The Glass Town Game

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “You unbelievable cheats. I knew Glass Towners had no shame. But I never thought you’d do it right in front of me. Rubbing it in my face like a pack of rich boys in the schoolyard! Boney was right about you. All of you. Glass Town is a scourge. All you do is take and take and take and use and waste and laugh at the rest of us. You have no right. It’s not yours. You bloody villains. You horrid thieves.” Brunty leaned toward them. He smelled like rot and bile. “Give it to me. Give it to me now. It’s mine.”

  “Well, it’s not yours, Brunt-o,” wheezed Quartermaster Stumps. “That’s sort of the whole point, my lad. Grog belongs to Glass Town. We invented it. We had to, didn’t we? Or else we’d all be speaking Gondalish and where would that get us?”

  “You’d never have it if it weren’t for Gondal!” screeched Brunty. He reached out his scorched fingers toward the flask of grog, but didn’t take it. The Magazine Man seemed almost afraid to touch it at all.

  “We’d never have needed it if it weren’t for Gondal!” Quartermaster Stumps bellowed.

  Brunty turned to Bran and Anne as though they were judges on a high bench, and if he could convince them, the war might never have happened and no one might ever have died. “They make it out of stuff that only grows in Gondal,” he whined. “They’ve got a secret recipe we can’t crack, and we’ve sent more souls after it than you can possibly imagine. But Glass Town? They disassemble our best boys and then send raiding parties to do their bloody shopping in the Gondal wilds every month. If they didn’t, they’d all die when we shoot them, like they’re supposed to. Like we do. Grog is ours.” He dropped his head like whatever barely held him up had been cut in two. When Brunty raised it again, his eyes bulged with hate and agony and they were fixed on Quartermaster Stumps and his bandolier. “My mother died, you piece of blighted driftwood. My mother died and everything in the world went wrong and my sisters and me starved and I had to do such terrible things to live, just to live, until I could claw my way to my stepbrother and take back one tiny shred of a future for us, and if you Glassers weren’t such a ruddy pack of gangsters with rotten onions for souls, it never would have happened because I could have . . . I could have just made her a pretty cup of groggy tea and she’d have got up again right as a new edition, but I couldn’t, and she died. She was perfect and beautiful and kind and she died anyway, you horrors, you mockers, you wolves; she died and you just keep coming back.”

  The creature collapsed sobbing on top of the ancient Quartermaster.

  Anne covered her mouth with her hands. Poor, poor Brunty! she thought. Only he’s not poor Brunty, he’s awful! But poor, poor Brunty.

  “Our mother died, too,” whispered Branwell. The softness was coming back, no matter how he told it to stay where it was and mind its own business.

  Brunty growled into the soggy earth. Stumps tried to push him off, but Brunty weighed more than the moon. “Yeah? Jolly good thing for you! I don’t care! You’re with them. You don’t even know what death is.”

  “Yes, we do,” Anne whispered. “It’s you who doesn’t know.”

  “Death is a churchyard so full of people the earth towers over the street,” Branwell said softly. “Death is your mother and your sisters down there under all the others.”

  Anne squeezed her brother’s hand. “Death is cold and blue and it doesn’t move and it doesn’t care about anything. But at least you live in a place where some people come back, sometimes. Only one person ever came back where we were born, and He didn’t get to stay. Our mother died and our sisters died and the only people who came back were us. We came back to the house and it was so quiet, so quiet . . . !”

  The Magazine Man had enough shame left in him not to answer. He got up and jabbed the toe of his boot into the Quartermaster’s ribs. He straightened his ruined back. He latched his scroll-knob belly shut.

  “Well. There it is, then. Something between us. Like a chain. Soon enough, Lady Sorrowful, no one will have to know what we know. Not in Glass Town, not in Gondal. It’s all their fault, don’t you see? If only they could share, the world would already be as it should!”

  “You mean Old Boney would already have conquered the world and we’d already be kissing his boney feet.” The Quartermaster coughed. His men helped him up, gave him his crutch again.

  “Even a child knows how to share!” Brunty shot back. He turned to Branwell and Anne. “You’re better off with me. I will share with you. Every good thing. Me and mine and Bonaparte. You can have everything you want. And when we are done, who will not call us heroes, while they live forever and a day?”

  Branwell and Anne looked down at poor dead Captain Bravey, scorched as black as a gentle-hearted fly.

