“I understand,” Marda said.

  “Do you?”

  “The Force must be free.” Marda brought her hands together, open to the sky, then curled her fingers into fists. “That is worth defending, and fighting for. I want to do that.”

  “It is important to make a home, to hold space, just as important as fighting,” the Herald said. “We must have both.”

  So Marda had been told again and again. She did not speak. But she was thinking of Jedha, of the Convocation and the lack of representation from the Path of the Open Hand. The Jedi’s voice was surely loud, and so strong, and Marda doubted anyone challenged them openly, not like she would. Not like she had.

  Kevmo would be pleased. They could both be working toward harmony with the Force and maybe even someday find ways for the Jedi and the Path to come to some understanding.

  Marda’s heart seemed to glow, just like the bugs. The Mother refused to allow her to become one of the Children, had said her place was with the Path, creating a home, taking care of the Littles, but surely this idea would have merit. Everyone agreed that Marda’s faith was pure. And even her doubts, she knew now, led her toward a greater clarity. This, this was how she could give back to the Force, give of herself freely.

  A smile began to spread on her mouth. She couldn’t wait to tell Kevmo—if she could see him again. Maybe she’d just surprise him one day, meet him on Jedha. But she could tell Yana, and Ferize, Er Dal, and Fel Ix.

  The Herald said, “There is something I wish to discuss with you, Marda Ro.”

  “Oh,” she said again, caught off guard. She’d thought…

  Marda opened her palms again and bowed.

  “What do you know of your cousin’s plans?”

  “Yana?”

  “Yes.”

  Confusion dowsed Marda’s excitement. “She has no plans. Only to serve the Children, and…” Marda paused. This might have to do with Kor, not with the Path. She lowered her eyes politely. “She cares for your daughter, Herald. I am sure her plans are well intentioned.”

  The Herald hummed a disgruntled note. “Yana Ro intends to leave.”

  For a moment Marda gaped. The Herald’s expression was cold, even in the milky pink moonlight. His black eyes held nothing she could read. Marda blinked, and blinked again. Then she said, “Yana is one of the Children. She leaves all the time.”

  “Permanently,” the Herald said more sharply.

  “No, no.” Marda shook her head.

  “She is. Not only Dalna, but the Path itself. And she is trying to take my daughter with her.”

  “That’s…impossible.”

  The Herald put his hand on Marda’s shoulder again. Harder. “Yana and the Mother have an arrangement. After this…mission…tomorrow, Yana intends to declare her obligations met and herself free of the Path, and she will leave.”

  “Obligations?” Marda jerked away from the Herald’s touch. “We don’t owe the Mother anything! Nor does she owe us. We—our commitments are gifts freely given. If Yana wished to go, she could. There’s no need to make bargains. You are wrong.”

  “I am not.”

  The weight of his words, and his certainty, rooted Marda to the road. It felt like her skin was slowly sloughing off her body, drip-dripping like all that rain.

  The starry sky glittered. The moon loaned pink light to Dalna. And the little bugs flitted away, drifting far, far from Marda, leaving her alone in the dark. “She would not leave me,” Marda whispered.

  “Consider otherwise,” the Herald said.

  Marda swallowed—and did so. Yana was her only family. They needed each other. Yana always said the galaxy hated Evereni and they must stick together. What would have changed her mind? Not—not Kor, not love. Marda felt very strongly about Kevmo, could imagine…being with him. At his side, traveling and sharing the Force, not that it would be possible, but…even her feelings for him wouldn’t make her leave Yana. Yana was as intrinsically a part of her as the Path itself. Family.

  “You can convince her to stay,” the Herald said more softly. “For you. For your family. For the Force. We all need each other, and we will even more so in the days to come.”

  “W-why?” Marda managed. “What is coming?”

  The Herald shook his head. “The Mother is preparing, but for what, she will not say. She has been, for months. The Gaze Electric is part of it—our sanctuary, our way to spread our mission. Perhaps it is only that, the new expansion of the Path back into the stars. But we cannot lose any of the Children.”

