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‘I’ve dreamed of him being free, when I look out at where the land meets the sky. Almost like he’s a cloud floating above that thin line. Like a drifter, along the horizon.’ Shmi turned away from Qui-gon, to gesture at where she spoke of, as if the Jedi needed to see it for himself in order to understand her. ‘I imagine him as a sky-walker, free from the burdens of slavery. I chose it, as a reminder. Of what he must become.’
The podracer tents were filled with the smoke of machines and their engineers, who played with wires like a musician did with strings. Even the youngest among them, who was no more than fifteen, made modifications with practiced ease. He pushed away sweaty, brown bangs from his forehead with the back of an oily hand, leaving his face shining in lantern light. The tents were so large and so piled on top of one another that even at midday, the inside was dim enough to require lanterns to work by.
Anakin stepped away from the engine of his podracer, setting down his tools on a small table as he wiped the sweat pooling in his eyes with the collar of his shirt. Between the bare heat of the desert and the roar of running engines, there was no reprieve from the swelter that insulated the racing tents. The suffocation and stench of nearly a thousand people under the shade of a thousand cloth roofs was overwhelming, but for the racers who would soon compete, the anticipation was even more so.
Not everyone in the shade of the camp was a participant in this race. Some were retired competitors, some were old collectors, but most were auctioneers, or otherwise sellers of podracers, or their parts— or, sometimes, the racers themselves. The slavers of Tatooine were not above taking advantage of the tourism the Boonta Eve Classic brought to the place. Anakin, though he would never admit it, was to some degree relieved that Watto never intended to sell him to another slaver. Anakin felt that he and his mother had changed hands enough times already. And some of the other boys here were whipped when they didn’t win a race, if they didn’t die in it in the first place.
Anakin shook himself of his doubt. He’d won his fair share of races against other slave boys, whether for practice or for small bet pools, while working on Watto’s old podracer in-between. It’d been his goal for many years now, to restore the thing to proper racing condition. Condition good enough to win a race such as today’s. Watto, while not eager to lose the boy, had been willing to fund a few more repairs than necessary for the vehicle, so that he might have a chance to win a large sum with the proper driver.
And Anakin was his driver. There was no one else, no one more proper than Anakin to choose from. Despite his lack of alternatives, Watto was well aware that the boy had some depth of skill with the machine. It had practically been built up from the mechanical skeleton by him. The boy was Watto’s only chance of winning the largest bet pool he’d ever seen offered. That, and the Jedi would pay him on top of it.
But the Boonta Eve Classic would not be an easy race to finish, let alone win. The designated racing track was full of canyons and cliffs and Tusken raiders that were left unchecked. But if the boy died, Watto could sell the vehicle scrap, and buy another slave. He would still have the boy’s mother, after all, even if he did win. The Jedi had not requested the mother’s freedom. Watto was surprised the Jedi were willing to bet on her smart-mouthed boy at all. The chance to be rid of him was almost a pleasure.
Anakin backed away from his podracer, pleased with his work. But now that he’d finished preparations, as well as double-checking, triple checking, there was nothing else to be done that could preoccupy his worried mind. Worried. The race didn’t worry him. He could fly through those deep desert crevices in the obscurity of a sandstorm. He had before. What worried him were the kind of people he was going to race against. They weren’t other slave boys or drunk betters, this time. Instead, they were cutthroats and race-riggers, hellbent on smashing their competitors to dust against canyon walls.
He would need to be careful. Placing trust in his instincts wouldn’t be enough.
(But it would.)