So You Want to Be a Jedi?

by Adam Gidwitz

  You hoist yourself into the cockpit.

  “Beep boop boop beep!”

  You grin. “Hi, Artoo. Everything okay?”

  “Boop beep beep, beep boop boop.”

  “Aw, that’s sweet. I’m fine. I just hope everyone else is.”

  You punch some numbers into the X-wing’s navigation system.

  “Beep boop boop boop boop!” R2 objects.

  “I know. We’re not meeting them at the rendezvous point.”

  “Boop beep beep beep?”

  “No. We’re going somewhere else.”

  “Boop beep beep?”

  “It’s called Dagobah.”

  “Boop beep boop.”

  “I’d never heard of it either. But there’s someone there I need to meet.”

  “Beep?”

  “He’s called Yoda.” You initiate the engine.

  “Beep boop boop boop.”

  “Well, some people might say that Artoo-Detoo is a stupid name, too,” you retort.

  “Beep beep beep beep? Beep boop boop boop, beep beep.”

  “It’s just something I have to do, Artoo. Just something I have to do.”

  YOUR X-WING HOVERS over an emerald planet. It is a shimmering green orb, with large patches of blue, indicating, perhaps, great inland lakes. Clouds and mist swirl over the planet’s surface like steam rising from a cauldron.

  “I’m not picking up any cities or technology, Artoo,” you say. “Massive life-form readings, though. There’s something alive down there. A lot of somethings, actually.”

  “Boop beep beep boop boop.”

  “No, I’m not going to change my mind. I’m going to find this Yoda.”

  “Boop beep beep beep.”

  “Artoo! Watch your language!”

  The ship descends through the atmosphere, submerging itself deeper and deeper into the swirling mist and cloud. You can’t see a thing. An alarm sounds in the cockpit. R2 beeps at you. “I know!” you shout. Your eyes frantically scan the scopes and meters. They’re all dead.

  You get the strangest notion in your head. It’s as if you’re descending into some kind of dream, a place where technology doesn’t work, where science and logic fail. You try to shake the thought away—and then the ship shakes you back. Hard. You’re being pushed back into your seat. Cracking and snapping echo through the cockpit, but the mist is so thick and deep you can’t tell if it’s the ship breaking or whatever’s outside.

  The X-wing is falling, plunging, deeper and deeper into the dreamworld.

  Your neck snaps forward as the ship jerks to a stop.

  Your head is pounding. Woozily, you try to make out the readings from the X-wing. There are no readings. The ship is no longer functioning at all.

  Wherever you’ve just landed, you’re not leaving anytime soon.

  You are now standing on the very threshold of your training.

  You have come to a place halfway between waking and dreaming, between the physical and the mystical.

  Welcome to Dagobah.

  LESSON LAMBDA:

  STRANGE PLACES, NEW WORLDS

  I want you to do something dangerous. Not too dangerous—don’t die on me, kid. But something outside your comfort zone. Something that makes your skin tingle, just a little bit.

  Think of a place that you haven’t gone before. It can be nearby. Maybe it’s the janitor’s closet in your school. Maybe it’s the basement of your public library (look around, it has one). Maybe it’s your own attic, at night, when everyone’s sleeping. Someplace that’s a little strange, a little creepy.

  Next chance you get, go there. Alone. Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing. Slip into that strange place, close the door behind you (don’t let it lock—starving to death counts as dying on me), and sit there. Maybe you’re in darkness. Maybe you’re not. Explore the place, with your mind, with your hands. Be alone there.

  Do you feel scared?

  Good. You should be.

  YOU ARE STANDING on the hull of your X-wing. It is half submerged in swamp. You can barely see. The air is dark and thick, and mists drift by, enveloping you in a warm cocoon of dew.

  You are afraid. There is life on this planet—the place teems with it. Some of it is poisonous. Some of it is sharp-toothed. Some of it is slow and strong and hungry. And you can’t see any of it.

  There’s a splash. “What’s that?” you whisper. “Artoo?”

