The Glass Town Game

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “Charmed,” said the Queen, who did not bow or curtsy, for she bent knee to no one. “And perhaps, indeed. I am always on the lookout for new conspiracies, and the beginning is always today, after all. Find me after the entertainments, Sergeant.”

  “Is there any end to the people you know?” Emily marveled.

  “Haven’t found it yet!” shrugged their man.

  The Queen hurried behind her fan and away, leaving them face-to-face with a most extraordinary pair—a young man nailed together out of the parts of a shattered ship and a young girl all of crackling electricity and steel. “Mary and Percy Shelley, may I present Misses Currer and Ellis Bell?” The wooden soldier leaned down and whispered in their ears: “I know, I know, the names can get brutally contwixting! Would it kill this lot to have a few less Marys and lads what start with the letter A?”

  When Charlotte touched Mary Shelley’s hand, the electricity of the other girl burned her golden fingertips within her glove. “I . . . I am honored. I . . . I read your book. Papa said I oughtn’t. But I did anyhow and it was so awfully splendid and Frankenstein is the most terrifying creature I could ever think of until . . .” She thought of Brunty grinning horribly over the top of his acid machine and shuddered. “Until quite recently, actually.” Then, it occurred to her that perhaps Frankenstein was not called Frankenstein here, just as Juliet wasn’t Juliet. Maybe in Glass Town, Shelley had named her wicked scientist Edward or Mason or Rochester or something.

  “Frankenstein is the creator, you know,” Mary said, her lips firing off sparks when they met. “Not the monster.”

  “I know,” Charlotte squeaked. “But . . .” She thought she might fall to the ground or lift up through the air. These dresses wouldn’t let your heart beat more than once an hour. Don’t say another thing, Charlotte, don’t you do it! “But he . . . he is, you know. He is a bit. The monster.”

  Mary Shelley quirked one sizzling blue eyebrow.

  “Your poems are very nice as well, Mr. Shelley,” Emily hurried to add, as it was clear the other felt slighted.

  Sergeant Crashey guessed that his young charge was about to faint with the excitement of meeting the Shelleys. He pushed them further in and farther on through the crowds, pointing here and there and everywhere. “The fellow who’s all over lace handkerchiefs is our own Mr. Keats. You look awful cold, Johnny! Put some mittens on before you catch your death! Right, where was I? That pile of pine-branches swiping purses ’cause he thinks I can’t see him is Robin Hood, the tall drink of mulled wine dancing by herself is Lady Guinevere, that plaid wool scamp is Sir Walter Scott, aaaaand he’s making off with a bit of silverware, good for him! Ah, and the girl with the black walnut cheeks playing with the little babies in the corner is Miss Katie Crackernuts. Thought I was to marry her once upon a time, but she got cursed by a fairy and we just drifted apart after that. Oh, well! Ooh, there! The ice-lads playing dice at the green table are Captains Ross and Parry, the gallant explorequistadors of Ascension Island and the frigid wastes of Parrysland, which, obviclearly he named for himself, but that’s the paybackoff for having to eat your sails and getting were-scurvy twice. And lo! Here we are, here we land, here we anchormoor our barking barques! Good gravy in a leaky boat, I am parched from all this naming and shaming! Where’s that butler?”

  Crashey pulled them along after a tuxedoed boy carrying goblets on a tray and nearly ran right over into two wooden soldiers with dear, familiar faces. One with a knotty burl on his forehead where he’d been wounded earlier that afternoon, and one with an eye patch Anne had made out of pitch on a rainy afternoon back home in Haworth. But now they had two handsome ladies on their arms instead of rifles. One was made of teacup handles and quill pens. She wore a pale, plain dress the color of a real, deep, proper blush, the kind that flood’s a girl’s face when society has offended her. The other had long green leaves for skin and wore a lovely delicate gray, the color of ash in an attic. Crashey greeted them with embraces and slaps on the back. “Of course, you know Sergeant Major Rogue and Leftenant Gravey!”

