Catherynne M. Valente sums up everything I have ever loved about the Bronte sisters
linkBut as I read about the tiny Brontes and their twelve wooden soldiers and their little magazine and newspaper and grand nations of their minds (even if Glass Town makes me a little uncomfortable as our small colonizers set their magical adventures in Darkest Africa) I am filled with longing.
… I want to have had that. I want to have had a close little circle who made up elaborate, endless tales of a country we all agreed on. I want to have that secret language and that private symbolism. I especially want to have had close siblings I could have experienced that with. I want that interior landscape, and I want to share it with others.
Which is, of course, probably the same longing that led me to become a fantasy writer. So that I could share worlds with everyone. But it’s not the same as the close heads-pressed-together letsputonashowforjustus thing.
… I read about those kids and I long for a childhood I never had. Long for a secret Tarot like the Moonwise girls, for a world so very near real, but contained in the woods behind my house. For make believe and ballgowns out of autumn leaves. To be so close to someone(s) that we’d make between us not a child but a world.
