Lost City of Tatooine

The Lost City of Tatooine

Originally published in Dig Magazine

by David West Reynolds

Luke Skywalker raced his landspeeder across the wide-open salt flats of the desert planet Tatooine. The twin morning suns shone like star-bursts in the windshield, and the wind tousled his hair. "It's just as great as I always though it would be!" the 16-year-old said. "I can't believe I finally saved up enough to buy my own landspeeder. It's freedom, Biggs!"

Luke's best friend, Biggs Darklighter, sat in the passenger seat, trading grins with Luke. "It runs pretty sweet, hotshot," he said.

"You don't think it's too beat up?" Luke asked,

"I think it's great," Biggs assured him.

 Luke was staying with Biggs for a few days, since the harvest was in and his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru could finally allow him some time away from the moisture farm. Luke was supposed to be sticking close to the Darklighter place, but the two friends had other plans. They were plotting to do a little exploring.

The bleached white domes of the Douz outpost appeared on the sandy horizon, and soon Luke was pulling up in front of a power station. The speeder needed a charge. "Where are you two headed?" asked the old mechanic at the station, as he brought cables out to hook up to Luke's speeder.

"Metameur," Biggs said. "We just want to take a look at the freighter landing pad there."

"Maybe see a spaceship!" Luke added.

The old mechanic smiled. "IvIetameur's a long way"

"We figured we'd take a shortcut through Desolation Canyons," Luke said.

"Wouldn't recommend that," said the mechanic. "Might run into Sand People."

"We'll just be passing through," Biggs said. "We won't provoke them."

"Them Sand People are savages," the mechanic said harshly. "There's reason we call 'em Tusken Raiders. They'll kill anybody. They killed off all the Ghorfas, you know, and they'd kill you, too."

"Who were the Ghorfas?" Luke asked.

"Ghorfas were creatures that used to live out here, way back before the settlers came. You ever seen the slave hovels in some of the old towns?" Luke and Biggs nodded. "Most of those were built by Ghorfas and turned into slave quarters when the Ghorfas left," the mechanic explained. "You find their ruins in the desert sometimes, too. They built things; weren't nomadic savages like those Tusken Raiders riding their banthas all over the desert. All those Tuskens ever build are walls around their sacred wells. Legends say there's a lost city of the Ghorfas out there somewhere, but anybody that's gone looking for it ain't come back."

As they zoomed away from the few buildings that made up the Douz outpost, Luke considered the possibilities. "If we don't take the shortcut, we'll never be able to make it to Metameur before we have to turn back," he said.

"Looks like Desolation Canyons then," Biggs replied, with a grin.

The rugged canyon lands rose on the horizon, and the boys turned off the regular route. Luke nosed the speeder through a gully in the lowlands and slowed as he steered through the hot rocky wastes. Biggs glanced up as they saw the entrance to a large canyon far ahead. "Sky's darkening," he said with concern. Luke looked behind them. "Oh, no," he yelled. "A sandstorm!"

"If it catches us in the open, we've had it!" Biggs said grimly.

"Get into those canyons!" Luke hit the accelerator. "I'm on it!" The two raced through the rough landscape, shooting around huge boulders and through arroyos. Luke was aiming for the canyons in the distance, but had lost sight of it in all the hills and valleys.

"Storm's getting closer!" said Biggs.

"I'm trying!" said Luke, as he sweated at the controls. He knew that if he wrecked the speeder they'd be in even more trouble.

Biggs hit the switch that would close the speeder's canopy to a sealed bubble. The back half slid over them from behind the seat, just as the roar of the storm and it's pelting sand caught up with them. "I can hardly see anything!" Luke yelled. "I have no idea where we are going!"

"Hang on, hotshot, you can do it!" Biggs told him.

Luke fought to stay ahead of the storm's core. Soon, rock walls were visible in the sandy haze.

"Over there!" Biggs called out.

"The rock overhang," Luke said. "I see it." He nosed the landspeeder over to shelter under the protective mass of a great cliff. They opened the canopy.

"Look at that," Biggs said, glancing out into the canyon. "The storm's fading."

"Uh, Biggs," Luke said, his eyes peering toward the inner reaches of the cliff's hollow. "Look at this." There before them was a ruined adobe city, built into the cliff wall. A giant stepped struc-ture in the middle was surrounded by several terraces of round and square dwellings with strange slots for windows.

It's the lost city of the Ghorfas!" Luke said in a whisper.

