The Crystal Star

by Vonda McIntyre

  Jaina crawled forward and joined Jacen.

  “Where are we?”

  “I dunno,” he said. “A wallow, maybe. For the critters who made the trail. The bat led us here.”

  On the other side of the wallow, a huge tree rose up through the bushes. Its shadow darkened the gold-green of the shade beneath the bushes. Its roots twisted together, spreading out across the far side of the swamp.

  “Look!” Jacen pointed. The little bat flitted across the swamp and into a dark place among the roots.

  “It’s like a tunnel,” Jaina said.

  “I bet it is. I bet it leads into the tree just like on Chewie’s world!”

  The bat flitted out again, hovered, and vanished into the darkness.

  “How are we going to get over there?”

  “I dunno,” Jacen said. “I guess the bat forgot we can’t fly.”

  “We better hurry,” one of the other children said. “Listen!”

  The Proctors sounded nearer. They also sounded mad.

  Jacen took a big step forward into the mud.

  He immediately sank in up to his knees. He tried to take another step but the mud sank under him. He sank to his hips.

  Jaina slid down the bank and grabbed him. She almost reached for him—but shrank back scared that Hethrir would find them. She pulled at Jacen’s hand, but he kept sinking. He looked scared.

  Jaina sobbed with anger and fright.

  But then the other children clustered around her, reaching for Jacen, grabbing his hands.

  The mud sucked at him but the children, all together, were too strong for it. They pulled him free and onto the bank.

  Jaina hugged him. He panted, trying not to cry, trying not to make any noise that would alert the Proctors.

  “You all saved me!” he whispered.

  But they still had to get across the swamp.

  A little at a time, Jaina thought. Then Hethrir can’t stop me, he can’t find me. A couple of molecules …

  Instead of speeding up molecules the way she speeded up the air to make light and heat, the way she spun the sand into tiny wind-devils, she slowed the water molecules in the swamp.

  She slowed them and slowed them and nearly stopped them.

  A fine film of ice formed near the bank. The muddy water froze, crackling around water-grass, cooling the warm air around them. Beautiful frost patterns painted the surface of the ice.

  Jacen saw what she was doing and helped her. Together, they froze a narrow path across the surface of the swamp.

  Jaina crawled out onto it, very carefully. It creaked and groaned under her hands and knees, but she kept freezing little bits of water and the surface held. She hurried to the other side of the swamp.

  She grabbed one of the thick, twisty tree roots and pulled herself off the ice. Her hands and knees were very cold and she was tired from slowing down so many millions and trillions and googolplexes of molecules. But she made it across! She motioned for the other children to follow.

  One by one they came to her and clung beside her on the tree roots. The four-winged bat fluttered out of the hollow root and flitted back and forth.

  Jacen came last. The ice was very weak now. It cracked and protested with every step he took. Jaina was so scared she could hardly keep the water molecules slowed down, even with Jacen’s help. He was an arm’s length from her when the ice cracked. Jacen fell face-forward in the freezing muddy water.

  Jaina grabbed his hand and pulled before he could sink very far. He kind of swam and kind of crawled toward her. There was no solid ground on this side of the swamp, just the mud and the tree roots. Jacen’s whole front was covered with bits of ice and frozen grass. He flung his arms around Jaina. He was shivering. The little bat landed on his hair and trilled to him. Jaina held Jacen tight, trying to get him warm.

  “The hollow r-root l-leads inside,” he said. His teeth chattered. “All the w-way to the top.”

  “You follow the bat!” Jaina said. “It’ll lead you. You lead us. I’ll come last.”

  Jacen crawled into the hollow root. Jaina clung to the twisted roots on the bank as the other children followed Jacen into the tree. She helped the little ones. Some of them were scared and did not want to crawl into the dark. Jaina thought of making some glowing air to lead them, but she was afraid it might set the tree on fire. Besides, she did not think she could heat up air and keep water frozen at the same time.

  Finally the last of the children crawled into the tree and disappeared.

  The Head Proctor pushed his way through the prickly bushes. Jaina dove into the hollow, then squirmed around to see what the Proctors would do.

