The Way of a Siluan
Chapter 2: Life in the Temple
"Eo, please focus," Luminara Unduli said sternly. It was her third reminder.
Seven years before Eo's assignment to the AgriCorps, Eo stood on the soft but firm tatami floor of a Jedi training room with fifteen other five-year-olds of her clan, as each cohort of Jedi younglings was called. Each stood in quiet focus, each levitating a coloured handkerchief at about knee-height in front of them. Except Eo. Her yellow piece of cloth still lay on the ground. She scowled at it.
"Focus," Master Luminara said again.
There is a particular breed of frustration known to small children, the frustration of knowing with perfect clarity exactly how you feel yet being unable to express it, especially to an adult. Eo felt herself caught up in this very frustration now. Couldn't Master Luminara see how much she was focusing? Couldn't she see how hard she was trying?
Five-year-old Eo couldn't express this. She felt hot, anger tears well up behind her eyes, but barred them from falling and stared at that yellow handkerchief on the tatami mat, focusing all the more. The angry tears became power, and the handkerchief jerked up into the air, not floating gently like the other children's, but stiff and taut.
Luminara shook her head. "If you channel your anger," she said, "you can do many things, but it will only be through the Dark Side of the Force. That is not the way of the Jedi. Please try again."
Eo shrank down under Luminara's knowing gaze and the handkerchief fell to the ground. All the other children turned to look at her, their focus broken, and a rainbow of handkerchiefs lay scattered on the floor. Hot humiliation engulfed Eo and she turned and ran out of the training room.
"Eo, come back!" Luminara called after her, but she ran down the great hall and back to her dormitory, where she crawled under one of the bunk-beds and hid there, thinking hot, angry thoughts. All the children in the Temple were brought there because someone thought they were strong in the Force. So why then couldn't she keep up with the other children?
Eo stiffened, hearing a soft footstep in the room. Was it Master Luminara, or was it one of the other children? She wasn't ready to face them yet.
But the footsteps were of an adult, not a child, and Eo heard a voice singing softly in another language. A woman's voice, a woman laying fresh towels at the head of each bed.
Eo peeked out from under the bed. She could only see her back, but it was Naomi, a Twilek who served as one of the nannies and housekeepers for the Jedi younglings. Eo drew back, but Naomi turned around and looked under the bed.
"Eo! You've been crying!" Naomi said in her thick Twilek accent. "Come!" she said, and held her arms open.
Eo hesitated for a moment, but then a child-instinct took over and she scrambled out from under the bed. Naomi pulled Eo up against her breast, and Eo could smell the resinous scent of laundry detergent on Naomi's blue work apron. Eo felt her body relax. Naomi set Eo back on the ground, and knelt down beside her, putting one arm around Eo and brushing Eo's hair back from her face with the hand of the other. "What's the matter?" Naomi asked gently.
Eo sniffed. "I can't lift the handkerchief like everyone else!" she said, but with painful clarity what she really thought was Why am I here? I don't belong!
Naomi kissed her forehead. "It is not a mistake that you are here," she said. "It is the will of the Force for you to be here with us. You will find your way as a Jedi, you will see."
Little Eo did not look particularly convinced.
"Never mind what you can't do," Naomi said. "If you are quiet inside, you will hear a small voice, very small at first but if you listen it will become bigger. Just listen, and the voice will tell you how to find your own path in the Force, the one that is right for you."
With Naomi's arm around her, Eo looked into Naomi's wrinkled face and did feel quiet inside again. She nodded solemnly at Naomi's words. Naomi smiled her broad, toothy smile. "Come!" she said again, "you can help me if you want. We'll lay out the towels and then set the tables for dinner."
Eo smiled back and Naomi got up to go about her work, with Eo trotting behind her. By the time they finished the pre-dinner chores, the other children were still at evening meditation. Eo slipped in quietly, grateful to have a way to come back unnoticed. She sat cross-legged on the same tatami mat where she had stood before, and gathering herself together, she closed her eyes and began to breathe slowly and evenly.
It felt so different from earlier. Even if she was too young to put it into words, the frustration she'd felt earlier had divided and scattered her, and the power it gave her was paralyzing. Here in meditation, she felt gathered together again, peaceful, whole and well. As she let her thoughts go, a sense of warmth and light settled over Eo, like Naomi's arm around her shoulders. In that warmth and light, Eo felt small, but perfectly safe and truly free. She had no words for it, but with the perfect clarity of a child's feelings she knew I want to have this Light within me. I want it more than anything.
That was seven years ago. The years that followed that five-year-old day were marked by episodes like that: the frustrations of undertaking training that she wasn't cut out for, the encouragement of Naomi and others in the Temple to Remember it is the will of the Force that you are here; keep trying and you'll find a way, and moments of Light to carry her along.
Now, as she stood on the brink of adolescence, Eo was assigned to the AgriCorps. Whether it was the will of the Force or not, she was carried in Ava Yen's little passenger starship, on their way to the AgriCorps station on Deema, a planet she'd never even heard of before.