Third chapter up! I'm trying my best to keep the updates coming, but since I'm doing a pretty important year in school, they might be a bit irregular.
This chapter is long! But it feels good to get it out of my system. Please, please, please R&R!
House Of Cards
Chapter Three – Make Mine Mocha
So far it had been an uneventful summer for Artemis Fowl the Second. Having finished his education at a rapid rate, he had realized that life at Fowl Manor was actually quite boring, and quite frankly, bothersome. Business dealings with his father, Artemis Fowl Senior, had reduced quite drastically, with his old man telling him that he was yet young, and he should take life easy. His mother, of course, knew all about his other 'dealings' and often chided him for taking too much of an interest in the world down below.
"They want to be alone, Arty, so leave them be. Look where all our meddling has got us – extinction of species," - Artemis gulped silently here - "global warming, and reduction of forest cover…We humans are so meddlesome."
"Maybe Arty needs friend," chirped young Beckett. Angeline beamed at her young son.
"But of course! That's a wonderful idea, Becky!" She turned to Artemis, who was pretending to be interested in the state of his nails. "What about your young French friend? What was her name now…Mandy? Maurine? No, no, Minerva! Why don't you invite her over for the summer? You'll have some fun then!" Angeline winked at her eldest son, whose face was so hot he felt as though he could fry three eggs on it.
And so, the eager young Minerva Paradizo was reluctantly invited over to the Emerald Isle for four weeks, an invitation she accepted with great glee. "We will do so much together, Artemis," she had oozed over the telephone. "Believe me; I look forward to hearing the tales of your latest escapades."
And so one and a half out of the four weeks of summer had passed, and Artemis Fowl was still bored stiff. Minerva had certainly grown even more beautiful over the years; unfortunately, the popular saying 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder' had applied in this case, and Artemis was now sitting next to Minerva on a swing in the garden, pretending to listen to her tales of a thousand suitors.
"So I told Antonio to take a hike, and his father spat out the cheap Merlot he had been drinking," Minerva was talking rapidly, not seeming to notice that her company was getting drowsier by the minute. "Normally I would have said something smarter and snappier, but he just makes me so mad! I missed you, Artemis," said Minerva wistfully. "You are the first person I've met with whom I can have a perfectly decent conversation."
"Huh," said Artemis, blinking his way out of a reverie. 'Huh' isn't even a word. Buck up, Artemis. Don't let your IQ drop.
"Really! When you went missing just like that" - Minerva snapped her fingers in front of Artemis' face - "I thought you were dead! I used to visit Butler's little cottage by the sea, hoping that one day you would turn up. And you did," she beamed brightly, her sparkling white teeth blinding Artemis temporarily. How on earth does she get her teeth to turn that shade of white? Must be the teeth whitening strips Myles found yesterday. I knew they weren't Father's.
"I had nobody to discuss Scientific American or New Scientist but you," she went on. Artemis toyed with the idea of faking a phone call from her father to send her back to France, but it seemed too immature for him. "Everyone else is just so dense, you know? You have this air of je ne sais quoi about you…and you are fully appreciative of what people like me do."
"What?" Artemis bolted up. "What are you doing?"
"Didn't your mother tell you? I was talking about it over dinner last week." Minerva frowned. "Don't you recall? I was pretty loud, I believe."
The only thing Artemis recalled about that night was that he had been playing an international chess tournament online on his BlackBerry that night, under the enormous dining table. The boredom was absolutely unbearable. Butler, of course, had noticed this all too well and had been trying to get Artemis' attention, but he had been waved away impatiently by the genius. Not surprisingly, his parents had never noticed, because they had been too wrapped up in the charming young blonde girl who had been chatting excitedly about her new pet project with them.
"Um…I don't. Sorry," Artemis shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. Minerva scowled. "The Resource Kiln," she stated triumphantly, settling back into the swing.
"That was you?" Artemis spluttered. It wasn't as though he hadn't heard of this groundbreaking plan; in fact, almost everyone on the planet had heard of it by now. It was certainly a radical plan, though innovative, and Angeline Fowl was a strong supporter of the cause.
"Yes and no. The idea isn't all mine; Gerald Walden came up with one half of it. The plan has been submitted at the United Nations, and next week, in the General Assembly, they will either accept or reject it."
"I know. I've been following the project quite intently. Congratulations."
"Thank you." Minerva said softly as she looked toward the horizon. The sun was slowly sinking into the golden fields. Artemis made a note of every move she made.
