by Adam Gidwitz
“Ararararaaaaaghhhh?”
“I’ll be okay,” Han says. He does not sound confident.
“Aaaraararaagh,” Chewie howls again. I don’t know what that means.
Han turns to Leia. Before he knows what’s happening, she’s kissing him.
Then she whispers, “I love you.”
He smiles his crooked smile and winks. “I know.”
Suddenly, Han is wrenched backward by stormtroopers. Chewbacca is howling. Leia is choking back tears. C-3PO is explaining the odds of Han’s survival. No one is listening to C-3PO.
The stormtroopers thrust the limp, exhausted space pirate onto the platform, which begins to descend slowly. Leia is about to be sick.
She can’t take it. She feels like her insides are being torn apart by Alderaanian wolf-cats. She rushes to the edge of the freezing chamber, but a blast of carbon gas shoots up into her face, casting her back. Vader himself is operating the controls.
Chewie roars again. Leia hides her eyes.
“Don’t worry!” C-3PO chirps. “He should be quite well protected by the carbonite! If, that is, he survives the freezing process, which I’ve concluded stands at a 453 to…”
More steam. Then a cascade of liquid carbonite, illuminated by a million sparks. They reflect off of Vader’s impassive black mask.
The process ends. With a shuddering creak, two great tongs are lowered into the pit.
Up from the gloom they draw a metal rectangle—frozen carbonite. Han Solo’s face protrudes from its surface, locked in a scream of agony. Leia looks, and then hides her face again. Chewbacca starts to make a rush for Han, but the muzzle of a blaster reminds him to stay put.
Lando has moved to Han’s side, where an electronic readout is registering on a small screen. “He’s okay!” Lando announces. “He’s…hibernating. He’s fine.”
“He’s all yours, bounty hunter,” Vader replies. “Reset the chamber for Skywalker.” To the stormtrooper commander he says, “Take the princess and the Wookiee to my ship.”
Lando objects. “You said they’d be left with me!”
“I am altering the deal,” Vader intones. “Pray I don’t alter it any further. Now, leave me. Skywalker has arrived. I can sense it.”
LESSON PHI:
FEAR ITSELF
What are you afraid of?
Don’t tell me. Don’t say it out loud.
I have a policy about that. If you tell someone what you are most afraid of, then one day it might be used against you somehow.
Just think about it. What truly scares you?
Close your eyes. Ask someone to time you, or set a timer, for thirty seconds.
Imagine that terrifying thing. Really imagine it. Picture it before you. Convince yourself that it is happening.
Once the time is up, reset the timer, or have your assistant count again. This time, close your eyes, breathe, and smile.
Fear is in your mind. It cannot hurt you. It has been said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. This is true.
You are a part of the Force. What is the worst that can happen to you? You are hurt? You are sick? You pass away?
When those things happen, you are merely changing forms. Becoming something new.
The Force is with you, and you are with the Force.
You and the Force are one.
YOU STEER YOUR X-wing through the pink, pacific clouds of Bespin.
R2-D2 beeps a question at you.
You can barely hear him. Before your eyes are your best friends. Screaming in pain. Writhing under needles and blades, barking with fear and whimpering in horror.
R2 asks the question again.
“See-Threepio is with them,” you respond. “I can sense it.”
Your X-wing settles on a deserted landing pad. After scoping it out—to ensure there will be no unpleasant surprises—you help R2 down from his perch at the back of the ship. You consider leaving him behind, for his own safety. But he’s a brave little droid, and he could come in handy.
Indeed, you haven’t gone three meters when you reach the door to the landing pad and find that it refuses to open. R2 extends his interface arm and inserts it in the universal computer communication port.
You wait. Han and Leia are no longer screaming in your head. Rather, they are silent. Eerily, frighteningly silent. Your palms sweat and your legs quiver. You try to calm yourself. Fear, you know, is your greatest enemy. Fear leads to the dark side. And yet you cannot control the cold sweat beading on the back of your neck.
