Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

‘I was… I was hungry, Pen.’ How inadequate those words sounded. ‘I’m… hungry.’

‘I’m still hungry too,’ replied Pen mournfully. Trista could hear the smaller girl dropping to a crouch next to her.

‘I’m… I’m really hungry, Pen.’ Trista swallowed drily. ‘I think… I think it’s because I lost bits of myself on roofs last night, when I was chasing the Architect. Those pieces left a hole, Pen. And I think that’s why I’m so very, very…’ She trailed off, clenching her hands into fists.

‘Then eat more things!’ Pen sounded dismayed. ‘I can get you leaves!’

‘It’s no good,’ Trista said through gritted teeth. ‘They have to be Triss things.’

‘You can’t fall apart!’ shouted Pen, as if it was something she could insist upon. ‘I… I won’t let you!’ Before Trista could react she felt Pen’s arms thrown around her, with the desperate energy of a rugby tackle. ‘You can’t !’

Pen.

Trista closed her eyes and held Pen tightly. She clung to the one thing that felt warm and solid in her strange, unforgiving world.

Suddenly Pen gave a squeak and wince.

‘Ow! Triss… why are you spiking me?’

Trista’s gaze dropped to her hands. The thorns were out, curling from her fingertips like bramble briars, digging in through the shoulders of Pen’s light dress. Her tongue could feel the fine points of tapering teeth. And her arms were curled around something that was banquets, and lemonade on a summer day, and hot soup in winter… and there was a hole inside her like a bottomless shaft that a person might just tumble into…

She pushed Pen away as hard as she could. The smaller girl fell backwards, hitting the cobbles with a yelp. Winded, she stared up at Trista, and her expression of outrage and shock slowly ebbed into horror and fear.

Trista dared not stay another moment. She backed away, then turned and sprang on to the top of the nearest wall. From there she dropped down on the other side into a neighbouring alley, landing at a crouch with her heart hammering. Then she was away and running, head ducked down to hide her monstrous face.

Outside, the air tasted of snow. There was something brittle in the jolting of the breeze, and the sky was so low Trista felt she could leap and draw her claws across it. Instead she continued to sprint down lane after lane, her shoes quickly picking up grime and leaf-litter from the pavement.

Where was she? She did not even know. These were not the streets that made sense to the Triss part of her mind, with prim, trim rows of houses where everything was held modestly back behind painted front doors and Venetian blinds. Here, in the roads between the back-to-backs, all the front doors were open and bold life poured out into the street. It was like watching somebody eating with their mouth open. Children sped hither and thither in intense, smile-less gaggles like starlings. Mothers in hairnets chatted and peeled potatoes on doorsteps, fathers sat and smoked.

She ran on, ignoring the front-yard cycle-repair shops, the children huddling outside the tobacconist to beg cigarette cards off strangers and the salty reek of stalls selling oyster pie.

At last Trista glimpsed the outline of the Victory Bridge, a concrete rainbow bowing to the earth under its own weight. The sight of it set her internal compass straight. She was no longer running through a twisted labyrinth of her own mind. She was still in Ellchester, with the river somewhere to the right, and the town’s slate-scaled hills to her left.

At last she stopped for breath in an enclosed alley full of the cold echoes of falling drips. She gasped, and sobbed, and ground her narrow teeth.

I hurt Pen. And what if I’d eaten her?

I’m a monster. A monster. Mr Grace was right all the time. And Violet was wrong.

But Trista couldn’t think about Violet without feeling a warm, stubborn hope. She remembered the way that Violet had stared straight into her eyes with complete faith.

Maybe I nearly ate Pen. But I didn’t . And I won’t. I won’t hurt Pen, whatever happens. I won’t make Violet wrong, not after everything she’s done.

Trista swallowed, and in her mind’s eye she could see the smile of the Architect. How charming he had been on the telephone! And how slyly he had slipped in that suggestion that devouring Pen might save Trista’s life. Perhaps he really had felt a shred of fondness for Trista at the time, but his real motive had been his desire to strike at Piers Crescent’s heart as cruelly as possible.

‘But you couldn’t make me do it, Mr Architect,’ Trista whispered aloud. ‘You lost that game. I’m not your tool, and I never will be. I’m free and I’m myself, until my pieces fall into the gutter. And I’m not ready for that to happen just yet either.’ She wrapped her arms around her makeshift body, with its ravening hungry hole at the centre, and hugged her small, dark victory as tightly as possible.

I’ll find something to eat. Something that isn’t Pen. Something to stop me falling apart before evening.

Her thoughts scampered, cunning and ravenous as mice. Where could she find something dear to Triss? Was there anywhere else outside Triss’s own home that had been important to her? Unlikely. Triss’s life had been lovingly enclosed by the walls of her house, like a pearl imprisoned in an oyster shell. Trista could have wept with frustration.

An idea struck her, and took hold. It was Tuesday – and Celeste had told Cook that she could take the whole of Tuesday off. Piers would be at work, and Tuesday was the day Celeste usually played tennis and had tea with other members of the Luther Square Mothers’ Association. Margaret would soon have finished her work at the house.

It was just possible that even now the house was empty.

When she thought of venturing near the Crescent home again, Trista’s insides twisted into a black scribble of indescribable feelings. The hunger won out, however. With new purpose Trista broke into a sprint once more. Her feet barely grazed the surface of the puddles, and the echoes slumbered on undisturbed.

The wind was Trista’s friend, so icily chill that it cleared all but the most dogged from the streets. It dragged up protective coat collars, and everybody hurried by, paying one another no heed. Shop owners were too busy battening down their displays to notice Trista. Nonetheless she kept to the alleys and side roads.

She began to recognize landmarks, street names, achingly familiar to the Triss part of her head. But now she saw everything through a filter of her own strangeness and wildness. The familiar did not welcome her. It stared at her aghast. She was not coming home. She was an insidious shadow falling upon the neighbourhood, like influenza or bad news.

And then, at last, there it was. The little square with its tiny park in the middle. The glossy cars, now crystal-freckled with the first spotting of rain. The tall, pompous houses shoulder to shoulder behind their wrought-iron railings. Trista slunk along walls between hiding places, then skulked behind an unattended car.

There was a postman at the door. He knocked and waited, knocked again, then leaned back to peer up at the house.

Trista wet her lips as she watched him straddle his bicycle and depart. Nobody had answered the door. The house was empty.

She scurried from her hiding place, swift as a wind-chased leaf, weaving through the side streets until she was in the alley behind the houses. Pushing open the gate to the yard, she crept in, a pepper-tingle of fear sweeping across her skin. Triss’s memories were everywhere she looked, and they chafed Trista like stolen shoes. They did not fit her. She could not understand how she had ever thought they fitted.