“Yeka, when I marry Shaun, can I come and live here? That way Shaun can stay.”
“Then you would be my sister?”
“Yes.”
“Alright, then. You can marry Shaun if you don’t take him away… Will you have a baby?”
“Maybe. Someday,” laughed Wennai.
“Good. I always wanted a baby.”
So that was decided upon. Shaun and Wennai set a date for the following year – it was to be a quiet wedding with just a few friends. But those who knew them realised that that wasn’t ever going to happen. Kakko remarked that they were going to have to hire the football stadium.
In fact, they didn’t have to book anywhere. City United put on a massive reception in the City Hall.
***
“White gate,” announced Jack, as he came in with a cup of tea to the waking Jalli. Jalli drank her tea, then got up to check it out.
“Me too, and there is a shed beside it.”
She called the others.
Shaun groaned, as it was still early for him, despite him coming up to his twenty-sixth birthday.
He and Wennai extricated themselves from the bedclothes and pulled back the curtain. Yes, there it was. “And us,” Shaun called as he made his way to the bathroom.
Matilda had been up for an hour and was in the kitchen. “Better check, Mum,” suggested Jalli.
“It won’t be for me. I haven’t had a white gate adventure for years,” said Matilda firmly. But she went to look all the same and came back into the kitchen wearing a shocked expression. She looked at Jalli and nodded. “What about Yeka if we’re all off somewhere?”
Yeka was bounding down the stairs and out into the garden to see if she was included. To her delight, she was. There was the new white gate, all shiny and smooth. She peered through it and saw what looked like a busy street. Then suddenly her view was obscured by a large red bus that passed across the gap in the hedge. She could see it but couldn’t hear it.
“Yay. Mum, Dad, I’m going on an adventure, aren’t I? I saw a bus – a big red one!”
“Did you?” said her father. “What else is out there?”
“A street… a busy street, with cars but different from ours.”
“Right,” stated Jalli, “that means all of us. Breakfast, and then we’ll see what’s in the shed.”
“Wanulka!” exclaimed Jalli. “Look, check out these banknotes!”
Yeka was trying to find the right way to put on a straw hat with a pretty pink trailing ribbon.
“Ibon straw,” observed Jack as he caught the scent of the hat Jalli had given him to feel. There were two bigger ones – one for Jalli and one for Matilda; both were attractive but lacked the trailing ribbon that so enthralled Yeka.
They opened a cardboard box which contained other clothes. “These are special,” said Jalli. “They are smart by Wanulkan standards. You wouldn’t wear a suit like that one, Jack, for everyday things – unless you were a lawyer or something.”
“What if I were a teacher?”
“You are a teacher… and, no, this is for best. A wedding or a special event of some kind.”
“What about you?” asked Jack of Shaun.
Shaun divested himself of his dressing gown and put on a very smart outfit.
“Well, I can definitely say I have never seen you so smart,” declared his grandmother. “You should do it more often.”
Jack, Jalli, Matilda and Yeka took their clothes inside the cottage. Yeka looked lovely in a navy-blue dress with a pink ribbon around her waist to match the one in her hat. She was particularly taken with the shoes which were also dark blue – open-topped with a strap and a simple silver buckle.
“Look, I’m a princess!” she announced. “I’m going to a party!”
“It certainly looks like it,” concurred Jalli, as she smoothed a smart sundress over her slim thighs. She gathered her hair and put on the matching jacket. It made her look young but sophisticated, as befitted her fifty-three years.
Matilda, of course, ever since she had come to Joh, had looked comfortable in more formal clothes, and a maroon suit became her. Jack looked great. Whatever he wore he looked at home in it – he behaved as if his attire was the way he generally dressed. Perhaps his confidence came because he couldn’t see himself in the mirror; he relied on Jalli to tell him he was fine, and that was far more reliable than any self-assessment. By contrast, Shaun felt rather self-conscious.
Then Wennai emerged from the bathroom and made her way to the shed. She found a most attractive outfit that seemed to yell, “Wennai”. With its pleats and tucks, and splashes of lace on bodice and sleeves, only Wennai could have carried it off. It was her to a T.
“I just love the way you’re allowed to be yourself,” she declared, going upstairs to change. When she came down, Shaun put his arm around her and whispered in her ear that she looked beautiful. She felt it. She was.
When they were satisfied they were all ready, they stepped through the gate, Jalli leading Jack, and Shaun holding Yeka’s hand. They stood in the busy street. It was indeed Wanulka City as Jalli had anticipated. They had barely adjusted their eyes to the glare of the Raikan suns – Suuf had just risen to join Jallaxa and Shklaia already ascending in the western sky – when Yeka spotted her sister, Kakko. They had left a message on her phone that they were taking a trip through a white gate but it appeared that Kakko and Tam had already got their own. With them, from Planet Earth One, were Bandi and Abby. Abby was looking very pregnant.
“Kakko! Bandi!” yelled Yeka rushing across the pavement. They were completely unconscious of the scene they were creating in one of the main streets of a planet they had only just arrived in. Passers-by smiled as they walked around them.
After several minutes of greeting, Shaun commented on how they were all done up. “It appears,” he said, “that we are here for something special.”
