Текст книги "Of Beast and Beauty "

Автор книги: Stacey Jay

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To Riley and Logan

But he that dares not grasp the thorn

Should never crave the rose.

–Anne Brontë

IN THE BEGINNING

IN the beginning was the darkness, and in the darkness was a girl,

and in the girl was a secret. The secret was as old as the cracked

cobblestone streets of Yuan, as peculiar as the roses that bloom eternally

within the domed city’s walls, as poisonous as forgotten history and the

stories told in its place.

By the time the girl was born, the secret was all but lost. The stories

had become scripture, and only the very brave—or very mad—dared to

doubt them. The girl was raised on the stories, and never questioned their

truth, until the day her mother took her walking beyond the city walls.

In the wilds outside, a voice as fathomless as the ocean spoke to her

of a time before the domed cities, before wholes became halves and

bargains were made in blood. It told of a terrible choice and even more

terrible consequences. It begged her to listen, to live.…

In the early days, I was one, the voice whispered. I was this world and

this world was me, and the dance was seamless and sweet.

Then the ships came from a faraway world. They came belching

smoke and fire, stinking of space and beings living and breathing, loving

and hating, hoping and despairing in close quarters for too many centuries.

I watched the humans spill from their ships, blinking in my sun, marveling at

my moons, weeping as they set foot on land for the first time, and I

was … curious.

I teased my magic between their spindle fingers, into their seashell

ears, around the pulsing heads of their babes, finding them as delightful as

my native creatures, but soft and unprepared for life on our world. Knowing

they would die without my help, I began to touch them, to transform them.

It was what I had done since the beginning, when I was only the land and

the sea and a longing for something more to keep me company.

But the humans were afraid of my touch, of the magic that caused

their smooth flesh to scale and their bodies to bunch with unfamiliar

muscle. They cursed me. They praised me. They retreated into the great

domes they had built and hid themselves away, locking those already

touched by my magic outside their gates and calling them Monstrous.

They made promises and offerings and dangerous bargains, pulling at

me until I was no longer one but two: the Pure Heart and the Dark Heart,

something both more a n d much, much less.

The Dark Heart, my shadow self, soon developed an equally dark

hunger. It told the Smooth Skins in the domed cities of its longing, promising

them safety and abundance in exchange for blood and pain, for the

voluntary laying down of a life, the ultimate act of devotion. It gave them

magic words to speak and took their rulers as offerings, and in each city, in

the place where the sacrificial blood was spilled, enchanted roses grew, a

symbol of the covenant between the Smooth Skins and their new god.

Decades passed, and the Dark Heart fed and grew powerful, stealing

vitality from the planet, determined that none but its chosen few should

thrive. And so the Smooth Skins in the cities learned to bleed, and the

Monstrous outside learned to hate, and I faded away, stretched thinner

with every passing year, until only a precious few heard my voice.

Finally, I realized I had to reach out to the Smooth Skins in a new way.

Before it was too late. Using the power of transformation upon myself for

the first time, I took the form of a Monstrous woman with long black hair

and white robes, a body to give the Smooth Skins one last chance to show

compassion.

I went from city to city, introducing myself as an enchantress, a

priestess of the planet. I begged to be allowed inside. I begged the Smooth

Skins to abandon their dark worship and accept the gifts of their new world.

I begged them to make me whole, to restore the innocence I’d lost when

they had begun to call me god and devil.

But the gates of the domed cities remained shut. The Smooth Skins

had no concern for the rest of the world, so long as their own desires were

met. They spit harsh words through the cracks in their walls. They shot

weapons through slots in their gates. Arrows pierced my chest, and my new

blood spilled onto the ground.

I stumbled into the wilds, seeking shelter, but in the camps of the

Monstrous I found no aid. Sensing I was not truly one of their own, they

bared their teeth, called me witch, and turned me away.

My new body dying and my hopes for peace shattered, I gathered the

last of my magic and sent a curse sweeping across the world. I cursed the

eyes of the Monstrous to run dry, never to know the release of tears, but I

cursed the Smooth Skins even more terribly. From that day forward, a

precious few of their babes would be born kissed by the Monstrous traits

they despised. The rest would be born with missing pieces, trapped in bodies

as twisted and wrong as the Dark Heart they worshipped.

The Dark Heart managed to spare a few of the city dwellers—those

from the families who had spilled blood for their god—but my curse had its

way with the rest. The rest of the Smooth Skins became more monstrous

than the creatures they feared, and no amount of blood spilled in their royal

gardens could make them whole again.

There is only one way to undo the curse: if even one Smooth Skin and

one Monstrous can learn to love the other more than anything else—more

than safety or prejudice, more than privilege or revenge, more even than

their own selves—then the curse that division has brought upon our world

will be broken and the planet made whole.

