Cuckoo Song Read online

  YOU!

  Pen backed away a few steps, her expression tormented.

  IT’S YOU! YOU TRICKED ME!

  ‘Me?’ Triss screamed, no longer caring that they were in a public park. ‘I tricked you? Look what you did to me!’

  Triss grabbed at a few strands of her own hair, yanked them out, hardly feeling the pain, and held them up. Within seconds she could feel them changing in her grip, becoming dry and crumbling. Then the wind was teasing fragments of filigree leaf from between her fingers, bearing them away like brown confetti.

  ‘I’m falling apart!’ Triss could hear all her anguish escaping into her voice, making it so harsh she barely recognized it. ‘Why is this happening to me?’

  Still wearing the same bright, half-mad look, Pen watched the last brown specks fall from Triss’s fingers. Triss sensed the change in the younger girl’s posture even before Pen turned to flee, and pounced quickly enough to catch her by the arm. Pen screamed silently and tried to claw away Triss’s restraining hand, even tried to bite her sister’s knuckles. There was no mistaking the desperation in her eyes. But Triss was desperate too. With a force she had not quite intended, she stepped forward and pushed Pen hard, so that she fell down into a tangle of tree roots. Pen gave a smothered yelp, and lay there clutching her arm.

  ‘What did he do?’ screamed Triss. ‘What happened at the Grimmer? Tell me!’

  ‘Leave me alone!’ shouted Pen, her voice returning with a shrillness that sounded almost angry. ‘You know what happened! You were there!’

  ‘But I don’t remember! I don’t remember anything about that day! I don’t remember lots of things . . . I hardly knew who you were at first, or Mother, or Father. And home looks strange, and I keep seeing things that can’t be real, and I’m hungry all the time – and it’s all your fault! What did that man do to me?’

  Realization washed across Pen’s face, leaving behind it a look of hypnotized horror.

  ‘You don’t know?’ she whispered. ‘But . . . but you must do! You must remember coming out of the Grimmer!’

  Triss hesitated, as the odd impressions bobbed to the surface of her mind again, like dead fish. Surrounded by cold, murky water, light overhead, the silhouettes of two men above . . .

  ‘No!’ she erupted. ‘It’s just . . . pieces! And I don’t remember how I fell in at all!’

  ‘That’s because,’ Pen said, in a tight and tiny voice, ‘you didn’t.’

  And Triss was standing on the brink again, just as she had been during her midnight excursion to the Grimmer. Standing on the edge of a terrible truth, something that after all she did not want to know. But she had drawn too close this time, and turning to run and run and run would not help.

  ‘What?’ she heard herself ask faintly.

  Pen was breathing heavily. Her eyes still wore that hard, bright look that made her look mad and desperate.

  ‘They put a big bag over her,’ she said rapidly. ‘She tried to kick them but they bundled her up and put her in a car. And then they came back with all the things I gave them – the brush and the diaries and everything – and they threw them in the Grimmer.

  ‘And then they brought out this big doll, made of leaves and twisted sticks and briars, and they threw that in too. Then the short man made some noises that sounded like the wind in the trees. And the wind answered. And then there were ripples and something started coming out of the water. Walking out. And it was made of sticks and paper and bits and bobs and thorns and painted eyes, but after the water ran off it, it started to look like Triss.

  ‘And then it climbed out on to the bank and stood up. And it smiled. And I ran away, back to the cottage. But it came after me. It turned up at the cottage, dripping. And everybody thought it was Triss.’

  The ground no longer seemed steady under Triss’s feet. Some stealthy sea seemed to be stirring under the turf, its waves rising and falling with each of her breaths.

  ‘But I am Triss,’ she said. Now it was her own voice that sounded distant and unreal.

  Pen said nothing, but just stared up at her, her eyes as hard as bullets.

  ‘I am Triss!’ Triss tried to give the words more force.

  And still Pen’s dark eyes just stared and stared.

  ‘I am Triss!’ screamed Triss, using all the power in her lungs, as if she could force the words to be true. ‘You’re lying!’ The wind was building, and as the clamour of the leaves increased, it sounded as if the very air was seething.

