Cuckoo Song

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘Pen,’ she breathed, ‘it’s cold. It’s cold. Violet did it! She did it, Pen!’

  Violet’s alive! She could not voice the words, though, without admitting to Pen that she had been in doubt.

  ‘Look!’ Trista drew back the blanket a little, and Pen blinked mulishly in the meagre daylight. ‘There’s nobody in the street. We can probably sit up a bit now.’ She expected Pen to be as pleased as she was, and was a little surprised when she directed a surly glare at the lowering sky. ‘The snow’s coming. It’ll be here soon, Pen, I promise. We just need to wait.’

  Pen sniffed hard, and half sat up, disarranging the blanket.

  ‘No!’ she hissed. ‘I don’t want to! I don’t like these docks! I don’t want us to stay here any more!’

  ‘Pen, you’re being . . .’ Trista let out a breath and started again. ‘You know I have to be here at midnight, so I can follow the Architect.’

  ‘No, you don’t!’ Stars of reflected light gleamed in Pen’s eyes, her shadowed face creased with earnestness. ‘We could sail away, in this boat! We could go to France!’

  ‘What?’ Trista could barely keep her voice to a whisper. ‘Pen, of course we can’t. And what would happen to Triss?’

  ‘I don’t care!’ And Pen, who had faced down moving cars and yelled at the Architect, was shaking, face crumpled, tears spilling out of her eyes. ‘I don’t want you to go! And . . . And I don’t want her to come back!’

  ‘Pen!’ Trista exclaimed, appalled. ‘You don’t mean that!’

  There was a growled, snuffled response that might have been, ‘Yes, I do.’

  To be loved, to be preferred . . . The very thought gave Trista a painful little stab of joy. A moment later, however, she thought of the jagged rips that criss-crossed the Crescent family and felt only sadness.

  ‘But she’s your sister, Pen! I’m not. I’m just a bundle of sticks that looks like her.’

  Pen did not answer straight away, but wriggled herself closer, so that her damp face was buried in Trista’s shoulder.

  ‘Do you remember what happened after . . . after I dug up the frog and found out it had moved?’ Pen’s voice was hesitant and defiant, but with a touch of slyness.

  It took a second or two for Trista to adjust to the change of subject and comb through Triss’s memories.

  ‘Yes . . . Yes, I do.’ Trista stroked Pen’s head. ‘You were so upset you couldn’t cry, you just went around staring at everything. You couldn’t sleep even. And so . . . one night I remember sitting on your bed and telling you that the frog was in frog heaven, where there were no cats, and where all the lily pads were lovely and soft. And I said that the frog wanted you to know that it was happy, and that it didn’t blame you for anything because you were only trying to help.’

  ‘And you hugged me when I cried,’ mumbled Pen. ‘And after that I went to sleep. Didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, Pen.’ Trista sighed, and let go of the stolen moment. ‘But that wasn’t me. That was Triss.’

  ‘But . . .’ Pen pulled away and looked into Trista’s face, and her expression was a startling combination of determination, desperation and pleading. ‘But what if it was you? Maybe that’s why you remember it so well? Because perhaps –’ she gabbled on with increasing speed, as if afraid of interruption – ‘perhaps we were wrong all the time, and you weren’t just made out of sticks a week ago, perhaps there were always two Trisses, a good one and a bad one, and you’ve always been the good one, and I only sent away the bad one . . .’

  Oh, Pen.

  With a surge of pity and exasperation, Trista started to understand the fantasy Pen had cobbled together in her head. So this was why Pen had slipped into calling Trista ‘Triss’ over and over again. This was why Pen had scowled whenever anybody talked about rescuing her real sister, and why she had tried to bargain with the Architect for the life of Trista instead. All this while Pen had been building a make-believe version of reality where she hadn’t really betrayed her sister to a terrible fate, just sent away a bad version of her . . .

  ‘Pen,’ groaned Triss, tenderness battling against frustration, ‘that doesn’t make any sense.’ She gave Pen another squeeze. ‘Life isn’t that simple. People aren’t that simple. You can’t cut them into slices like a cake, then throw away the bits you don’t like. The Triss who was kind about the frog and the Triss who spoilt your birthday – they’re the same person.’

