by Eoin Colfer
“Silly troll,” said Axborn, as the words had already been en route from his brain. And then: “Aaaaaarrrrrrpnnnnn!”
Which was a more appropriate response to broken ribs, but still should be dissected, as it gives us a glimpse into Axborn’s psyche.
The aaaaaa was a typical involuntary vocal reaction to sudden pain.
The rrrrrr was stage two of the reaction, which demonstrated that the warrior was angry that he had been injured.
And…
The pnnnnn was the dwarf’s attempt to internalize his reaction, so that he might:
1. Pretend that he was not, in fact, injured.
And…
2. Not draw attention to his own presence from other possible combatants.
But still the dwarf did not realize that his kreperplont had been hijacked. And why would he? The very idea was preposterous. Unfortunately for him, Beckett Fowl specialized in the preposterous, had a degree in the ridiculous, and was a doctor of the unbelievable.
Once Axborn had managed to subdue his own pain response, he set about reacting, and to this end whistled a command to his kreperplont.
Crush the troll was the essence of his command, and he released the section of vine on his right leg to carry out the order.
Beckett Fowl prevented the liquidation of his friend’s organs by whistling an order of his own, which freed up Axborn’s left leg and set the two sections of vine tangling with each other.
Beckett could not help smiling, as it seemed for all the world as if the tendrils were performing one of those extremely complicated handshake routines that inevitably concluded with a high five. This time, however, no high five was forthcoming, as the tendrils became entangled with each other more comprehensively than two phone-charging cords tossed into a handbag.
Axborn cottoned to what was going on and, forgetting the point of the pnnnnn portion of his previous excla-mation, opened his mouth to proclaim his disbelief. It was this parting of the lips that was to be his undoing on the kreperplont-control front, for the moment Whistle Blower noticed a flash of tooth, he decided to put the dwarf’s whistling apparatus out of action. This was accomplished with a roundhouse swing of the left fist, which mashed Axborn’s lip like raw steak. His lips split and swelled immediately, as though being pumped from the inside.
Whistle Blower drew back his fist before the dwarf’s remaining teeth made short work of it. A little-known fact about dwarf teeth is that even though they are referred to casually in the normal classifications, they are, in fact, all molars. No incisors or canines—crushers each and every one—and to a dwarf, an entire toy troll would be little more than an hors d’oeuvre. And so Whistle Blower was perfectly correct to sharply withdraw his digits, for this Reclaimer was far from down and out.
Axborn spat blood, then attempted further whistling, which was corrupted by the air’s passage through his pulped lips, and instead of ordering Budacious to attack the Fowl twin, he ordered it to knit a sweater of ants, which confused the creeper so much that it went into a spasm and fell away from Axborn completely, scurrying down the beach into the water, where it was picked up the following day by LEPretrieval.
And just like that, threat number one was neutralized. Axborn was left without armor or clothes, aside from a knee-length shift and the crumbling coating of clay-based sun protection that many dwarves paint on just in case.
Beckett had mixed feelings about the kreperplont’s tumbling exit. He was glad they wouldn’t have to tangle further with an innocent plant, but he would have dearly liked to keep it around as a new member of the Regrettables and maybe teach it to juggle chain saws.
Whistle Blower detached himself completely from the dwarf and lined up beside Beckett. The message was clear: two against one. Classic triangle brawl.
Axborn’s lip quivered at the loss of his bio-armor, and it seemed like he might actually weep for the kreperplont, but then he shook his head like a wet dog and plastered on his game face.
“That was a neat trick, human,” admitted the dwarf, hitching his shift and squatting to reclaim his skovl. “But one dwarf with his blade is still more than a match for two pups.”
There was more Axborn wanted to say, about how tough he was and how much pain he intended to inflict on his opponents, and so on and so forth, but he was feeling a little insecure about the mumble factor in his voice, and he wanted to put this whole episode behind him so he could swallow a few anti-inflammatories and fish Budacious out of the water. So he decided to end this confrontation now, before his mouth got him into even more trouble.
In the movies, climactic hand-to-hand fights tend to be stretched out over several minutes so that viewers feel like they’ve gotten their money’s worth, but in the real world, it’s more often the case that whoever lands the first decent strike wins. The Reclaimer/Regrettables’ tussle mostly followed that rule, except for the fact that it could be argued that there were two winners, but also two losers, which might seem confusing.
To explain:
Whistle Blower and Beckett launched a beautifully coordinated attack, which to an observer might have seemed as though the pair had been practicing it for years. The troll went high and the boy went low, both keeping an eye on the skovl, which could, theoretically, do both of them in with a single slash. Axborn decided in the moment to use the implement in shield mode to bat away the oncoming troll, who he reasoned (correctly) would attempt to further damage his lips and gums. His mistake was to underestimate the toy troll’s ability to manipulate himself in the air. Whistle Blower wrapped his toes around the skovl’s blade and used the metal as a springboard to propel himself toward Axborn’s mashed mouth.
Meanwhile, Beckett was swinging in a low arc, which should have brought him nicely in line with the dwarf’s kneecap so he could administer one of his trademark cluster punches. All that Beckett could hope for was that he wouldn’t be in the line of fire, so to speak.
