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None of her siblings heard her. While they had been busy translating their luncheon, the world outside the train had changed once again.
The patchwork moors had vanished. The train rocked from side to side as it steamed through a sea of red glass. A city rose up all around them. And not a city like Keighley. Not even a city like Leeds. A city like London. A city like Paris. A city like every metropolis the children had ever dreamed about visiting one day, all crammed together and forced to get along. Glittering towers and palaces and shops and pubs, sparkling statues and elegant houses and long, broad streets shaded by graceful trees, all shimmering brilliantly in the sun, all made entirely of scarlet stained glass. Branwell, even in his bloodiest dream, had never imagined so many shades of red existed in the universe. Scarlet, yes, but also crimson and vermilion and coral and maroon and fuchsia and garnet and pink and blush and burgundy and a million billion others he couldn’t even think of names for. The glass streets shot prisms into the sky. Hot, molten blown glass cypress trees bulged up along the edges of handsome parks filled with cut-glass rosebushes. And through it all ran a river as wide as the Thames, as wide as the Amazon, frothing and roaring with deep red claret wine, all the way to the sea.
A deafening boom rocked the train. It careened up on its side, threatening to topple off the tracks and into the copper-colored stained-glass station house. All four of them lurched and tumbled and fell against the other end of the car, were instantly buried in officers’ helmets and medals and Sergeant Major Rogue’s extremely surprised wooden body, then hurtled back painfully against their table as the train righted itself, shattering the remains of their lunch and cracking the lovely wide carriage window straight down the middle.
Anne and Emily saw the creature sprinting toward them on one side of the crack. Charlotte and Branwell and Rogue saw it on the other.
It was a rooster.
A rooster the size of their village church in Haworth. A rooster made, not of rooster parts, but smashed, mismatched porcelain dishes spackled together into the shape of a demonic cockerel, with fiery, insane eyes and a tail of a thousand enraged shattered china feathers streaming behind it. It screeched and green flame vomited out of its teacup-beak. A young man no older than fourteen or fifteen rode the rooster down the scarlet streets of Port Ruby, screaming war cries fit to wake the Romans. His legs in the rooster’s stirrups were long brass spyglasses. He wore a bicorne hat on his head like an awful black half-moon. His arms were two long muskets. With one he swung a great emerald hammer strapped onto the barrel, shattering crimson steeples and gates as he came. With the other he fired again and again, into the towers, into the palaces, into the tall, elegant houses of Port Ruby. But the face beneath that bicorne hat was bare, pure, white bone.
“What is that?” choked Branwell, terror eating up his heart. He reached for Charlotte’s hand and squeezed it awfully, though he would never admit to such a thing later.
Sergeant Major Rogue stumbled to his feet and straightened his eye patch. He glared out the window with mixed irritation and admiration in his good eye.
“That, my lad, is the local weather. Napoleon bloody Bonaparte.” The wooden soldier slammed open the door between carriages and shouted down the train. “Man positions! Form up! Sound the alarm! Oh, bugger, has Gravey died again already? Get him up! Give him a stiff drink! All hands on deck! Old Boney has come for us at last!”
PART II
In This Imperfect World
SIX
Out of the Train and Into the Fire
Port Ruby exploded around them. Charlotte and Emily dashed down a red cut-glass alleyway after the squad of wooden soldiers in tight formation, clutching their suitcases and each other for dear life. Branwell and Anne scrambled close beh
ind them. Anne held her hands over her ears as she ran. Napoleon’s impossible arms and his rooster’s jets of green flame thumped against the city like awful thundering drums. The demonic chicken scored a hit on a beautiful scarlet stained glass theater just ahead of them. It shattered with a terrible cry, as though it had been a living thing and not a building at all. Shards of broken windows fell into their hair. One sliced through Branwell’s ear, but he hardly felt it. It was finally happening, a real battle, all around him! He whooped in joy, twisting round to see if he could catch another glimpse of the great man astride his astonishing war-bird. Charlotte could feel the heat of that rooster-fire on her skin as she ran past the smoking ruin, scorching the hem of her dress, singeing her hair. She would never have confessed it to a grown-up person, but her heart burned with excitement, too. Only this morning her life seemed a gray, cold shroud. Now she, little Charlotte nobody, was running through ruby crystal streets after her old toys while a dead Emperor bore down on them like the devil come to life. It was just like a story. It was the most interesting the truth had ever been!
