Читать книгу The Fowl Twins - Eoin Colfer, Eoin Colfer, Оуэн Колфер - Страница 8

Behold Myles and Beckett Fowl, passing a late summer evening on the family’s private beach. If you look past the superficial differences – wardrobe, spectacles, hairstyles and so on – you notice that the boys’ facial features are very similar but not absolutely identical. This is because they are dizygotic twins, and were, in fact, the first recorded non-identical twins to be born conjoined, albeit only from wrist to little finger. The attending surgeon separated them with a flash of her scalpel, and neither twin suffered any ill effects, apart from matching pink scars that ran along the outside of their palms. Myles and Beckett often touched scars to comfort each other. It was their version of a high five, which they called a wrist bump. This habit was both touching and slightly gross.

Apart from their features, the fraternal twins were, as one tutor noted, ‘very different animals’. Myles had an IQ of 170 and was fanatically neat, while Beckett’s IQ was a mystery, because he chewed the test into pulpy blobs from which he made a sculpture of a hamster in a bad mood, which he titled Angry Hamster.

Also, Beckett was far from neat. In fact, his parents were forced to take up Mindfulness just to calm themselves down whenever they attempted to put some order on his catastrophically untidy side of the bedroom.

It was obvious from their early days in a double cradle that the twins did not share similar personalities. When they were teething, Beckett would chew dummies ragged, while Myles chose to nibble thoughtfully on the eraser end of a pencil. As a toddler, Myles liked to emulate his big brother, Artemis, by wearing tiny black suits that had to be custom-made. Beckett preferred to run free as nature intended, and, when he finally did agree to wear something, it was plastic training pants, in which he stored supplies, including his pet goldfish, Gloop (named for the sound it made, or at least the sound the goldfish was blamed for).

As the brothers grew older, the differences between them became more obvious. Myles grew ever more fastidious, 3-D-printing a fresh suit every day and taming his wild jet-black Fowl hair with a seaweed-based gel that both moisturised the scalp and nourished the brain, while Beckett made zero attempt to tame the blond curls that he had inherited from his mother’s side of the family, and continued to sulk when he was forced to wear any clothes, with the exception of the only article he never removed – a golden necktie that had once been Gloop. Myles had cured and laminated the goldfish when it passed away, and Beckett wore it always as a keepsake. This habit was both touching and extremely gross.

Perhaps you have heard of the Fowl family of Ireland? They are quite notorious in certain shadowy circles. The twins’ father was once the world’s preeminent crime lord, but he had a change of heart and reinvented himself as a champion of the environment. Myles and Beckett’s older brother, Artemis the Second, had also been quite the criminal virtuoso, hatching schemes involving massive amounts of gold bullion, fairy police forces and time travel, to name but a few. Fortunately for more or less everyone except aliens, Artemis had recently turned his attention to outer space, and was currently six months into a five-year mission to Mars in a revolutionary self-winding rocket ship that he had built in the family barn. By the time the world’s various authorities, including NASA, APSCO, ALR, CNSA and UKSA, had caught wind of the project and begun to marshal their objections, Artemis had already passed the moon.

The twins themselves were to have many adventures, some of which would kill them (though not permanently), but this particular episode began a week after their eleventh birthday. Myles and Beckett were walking along the stony beach of a small island off the picturesque coast of South Dublin, where the Fowl family had recently moved to Villa Éco, a newly built, state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly house. The twins’ father had donated Fowl Manor, their rambling ancestral home, to a cooperative of organic farmers, declaring, ‘It is time for the Fowls to embrace planet Earth.’

Villa Éco was a stunning achievement, not least because of all the hoops the county council had made Artemis Senior jump through just for planning permission. Indeed, the Fowl patriarch had on several occasions considered using a few of his old criminal-mastermind methods of persuasion just to cut through the miles of red tape, but eventually he managed to satisfy the local councillors and push ahead with the building.

And what a building it was. Totally self-sufficient, thanks to super-efficient solar panels and a dozen geothermal screws that not only extracted power from the earth but also acted as the building’s foundation. The frame was built from the recycled steel yielded by six compacted cars and had already withstood a hurricane during construction. The cast-in-place concrete walls were insulated by layers of plant-based polyurethane rigid foam. The windows were bulletproof, naturally, and coated with metallic oxide to keep the heat where it should be throughout the seasons. The design was modern but utilitarian, with a nod to the island’s monastic heritage in the curved walls of its outbuildings, which were constructed with straw bales.

