The following afternoon, I walk through Senator Padme Amidala's personal shuttle for the last time. I carefully remove anything that can identify its previous owner. Senator Amidala will be cremated on Naboo, after a brief illness on Coruscant. Her ship can't show up on Tatooine, or the lies we live with will all unravel. It's just a ship, perfect for retrofitting to whatever purpose you see fit, just give me the money in cash and don't ask for registration, as I'd said in a shady marketplace that morning. Someone took the bait within a standard hour.

My meager possessions fit into a very small bag, while the baby's supplies fit into a slightly larger one. Laying the baby on one of the couches, I stuff both bags into the crate I've been using for a cradle. A brief search turns up the crate's lid underneath one of the sleeping bunks, and it fits with only minor shoving. Outside, I strap everything to my eopie. "You're an ugly animal," I say to him, "But you'll carry me a few hundred more kilometers, I think."

I carefully wrap the baby in the cleanest blanket I have, gently folding it so it will shade his little eyes from the twin suns. "I'm taking you on an adventure today. You haven't seen true natural daylight in your whole life," I say, in the sing-song tone I heard Lyda use with him. "I do hope you don't start screaming when you see it, because this place is going to be bright every day of your life. Bright and sandy." A memory stirs, and I add, "I hope you're less fixated on avoiding sand than your father."

With him tucked into my left arm, I descend the gangplank and let it retract behind us. No one is around, so I take a chance on using the Force to jump onto the eopie's back. "How to mount a beast while carrying an infant" is not a subject they ever teach in schools. Once I'm all settled and the baby seems comfortable, I turn the animal's head towards the road out of Mos Eisley.

Twenty minutes' ride beyond the outskirts of the spaceport, ground traffic thins out drastically. Pretty soon, the baby and I are the only beings left in sight.

I look down at the little bundle. His eyes are open, and I give him a smile. "Hello there," I murmur, just to fill some of the silence. "I'm your friend. I'm Ben Kenobi. And you're, well . . . your name is Luke." That brings up a thought: Luke what? It won't be Lars, if your Uncle Owen's attitude is anything to go by. You're entitled to your mother's name, but a Naboo surname on Tatooine would attract attention.

Suddenly more serious, I add, "Your name is Luke Skywalker. I should have called you that from the beginning, but, well . . . maybe someday you'll hear the story of how you came into the universe, and you'll understand that this has been a difficult and chaotic time."

Without knowing why, I decide to keep talking. I'll tell little Luke his story, this once, even if I never get to tell it truly ever again. "Actually, there's quite a long story about how you came to be. Your mother was Padme Amidala Naberrie. She was one of the youngest elected queens in Naboo history. She was a diplomat and a brave warrior and she was kind to everyone. She brokered peace with the Gungans to take back her world. She was a senator, and she was fearless. Her only weakness was that she fell for your father, and that she never gave up on him." In fact that's what got her killed. There's worse things to die for than loyalty, but I wish I could have saved her.

"Well, that's your mother. You had a father, too. Your father was Anakin Skywalker. He was inhumanly good at flying. If a thing had even basic antigravity properties, your father could pilot it. Once when he was eleven I jokingly asked him 'if I levitate that box, can you stand on top and steer by leaning?' He said, 'I'll try.'" I smile at the memory. "Anakin was generous to a fault, when he was a child. He stuck his neck out for people he had no reason to care about, repeatedly. He was a good kid and a good friend. I tried to be a good mentor to him."

Back in the early days of training, Yoda used to tell us younglings "do or do not, there is no try." But sometimes trying is the best you can do. I was barely twenty-four, still a padawan, and Qui-Gon begged me to take care of raising a nine-year-old. What choices did I have?

My left arm is growing sore, so I pass the reins from right to left and shift Luke's weight onto my right arm. "Anakin grew up," I tell Luke, "to be a mass of contradictions. He would still stick his neck out for strangers, but he could also fly into rages and hurt people." Sand people, dismembered, pieces scattered in a gruesome tableau . . . "And he could be a very good fighter, but he hated rules, restrictions. He broke rules just to break them, I think, sometimes. Even ones that had very good reasons to exist. There never was a speeder fast enough for him, never a lightsaber durable enough to last in his care.

"I tried," and I have to clear my throat at the thought, "I tried to rein him in, to get him to focus, but I never managed it. His infractions were mostly minor and forgivable, though. All except for his obsession with your mother." I shall never forgive him for that. In the back of my mind I realize that I'm getting emotional, that I should get my thoughts under control. But I just don't.

"I'm sure if we had him here, he'd swear it was love. But I know what love is, and it's not chasing a woman when you know you can't be her partner in life. It's not faking a marriage with some pointless ceremony. It's not impregnating a Republican Senator when you know full well her career and reputation will be ruined when it comes out that she's unmarried and she can't even name the father publicly. That's obsession. It's—it's exploitation." I spit the word out. "Yes, he was using her. He wanted to possess her and still have his position and his life as a Jedi Knight.

"It's not like there weren't options, if he had bothered to explore them. If he had truly loved her, he could have left the Jedi order for her. Not many Jedi did that, but there were a few over the centuries. He could have been with her and raised you and your sister, but he didn't." Did it even come up? Did she ask him to do that, when they fell in love? What did he do to her to make her risk her own position to save his?

"I heard her ask him to run away with her, once. But he wasn't himself by then. We were on a world even hotter than this one, and he lost his temper much worse than he ever had. Anakin perverted the Force and used it to choke the life out of Padmé, then left her unconscious on the ground. He never even paused to check her pulse." I did. In the end, I loved her better than he did. There's something cruel in that. My throat is tight and sore, but I keep talking. I say, "I'm still not even sure how the three of us got to that point."

I truly can't stop now. Everything I've been wondering about for the past 9 standard days is spilling out, with no one but a newborn Luke to hear it. I've been distraught for days, and I'm finally letting myself feel it. "How blind was I that I couldn't see him getting swallowed by avarice? How did a woman like Padme Amidala give him such power over her? Why did she give up when I begged her not to? What did Chancellor Palpatine—or Emperor, or whatever he's calling himself now—what did he say to convince Anakin that slaughtering other sentient children was the right way to save his own? Why didn't Anakin sense the darkness in Palpatine? Why didn't the Council smell a trap? How did this happen?"

We're smarter than this.

Apparently not.

A quiet, grizzling cry comes from my right arm, and I realize that I've squeezed Luke too tightly. "Sorry, son, I'm sorry," I say, clearing my throat and returning to sing-song tones. "Your Uncle Ben is just talking about nothing. I'll never tell that nasty story again, not until you're a grown man, I promise, it'll be a solemn secret with me." I wipe the tears off my face with my left sleeve and I loosen my grip, just enough to let the swaying motion of the eopie soothe Luke.

When he's calm again, I revise the story for him. "Your name is Luke Skywalker. You had a grandmother, but she's joined the Force now. You had a grandfather, but he's one with the Force as well. Your parents are both dead." I killed one of them personally. "But you're alive. You have a sister, Leia Organa, I hope you'll meet her one day. She might grow up Force-sensitive. You will, too. I think. We had to test you both the very same day you were born, so it's hard to tell. Anyway, you have an aunt, Beru, and an uncle, Owen. We're going to see them now. They already love you so much. They'll be the best parents they can." Oh, how I hope they're better at parenting than I was. "You have me, too. I'm your crazy uncle, Ben Kenobi. I'm harmless but strange. I'll protect you, son, as if you were my own."

I rein up the eopie for a moment, lift Luke's tiny body, and press a kiss on his head. "My own," I repeat.