Star Wars_ The Approaching Storm - Alan Dean Foster [31]
“Locked in?” He rubbed his bare skull, his hand passing to either side of where a dark mane would normally be. “Bulgan confused.”
Immediately, she jumped on the opening thus offered. “Confusion comes from the pain you’ve been living with. Let me try to help you, Bulgan. Please. If I fail, it costs you nothing. Even if I succeed, you can still keep me in here because the door is locked from outside.”
“That right. Padawan speak truth. Ou, you try.”
Meeting his gaze evenly, she gestured toward her bound wrists. “You have to untie me. To do this kind of work, I need my hands.”
He was instantly wary. “What for? Jedi trick?”
“No. Please trust me, Bulgan. There are vastly more important things at stake here than my life, or the size of your future credit account. Are you familiar with the secessionist movement?”
The Ansionian made a negative gesture. “Only movement Bulgan know is in bowels.” He thought a moment longer. “Kyakhta be unhappy,” he muttered. Then he reluctantly stepped behind Barriss and passed a desealer across her wrists. The opaque bond that restrained them promptly dissolved, breaking down into cellulose, catalyst, and water. Relieved to have her hands free, she rubbed firmly at her wrists. As the circulation began returning, she beckoned for him to approach.
“Come here, Bulgan,” she instructed him gently. He did so with head bowed, shuffling his feet like a child approaching its mother. A very strong, very dangerous child, she reminded herself. She did not have to ask him to lower his head farther. His poor bent spine had already placed it within reach. Extending both hands, palm downward, she tenderly cradled the sides of his skull, careful not to cover the aural openings. His flesh was warm to the touch—the normal Ansionian body temperature being several degrees higher than that of a human. Her eyes closed, and she began to concentrate.
A throbbing ran through her as her focus sharpened. An enduring, agonizing ache that through straining and training she made her own. She let herself flow outward toward it, surrounding it with the soothing balm that was her own harmonious inner self. Within the damaged, misfiring neurons that were the source of the native’s ongoing hurt, the Force compelled a subtle realignment of tissues, an almost imperceptible but physiologically critical alteration.
She stood holding him like that for several long, silent minutes: healer and patient locked together in that mysterious, inscrutable mutual melding comprehensible only to another master of the Jedi healing arts. Not until all felt normal and natural and well did she finally allow herself to withdraw from the vulnerable state into which she had placed them both.
Opening her eyes, she found herself staring back at her captor. But there was something different about him now: a faint but discernible change of posture, a glint instead of a dullness in his eye. He straightened slightly, as much as his broken, permanently bent back would allow, and looked slowly around the room.
“How do you feel?” she finally prompted him when no words were forthcoming.
“Feel? Bulgan feel—I feel good. Very good.” Making fists of both three-fingered hands, he raised them toward the roof. “Really exceptionally remarkably good! Haja, jaha, ou ou!” The little dance he proceeded to perform, joyfully throwing his arms repeatedly into the air all the while, lifted her hopes in concert with his spirit.
Then he stopped, lowered his hands, and said to her in a notably different tone of voice than he had used before, “But you’re still my prisoner, Padawan.” When she slumped, he grinned, showing fine Ansionian teeth. “For about another minute.”
“You mean?…” His intent became clear when he walked over to her with a spring in his step that had been absent previously and bent to pass the desealer across her ankle bonds. They dissolved promptly, allowing her to stand. Her feet and legs numb from lack of use, she would have fallen had he not caught her in his strong arms.
At which point the door clicked and Kyakhta entered the room.
To say that the