Cuckoo Song (20 page)

‘You’re not cooking dinner in those!’

‘Why not?’ Dot raised her eyebrows, looking surprised. ‘They’re my pots and pans. Don’t you like them?’ And she continued her task. Some shreds of spinach, a
cube of turnip, a piece of rabbit meat, a dribble of stock . . .

Something about Dot’s po-faced expression set Not-Triss giggling helplessly. She looked away, but the sight of the tiny cooking pots over the fire made things worse. They just looked so
absurd dangling there, dripping stock into the flames. Suddenly everything seemed incredibly funny, far funnier than it had any right to be. She rocked silently, web-tears rising to her eyes.

She smothered her mouth with her hands, but she was full of a great swelling laugh and there was nothing her small frame could do to keep it in. It swelled, and swelled, and swelled, and it was
only in the moment before it broke forth that she was afraid, and knew it was not
her
laugh, not
her
hilarity that was bursting out of her.

Then the Laugh escaped. Not-Triss rolled on the bench, laughing with the creak and thrash of a forest in a gale. She laughed until the windows rattled and the flames of the hearth dipped and
quivered. Words came from her mouth, but they were not hers, nor could the voice that spoke them be mistaken for human.

Dot stood motionless, her face set and unreadable, watching Not-Triss until her helpless mirth subsided. Then she looked past her towards the door, her expression suddenly
youthful and uncertain.

‘Will that do?’ she asked, in a surprisingly respectful tone.

‘Thank you, Dot, that will do very well,’ said Mr Grace the tailor. He stood just within the doorway, and a pace behind him Not-Triss could see her parents, gazing aghast into the
kitchen.

Dot gathered up her kitchen knives, gave Not-Triss one glance of thinly veiled fear and revulsion and hurried for the door. She pushed hastily past the Crescents and vanished from view.

‘Eggshells used as cooking pots,’ Mr Grace said, as he advanced slowly and carefully into the room. ‘It never fails, for some reason. The sight always makes them laugh so hard
that they give themselves away. They just can’t help it.’ He sighed. ‘I promised you proof, my friends. Now you have seen the truth.
This is not your child
.’

Not-Triss was breathing hard, but there did not seem to be any air in her lungs. There were stone flags under her feet, and yet she felt as if she was falling.

‘I’m . . . ill.’ Her voice was a breathless, helpless creak. Everything she had fought so hard to find out, she wanted none of it now. She wanted to be wrong after all,
anything to stop her parents looking at her that way. She
was
wrong. She had to be. ‘I’ve been ill, that’s all. You said so. You all did. I’m just ill. I’ll .
. . I’ll get better. I . . . I promise I will.’ Her eyes began to mist.

‘Stop!’ The tailor threw out an arm to stop her mother stepping forward. ‘Don’t play into its hands. I’m sorry, but you have to be strong. It’s cornered
– it knows that its only hope is to tug at your emotions.’

‘But . . .’ Her mother cast an uncertain glance at Not-Triss’s face, her gaze bluer and more fragile than ever before. ‘But look at her!’

‘I
am
looking at her,’ murmured the tailor, and gave a short, dark laugh, a bit like a cough. Before Triss could react, he had sprinted forward and grabbed her by the chin,
so that she gave a squawk of shock and fear. Both her parents cried out and stepped forward to intervene, but the tailor’s expression stopped them in their tracks. His face was that of a man
bracing himself for battle, or staring into a hurricane. ‘You think those are tears shining in her eyes?’ he demanded. ‘Let me show you these “tears”.’ With his
free hand he tweaked out a handkerchief, and as Not-Triss tried to jerk her chin free he gently dabbed at the corner of her eye, catching a long silvery strand and drawing it out for her parents to
see.

‘What . . . ?’ Her father had turned ashen.

‘Spiderweb,’ the tailor replied curtly. ‘That’s all. Just another part of the disguise. This creature
has
no tears.’

Not-Triss dug her fingernails into the tailor’s hand. When his grip on her chin slipped, she bit him and sprinted away to the far corner of the room. There was a small scream of horror
from her mother.

‘Her teeth!’

