On the outskirts of the far-flung moisture-farming community of Anchorhead, the day was just beginning. The barest silver crest of the suns could be seen over the horizon, but the dim conditions did not deter the human inhabitants – a man, a woman, and two hired hands – from their duties. Breakfast and morning routines having been completed, they now bustled about the homestead, checking the security monitors, fixing droids, and preparing speeders to check on the more remote vaporators.
None of them had any clue that they were being watched.
"Which one's the female?" asked Lizard, poking his head over the rock. "Can't tell with these outsiders…"
"Get down!" hissed Weed. "Idiot, do you WANT your head shot off?"
"Not that it would be a big loss," muttered Thunder-Cry in a voice just a step above his breath. "Not like he uses it anyhow…"
"Hey!" barked Lizard, glowering at his older companion. "I do too…"
"Shut up!" snapped Weed.
The three Tusken youths crouched behind a sand dune, watching the homestead from a relatively safe distance, lying flush with the sand to blend in as much as possible. They were taking a huge risk – outsiders loved nothing more than to shoot Tuskens on sight – but none of them feared discovery. Their banthas were tethered to a rock formation a five minute walk away, so there was nothing to betray their presences unless one of them happened to stand or one of the homestead's inhabitants happened to look at the right spot for longer than a few seconds.
If an outsider had glimpsed these young creatures and stopped to fully absorb the sight of them before shooting, they might have decided that they all looked the same. But upon closer inspection – which outsiders rarely gave a Sandperson – they would have caught the subtle differences between them. Weed was as skinny as his namesake, and one of his shoulder straps bore a dozen or so small notches to represent some achievement or other. Lizard was stockier, but not much more so, and his robe and body wrappings had suffered more abuse than those of his friends. Thunder-Cry was a good handspan taller than his fellows, broader in the shoulder, and unlike the other two he wore the warrior-spines in his head-wrap that set him apart as an official adult, worthy of his adult name.
"That one," murmured Lizard, cautiously extending an arm and pointing. "I think that's the female. The one with the blue tunic."
"That's a female?" asked Thunder-Cry disdainfully. "She's ugly!"
"No uglier than your girlfriend," teased Weed.
"What girlfriend?"
"Oh come on!" Weed laughed. "We all know how much you obsess over Rain-Singer…"
"I do not!"
"Then how come you moon over her whenever she shows her face outside her tent?" taunted Weed. "Word of advice – find someone else to worship. She's the daughter of the chief. He's going to marry her off to one of the great dragon hunters, not some desert rat who just got his warrior-spines."
"Actually, I heard my father talking about Rain-Singer," Lizard offered. "Apparently he's negotiating a truce with the Serpent Clan."
"What's that got to do with…" began Thunder-Cry.
"One of the conditions," Lizard continued, unperturbed, "is that Rain-Singer marries the son of the Serpent Clan's chief."
The three of them shared a convulsive shudder. Few Tusken tribes were as savage as the Serpent Clan – brutal and lovers of conquest and bloodshed, they were known to lead daringly suicidal raids on Jawa Sandcrawlers, the outsider's white-armored soldiers, and even towns as large as Mos Eisley. Even members of their own tribe weren't safe, for while all Tuskens honored the Suns and Moons with ritual sacrifices, the Serpent Clan's ceremonies included the obscene practice of sacrificing other Tuskens. Not just criminals, either – warriors, even children, were offered to the skies.
And most horrifying of all, rumor had it the Serpent Clan had the power to spit streams of blood at attackers, just like fire-snakes could shoot their venom…
"Poor girl," Thunder-Cry murmured.
"Poor son of the chief," retorted Weed. "Rain-Singer's no catch. She's fat and lazy and she doesn't even bother to keep her wrappings tidy…"
"Lizard doesn't bother to fix his wrappings, so why pick on Rain-Singer?" demanded Thunder-Cry.
"I try!" protested Lizard, his hand immediately moving to cover a ripped arm-wrap. "But as soon as I fix one, another gets torn…"
"Besides, Lizard's not the son of the chief," Weed pointed out. "He can be excused. But isn't the chief's daughter expected to keep up with appearances…"
Thunder-Cry sniffed. "As the only true adult present, let me remind you cubs that appearances aren't everything. Plump and untidy Rain-Singer may be, but she has a good heart. That's all I care about."
