Cuckoo Song (16 page)

‘Where’s Mother?’

‘She has gone to talk to the neighbours, to see if they have seen anything of Pen.’ For Pen, ‘running away’ often meant fleeing to somewhere safe and dry where she could
stay until she felt that her absence had been long enough to worry people. The usual procedure when Pen disappeared, therefore, was to check with nearby friends and relations to find out whether
she had unexpectedly turned up at their house.

‘Triss, sit down,’ her father went on, his voice quiet and firm, and Not-Triss realized that the inquisition had come for her after all. He took some time folding his paper, then
looked across at her. Only two places had been set at the table, she realized now. There was a plate before her father, steam rising from the buttered potatoes and grilled mackerel. However, no
food had been set down at the other place.

Not-Triss understood the meaning of this immediately. She remembered seeing Pen sit down to an empty place on many occasions. It meant that she was in disgrace, and that unless she could explain
herself properly, or offer appropriate remorse, there would be no supper.

She sat, keeping her head lowered, so that her hair fell forward over her face.

‘Triss, I hear you frightened your mother badly today—’

‘I’m sorry.’ The moment the words were past her lips, Not-Triss knew that she had spoken them too soon. An immediate apology would look like a greedy bid for supper. There was
a disapproving pause, and then her father went on as if she had not interrupted.

‘Your mother tells me that you left the house, without telling anybody, and tried to hide the fact – and when you returned you lied to her about it and then raised your voice. What
could make you do that, Triss?’

‘I’m . . . sorry. I . . .’ Not-Triss thought about telling him the headache had made her do it, but her instincts told her that she was close to rubbing the gilt off that
excuse. ‘I . . . don’t really know. My room just started to smell of . . . being ill. I was hot. And I really, really, really wanted to go out all of a sudden. So I did.’

There was another long pause, and Not-Triss heard her father sigh.

‘So. Where did you go?’

‘I . . . just walked around.’

‘Walked around?’ Her father’s prompt was so very gentle that Not-Triss felt her heart break. All she could give him was a nod, and the silence stretched and stretched as he
waited for her to fill it with something more. She tried to think of a suitable lie, but the day had left her mind too battered to fashion one on the fly.

‘Just . . . around,’ she heard herself mumble.

‘Was Pen with you? Do you know where she has gone?’

Not-Triss shook her head to both questions, and there was another pause.

‘Triss, you’re hiding something from me.’ Her father’s voice was level but wounded-sounding. ‘Look at me.’

And she could not. She could not let him see that she had cobwebs softly oozing down her cheeks. She kept her chin ducked low to her chest, her hair a stubborn curtain before her face. The tears
at the back of her throat tasted like sour cherries. Her fingers gripped the table edge until they ached.

‘Am I a monster?’ he asked, and Not-Triss nearly looked up at him out of sheer surprise.

She shook her head.
No,
I
am.

‘Have I ever given you a reason to lie to me, or hide things from me?’

Not-Triss shook her head again.

‘Then don’t you think I deserve an answer?’ He waited a long time, knowing that his Triss would have to raise her eyes sooner or later. When she did not, he gave a long,
somewhat pained sigh, then picked up his cutlery and began to eat.

Not-Triss wanted to sob at the thought of hurting her father. Her mind was a tempest, however, and she could not be sure that a human sound would come out if she parted her lips. She turned her
head away so that her father would not see her face when she wiped her eyes, and it was then that she glanced at the window and saw Pen.

The younger girl was outside, beating on the window. She was a creature of coruscating silver once again, and her fists made no sound against the glass. Behind her, against the wall of the
garage, Not-Triss could see occasional flickering words appear.

B
ANG

B
ANG BANG BANG

W
HY
W
ON
’
T
A
NYBODY
L
ET
M
E
I
N?

The sight ruptured Not-Triss’s thoughts like a spade driving into a mosaic. Her first feeling was disbelief and horror. What was Pen thinking, trying to get everybody’s attention
while she looked like
that
! Even Pen with her talent for mendacity would have trouble explaining her transformation.

