Cuckoo Song (24 page)

Oh.

She stooped and picked up a solitary shoe buckle from the floor. It was somewhat bent, and there was a row tiny dints that looked like the marks of pointed teeth. Pen moved over to peer at the
buckle, then gawped at Not-Triss with awe and horror.

‘You ate Triss’s shoes!’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Not-Triss answered firmly, putting the buckle in her pocket. ‘I’m faster barefoot.’

Oddly, once Pen properly understood that Not-Triss proposed to steal a cockerel, this seemed to put all thoughts of sleep or breakfast completely out of her mind. It soon became clear that if
Not-Triss tried to leave Pen behind, she would risk a row that would wake Violet and probably the rest of Ellchester.

‘You
need
me,’ Pen explained. ‘I’m your lookout. If I see the coppers coming, I’ll make a sound like an owl.’

They slipped out of Violet’s rooms, down the stairs and out through the boarding-house front door, which thankfully had a key on a wall hook. As the door closed behind them Not-Triss
paused, peering at the front door’s tinted windows, then rubbed at one of them experimentally.

‘What is it?’ whispered Pen.

‘Nothing.’ Not-Triss bit her lip. ‘There’s no ice on the outside of these windows. And in Violet’s rooms there was – on the
inside
.’ Once again
she recalled the single snowflake that had fallen out of a flawless sky and landed between Violet’s feet.

The cockerel never knew what hit him. One moment he was king of a small but dusty yard, patrolling between a row of runner-bean poles and his ginger-feathered harem. The next
moment something landed behind him as softly as a moth, and a perfumed bag was thrown over his head.

As she leaped back up on to the fence, Not-Triss gripped the top with her toes and was glad of her bare feet. The rooster was larger than she had expected, and its struggles hard to control.
After a while, though, it stopped twisting and squawking so much and settled for a subdued, nervous fluttering and twitching.

As she dropped down to street level once more, Pen watched her with a mixture of excitement, fascination and disapproval.

‘Your toes are strange,’ was her only comment.

A few streets later, Not-Triss was no longer so sorry to have Pen with her. The younger girl did at least seem to know where they were, and the quickest route to get to Meddlar’s Lane
under the Victory Bridge. Once again, Pen’s career of running away seemed to be standing them in good stead.

Meddlar’s Lane was a steep cobbled zigzag of a road that climbed the hill, and at its crest passed under one end of the Victory Bridge before weaving unsteadily down the other side. It was
flanked by dour buildings the colour of tobacco, plain as aprons and dull-eyed as morning-after drunks. Some were homes, and celebrated the fact by stringing washing-line bunting between their
upper storeys. Many lay empty, however, having been bought up by the city at the same time as the land for the bridge, still ‘awaiting development’. They were split husks, waiting for
the seed of the new to germinate and make them into something better.

Arching over all stretched the Victory Bridge, which cast the highest portion of the street into shadow. Gazing up at it on the approach, Not-Triss realized for the first time how truly vast it
was, many houses high, its sandstone hues still murky in the half-light.

The two girls walked into the shadow of the bridge. There was a sound of dripping, and Pen’s footsteps began to echo. Not-Triss’s soles made no sound at all.

Not-Triss produced the carving knife.

‘Are you going to kill the cockerel?’ Pen asked, her eyes round.

‘No.’ Not-Triss sat down, and managed to find a crack between two of the pavement slabs. With considerable difficulty she managed to work free some of the mortar and slide the blade
into the crack so that it remained jutting out when she let go. It looked like a cut-price Sword in the Stone.

‘Why are you doing that?’ asked Pen.

‘We’re going somewhere, and this will help us get out again,’ answered Not-Triss, hoping it was true.

‘What happens if it falls out of the hole?’

‘Then we can’t get out,’ Not-Triss answered, with as much patience as she could manage.

‘What if somebody pulls it out?’

‘Then we can’t get out,’ Not-Triss repeated, with slightly less patience.

‘This is a stupid plan,’ Pen told her, helpfully.

‘Thengo back to Violet’s house and eat canned cheese!’ snapped Not-Triss. ‘I didn’t ask you to come! I didn’t
want
you to come! It’s going to
be dangerous and . . . and if anybody’s going to be hurt . . . then it’s best if it’s just me.’ She had not really planned the sentence, and when she ended it her face
burned with shame and annoyance.

