Star Wars - Crystal Star

by The Crystal Star (by Vonda McIntyre)

  Jaina's mouth watered. She watched the Proctors at the highest table and the helpers at the middle table breakfasting on good food, more than they could eat. They laughed and shouted and threw half-eaten food on the floor to go to waste, and leaned way back in their chairs with their feet on the table.

  The children, at the low tables, had to wait to be excused until the Proctors were all finished.

  It isn't fair! she thought.

  Jaina could see Jacen, but only the top of his head. He was all the way on the other side of the cafeteria. She wished she could talk to him about what she had learned she could do. And she wished she could tell him she had drilled half-way through the door of her cell to the lock. Then she had stuck the sawdust together with spit, Ick, and pressed it back into the hole in the door so no one would notice.

  Vram sat at the middle table with the other helpers. He wolfed down a piece of fruit, some bread, and a whole bunch of cookies. He picked up a honey-cake and waved it at the other children. At Jaina. Honey dripped down Vram's fingers. He licked it off.

  Jaina looked down so she would not have to see him.

  On the table in front of her, a bug, a tiny myrmin, tiptoed past on its hair-thin legs.

  It isn't really a myrmin, Jaina thought.

  It has ten legs instead of just six, and an extra set of feelers! But it sort of looks like a myrmin. Jacen would know what it is.

  I bet it's hungry.

  Jaina scraped the last tiny grain of porridge out of her bowl. She put it near the myrmin. The myrmin walked around it, tapped it with its feelers, and struggled to lift it and move it and carry it.

  I hope that tastes better to myrmins than to children, Jaina thought.

  The myrmin balanced the sand-grain-sized bit of porridge and climbed down over the edge of the table.

  The myrmin gave Jaina an idea.

  Sand got tracked in from the playfield. It lay in the cracks between the stone tiles on the floor, and even in the spaces where the planks of the table touched. Jaina experimented with moving a grain.

  I'll pretend I'm a myrmin, she thought.

  Not a little girl, not Jaina. I don't have any Jedi abilities--I'm just a myrmin! Who would pay any attention to a myrmin?

  She pushed the sand grain. It skittered across the table and fell over the edge.

  Jaina hunched her shoulders, expecting Hethrir's cold wet blanket to fall around her and cut her off from the world.

  Nothing happened. It was just like last night with the air molecules.

  Jaina reached for sand grains on the Proctors' table. She found none. Someone cleaned their table better. But plenty of sand lay on the platform at their feet. Jaina played with a few grains. They spiraled up into the air. No one noticed.

  The Head Proctor picked up a section of fruit. Jaina dropped the scatter of sand grains on it. The Proctor tossed it down to Vram. For a second, Jaina thought the Proctor had noticed the sand, but then she decided not because he did not look mad and he did not look for more sand on the sticky bun he chose from a steaming basket.

  Vram popped the fruit into his mouth and gobbled it without even noticing the sand.

  Jaina felt a little sorry for him. But only a little.

  If somebody gave me a piece of fruit right now, she thought, I probably wouldn't notice sand on it, either.

  The second time she moved sand, she dropped it onto the Head Proctor's sticky bun.

  Jaina felt like she had done something very, very bad, to spoil good food like that.

  The Proctor pulled off a piece of the soft, sweet bread and put it in his mouth. He chewed.

  His expression changed. Jaina felt glad.

  Not happy-glad. Jaina felt satisfied-glad.

  She lifted another handful of sand and scattered it across the Proctors' table, so it fell on all their plates.

  The Head Proctor spit out his mouthful of sticky bun.

  That's disgusting! Jaina thought. He didn't even cover his mouth with his napkin.

  "Grake!" the Head Proctor shouted.

  Several of the other Proctors spit out their food, too, and soon they were looking at it and poking it, even the half-chewed bits, and talking to each other and arguing. Jaina watched them, pretending not to. Soon she did not even have to pretend, because all the other children were watching, too.

  "Grake! Get out here!" The door beside the Proctors' stage slammed open, bouncing against the wall.

  A huge being thundered through the doorway. Jaina flinched--she thought the dragon had broken into the bunker--then looked again, surprised and excited.

  The being in the wide white apron was a Veubg, from Gbu, a high-gravity world. Gbu was the last world before Munto Codru that Mama had visited. The New Republic delegation had not been able to go to the surface, most of them, of course, because the gravity would have squashed them. But the Veubgri had traveled to the meeting satellite. They had liked Jaina and Jacen and Anakin. Jaina remembered the soft touch of their tendrils on her hair. Her mouth watered at the memory of their sweets. She wanted to jump up and wave at the Veubg.

  But Grake had never seen Jaina or her brothers. She would not recognize them. She would not care.

