The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
Artemis had made himself a commitment; he would cease arguing with himself – something which had become his brain's full-time occupation. Rocking back and forth, back and forth, his mind a small boat in the Atlantic battered by high waves threatening to swallow his sanity whole. For a moment, he would be forgiving himself, the next, berating. The voice in his head was too loud – his devil's advocate was so heavy on his shoulder that the back of the boat was beginning to sink. He would try to stop the torment and quieten his mind before the arguments could begin. The trouble, however, was that the voice in his head was so unnaturally present.
"What outrageous fortune do you face that you would seek to end the heartache now? What real heartache do you have, Artemis?" The voice sneered again, causing him to wince. He sat in the darkness, breathing deeply to clear his mind.
"Depression isn't always circumstantial. Many times, its genetic, or even personality based," he reasoned, trying to retain a semblance of positivity, like using his hands to bail out the water, watching half of the sea drain out of his fingers each time he lifted them. Maybe if he thought positively, he could act positively – Betari's Box, but against his own mind.
"Blaming your thoughts on something outside of your control is pretty convenient, isn't it?"
"Even so, I died last year. Is that not enough to count for a traumatic experience?" Artemis squinted and rubbed a knuckle into his tired eyes – he needed to stop this mental barrage and clear his mind, not argue more.
"Death is traumatic for those around you. You didn't even know it had happened. You lost your memories."
"Still, surely traumatic enough to warrant some mental damage?"
"It can't have been that traumatic if you're wanting a continuation."
"I don't want a continuation." Artemis parried.
"You don't?" How was it possible that his own voice was so scathing and awful. In fact, the voice in his mind sounded like a younger Artemis – twelve-year-old him scolding him severely. He could see the figure with a look of disdain on his child-like face, almost as though he was in disbelief that the grown man before him was his pathetic future. "Do you not recall gazing at your razor, running the blade over your fingers until it cut the flesh on your fingertips? Don't you remember casting your eyes out of the window, wondering whether it was high enough to crack your skull? Have you forgotten the visions of letting your car carry on straight at the road bend, depressing the accelerator to collide with the barrier?"
Artemis' delusions were deepening. His imagination had warped slowly. At the beginning, his thoughts were 'what if's. He made a habit of catastrophising daily occurrences, fantasising about the many ways he could die. Those fantasies crept ever closer to 'plans'. Each day more vivid imaginings of how the bones in his body would crunch; how his brain would be dashed pink-red against the walls; how the death rattle of his final breath would feel against his dry throat. Every danger in his life was an opportunity to romanticise about what it could do to him: how much pain it might cause; how quick it would be?
What if he veered off the bridge right now? What if he stepped into the road? What if he slipped from the windowsill? And then he began to settle on some fantasies more than others. Some methods of death seemed more appealing than others – carbon monoxide poisoning seemed fairly painless – drifting into an eternal sleep. Though, he did need to make it seem like an unfortunate accident. Though, unavoidable enough that Butler couldn't blame himself for it. People couldn't know he had thought like this. Veering off the bridge probably wouldn't be that quick – in essence, it'd be drowning. But it would look fairly accidental… He really didn't want to drown. Hanging was common and quick, but bodies were known to … do rather unpleasant things after a death of that fashion. And it would be the most indiscrete. Stepping into the road would mean someone would be scarred for life with the image of his body rolling off the bonnet of their car. He pondered over how he could make carbon monoxide poisoning seem involuntary…
And his fantasies began to sound dangerously like his intent, even to his deluded mind. When he caught himself thinking that the manor would be empty on Wednesday, he felt his stomach plummet. And later when he thought – not now, mother's birthday is close – the fright he gave himself caused his hands to tremble. Yet he kept returning to these thoughts, staring into the abyss that gaped wide open before him. What had he now to live for anyway? As a young teenager, he'd delivered death to innocents: animals, even humans indirectly. Guilt was a monstrosity drifting in the deep blue of his conscious mind, spraying its toxic breath into his ego, never really submerging far from view. Its shadow just hung there, a leviathan in the blue-black ocean. Opening its toothless jaws wide, it became unimaginably titanic, and it swallowed him whole. In a week, it could all be over, the thought boomed. It was the only thought that provided a reprieve.
Deep within him the sound of those words reverberated, soft vibrations soothing him. It could all end. He'd felt the peacefulness of death once before - now it called to him. He wished Foaley had never brought him back. He wished it so fiercely that the thought made him angry. What had he done since that day, other than mope and moan? The only thing his family said to him was "are you okay?", "you look tired" and "maybe you should rest a little". He was an ever-growing burden on their happiness.
Butler flicked on the lights and Artemis shied away from the brightness until his eyes adjusted. Blue-black flashed into white.
