Disclaimer: The characters, much of the dialogue, and sadly, even the plot are not mine; they all belong to Eoin Colfer.
Pages: 307, 308 – 309, 310 – 312
Chapter 29: Terminal Disease
Because they were forced to travel at an almost unbearably sluggish pace to avoid Opal, the trip was destined to be a long one. Holly guessed at least eight to ten hours minimum, which would put them dangerously close to the deadline, but it couldn't be helped.
Holly figured they both might as well buckle down and try to get some rest, recharge a bit from their latest ordeal. Almost as soon as things had begun to die down, her weak limbs and empty stomach reminded her that she needed to get some food and liquid in her before long or she wasn't going to be much use to anyone. She had not eaten a thing in over twenty-four hours while Kronski had been holding her captive, and her swollen tongue felt like sandpaper against the inside of her mouth.
Mulch had disappeared somewhere again, probably to look for more loot – the dwarf could have made a great Energizer Bunny if the humans who produced the commercial could learn to live the smell. Jayjay had apparently followed as he was nowhere to be seen.
Holly turned to Artemis, who was still sitting in the copilot's chair, the boy staring out over the dark sandstorm passing below them, thoughts unfathomable to Holly passing behind his eyes like the quiet roiling approach of an ocean wave – ephemeral in and of itself, yet timeless in its continued recycling, unending in it's gentle assault against the shore.
"I don't supposed you manged to save anything to eat," she commented.
Artemis turned to her. A smile played on his lips. "A little. Fortunately, I believe our resident bottomless pit has been distracted by everything else this ship has to offer."
Holly grinned. "So I noticed."
Artemis stood, and strode over to the shuttle's minifridge. Despite his assertion, he still breathed a slight sigh of relief when he opened the door and found an adequate assortment of contents still sitting there. "Yes, excellent," he said. "It would indeed appear our friend has not yet relieved us of all our supplies while the two of us were caught up in mundane battles for our lives."
He reached inside, and when he turned around his arms were full of nutribars, a few flavors of smoothies to choose from, and a couple of water canteens. He awkwardly carried the stack over and took his seat in the copilot's chair again, setting his load on the flight dash.
Holly downed half the canteen in one swig and she would have stuffed an entire nutribar into her mouth whole if she hadn't noticed Artemis watching her, carefully peeling back the specially modified, environment-friendly protective wrapping on his own bar.
Stomach growling like some predatory animal of its own, Holly forced herself to show restraint as she pulled off the wrapper almost sedately, but couldn't quite stop herself ripping a good-sized chunk off the bar with her teeth. However, she chewed slowly enough that she wouldn't accidentally bite off her own tongue.
"Kronski didn't feed you while you were held captive at the compound then, I take it," Artemis commented lightly, taking a delicate bite of his own bar. He oriented his body more toward the front of the ship and their makeshift table, as though this were a throwaway remark, but his twin blue eyes still remained fixed on Holly, burning with a quiet intensity.
Holly swallowed, then shook her head, shrugging. "I don't think he wanted to risk taking off my tape. Butler told him about the mesmer." She had gotten down another bite before Artemis spoke again.
"I do suppose it would be counterproductive to feed a prisoner one was planning to dispose of anyway." His voice was unusually quiet, but an underlying contempt of such strength churned beneath the surface that for a moment she was startled.
Holly hesitated, glancing at Artemis, who was looking out of the dark front window again. Despite his tone, he didn't look angry. Just tired.
"Guess not," said Holly, her own tone coming out strangely indifferent. She could honestly say that all the ill-feeling and bitterness she had been building up against Kronski during the trial he had put her through had deserted her in the souk. It wasn't that she forgave the man, just that she could no longer bring herself to care much about what happened to him, about "karma" or anything else, so long as he wasn't in a position to go around destroying more innocent species.
Holly suddenly smiled slightly as a thought occurred to her.
"Now that I think about it, you were a much more hospitable kidnapper," she said. "Feeding me in my dungeon. Well, at least Juliet was going to before I decided I wasn't going to sit around playing the nice hostage anymore. You could have forbidden it out of spite, lower my strength to make me easier to handle and all that. Thanks, Arty."
Artemis snorted slightly. "But I wasn't planing on doing away with you. You were of more use to us in relatively good physical condition." Artemis peered down at her over his hand on which his chin rested. There was a hint of amusement in his eyes, but Holly thought she also saw a guardedness about them too.
