Cuckoo Song

by Frances Hardinge

  Why had her parents brought her here?

  Perhaps this was still a trick. Perhaps this was a ‘rest cure’ after all. Perhaps doctors didn’t think that gas was ‘restful’ enough.

  The house was still as snow. Not-Triss strained to hear her parents’ voices, and could not. How long had it been since they had left their room? Gripped by panic, she tore down the stairs, nearly stumbling on the sloping steps, and crashed into the sitting room. It was empty. There was nobody in the neighbouring parlour, nor in the poky eating room.

  Dot looked up from chopping vegetables as Not-Triss hurtled into the long stone-flagged kitchen. She seemed surprised, her narrow face side-lit by the blaze from the great hearth.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘They’re gone!’ Not-Triss was shaking with a mixture of terror and anger. ‘They’ve left me behind, haven’t they?’

  ‘Who have?’ Dot frowned, wiping onion juice from her hands. ‘Do you mean your parents? They stepped out for a walk, lambkin. They’ll be back soon enough.’

  ‘I don’t believe you!’ shouted Not-Triss, fighting back the silken tears that threatened to creep into her eyes.

  Dot didn’t seem at all upset by this outburst. Instead she pushed her tongue into her cheek thoughtfully.

  ‘Well, if they headed back to Ellchester, they’ve got a long walk ahead of them. I didn’t hear the car leave, did you?’ She laughed as Not-Triss’s face flushed with new hope. ‘You go and have a look, put your mind at rest.’

  Not-Triss scampered back to the front door, and eased it open. With colossal relief she saw that the Sunbeam was still parked outside, its flanks darkening to cedar-green in the deepening twilight.

  Further down the beach, distinct against the leaden grey of the sea, she could make out the figures of her parents. Her mother’s head had drooped to rest against her father’s chest, and he was holding her tightly against him. Not-Triss remembered seeing her father wrap his arms around her mother many times, but usually gently and firmly, as if he was holding together a broken thing long enough for the glue to set. This time there was something fierce and desperate about it, as if he needed the contact as much as she did.

  Not-Triss’s mother raised her head and said something too soft to be overheard, and Not-Triss’s father nodded slowly and kissed his wife’s forehead with absolute tenderness.

  Not-Triss carefully closed the door and returned to the kitchen, where she hovered shame-faced in the doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Sorry I shouted at you.’

  ‘I’m used to it,’ Dot answered, flashing her a grin. ‘I come from a big family. Nothing but shouting, all day long. Only way to make yourself heard.’ She blew a stray tress out of her eyes and took stock of Not-Triss’s trembling uncertainty. ‘Do you want to come in and watch me make dinner? It’s warmer by the fire than it is over there. If you’re really worried about your parents driving away, you can leave the door open so you’ll hear the engine.’

  Not-Triss ventured into the kitchen, fascinated by the great black kettle next to the hearth, the butter moulds, the blackened patches on the white plaster ceiling. She had never been invited to watch Mrs Basset cooking. It had been something that she knew she was not really supposed to look at, like ladies dipping into their powder compacts. On the table was a pile of crisp, dark spinach leaves and some turnips shaggy with black earth. Beside these lay a dead rabbit. The head and feet had been removed, but with a creeping of the skin Not-Triss knew what it was.

  ‘Did you ever see anybody skin a rabbit?’ asked Dot, picking up a small, sharp knife.

  Not-Triss shook her head, mouth dry. But I don’t want to see it. Those were the words waiting on her tongue, but somehow she did not get them out in time.

  It was all so quick, deft and no-nonsense. Dot slit it down the middle, then made a workman-like cut across, and next moment she was peeling the fur off the body, just as if she was taking off a jacket. Not-Triss stared at what was left. It was strangely bloodless, a glossy misshapen thing that looked absolutely nothing like a rabbit at all. She wanted to unsee what she had just seen, but she could not stop looking at it.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Dot, looking her up and down. ‘Not going to faint, are you?’

  Not-Triss shook her head. The sight had been shocking, but Dot’s directness was curiously comforting. Seeing somebody dealing so calmly with horrible things made her feel that perhaps she herself was not so terrible, and might not strike fear into every heart.