With a hiss, the door slides open. You sidle into the glassy hallway. The floor shines as your feet sidestep their way down its length. Your back remains in contact with the white wall as you move. Your lightsaber dangles at your side. You’ll save that for Vader. You unholster your blaster.
Who is here. Suddenly, you sense it. It feels like someone has walked into a room where you’ve been sleeping. You sense him, and wake.
His presence is like Ben’s once was—except inverted. Every feeling you had for your teacher, your mentor, the closest thing you ever had to a father, is flipped. Love is hatred. Peace is fear. The cold sweat has spread, crawling down your back and up your scalp. Vader, who killed Ben. Vader, who killed your father before that. Here. Waiting for you.
And then, as you look around a corner, you see them. Leia and Chewbacca—with C-3PO tied in pieces to Chewie’s back. They are being led by a powerful-looking man with a pencil-thin mustache and a cape, and are surrounded by stormtroopers. Behind the stormtroopers marches a platoon of mining colony security guards. They are all armed.
Chewie must have smelled you. He looks in your direction and howls.
Not a good plan. A hail of laserfire explodes all around you. You duck behind the corner. R2, hiding in your shadow, is beeping and whirring. You lean out and fire a few laser blasts before ducking back behind the wall.
You are breathing hard, but—you are surprised to realize—none of this scares you.
Still, you need to be careful. You don’t want to hit the princess.
Leia screams, “LUKE! LUKE!” You pop around the wall again. Aiming a blaster feels different than it used to. You don’t have to aim so much. You can feel where the stormtroopers are. As if you were reaching into a box blindfolded, and feeling the difference between socks and knives. You fire at the knives. They begin to fall.
“LUKE,” Leia screams again. “IT’S A TRAP! A TRAP!” As soon as the words are out, Leia is picked up and hurried down the hall. “GO BACK! IT’S A—” Doors close, and she, Chewbacca, and C-3PO are gone.
You know it’s a trap. You’ve known since Dagobah. And now that you’re here, you know you didn’t come to save Leia and Han. If you save them, that will be no more than a side effect. You came here because Vader is here. You realize it now. He called you. To face him.
And you will.
Lando leads the stormtroopers away from their melee with Skywalker, striding far out ahead. He’s pressing some buttons on a wristband without slowing his pace.
In another wing of the colony, his bald manservant’s headset lights up. The man’s eyes fly open. He presses a button by his temple in rapid, silent code.
Suddenly, the stormtroopers aren’t following Lando anymore. He feels it.
He turns. He smiles.
The stormtroopers’ hands are in the air, and the platoon of security guards are aiming blasters at their heads.
“Take them away,” Lando orders the security guards. The stormtroopers are led to a nearby holding cell.
Lando turns to Leia. “Come on, Princess,” he says. “Let’s get to the East Platform. It’s not too late to—”
Lando’s words are choked off by two enormous paws.
“Chewbacca!” C-3PO cries, trying to see from his position on the Wookiee’s back. “What are you doing?”
The great Chewbacca is choking Lando, that’s what he’s doing. He’s pushing the gambler down to his knees, squeezing the air from his windpipe.
&n
bsp; “Had—no—choice—” Lando gasps.
Chewbacca squeezes harder.
“Oh, we understand,” Leia says, bending over him. “You had no choice.”
“Ha—a—a—”
“Chewbacca, trust him! Trust him!” C-3PO is crying.
“Ha—a—a—”
Leia suddenly lays her hand on Chewie’s arm. “Wait, I think he’s saying ‘Han.’”
Chewbacca loosens his grip. A little.
Lando gasps with relief. “It’s not…too late…to save Han. Bounty hunter…East Platform…”
Chewbacca lets him fall. Lando is sucking in air. “That way!” he points.
Chewbacca and Leia stoop to pick up the blasters that the stormtroopers dropped, and then they hurry down the shining corridor. C-3PO calls back, “I’m terribly sorry about all this! He’s just a Wookiee, you know!”
Lando drags himself to his feet, grabs a blaster for himself, and follows them, limping and gasping.
