Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

There was another long pause, and Not-Triss heard her father sigh.

‘So. Where did you go?’

‘I… just walked around.’

‘Walked around?’ Her father’s prompt was so very gentle that Not-Triss felt her heart break. All she could give him was a nod, and the silence stretched and stretched as he waited for her to fill it with something more. She tried to think of a suitable lie, but the day had left her mind too battered to fashion one on the fly.

‘Just… around,’ she heard herself mumble.

‘Was Pen with you? Do you know where she has gone?’

Not-Triss shook her head to both questions, and there was another pause.

‘Triss, you’re hiding something from me.’ Her father’s voice was level but wounded-sounding. ‘Look at me.’

And she could not. She could not let him see that she had cobwebs softly oozing down her cheeks. She kept her chin ducked low to her chest, her hair a stubborn curtain before her face. The tears at the back of her throat tasted like sour cherries. Her fingers gripped the table edge until they ached.

‘Am I a monster?’ he asked, and Not-Triss nearly looked up at him out of sheer surprise.

She shook her head. No, I am.

‘Have I ever given you a reason to lie to me, or hide things from me?’

Not-Triss shook her head again.

‘Then don’t you think I deserve an answer?’ He waited a long time, knowing that his Triss would have to raise her eyes sooner or later. When she did not, he gave a long, somewhat pained sigh, then picked up his cutlery and began to eat.

Not-Triss wanted to sob at the thought of hurting her father. Her mind was a tempest, however, and she could not be sure that a human sound would come out if she parted her lips. She turned her head away so that her father would not see her face when she wiped her eyes, and it was then that she glanced at the window and saw Pen.

The younger girl was outside, beating on the window. She was a creature of coruscating silver once again, and her fists made no sound against the glass. Behind her, against the wall of the garage, Not-Triss could see occasional flickering words appear.

BANG

BANG BANG BANG

WHY WON’T ANYBODY LET ME IN?

The sight ruptured Not-Triss’s thoughts like a spade driving into a mosaic. Her first feeling was disbelief and horror. What was Pen thinking, trying to get everybody’s attention while she looked like that ! Even Pen with her talent for mendacity would have trouble explaining her transformation.

Then Not-Triss noticed that Pen’s clothes were sodden, her hair bedraggled and her face crumpled with exhaustion and despair. Slowly the truth dawned. She must have been out in the rain for hours to get that wet. What if their mother had locked the back door again after Not-Triss’s stealthy entry, so that Pen would be forced to knock at the front door on her return and face the music? If so, who could say how long Pen had been beating in vain on doors and windows, producing nothing but silver words hanging in the air?

With a frisson of guilt, Not-Triss saw that there were three long dark parallel marks scoring Pen’s left cheek.

WHY CAN’T ANYBODY HEAR ME?

I DON’T CARE ANY MORE, I JUST WANT TO COME IN.

I’M COLD

She’s nine years old. Not-Triss had almost forgotten this fact, so busy had she been thinking of Pen as a threat. It doesn’t matter how clever she is, she’s a little girl, and right now she’s cold and scared and wants her mother.

Without meaning to, Not-Triss made eye contact with Pen, and instantly regretted it. The younger girl’s face changed, and took on a look of pure frustration, resentment and despair. Pen could not possibly guess at the icy tension around the supper table. She would see only a usurping monster seated in her house, with her father, presumably eating her dinner, and enjoying light, warmth and love while Pen herself was shut out in the cold.

Not-Triss sat paralysed with indecision and guilt. She felt a wrench of pity for the small, soaked figure outside, but what was she supposed to do? If she pointed Pen out to her father, what good would that do? He would demand an explanation, and if Pen was miserable enough, she might just break down and provide one. How would that make things any better for Pen or for herself?

Hoping she was unobserved by her father, Not-Triss risked a small shake of her head, willing Pen to read her mind. However, there was no sign that Pen had noticed the subtle signal.

‘Can I be excused?’ Not-Triss asked impulsively, the tension becoming too much for her.

There was no answer but the scrape of fork on china. The words Not-Triss had spoken were not the explanation for which her father was waiting. His silence was a cold grey sea of disappointment and chilled her to the bone. Eventually he did give a small nod, and she fled the dinner table.

As soon as she was out of sight of her father, Not-Triss slipped down the hall, unlocked the front door and stepped out into the rain.

‘Pen!’ she called out as loudly as she dared. ‘This way! I’ve unlocked the front door!’ There was no response, however, and after a few minutes she ducked back indoors, leaving the door ajar so that it would be obvious from outside.

Just as she was passing back along the hallway, a short silvery figure barrelled past her from the direction of the front door, colliding soddenly with her and knocking her aside. Crumple-faced with misery, Pen thundered up the stairs, or would have done if her steps had not been completely silent. The floating words behind her retreating figure were a poor substitute as an expression of rage.

STAMP

STAMP

STAMP

STAMP

STAMP

And then, a few seconds after she had disappeared from view –

SLAM

Just as Not-Triss was recovering her balance, her father appeared in the hallway. He was confronted by the sight of Not-Triss, hovering at the end of the hall, and the trail of small muddy footprints that ran past her and up the stairs.

‘Pen’s back,’ said Not-Triss, suspecting that she might be stating the obvious.

‘So I see.’ Her father let out a long breath. ‘Well, that’s one worry fewer at least.’ He walked past to close the front door, and Not-Triss retreated upstairs, not wanting to give him time to wonder why she was still downstairs, or to notice the raindrops nestling in her hair.

Upstairs in her room, as she rubbed her hair dry with a blanket, she heard a faint rap of the front door knocker, then the sound of the door opening and closing. Hushed murmurs moved down the hall and into the sitting room, where they were muffled by the closing of the door. One voice was that of her father, the other that of another man, and she could not shake off the feeling that it was familiar. Half an hour later she heard the sound of the front door opening again and shortly after her mother’s voice joined the muted conversation below.

For a long time Not-Triss lay on her bedroom floor, listening to the buzz of three voices which rose, fell and interweaved without ever becoming comprehensible to her. They went on for two hours, and when at last the stranger left the house, it was too dark for Not-Triss to make out more than a solitary, male figure walking away with a purposeful step.

Outside Triss’s room, the evening came to an end. There was movement on the landing, muffled voices, door percussion. The faint rustles and ticks of the sleep-time rituals. And then, over the next two hours, quiet settled upon the house by infinitesimal degrees, like dust.

And this fine dust of silence lay undisturbed, even as Not-Triss opened her bedroom door and glided out on to the landing. She might have been a figure floating across a cinema screen.