Lyric's World Read online

  Star Wars

  Junior Jedi Knights

  2

  Lyric's World

  by Nancy Richardson

  OCR: Ãîëîäíûé Ýâîê Ãðûçëè

  upload: 29.XII.2005

  Anakin Skywalker studied the girl in the front row of the Grand

  Audience Chamber. She sat alone on one of the stone seats that circled the

  stage. She was a small girl, and he guessed she was about eleven years old.

  Her long hair cascaded down to her waist in thick red ringlets, and her

  eyes were a pale yellow color. Anakin had never seen the girl sit with any

  other candidates. Maybe she was a loner just like he was.

  He knew what it felt like to be alone. Anakin had a brother and

  sister, twins named Jacen and Jaina, and parents, Leia Organa Solo and Han

  Solo. They all loved him very much, but ever since Anakin could remember,

  he'd been a loner. Even now that he was a candidate at Luke Skywalker's

  Jedi academy, surrounded by Jedi students from across the galaxy, he spent

  a great deal of time alone. It wasn't that he always wanted it that way, it

  was just that there was so much to think about.

  Studying to become a Jedi Knight took peace and quiet, something that

  his new friend, a student at the academy named Tahiri, didn't seem to

  understand. Only a week before, Tahiri and Anakin had almost been kicked

  out of the Jedi academy. They'd snuck away from the academy to raft the

  river that wound its way through the lush jungles of the moon, Yavin 4. A

  violent storm had struck. Anakin remembered the broiling green of the river

  crashing against his body as he and Tahiri shot through the water in a

  sleek silver raft.

  His heart skipped a beat as he recalled the look of panic that

  contorted Tahiri's face when she was thrown from their raft and had to

  struggle to survive in the cold waters. Without the help of the droid,

  Artoo-Detoo, he might not have been able to save his friend. If that had

  happened, he and Tahiri wouldn't have uncovered the evil that lay hidden on

  Yavin 4 in an ancient palace. An evil that they were now both pledged to

  destroy.

  Anakin heard Tahiri's bare feet padding along the gray stone floor

  before he saw her. Tahiri was from Tatooine, a desert planet with two

  scorching suns. Ever since she'd arrived at the academy she'd refused to

  wear shoes. After living on a hot world filled with gritty sand, Tahiri

  loved to feel the cool stones of the Great Temple beneath her feet.

  Anakin's only friend at the academy slid into the seat beside him. She

  pushed her long blonde hair behind her ears and fixed him with large, green

  eyes. Anakin could sense Tahiri's impatience.

  He knew that she wanted to talk. But Anakin wasn't ready to talk about

  the evil they'd discovered deep in the jungles of Yavin 4. And he didn't

  want to discuss the strange creature that had visited his room in the

  middle of the night. A creature named Ikrit that he'd learned was an

  ancient JediMaster. A Master who had drawn both him and Tahiri into the

  jungles to discover a giant golden globe hidden deep within the crumbling

  ruins of the Palace of the Woolamander.

  A crystal sphere created by an evil curse, locked with a riddle, and

  filled with glittering golden sands and the cries of children trapped

  within its spell. Before Anakin could turn to Tahiri to tell her he wasn't

  ready to talk, Luke Skywalker entered the chamber. Anakin was always amazed

  by the reaction he felt when his uncle Luke came into a room. The Jedi

  Master's presence seemed to wash a sense of calm over all of the

  candidates. Human children and aliens alike stopped shuffling feet, picking

  through matted black fur, flapping wings.

  "May the Force be with you," Luke Skywalker said as his pale blue

  eyes, almost the same color as his nephew Anakin's, scanned the room.

  "Today we will begin to learn how to use the Force to travel in our minds

  to places we have been, but cannot completely remember. In the time you

  have already spent at the academy, you've learned that training to become a

  Jedi cannot be taught with words, only with experience. So I won't tell you

  how to recapture your lost memories. I will say only this: Believe and you

  succeed. That is part of the Jedi Code, and you must truly accept it if you

  are to triumph. Are there any questions?"

  "What if we fail?" a large, blue-skinned, birdlike alien named Chitter

  squawked.

  Luke Skywalker met Chitter's concerned, beady black eyes with a

  patient gaze.

  "Asking the question means that you have already accepted that

  possibility," he said softly. "Remember, there is no try, only do, for a

  Jedi. In trying there is success, regardless of the outcome."

  Luke Skywalker stepped down from the stone stage and quietly left the

  chamber. The Jedi Knight Tionne, a humanoid woman with silvery hair and

  mother - of-pearl eyes, walked to the front of the room.

  "Please choose partners," Tionne said to the Jedi candidates.

  Anakin watched as all of the candidates paired with each other. He and

  Tahiri were partners. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the girl in

  the front of the chamber still sat alone.

