The tallest tower

I thought this was love.

Oh, I was foolish. 

I trusted him with my heart, with my whole being. When he whispered in my ear, his promises slipped into my dreams, colouring another world, a world made by the two of us, made bright by our future. 

We always said that once we escaped, the world would be ours. We were going to conquer the seas together, create calm where once was havoc. 

And now, I am left alone amidst an unforgiving ocean, waves taller than anything I have faced, ocean spray plummeting against me, pushing me deeper into darkness and sorrow. That tiny glimpse of light, the only light I ever knew– it is fading. It is all fleeting. Everything I ever was, felt, dreamt, it is as insignificant as displaced sand swirling through black waves in storm. 

My head aches. My chest feels hollow, as though oxygen once held my very being together and has now been stolen. My heart lays in pieces fractured not by sharp words or betrayal. It is broken by indifference. 

A fresh wave crashes over me, spilling out of my murky thoughts and onto my cheeks, painting the world in distorted flashes. I look around the room I was confined to for my whole life. Where once grew hope and passion now withers with decay and rot. 

This stone floor is no longer solid beneath my feet; it moves alongside me like the deck of a boat, praying so, so silently just to stay afloat. The bare cobblestone walls that once allowed me sanctity from the dangers of Outside now feel like an imprisonment, a barricade slowly approaching yet never arriving, like train tracks moving towards the horizon. And I am helpless, tied to the last sleeper, condemned to silently lament and await my fate as the conductor blows his final whistle.

I stumble across this gothic room, reaching for the one thing that has allowed me sanity despite everything: my window. It is my only view to the Outside, my only way of seeing the night sky and watching the trees sway amongst the morning breeze. I glare out as intensely, as fervently as I can muster; I want to soak in the world, I want to engrain the force of nature into my consciousness, make myself remember this hurt, remember what it felt like to be tossed away like nothing. Then, maybe, I, too, can become merciless and unforgiving like nature, my power electric and dark. Then, maybe, my screams will be heard, my shrieking heartbreak known to the world. If I am remembered as nothing more than a banshee; an insane, unrelenting, sorrowful woman, then so be it. At least I will not be forgotten. 

But as my watery eyes clear, and I look out once more, I see nothing. The world below has gone completely dark, as though I am not privy to the activities of earthlings, despite being one myself. Everything is still: the miniature trees below do not shake, the tiny houses do not stir with music or song; even my bare skin is left un-caressed by the chilly night. Maybe the world fears me, remaining so still and quiet that I may forget its very existence. Or, maybe I have swallowed the Earth in my anguish, vacuum-sealed it inside my jowls, detached it from space, from sound. 

Alas, even if I were to have had this world spinning on the tip of my smallest finger, I would go unheard. 

From my tower, I am foreign to all, known by none.

Then, one came along, stealing all I knew.  

It was in this knowing that everything came crashing down. 

***

I was supposed to be a simple princess, a symbol of our kingdom. 

As was every girl sharing my blood before me, I was to be Protected. As soon as I no longer needed the milk of my mother’s breast to survive, I was to live in the tower, above it all. 

My most basic needs were cared for by an army of strict nurses, all ready with punishments for even my slightest deviance.

I served one role: to show the Kingdom true purity. 

It is well known that the hearts of humans are corrupt; that they have serpents nestled alongside their arteries, serpentine poison coursing through their veins, their fangs awaiting their next victim, the one foolish enough to reach for another’s love. For to love another is to be blindly thrust into a pit of snakes; hoping, just hoping that they do not wake, that they do not reveal themselves as evil. At least, this is what I once thought love to be.

I tried to be what my Father, what my Kingdom, wanted me to be. I tried to be simple, to stare mindlessly out of my window, to prevent my thoughts from tarnishing me.

But the world fascinated me. I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to understand everything about it; to experience all the things I would never know through books. Of course, my Father would never have let me read. He was never aware of the sizeable stash of books collected in secret by every other princess, their kindest maid helping them to smuggle stories up the endless, jagged staircases and through the winding passageways. 

After much trial and error, I taught myself to read. This proved extremely difficult, especially considering my lack of exposure to our spoken language. Eventually, I outlined an alphabet, slowly sounding out each word, rolling them around on my tongue, assigning each one their own flavour. As I began talking more and more with my maid and nurses, the meanings of words revealed themselves like flashes of lightning cutting through the night. 

To say this was a hobby would be incorrect. Reading became my life. I would spend entire weeks absorbed by stories, escaping into this void of possibility and imagination for as long as I could. It was in these moments that I could imagine myself as free, that I was truly alive. 