Then Not-Triss noticed that Pen’s clothes were sodden, her hair bedraggled and her face crumpled with exhaustion and despair. Slowly the truth dawned. She must have been out in the rain
for hours to get that wet. What if their mother had locked the back door again after Not-Triss’s stealthy entry, so that Pen would be forced to knock at the front door on her return and face
the music? If so, who could say how long Pen had been beating in vain on doors and windows, producing nothing but silver words hanging in the air?

With a frisson of guilt, Not-Triss saw that there were three long dark parallel marks scoring Pen’s left cheek.

W
HY
C
AN
’
T
A
NYBODY
H
EAR
M
E?

I D
ON
’
T
C
ARE
A
NY
M
ORE
, I J
UST
W
ANT TO
C
OME
I
N
.

I’
M
C
OLD

She’s nine years old.
Not-Triss had almost forgotten this fact, so busy had she been thinking of Pen as a threat.
It doesn’t matter how clever she is, she’s a
little girl, and right now she’s cold and scared and wants her mother.

Without meaning to, Not-Triss made eye contact with Pen, and instantly regretted it. The younger girl’s face changed, and took on a look of pure frustration, resentment and despair. Pen
could not possibly guess at the icy tension around the supper table. She would see only a usurping monster seated in
her
house, with
her
father, presumably eating
her
dinner, and enjoying light, warmth and love while Pen herself was shut out in the cold.

Not-Triss sat paralysed with indecision and guilt. She felt a wrench of pity for the small, soaked figure outside, but what was she supposed to do? If she pointed Pen out to her father, what
good would that do? He would demand an explanation, and if Pen was miserable enough, she might just break down and provide one. How would that make things any better for Pen or for herself?

Hoping she was unobserved by her father, Not-Triss risked a small shake of her head, willing Pen to read her mind. However, there was no sign that Pen had noticed the subtle signal.

‘Can I be excused?’ Not-Triss asked impulsively, the tension becoming too much for her.

There was no answer but the scrape of fork on china. The words Not-Triss had spoken were not the explanation for which her father was waiting. His silence was a cold grey sea of disappointment
and chilled her to the bone. Eventually he did give a small nod, and she fled the dinner table.

As soon as she was out of sight of her father, Not-Triss slipped down the hall, unlocked the front door and stepped out into the rain.

‘Pen!’ she called out as loudly as she dared. ‘This way! I’ve unlocked the front door!’ There was no response, however, and after a few minutes she ducked back
indoors, leaving the door ajar so that it would be obvious from outside.

Just as she was passing back along the hallway, a short silvery figure barrelled past her from the direction of the front door, colliding soddenly with her and knocking her aside. Crumple-faced
with misery, Pen thundered up the stairs, or would have done if her steps had not been completely silent. The floating words behind her retreating figure were a poor substitute as an expression of
rage.

STAMP

STAMP

STAMP

STAMP

STAMP

And then, a few seconds after she had disappeared from view –

SLAM

Just as Not-Triss was recovering her balance, her father appeared in the hallway. He was confronted by the sight of Not-Triss, hovering at the end of the hall, and the trail of small muddy
footprints that ran past her and up the stairs.

‘Pen’s back,’ said Not-Triss, suspecting that she might be stating the obvious.

‘So I see.’ Her father let out a long breath. ‘Well, that’s one worry fewer at least.’ He walked past to close the front door, and Not-Triss retreated upstairs, not
wanting to give him time to wonder why she was still downstairs, or to notice the raindrops nestling in her hair.

Upstairs in her room, as she rubbed her hair dry with a blanket, she heard a faint rap of the front door knocker, then the sound of the door opening and closing. Hushed murmurs moved down the
hall and into the sitting room, where they were muffled by the closing of the door. One voice was that of her father, the other that of another man, and she could not shake off the feeling that it
was familiar. Half an hour later she heard the sound of the front door opening again and shortly after her mother’s voice joined the muted conversation below.