  The Proctor’s face was scratched and his pale blue jumpsuit was dirty and torn. He looked very mad. The other Proctors fought their way out of the bushes behind him. They had tried to walk, instead of crawling through the animal trail. They were all scratched and bleeding. Jaina looked at her hands. She was muddy, but that was all.

  The Head Proctor saw the path of ice across the swamp. He frowned, and tested the surface with one foot, and stepped out onto the solid patch. He motioned to the other Proctors. They hung back until he yelled at them and ordered them to follow him.

  Jaina waited till he was in the middle of the swamp and the other Proctors were strung out behind him on the ice.

  Jaina dropped the water molecules. She felt them leap apart in the hot humidity of the swamp. The ice disappeared. Jaina fled into the hollow root, and she did not look back to see what was happening.

  But she could hear the shouts, and the splashes.

  She crawled faster. The inside of the hollow root was very smooth, as if a thousand generations of wood insects had polished the surface.

  She reached the end of the root. Above her, the other children climbed through the trunk of the tree. Their sounds echoed. The tree trunk twisted, around and around, and the twists formed a steep spiral ramp that led up into the darkness. Jaina thought she could see a tiny bit of daylight. She scrambled upward, following Jacen and the other children.

  Chapter 10

  Lelila heard something. It was a cry from a far distance, a call to someone else.

  “What did you say?”

  Geyyahab made a questioning sound. He had not spoken.

  “I said nothing,” Rillao said. “What did you hear?”

  Lelila felt her mind tremble. She slapped the emergency controls of her ship, and crashed out of hyperspace.

  Chewbacca howled in shock, and Rillao snarled something in a language Lelila had never heard.

  “What are you doing? We must hurry to Asylum Station!”

  “Look,” Lelila said.

  Before them lay a tiny star and a tiny blue and green and brown planetoid.

  Artoo-Detoo trilled, Geyyahab made a gruff bark, and Rillao lunged forward in surprise. They all stared at the display. Lelila expanded it, marveling.

  “It’s artificial,” she exclaimed. “It’s too small to be natural. The star, the planet—”

  “It’s a worldcraft,” Rillao said.

  Chewbacca growled.

  “No,” Rillao said. “They are not mythical. I wish they were. I hoped never to see one. The Emperor caused a few to be created. He gave them as rewards, to the crudest and most loyal of his officers. Tokens, he called them. His “tokens’ were a greater gift than a natural world.” She trembled with tension. “It appears … he presented one to Hethrir.”

  Lelila put on a burst of speed. Her ship arrowed toward the tiny artificial planet.

  Geyyahab hunkered over the controls, preparing for evasion. The worldcraft had survived so long by concealment, by being nothing but a tiny spark of light, always moving, always avoiding the spaceways. Yet it might have defenses. It might attack.

  But the worldcraft made no challenge. As far as Lelila could tell, it was deserted. It spun beneath her. She sought a starship. She found a landing field, but it was empty. Its center glowed in the infrared with the heat of a recent departure.

&
nbsp; Have they all fled? she wondered. But if they fled, what brought me here?

  The starship slipped into the atmosphere, slowed, and changed to its soaring mode. It crossed a desert that gave way to a meadow, a stream.

  Alderaan stopped, hovering low over the flowing silver water. A great lizard rose up from the ripples, snorting, flailing its tail.

  “There!” Rillao exclaimed.

  Beyond the stream, past a wind-rippled sea of low green bushes, a huge tree twisted upward at the edge of a marsh.

  In the marsh, a group of people struggled in the mud. They looked like they had walked to the middle before they sank. Lelila could not imagine how they could have gotten themselves in such a predicament. She arrowed toward them, for they looked like they needed help. They were holding to each other, the ones nearest the shore desperately scrambling to reach solid ground, the ones in the center trying to clamber on top of their fellows.

  Rillao’s strong sharp fingers clamped around her shoulder.

  “Leave them,” she said. “They aren’t the ones we seek. If we help them, they’ll try to stop us.”

  “But they’re drowning!”

  “They might drown each other,” Rillao said without sympathy. “If they helped each other, if they did not panic, they would survive. If we help them—they will kill us.”

