12. Trouble in the Fields
Trouble in the Fields
Pearl jerked awake at the thud on the roof above her. Outside, rain hummed and distant thunder rumbled.
Just a storm. She started to relax and roll over until she heard it again. Something moving.
She bolted upright. Snagging her revolver from its holster beside her bed, she crept toward the window she’d left cracked. The sleepshirt she wore only reached her upper thighs and the cool night air prickled her exposed skin.
The roof creaked above her when she reached the casement.
Before the intruder could, Pearl yanked the window open, shoving her weapon ahead of her as she twisted out and up.
Rain poured from the ends of shaggy hair and shiny horns. Driz stared down at her over the edge of the roof.
“The hells?” Pearl muttered, lowering her weapon. She glanced out into the night, but this was the back of the building and not the side that faced the main street. “Get in here before anyone sees.”
Driz squeezed through the window, her large shoulders and wings scraping against the protesting wood. Pearl backed away and gave her plenty of space. And suddenly a seven-foot-tall, dripping gargoyle stood in her room.
“You’re fucking lucky my mother’s with Spencer tonight,” Pearl hissed. “What’re you doing here? How’d you find me?”
“I saw you enter this building once.”
Pearl narrowed her eyes. “You’ve been spying on me?”
“No. I followed you the night we met. To make sure you got home safe.”
“You did?” That didn’t matter. Pearl shook her head and refocused on the present. “Why’re you here?”
“Humans flooded your fields.”
Pearl froze. “Who?”
“I do not know. They crept through the night and opened the doors from the river.”
“Doors from the…you mean the locks?”
“The water doors,” Driz clarified. “I do not know what you call them.”
The rain would set back the harvest some.
But if the locks opened uncontrolled, it could wash away far more.
Pearl pushed past Driz to stare out the window, but she couldn’t see through the night or the rain.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Pearl demanded as she fumbled for her teeth on the dressing table, slotting them into her mouth.
“Five men. They opened the doors and tried to run.”
“All the doors?”
“Yes.”
“Shit.” The fields would already be gone by now.
“We closed them.”
Pearl paused in her frantic dressing. “What?”
“The doors. The locks. We closed them. The first field is covered in water, but I closed the canal doors so only some got into the second.”
Pearl stared at her. “Who’s we?”
“Another human. One of yours. A man from a house.”
“He saw you?” Pearl asked, alarm ringing through her.
“He did.”
“What happened to the intruders?”
“I do not know. Others from the house went after them. I thought the water was more important to stop. Was that right?”
Pearl ran a hand over her face. “No. Yes. Yes, that was right.”
She pulled on her coat instead of thinking about the destruction, or the idea that someone had seen Driz.
If one had, others probably had too. And she hated that whoever caused it would already have been long gone.
“You need to get out of here,” Pearl said.
“I’m gonna get the sheriff and head to the fields.
I’ll try to meet you at the ravine before dawn. If I can’t, I’ll meet you at dusk.”
Driz nodded and reached for the window.
“And Driz,” Pearl called. “Don’t ever come here again.”
Driz kept her back to Pearl, but her wings twitched.
“Because my mother will shoot you on sight. And I don’t want that to happen.”
Driz glanced back. “I heal. You would be worth it.”
And then Driz was gone again, leaving Pearl with that overwhelming statement. She didn’t have time to unpack it now.
Jamming her hat on her head, she took the stairs down two at a time. The rain worked beneath her collar as she pounded on Spencer’s door, off the back of the saloon. After a few moments, it was opened by the sleepy man.
“Sheriff,” Pearl called, pushing him aside and stepping in. “Trouble in the fields.”
Sheriff Oak was already half-dressed and reaching for her holster. Spencer didn’t ask any questions, just lit a few lamps. The sheriff pulled on her wooden boot, buckled the straps that held it in place, and shrugged into the coat Pearl held out.
“Tell me” was all she said as they hurried toward the stables.
“Flooding in the upper fields.”
They didn’t speak again. Sheriff Oak didn’t bother with a saddle, and Pearl didn’t either.
Rain pounded against them as they rode. Halfway there, they met Penny coming their way.
“Sheriff!” she cried. “Someone opened the locks.”
“Perpetrators?”
“Don’t know them. We’ve got one tied up, not sure what to do with him.”
“Thanks, Penny. Go and wake Rave and Steve. We’ll handle it.”
They pushed onward, riding harder toward the fields. The ground was slick with mud and thunder rumbled, flashes of lightning occasionally illuminating the landscape.
It was a long night.
The neighbors, Pearl, and the sheriff crowded into Penny’s home, the closest to the upper fields.
Everyone was soaking wet and in various states of dress and chill.
Pearl helped James stoke up the fire. Two strangers had been left behind by their party.
One was now a corpse, and a second had a bullet in his leg.
Sheriff Oak approached the injured, bound man and reached down to tug the gag free. “Ronny,” she greeted darkly. “Fancy seeing you here.”
Pearl recognized him then, too. He was from Faltsprings.
“You wanna tell me what you’re doing on our land in the middle of the night?” Sheriff Oak prompted, steel in her voice.
Ronny trembled. Whether from fear, cold, pain, or all the above, Pearl didn’t know. He stared, wide-eyed, at Sheriff Oak. “No one was supposed to get hurt,” he stammered. “But we didn’t know you’re working with those vultures.”
“What’re you talking about?” Sheriff Oak snapped, and Ronny shrank even farther, shaking his head. “What does he mean? What happened?” Sheriff Oak asked the rest of the room.
Several people started talking at once.
“James,” Sheriff Oak cut in. “You start.”
“A sound woke me. Something not human. A bellowing cry. I looked outside and saw several people running and a huge shape in the sky. They shot at it, then came toward us. That’s when I noticed the water.