"Ha," muttered Lizard. "You just want to corner her in the newlywed tent without her face-wrap."
"Shut up, Lizard!"
"Will you be quiet!" hissed Weed. "They'll hear us."
"All right, seeing as appearances aren't everything…" Lizard pointed to one of the outsiders. "What do you think of that one."
Thunder-Cry recoiled. "Ugh! What is that on his face, mold?"
"I think they grow hair on their faces," Weed replied. "Some of them get as shaggy as banthas."
"Disgusting," Lizard groaned.
"Repulsive," Thunder-Cry agreed.
Weed watched as the hairy-faced one climbed into one of the outsiders' mechanical beasts of burden, joined by his farmhands. The machine flew off with a screeching whine, keeping low to the ground as if the presence of outsiders weighed it down. When the beast had gone – in the direction opposite the Tuskens, thankfully – Weed turned to Lizard with a cock of his head.
"Hey Lizard, take a bet?"
"No way," Lizard said at once. "Last time I took one of your stupid bets, I was shoveling droppings for a week."
"C'mon, no one will even find out!" Weed protested.
"Yeah," Thunder-Cry added, joining in on the proceedings. "We're not even supposed to be out here in the first place. What reason will we have to tell?"
Lizard eyed them suspiciously. "What's the bet?"
Weed bobbed his head. "I bet you a month's worth of doing chores that you can't sneak into the outsider's den and bring something out."
Lizard stared at him. "You're kidding, right?"
"Nope," Weed replied cheerfully.
"Weed, that's not even funny," Thunder-Cry said firmly.
"You wanted him to take the bet…" Weed protested.
"I thought you'd be betting on how long it would take for the outsiders to come back because they forgot some tools, not trying to get Lizard killed…"
"Look, the males are gone, and they'll probably be gone for a long time," Weed said persuasively. "You know how they fuss over their shrines or artifacts or whatever they are for hours at a time. It's just the female down there, and we all know that outsider females are worthless fighters. And besides, it's still dark out, so no one's going to see him. What trouble is Lizard going to get into if he goes down there? Unless, of course, he's too afraid to do it…"
"I'm not afraid," Lizard insisted. "I'll do it."
"Swear it?" asked Weed.
Lizard sighed. "Fine. I swear by the Suns and the Moons."
"Struck," Weed grinned.
"And witnessed," added Thunder-Cry.
They struck palms on it. Then Lizard edged stealthily over the sand dune and stalked slowly toward the homestead.
"I hope you know what you're getting him into," he heard Thunder-Cry growl warningly to Weed. "If anything happens to him, it's you who has to answer to Red-Dragon, not me…"
Lizard hunched low to the ground as he crept toward the weird dome-shaped den of the outsiders. Let Thunder-Cry get paranoid. He was simply letting his newfound maturity get to his head. Never mind that when he still went by his child-name, he'd gotten into worse scrapes than Lizard ever had. No, now that he'd gotten his warrior-spines and adult name he knew everything there was to know about being an adult, and all his former friends were just stupid kids who were always getting into trouble.
He'd show Thunder-Cry. And he'd give him no excuse to report back to Lizard's father. If Red-Dragon found out that Weed had goaded his son into approaching an outsider's den – or "barbarian's nest," as he called it – it would earn both boys a severe punishment. It would be weeks before either of them would be able to ride their banthas comfortably again.
The silly bravado of youth that passed for bravery kept his spirits high as he approached the den's entrance, but when he finally reached the sunken courtyard and peered down he felt that bravado flee him like liquid from a slit water-skin. The horror tales exchanged around evening campfires treated the outsiders as ruthless creatures far worse than even the dreaded Serpent Clan. Lovers of warfare, greedy, obscene, ignorant of the spirits of the desert and the balance of nature, wantonly destroying and claiming… And though they had no control over the desert spirits, they still possessed some strange power in their mechanical artifacts, a power that was so great they could harness it to fly through the stars!
And he was about to go willingly into the abode of these beasts.
He would have turned around right then and there and gone back, but he could feel Weed and Thunder-Cry's expectant eyes on him. Pumping his fist in a gesture of bravery, he located a set of stairs carved into the courtyard wall and descended, trying his best to disguise his trembling knees.
