The Glass Town Game, Page 8

  Charlotte and Emily’s old, weather-beaten bags, the plain, familiar bags they’d used for years, since the first time they went off to the yawning cold prison called School, the bags that had been weapons a moment ago, outdid themselves. They unfolded and unpacked, joined together and grew—and grew and grew—until they became an enormous house wedged between the haberdasher and the redgrocer, yet taller by far than either of them, with two patched, threadbare leather and brass towers and dozens of windows made from their petticoats and bonnets and stockings and a great double door made from one of Emily’s black dresses and one of Charlotte’s.

  It looked just exactly like Westminster Abbey. If only Westminster Abbey had a giant wooden handle at the top for easy carrying.

  “FIRE!” howled Napoleon and Wellington.

  Anne leapt off her frog as he barreled past the redgrocer and the haberdasher. She rolled and tumbled over herself and dove past the astonished throng of them all into the suitcase-abbey. Charlotte, Emily, and the wooden soldiers only just dragged the doors of the luggage closed behind them when the world exploded into a hurricane of frog fire and lime smoke.

  EIGHT

  A Refreshment of Spirits

  Inside the luggage, they found a very pleasant lounge room waiting for them. Several long couches spread invitingly around a large table set with a whiskey and hardtack for the men and tea cake for the children. Vases of flowers were arranged elegantly around the room, the ceilings arched far above their heads like church buttresses, and several rich tapestries decorated the linen-lined walls, as well as stitched pockets meant for the securing of various smaller items within a suitcase. Charlotte and Emily felt somewhat embarrassed when they noticed that the couches were their old boots swelled up and stuffed till soft, the flowers were folded out of pages from the books they’d packed for School, and the rich tapestries were their shawls and gloves and chemises and hairpins and ribbons scrunched together, braided and twisted to look like hunting scenes and bowls of apples. The soldiers didn’t seem to care one bit. They cleared off the whiskey and hardtack and cakes with businesslike quickness and laid out the bodies of Branwell and Leftenant Gravey on the table.

  Sergeant Crashey drew a strange amber flask from his belt and tipped it into Gravey’s mouth, then Bran’s. Something the color of moonlight dripped out and splattered onto the corpses of the poor dead boys. In half a moment, the hole punched through Bran’s heart and through the Leftenant’s wooden head knotted up like two stitches knit together. Gravey groaned and rolled over onto his side. Crashey tucked his little bottle away again with a snort of satisfaction at a job well done. He relaxed, took off his helmet, letting an unkempt ruff of sawdusty curls free. Gravey managed to get himself sitting upright with the help of his men.

  Branwell didn’t stir.

  Oh, thought Emily, without hope, well, of course it won’t work on our Bran, whatever it is. He’s not made of anything fixable. We’re not like them. We don’t come back. We know that. We know it better than anyone. Rogue watched the whole operation out of his one good eye. Anne thought she saw a sappy tear well up in his wooden lashes. He must be such a very good man, she thought, to weep for his friend coming back to life. Most people only weep when somebody dies.

  “That was a good one, wasn’t it, Sergeant?” Gravey coughed a leaf or two into his hand. “I spun right around like a top! Did you laugh? You know I always want to get a good laugh when I go.”

  “I chuckled,” Crashey admitted. “But you’ll never top Wehglon! Exploded seven times in one day!”

  “Aw, I know, I know, Crash, my man,” he sighed, grabbing his comrade’s arm and hoisting himself upright again. “But a real artist never gives up trying to top himself!”

  “I laughed,” Branwell mumbled groggily, without opening his eyes. Three identical gasps rose up from the girls. Bran touched his heart. He stuck his finger through the bullet hole in his waistcoat. Finally, he winked one eye open, then the other. “I did. I laughed!” he said, though he hadn’t really, but now that he knew he should, he resolved always to do it when something dreadful happened right in front of him. Or to him. But what had happened to him? He remembered the red, the lovely warm feeling and the redness, but that was all.

  One moment, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne thought they’d never breathe again, and the next, they were hugging their brother with the ferociousness of a fistfight. They tackled him to the ground. He squirmed and protested, but, just for a second, toward the end, he shut his eyes and relaxed into his sisters’ arms and enjoyed their love and their tears as much as he’d ever enjoyed plum jam or hot soup.

