across any of the other predators on our planet, we can fight them
together."
Lyric was silent for a moment. She began to recall a memory she
visited only in nightmares.
"Several years ago, I was gathering trico when we heard the shriek of
an attacking avril," Lyric said softly. "There were five of us, and we
began to throw the rocks we carry for defense. I can remember the bird's
smell, even now. It was sour and dank, and the black feathers that covered
its body furrowed as it attacked. We ran out of rocks before the creature
tired. And moments later I felt sharp talons wrap around my body and I was
airborne. There was nothing the other Melodies could do but fill their
sacks with trico and return to the mountains without me. They were certain
that I was dead and would soon be devoured by the avril."
"Your friends just let the avril fly away with you?" Tahiri said in
shock.
"Yes," Lyric replied, her eyes wide with remembered terror. "There was
nothing they could do."
"They didn't abandon me," Lyric hastened to say as she saw the
identical looks of horror on the faces of her new friends. "One of the
reasons the elders allowed me to come to the Jedi academy is because the
children of my people do not know how to defend themselves well from
predators, and the adults cannot leave the water to help us survive. It was
the elders' hope that I might learn to use the Force to help my people,"
Lyric explained. "But I am getting ahead of my story. The avril who
attacked my group and snatched me took me to her nest, a shallow hole in
the mountains, high above my own home. I heard her young squawking for food
as I was dropped before their unseeing newborn eyes in a nest of twigs and
trico. As I lay on my back, I saw the same type of symbols as Anakin drew.
I did not have long to wonder how or when the carvings had been made. But I
could tell they were created from the hand of an intelligent being.
"The avril towered above me; I could see its black tongue lashing back
and forth as it prepared to devour me, later to regurgitate me in the way
these birds feed their young. I don't know why I did it, but I began to
squawk back at the creature. I tried to make my voice sound like the very
same cries as the young that surrounded me. The avril began to hop madly. I
could sense its confusion. Then, in a whirl of feathers, it flew off. I can
only assume that I copied the cries of the creature's young so well that it
thought I was one of them and went off to find more food. I scrambled down
the rocky mountain, desperate to find my way back home. Several hours
later, battered but alive, I entered the portal to my city."
Lyric paused and looked at Anakin and Tahiri.
"I wish I could tell you more about the symbols I saw, because it is
obviously terribly important to both of you," she said sadly. "But all I
can tell you is that they are much like the ones Anakin drew. That is all I
know."
"Are there others on your moon who might know?" Anakin asked.
"Perhaps the old ones," Lyric replied. "But they no longer surface, so
I have never spoken to them." Anakin and Tahiri both frowned. They
desperately needed to figure out what the symbols carved above the palace
meant if they had any hope of solving the riddle of the golden globe.
"Why do the elder Melodies live in water?" Tahiri asked.
"After the changing, our bodies can no longer survive outside the
water. We develop gills and breathe by extracting oxygen from water. In
addition, we can no longer walk on land because our legs fuse into a large
webbed tail," Lyric said. "Most of the elders can surface for varying
amounts of time, which they do to see their young and give us guidance.
However, the very old cannot surface at all."
"Let me get this straight," Tahiri gasped. "You're telling us that
you're going to turn into a fish?"
Anakin scowled at Tahiri. Sometimes she could be rude!
"Not exactly," Lyric said, laughing. "Our upper body remains about the
same, but our ability to breathe, as well as the form of our lower body,
changes."
"What is the changing like?" Anakin asked. He had sensed deep fear
beneath Lyric's lighthearted laugh.
"Seldom do all of us survive," Lyric replied softly. "Very seldom. I
leave tomorrow morning for Yavin... for my changing. That is why I was at
the academy before you arrived, Tahiri," Lyric explained. "My time to study
the Force is limited."
When it was time for the candidates to leave the Grand Audience
Chamber, Lyric hung back.
"Go ahead, I'll meet up with you later," she called to her new
friends. They hesitated.
"Please go," Lyric said softly.
Anakin and Tahiri both saw that thick salty tears were on the brink of
spilling from Lyric's eyes. They left the chamber and waited for their new
friend in the corridor. The Jedi Knight Tionne walked over to Lyric and sat
on a stone seat by her side.
"I don't want to go," Lyric cried to Tionne. "Tomorrow I'll be sent
back to Yavin 8 when the supply shuttle leaves. I'll be taken to the cove
where the others who were born at the same time as me will be waiting for
the changing, just below the blue - green algae that covers the surface of
the waters in the cove. And while I'm changing, I'll be defenseless,"
Lyric wailed. Tionne knew all too well what Lyric was going to face.
