Nobody is Free

A surge of familiarity strikes him when he looks at the boy in the glass. Behind the smudges of dirt and the scars that had puckered and healed since, he could recognize himself. 

He once used to be a prince. At least he thought he was. 

Looking down at his hands, then at himself in the glass, the day in question comes to him. 

What did he have to give up to get away? 

War-stricken, factions split up by politics, was his old country. Of course, he wouldn’t have known anything about that. Not until the beggar came to the back door and had asked for scraps from his handmaiden. The prince had not moved from his seat at the table but only watched as the beggar was turned away. Once he was the only one remaining in the room, he ran to the window to watch the beggar sneak through the back gates and into the shuffle of the city. He had never been past those gates or away from the palace in general. His father would have never allowed it—not with the riots and the looting going on just outside. 

So, he remained. 

He sat by as his tutors lectured him on the importance of the economy, supply and demand, as guards fought off protestors at the front and side gates. The prince watched from the window of his grand palace as fires bloomed out of storefronts and smoke crowded the narrow city streets. 

It took one fateful night when the prince was especially thirsty, to travel down the grand staircase and into the kitchen. He pumped at the well, drawing himself a glass of water instead of bothering his handmaiden for it, and brought it with him back up the steps. 

The palace was deserted, more so than when the sunlight slicked the marble walls. It was easier for voices to drift from one end of the fantastic structure to the other. He picked up on the voices, hearing the name of streets running through his precious city. A city he had never set foot in, all his life. 

Stepping closer, the prince laid an ear against the marble wall that separated the hall from the one war room out of many. They sounded like soldiers—the palace guard.

“We’ll set fire to these streets…right where the protestors will likely be. Smoke em out, I say…”

“Are you sure this is ethical?” 

A harrumph, and then, “Hell no. But that’s what makes it interesting.”

The prince clapped a hand over his mouth, the prospect filling his head and clouding his thoughts.

He wanted to scream, he wanted to shout. 

He wanted—needed to tell someone. 

But by the time made it back to his room, shakily placing his glass of ice water on the nightstand—untouched—he had realized the soldier speaking was his own father. His own flesh and blood, willing to hurt the people supposedly in his care. 

The prince’s eyes burned with tears. He would not sleep for the rest of the night or for the next. 

…

Two years had persisted since that night. The palace staff and the royal family had all gathered to celebrate the prince’s eighteenth birthday. That birthday would mark the day he would choose his own name to make the transition from his father’s reign easier for everyone. But for some unfortunate reason, the lawyers never came to carry out the legal yet ceremonial proceedings.  

Looking out towards the front lawn and the front gates, it was obvious to see why. 

More looters had gathered over the week, throwing their bodies against the wrought iron gates. They collide with the line of palace guards and local authorities, screaming in their faces and throwing rocks at their shields.  

All while they threw up signs—wavering pieces of cardboard and cardstock blotted in fat red and black marker ink. 

“FREE US!” and “EQUALITY WITHIN THE ECONOMY!” is what the prince can make out from the palace windows, his half-eaten cake tilting slightly on his gold leafed plate. 

His appetite had abandoned him as the cries of outrage from the rioting crowds swelled, thrashing against the glass of the palace windows. 

“Ah, my son…” 

The king approached his son with a booming, authoritative voice. It encompassed the entire room, yet it was only meant for the prince to hear. Heads of the palace staff and some of the prince’s distant relatives whipped their heads around before cutting back to their own conversations. 

Stabbing his own fork into his son’s half-finished cake, the silver tines slicing through the fluff of frosting and loaf, the king chewed slowly as he followed the prince’s gaze out the window. 

“What do you see down there?” his father asked. 

The prince shrugged, not wanting to lift his eyes away, but his father kept pushing him. Knocking his shoulder against his son’s, the king booms with laughter. 

“It’s pathetic, isn’t it? To fight like that and waste away your life? All for what?” his father crooked a brow. “To pay less taxes? C’mon…”

“But they have to pay all of the taxes,” the prince blurted out, regretting it but already too far ahead to stop himself, “don’t they? The distribution doesn’t affect the 1%....” 

The fork from the king’s hand clattered to the floor. It spilled crumbs and frosting, the fork bouncing off the marble floors. The sound echoed and brought heads looking their way, gazes traveling to the father and son at the window. 

Wiping his mouth, his brow taut with frustration, the king glared down at his son. 

“Finish your cake and enjoy your party…” 

With that, he left the whole ballroom shellshocked from the instance. 

The prince knelt to retrieve the fork from the floor and sat it on his plate, taking his half-finished cake to the kitchen. His handmaiden was there, refilling plates of hors d’oeuvres and desserts. 