  Pen made a lunge to the side, scrambling over the exposed roots away from Triss. As the younger girl stumbled to her feet, Triss leaped forward and lashed out, slapping Pen across the face as hard as she could. Pen gave a high, thin shriek of shock and pain and reeled back against a tree, clutching her cheek. She gave Triss one last hard-eyed, maddened glance, and far too late Triss realized what the look meant, what it had always meant. Not anger, not hatred at all, but terror.

  Then Pen turned and fled unsteadily towards the park gate, the film-light still coruscating over her small form.

  The girl who had been left behind did not chase her. Slowly she turned her hand and stared down at it, noticing the hint of red dampness on the tips of her middle three fingers.

  I hurt Pen. I really hurt her somehow. I made her bleed.

  She stared at those faint brown-red smudges for a long while, while the wind roared like a great page tearing in two.

  ‘I’m Triss,’ she whispered.

  But she knew it was not true.

  Chapter 13

  THE BRINK

  Not-Triss stood in the park with reddened fingertips, and wanted to run. Run, run, run from the monster. How could she though? She was the monster.

  But she ran anyway, pounding street after grey street into numb thunder with her foot-soles. The wind blasted into her face and she bared her teeth against it until they ached with the cold.

  Where could she run? Home?

  Mummy Daddy make it better make it not be true . . .

  But they could not make it better. They could not change the truth. And she was not their little girl. Why would they even try to help her? If she told them what she was, they would surely recoil in horror.

  Not-Triss tore her way into an alley across which washing lines zigzagged. As she raced through this rippling labyrinth, she wailed and lashed out, feeling cloth rend under her fingers. The sound that came from her mouth was not one a human girl could have produced. In it she heard the splintering lament of wind-felled trees, the steel cacophony of gulls, the whining note at the heart of a storm wind.

  On all sides she heard doors slam and voices raised in consternation. She hurled herself onward, making herself scarce before anybody could come to investigate.

  She burst out of the alley and into the next, and her feet carried her through one walled byway after another. There was a reek in her nose, a slick dark green smell of water that was old enough to be clever and dangerous. The paving stones gave way to worn cobbles, and then her feet were drumming on a wooden jetty and the wind was as clammy as a dead man’s kiss. The sky opened out before her like a wide white page scrawled with tiny bird shapes. And there surged the Ell, its grey skin rippled and scuffed, so broad that the far shore was fringed with toy trees and matchbox houses.

  At the jetty’s edge Not-Triss’s legs gave way and she dropped to her knees. Her sobs sounded more human now at least. Tears misted her vision now, but they stung bitterly and clogged her lashes. When she dabbed at her eyes, the tears came away in long, clinging strands, not blots of salt water. She stared at the gleaming gluey threads in confusion before realizing what they were.

  Spider-silk. She was weeping spider-silk.

  Numb with despair, she stared down at the glossy coffee-coloured river, hearing it click and lick against the quay supports.

  She felt as if it had been lying in wait for her. She had climbed out of the Grimmer. Perhaps these waters before her were destined to close over her head, completing the circle.

  T
riss’s parents could not make everything go away. The river could. Perhaps it would be better for everybody else if Not-Triss did let herself tumble forward into the water and took the monster out of the world . . .

  ‘But I don’t want that!’ she exclaimed aloud, frantically rubbing the cobwebs from her cheeks. ‘Even if I’m not Triss, I’m still real! I’m still somebody, even if I don’t have a name! And I don’t want to drown myself, or fall apart! I don’t want to die!’

  And, whispered a sly, unworthy voice in her head, the real Triss is gone. Why can’t I be Triss now instead? If I fix myself and don’t tell anyone where I came from, I could be a really good Triss – help round the house, maybe even be kind to Pen. I could be a better Triss than the real one.

  Almost as soon as this thought formed in her mind, however, Not-Triss recalled Pen’s description of the kidnap, of her other self being bundled into a car despite her struggles. Where was the real Triss now? What was happening to her? Was she in danger?

