The Way of a Siluan

by heatherxenia

Three AgriCorps Jedi survive Order 66. One is shipwrecked in a remote forest and begins to learn the ways of a quiet sect of Lightsiders known as the Siluans. Another tries to run a farm but is nearly thwarted by the Imperial Agriculture Program. A third takes the path of a Dark Jedi, masterminds Imperial agriculture policy...and sets out to destroy the Siluans. Part I complete.

36. Rites of Healing - Part I

Chapter 36: The Rites of Healing – Part I

13 BBY – 11 Months – 29, 28 Days

~On the planet Yemer~

The ramshackle hover-van bounced along with the slight glitch to its anti-grav and pulled up a few metres away from where a spindly Pau'an man stood tall amid the desert scrub. Not far behind him was a low mound not unlike the ones Varda had seen mud-ants make, but much larger, though this one had a series of round windows in it. Beside it stood a tall, spindly figure in a cassock of sun-weathered black.

"We're very blessed to have Ava Gerges," Dr. Gunma said quietly, bringing the hover-van down for as gentle a stop as he could. "There aren't many Elders like him," he said, then corrected himself, "weren't, even before. He has a gift: sometimes he can know things about people without being told, or even sometimes see people's thoughts."

Varda could clearly hear the awe in the doctor's voice.

"Not that you'd try to hide anything on purpose," he added quickly, "but just so you know."

"Thanks for letting me know," Varda said, wondering how this might play into her interaction with the Elder but not particularly worried.

The hover-van's sliding door creaked open and Varda stepped out, the hum of insects and the Force-feel of living vegetation both rather loud around her after their stop in the Dead Zone.

"Gabran! I wondered if I might see you today," the Elder called out as he walked towards them, following a narrow path worn between sparse grasses and dryland daisies that waved their sunny heads atop thin fuzzy stalks. "But I have yet to make your acquaintance," he said to Varda.

As the Elder came and stood beside them, Varda found herself looking up at a Pau'an nearly twice her height, though thinner than she was. His brown eyes were set deep in his sparsely-bearded grey-brown face and when he smiled, he showed a row of long yellow teeth. Varda flinched slightly before she could remind herself that there was no need to be afraid of him.

"Ava Gerges, this is Varda Wahi. She came to visit the monastery for a few days but found it as it stands now. Cheethwet found her and brought her to the hospital. She was hoping she might speak with an Elder and so," he bowed slightly to the Pau'an standing head and shoulders above him, "I wonder if she might be able to stay with you."

"Of course, and welcome!" Ava Gerges said, bowing with a flourish to Varda. His voice was a little high-pitched for a male but not unpleasantly so. "It is not often that we have visitors anymore," he said. "Thank you for coming to us."

"And thank you for receiving me," Varda said, bowing also. There was something artless about his courtesy that quickly warmed her to him.

"We are greatly honoured by Varda's visit," Dr. Gunma said. "Ava Gerges, Varda is one of the last of the Jedi."

Varda quickly cast her eyes down. She knew the esteem in which the Siluans held the Jedi and was at once painfully reminded of how far she had fallen from living up to this. But that was what she had come to deal with. She glanced up at Ava Gerges to see what he was thinking.

"A Jedi?" he said, and smiled as if to reassure her. "Whatever the case may be, it is our honour to welcome our elder kindred."

Varda almost gave a laugh. Something about the way his eyes smiled told her that the irony was not lost on him: being a Pau'an and not a young one at that, he was certainly many hundreds of years older than she was. But she managed to conjure up the phrase she had heard her friend Lu Mang use many times: "Elder in time but not in wisdom," she replied.

"Ava Gerges, we are very blessed," Dr. Gunma said. "Varda has agreed to help us with our problem."

Ava Gerges raised an eyebrow at the doctor. "Which problem?"

"The soil contamination around the old monastery."

"It's too soon to say whether there is any remedy for poisons that strong," Varda added quickly. "But I will try to find a way."

"Trying is as much as we can ask, and an attempt by a Jedi would be most appreciated indeed!" Ava Gerges said, then turned to Dr. Gunma. "Speaking of problems, how is our patient?"

Dr. Gunma rolled his eyes. "She's awake. From a medical viewpoint, that's progress."

Varda noticed Ava Gerges give the doctor a quizzical look; Dr. Gunma had made it sound as if, from every other viewpoint, this patient being awake was not such a good thing. A vague curiosity mixed with foreboding stirred in her, but it was not her business and so she refrained from asking.

"If you find your patience wearing thin," Ava Gerges said, straggly eyebrows dancing slightly at his own pun, "give her something to read."

