Cuckoo Song (37 page)

Like a stray cat she scrabbled through the rubbish in the alley, looking for more copies of the
Chronicle
with their pictures of Triss. There were none, so in the frenzy of hunger she
scooped up half-rotted scraps and swallowed them.

‘What are you
doing
?’ Pen’s voice was right behind her.

Trista did not turn round but remained crouched, only raising one stealthy hand to wipe a speck of grime off her lower lip. She did not want Pen to see her face, just in case it was a monstrous,
thorn-mandibled mask of hunger. If Pen kept talking to her normally, then perhaps everything
could
be normal.

‘I was . . . I was hungry, Pen.’ How inadequate those words sounded. ‘I’m . . . hungry.’

‘I’m still hungry too,’ replied Pen mournfully. Trista could hear the smaller girl dropping to a crouch next to her.

‘I’m . . . I’m
really
hungry, Pen.’ Trista swallowed drily. ‘I think . . . I think it’s because I lost bits of myself on roofs last night, when I was
chasing the Architect. Those pieces left a hole, Pen. And I think that’s why I’m so very, very . . .’ She trailed off, clenching her hands into fists.

‘Then eat more things!’ Pen sounded dismayed. ‘I can get you leaves!’

‘It’s no good,’ Trista said through gritted teeth. ‘They have to be
Triss
things.’

‘You
can’t
fall apart!’ shouted Pen, as if it was something she could insist upon. ‘I . . . I won’t let you!’ Before Trista could react she felt
Pen’s arms thrown around her, with the desperate energy of a rugby tackle. ‘You
can’t
!’

Pen.

Trista closed her eyes and held Pen tightly. She clung to the one thing that felt warm and solid in her strange, unforgiving world.

Suddenly Pen gave a squeak and wince.

‘Ow! Triss . . . why are you
spiking
me?’

Trista’s gaze dropped to her hands. The thorns were out, curling from her fingertips like bramble briars, digging in through the shoulders of Pen’s light dress. Her tongue could feel
the fine points of tapering teeth. And her arms were curled around something that was banquets, and lemonade on a summer day, and hot soup in winter . . . and there was a hole inside her like a
bottomless shaft that a person might just tumble into . . .

She pushed Pen away as hard as she could. The smaller girl fell backwards, hitting the cobbles with a yelp. Winded, she stared up at Trista, and her expression of outrage and shock slowly ebbed
into horror and fear.

Trista dared not stay another moment. She backed away, then turned and sprang on to the top of the nearest wall. From there she dropped down on the other side into a neighbouring alley, landing
at a crouch with her heart hammering. Then she was away and running, head ducked down to hide her monstrous face.

Chapter 35

Outside, the air tasted of snow. There was something brittle in the jolting of the breeze, and the sky was so low Trista felt she could leap and draw her claws across it.
Instead she continued to sprint down lane after lane, her shoes quickly picking up grime and leaf-litter from the pavement.

Where was she? She did not even know. These were not the streets that made sense to the Triss part of her mind, with prim, trim rows of houses where everything was held modestly back behind
painted front doors and Venetian blinds. Here, in the roads between the back-to-backs, all the front doors were open and bold life poured out into the street. It was like watching somebody eating
with their mouth open. Children sped hither and thither in intense, smile-less gaggles like starlings. Mothers in hairnets chatted and peeled potatoes on doorsteps, fathers sat and smoked.

She ran on, ignoring the front-yard cycle-repair shops, the children huddling outside the tobacconist to beg cigarette cards off strangers and the salty reek of stalls selling oyster pie.

At last Trista glimpsed the outline of the Victory Bridge, a concrete rainbow bowing to the earth under its own weight. The sight of it set her internal compass straight. She was no longer
running through a twisted labyrinth of her own mind. She was still in Ellchester, with the river somewhere to the right, and the town’s slate-scaled hills to her left.

At last she stopped for breath in an enclosed alley full of the cold echoes of falling drips. She gasped, and sobbed, and ground her narrow teeth.

I hurt Pen. And what if I’d eaten her?

I’m a monster. A monster. Mr Grace was right all the time. And Violet was wrong.

