The Glas s Town Game

“I wish we could ask Papa,” fretted Anne. “Or Tabitha. She knows all manner of tales about the moors and pixies and kelpies and suchlike. She’ll know if it’s safe to ride a railway car with a tiger tail.”

The other three glanced back toward the end of the line of train cars. They hadn’t noticed. But Anne saw everything. A long, enormous, properly striped tiger’s tail hung off the caboose, flipping lazily from side to side like a bored house cat.

“They’d think we’d gone mad and we’d all have to sleep with a doctor instead of a doll,” Emily said.

Charlotte nodded. She kept nodding, as though she’d had a private conversation with herself and it had come out excellently. “It’s no question at all. I am going. Maria and Lizzie would have gone. They’d have gone anywhere rather than back to those horrible cold dormitories where any day you might get death for tea. I won’t let Cowan Bridge take me. Never. Never.”

Her words snagged on Emily’s heart. Maybe Charlotte did understand. Their faces all went cold and serious.

“Never,” whispered Emily.

“Never,” Charlotte said again.

“Never,” promised Anne.

“I want to take the train,” said Branwell. He had no fear of School. Papa taught his only son himself in his musty, wonderful study, and always would, for he trusted no one else with the job. Bran felt terribly sorry for his sisters, but it was hardly his fault that the world was so determined to make girls suffer a great deal more than boys. He hadn’t built the world. It had nothing to do with him. But the train. Branwell wanted the train to have everything to do with him.

Anne clasped and unclasped her hands. She whispered: “But won’t Papa be worried if we don’t come straight home? Won’t Aunt Elizabeth cry and cry until she dries out completely like a kipper?” She couldn’t bear to think of them waiting in the parlor, listening for footsteps that didn’t come. That sort of thing happened in ghost stories, and ghost stories always made her shake and shiver and sob.

Branwell snapped at his sister, annoyed to the teeth at having to consider such boring things. “We’ll just pop off for the day, Annie. We’ll catch the evening train home from Glass Town just like proper businessmen and no one will be the wiser.”

Emily and Charlotte would not catch the evening train. They would not just pop off for the day. Even if Glass Town was the Devil’s own cowshed, it was better than School. They’d already told him that. But Branwell never listened. They twisted their littlest fingers together and held their tongues.

“But where will we get a million pounds?” whined Anne. “Each?”

Charlotte reached up under the wrist of her glove and ripped off one of the dove-gray little buttons sewn there in a neat row. She remembered the Game of And they’d played around the laundry tub. And they’ll take us away to the Kingdom of Clothes where they use thimbles for shillings and buttons for pounds. . . .

“Come on now, all in,” she said. “Hurry up! Everyone put in—you too, Bran. Oh, get the one off your coat, then, you great idiot! Stop arguing! I’ll tell you what I’m doing once I’ve done it! Don’t you trust me?”

“No,” Bran grumbled. But he gave her one of his round black buttons anyway.

Charlotte marched back to the wooden soldiers and held out her hand: four buttons. One dove-gray, one burgundy, one round and black and shiny, one white and tiny as a seed. She took a deep breath and announced, in the voice she always used for her best and most outlandish lies: “There we are! One million pounds sterling for each of us!” She said it breezily, cheerfully, absentmindedly, as though it mattered so little she’d completely forgotten that she’d walked out of the washroom with four million pounds stuck to the bottom of her shoe. That’s how you had to do it. No one ever believed you if you got all sweaty and trembly and nervous, even if you were telling the truth.

Crashey and Bravey exchanged glances. Crashey picked over the buttons. He counted them, lost count between two and three, and started over again several times.

“Sold!” cried Bravey, satisfied at last. “Sold to the young lady in the gray dress! And if we keep a wee bit of a tip for ourselves, no one has to hear about it, wouldn’t you say? A little off the top keeps the bottom warm!”

Crashey reached under his red, rough-bark waistcoat and produced four shockingly large lemons with bits of branches and leaves still stuck onto them. He juggled them happily, and as the lemons came round, the wooden soldier tossed one to each of the children. The lemons smelled marvelous—fresh and sour and sweet and sharp and warm and so terribly, astonishingly bright! Charlotte hadn’t known something could smell bright. But their tickets did. They smelled like what you imagine gold will smell like, before you find out that gold smells rather of nothing. Emily, Anne, Charlotte, and Branwell read what was written in gleaming, graceful, green ink on the peels:

Glass Town Royal Express Main Line

South Angrian Loop

One (1) Both-Ways Ticket

Entitles the Bearer to Passage,

Stashage, Gnashage, and Splashage

Does Not Entitle Bearer to an

On-Time Arrival, a Smooth Arrival,

Any Arrival at All, or Pleasant

Conversation with Staff

Luggage Rights Strictly Observed