Cuckoo Song (25 page)

‘
Look
,’ Pen said again, in tones of awe, her eyes as large and round as Ferris wheels. ‘Triss – do you have any money?’

‘No – and we don’t have time to go shopping!’ Not-Triss could have kicked herself for letting the easily distracted Pen come with her. That the younger girl had
absent-mindedly fallen back into calling her ‘Triss’ again did not reassure her much either.

‘I’m
really
hungry,’ declared Pen stubbornly, resisting Not-Triss’s attempts to draw her away. ‘I could go in and . . . you could make a distraction out
here. Pretend to be ill, or—’

‘No!’ hissed Not-Triss, scandalized. ‘I’m not helping you steal sweets!’ She cast a glance over her shoulder to make sure that nobody was listening. ‘Pen
– things aren’t the same here. If they catch you stealing, they won’t just call your parents or the police. They’ll . . .’ She trailed off, sure of her instincts but
not her facts. ‘They’ll . . .
eat
you!’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ mumbled Pen, but the seeds of doubt had been sown. A moment later she flinched back from the window, eyes bright with shock. Not-Triss glanced back towards
the display, and a motion caught her eye. The caramels in one of the great jars were in scuttling motion, their foil wrappers gleaming like beetle carapaces. Face reddening, Pen at last let herself
be dragged away from the sweet shop.

‘Where
are
we?’ asked Pen. ‘What
is
this place? What’s wrong with it?’

‘I don’t think any of it is real,’ Not-Triss whispered back. ‘Or maybe it’s real, but isn’t the way it looks. I think everything and everybody here is . . .
strange and dangerous. Like the Architect. And the cinema screen that tried to eat you. And like me. We need to hurry—’

Before she could finish her sentence, Pen let go of her hand and sprinted away through the crowd. When Not-Triss caught up with her, Pen was stooping to peer at a game of dice two boys were
playing in the dust. When the dice tumbled to a halt, Not-Triss could see that instead of spots they had faces etched on them, all with their mouths open as if trying to call out.

‘Don’t!’ Not-Triss caught Pen’s hand as she was reaching for the dice. ‘Remember that cinema screen?’

But Pen’s attention had already moved on, closely followed by the rest of her. It was all that Not-Triss could do to keep up, and more than she could do to stop Pen tugging on ropes,
straining to pluck peaches from iron trees or leaning into brine barrels and splashing the water, so that she could watch the sky-blue fish within leap and shimmer.

With every new distraction that drew Pen on, Not-Triss felt a creeping and increasing sense of panic. The pins and needles of a hundred gazes prickled across her skin. She knew in her blood that
she and Pen were perches in a pond full of pike, and that every thoughtless word or action from her small companion was drawing in grinning predators. Soon they would cast off all friendly disguise
. . .

But we’ve been noticed from the start
, she realized.
It’s all a lie and a game. The people around us, they’re only pretending to go about their business. The truth
is, they’re watching us. All of them.

What had the bird-thing said about staying safe in the Underbelly?

Pay no heed to any music that you hear playing. And whatever happens, remember why you are there.

‘Pen, we mustn’t get distracted!’ she exclaimed. Pushing through the crowd, she found Pen standing before an imp-adorned fountain, staring at its crystal arcs of water with
mute fascination. Not-Triss grabbed at the smaller girl’s hand for the tenth time and tried to pull her away.

Pen did not move. She continued to gaze straight ahead, as if mesmerized.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ whispered Not-Triss, with rising alarm and concern. ‘Oh, please, please,
please
, Pen – we have to stay on the move! They’re
closing in – I can
feel
it!’ She dragged on Pen’s arm with increased urgency. Her efforts were of no avail. Pen stirred not a step, not a muscle.

Pen’s hand was very cold. Not-Triss realized that the smaller girl was neither blinking nor breathing.

Not-Triss’s thoughts somersaulted, and fell into place. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes tightly for a few seconds. When she opened them again, her vision was clear. She was
standing in the street unaccompanied, and firmly gripping the handle of an old pump. In height and bulk it was almost the same size as Pen, and was painted the same blue as her jacket.

She spun around, and was just in time to see the real Pen disappearing around the corner of the street, following a tall and stately woman in a long green coat. Not-Triss pursued at a sprint,
and caught up with them just as the woman was opening the front door of a honeysuckle-draped house. Warmth and the smell of a roast dinner drifted from within.

