Glass

The legend of my father would repeat year after year on the summer solstice, each year the myth growing ever distant from the man.

As a child, my father was a ten foot tall giant, able to crush boulders with his muscles and climb mountains with his restless feet. His voice could command the Sun itself with his bellow, which echoed down the ever-growing palace walls any time I'd sneak out of his view.

He'd tuck me into bed at night, spinning tales of his adventures - adventures I listened to with childlike wonder, mind racing as I tried to sleep, imagining myself as the stories' protagonist, living through the triumphs and dangers of the life once led by my father. Meanwhile, my mother would tell me about the legacy of my grandfather - Andres, my namesake - and how my destiny was to one day follow his footsteps and rule Mendessa. Back then, it all seemed so achievable. So within reach I could almost taste my many victories. But as all men do, I grew up, reality a sudden weight rather than a gentle settling.

By the cusp of adulthood, I was already well aware that I was due to be married. My father had married at that same age, and my mother even younger. My Elijandrian cousins were already wed or betrothed, some years younger than I, which only brought the question of mine to closer attention.

On my eighteenth birthday, I couldn't help but pace around the snaking hallways of the palace, feet tapping restlessly on the cool tiles. Around me, the same peach walls that had bordered me from the outside world remained tall and all too familiar, and for a moment, I wished I could break them down with my bare hands.

Even when engrossed in my own negative thoughts, I knew to walk closer to the walls and turn around every once in a while in case of a surveying guard. Even then, I hadn't learned their patterns. Father changed their routes and numbers regularly for safety reasons. They kept the outside from coming in, and the inside from coming out.

I peered around another corner before following the path, every little sound freezing my blood and urging me to hide.

The early summer air was stifling - even in the early hours of the morning - and as cool as the sheltered palace remained inside, the air was thick and humid, clinging to the back of my throat.

I turned to a great stained glass door and exited to the courtyard - the heart of my home, surrounded by mahogany balconies identical to my own, fringed with vibrant greenery. The sun had not yet risen, its watchful eye thankfully not cast over me quite yet, and the curved crimson roof tiles were bathed in a silvery light.

I took a deep breath. My heart was hammering in my chest, and I wasn't sure I knew the reason why. I held onto it, my fingers clawing on the fabric of my loose, thin shirt. What was I so afraid of? The idea of spending the rest of your life with someone you love was a comfort. I'd had dreams about the woman I'd marry, adorned in white, her voice captivating and her laughter enchanting. So why now was that prospect so chilling? Why, so close to my own inevitable engagement, was I having doubts?

I stared at the fountain in the centre. The ripples of the moonlit water slowed my breath. For a moment, I'd forgotten about the daunting bronze statue of my heroic father holding the head of the feathered serpent, the water spilling from his feet. All I could focus on were the steady waves, reaching out to the ends of the fountain, bouncing off its edges. The tiles beneath them made them look an electric blue, the pale moon's white now less interesting.

I'd heard of the ocean through my studies. An endless expanse of his shining blue, deeper than any quarry and as alive as any city. When I was nine, my tutor, Emiliano, revealed its existence to me.

"Does Mendessa ever end?" I had asked him.

"What do you mean, Andres?" He replied, not looking up from his geography book. Only he called me by my first name when we were alone, but whenever my father was around, he reverted back to formalities.

I thought for a moment, wondering how to best word it.

"If I just kept walking across Mendessa, what would happen? Would I tip off the edge of the earth?"

Emiliano laughed warmly from his chest and shook his head.

"There is much more to the world than Mendessa, young prince."

My eyes widened. That sentence alone was a revelation, but then Emiliano continued. "There are other kingdoms all over like ours. Some across lands, separated by seas."

"A C?" I puzzled, imagining a great C-shaped wall between Mendessa and another kingdom, segregating us from each other's existence.

Emiliano turned his book to me. On it, an image that would be engrained in my mind forever.

It was a horizon, the sun meeting the sand. Only the sand was blue and smooth, foam edges laced over the beige land I was so used to. The waves were the colour of the sky, sprinkled in the sun's gold. Never had I seen water in such an expanse. Never before had I known such a thing to be possible.

Emiliano told me all about the ocean. Its own unique wildlife; its plants; its currents and waves and whirlpools. I sat listening, mesmerised, not saying a word. Every piece of information absorbed itself in my developing mind, and my imagination ran wild. He told me about boats that sailed across lands, trading stock and carrying travellers. Fish twice the size of a tower; fish with stripes and spots and shells; pink and purple briars spiking the ocean floor. I didn't realise how close I was to the edge of my seat until Emiliano reminded me to sit upright.

He moved on from his lecture, as though he hadn't realised the impact his words had just had on me. I don't remember what he went on to talk about - my mind was too preoccupied with visions of seeing the ocean for myself, riding across the waves and swimming to the deep depths to come face to face with new wildlife.

The new truth stuck with me for several days. It felt like biting down on a soft avacado, only for my teeth to hit the hard centre unexpectedly: the sudden, painful shock shivering through my body. How long would it have been before my parents revealed such a wonder to me? Did they ever plan on telling me at all?

I caught a glance of the window - that glass barrier overlooking the peach and burnt orange palace I'd always known. The glass was forged from sand - sand that likely got closer to the sea than I ever would. And yet, there we both were, exchanging glances in the highest tower of the largest structure in all of Mendessa. I sighed at the thought.

I started down at my book, my handwriting squiggled and jagged. I tilted my head and imagined it forming into waves, untamed and eternally flowing. The world expanded in my mind, as endless as the sun. From there, everything clicked into place. My father's travels; the foreign nobles he charmed. The world had always been there, waiting to be explored, yet there I was, encompassed in the library I'd grown bored of since toddlerhood.

Perhaps that was the root of my problems. Despite how much I begged my father to see the ocean, I was kept his captive in a large and comfortable cell. The more I pressed, the more guards he hired. The more guards he hired, the more walls were built around the palace. The new walls and towers grew old fast, and at times, I wondered if he would keep expanding until the palace reached the ocean I was so desperate to see.

My mother, courtesy of her royal blood, engaged me in lessons of manners and decorum from the age of eleven, often admitting that she should have started me much sooner. All the hardly necessary skills were covered; which knives and forks to use for each meal, how to hold a glass in a proper manner; how to walk in a straight line with my back rigid and head held high. But where I excelled in appearing the confident royal, I had no idea how I would talk to people from beyond the palace.

Emiliano could have given me all the educational books in the world - and he did - but nothing could give me the true experience of greeting a foreign noble or asking for a maiden's hand. I was utterly unprepared for meeting outsiders, nevermind marriage.

And so I stared at the gentle waves of the fountain, breathing steadily. For now, in darkness, I was safe. Nobody could see the cowardice protruding from the once-valorous King Santos' descendant.

I could not truly be my father's son until I had tasted life beyond the towers he penned me in.