Cuckoo Song

Chapter 37. STORMS AND TEACUPS

The Old Docks had not faded gently. They did not look sad, like the primly peeling paint of the Victorian bathing huts you sometimes saw in coastal towns where the tide of luck had gone out. Neglect had given the Old Docks a dangerous air, like a half-starved dog.

Violet drew up on a riverside street where a drab chorus line of three-storey houses stared out across the water. For the last five minutes, the motorcycle’s roar had been punctuated by occasional stutters, and this time as she killed the engine it died fretfully.

‘Fuel’s low,’ she muttered with a frown. ‘And the police may be watching out for me if I try to buy more petroleum.’

‘Why doesn’t Father stop them?’ demanded Pen. ‘Triss – you said he was on our side now! He can’t let them arrest Violet!’

‘He’s not in control any more.’ Trista could not bring herself to explain further. Piers’s harrowed face was still clear in her memory. ‘But perhaps he will try to help.’

‘And he wasn’t angry with me?’ Pen asked.

‘No, Pen,’ Trista answered gently. ‘He wasn’t.’

‘Then I expect it’s a trick,’ Pen declared in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘He’s always angry with me.’

‘You’ve been missing for two days,’ Violet reminded her. ‘Perhaps he’s starting to forget how annoying you are.’

Even now that her hunger had been sated, Trista still shivered at the memory of her last conversation with Pen. The smaller girl, however, seemed to have shrugged off the whole episode.

Both Trista and Pen wore cheap headscarves to cover their hair, in the hope it would make them slightly less recognizable.

Trista was aware of a growing sense of unease as she looked around her. It was not just the down-at-heel area that was gnawing at her instincts, she realized. To her ears the breeze had a faint dry buzz to it. The sky looked like china.

‘Is something wrong?’ Violet asked her quietly, with a frown.

Trista swallowed.

‘There are Besiders here somewhere,’ she whispered back.

‘Are those the boats?’ asked Pen in carrying tones, as she scrambled out of the sidecar and headed towards the water.

Some of the wooden jetties had not yielded to time and the waters, and still jutted out on to the river. Sure enough, moored to them and around them were a number of vessels. By far the largest was a shabby-looking barge, the glass of its portholes fogged with grime. There were some open fishing boats, each with a solitary slender mast, and a number of small rowing boats.

Trista climbed out of the sidecar and hurried to keep pace with Pen, who was running for the nearest jetty.

‘Careful, Pen!’ she called. ‘The boards might be rotten!’

To Trista’s surprise, Pen gave her a shy glance and slowed, waiting to take Trista’s hand. Pen ignoring her, Pen shouting at her – these were easier to deal with than Pen’s matter-of-fact trust.

Somehow the safety of another person, a smaller person, had been thrust into Trista’s hands. It frightened her. She wondered if mothers felt scared at having so much power over their children. Perhaps they did. Perhaps they wished there was somebody to tell them if they were doing things wrong. She felt a sudden, unexpected sting of sympathy for the Crescent parents.

While Violet hid the motorcycle down an alley, Trista and Pen walked stiffly down the jetty, glancing at the boats. Trista tried to read the names painted on the sides, but the peeling paint had obliterated each and every one. One boat appeared to be called the Si—er Wy-m. Next to it nestled the Ch----r and the Wail—g Gh---.

‘Where are all the people?’ hissed Pen.

‘I don’t know,’ Trista whispered back. The boats all had an abandoned look, like empty peapods. And then, all of sudden, one of them was not so empty after all.

There was an imperceptible moment of shift. It was like that instant where a patch of earth flutters and shows itself to be a brown bird, or a leaf twitches and becomes a lacewing. Somehow, in the jumble of sun-bleached deckchairs, rope coils and old crates painted with curling slogans, there must always have been a man and woman sitting on the barge’s deck in plain view. Now they stood up and became obvious.

Triss swallowed to smother her surprise. Pen gave a short, sharp squeak.

Neither of the strangers was young, but it was hard to be sure how old they were. Their skin was pale and greyish, with a tired, wet-weather look to it. Their hair was the colour of damp sand, and something about their eyes made Trista think of oysters.

Both were wearing floor-length grey-brown coats that set bells ringing in Trista’s memory. After a moment she remembered the coat the Architect had worn in the room behind the cinema, and realized that these coats were made of the same strange dull fabric. The other garments she glimpsed were wrong. The woman wore an old-fashioned plum-coloured dress with a bustle, like the sort Trista had seen a grand lady wearing in a chocolate-box picture. The man had seemingly normal trousers, but there were brown ribbons criss-crossing up them, binding them to his legs.

