The Glass Town Game

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “Yes, I have,” he said, a little nastily. I invented it, you weird white rat. Well, we all did. But I did the good bits. Oh, I am being dreadful, dreadful. Why can’t I stop being dreadful to her? “It’s fine. You’re not missing much.”

  Anne glared at him and shook her head disapprovingly. Branwell coughed. He prodded the doll with the big white beard again with his toe.

  “Leave Charles alone,” Victoria begged him. “He doesn’t belong to you.”

  “You are mad,” he declared. “I said you were and you are.”

  He expected the strange girl to go pale and apologize for her very bad joke—paler, anyway. But she didn’t. She clenched her white silk fists.

  “Hush, Bran!” Anne said. “You could drive a soap cake mad in five minutes flat! Manners banners!” Anne had already decided she liked that very much and would take it home with her. “Go on, Victoria. I know just what you’re talking about. We’ve made up loads of stories and games for our toys, haven’t we, Bran?” Bran looked slightly panicked. This was hardly the time to come clean or the person to come clean to! “You’re right, England is a funny name. But I like it all the same. What made you think of it?”

  Victoria slowly unclenched her fists and began to pace about her room, tidying up her dolls and models and figures. “I don’t know, really. It’s my own invention. It just came to me one day out of nowhere and I thought it sounded like a real, proper name for a country—a bit stiff and stuffy but not at all scrubby, the way a country’s name should be. It’s a little, lonely, green island in a cold sea. It’s got a capital called London and oodles of rivers—I’m ever so good at naming rivers! The Thames, the Tyne, the Clyde, the Nidd, they go on and on! I’ve drawn the place a hundred times, but I’m not much at sketching and it’s so hard to get Scotland right. That’s what I call the northern bits. The whole thing together is also called Great Britain. Miss Agnes says I must choose one, but I think a place can have two names if it’s truly splendid, don’t you? And I’d wager no one’s ever thought to say a nation’s great right in the title of the thing! But it is splendid and it is great and it has heaps of colonies so it never has to stay a lonely green island in a cold sea.” Victoria twisted her fingers together nervously. “I couldn’t bear for my country to be a poor lonely little thing so I let it conquer, oh my, just every kind of place, and that way it will always have friends. Oh, I’ve imagined other places and empires and geographies for my dolls before, but England’s different. Aren’t you, darling? Yes, yes, you are.” She put her hand on the stack of handwritten pages on her desk. Her writing was so small and fine the papers looked almost all black with ink.

  “How different?” Branwell asked, unsure whether or not he wanted the answer.

  But Victoria’s pearly eyes filled with the very special thrill of showing a stranger your dearest possession. “Well,” she said conspiratorially, “I’ve put myself in it, for one. I’ve never done that before! It’s very daring, don’t you think? I like being daring. It feels like jumping out that window there. You don’t think it’s prideful, do you? Oh, perhaps I ought to change it. Perhaps it is wicked and stuck up. But . . . it’s only that, up here in my tower, I’m not terribly interesting, not much of an anybody at all. I’ve never ever left these walls unless it happened when I was a baby and I don’t remember, and I suppose it might have and I wouldn’t know a thing any more than I know what I sound like when I’m sleeping, because once you’ve forgotten something, it forgets you, too, and you can’t ever get it back. I get a little food every day even though it’s never enough, and I get a little lesson from Miss Agnes every week, even though that’s never enough, either, and a little visit from Uncle Leon or Mr. Brunty on holidays, but that’s all I’ve got. And Mr. Brunty and Uncle Leon . . . well, I do love them, I just wish they wouldn’t call me quite so many harsh names. Or let the guards chase me for fun and exercise. But I expect they’re right, in the end. I am just a nasty little scrubby starling nobody with nothing and that’s all right, you can’t help being born a starling, no matter how much you might like to be a hawk. But there! There, in my lovely England! There I’m not in the least a starling. I am a great Queen! Not just a Queen! An Empress! Her Majesty Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India! Doesn’t that sound spectacular? Doesn’t it sound like all the trumpets of heaven at once?”

  Anne and Branwell shrugged. The room seemed to throb with strangeness, suddenly.

