A raw shriek of impossible anguish, it yanked me from nightmares of my own. It was not fear, that scream, but suffering so profound that it could have no other expression.
Her scream woke her as well, and her first thought was to open her tent and exhaustedly reassure us that it had been only a dream. That seems always to be her first thought: to reassure the Korunnai, and me. From this I take considerable comfort.
It's the third time this has happened so far tonight.
And yet-injured as I am, and unused to sleeping on a Korun bedroll on the open ground- I find I have slept as well as I have yet managed on this planet.
Depa's screams are a mercy.
Because my own nightmares don't wake me.
My nightmares suck me down, drowning me in a blind gluey chaos of anxiety and pain; they are more than simple anxiety dreams of wounds or suffering or the varieties of gruesome maiming, dismemberment, and death available in the jungle.
In my dreams here, I have seen the destruction of the Jedi. The death of the Republic. I have seen the Temple in ruins, the Senate smashed, and Coruscant itself shattered by orbital bombardment from immense ships of impossible design. I have seen Coruscant, the seat of galactic culture, become a jungle far more hostile and alien than any on Haruun Kal.
I have seen the end of civilization.
Depa's screams bring me back to the jungle and the night.
A week ago, I could not have imagined that to wake up in this jungle would be a relief.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU Tomorrow we leave this place.
This is what I've been telling myself all day long, riding cross-legged on the ankkox's shell, talking with Depa. I should say: listening to her, for she seems to hear me only when it suits her.
All day, I left the shell only to stretch my legs or relieve myself. and sometimes as I would climb up the shell to my spot, she'd be talking already, in that same low blurry murmur she used to speak with me-as though our conversation had been going on in her head, and my arrival was only a detail.
When the gunships came and rained fire upon us, or blasted away randomly with their cannons, the guerrillas who were lucky enough to be near the ankkox often ducked beneath it for shelter, but Depa never did, so neither did I. She lay on her chaise within the howdah, and I sometimes leaned my back against its polished rail, so that her soft voice drifted in over my shoulder.
We covered many kilometers today. The ground is rising; as the jungle thins we can move much more swiftly. It is not for nothing that a Korun does not speak of distance in kilometers, but in travel time.
The same thinning of the jungle that increases our speed also leaves us more exposed to the gunships that seem now to be patrolling in an organized search pattern.
I have much to tell of this day that has passed, and yet it's difficult for me to begin. I can only think of tomorrow, of meeting Nick, and finally calling down the Halleck to carry us away.
I burn for it.
I have discovered that I hate this place.
Not very Jedi of me, but I cannot deny it. I hate the damp, and the smell, and the heat, and the sweat that trickles constantly around my eyebrows, trails down my cheeks, and drips from the point of my chin. I hate the stupid bovine complacency of the grassers, and the feral snarls of the half-wild akk dogs. I hate the gripleaves, and the brass-vines, the portaak trees and thyssel bushes.
I hate the darkness under the trees.
I hate the war.
I hate what it's done to these people. To Depa.
I hate what it's doing to me.
The Halleck will be cool. It will be clean. The food will have no mold or rot or insect eggs.
I know already what I will do first, aboard ship. Before I even visit the bridge to salute the captain.
I will take a shower.
The last time I was clean was on the shuttle, in orbit. Now I wonder if I'll ever be clean again.
When I stepped off the shuttle at the Pelek Baw spaceport, I remember looking up at the white peak of Grandfather's Shoulder, and thinking that I had spent far too much time on Coruscant.
What a fool I was.
As Depa described me: Blind, ignorant, arrogant fool.
I was afraid to learn how bad things might be here, and the worst of my fears didn't even approach the truth.
I can't- I feel my lightsaber coming this way. I will continue later.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU Kar was ostensibly stopping at Depa's tent to discuss tomorrow's march before she settles in for the night; I suspect that his true aim was to check on me.
I hope he is satisfied by what he found.
This morning, I asked Depa why she hadn't left when the Separatists pulled back to Gevarno and Opari. Why she clearly would stay even now, were I not extorting her cooperation.
