Of Beast and Beauty

by Stacey Jay

“You don’t decide what I’m capable of! I’m the queen. My word is law!” I sound like a child having a tantrum, but how can I help it? What other option has Bo or anyone else in this city given me, when they treat me like a small girl or an invalid or a madwoman?

  “I’m not mad,” I say, fighting tears. “This city is mad. All of you! You and your father and the advisors and all the rest. Gem is three times the person any of you will ever be!”

  Bo sighs, but when his gaze meets mine, he doesn’t seem angry. He’s gone numb again. Numb with a hint of …

  Pity. He pities me. He’s so sure of the legitimacy of his hate that he can’t consider for a moment that the Desert People might be human like us. Or that I might be the only one in Yuan not out of my mind.

  But maybe that isn’t possible. Maybe the mind of the majority is always the healthy mind, simply by virtue of its numbers. Maybe it’s the definition of madness to believe I’m right and everyone else is wrong, to find my thoughts rational and reasonable when almost the entire world finds them damaged and flawed.

  The thought makes me want to cry all over again. Cry, and beg Bo to listen to me, to try to understand. Despite his cruelty last night, Bo isn’t as terrible as his father. He cares for me—or cared, at least a little. He has a gentle side, too.

  “Bo, please,” I whisper. “I’m not crazy. I swear I’m not. I—”

  “Did you mean to hurt yourself tonight?” he asks, ignoring my protests.

  “Of course not!”

  “You’re bleeding,” he says, as if breaking a scary bit of news to a child. “Those wounds are deep. You’ll have scars. Why did you do this?”

  “I didn’t do anything! They pulled me in. They were trying to kill me,” I say, regretting the words the moment they pass my lips.

  “Who was trying to kill you?”

  “The … roses,” I mumble, digging my nails into the dirt, wishing I had fingers big enough to uproot the roses with my bare hands. “I don’t expect you to believe me, but it’s the truth. They aren’t what they seem. Nothing is what it seems.”

  Bo glances down at the vines, now lying, limp and lifeless, across my legs. No one but Gem knows what the roses can do, and now no one else ever will. The roses won’t help me prove that I’m not insane. My allegedly weak mind stands to gain them a king and a captive queen and continuation of life as the Dark Heart that caused them to grow prefers it.

  For a split second I consider telling Bo about the Dark Heart and the wicked magic supporting life under the domes, but before I can think of a way to break the news to him that won’t sound mad, two breathless soldiers appear behind him.

  “The Monstrous has been spotted from the wall, sir,” the short guard with the crooked teeth huffs. “Running toward the King’s Gate.”

  “Go. Take the ten men waiting by the—”

  “No!” I shout. “Please, let him go. If you let him go, I won’t fight any of it. I’ll marry you tomorrow morning.” I begin tugging the thorns from my flesh, refusing to wince as the stickers pull free. “Just let Gem go.”

  “Take the ten men waiting by the tower,” Bo continues as if I haven’t spoken. “Tell them to kill the beast on sight.”

  “No!” I stagger to the edge of the rose bed. “You can’t! I forbid it! As your queen!” But the soldiers refuse to look at me, let alone listen.

  “Bring his body to the dungeon!” Bo shouts as the men rush away through the orchard, the scuff, scuff of their boots transforming to a shush, shush as they hit the grass beneath the trees.

  “Run, Gem! They’re coming!” I scream, even as I hope he’s too far away to hear me. “Run!” I scramble off the edge of the bed wall, moaning as I hit the ground, and every place where the thorns tore my muscles cries out at once.

  Bo takes my arm with a tenderness that startles me. I glance up to see sympathy in his rich brown eyes.

  “It’s for the best,” he says. “When he’s dead, the unnatural feelings will fade. I’m sure of it.”

  “They aren’t unnatural.” I’m too exhausted to scream the words. It wouldn’t make a difference, anyway. Bo doesn’t think he’s ordered a murder. He thinks he’s asked for an animal to be put down. Raging at him for the wicked thing he’s done is pointless until he understands how wrong he is.

