"Oh, my lady, I'm so relieved to see you safe! Cee Threepio exclaimed as I entered the main hold. Artoo Detoo bleeped his own welcome.
I scraped up a smile from somewhere for Anakin's droids. "Thank you both but everything went exactly as planned, so there's nothing for any of us to worry about now."
"I'm very glad to hear that." said Threepio with some emphasis, then added: "You know Master Anakin counted on us to take care of you for him, my lady, and though we're only droids we do try."
"And you do very well." I said soothingly, trying not to show my distress at the mention of Anakin's name. "You've both been invaluable to me."
"Thank you, my lady." said Threepio, pleased. And Artoo gave a long cheerful whistle.
I changed out of my burial robes in one of the tiny crew cabins then joined Raj in the cockpit. "Where are we going?" I asked, slipping into the co-pilot's seat.
"I don't know exactly." he confessed. "Master Yoda just gave me a set of co-ordinates, no planet name."
I leaned forward and called up the numbers then fed them into the nav-computer. It buzzed and clicked and produced a flashing 'no match'. I blinked, double checked, and frowned. "According to the computer those co-ordinates mark a spot about five hundred parsecs above the galactic plane and there's absolutely nothing there."
"Maybe we're going to rendezvous with another ship?" Raj offered.
"Maybe." I forced myself to shrug it off. "Master Yoda must know what he's doing."
"Mmm." said Raj, not altogether encouragingly.
'Everything I've done, I've done for you.' Anakin said, his eyes glowing red with reflections of the lava pools.
My own eyes popped open. "That doesn't make any sense!"
"M'lady?" Raj looked at me, startled.
"I was remembering what Anakin said to me on Mustafar." I explained. "He said he'd done it all for me and he talked about us ruling the galaxy together...but I never wanted that kind of power and he knew it!"
Raj frowned. "I can't believe he wanted it either. Master Anakin never talked about ruling, only about the power of the Force."
"He said the Sith way had made him more powerful than any Jedi." I said, but Raj shook his head firmly.
"No." he said with quiet confidence. "That's not possible. The Sith way can only destroy, it cannot build or heal." suddenly the certainty on his face faded into puzzlement. "Master Anakin was a maker, a creator, not a destroyer. The Sith way offers nothing that he would want."
It was my turn to shake my head, abandoning the puzzle. It didn't matter now Anakin was dead. "It was Palpatine," I said bitterly. "somehow he twisted Anakin's nature, turned him against his better self." Raj looked back out the canopy, mouth tightening. I hesitated a moment, then asked anyway: "Raj, exactly what relation are you to the Emperor?"
"Second cousin once removed - or so he said." the boy shrugged a little, still not looking at me. "But I don't know if I should believe anything he told me now."
"Do you know anything else about your family," I persisted, "your parents' names, where they lived on Naboo?"
Another shrug. "I never thought to ask. The records must have been lost with the Temple so now I'll never know."
"I'm sorry." I said.
"I don't care about that." he said vehemently to the whiteness of hyperspace. "The Jedi were my family, Master Anakin was like my father!" he still wouldn't look at me but I could see the tears gathering in his eyes.
"He was my husband," I said softly, "but he tried to kill me too."
Slowly Raj let out a long breath. "That's what I really find hard to believe." finally he turned to look at me, brow creased in a puzzled frown. "I can see Master turning against the Jedi, and even against Obi-Wan and me because we're Jedi, but not against you. He didn't just love you, m'lady, he believed in you, and in your love."
Now it was my turn to blink back tears. "That's what I always thought too."
We kept watch in the cockpit as long as we were within Republic - I mean Imperial - territory, not quitting it until we'd left the galactic plane for the empty wastes of the void. Artoo and Threepio were waiting for us in the main hold, the latter seated at a corner table, the former doing something to an open circuit panel.
"Are you hungry, m'lady?" Raj asked.
"Yes." I said, in some surprise - my life was in ruins but I was hungry. It must be my condition.
"There's nothing but ration concentrates I'm afraid," he said apologetically, "bland but nutritious."
"That'll be fine. And, Raj, call me Padme I'm not a senator anymore."
He grinned suddenly, the first time he'd done so since Polis Massa. "Actually I should be calling you your majesty. They said on the net that you were buried as a queen."
"Queen?" Threepio echoed. "Oh dear, have I been guilty of a solecism? Please forgive me your royal highness!"
"No, Threepio," I said firmly, "I'm not a queen either, Raj was just joking." I mock glared at the boy. "I want to be called Padme, please, by both of you."
Raj's grin broadened but he said. "Yes, Padme."
"Of course, as you wish, Mistress Padme." said Threepio.
The ship dropped out of hyperspace and we found ourselves floating in the black inter-galactic voice above a dazzling whirlpool of stars. There was no other ship, nor anything else to be seen by eye or sensor.
"There's nothing here." I said, trying not to sound worried.
"Yes there is." Raj had that look - the one Jedi get when they're getting messages from the Force. "I can feel it." he touched the controls and we surged forward.
