by Ken Liu
It had been amazing to see the Jedi at work. He had convinced a group of timid men and women who distrusted each other to walk across a lake of fire. Maybe it was an example of those dark Jedi mind tricks. But it didn’t feel dark. It felt like…hope.
One by one, the scavengers came to say good-bye. They each left Luke Skywalker the most precious piece of salvage they had. Some had been recovered from the abandoned Imperial compound, others not. It wasn’t exactly a payment. Closer to a token, a tribute to something grander than any of us.
“This power cell will fetch at least ten full portions….”
“I had never seen these crystals before. The self-destruct charge must have missed them. If you can figure out the encryption…”
“This droid hand is the most intricate I’ve ever seen. Probably meant for the Emperor’s own servants…”
“I don’t know what this is. A compass, maybe? Found it in a case labeled ‘Pillio.’ Who knows where it will lead? Maybe to a place where you won’t ever be hungry or worry about starships falling from the sky….”
Skywalker thanked each and every one of them. When the last scavenger had left, he knelt next to the litter and handed me two pills.
“Take these,” he said. “They won’t do anything for the infection, but they’ll take away the pain for a while. I found them in the compound commander’s quarters.”
I took the pills. The Jedi had not killed me so far, but maybe this was the moment. It was at least merciful of him not to want me to suffer.
Then he handed me something else. It was egg-shaped, and a tiny crystal display showed a scrolling series of numbers. There was a large orange button on the side. I knew what I was holding: an Imperial homing beacon.
I looked up at him, not understanding.
“I’m going to leave now,” he said. “Like I said, I’m not real friendly with the Empire. Push the button when I’m gone, and an Imperial patrol will come to get you. Don’t worry, the lake will keep the gnaw-jaws and nightwatchers away. Nothing will bother you until the rescuers come.”
What does one living being want with another in the desert?
To drag him across a sea of sand for days and keep him alive. To ferry him over a lake of molten glass. To hand him a beacon of hope.
There were only a few answers, but it hadn’t been easy to figure out. Not when you’d been told certain things all your life…and they turned out to be lies.
He was already some distance away before I called out, “Are you really Luke Skywalker?”
He stopped but did not turn around. “We’re all Luke Skywalker.”
Then he disappeared into the darkness.
I pushed the button.
They picked me up, took me back to a hospital ship, and fixed me up.
Then they interrogated me as a deserter, possibly a traitor.
I told them everything I knew.
“Liar!” my interrogator screamed in my face. “The war criminal Luke Skywalker was not anywhere near Jakku! Why are you hiding what really happened on the surface? Confess that you’ve become a rebel agent!”
They tortured me. They drugged me.
Images and memories blended in my mind. I could not tell what was dream and what was real. But I held on to my story as well as I could.
Sometimes the home you yearn for turns out to be a dark forest. Sometimes the people you trust the most turn out to be monsters. Sometimes the villains are really the heroes.
We’re all Luke Skywalker.
I imagined myself as Luke Skywalker. I imagined myself as a luminous being.
I survived. Barely.
Tossed out of the Imperial Navy, I returned to Jakku as a scavenger, one of many who had flocked to the planet to make a living in the graveyard of starships.
My home is in the wreck of a TIE fighter. The wings offer good shelter against sandstorms, and I use pieces of black glass collected from the frozen lake to make additional walls and a ceiling through which I can look at the stars.
I know he’s out there, still striding across the galaxy, still fighting for all of us.
“WAS THAT…REALLY LUKE SKYWALKER?” asked Tyra, the scavenger girl.
“That…depends on your focus,” said Ulina. Her eye patch turned to a gentle pulsing blue as she added, “Legends about our heroes don’t matter as much as what we choose to make of our own lives when the legends move us.”
Tyra bit her bottom lip and nodded.
The other deckhands started getting into a heated debate.
“Luke couldn’t really have tossed Star Destroyers down to Jakku by magic, could he?”