During these periods of fixation, I would hardly eat, hardly sleep. I was hungry only for knowledge, this desire for learning like a hole in soft earth; the more I dug at it, the deeper and more cavernous it became until eventually, it threatened to consume me completely. 

By this point, exhaustion would begin colouring my neurons purple and pink behind my eyes, igniting small explosions of light that pulled me from my vacuum, tugging me down, down, down, until I came crashing into a comatose-esque slumber that would last for days at a time. 

As I read, I would attempt to master the skills outlined in these books. Arithmetic, art, even the remnants of the Kingdom’s ancient language, Riyta. Once, I found a cracked lid of watercolour paints. I began studying the intricacies of the Outside available to me, attempting to replicate every detail on scroll I later draped across my room, allowing this small, locked space heavy with stagnant air to assume the vastness of this foreign, endless world. 

I wanted more, of course I did, but I was not dissatisfied with life. This was all I knew. Everything else would remain a mystery, in the same way that the stars and the moon and the galaxies beyond them continue to stretch far above what humans could ever understand.

As I grew, my solitude became increasingly uncomfortable. 

My body began changing in a way that felt invasive.

I no longer had control over my limbs: they broadened and lengthened and became streaked with white jagged lines not unlike lightning. Hair found its way into seemingly every corner on my body, cementing itself as though roots in the earth. Where my chest was once flat and smooth grew soft and tender, bearing a weight I had never considered before, a weight that seemed to whisper, ‘you are almost a woman, it is almost time for your prince to come along, for your uterus to be filled with life’. 

I was never told what would happen once a prince chosen by my Father was to ‘rescue’ me. I knew I would no longer be a symbol of purity, and would be expected to create another in my place. How tedious.

One morning, disaster struck.

I had woken up after a restless night, back and lower stomach sore, the world seeming too much to bear. When I finally rose from my warm bed, I saw blood had been left behind. I was horrified, fearing for my life. Had I been stabbed in my sleep? Did I have some disease causing my humours to seep out of me in all directions? Was I going to die, to leave the world before I had ever known it?

This was the first time I ever weeped. When I went to the bathroom and saw where the blood came from, I cried even harder. By the end of the day, my eyes were red and raw, encrusted in lost naivety and innocence.

This was also the first time I ever hated my father. If he hadn’t trapped me here, his only daughter, I would not be dying. I would have seen the world, I would have been able to live!

The next morning, as my dramatics faded into exhaustion and hurt, my nurse quietly entered my bedroom. She never stepped into my space; she only ever gathered and replaced my worn clothes, left me meals. Most unexpectedly, she sat down on my wooden bed, and, fingers firmly balled in her lap, began to describe to me the extent to which my body would betray me. By the end, she had taken my palm in hers, squeezing my fingers with a look almost like sympathy. It was the first time anyone had shown me kindness.

This was my fate for being born a girl: I was to be trapped in the highest tower like some unreachable prize, valued only in my unknowing, condemned to bleed every month as though my stolen freedom was not sacrifice enough.

 As the years passed, I continued to change. My cheeks became littered in angry red marks, marks that I would attempt to claw out of my skin to no avail, marks that seemed to return more fervently alongside the bleeding. My hips, too, widened, except they did not become perfect crescent moons like the women illustrated in so many of my books; they bore dips as though indented with craters and shadow, as though harbouring secrets. 

I felt I could no longer trust my body. Without warning, I had undergone a metamorphosis, but instead of becoming a beautiful butterfly, I was reverted into an ugly, crawling creature. I was left wingless and trapped when I was promised beauty and infinite, sprawling skies. I was a hairy, massive beast. Maybe I had been outcast so that no one would know of my hideousness.

The change that scared me the most was my new loneliness. I began imagining what it would be like when I was finally discovered, when my prince appeared so gallantly, stroking my cheek before whisking me away, towards freedom. 

I would be a dishonest narrator if I didn’t tell you the extent of my longing. I did not want to merely be held, I wanted to be touched, to be so completely consumed by the warmth of another’s body that I forgot the monstrous form of my own. I wanted to become a part of another, to have their fingertips immortalised in my skin like brushstrokes. I wanted to be loved, to be free, so desperately that I would have given my heart for it.

Maybe that was why I was not afraid when he appeared.

It was the dead of night, an icy breeze making my stony room an icebox. I was shivering as I slept, my dreams vivid and violent, tinkering on the cusp of consciousness. Outside, the wind was howling like a wounded dog, unrelenting in sharing its pain.