  "Today we are going to learn how to use the Force to travel in our

  minds to events and places we've experienced before but have difficulty

  recalling," Tionne began. "Part of working with the Force is developing the

  strength of your minds. All of you have heard stories from your childhood

  of places you've visited and events that took place. But sometimes it's

  hard to remember things that happened long ago. By using the Force you can

  reach into the darkest corners of your mind and find memories you can't

  quite grasp or never knew you had. Work together - this will be a difficult

  task for most of you."

  Anakin turned toward Tahiri, then turned back to look at the red-

  haired girl. He knew how she must be feeling. He remembered all the times

  on his home planet, Coruscant, when his older brother and sister had run

  off to play and left him alone. Quickly he slid off his seat and walked

  down the aisle to the girl. She was staring at the ground. Slowly she

  raised her yellow eyes to meet Anakin's blue ones.

  "Come join my friend and me," Anakin beckoned.

  The girl quietly stood and followed Anakin back to his seat. She sat

  down next to Tahiri.

  "My name is Lyric," the red-haired girl sang out in a voice that

  sounded like the bubbling of water over the smooth stones of a stream.

  "I'm Tahiri, and this is Anakin," Tahiri began chattering. "It's

  strange that I haven't talked to you before now-I mean, I've talked to just

  about everyone here.... Come to think of it, I tried to speak to you the

  first day at the academy, after I learned that you'd been here longer than

  any of us, studying with another group of candidates. You were even shyer

  than Anakin," Tahiri said with a grin at her friend. "So, where are your />
  from? What planet? You're humanoid, right? How old are you?"

  "Tahiri," Anakin said sternly, "give her a chance to answer one

  question before you shoot another at her."

  Still, he was pleased that his friend was being so nice to Lyric.

  Tahiri, too, understood what it was like to be lonely. She was an orphan.

  Her

  parents had disappeared when she was three years old, and the Sand

  People of Tatooine had taken her into their tribe. They were a violent,

  nomadic race that wore strips of cloth over their entire bodies and dark

  goggles and breath masks that covered their faces. Tahiri had lived with

  them for six years. Six years without any contact with other human

  children.

  Tahiri grimaced at Anakin's interruption, then turned back to Lyric.

  "So, where are you from?" she asked with a grin. Lyric met Tahiri's

  eyes with her large yellow ones. "I am from the moon Yavin 8," she began.

  "I'm a Melodie."

  The Jedi Knight Tionne walked over to Tahiri, Anakin, and Lyric.

  "How is your memory work going?" she asked. Tahiri frowned. She didn't

  want to do the exercise right now. It was more interesting to learn about

  Lyric. She'd never met a Melodie before, and she wanted to know more about

  Yavin 8 and Lyric's species. Tahiri sighed. The conversation would have to

  wait until later. She smiled at Pionne, then turned to Lyric.

  "Why don't you tell us a memory that you want to recall?" Tahiri said

  to the Melodie. Lyric shyly looked at Tahiri, her large yellow eyes

  earnest.

  "Let me think for a moment," she replied, and closed her eyes. While

  Anakin waited for Lyric's memory, he began to doodle on a sheet of paper.

  He was drawing the strange symbols he and Tahiri had seen carved deep in

  the jungle, in the crumbling stones of the Palace of the Woolamander.

  Symbols which were not only carved above the entrance to the palace,

  but deep within its base, down a dark spiral stairway, in the place where

  Anakin and Tahiri had discovered the mysterious golden globe. In that

  place, they could almost taste the evil of those who used the Force to

  serve the dark side. Anakin forgot about Lyric and Tahiri and closed his

  eyes, letting himself drift back to the jungle-back one week, when he and

  Tahiri had rafted the river of Yavin 4 and raced through the rain-soaked

  jungle to find refuge from the howling winds.

  Recalling places and memories, whether they were recent or far past,

  was a skill he 'd always had. At this very moment, Anakin could smell the

  dusky sweetness of the Massassi trees that lined the lush moon, could see

  their dark purplish bark. He could feel the cool soil of the jungle, wet

  from the storm that had threatened to capsize he and Tahiri's raft.

  Anakin moved toward the place he and Tahiri had found to escape the

  storm, the Palace of the Woolamander, and stood beneath its entrance,

  staring up through the rain at the strange carvings in its crumbling

  stones. Then he moved inside the palace and down a dark corridor. He heard

  the skittering of hundreds of woolamanders as they raced away from his

  intrusion.

  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.

  "When we leave the safety of our home to gather trico," Lyric said,

  "we travel in groups. Sometimes that isn't enough, though, and the avrils

  still attack."

  "What exactly are avrils?" Anakin asked.

  "They're enormous birds of prey with vibrant blue beaks and talons.

  Their bodies are about two meters long and covered with thick black

  feathers. When an avril's wings are spread, the span can measure up to

  eight meters. They feed on raiths, giant black rodents with thick,

  hairless, green tails; reels, deadly snakes that kill their prey by

  squeezing the breath out of their bodies; and the purella, a bristle-haired

  red spider that traps its prey in a thick black web and slowly feeds on it.

  But their favorite food, by far, is young Melodies. That's why we travel in

  groups, so that they're less likely to attack. And so that if we come