‘You saw that?’ The tailor was wrapping his handkerchief around his hand. The back of it was marked by small bleeding puncture wounds, not like the dents left by normal teeth at all.
Not-Triss raised hesitant fingers to her mouth, and their questing tips touched tooth-points that were slender and unbelievably sharp. ‘Thorns for teeth. Yes, that’s its real
appearance. Sometimes they revert when they’re frightened or angry. I am so sorry you had to see that, Mrs Crescent, but now at least you know.
This is not your daughter.
’

‘I . . .’ Not-Triss looked from face to face in desperation, feeling the cradle of love disintegrating around her. ‘I
am
Triss! I . . . I
can
be! I
want
to be! Let me try again – I’ll get it right this time! Please . . .’ They were backing away; her parents were backing away.

‘Triss.’ There was a soft, broken look on the face of her mother.

But she’s not your mother
, her wits told her, in a voice as soft and terrible as thunder. Too late Not-Triss realized how blind she had been. Even after she had found out that she
was an imposter, she had still been thinking of this man and woman as
her
father,
her
mother. It had been second nature. She had not even noticed herself doing it.

It was Triss’s mother who stood before her now, Triss’s mother who was flinching away from her in horror, Triss’s mother whose expression was ebbing into pale shaking rage.

‘Triss – where is she?’ Celeste Crescent’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. ‘You little monster, what have you done with her? Where’s my little
girl?’

‘Mother . . .’ With a sick feeling in her stomach, Not-Triss could feel her mouth drooping into the little sob-shape that always worked, that always made everybody soften and look
after her. But it was a stolen mannerism, and today it only made things worse.

‘Tell us what we have to do,’ asked Piers Crescent through his teeth.

‘It will be unpleasant,’ answered the tailor, ‘so we should spare Mrs Crescent. She’s been brave enough already.’

‘Celeste –’ Piers gave his wife a look of tender appeal – ‘love – please – can you leave us? Triss will need you strong and well, when we get her
back.’

‘Don’t go!’ Not-Triss knew at once that something terrible was going to happen, something that the tailor was not willing to do in front of Mrs Crescent. ‘Don’t
leave me!’

But her mouth was full of thorns, and her voice came out wrong. With one last white-faced, appalled look at Not-Triss, Celeste Crescent tottered weakly from the room and closed the door behind
her.

‘Now, Mr Crescent,’ continued the tailor in a deliberately calm and steady voice, ‘I will need you to stoke up the fire. Make it as fierce as you can.’

Not-Triss leaped towards the door by which Mrs Crescent had left, but the tailor seized her, wrapping both arms around her so that her own were pinned to her sides.

‘It’s the only way,’ he added through clenched teeth as Not-Triss scratched, struggled and tried to bite him with her thorn-teeth. ‘The only way to show the Besiders that
we mean business. This creature is either one of their own children, or it is even less than that – a doll made of dead leaves, perhaps, or carved from a block of wood. If it is a child of
theirs, the Besiders will not wish to see it hurt. The best ways of dealing with a changeling – the oldest, tried and tested ways – are to force them to save it. Beat it with a switch
till it screams. Throw it into fast-flowing water. Or push it into a blazing fire.’

‘God above,’ whispered Piers, as he shakily piled more wood on the fire and nursed it to a roar. ‘Isn’t there any other way?’

Not-Triss gave a wordless wail of terror, but it sounded ghastly even to her ears. There was the whickering of bat wings in it, the whistle of November winds, the scream of gulls. The kindling
in the hearth snapped with a sound like castanets, spitting sparks to dance lazily up the flue.

‘It won’t kill it,’ answered the tailor curtly. ‘Mark my words, if it’s a Besider child, either it will jump up the chimney, or its parents will come for it. Either
way, the Besiders will bring back your child to make sure you never trouble their family again.’

‘And if it’s a wooden doll?’ Piers was ashen-faced and shaking. He stared at his own hands tending the fire as if they horrified him. He did not look at the tailor, or at
Not-Triss wrestling in his arms. He kept his gaze on the rising flames the way a drowning man clings to a timber.

‘Then the outcome is less certain. The Besiders will not bother to rescue a doll, but if you destroy it they may well lose interest in their game and return your child anyway. Or they may
not – but you will still have rid your house of a monster.’

‘He’s wrong!’ Not-Triss called through her sobs, willing her not-father to look at her. ‘He’s wrong! I’m real! I’m real, and if you put me on the fire
I’ll die!’ She could feel cobweb-tears oozing out of her eyes and down her cheeks, leaving long, shining, incriminating strands.

