly led them back to the surface, their tail fins furiously swishing through the crystal waters, scribbling streaks of neon behind them. Tahiri felt her lungs tightening as she ran out of oxygen. She clawed at her pockets and released the rocks that weighted her down. The pounding in her head became dizzying, and she was afraid that she might lose consciousness. Just in time, she and Anakin burst through the surface. They ripped off their filters and greedily gulped in air. Lyric helped Tahiri swim to the side of the waters, and several Melodie children pulled her out onto the rocks, where Anakin already sat.
“We’ve got to find those carvings,” Anakin said weakly to Tahiri. “Sannah,” he said to the girl beside him, “can you take us to the deepest tunnel in the mountain?”
“That is where the purella live,” Sannah said in a voice laced with fear. “They are enormous red - bristled spiders with glowing orange eyes. It is strange that you have not seen a purella-every year one comes to the cove to snatch a child or a changeling. We were lucky this time. The purella is a vicious beast who drags away her prey and traps it within the web of her lair. There is no escape from the web. The victim is consumed slowly,” Sannah explained in a hollow voice.