  No response.

  “Artoo?”

  Just the burbling, steaming silence of the darkness answers your call.

  “Artoo!”

  You rush to the side of your ship. Suddenly, the X-wing lurches beneath you. You stick out your arms, sway, and steady yourself. R2 is gone. Ripples radiate out into the swamp.

  Frantically, you scan the morass, squinting into the murky gloom. “Artoo! Artoo-Detoo!”

  If there are hungry creatures about, they know you are here now—if the crashing of the ship hadn’t told them, your screaming has. They know exactly where you are. Unfortunately, you don’t know where they are.

  Suddenly, R2’s periscope appears above the surface of the swamp. You sigh. “Get to land,” you call. “No telling what’s in that swamp with you—” You stop speaking.

  The black back of a large creature breaches the surface of the swamp. Just behind R2-D2. Then it dives. Gone.

  You stare, as decisive as a weather vane in a cyclone. R2’s periscope is making its slow way to the nearest bank. Surely, the creature’s not interested in eating a hunk of circuits and metal. This is what you tell yourself. But your hands are sweating.

  R2 has reached the bank. His rounded dome of a head emerges from the water, followed by his cylindrical body. You begin to exhale.

  Which is when the creature takes him.

  “Artoo!” you scream.

  He’s gone, sucked back into the swamp. The water, already turbid, churns with the struggle.

  “Artoo! Fight him! Come on, Artoo!” Forget the other predators lurking nearby. You’ll scream for R2. He might be a droid, but he’s your friend. You’d fire your blaster, but you’d be just as likely to hit the little droid. And your lightsaber won’t reach. Not nearly. So you just shout. “Fight him!”

  The water falls still. You stare. A bead of sweat drips from your nose.

  “Artoo?” you murmur.

  And then R2-D2 is flying up out of the swamp, screaming his shrill whistling scream. He crashes into the trees, some thirty yards from the bank.

  You bound over the X-wing’s hull and leap to safe ground. You dash to him. He’s lying on his back, tangled in branches and vines and roots, covered with swamp mess. You try to brush him off. He smells disgusting. But you can’t help smiling.

  “Good thing you taste so bad,” you tell him.

  His response is not polite.

  You’re sitting amid boxes on the bank of the swamp. You’ve plugged R2 into his power regenerator. You’ve rescued your premade shelter from the X-wing and placed most of the components where they should go, and you’ve opened your rations box. You gnaw on a protein stick, watch your ship sink slowly into the bog, and think about how useless, how indecisive you were, when R2 was getting eaten by that swamp thing. You feel sick. Then you think of Leia and Han and Chewie—and even C-3PO—in that flying hunk of bolts. Last you saw them, they were heading straight toward an Imperial armada. You didn’t help them. Just like you didn’t help R2. You flew off to this planet to find some name from some hallucination you had. Yoda? There’s no Yoda. You pick up a stick and start breaking it.

  “What are we doing here, Artoo?”

  “Beep beep beep boop boop beep. Beep beep beep.”

  “Maybe I should have listened to you. Ben told me Master Yoda was here.” You stare around at the overgrown fen. The whole place smells of rot. “What Jedi Master would live here? There’s not even a spaceport….”

  “Spaceport? What is spaceport?”

  You leap to your feet and spin at the same time, hands raised in self-
defense.

  Half a meter from you sits one of the strangest creatures you have ever seen. He’s bluish-green, with long ears and bulging eyes. Your hand creeps slowly toward your lightsaber. “Who are you?” you demand.

  “I ask question first!” the creature laughs. His voice is raspy and high—as if a frog had learned to talk. Maybe he is some kind of frog. Then you think, No, his ears are too big.

  Before you’ve registered it, he is rummaging through your food. “Food this is?” he croaks. “Hungry I am!”

  “Get out of there! That’s mine!”

  “What is yours?” he asks, chewing on one of your dehydrated veggie bars and then throwing it away.

  “That is!”

  “What is mine?” he continues, as if you’d interrupted him. “Yours and mine is not. There only is.”

