The Crystal Star

by Vonda McIntyre

  Jaina could not resist anymore. She looked across the cafeteria toward her brother. She even stood up so she could see him. At the same time, Jacen stood up and looked at her. He grinned quickly. They both sat down again before anyone could catch them.

  Jaina knew Jacen had asked the myrmins to climb up the stage.

  One of the Proctors leaped to his feet with a shout. He thought he just had sand in his pants. Then the sand bit him. The other Proctors started jumping up and yelling and scratching. And stamping, stamping on the myrmins.

  “Oh!” Jaina whispered. “Oh—poor myrmins, thank you, myrmins.” Some of them were running away now, disappearing into cracks and hiding. But some of them were being killed.

  “We’re sorry, myrmins,” she said, sincerely, the way Chewbacca spoke to insects he sometimes killed, even if he never meant to, when he harvested forest honey. She risked another glance across the hall at Jacen.

  Stricken, he started to cry. He cried when Chewbacca apologized to the forest insects, too. But this time it was his fault that the myrmins were being hurt.

  Suddenly the myrmins all disappeared. Jaina felt the flare of Jacen’s abilities, whisking the little creatures out of danger.

  Hethrir’s cold wet invisible blanket fell down around Jaina—It’s not fair, she thought, I didn’t do anything … well, not much, anyway—and she knew the same thing had happened to Jacen. She gasped, and shivered, and struggled up out of her seat, and stumbled across the cafeteria to Jacen.

  They hugged each other. It was such a good hug. It almost made Hethrir’s blanket go away. Or anyway it made it feel only cool and damp instead of cold and wet.

  “Jacen, Jacen, they took Anakin, they took Lusa—”

  That was the first time she thought that Hethrir might have taken Anakin away forever, the way he took Lusa. Where else could their brother be?

  “We have to do something,” she whispered.

  “All you children get back to your studies!” the Head Proctor said, scratching the side of his leg. The myrmins were gone, but their bites remained!

  “Thank you, little myrmins,” Jaina whispered.

  “Thank you, little myrmins,” Jacen said too, “I’m s-sorry!”

  “Back to your studies!”

  The children straggled into an uneven line. They could not keep from giggling. Jaina stayed near Jacen. Maybe no one would notice they were together.

  “Do something about that line!” the Head Proctor said to his underlings.

  The other Proctors all looked at him like they thought he was crazy.

  And they ignored him and ran out of the cafeteria. Some of them were already unfastening their uniforms before they got out of the room.

  The Head Proctor glared down at the children.

  And then he winced and started to scratch, in a place it was very naughty to scratch in public, and turned around and strode out of the room. As soon as he vanished, his footsteps speeded up. He ran away.

  Chapter 7

  The children were alone in the cafeteria.

  “Let’s go out!” Jaina said. She did not know what she could do once she was outside, but she felt desperate to get away from this cold hard building.

  She and Jacen ran down the long dark corridor. All the other children followed them. They burst out into the light, as the tiny planet’s tiny sun leaped into the sky. The little planet spun fast, so its days were much shorter than regular days. The children shouted and ran and cheered in the warmth.

  Jaina and Jacen held hands and leaned backward and spun around and around, just like the little planet. Jaina whipped her hair back and forth till she felt dizzy. She and Jacen fell down in the sand, panting and laughing.

  Jaina jumped up again and Jacen jumped up beside her.

  “Jaina, Jaina, you’re okay!”

  “Jacen, I missed you so much! I don’t know where Anakin is!”

  “If we could reach for him—” Jacen said.

  “—we might be able to find him. But—”

  “—we have to run far away from that blanket!” Jacen finished their shared thought. Jaina was glad he thought about it the same way she did, but that did not help them figure out how to get away from it.

  “We have to get past the dragon,” Jaina said.

  “There’s no dragon,” Jacen said scornfully. “That’s just to scare us.” He marched straight toward the canyon fence, straight into the blank space.

  Jaina ran after him. The dragon jumped out of the sand and roared and bounced against the fence. Jaina grabbed Jacen and pulled him back till the dragon could not see them anymore. She did not have to pull him very hard because he was scared too, but he was also amazed.