  Gravey and Rogue exclaimed and kissed their cheeks and were informed by a wide variety of eyebrow-waggles and nose-tappings from Sergeant Crashey that they were not to spill any flavor of beans about the girls’ new names and faces. Rogue looked tremendously dashing in his eye patch and formal coat. Leftenant Gravey had worn a splendid lime-green sash for the occasion, the only way to display all his medals at once. The sash sagged with the weight of hundreds of crosses and coins and bars and stars. Emily caught her breath. One for each time he’s died on the field. Oh, poor, poor Leftenant Gravey!

  But Gravey did not seem to feel himself poor at all. He kissed their cheeks and proudly displayed his newest: a brilliant red sunburst with The Battle of Port Ruby engraved on one side and Distinguished Service Above and Beyond the Call on the other.

  “They do make those up rather quick, don’t they!” said Charlotte.

  “Command’s got a special press for Gravey in the big tent,” Sergeant Major Rogue laughed. “He gets cross if he doesn’t get his praise on time.”

  “Well, I did die, didn’t I? Deserves a bit of jewelry!” Gravey laughed along with his men and snuck a sip of something from a flask on his belt.

  The lady in the gray dress cleared her throat politely. “Ah!” Sergeant Major Rogue cried, slapping his beechwood forehead. “I would forget my own King if he weren’t on the money! Miss Currer, Miss Ellis, this is my betrothed, Lady Zenobia Elrington of Verdopolis.”

  Gravey put his arm round the shoulders of the girl in blush. “And this is most emphatically not my betrothed, Miss Jane Austen of . . . well, anywhere she likes, I expect. Jane is far too fine for the likes of me. Says I’m morbid and rude. Well, I only squired her up because I am an excellent and long-suffering friend. Roguey told me to scrub it and get my arm under this one so Miss Z wouldn’t feel lonely, and here we all are! You must try to hear one of Janey’s storyables while you’re here; they’re better than any of the desserts.”

  Charlotte and Emily stared all over again, dumbfounded once more, delighted once more to meet somebody so famous she shone. But this time Charlotte didn’t gush about the lady’s novels. She had never much cared for them. Too prim and neat and breakable. Nobody could ever really be that polite when their lives burst open like rotten dams. Emily liked them just fine, and said so. But more importantly, Leftenant Gravey just called Jane Austen “Janey.” And he was still alive. Jane’s pale eyes shot daggers at the Leftenant. Crashey hurried to skewer the awkward silence.

  “All rightnough! Moving on to the lessminor gentry!”

  “Oh wait, please! That’s quite enough for a first course!” pleaded Emily. “I’m already full!”

  Gravey and Rogue and their dates made affectionate farewells and promises to find them all again later, but Charlotte and Emily scarcely heard a thing.

  The dancing floor of the Wildfell Ball was half-filled with their toys and half-filled with the greatest men and women in Britain. Either of them could recite all those names back with hardly a breath between, but they could not understand it. It made them dizzy, trying to untangle the mess. Charlotte and Branwell had invented Adrian, the sly and wicked Marquis of Douro! And Emily had dreamed up Mary Percy after Branwell killed Douro’s first wife “to make love more interesting.” Branwell signed all his dreadful poems as Young Soult the Rhymer. And of course Anne had her Victoria. But Victoria, and Ross and Perry and John Keats and Jane Austen were quite real, and so was Lord Byron and Mary Shelley and Napoleon’s poor wife, Josephine. They’d never played Byron and Josephine of an afternoon, not once. Yet right at that very moment, Charlotte was staring into the black eyes of Lady Zenobia Elrington, a name she had spent hours thinking up while the Headmaster droned on about the Norman invasion.

  “Look at what we made,” Charlotte whispered to her sister.

  She could not doubt any longer that they had made it. Not with Douro and Zenobia and Mary Percy slurping brandy not ten steps away. It w
as impossible, of course, and no one would ever believe it, and she hadn’t the first guess as to how or why or when they’d done it. Only it was all so much grander and bigger than just the four of them huddled together in the playroom at the top of the stairs. So much thicker, so much wilder. She was, against all logic, walking through the insides of their four heads, and the wine there tasted wonderful.

  SEVENTEEN

  The Only Onions in the World

  Branwell and Anne slept and slept and slept.

