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Our Lady of Sighs 4/?
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com
http://www.demando.net
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Abandoned.
Luke sat, hands between his knees, supporting the weight of the word. The sand was firm and real against him, but the fading light of the suns made the world indistinct and full of possibilities. The shadows were abstract, hidden theta, and Luke felt as if they moved when he wasn't looking.
'By all *fair* terms I should have turned you out to die in the desert after your father--'
Luke hadn't gone back to the garage; he hadn't touched the droids or fixed the vaporator on the south end or even set foot back inside the small homestead. Rather, he wandered the perimeter of smooth sand around the white clay domes, purposeless, like the child he might have been, had Beru not appealed on his behalf. That must have been what happened, he thought numbly, his mind constructing the cold of a Tatooine night, and the sunburnt face of a child who's sandy world went on and on. In his imagination, he made Beru more beautiful, draped her in a silver dress she didn't own, watched it pool around her as she knelt before the child. He had no memory of that night-- it was make believe, but all childhood is myth and prophecy. He thought he finally understood the dark rock wall in Uncle Owen's eyes, and why Beru was always between the two of them.
'After your father--'
If you don't want something, throw it away.
Brushing the hair out of his face, Luke studied his hands. Abandoned; wild abandon, running through the desert as fast as you can, no destination in mind; surrender. Bones under the sand. On the horizon, both suns wavered, yellow and glorious crimson, overlapping in a brightness that made Luke look away. He had no memory of coming to the Lars home, he had no memory of wandering the desert-- if it happened-- it was as if he had simply been born at four in his room behind the kitchen, sitting in the small bed with the blue coverlet. There were stories about childless couples, receiving sons and daughters from the mystery of the universe, out of peaches and wells and rivers-- for a moment Luke considered that Beru's very wanting might have conjured him into being. It had as much sense as anything else.
The shadows began to wither, and Luke climbed to his feet, walking towards the garage with steady, even footsteps. The light came on without his memory of flipping the switch, but he assumed he had done so because it wasn't the first time.
"Artoo?" the concave walls tossed the sound back a him, "Threepio?" Metal on metal, the brush of sand against a speeder, and Luke bent to pass under the low threshold. "Hello?" Reaching for the narrow restraining remote, Luke's thumb moved over the button, eyes scanning the shadows until he saw Threepio's golden orbs-- a parody of the suns.
"I'm sorry sir," Threepio raised his arms in surrender, "I tried to stop him--" then an almost-shudder, the very human fear of death, "Please don't deactivate me."
"No, I wouldn't do that," without thinking, Luke placed his hand on the golden droid's shoulder. It almost seemed as though Threepio relaxed. "What's going on?"
"I couldn't stop him," there was a whir in Threepio's vocoder, a lot like a sigh, "He kept babbling on about his mission..."
"No," Luke's eyes rolled heavenward, his ears already ringing with phrases expressing his failures, all in Owen's voice. "Just great!" Trotting out under the cool sky and sand, he scanned the horizon, tracing the familiar ruins of rocks. "This little droid is gonna get me in a lot of trouble," he muttered.
"Oh, he excels at that," Threepio bemoaned. "Can't we go after him?"
Luke shook his head, swallowing his child's fear, "Not with the Sand People out. They'll slaughter you as soon as look at you."
"Sand people," the droid repeated, "How dreadful."
"No, Uncle Owen will be dreadful, if he finds out about this," the young man replied. He fished his binoculars from his short robe, aiming them towards where the darkness draped heavy. "I tell you what," he turned, handing the double-cylinder to the droid, "Go back to the garage and recharge for the night-- Uncle Owen wants you guys out in the south pasture by tomorrow afternoon, but he won't bother us until then. In the morning, we'll go looking for Artoo. We should be able to get him back with no one the wiser."
"Just as you say, Master Luke," Threepio moved aside, holding his arms bent. Luke watched him go, biting his lip, before taking the back hallway to his room. The narrow bed with the blue coverlet was a comfort; Luke rolled against the wall and listened to Beru's soft hum, seeping like water through the stone, falling asleep against the tone of her voice as he had since his memory began.