The female outsider was nowhere to be seen, which was a blessing. He murmured a silent prayer to the Moons for keeping the Suns at bay long enough to hide him, then cast about for something to take back with him. He needed proof that he'd been down here…
A shimmer of silver caught his eye, and he bent to pick it up. It was a metal tool of some kind, shining and slender, nothing like the age-dulled gaderffi and knives and pots his people pounded out of the scavenged scraps of shipwrecks. And best of all – to Lizard, at least – there were no buttons, switches, or anything else on this tool that indicated it was a dangerous artifact.
Tucking the tool into a pouch on his shoulder strap, he turned back to the stairs, glancing up just to make sure his path was clear. The shroud of night still covered the sky, though the rising Suns were just beginning to chase the stars from their places. He could still clearly see the many flecks and fires of the night…
Strange… did that star just move?
He froze in his tracks, his heart hammering its way up his throat. A great shining star, gleaming white in the sky, slid across the dark blue of early morning, green fire sparking from it like lightning from a cloud. A smaller star hung just before it, leaving a trail of blood-red sparks as it fled the larger star.
Lizard watched in wonder. So stars could move in the heavens too. Did that make them spirits, just like the Suns and Moons? Did they lie dormant in the night, only awakening to engage in battles such as this? And how had one star managed to incur the wrath of its brother?
He had to tell Wind-Dancer about this. She would be tickled to hear about it…
His thoughts were interrupted by an insistent push from behind. Not a physical push, however, not hands in his back. This was almost like a strong wind only he could feel, a thrust to his spirit that his body had to obey. Without thinking he fell flat on the ground…
…just as a blast of fire seared the wall where his head had been.
He scrambled to his hands and feet and looked up to find himself making eye contact with the female outside. Her face was completely, obscenely naked to the world, as were her hands and throat. Fur covered the top of her head and hung down like a silver-black hood around her face. And in her hands she clutched a rifle – not the projectile rifles his people used, but an outsider's blaster weapon.
"AAAUUUUGGGHHH!" he bellowed, scooting away on all fours for a few seconds before he managed to scramble to his feet.
The woman shouted something at his back – something that sounded suspiciously to his ears like "And don't come back, you scoundrel!" – as he bolted up the stairs and ran for all he was worth to the sand dune that concealed his friends…
Just as the males returned in their mechanical beast.
"By the eyes of the Moons, what did you do?" demanded Thunder-Cry.
"Worthless fighters my eye, Weed!" he screeched, vaulting behind the dune just as the outsiders redirected their course to pursue the Tuskens. "That female almost scorched me!"
"And so you led them right to us!" howled Weed.
"Nice going, dewback-breath!" growled Thunder-Cry. "Quick, let's try to lose them!"
"How?" panted Lizard as they bolted across the desert, the soft sands hampering their feet. "The banthas are too far!"
"This way!" Thunder-Cry ordered, leading them to another dune.
The younger Tuskens followed their elder comrade over the sand dune and into the trough between two of the rises. Together they hunched low, heads down, hands and feet sunk into the sands, only their backs offered to the sky. With the outsiders looking for fleeing Tuskens, not sand-colored lumps in the dunes, it would be harder for them to be spotted… but not impossible. They could only hold their breath and pray the Suns would have mercy on foolish youth.
At long last the weird cry of the mechanical beast faded, and with sighs of relief they extracted themselves from the sand.
"That was too close," Thunder-Cry exhaled.
"You should talk," Lizard humphed. "You weren't shot at."
"I don't suppose you remembered the bet in all your stirring up trouble," said Weed, dusting off his hands on his robes.
"Oh yeah, here." Lizard plucked the tool from its pouch and handed it over.
"I don't believe it," Weed grinned, taking the item and examining it carefully. "You did it!"
Thunder-Cry cocked his head. "You almost got shot by an outsider for THAT? You're braver than I thought."
"Ha ha," Lizard grumbled sarcastically. "Let's get to the banthas."
Weed glanced up. "Uh-oh."
"What do you mean 'Uh-oh?'" demanded Lizard.
"Here comes your sister, Lizard."
"Oh great," he groaned, turning in place.
