Glass

Chapter Nine: The Tree of Stars (Part I)

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.