by Eoin Colfer
“It is true, vile human,” said Axborn. “I was delivered into Bud’s embrace. We grew up together, in fact, and each vine, leaf, and tendril does what I tell it to do. Including holding you in their grip and forcing you to watch while I kill your vile parents.”
“That’s mean,” said Beckett.
Axborn fitted the skovl to his bare forearm. “It would be mean. But you are a human, and you deserve what you get because of some things you did a long time ago that I don’t care about.”
Beckett attempted to bond. “That long-time-ago stuff is called history,” he said. “And I don’t care about it, either.”
“Me, too, neither,” said Axborn, essentially agreeing with himself using questionable grammar. “But Gveld told me your family did things with a tunnel and gold. I think there were some kittens in there, too. So you deserve to watch your parents die.”
Beckett could believe that some of his sneakier ancestors might have been involved in tunnel-and-gold shenanigans, but no Fowl would ever harm a kitten (except maybe Artemis).
“There were no kittens!” he shouted in a tone that apparently the dwarf did not appreciate, because Axborn made a funnel from his tongue and whistled a couple of notes until the kreperplont tightened its grip on Beckett.
“Shout not, human,” said the Reclaimer, “or there will be trouble for you.”
Like I could be in more trouble, thought Beckett, taking tiny, rib-creaking breaths.
“Now, my loyal Budacious and I must be about our orders,” the dwarf said, making a few practice thrusts with his blade. “My skovl has human blood to spill.”
And then, in response to another note-specific whistle from Axborn, the vine hoisted Beckett aloft and trailed him behind the dwarf, who strode along the beach toward the villa whistling a merry tune.
Time to lose the rag, thought Beckett, and wriggle out of here.
Losing the rag was, as Myles had told him, a whimsical phrase meaning to become suddenly agitated and was arguably based on the older phrase Loosing the rage. There were, Myles had inevitably proceeded to expound, several other possible origins for the term, which he listed in some detail, until Beckett actually did lose the rag.
As he did again now.
Beckett was a slippery customer by nature, and had historically proved almost impossible to keep ahold of. In fact, during his toddlerhood, when Artemis was in Limbo (see LEP file: The Lost Colony), Beckett Fowl had retired four human nannies, and two of those had come with special-forces training. They simply could not be responsible for the boy’s safety. One of the nannies, a Sergeant Dirge McDoon previously of the SAS, left his quite-shrill resignation message with the answering service. A message that included the passage: “I cannae take it, Missus Fowl. The lad is a security nightmare. He nivver sleeps. Wee Beckett learned to walk in an afternoon, and by the next day he was jumping over walls. I tried to catch hold of him, I did truly. But you may as well try to catch a greased seal. You might as well attempt to hold on to a wisp o’ the wind. It’s nae natural. The bairn is not…” (From this point on Sergeant McDoon’s testimonial dissolves into sobs and sniffles.)
There were other messages and letters, but you get the gist: Beckett was difficult to contain. He learned early on that the most effective way to escape even the tightest grip was to move unpredictably. Never follow a full-body jerk with another full-body jerk, for example. Mix things up. And this was the philosophy he employed now during his tantrum. Beckett thrashed and roiled, contracted and expanded, vibrated and squirmed in his efforts to wear out the tendril. Even a kreperplont must get tired at some point, he reasoned. Then maybe it would lower him a little so that his free arm could grab on to something useful.
Axborn was amused by Beckett’s antics.
“It is true what they say, Mud Boy,” he called over his shoulder. “You are indeed the slow learner. Here is a lesson you would be wise to learn quickly.”
He whistled again and a thin tendril reached out and slapped Beckett on the cheek, leaving a nasty welt. Beckett flinched, which is unavoidable when struck by foliage, and then continued in his diverse thrashings with only the briefest of pauses.
