Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

A moment before, Not-Triss could have sworn that the shop had been an ironmongers. Now the window display held angel cakes, strawberry puffs and glossy Bakewell puddings clustered obsequiously around vast iced creations in the shape of sleeping swans and full-skirted maidens glittering with candied fruits. Beyond them were great jars of gleaming, multicoloured sweets – gobstoppers, lollipops, barley sugars, fruit bonbons, caramels, liquorice allsorts and the floury, jelly blobs of Peace Babies. There were other sweets that were unfamiliar, however – tiny silvery eggs, mint-freckled pebbles and what looked like pale yellow strawberries with black leaves.

‘ Look ,’ Pen said again, in tones of awe, her eyes as large and round as Ferris wheels. ‘Triss – do you have any money?’

‘No – and we don’t have time to go shopping!’ Not-Triss could have kicked herself for letting the easily distracted Pen come with her. That the younger girl had absent-mindedly fallen back into calling her ‘Triss’ again did not reassure her much either.

‘I’m really hungry,’ declared Pen stubbornly, resisting Not-Triss’s attempts to draw her away. ‘I could go in and… you could make a distraction out here. Pretend to be ill, or—’

‘No!’ hissed Not-Triss, scandalized. ‘I’m not helping you steal sweets!’ She cast a glance over her shoulder to make sure that nobody was listening. ‘Pen – things aren’t the same here. If they catch you stealing, they won’t just call your parents or the police. They’ll…’ She trailed off, sure of her instincts but not her facts. ‘They’ll… eat you!’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ mumbled Pen, but the seeds of doubt had been sown. A moment later she flinched back from the window, eyes bright with shock. Not-Triss glanced back towards the display, and a motion caught her eye. The caramels in one of the great jars were in scuttling motion, their foil wrappers gleaming like beetle carapaces. Face reddening, Pen at last let herself be dragged away from the sweet shop.

‘Where are we?’ asked Pen. ‘What is this place? What’s wrong with it?’

‘I don’t think any of it is real,’ Not-Triss whispered back. ‘Or maybe it’s real, but isn’t the way it looks. I think everything and everybody here is… strange and dangerous. Like the Architect. And the cinema screen that tried to eat you. And like me. We need to hurry—’

Before she could finish her sentence, Pen let go of her hand and sprinted away through the crowd. When Not-Triss caught up with her, Pen was stooping to peer at a game of dice two boys were playing in the dust. When the dice tumbled to a halt, Not-Triss could see that instead of spots they had faces etched on them, all with their mouths open as if trying to call out.

‘Don’t!’ Not-Triss caught Pen’s hand as she was reaching for the dice. ‘Remember that cinema screen?’

But Pen’s attention had already moved on, closely followed by the rest of her. It was all that Not-Triss could do to keep up, and more than she could do to stop Pen tugging on ropes, straining to pluck peaches from iron trees or leaning into brine barrels and splashing the water, so that she could watch the sky-blue fish within leap and shimmer.

With every new distraction that drew Pen on, Not-Triss felt a creeping and increasing sense of panic. The pins and needles of a hundred gazes prickled across her skin. She knew in her blood that she and Pen were perches in a pond full of pike, and that every thoughtless word or action from her small companion was drawing in grinning predators. Soon they would cast off all friendly disguise…

But we’ve been noticed from the start , she realized. It’s all a lie and a game. The people around us, they’re only pretending to go about their business. The truth is, they’re watching us. All of them.

What had the bird-thing said about staying safe in the Underbelly?

Pay no heed to any music that you hear playing. And whatever happens, remember why you are there.

‘Pen, we mustn’t get distracted!’ she exclaimed. Pushing through the crowd, she found Pen standing before an imp-adorned fountain, staring at its crystal arcs of water with mute fascination. Not-Triss grabbed at the smaller girl’s hand for the tenth time and tried to pull her away.

Pen did not move. She continued to gaze straight ahead, as if mesmerized.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ whispered Not-Triss, with rising alarm and concern. ‘Oh, please, please, please , Pen – we have to stay on the move! They’re closing in – I can feel it!’ She dragged on Pen’s arm with increased urgency. Her efforts were of no avail. Pen stirred not a step, not a muscle.

Pen’s hand was very cold. Not-Triss realized that the smaller girl was neither blinking nor breathing.

Not-Triss’s thoughts somersaulted, and fell into place. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes tightly for a few seconds. When she opened them again, her vision was clear. She was standing in the street unaccompanied, and firmly gripping the handle of an old pump. In height and bulk it was almost the same size as Pen, and was painted the same blue as her jacket.

She spun around, and was just in time to see the real Pen disappearing around the corner of the street, following a tall and stately woman in a long green coat. Not-Triss pursued at a sprint, and caught up with them just as the woman was opening the front door of a honeysuckle-draped house. Warmth and the smell of a roast dinner drifted from within.

‘Where are you taking her?’ Not-Triss seized Pen’s shoulder, bringing her to a halt at the very threshold. Pen wore a puzzled frown, as she often did when she was not completely awake.

‘My little girl is tired and hungry,’ said the woman. She was taller than Triss’s father, and yet her height did not look freakish. Her smile was sunlight on the skin. Her grey, summer-mist eyes understood everything, forgave everything. ‘I am just taking her home to supper, and then a nice, long sleep in a goose-feather bed.’

Not-Triss could hear the gulls laughing and laughing.

Seven years’ slavery , they mocked. Seven years scrubbing her floors and grinding her flour. Seven years nursing her brats as they bite and scratch.

‘She’s not your little girl,’ Not-Triss declared, dragging the sleepwalking Pen away from the door, ‘and we’re not here to see you !’

The woman gave the kindest of smiles, and without moving or changing she became taller. Or perhaps Not-Triss was becoming smaller, frailer, fading away before the warmth of that smile like steam on a window.

‘Triss?’ Pen blinked, still sounding sleepy. ‘What’s happening? Where are we?’

All around the false city sounds became muted, as if the crowd had ceased all pretence at milling and had halted in their tracks to gaze silently on the two girls. The buildings lost their cheerful, daylight appearance and once again became the strange toadstool tumble Not-Triss had first glimpsed, drab as old bones. She was gripped by a terrible fear.

A cold and stinging pain tore through her side. With a short shriek she spun around, and as she did so, a few dead leaves fluttered to her feet like brown confetti.

Looking down, she saw a tear in her dress, where it covered her flank. To her horror, she realized that through the rip she could see no skin, only dead leaves, fern fronds and twists of paper. Something had torn right into her , and her stuffing was falling out.

As she clapped her free hand to her side, she felt a similar rending pain in her other flank. She turned in time to catch a couple of child-sized figures stooped to peer at her exposed insides, teasing out leaves with their long fingers. She could feel the scrape of their fingernails like glass shards in her stomach.