“I think that it is broken,” I said.
“I know it’s broken!” He tried to push some hair back from his forehead, but only succeeded in poking himself in the eye. “Damn it!” He glared at me through the limp black strands. “The problem is that the shield is not broken, and the fey are coming, and we gotta get out of—what are you doing?”
“The fey warriors were not well equipped,” I said, tugging on a bloody corpse. “None of them had a sword and mine broke during the fight. They do not appear to make the souvenir versions combat ready.”
“So?”
“So, all we have is a broken sword and a knife. I thought that I would make us some more.”
“Some more what?”
“Weapons. We don’t know what we might be facing, and Faerie is said to be treacherous.”
“But how are you planning to—” He stopped abruptly, his eyes going from me to the fey, whose leg I was currently working on, and back again. “You thought you would make us weapons . . . out of their bones?”
I knew that look. It was the one Dory sometimes gave me, when I had accidentally done something unacceptable. I put the tibia back.
“No?”
“My God,” Ray said, staring at me. “I don’t believe my life. I just don’t, you know?”
I didn’t say anything. After a moment, he went back to trying to break the small control sphere, in the hopes, I supposed, that it would also destroy the shield. But even vampire strength did not seem to be up to the task.
I watched him while checking out the fey’s body through my peripheral vision. Their bones were nice and thick and very hard. They should take an edge well, instead of shattering as human bones were wont to do. I just needed to gather up a few more, lower leg bones usually worked the best, and—
Ray started shrieking.
“I’m sorry,” I said, dropping the bone again.
The shrieking did not stop.
“Ray, I was only trying to—”
I stopped talking when I noticed that he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at something behind me. I turned and saw nothing for a moment, merely the dark green forest, with its old, old trees in the background, their twisted trunks a stark contrast to those of the saplings nearer the road. Some of the latter of which were rustling.
And then a very small creature came waddling out of the tree line.
I was immediately enchanted.
It was so tiny. It looked like Dory’s roommate, but it had miniscule wings and big, jewel-like eyes and a little baby snout, and it was so pudgy that its scale covered legs had fat rolls. They had rolls.
Its coloring was various shades of gray, with almost white scales on the fat little belly. But there was enough pink on its back and, especially, down the spine, to hint that perhaps it would be more colorful when grown up. But now it was just a tiny, roly-poly creature with bright, curious, sapphire eyes.
It was adorable.
And then I noticed that one of the trees was moving strangely behind it. Only no, that wasn’t a tree, was it? Trees didn’t have scales. That was a—
“Dragon!” Ray shrieked, right before I realized that the tree was something’s leg.
Something huge.
“Oh,” I said, and quickly got up to join him in pushing against the shield.
I thought that he had the right idea: roll us a little farther away, and make it clear that we were no threat to the child. But the shield was surprisingly heavy, or perhaps that was all of the bodies, and it had landed in a slight depression. It did not want to move.
Even worse, the tiny creature had the curiosity common to all young things, and was coming closer, probably wondering what this strange device was. The mother let out a bellow of warning that . . . was quite something. It was so loud that it was almost literally stunning, to the point that it upset my balance and had me stumbling about instead of Ray.
But the child paid no mind.