"There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that."- Oscar Wilde
Walking down the dark hallway light flickered and danced against the stone walls of the old lake home. My heart pounded in my chest, and during these heavy seconds a distant forever filled screaming rang in my ears. I followed, my eyes on the girl, her blonde hair flickering in the illuminated orange light. It felt as if the sounds that were filling my ears, lead straight into the glowing room at the end of the hall. Emotions still pounding me, my eyes transfixed on as the girl as she turned around and gave me a slight smile. Filled with innocence.
Complete and utter innocence. Her blue dress seemed to still carry the outside balcony's moonlight, silvery and full. But what was distracting me more where the words. That started to weave in and out. Distant and never clear. The screams. The words. Just muffled sounds, wordless emotions, and blurry faces that didn't add up. I stopped. She was staring at me.
Her large blue eyes peering, waiting, her fair small hand pointing forward, she looked at me. We had stopped walking, and had reached a small room. There was fire burning in the kept up old fireplace, and moonlight drifting in through the overgrown vines dancing in patterns along the leather fainting couch. But that wasn't important. Even in my drunken and surreal state I knew that much. What my eyes went to first, was the old woman. Her face looking down, she had been reading large leather bound book. Like the girl, she did not look at me first. But when she did, it was then I knew I couldn't look away or turn back.
Her face was worn, aged, her hair a fading brown hung loose silvery white streaks running through. She had once been some kind of beautiful. But it was her eyes. Her eyes I could not describe to you or anyone, even now. There were no words to them. Except for that what thoughts first floated into my mind when she looked through me straight on. Haunted.
Traced by time and secrets looked to be inscribed into the very freckles of those indescribable eyes.
"So you've come." She spoke in a smooth motherly tone. The kind of voice you wanted to listen to. One you wanted to hear. One that held something important to say. One that burns into your stomach a feeling of knowing they possess a far greater knowledge than you know you may ever will. "You've come to hear the story, like many before you have, and I always knew you would...sit down my dear, this will be all night. But by the end you will know. Just like you always have. The tragedy that haunts us all."
With that she motioned for me to sit. I did as I was told and half in an effort to cater to the dizziness that surged through my body. Caught on this strange night, I was doing anything but thinking. The girl sat near the fire, and near the old woman. Her blue dress sprawled out around her. She looked up eagerly at the Old Woman, her large blue eyes looked as they could barely contain the anticipation. She waited in such anticipation as I sat dizzily, for a promised something I had no idea I was about to receive.
She studied me with the eyes. And began to speak in leathery words again.
"I wasn't sure you'd come this soon. But then again, time brings the unexpected. This I've known by now. Destiny, time, fate." Her hands clasped and even they looked to be knowing. Knowing of something. Of everything.
"Time has passed and filtered a lot, but it is in this place now that we sit this night, you may call me Mother Narratore. I understand you know a lot, but you don't. Fate has always been a tangle, and not many know things I am about to tell you. Few, very few. The fate of two poured into the fate of many. And that was all it took, just the fate of two."
She breathed deeply at this point, her breath was shaky and had the hints of blackened age creeping up in it.
"But before all of this, before the shadows where cast, and before destiny became a mangled web, before the dark days and everything you know that has come to pass, and before I knew anything of this all, is the beginning of where my own circumstance comes into all of this.
I was a young girl. Barely twelve when my mother sent me to capital city of Theed to work. We were country people, farmers, but my mother was determined to see me become anything but a farmer's wife. I could write, and read very well. But I was shy, painfully shy. My mother was promised I was to become a handmaiden, for the young newly elected queen, people been talking veraciously about. I had gotten a glimpse of her as she visited my small village.
The crowds had been overwhelming but I had seen her. She was nothing like I had ever seen before. Soft but intensely determined eyes, small, but filled with a passion you could practically feel radiating over her and the words that flowed with dignified elegance."
Her mouth turned up a small smile at this. Her eyes once again shifting in direction, almost as if reliving through the words filling the moon and fire lit room
"She held these outrageously noble ideals, and soon gained the trust and love of our entire people. As my mother was promised, I was chosen to be one of her handmaidens. We all worked and lived together, living in the palace. I can never quite remember being as lonely as I was there in those first weeks. The other girls were fierce, determined, but I was shy, quiet, and kept to myself. I cried myself to sleep every night wanting badly to return to my family, and the beautiful countryside I longed for and missed. Soon that loneliness shifted to fear, as our world came under attack. Our planet was invaded, and the others buzzed about it.
For as much time we spent around the new queen, not many spoke to her. She carried herself with a demeanor that one dared not approach. Although I knew she and I were of the same age, she seemed almost, otherworldly to me.
Not of age, or humanity. Something else all together. Everyone treated her with a delicate respect, and as handmaidens it was our duty to protect the queen. Late at night as I slept, I was awoken by Rabe, who found it her role to look after me, the smallest and youngest of us all. She looked at me with glistening eyes and said told me, "Malie, The Jedi have come." I knew what that meant. Even as quiet as I was, I was observant and very bright. I knew that it had become too serious for us all, and that danger was surrounding our planet, choking it. I will not lie, I was very afraid. Very afraid.