  ‘I don’t care!’ Not-Triss clamped her hands over her ears, as if she could shut out her own thoughts. ‘It’s not my fault! And . . . and I’m Triss too! They’re my family too! It’s my home too! I’ve got nowhere else to go!’

  But she did care. She could not help it. Somewhere her namesake was the captive of the Architect, and might be weeping just as bitterly. Perhaps she was tearfully waiting to be rescued by her loved ones, unaware that nobody knew she was even missing.

  Nobody. Nobody except me and Pen. If I don’t do anything, she’ll be murdered, or eaten by cinema screens.

  ‘But . . . if she comes home, what happens to me?’ Not-Triss whispered, her face in her hands, tear strands tickling at her fingers. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  It was fairly plain that she needed to do something. If she did not, soon there might be no Trisses left whatsoever.

  The world looked different as Not-Triss walked back. It was as if she was letting herself see with her true eyes for the first time, no longer trying to convince herself that everything looked normal. There was a new glisten to everything. Walls and trees conspired as she passed, their silent murmurs spreading through the air like blood into water. She was noticing things, like the way her own feet made little sound however fast she walked.

  Before, she had felt desperate and terrified, but all the while she had at least sensed the safety net of her parents’ love stretched invisibly below her. Now she knew how small a tug would be needed to drag it from beneath her. Her thoughts performed the same manic carousel all the way home.

  I have to find out what’s going on. Then maybe I can discover what’s wrong with me. Maybe I can find a way to rescue the real Triss, and help Sebastian. And maybe . . . maybe . . . maybe . . . if I do that, then they won’t mind there being two Trisses.

  But she could not believe it, and when at last the Crescent home came into view, her emotions leaped and flapped like washing in a tornado.

  I can’t let them know what I am, I can’t, I can’t! But Pen knows! How can I stop her telling everybody? No, Pen won’t tell. She can’t, not without admitting what she did.

  I hurt her. I hurt Pen. Maybe I hurt her badly.

  Not-Triss stared at her fingertips again, still uncertain how she had managed to draw blood. Perhaps she had claws that hid, like those of a cat. She did not want to think about hurting Pen, or consider the possibility that she had scarred her small face. Even as her stomach squirmed at the thought, a more fearful, selfish concern slipped into her mind. What if Pen had run home and been interrogated about her injuries? What if she had broken down in pain and terror and told the truth? What if her parents were waiting, even now, for the imposter?

  Not-Triss had the presence of mind to enter by the back door. Thankfully it was still unlocked. Cook had finished washing up but had evidently retreated to her own room in the basement. Not-Triss crept in, slid off her boots and tiptoed through the kitchen. The house was silent, so she eased her way back up the stairs, and hurried to Triss’s room.

  She was just reaching for the handle of the door, when it opened and her mother stepped out.

  ‘Triss.’ Her mother’s voice had a tone she had never heard before, faint and winded-sounding. ‘Where in the world have you been?’

  Not-Triss boggled at her. Somehow, amid the torrent of fears and feelings, she had not thought to put together a story that would serve if she was caught.

  ‘I . . .’ Not-Triss thought about claiming that she had seen Pen sneaking out, and had gone after her to bring her back. But what if they asked Pen to corroborate? ‘I . . . was sleepwalking.’ She could feel her face becoming hot.

  ‘Sleepwalking?’ whispered her mother, in the same tense, breathless voice. ‘Did you say sleepwalking?’ She swallowed, then held the door fully open. ‘Then what is that?’ Not-Triss was treated to a view of her own bed, and her heart sank as her eye fell on the covers, still clumped to look like a sleeping figure.

  Not-Triss had no answer. Her own precaution had incriminated her.

  ‘I . . . don’t know,’ were the words she mouthed, but she seemed to have no voice for them. It was a baby’s excuse, transparent as gauze.

  ‘You went outside. Without telling anybody. Why would you do that, Triss? Why would you betray my trust in you? Look at me!’ Not-Triss risked only the briefest glance at her mother, and was stricken to see that she was actually trembling, a great tear gleaming under one of her eyes. Not-Triss dropped her gaze again, fearful that her mother might look into her eyes and see a monster lurking there.