It was the doctor's turn to raise an eyebrow. "I highly doubt she'll be interested in Siluan texts."

"Then give her whatever else you have," the Elder said. "Just something to keep her mind occupied."

Dr. Gunma sighed. "I'll try," he said flatly.

The doctor's answer reminded Varda rather sharply of how Eo used to respond when asked to do something she would rather not. Varda felt a lump in her throat and quickly tried to quell it. She wanted to talk about these things with Ava Gerges, but now was not the time to begin.

"Ava Gerges, have you been long at the monastery?" Varda asked, ending with a cough to hide the catch in her voice a little husky. She kept her eyes carefully near his chin so that she wouldn't have to look him in the eye until she'd fully regained control.

"Coming on a hundred and fifty years," the old Pau'an said with a casual wave of his hand. "But for much of that I was living as a hermit in the mountains, until a few years ago. I suppose you saw the old monastery."

"Yes," Varda said.

"Ane Nami – Dr. Unayat – whom you may or may not have met came and found me and told me what had happened. And so now I am the abbot of the monastery, until another can be found."

Varda swallowed hard and then coughed into her fist again. "How many of you are there now?" she asked, voice almost back to normal.

"Just three: Ane Gabran," Ava Gerges said, gesturing to the doctor, "and Ane Nami and me. One more may join us soon, when, or shall I say if, we can arrange the ceremony for them to take their vows."

Varda gave a look of sad surprise. So few, and only one Elder.

"The whole monastery was wiped out," Ava Gerges said, as if in answer to her thoughts. "I survived because I attempting a hundred years of silence out in the mountains," with his sparsely bearded chin he gestured towards the hills on the far horizon. "But some intentions work to a different purpose than the one for which we set out. As for Ane Nami and Ane Gabran, both were still wrapping up lives they were preparing to leave in order to join the monastery. And here we are now."

"And there's Cheethwet; it sounds likely that they'll take their vows," Dr. Gunma added, sounding hopeful.

"Yes, if we can find a second Elder to hold the ceremony," Ava Gerges said. Dr. Gabran looked sad at that, but said nothing.

Ava Gerges, however, did not seem worried. He looked at the sun hanging above the horizon behind Dr. Gunma. "Will you stay with us for the evening chant?" he asked the doctor.

"No, Ava, not this time. I should get back before dark. There's some things I need to deal with at the hospital."

Varda gave the doctor a slight bow as he took a step towards the dilapidated ambulance that had brought them there. "Thank you for bringing me here," she said.

"Before I go, I should give you this," he said, fishing a slim tube from the pocket of his medical scrubs. "I was hoping you would say yes and so I made a disc of the background research I've done so far." He gave Varda a sheepish grin as he passed it to her.

"I'll make good use of it!" she said. "I have no starship of my own right now, but I'll arrange a way to come back to work on things soon as I can."

"Come whenever you can. Just give me a call and we can arrange to meet," the doctor said. "We have a comm at the hospital. The digits are in a file on the disc."

"I'll be in touch," Varda said.

As Dr. Gabran climbed back into the ambulance and sped off, Ava Gerges gestured to Varda to join him, leading the way around the side of the low mound. It was surrounded by the same spiky blue-grey-green Vitalis plants Varda had seen near the hospital, only far larger, much taller than she was and nearly as tall as Ava Gerges, each at least sixty centimetres across at the base, fanning out with two-metre fleshy spikes in all directions. She stopped and ran a hand lightly along the smooth surface of one of the huge leaves, carefully avoiding the white claws along each edge. It was warm from the heat of the day and the powdery grey wax that covered the surface brushed off on her hand, revealing a more vivid blue-green skin underneath, flecked with irregular white splotches. For a moment she just let her hand rest there, taking in the feel of the plant.

"These are very old," she said softly. Not as old as the ones at the old monastery, but old all the same, she thought, but didn't say it aloud.

"Yes," Ava Gerges said. "They must be at least two hundred years old. They were planted by my Elder. She was a Pau'an like me. But she was at the monastery when the attack came, while I was up in the mountains. So now she is gone, and I am here instead." Varda thought he sounded a little sad. She wondered what it was like for him to be away in the mountains, his silence broken by an acolyte bringing so much bad news, and realized how much they had in common.

"Who was your Elder?" she asked, leaving the plant and following Ava Gerges to the little wicker door, more a gate than anything, on the far side of the mound.

Before he answered, Ava Gerges opened the little wicker gate and led the way down a few steps into a semi-underground room. It was bright with the daylight coming through a series of round windows on one side, yet the air was pleasantly cool, smelling faintly of clay and dried herbs. In the middle of the room a low table sat on a colourful braided rug along with two low stools with crocheted black-and-white covers. On one stool lay a tangle of knitting needles and a yellow ball of yarn and what looked like the makings of a long yellow sock. Ava Gerges motioned for Varda to sit down on the other stool.

