by Ken Liu
Somehow, Seeker managed to hang on to the wind-truster. About ten minutes later, after the bright sun had dried him and he had recovered some of this strength, he even managed to lift his head and grinned at Aya.
Before Coni-Co’s next feeding, Seeker fashioned a new contraption for himself. He took half a doco nut shell and punched two holes in it, then covered them with a pair of the translucent wings of a flying fish. Then he fitted the shell over his face like a mask and secured it to his head with a short rope made of twisted doco tree leaves. He looked so much like a silly doco nut spirit from one of Elder Kailla’s bedtime stories that Aya laughed.
The next time Coni-Co dove into the sea, Aya watched as Seeker turned his head this way and that underwater, peeking through the translucent eyepieces of his makeshift goggles. That time, when the wind-truster emerged into the air again, Seeker whipped off the mask and whooped with delight.
“That’s very clever,” said Aya admiringly.
“Pilots wear helmets like this during combat,” said Seeker. “I have one in my X-wing that I can show you when we get back.”
The talk about war sobered Aya. Seeker was someone who sought to control the Tide to cause pain, perhaps even to kill. She wondered how such a man could ever understand the pacifism of Lew’el.
They continued over the endless sea, day after night after day, always with the sun rising before them, always with the stars spinning overhead.
Sometimes a storm separated them, for a few hours or even a few days. Aya searched the sea and sky anxiously during those times, uncertain if she would ever see Seeker again. But somehow they always managed to find each other, aided by the keen hearing and eyesight of the wind-trusters.
Seeker learned to spot updrafts over the ocean by subtle changes in the shimmering air or by the shifting colors of the sea. He got better at guiding Coni-Co, and the bird learned to trust his inexperienced rider, as well, who seemed to have a way of sensing just the right direction to turn to catch the fastest gusts.
They slept on the wind, securing themselves in the bamboo saddles. They exhausted their supplies and suffered pangs of hunger between infrequent feedings. In thunderstorms, they endured being pelted by hailstones and heavy rain. Under the scorching tropical sunlight, they felt their energy being sapped sweat drop by sweat drop in the relentless heat. Aya watched as Seeker’s skin blistered and his face grew gaunt.
He had endured, and he was going to pass the trial.
And then the moment Aya had been dreading came.
They had been flying for a month, and they were approaching Ulon Atur from the west, just a few days short of completing the grand circumnavigation, when the wind suddenly disappeared from beneath the wings of the wind-trusters.
Both birds plunged precipitously before they flapped their wings vigorously to regain altitude.
“Welcome to the Doldrums,” said Aya.
The Doldrums was a patch of the ocean whose size and shape changed with the seasons. A combination of ocean currents and weather patterns created a spot on the surface of Lew’el where the winds died. Flying through that region was extremely demanding since the wind-trusters had to keep their wings in motion the whole time. Wind-trusters who wandered into the patch by mistake sometimes panicked, lost all sense of direction, and never managed to make it back out. They fell dead from the sky eventually, having used up every last bit of energy trying to stay aloft.
But because wind-trusters seldom came, it was also a favorite spot for their prey to gather, especially the elusive golden marlin, whose scales shimmered with a luster as bright as liquid gold.
“This is where you’ll face the third trial,” said Aya.
Seeker looked over at her, across the gulf between the beating wings of their respective mounts, his face full of questions.
“When Grandmother asked me to guide you to the Doldrums, she meant to invoke an old tradition. The third trial is a fishing test, and the youngling is generally expected to catch something rare and valuable. But the hardest fish to catch is the golden marlin, which only comes near the surface in the Doldrums.”
“I’m…flattered,” said Seeker. “A teacher sets the hardest trial only for the most promising student.”
“Don’t presume,” said Aya. “Grandmother always says that the hardest trial is reserved for both the most promising students, to push them higher, and the most dangerous students, to keep them out.”
Seeker nodded. “Ambition and vanity both lead to the dark side. I understand. So…what do I need to do?”
