The Glass Town Game

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Charlotte gasped—but not because she’d been pinched or because her knickers were being discussed in public. The most extraordinary thing was happening to her suitcase. And not only hers, but Emily’s as well. The girls clung on desperately as their bags cracked and unfolded and wriggled and unlatched and relatched themselves. The beaten-up, hand-me-down luggage groaned and stretched and grew until, impossibly, Charlotte was holding a fearsome, gargantuan sword in her small hands, and Emily had her fists clenched round a grand medieval mace big enough for a young ogre. The weapons did not gleam in the sun, for they were all of the same leather and brass and wood that the suitcases had been. Branwell gave a strangled, indignant cry just as the sisters cried out in delight.

  “Look at that! I do wish I’d packed a bag!” Anne breathed in wonder.

  Bran had gone quite red in the face. He matched the architecture of Port Ruby very nicely. “Give that sword to me at once! It’s too big for you! And you don’t know how to use it! It’s not fair! Papa said I was to chaperone you! I am to see you safely to Keighley, he said! I’m to protect you, if protecting is to be done!”

  “We’re the same size, you donkey!” Charlotte laughed. “And we’re not in Keighley anyway, so stand back and I shall defend thee, milady!”

  Branwell’s pride strangled him. He couldn’t get a word out for his rage. He snarled wolfishly and shoved Charlotte to the ground rather more roughly than he meant. He instantly felt rotten about it and promised himself that he’d apologize just as soon as the danger was past. Bran took up the leather and brass blade himself. He tested its weight, feeling much better now he was in his proper place, despite Charlotte glaring daggers at him and rubbing her knees where they’d banged brutally into the street. He wasn’t any milady, he was the knight, thank you ever so much! He would be valiant, and dashing, and keep his ladies safe, and Papa would be so pleased he’d just burst when he heard of it all!

  “Form ranks, lads!” cried Captain Bravey.

  The wooden soldiers instantly snapped to attention in the center of the square, unshouldering their musket rifles and snatching vials of gunpowder from their belts. They could hear the savage squawks of the beast catching up to them, cracking the road like an old mirror under its weight. Leftenant Gravey, who seemed perfectly all right, tossed a pair of long pinewood rifles just like his to Charlotte and Anne. Branwell frowned. His sword was bigger, and that was all right, but it wasn’t a patch on an infantry rifle. Hang it all, if only he’d waited, he could have had a real weapon from a real soldier’s own hand!

  “I’ll leave no comrade defenseless,” Gravey bellowed, “be they breathers or bleeders or cows o’ the field! Form up, girls, form up!”

  Charlotte grabbed Anne’s hand and started off across the plaza toward the squadron. But Anne wouldn’t go. The little girl’s eyes shone wild with fright and thrill and fright again.

  “I don’t expect we can be hurt in our own make-believe country, can we, Charlotte?” she yelled over the din.

  Charlotte rolled her eyes impatiently. “Did you get hurt when we played Battle of Wehglon? Or Siege of Ascension Island?”

  Anne considered. “No . . . only the teapot got dented and the kitchen drapes got singed along the bottom. Oh! And I tore my green dress taking the pantry for Glass Town.”

  “Right! Because nothing you make up in your head can hurt you, really.” Charlotte’s cheeks flamed red in the wind. Was that right? It sounded right to her. It felt right. She’d figured out the trick of their lunch and she’d figured this just as well. Back home, anything could hurt them. Anything could sweep in suddenly and take the whole of everything away. School, Papa, marriages, fevers. But somehow, somehow, they’d slipped the trap of the real world and found their own place, the place they’d dreamed into life. And in that place, they were the ones who got to say who went and who stayed and who married and who didn’t and who lived and who died. No different now than in the playroom at the top of the stairs. “Think, Annie. Napoleon’s been dead an age. This one’s only a toy we named Napoleon! Can’t you see? His rooster’s got a bit of our own dented teapot for his wing! Come on, Annie, form up! Let’s play! It’s an adventure! We’re having an adventure! Of course there’s explosions and flames and all the good bits, or else it would be a frightfully dull game.”

  Anne took all this in, turned it over in her mind, and judged it as sensible as anything could be, under the circumstances. They dashed across the silence between barrages to join ranks with their wooden lads. The boys shuffled them into the rear, as they were so new to war and not in the least made of good, stout wood.