  The dragon forgot it had seen them and snuffled around the edge of the fence looking for a soft warm patch of sand.

  “Wow,” Jacen whispered.

  “Maybe I could jump up and down and wave and—” She was thinking Jacen could run around behind and climb the fence. But then she would still be stuck inside.

  “Maybe I could tame her,” Jacen said. “And we could ride her away!”

  Jaina had no idea how Jacen knew it was a Mistress Dragon and not a Mister Dragon. But he was always right about this sort of stuff.

  “Ride her?” Jaina said, entranced.

  Then Jacen’s lips trembled. “But maybe the Proctors would hurt her the way they hurt the myrmins.”

  “How could they hurt a dragon?” Jaina asked.

  “With their lightsabers!”

  “They’d be too scared! I bet they wouldn’t even get close to her.”

  “With a blaster, then,” Jacen said.

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “Maybe we could distract her,” Jacen said thoughtfully.

  “We better do it fast,” Jaina said.

  “I need something to throw,” Jacen said. He looked around but there was just sand.

  The dragon lumbered to the fence and rubbed her nubbly-scaled shoulder against the wire mesh, closing her eyes and groaning happily.

  If Jaina could use her abilities, she could easily distract the dragon. Together with Jacen, they might even be able to stop the dragon. But Jaina thought that would be a lot to try to do, without Uncle Luke’s help.

  “I know!” Jaina pulled her multitool out of her pocket.

  Jacen grabbed for it eagerly.

  “No, wait!” Jaina snatched it back. “Don’t throw it.” She opened up the lens and caught the light and flashed it on the ground in front of the dragon.

  “Isn’t she pretty?” Jacen said.

  When the dragon opened her eyes, she saw the concentrated point of light from Jaina’s lens. She snorted and lowered her head. Jaina gave the multitool to Jacen. He was better with critters than she was.

  He wiggled the light near the dragon’s front paws. The dragon put her paw on the place where the light was. Then she had to put her other paw on top of her first paw, and still the light was not covered. She pulled her first paw out from under her second paw and lost her balance. She rolled completely over, snortling and wriggling. Then she jumped up and looked around for the light.

  Jacen moved it around for her to chase. She jumped forward after it, shaking the ground when she landed, raising great sprays of sand. Jaina laughed with delight.

  By now all the other children had gathered behind Jaina and Jacen to watch the dragon play.

  Jacen danced the light before the dragon, who gallumphed after it, pouncing to try to catch it. Jacen skipped the light up the cliffside that projected beyond the fence. The dragon scratched the rock with her front feet, ripping loose bits of stone. She roared joyously. She lashed her tail.

  All the time, Jacen kept moving closer to the fence, crossing the undisturbed ground till he was right up against the thick metal mesh. Jaina followed him. The other children stayed back, still frightened of the dragon.

  “Hey, dragon,” Jacen said softly. “Hey, Mistress Dragon.” He wiggled the light down the cliff again, and the dragon followed. The l
ight crept toward the fence.

  The dragon followed.

  Jacen brought the spark of sunlight right up next to the fence. Jaina caught her breath. Her heart beat very fast.

  The dragon’s snout pressed against the fence. Her big teeth stuck out of her mouth and she drooled in the sand. Her tongue flicked, flicked, flicked between her lips. Her eyes were the size of Jaina’s fists, big and gold. The dragon blinked her heavy beaded eyelids. Her hot breath ruffled the sand where the spot of light lay.

  Jacen was having trouble keeping the light near the dragon because the sun was already falling in the sky.

  As the spot of light faded, Jacen put his hand through the fence. Jaina gasped. Jacen touched the dragon’s great eyebrow, and rubbed her smooth scales.

  “There, Mistress Dragon,” Jacen said. He rubbed harder. The dragon pressed against his hand, and made a low, rumbling, pleasant snorting sound. The dragon did not mind that she could no longer play with the light.

  “She likes you,” Jaina whispered.