  Geyyahab cried out with delight. He pointed to the branches of the huge twisted tree.

  There, on a branch as wide as a garden path, a group of children stood high above the ground. They waved joyfully at Alderaan.

  The ship lowered itself gently beside them. Lelila jumped up and ran back to the hatch. Rillao followed. They opened the hatch to fresh air, a gentle breeze, the scent of growing things, and the excited cries of welcome of the children.

  Lelila’s sight was blurred. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, but that did not help her see.

  I’m crying, she thought. Why am I crying? I should be happy, I’ve found my quarry.

  She blinked away the tears.

  “Mama! Mama!”

  Lelila the bounty hunter vanished as if she had never been.

  Jaina leaped into Leia’s arms, jumping across a sheer drop to the marsh. Chewbacca quickly moved Alderaan closer to the tree branch. Jacen took Rillao’s hand and stepped gravely onto the ship.

  Leia knelt and hugged Jaina and Jacen, then held them against her with one arm. She could not bear to let them go, even as she reached out to the children still standing in the tree. With Rillao’s help, all the children climbed from the tree and into Alderaan.

  “Mama, Mama! They took Anakin and they took Mr. Chamberlain’s wyrwulf and they took Lusa, we have to find them before they cut off Lusa’s horns!”

  “We knew you weren’t dead, Mama,” Jacen said. “Is—is Papa all right? Is Uncle Luke—? Is Chewie flying Alderaan?”

  Leia nodded. “Yes. Yes, they’re all fine. Chewie’s here.”

  “I knew it!” Jaina said. “I knew Hethrir told a lie. He told lots of lies.”

  “He’s a mean man,” Jacen said. “I don’t want him to be my hold-father!”

  “He is not your hold-father, children,” Rillao said. “Is that everyone? No one left in the tree?”

  “Wait!” Jacen said. He leaned toward the open hatch and whistled and chittered. Leia held him, afraid he might vanish, leap back into the tree, slip out of her arms ever again—

  A tiny four-winged bat flitted into Alderaan and landed in Jacen’s hair.

  “That’s everybody!” Jacen said. The hallway and both cabins were packed with children, all of them muddy and scratched, but all of them unhurt and excited, crying or screaming or shouting.

  “I wanna go home!” one of the little ones cried.

  Rillao closed the hatch. “We shall find your home, little one, and return you to it.”

  Jacen patted Leia’s undone hair. “Mama, your hair’s so long!”

  “And it’s such a different color,” Jaina said. “I like it the old way!”

  Leia touched her hair. She had forgotten it was down. She had forgotten the color-crawlers had changed it. She pushed it back from her face and twisted it into a knot at the back of her neck. She could not speak. She buried her face against their shoulders.

  They hugged her.

  Her hair fell down again. She left it loose.

  “Mama, I lost my front tooth! I’m getting a new one! I’m getting grown up!” Jaina said.

  “Both my front teeth are loose!” Jacen said.

  Leia gasped in a long breath and held it, to keep herself from crying.

  “It’s okay, Mama. We’re okay. All we have to do is rescue Anakin—”

  “—and Mr. Chamberlain’s wyrwulf—”

  “—and Lusa!”

  Alderaan hovered above the swamp. Chewbacca roared a question down the hall.

  “Chewie!” Jaina ducked out of Leia’s grasp, grabbed her hand, and pulled. Leia rose and let Jaina and Jacen lead her back to Alderaan’s control chamber, slipping around and past the other children. Jaina and Jacen piled into Chewbacca’s lap, hugging and kissing him. He enfolded them in his long arms and growled with joy and relief that they were safe.

  “You’re all speckled!” Jaina exclaimed. She laughed, petting his brindled fur.

  “Be careful of Chewbacca’s leg, children,” Leia said. She was astonished that her voice was almost steady.

  “Oh, wow!” Jacen said.

  “What happened?” Jaina asked.

  “He’ll tell you later,” Leia said. “For now we should save those people in the swamp.”

  “I think we should leave them there,” Jaina said. “They aren’t very nice.”

  “But it wouldn’t be nice to leave them, either,” Jacen said.

