Artemis Fowl: The Book of Ages
Homecoming
Holly Short felt the cool, slippery material of a shirt collar against her cheek as she leaned her head on Trouble's shoulder. She bent her head and inhaled deeply, suddenly shivering as she did. The lingering scent of sweat, recycled air, and dust from the elf's uniform didn't exactly smell good, but it was familiar. Holly knew that when she was this close to this smell, she was safe.
"You aren't going to leave again, are you?" she asked quietly, looking up and studying Trouble's face as he stared off somewhere past her shoulder.
He didn't say anything, but then he bent down a little, catching her lips with his.
Holly gasped, but pressed deeply into the kiss not a moment later, pushing against his head with her other hand. She would take that as an enthusiastic 'no'. Though her eyes felt moist, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, Holly Short was completely happy.
She opened her eyes, and Trouble was gone.
The elf stood frozen for a heartbeat before whipping her head around, looking to see where he could have gone so quickly. She found him off in front of her, a few feet away with his back turned towards her. His helmet was tucked under one arm and he was walking away.
"Wait!" she called out, "Where are you going!"
She started to run after Trouble, but felt a giant hand pull her shoulder back before she made it two steps forward. Holly sensed somebody crouch down behind her and felt an icy voice whisper in her ear. She saw ivory-colored skin and blood-red lips lean in next to her from the corner of her eye.
"Trouble Kelp is going home," came the cold voice of Artemis Fowl, "But you knew that already. Don't fool yourself."
Holly blinked and Trouble's image disappeared, replaced by two figures even further off into the distance- one tall, one short. Artemis Fowl, and herself. But she was over here! And so was Fowl! She distinctly heard her own laughter, and watched herself punch a lanky Mud Boy in the elbow before being promptly picked up by the waist and shrieking in surprise.
The elf stood unmoving, halfway between confusion and horror. It was like seeing a bull troll playing with a kitten. And the kitten liked it.
"Well, will you look at that!" came Fowl's voice again from behind her, his tone drenched in dark amusement.
Holly gulped, but couldn't find a proper response.
Fowl's grip on her shoulder briefly grew tighter as he chuckled.
"You know what they say about selling your soul…" he muttered before letting go and patting her shoulder almost affectionately.
"NO!" yelled the elf, a Softnose suddenly appearing in her hands. She swatted off the human palm on her shoulder, and pointed vaguely at the two figures in the distance.
She aimed, pulled the trigger.
And woke up in a cold sweat.
Lieutenant Colonel Holly Short's eyes shot open as she quickly registered the faint humming coming from the walls of the small room. She shouldn't have fallen asleep, not here, not now. But truth be told, recent days had left her feeling more drained than a toddler who had missed both naptime and bedtime.
"No…" she whispered, pulling her hands back and wrapping them tightly against her legs, resting her chin on her knees. She sneered. "I am not a blood traitor."
A little voice that sounded oddly like Julius Root nagged at her mind, but she ignored it.
'I've given everything to the People,' she thought, blinking the tiredness from her eyes, 'can't I be selfish… just this once?'
Fowl Manor, Dublin, Ireland
Holly Short closed her eyes as she lay flat on the low cot and tried to remember what she did to pass the time the last time she was captured by Artemis Fowl.
She remembered banging the cot against the hard concrete floor, digging an acorn out of her boot and using it to regain her magic. That wouldn't help here- this was an entirely different scenario, even if the place was the same.
Then she remembered her very first conversation with Artemis. She shivered. The pale youth she met years ago really was like a smaller version of the man who now ran the Manor. She wouldn't ask for dolphin meat this time. Oh, Fowl would get the joke, but then he'd probably actually put a plate of dolphin in front of her- if only to seriously disturb her, and to show that he could.
Holly groaned softly.
She needed to clear her mind. Maybe Butler could do it by meditating, but Holly never could sit still for that long- she was an exercising type. Jogging wasn't exactly an option here, unless she wanted to get very dizzy by running in tiny circles. She sighed and gently rolled herself off the cot without getting up.
