Author's Note: My apologies for taking so damn long with this chapter; last I really wrote of it was in a hotel room in London, where Lionel (my laptop) crashed. Without Lionel for the next few weeks I rather lost track of BoaF, and I most definitely lost the roll I'd been on up to London. Lionel's going into retirement at my Dad's work this week, I'm going to get Dad's current laptop instead, a fellow named Lex (can anyone guess where I'm getting my laptop names from? *grin*) and so things should all be good. Except for my chronic procrastination factor.
And Ivycreeper, Holly's line is in Irish, but probably reasonably wrong grammatically and everything, because my Irish dictionary is not the most comprehensive thing around.
Knowledge is Power
"Magic only appears when and where one least expects to see it, otherwise it would not be magic." - Anon.
The journey to E3 through the counties of Kildare, Meath, Westmeath, Longford, Roscommon and Galway was as uninteresting as you'd expect of such a drive across rural Ireland. When they passed a road sign pointing towards the N2, the road they would be taking if traveling to Tara Station, both fairies fell silent, a delicate balance of grief and bubbling anger surfacing. Of course, there were other added dilemmas due to nine-year-old Jacaranda Brambling being awake, and now faced with living, breathing proof of her own fantasies. That type of thing can always make things interesting; thankfully, it doesn't happen very often. Proof of belief adds the expected unexpected to any equation, especially with a young girl.
Root was the one faced with the task of calming the Mud Girl - answering her questions and ignoring her prods - with little help at all from Holly. And the Commander didn't ask for Holly's input, because there were times – such as the past few hours – where she was the "crazy girly captain" to even her Commander, who generally had quite a lot of control over Holly. As much as anyone could ever have control over Holly Short, anyway.
Root didn't really mind; he appreciated the brilliance and clarity of a curious child. And the questioning and prod dodging gave him purpose for the hours of transit across Ireland.
"Why aren't your wings attached to you, fairy? How can you fly if your wings aren't attached?" Jac asked, lightly touching the mechanical wings lying across the Commander's lap, afraid that they would be too delicate for human hands and fall to pieces like a dream.
"Because my real wings were eaten by a huge dragon when I was fighting him. Fighting him in a battle to save Haven, the fairy city. I had to get a pair of mechanical wings to fly with after that, I just attach them with the straps."
"Like Long John Silver's wooden leg?"
Root's look of puzzlement showed he had no idea who Long John Silver might be, but he knew the idea of a prosthetic leg. "Yeah, like a wooden leg."
Jac leaned closer to the Commander, so as to be able to whisper into his ear, but not speaking nearly soft enough for the whispering to actually serve any purpose. "Why's your daughter so cranky? Is it because the dragon ate her wings as well?"
"My daught—? Ah, Holly." Root clanked over at the Captain, who pointedly stared out the window at the dark hills. "No, her wings were taken away from her by the fairy king because she was being too grumpy even when she had them."
Holly turned towards her Commander and the girl, glaring with all the force of someone who has been eavesdropping on other's opinions of their faults. "I never had my own wings, Mud Girl. I was born without wings, as was Root. And the People do not have a 'fairy king', only a bunch of old foggy fools who lie too much and generally do troublesome things." She pointedly didn't look at Root at all, keeping her eyes on the girl in an effort to intimidate her, although her words were intended to chastise her Commander.
Jac moved closer to the Commander, taking more care with her whispering this time, glancing over at the back of Holly's head, turned towards the dark, midnight fields again. "I can see how the King would have taken away her wings." Root grinned. "Imagine not believing in fairies even when you are one!" she continued. "It's silly!" She said, with the finality that children have when they know they are Right, capital R.
"There are always silly people everywhere, miss. Always silly people, and not many of them believe in fairies at all."
"Well, I'm never silly. And I'll never be silly at all. Are you ever silly, fairy? And what's your name? I'm called Jac."
"I'm sometimes silly, but I try very hard not to be. And my name is—" Root's various names, titles, stations, ranks and accolades flashed through his head, including Beetroot, but he settled for that which was most right for that moment in time. "--Julius. I'm Julius."
