“Yeah, but you can’t. Not forever,” he told her.
His father mumbled, “Not even for as long as we hoped.”
“Stealing a ship, honestly,” Looway muttered through her sniffles. “I couldn’t believe it, when they told me. I simply couldn’t believe it.”
Maize held up her hand. “Um, technically I’m the one who stole it. He couldn’t even fly. Not until I showed him. I’m a terrible influence on him. You can go ahead and blame me for everything, if you want. My parents always do.”
Karr finally laughed. “This is unbelievable. It’s the most unlikely thing I’ve ever heard, and I’m hearing it right after the most unlikely thing that ever happened to me—with the weirdest person I ever met.”
Maize grinned. “Aw, thanks, Karr. You’re pretty weird, yourself. Oh, by the way. I’ve been in your kitchen, eating your food. This cheese is actually pretty great.” She grinned even bigger, showing off her faintly stained teeth.
“Help yourself,” he told her.
“Way ahead of you.”
Karr and Maize went for a walk around the family homestead. It wasn’t much of a homestead, really—just a smallish house with a large dirt yard, surrounded at a distance by other houses of a similar description. There wasn’t much of a neighborhood to speak of, but they walked around it together regardless…purely for an excuse to get out of the house and have something like privacy.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come right out and admit I told your parents,” Maize said. “But I figured it was their place to let you know when they were ready.”
Karr shook his head. “You just cannot keep a secret, can you,” he joked.
“Look, I admit to telling your folks, but not the First Order. There’s a big difference.”
“And your dad,” he reminded her.
“And my dad,” she admitted. “Fine, you’re right. I cannot keep a secret.”
The two of them laughed. It felt good to have things back the way they were, with nothing between them. Well, almost nothing.
Maize stared at the ground while she walked. The paths weren’t paved, and the roads were mostly sand. Her expensive boots were getting filthy, but she didn’t seem to care.
“The truth is, Maize, I haven’t been completely honest with you, either.”
“You told my parents that I have Jedi powers?” she said with a laugh, but Karr didn’t join in. “What is it?”
He didn’t know how to begin, so he just described it as he saw it. Like one of his visions. “When Arzee and I were on Batuu, I touched a lightsaber that belonged to an Inquisitor.”
“A what?”
“An Inquisitor. They were Force-wielders who were tasked with taking out the Jedi. Wiping out all the survivors of what was known as Order 66.”
“I don’t understand half of what you just said, but they don’t sound good.”
“They weren’t. But the thing is, when I touched the lightsaber I saw a vision…of myself. Striking down a Jedi.”
“That’s not possible,” she said. “You can’t see the future, you can only see the past, right?”
“Well, there was a Jedi named Sifo-Dyas who could see the future, and I’m worried that maybe I have abilities like him. Maybe I can see the past and the future.”
She stopped walking. “Wow. No wonder you’ve been so out of it. That’s pretty heavy stuff. Where do you even go with that?”
“Nowhere,” he answered. “Which is the other reason I came home. I’m too afraid to touch anything anymore, or go anywhere or even move, really. How do I know every step I take isn’t a step in that direction? So I figure if I just go to trade school and keep my head down, then I can’t possibly become what I fear.”
Maize gingerly reached for his hand. “But is that any way to live? Karr, when I met you, what I liked most wasn’t that you could use the Force. It was that you had a spark. That’s really what makes you special. I mean, sure, it’s pretty cool that you share something with a legion of mystical knights who protected the galaxy, but if you deny that spark, what difference does it make? Good or bad, you won’t be you.”
He kicked at a clod of dirt. It shattered against his shoe. “I appreciate that, Maize. But I know now that Skywalker survived. More Jedi could possibly rise again. And if my vision of the future is true, then I’m a threat to them. Where does that leave me? What can I do?”
Maize started walking again, briskly, and pulling him along. “We change your future, is what we do!”
“What?” he asked as he stumbled forward. “How are we going to do that? And where are we going?”
She suddenly stopped. “I don’t know, I just got excited. But who’s to say your future is set in stone. Why are you at risk of becoming one of these Jedi killers and these other possible future Jedi are not?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because they’d have someone to teach them.”
“So that’s it. That’s what makes the difference? Just a person to show you the way.”
“You’re making light of it,” he said, “but I’ve seen the visions. I know what can happen. Light and dark live side by side, and without the proper guidance, the temptation to slip to the dark side can be great.”
“So,” she said, “we find your guide.”
Karr couldn’t help laughing as he shouted, “That’s exactly where we started!”
“Yes, but now we know more. Wouldn’t you agree that if Naq Med were still alive he would be your logical master?”
“I would hope so.”
“So…let’s go find where he lived and start touching things. Didn’t your grandmother say life would be your master?”
“Yes.”
“Then this is even better! You know she would’ve taken you to his place if your parents would’ve allowed it. She was practically telegraphing a message to you to look for it.”
“She was?”
“Yes.…Possibly. I don’t know. Think back. Knowing what you know now, did she ever hint at anything or suggest something in between the lines?”
Karr thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. My grandmother was always true to her word. If she told my parents she wouldn’t tell me, then she’d keep that promise as long as she…” The idea hit them both at the same time, but Karr finished the sentence first. “Lived.”
