Child's Memoir

I came across a mystery today, and I turn it over in my hands while the thunder rolls. And I remember an earlier conversation:

"Aren't you going to read it?" Her voice had sounded puzzled, more than anything else.

"Of course."

That wasn't good enough for her. "I mean, you should really read it."

"You mean look into it."

"Well, yeah. It's important, isn't it?"

I hadn't answered her.

I still don't know the answer.

Running a hand through my uncut hair, and my wrist grazing the day-old stubble lining my jaw, I sigh, gazing outside at the storm that so much reflects my mood. I'm not really angry, so much as violently disordered.

My thumb idly riffles the pages while my other hand clenches the little book together. The pages hum by, creating a sort of low buzzing against both my ears and my skin. Faster I rub my thumb over it. Faster. Buzz, buzz, buzz-buzz-buzz buzzbuzz…

I guess I am angry. So what? I have a right to be angry. That doesn't mean I'm going to leave this room and slaughter countless thousands just because of my bad mood. I could, but I don't.

There are a lot of things I abstain from, that way. Like abstaining from telling Lahonna that she can't make me read the book. But of course…that doesn't necessarily mean I won't read it anyway.

I'm not holding anything special. There's nothing I see that's incredibly significant about this one little book. It's not that new, but not too old. It's about two hundred pages thick, but most are empty. Just a few at the beginning. That's all it was ever really about.

I put the thing down on the squat table in front of the chair I sit upon. And stare. A lightning bolt from outside washes the room suddenly with an electric brilliance.

The book's taunting me, I know it. It can feel how much I desperately want to look between its covers, want to throw it outside and burn it. You know when people talked about love-hate relationships? I'd never really listened, just ignored the idea as silly. Now I'm beginning to understand what they meant. A wonderful connection that will never go away, no matter how many times you cajole it, curse it, threaten it, love it.

Hate it.

I throw my head back, leaning into the chair to look up at the ceiling pleadingly. Can't it just disappear? Can't the pages spontaneously combust? Can't a thief suddenly run through the room and snatch it up, never to return?

Cautiously, I tilt my head back down just enough to eye the spot where I put it.

No. The damned thing's still there.

I bend forward, resting my elbows upon my knees and putting my face into my hands. It's really going to make me. It's really going to make me read it.

Realising I need a slap in the face, or a mental one at least, I shake my head. I'm acting like a child, maybe even worse than the brat who wrote in that little book.

There's no choice, really. I pick up the book once again, lean back in the chair, and open the cover to the first page. It isn't that hard. Getting myself to actually read the painstakingly scrawled words, however… That presents something more of a challenge. But I do anyway.

All of the words are legible, unfortunately enough. The child's hand that wrote this was unsteady, but only a little. The occasional letter is backwards, and the sentences, remarkably well-structured for a child of such an age, are openly concise. Punctuated.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Stop criticising the kriffing language skills and read.

I do.

Entry one:

Today Kam came to visit. He comes sometimes. He gave me this journal. He said I might like to write things in it. Mommy smiled a lot while he was there but she looked sad. Why did she smile if she was sad?

Entry two:

Mommy took me out for a walk today. We walked for a long time. We talked about speeders and flowers and where Daddy is. She always gets sad when she talks about Daddy. She says that's because she doesn't see him very much sometimes. I wonder if Daddy likes to go on walks. Maybe when he comes back we can all go on a walk and talk about flowers and speeders and things.

Entry three:

I haven't said anything in this journal for a whole week! That's because I lost it. Tionne helped me find it again. She said having a journal is a good thing to do. I made her promise she would not read in it. She promised she would not. She said she rispected my privacy. I don't know how to spell that right so I asked Mommy. She helps me with spelling things sometimes. She spelled it like this: P R I V A C Y. I hope I got the other word right. But if nobody reads this journal then it will be okay even if I did not.

Entry four:

I didn't see Mommy the whole entire morning today. When I saw her at lunch she held me for a long time. She was crying a lot more than I have ever seen anybody cry. I asked her why she was sad but she didn't tell me for a long time—

I break off suddenly, closing my eyes and slapping the covers together, though one of my fingers obstinately remains to mark the page.

Stop doing this, I instruct myself. You have to keep going. You have to face this.

—but I didn't really mind because I thought maybe I would not want to hear it. It is too bad that I was right about that. She said that Daddy was not going to come home. She said that some bad people had taken him away forever. I think she was very very mad under but didn't want to show me. I wonder why not. I am still very very sad. I will never ever see him again. I wonder if he will be one of those blue see-through people that Tionne told me about. She said Daddy had seen some of his old friends that way. I hope I will see Daddy sometime. Maybe even though he will be blue and see-through he will still be able to go on a walk with Mommy and me. If I keep thinking like this I do not feel so sad. But I hope this will work. I wonder how hard it is to get blue and see-through.

