Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

‘It won’t kill it,’ answered the tailor curtly. ‘Mark my words, if it’s a Besider child, either it will jump up the chimney, or its parents will come for it. Either way, the Besiders will bring back your child to make sure you never trouble their family again.’

‘And if it’s a wooden doll?’ Piers was ashen-faced and shaking. He stared at his own hands tending the fire as if they horrified him. He did not look at the tailor, or at Not-Triss wrestling in his arms. He kept his gaze on the rising flames the way a drowning man clings to a timber.

‘Then the outcome is less certain. The Besiders will not bother to rescue a doll, but if you destroy it they may well lose interest in their game and return your child anyway. Or they may not – but you will still have rid your house of a monster.’

‘He’s wrong!’ Not-Triss called through her sobs, willing her not-father to look at her. ‘He’s wrong! I’m real! I’m real, and if you put me on the fire I’ll die!’ She could feel cobweb-tears oozing out of her eyes and down her cheeks, leaving long, shining, incriminating strands.

‘Don’t listen.’ The tailor was manoeuvring her closer and closer to the hearth, an inch at a time. ‘Mr Crescent, remember this – it doesn’t feel pain the way we do; it doesn’t feel fear. However much it screams, none of it is real. Are you ready?’

‘Oh God.’ Piers stepped back from the fire, and at last turned his dismayed gaze towards Not-Triss. His face softened for an instant, with the kind look he saved for only one person. Not-Triss felt a small dewdrop of hope before she realized that he was looking through her, not at her. ‘For Triss,’ he said under his breath. ‘For Triss I can do this. Yes. I’m ready.’

‘Then on a count of three, help me force it into the fire,’ murmured the tailor. ‘I’ll need your assistance. Even their children can be inhumanly strong and agile.’

His face was drawn and pained. With a deep despair Not-Triss realized that he was a good man, and that good men sometimes did terrible things.

‘One…’

Not-Triss struggled and wailed until the roof tiles popped and cracked like hot chestnuts. She screamed until the grain pots shattered on the shelves.

‘Two…’

She fought, clawed and tried to bite, all pretence forgotten.

‘Tr…’

But the rest of the ‘three’ never arrived. Suddenly there came a drenching rush of icy water from behind, soaking her back and shoulder and cascading down on to the hearth. There was a deafening hiss, a blinding surge of smoke and steam, and the room was plunged into near darkness.

Not-Triss felt the tailor’s grip slacken in surprise. In one wild, convulsive motion she burst from his grasp, nearly losing her balance. Before she could fall, however, a small hand snatched at hers and yanked her in the direction of the door.

Instinct took over, and she ran. Out of the kitchen door, through room after room. Then out through the front door into the cold, sea-scented darkness, sprinting all but blind over the shifting pebbles, with the short dark figure of Pen by her side.

Pebbles clacked under their hasty steps with a cold, disapproving sound. The wind was against them. Overhead the clouds rolled by, solemn, smoky and vast, the pale face of the moon surfacing now and then. The black waves seethed unseen against the black beach, only occasional frills of white foam visible in the gloom.

Pen ran alongside her, panting fiercely. Her silveriness of the day before seemed to have worn off, and she was now as dark and solid as she had ever been. Not-Triss could not even start to guess how Pen had contrived to suddenly appear here, let alone why the younger girl had decided to save her.

Panic had led them down the beach, because it was flat, and panic told them they needed to run fast. Panic had nothing to suggest when the beach ran out and they found themselves staring at the cliff-face of the headland that formed the end of the cove. They halted for a second, staring and gasping for breath, and Not-Triss recovered enough of her wits to realize how exposed they were.

‘Head inland!’ she hissed. ‘Into the woods!’

The pair of them scrambled up the beach, over some slippery wave-worn boulders and into the birch wood beyond. Staring up the steep, tree-covered slope that seemed to climb forever, Not-Triss felt the clammy touch of despair.

The woods were thick with wet rust-coloured bracken, which soaked them as they struggled up the slope, and hid their own feet from them. The damp moss and leaf-rot were softly treacherous underfoot. The silver-birch trunks gleamed in the darkness like lean and elegant ghosts.

There was no sound of pursuit behind them yet, but there would be. Not-Triss was sure of that. Mr Grace and Piers Crescent must have gone to find light sources. And scissors , said a fearful part of her mind. She tried to silence it, but she could not rid herself of a mental picture of Mr Grace bounding up the slope after her with a pair of enormous scissors, like the ‘long, red-legged scissorman’ from the old story, who cut off children’s thumbs.

They tried to throw me on the fire.

Her lungs started jerking with sobs. She couldn’t think about that . Not now. Not when she needed every ounce of breath for climbing. If they could just reach the road…

But Pen kept falling down. Her legs were shorter. The bracken came up to her waist, not her hips. Not-Triss caught her and helped pull her back to her feet over, and over, and over. At last, when Not-Triss stooped to drag her upright for the twentieth time, Pen pushed her away hard, so that Not-Triss nearly slid back down the slope.

‘I hate you!’ Pen’s would-be shout was muffled by breathlessness, and Not-Triss realized that the younger girl was sobbing with exhaustion and rage. ‘I hate you! You stupid… Why did you have to happen? I never asked for a stupid… stupid… toothy… stupid… monster thing.’

‘I know,’ whispered Not-Triss. It was all she could do to keep her voice quiet and calm. Her mind was a thundercloud, waiting for the first crack.

‘You spoil everything! Always! Even when you’re just fake you, you still spoil everything. And now you’ve made me run away again!’

There were lights further down the slope, tame white-yellow lights that swivelled and scanned, foliage feathering their beams. Hand lamps, perhaps, or electric torches.

‘Pen,’ breathed Not-Triss, ‘they’re coming. They’re coming after us, Pen.’ With despair she stared down at Pen’s round, stubborn face.

Please, Pen, please! I’m so close to screaming. Don’t make me carry you! I can’t! I can’t do that as well!

‘We’ve got to get up to the road, Pen,’ she heard herself say. ‘It’ll be easier then. And we’re nearly there.’

‘Liar,’ growled Pen, as she scrambled to her feet with painful slowness. ‘Lying… monster-face.’ Nonetheless she continued her struggle up the slope, sobbing for breath.

When the rain descended, at first Not-Triss did not know what it was. All she knew was that the air suddenly rushed downward, waterfall-cold, and the forest gave a long exhalation like a sigh of relief. Then she felt the chill, heavy finger-taps of fat raindrops on her skull and understood.

She closed her eyes in an instant of gratitude. The weather was on her side for once. Their scuffles and rustles would be much harder for their pursuers to hear now.

We must be near the top. Please let us be near the top.

It became a chant in her head, and the words had almost lost meaning by the time she scrambled over one more tussock, and found herself staring at the winding, puddle-silvered road. Her legs burned and her head felt light.