Cameron To Candy

Candy had been busy writing letters, or rather, Cameron had. The Ministry still screened all correspondence to ensure the cover story was kept to, so everything had to pass through their “Redaction & Reissue” service: outgoing letters stamped, filed, and hand-carried off. Even the ones that just came back to their own house.

She’d written Owen, Josh, Luke, and Greg. Luke wished him well. Josh wrote from patrol duty somewhere near the Frostline. “Maybe we’ll cross paths,” he said. “What division are you in?” Candy made one up, knowing the clerks would black it out anyway.

She’d also written a few to acquaintances at work, slowly wrapping up loose ends like “hey, sorry I couldn’t get back sooner, can you finish the Danville project for me?” kind of thing. Then there were the Drapeville letters. She wanted to make sure the stocks could be given to, well, herself. It was weird thinking of it. Cameron’s stocks had to be passed to Candy, so there she, or he, was writing as himself to make sure his, or her, new persona would inherit his/her own stocks. It made her head hurt.

But Greg’s was the one that mattered today. After he’d liked Cam’s old drawing of Marcus riding a mermaid, Candy sent him another, as Cam, making fun of one of their previous trainers. That little caricature was of General Tyrone, the very old arch-axe-throwing instructor who used to bellow, “Hit your target, I can hear a true blow!” while too blind to actually see any. So Candy had drawn the cartoon of him yelling that while soldiers were thunking logs with their axes whilst drinking their coffee. Greg had taken it and somehow got it printed in the Paddlewick Herald. The paper liked humor from soldiers and had paid him four copper coins for it.

I didn’t know what you’d want me to do with it, Greg had written. So I’m splitting it, two for me, two for you. I’m leaving it in your mailbox at your house.

She wondered if the ministry would have let the cartoon pass if it had been known it'd end up in the paper with Cameron Allister's name on the bottom of it. That part made her laugh. He’d left the coins in Cameron’s old mailbox. Fetching them meant visiting her house, and that sparked the idea.

Why wait? Why not rent it out now?

So, she wrote two more letters. The first was to Greg, sending more cartoons with a request that if any got published, he’d give the money to his cousin Candy. “You know how copperfisted Marcus is,” she’d written in the letter, “He set her allowance pretty low so this is me helping her out.” Marcus was a well-known copper pincher. Greg had laughed when he read it, both at the knowledge that Marcus was notoriously cheap and at the old fashioned term copperfisted, then went off to see if the paper was in a buying mood.

The next letter was to Marcus, a formal request, as Cameron, asking him to take over renting it out for the time being. Annoying though it was, the letter was sent out, reviewed by a ministry official in charge of her cover-up, then sent right back to them with new postage. But it was not shot down, so they went forward with it. The ministry seemed to go with whatever they posited as long as it worked within the cover story. So far anyway.

The next day they went together. The house smelled like dust and faint ink. Candy opened the old letter box, fished out a thin envelope. It was stamped Herald Payment Office and contained two copper coins. She smiled.

They spent the afternoon sorting Cameron’s old belongings, a slow, nostalgic process of separating what could be rented with the house from what needed to stay boxed. Candy folded old shirts, uniforms, and work clothes she no longer needed, tossing them into neat stacks.

Then she stopped. The socks looked wrong.

It wasn’t a matter of being a different shape, or texture, or size… but something was just off. Looking closer, one was a reddish-brown, the other… more of a, well, if she'd known the word she'd probably have said burgundy. She frowned, held them closer to the window.

“Marcus,” she called. “Come here a sec.”

He wandered in, hands still dusty from the cellar. “What?”

“These socks. They’re not the same color, right?”

“No. One’s brownish, the other’s… I don’t know, wine? You used to wear them like that all the time.”

Her stomach gave a little flip. “No, I didn’t. They were the same color before.”

Marcus scoaghed. “No, they definitely were not.” She rubbed her eyes, looked again, and the difference only grew clearer. It wasn’t that the socks had changed. She had. She rummaged through the drawer. Pair after pair of mismatched socks, not a two alike.

“What in the name of Socken-the-Mismatcher is going on?” she asked. “These were exactly the same color the last time I was here.”

Marcus leaned on the doorframe, grinning. “Candy, you never once wore matching socks in your life.”

“Yes, I did!”

“No, you didn’t,” he said flatly. “Not once. I can’t remember a single time Cameron ever had a pair that matched, except maybe when you first bought them. You’d come downstairs with two different colors and think nothing of it. We always just thought that was your idea of rebellion.”

She stared at the fabric in her hand, squinting. “But they were identical! I remember—”

“Candy,” Marcus said, his grin softening, “I think maybe before your transformation, you were colorblind. She paused, the idea settling like a dropped thread. “That,” he said, drawing the word out, “actually explains a lot.”

Candy frowned. “A lot?”

He ticked off on his fingers. “The ‘mud red’ jacket that was actually orange. The ‘navy’ tie that was screaming violet. The endless arguments with Greg about whether the Ministry’s banners were maroon or crimson.”

Her mouth opened, then shut. “That was maroon!”

He only raised an eyebrow.

“Oh,” she muttered, looking back at the socks. “Huh… wait what color is this?”

