Beast by Tiffini Hunt Read Free Book Online Page B

Papa’s bed. Then I proceeded to crawl on all fours to the top of my bed, closest to the roses. Hoping to go back to the place in the forest I had seen before I fell, I shut my eyes again, really tightly. This time, all I saw was the black of my eyelids.
    After I spent some time just staring at the backs of my eyelids, I started to hear a voice. At first it was extremely quiet, almost inaudible. The voice sounded familiar.
    “No matter what happens, it is for a reason!” it whispered.
    “Keep your faith! Never give up hope!” I heard it say a little more loudly.
    “You are where you are for a reason! Do not be afraid or discouraged!” it shouted.
    I realized it was Mother’s voice. Tears fell from my eyes as my heart began to ache. But despite all the pain and agony, it was encouraging not only to hear her voice, but also to be reminded of what she had always told me.
    My bed shook, which caused my eyes to spring open. I looked toward the end of my bed; there was Buttons, sharpening his claws on the end of the bed.
    “Wait a minute!” I yelled as he jumped onto my bed. “I shut my door when I came in here. Buttons, where did you come from?”
    I looked to my door, which was indeed closed. I could not remember if I had seen Buttons in here when I walked in.
    Maybe he snuck in when I walked in, I thought.
    Hopping off the bed, I decided to leave my bedroom to go back downstairs; I needed to not be cooped up in my room for the rest of the day. I looked at the roses before I left and thought about trying to help the roses outside.
    Because of the roses, I lingered and left my room slowly. It seemed that I had done this a lot since the roses had started giving out their intense perfume.
    This time, I made sure that Buttons came out of my room before I shut the door. He followed me down the stairs and stayed with me until we were in the foyer, where we parted. I went out the front door; Buttons stopped to clean himself.
    The sun was high in the sky, but there were clusters of clouds that sometimes covered the sun. As I watched the sky, I skipped over to the toolshed that was over by the barn. I grabbed a watering can, which I proceeded to fill with water. As I walked around the castle to the rose bed, I looked out into to the forest. My heart began to sink. I was sure that I was going to start crying again if I did not turn away.
    When the rose bed was about ten feet in front of me, I saw that the roses looked horrid, as if no one had taken care of them in months. In the bed of about one hundred roses, only eight had petals on them; however, the petals were so brown that they were almost black. The petals from all the other roses were all over the bed, covering the soil.
    Before I could water the roses, I needed to remove the dead petals. It was difficult to avoid the thorns; I did not even really know what I was doing, to be honest. After getting poked several times by the thorns, I finally cleared enough of the petals to water the roses.
    Russel must have seen me from the dining-room window.
    “What are you doing out there?” he asked.
    “I am trying to help the roses grow!” I insisted, putting my hands on my hips.
    “You are bleeding! Come inside; we need to clean you up!”
    I sighed, poured the rest of the water out of the jug, and attempted to dust off the mud on my knees and hands.
    As I walked in through the front door, Leala and Deleena started laughing at my appearance. My nice pants had been ruined by the mud.
    “What in the world made you so muddy?” Deleena giggled.
    “I was out trying to make the roses grow. They are almost all dead!” I whined.
    Leala grabbed my hand to take me to the nearest bathroom, which was in the hallway between the kitchen and the dining room, to clean up. Deleena ran to grab clean clothes out of my room. In the bathroom, Leala wiped off my face with a wet towel. A few minutes later, Deleena came in with clean clothes.
    After they helped me change, we walked back into the