The Last Guardian

by Eoin Colfer

  Artemis had a single strand of defiance left in him.

  “I could close it,” he grunted. “Given a few minutes.”

  Opal was nonplussed. “You could…you could close it? Weren’t you listening? Didn’t I make it simple enough? No one can close it but me.”

  Artemis seemed unimpressed. “I could figure it out. One more hour, ten minutes even. Holly is a fairy, she has magic. I could have used her hand and my brain. I know I could. How difficult could it be if you managed it? You’re not even as smart as Foaly.”

  “Foaly!” screamed Opal. “Foaly is a buffoon. Fiddling around with his gadgets when there are entire dimensions left unexplored.”

  “I apologize, Holly,” said Artemis formally. “You warned me, and I wouldn’t listen. You were our only chance, and I tricked you.”

  Opal was furious. She skirted the Chinese warriors to where Juliet stood holding Holly, whose head was dangling.

  “You think this ridiculous thing could ever have accomplished what I have accomplished?”

  “That is Captain Holly Short of the Lower Elements Police,” said Artemis. “Show some respect. She beat you before.”

  “This is not before,” said Opal emphatically. “This is now. The end of days for humanity.” She grabbed Holly’s hand and slapped it vaguely in the area of the handprint on the Berserker Gate. “Oh, look at that. The gate is not closing. Holly Short has no power here.” Opal laughed cruelly. “Oh, poor, pretty Holly. Imagine, if only your hand would activate the gate, then your suffering could end right now.”

  “We could do it,” mumbled Artemis, but his eyes were closing, and it seemed as though he had lost faith in himself. His free hand tapped a distracted rhythm on the stone. The human’s mind had finally snapped.

  “Ridiculous,” said Opal, calming herself. “And here I am, getting flustered by your claims. You vex me, Artemis, and I will be glad when you are dead.”

  Two things happened while Opal was ranting at Holly. The first thing was that Opal had a series of thoughts:

  Holly’s hand seems very small.

  Opal realized that she hadn’t closely examined the elf since she’d appeared at the crater’s rim. Either she’d been lying down, or Artemis had shielded her body with his own.

  But her face. I saw the face. It was definitely her.

  The second thing to happen was that the small hand in question, which still rested on the Berserker Gate, began to crab spasmodically toward the handprint, feeling its way with fingertips.

  Opal pulled back Holly’s hood to take a better look and saw that the face crackled a little on close inspection.

  A mask. A child’s projection mask. Like the one used by Pip…

  “No!” she screamed. “No, I will not permit it!”

  She reached under Holly’s chin and wrenched off the mask, and of course it was not Holly underneath.

  Opal saw her own cloned face beneath the mask, and she felt instantly traumatized, as though blindsided by a massive blow.

  “It is me!” she breathed, then giggled hysterically. “And only I can close the gate.”

  Two seconds of stunned inaction followed from Opal, which allowed Nopal’s fingers to arrange themselves perfectly in the handprint. The print turned green and radiated a warm light. The smell of summer emanated from the stone, and there was birdsong.

  Artemis chuckled, showing his blood-rimmed teeth. “I would imagine that you’re vexed now.”

  Opal sent a vicious magical pulse directly into the clone’s torso, twisting her from Juliet’s grip and sending her rolling away from the gate, but all she accomplished with her brutality was to let the ethereal light flood through faster. The emerald rays spiraled upward in a tight coil, then fanned out to form a hemisphere around the magic circle. The Berserkers sighed and bathed their upturned faces in the meadow-green glow.

  “It is finally finished, Opal,” said Artemis. “Your plan has failed. You are finished.”

  There were people in the light, smiling and beckoning. There were scenes from times gone by. Fairies farming in this very valley.

  Opal did not give up so easily and recovered herself. “No. I still have power. Perhaps I lose these Berserker fools, but my magic will protect me. There are other fairies to be duped, and the next time you will not stop me.”

