The Cuckoo Tree

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by Joan Aiken


  I wonder if a cuckoo ever really did build a nest in it? she thought. No, Cris said cuckoos don’t build nests. Cuckoos don’t have nests. All they have is other birds’ nests.

  She climbed up into the tree and looked down at the wide, spreading stretch of country below, beginning now to be hazy with the blue of evening. She remembered how she had first come to the tree and heard Cris, apparently talking to nobody.

  It was right queer about Aswell. Once she met Tobit, Cris just forgot him. I wonder if he’s lonely too.

  Half seriously, half not, she put out both hands and shut her eyes. She remembered Cris saying, ‘When we first start talking I can feel him put his hands in mine.’

  ‘Aswell?’ said Dido. ‘Is you there, poor old Aswell? Can you hear me?’

  She waited.

  And waited. But nothing happened, and presently she opened her eyes again.

  Meanwhile, through the beech grove, across the saddle of down, along the yew-hung path, her friend Simon, sixth Duke of Battersea, came searching for her, following the direction Mr Firkin had given him.

  About the Author

  JOAN AIKEN comes from a family of writers; daughter of the American poet, Conrad Aiken, her sister Jane also writes novels.

  Joan Aiken has written over a hundred books for young readers and adults. Her best-known books are those in the James III saga of which the classic The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was the first title, published in 1962 and awarded the Lewis Carroll prize. Both that and Black Hearts in Battersea have been filmed. Her books are internationally acclaimed and she has received the Edgar Allan Poe Award in the United States as well as the Guardian Award for Fiction in this country for The Whispering Mountain. More recently she has been decorated with the MBE for her services to children’s books.

  She has children and grandchildren and lives in Sussex.

  Also by Joan Aiken:

  The Wolves of Willoughby Chase sequence:

  The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

  Black Hearts in Battersea

  Night Birds on Nantucket

  The Stolen Lake

  Limbo Lodge

  The Cuckoo Tree

  Dido and Pa

  Is

  Cold Shoulder Road

  Midwinter Nightingale

  The Witch of Clatteringshaws

  (in preparation)

  The Felix trilogy:

  Go Saddle the Sea

  Bridle the Wind

  The Teeth of the Gale

  The Whispering Mountain

  (winner of the Guardian Award 1969)

  Short Story Collections:

  A Handful of Gold

  Ghostly Beasts

  Young Fiction:

  The St. Boan Trilogy

  In Thunder’s Pocket

  The Song of Mat and Ben

  Bone and Dream

  THE CUCKOO TREE

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 409 02459 0

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Random House Group Company

  This ebook edition published 2012

  Copyright © Joan Aiken, 1971

  Illustrations copyright © Jonathan Cape, 1971

  First Published in Great Britain

  Red Fox 9780099456650 1971

  The right of Joan Aiken to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  RANDOM HOUSE CHILDREN’S PUBLISHERS UK

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  www.randomhousechildrens.co.uk

  www.totallyrandombooks.co.uk

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:

  www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

 

 

 


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