"Oh, don't sound so happy to see me," a merry female Tusken advised, kneeing her bantha to a halt about five bantha-lengths from the boys. Veiled in the elaborate wrappings and robes of her calling as a Daughter of the Moons, she was so bedecked with beads, animal teeth, and outsider-pilfered jewelry that she clattered and jangled with every move. Her bantha, an elderly silver-haired creature appropriately named Slowfoot, also chimed musically with every ponderous step, his harness and horns gleaming with bells and rattles. And in place of the gaderffi typically carried by all Tuskens over the age of twelve summers, she wielded a staff carved from the leg bone of a krayt dragon, etched with the runes and symbols of the many rituals her order carried out on a regular basis.
"I just happened to find your boys' banthas," she continued in her cheerful manner, gesturing to the beasts tethered in a neat row behind her. "So I figured I might as well catch up with you and return them."
"Don't fool us, Wind-Dancer," grumbled Thunder-Cry, reaching to grab the reins of his dark brown beast Crusher. "You're looking for volunteers for your next stupid Moonlight Ceremony…"
"Now now, Thunder-Cry, participating in the Moonlight Ceremony is a privilege, not a punishment," she chided. "It's a good means to burn off your excess energy, you know."
"Getting chased around by psychotic priestesses isn't my idea of a privilege," snapped Weed, vaulting onto his sand-colored Archer.
"You just have no sense of fun…" Her gaze rested on Lizard. "Hold still, little brother, you have a bad rip."
Lizard, who was just getting one leg up onto Cyclone's back, froze. Slash it all! Not only had he almost gotten himself and his friends killed by outsiders, he'd managed to tear his wraps escaping from their den! The penalty for exposing flesh, even accidentally, was banishment…
Wind-Dancer leaned over to reach her brother's arm, wrapping a piece of cloth around the torn area and knotting it securely. "That should hold until we get home and can repair it."
"Thanks," he sighed gratefully. "I owe you."
She cocked her head slyly. "Help us with the Moonlight Ceremony?"
"Sure, whatever." He climbed fully onto Cyclone's back. "You're not going to tell Father about this, are you?"
She cocked her head to the side. "I don't know. As a family member and your guardian, I'm obligated to protect you from harm. And yet, as a Daughter of the Moons, I'm also obligated to report infractions of Tusken laws to the appropriate parties. And seeing as you three deliberately approached a known outsider den, quite contrary to the chief's edict…"
The three boys groaned.
"I judge this a severe enough infraction that it not be turned over to your parents, but dealt with by a holy woman. And seeing as I'm the only available holy woman at the moment, I hereby declare the three of you shall serve sentry duty for the next moon."
Thunder-Cry groaned again, but Weed and Lizard sighed in relief. So long as they wouldn't have to endure their fathers' switches, they would do anything, even groom Wind-Dancer's bantha, to make restitution for their troublemaking.
"Now you two head back to camp," she ordered Weed and Thunder-Cry, gesturing to the northwest. "I have things to discuss with Lizard. Family matters, not for your ears."
"Tell him off good for us," advised Weed, and he and Thunder-Cry kicked Archer and Crusher into full gallop.
Wind-Dancer urged Slowfoot forward at a more sedate pace, Cyclone plodding alongside. The sky took on a pinkish hue as the Suns cast their bright robes upon the land, gradually warming the air and throwing back the shroud of night. The rolling dunes gave way to hard-packed ground as fissured and cracked as a dewback's egg about to hatch, with flame-red cliffs gleaming in the distance. Lizards and snakes fled before the heavy tread of the bantha's feet and the warming touch of the sun that would shortly grow harsher.
"I sense there's something you wanted to tell me, Lizard," she said at last.
Lizard explained what he had seen back at the outsider's den. Wind-Dancer listened attentively, nodding every now and again.
"So could it mean that the stars are… alive?" he concluded.
Wind-Dancer considered. "The Sons of the Suns and the Daughters of the Moons have long declared the stars to be without spirit," she said slowly. "It could very well be that we have been wrong all this time, and the stars indeed play a role in the heavens – a small role, but a role."