  “Maybe another name,” Bran suggested. “Most Queens are Elizabeths or Marys. There’s never been any Victorias.” Anne shot him a glare. “So I’ve heard.”

  “But I don’t want to be an Elizabeth or a Mary. I’m not an Elizabeth or a Mary! I’m a Victoria! And in my story, well, it’s very long and complicated and there’s just so terribly many chapters, but in my story, in my sweet little England, I rule forever and ever and ever over a great kingdom. I’ve invented a wonderful husband for myself as well.” She swooped down and scooped up the doll with the yellow silk hair she’d been fussing with before. “I named him Albert. I made him perfect. We have just the same color eyes. He’s staggeringly handsome and clever and brave—but not so brave that he will lord over me! Albert’s very dear that way. We’re never going to be parted, not even for a single moment, and he will never yell at me and he will never call me bad words and he will never think I’m scrubby, not even when I’ve just got up in the morning. Every day Albert will say to me: Victoria, you are good and kind and special and everything you do is the right thing to do. You are the hawk of my heart. Then we shall go for a long walk out of doors together in the sun. And I shall give Albert and me a shocking number of children, and all our babies will all be Kings and Queens and Emperors and Empresses as well, so that no one must feel lesser when we gather together for holidays and we will all love each other so much we never stop saying how well and truly we love each other even for a moment, and none of us will ever have to be alone, and all the laws will just be love each other and never stop, written on clay tablets and hung up where everyone can see, and that will be enough. All the other times I made up countries for my toys to live in, I invented wars and diseases and tragedies so that none of them would get bored and we’d all get a good story out of it. But this time, this time it’s going to be perfect. No one will ever get sick or suffer injustice and there will be no wars, unless everyone really wants one, but at the end of the day they must all shake hands and have a bath and be happy again. Best of all, no one will be bored, because I’ve planned a whole pantheon of wonderful poets and scientists and authors and inventors and painters and composers for my court! You’ve already met and manhandled Mr. Darwin and his poor turtles, Bran, but I’ve got scads more.” Victoria sank down at her desk again, overpowered by her vision. She touched the quill pen shyly. “I can put you in it, if you like,” she said to Anne. “I like to share. It’s only that I’ve never had any other children to share with. What would you like to be?”

  “What about me?” said Branwell. This was all absurd, of course. Their games had come to life. Not hers. But he smarted all the same. It was the worst sort of feeling, to be left out.

  “You called me mad,” Victoria said haughtily. For the tiniest slice of a moment, she looked every inch Queen Victoria, Her Majesty, by the Grace of God. “Anne didn’t, so she’s my favorite at the moment. You can’t call the Queen names. England’s not that kind of place. If you want to be in my story, you mustn’t say anything cruel or be vicious or argue with any single thing I say, even if it is only a little thing and you know it isn’t true, such as: Why, that Certain Clever Wren has just told me there’s a new Prime Minister! I’m afraid you cannot say: Birds don’t talk; instead you must curtsy and say something agreeable, for example: That Certain Clever Wren certainly is up to date on the most exciting doings, Mum.”

  Victoria was beginning to remind Branwell of Charlotte. He gritted his teeth. But he could not bear for Anne to
be anyone’s favorite while he was standing right there. If the girls were getting something, he wanted it, too. Some things inside Branwell were as unchangeable as gravity, and that was one.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said through his teeth. “I’m sorry I said you were mad.”

  Victoria inclined her head. She would give him no more than that.

  Anne rocked back and forth on her heels. It was too much. The girl she invented, inventing her future. “Could . . . could you write our sisters in as well? Charlotte and Emily.”

  “If it pleases you,” said the child Victoria with a gracious wave of her pen. “What would you like to be, Anne? I’ll write you all in this minute.”

  “This is ridiculous!” Branwell threw up his hands. He’d tried once. That was all through now. “Did you or did you not hear that rooster crowing not ten minutes ago? We’re in the middle of a prison break and you want to play with dolls! It’s not England, it’ll never be England, England’s nothing like she says. There’s never been a Queen Victoria and there won’t be one. Prince William’s next after King George, everyone knows that! And William’s got loads of brothers all over the place, so they wouldn’t give it to a girl just for funsies. She’s just daydreaming. The England bit’s only a coincidence, Anne! Lock a monkey in a room and tell it to rearrange the alphabet or no lunch and he’s bound to come up with London and the Thames sooner or later. It’s not like what we did, not in the least like us. She’s barmy. Barmy as a bilge rat, and I’m not sorry for saying that. Just let her talk to the wall and her pile of junk by herself. Let’s get out of here.”