  “You scared me,” whispered Charlotte. “You scared me so.” But I wasn’t wrong, she thought to herself. I wasn’t, after all.

  “Did I?” said Bran, suddenly eager and keen. “Did you cry? Did you scream?”

  “Well . . . yes, of course.” Charlotte sat back from the pile of them. She drew all her fear and love and wonder and feeling back inside her. Perhaps you weren’t meant to scream, if you were the oldest. If the oldest child screamed, how could the youngest be expected to hold herself together?

  Branwell leapt up and peered at his sister with a dark, interested stare. “What did you scream?”

  Emily stood up and brushed off her skirt. “What are you talking about, Bran?”

  “Well, what I mean to say is, of course you screamed and cried, because I was dead and all. But what did you scream? How did it go? Did you scream my name? For God? For Papa? Any swear words? Did you fall down on the floor? When you screamed, was it like this?” Bran let out a little, helpless yelp. “Or like this?” He threw back his head and bellowed. The soldiers gawped at him. “Did all of you cry out for the loss of me or was it just Charlotte? Do it again, so I can hear you this time! I can mime it all over if that would help you get into character.”

  Emily and Charlotte rolled their eyes. Suddenly, the black knots of terror in their stomachs loosened and fell away. Branwell was Branwell again, as perfectly Branwell as ever a boy had been.

  “We’ll do no such thing,” Charlotte snorted. “You are bizarre.”

  “You’re such a little pig,” Emily laughed. “Snuffling in the weeds for attention!”

  “Well, I did die, you know,” the lad grumbled.

  “Dying’s easy! I killed the rooster!” Anne announced, readying herself for a heaping serving of praise.

  “No!” cried Bran. “How could you?”

  Anne crossed her arms over her chest. “He was a monster! He’s the enemy! They’d killed you!”

  “Well, yes, but I’m fine now and he was such a fantastic monster! You didn’t have to kill him! Before I could even get a good look!”

  “Wounded, surely,” Captain Bravey interrupted. “Not killed. Marengo is a tougher bird than that. Though I’m quite sure you’ve a medal of some sort coming your way, Private Anne.”

  Private! She had a rank! Anne beamed. Bran looked around, still a bit hungover from his recent death. He snorted nastily at a footstool fashioned out of Emily’s bloomers. Without saying anything aloud, the girls silently agreed to pretend that they were not just now about to have tea in a house made out of all their personal belongings.

  Outside, the volleys of the great battle of the frogs against the limeys boomed and crashed, but the thick leather walls muffled the noise until it sounded as though it were all happening ten miles away and no danger to them whatever. The wooden soldiers heaved a great sigh of relief and set to their lunch, uncorking the good stuff and passing round the tack. By now, Charlotte and Branwell were entirely unsurprised that the biscuits were actual nails and pins served on a dainty plate with orange roses painted round the edge. Crashey and Bravey and the rest crunched happily between their mighty teeth. But Emily and Anne could not help crying out in fearful delight when a pair of caramel-colored ghosts sprang out of the liquor bottle and rose whirling into the air, howling and moaning like the wind through a dead marshland. Their icy eyes glittered and its rags shone wit
h the oily swirls of good whiskey. The ghosts rattled armfuls of liquid, frothing chains very convincingly before finally dissolving into a fine, wet mist that settled down onto the faces of the fighting men and left them quite satisfied and refreshed.

  “Spirits,” Branwell said, jostling his sister with an elbow, rather proud to have been the one to see it. “Get it? Oh, Charlotte, I could live here forever!”

  “Not forever, though, Bran,” whispered Anne, tugging his sleeve. “Not always and always. They’ve got whiskey at home, too, you know.”

  Branwell ignored her. They’d only just gotten here! He’d only just come back to life! He’d only just learned he could come back to life! Bran didn’t want to hear the word home until six in the evening, at least. He practically leapt the table to crowd in with the fighting lads and get a bit of spritz on his cheeks. It did not leave him entirely satisfied or refreshed, rather more wet and dizzy, but in all his days Branwell had never felt so grown-up, and that satisfied him from his toenails to his earlobes.

