Away From Here-Prologue: A Father's Return

I was born in a family where much was expected. My father was the Duke of Naman, one of the biggest provinces of Galean. My mother was nonexistent. I did not even know whether she was alive or dead. I remember having asked my father about her. It was on a cold day, after the servants had laid out our supper.

“I…I want to know about my mother.”

My father looked up from his food, giving me his most solemn look, the one he gave when I had gotten into mischief.

I immediately rested my chin on my chest, looking intently into my soup.

“You want to know about your mother, why darling?” My father’s voice was calm and kind for one so big and strong. I’d heard the servants say that he used to sing when he was a boy, high and clear, sweet enough to charm the very birds from the trees.

I swallowed and lifted my head, “I just felt, that I ought to know sir.”

“Conrad,” My father addressed our butler, “Take it away, I’ve had my fill.”

Then Gregory of Naman, my father, came to me, knelt down at my feet and told me the one thing that I ever knew about the woman who was my mother.

“Your mother’s most beloved possession in this world… was you.”

That is all I knew at the time that I was twelve years old. I had given up making more attempts because my father would simply say the same thing each time, and then be unsociable and melancholy for at least a week.

I often found myself lonely and quite honestly bored due to the lack of siblings or peers of my own age. My only friend in the world was my father, but during the long months when he was away, I would retreat into my own sadness.

My afternoons were spent picking flowers in the garden, and watching the sea ebb as it draped the rocks below on the pier. I wasn’t allowed to go down; I think my father was afraid of the ocean. He called it the “destroyer”. Secretly, I thought it was beautiful, large and mysterious. I longed to touch that world.

My life went on, and my curiosity grew stronger. Each night was spent dreaming about running on the white beaches, feeling the spray on my face, and becoming completely immersed in the waves. I wondered if I would ever be allowed to come that close, knowing that my father would forbid it. After my sixteenth birthday, my father left for the longest time he ever had. A year passed, and I was afraid he was gone forever, until a messenger brought news of his return to Naman.

As I was staring at the ocean from my window, my maid Cynthia came in to dress me for my father’s return. She was always very prompt, her motions were mechanical, and I wondered whether she ever tired of dressing a seventeen year old girl, who was very capable. But she dressed me anyway, as she had always done. I suppose I could have told her I would do it on my own, but somehow didn’t want to break the ritual.

“This one is suitable, yes?” She held up a dress, long and flowing. It reminded me of the sea, its deep blue color, the silver stitching; simple, yet elegant.

“Yes, it’s perfect.” I smiled as she nodded.

“I thought it would be. It seems to suit you. It brings out your eyes miss.”

Indeed my eyes were blue. Like my father’s.

Almost hesitant, I glanced in the mirror. I was tall for a girl my age, nearly six inches below my father. The skin I had was slightly tanned from my incessant walks in the garden, and my cheeks were sun kissed red. I had small lips that I considered disproportioned. My father called them rosebuds, and said when I just born they were dark and pursed like a new flower. My cleft chin was the one thing I knew I could link to my mother, because my father clearly didn’t have one. Sometimes he called me Edeline, my mother’s name, and it scared me. The look on his face was so dark and wounded when he said that name. Somehow, I think part of me reminds him too much of her.

“My lady,”

Cynthia had returned and looked excited. Happiness was a rare emotion she carried.

“Your father is home.”