Page 33 of Suncatcher

The storm died, the world quieting, but it left Pearl’s ears ringing. What had just happened?

She slipped outside without another word. A fine layer of dust coated every surface. Bits of fences lay smashed and broken, and a chair tangled with a ripped-off shutter a dozen paces away. The paint on Molly’s shop had been wet. Pearl would have to start over now.

She hurried to help fix and clean what she could, Rosie’s unsettling words echoing in her head.

Driz waited.

Pearl had told her not to, but Driz waited anyway.

She tried to stay away. But she kept finding herself at the ravine first thing after she woke each dusk, hope a beating thing in her chest as she waited to see if Pearl might return that night.

Pearl hadn’t said she would. But she also hadn’t said she wouldn’t.

What if Pearl needed to find her? What if she needed Driz’s help again?

And if Pearl never came back, she couldn’t be mad that Driz had waited because she wouldn’t know.

So Driz remained in the ravine until it was too deep in the night for Pearl to come. And then she would gather her disappointment around herself and go off to hunt or just watch the lights.

She was perched on the top of the bluff, picking the remnants of a lizard from her teeth. Churning clouds gathered and a splinter of lightning struck, followed by the wonderful rumble of thunder. Driz smiled, anticipating the rain.

Then she saw the new light that emerged from the brush below her. It appeared and disappeared, bobbing steadily toward the drying salt fields. Driz frowned and flared her wings.

The darkness of the storm would help conceal her flight from human eyes.

Five individuals moved slowly and stealthily closer to the fields, where the river was contained by a series of metal doors that led toward an empty channel.

One by one, the figures opened the doors, sliding back the metal bars that held them in place.

Water poured through as the rain started to fall. Driz had watched long enough to know that was not right. These were not Pearl’s humans.

She roared and dove. The figures shouted and all started to run. A gunshot cracked and a bullet whizzed past Driz’s head. She circled toward where they were running, cutting off their retreat, and they scattered back.

As light flickered at the nearest houses, Driz swooped this way and that, herding the five interlopers toward town. More gunfire sounded, and a sting sliced through Driz’s leg.

Three new figures from the houses came running toward the commotion. Driz had intended to alert them, but now she didn’t know what to do. The water.

She dove again, aiming for the salt fields, and landed on the far side, lurching as the pain in her leg flared. She studied the metal doors. On the bank beside each was a track attached to the braces. The handle to shut the one nearest her lay on the ground. They’d broken it.

Driz grabbed the door and pushed. The force of the water pouring against her was strong. She pushed harder.

The screech and grinding of rusted gears made her snap her head up. A human man dressed in a white nightshirt frantically worked the crank on the second door to close it. He looked back at Driz, panic and determination and bewilderment on his face.

He struggled to get it to close all the way, the water an intense rush, so Driz braced herself between the bank and her own half and reached for his. She held them in place as the man slotted the metal bar across.

They had shut the bottom doors, though some of the current still poured over the top. Driz vaulted to the uppermost set connected to the river. This crank was not broken and the doors closed easier.

The water stopped flowing in, but the nearest field had already flooded, and more poured into the second via the canal between. These areas were designed to flood. But not now.

The man started running toward yet another set of doors that dammed the canal at the corner of each field. Driz flew and closed the next two. She couldn’t find any more water coming in, except from the rain.

She had to tell Pearl.

12

Trouble in the Fields

Pearl jerked awake at the thud on the roof above her. Outside, rain hummed and distant thunder rumbled.