--Basil was lying on the rather grimy carpet when Jason stepped over the threshold. "Basil?" he whispered. Moving through the small apartment with the care that People naturally adopt when grief or tragedy hangs in layers of thick curtain throughout the area; it takes extra effort to wade through the thickly laden air, churned into grief-flavoured cream. than it would usually take; to push into grief where you are not wanted is not a task for the weak of constitution. Jason found Basil, who was looking up at the ceiling as though it had mysteries of the Universe mapped out every 4:42 am and he didn't want to miss a moment of it. Jason knelt down beside his... comrade? friend? Associate? …Finally, he decided that he was here, he had the right to be here, as one of only three others who knew the truth about how and why Basil's lover had died. Although, if that made him an enemy or a friend Jason didn't know.
"Basil, I don't think you should be staying here alone. Don't you have any family you could stay with? You could stay with me if you need to."
"I like it here." The room around him was a mess: there would have been clothes thrown everywhere, if only Basil had changed clothes at all in the past 5 days. There was a plate of something half-eaten on a coffee table, and it was covered with flies, the potatoes turning a sickly grey colour and sporting disfigured lumps of mould. The disk player had a piece of plastic broken off it - Basil had thrown it at the wall once its batteries had run out of juice because he wasn't able to listen any longer to the horrible Country-Western disks Cypress had loved, and it had been such a waste of time arguing over that damn music.
Basil rolled over onto his side, facing the pixie. It seemed to take an extraordinary amount of effort to do such a simple task. "Do you know what's worst, Jason? I had to go to Willow and William's place the next day, pretend I'd fobbed Cypress off for an hour with a lame excuse. People asked me if I thought Cypress would like the presents they'd got him. And he would have liked some of it, even the book from his Aunt. And I had to pretend that everything was normal, and it wasn't. But it was, because it wasn't too hard to pretend at all, because I'd done it so often. It wasn't hard to go on for hours before I was allowed to cry, not as hard as it should have been. It was selfish, because I shouldn't have been pretending at all. I should have gone to the LEP, whatever the consequences I would have had to face. It would have been the noble thing to do."
"Quentin--"
"I don't care a jolt about Quentin! I bet he wants me back there, doesn't he? He sent you to check on me, to see that I wasn't going to do something stupid after he killed the man I loved."
"He didn't, Bas, he didn't order me over here." Basil didn't point out the differential in terminology, he knew that Quentin didn't need to order someone most of the time; most fairies found knowledge that his suggestions weren't negotiable rather quickly.
"Go away, Palm. I want to wallow in my own filth for a little longer. Your presence is not appreciated."—
Basil came out of his almost doze when the door to his cell clanged against its railings, the tracks it ran on being very well oiled. The sprite who came in – one who he'd seen from afar as he was brought into the Plaza, and had recognized as calling the shots – was really rather excited, but hiding it all under a cracking layer of calm indifference. The elf behind him gave Basil a slightly apologetic, mostly tired smile at the unnecessary dramatics of the cell door. And the woman beside him was as unreadable as ever they come.
Basil stood, nervously, not quite sure what he was supposed to do now that he was here. He inclined his head towards the three.
The elf spoke first, after pointing an infrared remote at the camera mounted in the corner – turning it on or off, or doing something else altogether Basil didn't know. "I'm Captain Trouble Kelp, currently Commander-in-Absence of the LEP. This," he indicated the sprite, "is Captain Christopher Vein, in charge of all LEP Intelligence divisions. And the lovely lady on my right is a Kry'rae diplomat, Lady Vinyáya, a member of the Council. I hope that since you now know who we are you'll extend the courtesy."
"Somehow I doubt that you treat all your prisoners in this way, Captain." Basil replied. "My name is Basil Rune. I am… legally dead, but before that I was included in the advisory soviet of Quentin Thyme. Part of the highest band of the Anti-Atlantis Association hierarchy, for all extents and purposes."
Vein let out a low whistle that Trouble ignored. "And are you willing to co-operate with the LEP in our efforts concerning the AAA in return for asylum?"
Basil nodded.
"And why would you do that?" Asked Vinyáya, glaring at him with suspicious eyes.
"Lady, you must understand, I'm not the only person who's willing to give up all the information about the AAA that they have. I'm not the only one, not by a long shot. But it's impossible to do anything because of Quentin. Well, almost impossible. I faked my own death in the E1 bombing so that I would be able to come to you."