My eyes shifted apprehensively from Raj's rapt face, to the blackness outside our canopy and back again. And then, suddenly, space rippled and parted and there was a small white dwarf star with a necklace of jewel toned planets; deep blue, verdant green, bright red and luminous gold. I gasped.
"Incredible," Raj muttered, "a whole star system shielded against detection."
The communications system fizzled and Master Yoda's holographic image appeared, small and blue, hovering over the tiny stage. "Welcome you are." he said. "To the second planet come. Follow the beacon to the landing field you will."
"Yes, Master." said Raj. Yoda disappeared and he turned to me, blue eyes practically spitting sparks of excitement. "You know what that is out there? Yoda's home world!"
Nobody in the Republic, or even the Jedi Order, had ever known where Yoda and his handful of compatriots came from - until now. I understood Raj's excitement but felt rather more apprehension at the prospect of spending the next eighteen or twenty years surrounded by Yodas.
The surface of the second planet, the green one, seemed to be mostly marshland; little islets of grass fringed with reeds and rushes, divided one from the other by channels of sluggish water thick with flowering water plants, and dotted here and there by clumps of low trees with trailing fronds and what seemed to be stacks of green rushes. But above all this flat country rose a steep cone of a mountain, obviously volcanic in origin. Extinct I hoped!
The landing field proved to be in its shadow, a wide field of short cropped grass with a metal beacon tower and one or two little round craft parked at its edge. The tiny figure waiting near the tower was instantly recognizable as Master Yoda. He stood, leaning on his wooden staff watching us disembark and come towards him.
"Welcome to Whillowan you are, Senator Amidala." he said with a bow towards me."
"Thank you Master, but please call me Padme. I'm no longer a senator - or a queen." I added with a sidelong look at Raj.
"And I no longer a Master am, but a student." said Yoda. He shot a sharp look at Raj. "Surprises you does that, Youngling?"
"Yes, Master it does." the boy admitted frankly.
Yoda chuckled a little. "Always there is more to learn, no matter how old one becomes." suddenly he turned sad. "Forgot that I did for far too long."
"You mustn't blame yourself, Master." I said earnestly.
"No?" he looked back at me, ears rising. "Who then should I blame, hmmm?"
"Palpatine!" I answered emphatically.
He nodded. "True. True that is. Cunning is Palpatine and hard to see is the Dark Side." now it was my turn to get a piercing glance. "Blame myself I will not, if blame yourself you do not, Padme."
I squared my shoulders. "You're right, Master. I've shed enough tears over my mistakes. Vain regrets aren't going to help my children or save the galaxy."
That won me a look of warm approval, the first I'd ever received from that quarter. "Without remorse, without regret." he said like he was quoting somebody.
Yoda ushered us into a narrow boat made of bundles of reeds. Raj and I were ordered to sit as still as possible in the middle of it while Yoda stood in the stern poling us along. I discovered the stacks of reeds I'd seen from the air were actually the thatched domes of small cottages with white plastered walls and round little windows and doors peeping out from beneath their overhanging roofs. But the people who lived in the little houses remained invisible, though wisps of smoke floated from the pipe like chimneys and strange odors wafted out of the open doors.
"Mealtime this is." said Yoda. "Get you something better than concentrates to eat we will once home we are."
'Home' I thought looking around at that strange flat, watery landscape. 'This is going to be my home from now on.' Mine and my babies'. It wasn't at all the sort of home I'd dreamed of - which wouldn't have mattered a bit if only their father had been with us. Tears threatened but I determinedly blinked them back. This place was wet enough without my adding to it!
I remembered what Yoda had said; 'Without remorse, without regret.' Heartless as it sounded he was right. Remorse and regret could only keep me from doing my job, which at the moment was carrying my twins safely to term. And that meant eating and sleeping and exercising like a sensible woman and trying to maintain a serene and steady frame of mind - however difficult that last might be!
We finally landed on a little islet some distance from the mountain with a stand of the willow like trees at one end and little yellow flowers blossoming among the grass. There were two cottages; one just a few steps away from the mooring place and the other near the trees.
Yoda led us towards the latter; "Your house this will be, Padme."
The door was oval instead of round and I only had to duck my head a little to enter. Inside it was more spacious than I had expected with a high domed ceiling that meant I could stand upright. A platform with a mattress and a soft green coverlet took up one side of the circular room. There was a human sized wicker chair and table, rush mats to cover the floor and a little Yoda sized cook space tucked away in the back.
There was also a person standing in the middle of it all; small and green skinned and big eared like Yoda but also slim and young and female with a mane of thistledown fine white hair and wearing Jedi robes of cream and yellow brown.
"Yedda, this is." Yoda announced. "Look after you she will, Padme."
"Thank you, Master, but I can look after myself." I said, softening the refusal with a smile at the girl.
Yoda gave one of his snorts. "Know you how to find food on Whillowan and how to cook it?" he asked pointedly. "Know how to make reed cloth and repair a thatched roof do you?"
"No, Master." I admitted meekly.
"Then take care of yourself you cannot!" he said. And that settled that.
"Yes, Master." I said, even more meekly. "And thank you, Yedda."