“I don’t know. Brick I think.”

“What… what do you call this one?”

“Uh, cherry red, maybe. You had an odd number of red socks.”

“I thought they were brown!”

“Well, welcome to the world of color.”

“So now I get to see the world in… what, full vision?”

“Apparently,” Marcus said. “Congratulations. You’ve unlocked female vision mode.”

Huh, she thought, letting that sink in. Then, slowly, she beamed, in awe of the new spectrum she was seeing. “Does that mean I’ll start noticing all the ways you dress wrong, too?”

“No, I dress impeccably. Everyone knows this,” he responded with a sly grin.

“Hmmm, what color is that shirt supposed to be?” she asked.

“Leaf green,” he said, without looking.

She frowned. “Leaf green? No, it’s more… brownish. Like a swamp with some forest in it.”

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “What kind of color blindness did you have before, and… maybe now?”

She stared harder, narrowing her eyes. The fabric shimmered faintly in the sunlight. “I don’t know. The regular kind?”

“Well, this is definitely green.”

She kept staring, willing her eyes to focus, and suddenly the air around her seemed to shift. The light in the room moved indiscribably, edges sharpening, colors deepening until her stomach lurched and her head spun.

“Whoa.” She reached for the wall, dizzy.

Marcus dropped what he was holding and caught her by the elbow. “Candy?”

She blinked fast, the dizziness fading as quickly as it came. “I’m fine. Just—” She looked back at his shirt and froze.

The color had changed. Or no… she had. The muddy brown-green she’d seen a moment ago now shone bright and alive, a crisp emerald with gold undertones. It was like she’d never really seen green before.

Her voice was a whisper. “Marcus, I can see it now.”

“See what?”

“The color. The real one.” She laughed, shaky, disbelieving. “The spell… it must’ve shifted again. I’ve never… felt it change me like this….”

Marcus studied her. “So you tried to see, and it… adjusted you on the spot?”

“Looks that way.” She pressed a hand to her forehead, still smiling. “Guess the spell didn’t like me not being a perfectly sighted woman….”

He smirked. “Maybe it’s got pride issues.”

“Maybe. This is definitely something to bring up with the mage. I see him again soon.” She said.

“Yes, definitely.” Marcus agreed. “Are you… okay?”

“Yeah, I think so.” She said, straightening and gently pulling from his steadying hand. “Just little shook and —” Then she straightened suddenly, eyes glinting. “You know, that looks weird with those trousers. Let me try something.”

She rummaged through a nearby trunk and pulled out one of Cameron’s old jackets, a faded, stubborn thing somewhere between burgundy and rust.

“Put this on.” Marcus sighed, humoring her, and slipped it on. Candy stepped back, studying him with her hands on her hips. “Okay, I don’t know what the colors are called, but I do know this looks better.”

He looked down at himself, then up at her. “That’s terrifyingly confident for someone who just learned there are different shades of green.”

She grinned. “Trust me, I… ugh. I think it’s a girl thing.”

***

Days later, at the Elwood estate for the King’s Feast, the great hall glowed with chandeliers and roast steam. Marcus adjusted his collar as they stepped through the door, wearing the pine-and-cream ensemble Candy had chosen. She’d spent an hour the night before arranging his outfit, muttering about undertones and different hues like a painter facing judgment day.

Inside, the Elwoods were already gathered. Lady Eleanor, regal, alert, and chronically observant, looked up as Marcus walked in and froze. Then she smiled, hands clasped.

“Finally!” she exclaimed.

Marcus paused. “Finally what?”

“Thank the gods,” she said. “Candy’s finally started dressing you. You'd been married so long, I was starting to worry it would never happen!”

“What?” Marcus said, baffled. “She’s picked an outfit or two, but... wait, what was wrong with what I had before?”

Lennie, his younger cousin, tried to soften the blow. “It’s not like it was bad, cousin, just… uh, in need of a woman's touch.”

“Huh?" Marcus weakly spat out.

Lady Eleanor sighed delicately. “Oh, darling, you’ve always been so capable at everything else. But clothes coordination? It wasn’t your greatest talent.”

Candy smirked into her wine, but Marcus turned on her. “Hold on. Cameron is the one whose bad with clothes! You should’ve seen him; socks, jackets, chaos!”

The women exchanged the kind of silent look that made Candy’s eye twitch.

“Yes,” Lady Eleanor said, “Cameron’s grasp of color is tragic. He is Socken-the-Mismatcher’s dream project, I imagine. But you, my son…” She gave him the motherly pause. “You’re not great yourself.”

Lennie nodded. “It’s in the family. Uncle wore shirts that looked like birds threw all their feathers on it randomly.”

Marcus groaned. “So none of us men are good with clothing?”

Candy leaned back, triumphant. “Apparently not." Then, in a whisper that only Marcus heard, she added, "Good thing I know my colors now.”

He sighed. “Wonderful.”

Candy joined the ladies at the table and seamlessly slipped into the discussion about how hopeless the men were. Soon, laughter rolled around the table as the musicians struck up the royal fanfare, and Marcus muttered under his breath, “I don't know what's worse. Candy not doing women things or Candy succeeding at them.”