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My love,
Hanna is sitting on my lap and is trying to take the pen. In the morning we’re playing a new game. She sits at your writing desk in your office and I sit at the kitchen table and we write each other letters. She’s a baroness and I’m the lady in charge of her stables and we write back and forth about the horses. What the horses are eating. Where the horses go on rides. One of the horses got sick and she told me to call a vet and then the horse got better but the baroness had run out of money so she asked me to pay using my emerald necklace that she’d given me as a reward for my long life of service. It’s a tough life, isn’t it? But as I told her, I signed on to service because I love the Baroness Hanna so much, and she does take care of me, and she does have sixteen wonderful horses and two of the horses are pregnant.
Little in our town has changed. Witchsongs come down from the mountains and I think of my mother. A slow cycle of festivals. Hanna draws in the condensation on the windows of the Glacier. Your brother will come by about once a month and we drink schnapps and gossip about you.
Some interesting news. Do you recall the farm plot on the eastern slopes next to Melissa’s place? A few years ago, three new farmers moved in. At least one of them is from the city. At first I thought they’d work the plot together, but right away they brought in machinery for the caves and a launcher and I realised it was getting spun up as one of those vertical farms. Hanna and I went to have a look. It’s just like you describe them: a funny little tiered cake of effort and industry and produce.
The farmers, as far as I can tell, are strange people. I have never had the chance to introduce myself. You’re always so much more outgoing than me. But, since I realise I’ve never mentioned them to you before, here’s what I’ve learned. Let’s start at the bottom.
Ms. Lunde works in the caves and is always tangled up in some sort of city bureaucracy. I can’t tell whether she’s down there mining gems or crystals or fossils because whenever I see her stall it’s either an amethyst the size of my fist, or the skull of something with teeth where they shouldn’t be, or nothing at all and she’s behind the table glowering. There was a rumour in town that she poisoned one of the alchemists but it was “all in good fun” (?) and if it was Miss. Paran she had it coming.
Mr. Langerhank works on ground level and he is such a sorry sack. Word is that he came from the city afflicted by some kind of curse, thinking he could turn it to his advantage in the country. He could not. Whenever I see the man in town he has such an ill-begotten demeanour. There are rumours about something sinister going on at his farm but the impression that I get from him is that of a cat who has - after realising its head has become stuck in a jar - decided that this is simply the way the world works, so I’m not terribly concerned.
Up above, Ms. Butter cultivates rare cacti in the clouds. I believe she used to work for one of the magazines in the town! Fashion, or interior design, or the opinion sections. I’m sure you’ve read her work. It seems to be a tough life up there: cold wind in the winter, bright scouring sun in the summer. I always see her purchasing some new kind of breathing equipment, or gear for the launcher, and the von Ronsteins are always jetting up there in their machines to see what’s what. She has these little mechanical figures that tend the farm when she’s down below. Hanna loves them but they give me the chills.
All in all, the three have become something of a fixture. Mr. L was in a play. Ms. VL comes to the town meetings. Robby von Jr. is always talking about Ms. B. I’m sure when you get back you will introduce yourself to the three and charm them and before too long will solidify rumour into fact. You simply married a shy woman, although she would never admit it.
We miss you every day. The years turn slowly without you here. Each season bleeds interminably into the next. Autumn and winter feel like they take decades. Hanna invariably gets a cold and then I get a cold and we sit miserably in the front room and sniffle. She’ll cough without covering her mouth, like children her age do, and I’ll scold her, but by the evening I’m doing the same. If only you were here, my love, we three could sit together like sick old maids. What an unpleasant time that would be, and we would all be together, and it’s all I want.
And now I will give the pen to Hanna and she will write a letter of her own to you.
DADY ITS SNOWING I HAVE HORSES AND MY DADY I LOVE YOU
Snow falls on our little house. With all my love, endless and infinite,
Agnieszka
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