Another whistle, and another sharp strike on the cheek, this time drawing blood, and while it seemed as though Beckett might have avoided the second blow with a simple duck of his chin, which would have been well within his capabilities, it also seemed as though the twin had accepted the blow on purpose. People who did not know Beckett might possibly exclaim, Good grief, I do believe the boy’s had an idea, or words to that effect, but in actual fact Beckett did not generally have ideas in the traditional sense, if ideas are defined as thoughts that suggest a course of action. Beckett acted on instincts, those being the inheritable tendencies of an organism to take complex action without involving reason. Myles had, during a relatively calmer moment when the twins’ lives had not been in any immediate danger, tried to explain this to Beckett, who could not have cared less about inheritable tendencies, so Myles reduced the theory to a single interesting statement: Simply put, brother mine, when you act on instinct, it is because our grandfather once had an idea.
Which was just intriguing enough to penetrate Beckett’s mental defenses.
So, although Beckett did not even know precisely why he wanted his own blood drawn, he knew exactly what to do with it when it pulsed onto his cheek. He smeared the viscous liquid across the palm of his free hand and made one final desperate lunge toward the pebbled beach.
Thanks, Granddad, he thought.
If Beckett had been hoping that his entire person would touch down, then he must have been dismayed, for the only part of him to make contact with the beach’s pebbled surface was his bloodied hand, and even that barely grazed a single flat stone.
And following that final gargantuan thrust, Beckett seemed to accept defeat and hung limply in the kreperplont’s gnarled embrace as Axborn took the shingled path from the beach to the main house.
To kill Mum and Dad, thought Beckett.
Unless…
Unless…
But he could not even complete the thought, for there is an inherently Irish belief that happy thoughts jinx happy endings. Usually the Fowl twin did not indulge in this kind of superstitious twaddle, but today, he was prepared to grasp at straws.
The path to Villa Éco was a short one, and on this Sunday afternoon, with the post-eclipse light creeping across the island, the surroundings were quite melodramatic. There was even an obliging mist rolling from the crags of Howth on the outer rim of Dublin Bay. Beckett, who was usually a major fan of spooky nature, had no time for this vista as his head was chock-full not of despair, as one might reasonably expect, but hope.
Axborn had set the screen on his wrist communicator to reflect and was using it as a rearview mirror to check on his captive.
“Hello, up there, Mud Boy!” he called cheerily to the elevated twin. “You didn’t see this coming, I bet. No one ever does. My kreperplont is the best and coolest of all vines. He has won three rosettes from the secret dwarf games, which I shouldn’t tell you about, because they are a secret. I never even mention them to humans unless they will shortly be dead, like you.”
Usually Beckett would jump on a wacky conversation-starter like this, but he was concentrating on not completing his hopeful thought in case he would jinx it while still remaining hopeful, which he was finding was an incredibly difficult state of mind to maintain.
“Very well, don’t talk,” said Axborn, a little disappointed. “Save your breath for screaming.”
The dwarf took the slight incline to the front door at a strange angle, as though leaning into a heavy wind, because, as strong as the kreperplont was, Beckett needed to be counterbalanced.
With every step Axborn took, Beckett felt his own strength ebb away, as restricted breathing diminished his energy, which Myles had once told him had something to do with oxygen in his bloodstream. And as of now, quite a lot of blood seemed to be streaming down his face.
; At least when I’m dead I’ll stop bleeding, he thought, and it was without a doubt the second-most-negative thing ever to cross Beckett’s mind, right after Axborn is going to kill Mum and Dad.
And just when Beckett was down to the last grain of sand in his egg timer of hope, Axborn was blindsided by what seemed like a furry cannonball, which sent him staggering to starboard.
IT QUICKLY became obvious, when the cannonball grew claws and teeth, that it was not in fact a cannonball, but a living thing.
“Whistle Blower!” called Beckett. “You got my signal.”
If you ever have need of me, paint my feeding stone red.
The toy troll did not reply, as he was busy tearing at Axborn’s vine helmet while growling his way through a rough approximation of…
“It’s our theme song!” exclaimed Beckett. “The Regrettables’ theme song.”
The twin thought his heart might burst with pride, but the fact that a kreperplont was squeezing the organ’s valves might also have had something to do with it.