  “Gem is like us, Bo,” I say, pleading with him to understand. “He feels and thinks and hopes and dreams. He loves his family and is devoted to his tribe. He’s no different, not in the ways that count.”

  “Let’s get you back to the tower,” Bo says, ignoring me. Again. He starts back toward the tower, cradling my elbow as if I’m made of glass. “I’ll have the healers sent to attend you.”

  I dig my heels in. “I’m not going,” I say, jaw tightening as I stare through the trees in the direction where Gem disappeared. I can’t see him or the soldiers any longer, but I swear I can feel him. He’s still in the city. “Not until I know Gem’s safe.”

  Bo heaves a tragic sigh, but he doesn’t try to force me to keep walking. He stands beside me, as silent as I am, though I’m certain he’s not straining as hard for a sign that the soldiers’ mission has failed.

  “It could have been good,” he finally whispers. “You and I.”

  I don’t say a word, though I agree with him. In a way.

  We could have had a very different relationship if Gem hadn’t come into my life. If not for Gem, I might have mistaken faint stirrings and budding friendship for something more. I might have thought love could grow between Bo and me. I would have agreed to marry him and would be looking forward to however many years we’d have together before I made the ultimate sacrifice for my city.

  Sacrifice.

  “I don’t have to do it,” I whisper, my reprieve finally seeming real now that I’m free of the roses. I will never lie down in that wretched bed and slit my own throat. The realization makes my breath come faster, makes my ribs shake with something too hysterical to be laughter. “I don’t have to do it.”

  “I’m afraid you won’t have a choice,” Bo says, watching me from the corner of his eye, clearly seeing my relief as another sign of madness. “Father says the law allows the advisors to compel you to marry.”

  My ribs grow still, even as my heart beats faster behind them.

  Junjie will kill me if I refuse to go to the roses. I know he will. As soon as Bo and I are married and the city begins to fail, he’ll slip poison into my food or slit my throat while I sleep. Then, once I’m dead, Bo will remarry and that poor girl will pay the price for my refusal to honor the covenant. She will be a bride in the morning and a dead woman by nightfall, and the wicked thing at the city’s core will never be stopped.

  I can’t let that happen. I have to find some proof of what I felt in the garden tonight. I have to convince my advisors and my people that the power sustaining our city is evil.

  “But how?” I mumble, biting my lip.

  “I don’t know,” Bo says, continuing to labor under the delusion that I’m speaking to him. “I suppose one of the advisors will say your vows and the sacred words for you if you refuse to say them yourself.”

  So refusing to speak won’t be enough.… What if … What if I …

  “Take me back to the tower,” I say, gripping Bo’s arm. “I want to see Needle.”

  “But I—”

  “My arms and legs hurt. Needle will tend to them,” I say, not bothering to explain myself any further. A woman has a right to change her mind, and a madwoman even more so. There’s nothing I can do for Gem here and now, but if I can rid myself of Bo and move quickly, while the guards are distracted …

  “I’ll send for the healers as soon as you’re safe in your rooms,” Bo says as he leads me through the orchard.

  I start to tell him no, that Needle is the only attendant I need, but I think better of it. I don’t want to make him suspicious, and his mission to fetch the healers will keep him busy while I throw together what I’ll need for my journey. Our journey. I’ll go with Gem. Tonig
ht. I’ll leave the city and not come back until—

  Never. I’ll never come back. If I’m not here, no one can force me to marry. And if I never marry, then the curse ends with me.

  But where does that leave your people? Needle? All the innocent and the damaged who have already suffered so much?

  Dead. It leaves them dead. Sooner or later.

  I swallow, blinking back tears as Bo and I make our way through the withered stalks that are all that’s left of the sunflowers. Soon, the remains will be plowed under, and bone meal and sheep dung added to the soil, and next autumn’s flowers planted in the enriched dirt. Sunflowers are feeders, Father said. They’ll suck the life from the land if you’re not careful.

  I’ll suck the life from this city if I leave it. Innocent children will die. Needle will die. But if I stay, it never ends. It never ends and all our lives are paid for with blood and hate and fear, and the Desert People will die and I will die and I will never see Gem again.

