Adrift
Summary: Artemis Senior takes his wife's death harder than he expects.
Author's Note: A little one-shot where I play around with the Fowl family, yet again. Some attempts at a different writing style, it's up to you to tell me how successful that was.
Saoirse: Pronounced 'SEER - sha'. Means 'freedom' in Irish Gaelic. I need to stop lurking on Irish naming websites.
"But I don't want to go."
Artemis sighed at this statement, walking around the four-poster bed to draw the curtains and let some of the winter light into the room. Early January in Ireland was notoriously unpredictable, weather-wise. Today seemed bright and frosty. The kind of day where the grass looks like gemstones and breaks underfoot as dry spaghetti.
"Come on, Dad. You've barely left your bed this week. It'll do you some good."
The old man in the bed - the lines on his face said he was eighty better than any lines in a novel - huffed and wrapped the burgundy velvet tighter around his shaking limbs. His son was across the room now, pulling open the wardrobe doors despite the reverential layer of dust that coated them.
"You're coming with us. Saoirse's been talking about going out with her grandfather all morning."
Artemis Senior looked up at this. Saoirse - his son's daughter and his youngest grandchild - was nearly five. He'd do anything for her, and Artemis Junior exploited this fact expertly.
"Fine. But get a blanket out, for goodness' sake. They're on the top shelf."
His son obliged, pulling down a slightly bobbled tartan blanket. It was placed on the bed as he helped his father into suitable clothes; fastening the buttons of the crisp shirt with a dexterity his father's had lost a long time ago. They avoided eye contact during this ritual, both hating the necessity of it.
When this was done, and the black-and-steel wheelchair folded out, Artemis hooked both forearms under his father's armpits and lifted him gently into the seat of the wheelchair. The blanket was smoothed over his thin legs, and gnarled hands rested on top. Finally, they were ready to leave the room, both men sweating slightly in the outdoor clothes they were wearing in the stifling house. The stair-lift saved the indignity of Artemis wheeling his father down step after bumpy step, and they were met at the foot by Saoirse, dressed in a long black winter coat and a red beret perched on her dark hair. It had been less than a month since Artemis Senior had last seen his granddaughter, but he was convinced she had grown in that time.
"Good morning, grandfather."
He waved a frail hand. "Good morning, Saoirse. What have I told you about calling me grandfather?"
"Sorry, grandpa."
He smiled, straining his myopic eye to see her better. "Your Dad tells me he's going to take you to the fountain today."
Saoirse nodded, smiling. "We're going to sail the boat we built. Do you remember?"
"I remember."
His son began to push the wheelchair forward, calling to his wife to tell her where they were going. Just before they exited the manor, he scooped a model boat with a highly varnished hull and snowy-white sail under one arm and the party stepped into the frosty morning.
--
They had been crunching over the grounds for almost five minutes, their breath steaming in front of them, when Artemis Junior made a detour. The fountain they were intending to sail their boat on was due east from the front of the house, shielded from view by leafy oak trees in the summer, but now, in winter, the fountain rose from behind the skeletons of the trees like a great marble evergreen, stained as it was a muddy green by the algae that clogged the spout-heads.
Instead, the course they took looped around the house, heading to the back of the manor grounds, where the foliage was wilder and more forbidding.
In the wheelchair, Artemis Senior's heart began to pound in realisation as his wheelchair began to pound over the rougher ground. "Turn back."
His son leaned in. "What?"
"Please, Arty. I can't face it."
The younger man's answer, when it came, was filled with an empathy that surprised his father. "At some point, Dad, you'll have to. There's no magic solution."
The frozen twigs and leaves they ploughed over snapped in the air and echoed in the sleeping woodland, disturbing the lifeless calm. Saoirse darted and weaved in front of them like a kitten, her red beret stark against the monochrome forest.
They arrived at the clearing silently. The ground evened out and Saoirse fell into step with her father, her small hand clinging to his gloved one. The boat shifted and settled under his arm.