  "Why are you yelling at me, little blue-clothes?" Grake climbed the stairs, light-footed and powerful, tendrils coiled around a heavy wooden spatula, and stopped behind the center chair. "I work all day for you, and you only yell at me, you are a very unappreciative person." "There's sand in the food!" the Head Proctor shouted. "Is this your idea of a joke?" "A joke? Sand--in my food?" Grake smacked the Head Proctor on the side of the head with the spatula.

  The Head Proctor fell off his chair and scrambled up, staring, stunned.

  Jaina gasped. She wanted to hide her eyes. She was sure the Proctors would hurt Grake--use the Force to make her explode!

  And it would be Jaina's fault.

  But nothing like that happened.

  Maybe they can't, Jaina thought. Maybe all they can do with the Force is just barely turn on their lightsabers, or maybe Hethrir even cheated to let them do that!

  Grake leaped to the end of the stage and whacked the Proctor who lounged in the last seat. He scrambled to keep his balance, lurching sideways and forward to grab the edge of the table.

  "Take your feet off the table!" The Veubg leaped again, all the way from one end of the stage to the other, knocking the spatula against the head of each Proctor in turn. "You complain of sand in my food--when you put your feet on the dinner table?

  You have the manners of dragons!" The Veubg landed soundlessly--then stamped all six feet. The whole Proctors' table bounced a handsbreadth in the air and forward.

  Jaina giggled. She could not help it. She tried to stop and so did all the other children. She knew they would get in trouble for laughing and she knew she would be the cause of it. But she could not help it. And how she wished Lusa were here to see it too!

  "Stop it!" the Head Proctor shouted.

  Jaina could not tell whether he meant her or Grake.

  Grake snatched handsful of fruit from the serving dishes and flung them over the second table and out to the children. Everybody shrieked with excitement and grabbed for the fruit.

  Jaina caught a chunk of melon and stuffed it into her mouth. It was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. It made tears spring to her eyes.

  She was glad she had not poured sand on the serving dishes, but she would have eaten the fruit anyway.

  "Sand! In my food!" Grake flung the contents of a whole serving bowl of cookies over the children's heads. Everyone was running around and jumping up to catch the sweets and snatching them off the floor before they got trampled.

  Jaina snatched more sand, even though she really wanted a cookie. A little cloud of sand grains floated up from the tiles. She dropped the sharp grains down the necks of the Proctors' uniforms. The sand fell down their backs and into their pants.

  At first they did not notice because they were all on their feet, yelling. Then the Head Proc
tor drew his lightsaber. Its blade hummed and glowed.

  Jaina jumped up, horrified. Uncle Luke always said that when she became a Jedi Knight, she should never draw her blade, except for practice, unless she was willing to kill.

  Jaina had never even touched a lightsaber.

  Grake did not give the Proctor the chance to kill her. She leaped down the stage, down the steps, and through the doorway even before the Proctor could strike, if he was going to. Jaina had never seen anyone move so fast.

  The Proctors shouted a few last insults.

  The Head Proctor put away his lightsaber.

  Jaina did not know if he would have killed Grake, or if he was only threatening. Or joking. She did not think they should threaten or joke with a lightsaber.

  The Proctors shouted after Grake, and pushed each other back and forth, and finally sat down again.

  None of them put their feet on the table.

  "Be quiet!" the Head Proctor yelled at the children. "Sit down and be quiet or we'll come put you in your places." Jaina sat back down and so did the other children.

  They might as well, because all the extra food was gone. Everybody was looking around, hoping to find one last tart grape or sweet crumb.

  The Proctors sat uneasily at their table, not wanting to dismiss dinner because that would mean they had failed at something. But they did not eat any more of the sandy food.

  The Head Proctor frowned and fidgeted and pulled his uniform away from his sides and shook it.

  Jaina stared down at the table. If she started to laugh before anybody else noticed what was happening, the Proctors would know it was all her fault.

  Jaina wished a grape had fallen on the table in front of her so she could eat it. But the table was empty. She carefully looked past the edge of the table. The Proctors were talking together now. They sounded mad. Jaina made herself not smile.

  Instead she jiggled the sand in the Proctors' uniforms, and looked for more sand.

  She had used it all up. The floor tiles, even the cracks between them, were clean.

  Except for little black spots moving toward the Proctors' table. They formed a line across the floor like the foam on waves.

  The myrmins scurried up the front of the Proctors' stage. As the Proctors squirmed and itched and hissed impatiently at the Head Proctor to dismiss dinner, the myrmins ran over their shoes and into their pants legs.

  Jaina could not resist anymore. She looked across the cafeteria toward her brother. She even stood up so she could see him. At the same time, Jacen stood up and looked at her. He grinned quickly. They both sat down again before anyone could catch them.

  Jaina knew Jacen had asked the myrmins to climb up the stage.

  One of the Proctors leaped to his feet with a shout. He thought he just had sand in his pants. Then the sand bit him. The other Proctors started jumping up and yelling and scratching. And stamping, stamping on the myrmins.