“So you’re an expert on magic now?”
“Maybe the Imperial was just confused.”
Ulina finally stepped in and made it clear that it was time for everyone to go to their bunks. As Dwoogan and G2-X cleaned up the galley and the mess deck, Ulina headed for the cargo hold to check that the shipping crates were secure before docking.
The yawning deckhands made their weary way through narrow corridors and up rickety ladders to tiny cubbyholes and bunk beds wedged between pipes and ducts. The Wayward Current was designed to maximize every bit of cargo space, and the crew had to make do with whatever odd nooks and crannies were left over.
Teal waited until the others were gone from the mess deck before shuffling up to Dwoogan. She held out her credit chip.
“Again?” asked a surprised Dwoogan. “You’ve been buying every night, just about. You know, you really ought to try to save up. If you’re still hungry after a full ration, you’re probably not getting enough sleep. You can’t spend all your wages on snacks and drinks. When I was your age, I—”
“It’s my money,” hissed Teal. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
Dwoogan sighed and took the credit chip to scan it. Then she unlocked the pantry door and pulled out another ration pack, divided the bread and the nutrient paste tube in half, and handed the half portion to Teal.
“Thank you,” said Teal. “And please don’t tell—”
“It’s your money,” said Dwoogan. “As long as you aren’t stealing from the ship, it’s nobody’s business. Not even Captain Tuuma’s.”
Silently, Teal tiptoed to the maintenance closet next to the engine room. She waited in the shadows until she was sure no one was around, ducked into the closet, and crawled through the gap between two thick coolant pipes until she found herself above a grate. She lifted it off and dropped through the opening into the crawl space below. A few twists and turns later, she emerged into a tiny room that was barely big enough for her to stand up and lie down in. The compartment had perhaps been added by one of the Wayward Current’s former owners as a hiding place in the event of a pirate boarding, or maybe it had just been left over and forgotten during some round of retrofitting. In any event, no one in Tuuma’s crew, save for Teal, knew of its existence.
“Hey, I got you a little more food.”
The woman who was already in the room was a few years older than Teal. Dressed in a thick white flowing robe, with her long black hair tied in a plain ponytail, she seemed the very image of simplicity, completely out of place among the twisting pipes and rat’s nest of exposed wiring that surrounded her.
“Thank you,” she said to Teal. “The food you brought me earlier was enough. I don’t need much since I’m not moving around a lot. I feel terrible taking your food all the time.”
Teal broke the half portion of bread and handed the larger piece to her along with the nutrient paste. She bit into the rest of the bread hungrily. “You need the strength,” she mumbled as she chewed. “When we get into port tomorrow, they’ll scan the whole ship. We’ll have to do some work tonight to prepare for your escape. Tuuma will kill both of us if he finds out.”
The woman nodded and didn’t protest any more. She chewed slowly and thoughtfully, as if completely unconcerned with being a stowaway on a ship whose captain would have no scruples about throwing her out of the air locks upon discovery.
Teal finished her bread in just a few bites. Rather than staring at the food in the woman’s hands, she decided to distract herself by recounting to the woman the stories she had just heard from Dwoogan and Ulina.
The woman paused when Luke’s X-wing was mentioned, and a light seemed to brighten her eyes. But she said nothing as she continued to chew and listen to Teal.
“I may know a story about Luke Skywalker, too,” she said after Teal was finished.
“Really?” Teal was surprised. The woman had not seemed to her an experienced traveler or adventurer. Indeed, she had been mesmerized by Teal’s stories the past few weeks, exclaiming over even minor victories, like the time Teal had managed to convince a trader in Ara Dyelle that an ordinary lizard egg was a rare artifact worth five full rations. In contrast, the woman had not told Teal any stories at all.
“Can I hear it?” Teal asked eagerly.
The woman hesitated. “Where I’m from…I’m really not supposed to…”
Teal didn’t press. Everyone was entitled to keep their secrets. She didn’t like to talk about her past with just anyone, either.
