A Mirror for the Heir Apparent Nano

“Vater?”

The boy paused outside the garden’s gate, chubby fingers hovering over the rusted white latch. Everything beyond the family’s estate was a pristine shade of white under the bleak winter snow. But the garden had always been white, rain or shine. The boy hesitated slightly, then croaked out for his father once more.

“Father?” His breath was misting in the air, a fascinatingly curious sight. Be that as it may, his cheeks were beginning to sting, and he would hate to stay out longer than he should. His nanny was bound to have started stalking through the house, wondering where he had gone. The boy tugged at his maroon scarf, uncomfortable under its woollen itch. While it would take a considerable amount of time to decide whether to unlock the gate and trespass into the forbidden Garden of Glass, there was simply no time. Besides, he had already broken one rule today. Another one wouldn’t make matters much worse, would it?

Numb fingers pried at the lock, fumbling with the frosted silver. It took several attempts before the latch yielded under his touch and slid with a dull thud against wood. The boy winced at its creak. The hinges screamed against his flushed ears. He tried to open it slowly, but it made matters worse, so he wiggled through what little gap he had pushed open.

To anyone who lived beyond the estate’s walls, what lay within the sacred Garden of Glass would have been a sight to behold. It was not the exotics within that sparked this statement, nor was it the colours that dotted across the area on a dreary winter day. No, upholding its name, the grandeur consisted of flora and plants made of glass. Each work seemed to be so meticulously carved that it felt, quite frankly, impossible to deem them as man-made. It looked as though nature itself had frozen over and left the mere surface ice, and the plant the ice may have encased over ceased to exist.

The intricacy within the detail never failed to astound anyone who managed to catch a sight of it, and even so, to see a sight, one must have pulled several strings or be simply very lucky. Due to the fragility of the garden, barely anyone was permitted to step into the grounds besides the boy’s father, the only eligible gardener of the Garden of Glass. It was for this reason that the boy assumed that his father would be here, tending away under a dreary winter day.

Sure enough, there he crouched. Surrounded by crystal clear poppies, tending to a lone bulb, was his father, spectacles perched precariously over the rim of his nose. The boy had only ever seen him wear them when he was heading to the Garden of Glass. It made sense to don them. There were flaws that only one with such scrutinising eyes would notice, and his father needed these eyes to trim the flowers into perfection.

“Sohn.” The boy’s father barely glanced up from his meticulous process of bringing the bulb to life—an acknowledgement, at best. The boy shuffled his feet, taking the greeting as a sign to come closer. When his father failed to deny his approach, he came closer, till he, too, crouched and watched calloused hands tend to the glass. It was silent for a while. It often was, whenever his father was present. Yes, his nanny was far from agreeing to the terms of letting an eight-year-old boy traipse amongst such fragile beauties, but his father relented. In fact, he enjoyed having his son around, hoping to pass along the duties of taking care of the glass pants one day.


His father gestured towards the bulb. “Imperfection,” he tutted, gingerly wiping dew off the glistening surface. The boy blinked, then gazed back down at the bulb. There seemed to be nothing wrong with it. No matter how much he squinted, the glass flower looked flawless from every angle, casting caustic patterns across the soil. At least, until his father handed his son a trusty magnifying glass, beckoning him towards the tip of the stigma. With his wide-eyed, bubbling curiosity, the young boy held the optical tool up to his eyes. And there it was–a minuscule crack fracturing across the surface.

The slit was so small that the boy had almost skimmed across it. It would forever be a mystery how his father’s ageing eyes could spot such a minute flaw. Silently, the boy watched as his elder began his meticulous polishing. Out of the pouch hanging limply from his belt, his father fished out silk spun from moonlight moths, thread so pale it seemed to exist under daylight barely. With fingers moist from wiping dew, he wets the thread before slipping it through a silver needle. Then, gently, his father stitched the crack close before his very own eyes, each puncture singing a soft ting. The boy watched, rapt, as his father placed a palm over the faint white veins and whispered the magic words:

“Be whole, but remember.”

Fumbling with the magnifying glass, handle slick with sweat from being clutched so tightly, the boy brought his eye back in time to notice an almost imperceptible pulse as the glass began to mend itself with a warm hum. The sight brought a breathless gasp of awe and wonder slipping from his lips. His father nodded in mild content. “Perfection,” he declared this time, tucking the needle back into his pouch before extending a calloused hand towards his son.

Stuck in a trance of admiration towards his father, the boy slipped his hand into the other’s palm, fingers grazing bumps of blemishes from years of tending to the Garden of Glass. Within this perfect little world, he guided his son through the perfectly perfect plants, assuring that one day, he would take over the garden and fill his father’s shoes.