Somewhere on the forest moon of Endor, circa 1 BBY
The shadow reappeared solely to disappear again. The chaser swallowed a lump. He was not sure if the intruder was breathing behind his back, or if it was just the wind blowing. After a long, sleepless night, all the sounds of the forest were starting to resemble each other and now they were even starting to sound like his and his friend's own voices. By now, they had spent hours running around the forest, tracing the damp, muddy footprints. Being plump and reasonably short, he never liked running. The smell of his own damp fur in a stormy night was making him feel uneasy.
His name was Mechett and he was a healer.
He and Rango – his closest friend from the earliest days and now the tribe's much admired chief – had been on guard duty in the middle of a thunderstorm when they encountered the menace that their fellow villagers claimed they had seen a few times. Now it was close to dawn and they were getting tired, but their enemy was not. Up till now they had not managed to catch a glimpse of his face, let alone attempt to capture him. When they finally did see him, they lost him again and they were on the edge of the forest and close to home.
"So, now we know that he is a Yuzzum." Mechett leaned against a nearby oddly-shaped blasé tree, panting. He could not run and talk at the same time. "I did not expect that!"
They were not willing to continue the chase with the rain falling over the nearby small body of water and lightning hitting somewhere in the distance behind them. The odd tree with its dense crown seemed like a perfect shelter.
"I hate Yuzzums, but this is the worst kind of Yuzzum I have seen in my entire life!" Burly, dark-furred Rango nervously poked his spear against the bark and sat down. "I understand that we are not born with nature powers to begin with, because powers are for the spirits to interfere with, but I swear that this creature has them!"
"Chak, right, no nature powers among us Ewoks!" Mechett almost tripped on the root. "So, whatever we are dealing here could be a Yuzzum god that they summoned and offered a sacrifice to!"
"A bloody sacrifice, you think? That's a scary thought right there! Remember when I banished those frightening...Mechett, are you listening to me?" Rango got up, seeing that his friend was not responding.
"Rango, do you see it?" Mechett pulled his friend's large hand. "Look up in the sky!"
Shading his eyes with his hand, Rango looked at what Mechett was pointing. It was not moving and it looked like a crescent moon. The colour was not the yellowish white they were used to, so it could not have been a new star. It wasn't as though new stars were going to pop in the dotted night sky out of nowhere.
"Strange. It's not the time for the Sistermoon to be visible to us yet, since it's now with those tree-dwelling folk on the other side, far away."
"That's no Sistermoon, Rango!"
"Then what is it? Do you know?"
"No. I just…I just think it could not be the Sistermoon, since that would mean the…the sky has shrunk and the end of the world is coming! Also, the Sistermoon is much, much bigger!"
Mechett couldn't possibly tell Rango about the prophecy, since that would have gotten him in trouble. He shared all of his secrets with his best friend. All of them but one – the one he thought would end their friendship and break their village apart.
"So, are we going to tell the Council about this?" he asked.
"Chak. If they're still listening to us after we've told them that we were unable to catch this – aaaaargh!"
Just as Rango was about to mention the ghostly Yuzzum again, it jumped from the tree and stabbed him in the cheek. He screamed and tried to reach for his spear, which remained stubbornly stuck in the bark.
"Dengar, Ewoks!" Mechett head-butted the menace. Seconds later, he was pushed back against the tree and everything turned black. Once he came round, Rango lay in a pool of blood, his hood torn off and his face disfigured.
"Rango!" Mechett laid his head on his friend's chest. The injured chief let out something that would have been a scream if his mouth and throat hadn't been full of foam and blood. Mechett jumped and gently tried to touch Rango's chest again, prompting another painful sigh.
"He…he's crushed your chest bone! I need to treat your injuries!"
Rango only managed to mutter a barely audible "no". Mechett pulled out a straw from his pouch and tried to suck out as much bile as he could from his friend's throat. The burly warrior reached for the straw and pulled it out.
"There is no time. I…I have to tell you something important before I die."
"You are not going to die, Rango. I'm a healer!"
Rango shook his head. Even in his agony, he could not get over how stubborn Mechett was. In his last-ever bout of anger, he realised that he couldn't possibly tell his friend about the biggest deception in the history of their village – that would have gotten somebody in trouble.
He shared all of his secrets with his best friend. All of them but one – the one he thought would end their friendship and break their village apart.
"Mechett...I…appreciate your effort, but my heart is…barely" – he gasped for air – "beating. Please, tell my wife and my...my...my...my son that I loved them." He took Mechett's hand. "And make sure you take over the duties from the council until…cough…he is old enough to succeed me. I don't trust anybody else. And beware of..."
Rango stopped talking as one last stream of blood and bile came out of his throat. His eyes remained open and his tongue, barely recognisable from foam, blood and vomit, hung out of his mouth. A tearful Mechett shook him and pressed his head against his friend's chest. There was nothing that could bring Rango back – not even the numerous gods the other Ewok tribes believed in. Still, he laid the corpse down and looked up through the treetops, praying one last time to Brother Sky to have mercy on his friend's soul. Faced with his best friend's death, he found himself believing in afterlife.
