by Adam Gidwitz
You cannot put a name to it.
But it scares you.
Back at the poor man’s house, the youngest brother worked three times as hard to milk the cow and feed the chickens and care for his poor father.
But one day, the youngest brother came before his father and said, “Father, I would like to go out into the world and discover what has happened to my two brothers.”
His father begged him not to go. “You are just a simple boy. You will be lost…or worse. Stay here and milk the cow and feed the chickens and take care of your poor old father.”
But the youngest son said, “I have set aside ten pails of milk for you to drink and a hundred eggs for you to eat, for my brothers are gone and there is plenty of extra food now. Eat what I have set aside for you, and I promise I will return before it is all gone.” When the father saw what his youngest son had done, he agreed to let him go.
So the boy packed a bag with a little bit of food and set down the same road as his brothers had. And soon, he came to the same dark forest. He, like his brothers, hesitated just beyond the wood’s shadows. And then he saw, sitting by the side of the road, a chicken.
“Hungry I am,” the chicken said. “Share your food with me, will you?”
So the youngest brother sat down and opened his bag, and laid out all the food he had brought for his journey on the ground. And he and the chicken sat and ate. The chicken had an enormous appetite, and soon all the food was gone.
Then the brother picked up his bag and ventured into the dark forest. His stomach began to rumble, but his bag was empty. Kilometers and kilometers he went, until his legs were shaking and he was on the verge of collapsing from hunger.
Just when he thought he could go no farther, he came to the castle in the wood. He asked the guard who lived there, and heard it was a great king. “Perhaps the king knows where my brothers are!” he said. “May I see him?” He was so weak with hunger that he had to be carried up to the king’s throne room.
When the boy saw the king, he fell to his knees. “Please, king, help me. I seek my brothers, who ventured into this wood and disappeared. Also,” he added, “I am very hungry.”
The king laughed, and his laugh sounded like this: “Buck-buckaw!”
Then the king said, “Brothers you shall not see. Dead they are. But this chicken feed you must take. To your father’s chickens you will give it. And hungry again you shall never be.”
So the boy returned home, with no brothers but with the chicken feed. His father cried with joy when he saw his youngest son returned to him. Then they fed the king’s chicken feed to the chickens.
And forever after, when those chickens laid eggs, the eggs were made of solid gold.
And the boy and his father lived happily ever after.
The creature stops speaking. He is still staring at you, but now with a satisfied expression on his strange, green face.
“That’s it?” you ask.
He nods happily.
You gaze at the little creature. The magic you felt when he spoke is gone. He is a strange, lonely little swamp toad. Nothing more. Your voice is loud and angry when you say, “That had nothing to do with Yoda!” You rise to your feet—and hit your head, hard, on the ceiling. “Why are you wasting my time?”
The creature looks crestfallen. He turns away from you.
You sit back down and sigh. “I’ll never be a Jedi at this rate.”
The creature murmurs, “Why wish you become Jedi, hm?”
You stare at the flickering fire beneath the pot of root-leaf stew. “I don’t know. To save the galaxy from the Empire. And to help my friends.”
The creature peers at you, as if he knows there is more.
“And,” you continue, “and…well…because of my father, I guess.”
“Ah,” says the creature, crawling up onto his little bed and sitting there. He kicks his short legs back and forth before him, like a small child. “Powerful Jedi was your father. Mmm.”
You roll your eyes. “How do you know? You don’t even know who I am! This is ridiculous!” You stand up—and hit your head on the ceiling again. You curse and turn toward the door. Just outside the window, R2 is jumping up and down, trying to get your attention.
“Beep beep beep boop boop!”
“Yeah, Artoo, we’re leaving.”
You’re clambering over roots and chairs and stools to get to the door. Behind you, the creature closes his great green and black eyes. His voice is no more than a murmur. “I cannot teach him. He has no patience.”
You hesitate at the door.
The creature is answered by a voice as vast and calm as the deserts of Tatooine: “He will learn patience.”
You spin around. There is no one else in the room.
The creature says, “He is not ready….”
“YODA!” you cry, staring at the strange little creature. “You are Yoda!”
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s voice suffuses the little house: “Was I any better when you taught me?”
“He is too old,” the creature—Yoda—replies. “Too old to begin the training.”
You move swiftly to the side of his bed and kneel, peering at the strange blue-green skin, wizened like a raisin, white wisps of hair flying in all directions from his otherwise bald scalp. He is hideous. He is ridiculous.
He is Yoda.
“Yoda, please,” you say. “I’ve already learned so much….” And then you pause, before saying, “I…I understand the story now. It was about Yoda.”
The creature turns his luminous eyes upon you.
“You were the frog, the cat, the chicken, and the king. I was each of the three brothers.”
“The first two brothers you were,” Yoda says, pointing a gnarled finger in your face.
“I was,” you say, and you let your head fall. “But I won’t be. I will be the youngest boy. I will trust you. I will listen to you. I will learn.” And then you add, “I’m not afraid.”
