Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

In that moment, Trista’s fear of losing her quarry pushed out all others. She scrambled down the roof, and at the edge felt her knees tingle with the sense of the hungry drop before her. Thankfully it was only a small jump to the next house, and she leaped it with only a slight spasm of vertigo. Over the ridge of the roof, down the other side…

…just in time to see the three black carriages drop off the lip of a roof and vanish into the maze of streets, like frogs disappearing off the edge of a lily pad. The swarm swooped down with them and was lost to view.

With new urgency, Trista sprinted and leaped, sprinted and leaped, zigzagging her way through the roof maze. She reached the place where she had last seen the carriages and stared around her, shivering.

Somewhere she thought she heard the ting-ting-ting of a tram and the beating of wings, but the breezes were fighting and she could not tell where the sound came from. The ride was continuing – but where?

Trista stared around her for a little age, her eye baffled by chimney-smoke mirages and the rapid passing of bats, before the unbearable truth sank in. She had lost track of the riders.

She hobbled to the edge of the roof, peered over and felt her stomach flinch inwards like a sea anemone. Caught up in the frenzy of the chase, she had not felt that she was so very high, nor had the distances between the roofs seemed so very great. Now, as she returned to her usual perspective, she almost seemed to see the street dropping away to a perilous depth below her, and the gaps she had so confidently leaped widening like opening mouths.

She was a good two storeys above the ground, and her leaps from one roof to another had carried her the breadth of streets.

There was something flapping against her side. Staring down, she saw a loose ribbon trailing out of a tear in her flank. As she watched the wind whipped it free and carried it away. Instinctively turning to follow it with her eye, Trista realized that she could see other oddments scattered over the roofs she had crossed. Wind-chased scraps of paper, twigs tumbling over the tiles, hazy tangles of pale hair.

No.

Filled with a new desperation, Trista scrambled after the fleeing fragments. The ribbon had wrapped itself around a chimney pot, where it trembled temptingly, but flung itself free just as Trista’s reaching hand was within inches of it. The other pale pieces bounded away with the jollity of the wind and were swallowed by the night.

Shaking, Trista sank into a crouch on the roof’s edge, hugging her knees. It was a few minutes before she became aware of Violet’s voice still calling and calling her name.

Trista’s jaw seemed to have locked solid, and minutes passed before she was able to call back. There was a pattering of steps down in the street, and then the tiny figure of Violet emerged in the road below her.

‘Trista?’

Trista only managed a faint squeak in response. The street now looked terrifyingly far down, and the drop dragged at her stomach. She closed her eyes, hugged her knees and couldn’t move. The air was cold.

She was dimly aware of noises below, a rapping on wood, voices, creaks and bangs. Then something clacked loudly against the guttering near her feet. She opened her eyes, and her gaze settled upon the top prongs of a wooden ladder, shifting uneasily against the roof’s edge. After a sequence of creaks, Violet’s head and shoulders rose into view.

‘Come on,’ was all she said, very quietly. Trista edged over and shakily followed Violet back down the ladder. At the bottom, a stout man in a dressing gown viewed Trista with outrage.

‘You said it was your cat what was stuck on my roof!’ he exclaimed, glaring at Violet.

‘Thanks for the use of the ladder,’ Violet answered him blandly.

‘Here, wait! What was she doing—’

Violet turned on him.

‘My daughter sleepwalks,’ she declared icily, ‘and I didn’t want to spend an hour explaining that to you. What do you want me to do – put her back on the roof?’ Before the enraged man could reply, Violet took Trista by the hand and led her back to the alley where the motorcycle was waiting.

Thank you . Trista mouthed the words, but could not give them voice. Thank you for coming to rescue me. More than anything else, it was the way Violet had called Trista her daughter that set Trista’s eyes prickling. It made her feel that she had something small, fragile and warm to hold on to, something to put in the hole left by the fragments that the wind had chased across the roofs.

They rode back in silence. When they had slipped into the attic of Jack’s house, they sat down on one of the mattresses and Trista told of the chase, in whispers to avoid waking Pen. Violet hugged her all the while.

‘It’s not over,’ Violet murmured at last. ‘We’ll find them tomorrow. But now you need to sleep. You’re pale as paper.’

‘But I’m afraid to sleep!’ whispered Trista. ‘What if I fall to pieces before I wake up? What if tomorrow morning I’m just a pile of leaves and sticks tucked under a blanket? What if this is the last time I’ve got left, and I waste it all being asleep, then wake up dead?’

For a moment, Violet looked conflicted. Then her jaw set, and she took Trista by the shoulders.

‘You won’t,’ she said gently but firmly. ‘I’ll make sure you don’t. I’ll be watching you sleep. And if your hair starts to turn into leaves, or anything like that, I’ll wake you up.’

‘You promise?’ Trista felt the icy, titanic force of her terror recede a step or two. ‘You… you won’t leave me when I’m asleep and go out?’

‘I promise,’ said Violet, with a firmness in her tone that allowed no doubt. Her dark grey eyes were resolute as flint.

The long path down to the Grimmer had changed. Now it was knobbly with the roots of twisted trees. Rotting apples puckered on the grass like ancient, wizened faces. There were words to the birdsong and the leaves were softly laughing. Under Trista’s bare feet she could feel a flutter in the turf like a pulse. Ahead through the trees she could make out the sleek, obsidian surface of the water. An inky threat, a coal-black promise.

You have nothing of your own , said the Grimmer. Everything you have is borrowed, and when it is paid back there will be nothing left. Even your time is borrowed, and it is running out. One day. One left…

The wind rose and became bitingly chill. Trista could feel it starting to tear her apart like a dandelion clock…

…and then she woke, shivering with the cold.

She was in one of the attic beds, tucked under a blanket. Nearby, Violet reclined in a chair, her face set in a frown, her head moving in the discontented manner of one who is nodding in and out of slumber. Beyond her, in another bed, Pen was still fast asleep. White morning light was creeping in through the skylight.

Morning. My last morning. Only one more day…

The thought stared back at her, bald, cold and inescapable as the sky.

Trista’s breath was steam. She sat up, chafing feeling back into her hands.

Violet started fully awake, glaring around her for a baffled instant with glass-eyed antagonism.

‘Oh.’ She recovered herself, and let out her breath. ‘Still with us then?’ She came over and studied Trista with a speculative scowl, then drew her fingers through Trista’s hair, causing a faint, crackling rustle.

Violet stared down at the dead leaves in her hand, biting her lower lip hard.

‘It could be worse,’ she muttered under her breath.

‘It is worse,’ Trista said softly. She did not need to say anything more.