  “She’s all alone,” Jacen said. “She’s lonely, she’s a little dragon, she wants someone to play with.”

  “Hey! You children!”

  The dragon jerked her head up, startled by the shout. Jaina turned around. The Head Proctor stood at the head of the stairwell. The other children scattered away into the twilight.

  The dragon roared. The fence rang as she rose up and crashed against it. Jacen snatched his hand away from the fence, and he and Jaina ran to the playfield. Jacen pressed the multitool into Jaina’s hand, and she hid it in her pocket.

  The Head Proctor laughed at them.

  “Now you’ll believe in the dragon, I think,” he said. “You children all line up! You’ve been very bad. I told you to get back to your studies.”

  “We couldn’t hear you, sir,” Jaina said respectfully. “We thought you said to go outside.”

  He glared at her. He looked very uncomfortable. He had swelling red bites on his wrists and his neck. He kept moving inside his uniform as if he wanted to scratch. Jaina looked him straight in the eye without laughing, even though she wanted to laugh.

  “That’s right, sir,” Jacen said. “I thought I heard you say to go outside, and I was much closer to you than my sister!”

  “That’s right, sir,” one of the other children said.

  The Head Proctor was wearing a rumpled uniform with a dirty smudge across one arm, and all his medals pinned on crooked.

  I bet he didn’t do his laundry when he was supposed to! Jaina thought. I bet he lets it pile up all over the floor of his room, and he didn’t have anything clean to put on when the myrmins and the sand got in his clothes.

  Jaina felt very grateful to Winter, who always encouraged Jaina and Jacen to pick up after themselves. She had even shown them how to do their laundry if they needed to, if the laundry droid wasn’t working or forgot how you liked your clothes ironed.

  “Get in line,” the Head Proctor said. All the other children lined up behind Jaina and Jacen.

  The Proctors marched the children back inside. Jaina sighed. They had not escaped, and now they would have to spend all day staring at the horrible, dull displays that said how wonderful everything would be when Hethrir made himself Emperor.

  Probably Lord Hethrir would come and leeture them, too. She was scared of that. He would probably know that she had caused all the trouble.

  Jaina yearned for her classes back home. Sometimes she and Jacen read stories to Winter or to Papa and Mama. Sometimes they made up stories! Jaina was learning number theory and she loved it, it was so beautiful. On Munto Codru, Jacen had been studying first aid with Dr. Hyos and her child. Jaina bet Jacen was as bored with these dumb displays as she was. She bet all the children were bored.

  Instead of taking the children to the study desks, the Proctors herded them back to their rooms. Most of the children groaned.

  “Be quiet!” the Head Proctor shouted. “Your discipline is dreadful! Lord Hethrir will never choose any of you as his helpers at this rate.”

  The children fell silent. Jaina realized she should have groaned, too, but the truth was that she no longer feared the dark of her cell. She was overjoyed that she would have a few hours, maybe all the way until tomorrow morning, by herself, to work and plan.

  “You’ll spend the day in bed,” the Head Proctor said. “So that tomorrow, you’ll appreciate the opportunity Lord Hethrir gives you to learn.”

  He opened Jaina’s door and pushed her inside and slammed the door closed after her.

  Bits of sawdust scattered to the floor. But the Head Proctor had not noticed that Jaina had been drilling the wood.

  And Lord Hethrir had not come to lecture them or inspect them.

  Finally, outside Jaina’s cell, the faint sounds of closing doors and the voices of the Proctors and the sounds of their boots on the floor stopped.

  Jaina rubbed some molecules of air together and created a faint light to work with. She brushed the last of the sawdust away from the hole she had made, pulled out her multitool, and began to drill again.

  For several hours, the Firrerre passenger freighter hovered in space, coming alive. The first thing it did, long before it reached full power, was to disengage itself from Alderaan.

  Leia took her ship out of range of the freighter’s propulsion field.

  “Good luck,” she said, transmitting to the nameless Firrerreo.

  He did not reply. The freighter hovered in space, gathering itself for its lonely voyage. Even if Leia could do any more to help the Firrerre ship, its inhabitants did not want her aid.

