Salvia: The Exile Chapter 8

Chapter 8 Salvia was going to have to tell the children about her pregnancy fairly soon. Now she knew she was pregnant, she could see why her other clothes had stopped fitting her properly. She was putting on a little weight – and soon she’d be putting on rather more weight. And then they’d notice. “Soon,” she thought. “But not just yet.” Mealtimes were pleasant now. The children chatted while they ate, and the atmosphere was a happy one. Salvia asked them where their clothes came from, and Primrose told her that the last-but-one Roku had made them. Thank goodness, I can sew, Salvia thought.
“Because you’re beginning to need new ones. These are getting a bit small and worn.”
“Can we have softer clothes please? These are so itchy and hard. But that Roku asked for itchy cloth. To remind us, she said.”
“But it served her right,” Jay added, “because she had to make her clothes out of it as well.” “Why were some of the Roku so unkind to you? Do you know?”
But it was Willow who knew the answer to that one.
“Looking after us was their punishment. They had all done bad things, and this was their punishment. But they were scared of us. I think that’s why they ran away sometimes. I didn’t like the one before you came. She scared me.” Salvia would have liked to ask why Willow had been scared, but she decided to leave that until later. These poor children she thought: what sort of a life have they had? And what sort of a life is my child going to have? Salvia did ask for new material – that wasn’t so scratchy – and also for some coloured fabrics. Once again, to her surprise, both came, with a note explaining that when the children left the compound, they must wear the grey clothes, else she would be severely punished. Salvia shuddered at the threat. But she started sewing, unpicking an old set of clothes and using it as a pattern to make larger ones. Next thing she had to do was tell them about her pregnancy – pretty soon this bulge was going to be too obvious to hide. Her chance came a couple of days later at the meal table.
“I’ve got something to tell you all – something that you all need to know about. It’s not that I’m leaving you,” she added hastily, as she saw the beginnings of a shadow cross Jay’s face. “It’s that I’m going to have a baby. It’s growing inside me right now.” “Does this mean you won’t be like a mother to us any more?” Robin asked. “If you’re going to have a real child of your own?” “No, my darling, it doesn’t. I will still be like a mother to you. And this baby will be like a little brother or sister to you.” “Will you sing to the baby like the first Roku sang to us?” Jay asked. Salvia laughed.
“Probably. In fact, definitely. Babies love being sung to. But they’ll be different songs because I come from somewhere very, very different. This isn’t my world.” “Salvia,” Willow said. “Can I ask you why you are here? The last Roku – the one who scared me – she’d done something called frord, and she’d done a big one. And all the others too – this was their punishment, to look after us. But I can’t believe you’ve done anything bad.” “But I did, Willow. I did something very bad.” Salvia hated telling the children this, but she knew she had to be honest with them.
“Where I came from, we had five laws called the First Five Laws. And they were very important. And I broke all five of them, and I was sent here through a kind of magic gateway. This is my punishment, and I deserved it.” Willow was thinking about this carefully. Ash was more interested in finding out what Salvia had done.
“What were the laws?” he asked, somewhat indistinctly, because his mouth was full. Salvia recited them in the way she’d been taught them from being tiny.
“Speak the truth. Keep your vows. Neither covet nor steal. Protect the weak. Tend the land.”
“What’s vows?”
“What’s covet?”
“Your vows are your promises. And to covet means to want something so badly you’re all eaten up inside with wanting it, and you stop being nice inside.”
“So if you broke them,” Primrose asked, “how do you mend them? And can you go back home when you’ve mended them?”
“I can go back home when these marks have gone off my body. These marks came because I broke the laws.” “Then maybe they’ll go away when you keep the laws. But I don’t want you to go and leave us, Salvia.”
“If I can take you with me, I will. This is no place for you, and I don’t know why you’re here. And I promise I won’t choose to leave you. If I ever go away without you, it will be because someone has made me go.” The other children were all heading off to bed, but Willow came over to Salvia to talk to her.