  “Ugh,” whispered Bran to Emily as he held his blade a little higher, trying to convince himself he’d gotten the best of the lot. He rolled his eyes. “They’re only Brown Bess muskets, anyway! What a lot of rubbish. I rather thought they’d have something better here than our army back home. We used those stuffy old things against the Americans!”

  Emily stared at her brother. She tightened her grip on her leather mace. “I don’t care what kind of guns they are!” she hissed.

  “Prime and load!” commanded Bravey as another volley of flame erupted against a stately tall bank and shivered it down to glass dust. The squad turned to face the narrow street leading into the plaza, ready to fire upon anyone who came through.

  “Handle cartridge!” Bravey called. The men drew tight bronze-colored musket balls from their shoulder sashes, jammed them down the long barrels of their rifles, and poured their powder after. Charlotte and Anne scrambled to copy the soldiers. “About!”

  Bran pouted. “Well, you ought to. Because I daresay they won’t do as well against this Boney as they did against ours. Not when he’s got a giant fire-breathing chicken! Oh, but I can’t wait to see! Do you want to bet on it, Em? I bet you Aunt Elizabeth’s shilling they don’t even dent his hat. Just let him come in reach of my blade, though!”

  “Draw ramrods! Ram down cartridge!” Bravey bellowed.

  In went a long, thin mallet, crushing the powder against the ball. Charlotte could not quite believe how long it was all taking to fire a single shot. Somehow, she had always imagined soldiers firing quickly and surely, like archers, one volley after the other. Napoleon seemed to reload his arms in no time at all, which seemed a horribly unfair advantage. Just then, Old Boney wheeled into the red plaza. The rooster’s claws scrabbled and careened on the glass. The Emperor of France pulled back his shoulder and fired his left gun-arm again. Gravey took it directly in the heart. He clutched his piney breast and keeled over like a King in a chess match, landing with a clatter on the glass cobblestones. Anne cried out and lurched toward the fallen soldier, but Charlotte held her back.

  “Let me go! You said we couldn’t be hurt!” The china rooster screeched and vomited green flame before him. The heat of it turned their cheeks pink.

  Charlotte trembled. She was right. She was sure she was right. But the warmth blowing against her face felt awfully real. “J . . . just . . . just to be safe, Annie. We can’t be fixed with glue if I’m wrong, after all.”

  “They’ll all be killed before they get off one shot!” wept Emily, behind the pastry cart.

  “Perhaps, if we wanted them to have better weapons, we should have imagined better weapons for them!” Bran snapped. Then, he felt a cold flush of guilt, for not dreaming up something spectacular for the lads. “Oh! If only we’d known they could come real, I’d have given them all cannons for eyeballs and swords for fingers!”

  Bravey shouted his final commands. “Make ready! Present!” Anne and Charlotte hoped they’d done it all right and were not about to blow themselves up. They pulled up their barrels with the rest of the squad.

  Branwell forgot his guilt in a moment. He was about to see so many guns go off all together, right in front of him! His eyes shone with a fierce delight. “Come on, Em, bet me! I bet they don’t even hit him! Brown Besses fire wild all the time, you know.”

  “No! God, Bran, shut up!” Emily stomped her broth
er’s toes, but the black-eyed boy only laughed as Old Boney reared up on his monstrous rooster, both of them crowing to the heavens, firing his great arm-guns at the cafés until they burst into rainbow showers of glass.

  “Bonjour, mes amis!” howled Napoleon Bonaparte. “This can all stop, you know, my darlings, mon chéries! All you have to do is bow down and say I LOVE NAPOLEON three times fast! And kiss my rooster on both cheeks; he likes that.”

  “FIRE!” bellowed Captain Bravey, and almost before the words left his birch-bark lips, a deafening rattling boom of muskets firing shook the cobblestones below their feet.

  Emily turned her eyes away. Branwell stared, goggle-eyed. Charlotte’s jaw dropped open as she pulled back the trigger. Anne started hiccuping, her nerves were jangled so!

  “Is this really happening?” Anne cried as she wrapped both pointed fingers round the trigger to pull it hard enough to make any headway. “It can’t be! Is it?”