They haven’t gone far when C-3PO sees a familiar form emerging from a doorway. “Artoo! Artoo!” he calls.
Leia stops, turns, and runs back to the little service droid. Chewbacca follows her. “Oh, turn around!” C-3PO shouts at him. “Please! Oh, you big stupid rug!”
Leia bends down to talk to R2-D2. “Where’s Luke?” she demands. R2 beeps madly. Lando has just caught up. He’s panting.
“He’s gone into the freezing chamber!” C-3PO translates, still flailing and looking in the wrong direction. “Oh, Artoo, how could you have left him alone!”
Lando says, “If we’re going to save Han, this Skywalker will have to fend for himself.” He looks at the princess.
Leia hesitates. She squeezes her knuckles with her fingers until her hands have gone white. She is choosing between a pile of diamonds and a pile of gold. And she doesn’t know which is which. Finally, she says, “If Luke’s in there with Vader, we couldn’t help him anyway.” Her voice is trembling. “Let’s go get Han.”
The small party, now joined by R2-D2, hurries for the East Platform. The door is sealed, and Lando’s mad punching of numbers into a keypad yields no results.
He curses. “They’ve changed the security codes!”
But R2-D2 has already begun interfacing with the communication port. Within moments, the door slides open. Lando, Leia, and Chewbacca rush through. R2 rolls after them, beeping at C-3PO.
“What do I care about the hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon?” the golden droid snaps at him, bouncing up and down with each of Chewbacca’s enormous strides. “We’re trying to save Master Han! And what do I always tell you about interfacing with strange computers? You could catch something! Who knows who that computer’s been interfacing with recently? Did you even ask?”
As the group emerges into the pink atmosphere of Bespin, they see Boba Fett disappearing into his small, rusty ship and the hatch swing closed. Lando lets loose a ferocious volley of blaster fire. They all do. No use. They ricochet harmlessly off the spacecraft, like laserballs in one of those laser-pinball machines on Melchior 5.
Lando, Chewbacca, and Leia stand on the landing pad, furious but impotent, as Boba Fett’s ship lifts off the landing pad and swiftly rises into the sweet-smelling clouds, with Han Solo, frozen in carbonite, secure in the cargo hold.
For a moment, they just stare. Then Leia says, “I guess our best bet now is the Millennium Falcon.”
“Right!” Lando agrees, with renewed hope. “She’s the fastest ship in the galaxy!”
Leia, Chewie, and C-3PO all shake their heads.
LESSON CHI:
PREPARE YOURSELF
Get yourself into a comfortable sitting position. It can be in a chair or on the floor.
Get a timer, or ask someone to time you.
You are going to meditate for three minutes. This is the longest I have asked you to meditate. It will not be easy. You will not be able to keep your mind still the whole time. But whenever your mind starts to wander, breathe deeply, and think of that thin, silver thread of breath going in your nose, to the bottom of your belly, and out again. Don’t get mad at yourself. Don’t be afraid that you will fail. Just relax, and sit, and let your thoughts wander away from you like sheep into a distant field.
When you’ve meditated for three minutes, open your eyes. Smile.
You have peace. You have compassion. You have patience.
And therefore, you have strength.
Which is good, because you’re going to need it.
YOU’VE LOST LEIA and the rest of them, and R2 has lost you. You pad through the white, shimmering corridors. You let your friends slide from your mind. Vader is near. He’s the one you must focus on now.
You come to an elevating pad, set back in a recessed alcove. There is a button on the wall. You step onto the pad and push the button. You are being drawn forward. You are not choosing anymore. You are not in control.
The pad is rising now, bringing you into a new room.
A room unlike the sterilized white corridors of the rest of the mining complex. The black walls are barely lit, and where they are it is with winking red lights, while a violet glow suffuses the floor. Cold mist drifts across the cavernous space.
But there is something colder here than the mist.
You hear breathing. Deep. Rhythmic. Metallic.
You look up.