She'd been to Yavin 8 during her search for Jedi candidates for the
academy, and had witnessed a changing ceremony. Tionne recalled the
explanation Lyric had given her months before, when she'd questioned why
the Melodies had to partake in a ceremony set in such a dangerous place.
The shallow algae-covered waters of the cove were the only place on the
mountain where the changing could occur. Until the changing was complete,
the young Melodies needed the blue - green algae that carpeted the waters
and created oxygen through photosynthesis, to provide them with enough
oxygen to breathe. Once their gill slits were completely formed, the
Melodies would be able to extract oxygen from water without the help of the
algae and could be moved to safety-to the deep pool of water within the
mountain. Until that time, Melodie children did their best to protect the
changelings. The children circled the shallow cove and sat on its banks
with bags of rocks to fight off the purella, avrils, reels, and raiths that
came to feed on the changing Melodies.
Those creatures seemed to instinctively know the right season to hunt
for changelings, Tionne grimly recalled. Lyric had ringed the cove with the
other children for many seasons of changing ceremonies. She knew all too
well, Tionne thought, that though the children always fought without fear
for their lives, some of the changelings as well as some of the children
didn't survive the day.
"I don't want to go," Lyric said plaintively. "I want to stay at the
academy."
Tionne studied the young Melodie. From what she'd seen, Lyric was more
than ready for the changing. In the past few weeks, she'd noticed that the
child had begun to have difficulty breathing, her breaths sometimes
sounding like rattling, dry gasps.
"Lyric, do you remember when I fought by your side at the cove?"
Tionne asked.
Lyric nodded. "You came in search of Jedi candidates, but it was the
day of the changing, and you fought to help save those who would become
elders," she whispered. "I remember an avril swooped over your head and
tried to slash you with its sharp talons, and you didn't see the reel that
slithered up behind you," Lyric said.
"You saw the thick violet snake moments before it wrapped me in its
coils and began to hiss and squeeze," Tionne said softly. "I recall that
you turned and, without thought, stared into its black eyes and began to
hiss at the long creature. Lyric, your voice, the voice of rushing streams
and tinkling water, became the snake's voice. Just as I was about to be
crushed, the creature released me from its coils and slithered away. For
that reason, I took you to study at the Jedi academy.
"You were strong in the Force, even then," Tionne said to her student.
"You are even stronger now. But if you don't return to Yavin 8 and undergo
the changing, you'll die. You knew that you wouldn't have a lot of time at
the academy," Tionne continued. "You said that you wanted to study here
anyway, in the hopes that you could use your training to help your people
when you returned to Yavin 8. If you want to help them, you must return.
And you must survive."
Slowly Lyric turned and left the room. Tionne was right, she thought.
The only way to help her people learn to fight and survive was to teach
them what she had learned at the academy. To find other Melodies who were
sensitive to the Force, and train them to use their voices and minds to
fight the predators that fed on the Melodies ' eggs and changelings.
Still, her sobs caught in her throat as she left the Grand Audience
Chamber.
"Lyric," Tahiri called out. "We didn't mean to eavesdrop, but we were
worried about you. How can we help?" she asked.
Lyric shook her head.
"You can't," she answered sadly. "This is something I have to do
alone."
"Why?" Anakin asked suddenly. "Why can't Tahiri and I go with you to
Yavin 8 and help you through the changing ceremony?"
"Your place is at the academy," Lyric murmured.
"Our place is with our friend," Tahiri replied.
The battered supply ship, the Lightning Rod, slid silently through the
morning sky. Its courier and message runner-a longhaired pilot named
Peckhum-navigated the ship past Yavin's moons. Old Peckhum would not only
take Anakin, Tahiri, and Lyric to Yavin 8, but would accompany them
throughout their journey. Lyric's world was too dangerous a place for the
children to be alone. Anakin and Tahiri sat side by side. Anakin stared out
his window. As they passed Yavin 13, he found himself wondering about the
moon. It was said to be inhabited by reptilian creatures called slith. He'd
read that the slith were meat - eating creatures with enormous jaws lined
with spiked teeth. Anakin shook off his thoughts and rose from his seat to
check on Lyric, who was sitting up front with Old Peckhum.
Since they'd left the academy, she hadn't spoken. And, while Anakin
knew that she was relieved to have him and Tahiri with her, he could also
sense her apprehension and fear. Persuading Luke Skywalker to allow them to
accompany their friend to Yavin 8 had been difficult. Anakin thought about
the conversation they'd had that morning with his uncle.
