Embers: Sequel to Crash and Burn

Okay, good. Almost there.

Allana had never made an interstellar journey on her own. She’d gone with her father to many places across the galaxy, and he often let her help fly the ship. Once, she even manned the cockpit mostly by herself, as he was injured, and only on call in case there was a problem. But now there wasn’t anybody to call if a problem came up, and she didn’t think there was a station on or near Dathomir that she could call for help if she needed it. And even if there was, she didn’t know their channel.

So far, so good, though; there hadn’t been any problems yet, even though the hyperdrive had been slow to kick in on the last jump, and coming out of hyperspace in the Dathomir system took twice as long as it should have and the return was shaky. She still felt a little bit nauseated from the ship’s tremors, so she took a sip of clear soda from a closed can to settle her stomach.

A little red light on the control panel started to blink, and she felt her stomach twisting again. Words poured across the datascreen, and she struggled to keep up with the dancing letters. Hyperdrive failure, commencing shutdown immediately.

Allana frowned and double-checked her navigational charts. If she wasn’t actually in the Dathomir system, then she was really in trouble. Maybe not as much trouble as her father had been fifteen years earlier, but it still would be bad. She only had two weeks of rations in the cabinet. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone taking ships, she thought ruefully, but the charts confirmed that she was indeed in the correct location.

The rickety old Hadron Boson bounced her around in her seat as she guided it towards the atmosphere, and the rocking got even worse when she entered the air. Towards the mountains, she thought, but there was more than one mountain range, and she couldn’t quite remember which one was which. Sure, she was supposed to look for the clan in the northern hemisphere, but how was she supposed to tell the difference between the north and the south?

She consulted the onboard computer once she got to a patch of air that wasn’t as windy, and figured out at least which range she was looking for, but it was still wide and landing in the wrong location could leave her more than a week’s journey away from her destination. Two weeks, if particularly unlucky. Stop thinking, she told herself. Just do it and let the Force guide you.

Allana struggled with the four control levers, and the ship flipped over twice before she was able to force it upright and in the right direction. She flew around a few times, looking for a good place to land, and eventually picked out a wide space on the side of one of the mountains. It would be a tricky landing, but there wasn’t a lot of fuel left and she didn’t think she could make another pass over the mountains without running out and having to land wherever she was.

She turned off the sublight drives little by little and let the repulsors take over. Now the ship moved slowly and in a jerking fashion, on repulsors that were much older than she was and probably hadn’t been properly maintained or even tuned up in years. She moved closer to the ledge, but dropped below it, and strained against the levers to bring the ship back up until she was hovering on a parallel plane close to it and slightly above.

Allana applied the brakes and slowed the ship down, but she didn’t do it hard enough, and the ship smacked lightly into the side of the rock face and bounced backward. She settled it down on the ledge before it bounced too far, though, and powered down.

She started to extend the boarding ramp and look for a place to stand, but only saw a sheer vertical drop going down about a hundred meters. She gasped and scrambled to the other side of the ship, which had an emergency hatch, and she spent two minutes pushing against the stuck door before she could get it open. The hatch was just big enough for her to crawl out of, and she wiggled out, carrying a sack with water bottles, food, and a first aid kit behind her.

The Hadron Boson wobbled on the edge of the flat plane, and when she slammed the hatch closed, it began to tip over. One of the landing legs, now broken, buckled under the ship’s weight and crumpled. This changed the ship’s center of gravity just enough to send it rolling, and Allana watched it slowly roll off the side of the ledge and disappear. Several seconds later, she heard a muffled crash.

If she had any doubts about her course of action, they were gone now. She no longer had the luxury of second thoughts; her transport off the planet was gone, and she was now going to have to seek out the Singing Mountain clan and ask for help.

Except that she still didn’t quite know where they were.

