Rilla's Inheritance Chapter 13

Chapter 13 Gabriella, and my first grandchild, were constantly on my mind. I tried not to fret too much – like Gabriella, I didn’t want to harm the children I was carrying – but I couldn’t not worry.
Yan was looking so drawn and haggard.
“It’s the not knowing, Rilla,” he said to me in quiet despair one evening. “Yolande and Zoe would probably be able to sense her, if we brought them to the surface, but we daren’t. Last time someone spoke to Armiger, he said that they were broadcasting so loudly that you could feel them miles away. And that was before Gabriella was even pregnant. It’ll settle down when they finally mature – but we daren’t risk it at the moment. We haven’t told them, and we haven’t told Armiger – they didn’t know she was pregnant anyway, so they aren’t waiting for news. Can you sense anything? She is your daughter, after all.”
But I had no idea, and told him so, as gently as I could. Ger’s children were growing fast – Garnet was learning to walk, and Emerald and Fluorite were fascinated by everything around them. And these small triumphs did make me happy.
I had given birth to Mellin twins, Heliotrope and Iolite, and they were bidding fair to be as sweet-tempered and contented as my Mellin children had always been. I was becoming resigned to the necessity of being pregnant as much as possible – and the sheer joy of the fathers was a bit unmissable, so I guessed I really had no room for guilt. My Mellin twins grew sweeter and happier day by day. They were such cheerful and sunshiny children that they helped take my mind off Gabriella a little – but they reminded me of her, Eloise and Felicity so much at other times. Gabriella was never far from my thoughts. By now she would have had her baby – or should have done. If she was all right, that is. And as though what had happened to Gabriella wasn’t enough of a disaster, tragedy struck again all too soon afterwards. Adri Caldin took me to meet the seven men who ran the biggest farm in the colony. Most people were trying to grow or catch as much as they could of their own food, but it takes time to garden or fish, and not everyone had the time. I’d already met Aghri at Adri Caldin’s house, but he wanted me to meet the rest of them, so with Adri Caldin as bodyguard, I travelled to their farm. There seemed to be hundreds of them! All big and green and muscular – and a bit earthy under the fingernails too! Actually, there were only seven, and it took all seven of them to keep on top of the work needed. Lew and Reevo both offered to show me round, but Cul won the toss. They ordered Aghri straight back out there to get on with the harvesting! He went very good-naturedly. The fields were big – I could see why it took all seven of them to cope with the weeding, watering and harvesting of everything. Suddenly, there was a strange screaming noise in the sky, and the sky darkened. Everyone stopped what they were doing and rushed outside to look.
“What is it?” Chure asked.
“I don’t know!” Shan had no answers, and Ral was no wiser either. A trail of fire and a plume of smoke arched across the sky, and the screaming noise got louder. Then there was a whoomph and a massive thump that shook the ground. The meteorite had missed the house, and the crops in the fields, but Lew had been too close to it when it landed. I was pregnant again, and it was with a Caldin child. It was a relief to feel well, but my pregnancy also reminded me of Gabriella. Like Yan had said, it was the not knowing that was so hard. Another labour, another panicking father! Aghri hadn’t planned to be around for the birth – since Lew’s untimely death, they had all had to work harder than ever, and he had merely called round to check that I was all right. He got a bit of a surprise! He got another surprise when it turned out to be triplets. I don’t know why, as there were enough of my triplets around now for it not to be anything new – but he’d convinced himself that it would only be twins. Moonstone, Jade and Kyanite however were his, and he’d be bringing them up once they’d stopped being toddlers. At least they wouldn’t be fenced in and imprisoned, growing up with a Caldin father. I was beginning to hate the walls around me. At least I could get outside though. Yolande, Zoe and Amaryllis were even more fenced in than I was – and for the same reason: to keep them safe for the time being. They spent a lot of their spare time forcing Armiger to remember everything he could about the Xydin, and particularly the Adrina.
“She had three things that were hers and hers alone. She had a collar – like Rilla’s, but golden and blue. Mostly it was like the standard Xydin one; it damped down the mental noise from other people, but hers was more powerful than the others, and a bit more specific. So she could listen really carefully to one person if she wanted to help someone, but still cut out the background noise from everyone else. Tela – my wife – she would have to go somewhere private with someone, if they wanted her to really listen to them.” “What else?” Amaryllis and Zoe both wanted to know the same thing.