Pen’s face also looked like she might be flushed, but it was hard to tell in the shadow of the bridge.

‘I
hate
canned cheese,’ she growled. ‘It tastes like I bit my tongue. Anyway, don’t be stupid. Go on – tell me. How do we get in?’

‘Are you sure you want to come?’ Not-Triss felt like crying, but was uncertain why.

Pen nodded.

‘Then you’d better take my hand.’ She reached out, and was a little surprised when Pen’s small, cold hand was indeed placed in hers. ‘Walk forward, just the way I
do.’

Facing the wall that formed one of the great pillars of the bridge, she began to advance. As the two girls passed the embedded knife, Not-Triss thought she heard a faint musical whine, a sound
as frail as a moonlit hair.
Go down Meddlar’s Lane under the bridge’s end,
the bird-thing had said,
turn your face to the bricks and start walking. Then keep walking until
the sound of the traffic grows faint and you can understand the gulls . . .

Step after step. The brick wall approached, but as it did so it seemed to lean back, so that it was not a sheer face but an impossibly steep upward slope. They took another step, and the slope
was less steep, almost climbable. Another step brought them to the base of the brick wall and now it was only a mild climb, like a hilly path.

Instinct told Not-Triss to avoid looking either to left or right, and she was glad that she had Pen by the hand. She stepped out on to the brick ‘slope’, and it tipped to become a
level, horizontal surface under her feet. Ignoring the internal voices that screamed that she was walking up a sheer wall, Not-Triss strode on. She ignored them again when the brick gave way to
sandstone and concrete and they screamed that she must be walking along the underside of the bridge.

The faint sounds of the early-morning city were fading. The distant rumbles of the first trams, the the rattle of handcarts – these sounds were dissolving like salt grains in water. A
strong wind blew around them, and the peals of the gulls became louder.

And as they walked and walked, it seemed to Not-Triss that she heard something new in the voices of the gulls. It was not that the sound changed, rather that it was unsheathed like a blade so
that its edges were bared. Or perhaps it was her ears that were unsheathed and her hearing that grew sharper.

‘Child!’ she could hear the gulls shouting. ‘One child, two child! Pink cheek childs with eyes in their heads! Soft eye childs with hearts like fruit!’

Not-Triss knew that Pen could hear them too. The smaller hand did not shake, but gripped hers like a vice. Not-Triss squeezed it back as they matched each other, step for step.

Chapter 23

Not-Triss told herself that she was walking along the top of a bridge, not the underside. That was the only way to stay calm. The path before her was so broad that thirty men
could have stood shoulder to shoulder across it. There were curve-topped walls to either side, and they threw the walkway into ever-deepening shadow. Beyond these side walls the sky had a dull
lustre like oiled lead, and against it shapes could be seen circling and skimming. They were swift as ice skates and called with their almost-gull voices.

And ahead . . .

‘What’s that?’ whispered Pen.

About thirty yards away, the shadowy path disappeared into a large dark mound that blocked the way entirely, like a giant molehill.
Or a housemartin’s nest under the eaves
,
thought Not-Triss as she remembered for an instant which way was up. It was so dark that she seemed to hear the hiss as it sucked light out of the air. Its mass was irregular in shape, its outline
knobbly and bristling with spikes.

As they drew closer though, the inkiness seemed to drain away. The opaque mound resolved itself into a cluster of small, dun-coloured buildings, which clustered and jostled and sat on each
other’s shoulders, as if somebody had piled them into a cairn. The windows were squint-thin and without glass, the roofs sagged and dimpled like damp bread, and some had steps cut into them
so that one could reach other huts further up the mound. Ladders leaned and ropes dangled, so that the whole vista looked like a strange brownish Snakes and Ladders board. There were spires, not
lofty like those on a church, but wickedly slender and topped with weathervanes that moved independent of the wind. There were flagpoles too, from which drooped tattered banners, their colours too
faded and grimy to be recognizable.

‘It’s a village,’ Not-Triss answered, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice.

‘But we’re under the bridge, aren’t we?’ Pen scowled. ‘Why is there a village under Father’s bridge? Does he know?’

It was a surprisingly good question.

‘I don’t know,’ Not-Triss answered. ‘But I wish I did.’