‘Are we in Ellchester, pretty ladies?’ asked the man. A flock of passing gulls made his voice hard to hear, and Trista had to shake her head to clear it. She felt as if somebody just behind her was whispering in her ear, telling her that the gentleman had actually said something perfectly normal, and that he did not have a smile like a sick wolf.

‘Yes!’ Pen declared with a boldness that told Trista she was frightened.

The woman’s gaze trickled down Trista’s face like cold oil.

‘The little one,’ she breathed, ‘is she yours?’

Again the imaginary whisper was busy at Trista’s ear, or rather inside her mind, telling her how charming and unthreatening the woman was.

‘She’s my sister,’ Trista answered as brightly as she could, while taking step after step backwards. ‘It is so nice to meet you, but we… have to go back to our mother now.’

The two girls turned about and returned to Violet, steps brisk. All the while, the back of Trista’s neck tingled as she listened to sounds from the barge.

‘… such nice shin bones…’ she heard the woman whisper.

Trista and Pen clung silently to Violet’s sleeves as the couple approached them along the jetty, and then walked past, proceeding up the road with a careful, stilted gait. Violet glanced down at the girls with a question in her eyes.

‘They’re Besiders,’ whispered Trista, once she was sure the pair were out of earshot.

Violet’s expression barely changed, aside from a pucker of tension at the corners of her mouth. She did not look over her shoulder at the strangers.

‘How can you tell?’ she murmured very quietly.

Trista stared at her. ‘Can’t you tell?’

‘They’re like bonfire guys come to life!’ hissed Pen. ‘Didn’t you notice?’

Trista dared a glance at the couple, who had come to a halt outside a tea room. The man seemed to be having some trouble working out how to use the door handle.

‘I think they’re doing what the Architect does to make people see him as handsome,’ she whispered. ‘It’s probably the same thing the bird-things do, so everyone thinks they’re just birds. Lying to people’s minds without saying anything. But those two over there… I don’t think they’re very good at it.’

‘I had an odd feeling about them, but…’ Violet trailed off, frowning.

‘It’s as if they’re wearing a lie, but it doesn’t fit them.’ Trista tried to straighten her thoughts. ‘They haven’t buttoned it the right way, so it’s baggy in some places and coming away in others.’

And maybe Pen and I can see through it more easily because we’ve had more dealings with the Besiders, she added silently in her head. I’m almost one of them, and we’ve both been to the Underbelly. It’s as if we have a stamp on our passport.

‘Well, we can’t stand here in the street,’ muttered Violet, looking warily about her. She gave the tea room an appraising glance, then pulled off her gloves and strode resolutely towards it, Trista and Pen keeping pace.

The tea room looked self-possessed but a little weather-worn. Celeste would probably have sniffed at it for being ‘plain’ and ‘frequented by all sorts’. Compared to the pretty Lyons tea shops with their fancy cakes in the window, it did look a bit drab.

Violet pushed the door open, and the girls filed in behind her. They traipsed through the ground-floor bakery, then up the stairs to the first floor.

The tea shop itself had walls the pale colour of egg custard, interrupted by occasional paintings of nursery-book scenes where wispy fairies danced with mice. There were about twenty square tables, two-thirds of them occupied. A couple of female staff in aprons hurried to and fro bearing plates of cake, and making ready the pots at the corner counter, with its row of great steel urns, spotted with age.

A smell of cooking sausages made Trista’s stomach leapfrog. With a shock she realized that it was probably lunchtime. The day was seeping out of her fist like so much dry sand.

‘I’m really hungry,’ declared Pen in a half-growl, half-whine.

Violet chose a table in the corner by the window, so that they could keep a discreet eye on the street.

While Violet ordered crumpets and tea from the waitress at the counter, Trista cast a careful glance across the dining area. At a distant table she saw the mysterious couple from the boat, heads stooped together in earnest conference. Then her eye strayed to the next table, and the next, and the next…

A twitch of the head that was too rapid, too hawk-like. A flash of silver in the eyes. A furtive licking of a jam knife with a long tongue. Boots that in shadow seemed to have toes…

‘What is it?’ murmured Violet, as she returned to the table.

‘Other Besiders,’ breathed Trista.

Violet nodded very slowly, taking in the information. ‘How many?’

‘Do you see the waitresses?’ whispered Trista. ‘And the two ladies eating bacon over there? And the old man in the worn-out hat, and the young man with the newspaper?’

Violet nodded.

‘Well…’ Trista hesitated. ‘I think those are the only ones who aren’t Besiders.’

Violet grimaced and hissed her breath in through her teeth.

