Cuckoo Song

by Frances Hardinge

  With one arm firmly tucked around the rooster-bundle and the other gripped fiercely by Pen, Not-Triss advanced into the workshop.

  Within, the light was dim, most of it pouring in through the door, a few pallid shafts from the narrow windows. Above, Not-Triss could make out the thorny thatch past the heavy rafters. There were a dozen tables, all cluttered with tools, china hands, herbs and feathers. On stands and sideboards were displayed dozens of dolls, nearly all of them incomplete. The majority were fashioned from a mixture of green twigs, leaves, porcelain and wood. All of them were life-size, mostly babies, but there were occasional effigies of older children or even full-grown women, their bellies swollen to suggest pregnancy.

  Not-Triss was uncomfortably aware that the nearest dolls were turning their incomplete faces towards her, regarding her with hostile eyes of glass.

  The man who had greeted them sat in a small rocking chair and watched them with dark grey eyes, brighter than a soldier’s buttons. Now that she saw him close to, Not-Triss realized that he was scarcely taller than she was. He had a heavy, bulldog cast to his face. The curls beneath his bowler hat were grey. His nose was particularly long, with a slight downward curve that made Not-Triss think of predatory birds.

  ‘Mister . . . Mr Shrike?’ asked Not-Triss. She was not sure how manners worked in this strange place.

  ‘Just Shrike.’ The man grinned. For the tiniest flash of a second, Not-Triss thought she saw something that was not a man’s face. A bird’s beak snapping shut. A curved beak – clever, wise, but possibly cruel. Then the impression was gone, and the bowler-hatted man was smiling at her again.

  He waved them to two worn-looking stools with blue velvet cushions. As they sat, he appraised them with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Well. This is unexpected.’ The Shrike sounded interested and genuinely delighted. ‘Yes, I can promise you that I did not expect to see you here. And with little sister in tow! Now, that’s a team I would never have predicted.’ He leaned towards Not-Triss with a confidential wrinkle in his brow. ‘You do know what young Penny did, don’t you? To poor, trusting Theresa?’

  ‘Yes,’ Not-Triss answered quickly, noticing the way Pen was flushing.

  The Shrike nodded, seeming if anything even more pleased, and glanced across at Pen. ‘And you – you’re happy skipping down lanes with this one, are you? She doesn’t frighten you?’

  ‘I’m not scared of anything,’ Pen declared icily.

  ‘Marvellous.’ The Shrike looked pointedly at the claw-marks on Pen’s cheek and gave a snicker of pure glee, touched with something like admiration. ‘Why not? What’s a little maiming and treachery between friends? Oh, don’t look so sour. I’m impressed. I don’t remember the last time I was so impressed.’

  As he spoke he flashed occasional glances at Pen, but most of the time his gaze was fixed on Not-Triss. There was curiosity in his bright eyes, and approval, but also a hint of pride.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he said under his breath. ‘You’re wonderful, if I say so myself.’

  ‘You’re the one that made me, aren’t you?’ asked Not-Triss. It came out sounding like an accusation. The idea also made her feel vulnerable, as if she was a book and somebody had seen all her secret pages.

  ‘Yes.’ The Shrike twinkled at her, pulling what looked like a silver snuff box out of his top pocket. ‘And when I did, I surpassed myself, I must say. I just never realized how far I had surpassed myself until now.’ He opened the box, and to Not-Triss’s surprise she saw that it did not contain snuff at all. Instead there was a small pat of butter on a wad of muslin. The Shrike licked at it with a slim black tongue, and studied her with narrowed, speculative eyes. ‘I would love – dearly love – to know how you came to find us here. Not to mention how you knew to stick a dirk in the ground, and bring that bird with you.’

  Not-Triss had no intention of revealing the way she had gained her information, however. Tricksy as the bird-thing had been, she did not particularly wish it ill.

  ‘Perhaps my leaves and twigs knew,’ she suggested. ‘You made me in this workshop, didn’t you? Perhaps they remembered.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The Shrike did not look particularly convinced, but he inclined his head, conceding the possibility. ‘But . . . the fact is, by coming here you have put us all in a bit of a pickle. A pretty little dilemma. I might go so far as to call it “a spot”.

