Chapter Text
The remote whirred once, then fell silent. Even with the blast helmet pulled over his face, Ben Skywalker knew exactly where it was, and when it would strike again. The problem was getting his lightsaber up in time to block it--
He swung too far to hit the bolt when it came, but quick backpedaling saved him from a direct hit. This maneuver had no effect on from the second remote coming up behind him, and he was shot twice before he realized his mistake.
By then, he'd had enough. Even though it was contrary to the spirit of the exercise, he wrested control of both remotes and flung them to the ground, where they sparked and twitched helplessly. Only then did he extinguish the lightsaber and remove the blast helmet.
"Nice work," his mother said from her place at the dejarik table. Mara Jade was not the sort to offer unnecessary praise, so Ben knew her approval of his unorthodox solution was sincere. "I did that once to your father in a training exercise once. Ripped that damn pod he was controlling right out of the sky rather than put up with it for one second more."
"And you did it well. Both of you. As I've said before, it's very difficult to split one's attention in that way against two opponents. Not to mention the amount of creativity under fire it requires." Luke Skywalker shook a cascade of bleached-blond hair out of his eyes and tapped the dejarik board, sending his holographic nexu right into his wife's Kintan Strider. An angry battle ensued, from which the nexu emerged victorious. "Your move, dear."
His mother snorted. "Huh. Didn't think you'd fall for the old Kintan Strider death gambit."
"What do you mean--oh!" A second later, it was all over as her Mantellian Savrip went for the kill.
His father shook his head in dismay at the ensuing slaughter, and switched the board off. "I should have known you'd pull a stunt like that."
"Winning isn't everything," Mara Jade Skywalker said sweetly as she rose from the table, "but it's satisfying nonetheless. Isn't that right, Ben?" she added with a wink.
Ben nodded soberly. Like his mother, he played to win, even if in his case, his opponent was an automated pair of remotes.
"Something wrong?" his father asked into the silence. "Don't worry about mastering the lightsaber techniques yet; that'll come with time. The lightsaber may be a potent symbol and a useful tool, but there's far, far more to being a Jedi than a fancy laser sword. Your instincts are in the right place, and that's what matters."
"No," his mother said softly. "That's not it. It's something else. What is it, Ben?"
Ben sighed. The problem with having two powerful Jedi as parents was that it was impossible to hide what he felt around them--and equally impossible to dodge their inevitable scrutiny. He hadn't minded so much when he was younger, but he had to get better at shielding from them if he ever wanted privacy.
"Why am I here?" he wondered aloud. "It's not like you need me on this expedition at all."
"We haven't had a family vacation in years," his father said, as if that explained everything. "And I thought you wanted an adventure. This is it. Cutting-edge Jedi action right here."
"Or maybe not," his mother piped in. "There's no way to tell until we get there. For all we know, this Ach-To place could be a desolate rockball in the middle of nowhere. Karrde's informant wasn't exactly reliable."
Two weeks earlier, Uncle Karrde -- one of Ben's many adopted relatives from his mother's smuggler days -- had been approached by a man with a map marking what he claimed was the the ancestral home of the Jedi. The document in question was so old it was made of paper - paper! -- and the man claimed it had been passed down as a relic for generations in the archives of a cloistered religious commune. Of course Uncle Karrde had informed Ben's parents right away so they could investigate--bringing Ben along for the ride.
His father shrugged. "Artoo found a similar diagram in some old files in the Imperial Palace, so someone thought the coordinates worth recording there, too. But it's the Unknown Regions. Anything could be out here."
"I guess I feel... superfluous, that's all," Ben said, finally able to put his disquiet into words. "You two are so good there's not much for me left to do except get in the way and screw things up."
"That's not true," Luke Skywalker said, looking at his son with compassion. Ben twitched, unable to meet his gaze. "You just haven't found it yet. Give it time."
Ben's protest was interrupted by the alarm announcing their arrival in the Ach-To system. As they dropped into ordinary space, a tiny blue speck appeared in the distance, growing larger and larger as the Jade Shadow approached.
"You really think this desolate backwater is the ancient home of the Jedi Order?" his mother asked, looking down on the planet with distaste. Having grown up on Coruscant, she had cosmopolitan expectations and judged accordingly. "I didn't expect it to be so... boring."
"If it's a trap, it's an odd one. I'm picking up a few life forms, but no sign of any tech," his father said, settling down into the pilot's chair. "Looks like any starfaring civilization picked up and moved out a long time ago." He grinned. "Let's go down and see if they left anything behind."
