Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

‘Oh yes… that would be… I really can’t go on like this.’ Pause. ‘Yes. Yes, please do. When?’ Pause. ‘Could you not leave work a little early? Just today?’ Pause. ‘I… I see. Yes. No, I do appreciate that. Thank… Thank you. Yes. Yes, I… I might have a little tonic to settle myself. We will talk this evening then.’

Not-Triss was back in her room before her mother had set the earpiece back on its hook. She listened as steps creaked unsteadily back down the landing again, and the door of her mother’s bedroom closed.

She knows! She knows I’m not the real Triss!

No. She suspects something, that’s all. She doesn’t know what she suspects. And she’s a bit hysterical and she’s been drinking her wine tonic. So maybe Father won’t have taken her seriously.

It was small comfort. Over and over, Not-Triss kept remembering the fear and distress in her mother’s voice. She was torn between utter misery at being the cause of her mother’s unhappiness, and selfish panic at the prospect of discovery.

I have to be normal. I have to be as normal as normal can be, just until I know what’s going on.

But I’m so scared. I’m so confused. I’m so… hungry.

Oh no, oh no! I can’t afford to be hungry again! I can’t afford to start eating like a plague of locusts, not now!

But there was no hiding from it. The clawing hole in Not-Triss’s stomach was back. What could she eat? The panic seemed to make it more intense. Her eyes turned involuntarily towards the wardrobe, where she had hurriedly thrown the rest of her dolls. She took a few hesitant steps towards it, even reached for the wardrobe door, then flinched back as within it she heard a rattle like the gnashing of wooden teeth.

‘I can’t!’ she whispered in despair. ‘I can’t! Oh, isn’t there something else here I can eat? Something that doesn’t scream?’ She tugged open drawers, dragging out the contents and throwing them on the floor. At last, amid the heaps of clothes, she saw a small box shaped like a wooden treasure chest. As she flipped the catch open, the hunger inside her stirred, like a deep-lurking pike sensing a ripple on the surface.

The box was filled with small glittering treasures, a tangle of brooches, ribbons and glass beads. Her borrowed memories told her that they had been gifts from school friends, cousins and Sunday-school acquaintances.

She could almost smell the real Triss’s love for them, like steam from a cooking pot.

Not-Triss drew a long necklace from the box, fascinated by blue-ish pallor of the mock pearls. She closed her eyes and tipped back her head, slowly lowering the string into her mouth, then swallowed once, twice. The beads were hard as gobstoppers against her tongue, and mint-cold. Then the whole string of them vanished down her throat with a swoop, as if they had found a life of their own.

A brooch followed shortly afterwards, its glass jewels fizzing on her tongue like champagne. Then she was snatching up a bracelet with one tiny boat-shaped charm. A part of her cried out that she couldn’t eat that, anything but that, even as she was gulping it down, the tarnished silver like sugar frosting.

Her frenzy ebbed. A wave of terrible sadness took its place. She had devoured things that could never be replaced, she realized. With a shaking finger she stirred the remaining items in the box. So many gifts, so many friends. But how many of these friends were still in Triss’s life? None, she realized. Her mother had considered some ‘too exuberant’ for Triss’s health, and her father had argued with the parents of others. Somehow, every time Triss had formed a connection, it had been severed. These gifts were the stumps of friendships hacked short.

The little silver boat, however, had been a present from Sebastian.

It had been a promise as well. Sebastian had told Triss that when he got back from France he would take her out boating again. To her surprise, Not-Triss found she had cloudy recollections of bright days out on the estuary in a little wooden boat, Sebastian rowing while Pen and Triss giggled and splashed each other with river water. How had that laughing girl become Triss of the sniffles, who needed to be protected from every breeze?

The box held the relics of a dozen dead friendships and one dead brother. Not-Triss closed it with a sting of self-loathing and guilt, knowing how much the little treasures meant to Triss. But, she realized, that was precisely why they were so irresistible. They were soaked with an essence of Trissness that made them delicious, and Not-Triss almost wept with relief when she realized that her hunger was now sated. Perhaps she did not need screaming dolls to satisfy her appetite after all.

‘I’m ready,’ she told her ashen reflection in the dresser mirror. ‘I’m ready to be normal now.’

Father came home at the usual time, and as she heard the Sunbeam draw up Not-Triss felt her stomach twist with anxiety. She peered down from her window as he walked from his car through the increasing rain, but she could not tell from his face how he had reacted to the afternoon’s telephone call.

After he had entered the house, Not-Triss could just make out the sound of a conversation below. She pressed her ear to the floor of her bedroom, hoping to make out what was being said, but the voices remained a bee hum, just recognizable as the tones of her parents. They went on for over an hour, her father’s voice sometimes rising in volume, but not enough for her to make out what he was saying.

By the time she was called down to supper, Not-Triss was almost trembling with apprehension. To her surprise she found her father seated quite calmly at the table and her mother absent. She had expected to find both her parents waiting side by side, ready for an inquisition.

‘Where’s Mother?’

‘She has gone to talk to the neighbours, to see if they have seen anything of Pen.’ For Pen, ‘running away’ often meant fleeing to somewhere safe and dry where she could stay until she felt that her absence had been long enough to worry people. The usual procedure when Pen disappeared, therefore, was to check with nearby friends and relations to find out whether she had unexpectedly turned up at their house.

‘Triss, sit down,’ her father went on, his voice quiet and firm, and Not-Triss realized that the inquisition had come for her after all. He took some time folding his paper, then looked across at her. Only two places had been set at the table, she realized now. There was a plate before her father, steam rising from the buttered potatoes and grilled mackerel. However, no food had been set down at the other place.

Not-Triss understood the meaning of this immediately. She remembered seeing Pen sit down to an empty place on many occasions. It meant that she was in disgrace, and that unless she could explain herself properly, or offer appropriate remorse, there would be no supper.

She sat, keeping her head lowered, so that her hair fell forward over her face.

‘Triss, I hear you frightened your mother badly today—’

‘I’m sorry.’ The moment the words were past her lips, Not-Triss knew that she had spoken them too soon. An immediate apology would look like a greedy bid for supper. There was a disapproving pause, and then her father went on as if she had not interrupted.

‘Your mother tells me that you left the house, without telling anybody, and tried to hide the fact – and when you returned you lied to her about it and then raised your voice. What could make you do that, Triss?’

‘I’m… sorry. I…’ Not-Triss thought about telling him the headache had made her do it, but her instincts told her that she was close to rubbing the gilt off that excuse. ‘I… don’t really know. My room just started to smell of… being ill. I was hot. And I really, really, really wanted to go out all of a sudden. So I did.’