Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [44]
I tried to push and make it move again, but got nothing.
I opened my eyes and looked up at Master Skywalker. “I think nothing’s happening.”
He smiled. “Don’t think, feel it. It will happen.”
I shrugged. “I’m not even moving the dust on this rock.”
“You don’t believe, which is why you fail.” Luke opened his arms to take in the other students. As I looked around I saw that the short hops Tionne’s stone had taken were insignificant compared to what others had accomplished. Worst of all, Gantoris had a halo of pebbles whirling at different speeds around his head. “You see, size matters not, numbers matter not. If you believe, you open the way for the Force to come through you.”
I shook my head. “I believe, but apparently not well enough.”
Gantoris’ eyes opened and he stared at me past Streen’s head. “You believe in failure, Keiran, which is why you fail. It is a never-ending cycle.”
Luke gestured toward Gantoris and the stones he’d had orbiting his head flew up into the air. They wove themselves through an intricate pattern almost too fast for the eye to follow. It would have been all but impossible to watch, but Luke struck one stone off another, creating sparks at this point and that. Then, like a swarm of piranha-beetles on the hunt, the stones flew off and vanished into the rainforest.
“There is only one cycle that is without end, Gantoris. That cycle is life and life is what creates the Force. Success comes with feeling, understanding and controlling the Force.” He smiled. “The pace may be different, but the progression is the same for all of you. Setbacks are expected. Success and failure will always be part of your training.”
“Not for me.” Gantoris shook his head adamantly. “I do not choose to fail.”
Gantoris’ declaration sent a chill down my spine. I’d heard that tone many times before, though the words had been different. “You’ll never take me alive, CorSec,” was how it always came out, and disaster almost always followed it. Here, at the Jedi academy, where we were learning to manipulate the energy that bound the universe together, I didn’t even want to think about what sort of tragedy Gantoris’ comment could spawn.
ELEVEN
That evening, after dinner, I found myself thinking about what Luke had said. The idea that I had to first feel the Force before I could employ it made me reevaluate what I had learned so far. Luke had also said that prior to what we tried earlier we had only been using the Force passively, to enhance our senses. This made me wonder if I had been tapping the reservoir of Force energy that my body produced. It occurred to me that each living creature generated enough of the Force to keep them aware of and in touch with the world, but to push beyond that required an expanded flow of energy.
It required tapping into the Force itself. Luke said that I had to believe, but that meant letting go of doubts. This brought me back to the realization that my doubts were part and parcel of who I was, and unless or until I could push beyond them, I would be blocked from access to the Force. I felt as if I had to sacrifice myself to be able to feel the Force and use it, and yet I did not want to do that.
Still, my little chamber reeked of sacrifice. The names sunk in the stone made it crystal clear. Porkins and Biggs had died at Yavin, sacrificing all they were and could ever be. Wedge’s life had been sacrificed to the Rebellion; his dreams deferred, his access to a life others would consider normal denied. And if I included Luke in the group, he was left with a mission to recreate an order of peacekeepers that his father had destroyed, to be able to rebuild a galaxy his father had helped take apart.
Suddenly my room became cloying and close. Here three men had vowed to put an end to the Empire or to die. Knowing less about their probable futures than I did about mine, having lived less of a life than I have lived, they made