  ‘Here’s the hub of it. This place is secret, and for good reason. The safety of everybody here depends on it. So you really shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t know how to get here. You definitely shouldn’t know that we’re here. And now that you do know, we can’t let you leave. The problem being, of course, that thanks to your cockerel there, we can’t actually stop you leaving.’

  ‘If we did tell everybody, and the police came and arrested you, it would serve you all right!’ said Pen, with venom.

  The Shrike ignored her outburst and paused to lick at his butter again. It seemed that he was waiting for something, and Not-Triss did not know what.

  ‘So . . . what are you going to do?’ she asked at last.

  He gave a shrug. ‘That, my dear, depends on you. You must have come here for a reason. What is it you want with me?’

  ‘I have questions,’ Not-Triss replied. ‘Questions about the Architect, about me, and about . . . other me.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you do.’ The Shrike twinkled thoughtfully, and his black tongue scraped another smear of butter. ‘Dangerous questions, with dangerous answers.’ He drew breath in through his teeth, in a way Not-Triss recognized. It was the mock-doubt of the market stall, the noise somebody made before they started to haggle.

  ‘You want to make a bargain, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘It’s that, or sit here staring at each other until the final trump,’ the Shrike responded placidly. ‘You want questions answered. I want to protect my people here. So we bargain. You hold your tongue, and I loosen mine. Everybody is happy.’

  ‘Triss, I don’t trust him!’ Pen declared. ‘He was working with the Architect! He’ll lie to us and betray us. We should just set the cockerel on him and run away!’

  The Shrike gave Pen a hard, flat flash of a smile. ‘You remind me of a little girl I knew years ago. One day, all of a sudden, her head fell off. It was very sad.’

  ‘But we don’t know if we can trust you!’ Not-Triss cut in quickly, before hostilities could escalate.

  ‘That we can mend,’ answered the Shrike. ‘How shall I explain this? There is . . . a special promise that can be made. If somebody breaks such a promise, then a terrible curse descends upon them. I am willing to promise to answer all your questions truthfully, if the pair of you will promise never to reveal to another living soul anything you have learned in the Underbelly.’

  The bargain sounded appealing, but after her experience with the bird-thing Not-Triss took a moment to think about it. Pen, on the other hand, needed no such moment.

  ‘That’s not fair!’ she announced. ‘That’s two promises for one! If Triss and me are both promising, then you should promise two things!’

  ‘She’s right.’ Not-Triss nibbled at her lower lip. ‘You’re asking us not to warn people in Ellchester that there’s a camp of . . . of magical, dangerous things living right over their heads! You have to promise that none of the people living here will cause trouble in Ellchester. No stealing children, or hurting people, or laying traps—’

  ‘I can’t promise that.’ The Shrike’s smile was gone, and he looked quite serious.

  ‘Then you admit it – that’s exactly what they’re going to do!’ Not-Triss’s spirits plummeted as she imagined the hissing, half-seen Underbelly mob descending upon the streets of Ellchester.

  ‘Some of them, yes.’ There was something disarming about the Shrike’s bluntness. ‘And usually – not always, but usually – it’s because a human has wronged them, intruded upon them . . . or invited them.’ He cocked an eyebrow and glanced pointedly at Pen. ‘Do you think that one is the first
to make a deal with one of my people?’

  Pen reddened furiously under his gaze, but the Shrike continued with more earnestness.

  ‘And what promises could you make for the rest of your kind, human girl? Could you promise that nobody in Ellchester would lie, steal, kidnap, harm or kill? No. Of course not. Because Ellchester is a town. Well, so is this. A hotchpotch of the helpful, the harmless, the mischievous and the malicious.

  ‘Believe me, we did not choose to be mingled so, or even to live so close to your kind. This town is a refugee camp. We are all here, not because we wish to be, but because we have nowhere else to go. The places that were ours . . . we can longer survive there.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Pen.

  ‘That’s a long story.’ The Shrike gave a wry smile, and Not-Triss thought she understood his meaning. One I will tell you if we make our bargain.

  ‘And . . . if we do tell people you’re here?’ Not-Triss had the feeling that everything had just become much more complicated.