Catching herself on the floor with her palms and toes, Holly squared her shoulders and let out a breath. She bent her elbows to right angles until her nose touched the floor. It smelled faintly like vomit doused in chlorine, causing face to scrunch in disgust. But at least it would keep her alert.
She pushed up. Then dropped down again. One.
No girl push-ups for this 'crazy girlie captain'.
Keeping a steady, slow rhythm, Holly suddenly had the mental image of Artemis trying to do the same, and she smiled despite herself. Her Artemis would probably fall after the second one.
'Wait,' she thought, pausing with her elbows still bent, 'my Artemis?'
She blinked, wondering where the word had come from. A second later, she rationalized.
'Well of course, my Artemis,' she thought to herself, 'how else would I distinguish the good one from the monster upstairs?'
Holly almost managed to convince herself that that was the only reason. She kept counting.
She was somewhere in the thirties when her shirt gently pulsed gold. Or at least she thought it did. Not a second later, it pulsed again.
The elf stopped and shoved herself up into a crouch before sitting down carefully on the edge of the cot. She was still staring down her shirt, where the light had come from.
It was the Book, that much, she was sure of.
She glanced up at the camera lodged in the upper corner of the room. It wouldn't have captured the golden light, since her whole body had covered it. Deciding to give it a few more minutes before she pulled out her Book to avoid rousing suspicion, Holly lay back on the cot, letting her muscles relax a little.
Holly thought it was minutes later when she sat up again, bit it was really just over one. She cracked open the Book. There had to have been a change. That was the only explanation she could think of. Books- even magical ones- didn't normally glow.
And there were changes. Not one new page, but two.
On the first, the verse was short, and there was only one stanza.
To find ye then, the place ye seek,
Dispel thine notion of great mystique,
The island's rock thou hast known before,
Search for nothing and know once more!
The elf groaned mentally.
'What kind of rock do I know? Magma? Was the island destroyed?' she thought, 'It must be talking about Mu though…'
Her eyes scanned back to the bottom of the page.
'Search for nothing…? What kind of stupid riddle is this?'
She though for a while, but couldn't come up with anything else. It would make sense if Mu had already been destroyed though. That wouldn't be good.
She decided to turn to the next page.
The Book is not lenient, not as one such as I,
For pardon and mercy, even gold cannot buy.
Unlike the others was this monstrous offense,
For Time is unbending, and the price, immense.
Ponder now, Thieves, upon thine past crime,
And seek absolution, when comes the time.
The Rule of Law and the Rule of Need,
Without their leave thou canst ne'er succeed.
Choose to fail and return to thine lands,
Or fade into darkness, as dust on the sands.
To you then, Thieves, a piece of advice:
No wrong is made right, save through sacrifice.
The elf furrowed her brow. She couldn't make anything of this message. Thieves?
The only thieves she knew were Artemis and Mulch, and she didn't even know where Mulch was in this world. She imagined he was probably off stealing some Mud Man trinket or other, taking advantage of the war and the surface, no doubt.
Thieves. More than one.
'Could it be the two Artemises?'
Holly scowled at the second half. Either fail or fade? What was that supposed to mean? Was there no way to succeed?
'There has to be!'
She reread both pages. This time, her gaze froze at I.
Holly was no linguistics expert, but it was obvious that somebody- and not the Book itself- was writing. Communication through the Book itself!
That wasn't possible. The magic needed to alter the Book was lost eons ago.
But then again, the Book had been changing for quite a few days now.
Minerva Paradizo's apartment, Quartier des Invalides, Paris
Minerva leaned back on her chair and seemed to relax slightly. She looked almost relieved after letting the story out, but appeared tired from the effort.
"Mu…" she said slowly, with some effort, "is an ancient fairy stronghold."
Artemis immediately frowned. He had scoured six continents and over a dozen cultures' worth of fairy references- Polynesians included- and had never come across anything like that.
"You're Irish," Minerva turned slightly and glanced at the teen, "you must know something about the fairy forts and the old enchantments of the De Danaan."