  ‘But she hates me!’ roared Pen. ‘And if she comes back, she’ll tell Mummy and Daddy what I did, and . . . they’ll send me away to prison or an orphanage or school . . .’

  And that was it, of course. If Triss returned, reality would come knocking. Pen would no longer be able to pretend to herself or to her parents that she had not been responsible for her sister’s kidnap. She would have to face up to what she had done.

  ‘Triss doesn’t hate you.’ Trista could almost feel the strands of Pen’s affection, and knew that they had been flung out to her in desperation, like a swift grab made by a falling climber. Now, with a sense of sadness, she realized that she needed to detach them and reattach them to Pen’s real sister, where they belonged. ‘When I talked to her on the telephone, she was shouting at me – asking what I had done to you. She wasn’t angry with you. She was worried about you.’

  Pen had no answer. Instead she gave in to a torrent of ragged, tormented sobs.

  ‘I don’t want to go to prison!’ she wailed at last. ‘I want my mummy!’

  ‘I know,’ said Trista, who had no mummy. ‘I know.’

  She was still rocking Pen in her arms a few minutes later when the first tiny flakes of snow began to float down from the sky.

  The boat-bound fugitives sneaked occasional peeks out from under their blanket as the sky grew dimmer. At first the snowflakes were tiny like ash flecks, dying as soon as they touched the ground and leaving freckles of damp. A few people opened their windows for a while to laugh and wonder at the unseasonal sprinkling. The temperature kept dropping, however, and soon the windows were closing again.

  The wind stilled and the flakes fattened. Before long the air was a ballet of chill tufts, each the size of a farthing. The first settled on the earth and melted, falling in on themselves. Their successors left a skin of fine, grey slush. But there were more and more, falling faster than they could melt, and soon the whole scene had a downy pallor. Both girls in the boat were shivering now, and Trista was glad of the blanket.

  ‘I haven’t had my tea,’ Pen muttered mournfully as supper smells seeped from dozens of houses.

  ‘We don’t have any money,’ Trista reminded her.

  ‘There’s snow! We could go carol singing, and people might give us food if we look sad.’ Without further ado, Pen began pulling at the underside of the jetty, so that the boat began to swing out from beneath it.

  ‘Wait!’

  ‘You said we could get out of the boat when it snowed!’ protested Pen.

  ‘All right, but be careful getting out, and stay close to me!’ Trista helped Pen climb up on to the jetty, the smaller girl tottering slightly with stiffness. Triss wrapped the blanket around the pair of them, so that it shrouded their heads and figures like a cloak. ‘Let’s keep this over us, so people don’t recognize us.’

  At the back of the tea room, a kindly under-cook passed some leftover currant scones to the girls through the kitchen door, telling them that she shouldn’t really, but it was a shame for them to go to waste. The girls stood in an alley and munched the scones, watching the whirl of white around them. The few scant gas lamps on the streets were now surging into solemn, flickering life, each illuminating a halo of flurrying flakes.

  ‘I’m cold.’ Pen hiccuped down the last mouthful of her scone, then peered into the darkness. ‘I bet they would let us sit by their fire.’

  Following the direction of Pen’s pointing finger, Trista made out a reddish gleam in the shadow of an abandoned auction house. Against the wall she could just see a stumpy black crate that had been pressed into ser
vice as a brazier. Around it stood three figures, hunched against the cold.

  ‘All right,’ she whispered back. ‘But let’s creep over, in case they’re Besiders.’

  ‘Besiders like you, don’t they?’ Pen frowned.

  ‘They won’t when they hear I’m against the Architect,’ Trista muttered. ‘And they’ll find that out as soon as they talk to the Architect’s people. They might know already.’

  Trista and Pen padded down the powdered road, keeping to the darkest parts of the street and avoiding the pools of gaslight. Finally they found a shadowed doorway from which they could watch the firelit group with more ease.

  The murmur of voices from beside the brazier was subdued, but sounded human. There was no eerie overlaying, no sinister under-voice. The figures seemed to be dressed in ordinary jackets and coats, furthermore, not the strange feather-garments the Besiders in the tea room had worn.

  ‘They seem—’ Trista began.

  ‘Shh!’ hissed Pen furiously.