Holly laughed suddenly. She consumed the rest of her nutribar and tilted back her canteen a second time, then set it back down with a clatter on the dash above the readout screens, and turned to the human beside her. "Is that just a bit of guilt I hear creeping into your voice, Artemis Fowl? Wait, I better write this down, it could be a historic moment." Her grin softened a little as she turned back to the dash. "Whatever," she said, shrugging. "It's all in the past now."
Artemis was quiet a moment. As he opened his mouth however, Holly said quickly, "Wait, don't even say it. Okay, technically it's in the future here I guess, but I really don't care. That's still the past for us."
"I wasn't..." Artemis began, but trailed off, smiling a little and shaking his head.
Holly suddenly remembered something else. "Oh, that reminds me, thanks for saving me in the souk by the way," she added.
Artemis's smile seemed to freeze. His only response was a slight twitch of one thin eyebrow. "Oh?" he said in a would-be casual tone.
Holly reached for another bar sitting in the small, further-dwindling pile of foodstuff between them, but hesitated as she realized that Artemis had gone very still, piercing blue just visible in her peripheral vision eyes boring into the side of her head.
Despite the lack of sarcasm in her tone, Holly understood then what Artemis would think she meant. She explained quickly to clear up the confusion. "When Kronski's guards were after me in the souk, little Artemis distracted them by throwing out the diamonds he got as payment from selling me to Kronski. I still don't know what to make of it. But I wouldn't have gotten away if not for that. When you think about it, technically he'sa younger version of you, so in a way it was thanks to you." Thinking about it again, she felt the complete disbelief return as strong as before. In a way, the scene in her memory still felt like a dream. A dream so unreal as to be ridiculous in hindsight if it hadn't actually happened.
Artemis pursed his lips as he considered this. "Did he now? I wonder..." His gaze, still directed at her, slipped out of focus for a moment. Finally he shook his head and said, his brow creased in thought, "No, I can't say what might have triggered such a generous act. That is indeed remarkably odd."
"I'm beginning to think it isn't so much," said Holly, finishing up her second bar.
Neither said a thing, an odd silence that was neither awkward nor exactly comfortable filling the cabin between them.
"I'm afraid I don't understand what you're trying to say," said Artemis after awhile, and Holly thought he sounded not unlike his ten-year-old self, when the boy had said to Kronski, I don't understand the question.
Holly shrugged, reaching for yet another nutribar, then stopped herself. Her stomach was a bit sensitive and shrunken from the full day's fast, so she would probably be better off if she held herself back. However, still looking for an excuse not to explain herself, she grabbed a smoothie and downed it instead. Something inside her made her reluctant to verbalize the new, strange view of the world she felt was forming in her mind; perhaps she still hadn't completely forgiven him yet.
After another long pause, Artemis finally turned back to looking out the front windshield, at the dark swirling sand below. He leaned forward to rest his chin on his palm again, then stopped, hesitantly bringing his head a few centimeters back up off his hand as though he'd just realized something. The next moment he went to work tearing off the fake goatee.
"So, Mud Boy," said Holly, smirking, "tell me, was that part of the disguise really necessary, or do you always tend to get a bit carried away when you get a chance to play dress-up?" Butler, though ever the staunch keeper of his master's secrets, had relaxed the policy just a bit when they'd done some three-way communication after they'd come back from Hybras, and so Holly knew the story about her ever-formally attired friend's strategy to break into Crane and Sparrow's safe-deposit box at the International Bank in Munich.
"I needed any element I could find that would make me appear older," Artemis replied, poker-faced. "And it was imperative I disguise myself well enough that Kronski not be able to pick up any resemblance to the Fowls."
His lips curved in a slight smile then, but, though perhaps she was imagining it, it seemed to her that the usual condescending self-importance he always had when he described the various aspects of his elaborate plans had seemed a bit half-hearted. If she didn't know better, she would have thought Artemis seemed a bit... dispirited. She'd just handed him the perfect opportunity to go on to his favorite pastime of lecturing lesser minds with the brilliantness of his schemes, yet that was all he had to say. For some reason, that bothered her.
"Are you going to eat that?" Holly finally asked after yet another long stretch of quiet. She pointed at the remaining nutribar sitting untouched between them.