"She needs us!" Tahiri had cried. "Please let us go to Yavin 8 with
Lyric. Anakin and I can help her survive her changing, I know we can! And
Peckhum will be there to protect us."
Luke Skywalker had been unmoved.
"I can't send students into a potentially hazardous situation," he had
said.
"Uncle Luke, you're the one who said that we can't learn to become
Jedi Knights by listening to words. Experience is the best teacher, right?"
Anakin had asked innocently, his ice blue eyes meeting his uncle's pale
ones. "Please let us help Lyric."
Finally, Luke Skywalker had agreed. Anakin stared out the window as
the supply shuttle sped through the silent sky. He thought about that
morning. As he'd packed his academy jumpsuit and some extra socks, Ikrit,
the Jedi Master they'd found in the palace, had climbed through the open
window of his room.
"Where are you going, young Anakin?" Ikrit had asked in his raspy
voice.
Anakin had explained the situation.
"Are we wrong to leave now, when we haven't solved the riddle of the
golden globe?" Anakin asked.
Ikrit had only replied, "You must go where you are needed. You must go
where you are drawn."
Then the Master had swung off the window ledge and scampered down the
pyramid-shaped stone wall of the Great Temple. Anakin hadn't expected him
to be much help. Ikrit had already explained that if an adult Jedi Knight
or Master tried to break the curse, the globe would shatter into a thousand
pieces of crystal. Anakin understood that he and Tahiri were on their own.
His thoughts were interrupted.
"Anakin, have you thought much about the globe?" Tahiri whispered. She
didn't wait for an answer.
"I have. I don't know how, but we've got to understand what the
symbols carved in the palace and in the mountain on Lyric's planet mean.
It's the only way I can think to figure out how to break the curse."
The curse. Ikrit had come to Anakin's room the night he'd returned
from the Palace of the Woolamander. He'd explained to Anakin that four
hundred years ago he'd discovered the globe in the ruins of the palace,
which had been built thousands of years earlier by an ancient race called
the Massassi.
Ikrit said that he couldn't break the curse, so he'd curled up at the
base of the globe to wait for the people who could. Those people were
Anakin and Tahiri. When Anakin had told Tahiri what Ikrit had said, she'd
agreed that they had to work together to break into the crystal sphere that
was locked with a riddle and filled with glittering golden sands and the
cries of trapped Massassi children.
"I think you're right," Anakin said to Tahiri now. "Understanding what
the Massassi wrote in their palace will help us to unravel the riddle of
the globe. But right now, we've got to concentrate on helping Lyric."
He didn't add that he'd seen Ikrit. Or tell Tahiri Ikrit's words. It
was enough to feel that what he and Tahiri were doing was right. And to
know that he felt drawn both to Lyric and her moon. The shuttle dipped
toward Yavin 8. Anakin watched the moon grow in size as they sped toward
its surface. He could see that it was covered with brown and green tundra
and a ridge of purple mountains that jutted from its surface.
Moments later, the ship gently touched down, only a few hundred meters
from the mountains. Lyric moved back to join her friends. In the time of
the flight, her breathing had become alarmingly labored. It escaped from
her mouth
in deep rattles and hisses, and Anakin could see that the effort
of drawing air was exhausting her. Lyric raised one hand to brush her red
ringlets from her eyes.
Anakin gasped. In the last hour, the pink webs on her hands had spread
until they reached the tips of her fingers. It was clearly getting close to
the time for her changing ceremony. The silver door of the shuttle hissed
open. Old Peckhum, Anakin, and Tahiri followed their friend down the ramp.
Waiting for them were five Melodie children.
"Welcome," one of the Melodies began, but he stopped when he saw
Lyric.
"Come," he said, "we've got to get Lyric to the cove quickly."
The look of worry on his face told Anakin all he needed to know. He
reached up and took hold of Lyric's elbow. Tahiri moved to the other side,
and together they helped Lyric half walk, half run to the mountains that
loomed before them.
"Oh no!" Peckhum cried as he followed the children toward the
mountain.
"What is it?" Anakin asked as he ran.
"I forgot some of the supplies I need to transport after we leave
Yavin 8," Peckhum worriedly explained. "It wouldn't be important, except
they're medical supplies, and this trip has already put me behind schedule.
"
"Go back and get them," Anakin called over his shoulder. "You'll only
be gone for a few hours, and we'll be fine. Just come find us in the
mountains when you return."
"I don't think I should leave you. Luke Skywalker wouldn't be pleased,
Lyric's World Page 2