… and saw something off to the right.
It appeared just at the edge of her peripheral vision. For a split second, she thought it was the imagined Tusken. But jerking her head backward for a moment, she saw the reality was more unbelievable. Another rider had joined the chase, angling in from the faraway rise to the southeast. A figure clad in brown, racing at a diagonal to catch up with them. Running at full tilt—
—on an eopie?
Annileen looked down at Kallie, whose face was frozen in terror—and then back at the newcomer. She’d seen it all right: an eopie. A fraction the size of the dewback, four-legged and tan. An eopie could sprint, but its legs were no match for those of the dewback. And yet the hooded figure guided it quickly along, with no more effort than one would exhibit driving a speeder bike.
Annileen gawked. The rider couldn’t possibly catch up to them, but he was certainly trying. Not all desert brigands were Tuskens, she knew—but a smart scavenger wouldn’t chase anyone down in this terrain. He’d wait for the women to break their necks. Did this one actually want to help them? she wondered.
He answered that himself. “Hold on!”
The eopie nimbly danced along the edges of the sandpits, making no more imprint with its hooves than if it had been riderless. The man—close enough now that Annileen could make out a human nose and an auburn beard and mustache under the flapping hood—rode the creature expertly, approaching Snit without seeming regard for his own safety. Snit’s tail whipped back and forth wildly, forcing the eopie rider to weave and dodge. But he continued to accelerate.
A second later he was alongside the deranged reptilian. Annileen looked ahead at the tortured terrain, worse than anything behind. Snit’s massive hind feet might punch through the crusty sand and catch anywhere. When Annileen looked back, she could tell the mystery rider saw the danger, too. His eyes locked with hers. “Give me the girl!”
Without thinking, Annileen repositioned her arm under Kallie’s chest and pushed. Her daughter, unaware of the new arrival, screamed as she lost her last handhold on the reins. But less than a breath separated the eopie and the dewback now—and a long arm reached from the billowing cloak to grab her. Annileen transferred Kallie’s other arm to his and shoved.
Annileen slammed across the monster’s back as the weight fell away. She saw Kallie and the rider atop the eopie, which was slowing now from the additional burden. No way would it carry two for long, nor three for a second. Snit was her problem. Recovering, she looked forward. It was just a matter of finding the—
Krakkk! Snit’s rear foot struck a hole. Annileen went somersaulting forward, even as the impossible mass of the dewback went aloft underneath her. She saw light as the suns flashed before her eyes—and then darkness as the bulk of the dewback eclipsed them.
And then, nothing.
CHAPTER SIX
“MOM!”
Annileen opened her eyes and swiftly shut them. “I can’t see.”
“Wait,” Kallie said, brushing the grains of sand from her mother’s eyelashes. “Try now.”
Annileen tried again. She saw a young face stained by saddle grease hovering over her, lit from above by the high suns. Annileen tried to speak, but her voice cracked. “K-kallie. You … you—”
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m okay.”
“—you’re grounded,” Annileen said. “For life.”
Kallie grinned. “She’s going to be all right.”
“Yes,” replied someone else. “She is.”
Annileen couldn’t hear where the voice was coming from, but she didn’t want to sit up to look, either, not when the sand was nice and soft and warm.
Kallie vanished from her view, and another face replaced hers. It was the rider from before. His hood was removed, now. He had reddish blond hair, lighter than his beard and mustache. His blue-gray eyes looked on her with what Annileen interpreted as bemusement. “Hello, there,” he said, in an accent she couldn’t place. “You’ve taken a nasty spill.”
“You might be on to something,” Annileen said, coughing.
He smiled. A pleasant smile, she thought; not one of Orrin’s winning ones, to be sure. But understated, and inflected with well-meaning. As was his voice.
“You’re in one piece,” he said. “You’ll be picking sand out of your clothes for a while, but nothing appears broken.” The man produced a canteen from the folds of his cloak. It was an old garment, she saw, its deep brown turned tawny in places from wear. Beneath, she could see he wore a blousy tan tunic. The stranger paused as he knelt close. “May I?”