Instead of the stars, he came face to face with a pair of yellow eyes on a branch high above him.
He snarled. With strength he never knew he had, jumped onto the tree and climbed up to the branch, his axe between his teeth. The thin Yuzzum was sitting on a fork of two branches close to the top of the tree, cackling like an evil forest spirit. He was now adorned with Rango's long hood, his face barely showing.
Not thinking much, Mechett swung the axe, severing one of the menace's hands. The Yuzzum did not let out a single cry of pain but just looked at his hand as it fell to the ground.
"You really like being angry, midget!" The thin Yuzzum spoke near-perfect Ewokese.
"Not midget. Mechett! I spent my whole life with Rango! I remember holding him when I was a wokling and he was an infant! He was destined to become a great leader, just like all the sons of the Arankoo family! And he was the best leader our village ever had!"
"You also talk too much, midget…and none of it makes sense." The Yuzzum directed the index finger of his remaining hand towards the ground below, summoning the severed hand. Mechett observed the ghostly hand floating in what looked like a bubble of light and then wielded the axe again, this time missing his target. The axe was now stuck in the thick branch he stood on.
"Great! This is where I wanted you!" The Yuzzum menace cackled again. "Sure this old tree is notorious for getting weapons stuck in its bark."
Mechett's whole life was flashing before his eyes. He expected the creature to stab him in the heart or sever his very head, as he reached for the axe. Instead of that, the gnarly fingers grabbed the red trinket hanging from his hood, tearing a piece of cloth along with it.
"I got that from my grandmother!" Mechett protested. "You can't possibly –"
The Yuzzum first ignored him. He observed the trinket and even bit it once, to make sure it wouldn't break.
"This is it. Give me your knife, midget!"
"What? How do you know I have a knife?"
"Give me your knife if you want me to spare you!"
Mechett looked down. A true Gondula, he didn't like being this high in a treetop for so long. He reached reluctantly into his pouch and handed the only knife he had to the Yuzzum, who, to his surprise, proceeded to stab himself in the eye. Disgusted, the Ewok looked away, as his enemy pulled out his eyeball and stuck the red trinket in the empty socket.
"W-why would you willingly blind yourself?"
"That is not of your concern, midget. I have been looking for this ever since I read about it in my mistress' scrolls! Your burly friend was an unnecessary distraction and I lost my patience. He had to die. I have already spent years trying to locate this gem. I only regret that I couldn't rip it off your hood before I killed him, because using it would have been much more satisfying than fighting! "
Having heard this, Mechett was feeling as if he had betrayed everybody. There had been warnings that something might have been going on, but he had had no way of communicating them to the Elders. He would have had to reveal his source.
"I can see inside your mind, midget. If that Rango loved you and respected you as much as you claim you loved and respected him, why did you keep your biggest secret from him? And, more importantly, why did he keep his biggest secret from you?"
"Rango had no secrets!"
"That's right. Almost right. So, you knew how much he liked a flower in bloom and how many times he stopped to smell a flower until he found the one that smelled just right. But not all that blooms eventually bears fruit. And when it does…"
"I don't care, stranger! Rango had no secrets! And you're a Yuzzum, you're a nobody! You can't judge him! I know how Yuzzums live!"
"And they do. But I am the purest of the pure!"
"I don't believe in purity!" Mechett was furious.
"You don't believe in anything. A true Gondula right there. It will be so much easier to deal with those head-in-cloud Panshees!" The Yuzzum waved his hand. "You have seen too much! And I need to try and to find the right hosts for this hand you so generously severed from me…as well as this eye!"
The Yuzzum directed his finger at the axe stuck in the branch, which started cutting through the bark. Before he knew it, Mechett was falling through the air. He only just managed to grab the very bottom branch, right above Rango's corpse.
A little later, as dawn was breaking, he marched into the village carrying the body of his dead friend. A female clad in a leather dress came out of the first hut.
"Mechett! I have been waiting for you all night. Are you alright? What has happened to Chief Rango?"
"He's dead, Kerida. Go and tell his wife and son and have somebody inform the Council of Elders. I am not leaving him." Breathing heavily, Mechett sat down next to the corpse.
…
After Rango's funeral, the Council of Elders gathered for an emergency meeting. Mechett was nervous. He was looking at Rango's young son, the only Ewok present who was as small as him, sitting at the end of the table. Clad in a washed-out red hood with no trinkets on it, with an empty belt of honour over the front bib, he looked too fragile to be a warrior apprentice.
"So, Mechett, tell us more about the murderer," the elderly and sickly Head Elder Ooba asked, leaning over the table to the healer.
"It was a Yuzzum. A strange, posessed and very thin Yuzzum…I chased him up a tree, but he took my axe and the trinket from my hood. He then stabbed himself in the eye and replaced his eye with my trinket! But it all started when we saw the crescent."
"You climbed a tree?"
"Chak, I did. The Odd Tree. That is also where that evil creature killed Rango!"
The young heir to the throne started coughing and put his hands over his mouth.
"Toughen up, will you?" one of the other Elders yelled at him. He apologised and swallowed a lump.
