The Time Paradox Read online

  “It’s Mother,” said Artemis, passing him. “She’s very ill. I’m going to see what I can do.”

  Butler hurried to keep pace, his chest plate clanking. “Be careful, Artemis. Magic is not science. You can’t control it. You wouldn’t want to accidentally make Mrs. Fowl’s condition worse.”

  Artemis arrived at the top of the grand stairway, tentatively reaching his hand toward the bedroom door’s brass knob as though it were electrified.

  “I fear that her condition couldn’t be worse. . . .”

  Artemis went inside alone, leaving the bodyguard to strip off the kendo headgear and hon-nuri breastplate. Underneath he wore a tracksuit instead of his traditional wide-legged trousers. Sweat blossomed across his chest and back, but Butler ignored his desire to go and shower, standing sentry outside the door, knowing that he shouldn’t strain too hard to listen, but wishing that he could.

  Butler was the only other human who knew the full truth of Artemis’s magical escapades. He had been at his young charge’s shoulder throughout their various adventures, battling fairies and humans across the continents. But Artemis had made the journey through time to Limbo without him, and Artemis had come back changed. A part of Butler’s young charge was magical now, and not just Captain Holly Short’s hazel left eye that the time stream had given him in place of his own. On the journey from Earth to Limbo and back, Artemis had somehow managed to steal a few strands of magic from the fairies whose atoms were mixed with his in the time stream. When he had returned home from Limbo, Artemis had suggested to his parents in the compelling magical mesmer that they simply not think about where he had been for the past few years. It wasn’t a very sophisticated plan, as his disappearance had made the news worldwide, and the subject was raised at every function the Fowls attended. But until Artemis could get hold of some LEP mind-wiping equipment, or indeed develop his own, it would have to suffice. He suggested to his parents that if anyone were to ask about him, they simply state it was a family matter and ask that their privacy be respected.

  Artemis is a magical man, thought Butler. The only one.

  And now Butler just knew Artemis was going to use his magic to attempt a healing on his mother. It was a dangerous game; magic was not a natural part of his makeup. Artemis could well remove one set of symptoms and replace them with another.

  The boy entered his parents’ bedroom slowly. The twins charged in here at all hours of the day and night, flinging themselves on the four-poster bed to wrestle with his protesting mother and father, but Artemis had never experienced that. His childhood had been a time of order and discipline.

  Always knock before entering, Artemis, his father had instructed him. It shows respect.

  But his father had changed. A brush with death seven years earlier had shown him what was really important. Now he was always ready to hug and roll in the covers with his beloved sons.

  It’s too late for me, thought Artemis. I am too old for tussles with Father.

  Mother was different. She was never cold, apart from during her bouts of depression when his father had been missing. But fairy magic and the return of her beloved husband had saved her from that, and now she was herself again. Or she had been until now.

  Artemis crossed the room slowly, afraid of what lay before him. He walked across the carpet, careful to tread between the vine patterns in the weave.

  Step on a vine, count to nine.

  This was a habit from when he was little, an old superstition whispered lightly by his father. Artemis had never forgotten, and always counted to nine to ward off the bad luck should so much as a toe touch the carpet vines.

  The four-poster bed stood at the rear of the room, swathed in hanging drapes and sunlight. A breeze slipped into the room, rippling the silks like the sails of a pirate ship.

  One of his mother’s hands, pale and thin, dangled over the side of her bed.

  Artemis was horrified. Just yesterday his mother had been fine. A slight sniffle, but still her laughing, warm self.

  “Mother,” he blurted upon seeing her face, feeling as though the word had been punched out of him.

  This was not possible. In twenty-four hours his mother had deteriorated to little more than a skeleton. Her cheekbones were sharp as flint, her eyes lost in dark sockets.

  Don’t worry, Artemis told himself. In a few short seconds Mother will be well; then I can investigate what happened here.

  Angeline Fowl’s beautiful hair was frizzed and brittle, broken strands crisscrossing her pillow like a spiderweb. And there was an odd smell emanating from her pores.