Allana looked all around her and spotted a tiny, dim fire near the base of the mountains opposite the ones that she was on. Her heart raced again, because she had no idea how she was going to climb down a rock face – even her mother needed the Force to help her, and had been training with it a lot longer than Allana had. But I have two arms, she thought. She wished she had an anchor or a rope, but then realized that she might not need them, because there was another path down from the ledge and into the valley. At least, she could see the beginning of the path, and it was going to be a difficult hike down, but not nearly as perilous as a hundred-meter drop.

She took a deep breath to calm herself and started climbing down. Allana managed to get about a third of the way down the mountain before it got dark and she needed another place to rest; that she found in a half-hour, and slept uncomfortably and lightly on the rocks. She woke up whenever she thought she heard something that might be a wild animal, but by the time morning came again, she had gotten at least enough sleep that she could start again.

Allana passed by a bleached white skeleton, and she shuddered, but kept on going until she reached the valley, three days later. By that time she was covered in scratches and insect bites, and wanted little more than to take a shower, or have something to eat that wasn’t a chalky ration bar. It’s a lot better than Dad had on the ice planet, at least, she thought.

But he wasn’t by himself, either.

Allana missed everybody already. She hoped that her father and uncle wouldn’t worry too much about her; they could, surely, just reach out in the Force and find that she was still alive, even if they couldn’t find out exactly where she was. But it occurred to her that she might not see her friends for a long, long time, or anyone in her family other than the Dathomiri relatives that she hadn’t seen in seven years, and that made her a little bit upset. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and used a few leaves to wipe her nose, then kept on going.

It was about a week after she landed that she finally came to the clan’s home perimeter. She was exhausted and hungry, and the feeling was only ameliorated by the fact that her journey was over. She stood at the wooden gate until someone saw her, someone she didn’t recognize; a fierce-looking woman with long, dark brown hair and copper-brown eyes. She wore skins like Allana’s mother had, with plenty of oiled leather armor pieces over her legs and arms. “What do you call yourself?” the woman asked, but the voice didn’t seem to come from her mouth. Allana then realized that she was speaking directly into her mind.

“I’m Allana,” she said. “Tenel Ka’s daughter. Teneniel was my grandmother.”

Wait there. I will find out if what you say is true.

Of course it’s true, Allana thought, but she waited with a scowl.

An old woman, in heavily decorated leather armor and a metal spiked helmet, came out of the area’s only actual building – a large structure made entirely of rustic wood and adorned with fabric, flags, and metal parts attached to the outside. The metal pieces were beginning to rust and had flakes of paint still attached, and she thought she could pick out an old Imperial design on one of the pieces.

The woman approached Allana and looked her over. You tell the truth, she said. You are Teneniel’s granddaughter. We did not think that you lived, but some had doubts. What are you doing here?

Augwynne opened the gate, and Allana entered the giant fenced circle. “My mother is dead,” she said, and new sorrow welled up inside of her. She pushed it down, though, because she didn’t want to start crying in front of Augwynne. “She was killed by a man named Boba Fett.”

Did she fight bravely?

“Yes, of course she did. She killed him first, kind of. She stabbed him in the belly with her lightsaber. Except that he didn’t die right away and he shot her down, and then my cousin Ben shot him back.”

That sounds much like her. She will be missed. Where have you been all these years?

“On Coruscant. On Coruscant with my father, because I was hiding, and now, now I guess I’m hiding again. I don’t want to go back to Hapes.”

Hapes was good for Teneniel, for a time, but it is not a place that I would want to go and I would not send anyone there who does not want to be there, said Augwynne. You may stay here as long as you like if you will learn our ways.

“I will,” said Allana. “I promise.”

The strange women cleaned Allana up and gave her a new dress to wear, one that wasn’t torn by brambles and sharp rocks. It was made of thick, brown fabric, homespun, and it itched, but Allana wore it without complaining. This was the lot she had chosen, and it was still better than the alternative. At least here, she was alive.

