The Fowl Twins

by Eoin Colfer

  Myles did not go into details, for he knew that Beckett preferred the direct approach. And, in this spirit, he waggled his tie with three fingers, and Beckett realized that everything was okay. So, when Myles told him to jump, he did so without hesitation.

  To explain: The Fowl family had for years enjoyed film night, but the only movies that could tempt Artemis into the den and away from his laboratory were the old black-and-white Laurel and Hardy shorts, which never failed to crack everyone up. Even Butler had been known to stop scowling, which was his equivalent of an uncontrollable laughing fit. The most famous running joke in those movies was when Hardy waggles his tie and says to Laurel, “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.”

  Which was something Myles often had occasion to say to Beckett. He generally augmented the quote with the clause and I suppose it’s my responsibility to get us out of it. This sentiment was absorbed into the Argot minus the actual words. Myles simply waggled his tie and Beckett was assured his twin had a plan to deliver them from whatever mess they were in. That was all Beckett needed to know and, in fact, wanted to know. So, when Myles waggled his tie on the Spine, Beckett handed over Whistle Blower, did a quick wrist bump, and, with utter confidence, leaped off the cliff into the arms of Specialist Lazuli Heitz, who had absolutely zero clue as to what was going on and was only sure of one thing: Humans are unpredictable.

  Now Lazuli was falling again, tangled in a jumble of limbs, and it seemed as though the rescue had gone sideways, and this time there was no infernally clever Fowl plan to cushion their impact.

  It’s up to you, Lazuli, she thought. You’re the LEP specialist. Time to prove you are more than semiprecious.

  Quite a challenge for someone with barely a nanosecond to spare, loaded down with two humans and a toy troll.

  If only I had magic! she thought for perhaps the eightieth time that day. If I had some magic, we might survive this.

  In truth, Lazuli did not form this precise thought, for it occurred so often that she had assigned it a color. Whenever Lazuli vaguely lamented her lack of magic, an angry orange screen rippled across her inner monologue.

  It was true that many hybrids never manifested on the magical spectrum, but some were late bloomers. Even so, Lazuli was coming to the end of her sixtieth year and no longer an adolescent by anyone’s measure.

  In the Academy, she had been the only member of her class without some kind of magic. And she was the only specialist in the history of the LEP without magic. It was stressful enough being a tiny blue pixel, but Lazuli was fine with that—more than fine, actually. She was proud of her heritage and was, in fact, a member of an online pixel community. But not having magic did rankle. Everything was so much more difficult.

  Lazuli realized with some alarm that the orange veil was more intense than usual. In fact, it was dominating her consciousness. Her brain seemed to be heating up and growing too big for her cranium.

  Perhaps I’m having a panic attack? she thought.

  Which would be of no use whatsoever.

  Quit it, she told her brain. Think of something useful.

  But in spite of Lazuli’s admonition, her mind focused on her unfair lack of magic and the orange glow intensified, seeming to color her actual vision.

  Lazuli seemed to have no choice but to give in to the mood, though it was against her nature to wallow.

  It isn’t fair! she thought. We’re all going to die because I have no magic. No stupid magic.

  As they scythed through St. George’s ring of mist, it seemed to Lazuli that the cloud itself was tinted orange.

  Sunset, she thought. Is it sunset?

  But it was not the sun. Lazuli felt the orangeness emanating from her in an irresistible wave.

  I’m having a psychotic episode, she thought.

  The hard-packed earth surrounding Childerblaine House rushed up to meet them, and Lazuli knew it would be almost as unforgiving as rock.

  Someone might survive, she thought. Whoever lands on top.

  But she abandoned this thought as it seemed there was no more room inside her for anything but orange, and it became so large that it had to come out.

  Lazuli felt herself going mad and opened her mouth to scream, but, instead of a scream, what blasted from her was a roaring bolt of fire that shot straight down, liquefying ten cubic tons of clay and boring through to the seawater below, which fizzed up to fill the space.