--
It wasn't a large stone. When he had picked it out, Artemis had decided that a smaller memorial would be more fitting. She never liked a fuss.
Wretched fingers shaking with cold, he moved them from their resting place on his lap, and with a great effort, gripped the rubber wheels of his chair. His son duly let go of the handles, and the old man staggered forward in his wheelchair, jerking as his muscles protested against the strain.
He was red in the face when he reached the gravestone. He could have been pushed there in less than ten paces, but his son and granddaughter held back at the edge of the clearing, hand in hand. The lettering winked a brassy gold, still bright from the application of gold leaf less than a month ago. Artemis Senior let out a low sigh as his arthritic fingers stroked the smooth marble. Artemis Junior took this as a sign to leave the elderly man with the headstone, and led his daughter gently away.
It was a long time before the wind died down enough for him to say anything. But she was patient with him, as always, and they remained face to face, unmoving, with the wind invisibly between them.
He licked his lips. She stared blankly back.
"You're very quiet today." He said, and then he chuckled softly. She didn't share the joke.
Absent-minded fingers traced the grooves cut into the marble. His index finger swirled round the 'o' in her name and he felt his eye begin to sting.
Death is one thing, Artemis. I can't cure old age.
"I know that. It's just not fair."
Why not? She had a good life. It happens to us all, in the end. And it was her choice, after all.
A hand rested on his shoulder, light and tangible as a whisper. He didn't turn around. The tiny pressure lifted and a shimmer of air passed by his myopic eye. A holly wreath appeared as though from nowhere, and was dropped at the foot of the headstone.
See you next month.
They were alone again.
"You wanted this, didn't you?" He asked the stone, his old voice breaking. She didn't reply. He rubbed his stinging eye, the perfect sight in it momentarily disturbed by a slight blurriness.
--
When his son returned five minutes later, his young daughter clutching a ghost leaf in her hand as though it were made of starlight, they found Artemis slumped in the chair, his head bent as he examined a tiny object on the tartan blanket on his knee.
"Dad?"
He looked up; a deer in front of a hunter.
"Is that her necklace?"
The old man held the thin chain between his thumb and forefinger. At the bottom of the gold loop, swinging like a pendulum, was a small rectangular charm, about the thickness of a matchbox.
"Yes." He dropped the necklace onto his outstretched palm and placed it carefully into his breast pocket. "She never used to let me touch it."
Saoirse listened nonplussed to the exchange between her father and grandfather. "Can we sail the boat now?"
Artemis Senior smiled at his granddaughter and his son walked to the handles of the wheelchair to push him to the fountain. Saoirse dodged and weaved in front of them in much the same way as before.
I want this, Artemis.
She hadn't cared about her magic, or the thousands of years she would miss. In fact, she was glad of it. And at the time, he didn't think twice about it. They weren't to be parted by something so trivial as a difference in life expectancy, and Opal Koboi had shown them that it was possible to remedy the difference in species.
He'd held her hand when she died. She was cheerful right until the end, commenting on how happy she was to see their hands equally wrinkled with age. He kissed her forehead, stroking the once-auburn-now-grey hair, and death came. And it wasn't until that moment, when it was too late, that he fully understood what she had given up for him. He never expected to outlive her, and now that he had, the guilt for her death weighed heavy above his heart.
But as Saoirse tripped towards him, her auburn hair shining in the winter light and catching the tips of her ears, he thought that though he couldn't forgive himself for her death, he could be proud of the life they had made together.
And as they sailed the boat across the glassy water of the fountain, with the sky reflected in the surface, The little gold chain tucked next to his heart grew warm, despite the frost.
OK, you made it to the end! Not too miserable, I hope. But a little bit miserable. Slightly melancholy? And can I be forgiven for the name Saoirse or am I to be whacked with the Mary-Sue beatdown stick?
Reviewers get their own secluded rendevous with the Artemis Fowl character of their choice. I wouldn't recommend Mulch in a tight space, though.