Right, this is my first fanfic in a looooong while, so if you do review, feel free to be vicious while I can still chalk it up to being out of practice.


Fowl Manor, just outside Dublin, Ireland

For the third June night in a row, Artemis Fowl the Second was to be found sitting at his computer until the last hours before dawn, his alert blue eyes under furrowed brows zeroed in on the words in front of him. He should have been tired, having barely slept in days, but instead he was utterly consumed by page after page of any information he could find regarding one subject:

Fairies.

Artemis had spend the last two months investigating the mysterious circumstances surrounding the mirrored contact lenses he, Butler, and Juliet had found planted in their eyes one morning. There weren't many clues to follow, it was true; the insistence of Butler's contact in Limerick that the man had been commissioned by Butler himself to construct the diminutive technological marvels was baffling, and though Artemis had been unable to find any significant new leads, he couldn't shake the uncanny feeling that this apparent conspiracy had somehow penetrated every aspect of his life. There was no reason to think that there was any correlation between Butler suddenly seeming to age a decade overnight; his father's inexplicable return from captivity by the Russian Mafia; his mother's sudden and miraculous return to sanity; his own recurring dreams of people and places he had once known, that evaporated from his memory before he could recall them; and, of course, the substantial amounts of gold and capital credit that had, according to the bank records, been accumulated over the last 18 months.

But even so, he was uneasy, as though there was something he'd overlooked, something he was supposed to do or know or decipher. There were entire days in which, he discovered, his strangely frail memories of his activities did not match with what, by other accounts, had actually happened, particularly when he consulted Butler, who was with Artemis at almost all times. But even during deep meditation, he could not wrap his mind around the ghostly residual imprints of something that seemed long forgotten.

It had been during his work on a Pascal Hervé forgery - a painting depicting miniature humans with wings and pointed ears - that Artemis felt the unexplainable urge to learn more about the mythical creatures known as fairies. As he searched the Internet, all the information he found seemed to slide into pre-molded grooves in his memory, as though he'd known of every myth, testimony, and depiction of a fairy for years without every really taking it in, and was only now interpreting them. The more he read, the more he felt that, somehow, the answers to all his questions were at the end of this search. Normally he would have been astounded by the amount of faith he was putting into something as unreliable as a hunch, but he was too focused on his research to dwell on it.

It was nearly 2 in the morning when something he read on a webpage caused Artemis to brake his trancelike state and sit up abruptly.

'The book...' he whispered mutely. His eyes squeezed shut and his fingers moved to massage his temples. Images flashed through his brain: him and Butler sitting in an outdoor restaurant somewhere in...Vietnam? When had he been there?...Then a splotchy green arm, reaching out through the shadows to hand him something the size of a matchbox...then images on his computer screen of impossibly familiar symbols...

He had begun combing through his disks and drawers before his head had stopped spinning. The Book of the People...he had it already, he had saved copies on disk and hidden several more throughout the house. Part of him was trying to understand what these new memories meant, how it was possible that he could have forgotten such a significant block of time, but image after image of passages from the Book and the time he'd spent decoding it still flickered in and out of his head like fireflies.

But the disk wasn't with his others, or anywhere in his desk. So he headed for one of the safes in which he now remembered hiding the backup copies. Even the lock combinations were coming back to him.

Artemis found nothing in the safe in the ceiling of his study, or in the one hidden behind the portrait of Artemis the First, or in the one behind one of the bookcases in the library. Obviously someone had been looking for the Book, though he was amazed that anyone could have gotten past all of Fowl Manor's security. But this adversary couldn't have simply wanted the book for himself, or he would have just taken one copy. No, someone had wanted to prevent Artemis from having access to the it be the fairies themselves? Was it possible that they had somehow wiped his memory of them as well? It all would have seemed far-fetched at best, if Artemis hadn't felt so strangely certain that it was true.

There was one last place he could look. It was better hidden than the others, which might prove advantageous; but the price of such stealth was security: the most dependable locks were usually also the most detectable. He was almost afraid to check and find it empty as well. What if some of his memories really were gone forever? But then, he had remembered finding the Book, so perhaps total recall was possible. Then how many of his questions would be answered with such information? And how long would it take him to find another copy of the Book if this one was gone, too?

When he reached the attic lounge, he strode to the chaise lounge in the corner and pulled it away from the wall. A combination lock on a small camouflaged door in the wall opened to reveal several bound stacks of hundred Euro bills. Artemis extracted each one, pushing them to the side until the safe was empty. Then he took a Rolex off his left wrist, and inserted the tiny key, which was crafted onto the watch's fastening device, into a minute hole in the edge of the back wall of the safe. A lock clicked, and the tiny door swung open to reveal a white folder fastened to the wall with adhesive, so that it appeared that there was just a blank wall behind the door. When Artemis removed the folder, an unlabeled CD-ROM slid out.

With a cry of triumph, Artemis seized his treasure and was halfway out of the room before he realized he hadn't closed the safe. So careless; quite unlike him. This whole fairy business was really messing with his head. He should really make an effort to stay more alert; if, as he suspected, the fairies were actively trying to prevent him from remembering them, then he would need to be on his guard until he knew more about their capabilities. The last thing he needed was to have his mind re-wiped and his last copy of the Book stolen on his way back to his study to read it.

Artemis couldn't say how he knew - perhaps it was the residual memory that seemed to be closer to his consciousness than ever before, now that he had remembered something - but he was certain that by noon, perhaps even by sunrise, he would finally have this mystery, and possibly several others, unraveled.