But Trista couldn’t think about Violet without feeling a warm, stubborn hope. She remembered the way that Violet had stared straight into her eyes with complete faith.

Maybe I nearly ate Pen. But I
didn’t
. And I won’t. I won’t hurt Pen, whatever happens. I won’t make Violet wrong, not after everything she’s
done.

Trista swallowed, and in her mind’s eye she could see the smile of the Architect. How charming he had been on the telephone! And how slyly he had slipped in that suggestion that devouring
Pen might save Trista’s life. Perhaps he really had felt a shred of fondness for Trista at the time, but his real motive had been his desire to strike at Piers Crescent’s heart as
cruelly as possible.

‘But you couldn’t make me do it, Mr Architect,’ Trista whispered aloud. ‘You lost that game. I’m not your tool, and I never will be. I’m free and I’m
myself, until my pieces fall into the gutter. And I’m not ready for
that
to happen just yet either.’ She wrapped her arms around her makeshift body, with its ravening hungry
hole at the centre, and hugged her small, dark victory as tightly as possible.

I’ll find something to eat. Something that isn’t Pen. Something to stop me falling apart before evening.

Her thoughts scampered, cunning and ravenous as mice. Where could she find something dear to Triss? Was there anywhere else outside Triss’s own home that had been important to her?
Unlikely. Triss’s life had been lovingly enclosed by the walls of her house, like a pearl imprisoned in an oyster shell. Trista could have wept with frustration.

An idea struck her, and took hold. It was Tuesday – and Celeste had told Cook that she could take the whole of Tuesday off. Piers would be at work, and Tuesday was the day Celeste usually
played tennis and had tea with other members of the Luther Square Mothers’ Association. Margaret would soon have finished her work at the house.

It was just possible that even now the house was empty.

When she thought of venturing near the Crescent home again, Trista’s insides twisted into a black scribble of indescribable feelings. The hunger won out, however. With new purpose Trista
broke into a sprint once more. Her feet barely grazed the surface of the puddles, and the echoes slumbered on undisturbed.

The wind was Trista’s friend, so icily chill that it cleared all but the most dogged from the streets. It dragged up protective coat collars, and everybody hurried by,
paying one another no heed. Shop owners were too busy battening down their displays to notice Trista. Nonetheless she kept to the alleys and side roads.

She began to recognize landmarks, street names, achingly familiar to the Triss part of her head. But now she saw everything through a filter of her own strangeness and wildness. The familiar did
not welcome her. It stared at her aghast. She was not coming home. She was an insidious shadow falling upon the neighbourhood, like influenza or bad news.

And then, at last, there it was. The little square with its tiny park in the middle. The glossy cars, now crystal-freckled with the first spotting of rain. The tall, pompous houses shoulder to
shoulder behind their wrought-iron railings. Trista slunk along walls between hiding places, then skulked behind an unattended car.

There was a postman at the door. He knocked and waited, knocked again, then leaned back to peer up at the house.

Trista wet her lips as she watched him straddle his bicycle and depart. Nobody had answered the door. The house was empty.

She scurried from her hiding place, swift as a wind-chased leaf, weaving through the side streets until she was in the alley behind the houses. Pushing open the gate to the yard, she crept in, a
pepper-tingle of fear sweeping across her skin. Triss’s memories were everywhere she looked, and they chafed Trista like stolen shoes. They did not fit her. She could not understand how she
had ever thought they fitted.

The back door was locked.

Above her, the bedroom windows beckoned. Trista felt the leap as an electricity in her legs, even before she sprang. Her fingers closed on one of the sills, and she tugged herself up with
ease.

She scrabbled at the window, her thorn-claws leaving scratches on pane and frame alike. Then she managed to heave up the sash and pushed her way in past the soft lavender-coloured curtains. The
room beyond smelt of powder, potpourri and the slightly acrid scent of wine tonic. It was Celeste’s room.

Trista ventured out on to the landing, then opened the door into Triss’s room. Her heart ached as she saw how carefully the room had been tidied and aired, the bed meticulously made, with
Triss’s nightdress folded on the pillow. It was like the scene from
Peter Pan
where the Darlings discover that their rooms are poignantly waiting for them to come back.

