The Way of a Siluan
Chapter 14: Winter is Hard Here
As half a year passed in the galaxy outside, fall turned to winter on the little planet Eo called Hokto.
"You must prepare yourself," Varda said. "Winter is hard here."
Eo had loved winter at the Jedi Temple: the soft glow of the Temple lamps; the thick, soft clothes the Jedi younglings were assigned to wear for the season; the sharp, bright stars seen from a Temple parapet. There was nothing to prepare Eo for what winter meant on that little planet of the Hokto system. Winter is hard. Three little words glossed over three hundred short foggy days and three hundred long, cool, rainy nights of water dripping through gaps in the roof; of waking to fingers hard to unclench after sleeping curled up against the damp cold.
Winter is hard here, Varda had said, yet for Eo, winter was also beautiful. Every morning after warming her hands over the steam from the big kettle, Eo would step out into the great quiet of the garden. There, the stately brakkas with their dark frilly leaves held orbs of rainwater, and the fleshy stems of a plant called chadris shone red and orange and yellow in the grey light. With a small knife Eo would cut their leaves for breakfast, carefully setting aside the little purple slugs that looked up at her with oogly eyes. Here they were the natives, and she the alien.
On one such occasion, when Eo had finished collecting armload of greens, she stopped for a moment, and with her feet planted on the ground, she looked up into the low, grey sky. As she let the raindrops kiss her face, Eo soaked in the energies of the plants around her: some waiting in winter's long meditation, some seizing even the grey light to grow ever upwards. They too were her teachers now in this gentle way that required only her willingness to seek the Light. In the power, the wisdom, and the quiet of the garden, Eo felt she was in the Temple again.
The thought of the Temple brought back the memory of her friend Lin Mang, who always tried to cheer her up after a bad training session. Being so talented and so strong in the Force, Lin must be a Padawan under a Jedi master now, Eo thought, off in the galaxy somewhere, brandishing her lightsaber against the onslaught of the Separatists. Eo imagined her Yemerian friend in a brown Jedi robe, with her elegant long lizard tail sweeping out behind her. At one time, the thought her friend's success would have made Eo jealous, but now she dreamed of their meeting again one day, as Jedi and Siluan, each working for the peace and order of the galaxy in her own way. But first Lin had the war to face, Eo remembered, and sent out a wish for her safety, trusting it would reach Lin through the Force.
"Eo! Where are you?" Varda called from the hut, and Eo snapped out of her reverie and ran inside. She dumped her armload of greens on the table, and Varda pointed to a pile of thin reeds for Eo to start weaving into a new rainhat while she waited for breakfast to be ready.
"Varda, you do ever miss the Jedi temple?" Eo asked as she sat down on a mat and started her work.
"I came here to get away from everything, so no, I miss nothing." Varda saw that Eo looked sad when she said this, so she added, "Do you?"
"Sometimes. But not as much as I thought I would. When I'm in the garden, I feel I'm in the Temple. I'm very happy that I can learn to be a Siluan. It's like being a plant: my roots are in the soil of the Jedi, but with my branches I'm finding the path that's right for me. If I can spend the rest of my life tending my garden and meditating and studying the Siluan texts, I will be very happy."
With the grey weather, Varda was in a dark mood and found Eo's youthful simplicity jarring. "You think your life will be so easy? The way of a Siluan is hard," she said, and shook her head. "The way of a Siluan is absolute nonviolence. Do you have any concept of what that means?"
Eo scowled at the reeds she was braiding together and tried to think. Wasn't the meaning obvious? Varda must be looking for some deeper answer. "Maybe that's why the Siluans have their gardens and their vow of poverty," she managed eventually. "That way they can live lightly on the land, without taking from anyone else or doing violence to anyone even indirectly."
Varda considered this for a moment. It was actually a better answer than she'd expected, but still not the point she was trying to make. "It means," Varda said pointedly, "that not if, but when you are hurt, you indulge neither hatred nor retaliation; when you suffer loss, you accept it with peace; when some enemy comes to destroy you and everything you worked for, you wish their wellbeing even as you wish your own. Are you able to do that?"
Eo slumped, as if by that question Varda had laid a sudden weight on her shoulders. She searched herself: how had she ever reacted to anyone who hurt her or was at odds with her, someone she might consider an enemy? The image of Master Contar flashed across her mind, looking down on Eo with pursed lips. But no, even if Master Contar was a little mean, she was only doing her job, and she'd done Eo a favour by introducing her to Ava Yen. There was the war, of course. The Separatists were enemies, but they were just a faceless mass to Eo, one she'd never had to face and maybe never would. But then there was the Temple bombing, less than a year before she'd left with Ava Yen. What shook Eo to the core was not simply the fact that a suicide bomber set off an explosion in a hangar of the Temple. Rather, the young woman who was ultimately convicted as the the orchestrator of the attack was a young Jedi, a Padawan only five years older than Eo. For years they'd shared a common life as Jedi younglings, the older children helping the younger. And yet Bariss Offee was willing to endanger her own fellow Jedi and strike out against what they held sacred. If Eo ever had to face Bariss again, would she, could she treat her peacefully and truly desire her wellbeing?
"I don't know," Eo said at length. "If I say I can face evil with peace, maybe I'm just fooling myself, but if I say I can't, isn't becoming able to the whole point of all my training?"
"I don't know is a good answer," Varda said sternly. "I suggest you reflect on it further."
Eo focused again on braiding the reeds, then decided to speak up. "But Varda, it isn't so different from the way of the Jedi, is it?"
"In theory," Varda said dryly.
"But Varda, you're a Jedi yourself, yet it seems as if you don't like the Jedi at all!"
"You are young," Varda said, "and for you everything is beautiful. I am old and I've seen too much. I've seen the Jedi deny everything they believe in."
Eo looked up from her work, troubled to hear Varda speak like this. "Is that why you came here?" she asked, tentatively.
"Partly. In war one loses many things, including oneself." Varda spoke bitterly, staring into the pot she was stirring on the woodstove.
"But whatever happened, there must be a way to heal it. Isn't there? I want you to be well again, Varda."
"That is good," said Varda. "A Siluan should wish for all life to be well, even if she has no power to make it so."
With grey day after grey day and conversations such as this, Eo found that winter was indeed hard on the little planet she called Hokto.