11. Oak’s Story
Oak’s Story
“What’s put you in such a foul mood today?” Molly asked, rolling out onto the front porch of her shop, where Pearl was hurling white paint onto the peeling sun-chapped boards of the wall with more violence than was called for.
“Nothing.” Pearl ran the brush vigorously along the trim around the window.
“Yeah, sure. And I’m engaged to the empress.”
Pearl threw her a glare. “Fine, it’s not nothing. Just none of your business.”
“Here.” Molly thrust a smoldering cigarette toward her.
Pearl reluctantly leaned down and accepted it, wrapping her lips around the end jutting from between Molly’s fingers. “Thanks,” she mumbled and returned her attention to attacking the other side of the window.
She couldn’t stop thinking about a goyle in a ravine and how sad she’d looked the other night.
And Pearl was angry that she even cared.
She didn’t owe Driz anymore. Except she knew that wasn’t actually true.
A shirt and some pie were hardly an exchange for several lives, including her own, which Driz had helped keep from harm.
Pearl was afraid if she spent more time with Driz, she might like her.
Might care. And Pearl wouldn’t do that, especially not for a creature of another species, who could easily kill her if she got upset.
So instead of caring, Pearl got angry and took her frustration out on the wall of Molly’s shop, wishing the paint could cover the ugly parts of her mind too.
“Take a break and come in back for a drink.”
“I don’t need a break or a drink,” Pearl grumbled.
“I’ve got lemonade.”
Pearl glared at her again. “You don’t play fair.”
Molly grinned and disappeared inside. Damn her, but Pearl loved Molly’s thistle lemonade nearly as much as her pie, especially in the heat of late afternoon.
She glanced at the sky, where the puffy clouds had been doing nothing to shield them from the anger of the sun.
A tumbleweed rolled down the road, a gust bumping it up onto the porch.
Pearl kicked it away before it stuck in her fresh paint.
She finished the wall and then succumbed to temptation. She capped the drying can of paint and slipped the oversized apron over her head.
Molly had a glass already waiting for her. Pearl threw herself down into the chair at the kitchen table and gratefully chugged. The tart, sweet drink made of stewed thistles and a few precious jarred lemons soothed her throat and calmed her agitation.
“Did she break your heart, or did you break hers?” Molly asked.
“What’re you talking about?”
“Your large lady friend. And don’t try to tell me it’s not about her.”
Pearl groaned and slumped lower in her chair. “It’s not what you think.”
“Then tell me.”
“She wanted more, I guess. A promise I couldn’t give her.”
“And so you ran away.”
Pearl shrugged. It was sort of true.
Someone from the main street was calling Pearl’s name.
“In here,” Pearl hollered through the open doors.
Molly rolled her eyes, and a moment later, Sheriff Oak appeared in her kitchen.
“Sheriff,” Molly greeted her with a nod. “Lemonade?”
“Thanks, doll.”
“What d’you need?” Pearl asked, handing over her glass for Molly to refill for her mother.
“I just noticed a lack of painting happening and an absence of a painter. But now I see why. This is delicious as always, Molly.”
Pearl huffed and stood. “Fine, I’ll get back to work. Sundering blazes.”
“She’s in quite a mood today,” Molly shout-whispered to the sheriff.
“Oh, I know,” Sheriff Oak replied meaningfully as she followed Pearl back outside.
“Get off my back,” Pearl snapped. “I’m getting it done.”
Sheriff Oak caught her wrist to stop her when she started to pull on the apron. “I came to talk to you about something. Can I do that without you jumping down my throat?”
“Fine.” Pearl wrenched her wrist free and folded her arms. “Go on.”
“One of the fences got broke last night. Two dozen cattle loose. We’ve managed to find most, but a few are still missing.”
“Shit. Faltsprings?”
“Likely. But I also wondered if it might’ve been that goyle, if it’s still hanging around. A few people said they’ve seen shadows on the horizon at night. They’ve been known to take calves occasionally.”
Pearl’s heart accelerated. “It wasn’t her.”
“How d’you know?”
Driz didn’t hunt mammals. That was her first thought, but Pearl couldn’t say that because she had no reason to know it. She shook her head. “If the goyle took a calf, she wouldn’t need to bother with the fence.”
The sheriff shrugged in consent. “Not need, no.”
“What d’you know about them? Gargoyles? Why do they bother you so much?”
Sheriff Oak studied her from beneath the wide brim of her hat, as if deciding whether to answer.
“They were created by the lesser god Garga, before the Sundering War. It’s said the first ones were humans she encased in clay and stone, molding them into warriors for herself.
She created a small army. When she died in the war, it broke something in them.
