Star Wars: Rebel Rising(55)

“They’re relaxing,” Akshaya said, carefully drawing out a series of rays from a center circle on the floor. She didn’t look relaxed. She was so focused on the drawing that her brow was furrowed, her gaze a laser beam trained on each line.

Jyn could understand this. She remembered just before her family moved from Coruscant to Lah’mu. Mama had been full of frantic energy, just like Akshaya was now. Mama had cleaned everything, had taken Jyn to the park, had meticulously talked over her plans, softly, under her breath, so low she didn’t know Jyn heard. Mama’s plans were Akshaya’s mandalas. Her love was boiling inside her and had to come pouring from her fingertips or it would overwhelm her.

Jyn watched her for several long moments. Hadder came in, interrupting the silence and his mother’s concentration. “Dinner’s ready in a few minutes,” he said.

“I’ll clean up,” Akshaya replied, and Hadder left. Akshaya watched him go, her eyes soft. For the first time since she’d started working on the floor, she actually did look relaxed.

“I don’t suppose you want to learn how to make mandalas?” Akshaya asked. “You’re welcome to, you know. There’s that whole wall in your room.”

“I—uh.” Jyn paused. She actually wouldn’t mind learning how to draw the intricate designs, but she was afraid of ruining the blank wall.

“In case you change your mind,” Akshaya said, pressing three paint sticks into Jyn’s hand.

Jyn felt awkward lingering in the room, so she went back to her own. She sat down on the bed and stared at the blank wall. Akshaya had given her black, orange, and red paint sticks. She twirled the black one in her hands, contemplating a design she could cover the whitewashed wall with. She wondered if Akshaya’s daughter had drawn mandalas on the wall and Akshaya had painted over them after she died. Or maybe her daughter hadn’t bothered painting the wall at all. Maybe Akshaya wished she had, and the white wall reminded her of everything that couldn’t be.

Jyn stood, the black paint stick in her hand, and she held it over the white wall. A long swoop, she thought, tracing a line with her eyes, and rays made of red spiking out of it…tiny orange dots in between…

But even though she could see the picture spreading out before her, she didn’t touch the paint stick to the wall. She put them all in the box on the shelf, along with the empty hypo-injectors.

That night, Akshaya complained again that she’d lost another planet in her regular shipping run. “We’re being bought out left and right,” she said as Hadder scooped out bunn for their evening meal.

“The Empire?” Jyn asked quietly.

Akshaya didn’t answer, which made Jyn certain her guess was right. “We’re not that far away from Tamsye Prime and other Empire-run systems,” Jyn said. “Just because Skuhl is in the Outer Rim doesn’t mean it’s going to be ignored.”

“We’re ants,” Akshaya said, sighing heavily. “Giants don’t notice ants.”

“But—”

Akshaya shoved her chair back abruptly. “Come with me,” she said, heading to the back door. Hadder and Jyn shared a confused, worried look, but they followed Akshaya outside.

Akshaya had her head tilted back, staring up at the stars. “What do you see?” she asked quietly when Hadder and Jyn approached. She was calm now, too calm.

Jyn looked up. “Stars,” she said, confused.

“Stars,” Akshaya repeated. “Where’s Tamsye Prime?”

Jyn scanned the sky. All the white dots, impossibly far away, looked the same.

“Where’s the Empire?” Akshaya continued. “Do you see it? Because I don’t.”

It doesn’t work like that, Jyn thought. Just because you don’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.

But Akshaya didn’t look away from the stars. She kept staring, so Jyn directed her gaze back up, too. And she didn’t see the Empire. But she thought she may have seen some of what Akshaya saw.

Up above, the stars seemed to stretch on forever. There were no clouds, no moons visible yet, just a million tiny dots of light. If she tilted her head back far enough, she could pretend the horizon wasn’t there, only space.

There was something comforting in pretending that there was nothing at all in the universe but her and the stars and the silence.

“Right, stars are far away,” Hadder said. “Meanwhile, dinner’s getting cold.”



As the weeks turned into months and there was no sign of Berk or any of Saw’s other contacts, Jyn almost let herself forget about the past. She continued working on new codes and permissions for the ship’s ID chips to help Akshaya bypass any Imperial security but otherwise left behind everything she had learned from Saw.

Except the knife. Every morning, without fail, she weighed it in her palm and forced herself to remember the feel of the hilt in her hand, the pressure it took to break skin. And then she slipped it into her boot, making sure she could easily reach it if she needed to.





“Where are you taking me?” Jyn asked.

“Don’t you trust me?” Hadder turned, letting the ship veer south.

It had been more weeks than Jyn liked to count since she and Hadder had last been in the air. Akshaya was starting to have trouble with the shipment runs as more and more Imperial checkpoints were scanning ships and cargo in the area, which meant she was grounded, grumpy, and too present for them to sneak away on the planet hopper.