But the real marvels of Villa Éco were discreetly hidden until they were called upon. Artemis Senior, Artemis Junior and Myles Fowl had collaborated on a security system that would bamboozle even the most technically minded home invader, and an array of defence mechanisms that could repel a small army.

There was, however, an Achilles heel in this system, as the twins were about to discover. This Achilles heel was the twins’ own decency and their reluctance to unleash the villa’s defences on anyone.

On this summer evening, the twins’ mother was delivering a lecture at New York University with her husband in attendance. Some years previously, Angeline had suffered from what Shakespeare called ‘the grief that does not speak’, and, in an effort to understand her depression, had completed a mental-health doctorate at Trinity College and now spoke at conferences around the world. The twins were being watched over by the house itself, which had an Artemis-designed Nano Artificial Neural Network Intelligence system, or NANNI, to keep an electronic eye on them.

Myles was collecting seaweed for his homemade-hair-gel fermentation silo, and Beckett was attempting to learn seal language from a dolphin just offshore.

‘We must be away, brother,’ Myles said. ‘Bedtime. Our young bodies require ten hours of sleep to ensure proper brain development.’

Beckett lay on a rock and clapped his hands. ‘Arf,’ he said. ‘Arf.’

Myles tugged at his suit jacket and frowned behind the frames of his thick-rimmed glasses. ‘Beck, are you attempting to speak in seal language?’

‘Arf,’ said Beckett, who was wearing knee-length cargo shorts and his gold necktie.

‘That is not even a seal. That is a dolphin.’

‘Dolphins are smart,’ said Beckett. ‘They know things.’

‘That is true, brother, but a dolphin’s vocal cords make it impossible for them to speak in the language of a seal. Why don’t you simply learn the dolphin’s language?’

Beckett beamed. ‘Yes! You are a genius, brother. Step one, swap barks for whistles.’

Myles sighed. Now his twin was whistling at a dolphin, and they would once again fail to get to bed on time.

Myles stuffed a handful of seaweed into his bucket. ‘Please, Beck. My brain will never reach optimum productivity if we don’t leave now.’ He tapped the right arm of his black plastic spectacle frames, activating the built-in microphone. ‘NANNI, help me out. Please send a drobot to carry my brother home.’

‘Negative,’ said the house system in the strangely accented female voice that Artemis had selected to represent the AI. It was a voice that both twins instinctively trusted for some reason.

Myles could hear NANNI through bone-conduction speakers concealed in the arms of his glasses.

‘Absolutely no flying Beckett home, unless it’s an emergency,’ said NANNI. ‘Mother’s orders, so don’t bother arguing.’

Myles was surprised that NANNI’s sentences were unnecessarily convoluted. It seemed as though the AI were developing a personality, which he supposed was the point. When Artemis had first plugged NANNI into the system, so to speak, her responses were usually limited to one-word answers. Now she was telling him not to bother arguing. It would be fascinating to see how her personality would develop.

Providing NANNI doesn’t become too human, thought Myles, because most humans are irritating.

At any rate, it was ridiculous that his mother refused to authorise short-range flights for Beckett. In tests, the drone robots had only dropped the dummy Becketts twice, but his mother insisted the drobots were for urgent situations only.

‘Beckett!’ he called. ‘If you agree to come back to the house, I will tell you a story before bed.’

Beckett flipped over on the rock. ‘Which story?’ he asked.

‘How about the thrilling discovery of the Schwarzschild radius, which led directly to the identification of black holes?’ suggested Myles.

Beckett was not impressed. ‘How about the adventures of Gloop and Angry Hamster in the Dimension of Fire?’

Now it was Myles’s turn to be unimpressed. ‘Beck, that’s preposterous. Fish and hamsters do not even share the same environment. And neither could survive in a dimension of fire.’

‘You’re preposterous,’ said Beckett, and went back to his whistling.

The crown of Beck’s head will be burned by the evening UV rays, thought Myles.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Gloop and Angry Hamster it is.’

‘And Dolphin,’ said Beckett. ‘He wants to be in the story too.’

Myles sighed. ‘Dolphin too.’

‘Hooray!’ said Beckett, skipping across the rocks. ‘Story time. Wrist bump?’

Myles raised his palm for a bump and wondered, If I’m the smart one, why do we always do exactly what Beck wants us to?

Myles asked himself this question a lot.

‘Now, brother,’ he said, ‘please say goodnight to your friend, and let us be off.’

Beckett turned to do as he was told, but only because it suited him.