"You go ahead." His eyes were on the darkness outside the shuttle again.
Holly took the bar slowly, but didn't open it right away, still wondering if she should hold off. "The sun will be rising soon," she commented, but Artemis didn't respond.
Holly's eyes flickered back to Artemis's exposed wrist and the collection of red holes. She could make out now-dried trails of blood running from them.
"I'm guessing you had a pretty eventful time at the compound after I left," she probed hesitantly.
"Indeed," said Artemis. "Opal is as charming a host as I might have expected." He turned, the smile playing about his mouth again. "In other words, if given the choice, I believe I would prefer to face the real flame pit the next time."
Holly didn't know what to say exactly. She wanted to know more, but she got the feeling that, though he was saying it in a light, joking tone, a part of him probably really meant that. It must have been horrible – however, she somehow she doubted talking about it would make it any better, so she said nothing.
Holly sighed to herself. Then, looking back at the bar for a second, shrugged a little to herself and gave in to the impulse to finish the very last bit of food of what Artemis had set out. When it was gone, she still somehow didn't feel quite satisfied, but she knew she really would make herself sick if she tried to force down anymore.
"It'll be a relief to get back to the future," she commented. "Safe from murderous Extinctionists and Opal Koboi and snot-nosed criminal masterminds, at least for awhile."
Artemis glanced her way. He still wore that same quiet smile, as though he agreed with her. However, as he turned his gaze back to the window Holly thought she imagined that, as he did so, he did not quite meet her eyes.
Not long after the food was gone and their conversation petered out, Holly's eyelids began to feel like lead as the day's events caught up with her. She felt as though a herd of stampeding buffalo had trampled her flat, her entire body aching and sore. It wasn't long before she began to catch herself letting her head lull forward, and she would snap back up only to have it drift down toward her chest again.
Holly blinked profusely and shook herself, then turned to tell Artemis that at least one person should stay up and keep watch on the instruments, to make sure Opal didn't find them.
Artemis replied immediately, "You sleep. I will keep watch and wake you if anything of note happens. I am not in need of rest at the moment, but if that changes I will see if I can work something out with the third member of our little band."
Holly tried to protest at first – the idea of Artemis being so generous was a disturbing one and no one could have blamed her for being dubious – but Artemis simply responded by turning his sharp blue eyes on her, staring back into her mismatched ones, and repeating softly, but with unmistakable authority, "Sleep."
Perhaps it was because she was so exhausted and not fully in her right mind, but a strange sensation came over her. Almost as though he had injected mesmerizing layers to his voice to make his commands irresistible, the weight on her eyelids and in her limbs seemed to double. Her rational mind darkened and drifted into standby, so that for a moment she felt oddly safe where she was, free from suspicion.
Her vision bleary now and too exhausted to keep her brain working as it should, Holly decided to let herself give in to the feeling this time. Holly closed her mouth and, nodding sluggishly once, slumped, then curled up in the pilot's seat. For a moment her senses lingered in the vague world between consciousness and sleep as always, and incoherent bits of images and incomplete thoughts she wouldn't remember whenever she awoke drifted aimlessly through her mind, until at last she sank into unconsciousness.
When Holly's eyes opened again, she had a moment where she didn't have a clue where or when she was. She sat up and looked around, taking in her surroundings. Finding an older shuttle with less-than-stellar accommodations, it all slowly came back to her.
Bright light was shining in through the front window and falling on the face a tall, pale corpse-like figure reclining in the chair next to hers, eyes closed, apparently dozing.
Holly's heartbeat sped up as it occurred to her that he really looked dead rather than asleep.
"Artemis?" she said tentatively, touching his elbow. She noticed he was dressed once again in his parents' old tracksuit.
"Finally," exclaimed a guttural voice behind her. "I thought you'd never wake up from your beauty nap. You two must think you're on some kind of relaxing romantic cruise here. Sleeping on the job all the time."
Holly was still a bit out of it so she let that comment slide. "What? How long has it been?" Holly took a look at the time and rolled her eyes in exasperation. "It's only been a few hours," she said. "It's not even mid-morning yet. And Artemis was awake for a lot of that."
