by Eoin Colfer
Myles was ratcheted up high, sipping his favorite beverage: acai juice from a martini glass. Two ice cubes, no straw.
“This is my favorite drink,” he said, dabbing the corner of his mouth with a napkin monogrammed with the Fowl motto, Aurum potestas est. “I know that because I am me again and not a fairy warrior.”
Artemis sat facing him in a similar but larger chair. “So you keep saying, Myles. Should I call you Myles?”
“Yes, of course,” said Myles. “Because that is who I am. Don’t you believe me?”
“Of course I do, little man. I know my own brother’s face when I see it.”
Myles toyed with the stem of his martini glass. “I need to talk with you alone, Arty. Can’t Butler wait outside for a few moments? It’s family talk.”
“Butler is family. You know that, brother.”
Myles pouted. “I know, but this is embarrassing.”
“Butler has seen it all before. We have no secrets from him.”
“Couldn’t he just step outside for a minute?”
Butler stood silently behind Artemis, arms folded in an aggressive manner, which is not difficult to do with forearms the size of baked hams and sleeves that creak like old chairs.
“No, Myles. Butler stays.”
“Very well, Arty. You know best.”
Artemis leaned back in his chair. “What happened to the Berserker inside you, Myles?”
The four-year-old shrugged. “He went away. He was driving my head; then he left.”
“What was his name?”
Myles rolled his eyeballs upward, checking out his own brain. “Erm…Mr. Gobdaw, I believe.”
Artemis nodded like someone with a great deal of knowledge on the subject of this Gobdaw person would. “Ah yes, Gobdaw. I have heard all about Gobdaw from our fairy friends.”
“I think he was called Gobdaw the Legendary Warrior.”
Artemis chuckled. “I am sure he would like you to think that.”
“Because it’s true,” said Myles, with a slight tension around his mouth.
“That’s not what we heard, is it, Butler?”
Butler did not answer or gesture in any way, but somehow he gave the impression of a negative response.
“No,” continued Artemis. “What we heard from our fairy sources was that this Gobdaw person is a bit of a joke, to be frank.”
Myles’s fingers squeaked on the neck of his glass. “Joke? Who says that?”
“Everybody,” said Artemis, opening his laptop and checking the screen. “It’s in all the fairy history books. Here it is, look. Gobdaw the Gullible, they call him, which is nice because of the alliteration. There’s another article that refers to your Berserker friend as Gobdaw the Stinkworm, which I believe is a term used to describe a person who gets blamed for everything. We humans would call that a fall guy, or a scapegoat.”
Myles’s cheeks were rosy red now. “Stinkworm?
Stinkworm, you say? Why would I…why would Gobdaw be called a stinkworm?”
“It’s sad, really, pathetic, but apparently this Gobdaw character was the one who convinced his leader to let the entire Berserker unit get themselves buried around a gate.”
“A magical gate,” said Myles. “That protected the fairy elements.”
“That is what they were told, but in truth the gate was nothing more than a pile of stones. A diversion leading nowhere. The Berserkers spent ten thousand years guarding rocks.”
Myles kneaded his eyes. “No. That’s not…no. I saw it, in Gobdaw’s memories. The gate is real.”
Artemis laughed softly. “Gobdaw the Gullible. It’s a little cruel. There’s a rhyme, you know.”
“A rhyme?” rasped Myles, and rasping is unusual in four-year-olds.
“Oh yes, a schoolyard rhyme. Would you care to hear it?”
Myles seemed to be wrestling with his own face. “No. Yes, tell me.”
“Very well. Here goes.” Artemis cleared his throat theatrically.
“Gobdaw, Gobdaw,
Buried in the ground,
Watching over sticks and stones,
Never to be found.”
Artemis hid a smile behind his hand. “Children can be so cruel.”
Myles snapped in two ways. Firstly his patience snapped, revealing him to be in fact Gobdaw; and secondly his fingers snapped the martini glass’s stem, leaving him with a deadly weapon clasped in his tiny fingers.
“Death to the humans!” he squealed in Gnommish, vaulting onto the desk and racing across toward Artemis.
