Cuckoo Song

Chapter 35. CRUEL MIRROR

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.

‘I tried to explain before,’ Trista answered with feeling, ‘but you wouldn’t listen. I don’t work for the Architect. I’m not his child or his servant. He had me made to look like your daughter, so you wouldn’t notice she was missing, and he gave me Triss’s memories. But I didn’t know what I was.’ Trista could not keep the rage and pain out of her voice. ‘I thought I was Triss. When I looked at you, I saw the father I loved. Then everything started going wrong with me, and I was terrified. I thought I was going mad. And I tried so hard to be well, so you wouldn’t have to worry about your little girl.

‘And then you tried to throw me on the fire. Do you know what would have happened if you had? I would have burned to death, screaming. That’s all. It wouldn’t have brought Triss back. Because the Architect doesn’t care what happens to me.’

Piers stood staring at her, lips pressed together as if the truth was a pill he was trying to avoid swallowing. He wanted to dismiss her words as changeling lies, she could see that, but even now she knew a hundred small details were falling into place in his mind with painful clarity.

For years the whole of Ellchester had held a flattering mirror in which Piers could see himself reflected. A man of vision and community spirit, a leading figure of the city, an ideal father and husband. Now Trista was holding up a very different mirror, with a twisted image he had never seen before. To his credit, however, he did not look away.

He made two abortive attempts to speak, before managing to frame words.

‘I was told that you—’

‘And Mr Grace believed what he said,’ Trista interrupted. ‘But he was wrong.’

‘I did not know.’ Piers dragged his fingers back through his hair. ‘I… All I thought of was my daughter. It… It seemed the only way to save her. That is all I care about – protecting my little girl.’

It was not quite an apology, for what apology could Piers give to the feral thing on his windowsill? It was close though. Perhaps this should have made Trista feel a little better, stirred her sympathies. Instead his words stung her to the quick.

This time it was not just rage on her own account but a turbulence of feelings – anger, pity, frustration and pain. Her mind was full of her other self, whom Trista had envied and despised. Triss the cherished. Triss and her nervous ailments, swaddled to suffocation…

‘I know.’ The bitter words were out before Trista could stop them. ‘She’s your precious treasure. That’s why you like to bury her.’

‘What?’ Piers reddened around the neck. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You and your wife,’ Trista answered starkly, ‘have been burying Triss alive for years. She’s miserable. She has no friends. She hardly ever goes out, and never gets to try anything new or difficult. She’s twisted up inside with boredom, and it’s poisoning her.’

‘How dare you!’ Despite Piers’s state of shock, this was evidently a blow too keen. ‘My daughter needs special care! If you had any idea of the pains my wife and I have taken… Theresa is ill !’

‘Triss is ill because you and your wife need her to be ill!’ snapped Trista. ‘Apart from Pen, your whole family is ill! None of you have been well since Sebastian died!’

She had broken the taboo and spoken the sacred name. A shocked silence followed. Piers seemed to be having trouble breathing. Trista knew her words were harsh, but they had the bitter taste of truth. They needed to be spoken, and there was no gentle way to do that.

‘Sebastian died,’ Trista went on. It was too late to stop. ‘You were supposed to be in charge of the family, and in control. But he died and you couldn’t stop it happening. You tried. You made your bargain with the Architect, and it made everything worse.’

Piers had no answer. The tormented letters from Sebastian were in the very next room.

‘I think you tried to make up for it.’ Trista was probing deep in the family’s wound now, and she knew it. ‘Maybe you promised yourself that you would protect your other children from all danger. But you couldn’t do that unless they were in danger. That’s why Triss had to be ill – badly ill – so that you could save her, over and over again, the way you couldn’t save Sebastian.

‘I know you didn’t plan it like that – you thought you were just protecting her. But really all this time you’ve been teaching her to be ill. I know – I remember it all. I remember being told, over and over again, you can’t, don’t even try, you’re ill, you’ll make yourself unwell. And I remember being scared of the way my parents turned cold and angry if I ever liked somebody that wasn’t them, or wanted something that wasn’t home.’ Trista had to pause for an instant. The memories were not hers, but they bruised as if they were. ‘If Triss wants love, presents, kindness or her own way, she can get them by being ill. She can have anything she wants… as long as she doesn’t want to make friends, go to school, leave the house or get better. Of course she can’t get well – deep down she’s scared that if she does, her Mummy and Daddy will stop loving her.’

‘Triss could never believe that!’ exclaimed Piers aghast. ‘She knows we love her!’

‘Do you?’ Trista felt a pang as she saw her not-father blanch. ‘Or do you love the six-year-old Triss in your head, the one who never grows up, never looks at you differently and always needs you forever? She isn’t real. Your real daughter spends her life pretending to be her – it’s like a horrible game she has to play or she loses your love. Nobody is “your Triss” any more. There’s just a girl who play-acts all the time, and makes herself believe her own lies, and torments Pen out of misery and envy. She’s spoilt and spiteful and deceitful, and you have to promise that if I rescue her and bring her back, you will love her anyway, for the Triss she really is.’

A few moments passed before Piers seemed to take in the full import of her speech. Then he mouthed the word ‘rescue’ voicelessly to himself.

‘You… intend to rescue her.’ His tone was flat, as if he did not dare imbue it with any hope or energy.

‘If I can,’ Trista answered.

Piers looked utterly flabbergasted. ‘Then… you know where she is?’ He took on a look of pained hope. ‘Where? Tell me! Is she hurt?’

‘I don’t know where she is, not yet. She’s alive, or she was last night.’

Piers let out a breath, and then another thought seemed to occur to him.

‘And Pen? Little Pen?’

‘I thought you would never ask,’ Trista muttered nastily.

‘Where is she? Tell me you have not hurt her!’

‘Hurt Pen? After she saved my life?’ Trista could not keep the outrage out of her voice. ‘No. Never. But right now I think she’s safer with me. I don’t trust your Mr Grace not to decide that she’s a changeling too, and throw her in the fire.’

Piers looked anguished, perhaps at the idea that he could not be trusted with his own children. The thorny part of Trista’s heart gave a skip of malicious satisfaction. She could not help it. But there was another part of her that watched him with sadness and pity. She could not help that either.

‘If I find out where Triss is,’ Trista said quietly, ‘and if there is time, I will tell you, so that you can come to help rescue her. But now you must tell me everything that might be important – everything about your deals with the Architect.’

Seconds passed, then Piers winced before the cruel mirror he had been shown, and dropped his gaze. He swallowed down his protests and his pride and began to speak.

Trista listened, and all the while the part of her that was Triss sobbed to hear her mighty father sounding so humble, abject and destroyed.