Entry five:

Mommy went away today. She said she was going to visit some of her old friends. She said she might be gone for a little while but she would be back. She said she hoped I would understand someday. I do not know why she said that. She said she was only going to visit some friends. Kam told me a new story today. It was about a very bad man who got in jail because a good man put him there after the good man fell in love with a princess. Kam said the bad man had fallen in love with the princess too because she was beautiful but the good man loved her because Kam said she was beautiful inside too. How can somebody be ugly inside? Is it when they do bad things? Do people have to go to jail when they get ugly inside? I wonder why all thestories that are good have bad people and bad things in them. Why are stories boring when only good things happen to people? That is very strange.

Entry six:

Sometimes I get a song stuck in my head. It is always the same song. I went to Tionne today to ask her what it was. I let her look inside my head. She said she knew it. She said it was called Dance Dance Little Ewok and that Daddy used to sing it to me when I was a baby. She thought maybe that was why it was always getting stuck in my head. I thought that was funny. I thought I could not remmeber remember things when I was only a little baby. Tionne said some things stayed anyway.

Entry seven:

It has been a very long time since Mommy went to visit her friends. It has been three whole weeks! I miss her. Tionne said that happens when you love somebody who isn't here. I asked her if she missed anybody. She said she missed my Daddy very much. She said he had told her lots of things and helped her be a Jedi. I asked her if Mommy would be back soon. She said soon.

Entry eight:

Mommy has still not come back. I wonder if she forgot to come back. But that is wrong because she always remembers things. I hope she will not leave like she said Daddy did. I do not think blue see-through people would be able to hug very well. I still want her to hug me, even when I get bigger. Tionne said that she was sorry Mommy wasn't here yet. She thought maybe Mommy's friends had given her a special job to do. I said I did not know why Mommy would get a job and forget to come back. Tionne said that maybe it had something to do with Daddy. I do not know what she meant.

That's the extent of this little book; for each entry, a page. So much wasted paper after that. So much…

I close my eyes and set the book back down on the table. So I'm done. That wasn't so bad…

I'm not kidding anyone.

"Hey," says Lahonna softly from behind me, somewhere. "You okay?"

"Yeah." I run a hand down my face, suddenly wearied. "I'm all right."

The lightning flashes.

The sense of startlement erupts from her, and I can sense she's been sleeping, how she was shaken out of her lethargy.

I stand and walk around the chair. "You know what? I'm tired of this place."

"Why is that?" she asks wryly, coming up as if to playfully bully me over. "I thought you liked it here. That's why we moved in the first place, isn't it?"

"I know," I say, surprised at the restlessness in my voice. "But I still want to leave."

She glances down meaningfully at the little book lying upon the table. "That have anything to do with it?"

"Maybe. Maybe not." I watch her carefully. Would she be able to figure it out…?

"I see." She nods reasonably. "You, once again, are going to refuse to give me a straight answer." Mincing nimbly over, she snatches up the book from the table and moves to the opposite side of the chair.

"Hey." I walk after her. "That isn't—"

"I'm looking at it," she cuts in, "because it's doing something to you, and I want to know what. Since I'm not going to get a straight answer from you, I'm going to get it from this book of yours." Resolutely, she opens it and begins reading, seeming to watch me at the same time as insurance that I don't make a grab for the book.

That's not what I have in mind, though. I watch as her face turns from puzzled, to a smoothed-over pity, to surprise…to understanding, as she completes the last entry and looks up to me, laying the little journal back down on the table.

"There," I mumble. "Isn't that what you wanted to know?"

"But…" Her brow furrows. "It doesn't make sense. It doesn't—"

"Sure." I gesture offhandedly at nothing in particular. "Sure it makes sense. This kid isn't who you think he is, Lahon. He's changed into something completely different. I…" Running out of words to express myself, and irritated once more, I walk to the window, watching the rain channel down the transparisteel in rivulets as more comes down in sheets.

"He was you," she says quietly, almost matter-of-fact. Almost.

I try to deny the fact that I'm brooding. "Yeah. Mostly."

Her confusion becomes manifest in my senses. "But…what's this about Jedi, then? I mean, it's only mentioned in one entry, but…"

I shake my head. "Ever heard of what happened to that little Order?"

"Yeah, a bit," she says distantly. "Something about Skywalker getting imprisoned by renegades…or was it pirates?"

"Pirates."

"Right, and the Jedi fell apart for a while. I can't believe everything I hear, but I do remember something about several of them turning…dark? Is that the right word?"

"Yeah. About as accurate as it gets."

"And they got a new leader after a little while, but he wasn't the same. I heard Skywalker's family, his wife and kid, just disappeared."

"You've got the basics of the story," I tell her. "Only the wife and kid didn't disappear at the same time."

Now I receive a vivid impression of her jaw dropping, but I still don't turn around. She curses in astonishment, a couple of them words I've never heard but sound distinctly Rodian. That figures; I never took enough time to learn that particular language.