If Beckett had not turned to bid the dolphin farewell, then perhaps the entire series of increasingly bizarre events that followed might have been avoided. There would have been no nefarious villain, no ridiculously named trolls, no shadowy organisations, no interrogations by a nun (which are known in the intelligence community as nunterrogations, believe it or not) and a definite lack of head lice. But Beckett did turn, precisely two seconds after a troll had surged upwards through the loose shale at the water’s edge and collapsed on to the beach.

Fairies are defined as being ‘small, humanoid, supernatural creatures possessed of magical powers’, a definition that applies neatly to elves, gnomes, sprites and pixies. It is, however, a human definition, and therefore as incomplete as human knowledge on the subject. The fairies’ definition of themselves is more concise and can be found in the Fairy Book, which is their constitution, so to speak, the original of which is behind crystal in the Hey Hey Temple in Haven City, the subterranean fairy capital. It states:

FAIRY, FAERIE OR FAERY: A CREATURE OF THE EARTH. OFTEN MAGICAL. NEVER WILFULLY DESTRUCTIVE.

No mention of small or humanoid. It may surprise humans to know that they themselves were once considered fairies and did indeed possess some magic, until many of them strayed from the path and became extremely wilfully destructive, and so magic was bred out of humans over the centuries, until there was nothing left but an empath here and there, and the occasional telekinetic.

Trolls are classed as fairies by fairies themselves, but would not be so categorised by the human definition, as they are not magical – unless their longevity can be considered supernatural. They are, however, quite feral and only slightly more sentient than the average hound. Another interesting point about trolls is that fairy scholars of their pathologies have realised that trolls are highly susceptible to chemically induced psychosis while also tending to nest in chemically polluted sites, in much the same way as humans are attracted to the sugar that poisons them. This chemical poisoning often results in uncharacteristically aggressive behaviour and uncontrollable rage. Again, similar to how humans behave when experiencing sugar deprivation.

But this troll was not sick, sluggish or aggressive – in fact, he was in remarkable physical health, all pumping limbs and scything tusks, as he followed his second most powerful instinct: REACH THE SURFACE. (Trolls’ most powerful instinct being: EAT, GOBBLE, DEVOUR.)

This particular troll’s bloodstream was clear because he had never swum across a chromium-saturated lake and he had never carved out his burrow in mercury-rich soil. Nevertheless, healthy or not, this specimen would never have made it to the surface had the Earth’s crust under Dalkey Island not been exceptionally thin, a mere two and a quarter miles, in fact. This troll was able to squeeze himself into fissures that would have made a claustrophobe faint, and he wriggled his way to the open air. It took the creature four sun cycles of agonisingly slow progress to break through, and you might think the cosmos would grant the fellow a little good fortune after such Herculean efforts, but no, he had to pop out right between the Fowl Twins and Lord Teddy Bleedham-Drye, who was lurking on a mainland balcony and spying on Dalkey Island through a telescopic monocular, thus providing the third corner of an irresistible triangular vortex of fate.

So, the troll emerged, joint by joint, reborn to the atmosphere, gnashing and clawing. And, in spite of his almost utter exhaustion, some spark of triumph drove him to his feet for a celebratory howl, which was when Lord Teddy, for diabolical reasons which shall presently be explored, shot him.

Once the shot had been fired, the entire troll-related rigmarole really got rigmarolling, because the microsecond that NANNI’s sensors detected the bullet’s sonic boom, she dispensed with her convoluted sentences and without a word upgraded the villa’s alert status from beige to red, sounded the alarm klaxon, and set the security system to siege mode. Two armoured drobots were dispatched from their charging plates to extract the twins, and forty decoy flares were launched from mini mortar ports in the roof as countermeasures to any infrared guided missiles that may or may not be inbound.

This left the twins with approximately twenty seconds of earthbound liberty before they would be whisked into the evening sky and secured in the eco-house’s ultrasecret safe room, blueprints of which did not appear on any set of plans.

A lot can happen in twenty seconds. And a lot did happen.

Firstly, let us discuss the marksman. When I say Lord Teddy shot the troll, this is possibly misleading, even though it is accurate. He did shoot the troll, but not with the usual explosive variety of bullet, which would have penetrated the troll’s hide and quite possibly killed the beast through sheer shock trauma. That was the absolute last thing Lord Teddy wanted, as it would void his entire plan. This particular bullet was a gas-powered cellophane virus (CV) slug that was being developed by the Japanese munitions company Myishi and was not yet officially on the market. In fact, Myishi products rarely went into mass production, as Ishi Myishi, the founder and CEO, made quite a lot of tax-free dollars giving a technological edge to the world’s criminal masterminds. The Duke of Scilly was a personal friend and possibly his best customer and had most of his kit sponsored by Ishi Myishi so long as the duke agreed to endorse the products on the dark web. The CV bullets were known as ‘shrink-wrappers’ by the development team, and they released their viruses on impact, effectively wrapping the target in a coating of cellophane that was porous enough to allow shallow breathing but had been known to crack a rib or two.

