Frances Hardinge: Cuckoo Song

Her head hurt. There was a sound grating against her mind, a music-less rasp like the rustling of paper. Somebody had taken a laugh, crumpled it into a great, crackly ball and stuffed her skull with it. Seven days , it laughed. Seven days.

‘Stop it,’ she croaked. And it did. The sound faded away, until even the words she thought she had heard vanished from her mind like breath from glass.

‘Triss?’ There was another voice that sounded much louder and closer than her own, a woman’s voice. ‘Oh, Triss, love, love, it’s all right, I’m here.’ Something was happening. Two warm hands had closed around hers, as if they were a nest for it.

‘Don’t let them laugh at me,’ she whispered. She swallowed, and found her throat dry and crackly as bracken.

‘Nobody’s laughing at you, darling,’ the woman said, her voice so hushed and gentle it was almost a sigh.

There were concerned mutterings a little further away. Two male voices.

‘Is she still delirious? Doctor, I thought you said—’

‘Just an interrupted dream, I think. We’ll see how young Theresa is when she has woken up properly.’

Theresa. I’m Theresa. It was true, she knew it, but it just felt like a word. She didn’t seem to know what it meant. I’m Triss. That seemed a bit more natural, like a book falling open on a much-viewed page. She managed to open her eyes a little, wincing at the brightness. She was in bed, propped up on a mound of pillows. It felt as if there was a vast expanse of her, weighted down with rocks, and it was a surprise to see herself stretched out as a normal-sized lump under the counterpane and blankets.

There was a woman seated beside her holding her hand gently. The woman’s dark hair was short and arranged close to her head, moulded into stiff, gleaming, crinkly waves. A faint flouring of face powder dusted over her cheeks, muffling the tired lines at the corners of her eyes. The blue glass beads of the woman’s necklace caught the light from the window, casting frosty glints on to the pale skin of her neck and the underside of her chin.

Every inch of the woman was achingly familiar and yet strange, like a map of a half-forgotten home. A word drifted down from nowhere, and Triss’s numb mind managed to catch at it.

‘Muh…’ she began.

‘That’s right, Mummy’s got you, Triss.’

Mummy. Mother.

‘Muhm… muh…’ She could only manage a croak. ‘I… I don’t…’ Triss trailed off helplessly. She didn’t know what she didn’t, but she was frightened by how much she didn’t.

‘It’s all right, froglet.’ Her mother gave her hand a little squeeze, and smiled softly. ‘You’ve just been ill again, that’s all. You had a fever, so of course you feel rotten and a bit muddled. Do you remember what happened yesterday?’

‘No.’ Yesterday was a great, dark hole, and Triss felt a throb of panic. What could she actually remember?

‘You came home sopping wet. Do you remember that?’ The bed creaked as a man came and sat on the other edge of it. He had a long, strong sort of face, with creases between his brows as if he was concentrating on everything very hard, and his hair was a tired blond. His voice was gentle though, and Triss knew that she was getting his special kind look, the one only she ever received. Father. ‘We think you must have fallen into the Grimmer.’

The word ‘Grimmer’ made Theresa feel cold and shuddery, as if somebody had pressed frogskin against her neck. ‘I… I don’t remember.’ She wanted to squirm away from the thought.

‘Don’t press her.’ There was another man standing at the foot of the bed. He was older, with a combed haze of colourless hair curving half an inch over his pink scalp, and grey tufty eyebrows that went everywhere. The veins on his hands had the bulgy, puddingy look that spoke of advanced years. ‘Children will play by water, it’s what they do. Goodness knows I tumbled into enough streams when I was young. Now, young lady, you put your parents into a fine fright, wandering in last night with a towering fever, not knowing who they were. I suppose you know them well enough now?’

Triss hesitated and nodded her heavy head. She knew their smells now. Pipe ash and face powder.

The doctor nodded sagely and tapped his fingers on the foot of the bed. ‘What’s the name of the King?’ he rapped out sharply.

Triss jumped, and was flustered for a moment. Then a recollection of childish schoolroom chanting swam obediently into her head. One Lord is King, One King is George, One George is Fifth…

‘George the Fifth,’ she answered.

‘Good. Where are we right now?’

‘The old stone house, at Lower Bentling,’ Triss answered with growing confidence. ‘With the kingfisher pond.’ She recognized the smell of the place – damp walls, plus the fading scent of three generations of old, sick cats. ‘We’re here on holiday. We… We come here every year.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Eleven.’

‘And where do you live?’

‘The Beeches, Luther Square, Ellchester.’

‘Good girl. That’s a lot better.’ He gave a wide, warm smile as if he was genuinely proud of her. ‘Now, you’ve been very ill, so I expect your brain feels as if it’s full of cotton wool at the moment, doesn’t it? Well, don’t you panic – over the next couple of days all your wits will come home, I dare say, dragging their tails behind them. You’re feeling better already, aren’t you?’

Triss slowly nodded. Nobody was laughing in her head now. There was still a faint, irregular rustle, but looking across the room at the window opposite she could easily see the culprit. A low-hanging branch was pressed against the pane, weighed down by clusters of green apples, leaves scuffling against the glass every time the wind stirred it.

The light that entered was shattered, shifting, broken into a mosaic by the foliage. The room itself was as green as the leaves. Green counterpane on the bed, green walls with little cream-coloured diamonds on them, fussy green square-cornered cloths on the black wood tables. The gas was unlit, the white globes of the wall lamps dull and lightless.

And it was only now, when she looked around properly, that she realized that there was a fifth person in the room, lurking over by the door. It was another girl, younger than Triss, her hair dark and crimped so that she almost looked like a miniature version of Mother. But there was something quite different in her eyes, which were cold and hard like those of a thrush. She gripped the door handle as if she wanted to twist it off, and her narrow jaw was moving all the while, grinding her teeth.

Mother glanced over her shoulder to follow Triss’s gaze.

‘Oh, look, there’s Penny come to see you. Poor Pen – I don’t think she’s eaten a thing since you got ill, for fretting about you. Come on in, Pen, come and sit next to your sister—’

‘No!’ screamed Penny, so suddenly that everybody jumped. ‘She’s pretending! Can’t you see? It’s fake ! Can’t any of you tell the difference?’ Her gaze was fixed on Triss’s face with a look that could have splintered stone.

‘Pen.’ There was a warning in their father’s voice. ‘You come in right now and—’

‘NO!’ Pen looked mad and desperate, eyes wide as if she might bite someone, then tore out through the door. Rapid feet receded, echoing as they did so.

‘Don’t follow her,’ Father suggested gently as Mother started to stand. ‘That’s “rewarding” her with attention – remember what they said?’