***
The Jade Shadow turned smoothly through Ach-To's as Luke brought her in for a landing on one of the many rocky islands scattered like jagged teardrops across the surface of the vast ocean. Were it not for the coordinates Artoo had uncovered in the old files, he wouldn't have picked this particular island out of the thousands in an archipelago that stretched across the northern half of the planet.
As they drew closer, two massive peaks, linked by a low saddle, rose seven hundred meters out of the water, dominated by bare rocky cliffs and exposed stone, with smatterings of low plants in sheltered patches where enough soil had accumulated to support them. Landing a starship was tricky on such steep terrain, but there was a fairly level patch at the base of one peak that was large enough to accommodate the Jade Shadow without running afoul of high tide. A stairway carved from the rocks up over the ridge to the east was proof they were not the first visitors to use the place as a makeshift docking bay.
"Well," Luke said, as the ship cruised to a halt, "welcome to the Unknown Regions, everyone. Time to see what Ach-To has in store for us."
Three things assailed them as they stepped off the ship: the cutting wind off the ocean, the stinging salt spray that came along it, and the raucuous cries as a thousand portly sea-birds descended on them from the air.
"PORG! PORG! PORG!"
"What are those things?" Mara said, waving her hands in front of her to scatter them.
Luke's initial reaction wasn't charitable either. The avians were fuzzy and rotund, with white bellies and black and tan backs, but their faces were dominated by a pair of eerily human black eyes. While they were capable of flight, their bulk made them poor fliers, and they settled on the ground with indignant squawks a safe distance from the invaders. Their stubby, dark-scaled feet were devoid of any fur or feathers, with three strong toes that allowed them to cling to the steep cliffs like limpets, and walk up and down sheer walls of rock. Every motion was accompanied by the same endless squeals: "PORG! PORG! PORG!"
"Sounds like they call themselves porgs," Ben called from behind them. "That's as good a name as any for them. They're kinda cute."
"In a grotesque sort of way," Mara sniffed, unmoved. Luke fought to hold back his smile.
There was no escaping the porgs. They were everywhere: soaring in the air, perched on rocks, the stairway carved into the side of the mountain, or any surface that wasn't already occupied with something else. Fortunately, they were easily startled and fled as the three humans made their way up the stairwell and down the other side.
There they discovered the further evidence of habitation: a village of domed huts constructed entirely out of intricately stacked stones, with no mortar to hold them together. The island's twin peaks and the intervening saddle that connected them loomed above them, punctuated only by a second stairway that arched over the saddle and disappeared down the other side.
Much to Luke's frustration, a diligent search revealed all of the buildings to be empty. Worse, there were no indications that whoever had lived here had any ties to the Jedi.
"These huts are in pretty good shape considering no one lives here," Mara said in his ear as they emerged from the last hut into the open. "No porgs nests, either. I wonder--"
"Here comes the welcoming committee," Ben said, pointing towards the stairway to the saddle. Luke looked up to see a a cluster of bipedal aliens descending into the village, clucking excitedly among themselves as they approached.
"I hope we're not intruding," Luke said, pulling out a translator box and handing it to his wife.
"Shoulda brought Threepio with us," Ben noted soberly.
"I can handle this," Mara said, tucking the box into her belt and threading one set of wires up to her ear. Such an unsophisticated interpreter was no substitute for a working protocol droid, but it worked well enough give a representative samples of a given language. Coupled with Mara's quick wits and practiced negotiating skills, Luke had no doubt whatsoever she'd make it work.
"He wouldn't have wanted to come," Luke said to Ben as Mara went forward to meet their alien visitors. "Can you imagine him tottering up so many steps? He'd hate every minute of it."
"Since when would that stop anyone?"
A fair point. "I suggested it. Your mother didn't want him to come," Luke corrected.
Ben nodded. That he could believe.
Vaguely humanoid in form, the three aliens stood roughly a meter high, with dark blue-grey rubbery skin and paler throats. All of them were dressed in identical white robes with simple robe belts and white wimples. On the surface, they were nothing like the porgs, yet something about the way they bobbed their heads and honked among themselves made him wonder if they shared a common ancestor somewhere.
As the trio approached, Mara knelt before them, keeping her hands open and in front of her to show her peaceful intentions. She said something in a language Luke didn't recognize, and the aliens stopped short, burbling excitedly at her in an equally incoherent reply.
Mara frowned as she listened to the translation box in her ear, and tried again. More confused squawks ensued. It took several exchanges before the pace picked up, and Mara was able to program the box to speak a reasonably convincing imitation of their native language. Only then did the real conversation begin in earnest.
