31. A Welcome Sunset
A Welcome Sunset
The shift in Driz’s body washed over her like fresh rain. Like breaking through a layer of dense clouds where everything was confusing and muddled before, now growing clear.
She shuddered, her breath rushing in and out. She swayed as the weight of her body changed and pain ricocheted through her.
Pearl was in her arms. Driz blinked, freshly disoriented.
Why was Pearl here? Where was she? What…
The realization and flashes of memory hit her. She’d woken already.
“Driz?” Pearl gazed at her, one hand stroking Driz’s cheek.
Pearl’s shiny golden teeth were missing. She looked just as lovely without them, except for the salt stains streaking down her face.
Driz’s insides went cold.
They were standing alone in the street in the middle of Salt Bluff. But people hovered all round. Driz could sense and smell them. Their terror. And fresh blood. Blood on Driz. Blood on Pearl.
“What happened?” Driz asked, dropping her arms and scrambling back, her eyes flying frantically over Pearl’s form.
Her shirt was dark and stained. Driz’s arms and hands wore more of it.
A keening sob escaped Driz’s lips. “You are hurt?” Had she hurt Pearl? She would never recover if she had hurt Pearl.
“No.”
“What have I done?” Driz demanded, only fragments rushing through her mind. A wall breaking. Holding Pearl. Pearl’s tears. Flying.
“You woke. You helped us.” Pearl held out her hand for Driz.
Driz backed up, her eyes flicking to the saloon, recalling Oak lying on the ground. “Your mother?”
Pearl’s eyes glistened. “I must go in to her.” Her hand was still outstretched. “Come with me.”
But Driz hesitated. Her wings ached and when she glanced, one of the joints was damaged. The bone had fractured. Aching, hollow welts marked her shoulder and her hip. Where she had been shot while stone.
“Come with me,” Pearl repeated.
“I should not.”
“Please.”
Pearl had pleaded with her earlier too, hadn’t she? When she had tried to get away from Driz.
Pearl stepped onto the porch of the saloon, torn between the light inside and Driz, hand still outstretched. “Please stay. I need you to stay.”
Driz pushed aside her confusion and horror. Pearl needed her.
Driz followed Pearl up onto the porch, but stopped at the doors.
Oak lay on a bloody table, several people huddled around her. One man was dabbing her forehead and the other was wiping his own. Pearl halted right beside the table, looking between them. “Tell me. Will she live?” Her voice cracked on the question.
The doctor nodded wearily. “I hope so. I got the bullet out, and have done what I can. But only time will tell for certain.”
Pearl’s hands shook. “I don’t have any blight left, but she might. Take it. Anything you need. I don’t care if it’s not in your practice…”
The doctor shook his head. “I already used a little in the wound, but she consumed a lot earlier too. Any more and it’ll do her system more harm than good.” He assessed Pearl. “How’re you?”
“Fine.” Pearl waved him off, dropping to her knees and grabbing her mother’s limp hand, pressing her lips and then her forehead to it, fresh tears clinging to her cheeks. She tried to hide them, but Driz saw. Driz shifted, wanting to go to Pearl, but knowing she was all wrong.
How could she have ever thought she had a place anywhere near humans? Her battered, blood-coated body was evidence she could no longer deny. She had killed today. Just like Oak had said. It was her nature. Driz didn’t entirely remember. And that made it so much worse.
The tops of her wings brushed the doorframe. She was too big.
Pearl looked back at her. “Won’t you come in?”
Driz shook her head.
Pearl glanced between Driz and her mother as she stood and approached. When she got near, Driz retreated, backing down the steps and into the street again.
Pearl scowled. “Don’t run from me. Not after you couldn’t tear yourself away earlier.”
Pearl’s arms looped around Driz’s neck, her body pressing into her. And Driz instantly relaxed, some of her tension easing.
“Thank you,” Pearl whispered. “For listening to me.”
Driz ran her nose along Pearl’s neck, simply inhaling the wonderful, comforting scent of her. As she skimmed a hand down her arm, Pearl twitched and quickly smothered her hiss.
“Are you hurt?” Driz pulled back.
“No, I’m fine,” Pearl said, too fast.
“Are you lying?” Driz was trying to learn. Trying to understand. But her trying wasn’t enough.
“I’m just…No, I’m fine.”
“Show me your arms.”
Pearl eyed her, wariness in her gaze, and Driz’s aching wings flared.
“Show me,” she demanded. Pearl was hiding something.