  Lilies, thought Artemis. Sweet, yet tinged with sickness.

  Angeline’s eyes opened abruptly, round with panic. Her back arched as she sucked a breath through a constricted windpipe, clutching at the air with clawed hands. Just as suddenly she collapsed, and Artemis thought for a terrible moment that she was gone.

  But then her eyelids fluttered and she reached a hand for him.

  “Arty,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper. “I am having the strangest dream.” A short sentence, but it took an age to complete, with a rasped breath between each word.

  Artemis took his mother’s hand. How slender it was. A parcel of bones.

  “Or perhaps I am awake and my other life is a dream.”

  Artemis was pained to hear his mother speak like this; it reminded him of the odd turns she used to suffer from.

  “You’re awake, Mother, and I am here. You have a light fever and are a little dehydrated, that’s all. Nothing to be concerned about.”

  “How can I be awake, Arty?” said Angeline, her eyes calm in black circles. “When I feel myself dying. How can I be awake when I feel that?”

  Artemis’s feigned calm was knocked by this.

  “It’s the . . . fever,” he stammered. “You’re seeing things a little strangely. Everything will be fine soon. I promise.”

  Angeline closed her eyes. “And my son keeps his promises, I know. Where have you been these past years, Arty? We were so worried. Why are you not seventeen?”

  In her delirium, Angeline Fowl saw through a haze of magic to the truth. She realized that he had been missing for three years and had come home the same age as he had gone away.

  “I am fourteen, Mother. Almost fifteen now, still a boy for another while. Now close your eyes, and when you open them again, all will be well.”

  “What have you done to my thoughts, Artemis? Where has your power come from?”

  Artemis was sweating now. The heat of the room, the sickly smell, his own anxiety.

  She knows. Mother knows. If you heal her, will she remember everything?

  It didn’t matter. That could be dealt with in due time. His priority was to mend his parent.

  Artemis squeezed the frail hand in his grip, feeling the bones grind against each other. He was about to use magic on his mother for the second time.

  Magic did not belong in Artemis’s soul and gave him lightning-bolt headaches whenever he used it. Though he was human, the fairy rules of magic held a certain sway over him. He was forced to chew motion sickness tablets before entering a dwelling uninvited, and when the moon was full, Artemis could often be found in the library listening to music at maximum volume to drown out the voices in his head—the great commune of magical creatures. The fairies had powerful race memories, and they surfaced like a tidal wave of raw emotion, bringing migraines with them.

  Sometimes Artemis wondered if stealing the magic had been a mistake, but recently the symptoms had stopped. No more migraines or sickness. Perhaps his brain was adapting to the strain of being a magical creature.

  Artemis held his mother’s fingers gently, closed his eyes, and cleared his mind.

  Magic. Only magic.

  The magic was a wild force and needed to be controlled. If Artemis let his thoughts ramble, the magic would ramble too, and he could open his eyes to find his mother still sick but with different-color hair.

  Heal, he thought. Be well, Mo
ther.

  The magic responded to his wish, spreading along his limbs, buzzing, tingling. Blue sparks circled his wrists, twitching like schools of tiny minnows. Almost as if they were alive.

  Artemis thought of his mother in better times. He saw her skin radiant, her eyes shining with happiness. Heard her laugh, felt her touch on his neck. Remembered the strength of Angeline Fowl’s love for her family.

  That is what I want.

  The sparks sensed his wishes and flowed into Angeline Fowl, sinking into the skin of her hand and wrist, twisting in ropes around her gaunt arms. Artemis pushed harder, and a river of magical flickers flowed from his fingers into his mother.

  Heal, he thought. Drive out the sickness.

  Artemis had used his magic before, but this time was different. There was resistance, as though his mother’s body did not wish to be healed and was rejecting the power. Sparks fizzled on her skin, spasmed, and winked out.

  More, thought Artemis. More.

  He pushed harder, ignoring the sudden blinding headache and rumbling nausea.

  Heal, Mother.

