The Stone Circle

Our spaceship hovered above the stone circle as my partner and I disembarked. I paused at the bottom of the ramp and took in the atmosphere. My fingers flexed. There was…something here. An energy unlike anything that the humans of this planet were able to create.

I looked around. Nothing. There was nothing but the standing stones and the lush grass growing all around us. No clear explanation for this…static in the air.

I glanced at my partner to see if they could feel it, too. Their black, compact eyes stared back at me, and they nodded. They could feel it, too. They pulled out their EMF detector. They turned it on, and the readings were off the charts. We had calibrated the instrument to take our spaceship into the baseline readings, so where was this coming from?

My partner reported the readings back to the spaceship with their earpiece. I pulled out my Geiger counter. Nothing. Whatever the power source was, it was electrical and not radioactive.

I pressed my fingertip to my earpiece.

“Nothing on the Geiger counter,” I mentally sent to our commander back on the spaceship. “How do we proceed?”

“You…and then…”

Static interrupted our mental communication. I exchanged looks with my partner and switched the earpiece to vocal communication.

“Sorry, Commander. You seem to be cutting out on mental communication. Try again?” I said.

“I said…and then…”

The same static cut through our vocal communication. Then, suddenly, silence.

“Commander?” I said, toggling the earpiece back and forth between vocal and mental communication. “Commander, are you there?”

Still just silence.

I turned to my partner. Their thin lips pursed into a line. They shook their head; they couldn’t hear anything from the commander, either.

“What should we do now?” I asked them. “Return to the ship?”

“I don’t know,” they replied. “Our orders are to locate the source of this energy anomaly. Maybe we should—“

Suddenly, a bright light at the center of the stone circle caught our attention. We stared at it as it split into multiple rainbow-colored lights and began to dance all around us. I had never seen anything so beautiful, so pure on this planet before; it reminded me of the Legend of the Dancing Lights from our planet. They were said to be the spirits of our deceased, come back to guide lost travelers—could this be what these lights were as well? The spirits of deceased humans here to guide us?

One of the lights—a pure white light—hovered in front of us. It grew and grew until it was the size of a full-grown human, taller than either my partner or me. Then from the light emerged a mahogany-skinned humanoid with pointed ears and sparkling translucent wings.

“Welcome, space travelers,” she said to us in our native tongue. “For what reason do you come to our home?”

I gawked at her for a moment, unable to comprehend what was happening. Things like this did not happen on this planet. There were not beings like this on this planet. The most advanced beings were humans—just humans.

“We—we were tasked with finding the source of an energy anomaly that we detected in this circle,” my partner finally answered. They had said it so many times, of course they were able to spew it now.

The being smiled at us, gentle, warm smile.

“Well, then I can help you,” she said. She spread her arms wide. “You are at a portal to the Land of the Fae.”

“The Fae?” I asked.

“As in…faeries?” my partner added.

We had heard about faeries from our human subjects, but we had been assured that they were just mythical creatures, not a threat to our study. And yet what other explanation could there be?

“Yes, and we would kindly ask you to leave us be,” the being said. “Do what you wish with the humans, but when it comes to us and our portals…”

Lightning flashed, and the being’s beautiful face turned rotten with sharpened teeth. As quickly as the image appeared, it left—like an illusion.

The being tilted her head.

“Do we have an agreement?” she asked.

My partner and I glanced at each other, then nodded.

The being smiled, but this time, there was no warmth or mirth to it.

“Good. Fare thee well, space travelers.”

The being waved her hand. In an instant, all the lights around us dimmed until they disappeared, leaving us in the pitch black.

“Are you there? Hello?” my earpiece blared, first in mental communication and then in vocal.

“Yes, yes, we’re here,” I replied.

“What happened? Everything went dark up here. We couldn’t see a thing.”

“I don’t know if you’re going to believe it—“ I stared at the spot where the being had stood moments before— “but we have a lot to talk about.”