‘Where are you taking her?’ Not-Triss seized Pen’s shoulder, bringing her to a halt at the very threshold. Pen wore a puzzled frown, as she often did when she was not
completely awake.

‘My little girl is tired and hungry,’ said the woman. She was taller than Triss’s father, and yet her height did not look freakish. Her smile was sunlight on the skin. Her
grey, summer-mist eyes understood everything, forgave everything. ‘I am just taking her home to supper, and then a nice, long sleep in a goose-feather bed.’

Not-Triss could hear the gulls laughing and laughing.

Seven years’ slavery
, they mocked.
Seven years scrubbing her floors and grinding her flour. Seven years nursing her brats as they bite and scratch.

‘She’s not your little girl,’ Not-Triss declared, dragging the sleepwalking Pen away from the door, ‘and we’re not here to see
you
!’

The woman gave the kindest of smiles, and without moving or changing she became taller. Or perhaps Not-Triss was becoming smaller, frailer, fading away before the warmth of that smile like steam
on a window.

‘Triss?’ Pen blinked, still sounding sleepy. ‘What’s happening? Where are we?’

All around the false city sounds became muted, as if the crowd had ceased all pretence at milling and had halted in their tracks to gaze silently on the two girls. The buildings lost their
cheerful, daylight appearance and once again became the strange toadstool tumble Not-Triss had first glimpsed, drab as old bones. She was gripped by a terrible fear.

A cold and stinging pain tore through her side. With a short shriek she spun around, and as she did so, a few dead leaves fluttered to her feet like brown confetti.

Looking down, she saw a tear in her dress, where it covered her flank. To her horror, she realized that through the rip she could see no skin, only dead leaves, fern fronds and twists of paper.
Something had torn right into
her
, and her stuffing was falling out.

As she clapped her free hand to her side, she felt a similar rending pain in her other flank. She turned in time to catch a couple of child-sized figures stooped to peer at her exposed insides,
teasing out leaves with their long fingers. She could feel the scrape of their fingernails like glass shards in her stomach.

‘Get away from me!’ She backed away, helplessly shrill. But the crowd was closing in now, weary of watching and laying traps. Her gaze still would not settle on their faces, but she
could see and feel their eyes – hard, childlike and multicoloured, like toy marbles. No matter which way she turned, there were always wicked fingers behind her, tugging at her wounds. One of
her arms was taken up with gripping the rooster bundle, so it was impossible to defend herself properly.

A long, dry vine was tweaked from her flank and carried away by a cackling figure. The pain was shocking, but worse was the dizzy weakness that followed, the sense of having lost part of her
very self.

They’re all monsters
.
I’m going to be torn apart by monsters.

But I’m a monster too.

As cruel fingers plucked and poked at her once more, she rounded on her tormentors and hissed as loudly as she could, showing her thorn-teeth.

‘Don’t touch me!’ Not-Triss raised her voice for the benefit of the surrounding crowd. ‘I bite!’ She felt the tingle of her thorn-claws pushing out through her
fingertips.

The throng around her receded sharply, like chaff before a breeze. The cold, hard eyes around her lost their glitter, and became wary, appraising. For a moment she thought she had them at bay,
but then an insistent whisper hissed its way through the crowd.

‘They know how to enter!’

‘They know where we are!’

‘They will tell everybody! We cannot let them leave!’

The throng started to close in once more. Not-Triss knew that she had only seconds to act. She pulled the drowsy Pen behind her, turned to face the crowd . . . and pulled the cloth from the head
of rooster. Finding itself abruptly returned to the world, it bucked, flapped and crowed.

The sound was deafening, and set the very streets shuddering like a struck bell. On all sides rose an unearthly howl as Not-Triss’s erstwhile foes doubled up, hands clamped to their ears,
and shrieked as if in torment.

‘We want to see the Shrike!’ Not-Triss shouted, fighting to make herself heard over the din.

These were not human screams. This was like the sound she had heard leave her own mouth during her worst anguish, but multiplied a hundredfold.

‘Get out!’ bayed the mob. ‘Get out, or we’ll tear you! We’ll fay you!’

Not-Triss realized that the hostile crowd was parting, offering her a route of escape. Up ahead, she could even see the tempting arc of the bridge-road she and Pen had used to reach the village.
Behind her, she could feel Pen trembling. Small hands were clutching at her sleeve.

But Not-Triss had not come all this way just to flee. She gritted her teeth.

