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Ginevra fidgeted. “It’s not that, it’s . . . it’s your skin, you see.”
Charlotte ran her fingers over the purple silk of her skirt. It felt like water. “What about our skin?”
“Well . . . erm . . . you have it. It’s all over you. There’s little hairs on it, and moles, and it’s awfully warm and squooshy.” Ginevra’s pink-powder mouth wrinkled in distaste. “I don’t know how you stand it, honestly. But I’ve got a solution! I thought and thought and short of gluing pottery all over you, it’s the best we can do. Only please don’t be offended and please be willing to stand very still and not blink for quite a while?”
Ginevra Bud plunged her talcum hands into her trunk and came out with two large lavender pots and two long, wide brushes.
One was full of gold paint. The other was full of silver.
“I would imagine,” Ginny said apologetically, “that this is going to itch like the devil.”
FIFTEEN
Me and Mine and Bonaparte
Come any closer, Bravey, you bloody stump, and I’ll jug these two like hares and serve them to your customers,” Brunty snarled. He held out his long newsprint arm toward the unflappable Captain.
Branwell stared curiously at the Magazine Man. Beads of inky sweat trickled down the pages of his head. His voice was high and tight and bitter and brittle. Brunty was getting desperate now. Things were not going to plan. Somehow, that made Bran love him a little, despite everything with the acid and the pits under Ochreopolis and the dead fly back there and him presently threatening to boil them up in a pitcher for supper. Nothing ever went to plan for him, after all. It was wonderful to know that Bran wasn’t alone in mucking up even something as little as getting home at the end of the day. And at the same time, it wasn’t wonderful at all, because he could feel in his own chest how rotten Brunty must have felt just then. Branwell didn’t like empathy. It made him itch. It was a real busted cog in the design of people, is what it was. What use was there in feeling wretched just because someone else did? If only it were possible to file a complaint.
Anne’s hate and fury burned so hot she hardly noticed the frost or the patchy snow. It filled her up as sure as cider and twice as spiced. She was certain that if Brunty tried to touch her one more time, just at that moment, his pages would go up in smoke.
They might have run then. Brunty was trying to get his hands round their collars again, but they dodged him easily, ducking and rolling in the frozen grass as he lunged for them like an old fat nanny puffing after a pair of runaway cats. If they had been watching it all happen to another boy and another girl, they’d have laughed themselves breathless. But Brunty was not happening to another boy and another girl. They didn’t laugh at his girth swinging toward them like an exhausted boxer. They didn’t laugh and they didn’t run. Bran couldn’t help it. He wanted to comfort the great spy.
Anne wanted revenge. For Ryecote and for herself and for Branwell and jolly well for anyone else who felt like queuing up and putting their name in.
There would be no running for a good while yet.
“Now, now, you big dumb Bruntersaurus, such language!” Captain Bravey tutted. “I’m going to have to take you over my knee and dog-ear every one of your pasty pages. You almost got away! I’ll bet that felt jolly fantastic, hm? It’s so close! If you’re a good wee pupper I’ll let you look at the border from my attic window while you wait for the constables. You Gondaliers haven’t got the sense the Genii gave a hole in the ground. What happened, Time Fly sputter out on you? Aw, poor poppet. They’d last if you wouldn’t ride them like the devil after
a Sunday roast. You’ve no respect for the working class and that’s the truth.”
“It won’t matter, once I’ve got back to Verdopolis. Nothing you blithering, snot-blooded Glass Towners ever say again will matter.”
Captain Bravey made a mocking face. “So dramatic! Such tragedy for our Brunty! I shall play the saddest of shanties for you tonight on my saddest bagpipe. Frankly, Christmas is going to get to Verdopolis before you do, and New Year’s, too.” The Captain laughed, such a warm, unafraid, fatherly laugh! “My dear, stupid doorstop, you really have no luck at all. You’ve managed to tip yourself out at Bravey’s Inn, and Bravey’s Inn caters exclusively to veterans of the armed services. I assure you, all the old bears hip-deep in beer and the same stories they’ve told a hundred times are still very armed. And very drunk. And very belligerent. And very keen to get a few new war stories under their belts. All I’ve got to do is yell.”