Teal had discovered the woman hiding in the fathier stalls near the start of the Wayward Current’s voyage, and rather than reporting her to the officers, Teal had decided to help the stowaway hide. It just felt like the right thing to do. After all, when she had first escaped from the slavers in the colonies, a kind Hutt mechanic had helped her stow away on a mining transport without asking for anything in return.
The woman closed her eyes and seemed to be either meditating or thinking hard. Teal was about to remind her that they needed to start preparing for her escape in the morning when the woman opened her eyes and nodded resolutely.
“I trust you, and I trust that it means something that you told me about Luke Skywalker tonight. Let me tell you a story….”
THERE’S ALWAYS A BIGGER FISH.
—QUI-GON JINN
A LONG TIME AGO, AS far away from the bright center of the galaxy as possible, humans settled on a world covered by the ocean. Here and there, a few islands stubbornly poked out of the endless water. People named the world Lew’el, which meant “deluge.”
Over time, as empires and republics rose and fell in the galaxy, Lew’el remained largely forgotten by those who craved power. It had few resources that could not be obtained more easily elsewhere, and scarcely any traders bothered to stop by. From time to time, adventurers came for its beauty, but they skimmed over its surface like skipping stones and did not linger.
The people of Lew’el lived by, from, and with the sea. The ocean offered everything they needed: the tentacled whales provided blubber fuel and bone for construction; the triple-speared marlin furnished both durable leather and a supply of ready-made tools; translucent clams and kiln oysters provided decorative shells and lustrous pearls; and most of all, a thousand varieties of fish and other fruits of the sea gave the Lew’elans all the food they needed.
But that didn’t mean obtaining such food was effortless.
One spring morning, as the sun leapt out of the sparkling sea, two X-shaped figures took off from the white-sand beach of the island of Ulon Atur and headed east over open water.
“Bet I’ll get a bigger fish today,” shouted Aya-Glon, the girl riding in front. She was twelve and strong as a breaching yearling whale, and a pair of dimples enlivened her wind-smoothed face. She patted the head of her iridescent blue mount and urged her to fly faster.
“You’re on!” shouted the boy flying behind her. “Loser has to do all the winner’s chores for three days.” He was Tonn-Glon, Aya’s twin brother. He caressed the crest ridge of his scarlet mount and urged him to keep up.
As you’ve probably guessed by now, in contrast to the aerial machines that were common on other planets, the flying vehicles in this case were alive. Sporting four wings, each spanning ten meters, these giant, majestic birds, called wind-trusters, were native to Lew’el. They spent almost their entire lives on the wind, only landing for a brief day now and then to mate and lay eggs, which they hatched airborne in woven seagrass nests suspended from their feet. Exceptional gliders, they could even sleep while flying. The Lew’elans had tamed them, and used them to hunt and fish, as well as to travel between the remote settlements scattered across the planet.
Soon the tiny dot of Ulon Atur disappeared behind them and the two fliers were all alone, suspended between sky and water. The siblings surveyed the featureless expanse, shading their eyes from the glare of the rising sun. Storm clouds were brewing on the horizon, but they wouldn’t arrive for a while yet.
Actually, it’s not quite accurate to call the deep aquamarine sea featureless, though it might seem that way to an off-worlder. In the eyes of Aya and Tonn, the sea was as packed as a metropolis on Hosnian Prime. There were warm currents that carried shoals of migrating eels, as busy as an aerial highway; there were rising columns of bubbles formed by hunting whale packs; there were underwater forests of flowering kelp that waved gently in the tides; there were vibrant coral reefs filled with the strange chatter of colorful fish and crustaceans, as full of gossip and fashion as any city block.
And there was the Tide, the always-present, ever-powerful web that connected everything and everyone. The siblings could feel its comforting strands, as tender and nourishing as the bright warm sunlight.
