The Glass Castle Read online

Was that a giggle?

  Avery turned to leave, embarrassed she had even tried. She was starting to believe she didn’t belong anywhere in the world.

  “You’re right,” Tuck said, standing. “We are prisoners in the king’s castle.”

  “We are?” Avery asked, unsure whether to be pleased or scared she was right.

  He motioned her closer. “Sit with us and tell us everything you know. Maybe you can offer something that will help.”

  The group seemed to exhale at Tuck’s willingness to include her.

  Kate patted the seat beside her.

  “You’ve known all along?” Avery whispered as she sat.

  Kate nodded. “To be in our inner circle, we need to know we can trust you. If Tuck trusts you, everyone else will, too.”

  “Does everyone else know?”

  “That we’re in the king’s castle?” Kate nodded. “Eventually they all figure it out, though not usually as quickly as you.”

  Avery rehearsed her mother’s stories for the group, every detail she could remember. It was nice talking about her mother again, if only for information. “So why are we here?”

  A girl burst out laughing and was shushed.

  A boy said, “You don’t get out much, do you?”

  Avery felt the red creep into her cheeks again.

  Getting out was what got her in this mess to begin with.

  Tuck took over explaining. “A month ago, the castle ordered that all thirteen-year-olds without living parents were to be”—he paused—“discarded.”

  The group seemed to tense at the word. Tuck continued.

  “Entire bands of men have been sent to find and capture as many thirteen-year-old orphans as possible. If you step one foot outside of this castle, the star on your wrist will identify you and you will be destroyed.”

  Avery looked at Kate, who said simply, “The old woman brought us here to hide in the one place she’s sure the king will never look—right under his nose in his own castle. And she’s hidden our brothers and sisters somewhere else so that we won’t leave. If we leave, we will never see them again.”

  Avery ignored this last bit. She couldn’t imagine never seeing Henry again.

  “What’s in it for her?” Avery asked.

  “Help,” Kate said. “The castle is severely understaffed by a crippling workload because Angelina doesn’t trust anyone. We live in the rooms once filled with the people who ran this castle.”

  “So we work in exchange for safety,” Avery said.

  Kate nodded. “The old woman passes along responsibilities and we do them. Anything a working adult can do in a castle, we can do.”

  “So then why do we avoid all adults?” Avery asked.

  “Because we don’t know which ones we can trust. Each of us has a large bounty on our head—any of the staff left in this castle could retire on the money made from turning us all in to the king.”

  Avery nodded. This, at least, made sense.

  Tuck continued, “Every kid here is a thirteen-year-old orphan.”

  “Not me,” Avery said.

  This drew strange looks and murmurs. “Your parents are alive?” a boy asked.

  “My father was working at his shop when I was taken from the woods.”

  “And your mother?”

  A lump rose in Avery’s throat. Who would believe her mom vanished almost two years ago but was never declared dead? Avery just shook her head.

  “You’re sure your father is still alive?” Tuck asked.

  Avery nodded. “Of course! And he’s probably very unhappy with me at the moment.”

  “If that’s true, you’re the only one here who isn’t an orphan.”

  Avery could tell the group was not convinced. She had a strong urge to prove them wrong. She would find a way.

  By suppertime, a stack of news bulletins had made its way to the kids’ quarters bearing the headline THE KING CHOOSES A QUEEN.

  Avery and Kate huddled over the bulletin in a small sitting room off the dining room.

  Other clusters of girls did the same.

  “I don’t understand. What is so special about Angelina?” Avery asked.

  Kate glanced both ways before whispering, “Right now the king’s family is in jeopardy of dying out. Without a son, the family name is doomed. Angelina is young and beautiful and has promised him an heir.”

  “But can’t he marry anyone he chooses? Why not at least pick someone who is nice?”

  “Angelina knows too many secrets. She has made the king dependent on her guidance and now she has given him no choice. He either marries her or risks her telling the world everything she knows.”

  “I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well for anyone, including us.”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “Maybe a royal wedding is what this castle needs.”

  “You saw the way they fought in his office! They don’t love each other.”

  “Marriages of power are rarely made of love.”

  Avery missed Henry more than she thought possible.

  She missed his silly questions and stubborn opinions, his pink cheeks and endless talk of food. She wished she had told him she loved him that last afternoon in the woods. She knew he must be terrified wherever he was, and that thought haunted her most of all.

  She vowed not to leave the castle unless she was sure doing so wouldn’t put Henry in more danger. There was simply no other choice. She was beginning to wonder if Henry and the other brothers and sisters were being held somewhere else in the castle. It was certainly big enough for everyone.

  She would risk her life, if necessary, to find him.

  Avery spent her second and third mornings in the castle trying to make pies with the girls in the kitchen.

  She almost set the place on fire.

  With the room full of smoke, she said, “I didn’t really pay attention when my mom tried to teach me to bake.”

  “We can tell,” one said, who, like the others, looked shaken. No one protested when Avery said she thought she should find another job.