"Maybe," said Mulch," but I can't stand being in here much longer." He pointed a shaking finger at the front windshield where the rays of bright sunshine shown through into the cockpit, as though it were some big black beast coming to get him. "And I can't stand anymore of this heat."
Holly did notice then that the room was uncomfortably warm.
"If I have to stay in here much longer, I'm gonna – "
"Then go already," said Holly, gesturing hurriedly at the annex bathroom. "For heaven sakes, don't stand around here talking about it."
Mulch was pale behind his beard as he went for the bathroom door. However, he was still well enough to stop and say to her with an obnoxious wink, "Oh, and Captain, I have to admit I'm starting to grow rather attached to the Mud Boy over there. So please don't be doing anything inappropriate to him while he's defenseless when I'm not there to supervise, eh?"
This time Holly was ready and she had her only remaining shoe ripped off her foot so fast her hand for a second vaguely resembled a striking cobra. "Go throw up your insides!" she barked.
But Mulch, guffawing, was already safely inside the bathroom by the time Artemis's shoe connected violently with the metal with a sound like a bowling ball taking down a row of pins.
Holly remembered Artemis trying to sleep and winced, glancing back at him guiltily. Artemis stirred and grunted, but miraculously didn't wake.
Holly sighed, lips curled sharply downward in a frown of annoyance. Well, she supposed Mulch's ribbing was one way to get her up. She was more than wide awake now. Really, did he ever stop? She hoped this wasn't a tradition in the making; he had to get tired of throwing out the same old jokes over and over sometime.
As, still frowning slightly, Holly started to turn back to the controls, she noticed a pair of reproachful orange eyes staring up at her. She glanced down and saw that Jayjay had one of the leftover wrappers from the food Artemis had taken from the minifridge clutched in his tiny black hands.
"What?" said Holly in response to the look of what could only be described as indignation. "Don't tell me you're going to develop an appetite like him, too. Next you'll be swiping wallets from innocent bystanders off the street."
Jayjay turned away from her, as though giving her the silent treatment. It seemed the lemur now considered the co-pilot's seat his own, as he leaped up into it, regardless of the fact it already had an occupant. Jayjay turned around from where he stood perched on Artemis's leg to stare at her again.
She looked back at the lemur for a moment, then suddenly smiled reassuringly.
"Almost there," she said. "Soon this is all going to be over. Hope you like it in the future."
Her gaze shifted automatically from the large, innocent amber eyes of the furry animal, to the sleeping face of the human next to him. For a moment, there was a flicker of something at the back of her mind. A feeling of something like melancholy.
"That wouldn't be so bad, would it?"
She turned away, closing her eyes, breathing slowly and deeply. It would all be over soon. Right now they were in the past, a shadowy, mythical place that for all intents and purposes did not exist in the reality they lived in in the future. So when she went back, she would leave it all behind here, in this time. Every last bit of it.
The old mining shuttle, which was made primarily for underground use, and had been in need of new parts plus a variety of repairs even before it had been commandeered by the party of outlaws, eventually began to show fervent signs of a need for an early retirement as they neared their destination.
Mulch was able to come out of the bathroom as they drew closer to the more temperate climate of Ireland and the sun had begun to sink in the distance. Artemis had woken up some time earlier, so they were all gathered together, each ready for this mission to be over and done.
At the moment Holly, who had changed out of the abaya and back into Artemis's trashed designer suit, leaving off the suit jacket to stay cool, was devoting all her attention to coaxing the shuttle onward.
Just a few more miles, she kept telling it every little while. Hang in there. A few more miles to go. Just a few more.
"I had to speed up for a bit back there, or we wouldn't make it in time," Holly said. "So Opal knows where we are now."
She thought Artemis looked rather paler than usual. "A necessary risk."
"She can't catch us now anyway."
Artemis nodded, though again he would not meet her eyes. He had taken out the blue contact earlier while she had been asleep, so now his irises were back to their usual colors. "Yes."
Holly had a feeling he knew something that he wasn't telling her, but she was afraid to ask, or maybe too tired. The effects of her three-or-so-hour nap were beginning to wane and she was starting to feel hungry again.
In addition, Holly was also now battling a new feeling in the pit of her stomach that had sprung up not too long ago. It was like a tightness, a weakness. Not enough to make her feel sick or affect her motor skills, but just enough to make her feel not altogether well. It had taken her some time before she realized that it was the spark of magic from Nº1, the one that was supposed to help guide her back to their own time. They had only had three days, and now the power in the spark was beginning to fade.