“Her garden. And that was almost secret. You couldn’t find it very easily – and not at all, if the Adrina really didn’t want anyone to visit. It was where she recovered her strength, if she was very tired. It was where she could be alone. And it was where the Truth Space was.”
“What was that?”
Armiger shrugged. “Tela could never really describe it. What it was for was to help someone know the truth about themselves – you know when you need to make a big decision, and you don’t know what you really want to do? Well, the truth space would help you see. And the Adrina could use it to see the truth in someone else as well. After the first one was built, there were no more unjust judgements. But it was exhausting for her – you didn’t use the Truth Space for petty things. Tela went to it to find out whether she should marry me or become the next Adrina.” “So you can’t get married if you want to be Adrina!” Yolande scowled at the thought.
“Yes you can.” Armiger was quick to correct her. “But you can’t marry someone who wants to go to the far ends of the planet, and be away from others for months, even years at a time. The Adrina is needed by her clan – or the Adri, with the other clans: they can have either. To become Adri or Adrina is to give up your name, and keep only your clan name. Adri and Adrina: they mean “servant” in the oldest language.”
“How come people don’t forget you then?” That was Amaryllis.
“No-one takes your name from you – not like they did to Rilla and Pertin. Nothing is taken away; instead something is given, is offered. You usually remember what you’ve been given, don’t you?”
The girls saw his point. And Armiger had given them a lot to think about. They all three of them knew that one of them would need to become Adrina for the Xydin, and would also need to stand up to the rogue Xydin who was still at large, if the colony was ever to be at peace, and if Rilla was to be safe. It was just as well that they didn’t know what had happened to Gabriella. Yolande and Zoe didn’t know what had happened to Gabriella – and she didn’t know what was happening to them either. But she knew that Four hadn’t found them yet. Finding them was one of his constant themes. He was forever sending the others out at night to hunt for them – or going out hunting himself. Which explained what he had been doing at their house that fateful night.
He had questioned Gabriella, hunting through her mind ruthlessly, but she did not know where they were, and she could not tell him what she did not know. She whispered their names to Ella though, as she held Ella close to her, and showed Ella the wide world that lay beyond the fences that hemmed them in.
“Somewhere out there Ella, people are looking for us. And they won’t rest until they find us. You will see you father, and he will see you. One day Ella, one day.” Heartsease had come to stay with me and help me with the children. Aghri couldn’t stay himself; there was too much farm work to be done. Plus he needed to build a little cottage for himself and the children for when they were old enough to leave me – it didn’t leave much time. He visited whenever he could, so that he wouldn’t be a stranger to his daughters, but full-time was not an option. I enjoyed having Heartsease there – it was good to hear what she was up to, and Iris and Galantha as well. After the library, they’d decided one of the things they could do was to restore some other places in the neighbourhood that had become decayed or derelict. Three determined girls – women now, really – could make a lot of difference, and if they started things, others would help.
“I think people stopped hoping that there would be a future. But now it’s here, and it’s time we started making it. Now tell me some more stories of your orphanage days, please, Rilla.”
Gabriella had loved hearing those stories too – she’d come round when she was pregnant, to talk to me, and to find out if how she felt was normal, and always asked for my orphanage stories. Now I had three Caldin girls in high chairs… …and three more in cots downstairs. Ruby, Peridot and Quartz. One of my daughters, however, remained as much of a problem as she had ever been. W was forever laughing at Unity, and mocking her for her black face. She would go out of her way to track Unity down and tease her mercilessly. It didn’t matter what Kel said to her – she remained totally unrepentant and obdurate. Cat met up with me at Eloise’s house and told me all about the things they were having to put up with, and how difficult it was. She was obviously getting to the end of her tether, and I agreed with her that this had gone on for long enough. They needed a change – and W was going to have to improve her ways or take the consequences. Cat and Kel warned W that if she didn’t mend her ways, there would be serious consequences for her. She was promptly rude to them, and ended up having to eat all her meals alone, go nowhere except school and back and see no-one for a week. At the end of the week, she went straight round to Querida’s house and pitched into her.
