Dispatch from a Colored Room

From the correspondence of Gauthier Leblanc, letter #5

I have become a character from a fairy tale—and the fool, at that, or at best the hapless hero with a hard road ahead.

This separation cannot be borne, Aimée. It is only a matter of time before this chancre has its way with me, and it may kill me before it devours my flesh; already my judgment suffers, my worse urges slip their chains. The doctors here are no better than they are on the sixth—no hope of a cure, no estimate of the time remaining me. So I have done what the fools in the fairy tales do. I have taken a day away from work to comb the streets of the fourth terrace in search of a dandelion (which are rare, you must know, for the synod and the gendarmerie order them exterminated wherever they are seen) and put it outside the window of my office.

It is odd how these things happen—how often, in such a full city, we can find ourselves on an empty street, or empty but for the Dandelion Knight. We walked side by side, like friends, and I made my request. 

I name myself fool, but I know a few things nonetheless. I call him the Dandelion Knight, but he is not the same Aurcryn-Jon who visited me on the sixth. His voice was higher, his step lighter, his frame stronger. None by much; I would have taken him for the same in a more casual encounter. (Is there such a thing as a casual encounter with the Dandelion Knight?) It follows, then, that the Dandelion Knight has power over the body, if he can make his servants look so much the same. And then—

I forget how much you cannot know; how little, even now, you can possibly understand, much less remember. I fought yellow-headed men like this in the 7th Ashview, with Elias and Jesson and all the others. I know they can see the Champions of Altronne, who are invisible to us except as ghosts, through windows or high on distant parapets and balconies. I know they can contend with a Champion hand to hand, and I know they reap lesser men like wheat in wet soil. I have heard some of them call to one another in lost accents and vocabularies, the sort we hear mangled in stage-plays aspiring to an ambiance of centuries long past. If the flesh serves them in these ways, what other concessions might it make? They are breakers, these yellow men, not healers; yet, in learning to break, what else might they have learned?

"You've come to ask about the chancre," Aurcryn-Jon said to me.

"You can cure it?" I asked.

"For a price, of course."

"Name it."

And he did. 

Aimée, it does not seem high. But that is what fools in fairy tales always think.

"You cannot have forgotten the Hoofstone mission," I said after the price was set. It was a risk, I suppose; for what if they had? But it seemed inconceivable, that such men could pay me such attention and not know.

"You fought bravely there, I am told," said the Dandelion Knight. "Your men killed and were killed, and those who were not killed, suffered. But that was when you could not find a use for us, nor we you. Now you are a pillar of Altronner letters, separated from your daughter by a wall only we can tear down. What use to crush a failed schoolteacher, M Leblanc? We have more elegant plans."

We spoke, then, for a time, of my misgivings. Perhaps by the time you read this, Aimée, they will all have come to nothing; but, you must realize, there are some strange interpretations that have taken hold among the poem's enthusiasts, ones that do not reflect well on its author. It is my belief that these controversies form a part, perhaps the greater part, of its appeal. If I reveal myself as its author, I will be pressed for an answer. I will not give one, of course, for I wish to sell books; but how might my demurral be received? What inferences might I inadvertently encourage?

Think enough along these lines, though, and their irrelevance becomes clear. The Dandelion Knight has given me a hope that no physician would. Wherefore I must close, Aimée, with two tasks in mind. The second is to put pen to paper, for the Dandelion Knight has asked for a chapbook, and one poem does not a chapbook make. But, before I begin, I must speak with the friends of mine who know Aurcryn-Jon best: Jesson Desrosiers and your own caretaker, to whom I owe all. In his company, I believe I can pass a short visit with you and your mother without imperiling your good opinion of me. My heart sings at the thought, Aimée—of hearing your words, watching your stride, feeling the new weight of your body in my arms, the strength of your back and the length of your legs. Perhaps I will finally hand you these letters. Perhaps you will read them with your own eyes.