The Force Awakens

Chapter 21

I woke to the sunlight. Dawn streamed through the doorway of the hut in which I'd taken shelter to escape the night's rain. Fortunately, the rain had ended.

This day was too important to let anything disturb me. I had to have all my focus if I was going to learn the ways of the Jedi.

Stretching my body, I slid off the stone bench and stepped toward the door, then stopped. I wasn't alone in the hut.

The presence of someone I knew lurked in the shadows. A brooding, angry presence. My brother, Kylo Ren.

I saw him, somehow, undergoing surgery. He winced as a droid pulled stitches from his face. I had cut him there during our fight and I could feel the ache and sting of the wound, as if Ben had drawn me into his suffering. His pupils burned with hate.

Instinctively, I drew the blaster my father had given me and shot at the shadows.

The energy bolt drilled a hole through the wall. Light poured inside, dispelling the darkness. Kylo Ren was nowhere in sight.

I ran outside. To my relief, Kylo Ren didn't appear to be anywhere in the village, either. He'd just been another weird manifestation of this weird island. A ghost.

Or maybe not, as he materialized before me again.

This time I could clearly see his mane of hair, his scarred face, his dark eyes. He gestured at me and said, "You will bring Luke Skywalker to me."

I almost laughed. Did this murderer think I would obey him? Did he think he could control my movements or extract my secrets as he had before? I would rather die than let him do those things to me again.

Ben dropped his hand, as if surprised by the power of my rebuke. "You're not doing this...no. The effort would kill you." His eyes probed around me, only to settle back on me. "Can you see my surroundings?"

"You're going to pay for what you did," I said.

"I can't see yours," he said, ignoring my threat. "Just you. So no, this is something else."

Something else? What was he talking about? What was happening anyway? Was this even real?

Footsteps sounded behind me. I turned. Luke Skywalker stood outside his hut. I kept quiet out of fear. If Kylo Ren discovered I had found the Jedi Master, he could ruin the progress I had made.

My silence, however, could not conceal my emotions from Ben. He snarled. "Luke..."

Luke stopped, peering past me. "What's that about?"

I spun back around toward Ben. But as before, my bitter enemy was not there. In Kylo Ren's place was a group of hairless humanoids in white robes and headdresses. Their skin was rubbery, like that of an amphibian, and tinted the gray-blue of the surrounding sea. Two large eyes rested on either side of their melon-shaped heads, with twin blowholes and a pursed mouth between. They trundled about the village on three-toed feet, regarding me with distrust and mumbling to each other in a singsong tongue. One jabbed a fat finger at the hole I had blown in the wall of my hut.

I turned red, realizing Luke had been asking me about the damage and not Kylo Ren. "I was cleaning my blaster, and...it went off."

Luke accepted my lie without further question. Another of the beings piped something at Luke, eyeing me. Luke responded in their language, then headed out of the village.

Eager to be away from Kylo Ren and those creatures, I followed Luke. He led me up another staircase, this one spiraling up the highest of the two mountains on the island.

"Who were those things?" I asked.

"Caretakers," Luke said. "Island natives. They've kept up the Jedi structures since they were built."