Disclaimer: The characters, much of the dialogue, and sadly, even the plot are not mine; they all belong to Eoin Colfer.
Pages: 281 – 286
Chapter 26: The Price of Justice
Holly stared up at the dark sky, eyes drawn away from the horrible faces of the beasts drawing ever closer, throwing up her final, useless cry for aid, and was answered by a blessed downpour from the heavens.
Silver sparkles like a scene from a children's book seemed to fall slowly, turning over and over in midair like tiny glittering meteorites of wealth.
Holly and Kronski's men alike had stopped moving, all staring up at the ethereal scene suddenly before them. Strange how even in this abhorrent-smelling place the atmosphere of a beautifully quiet field of snow with snowflakes drifting softly, slowly down all around them could be replicated so effectively, the awed silence falling over them like the casting of a magic spell.
The 'snowflakes' hit with soft plinks and plooshes as they struck the sandy ground and fell into the liquid dye still standing in the vats all around them. The look of childlike wonder on the faces of Kronski's men was almost comical with those huge, muscular bodies, which had a moment before been so twisted, muscles taut and drawn back over bared teeth as the excitement of the capture mounted. But their quarry seemed to be the last thing on their minds at the moment.
It was one of Kronski's men who finally punched through the stunned silence with an exclamation. "Des diamants!"
Diamonds. Hundreds of tiny gleaming gems, maybe thousands, falling like hailstones in the light of the lamps hanging all around the souk.
As unexpected as this turn of events was, Holly had a blinding flash of insight and knew in an instant exactly what was happening.
Her gaze flitted upward, eyes falling on the precise spot where the diamonds had come from. As the men all simultaneously dove for the stones that would make them among the richest men in the city, Holly saw a dark window up on a higher level of the wall where she was just able to catch a glimpse of a small, pale hand retreating into the darkness.
Five million euros in diamonds would certainly serve as an adequate distraction, Holly thought, especially for greedy men such as these.
Though Holly knew what had had happened, she was completely at a loss as to why. Little Artemis had just saved her life. No, not only saved her, but done so by giving up what he had gained by going to the effort of taking her captive to begin with. This definitely wasn't the Artemis she knew, at least not the young one.
Well, maybe not saved quite yet, she thought, as one particularly large, hairy guard plunged right past her. Even though at the moment he was as blind to his target as if she had had her shield buzzing, this was a temporary distraction that could only last so long.
Holly gave a quick salute of thanks at the dark window above, unable to see whether the boy was still standing in the shadows, observing the scene unfolding below or not. But he probably was: he would want to see how well his strategy worked. Holly could just imagine his two blue eyes piercing through the low light, boring into her mismatched ones, thin lips tight with obvious displeasure at the thought of doing something decent for another living being just for the sake of it.
Holly shot off in the direction of the closest alleyway, one that had been blocked earlier by one of the giant men now scavenging in dye vats and motes of pigeon droppings.
As Holly ran, she found herself still wondering why young Artemis had decided to step in to help. She had, of course, hoped that Artemis would be there waiting for her, that he would have something planned, but the last thing she would have expected was for the Artemis of this time, who had just sold her to the Extinctionists in the first place, to fill that role. Did he have a sliver of conscience even at that age? Or perhaps, thought her more wily side, he yet had some other plan for her in store.
Holly was almost to the alley now, long since out of little Artemis's sight line. The fact that being out of the area little Artemis could see her – and therefore probably beyond where the boy would have even the slightest bit of control – actually made her nervous again probably showed just how tapped out she was at the moment.
As it turned out, she was right to be nervous, not that little Artemis could or would have done anything had he seen what happened to her next. Fate was really dead set against her lately.
Maybe it was because she had let her guard down knowing the guards were occupied, or maybe she was too exhausted from all that had happened to be as careful as she should, but Holly had absolutely no warning as, her eyes still trained on the open alleyway in front of her, something very large suddenly slammed into her full force, tackling her to the sandy ground.