  The magic wrapped his mother like an Egyptian mummy, snaking underneath her body, raising her six inches from the mattress. She shuddered and moaned, steam venting from her pores, sizzling as it touched the blue sparks.

  She is in pain, thought Artemis, opening one eye a slit. In agony. But I cannot stop now.

  Artemis dug down deep, searching his extremities for the last scraps of magic inside him.

  Everything. Give her every last spark.

  Magic was not an intrinsic part of Artemis; he had stolen it and now he threw it off again, stuffing all he had into the attempted healing. And yet it wasn’t working. No, worse than that. Her sickness was growing stronger. Repelling each blue wave, robbing the sparks of their color and power, sending them skittering to the ceiling.

  Something is wrong, thought Artemis, bile in his throat, a dagger of pain over his left eye. It shouldn’t be like this.

  The final drop of magic left his body with a jolt, and Artemis was thrown from his mother’s bedside and sent skidding across the floor, then tumbling head over heels until he came to rest, sprawled against a chaise longue. Angeline Fowl spasmed a final time, then collapsed back onto her mattress. Her body was soaked with a strange, thick, clear gel. Magical sparks flickered and died in the coating, which steamed off almost as quickly as it had appeared.

  Artemis lay with his head in his hands, waiting for the chaos in his brain to stop, unable to move or think. His own breathing seemed to rasp against his skull. Eventually the pain faded to echoes, and jumbled words formed themselves into sentences.

  The magic is gone. Spent. I am entirely human.

  Artemis registered the sound of the bedroom door creaking, and he opened his eyes to find Butler and his father staring down at him, concern large on their faces.

  “We heard a crash; you must have fallen,” said Artemis Senior, lifting his son by the elbow. “I should never have let you in here alone, but I thought that perhaps you could do something. You have certain talents, I know. I was hoping . . .” He straightened his son’s shirt, patted his shoulders. “It was stupid of me.”

  Artemis shrugged his father’s hands away, stumbling to his mother’s sickbed. It took a mere glance to confirm what he already knew. He had not cured his mother. There was no bloom on her cheeks or ease in her breathing.

  She is worse. What have I done?

  “What is it?” asked his father. “What the devil is wrong with her? At this rate of decline, in less than a week my Angeline will be—”

  Butler interrupted brusquely. “No giving up now, gents. We all have contacts from our past that might be able to shed some light on Mrs. Fowl’s condition. People we might prefer not to associate with otherwise. We find them and bring them back here as fast as we can. We ignore nuisances like passports or visas and get it done.”

  Artemis Senior nodded, slowly at first, then with more vigor.

  “Yes. Yes, dammit. She is not finished yet. My Angeline is a fighter, are you not, darling?”

  He took her hand gently, as though it were made of the finest crystal. She did not respond to his touch or voice. “We talked to every alternative practitioner in Europe about my phantom limb pains. Perhaps one of them can help us with this.”

  “I know a man in China,” said Butler. “He worked with Madame Ko at the bodyguard academy. He was a miracle worker with herbs. Lived up in the mountains. He has never been outside the province, but he would come for me.”

  “Good,” said Artemis Senior. “The more opinions we can call on the better.” He turned to his son. “Listen, Arty, do you know someone who might be able to help? Anyone. Perhaps you have some underworld contacts?”

  Artemis twisted a rather ostentatious ring on his middle finger so that the front rested against his palm. This ring was actually a camouflaged fairy communicator.

  “Yes,” he said. “I have a few underworld contacts.”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE WORLD’S BIGGEST

  Helsinki Harbor, the Baltic Sea

  The giant sea monster that is the kraken sent its finned tentacles spiraling toward the ocean’s surface, pulling its bloated body behind. Its single eye rolled manically in its socket, and its curved beak, the size of a schooner’s prow, was open wide, filtering the rushing water through to its rippling gills.

  The kraken was hungry, and there was room for only one thought in its tiny brain as it sped toward the holiday ferry above.

  Kill ... Kill ... KILL ...

  “That is such dwarf manure,” said Captain Holly Short of the Lower Elements Police, muting the sound file in her helmet. “For one thing, the kraken doesn’t have tentacles, and as for ‘kill, kill, kill’ . . .”