  "Oh!" Jaina whispered. "Oh--poor myrmins, thank you, myrmins." Some of them were running away now, disappearing into cracks and hiding. But some of them were being killed.

  "We're sorry, myrmins," she said, sincerely, the way Chewbacca spoke to insects he sometimes killed, even if he never meant to, when he harvested forest honey. She risked another glance across the hall at Jacen.

  Stricken, he started to cry. He cried when Chewbacca apologized to the forest insects, too.

  But this time it was his fault that the myrmins were being hurt.

  Suddenly the myrmins all disappeared. Jaina felt the flare of Jacen's abilities, whisking the little creatures out of danger.

  Hethrir's cold wet invisible blanket fell down around Jaina-- It's not fair, she thought, I didn't do anything. well, not much, anyway--and she knew the same thing had happened to Jacen. She gasped, and shivered, and struggled up out of her seat, and stumbled across the cafeteria to Jacen.

  They hugged each other. It was such a good hug.

  It almost made Hethrir's blanket go away.

  Or anyway it made it feel only cool and damp instead of cold and wet.

  "Jacen, Jacen, they took Anakin, they took Lusa--" That was the first time she thought that Hethrir might have taken Anakin away forever, the way he took Lusa. Where else could their brother be?

  "We have to d something," she whispered.

  "All you children get back to your studies!" the Head Proctor said, scratching the side of his leg. The myrmins were gone, but their bites remained!

  "Thank you, little myrmins," Jaina whispered.

  "Thank you, little myrmins," Jacen said too, "I'm s-sorry!" "Back to your studies!" The children straggled into an uneven line. They could not keep from giggling. Jaina stayed near Jacen.

  Maybe no one would notice they were together.

  "Do something about that line!" the Head Proctor said to his underlings.

  The other Proctors all looked at him like they thought he was crazy.

  And they ignored him and ran out of the cafeteria.

  Some of them were already unfastening their uniforms before they got out of the room.

  The Head Proctor glared down at the children.

  And then he winced and started to scratch, in a place it was very naughty to scratch in public, and turned around and strode out of the room. As soon as he vanished, his footsteps speeded up. He ran away.

  Chapter 7

  The children were alone in the cafeteria.

  "Let's go out!" Jaina said. She did not know what she could do once she was outside, but she felt desperate to get away from this cold hard building.

  She and Jacen ran down the long dark corridor. All the other children followed them. They burst out into the light, as the tiny planet's tiny sun leaped into the sky. The little planet spun fast, so its days were much shorter than regular days. The children shouted and ran and cheered in the warmth.

  Jaina and Jacen held hands and leaned backward and spun around and around, just like the little planet. Jaina whipped her hair back and forth till she felt dizzy. She and Jacen fell down in the sand, panting and laughing.

  Jaina jumped up again and Jacen jumped up beside her.

  "Jaina, Jaina, you're okay!" "Jacen, I missed you so much! I don't know where Anakin is!" "If we could reach for him--" Jacen said. his--we might be able to find him. B--" his--we have to run far away from that blanket!" Jacen finished their shared thought. Jaina was glad he thought about it the same way she did, but that did not help them figure out how to get away from it.

  "We have to get past the dragon," Jaina said.

  "There's no dragon," Jacen said scornfully. "That's just to scare us." He marched straight toward the canyon fence, straight into the blank space.

  Jaina ran after him. The dragon jumped out of the sand and roared and bounced against the fence. Jaina grabbed Jacen and pulled him back till the dragon could not see them anymore. She did not have to pull him very hard because he was scared too, but he was also amazed.

  The dragon forgot it had seen them and snuffled around the edge of the fence looking for a soft warm patch of sand.

  "Wow," Jacen whispered.

  "Maybe I could jump up and down and wave and--" She was thinking Jacen could run around behind and climb the fence. But then she would still be stuck inside.

  "Maybe I could tame her," Jacen said.

  "And we could ride her away!" Jaina had no idea how Jacen knew it was a Mistress Dragon and not a Mister Dragon.

  But he was always right about this sort of stuff.

  "Ride her?" Jaina said, entranced.

  Then Jacen's lips trembled. "But maybe the Proctors would hurt her the way they hurt the myrmins." "How could they hurt a dragon?" Jaina asked.

  "With their lightsabers!" "They'd be too scared! I bet they wouldn't even get close to her." "With a blaster, then," Jacen said.

  "Oh. Yeah." "Maybe we could distract her," Jacen said thoughtfully.

  "We better do it fast," Jaina said.

  "I need something to throw," Jacen said. He looked a
round but there was just sand.

  The dragon lumbered to the fence and rubbed her nubbly-scaled shoulder against the wire mesh, closing her eyes and groaning happily.

  If Jaina could use her abilities, she could easily distract the dragon. Together with Jacen, they might even be able to stop the dragon. But Jaina thought that would be a lot to try to do, without Uncle Luke's help.