"My Elder was Ava Zoika," he said, as he took the knitting off his stool and put it in a basket under the table. Then he sat down and pulled out another basket, this one with small clay teacups and a flask or thermos. He poured clear liquid from the thermos into a teacup and handed it to Varda, then poured another for himself. "Perhaps you met her?" he asked before taking a sip.

Varda shook her head as she took a sip. "I was never able to stay at the monastery for more than a few days at a time," she said, "and so there were many monastics who I never met."

"That's understandable. You must have had a lot of responsibilities as a Jedi. It isn't often that we had Jedi visitors, even in the old days."

"I was a friend of Lu Mang. He brought me with him when he came here at times, and eventually I started to come on my own," Varda said. She another took a sip of the drink. It didn't taste like much but it was cool and calming, more refreshing even than water itself. The feel of it quickly brought back memories of earlier visits to the monastery.

"This is Vitalis?" she asked.

"Yes, from our friend who you said hello to out there," Ava Gerges said, gesturing to the plant outside the window.

"I remember drinking this when I used to come here."

"You must have really loved the monastery," Ava Gerges said.

Varda nodded. "I'm so grateful to have known in in its fuller days. And grateful to be here now," she added quickly, then remembered, with a bump, that being a Jedi, she should be grateful to be alive at all. But it was hard to feel grateful for that when she had survived by such dishonour. She took another sip of her drink if only to hide her face.

Ava Gerges cocked his head to one side. "But you, how did you survive? The Jedi have certainly fared no better than the Siluans."

Varda sighed and rubbed one wrinkled hand across her knee. She knew this would begin what she had come to talk about, yet her tongue somehow didn't want to move.

"I can't say by escape was entirely honourable," she said at last. "I was stranded in the Hokto System at the time and I didn't hear about what had happened until last week."

"The Hokto System?" Ava Gerges said, with some surprise. "How did you manage to get stranded there?" He took a sip from his little clay cup and waited for her response with obvious interest.

Varda looked down at her knees again, then set her cup on the table. "I...I suppose that is part of what I came to talk to you about."

"I see," Ava Gerges said. Drawing himself up, he put down his teacup and folded his hands in his lap, as if getting ready for a different kind of listening. "Please, tell me what happened."

For a moment Varda fought to just to make her lips form words. "As you know, I am a Jedi," she began slowly. "As I'm sure you heard, the Jedi were asked to serve as commanders of the clone army during the recent galactic civil war."

"Yes, Ane Nami told me about that."

"I felt very strongly against the our Order taking on a military role, especially one that meant so strongly taking sides in a political dispute like that. I felt even more strongly that being a military commander was not a role I was meant to play. But I was also reluctant to cause division by refusing to serve, especially because of the younglings I taught in the Temple, and so I agreed to to play my part." Varda looked down at her hands in her lap and scowled. That point in itself was a deep regret. The Council had implied that she would not be teaching in the Temple anymore if she refused her part in the war, and her role as a teacher was not one she was willing to give up, despite her misgivings. She wondered what would have been if she had acted on her intuition, but at the moment, that was not the point, so she went on.

"The war was very hard for me," she said. "For years I had previously taught various cohorts of Jedi younglings – natural sciences and math, mostly – and they were very dear to me. I had to watch some of them get sent into battle barely on the edge of their adolescence. Many of them never came back. I know I should not have done so, but many days I just felt angry that our Order was doing this. I stopped meditating, I stopped reading our texts, I stopped all the things that would normally ground me, because I felt too angry to focus." She paused, took a sip of her drink, and went on.

"But most of my time during the war was spent with the clones. To my shame, I hated them from the beginning. But there was one in particular, the head of my battalion. They called him Grim, because he had a bitter, bitter, morbid sense of humour. It grated on me, but there was nothing I could do to make him stop." Varda paused and sighed. She wished now that she had paid more careful attention to what the clones were going through. It made sense, in retrospect, that a person who saw his brother clones die in battle after battle might develop a twisted sense of humour as a way to cope. But she hadn't seen that at the time. To her, the clones were synonymous with the war, and she hated the war; it was changing the Jedi in ways they could plainly see but had no time to stop and re-consider.

"Then one day I was asked to lead the clones under my command on a mission to the planet Terrapin to take out a Separatist munitions factory. I had worked with the Terrap people for many years before, and had some rapport with them; perhaps that is why the Council asked for me to go. But the Terraps were very much against our involvement on their planet. The didn't like the Separatists but they didn't want the Republic either. They were very reticent for us to bomb the Separatist munitions factory even though they didn't like having it there; it was near a large river. I was able to negotiate a plan, however, that would allow us to destroy the factory with little other damage.

