CHAPTER 6
Rey couldn't sleep that night. She tossed around in her bunk on the Falcon, then gave up, left the ship, and ran a few laps around the squashy grass of the island. She practiced maneuvers with her quarterstaff, and she found a handy light in the Falcon that strapped to her wrist and had a couple of replaceable diatium fuel cells. By the time the stars began to fade, the water around the island had ebbed lower, revealing algae-soaked parts of the island and leaving a sort of wet-rot smell.
Rey was at Luke's door, light on her wrist, quarterstaff slung on her back, when the Jedi Master threw back the flap and gave her a short nod. He was dressed in the full Jedi regalia she'd first met him in-except now he wore the lightsaber at his belt. Rey found that somewhat satisfying.
She followed the Jedi Master into his dwelling, and noticed that the pool at the back was no longer a pool. The water had receded to reveal a staircase leading down through a low archway.
Luke Skywalker gave Rey R2-D2's comm link. Rey blinked at it.
"Just in case," Luke said.
Rey wondered what in case would happen. But she said nothing. The Jedi Master seemed in a solemn mood, and Rey could feel why. The temple had presence. It seemed to eek from the walls.
Luke began down the narrow set of stairs, and Rey followed him, ducking under the pool archway and into darkness so thick Rey could feel it. Her light shone enough in the velvet blackness to illuminate the steps before them, but Luke didn't seem to need it. He had obviously been here before.
"Why do you want to enter the Jedi temple, Lady Rey?" said Luke, breaking the silence as they descended.
Rey hesitated. There was no way she would tell the Jedi Master about her lost family. Instead she said, simply:
"I can't bring you back to General Organa if you're dead."
It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth. Luke paused on the stairs, and turned around, looking at her with his piercing blue eyes. Rey swallowed.
He knows I'm not telling him everything, she thought. Of course he did. Her explanation was ridiculous on its face. The great Luke Skywalker, who had redeemed Darth Vader, refused ownership of the Galaxy, and defeated the Empire...did not need help.
Still, under his gaze, Rey kept her face completely serious.
"Well, Lady Rey," said Luke Skywalker after a moment. "Thanks."
They continued down the stairs, which were endless. There was no railing to grip onto, and the stairs were slick. Rey didn't know how deep the chasm was on either side of her, but her footfalls echoed cavernously, and water lapped somewhere below. At times, Rey's light caught streaks of glimmers in the darkness.
It was cold, and Rey began to shake. Or perhaps it was from her anxiety and anticipation. Either way, the Jedi Master noticed, and shrugged off his Jedi robe, offering it to her.
Rey shook her head, refusing. The last thing she needed was the Jedi Master to think she was weak and not ready for this. Luke Skywalker shrugged and slung the robe over his arm. And so, the light that lit the stairway in front of them and touched the streaks all around them trembled.
And then; dawn.
It came like a soft wind. One moment Rey was peering into the darkness, and the next moment, her eyes had adjusted and saw the world around her in blues and purples. Rey froze. What she had thought was an old stone cavern was, indeed, old and stone and cavernous, but nothing like she expected. A vast hall lay before them, carved pillars along the walls and tall windows in between. Like the dwelling above, gold in great swirling designs and old aurebesh was inlaid all throughout the stone, and even across the floor, visible underneath several inches of quickly-draining water. Unlike the dwelling above, a shimmering network of orbs and golden strands criss-crossed and connected in a brilliant reticulum above them.
The sun dawned through the first tall window, sending shards of light dancing across the great cavern. Rey realized she was holding her breath.
Luke Skywalker a few stairs ahead of her, gave a sideways smile. It was a smile that said he had seen this before, but had never gotten tired of it.
Master Skywalker had been right; the water did drain quickly. There was only an inch or so when they reached the floor. And now, Rey recognized what the orbs and swirling inlays were: diagrams of the moons and their orbits around Ahch-To. The shadows the sun cast over the walls marked their place in the sky and the correlating tides. So, Rey realized, that was how Master Skywalker knew about the moons, their orbits, and the 70-year lowest tide. He'd studied it over the past thirteen years.
Rey would have liked to stay longer in the room of orbs and diagrams, but Master Skywalker strode on, water splashing at his feet. Rey hurried after. They didn't have much time, it seemed. Rey's boots were completely soaked by the time they reached the end of the vast hall and followed the water cascading down another staircase like a waterfall.