The tea shop was filled with a commonplace-sounding hum of conversation, but when Trista focused she could hear what her fellow diners were really saying to the waitresses that came to take their order. It was like those moments when Triss’s father tuned the family wireless and brought voices magically into clarity.

‘Bring us butter! Butter! Never mind the bread.’

‘Good afternoon. I am not here to devour you. Now bring me sweetmeats so that I may pass as one of your kind.’

‘A glass of your tears, my honey. What? Oh. Tea then.’

The two waitresses were young, tired-looking women, and Trista noticed that both of them looked tense and strained. They made mistakes, miscounted money, occasionally knocked over a milk pot or rattled their trays. The other non-Besider customers had the same air of confused unease.

‘We should have brought a rooster!’ hissed Pen.

Trista blinked hard, and realized that the strange, seated figures had something else in common. All of them were wearing overcoats or long shawls in shades of grey or brown, made of the same dull, tufted fabric. As she watched, a woman at a far table yawned, and her coat seemed to ripple and flutter in a way that was familiar.

‘Look at their coats!’ Trista murmured. ‘I know it’s difficult – your eye doesn’t want to see them – but look. I think they’re made of feathers. Bird-thing feathers.’

All three of them jumped when a tea tray was set down with a slight clatter. Trista flinched, wondering how much the waitress had heard.

‘I love children.’ The waitress winked at Violet. ‘They always have a world of their own, don’t they?’ She set out the crumpets, butter and jam in front of the threesome, and gave Trista and Pen a broad, indulgent smile. ‘You girls make the most of it while you can, that’s all I can say.’

Trista and Pen stared back at her with dark, round, exhausted eyes.

‘I want a spoon, please,’ said Pen dourly.

The waitress had barely turned her back when another figure drifted into the room. At first glance she looked like somebody’s smartly dressed aunt, in tweed hat and coat. As Trista stared, however, the illusion split like the skin of a rotten fruit. She saw beneath it the red doll-cheek circles painted on to the drowned-looking face, the cat’s tails knotted into the floor-length black hair. The woman drifted like a mote on the breeze and came to a halt by their table.

Cowslip-yellow eyes passed over Violet and Pen, then fixed on Trista.

‘These two – are they yours?’ asked the woman. Her voice seemed to be made of the sobs of children in some distant cavern. Her gaze crept pointedly towards Violet and Pen.

That’s almost exactly the same question the couple from the boat asked. What does it mean? And why are they all asking me that?

Because they’ve seen something in me that is like them. They think I’m a Besider too. And they want to know if Violet and Pen are my… friends? My pets?

‘Yes,’ Trista said defensively, hoping she was giving the safer answer. ‘They’re mine.’

‘I’m n—’ began Pen, then gave a yelp as Trista kicked her. ‘Ow!’

‘I’m still training the small one,’ Trista said quickly, recalling the Architect’s words on the telephone. Oh, you have her trained then, do you?

Violet put an arm around Pen, perhaps to comfort, perhaps to restrain. Her gaze flicked from Trista’s face to that of the stranger and her brow furrowed in frustrated concentration.

The woman appeared to accept Trista’s answer, giving a slight nod, then put her head on one side.

‘Where is your coat?’ she asked, in her eerie, echoing voice. ‘I was told we were all to wear coats on arrival. So that we would not… cause remark.’ The last words were pronounced carefully, as if she was reciting them from memory.

‘I don’t need one.’ Trista watched the woman closely for any sign of reaction. ‘I didn’t arrive today – I was already here.’

The woman’s yellow eyes became butter-bright with interest.

‘You have been living in this… town then? And is it true about the bells?’

Trista nodded. ‘They cannot hurt us.’

‘I wanted to believe,’ breathed the woman. She shook her head. ‘I had no choice but to believe, to take a chance. Are you one of our guides then, for the ride tonight?’

‘No.’ Trista sipped slowly from her teacup to give herself time to think. ‘But I might join the ride… for fun. How much have you been told about it?’

‘Only that we should disembark here and wait, and go no further into this town, and draw no attention… and at midnight the Architect will arrive in his chariot and lead us to the haven.’

‘Is the haven the—’ Pen began, then cut off with a little gasp of fear and frustration. Trista guessed what the smaller girl had wanted to ask, for the same question had flitted through her mind. Is the haven the Underbelly? Due to the magic promise, however, she could no more ask the question than Pen could.

‘How much have you been told about the haven?’ Trista asked instead, desperate to know if her guess was correct.

‘Nothing – only that it is safe.’ The woman narrowed her eyes and gave Trista an inquisitive look, clearly inviting her to say more.

