[Thrawn Trilogy] - 01(47)

Abruptly, Luke stood up in the cockpit, hand going reflexively to his lightsaber as he peered through the haze. Surely he hadn’t brought his X-wing down by the cave.

He had. There, no more than fifty meters away, was the tree that grew from just above that evil place, its huge blackened shape jutting upward through the surrounding trees. Beneath and between its tangled roots, just visible through the mists and shorter vegetation, he could see the dark entrance to the cave itself.

“Wonderful,” he muttered. “Just wonderful.” From behind him came an interrogative set of beeps. “Never mind, Artoo,” he called over his shoulder, dropping his helmet back onto the seat. “It’s all right. Why don’t you stay here, and I’ll-“

The X-wing rocked, just a bit, and he looked back to find Artoo already out of his socket and working his way gingerly forward. “Or if you’d rather, you can come along,” he added wryly.

Artoo beeped again-not a cheerful beep, exactly, but one that definitely sounded relieved. The little droid hated being left alone. “Hang on,” Luke directed him. “I’ll get down and give you a hand.”

He jumped down. The ground felt a little squishy beneath his feet, but it was easily firm enough to support the X-wing’s weight. Satisfied, he reached out with the Force to lift Artoo from his perch and lower the droid to the ground beside him. “There you go,” he said.

From off in the distance came the long, trilling wail of one of Dagobah’s birds. Luke listened as it ran down the scale, eyes searching the swamp around him and wondering why exactly he’d come here. Back on Coruscant it had seemed important-even vital-that he do so. But now that he was actually standing here it all seemed hazy. Hazy, and more than a little silly.

Beside him, Artoo beeped questioningly. With an effort, Luke shook off the uncertainties. “I thought Yoda might have left something behind that we could use,” he told the droid, choosing the most easily verbalized of his reasons. “The house should be-” he glanced around to get his bearings “-that way. Let’s go.”

The distance wasn’t great, but the trip took longer than Luke had anticipated. Partly it was the general terrain and vegetation-he’d forgotten just how difficult it was to get from one place to another through the Dagobah swamps. But there was something else, too: a low-level but persistent pressure at the back of his mind that seemed to press inward, clouding his ability to think.

But at last they arrived … to find the house effectively gone.

For a long minute Luke just stood there, gazing at the mass of vegetation occupying the spot where the house had been, a freshly renewed sense of loss struggling against the embarrassing realization that he’d been a fool. Growing up in the deserts of Tatooine, where an abandoned structure could last for half a century or more, it had somehow never even occurred to him to consider what would happen to that same structure after five years in a swamp.

Beside him, Artoo twittered a question. “I thought Yoda might have left some tapes or books behind,” Luke explained. “Something that would tell me more about the methods of Jedi training. Not much left, though, is there?”

In response, Artoo extended his little sensor plate. “Never mind,” Luke told him, starting forward. “As long as we’re here, I guess we might as well take a look.”

It took only a few minutes to cut a path through the bushes and vines with his lightsaber and to reach what was left of the house’s outer walls. For the most part they were rubble, reaching only to his waist at their highest, and covered with a crisscrossing of tiny vines. Inside was more vegetation, pushing up against, and in some places through, the old stone hearth. Half buried in the mud were Yoda’s old iron pots, covered with a strange-looking moss.

Behind him, Artoo gave a quiet whistle. “No, I don’t think we’re going to find anything useful,” Luke agreed, squatting down to pull one of the pots out of the ground. A small lizard darted out as he did so, and disappeared into the reedy grass. “Artoo, see if you can find anything electronic around here, will you? I never saw him use anything like that, but …” He shrugged.

The droid obediently raised his sensor plate again. Luke watched as it tracked back and forth … and suddenly stopped. “Find something?” Luke asked.

Artoo twittered excitedly, his dome swiveling to look back the way they’d come. “Back that way?” Luke frowned. He looked down at the debris around him. “Not here?”

Artoo beeped again and turned around, rolling with some difficulty across the uneven surface. Pausing, he swiveled his dome back toward Luke and made a series of sounds that could only have been a question. “Okay, I’m coming,” Luke sighed, forcing back the odd sense of dread that had suddenly seized him. “Lead the way.”