The Glass Town Game

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “Help him!” Charlotte cried.

  But the wooden soldier only looked down at her sadly out of his one good eye. Douro had nearly reached the puppet theater, which seemed to be coming apart in the crush. Young Soult the Rhymer threw down puppet after puppet onto his head. “There is a plan! It’s all to do with a man made of books and the Other Place and something called a bat-tree!”

  “Brunty!” Charlotte yelped.

  Young Soult kept hollering. “I know everything! I’ve seen letters and such! Douro’s not alone! He’s got friends!”

  “Well,” sighed Sergeant Major Rogue. “I wouldn’t say friends. Collaborators, at a stretch.”

  Charlotte blinked. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, then turned her head to one side. Zenobia’s fiery eyes began to drip white flame. Sergeant Major Rogue shrugged and winked at them.

  “Oh dear . . . ahem. Good show, I suppose. Both him and me. Tip the lad for me, won’t you, Zenobia? He’s earned it. And do tell old Bravey I’m sorry. It’s not his fault. When you’re born a Rogue, you know, what else can you ever hope to be? Erm. Rather. Well. That’s me, then! Bye, bye!” he chirped. Then Captain Bravey’s right hand turned, got his foot up on the pedestal of one of Dr. Home’s grisly statues, and in half a blink was up, over the holly hedge wall, and running at a dead sprint across the dark, open fields beyond the estate. A black diamond lung toppled onto the ground where he’d kicked it loose.

  “Never get involved with a man in uniform, Miss Bell,” Lady Zenobia sighed. “They’re always too loyal to somebody else to ever be loyal to you. I expect he’s already married to some Gondalier cow. Shall I scare us up some champagne?”

  “We might still catch him,” Charlotte said, putting her foot experimentally on the pedestal to see if she could manage it in Ginevra’s gown.

  “Why?” Zenobia sighed, and disappeared into the glittering riot. “You can’t fix a bad man like a bad staircase. I’d end up locked in his attic or something. Thank you kindly, but no. Really, who has the time?”

  Charlotte watched her go and saw all the rest happen. Douro finally got one hand free. He drew a flintlock pistol from his beautiful, expensive coat, spun round, shot Gravey in the chest, then again, and stabbed Crashey through both eyes—one! two!—with a dagger hidden in his sleeve. Charlotte and Emily screamed.

  “Rude,” Crashey said, and collapsed in a heap.

  Charlotte ran to the fallen boys, but Byron held Emily by the wrists and would not let her go.

  “Watch, watch!” he insisted. “This is the best part!”

  Adrian stared up demonically at the puppeteer. But at the sight of all that sap, the boy seemed to finally pull himself together. He stared down at the Marquis of Douro with something like pity.

  “If you think Boney means to keep his bargain, I’ve got a unicorn for sale out the back.” Soult called out for Wellington, for Copenhagen. One of the torches had fallen into dry grass. Black smoke began to billow and blow. “Wellesley! Arthur! Douro and his friends, they’ve built something terrible and when it’s finished, Gondal is coming for us all!”

  The Iron Duke stood leaning against the stone archway with an oddly satisfied expression on his metal face. He touched his fingers to his hat in a little salute. Young Soult the Rhymer closed his eyes then and waited for Adrian of Douro to kill him flat.

  Nothing happened.

  Douro had run. When he opened his eyes again, Soult saw the tails of that splendid coat disappearing through the holly. Below him, half the nobility of Glass Town sobbed or tried to put out fires or swung punches at one another, each assuming everyone else had thrown in with the traitors. Copenhagen padded lazily round the Vivisectionists’ Garden, where Glass Town’s nobility had well and truly been vivisected. He dropped down onto his seawater haunches here and there to drench the smoking grass. In the middle of it all, Josephine sat in her cage, her rosy arms crossed over her chest, fuming.

  “I hate you all so much,” she said simply. “So enormously much.”

  Soult crept backward on the platform above the stage until he was half buried in hedge, weeping pitifully. He craned his neck, searching the mob for his protector, his boss, the boy who came to him months ago with a horrible story and a bag of gold, who helped him pick out the milk pitcher for the rooster and bead the scarlet flower past three in the morning, who thought, at last, of rhyming unfurl with pearls. But half the steam from the lion’s firefighting efforts was too thick and he was crying too hard to see Lord Byron, still lounging on his patchwork quilt, grinning and munching on raspberries next to an utterly shell-shocked young girl made all of silver.