After several minutes of intense back-and-forth, the aliens bowed and withdrew, clucking to each other as they clambered back the way they had come. Mara bowed back, rose to her feet and wiped as much of the wet as she could off her knees before she turned back to Ben and Luke.
"What'd they say?" Ben asked.
"They call themselves the People--Lanai in their own language. These ones are Caretakers. They claim that is their sacred duty to maintain this place for any visitors who come seeking truth. As long as we don't disturb anything--they were very intent on that--we're welcome to stay here on the island as long as we want. We can explore anywhere, but they ask that we knock at the gate before entering their own village on the north side of the island."
"Do they often have visitors?" Luke asked, puzzled. "They seem so--"
"Casual?" Mara finished. "Yes, I noticed that, too. I asked them about the Jedi, but they don't seem to understand the word. Could be linguistic drift, but... Ben, what do you think?"
"I don't know," Ben said. "I didn't sense any ill intent from them. Nothing here feels like a trap or a ruse. Perhaps they've been doing this for so long, they don't remember why they're doing it anymore. This seems like the sort of place where nothing ever really changes."
Luke nodded. Night was coming on fast now, and the wind had picked up with a vengeance. "I concur. What do you say we head back to the ship for now and get something to eat?"
No one argued.
***
Ben was fascinated by the intricate stone huts in the abandoned village, how each piece had been shaped just so in order to hold itself in place without any need for mortar. While his parents busied themselves with the campfire in the lee of the Jade Shadow, he constructed miniature imitations out of loose stones. Much to his frustration, none of them held up properly under stress, falling into pieces at his touch.
"How old d'you think those buildings are?" he asked, shaking his head as he came over to warm his hands in front of the fire next to his parents.
"Hard to say," his father said. "I didn't see any sign of machine tools anywhere, so they must have been constructed by hand. With the Caretakers here to keep them in good repair and chase away the porgs, they could have been here for millennia. Maybe more. They could easily be older than the Republic."
"That's a long time for traditions to endure," his mother said. She stared into the fire, chewing thoughtfully on a ration bar. "They must have some sort of communal memory, to keep it going. It would explain why there wasn't as much linguistic drift as the translator was expecting. I wonder..."
As if on cue, a squawking convey of Caretakers came into view, scattering porgs right and left as they descended the mountain, bearing what on closer inspection appeared to be--freshly caught fish?
"Somehow, I did not expect room service," his mother said under her breath as they approached.
"You're just grumpy because you like ration bars," his father said, accepting the offering with a deep bow and a smile that Ben hoped transcended language and cultural barriers.
It seemed to work. The Lanai matron leading the procession honked in approval and bowed back, before the group retreated in a satisfied huddle.
His father pulled a vibroknife out of the folds of his robe and began to gut the fish with expert precision. This brought another storm of porgs on their heads as they pressed close, eager for any stray guts or entrails tossed their way. A disapproving look from Mara sent them scattering back several feet, but they didn't go retreat any further.
"Are you sure you can eat that thing?" his mother asked, shaking her head.
"I'll run it through the scanners in a second to be sure. But it'd be a shame to waste it after they went to all this trouble to bring it to us."
"Dare I ask what you're going to cook it with?"
"There's a pair of hydrospanners in the spare toolkit I could improvise into--"
"No! You are not using tools that touch my ship to cook fish!"
Despite his hunger, Ben was edgy and restless. Watching his parents flirt as they argued over cooking was boring. Night had fallen and the wind off the ocean was damp and cold, even in the relative shelter of the Jade Shadow, but he was suddenly eager to get away and explore. On the edge of his awareness, something momentous lurked in the shadows, waiting for him to find it. He just had to--
"I'm going out," he said, rising to his feet and turning away from the fire.
"In the morning," his mother said firmly.
"Aww, come on, Mom, I have glowlamp--"
"In the morning," she repeated. "If you're going to fall off a cliff into the ocean, you'll do it in broad daylight where I can do something about it."
"You'd hear me anyway through the Force," Ben muttered in annoyance. But he took the hint and settled down by the fire, though he chafed at the restrictions. While he accepted the pieces of cooked fish his father offered, it was with poor grace that both his parents ignored.
Somehow that made his temper even worse.
His dark mood eased when a squall blew in an hour later, drenching them with a thick spatter of rain that forced them to abandon the fire and retreat back inside the ship. It was just as well he hadn't gone exploring in that kind of weather, anyway.
***
The morning dawned clear and cold, the mist from the evening rain disintegrating with the sunrise. After a hasty breakfast of ration bars and leftover fish, Mara announced the plan she and Luke had concocted the night before to Ben.
