Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

The back door was locked.

Above her, the bedroom windows beckoned. Trista felt the leap as an electricity in her legs, even before she sprang. Her fingers closed on one of the sills, and she tugged herself up with ease.

She scrabbled at the window, her thorn-claws leaving scratches on pane and frame alike. Then she managed to heave up the sash and pushed her way in past the soft lavender-coloured curtains. The room beyond smelt of powder, potpourri and the slightly acrid scent of wine tonic. It was Celeste’s room.

Trista ventured out on to the landing, then opened the door into Triss’s room. Her heart ached as she saw how carefully the room had been tidied and aired, the bed meticulously made, with Triss’s nightdress folded on the pillow. It was like the scene from Peter Pan where the Darlings discover that their rooms are poignantly waiting for them to come back.

But I’m not the one it’s waiting for.

And as her hunger enveloped her, Trista tore the room apart.

She tipped the chest of drawers, so that all the drawers spilled out on to the floor, then scrabbled through the fallen clothes, rending them in her haste. Triss’s false pearls crunched like sugar. Books were clawed from the shelves, torn and swallowed, their leathery bindings dropped to the floor like discarded fruit husks. The straw boater and St Bridget’s blazer were bittersweet and heady and nearly choked her. The bedside table tumbled and the medicine bottles smashed. Now the carpet beneath Trista’s feet was covered in broken glass, coloured pills and sticky puddles of cordial and cod-liver oil.

All the while the dolls shrieked and clattered in outrage and fear, beating their fists of china and wood against their shelves. She grabbed a rag doll, feeling it twist and struggle in her hands, and heard it wail as her mouth engulfed it. Two clothes-peg dolls followed, then a porcelain Pierrot. The screams filled Trista’s ears as she fed in a frenzy, hardly knowing if one of the voices was hers. She was hardly aware of the cobweb tickle of her tears rolling down her cheeks. Her mind was filled with a white madness, and all sounds were meaningless.

She barely noticed when there was another noise beneath the hubbub, the sharp distant slam of a front door. Only the thunder of steps on the stairs roused her from her frenzy.

Fear sobered her in one drenching instant. Trista sprang for the bedroom door, leaping out on to the landing just as Piers Crescent came into view around the corner.

He stopped, stared. His colour and strength seemed to leak out of him. Trista had never seen him look so hollow-eyed, so desperate.

‘Triss…’ It was a barely audible whisper. A tiny, miserable flame of hope ignited in his eyes, and he took an eager step forward.

Terrified, Trista recoiled, baring her thorn-teeth in a hiss. Her mind was a furnace. All thought singed and sizzled into nothingness.

It brought Piers to a dead halt. Trista took advantage of that moment to flee into Celeste’s room. She had just leaped on to the sill of the open window when Piers’s voice reached her.

‘Wait! Please! Please! ’

Trista cast a glance over her shoulder into the room behind. Piers had stopped in the doorway, holding out one hand as if he could detain her from a distance. Her knees were still bent, poised for the drop to the yard. Something in his face, however, made her hesitate for an instant.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said, with a steadiness that evidently took some effort. ‘Please – I want to talk. I want to make terms.’

‘ Terms? ’ The word exploded from Trista, and the voice that spoke it was not that of a little girl. ‘ You tried to throw me in the fire! ’

If I drop now, I can outpace him, I know I can…

‘Then your argument is with me, not with my daughters.’ Piers let out a long breath. ‘Your master’s quarrel is also with me. Tell your master – or your father, or whatever he is – that I want to make a bargain. I will hand myself over to him and suffer whatever revenge he sees fit. All I ask is that my girls be brought home safely.’

Master? Father?

Trista did not know what to feel. Triss-feelings of love, loyalty, hurt. Trista feelings of anger, outrage, fear.

‘You don’t understand,’ she said, her bitterness softened by sadness. Her voice sounded more human this time, but older than the hills. ‘You don’t understand the Architect, or me, or your own daughters. You don’t understand anything. You’re a loving father, but you’re blind. Blind enough to be cruel.’

Piers was in the dimness of the unlit room, but Trista thought she saw a pucker of tension and outrage in his cheek. It must have been years since anybody dared defy him, let alone speak to him in such terms. He took a hasty half-step into the room, but halted again when Trista tensed on the sill.

‘Then tell me – what can I do to get my girls back?’ His tone of desperation tore at her heart, in spite of everything. ‘What does the Architect want from me?’

‘He wants you to suffer,’ hissed Trista. Even now, she feared that the bird-things might be nearby and overhear her talking about the Architect. ‘Once upon a time you were useful to him. But then you broke the bargain. Now all he cares about is making you wish you were dead, and he knows the worst way he can hurt you is through your family. If you try to make a deal with him, he’ll pretend to listen, and tie you up in clever words, but he won’t give up his revenge.’

Piers stared at her for a few moments.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ he asked at last.

‘I tried to explain before,’ Trista answered with feeling, ‘but you wouldn’t listen. I don’t work for the Architect. I’m not his child or his servant. He had me made to look like your daughter, so you wouldn’t notice she was missing, and he gave me Triss’s memories. But I didn’t know what I was. ’ Trista could not keep the rage and pain out of her voice. ‘I thought I was Triss. When I looked at you, I saw the father I loved . Then everything started going wrong with me, and I was terrified. I thought I was going mad. And I tried so hard to be well, so you wouldn’t have to worry about your little girl.

‘And then you tried to throw me on the fire. Do you know what would have happened if you had? I would have burned to death, screaming. That’s all. It wouldn’t have brought Triss back. Because the Architect doesn’t care what happens to me.’

Piers stood staring at her, lips pressed together as if the truth was a pill he was trying to avoid swallowing. He wanted to dismiss her words as changeling lies, she could see that, but even now she knew a hundred small details were falling into place in his mind with painful clarity.

For years the whole of Ellchester had held a flattering mirror in which Piers could see himself reflected. A man of vision and community spirit, a leading figure of the city, an ideal father and husband. Now Trista was holding up a very different mirror, with a twisted image he had never seen before. To his credit, however, he did not look away.

He made two abortive attempts to speak, before managing to frame words.

‘I was told that you—’

‘And Mr Grace believed what he said,’ Trista interrupted. ‘But he was wrong.’

‘I did not know.’ Piers dragged his fingers back through his hair. ‘I… All I thought of was my daughter. It… It seemed the only way to save her. That is all I care about – protecting my little girl.’

It was not quite an apology, for what apology could Piers give to the feral thing on his windowsill? It was close though. Perhaps this should have made Trista feel a little better, stirred her sympathies. Instead his words stung her to the quick.