  Slowly, Marda nodded. She breathed carefully, drawing her horror closer into herself. And she realized she was angry, too. At the idea Yana might leave, especially without even telling Marda. Deeply furious! It was a cold sliver of ice, and as she let herself feel it, clarity came. Maybe this was the relieving certainty of her people.

  “I will remind her,” Marda said. Her gaze sharpened, and she turned it up to the stars. This she knew: the Path was the only true will of the Force, and she was meant to walk it. With open hands, in harmony with a free Force. Maybe this burning clarity, this understanding of where the future would lead her was the meaning of the name the Gaze Electric.

  She said to the Herald, “We are leaving Dalna, in the Gaze Electric, and taking the Path with us. But we will do it together.”

  Yana attached the final light and sighed as it powered up. Finally. Replacing and programming the lights for the caves was finished, and not a moment too soon. She had places to be.

  Or just one, actually.

  Yana packed up her tools and gave a wan smile to the Elders who walked past with their meager belongings in hand. Everyone was back where they were supposed to be, and Yana had even managed to install a few moisture sensors farther back in the caves in addition to the lights. Next time the caves flooded, everyone would have ample warning.

  Yana considered it a parting gift for the people who had cared for her most of her life.

  Once she was packed up, Yana headed back outside into the fresh air. She didn’t take the route that went past the Mother’s listening room. Since the flood, the Mother had relayed all messages through the Herald, and Yana got the impression that if she were to try to speak with the Mother directly, she would be turned away. But whether it was because Yana had lost favor or because the Mother was occupied with her own matters, Yana was unsure. The Path did not like deserters, and very soon news would travel that she was planning on leaving, and everyone would make it their business to try to convince her to stay. Yana had seen it in action only once, back when Treze’s older sister had fled the Path for a life anywhere but Dalna. The Mikkian had sat in the middle of the gathering field for days as every single Elder, parent, Little, and initiate tried to get her to see reason.

  In the end, she still left. The Path was not the galaxy, and there were wonders far beyond majestic mountains, wild lompop, and the sunrise tree to behold. Dalna could not be enough for everyone, and it hadn’t been for her.

  And it wasn’t for Yana, either. She wished she could make Marda understand, but nothing seemed less likely. She wanted to tie Marda up and take her somewhere safer. She wanted Marda to stay, be happy, grow into the kind of Elder of the Path that anyone could respect. Or not. She wanted Marda to be truly happy and not the false, hollow happy of want and scarcity that the Path peddled. She wanted them to have left years before. She wanted to have ended up on some other nothing world. She wanted to see Marda fierce and ready to fight for the things she loved, instead of so meek and subservient.

  She wanted to leave immediately.

  But it wasn’t only Marda who made Yana want more than just an escape. She wanted Kor to go with her. She wanted Kor by her side to marvel at the wonders of the galaxy. She wanted Kor to love her enough to go.

  But only one of Yana’s wants was likely to come true. She was leaving.

  Yana had no intention of letting the Mother or the Herald push her into a long goodbye. Rather, she would do what Evereni had done for centuries: simply disappear without a trace, fading into the noise of the galaxy. She just needed the credits the Mother owed her to make her escape. She wouldn’t ask Kor or Marda to come with her. Kor knew she was leaving, and if she wanted to come with, she’d say so. Yana didn’t know what she would do without Kor’s steady presence. But she also loved her enough not to ask her to go. Or maybe she was just afraid of what the answer would be.

  And Marda? Well, Yana just couldn’t bear to see the sadness in her cousin’s eyes when she decided to stay with the Path.

  It was dark outside when Yana exited the main entrance to the caves. She blinked, waiting for her eyesight to adjust. Had she really lost that much time? The work in the caves had consumed her, and her middle pinched from lack of food. She needed to find something to eat.