"Why?"
"No one joined the AAA because they wanted to kill innocent kids going up for some moonlight. It was a lark, it was just one of a long list of 'cool' groups to become part of. It wasn't extremist when most of us joined; it was a joke. Who you knew, how radical you could pretend to be – that was how you were defined at age 60. I joined in order to pretend to my friends of the time that I was like them, and because they already suspected me of being 'a dirty rotten queer'. There's nothing like joining an extremist terrorist group because of peer pressure and that insane urge to be normal and fit in."
"How old are you, Rune?" Trouble asked.
"Eighty-five."
"And what do you get out of betraying the AAA, and this Quentin you've mentioned?" Vinyáya leant back on her heels, looking Basil over.
Basil didn't flinch at her scrutiny, and Vinyáya thought that reasonably impressive, because she was trying to make him flinch. "Peace of mind. Peace." He gave a snorting mockery of a laugh. "And an extremely inadequate and ultimately useless form of revenge that probably will not make me feel any better at all."
"Revenge for what?" She continued.
"He killed my lover."
"Romantic." Intersected Vein. "How about the important stuff. How much info can you give us?"
"A lot, I suspect. I was hated within the AAA – People who hate Atlanteans for no reason hate homosexuals for a lot of often spoken reasons - and for that reason Quentin told me more than he would others – I wasn't going to take his power, because no one would let me. I was safe, where many others would be liabilities. Even if I had ambitions I would not be allowed to act upon them, while others were potential threats to his leadership."
"Quentin Thyme is the leader of the AAA?" asked Trouble. Basil nodded. "Any other names you're willing to give us?"
"Not all, only those who I know don't mind what Quentin asks them to do, and aren't being forced into it by some other means."
"Any particular place Underground you'd like to visit? The tunnels under Japan, perhaps? Or Turkey? We'll be putting you up in Council-paid accommodation for the next while, Rune." Said Vein, after glancing at Trouble.
"Do you have a location for Thyme?" Asked Trouble.
"Yes."
Trouble let out the breath it seemed he'd been holding in for years, but probably only since the attack on E1. "Great."
A stiff breeze increased the chill factor of the winter air, as they finally stopped and waited outside the car for a message or shuttle from E3. Holly rubbed her hands up and down her arms in an effort to keep warm, and she appreciated the wonder of Foaly's microfilament suits with heating coils in a way she hadn't before. Why did all these places Above have to be so cold?
Root didn't sidle up to her – because he was her Commander; he didn't have any right to be sidling – but he didn't exactly storm up to her directly. "Holly?" he almost-whispered. She grunted, staring at the turf-covered hill that was the E3 fairy fort, wishing it open. "What's wrong?"
Another grunt, setting her will against that damn turf so it'd just open already.
"Captain Short, answer my question!"
She glanced over at her Commander and felt instantly rather guilty, although not for any real reason, just general guilt of a lack of truth.
"Is it the Life Bond?" She felt herself nodding, but she turned back to stare at the ordinary-looking hill. She couldn't have this conversation looking at anyone. "I can feel it too, Holly. And, well, I know what it feels like, the responsibility and the lack of control."
She had to keep staring at the hill; the Bond left her with so little self-control when it came to Root or Artemis that if she actually saw her Commander talking to her she wouldn't be able to stop herself from spilling her heart. "Do you?" She asked.
"Yes. My life has been saved more than once before. Most of the Bonds I've paid back, though one only recently."
"Who?"
"Are you sure you want to hear this?"
She nodded; the hill really was very interesting, she knew what it was but couldn't for the life of her see where the door might open up.
"My first was when I was only very, very young – maybe 30 or 32. A friend – our butler – hid me with his family in the 1432 Frond Revolution. I managed to save his nephew during a riot just after I joined the LEP." Root breathed out, looking up at the stars and remembering the nephew or the butler, or the lost innocence of the Revolution.
"And the recent one?" Holly's morbid curiosity would itch at her until she asked.