When Holly finally brought the shuttle over the high stone wall of the manor, the atmosphere seemed to grow suddenly heavier, straining under the weight of their finally being so near the end of all their struggles. Artemis sat next to Holly in the copilot's chair, his serious face made eerie by the orange light cutting through the cabin as he stared down at the large, old building before him that was his home. Holly was sure his mind was now back with his mother in the Fowl Manor of his own time.
Only a few days ago, Holly had been approaching the manor very much like they were doing now, in response to Artemis's grave message. The only difference was that she had Artemis sitting next to her this time around. Despite her ever persistent second-guessing of herself, a consequence of being this jumpy, inexperienced adolescent, she felt oddly more confident this time around.
"Well done, Holly," said Artemis, eyes unmoving from the familiar grounds below. "You did it."
Holly was used to taking this kind of encouragement in stride from her work with the LEP, but she felt herself involuntarily thrill at the unexpected praise.
I really need to get back to my real body, she thought a little desperately, as Artemis continued on with instructions on where to put down the shuttle and she adjusted the mangled vehicle's course over the estate accordingly. No denying she was definitely getting worse.
Maybe being trapped as a 'teenager' is like a terminal disease, she mused. As in, the longer she was one, the symptoms would keep getting progressively worse, her brain just continuing to devolve until she was twirling a lock of fake silver hair while lying amidst a field of dandelions, plucking petals from a daisy saying, 'he loves me, he loves me not.'
The thought very nearly made Holly lose the nutribars she'd managed to cram down earlier, and she quickly censored the disturbing image. She glanced at Artemis, glad that he couldn't actually read minds. She hoped these were not the first signs of madness, and instead could be fairly attributed to exhaustion from all the trying events of the last three days – the way a person hopes a slight cough is just a passing cold, rather than an early indication of lung cancer.
Artemis's gaze was still fixed on the window where Holly knew his mother's bedroom to be. His face was expressionless, in control, but his hands, which were knitted together in his lap, were tense with anxiety. Of course, there was probably almost no one he loved so much as his mother. He would do just about anything to have her well again.
Holly remembered then of Butler telling her something else, other than the International Bank episode. Apparently, during the exchange of Nº1 and Minerva Paradizo, Artemis had asked his bodyguard, Is it normal, during puberty, to feel these blasted feelings of attraction at stressful times? Much to Artemis's dismay, Holly had laughed long and hard in sheer delight. She loved seeing the mastermind reduced to the cares of ordinary beings. However, she wasn't laughing now.
The diagnosis sure looks grim, she thought as she turned away.
Holly guided the ship in a careful descent. However, as she did so, the adolescent fairy felt a sudden jolt as something very suddenly occurred to her that probably should have crossed her mind hours ago. She nearly groaned in frustration with her own idiocy. She'd been drugged, stuffed in a trunk and a duffel bag, nearly formally executed by lunatics, almost strangled to death, not to mention just about everything else she'd gone through. And now, after all that, she suddenly wished she could go back and go through all of it again rather than face what was coming next.
It's not a big deal, she assured herself. You're saving an entire species. And Artemis's mother. And possibly all the fairies of Haven who might have contracted Spelltropy otherwise. It'll be nothing. Really.
Unfortunately, hormonal adolescents tended to have a penchant for getting their priorities mixed up, and Holly had to fight very hard not to cringe as an image of the wardrobe in Artemis's study appeared in her mind.
The first time around, things had been awkward at best. And that was when she was a mature adult who couldn't have thought of this Mud Boy in those terms even if she had tried. Now she had kissed him for Frond's sake, and she'd been such an idiot as to fail to try to pass it off as temporary insanity or possibly brain damage, so he was well aware of where things had stood, at least temporarily.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Holly had a strong urge to go off somewhere and weep. A little embarrassment to save the world was one thing, but total and complete humiliation, she would still have to think on that.
Meanwhile, while all this ridiculous drama was playing out in her head, outwardly Holly's face was its usual mask of professional resilience and concentration. She undid the manor's alarms – in eight years the security wouldn't be so easy for a fairy to bypass, she thought – and did a thermal scan on the building to make sure the coast was clear. Fortunately and as expected, the heat of only one body showed up.
