Chapter 16
Rope Through Water
Maisie
The wash is ankle-deep in sand that swallows my footsteps. I keep the flashlight pointed low, the beam tracking over scattered rock and creosote, and try to ignore the way the darkness presses in beyond its reach.
Oz flows beside me in his preferred shape, tall and loosely humanoid, and he catches the faint moonlight to throw it back in shifting iridescence. He makes almost no sound. When he steps, the sand barely registers his weight.
He hasn’t said anything for the entire trek.
I stop and turn to look at him. His face is a smooth expanse of teal, but there’s a pulse of gold at his center. Concern. Or curiosity. I still haven’t learned all of his colors.
“You okay?” I ask. “Do you still sense it?”
Oz tilts his head. The gesture is so human that I sometimes forget he learned it from observation, not instinct. “Yes. Just barely. A creature yearning.”
Yearning for what, I’m afraid to ask.
An owl calls from somewhere up the canyon, a low question repeated twice. The night answers with silence. Somewhere to our left, something small skitters between rocks. Lizard, probably. Maybe a kangaroo rat.
I let Oz hold my hand.
We keep moving. The wash narrows as we climb, the walls rising on either side in layers of red sandstone and pale limestone.
Oz’s surface shifts as we pass through shadows and open stretches, violet deepening to indigo in the darkest pockets, teal brightening where the moon reaches.
He’s reading something in the rocks. Some mineral signature I can’t perceive.
“Here,” he says suddenly.
I stop and sweep the flashlight at the wash ahead, finding nothing but sand and stone and a twisted mesquite clinging to the wall.
“What do you see?”
He crouches, pressing his palm flat against the sand. Gold threads pulse through his body, racing from his hand up through his arm and across his chest. He stays like that for a long moment, perfectly still.
“Someone came through here. Recently.” He lifts his hand and points up the wash, toward the old mining claim. “That way.”
“How recently?”
“Hours. Maybe less.”
“Do we follow?”
Oz rises to his full height, his form rippling with something that looks like anticipation. The gold in him brightens. “I want to know what it is.”
His hand finds mine again. His palm is warmer now, or maybe I’m colder. The desert leaches heat fast once the sun goes down, and I left my jacket on the porch.
We go deeper. The mining claim opens into a shallow canyon, the walls pocked with old blast holes and the dark mouths of tunnels that were abandoned before my grandmother was born. Oz slows as we approach and lowers himself, spreading out and growing denser. His colors dim to near-black.
“Here,” he murmurs.
I kill the flashlight. The darkness is immediate and total, pressing against my eyes until they adjust. When they do, I can make out the shape of the ridge against the stars, the pale ribbon of the wash below us, and something else—a faint glow from the base of the canyon wall.
A cave mouth. Low and wide, the rock around it has been worn smooth by water that hasn’t flowed here in centuries. The glow comes from inside, a pale green that pulses once and goes dark.
Oz goes rigid beside me. His surface flickers with jagged static—distress, I’ve seen it before—then settles into a deep, slow violet. Focus.
Before I know it, he’s moving toward the entrance, his form compressed low, gliding over the sand like something that belongs here. I follow, my heart hammering as my feet find purchase on loose scree.
The cave smells like mineral water and old stone. The air is cooler here, damp, and there’s a sound underneath the silence—a low, resonant hum that I feel in my molars more than hear with my ears.
Then the glow returns, and I see it.
A white shape huddled against the cave wall. Fur matted and dull, ribs visible beneath the skin, but alive, like it’s been fending for itself for months.
Captain. Gary’s cat.
The green light pulses again from deeper in the cave, and Captain’s head turns toward it. His eyes are wide, the pupils blown, and he makes a thin, trembling mew that echoes off the stone.
Oz moves past me. His form shifts as he approaches the cat, spreading wider and lower until he’s barely a foot tall, just a warm pool of teal on the cave floor. Captain hisses, ears flattening, but doesn’t run.
“Hush,” Oz says, and his voice drops to something barely above a whisper. “I know. I know you’re scared.”
Captain’s hiss dies in his throat. The cat watches Oz with those blown pupils, trembling, and Oz inches closer. Slowly. So slowly. His surface reaches the edge of Captain’s paw and stops, a hair’s breadth away, waiting.
The cat sniffs. His whiskers twitch against Oz’s surface. A long moment passes.
Then Captain leans into him.
Oz gathers the cat with the same careful attention he uses for everything—pouring soap, reading my spine, handing me tools before I ask.
