Of Beauty and Beast

by Stacey Jay

  I wait, squirming my toes, ears straining in silence broken only by the faint buzz of the hives at the bottom of the hill. The bees are quieter at night but still busy. I like the hum, the evidence of nonhuman activity. We used to have wild birds under the dome, too—all different sorts, some night singers, some day—but the last of them died years ago. Father said it was an avian epidemic.

  “Why didn’t it take the messenger birds, then?” I asked him at the time. “Or the ducks and geese by the orchard pond? Why did only the wild birds die?”

  “Wild things don’t always survive under the dome,” he said.

  There was something in his voice that day.…

  It made me wonder if he knows I’m not as biddable as I pretend to be, if he knows I’m wild, and doesn’t hate me for it. Or at least doesn’t blame me. It’s not as if I asked to be born this way, with a taste for defiance and a longing for the hot desert wind, the wind I felt only once, the day my mother took me for a forbidden walk outside the city walls.

  I’ll never have that wind again—if I left the city for any length of time, I would die of thirst or sun poisoning, if the Monstrous didn’t get me first—but I can have my night runs. I can have the autumn smells, the satin of rose petals between my fingertips, and the sweeter sting of the roses’ thorns.

  My mouth fills with a taste like honey and vinegar mixed together.

  The rose garden. How I love and loathe it. How I need it and hate the needing. But still, I’ll go there first tonight. I want to see the color of the sky, know which of my moons hangs heaviest above the dome. I am efficient in my darkness, but how I crave the moonlight!

  It’s hard to wait, but I don’t move a muscle, don’t twitch a nostril, even when my nose begins to itch in the way noses never fail to do when you’re not able to scratch them. Two minutes, three, and finally my patience is rewarded with the soft, rhythmic scuffing of leather boots on stone.

  Scuff, scuff, scuff, scuff. I am a soldier, this is my song, and I shall scuff it all the day long. I am a soldier and these are my boots, the biggest shoes for the biggest brutes.

  My lip curls. Soldiers. Ridiculous. Yuan needs a third as many, and those should be stationed at the Desert Gate and Hill Gate and around the wall walks, where the rest of the city won’t have to bear witness to their strutting about.

  Our only hope is to keep the mutants out. If they make it inside, the city will fall. If we’ve learned anything from the destruction of the other domed kingdoms, it should be that. The Monstrous are bigger, stronger, with poison seeping from their claws, and skin as thick and hard as armor.

  They can see in the dark and live on nothing but a daily ration of water and cactus fruit. They are brutal beasts determined to destroy humanity and take our cities for themselves.

  But our bounty will never be theirs. If they kill the keepers of the covenant, Yuan will turn to dust like the other cities and the land beyond our walls. Magic is loyal only to those who have bought and paid for it. With blood. Hundreds of years of blood, blood enough to fill the riverbed beneath the city and carry us all to the poison sea.

  As soon as the soldier scuffs away, I scurry between the rows of cabbages on tiptoe, leaving as little sign of my passing as possible, counting the eighteen steps to the road, the four steps across it, the fifteen steps down the softly sloping hill—also planted with cabbage; oh, the cabbage I have eaten in my life—and into the sunflower patch. My fingers brush their whiskery stalks, feeling the heavy flowers bob far, far above me.

  They are unusually tall this year. No matter how high I reach, I find only more prickly stalk and leathery leaves. I am nearly two meters tall, and my reach is another half above. They must be three meters, maybe more. I bet their heads are bigger than the moon.

  “Moon. Moon, moon of mine,” I sing softly as I skip the thirty skips through the sunflower patch, up the rise to the city green where the children play. Seventy more steps—it is the widest green in the city, and the grass is still damp from the groundskeeper’s hose—and I am in the orchards that surround the royal garden.

  Dried grass sticks to my wet feet as I carefully tread the last fifty steps that separate me from my destination. There are snakes in the orchards. They hide beneath the grass clippings, lurking in wait for the rodents that feed on the apples the orchard workers miss. More than once, I’ve felt a strong serpent’s body brush my bare foot, heard a rustle and a hiss as a viper slithered—

  Shish. I freeze, ears pricking. My ears are very large, too. They hear more than average.

