The Glas s Town Game

“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.