Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

According to the clock it was ten past four. With every passing hour, there would be more people abroad on the streets. If she wanted to sneak through Ellchester without a risk of family friends spotting the eldest Crescent daughter, it had to be sooner rather than later. Not-Triss dug through the boxes of Violet’s belongings by the wall, until she found a carving knife and a cloth bag that she could ‘borrow’.

It’s best to leave Pen behind , she thought, as she donned her jacket and started looking for her shoes. She’s only little, and she talks too much, and I might be going somewhere dangerous —

There was a rustle of blankets behind her. She turned to find Pen sitting up, rubbing at her hair in a disgruntled way.

‘Where are you going?’

Not-Triss hesitated. Her tongue seemed to have run out of lies.

‘I’m going to steal a cockerel, then walk into the Victory Bridge,’ she admitted. ‘But I’ll be back in a few hours. Go back to sleep – it’s four in the morning.’

‘You have to let me come! You were sneaking out without me!’ Pen rubbed her eyes, scowling, and Not-Triss could not tell how far her own words had penetrated. ‘And I’m hungry,’ Pen added as an afterthought.

‘Then stay here,’ answered Not-Triss, almost keeping the snappishness out of her voice as she continued the search for her shoes. ‘Violet will feed you when she gets up.’

‘But I’m hungry now ,’ Pen declared obstinately. ‘Aren’t you?’

Slightly to her surprise, Not-Triss realized that she wasn’t hungry. But she had been at one point in the night, ravenously so. She had sat up, wildly famished, and the first thing her eyes had settled upon had been…

Oh.

She stooped and picked up a solitary shoe buckle from the floor. It was somewhat bent, and there was a row tiny dints that looked like the marks of pointed teeth. Pen moved over to peer at the buckle, then gawped at Not-Triss with awe and horror.

‘You ate Triss’s shoes!’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Not-Triss answered firmly, putting the buckle in her pocket. ‘I’m faster barefoot.’

Oddly, once Pen properly understood that Not-Triss proposed to steal a cockerel, this seemed to put all thoughts of sleep or breakfast completely out of her mind. It soon became clear that if Not-Triss tried to leave Pen behind, she would risk a row that would wake Violet and probably the rest of Ellchester.

‘You need me,’ Pen explained. ‘I’m your lookout. If I see the coppers coming, I’ll make a sound like an owl.’

They slipped out of Violet’s rooms, down the stairs and out through the boarding-house front door, which thankfully had a key on a wall hook. As the door closed behind them Not-Triss paused, peering at the front door’s tinted windows, then rubbed at one of them experimentally.

‘What is it?’ whispered Pen.

‘Nothing.’ Not-Triss bit her lip. ‘There’s no ice on the outside of these windows. And in Violet’s rooms there was – on the inside .’ Once again she recalled the single snowflake that had fallen out of a flawless sky and landed between Violet’s feet.

The cockerel never knew what hit him. One moment he was king of a small but dusty yard, patrolling between a row of runner-bean poles and his ginger-feathered harem. The next moment something landed behind him as softly as a moth, and a perfumed bag was thrown over his head.

As she leaped back up on to the fence, Not-Triss gripped the top with her toes and was glad of her bare feet. The rooster was larger than she had expected, and its struggles hard to control. After a while, though, it stopped twisting and squawking so much and settled for a subdued, nervous fluttering and twitching.

As she dropped down to street level once more, Pen watched her with a mixture of excitement, fascination and disapproval.

‘Your toes are strange,’ was her only comment.

A few streets later, Not-Triss was no longer so sorry to have Pen with her. The younger girl did at least seem to know where they were, and the quickest route to get to Meddlar’s Lane under the Victory Bridge. Once again, Pen’s career of running away seemed to be standing them in good stead.

Meddlar’s Lane was a steep cobbled zigzag of a road that climbed the hill, and at its crest passed under one end of the Victory Bridge before weaving unsteadily down the other side. It was flanked by dour buildings the colour of tobacco, plain as aprons and dull-eyed as morning-after drunks. Some were homes, and celebrated the fact by stringing washing-line bunting between their upper storeys. Many lay empty, however, having been bought up by the city at the same time as the land for the bridge, still ‘awaiting development’. They were split husks, waiting for the seed of the new to germinate and make them into something better.

Arching over all stretched the Victory Bridge, which cast the highest portion of the street into shadow. Gazing up at it on the approach, Not-Triss realized for the first time how truly vast it was, many houses high, its sandstone hues still murky in the half-light.

The two girls walked into the shadow of the bridge. There was a sound of dripping, and Pen’s footsteps began to echo. Not-Triss’s soles made no sound at all.

Not-Triss produced the carving knife.

‘Are you going to kill the cockerel?’ Pen asked, her eyes round.

‘No.’ Not-Triss sat down, and managed to find a crack between two of the pavement slabs. With considerable difficulty she managed to work free some of the mortar and slide the blade into the crack so that it remained jutting out when she let go. It looked like a cut-price Sword in the Stone.

‘Why are you doing that?’ asked Pen.

‘We’re going somewhere, and this will help us get out again,’ answered Not-Triss, hoping it was true.

‘What happens if it falls out of the hole?’

‘Then we can’t get out,’ Not-Triss answered, with as much patience as she could manage.

‘What if somebody pulls it out?’

‘Then we can’t get out,’ Not-Triss repeated, with slightly less patience.

‘This is a stupid plan,’ Pen told her, helpfully.

‘Thengo back to Violet’s house and eat canned cheese!’ snapped Not-Triss. ‘I didn’t ask you to come! I didn’t want you to come! It’s going to be dangerous and… and if anybody’s going to be hurt… then it’s best if it’s just me.’ She had not really planned the sentence, and when she ended it her face burned with shame and annoyance.

Pen’s face also looked like she might be flushed, but it was hard to tell in the shadow of the bridge.

‘I hate canned cheese,’ she growled. ‘It tastes like I bit my tongue. Anyway, don’t be stupid. Go on – tell me. How do we get in?’

‘Are you sure you want to come?’ Not-Triss felt like crying, but was uncertain why.

Pen nodded.

‘Then you’d better take my hand.’ She reached out, and was a little surprised when Pen’s small, cold hand was indeed placed in hers. ‘Walk forward, just the way I do.’

Facing the wall that formed one of the great pillars of the bridge, she began to advance. As the two girls passed the embedded knife, Not-Triss thought she heard a faint musical whine, a sound as frail as a moonlit hair. Go down Meddlar’s Lane under the bridge’s end, the bird-thing had said, turn your face to the bricks and start walking. Then keep walking until the sound of the traffic grows faint and you can understand the gulls…

Step after step. The brick wall approached, but as it did so it seemed to lean back, so that it was not a sheer face but an impossibly steep upward slope. They took another step, and the slope was less steep, almost climbable. Another step brought them to the base of the brick wall and now it was only a mild climb, like a hilly path.