  Specialist Heitz thought that perhaps her mind was supplying a nice hallucination so she would die calmly. But when the group crashed into the cooling slop of a mud bath, she understood that the fire and its effects were real, and she suddenly knew what the mystery five percent of her DNA was.

  I’m a little bit goblin, thought Lazuli as the mud closed over them.

  And also: I think I broke my nose.

  Beckett Fowl was also thinking on the way down. He was totally relaxed now that Myles was by his side (and under his armpit and between his legs) and had no doubt that his twin’s big brain would take it from here. And so he simply wondered what they would have for dinner, and whether Whistle Blower could do handstands, and then:

  Muuuuuud! Best rescue ever!

  * * *

  Myles’s pre-impact thought process wasn’t so much a process as a loop.

  His ingenious and largely improvised plan had completely failed, and now they were plummeting toward intense agony at the very least, and there was precisely nothing he could do about it. Myles had, of course, fallen flat on his face before, plan-wise—three times, to be precise—but now he was about to fall flat on his face in more ways than one. The shock of his own helplessness had almost shut down Myles’s brain and it was all he could do to mentally mumble No. This is not right. I had a plan over and over until it rebounded in the echo chamber of his mind.

  Myles did manage to utter two words in the final moment before impact, just after a fireball from Lazuli’s mouth provided them with a mud bath to land in.

  “Oh, my,” he said.

  He really should have kept his mouth shut.

  High above, Lord Teddy watched the descent from the laboratory balcony. His initial emotional blend at the prospect of the death and maiming that would result from the fall could be described as fierce glee tempered with regret.

  Glee that the Fowl Twins would be no more.

  Slight regret that the troll would probably die alongside or underneath them.

  But mostly glee.

  Then the cloud of mist turned orange and was suddenly burned off, and so the duke could clearly see Myles and his sorry bunch tumbling toward a mud pool that he could have sworn had not been there earlier in the day.

  “Blooming hell!” swore Bleedham-Drye, slapping the railing with one hand. “What has the Fowl brat done this time?”

  It was too much for a fellow to bear. In all his years on this earth, the duke had never encountered such an ingenious trickster. And while part of him respected Myles Fowl’s wiles, most of him dearly wished to stamp those wiles underfoot.

  Lord Teddy pointed a rigid finger at the orange mist.

  “That was your last chance, my boy!” he shouted. “Your absolute last chance. If you are indeed still alive down there, then prepare to die, for I, Teddy Bleedham-Drye, Duke of Scilly, have had enough.”

  Under normal circumstances, the inflamed duke would be a terrible sight to behold, but, on this occasion, Teddy’s frizzled hair resembled brittle cotton candy, his soaked swimming costume was more comical than imposing, and his vocal cords, dehydrated from his misadventure with the eels, had elevated his baritone to a far higher pitch.

  “Enough, do you hear me?” he squeaked. “Prepare to meet your maker, Fowl.”

  Five minutes earlier, Beckett Fowl would have laughed heartily at the sight and sound of the distraught duke. But then again, five minutes earlier Beckett Fowl was not drowning in mud.

  The instant mud pool had indeed been a lifesaver, but it was a double-edged one in that Lazuli’s firebolt h
ad drilled through the island, finding the ocean below, and while the pressurized water was surging upward now, it could just as quickly drop back down to sea level, taking the Regrettables with it.

  And, as much as Beckett Fowl adored sloshing around in mud, he knew in that instinctual way of his that while they were riding a swell at the moment, soon the swell would begin to suck.

  “Okay, team,” he said once his mouth broke the surface. “Fun’s over.”

  Lazuli heard this, or at least thought she did.

  Did Beckett say this was fun? she thought. There must be mud in my ear.

  Beckett’s arm was still looped under Lazuli’s belt, and so it took barely any effort to sling the small fairy onto relatively dry land. Whistle Blower took care of himself, scampering along his human friend’s body and stepping neatly from the crown of the boy’s head to solid ground.

  Beckett was about to haul himself and the semi-catatonic Myles over the muddy rim when he cocked his head to one side and listened to a wave crash against the nearby shore.