“I’ll show you.”
“How…how am I supposed to do anything with this?” asked Seeker. His voice was charged with not just disbelief but also a kind of awe.
It was easy to understand why. He held a thin long pole horizontally by its middle, and the pole stretched half a kilometer on each side of Coni-Co. The pole was so long that both ends vanished into the distance from his perch on the bird. He was like a wire walker in circuses still popular on some of the Core Worlds, except his balancing pole was absurdly long.
“You’re supposed to fish,” said Aya.
Both she and Seeker were balanced precariously on the backs of their wind-trusters, their legs wrapped tightly about the birds’ necks and their waists tethered to their mounts with thin safety lines made from rock crab silk. They were no longer sitting securely in their saddles.
That was because Aya had just spent the past hour or so showing Seeker how to take apart the bamboo saddles piece by piece and connect the ends of the thin segmented poles to each other until they had assembled the kilometer-long fishing spears.
Aya continued to explain. “Since there’s no wind in the Doldrums at all, the wind-trusters are terrified of flying too low, because if they fall into the water, they may never be able to gain enough speed to take off again. You can’t dive-fish here. Instead, you have to spear the fish you want from the back of a flying wind-truster with that pole.”
“But I can’t even move with this thing!” said Seeker. “There’s no way I can fish with it.”
“Watch me,” said Aya, and she gently nudged Tigo-Lee to veer away.
She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing.
For every ebb there’s a flow; for every flow there’s an ebb. The full moon must wane just as the new moon must wax. Happiness turns to sorrow; sorrow is reborn as hope. There is nothing constant but change in the Tide, and I am Change.
The world at once faded away and leapt into focus. She was a node in the infinite web that connected the most distant stars still being born in the core of the galaxy to the smallest stirrings of hope in the innermost chamber of her heart. She was a luminous being, a vibrating string of infinite strength, as resilient as the sea, as beautiful as all Creation, as transcendent as all matter, forged in the heart of exploding stars and refined through eons of ever-turning cycles of life and death.
Aya opened her eyes and let go of the pole with her right hand. Slowly, like the hand of an old mechanical clock, the spear dipped with her left hand as the fulcrum, pivoting from its horizontal resting position until it pointed down. She loosened the grip of her left hand, and the spear plunged, accelerating through the loose ring formed by her fist.
Just before the spear would have fallen all the way through, her fingers tightened, and as Tigo-Lee suddenly folded her wings tightly about herself, Aya thrust the kilometer-long spear into the sea. With a loud scream, Tigo-Lee unfolded her wings and flapped them in an explosion of motion, propelling both herself and Aya up at a sharp angle.
Aya cried out triumphantly as the tip of her bamboo spear left the sea. A bright golden glow thrashing at the end showed that she had caught an elusive golden marlin. It was at least five kilograms.
“How…” Seeker’s voice faded away. “All right, let me try this.”
For hours, Seeker guided Coni-Co in circles over the Doldrums. With Aya’s help, he learned to see the telltale glints of the golden marlin, and he lunged after them with his kil
ometer-long spear. Aya was amazed at his facility with the Tide. Though awkward at first, soon he had learned to swing and lunge with the unwieldy weapon as though it was no bigger than an ordinary fishing spear. And his senses seemed to grow sharper with every pass. By late afternoon, Seeker was able to pick out a golden marlin from even farther away than either the wind-trusters or Aya.
She could tell that by reaching out into the strands of the Tide, he was channeling and shaping the Tide’s currents and tributaries to accomplish these feats. His ability to manipulate the Tide in this way both fascinated and horrified her.
Still, Seeker could not spear a golden marlin. Always, at the last minute, the tip of the spear missed the target, sometimes by mere centimeters.
“I don’t understand,” he finally said, sounding defeated. “I’ve used up every trick I know—”
“Why do you not trust in the Tide?” asked Aya. “Why do you always try to use it?”