  Leia checked on Rillao, who remained asleep. But Artoo-Detoo and the medical equipment thought her body was regaining its strength.

  “Thank you for watching her,” Leia said to Artoo-Detoo.

  Chewbacca came in and looked mournfully at the sleeping Firrerreo.

  “What are we going to do?” Leia said. “This is a dead end! The trail is gone.” She tried again, reaching out desperately all around her for any trace of her children.

  Rillao’s pain had blasted the trail out of existence.

  The kidnappers tortured her, Leia thought. The nameless Firrerreo was wrong: Rillao wasn’t left here by the Empire at all. The kidnappers tortured her so no one could follow them!

  Unless … they’re the same people.

  That would make sense, Leia thought. And it would explain how they knew where to find the passenger freighters. But it doesn’t give me any better clues to finding them.

  Chewbacca put one giant hand on her shoulder. The fur of his fingers tickled Leia’s cheek. His plaintive groan conveyed his sympathy and his grief. Leia’s family was his family, his Honor Family. He had chosen to share his life with the people she loved. She could not remain angry at him.

  “The Firrerreo was right about one thing!” Leia said. “Our disguise is no disguise at all. We’ll never get anywhere if everyone knows we’re Leia and Chewbacca. And if we’re up against Imperial loyalists—come on!”

  She took Chewbacca to her cabin and pulled out all the cosmetics in the dressing-table drawer. Chewbacca looked at them quizzically.

  “You didn’t think my eyelids were this color naturally, did you?” she asked. “Didn’t you notice the color changes sometimes?”

  He snorted.

  “No, my skin doesn’t camouflage itself!” Leia said.

  As she spoke, she pulled the pins from her hair and unbraided the long plait. Chewbacca watched with astonishment.

  I so seldom take my hair down, she thought. Hardly anyone has seen me with my hair down in years … except Han.

  She had thought, over the years, of cutting her hair, but the idea was too radical. On Alderaan, adults grew their hair long and usually kept it bound.

  Feeling reckless, Leia brushed her hair loose and free over her shoulders. She stood up. Her hair spilled almost to her knees. She kept brushing it, till it parted down the center and hung on either side of her face and draped down over
her breasts. It tended to fall across her eyes, so she looked out through a curtain.

  All the better, she thought. All the better to hide me with.

  She rummaged through the bottles and packets. Some she had bought on a whim and never even tried. She kept them on her ship because her ship was her place for whims and fancies.

  Leia remembered the first time she had taken Han out on Alderaan. She shook the stirring memory away. Now was no time for such memories.

  Several packets of color-crawlers lay in her hand.

  “Aren’t you tired of being chestnut all the time, Chewbacca?” she said. She tore open a package of black and a package of silver, mixed them together, and tossed them at Chewbacca. He blew out his breath in surprise, reached up as if to brush them off, then looked at them curiously.

  The color-crawlers picked their way over and across and through his fur, leaving intermittent trails of black and silver behind them. Chewbacca plucked one up, delicately, let it crawl along his finger, and watched it streak a patch of chestnut hair with silver. The hair on his chest had already begun to mottle with silver and black.

  Amused, the Wookiee let the color-crawlers have their way with his fur.

  “Soon you’ll just be one more brindled Wookiee.” Leia said. “Now. What about me?”

  Chewbacca chose several different greens and handed them to her.

  “I look terrible in green,” Leia said. “I can’t imagine why I bought those.” She chose, instead, several shades of ordinary brown and let them loose in her hair.

  I can’t imagine why I bought these colors, either, she thought. I gave Chewbacca the best shades. Oh, well.

  She chose one package of very dark green and opened it into her hair.

  Chewbacca whuffled with approval.

  I’m going to look so boring, Leia thought.

  But I want to be invisible, Leia reminded herself. There’s no way to make Chewbacca invisible. I only have to make him not-Chewbacca. And I have to make sure no one notices me.

  She was glad Artoo-Detoo was a common sort of droid, so she did not have to disguise him, too.