The Glass Town Game

by Catherynne M. Valente

  The knock grew annoyed.

  “Please.” Bestminster Abbey’s mighty plea. “You’re embarrassing me. Someone is being kept waiting on our account. It’s . . . it’s unbearable.”

  The two of them apologized over and over to their suitcase and hurried to open the door. They peered together out into the warm, syrupy afternoon sunlight. A young lady not much older than they stood there with a large steamer trunk in her arms. She was very young and very pretty and she wore a lilac-colored dress with bits of indigo lace and real violets along the neckline. She was also made entirely of powder. Clouds of talcum powder, rouge, charcoal powder, cinnabar, snuff, and pearl powder floated in the shape of a girl with red curls and big brown eyes and cheekbones like birds’ wings.

  “Oh,” the powder-girl clucked in a terribly refined voice, looking them up, down, and over. “Richard was right. That won’t do at all. Poor kittens! Who left you out in the rain? What a jolly thing you’ve got Ginny to let you in the back way and fill up your saucers with milk!”

  Ginevra Bud swept into Bestminster Abbey in a mist of flowery scents and set her trunk down with a loud thwack in the center of the lounge. She left little glowing footprints of pearl dust wherever she walked. Charlotte and Emily felt suddenly like a pair of warty bridge trolls next to Mr. Bud’s daughter. No dress or paint in the world could make them look like that. Ginny was a girl from a fairy book. They were girls from Haworth. And her only a dressing maid! What would the Lords and Ladies at the Wildfell Ball look like, then? They’d stand a better chance of blending in with a pack of leopards.

  Ginevra winked at them. She lowered her voice, and suddenly it wasn’t near so fancy. “I know just what you’re thinking, ’cause I thought it too, first time I clapped lash on Lady Percy. Oh, Ginny, I said to meself, you just clip-clop on home to Custardside ’cause you’re never’n nothing but a rumpy horse with flies in her hair and a bray in her mouth. You ain’t the same kind as those Lavendry Ladies. Not even the same species. As much like ’em as a badger to an angel. But lookie now!” She twirled around and her lilac dress flared out and when she finished twirling, her voice was all shine and silver again. “Miss Mary taught me proper and I’ll teach you better than that. Have you ever played a scene, girls? Swanned over a stage, even if it was only the boards of your bedroom? Recited lines as a grand old Emperor or a fairy in the wood?”

  Emily and Charlotte nodded shyly. Ginevra popped open her steamer trunk.

  “Well, half-done, then! The difference between the likes of us and the likes of them is nothing but a bath, a bit of paint, a pile of cloth, and a funny voice. And do you want to know the deepest, darkest secret of all? They’re playing scenes, too, each and every one. It’s the most marvelous and terrible thing in the world. Everyone, but everyone, is pretending to be someone else. Tumbling and tripping along, writing their own little play as they go. Look at your Ginny. Isn’t she fine in her gown? Lovies, this is my only dress! When washing day comes I wear an old plaid blanket with a belt round my middle. Very well!” She clapped her powdery hands together. A little cloud of scented dust puffed out from between her palms. Bestminster very helpfully made two bathtubs out of gravy boats leftover from their tea with the wooden soldiers, swelled up like flour sacks filling at a mill. He pumped them full of hot water. Bestminster had spoken with the city pipes while the girls slept and come to a very fine arrangement. Ginny politely turned around while Charlotte and Emily peeled off their gray and black school dresses. They climbed into the gravy-tubs and began to scrub all the grime of traveling between worlds away till their skin turned raw and pink.

  Ginevra busied herself in the depths of her steamer trunk. Every once in a while, she tossed a little vial of oil or a cake of soap or a sachet of mysterious powders over her shoulder for the girls to catch. They applied whatever it was to whatever bit of body or bathwater the picture on the packets showed and hoped for the best. Ginny talked like Tabitha did—as though, if she stopped, she’d just wind down completely like a pocket watch and never spin up again.