  Opal slapped Oro hard to distract him from the light. “Make certain that clone is dead,” she ordered. “The magic may not take the soulless creature. Finish her off if need be. Do it now!”

  Oro frowned. “But she is one of us.”

  “What do I care?”

  “But it is over, Majesty. We are leaving.”

  “Do as I say, thrall. It can be your last act before you ascend. Then I am done with you.”

  “She is innocent. A helpless pixie.”

  Opal was enraged by the argument. “Innocent? What do I care about that? I have killed a thousand innocent fairies, and I will kill ten times that if I deem it necessary. Do as I command.”

  Oro drew the dagger, which seemed as big as a sword in his hand. “No, Opal. Bruin released me from my bonds. You shall kill no more fairies.”

  And with a soldier’s efficiency he pierced Opal’s heart with a single thrust. The tiny pixie dropped, still speaking. She talked until her brain died, mouthing foul vitriol, still refusing to believe that it was over for her. She died staring into Artemis’s face, hating him.

  Artemis wanted to hate right back, but all he could feel was sadness for the waste of life.

  Something that may have been a spirit, or a dark twisted shadow, flickered behind Opal for a moment like a fleeing thief, then dissolved in the magical light.

  All this time. All this strife and nobody wins. What a tragedy.

  The light glowed brighter and shards detached themselves from the corona to become liquid, congealing around the Berserkers inside the circle. Some left their bodies easily, as though slipping from an old coat; others were yanked out limb by limb, jerking into the sky. Oro dropped his dagger, disgusted by what had been necessary, then vacated Beckett’s body in a flash of green fire.

  At last, he may have said, though Artemis could not be sure. On either side of him, the clay warriors disintegrated as the Berserker spirits vacated them, and Artemis dropped to the ground, coming face to face with Nopal.

  The clone lay with her eyes uncharacteristically bright and what might have been a smile on her face. She seemed to focus on Artemis for a moment, then the light died in her eyes and she was gone. She was peaceful at the end and, unlike the other fairies, no soul detached itself from her body.

  You were never meant to be, realized Artemis, and then his thoughts turned to his own safety.

  I need to escape the magic as quickly as possible.

  The odds were in his favor, he knew, but that was no guarantee. He had survived against all odds so many times over the past few years that he knew that sometimes percentages counted for nothing.

  It occurred to Artemis that, as a human, he should simply be able to hurl himself through the walls of this magical hemisphere and survive.

  With all the genius in my head, I am to be saved by a simple high jump.

  He scrambled to his feet and ran toward the edge of the gate tower. It was no more than ten feet. Difficult, but not impossible from a height.

  What I wouldn’t give for a set of Foaly’s hummingbird wings now, he thought.

  Through the green liquid Artemis saw Holly and Butler cresting the hill, running toward the crater.

  Stay back, my friends, he thought. I am coming.

  And he jumped for his life. Artemis was glad that Butler was there to witness his effort, as it was almost athletic. From this height, Artemis felt as though he were flying.

  There was Holly racing down the slope, outrunning Butler for once. Artemis could see by the shape of her mouth that she was shouting his name.

  His hands reached the skin of the magic bubble and passed through, and Artemis felt tremendous relief.

&n
bsp; It worked. Everything will be different now. A new world with humans and fairies living together. I could be an ambassador.

  Then the spell caught him as neatly as a bug in a jar, and Artemis slid down the inside of the magical corona as though it were made of glass.

  Holly rushed down the hillside, reaching toward the magical light.

  “Stay back!” Artemis shouted, and his voice was slightly out of synch with his lips. “The spell will kill you.”

  Holly did not slow, and Artemis could see that she intended to attempt a rescue.

  She does not understand, he thought.

  “Butler!” he called. “Stop her.”

  The bodyguard reached out his massive arms and folded Holly in a bear hug. She used every escape maneuver in the manual, but there was no slipping such a grip.

  “Butler, please. This is not right. It was supposed to be me.”