The two boys cautiously moved through the silent city, their heartbeats seeming louder than their footsteps. Luke noticed a pattern in the way certain stones were put together. "Biggs, look," he said. "That wall there is built just like the walls the Tusken Raiders use around their wells. That's strange."

"But those ruins over there look just like the slave ruins in old villages, and the mechanic said the Ghorfas built those," Biggs said. He pointed out a mass of cell-like rooms piled atop each other, linked by narrow stairways. Then they found the tombs.

"These are Sand People tombs," Luke said uneasily He recognized the crude rectangular slabs on the ground, with standing stones at each end. They stretched in lines deep into the shadows of the cliff hollow "Uncle Owen and I found some by accident once and he told me what they were. He said we were lucky we were never seen near them or we'd have been killed."

"If these are Sand People tombs, then they must have killed all the Ghorfas who lived here and taken over their temple city" Biggs concluded.

Luke was walking farther back into the cave-like hollow of shadows. "The most recent graves are near the front," he observed. "There are older ones back here. Look how the shape changes."

"Right, and look how they start using little pictures carved into them rather than just the symbols the Sand People use," Biggs noted. "Those must be the Ghorfa tombs. Luke, where do the Sand People graves stop and the Ghorfa tombs start?" he asked.

“There's no clear dividing line," Luke said."They just gradually change from one to the other. Strange. Why would the Sand People use the same cemetery as the Ghorfas they killed off?" Walking far back in the shadows, Luke found tombs that were much more carefully built and detailed, with many pictures covering them. He knelt to examine them. "Look at these pictures," Luke said slowly. "They show early settlers coming to Tatooine and using big machines to suck all the water wells dry"

Biggs knelt at another tomb. He could see from the cracks and the weathering on them that these in the back were definitely older, but the carvings looked much more advanced. And the pictures told a very clear story. "This one shows the Ghorfas dying of thirst," he said. "They didn't have enough water to stay in their city" Luke looked back at the stone work and the line of tombs. He saw how they gradually changed to the rough, crude Sand People graves with only symbols and no pictures.

Tusken Raiders had spotted the landspeeder. Biggs and Luke knew that they would certainly be killed if they were caught." "Biggs," he said, "the Sand People didn't kill off the Ghorfas. They were the Ghorfas. And the farmers who settled in this area before us destroyed their culture by stealing all their water."

Biggs understood. "They had to become nomadic," he said, "And now they are the Sand People. They are the Tusken Raiders!"

"No wonder they hate us farmers," Luke said. At that moment Luke heard the very last sound he wanted to hear: the low guttural growl of a bantha in the canyon. And then he heard a savage voice ring out. There were Tusken Raiders out there, and they had spotted the landspeeder.

Biggs and Luke sprinted for the speeder, adrenaline racing through their veins. They knew that they would certainly be killed if they were caught. As they vaulted into the speeder, they saw six Banthas and at least two dozen Sand People in the far end of the canyon. Luke activated the jet turbines as the Raiders began to stream forward with hideous war cries. One of them hurled his gaderffii stick, a huge heavy metal club with a sharp pointed end. It hit the rear deck of the landspeeder and Luke could hear the windshield underneath cracking from the impact. But the turbines were suddenly at full blast and the hovercraft zoomed away.

They emerged into the rocky wastelands, only to find other Tusken Raiders lurking behind boulders. Luke repeatedly steered away from them, becoming hopelessly lost, until it seemed as if he and Biggs would never reach the dunes. And then there was sand ahead, and wide-open space, and the Desolation Canyons were behind them. They were safe. The two boys hardly spoke as they made their way back to the Douz outpost by the light of the setting suns.

When Luke was home again days later, he started to tell Uncle Owen over dinner about his adventure. "Desolation Canyons!" said his gruff Uncle. "If I'd thought you'd go near that area I would have taken that land-speeder away from you. It's too dangerous."

"But what if there was something to learn?" Luke pressed. "This legendary lost city...it might help us understand. .. things. Maybe we could learn to be at peace with the Tuskens. I think you need to understand the past to understand the present."

"No, Luke," Uncle Owen replied softly. "The past is best left alone." Luke went out and looked at the sunset from the edge of the lonely crater that was his home.

"The past does hold clues," he thought to himself. "And now I know who the Sand People really are." Luke wondered what clues his own past held. Why did he always yearn for something more than the farm? What had his father been like? Someday, perhaps, he would learn. Someday the past would help him understand who he was, too.