It took Axborn a moment to realize that he was under attack, but once that fact hit home, the Reclaimer recovered quickly. It was not the first time the dwarf had been under attack, or even the first time he’d tangled with a troll—not that he was yet aware that his assailant was a troll, as Whistle Blower’s breed was so rare that toy trolls were virtually nonexistent, and most fairies would never see one in their lifetimes.
But regardless of whether he could categorize his assailant or not, Axborn had several sequences of practiced moves he could employ in a surprise attack situation. The first priority was to regroup, and to this end Axborn knelt on the ground and drew in his extremities, shielding as much of himself as possible while he assessed how much danger he was actually in. He whistled a few instructions to his kreperplont, which sealed up any crevices in his body armor, leaving only his skovl arm partially exposed.
It became clear almost immediately that while his attacker was certainly enthusiastic, the troll’s vigor was no match for the tough hide of a kreperplont, and although it was true that Axborn’s beloved vine was being shorn of bark, it would take several hours at this rate for the injuries to be anything like fatal to Budacious.
Thus comforted, the Reclaimer launched his counter-attack, which was swift and efficient. Whistle Blower may have been an instinctive young buck when it came to a frenetic bust-up, but Axborn was a trained special-forces operative clad in functional bio-armor.
All it took was a few whistles for Axborn to weaponize a vine and send it flashing Whistle Blower’s way like a bolt of organic lightning. The vine curled its tip into a vegetative fist and clobbered the toy troll in the side of his mohawked skull. The stunned troll blinked in surprise, and that was all the time it took for the kreperplont to truss him up like a tiny hog ready for the barbeque spit. To add insult to injury, Axborn ordered the creeper to tie a bow at the end of the package.
The dwarf spat a stream of blood through his square teeth and grinned. “That was good with the trying, tiny troll,” he admitted. “But we fight as one, my kreperplont and I. We are unique even among my people.”
Whistle Blower struggled valiantly against his restraints, but it was patently obvious that the toy troll was wasting his energy.
Axborn stood and whistled so that both Beckett and Whistle Blower were elevated and separated.
I have summoned my friend to his death, thought Beckett, which was an unusual thought for the boy, firstly because it was quite negative, and secondly because it was succinct and comprehensible to a third party should a third party be able to read his mind. To explain, Beckett’s inner monologues were usually both rambling and random, and they rarely dwelled on blame or guilt. For example, Myles had once hypnotized his twin in an attempt to understand his thought process, and Beckett had mumbled the following: Never trust a donut, because donuts look all sparkly and stuff but are empty on the inside.
Which was about the most intelligible thing he’d said for the entire session.
But back to the present:
Axborn swished his blade a few times to warm up his killing arm and called up to his prisoners, “I am truly enjoying your doomed attacks, but to you this entire campaign of war must seem regrettable.”
Beckett frowned. Regrettable? It was regrettable, he thought morosely. Maybe the Regrettables is the right name for our team. We can’t even beat a plant.
Below him on the path, Axborn tootled a whistle that resulted in Budacious crashing the captives together in the manner of orchestral cymbals.
“I am doing that just for the fun,” said the dwarf, confirming just how wide his mean streak was.
Protected as they were by bio-armor, Beckett and Whistle Blower barely felt the impact, but their self-esteem was shattered.
Axborn ballooned his cheeks for a further whistle, and Beckett thought, Allow me. And he whistled the cymbal command, sending himself speeding toward Whistle Blower.
The troll had just enough time to brace himself before the two friends crashed into each other, but this time Whistle Blower held on for long enough to say, “You speak to plants now?”
Beckett was about to deny this when he realized: I do. I speak to plants. This one, anyway.
He tried the whistle again and once more the friends were bashed together.
Axborn chided his kreperplont. “Calm down, Budacious. There will be plenty of unnecessary violence later.”
That was not Budacious, thought Beckett. That was me: Beckett Fowl, the Plant Master.
Beckett grabbed on to Whistle Blower’s baby banana–sized tusks. “I knew you’d come back,” he said. “My elbows told me.”