  “What was it like, when you were dead?” Emily asked. Her eyes gleamed with a curiosity like hunger. “Were you a spirit?”

  “Dunno,” Bran shrugged, eyeballing the soldiers’ tea. Dying was starving work! “Wasn’t like anything.” But the question made him shudder. Was he a spirit for a moment? And if he had been, what was he now? No! He would not think of it. He would think of food. Food would set it right. Spirits didn’t eat a hearty second lunch, and he meant to do just that.

  “But how is it possible?” Charlotte said, with a little fear and a little awe—the kind of awe that wants to burrow right down into the wonderful thing and find out how it works. “What was that stuff Crashey had on his belt?”

  Branwell scratched the back of his neck. “Tasted like some old lady’s perfume. Vile stuff. Brrr.”

  The girls fell to their own rather odd tea, for grief, too, is a hungry thing. Their luggage had laid out two cups and two saucers for each of them, decorated with the same design of orange roses, a little too like the embroidery on Charlotte’s summer dress for comfort, and four fine copper toffee hammers set neatly alongside with their names on the handles, bearing the same scuffs and scratches as the copper corner caps on their old suitcases. In one cup lay a large, elegant capital letter T done in red ink in a complicated medieval style; in the other, a typewritten lowercase t in sepia ink, as simple and honest as if it were printed in a novel. Bran much preferred the men’s meal, for it looked terrifically dangerous to eat. He grabbed a piece of tack, a long, fierce, iron nail with an icing of rust. Gingerly, he bit the head off the end and found it, though very dry and crumbly, not at all vile. It tasted rather like cinnamon.

  “You’ve always got to show off, haven’t you?” Emily sighed, rolling her eyes. But she didn’t want to look helpless and silly in front of the soldiers, either, anymore than they already had. They had to show that they could behave like locals or Crashey and Bravey and Gravey and Rogue would run off to find more interesting comrades. She took up the hammer marked EMILY with confidence, feeling nearly, almost entirely, positively halfway sure of herself. She tapped the lovely red capital T with the hammer just as she would do to break up a sheet of toffee. The letter instantly wriggled and wobbled and swelled up into a red frosted cake that bulged deliciously over the brim of the cup. When she whacked the lowercase t, it obediently dissolved into the most perfect cup of tea that had ever been poured. All four slipped their copper toffee hammers into one pocket or another as a souvenir, thinking no one saw, though everyone did.

  Charlotte eyed the commander suspiciously. She knew the mystery ought to wait till after the tea, but she couldn’t resist trying to get at it right away. She couldn’t help it. She wanted the story. She needed it. Besides, the battle had got her blood up, and she was feeling awfully courageous.

  “Captain Bravey,” she asked by way of breaking the ice. “Won’t you introduce us to your men?”

  “By the Duke’s left armpit, I am the most graceless grunt in Glass Town! Do forgive me, I am only a humble soldier, after all, and we are prone to sitting upon our manners rather than wearing them proper.” Bravey blushed with true shame, that curious mossy blush creeping up his cheeks. “I am Captain Bravey, but you’ve met me, and this is Sergeant Crashey, but you know him. That’s Corporal Cheeky there with the smart mustache; our recently revivified friend is Leftenant Gravey; that dashing fellow in the eye patch is Sergeant Major Rogue. Elbow deep in the snack tray you’ll find Bombadier Cracky, Warrant Officers Goody and Baddy, and our company Quartermaster, Hay Man. Lance Sergeant Naughty, Lance Corporal Sneaky, and Private Tracky appear to have fallen asleep, poor lads.”

  There it was, laid out on the table like the whiskey and the tea, for them to make what they might of it. Those were the names, each and every one, of their toy soldiers back home, chosen carefully and with much yelling between the four of them. One or two or four might be coincidence. Perhaps names ending in ey were terrifically popular in this place. But twelve? Twelve meant something grand and mad and beefily real. Here sat their dolls, talking and eating biscuits like real grown men. It was magic, certainly, but what sort? Each of them felt their chests practically bursting to say something, but it seemed so awfully rude to blurt out: I say, old chaps, did you know you’re our toys? Isn’t it funny how we’ve got a Napoleon and a Wellington in our world, too, only they’re rather older, and also one’s dead and the other’s Prime Minister? What do you think of all that? Lovely weather we’re having. The soldiers would either laugh or take offense, and they loved them all too much already to bear either one. Besides, there was a war on. Intelligence was at a premium. They might be able to make some use of these strange secrets later, if they could keep mum now.