The lot of them burst into a wide plaza, paved in garnet looking glasses and ringed by smart vermilion cafés where giant overturned wineglasses served for tables. Loads of people huddled beneath the table stems and hid behind thick pink quartz trees, praying desperately for glass to stop being quite so easy to see through, if you please. The four children careened into a rather splendid maroon muffin cart just as a stray arrow of green fire crashed into the pretty pastry pyramid on display. They crouched down behind the toppled cart as currants and almonds and crumbly cake rained down all over them. The wooden soldiers ignored them, taking up positions, barking orders, counting off their numbers and weapons. Charlotte and Emily shook off a little rain of exploded muffins and hauled up their suitcases in front of themselves and their siblings like a pair of knight’s shields. Anne buried her face in Emily’s back—but after a moment, she peered out between her fingers, so as not to miss anything. Branwell felt so extremely cross at being shown up in his duty by his sisters’ old bags that he stopped being afraid at all. It’s a very difficult job to be cross and terrified at the same time. One always wins out. He pinched Charlotte savagely and hissed: “Get over yourself! What are you going to do with those, throw your knickers at Napoleon?”
Charlotte gasped—but not because she’d been pinched or because her knickers were being discussed in public. The most extraordinary thing was happening to her suitcase. And not only hers, but Emily’s as well. The girls clung on desperately as their bags cracked and unfolded and wriggled and unlatched and relatched themselves. The beaten-up, hand-me-down luggage groaned and stretched and grew until, impossibly, Charlotte was holding a fearsome, gargantuan sword in her small hands, and Emily had her fists clenched round a grand medieval mace big enough for a young ogre. The weapons did not gleam in the sun, for they were all of the same leather and brass and wood that the suitcases had been. Branwell gave a strangled, indignant cry just as the sisters cried out in delight.
“Look at that! I do wish I’d packed a bag!” Anne breathed in wonder.
Bran had gone quite red in the face. He matched the architecture of Port Ruby very nicely. “Give that sword to me at once! It’s too big for you! And you don’t know how to use it! It’s not fair! Papa said I was to chaperone you! I am to see you safely to Keighley, he said! I’m to protect you, if protecting is to be done!”
“We’re the same size, you donkey!” Charlotte laughed. “And we’re not in Keighley anyway, so stand back and I shall defend thee, milady!”
Branwell’s pride strangled him. He couldn’t get a word out for his rage. He snarled wolfishly and shoved Charlotte to the ground rather more roughly than he meant. He instantly felt rotten about it and promised himself that he’d apologize just as soon as the danger was past. Bran took up the leather and brass blade himself. He tested its weight, feeling much better now he was in his proper place, despite Charlotte glaring daggers at him and rubbing her knees where they’d banged brutally into the street. He wasn’t any milady, he was the knight, thank you ever so much! He would be valiant, and dashing, and keep his ladies safe, and Papa would be so pleased he’d just burst when he heard of it all!
“Form ranks, lads!” cried Captain Bravey.
The wooden soldiers instantly snapped to attention in the center of the square, unshouldering their musket rifles and snatching vials of gunpowder from their belts. They could hear the savage squawks of the beast catching up to them, cracking the road like an old mirror under its weight. Leftenant Gravey, who seemed perfectly all right, tossed a pair of long pinewood rifles just like his to Charlotte and Anne. Branwell frowned. His sword was bigger, and that was all right, but it wasn’t a patch on an infantry rifle. Hang it all, if only he’d waited, he could have had a real weapon from a real soldier’s own hand!
“I’ll leave no comrade defenseless,” Gravey bellowed, “be they breathers or bleeders or cows o’ the field! Form up, girls, form up!”
Charlotte grabbed Anne’s hand and started off across the plaza toward the squadron. But Anne wouldn’t go. The little girl’s eyes shone wild with fright and thrill and fright again.
“I don’t expect we can be hurt in our own make-believe country, can we, Charlotte?” she yelled over the din.
Charlotte rolled her eyes impatiently. “Did you get hurt when we played Battle of Wehglon? Or Siege of Ascension Island?”
Anne considered. “No . . . only the teapot got dented and the kitchen drapes got singed along the bottom. Oh! And I tore my green dress taking the pantry for Glass Town.”
“Right! Because nothing you make up in your head can hurt you, really.” Charlotte’s cheeks flamed red in the wind. Was that right? It sounded right to her. It felt right. She’d figured out the trick of their lunch and she’d figured this just as well. Back home, anything could hurt them. Anything could sweep in suddenly and take the whole of everything away. School, Papa, marriages, fevers. But somehow, somehow, they’d slipped the trap of the real world and found their own place, the place they’d dreamed into life. And in that place, they were the ones who got to say who went and who stayed and who married and who didn’t and who lived and who died. No different now than in the playroom at the top of the stairs. “Think, Annie. Napoleon’s been dead an age. This one’s only a toy we named Napoleon! Can’t you see? His rooster’s got a bit of our own dented teapot for his wing! Come on, Annie, form up! Let’s play! It’s an adventure! We’re having an adventure! Of course there’s explosions and flames and all the good bits, or else it would be a frightfully dull game.”
Anne took all this in, turned it over in her mind, and judged it as sensible as anything could be, under the circumstances. They dashed across the silence between barrages to join ranks with their wooden lads. The boys shuffled them into the rear, as they were so new to war and not in the least made of good, stout wood.