“That,” replied Matilda, “is clear. But what?”
“Look,” said Kakko, “those people over there, they’re all dressed up too. They seem to be just standing around.”
“No, they’re standing at the bus stop,” stated Jalli. “They’re waiting for a bus.”
“The same stop that you used when you emerged from your white gate when we first met?” asked Jack.
“The very one,” said Jalli.
“I remember it, too,” said Matilda. “It was here I phoned Momori when you, er…”
“Quite,” said Jack. “Don’t remind me.”
Just then a bus drew up. On the side it displayed its destination – Zonga. The Rarga-Smith party joined the queue.
They passed the house that had been home for Jalli for fourteen years of her life. She said nothing. It still sported the garish plaster garden ornaments; it wasn’t worth interrupting her family to point it out. They chatted on catching up on all they had been doing since they had last met. Jack was aware of where they were, of course, and of Jalli’s stillness as they passed the house. He squeezed her hand. “Still there?” he asked.
“Same ugly curtains,” she replied with a smile.
The bus rounded the last bend on the descent onto the Zongan coastal plain. This time, unlike fifty years before, there was no hold-up, and it continued on down the hill, rounding the corners of the final two yukets towards the bridge that marked the site of the former community of Zonga. The air was full of the scent of ripening ibon. Except for a couple of houses and a modern building bearing the Wanulkan words, “The Zonga Museum”, the village had not been rebuilt. There were, however, a few fishing boats bobbing in the little harbour, and a tractor parked in a gateway into one of the fields.
In the car park in front of the museum a crowd of people in animated mood were gathering. This was the first time Jalli had visited Zonga since the day she had left for the dental appointment in Wanulka Hospital fifty years before. Then it came to her: it was exactly fifty years ago that the dam had burst – fifty years to the day since she had lost her mother, her father and he
r grandfather, as well as aunts, uncles and all her cousins. She and her family, along with all the others, were now gathering to remember.
Jalli explained to the others. The former excitement of meeting together had become slightly tempered when they had realised where they were going – but now they were very subdued as Jack put his arm around his beloved Jalli. Her tears flowed.
They followed the crowd making its way around to the back of the museum building. A small dais had been erected next to the memorial stone put up many years ago in memory of all those who had lost their lives. Jalli led her family to the memorial. She had never seen it before. Momori had been once when she was at school but had expressed no desire to visit again with Jalli, and Jalli had taken it that Grandma would prefer she didn’t go, and she had accepted that. They stood, looking up at the pillar, with the names of those who had lost their lives etched in Wanulkan down the four sides – so many of them. Jalli noticed the many Rargas and Butts – her mother’s maiden name – and identified her great-grandparents, as well as her grandfather Danga and her own parents – Momori’s son, Sol, and her mother, Mahsnyeka. She was about to translate when Yeka, who had learned to spell her name in Wanulkan, spotted it among the others.
“There,” she said pointing to the memorial, “there’s my name, Mahsnyeka!”
“Yes,” smiled Jalli, “well done. Do you know why it’s there?”
“Because it is for my grandmother?”
“Yes. Your grandmother, my mother, Mahsnyeka Rarga. And the names above it are your grandfather – my father – Sol Rarga, and your great-grandfather, Danga Rarga.”
“So that says ‘Rarga’. There are so many of them.”
“All my family, Yeka – all your family.”
“But Grandma Momori isn’t there. I know how to write ‘Momori’ in Wanulkan too.”
“No, she’s not. Grandma didn’t die here fifty years ago.”
“No, she died on Joh… in the hospital… and you put her ashes in the sea. But she was the only one left – the only one of your family who didn’t die in the flood.”
“The only one, Yeka, apart from me. But now look. Look how many I have now!”
“Yes, nine of us… Only, one isn’t born yet.”
“Yeah.” Jalli smiled at her daughter’s including the yet to born. “So you see, I have lots of people now. I don’t remember any of these… except vague memories of my mum. Grandma was my whole life and she was the best grandma anyone could have. Now she has joined all these in heaven.”
“Are they having a party?”
“Heaven is one great big party, Yeka, full of the love and the presence of the Creator.”
“Does She want us to dress up in party clothes every day?”
“We can’t know any of those things until we get there.”
“But She gives us the clothes we will need? Just like when we go through the white gate?”
“Exactly. Just leave all the details to God. She has it all worked out.”
“I hope I can have a hat like this one.”
“You will have a hat far more beautiful than you can possibly imagine.”
Heaven, thought Matilda, I must have a few there I know, too. Mum and Dad did love me in their way – in their rather odd way… but then it was wartime in Europe when they were young and nothing was normal and that’s probably why they grew up odd… And my drunken husband, Shaun, he told Jack he still loved me a few days before he died. If God loves him, He will forgive him for the bad bits – not that he was that bad really: it was the drink. Now, God, if people get drunk in heaven, I shall be very disappointed, to say the least…!
“Penny for your thoughts, Mum,” said Jack, aware that his mother had gone quiet.
“Oh, nothing. Just thinking of your father and our ancestors. Reckon they’ll get into heaven, too?”