Maize was getting excited. “Did she leave you anything special when she died?”
“Just my gloves.” He waggled his fingers, inspecting them for any secret etchings.
“That’s not what I mean.” Maize shook her head. “I meant like family records, stories she wrote down, anything like that.”
He paused and thought about it. “I don’t think so, but we still have a lot of her things back at the house. She lived with us, until she died. Her room is full of stuff—but it’s mostly bolts of fabric and sewing equipment. After she died, my parents just stuffed her things into the closet, and now we store custom orders there—until we get them finished and the client picks them up.”
“So…what I’m hearing is…we could go digging around in the closet, and we might find something.”
“I don’t see why not?” he said, but privately the thought made him feel weird. The idea of going through his grandmother’s things without her permission was strange and intrusive, even though she was gone. But he couldn’t come up with a solid reason to protest, so he didn’t.
“Great!” She smacked him on the back. “Let’s go check it out.”
Back at the house they found no one and nothing waiting for them. His parents had gone back to work and his brother still wasn’t home from school. It was just Karr, Maize, and RZ-7—who had parked himself beneath the landspeeder. It needed a tune-up, and that tune-up was within his skill set.
“Sir, do you require any assistance?” he asked, looking up from underneath the craft.
“Not sure, but you’re welcome to join us.”
“Where are you going, sir?”
Maize answered for him. “Grandma’s room. We’re looking for Jedi
clues.”
“Jedi clues?” Karr smiled. “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever called them Jedi, and not laser space knights, or intergalactic sorcery monks, or something like that.”
“I’m running out of euphemisms,” she told him. Then to RZ-7 she said, “We’re going to see if Grandma left behind any good hints about her dad.”
“Ah, yes. Well, very good, sir. I’ll be along when I’m finished here. My recent refurbishing has inspired me to do the same for these overlooked items. But feel free to summon me if needed.”
They went inside, and Karr led Maize to the bedroom that once belonged to J’Hara and now belonged mostly to hangers, bolts and stacks of fabric, suits of clothing that were almost finished but not quite, sewing machines, scissors, and paper patterns for everything from socks to wedding apparel. Most of the floor space was occupied by racks and crates, but there was room to squeeze between them and climb over them.
Against the far wall—pushed into the corner—was a bed, still neatly made.
Karr made his way toward it and sat on the side—gazing around the room. “Most of her things are gone now. Some of them we sold off, some of them we donated to charity.”
“Okay, but everything else is in the closet?”
“Um…” He scanned the scene, trying to mentally eliminate all the things that his parents had crammed into the space since J’Hara had died. “Yes. And that trunk at the foot of the bed, that was hers. My mom’s been using it as a stand for her tailoring dummies.”
Maize went to the closet and flung the doors open. Quickly and efficiently, she pushed the clothes around and looked for anything that might be promising, stopping to stuff her hands into assorted pockets and feel around with her fingers. She turned up nothing until she asked, “What about that case up there?” She pointed at the top shelf.
“That’s just luggage.” He’d moved to the foot of the bed so he could pop up the trunk lid and go digging around himself. “She used to travel a bunch, but by the time she moved in with us she hadn’t been anywhere in a long time.”
“Did she go visit her father? Is that why she traveled?”
“I have no idea. It turns out, nobody ever tells me anything. Not until it’s too late to do me any good.” He pushed aside nightgowns and slippers, stockings and sandals and gloves. Down at the trunk’s bottom he found a couple of datapads, but they only held romance stories. He flipped open some holocubes he found, but they produced no promising pictures or documents. He put them on the floor beside the trunk and kept going.
Meanwhile, Maize dragged the case down from the closet shelf and opened it up. “Oh, hey, it’s not locked.”
“Neither was the trunk. Anything good in there?”
“Hmm.” She held up a dead datapad with a crack in it. “Maybe?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Yeah, I think this thing’s garbage. What else…?” she asked herself more than him. “A little bit of jewelry. Some of it looks pretty nice.”
“Just put it back in there. If my mom wanted to wear it, she would’ve kept it out.”
Maize smirked. “Maybe she wants to save it for her daughter-in-law, someday.”
“Or that. Wait, what’s this?”
She stopped her digging around and looked up. “What?”
He scrolled through another datapad folder full of receipts and other stray bits of ephemera. “There are important records in here…or they would be important, if she was still alive. Travel documents, that kind of thing. Nothing that helps me, though.”
“Well, I’ve found something in this case. Looky here….” She showed him another datapad that was probably older than both of them put together. “It still works!”
At least, it lit up and began projecting images when she pressed a button, and Karr’s breath caught in his throat. “There she is,” he whispered. His grandmother appeared in a flowing layered dress. She was perhaps thirty years old, and very happy—she spun around as if to show the pleats and folds. Her lips were moving, and he thought she was talking to someone just out of sight. But there wasn’t any sound, and the image was terribly grainy. It fizzled out after a few seconds.
“It looked like maybe her wedding day? Was that a wedding dress?”
He swallowed hard, but it didn’t fix the lump in his throat. “Yeah. She made that dress herself. Is that all there was?”
