Chapter 3: Isabella Cullen
2416 AD
Isabella held her breath, knowing this was the moment she had dreaded for one hundred and sixty-five years. All eyes in the tense room turned to Alice, but before she had the chance to speak, Esme interrupted. She swept into the center of the room like a debutante in a ballroom and gave a smile that was equal parts warmth and unyielding iron.
"Welcome to Cullen Castle, Khalid, Kassim, Michael, and Bell. You are most welcome here. I apologize for our breach of manners in welcoming you today. I am afraid we are all a bit out of sorts and your coming has taken us by surprise. I am Esme Cullen, and that is my husband, Carlisle. Allow me to introduce our children: Rosalie, Emmett, Alice, and Jasper, and you've already met our granddaughter, Isabella. I am sure I speak for our whole family when I say we will do whatever is in our power to assist you. But I do not believe the world will end if it waits until tomorrow, when we all are fresh. I get the feeling that this whole affair may take days...or years...to fully unravel, and based on the yawns coming from that sweet girl's face and the rain dripping off your clothes, I think it's safe to say storytelling should wait. For now," and here she gave a stern, no-nonsense stare at each of her children, "we should let them rest and refresh themselves. No more accusations or threats or difficult questions until the morning and, please, I beg you all, there will be absolutely no attempts at drawing anybody's family trees or violent outbursts of temper until we've let our new guests change and eat and sleep."
Her audience nodded dutifully. No one was brave enough to try to cross Esme in the best of times, but when she put her hand on her hip like that, clearly drawing her battle line in the sand, it would take an army greater than all the Cullens put together to get her to retreat an inch.
"It is a wise and gracious suggestion, grandmother," Khalid said. "But, perhaps, if it is not too much to ask, is it possible for your learned medical doctor to consult with Bell before she sleeps? I believe we could all rest more soundly if we know all is well with this mother and her child."
"Oh, of course, of course!" Esme said, shooting a look at Carlisle. "He will be happy to. Now, Izzy, you take your brothers to the room next to yours and make sure there are fresh blankets. I'll have Jasper send over some clothes since he appears the closest to all three of your sizes. Michael and Bell, I'll put you in the room down the hall from them. It oversees the duck pond and has the best view of the moor and has a lovely little window seat that Bell can stretch out on in the morning if she wishes to rest and still see outside. Rose, Emmett, make some refreshments and bring them to their rooms. Alice, do you think you can dig up any clothes that will work for Bell? Poor thing, I'll bet you've travelled for days in that dress."
Once Esme ensured everyone in the room appeared suitably chastened and in possession of properly hospitable manners, she clapped her hands together in a gesture of final parting. "Good. Good. Sweet dreams to everyone who is able to sleep and I will very much look forward to seeing you all in the morning."
At the magic stroke of Esme's dismissal, the room exploded into movement in ten different directions at once and Isabella gave a sigh of relief. It wouldn't be that night. She wouldn't have to see the blessed wall of ignorance lifted from the faces of her family just yet. She knew what she would see tomorrow. Their faces would twist into grimaces of disgust at just how she came into being, followed by outrage at their brother's behavior. They'd never think of their brother the same way and they sure wouldn't look at her the same way either. She knew it, because she had never been able to look at herself the same way after finding out either. She had procrastinated this for so long, she would gladly have one more night of reprieve, but she was not looking forward to having this barrel of truths cracked open the next day.
After the rollercoaster of shock and fury she had ridden that night, her entire body felt drained and she welcomed the opportunity for quiet and rest, though she doubted sleep would come. She definitely would not be able to sleep alone.
It was like that a lot, after that first time in Barzakh. She hadn't wanted to admit to herself, or anybody else, how her experiences in Barzakh had impacted her, but she had never been the same after that. It was one thing for the archaeologists to examine a mummified corpse of an anonymous woman who died a century ago. It was quite another thing for Isabella to look upon her own mother's face etched with the echoes of a thousand terrible deaths, and knowing better than anyone else who the true author of her deaths had been. How those faces haunted her dreams and crept into the dark shadows of her nights! For months, she woke with a startled scream, bolting upright in her bed after dreaming of hungry eyes watching her while she slept, waiting to consume her.