By now, the light at Rey's wrist was completely useless. The sun rays through the carved skylights above them lit everything with a grey-white sheen. Rey fumbled with the light at her wrist, switched it off, and when she looked up…
The temple had changed. Instead of the waterfall staircase she'd been descending, grains of sand poured down past her feet, and stretched before her in an expanse of golden swirls and white-blue sky.
Luke Skywalker, who had been just a few steps ahead of her, had disappeared.
"Master Skywalker?" said Rey, frozen on the steps.
Only the soft ffffff of sand pouring past her feet could be heard. Rey looked upward. The grey of the temple's stone ceiling was gone, replaced by blue, searing sky as far as she could see.
I'm having a Force vision, Rey thought, hairs on her neck pricking. It had to be. There was no way this was part of the Ahch-To temple. Rey took a tentative step down, her boots now sand-blown dry, then carefully descended into the sand, which swept past her knees, whipping past and ebbing away an inch a minute. In the distance, star destroyers jutted up from the landscape.
This was Jakku. Rey knew it anywhere. The smell of the sun beating against the metal plates of old ships. How dry her mouth was. The burn of sun on her face. She knew it very well.
Why would I have a Force vision about-- And in the middle of this thought, Rey's thoughts interrupted with another thought: Years ago, her family had left her on Jakku. This was Jakku. And Force knew Rey needed answers.
She was going to find out, at last, who her family was.
Excited, Rey took hurried forward, slogging through the sweeping sand, now to her ankles. She pulled her quarterstaff off her back, searching furiously for...something. Anything! Any clue or memory or-
Two TIE fighters screamed by overhead. They dipped close to horizon and did an about-turn, coming directly for her.
"TIE fighters?" said Rey, backing away. This wasn't a part of her distant memory. She turned sharply and ran as the sand exploded in a line beside her from their blasters.
"We can't outrun them!" a desperate voice called from behind her.
Rey knew that voice! It was Finn! Her heart felt as though it leapt into her throat at the sound of it, and she nearly stumbled as she ran, turning to see him. She had missed him! He was running too, his face shiny with sweat, and wearing a Resistance pilot's jacket. Behind him, BB-8 squealed and rolled over the sand, rushing to keep up with them. The TIE fighters did another turn on the horizon and zoomed forward.
This-this Force vision was from Rey's memory! She had lived this before, and knew every bit of it. The taste of smoke-studded sand from the blaster fire, the panic rising in her throat as the TIE fighters screamed closer.
"We might!" Rey called back to Finn, now an active participant of her memory, due to helpless panic. Still running, she pointed ahead to the only escape she saw. "In that Quad-Jumper!"
The TIE fighter blasted an old ship behind them, and it exploded into a ball of flames, the sound pushing them forward. Rey could feel the heat licking her as they ran, kicking up the sand.
"We need a pilot!" Finn yelled.
"You have one," a voice prompted Rey, and immediately, without breaking her stride, Rey said: "We've got one!"
Which was an odd thing to say-Rey had flown a total of three ships in her life, and they were all the junked broken-down ships Unkar needed moved to another part of the graveyard. That hadn't been much different than flying a speeder. She had studied the cockpits of the ships among the metal carcasses, but that was a far cry from actually flying a ship under fire.
But even so, it felt like the exact right thing to say.
"You?" Finn cried aloud as another blast of sand rained behind them. "What about that ship?"
Rey somehow knew which ship he was pointing to: the old sun-baked Falcon.
"That one's garbage!" Rey cried.
This is surreal, I've said that exact same line- Rey thought, still running for her life.
The Quad Jumper a length away exploded into a ball of smoke and flame as the fighters zoomed overhead. Shrapnel and hot bits of sand rained over the three of them. Rey pulled up short.
"The garbage'll do!" she said, and in a moment both she, Finn, and BB-8 were racing to the Millenium Falcon.
Sand exploded behind them as they raced up the Falcon's boarding ramp.
"Gunner's position is down there!" said Rey, motioning down the hall of the Falcon. She did know the basic layout of the ship-her explorations of the ships here had taken care of that-and she raced to the front of the ship.
It was sweltering hot inside the cockpit. Rey's fingers touched a switch, and it burned her.
"You ever fly this thing?" Finn called.
"No!" Rey called back, taking the pilot's seat. "This ship hasn't flown in years!"
Rey stared at the numerous buttons and dials of the control panel. Right. Right. "I can do this, I can do this," she muttered to herself. And, in fact, she did know she could do this, she had done it before in real life, hadn't she?