‘We want to see the Shrike!’ she shouted again.

The din became so terrible that her ears ached. The crowd surged to envelop the two girls, and Not-Triss was pinched, poked, scraped, scratched, clawed and nipped on all sides. Around her
whirled a crazy mosaic of half-seen faces. Pointed features with conker skin.

Puckered bat-faces with human eyes. Colourless girls with wet hair.

It took every ounce of Not-Triss’s will to stop herself breaking into a run. It took all her strength to hold on to the legs of the cockerel. But hold on she did, while the bird stretched
its neck to crow, and crow, and crow.

The cockerel’s feathers gleamed a brilliant bronze and its comb was flame. It shook its plumage, scattering sunbeams. Those whom the beams touched screamed and backed away, as if singed by
embers.

All around, the buildings shivered and shuddered like a coop full of frightened hens. Stray tiles and lumps of thatch shook themselves free and fell upward, leaving ragged holes in the roofs.
Cracks appeared in the street, leaking gravel and loose cobbles, which also flew up and disappeared. Puddles flung themselves upward in a brown rain. Some of the smaller figures were hurled from
the ground and had to clutch at house eaves to stop themselves rising out of view.

Not-Triss could feel her own body becoming weightless, giddy. There was a perilous drop somewhere above, beckoning to her. She clenched her eyes shut.

‘We want,’ she bellowed at the top of her lungs, ‘to speak to the Shrike!’

A voice cut through the uproar. It was not loud, but it made itself heard, like a cello note through the roar of a storm.

‘Leave them be. I’ll talk to the ladies . . . if they’ll hood their bird.’

The pinching and scratching stopped abruptly, and Not-Triss opened her eyes to the see the crowd withdrawing from her with a reluctant hiss. With a shaking hand, she flung the cloth over the
cockerel’s head once more.

It took a second or two for the world to settle on its axis with a jerk and a rattle. When her head stopped spinning, Not-Triss found that she was staring down a deserted street, haunted only by
flickers of movement at windows and street corners. Pen was clinging to her arm and taking tiny, rapid, terrified breaths.

Further down the street, Not-Triss could see a workshop with an open door. Just outside it stood a short, stocky man in a bowler hat. He was in his shirtsleeves, for all the world as if he had
just stepped out for a smoke. As she stared he raised a hand in a casual-looking wave, then beckoned.

Warily, and with Pen gripping her arm, Not-Triss advanced towards the hatted figure.

Chapter 24

As Not-Triss drew closer, she saw that the workshop wore a dull grey mop of thatch, streaked with dank green. The man did not wait for them, but ducked back under the low eaves
and disappeared into the shop.

The idea of following this stranger into his lair was unappealing, but Not-Triss was even less keen on staying out in the streets.

Pen was shivering slightly. Her face was still pale, but to Not-Triss’s relief, her expression was recovering some of its usual uncertain, belligerent glare.

‘That was him!’ exclaimed Pen shakily. ‘He’s the other man from the Grimmer – the Architect’s friend – the one who called you out of the
water!’

Not-Triss had guessed as much. Her hazy recollection of her view from beneath the Grimmer’s surface had shown her the dim outlines of two men standing on the bank above her. The taller of
the two had doubtless been the Architect, but beside him there had been another shorter and stouter man.

‘Yes. He’s the Shrike – and we’re going to ask him about the Architect. He might not be our enemy. But he’s probably not our friend.’ Not-Triss wet her lips
as the doorway neared. ‘Pen – hold on to me tightly. Everything here is a trick and a trap. Don’t eat anything. Don’t dance to any music. Don’t touch anything.
And,’ she added quickly, as Pen’s expression became mulish, ‘don’t let
me
do any of those things either. We have to watch out for each other.’

With one arm firmly tucked around the rooster-bundle and the other gripped fiercely by Pen, Not-Triss advanced into the workshop.

Within, the light was dim, most of it pouring in through the door, a few pallid shafts from the narrow windows. Above, Not-Triss could make out the thorny thatch past the heavy rafters. There
were a dozen tables, all cluttered with tools, china hands, herbs and feathers. On stands and sideboards were displayed dozens of dolls, nearly all of them incomplete. The majority were fashioned
from a mixture of green twigs, leaves, porcelain and wood. All of them were life-size, mostly babies, but there were occasional effigies of older children or even full-grown women, their bellies
swollen to suggest pregnancy.