For a time, I had hope that my last act of cruelty would sway the

humans in a way my pleas for mercy had not. But as time

passed—hundreds and hundreds of years slipping away as I tossed on the

wind, a ghost haunting lands where I used to live and breathe—I saw I had

accomplished nothing. The world outside the domes continued to die. The

land and the creatures upon it cried out for aid, but I could only watch as

elders suffered and young ones starved. I had nothing left to give. I had lost

everything but my voice.

And what good is a voice when so few will listen?

Will you listen, child? the Pure Heart of the planet asked the girl. Will

you do what the others would not? There is proof of the story I tell. I can

show you where to look. I can help you find the truth.

The truth had been hidden away, the voice told the princess, but she

could find it, if she was brave.

The girl wasn’t brave. Her fifth birthday was still three months away.

She wasn’t a hero with a sword; she wasn’t even allowed a knife to cut her

food, for fear she’d sever a finger. But still, the voice haunted her dreams. It

cried out for justice, but the girl learned to cry louder, to stand on her

tower balcony and howl, terrifying the common people living in the center

of the city.

She screamed and fought the servants who were sent to care for her.

She clawed at her father’s face and bared her teeth at him in rage. She

wept and ripped her dolls to pieces—heads and arms and legs pulled

asunder, every dress torn in two, every tiny crown bent and broken—but

she never spoke of the secret. She never admitted, even to herself, why she

was so angry. And sad. And afraid.

Months passed, and eventually the Pure Heart spoke to her no

longer. The girl’s misery and rage slipped away, and the secret sank like a

stone,

deep,

deep,

deep

inside her, until the truth was as forgotten as hope and beauty and

all the other things given to the darkness.

ONE

ISRA

THE city is beautiful tonight. I can tell by the smells drifting through

Needle’s open window—the last of the autumn flowers clinging to their

stalks, their perfume crisper and cleaner than the summer blossoms that

came before; fruit sweet and heavy on the trees; and above it all, the heady

fragrance of the roses blooming in the royal garden.

I will be out among it all soon. The tower holds me by day, but by

night I am a wanderer, a good fellow of the moons. The yellow moon, the

blue moon, even the red moon, with its beams that cut angrily through the

dome when the Monstrous light their funeral fires in the desert. I call the

moons by secret names; they call me Isra. I am not their princess, or their

mistress, or their daughter, or their prisoner. I am Isra of the wild hair and

quick feet clever in the darkness. I am Isra of the shadows, my secret made

meaningless by moonlight.

I am ready to see my moons, to see anything.

It’s been four endless nights since I visited the roses.

The Monstrous draw closer to Yuan than ever before. There are city

soldiers everywhere, prowling the wall walks, fortifying the gates, testing

for weaknesses in the dome, padding the trails from the city center to the

flower gardens to the orchards to the fields, and back again, in their soft

boots.

They would never survive in the desert outside. Their boots are

glorified house slippers, their feet soft and vulnerable beneath. I’m certain I

have more calluses on my feet than any of Baba’s soldiers, rough spots on

my toes and heels that catch and hold on stone.

I can practically feel the stone of the balcony’s ledge digging into my

skin now, grounding me as I hover in the hungry air at the edge of the

world.…

My toes itch. My tongue taps behind my teeth. My skin sweats

beneath my heavy blanket. Just a few more minutes. Surely Needle will put

out her light soon. My maid insists it’s impossible to smell wax melting from

across the room, but I can smell it, and it keeps me awake, even when I’m

not biding my time, waiting for the chance to escape.

An untended flame is dangerous, and this tower has burned before.

I dream about that fire almost every night—flames blooming like a

terrible flower, devouring the curtains and the bed, licking at my

nightgown. Baba’s strong hands throwing me to the ground, and my head

striking the stones before the world goes black. And finally, the door

splintering and my mother’s cry as she hurls herself from the tower

balcony.

That night is my clearest memory from the time before. One of my

only memories. I don’t remember my mother’s face or the color of Baba’s

eyes. I don’t remember romps in the garden or holiday dinners at court,

though Baba swears we had them. I don’t even remember the sight of my

own face. My mother forbade mirrors in the tower, and after her death, I

had no need of them. My eyes never recovered from the night Baba saved

me from the flames. For a day or two, the healers thought they might—I

saw flashes of light and color in the darkness—but within a week it was

obvious my sight was gone forever. I’ve been blind since I was four years

old, the year my mama joined the long line of dead queens.

“Terribly unfair,” I’ve heard people whisper when they don’t realize

the figure in the garden with the cloak pulled over her head isn’t another

noble out for a walk, “that the princess should lose her mama and her eyes

all at once.”

I want to tell them my eyes are not lost. See? Here they are. Still in

my head. But I don’t say a word. I can’t reveal myself. No one knows what

the princess of Yuan looks like these days. I haven’t been knowingly allowed

out of the tower since my tenth birthday. If the Monstrous breach the

walls, Father is certain I’ll be safe here until the mutants are destroyed.

There is only one door leading into the tower, and Baba and his chief

advisor, Junjie, are the only ones who know where the key is hidden.

They have no idea that I don’t need a key. Or a door.