* * * * * * * * * *
Luke had only seen a woman cry once before, and it had been nothing like this. Camie, it must have been, or Wedge's little sister-- the one that died in the summer of heat exposure. He remembered the tears running down the face made indistinct by his memory. It was not so much important who was crying as the fact it was being done.
When he was nine, the speeder Aunt Beru had been driving tumbled to the dunes and lolled there while their two bodies were dashed to the sand. Beru's sharp hiss of pain had been the acknowledgement she'd made of the long, deep cut along her leg. Her eyes had been bright, they'd shimmered so blue, but she had not cried.
"The desert longs for water," he remembered her whispering into his hair as night and chill air fell around them. They waited for someone to come looking for them, Luke sheltered in the circle of her arms as the sound of banthas calling echoed in both their spines. "If I cry, the desert will eat my tears." And then, there had been an else-image, a nightmare that sprang from Beru's mind and became real for Luke. They were surrounded by bodies, fallen at odd and inhumane angles, broken to pieces that could not be fixed. They were Tuskens, the bogeyman enemy that Luke had grown up with, but somehow he felt no triumph, no safety in knowing that so many of the savages had fallen. Instead, there was only Beru's memory of the smell of bodies-- Luke had buried his face in his Aunt's neck and breathed in the faded flowers of her scent. He didn't want to see it, didn't want to watch the setting suns throw shadows for corpses that weren't there. He was afraid, not of death, not of the Tuskens, but of...
The villains of his childhood could be killed. He was afraid of the thing that had slaughtered them.
Abruptly, he was there again, amidst the bodies half covered by the sand. It was as if they were growing out of the dunes, these corpses. He sensed, rather than saw, a tear fall into the sand and become instantly swallowed there. There came another and another, pounding in a rhythm like the distant remembered beating of his true-mother's heart behind her warm breast. It was rain, twisted and alien-- it was someone crying.
Raindrops
(Or were they teardrops? He lifted his hand, caught a few of them and found them salty and bitter against his tongue.)
embraced the garden of bodies, laying over them, soaking into their long frames as if to devour them, as the desert devoured the rain. Soaked to the skin, feeling as if all his life (I was born this way) he'd been swathed in regret and longing, Luke leaned down to touch the shoulder of a corpse. He felt the dead skin through the wet robe, thick and leathery, robbed of life. Without really meaning to, he pushed the body so he could see its face.
"No," he wasn't even sure he'd said it aloud, but the sky and the storm rang with his denial. He turned over another body, and another, as if they were stones that might tell his future. "No. No. Oh, please, no." Another body rolled over (my God, they seemed to be doing it on their own now), endlessly, in a counter-rhythm to the rain, until every corpse looked up to the rain with an open mouth.
"NO!"
Each and every one of them had Padme's face.
He turned, closed his eyes, so he would not see Padme's lips lax and overflowing with rainwater. He was a child again, longing for Beru's secure arms, and he felt his mind pull inward and then... PUSH. Away, it seemed to chant in a low, determined voice, go away. His eyes flashed open to see Padme's myriad bodies swept away as if by the hand of some vengeful god. That was when he began to run, because he understood that he'd just seen the power capable of killing Tuskens, of rending bodies as meaningless as grains of sand.
FEAR. (Where does that power come from?)
And a voicelessness came to him, saying, "It comes from you."
He ran, feeling his heels pounding against the backs of his legs, feeling like he would never ever be able to stop. The desert became a forest which he'd only seen in picture-books, and the tall trees came together to form a corridor. He could hear Her crying now; quiet and ashamed, little sobs of determination and long, shallow breaths of exhaustion.
She was Someone.
She was the person he'd loved since before he'd known what love was, or what a person was-- before he'd understood any separation between Her, himself and the other also-loved entity that shared the warm, blood-red ocean.