  They had a few dim, unpleasant dreams. When they hashed everything out later, they discovered they’d dreamt the same murky, echoing stuff. Very clumsy ogres with cold, sticky hands moved them about. They pinched and sniffed and prodded roughly, shoved them here and there, ordered them to take one or another thing off or to put this or that thing on, marched them down halls and up staircases that never seemed to end, the way they never do in dreams. And the whispering! Those stupid ogres were always whispering, and at the most maddening volume: just softly enough so that they couldn’t hear, but too loud to ignore. Their whispering breath smelled like water in a still, scummy pond.

  Anne woke first, but she pretended she was still asleep, just in case the ogres weren’t dreams. The pond smell still wriggled around in her nostrils. She pretended for so long that Bran woke up as well, and she lost the chance to scold him for being lazy. Her hand flew to her chest—was it safe there? Was it hers? She breathed a shaky sigh of relief.

  “I can tell you’re faking, Anne,” Branwell said, and poked her in the ribs. “You always scrunch up your eyes when you’re faking. Come on, up you get! Prison’s not bad, really. Though I’m hungry as Hades. Oh, and don’t look out the windows. It’s a ghastly long way down. You know how you get.”

  Anne opened one eye. Clear, cool sunlight drifted through six tall windows shaped like church candles. She was lying in a bed in a little round room. Bran sat on the edge of his own bed, swinging his feet impatiently. Their sheets and blankets were blue and red. So was Anne’s nightgown and Bran’s pajamas.

  “Gondal’s colors,” Bran said. The idea of it excited him a little. He picked at the white buttons on his nightclothes.

  “And France’s,” Anne said. “And England’s, come to think of it. And America. And Russia as well!”

  Bran shook his head. “Good grief, didn’t anyone think that might get confusing? What’s the matter with a bit of black?”

  “Or purple! Purple is much nicer than black. Oh!” Anne exclaimed, clutching her rough-spun nightgown. “Bran, where’re our clothes? My dress and my shoes and my lemon? That’s our ticket home!”

  “I haven’t the foggiest,” Branwell answered gloomily.

  Anne climbed out from under the covers to have a look round. The polished flagstone floor was cold under her bare feet.

  There was a hearth down one end of the room with a fire going about its business inside. A pot of something that smelled oaty and milky bubbled over the flames.

  “It’s vile,” Branwell assured her. “Turns out gruel is gruel wherever you go.”

  Over the hearth hung an obnoxiously large portrait of Bonaparte and a lady made of roses wearing crowns the size of rain barrels. They looked smugly pleased to be having their portrait painted. The lady’s rose-hair had lost a few petals, and where they lay, they shone the most peculiar color, like moonlight. Anne chewed her lip. Down the other end was a thick, heavy door hacked out of wood so old it might have started out as the gangplank on Noah’s Ark. It had one little square window in it, too high for either of them to look out of, and full of iron bars anyway, even if they tried.

  “Prison, you said?” Anne said to her brother.

  “Well, it’s locked, if that’s what you mean. I don’t expect they lock you in if they mean to throw you a birthday party.” Branwell clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace up and down the cell with his best hardened warrior expression on. “Best face up to it, Anne. We’re prisoners of war, now. It’s to be interrogations and meager rations for us. We shall have to be strong. We shall have to be resolute!”

  Anne rolled her eyes.

  “You sound like you’re counting Christmas presents! I don’t know why you have to be so odd all the time.”

  “But, Anne! We are prisoners of war! And that means we’re important. If we weren’t, they’d just drop us out the window and wave at us while our heads splattered on the rocks. I like being important. Don’t you? It’s important to be important! Why, it’s the most important thing!”

  “I like being Anne,” she sniffed. “That’s quite important enough.”

  Finally, she could put it off no longer. Bran was right. She did know how she got when she found herself too high up in a tree or the bell tower of Papa’s church or Bestminster’s balloon basket. She wanted to like it up there as the others did. But it made her stomach turn inside out. The trouble was, Branwell had said not to look, which meant Anne had to look. She needed to look. She would look. Anne hadn’t disobeyed anyone in ages. It made her itch.