All very well and good, you might think, but you would be absolutely wrong, for the Regrettables had regrettably forgotten about the dwarf male’s greatest talent, that being the spring-loaded unhinging of the lower jaw to accommodate buckets of clay and debris while tunneling. To many dwarves it seems as though their lower jaw has a mind of its own, as they reflexively unhinge when they sense danger coming. Axborn had one of these hair-trigger jaws, and so when Whistle Blower clenched his fists for a double strike, the Reclaimer popped his jaw and swallowed him whole.
And just like that, even quicker than Axborn had lost his armor, Beckett Fowl lost a friend.
Perhaps lost is a slight exaggeration. Whistle Blower was more misplaced than lost.
And even that was temporary.
But when the toy troll came back some moments later, a certain innocence had been left behind in the dwarf’s digestive tract, and it would take quite a few weeks before the little fellow slept peacefully.
Readers of a more sensitive nature are advised to skip over the next paragraph, as it ranks among one of the most disturbing events to be chronicled in the Fowl files. Yet it must be included in the name of historical accuracy.
Whistle Blower disappeared into the cavern of Axborn’s open mouth without even hitting the sides. His left big toe did clip one of the dwarf’s tree-stump teeth, which curved his body to the exact angle necessary to descend through Axborn’s esophagus into his stomach, where the dwarf’s aggressive stomach acids would dissolve him down to the bones in seconds.
“Oh,” said Beckett. And then once more for good measure: “Oh!”
The twin decided that he would go ahead and throw a cluster punch anyway, but the sight of his friend being swallowed whole stayed his hand momentarily, and this hesitation gave the special-ops dwarf plenty of time to stomp on the boy’s punching arm.
The dwarf grinned a leery loose-jawed grin, and for a moment there seemed to be a measure of satisfaction on his bloodstained teeth. This satisfaction was diluted somewhat moments later when the dwarf’s stomach distended and stretched as thoug
h there was something inside trying to get out.
In fact, it was exactly like that.
Yes, Whistle Blower, thought Beckett. Fight!
Axborn did not seem overly concerned by all this stomach upset, because dwarves can train themselves to regurgitate at will. Given the choice, dwarves would prefer to send recyclings south rather than north, so to speak, but in a pinch they can spit up blockages. And in this case Axborn decided that north was infinitely preferable to south. He hunched himself over, made a series of bullfrog croaking noises, and hawked Whistle Blower out of his gut just as quickly as the troll went in.
The little troll lay shivering on the grass, displaying none of his usual vim and vigor.
He’s injured, thought Beckett, then he called to his friend. “Whistle Blower?”
The troll could not respond, as he was overcome by violent shivers.
He must be cold, thought Beckett. But alive, at least.
The Fowl twin laid a hand on Whistle Blower’s skin. The troll was not cold to the touch. He was being eaten alive by the same liquid that was now burning Beckett’s hand.
Beckett did not know what to do.
Myles would know what was wrong, and he would know what to do.
The boy was correct on both counts; Myles would certainly have diagnosed stomach acid as the problem and prescribed a dip in his seaweed silo as the cure. But of course Myles was not available for consultation. He was several miles away, endeavoring to stop a building from falling.
Maybe knowing things is important, thought Beckett now, for maybe the third time in his life. Then: I have no friend to help save Whistle Blower’s life.
Beckett was wrong in this regard. He did have a friend to help.
More than a friend, in fact.
A Fowl.
TO EXPLAIN this, we must shift our focus several hours into the past and several yards northwest into Villa Éco’s safe room, where the Fowl parents were incarcerated. In order to preserve the narrative flow, we shall summarize this episode as much as possible and omit several conversations, which, while admittedly amusing, do not, strictly speaking, contribute to the story. These conversations may be summarized as follows:
1. “I can’t believe we have been locked in our own safe room by warrior dwarves.” (This conversation was repeated in various guises several times.)
2. “Some genius you turned out to be.”
3. “Trust me, I actually am a genius.”
4. “Our boys, our wonderful boys!”
5. “We’ll get through this together.”
6. “But what if we don’t get through this? I don’t think I can survive losing one of my boys again.”
Once the Fowl parents had exorcised these various issues from their systems, they set about finding a way out.
Artemis Senior left no stone unturned looking for something that could help him open the steel door. The stones that the twins’ father turned were part of a pyramid that Beckett was building and considered important enough to store in a safe room. In fact, the twins used the basement chamber as something of an overflow room for whatever they deemed valuable. Artemis Senior could not find a single useful item in the various crates. Of course, there had been a manual release cord on the inside of the door, but the Horteknuts had literally snipped that off at the root, and the cable nub had retreated into the wall. The dwarves had also taken the precaution of removing anything from the room that could possibly assist the Fowls in their inevitable escape efforts but had left the twins’ various crates upended on the floor, before quite smugly informing the Fowl parents that they had infected the entire security system with a fairy virus.
Artemis Senior was understandably frustrated. “Of all the things Myles could have left in here,” he said, actually kicking a box, “he leaves beach gear. Why on earth would Myles consider ragged beach gear important?”