  ‘No,’ Dot went on, ‘I don’t reckon you’re the fainter in the family, are you?’ She gave Not-Triss a conspiratorial smirk. ‘Your mother came over nervous, so your father took her out to find some air. And they said you were highly strung. All I can say is, you’re not the one I’d be dragging to doctors.’

  Not-Triss could only gape. She was so used to everybody treating Piers Crescent and his family as sacred. And yet here was this odd girl fearlessly dissecting the Crescents’ private affairs, as swiftly and matter-of-factly as she had skinned the rabbit. Not-Triss was shocked and horrified, but also excited and fascinated, in an uncomfortable, pins-and-needles way. Dot was doing something else with the rabbit and the knife now, and Not-Triss looked away for a bit.

  When she looked back, the rabbit was becoming chunks of pink meat, some pale, some darkly marbled. After that, the turnips were diced, the cubes glowing amber in the firelight. The greens were shredded. From time to time Dot muttered and added more wood to the fire.

  ‘What’s the point of having a great hearth like this if you don’t use it?’ she asked, and laughed when it spat sparks on her feet.

  As Dot finished preparing the ingredients, Not-Triss looked around and realized for the first time that there was something missing, among the bound herbs and long spoons hanging from the beams.

  ‘Where are your pots and pans?’

  ‘I haven’t got them out yet. Wait a moment – I’ll show them to you.’ Dot receded into a dark corner of the room, and returned with a square box, about six inches across. She set it down carefully before the hearth and lifted the lid. Inside, Not-Triss could just make out white, rounded shapes nestling in a bed of fine, wispy straw.

  Slowly and respectfully, Dot pulled out pale shape after pale shape and set them next to each other on the floor. They were eggshells, their crowns broken away and their insides scooped out. The ragged hole of each shell was spanned by a loop of cotton like a miniature handle. Although they were perfectly clean, Dot pulled out a handkerchief and began delicately wiping them, inside and out.

  Then, as if she was performing the most ordinary act in the world, she took one of the shells to the table and very carefully pushed some shreds of spinach into it, followed by a cube of turnip, a piece of rabbit and a tiny dribble of stock.

  Not-Triss stared at her, looking for the flicker of a smile to show that this was a joke, but Dot’s manner remained perfectly serious and offhand as she carried the shell back to the hearth and used the cotton handle to hang it from a hook over the fire, just as if it was a tiny cooking pot.

  Not-Triss gave a snort of a laughter as Dot began doing the same with a second eggshell.

  ‘You’re not cooking dinner in those!’

  ‘Why not?’ Dot raised her eyebrows, looking surprised. ‘They’re my pots and pans. Don’t you like them?’ And she continued her task. Some shreds of spinach, a cube of turnip, a piece of rabbit meat, a dribble of stock . . .

  Something about Dot’s po-faced expression set Not-Triss giggling helplessly. She looked away, but the sight of the tiny cooking pots over the fire made things worse. They just looked so absurd dangling there, dripping stock into the flames. Suddenly everything seemed incredibly funny, far funnier than it had any right to be. She rocked silently, web-tears rising to her eyes.

  She smothered her mouth with her hands, but she was full of a great swelling laugh and there was nothing her small frame could do to keep it in. It swelled, and swelled, and swelled, and
it was only in the moment before it broke forth that she was afraid, and knew it was not her laugh, not her hilarity that was bursting out of her.

  Then the Laugh escaped. Not-Triss rolled on the bench, laughing with the creak and thrash of a forest in a gale. She laughed until the windows rattled and the flames of the hearth dipped and quivered. Words came from her mouth, but they were not hers, nor could the voice that spoke them be mistaken for human.

  Oh, we are leaves of the Perspell Wood

  That grew before old London stood

  Yet never have we seen a sight so strange

  As eggshell stew pots on the range.

  Dot stood motionless, her face set and unreadable, watching Not-Triss until her helpless mirth subsided. Then she looked past her towards the door, her expression suddenly youthful and uncertain.

  ‘Will that do?’ she asked, in a surprisingly respectful tone.

  ‘Thank you, Dot, that will do very well,’ said Mr Grace the tailor. He stood just within the doorway, and a pace behind him Not-Triss could see her parents, gazing aghast into the kitchen.

