Star Wars_ Young Jedi Knights 01_ Heirs of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [38]
Dropping to her hands and knees, she scrabbled along the ground near the mouth of the cave, searching for twigs, leaves, any-thing that would burn. Back on Dathomir she'd had plenty of practice in rugged camping and outdoor endurance.
As she thought of the cozy warmth of a fire and a soft bed of leaves, Tenel Ka's spirits rose. The nightmarish events of the afternoon began to settle into perspective. This was an adventure, she assured herself. A test of her will and determination.
When she had collected kindling and some thicker branches, Tenel Ka began to build her fire against the velvety shadows of gathering night. She fumbled in her belt pouches for her flash heater and groaned as she remembered that Jaina had borrowed it that afternoon. She rubbed her cold, bare arms and blew on her hands to warm them.
Tenel Ka thought longingly of the cheery warmth of a crackling fire, of drinking hot, spiced Hapan ale with her parents. A rare smile crossed her lips as she thought of them, Teneniel Djo and Prince Isolder. If she were at home, she would only have to lift a hand to bring a servant of the Royal House of Hapes running to do her bidding. . . .
Tenel Ka grimaced. She had never known poverty or hardship, except by choice. Well, you chose this, Princess, she reminded her self savagely.
You wanted to learn to do things for yourself.
Her father, Isolder of Hapes, had always said that the two years he spent in disguise working as a privateer had done more to prepare him for leadership than any training the royal tutors of Hapes could provide. And her mother, raised on the primitive planet of Dathomir, was proud that her only daughter spent months each year learning the ways of the Singing Mountain Clan and dressing as a warrior woman-a practice that Tenel Ka had enjoyed all the more because it annoyed her scheming Hapan grandmother.
Teneniel Djo had been even more pleased when her daughter had decided to attend the academy and take instruction to become a Jedi. She had enrolled simply as Tenel Ka of Dathomir, not wanting the other trainees to treat her differently because of her royal upbringing.
At the academy, only Master Skywalker-who was an old friend of her mother's, and the man Teneniel Djo most admired-knew Tenel Ka's true background. She had not even told Jacen and Jaina, her closest friends on Yavin 4.
Jacen and Jaina. The twins trusted her. They needed her help now. She shivered in the cave. She had to stay safe for the night and then get back to the academy in the morning to bring reinforcements.
Tenel Ka heard a faint rustling, slapping, and hissing in the darkness behind her. She looked back into the undulating shadows, blinking to clear her eyes. Had the shadows really moved? Perhaps she had been foolish to spend the night in an unexplored cave, but cold and fatigue had overruled her natural caution. She looked up and thought she could discern glossy dark shapes clinging to the ceiling, moving like waves on an inverted black sea.
Don't be a child, she chided herself. She had always tried to show her friends how self-sufficient and reliable she was. Right now, she was cold and bruised and miserable. What would Jacen say if he could see her? He'd probably tell some dumb joke.
Tenel Ka gritted her teeth. She would just have to build a fire without the flash heater, using skills she had been taught on Dathomir.
It took an agonizingly long time for her strong arms to produce enough friction twirling one smooth stick of wood against a flat branch.
Finally, she managed to coax forth a glowing ember and a tendril of smoke. Working quickly, she touched a dried leaf to it and blew. A tiny golden flame licked its way up the leaf. With mounting excitement she added another and then another, and then a few twigs.
A gust of wind threatened to extinguish the struggling flame, so she encircled her fire with a tiny earthen berm to protect it. She added more tinder,