‘It is safe,’ Trista whispered, hoping that she sounded confident. ‘I shouldn’t say any more about it here though. You will see it soon enough.’

The woman inclined her head, and drifted on through the tea shop. Trista was unnerved to notice the stranger talking to a number of the other seated Besiders, each of whom turned to gaze at Trista and give her a small, deferential nod.

‘I…’ Violet shook her head and rubbed at her eyes. ‘I… didn’t catch all of that. It was like listening through fog.’

‘These Besiders are all newly arrived from outside Ellchester,’ Trista whispered. ‘I don’t think they understand towns, and they can’t blend in well, so they’ve been told to stay here and wait to be picked up. That’s why the Architect is leading midnight rides – it’s so he can lead them to a new home – a haven.’

‘By leading them over the roofs?’ Violet raised an eyebrow.

‘It’s probably the only way to get them all there safely,’ Trista murmured back. ‘I certainly wouldn’t trust them to follow a map. Look at them – some of them are having trouble with spoons.

‘But the important part is, the Architect is starting the midnight ride here tonight. We already know that he takes Triss with him when he rides. It means that I might have a second chance – if I’m still alive at midnight, I can follow the ride across the roofs, and try to save her!’

‘Don’t let her, Violet!’ squealed Pen with deafening force. The waitresses glanced across at her with curiosity, and she dropped her voice again to match the whispers of the others. ‘She’ll get hurt!’

‘Pen’s right – it’s out of the question!’ Violet’s eyes were wide and serious. ‘Trista, last night the chase nearly tore you apart, and you still lost them! We… We’ll have to find a way to follow them on the motorbike.’

‘But… the fuel tank’s nearly empty…’

‘It will have to last!’ retorted Violet, and this time Trista caught the edge of panic intertwined with the determination.

Of course. Violet without her motorcycle was Violet with her wings clipped. She needed her wings, so as to be ever on the move. Her nightmares were always a step behind her. The unending, all-swallowing blizzard, the iron skies and forests of thorned wire, the hungry tempest of ice and darkness and loss…

…and snow. Soft, treacherous, all-covering, all-revealing snow.

‘Violet,’ Trista said softly, ‘when you stay still, how long does it take before the snow starts to fall?’

‘It varies.’ Violet tipped her head back and studied Trista interrogatively. ‘Sometimes as much as five hours, sometimes as little as two. Why?’

‘I…’ Trista bit her lip. ‘I’ve just had an idea. It’s true, I did lose the riders last night. They dropped, and rose, and changed direction so quickly I couldn’t keep track of them, not without moving fast enough to rip myself to pieces. But I saw them, Violet! Some of them were flying, but others were leaping from roof to roof, like me. And the Architect’s car was driving – up walls, over roofs, along the roads. They touch down – and if there’s snow, they’ll leave tracks.’

Violet stared at her. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that I… ?’ She broke off, and was uncharacteristically speechless for a moment. ‘But I can’t!’ she hissed at last. ‘I don’t control this. I don’t summon the snow, it chases me.’

‘I know.’ Trista glanced furtively round the room, then clasped Violet’s hand in both of hers. ‘You’re so brave, and fearless, and… and I know you’re ready to drive into any kind of danger. I know you’d fight the Architect and Mr Grace and the bird-things and the police and everybody until they were black and blue. And I know this is the one thing you don’t want to face, and it’s really scary and difficult, but—’

‘But you want me to stop running.’ Violet finished Trista’s sentence and cut it dead. ‘You want me to wait for the snow.’

Trista hugged one of Violet’s arms and buried her face in her jacket.

‘I know you want to protect me,’ she said very quietly, ‘but you can’t. Whatever you do, I only have this day. I want to make it matter. Please, please let me do some good with it. Let me choose.’

Violet said nothing. Nothing was not a yes, but neither was it a no. Trista felt Violet’s hand gently rest on the back of her head. Just for those few seconds their silence felt like a little fortress against the world.

‘Pen,’ said Violet, in tones of affectionate irritation, ‘will you please stop doing that?’

Trista looked up in time to see Pen with her hands pressed against the window, sticking out her tongue at somebody down in the street.

‘He started it!’ Pen exclaimed defiantly. ‘It’s rude to stare!’

‘Pen, the Besiders are staring because they think I’m one of them!’ Trista pointed out.

‘But it wasn’t one of the Besiders.’ Pen dropped back into her chair and filled her mouth with crumpet. ‘It was the man who didn’t eat his lunch.’

‘What?’ A spider-tingle of alarm crept up Trista’s spine.

‘He was over there.’ Pen pointed to a nearby table. ‘And they brought him sausages, but he didn’t eat them. He just went away.’