  “Wait,” said Butler. “Just wait, Holly. Artemis has a plan.” He squinted through the green dome. “What is your plan, Artemis?”

  All Artemis could do was smile and shrug.

  Holly stopped struggling. “The magic shouldn’t affect a human, Artemis. Why hasn’t it released you yet?”

  Artemis felt the magic scanning his person, looking for something. It found that something in his eye socket.

  “I have a fairy eye—one of yours, remember?” said Artemis, pointing to the brown iris. “I thought my human genes could overcome that, but this is perceptive magic. Smart power.”

  “I’ll get the defibrillator,” said Butler. “Perhaps there will be a spark left.”

  “No,” said Artemis. “It will be too late.”

  Holly’s eyes were slits now, and a pallor spread across her skin like white paint. She felt sick and broken.

  “You knew. Why, Artemis? Why did you do this?”

  Artemis did not answer this question. Holly knew him well enough by now to unravel his motives later. He had seconds left, and there were more urgent things to be said.

  “Butler, you did not fail me. I tricked you. After all, I am a tactical genius and you were unconscious. I want you to remember that, just in case…”

  “Just in case of what?” Butler shouted through the viscous light.

  Again, Artemis did not answer the question. One way or another, Butler would find out.

  “Do you remember what I said to you?” said Artemis, touching his own forehead.

  “I remember,” said Holly. “But…”

  There was no more time for questions. The green mist was sucked backward into the Berserker Gate as though drawn by a vacuum. For a moment Artemis was left standing, unharmed, and Butler dropped Holly to rush to his charge’s side. Then Artemis’s fairy eye glowed green, and by the time Butler caught the falling boy in his arms, Artemis Fowl’s body was already dead.

  Holly dropped to her knees and saw Opal Koboi’s twisted body by the lock. The remnants of black magic had eaten through her skin in several places, exposing the ivory gleam of skull.

  The sight affected her not one bit at that moment, though the pixie’s staring eyes would haunt Holly’s dreams for the rest of her life.

  Six Months Later

  The world was resilient and so slowly fixed itself. Once the initial thunder strike of devastation had passed, there was a wave of opportunism as a certain type of people, that is, the majority, tried to take advantage of what had happened.

  People who had been sneered at as New Age ecohippies were now hailed as saviors of humanity, as it dawned on people that their traditional methods of hunting and farming could keep families fed through the winter. Faith healers, evangelists, and witch doctors shook their fists around campfires and their following blossomed.

  A million and one other things happened that would change the way humanity lived on the earth, but possibly the two most important events following the Great Techno-Crash were the realization that things could be fixed, and the detection of fairies.

  After the initial months of panic, a Green Lantern fanatic in Sydney got the Internet up and going again, discovering that even though most of the parts in his antenna had exploded, he still knew how to fix it. Slowly the modern age began to reassert itself, as cell phone networks were rigged by amateurs and kids took over the TV stations. Radio made a huge comeback, and some of the old velvet-voiced guys from the seventies were wheeled out of retirement to slot actual CDs into disk drives. Water became the new gold, and oil dropped to third on the fuel list after solar and wind.

  Across the globe there had been hundreds of sightings of strange creatures who might have been fairies or aliens. One moment these creatures were not there, and the next there was a crackle or a bang and suddenly there were observation posts with little people in them, all over the world. Small flying craft fell from the sky, and powerless submarines bobbed to the surface offshore of a hundred major cities.

  The trouble was that all of the machinery self-destructed, and any of the fairies/aliens taken into custody inexplicably vanished in the following weeks. Humanity knew that it was not alone on the planet, but it didn’t know where to find these strange creatures. And considering mankind had not even managed to explore the planet’s oceans, it would be several hundred years before they developed the capacity to probe beneath the earth’s crust.

  So the stories were exaggerated until nobody believed them anymore, and the one video that did survive was not half as convincing as any Saturday morning kids’ show.