“I know why we’re here. The last Roku told me, when she was angry with me. She said it was because our – our ceeyenay was all wrong, and we thought we were safe at the moment, but as soon as we were old enough the govmint scientists would speriment on us. But she said lots of other people wanted us as well, and they would pay her lots of money if she told them how to get us and as soon as we weren’t so closely guarded they would come and take us. And we were really just scary freeks so it didn’t count as hurting people. Then she tried to go out without them putting a mask on her because she said she wasn’t going to wear one of those for the rest of her life, but she died.” “My poor little Willow! What a nasty woman she was!” Salvia wasn’t sure what govmint scientists were, nor ceeyenay, but it was obvious that Willow had been badly frightened by the woman. When Willow went to bed that night, Salvia sat next to her and held her hand until she fell asleep. The children’s new clothes added a much-needed splash of colour to the dull gray room – as did their paintings on the walls. The place was still dreary beyond belief, but it was beginning to feel a bit more like a home, and less like a prison. As her bulge became more obvious, the children became touchingly protective. They did as much as they could to help around the house, and to spare her trouble. And what heartened Salvia about this was that they weren’t doing it out of fear, but out of love for her. They were also fascinated by the whole idea of a new person growing inside Salvia. “It’s getting bigger, Primrose said. “Will there be lots of babies in there?”
Salvia laughed. “No, just one. People usually only have one baby at a time. Sometimes they might have twins.”
And she thought, with a sudden pang, of Sambucus’ sister, dying in childbirth, and the twins she’d been carrying malformed, and dying too. Oddly, she herself wasn’t frightened. She had felt Alfwyn’s shield take effect when Sambucus had put it on her wrist, and she could feel it now, shielding and protecting their unborn child – who, after all, was going to be the one to inherit it. The children were due to leave for school in twenty minutes, and were making the most of their time before they left. Ash was finishing off his usual enormous breakfast! Salvia had made the girls headscarves, and did their hair in matching plaits before school. They all understood the importance of hiding the changes Salvia had made in their lives.
“But they can’t watch us in here,” Primrose said. “Something messes up the signal – I heard two of them talking once at school. Our school room’s like this but smaller. They said something about… sub-sonic frequencies, I think, and something else about mod-u-la-tions. But I didn’t understand it.”
Theta stone, thought Salvia. Their schoolroom’s made of theta-stone. And it obviously has the power to affect things here too. Salvia looked at the children at the end of the day, and was pleased. Ash had headed straight for the paints, as usual, and the other four had set up a complicated rock, scissors, paper tournament. They were acting like normal children, not the scared little things they’d been when she arrived. The first Roku had obviously laid a good foundation. Salvia found herself more and more curious about her as each day went by. Autumn passed, Winter came, Salvia grew ever rounder – and it snowed! Warm (grey-of-course) clothing arrived at the gates for the children a day or two later, and Salvia promised them she’d show them how to make snowmen, and have a snowball fight. The huge rocks that surrounded the compound looked like miniature mountains, topped with snow. Salvia gave birth to a baby boy. She named him Rowan – she and Sambucus had discussed names on that long pre-dawn walk to the Porta Mutantis, and chosen Rowan because it would do either a boy or a girl. Holding him close to herself, she was so aware of two strong emotions pulling at her. On the one hand she loved him – but on the other hand, he was another huge responsibility. She wondered what the children would make of him.
She needn’t have worried. The children loved him.
“He’s so little. And so beautiful. We’ll have to paint some more pictures for him to look at, or he’ll get bored.” And Primrose headed straight for the easel. It was a bit later on in that day when Salvia got the shock of her life. Rowan was being fretty, and she picked him up and sang to him: the same lullaby her mother had sung to her.

“Fold your wings and close your eyes.
The stars are shining clear.
Lay your little body down.”

And Robin’s voice joined in the last line.

“It’s time to sleep, my dear.”

Salvia stopped – about to congratulate Robin on a good guess at the words - but Robin sang on.

“See the moon is shining bright.
The night has come again…”

She tailed off as she saw Salvia’s face.