‘Violet,’ Trista whispered urgently, ‘that’s where the young man was sitting – the one with the…’

The newspaper. Over on the abandoned table, draped over the neglected plate, was a copy of the Ell Chronicle. The trio exchanged glances.

‘We need to get out of here right now,’ hissed Violet. She rose from her chair and then froze, still half stooped. Looking down into the street, Trista could see exactly what had caught her eye. Two policemen were hurrying across the road towards the entrance of the tea room.

Violet pressed the heels of both hands against her temples and stared down into the street. She was breathing quickly, in a way that made her nostrils flutter.

‘Violet…’ Pen’s voice was a rising curl of panic.

‘I’m thinking,’ Violet said through her teeth. Some resolution clicked into place behind her gaze and she gave a short, sharp nod. ‘Follow me – quick!’

The three of them weaved hastily between the tables towards the back of the dining area, to the dark doors of the ‘conveniences’.

‘In here!’ Violet shoved open the nearest door, and the girls bundled in after her.

Immediately Trista knew they were in the wrong place. The walls were a sombre olive instead of powder-pink. It smelt strange, a little like cologne and men’s hair cream…

‘Violet, this is the wrong—’

‘Shh!’ Violet braced herself against the door. Her gaze fell on Trista and Pen and she gave them a dark, wry smile. ‘Both of you – listen to me. When I say run, you run. You don’t wait for me. You find somewhere to hide. Do you understand?’

‘But—’

‘Take care of each other.’ Violet turned to place her ear to the door, eyes closed as she listened. ‘And, Trista – good luck in the snow.’

Outside came a soft tumult of steps, then a thunder of knocks at a door, but not the one to which Violet’s ear was pressed. Trista guessed it must be the door to the ladies’ convenience. Of course it never occurred to them we would come in here.

‘Miss Parish?’ It was a male voice, polite, youthful and slightly out of breath. ‘If you would be so kind as to come out, we can avoid a scene.’

Violet’s mouth twitched with the shadow of a grin, her hand curled around the door handle.

‘Miss Parish?’ A different male voice, deeper, gruffer and a bit uncle-like. ‘At least send those children out. Then perhaps we can talk more calmly.’

A long pause. A sigh. Then the sound of the ladies’ convenience door being barged open and a clatter of boots on a tiled floor.

Violet’s reaction was instant. She flung open the door and leaped through it, closely followed by Trista and Pen. The two policemen who had charged into the ladies’ powder room turned in time to see Violet slamming the door behind them. She grabbed a chair from beside a neighbouring table, and wedged it under the door handle. The door jerked in its frame, and there was the sound of pounding fists and irate voices from the other side.

‘Run!’ she shouted.

Dozens of Besider eyes stared as Violet, Trista and Pen sprinted back through the tea room, knocking over chairs as they went. They all but tobogganed down the stairs, stumbling, slithering and bruising knees. The bread girls gaped as they raced down the aisle to the front door.

The young man with the newspaper was loitering outside, but was apparently not expecting the three of them to barrel out into the street. He tried to call out, and made a snatch for Pen, but Violet used her momentum to shoulder-charge him. Violet and the stranger hit the pavement in a sprawl.

‘Keep running!’ she shouted, elbowing her opponent in the head.

Trista grabbed Pen’s hand and kept sprinting, taking turns at random. She did not know where she was or where she was going. All that mattered was that they kept moving. The riverside kept appearing solicitously on the right, like an over-attentive nanny.

Her feet were silent, but Pen’s steps echoed with painful clarity. How obvious they were! Tell me, have you seen two girls running? They needed to hide.

‘There!’ she hissed, and pulled Pen over to one of the jetties, beside which a rowing boat bobbed. She clambered down into the boat and helped Pen in after her. Then, pulling at the underside of the jetty with all her might, she managed to drag the boat under it, so that they were hidden from casual view. There was a sodden blanket in the belly of the boat, which she pulled over them for good measure.

As they lay there gasping, trembling, listening, a familiar sound reached Trista’s ears. It was a guttural, rebellious rumble, the sound of a not-too-distant motorcycle engine throbbing to life.

‘It’s Violet!’ squeaked Pen in stifled excitement. ‘She got away! She got away!’

The motorcycle’s tune rose into a crescendo, accompanied by the percussion of running steps and shouted demands. A roaring ribbon of sound… and then a long screech of distressed rubber, and a sustained, painful rattle of impacts. There was a ting, tinkle, clatter of settling fragments, followed by a gouging silence.

The hush held its own for seconds, then gave way to a growing murmur of voices, a bubbling swell of concern and curiosity, punctuated by urgent shouts.