Now Isabella had come face-to-face with a living manifestation of her deepest nightmares. It was both of her parents. Alive. In the flesh. Repeating the past like a terrible, recurring nightmare all over for Isabella to experience firsthand without the filtering effects of time and others' memories to dull the reenactment.
After changing into her pajamas and brushing her teeth, she could still hear the bustle of activity in the vaulted hall of the second story family chambers. The smell of a hastily heated frozen pizza slipped beneath her door and Carlisle's voice directed Emmett to gather him supplies from his office. Isabella tried to lie down on her bed. It was time for her to call home and check in with her husband, but she didn't think she could do that either. What would she say? "A ghost of my father appeared to haunt me after years and years of running from his memory?"
She hadn't even told her husband the story. Not the whole story. He knew she had brothers who were "like us" and he knew that her origin was as infamous as his own, but she hadn't wanted to open up to anyone about it who didn't already know.
That was yet another reason she was so thankful for her brothers. Once the sounds of footsteps dwindled in the passageway connecting their rooms and the voices coming from down the hall had quieted, she carefully slipped into the room next to hers. She closed the door behind and her eyes sought out the shapes of her brothers in the darkness. They were strange sights to see now. She had never seen them wear anything but their own clothes, the long robes and headwraps worn by their adoptive father's people of northern Chad. Now they were both sitting on a comforter on the floor wearing orange and black flannel pajamas with the logo for the Baltimore Orioles stretched across the shirts. Their heads were bare of any covering and their long hair was allowed to fall loose over their shoulders. The scent of shampoo and soap hung heavily in the air and they whispered quietly to each other in their native tongue.
They didn't often use words to speak to each other. In all the time she'd known them, most of the time, they communicated through their own mental link. Anytime the pair made physical contact, they could freely share their thoughts with each other and access each other's gifts. Khalid was the spokesperson and leader of the pair and Kassim rarely, if ever, spoke. But he was watching, always watching, and he had a keen insight into the feelings and emotions of others which she attributed to his gift for gathering memories. Through a physical touch, he could collect memories like some people collected cow statues. Khalid's gift was to share his own images and thoughts with others, but he could also share those of his brother. Their whispers ceased when they heard her enter and both pairs of green eyes fell on her.
"We were waiting for you," Khalid said and he patted a spot on the comforter beside him. She readily agreed and stretched out in the spot they made between them. Khalid took her hand and silently asked if she were ok. She nodded, but the hitch in her throat told otherwise.
"Did you know we have now flown over the ocean like how a bird flies?" Khalid asked, intentionally calling her attention away from what was bothering her. She shook her head. She had not even stopped to ask how they had made it all the way to Scotland. They were terrible homebodies. She had tried again and again to get them to meet her in Europe or Thailand and they refused. They had been willing to meet up with her in Morocco and Abu Dhabi, but if their camels would not take them, they refused to go.
"You can drive, too, you know," she had told them once.
"And you can ride a camel, if you wanted. What of it?" Khalid had said. She dropped it and contented herself to meeting them where they wished to be. It did speak to the importance of whatever these circumstances were that they were willing to get onto an airplane for the first time in their very long lives and meet their extended family they had been so hesitant to meet.
"Did you enjoy flying?" she asked.
"I could not stop staring out the window at the way the people became as small as little flies or the way we went straight through the clouds without getting caught in them. I could watch that again and again. Kassim missed it all. He spent his entire time eating and watching movies."
Kassim gave a wide grin which showed he was anything but repentant about how he spent his flight.
"I'm surprised you left your beloved camels behind. I thought you'd try to smuggle them onboard the plane." she said.
"We tried, but they told us we would need to rent a camel upon arrival. I asked at the airport and no one can tell me the best place to find them. We had to lower ourselves to riding in a taxi and it was terribly uncomfortable and we could not enjoy the journey at all."
"Scotland isn't known for their camels. You might have to content yourselves with renting cows or horses."
He snorted. "Worthless creatures best left for stews and skewers and not for transportation. They may travel well across a well-watered plain, but give them a desert and they will not survive."
