Cuckoo Song

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘Who are you to tell me whether I can sell what is mine? Sebastian wanted me to have those things!’

  ‘Because he mistakenly thought you would value them. He had no idea what a cold-blooded vulture you could be.’

  ‘Do you think I care what you call me?’ shouted Violet. ‘Do you think I care what you think of me?’ She did not look as if she did not care. For the moment she was like the motorcycle, all her angry, grimy inner workings visible to the eye.

  ‘No, I think you are quite dead to the feelings of others. I must consider my son’s wishes, however, and I know he would have wanted his possessions to remain with those who would treasure them.’ Triss’s father stepped back with an air of finality.

  ‘Oh, that tune again!’ Violet snarled, and drew herself up as if preparing to trade punches. ‘Yes, I can see why you love him so much. He’s the perfect son now, isn’t he? He can’t argue with you any more. You can make him agree with whatever you say, for ever and ever—’

  But this was too much for Triss’s father. He abruptly turned away from Violet Parish and strode back to the car, opening the rear door.

  ‘Come on, Triss,’ he said, his voice vivid with an anger that Triss knew was not meant for her, but which still made something in her stomach shrivel like a petal in a frost. She got out quickly. The atmosphere outside the car turned out to be frosty in more ways than one. There was an unseasonable chill, and a sharp minty bite to the air. Triss could see her breath.

  ‘Don’t walk away from me—’ Violet began, but broke off abruptly just as Triss’s father was slamming the car door. Glancing past her father, Triss realized that Violet was no longer looking at them. Instead her eyes were following something small, white and feathery that had floated down from above to land between the toes of her patent leather shoes. Violet hastily stepped back from it, as if it was a cinder that might burn her.

  ‘This conversation is at an end,’ Triss’s father announced to Violet as he guided Triss briskly to the front door. ‘If I ever find you here again, I will call the police.’

  But Violet no longer appeared to be listening. Even before the last threat was uttered, she was pulling her goggles back down to cover her eyes and hastily buttoning her coat. As she followed her father indoors, Triss could see Violet hurriedly straddling her motorcycle. The door shut, and then there came the sound of an engine starting, somewhere between a roar and a loud, lazy rattle of gunfire.

  Triss’s mother was waiting just inside, her hands clasped in a fretful knot.

  ‘That dreadful girl,’ she began immediately, her voice high with tension. ‘I told her you were out but she would not go – I do not think she believed me. Piers, I . . . I did not know what to do! But I did not think you would wish me to let her into the house. After all, it would set a precedent—’

  ‘You were quite right.’ Her husband patted her hand. ‘Unconscionable behaviour. We cannot let such things go.’

  That dreadful girl. It was the only name Violet Parish was allowed nowadays in the Crescent household. The nature of her dreadfulness had never been openly discussed in front of Triss, but she had pieced together a little from her parents’ veiled remarks. The word they used a lot was ‘fast’, and Triss did not think they were talking just about the motorcycle. Violet did look fast, Triss reflected, lean like her motorcycle, pared to the sleek basics, with no softness to slow her down. Even her bobbed hair had sharp corners.

  ‘I can’t believe how cold she is,’ Triss’s mother said, peering fearfully out through the window. ‘Could you ever think that was the same girl?’

  After Sebastian’s death the Crescent family had been braced to catch ‘poor Violet’ in its welcoming and supportive arms, but Violet had failed to reel or fall back into them. Instead of going into a proper, decent mourning, she had hacked off her hair, then started smoking and wearing dresses that let men see her calves. She had also started bothering Triss’s father for money, and Triss’s mother always shook her head and murmured about funds squandered on cocktails and ‘the high life’.

  Triss let her hand rest against the inside of the front door, almost expecting it to be chilly to the touch. Violet had indeed seemed cold – cold, selfish and ugly. Her visit had ripped a hole in the fragile calm of the house, like the scratch of a careless nail over tissue paper. It had torn away the last remaining shreds of Triss’s brief sense of joy. She had seen herself through Violet’s eyes, a pallid, simpering accomplice of her father’s claims.

  Perhaps if you’re cold enough, you make the world around you cold . . .

