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She tried to curtsy, but Brunty was incredibly heavy It ca Charlotte’s clever trick would last Or perhaps Brunty only wanted theoods on hies She squeezed the Magazine Man tighter She was beginning to lose feeling in her arms “I’m Emily And this is Charlotte, Anne, and Branwell”

“I say, what exotic na me your mother’s called Leopard and your father’s Toffee Pie! Miss Emily, if you’ll follow me to Press Number seventeen—seventeen is free, isn’t it, Mr Bud? Excellent Don’t let go of Master Brunty there, now, not until I say Manuscript transmission is terribly easy to stuff up, you know Here we are”

The lot of the steps for a s He stopped at one of the dozens of backward-facing printing presses that lined the lobby walls It was e, shaped like an enormous heavy door frame with ponderous wooden screws and plates and blocks inside it instead of a rooht plank of the frailded letters Mr Bud and Mr Tree took up positions on either side of the press On the count of three, they each pulled a lever that wound a screw thicker than Anne’s whole body The screw ground around and around until the gigantic roaned, rattled, creaked, and finally pulled out away fro, further and further, until it finally lodged against the glass wall like a desk drawer and stuck there They could see all the es, the copper plates, the boxes full of letter blocks, the ink jugs, the levers and chains and straight edges for keeping lines of print tidy All the children were thrilled to stand so close to the impossibly marvelous machine that made books, that could make book after book, as many as you wanted, as ht to theot close up to the thing All those racks and screws But they didn’t say a word of it Mr Bud and Mr Tree were obviously very proud

Mr Bud whipped out a golden ruler and began to ht in Emily’s arms He talked cheerfully while he worked

“You see, my little felt bookmarks, Glass Town is a fabulously fair sort of place We put our justice on one law at a tioes bad, you can’t just throw hieon and call it a day! Heavens, no! Barbaric! You gotta consider his backstory, his conflict, his ot a bad draft Not his fault Maybe he fell into a plot hole, poor chap Saddled with lazy clichés or an unlucky twist ending—could be any one of us, really You can’t blame a book for its story It’s only done what it ritten to do If the thing’s set in a cold and loveless house and it grows up to be cold and loveless, that’s just plot! If the poor scrapper began in a war-torn city with thirteen brothers and no bread or warm kindness for itself, you can’t expect it to end the way it would if it started out in a fine ht! That’s just genre, and it’s a rare bird who can escape their genre Everyone has to get froe One to The End one way or another That’s just life!”

“But not everyone’s a book like Brunty is,” Branwell frowned It sounded like no way to run a criminal justice system

Mr Bud and Mr Tree frowned right back

“’Course they are,” said Mr Tree

“Can’t say I like your tone,” said Mr Bud “It’s a bit offensive”

“How else do you explain people?” Mr Tree exclai his silver etched muttonchops “The way they are born into a variety of interesting situations and grow up and set out to etand discover secrets and fall ill and get tangled up in plots that go nowhere and have long boring stretches where nothing ery, the way they start at the beginning and the way they stop at the end? Sounds just like a book to me Sounds like every book I’ve ever read! How is anyone not a book like Brunty is? Just because old Brunter looks like one and you don’t? Very prejudiced thinking, young sir If you continue that sort of thing in my presence, I shall have to ask you to leave”

Branwell didn’t think this ht soodforsaken Gondalier, and he wouldn’t want tohis job if it wasn’t going to be a little dreadful

“But!” Mr Bud shook his knotty head to clear his s and arrows of outrageous plot! Bad writing happens, what can you do? I’ll tell you what you can do! You can correct your paper, young ood You can take up the very reddest of pens and , faulty logic, profanities, dangling punctuation! And that’s just e’re going to do today We’re going to correct Brunty! Rewrite his rough and ugly bits, cut out his quick tehten up his themes, reorder his scenes, start him over nice and fresh and proper When we’re done with him, he’ll be as harmless as a nursery rhyme”

The four children exchanged fretful glances

“But” Anne whispered, nearly faint with the fear of contradicting constables, which hat they were, even if they didn’t say so

“Yes?” said Mr Tree sharply “Some problem?”