“I don’t understand,” said Seeker. “How can I accomplish what I need to do without calling on the Force’s help?”
“I’ve never seen anyone so sensitive to the Tide,” said Aya. “I don’t think even Grandmother is your match. But you stand apart from the Tide. You don’t let yourself be immersed in it.”
“The Force is my ally.”
Aya shook her head, frustrated. “That’s not what I mean. You can’t let go. You want to be in control. But you must trust the Tide; you must let it uplift you and push you where it already knows you must go.”
Seeker said nothing as he looked pensive. Then he nodded at Aya to tell him more.
“You cannot catch the marlin on your own, no matter how much you try to bend the Tide to your will,” Aya said. “You have to trust the Tide to guide the fish and the tip of the spear together, and put yourself in the will of the Tide’s ebb and flow.”
“So…you’re saying that lack of trust that things will work out without my intervention is why I cannot catch the fish,” said Seeker.
“Yes, that is it, exactly.”
“‘That is why you fail,’” muttered Seeker.
“What do you mean?” asked Aya.
Seeker shook his head and smiled. “I was remembering something my teacher once told me, when I couldn’t learn what he wanted to teach me because I didn’t believe it was possible. So much of learning is unlearning what I thought I knew.”
Aya nodded. “This sounds like something Grandmother would say.”
Seeker chuckled. “I’m pretty sure your grandmother and my old master would have gotten along very well.”
He closed his eyes and guided Coni-Co in a wide, sweeping arc. Aya could sense the change in the Tide as something shifted in his attitude. No longer anxious or impatient, Seeker relaxed his entire body, seemingly unconcerned that he was sitting on the back of a giant bird laboring vigorously over a vast sea with no shore in sight and no wind at his back.
The tip of his spear dipped and then swung over the sea like a pendulum. Seeker was at once passive and poised to act, the potential of infinite action coiled within a single pose of inaction.
Coni-Co dove. The spear extended from Seeker’s hand like the striking tentacle of a jellyfish. The wind-truster pulled up sharply and squawked as he strained to gain altitude. The Tide-truster on his back pulled the spear out of the ocean, and at the tip of the spear a massive golden fish writhed and flapped.
“That’s gotta be at least a hundred kilograms!” yelled Aya. She could not believe it.
Coni-Co struggled hard but could not overcome the weight of the fish. The bird soon dipped back toward the sea.
“Oh, no!” Aya cried out. “How are we going to get this fish back?”
“We’re not,” said Seeker. He gripped the bamboo spear tightly with both hands, as if it were the hilt of some massive sword. Aya saw the muscles in his arms bulge with the strain, and she felt the strands of the Tide vibrate all around her. The tip of the spear, far below, twirled in a pattern like the petals of a flower, and the fish, dislodged from the tip, fell back into the water with a loud splash.
“The spear went through the cartilage beneath the top fin,” said Seeker. “The fish will be sore for a few days, but it will live.”
Coni-Co, relieved of the weight, pulled back up, and his squawks sounded full of exhaustion, as well as joy.
“We should head back,” said Seeker. “The wind-trusters have been without wind for too long. I don’t think they’ll be able to stay aloft much longer in the Doldrums.”
“But your fish got away,” said Aya. “You’ll fail the trial.”
“It’s time to let go,” said Seeker, and there was no sorrow or disappointment in his voice. Only acceptance.
Aya nodded, and the two wind-trusters began the long flight east, toward Ulon Atur.
“You came close,” said Elder Kailla. “Closer than any off-worlder.”
Seeker nodded. “Though I didn’t pass the trial, I’ve already learned much that is valuable.”
“What have you learned?”
“To see the light side and the dark side of the Force as sunlit foam and shadowed eddies in the same Tide; to accept that the Force has a greater will than the individual; to trust that sometimes to yield is not to surrender but to dissolve the ego in the grand web that connects all to all.”
