Inheritance


43.

Something's happening.

It's like the whole universe is talking just to me. It's like the jabuur-weki knows I'm here and it's calling out to me, like it wants me to come out and fight it.

It knows my name. I can hear it – the rain and the hail and thunder and stuff, that's all the jabuur-weki, and the nighttime and the screaming Feorians out there and Master shouting and Master Windu shouting back – that's all part of it. There's like a whole million voices shouting in the dark, and I can hear them but nobody else can. They all want me.

They want to blitz me.

I'm all alone in here. Master said to stay put, but he didn't understand about the voices. It's like claws and snatching jaws and stuff are ripping down the house and ripping through the darkness and coming to get me. I can't just stay here, 'cause it'll get me. Master would want me to get away – he really would. I have to get away… except where?

It's outside and inside, and I can't get away. It's coming for me and it keeps calling my name like it knows me and its hungry.

"Master!" I yell, but he can't hear.

Then I try to yell for him in the Force, but everything is so twisty and jiggery and full of thunder. Ow! Real thunder, and it hurts my head. And the jabuur-weki is laughing at me , like it thinks that was funny. It's gonna kill all the Feorians and Master Windu and Obi-Wan too. It's gonna eat up this entire world and the stars and everything, and it's gonna get me too and eat my insides all slow and terrible and claw them out and even if I scream forever there won't be an escape and –

"Noooo!" I don't want that! I have to stop it!

And there's this place inside me where I don't like to think about, but it's like an empty place and sometimes its all full of light, like when I met my angel from Iego for the first time – Padme I mean – and sometimes it's full of dark like when that sleemo pizzmah Lorra called me a slave boy. And right now that place hurts. It's all full of lightning, like fire, and I can't tell if it's good or bad or anything but all of a sudden I'm not afraid, I'm mad.

And I'm gonna stop that jabuur-weki, like the hero in the story.

I am the hero, even if I don't have a lightsaber. I've got something almost just as good.

So I get all my stuff- my cloak and my boots and this satchel thingy and the old busted repulsor drive from the Feorian tram and the knife that Master let me borrow for a while 'cause I liked it so much and we're friends, and I guess if you share your possessions that's kinda like not being attached, right? It's not a vorpal blade, technically, but it's still pretty rugged, and Master Qui-Gon gave it to him special. I stick it in my boot just like he does, except it kinda sticks over the top of mine so I shove it in my belt instead right where a real 'saber would go when I'm older. And then I peek my head out the door and there's something on fire over there – I think it's the elders' longhouse, that's really really bad – and I scream right back at the jabuur-weki.

It can't make me afraid because I'm real super mad and I'm gonna get it before it gets me and everyone else! Maybe it should be afraid of me.

I'm the hero.

And I go running like as fast as I can with all this ice and rain hitting me in the face and making the ground slippery. But the Force is on my side even if it's all hot and burning and cold and awful and stuff, 'cause it still makes me fast and powerful like I'm podracing and I'm the only human who can do it. I can do anything- anything at all, even slay the jabuur-weki. And I run.

I remember the way. I don't need to even see and it's like there's a big ol' magnet pulling me that way so it doesn't really matter if I remember or not and the closer I get the louder the voices get until they're all screaming just crazy loud inside my head and the thunder and stuff is inside of me and the lightning that zaps over there is like part of me too. I can feel it. Everything is connected and I'm like the center of it all.

And here's the cave and I almost drop my bag because there's so much ice blitzing me out of the sky like the clouds are trying to stop me and that cave opening is really dark where the boulder leans over. In the nighttime it looked for a minute like a monster, all folded up there with its wings wrapped around its body and its beak jaw thing all tucked down secret so I wouldn't see it. But then there's more lightning way over there and I can see it's just a giant boulder so I go underneath it.

The cave is cold.

And it's like a dream, a bad one.

It's like that dream I had before, only worse.

"Mom!" I holler. She's right over there, only she's all wrong, all sad and and and bloody and stuff, and then she's gone again.

And then there's Hutts and Watto and Tusken raiders and the prison bloc under Gardulla's palace and a dead krayt skeleton staring up at the moons with the sand all hissing around it like its alive and there's lots of stuff, bad stuff I don't want to look at – and then its gone and it's super freezing cold.

And this is the jabuur-weki's lair. Master went in here and he almost blitzed the monster. Almost. But I think I can do it for real. I know what to do.

I'm the hero.

Mom would be super proud, and Master will be too. He won't get in trouble from the Council any more 'cause I'm not good enough and cause I sorta accidentally break the rules and all. And then we'll be super real good friends.

I grab my stuff and I squeeze through into the smaller cave. I have to get all the way in, to the secret inner cave, the one Yonso found. That's the place. And then I'll show the jabuur-weki who's the boss.

Me. Anakin Skywalker. A real Jedi. A hero.