Paper Wings

  We waited under the olive trees, my feet scuffling the ground as I swing from the bench. Grandmother sat beside me, fussing with thick embroidery in her lap. She smiled as I leaned over to see what she was stitching. Back then, I could only make out small birds against the rich purple backdrop, with figures posed with sticks and spears. They seemed to be shouting. She must have followed my eager gaze and she held the needle up to the sun, and continued to stitch.

     The courtyard bustled around us, the gossip of the palace drowned out the squawks from the ducks and swans in the pond. Which nearly flew away after a a servant passed by with a pitcher of water. The long fabric from her dress bunched up to her calves. Several others gossiped under the arbor, their teeth flashed as their dark eyes crossed the courtyard at us. Then darted back as soon as I lifted my head. Grandmother laughed and waved at them, her wrists flashed with golden bracelets. Her shawl slipped from her shoulder, as she laughed. I felt as though they were speaking a different tongue, a joke that I was the only one who didn’t understand the story behind it. I slumped against Grandmother, eager for her attention again. I debated letting out a whimper like one of the pups from the barn.

     “Look.” Grandmother finally said in a hushed voice, and lifted her work. I eagerly ran my fingers against the thread. I didn’t understand that this would be my fate as her hands guided mine. Newly creased with age, and but not a blemish to be seen. Her wrists were gilded with golden bracelets, passed down from the ancient rulers, not even mother wore such jewelry. She fiddled with my tunic, I had not payed attention that it was wrapped around me.

   “I think it will be a boy. Don’t you?” She smiled and pinched my cheek. “We will need a strong prince.”

    Naturally I nodded, her smile was contagious, and I didn’t understand what she meant back then. She said it so sweetly in the summer afternoon, with dark strands dipped with silver framing her face. I settled down and climbed off the bench.

    “Where are you going little bird?” She said.

     “I want to explore.” I responded.

    “Child, you need to stay put.” She held out her finger. “Your mother is already-”

     “No!” I shouted. “I don’t want a little brother!”

     “Of corse you do.” She stood, exchanging nervous glances around her. The servants stopped moving. Good. I thought. Let them watch.

     “I want to be the lord!” I shouted. “I am the oldest! I want to learn-“

     “That is enough!” She shouted, and it silenced me instantly. I sounded like such a child, one who simply wanted what another had. I didn’t understand why the law overlooked me, I remembered ballads dedicated to heroes and the villains they slain. The battles, the trickery, the ambition that I longed for. Then there were the women in those stories, princesses like me that sat and waited for their husbands to come home. Bearing heirs, and weaving tapestries, there was a painting of one on my wall.

   The sun beat down, with my fists clenched around my tunic and tears in my eyes. Grandmother’s face mirrored her son’s, and suddenly my father stared back at me. The scene shifted as I stood next to a broken pot, then again I stood knee deep in mud, then I stood with a wooden sword in my hand. My cheek began to sting, and I felt the bite from his ring on my bottom lip.

Even now I can still feel it.

    Grandmother walked towards me as if I were a deer on a hunt. I shrank away, clutching my hands to my chest. I knew what she was going to say, she always said it. Those mindless games are not for you, do not let the glory of battle take you away like that.

     I thought she was going to swing at me as she kept closer. I winced, but she knelt down.

    “My little bird, do you know why we need a lord?”

    “Because a lady is useless.” I answered with the word I learned a year back. The one mother called me several times in the heat of her anger. It stung my Grandmother as it fell from my mouth. She cupped my face in her hands.

     “No, you are thinking of the absent minded women from aristocratic families. Who waltz and gossip, who marry for wealth and gamble it all away.” She whispered as bustle returned around us. “We are rulers, we are born to command and we call power. Your private tutors won’t tell you this, but a empress holds more command than an emperor. Yes, he does dabble and train as you wish to do as is his birthright, but true power is not pounded in the slashes of a sword, do you know where it lies?”

     I shook my head, and she tapped my forehead just under my hairline.