"Two for two," gasped the enormous Damon Kronski, out of breath, pinning Holly down with his bulk. "I got both of you. This must be my lucky day."
This comment should have sent warning bells clanging in Holly's head then, but she was too dazed by the suddenness and unfairness of this latest development to register anything else.
Kronski leaned over her, droplets of sweat running off his face and falling like fat, foul polluted raindrops onto her face and neck. He sat on her torso, slowly crushing the air from her lungs as though he were squeezing the air out of a beach ball with a tiny, invisible puncture.
The madness in the man's eyes was much different than the kind she had seen when he had been talking excitedly about wiping out rare species, or expounding to his fellow Extinctionists on how they ought to kill Holly to show her kind and the planet who was boss, or making James Bond references. This was an irate sort of insanity, the kind that would result in complete, unbridled violence. There was no reasoning with this man now; he was beyond being stopped with bribery or the proffered hope of making a profit. Unlike his hoards of rapacious hired men, Kronski at this moment cared nothing about his wasted diamonds.
"Except, this is not my lucky day, is it," he roared in her face, spraying her with spit.
Join the club, thought Holly, as she struggled helplessly against the weight. Although in Kronski's case she didn't consider it so much luck as karma.
Kronski was still raving. "You saw to that. You and your accomplice." He was in such a state that, despite his wild fury, there was not even a single flicker of vindictive joy as he hurled the next verbal bombshell in Holly's face.
"Well, my gas chamber took care of him. Now I will take care of you!"
Holly made no sound of response, but it suddenly felt as though the physical weight pressing down on her had punched through to her inner being. She couldn't breathe; her chest was going to cave in under Kronski's immense frame, the mass as immovable atop her as a fallen boulder. The words hung in her mind like a hundred-million-ton hematite orebody, a force that dragged her down, overwhelming her motivation, her willpower.
Artemis dead?
The smell of pigeon droppings filled her nostrils as she flailed limply against Kronski's bulk, the lack of air already draining her of her strength. The stench swirled in her mind with the pain and the confused lightheadedness as her body pleaded for oxygen.
Holly's survival instinct forced her to shut out thoughts of her friend for the moment. After all, Artemis Fowl was a constant of this world. He could not be dead.
Kronski was at least twice Holly's size and as far as weight went probably even more than that. Old and out of shape as the man was, Holly didn't have a prayer of getting him off. Instead she continued to fight helplessly as Kronski pressed his forearm ever harder down against her small, fragile fairy neck, slowly suffocating her. Her lungs burned for air, her creaking ribs screamed for relief.
Strange. She had always thought that, when her time came, right before the end she would somehow be supernaturally filled with thoughts of friends and family. Of her deceased mother and father, of Foaly and Major – or Commander – Trouble Kelp, Julius, and even her human friends. But as her vision faded, her brain felt oddly devoid of any meaningful rational thought. The horrible smell of the souk was stifling as it muddled everything.
Karma, she thought vaguely. What a bunk concept. It wasn't right that she was going to spend her final moments breathing in the awful odor of pigeon droppings, while Kronski didn't even catch a whiff.
I wish Kronski could smell this, she thought bitterly.
Then it occurred to her. Wasn't it in her power to do just that? She had almost forgotten, but she had a bit of magic left. Enough to heal Kronski of his anosmia – the condition of having no sense of smell that Artemis had mentioned. Healing such an old injury was of course a risky business and not recommended by the Bureau of Public Health and Safety in Haven, and Holly wouldn't have dared try it on someone she actually liked, but maybe Kronski would be a good subject for a little experiment.
Despite the pain, despite the smell, Holly forced herself to concentrate, summoning every last bit of magic she possessed as she crawled her hand slowly up Kronski's face centimeter by centimeter, her hand moving along like a timid, five-legged spider. This was easier said than done, as to reach she had to strain against Kronski's forearm, causing the sweaty purple fabric clinging to the arm to cut even deeper into her windpipe.