His substance rises around Captain in a gentle cup, supporting the cat’s weight without restraining him, warming the body that’s been alone out here for months.
Captain tenses, claws out, but Oz holds. The tremors gradually slow.
I crouch beside them and reach for Captain’s head. His fur is gritty with sand, but he’s solid beneath my palm.
“Hey, buddy,” I whisper. “Gary’s been looking for you.”
Captain’s eyes close. He presses into my palm, and Oz’s warmth spreads up through my fingers, the three of us connected in the dark while something pulses deeper in the cave, watching us with its green light.
The hum in my teeth sharpens, and Oz’s colors shift, deep violet threaded with something uncertain. Captain’s ears swivel toward the sound.
“We should go,” I say.
Oz doesn’t move. His attention is fixed on the glow, his form perfectly still around the cat. “It’s been here a long time. Waiting.”
“For what?”
“Company.” The word comes out slow, weighted. “The same thing I was.”
The hair on my arms stands up. The green light brightens again, and I catch a glimpse of something at the edge of the glow.
A shape, low and irregular, pressed against the cave wall. It could be rock. It could be something that learned to look like rock.
Then a flashlight beam cuts through the dark from above.
“Deborah Pritchett, Neighborhood Watch!” The voice rings off the canyon walls, sharp and official. “Step away from that animal!”
I spin. Mrs. Pritchett stands at the rim of the wash, safety vest blazing orange, one hand cupping a flashlight the size of a billy club and the other gripping a coil of clothesline rope.
Her sun hat is askew. Her expression is the kind of determination you only see in someone who has rehearsed this moment.
Captain scrambles in Oz’s hold. Oz tightens his hold slightly, keeping the cat cradled, and the movement makes Mrs. Pritchett’s face go white.
“Put that cat down this instant!” She scrambles down the scree and her flashlight jerks wildly. “I saw you! You were going to eat it!”
“What?” I stand up, putting myself between her and Oz. “Mrs. Pritchett, no—”
“I have binoculars, Maisie. I’ve been watching the ridge all week, and tonight I see you sneaking off with—” she fumbles for the word, her flashlight landing on Oz’s iridescent surface, “—with that, and it’s got Gary’s cat! Give me Captain this instant!”
Oz rises slowly, Captain tucked against his chest. The cat’s gone rigid, eyes huge, but he’s not struggling anymore. Oz’s warmth is doing its work.
“Mrs. Pritchett.” I step forward, hands raised. “You’ve got this wrong. Oz found him. He was keeping him warm.”
“Oz.” She repeats the name like it’s evidence. “You named it.”
“Him. And yes, because he lives with me. He’s been living with me for weeks, and helping me with my work.”
Mrs. Pritchett’s laugh is a short, incredulous bark. “Goodness, you’ve gone mad! Hold still. I’m performing a citizen’s arrest on this creature!”
She advances with the rope held high like a lasso, her safety vest catching the moonlight.
Oz bends and transfers Captain gently into my arms before she reaches us.
The cat is light and bony, trembling against my chest. I hold him tucked close, one hand supporting his hindquarters, his fur gritty against my palm.
Mrs. Pritchett reaches Oz and grabs his wrists with the determination of a woman who has lassoed ornery livestock. She wraps the clothesline around, loops it twice, yanks the knot tight.
The rope slides through his arms and pools onto the sand between them.
She stares at it. Picks it up. Tries again. This time she pulls harder. Her knuckles go white and her jaw sets in the way that means physics won’t deter her.
The rope yet again passes through his wrists like a piano wire through jello, the knots tightening on themselves before dropping to the sand again.
Oz stands perfectly still and makes no comment. His surface ripples once with amusement, but he keeps his face smooth, his posture cooperative. He lets her work.
I should intervene. I should explain. But Mrs. Pritchett’s mouth is pressed into a thin line of concentration, and she’s attempting a square knot now, her fingers working with the grim focus of someone who won’t be denied a citizen’s arrest, and something about the earnestness of it stops me.
This is the most important thing she’s done in months. Possibly years. Who am I to take that from her?
Oz seems to reach the same conclusion. He adjusts his stance slightly, making his wrists more accessible, and waits with the patience of a creature who spent three years in a storage unit. The rope keeps falling through. Mrs. Pritchett keeps trying.
“Mrs. Pritchett,” I start. “Maybe I can explain—”
“Save it for the judge.” She doesn’t look up from her knotwork.