But I’m not the one it’s waiting for.

And as her hunger enveloped her, Trista tore the room apart.

She tipped the chest of drawers, so that all the drawers spilled out on to the floor, then scrabbled through the fallen clothes, rending them in her haste. Triss’s false pearls crunched
like sugar. Books were clawed from the shelves, torn and swallowed, their leathery bindings dropped to the floor like discarded fruit husks. The straw boater and St Bridget’s blazer were
bittersweet and heady and nearly choked her. The bedside table tumbled and the medicine bottles smashed. Now the carpet beneath Trista’s feet was covered in broken glass, coloured pills and
sticky puddles of cordial and cod-liver oil.

All the while the dolls shrieked and clattered in outrage and fear, beating their fists of china and wood against their shelves. She grabbed a rag doll, feeling it twist and struggle in her
hands, and heard it wail as her mouth engulfed it. Two clothes-peg dolls followed, then a porcelain Pierrot. The screams filled Trista’s ears as she fed in a frenzy, hardly knowing if one of
the voices was hers. She was hardly aware of the cobweb tickle of her tears rolling down her cheeks. Her mind was filled with a white madness, and all sounds were meaningless.

She barely noticed when there was another noise beneath the hubbub, the sharp distant slam of a front door. Only the thunder of steps on the stairs roused her from her frenzy.

Fear sobered her in one drenching instant. Trista sprang for the bedroom door, leaping out on to the landing just as Piers Crescent came into view around the corner.

He stopped, stared. His colour and strength seemed to leak out of him. Trista had never seen him look so hollow-eyed, so desperate.

‘Triss . . .’ It was a barely audible whisper. A tiny, miserable flame of hope ignited in his eyes, and he took an eager step forward.

Terrified, Trista recoiled, baring her thorn-teeth in a hiss. Her mind was a furnace. All thought singed and sizzled into nothingness.

It brought Piers to a dead halt. Trista took advantage of that moment to flee into Celeste’s room. She had just leaped on to the sill of the open window when Piers’s voice reached
her.

‘Wait! Please!
Please!
’

Trista cast a glance over her shoulder into the room behind. Piers had stopped in the doorway, holding out one hand as if he could detain her from a distance. Her knees were still bent, poised
for the drop to the yard. Something in his face, however, made her hesitate for an instant.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said, with a steadiness that evidently took some effort. ‘Please – I want to talk. I want to make terms.’

‘
Terms?
’ The word exploded from Trista, and the voice that spoke it was not that of a little girl. ‘
You tried to throw me in the fire!
’

If I drop now, I can outpace him, I know I can . . .

‘Then your argument is with me, not with my daughters.’ Piers let out a long breath. ‘Your master’s quarrel is also with me. Tell your master – or your father, or
whatever he is – that I want to make a bargain. I will hand myself over to him and suffer whatever revenge he sees fit. All I ask is that my girls be brought home safely.’

Master? Father?

Trista did not know what to feel. Triss-feelings of love, loyalty, hurt. Trista feelings of anger, outrage, fear.

‘You don’t understand,’ she said, her bitterness softened by sadness. Her voice sounded more human this time, but older than the hills. ‘You don’t understand the
Architect, or me, or your own daughters. You don’t understand anything. You’re a loving father, but you’re blind. Blind enough to be cruel.’

Piers was in the dimness of the unlit room, but Trista thought she saw a pucker of tension and outrage in his cheek. It must have been years since anybody dared defy him, let alone speak to him
in such terms. He took a hasty half-step into the room, but halted again when Trista tensed on the sill.

‘Then tell me – what
can
I do to get my girls back?’ His tone of desperation tore at her heart, in spite of everything. ‘What does the Architect want from
me?’

‘He wants you to suffer,’ hissed Trista. Even now, she feared that the bird-things might be nearby and overhear her talking about the Architect. ‘Once upon a time you were
useful to him. But then you
broke the bargain.
Now all he cares about is making you wish you were dead, and he knows the worst way he can hurt you is through your family. If you try to
make a deal with him, he’ll pretend to listen, and tie you up in clever words, but he won’t give up his revenge.’

Piers stared at her for a few moments.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ he asked at last.