YOU SIT, CROSS-LEGGED, before Yoda’s little house. Your eyes are closed. You are listening. You are feeling.

Yoda is near you. You can faintly perceive the heat that emanates from him. Yoda is holding up an object. This is like an exercise you did with Ben once, back when he was your teacher. Back when he was alive.

“A stick?”

Yoda grunts angrily.

“A rock?”

“Guessing you are,” he says. “Guess not. Feel.”

You try to still your mind. Quietly—oh, so quietly, you hear something moving. Small, quick movements. Not going-somewhere movements. More like…squirming. There is heat coming from Yoda…but there is more heat, just a little more heat, coming from his hand.

“It’s alive…” you murmur.

“Mmm…” Yoda says.

You get excited. “A frog!”

“No!” Yoda barks. You open your eyes. It’s a mouse. “No,” Yoda says again, shaking his froglike head. “Guess you do! Impatient you are! Trust the Force you do not.” He looks away from you. “Eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. The deepest commitment must a Jedi have. The most serious mind.” He grunts and puts down the mouse. It scurries away into the thick, wet greenery of Dagobah.

“You a long time have I watched,” he says. “Always looking away you are—off to the horizon. Adventure! Excitement! Never your mind on where you are.” Yoda punctuates those words by gesturing with his walking stick at your chest. “A Jedi looks not to other times, other places. To now a Jedi looks, and feels.”

You nod. You are trying to understand. Trying, but not succeeding.

“Again your eyes you must close.” You do. “What is around you? Every tree, rock, thing living and not living must you list.”

You squint and try to remember your exact surroundings.

Suddenly, Yoda’s stick whacks you in the side of the head. “Remember not!” Yoda commands, as if he is reading your thoughts. “Feel.”

You are sprinting through the jungle, leaping over stones and running along wet logs, trying to sense the slick spots, the rotten spots, before you step on them. Yoda is clinging to your neck. He is small, but his judgment of you, his disappointment, hangs heavier than his little body.

“Focus,” he says.

You leap up onto a log that has fallen over a stream. As your foot lands on it, you relax. Inhale. You hear the hollow sound it makes, feel its weight beneath you, its density. You take two long strides and then—a short one. You hop over a pale spot and slide your feet the rest of the way, till you jump down onto the farther bank and keep running.

“Good,” Yoda intones. “Felt the wood you did. Knew what was good, what rotten.”

There is a steep slope that leads down into a wet ravine. A bunch of vines hang from a nearby tree. You go to grab one—and hesitate.

“Feel,” Yoda whispers. You close your eyes and feel without touching. There is a strong vine among the bunch. A good, hearty one, ready and happy to bear your weight, and Yoda’s. You open your eyes. It is obvious. It looks no different from the others. But it is different. You know it. You take it, swing out over the ravine, and drop lightly to the other side.

“Good! Good!”

You run, and run, and run. Your legs tire. But the Force is good, and as you relax into it, your legs keep moving as if this is what they were meant to do. Indeed, you think, it is. Your arms and shoulders ache from swinging and climbing and carrying Yoda. But you breathe deeply—then smile. This is what they were meant to do, too. It is their function. The soreness is just telling you that they are working to their potential. It is not bad pain. It is merely the language of your body, speaking. And you are, at last, listening.

You have stopped. Yoda stands, like a wizened, withered stump, staring into the distance. You sit cross-legged, feeling your breath come in through your nose, down your throat, into your chest, and out again.

“A Jedi’s strength flows from the Force,” Yoda is saying. “But beware of the dark side. Anger…fear…aggression…The dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. But if once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice.”

You lose track of your breathing. “Vader?” you ask. Yoda nods.

You have another question. “Yoda, is the dark side stronger?”

“No…no…Quicker, yes. Easier, yes. More seductive. Like a big cake of swamp cane. Eat it all, you want to, and sweet will it taste. Full will you feel. And energetic. But fade the energy will, and sick you soon will be. Better to eat fruit, fish, good things. Not as sweet. But long will they last.”

You furrow your brow. “I know a cake when I see one. But what about the dark side? How do you tell the difference between the dark side and the Force?”

“Search your feelings, and know you will. Like the wood on the tree trunk. When you are calm. At peace. Not angry. Not grasping. You will know.”

“But tell me why—”

Suddenly, Yoda is impatient. “No! No! There is no why. There only is, and is not. No more will I teach you today.”

You don’t know what you said that was so wrong. Disappointed, still hungry for knowledge, you stand. Stretch.

And then you see it.

Looming dark and sinister through the tangled branches of the jungle. It is a cave. Even from this distance—a hundred meters or more—you can feel it, like a sudden gust of freezing wind. “What…what is that place?” you ask. “I feel…cold…death…”

Yoda looks up at you, and his eyes are shining.

“That place…strong with the dark side it is. A domain of evil. In you must go.”

“What…what’s in there?” You can’t take your eyes from its darkness, like a negative space, a void, among the vibrant, vivid greenery of the rest of the planet.

Yoda’s voice is quiet, but clear. “Only what you take with you.”

You pick up your lightsaber.

“Your weapons,” Yoda says. “You will not need them.”

You pause, look at Yoda. You look at the cave.

You keep the lightsaber in your hand.

The darkness is thick, and smells musty and rotten. But not rich, not full of life, breaking down and transforming into something new, like most of the rotting smells of Dagobah. This is a smell like death.

Something moves behind you. You turn. A black snake, long and thick, curls around a root that protrudes from the earthen walls. It is speckled with white spots—each one looks like a death’s head. You shudder.

You push deeper into the cave. Creepers hang in your path. The air is cold here. A rush of wind blows something sticky into your face. You claw it off. It’s a spider web—teeming with tiny arachnids. You try not to panic, flicking them from your skin, your ears, your hair.

Your heart is beating hard. Your breath is shallow.

You are afraid.

And angry. Angry at Yoda for sending you in here. For giving you all of these stupid tests and never being satisfied. For not recognizing how well you’ve done, how far you’ve come.

Also, you realize, you are angry at yourself. Angry that you are so afraid.

And then you hear something breathing in the darkness.

It sounds…metallic.

You step forward. Again. Once more.

And then he emerges from the shadows.

Darth Vader.

Darth Vader is here.

He has found you. Followed you here. Somehow.

You grab your lightsaber and ignite the blue blade.

His lightsaber rises, too—a pulsating red, reflecting in his black helm and black, synthetic eyes.

The blades are, in the darkness, strangely complementary. As if, somehow, they belong together.

Vader advances.

Fear and hatred mingle in your heart.

He raises his lightsaber. You raise yours sideways, and as his crashes down upon you, you catch it with your own, and your strength holds.

You step back. He advances, swinging his blade. You parry, sidestep. He turns to you, lightsaber coming round fast—but too late.

With a vicious strike, your lightsaber blade is already slicing through Darth Vader’s neck.

His head rolls to the cave wall. His body crumples.

You stand astride it, heaving, victorious.

He is dead. Dead at last!

You turn your gaze on his head. His mask breaks asunder in a sudden explosion, revealing his lifeless face—but it is not his face.

It is your face, staring back at you. Eyes wide. Mouth open.

Your face, in Vader’s helmet.

You turn and run.