Gone in--How many?--Seconds
"Okay, so now what do we do?" This was Holly speaking and she was extremely annoyed. They had been detained at customs (stupid, highly paranoid shuttle-port security gnomes), it was Mulch—or more accurately, his sixteen dozen jars of bug preserves. All three of them had been stopped at the barrier separating the two shuttle-port terminals because the idiot gnome thought they were carrying—as he so eloquently put it—'dangerous killin' poison' that they were going to use to take over all the known Mud Man world. This would not have been a problem at all if Mulch—stupid, belligerent, mulish, utterly mentally and physically stunted dwarf—had not insisted that he totally needed every blasted jar of insect jelly.
"Ask him," Foaly pointed a hairy finger at Mulch, "he's the one who caused the trouble, not me."
"Mulch," Holly bore down on the dwarf who was just then sitting on the 'Welcome" mat outside the airport (where the security gnomes had so unceremoniously dumped them when their colleague got tired of arguing), delicately digging out juicy chunks of dung beetle from one of his jars. "Now that you've got your bugs—and all of us stuck without a flight, you had better have a good idea too."
"Mmm hmm. My, my, that would take quite a bit of thinking," Mulch said with his mouth full, big, splashy drops of bug juice raining down on the velveteen matting around himself. "Now, if you would, say, get me can of Cockroach and Earthworm Heavenly Soil Delight, I might suggest something."
"MULCH!!!" Both Foaly and Holly yelled.
"Kerpoo!" Mulch spat out a blackish-brown blob of mashed insects in surprise. "Fine, fine, I give you an idea. Just wait, wait for the dwarf brilliance to work."
"Yeah, like it'll ever. Listen Mulch, for as long as I've lived, I have never, never, never heard of 'dwarf brilliance', or of a brilliant dwarf for that matter." Foaly leaned over and rapped Mulch's skull with his knuckles. "Listen, I have an idea."
"What?" Holly said, looking up from the shuttle-port map.
"Weeeellllll," Foaly cracked his knuckles and gazed upwards at the fluorescent-lit city sky.
"Go on." Holly prompted, and even Mulch glanced up in mild interest.
"Well, what I was thinking was that we could get Mulch here to, uumm, how can I say this, erm……well, crawlintotheshuttleengineandsmuggleallofusinwithhim."
"What did you say, didn't quite catch you." Mulch said.
Foaly took a deep breath, "Okay, I said, that you could crawl into the shuttle engine and smuggle all of us in with you."
"WHAT????!!!!!!!!!" This time Mulch heard him.
"That's really too dangerous Foaly, I'm sorry, but this time, I have to say Mulch is right." Holly shook her head.
"Yeah……then, what other way is there?"
For a long time, there was only silence from the three of them, sitting out on the shuttle-port doormat.
They were all eating ice-cream, still sitting on the doormat with their luggage all surrounding them like a small fort, formulating a plan to get above ground. They had been approached by quite a few Atlantean tourists offering to pay good money to take photographs with them ("My, my, are you young people here doing a demonstration of some sort?"), all of them had been scared off by the terrible grin that Mulch promptly gave them.
"Okay, so we're talking hijack now." Holly said, licking her strawberry fudge ice-cream.
"Uh huh." Mulch nodded. "What I think we should do is to masquerade as a good, wholesome, multi-specie family with a lifetime's supply of nut jam or something."
So they set about collecting the right clothes, they split up and made visits to the restroom, to steal clothes, or in Mulch's case, to the shops to 'borrow' garments. In an hour's time, they were all dressed up—Foaly as an elderly grandfather, Mulch as a venerable, jam crazy senile aunt and Holly as a long suffering filial daughter accompanying her elders on holiday.
"Uhm. Have a good holiday oldies!" the gnome called after them as they passed into the second terminal. From there they would board the shuttle.
"Announcing Flight Eighteen. Flight Eighteen, now boarding. Announcing Flight Eighteen. Flight Eighteen, now boarding." The flight announcer's voice called out. "Announcing Flight Eighteen. Flight Eighteen, now boarding. Announcing Flight Eighteen. Flight Eighteen, now boarding. All passengers to Paris please board Flight Eighteen. Have a lovely holiday!"
"Tell me again Holly, why are we going to so much trouble to go to Howler's Vale?" Asked Mulch.
"Well, Artemis--he's our friend…" Holy began reluctantly, there were so many reasons why so that it made saving Artemis's life so essential to her and her own, but they were so deeply buried in her that she couldn't quite point them out. She thought then, she thought very, very hard. Artemis, he was their friend, not just their friend but someone so impossibly special to the whole of the fairy world that his very existence was ingrained in every molecule of every thought, every atomic particle of every minute of every day, so much so that the world would never reconcile itself to being without him. And—and most of all, they were his friends. They loved him.
Holly wanted to open her mouth and say that. She wanted to open her mouth and say all that should have been said ages ago—when the Council was getting ready to mind-wipe him, to take him away—and what so painfully needed to be said. It was the truth—it was the truth and it would be forever—screaming down into the depths of infinity.
But first there was something else.
"I'll tell you why," Holly steeled herself. "Opal Koboi. We've got to save the world."
'And Artemis, don't forget him.' She added silently.
They were flying! Flying out at last!!! They had boarded the plane and headed off to Howler's Vale.
By the time they got off the shuttle, the dusky hues of evening were closing in on the mountain region. The shadows had crept out of the crevices where they hid in the daytime to acquire the night, the greyish-blue fabric of twilight swirled around the the great dome of the sky overhead. the crimson fluorescence of the dying sun glowed faintly through the organdy mists that had unraveled themselves from the clouds overhead, to sink to the earth. The mountains loomed like titans encircling the darkling horizon to greet Eos, goddess of the night. One by one, stars came out too, bright and glittering nymphs of the empyrean and sang their song of quiet and of sleep. The wonderful atmosphere of solace had heavily descended like a beauteous curtain of silence, and the nearness of the sky made the world a holy place again, from such a long, long time ago.
"It's truly ……undescribable." These were Holly's only words for it. Foaly and Mulch could only gaze in appreciative silence. This was where the adventure begun too, and after they had all gotten their fill of the night, they set up camp.
They pitched the tent and cooked dinner over a campfire—'Mud Man style' as Holly put it—then they went to sleep after planning the next day.
Holly stayed awake through the silence of the night, that day was the first time ever since Artemis's mind-wipe that she had fully realized what she had done to him, and with the closeness of Frond's spirit around her, she knew just how much guilt she would have to bear if anything happened to Artemis.