Cuckoo Song (18 page)

I was sleepwalking. I had a nightmare. I think maybe I cried out in my sleep. A lot.

There was a bird in the room. It was squawking and banging around. I came in here to help it out through the window.

I dreamed that Sebastian came back, so I came in here to see if he was sleeping in his bed. But he wasn’t there, and I was really upset. And cried a lot.

Why hadn’t she said something like that? Anything, just so that her parents could force themselves to believe her, and could go to bed with their minds somewhat at rest. That was the whole
problem, though, she realized. Right at that moment, she had not wanted their minds to be at rest. She had not wanted to make things easy for them, or to add yet another lie to the stack of
comfortable lies that seemed to be the only thing holding up the roof.

‘Stupid,’ she whispered, feeling her eyes sting and her lashes clog with cobweb. ‘Stupid! What’s wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just lie? Now they’ll think . .
.’ She could hardly begin to imagine what her parents might think.

The excitement of her little victory over the bird-thing had dissolved, leaving only dread. She had learned something from its answers, perhaps enough for her to continue her investigation, but
at what price? It was too late for her to offer her parents an innocent-sounding explanation for her presence in Sebastian’s room, the strange shrieking and upheaval that had taken place and
the long scratches on the furniture. Any plausible excuse she gave from now on would smack of a tale invented in retrospect, and for very good reasons.

But I have to think of a story
, she realized.
By tomorrow. Something that will explain everything, even why I shouted at them, and why I wouldn’t explain myself at the time.
Or I’ll be knee-deep in doctors for the next three days, and I’ve only
got
three days. That’s what the bird-thing said.

Only three days.

Chapter 17

Not-Triss managed only snatches of sleep during the night. Her mind sparked and spun relentlessly like a Catherine wheel, trying to come up with stories that would save
her.

In the early hours she was woken by sounds of furtive, shuffled movement which appeared to come from Pen’s room. To Not-Triss’s surprise, they did not appear to wake anybody else.
But, she considered after a moment, perhaps they were not as loud as she imagined. Perhaps she could hear them so clearly because her own senses were peculiarly sharp, or because she was in tune
with the sounds of the night.

Another thought crossed her mind. If Pen was making any noise at all, then right now she was not suffering from her eerie state of silence. If Not-Triss wished to speak to Pen, this might be her
best chance.

It was risky, given the fragility of the ice beneath her feet, but Not-Triss slipped out of her room anyway and very gently tapped on Pen’s door.

‘Pen!’ Not-Triss tried to make her whisper eiderdown-soft. ‘I know you’re awake!’

There was a short, sharp movement within, as if somebody had started.

‘Don’t be scared – I’m not going to hurt you.’ Once more Not-Triss was haunted by the image of the scratched lines in the younger girl’s cheek.
‘I’m sorry about your face. I didn’t mean to. I was just . . . scared. I . . . only meant to slap you.’ Somehow that had sounded better in her head.

There were no more noises of motion within, though Not-Triss thought she heard the sound of slow, careful breathing.

‘Pen, I know you can hear me! We have to talk. Can I come in?’

No answer. Not-Triss reached for the handle and gently turned it. The door refused to open, however. Evidently Pen had wedged a chair or something against it. Not-Triss wondered if the smaller
girl was hunched in a corner of the room, staring hypnotized at the silent, menacing turning of the handle. She sighed, and rested her forehead against the wood.

‘
Please
let me in, Pen! I know you hate me, but you need my help, and I need
your
help. You have to tell me everything you know about the Architect – what
he’s doing, how you got in touch with him, where he lives. Think about Triss – you want to get her back, don’t you? What do you think will happen if we don’t work
together?’

There was an abrupt snuffle, like somebody resolutely sniffing back a sob.

‘Go away!’ came the snapped whisper. ‘I . . . I’ve got a gun! Don’t you break this door in, or . . . or I’ll shoot you!’

‘You haven’t got a gun.’ Not-Triss fought against all the years of Triss’s frustration and hurt and focused on the memory of Pen standing alone and drenched in the rain.
‘And I’m not going to break into your room. But I can’t keep talking through the door like this – sooner or later I’ll wake everybody up!’ There followed a few
seconds of silence while her words were digested.