  “Well, it was mostly rubbish, but the ending was a bit of all right,” Byron said happily. He stretched his arms in front of him and yawned. “What did you think, you naughty little breather minx?”

  A heavy hand fell on Charlotte’s shoulder. She nearly jumped out of her golden skin. Wellington stood behind her with the oddest half-embarrassed smile on his iron face.

  “I am sorry for my attitude earlier,” he said. “I couldn’t let Douro think I was on to him. Needed the scoundrel to hear the trap I’m springing on Old Boney at Verdopolis. But it does seem that your problems and my problems are having a fine old time together. Shall we put them all together in a big pile and light them on fire?”

  Charlotte frowned doubtfully. Wellington rubbed the back of his neck like a schoolboy.

  “Oh, I do try to make grand speeches, but I always muck it up. By light them on fire, I mean set sail for Gondal at first light on a ship full of very angry people and just massive heaps of gunpowder.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The Princess in the Tower

  This cell was much nicer than Branwell and Anne’s had been.

  There were plush red and blue chairs and a neat red and blue bed with a red and blue brocade canopy. A round table covered in a red and blue cloth and a sapphire tray full of breakfast leftovers stood beside the biggest chair. All along the thick stone walls of the vast room full of toys hung a great walloping tapestry. It draped down in panels between the windows, reaching up to the ceiling and down to the floor. Each panel showed a map of a different city, painstakingly woven with a million tiny, brilliant threads. Their names were stitched near the ceiling in silver. There was Ochreopolis in gold thread, and Port Ruby in crimson, and the Plaid Lands in black and brown and white, and some very violet place called Lavendry-on-Puce, and Verdopolis in emerald. There were others, too, places they had never been but imagined a thousand times. They’d marched their wooden soldiers through them and argued over their names and climates and peoples. Bran had spent hours drawing their borders, their castles, even their local trees and fruits. Regina and Lake Elseraden and Almadore and Zamorna and Calabar Wood and the Isle of Gaaldine and Ascension Island and the Isle of Philosophers and the Isle of Dreams.

  The whole world hung in that room. Their whole world.

  Bran stood on tiptoe and reached out toward the Ascension Island tapestry. He couldn’t help it. It was just right. It wasn’t any loud color like Port Ruby or Verdopolis. Just brown earth and green leaves and black chimneys and the blue sea.

  “Do you see it, Annie?” he whispered. His throat had got all thick and tight. He couldn’t name the feeling swelling up inside him the way he and Charlotte had named the place on the tapestry. “That’s my map. I drew it! On the blank page at the back of Papa’s copy of The Iliad.”

  “Ooh! You sneak!” Anne sucked in her breath. “I’ll tell! And get your hand out of the bars, idiot!”

  He snatched his fingers back. “You won’t tell, or I’ll tell Tabitha you fed her Christmas cake to the badgers out the back of the garden!”

  Anne started laughing. She thought you probably weren’t meant to laugh in prison. She tried to do it without making any noise. Bran’s face went red with being laughed at. He hated anyone laughing at him. How did other people stand it?

  “Bran,” Anne giggled helplessly. “Who cares about the cake or the
badgers or the silly old Iliad? We’re in jail! We’re already in all the trouble we can be!”

  “I did draw it,” Bran grumbled. “It’s mine. That’s my handwriting up there on the banner in silk and my special way of making palm trees. Nobody else does them like me. Somebody took my drawing and made it bigger and better than me.”

  Anne’s knees ached from crouching in the cold on a stone floor.

  The doll who was not a doll moved again. It was hard to tell the difference between her and the bigger toys leaning against the wall or lying on the floor. She was small and pale and she didn’t make a sound. Slowly, their eyes traced out the shape of a girl sitting at an ebony desk pushed up against the wall between the green Verdopolis panel and the snowy Elseraden panel. She was writing something with a beautiful black quill pen and a silver ink pot. Her posture was as perfect as a picture book. Whenever she finished a page, she blew on it gently to dry the ink and lay it aside in a neat stack. All over and around the desk and her feet lay books wedged open at favorite pages and pile upon pile of those strange toys.

