Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

‘And then it climbed out on to the bank and stood up. And it smiled. And I ran away, back to the cottage. But it came after me. It turned up at the cottage, dripping. And everybody thought it was Triss.’

The ground no longer seemed steady under Triss’s feet. Some stealthy sea seemed to be stirring under the turf, its waves rising and falling with each of her breaths.

‘But I am Triss,’ she said. Now it was her own voice that sounded distant and unreal.

Pen said nothing, but just stared up at her, her eyes as hard as bullets.

‘I am Triss!’ Triss tried to give the words more force.

And still Pen’s dark eyes just stared and stared.

‘I am Triss!’ screamed Triss, using all the power in her lungs, as if she could force the words to be true. ‘You’re lying!’ The wind was building, and as the clamour of the leaves increased, it sounded as if the very air was seething.

Pen made a lunge to the side, scrambling over the exposed roots away from Triss. As the younger girl stumbled to her feet, Triss leaped forward and lashed out, slapping Pen across the face as hard as she could. Pen gave a high, thin shriek of shock and pain and reeled back against a tree, clutching her cheek. She gave Triss one last hard-eyed, maddened glance, and far too late Triss realized what the look meant, what it had always meant. Not anger, not hatred at all, but terror.

Then Pen turned and fled unsteadily towards the park gate, the film-light still coruscating over her small form.

The girl who had been left behind did not chase her. Slowly she turned her hand and stared down at it, noticing the hint of red dampness on the tips of her middle three fingers.

I hurt Pen. I really hurt her somehow. I made her bleed.

She stared at those faint brown-red smudges for a long while, while the wind roared like a great page tearing in two.

‘I’m Triss,’ she whispered.

But she knew it was not true.

Not-Triss stood in the park with reddened fingertips, and wanted to run. Run, run, run from the monster. How could she though? She was the monster.

But she ran anyway, pounding street after grey street into numb thunder with her foot-soles. The wind blasted into her face and she bared her teeth against it until they ached with the cold.

Where could she run? Home?

Mummy Daddy make it better make it not be true…

But they could not make it better. They could not change the truth. And she was not their little girl. Why would they even try to help her? If she told them what she was, they would surely recoil in horror.

Not-Triss tore her way into an alley across which washing lines zigzagged. As she raced through this rippling labyrinth, she wailed and lashed out, feeling cloth rend under her fingers. The sound that came from her mouth was not one a human girl could have produced. In it she heard the splintering lament of wind-felled trees, the steel cacophony of gulls, the whining note at the heart of a storm wind.

On all sides she heard doors slam and voices raised in consternation. She hurled herself onward, making herself scarce before anybody could come to investigate.

She burst out of the alley and into the next, and her feet carried her through one walled byway after another. There was a reek in her nose, a slick dark green smell of water that was old enough to be clever and dangerous. The paving stones gave way to worn cobbles, and then her feet were drumming on a wooden jetty and the wind was as clammy as a dead man’s kiss. The sky opened out before her like a wide white page scrawled with tiny bird shapes. And there surged the Ell, its grey skin rippled and scuffed, so broad that the far shore was fringed with toy trees and matchbox houses.

At the jetty’s edge Not-Triss’s legs gave way and she dropped to her knees. Her sobs sounded more human now at least. Tears misted her vision now, but they stung bitterly and clogged her lashes. When she dabbed at her eyes, the tears came away in long, clinging strands, not blots of salt water. She stared at the gleaming gluey threads in confusion before realizing what they were.

Spider-silk. She was weeping spider-silk.

Numb with despair, she stared down at the glossy coffee-coloured river, hearing it click and lick against the quay supports.

She felt as if it had been lying in wait for her. She had climbed out of the Grimmer. Perhaps these waters before her were destined to close over her head, completing the circle.

Triss’s parents could not make everything go away. The river could. Perhaps it would be better for everybody else if Not-Triss did let herself tumble forward into the water and took the monster out of the world…

‘But I don’t want that!’ she exclaimed aloud, frantically rubbing the cobwebs from her cheeks. ‘Even if I’m not Triss, I’m still real! I’m still somebody, even if I don’t have a name! And I don’t want to drown myself, or fall apart! I don’t want to die!’

And , whispered a sly, unworthy voice in her head, the real Triss is gone. Why can’t I be Triss now instead? If I fix myself and don’t tell anyone where I came from, I could be a really good Triss – help round the house, maybe even be kind to Pen. I could be a better Triss than the real one.

Almost as soon as this thought formed in her mind, however, Not-Triss recalled Pen’s description of the kidnap, of her other self being bundled into a car despite her struggles. Where was the real Triss now? What was happening to her? Was she in danger?

‘I don’t care!’ Not-Triss clamped her hands over her ears, as if she could shut out her own thoughts. ‘It’s not my fault! And… and I’m Triss too! They’re my family too! It’s my home too! I’ve got nowhere else to go!’

But she did care. She could not help it. Somewhere her namesake was the captive of the Architect, and might be weeping just as bitterly. Perhaps she was tearfully waiting to be rescued by her loved ones, unaware that nobody knew she was even missing.

Nobody. Nobody except me and Pen. If I don’t do anything, she’ll be murdered, or eaten by cinema screens.

‘But… if she comes home, what happens to me?’ Not-Triss whispered, her face in her hands, tear strands tickling at her fingers. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

It was fairly plain that she needed to do something. If she did not, soon there might be no Trisses left whatsoever.

The world looked different as Not-Triss walked back. It was as if she was letting herself see with her true eyes for the first time, no longer trying to convince herself that everything looked normal. There was a new glisten to everything. Walls and trees conspired as she passed, their silent murmurs spreading through the air like blood into water. She was noticing things, like the way her own feet made little sound however fast she walked.

Before, she had felt desperate and terrified, but all the while she had at least sensed the safety net of her parents’ love stretched invisibly below her. Now she knew how small a tug would be needed to drag it from beneath her. Her thoughts performed the same manic carousel all the way home.

I have to find out what’s going on. Then maybe I can discover what’s wrong with me. Maybe I can find a way to rescue the real Triss, and help Sebastian. And maybe… maybe… maybe… if I do that, then they won’t mind there being two Trisses.

But she could not believe it, and when at last the Crescent home came into view, her emotions leaped and flapped like washing in a tornado.

I can’t let them know what I am, I can’t, I can’t! But Pen knows! How can I stop her telling everybody? No, Pen won’t tell. She can’t, not without admitting what she did.