‘Go away,’ hissed the unseen Pen again, this time with venom and more confidence. ‘Get away from me, or I’ll
scream
.’

And that threat, more than the menace of imaginary firearms, was enough to drive Not-Triss from the door. She could not afford to be discovered roaming the nocturnal house a second time, not
after her first ignominious capture. Once again, holding out a hand to Pen had been about as rewarding as plunging it into a nettle patch.

Day crept in like a disgraced cat, with a thin, mewling wind and fine, slanting rain. Her face pressed against her window, Not-Triss watched it come. The birdsong sounded hard
and metallic.

Not-Triss was not ready for this day. She hated it. She wanted to send it back. Something inside her was squirming so hard she felt she might burst. Everything was wrong. Everything was going to
go wrong.

Breakfast was left on a tray outside Not-Triss’s room, and she did not know whether to feel relieved or hurt. The eggs were soft-boiled the way she liked them, but with a sense of
disorientation she noticed that the fruit juice was not in her favourite, pink-tinted glass.

She stared at it, as though making sense of the change would help her understand her parents, and allow her to save herself. The pink glass was Triss’s glass. Had they really decided to
deprive her of her favourite glass as part of her punishment, or had they instinctively felt that Triss’s glass was no longer rightly hers? Did disobedient Triss no longer count as Triss? Was
crazy Triss no longer Triss? Or . . . could they possibly suspect the truth?

Not-Triss braced herself, and used the fruit juice to wash down a hair slide and two screwed up pages from Triss’s favourite comics, but her stomach continued to growl.

It was Sunday, so Not-Triss changed carefully into her smart church clothes.

By the time she went downstairs, she had an explanation rehearsed in her head. It was a good lie, with a fair dollop of the truth in it to stop it curdling. As she meekly sat down beside her
father on the sedan, however, she saw his face and her story cooled in her mind. He had clearly slept less than she had. Not-Triss plunged in anyway, but her explanation sounded stilted, her words
cold and mechanical as beads on an abacus bar. She was not sure he was even listening.

Her father said nothing when she had finished, but gently laid a hand on her head. He was looking at her face, she knew it, and still she dared not meet his eye. If she did so, the spine of her
story would break and the beads clatter to the floor.

‘All right, Triss.’ She could not tell from his tone whether he had accepted her story, or merely accepted that it would be the only story forthcoming.

Not-Triss became aware of her mother having a hushed conversation in the hall with Miss Soames, a young woman who sometimes came to babysit when the Crescent parents went out to parties.

‘Thank you for coming at such short notice. We should be back tomorrow, so we only need you to stay over the one night. It’s just a matter of looking after Penelope this time. She
will need to be taken to church, and you will need to consult Mrs Basset about meals.’

We should be back tomorrow.

It’s just a matter of looking after Penelope.

‘Are we going away somewhere?’ Not-Triss asked. She kept her eyes fixed on her father’s shoes, so that they would not stray to his face. His feet moved slightly, perhaps
uncomfortably.

‘It’s going to be rather a long day, I’m afraid.’ His hand settled over one of hers. It was warm, but did not squeeze. Perhaps he was afraid of breaking her.
‘We’re going to drive out on a trip to Wenwick – you, me and your mother. We’re going to talk to one or two people, to see if they know . . . ways to help you get over these
. . . night troubles. Most of them are friends of friends. Kind people. You’ll like them.’

Not-Triss gnawed at her lip, her small, scattered fears becoming large, specific fears, like raindrops merging on a window pane.

No pink glass for crazy Triss.

‘I don’t want to!’ she blurted out, still fixing the innocent shoes with a stare that might have kindled wood. ‘I don’t want to talk to them! I don’t want to
go away! Not . . . Not now!’

I can’t go away now, I can’t! I need to find the Shrike! I need to talk to Pen!

‘And you’re busy right now!’ she went on, scrabbling for arguments. ‘You have lots of work – getting ready for the Capping Ceremony in three days’ time
– you said so! So we can’t! Why don’t we talk to them next week?’

