The Bread We Eat in Dreams

And they did see something—a man, a hugely fat man, in fact, tottering just below them, his collar turned up to the cold. But his collar was not a collar: it was a fine, illuminated page from some strange manuscript, folded crisply. His waistcoat was fashioned from a coppery book spread out along the spine; his cravat a penny dreadful folded over many times. But queerest of all, the enormous belly that protruded from beneath his coat of printed pages was the carved ebony knob of an ancient scroll, his legs were dark hymnals, and his enormous head was an open book longer than the Bible itself, glasses perched upon the decorated capitals of the pages: two handsome Os which served for eyes. The lower parts of the pages formed a mustache, and his nose crowned it all: a long, blood-scarlet ribbonmark.

After a moment of shock in which no one breathed and everyone clutched hands as tight as murder, all four children burst out of their stillness and tumbled down the hill after the book-man, calling out to him and demanding his name, his family, his business. He began to run from them, his breath whistling fearfully through the hundred thousand pages of his body.

“Go away!” he shouted finally as they ran together, leaping over frozen puddles and knotted roots. “If Captain Tree hears of this I’ll be remaindered for certain!”

“We’re dreaming!” cried Anne. “It’s all right, it’s a dream and we’re dreaming!”

“You can run forever in dreams,” panted Branwell, “and I think if I don’t stop soon I shall throw up!”

But finally the ma

n of books did stop, skidding to a halt before two tall soldiers, their rifles leaning on their shoulders, their gazes clear and bold, made entirely of rich brown wood.

The fat man looked back at them in terror, then folded up his face, his collar, his cravat, his waistcoat, and his long hymnal legs. He folded up so completely that between the children and the soldiers no longer stood a man at all, but a great fat book firmly shut, lying on the moorland. One soldier with painted black trousers, bent and retrieved it, tucking the volume under his strong arm.

“Hullo,” said the other soldier. This one had a wood-knot over his heart as though he had been shot there long ago. His mahogany mouth turned up in a sad little smile that seemed to say: well, we had better make the best of things. “My name is Captain Tree, and this is my comrade Sergeant Bud. But you may call us Crashey and Bravey.”

Long afterward, Charlotte would try to remember how it happened, but her mind could not quite clamp down upon it. It had already had to struggle mightily with a man made out of books, and was not at all prepared to record how one managed to lift a foot off the ground in Yorkshire and put it down in somewhere else altogether. They did not pass through a door, of that she was sure, nor was there a mystic ring or pool. Yet Crashey and Bravey—their own stalwart soldiers, their miniature toys!—had taken them up and now the sun battered down hot and sultry through viridescent fronds and great pink hothouse flowers as tall as streetlamps, bobbing over a long glass road which lead to a palace of such grandeur it burned their eyes. All along the boulevard strange obelisks rose, tipped with fire or ice or balls of blue lightning, and between them great birds of marvelous size and countenance, like peacocks given the gift of flight, bobbed and darted, crying out like mournful loons.

“What is that place,” said Emily, her voice trembling. “That place you are taking us? It is too dazzling! I fear it will catch fire, the sun dances upon it so.”

“That is the Parsonage,” said Crashey. His voice was deep and pleasant. “It is where the Chief Genii of Glass Town live, and many other wonderful fine folk besides.”

“That is not the Parsonage!” protested Anne, who could bear very much fancy, being so young, but could not abide a lie. “We live in the Parsonage, with Papa and Aunt Elizabeth and Tabitha! It looks nothing like that!”

Indeed, this Parsonage was an edifice all of diamonds, its stately pillars sparkling emerald and ruby illuminated with lamps like stars. A sapphire hall opened up like a blue mouth in its exquisite face, and the light of the warm Glass Town day filtered through all these gems as through water, throwing up fountains of fitful reflections. A little churchyard lay just beside it, just as it did at home, but here the gravestones were perfect alabaster stippled with black pearls.

“Sir, I must insist you admit this all a dream,” Branwell said crossly. “If you are my Crashey indeed you must do as I say. I have had quite enough silliness!”