And yet, she stared at the dials, her memory fleeing. Why in the world did she say she was a pilot? She couldn't fly an actual ship like this! She knew small, familiar things like speeders! The control panel buttons in her vision warped and throbbed. TIE fighters screamed overhead as they rounded the Falcon, blasting at it. Sand blinded the glass of the transparisteel window. Rey floundered among all the buttons and levers.
"Engine start levers," came a voice behind Rey, and she knew it immediately.
It was the Jedi Master. Rey turned sharply to see Master Luke Skywalker taking a seat in the co-pilot's chair. Blaster sounded behind them, shaking the ship. "Further up the control panel. You've got it," he said.
Without a second thought, Rey took the black-knobbed levers by the window-which burned-and yanked them.
The engines fired to life, and the ship jolted. Rey was thrown back into the searing pilot's chair.
Rey randomly pressed buttons, hoping something would work. It almost worked. The Falcon shuddered and lifted, shaking off bits of metal, years-long sand, and a threadbare tarp...then smashed into the ground again, side-first.
Rey cried aloud, thrown almost out of the chair. Finn's yell came from the gunner's position. The Falcon scraped forward, slamming into an old ship. Scavengers below them ran out of the way as the Falcon canted and barrelled on through the Niimu outpost. Rey caught a glimpse of Unkar Plutt shaking his fist at the ship. The numerous buttons and levers around her swam in her vision.
"Grab the control yoke and the throttle," said Luke Skywalker among the chaos, reaching over to guide Rey and placing her hands on the shaped levers. "Those two. Good. You can do this. I can help you fly this ship, Lady Rey," he added. "But I can only help if you're listening to the Force."
The Force. Rey made an effort to focus. Blaster fire shook the Falcon.
Luke Skywalker gripped her hands over the levers, and pushed them forward. The Falcon shuddered and began picking up altitude again in a forward trajectory. Rey swallowed and followed his lead on the controls, allowing him to push them forward. The Falcon dodged the oncoming TIE fighters and accelerated forward and up, above the blinding explosions of sand, and streaked into the sky.
"Stay low, stay low!" Finn called from the gunner's position.
"What?" said Rey, confused and panicked.
"Stay low! It confuses their tracking!"
Luke Skywalker rolled his eyes, but pushed the control yoke forward and punched the accelerator. The Falcon streaked upward and upside-down, veering back toward the earth under the Jedi Master's expert guidance.
And everything happened just as Rey had remembered it. Accelerating into the TIE fighters, their blaster fire blurring past in green lines. Skimming the sand so close it sent clouds of dust in a long wake behind them. Stretching to raise the shields, which Luke Skywalker helped her find. He placed his hands over hers, his face lined with concentration, as he helped her fly the ship with dextrous speed through the fallen star destroyers.
They really did go through. Down into the carcass of the massive ship, dodging inner the machinery that Rey had spent her life harvesting. Each move Luke Skywalker guided her through was an inch from death. Rey felt both panicked and thrilled. She did have moments-moments where she almost allowed herself to get cocky and consider the idea that she did know how to fly a ship like this and dodge TIE fighers and she was getting pretty good at it...and immediately the Falcon would clip a sand-buried ship, or nosedive as the engine stopped.
"Listen to the Force, Rey!" Luke Skywalker urged.
Rey swallowed and tried to focus, allowing Luke to guide her hands back to the upper levers, starting the engines up again, and punching forward into the blistering blue sky.
It faded into star-studded black as the ship broke through the atmosphere, leaving the reds and oranges of Jakku behind.
Rey closed her eyes for a moment, allowing her heart to slow down. Her ears were ringing.
The memory of her escape-and now the Force vision of it-stung in her eyes like the bright sun. Everything had happened just as she remembered it. Except Luke Skywalker. He hadn't been there when it had actually happened.
Or had he?
The ship jolted to a halt. Rey was nearly thrown out of her chair.
Luke was no longer in the cockpit, and Rey was alone. Grasping the edge of the panel for balance, Rey peered out the transparisteel window-no longer studded with stars-confused. The Falcon, which had which had been accelerating into into the inky blackness of space, was now grounded on the inky blackness of another planet.
"Master Skywalker?" said Rey.
She looked out the cockpit window again, her eyes slowly adjusting.
In the darkness, the dim outline of branchless trees formed against the cold blue of snow. Flakes flicked past the glass of the Falcon window. The cockpit's internal temperature was dropping, Rey began to shiver.
Another memory. Rey knew this place.
The Starkiller Base.