They went rabid and got driven from the city, turned feral with the other beasts out here for the past centuries.
They’re usually skittish and keep to themselves.
Usually. And I don’t like the idea of one lurking around.
Especially if it’s nearby during the day. ”
“Because she might wake?”
Sheriff Oak nodded. “Never wake a sleeping goyle. No bullet will stop a ton of living stone on a rampage.”
“But why’d you think she’d rampage?”
“Because that’s what they do,” Sheriff Oak snapped. “They’re mindless and violent.” An unusual darkness edged her tone.
A shiver ran down Pearl’s spine. “You’ve seen that, haven’t you?”
Sheriff Oak appeared to study the freshly painted boards of the wall, but Pearl knew she was far away.
“Two days before I arrived in Salt Bluff. I was almost twelve, coming out with my pa and a dozen other families to start a life. We stopped in the foothills, a canyon to water the horses and mules. I’d made friends with another boy about my age.
He found a statue. But it wasn’t no fucking statue.
Over thirty people were in the canyon that day. Five walked out.”
“I never knew that,” Pearl whispered. She knew her grandfather had survived too. Pearl didn’t remember him, but she’d heard accounts of him helping to build some of what still stood as their town.
“It’s not a nice story. And there’s no one left to remember it but me now.”
Pearl could too easily imagine it. She’d seen Driz’s strength in her breathing flesh form. If she were made of solid stone…
Pearl put a bracing palm on her mother’s shoulder and squeezed. Sheriff Oak covered Pearl’s hand with her own, cracked and roughened from years of use, sun, and salt. Pearl’s were only somewhat less so, and given another twenty years, she knew they’d be the same.
“You certain that goyle wasn’t after you, Pea?”
Pearl frowned. “Why?”
Sheriff Oak met Pearl’s gaze, hard intensity to the gray. “That’s not the end of that story. After we settled here, I went hunting. Not for meat, but for revenge. With two of the others who survived. We never found the one who did it. But we found another. And those creatures do bleed at night.”
Pearl’s stomach dropped.
“Grief can do ugly things to people. The others lost their entire family in that canyon. I was young and angry too, and I went along with it, even though it was wrong. I knew it then, and I know it now. Probably why I never told you. There’s more to the story too, but I don’t wanna talk about that.
I made two terrible mistakes that night, and I’ve always worried one will come back to haunt me.
To collect its price.” Sheriff Oak gripped Pearl’s hand hard.
“I’ll be damned before I let that price be you. ”
“I won’t be,” Pearl promised. “And if anyone tries, I’ll shoot them. Like you taught me.”
Fondness curved Sheriff Oak’s mouth. “Good.” She cleared her throat and released Pearl.
The tolling bell tensed every muscle in Pearl’s body. She glanced toward the end of the street, hoping it was a kid being stupid instead of a true warning.
That was when they both saw it. The faint change in the light.
Like a wall of red smoke, the dust storm spilled over the horizon.
“Help here,” Sheriff Oak ordered, already running down the road, calling to the people rushing from their doors and toward the fields to pull the coverings over them so the storm wouldn’t whisk away their entire harvest.
Pearl ran back to Molly’s door, who was at the back porch, calling for Buster. He whined and bolted inside, his senses on high alert as the sky darkened. Pearl grabbed Buster’s bed and Molly’s rocking chair, tucking them in her kitchen, and shuttered her windows.
“I’m good. Go make sure Rosie’s chickens are safe,” Molly said.
As Pearl took the back steps, gritty wind hit her, the edge of the storm not quite on them but coaxing up the dry earth around her.
Would Driz be alright in the storm? Would it affect her at all? Would it wake her, wherever she was?
Pearl pushed thoughts of the goyle from her mind and dashed behind the row of houses, calling in case anyone hadn’t yet noticed or heard the bell.
Rosie had a hen under each arm while chasing a last flustered bird around the fenced yard. Pearl braced her hand on the corner post and vaulted inside.
“Wilhelmina just won’t come!” Rosie told her, pretty eyes fluttering against the intensifying wind, her panic palpable and not helping anything.
“Take those inside. I’ll get her,” Pearl promised.
As Rosie staggered up the steps, a gust billowed her skirt, pushing her petite frame sideways. It also stole Pearl’s hat, lifting it off her head. She’d liked that one.
Cursing, Pearl let it go and steadied Rosie instead, forcing the back door open and closed behind the woman before Pearl turned back to the bird.
Wilhelmina glared from the corner of the yard, her feathers flattening. Pearl reached out and earned a slice on her finger from a sharp beak. The hen flapped and got airborne enough to almost hop the fence.