  “We should make them tell us where Anakin is,” Jaina said. “And Lusa, and Mr. Chamberlain’s wyrwulf. And then we should drop them back in the mud!” She jumped out of Chewbacca’s arms and ran to Leia again. “I’m so dirty, Mama! And hungry! We found some fruit. But the food Hethrir—he isn’t really our hold-father, is he?—the food he gave us was nasty!”

  Leia could not help but laugh. Jaina and Jacen filled part of the emptiness in her heart, though she still feared for her littlest one. She saw, with horror and fury, how gaunt the other children were. Hethrir had starved them, and would have starved her children, too.

  “No more nasty food,” she said. “I’ll make something good for all of you. No, my sweeties, Hethrir isn’t your hold-father. Our friend is right.” She gestured toward Rillao, standing in the doorway. She introduced her children to the Firrerreo. “This is Jaina, and this is Jacen.”

  “What’s your name?” Jaina asked.

  “Jaina!” Jacen said, shocked.

  “You may call me Firrerreo, little one,” Rillao said. “When I know you better, perhaps I’ll tell you my name.”

  “You look just like Tigris,” Jaina said.

  “Where did you see him?” Rillao asked, her voice so intense that Jaina took one apprehensive step back. “Is he here? Is he with Hethrir? Is Hethrir here?”

  “Are you his mama?” Jaina asked.

  “Yes, little one,” Rillao said. “And I have not seen him in a long time. I miss him very much.”

  Leia grasped Rillao’s hand. “We’ll find him. Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”

  While they spoke, Chewbacca dropped Alderaan to just above the struggling, muddy mob, and loosed a cable for them to grab. He used Leia’s ship as their anchor, and watched while they pulled themselves out of the mud. He could have pulled them out with the strength of the ship. But he did not.

  Rillao hurried to the display and expanded it. She searched the group, then turned away, downcast.

  “Tigris isn’t one of those Proctors,” Jaina said.

  “Where is he? What is he doing?”

  “He … I don’t know,” Jaina said. “Mostly he followed Hethrir around. And he took Anakin.”

  “Hethrir told him to,” Jacen said.

&
nbsp; Jaina glowered at Rillao. “He kept trying to act mean.”

  “But he wasn’t, not really,” Jacen said.

  Alderaan swooped. Chewbacca herded the Proctors through the stand of bushes and across the stream.

  “Make them go in the desert, Chewie!” Jaina said. “There’s a place we can keep them where they can’t be mean to anybody!”

  The huge pink and black and tan lizard exploded from the center of the stream, flinging her head up, lashing her tail, roaring in challenge at Leia’s starship. Water splashed in great sprays, like rain falling upward. Sunlight reflected through the droplets, cloaking the enormous lizard in rainbows. The creature lumbered across the stream, following Alderaan. It climbed the bank. Its claws left great gouges in the mud.

  “Look, Mama, Mistress Dragon is coming, too.” Jacen grinned. “I bet she got tired of taking a bath, and she wants to go back to her sand nest.”

  Mistress Dragon followed the Proctors into the desert. As she caught up to them, they tried to run. They all looked exhausted.

  “Did my son tell you his name, children?” Rillao asked.

  Jaina wrinkled her nose in deep thought. “No, that was Hethrir who told us.”

  “Hethrir …” Rillao said softly, dangerously.

  * * *

  The deck of the starship was cold and hard, even harder than Tigris’s steel bunk on the worldcraft. At least back on the worldcraft he had a thin mattress and a blanket. Sometimes he slept without them, to toughen himself. Tonight, he wished he had them. A faint breath of warm air trickled from beneath Hethrir’s door. A faint buzzing sound came with it. At first Tigris thought it might be a snore, but he banished the improper thought. Lord Hethrir had said he would meditate; he would naturally focus his attention with a chant.

  Another noise came to him, from the passenger compartment of the starship. Anakin was crying again, with an exhausted sob. Tigris tried to ignore him, tried to disregard how hungry the child must be. He could not understand why the Proctors had not soothed him and fed him.

  His own stomach growled. That was easy to ignore. He would not eat till Lord Hethrir bade him to.