  “You won’t ‘share’ a single all-fired thing with them on my watch, pupper. You’ll go straight to—” Stumps began.

  But he did not finish.

  Godforsaken Brunty bellowed at the ranks of broken toys. He shoved his fist into the remains of his pockets and drew out a handful of the red and glinting sands of time—glinting because the shards of their bottle stuck up out of his palm like an awful garden. He threw the sand in the soldiers’ faces and roared:

  “DROP. DEAD.”

  A great thrum and buzz filled the cold winter wilds of the Calabar Woods. Far faster than Ryecote had managed to find them in the bowels of Ochreopolis, another elephantine Time Fly skittered toward them across the blasted heath. The soldiers shouted and scrambled to their feet, to their rifles, to their powder. Quartermaster Stumps reached his arms out to Branwell and Anne. But the fly skidded in between them, blocking their rescue with his fat, black, iridescent body.

  “Hullo, sirs and ladies!” chortled the fly merrily. “Isn’t it a loverly day we’re having! Air’s crisp as old bread! The name’s Boarham, son of Peachmuck, son of Scraphole, son of Ol’ Cowskin—”

  The Magazine Man seized Bran and Anne again, and his arms were no less strong for having been tortured till they’d nearly fallen off. This time, the children just went slack, resigned.

  As she fell back against Brunty’s tattered, wheezing chest, Anne could feel the Quartermaster’s flask hidden there. It pressed up against her spine. She glanced over the hump of Boarham’s thorax. None of the soldiers had even realized it was gone yet. But they would, of course. They would know the minute they tried to bring Captain Bravey back. Tears blurred her eyes. The only difference between a thief and a spy is what you steal, Anne thought drowsily. And Brunty’s stolen everything that matters. Poor Captain Bravey. He really was. So marvelously brave.

  “Shut your cursed mouth, bug,” Brunty snapped. “You’ll be dead in an hour and no one cares who spat you out. Gondal. Verdopolis. The Bastille. Now, now, now!”

  The woods wobbled. Bravey’s Inn shuddered. Anne began to slide her fingers behind her, ever so gently. The silver, frozen, ruined meadow groaned. The whole wintry world seemed to, somehow, and only once, tick. Like a minute hand juddering into place.

  And

  then

  —they were in Gondal. But Branwell and Anne never saw the hills or the blue houses all in tidy rows or the silvery sunlight on Lake Elseraden or the meadows of Zedora or the spires of Regina. They simply disappeared from the meadow and the woods and Bravey’s Inn and reappeared within the walls of a great prison, with the door already locked fast behind them.

  SIXTEEN

  The Wildfell Ball

  Charlotte and Emily stood at the top of a long, curling staircase made of jewels so scuffed and ancient they had faded to the color of milk. Vines of heather and bilberry and lobelia flowers raced up one banister. Wine-grapes and wild lavender tumbled down the other. A man slapped together out of broken brandy snifters looked them up and down with one frosted eyebrow raised disdainfully. Charlotte straightened her back and placed the little card Ginevra had given them into his outstretched hand. Candlelight glanced off her perfectly pinned and curled hair, her skin, her eyelashes, her lips: all painted as gold as a goose’s egg. Not one square inch of plain skin
-and-bones Charlotte was left. She was nothing but gold. Emily raised her own eyebrow at the same angle as the snifter-man, but somehow, on her new silver face it came out less disdainful and more furious and prone to violence. He looked suddenly alarmed and turned away from this terrifying metal girl immediately.

  “May I present Lady Currer Bell and Lady Ellis Bell of Thrushcross Grange!” roared the herald to the shimmering throng spread out below the staircase.

  No one paid him the least attention.

  But Charlotte and Emily could not make themselves move. Now was the time to descend the stairs gracefully and melt into the crowds. That was what was meant to happen next. But they could not force themselves to do it. The great hall dazzled them so completely that they just stood there like two bathers at the edge of a swimming hole where everyone else has already jumped in.

