Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

Now and then, Besiders would drift down this street or that in ones or twos. None of them seemed to notice her. Their prints in the snow were misshapen, some leaving double grooves like tracks left by deer, or score-marks from tails dragged across the snow’s crust.

The human inhabitants withdrew, as if they sensed the strangers. Sound gradually died in the riverside public houses. No clatter of hoofs or stutter of engines interrupted the settling silence. The snow accepted its dominion.

Distant church chimes announced the passing of time, but their voices sounded muffled and bewildered, like nightwatchmen who had lost their bearings in the blizzard.

As the darkness deepened, other boats arrived at the jetties, the snow flurries parting for them like gauze curtains. There was a little ferry made of walnut shells, its cobweb sails almost tearing under the weight of the snowflakes. Next came a crooked white coracle, its rim jagged so that it looked like half a broken eggshell. Cold on their heels came a raft of painted poles, bound together with mouldering ribbons and crowded with grey-clad, silent children.

Every time Trista blinked, there seemed to be more Besiders clustered in the street, mutely waiting in the cloud-coloured coats. Soon they were huddled along every jetty, the base of every wall, in every doorway. A few lighted easily on nearby rooftops, folding wings away like umbrellas or preening them with toothed beaks.

When midnight approached, Trista could feel it. The snow whirled with its breath. The chill intensified as its shadow stretched long over the city. All over the Old Docks the Besiders raised their heads to stare into the darkness, and gave a long, drawn-out hiss of excitement.

Elsewhere in the city, church bells released a muted jumble of chimes. Trista barely noticed them. Her gaze was upon the jet-black tram that had suddenly, impossibly, surged into view, gliding down the rail-less road.

As it drew level with the jetties, it halted in a heartbeat without needing to slow. The twin trailer cars behind it came to the same unnatural stop without shunting each other.

When they were not moving, they looked eerily ordinary. Both tram-car and trailer-cars had corkscrew steps at both front and back. Through the windows of the trailer cars, Trista could make out the usual wood trim and advertisements for hand soap. As with commonplace trams, they had open cabs at both front and back, so they could be driven from either end, and soulful, round headlights.

No oilskin-clad driver stood braving the bitter wind, however. There was nobody manning the tram’s controls at all.

Half of the Besiders poured on to the trailer cars, finding seats inside the lower saloons or scaling the spiral steps to the open air ‘balcony’ seating on the upper level. Others gathered around the doors, twitching with eagerness.

The doors of the tram-car itself did not open, nor did anyone make a bid to board it. Just for the fleetest moment, Trista saw the Architect at one of the lower windows, waving a gloved hand with gracious regality. Beside him was a shorter figure, face pale under her hat…

Ting, ting . The tram sounded its bell, a crystal note eerie in its mundanity.

Without warning, the tram was in motion once more, snaking away through the docklands with dizzying speed. The Besiders who had not boarded the trailer cars surged after it, like a tide of grey-brown floodwater, bobbing and leaping. From all the surrounding rooftops figures took to the air, some spreading wings like ribbon-cloaks or skeleton leaves, others springing light as fleas from roof to roof.

Taking a deep breath, Trista sprang from her hiding place and joined them.

The first leap was nearly her last. She had not appreciated how treacherous the snow would make the roof slopes. The white layer slithered away under her weight, so that she lost her footing and nearly plunged to the cobbles below. A timely snatch at a chimney steadied her though, and she continued, landing on all fours each time so that her thorn claws could sink into thatch or the gaps between tiles.

Ahead, the tram took a sharp right away from the river and directly towards a row of houses. Without effort, it ran up the front of the nearest house, drawing the trailer cars after it, then up on to the roof, leaving two frayed grooves in the snow. There the tram and cars changed course again, speeding away along the row of roofs, tilted sideways by the tiled slope. A grey, half-seen mass of figures followed them, like a fog of giant gnats.

Trista gave chase, trusting to instinct, toe and claw. She felt her hair stream with each leap, the wind chilling her clenched teeth. Her heart beat hard but did not seem to matter, like a loose oddment rattling in a forgotten drawer.

She barely saw the other members of the ride, but they were all around her. Their wings beat in her ears. Her feet scuffed their forked and twisted tracks across the rooftops. Occasionally she caught a flash of lichen-coloured eyes, or teeth bared in a grin of fellowship. She tasted snowflakes and realized that her mouth was open, that she was laughing.

All at once it felt like a game. The tram weaved this way, that way, and she matched it, increasing her speed. She was a kitten chasing a twisting piece of string. She focused all her energy and strength, and pounced.

Trista leaped for the stepped boarding platform at the back of the rear trailer car. She judged the leap well, and knew that she would land safely. Her knees reflexively bent, ready to soften the impact, and her arm stretched out to grab the pole. Before her feet could touch down, however, the whole trailer car changed before her eyes.

The engine thrum melted into a clatter of hoofs and the rattle of carriage wheels. Instead of landing feet first on a metal platform, Trista struck what felt like a slick wooden wall, jolting her jaw and knocking the breath out of her. She scrabbled for purchase, her claws leaving lean gouges in the black-painted wood, then lost her grip and fell.

She hit the sloping house roof and rolled down it in a froth of snow, before tumbling off the edge.

Only a last-minute snatch at the guttering with one hand stopped her plummeting to the street below.

She hung there winded for a few seconds, her mouth dry. Below her she could see a few fragments of herself falling away, shocked loose by the impact and her exertion. Dead leaves, crumpled book pages, strands of hair… she did not have time to collect them.

With her long toes she scrabbled at the brickwork and with difficulty hauled herself up on to the roof once more.

Where was the trailer car turned black carriage? Where was its hissing, soaring entourage? Gone, swallowed by the blizzard. But on the roofs around her were tracks which even now the snow was trying to blot out. Fox-paws, child-like bare feet, long loping prints… and among them the grooves from wheels, and the crescent scoops of horses’ hoofs.

Trista brushed the snow from her eyelashes, and set off in pursuit once more.

She followed the tracks across the roofs of slum houses, then through the petite, well-groomed streets of the daintier shopping districts.

Now and then a tug in her flank that told her she had lost a twig, a trinket, a twist of paper.

There, ahead! Three black carriages raced over the roofs, amid a wider haze of flitting, leaping shapes.

Her legs shaking, Trista risked wider, wilder jumps as she fought to catch up. She sprang to the town-council roof, then to the tip of the war monument, and finally leaped for the back of the rearmost carriage once more.

This time her toes sought out the rear footboard, and she sank her claws into the woodwork of the carriage. She hung on even as the ‘carriage’ changed shape again and again. One moment she was clinging to the spare tyre on the back of a great black Daimler. The next she was hugging the tail of a huge black snake. At last her strange transport swelled back to trailer-car dimensions once more. She landed with a clang on its rear platform, grabbing the pole to steady herself.