"I don't know what part of my instructions was lost on the clones. But the charges were laid in the wrong positions and when we set them off, reactant from the factory spilled into the river. It turned out that the estuary at the end of the river held one of their main breeding grounds, and almost all their fry that year were wiped out. The Terraps were furious with me and said they never wanted to see me again. These were people I had worked with for decades, persuading them to trust the Jedi to negotiate for them in their complaints against the Republic. I felt so angry at what had happened, yet when I questioned the Grim about it, he brushed it off as a mistake. He tended to be like that. If that was all, maybe nothing so terrible would have happened, but then Grim decided to crack a joke. I will not repeat what he said, but I was so angry, so so angry."

Varda twisted her hands in her lap. She could remember that moment, being so far gone that, if only for a second, she truly felt that ending Grim would end everything: the loss of so many padawans, her failing with the Terraps, even the war itself. "I only realized what I was doing in the moment that I killed him. One of the other clones pulled his blaster on me and I deflected the shot, which killed another clone too. The others didn't dare to shoot me then, but I didn't dare to face them either. And so I ran. I took one of the shuttles from our battleship and I fled." Varda stopped and shook her head. She could remember her head spinning, her heart pounding as the shuttle hurtled through hyperspace en route to the Outer Rim.

"I was still very angry with the Jedi Council, for a number of decisions they had made, both before the war and during it, and I was not willing to face either their mercy or their judgement after what I had done. And so..." she took a deep breath, "I destroyed the shuttle's transponder. I stopped somewhere remote to buy some seeds and clothes and tools, and then I studied the star charts. The Hokto System is dangerous because of the debris field, but sometimes there is an opening. I had to wait and watch, but I found a way. I thought no one would find me there, and so I settled on one of the planets and destroyed my hyperdrive so that I wouldn't have a way to go back. And so, when the Jedi were destroyed, I was there on Hokto."

"Were you alone there?" Ava Gerges asked.

Varda's face twisted for a moment before she answered. "I was alone at first," she said. "But after one or two standard years a young girl came. She was in a starship that came out of hyperspace wrong and crashed there. It was not the first crash, actually, but it was the first to have someone come out alive. To tell the truth, I didn't want her there at first, but she was keen to learn and so I taught her. She became a friend, even a daughter to me. But I felt it was her duty to report for her work assignment on another planet, and so I insisted that she repair my starship with parts from the one she came in, so that she could leave when the gap in the debris field opened.

"When the time came, she asked me to go with her, but I refused. I told her it was my calling to be a hermit, and so she went alone. Yet even the next day I knew I was wrong. I should have gone with her. I should have gone because my reasons for staying were not good. I was still running away, I still didn't want to face the Jedi Council. Yet I found out later, when a mutual acquaintance of hers and mine came to find me, that truly, I should have gone with her. Through a chain of events I will not explain now, she did not reach her destination but rather went to the planet Iwaki. A Dark Jedi found her there and killed her."

Ava Gerges' face showed no small surprise when she spoke of the Dark Jedi. But then he let out a long breath and closed his eyes and shook his head. "This is no small burden you carry," he said. "It is good that you came. To speak there things is to bring Darkness to Light, or to begin at least."

Varda bit her lip to keep from crying. "That's why I came," she said.

Ava Gerges nodded. "It is very important for all of us who are left to realize that we are not alone in these times. I hope that while you are here we can speak further on these things. But tell me, until when are you able to stay with us?"

Varda sighed. "Only until morning or so of the day after tomorrow. A former student of mine will come to pick me up then."

"You found another Jedi?" Ava Gerges asked, with no small surprise.

"Neither of them are Jedi formally speaking anymore, but two young ones, one who brought me here and one with whom I will be staying when I go back."

"Still," Ava Gerges said, "in these times two is many. It's good that you have them." He paused and took a drink from his cup, which had been waiting on the table, and then looked out the window, where the Vitalis plant outside was bathed in the orange glow of the evening sun. "Soon will be time for the evening chant," he said, "and I would also like to reflect a little on what you have told me so far. Perhaps you could get settled in your guest room, and then join me for the evening chant if you like?"

"Yes," Varda said, "thank you." Relief at having spoken mingled now with fatigue.

They both drank the last of their Vitalis and Ava Gerges showed Varda to another low mound nearby, smaller than his and surrounded by fragrant sagebrush and other wild desert scrub rather than Vitalis, but it had the same wicker door and three steps leading down into a cool half-underground room with soft light coming through a series of round windows in one side.