  But Anne wasn’t listening. She was thinking hard about what she and her sisters would like to be. In another England. A perfect England. Emily and Charlotte weren’t here. She had to get it right. “Poets,” Anne said finally. “And authors. The sort that last.”

  Victoria beamed. “I shall not forget when I come to that part! There is plenty of room for everyone in Barmytown.” She turned her back on Bran. “Oh, wait until you see the inventions I have imagined for my empire, Miss Anne! Every single person in my world shall be a wizard, able to trap lightning in a glass or a pot or a bit of rope and use it to do miracles whenever they wish! I’ve put in machines that can sew anything all by themselves and sweet oranges filled with a magical medicine that can heal any infection and tin ponies that run upon two wheels! I’ve written locomotives that crisscross the whole planet, even running under the ground like iron worms, and great birds that will carry my people anywhere they wish to go. I do love anything that can fly, and Albert does as well. So I’ll have flying balloons, too, and rockets you can ride in all the way to heaven! I’ve made them such a place, my darling wooden men and porcelain ladies. I’m a good mother, I am. I’ve given them candles that never burn out so they needn’t ever be afraid of the dark and pictures that talk and move so they needn’t ever feel the littlest shiver of boredom and fairs so big you have to build a whole new city just to contain them! Oh, my world will shine. And you will too! I’ll put you right in next to Mr. Conan Doyle and Mrs. Curie and Mr. Wilde and Miss Nightingale and Mr. Rossetti and Mr. Dickens and Mrs. Browning and Mr. Marconi . . . ”

  And the child Victoria, her long lace hair spilling down over her slim shoulders, began to write so fast that they could no longer see the strokes of her pen. Sheaves of paper flew out from the desk, falling like snow onto the floor, piling up in drifts, nesting in a plush blue and red chair, on a narrow blue and red bed.

  Bran had a terrible sick feeling in his stomach. It got worse the more Victoria talked. No, no, no, said Branwell’s mind. It’s not true. That’s not our England. It’s preposterous. It’s completely unacceptable and I will not have anything to do with it. Veins stood out on his forehead. He’d only just accepted that there were two worlds in God’s creation: the world that contained England and Yorkshire and Papa and home, and the world that contained Glass Town and Gondal and all the most secret delights of their playroom games. If Victoria had her own world—and she didn’t, she didn’t! Then it couldn’t be his world. It had to be a third one. And three was right out. No, no, no, his mind stubbornly repeated. We made Glass Town. And it came real because we’re special, somehow. Because we made the best stories. They’re the made-up ones. It’s them. Not us. They’re the toys. It’s not me. I’m nobody’s toy. I’m no one’s wooden soldier.

  “She can’t do that,” he told Anne. “We can, but she’s a toy. Why would you make it so she could do that?”

  “Later,” Anne begged.

  “What do you mean later? What if there isn’t a later?”

  “There’s always a later. When the game is done and everything’s put away and we’ve had our supper. That’s when you tell us we’re just silly girls because we didn’t work any murders in, or we tell you you’re a brute. Later is when it’s safe to say anything, because the game is over and there’s no point getting cross about it. Let’s wait until you can’t get cross with me, Bran,” Anne begged. Tears filled her eyes. “You’re already cross with me right now! And you’ll be more than cross if I say it before later comes. You’ll be ever so much more than angry. You’ll be . . . you’ll be hurt.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Anne. You can’t hurt me. I promise. I’m practically a grown up already. It’s dreadfully tough to hurt a grown-up, you know. So just pretend now is later and tell me or I’ll pinch you.”

  Anne trembled from head to foot. The truth burst out of her like water from a burst pipe. “I made her so that she could do anything Charlotte and Emily could do! I made her so that when they die at school I won’t be alone! I’ll have someone all mine, who will never leave and never lie and never stop talking to me and she’ll be just as wonderful as Charlotte and Emily and tell stories even better than they could and stay with me forever!”

