Page 95 of Suncatcher

Driz looked up at the silent house. Pearl had said not to leave, yet Pearl also had not asked for Driz to come up to her. What was Driz supposed to do? She was tired of doing the wrong thing. Was she wrong for sitting here, waiting?

She would find out what Oak meant. What she wasn’t saying.

Driz launched into the air, pushing higher than necessary to expend some of her restless energy.

It wasn’t hard to find the place where the river split, or to count the two valleys. Driz touched down in a nondescript basin of shrubs and windswept dirt. Not certain what to look for, she stalked up it until she found a pile of rocks stacked unnaturally.

She unstacked them, but that revealed nothing. So she started to dig. Her claws tore through the earth, churning up rocks and a few roots.

Her nails scraped against something else.

She stilled. More carefully, she brushed away dirt to expose bone.

With a sinking sensation in her gut, Driz uncovered more. She followed it up until it revealed the skull. The nubbed cradles where horns once grew were unmistakable, even if Driz had not already recognized the joint of the large wing. No other creatures had wings like that. The cakey dirt clung to the bone and sunken cheeks like lingering pieces of flesh.

Goyles did not bury one another. They crumbled when they aged.

This goyle had not died of age, but rather, as flesh.

Driz continued to expose the skeleton. It shouldn’t have been covered. It should face the sky and experience the rain when it fell.

She worked until her hands began to ache with the effort of carving away the stubborn, old earth. Until all the stone-smooth bones stared back at her.

Driz ran her fingers over them. Questions, all of them unsettling, spun through her mind. She stumbled back, suddenly needing to be gone, and kicked into the sky and toward Salt Bluff.

As soon as she landed in the street, Oak emerged from the shadow of the porch. She had been waiting for her.

And behind her stood Pearl.

Driz’s whole body tensed. She stepped forward, intending to go to Pearl and hold her, but Oak moved between them and aimed the revolver.

“Ma!” Pearl hissed, gripping her mother’s shoulder, using it to hold herself upright. She coughed, but she grabbed for the gun.

Oak let it go easily. “Go back to bed, Pea,” she said, her voice echoing strangely. “You shouldn’t be up.”

“You left,” Pearl accused, ignoring her mother and looking at Driz, her brow furrowing.

Driz was so tired of doing the wrong thing. “I am back now.”

“Where’d you go? Why are you covered in dirt?”

Driz realized Pearl was right. “I was digging.” She looked at Oak, whose face was a cold, impassive mask. “Who was that?”

“You know the answer to that, goyle.”

Driz shivered. She needed to hold Pearl, but Pearl remained behind her mother. “Why did you tell me to go there? How did you know it was there?”

“You know the answer to all that too.”

“Tell me!” Driz’s wings flared as her anger swept through her, the monster within rising up.

Oak coiled, a second revolver in her hand in an instant.

“Don’t,” Pearl said. Her eyes were also wide as she stared at Driz.

Shards of ice pricked Driz’s skin, and she forced her wings down. “Did you bury that goyle?” she asked Oak, speaking extra carefully.

“Thirty-five years ago.”