Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

This time it was not just rage on her own account but a turbulence of feelings – anger, pity, frustration and pain. Her mind was full of her other self, whom Trista had envied and despised. Triss the cherished. Triss and her nervous ailments, swaddled to suffocation…

‘I know.’ The bitter words were out before Trista could stop them. ‘She’s your precious treasure. That’s why you like to bury her.’

‘What?’ Piers reddened around the neck. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You and your wife,’ Trista answered starkly, ‘have been burying Triss alive for years. She’s miserable. She has no friends. She hardly ever goes out, and never gets to try anything new or difficult. She’s twisted up inside with boredom, and it’s poisoning her.’

‘How dare you!’ Despite Piers’s state of shock, this was evidently a blow too keen. ‘My daughter needs special care! If you had any idea of the pains my wife and I have taken… Theresa is ill !’

‘Triss is ill because you and your wife need her to be ill!’ snapped Trista. ‘Apart from Pen, your whole family is ill! None of you have been well since Sebastian died!’

She had broken the taboo and spoken the sacred name. A shocked silence followed. Piers seemed to be having trouble breathing. Trista knew her words were harsh, but they had the bitter taste of truth. They needed to be spoken, and there was no gentle way to do that.

‘Sebastian died,’ Trista went on. It was too late to stop. ‘You were supposed to be in charge of the family, and in control. But he died and you couldn’t stop it happening. You tried. You made your bargain with the Architect, and it made everything worse.’

Piers had no answer. The tormented letters from Sebastian were in the very next room.

‘I think you tried to make up for it.’ Trista was probing deep in the family’s wound now, and she knew it. ‘Maybe you promised yourself that you would protect your other children from all danger. But you couldn’t do that unless they were in danger. That’s why Triss had to be ill – badly ill – so that you could save her, over and over again, the way you couldn’t save Sebastian.

‘I know you didn’t plan it like that – you thought you were just protecting her. But really all this time you’ve been teaching her to be ill. I know – I remember it all. I remember being told, over and over again, you can’t, don’t even try, you’re ill, you’ll make yourself unwell . And I remember being scared of the way my parents turned cold and angry if I ever liked somebody that wasn’t them, or wanted something that wasn’t home.’ Trista had to pause for an instant. The memories were not hers, but they bruised as if they were. ‘If Triss wants love, presents, kindness or her own way, she can get them by being ill. She can have anything she wants… as long as she doesn’t want to make friends, go to school, leave the house or get better. Of course she can’t get well – deep down she’s scared that if she does, her Mummy and Daddy will stop loving her.’

‘Triss could never believe that!’ exclaimed Piers aghast. ‘She knows we love her!’

‘Do you?’ Trista felt a pang as she saw her not-father blanch. ‘Or do you love the six-year-old Triss in your head, the one who never grows up, never looks at you differently and always needs you forever? She isn’t real. Your real daughter spends her life pretending to be her – it’s like a horrible game she has to play or she loses your love. Nobody is “your Triss” any more. There’s just a girl who play-acts all the time, and makes herself believe her own lies, and torments Pen out of misery and envy. She’s spoilt and spiteful and deceitful, and you have to promise that if I rescue her and bring her back, you will love her anyway, for the Triss she really is.’

A few moments passed before Piers seemed to take in the full import of her speech. Then he mouthed the word ‘rescue’ voicelessly to himself.

‘You… intend to rescue her.’ His tone was flat, as if he did not dare imbue it with any hope or energy.

‘If I can,’ Trista answered.

Piers looked utterly flabbergasted. ‘Then… you know where she is?’ He took on a look of pained hope. ‘Where? Tell me! Is she hurt?’

‘I don’t know where she is, not yet. She’s alive, or she was last night.’

Piers let out a breath, and then another thought seemed to occur to him.

‘And Pen? Little Pen?’

‘I thought you would never ask,’ Trista muttered nastily.

‘Where is she? Tell me you have not hurt her!’

‘Hurt Pen? After she saved my life?’ Trista could not keep the outrage out of her voice. ‘No. Never. But right now I think she’s safer with me. I don’t trust your Mr Grace not to decide that she’s a changeling too, and throw her in the fire.’

Piers looked anguished, perhaps at the idea that he could not be trusted with his own children. The thorny part of Trista’s heart gave a skip of malicious satisfaction. She could not help it. But there was another part of her that watched him with sadness and pity. She could not help that either.

‘If I find out where Triss is,’ Trista said quietly, ‘and if there is time, I will tell you, so that you can come to help rescue her. But now you must tell me everything that might be important – everything about your deals with the Architect.’

Seconds passed, then Piers winced before the cruel mirror he had been shown, and dropped his gaze. He swallowed down his protests and his pride and began to speak.

Trista listened, and all the while the part of her that was Triss sobbed to hear her mighty father sounding so humble, abject and destroyed.

‘I first met the Architect near the old cemetery district,’ Piers began. ‘The letter about my son’s… passing… had arrived that morning. My wife… It took some time to calm her. When she was asleep at last I went out, and walked through the streets without seeing them. I do not expect you to understand, but sometimes grief has a terrible energy…’ He trailed off.

Trista understood, and said nothing.

‘I was halfway down a dark, narrow alley when I realized that I could hear a second set of footsteps echoing against the walls. There was a man walking in step with me. He greeted me familiarly, and by name, so I answered automatically. I meet so many people, you see, and I cannot always recognize them afterwards.

‘He knew all about my work for the War effort – the harbour defences I helped to design in Kent – and talked of them so knowledgeably that I knew he must be someone of my own profession, or something similar. Then he offered his condolences for my loss. I was too miserable to care how he had learned of it. I told him that my son’s death was not certain, that mistakes were sometimes made, that perhaps another boy with the same name had died. Or perhaps his injuries were not as bad as had been thought, and that he might have recovered after the letter was sent. I must have sounded like a madman.

‘He called me his “poor fellow”, said that his house was nearby and insisted that I step in for a brandy to steady myself. There was a beautiful polished front door at the end of the alley – I thought that was strange, even then. Inside was a great studio, with light falling in through high windows. There were architectural drawings everywhere, on walls and easels. All my training told me that there was something wrong with the angles of that room, like badly drawn perspective in an old painting.

‘But I just stood there like a fool, drinking his accursed brandy and telling this complete stranger everything I felt. I told him that I would give anything to hear from my son again.