  People knew what they had seen, and those people would believe it to the day they died; but soon psychiatrists began to assign the fairy sightings to the mass traumatic hallucination scrapheap that was already piled high with dinosaurs, superheroes, and Loch Ness monsters.

  The Fowl Estate

  Ireland became truly an island once more. Communities retreated into themselves and began growing foodstuffs that they would actually eat rather than mechanically suck all the goodness out of, freeze all the additives into, and ship off to other continents. Many wealthy landowners voluntarily donated their idle fields to disgruntled hungry people with sharp implements.

  Artemis’s parents had managed to make their way home from London, where they had been when the world broke down, and, shortly after the funeral ceremony for Artemis, the Fowl Estate was converted into over five hundred separate plots where people could grow whatever fruit and vegetables the Irish climate permitted.

  The ceremony itself was simple and private, with only the Fowl and Butler families present. Artemis’s body was buried on the high meadow where he had spent so much of his time tinkering on his solar plane. Butler did not attend, because he steadfastly refused to believe the evidence presented to him by his own eyes.

  Artemis is not gone, he asserted, time after time. This is not the endgame.

  He would not be persuaded otherwise, no matter how many times Juliet or Angeline Fowl dropped down to his dojo for a talk.

  Which was why the bodyguard showed not one whit of surprise when Captain Holly Short appeared at the door of his lodge at dawn one morning.

  “Well, it’s about time,” he said, grabbing his jacket from the coatrack. “Artemis leaves instructions, and it takes you guys half a year to figure them out.”

  Holly hurried after him. “Artemis’s instructions were not exactly simple to follow. And, typically, they were totally illegal.”

  In the courtyard, a doorway had been cut into the orange glow of the morning sky, and in that doorway stood Foaly, looking decidedly nervous.

  “Which do you think seems less suspicious?” asked Butler. “An alien-looking craft hovering in the yard of a country home, or a floating doorway with a centaur standing in it?”

  Foaly clopped down the gangplank, towing a hover trolley behind him. The shuttle door closed and fizzled out of the visible spectrum.

  “Can we get on with this, please?” he wondered. “Everything we’re doing here is against fairy law and possibly immoral. Caballine thinks I’m at Mulch’s ceremony. The Council is
actually giving him a medal. I hate lying to my wife. If I stop to think about this for more than ten seconds, I might just change my mind.”

  Holly took control of the hover trolley. “You will not change your mind. We have come too far just to go home without a result.”

  “Hey,” said Foaly. “I was just saying.”

  Holly’s eyes were hard with a determination that would tolerate no argument. She had been wearing that expression every day now for six months, ever since she had returned home from the Berserker Gate incident. The first thing she had done was seek out Foaly in Police Plaza.

  I have a message for you from Artemis, she’d said, once Foaly had released her from a smothering hug.

  Really? What did he say?

  He said something about a chrysalis. You were to power it up.

  These words had a powerful effect on the centaur. He trotted to the door and locked it behind Holly. Then he ran a bug sweep with a wand he kept on his person.

  Holly knew then that the word meant something to her friend.

  What chrysalis, Foaly? And why is Artemis so interested in it?

  Foaly took Holly’s shoulders and placed her in a lab chair. Why is Artemis interested? Our friend is dead, Holly. Maybe we should let him go?

  Holly pushed Foaly away and jumped to her feet. Let him go? Artemis didn’t let me go in Limbo. He didn’t let Butler go in London. He didn’t let the entire city of Haven go during the goblin revolution. Now tell me, what is this chrysalis?

  So Foaly told her, and the bones of Artemis’s idea became obvious, but more information was needed.

  Was there anything else? asked the centaur. Did Artemis say or do anything else?

  Holly shook her head miserably. No. He got a little sentimental, which is unusual for him, but understandable. He told me to kiss you.

  She stood on tiptoes and kissed Foaly’s forehead. “Just in case, I suppose.”

  Foaly was suddenly upset, and almost overwhelmed, but he coughed and swallowed it down for another time.