  “Water spout coming,” he said, and rode the suddenly rising water from a blowhole, landing easily on two feet with Myles gasping under his arm. The water throbbed skyward in a giant column, then blossomed into a fountain worthy of a Roman piazza.

  Beckett watched the ocean retreat down the blowhole and grunted in Whistle Blower’s direction.

  Whistle Blower rejoined with a similar grunt, which Lazuli assumed was an approximation of Wasn’t that awesome? And suddenly she understood Beckett a little better. You just had to think of him as a toy troll, but taller and hairless.

  Myles Fowl collapsed onto his back, arms crossed on his chest, looking for all the world like a boy laid out for his own Irish wake. He was draped in a shroud of congealing mud and all that was missing to complete the wake illusion was a pair of pennies for his unseeing eyes.

  Beckett nudged him with the toe of his fencing boot. “Myles, what’s the matter? We made it.”

  Myles blinked and salt water trickled from his eyes, cleaning pathways in the mud.

  “My plan didn’t work,” he said. “I failed.”

  Beckett squatted beside him. “I used to do what you’re doing,” he said. “Live in the past. But now I know the past is past. When your plan failed, that was then. This is now, and we need a new plan. Say good-bye to old-failure Myles, and hello to new-plan Myles.”

  Myles closed his eyes to absorb this, then said, “But we must learn our limits from our mistakes, brother.”

  “You always say that learning is good. Is that a lie?”

  Myles opened his eyes just enough to squint at Beckett. “Are you using social influence on me, Beck?”

  “Me?” asked Beckett innocently. “I’m the action twin, remember? I don’t know anything about brain stuff.”

  Myles clarified the term. “Social influence is a tactic that psychologists use to challenge patients.”

  Beckett pulled Myles to his feet. “Whatever you say, Brainiac. All I know is that a really smart but boring guy once told me that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Is that true, brother, or was that boring guy just speaking words?”

  The mud fell in sheets from Myles’s clothing and he thought, Two suits destroyed in as many days, but he said, “It’s true, Beck. Thanks for reminding me.”

  If he were being honest, Myles did not feel very strong at the moment, but, thanks to his brother’s optimism, he could feel his confidence already reasserting itself like a fire in his belly.

  Fire in my belly, he thought. That reminds me.

  Myles turned to Lazuli, who had torn off her helmet and was vomiting smoke and mud, her back arching with each retch.

  “Specialist Heitz,” said Myles, “as soon as you feel able, we must be away from here. I imagine the duke is already on the move.”

  “Agreed,” Lazuli managed between heaves. “Just a”—heave—“second, Myles.”

  “You know,” continued Myles, “that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

  Lazuli was in no mood for German philosophy and shook a warning fist at the twin, but Myles continued to speak undaunted.

  “When you have an interval in your bouts of illness, perhaps we should drill down into what happened. You appear to have blossomed into a magical creature. Artemis’s files are typically incomplete on this subject, so perhaps you could fill in the gaps? It would help me to strategize if I knew the extent of your gifts.”

  Lazuli knew she wouldn’t be much help in this area. The fire-breathing seemed magical, but in fact it was not. Goblins were born with the biological tools. Heaven knew she had been through enough MRIs and physicals for little things like oil ducts at the back of her throat and fireproof body parts to be detected. Today they had finally served a purpose.

  She spat into the earth and accepted Myles’s offer of a handkerchief to wipe her mouth.

  “I don’t fully understand how it’s possible for me to make fire.”

  “Magic,” said Beckett, as if it was obvious. “Magic is impossible.”

  Whistle Blower aped Beckett’s stance and growled an approximation of the word impossible.

  Myles nodded. “It seems that will have to satisfy us for now. Can you walk, Specialist?”

  Lazuli flashed on a hokey human movie she had always loved, and, with a wry grin, said, “I’ll bloody well walk out of here.”

  But she wouldn’t walk off the island.

  Ever.

