Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

‘Well, it isn’t stopping me healing. It sounds as if we’ll have time to think about that anyway.’ She grinned. ‘And potential immortality isn’t the worst problem we’ve had to face recently, is it?’

There was a knock at the door.

‘Miss Parish?’ A nurse put her head around the door. ‘Those visitors you’re expecting – they’re here.’

Despite herself, Trista found herself straightening and readying her mental armour as the Crescent family entered the room. The armour was almost immediately dented as Pen pelted across the room and flung her arms around her.

‘Trista!’

Trista picked her up and swung her to and fro so that her legs waggled in the air, then remembered that she was displaying strength unusual for a slight eleven-year-old girl. The other three members of the Crescent family waited by the door, looking pale-faced and uncertain as if they thought there might be lava under the floor.

It was Piers, of course, who braved the lava first, finding a chair for his wife to sit down, then walking over to shake Violet’s hand and ask if she was being well looked after.

It was Piers also who went on to talk and talk, filling the gaping silence that was waiting to happen. His voice sounded confident, but Trista knew him too well to believe that. He was treading carefully, knowing he was walking along a riverbank full of sleeping crocodiles. All the while, Violet listened with a crocodile smile, and helped him with a wry remark now and then.

Trista was not really listening. She was looking at the Crescents, watching for hints and signs. Their little family jigsaw had been torn apart, and the pieces had suffered strange adventures, growing into new and unexpected shapes. Yet there they were, sitting in the same pose as the newspaper photo, the classic family. Mother demurely seated, children on either side, father standing behind with one confident hand placed on the mother’s chair. Had the pieces been slammed back into place, forced to take up the same shapes as before and form the old picture? Would they pretend that nothing had happened?

No. She did not think so. A few tiny changes caught her eye.

Pen was bold and impulsive as ever, of course, but she was not silenced at every step. Her parents occasionally muttered a restraining or reproving word, but it no longer had the same reflexive force, the same weary exasperation. The reins seemed to have slackened, and Pen’s boisterousness was enthusiastic instead of angry.

Celeste looked older. There was something slightly off-kilter about her, as if she had lost her balance and was not sure how to regain it. She tried to give Trista a smile, but it fractured and went wrong, and Celeste dropped her eyes. Looking at her face, Trista could only think of Celeste walking out of the farmhouse kitchen, and shutting the door behind her so that horrors could happen.

I don’t know why I find that harder to forgive than Piers, who was ready to throw me in the fire. Well, at least he was willing to face up to what he was doing. But I do feel sorry for her. She will always be the person who walked out of that door… and she knows she can never come back through it.

There was a hollowness in Piers’s confidence now. He halted himself now and then, glancing at others to gauge their feelings, their approval or disapproval.

And then there was the fourth member of the family, in her powder-blue dress and hat, sidled up against her mother’s arm, the tip of her nose red and a thick scarf wound under her chin.

How did anybody ever mistake us for each other? I’m taller than her! No, perhaps I just stand up straighter than she does.

It was still eerie, looking into a face that was so like her own, and yet animated by another mind. Triss clearly found the experience unnerving too. Her eyes glassed over as she looked at Trista, then she dropped her gaze and gave a little involuntary shudder.

Trista felt a pang of hurt, but rallied. She saw me walk out of the Grimmer , she reminded herself. I frightened her family, and tore apart her room, and ate her dolls, and made her sister like me, and pushed her into a river. No wonder she’s scared of me.

Then Triss lifted her eyes again, met Trista’s gaze and hesitantly managed a small smile. It was a bit nervous and tight-lipped, but still a real smile, not a parentally enforced smile-to-show-you’re-friends-now.

Trista smiled back, guessing that her own smile looked much the same.

‘Obviously, there are problems,’ Piers was saying. ‘If you and young… Trista stay in Ellchester, both of you are likely to be hounded by the papers. Idle people, foolish questions – you know how unpleasant such things can be.’

‘I can see it might be embarrassing to have to explain how you grew a spare daughter overnight,’ remarked Violet, with a paper-thin air of sympathy. ‘Perhaps you could claim that one was a draft version?’

‘Miss Parish, you understand the way people’s minds work, the sort of scandal—’

‘Oh, I think I understand what you’re worried about, Mr Crescent,’ said Violet with a slightly unpleasant smile.

‘Our family owes you both a great deal,’ Piers went on. ‘And we want to make sure young Trista has the best possible prospects. There are excellent schools—’

‘Boarding schools?’ asked Trista. Her reward sounded a lot like being locked away and tucked out of sight.

Without even thinking about it, she reached out for Violet’s hand, knowing it would be there. It was, and curled warmly around hers.

‘No boarding schools,’ said Violet. ‘She needs a home – people that understand who and what she is.’

The Crescent parents exchanged appalled glances. They began the terrible, apologetic disclaimers, trying to explain without explaining. Of course we would love to have Trista, but… but… but…

‘Why?’ demanded Pen. ‘Why can’t she come home with us?’

‘Because she’s coming with me,’ answered Violet.

There was more talk after that of course. Piers would help. Lawyers, adoptions, a story – perhaps that Trista was an orphaned daughter of one of Sebastian’s comrades? If Violet was looking for work in London, Piers could provide references, contacts, possibly even a place somewhere. Trista could only think about the strong, long, nicotine-stained hand holding hers.

‘And… if we can help with money…’ Piers suggested.

Trista’s ‘no’ coincided with Violet’s ‘yes’. Trista glanced at Violet and changed her own ‘no’ to a ‘yes’.

‘Well, we should let you both get some more rest.’ Celeste rose from her chair. Her ever-busy fingers made their usual adjustments to Triss’s clothes, pulling her scarf warmly around her, drawing her protectively close…

…and without unkindness, Triss pulled away from her mother slightly. She did not even appear to notice she was doing so.

‘Mother,’ she said shyly. ‘Can I… talk to Trista alone? In the garden?’

They walked side by side, darting only occasional glances at each other. On an unvoiced impulse they had linked hands as they left the building, and were now uncomfortably connected. Sometimes Trista felt Triss try to pull away, and reflexively tightened her hold. At other times the strangeness of it made Trista want to let go, only to find Triss hanging on stubbornly.

‘Thank you for rescuing me,’ said Triss at last.

‘That’s all right.’ Trista gave her a sideways glance. ‘Sorry about pushing you in the river.’

‘You could have asked me to jump,’ Triss replied in a small voice. ‘I would have done.’

‘Would you?’

The Triss that Trista could remember being would not have jumped. She would have wailed, clung to somebody and demanded to be taken home. But that was Triss before she was kidnapped by the Architect, not the girl who stood before her now.