"I don't know if you've noticed, we are a little short on deserts here."
"Oh, we noticed. I feared I would need to learn to swim while we walked our way from the taxi to the house."
"I rather wish I could have seen the four of you travelling on an airplane and walking around an airport. You'd make quite the party."
"Oh, you would have enjoyed it, Isa! The stories I could tell! Neither of the other two have spent much time around humans, though Michael thinks he is an expert. Bell has been as excited as a child on his first bird hunt to see the world outside!"
Khalid knew that was the wrong thing to say when he saw her face fall and she inhaled deeply. He quickly changed the subject.
"You know, Kassim watched a very interesting movie on the flight. Perhaps you would like to see," he said.
"I'd like that," she answered.
The three lay down on the comforter with Khalid in the center. He took both of their hands. Kassim began to replay his memories of the movie he had watched and Khalid transmitted the visions to Isabella. The scenes were augmented by Kassim's reactions and memories of the movie, adding an additional level of commentary as the three watched. It was rare that Kassim opened up for anyone outside his family to see his sense of humor, but soon all three were in a fit of laughter over his interpretation of a movie, which was, to anyone else, really a terrible movie.
They had always been that way. For over 240 years, the pair had lived inseparably from each other and Isabella had always envied them that. She'd wished she had someone by her side who understood her in the same way.
She had tried to live as a human for awhile and she congratulated herself on doing a mighty fine job of it. It's just she kept living long after all her human counterparts had died and then she had to face the fact that she wasn't human. Not really.
Isabella had met Sami her first day in high school biology class. The Cullens had just relocated to British Colombia and had decided Isabella could make her first try at school.
"I suppose she looks old enough," Esme had consented with a resigned sigh. She wasn't, of course. Isabella was barely seven, but she felt old enough and she pleaded and pressed and cajoled long enough that the family finally agreed. Esme fought the hardest against the idea. It wasn't until Isabella was a parent herself that she understood why they were so hesitant to let her jump right into high school, but back then, with the enthusiasm of youth pulsing through her veins, she felt like they were just confining her and holding her back.
"You keep telling me you don't know how long I'm going to be around and there's no way of knowing how long I'm gonna live," Isabella argued. "If I'm gonna be dead by the time I'm 30, shouldn't I make the most of the time I have left?"
That argument carried her case and she enrolled first thing in 9th grade. She fully intended to seize her life with both hands and make the most of it, for however long she had it. When she arrived in her first class, Sami was there in a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt. He greeted her with a wide, friendly grin and welcomed her to his lab table.
"I'm Samay, but you can call me Sami. Everybody else does. I might look like I am Indian, but I'm actually from Fiji, but now I live here in Canada. And I love surfing, but its too cold to surf here most of the time. And I love comic books. Who are you?"
"I'm Isabella, but you can call me Izzy. That's what my family calls me. I was born in Chad, but I'm not Chadian. My parents just kinda had me there and then decided to both die at the same time. I like hunting and playing piano."
"Cool, cool," Sami said, flashing her another wide grin. They was fast friends and neither minded the recurring lapses into social awkwardness that the other was prone to.
After years of study groups and science fairs and school dances, Isabella was more than smitten by her Indo-Fijian classmate. They found a mutual comradery in not really fitting into the world around them and they created their own little world together. Their families were tolerant enough of their arrangement as long as high school lasted, but when the pair came home from their graduation ceremony with an engagement ring on Isabella's finger, they were less than pleased.
"You were supposed to marry a nice girl from Fiji, Sami. Who is she and who is her family?" his mother had complained.
"Izzy, he's human!" Esme said.
"And I'm half-human. What's the problem?"
"That's the problem! You are only half human! What are you going to tell him when you age faster than him or heal faster or never get sick?"
"I already told him I have a weird genetic disorder that screws with my aging and healing. He's used to that. He said he'll have me for however long he can have me."
"That's another thing," Esme said. "Izzy, you may look 18, but you are 11."
"Exactly. When Jasper was born, I'd have been legal and a year over the age of consent in Texas."
"She does have a point," Jasper called in from the other room.
"Don't you dare take her side on this, Jasper!" Esme argued back.