‘Don’t listen.’ The tailor was manoeuvring her closer and closer to the hearth, an inch at a time. ‘Mr Crescent, remember this – it doesn’t feel pain the way
we do; it doesn’t feel fear. However much it screams, none of it is real. Are you ready?’

‘Oh God.’ Piers stepped back from the fire, and at last turned his dismayed gaze towards Not-Triss. His face softened for an instant, with the kind look he saved for only one person.
Not-Triss felt a small dewdrop of hope before she realized that he was looking through her, not at her. ‘For Triss,’ he said under his breath. ‘For Triss I can do this. Yes.
I’m ready.’

‘Then on a count of three, help me force it into the fire,’ murmured the tailor. ‘I’ll need your assistance. Even their children can be inhumanly strong and
agile.’

His face was drawn and pained. With a deep despair Not-Triss realized that he was a good man, and that good men sometimes did terrible things.

‘One . . .’

Not-Triss struggled and wailed until the roof tiles popped and cracked like hot chestnuts. She screamed until the grain pots shattered on the shelves.

‘Two . . .’

She fought, clawed and tried to bite, all pretence forgotten.

‘Tr . . .’

But the rest of the ‘three’ never arrived. Suddenly there came a drenching rush of icy water from behind, soaking her back and shoulder and cascading down on to the hearth. There was
a deafening hiss, a blinding surge of smoke and steam, and the room was plunged into near darkness.

Not-Triss felt the tailor’s grip slacken in surprise. In one wild, convulsive motion she burst from his grasp, nearly losing her balance. Before she could fall, however, a small hand
snatched at hers and yanked her in the direction of the door.

Instinct took over, and she ran. Out of the kitchen door, through room after room. Then out through the front door into the cold, sea-scented darkness, sprinting all but blind over the shifting
pebbles, with the short dark figure of Pen by her side.

Chapter 19

Pebbles clacked under their hasty steps with a cold, disapproving sound. The wind was against them. Overhead the clouds rolled by, solemn, smoky and vast, the pale face of the
moon surfacing now and then. The black waves seethed unseen against the black beach, only occasional frills of white foam visible in the gloom.

Pen ran alongside her, panting fiercely. Her silveriness of the day before seemed to have worn off, and she was now as dark and solid as she had ever been. Not-Triss could not even start to
guess how Pen had contrived to suddenly appear here, let alone why the younger girl had decided to save her.

Panic had led them down the beach, because it was flat, and panic told them they needed to run fast. Panic had nothing to suggest when the beach ran out and they found themselves staring at the
cliff-face of the headland that formed the end of the cove. They halted for a second, staring and gasping for breath, and Not-Triss recovered enough of her wits to realize how exposed they
were.

‘Head inland!’ she hissed. ‘Into the woods!’

The pair of them scrambled up the beach, over some slippery wave-worn boulders and into the birch wood beyond. Staring up the steep, tree-covered slope that seemed to climb forever, Not-Triss
felt the clammy touch of despair.

The woods were thick with wet rust-coloured bracken, which soaked them as they struggled up the slope, and hid their own feet from them. The damp moss and leaf-rot were softly treacherous
underfoot. The silver-birch trunks gleamed in the darkness like lean and elegant ghosts.

There was no sound of pursuit behind them yet, but there would be. Not-Triss was sure of that. Mr Grace and Piers Crescent must have gone to find light sources.
And scissors
, said a
fearful part of her mind. She tried to silence it, but she could not rid herself of a mental picture of Mr Grace bounding up the slope after her with a pair of enormous scissors, like the
‘long, red-legged scissorman’ from the old story, who cut off children’s thumbs.

They tried to throw me on the fire.

Her lungs started jerking with sobs. She couldn’t think about
that
. Not now. Not when she needed every ounce of breath for climbing. If they could just reach the road . . .

But Pen kept falling down. Her legs were shorter. The bracken came up to her waist, not her hips. Not-Triss caught her and helped pull her back to her feet over, and over, and over. At last,
when Not-Triss stooped to drag her upright for the twentieth time, Pen pushed her away hard, so that Not-Triss nearly slid back down the slope.