  Yana dropped off the tools at Cincey’s hut, the human nowhere to be found, most likely off on business of their own, and made her way to the kitchens to see if she could scrounge up a hunk of cheese or something before bed. The next day, she would travel to Thelj with Kor and Treze and Cincey. Just thinking about it made Yana click her teeth in agitation. They’d gotten all the information Cincey could drag from the holonet about the Graf compound on Thelj, and it hadn’t been much. A few stills and vids from social engagements, a documentary about how much it had cost the Grafs to build the place—a lush garden in the middle of a frozen ocean waste beset by ice whales that sometimes tried to break through the surface too near the compound—and a wedding announcement of one Pamalonia Graf to a shipping heir from Coruscant. Other than that, there wasn’t much.

  It was going to be a bad scene.

  “Yana!”

  The Evereni turned, stifling a yawn. Her cousin stomped toward her, her face twisted with an unfamiliar expression: rage.

  “You’re leaving?” Marda said, nearly shouting. Yana blinked in surprise.

  “What? Not until tomorrow,” Yana said. “I thought I told you that?”

  “Not with the Children,” Marda said, her voice a near growl with the force of her anger. “The Herald told me you’re leaving the Path!”

  Yana swore in every single language she knew and then added in a few more curses she’d heard once or twice in dockside taverns. “Let’s talk about this somewhere else,” she murmured, and then grabbed the edge of Marda’s sleeve and dragged her along the road toward her chamber.

  Yana’s chamber was closer than Marda’s, and once they were inside, Yana closed the door and leaned against it while Marda began to pace. Yana took a moment to gather her thoughts, but unfortunately Marda took that as a sign to launch into her argument before Yana could say anything.

  “Yana. You can’t leave. I was talking to the Herald, and you just can’t. There’s nowhere else for us. Even the Herald said so.”

  Yana smiled and stripped off her robes, leaving behind the fitted black pants and long-sleeved shirt she always wore beneath. “It’s a big galaxy. And I daresay that the Herald has only seen a small part of it.”

  “Don’t be like that,” Marda said, a tremor entering her voice.

  Yana sighed and collapsed onto her bed, patting the space next to her for Marda to join her. When they were little, this had been their shared sleeping quarters. The minder of the Littles at the time, an old Twi’lek woman named Hialeah, had refused to let them sleep with the other Littles, worried that as Evereni they would prey on the weaker children. It didn’t matter that Hialeah had known them most of their lives; her edict stood until they were old enough to claim their own chambers as initiates.

  Yana wondered if Marda remembered that time in their lives the same way she did, or if her cousin’s memories had softened it into something more bearable.

  Marda watched Yana for a long moment before climbing into the bed with her. They laid across the bed the same way they had as children: backs against the wall, feet dangling off the side. Yana wrapped her arms around her cousin and sat for a moment in silence, the only sound in the room their breathing: Yana’s even and steady, Marda’s ragged with her waning temper.

  “You don’t remember when we came here,” Yana said. It wasn’t a question. They’d had this conversation before, and she knew the things Marda remembered were scattered and nonsensical. She didn’t remember their last night on Genetia and the way the townspeople had come for them, believing they were the reason the crops had failed. Marda didn’t remember how viciously her sire had fought so they could escape, and how their mothers had killed a family of Theelins so they could take their ship. She didn’t remember the days of hunger or the cold when the life-support systems began to fail. She definitely didn’t remember when their ship was towed by a Hutt trawler to Nar Shaddaa, and the way the slugs had tried to force them all into slavery before the Path stepped in and paid for their release. All Marda knew was the safety of the Path, the security and sense of belonging—however conditional—the Path provided.

  “But I do,” Yana continued. “And I know that this, like everything else, is a lie. Temporary and arbitrary, a gift given by the Force that can be easily snatched away. One day, the Path will be gone. The Mother will be dust. The Herald will be ash. But we will still be Evereni, Marda. And we will still be in search of a home.”

  “Dalna is our home,” Marda began, but Yana took her hand and squeezed it.

  “Dalna is your home,” Yana said, her voice soft, gentle as it must be to get through the wall of hurt and anger around Marda’s heart. “You love it here. But this isn’t my home. We are Evereni, and until our heart claims a new land, we have no home. You have claimed Dalna, and it has claimed you. But my home is lost to the ebb and flow of the Force. I belong out there, among the stars, free to find my own direction. To find a place to be. You have found yours, dear cousin. And now I must find mine.”