“Your Highness…” she stared, her eyes rounding when she sensed something amiss. “What’s wrong?”

The prince threw up his hands, exasperated, “Everything that I’ve known has changed. I am not the noble prince that I should be…I’m an adversary to my own people.”  

“Does this have to do with your father?” 

“Not just him. All of ‘em…” he shook his head and sat down, the weight of everything collapsing in on top of him. “I don’t belong here…I never belonged.” 

“Do you want my advice?” 

The prince blinked up at his handmaiden—the one that he had been assigned to him since birth. Just now, he noticed how small she was compared to him. Her eyes were warm and dark, surrounded by soft, faint wrinkles whenever she smiled. 

The prince nodded. 

His handmaiden sighed, grabbing the chair across from him and sitting. She held his hands, squeezing them and shaking them. 

“What are you willing to give up for this? To change the world?” 

The prince could feel his expression crumple and then smooth. 

“I don’t know…”

“Well, when you find that out…come back to me.” 

Immediately, the prince’s handmaiden stands and returns to her post. She redresses plates and refills flutes of sparkling champagne, as if the prince had already left. Taking his leave, the prince heads upstairs to his room on the northernmost side of the palace. As his own birthday party resumed its awkward pause in the ballroom downstairs, the prince sat on the foot of his bed where he was in view of the city streets. 

What was he willing to give up to change the world and leave this one behind? 

…

“Son!” the prince heard his father shout the one morning, rousing him up from his deep sleep. “Get down here, quickly!” 

At that, the prince left his room and the window at his bedside where it showed the streets still crammed with protestors and police alike. His feet pounded on the marble steps and he almost slipped when he caught himself on the door, seeing a team of lawyers standing at the gold-leaf table. 

“What’s this?” The prince questioned. 

“The lawyers, son…they couldn’t make it with all the protestors outside, but we were able to sneak them in through the back gates.” His father pats his son on the shoulder, pushing him towards the table and the parchment laying on it. “C’mon, now…”

Fixing his eyes on the legal documents spread over the tabletop, he saw that the specifications were for his new name. Finally, a name he could call his own as he tried to change the world—one decree at a time. 

The prince sat, readied with the quill. The theatrics of the ceremony were not as acclaimed as they would usually be, considering there was no audience there to watch him write his new name out in splendid obsidian ink. They could not afford to make the trip up the city streets, rampaging with war and violence. 

He could hear their cries seep through the glass like a draft and his eyes strayed from the signature line. His hand around the feathered quill hovered, remaining in the air longer than it should. 

And that is when the first of the many shots bombarded the air. 

Thunderstruck by the raw, unnatural sound, the prince pitched to the side and fell off the chair. The team of lawyers presiding also took cover as more ammunition was sent into the crowds below. 

The prince crawled on his hands and knees to the window, pressing himself up and against the wall to see the mayhem being carried out in front of his eyes. 

He saw protestors fall in waves, like a tide pulling back from the shore. He saw bodies go limp, bullet holes riddling the crowd and the storm of shouts and gunfire running rampant through the streets.   

The prince could not believe what he was witnessing. His gut twisted and heaved as he struggled to stand, finding purchase on the smooth marble floors. 

The war just outside had quieted to a low muffle, but the memory was louder in his head. He replayed the scene over and over, sweeping his eyes over the room and finding his father at the table. 

He was bent over the papers, quill in hand and scribbling like mad before the lawyers can regain their composures. Spotting his son, he threw him a wink and a satisfied smirk. He shoved the quill into his son’s hand and presented the signed roll of parchment like it were his own. His hand pressed down into the prince’s shoulder, eager and desperate for him to keep quiet on the truth. 

It was not his name on the parchment, but a diminutive of his father’s. 

Maximillian. 

The prince blinked and looked away in shame. As champagne bottles were popped and sipped, he trudged back upstairs to hide under his covers. 

That was the day that everything would change for young Maximillian. 

…

The plan came together over a couple of weeks, during the prolonged lull of protesting from the streets just outside. Instead, they were mourning where they were safe at home or in their churches, boarded up to keep the authorities out. 

Maximillian imagined he could hear the wailing from his bedside window. He saw the rain rolling down the pane of glass and thought of the tears rolling down the mourner’s faces. He could still smell the musk of smoke and spent gunfire hanging over the city like a shroud of fog. 

It was hard to breathe anymore and seeing that his time to take over his father’s throne was looming nearer, he knew he had to act. Quickly. 

After refusing breakfast, he ran down the steps. He made sure to duck around corners and slip down tight hallways throughout the palace, avoiding any place where his father’s feet might tread. 

