In Present Time
Plan B Laboratories
Now, dear reader, I should expect you found the coming of the hurricane (that blew Master Fowl and yours truly all the way back to the middle Ages) very bizarre. Well, it has an explanation, one that I managed to squeeze from an LEP operative just this morning, and the story, it seems, narrates as such…
This hurricane was no invention of Opal Koboi's, sent fresh from Plan B Labs to St. Bartleby's to send Artemis on a little jaunt to the Middle Ages, it was, in fact, an ancient spell from a book she happened to come by, most innocently (as innocent as a half-crazed megalomaniac She-Devil could get), during her child-hood on a holiday to a Celtic village. Opal didn't even know it's after-effects fully as the rest of the page that went beyond 'creating a gust of wind to blow one's enemies away so far…' had been covered in age-old, crusty, blackened Mud Man's blood (fairy blood never degenerated).
So when she watched, from the comfort of the Lab, the video sent back from an ultra-light, reflective-foil wrapped, flying camera which was dispatched along with the newly created hurricane, the results were very satisfactory. To her (but we all know what happened) Artemis Fowl had been effectively wiped from the face of the earth.
One down, seven to go until revenge was complete.
Fowl Manor
Mrs Fowl was seated in front of the television again, bored, as always. This was most unexpected, least of all by Angeline herself, especially while her dearest husband was still recuperating in hospital. Everything had been all light and sweetness then. There were promises, from her Timmy to go about business legally, and then from Arty to stop his crime spree and go back to being the nice, manageable, agreeable schoolboy son she had never known. And then yes, they were kept, but like things she saw through sparkling shop windows, they lost their shine once she viewed them through the eyes of an owner. The future that had turned into the present had lost that rosy, romantic light in which she used to see them.
Her husband was out day and night, he was turning into a strait-laced workaholic, and a very dull companion, there was no Artemis to worry about either, he was at school, far, far away, and his letters had been dwindling steadily.
Her life, she had concluded, was an absolute misery.
Then the phone rang, the jarring, shattering song of the antiquated contraption wrapped in age-dulled Mother-of-Pearl, so much like a faded lily, yesterday's moonlight, an old woman whose beauty was now gone, swelled up like an invisible, glassy wave, filling the empty, soundless sitting room with a certain profusion of decadence and horror of age that hungered for more to eat and eat away.
She couldn't hear the lovers in the soap opera speak anymore though their faces curved into increasingly sappy, soppy and overwhelmingly idealistic smiles. Her brow twitched in annoyance, she leant to the side to pull out the phone wire but then stopped, what if it were Timmy?
Eastenders can wait.
She picked up the phone in happy anticipation and waited for her husband's voice to flood through the earpiece from wherever he happened to be, into Fowl manor, illuminating the darkness within.
The actual situation could not be more different.
"Mrs Fowl," A nervous, unfamiliar voice came through, "I have some bad news for you."
Angeline was dumbfounded, what could have gone wrong now?
"Madam?" The voice rose tremulously.
"Ah…hmm, I-I mean---yes?"
"I trust you have heard news of the latest hurricane? Well, it happened near St. Bartleby's, where your son goes to school, I believe. The hurricane hit the school and he is among the missing." The voice said, finishing up the last, terrible sentence quickly, "I'm very, very sorry."
And the phone went dead.
The phone clattered, raucously, as it hit the polished marble floor and lay there, dead, silent, shattered as the two leads on television embraced and Angeline sank to the floor.
Her-baby-was-GONE!!!