"Ah, that one I'm sure you'll delight in knowing. It was eighty years ago, and I was Above on a mission in Ireland. The IRA was very active, and we had a group of civilians that were trapped in a disused fort with a firefight going on right above their heads – they'd been trapped for two days already. My team and I were sent in to try a diversion so they could escape, or attempt a rescue. We managed to get them out, but one of my team took a Mud Man's bullet that would have killed me. It was that night that I made the airspeed record, flying to E2 so that we could get a medic team up to save the man. He missed the birth of his daughter that night, although he was in the same medical centre."
Holly was silent.
"I didn't manage to pay him back before he died, but I looked out for his daughter since. And even now the debt has been repaid in complete, I'm still going to look out for his daughter."
"My father…?" She asked, and Root nodded. "That's stuffed up. You save my life to rid yourself of the debt towards my father, and I get saddled with one towards you."
"The debt was gone after I saved your badge after that disastrous Hamburg Affair. We can presume that if you'd lost your job it would have indirectly ended up killing you."
Holly bit her lip. "I was a bit messed up after that."
Root smiled, grimly. "Let's not dwell on the past. And you'll see, the debt will work itself out."
She nodded, and noticed a darker line of shadow on the hill – that was probably the end of the hologram covering the entrance; they could never get them perfect. She wanted to say something about him having his magic while repaying his debts, but didn't. The shape of the second acorn was molded into her palm; she had been gripping it like death for hours now, fearing its uselessness. She needed to fly again. She needed her magic, or she'd never be free.
"Commander, can I go for a fly for a few minutes? I need to clear my head, and we won't get any message for a while probably."
"Of course, Holly." He handed over the pair of wings, and she adjusted the straps once more before swinging them over her shoulders.
She flew in the direction of the hidden fort, trying to see the lines of hologram. She looked back at her Commander from a distance, he wasn't looking at her, rather staring directly over his head at the stars, probably remembering tales he'd been told as a child. She looked up at the stars as well, and remembered her father telling her that heroes become stars when they die, and how she had scoffed him because at school they'd just learnt that the stars were actually the ghosts of giant fires half the universe away that had gone out millions of years before we even see their light. Maybe her father was a hero though.
The acorn's shape was smooth, familiar, and she could picture it in her palm with perfect clarity – the same shape as Root's acorns of office, of advertising symbols that littered the Underground; the shape of an award she'd gotten in LEPAcademy, and a different one she'd gotten in her first year of school, congratulating her on knowing her alphabet… She felt tempted to drop it to the ground, because what would happen if this didn't work? If her magic was really gone and it wasn't just the fault of the first acorn that perhaps she hadn't plucked correctly. It could have been the fault of words she hadn't spoken right, or maybe the ground had been only a thin layer of soil over concrete and not able to conduct the magic…
She wanted her magic back.
She looked back at the hill, and couldn't see the car with the sleeping Jacaranda and the probably squabbling Artemis and Brambling, nor her Commander standing ten metres from it.
She flew to the ground and pulled off her helmet, in direct, purposeful violation of LEP Protocol. She knelt to the ground, and willed this to work as she dug her fingers into the peat to dig a hole. The acorn rolled into it, and she piled dirt on top. She rested her hand against the soil, fingers spread, and recited the words.
"Tabhair ar ais mé dul an domhan, agus éiligh an bronntanas sin mo ceartas."
The particles of magic danced along the peat in the most beautiful and appreciated waltz they'd ever danced for her. She breathed out a sigh as the first particles touched her fingertips and disappeared under her skin. The sheer feeling of it was enough to make her laugh and laugh, slightly hysterical. She smiled and grinned and let herself fall back to lie spread on the ground, not caring about the dirt marking her clothes, touching as much of her body to the Earth as possible so she might attract as much of the dancing blue as fairily possible.
Her breath caught as the final particles sank into her fingers and temple and made their journey to lodge in her abdomen and at the base of her skull like the most perfect of friends come back to stay and reclaiming their old rooms.
Her magic was back, running through her body in that most unappreciated of ways that she now appreciated so much more, having faced the fear of having lost it forever. And she didn't bother wondering why it had disappeared in the first place because she had it back now.
She made her way back over the hill on foot, her feet sinking into the thick peat and she didn't care at all that her boots were being ruined.