"I didn't think you'd be sleeping," he said, his voice a deep rumble. Artemis had been sat on the edge of his bed in the London apartment, gazing out of the reinforced glass window that took up one wall. Bright white walls vanished into the blue-black of night. On a clear twilight like this one, the London cityscape was an arcade of synthetic lights glimmering below. Cars swam under the streetlights, leaving red glowing tentacles in the streams of their maze. Stone met steel; the older buildings were illuminated in a musky orange, the newer ones a green-ish white. The colours bled into each other in their reflections in the river. The speckles of apartment rooms were white lights marking each tiny household in the metropolis outside his window.
"I can't sleep," Artemis replied, quietly. It was an admission instead of an excuse.
"Me neither," Butler replied, crossing the room to perch beside him on the mattress, gazing out in the same direction at the city. "Would you like for me to cancel tomorrow's appointments as well?"
"No, old friend. I need some semblance of duty and normality to keep me alive- feeling alive. Feeling … normal. Poor turn of phrase." The sentence petered out to a weakened sigh. At this moment, his laptop which had been humming quietly on his desk, alerted the occupants in the room to contact from the world outside. Artemis got up to look, less out of curiosity and more to dispel the awkward atmosphere between him and his manservant. "It's Kathie," he said quietly, his eyes blinking in surprise. "At this hour."
"Another insomniac?" After several clicks, Artemis hmph'd.
"She has sent across a slide deck for the group briefing we have next week," Artemis was smiling, feeling his low mood scatter back into the shadows. In his imagination, a hopeless and concerned Kath tried to busy her mind against her troubles to keep them at bay. When faced with the mortality of her father, she turned to the mundane to keep her mind off the casket in her mind's eye – logging on at midnight to make a slide deck. It was nonsensical and just the sort of selfless, busy-body work that his mother would have chosen to perform. For many months after her husband had vanished, Angeline had been more productive in her exploits than ever before. Until the fatigue, the grief, and the depression began to rot away her mind… Maybe it was genetic, after all.
He pulled out the desk chair and lowered himself into place, fingers striking the keyboard as he opened up a message chat.
Can't sleep? he tapped.
~ding~ You're up late as well, came the reply. "Avoided the question," Artemis hummed. Butler chuckled to himself and raised his hulking figure off the edge of the bed, brushing across the sheets to straighten the creases where they had been sat.
"I'll go make tea," he declared.
"Thanks," Artemis cast him a quick smile. He owed him that much.
I would have thought the group presentation could wait, he typed. But it was kind of you to get ahead of the work.
~ding~ It's easier for me to have a shared workspace to begin dropping my slides into. Also then we can see what the others are writing. So we don't repeat points.
I see. But do you not have more pressing matters?
~ding~ I couldn't sleep. Might as well take the opportunity to be productive.
Did you manage to see your father? Was he well?
As well as can be expected. He's stable at least.
That's good to hear, Artemis replied. After a moment's hesitation, he reached for his headset and typed, Can I call?
As he was establishing a connection between the two devices, his ringtone sounded. He clicked right away.
"I thought it would be easier to speak than to type," he said as the ringing tone was replaced with the crackling silence of a connection.
"It's very late," Kathie replied, though it did not seem like an admonishment. She spoke softly, calmly. Not the voice of someone distressed and distraught. He leaned back into his chair and closed his eyes, drowning out teenage Artemis to focus on this one voice. "You should be getting some rest for your meeting."
"I wasn't feeling too well so I couldn't sleep" he admitted.
"Are you ill? Have you got a cold coming?"
"No, just fatigue I believe." Well, it wasn't exactly a lie.
"Look after yourself, Artemis. You give too much of yourself away. You're quite selfless."
"Selfless?" Artemis spluttered, bolting upright. When had Artemis Fowl II ever been accused of being too selfless?
"You may not be friendly, but you are giving. It's in your nature to work yourself to the bone, I think. I don't know you well, that's just the impression I get."
"I don't work for others though, just for myself. That's not selflessness."
"I don't think that's true. You just changed all your plans to fly me out to England."
"That's a slightly different situation. I was heading this way anyway."
"It was out of your way. And, from what I hear, almost all the Fowl capital is invested into green energy and environmentally friendly solutions. You could be making millions out of oil and gas, but you don't."
"That's my mother's influence more than anything."
"Your mother seems like a lovely person." Artemis could hear the smile in her tone. Maybe it was because their voice call was late and she was tired, but her voice was so warm tonight. Low and gentle, breathy. There were therapists unable to achieve this level of reassurance.
"I'm looking forward to seeing you again." The admission caught even himself by surprise and he tried to keep his voice level and natural. But he was. There was an empathy he felt with her – perhaps because of the situation with her father, perhaps because she worked needlessly hard; something drew him to her. Perhaps his current vulnerability was seeking a figure of reassurance in his life to cling onto. Stop with the first-year psychology student nonsense, Artemis. Just live your life without psychoanalysing your own behaviour for once.