  ‘I said, look at me!’ Large hands took a firm grip on her shoulders. ‘Did Pen talk you into this? Where has she run off to now?’

  So Pen had not returned after all, and Not-Triss had a chance to blame the whole escapade on the younger girl. She could even feel the right words curling into shape on her tongue, and her mother’s ear waiting for them. But instead, quite unexpectedly, amid the pity, guilt and alarm, a tiny spark of outrage managed to flare in Not-Triss’s mind.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t Pen.’

  There was a pause, and a gasp, then Not-Triss felt herself shaken slightly by the shoulders.

  ‘You know it was! You would never treat me this way unless Pen had made you do it!’ There was almost a tone of pleading in her mother’s voice.

  ‘It wasn’t her!’ Not-Triss felt choked by claustrophobia. ‘I just . . . felt better. And . . . I really wanted to go for a walk. And . . . I knew you wouldn’t let me go. You never let me go anywhere.’ The words were out before she could do anything about them.

  ‘Triss!’ Her mother’s voice had a choked, tear-mangled tone. ‘Enough! You are ill ! Now . . . go back to bed. You’ve made me very unhappy, Triss, and you knew I already felt under par.’

  There was nothing Not-Triss wanted to do more than to leap into the woman’s arms, but there was no safety there, no hope.

  Help me, she begged her silently as the door closed between them. Help me, help me, help me . . .

  Chapter 14

  SILENT TREATMENT

  There was no help. There was no help from anybody. Not-Triss had nobody to trust but herself.

  She wiped the cobwebs from her eyes with the heel of her hand and listened. Her mother’s steps were moving into the study at the end of the landing. The door closed, and then she could make out the very faint sound of her voice.

  The telephone. Her mother was using the family telephone. After a moment’s confusion, Not-Triss realized that this was to be expected. Pen was missing again. Her mother would doubtless wish to tell their father. But would she report their other daughter’s disgrace at the same time?

  Not-Triss crept out and along the landing. She was aware now of the ease with which she softened her steps. The floorboards were her accomplices, swallowing their creaks as her soles pressed them. Her breath made no more sound than a flower petal falling.

  With her ear to the door she could make out her mother’s half of the conversation in the room bey
ond. Her tearful tone tugged at Not-Triss’s heart. But was it really her heart that was tugged? Did she even have one? She could not be sure.

  ‘. . . oh, I know that I should not be calling you like this, while you are at work. Believe me, I would not have done so, if I were not quite, quite desperate. I must talk to you.’

  Pause.

  ‘Yes . . . yes, it is! And I am completely at my wits’ end. I thought . . . I thought she seemed better. I really did. But . . . there is something terribly wrong. Ever since the fever. And as time goes by, I am ever more certain of it.’

  Not-Triss stiffened against the door. Whatever she had in the place of blood ran cold. Her mother had not phoned her father to report Pen’s disappearance. She had called to talk about Triss.

  ‘What makes me certain? A hundred things!’ her mother went on, now sounding almost hysterical. ‘I would be anxious enough if it were just the weight loss, or the way she eats, eats, eats like a mad thing – like a plague of locusts! But . . . there’s something more than that. She is different. There’s something slow and strange about the way she talks to me. It’s as if she is pausing to listen to somebody else before she answers. It’s more than just a worrying symptom, it’s . . . eerie.

  ‘She never used to have a temper, and now she does. Sometimes in her eyes I see this . . . this wild thing I don’t recognize! I don’t know what it is! I don’t know what it is doing in the face of my little girl!

  ‘And she creeps everywhere.’ Her mother’s voice dropped to a hushed, oppressed almost-whisper. ‘Over and over she startles me half to death by turning up unexpectedly without a sound. Even now . . . Even now I almost want to go the door to make sure she is not behind it, listening.’

  Behind it, listening, Not-Triss held her breath, remembering Pen’s words.

  You’re doing everything just a little bit wrong. And sooner or later they’ll notice.