"The last aboveground fairy dynasty," Artemis nodded, "before their defeat by Mud M-" he paused, "-by us."
"Yes, well, modern fairies claim the People are peaceful, but that really only begins after the ascent of the De Danaan. There were five dynasties of fairies before the De Danaan, and all of them gained leadership through war and conquest. Do you remember the Cessair Dynasty?"
Artemis' eyebrows arched up. "The first Irish society?"
The blonde nodded.
"Most of them were killed during a global flood, but some survived. This was when the species began to fragment- humans, elves, dwarves, and the rest settled in different places and formed their own kingdoms. But the demons… they did it a bit differently."
"They re-colonized Hybras," said Artemis impatiently, now scowling slightly. He was all for knowing more fairy history, but now was hardly a good time.
Minerva seemed to notice his annoyance.
"Well, yes… and a bit more," she said, "Some of the demons went to the island of Hybras, but another- perhaps more adventurous- group sailed on after the flood. Years later, they ended up in the Pacific, stranded on a tiny island… which we now know as Mu."
Artemis thought back to the Hybras legends that Foaly had found, and swallowed. It was possible.
"You see," said Minerva, biting her lip briefly before continuing, "there were two lost demon colonies. I destroyed one, but the other still exists, even if the demons died out after the local ecology collapsed."
The Irish teen pressed his lips together tightly, his brow furrowing as he churned through the facts. This would have been so much easier if Qwan was around.
He looked up and saw Minerva watching him
"This island…" he said finally, "is it hidden by magic?"
The blonde shook her head.
"That was my first thought too. But the answer is much simpler. You realize of course, that very little of the Pacific Ocean has actually been physically charted- with depth soundings and such. Most of it is done by satellites now."
"And the demons of Mu anticipated remote sensing technology?" asked Artemis sarcastically.
Minerva almost laughed.
"No, they anticipated magical sensing by other fairies." She paused briefly. "There is a substance that defies both magical and technological sensing. Basically the only way you could detect it is to see it or touch it. The fairies called it unob'khanbu. The common name, I believe, is translated to 'stealth ore'."
Artemis's mouth twitched slightly as he brought two fingers up to his temple. He took a long breath.
"I happen to have come across this substance before…" he said, shaking his head, "but an entire island made of it… you could end global poverty a hundred times over with that kind of wealth."
Somewhere in Artemis' brain, a group of neurons slapped the part him that had just decided to talk about ending poverty. He was a Fowl, not some idealistic buffoon! It must have been his father and all those little humanitarian projects.
He made a mental note to buy something obscenely expensive when he got back to his own time- that usually made him feel better about these occasional slipups. Maybe he would have his bathtub silver plated.
"It wasn't always made of stealth ore," answered the woman. "The fairies did have some powerful extensive knowledge of alchemy back in the old, old days," Minerva shrugged, "Maybe the Philosopher's Stone pushed the mythology a bit, but stealth ore is the closest real alchemic metal, at least in terms of value."
Artemis thought for a bit, but then gave the blonde woman a hard, questioning look. She sighed and answered. It didn't take a genius to get the unsaid prompt. And even if it did, well, she was a genius.
"I found my sources mainly in Egypt; the Leyden papyrus IV gave most of the details on stealth ore alchemy. James Churchward's diaries and the Ahu Akivi glyphs from Easter Island compiles into the most likely story of Mu. It was almost funny," she smiled without humor, "Most of the manuscripts that dealt with Mu were reproduced digitally online. I didn't even have to leave my house! It was just an ancient demon dialect of Gnommish, which all the anthropologists assumed was some badly-written Egyptian hieroglyphs. Too bad the Easter Island researchers never compared notes with Egyptologists."
"So why didn't you go look?" asked Artemis.
Minerva's glance was momentarily withering, but it fell quickly.
"I had just destroyed one demon colony," she said, "I was not about to go mess with another one, even if it was deserted." She looked away. "I'm not exactly… evil, you know. Ambitious to a deadly fault, maybe, but the same could be said of you."