  The Shrike stayed silent for a second or two, then closed his butter box. ‘We would have to leave. I . . . would survive. So would a few of the others, the clever and adaptable ones. The rest . . .’ There was nothing plaintive about his small shrug. Indeed he seemed rather cold and analytical. ‘Most of them would not find a way to live. Some are too old, or too lost in the past, some too strange, or too stupid. One or two are . . . unpleasant things, and perhaps they would be better off dead. But they are my people, and this is their last chance to change, and find a place in this new world. I would like to see them have this chance. And if they fail to take advantage of it . . . then let them join the lizard bones in your museums.’

  Not-Triss glanced at Pen, and saw the same splinters of indecision in the other girl’s frown as she felt.

  ‘I can see you both still bear a grudge for the welcome you received when you arrived here,’ remarked the Shrike. ‘I don’t much blame you.’ He glanced at the rips in Not-Triss’s side and tutted. Again Not-Triss had a fleeting image of a strong beak cracking something small. ‘The children weren’t kind to you, were they?’

  ‘Children?’ Not-Triss realized that most of the figures had seemed shorter than adult height.

  ‘What else could be so cruel? Wait here.’ He went to the door and whistled, then Not-Triss could hear him talking. ‘The lady’s innards – bring them in. No, all of them. I’ll know if anything is missing. Enter in your own skins – no guises, no shapes.’

  And into the workshop trooped a parade of figures with scowls and bowed heads, misshapen things with skinny flanks and ragged clothing. Many were dressed in coats made entirely of dull-coloured feathers. One had hare’s ears and a cleft between nose and mouth like that on an animal’s muzzle. Some had paws, and one a long, trailing rat’s tail. However, the slouch was that of children in disgrace. Each in turn trudged up to Not-Triss and placed something in her hand – leaves, twigs, twists of paper and finally the long piece of vine she had seen tugged from her side.

  They were children. Monstrous children perhaps, but Not-Triss felt that she was in no position to criticize.

  ‘Little horrors,’ the Shrike said with affection, and gave the familiar phrase new meaning. ‘But what do you expect? Drop a wounded bird into a box full of kittens . . . and what you see will not be pretty. They are just doing what they do.’

  ‘Did you see them?’ whispered Pen. ‘They looked scared, Triss. Scared of us.’

  It was true, Not-Triss realized, and she finally understood the enormity of the decision before her. Some of the people in the Underbelly were terrifying, but did she really want to destroy them all? What if the Shrike was right, and some of them were harmless, or helpless, or stupid, or just too young to realize what they were doing?

  I’m a monster too. And they probably can’t help it either.

  She leaned over and whispered into Pen’s ear.

  ‘Pen . . . I don’t want to force them all out so they die. Do you?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘No,’ Pen whispered back, in a grudging tone. ‘They’re just stupid. And . . . we can always come back with more cockerels. I think he’s the scariest one. I don’t like him.’

  Not-Triss realized that she did like the Shrike, but then again she had liked Mr Grace. Both had the same air of candour, the same sense that she was being allowed into their confidence.

  ‘Shrike,’ she said slowly, ‘maybe we’ll make the promise you want . . . but Pen’s right. We need two promises from you. One is answering all our questions truly. The second one . . . is that you never act against either of us. In any way. Ever.’

  The Shrike was silent for a long time, and appeared to be thinking hard. The harsh, beaked look of his face intensified.

  ‘Clever little vixens,’ he said at last, rather sharply.

  Not-Triss suspected that that counted as a yes.

  Chapter 25

  THE PACT

  ‘Then we are agreed?’ asked the Shrike, and received a nod from both girls. He took a deep breath and started to speak. It was a slippery, musical language which sounded like the bird-thing’s attempt to speak the Architect’s true name. The words were unknown to Not-Triss, but then she sensed that they were not directed at her. The Shrike was speaking to gain something else’s attention, and as he spoke the whole room developed a thickening storm-tingle, as if something enormous was turning its ancient, passionless stare upon them.

  It waited for their promises. It heard them. Something indefinable in the world changed with a silent click, like a key turning in an imaginary lock. The tension receded, leaving Not-Triss feeling lighter but queasy. Pen sniffed and gripped Not-Triss’s sleeve. Even the Shrike paled, his face puckering for a few seconds as if he was struggling to hide his discomfort.

