Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

‘For a while he just stood there watching me. Then he told me that he “might be able to do something about that”. At first I thought he was going to recommend some spiritualist, one of those phony parasites who bleed the grief-stricken for money. But he laughed and said it was nothing like that. He told me that he could promise a nice, solid letter from my son within a week, if I did something for him in return. Then he led me over to look at his designs.

‘They made my skin crawl. They were plans for impossible buildings made possible. When I stared at each individual part of the design I could see that everything fitted, supported each other and made sense. I knew that it would work. But as a whole each design was madness, illogical. Trying to comprehend each as a building made my head hurt as if my brain was being twisted.’

‘But you agreed to build them anyway?’ prompted Trista.

‘Not at first,’ Piers answered. ‘It hurt my pride to consider passing another man’s work off as my own. If he had tried to bully me into it I would have resisted. But he shrugged, told me that I should not leave my decision too long, and then suggested we talk about something else. How could I banish his words from my mind?

‘In the end I agreed. The Architect asked for a list of Sebastian’s possessions, and was immediately interested when I mentioned the service watch.’

‘Did he say why?’ asked Trista quickly. Her spirits had leaped at the mention of the watch.

‘He said that clocks were servants of time but could be taught to be masters of it.’ Piers frowned, as if focusing his memory on the precise words. ‘He asked when Sebastian had died, and whether the watch had been on his wrist at the time. He was glad to hear that it had. When he examined it, though, he seemed dissatisfied, and said that it was not as strongly tethered to Sebastian as he had hoped – he suspected that somebody else had owned or used it. He could still enchant it to control the flow of time, but he would need something else powerfully linked to Sebastian to bind it to my son in particular.

‘I came back to his studio the next day, and brought a lock of Sebastian’s baby hair, from my wife’s keepsake box. He opened the works of the watch and dropped in the twist of hair. The cogs jammed on it, and the watch stopped dead… at exactly half past four.’

Trista wondered if the hair was the only thing caught in the delicate grip of those cogs. Perhaps in that second Sebastian’s departing ghost had also been trapped, suspended in an eternal moment between life and death.

‘Where’s the Architect’s studio?’ she asked.

‘Gone.’ Piers shook his head miserably. ‘I went back, but found only a faded boarded door, and behind that a tiny cramped room covered in grime and cobwebs. I have been trying to find the Architect for days, with no success. Plainly he has no interest in talking to me.

‘When I spoke to Mr Grace this morning he seemed to think he had a line of investigation, but…’ Piers tailed off, his expression conflicted and uncertain. Perhaps he felt uncomfortable about revealing Mr Grace’s activities to Trista, even now. ‘But… he has chiefly been on your trail, so he has been tracing Miss Parish through her friends. We thought that would lead us to the Architect and my daughters.’

‘Can’t you make Mr Grace stop?’ she demanded. ‘If you tell him everything I just told you—’

‘He would not believe it.’ Piers shook his head with an air of finality, ‘even if I added my voice to yours. He has a terrible history with the Besiders.’

Trista remembered the black band around the tailor’s arm.

‘What happened to him?’ she asked.

‘It was before the War. His wife was a woman from a small village, brought up with all the old folklore. When she was very ill during childbirth, she told him that she believed she had accidentally angered “the Besiders”. She begged her husband to make sure that a pair of scissors was left in the cradle with the child to protect it. It seemed foolish and dangerous, so of course he did not.

‘As a result, she became convinced that their baby had been replaced by a changeling. One day he came home and found her preparing to beat the little baby with a broom, so he called in a doctor who sedated her. She pleaded with him to at least keep the child away from her, but the doctor said that it was important for the body of the child and the mind of the mother that the suckling continued.

‘He came home one evening to find his wife dead, her body looking, in his words, “drained”. The cradle was empty, and rocking vigorously as though it had just been kicked. He heard the back door bang, and when he ran to look out he could see a white shape fleeing through the darkness. It was the size and shape of a tiny baby, but leaped with unnatural agility. It turned for a second to look back at him, then vanished into the night. He says it was smiling.’

Trista was lost between despair and pity. Her hopes of convincing Mr Grace softly shattered.

‘What about the police?’ she asked.

‘I never wanted them involved in the first place,’ answered Piers, ‘but last night I argued with Mr Grace. I wanted to find the Architect and make terms; he said it was hopeless. He told me he was taking matters out of my hands for my own good. He went to the police and now the investigation is beyond my control.’

‘Do what you can to stop them, Mr Crescent,’ Trista said bluntly. ‘Triss’s life probably depends upon it.’ She turned away from Piers and dropped swiftly from the sill. Her feet struck the ground as lightly as pine needles.

‘Wait!’ shouted Piers as she sprinted for the back gate. ‘There are so many things I need to ask you!’

Trista did not linger for his questions, but plunged into the network of alleyways, racing through turn after turn. She had to find her way back to Violet and Pen.

The birds in every tree she passed were as restless as the breeze. Her distracted brain made out the words in their rasps and chirrups, and she realized that they were not true birds at all. Glancing at a tree grey with beating wings, she thought she saw wizened, featherless faces leer back.

Traitor! Traitor! We heard you. Crescent’s little helper. Plotting against the Architect.

Wait till the Architect hears! Wait till we tell him what the thorn-doll said!

Traitor! Traitor!

There was a jubilant viciousness in the tone, as the last word was tossed to and fro between them like a child’s ball. Perhaps throughout her conversation with Piers, the bird-things had been lurking in the eaves, their wicked, tiny ears sucking up every word.

With a massed, needle-thin shriek of derision, the winged shapes burst as one from every tree in the avenue, whirled around Trista until she felt the lid of the world might unscrew, and then flung themselves up into the sky like reverse rain and were gone.

Trista felt chill. The bird-things would report back, and the Architect would know that she was not, after all, to be counted among his friends. The Architect, with his wild, tenacious rages and his vindictiveness towards any who betrayed him.

But she had no time to think about that now – she had to find the others…

‘Trista!’

At the sound of her own peculiar name, Trista turned and was astonished to see Violet straddling her motorcycle parked at the edge of the main thoroughfare. Pen was standing up in the sidecar waving both arms. Trista’s heart swelled with relief and love, and she ran over.

‘Are you all right?’ was Violet’s first question, her grey eyes earnest and concerned. Trista had been braced for an angry tirade and could do little more than nod.