  I can’t leave. I can’t stay. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s right; I’ve never felt so ripped apart inside.

  “Don’t cry,” Bo mumbles beneath his breath. “Please.”

  I swipe the back of my hand across my eyes, hissing as salty tears sting into the cuts at my wrist. I didn’t even realize I was crying, but I am. Weeping as if my heart is broken. Which it is. Broken in two. One half here in Yuan, with the city I was raised to serve. One half with Gem as he—I hope—runs into the desert to save his people.

  Everything is happening so fast. I need more time!

  “It won’t be a miserable life for you when we’re married. I won’t be cruel,” Bo says, motioning aside the soldiers guarding the door of the tower. The two men stand gaping for a long moment without moving, before first one and then the other scrambles out of the way.

  Bo and I are climbing the stairs by the time I realize why the guards were so surprised. They have no idea how I got out, let alone came to be covered in my own blood.

  Get out. I can still get out. There’s time between now and when I’ll be forced to marry Bo tomorrow. I’ll let Needle bandage me up and do some serious thinking. I’ll tell her everything that’s happened and see what she believes I should do. Needle is more practical and selfless than I’ll ever be. She’ll have advice. Good advice.

  “Needle, bring the medicine kit,” I call at the top of the stairs. “And water, please, with two cups.”

  Poor Needle. She’s going to be beside herself when she sees what’s happened to the skin she’s fussed over all these years. I wipe at my face again, trying hard to pull myself together.

  I’m so busy worrying about the look on Needle’s face when she sees me that it takes me longer than it should to realize she didn’t come when I called.

  “Needle?” I call again.

  A strange cawing sound comes from the music room in response. I pull away from Bo and race down the hall as fast as my aching legs will carry me. I fling myself through the doorway at the same moment Needle flies through it in the opposite direction. I cry out as we collide, but when my hands find her shoulders, I don’t let her go. Her face is streaked with tears, and one cheek bears an ugly red handprint.

  “Who did this to you? Who’s here?” I demand, searching the room behind her. At first I see nothing, but then, movement on the balcony. Three pairs of wide shoulders shifting, six big hands lifting, two hand trowels busy spreading sluggish gray mortar between heavy red bricks.

  They’re building a wall. A wall to take away the world.

  I tried to stop them, Needle signs beneath my hand. I tried.

  “I’m sorry,” Bo says from behind me. “They shouldn’t have struck her.”

  “What is this?” I ask, unable to turn to look at him, unable to glance away from the wall already rising as high as my thighs.

  “It’s to keep you safe. I wanted to make sure the beast couldn’t enter your rooms,” he says. “And Father was worried. I didn’t tell him about last night, but after what happened today, and with your mother …”

  “No,” I whisper, breath coming faster, feeling more trapped than I have in my entire life. It’s been years since I was truly a captive in the tower, and I’ve never had so many reasons to gain my freedom.

  “It’s not forever,” Bo says. “Once we’re married, and you start feeling better …”

  No. No, no, no!

  I’ll never feel better. I’ll never feel the wind in my hair again. I’ll never race through a damp field in bare feet. I’ll never sneak away to the King’s Gate or the desert beyond. Even if Gem sets a fire burning by the gathering of stones, I’ll never see it. I’ll never see Gem again.

  I’ll never leave this tower, not until the day they lead me to the garden to die.

  My knees give way and I crumple to the floor, but I don’t cry out. I don’t sob or scream. There’s no point in it. Bo is here by my side, three strong men occupy my balcony, and guards with spears and sleeping darts wait at the bottom of the stairs. There is no way out. There is nowhere to run. It’s over. Everything is over. I am over.

  The world goes soft around the edges, my mind softer.

  I don’t remember rising from the floor. I don’t remember Needle tending my wounds or mixing a sleeping draft or tucking me into bed—though she must have, because when I come back to myself hours later, I am bandaged, and the bitter taste of valerian root is strong in my mouth.

  I don’t remember throwing off my sheets or dragging the chair in the corner across the room. I don’t remember ordering Needle to help me lift it on top of my bed, or threatening her with dismissal if she refused to assist me. I don’t even remember climbing up to stand on top of the tower of furniture and nearly falling in the process.

