Free Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay Page B

says, before adding in an almost shy tone, “I’ve been trying to read them. My mother taught me your letters and the sounds they make. It’s not as difficult as I thought it would be.”
     
    “I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon,” I say, feeling a little envious. “I wish I could read. Being read to is wonderful, but I always thought the stories would go faster if I could see the words myself.”
     
    “I’m not very fast.”
     
    “You will be. You’re clever.” He is. More clever than I could have imagined before we started working in the garden together. The past two weeks have only confirmed how foolish I was to underestimate Gem. He has a vast knowledge of plants, speaks our language with the fluency of a noble, and has more stories memorized than I’ve had read to me in my life.
     
    “Soon you’ll have even more stories to add to your collection,” I say, trying to smile. “You’ll have to tell me your favorites.”
     
    “Of course,” he says, before adding in a softer voice, “What’s wrong?
    You don’t sound like yourself.”
     
    I lean against the retaining wall, and reach out, running my fingers over the wilting petals of the last of the autumn clematis. “I’ve done foolish things tonight.”
     
    “What kind of foolish things?”
     
    “I was mean to Needle,” I say, tears stinging my eyes for the millionth
    time since my father died. “I shouldn’t have been. She’s always so patient with me.”
     
    “She’ll forgive you,” he says, the lack of judgment in his tone making me feel even worse.
     
    “I know,” I mumble, wishing I hadn’t said anything. No matter how well we’ve been getting along, or how much more human Gem is than I could have dreamed a Monstrous would be, it was stupid to start confessing things to him. He’s not my friend; he’s my prisoner.
     
    “What else?” he asks.
     
    “Nothing,” I say, lingering when I know I should tell him good night and be on my way. But I’m not in any hurry to return to the tower or Needle, who I know will be waiting by the door with her sad sigh, ready to gently remind me of everything I did wrong tonight.
     
    I know I have to apologize and endure the reminders, but I’m not ready. Not yet.
     
    “I don’t believe you.” Gem’s voice holds a challenge I refuse to take.
     
    “Tell me a story,” I say instead, forcing a smile. Storytelling is what built the bridge between Gem and me in the first place. I began it as a way to break the strained silence during our first day in the garden, but Gem soon took the lead. He is a gifted storyteller and obviously appreciates a receptive audience. He has never refused me a story. “A happy story, please.”
     
    “What kind of happy story?”
     
    “One of your people’s legends. One with wind in it.”
     
    He falls quiet, but I don’t repeat myself. I know he’s putting his thoughts together and that it will be worth the wait. Gem’s stories are always wonderful, mysterious and magical and eerily familiar, stories my heart swears I’ve heard before even if my mind can’t remember them.
     
    “Once, long ago, in the early days of my tribe, there was a girl who loved a star,” he begins, summoning a delicious shiver from deep in my bones. I pull myself up to sit on the edge of the wall and draw my legs to my chest beneath my dress, grateful Needle gave me a full skirt rather than one of the narrow ones that make me teeter when I walk.
     
    “It was a summer star,” Gem continues once I’m comfortable. “And it appeared in the sky just as the summer grass turned brown. It burned a fierce orange and red, and spent its nights boasting of all the worlds it had known and the creatures who had loved it.
     
    “All the girls in the tribe enjoyed gazing at the star, but one girl, Melita, was captivated at first glance,” he says, the lulling rhythm of his words easing the last of the tension from my shoulders. “Every evening, she would creep from her