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“You sound like you’re counting Christmas presents! I don’t know why you have to be so odd all the time.”
“But, Anne! We are prisoners of war! And that means we’re important. If we weren’t, they’d just drop us out the window and wave at us while our heads splattered on the rocks. I like being important. Don’t you? It’s important to be important! Why, it’s the most important thing!”
“I like being Anne,” she sniffed. “That’s quite important enough.”
Finally, she could put it off no longer. Bran was right. She did know how she got when she found herself too high up in a tree or the bell tower of Papa’s church or Bestminster’s balloon basket. She wanted to like it up there as the others did. But it made her stomach turn inside out. The trouble was, Branwell had said not to look, which meant Anne had to look. She needed to look. She would look. Anne hadn’t disobeyed anyone in ages. It made her itch.
The windows were thin and graceful and went almost from the floor to the pointed roof of their cell. Anne peered over the sill. It was a ghastly long way down. Miles and miles. Probably not miles, she corrected herself. But taller than any tree or chapel or even the palaces of Europe in their beloved magazines. They were in a great, grand house, greater and grander than any English house could ever dream of growing up to be. The walls were neither brick nor stone but pure diamond, billions of them, perfectly cut and dazzling in the cold sunshine, sweeping off to the left and right into endless banks of windows and gables. They were on the top floor, or very nearly. Glittering crystal walls plunged down toward a craggy, jagged cliff, which plunged down into a rocky, barren valley, which plunged down until it ended in an icy river that raged and frothed itself into a pure white scream of water. Anne yelped softly, then tried to pretend she hadn’t. She couldn’t be scared. Not now. Not here. She had too many other feelings for stupid old scared. Scared would have to queue up.
Anne dashed to the opposite wall. This was better. No cliff or valley or river. Just a vast, busy courtyard full of those wonderful, terrifying frogs slapped together out of steel armor. Other folk had joined the elite fighters: tall and short and fat and thin and made out of every which thing. But many of them were Ascension Islanders: walking, talking ninepins and chess pieces and checker-stacks and dice and dominos. Gondal’s soldiers stood in row after row, rank after rank. They turned sharply, left, right, all in perfect unison. They exercised and drilled and marched and practiced their stabbing skills on straw dummies with Wellington’s face painted on them. Bonaparte’s army was mustering. It wasn’t a better view at all, really.
But above the courtyard of the Bastille soared spires and towers and roofs and gables that Anne knew as well as she knew the kitchen garden and the tracks through the moors beyond. The glorious skyline of Verdopolis filled her eyes and her whole heart. The Tower of All Nations rose in a column of green glass and smoky crystal and wrought iron pillars. The crumbling pyramids looked like green mountains in the distance. The guard houses of the Great Wall of China stretched on forever over the hills and plains, a wall so impossible to believe that the moment they read about it in Papa’s magazine, they knew they had to build it in their ideal city and man it with their wooden soldiers. The Hall of the Fountain pierced the clouds with its pale jade steeples. The rose window of the Grand Inn of the Genii, which they’d decided sounded ever so much more inviting than “cathedral,” caught the sun, so far away but still, just barely, shining.
“We’re in Verdopolis,” she whispered. “We really, really are!” The frogs bellowed orders and turned on their green, three-toed heels. “What’s this place, then? We never put a prison in!”
Branwell liked being asked. At least Anne acknowledged that he was an authority. Charlotte would never. But Charlotte wasn’t here. He was finally the oldest. Finally the smartest. Bran was, without argument, in charge. It felt warm and bright in hi
s chest, like Brunty’s amazing bat-tree. “I think this is the Hall of Justice. Or at least, it used to be. That’s where we always put prisoners awaiting trial when we played Verdopolis. But if we are in Verdopolis, courtesy of Brunty, that means we’re in Gondal territory, which means Napoleon must have taken the city. And he wouldn’t keep calling it that. I think it’s the Bastille now. Do you remember? Brunty said something about a Bastille a thousand years ago when all this started. That’s where the Frenchies keep their baddies in our world, anyhow. It only makes sense.”
Anne turned away from the window before she was sick all over the thick, bubbled glass. “We’ve got to break out, obviously.”