Maximillian barged into the kitchen, his handmaiden kneading dough as other servants ran to and fro. As she sprinkled a handful of flour onto the tabletop, the rest of the staff vacated the small, clustered space. 

Stepping up to his handmaiden, he swallowed and felt the heavy lead ball of fear spasm in his throat. 

“I need your help…”

His handmaiden turned to look at him. 

Maximillian continued, “I came up with a plan, and I need your help with it.” 

“I could get into a lot of trouble, Your Highness…” his handmaiden smiled but it looked sad and forced. “Your father wouldn’t be too happy about me sneaking you out of here…”

“I can’t take what’s happening out there. I can’t sleep, I can’t get it out of my head…”

“Why should you care?” the woman scoffs, forming the dough into a neat little ball and placing it in a bowl. “You’re the most protected person in the city—in this palace…why would you wanna give that up?”

“What can I do if I’m kept up in here? It’s our fault that they’re down there, dying in the streets like animals…” Maximillian bit back on the rush of emotions, his eyes welling with tears. 

He had never left the palace, for as long as he could remember, but he could not help but see what was happening all around him. All while he remained, watching. Not doing anything to stop the world from collapsing in on itself. His world.

And nobody was doing anything. Nobody was trying to help. 

To him, this war was not going to end and when it did, it was not going to end well. 

His handmaiden watched him, carefully, “Are you sure you want this? No more parties, no more private tutors, nothing like that outside those gates…”

Maximillian nodded, now more than ever ready to risk it all, “I’m ready.”

“What do you need from me? Didn’t you say you had a plan?”

They spent the rest of the day in that kitchen, and with every passing hour, they began to scheme and orchestrate the ins and outs of the escape plan together. 

…

That night was the night. 

His handmaiden’s younger brother, the same size and height as Maximillian, exchanged clothes with the young prince and took his place under the covers of his four-poster bed. 

Maximillian changed into the boy’s clothes, smudged and threadbare in comparison to his usual soft linens, and his handmaiden helped him cake dirt and soot from the fireplace onto his face. She ran mud through his hair, pulling on a pair of her brother’s beat-up shoes and an old overcoat. 

“Go out the back gate.” His handmaiden told him as she clasped the last button at the top of his collar. “There’s not as much security out there…”

“What about your brother?” Maximillian wondered out loud. “What about you?”

“We’ll be fine. We’ll leave by early morning. I have no place here, anymore, without you to take care of.” 

Before Maximillian could protest, his handmaiden sent him out of the back door and into the yard. The back gates stood just a hundred or so feet away. 

“Good luck!” She wished in a whisper and shut the door in his face. 

There was no going back now. 

Maximillian skirted the manicured lawn, his borrowed, oversized shoes slipping over the wet, dew-ridden grass. The moon hung high in the black abyss of the sky, held aloft by a mantle of clouds, while the stars seemed to be dimmed in vigil for the fallen protestors. 

It felt as if it were a different world out there, yet it made Maximillian feel more at home than his birthplace. 

He remembers how the beggar from a couple years ago got in, swinging her leg over the lower part of the gate before crawling out. In that time, the gate hadn’t been mended and seeing this, Maximillian followed her example. He managed to scrape his face on the hedges pressed flush against the back gate, wiggling his way out of their reach and into the open street. 

As soon as his feet left the kempt, young, and nourished grass from inside the palace gates, he sucked in a breath to ground himself and lifted his eyes to the sky. 

Somehow, the stars seemed even dimmer on this side of the gate. 

But he was free. And to him, in that moment, that was all that mattered. 

…

“Son? Son?” 

Maximillian rips his eyes away from the glass and centers them on the man behind the glass partition of the booth. The man on the other side of the glass gestures him forward and the prince dislodges himself from where he had been standing in line. 

He comes up to the window and the worker offers his hand. 

“ID to get into the city, please?”

The prince shakes his head, “I don’t have one.” 

The worker quirks an eyebrow, “You don’t have one?” 

“No…”

“What do you expect me to do, then?” he laughs. “Let you in, anyways?” 

“I’d like to get a new ID.” 

Bringing out the required paperwork, the worker readies a pen, “Name?” 

Maximillian just stares. The name he is about to pronounce stands on the tip of his tongue, lodged there. 

He realizes why, catching his reflection in the glass. 

Maximillian had not been his name to begin with. It had been what his father had decided, and in a way, would tie him forever to that place behind those marble walls and plated ornate windows. 

Blinking once the worker snaps his fingers in front of his face, Maximillian watches the man press his pen into the paper in front of him. 

“Name.” He sounds irritated by the long stretch of silence. “Please?” 

The prince shakes his head, born anew at the thought. 

“I am Nobody.”