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, pushing through as if thousan
ds of gallons weren’t pelting down on top of them.
Neither of us said anything, because neither of us understood what we were seeing. We just pulled farther back into shadow as something streaming with water came into the cave, stopping beside the remains of our shield.
There was no way that the wreckage could have been seen from the outside. The rocks that had trapped it were the only things that extended beyond the falls, and then only barely. The shield itself, now cracked like a giant egg, bounced back and forth behind them as it slowly filled with water.
They did have some way of tracking it, I thought, as Ray’s grip on my shoulder became painful.
I pried his fingers loose before he cracked a bone, and he shot me a startled look. “Sorry,” he mouthed.
I nodded, and went back to staring at the intruder.