The search for Leia was a dead end so far. Two scans four hundred metres apart resulted in no trace of her and Tess was growing more and more worried by the minute.
Looking at the wrecked speeder that Han found, Tess couldn't stop imagining Leia's charred, lifeless body crumpled beside it. She turned around and found Luke staring at something in his hands.
"Did you find something?" Tess asked him, hopping over a log.
The Jedi made a failed attempt to hide what he found behind his back. Realizing there was no use in hiding it from her now, he handed over the helmet in his hands. Tears stung Tess' eyes, but she didn't let them fall.
"Leia's…?" she stammered. Luke nodded solemnly. Tess' imagination went horrifically wild, picturing all of the terrible things that could have happened to her sister. "What if she—"
"Hey," Luke stopped her. He made a fist and knocked her on the top of the head with his knuckles, just to get her attention. "Where's your helmet?"
"It was too hot so I took it off when we were waiting for you," Tess explained defensively, surprised that he would judge her for misplacing something when Leia might be hurt or worse. "Then we left there in such a hurry that I forgot to pick it up again."
"Well, maybe Leia had the same idea," Luke suggested, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Maybe she was here, took that hat off, then forgot to grab it again the next time she was on the move. This doesn't mean anything. At least not yet."
Suddenly, in her head, all she could see was Leia. She was fine at first, then suddenly a blaster bolt hit her in the upper arm and she recoiled in pain.
Tess grabbed her own arm, getting a prickly feeling in the exact spot that she just imagined Leia getting wounded. She looked up at Luke with tears in her eyes.
"We have to find her."
"I know…" Luke whispered, wrapping the teenager in a hug. "And we will."
Tess tried to calm down in Luke's arms, but all she could see was Leia in pain and it was driving her crazy.
"Luke!" came a familiar smugglers voice as he trudged in their direction. Tess and Luke broke the hug and made their way towards him.
The Jedi and his former apprentice pushed through stray branches to meet up with Han, Chewbacca, Threepio, and Artoo. At Han's feet was the wrecked speeder Tess had already seen. Luke looked down at it, biting back any possible conclusions given the evidence.
"There's two more wrecked speeders back there," Luke informed his friend. "And I found this."
Han's expression sunk as Luke threw him Leia's helmet. He turned it around in his hands longingly. Tess could hardly watch—Han was not the kind of person to get emotional so seeing him like this didn't make Tess feel any better. To make matters worse, Threepio—ever the bearer of bad news—announced that Artoo's sensors once again found no trace of Leia.
Han sighed sadly.
"I hope she's alright."
Suddenly, Chewie let out a growl of excitement. Tess wasn't an expert on the Wookie language but she did recognize that as something along the lines of 'Look, over there!'
Tess perked up and followed Chewbacca, as did the others.
"What?" Han called after his friend, growing impatient when the Wookie didn't answer. "What, Chewie?"
Trailing behind Chewie, Tess stopped when he did and found herself looking at a slab of meat handing from a tree limb. She groaned with frustration.
"Can't you think of something other than food right now?!" Tess snapped. She paced in the other direction while the others caught up to see what Chewie was looking at.
"Hey, I don't get it," Han said, staring at the dead animal with confusion. "Nah, its just a dead animal, Chewie." Tess took a seat against a tree a few paces away. She was feeling tears coming on and she didn't want any of them to see.
"Chewie, wait! Wait, don't!" Luke cried.
Suddenly, Tess looked up and her friends were swept together in a net and pulled far off the ground. Tess sprung to her feet and ran over to the suspended net. It was incredibly high—she wouldn't even be able to reach it if she was standing on Chewie's shoulders.
"What the—?! Are you guys okay?!" Tess called up.
"Great, Chewie," Han muttered. "Great. Always thinking with your stomach."
"We're fine, Tess!" Luke informed her from his cramped position in the net. "Han, can you reach my lightsaber?"
Tess looked down with a disappointed sigh, seeing Luke's weapon lying on the forest floor.
"No," she answered for the smuggler. "But I can."
A collective groan came from the net. As the only survivor of the trap, Tess looked around.
"There has to be some way to set it loose—or else what's the point of catching something?"
"Branch ornaments?" Han suggested.
Tess ignored him. She followed the rope from the peak of the net up to a thick tree branch, then followed the branch to the tree trunk. It was swallowed with vines and entwined with another tree—perfect for climbing. The fifteen-year-old rebel attached Luke's lightsaber to her belt and started to pull herself upwards.
"Whoa—Tess, wait," Luke interjected. Tess didn't stop climbing.
"Your sister is going to kill me if you fall and break your neck," added Han. The girl rolled her eyes.
"Well, we can't find my sister until I climb up there and cut you down," she pointed out.
The vines were incredibly convenient. They were so dense that there was always one to grab and ascend with, and so thick that they easily held her body weight.
Finally, Tess reached the long, thick branch that held the net. She could see the contraption it was connected to from where she was. Carefully, the girl steadied her feet on the trunk of a branch.
"Tess, be careful," Luke reminded her.
Nodding compliantly, Tess' eyes focused on her feet. She moved one in front of the other, her arms out at her sides to maintain her balance. Left foot, right foot, slowly, carefully… For Leia. Come on, for Leia.
All of a sudden, Tess saw Leia's face again. Leia's face—twisted in pain as a blaster bullet struck her in the arm. Tess' feet shook from under her, sending her falling to the branch and tumbling off it.
Cries of 'NO!' and her friends calling for her came from the net as Tess' arms flailed, reaching for something until her hand wrapped around a vine. It was partially attached to the branch with several thinner vines, but the thin ones snapped under Tess' weight and without their support the thick vine swung her into the trunk of the tree with a thud.
She put her hands out in front of her to brace for the impact, which was a good decision until she felt her fingers crack from the collision with the tree. Still, she miraculously managed to hang onto the vine.
Han, Luke, Chewbacca, and even the droids were overlapping each other as they called out to Tess, asking if she was alright or not. But through their cries she heard an odd sound—some sort of humming or maybe an animal making noises. They must have heard it, too, because they stopped talking to her and started looking down to see what was there.
Tess' eyes scanned through the leaves and vines on the forest floor, but she didn't need to look as hard as she thought. As if out of nowhere, several furry heads popped up. They were muttering in an alien language. One of them exposed a woven box-like cover on the ground. Only then did Tess see that there was another rope connected to the net, coming from the tree right across from hers. There must have been a release latch under the woven box cover because the net suddenly dropped and her friends fell to the ground. All Tess could do was watch from several metres up in the tree.
Don't say anything, Tess, echoed Luke's voice in her head. She looked down to see him meeting her eyes. He was communicating with her through the Force. They don't know you're up there. You're safe now, so keep it that way.
Tess bit her lip nervously. The small aliens—which almost resembled tiny, cute versions of Wookies—now spoke in more of a chant.
"Ewoks…" Tess whispered to herself. She had read up on Endor before they arrived and she just connected their descriptions with the real thing.
Tess couldn't hear all of the conversation down there, but the Ewoks seemed to be bowing to Threepio. Before she knew it, the tiny, furry aliens were tying her friends to logs and carrying them off.
As soon as the Ewoks were nearly out of sight, Tess climbed down from the tree and raced after them.
She hoped with all her might that she would run into Leia on her way.