Of Beauty and Beast

I see the pearl buttons on my mother’s dress, the ones that dug into my cheek when she let me nap with her on the sofa in her chamber. I see the cabbage fields and the orchards blossoming far below the tower balcony, and the scarlet explosion of the sun setting outside the dome. I see my own pudgy hand—not too tainted then, only dry and a bit cracked—snatching a sticky roll from my mother’s tray, and I feel a giddy squeal rising inside me as I sneak with it back to my room. I’d already eaten my morning treat, but my appetite for burned honey icing was insatiable.

Mother always slept late and so soundly that not even little feet scampering into her room would wake her.

I’d forgotten that about my mama. I’d forgotten most of those memories. Their recovery warms me from the inside out, makes me smile as I give in to the muzzy feeling tugging me closer to sleep.

I curl on my side in the dirt, arm pillowing my cheek—thinking of those pearl buttons, and wishing I could remember my mother’s face—while the cold pulls oblivion over my shoulders, tucks it around my ears, and covers my sightless eyes. Before I consciously decide to go, I am snapped away into something deeper than sleep, but I’m not afraid.

I’m not cold or lost or lonely anymore. I am not a princess or a queen or a sacrifice or an abomination or a disappointment. I am nothing at all, a cup swiftly emptying of all the Isra inside it, leaving nothing behind.

11 GEM

I stand at the base of the mountain for a long, long moment, not sure I’ll be able to climb back up again.

The place where the soldier’s spear pierced my thigh aches so badly, it feels as though the bone there will split in half. A hollow in the ground between two nearby Cross cacti looks more inviting than a Smooth Skin bed of clouds. I think how good it would be to lie down there and stare up at the million stars in the sky and be done with this day. But after a long drink of cactus milk and a too-short rest, I start back up the trail.

As much as I’d like to leave the queen to her lies and trembling up on the mountain, I promised to keep her safe.

Still, I don’t hurry. I can’t hurry with my leg throbbing like a second angry heart, but I wouldn’t even if I could. The less time I spend with Isra tonight, the better. I can’t remember being this angry since the day she came to my cell and laughed at my starving people and cried her sticky tears onto my chest. I would just as soon wrap my hand around her throat and squeeze as sit by the fire with the queen of Yuan.

How dare she treat me like a comrade at shovel and hoe every day we worked together, only to cower and quake the moment her guards are gone? I’d believed the way she viewed my people had changed. I thought she was different from the rest of the Smooth Skins. I thought she considered me a … friend. I certainly worked hard enough to convince her I was worth befriending. Even if every shared story and teasing word and gentle bit of advice was deception on my part, she doesn’t know that. I’ve given her no reason to change her good opinion of me.

If she ever had one.

She must have been lying, too. Lying with every lopsided smile and flash of her clever eyes and softly whispered reassurance about my healing legs. She was only pretending to trust me, to feel affection for the beast she kept in chains. I should have known she was false. In her eyes, I’ll always be a monster. I suspected as much from the beginning.

So why does the proof of what I’ve known all along feel like a betrayal? Why does the sight of her shaking hands make me want to hurl boulders down the mountain? Why do I hurt?

I feel as bruised as I did the day Meer told me she was choosing another man as her mate. I should have been happy. I didn’t want to stay with the tribe and watch the baby growing inside Meer be born into a life of famine and pain. I was a warrior. I had a tunnel to finish digging, roses to steal, Smooth Skin cities to worm my way inside.

But I wasn’t happy. There were days when watching Meer love someone else more than she had ever loved me—seeing the casual intimacies between her and Hant at the campfire, catching him with his hand upon her swelling belly and a smile on his face—felt like dying. The same way being captured by Smooth Skins felt like dying, and being ordered about by my enemy felt like dying.

Isra has brought nothing but misery into my life, but when I arrive at the remains of the campfire and see the flames out and Isra no longer sitting where I left her, every hot angry thing inside me runs cold.

“Isra?” I circle the fire, panic sharpening my voice. “Isra!”

The air is too quiet. Even the wind has stopped moaning. It feels like the night is holding its breath, waiting for me to discover the terrible fate that has befallen the queen of Yuan. It has to be terrible. I left a blind girl alone a dozen feet from the edge of a cliff. She could have gone to relieve herself and fallen to her death. She could have decided to follow me and taken a wrong turn on the path and wandered into a zion nest. She could have been discovered by a hunting party and been taken prisoner.

I was certain there would be none of my tribe this close to Yuan, but what of the other tribes? The Desert People from the north have been venturing farther south since they burned the domed city of Vanguard two years ago, only to find that its destruction did nothing to return life to their own blighted territory.

Naira warned my father that if we failed to return with Yuan’s magic roses, it might come to war between our tribes one day soon. We must show the northerners that we have harnessed the Smooth Skin magic, and share the power of the roses with them, before their chief convinces his people that the only way to heal the land is to destroy every domed city still standing. We cannot allow Yuan to fall, not until we have secured the secret to their abundance.

Isra knows that secret. I should have been coaxing it from her, not shouting and brooding like a child. I should have thought about my people and my promises. I should have remembered how much Isra needs protecting. The desert might be my home, but it isn’t hers. I was a fool to forget that, even for a second.

I think of the first moment I saw her, with her head thrown back and her arms open wide, laughing as she ran through the garden. I thought she was crazy then, but what I wouldn’t give to hear her laugh like that right now. I have to find her. I have to. She has to be alive. If she’s not …

“Isra!” I roar, my voice echoing off the rocks. I can’t think of her body lying bent and broken halfway down the cliff. I won’t.

I search the dirt around the fire once, twice, and finally, on the third careful circle, I find an uneven set of footprints. The moons haven’t risen high enough to touch this side of the mountains, but the stars give enough light for me to see the scuff marks leading up the trail. She was walking.

Not steadily, but alone. That’s something. Something.

I start up the mountain at a run, ignoring the agony in my leg every time my left foot connects with the ground. I deserve this pain. I’ll gladly take this pain and more if only—

There! An Isra-sized lump, curled on the ground by the side of the trail.

“Isra!” I kneel beside her, expecting her to wake up and snap at me for frightening her. Expecting her to stir in her sleep, or grumble beneath her breath. But she doesn’t move, even when I push her hair from her face and cup her cheek in my hand.

Instantly, I know something’s wrong. She’s so cold. Colder than anything living.

All this time, I thought I was changing Isra’s mind, but she was the one changing mine, so much so that I forgot that there are differences between us. Serious differences. She has no scales or claws to protect her from the hardships of the desert; she has a body that must be fed and watered more often than mine; she is smaller and more delicate and clearly isn’t able to tolerate variations in the temperature of her blood.

The Desert People grow cold during the winter, but there’s no danger in it. We are more vital in summer, but we don’t lie down and die when the winter nights take hold.

Die. She can’t.

“Isra. Is—” My voice breaks as I gather her into my lap. Her limbs are limp and lifeless; her head rests