Early-summer evening light shafted down through gaps in the green canopy of leaves and branches, but I couldn’t hear a single bird in the trees. At this time of year the woods around the Reach were normally echoing with birdsong, cuckoos calling and calling, such murdering careless birds, shoving blackbird eggs out of their nests and replacing them with their own. Young cuckoos are changelings just like Lissy – a not-human girl growing up in the heart of my own family, with a starring role in all my earliest memories. The day I started school, I went into the classroom with Lissy holding my hand. I thought she was my sister. My whole life was just an illusion, a carefully woven fabric of lies upon lies upon lies, and the woods were silent, and as I walked, not even caring any more about the twigs and stones digging into the soles of my bare feet, I couldn’t stop the tears spilling down my face, as if crying could actually change anything or make it better. It wasn’t long before I heard laughter, though, a boy singing: Blue, ripping off a song that had been all over the radio the last couple of weeks.
What do You think about The Hidden Princess (2014)?