    “It is here. Your wit.” She smiled. My hand flew to where her finger was, and my brows knit.

     “How?” I asked.

     “You observe, you study, and you learn.” She glanced around us. “Everyone knows who we are, but they do not know about this.” She tapped her own head.

     “But father and mother…” I stumbled. She shook her head.

     “They are still young, your parents have much to learn about how the world works.” She let out a loud laugh. “And see, you have survived the gods trials of pestilence that have already claimed so many of your cousins and siblings.”

     She held up my pendant around my neck. The one used to warn off evil spirits and plagues that claimed children and babies. I hadn’t been been born sickly, but my parents didn’t have to worry if I would live. The goddesses had been at my side, they said, sometimes I think that is what saved me from my father leaving me in the town to be claimed by someone else. 

     She patted my head when I opened my mouth to contradict her. The sun softened as it hung around her head like a crown. Her words echoed in my head like inside a well. I had not known there was power unknown to most of the kingdom, or that the palace did not even know about.

    The bells sounded, carrying their high notes rattled in my bones, scaring the birds from the pond.

  “Our wish has been granted.” She said. I remember there were no bells on the day I was born.

   She held out her hand and I took it. She pulled me in, and I could smell only her. Hints of incense from her chambers, and lavender oil that she used to sleep. She stroked my hair.

“Remember little bird, only you can choose to soar. The kingdom depends on it, not on your cousins, the other noble children, or your new little brother. You will do great things, you do not need a sword like they do.”

    My eyes went wide as she then turned to a servant. One who had her embroidery, and led us through the pillars. I herd wailing even from the hall, and I hesitated.

     I still stop in front of that door sometimes, when I walk through the palace at night. I didn’t feel the lump in my belly as I expected to when I saw the small swaddle that a servant brought to me. Mother slept on the bed as servants cleaned up the mess, father stood in the doorway chest puffed and eyes gleaming with pride. Still, I felt heat in my face. Just for being born, someone was already better than me.

     My tunic is longer now, no longer white, and richly dyed purple. I wear the images that Grandmother stitched that day, of epic battles that I read in books. I read them over and over like scriptures now. Trying to pick them apart from their politics, history, and monsters. I have earrings that chime around my neck when I walk. My hair is has grown out now, with a playful curl that mother claims will make me more captivating. I’ve wandered into the courtyard again; it is usually what I do when I cannot sleep. I sit on the bench again and listen to the bubble of the fountain and the crickets. Closing my eyes, I savor the silence, and I try to conjure up Grandmother again. Sitting next to me, still stitching along and reaching to fix my tunic again.

     I smile. Sometimes I let father convince me that I made it all up, that Grandmother would’t speak to me like that. I’ve learned to laugh in his face, and mothers as well. I usually chase their words down with bitter remarks, or the rumors I hear through the palace walls. That latest scandal of theirs, and that my brother isn’t father’s. I have learned how to play their games, and I’ve studied weak points that are more deadly than a strike to an organ. I take a branch from the olive tree and twirl it in between my fingers. Thinking of the time I waved them around like fools do.

      It’s a summer night, and I don’t hear the chatter of chaos during the day. I can hear thick footsteps, thumping along the corridor. I turn to see father, his gray hairs blazing in the lamplight. I cross my hands in front of me. 

    “Can’t sleep again?” I chide. 

     He grumbles, like some grumpy mountain man. His face has been drawn down by time, and ignores me. He knows better not to engage me anymore. I watch him stumble into his room, some servants say our home is haunted. That the ghosts of the people my father killed in his years of command have come to claim him. He no longer recognizes me, nor my brother, nor my mother. The madness of kings, I have predicted this, even Grandmother did when she placed a bulla around my neck. Usually sworn only to keep young sons safe. I catch a glimpse of her bust in the atrium, with her jewelry adorned on it. I run my finger over my pendant, tracing the head of a beast and its wings. They are terrifying, and ready to fly.