"The wife," I muttered, "learned he wasn't actually dead after spending a while with her old friends. Tried to get him out, but the pirates managed to kill them both. Kind of funny, isn't it, how the same guy who single-handedly blew up the Death Star, led the Alliance to victory, established a new Jedi Order on limited information, survived the Vong invasion, and decapitated their Supreme Overlord could just get killed by a pirate's stray shot."

She's silent, for a long time. "And…the kid?"

"The kid obviously wasn't raised by his own parents. What sort of Jedi Order was it to hang onto, anyway? After a while, he figured out there would be no blue apparitions. There wouldn't even be any real help from inside the Order. So he left. He just forgot about it. He's a normal guy," I mumble, "except for that one kriffing little book."

"You're Jedi?" Lahonna swears again, this time sounding a little fearful.

As the anger rises in me, I clench a fist and let it dissolve away. I can't allow myself to lose control and possibly take it out on her. "I am not a Jedi. That title has lost all the meaning it had left after he died. It's a useless legacy," I snarl quietly.

"Damn," she says after another moment of thought. "I can't blame you for using an alias in that case, but…why couldn't you tell me? Didn't you trust me?"

"The fact that I ever allowed you to know about that journal speaks measures of itself." I turn about and pace back to the chair. "I've never shown it to anyone else."

"Ben Skywalker," she murmurs, moving behind me and slowly starting to rub away the knots in my shoulders. "That explains how you kept on guessing what I wanted for dinner, doesn't it?"

I shrug minimally, then relax under her touch. "It's not that hard. You've got your favourites."

"Huh. Does this mean—"

"No," I mutter. "Vader take 'em. I'm not going back. I don't care anymore. They think I'm dead anyway."

"Really." She doesn't believe me. Lahonna can be a fair truth detector herself, even though I have reason to believe she's every bit as Force-sensitive as a drunken Dug on Fete Day. Although maybe I shouldn't say anything about drunken Dugs on Fete Day. Things have come back to haunt me before.

"I'm as good as dead, to them," I return, a little more sharply than necessary, perhaps. "Sure, they might feel it if I died. But would it really make any difference?"

She seems to completely ignore the rhetorical question and muses: "You know, maybe they just need a new leader. Someone who's actually got what it takes, not to mention a good amount of public recognition."

"Oh, hell, no. I'm staying right where I am." I shift my head to look up at her from an angle. "Don't you get any funny ideas."

She smiles sweetly as her fingertips dig in harder. "Of course not. But seriously, you should think this over."

"You think I haven't been for the past fifteen years?"

"That's not what I meant. I think the Jedi need another Skywalker, and you know it. Why are you hiding? You've got what it takes."

"You don't know what it's like," I mumble.

"You're right," she agrees. "I don't. But I still think you should go to them and see what you can do."

"I thought you hated Jedi."

She considers this as she massages a little lower. "Not all of 'em. Some freak people out, like what I heard about the kid who blew up a bunch of stars. But if all Jedi were like you or your dad, I think it would work out."

A smile twitches at my lips. "What about your supervision of that spice run a few months back?"

"Oh, I'm sure you can overlook some things. You're not entirely clean, either—you piloted that ship."

"All right," I sigh. "If it'll get you to shut up about this, I'll contact the Order."

"You just thank your stars that you didn't wind up looking more like your dad, or no one would leave you alone."

I crane my head back. "The son of a Tatooine farmboy and an Imperial assassin returns to save the day. What do you think of that?"

Lahonna shakes her head. "Dammit, that sounded like something out of one of those weak old holodocumentaries. If you'll take my advice, you should work out a better catch phrase or the galaxy will never like you."

"I know," I mock-mourn. "Why didn't Dad save any Death Stars for me?"

"Selfish brat." She smiles, draws back her hands, and leaves the room with quiet steps.

I stay in the chair another while, gazing up at the ceiling.

The lightning once again flickers, the electric blue lighting up everything in my vision. It's refreshing, in a way, and I no longer feel that pulling urge to pack up and fly offplanet.

Do I let the dead lie? I wonder. Or do I call the Order? What'll they do about it? Will they even recognise me?

The thunder that rolls through the room and vibrates the solidness underneath me covers the soft little sound that starts up, but only for a moment. As the rumble passes through and diminishes, I hear the melody.

And stand in sudden fright, though I can't figure out why. It's just a simple little tune. Terribly familiar, but… Just a tune.

As the melody of 'Dance, Dance, Little Ewok' pauses then repeats itself just as quietly, I can hear a voice dredged up from early memory humming along to it. I can't exactly decide whether I like the results that have vaulted from this mystery in the form of a little, mostly empty book. But I have promised I'll do something about it.

I head for the little comm unit in the corner. There's a call to make, long overdue.