  “You made a replacement?”

  “I made a sister!” Anne sobbed. “You can’t tell! You mustn’t! They won’t understand!”

  Branwell was hurt, after all. He had never felt so hollow. He’d never felt so much like he didn’t exist at all. “But . . . but Anne . . . what about me?”

  Anne never got a chance to answer.

  A ghost drifted in through the window, silvery blue, somewhat pretty and somewhat plain. Her bare feet left frost-tracks in the air.

  Any thought that did not concern ghosts fled from Anne, Victoria, and Branwell’s minds. The spirit put a thin scrap of paper in Branwell’s dumbfounded hand. Then she melted away like winter snow.

  Anne read over her brother’s shoulder. She opened her mouth to cheer for Charlotte and Em and somehow Wellington and Lord Byron, too, but a savage knock at the door and a savager squawk cut her off. Bran quickly shoved the note into the pocket of his Gondalier pajamas.

  “Uncle Leon! Puppy!” Victoria cried happily. “Miss Agnes! Oh, everyone, just everyone’s come to see me today! I don’t know how I shall stand it! Oh, you needn’t knock, I’m perfectly decent, come in, come in!”

  Victoria pulled open the green glass door. Napoleon Bonaparte stood on the other side, all two hundred and some odd bare bones and two long rifles and one large blue hat of him. His war-rooster Marengo waited magnificently behind him, along with a tall girl made of dark gray school slates with chalk dust still clinging to them in pretty patterns. Bonaparte’s chiseled bone face took in the room, Victoria, and the two, very much out of place and out of formation, intruders, Branwell and Anne. He puffed out his chest and slid the tip of his left musket inside his richly braided general’s coat. He said nothing. The great tyrant entered the cell and sprawled out comfortably in one of the plush red and blue chairs. The gray slate girl followed with a tray full of tea and pitchers of cream and plates of dainties—and two large, ripe lemons. She laid it out on the table, clearing away the ruins of breakfast.

  “Puppy!” Victoria shrieked.

  Marengo crowed joyfully and barreled in to be aggressively hugged by his favorite person apart from Napoleon. The green fire they remembered roaring out of
the spaces between his broken pottery skin was no more than a pale glow. Victoria rolled on the floor with the rooster, burying her face in his neck.

  “Now, Victoria Alexandrina, what have we said about guests?” the slate-girl said softly.

  “ ‘Guests can only cause distress and must be put under arrest,’ ” Victoria answered glumly. She climbed down from Marengo and brushed his feathers off her knees. “But they’re not really guests if they have their own room in the same castle as me, you know.”

  “Ah,” the gray girl replied. “Then what have we said about introducing new friends?”

  “ ‘You don’t need to know anything about that because you’ll never have any friends but us’?” Victoria said, with the smallest twinkle in her pearl eye.

  “That’s an awful thing to say. Who would ever say something like that?” said Napoleon. “Wasn’t me, I can tell you that much for the price of a smack in the mouth.”

  “It was though.” Victoria squared her shoulders. “Miss Agnes says: ‘Introductions provide sound construction for any social gathering.’ Branwell, Anne, this is my governess, Miss Agnes Gray.”

  Governess! Anne stared up at the tall creature. Was this what she and Charlotte and Emily were meant to be when they were grown? All gray stone and prim little lessons that rhymed and serving tea fearfully to a master who was all bone and no heart? For Miss Agnes was afraid of her master, anyone could see it. The chalk dust on her slate cheek quivered whenever he moved. Anne didn’t want to be stone when she grew up. It wasn’t fair.

  Victoria hadn’t stopped talking, of course. “And this is my Uncle Leon, who never told me his last name so I can’t be blamed for not knowing it, unless he doesn’t have one, in which case I still can’t be blamed, because there wasn’t anything to know, and we should all feel anxious because we have something he doesn’t. Miss Agnes, Uncle Leon, this is Branwell and Anne, whose last names I don’t know either, so I suppose I ought never to have brought up the subject of surnames in the first place.”