“I don’t know why you kept those stars on your face – you’re no true Xydin. And those goody-goody friends of yours, wherever they are, no-one would want them to rule the clan either…”
She had Querida in tears before some adult intervention showed up, and she was hauled home in disgrace again. For the first time in her life, W began to wonder if she might not have gone a bit too far. Kel was actually really angry with her. The Mellin clan were so even-tempered that she hadn’t realised he was capable of anger – and, secretly, she’d always rather despised him for his kind and considerate nature. That night, as she lay in bed still awake, she heard Cat and Kel talking outside.
“Kel, I feel like we’ve failed. The others have all turned out so well now.”
“Cat, it’s not your fault. She’s obviously been totally spoilt by her upbringing. But we are not going to let her go on ruining our lives. All the Adris agree – they met at The Place yesterday to discuss this. You and I have tried and tried. Now it’s someone else’s turn to take over this burden. Come here, my love.”
W could hear Cat crying softly. For a moment she thought of going and apologising – but then she thought of the destiny she had been promised. She was going to be Adrina of the most powerful clan! She would rule everything! Softness was for weaklings. The next day, W crept out early and ran off to one of her favourite places. She loved the huge and open views, the sense of space and adventure that it gave her. It touched something buried deep inside her. She was almost happy as she went back to Cat and Kel’s house – and discovered that her world had been re-organised for her. “You’re leaving.” It was a Valdin who told her this, eyes neither hostile nor friendly but merely indifferent.
“Oh, and we’ve had enough of the show-off black clothes – put these on instead. And there’s going to be no more head-shaving to try and look scary. You’re still only a girl. You’re going to look like one. Hurry up – we march in ten minutes.”
And that was it. Ten minutes later, she was marching off. To, as it turned out, a Valdin training barracks in the middle of nowhere. And to a very different life-style. She was escorted to and from school each day by one or the other of the three new recruits – usually with heavy packs on their backs! No-one was unkind to her, but no-one was kind either. She was just part of their responsibilities. And she had responsibilities of her own too. The dishes, for one. And the cooking for another. It had better be done right too, or there were complaints. She was expected to get on with her homework alone, but someone always checked it, and it had better have been done well. If it wasn’t satisfactory, Dev or Edo simply ripped it up and told her to start again. Sometimes W would watch the three recruits talking and laughing together – or playing chess against each other – or singing together – and wonder if she might have missed out on something. Orache, Nepeta and Melilot seemed to have something she didn’t. But then she would remind herself of her glorious destiny – only it seemed to be a long time coming. However, she was a true Xydin! She had the blue eyes! She would rule one day – he had promised that to her. Well, to her or Verity, but Verity had gone soft now, so she was the only one left. Iris, Heartsease and Galantha were serious about improving the neighbourhood. The next target they had their eye on was the old outdoor swimming pool. It had been unused and neglected for a long time now, but it had been well-built in the first place, and the girls were confident that they could restore it to its former glory.
