Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

Perhaps this was still a trick. Perhaps this was a ‘rest cure’ after all. Perhaps doctors didn’t think that gas was ‘restful’ enough.

The house was still as snow. Not-Triss strained to hear her parents’ voices, and could not. How long had it been since they had left their room? Gripped by panic, she tore down the stairs, nearly stumbling on the sloping steps, and crashed into the sitting room. It was empty. There was nobody in the neighbouring parlour, nor in the poky eating room.

Dot looked up from chopping vegetables as Not-Triss hurtled into the long stone-flagged kitchen. She seemed surprised, her narrow face side-lit by the blaze from the great hearth.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘They’re gone!’ Not-Triss was shaking with a mixture of terror and anger. ‘They’ve left me behind, haven’t they?’

‘Who have?’ Dot frowned, wiping onion juice from her hands. ‘Do you mean your parents? They stepped out for a walk, lambkin. They’ll be back soon enough.’

‘I don’t believe you!’ shouted Not-Triss, fighting back the silken tears that threatened to creep into her eyes.

Dot didn’t seem at all upset by this outburst. Instead she pushed her tongue into her cheek thoughtfully.

‘Well, if they headed back to Ellchester, they’ve got a long walk ahead of them. I didn’t hear the car leave, did you?’ She laughed as Not-Triss’s face flushed with new hope. ‘You go and have a look, put your mind at rest.’

Not-Triss scampered back to the front door, and eased it open. With colossal relief she saw that the Sunbeam was still parked outside, its flanks darkening to cedar-green in the deepening twilight.

Further down the beach, distinct against the leaden grey of the sea, she could make out the figures of her parents. Her mother’s head had drooped to rest against her father’s chest, and he was holding her tightly against him. Not-Triss remembered seeing her father wrap his arms around her mother many times, but usually gently and firmly, as if he was holding together a broken thing long enough for the glue to set. This time there was something fierce and desperate about it, as if he needed the contact as much as she did.

Not-Triss’s mother raised her head and said something too soft to be overheard, and Not-Triss’s father nodded slowly and kissed his wife’s forehead with absolute tenderness.

Not-Triss carefully closed the door and returned to the kitchen, where she hovered shame-faced in the doorway.

‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Sorry I shouted at you.’

‘I’m used to it,’ Dot answered, flashing her a grin. ‘I come from a big family. Nothing but shouting, all day long. Only way to make yourself heard.’ She blew a stray tress out of her eyes and took stock of Not-Triss’s trembling uncertainty. ‘Do you want to come in and watch me make dinner? It’s warmer by the fire than it is over there. If you’re really worried about your parents driving away, you can leave the door open so you’ll hear the engine.’

Not-Triss ventured into the kitchen, fascinated by the great black kettle next to the hearth, the butter moulds, the blackened patches on the white plaster ceiling. She had never been invited to watch Mrs Basset cooking. It had been something that she knew she was not really supposed to look at, like ladies dipping into their powder compacts. On the table was a pile of crisp, dark spinach leaves and some turnips shaggy with black earth. Beside these lay a dead rabbit. The head and feet had been removed, but with a creeping of the skin Not-Triss knew what it was.

‘Did you ever see anybody skin a rabbit?’ asked Dot, picking up a small, sharp knife.

Not-Triss shook her head, mouth dry. But I don’t want to see it . Those were the words waiting on her tongue, but somehow she did not get them out in time.

It was all so quick, deft and no-nonsense. Dot slit it down the middle, then made a workman-like cut across, and next moment she was peeling the fur off the body, just as if she was taking off a jacket. Not-Triss stared at what was left. It was strangely bloodless, a glossy misshapen thing that looked absolutely nothing like a rabbit at all. She wanted to unsee what she had just seen, but she could not stop looking at it.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Dot, looking her up and down. ‘Not going to faint, are you?’

Not-Triss shook her head. The sight had been shocking, but Dot’s directness was curiously comforting. Seeing somebody dealing so calmly with horrible things made her feel that perhaps she herself was not so terrible, and might not strike fear into every heart.

‘No,’ Dot went on, ‘I don’t reckon you’re the fainter in the family, are you?’ She gave Not-Triss a conspiratorial smirk. ‘Your mother came over nervous, so your father took her out to find some air. And they said you were highly strung. All I can say is, you’re not the one I’d be dragging to doctors.’

Not-Triss could only gape. She was so used to everybody treating Piers Crescent and his family as sacred. And yet here was this odd girl fearlessly dissecting the Crescents’ private affairs, as swiftly and matter-of-factly as she had skinned the rabbit. Not-Triss was shocked and horrified, but also excited and fascinated, in an uncomfortable, pins-and-needles way. Dot was doing something else with the rabbit and the knife now, and Not-Triss looked away for a bit.

When she looked back, the rabbit was becoming chunks of pink meat, some pale, some darkly marbled. After that, the turnips were diced, the cubes glowing amber in the firelight. The greens were shredded. From time to time Dot muttered and added more wood to the fire.

‘What’s the point of having a great hearth like this if you don’t use it?’ she asked, and laughed when it spat sparks on her feet.

As Dot finished preparing the ingredients, Not-Triss looked around and realized for the first time that there was something missing, among the bound herbs and long spoons hanging from the beams.

‘Where are your pots and pans?’

‘I haven’t got them out yet. Wait a moment – I’ll show them to you.’ Dot receded into a dark corner of the room, and returned with a square box, about six inches across. She set it down carefully before the hearth and lifted the lid. Inside, Not-Triss could just make out white, rounded shapes nestling in a bed of fine, wispy straw.

Slowly and respectfully, Dot pulled out pale shape after pale shape and set them next to each other on the floor. They were eggshells, their crowns broken away and their insides scooped out. The ragged hole of each shell was spanned by a loop of cotton like a miniature handle. Although they were perfectly clean, Dot pulled out a handkerchief and began delicately wiping them, inside and out.

Then, as if she was performing the most ordinary act in the world, she took one of the shells to the table and very carefully pushed some shreds of spinach into it, followed by a cube of turnip, a piece of rabbit and a tiny dribble of stock.

Not-Triss stared at her, looking for the flicker of a smile to show that this was a joke, but Dot’s manner remained perfectly serious and offhand as she carried the shell back to the hearth and used the cotton handle to hang it from a hook over the fire, just as if it was a tiny cooking pot.

Not-Triss gave a snort of a laughter as Dot began doing the same with a second eggshell.

‘You’re not cooking dinner in those!’

‘Why not?’ Dot raised her eyebrows, looking surprised. ‘They’re my pots and pans. Don’t you like them?’ And she continued her task. Some shreds of spinach, a cube of turnip, a piece of rabbit meat, a dribble of stock…

Something about Dot’s po-faced expression set Not-Triss giggling helplessly. She looked away, but the sight of the tiny cooking pots over the fire made things worse. They just looked so absurd dangling there, dripping stock into the flames. Suddenly everything seemed incredibly funny, far funnier than it had any right to be. She rocked silently, web-tears rising to her eyes.