Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

Mr Grace’s tension seemed to subside slightly into relief. ‘Thank you, Miss Parish—’

‘Which means,’ continued Violet with the steely relentlessness of a torpedo, ‘that she isn’t Mr Crescent’s daughter, and he has no rights over her. Which means you don’t either. So she’ll be coming with me.’

Suddenly Not-Triss’s lungs were full of too much air, and she did not know what to do with it all.

‘Please do not do this!’ exclaimed Mr Grace. ‘Think of Penny! At least let me take Penny back to her parents! Remember, that letter gives me authority—’

‘No, it doesn’t.’ Violet crumpled the letter and thrust it into her pocket. ‘Not any more.’ She leaned forward and jutted her long jaw. ‘So I don’t think you’ll be taking Pen either. Now get out of our way, or I will start screaming the place down. They know me in this tea shop… and they won’t know you from Jack Frost. Who do you think they’ll believe?’

Watching Violet and Mr Grace stare at each other across the table, Not-Triss realized that they were about the same height. It baffled her, for Mr Grace had quietly become a towering figure of fire in her imagination. Only now, when he no longer seemed unstoppable, could she see that he was not that tall for a man. Violet was tall for a woman, stubbornly lanky like a thistle.

‘Violet,’ piped up Pen, ‘he keeps looking at the clock .’

Belatedly, Not-Triss realized that Pen was right. Mr Grace had been glancing repeatedly at something on the wall behind them.

He was clock-watching. He was waiting for something to happen. Perhaps when he had seen the three of them walk into the tea shop he had not followed them in immediately. Perhaps he had sent off a hansom cab or message to somebody… maybe even Piers Crescent.

There was a frozen moment during which the truth sank in, and everyone realized that everyone else was about to do something . The next moment, of course, everything happened at once.

Mr Grace leaped sideways, arm outstretched to block any attempt at escape, just as Pen threw her cup of cold tea into his face. Violet brought her knee up hard against the underside of the tabletop, tipping it on to its side and sending crockery, scissors and everything else tumbling to the floor. The tailor leaped backwards reflexively, and Violet gave the table another kick, knocking it on to its back like a turtle.

‘Run!’ she shouted.

There was now a path across the overturned table. Pen and Not-Triss leaped for it without more prompting. Out of the corner of her eye Not-Triss thought she saw Mr Grace make a lunge for her, but suddenly Violet was there as well and crockery was breaking and his fingers did not reach her after all.

At the street door fear jerked her to a halt, and she stared paralysed at the hanging scissors. The next moment, however, Pen had flung open the door, and the scissors could only clatter at Not-Triss harmlessly from behind the glass. Both girls hurled themselves out on to the pavement and ran for Violet’s motorcycle.

‘Get into the sidecar!’ Violet burst from the tea shop and pelted after them, her face red and her hair awry. The girls obeyed, Pen scrambling in after Not-Triss with painful haste. Violet did not bother with her goggles or hat, but straddled the bike.

She brought down her heel on the kick-starter and the world filled with the triumphant roar of the motorcycle engine. The forward surge was so sudden it yanked back Not-Triss’s head, jarring her neck.

The roads were full of traffic and Violet did not seem to care about any of it. They weaved between two carts, dared a car head on, clipped over some tramlines and came perilously close to the broad, downy feet of a shire horse. At the end of the road Violet ignored the furious waves of a policeman and cut across the path of a large mint-green Sunbeam that Not-Triss recognized all too well. For a fleeting second Not-Triss thought she saw Piers Crescent in the driver’s seat, frozen behind glass like a photograph.

Then they were past, and through the next gap, and nothing that ought to stop them did. The traffic just seemed to part for them again and again, like cows for a terrier. There was dust in Not-Triss’s mouth, and her mind was spinning and singing like a gramophone record. The wheels of disaster had fallen foul of a rut. The unavoidable had been avoided.

At last Violet stopped the bike in a quiet dockland street. After the engine had faded away she did not dismount, but sat for a few minutes with her face in her hands, almost as if she was praying. If it was a prayer she was muttering, however, it was one full of all the swear words that Not-Triss had ever heard, and quite a few she had not.

‘What happened to Mr Grace?’ demanded Pen, breaking the silence.

‘He’ll be fine,’ muttered Violet, without looking up.

‘What did you do to him?’ asked Pen in hushed tones.

‘You’ll work it out some day,’ Violet growled. ‘But I’m not going to be the one to tell you.’ She glanced across at the two girls, her face grimy with dust, and gave a small grimace. ‘Hop out then.’

They ‘hopped out’, and Not-Triss’s legs promptly gave way. Her mind was still spinning and singing, not helped by the engine fumes, and her limbs were shaking uncontrollably. When she tried to speak, she found her mouth was still full of thorn-teeth. Without meaning to, she started to sob, her eyes filling with cobweb. The world misted from view.

Suddenly there were two strong arms around her, holding her tightly, more tightly than Triss’s parents had ever dared to hug Triss. Violet smelt of oil, cigarettes and some kind of perfume. Her coat was rough against Not-Triss’s face. Not-Triss could feel Pen there too, scrambling to be part of it, resting her head against Not-Triss’s back.

‘You’re all thorny ,’ whispered Pen, shifting position.

‘I’ll hurt you both,’ whispered Not-Triss. ‘My thorns – they’ll hurt you.’

‘What, me?’ answered Violet. ‘Don’t be silly. I’m tough as nails. I’ve got a hide like a dreadnought.’

Violet did not feel cold or metallic like nails or a battleship. She felt warm. Her voice was a bit shaky, but her hug was as firm as the hills or the horizons.

There was a deserted boathouse on the water’s edge, so Violet pushed the bike inside, the girls showing willing by putting their shoulders to the sidecar. The roof had not been mended for a long time, and was full of bright squints where the sky crept through. The concrete floor was slick with old puddles.

Against one wall were stacked some crates that were almost dry, and serviceable enough as seats. Violet dropped herself down on one, wiping at her grimy face with her handkerchief and leaving red, rubbed swipes across her cheeks.

‘Don’t worry, nobody comes here,’ she said, evidently noting Not-Triss’s quivering tension. ‘Not during daylight anyway. It’s too damp to store anything, and no one will be coming back for these.’ She patted the crates with the flat of her hand. ‘It’s just a bundle of toys sent over from Germany a few years ago, handmade, part of their reparations for causing the War. The water got into the crates, so – oh, Pen ! Stop that!’

‘I’m not doing anything wrong!’ Pen protested, elbow-deep in a newly opened crate. ‘You said nobody was coming back for any of them!’

‘That’s because they’re rusty and rotten,’ explained Violet. ‘Well… don’t come crying to me if you get gangrene and they have to saw your arm off.’

Pen grinned at Not-Triss, holding up a tin clockwork airship which circled its mooring mast with a buzz. Not-Triss looked at it with a fascinated, hollow feeling. War reparations. We’re sorry your sons are dead. Have some clockwork airships instead. Then she wondered what it was like for the German families who had lost sons but who still had to make toys for British children, to say sorry.