Her declaration did not startle Lizard in the least – Wind-Dancer was always like that. While the Sons of the Suns were sticklers for tradition, the Daughters of the Moons tended to throw tradition to the wind and would question everything relentlessly. And while Wind-Dancer was no renegade, she was also infamous for routinely throwing out highly controversial ideas that even most Daughters of the Moon would balk at.
"Or," she continued, her voice growing uneasy, "it could be that the outsiders are at work."
Lizard tilted his head at a puzzled angle. "I've seen their ships fly overhead. They look nothing like stars."
"Not when they're very high up," she replied. "When they fly so high that air itself vanishes and the Earth-Mother is but a golden jewel to their eyes, they do indeed look like stars. Often they are small and faint, like the one that shot red sparks in your story, but a bright one…" She shuddered. "It would mean a ship far larger than I have ever seen or heard of to be a star that bright."
Lizard mulled that over. "Do you think more outsiders will be coming? Will they try to form new dens and new hives?"
"Cities, Lizard," she corrected. "Not hives, but cities. And there have been no new cities built in these parts for over forty summers. I don't see why a new one would suddenly spring up." She shook her head. "No, whatever goes on is for outsiders, and outsiders only. It is not our problem."
"Should we tell the tribe?"
She laughed. "Oh, Chief Stone-Shadow has enough on his plate to worry about than what a few fool outsiders are doing up in the sky. The truce and the wedding, you know."
"Oh." A thought suddenly occurred to him. "The wedding isn't going to interfere with… you know…"
"Your birthing-day and your Adulthood Ceremony? Never fear, my brother. A wedding can be delayed. A birthing-day cannot. You'll have your Adulthood Ceremony, and you'll receive your name and calling." She cocked her head slyly. "You still haven't told me what name you want…"
"Like I keep telling you, I haven't decided yet! I've tried out several, but… none seem to fit."
"Fine, you don't have to tell me if you don't want," she said in a mock pout. "But you'd better choose carefully. You'll be dragging that name around the rest of your life, remember."
"I've dragged 'Lizard' around for long enough," he complained. "Honestly, I thought parents were supposed to love you."
She laughed. "Come now, child-names are a protection. They prevent dark spirits from taking your soul by protecting your identity. And really, what dark spirit wants a lizard's soul?"
"Still, I'm tired of embarrassing myself by responding every time some kid announces he's caught a lizard." He sighed deeply. "What I'm really worried about is the calling. I mean, I don't want to be stuck as a bantha-herder all my life…"
"In all honesty, my brother, I think you'll be recruited as a Son of the Suns."
He gave a wounded moan. "That's even worse."
"Come now, it's a perfectly respectable…"
"But there's nothing exciting about it! Sons of the Suns have power, sure, but they can't do anything with it! They can't marry, can't fight or hunt or go on raids, can't leave the encampment without having to purify themselves for a week afterward… they can't even eat meat, for the sake of the Moons!"
She laughed. "Whereas the Daughters of the Moons are free to do whatever they please, to the eternal envy of the other women of the tribe." She gave a sympathetic roll of her shoulder. "Unfortunate that there is no calling for a Son of the Moons, but everyone knows the Moons only choose daughters while the Suns only choose Sons."
Lizard wished it otherwise. He had witnessed and even helped with many of the Daughters of the Moons' ceremonies, and he had found them exhilarating. But to be a Son of the Suns and spend his days scratching in the sands, meditating, studying shadows and animal tracks for hours on end to divine the future, seemed completely pointless. He would rather be a warrior, or a guard, or a dragon hunter, or a raider… stang, even a consort to a Daughter of the Moons would be better!
But if Wind-Dancer had declared him an ideal candidate for a Son of the Suns, then there was no arguing it. For like all Daughters of the Moons, she had a powerful gift… and hers happened to be that of soulsight, of looking into a person's soul to divine their intentions and destinies.
"Chin up, my brother," Wind-Dancer said gently. "I've been wrong before. And you can always put in an appeal."
"Ha," huffed Lizard. "Remember what happened when Fire-Stalker appealed. He was married and had a child by the time they chose a new calling for him, and it was worse than the first."
"Then learn to make the best of it," she advised. "Come now, let's have some fun. Race you back to camp."
"On your old fat cow?" he taunted, feeling his spirits rise at once at the prospect of a race. "I'll run circles around her." And he kicked Cyclone into a run.