Of Beast and Beauty, стр. 4

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.

TWO

GEM

THERE’S a woman in the garden.

No, a girl. Tall but young. She runs like a child. Big, loping 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