  “I know,” said Foaly, the voice of mission control in her communicator. “I thought you might enjoy that passage. You know, have a laugh. Remember laughing?”

  Holly was not amused. “It’s so typical of humans, Foaly, to take something perfectly natural and demonize it. Krakens are gentle creatures, and the humans turn them into some kind of murderous giant squid. ‘Kill, kill, kill.’ Give me a break.”

  “Come on, Holly, it’s just sensational fiction. You know those humans and their imaginations. Relax.”

  Foaly was right. If she got worked up every time the human media misrepresented a mythical creature, she would spend half her life in a rage. Over the centuries Mud Men had caught glimpses of the fairy folk, and had twisted the truth of these glimpses almost beyond recognition.

  Let it go. There are decent humans. Remember Artemis and Butler.

  “Did you see that human movie with the centaurs?” she asked the centaur on the other end of her helmet communicator. “They were noble and sporty. ‘My sword for thee, Majesty, then off for a spot of hunting.’ Fit centaurs, now that did make me laugh.”

  Thousands of miles away, somewhere in the earth’s mantle below Ireland, Foaly, the Lower Elements Police’s technical adviser, rubbed his paunch.

  “Holly, that hurts. Caballine likes my belly.”

  Foaly had got married, or hitched, as centaurs called the ceremony, while Holly had been away with Artemis Fowl, rescuing demons in Limbo. A lot had changed in the three years she had been away, and sometimes Holly was finding it difficult to keep up. Foaly had a new bride to occupy his time. Her old friend Trouble Kelp had been promoted to LEP Commander, and she was back working at Recon with the Kraken Watch task force.

  “Apologies, friend. That was mean,” said Holly. “I like your belly too. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there to see a hitching sash around it.”

  “Me too. Next time.”

  Holly smiled. “Sure. That’s going to happen.”

  Traditionally, male centaurs were expected to take more than one bride, but Caballine was a modern fairy, and Holly doubted if she would stand for a new filly in the household.

  “Don’t worry, I’m joking.”

  “You’d better be,
because I’m meeting Caballine at the spa this weekend.”

  “How’s the new gear?” said Foaly, hurriedly changing the subject.

  Holly spread her arms wide, feeling the wind ripple her fingers, seeing the Baltic Sea flash past below in shards of blue and white.

  “It’s wonderful,” she said. “Absolutely wonderful.”

  * * *

  Captain Holly Short of LEPrecon flew in wide lazy circles above Helsinki, enjoying the brisk Scandinavian air filtering through her helmet. It was just after five a.m. local time, and the rising sun set the Uspenski Cathedral’s golden onion dome shimmering. Already the city’s famed marketplace was strobed with headlights as vendors arrived to open up for the morning trade, or eager politicians’ aides made their way toward the blue-gray facade of city hall.

  Holly’s target lay away from what would shortly be a bustling center of commerce. She adjusted her fingers, and the sensors in her armored gloves translated the movements to commands for the mechanical wings on her back, sending her spiraling down toward the small island of Uunisaari, half a mile from the port.

  “The body sensors are nice,” she said. “Very intuitive.”

  “It’s as close as it gets to being a bird,” said Foaly. “Unless you want to integrate?”

  “No thank you,” Holly said vehemently. She loved flying, but not enough to have a LEP surgeon stick a few implants in her cerebellum.

  “Very well, Captain Short,” said Foaly, switching to business mode.“Pre-op check. Three W’s, please.”

  The three W’s were every Reconnaissance officer’s checklist before approaching an operation’s zone: wings, weapon, and a way home.

  Holly checked the transparent readouts on her helmet visor.

  “Power cell, charged. Weapon on green. Wings and suit fully functional. No red lights.”

  “Excellent,” said Foaly. “Check, check, and check. Our screens agree.”

  Holly heard keys clicking as Foaly recorded this information in the mission log. The centaur was known for his fondness for old-school keyboards, even though he himself had patented an extremely efficient virtual keyboard.