Cuckoo Song

What happens to the outsiders? Are we like windfalls, rotting when we fall off the main tree?

‘We’re like ghosts,’ she said aloud, feeling sad. ‘The real world goes on – jobs and families and newspaper stories – and we’re outside it.’

‘No, we’re not,’ said Violet, with surly defiance. ‘They’re the ghosts. Piers and Celeste and the others like them. Trying to cling to the past, to the way things were, pretending nothing has changed. Everything changes and breaks and stops fitting – and we know that, even with our stopped clock. The world is breaking, and changing, and dancing. Always on the move. That’s how it is. That’s how it has to be.’

Trista never tired of hearing them. Clocks fascinated her now, the way they ticked and told the hours without her dying. Suns that set and rose again, without a countdown. Mornings without the whispers and snickers of mortality

Everything she had was borrowed, just as the Grimmer had said in her dream. She was litter and leavings, not a person in her own right.

‘But I am a person!’ she wailed, the room throwing back derisive echoes. ‘I’m real! I am! I’ve got a name!’

‘Listen, please!’ Once again she was the miserable child-monster begging, cobweb tears clouding her eyes. ‘I’m on your side! I’m trying to save Triss too! If you only listen, we can defeat the Architect together!’

‘And that, I fear, is your problem,’ sighed the Architect. ‘For the world, my friend, is not clear. It is cloudy as a blood pudding. So if you see it crystal clear, there is something wrong with your eyes. Or perhaps you do not use your eyes.

Maybe later I’ll end up choosing sides in the big fight, but saving people comes first. I have to free Sebastian’s soul and let it escape from the snows. And I have to save my other self.

I have to save Triss.

For Triss’s own sake, and for Piers’s and Celeste’s sake. For Violet’s sake, so she doesn’t get sent to prison for murder. For Pen’s sake too, or she’ll grow up knowing she caused her own sister’s death. And for my sake, so that – whatever happens – my life will have mattered

.’ She gave Pen another squeeze. ‘Life isn’t that simple. People aren’t that simple. You can’t cut them into slices like a cake, then throw away the bits you don’t like.

‘Pen!’ Trista exclaimed, appalled. ‘You don’t mean that!’

There was a growled, snuffled response that might have been, ‘Yes, I do.’

To be loved, to be preferred… The very thought gave Trista a painful little stab of joy.

You have nothing of your own, said the Grimmer. Everything you have is borrowed, and when it is paid back there will be nothing left. Even your time is borrowed, and it is running out. One day. One left…

. ‘Believe me, I do understand that. And let me tell you – from one monster to another – that just because somebody tells you you’re a monster, it doesn’t mean you are