Allana was hungry enough to eat the stew that she was given for dinner, even though it smelled stale and was served up in a wooden bowl. It wasn’t as bad as some of the things she’d tasted on missions taken with her father and with other trainees. She minded her manners and tried hard not to slurp or let pieces of coarse bread dribble down her chin. Still, there weren’t any napkins, and she had to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand. She delicately cleaned her hand on the grass, and one of the witches laughed, but Allana held her head high.

Do you know any spells? Augwynne asked her.

“No, not really. But I can do a little bit without them. I can sometimes talk to animals, and I can pull things through the air.” Allana looked up at a fruit tree and frowned as she concentrated on snapping it free from the branch. Little by little, she loosened it, and then called the falling fruit to her hand.

You will learn stronger tricks than that, but that is a good start. Tomorrow I will begin to teach you to talk to rancors. Then you will find it easy to move long distances over the land.

Augwynne lit a candle to mark Tenel Ka’s passing, and all of the witches, and the women without the Force, made a circle around the candle, chanting words of sorrow mixed with words of celebration. Tenel Ka was as much a Dathomiri as she was a Hapan, and they mourned her as one of their own. Allana let herself cry all through the ceremony, but when it was over, she dried her eyes and followed Augwynne, who made a place for her in the wooden clan hall, a simple pallet bed in an unused corner underneath a brown, orange, and white tapestry.

Allana learned a few Dathomiri words in her first week, and she also learned how to tie tight knots with ropes and how to hunt. At first, she shied away from the idea of hunting, because she didn’t like the blood and didn’t like to kill anything that wasn’t coming right at her, but Augwynne explained to her that it wasn’t killing in anger, but for survival. The clan needed the food, and it would help Allana earn her keep.

I never had to do that before, she thought, but maybe I should learn how. She still used her rough sensing skills to find out where it would hurt the animal the least, and tried to aim her spears towards that spot, but her throws were clumsy at first and she often missed. Augwynne was firm but patient with her, and let her practice on stationary wooden targets first, and she slowly found that her aim was improving.

She awoke to the sounds of running feet and loud war-cries, though. It was the middle of the night, and when she ran to the front of the clan hall and looked out of the doors, she saw a swarm of women carrying spears and swords. Clan raid, said Augwynne. Stay in the hall! Do not leave unless it starts to burn.

The young girls of the clan, and men ranging in age from much older than Allana’s father down to younger than Xander, crowded into the back rooms of the hall. Some of the girls linked arms and chanted a weak protection spell while Allana wedged herself into a corner and waited for the noise to pass. Eventually, it died down, and was quiet again, and they started to leave the hall.

Most of the tents had been trashed, uprooted and looted for treasure. There were four dead bodies on the ground, and several more moving figures that were wounded. Allana clutched Augwynne’s arm. “What happened?”

The Fire Island clan came and stole much of our treasure, and some of our slaves, Augwynne said. We were able to fight them off, but not before they could do much damage and take much that belonged to us.

“I could have helped,” said Allana.

It is too dangerous for you right now, Jedi training or not. We cannot afford to expend our youngest in battle now. Our numbers are too low, and the Nightsisters have taken too many. Augwynne snorted. The Fire Island clan is small and bloodthirsty, and their warriors are fierce. My sister Saria leads the clan. They broke away from us forty years ago and have been trying to build up their numbers. We will go to them soon to retrieve our slaves.

Allana picked up a scrap of fabric that had been torn away from someone’s clothing and stuck to the front gate. “This looks like fibersilk,” she said. It had the fine texture of fibersilk, which was not found anywhere on Dathomir. She had only seen it in a few import shops on Coruscant. The bright ochre color was what caught her eye, and she examined the fabric closely. “And it has loopy double-stitches.”

It may have belonged to an offworld traveler, one whose things were stolen by someone in Fire Island, said Augwynne.

“My father bought a fibersilk shirt for my uncle,” said Allana. “And it was just this color.” She noticed something glittering on the ground by the gate, and knelt down on the dirt to get a closer look. It was a golden ring set with a clear square stone. “This was his ring!”