"Please make yourself at home," Ava Gerges said.

"When should I come for the chant?" Varda asked.

"Half and hour or so. I'll ring the singing stick," he said.

Varda thanked him and when the wicker door closed behind him, she slung down the bedroll she had brought from Ahsoka's starship just in case and sat down on the edge of the bed. It was firm without being hard, covered in a beige bedspread of something like unbleached linen, with a pattern of leaves and vines twining its way around the edge, embroidered in black thread.

Sitting there reminded Varda of the room where she had stayed in the old monastery. Suddenly, she wished Eo was there with her. Eo had wanted to come to Yemer. If Varda had gone with Eo when Eo left Hokto, everything might have been different: once Varda learned of the danger they faced as Jedi, she could have brought Eo here to be safe.

Eo would have loved this place. She would have loved the desert gardens by the hospital, where deep hollows in the ground sheltered young plants from the harsh winds. She would have stood in awe of the tall Vitalis plants around Ava Gerges' home, plants that for more than a hundred years had given the clear gel within their leaves as drink and as medicine for the people of this sacred place. It would have hurt Eo to see the desolation of the old monastery and the stark lifelessness of the Dead Zone, but she would have worked to heal it with focus and diligence and determination, gaining in gentle power as she grew into greater skill and knowledge and maturity. Varda longed to have been part of that.

Suddenly she felt tired, tired and numb and sad. Just for a moment, she lay down and closed her eyes.

It was completely dark when Varda woke, except for the thin light of orange stars shining through the round windows on one side of the room. It took her a moment to recollect where she was. Still in her day-clothes, she fumbled for the right button on the comm unit Ahsoka had given her and managed to switch on a tiny flashlight. Shining it around the room, she found and lit an oil-lamp standing on the little wooden dresser beside the bed.

By its yellow light, she noticed a wicker basket near the door. Inside lay a bundle wrapped in beige cloth. On top was a flat piece of smooth grey stone with a message scrawled in white chalk: I thought it might be better to just let you rest. Here is something to eat. Please sleep in if you like.

Setting aside the flat stone, she unwrapped the cloth and found a tall glass jar of clear liquid – Vitalis, she presumed – and a round jar of red jelly. Opening it, she recognized the floral scent of the cactus jam she'd had before at the monastery. Looking in the basket again, she found a small package wrapped in wax paper and tied with a piece of twine. The wrapper crinkled open to reveal five round wafers. They had a sweet and slightly nutty smell to them. Yemer cakes, she remembered, were made from powdered krillik, a type of insect much like a grasshopper, but they were nutritious and she remembered having enjoyed them quite well even though she wasn't used to eating insects.

Using the narrow desk at the end of the bed as a dining table, Varda broke the Yemer cakes into bite-sized pieces and dipped them in the cactus jam. Outside was only the thin cree cree creek, cree cree creek of insects, and inside only the soft crunch of the Yemer cakes, yet Varda hardly felt alone even though she was eating by herself. Every bite spoke of the care Ava Gerges and others had put into this food and into this space.

After washing down the last of the Yemer cakes with a big drink of Vitalis, Varda put on the coat she had wrapped up in her bedroll and pulled the hood over her head and went outside. The air was still cold and a thin breeze came from the dark horizon behind the guest house, but as she stood on the doorstep, the sky straight ahead was a thin blue-green in which only the brightest stars still shone. Soon it would be sunrise.

Varda's night vision was not as good as it used to be, but in the Force she could feel the life of the plants around her the way a person can feel warmth and cold even without direct touch. She slowly made her way between the cacti and sagebrush, along the little path back to Ava Gerges' house, where she sat down to wait at the top of the stairs, turning her body away from the wicker door and looking out into the pale dawn sky for signs of the rising sun.

Sleep had put Varda in a more philosophical frame of mind. Grief and guilt, sadness and anger, she knew these would come in waves. In between the waves, she could see that she had a job to do, healing the Dead Zone here and helping Devin and so many others reclaim poisoned land. Yes, it would be have been infinitely better if Eo could have been there to grow into her gift and to help, but Varda's job was to make her own life worth something by using such gifts of her own to do what she could, on Yemer, on Nechako and elsewhere.

In the distance, a desert owl called out in a low hoot, and Varda remembered the owl of Iwaki. There too she had received great strength.

All around her, the blue-green dawn turned slowly to orange-pink and the light grew strong enough that Varda could see a pack of amber-eyed coyotes slinking back to their dens. The desert air was still cool and Varda breathed deep, savouring the growing light as she waited for the dawn.