Yoda’s eyes darken. He rises up, taller and taller, until he seems to fill the room, until it seems that he is the greatest, grandest, largest creature you have ever met. “You will be,” he intones, looking down at you, through you, and deep into you. “Oh, you will be.”
LESSON MU:
THE FORCE IS NOT MULTIPLE CHOICE
So which are you, young Padawan? One of the older brothers? Or the youngest?
I know what you’d like to say. We’d all like to say that we’re the youngest brother. But are you really?
Let’s find out.
Are you familiar with those teen magazines that have multiple choice tests? You answer a bunch of questions, and if you chose mostly A, you’re this kind of person, and mostly B, you’re that other kind?
We’re going to do one of those tests.
One question. Three options.
You might want to meditate before we begin.
Really.
Okay, have you meditated? Then here we go.
It’s lunchtime in the school cafeteria. You exit the food line, gripping your tray of steaming sloppy joe. You look around.
To your right, you see your friends. The table is full, except for one chair next to your best friend. You know your best friend has been having a really rough day.
Straight ahead of you, there’s a new kid. A group of mean kids has sat down around him. They look like they’re already starting to give the kid a hard time.
To your left, there’s someone in your class who sits alone every day. She would obviously like to sit with someone, but nobody gives her a chance.
So, do you:
A) Go sit beside your friend. He or she is your best friend, and needs your support today. The other kids can wait.
B) Sit down with the new student. If the mean kids tease him, you’ll stand up to them, or at least let the new kid know you’re on his side.
C) Join the table with the loner. She’s been suffering the longest, and it’s time to help her out.
Think about it. Which will
it be?
All right, ready for the answer?
It’s a trick question. Jedi do not act hypothetically. They act in real life. Next time you see A, B, or C going down, do something about it. For real.
That is the way of the Jedi.
YOU SIT, CROSS-LEGGED, before Yoda’s little house. Your eyes are closed. You are listening. You are feeling.
Yoda is near you. You can faintly perceive the heat that emanates from him. Yoda is holding up an object. This is like an exercise you did with Ben once, back when he was your teacher. Back when he was alive.
“A stick?”
Yoda grunts angrily.
“A rock?”
“Guessing you are,” he says. “Guess not. Feel.”
You try to still your mind. Quietly—oh, so quietly, you hear something moving. Small, quick movements. Not going-somewhere movements. More like…squirming. There is heat coming from Yoda…but there is more heat, just a little more heat, coming from his hand.
“It’s alive…” you murmur.
“Mmm…” Yoda says.
You get excited. “A frog!”
“No!” Yoda barks. You open your eyes. It’s a mouse. “No,” Yoda says again, shaking his froglike head. “Guess you do! Impatient you are! Trust the Force you do not.” He looks away from you. “Eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. The deepest commitment must a Jedi have. The most serious mind.” He grunts and puts down the mouse. It scurries away into the thick, wet greenery of Dagobah.
“You a long time have I watched,” he says. “Always looking away you are—off to the horizon. Adventure! Excitement! Never your mind on where you are.” Yoda punctuates those words by gesturing with his walking stick at your chest. “A Jedi looks not to other times, other places. To now a Jedi looks, and feels.”
You nod. You are trying to understand. Trying, but not succeeding.
“Again your eyes you must close.” You do. “What is around you? Every tree, rock, thing living and not living must you list.”
You squint and try to remember your exact surroundings.
Suddenly, Yoda’s stick whacks you in the side of the head. “Remember not!” Yoda commands, as if he is reading your thoughts. “Feel.”
You are sprinting through the jungle, leaping over stones and running along wet logs, trying to sense the slick spots, the rotten spots, before you step on them. Yoda is clinging to your neck. He is small, but his judgment of you, his disappointment, hangs heavier than his little body.
“Focus,” he says.
You leap up onto a log that has fallen over a stream. As your foot lands on it, you relax. Inhale. You hear the hollow sound it makes, feel its weight beneath you, its density. You take two long strides and then—a short one. You hop over a pale spot and slide your feet the rest of the way, till you jump down onto the farther bank and keep running.
“Good,” Yoda intones. “Felt the wood you did. Knew what was good, what rotten.”
There is a steep slope that leads down into a wet ravine. A bunch of vines hang from a nearby tree. You go to grab one—and hesitate.
“Feel,” Yoda whispers. You close your eyes and feel without touching. There is a strong vine among the bunch. A good, hearty one, ready and happy to bear your weight, and Yoda’s. You open your eyes. It is obvious. It looks no different from the others. But it is different. You know it. You take it, swing out over the ravine, and drop lightly to the other side.
“Good! Good!”
You run, and run, and run. Your legs tire. But the Force is good, and as you relax into it, your legs keep moving as if this is what they were meant to do. Indeed, you think, it is. Your arms and shoulders ache from swinging and climbing and carrying Yoda. But you breathe deeply—then smile. This is what they were meant to do, too. It is their function. The soreness is just telling you that they are working to their potential. It is not bad pain. It is merely the language of your body, speaking. And you are, at last, listening.