The locks were open. There’s no way I could’ve closed them myself.
But when I got there, the creature was too. ”
James swallowed and Sheriff Oak’s expression darkened. “Creature?”
“A gargoyle. That side of the lock was broken but it closed it just with its hands. And helped with mine too, and the rest of the locks. And it closed the lower canal.”
“You’re certain it was closing them and not breaking?”
“Dead certain. As I said, I wouldn’t have been able to do it myself.”
“D’you think it’s the same one who helped during the ambush?” asked someone else. “But why?”
“Where’d the goyle go?” Sheriff Oak demanded.
“I dunno. It just disappeared into the night.”
“Did anyone else see?” Sheriff Oak asked the rest of the room.
“I saw it flying at the start and by the locks with James,” said one of the men. “But we were distracted by this group of bastards.” He gestured toward Ronny.
Pearl watched her mother closely. She remained outwardly calm, but a storm brewed inside that echoed the one beyond the roof above them. Pearl’s own mind whirled listening to the events rehashed again when Rave and Steve showed up.
As they carted Ronny back to town to lock up in the two-cell prison, Pearl went to inspect the fields. The top one was flooded, and the second less so. The easing rain dimpled the surface that reflected the light cast from their hooded lanterns.
But Sheriff Oak’s attention wasn’t on the fields. She scanned the sky and horizon.
“Sheriff?” James repeated when she didn’t answer a question he asked.
“Thanks for your help tonight, James,” she said distractedly. “Get some rest.”
It was nearly dawn by the time Pearl and Sheriff Oak dripped their way home.
Pearl shrugged out of her coat, hanging it in the narrow entry by the door, and headed to the stove. The kettle shook in her numb hands.
“Go change. I’ll do this,” Sheriff Oak said, taking the handle from her.
Pearl stole it back. “So are you. You go change.”
“Pearl.”
Pearl might have been a grown woman, but when her mother used that tone, Pearl listened.
She relinquished the kettle and retreated up the creaking steps.
Her mother’s room faced the front of the narrow house to the right.
Pearl turned left and entered her own. The soft light of the lamp she lit illuminated the space, shining off the water puddled near her window, where Driz had been earlier.
Pearl frowned. The puddle was darker than it should’ve been. With blood. Had one of the Faltsprings men’s bullets hit her? She’d been injured and Pearl hadn’t known.
Pearl hurried to wipe the floor before it stained the weathered wood more. The thought of Driz’s blood soaking into the boards made Pearl’s stomach cramp.
When she emerged downstairs, dressed in dry clothes and with two blankets, her mother still stood at the stove. Pearl draped the thicker blanket around her shoulders and nudged her into a chair, relieved when the sheriff complied.
Pearl finished making two steaming mugs of tea and added a healthy splash of liquor to both.
She sat in the other chair, glancing out the smudged window at the brightening world.
She wouldn’t make it in time to see Driz before dawn.
Guilt for that slithered through her, but she couldn’t leave right now.
She studied her mother.
“How’d you know to get me tonight?” Sheriff Oak asked.
Pearl’s heart started pounding again. “I thought I saw some commotion.” It was too far to see, and they both knew it.
“Are you lying to me, Pearl?”
“No,” Pearl lied, looking right back into her eyes.
Sheriff Oak glanced away. “It’s here,” she murmured, staring out the window at the sky. “It came here. On our land.”
“And saved most our fields.”
Sheriff Oak met her eyes again, and they glittered. “And the question is, why? None of the possible answers sit well with me.”
“Rave thinks she’s showing goodwill.”
“To what end? To lower our guard? To get our attention? It must want something.”
Pearl almost told her. But what could she say?
Pearl admitted to herself that she didn’t know Driz’s true motives.
She thought she knew, but she didn’t, really.
And what if her mother didn’t believe her?
Didn’t agree? The thought of opening her mouth and saying, “Her name is Driz and she’s actually kind of sweet in a terrifying way and she just seems really lonely and wants some company,” made Pearl shudder. She kept her mouth shut.
“Why won’t you tell me the truth of what happened that night?” Sheriff Oak asked, a deep torment in her eyes. Pearl didn’t need to clarify that she was talking about the night they recovered the caravan.
“There’s nothing more to tell.”
“What color was it?”
Pearl responded the same way she had last time. “It was night. Hard to say.”
“Pearl…”
Pearl stood. “I’m gonna try to get some sleep. You should too.”
“Wait.”
Pearl paused, her foot on the lowest step.
“The rail commissioner’s coming in a few days. I meant to tell you earlier, but you keep vanishing. I may need help. Can I rely on you?”
More guilt twisted in Pearl. “Of course, Sheriff.”
The sun peeked over the horizon as Pearl slumped back onto her bed. Driz would be in the ravine, waiting for her, made of stone now. Was she disappointed Pearl hadn’t come?
Her mother eventually followed Pearl up, announced by the sound of her mismatched feet on the stairs and the click of her door. An uncontrollable affection choked Pearl for a moment.
Pearl didn’t love anyone else. She’d learned long ago that feckless feeling only caused pain in the end. Everyone eventually left. Some did it quickly and some took their time, but they all left. That was just the way the world worked. It took.
Her first baby brother had died so young she’d hardly gotten the chance to know him.
The two who followed were gone even faster.
Then her father abandoned them too, cursing the sheriff for caring more about her town than him before eating his own bullet.
His bones were six feet deep in the salty earth, out behind the mayor’s home in the graveyard.
Alongside his sons’ tiny ones. But Pearl's mother was still here, and Pearl couldn’t stop loving her even if she tried.
Pearl didn’t want to hurt her. Telling her the truth would hurt her. Keeping the secret would also hurt her. Either way, Driz would be in danger.
What was Pearl supposed to do? She buried her face in her pillow and slept.