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."
I glanced down at the village. The strange Caretaker beings were watching me. "I don't think they like me."
"Can't imagine what gave you that idea."
A section of the staircase hugged the cliff. Cooing and chirping sounded from small dark holes in the rock wall. The occasional avian perched on a step, blinking at me with big black eyes. "While you're being chatty, can you tell me what those chubby birdlike things are?" I asked.
"Porgs."
"Porgs?"
"Porgs," Luke said, without further comment.
After strenuous effort, we climbed the last stair and arrived on a short shelf of rock near the summit. A cave was carved into the mountain behind us. I felt a pull toward the mouth of the cave, as I had at the tree. Luke took me to the ledge instead.
The height provided an unsurpassed view of the ocean. Giant waves crashed on rocks below, and the sky met the sea along a gray horizon. The sight should have relaxed me, but my conversation with Kylo Ren hung over me like a noxious cloud.
Luke broke a stalk off a plant that grew between the cracks in the rock. He rolled it back and forth in his palm. "What do you know about the Force?"
The truth was, I didn't know much. My mother told me about it, but not enough. I always wanted to learn more. Once Ben started showing off his new abilities, I tried coaxing him into telling me about it. Unfortunately, he refused. But I dared not show Luke my ignorance.
"It's a power that the Jedi have, that lets them control people and...make things float," I said, fumbling through what little I knew.
"Impressive," Luke quipped. "Every word in that sentence was wrong."
I felt foolish for not listening to my mother more. She had told me about it years ago, but it all seemed boring at the time. And I had left D'Qar in such a rush, with barely enough time to say good-bye to Finn, Rey, and Poe.
Luke gestured to a large smooth rock. "Lesson one. Sit here. Legs crossed."
When I had seated myself atop the stone, Luke spoke with a reverence I had not heard from him before. "The Force is not a power you have. It's not about floating rocks. It's the energy between all things, a tension, a balance that binds the universe together."
"Okay," I said. His description could've characterized a thousand other mystical traditions. "But what is it?"
"Close your eyes."
Annoyed he wouldn't give me an answer, I still did as he said. My world soon became one of sound, waves breaking, gulls cawing, and the measured tones of Luke's voice.
"Breathe," he said.
I exhaled and inhaled, filling my lungs with the salty sea air. With every breath, my heartbeat slowed and my impatience receded. A calmness I had never experienced before settled over me.
"Now...reach out."
I lifted an arm and stretched out my hand. Something danced on the tips of my fingers. "I feel something."
"You feel it?"
Most definitely, I did, so much that it tickled. "Yes, I feel it!"
"That's the Force," Luke said.
"Really?" It seemed so easy to access its power. Just a few breaths and my palm tingled with new energy. If I had only known this method before, my life could've been far different.
Luke sounded equally astounded. "It must be really strong with you."
My confidence soared. That was the first nice thing he had said about me. "Well, I—"
I yelped as pain shot through my palm. Opening my eyes, I realized that what I had felt wasn't the Force at all, but a reed Luke held. He had smacked my hand with it.
My cheeks reddened in embarrassment at being so easily tricked. Luke hadn't been talking about stretching out my hands at all. "You meant reach out like..." Not knowing exactly how to define it, I pointed to my center, my heart. He nodded. "Okay, got it." I shut my eyes, determined to try again.
Luke moved my arms so my palms touched the stone on which I sat. It helped me resist the temptation to use my limbs.
"Breathe," Luke said once more. "Just breathe."
Out and in went my breaths, slowly but surely. With them went my confusion and my questions. Peace returned, deeper than before.
"Now," Luke said, "reach out with your feelings."
I didn't think about what he had said. I just let it happen. Every one of my senses reached out, rather than one dominating the others. A new awareness of the world came to me, informed by the little things I would have missed otherwise. I felt moisture on the boulder beneath me. Smelled the algae that flourished in the seashore pools. Tasted a gust of moldy air coming from within the cave. Heard the mating song of some faraway leviathan.
"What do you see?" Luke asked.
Though my eyes were closed, images flashed in my mind. "The island," I told him, perceiving it in all its glory, as if I were one of the gulls gliding above. It was quickly replaced by a vision of flowers blooming before her. "Life," I said, enjoying the flowers' lovely fragrance, yet also sniffing out the rot in the soil from which they grew. "Death and decay," I added, watching blades of grass shoot from the dirt, "that feeds new life."
A view of the mountainside presented itself, splendid in the sunlight. "Warmth," I said, shuddering as I was plunged deep into the sea, "and coldness."
My perception returned to the cliff, where a mother porg doted over her nest. "Peace," I observed, touched by the maternal affection. But as before, the scene was swiftly upended. A wave smashed into the nest. "Violence," I said, as the sea snatched the eggs.
"And between it all?" Luke asked.
I shifted my attention. I let the images and smells, feelings and sounds fade into the background and instead concentrated on the ways those details came to me, the paths that brought my senses alive.
Luke was right. There was something in between. It connected me to the rock, the porgs, the sea, the waves, the island. It was untouchable yet tangible, invisible yet bright. "A balance," I described, "of energy."
Yet it was more than a source of power. Much more. A set of principles governed it. It held influence, yet did not judge. Most simply, it attracted things—like gravity, like love.
"A...force," I said.
"And inside you?"
"Inside me..." And there it was, encompassing me, too, as if there were no difference between the inside and the out. "That same force."
"This is the lesson," Luke said. "The Force does not belong to the Jedi. It is so much bigger. To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies is vanity."
The joy of discovery was short-lived. My senses took control. "There's something else here. A powerful light. Blinding."
"This is the first Jedi temple. The concentration of light."
"But there's something else." In my mind's eye I saw a hole in the rock, ringed by a reddish moss. "Beneath the island. A place. A dark place. It's cold. It's calling me."
Luke's voice took on a new urgency. "Resist it, Annie. Fight it!"
I couldn't. The darkness swallowed me up. I heard a roar. Felt a shake. The ground moved. A chorus of stars shrilled in the skies. A fountain gushed from the underground cove. Someone called my name. Luke? Where was he? Should he not be here, too? In the Force? It was supposed to connect everything and everyone.
"Annie! Annie!"
My vision ended in pain. Luke smacked me awake. I choked on air and shivered. I was wet, as if I had actually gone underwater. "That place," I said, remembering to breathe, "was trying to—"
Luke didn't let me explain. "You went straight to the dark. It offered you something you needed and you didn't even try to stop yourself."
He started toward the cave behind us. I staggered up from the rock. "I saw everything—the island, and past it...I felt the stars singing. I thought my heart would explode, but...I didn't see you. Nothing from you, no light, no dark."
Even here, as I stood before him, I couldn't sense him. Why? Wasn't he a Jedi Master? Shouldn't he shine brighter than anything else?
"You've closed yourself off from the Force," I said. Luke wasn't merely hiding out from the rest of the galaxy. He was hiding from the very thing that had made his destiny.
My accusation fell on deaf ears. "I've seen this raw strength only once before—in Ben Solo, your brother," Luke said. "It didn't scare me enough then. It does now."
Luke entered the cave. I remained on the ledge, still in shock. I noticed cracks in the dirt surrounding me. A chunk of the mountainside had collapsed into the sea. When had that happened? Had I somehow caused a landslide?
I looked into the mouth of the cave, then turned away.