Rilla's Inheritance Chapter 12

Chapter 12 My older Xydin girls were getting a bit tired of life underground – especially Yolande, who had always been the adventurous one of the three of them.
“Please can’t we go out for a bit,” she begged Armiger. And Zoe and Amaryllis added their voices to hers. “No way! You might not realise this, but you are all so close to coming into your full Xydin selves now that you would be felt miles away. The three of you are broadcasting on an incredible level – I can feel you three floors up, and I was only married to a Xydin.”
And when they didn’t believe him, he offered to prove it. “I’ll go right to the top of the mine – up to the false wall on that top floor. And when I’m there, one of you can start to come up the stairs towards me. And I’ll tell you who it is. I’ll turn my back and put earplugs in.” Zoe tried first, as they figured he would expect it to be Yolande, but she had got no more than four steps up the stairs when he identified her. Yolande tried next and she had barely set foot on the stair before he knew it was her. In the end they turned it into a game and tried to see how far they could get before he sensed them coming. Amaryllis was the best at it – she learnt how to fold her presence away deep within herself, and could get almost all the way up before he felt her. Zoe was a little better than she had been at the start, but Armiger knew Yolande’s presence sometimes almost before she set foot on the stair.
However, it stopped them asking to go outside. They began to see what he meant – being triplets, they were so used to each other that they didn’t really notice each other’s presence, and hadn’t realised that this would not be the case for everyone. I had three delightful toddlers. Having had more than one batch of Adrin babies now, I was beginning to notice their clan personalities more; their individual ones I had always noticed! They were very calm children, and quite self-contained, but in a totally different way to my Valdin girls.
My Adrin girls wanted to investigate the world too, but they liked looking at things and considering them carefully – woe betide you if you took something off one of them before they had finished looking at it! They were also very affectionate, in a quiet and thoughtful way. Ger also had three children of his own now – Coral, Diamond and Beryl. His happiness and contentment was so great it filled the house – I hadn’t thought that an Adrin could make his feelings felt so by everyone else! My new kitchen/living room was lovely. Jenny had found an old rusty trough, cleaned it up, painted it with a most beautiful pattern and planted it up with herbs for me to use in my cooking.
Imogen had made some Useful Pots To Put Things In, and each time I looked at what they had given me, I was reminded of how much I loved them and they loved me. I was truly content – except that as the last of the pregnancy hormones drained from my system, I knew I was beginning to fall ill again. I met Imogen outside the library and had a chance to thank her for the pots all over again. She too was gaining her Tallin markings, and very proud of them. And the outside of the library was looking so much better. Galantha, Iris and Heartsease had done a wonderful job getting rid of the weeds, and planting flowers in the old flower beds. I gathered that they had their eyes on some other overgrown bits of once-gardens to attack next. It was good to realise that my girls were changing this world for the better. Gabriella had taken my advice and stopped fretting about getting pregnant – or rather, not getting pregnant! Armiger Valdin had sent them messages from Zoe and Yolande, and she and Yan knew that they were all right and not unhappy. She tended to the garden and relaxed into her married life with Yan and without children round the house.
“You know what,” Yan said one morning, as she came in from the garden. “Let’s just go out this afternoon!” As they ate lunch, Gabriella realised that she was feeling like she did when Yan was courting her – excited and happy to be getting to go out together. There were, she decided, some compensations for not having the girls around – a bit less work, and a bit more time for the two of them together. They went for a walk and ended up at The Place. Gabriella looked at the stones in the ground. “So these stones actually came from our – well, your – home planet?”
“Yes. Every colony ship takes seven stones with it, one for each clan. And we make a Place, and set the stones up round it.” “What was it like, the home planet? I can’t imagine it. And…” she hesitated a little here. “Are you sorry you’ll never go back?”
Yan caught her up in his arms and pulled her close to him. Then he looked into her face.
“If we hadn’t come here and been stranded, I would never have met you. You are the sweetest and loveliest thing that has ever happened to me. It’s been a long journey, and a hard one at times, but here, with you in my arms, is the only place I want to be.” They wandered home, hand-in-hand and very content.
When they got home, Yan turned to Gabriella and said, “You know, we haven’t got teenagers in the house any more. There’s nothing to stop us going to bed whenever we want…” It was a while later – and Gabriella was standing inside the door, waiting for Yan to come home. He was barely inside, before she was telling him: “I’m pregnant!” “Really! That’s amazing! Wow! How wonderful! Let me feel.” He ran his hands over Gabriella’s still very flat stomach. “I can’t believe it! I can’t feel it either.”