  Yes … shish … a faint stirring in the grass to my right, but then nothing. Silence. After a long moment, I continue on my way.

  Luckily, I’ve yet to step on any hidden squirmy thing. Snakes don’t strike unless they have no other choice. Given the opportunity to flee, they will, and so I force myself to move slowly, no matter how the roses’ perfume urges me to run. The smell is so strong, I can taste it, like the filling in the rose honey candies Baba brings me on the winter solstice. The sweets are terrible—bitter, and as enjoyable as sucking on a perfume bottle—but I eat them anyway. I save them up for treats on days when Baba is too busy to visit and Needle and I are alone and the silence threatens to drive me mad. The rose candies never fail me. I slip one into my mouth to melt, and taste freedom. Every time.

  I pull in a breath and hold the sticky air inside me as I step onto the paving stones. The path is still warm from the sun. The stones kiss the bottom of my feet, whispering sweet things about how nice it is to see me again.

  I stretch and smile and run. And run and run and run.

  It’s safe for a blind girl to run here. The path goes in a perfect circle, the roses stay in their bed except for a spill of vines on one side that I’ve learned to avoid, and there is never anyone here at night. If I am of the mind to eavesdrop later this evening, I will have to continue farther down the path. The royal garden is the most beautiful of Yuan’s gardens but also the most tragic. It is a place of death, and the living avoid it when they can.

  They say they feel watched here, as if the roses have eyes.

  They have no idea.

  The roses have more magic than anyone, even my father, understands. I am the only one who knows their secret, who knows that they are more alive than other flowers, that they see and hear more than anything else on our world.

  I throw out my arms, running faster and faster, until my heart beats in time with the slap of my feet, a layer of sweat coats my skin, and the giddy feeling inside swells so big that I have to leap and twirl, to spin with my head thrown back, the wind I’ve created whipping my hair. I want to scream with delight. I want to howl like the dogs on hunt day. I want to announce to the world that I’m free, free, free!

  Instead I leap onto the ledge of the central bed, where the oldest roses’ roots dig deep into the ground, where vines as thick as human arms twine through ancient trellises, snapping the brittle wood. Where flowers as big as melons bloom and thorns as long as fingers warn, Don’t touch!

  Hands to yourself! Back, savage!

  I reach out, the pads of my fingers prickling. I never know where I’ll find a thorn. The wind never blows in Yuan, and the roses seem to grow like any other flower—though larger and older and always blooming—but the vines move. They move.

  From one night to the next, a girl never knows when she might—

  “Ssss …,” I hiss as my finger finds a thorn, a sharp one that glances off my fingertip and slides beneath the nail, piercing the bed. I grit my teeth and fight the urge to snatch my hand back to my chest. We must be connected—the thorn and the flesh—for the magic to work. I hold perfectly still until the sharp pain becomes a mean little ache, until the blood flowing from my cut eases the hurt away with its warmth. I stay and I breathe and I sigh as, one by one, my eyes open.

  All one hundred of them.

  2 GEM

  THERE’S a woman in the garden.

  No, a girl. Tall but young. She runs like a child. Big, lopi
ng steps with her arms held out and her head bobbing like one of the giant flowers.

  I’ve never seen so many flowers. Flowers, plants, fruit, green things bursting out all over. When we first crawled from the caverns, I stumbled in the face of it. I fell, and my hands felt alien against the soft, wet grass. The smells devastate me. I don’t have Desert People or Smooth Skin names for them, can’t tell where one smell ends and another begins. The land under the glass dome overwhelms with its life.

  Fierce, vicious life. Stolen life. Paid for with the deaths of my people.

  We’re starving. The children first. Their skin cracks and bleeds. They cry until they have no strength left, and their silence is worse than their moans. The tribal medicine men have become death dealers. Better to eat poison root and have the pain over in an instant than to die slowly.

  The autumn harvest of cactus fruit has bought the Desert People time, but only a little. We must have the roses. According to our chief’s visions, they are the key to the magic that keeps the land under the domes flourishing and abundant.

