Glass

I stewed over my fears in the night, deciding what the next course of action was. To question people and potentially expose the girl I was looking for posed more risks than I initially thought of, but without it, finding her would be close to impossible.

I turned in my bed. My brain refused to shut down despite how exhausted I was. When I tried to think of the ocean - the one thing that would always get me to sleep - the sea foam crawled upwards into the shape of the mystery woman's dress, coated in illustrious details. She was out there, but she was only one person out of millions. Every time I tried to imagine a facial feature, it would fade quickly and fog my memories.

I supposed that this Faerie Godmother would be the one to know who she was. She may have been a godmother to many, but she had only performed a spell of anonymity on one person, and I highly doubted that anyone else would have shared the same pair of glass slippers.

I left my bed and approached the door. It was left locked from the outside most nights, but I had kept one of my mother's hair pins to pick at the lock. I concentrated, hoping to not make any noise in case a guard was passing by, and awkwardly, I leaned into the lock, my feet at the side of the wall to not make a shadow beneath the door.

I heard a click. Slowly, I turned the knob, my face creasing at the grinding sound it always made. I cracked open the door and slid through the gap. I eyed my surroundings.

On tiptoes, I paced down the corridor in the direction of the library.

"Your highness."

My heart sank.

"You are supposed to be in bed at this hour," the guard's sour face was mostly shadowed by his helmet, "allow me to escort you."

"Actually, sir, his highness will have to come with me."

A familiarly shy voice shook from behind the giant figure before me. They came into the light, short and still in uniform despite the late hour.

"Sir Zolin?" I whispered.

"King's orders." Zolin smiled innocently at the guard.

"You should be lucky I caught him before he ran off." He said. He gestured for me to pass, and my lungs could finally relax again.

Zolin walked with me until we reached a corner.

"Thank you," I whispered, "but how did you-"

"-I need to show you something." He whispered back, his voice almost child-like.

We looped down stairways and across the palace's endless maze of hallways until we reached the courtyard. From there, we turned into a series of paths at the far north side of the castle, closer to where the other soldiers would be resting. But instead of going back down into the musky soldiers' quarters, we ascended to a small tower where the door was barred by a metal rod. Zolin lifted it with some difficulty and pushed it aside, and the moment he opened the door, hundreds of birdsongs lapped over one another.

The Avery was tall and housed any bird that one could think of - from ospreys to manikins, and every breed of flycatcher in-between. All colours of the rainbow perched on the many bars all the way up to the ceiling, illuminated by the moon's rays peering through the hollow windows. Wings flapped and birds chirped, while others curled up and slept in the warmth of their own feathers.

Zolin waded through the muddy floor covered in bird-muck, not expecting me to follow with my bare feet. He stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled, instantly summoning a tiny, jade-green jacamar. A tiny scroll was tied to its foot. I squinted in the darkness. A jacamar was a very unconventional bird to choose for sending messages, but somehow this one has been trained to do it. Zolin untied the parchment and came back to me, making sure to hold it to the light for me to see clearly.

It was a sketch. It was a sketch of a boy staring up at a great statue, looking at it in awe as the statue held its sword to his shoulder, as though to knight him. As I looked closer, I noticed the statue looked eerily similar to the one facing the palace, and the boy looked like me, although creative liberties had been taken on the shape of my eyebrows.

"My cousin drew this today when he saw you in the square. He's twelve. Don't you think it's good?" Zolin said with his finger pointed on his cousin's initials at the bottom corner of the page.

The pencilwork was both messy yet perfect, accurate and precise in its composition. The shading was done with tiny diagonal lines and added to the details of my clothes and the stone texture of my grandfather's statue. It was hard to believe the artist was only a child.

"It's incredible, Zolin." I smiled, taking it all in.

"I just thought it might cheer you up after today," Zolin became sheepish, "you seemed down on the way back. But I didn't want to say anything because… well, I thought I'd say something wrong, you know?"

I knew exactly what that was like.

"I just don't want you to be dissuaded. Everyone still sees you as Prince Charming out there. Especially my cousin; he looks up to you a lot."

I had to ask.

"Why?"

Zolin seemed taken aback by the question.

"Because… you are the prince of Mendessa! Prince Charming, the future King Andres the third! You are destined for greatness. That makes you a role model in itself."

I didn't even think I was destined for greatness. Not at all. But the pressure to fulfil such a destiny was always there. Every time someone said my name, it was a reminder of that. But that picture depicting my grandfather accepting me and knighting me as worthy of his blood… I felt something lighten within me. This was how the world still saw me. Children looked up to me, of all people, simply for existing.

I felt a shudder of fear, though. And I had to let it out.

"I'm scared I'll let them down."

"Who?"

"Everyone."

I looked away and sat on the step. Zolin sat beside me.

"No one has ever even told me that I wasn't good enough. But I always felt it. I have always felt judged, most of all by my father. I suppose… I suppose it just feels nice that there are people who accept me. But again… I worry that there will be a time that they discover I'm… not who they think."

Something about Zolin's presence felt so comfortable. All of a sudden, I could pour my heart out and he would never share whatever ridiculous things came out of my mouth. Rafael would have just laughed at me. Emiliano, as much as I looked up to him, would dismiss me. But Zolin just listened.

"Have you ever told anyone that?" He said eventually.

"Emiliano knows, but he believes in me so much despite it all. Too much, I think. And I opened up to the woman at the ball… I hope that wasn't the reason she left. I worry that I frightened her with over-sharing. And if that's the case then, well, maybe she will never like me, because I showed her everything that I truly am."

"Can I be honest about something?" Zolin said, looking up to the birds floating in circles above us, "I feel like a fraud too."

I remembered the pushing around and the jeering at Zolin's voice that day. The cruel nickname 'Squeak' and the back-handed compliments about being strong "for his height" and "for a girl". It would have been impossible for me to feel any other way in his position.

"I'm not supposed to be a soldier. If I hadn't proven myself like that, they'd never have let me. But even now, I don't think I'll ever be one of them, even if I fake it. This isn't really what I expected it to be, y'know?" He tried to shrug off everything he had just said, but I had already heard it.

I looked at the picture, once again getting that small hint of joy when I noticed everything it represented. Each time, the after-effect of the fear numbed. But I thought of what the woman had told me at the ball, looking for some hint of displeasure to justify my self-hatred. But I found a nugget in there, golden and shining; something which may have proved that perhaps I was wrong about her leaving out of aversion.

"Break the glass," I repeated to myself quietly.

"What was that?" Zolin asked.

"Break the glass," I repeated, "that's what the woman at the ball told me. Defy expectations of yourself; do what to can to feel free. And now I suppose I'm passing that on to you."

I almost laughed at myself for acting like I had the answers. But Zolin didn't seem to care. He let the words stew in his mind.

"Break the glass," he mumbled to himself, "I like that."

"You've already proved yourself to those other soldiers. You can fight. I suppose not believing in ourselves is what's holding us back."

"You might be right, your highness."

"Just call me Andres."

A splattering sound shocked me for a second.

"Ugh!"

Zolin stood up suddenly, his hair white with bird muck. It was so disgusting that I had to laugh.

"Don't laugh!" He spoke with a grimace, but I couldn't help it. After many attempts to rub it away with his sleeve, he rolled his eyes.

"Goodnight, Andres."

I stifled my laughter as we left the Avery.

"Goodnight, Zolin."