  At first, Anne thought the girl was wearing a white dress. But she wasn’t—or rather—she was a white dress. A dingy, faded white wedding dress folded and coiled and arranged and draped into the shape of a terribly thin child around Anne’s age, with orange blossoms in her white lace hair and ink stains on her white silk thumbs. Anne shook her head from side to side. It couldn’t be. Oh, of course she’d hoped, in all this whole country of their own best dreams, that her best dream might be here, too. But it couldn’t be!

  Branwell squinted in the stranger’s direction. “I don’t think I like her.” He ducked back down below the barred window and leaned his back against the green glass door. “She’s just . . . sitting there. While we goggle in at her! She’s being very rude. But then, jail has different manners.” He gave a world-weary sigh. “I know that now that I’ve served time.”

  “Branwell, you hush right now or I shall hit you. I shall hit you hard. I shall hit you thoroughly. And I shall keep hitting you. That’s her, Bran!” Anne’s eyes grew huge and liquid and loving as she stared. “That’s my Victoria. And she’s writing! Just like Charlotte and Emily! Just like me!”

  “And me.” Branwell frowned. As if he hadn’t written Douro and Napoleon and Rogue and Gravey and Crashey, too. And Bravey. Oh, poor Captain Bravey. Still, how valiant he was! I wonder if I shall ever be valiant?

  “She’s perfect. She’s real.”

  Branwell felt quite put out. Anne had never said his name like that, even when he’d come back to life. And not to put a fine point on the thing, but if any hitting was to be done, he would do it. “Still don’t like her.”

  Anne rolled her eyes again and stamped on his foot. “How do you know if you like her? You haven’t even talked to her.”

  “You should do it,” Bran said decisively. “I’m not afraid or anything! But she’s your . . . and you’re both girls . . . and she’s rude . . . and you’re . . . you’re Anne . . . so perhaps you’d better have a go first. She may bite. I can’t tell from here. Did you make her a biter?”

  But he was afraid. Anne and the girl in white had secrets between them. He would be left out again.

  Anne made a face. “Oh, Bran, we’ve just ridden a huge crawly fly while being squished half to death by a very nearly dead Brunty and you’re scared to talk to a girl?” She stretched out her knees and whispered in a singsong, teasing voice: “When I tell Charlotte and Em they’re going to press that in a book and keep it forever and ever and ever.”

  Bran frowned at his sister, trying to glare her down. “I’m not scared! And she’s the crawly one! She’s just sitting there! Like a weird white rat!”

  Anne crossed her arms over her thin chest. “If you’re not scared, then you talk to her.”

  “You’re scared. You’re little, you’re always scared.”

  She kicked his shin for that. “You’re big, so what excuse have you got?”

  “Fine, we’ll do it together.”

  “Fine. But don’t call me little.”

  “Then don’t call me scared.”

  “Very well, then, Mr. B.”

  “Very well, then, Miss A.”

  They sat staring angrily at each other for a while, until they started to feel a bit silly. Out of danger for a few hours and shins had already been kicked.

  “I won’t tell Charlotte you were scared,” Anne sighed.

  “Well, I wasn’t, so good.”

  “But I’m still telling Em.”

  Suddenly, all the color drained from Anne’s face.

  “Oh, Bran, you don’t suppose they’re . . . they’re not all right, do you? They will come and find us, won’t they? They’re on their way right now, right this second. They’ve been on their way this whole time and they’ll turn up any minute. Right?”

  Bran’s chest went cold. His stomach clenched. All at once, he felt younger than Anne, and very far away from home. He’d told Charlotte every day since he learned to talk that her being older didn’t matter the littlest bit because he was just as tall and clever and a boy besides. And he meant it every time. But it had simply never occurred to him that he could have gotten into any sort of trouble that his sisters couldn’t fix. Of course they were all right. The world would just fall off its axle if Charlotte and Emily ever took one step off all right. But not so deep down, Branwell knew very well that two sisters could so easily vanish if you let them out of your sight for so much as one beat of their hearts.

  He couldn’t say that to Anne. Not now. He was the oldest. He was the man of the house. If he failed now, he’d never deserve another try.