  “You’ve auditioned, and I’ve cast you as two Angrian Ladies visiting from your country estates. Just Ladies, I think. Any higher in rank and we’ll run right into trouble. They expect Baronesses to be rather the life of the party, you know. But a Lady can just flutter her fan in the corner. Of course, you’ll have to have new names! The wild foxes at the Wildfell Ball know all the noble families down to half-cousins and lesser hunting hounds.” She looked at them appraisingly over her shoulder, her charcoal-dust eyebrows furrowing. “Best to put you far away from the action. So . . . let’s see. I think you grew up on family lands in Smokeshire, in the wild counties north of Verdopolis, our fair capital. Before the occupation, naturally. Lord Linton Bell runs those counties from his estate at Thrushcross Grange. He’s got more grandchildren than grapes on his vines. What’s another two, more or less? You’ll be Bell girls, just introduced to society. You’ve got inheritances, but nothing so posh that the boys would come tripping over themselves to dance with you. A word to the wise: May I have this dance? never means may I have this dance. It means: May I scheme with, for, against, or, at least, near you? Whether that’s scheming for marriage or money or a ride home in your carriage so the fellow doesn’t have to walk, you’ll have to snuffle out for yourselves.” Ginevra began to lay out hairbrushes, combs, bottles of mysterious somethings, scissors, puffs, and pots all in neat rows on the luncheon table. All laid out together, it looked like an armory full of rifles and swords. Ginevra twittered on. “Of course, we must give you good, Angrian names. I’ve never met a Charlotte or an Emily in my life, and no one would believe Linton Bell would allow such modern-sounding names to land on any of his little grapes. Something strong and heavy and fashionable about a thousand years ago, that’s his speed! I think . . . Lady Currer and Lady Ellis Bell will hang very nicely on you both.” She clapped her talcum hands together. “Now for the best part! The best mask is fitted precisely to the wearer’s face!” Ginevra Bud rocked back on her heels between the two gravy-tubs and sparkled at them. Her eyes shone with interest and merriment. “Tell me about yourselves. What do you like best in the world? What do you dream of having for your own that you cannot touch just yet? And I don’t mean having your brother and sister back safe. That’s too easy.”

  Emily clasped and unclasped her hands in the foaming bathwater. She felt like she was standing under a waterfall, getting her head soaked by Ginny’s gushing talk and her new history and her new name. How could you think in a waterfall?

  “I like dogs with white ears, and half-blind old ravens, and extremely tidy rooms, the opposite of arguments, and thunderstorms on the moors, and . . . and ghosts,” Emily breathed out all at once, adding the last without quite meaning to. “I . . . I suppose . . . I should like to love someone who makes me feel the way I feel when the thunder storms on the moors. And to not be a governess ever.”

  Charlotte dunked her head in the bath and bobbed up again. “I like books, and—”

  “Books!” protested Emily from her gravy boat. “Well, I would have said books, too, you know, but books are just obvious. That’s like saying you like air!”

  “Books,” Charlotte repeated firmly, “and pheasants at the kitchen window, winning arguments, plum cake, and the room at the top of the stairs. I want . . . I want everyone to be all right, to know they’re all right, forever and ever. And . . . oh, I suppose I should like to love someone, too, but not someone who will be a storm on a moor, for he would put out all my fires with his nasty wet downpours.” She paused and flicked at the water and then whispered: “Fire is so fragile, sometimes, you know.”

  Ginevra Bud narrowed her cinnamon-dust eyes. “Is that really what you want most of all, my girls? Come now, a dressing room’s as good as a confessional. Just love, and all that rot about fires and storms? Even kittens want more than that.”

  Charlotte and Emily blushed and looked down into the water and until it started happening, they’d no idea really that th
ey were about to say much the same thing.

  “I want to write down—”

  “All the things in my head—”

  “All the stories and poems from the room at the top of the stairs—”

  “The way Mr. Shakespeare or Mr. Chaucer or Lord Byron did—”

  “Or Mrs. Shelley or Miss Austen—”

  “And know people have read them—”

  “Other than Papa and Tabitha and Aunt Elizabeth—”

  “To know everyone’s read them—”

  “So that everything inside me is outside me at last.”

  The sisters looked sidelong at each other. Their ambitions hung in the air like Christmas garlands. They had said the most true thing in their hearts, and it had been the same thing, which is very nearly a miracle between sisters. There was nothing for it but to dry off and slip into their shifts and get after the future as fast as they could.