  The windows were thin and graceful and went almost from the floor to the pointed roof of their cell. Anne peered over the sill. It was a ghastly long way down. Miles and miles. Probably not miles, she corrected herself. But taller than any tree or chapel or even the palaces of Europe in their beloved magazines. They were in a great, grand house, greater and grander than any English house could ever dream of growing up to be. The walls were neither brick nor stone but pure diamond, billions of them, perfectly cut and dazzling in the cold sunshine, sweeping off to the left and right into endless banks of windows and gables. They were on the top floor, or very nearly. Glittering crystal walls plunged down toward a craggy, jagged cliff, which plunged down into a rocky, barren valley, which plunged down until it ended in an icy river that raged and frothed itself into a pure white scream of water. Anne yelped softly, then tried to pretend she hadn’t. She couldn’t be scared. Not now. Not here. She had too many other feelings for stupid old scared. Scared would have to queue up.

  Anne dashed to the opposite wall. This was better. No cliff or valley or river. Just a vast, busy courtyard full of those wonderful, terrifying frogs slapped together out of steel armor. Other folk had joined the elite fighters: tall and short and fat and thin and made out of every which thing. But many of them were Ascension Islanders: walking, talking ninepins and chess pieces and checker-stacks and dice and dominos. Gondal’s soldiers stood in row after row, rank after rank. They turned sharply, left, right, all in perfect unison. They exercised and drilled and marched and practiced their stabbing skills on straw dummies with Wellington’s face painted on them. Bonaparte’s army was mustering. It wasn’t a better view at all, really.

  But above the courtyard of the Bastille soared spires and towers and roofs and gables that Anne knew as well as she knew the kitchen garden and the tracks through the moors beyond. The glorious skyline of Verdopolis filled her eyes and her whole heart. The Tower of All Nations rose in a column of green glass and smoky crystal and wrought iron pillars. The crumbling pyramids looked like green mountains in the distance. The guard houses of the Great Wall of China stretched on forever over the hills and plains, a wall so impossible to believe that the moment they read about it in Papa’s magazine, they knew they had to build it in their ideal city and man it with their wooden soldiers. The Hall of the Fountain pierced the clouds with its pale jade steeples. The rose window of the Grand Inn of the Genii, which they’d decided sounded ever so much more inviting than “cathedral,” caught the sun, so far away but still, just barely, shining.

  “We’re in Verdopolis,” she whispered. “We really, really are!” The frogs bellowed orders and turned on their green, three-toed heels. “What’s this place, then? We never put a prison in!”

  Branwell liked being asked. At least Anne acknowledged that he was an authority. Charlotte would never. But Charlotte wasn’t here. He was finally the oldest. Finally the smartest. Bran was, without argument, in charge. It felt warm and bright in hi
s chest, like Brunty’s amazing bat-tree. “I think this is the Hall of Justice. Or at least, it used to be. That’s where we always put prisoners awaiting trial when we played Verdopolis. But if we are in Verdopolis, courtesy of Brunty, that means we’re in Gondal territory, which means Napoleon must have taken the city. And he wouldn’t keep calling it that. I think it’s the Bastille now. Do you remember? Brunty said something about a Bastille a thousand years ago when all this started. That’s where the Frenchies keep their baddies in our world, anyhow. It only makes sense.”

  Anne turned away from the window before she was sick all over the thick, bubbled glass. “We’ve got to break out, obviously.”

  Bran blinked at her. “Why?”

  “Well, we’re not anyone’s baddies, for one! But, Bran . . . Charlotte and Emily will never find us in here! They can’t storm the Bastille! What are they meant to do, throw their shoes at it? Do up a Trojan Bestminster and hope those frogs fall for the really, actually oldest trick in the oldest book?”

  “But we’ll miss the interrogation!” Branwell furrowed his brow. He hated the little whine creeping into his voice, but he couldn’t help it. “I’ve never been interrogated! It was ripping fun back home when I had Crashey interrogate Douro in the kitchen garden and pull out all his fingernails! I want to be strong and resolute! Don’t you want to see who they’ll send to question us? Brunty is a bit worse for wear at the moment. I’d wager it’ll be Boney himself!”

  “I don’t want my fingernails pulled out!” Anne cried. “Pull out your own! I’m going to find a way out of here and back to Em and Charlotte and Glass Town and the train home!”

  She started to march toward the heavy door, but Bran stopped her. He got down on one knee so he could look his sister in the eye.