The Way of a Siluan

Chapter 4: Meeting Varda

Eo stood by Ava Yen for some time, hoping he would move or even breathe, but he didn't. The air in the ship was quickly being filled with the smell of spilled fuel; she had to get out, but without power to the ship, the controls to open the hatch were jammed. If Eo had been capable of using the Force to open it, she might not have been sent into the AgriCorps, but under the circumstances she used her wits instead. There was an emergency toolbox in the cupboard at the back of the cockpit, and a laser-saw inside allowed her to cut the hatch open.

With a heavy heart and one last look back at Ava Yen, Eo emerged from the shipwreck and stepped down to the forest floor. The woods stood tall and green and silent around her. Through the trees, she saw a lake nearby and walked toward it, scrambling through the brush to the shore. The lake lay before her wide and still, shining in the evening light. Beyond it a thin column of smoke rose into the clear sky. Eo worked her way toward it, along the shore of the lake and then as well as she could through the forest, but dusk was quickly falling. After marking her direction with an arrow made of twigs, Eo curled up in the leaf-litter under the protection of a big tree. Night overtook her, and she slept uneasily, until a pale dawn crept beneath the trees.

Eo woke damp and stiff. All around her the weird song of tree-frogs rose and fell, a funeral chant for Ava Yen. But she heard another sound too, a rhythmic thud, and she got up and hurried toward it.

In a clearing beyond the trees there was a big garden, somewhat tangled, but rows of plants could be clearly seen, some roughly staked on branches. At the far side of the garden, an older woman in a green sari, perhaps about sixty years old, was chopping wood beside a rough round hut made of bent branches. She looked up and saw Eo come out of the trees toward her. They both stared at each other in surprise.

"Master Varda!" Eo cried.

"I don't know about Master, but I am Varda. I believe you are Eo Cloudlee."

"You remember me!"

"I remember all the children I taught in the Temple and hope better things for them than for myself. But how did you come here?"

Eo's face clouded over. "Ava Yen-he was the pilot-he and I were on our way to the AgriCorps station on Deema, but we came out of hyperspace wrong and crashed here."

Varda did not hide her surprise. "The Force must be strong with you. It's very rare to come here alive. But the pilot..."

Eo took a deep breath and let it out again. "He didn't make it," she said quietly.

"Then let us attend to his last rites before the wild things have their way with him."

Varda showed Eo a small path back to the lake, and a little boat with oars. Soon they had reached the shipwreck and dug a shallow grave nearby. Together, they laid Ava Yen in it.

"It's very difficult because the soil is shallow here," Varda said. "We ought to have dug more deeply, but the least we can do is to cover the grave with stones so the wild things don't bother him."

"But why don't we burn him?" Eo asked, puzzled. "Aren't Jedi usually burned when they die?"

"This man was not a Jedi. He was a Siluan. I knew him."

At this Eo was quite surprised. "What is a Siluan?" she asked.

Varda sighed. "I wish they would teach you these things in the temple! Tell me first, what is a Jedi?"

"A Jedi is one who is trained in the ways of the Force. We are to defend the peace and order of the galaxy."

Varda narrowed her eyes at this. "I suppose that answer will do for now," she said tersely. "If you say the Jedi defend the peace and order of the galaxy, then let us say that the Siluans cultivate a form of peace and order that is worth defending. They usually can't use the Force outwardly the way the Jedi do, but they use the Force inwardly, to 'acquire Light within them,' as they say."

Eo felt her heart leap unexpectedly at these words, but she was still confused. "But I thought only Jedi served with the AgriCorps..."

"Sometimes there are Siluans who volunteer to serve as well. The ones who can use the Force at all tend to be best at using it to understand plants and to help them grow, so they help the AgriCorps where they can." As she spoke, Varda led Eo to a streambed nearby to gather stones.

"It's very strange," Eo said as she gathered the smooth, flat rocks. "At first I was scared to touch a dead body, but I now feel peace, I feel alive!"

"Yes, it is often that way with the death of a Siluan."

"How so?"

"The Siluans believe that when a person dies, the energy they cultivated within them is released. If a person has cultivated Light within them, then their energy can do good even after they die. It's very unpredictable, but one way or another it brings life and peace, and it unmakes the works of the Dark Side."

Eo said nothing as she placed the stones over Ava Yen, but looked at the grave with wide eyes.

"So it is a great gift for you to have been present for the death of a Siluan," Varda continued. "But...we are alive, and those who live must eat, and if we wish to continue eating we must work." Varda turned away from the grave, motioning for Eo to follow her back to the boat. "I don't like to tell you this, but you are stuck here with me for some time. Your starship is badly damaged, and the one I came in is disabled. What is more, we are in a remote place, and the planet is surrounded by a debris field that is very dangerous to cross except at certain times."

