Rilla's Inheritance Chapter 7

Chapter 7 Time went on. My Amaryllis finally grew up into a beautiful teenager, much to her delight. She’d been moaning about the way other people seemed to grow up faster than her.
Penander Mellin was the next person to come round and talk to me. Everyone was searching for my missing children, and as they knew more-or-less where I’d been, then there was a starting point for the search. My Verdin girls had gone to live with their father – Tambor was right about six children in the house being too much for me – and the evenings were lonely when the others were in bed. That evening, he came round to tell me that they thought they’d found the children. My heart was torn between concern for them, and a deep but nameless fear of them. I was scared of something – or someone – but I didn’t know, couldn’t remember, what.
“Oh Rilla,” he said, and there was a world of longing in his voice. “I do wish we could have spared you this.” And he put his arms around me and let me cry inside the warm circle of his care for me. The next morning he joined us for breakfast. Fern and Erica thought nothing of it, but Amaryllis had a small but definite smile on her face! The children had been found – and the adults with them had been put “Somewhere very safe and secure, while we decide what to do about them,” as Adri Valdin said. The children had been shared out among my older daughters. But they were a sorry and strange bunch. Imogen invited me over to meet the one she and Danno were taking care of. She was a sad little child, with a grey face. And when Imogen had asked her about her face, the child had shrunk into herself. “My eyes are the wrong colour. I’m not a proper Xydin. He said my face should be forgotten, and he would make it disappear. But I could be a servant to the Adrina when she was chosen.” Imogen was incensed about the way the child had been brought up. “Rilla, she’s got no name! She’s just called Q. You have to give her a name – you’re the only one who can. You are her mother.” I looked at the little girl again, and my heart melted with pity for her.
“Your eyes are beautiful,” I told her. “They are just like mine. There’s nothing wrong with them at all.” But whatever the mysterious and terrifying “he” had done to her face wasn’t going to be easy to undo. Imogen found some bits of fabric and made her some more cheerful clothes. And she taught her how to paint, which she did for hours on end, and was happier afterwards. However, the grey on her face was getting ever darker and darker, and her features were being lost behind it. And the other Xydin children all brought their own problems and challenges too. Imogen’s adopted child was a sad little mite, and that was problem enough in itself. But Catriona and Kel’s child was an aggressive, almost ferocious little bundle of fury. Angry and argumentative, she kept insisting that she was really important, because she might be the Adrina one day, if she could outdo her sister. Her eyes were the right colour, not like some of the other useless ones. She was a true Xydin, and she would be powerful one day, and rule all the clans. Catriona and Kel’s happy start to their marriage had ended abruptly. Amaryllis came to talk to me in the garden, after she came home from school, but before the others arrived. “Something’s troubling you. I can feel it. What is it?”
It would have been easy to brush her off, and say that I was worried about these children, but it wasn’t that, and she knew it. I was honest with her.
“I feel that there are things that I’ve forgotten, and they’re important. But I don’t know what they are. I can’t reach my memories.” Amaryllis closed her eyes and concentrated. “I can feel the doors that have been locked in your mind. Your memories are there, behind them. But I don’t know how to open the doors. I haven’t got the key.”
Then she opened her eyes wide in surprise. “I’ve never done that before! I didn’t know I could! Is there something wrong with me?”
“No!” I wanted to reassure her quickly. “I think it might go with being a Xydin. Adri Verdin might know. I don’t think you should do it without being asked, though. That feels like it would be wrong.” A couple of mornings later, I found myself being sick again. Penander Mellin was delighted with my news. It was three girls! Iris, Galantha, and Heartsease – because that was what Penander had given me. Ease for my aching heart. They took my mind off my other daughters, and their troubles, but only a little. Octavia and Philomena, along with Adri Verdin, had taken one of the children in. She too kept insisting that her eyes were the wrong colour, and that she had no value except as a servant to the Adrina. And she too said that a nameless “him” had said that her face should be hidden. And, like little Q, her face was slowly growing ever darker. The Verdin care and tenderness that she was receiving was making a difference to her though – each time I saw her, she was a little bit more open, and a little bit more affectionate. I went round late one evening. In the gloom, I could hardly see her face – and the black clothes didn’t help much either. I must tell Adri Verdin that she needed different clothes.
“Do you really care about me?” she asked. “Tavy and Phil say that you do, because you’re my mother, but I don’t think my father cared much.”
I looked into the eyes – my eyes – looking up at me and answered from my heart. “You are my child. Yes, I love you. Even though we don’t know each other very well yet, I love you.”
And I reached down and hugged her. “I want a name,” she whispered to me. “I don’t like being called X”
“Then you shall have one,” I whispered back. “We’ll call you Xanthe.” Each time I visited my Xydin children, it was such a relief to get back to my own home. Though this morning was a bittersweet one for Amaryllis – Fern and Erica were moving out to live with their father. I could see that she wished she knew who her father was. I, on the other hand, was dreading meeting him. The Valdin were holding the male Xydin they had captured, and Adri Adrin’s team were doning their equivalent of DNA testing to find out who was the father of Amaryllis, Yolande and Zoe. And judging from all I’d heard from Gabriella, those two weren’t too happy either. Daisy and Andor Valdin had taken on one of my children as well – and it was another blue-eyed little spitfire.
“I’m going to be Adrina one day,” she announced to Daisy. “And then you’ll all have to obey me.” But she’d picked the wrong person to try that sort of attitude on. Daisy wasn’t standing for any nonsense like that. And V, as she called herself, had more than met her match in Andor Valdin. He had her out of her black clothes and into something more suitable for her environment in no time. And her hair neatly combed and tied back. And it was a case of: “You’re hungry? You better start catching your dinner then.” But Andor came and fished with her, and kept her company, and taught her about what was going on around her. He praised her generously when she finally managed to catch her dinner, and didn’t need to eat his catch. And as she cooked and ate the food she’d caught herself, night after night, V began to feel a sense of self-worth that had nothing to do with the colour of her eyes. They kept her out of school for the time being, and Daisy tutored her in the academic basics, while Andor taught her how to fish and how to track an animal, what plants were edible and how to move silently through the undergrowth. She loved it when she managed to creep up on him and catch him unawares. I had brought the highchairs down from the attic again, and once again they were full of hungry toddlers. Amaryllis and Penander were in the garden one day, teaching the children to walk. Penander, like all the Mellin, was wonderful with his daughters. And Amaryllis was endlessly kind and patient. So what was bothering me, as I watched them? Then I realised that it was the railings round the garden. Though I knew they were there to keep me safe, and keep out anyone unwanted, yet I felt uneasy. But why? I could walk through the gate any time I wanted. And the Xydin had been captured: I was safe now.