"… you did promise me a coffee without a catch." Kath said, and he could hear bells in her voice as she joshed.
"I don't make promises that I don't intent to keep."
"Then I will look forward to the day Artemis Fowl meets me for a coffee in his suit and tie."
He pursed his lips slightly. "I can wear normal clothes."
"The suit's rather fine," she teased, and Artemis wondered in amazement - is she flirting? Then he thought, did I flirt first? Me? Artemis Fowl II? Butler was late with his tea. "I like cheap coffee best though." Artemis heard a muffled yawn crackle through the headset. He noticed the time.
"It's 1am. You should go to bed."
"I probably should."
"No more late-night PowerPoint antics," he admonished.
"Just excel, got it."
"Perhaps you should leave those sheets for another set." Artemis heard a snort that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, and he span in his seat to glare fiercely at Butler, who had his mouth covered with a spade-like hand.
"You're vastly different from what people say about you, Artemis," Kath said, and he realised she had been laughing as well. His cheeks burned bright red. "I'll leave you to whatever mastermind schemes you were concocting at 1am and I will hope it does not involve the downfall of Mrs Walker."
"Was my hatred so apparent?"
"Almost all of your expressions are transparent."
"Then I wonder why no-one pays attention to my want to be left alone," Artemis grunted.
"Because that's not what your face reads," she said, softly, "Goodnight."
He was once more dumbfounded, but picked his jaw up off the floor hurriedly as Butler placed a steaming cup of Moroccan green tea beside him.
"I won't say anything," Butler chuckled. "But it really is time for bed now. You've got a late night tomorrow at the formal dinner following your meeting."
"A-ha, reverse petrification," Artemis announced, startling Butler. He shot up from his desk and headed over to a large painting of a waterfall that more or less took up half of the space there. "Give me a hand, old friend," he said as he grasped one side of the painting. Butler rolled his eyes and took the other. Together they flipped the artwork to reveal a large whiteboard on the reverse side, complete with a pocket for pens, post-its and pins. Young Artemis had loved to hide whiteboards everywhere. Even as technology advanced, Artemis still liked nothing better than a mind map on a whiteboard to gather his thoughts. He clicked off the lid of a pen and chewed his lip thoughtfully, staring at the great blank expanse.
"Reverse petrification?" Butler asked, swallowing a long sigh. He wanted to reprove his charge, but he knew Artemis well enough to know this mood was not about to evaporate into bedtime. There was a glint to his eyes that had been missing for many months now. Despite the fact it was far past midnight, Butler himself began to feel reinvigorated to see Artemis back to himself – if only for as long as this mood lasted.
"Yes, I think it is happening to the stones."
"The stones?"
"The Piper's Stones."
"The thing that Holly and Foaley asked you to stay away from?"
"They will need me, eventually, if my gut instinct is correct."
Butler sighed, "and it usually is. So," Butler watched as Artemis' hand got to work scrawling faery text across the board, drawing swooping lines between some points and others, hovering over certain words and beginning to form a criss-cross of connections. "Reverse petrification. I assume you mean something that was once alive was turned into those stones, and now that petrification is undoing?"
"That's exactly right."
"What are these things? Are they dangerous?" Then Butler scoffed. "No, of course they're dangerous. Whenever you're involved, its life-threatening or nothing."
"Well, actually, I am unclear on why they were petrified. At the moment."
"What are they?"
"Banshees."
Butler took a sharp intake of breath. "They don't sound very cuddly to me."
"Perhaps not. Shortly after demon-kind left for Limbo, the banshees were petrified by warlocks. Now that the demons have returned, there has been a significant amount of activity around those stones. My guess is that the spell is unravelling, or being unravelled."
"Why would the faeries petrify one of their kind? Aren't they a peaceful folk?"
"That much I am unclear on, old friend. Things rooted in sentiment are harder to research. Rather than factual texts, I need to trawl through something a little more… subjective. Something that will capture attitudes of the time. The faeries have always made out like humans are the only beings with evil and hubris within them. We know from Opal Koboi that is not quite true."
"By human-lore, banshees are not exactly beings we'd welcome. Perhaps faeries feel the same."
"Well even in human stories, our sentiments are mixed about the banshees. They're generally thought-of as a peaceful species. Though they are known to be terrifying when they are wronged. However, they are also seen as protectors of Irish families. Both feared and respected."
"Much like the Fowls," Butler grunted, already knowing the cup of tea he'd just brewed for Artemis was going to be left until it was cold. "In that case, why would Foaley and Holly be concerned about them returning?"
"There's the rub," Artemis beamed from ear to ear, looking in his early adulthood years so much like a child with a toy. "There, my friend, is the rub."