The Glas s Town Game

“These aren’t tickets!” spluttered Anne.

“Aren’t they?” Crashey said, raising a twiggy eyebrow. “But you gave us a million pounds each! So these must be tickets! Ipso facto quid pro quo ad hominem habeas porpoise and all that.”

“What does ‘passage, stashage, gnashage, and splashage’ mean?” Branwell said dubiously.

Bravey sighed. He felt around inside his coat and produced a hefty acorn cap, clicking it open like a pocket watch. He seemed very dissatisfied with what his watch told him. “A seat, one suitcase, a meal, and a drink, of course.”

“And luggage rights?” ventured Charlotte, holding tighter to her suitcase.

Bravey glared. “You are holding up the train, young sirs.”

“I’m a sir, they’re misses,” Bran insisted, quite horrified at the idea of his sisters being called by the noble, powerful name of sir when it did not belong to them.

“It’s all sirs in Glass Town!” Bravey yelled in exasperation. “Sirs as far as the eye can see!”

“ALL ABOARD!” called Crashey, who clearly loved yelling best of all. “LAST CALL!”

For a moment, hesitation grabbed hold of them. If they got on that train, anything could happen to them. Anything at all.

Charlotte stepped forward first and climbed the silver carriage stairs with only a little shake in her breath. Bravey checked her lemon extremely thoroughly, which rather annoyed her, as he’d just given it to them.

One by one, Emily, An

ne, and Branwell followed their sister onto the train to Glass Town. The door shut behind them just as the long, sweet, owl-song whistle filled up the gray Yorkshire sky.

FIVE

Passage, Stashage, Gnashage, and Splashage

Anne tried desperately to watch for the exact moment when Yorkshire stopped being Yorkshire and started being Somewhere Else. She pressed her nose to the fine glass of the dining car window, waiting for a bang or a flash or the bonging of a mystic bell. But somehow she missed it, even though she watched the whole time, holding her eyelids open with her fingers so she wouldn’t blink and lose her chance. One minute the dear, familiar purple-gray moors rolled by beyond the train—and the next minute, the moors weren’t moors anymore. The land outside the window had turned itself a thick patchwork quilt. It rose and fell gently, hills and valleys and seams, under threadbare clouds and a golden sun.

“Oh, it’s not fair!” cried Anne. “It cheated!”

But she couldn’t stay angry. It was too lovely to be angry at. The others crowded in to see. The patchwork fields flowed on and on, plaids, brocade, faded flower prints, blue satin, green silk, black velvet. Little ribbon rivers rippled through the lowlands. And wasn’t that farm there growing turnips in one of Aunt Elizabeth’s embroidered handkerchiefs? Every now and again, they spied the same tall gray standing stones they knew from home, casting shadows on the tweed thickets, the only things unchanged from there to here. It was such a pleasant, orderly countryside—nothing at all like the dining car of the Glass Town train.

Charlotte and Branwell sat on one side of a thick, scuffed, ancient walnut table, Emily and Anne on the other. They could hardly do more than sit. The dining car was an awful mess. As beautiful as the engraved silver car looked on the outside, it seemed no one had bothered to clear out the inside in years. Every other table and chair groaned underneath piles of cast-off hats: naval tricorns and bicornes, bonnets and boaters, army caps with golden braids, top hats and fearsome spiked helmets. Heaps of old swords and boots blocked the door into the next carriage. Dented stirrups from a thousand horses stacked up the corners to the ceiling. They’d had to kick over a small mountain of gold and silver and bronze and very nicely jeweled medals of valor and bravery just to clear enough space to crowd in round the table. Emily still felt quite guilty about it. Branwell did not. But then again, Branwell had not nimbly swiped a ruby-encrusted cross with FOR LAUGHTER IN THE FACE OF CERTAIN DEATH stamped on it and tucked it into his coat pocket. He had very much less to feel guilty about, on the whole. But not nothing—Bran had got his sketching pencil out of his coat and begun to draw out the pyramid of hats on the tablecloth.

A wooden soldier elbowed the dining car door open and wedged himself through with a great deal of grunting and swearing. Branwell hurried to hide his bit of tablecloth graffiti with one sleeve. It was not Crashey or Bravey. He had a completely different face, with a curly beard carved into his pinewood jaw and a splendidly tall black hat tied under his chin with balsam straps. His chest was covered with odd, lumpy burls and knots and craters of scabby, unsanded wood. He wore a waiter’s apron over his uniform and carried a dish covered with a silver dome hoisted up in one strong hand. With the other hand, he blew a short blast on a tin whistle.

“Good afternoon, passengers!” the soldier bellowed. “I trust you and your luggage are comfortable?”

“I don’t know why you’re all so excited about luggage,” sighed Emily. “We left ours in our seats.”

The soldier blushed. It was the oddest thing! When the wooden man blushed, a thin, soft green moss sprang up over his cheekbones in the most handsome way. “I certainly do hope it will forgive you, young miss! My name, if it please you, is Leftenant Gravey—”

“Gravey!” yelped Branwell.

Gravey was his second favorite of all the toy soldiers in their latched box back home. That was why Bran always made sure he died gallantly in battle at the end of every game. Charlotte shushed him hurriedly. He didn’t see why they couldn’t just tell the lads they owned them! It would make everything so much easier. Branwell thought it would be terrifically pleasant to find out you were owned by such a splendid person as himself. But Charlotte had the most maddening way of making the rest of them do as she said without saying anything at all. He would have to study that more closely, now he was so near to being a man.

“As I was saying,” Gravey continued with a pointed glare, “my name, if it please you, is Leftenant Gravey, and I have been charged with the honorable and hazardous duty of bringing you our finest luncheon service, compliments of the Glass Town Public Rail. Now, I must apologize straightaway. We have not had . . . breathers . . . on board in some time. Oh! You’ll find that term offensive! I am a stupid stump! I shall hold my hand in the fire for a full minute when my watch ends, you have my word. Bleeders, then? Oh, no, that’s worse! Meat sacks? What about weepers, that’s mostly polite.”

“Human beings,” said Charlotte curtly, putting the poor man out of his misery. “Thank you.”

“Homo sapiens sapiens, if you’re fancy!” Anne piped up.

Gravey wrinkled his broad nose. “I’m only an enlisted man, miss. Fancy is above my pay grade. Human beings is rather an ugly phrase, but it’s not for me to say, I suppose! Well then, we have not had any humans on board in some time, so the kitchen had a spot of trouble. More than a spot. A whole cup and a few tablespoons on top. But we’ve done our best, and we are very sensitive, so if you don’t eat every crumb, we shall all take mortal offense and put our hands in the fire for five minutes.” Gravey lifted the silver dome with a flourish. Steam rose from plates and bowls as he laid out a dizzying number of spoons and four puzzling dishes. “For the young human lady, we have a lovely vol-au-vent; for the gentleman, a delightful pot au feu; for the quiet lass, a sweet éclair, and for the littlest miss, a positively sinful galette des rois.”

Leftenant Gravey set down a small, tightly lidded blue china pot like an unhatched robin’s egg in front of Charlotte. He laid another pot before an astonished Branwell: a miniature black iron cauldron full of roaring blue flame. With a dramatic flourish, he produced a storm cloud crackling with violet lightning on a green glass saucer for Emily. Finally, he placed a red velvet cushion shaped like a cupcake into Anne’s greedy, clasping hands. A magnificent silver crown set with black pearls floated ridiculously, in midair, above the pillow.