Cuckoo Song

Chapter 16. CAUGHT

There was no time to dive under the bed. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, and the candle dazzled her, so that she could scarcely make out the two figures standing behind it.

‘Triss!’ Her mother’s tone was beyond anger or incredulity. There was awe and fear in her voice.

Not-Triss could only gape into the light. How stupid she was! For some reason she had assumed that her ferocious battle with the bird-thing would have been inaudible to ordinary ears, like Angelina’s screaming back in the cottage. Now she realized that it had been very, very audible indeed, loud enough to wake the whole street.

The light advanced slowly into the room, and Not-Triss could see that it was held by her father. Not-Triss wondered how she looked to them – a glaring, dishevelled specimen perhaps, hunched like a church gargoyle on the scuffed rug.

‘Triss – what are you doing here?’ Her father’s voice was very, very level.

‘Nothing,’ she whispered. A stupid lie, but she scarcely cared any more. What was one more stupid lie in this house full of stupid lies?

Her mother still hovered in the darkened doorway, and Not-Triss could just make out shocked stars of candlelight reflected in her eyes. Glancing around, Not-Triss could understand her aghast silence. The sacred room was in chaos. Most of Sebastian’s award cups had been jogged off their stands during her battle with the bird-thing, and several photographs had fallen face first. The rug was chaotically rucked, and the wood of the shelves and desk was gouged here and there with fine, deep scratches.

‘Triss,’ her father began again. ‘I’m trying to give you a chance. Why did you come in this room? What… happened just now? Was there something else in here with you?

Yes. I fought a bird-thing and forced promises out of it at scissor-point.

Not-Triss looked down at her own hands, clenching at her cloth-covered knees. She shook her head.

‘Then where on earth did that terrible noise come from?’ demanded her mother.

Not-Triss did not need to look up to know what expression her mother would be wearing. A hesitant, brittle look, eyes brilliant with uncertainty and nerves.

‘Oh, why don’t we blame it on Pen?’ Not-Triss heard herself snap, in a voice that sounded harsher and more brutal than her own. Something had burst, and the words welled out, in spite of all her attempts to dam them. ‘That’s what we always do, isn’t it? That’s what she’s for, isn’t it? We blame everything on Pen and then we change the subject. And nothing matters as long as we don’t talk about it.’

The following silence was terrible. There had been a whole conversation she might have had, she knew that now. It was no longer there to be had. She had ripped out the remaining pages of the script, and had fallen off the ragged edge of the paper.

For a moment there was nothing she wanted more than to break loose, scream at them for lying to her for so many years and demand an explanation. Here they were, acting as if she had behaved in a strange and treacherous fashion, and all the while they had been hiding the letters sent by their dead son. The unfairness of it filled her with Pen-like rage.

The next moment she remembered that it was Triss they had lied to for years, and that she herself had many dangerous secrets that needed to be kept. If she gave vent to her temper, would she give herself away for the monster she was? Had she given away too much already?

‘Go to your room, Triss.’ Her father’s voice was so distant that it took Not-Triss a moment to understand that his words were directed at her.

Very slowly, Not-Triss got to her feet. As her unsteady steps carried her back to her room, her mind crowded with all the excuses and stories she should have used when asked for an explanation.

I was sleepwalking. I had a nightmare. I think maybe I cried out in my sleep. A lot.

There was a bird in the room. It was squawking and banging around. I came in here to help it out through the window.

I dreamed that Sebastian came back, so I came in here to see if he was sleeping in his bed. But he wasn’t there, and I was really upset. And cried a lot.

Why hadn’t she said something like that? Anything, just so that her parents could force themselves to believe her, and could go to bed with their minds somewhat at rest. That was the whole problem, though, she realized. Right at that moment, she had not wanted their minds to be at rest. She had not wanted to make things easy for them, or to add yet another lie to the stack of comfortable lies that seemed to be the only thing holding up the roof.

‘Stupid,’ she whispered, feeling her eyes sting and her lashes clog with cobweb. ‘Stupid! What’s wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just lie? Now they’ll think…’ She could hardly begin to imagine what her parents might think.

The excitement of her little victory over the bird-thing had dissolved, leaving only dread. She had learned something from its answers, perhaps enough for her to continue her investigation, but at what price? It was too late for her to offer her parents an innocent-sounding explanation for her presence in Sebastian’s room, the strange shrieking and upheaval that had taken place and the long scratches on the furniture. Any plausible excuse she gave from now on would smack of a tale invented in retrospect, and for very good reasons.

But I have to think of a story, she realized. By tomorrow. Something that will explain everything, even why I shouted at them, and why I wouldn’t explain myself at the time. Or I’ll be knee-deep in doctors for the next three days, and I’ve only got three days. That’s what the bird-thing said.

Only three days.