The Glas s Town Game

“We’re flying,” shouted Emily. Tears welled up in her eyes, and not only from the whipping wind.

Charlotte’s stomach felt like it meant to float up through her chest and out through her mouth. She held her hands to her reddening cheeks. The sound of the wind was so loud and fierce! The cold on her skin felt so bright and sharp! “How many people do you think have flown, ever, in the history of everything?” she marveled. “Mr. de Rozier and Mr. Laurent in Paris, they were the first . . . ”

“Then Mr. Blanchard . . .” Branwell said softly, staring out into the clouds, down to the furry earth. He felt dizzy. “I can’t think, I can’t think. Where do we fall on the list of first humans to beat the birds at their own game? I’d bet we must be in the top ten! And to think, an hour ago I was stone dead!”

“I’m an owl,” whispered Anne, stricken by the word dead bouncing around the room like an awful black ball. She hated being up too high. It made her dizzy and sick. And this was higher than anyone had any right to be. She tried to look out the way her brother and sisters did. Intrepid, like them. Brilliant, like them. Out, but not down. “A little baby owl like Diamond in the tree outside our playroom. And . . . and . . .”

“And I’m Snowflake, our poor raven,” Bran said softly. “And . . . and . . .”

“And Em’s Rainbow.” Charlotte took up their game. All the birds and the tree and the playroom seemed so impossibly far away now. “The sparrow hawk with one leg. And . . . and . . .”

The sun fell on Emily’s face, turning her hazel eyes to gold. “And Charlotte’s Jasper the pheasant, who sneaks into the kitchen garden every night for bread and beans.”

Anne finished the round for them, clutching her cold cheeks in her hands. “And we’re all birds together in the clouds and nothing will ever be like this again, even if I live to be a hundred and eight.”

And then, for a long while, they just flew, and stared, trying not to blink and miss a flock of passing loons or a shaft of cold sunlight, thinking each to themselves that no one would ever believe a word of this in Haworth, and how that didn’t really matter to them one bit.

Branwell broke their thrilled silence, as he usually did.

“Can we talk about it now? We’re finally alone, just the four of us! Can we finally talk about the soldiers? I can practically feel it burning me up! I’ve got blisters on the inside of my mouth from not saying anything! Did you hear them say Gondal on the train? And the Battle of Wehglon? And Acroofcroomb! I thought we were playing all that time, but it couldn’t have been only pretend, it just couldn’t have, because here we are! Only it’s not exactly like we played it, really. It’s all jumbled up and upside down, thrown in with a lot of other stuff and nonsense I never thought of. But we must have known somehow. Known this place existed. Heard about it . . . someway . . . and then forgot? Or do you think we’re secretly magicians and we were casting spells but nobody ever guessed it all this time? But . . . but don’t you have to mean to do magic? Doesn’t it have to be on purpose, with a wand and that? Wouldn’t you have to know you were doing it?”

“Wouldn’t you feel it happening, if you made a whole world?” Emily said softly.

Branwell ended feeling a bit confused, for it didn’t seem they could ever forget such a thing. But it was just as impossible that a battle they’d waged in the sitting room on Boxing Day and given a silly name, with teapots for cannons and magazines for barricades and overturned soup bowls and napkins for command tents, could turn into something so real that poor Leftenant Gravey had died there. But on the other hand, they’d never imagined a place called Port Ruby, and all that red glass, or the Iron Duke being really and truly actual iron. Bran did know he couldn’t leave off sounding wobbly on the subject, so he tried again.

“Did you see the burn on Cheeky’s face where I scorched him? It looks jolly good in real life! I did that! That’s mine! I wonder what else is mine round here?”

“Grog,” said Anne, without looking up.

“I don’t think so,” Bran said, rubbing the spot between his eyebrows. “I don’t remember inventing anything that good.”

Anne rolled her eyes. “I meant that we made grog, not you. If you think about it, it makes heaps of sense! Didn’t we always bring everyone back to life once the game was over? Can’t play again tomorrow with a heap of dead toys. So of course everyone here pops right back up! No one dies in a game. Not really. Not forever.”

The four of them were very quiet for a moment.

“I think it’s time for a Thump Parliament,” Emily said. “Because if it worked on Bran, it might . . . it might . . .” She could not finish, the idea of it was so big and so awful and so wonderful and so impossible all at once.

“We need to get some,” Anne said. She clenched her fists so hard they went pale. “If we could take it home with us, everything would be as it was! Everyone would be as they were! And Mummy would hold me so tight and I would know her so well and bring her tea and nobody would have to miss her or Maria or Lizzie . .

. nobody would have to be sad anymore . . . ” Anne’s half-violet eyes filled up with tears.

“It couldn’t work, Annie,” Charlotte said gently. “It just couldn’t. Any more than you could eat a pot of fire back home. If such a thing were possible, cleverer and crueler fellows than us would have dragged it back home to England long ago, like coffee or tomatoes or chocolate.”

Anne went pink. “It worked on Bran! It does work on people! On breathers! On us!”

“Just the chance of it . . .” Emily whispered. “It’s worth anything. Anything, if the house could be full again. If we could be six again.” Even going back. Even School. Even a lifetime of nothing but School.

Branwell wiped his palm on his trouser leg. He reached out and stroked Emily’s hair, even though he felt rather stupid doing it, and Emily looked at him like he’d thrown a fish in her lap. Papa stroked their hair. Touching people was part of protecting them. He had to learn how. Below Bestminster’s balloon, something dark and blue bolted across the spotted streams and islands: a protest of Bluestockings, riding mares made of iron gates and silk banners and turquoise fire.

“I feel completely fine,” he said finally. “I was dead. I was deader than most people, even, because I was bleeding all over everywhere and not just very still and cold in a bed. You saw it. You screamed, even if you won’t tell me how. And I feel completely fine now. It does work, somehow. Maybe, just maybe . . .” Branwell bit the inside of his cheek savagely so he would not cry. He missed his mother so much it sometimes felt as though he were missing his own head. And he missed the way his father had been before Mummy died. He missed everything the way it had been before Mummy died.

“Maybe indeed,” a low, thrilling, secretive, seductive voice said.

It was not Bestminster. It was not Branwell. It was not a wild Bluestocking far below.

“Oh, God!” said Charlotte sharply. “Quiet! All of you!”

“All of us? You were talking, too!” said Anne.