  “Very pleased to meet you. I am Charlotte—” she began, but Branwell would not let her be the one who spoke for them. He was the one who’d come back to life not fifteen minutes ago. Whenever he got sick at home, Aunt Elizabeth and Tabitha made a tremendous fuss with hot water bottles and tinctures and sweets and kisses. It only stood to reason that they should all make an extra-tremendous fuss now. After all, when you rose from the grave in England, people tended to make whole religions out of you. He would do the talking. It was only logic.

  “I am Branwell,” he cut in, “and these are my sisters, Anne, Emily, and Charlotte. I’m dash honored to make your acquaintance, sirs, and, er, so’re they.”

  Charlotte ignored him. She had questions, and when Charlotte had questions she could hardly bear to breathe until she got her answers. “And where were you born, Captain Bravey? Was your father a military man?”

  “How kind of you to take an interest in little old blockheaded me, young lady!” the Captain said with a delighted blush. “But I’m afraid my story is rather dull. No different from any other soldier, really. My full name is Reader Rootstock Bravey. I was born in the village of Boxwickham, a little, dark place in the county of Shoppeshire. Do not feel in the least shamed if you’ve not heard of it! There’s nothing to see there at all. A bit of velvet land, a pleasant enough river on the north side of town to keep brigands out, and the whole lot surrounded by sturdy, impenetrable woods that quite block out the sun. I never knew my father, only my eleven brothers, whom you see before you. Sometimes, I think I remember our old dad. In my dreams I see an aged fellow with a white mustache and spectacles, forever with a wood-chisel in one hand and a paintbrush in the other, with a Northern accent and a musty smell about him—wood oils and lacquer and sap. But then I wake up and think I am the silliest of Captains, dreaming about fathers and paintbrushes when there is work to be done!”

  He means the toy shop in Leeds, Charlotte thought furiously. And the wooden box they all came in, that Father gave to Bran at Christmas! He doesn’t know that’s what he means, but he means it anyhow.

  Emily caught on to Charlotte’s game and played her turn. “And where did you get your marvelous name?” she asked brightly.

  “And were you named after an un
cle or a famous warrior?” Anne put in her and.

  Bravey looked puzzled. He scratched the short, barky hair beneath his helmet. “Do you know, I never thought about it! I suppose I always thought it made plenty of sense, as I am quite brave. Perhaps the old man with the paintbrush gave it to me. Perhaps I am not so silly after all.”

  It was all Anne could do not to shout: No, he didn’t! No, he didn’t! I named you that because you had such a stern look on your face when we took you out of the box! I named you! Me!

  “Dash splendid Valise you’ve got here,” coughed Corporal Cheeky, feeling that the conversation had become a trifle too personal for his taste. He hoisted his ankle up on one knee and rested back on the sofa with a long nail wedged between his teeth like a toothpick. “So many of them don’t bother to set a proper table these days. Labor disputes, you know.”

  Cheeky had a long burn across one cheek where Bran had left him too close to the candle.

  Captain Bravey looked up round the walls and buttresses. “You’ll have to excuse the Corporal; he’s got a mouth like poison ivy.” He slapped the lad’s cockily crossed leg back onto the floor. “Do you want to cause a strike? Do try to behave like an oak and not a weed, boy!”

  One of the tapestries began to shiver and quiver above the soap-brick mantel. The woven picture of spotted dogs chasing after a fox and a unicorn unfurled its ribbons and gloves and shawls and leather and wooden hairbrush handles and thimbles and knitting needles into an enormous face and neck and chest. It was the wise, old, beaked head of a turtle, only it had a snail’s kindly, soft antennae, too. They could see half its shell poking out of the wall as well, pearly and spiraled like a snail, but plated and patchworked like a turtle. It stared down at them like the strangest hunting trophy. The two sorts of animals who carry their houses on their back like the loveliest of suitcases, crushed into one creature.