Stacey Jay - Of Beauty and Beast

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.