Foaly had hit the jackpot. Now, not only did he have Kim's online diary and all of her medical and school records to work from, he now had a private journal of one of her friends. It hadn't been posted online, but it had been typed on a computer with internet access, meaning the centaur could easily get at it.

It had been written by someone named Matt, obviously one of Kim's close friends. Probably one of her only friends, Foaly thought with a smile. Still, he wasn't exactly one to talk.

He discovered quite a few interesting facts about the girl, including the fact that she had actually succeeded in burning water during a Family Studies cooking class. But there was nothing that could help him crack the mystery of the Maple Stone.

Foaly looked back towards the screen that was supposed to display live images coming from Fowl Manor. Still nothing. About fifteen minutes ago, the picture had just vanished. The flares hadn't been up, but he had simply written it off as bad reception. It was a hard thing to set a link up from the centre of the earth to Ireland.

The centaur flicked to her medical records and whistled. Quite a few little accidents were recorded, along with a few incidents with her asthma. He smiled as he saw a short report dated September 11th, 2001. She had received two stitches on one of her finger webs. He didn't even want to know what had happened there.

There was something, the webs. They were listed in her med records, but it apparently ran in the family. Same with the funny eyes that made her look like she had a touch of Downs Syndrome. He had at first thought that she could be part water nymph, but finally concluded that wasn't the case. There was the blood test, not to mention if she was part nymph, she'd be a lot prettier. It wasn't an insult, it was just a fact.

He clicked around until he reached her birth report. His eyebrows rose. Bad respiration, poor circulation, jaundice, and nerve damage to her eyes.

Foaly flicked his tail, slightly impressed. She had probably been written off as dead when she was born. And now she was this hyperactive, normal, annoying person. He focused on the nerve damage. She had actually been born blind…

"Are you blind when you're born?" he muttered to himself, quoting from a Cat's song. Obviously the nerves had repaired themselves somehow, and she had gained sight at eight days old.

Unless she's actually blind, she lied about not being magical, and she navigates with her powerful aura, he smirked. Highly unlikely. If she had a powerful aura, she wouldn't be such a klutz. Not to mention Holly would spot her a kilometre away.

He breezed through several of her school records, but found nothing out of the ordinary. She had fairly high marks, mostly nineties with the odd eighty-something in Gym or Family Studies. There were several reports from her teachers saying that she was a good student, but she's be much better if she got her nose out of her books or her head out of the clouds.

The part about the books gave him an idea. He hacked into a Canadian library database, and pulled up a list of books Holmes had checked out. He discovered that the only ones documented were those which were signed out using a digital card, but he still had a huge list.

Fantasy. Almost all of it was fantasy, science-fiction, or both. There were some books on the Titanic, a few on King Henry the Eighth, but it was mostly fantasy. And a whole bunch by Stephen King. She read a lot, which was nothing huge. Sure, she didn't have a life. He couldn't really say that was contrary to his current social position.

Foaly looked back at Matt's journal, rereading an entry about the previous year's school production of Annie. It truly got funnier each time he read it. Obviously, it had turned into complete and utter chaos, and still the show went on.

The centaur flicked his tail, and checked on the Fowl Manor screen. Still nothing. Were they even trying to restore the link? Probably not. Fowl was the only one with any tech smarts in the group, and the fairy network would be far to complicated, even for him.

Not much on the dating front, he mused, returning to Kim's diary. Although it didn't seem like it bothered her much. She was happy to live with her impossible dreams of Orlando Bloom, Daniel Radcliff, and Jacob Brent. Pathetic, really, but she was still young. No doubt she'd grow out of it and move on to real boys. Or girls. It was, after all, the twenty-second century.

"Okay, let's take this thing like you'd take a test," Holly said calmly.

"Yeah," snorted Kim. "With the answers written on your hand and a smart person in front of you leaving their paper in clear view."

The elf captain rolled her eyes. "I mean, let's sort out what we know, then see if it tells us anything else. Obviously, this isn't the world we know. Unless, of course, the Maple Stone did… whatever it did to the sky, then dumped us here."

"Sounds pretty unlikely," Root sighed. "Not matter how bloody powerful that thing is supposed to be, I really don't think it could create about a billion more stars, two more moons, and paint the entire mess in Day-Glo."

"We could be on another planet," Holmes suggested. "But I doubt it."

"Why not?" Butler shrugged. "Right about now, anything seems likely."

"Well, the plants, for one thing. These trees are exactly like the trees we know, the plants and the moss and all that crap is the way it should be. And the air's not really light or super heavy or nonexistent. What's the odds that out of all the planets in the galaxy, we land on one that's so similar to Earth tree-wise, and has the perfect oxygen levels for us?"

Artemis blinked. "I think that's the first logical thing you've said since I met you."

She shrugged. "Don't get too excited, Fowl. I read about something like this in a book once."

"How did they get out of it in the book?" Butler questioned.

"Er, I don't know, to tell ya the truth. I was just about to read the ending, and I accidentally left it in our hotel room in Toronto. I kind of forgot about reading the rest until now. Kinda ironic, really… Oh wait, Matt told me how it ended!"

"And?" Root prompted.

"They fell through some rip in the time space thingie, and they got caught between dimensions. They found the way back, but there was something wrong, and they were all busted into atoms and sucked into a black hole."

The commander groaned.

"And, of course," she continued. "There's a possibility that we're completely in another dimension. In fact, I would be surprised if we see Amelia Erheart or the crew of the Mary Celeste wandering around here."

"The crew of the what?" Commander Root asked.

"The Mary Celeste. It was a British ship that was found by Captain Morehouse and the Dei Gratia on December 5th, 1872, floating in the Atlantic Ocean. When he and his crew boarded the ship, they found it to be completely empty. Everything was still in place, food on the table, sheet music for the organ, a vial of oil standing upright, even a letter a crew member had started. But all of the people were gone.

"The last entry in the log had been made ten days earlier, on November 25th, reporting everything had been fine then, and stunning Captain Morehouse with the fact that the Mary Celeste had sailed nearly four hundred miles without a crew. The cargo was untouched, and the only things out of place were a missing lifeboat and an open window. But the tackle needed to launch the lifeboat was gone, so it was unlikely that it had been used. The captain of the ship, a man named Briggs, his family, and a large crew had just disappeared into thin air."

Everyone blinked.

"You really don't have much of a life, do you?" asked Artemis.

"Shut up," Kim scowled. "You're lucky I'm here. I'm an expert in the fields of mythology and the paranormal." She didn't mention, of course, it was all from books she read because she didn't have anything better to do.

"Yeah, you study the paranormal up close in the mirror every morning," Root muttered. Sure, it was immature, but it made him feel better about getting 'told' by a Mud kid.

"Well, we're not going to kind any answers just sitting here," Holmes said, standing up and walking forward. She tripped over a tree root, fell, and got a mouthful of dirt. "Dammit."

"Nice walking skills."

"Shut up, Julius."

"Don't call me Julius, Mud Girl."

"I'll call you Julius if I bloody well feel like it."

Artemis rubbed the bridge of his nose in an attempt to keep himself from banging his head against the trunk of a tree. Here he was, stuck God-knows-where with two elves who hated the ground he walked on, his bodyguard, and a clumsy girl who's only known talent was spouting information that really wasn't much of a use to anyone.

Joy.