"Look, we all know I am on a time limit here and we don't know anything about what my weird, screwed up hybrid genetics are gonna do to me. So, I say, let me live and live well, while I can. I'm not like you all. I can blend better. I eat. I sleep. I bleed. I have a heartbeat and a pulse. Sami and I want to get married and live our lives, however long they are, together. I love you all, but I am going to do this, whether you agree or not."
"I don't think this is a good idea," Esme continued. "There are so many risks..."
"Risks that I am willing to take," Isabella interjected. "Besides, I'm pregnant."
ooooo
After two beautiful, normal, basically fully human children, and Izzy learning the hard way just how young she had been when she got into her "adult" life, something became very, very clear. She wasn't aging at all. They all breathed a sigh of relief when her supernaturally accelerated aging slowed down and it appeared she would not become an old woman by the age of thirty after all. However, when she reached her forties and her fifties, Sami's hair began to grow grey and his dark skin sagged slightly on his cheeks, but Isabella still looked no older than the day she graduated high school.
She tried to blend. She dyed her hair grey and tried to dress older and she blamed it on her "aging disorder," but then she had to grapple with the fact that it was becoming more and more likely that she might even outlive him.
"You could always change him," Alice had suggested during one of the rare times Isabella made it away from her family to visit the Cullens. "Then you would have him forever."
Isabella shook her head. "I've thought about it a lot. It doesn't seem fair. Asking him to commit to an eternity with someone who isn't immortal is not fair to either of us. He could be changed and then we discover my aging kicks in suddenly and I die of old age by 70. I'm not like you all. I do change, even if at a slower rate. If he became like you, he'd still be no more like me than he is now...and we'd only be exchanging challenges.
"One of the things I love about Sami is that he loves his family more than he loves me. He adores me, but he loves being an uncle and a grandfather and a great-nephew and a cousin. I could not give him those things if he were changed and I would be robbing him of some of the best parts of his life. No. I married a human man and I love a human man and I will love him through every stage I get him."
When he finally passed, he was 75 and Isabella decided it was time to also "die" and cut her ties with her human family. She loved them. She did not regret a thing. She'd fully thrived and embraced her mother's heritage to her and experienced a full life as a human.
But when she took off her "grandma clothes" and her wig and her pounds of makeup and thick glasses, she still looked 18. Isabella was many things, but she was not fully human and she had to accept that about herself.
She moved back home to live with the Cullens after that, idle and aimless and still grieving as she tried to figure out what to do with herself next.
It was not long after Sami's death, less than a year, when Isabella went to Barzakh and she confronted her father's heritage for the first time. It sent her world into a tailspin of chaos. How could she go back to "playing human" when that was where she came from?
She remembered the first time she had approached Alice about the truth, after her return from Barzakh. She had been furious with her aunt's omissions and had cornered her as soon as she returned to the family's current home.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Isabella asked Alice in a tone dripping with both anger and accusation.
"Tell you what?" Alice asked.
"Oh, I don't know. That my father was a sick, sadistic psychopath who spent his life consuming my mother...again and again and again."
Alice's face fell. "How did you find out?"
"I went to Barzakh. I saw the digs. I helped the archaeologists catalogue their data. It was my mother. He cloned her and then murdered her nearly 1300 times."
"Then you know why I didn't tell you. I haven't told anyone, except Jasper. I didn't think the rest could handle knowing."
"But why didn't you tell me? I've asked you about them again and again."
"Do you feel better knowing?" Alice asked, knowing full well that Isabella did not. In her anger, Isabella didn't care. She knew she was not actually angry with Alice. She was angry with her father and she was taking it out on Alice, but she didn't care. The anger spewed from her mouth like lava from a volcano onto the targets nearest to her base and she let it flow.
"I asked you once if my father loved my mother. Why did you lie? Why did you say you didn't know?"
"I did not lie. I told you that because I do not believe it is a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer," Alice said sadly. "Your mother's blood was like heroin to Edward. After he first met her, he spent the remainder of his life obsessed with nothing but her. He cut off his family, friends, his other pursuits, even his hobbies in order to give himself over fully to his addiction.