I was woken by a rustling sound. My eyes flew open, wide and white in uncertainty. I dared not move. Gently pushing down the top of my blanket, I saw him. His shadow was tall and broad, made black against the light of the outside storm. He was wearing what seemed to be a royal’s clothes, a sword shielded at his side and a long cloak trailing behind him. My prince!

Quietly, he began stepping towards me, his head low. I shut my eyes as he stood over my bed. My heart was pounding, though I wasn’t sure I was scared. I had never felt trepidation before, I could not know what it felt like, even as it clawed at my chest, blocking my airways. I did not breathe.

Just as I had imagined so many times, he reached down and stroked my cheek. Except, unlike my dreams, his skin was cold and rough against my own. Despite this, I let myself enjoy this moment, let warmth filter through me like gold. My prince had arrived, now I would be free! 

To my shock and despair, his hand did not stop at my cheek. It slowly grazed my jaw, my neck, my collarbone, coming to rest around my still triangular, underdeveloped breast. At this moment, I was afraid.

He began to unfasten his belt with the other hand, reaching past the fabric of his pants and between his legs. “Fuck”, he whispered. I had never heard a man speak before. The sound summoned bile to my throat. I jolted, immediately realising my mistake. Now, I would have to act. 

He opened his mouth, words tumbling out breathlessly. “Princess, I’m your prince! You’re mine, don’t you know that! You’re mine, your father even gave you-” I kicked him between his legs, where his hand once was.

The man stepped back, doubled-over and cursed in agony and rage. As he did so I suddenly rose, springing into a stance similar to the wild huntress cats I had read about. I let out a noise deep from my throat, a scream that had been trapped inside my chest for years. This shriek was animalistic, a hiss that rattled the entire room, shaking even the thin hairs on the man’s head. It was a scream that yelled “You’re my prey”. How could he think it the other way around?

Now, his eyes became large and he fled, disappearing out the window as quickly as he had appeared. Ruby rage blinded me, coming to rest over my irises like cataracts.

If this was my prince, I did not want him.

Alas, my story does not end like this.

You see, this man, to my dismay, returned. 

He came back night after night, resting on the bench next to my bed, watching me sleep. I was unaware of his presence. I was vulnerable, exposed, helpless as he whispered in my ear. He would tell me he loved me, tell me that he was sorry for his past actions. He told me that soon, he would rescue me from this tower, that he would run away with me. Sometimes, I would wake up to find him there, disgusted and afraid at what he had done with my body. 

But as soon as I began to move towards him, to yell at him, he would disappear. And somehow, my body would feel unchanged, well-rested, even, until I came to believe, truly believe, that he had not touched or hurt me. 

This went on for several months. Each night, I would move my dresser to block the window, attempting to fight sleep as it attacked my mind. And each night, I would eventually surrender to my dreams and wake to either find the prince whispering beside me, or the sun beaming down on me through a now open window.

Then, that night happened.

I was woken to the feeling of something slimy pushing against my lips. My head shook violently as I came into consciousness. As I opened my sleepy eyes, I saw the prince was crouching over me, his eyes focused on mine. He stroked my cheek, as gently as a feather this time.

Maybe this was the night I would finally escape with him. Maybe all freedom took was letting him have me.

Staring deeply into my eyes, he told me he loved me. He began praising me, whispering that I was beautiful, that I was hidden to be protected from the ugly world. He kissed me softly.

As though I was looking down at myself from the eyes of a ghost, I watched myself tell him I loved him back. I watched myself conceal my revulsion, pressing my lips against his. I watched a girl I once thought strong-willed and brave lay still as a man lifted her nightgown, breaking her purity away in slow, painful motions.

When he was finished, he kissed the girl and left; disappearing into the night like smoke from a faraway campfire. This girl did not move. She lay soundlessly on her bed as she had every night before that since the beginning of her existence. She tried to pretend that her insides were not aching and raw, that she could not feel him sticky against her legs.

And as the months continued, long and painful and mellow, as though in a dream, the girl tried to not think. She tried to forget herself, her knowledge, her betraying body; trying to assume the simple princess she was expected to be, trying to con herself into believing that this was love.

But even as she spent her days sleeping and simply staring at those cold, grey walls, she could not deny that something was growing inside of her. Something undeniable was sucking her life away, feasting on her young body, on the food she ate, on the water she drank. A child. 

She had spent her entire life waiting to be saved. Now, she would have to save herself.