They went there together for a closer look one day. Closer was not necessarily better. “What is it with the brambles?” Galantha asked Heartsease. “Do you think they lie in wait for us, and all walk over to wherever we’re going to clear next?” “So where do we start?” Iris asked the others. “The brambles, the fence, the changing rooms? I saw some old benches round the back that we could re-paint, maybe.” “I think we should start by re-painting the hopscotch grid. I can hardly see the markings on this,” Heartsease said, very firmly. The other two pointed out, gently but equally firmly, that they hadn’t come here to play, but to work… Some others who were working hard were Adri Adrin, Barbara and Abigail. They were reaching the end of their tests on the three Xydin in the isolation labs, and hoped to begin analysing the results soon. The tests had been far more complex, both to do and to analyse, than anyone had expected them to be. It had taken everyone who was capable of helping a huge amount of time. Now they were nearly over, though Barbara and Adri Adrin were still working late into the night. As Barbara carried out the final analyses, Adri Adrin checked the results against the programs they had written to cope with the strange outcomes they had been observing. He found them so disturbing that both Barbara and Abigail re-ran the analyses, but unfortunately the same results came up again. As soon as he could, he called a meeting of the other Adris to discuss what he had found. Meanwhile, W’s new life continued as it had started. Dev and Edo added physical training into her routine, and again they treated her with dispassionate indifference. No-one was cruel to her, no-one menaced her – but it was very clear to her that she had better co-operate rather than rebel. And she was worked hard – but not excessively so. No-one showed her any sympathy when she fell over on the treadmill – they simply expected her to get up and get on with it as soon as possible. But no-one mocked or taunted her either – as she would have mocked and taunted them if the position had been reversed. For the first time ever, she began to question her own behaviour. Her confidence in her glorious destiny was beginning to ebb away a little. No-one really trusted her either. She was never alone, and there was always someone watching her. They don’t think I can behave properly, she thought to herself – and a little, long-stifled voice in her head said: well, can you? Adri Adrin called the other Adris together to discuss his findings.
“The plague seems to have affected their capacity for empathy – never as strong in male Xydin as in female Xydin, admittedly, but never absent! And the cocktail of drugs they were taking – or being fed – has made this far worse. But the other problem is that these drugs have heightened their ability to influence the minds of others.”
“And you think that the remaining Xydin is still taking these, and is getting more extreme in both areas?” That was Adri Verdin. “Yes. But what really worries me is that I’m not sure if Zoe, Amaryllis and Yolande are going to be a match for him – even the three of them together. I’m worried that he will be stronger than them.” Barbara had been explaining their findings to Adri Tallin and Adri Valdin – and their worries too.
“We need more Xydin,” Adri Tallin said flatly.
“How? Rilla will never agree to having another Xydin child – and who would be the father in any case?”
“No. We need to find the missing ones. Armiger’s brothers-in-law. Andolin and Garender, and their families.”
Adri Valdin agreed with him. “I’ll get the patrols out looking for them as well as Gabriella. We know they survived the plague – it’s not right that we haven’t seen them since. Either they’re somewhere, or their bodies are – we need to know. I don’t know how they’ve managed to disappear so completely. And come to think of it, they disappeared at about the time the trouble with this four started.” Life was the oddest mixture of the normal and the strange. Gabriella was missing, and none of my other daughters dared to think about getting pregnant in case the same thing happened to them. I, on the other hand, needed to be pregnant as much of the time as possible – and I only went out with a bodyguard.
Adri Valdin had taken me out to see what my girls had been doing with the swimming pool. Heartease had re-painted the hopscotch grid! They had also dealt with the brambles, replaced the missing bits of fence (and were going to re-paint the rest to match next), and cleaned up the seesaw. The toilet and shower block was still looking rather shabby, but that was next on their list for improvement.
“I want us to have places we can all meet as a community,” Iris had explained. “I want family places for us all. I want us to be able to play together, and have fun. Thanks to you, there are children here again. Let’s make it good for us all.”
I looked around at what they had done so far, and I was proud of them. Not only were my three Mellin girls changing the look of the neighbourhood, but they were also helping build the relationships that made a neighbourhood good. With W out of the way, Unity was beginning to regain the confidence W had eroded so successfully, but she had retreated back into herself noticeably.
Galantha found out about Unity’s passion for collecting songs, and promptly ordered Byander to teach Unity any that he knew. It was a very silly song, that had everybody joining in one after the other. Byander began.