"But she was more than a food source. She was his mate. She was his life, his everything. He wanted nothing, other than her. He lived for nothing, other than her.
"Yes, he dehumanized her and objectified her, but he also worshipped her. She was the cornerstone that determined the course of the rest of his life. He could have chosen to leave Barzakh, turn her, and start a new life with her and he would have been happy, but he refused and your mother paid the price for that...again and again and again.
"Whether or not Edward loved your mother is not the question. The appropriate question, I believe, is whether Edward was even capable of love. Could someone so bent on selfishness even understand a form of love not as equally rooted in selfishness? Edward loved her, but only in as far as his narrow, self-centered life had the capacity to love anyone other than himself. He was the center and she an appendage and a tool to use to seek his happiness. She was not an equal, not a person, not someone worth denying himself for."
Isabella's tears fell. "Did he even know my mother was pregnant?"
"I don't know. Remember, I couldn't see you."
"How many more siblings do I have?"
"Isabella, I never saw you! I still can't see you. How am I supposed to know if there are more like you? I don't know if Edward fathered children knowingly or by accident. I am not sure I wish to know. All I know is that by the end, he was not in his right mind."
"In the end. You mean, around the time I was conceived. I was the unfortunate byproduct of a man out of his mind."
Alice nodded, sadly.
"Why did you name me after her?" Isabella asked.
"It seemed right - to have something to honor her memory," Alice said.
"Out of pity, you mean. Because my own mother, my real mother, didn't matter enough to have her own name. Did she even receive a proper burial?"
"There wasn't time. I burned her with the others."
"In life and death, she was faceless and nameless and meaningless," Isabella mused.
"No, not meaningless. She has meaning. We are forever indebted to her for the gift she left us. I don't care how you came about; you are our treasure and we wouldn't exchange you for anything."
"Too bad my father didn't see it that way."
"Oh, Izzy..."
"No, I think, no, I know I just need some time. Ok. I am not ready to talk to the others about this yet. Tell them I am doing another internship overseas. Tell them I am studying plants or whatever. I don't care. I just need to head out on my own for awhile."
"Whatever you need, little one," Alice said.
Isabella dodged the embrace Alice tried to give her. She threw together a rushed suitcase of belongings, and drove away without an idea where she was going or what she was going to do.
She was glad Alice couldn't see her. She was glad she at least had that privacy. However, she didn't know what she was looking for, only that she was looking for something. She didn't know where to find it, only that she couldn't find it where she had been and she hoped she would find it where she was going. Jasper, long years after, referred to her marriage to Sami as her period of "Terrible Twos turned Teenage Rebellion." The nomadic period following her return from Barzakh he called her "Teenage Rebellion turned Midlife Crisis."
In reality, it was her time to try to explore and embrace her vampiric nature over her human.
She wandered. Oh, how she wandered. Between cities and countries, villages and wastelands. Between covens and humans and a variety of mythical creatures, she wandered. The open road was her balm and her torment and she tried to figure out what it was she was supposed to live for and focus on and do and become.
Sometimes, in her process of self-discovery, she made her own terrible, self-destructive decisions and sometimes she just did stupid things. Sometimes she learned things she really had needed to learn.
It was hard to process what to do with all she had learned at Barzakh. Khalid and Kassim understood her struggles to a certain extent, but not fully. For one, they had their own unique gifts that gave them special insights into their mother's past and lifetime which Isabella didn't have. For another, their mother had not been like the others. In life as well as in death, she had been set apart. She had a name, a face, and a lifetime of experiences.
Isabella's mother had none of that. Well, she had a face, but Isabella had only seen it after death. That had been a terrible death, one caused by Isabella's dramatic and violent entrance into the world, half-starved and struggling to survive on her own devices. Any chance her mother had of becoming a person and living her own life had been stolen by Isabella's undesired entrance into the world. Isabella doubted her mother had any say in whether or not she had been conceived and she knew no one had bothered with caring about her mother after Edward was done planting his seed.
Her mother had been left alone and forgotten. Had she even learned to walk on her own yet? Could she say she was hungry? Did her mother recognize what was happening to her as her womb began to shift and grow or had that been another frightening unknown? Or, perhaps, she had not even been conscious enough to know any of it. Perhaps she was not awake and had no capacity to think or feel pain or fear or isolation.