Whistle Blower rolled his eyes. One of the few theories Beck had any faith in was his own about having psychic elbows.
“Of course, they did,” said the troll, as clearly as he could with digits wrapped around his tusks.
“And I do talk to plants,” whispered Beckett. “Are you ready?”
Whistle Blower’s response to this was a look so menacing that Beckett was relieved the menace was not directed at him, but even so he promptly released his grip on the troll’s elongated incisors.
“Sorry about that.” he called as he swung away. “Friends?”
“Friends,” confirmed the troll.
Then Beckett made a funnel with his tongue and blew a sharp whistle.
Budacious instantly relinquished his grip on the Regrettables, and they dropped to the earth the way cats might, that is to say landing on their feet ready for fight or flight.
In this case, it was most definitely fight.
Axborn immediately noticed the change in counter-balance and retracted Budacious’s tendrils to cover his own arms.
“It seems my Bud has grown weary,” said the Reclaimer. “A little dehydrated, perhaps. No matter. I will kill you right now. It messes with my timetable a little, but these things happen.”
Axborn slashed the air with his skovl as if warming it up. “Very well, runts,” he said. “Who goes first? Let’s get this over with. I have places to go and parents to kill.”
As a point of information, the Dalkey Island beach confrontation was submitted for consideration as a singularity as it was the only time such a battle took place, specifically between a human, a toy troll, and a dwarf. The confrontation was not ratified, however, due to two objections:
1. A human, a dwarf, and a troll were previously involved in the Fowl Manor siege (though not a toy troll; see LEP file: Artemis Fowl).
And…
2. The Dalkey Island beach confrontation could be seen as an extension of the ACRONYM Convergence.
But to return to the confrontation itself:
Whistle Blower decided that he would go first, even though the little troll had not understood the particulars of Axborn’s challenge. The toy troll roared as best he could, considering his tiny vocal cords and lung capacity. His vocal efforts did not have the desired effect, unless the desired effect was the shudder of chuckles that m
omentarily overcame Axborn.
“Oh, look,” said the dwarf. “The puppy wants to play. Come on, fella. Come and have a try.”
It must have seemed funny to a trained killer that the diminutive fur ball would persist with his aggression in spite of the obvious mismatch. It was like a stinkworm taking on a python.
Axborn removed the skovl and balanced it on his head like a silly hat. “Look, little stinkworm. I am without any defense.”
And then came the ultimate insult to the toy troll: Axborn closed both eyes.
Which turned out to be something of a tactical error, as Axborn really should have known that his kreperplont was not simply pooped. After all, the two had been through shallow and deep together. But, as often happened with the Regrettables, their opponent underestimated them, which was to cost Axborn dearly, both physically and emotionally, considering the demeaning trauma he was about to endure.
Whistle Blower did not have to be a trans-species polyglot to know that Axborn was taunting him, and so piqued was he by this rude display that he sprang from a low rock in a full-frontal rage attack that would have left him wide open for a fatal strike in other circumstances.
But these were not other circumstances, and Axborn’s eyes were shut. In fact, the Reclaimer was considering chanting a dwarf nursery rhyme that was not very complimentary toward trolls:
Silly troll, silly troll,
Fell into a deep dark hole.
Humans beat him with a pole,
Silly troll, silly troll.
Silly troll, thought Axborn, and snickered just as Whistle Blower crashed ineffectively into his vinesuit.
Which was what Axborn had anticipated would happen, but it was not actually what did in fact happen. Axborn snickered, but Whistle Blower did not crash into his armor, because the vinesuit conveniently opened a toy-troll-sized hole just as he impacted. This meant that Whistle Blower’s attack was not ineffective in the least. In fact, it proved to be very effective indeed, as toy trolls are pound-for-pound the third-strongest creatures on the planet, after dung and rhinoceros beetles, which still did not make the tiny troll anywhere near as strong as Axborn, but it certainly gave him enough force to rock the Reclaimer back on his heels, dislodging the skovl from its perch and cracking a couple of dwarf ribs.
