The Glas s Town Game

“If you haven’t got a ticket you can’t get on the train, you know,” scolded Anne.

“Where did you come from?” shouted Branwell, far too loudly. “Why do you look like a wastepaper bin?”

“Children ought to be seen and NOT HEARD, ORRIGHT?” barked the stationmaster from his booth, showing no concern at all for the enormous thing right in front of him.

“Can’t you see the paper man standing eight feet tall and coughing up both lungs in the middle of your station?” snapped Charlotte. She was unable to bear this total abandonment of adult responsibility one second longer.

“All I see are a pack of brats who ought to be in school!” the stationmaster snarled back, and slammed his little window shut. Emily flinched.

School.

The 2:00 train arrived in Keighley Station. None of them had ever seen one except in drawings. They’d heard the better-off folk in the village talk about the huge, noisy, smoky, rattley beasts. But here it came, in real life, barreling down the rails, a splendid engine, making that thumping, pounding sound they’d felt in their chests, puffing and whistling and thumping and clacking.

“They look so different in the newspapers,” whispered Emily.

In fact, no train in any newspaper anywhere in any country looked anything at all like the one steaming into the station just then. It had a wicker engine made all of sticks and brambles, as though the dead winter moor itself had woken that morning and decided it wanted to see the world. The smokestack was a basket of spiky frozen gorse branches. The carriage doors were thatches of old heather and gooseberry thorns. Great hay wheels turned along the tracks as though they were wheels of ir

on, bound to a long, rough-hacked ruby axle. But not the pretty, polished rubies that you’d put in a ring. Ancient, glowering red stone still clotted up with black rock. The wicker engine drew impossible cars behind it, built out of apple skin and glass and pheasant feathers and even widow’s lace that seemed somehow as sturdy as steel.

The train’s headlamp was a star. A real, honest star, pulled right out of the night like a coin from behind your ear.

The children stared as the train came to a wheezing rest in the hollow, gleaming, its windows full of shadows. Emily’s mouth dropped open. She simply couldn’t make any sense of it, no matter which way she turned her head. Perhaps this was simply what trains looked like. They’d only just been invented, after all. Perhaps rubies and apple skin window curtains were so usual to the well-off folk in Haworth that it never occurred to them to bring such things up down at the pub. But surely, surely Blackwood’s had never mentioned using stars to light the way.

“What if someone came while we weren’t looking,” Branwell whispered, “and swapped the train?”

Anne giggled madly. She felt as though the top of her head had come clean off. “We’re dreaming!” she laughed. “It’s all right, it’s a dream and we’re dreaming!”

Charlotte said nothing, but that smile that was so slow to come spread over her flushed and rosy face. Something was happening. Something straight out of a story. Something so astonishingly fantastic that no fanciful lie she’d ever told could top it.

The Magazine Man decided to make a run for it. But he was not a graceful sort of beast and they weren’t about to let him get away. He was magic. It was all magic and they knew it was magic; they’d known it at once. Anyone would know! There had never been a train like that made in the London Yards, not ever in the whole history of the British Rail Service. And without saying a word to each other, they already knew that not a one of them wanted anything in the world at that moment but to get on board. Clearly, the Magazine Man wanted the same thing. He tripped and stumbled and the platform was only so big, so he ended up running somewhat pitiful circles away from his tormentors and more or less toward the tracks. He got so out of breath he couldn’t even cry properly, but tried anyhow. Ink squeezed and sprayed out of his eyes. The train sighed and a great jet of steam belched out of its stack.

The four of them were going too fast round the cramped platform. They collided into the Magazine Man at full speed. Branwell took the scroll-knob of his belly to the nose. The fat man wheezed and pawed at them. “Leave me alone! Pirates! Brigands! Librarians! If the top brass hear of this I’ll be remaindered for certain! I’ll be punished! I wasn’t to let anyone see!”

“We’re awfully sorry,” said Emily politely as she climbed off his back, which read in very large print: BONAPARTE STORMS GREENTEETH CASTLE! FORTY GIANTS DEAD! PANIC CONSUMES COUNTRYSIDE! “We only wanted to know about the train.”

Charlotte straightened her wool coat, and added, only because she didn’t quite know how else to put it, but felt very strongly that she had to say something on the subject or she’d just pop right there like a soap bubble. “You’re made of pages, did you know?”

The Magazine Man shoved Charlotte aside with a bleat of terror. “Well, you’re made out of meat,” he snarled. His red ribbon nose coiled up as if it smelled something vile. “It’s disgusting. I bet you’ve got . . . I bet you’ve got bones in there. And hair, too! Pah! How gruesome!” Only the way he said gruesome was to stretch out the grue until it sounded very much like the train whistle. “No, don’t touch me! I’ve a Horror! Next you’ll tell me you’ve got blood and I just couldn’t bear it, the thought of it, just under your skin, practically . . . practically touching me!”

“Nothing so wrong with blood,” sniffed Branwell, brushing off his trousers. “Wonderful stuff!”

The Magazine Man shrieked and bolted once more. His bookend-boots echoed on the bricks. “I hate you!” he yelled behind him. “If you tell anyone you saw me I’ll break in to your house at night and erase all your storybooks! And . . . and tie knots in all your socks! Leave me alone!”

“I’m beginning to think there’ll be no train at all today, old chap,” sighed the man with the small mustache to the man with the large one. Charlotte and Emily rolled their eyes, Branwell and Anne laughed incredulously, and all four gave up on adults at once.

Finally, the Magazine Man stopped his mad dash. It wasn’t his choice to stop. He couldn’t help it. He skidded to a halt before two tall soldiers who were standing, quite suddenly, in front of the engine car. They held their rifles leaning smartly on their shoulders, their caps neat and crisp, their gazes clear and bold. Both of them were made entirely of rich brown wood, like jointed dolls. Anne frowned. They had absolutely not been there before. Not when the train arrived and not when they were playing merry-go-round with the Magazine Man. They were new.

The fat man looked up at the wooden soldiers in terror, then folded up his face, his collar, his cravat, his waistcoat, and his long newsprint legs. He folded up so completely that he turned, midair, into a great, fat, firmly shut book. The book fell with an indignant thump onto the platform between the children and the riflemen. One soldier, with painted black trousers, bent down and picked the poor fellow up, 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, what’s done is done, and we had better make the best of things.

“Good morning! Aren’t you a noisy lot, and aren’t there rather a lot of you! My name is Sergeant Branch, and this is my comrade Captain Leaf. But you may call us Crashey and Bravey. Tickets, please!”

FOUR

To Glass Town, My Girl!

Come on then, lovies. We haven’t got all day. Gawping’s free but seats cost. Tickets or run along!” Crashey barked with a businesslike snap in his voice.