It had been a tragedy for the twins to lose their beloved mother in childbirth. However, their mother was conscious of the fact that she was carrying them and she died surrounded by family who loved her and wept for her loss. Isabella's mother was all the more tragic for her anonymity and the fact that she was an accident, a forgotten apple core that happens to sprout a tree after being discarded.
Isabella did not know what to do with these uncomfortable truths so she wandered and she sought out her brothers multiple times during her years of wandering. That had helped, a lot. They were simultaneously more human and less human because of their upbringing. They were "more human" based on the fact that they had been raised and lived entirely among humans. They were also "less human" because they were known to be different and their supernatural origins were not a complete secret so they did not try as hard to hide what they were.
Life had not always been easy for them. For many years, they took wives, but neither brother could produce children. In their culture, this was seen as a great shame and they felt guilty to marry women and deprive them of children. Later, they married widows with children of their own. This gave the widow a chance at security in a second marriage and gave the brothers the benefit of raising children without the expectations of carrying on their names through their bloodline.
All their marriages were temporary alliances because death always came too soon. They watched their blood relatives grow old and die and then, after enough generations past, forget them entirely long before the sons of Amir forgot them. When they grew too weary of the constant cycles of life an death, the took to the road and also wandered.
They had no wish to explore the birth father's heritage, however. They had never even met a "jinni" and they refused to, if they could help it. Isabella begged for them to visit her and meet her family, but to no avail. They were curious about the Cullens and they asked her question after question about them, but they had no interest in seeing the world outside their beloved desert and they had even less desire to "meet with jinn."
When she finally came "home" to her family five years after she first left, it wasn't until she was good and ready to be there and accept the truth. The truth was that she wasn't a human and she wasn't a vampire. She was simultaneously both and neither one and that was just the way it was.
Her decision to return home was helped by the fact that she was eight months pregnant. She had no intention of confessing to anyone who the father was...and even less intention of allowing the father to know about the child. It was enough for her to know that vampires and hybrids were apparently as genetically compatible as male vampires and human women, except for the more typical human length of gestation. And Isabella could cross that question off her bucket list...along with the other curiosities that particular night's events had solved.
Her family welcomed her home with open arms, helped her raise the baby, and did not ask questions...or questions other than the, "the father wasn't human, was he?". But that was an understandable response to when a baby starts freezing bath water with his hands and can jump a set of stairs uninjured. The baby grew at a normal human rate, ate human food (though he did like his meat a little on the rare side) and he did not sparkle, except when he spilled glitter on his head. This drove Carlisle to near distraction as he tried to understand how a child with three quarters vampire DNA could end up more human than his mother. All he could figure was some complicated interaction in both sets of human genes and vampires genes was at play.
The family did start asking questions when a similar occurrence happened not just one but two more times.
"Apparently human methods of birth control don't work with vampires and hybrids," was all Isabella would say. But she made sure it didn't happen again. Not because she didn't enjoy becoming a mother again or adore her "special" children, but because she had never meant for it to happen at all.
In reality, when she was honest with herself, she knew that wasn't exactly it. When she came across those red-eyed nomads, she knew she was flirting with trouble. Their wild violence raised questions of whether they could change or learn to love. She wondered if they were like her father and if they would remember her name in the morning or think of her again.
They didn't.
She didn't think of them either, and she only knew one of their names.
Isabella's biggest regret from that time of her life was that her brothers had missed meeting her children. She had been staying with them when she first realized she was pregnant and it was impossible to keep anything a secret around Kassim. Her brothers did not approve of her "consorting with jinn" and let her know.
Their argument had been long and explosive and tempers had flared on all sides. Isabella left in a fury and refused to answer their calls for the next decade.
By then, she had three children to raise and no intention of hearing their disapproval over her life choices all over again. She also had no intention of explaining to her children where her brothers came from or why they could not mention their uncles to the rest of the Cullens. She regretted it later when she realized her children were the closest her brothers would come to blood children. She wished she had been open and honest back then and willing to admit to both her questionable decisions and her even more questionable past.
