Eventually a low chanting sound buzzes in my ears. I look up from the dress I'm admiring, look around the shop. I see nothing amiss, but I hear the noise still. Like muddled voices, all speaking at the same time. All speaking together. 

I walk to the window of the shop. And outside I am met with a scene the likes of which I have never seen before. 

The streets are teeming with people. People in ragged, worn-down clothes. People who look ugly, who look angry, who look terrified and fearless. They are all crowded together, crammed in the wide street so that in all its wideness it still looks small. They just, they just keep coming and coming and coming. 

Next to the glass of the window, I can hear their chanting better than I could in the middle of the shop. But it still comes muffled. It still comes muted. 

"Give us bread and give us beans! Give us rest and give us peace! Give us bread and give us beans! Give us rest and give us peace!" They say this over and over, shout it as if their lives depend upon it. What a strange thing to be saying. What a strange way to by saying it. I wonder why they are chanting such bizarre poetry. 

I have to learn more. 

I take off my dress, unlacing it all by myself and letting it stay there on the floor. In my white underdress that hangs loose against my legs, I look a lot more like the people outside. But still, there is a vast difference between myself and them. A difference that is obvious. I take my jewelry off and I open the window. I climb up and slip outside. 

A few heads turn towards me. Strange, ugly heads. Strange, angry heads. But mostly the people keep walking and chanting. In my infinite curiosity, I walk along with them, chanting so that I do not get noticed. 

The chant changes to a different poem about a minute after I get there. 

"Stop killing us! Stop enslaving us! Stop threatening us! Stop starving us! Stop killing us! Stop enslaving is! Stop threatening us! Stop starving us!" This is an even more bizarre thing to be chanting. Who is killing who? Why? This is real life, not a book. Stuff like this doesn't happen. 

But nonetheless I walk on, determined to get to the bottom of whatever this bizarre march is. 

The chant then changes again. 

"We are not your subjects! We are not your slaves! We will show defiance! We won't let you get your way!" Who are they yelling at? 

Well whoever it is, their anger is overwhelmingly tangible, as if it's something you can reach out and touch. Like it's something you can feel in the air all around you as you walk through it. Like it's something that impresses upon you, holding on and never wanting to let go. I have never seen such anger. Not really. I have never seen anything like this at all. 

I chant alongside everyone. And I feel the anger swelling up inside of me, I feel it moving through me. I feel it changing something within me. Something I cannot name. Something I cannot place. Something I doubt I'll ever understand. But whatever it is, I can tell that it has changed. Maybe not permanently, but for this moment right now it has definitely changed. 

"Down with the powers that be! Down with the powers that be! We want equality! We want equality! Down with the powers that be! Down with the powers that be! We want equality! We want equality!" I find myself calling out this new chant, this new chant that is just as strange as all the others. But this strangeness feels almost natural on my tongue now. As if it was always meant to be there. 

Everyone is yelling at the same time. Not exactly at the same time. But in such a way that it feels like it's the same time. I have never heard anything like this before. It's almost like a song but it's not at all like any of the songs I have heard in my lifetime. It's musical. Lyrical. But it's not any of those things. It's power seems to come from a source undefined, a source unnameable. Or at least, I cannot name it. 

Everyone looks invigorated, like they could fight an entire army and not become tired. Everyone looks absolutely exhausted, as if right at this very moment they could drop down dead. It's a strange sort of contrast. One which I never thought possible. But one which I am seeing right in front of my eyes. 

And they are ugly, so ugly. Their skin is ugly, their hair is ugly, their clothes are ugly. But even amidst all this ugliness there is a strange sort of beauty. There is a strange sort of awe-strikingness. 

We keep walking until we reach a large building that stretches up to the sky. It is made entirely out of marble and there are statues carved on its front. On its front there are also large steps. We stop just before the steps, the front edges of the crowd meeting the marble. 

From the crowd a young woman steps forwards, and strides purposefully up the stairs. Standing about a meter taller than she would be normally, she looks out into the crowd. And there is something fierce in her eyes. And something fiercely protective. I would almost call it loving, but I have never seen any love of such a fierce and raging type. I have never seen a face as hers. 

Someone comes up the stairs and hands the young woman - or maybe she's a girl - a metallic megaphone that looks bent and beaten up, completely lacking lustre. She takes it and she addresses the crowd. 

"Dear friends and companions," her voice is strained, "glory be to this protest and glory be to this day. We are gathered here today to stand up to the lords and the nobles and the pathetic bastard king who hides away in his castle. We are gathered here today to show them that we are not the docile subservient subjects they want us to be!" 

The crowd cheers. And I cheer too, so that I do not seem out of place. But my mind revolts. She's cussing out the king. My father is the king. My father is a good, nice man. Why is she cussing him out? Why is she slandering him? I decide right then and there that I do not like her. 