I only need my sentry to put out her light and go to sleep!

I muffle a frustrated sigh with my fist. She’s probably sewing in bed

again. Needle has sewn me a dress each month for the past year. This one

is green, she told me.

Lovely, I said, and rolled my eyes. As if I need another dress. I’m

drowning in dresses. I’ve begged her to stop—or at least make something

for herself—but she won’t listen. One would think she’s deaf as well as

mute. If one didn’t know better. If one hadn’t been caught sneaking out of

one’s bedroom a dozen times, betrayed by the squeak of the bed frame or

the crack of an anklebone.

That’s why I have to wait. I have to be sure.…

Another half hour ticks away with maddening slowness. I’ve decided

Needle has indeed forgotten to put out her candle– again!— and am about

to throw off the covers, when I hear the shup of the silver cap smothering

the flame, and catch a whiff of smoke and the tail end of Needle’s soft sigh

as she curls beneath her blankets. Needle doesn’t make many sounds, but

of those she does, that sigh is the saddest.

Sigh.

I’m suddenly ashamed of myself. Poor, tired Needle, the common girl

without a voice, sworn to serve the princess without sight.

When I’m queen, I will give her a better job. Something far away

from me and the burden of my misbehavior. When I’m caught sneaking

from the tower—and I will be caught, no matter how careful I am; there are

only so many precautions a blind girl can take—she will be the one who’s

punished. I know that, but I can’t stop. I need the night. I need the feel of

my hair lifting from my shoulders as I run.

There is no wind in Yuan. Wind is a fairy tale, a magical, invisible

force that stirs the planet, assuring living things that the world still moves.

Under our dome, the air is too still. It smothers, clutches, a hand tightening

into a fist that will someday crush the city to pieces.

It’s been nearly a millennium since those outside the domes were

mutated by the toxic new world, but the past two hundred years have been

the most devastating for the people living in the cities. All but three of the

original fifteen settlements have fallen to the monsters in the desert. The

messenger birds from the king of Sula and the queen of Port South come

less and less frequently. One day they will stop altogether.

Or perhaps our birds will be the first to have their freedom. Either

way, Yuan is living on borrowed time. Though probably not as borrowed as

mine.…

I wait a few more moments—until Needle’s breath comes slowly and

evenly—before slipping out of bed and eating up the thick carpet between

my bedroom and the balcony with eager feet. Seventeen steps to the

bedroom door; twenty-seven down the hall, past the sitting room, through

the music room, and out onto the balcony; then three more and the careful

fall to freedom. Careful, so I don’t follow in my mother’s footsteps. Careful,

so my escape is only for the night, not for forever.

I brace my hands on the balcony ledge and push off the ground with

bare toes, drawing my knees up to my chest, landing atop the parapet in an

easy crouch. My fingertips brush the cold marble; my cotton overalls draw

up my shins.

The overalls are an orchard worker’s suit with wide legs and deep

pockets. I stole them from a supply shed near the apple orchard two years

ago. Now the legs grow too short. I am seventeen and very tall for a person.

Very, very tall. I am taller than Baba, taller even than Junjie, whom I’ve

heard called “an imposing man.” I am long and tall, and my skin is coarser

than any other I’ve touched. Even Needle’s work-roughened hands are

softer than mine, the princess she bathes in cream, washes only with honey

soap. My rough, peeling flesh was my greatest clue, back when I was still

sorting out the mystery of myself.

Now I understand. I know the real reason I’m locked away from my

people.

“I may be tainted, but I’m not a fool,” I whisper into the too-tranquil

air. It gobbles up my words and swallows them deep, smug in its assurance

that the quiet order of the dome will never be disturbed. Seconds later, I

bare my teeth in my most ferocious smile, and jump from the ledge.

The night comes alive. Cool air snatches my hair, lifting it from my

shoulders, tugging at my scalp. It rushes up my pant legs, shivering over my

belly and up my neck. My blood races, and my throat traps a giddy squeal.

The tips of my toes beat with their own individual heartbeats as they make

contact with the curved edge of the first roof and I take a running leap for

the second, deliciously alive with fear.

I’ve made this descent a thousand times or more, but still a taste of

the original terror remains. The first time, my feet didn’t know the dips and

curves and footholds for themselves. The falls—the six curved roofs below

the tower balcony—were only a story told by Baba as we sat in the

afternoon sun. My fingers and toes are my eyes. I couldn’t see the truth of

my way out until I was already over the edge, dropping the ten feet to the

top of the first roof. But it was there. Just as my father had said. As were

the second and the fourth and the sixth, and the last tumble into the

cabbage garden.

I plop down on the hard ground between the cabbage rows—no

fertile patch of land is wasted in Yuan—and fold back into a crouch, staying

low as I shuffle back and scatter the dirt with my hands, concealing the two

deep prints from my landing. There is rarely anyone this close to my prison,

but I don’t set off right away. With all the guards milling about, Baba surely

has a patrol stationed near the tower.

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.