“I’m sure God won’t turn anyone away, if they are willing to go through the cleaning up bit.”
“Oh, your father would definitely need that!”
“He did quite a bit of it before he died, I reckon.”
“You were there. I’ll take your word for it,” said Matilda sceptically.
“Jallaxanya Rarga!” A rather rotund gentleman, accompanied by a well-dressed lady and a bashful eighteen-year-old, was calling through the crowd.
“Mr Bandi,” declared Jack, who recognised his voice immediately.
The families pushed their way together and Jalli took Mr Bandi in her arms, then introduced all her family. “And this,” she concluded, “must be my namesake, little Jallaxanya – but not little anymore.”
Jalli Bandi smiled, a little bashfully. She was a demure young lady – not unlike Jalli Rarga had been at the same age. The Jallis embraced.
“We came especially,” said Mr Bandi, “to represent you. There are so many of your family up there and you are the only one who is still in this universe. But, look now – you and all your family are here!”
“Thanks to the Creator of all that is,” said Jack. “We all got white gates this morning… from three different places.”
“You mean your family is scattered around the universe?”
“I’m afraid so. We don’t get to meet each other as often as we’d like. So today is quite a big day.”
“Jalli,” said Pammy Bandi, “we have brought some flowers for the Rarga and Butt families. You should lay them.” And she handed Jalli two lovely bouquets. Jalli was about to protest but replaced her protestations with thanks. These were for her relatives.
“Thank you. I am so grateful to you for coming along today. It was very thoughtful of you. It wasn’t until we got here that we knew why we had to come… Yeka, will you lay these flowers for your grandmother, Mahsnyeka?” Jalli handed one of the bunches to her daughter.
“When?”
“There will be two minutes’ silence and then they are going to read the names out,” explained Mr Bandi. “When you hear them say ‘Mahsnyeka Rarga’ just go up and put them with the others. Your mum will tell you when.”
The ceremony was addressed by none other than the Wanulkan Minister of Local Affairs accompanied by the leader of the rural council that included Zonga. The minister offered his condolences and stated that the government was opposed to any future reconstruction of the dam. Although there had been calls from those concerned with the growing demand for electricity, the demands for any new dam had been mitigated by the introduction of helicate-based power stations. The helicates were brought to them by the new faster space cruisers – two deliveries were due in the next ten years, which guaranteed enough raw material for the production of electricity for the next fifty years. In addition, the discovery of multilayered single-crystal padmium had doubled the efficiency of solar energy, and new padmium panels were due to be installed in the previously flooded valley upstream. Instead of water, the valley bottom would be covered in solar panels that would produce as much electricity as the dam had once done but at an eighth of the cost. Beneath the panels, commercial egg-laying birds were free to forage in the damp soil protected from the suns, thus replacing the fish that once stocked the dammed lake. He hoped that, one day, people would again inhabit Zonga. Kakko was impressed by how much of this she understood. It wasn’t being translated for her.
Then the silence was kept and the names read out. Jalli laid her flowers as they called Danga and Sol Rarga, and Yeka proudly placed her bunch when she heard her grandmother’s name. A little buzz of recognition went round when Jalli and Yeka came forward: these must be Momori’s daughter’s family.
Following the ceremony, other people came up to them and made themselves known – people Jalli didn’t recognise but understood where they fitted in after they explained. The few other people who had survived fifty years before had also expanded in number.
To Yeka’s delight there was a party – inside the museum, which housed exhibits of the village activities before its destruction and an account of the day itself. Tables of food had been laid out, courte
sy of the rural council. There were glasses of delicious fruit drink and an urn of bru that Jalli drank with relish. She hadn’t grown up with the people who had died and she could not miss them but she did wish Grandma could have been there. It felt odd on Raika without her.
Shaun and Wennai spent quite a long time in conversation with Jalli Bandi over the food. They discovered that she had been accepted into Wanulka University to study entomology, and possibly follow her father and mother into teaching – but that was several years away. She hoped she would see a white gate one day too, like her namesake, Shaun’s mum, had done. “What’s it like travelling the universe?” she asked.
“It’s scary sometimes. You never know where you’re going to next. And sad, too, because you meet great people you know you might never see again.”
“But how exciting… I mean, like, to have adventures across the entire universe! I would love to have an adventure. Life here can get so boring at times. I mean, I know there are lots of things to discover, like, right here on Planet Raika but—”
“You sound like my sister,” interrupted Shaun. “She was always staring over the horizon and dying to experience white gates adventures. But all that depends on the Creator, of course… Still, if you really pray for it, you never know.”
“Don’t you pray for adventures?”
“No. They just happen. And, anyway, I have a job I can’t just leave.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like… being a coach of my football team… and lots of other things.”
“That’s just it. I don’t know anything about it – what did you call it?”
“Football. It’s a sport. You play it with a ball. You can’t use your hands. It sounds simple but it’s… well, it’s—”
“Yes. What’s it like playing football?”
“The buzz is like nothing else. When you score a great goal that turns the game around, or when you lift the cup at the end of the season like we did one year when I was playing, it’s magic. If you haven’t played football, you haven’t lived.”
The Spark (White Gates Adventures Book 4) Page 36