  The vast mansion that hosted the Wildfell Ball had no roof. The buttresses and garlands were the wheeling silver stars of Glass Town and a warm evening wind conducted the music. Huge thistle blossoms hung like chandeliers from nothing at all. Their spiky petals burned with blue fire. Indigo couches lined walls sheathed in magenta wallpaper; but the walls ended cleanly twenty feet in the air. Bronze candlesticks as tall as two men stood everywhere like sunflowers, boasting fifty candles each. On a little velvet stage, a quartet in lavender wigs played a maddeningly fast waltz on a violet harpsichord, a plum cello, a bassoon the color of raisins, and a drum hollowed out of mulberry stump. The ballroom floor was checkered amethyst and black marble, reflecting hundreds of feet spinning in steps so complicated Emily thought she could practice till she was eighty and never learn them. The Wildfell Ball was a blur of people. Tall, handsome limeskin soldiers lounged in their uniforms, Lords and Ladies danced in their finery, servants rushed here and there with platters and goblets and armfuls of new shoes in case anyone wore theirs out. And there, there in the middle of it all like a cake topper, stood the Duke of Wellington, his burning iron wings lighting up the dance floor as a laughing young maiden made of playing cards pulled and prodded him to join in the fun.

  Each Lord, each Lady, each soldier, each servant was terribly young, just like Wellington, just like Bonaparte, just like Charlotte and Emily. Even the oldest reveler they saw wheel by could not have been much more than sixteen or seventeen.

  Strangest of all, a woman made of roses hung miserably in a cage above the party. Below her, Copenhagen, the great blue water-lion, stared up intently, his sea-foam whiskers twitching, batting at the bottom of the cage with one huge, salty paw. The cage rocked back and forth. The rose-lady hissed. The lion purred and chortled in feline glee and whacked it again.

  “Come on, Charlotte,” Emily whispered. “Er. Currer. Lady Bell. We can do this. It’s just like playing with dolls and wooden soldiers at home. We know their names and their histories better than they do—we made them up in the room at the top of the stairs! I don’t know how that can be, but it is. We’d better stop marveling at it and start using it to our advantage. This should be as easy as one of our games.”

  “I’m more worried about the things we didn’t make up, Ellis,” Charlotte said smoothly. A new name was nothing to a liar as practiced as she. “Wehglon, Acroofcroomb, Captain Bravey, Verdopolis? Those feel good and safe to me. Old friends. But we never imagined Port Ruby or Bestminster or . . . or . . . this. Our games have gone on without us and I don’t think we’re all such good friends anymore.” Charlotte took a deep breath. She put it all in a neat stack underneath her heart to worry at later. “Buck up,” she said.

  “Be brave,” Emily answered her.

  But there was no one to do the other parts. Two was nothing. What good were two bees out of four?

  A voice bellowed out above the noisy throng. Someone was coming toward them, making his apologies as he dodged dance-traffic. Someone made of wood.

  “Well, cut my rations and wet my powder! Never thoughtmagined I’d see you girls in a place like this! I hardly recognized you! What’s that all over your face-parts? Did you change your hair?” Sergeant Crashey was panting by the time he got to the bottom of the jeweled staircase. The wood of his face had gone from ash to cherry. “You surely do look grandnificent, if you’ll take a compliment from an old army-man! What’re ya standing up there for? It’s boring up there! Much better down here. Down here there’s me!”

  Charlotte and Emily found their feet at last and bolted down the steps toward the one familiar thing in all the world and hugged it fiercely. Sergeant Crashey cleared his throat to rid himself of the embarrassment of this sudden outpouring of breather affection. The song changed to something slower and kinder to tired feet. Dancers drifted toward the wallpaper to rest their nerves.

  Charlotte wiped her eyes, careful not to disturb her golden paint. Emily shook his hand vigorously, hardly able to stop herself, so the handshake went on, really, far too long. “What are you doing here, Crashey? I thought Wildfell was only for the richies! Is Cap’n Bravey with you? And Gravey? And Cheeky and Rogue?”

