Tonight was another night of being locked in her special place—the cellar. Rey was sure that Unkar thought the cellar was a punishment for her, or at least a prison to keep her out of the way. However, for Rey the cellar was her special place with Ani.
As Rey climbed down the ladder through the trap door, she took in a deep breath of the cool cellar air. She shut the doors above her, standing on the ladder, taking a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once adjusted, she carefully moved down the rungs. She then realized that the crates had been moved from where they were this morning.
"Ani?" Rey called out. "Ani! Where are you?"
Ani spoke in her head. "Find me."
"It's so dark down here. I can't see your light." A whine accompanied those words. "Stop hiding, Ani."
"Rey, your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them," Ani said. "Use the Force, like I showed you."
Rey took a deep breath and focused as Ani had been teaching her these last few months. It was never easy for her doing it this way, but she was learning how to use the Force to avoid Unkar. Time to find Ani.
As Rey hurried around the dark cellar, she stubbed her toe on a crate she did not see. "Ow!"
"Use the Force, Rey. Feel the crates around you, and avoid them."
Rey growled at him but pushed on through the dark chamber. After stumbling a few times on the uneven stones of the floor, Rey quickly ran around a stone support pillar and pushed a shipping crate out of the way to reveal Ani. He had covered the area he was hiding in from head-to-toe so that his blue aura would not give away his location.
She grabbed him, or at least his Force barrier that he kept around his arms while she was with him. "Gotcha!"
Ani knelt down and tickled her. Rey ran away, squealing and laughing until Ani caught her and tickled her some more. "Stop! I give up!" Rey said between giggles.
Ani sat up. "What do you want to learn tonight?"
"Not more lessons," Rey moaned.
"Yes, more lessons, Young Lady," Ani replied with a wink. "But this time a little different. Do you see all those crates?"
"Yes. Why did you move them everywhere?"
"You'll see. I'm going to give you a ten second head start. Go hide, and don't let me catch you."
Rey ran off, looking for a good hiding place. "No cheating, Ani."
"I won't," Ani said with a grin. "This time."
It took Ani a few minutes, but he finally found Rey behind some crates near the ladder to the trap door. As he reached to grab her, Rey ran out of his grasp and started climbing up a stack of crates a meter away.
She jumped to another stack of crates, holding on tightly as they tumbled to the ground. She rolled in a tight somersault and ran toward the other end of the cellar where the ceiling was higher and the walls were rough stone.
Rey glanced behind her, watching Ani close the distance. Then she looked up. There were no crates at this end of the room. Ani was closing in on her, backing her into a corner. She grabbed at the rough stone wall and found her tiny fingers could grab it.
She turned around and started up the wall, looking for notches in the wall until she could reach the wooden slats above that served as extra storage.
Just as Ani was about to grab her, she made it to the safety of the rafters. "Safe!"
Ani beamed in pride at his granddaughter. "That was good. That was really good. Way to think outside of your problems to the solution, you little Kowakian monkey lizard. Come on down, now, or do I have to come get you?"
"Come get me!" Rey squealed with joy.
Ani appeared automatically next to her in the rafters. Rey balanced herself on two slats spread apart a few inches. "What is this place, Rey?"
"I don't know. Just lots of cool stuff," she said, lifting a long pole a bit longer than her height. She held it in the middle, tilting it awkwardly toward him. "Fight with me, Ani. Fight with me."
"Not up here, Young One. Come on, let's go down." Ani pointed to the floor. "You can bring your staff with you."
After Rey dropped her staff to the cellar floor, she looked down at the distance. "Ani, I don't know how to get down."
"Same way you got up. Use the wall."
Rey gingerly crawled to the end of the rafters, but she could not find a way to grasp the wall from this angle. "I can't, Ani."
Ani smiled. "Hold on. I'll bring you down." He held out his hand and slowly levitated her to the floor.
"That was fun, Ani! Do it again."
"No," Ani said. "The Force is not a toy."
"Please." Rey gave him the most adorable imploring look she could create, the one that Mommy could never resist.
Ani opened his mouth to say "no" again, but then gave in. "All right. Just this once." He raised his hand and lifted her up to the ceiling and then brought her quickly down again.
"Faster, Ani! Faster!" Rey giggled.
Ani smiled at her, taking joy from her giggles, lifting her up and down in the open space, until she became nauseated. "Maybe it's time to stop, Rey."
"Yeah, that was fun. But I'm a little dizzy now." She held her stomach.
As Ani lowered her to the cellar floor, he held out his hand and levitated a piece of charcoal that Rey had purloined from the kitchen fires a few weeks before. "More lessons?" Rey whined.
"Yes, more lessons." He wrote out a few words on the stones and had Rey read them back to him.
"Bantha, wampa, Hutt, Wook-Wook-eye."
"Wook-eeee," Ani corrected.
"Wookiee, Twi'lek, Ray, Naboo, droid," she continued.
"Which one is your name?"
"My name's not there."
"Yes, it is! See this one? Resh, Aurek, Yirt. Ray." Ani pointed to each letter in turn.
"No, my name is Resh, Esk, Yirt! That's what Mommy says."
Ani rubbed the Aurek out of the stone and inserted an Esk. "That better?"
"Yes, Resh, Esk, Yirt! Rey!"
"Now, I'm going to set you some problems. When you finish them, I'm going to teach you something new." He wrote out twenty simple addition problems and then gave Rey the charcoal.
Rey quickly filled in random numbers as Ani watched. She proudly proclaimed, "Done!"
Ani grimaced at her when he looked at her work. He waved his hand and the charcoal bits disappeared from her answers. "This time work the problems out and give me the correct answers."
"But you already know the correct answers. Why do I have to tell you?"
"Just do it." Ani sighed, shaking his head.
When Rey had completed all of the problems correctly, Ani smiled at her. "Good job."
"Mommy will be proud when she sees what I can do, right, Ani?"
"Right, Honey." Ani's face hardened at the thought.
"Why hasn't my mommy come back yet, Ani?"
"She can't, Sweetie."
"I was a bad girl, Ani. I wouldn't eat that icky soup. But I promise I'll be good. Can you tell her that, Ani?"
"Sweetie, why you're here has nothing to do with that. Your mommy can't come back. She doesn't know where you are. She's searching the galaxy for you. She would be here right now for you if she could."
"But you know where I am. Go tell my mommy where I am, Ani."
"I can't, Rey."
"Why not?" Tears creeped down her cheeks.
Ani took a deep breath while thinking of an answer Rey would understand. "Do you remember why I first came to you, Rey?"
"I called for help. I called for my mommy."
"Yes, but she can't come. So I did." Ani rubbed his neck. "Your mommy hasn't called for me, so I can't go to her. She doesn't want me there."
"She doesn't know you, Ani. I'm sure if she knew you, she would call you." Rey said. "She would love you like I do."
A tear escaped Ani's eye. "Rey, I wasn't always Ani. Your mommy knows me . . . the way I used to be."
"Who were you, Ani?"
"Who I was does not matter anymore. Who I am now . . . well, that's all that matters, right?"
"You're just a ghost, right?"
"No, I am your grandfather." Ani held his arms out to Rey. He was the one who needed a hug this time.
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