  Dot gathered up her kitchen knives, gave Not-Triss one glance of thinly veiled fear and revulsion and hurried for the door. She pushed hastily past the Crescents and vanished from view.

  ‘Eggshells used as cooking pots,’ Mr Grace said, as he advanced slowly and carefully into the room. ‘It never fails, for some reason. The sight always makes them laugh so hard that they give themselves away. They just can’t help it.’ He sighed. ‘I promised you proof, my friends. Now you have seen the truth. This is not your child.’

  Not-Triss was breathing hard, but there did not seem to be any air in her lungs. There were stone flags under her feet, and yet she felt as if she was falling.

  ‘I’m . . . ill.’ Her voice was a breathless, helpless creak. Everything she had fought so hard to find out, she wanted none of it now. She wanted to be wrong after all, anything to stop her parents looking at her that way. She was wrong. She had to be. ‘I’ve been ill, that’s all. You said so. You all did. I’m just ill. I’ll . . . I’ll get better. I . . . I promise I will.’ Her eyes began to mist.

  ‘Stop!’ The tailor threw out an arm to stop her mother stepping forward. ‘Don’t play into its hands. I’m sorry, but you have to be strong. It’s cornered – it knows that its only hope is to tug at your emotions.’

  ‘But . . .’ Her mother cast an uncertain glance at Not-Triss’s face, her gaze bluer and more fragile than ever before. ‘But look at her!’

  ‘I am looking at her,’ murmured the tailor, and gave a short, dark laugh, a bit like a cough. Before Triss could react, he had sprinted forward and grabbed her by the chin, so that she gave a squawk of shock and fear. Both her parents cried out and stepped forward to intervene, but the tailor’s expression stopped them in their tracks. His face was that of a man bracing himself for battle, or staring into a hurricane. ‘You think those are tears shining in her eyes?’ he demanded. ‘Let me show you these “tears”.’ With his free hand he tweaked out a handkerchief, and as Not-Triss tried to jerk her chin free he gently dabbed at the corner of her eye, catching a long silvery strand and drawing it out for her parents to see.

  ‘What . . . ?’ Her father had turned ashen.

  ‘Spiderweb,’ the tailor replied curtly. ‘That’s all. Just another part of the disguise. This creature has no tears.’

  Not-Triss dug her fingernails into the tailor’s hand. When his grip on her chin slipped, she bit him and sprinted away to the far corner of the room. There was a small scream of horror from her mother.

  ‘Her teeth!’

  ‘You saw that?’ The tailor was wrapping his handkerchief around his hand. The back of it was marked by small bleeding puncture wounds, not like the dents left by normal teeth at all. Not-Triss raised hesitant fingers to her mouth, and their questing tips touched tooth-points that were slender and unbelievably sharp. ‘Thorns for teeth. Yes, that’s its real appearance. Sometimes they revert when they’re frightened or angry. I am so sorry you had to see that, Mrs Crescent, but now at least you know. This is not your daughter.’

  ‘I . . .’ Not-Triss looked from face to face in desperation, feeling the cradle of love disintegrating around her. ‘I am Triss! I . . . I can be! I want to be! Let me try again – I’ll get it right this time! Please . . .’ They were backing away; her parents were backing away.

  ‘Triss.’ There was a soft, broken look on the face of her mother.

  But she’s not your mother, her wits told her, in a voice as soft and terrible as thunder. Too late Not-Triss realized how blind she had been. Even after she had found out that she was an imposter, she had still been thinking of this man and woman as her father, her mother. It had been second nature. She had not even noticed herself doing it.

  It was Triss’s mother who stood before her now, Triss’s mother who was flinching away from her in horror, Triss’s mother whose expression was ebbing into pale shaking rage.

  ‘Triss – where is she?’ Celeste Crescent’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. ‘You little monster, what have you done with her? Where’s my little girl?’

  ‘Mother . . .’ With a sick feeling in her stomach, Not-Triss could feel her mouth drooping into the little sob-shape that always worked, that always made everybody soften and look after her. But it was a stolen mannerism, and today it only made things worse.

  ‘Tell us what we have to do,’ asked Piers Crescent through his teeth.

  ‘It will be unpleasant,’ answered the tailor, ‘so we should spare Mrs Crescent. She’s been brave enough already.’