  The wooden soldier looked terrifically offended. He clutched his heart. “How do you know I’m not a richie? I could be. Could be sitting my arse-end on a fortune the size of Mount Pavonine! You’ve never asked me my busindustry. I could be the Crown Prince for all the knowledge you’ve got in your block about the House o’ Crashey. And even if I was broke as a bloody wheel, Her Majesty’s armed forces are welcome at any society to-doering. ’S only fair, as we put our skins on the line so this lot can have their canapés. Gravey and Rogue will be around here someeverwhere. As for the Cap’n, he’s off indulging himself. Can’t soldier all the time! And didn’t we all have dreams before we heard the drum? He’s got an inn out in the wirralywilds of Calabar Wood. Dunno why he likes it up there in the freeze. Too close to the border for the tastes of me. Practically dumps his rubbish out the back window into Gondal! Mostly he puts up grizzlelimp old army boys, the shot up and the sawn off and the slumped over. Bravey’s an unforgivlievable softie. I expect sooner or later, we all end up at Bravey’s Inn.” The oaken Sergeant stopped and looked about. He lifted up one of Emily’s arms, then one of Charlotte’s. “Hold on. I could’ve sworn there used to be more of you! Where’s the little monster and the wee moppet?”

  “We did try to get Brunty safely to the P-House,” Emily moaned. A silver curl of hair slid out of her bun and lay gracefully against her collarbone. “But he sprang himself and kidnapped Bran and Anne and they’ve run away to Gondal and we’ve got to get them back, we’ve just got to, even though we’re far past catching the evening express train home now. He’s our brother and she’s our sister and he’s a beastly little beetle sometimes but he’s our beastly little beetle. We’ve come to rouse up a gang to go after them. You’ll help us, won’t you, Crashey? You’ll come. You must. It’s a real military operation! Under cover of darkness! Search and rescue! Espionage in the black of night!”

  “I don’t reckonoitter many of the peacocks round here will be too keen on buckling up to a couple of breathers and crossing borders with ill intent, I’m sorry to say it.”

  “That’s why we’re in disguise, sir.” Charlotte curtsied a little. “Incognito. We’re Lady Currer and Lady Ellis Bell, in from Thrushcross to enrich ourselves culturally. Lord Bell is such a country boor, you know.” She winked and batted her eyelashes as she imagined an upper-class girl might. She pulled it off rather well. Emily touched her silver fringe with a nervous hand. She didn’t think she looked that winning when she fluttered her eyelashes. She mostly looked like she had something stuck in them. “Now, if you don’t want to lead our rescue party, that’s perfectly understandable, but you mustn’t give us up.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it, my lamb kabobs!” Sergeant Crashey nicked a flute of champagne off a passing butler’s platter and blew a little golden note on it, smacking his lips. “Now, if you mean to rattle hearts and rustle minds, you’ll need more than a new paint jobbie. If you want to raise an army, however small, you’ve got to have intelliconaissance
. The slope of the high ground! The lay of the land! Look around, my girls! Who do you recognize?”

  “That’s the Duke of Wellington,” Charlotte said at once, pointing her gloved finger at the Iron Duke, his many-metaled handsome face laughing over a mug of something hot and heady. Emily rolled her eyes. She couldn’t think of anything more boring than the Duke of Wellington. I’d wager he sleeps with a stick jammed in his teeth so he doesn’t lose that stiff upper lip to a stray dream, she thought. His lion is ever so much better! If I had my way I’d roll out a ball of yarn for him right this second.

  “That’s Copenhagen under the Lady in the cage, though I’ve no idea who she is,” Emily ventured. “And you’re Sergeant Crashey. That’s all, really.”

  The wooden soldier clapped his birch hands. “Oh, brilliorgeous! I do so love to say a story! Gather round me pant-legs, Misses Bell, I present to you: THE COMICAL FARCE OF EVERYBODY WHO’S ANYBODY AND HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY, BY SERGEANT CRASH C. CRASHEY ESQUIRE, WHO MIGHT BE RICH, YOU DON’T KNOW DO YOU, THAT’S RIGHT YOU DON’T. Let’s start with the Lady in the cage, shall we? Hullo, Copey. She’s not a mousie, leave her be, there’s a pussycat.”

  Copenhagen purred loudly and nuzzled Crashey’s head. His seawater mane sloshed over the soldier’s uniform, soaking him through. The woman in the cage stared down at them with two purple primrose eyes blooming in a white tea-rose face. Her hair was a river of plump red roses so brilliant and dark and thick they seemed to suck the light and life from everything around them so that they could glow all the brighter. Her limbs were thin, green, and sharp. Thorny vines twisted together into fingers and arms. She wore a black gown whose skirt was one single, stupendous black tulip. The bodice was a charcoal fleur-de-lis wrapped round her petaled chest. That’s the flower on all the French flags, Charlotte thought. I wonder if it’s Gondal’s flower, too?