  “Take them at any cost,” Naira said when we left our camp a month ago. “Die for them. Kill for them if there is no other way.” Our chief is a peaceful woman. But these are not times for peace.

  Or mercy. If the girl sees me, she’ll scream. The guards will come.

  They’re everywhere. They were here a few minutes ago. I hid in the orchard, but they’ll come again, and I might not be so lucky next time. The moons are so bright, it’s practically daylight under the dome. I have to act.

  If Gare were here instead of on the other side of the city, he would have already slit the girl’s throat and wrested a plant from the soil, and would be halfway back to the caverns.

  It took generations of digging to build the tunnel down to the underground river. It will take generations more to find another way in if we fail, generations we may not live to birth. This path will serve us only once. When the Smooth Skins realize what we’ve done, they’ll shore up their underground defenses, build another impenetrable wall. They already suspect an attack will come. Their guards shot arrows at our scouts as they circled the city. This is our only chance.

  Kill her. I hear my brother’s voice in my head. One death is nothing, a drop of water in a sea of the Desert People’s blood.

  I flex my hands. My claws grow loose inside the grooves above my nail beds. There’s no choice. There’s no time.

  I step from behind the thick tree, out of the shadows, into her line of sight. I bend my knees and bare my teeth. My claws slick from their hiding places as I ready myself for the rush. Her eyes fall on me, huge round eyes in a face so different from my people’s, but somehow still so … familiar.

  I hesitate. I shiver.

  I didn’t expect the Smooth Skins to look like this. I expected softness like uncooked dough, empty eyes sunk in privilege-rotted flesh. I didn’t expect whisper-thin skin peeling like old tree bark, skin so pale I can see the blue blood flowing beneath. I didn’t expect a sharp chin or a sharper nose or eyes that seem to see everything.

  Except me.

  She doesn’t see me. She doesn’t startle. She doesn’t scream. Her gaze doesn’t waver. She looks past me, into the orchard. I turn, but there’s no one there. I turn back to find her still motionless, her hand in the flowers, her eyes focused on some faraway nothing. The truth hits, and my claws slide back into their chambers with a shup so hard, it hurts.

  She’s blind. I was about to kill a blind girl. Maybe even a simple blind girl. Now that I’ve seen her face, there’s no doubt she’s nearly a woman, but she skips and plays in the flowers like a child. No near adult of the Desert People would behave that way unless they were rattled in the brain.

  A strange heat creeps up my neck, making my face burn. Shame.

  That’s what this is. Not something I’ve had reason to feel more than once or twice, but now it curdles inside me.

  This isn’t the way. No women or children. We’re not like the Smooth Skins. They are as soulless as a sandstorm. We are better. We know the power of transformation. This planet has changed us, but its magic is good magic. It would be enough to sustain us all if the Smooth Skins hadn’t twisted it to serve their unnatural purposes.

  They are the murderers. Their domed cities rob the surrounding lands of vitality. Their prosperity is paid for by the slow death of the desert, and if something doesn’t change, it will lead to the extinction of my people.

  This raid isn’t about killing Smooth Skins; it’s about keeping them from killing any more of us.

  I back into the shadows under the orchard trees. I’ll wait. The girl will leave eventually, and then I’ll—

  “Please,” she says.

  I freeze, skin crawling, claws slicking out again. Was I wrong? Has she—

  “Show me this garden,” she begs. “Show me myself. Just once.”

  She isn’t talking to me. There must be someone else. But where? The flower bed looks dense, the thorns dangerous. I ease closer, circling around her on quiet feet, braced for attack. But there is nothing in the shadows beneath the roses. Only her hand, with a thorn buried deep in one finger and her blood dripping slowly to the earth below.

  “You’ve shown me the nobles’ cottages and the soldiers on the walls and the desert outside and the monsters who live there,” she says, spitting each word. “But you refuse to show me what’s right here. Right now. All I want to see is my face! You promised me. You promised!”

  The girl is rattled. No question.