“No. Because it’s Too Small to feel yet, idiot. But you will feel it soon – and see it, or at least a bump. Oh Yan, this is wonderful!” Gabriella and Yan came round to tell me she was pregnant almost as soon as she had told Yan. “I wanted someone else to know!” Gabriella was so excited, and Yan was just as excited too.
“Have you thought of any names yet?” I asked the question idly, as I would have asked it on Earth, forgetting the importance they placed on names among the clans.
“No.” Yan spoke slowly. “We should choose, shouldn’t we, as we will have to name the child; we have no Adrina for the Xydin yet.”
Gabriella nodded. “We’ll have to think. We’ll tell you when we’ve thought.”
And a little while later, she invited her father round.
Adri Mellin was delighted as well. “That’s my grandchild,” he said, unbelievingly, as he stroked Gabriella’s by-now-visible bulge.
“This is our next generation. Our plan has worked! We have a future – we have future children.”
“I meant to ask you,” Gabriella said. “Why did the Xydin object so to marrying between the clans? I mean, by all accounts, people always have.”
“It wasn’t that.” Adri Mellin paused and tried to think how best to explain. “This child of yours – let’s pretend it’s a girl. And let’s pretend Daisy has a boy. Well, they can’t marry each other – you and Daisy share a mother. We’d have too much in-breeding. So she could marry one of the men still without families of their own – goodness only knows, there’s still enough of them. There’s going to be a lot of children with Rilla’s genes in them, though, so we need to avoid sharing any other common genes as well. So she can’t marry a Mellin, or an Adrin. What clan will their children belong to – say she marries a Caldin?” “Oh. I see! I mean, I think of me as a Mellin, and Yan is an Adrin – but this child could be like me or him. Or a mixture. So how do we decide where we belong?”
“I think the clans will be based more on what you’re like – if your child is really scientific, she’ll probably belong to the Adrin clan. And if he’s really like his grandfather, he’ll join the Mellin. We’ll have to invent a new ceremony!”
“So what made the Xydin so worried? The thought that people wouldn’t look right for their clans any more?” “Maybe. When their Adrina died, they formed a council of four – two pairs of brothers, the oldest men still alive but young enough to serve for a while. And they really wanted to keep things the same. Xydin men don’t cope with change well; they need their womenfolk to help them. And we hadn’t got a lot of time – the window for reaching Rilla wasn’t a very big one. They were coming round to the idea, but so slowly! We’d agreed that she had to be willing, or we were law-breakers. And there they were, quibbling about future clan affiliations, before we even knew if Rilla would help us. Or if we could rescue her! Then, on their way home one night, the bridge they were crossing collapsed – we’d had some heavy rain, and one of the supports was washed away. And no-one came forward to take their place. So we had to act anyway.”
“And now I’m here, and pregnant.”
“That’s right!” There was a holiday mood everywhere as the news of Gabriella’s pregnancy leaked out. Adri Adrin said she was beautifully healthy, and so was the baby. I wanted to give her something special for this, the first child of my daughters, so I got out the basket of toys Imogen, Hope and Laura had made for Amaryllis. They were looking very shabby now, they had been loved and played with by so many children, so I thought I would see what I could do to smarten them up a bit. I begged as much cloth as I could from Adri Tallin. The lion cleaned up beautifully, but the other two fell apart when I tried to clean them, and I had to take them to pieces, cut new pattern from the old pieces, and re-make them. I re-covered the basket as well – that fabric had seen better days too! When Yan and Gabriella came round to collect the toys, they told me that they had chosen their names.
“Ella if it’s a girl, from my name.” Gabriella said. “And if it’s a boy, then Ril. From your name – we wanted to honour you for all that you have done for us. We can’t call a girl after you – Amaryllis has that name; it’s hers.”
I was deeply moved. And, I thought, they had done just as much for me. They had rescued me as well. And given me a new family of my own. Gabriella’s sister and brother-in-law were thinking about children as well. Or at least, wondering about them.
“Shall we see what it’s like for Gabriella first?” Eloise asked Haden. She got up to clear away her plate, but sat down again when Haden said, with a twinkle, “You’re nervous, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she admitted, a little shame-faced. “I mean, I know Rilla has had lots of babies, but she’s Rilla, and she’s special.”
“She’s just the same as you – well, not quite, I know – and you will manage too. But I agree – we’ll learn from Gabriella first.” Callinet was talking to Philomena about the same subject.
“But I just feel so young and inexperienced, compared to you,” she wailed.
