Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

‘What are you planning to do?’ Dot helped Charles to his feet. Her face was a picture of anxiety, admiration and trust. Just for a fleeting moment, Trista’s mind seesawed, and she could almost see Mr Grace and the world as Dot saw them. The next instant Trista was back to her own perspective with a thud.

Mr Grace slowly slipped on the coat. It brindled a couple of times, then settled. Occasionally it spasmed a little, its colour turning patchy like scuffed velvet.

‘You heard the creature, Dot. Some guides will be here soon, to lead forty newcomers to the Besider stronghold. Let’s hope they do not know the new arrivals by sight… and will simply be looking out for strangers in eye-baffling magical coats.’

From the shadowed doorway, Trista and Pen watched as Dot helped Charles limp away. Mr Grace carefully smothered the brazier and then stalked away into the night in his twilight-coloured coat, his footprints neat and straight like a dotted line on a dress pattern.

‘I feel sick,’ said Pen in a tiny voice. ‘I think I might be sick.’

Trista found her hands were pressed to her own chest, perhaps in search of scissor holes.

‘He just killed them.’ Her own voice sounded breathy and lost. ‘He didn’t have to kill them.’

‘I didn’t like them.’ Pen’s face made crumple-shapes and her eyes were shiny. ‘But… they were scared…’

‘… and they didn’t hurt anyone,’ finished Trista. ‘Not until everybody attacked them.’ Her mind was still playing the scene over and over. ‘Perhaps that old man did want to hurt Dot – Mr Grace seemed to think so. But sometimes Mr Grace is wrong. He was wrong about me.’

‘What do we do ?’ whimpered Pen.

Trista drew in a breath, then found she had no words to fill with it. What could they do?

If she did nothing to stop Mr Grace, what would happen? If he succeeded in infiltrating the Besiders, and found his way to their haven, he would stop at nothing to destroy the stronghold and everyone in it. If she warned the Besiders about him, though, she would almost certainly be signing his death warrant. And how could she contact the Besiders without giving herself away to the Architect?

‘I don’t know, Pen,’ she answered faintly. ‘I don’t know.’

Trista looked at her not-sister, at her small, round, crumpled face, the dusting of snow in her hair, her stocky legs trembling with the cold. Everything became a lot simpler.

Maybe later I’ll end up choosing sides in the big fight, but saving people comes first. I have to free Sebastian’s soul and let it escape from the snows. And I have to save my other self.

I have to save Triss.

For Triss’s own sake, and for Piers’s and Celeste’s sake. For Violet’s sake, so she doesn’t get sent to prison for murder. For Pen’s sake too, or she’ll grow up knowing she caused her own sister’s death. And for my sake, so that – whatever happens – my life will have mattered.

She closed her eyes, and focused on the thought of Triss’s fragile voice on the telephone. Triss, with her hints about the frog, her terror of being buried alive.

Buried alive…

Trista opened her eyes again and was dazzled by the excited whirling of the snow.

‘Pen – I know where the ride is heading! I know where the haven is, where the Architect is taking Triss!’

‘What?’ Pen’s curiosity burned through her misery. ‘Where?’

‘It’s not the Underbelly. You heard the Besider lady – it’s somewhere new, people have only just started moving in. It’s the new railway station . Of course it is – we’ve been so stupid ! And that’s where the Architect is planning to bury Triss alive too.

‘It’s shaped like a pyramid, Pen. Pyramids are tombs . And tomorrow morning, your father will be in charge of the Capping Ceremony, lowering the point on to the pyramid and sealing Triss in. ’ Trista’s blood throbbed with certainty. The Architect would not have been able to resist the twisted elegance and irony of that solution.

In Pen’s dark, horrified eyes, Trista finally saw realization dawn. At long last, Triss was no longer the threat, the twist of conflict in Pen’s gut. Triss was the frog, hearing the deluge of earth on the lid of her box-coffin.

‘Pen,’ Trista said quickly, ‘I need you to do something for me. It’s difficult, but really important. You have to go home. You have to find your father, and tell him that the Architect is taking Triss to the station. If he doesn’t hear anything of her or me by tomorrow morning… then I’ve failed, and he needs to find a way to stop the ceremony. He could tell everyone… that the station caught fire, or there’s a dog trapped inside – anything to stop them lowering the cap.’

‘But he never listens to me!’ protested Pen.

‘He will this time!’ insisted Trista. ‘Everybody else will try to calm you down, and take you to doctors, and give you Ovaltine and tell you to have a nice night’s sleep. But you must talk to your father, whatever happens.’

Pen cast an open-mouthed glance over her shoulder at the snow-draped streets. She looked painfully small, and Trista felt a pang at sending her away through the city by herself at night. But the Old Docks were becoming more dangerous by the moment.

‘You could come with me!’ Pen exclaimed. ‘If we know where the Architect is taking Triss, you don’t need to chase them after all—’

‘Yes, I do,’ Trista interrupted gently. ‘You saw how hard it was to get into the Underbelly! Once the Architect hides Triss in a secret part of the station, how would anybody ever find her? I have to try to rescue her before he can do that.’

Trista pulled off her blanket and wrapped it around Pen’s head and shoulders, so that she looked like a small nativity-play figure.

‘If you get lost or scared, find a policeman, or tell somebody to hand you in for the reward,’ Trista advised. ‘I didn’t want to send you home before, in case Mr Grace hurt you – but right now he isn’t at your house. He’s here .’

‘I’m not scared,’ said Pen with shaky ferocity, under her blanket robe. ‘I’m never scared.’

‘I know,’ said Trista. Their hug was quick, cold and damp. ‘Go on then! Quickly!’

Of ran the short blanket shape, like a robust little ghost, feet slithering on the fresh snow.

Goodbye, Pen.

Trista was alone. She felt cold and strangely light, as if Pen’s presence had been a warming but heavy overcoat. She stepped out of her borrowed shoes without even thinking about it, and left them lying pigeon-toed in the alley.

The snow burned her soles with its cold, and she was alive, alive, feeling every second. She opened her mouth and tasted the flakes, feeling her tongue tickle and her teeth ache.

Now there’s nobody to judge me, to tell me about myself. Nobody to impress, nobody to disappoint. Now is the time I find out who I am.

She searched the brazier for the Besider lady’s coat, just in case there was still enough of it for her to wear as a disguise. There was nothing left, however, except for some charred shreds and a smell of burnt feathers.

She scaled the front of a boarding house, leaping up from sill to sill, and found a skulking point between the chimney stacks. The chimneys were hot with smoke, taking the edge off the chill, and she could watch the street without being silhouetted against the sky. There she settled to wait, crouched like a slender-limbed gargoyle, her damp hair feathered with falling snow.

From her high vantage, the snow was a wide white shoal, ever changing, flickering with each shift of the wind. She watched as it relentlessly heaped on sills and doorsteps, weighing down gutterings with gentle malice until they threatened to crack.