After a long stretch of silence, Artemis spoke again. "I've only seen Walden's name crop up in articles about the Kiln. Where's all your publicity?"
"I'm too young, Papa says. Maybe if the project is approved I can go into the spotlight."
Artemis nodded, and looked down.
"So…what have you been up to so far? I've only talked about myself. You must have created a few hundred new inventions with all this spare time on your hands!"
"Not really. I help take care of the twins now."
"Artemis Fowl, taking care of children? Pfuit," Minerva snorted, laughing. "What on earth did you do for them; invent a cream that annihilates diaper rash?"
Artemis smiled weakly and looked away, fiddling with his cell phone. Apparently, Level 11 of Snakes was pretty easy for him to get to.
Minerva sighed loudly. Things were not going as well as she had planned.
Sharmista had not had a good day either. The red eyes had haunted her dreams, and she had floated in and out of hallucinations. Mostly they consisted of mythical creatures that smoked foul-smelling cigarettes and spoke back to her if she even opened her mouth. Needless to say, she hadn't spoken a word the entire time. She had been dragged out of a hospital when she had been feeling quite nauseous, been handcuffed and shoved quite roughly into a cramped van, and dragged into what she thought (and later confirmed) was a police complex. She realized that the short creatures around her were quite technologically advanced; she also realized that the sky was made up of artificial lights, which reminded her of a book she had at home about an underground city (she hadn't seen the movie yet).
So she asked one of the uniformed creatures to pinch her, just to make sure she wasn't dreaming. Seeing that she had been handcuffed, the creature wickedly smiled and sent a jolt of electricity through her left arm. Sharmista had screamed. Very, very loudly, for what seemed like the thirtieth time that day.
Once in the dingy room, she had waited patiently for Ashton Kutcher to walk through the door and inform her that she had been Punk'd, but when the door opened, another fairy-like creature in a uniform had come in with a file under her arm. This one was prettier than all the others, but one thing really stood out about her was the fact that one of her eyes was a deep hazel, and the other was an electric blue. Sharmista had never seen eyes like that before, and quite frankly, they seemed to hypnotize her.
"Ab aapne hamare liye ek bahaut bada problem banaya hai," the fairy purred, settling down into a chair on the other side of the table. This comment snapped Sharmista out of her drowsy state.
"You speak Hindi!" she cried out in bewilderment.
"And you speak English. Very well, then, for the purposes of this conversation, I shall begin again. You have created quite a problem for us now."
"I have created a problem?" Sharmista yelled. The fairy seemed a little taken aback by her sudden outburst. "I am the one who has been banged up, tied to a lamppost in this horrible, claustrophobic city which no one else knows exists, and you tell me you're having problems! Tell me," she leaned over the table to look into the creature's mesmerizing eyes, "and tell me the truth. You owe me that much after all you have done to me. Is this place actually real, or is it in some corner of my deranged mind?"
"It's real," the fairy whispered. "It's real all right. But I don't understand what you said - what we've done to you?"
"Hello? I'm not exactly in mint condition here, you know." Sharmista gestured towards her many injuries.
"We didn't do that to you! We found you like this on Candon Street today morning! We're the police here – why would we beat you up? Besides," the fairy opened the file she had brought in with her, "you aren't exactly someone we'd bring down here, if you've noticed."
"Down…here?" Sharmista asked weakly. "You mean, this entire city is subterranean?"
"You've got that right. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a few questions about what happened to you. Do you mind if I tape this?"
"No. If I remember my movies – and I do – you'll mind wipe me later. Am I right?"
"You are a sharp one. First question: name, city, age."
"That's not a question."
"Alright, please state the following particulars: name, city, age." The fairy snapped, her voice still sounding as though it was coated in honey. A lock of her hair fell across the hazel eye, making the blue one stand out in the gloom. Sharmista shivered.
"Sharmista Varma, Sharjah, sixteen."
"What were you doing before you landed here?"
"The stupidest thing I ever dared to do in my life."
"Please elaborate the facts." Sharmista noticed that the fairy was making direct eye contact with her.
"What are you?" She blurted out loud without thinking. The fairy looked up from the file sharply.
"I'm sorry, I'm just curious. Are you a fairy?"
"No, I'm an elf. Now can you please answer the questions? I'm very annoyed right now."
"God, alright, Miss Snappy." Sharmista leaned back in her chair, and she felt some of the vertebrae in her back snap. That felt a lot better. "I was trying to climb down a hole."