  Emily dared a look. A storm of musket balls exploded out of the phalanx of wooden rifles, soaring toward the giant bone-man on his horrible mount. Then, in midair, the bullets sprouted wings. And feet. And fat rosy cheeks.

  They had never been bullets at all. Anne giggled helplessly as her shot flew from her rifle, somersaulted out of a tight brown ball, and became a sturdy, furious, tiny woman with broad brown wings, a brown dress and apron, brown hair flying wild, brandishing brown rolling pins with menacing glee. The head bullet in the volley of Brown Besses threw her head back and gave a piercing war cry, which all the other bullets took up at once. It sounded like a hundred piccolos broken over a hundred knees. As they hurtled through the air, the Brown Besses grabbed at snatches of wind and cloud and threw them under their rolling pins. Push, squish, crush! The ladies rolled out fearsome icy storm clouds like piecrust, and when the dough rose, it rose into a violent snowstorm about three feet wide, aimed at the heart of Napoleon and his war rooster. The porcelain bird took a breath to roast them all, sparks flaring between the broken plates of his body. The storm hit just as the flame poured out of his teapot-spout beak. The blizzard froze the stream of fire into a long green icicle, which promptly fell to the ground and shattered. Old Boney’s rifle-arms seized up in the sudden cold, their flintlocks jamming, their powder turning to so much snow.

  The wooden soldiers cheered and wept and embraced one another and clapped Charlotte and Anne’s shoulders.

  “Cracking shots, really!” Sergeant Crashey gushed. “I won’t believe it’s your first time, chaps, not for a minute!”

  “Couldn’t shoot straighter my own self,” Sergeant Major Rogue marveled.

  “I daresay a field commission is in order!” Captain Bravey allowed with a little bow at the waist.

  Charlotte blushed and smiled and stood a full inch higher. No grown man had ever approved of her so heartily before, and without once calling her sweetheart or dearest or girl. And now eleven of them were doing it all together. She felt dizzy. It was too much all at once; she’d spoil her dinner with all this praise. Anne was saluting everyone madly, over and over, laughing and clapping her hands together between salutes. But when she went to salute Leftenant Gravey, her laughter withered up in her throat like old grass.

  There was no time for grief. The Brown Besses gave their own salute with their rolling pins, brushed off their skirts, and flew off into the sunshine, their work done. The lads began all over again, priming and loaded and drawing ramrods for another go.

  Branwell watched and scowled. “They oughtn’t make such a fuss just because a couple of girls managed not to faint for five minutes at a go,” he grumbled. “When I am right here and ready for real, proper combat! A real man fights with a sword, you know. Any old girl can fire a rifle.”

  “You’re so utterly full of rubbish you ought to be fed to the hogs, Bran,” Emily sniffed. “Joan of Arc fought with a sword, you know!”

  “Doesn’t count, she’s French,” Branwell scoffed. His shoulders relaxed a little. The plaza had gone a bit quiet. Perhaps it was done. He peered up over the top of the pastry cart.

  Napoleon was not finished with them. Bran scolded himself. He wouldn’t really have been Napoleon at all if one shot did him in. The sun fell on Old Boney’s awful naked skull as his voice echoed through the empty glass streets of Port Ruby:

  “Give him up, you stupid matchsticks! Donnez-moi mon frère du coeur! I’ll have my Brunty or I’ll have your heads! Hand over the book and I shall let you toddle back home to Papa, non? So few of you, so much of me! Quelle tragique!”

  “Did you hear that?” Bran cried.

  “He ambushed the train, the rotter!” Emily said.

  “All this for that fat old Magazine Man?” Charlotte wondered.

  “I’d be very cross if I lost any of my books,” Anne shrugged. It made a good deal of sense to her.

  “We’ve got a right tragique for you, Boney! Come and get it!” roared Captain Bravey, and knelt right down on top of the great book called Brunty as he primed his next shot.

  Napoleon shrugged. “Is no matter to me! Either way I have what I want and I get to explode things!” He raised up the rifles of his arms as if to part the Red Sea. “Come to my side, my sweethearts! My strongtongues, my stoutlegs, my song in the twilight, my jumpkings, my greenskin glory!”