Are you sure? There might be a thousand rings just alike.

“No, this was really his. It’s a synthetic zircon quadrille stone, and it scatters purple light if you look at it one way and green light if you look at it from the other direction.” Allana held the ring up to the dancing firelight and it confirmed it. “And if you look closely at the inside of the band it says sharasi bitta seel – that’s some ancient language, I think on Alderaan for ‘love forever.’ My father had this made for Uncle Anakin last year.”

Augwynne frowned, not quite understanding Allana’s meaning beyond the surface meanings of her words. How did it get all the way here, then? Did you bring it with you?

“No. He must have come after me! Were there any men in the raiding party?”

Not even one.

“Then the Fire Island clan caught him,” said Allana. “When you go, I want to go with you, so we can free him.”

I do not think you are strong enough yet. You would be an easy target for their fighters.

“But they have Anakin!” Allana cried.

They would not hurt him. And if he is a Jedi Knight he might be able to escape. He is as powerful as Welk, is he not?

“How do you know about Welk?”

Welk is my sister’s grandson, Augwynne explained. My great-nephew. He is the only free man in the Fire Island clan, and he is a strong warrior, although he must still answer to my niece.

“Then I am definitely going with you.” Allana drew up all of her nobility and stood up straight. “Anakin should not be a prisoner of Welk twice in his life. Once was one time too many and I will help to free him.”

He wouldn’t be freed. He would be the property of the Singing Mountain clan.

“I could give him his freedom,” said Allana.

You are not a full member of the clan yet. That would not be for at least three more years, when you prove yourself.

“Then you could give it to him! Please? He was Tenel Ka’s brother-in-law.” And her ex-husband’s new partner, she thought, but she didn’t say that part.

Augwynne took a step back. Allana had forgotten that Augwynne could hear her thoughts as well as translate her words. No, I will not do that. If he escapes on his own then we will not go out of our way to capture him again, but I will not give freedom to a man who has no respect for women.

“It’s not like that!” Allana stamped her foot. “He’s been very good to me, all my life.”

I am finished discussing this with you, Allana. My word is law within these walls, and we will not free your uncle from Fire Island unless he is fairly captured during our raid. And if he is, then he becomes the property of the warrior who caught him. Should this happen, and should you free him, then you will be ejected from the clan. Do you understand?

Allana nodded sadly and retreated to her thin bed. There had to be something she could do, but what?

She was not very surprised when they came back from the retaliatory raid with most of their original property and a little bit of extra, but Anakin was not with them. Augwynne confirmed that a man who looked like Anakin and felt a little bit like Allana in the spell-magic was being held by a member of the Fire Island clan, one of the young warriors who had come to Singing Mountain the week earlier, but he was too heavily guarded by her and her more powerful grandmother, as well as her father, for any of them to get to, and they would not expend warriors to get him when there were targets just as desirable, or more so, whose guardians were weaker in magic. You will get over this, said Augwynne. You must understand that men are not to rule women. Your time on Coruscant was not entirely good for you, although it enabled you to learn skills that you might not have learned on Hapes. There are a few things that you must unlearn.

“But Uncle Anakin is a Jedi Knight. He would help us fight off other clans and help us with the Nightsisters.”

I believe you, but there are more far-reaching effects. If he was brought here, then others might think that they also should be free, and our society would collapse. It cannot be allowed. If the threat from the Nightsisters grows significantly, then I will try to arrange with my sister that she talk to her great-granddaughter and ask her to turn Anakin over to us. But if Desa does not, she cannot be forced. It is her choice.

“I’d make her choose,” said Allana. “She’s not even in this clan.”

Perhaps in a few years you will be strong enough to make her choose, but right now, she is stronger than you are. She has many more years of training. It would not be wise to fight her.

Maybe Dad will come and find us, Allana thought. Uncle Anakin, I'm sorry! I’ve really made a mess this time.