  Later, when Needle asks me how I knew the diary was there, I tell her it must have come to me in a dream, but the first thing I recall between my falling to the ground at Bo’s feet and the slender volume dropping into my hand is reaching for the beam above my bed, fingers prickling as I released the secret latch I was certain I’d find on one side.

  I tell Needle it must have been an ancestor dream, like Gem said. My father was always proud that we could trace our ancestry all the way back to King Sato and his third queen.

  I don’t know what he’d feel if he were alive to read our ancestor’s words now. It takes more time for Needle to read and sign each word than it would if I could read the diary myself, but still it doesn’t take long to learn that the volume belonged to that very queen. Or that everything I’ve been raised to believe is a lie.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  GEM

  I hear the heavy footfalls and turn to see soldiers rushing around the granaries, but the men scrambling through the tall grass inspire more relief than fear. I’m already at the King’s Gate with the pack of food and supplies strapped to my back, and they’re coming from the direction of the royal garden. They must have found Isra and freed her from the roses. I know these people have no issue with killing a queen, but only after she’s married, and that day is still months away. Isra should be safe until I return.

  Please let her be safe.

  With one last glance back at the tower, the peak of its highest roof barely visible over the rise, I step through the door and walk away from Yuan.

  I walk. There’s no need to hurry. It’s too dark for their arrows to find me, and the soldiers won’t dare follow me into the desert.

  I walk until the dome is a faintly glowing speck on the horizon, on through the darkest part of the night, and into the next morning. I walk until the sun bakes my head, and the straps of my pack rub blisters on the scale-free flesh on the undersides of my arms, on through another night and the pale blush of a second morning, before exhaustion hits like a rock slide crushing me into the ground. I collapse into a hollow between two cactus plants, but I don’t sleep for long. I don’t know which is stronger, the need to reach my people, or the need to return to Isra, but both drive me like nothing has before.

/>   I walk until my good leg throbs and my bad leg screams for mercy. I walk until both legs go numb and my joints begin to creak like the wheel of an overloaded cart. I walk until my entire body is a collection of aches and pains and my mind exists outside it all, lulled by the endless rhythm of my footfalls, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the misery of my flesh. I drink little; I eat even less, determined to save as much food for the others as I possibly can. The pack is brimming with dried fruit and nuts and salted meat, enough to keep the hundred souls still remaining in my tribe from starvation for a month if the food is rationed carefully.

  I think of how wonderful it will be to see my father’s face, my son’s smile as he gums a piece of dried fruit, the relief in my people’s eyes as they eat well for the first time in months. I think of Isra, of her lips on mine that night in her tower.

  I can’t be without her. Seeing her held captive by the roses settled any question about that. I can’t accept her death as a necessary evil. I won’t have her blood spilled. Not for Yuan, not for the Desert People, or anyone else.

  Gare will never understand. Father, maybe, if I explain myself well, but Gare … never. He’ll never forgive me for caring for a Smooth Skin. He’ll hate me until the day he dies, and he’ll go to his funeral pyre with a curse for me lingering in his soul.

  I’m sure most of my people will feel the same way. The Smooth Skins are the enemy. Our rage against them has been building for centuries, a bonfire stoked and fanned by every loved one lost too soon, every night spent listening to a child cry out in hunger, every morning a mother rolls over to find her baby starved to death on the pallet beside her.

  I know now that most of the Smooth Skins have no idea how their actions have affected my people, but I still have hate for them in my heart. I hate Bo and his father and the soldiers who damaged my legs, but I care for Isra more than I loathe them. I … I love her. And love is stronger than hate. I believe that. I believe Isra and I can change our worlds. Together. If we are brave.

  I finally feel brave. I won’t ask Father to cut my warrior’s braid. I’m not a coward. I’m a different kind of warrior, one who will fight with my heart instead of my hands, and I’ll start by telling my people the truth. It would be easier to lie, but lies will never change the way they see the Smooth Skins, and we’ve all told too many lies. I’m sick of them.