I made myself a tasty stew
There was plenty there for two
I found myself a comfy seat
And I was just about to eat
When I heard

and here everyone else clapped the four beats

1,2,3,4 And so I opened up the door
I found Penander standing there, saying…
Penander picked up his part

Neighbour, have you food to spare?
I’m starving and my larder’s bare.

Byander sang again

I said there’s plenty here for two
So come and find yourself a seat

Their voices joined

And we were just about to eat
When we heard 1,2,3,4
And so we opened up the door
Aaand... Iolite was standing there
Iolite was a little shy about singing in front of Unity, but Galantha had asked her to do it, and explained that it would make Unity happy, so she obliged. She had a sweet, clear voice.

Neighbour, have you food to spare?
I’m starving and my larder’s bare.

The other two sang back at her.

We said this stew is fine for three
Sit down here with him and me
And we were just about to eat
When we heard 1,2,3,4
And so we opened up the door,
And we found Iris standing there
Iris joined in. By now Unity was laughing at the song.

Neighbour, have you food to spare?
I’m starving, and the larder’s bare.

Three voices answered Iris.

We said this stew will stretch round four.
Come on in and shut the door
And we were just about to eat
When we heard 1,2,3,4
And so we opened up the door
And Unity was standing there

Unity joined in the song, and their voices blended and rose in the starlight. When I heard of the evening they had spent with Unity, I was even more proud of the three of them. They were turning out to be true Mellin – community and family oriented.
I could see why my Valdin daughters had said they couldn’t marry a Mellin – those were not responsibilities they could take on and do justice to. I had two Valdin toddlers in high chairs in front of me, and their adventurous and inquisitive natures were already very obvious. Topaz and Sapphire were a full-time job in their own right. And I was pregnant again. Very pregnant! Chure Caldin was going to be a father, and that news went some way to easing his grief over Lew’s death. I was going to need some help though. I needed another daughter to come and stay. If only we could get this collar off my neck! If only Amaryllis was here… But although Laurel wasn’t Amaryllis, it was lovely to see her and catch up on all the Adrin news. The influx of Adrin girls had transformed the clan, apparently.
“Barbara and Abigail notice it the most,” Laurel said, cuddling Verdite. “But we three do as well. People have stopped being so solemn and serious. And the girls all ask questions and some of the questions are funny, and everyone laughs again. And they want to play games, and not work all the time – we all went to our fathers as teens, and that was different, because we were expecting to learn and work – but they’ve come as children. It takes everyone’s mind off all these test results and everything.” The test results and everything were very much on people’s minds though. Adri Valdin had organised a massive search for any traces of the other Xydin. They couldn’t just have disappeared, surely. Nepeta and Orache were among the searchers. As Dev Valdin said to them, this was real training. They searched everywhere. “What happens if we never find them?” Nepeta asked.
“We’ll find something. We must. Hopefully, we’ll find them,” Dev replied. They found Garender’s old home. It was obvious that no-one had been there for a long time. The whole place had an air of desolation about it. Many many miles away, Edo had found the place where Andolin had gone with his son and grandson. Again, there was no sign of anyone having been there for a long time. So where had they gone? There were no bodies, no sign of illness, no signs of violence. And this had been far enough away for little Dyander to be shielded from everyone else’s grief, which was why Andolin and Frandin had moved in the first place. It didn’t make sense. They travelled as far as the huge ruins, left by a former civilisation (Adri Adrin’s bet was that the plague had finished them off too), which was as far in that direction as anyone had ever explored. No signs of anyone. In the end, they had to give up and go back home again. Dev Valdin’s two girls were old enough to join him now – and living in a house with so many walls round it was not suiting them at all. With Topaz and Sapphire joining them, the atmosphere at the training barracks changed somewhat. A more family feeling became apparent. W began to see what Cat and Kel had been trying to create for her. Living outside so much was suiting her as well – she enjoyed the open spaces and the huge views.
She had a favourite spot on the top of a nearby hill, and no-one objected to her going and sitting there and watching the sky change around her – as long as she had done all her duties. They’d even stopped setting a watch on her, as she always came back when she was supposed to. To her surprise, she found that she liked being trusted. Soon, she knew, she was going to grow up. And she was beginning to ask herself how she wanted to grow up.
Did she really want to carry on with this whole I-am-going-to-be-Adrina business? With no-one around to remind her of it, and with these wide-open spaces everywhere, just waiting for her to explore them, her glorious destiny didn’t seem so important any more.