  “I hate you,” she whispers, sightless eyes narrowing. “I’ll set fire to the entire lot of you.” She laughs, a cruel laugh, not childlike at all. “I’ll do it.

  I swear I will if—” She breaks off with a cry as the flowers begin to move. Squirm. Coil like snakes preparing to strike. The giant blossoms roll on their stems, turning to fix me with their alien eyes.

  Naira’s visions are sound. The roses do have magic, greater than the planet magic that touched our people in the early years, granting us size and strength and protection from the sun and our new predators; greater than the blessings our dead bestow as their final flames burn. And the girl knows the magic. She speaks to the flowers.

  A plan takes shape quickly. I’ll trap the girl, creep up behind her, and hold my claws to her throat. I’ll make her dig up one of the bushes and whisper the roses’ secrets while she does it. If she’s helpful and quiet, I’ll let her go. If not, I’ll—

  “No,” she gasps. Her eyes go wide. Her thin chest heaves as her breath grows faster. If I didn’t know she was blind, I’d think—

  “No!” she says, louder this time. “Help me!”

  I lunge for her, but she darts away, leaping off the edge of the flower bed, leaving a smattering of blood behind. “The Monstrous are in the city!”

  She runs, as fast as the desert wind, around the flower bed and down a stone path lined with more flowers. “Monstrous! In the royal garden! Help me! Help!”

  I race after her. I have no choice. I need her silence before it’s too late, before—

  More Smooth Skins appear at the end of the path, spears raised. I know the moment they see me. I see their silhouettes ripple in the yellow moonlight. I smell their fear. I lift my clawed hands and roar—a warning to my people. Wherever their search has taken them, my father and brother and the others in our raid party will hear me and know I’ve been discovered. They’ll make it to the caverns and into the river before they’re caught, but they’ll do it without the roses we came for. We’ve failed. I’ve failed. I let this girl doom my tribe. I should have killed her. I should have slit her throat and lapped the blood from my claws. Now everyone I love will die—my father, my brother, my friends. My son.

  He’s only six weeks old. He’ll be the first on the pyre.

  I roar again, a sound so terrible the girl screams and stumbles, falling to the ground. I leap and land on top of her before the guards can throw their spears. They’ll kill me sooner or later, but I’ll kil
l this girl first. I’ll take her life as payment for the destruction of my people.

  I grab her shoulder and flip her onto her back, the better to get at her throat. Her skin gives like water beneath my claws. Her blood is the exact color of the roses, red that swallowed brown and black and holds them prisoner in its belly.

  I stare at it. It’s beautiful. Terrifying.

  I’ve never killed something so large before. So large or so delicate. I didn’t even mean to cut her. I didn’t—

  “Do it,” she whispers, her voice fearful, but angry, too. She trembles beneath me, her long body quaking, her eyes once again without focus. “Do it! Kill me!”

  Her words make my blood burn. “You’re so ready to die?” I demand in her language. “My people would do anything to live. Anything.”

  Her eyes bulge in her narrow face. “You—you—s-speak. How—” A spear falls next to my arm, and another glances off my bare shoulder, but my skin isn’t like theirs, so thin that it’s practically pointless to have skin at all. My hide is thick, scaled across my chest, over my neck and shoulders, and down my back. If they want to kill me, they’ll have to hit my belly. I lift my head, roaring at the two guards who’ve dared come close enough to hurl their weapons.

  “Wait!” the girl screams. “Take it alive! Don’t kill it!”

  It.

  I snarl into her face. She screams, and her eyes squeeze shut. Her hands cover her mouth, muffling her sobs. Another spear flies. And another, but I knock them away, rage making my warrior’s reflexes even swifter.

  I am not an it. I am a Desert Man. I have nineteen years. I have a son.

  I might have had a mate if there were no Yuan, no tunnel to dig, no scouting missions to take me away from my tribe over and over again. But Meer chose a different mate, and my son sleeps in another family’s hut.

  Now my son will die and be burned without ever knowing my face. Because of them!

  I roar again and hope it rattles the loose pieces of her brain. Stupid girl. Stupid Smooth Skin. Stupid—