“Got it!” said Tonn, and he gently squeezed his thighs around the long neck of his wind-truster, a two-year-old named Coni-Co. With a loud hoot of acknowledgment, the bird shifted his four wings and veered off course.
Aya didn’t urge her mount, a proud three-year old named Deek-Deek, to follow. After all, there was no point in fighting for a prize already claimed by another. That kind of behavior belonged to toddlers who had to be tied to the necks of their wind-trusters.
No, she would find her own fish, and make sure it was bigger.
“We’re going to catch a fish that will feed the whole village today, won’t we, Deek-Deek?” she whispered into the soft down at the base of her mount’s neck.
There, a splash!
She nudged the wind-truster’s flanks with her heels, and the giant bird flapped her four wings and swooped toward the sea. Aya’s hair streamed behind her, and her heart pounded with the exhilaration of the dive. She held on tightly to the crest ridge of the wind-truster.
In less than a minute, the wind-truster had descended from her cruising height to just a few meters above the sea. The waves roiled below Aya, and she gazed intently into the blue-green water, looking for telltale glints from the silver scales of the triple-speared marlin.
“Deek-Deek, do you see it?”
The wind-truster whooped in acknowledgment and circled around the spot Aya had indicated. She beat her wings vigorously and climbed higher in a tight spiral.
Aya held on tightly, closed her eyes, and took deep, steady breaths. She felt her heartbeat slow down; she focused on the eddies in the Tide.
About a kilometer above the sea, Deek-Deek leveled off and clicked her bill a few times to signal that she was ready for the next step. Aya wrapped her arms around the wind-truster’s neck.
Gracefully, the bird folded her four wings around herself, like the reversal of a moth emerging from its cocoon. Then she dove straight toward the sea.
Faster and faster the bird plunged, her sharp, long bill aimed straight at the undulating, silken surface. Aya pressed herself against the bird’s torso, minimizing the pair’s drag through the air. She kept her breathing steady and slow, and held her eyes open until the very last possible second to keep her prize in sight, just before the giant bird slammed into the sea.
The cold water smashed against her like a wall, but she held on. The momentum from the wind-truster’s dive sent the bird and girl down thirty meters before they stopped. Aya let go of Deek-Deek’s neck and kicked off into the deep while the bird unfolded her wings and swam for the surface. A thin line trailing from Deek-Deek’s bamboo-constructed shoulder saddle connected the bird and the girl.
Aya opened her eyes and looked around the aquatic world. She felt weightless and powerful, the dense medium holding her aloft. The flashes from her prey’s silver scales were just above and to the right, and she kicked her strong legs to chase it.
If she weren’t underwater, she would have gasped with delight. The marlin was the largest she had ever seen, with a body almost three times as long as she was tall. Its two tusks and single horn added another two meters to its overall length, and all three spears were covered with sharp hooks and teeth that could be fashioned into fishing hooks and gutting knives.
Shocked by the turbulence and noise of the wind-truster’s dive, the marlin had turned around to investigate. The great fish found the majestic figure of the rising wind-truster, surrounded by columns of air bubbles, far more interesting than the small figure of the approaching girl.
Aya stopped when she was about ten meters from the marlin. The fish was far too large for conventional hunting techniques. She needed a different plan.
Willing her heart to slow down, she closed her eyes and reached out to the Tide with her mind, to discern the warp and weft of the threads around the marlin, to read the pattern. The Tide governed everything, and a successful hunt required her to follow the Tide’s irresistible pull.
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.
There, I’ve got it!
Aya’s eyes snapped open.
Wheeling her arms and kicking her legs furiously, Aya flipped in the water and made a large loop, trailing the thin rock crab–silk line behind her so it formed a floating circle that expanded and contracted in the current like a jellyfish.
Then, almost casually, Aya removed a small spear tipped with a basher shark’s tooth from the belt of her tunic and waved it at the marlin. Filtered sunlight caught the white tooth and it sparkled.
