The Glass Town Game by Catherynne M. Valente

Author:Catherynne M. Valente
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

SIXTEEN

The Wildfell Ball

Charlotte and Emily stood at the top of a long, curling staircase made of jewels so scuffed and ancient they had faded to the color of milk. Vines of heather and bilberry and lobelia flowers raced up one banister. Wine-grapes and wild lavender tumbled down the other. A man slapped together out of broken brandy snifters looked them up and down with one frosted eyebrow raised disdainfully. Charlotte straightened her back and placed the little card Ginevra had given them into his outstretched hand. Candlelight glanced off her perfectly pinned and curled hair, her skin, her eyelashes, her lips: all painted as gold as a goose’s egg. Not one square inch of plain skin-and-bones Charlotte was left. She was nothing but gold. Emily raised her own eyebrow at the same angle as the snifter-man, but somehow, on her new silver face it came out less disdainful and more furious and prone to violence. He looked suddenly alarmed and turned away from this terrifying metal girl immediately.

“May I present Lady Currer Bell and Lady Ellis Bell of Thrushcross Grange!” roared the herald to the shimmering throng spread out below the staircase.

No one paid him the least attention.

But Charlotte and Emily could not make themselves move. Now was the time to descend the stairs gracefully and melt into the crowds. That was what was meant to happen next. But they could not force themselves to do it. The great hall dazzled them so completely that they just stood there like two bathers at the edge of a swimming hole where everyone else has already jumped in.

The vast mansion that hosted the Wildfell Ball had no roof. The buttresses and garlands were the wheeling silver stars of Glass Town and a warm evening wind conducted the music. Huge thistle blossoms hung like chandeliers from nothing at all. Their spiky petals burned with blue fire. Indigo couches lined walls sheathed in magenta wallpaper; but the walls ended cleanly twenty feet in the air. Bronze candlesticks as tall as two men stood everywhere like sunflowers, boasting fifty candles each. On a little velvet stage, a quartet in lavender wigs played a maddeningly fast waltz on a violet harpsichord, a plum cello, a bassoon the color of raisins, and a drum hollowed out of mulberry stump. The ballroom floor was checkered amethyst and black marble, reflecting hundreds of feet spinning in steps so complicated Emily thought she could practice till she was eighty and never learn them. The Wildfell Ball was a blur of people. Tall, handsome limeskin soldiers lounged in their uniforms, Lords and Ladies danced in their finery, servants rushed here and there with platters and goblets and armfuls of new shoes in case anyone wore theirs out. And there, there in the middle of it all like a cake topper, stood the Duke of Wellington, his burning iron wings lighting up the dance floor as a laughing young maiden made of playing cards pulled and prodded him to join in the fun.

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