Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

‘And… if we do tell people you’re here?’ Not-Triss had the feeling that everything had just become much more complicated.

The Shrike stayed silent for a second or two, then closed his butter box. ‘We would have to leave. I… would survive. So would a few of the others, the clever and adaptable ones. The rest…’ There was nothing plaintive about his small shrug. Indeed he seemed rather cold and analytical. ‘Most of them would not find a way to live. Some are too old, or too lost in the past, some too strange, or too stupid. One or two are… unpleasant things, and perhaps they would be better off dead. But they are my people, and this is their last chance to change, and find a place in this new world. I would like to see them have this chance. And if they fail to take advantage of it… then let them join the lizard bones in your museums.’

Not-Triss glanced at Pen, and saw the same splinters of indecision in the other girl’s frown as she felt.

‘I can see you both still bear a grudge for the welcome you received when you arrived here,’ remarked the Shrike. ‘I don’t much blame you.’ He glanced at the rips in Not-Triss’s side and tutted. Again Not-Triss had a fleeting image of a strong beak cracking something small. ‘The children weren’t kind to you, were they?’

‘Children?’ Not-Triss realized that most of the figures had seemed shorter than adult height.

‘What else could be so cruel? Wait here.’ He went to the door and whistled, then Not-Triss could hear him talking. ‘The lady’s innards – bring them in. No, all of them. I’ll know if anything is missing. Enter in your own skins – no guises, no shapes.’

And into the workshop trooped a parade of figures with scowls and bowed heads, misshapen things with skinny flanks and ragged clothing. Many were dressed in coats made entirely of dull-coloured feathers. One had hare’s ears and a cleft between nose and mouth like that on an animal’s muzzle. Some had paws, and one a long, trailing rat’s tail. However, the slouch was that of children in disgrace. Each in turn trudged up to Not-Triss and placed something in her hand – leaves, twigs, twists of paper and finally the long piece of vine she had seen tugged from her side.

They were children. Monstrous children perhaps, but Not-Triss felt that she was in no position to criticize.

‘Little horrors,’ the Shrike said with affection, and gave the familiar phrase new meaning. ‘But what do you expect? Drop a wounded bird into a box full of kittens… and what you see will not be pretty. They are just doing what they do.’

‘Did you see them?’ whispered Pen. ‘They looked scared, Triss. Scared of us .’

It was true, Not-Triss realized, and she finally understood the enormity of the decision before her. Some of the people in the Underbelly were terrifying, but did she really want to destroy them all? What if the Shrike was right, and some of them were harmless, or helpless, or stupid, or just too young to realize what they were doing?

I’m a monster too. And they probably can’t help it either.

She leaned over and whispered into Pen’s ear.

‘Pen… I don’t want to force them all out so they die. Do you?’

There was a pause.

‘No,’ Pen whispered back, in a grudging tone. ‘They’re just stupid. And… we can always come back with more cockerels. I think he’s the scariest one. I don’t like him.’

Not-Triss realized that she did like the Shrike, but then again she had liked Mr Grace. Both had the same air of candour, the same sense that she was being allowed into their confidence.

‘Shrike,’ she said slowly, ‘maybe we’ll make the promise you want… but Pen’s right. We need two promises from you. One is answering all our questions truly. The second one… is that you never act against either of us. In any way. Ever.’

The Shrike was silent for a long time, and appeared to be thinking hard. The harsh, beaked look of his face intensified.

‘Clever little vixens,’ he said at last, rather sharply.

Not-Triss suspected that that counted as a yes.

‘Then we are agreed?’ asked the Shrike, and received a nod from both girls. He took a deep breath and started to speak. It was a slippery, musical language which sounded like the bird-thing’s attempt to speak the Architect’s true name. The words were unknown to Not-Triss, but then she sensed that they were not directed at her. The Shrike was speaking to gain something else’s attention, and as he spoke the whole room developed a thickening storm-tingle, as if something enormous was turning its ancient, passionless stare upon them.

It waited for their promises. It heard them. Something indefinable in the world changed with a silent click, like a key turning in an imaginary lock. The tension receded, leaving Not-Triss feeling lighter but queasy. Pen sniffed and gripped Not-Triss’s sleeve. Even the Shrike paled, his face puckering for a few seconds as if he was struggling to hide his discomfort.

‘So,’ said the Shrike, once he had recovered his colour, his smile and his sangfroid. ‘Ask away.’ There was still something a little forced in his tone.

Not-Triss had to swallow before she could speak. There were too many questions in her head, trying to crowd out all at once.

‘What am I, really?’ she asked. ‘And… And why was I made? Why did the Architect take away the real me? And where did he take her? What’s he doing?’

‘And where’s Sebastian?’ demanded Pen. ‘And what are you all doing here under Father’s bridge? And why is everything upside down?’

‘Slow, slow!’ The Shrike held up a hand to halt their flow, then dropped his voice to a confidential murmur. ‘I had better start at the beginning, or we will be running in circles.’ The Shrike looked Not-Triss up and down, and again she was struck by the mixture of pride and cold appraisal. ‘And while we talk, I’ll stitch up those rips in your sides, if you’ll let me,’ he added. ‘It goes against the grain to leave those holes gaping.’

Not-Triss remembered his promise not to act against her and warily drew her stool closer to him. As she did so, the nearest dolls shifted as well. Some flinched away from her. Some reached out slender jointed hands of wood.

‘Stop that!’ squeaked Pen, glaring at the Shrike. ‘Stop making them do that!’

‘I’m not.’ The Shrike’s eyes gleamed like stars in mist, as he threaded his needle. ‘ She’s doing it.’ He nodded towards Not-Triss, to her alarm and confusion. ‘But we’ll come to that.

‘I told you before, that my people have found it harder and harder to live in the places that were once our homes—’

‘Why?’ Pen’s question broke through his words like a bullet through a windowpane. The Shrike’s gaze flickered, and Not-Triss suspected that she had just seen a veiled wince. Certainly, when he started speaking again there was a good deal of reluctance in his voice. The point of his needle stung slightly as he set about darning her flanks.

‘Maps.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Mostly maps. We… used to live in the wilds, the deep forests, the bleak mountains, the unused places. Because they were unknown. Mysterious. Lost. Uncharted. And… we need that. We can’t survive anywhere that is governed by certainty, where everything is known and mapped and written about and divided into columns. Certainty poisons us, slowly.’

The Shrike gave Pen a small cool glance in which there was a good deal of dislike, and Not-Triss felt certain that her question was one he had hoped not to answer.

‘Or sometimes quickly,’ he added, and darted Not-Triss a questioning look. ‘I dare say you’ve noticed by now that there’s a certain human tool that has a quarrel with us?’ With his second and third fingers he mimed scissorish snipping motions. Not-Triss flinched, and the Shrike nodded. She noticed that he was trimming his sewing thread with a tiny serrated bone knife, rather than scissors.