Annileen tried to nod.
He lifted her head gently so she could take a drink. Annileen drank desperately, half realizing that seventeen years of her teachings about strangers in the desert were vanishing before her daughter’s eyes. Annileen didn’t know what to think about the newcomer, other than that he seemed to be dressed out of her seconds bin at the store.
Annileen gasped as she finished swallowing. She nodded her thanks to the stranger and then narrowed her eyes. “Kallie?”
The stranger stepped away, and her daughter reappeared. “Yes, Mom?”
Annileen’s hand shot up, grabbing at the girl’s collar. “What were you doing?”
A guilty look crossed Kallie’s face. “Well, you had half the galaxy showing up at the Claim to get drunk—and before lunch, even. I figured if I didn’t get out and work the animals on the range, I’d be stuck in there helping.”
“Yes—but why that animal?”
“I—I don’t know.” Kallie shrugged. “Besides, I didn’t think you’d care. You were busy with Jabe, as always—”
Behind the girl, the stranger fastened the lid on his canteen and chuckled. “If you were trying to get your mother’s attention, my young friend—you succeeded.” He flashed that disarming smile again.
Kallie’s brown eyes lit up, and she beamed at him. “Oh, please—you can call me Kallie!”
He smiled politely—and Annileen glared at her daughter. “Grounded for life,” she said, and tried to sit up. A second later she realized the futility of the attempt and surrendered to gravity.
The stranger was back down in a flash, catching her. His riding gloves exposed his bare fingers, and she could feel them in her hair. “Don’t do anything rash,” he said. “We just got you back to the world.”
“Right.” With the help of the two of them, Annileen sat up.
“I was heading home from Bestine when I saw you were having troubles,” he said. “That was some masterful riding, you catching up to your daughter. I hope I didn’t offend you by getting involved.”
“No, no offense,” Annileen deadpanned. Turning her head, she saw what had become of Snit. The dewback drooled on the sand, his once-crazed eyes staring mindlessly at her. Looking along the animal’s length, Annileen thought his rear leg looked like a half-deflated balloon. The bones, deep inside, had shattered badly from the misstep.
But more remarkable was where Snit was: only a couple of meters behind her. The creature had just missed her when he landed.
“It was a lucky thing,” the man said.
“Lucky,” Annileen said, rubbing the side of her head. There’d be a knot there, for sure. “I was afraid we’d run into a sarlacc.”
“A healthy fear to have.”
Annileen forced herself to stand. Once sure of her bearings, she wiped her hand on her shirt and presented it. “Annileen Calwell.”
“Annileen.” The man seemed reluctant at first to shake her hand, but soon did so amiably. “I haven’t heard that one. Family name?”
“Not any longer, if I have anything to say about it,” she said, smiling. “Most just call me Annie.”
The rescuer paused, and for a moment she thought she saw his eyes fix, as if looking somewhere else. But the gentle smile quickly returned. “No, Annileen is just fine.”
“And you’ve met the tornado,” Annileen said.
“Kallie,” the girl repeated, going for a handshake of her own.
The
man nodded. “Ben.”
Before Annileen could ask more, he stepped past her to examine Snit. The animal seemed catatonic. “I don’t know much about this species,” he said. “But he doesn’t look good.”
“He’s in shock.”
Ben appeared concerned. “Can he make a go of it on three legs?”
“Let me ask the livery manager.” Annileen looked over at Kallie, who was adjusting the saddle on Vilas. “What do you think?”
Her daughter splayed her arms and whined, “I didn’t mean for this to happen!” Kallie hated to lose any creatures at all. But even if Snit could somehow go on, Annileen had half a mind to shoot the nasty thing anyway.
Which was when Annileen realized she had no weapon at all, out here on the desert with a vagrant. But as before, Ben somehow seemed to sense her unease. He whistled once, and his eopie scampered back toward him. The animal was spry, despite being heavily laden with gear.
Kallie smiled. “What’s her name?”
“Rooh. Or that’s what they told me when I bought her.” Ben patted the eopie’s snout. “Good job, Rooh,” he said reassuringly.