  An army of mighty frogs leapt into the plaza from every corner, out of every fountain, down from every gutter. They twanged and bellowed and croaked mightily. They landed with crashes and clatters, for these bullfrogs were well-armored in plate and mail, like medieval knights. In fact, as Branwell peered closer, he saw that they were made all of greaves and breastplates and helmets and gauntlets, with no real fleshy frog inside, just like the rooster made of dishes and the Emperor made of bones and guns. Each of them was as tall as Emily and as burly as the old blacksmith back home in Haworth. They carried steel barrels on their broad backs, their fat arms bristling with poleaxes and swords and cruel, spiked maces, and they flew silken green flags with froggy crests blazing upon them. As one, the frog army whipped the air with fearful silver tongues and roared out the clanging tribal RIBBIT! RIBBIT! SNAPPANG! that was the song of their noble people.

  “Well!” said Charlotte, and she meant to say something more, something clever, something brave, but she simply had not been prepared to stare down an army of frogs today. She opened her mouth and shut it again.

  Just then, behind her lovely round head, the sun came up. Not a real sun, but an extraordinary golden-red-orange color wonderfully like sunrise, a molten smear of light surrounding Charlotte like a bonnet of lava.

  “Oh, Charlotte,” Anne breathed. “Look!”

  An iron boy rode into the red plaza on a gargantuan lion made all of blue water. But he was not any sort of ordinary iron, nor any sort of ordinary boy, for that matter. He sat in his spectacular curving, curling sea-foam saddle with such a straight back and noble bearing that they all knew right away he was there to save them from the vicious frogs, even though he could only have been a year or two older than Charlotte. His features were carved in dark, finely forged and gleaming iron, but his hair was dusty, rusty red, his hat slick, oily green, his coat and buttons dark and glinting blue, his trousers and riding boots a brilliant violet, even his hands and his teeth shone with stripes of black cast-iron and sleek pyrite, the hundred thousand colors iron can become, given enough dirt and rain and impurities and time. But most splendid of all were his wings, which opened up at his back like the fiercest of all angels, made of molten, dripping, fiery liquid iron, orange and scarlet and white-hot oozing feathers, iron poured fresh from a forge. Beneath him, blue and white and green seawater swirled and crashed and bubbled in the shape of a magnificent lion, with a mane like a waterfall, a whiskered muzzle as blue as the North Sea, and a tail held aloft like a gushing fountain. Whenever a globby burning feather fell from the man’s wings, it popped and sizzled and hissed against the lion’s skin, sending up great clouds of steam, so that a warm, mysterious mist announced their arrival anywhere th
ey went.

  “Who is that?” gasped Emily behind the cart and Anne behind Sergeant Crashey, at the same moment.

  “How should I know?” hissed Branwell.

  But safe in her infantry ranks, Charlotte’s secret smile had come out again, so wide it hurt her cheeks. “I know. I know! Everything in this place is like a riddle but I can solve it, I can! Sometimes! If it’s not frogs! At least I can solve this one! That’s him! Wellington! Sir Arthur Wellesley! The Iron Duke! That’s what they called him, you know,” she finished somewhat lamely. “After the war. Because he was so strong.”

  A platoon of very serious-looking soldiers marched into the plaza behind the Iron Duke. Rank after rank appeared through the roiling mist of his burning wings and watery horse. They carried long green muskets tipped with green bayonets and wore tall green helmets. Fierce green sabers hung at their sides. And as the wind picked up over the roaring red river, the children caught an incredible scent in their noses. Their nostrils flared in the breeze to catch it. Armies were meant to smell dreadful, like old sweat and old socks and old wounds. But the Iron Duke’s army smelled so wonderfully fresh and sharp and clean and sharp!

  Branwell laughed. He didn’t mean to. He was trying so very hard to be good at hiding. But he laughed anyway.

  “They’re made of limes!” The boy cackled. “Don’t you get it, Em? They’re limeys! Limeys and frogs! The English and the French!”

  And Branwell was right. Their tall green helmets were rough, bumpy lime skins crowned with lime-pith plumes. Their rifles were long lime branches and their bayonets were made of pale ancient lime flesh, hardened and dried to a terrifying point. They wore fresh, wet, lime-flesh coats, lime-flower medals, and lime-leaf belts weighed down with vials of lime seeds, and lime juice where the wooden soldiers carried their Brown Bess bullets and powder. And beneath those dashing helmets they could see shadowy faces, faces carved out of whole limes like Greek statues out of marble.