For a long time Not-Triss lay on her bedroom floor, listening to the buzz of three voices which rose, fell and interweaved without ever becoming comprehensible to her. They went on for two
hours, and when at last the stranger left the house, it was too dark for Not-Triss to make out more than a solitary, male figure walking away with a purposeful step.

Chapter 15

Outside Triss’s room, the evening came to an end. There was movement on the landing, muffled voices, door percussion. The faint rustles and ticks of the sleep-time
rituals. And then, over the next two hours, quiet settled upon the house by infinitesimal degrees, like dust.

And this fine dust of silence lay undisturbed, even as Not-Triss opened her bedroom door and glided out on to the landing. She might have been a figure floating across a cinema screen.

Over one arm hung a woollen shawl, which she hoped might serve as a net to throw over her winged quarry. In her hands she carried her sewing box, a gift from her mother. It was made of wood,
painted with forest scenes. The inside was lined with silk, the sewing tools housed in sheathes in the underside of the lid. Not-Triss had emptied out the box’s store of cotton reels and wool
balls, and could only hope that it would be large and sturdy enough to act as an improvised cage. The night was thistle-sharp, spider-web tense. Not-Triss was part of its secrecy and danger now,
but she sensed that she was not the most secretive or dangerous thing abroad. The night had no favourites. She could almost sense it curled around the world, dispassionate as a dragon, the stars
mere glints in its black scales.

Not-Triss slipped into the forbidden room and found it much as she had last seen it. Once again, she slid under Sebastian’s bed to hide and wait.

Whatever that bird-thing is, it comes at midnight. If I can catch it, and if it’s able to talk, perhaps I can force it to tell me what’s going on. Maybe it knows what happened to
the real Triss, and to Sebastian.

The little mantel clock downstairs could just be heard chiming twelve.

After the lost chimes had hung in the air for a few seconds, the sound Not-Triss was waiting to hear reached her ears. It was the same dry, wispy flutter-tap as before. It was out in the
corridor. It was growing nearer. And then, with a whirr like the wind through dry wheat husks, it was in the bedroom.

The room was too dark to see it clearly, but now and then she could just make out the small airborne shape careering hither and thither. A dark shuttlecock in an invisible game, each wing-brush
like a rasped breath, the motions unnerving in their unpredictability. Not-Triss
could
predict it though. That was her one advantage. She knew that it had come to deliver a letter, and
that sooner or later it would have to perch on the drawer handle in order to do so.

Flutter-tap, flutter-rasp-bangitty-flap, flappety-flap. Flap. And perch.

There it was, a tiny shape perched on the drawer handle, so small that she would not have seen it if she had not been looking for it. Even now it melted into shadow before her direct gaze, and
only kept its outline when she looked slightly away. It was distracted for the moment, sliding an envelope in through the narrow gap above the drawer.

Her instincts prickled in her veins like a thousand tiny thorns, causing her muscles to tense and coil.

Now.

Not-Triss sprang from cover, the motion as easy as falling. The only sound she made was a faint flap from the counterpane, stirred by her passing. Nonetheless the perching thing heard it, and
looked around in time to see her landing neatly on her bare feet. Its shocked cry sounded the way a scar looks. The thing spread its wings, but Not-Triss was already hurling the shawl.

The fabric swamped the creature, but even the heavy wool was not enough to keep it down. A moment later there was a shawl-smothered shape crashing blindly around the room, bouncing off walls.
All the while it hissed and screamed, in a voice like hot embers dropped down a well. Not-Triss could just make out gabbled curses and muffled abuse.

Not-Triss made a few jumps in an attempt to catch it, only to have the trailing fronds tease through her fingertips. She bounded on to the desk, landing so lightly that it did not even shudder,
and leaped out into the centre of the room, seizing the loose ends of the shawl with both hands. She landed with a triumphant huff of breath, but the next moment her feet were dragged from the
floor again as the thing fought its way back into the air and Not-Triss clung on to the shawl like grim death as she was lifted from the ground, swung against shelves and then dropped floorward by
sudden cruel swoops so that she landed awkwardly.