were any more potential weapons to be found, moving slowly and looking at the ground more than ahead. Which was why my new find surprised me. If it had been a fey—
Well, if it had been a fey, I would have bashed in his skull in with my wrench.
But it was not.
I did not know what it was.
I moved some of the driftwood, which was beginning to look like it had been piled up deliberately. There was a great deal of it, and it was woven thickly together, so it took a while. In the process, I ended up knocking much of the surrounding dirt away from the object, enough to see a gleam of metal.
With patience, more of the crusty covering came off. It was odd, because it looked like it had been there for years, perhaps centuries, until the accumulated dust of ages turned into a good facsimile to stone. But the more I chipped away, the more prefect, gleaming metal met my eyes. Until I finally found myself looking at . . .
Well.
I stood there for a moment, doubting myself. I had been through a good deal recently, and I did not have Dory to help ground me anymore. Perhaps I was having some sort of episode?
Either that, or I had to explain why what looked like a spaceship was doing in a cave in Faerie.
Or part of a space ship. It reminded me of the capsules that astronauts used to splash down in. It was big enough to hold perhaps four people, had metal sides, and had some sort of writing on the side that I couldn’t—
It lit up.
I stepped back abruptly, which turned out to be a good thing. Not only had a circle of lights suddenly flashed to life all the way around it, but part of the side had fallen outward. I just stood there for a moment, nonplussed.
Then I cautiously peered within.
There was a central pole, going up to the top of the structure. There were padded benches covered with a silvery looking fabric surrounding the pole, which almost matched the tunic I was wearing. There were squarish windows in the remaining sides that were bigger at the bottom than the top to accommodate the shape of the capsule. They had metal shutters covering them on the outside, which had raised up slightly when the door came down, but were prevented from going any further by the thicket of driftwood. There was even something that looked like a spy glass affixed to the pole, standing out from the strangely modern looking interior by the fact that it was in a leather pouch.
I had started forward to see if my guess was right, when someone grabbed my arm. I spun, brandishing my weapon, then stopped partway through the swing. And all of an inch from Raymond’s forehead.
His eyes crossed, staring up at it.
“Oh.” I lowered the wrench. “You startled me.”
“I startled you? What the fuck?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, because he looked genuinely frightened. I patted his shoulder, which did not seem to help, so I stopped. “I found something.”
“Of course, you found something! I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without—” he stopped, finally looking past me. “What the hell is that?”
“What I found.”
“Shit!” Raymond went into a crouch. “Where are the fey?”
“What fey?”
“The fey from the thing!” he gestured at it.
“There are no fey in the thing.”
“Are you being sarcastic again?”
I looked into the small space. There was nowhere for a fey to hide that I could see. The benches would never have accommodated anyone so tall, even assuming they opened up.
“No?”
“Then why is it all lit up like that?” He gestured at the lights shining down from near the top of the capsule, and at intervals around the outside. They appeared to be some kind of liquid suspended under domes of glass, so I wasn’t sure how they turned on.
Until I stepped closer, and they abruptly became even brighter.
“Okay, what did you do?” Ray demanded.
“Nothing—”
“Don’t give me that!” He appeared a bit stressed, which was understandable. But no one was attacking us, and there didn’t seem to be any reason for concern.
Until more lights suddenly lit us up—from behind.
The lights were coming from outside the cave, but they didn’t stay that way. Ray and I crept up to the shadow of a large, protruding rock near the entrance to the tunnel, and watched them slowly get closer, like the eyes of some fell beast. And then breech the watery curtain,