She made her way to her Commander's side, grinning like a mad man. "Commander – Julius. I forgot to tell you," she mock-whispered in the silence of the early morning. "I broke your record coming back from the oak tree. 181 kilometres an hour average." She smirked.
Vinyáya excused herself from the room while Basil was giving every ounce of information about the AAA that he could remember to Trouble and Vein. They'd already found out the important things, it was just that Trouble and Vein were held in place by the regulations and rhythms of Police Procedure, they couldn't just run when they had the most relevant information. And they didn't really know how to best use the information once they had it; they were far too isolated from politics to even think of what she was going to do with Basil's revelations.
She called a friend of hers, he owed her a favour. And she still had that picture of his illegitimate daughter somewhere…
By seven am they'd received word from the Underground and Trouble had told them that he was sending up a shuttle to pick them up. There had been some magma flare disturbance, which is why it had taken so long.
Artemis decided to make a call. He got out of the car, breathing on his hands to keep them warm, and plucked his mobile from a pocket, searching through his address book to find the number of the Helsinki University Hospital. He pressed the green button to start dialing.
"Would you be able to put me through to Angeline Fowl?" He said in perfect Finnish, with only a slight trace of his Irish accent.
"We're not allowing any media contact with Mrs Fowl. She has requested that all persisting calls be diverted to her lawyer. Artemis Fowl is in a stable condition. Thank you for calling." Artemis' nose wrinkled in disgust.
"I'm not part of the media, I'm family. Her son."
"Oh. Oh. I'm so sorry, Master Artemis. I'll put you through right away. Your father's doing just fine."
The woman on the other end of the line seemed to cause Artemis physical pain. He murmured under his breath, so that only Butler (who had followed him from the car) could hear him, "King Timmy Syndrome…". Butler grinned slightly.
"Thank you, ma'am." There was a moment of waiting…
"Mother?"
"Arty, darling!"
"Butler said that you called."
"He did? I did? I… I don't think I've called you, but my memory sometimes plays up on me. You only left an hour ago. You said you had a friend you wanted to visit out in the city. Have you met up with him already? Are you coming back now? The doctors said that your father won't be waking in the near future so…"
"I did?"
"Oh, that's good darling. What did you talk about?"
"Oh, nothing much at all. A wasted meeting really. I'm still here."
"Is something wrong, Arty? You sound a bit strained."
"No, no, of course not, Mother. I just had … It was a moment of déjà vu. It's nothing."
"I worry about you sometimes, Arty. You're always doing strange things. And you don't have any friends your own age. Spending all your time on computers and in labs… It's not healthy."
"No, I guess it's not at that, Mother. Although I'm here with a classmate from school right now. Okay, I'll … I'll see you."
"When will you be coming back? One of the doctors wants to speak to you."
"Um… I don't know, Mother. Sorry."
"That's fine, Arty. I'm sure he can speak to you whenever you get back. Are you sure there's nothing you were calling about?"
"Oh, no, nothing. Sorry for bothering you, Mother."
"You never bother me, darling."
"Good bye."
"Bye. I love you, Arty."
"Yes, Mother."
Artemis hung up. He turned to Butler, opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it. Either his mother was…or she… He opened his mouth yet again, about to speak, but then he figured it out and almost smiled. He looked at his watch, noting the time, adding two hours so it'd be Helsinki time.
He put the phone away and moved back towards the car. There was an oppressive silence being held up by the occupants. The radio was still playing, sprouting out some horrible Christmas carol.
"What's happened?"
"There was a message over the radio, Fowl," said Liam. "Bombay has been bombed by Pakistan. They've declared war. And you know how long it'll last before the UN and America get involved, what with the threat of nuclear war."
"Damn," Artemis said, running a hand through his hair. "Damn." He repeated.
An elf who wasn't nearly nervous enough – he'd have to promote him – had just given Quentin Thyme the item that was sliding between green fingers. A small seven-pointed star, glittering with layers of white elaborate decoration; the jewels occasionally glinting, showing a multitude of colour within the white – the seven colours of the rainbow.
He pocketed the trinket.
He really would have to promote that elf.
Thanks to: becca8, That Aerin, Simply Myself, Melbell, puzzelorjijsaww, darklight ascendant, flamaria13, Black Knight and Ides of March for your reviews since last chapter.