  “What? Stop talking nonsense! Get out of here!”

  R2-D2, who’s been beeping madly since this little gnome showed up, is reaching his long, retractable arm out to grab a protein stick that the creature has begun to nibble on. He gets hold of it. The creature refuses to let go. They start a tug-of-war over the protein stick.

  “Where am I?” you mutter, staring at the surreal scene. The creature has picked up a gnarled walking stick and is hitting R2-D2 over the head with it as he desperately grips the protein stick with his free hand.

  “Oh, just let him have it, Artoo!”

  R2 lets go and goes tumbling backward.

  The creature sits down and with a satisfied grin takes a bite of the protein stick. Suddenly, he contorts his strange face into an even stranger one and throws the stick over his shoulder. “How get so big, do you, eating such bad food?”

  “It’s not meant for little swamp frogs,” you reply. “It’s meant for humans.”

  The creature peers up at you. “What are you doing here, I am wondering?”

  You sigh. “I’m looking for a great warrior.”

  “Great warrior, you say? War makes not one great.”

  You shake your head. You can barely make sense of what he’s saying. “Fine. I’m looking for a great Jedi Master, then.”

  “A Jedi Master? Yoda you want!”

  You perk up. “You know him?”

  “Know him I do. Take him to you I can. But first, eat we must! Come!” The little creature picks up the gnarled stick he’d been hitting R2 with and uses it as a cane. Not that he needs one. He bounds over roots twice his height with apparently little effort. You struggle behind him, sweat dripping down your hair and into your eyes, the rich, fetid smell of the swamp clogging your nostrils. R2 rolls and totters behind you—sometimes. The rest of the time you have to carry him.

  Your shirt is soaked and your back is aching when the little frog creature comes to a stop. You put R2 down with a grunt. You are standing before what looks like a pile of roots and mud that someone cut a single door and window into. “This is where Yoda lives?”

  “My house this is! Eat we must!”

  The door’s so low you have to crawl through it. R2 can’t even fit, so you tell him to wait outside. He peers through the single round window and mutters low beeps and whistles. You hope the creature can’t understand them. You’ve known space pirates who wouldn’t use the language R2 does.

  Once in the house, the creature immediately busies himself with cooking. He has a pot hung over a little fire, and two small cauldrons sitting among coals, and he runs back and forth between them, throwing roots and swamp weed into them. As he cooks, the smell that wafts through the room reminds you of a garbage depot in the hot season on Tatooine.

  Then you sense it. Something is moving behind you. You glance back—and dive to the ground. There is a very large snake. Or maybe it’s not a snake. It could be a slug. A slake, maybe. Or a snug. Whatever it is, it gives you the creeps. You glance between the snlug and the blue-green creature. He doesn’t pay any attention to it. You find another seat. The little frog-man bustles over the putrid meal, humming to himself, as outside R2 mumbles a stream of electronic invective so foul you’re blushing. Finally, you can’t take it any longer. “When am I going to see Yoda?” you blurt.

  “Later! Later! Now we eat! Even Jedi Master is eating now!”

  The creature shoves a spoonful of root-leaf stew into your mouth. It has the consistency of boiled brains, and you’re about to spit it out when you stop—it doesn’t taste terrible, actually. You chew and swallow.

  “Good? Good!” squeals the little creature.

  “Yes,” you say, surprised. “Good. Can I see Yoda now?”

  “First,” says the creature, “a story I tell!”

  “What? No!”

  “Short story. Good story. You sit. You listen. Maybe learn something you will. About Yoda.”

  You sigh. If you’ll learn something about the Jedi Master, maybe it’s worth hearing the story. You settle yourself among the roots, coals, and steaming pots—making sure no more snakes are sharing your seat. The ceiling is low and smoky above you. The smell of boiling swamp-weed suffuses the little house. The light is dim and red.

  The creature begins.