In combat, Gobdaw liked to visualize his strikes just before executing them. He found that it helped him to focus. So, in his mind he leaped gracefully from the lip of the desk, landed on Artemis’s chest, and plunged his glass stiletto into Artemis’s neck. This would have the double effect of killing the Mud Boy and also showering Gobdaw himself in arterial blood, which would help to make him look a little more fearsome.
What actually happened was a little different. Butler reached out and plucked Gobdaw from the air in mid-leap, flicked the glass stem from his grasp, and then wrapped him firmly in the prison of his meaty arms.
Artemis leaned forward in his chair. “There is a second verse,” he said. “But perhaps now is not the time.”
Gobdaw struggled furiously, but he had been utterly neutralized. In desperation, he tried the fairy mesmer.
“You will order Butler to release me,” he intoned.
Artemis was amused. “I doubt it,” he said. “You have barely enough magic to keep Myles in check.”
“Just kill me, then, and be done with it,” said Gobdaw without the slightest quiver in his voice.
“I cannot kill my own brother, so I need to get you out of his body without harming him.”
Gobdaw sneered. “That’s not possible, human. To get me, you must slay the boy.”
“You are misinformed,” said Artemis. “There is a way to exorcise your feisty soul without damaging Myles.”
“I would like to see you try it,” said Gobdaw, with perhaps a glimmer of doubt in his eyes.
“Your wish is my command and so on and so forth,” said Artemis, pressing a button on the desk intercom. “Bring it in, would you, Holly?”
The office door swung open, and a barrel trundled into the room, seemingly under its own power, until Holly was revealed behind it.
“I don’t like this, Artemis,” she said, playing good cop, just as they had planned. “This is nasty stuff. A person’s soul might never get into the afterlife trapped in this gunk.”
“Traitorous elf,” said Gobdaw, kicking his little feet. “You side with the humans.”
Holly waltzed the barrel trolley into the center of the office, parking it on the wooden floor and not on one of the precious Afghan rugs that Artemis insisted on describing in great historical detail every time she visited the office.
“I side with the earth,” she said, meeting Gobdaw’s eyes. “You have been in the ground for ten thousand years, warrior. Things have changed.”
“I have consulted my host’s memories,” said Gobdaw sullenly. “The humans have almost succeeded in destroying the entire planet. Things have not changed so much.”
Artemis rose from his chair and unscrewed the barrel lock. “Do you also see a spacecraft that shoots bubbles from its exhaust?”
Gobdaw had a quick rifle through Myles’s brain. “Yes. Yes, I do. It’s made of gold, is it not?”
“This is one of Myles’s dream projects,” said Artemis slowly. “Merely a dream. The bubble jet. If you delve deeper into my brother’s imagination, you will find a robotic pony that does homework, and a monkey that has been taught to speak. The boy you inhabit is highly intelligent, Gobdaw, but he is only four. At that age there is a very fine line between reality and imagination.”
Gobdaw’s puffed-up chest deflated as he located these items in Myles’s brain. “Why are you telling me this, human?”
“I want you to see that you have been tricked. Opal Koboi is not the sa
vior she pretends to be. She is a convicted murderer who has escaped from prison. She would undo ten thousand years of peace.”
“Peace!” said Gobdaw, then barked a laugh. “Peaceful humans? Even buried beneath the ground we felt your violence.” He wriggled in Butler’s arms, a mini Artemis with black hair and dark suit. “Do you call this peace?”
“No, and I apologize for your treatment, but I need my brother.” Artemis nodded at Butler, who hoisted Gobdaw over the open barrel. The little Berserker laughed.
“For millennia I was in the earth. Do you think Gobdaw fears imprisonment in a barrel?”
“You will not be imprisoned. A quick dunking is all that will be necessary.”
Gobdaw looked down between his dangling feet. The barrel was filled with a viscous, off-white liquid with congealed skin on its surface.
Holly turned her back. “I don’t care to watch this. I know what it feels like.”
“What is that?” asked Gobdaw nervously, feeling a cold sickness tipping at his toes from the stuff’s aura.
“That is a gift from Opal,” said Artemis. “A few years ago she stole a demon warlock’s power using that very barrel. I stored it in the basement, because you never know, right?”
“What is it?” Gobdaw repeated.