  Ilsa and her friends worked in the laundry, so that was out. Pot wash sounded like eternal punishment, and the infirmary—for sick kids—was fully staffed, or so they said.

  Avery had neither the skill nor the desire to join the woodworking team or the horticulture group. And the scouts laughed when she inquired there.

  “Because I’m a girl?” she asked.

  “Because you talk too much!”

  Avery couldn’t argue.

  If only the castle needed an organist or an artist.

  She went looking for Kate by climbing the stairs and stopping outside one of the topmost rooms where at least a dozen girls spent their days creating patterns, cutting fabrics, and sewing clothes. When she peeked in and saw what was featured on the mannequin, her hand flew to her mouth.

  She had never seen anything like it.

  Chapter 10

  The Crown

  In the center of the sewing room stood a dazzling wedding dress. Yards of ivory silk gave way to lace and tiny pearls that shimmered in the light of a dozen candle stands.

  Girls scurried around it as if dancing, their feet barely touching the floor, making small stitches and adding tiny pearls and diamonds as they went. A few hummed in harmony as they worked; others whispered and laughed.

  Avery was drawn to the group like a moth to light, desperate to be included in the fun.

  How—kept against their will—could these girls be so happy?

  All Avery could think about was finding Henry and going home.

  Kate came to stand beside her and answered without being asked. “They didn’t have anything before coming here. Two of the girls you’re looking at lived in a sewer. Now they have warm beds at night and full plates of food at every meal. They spend their days doing what they love with people they like. For most of them, this life in the castle is more than they ever had at home.”

  Avery took one step closer to the dress and the seamstr
esses set down their tools and shuffled out of the room.

  Avery shot Kate a puzzled glance.

  “Their work is done for the day,” she said simply.

  Avery was thankful for a few minutes with the dress all to herself. It was an image she wanted to burn in her memory forever.

  Time seemed to stand still as she approached it, and a heavy spotlight appeared, leaving everything else in darkness, highlighting the gown’s absolute perfection. She touched the delicate rope of pearls sewn at the waist, imagining what it would be like to wear such a dress in the presence of an entire kingdom.

  “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful, Kate,” she whispered. “Have you?”

  “A dress is only as beautiful as the woman in it.”

  Avery wondered why everything Kate said sounded like a cryptic proverb. She sounded so much older than thirteen. Had Kate had a wise mother, too?

  “How did you make this dress so fast?”

  “A lot of us work here,” Kate said.

  “But a dress like this had to take hundreds of hours, and Angelina’s been engaged for one day. It’s nearly finished!”

  Kate let out a sigh. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “And you avoid straight answers.”

  They held each other’s gaze in a friendly standoff.

  Kate finally lowered her eyes. “Fine. We knew it was only a matter of time. And Angelina has very specific expectations. We knew if we waited until the dress was commissioned, we wouldn’t have enough time to get it done. We can’t have her sniffing around here because she might find out a group of kids made her dress, so we’ve been working on it for a while.”

  “You knew the engagement was coming before the king did?” Kate nodded.

  “And you don’t find that strange?”

  Kate glanced at the door then leaned close. “I’ve been trying to tell you. This place is full of secrets—centuries of them. The less you ask, the better. You don’t want to be held accountable for what you know.” Then, more brightly, she added, “Come. I want to show you something.”

  Avery followed Kate to where a full-length mirror was propped against the wall next to a heavily draped window. Kate pulled from behind it a red silk pillow bearing a queen’s crown, and suddenly Avery could not speak.

  She was not often at a loss for words, but this crown hushed her.

  How many nights—curled in bed beside her mother while rain beat against the windows—had she described exactly this piece?

  The crown was set in gold with dozens of elaborate gold stems topped with diamonds that caught the candlelight and danced in their opulence. Avery thought it looked like a cake topped with candles, but why anyone would ever put candles on a cake, she had no idea. This was the stuff of dreams—the crown every girl imagined when playing princess on summer days. Avery herself had pretended to wear a crown exactly like this when she played in her castle tree house in the woods. How many times had she closed her eyes and imagined the weight of it on her head?

  “This will become Angelina’s on her wedding day,” Kate said.

  “How are you even allowed to touch it?”

  Kate laughed. “It’s my job. Go ahead, try it on.”

  Avery shook her head, knowing better than to think the daughter of a peasant had any business trying on the crown of a queen. But before she could refuse, Kate placed it on her head.

  Avery nearly fainted.

  She stepped before the mirror and remembered what her mother had always told her. “Avery, girl, you can be anything God wants you to be. Even the queen if that is His plan.”

  She had always known her mother was just trying to encourage her the way mothers do. She hadn’t actually believed the words.

  “It’s heavy,” Avery said.

  Kate nodded. “As are the pressures that come with the crown. Angelina will spend the rest of her life fearing the assassin’s blade or the enemy’s cup.”

  But Avery didn’t hear any of this. Instead, she turned this way and that, admiring her look from every angle. It was impossible, she decided, to look bad in a crown like this.