Brunty stopped groping for Bran and Anne. He stood up very still and very straight. He grinned.
“No, Cap’n Bravey, wait!” cried Anne.
“You don’t know what he’s got in his waistcoat!” shouted Bran, whose sympathy for Brunty stopped flat at Captain Bravey’s noble feet.
“Go on then,” sneered the Magazine Man. “Yell.”
Captain Bravey did. He threw back his wooden head and bellowed two words that would bring every man inside running before their ears could even finish hearing them: “FORM UP!”
A flood of wooden wounded lads poured instantly out of the doors of Bravey’s Inn. They wore eye patches where they’d taken Gondal’s musket balls, and slings round their arms where they’d been crushed against their comrades, and hobbled on peg-legs where cannon fire had shredded their knees, and leaned on crutches where Old Boney’s frogs had sliced off their legs with their sabers. But each one came running with their scuffed and ancient rifles resting ready on their broken shoulders all the same. Each one would grow new arms and legs and even hearts if their Captain Bravey so much as hinted that he’d like to see it.
But Brunty paid no attention to the ramshackle squadron taking a knee and pouring powder into barrels, all for him. He reached into his waistcoat just as Bran and Anne knew he would. He yanked out his dreadful device, still oozing green acid over its strange stack of saucers and spitting blue lightning. But this time, the two of them did not watch in horror with their toes frozen to the ground. They leapt at him, tearing and pulling at his paper limbs, tearing at his parchment hair, biting wherever they could get their teeth in, screaming and scratching at their captor. Anne, in particular, said some very ungraceful words Branwell hadn’t even known she knew. Brunty could do all he liked to them, but not Captain Bravey! Not their dear wooden soldier! He had only just come to life; they would not let him go now! But the Magazine Man paid them no mind. He was so ferociously strong. He flung Anne aside like she weighed no more than a hat. She slammed into a twisted black yew tree and slumped to the chilly earth with her eyes shut, just as Lord Brunty Errata-Huntingdon struck Branwell hard across the face with his thick, illustrated fist.
Bran dropped to the ground. His blood burned bright in the white air. He was too surprised to cry. The pain soaked his mind like spilled paint and turned him the color of being alive. It was too big a feeling for Bran. He didn’t know what to do with it any more than he’d know what to do with a dragon. The feeling bound him to the grass as well as any rope. He’d been angry before. He’d been ashamed. He’d been hurt and he’d wanted to get his own back plenty of times. But the sharpness of the pain and the brightness of the blood and the coldness of the wind and the desperation of the danger he was in made everything shine in a way it had never done when he was sitting at home studying French. The edges of everything shimmered brilliantly. The shadows and light were suddenly so astonishingly vivid. His jellied mind thought wildly that if only he could paint this, he would be the greatest artist who ever lived. And over and under all of it came the indignant fury that had always been his closest friend, closer even than Charlotte. Branwell had never wanted to utterly erase someone he’d felt so soft toward only a moment before. Brunty had betrayed his softness, even though he’d never known it existed. Never again, Bran swore to the blood pouring out of his nose. Never soft again. But even as he thought it, he knew that he liked this new, big feeling, liked it better than anything.
Brunty raised his painted eyes to heaven—was he praying? Was he laughing? Was he looking for help on its way? Captain Bravey called for ramrods to be drawn and cartridges to be rammed down. The Magazine Man just reached round to the left side of the carved ebony scroll-knob that was his belly and flicked a brass latch hidden under his ribs. His stomach creaked open like a rusty, round door. Bran thought he was going to be sick. Then, quick as a page turning, he was fascinated. I’m going to see what’s inside them. What’s inside all these people made of things! Or at least, what’s inside Brunty.
Inside Brunty was a dark, empty bookshelf. It was very clean, with no cobwebs or dust or spiders.
The Master Spy of Gondal placed his oozing, spitting machine on the shelf within him, shut his gut, and locked it fast. He looked triumphantly at Branwell, his only audience.
“What is it, young master Nobody? You wanted to know, didn’t you?”
