Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

Mother sighed wearily, but obediently seated herself again. She noticed that Triss was sitting with her shoulders hunched to her ears, staring towards the open door. ‘Don’t you mind her,’ she said gently, squeezing Triss’s hand. ‘You know what she’s like.’

Do I? Do I know what she’s like?

She’s my sister, Penny. Pen. She’s nine. She used to get tonsillitis. Her first milk tooth came out when she was biting somebody. She had a budgie once and forgot to clean it out and it died.

She lies. She steals. She screams and throws things. And…

… and she hates me. Really hates me. I can see it in her eyes. And I don’t know why.

For a while, Mother stayed by her bedside and got Triss to help cut out her dress patterns with the big tortoiseshell-handled scissors from the sewing box that Mother insisted on bringing on holiday. The scissors snipped with a slow, throaty crunch, as if relishing every inch.

Triss knew that she had always loved pinning pattern to cloth, cutting out then watching the fabric pieces slowly become a shape, bristling with pins and ribbed by fray-edged seams. The patterns came with pictures of pastel-coloured ladies, some in long coats and bell-shaped hats, some in turbans and long dresses that fell straight like tasselled pipes. They all leaned languorously, as if they were about to yawn in the most elegant way possible. She knew it was a treat to be allowed to help her mother with the sewing. It was the usual drill, she realized, for when she was ill.

Today, however, her hands were stupid and clumsy. The big scissors seemed impossibly heavy and her grip on them kept slipping, so that they almost seemed to twist rebelliously in her hand. After the second time that she had nearly caught her own knuckles between the blades, her mother took them back.

‘Still not quite yourself, are you, love? Why don’t you just read your comics?’ There were well-thumbed copies of Sunbeam and Golden Penny on the bedside table.

But Triss could not concentrate on the pages before her. She had been ill before, she knew that. Many, many times. But she was sure she had never woken up with this terrible vagueness before.

What’s wrong with my hands? What’s wrong with my mind? She wanted to blurt it all out. Mummy, help me, please help me, everything’s strange and nothing’s right, and my mind feels as if it’s made up of pieces and some of them are missing…

But when she thought of trying to describe the strangeness, her mind flinched away from the idea. If I tell my parents , she thought irrationally, then they’ll get worried, and if they’re worried that means it’s serious. But if I don’t, they’ll keep telling me that everything’s all right, and then maybe it will be.

‘Mummy…’ Triss’s voice came out very small. She stared at the pile of fabric pieces now lying on the bed. They looked wounded, limp and helpless. ‘I… I am all right, aren’t I? It isn’t… bad that… that I can’t remember bits of our holiday, is it?’

Her mother examined her face carefully, and Triss was startled by how blue her eyes were, like the glass beads around her neck. Clear and fragile too, just like the beads. It was a kind, bright look that needed only the slightest change to become a frightened look.

‘Oh, sweetheart, I’m sure it’ll all come back to you. The doctor said so, didn’t he?’ Her mother finished pinning a seam, smiled and stood. ‘Listen, I have an idea. Why don’t you have a look through your diary? Maybe that will help you remember.’ From under the bed, Triss’s mother pulled a small, faded red leather travelling case with the letters ‘TC’ marked on one corner, and placed it on Triss’s lap.

Birthday present. I know I love this case and take it everywhere. But I can’t remember how the catch works. A little fiddling, however, and it clicked open.

Inside were more things that stung her memories to life, more of the pieces of being Triss. Clothes. Gloves. Other gloves in case of even colder days. A copy of the poem collection Peacock Pie . A compact, like her mother’s but smaller, with a mirror in the lid but no face powder. And there, beneath them, a book bound in blue leather.

Triss pulled out her diary, opened it and gave a small croak of shock. Half the pages in the diary had been filled with her cramped, careful scrawl. She knew that. But those pages had been torn out, leaving a fringe of frayed paper, still marked by the occasional whorl or squiggle from the lost words. After them, blank pages confronted her. Her mother came over, summoned by her cry, and simply stared for a few seconds.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Triss’s mother whispered at last. ‘Of all the stupid, spiteful pranks… Oh, that really is the limit .’ She marched from the room. ‘Pen? PEN!’ Triss heard her feet rattle up the stairs and then the sound of a handle being shaken and a door shuddering in its frame.

‘What is it?’ enquired her father’s voice at the top of the stairs.

‘It’s Pen again . This time she has ripped out half of Triss’s diary. And her door won’t open – I think she has moved some furniture against it.’

‘If she wants to imprison herself, let her,’ came her father’s answer. ‘She’ll have to come out and face the music sooner or later. And she knows it.’ All of this was said clearly and loudly, presumably so that the besieged party could overhear.

Triss’s mother entered the sickroom once more. ‘Oh, froglet, I’m so sorry. Well… perhaps she has just hidden the pages, and we can stick them back in when we find them.’ She sat down on the bed next to Triss, sighed and peered into the case. ‘Oh dear – we had better make sure that nothing else is missing.’

Other things were missing, as it turned out. Triss’s hairbrush was gone, as was a photograph of her riding a donkey on the beach, and a handkerchief into which she had proudly stitched her name.

‘I know you had some of them yesterday afternoon, before the accident,’ muttered Triss’s mother. ‘You were filling in your diary. I helped brush your hair. Oh, Pen ! I don’t know why she plagues you, love.’

The sight of the ripped diary had filled Triss with the same cold, squirming feeling in the pit of her stomach that the mention of the Grimmer had given her. It had frightened her, and she did not know why, or want to think about it. But it’s OK , she told herself. It’s just Pen being stupid and cruel.

Triss guessed that perhaps she should feel angry about it, but in truth there was something comforting and familiar about her parents being angry on her behalf. It felt like being coddled inside a horse-chestnut shell, protected by its inward downy softness, while all the spikes pointed outwards. It was, her recollections whispered to her, the natural way of things.

Now, if she let her mouth droop as if she was going to cry, the whole household would spin around her to try to make things up to her… and without even quite intending it, she felt her face start to pout sorrowfully.

‘Oh, Triss!’ Her mother hugged her. ‘How about something to eat? There’s some mushroom soup, the sort you like, or steak-and-kidney pie if you can manage a little. Or what about jelly? And tinned pears?’ The sick puckering feeling in her stomach intensified at the thought, and Triss realized that she was ravenously hungry.

She nodded.

Triss’s mother went upstairs and knocked on Pen’s door in an attempt to lure her down for lunch. Even from her sickroom, Triss could hear Pen’s shrill, incoherent cries of refusal.

‘… not coming out… not real … you’re all stupid …’