“Yeah, sorry. That’s all that was in there. I’ll keep looking.”
He went back to looking, too.
Between them, they tore the place apart—until Karr flopped back onto the bed with a heavy, tired sigh. “There’s nothing here,” he proclaimed, folding his hands behind his head.
“There’s plenty here. Just not anything that’ll point us toward your great-grandfather.”
As she said so, Karr felt something odd beneath his head. He rolled over and shoved his hand into the pillowcase, then pulled out a holocube that had somehow escaped his parents’ repurposing of the room after J’Hara’s death.
“Karr? What have you got there?” Maize asked suspiciously. “Share with the group!” she added, just like a teacher would say in class.
He tapped the cube and it began to play its message. An image of J’Hara appeared in bright blue-and-white light, with a soft flicker. She was older—the way Karr had always known her and would always remember her. She must have made the recording shortly before she died.
The image smiled warmly. “Hello, Karr,” she said. “I assume you’re the one who found the cube and you’re the one who’s playing it. If not, then I’d ask whoever pulled it out of my pillow to give it to my grandson, please. This message is for him.”
Karr was too stunned to even gasp. He stared, open-mouthed, at his beloved grandma—or the shade she’d left behind, just for him. He cleared his throat, but that didn’t help the lump at all. It filled the back of his mouth, threatening to make him cry at any moment. He did his best to breathe around it and only kind of succeeded.
“Darling Karr, by the time you see this, I’m sure I’ll be gone. I’ve felt death creeping near, in these last few weeks. I haven’t wished to say anything because I didn’t want to worry or upset you—for death should not be upsetting. It is inevitable. We all leave one another, in time.”
His nose was starting to run, but his grandmother always had tissues next to the bed. Maize handed him one, and he blew his nose.
“Once I’m gone, there will be no one left to teach you about the Jedi, and I suspect that your parents think it’s for the best—but we haven’t always agreed on everything, including this particular matter. You can’t help being what you are, Karr. It isn’t fair to ask you to live with your abilities without giving you any guidance as to what causes them, or how you can best navigate them. I know that my own teaching was insufficient at best, but I hope you believe me when I tell you that I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard, but I fear that it hasn’t been enough.
“Your parents and I reached a decision a few weeks after your headaches began. We would each be free to attend to you in the manner we felt best, but under no circumstances was I to tell you about your great-grandfather. This seemed particularly cruel to me, but in hindsight I guess I understand their fears. Not everyone is born with the clarity they need to see what lies before them. Nonetheless, I gave them my word that I would keep my promise until the day I died. Which brings us to today.”
J’Hara smiled, a glint of glee in her eyes at the loophole she had discovered.
“I’ve often told you not to fear death, and that in many ways it can be perceived as a gift. Well, despite my penchant for speaking figuratively, today I give you a literal gift.
“My father’s name was Naq Med. And yes, my dear boy, he was a Jedi. Which, I imagine, is why the Force is strong with you. Do not take this blessing lightly, for it is not necessarily a common occurrence. While my love for the Force is strong, it has not favored me. The abilities you possess were not passed down to me or your father. No one kn
ows for sure if the Force is shared through family lines, because as I told you, a Jedi has no family. Or at least they were instructed not to.”
His grandmother looked away for a moment. A wave of sadness seemed to wash over her, but she continued.
“From an early age my father’s path was laid out before him. He was to become a Jedi Padawan and fulfill his destiny of being a Jedi Knight. But at some point, he began to question his fate. He struggled with the idea of blind allegiance when he still had so many questions. And so he took it upon himself to leave the Jedi Order. Not out of anger, or spite, but out of love. Love for his independence and eventually love for a woman. I am so grateful for his decision and for the family I have. I loved my father and cherished the time I had with him. But sometimes a person cannot escape their fate, and soon the shadow of the Jedi caught up with him. And although he had not been part of the Order for some time, he was being made to pay for their actions, and he felt it best to go into hiding. I never quite understood it all, but what I do know is that he did it to protect his family.”
She wiped a tear from her eye. “Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not crying because of his decision. I’m crying because I miss him. It has been so very long. We would receive messages from time to time to let us know he was safe and so he could hear of our lives. But after he learned that my mother died, he lost something of himself. He lingered long enough for me to tell him of my son, and my grandsons, but now that I am gone, perhaps we will be reunited again and we can share all the things that could not be conveyed in those messages. I do not have any of those messages to leave you, and I am sorry. I destroyed everything. It would have been bad enough if our family secrets were to bring him harm, but worse still if bad fortune or the Jedi’s enemies were to take the both of you.
“The reason I tell you all this, Karr, is because I am the only person who knew where he lived, and I believe that if you find his dwelling there will be a treasure trove of artifacts that can guide you forward in the Force.
“The last I heard from my father, he lived in a modest home in a rural region of a largely uninhabited planet called Pam’ba—in some marshy grasslands around the equator. All I know is that there’s a river that leads to an estuary, and he’s built a little house on stilts to hold it above the water. I wish I could be more precise, but he refused to tell me any more than that. And most of it, he didn’t say at all. I gleaned it from his messages.
Journey to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Page 18