  ‘Celeste –’ Piers gave his wife a look of tender appeal – ‘love – please – can you leave us? Triss will need you strong and well, when we get her back.’

  ‘Don’t go!’ Not-Triss knew at once that something terrible was going to happen, something that the tailor was not willing to do in front of Mrs Crescent. ‘Don’t leave me!’

  But her mouth was full of thorns, and her voice came out wrong. With one last white-faced, appalled look at Not-Triss, Celeste Crescent tottered weakly from the room and closed the door behind her.

  ‘Now, Mr Crescent,’ continued the tailor in a deliberately calm and steady voice, ‘I will need you to stoke up the fire. Make it as fierce as you can.’

  Not-Triss leaped towards the door by which Mrs Crescent had left, but the tailor seized her, wrapping both arms around her so that her own were pinned to her sides.

  ‘It’s the only way,’ he added through clenched teeth as Not-Triss scratched, struggled and tried to bite him with her thorn-teeth. ‘The only way to show the Besiders that we mean business. This creature is either one of their own children, or it is even less than that – a doll made of dead leaves, perhaps, or carved from a block of wood. If it is a child of theirs, the Besiders will not wish to see it hurt. The best ways of dealing with a changeling – the oldest, tried and tested ways – are to force them to save it. Beat it with a switch till it screams. Throw it into fast-flowing water. Or push it into a blazing fire.’

  ‘God above,’ whispered Piers, as he shakily piled more wood on the fire and nursed it to a roar. ‘Isn’t there any other way?’

  Not-Triss gave a wordless wail of terror, but it sounded ghastly even to her ears. There was the whickering of bat wings in it, the whistle of November winds, the scream of gulls. The kindling in the hearth snapped with a sound like castanets, spitting sparks to dance lazily up the flue.

  ‘It won’t kill it,’ answered the tailor curtly. ‘Mark my words, if it’s a Besider child, either it will jump up the chimney, or its parents will come for it. Either way, the Besiders will bring back your child to make sure you never trouble their family again.’

  ‘And if it’s a wooden doll?’ Piers was ashen-faced and shaking. He stared at his own hands tending the fire as if they horrified him. He did not look at the tailor, or at Not-Triss wrestling in his arms. He kept his gaze on the rising flames the way a drowning man clings to a timber.

  �
�Then the outcome is less certain. The Besiders will not bother to rescue a doll, but if you destroy it they may well lose interest in their game and return your child anyway. Or they may not – but you will still have rid your house of a monster.’

  ‘He’s wrong!’ Not-Triss called through her sobs, willing her not-father to look at her. ‘He’s wrong! I’m real! I’m real, and if you put me on the fire I’ll die!’ She could feel cobweb-tears oozing out of her eyes and down her cheeks, leaving long, shining, incriminating strands.

  ‘Don’t listen.’ The tailor was manoeuvring her closer and closer to the hearth, an inch at a time. ‘Mr Crescent, remember this – it doesn’t feel pain the way we do; it doesn’t feel fear. However much it screams, none of it is real. Are you ready?’

  ‘Oh God.’ Piers stepped back from the fire, and at last turned his dismayed gaze towards Not-Triss. His face softened for an instant, with the kind look he saved for only one person. Not-Triss felt a small dewdrop of hope before she realized that he was looking through her, not at her. ‘For Triss,’ he said under his breath. ‘For Triss I can do this. Yes. I’m ready.’

  ‘Then on a count of three, help me force it into the fire,’ murmured the tailor. ‘I’ll need your assistance. Even their children can be inhumanly strong and agile.’

  His face was drawn and pained. With a deep despair Not-Triss realized that he was a good man, and that good men sometimes did terrible things.

  ‘One . . .’

  Not-Triss struggled and wailed until the roof tiles popped and cracked like hot chestnuts. She screamed until the grain pots shattered on the shelves.

  ‘Two . . .’

  She fought, clawed and tried to bite, all pretence forgotten.

  ‘Tr . . .’

  But the rest of the ‘three’ never arrived. Suddenly there came a drenching rush of icy water from behind, soaking her back and shoulder and cascading down on to the hearth. There was a deafening hiss, a blinding surge of smoke and steam, and the room was plunged into near darkness.