But she hadn't.
They had all apologized and made up later and tears were shed on all sides. She maintained close contact with them after that, but her children were already grown and settled into their own lives. Only her youngest ever met her uncles, and that was only during a brief layover in Dubai.
Isabella, Khalid, and Kassim met up every few decades or so after that, and it was a breath of fresh air whenever they did. Despite vastly different cultural upbringings, they shared much in common and it was comforting to know she had relatives out there in the world, even when they were far away. It helped ground her in deeper knowledge of who she was, and it gave them all a sense of continuity in a world where too many of the people and places they loved shifted and changed quicker than the sands of the Sahara.
It was many years later before Isabella met another hybrid who was not her blood relation. Isabella and Octavio had immediately clicked and were inseparable from then on. But her husband, like her brothers, was incapable of producing children. He loved her children and grandchildren and took to them as if they were his own. But they were now grown and far away and Octavio and Isabella were in another transition stage. Age was slowly creeping up on them, though it would still be long before it fully caught them. After sixty years of marriage, they were both deciding where they should move to next and what they should focus on.
When Rosalie had called to beg Isabella to break the tedium of the Cullen days at the recently acquired Cullen Castle, she agreed. She tried to convince Octavio to come, but he had his own trip to make and he promised to meet her there soon.
It was nice, in a way, to be back with the Cullens. She loved them, even when they still made her feel like a child...and even when their lack of change was such a sharp contrast to her own quiet, slow transformation. She already looked older than all of them. Someday, their baby would look like their grandmother.
ooooo
When Isabella woke, she found herself asleep on the ornate canopy bed in the guest room. She stretched out and rolled over to peek over the edge of the bed. Sure enough, as she expected, her brothers were asleep on the comforter on the floor. She doubted they'd spend a single night in the bed for the duration of their stay, but she was happy someone had placed her on the bed so she didn't wake up with a sore back.
That was something she always appreciated about them. They slept, too. They got tired. They got hungry. She didn't feel like such a killjoy or an outlier when she hung out with them. They made her feel almost normal.
She sat up enough to see the first rays of dawn peeking through a break in the dense clouds. The storm had finally worn itself out and the rain-soaked moor could not decide whether it wished for another good wetting. She watched the change of colors as the sun rose until she was interrupted by her name outside the door.
Quietly, she tiptoed out of the room to where Esme and Carlisle both waited for her. Before she knew what was happening, she became the jelly to their bread and they sandwiched her tightly between them, both placing kisses on the top of her head. Esme had to stand on her tiptoes to reach, but it didn't stop her.
They didn't say anything else. They held her there, then let her go, and said the magic words that always put a smile on her face.
"We made French Toast!"
"Yes!" Isabella exclaimed, a bit louder than she intended, and she covered her mouth with her hands. It was too late though, because she could hear the sounds of movement from within the room.
Despite having only four mouths to feed, Esme made a feast. It was good she did. At least three of those mouths knew how to make a feast turn into crumbs like hungry piranhas and the sons of Amir gave French Toast their official approval, after a few false starts and hesitant tastes.
"I believe, brother, that if I stay in this land of syrup for too long I will grow very fat," Khalid said with a wide, contented grin. Kassim rolled his eyes and placed a finger on his brother's hand. Khalid pretended to be offended. "For shame, brother! I am not fat yet! I am as young and as strong as the day I caught the buffalo!"
Kassim responded, though none present could hear what he said when he placed his finger on his brother's hand again.
Isabella watched the people in the room behind her, her stomach still flipping in little somersaults as she waited for what must come after. Alice rubbed on her temples and she looked no more relaxed than she had the night before. Her brothers continued their quiet bickering while Jasper and Emmett debated how the twins were able to communicate with each other. Esme made more French Toast. Michael brought Bell plate after plate of food, carefully smelling each food item before cutting it up into small pieces and feeding her where she lay on a couch like a mother bird with her chick. Her eyes were brighter now and she had a little more color back into her face. Her hair had been washed and tended (most likely by Alice) and dried in loose, mousse-filled curls. She wore a dark blue maxi dress and sweater, but Michael did not think it was enough and kept arranging a blanket tighter over her waist as he tried to convince her to eat more. When she finally waved him away, she lay her head back against the couch and closed her eyes again.