"As promised, we're going to explore today, and we'll split up to cover more ground. Your father and I will go west. You go east. Let us know if you find anything big or unusual. Don't hesitate to call if there's trouble. We'll meet back here at the ship in the afternoon for lunch."
Ben nodded, unable to conceal his eagerness. Despite himself, Luke felt a pang at his son's desire to get away. He knew that Ben's desire for independence was an important part of his development, but he hadn't expected it to hurt so much. There was nothing to gain by holding him back and everything to lose.
"You sure it's safe to let him go alone?" Mara said as he sped up the stone steps with impressive speed and agility, and vanished out of their sight.
"We were both doing far riskier things when we were his age," Luke pointed out. "Besides, I haven't sensed anything dangerous here."
"Nor do I. That doesn't mean there isn't any."
Luke tugged at her arm. "Come on. Let's go exploring."
***
They took the stairway over the saddle and upward towards the western peak. About halfway up the slope, the stairs branched off into two paths--one continuing up the mountain and the other spiraling inland to the north. Luke and Mara took the inland path first, which dead-ended in a narrow, secluded valley dominated by the withered trunks of what had once been a gargantuan tree, easily twenty meters in diameter. Each of the four arms was weathered to a grey polish by centuries, if not millennia, of wind and water. Branches from that ancient tree littered the valley, though it was unclear from their placement if the tree had broken apart gradually over time or in some catastrophe all at once. But even in pieces, the size and branching structure were unmistakeable.
"An uneti tree," Luke breathed.
"So the Jedi were here then," Mara said.
"So it seems."
By long-tradition, the long-lived Force-sensitive uneti trees had been planted at every Jedi temple, outpost or hermitage for thousands of years, since the dawn of the Old Republic. All but a handful of the trees had perished in the slaughter of their Jedi friends and caretakers--and, like the Jedi, Luke had vowed to bring them back to their former glory. But there was no friendly welcome from the long-dead tree before them, no soft whispers ringing in the back of his mind, only the bitter moan of the wind.
As they circled the ancient remains, they found a massive crack in one of the trunks that had been shaped into a doorway. The two of them wended their way through the narrow passageway into the tree's hollowed heart.
"Do you think this happened when the tree was alive or dead when they made this place?" Mara asked, running her fingers over the polished walls. "Some of these cuts and curves, I don't think you could do with dead wood - too rigid, it would break off in your hands..."
"Can you imagine being here if the tree were alive?" Luke whispered. Somehow, it seemed right to whisper here, as if they were treading on holy ground. "This was a sacred place. I can feel it..."
Hand in hand, they stood for a long time, listening for any hint of memory that might be present within these walls, but they heard nothing more than the rapid beating of their own hearts, mimicking the rise and fall of the ocean outside.
At last Mara turned away. "This is beautiful, but..."
"We should keep going," he finished.
"If we want to meet our son back at the Shadow for lunch, then yes."
***
As he crested the saddle, Ben spied smoke rising in the distance from the Caretaker's village at the base of the ridge. He hesitated, mindful of their guarded request for privacy from the night before, but it didn't matter - whatever he had sensed last night was somewhere else on the island, still waiting for him. Instead of following the well-worn path down to the Caretaker's cove, he turned to a poorly tended path over the eastern peak terminated a kilometer later into a dramatic series of bare rocks plunging down into the oceans.
In addition to the endless stream of porgs nesting in the rock faces and paddling in the water, massive thick-skinned mammals with long, curved snouts and wide flippers, perched upright like sentinels along the rocky shoreline below. They bellowed and moaned to each other, snorting sea water out of their noses at random intervals. Ben grinned and bellowed back, laughing and whooping in delight at the creatures' startled reactions as he began to pick his way down the rocks towards them.
As he drew closer, though, the sensations of darkness, of coldness grew and deepened, in a way that had nothing to do with the wind. He tightened his cloak around him anyway, his ebullience fading as he drew closer to--something--
And then he saw it. The tide had gone out, exposing a slab of rock covered with the slimy fronds of brown kelp directly below him. The only spot devoid of the limp blades of algae was a jagged black hole, leading down into a cave only accessible at low tide.
Whatever he sensed was waiting for him inside. He knew it in the same way he knew where the remotes had been the day before, or how the Caretakers meant them no harm. He knew he had to go inside. It was his destiny.
In spite of his apprehension, Ben smiled. Whatever was down there might be frightening, but it was his. It had been waiting for him for a long time now--and though it was dark and cold, he didn't think it would hurt him.
The smart thing to do would be to go and get his parents. But where was the fun in that?