Yoda Read Free

how easy it would be to see his foot fall through, into that deep power—to sink into dark depths there, and drown.
    Tick, tick,
tchak.
Tick, tick,
tchack.
Footsteps coming nearer, one, two, and then the
thunk
of a cane stubbed into the white-pebbled path. A glow light approaches, coming from the direction of the Masters’ quarters, a blur of light moving through the garden’s tangle of leaves and vines. The presence is a familiar one, and the student can feel Yoda, his old mind warm and bright as that glow light, long before the old one’s silhouette rounds the last bend, and the great Master of the Jedi Order hobbles slowly up to join him.
    The student smiles and dips his head. How many times Yoda has told him, in endless hours of meditation or lightsaber training, that while the outer form of a figure or an attack need not be displayed, one must feel its
intention
in every cell. So that little dip of the head, so casual, carries a lifetime of gratitude and respect. And fear, too. And guilt.
    The Grand Master of the Jedi Order puts down his light and clambers awkwardly onto a rock, scrabbling for purchase and then hauling himself up to sit snuffling beside his student like some unfortunate garden gnome. The student’s grin broadens, but he knows better than to offer to help.
    Yoda settles himself on the stone in a series of grunts and shifts, adjusting the skirts of his worn Jedi robes, and letting his feet hang just over the surface of the pond. The water-skeeters zip under his ancient green toes, oblivious to the slightly hairy greatness dangling over them. “Pensive, are you, Dooku?”
    The student doesn’t attempt to deny it.
    â€œNo fear about this mission have you, surely?”
    â€œNo, Master.” The student corrects himself. “Not about the mission, anyway.”
    â€œConfident, you should be. Ready you are.”
    â€œI know.”
    Yoda seems to want the light he has left on the ground. He turns his cane around and tries to hook the glow light’s handle with it. Grimacing, he fishes once, twice, but the light slips off. He grunts, exasperated.
    With the barest flick of his attention, the student picks up the lantern with the Force and sends it floating to his teacher. “Why not do it the easy way, Master?” he asks—and knows what’s coming as soon as he shuts his mouth.
    â€œ
Because
it is easy,” Yoda grunts. In the young man’s experience, students get a lot of answers like this from Yoda.
He didn’t send the light away, though,
Dooku thinks.
    They sit together in the garden. Somewhere out of sight, a fish breaks the surface, then settles back into the water.
    Yoda gives the student a companionable prod with the end of his stick. “So ready to leave, yesterday you were!”
    â€œAnd last month, and last year, and the year before that.” A rueful smile from Dooku lights and dies slowly away. “But now that it’s really going to happen…” He looks around. “I can’t remember a time I didn’t want to leave—to go out, to travel the stars, to see the world. And yet I have loved it here. This place has been my home. You have been my home.”
    â€œAnd will be still.” Yoda gazes at the sweet-scented darkness of the gardens approvingly. “Always be here, we will. Home, yes…they say on Alderaan,
Home it is, where when you come to the door, they have to let you in!
” He snuffs the evening air, laughing a little. “Hm. Always will there be a place for you here.”
    â€œI suppose so. I hope so.” The student looks down at the shell in his hand. “I found this on the bank. Abandoned by a freshwater hermit crab. They don’t have homes of their own, you know. They keep outgrowing them. I was thinking about that, how the Jedi found me on Serenno. With my mother and father, I suppose. I can’t remember them now. Do you ever stop to think how strange that