  “Excellent!” said Ginevra. “These things are crucial. No Lady would wear a dress to a ball that she did not love, and no Lady could love a dress that did not speak to some secret desire she daren’t reveal any other way. The secret language of gowns is the language of the soul, my darlings! I think I’ve got something for both of you. Don’t tell anyone, but I raided Miss Mary’s third wardrobe for the occasion. She has so many dresses she’ll never notice, believe me. Now . . . dogs with white ears and ravens and moors and thunderstorms and no governesses, yes?”

  Ginny pulled a gown out of her trunk and laid it on the sofa. It was so lovely Emily gasped out loud—and so did Bestminster. He blushed above the mantel, all the way back under his shell.

  “I never thought in all my life I’d get to carry a garment so fine,” Bestminster confessed, and bashfully drew his head back into his half-shell and even the wall itself. But his eyes still glinted in the shadows as Ginny held the dress up to Em’s shoulders. “I’m so proud,” the suitcase whispered. “I could die.”

  The gown was pure white silk with a long ruffling black train. Wild whips of heather blossoms ran all round the neckline and down the skirt, and the lace was knotted up out of the tiniest, most delicate thunderclouds, as thin and wispy as the rags of ghosts. Emily reached out her fingers to touch it, sure that it would curl up and turn brown like a lily if she did.

  Ginevra turned to Charlotte. “And pheasants and plum cake and un-put-out-able fire and books?”

  This time Ginny lifted a dress so bright it hurt to look at. The bodice was all the colors of pheasant feathers except the plain brown bits. The skirt was deep, deep violet with a red petticoat, like plum skin and plum fruit, like a fire burning underneath a night sky. Charlotte’s lace crackled orange and black around her neckline, tatted from real, burning embers that did not burn her skin, which was impossible, but happening all the same.

  The dresses were windows into a world they had never known in Haworth, in the little house above the churchyard, in the orbits of Papa’s universe, where there wasn’t enough money to save all four of them at once from cold and hunger and the long life ahead. They didn’t even know how to put them on. You’d need an instruction manual—or a Ginevra. The powder-girl moved like Tabitha in the kitchen, every step perfectly placed for the task. Step in here, button up there, tuck in and smooth out and lace tight and bind down. Finally, Ginny put belts round their waists, swiped from Bud & Tree Publishing, no doubt: two sturdy leather book spines, stitched in gold and stripped from some poor lost novels. The gowns were so tight Emily and Charlotte felt as though their hearts would explode or they’d throw up or both. But somehow, the clothes felt very like the arms and armor Mr. Bud said they’d want.

  Ginny was frowning. She pursed her powdery lips.

  “I was putting off this bit,” she admitted. “I knew it was coming, but the dresses were ever so much more fun. It’s only that I wanted to see you two happy. Miss Mary is never happy with her dresses. She’s too rich for anything so simple as a dress to make her smile. And it’s a sad lady’s maid who never gets one single joyful gasp for her efforts. But . . . you must see, don’t you. They’d never let a pair of . . . of . . . breather girls into a Lavendry ball. Oh, I know that’s a dreadful way to put it, but it’s just not done. Wildfell Ball is for loyalists, and you’re the foreignest of the foreign.”

  “Well, if it helps any, I think I’ve stopped breathing.” Emily laughed. The laugh turned into a cough partway through.

  Ginevra fidgeted. “It’s not that, it’s . . . it’s your skin, you see.”

  Charlotte ran her fingers over the purple silk of her skirt. It felt like water. “What about our skin?”

  “Well . . . erm . . . you have it. It’s all over you. There’s little hairs on it, and moles, and it’s awfully warm and squooshy.” Ginevra’s pink-powder mouth wrinkled in distaste. “I don’t know how you stand it, honestly. But I’ve got a solution! I thought and thought and short of gluing pottery all over you, it’s the best we can do. Only please don’t be offended and please be willing to stand very still and not blink for quite a while?”

  Ginevra Bud plunged her talcum hands into her trunk and came out with two large lavender pots and two long, wide brushes.

  One was full of gold paint. The other was full of silver.

  “I would imagine,” Ginny said apologetically, “that this is going to itch like the devil.”

  FIFTEEN

  Me and Mine and Bonaparte

  Come any closer, Bravey, you bloody stump, and I’ll jug these two like hares and serve them to your customers,” Brunty snarled. He held out his long newsprint arm toward the unflappable Captain.