"He just lost his father, don't be cruel to him." Mechett's wife approached the boy and hugged him. He hit her.
"Shut up and get out of here, Kerida! Women have no rights in the council. If my mother is not here, why are you?"
As two guards escorted her of the hut, Kerida tried to say something, but one of them placed a hand on her mouth.
"We have to escort his family to a safe place," one of the Council members said once the hut was free of women. "This creature may well be after them!"
"Nonsense." The Ewok who had told the young heir to toughen up slammed his fist against the table. "Mechett is lying."
"What?" the whole Council gasped and the heir started coughing again.
"Where is that hand you're talking about? Show us the severed hand and we will believe you." The loud Elder turned away from Ooba towards Mechett.
"The hand probably disappeared underwater."
"Impossible! That tree is too far away from the water!"
"There were so many puddles and it was still raining when I fell off the tree. The hand could be in any of them, deep in the mud."
Ooba was about to say something, but the one particularly pushy member cut him off again.
"Let's get this straight, Mechett: you have no proof and nobody believes you. You had all the reasons on Endor to get rid of the chief. You already disagreed with him when you got married, despite most shamans remaining pure all their life."
"What you call purity is nonsense and you know it! Purity is a state of mind. Did you meet Keoulkeech from the Red Bush Grove? He has children, just like I do!"
"Red Bush Grove? Those no-good Panshees!" Ooba spit on the hut floor. "I don't care what Panshees are doing!"
The pushy one grinned and continued.
"Rango was easily the most handsome chief we have ever had, and also the most honest one. He was strong, burly and big, with fur dark as the darkest night. You, you are barely taller than his son, who is still a wokling, and your fur looks like you rolled around in turd."
"Am not!" the young one protested, but Ooba shook his fist at him. He was starting to like the pushy warrior.
"Lastly, you knew what he wanted from you, in the unlikely case that anything should happen to him. He wanted you to take over as the chief until the boy is old enough to rule us."
"That much is true." Mechett raised his hand. "And that is because he didn't trust you. I can…I can see why. Nobody respects the boy, either. You're trying to fill his head with anger and I don't…I don't know who is the Head Elder here anymore."
Everybody gasped. Ooba snarled.
"Mechett, I choose to believe my most trusted advisor and I don't see anything wrong with it. Rango trusted you too much and that led him to his demise. You probably wanted to get rid of me and the boy and then rule the village as you please." He paused, then continued. "You killed our leader. Therefore you will be executed."
"I have the right to appeal to the rightful heir to the throne."
"Indeed you do." The loud one looked towards the boy. "The young heir of Arankoo family, do you wish to pardon Mechett, the healer?"
"No. I am not pardoning the one who killed my father. And hereby, I appoint Head Elder Ooba, as my lead advisor until I have completed all the trials."
"This is betrayal!" Mechett cried as the guards tied his hands and legs behind his back with a rope, then hung him from a pole. He was in for the harshest punishment – he would be tied up on the top of the nearby mountain's summit with his arms and legs broken and left to be devoured by whatever beasts find him first. No funeral, no name mentioned in the village's songs of remembrance.
The elders went outside carrying their prisoner. Kerida approached them, but they thrust their spears at her. Behind them she managed to see her husband's face for one last time. She looked at Mechett and realised he was trying to tell her something.
"Take the children and run to the forest and head to the other side," she read from his lips. "Don't ask me anything." Ooba walked to her slowly, the boy standing next to him.
"Kerida, he is going to be staked out and punished. Rango's only son is to break his legs. As his wife, you can choose to be present or not."
"I don't want to witness that. Neither do I want our children to be there."
"In that case, go home. We will discuss your fate once we determine if you were involved."
"If I was involved in…what exactly?"
"Shut up!" the boy yelled, spitting in Kerida's face. He reached out to hit her, but Ooba grabbed his hands.
Further away, the advisor to the Head Elder called the two guards over to him.
"Everything is going the way it should. The boy is not going to be a problem. He lives and breathes hate."
"And Ooba?" The taller guard with a bird skull on top of his head was suspicious.
"Ooba is a ninety-snows-old lurdo who does not remember what he ate earlier in the day. If he died tonight, that would be suspicious. If he dies in one moon, however…we can accept that his flame burnt out."
"How about Kerida and her two brats?" The shorter guard with an eye patch reminded the advisor.
"I am almost certain that they will leave the village tonight. In a day or two, we will go after them. Once we find them, we'll deal with them."
"With Ooba around? He will quickly turn the boy against us!"
"What he does not know cannot hurt him. We will say that we're going hunting and that will give us plenty of time to come up with a good story. That crescent Mechett talked about is interesting."
"For many moons one of his brats was drawing lines in the sand and carving them in the hut wall. The last time I saw it, the line did resemble a crescent."
The advisor was puzzled.
"Hmm, that one needs to be kept alive, then. After having been frightened for life, of course. There must be some rumours we can benefit from in this case."
The guard with the eye patch clapped his hands.
"The things my daughter has been telling me recently, about that very one of Mechett's brats…could be useful."
"Tell me all about it, then."