  “What about Kor?” Marda asked. Her rage had drained away, just as Yana knew it would. Marda could never stay angry for long.

  “I won’t ask her to come with me,” Yana said. “The same way I won’t ask you. I love both of you more than the breath in my lungs, but I know you and Kor belong here. She has her mother and father, even if he is a son of an ice gator.”

  “Yana!” Marda said, scandalized. “You can’t talk about the Herald that way.”

  “Well, he is,” Yana said, feeling less like Marda’s cousin and more like one of her Littles.

  Marda sighed and leaned her head on Yana’s shoulder. “I don’t know what I will do without you. How can you leave the Path, and all we have here?”

  Yana swallowed. This was a harder conversation to have. Evereni were always leaving. It was something their mothers had taught them at a very young age, the art of saying or avoiding a goodbye. Hadn’t their own mothers left them to the Path? But to talk about belief and faith, well…those were things the Evereni were less skilled at.

  “You should be careful about the Path’s teachings. Just, think about them a little,” Yana finally said.

  Marda lifted her head to peer at Yana. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…don’t you think it’s strange that when the fields have gone to rot, we suddenly have a benefactor who will support us through the rest of the summer and the winter?”

  Marda blinked. “Well, the Force—”

  “The Force doesn’t care about us, Marda!” Yana said, unable to hold her tongue. “Think about the galaxy, the size of it. Think of all the people out there, all the different kinds of animals and planets and everything else. Do you really think the Force cares for a handful of outcasts on a small planet on the edge of nowhere?”

  “How can you talk like this when you are one of the Children?” Marda asked, her voice small.

  Yana climbed to her feet. Exhaustion weighed her down, and the look on Marda’s face made Yana feel as though she had just eaten her cousin’s favorite pet. “Maybe one day you’ll find your way off of Dalna, as well, Marda. And it won’t be a sad thing. It’ll be what you were meant to do.”

  Marda set her jaw stubbornly, some of that fire blazing up again in her eyes.

  Yana sighed. This was going nowhere, but that was fine. Marda was grown. She would figure it out. Yana stifled a yawn. “I have to leave early in the morning, and I’ve had a long day. You should go.”

  Marda nodded and climbed to her feet. She stood next to Yana for a long time, watching her.

  “You won’t leave me. Us,” Marda said. “Not forever. And I will be waiting with open hands when you realize your mistake. The Force accepts you as you are, and I do, too.”

  Yana nodded and managed not to flinch when Marda engulfed her in a too-tight hug. And then her cousin took her leave.

  It was a long moment before Yana laid down on her mattress, appetite forgotten. She could think only of her cousin, living a beautiful dream of belonging and acceptance, of a deep connection to the Force and the people around her. Yana wished she could fall into the fantasy so easily. How delicious would it be to just float through each day in a bubble of warmth and delusion?

  More than that, she worried just what would happen when her cousin finally decided to wake up.

  Kevmo had thought their extra time on Dalna a gift, but that was before he realized how much work there was to do after a flood. Everyone in Ferdan had a task that could benefit from Jedi assistance, and Kevmo found himself running from cleanup operation to building operation to preparation for the exportation of gnostra berry wine without a break. At the end of the long day, he would look to Zallah, wondering if this was part of what it meant to be a Jedi, and she would just smile.

  “We have nowhere to go and no way to get there until the skiff is repaired. So it is our job to spread the light while we are here. Goodwill,” she murmured when they were alone, but that didn’t make Kevmo’s day any less fraught. It only reinforced that they had at some point lost their focus on their mission. The Rod of Seasons was in the grip of the Path of the Open Hand, and it was their job as Jedi of the Order to reclaim it. Kevmo couldn’t help feeling that he should be spending time with the Path, trying to discover the location of the rod, or at least to figure out if the Path sold the artifact.