  Branwell stared curiously at the Magazine Man. Beads of inky sweat trickled down the pages of his head. His voice was high and tight and bitter and brittle. Brunty was getting desperate now. Things were not going to plan. Somehow, that made Bran love him a little, despite everything with the acid and the pits under Ochreopolis and the dead fly back there and him presently threatening to boil them up in a pitcher for supper. Nothing ever went to plan for him, after all. It was wonderful to know that Bran wasn’t alone in mucking up even something as little as getting home at the end of the day. And at the same time, it wasn’t wonderful at all, because he could feel in his own chest how rotten Brunty must have felt just then. Branwell didn’t like empathy. It made him itch. It was a real busted cog in the design of people, is what it was. What use was there in feeling wretched just because someone else did? If only it were possible to file a complaint.

  Anne’s hate and fury burned so hot she hardly noticed the frost or the patchy snow. It filled her up as sure as cider and twice as spiced. She was certain that if Brunty tried to touch her one more time, just at that moment, his pages would go up in smoke.

  They might have run then. Brunty was trying to get his hands round their collars again, but they dodged him easily, ducking and rolling in the frozen grass as he lunged for them like an old fat nanny puffing after a pair of runaway cats. If they had been watching it all happen to another boy and another girl, they’d have laughed themselves breathless. But Brunty was not happening to another boy and another girl. They didn’t laugh at his girth swinging toward them like an exhausted boxer. They didn’t laugh and they didn’t run. Bran couldn’t help it. He wanted to comfort the great spy.

  Anne wanted revenge. For Ryecote and for herself and for Branwell and jolly well for anyone else who felt like queuing up and putting their name in.

  There would be no running for a good while yet.

  “Now, now, you big dumb Bruntersaurus, such language!” Captain Bravey tutted. “I’m going to have to take you over my knee and dog-ear every one of your pasty pages. You almost got away! I’ll bet that felt jolly fantastic, hm? It’s so close! If you’re a good wee pupper I’ll let you look at the border from my attic window while you wait for the constables. You Gondaliers haven’t got the sense the Genii gave a hole in the ground. What happened, Time Fly sputter out on you? Aw, poor poppet. They’d last if you wouldn’t ride them like the devil after
a Sunday roast. You’ve no respect for the working class and that’s the truth.”

  “It won’t matter, once I’ve got back to Verdopolis. Nothing you blithering, snot-blooded Glass Towners ever say again will matter.”

  Captain Bravey made a mocking face. “So dramatic! Such tragedy for our Brunty! I shall play the saddest of shanties for you tonight on my saddest bagpipe. Frankly, Christmas is going to get to Verdopolis before you do, and New Year’s, too.” The Captain laughed, such a warm, unafraid, fatherly laugh! “My dear, stupid doorstop, you really have no luck at all. You’ve managed to tip yourself out at Bravey’s Inn, and Bravey’s Inn caters exclusively to veterans of the armed services. I assure you, all the old bears hip-deep in beer and the same stories they’ve told a hundred times are still very armed. And very drunk. And very belligerent. And very keen to get a few new war stories under their belts. All I’ve got to do is yell.”

  Brunty stopped groping for Bran and Anne. He stood up very still and very straight. He grinned.

  “No, Cap’n Bravey, wait!” cried Anne.

  “You don’t know what he’s got in his waistcoat!” shouted Bran, whose sympathy for Brunty stopped flat at Captain Bravey’s noble feet.

  “Go on then,” sneered the Magazine Man. “Yell.”

  Captain Bravey did. He threw back his wooden head and bellowed two words that would bring every man inside running before their ears could even finish hearing them: “FORM UP!”

  A flood of wooden wounded lads poured instantly out of the doors of Bravey’s Inn. They wore eye patches where they’d taken Gondal’s musket balls, and slings round their arms where they’d been crushed against their comrades, and hobbled on peg-legs where cannon fire had shredded their knees, and leaned on crutches where Old Boney’s frogs had sliced off their legs with their sabers. But each one came running with their scuffed and ancient rifles resting ready on their broken shoulders all the same. Each one would grow new arms and legs and even hearts if their Captain Bravey so much as hinted that he’d like to see it.