  Enraged though Lord Teddy most assuredly was, he made time to snatch his bathrobe from its hook and tug on a pair of riding boots that stood sentry by the front door. He checked the pockets for the shells he kept in most of his clothes, and selected a twelve-gauge Myishi semiautomatic gas gun from the umbrella stand, slinging it over his shoulder, which left his hands free for the two wireless remote mitts that he used to control his various robots and battle drones. He was on a maintenance contract with Myishi, which had cost him a bloody fortune over the years even with his friends-and-family discount, but it did ensure that St. George’s defenses were always ready to go at the touch of a button. The duke pressed that button now, and the aluminum central server built into his desk clunked once then rumbled into life.

  And now, my boy…thought Teddy, flexing his fingers in the controller mitts, activating literally hundreds of electronic death/gardening/cleaning machines, including dozens of his own construction—little steampunk fellows with tommy guns attached to their arms, which Ishi Myishi had described as delightful anachronisms.

  It is time to end this tiresome chapter in the life of Teddy Bleedham-Drye. The chapter titled: “Lord Teddy Meets the Fowl Twins.”

  There was only one way, it seemed, to be sure of eradicating the Fowl blight.

  Massive overkill.

  And Teddy was prepared to pound a good chunk of his own island with ordnance to ensure that Myles Fowl and his merry gang were no more.

  Mostly Myles, if he were honest.

  MOSTLY Myles was feeling frustration. It felt to him like the universe was intent on eliminating his group. It was indeed regrettable.

  Perhaps Beck’s name for us is, in fact, appropriate, he thought with some glumness. It seemed as though his intellect was about to be defeated by sheer firepower, disproving the trite old maxim that the pen is mightier than the sword.

  The reasons for Myles’s glumness could be itemized as follows:

  1. His fellow team members were in pitiful disarray—most notably Specialist Heitz, who seemed capable of little more than snatches of conversation in between barfs.

  2. The toy troll, while undeniably cute, even with a shaven patch on his forehead, was incapable of grasping the seriousness of the situation and was lying with Beckett in the mud.

  3. His brother Beckett was incapable of grasping the seriousness of the situation and was lying with Whistle Blower in the mud.

  4. He himself was running dangerously low on ideas and lacked confidence in the various schemes he’d already put in motion.
>
  I need a win, thought Myles. Then aloud: “I need a win, NANNI.”

  But, of course, NANNI’s voice was not in his ear.

  At any rate, a win seemed increasingly unlikely when one considered the myriad lethal weapons headed their way. The air was filled with an electronic cacophony, and it seemed as though there was not a square inch of earth or sky that the duke’s machines did not inhabit. In seconds the group were surrounded by murderous minions.

  It would have been prudent for Teddy to give the kill order, but he held back, preferring to negotiate before pulling the virtual trigger. So, as soon he was through the front door and satisfied that his robotic army had surrounded Myles and his pathetic band, Teddy belted his robe and considered how he might once again negotiate possession of the toy troll. As he strolled across the courtyard, he looked every inch the picture of an eccentric nobleman out for a spot of hunting on his estate.

  He did not have far to stroll, for Myles and his bunch had plummeted some thirty feet from the laboratory turret into a mud puddle on the grass that bordered the house on three sides, but something caused the duke to miss a step: a sinkhole by the wall. Lord Teddy knew every blowhole on St. George—there were many—and he was one hundred percent certain that there hadn’t been a sinkhole there this morning. A puddle, perhaps, but definitely not a sinkhole.

  Blast the boy, he thought. That sinkhole is adjacent to the family plot and could very well cause a disaster.

  There was no doubt in Teddy’s mind that Myles was somehow responsible for the geological formation, but he sensed with his hunter’s nose that the boy was no longer a threat. Even so the duke was on high alert. There would be no more risk-taking with these little blighters. If the last couple of increasingly bizarre days had taught him anything, it was not to underestimate the twins, and, on top of that, he had no idea what the tiny blue fairy was capable of. So Lord Teddy ignored weapons protocol and kept his forefingers on both triggers of his wireless controllers and his remaining fingers and thumbs on the various control buttons.