  Trista shushed, and a voice from the group at the brazier floated over to her.

  ‘They were definitely here. That much is certain.’

  The speaker had his collar turned up and a scarf wrapped protectively around his chin, hiding most of his face. Nonetheless, there was no mistaking the voice of Mr Grace.

  Chapter 39

  A SHEEP IN WOLF’S CLOTHING

  ‘The girls were in the tea room with Miss Parish,’ Mr Grace continued. ‘We are not likely to get a statement from her any time soon, of course.’ He sighed. ‘I still think she might have been an innocent dupe in all of this. I did try to reason with her when we first met, but she wouldn’t listen.’

  Trista’s heart gave a flip-flop of anxiety. What did he mean, Violet would not be giving a statement any time soon? Please let him mean that she’s being stubborn, or just unconscious! Don’t let her be dead! She had been so sure that the snow meant Violet was alive. Now she felt the chill of doubt.

  ‘But everybody says the children left again,’ remarked a girl by the fire, rubbing her hands frenetically over the dull embers of the brazier. ‘In a yellow car.’ With a shock Trista realized that it was Dot from the cottage. Dot of the eggshells.

  ‘Yes. Yes, they do.’ Mr Grace pensively pushed more lengths of wood into the fire. ‘Over and over again. In exactly the same words.’ The firelight made his face look narrower and more haunted, a collage of sharp edges. ‘There is something odd about this place. Have you noticed that?’

  ‘Yes. It’s covered in snow. In September.’ The third figure at the brazier was a middle-aged man Trista had never seen before. He had shaky hands, thick eyebrows and a moustache that made him look like a colonel. ‘Is that what you mean?’

  ‘No,’ answered Mr Grace, ‘though I dare say the snow is their doing as well. No, the snow seems to be falling all over Ellchester. But here, right here, there is a feeling . . .’ He trailed off.

  ‘People here make my thumbs prick,’ muttered Dot.

  ‘Well put, Dot.’ The tailor gave her a smile softened by avuncular affection. ‘We are all feeling uneasy for a reason. There are Besiders in the Old Docks, I would lay money on it – and we have probably spoken to some in the last hour.’

  ‘Well, if you think the story of the yellow car is bunkum, then what—’ The moustached man came to a halt abruptly, seeing Mr Grace raise one hand in warning.

  ‘Charles,’ the tailor said evenly, ‘it would seem we have guests.’

  Trista stiffened, ready to grab Pen’s hand and run. However, she soon realized that Mr Grace’s gaze was not trained their way. Instead he was peering down the street towards two figures who were hobbling with a stilted but relentless gait towards the light of the fire.

  Both individuals wore the strange grey-brown feather-coats, and peeping out beneath them Trista glimpsed a plum-coloured hem and brown ribbon garters. It was the Besider couple they had met on the jetty.

  ‘May we join you?’ asked the woman, as she advanced into the halo of the brazier. ‘Your fire has such a gentle light.’ Her wet-looking gaze flickered disapprovingly towards the yellow aura of the gas lamps.

  There was the briefest hesitation and exchange of glances among the huddled threesome before Mr Grace hurried forward.

  ‘Of course – let me find you something to sit on.’ He hastened around a corner and returned with a pair of crates which he set down as seats for the newly arrived ‘guests’. Trista was uncomfortably reminded of the way he had played gracious host to her, during her visit to his shop.

  There was a growing knot of tension in Trista’s stomach. It was like watching a perilous scene in a play, and desperately wanting to call out a warning. At this moment, though, she was not sure whom she wanted to warn.

  Charles, the colonel-like man, passed a flask of brandy to everyone around the fire except Dot (who seemed a little disappointed). Everybody remarked on how peculiar the weather was.

  ‘So what brings you out into the snow?’ Mr Grace asked the couple after a pause.

  ‘We have just arrived in this town,’ answered the Besider man serenely. ‘We are waiting to be shown to our new home. The snow does not trouble us.’

  ‘Really?’ Mr Grace’s smile was perfectly charming. ‘Then welcome to Ellchester! Are you and your wife travelling alone?’

  ‘No,’ answered the woman in the plum dress. ‘We have . . . many . . .’ She trailed off, and locked gaze with her companion for several seconds in silent communion. ‘Friends,’ she hazarded at last. ‘Many . . . friends.’