  Triss’s father had shown no sign of noticing the tiny white something that had floated down to land at Violet’s feet. However, Triss was almost certain that the frail scrap of white that had fallen out of the cloudless September sky had been a solitary snowflake.

  Chapter 8

  THE MIDNIGHT POST

  When Pen appeared at the head of the stairs, Triss could not prevent a small smile from creeping across her face. The younger girl looked thunderous and disappointed at seeing Triss standing there in the hall. Perhaps she had really thought that the doctor would instantly order Triss to be taken away in a straitjacket, leaving their father to return home alone.

  Pen’s first words reflected nothing of this, however.

  ‘Where’s Violet?’ she demanded. ‘That was Violet outside, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Hush, Pen,’ her mother answered firmly. ‘It was, and she’s gone, I’m glad to say.’

  ‘Why didn’t she come in?’

  Pen’s question was not dignified with a response, so the younger girl stamped off down the landing again. This was one of Pen’s many small acts of rebellion, an occasional perverse insistence that she liked Violet. Triss was fairly sure Pen only said it to shock, just as when she claimed to have drunk gin or seen a dead body.

  ‘Really,’ muttered their mother, ‘that child.’ She trailed her fingertips lightly over her temples. ‘Sometimes I just cannot . . .’ She did not say what she ‘could not’, but there was a tone of utter weariness in her voice.

  Triss had hoped that her cake frenzy would dull the edge of her appetite, but as the smell of dinner reached her nose she was again swept up by dizzying waves of hunger. A pleasant surprise awaited her, however.

  ‘Dr Mellow says that you’ve lost some weight, so we should let you eat as much as you like for now,’ her mother told her, heaping Triss’s plate with steak-and-kidney pie. Pen glared poison over her more meagre serving, but Triss had no thought to spare for her. She wanted to weep with relief, and mentally sent a hundred thanks to Dr Mellow. For a while she was incapable of thought, so utterly submerged was she in the joyous, helpless, compulsive task of eating. Pie, potatoes, mashed parsnips, buttered peas, bread and butter, fruit, jam sponge, tinned pears, bananas, preserved cherries . . .

  Only gradually did the bliss of it start to develop a bitter edge. There was something dreamlike about it, a continual ritual of disappointment. It seemed to her that every time she reached for a serving bowl she found it empty. She was vaguely aware that full plates were being brought in to replace these, but they were not brought fast enough, and eventually she awoke to the dull, horrified realization that the arrival of loaded dishes had trickled to a halt.

  She stared at all the empty plates before her, breathing heavily. What was wrong? Why had they stopped bringing more food? She looked around, aware for the first time that all sounds of dining had ceased around the table, that the rest of her family was mutely observing her as she scraped at each bowl for crumbs or traces of sauce.

  ‘That’s enough, Triss,’ her mother said gently, with the tiniest touch of panic in her voice. ‘That must be enough.’

  Enough? Triss could barely understand the word. She might as well have been asked whether she had had ‘enough’ air, and was ready to stop breathing.

  ‘But I’m still hungry!’ she exclaimed. There was nothing in her head except need, and it made her angry, terrified and childish. ‘You said
I could eat as much as I liked! I’m still hungry!’ Her voice was louder than she intended, but why not? She was desperate. And they had promised her all the dinner she wanted! If they loved her, why was there not more food?

  ‘Darling,’ her mother said, gently and shakily, ‘you’ve eaten half the pantry. Now, unless you want to eat dry oats or flour . . .’

  ‘Oats – I could have porridge! Porridge!’

  ‘No!’ snapped her mother, then closed her eyes and smoothed her own hair. ‘No,’ she added more gently. ‘That . . . That really is enough, Triss.’

  ‘You promised!’ The yell tore its way out of Triss as she jumped to her feet. ‘You promised I could have as much as I wanted!’ She felt impossibly angry, as if she had been tricked into giving full rein to her appetite. Her plate was gripped tightly in her hands, and it seemed possible that she might smash it on the table, watch its little blue-white Chinese scene shatter into bits. Why were her parents starving her? What was wrong with them?