"Good. Just Mother," said Artemis, breathing a slight sigh of relief. "She will have taken her sleeping tablets by now. Little me can't be back yet."
Little me. Cute.
However, Holly was too tired and too preoccupied with other unpalatable thoughts to pass a smart comment, and she focused on setting the creaking junk heap down around back where Artemis had specified. It was a rocky landing despite her efforts. As unwieldy as the overtaxed craft had become, it was a little like piloting a boulder with boosters.
Once they were safely on the ground, the shuttle sitting amidst a small pile of debris that had once been part of the Fowl Estate's enormous backyard patio, Holly released the controls with a sigh. She knew there was no time to waste now. The deadline was drawing ever nearer, as was Opal.
Artemis meanwhile picked up Jayjay and said, smiling down at the little lemur, "Are you ready for more adventures, little man?"
Holly glanced at him, surprised he would show such affection, especially to an animal.
However, Jayjay it seemed wasn't buying it. Worriedly, the lemur shot a look at Mulch as though for guidance.
The dwarf reached forward and scratched Jayjay's chin fondly. "Always remember that you are the smart one," he advised.
As Mulch turned and began shoving everything he could reach from the on-board fridge into a duffel he'd picked up somewhere, Holly, glancing at Artemis and shrugging slightly, assured the dwarf he could keep the shuttle and everything in it. He would be able to make quite a chunk off what was stored inside, then trash the old thing to remove all trace the time travelers had been there. After all, the last thing they needed was for Foaly or some other tech-head to get a hold of it and discover evidence that elven Captain Holly Short had stolen it and been using the thing to pal around with a well-known criminal dwarf and a human.
Holly found she actually did hope for Mulch to have an easy time for awhile, despite the fact that his doing well was bound to mean trouble for someone else, and despite how irritating he had become as of late. She felt a kind of nostalgia for the pungent friend she knew back in their own time.
When Mulch readily agreed, grinning at the prospect of demolition duty, Holly returned his grin with one of her own. "Good. And remember, when we meet again, none of this ever happened, or it probably won't."
"My lips are sealed," replied Mulch, with not entirely sincere solemnity.
Holly's eyebrows knitted momentarily, suddenly curious. Did the Mulch from their time really have memories of all this happening from the start, and hadn't said a word? Not so much as a hint? Somehow, Holly had trouble seriously entertaining the idea he could have had that much restraint, especially when some of it would make for such juicy blackmail material.
Of course, there was always the possibility that because they had just changed the past, the Mulch from their time would now have these new memories when they returned there. She imagined him sitting across from her behind the desk of their formerly shared detective agency, surrounded by mounds of reeking garbage and unidentifiable suspect substances as ever, picking at his huge teeth as he grinned at her. Naughty, naughty, Captain... I wonder what the public at large would think if this tidbit happened to leak out.
Holly nearly blanched. To have Mulch Diggums forever tormenting her about that little slip-up was the stuff of horror films. She was certain there was only so much she'd be able to take. For a moment her mind drifted and she could just hear the breaking news story in Lillian Frond's voice: After years of service, it seems first-ever female Recon Captain Holly Short simply snapped yesterday. Mulch Diggums, dwarf partner to a successful PI firm was found strangled to death in his apartment. Short is suspected of being mentally unstable, and citizens are advised to keep a safe distance. A substantial reward is being offered for any tips leading to her capture, so if you have any information on this case, please call this toll free number...
"Now, there's something I would pay to see," said Artemis, interrupting Holly in her morbid thoughts. The teenager was smirking as he slid around the large dwarf to the shuttle's side exit. "Mulch Diggums with his mouth closed."
Artemis and Mulch spoke a few of their own parting words, even shaking hands, which made Jayjay shoot out a little black paw in imitation, also looking for a handshake from his hairy friend.
"You look after the human, Jayjay," Mulch told the little lemur. "He's a bit dim, but he means well."
Holly had to bite back a grin.
Mulch raised the shuttle from the courtyard behind the manor. Holly winced as the shielded ship took off the top of an old ash tree and wobbled dangerously before going higher and shooting off into the glowing red light of the evening sky.
"A bit dim, but means well," said Holly when the ship was out of sight. "That's certainly a step up, Arty."