You have stopped. Yoda stands, like a wizened, withered stump, staring into the distance. You sit cross-legged, feeling your breath come in through your nose, down your throat, into your chest, and out again.
“A Jedi’s strength flows from the Force,” Yoda is saying. “But beware of the dark side. Anger…fear…aggression…The dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. But if once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice.”
You lose track of your breathing. “Vader?” you ask. Yoda nods.
You have another question. “Yoda, is the dark side stronger?”
“No…no…Quicker, yes. Easier, yes. More seductive. Like a big cake of swamp cane. Eat it all, you want to, and sweet will it taste. Full will you feel. And energetic. But fade the energy will, and sick you soon will be. Better to eat fruit, fish, good things. Not as sweet. But long will they last.”
You furrow your brow. “I know a cake when I see one. But what about the dark side? How do you tell the difference between the dark side and the Force?”
“Search your feelings, and know you will. Like the wood on the tree trunk. When you are calm. At peace. Not angry. Not grasping. You will know.”
“But tell me why—”
Suddenly, Yoda is impatient. “No! No! There is no why. There only is, and is not. No more will I teach you today.”
You don’t know what you said that was so wrong. Disappointed, still hungry for knowledge, you stand. Stretch.
And then you see it.
Looming dark and sinister through the tangled branches of the jungle. It is a cave. Even from this distance—a hundred meters or more—you can feel it, like a sudden gust of freezing wind. “What…what is that place?” you ask. “I feel…cold…death…”
Yoda looks up at you, and his eyes are shining.
“That place…strong with the dark side it is. A domain of evil. In you must go.”
“What…what’s in there?” You can’t take your eyes from its darkness, like a negative space, a void, among the vibrant, vivid greenery of the rest of the planet.
Yoda’s voice is quiet, but clear. “Only what you take with you.”
You pick up your lightsaber.
“Your weapons,” Yoda says. “You will not need them.”
You pause, look at Yoda. You look at the cave.
You keep the lightsaber in your hand.
The darkness is thick, and smells musty and rotten. But not rich, not full of life, breaking down and transforming into something new, like most of the rotting smells of Dagobah. This is a smell like death.
Something moves behind you. You turn. A black snake, long and thick, curls around a root that protrudes from the earthen walls. It is speckled with white spots—each one looks like a death’s head. You shudder.
You push deeper into the cave. Creepers hang in your path. The air is cold here. A rush of wind blows something sticky into your face. You claw it off. It’s a spider web—teeming with tiny arachnids. You try not to panic, flicking them from your skin, your ears, your hair.
Your heart is beating hard. Your breath is shallow.
You are afraid.
And angry. Angry at Yoda for sending you in here. For giving you all of these stupid tests and never being satisfied. For not recognizing how well you’ve done, how far you’ve come.
Also, you realize, you are angry at yourself. Angry that you are so afraid.
And then you hear something breathing in the darkness.
It sounds…metallic.
You step forward. Again. Once more.
And then he emerges from the shadows.
Darth Vader.
Darth Vader is here.
He has found you. Followed you here. Somehow.
You grab your lightsaber and ignite the blue blade.
His lightsaber rises, too—a pulsating red, reflecting in his black helm and black, synthetic eyes.
The blades are, in the darkness, strangely c
omplementary. As if, somehow, they belong together.
Vader advances.
Fear and hatred mingle in your heart.
He raises his lightsaber. You raise yours sideways, and as his crashes down upon you, you catch it with your own, and your strength holds.
You step back. He advances, swinging his blade. You parry, sidestep. He turns to you, lightsaber coming round fast—but too late.
With a vicious strike, your lightsaber blade is already slicing through Darth Vader’s neck.
His head rolls to the cave wall. His body crumples.
You stand astride it, heaving, victorious.
He is dead. Dead at last!
You turn your gaze on his head. His mask breaks asunder in a sudden explosion, revealing his lifeless face—but it is not his face.
It is your face, staring back at you. Eyes wide. Mouth open.
Your face, in Vader’s helmet.
You turn and run.
LESSON NU:
PATIENCE PLUS COMPASSION EQUALS STRENGTH
Think of someone you do not like. Someone you know who’s been mean to you in the past, or whom you’re afraid of, or whom, maybe, you’re not always very nice to.
Think of everything you know about that person. Think of his parents, his family, his house, his schoolwork, his friends. Think of what he is good at, what he is bad at.
Now pretend you are him or her. Close your eyes and walk through the day in her shoes. You should imagine yourself with her joys, and with her pains. Can you name those pains? You should try. Really try.
Understand that person. As thoroughly as you can.
This will give you patience and compassion, the next time you encounter them. Which is good.
Patience and compassion, combined, make strength.
IN THE DARK HEART of the Empire’s largest Star Destroyer, there is a dark room. In that dark room is a large, dark egg. It is a meditation chamber. In that large, dark egg is possibly the darkest soul in the galaxy.