  Kate and Avery sat and talked all afternoon, tucked away where they wouldn’t be heard. When they finally stood to go downstairs for supper, Kate said, “Don’t leave the castle until it’s your only choice, okay? Being here may be what you were born to do.”

  Avery nodded, but as she did, she felt bad for making a promise she could not keep. She wouldn’t stay one moment longer than she needed to. She only stayed now with the hope that she might find Henry or at least keep him safe.

  She trusted that she would find her brother or that her father would find her before a week had passed. This hope kept her from doing anything too irrational.

  The inner voice that so often got Avery into trouble whispered to her now. It told her to disappear from supper with a match.

  As usual, she was prepared to do something she might regret.

  Chapter 11

  Midnight Foray

  Avery waited until everyone in the bunk room fell asleep.

  The last thing the children did each night before bed was blow out the candles throughout their side of the castle, the trails of smoke long and thin and wobbly as the warm scent of day’s end followed them all to bed.

  It was eerily quiet now.

  Barefoot in her white nightgown, she crossed the cold marble floor, resolve growing with each step to find the answer to a question that had gnawed at her since she’d learned where she was.

  She slid a candle from the stand by the door and lit it with the match she had taken from the dining room at supper. She walked down the long hallway to the stairwell, checking to be sure no one was following. What she was about to do would break the rules, and though she did not know whose rules they were or who would punish her if she was caught, she was sure the penalty would be swift and severe.

  Yet she needed to know the truth.

  She made her way all the way up to the sewing room, but she hadn’t come to see the dress.

  Kate’s warning from the first night rang in her ears: “We’re not allowed to look outside.”

  But Avery didn’t care. She moved to the heavily draped window, pausing only briefly before pushing the curtain aside.

  Right now Avery cared about only one thing: she needed to know what she could see when she looked outside.

  The entire village lay before her like a collection of dollhouse pieces, the houses on the other side of the Salt Sea glowing with warm, golden light while the chimneys produced tiny puffs of smoke. Water inlets snaked through the village like blue veins beneath paper-thin skin.

  Though she had never seen the castle before, she wondered—this high off the ground—if she might find anything she recognized. She felt like she was sitting in the clouds.

  From the top of the castle, she searched for Murphey’s Flower Store and her father’s shop—Godfrey’s. She also looked for the grocer and the butcher and the masonry, but she couldn’t spot them anywhere.

  Of course not. Home is so far away.

  And then the thought crossed her mind that she had adamantly refused to consider since her first night in the castle. Was it possible that her father, too, was missing—that her entire family was in danger? All this time, Avery had assumed her father was worried about her and Henry. But maybe he didn’t even know they were missing. Maybe he was waiting for Avery to search for him.

  Could there be truth to what Tuck had said? “You’re sure your father is still alive?”

  She swatted the question away.

  “He and Henry are fine,” she said aloud. “They are fine.”

  Avery let the drape fall back into place and was heading back to the door when she caught sight of a silhouette on the stairs, heard a rustle that was definitely human. She blew out the candle and dove beneath the wedding dress.

  All was quiet, and she wondered if it had been a scout on the stairs. She hoped he hadn’t seen her looking out the window. What consequence
s might there be?

  Then, suddenly, two sets of footsteps approached on the marble floor.

  “In ’ere you will see the dress. I only ’ope it meets your expectations.”

  The old woman!

  The room filled with light, and a single pair of heels clicked in a lazy circle around the mannequin. Avery held her breath.

  “It needs more pearls,” came the whine that made Avery’s blood run cold. She could have reached out and touched Angelina from where she crouched. “And more diamonds. When I enter the Great Hall, I want to be the brightest thing in the room.”

  If they moved the dress for any reason, she was a dead girl.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the old woman said. The dress swayed all around Avery as Angelina tugged at the material.

  A third voice added, “Would you like to try it on?”

  Avery stiffened. The third voice belonged to Kate.

  Kate? How could it be?

  “I’ve seen enough,” Angelina snapped. “Now fix it.”

  Avery waited what seemed a lifetime until she was certain the three were gone before she crawled out and stood, waiting until her legs stopped shaking enough so she could walk back down to her bed.

  Where she expected to find Kate’s bed empty, instead Kate was fast asleep, snoring lightly.

  Time had no meaning in the castle.

  Avery began marking her days using the ivory hairpins she borrowed from Kate. Each morning she added one to the edge of her pillow. Today brought the total to six.

  Six days more than I ever expected to spend in a real castle.

  Six days more than I ever wanted to spend away from home.

  Kate brought her a second dress, this one a deep blue with gold hand-stitching, trimmed at the neck with dozens of stunning pearls.

  “How do we get to wear dresses like this?” Avery asked over breakfast.

  “Thankfully for us, Angelina has a weakness for new gowns and she refuses to wear anything publicly more than once. If she has made an appearance in a dress, she tosses it.”

  “So how do you get them?”

  “The scouts collect them and bring them to the sewing room. We alter them, sometimes making multiple dresses from each one.”