Artemis smiled thinly at her. "Yes, thank you for that observation. Now, we had better get moving. Mother is the only one here, so there is little danger of being discovered. Speed must be the priority over caution."
Holly nodded as she pulled on the silver wig and suit jacket, which she figured had to be returned to the manor where they belonged, no matter what condition they were in. "Right."
They entered the manor through the kitchen, and as they made their way briskly through the rooms of the outrageously enormous house, Artemis continued to intone words of comfort to Jayjay to keep him calm while Holly kept behind them, on the lookout for signs of Opal or little Artemis – she didn't know which one scared her more.
"Come on, Artemis," said Holly urgently, though as much to herself as her human companion. "Nº1 is weaker now, so we have to jump soon."
"Nearly there," he murmured, speaking to her in a tone not unlike how he had been speaking to Jayjay a moment before. "Seconds away."
As they arrived at Artemis's study, Holly could have breathed a sigh of relief. The effort to hold onto Nº1's spark was increasing, and she found the mounting pressure an adequate distraction to drive most other thoughts from her mind. Despite all her previous anxieties, she made her way to the wardrobe first thing almost eagerly, too tense and exhausted to care anymore. She just wanted to get home.
However, the tug of Nº1's magic and the effort it took to hold onto it oscillated in and out like a dying double-A battery, and as the pressure receded again, Holly's uncooperative eyes watched her friend out of the corner of her eye as he carefully set down Jayjay and approached the wardrobe after her. She searched for signs in his posture or expression that he was feeling as self-conscious as she was. After all, quite possibly the only thing more unbearably uncomfortable than changing in a room with a person toward whom your adolescent body had at some point had an unwelcome hormonal response, was changing in a room being the object of said signs of utterly unsolicited attraction.
However, Artemis didn't appear to notice her stress as he unzipped the blazer of his tracksuit without the slightest hesitation, at which point Holly quickly looked away.
Perhaps there's nothing to worry about after all, she thought as she struggled out of little Artemis's white button-down shirt. Quite possibly Artemis had completely forgotten the entire episode already. After all, if his brain really did work like a computer, then he could not only store unlimited amounts of information in perfect detail, but he could also go back and delete unwanted files whenever he wanted. Or maybe it was simpler than that, and he was just convinced his confession of having blackmailed her had cured her, so, according to his calculations, he was perfectly safe now.
Good, thought Holly. Perfect. Now it was just her, standing here feeling like today might be a good day to test whether it was physically possible to die of embarrassment.
Come on, just a bit longer, she encouraged herself. You just need to last a few more minutes. Then you'll be free of that way of thinking.
They stood side by side in the doorway of the wardrobe, putting their shoes away (Holly unfortunately only had one left) and returning the borrowed clothing to where they had found it, Holly handing Artemis the silver wig so he could replace it in the box on top.
As Holly, back to just how she had been when she had first arrived in this time, turned to go, her gaze fell momentarily on the mirror that hung inside the wardrobe door, and she caught sight of her own face staring back at her.
I really do look young, Holly realized as she stared into the round, mismatched eyes. She wondered vaguely, if her body had reverted to the way it was twenty or so years before, why her eyes had not also changed. Perhaps these last few years she had known Artemis had become such an integral part of her life that the evidence of it could not be erased, even subconsciously.
Holly was breathing harder now. She doubted she could hold onto the spark for too much longer.
They moved back to the center of the room. "Good," said Artemis as they stood there. "This is the spot. The exact spot."
Holly glanced up at him. Though he looked almost as exhausted as she felt, there was also relief, even excitement there, an expression she knew was probably reflected on her own face. They had done it. Mission accomplished. While she was anticipating getting back to her own time and escaping once and for all this uncertainty and adolescent confusion, Artemis must be thinking about how he would now be able to save his mother.
"About time," replied Holly, breath coming even faster now. "I'm having trouble holding onto the signal. It's like running after a smell."
Apparently Artemis's outward complete lack of embarrassment and sudden memory loss concerning her behavior a couple of days before was not pretense, because instead of reaching out to awkwardly touch fingers as before, he put an arm around her shoulder, allowing her to lean against him for support as she gasped for breath.