It reassured Annileen, anyway. One thing about the lowlifes of Tatooine: they were seldom nice to children and animals. Ben had saved her child from an animal.
And with that, her judgment was made.
“Well, good job to you, too, Ben,” she said, dusting herself off. “Why were you coming this way again?”
Scratching the eopie’s neck, he nodded to the southwest. “I’ve … set up house near the wastes. Just running some errands. Things to do, you know.”
Annileen brightened. “No need to go to Bestine.” She looked at some of the gear jutting from Rooh’s saddlebags. “You’re closer to the oasis.”
“The Pika Oasis?” He scratched his beard. “I heard there was a shop there.”
“Dannar’s Claim. Best store in the oasis.”
“Only store in the oasis,” Kallie piped in from behind.
Annileen spoke without looking over her shoulder. “Girl, I hope you’re not talking again. Because if you are, you should be apologizing to me and to this man. And to the dewback you nearly killed.”
Ben chuckled, and then stifled it. Annileen calculated he had kids of his own, or that he’d at least worked with them. He looked down at the eopie’s load. “This store. It has vaporator parts?”
“Wouldn’t be much of a store without. And besides, you’re looking at the—”
Before Annileen could continue, Ben’s expression changed. Suddenly alert, he held up his hand. “Wait,” he said, turning.
All three fixed their eyes on Snit’s motionless body—and watched, as it began to descend, sinking in the sand. A groan came from beneath, and a tremor rocked the place they were standing.
“I’m afraid that’s your sarlacc,” Ben said. Tendrils snaked upward, lashing around the huge form of the dewback.
Annileen saw Ben reach for an object beneath his cloak, only to stop when he noticed her watching. She waved him off. “There’s no blasting at a sarlacc,” she said.
“Perhaps you’re right.” The tentacles began straining at the dewback, pulling it downward. Ben grabbed at the lead on his startled eopie. Annileen hustled her daughter toward Vilas.
Kallie looked back in anguish. “Snit—”
“Comes out of your earnings,” Annileen said, shoving the girl onto Vilas’s saddle. She climbed in front. “And you hang on this time.”
From atop Rooh, Ben paused to look in amazement at the disappearing beast. The appetite of a sarlacc was something no traveler could see and forget, Annileen knew.
She wanted to ask where he was from, but it clearly wasn’t the time. “Thanks again! Maybe we’ll see you in the oasis!”
Ben smiled mildly and nodded. “Maybe.” He pulled his cowl back over his head.
“See you soon, Ben!” Kallie yelled, waving.
Annileen rolled her eyes. So much for remorse over Snit. Beneath them, Vilas started walking, eager to get away from the new sarlacc pit.
Remembering something, Annileen looked back at Ben, poised to head off to the southwest. “Hey!”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t catch your last name!”
“Oh,” he said, only to tilt backward as Rooh broke into a sudden trot. “Sorry,” he said with an apologetic wave as the eopie ran. “I think she wants to get home!”
No doubt, Annileen thought. She’s not alone!
* * *
From behind a dune, A’Yark watched the trio part company.
The warrior’s one good eye was very good, indeed, and the lens in the eyepiece could see far, when adjusted. Whoever had crafted it had done a useful thing with his or her existence. But A’Yark now doubted the work, because the eyepiece had seen something that made no sense at all.
Just after the eopie-riding male had plucked the young female from the racing dewback—an impressive feat, to be certain—the out-of-control creature had tripped in a hole and flipped over, throwing the woman who was riding it. She should have been crushed by the dewback—but instead of falling on her, the beast had been caught by the air itself and actually hovered there, bobbing, for a second. It was as if the world itself had rejected the mad thing. Then it tumbled once in midair and fell away at an angle, coming to rest just shy of the woman’s body.
The younger woman, partly hanging over the eopie’s saddle in the wrong direction, had not seen it. But the male rider had seen it happen—and was unfazed by it. Surprise was the one human expression all Tuskens learned to recognize. This man had not displayed any at all—not even when a giant dewback floated on air.