Angeline was suddenly thoughtful. “He wouldn’t. Myles rarely swims. And he never sunbathes.”
Artemis Senior frowned. Perhaps this beach stuff merited a closer look. He squatted and sorted through the various items: a towel—folded, of course—a pair of trunks sporting an anchor motif, goggles with tiny motorized wipers, and a sun visor bearing the legend STAY COOL.
Stay cool. Where have I heard that recently?
The twins’ father examined the visor. “This is the most un-Mylesy thing ever,” he said. “It is quite trendy, which Myles would hate, plus the letters on the plastic would obscure his view, which our son would find intolerable.”
“Try it on,” urged Angeline. “You never know.”
Artemis Senior did so. “Nothing,” he said. “Just a visor.”
“Nothing is ever nothing with Myles,” said Angeline with conviction. “And just is never simply just.”
She thought for a moment and then read the legend aloud. “Stay cool,” she murmured, and then Artemis Senior remembered hearing the phrase from Myles himself mere hours before.
All you need to do is stay cool.
He had thought it strange at the time, as Myles detested such colloquial turns of phrase.
“That must be it,” he pronounced. “Stay cool!”
And this did the trick. The visor became a screen and flickered into life, and NANNI spoke through tiny speakers on the frames.
“Pass phrase accepted,” she said. “Welcome to NANNI lite.”
“It’s NANNI!” said Artemis Senior, excitedly. “Our sneaky son snuck NANNI in here.”
“Of course he did,” said Angeline. “Now open the door.”
Artemis Senior echoed the command. “Open the door, NANNI. Now.”
“NANNI lite,” corrected the program. “Someone shut NANNI down. I will do my best to open the door, but the house system has been corrupted, and the damage is considerable.”
“Just do it,” said Artemis Senior, who could not help thinking that it was he who had disabled NANNI and how he could never forgive himself if something happened to the boys as a result.
What had I been thinking? he chided himself. To leave us even partially undefended?
While the Fowl patriarch thought, NANNI lite poked the Horteknut virus, rebuilding bridges where she could, zapping malware as she went, running thousands of commands per second in an attempt to clear out the fairy software. Luckily, the Fowl systems had some foreknowledge of fairy code, and in less than half a breathless minute she managed to crack open the door a few inches.
“She’s doing it!” said Angeline. “I can see daylight.”
The twins’ mother flattened herself against the door and stuck her arm through the gap. “I can almost fit.”
“Wait, honey,” said Artemis Senior. “It’s not stable. Without a safety sensor, those doors could bite you in two.”
“I can fit now,” Angeline insisted as the door cranked open maybe another centimeter.
“Negative,” said NANNI. “It is not physically possible for you to fit through yet. I have scanned the available space and the dimensions of the object.”
Angeline wiggled farther into the crack. “Are you calling me the object?” she demanded, and then: “How much longer, NANNI?”
“I estimate a point somewhere between five seconds and eight months.”
“Eight months?!” said Artemis Senior.
Angeline could not wait that long and so squeezed herself through the tiny space and was off running up the stairs, leaving her tennis jacket snagged on the door’s teeth.
“Angeline has done the impossible,” commented NANNI.
“She often does,” said Artemis Senior.
There is an old saying that Irish people employ when they are subjected to a sudden fright. Upon hearing a banshee wail, for example, an old farmer might swear that the heart was put crossways in me. Being of Russian descent, Angeline had never quite come to grips with this particular phrase, until the moment she raced past the sea window and saw her son battling one of those horrid Reclaimers. The dwarf was hefting a weapon, and Angeline felt as though her
heart had slid across to the right side of her chest.
Beck, she thought. My Beck.
Angeline’s instinct was to press her nose against the window and pound the toughened glass for all she was worth, but those would be the actions of a defeated parent, and she was not prepared to accommodate the notion that she might be too late.
And so she ran toward Villa Éco’s front door, and the hardest part was the single second when Beckett was out of her sight.
What should I do? she thought with some considerable desperation. How should I fight my enemy?
In times like these Angeline missed the Butler family, who had been bodyguards to the Fowls for centuries, but Artemis had swept one Butler off to Mars with him, and the other was in the United States pursuing a career as a professional wrestler. Perhaps if there’d been some time available to gather weapons or call for help, Angeline would have felt some measure of confidence in her own chances of success, but she couldn’t halt her forward momentum for even a split second.
Grab whatever you can lay your hands on, she told herself.
Unfortunately, all that Angeline could lay her hands on was the fire extinguisher hanging by the front door. She adored this particular fire extinguisher, as it had been molded to look like a metal grouse and it spewed foam when its beak was opened. But right now, she was not appreciating its artistry, just its heft.
Angeline grabbed the Fowl fowl from its bracket, ripped open the door, and rushed without hesitation toward the confrontation unfolding on the lawn.
As she neared the conflict, things seemed dire for Beckett and his friend. Angeline had never met Whistle Blower, but she had heard about his prowess on the battlefield. This prowess was not in evidence now as the little fellow writhed on grass that was blackening beneath him.