  “Of course they are,” he said confidently. And praised himself a bit for how strong and even he sounded when he felt no bigger or stronger than one of those dolls. “They’d be perfectly fine in a hellfire hurricane, so long as Em had something to worry about and Charlotte had something to boss about.”

  “But what if they got hurt or lost or they can’t find us?”

  “Buck up,” Branwell said softly. His voice did tremble then. He never got to start the Bees.

  “Be brave,” Anne told herself.

  But it was no good. Bad enough to go from six to four when Lizzie and Maria died. The Bees couldn’t stand to lose two more. There’d be nothing left if they weren’t careful.

  Anne jutted out her chin and let Branwell help her up from the dark hallway floor. The girl at the writing desk still didn’t look up or take any notice of them at all, even when they knocked at the green glass door. The orange blossoms in her lacy hair smelled sharper and more alive than anything else in this place. All Anne wanted in all the world was to throw herself onto Victoria and hug her forever. But, as agreed, on the count of three, Branwell and Anne said in unison:

  “Hullo!”

  The strange little girl gave a strangled cry and leapt out of her chair. She clutched her chest and shut her eyes. Then she started laughing.

  “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry! I thought you two were still asleep! You do sleep quite a bit, you know. And you make such savage noises while you’re doing it! I listened for hours. I say, you are made out of funny stuff, aren’t you? What a strange color you both are! I snuck out to watch you sleep. Was I being wicked? I’m often wicked; everyone says so. But it was so awfully interesting! One can never tell what one sounds like when oneself is sleeping. But I don’t think I sound like an angry tiger riding a runaway steam train. I suppose I could. It’s just impossible to know! Wouldn’t it be nice to know everything it’s impossible ever to know? If I were in charge of the universe, I would know every impossible thing, even the ones that don’t seem in the least important, like what I sound like when I’m sleeping and how old the moon is to the minute and what it feels like to have enough to eat. And I’d let everyone else know their own private impossibles, too. Well, nearly everyone else. Everyone who’s up to snuff. Everyone who was kind to me and didn’t yell. I think if you yell a lot, you shouldn’t get anything ni
ce.”

  The girl clapped a threadbare satin hand over her mouth.

  “Oh, I’m so loud! You must think I’m the worst sort of scrubby old starling CAWing and CAWing and CAWing even though everyone’s just praying they’ll stop. But I’m not a starling and I’m not altogether old and I shouldn’t like to think I’m scrubby, but it’s the people who have to look at you who decide whether or not you’re scrubby. Anybody could slump about being scrubby as a brush, but if everyone he knew said he looked a treat, he’d never suspect he was actually the scrubbiest. But Mr. Brunty’s never said I am, and neither has Miss Agnes or Uncle Leon said I am, so I don’t think I am, but they might not tell me if I was, because it’s not polite and Agnes says we must all raise up the manners banners along the walls of our soul’s castle, which I’m reasonably sure isn’t a real saying and she only made it up because it rhymes and she thinks I won’t remember if it doesn’t rhyme. But I do. I remember everything. Agnes is my governess. I think everyone ought to have a governess, not just children. But the trouble is, I never have anyone to talk to, banners up or banners down, except sometimes Agnes and some fewer times Uncle Leon, and my dolls and darling, sweet, funny old Mr. Brunty. I haven’t seen Brunty in ever so long. Oh! I do miss him dreadfully! What I mean to say is that I am alone almost all the time, and that’s why all this nonsense comes out the moment I’m not alone anymore, and it is. It’s just nonsense. Listen to me go on! Oh, I am scrubby, I am! Only scrubby folk can’t stop CAWing and CAWing and CAWing even though you’re probably praying right this instant for me to stop and I shall, I shall stop. I am going to stop right now, I am, I will stop talking.” The girl began to shake and tremble and rub her arms with her hands as though she was terribly cold. “I will stop, I must stop. I’m sorry, I’m stopping, stop now, stop it! Good little starling, I’m a good starling, I’m a good girl, everyone says what a good girl I am. See there, I’ve stopped. I’ve done it. It’s over. But in a moment, you’ll say something. Then I’ll have to say something back and it’ll all come gushing out again and we’ll talk and talk and talk and I’ll have to think of things to say every time, not just things, but new things, and if we’re not careful there’ll be no end to it.”