The Scroll Knight
By Adam Kaz
“Once upon a time in a kingdom far far away there lived a team of brave, hardworking knights that did all boring work most knights didn’t want to do.
“You see, kiddo, some knights get to travel the world and have adventures. Some knights slay dragons and save maidens and get famous. You’ve heard of the famous ones: King Arthur and Lancelot, Richard the Lionheart and Sir Robin.
“But some knights, sweetie, some knights never get to be famous.
“No, some knights are entirely forgotten by history, because all they did with their lives was sit inside the castle ALL DAY LONG writing notes on massive scrolls. They’re called scroll knights, and for 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year they sit quietly in a large room scribbling down notes.
“They’re the king’s record keepers, you see. On the scrolls they record exactly how many dragons were slayed each month, and how many maidens were brought back to the kingdom, and details about those slayings and rescues. Basically the whole reason for their existence is the king needs this info so he can tell how well the famous knights are doing in the field and, based on the data gathered by the scroll knights, allocate gold to different expeditions as need be. And so every day the scroll knights use carrier pigeons to communicate with knight colleagues throughout the land, learning all about their famous adventures, and then writing down the important details.”
“That doesn’t sound very brave.”
“But it is, sweetie, because it’s not like the scroll knights do this on their spare time, when they’re not fighting dragons. They don’t fight dragons or save maidens—there are no songs about them—but day in and day out they do this valuable work even though no one notices or cares. Isn’t that brave?”
“I guess so.”
“OK, cool. So this story is about one particular scroll knight, Scroll Knight Eric, whose had this scrolling job for a few years now. He didn’t mean to be a scroll knight, not when he was getting out of knight school. But he’s a scroll knight now, and that’s his job, and it’s whatever. So, anyway. So Eric, the knight, one day he’s looking over these scrolls to make sure everything is put together for the king; because the scrolls are expected every month; and since this is really the only thing he does, he has to make sure it gets done right, otherwise the king might be mad. And it’s kind of super stressful because the king needs it done before sunset. But then Eric’s manager . . .”
“What’s a manager?”
“You’ll know when you’re older.”
“What’s a manager? What’s a manager?”
“A manager is a person who makes sure you’re doing your job. They tell you if you’re not doing things right.”
“Is the manager the king?”
“Sometimes. But not this manager. This manager’s manager is the king. It’s a hierarchy.”
“What?”
“Never mind, what you need to know is this other knight, or I guess he’s a duke—this duke, his job is to make sure Eric is doing his job. And this duke bursts into the room where Eric is scrolling, and he says, ‘We’ve got a problem.’ Now Sir Eric had his headphones in at the time, so he had to take them off to catch what was going on. But the boss duke doesn’t wait for him to catch up, he jumps right into it, says, ‘You have messed up Lancelot’s numbers. It looks like there are multiple scrolls for every dragon he’s slayed this month, which is a problem because if there are too many scrolls for the same dragon there won’t be an accurate read on how much gold the king needs to spend on dragon slaying.’
Sir Eric says, ‘Slow down,’ and the boss duke says, ‘OK, so now you’re giving me attitude. We need this fixed.’
Now the duke and Eric know what’s really going on. This is not Eric’s mistake. What happened was Lancelot, in order to look like he’s slaying more dragons, overreported his work to me. He’s purposely lying so the king will like him better. Sir Eric knows this, and the duke knows this, but no one can say anything because Lancelot is really important to the kingdom, and we can’t make him look bad. So both of them are lying to each other, and they both know it, but it doesn’t matter because someone needs to fix this, and the scroll knights always fix the scrolls. It’s like a dance, it’s like we’re robots just doing the same dance moves over and over again. We’re like, ‘No master, affirmative, my data processors tell me you are correct, we must fix the problem.’”
“Who’s dancing?”
“No one, sweetheart, it’s just like a dance. So the duke makes Sir Eric go through all of Lancelot’s scrolls, bit by bit, to suss out what’s as an overreport. This takes him awhile, and he’s already got other scroll knight duties to finish before sundown. And the whole day Sir Eric is thinking about this, thinking about how unfair it is these famous knights get to do borderline duplicitous shit, and it's still his job to cover for them, and no one says anything. So before Eric leaves the castle, just before sunset, after he sorted out the whole mess, which he had to stay late for, he writes a really long letter. It’s addressed to Lancelot, but he also makes a bunch of copies so he can CC them to everyone. In the letter he talks about what’s going on, about how Lancelot is not doing his job, and that it shouldn’t be my job to cover for him. And he works on this really hard, really gets into it, and really likes the way it looks. He attaches the copies to a bunch of pigeons. They fly off and deliver them to everyone in the kingdom . . .
And I’ll leave you with that.”
“But what happens next, Dad?”
“I don’t know, sweetie, but I will tomorrow. Sleep tight, beautiful girl. Please be good and go to sleep.”
“OK, Dad.”
“I love you so unbelievably much.”
“I love you, too.”
“Could you draw me something tomorrow at school?”
“I’ll draw a scroll knight.”
“Could you draw me anything but that?"
