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By Root 634 0

fluid jetting through a pinpoint gap in a pipe. It filled me up in an instant and I imagined it leaking from my eyes, nose and mouth. I wanted to shout and dance with joy because it was everything Streen had described. It was what I felt when Mirax first said she loved me. It was the scent of the perfume my mother wore, and the warm laugh my father used to have when he was proud of me. It was the hearty slap on the back from Wedge after a mission and even a touch of Whistler’s triumphant serenades. It was everything that was good and right and positive and alive; and it was waiting for me to bend it to my will.

Newly empowered, I reached out for the stone. In a heartbeat I plumbed its depths. I knew its size and mass, I knew its contours and its weaknesses. I knew I could shape the Force into a hammer and shatter it, but that was not the task at hand. My task was to move it, to rip it from the ground, to raise it up so all could see what I had done.

I poured the Force into my effort. At first I felt resistance, but I expected that. The stone had been firmly stuck in the ground for years. I tugged at it and could see it rocking back and forth. Small pebbles cascaded off it, bouncing down into the grasses at its base. I worried it like a loose tooth, then I prepared to pull it.

I gritted my teeth against the effort. I felt the stone shift. Before my mind’s eye I saw it quiver and shake. Slowly, slowly at first it began to move upward. A micron here, a millimeter there, then a centimeter, then two. And four and six and twenty. Rich brown loam fell from it as the lower half of the stone began to rise above the surface. Faster it moved now, slowed only by the occasional clumsy bump against the side of the hole it had inhabited. My control was not yet fine, but I knew it would get better, so I pushed on, working on lifting it higher.

The stone came fully clear of the ground, but that was not enough for me. I could feel the Force pulsing into me, full and insistent. I channeled it back out through my mind and made the rock’s ascent smooth. I lifted it and lifted it up so high that when I opened my eyes, I knew I would be able to see beneath it and find Master Luke across the circle from me. I would lift it so high, in fact, that not even Gantoris could deny what I had done.

Finally I had success. The stone hung in the air better than two meters above the ground. I held it there and redoubled my effort to quell the list in it. I wanted it as firmly embedded in the Force and air as it had been in the ground. When it stopped moving, I smiled and opened my eyes.

The rock remained in the ground.

I stared at it and tried to remember if I had heard it crash back down into the ground. I couldn’t remember such a sound, nor could I remember feeling the shockwave that would have resulted from a crash landing. I glanced up at where the rock should have been, then back down. I couldn’t believe it had not moved because I knew I had felt the Force, and I knew the rock had flown.

Then I noticed that all the others, every single one of them, were looking at the spot in the air where I had seen the rock floating. Tionne and Streen wore open expressions of wonderment. Kam wore the smirk with which he rewarded good efforts. Gantoris looked as if he’d seen a ghost and the others just looked amazed.

Across from me Luke shook his head, then passed a hand over his eyes. He glanced back at the spot in the air where the rock should have been, then his gaze flicked toward where it really lay. He looked around at the other students, then gently passed a hand through the air, causing them to blink and rub their eyes.

Gantoris looked at the rock and then accusingly at me. “What did you do?”

“What Keiran did, was feel the Force.” The Jedi Master nodded to me, then advanced and rested a hand on Gantoris’ shoulder. “He opened the pathway to his future. What he did or did not do here should not concern you. Instead, be happy knowing yet another of you is past the first hurdle on the road to becoming a Jedi Knight.”

TWELVE

The next morning I