‘Triss.’ He put his arms around her, as carefully as if he was hugging a child of smoke. ‘I love you very much, you know that?’

Not-Triss nodded, sick with panic. ‘Don’t make me go! Please, please let me stay here!’ She clenched her eyes shut, willing him to feel her desperation even if he could not
understand it.

‘I love you,’ he continued, tenderly relentless, ‘and that’s
why
we have to go.’

As Not-Triss stepped out through the front door and heard it click shut behind her, she felt a sudden superstitious pang. Into her head came an unreasonable fear that she would
never see it open again. She felt as if it had closed like scissor-blades, snipping away her past and everything she knew.

The little travel case in her hand she had crammed to bursting, for she knew she would be away for at least one night. It was filled with treasured trinkets, comics and hair ribbons. Not-Triss
could only hope these provisions would be enough to stop her becoming feral.

Before her, the world wore a grey veil of rain. The air was clammy and unseasonably cold. There were grains of something in Not-Triss’s socks, and she guessed that they must be
earth-crumbs that had broken away from her soles. The gutters tutted, and the Sunbeam was slick as new paint.

Her mother had a yellow scarf around her head and hesitated on the step under her umbrella while Triss’s father readied the car.

Not-Triss could hear the cool, solemn chiming of church bells over the growl and gossip of the traffic, and could see other people stepping stiffly out into the drizzle in their best clothes.
The raindrops glistened on straw hats and buttoned gloves. But Not-Triss was not going to church, and it made her feel all the more out of step with the world.

Not-Triss stared up at the windows of the house, but the one face she expected to see did not stare down at her. Somehow she had been certain that she would be confronted with Pen’s
coal-hard gaze. With triumph in her eyes, perhaps? Or fear, or resentment? But perhaps Pen was still given to flashes of silver, and would not be coming out of hiding for a while.

To her surprise, Not-Triss found that she was disappointed. In spite of the way the younger girl hated her, she realized that she had counted on that exchanged look to strengthen her nerve. They
shared secrets, if nothing else, and a mutual interest in keeping them. That made Pen the nearest thing she had to a co-conspirator.

Not-Triss approached the car feeling betrayed. The rear seat was covered in luggage, and she was offered a place in the front, between her parents. Usually this would have been a treat, and even
the crush would have made her feel warm and protected. Today she wondered whether they wanted to keep an eye on her.

The Sunbeam’s engine stuttered its objections to the rain, then found its voice. Not-Triss smudged herself a spyhole in the clouded windscreen and watched mutely as Ellchester slid damply
by and then was left behind.

Wenwick was fifty miles’ drive away, an old-fashioned resort with long, arcing streets of wide-windowed, staring houses. Even though the Wenwick baths were no longer
considered to cure everything from gout to toothache, the place still bristled with doctors, like a crust of barnacles marking a high water point after the tide had gone out.

Each doctor the Crescents visited spent half an hour talking to Triss’s parents, and then ten minutes or so talking to Not-Triss herself in private, ‘so they could get to know each
other’.

The first one was a very kindly, elderly man who talked to her about the ‘rest cure’, in a conservatory that looked out on to a garden. Sometimes people had too many worries and
needed
rest
. Even wonderful things like families and friends could be too tiring sometimes. So you needed a
rest
from them, so that your mind had a chance to calm down. A few
weeks of lovely bed rest, perhaps. And sometimes it was best to avoid other excitements, just for a while. Reading, writing, talking . . .

The second doctor was much younger, and believed in the ‘talking cure’. He told Not-Triss that he was there to help her defeat her secret ‘monsters’. Sometimes you had
monsters that frightened you, and so you pretended they weren’t there and didn’t look at them. But the strange and magical thing was, if you
did
look at the monsters they just
vanished away, and you were perfectly safe. The young doctor had the clear, earnest eyes of a man who had never seen a monster in his life.

The third doctor was really a nurse, a big, boisterous woman with a voice that could have drowned out a foghorn.

‘Fresh air!’ she explained in tones that might have been heard as far as Denmark. ‘We move the beds outside, so they have fresh air all the time. And they can see the sea.
You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’