  ‘Triss!’ It was her father’s voice, and it was sharp enough to penetrate the fury and desperation that had enveloped her. It was not a tone he had ever used towards her before, and it stung her to the quick.

  She became abruptly aware of herself, standing by an overturned chair, gripping a plate, white-knuckled. Her mother had one hand raised protectively to her throat, a sign that she was particularly nervous or shocked. Pen was struggling to keep a look of mock shock on her face, her eyes alive with glee, fascination and triumph.

  The plate rattled as Triss hastily set it back on the table. Her mouth was too dry to form words. She mutely fled the dining room.

  Back in her room, Triss lay on her bed, curled into a ball.

  When a knock sounded, she raised her head, but could not face opening the door.

  ‘Triss?’ It was her father’s voice. It was gentler than before, but Triss did not want to see his face, in case it wore some of the hardness and disappointment she often saw when he looked at Pen.

  ‘I’m . . . I’m sorry,’ she croaked.

  The door opened. Her father entered, and his face was not hard. It was tired and sad, which made Triss feel even worse.

  ‘That sort of behaviour was not something I expected from my Triss,’ he said softly. ‘My Triss is a sweet, quiet, well-behaved girl. She doesn’t stamp and scream at the dinner table.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ whispered Triss. ‘I couldn’t . . .’ I couldn’t help it, I think I went a bit mad, I felt like you were starving me and I was going to die, I felt like you hated me and I hated you. ‘I think I might be . . . running a bit of a temperature.’ It was the easy lie, the much-stamped passport to forgiveness, and Triss felt sick as she heard herself say the words.

  ‘Yes.’ Some of the sober tension went out of her father’s posture, and he came over to sit next to her on the bed. ‘Yes, that’s probably it. I did think you looked a bit flushed when we left the dressmakers’.’ He touched the back of his hand to her forehead, and seemed satisfied. ‘It has been a long day, hasn’t it? Lots of shocks too.’

  He put an arm around her and she threw both of hers around him, clinging on as if otherwise she might drown, her face buried in his waistcoat.

  Help me help me help me . . .

  ‘What you need,’ her father said at last, ‘is an early night. You’ll feel a lot better after a good, long rest.’

  He gave her a brief squeeze and stood up, pausing to gaze fondly down at her. Triss managed to force a smile and nod.

  The door closed behind him, and Triss was alone and at the mercy of her thoughts.

  Pen had told Triss that she was doing everything a little bit wrong. It’s true, she reflected, I am doing everything wrong. I lied to the doctor when he tried to help me, and it didn’t even do any good – if I keep screaming at everybody, they’re going to decide I’m crazy anyway.

  So what can I do? I have to get better without the doctor’s help. I have to get better really quickly before they realize just how sick I am. I can’t go on like this.

  She had to get well. Perhaps it was all a matter of willpower. Perhaps she could force herself not to eat everything in the house. Maybe she could make herself stop seeing strange things that could not exist.

  Perhaps when Angelina had started screaming, she should just have ignored it and carried on packing. Perhaps if she had stared down the shifting shop mannequins instead of running away, they would have returned to being decently inanimate again. Perhaps the dolls in her room had not really been moving in her peripheral vision . . .

  Her eye strayed towards the wardrobe where she had hastily bundled all her dolls, and she sat irresolute, chewing her lip.

  They won’t move, she told herself, as she edged gingerly towards the door. And even if they do, I’ll know it’s not real. I’ll just stare at them and stare at them until they go back to being normal.

  When she opened the wardrobe door, the lumpy pillowcase bundle within showed a reassuring disinclination to writhe or struggle. With her foot, Triss nudged it on to its side, stepping back quickly. As it slouched and fell open, a single doll felt out of the opening. It was a china half-doll with a glazed pompadour hairstyle, narrow-waisted blue dress and a pincushion where its lower body should be.

  Very slowly and deliberately, Triss crouched beside the bundle and picked up the doll. The pincushion was just small enough to fit into her splayed hand, the china head, neck and torso four inches tall altogether. The doll had its eyes lowered so that they looked shut, and its delicate little hands rested on its lace neckline and the rose on its bodice, as if it was adjusting its dress.

  You’re just a doll. You’re just a doll. You’re just a . . .

