Anakin found the crumbling spiral stairway he and Tahiri had descended and slowly dropped into the depths of the palace, to the place where evil coated the stones and called out warnings in a voice laced with danger. When Anakin reached the base of the steps he stared at the symbols carved in the wall of the small room. Only a week before, he and Tahiri had used the Force to open a hidden passage and reveal the golden globe that had lain in secret for thousands of years. Tahiri had tried to touch the sphere, to break its smooth crystal surface, but a powerful field had thrown her into the stone wall. The globe was untouchable-at least until he and Tahiri could figure out what evil curse surrounded it.
Out of the corner of his eye, Anakin saw Ikrit, the furry white creature he and Tahiri had found sleeping at the base of the globe. He hadn’t known then that Ikrit was an ancient Jedi Master who had drawn both him and Tahiri to the globe. Drawn them to break a curse he’d later told them only children, strong in the Force and trained to be Jedi Knights, could break. A curse that no one, not even Luke Skywalker, could know about or help them undo.
“Anakin’s lost in thought as usual,” Tahiri said, breaking his memory. Lyric smiled softly, then looked over at Anakin. He’d been drawing on a sheet of paper with his eyes closed. She glanced down at the sheet, then drew in her breath sharply.
“What’s wrong, Lyric?” Tahiri asked.
The girl had gone from pale-skinned to white, and her hands had shot up, covering her eyes with fingers that were linked at their base with pink webs.
“Those symbols,” Lyric began.
“What about them?” Anakin asked excitedly. “Have you ever seen them before?” Anakin was certain that understanding the symbols carved in the palace was the next step toward solving the riddle that locked the golden globe. “Do you know what they mean?” he asked Lyric.
“No!” Lyric cried.
“But you recognize them,” Tahiri prodded. “You’ve seen them somewhere before!”
“Yes,” Lyric said in a voice that had lost its bubbly quality and now came out in a plaintive gurgle.
“Is it that you can’t remember, or that the memory is too frightening? ” Anakin said gently. “That’s what this exercise is about. We’ll help you remember. Please try-it’s important.”
Lyric closed her eyes and didn’t reply. Anakin could sense her torment.
“Do you at least remember where you saw the symbols?” Tahiri asked.
“I’d never been off my moon before I came to the academy,” Lyric finally said. “It was on Yavin 8.”
“Please tell us,” Anakin said softly. “Please. It’s important.”
Lyric looked up and met Anakin’s eyes. She steeled herself to remember. To conquer her fear and put into words an experience of terror that she’d blocked from her mind and never spoken of before.
“I saw those symbols in the purple granite of my mountain,” Lyric began in a faltering voice. She paused, trying to calm herself and let the memory flood back in an icy cold wave. “They were carved beside the nest of a giant avril, and the last time my eyes fell upon their strange design, I was about to be ripped to shreds by the creature’s razor-sharp beak.”
“What do you mean, ripped to shreds?” Tahiri said with surprise.
“I mean eaten for dinner by a giant bird with a razor-sharp beak and twenty-centimeter talons,” Lyric replied. “I was out gathering trico, a plant our young eat, in the tundra below the mountains… This will make no sense unless I tell you a bit about my people,” Lyric said, interrupting her own story. “I’m from the species called Melodies. We live deep in the purple mountain named Sistra on the moon Yavin 8,” Lyric explained. “Our elders, those who have undergone the changing ceremony, live in pools of crystal blue water that run through much of our city. The children, all those who have yet to change, live around the pools in the caves and caverns of the mountain. It is our job to care for each other, since the elders cannot leave the water, and to watch the eggs-“
“What eggs?” Tahiri interrupted.
“Melodies are humanoid,” Lyric reminded Tahiri. “We hatch from eggs spawned by our females. The eggs are kept in a dry cavern within the mountain. When we hatch, we look like human infants. And those of us who haven’t changed-who are awaiting our twentieth year, when we are taken to a shallow cove to begin our transformation-care for the young. Part of that care is to gather trico, which is made into a paste to feed our infants until they are old enough to eat the silver-backed fish that we catch in the pools within the mountain.