We stood the next day in a hanger, with two of the Jedi in their heavy cloaks. I had never seen one before, but I was astounded as I peered through my hood. The Trade Federation had invaded Theed and fear spilled through the streets. Numbers rolled in of those left homeless, dead, or wounded and I watched from a far as the majestic queen looked out across the window. Even in her royal attire, lavish robes, and white makeup, she appeared human in that moment. No one saw a single tear run down her cheek. I'll never forget it, because to me she looked like a fallen angel."
Those words hung for a while. Cryptic, floated into my mind. I wasn't sure of why yet. The fire was still burning, pacing itself throughout the night. The girl still fixed, she dared not take her eyes off of the old woman. I realized then, I hadn't either.
"We all were gathered as Sabe took my hand later that same day. "Come, Maile. Don't be scared. You've been chosen to come to Courscant too." She had spoken to me in a whispered voice. It was if she was afraid they'd hear. The enemies of our secret plan to escape to Courscant to speak with the senate. Some handmaidens stayed behind, with sad faces I hoped they would be alright. I hoped we would be all right too as we took off with the two dark cloaked men, dodging the fire of the Trade Federation. I sat inside and looked off into the distance. I had never been in space, I had never been outside our home planet.
I looked longingly at the green and blue sphere as we went into the unknown. I slept too. There wasn't much else to do but wait. Somewhere in between that something went wrong. We had to emergency land on a desert planet in the outer rim. The cloaked Jedi men were flustered, they spoke with each other in questioned voices. I was afraid to be stuck in this strange place.
As I looked out the window it was nothing but endless white sand and blue sky. Nothing in between. I wondered if any people even lived in this kind of place But of course I knew there had to be something living there, the other girls talked of this strange planet. Of how it was risqué and extremely dangerous.
"A planet of sin."
One of them whispered through clenched teeth. The cloaked men walked off as I watched, with a girl, one of us, but she wasn't familiar. I didn't take time to think about it, I was just so happy I wasn't asked to go off with the strange cloaked men into the sandy dunes and blue nothingness.
They didn't come back for days. None of us were sure what to do, it was assured that things were fine, and that they were finding a way to get whatever we needed. I busied myself and tried not to think about what slimy bottom suckers lived in this dreadful place. I wondered about the girl, and if she was one of us, a handmaiden, how come I had never seen her before?
They did return in a hurried rush. Everything happened at once. Panic spread as it was said that a Sith Lord was after the Jedi. Rushed in with them was a boy. A human boy, with sandy blonde hair and the most intense eyes I have ever seen. They were blue, and full of something. Full of something. He wore wrapped desert wear, and didn't speak much. One of the handmaidens told me he had been a slave.
"A slave." Rabe hissed in the dark as the girls talked. Like it was poison, like he was poison rolling off her tongue. He was defective, and bruised, "a slave."
I overhead the Jedi talking about him, the older one to the younger one, apparently he was chosen. Chosen the older one argued, which I did not understand, but what I did understand from the way they talked in harsh whispers that this boy was something special.
I never spoke to him, but I did watch. One night very late I could not sleep. I kept thinking of the dangers that lay ahead, and my stomach churned as I thought of everything. I wandered into the main hallway of the ship to find the girl who was supposed to be a handmaiden who I did not know. He was looking at her with those eyes, like she was something of an angel. Angel.
Fallen Angel.
That's when it clicked in my mind, this girl was the queen herself. It was queen Amidala, Sabe was filling as her decoy. I hid as he slipped her something. She touched his cheek affectionately and wiped away his tears. My heart still pounding from piecing together the puzzle, I sat stunned until she walked past me, fingering a wooden pendant looking ahead into the distance. She noticed me and stopped. She smiled.
"Can you not sleep?"
"No." I whispered.
Re-adjusting her hood she still held the pendant as she spoke. "I pray to the gods once we reach Courscant everything will resolve itself."
I nodded. Then she asked me something that still haunts me to this day. "Are you afraid?"
I was petrified, but if anything we all are never supposed to be afraid.
"No milady, are you?"
She looked hard into the distance for a second, but then straight at me.
"No. I am not afraid. Even if it means sacrificing everything, I am willing to die in the name of what I love."
Leaving me in the cold hallway she smiled and walked on. I wondered if she knew I knew. I wondered if she cared. Her name was Padme, I found out the next morning. The boy, I found out, had sworn her to be an angel. I had known she was the queen. On Courscant we went to the senate and I sat as Padme, Angel, girl and Queen of the Naboo pleaded with the senate. We returned home and fought in battle, thus freeing the Naboo, but what stuck with me most throughout the entire journey was the boy and Padme.
In the battle of Naboo apparently I was told later the older Jedi had been killed by a Sith Lord.
His dying wish was something of a controversy. The boy, the chosen slave boy, was to be a jedi. In the celebration of Naboo was the last time I saw the strange boy with the intense eyes for a long time.
The older man's wish had been granted. He was to be a, Jedi, too. Peace seeped back into the Naboo's lavish rivers and lakes, and hung in it's green trees and never ending skies. But something shifted as I watched the boy look at the queen and smile, something shifted in my stomach and something churned and I could feel it. I could feel destiny shifting."