Artemis opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by a loud knocking noise on the apartment's glass balcony door. Each knock sounded like it was being done with a vibrating electric toothbrush. When he looked towards the glass though, nothing was there. The pale light of a waning crescent moon could just barely be made out above the lights of Paris against a dark night sky.
"That would be Trouble and N°1," said Artemis.
Minerva started to get up, but froze and stared back at Fowl. "Trouble?" She shook her head and started towards the door. "Who the hell names these people?" she muttered.
The blonde slid the glass door open, and an elf appeared on the porch, followed shortly by an imp (though his reappearance looked more like stepping out of a slight fog than settling into the visible spectrum), who was trying to jump out the tangled links of a Moonbelt. Unfortunately, stubby imp legs weren't really made for jumping through hoops.
"Could you un-shield before knocking next time?" asked Minerva in what Artemis supposed was a greeting, "The vibrations could have shattered my door."
Trouble grunted.
"Yeah, sure Miss Paradizo. I'll remember that the next time I knock on your door because of a temporal crisis."
It was a few minutes later, and Trouble Kelp was fuming. Technically though, it only took about five seconds for Artemis to get him to that state.
"Let me ask you something, Fowl," he said, teeth clenched together tightly, "Is it just me, or do you seem to have a natural compulsion to kidnap fairies named Holly Short?"
"I do not," Artemis glared at the elf, "and for your information, I plan to personally get Holly back."
The teen turned to N°1 without another word on the matter, though his glance wasn't quite as smooth as it usually was. He nodded towards the imp's still-petrified arm.
"N°1, if you were to put a magical beacon on somebody like you did with me and Holly last time, how far could you pull them through space to you? Space only- no time."
The imp seemed to think for a few seconds.
"Time is a lot trickier… but I am missing an arm for all intents and purposes…" he scratched his chin, "So say… if you want about a ten-foot margin of error without that somebody turning into the consistency of beetle juice… then something like halfway from here to the Sun."
Trouble stared at the young warlock, obviously still not used to the extent of his magic. He heard Minerva give a low, appreciative whistle off to the side.
"It's a lot easier pulling things towards me than pushing things away," said the imp, as if he was explaining how to do a proper backstroke. "Why do you ask?"
"So I could have the proper plan," he responded. Artemis turned to the C Cube that was on one side of Minerva's dining table. "Destroy alternate files."
"Confirm deletion of three alternate files," came the voice from the machine's small speaker, "Confirm?"
"Yes," Artemis said quickly.
"Files deleted."
"Decrypt files named 'Commander,' 'Warlock,' and 'Scientist.'" The teen placed a CD under the Cube's omnisensor. "Burn files separately to CD."
Seconds later, Artemis turned back to the others with three CDs. Trouble rolled his eyes, spinning his copy around a single index finger and looking at it as if he had just been handed a clay tablet. Minerva muttered something about paranoid Irish teens.
"Please read the files," said Artemis, "Destroy them when you are finished. It is time we finally put some plans into action."
Outskirts of Dublin, the next morning
Artemis checked his watch impatiently. He was currently sitting in a rented black sedan, parked in what was probably the closest parking space to the south entrance of Fowl Manor that was actually outside of Manor grounds. It was three miles away.
"Signal has cleared European airspace," came the calm voice of the C Cube from the back seat.
Artemis let out a small sigh of relief. Minerva and N°1 were already on their way to Hawaii via subterranean shuttle since a few hours ago. Hopefully, they would make it before the Fowl Learjet. Artemis' calculations placed them at least half a day ahead of the jet, but that was assuming mostly clear tunnels without any human interference. But these days, he couldn't be sure about the last bit.
"Finally!" exclaimed Trouble Kelp from next to the C Cube, where the windows' tinting hid him from the sun. Artemis shifted the car into drive. The blue device was evidently the only one that still spoke calmly.
The Irish teen drove carefully towards Fowl Manor, hoping that he was right about the Manor's security. He wasn't exactly welcome in the Manor anymore, but they would see about that soon enough.