Crashey and Bravey stopped and turned smartly to them, saluting. They stood on the porch of the bright Parsonage, and Charlotte heard her heels click on the diamond floor. That click, somehow, sounded deep in her and convinced her of the reality of this summer country as the birds and pillars and heat could not. The floor beneath her was real, and its facets yawned below her like mirrors. She drew her sisters in close and her heart battered madly at her ribs.

“I am your Crashey,” said the solemn soldier. “And so I must obey you, but I wish you would not compel me in this way. I will say it is a dream, if your will is set. But I am an honest nut, and I do not like to lie. I will show you my wounds if you require evidence—you may already see the place where the Marquis of Douro put his musket-ball during the African campaign, but here,” and Captain Tree showed his thigh, which had a scorch mark upon it, “you may find proof of the explosion of the citadel of Acroofcroomb. Witness also my flank, whereupon Buonaparte stuck me with his knife, and my throat, slashed in the battle of Wehglon. If it will not make the ladies too faint, I can show you the scar over my liver, where the cannibal tribes made a lunch of Cheeky, Gravey, Cracky and my humble self.”

Branwell at last relented and drew into the protective circle of his sisters. Charlotte held him tight about the waist and warmth spread through him as he put his hand upon little Anne’s shoulder as he had seen their father do when their Aunt suffered a spell of grief.

“Those are our battles,” whispered Emily, utterly ashen. “We sent the Young Men to Acroofcroomb. We set the cannibal hordes upon them. We invented Glass Town, and Gondal, and the Marquis. He is talking about Our Work.”

“Indeed, fair Emily, you did send us into service,” spoke up Bravey for the first time. “Well do I recall our suffering and many deaths—but also I remember gentle hands which restored us to life, fit and hale to strive again for the sake of our nation.” Handsome Bravey put his hand over his heart and bowed. Branwell flushed, remembering his own plans for the afternoon, which had included dropping Bravey from a great height onto sharp rocks.

Charlotte shook her head. “It is not possible. Fiction counts no casualties! The Young Men are playthings, made by a gentleman in Leeds and purchased fairly—they cannot simply become real.”

“I believe you will find all this easier on your stomachs if you join us within,” said Bravey uncomfortably. “For the whole of reality is not easily explained by a couple of old veterans with splinters still stuck in their bones.”

The children allowed themselves to be lead into the long blue hall. They seemed to pass underwater, through green and turquoise shadows pierced by pins of sunlight. The hall opened into a great room with a floor like midnight, full of still more jeweled pillars of rose and silver and white. Four golden thrones arrayed themselves at the north end, and upon them sat four figures. Three ladies there were, two dark and one light, their glossy hair gathered at their necks, their pale faces calm and perhaps amused. They wore long, gauzy dresses of spectacular colors: crimson, blue so bright it seemed to crackle, and glinting garnet-black. Beside them a young man sat with one leg crossed over one knee, his face craggy and not unhandsome, his brow furrowed, his lanky hair coal-colored and loose. The four bore a similarity of feature, of seriousness and of long familiarity.

Of all of them, little Anne, hardly turned seven, understood and ran toward the thrones.

“She is myself!” Anne cried. “All grown, and beautiful, and that is you, Charlotte, and you, Emily, and you Branwell, your very scowl! Oh!” Anne put her hands to her face. “So that is what I will be. I have wanted to be grown-up all my life.”

“How small I once was,” marveled the older Anne. A lock of her bright hair came loose as she put her own hand to her cheek.

“Welcome,” said the older Charlotte. “We are the Chief Genii of Glass Town. You may call me Tallii, and they Annii, Emmii, and Brannii.” The great lady dropped her formal demeanor like a fan. “You’ve caught us quite off guard! We are in the midst of our annual rite, and to be perfectly frank we did not think we should meet you here, or ever.”

The younger Charlotte approached the throne shyly. She extended her hand, still gloved from the distant, cold moorland, marveling at this woman who was herself but not herself, herself older and wise and somewhat sad, herself whole and complete. The Chief Genii Tallii laced her fingers through the child’s and smiled.

“How strange,” she said.

“You must explain!” cried Branwell fearfully. “Or I will call the Young Men! Crashey said he would obey me!”