Michael withdrew to their room and returned with a specially sealed container. It appeared to be a semi-opaque glass bottle, nearly the size and shape of a wine bottle, but slightly taller. A label was hand-written on its neck, but the series of numbers and letters made no sense. Michael flipped the top off the bottle and poured its contents into two glasses from the breakfast table. The scent of human blood flooded the room so strongly that the vampires present all gasped and stopped breathing.
Michael brought one glass of the bright red liquid to Bell. She opened her eyes, grabbed at the glass, and greedily gulped it down. Michael poured her a second glass before drinking his own. When he caught the small dribble of blood at the edge of her mouth, he giggled, leaned into wipe it off with his own tongue, and then kissed her deeply.
"Anybody else want a drink?" Michael asked when he pulled away and met the gawking stares of the suddenly silent room.
"Where did you get that?" Carlisle asked.
"Oh, from home. It's what we eat there. Peter sent me with a few months' supply, just in case."
"Who is this Peter?"
Bell, much brighter and more energetic than she had been the night before sat up in her chair to offer the answer.
"Peter is the one who taught me everything that I taught Michael. He is like Michael, but his hair is longer and he is always sad. He used to come and sit with me sometimes when Michael was away so long. He helped us leave our home and introduced us to Kalid and Kassim."
"Do they normally give this to humans to drink where you come from?" Esme asked.
Michael and Bell whispered together, their foreheads touching as they considered how to answer. It was apparent they were beginning to feel self-conscious with all the attention fixed upon them.
"We always shared everything we had the first time there was no wall between us so when I returned and there was no wall, we went back to the way things were before...well, but better," he said with a grin and a kiss on Bell's stomach.
"A wall?" Carlisle asked.
It was Khalid who explained.
"They spent most of their lives cut off from any other people except each other. There was no one, not vampire, not human, except for one clone of our father who is called Peter. This pair were kept together as humans for years in a large, underground room. Once Michael was mobile and could feed himself, they were separated into two compartments by a glass partition."
"With good reason, apparently, " Rosalie interjected. Michael grinned wider at her thoughts and cuddled into Bell's side, nestling his face into her shoulder.
"Very good reason," he echoed happily.
"It was only a few weeks ago that Michael returned home and found the partition removed," Khalid continued. "Until Peter brought the pair to us outside Koro Toro, Bell had never seen another human before."
"I had, though," Michael said, happily. "I saw humans in Volterra. Some even worked there with us, but none were as clever or as beautiful as my Bell. When I returned home to my Bell, it was my turn to be her teacher, but I do not believe I can ever be as good a teacher as she was to me."
"Ugh, are they always this mushy?" Emmett complained. "I'm getting sick just watching them and I don't even eat."
Kassim quietly held his hand to his brother's. Khalid nodded. "Worse. We only met them five days ago, but their memories show that they are usually much, much worse."
Esme came to stand in the center of the dining room, wiping her hands on her apron before she clapped them together.
"Right, I'm sure we all have a lot of questions for our guests. Let's all move to the drawing room and get ourselves comfortable and we can begin to hear all our stories."
Isabella inwardly groaned. She felt a small arm come around her and give her a squeeze.
"It'll be ok, Izzy," Alice whispered. "Really."
She nodded. Alice was usually right.
Oooooo
Author's Notes:
Since there is no big show down with the Volturi over the "Immortal Child" deal, the Cullens never meet Nahuel and so they never know much about hybrid kids, except what they learn a long the way. I'm trying to think through the implications of that.
Most mammalian hybrids follow Haldene's rule which states that in hybrids, some of the females can be fertile even if all the males are sterile (as in the cases of mules, zonkeys, ligers, etc.). I am following this rule for this story (though I obviously don't follow it in all my stories).
Also, to my readers both new and old, it may take a little while to fully catch on to what is going on. There are lots of clues, but we will very slowly progress into figuring what it all means and what exactly is going on. If you are feeling a bit lost and confused, it's normal. In fact, all the characters in the story are very lost and confused so you fit right in!