Pearl glanced around, her gaze flitting to the windows on either side. Then she unbuttoned her ruined shirt.
It was growing dark, but unfortunately Driz could see very well in the darkness. She saw the redness, and the splotching bruises forming beneath Pearl’s pale, perfect skin. On her chest and her shoulder. On her arms. Her wrists.
“I was kidnapped. I had most of them already,” Pearl insisted.
But not all of them. Driz gently curled a shaking hand over Pearl’s shoulder, mimicking the shape of the marks there.
Driz had done that. Driz had hurt her. And she hadn’t even known.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Pearl said, seizing Driz’s wrist as she reeled away. Pearl went with her, wrapping herself around Driz’s front. As if she could somehow prevent her from leaving. “You protected me. You saved my mother. Don’t you dare blame yourself.”
Pearl was so fierce and beautiful, and Driz couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t handle her touch. Couldn’t be here. “I cannot…” Driz couldn’t even explain. “I have to go.”
She tried to untangle from Pearl, but Pearl wasn’t having any of it. “Then I’ll come with you.”
“Please, Pearl.” Tears dampened Driz’s cheeks. “Please let me go.” A building panic was twitching her wings, along with a need to do something she didn’t comprehend. The ground was trying to swallow her. She had to fly away and escape.
Pearl stared at her. “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“Maybe I should.” Driz ripped away from Pearl as softly as she could, every bruise on Pearl’s skin an accusation. A warning. “I am meant to be alone.” The pain of those words shook her. “I could not stay away from you, and I hurt you.”
“Don’t be stupid. You helped me. Us. I’m trying to explain that to you.” Pearl reached for Driz again, but Driz stumbled backward.
“Who did I kill? Were they your friends? I do not even know.”
“I don’t either,” Pearl admitted. Driz tensed to fly away, but Pearl ran toward her. “Wait!”
“You belong here. With your mother. With your people.” Driz turned. “I do not.”
She launched into the air, the strain of it on her damaged wing making her snarl. But it was a focus. A distraction. She pushed unsteadily upward into the growing night.
She didn’t know where she was going until she landed on the rocky plateau of the old, abandoned Meeting place. She clambered up onto the perch the speaker had always taken and surveyed the world. The broken, lonely world that she was utterly alone in.
A welling mix of emotions brewed and bubbled and could not be contained. They burst from her as she roared. She stretched her jaw wide and screeched into the night. Over and over until her chest and lungs ached. A call.
Pearl and her people had calls, except Pearl’s people answered.
The goyles were already gone. They’d left, as they’d said they would. And if they hadn’t, they didn’t respond. Not to her.
The sky remained still and dark, and Driz bowed her head.
The faint whoosh of wings had her looking back up.
Through bleary eyes, she watched an old goyle land unsteadily on the lip of the rock. He was the same one who had spoken about the railroad at the last regular Meeting.
She stared at him, and he stared back.
“You called,” he said. “Why?”
It took Driz a while to answer. “I do not want to be alone. Why have you not flown west?”
“I do not want to leave my home.”
“I do not either.”
They watched the stars as a beetle approached and crawled over Driz’s foot. She let it go tonight.
“Am I truly cursed?” she finally asked.
“Do you feel cursed?”
“Yes. And no. I cannot tell.”
He eyed her shoulder, shifting closer to peer at it. Then he nodded and reached for a wide leather wrapping on his forearm, pulling it off to reveal a jagged glowing line that ran all around beneath his elbow.
Driz stared at the blighted scar. “How long?”
“I have hidden it for over a century.”
“What happened?”
“I crossed a djinn I should not have. I knew I would not survive to the dawn with my arm gone. So I risked it to live.”
“And are you cursed?”
He swept his gaze to the horizon, taking a moment to answer. “I was born to an original, who was crafted by the goddess’s hands herself. We are different from the originals, you and I.”
“How? What are we?”
He shrugged clumsily. “We are who we are.”
Driz scowled. “That was not a helpful answer.”
“There is no one to give us an answer but us. We are all lost, trying to find a way. The world has changed since the war. And so have we.”
“I love a human,” Driz blurted.
He nodded again, looking sad. “I wake from stone later each night.”
Driz scowled harder. “That is not the same.”
“We may both be close to death.” He shuffled toward the edge. “Or we may not. Make your own laws, young one. Who is left to say otherwise?” Then he hurled himself off the cliff.
And Driz was alone again.