Stacey Jay - Of Beauty and Beast

When I wake again, the cage is dark and quiet, and I’m cold. Freezing.

My skin crawls. My scales pull so tightly together that it feels they’ll rip away from the flesh. I shiver until my teeth knock with a dull clack, clack .

“Gem? Are you awake?” A whisper I can’t place, but in the language of the Desert People, not the Smooth Skins, so it must be—

“Gem? Can you hear me, boy?”

Father . I try to speak, but my jaw is clenched too tightly; my tongue is fat and slow. I’m dying. I know it. My body feels cut in half—the top made of ice, the bottom still hot, scattered with knots full of poison.

“Gem, if you can hear me …” He draws a ragged breath. “You are our hope. Remember what we came for. Leave a message at the gathering stones if you’re able. We’ll come back for you if we can.”

Come back? Where are they going? Have they found a way to escape?

“If not, you must finish—” A long, hollow scrape interrupts him.

“Silence in the cell,” a voice booms in the Smooth Skin language.

Father ignores the warning. “Bring life to our people. Save them, Gem. You—”

“I said silence.” There’s another scrape, and then footsteps and the clang of metal on metal. “Bring the darts!” Another man answers, and more footsteps fill the room, and my father is still shouting, but somewhere beneath it all, I swear I hear Gare growl that he should be the one to stay behind, that he doesn’t need Smooth Skin words to claim Smooth Skin lives.

I try to tell him he’s right, to confess my weakness, to tell father I’m dying and it’s too late, but I’m already floating away from my body. Up, up, up, until I look down at the slab of meat that housed my spirit, down from the ceiling where the air is silent and peaceful.

I want to keep going. I want to leave my corpse to cool on the stone, but I worry.…

Will I be able to reach the land of my ancestors if I die here? Without a funeral fire or the songs of the Desert People singing me into the night?

Or will I stay in this hole, a lost spirit, haunting the Smooth Skins for the rest of time?

They deserve a haunting, but I don’t want to be the spirit to do it.

I am weak. How could I have ever thought myself strong?

My heart thu-dums , and I’m pulled back to the cold and the hot of my body. To the knocking of my teeth, and the sound of my father crying out in pain as he’s shot. When the blackness comes again, I’m grateful.

In and out. In and out.

Days—maybe weeks—pass in a haze. My feverish body is moved from the stone slab to a pallet so soft, I’m sure I’m dreaming it. It cushions me like a cloud. A blanket made of whispers covers my body. Gentle fingers pry open my lips and pour bitter liquid down my throat. I swallow. I don’t care if it’s poison. I sleep. I don’t care if I wake. I’m ready to die. I don’t want to live or think or dream anymore.

The dreams are the worst. Even when the sick heat in my legs fades, I still dream of flame, of a pyre where I burn forever to pay for failing my people.

I am more than shamed. I loathe myself.

“Father …” The sound of my own voice startles me awake. I open my eyes wide, but immediately slide them half-closed again. It’s bright in this room. Sun-filled. I never thought I’d see the sun again. I never thought I’d see her again, either.

The princess sits by my pallet, her oval face calm, emotionless, her blind eyes staring through me. “Are you awake?” Her voice is different than I remember. Emptier. She looks different, too.

Her dark hair is coiled on top of her head like a nest of snakes. Her lips are stained the red of a cactus flower. Her body is covered in a dress the color of her eyes, but not a dress as Desert Women know it. Our women’s dresses tie with straps at the back of the neck. They end at the knee, with slits up the sides to give their legs room to move. This dress has sleeves that clutch at the girl’s arms, holding her shoulders prisoner. It squeezes her chest and waist. I roll my head to see that the squeezing continues all the way to her ankles.

She looks like a worm wrapped up in green silk for a spider’s dinner.

“I asked you a question,” she says, still calm, unmoving except for her red lips. It feels like we’re alone in this room, but she doesn’t seem afraid.

I roll my head, forcing my stiff neck to turn one way and then the other. My eyes roam, taking in the stone walls, the barred windows, the heavy wooden door. Still a cage, but not as miserable a cage. And we are alone. The princess and the monster.

I turn back to her, watch her pale throat work as she swallows. I could kill her now. I’m weaker than I’ve ever been, and my legs ache in a way that assures me that standing isn’t possible, but I could still take her life. My arms aren’t restrained. One swipe of my claws at her neck where the blood flows quickest, and it would be done. She’d bleed to death before the guards could open the door.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Her lips twitch.

My right hand flexes. My claws descend with a sluggish lurp , oozing from above my nail beds.

“It would be a tragedy for the city.” Her words float on their own cloud, hovering above us in the crisp air. “I should be married,” she announces suddenly, proving she’s as rattled in the head as I remember.

“Seventeen is young, and I’m in mourning until the spring, but I could do it.

I’m sure someone would be willing to risk the bad luck that comes from breaking tradition.”

Seventeen. Two years younger than me. Not young at all.

“But then they’d have no reason to humor me.” She sighs. “Being the keeper of the covenant only goes so far, you know. I’ve learned that in the time you’ve been sleeping. People still feel free to tell a blind girl what to do. My maid had to sneak a sleeping draft into your guards’ tea in order for me to be granted a private visit with my own prisoner. Maybe it would be different if …” Her empty eyes slide toward the door, her ears lift until the tips are hidden in her hair. “They’ll lock me up again if they find me here,” she whispers. “Junjie will take my father’s place as jailer. I will never be seen again.”

“Then … go,” I rasp.

Her lips curve in a hard smile. “I knew you’d speak to me. Sooner or later.” She leans closer, stretching her long neck. “How did you learn our language out in the desert?”

I think about refusing to answer, but I don’t want the princess to leave, not until I’ve decided whether or not I’ll take my piece of her. “My mother.” I lift my fingers and let them drop, one by one, bringing life back into my hand. “She carried the tradition.”

“What does that mean?”

“She carried Yuan words in her mind. Her mother carried them before her, my great-grandmother before that.” With a steady movement I pull the whisper-soft blanket down my body. It slips off my shoulders, down my chest. I keep pulling, slowly baring my right hand. “Women usually carry language. They take words faster. But I have no sisters. I was the youngest, so my mother taught me.”

“How did your ancestors learn?”

“I don’t know.” My hand is almost free. My focus is on ridding myself of the blanket. “Mother never told me, and she died four winters …” My words trail away as I realize what I’ve said.

The princess is quiet. I lie still, not wanting her to hear me rearranging the covers. “My mama is dead, too. When I was four years old.”

I don’t say anything. I don’t feel sorry. The Smooth Skins deserve to suffer, this girl most of all.

“Well …” She clears her throat. “You speak well.”