The elf's eyes widened. "Sharjah…hole?" she repeated blankly. "The sixteenth hole? You tried to go down it? Did you have a death wish? Do you even know what it is?"
Sharmista glared at the elf. "I was just looking for some fun…What the hell do you know about the hole? Do you know something we don't? Are they lethal or something?"
The elf snorted. "Have you ever seen a hole get up and kill someone?" Strangely enough, her voice still sounded sweet to the human girl's ears.
"Sarcasm is your weapon of choice, I see. I'll remember that." Sharmista began chewing on the nail on her thumb, a habit she actually despised. "So what do you know about the hole?"
"Same as you humans: absolutely nothing."
"But it does mean something to you. I wouldn't be here if it didn't."
"First you tell me how you ended up looking like the goldfish that got flushed down the toilet." The elf stared at Sharmista, and Sharmista stared right back.
"I got to the bottom of the hole, and I decided to pick up a glow stick that my friend had thrown into the hole to check its depth. Only after my feet touched the base did I realize that I was falling. I fell for quite some time, and then I landed in what felt like large, calloused hands. I opened my eyes to see six other glowing pairs. One of the hideous things held a lamp up to its face, and I was able to make out what it looked like." Sharmista shuddered. "It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen. It had boils all over its face, with the reddest eyes and nose ever, like it was suffering from a hangover."
"Gremlins. I thought as much." The elf muttered.
"Gremlins? You can't be…never mind. Why am I even telling you all this? I don't even know what is going on here; if you're some kind of a prank or something. Why am I not screaming in terror? Why am I being so submissive?"
The elf's eyes suddenly lost their hypnotic power, and Sharmista experienced a feeling of freedom deep down in her heart. "You hypnotized me," she breathed.
"It was necessary," the elf stated shortly. "Did the gremlins say anything at all?"
"Now how am I supposed to trust you? Nice going. I must have been your only witness." Sharmista crossed her arms across her chest. "I'm not talking."
The elf leapt out of her chair, temporarily startling the girl. She walked straight up to Sharmista and stuck a rather dangerous looking gun into her stomach.
"Listen now," she rasped, "and reply. What did they say? Was it in English?"
"Okay, okay," Sharmista backed away from the maddened officer. "Yeah, strangely enough, it was in English. One said, 'Gerald isn't going to like this.' The one with the lamp said, 'Let Bobby take care of her. We'll just give her a few souvenirs before we move on.' And then they hit me. The next thing I remember is waking up in a cramped bed at that hospital."
The elf looked strangely at Sharmista. "Are you sure they said Gerald and Bobby?"
"Sure as eggs are eggs. Can I go now? Or do you have to mind wipe me first?"
The elf walked around the room for a bit. A small device at her belt beeped, and she put her ear to it. The expression on her face went from frustration to surprise. After some time, she slowly clipped the device back on to her belt, and turned to the puzzled girl. She extended a hand to Sharmista, who cocked her head to one side and raised an eyebrow.
"I don't believe a mind wipe is quite necessary. I'm sorry for the way I treated you. My name is Captain Holly Short, and I work for a special unit called Section Eight. We need your help, Miss Varma, and if you would kindly follow me, I will show you to the person in charge. There's quite a bit of explaining to do, I'm afraid, and I'm not holding anything against you, but we don't usually ask humans for help, so this is something pretty big for all of us."
"First explain this to me: how is it that you all exist down here without us topsiders noticing?"
Holly smiled, relieved to be Good Cop again. "All will be explained, as I said, and there's a lot of it to be done. Are you in?"
"Hell yes!" Sharmista crowed. "I was looking for adventure, and now that I've found it, I'm not going anywhere. Lead they way, Captain Short."
Halfway out of the room, Holly turned to her newest ally. "Why weren't you screaming, by the way? I was kind of wondering that too."
"I have this theory," Sharmista said, "that whenever I drink coffee something unbelievable happens to me, and it's never, ever a dream or fantasy. I had cappuccino only a few minutes before I decided to climb down that hole like the idiot I am, and here we are."
"Well, would you like to get some coffee with me, then?"
"You have coffee down here too?" Sharmista gleefully rubbed her hands. "I'm slowly beginning to like you now, Holly."
"I can be a nice elf if I feel like it. Just make mine mocha, and we'll be okay."
Yay for coffee, late nights, and updates! Please review - the fun is only just beginning!
Renata Swift