But my curiosity keeps me glued right there under the harsh sun in the crowded streets, wanting to know what happens next. 

"Thank you for riding up with us!" The woman declares to the crowds. "For our first speaker today, we present Marki the street urchin!" 

The crowd cheers again, a pathetic, breaking sort of cheer, as a man in ragged clothing that is far too big for him takes the stage. He takes the megaphone and the woman leaves. He has aching, hollow eyes. And just looking at his eyes makes me shiver. They make me want to both recoil and come closer. They pierce my heart.

"Hello, comrades!" The man's voice is equally hollow and haunting. "I'm sure everyone who lives in the city, who lives in the slums, has seen people like me. I am sure you have seen people who have nothing and are denied everything. Many of you have even passed your kindness and coin our way, even though your own children are hungry and cold in their broken-down one-room shacks. 

"But you know who never gives of any generosity? You know who has no generosity to give? The royals and nobles in their huge mansions and palaces! The people who eat roast pork and pudding and cake every day! The people who have more than enough to spare, more than enough to share, but they do not give any of it! They live in their mansions gilded in gold while people starve to death and freeze of cold on the streets. While people die of preventable and curable sicknesses! While people have less than nothing!" 

The people around me burst into cheers again, a deafening sound even though they are not very loud. A sound that grates the strings of my heart. Leaves me hanging onto the edges of my mind, of my knowledge, of my belief. 

"It's painful," the man continues, "starving every day on the streets, under the weather. It is beyond painful. It is beyond description. Beyond imagination. The violence of my life is overwhelming. But it's only a single one of the many types of violence my people are forced to contend with in this world!"

There is cheering all around me. All desperation and power. It terrifies me. The man terrifies me. All these people, crowded together, they all terrify me. But I do not let any of them know it. I keep on cheering with all the rest. And I can feel eyes trailing over me. But I do not think they think much of my presence here. 

"But you know who does not care?" The man shouts out after the crowd is done screaming, "Do you know who does not care about the violence and the suffering our people are facing? The king! The one who thinks that he is so much better than us and we are worms to be crushed underfoot!" The crowd cheers again and the woman from before trades places with the man. 

"Fellows," she shouts into her instrument, "can we have another round of applause for Marki!" The people cheer. "And now," she begins, after the cheering dies down, "I would love to announce to you our next speaker, Aria the ex-peasant!" 

Another woman takes the stage, older than the last one. She had something tired amidst her eyes. Something terrified. Something terrifying. There is something both desolate and radiant in the way that she holds herself. And she vaguely reminds me of the queens in my stories. Only vaguely though, as her clothes are old and worn and her face is streaked with sweat. 

"Dear friends!" She calls into the megaphone, "thank you for joining us today! I am here to talk about the horrific state of the farmers and growers in the kingdom! I was a peasant for many a year before having to move to the city in order to feed my growing family. I now work in a workshop. But before that I worked on a farm in the countryside.

"Now let me tell you," she continues, "the life of a peasant is an incredibly hard one. We have to work, we have to toil in the fields, from sunup to sundown every single day. It is exhausting. And we are hungry. And we feel like slaves. We feel like slaves because we are slaves. We are, all of us here and all of us beyond, slaves to the powers that be!" 

The people of the crowd shout their cheers. And I cheer along with them. Because I have to. I do not know why I have to. I do not know why I am glued here to my spot. But I am. Something with the force of a thousand suns is keeping me here and I can't leave. 

"But you know what's worse?" The woman continues, "We are understaffed. We work so hard, inhumanly hard, like animals, from dawn to dusk but there still isn't enough of us to keep this country fed! Our crops are dry and under watered. They are overrun by pests. They are choked by weeds. All because of the powers that be who do not pay enough for good, fully-staffed, healthy farms!" 

They shout their cheers again. And I cheer. And for the smallest, briefest second I feel like I am one of them. Like I am cheering alongside them. And it feels bright just as much as it feels rough. I try to grasp onto the feeling but it slips away from me and I am left there again, an alien, glued to the spot. 

"The farmers feed the kingdom!" The woman exclaims. "They are the very thing that keeps everyone alive! So do you not think that the king and his cronies would fund the farms better? But they do not! Because they do not care about the lives of anyone in the kingdom!" 

The crowd cheers and the woman steps down, doing a clumsy little curtesy as she does so. 

"Down with the king! Down with the king!" Everyone breaks out into this new, many-voiced, many-toned chant. I feel a deep, dark resentment in my heart towards all these people. None of them know the king. Not personally. Not like I know him. None of them know the way that he laughs or the softness in his eyes or the brightness of his smirk. They just want somewhere to direct their anger. 

Finally all the chanting dies down and the young woman speaks again.