“One of two natural magic inhibitors,” explained Artemis. “Rendered animal fat. Disgusting stuff, I admit. And I am sorry to dunk my brother in it, because he loves those shoes. We dip him down, and the rendered fat traps your soul. Myles comes out intact, and you are held in limbo for all eternity. Not exactly the reward you expected for your sacrifice.”
Something fizzed in the barrel, sending out tiny electrical bolts. “What the bleep is that?” squeaked Gobdaw, panic causing his voice to shoot up an octave.
“Oh, that is the second natural magic inhibitor. I had my dwarf friend spit into the barrel just to give it that extra zing.”
Gobdaw managed to free one arm and beat it against Butler’s biceps, but he might as well have been beating a boulder for all the effect it had.
“I will tell you nothing,” he said, his little pointed chin quivering.
Artemis held Gobdaw’s shins so that they would drop cleanly into the vat. “I know. Myles will tell me everything in a moment. I am sorry to do this to you, Gobdaw. You were a valiant warrior.”
“Not Gobdaw the Gullible, then?”
“No,” admitted Artemis. “That was a fiction to force you into revealing yourself. I had to be certain.”
Holly elbowed Artemis out of the way. “Berserker, listen to me. I know you are bound to Opal and cannot betray her, but this human is going in the vat one way or another. So vacate his body and move on to the afterlife. There is nothing more you can do here. This is not a fitting end for a mighty Berserker.”
Gobdaw sagged in Butler’s arms. “Ten thousand years. So many lifetimes.”
Holly touched Gobdaw’s cheek. “You have done everything asked of you. To rest now is no betrayal.”
“Perhaps the human is toying with me. This is a bluff.”
Holly shuddered. “The vat is no bluff. Opal imprisoned me in it once. It was as though my soul grew sick. Save yourself, I beg you.”
Artemis nodded toward Butler. “Very well, no more delays. Drop him in.”
Butler shifted his grip to Gobdaw’s shoulders, lowering him slowly.
“Wait, Artemis!” cried Holly. “This is a fairy hero.”
“Sorry, Holly—there is no more time.”
Gobdaw’s toes hit the gunk, sending vaporous tendrils curling around his legs, and he knew in that instant that this was no bluff. His soul would be imprisoned forever in the rendered fat.
“Forgive me, Oro,” he said, casting his eyes to the heavens.
Gobdaw’s spirit peeled away from Myles and hovered in the air, etched in silver. For several moments it hung, seeming confused and anxious, until a dollop of light blossomed on its chest and began to swirl like a tiny cyclone. Gobdaw smiled then, and the hurt of the ages dropped from his face. The spinning light grew larger with each revolution, spreading its ripples to swallow Gobdaw’s limbs, torso, and finally, face, which at the moment of transition wore an expression that could only be described as blissful.
For the observers, it was impossible to look upon that ghostly face and not feel just a little envious.
Bliss, thought Artemis. Will I ever attain that state?
Myles shattered the moment by kicking his feet vigorously, sending ribbons of fat flying.
“Artemis! Get me out of here!” he ordered. “These are my favorite loafers!”
Artemis smiled. His little brother was back in control of his own mind.
Myles would not speak until he had cleaned his shoes with a wet wipe.
“That fairy ran through the mud in my shoes,” he complained, sipping a second glass of acai juice. “These are kidskin shoes, Arty.”
“He’s quite precocious, n’est-ce pas?” Artemis whispered from the side of his mouth.
“Look who’s talking, plume de ma tante,” Butler whispered right back at him.
Artemis picked Myles up and sat him on the edge of the desk. “Very well, little man. I need you to tell me everything you remember from your possession. The memories will soon begin to dissipate. That means…”
“I know what dissipate means, Arty. I’m not three, for heaven’s sake.”
Holly knew from long experience that shouting at Myles and Artemis would not hurry them along, but she also knew that it would make her feel better. And at the moment she felt glum and dirty after her treatment of one of the People’s most illustrious warriors. Yelling at Mud Boys might be just the thing to cheer her up a little.
She settled for a prod at medium volume. “Can you two get a move on? There is no time-stop in operation here. Morning is on the way.”