There was motion in the house-mound. It was not a single flash of activity to draw the eye, but rather a universal stirring, like the subtle seething of an anthill, or the heat-shimmer of a
summer day. Now and then pennants flapped with idle deliberation, like horse tails slapping at a gnat’s bite. The outlines of the roofs shifted, as if low, scarcely seen shapes were scurrying
along them. There were faces at the windows too. Not-Triss never saw any of them directly – they were too quick for her – but their fleeting appearances left a smudge upon her eye.

‘I think there are people looking at us,’ hissed Pen. ‘Who
are
they?’

Not-Triss recalled what the captive bird-thing had said about the Architect.
Of all the Besiders in these parts, he is the most powerful and dangerous.
Mr Grace had used the same term
back in the cottage, when he had talked of throwing her in the fire.
The only way to show the Besiders that we mean business.
He had believed that Not-Triss herself was a child of the
Besiders, or a doll of their creation. If the Shrike
had
made her, then presumably
he
was a Besider too.

‘Besiders,’ she said aloud, trying out the word.

‘What does that mean?’ demanded Pen.

Not-Triss shrugged, trying to seem calm despite the hammering of her heart. ‘I think we’re about to find out.’

The wind’s tone changed and rippled, and now there was music riding on its back. Not-Triss had known at blood level that there would be, but the sound of it still surprised her. She
realized now that she had been expecting old-fashioned instruments – pipes, fifes, fiddles and tinny drums. Instead there came the cocksure, brassy warble of a saxophone, the blare of a
cornet and the squeak and trill of a clarinet being made to work for its living.

Not-Triss had heard jazz with neatly wiped shoes and jazz with gritty soles and a grin. And this too was jazz, but barefoot on the grass and blank-eyed with bliss, its musical strands irregular
as wind gusts and unending as ivy vines. It was not human music; she could tell that in an instant. This was truer, purer and more chaotic, but also . . . colder. Human jazz was a clumsy imitation
of this music, but it had blood, breath and warmth to it.

The melodies called to her, but she knew she should not answer. Her feet were full of pins, but if she let them twitch even an inch she would start dancing and never be able to stop.

Pay no heed to any music that you hear playing
, the bird-thing had told her.

‘Don’t listen to the music!’ she whispered. ‘Don’t dance!’

In spite of her determination, however, her pace was increasing, trying to find a match in the rhythm of the music. Pen was speeding up beside her as well, until they were pelting along at a
syncopated sprint. And then, all of a sudden, they were no longer approaching the village, they were in the midst of it, and Not-Triss had the eerie feeling they had been there for some time.

A man bowed low to them, as if thanking them for a dance. Not-Triss caught only a glimpse of his face as he straightened. His long, pointed nose and chin met and merged, making a loop like a cup
handle. Then he had moved away, losing himself in a crowd that was full of cheerful noise but baffled her eye when she tried to gaze upon any part of it. The throng flowed around the two girls,
apparently unconcerned by their presence. Not-Triss felt her determination waver, dissolving into the shyness and uncertainty of a child lost in the adult whirl of an unknown town.

Her everyday mind tried to tell her that she was in an ordinary street, clean and gleaming with sunlight after rain. However, her sharp eyes noticed the strangeness in the puddles, the way
individual drops would swell on the surface and then fly ‘upward’, obeying the call of thwarted gravity. Her everyday mind was dazzled by the brilliant displays in the shop windows and
the sweet, crimson smiles of the immaculate shop girls. However, her eyes noted the bizarreness of the wares, the gold clocks whose hands moved backwards, the arrays of tiny arrowheads made of
flint, silver and glass, the cages of goats as small as mice.

None of this was wasted on Pen either.

‘Look!’ The younger girl surged towards the nearest shop window, nearly pulling Not-Triss off balance as she did so.

A moment before, Not-Triss could have sworn that the shop had been an ironmongers. Now the window display held angel cakes, strawberry puffs and glossy Bakewell puddings clustered obsequiously
around vast iced creations in the shape of sleeping swans and full-skirted maidens glittering with candied fruits. Beyond them were great jars of gleaming, multicoloured sweets – gobstoppers,
lollipops, barley sugars, fruit bonbons, caramels, liquorice allsorts and the floury, jelly blobs of Peace Babies. There were other sweets that were unfamiliar, however – tiny silvery eggs,
mint-freckled pebbles and what looked like pale yellow strawberries with black leaves.