Her weeping seemed to draw him through the maze of hallways to a room where half the floor was water and light flickered like dream-patterns against the wall. Unable to see her face, he drew closer, but always her features seemed to slip past him. He knew her, he KNEW her; but like a goddess she was simply too beautiful to truly behold. Hair, dark and wild, fell over her breasts and around the two small children she cradled close. She was bent over them, sheltering with her body, as if she could safely swallow them back into the cradle of her hips. Her back, bent and arched like a bow, was exposed-- he could count the elegant notches of her spine. Another came (he did not bother to identify anymore than that), holding a silver knife.
Slowly, the other carved the lines of wings against Her shoulder blades and back. It was like the paint he'd used on the side of the homestead courtyard as a child-- it refused to dry and ran down towards the ground, obscuring the picture. Only then, the paint had been blue, and this was red. Crimson, her lifeblood, washing like slow, sweet molasses over her ribs, the backs f her legs. It merged with the water, spread like a faint stain all around her, until she and her children were an island of red. He understood, suddenly, that this part of the dream had really happened.
She said, she cried, "Oh, Ani... Ani..." Overflowing with emotion, until it seemed to be even in the milk her children drank from her breasts. "Ani..."
And later, "I'm sorry, I love you, my children... I'm sorry." She said the words over ad over again, as if she could not bend them to what she really meant, such was her anguish.
Later still, "I was a fool. I should know that love can demolish as well as build."
The children slept in her arms, and Luke drew towards them, longing for the love She had for her children to be directed at him. She was a mother...
(My mother! MY mother!)
she was brave and kind and she shouldn't have to hurt. Kneeling beside her, Luke wrapped his arms around her from behind-- his turn to shelter her-- and rested his chin on her shoulder. Through the veil of her hair, he could see her sleeping children, and one of them stretched, opened his eyes, and...
Blue eyes blazed before Luke and he woke to stare once more into azure orbs.
Beru was sitting by his bed, strong hands for once still in her lap. Slowly, Luke turned his head so he could see her better. In the dark, she was so much younger, and her eyes were brighter than the best blue sky. She'd covered him with quilt, one that had been begun by hands with a more elegant style and finished with Beru's industrious practicality; the blanket was tucked up under his chin to shield him from the night cold.
"Aunt Beru," he said, looking at her through half-closed eyes. The smooth, work-worn tips of her fingers traveled over his face, tracing eyes and nose, a freckle here and a birthmark there.
"You were having a nightmare," she said, seeming in her own way like a little girl, half-swallowed by her loose nightgown and shawl. "It's alright." He saw that the hallway light was on and spilling through the crack in the door, that the floor was littered with things that had been dashed from the shelves. Raising his eyes to hers in careful question, he grasped her hand. She nodded towards the mess, "I'm afraid I threw the door open a little roughly." The lie was transparent; sometimes things shook as if there was an earthquake, but in the Lars household, it was always ignored. She continued to hold his hand, grip light, as though she might fade away.
He said, "Aunt Beru, is everything alright?"
"Yes," she said, and then again more firmly, "Yes. I just wanted to check on you. When you were little, I sometimes watched over you half the night. I realized I hadn't done that in a while-- watched you sleep, I mean. You've changed so much, Luke. You've grow up."
He couldn't think of anything to say, so he murmured, "Of course", and felt bad when he saw that he had made her feel silly.
"In so many ways, though," she continued with effort, "You're still a little boy. Luke, the Galaxy is such a different place than you can really know."
"I want to see it," he confessed, "I sometimes dream that I try to leave Tatooine, but there's noting beyond here-- reality just stops."
Beru laughed, suddenly-- she was laughing so she wouldn't cry, "I've never been off the planet, Luke. Never once. I was born about forty parsecs from here, and furthest I've been is to Mos Miena. No further than that."
"Never?" he asked, filled with the understanding that for her the sky was sometimes not an endless expanse, but a dome under which she was trapped.
"Nope," she used the slang trying to lighten the mood. "But you know," she ran her thumb over his knuckles, "I've always wanted to see something. I've always wanted... well, it's silly."
He had made her feel old and clingy earlier, and realized how awful that was, so he confessed, "I want to see a field, like in the stories. Green going on forever, maybe with a river and a few trees. I want to see grass and red fruit."