Myles waved at her. “Hello, fairy. You sound funny. Have you been sucking helium? Helium is an inert, monatomic gas, by the way.”
Holly snorted. “Oh, he’s your brother all right. We need whatever information he has in his head, Artemis.”
Artemis nodded. “Very well, Holly. I am working on it. Myles, what do you remember from Gobdaw’s visit?”
“I remember everything,” replied Myles proudly. “Would you like to hear about Opal’s plan to destroy humanity, or how she plans to open the second lock?”
Artemis took his brother’s hand. “I need to know everything, Myles. Start at the beginning.”
“I will start at the beginning, before the memories start to dissipate.”
Myles told them everything in language that was a decade beyond his years. He did not stray from the point or become confused, and at no instant did he seem worried about his future. This was because Artemis had often told his little brother that intelligence will always win out in the end, and there was nobody more intelligent than Artemis.
Unfortunately, after the events of the past six hours, Artemis did not have the same faith in his own maxim that he used to. And, as Myles told his story, Artemis began to believe that even his intelligence would not be enough to forge a happy ending from the mess they were mired in.
Perhaps we can win, he thought. But there will be no happy ending.
Haven City, the Lower Elements
Foaly did not have much of a plan in his mind as he ran. All he knew was that he had to get to Caballine’s side no matter how he achieved it. No matter what the cost.
This is what love does, he realized, and in that moment he understood why Artemis had kidnapped a fairy to get the money to find his father.
Love makes everything else seem inconsequential.
Even with the world crumbling around his ears, all Foaly could think about was Caballine’s plight.
There are goblin criminals converging on our house.
Opal had known that, as an LEP consultant, Foaly would require that all deliveries to his house be scanned as a matter of routine. So she had sent an ornate gift box that would appear empty to t
he scanners. In actuality, though, no box is ever truly empty. This one would be packed with microorganisms that vibrated at a high frequency, producing an ultrasonic whine that would knock out surveillance and drive goblins absolutely crazy—so much so that they would do anything to stop it.
Goblins were not bright creatures at the best of times. There was only one example of a goblin ever winning a science prize, and he turned out to be a genetic experiment who had entered himself into the competition.
This sonix bomb would strip away any higher brain functions and turn the goblins into marauding fire-breathing lizards. Foaly knew all of this because he had pitched a mini-version of the sonix bomb to the LEP as a crime deterrent, but the Council had refused grant aid because his device gave the wearer nosebleeds.
Police Plaza was eighty percent rubble now, with only the top story left clinging to the rock ceiling like a flat barnacle. The lower floors had collapsed onto the reserved parking spaces below, forming a rough rubble pyramid that steamed and sparked. Luckily, the covered bridge that led to the adjoining parking structure was still relatively intact. Foaly hurried across the bridge, trying not to see the gaps in the floor where a hoof could slip through, trying not to hear the tortured screech of metal struts as they twisted under the weight of their overload.
Don’t look down. Visualize reaching the other side.
As Foaly ran, the bridge collapsed in sections behind him, until it felt like the plinking keys of a piano falling into the abyss. The automatic door on the other side was stuck on a kink in the rail, and it juddered back and forth, leaving barely enough room for Foaly to squeeze through and collapse, panting, on the fourth-story floor.
This is so melodramatic, he thought. Is this how things are for Holly every day?
Encouraged by the crash of masonry and the stink of burning cars, Foaly hurried across the lot to his van, which was parked in a prime spot near the walkway. The van was an ancient crock that could easily have been mistaken for a derelict vehicle instead of the chosen conveyance of the fairy responsible for most of the city’s technological advancements. If a person did happen to know who the van belonged to, then that person might suppose Foaly had disguised the exterior to discourage potential carjackers. But no, the van was simply a heap of rust mites and should have been replaced decades ago. In the same way that many decorators never painted their own houses, Foaly, an expert in automobile advancements, did not care what he himself drove. This was a daily disadvantage, as the centaurmobile emitted noise output several decibels above regulation and regularly set off sonic alarms all over the city. Today, though, the van’s antiquity was a definite advantage, as it was one of the few vehicles that could run independently of Haven’s automated magnetic rail system and was actually fully functional.