"What's this? Are you playing 'got your nose'?" jeered the doctor, as ever treating Holly as a child merely because of her size. Patronizing, always mocking her.
Kronski of course could have no idea what Holly planned. If he had, as well as the veritable list of possible unpleasant consequences for what his formerly soon-to-be victim was about to do, he probably would have tried harder to stop her. As it was, Holly ignored his flapping mouth and her hand was able to find Kronski's nose unhindered.
Holly let her blurred, watery eyes close as she concentrated everything she had on the magic, forcing her tense body to relax as she put everything she had into preparing for the spell even under Kronski's vicious attack. Then, abruptly she shoved two fingers right up the former Extinctionist president's nose.
Holly didn't have enough clear thought left to contemplate how gross it was to have her fingers inside the nostrils of what had to be one of the most repulsive people in the world. There was no more time left to think, only to act.
"Heal," she breathed, using up her very last bit of air.
"Hey, what the..." Kronski began, voice distorted and nasally as he spoke around Holly's fingers, then gave a hard sneeze a moment after Holly's hand dropped back down like that of a marionette suddenly cut from its strings, her remaining energy spent.
But her last effort was not to go to waste. The sneeze, strong as a blast from a fireman's water hose, threw Kronski backward and off the trapped fairy.
Kronski seemed more annoyed than alarmed. "What are you, five years old?" he said, dropping the pretense of viewing Holly to be not much beyond preschool. "Sticking fingers up my nose."
He was really one to talk about acting like a child, with all his spoiled immaturities and squeals of terror when the least thing startled him, Holly thought. Although, that statement was potentially an insult to children of every nationality worldwide.
Kronski sneezed again, this time with the force of a gunshot, with even what looked like smoke rising in spirals from each nostril to top off the effect. Holly was glad to have avoided the line of fire both times; she didn't need anything to make her feel any more grimy than she already did.
Kronski was still complaining as he sneezed hard yet again, this one painful enough to make tears roll down his flabby cheeks and to make him tremble violently all over, even cracking the glass of the lenses of his audacious purple sunglasses.
Holly couldn't move right away. At first the most she could do was watch Kronski, her face a mask of nothing but a blank stupor of exhaustion.
When the doctor's convulsions stopped, his whole body relaxed again. He laid there in that spot for a brief moment, just enjoying the relief. A moment passed before he said in wonder, "Oh my. Something's different. Something has changed."
Then, suddenly, a high-pitched screech that was almost subhuman started coming out of his mouth. His entire body went abruptly taut and his limbs flew about wildly like a beetle caught on its back. He looked like he was in pure agony.
"Wow," said Holly in a painful, rasping voice as she rubbed her sore esophagus – she could probably expect to have nice, big purple bruises forming there within the next couple of days with her luck, if she lived that long – Kronski's body's response to the healing was turning out to be really something. She had hoped it would give her a bit of a reprieve and maybe time to get a head start on her escape, or else come up with a better plan, but she hadn't expected it to completely immobilize him. No doubt Artemis would have been able to conjure up some explanation for this extreme reaction, or maybe several, but all Holly cared about right now was that she was finally getting a much-deserved stroke of luck.
The thought of Artemis however brought a biting pain to her throat that had nothing to do with the doctor's attempt to strangle her. The weight in her chest was suddenly heavier than even Kronski's bloated form had been, the tiredness that had been in her limbs almost from the beginning of this wretched mission more complete.
"Foul," repeated the now deranged Kronski, over and over again, apparently in response to the stench of the pigeon droppings now permeating his fully functional sense of smell. "Foul. Fowl, Fowl."
Holly forced her body to move, to roll onto her stomach so she could push herself up onto her hands and knees. She gasped for breath and coughed hard, aggravating her burning throat. Her fingers dug tiny, shallow trenches in the coarse sand as her hands tightened into fists.