There is a dark flight of stairs. At its head stands a great shadow, with a helmet shimmering in the red and violet industrial dusk, and a black cape swaying gently by the shadow’s feet.
It is Vader. As you knew it would be.
His voice is as soft as a lullaby, as sudden as a sword. “You are not a Jedi.”
It is not what you expected him to say. You don’t know what you expected. But not that. He sounds, almost, disappointed. In you.
He is still speaking. “The Force is with you, young Skywalker. But you are not a Jedi. Not yet.”
You resist the urge to respond. To tell him what you’ve done. And what you intend to do. Instead, you simply ignite your lightsaber. It glows blue in the darkness.
“I have not seen that blade in a long time,” Vader says.
You grip it more tightly. “It was my father’s.”
He says, “I remember.” And then he ignites his, an infernal red.
You walk toward one another, you up the stairs, him down.
Your mind drifts to the cave on Dagobah. There, fear defeated you. That will not happen again.
You think of balancing on your hands, with Yoda sitting on your feet. You think of running through the forest, knowing the good wood from the bad, the strong vines from the weak. You think of leading a raging elephoth back to her child.
In those times, you were strong, despite your fatigue, despite the pain, despite your fear.
You take a deep breath and return to that place.
You are but a sword’s length away from the greatest weapon in the galaxy. And yet you will not be afraid.
You sweep your blade forward. Vader repels the blow without effort.
You thrust again. He parries your sword away, steps down the stairs and to the side, and sends a searing swipe at your head. But you knew he would. You saw it, a fraction of a second before it happened. You duck, and Vader’s blade cuts an electrical wire, burying you in a cascade of sparks. You slide out of his reach.
“You have learned much, young one.”
You lunge at him again, and again. He falls back, parrying both blows—but not quite so effortlessly this time.
“You’ll find I’m full of surprises,” you say.
Just as you do, Vader swings his blade. You move to the side, above him on the stairs—he is slower than you expected.
And Vader punches your sword-hand with his fist.
Your lightsaber hurtles through the air and clatters to the bottom of the staircase, far out of reach.
You turn back to Vader. Fear has returned to your chest. Behind his mask, you can sense him, almost smiling.
He steps
forward.
And then you are flipping backward through the air. You land on your feet, reach out, and can sense that your lightsaber is lying some ten meters away. But what is ten meters? Just the Force, in different form.
Vader charges down the stairs. You call to your lightsaber, and it flies to your hand. It merely needed to trade places with the part of the Force that you were holding, the part that looked like empty air.
Vader is upon you.
You duck and roll and rise to your feet, facing him, sword ignited and ready.
Vader speaks. “Your destiny lies with me, Skywalker. Obi-Wan knew this to be true.”
“No!” you shout. A little louder than you intended. Why did you shout?
Suddenly, Vader lunges at you. You step back—and there is no floor beneath you. You are falling. You hit the ground.
He distracted you—confused you. You felt fear, and not the space behind you.
“All too easy,” Vader murmurs. He is adjusting knobs on an interface above, and suddenly it is cold. Very, very cold. “Perhaps you are not as strong as the Emperor thought.”
Then you are flying upward. Yes. Flying. You never knew you could. But you can. You are. Freezing carbon gas is filling the pit, but you are above it now, perched on a pipe attached to the ceiling.
Vader looks down—and then up at you. “Impressive…” he says. Is there a smile in his voice?
You drop to a platform opposite Vader and raise your lightsaber.
Vader raises his to meet it.
“Obi-Wan has taught you well. You have controlled your fear. Now, release your anger.”
And you feel it. Anger coursing through you. Anger at this man—this Sith—who killed your father. Who killed your master. Who taunts you one moment and praises you the next, as if he were…
“Yes,” Vader calls to you. “Only your hatred can destroy me.”
You swing at him with all your might. He blocks, stepping back. You swing again, and again, knocking him backward. You are trying to control your anger, but you are not succeeding. It is controlling you. Vader is blocking and blocking, but your attack is furious, relentless, blinding. He steps back—and falls.