  Now, I’m going to tell you the creature’s story as I’ve heard it, passed down through the years. I’m not going to try to replicate the creature’s strange way of speaking. Besides, you wouldn’t know what I was talking about. I wouldn’t know what I was talking about. I’m just going to tell it. It goes like this:

  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there lived a poor man with his three sons.

  The oldest son was strong and handsome and everyone thought he was very wonderful. He agreed with them.

  The second son was wise and clever, and everyone thought he, too, was very wonderful. He also agreed with them.

  The youngest son was quiet and thoughtful and everyone thought he was an idiot. He did not agree with them. But nobody cared what he thought.

  One day, the oldest son announced that he was going out into the wide world to find his fortune. His father begged him not to go. “Stay and help your poor father on the farm! If you go, who will milk the cow and feed the chickens? We’ll all starve!”

  But the oldest son said, “My brothers can milk the cow and feed the chickens! I’m off to seek my fortune!” So he packed a bag with plenty of food for his journey, and off he went.

  Soon, he came to a dark and frightening forest. He hesitated, just beyond the forest’s shadows. And then he saw, sitting by the side of the path, a toad.

  The toad croaked at him. “Hungry I am! Share your food with me, will you?”

  (Yes, I realize the toad talks like the creature on Dagobah. I don’t know why. That’s just the way the story’s always told.)

  But the brother refused. “Begone, you filthy toad! I am off to seek my fortune!” He tried to kick the toad, and then he strode forward into the dark wood.

  Soon he came to a great palace. Its walls were as tall and strong as tree trunks, and banners waved from every turret. The boy wanted to know who lived in such a castle, so he asked one of the guards. The guard said it was a great king.

  “Perhaps this king will make me the commander of his army!” the oldest son exclaimed. “Take me to him!”

  So he was brought before the king. The king sat on a simple throne, and he wore no crown. When the boy saw the king, he announced, “I have come to seek my fortune!”

  “Your fortune you seek?” replied the king. “Then your fortune you shall have!”

  And with those words, the oldest brother was suddenly transformed into a fly. A long tongue shot out from the king’s mouth, caught the oldest brother, and pulled him down the king’s throat.

  The creature peers up at you, as if expecting you to speak.

  “That was a good story,” you say. Really, you’re just trying to be polite. You begin to stand up. “Can I see Yoda now?”

  The creature growls, “Finished it isn’t! Listen you must. Interrupt do not, or take you to Yoda I won’t!”

  You frown and force yourself to listen.
The toadlike creature continues his strange tale.

  Back at the poor man’s house, the second brother and the youngest brother worked twice as hard to milk the cow and feed the chickens and care for their poor father.

  But after some time, the second son announced that he was going out into the wide world to find his fortune, just like his brother had.

  His father begged him not to go. “Stay and help your poor father on the farm! If you go, who will milk the cow and feed the chickens? We’ll starve!”

  But the second son said, “My brother can milk the cow and feed the chickens! I’m off to seek my fortune!” So he packed a bag with plenty of food for his journey, and off he went.

  He followed the same road as the oldest brother, and soon he came to the same dark forest. He, like his brother, hesitated just beyond the wood’s shadows. And then he saw, sitting by the side of the road, a cat.

  “Hungry I am,” the cat said. “Share your food with me, will you?”

  (Yes. The cat also talks like the creature. Again, I have no idea why.)

  But the second brother also refused. “Begone, you mangy cat! I am off to seek my fortune!” He tried to kick the cat, and then he strode forward into the dark wood.

  Soon he came to the same great palace, and he, too, asked who lived there. The guard said it was a great king.

  “Perhaps this king will make me his closest adviser!” the second son exclaimed. “Take me to him!”

  So he was brought before the king. When the boy saw the king, he announced, “I have come to seek my fortune!”

  “Your fortune you seek?” replied the king. “Then your fortune you shall have!”

  And with those words, the second brother became a mouse. And the king reached out with a great paw and crushed the brother. And then the king ate him up.

  You are watching the little creature tell his tale. You have noticed something in him—something you had not seen before. Intensity. Age. And some hidden, ferocious force.