  The first movement was very slight. A tiny hand, delicate as a minnow fin, shifted its position on the porcelain lace. Slowly, stealthily, it reached out towards Triss’s encircling hand, and Triss felt tiny, cold fingertips grate lightly down the fine grain of her thumb pad. It did not turn its head. Its eyes were closed and it moved its hands like a blind thing, searchingly.

  It took all of Triss’s willpower not to hurl it away. There was a horror in the idea of it smashing, however, the elegant neck snapping like a celery stick. Her hand shook, but she tried to focus all her attention on the idea that what she was seeing was not real.

  At last the small, questing fingers nudged against one of the pins in the pincushion and closed around the white glass bobble of its head. Before Triss could react, it grasped the pin with both hands, tweaked it out of the cushion and drove it into the flesh of Triss’s thumb.

  ‘Ow!’ Triss jerked her hand, but managed not to drop the doll. It’s not real, she tried to tell herself, even as a bead of blood began to swell from the tiny puncture. This pain can’t be real, it can’t. A moment later she was suffering more unreal pain, as the half-doll raised the pin high and drove it into Triss’s thumb again. ‘Ow – stop it!’

  In spite of all her resolutions, Triss found herself using her free hand to tweak the pin from her tiny attacker’s grasp. I shouldn’t have done that, it isn’t real, it isn’t real. But mind over matter had seemed much easier when the matter was not actually stabbing her.

  Triss became aware that the half-doll was making a faint musical rattling noise, like the sound of cups tottering on saucers. Its jaw was moving rapidly up and down, but she could not tell whether it was cackling, gnashing its teeth or trying to talk. Its hands were now stroking over the surface of the pincushion, in search of another weapon.

  ‘Stop it!’ hissed Triss. She shook the doll, and her blood ran cold at the way its big-wigged head wobbled forwards and backwards. ‘Stop it, or . . .’ A flood of panic filled her, and with it the tide of hunger that had been driven back but not defeated. ‘Stop it, or I’ll . . . eat you!’

  The little doll’s voice increased to a crockery snarl. A black well of terror swallowed Triss. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth wide, then wider.

  The china slid over her tongue like ice cream. The pincush
ion was harder, and for an alarming moment it lodged in her mouth, filling it, the saggy velvet stale-tasting and dusty. Then Triss did something that sent a shiver through her throat, and next moment she was swallowing the cushion down. For a second or two she could feel the cold knobbly sensation of the pinheads grazing her insides as they travelled downward.

  Afterwards Triss sat for a long minute, staring down at her empty hands.

  I can’t have done that.

  Coming to her senses, she slammed the wardrobe door with trembling hands. Then she rose unsteadily, walked over to her dresser and dropped into her chair. Staring into the mirror, she opened her mouth as wide as she could, closed it again, opened it, closed it.

  Seeing dolls move was crazy. Swallowing dolls whole was impossible. There was no way that she could have opened her mouth wide enough to fit the entire doll inside it, let alone force it down her gullet. She watched her face in the reflection crumple with confusion, fear and misery, but tears did not come.

  It was only slowly that she realized that the howling quicksand in her stomach was now silent. For now, she was no longer hungry.

  Hours passed, and at last Triss admitted to herself that there was no hope of sleeping. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, while her thoughts traced out dark kaleidoscope patterns across it. I’m ill, I’m mad, I’m horrible, I have to get better.

  What had the doctor said? Remembering his words, Triss felt a tiny sting of hope. What if he was right, and her illness was just caused by a memory that she had swallowed like a marble? What if all the strangeness really was just a ‘tummy ache of the mind’? What if she could get better just by remembering whatever it was that she had forgotten?

  If so, then the ‘swallowed’ memory must be of the day that she had lost, the day she had fallen into the Grimmer. Before that day, everything had been normal, she was almost sure of it – no strange hallucinations, no terrible hunger. Triss focused all her energy on trying to remember the missing day, but in vain. She sat up and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyelids until red flowers starting exploding against the blackness. She tried to recapture the sense of certainty and imminent recollection that she had felt on the nocturnal banks of the Grimmer, the memory of icy cloudy water, but to no avail.