Elder Kailla smiled. “You might have learned everything we could have taught you, after all. Sometimes failing a trial is the same as passing it. ‘Do not’ can be as good as, if not better than, ‘Do.’”
Seeker bowed to her. “And there are more ways to serve good than by fighting and confronting evil. You also serve the good by standing guard and maintaining pools of tranquility and peace; you also rebuke evil by showing that there is another way than death and warfare. We are all connected through the Tide, and there’s a time and place to rest, as well as a time and place to act.”
The elder bowed back. “You’ll always be welcome here, Seeker, Cloud Walker, and Fish Sparer.”
Seeker was in his cockpit, preparing the metal bird for takeoff. The blue-and-silver domed brain of the bird chirped and whistled excitedly.
Aya stopped by to say good-bye.
“Where will you go next?” asked Aya.
“To seek out other aspects of the Force—the Tide. The galaxy is large, and there is always so much more to learn. I trust the Tide will guide me where I must go next. I don’t always have to be hunting for the fish. The fish will come to me when the moment is right.”
Aya smiled. “I will see the galaxy one day,” she said. There was no doubt in her tone.
Seeker gazed at her and grinned affectionately. “Trust in the Tide and go where it takes you.”
But Aya shook her head. “No, this isn’t because of the Tide. I want to see the galaxy. Not today, not this year, but I will make it happen. There is war and strife, and good and evil out there, but I can always choose the right side, to uplift those I trust and restore the balance.” After a moment, she added, “You taught me that.”
“We take turns to uplift each other,” said Seeker.
She waved at Seeker. “May you trust in the Tide.”
Seeker’s expression turned somber. “May the Force be with you.”
IS SEEKER ALSO LUKE SKYWALKER?
Are you Aya? Have you left home finally to see the galaxy?
Are you scared that others might harm you if they knew you could swim in the Tide?
Is that why you’re a stowaway full of secrets?
Are you trying to find him?
Teal had a million questions bouncing around her head, but she bit her tongue and swallowed them. It obviously took a lot for the stowaway to even tell her that much, and she understood that trust had to be earned. Besides, there was no time for idle conversation. They had to carry out the plan for sneaking the woman off the ship in the morning without alerting Captain Tuuma.
“Come on,” Teal said, holding out a hand. “Let’s go.” After a brief pause, she added, “Canto Bight is
like nowhere else in the galaxy. It’s full of strange people and strange sights, all of them from somewhere else. But it’s also a place where anyone can find a nook to call home. You’ll be safe if you’re careful.”
“Like a coral reef? Where the giant razorback whale and the minuscule angel-pin shrimp can both find their niches?”
“Sure. Exactly like that.” Teal had never seen a coral reef, but it made her smile to think of the city of artifice that way. “You’ll need a name—something that will not make you stand out.”
The woman grabbed Teal’s hand. “Call me Flux. I am Change.”
Silently, they crept through the corridors, darting from shadow to shadow, hiding behind ventilation shafts or ducking into access cutaways whenever one of the ship’s officers strolled through. Finally, they made their way back to the mess deck, which was deserted.
“Why are we here?” asked Flux.
“The port officials do a deep scan of the ship’s cargo areas for contraband upon arrival,” said Teal. “So you couldn’t stay where you were. The scanners they use are so high-powered that they might kill you.”
“They don’t scan the crew quarters?”
“They do a manual inspection,” said Teal, “and check the crew and passengers against the manifest.”
“But there’s nowhere to hide here,” said Flux, looking at the low tables in the dining area and tiny cupboards in the galley.
“I thought of one place they never look,” said Teal, a grin on her face. She pulled open a narrow door to reveal the opening to a sliding chute that angled down into the darkness. “This leads to the bilge, where the ship’s wastewater and trash are stored. The customs inspectors never look in there, and once we dock, the bilge is emptied into the port’s sewers.”
Flux looked at the yawning chute skeptically. “I don’t know about this….”
“It’s going to stink down there,” said Teal. “But it really is the safest—”