Her smile was so strange, perhaps one of the greatest gifts she'd ever given him, "I want to see the ocean. I want to swim, feel the water. A... friend once told me about a waterfall that runs through a city and into the sea. I want to see that. I want to splash water, waste it, bathe in it."
"Someday," he tasted the word, wondering why he felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, pretending it wasn't there. "Someday, we'll go there, together. And we'll go to Coruscant, too, and see those fountains they show in the holo-books. You can go shopping, too," he added with a smile.
"Buy things we'll never need," she murmured, amused, "Baubles. Vids. Candy."
"We'll buy you a dress, too," he caught from her an image of rich satins and silks, "You'll outshine every princess."
Beru covered her mouth with her free hand and breathed with a shudder. They gripped each others hands because both of them knew it would never happen, and were terrified because they didn't know why. "I'd like that. Let's do that someday."
Softly, "We will."
She laughed again, and it was brittle, "It's so late. I'm sorry I woke you..."
"The nightmare woke me," he reminded her.
She nodded, "Of course." He sat up in bed as she paused in the threshold. Holding the quilt over his lap, he stared at the difference in the style of it's two makers, and wondered who Beru's companion had been. The chrono read two hours before Owen would rise.
"Actually," he said, folding the quilt gently and placing it on his bed, "I should get up. I have some things I need to do before Uncle puts me to work."
"Alright," Beru bit her lip, "Yes, I suppose it's a good idea."
She passed like a ghost through the doorway, and left him to dress.
Luke fetched Threepio from the workshop and sent him out to wait with the speeder. He found himself suddenly turning back towards the homestead, though there was nothing else he needed to get before leaving to look for Artoo. He walked through the courtyard, listening to the machines hum like sleepy animals, then through the cool hallways, knowing the suns would soon rise and banish all else in a blaze of heat. Beru was in the kitchen, lifting pots and dishes with steady hands. She turned towards him as he entered, looking for a moment like a little girl caught. Her face wavered in his mind, became so much younger and childishly pretty. Abruptly, it was gone, and only her bright eyes suggested the Beru of her youth.
"I thought," she lifted a small package, wrapped in dura-cloth, "I thought you should eat breakfast, before you go. I cooked the guro-beans-- it's a little early in the season, but they'll still taste good." She was barefoot, with her modest white nightdress shifting around her.
"Thank you," he took the package from her, set it on the counter and took both her hands in one of his. Once, she had been a large, soft mother-bear woman-- he had been able to sit in her lap, ride on her shoulders. Now, she was small, but still very, very strong. For a moment, they stood apart just like that, until he moved to embrace her. He held onto her, amazed by the solidity of her bones.
"Luke," she said, and then, "I love you. My baby. You are still my baby. You'll always be my baby." She was panicking and he didn't know why, but he was doing it too. He was just going out for an early ride. He'd be right back. They'd sit down and have lunch with Owen-- she'd scold him for something minor and everything would be back to the way it had been.
"I love you, Aunt Beru," he said, and held on tight. Then, gently, he released her and took up the package of guro-beans, a little embarrassed. At the door, he turned and said, "Goodbye." It sounded so final-- he added, "See you in a bit," but it didn't seem to help.
"Bye," she said, "You did remember a jacket for until the suns rise, right?"
"Don't worry, I did." He threw the words over his shoulder, unable to look back.
"Alright."
When Luke was gone, Beru went back to his bedroom, seeing that he had already attempted to clean up the mess caused by his Force-nightmare. Sitting down on the bed, she unfolded the quilt and laid it over her lap. Gently, she reached out for a small, stuffed bantha doll that had been knocked off the shelves; she held it close and squeezed her eyes shut.
She felt more childless than she ever had before.
"He's not coming back," she whispered, confiding in the quiet room. Later, Owen came looking for her, worried, and she reassured him with a dry kiss on the cheek, a token of their long-marriage. He told her she was beautiful, something he hadn't said in so long that it startled her into dropping a bowl. Fervently, she wished he hadn't said anything, hadn't disturbed the feeling of a usual morning that had been fading since Luke left. Determined, she set about cleaning the kitchen, and did not pause in her work until she saw the rows of white Stormtroopers marching up over the dunes.