"But then how did you get here?"

"That is a long story," Varda said. "Suffice to say I studied the debris field and found an opportune time. For you, we'll have to do the same, and find some way to repair either your ship or mine."

"It's OK if I'm stuck here," Eo said non-nonchalantly. "I don't want to go into the AgriCorps."

"That won't do!" Varda said sternly. "I came here to be a hermit, and you have a responsibility to go and continue your training."

Eo listened, but didn't answer at first. As they were laying stones on the grave, an idea had been hatching in Eo's mind, damp and fluffy at first like a newborn bird, but now as they walked back to the lakeshore, the idea sprouted feathers. "But couldn't you train me?" she asked. "Could you train me to be a Siluan?"

"The way of a Siluan is hard," Varda said flatly. "You don't know what you're asking for."

"I want to learn the ways of the Force. I want to learn more deeply, not like in the AgriCorps."

Varda's voice was hard as she spoke. "I've heard so many young people say that, but they don't know what they're asking for! They want honour, they want power, they want lightsabers! They don't understand that practicing the ways of the Force is very very hard!"

Eo looked a surprised and a little hurt at Varda's outburst, but answered simply, "They put me in the AgriCorps, so I'll never have a lightsaber anyways. I'm not good at using the Force the way the Jedi do, but I want to have light within me, like Ava Yen. I want to be like him when I die."

Varda stopped in her tracks and wheeled around to face Eo, who was following behind her. "A Siluan must have no self...no ego, no self-defence," she said. "They are almost never recognized or noticed for their work, and yet they must receive all that with humility. Do you really want that?"

"I...I don't know," Eo said. "I want to try."

Varda sighed and started walking again. "For better or worse, I am a Jedi, and a Jedi can't fully train a Siluan. But while you are here, you might as well learn what you can. But it will not be easy. You must listen carefully and do as I say. And you will have to work hard to help me with growing and gathering something to eat, as well as fixing the starship for you to leave when it's time."

"Yes, yes, yes!" Eo said excitedly. "I'll do everything!"

Varda sighed again, resignedly. "Evidently my will and the will of the Force are rather different things," she muttered to herself. Then she turned, and saw Eo lagging behind. "Well, come on then!" she said more loudly. "We have many things to do."

Back at the hut, Varda spooned lunch out of a big pot on the small stove. When Eo saw what was in her bowl, she didn't find it particularly appetizing: irregular chunks of something grey. But she said nothing, and on the first bite found it quite good and finished the whole bowl very quickly. Varda ate more slowly while Eo waited, and when she finally put down her chopsticks said, "Now that we have eaten, we will plant what we just ate."

From a basket in the kitchen, Varda pulled out a raw tuber and handed it to Eo. "Tell me what you see," she said.

Eo turned the fleshy tuber over in her hands and looked at it with awe. "It looks like a rock, but it feels alive," she said. "It's all knobby and purple...but the ones we ate were grey?"

"Yes, the purple pigment is destroyed with the heat of cooking. But go on."

"There's little green nibs," Eo said, touching the five small spikes sticking out from the sides of the tuber.

"Those are called eyes," Varda said, "and rightly so: even in the soil, they can sense the light, and when they see it, they will grow toward it and become a new plant."

"I've never planted anything before," Eo said with awe.

"That," said Varda, "is one of many failings in Jedi education which you will have to overcome. But let us begin."

Varda led Eo to the garden. It had seemed so tangled when Eo first saw it earlier in the day, but now that she'd had something to eat and wasn't so distraught, she could discern blocks of garden beds, each three meters by three meters, planted with a dizzying array of crops she didn't know: some with wide flat leaves and scrambling vines, some with tall straight stalks. Beside some frilly plant with pink flowers, Varda pointed out a patch of bare soil and showed Eo how to make a trench in the ground. They laid the tubers in length-wise, with the pointed ends all facing the same direction, and covered them with soil.

Eo might well have sat there all day waiting for the new shoots to come up, but Varda had other ideas. For the rest of the day she pushed Eo hard at garden work, assigning her to cut down tall weeds and haul heavy buckets of fertile pond muck. They barely spoke as they worked, but as the sun set, Varda said, "That is all for today. What do you think of this garden work?"

Eo's eyes were full of thought, and she was slow to answer. She felt tired, but it was the best kind of tired she had ever felt. And the feel of the Force in the myriad plants of the garden sent a shiver up her spine. "I had no idea there was so much life in the plants and the soil," she said at last. "I feel the Force here. Working in the garden every day would be very beautiful, I think."

"Perhaps, then, you could be a Siluan. One of the Siluan masters said, Be the slave of your garden, and your garden will teach you everything."

Eo thanked Varda, and dusk fell gently around them. Little did Eo guess where her new path would take her, or just how much the galaxy was about to change.