Based on previous experience, the sudden, unexpected contact of Artemis's pale hand against her bare shoulder, Holly would have expected her heart-rate to jack up. However, her teenage body was unpredictable as always. Instead, the moment she felt Artemis supporting her, she slumped suddenly, as though she had just realized she was standing on purely borrowed energy. She felt weak from all the adrenaline and stress of the last few days. All the worrying and frustration, the effort of trying to be her usual reliable self when she was so full of self-doubt and fear and unwanted amorous emotions.
"I thought you were dead," she said suddenly. She could not bring herself to meet his eyes as she said it, though she was pleased to say her eyes were perfectly dry.
"Me too," Artemis answered.
Holly nodded slightly, relieved he hadn't passed a snide remark about how she should have known better, or asked if she wouldn't actually have been secretly relieved to be rid of him. She had watched both her mother and her commander die, people who she had always felt were constants of the world, people who she had not been able to imagine ever being anywhere or anything other than where and what they were then, when they were alive and vital. When she thought of her friend so close to death in Rathdown Park, or that moment when Kronski told her that his gas chamber had killed him, or even all the way back to when Opal had sent the biobomb to his hotel room, she could not help but feel the deep sickness in her stomach she had felt almost for an entire week while her mother had laid dying, and in those seconds that seemed to last a lifetime before Julius had been blown apart. It was not just the loss of someone she cared about. It was to be suddenly alone in the world. To lose all sense of security.
Of course, when she got back to her own time, she would not be an insecure adolescent anymore, a child who so feared not having someone else to rely on. She would be her usual independent self, free from such stifling, choking bonds.
Holly allowed her eyes to move back up to his face at last. But she supposed she couldn't exactly help the way she was now.
Holly said nothing and Artemis went on to add, instantly diffusing what could have almost turned into an exceedingly rare tender moment between them, "Then I realized I couldn't die, not in this time."
Holly wondered if it was just a complete and total lack of any sense of appropriateness or decorum, or if little comments such as these were specifically calculated to prevent the conversation from drifting over into something awkward or mushy – i.e., dangerous territory for criminal masterminds and tough Recon jocks.
If they are calculated, by all means keep doing it, Arty, she thought. Someone had to keep things sane.
"I presume you're going to explain that to me," she said incredulously, her curiosity upon being teased with this piece of information simply too strong to resist. Not even the discomfort of holding onto that bit of Nº1's magic inside her was enough to stop her from opening herself up to the possibility of a Fowl lecture.
"Later," he said, which was probably better for her health overall. "Over supper. Now can we open the time stream, friend?"
This new, more genial version of her friend, no doubt brought on by the prospect of being so close to completion of his mission, took Holly a bit aback, and she hesitated. However, before she had time to reply, she heard the curtain of the nearby tall window draw back, revealing two new unwelcome figures standing hidden in the shadows.
It seemed her treatment was going to be getting postponed a bit longer.
A/N: Huh, I really didn't think I'd be able to get to this until next week, but I managed to fit it in somehow. (:
But yeah, this sort of stuff is really hard for me to write. XD (There's enough romance-related nonsense in this one to make you gag, lol. As I was working on this, I'd cut something out, then add more somewhere else.) But the adolescent thing is kind of in its death throes, so I ended up in a way going all out I guess. I have decidedly mixed feelings about it in the end. X3 (Lol, it was ridiculously long, yet in the end not much happened. You know that feeling where you think some scenes can probably be cut down or out entirely, but there's one line in every one of them that needs to be in there? And for some reason they don't seem to work the same way unless you have all that buffering)
Notes: The whole thing with Mulch leaving... Again, this was another thing I wasn't clear on, since the book cuts right from when Artemis and Holly bid him farewell to when they are already inside the manor. So is Mulch still at the manor when he's burying the coin to Shammy and Opal shows up? I thought at first he probably was, since it's mentioned he's thrown near a 'silver ash tree,' and ash trees are specifically mentioned as being one of the kind of trees on the Fowl Manor grounds.
However, it seems like Mulch had already ditched the ship, since he only has the shuttle starter chip in his pocket. Plus, if he woke up on the Fowl Manor grounds, I imagine when things were happening in book 1, he would have had to have remembered being there before, so it wouldn't have made sense.
Anyway, wow, eight reviews last chapter! I've never gotten so many! Thank you very, very much, I really appreciate it. All I said about reviews last chapter still stands, so please tell me what you thought, or even just if you read it! (;
Posted 4/4/12