The Tuskens were well aware of the powers the settlers had at their disposal. They used lesser magics, their spells all relying upon physical components linked together in a certain way. A landspeeder was a conglomeration of trinkets. If the ordering of the pieces was in any way disturbed, it lost its powers. An unreliable magic, to be sure.
But there was no metal, no unnatural material, no mechanism present here. Just humans. That was when A’Yark had slipped back behind the dune, to think.
This was no false dragon call. What did it portend? Things were already bad for the Sand People. If the settlers had now added to their capabilities, then caution was demanded. A’Yark needed to know what the Sand People were facing. What was this power?
And which one of the humans had it?
As far as A’Yark was concerned, there was no reason for the human male to put himself at risk for either of the women. What had brought them onto the desert floor was apparent. The women had obviously tried, as so many settlers had, to tame the very spirit of life on Tatooine—in this case, the dewbacks who belonged in the mountains. It was right that they had failed. They should have died, and the hairy-faced male should have let them.
Living beings helped only themselves—that was the Tusken way. And it suggested that the woman had the sorcery in her, to land so gently, and to brush the dewback aside. The man must have known she was in no danger—that she had the power to save herself. Yes. That made sense.
While the woman recovered from her feat, A’Yark had sat, contemplating the right path. The conclusion was now clear. The settler woman had to be killed—and quickly, before she taught her skill to another. Now, while her dewback carried two—
A’Yark felt another tremor in the sand. It was gentle, and would have gone unnoticed by another. A’Yark knew it for what it was. The accursed Sarlacc had many children in locations unknown to the Tuskens. Most sat inert, starving, never becoming. But the feast of the dewback by one had awakened others. This was no time to find out how many more existed.
No, the information A’Yark had just learned needed to reach the clan. The humans could be found again without difficulty. Then the Tuskens would all move as one, knowing they were doing a truly important thing. It would be the victory they needed to regain their defiant spirit once and for all.
A’Yark left t
he hiding spot and departed for the hills. Not as the cowardly sun—but as the hunter.
It felt good.
Meditation
Let’s try this again.
I’m afraid I haven’t had any success with this means of communication, Master Qui-Gon. Perhaps you haven’t had anything to say? That’s fine. I’ve tried speaking to you mentally; I’ll try speaking aloud for a while, and see if that makes a difference.
Since I last tried speaking to you, I’ve made some tactical moves. Owen Lars didn’t want me hanging about near his home anymore. He had a point, believe it or not. Creeping on hillsides every morning and evening might not be the best way to avoid drawing attention to his farm.
So I’ve found another place. You might be alarmed when you hear how far away it is. It certainly unnerves me. You remember the Xelric Draw, where we landed the ship from Naboo years ago? This is due south of that, up against the northern wall of the highlands—the Jundland Wastes. Only we’re at the far end of the formation from where Owen lives—maybe a hundred kilometers.
It’s a funny way to keep watch over someone, I know. I can’t get there and back in a day on Rooh—and I’m reluctant to get so much as a speeder bike, for fear of the attention I’d attract. The Tusken natives seem to follow anything shiny they find; I could lead them to the Lars farm if I’m not careful. And anyone watching from satellite might notice a pattern to my travels.
I’ve also ruled out leaving surveillance equipment. Access to the galactic mainframe is spotty everywhere here, but regardless, I don’t want to own anything that taps into it. I haven’t even used the secret one-way message drop Bail Organa provided to tell him I’ve settled in. The fewer signals coming from my home, the better. What if Palpatine has eyes all the way out here, looking for Jedi Knights he failed to kill? It could happen.
The other Jedi. How I hope others have survived. I couldn’t bear to be the only one left. It seems impossible to imagine.
I wish you could tell me—
In any case, with regard to the Lars farm, it’s probably okay if I just go over there once in a while, on foot or on Rooh. I can hide better that way, and camp if I need. There won’t be a pattern to my movements, or when I choose to go. I won’t be able to respond quickly if someone troubles the boy—or even know about it. But at least I won’t be the trouble.
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