Bran blinked at her. “Why?”
“Well, we’re not anyone’s baddies, for one! But, Bran . . . Charlotte and Emily will never find us in here! They can’t storm the Bastille! What are they meant to do, throw their shoes at it? Do up a Trojan Bestminster and hope those frogs fall for the really, actually oldest trick in the oldest book?”
“But we’ll miss the interrogation!” Branwell furrowed his brow. He hated the little whine creeping into his voice, but he couldn’t help it. “I’ve never been interrogated! It was ripping fun back home when I had Crashey interrogate Douro in the kitchen garden and pull out all his fingernails! I want to be strong and resolute! Don’t you want to see who they’ll send to question us? Brunty is a bit worse for wear at the moment. I’d wager it’ll be Boney himself!”
“I don’t want my fingernails pulled out!” Anne cried. “Pull out your own! I’m going to find a way out of here and back to Em and Charlotte and Glass Town and the train home!”
She started to march toward the heavy door, but Bran stopped her. He got down on one knee so he could look his sister in the eye.
“All right, all right, Annie. I wouldn’t let them do anything awful to your fingernails. I say, girls frighten so easily!”
“I’m not frightened! I’m angry, because you’re being . . . you’re being . . . oh, you’re just being Branwell all over yourself! I’m hungry and cold and we’re far too high up and I want to go home!”
“Yes, but, Anne . . . do you really want to go back to Glass Town? You heard what Brunty said! This whole beastly war is their fault! They steal all the stuff to make their grog from Gondal and they don’t let them have a drop. I don’t call that fair and I don’t call that right. If Mrs. Reed down the way popped over the garden wall in Haworth and swiped all our onions, Papa’d go bashing on her door, wouldn’t he?”
“I suppose . . .”
“And what if they were the only onions in the world? And what if they were magic onions that you could make medicine out of, medicine that should go to anyone who needs it, only Mrs. Reed was hoarding it just for herself and her million horrid children who always pull the washing down whenever we’ve got it pinned up nice? Well, then everyone would go bashing on her door!”
“Oh, the Reeds aren’t so bad as all that! Well, John’s a brute. But Georgiana gave me a crabapple out of her pocket once and you never have. I’m on the side of the crabapples! You shouldn’t talk nasty behind people’s backs, Bran.”
“They aren’t the goodies, Anne! Just because Glass Town has a Wellington doesn’t make them England. And even if it did, England isn’t so jolly nice to anybody not called England anyhow.”
“Bran! We’re English!”
“So’s Prince John and Morgan le Fay and Mrs. Reed and Macbeth and the Headmaster at Charlotte and Em’s school and Richard the Third and Henry ‘Dunno, What’dya Think, I’ll Just Cut All My Wives’ Heads Off, Shall I?’ the bloody Eighth! No one’s good just from being born any place.” He tugged on the sleeve of Anne’s red and blue nightgown. “All the same colors, like you said! Glass Town isn’t any safer or sweeter than Gondal, Annie. Perhaps we should break out of prison. Perhaps you’re right and I’m wrong. But if we do spring ourselves . . . perhaps we should think about rescuing Charlotte and Emily, not the other way round.”
“But Brunty isn’t sweet at all. He’s a Master Spy! That means he lies for fun! You haven’t heard one word of what anyone in Glass Town has to say about it!”
“I don’t need to! They’ve got the magic onions from Gondal’s garden. Gondal just wants its own back. And isn’t that what we want, too? Why not throw in with those who see the world our way? We could use a frog army right about now, that’s for certain.”
“But that’s just it, Bran.” Anne twisted her fingers and stared down at her bare, frozen toes. “They do have the magic onions.”
Anne hadn’t wanted to say. She’d wanted to sneak her prize home while no one was looking, and then when they got there everyone would say how astonishingly clever and brave and nimble she was. And her mother, whom she couldn’t remember, not really, would love her best of all. Of all of them. But now, Bran had gone and spoilt everything, like he always did.
A soft, sidelong smile crossed Anne’s face. No matter how it came out in the end, she’d done it. Not Bran or Emily or even Charlotte. No one could argue with that. No one could best her. She reached into her dressing gown.
