The Tree
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You know what its like? That moment when you realize something is wrong? You could be walking down a street or brushing your hair and thinking about how it seemed a little thinner than it should, or cruising over the rim of a star on a routine patrol when suddenly, unexpectedly, it hits you—that sick feeling, like your X-wing took to the sky but your stomach remained planet-side.
I know that feeling.
I had it the moment I looked at the tree.
It crawled over me like a wave of black insects. Each and every one of their thousand legs scrambling over my skin, pricking the end of a nerve. But I couldn't shudder. I wanted to. But I couldn't. You know that feeling too, the one where the only thing that will help you is to vomit up the food that has gone bad, turning your stomach into one churning mass of misery. Relief lies on the other side of that release. Even though its painful, even though your sides will hurt and your throat turn into a fiery cess-pool, you know once the foul stuff has been purged, you will feel better.
But the foul stuff was a part of me.
Like the tree.
I glanced back at the Jedi master who had brought me here. He knew I had just finished a hard day of training. He knew I was weak and exhausted. He knew the power of the sinewy branches that lay bathed in shadow, and knew what waited within.
Within the tree and within me.
I laughed when he told me to leave my weapon behind. Did he consider me an untried fool? No. He had trained me too well. I could sense the evil streaming from the tree's withered bark in a baneful river. I knew there was danger.
I just didn't know how much.
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You have to understand. Trees are foreign things to me. I grew up on a desert world. I never even saw what you would call a real tree until I left Tatooine. There has always been something about them. Something about their moist dark recesses, their thick hides and the vulnerable meat beneath. Something about the way they move when the wind strikes them. And their voice... Did you know that trees have a voice? They do. It's soft and hard to catch, moving through the innumerable leaves like the life force of a butter-moth on the wing, but it is there.
This tree had a voice. It called to me, beckoning me forward. Urging me to accept the offer of its tenebrous embrace.
I smirked and straightened my weapons belt and charged forward as if I wasn't afraid. Did I fool him? Do you think? Can you fool a Jedi master? Ben seemed to think so. Ben with that wry smile and the light in his eyes that told you there was so much yet to be discovered. So much you didn't know. Ben who sent me here to Yoda.
And to the tree.
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My boots sink into the earth. The water sucks at them, seeking to claim them. The air is thick with mist. Like the sandstorms back home, it obscures my vision. But the sand was always warm. Its cold here. Cold and wet. I'd rather die dry.
Die? Abruptly I halt my pace. What made me think of dying? I glance back once again, but Yoda is gone: swallowed in a silent sea of gray.
Alone, I turn back to face the tree.
What is it that frightens me? Certainly not the snakes slithering in and out of its gaping wounds. Nor the glistening lizards or flying creatures clinging to its bent branches. No. I know what it is. It's the ominous maw, yawning like a bored Sabbac player—the kind that has a blaster aimed at you under the table. Sinister. Dangerous.
Deadly.
Still, I feel compelled to enter. To seek what lies within.
Within the tree.
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It's warm inside and smells of earth. Like Ben's cave or Yoda's home. And impossibly large. What is this place? What was it? I close my eyes and draw a deep breath and reach out with my senses, waiting to be assaulted by its life-force, but there is nothing. Frowning deep, I try again.
Nothing. Its dead.
I have never felt anything so very dead before.
And yet outside I sensed its evil heart. Can a dead thing be evil?
Isn't it just ...dead?
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A sudden noise—no—the sense of a noise behind me makes me pivot. For a moment it is as though I am standing without the cavern again, facing the brooding black silhouette of the tree. I see its branches spread wide, casting their shadows across the leaf and root-littered floor. I watch it rear up before me and hear the intake of breath of a hundred thousand leaves.
And then it exhales. And breathes again.
And again.
Like lightning a bolt of red cleaves the darkness. I falter at first, but then find my courage and press forward with it grasped tightly in my hand, answering with a flash of blue that ignites sparks which fill the false night like so many stars in the sky.
So much for Yoda and his Jedi wisdom. If he had had his way, I would have come here unarmed, defenseless...
Vulnerable.
As it is, I barely hold my own. Still, as I counter his attack, I remember. I remember Zack dead on the fields of Hoth, and Leia and Han, caught and tortured at his command. And Alderaan. Peaceful Alderaan. Obliterated as an object lesson.
And I find my strength.
In other words, I lose my temper. My uncle Owen used to call me a 'hothead'. Aunt Beruh was more kind: she said I was impulsive. Yoda gave it another name. He told Ben I was reckless. "Too much anger in him. Like his father."
I look at Vader and suddenly everything in me goes black. Black as the deepest recesses of the tree's shifting foliage. Black as its skin.
Black as its dead heart.
And I win.
I kill him.
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The trouble is, that sick feeling comes back again. The one I got when I looked at the tree for the first time. I know, even before it happens, that something is wrong. I take a step back, sweating, panting hard. I wait for my vision to clear and stare at the work of my hands—at the severed head laying at my feet and I want to vomit.
But I can't.
The black stuff in me isn't about to come out.
I think maybe the next second my heart stops. Oh, I know Two-OneBee would say it isn't medically possible, but it happens. Or maybe time just stands still as I look at that black mask and watch it dissolve in a puff of smoke to reveal my own face: cold, waxen, eyes forever frozen open in death.
What I fear has happened.
I killed me.
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Failure is a curious thing. Imprisoning and liberating the one who fails. Like iron bars Yoda's expectations had weighed me down. In falling short of them, I was free. Free to be me.
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The tree stands before me now, a dark silent sentinel of what is to come. In it I see my enemy. My self.
My destiny.
I walk around it, seeking the source of the evil I felt. There is nothing there. It is a dead thing. Like Yoda said, there was nothing there but what I took in with me.
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Within me.
Within the tree.
-end-