  ‘So,’ said the Shrike, once he had recovered his colour, his smile and his sangfroid. ‘Ask away.’ There was still something a little forced in his tone.

  Not-Triss had to swallow before she could speak. There were too many questions in her head, trying to crowd out all at once.

  ‘What am I, really?’ she asked. ‘And . . . And why was I made? Why did the Architect take away the real me? And where did he take her? What’s he doing?’

  ‘And where’s Sebastian?’ demanded Pen. ‘And what are you all doing here under Father’s bridge? And why is everything upside down?’

  ‘Slow, slow!’ The Shrike held up a hand to halt their flow, then dropped his voice to a confidential murmur. ‘I had better start at the beginning, or we will be running in circles.’ The Shrike looked Not-Triss up and down, and again she was struck by the mixture of pride and cold appraisal. ‘And while we talk, I’ll stitch up those rips in your sides, if you’ll let me,’ he added. ‘It goes against the grain to leave those holes gaping.’

  Not-Triss remembered his promise not to act against her and warily drew her stool closer to him. As she did so, the nearest dolls shifted as well. Some flinched away from her. Some reached out slender jointed hands of wood.

  ‘Stop that!’ squeaked Pen, glaring at the Shrike. ‘Stop making them do that!’

  ‘I’m not.’ The Shrike’s eyes gleamed like stars in mist, as he threaded his needle. ‘She’s doing it.’ He nodded towards Not-Triss, to her alarm and confusion. ‘But we’ll come to that.

  ‘I told you before, that my people have found it harder and harder to live in the places that were once our homes—’

  ‘Why?’ Pen’s question broke through his words like a bullet through a windowpane. The Shrike’s gaze flickered, and Not-Triss suspected that she had just seen a veiled wince. Certainly, when he started speaking again there was a good deal of reluctance in his voice. The point of his needle stung slightly as he set about darning her flanks.

  ‘Maps.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Mostly maps. We . . . used to live in the wilds, the deep forests, the bleak mountains, the unused places. Because they were unknown. Mysterious. Lost. Uncharted. And . . . we need that. We can’t survive any
where that is governed by certainty, where everything is known and mapped and written about and divided into columns. Certainty poisons us, slowly.’

  The Shrike gave Pen a small cool glance in which there was a good deal of dislike, and Not-Triss felt certain that her question was one he had hoped not to answer.

  ‘Or sometimes quickly,’ he added, and darted Not-Triss a questioning look. ‘I dare say you’ve noticed by now that there’s a certain human tool that has a quarrel with us?’ With his second and third fingers he mimed scissorish snipping motions. Not-Triss flinched, and the Shrike nodded. She noticed that he was trimming his sewing thread with a tiny serrated bone knife, rather than scissors.

  ‘A knife is made with a hundred tasks in mind,’ he continued, threading his bone needle. ‘Stab. Slice. Flay. Carve. But scissors are really intended for one job alone – snipping things in two. Dividing by force. Everything on one side or the other, and nothing in between. Certainty. We’re in-between folk, so scissors hate us. They want to snip us through and make sense of us, and there’s no sense to be made without killing us. Watch out for old pairs of scissors in particular, or scissors made in old ways.’

  ‘Yes,’ Not-Triss admitted reluctantly. ‘They do seem to hate me . . . and I think it’s been getting worse.’

  ‘The more you act and think like one of us, the more they’ll see you as one of us.’ The Shrike was feeding the stolen vine back in through her torn side, and she could feel it moving amid her vitals like a dry snake.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘we ran into the same sort of fix when your people started making better maps. Planes flew over and could see everything, and the railways went everywhere and ramblers started wanting charts so they could follow the paths into the remote places. We withdrew and withdrew, until there was nowhere left to withdraw.

  ‘Some tried to defend their territory from the certainty, some tore each other apart fighting over the last scraps of land . . .’ The Shrike gave a dismissive wave of his hand, idly brushing away decades of bloody history. ‘We were losing. We were dying. And then one of us – the man you call the Architect – came to the rest of us with a plan.