“You are young, compared to me! But although I have the age and experience, you supply the youth and freshness. We need each other. We’ll learn from Yan and Gabriella, and then make our own batch of mistakes!” Gabriella and Yan were making the most of the pregnancy. Their marriage was firmly established, they had already raised two children from toddler-hood to teenage – they had time to do things like fell Gabriella’s ever-expanding bump. Or talk to it and listen optimistically for a response. Gabriella said it kicked harder at the sound of Yan’s voice. Or just pull each other close, and kiss fondly, before Gabriella went in to sit down for a while. What they didn’t notice, that fateful evening, was the dark figure watching them from the shadow of the trees. Yan had no warning of the sudden attack from behind. He was no fighter either – it wasn’t hard for his assailant to knock him cold. The first Gabriella knew of it was when a furious Xydin burst into the room.
“You half-breed! And what sort of a child are you carrying?” His eyes were burning with madness, and Gabriella felt sick and giddy with fear. He grabbed her by the arm.
“You’re not staying here to pollute the purity of the clans with your disgusting offspring! I’m removing you – for the good of everyone else! And let’s hope they learn the lesson!” The last thing Gabriella saw, as she was dragged away, was Yan’s body, lying on the grass outside their home. She didn’t even know if he was alive or not. Pertin had known that there was something up with Four for a while – the black mood was all too palpable, even in the peace of the garden. The odd one out of the others came in for even more scorn than usual. Then something very worrying happened. A second bed was brought into one of the garden buildings, and Pertin’s own bed was moved out from where it had been. And a cot was placed where Pertin’s bed had been. Pertin’s heart grew cold with fear. Surely Rilla hadn’t been captured again! But the woman who was dragged in by Four, tired, afraid and desperately concerned for both her unborn child and her husband, was nobody that Pertin knew. He felt the oddest mixture of overwhelming relief that it wasn’t Rilla, and overwhelming sympathy for her. She was so obviously trying not to get too upset, so as not to affect her baby too much. He listened to her, while she told him all that had happened to her over the past few days. “But I think our child is all right. He – or she – is still kicking strongly. Feel for yourself.”
And for the first time in a longer age than he cared to think about, Pertin’s hands touched another human being in friendship. When Yan had come round, he had found an empty house with no sign of Gabriella anywhere. His heart felt as though it would break. He should have been a Valdin, ready and able to defend her! Or at least a Caldin – they tended to have huge muscles, with all that outdoor work. Instead, he was just a weedy little Adrin. He wept, hopeless with fear for her and their child. Then he pulled himself together, and got hold of Adri Valdin and told him the whole story. Although his first instinct was to rush out and search for her himself, his analytical mind pointed out the best way forwards. Adri Valdin lost no time at all in organising a search party. Yan was impressed by the clear-cut efficiency which everyone showed: orders were clearly given, and obviously understood. Dawn was just breaking as they set out, looking in every direction for some sign of Gabriella. But the twelve hours’ headstart, and the fact that they didn’t know which way Gabriella and her abductor had gone, meant that she wasn’t found in time. Four had stayed one jump ahead of his pursuers all through the journey. Gabriella told Pertin all about it the afternoon after she arrived – she had slept through for fourteen hours, worn out by the journey, and her worries.
“I know you must be one of Rilla’s daughters,” he said at the end of her story. “But I don’t know your name.”
“Oh, sorry! I’m Gabriella. And I know who you are. You’re Pertin, and you found Rilla when none of the other men could even remember her. And you helped rescue her.” “You know about me!” Pertin was amazed. “But how?”
“Rilla remembered you. And she and Amaryllis gave you a new name, so that they could talk about you – you old name just seemed to make people forget you whenever it was mentioned. Everyone knows about you, and everyone has been looking for you. We just thought you were still hiding away – we didn’t realise you’d been kidnapped too. Alkanet Verdin has even been living in your little hut, in the hope that you’d come back to it one day.”
And Pertin remembered the day when he’d suddenly felt his spirits lift for some unaccountable reason, and how, after that moment, he’d been able to stand up to Four mentally, if not physically. Gabriella’s company was the best thing Pertin had known for ages. If he could have sent her safely back to her husband, he would have done it in a moment, even though he would have been alone again. But he couldn’t – and Gabriella, too, found him a great support. When she went into labour, at least she wasn’t alone. Not that he was a lot of help, as he went straight into the traditional male panic mode! Gabriella gave birth to a daughter. “Ella,” she whispered into the child’s ear. “You are Ella. You are Gabriella and Yan’s daughter, and you are Rilla’s first grandchild. Welcome, Ella.”