  At this revelation, Dot shot her human companions an alarmed glance. Charles paused in refastening the lid of his flask.

  ‘Well, at least you are better dressed for the weather than we are, with those warm-looking coats,’ remarked Mr Grace.

  The Besiders’ oyster-like eyes glistened uneasily in the firelight.

  ‘You . . . noticed them?’ enquired the Besider man, in a tone that suggested that this was surprising and unwelcome news. ‘Yes. They are useful to us.’ He leaned forward, and there was a new intensity and suspicion in his wet gaze. ‘And what brings the three of you out into this bitter night without such warm coats?’

  Mr Grace hesitated only briefly, as if choosing a card at whist.

  ‘We are looking for a couple of children. Two little girls—’

  ‘They got into a yellow car,’ declared the Besider woman promptly, without waiting for him to finish.

  ‘And it drove away,’ finished her consort.

  There was a long, uncomfortable pause.

  ‘You cannot even see your city now, can you?’ said the Besider man at last. It was true. The whirl of fat, feathery flakes hid anything more than twenty yards away. He pushed a stick into the fire, stirring the embers so that they cracked and sent sparks in a panicky dance. ‘The snow has a thousand, thousand fingers. Imagine them pulling apart your city, piece by tiny piece. Imagine that this little street is all that is left. Adrift. In darkness.’ He smiled, as though paying somebody a compliment.

  ‘In the old days folk would have told stories,’ remarked his companion. ‘By the fire. To hold back the dark. But the dark always finds its way into the stories, does it not? The stories worth hearing, at least. The true lies.’

  ‘Everybody has dragged a tale to this fire,’ continued her male friend. ‘I can hear them whispering.’

  Charles cleared his throat, perhaps in an attempt to relieve the tension. ‘I’ve never been good at story-telling – not even when it comes to telling jokes at my club.’

  ‘Every person can recount their own story, even if they can tell no other,’ said the male Besider. His clammy gaze slithered to Dot’s face. ‘What is your story, little fox cub?’

  Dot swallowed nervously. Her laugh was forced and breathless.

  ‘Me? Oh, you don’t want to hear about me!’

  ‘But I do,’ insisted the man in garters. ‘I want your story. Give it to me.’

  With the last words, his expression ch
anged to one of urgency and hunger. His eagerness tore through his false human facade like a fang through silk. In that instant, the tension of the scene snapped, like an overwrought violin string.

  Eyes wide with panic, Dot recoiled a step from the gartered stranger, and Charles pushed forward, taking up a hostile stance in front of her. Both Besiders leaped uncannily to their feet, like two string puppets pulled up from a slump.

  At the same time there was a faint silken shunk, like a sword being pulled from its sheath. It was not a sword that Mr Grace had drawn from beneath his coat, however, but a long, wicked pair of blackened scissors. Trista’s stomach tingled as she recognized them from the dressmakers’.

  At the sight of the scissors, both Besiders sprang backwards a step, making yowling noises like cats. The man flung out one hand as if sowing seeds, and the snowflakes around him started to fizz and frenzy with new purpose, diving for the faces of the humans. His female companion gave a soundless wail that made Trista’s eardrums tingle and throb. Charles clutched at his ears and fell to his knees.

  One arm shielding his eyes, Mr Grace lunged forward, aiming the iron points at the face of the Besider man. The latter ducked and retreated, only to find the wall against his back. The tailor lunged forward once again, this time halting so that the points of the scissors were just resting on the man’s chest. His captive gave a shriek like tortured chalk and froze against the wall, quivering.

  ‘Tell that she-creature to stop singing!’ demanded Mr Grace. ‘Now!’

  There was a short pause, and then the Besider woman closed her mouth and the terrible silent noise ended. She stood trembling like a flag in a breeze, her eyes fixed on the black metal of the scissors. Snow settled on her cheeks without melting.

  Charles remained on his knees, dabbing at his ear with a handkerchief.

  ‘It’s your turn to tell tales, I think,’ continued Mr Grace, regarding his prisoner without sympathy. ‘To begin with, how many of your friends are in the docks area tonight?’