Holly stared down at the hard, rough ground beneath her, her shoulder blades forming peaks on her back as her body slumped listlessly between them, ears dully taking in the rising voices of Kronski's men in the distance now fighting over the remaining diamonds.
Vague images flickered in Holly's mind. For a moment she pictured herself returning to the manor with Jayjay without Artemis. Returning to the future alone.
A sense of revulsion and regret so strong it sent a numbness spreading from the tips of her fingers up her arms seized her. It hit her that Artemis, in having come to save her, had possibly unintentionally taken her place as the strange creature to be executed for the crime of being unwanted by the human race, burned alive in an instant. What would Butler do to her when her found out, she wondered dimly.
The mission isn't over yet, her professional side reminded her. Get up.
Despite the horror of the circumstances, there was still a part of her as hard as nails, pushing her as ever. If things were the other way around, Artemis would keep going, she reminded herself. He would keep walking forward regardless of everything. If she somehow failed to get back and save his mother now he would never forgive her. His spirit would probably haunt her, reciting scientific equations she couldn't begin to understand.
However, even these thoughts weren't enough to renew her strength enough to continue. Her spirit was emaciated, torn down to no more than the thinnest thread. She was debilitated, just as she had been when her commander had been murdered by Opal Koboi, and she had thought for a moment her human friends exterminated by blue rinse light. She had barely been able to pull herself back together back then as it was. Now on top of everything her sense of professionalism was muted beneath countless insecurities, wild, overpowering emotional fluctuations of being in this worthless adolescent body. No more than an adolescent, like Artemis – like Artemis had been.
At this, muddled thoughts like tendrils of smoke rising from a distant fire drifted through her head. It was so strange; she could not understand it. How had he, still a child, always been able to deal with things like this with such equilibrium and composure?
Each breath of Holly's was still coming hard as she looked toward Kronski again. She knew she needed details of what had exactly happened to her friend before she could keep going. But even in this semi-stupor she could see at a glance it was hopeless; Kronski, still twitching and moaning, was too far gone to be any use interrogating.
Holly looked at the man lying pathetically on his back, and found herself wondering where all her wrath had gone. For so much of the past day she had dwelt endlessly on how much she wanted this man to get what he deserved, not just for his putting her on trial, but for what he had done to so many species around the world, his attitude toward nature itself. Now they were here, and after Kronski had committed the most heinous act yet, apparently he was finally getting the full measure of those just deserts.
Yet she found she couldn't bring herself to care much. Perhaps the price that had had to be paid before that justice had come had simply been too high – There was no satisfaction, only an empty ache.
She needed to get up. She was not going to get anywhere dwelling on these regrets. But still, Holly stayed where she was, staring languidly at the large man, now left so helpless.
But Holly hesitated then, a spark of life for a second reigniting itself in her eyes as she noticed that one of the lenses of Kronski's tinted glasses had totally broken out. Behind the shattered glass shards still jutting at all angles within the frame, she realized upon really getting a good look at the man's eyes for the first time that the pupil looked almost blurred or out-of-focus from a distance. An almost jagged, rough look around the edge of the retina.
This startling piece of evidence could only mean one thing: Kronski was under a fairy's spell.
Normally, the idea of yet another unknown factor in an already complicated situation would have been as unwelcome as anything to Holly, but right now factors and variables unaccounted for which would undo all that seemed certain was like a blessed gift descended directly from above.
Holly got slowly to her feet.
A chance, she thought. It was a chance. If by some miracle the mere fact that a fairy had clearly been involved with Damon Kronski meant that there was a probability, however slight, that Artemis might still be alive somewhere – no matter what it took, Holly would make sure she was there to save him.
A/N: Well, so much for homework. But I really wanted to post this on Valentine's Day, because I have a bit of a fetish for posting on holidays. (; I'll get it done eventually...
Thank you so much for reviewing! Please tell me what you think. (:
Posted 2/14/12