And then there is the physicality of the troll itself. There are many breeds of troll. From the three-metre-tall behemoth Antarctic Blue, to the silent jungle killer the Amazon Heel Claw. The troll on Dalkey Island beach was a one-in-a-million anomaly. In form and proportion, he was the perfect Ridgeback, with the distinctive thick comb of spiked hair that ran from brow to tailbone, and the blue-veined grey fur on his chest and arms all present and correct. But this creature was no massive predator. In fact, he was a rather tiny one. Standing barely twenty centimetres high, the troll was one of a relatively new variety that had begun to pop up in recent millennia since fairies were forced deep in the Earth’s mantle. Much in the same way as schnauzer dogs had miniature counterparts known as toy schnauzers, some troll breeds also had their shrunken varieties, and this troll was one of perhaps half a dozen toy Ridgebacks in existence and the first to ever reach the surface.

Not at all what Lord Teddy had been expecting. Having seen Brother Colman’s scars, the duke had imagined his quarry to be somewhat larger.

When the little troll’s heat signature had popped up in his eyepiece like an oversized gummy bear, the duke had exclaimed, ‘Good heavens! Could that little fellow be my troll?’

It certainly matched Brother Colman’s description, except for the dimensions. In truth, the duke couldn’t help feeling a little let down. He had been expecting something more substantial. That diminutive creature didn’t look like it could manufacture enough venom to extend the lifespan of a gerbil.

‘Nevertheless,’ muttered the duke, ‘since I’ve come all this way …’

And he squeezed the trigger on his sniper’s rifle.

The supersonic cellophane slug made a distinctive yodelling noise as it sped through the air, and impacted the toy Ridgeback square in the solar plexus, releasing its payload in a sparkling globule that quickly sprawled over the tiny creature, wrapping it in a restrictive layer of cellophane before it could do much more than squeak in indignation.

Beckett Fowl spotted the cartwheeling toy troll, and his first impressions were of fur and teeth, and consequently his first thought was, Angry Hamster!

But the boy chided himself, remembering that Angry Hamster was a sculpture that he himself had constructed from chewed paper and bodily fluids and therefore not a living thing, and so he would have to revise his guess as to what this tumbling figure might be.

But by this time the troll had come to rest at his feet, and Beckett was able to snatch it up and scrutinise it closely, so there was no need for guessing.

Not alive, he realised then. Doll, maybe.

Beckett had thought the figure moved of its own accord, perhaps even made a squealing noise of some kind, but now he could see it was a fantasy action figure with a protective plastic coating.

‘I shall call you Whistle Blower,’ he whispered into the troll’s pointed ear. The boy had chosen this name after barely a second’s consideration, because he had seen on Myles’s preferred news channel that people who squealed were sometimes called whistle-blowers. Also, Beckett was not the kind of fellow who wasted time on decisions.

Beckett turned to show Myles his beach salvage, though his brother had always been a little snooty when it came to toys, claiming they were for children even though he was patently a child himself and would be for a few more years.

‘Look, brother,’ he called, waggling the action figure. ‘I found a new friend.’

Myles sneered as expected, and opened his mouth to pass a derogatory remark along the lines of, Honestly, Beck. We are eleven years old now. Time to leave childish things behind.

But his scorn was interrupted by a deafening series of honks.

The emergency klaxon.

It is true to say that there is hardly a more alarming sound than an alarm klaxon, heralding as it does the arrival of some form of disaster. Most people do not react positively to this sound. Some scream; some faint. There are those who run in circles, wringing their fingers, which is also pointless. And, of course, there are people who have involuntary purges, which shall not be elaborated upon here.

The reactions of the Fowl Twins could seem strange to a casual observer, for Myles discarded his seaweed bucket and uttered a single word: ‘Finally.’

While Beckett spoke to his new toy. ‘Do you hear that, Whistle Blower?’ he asked. ‘We’re going flying!’

To explain: designing the security system had been a fun bonding project for Myles, Artemis and their father, so Myles had a scientific interest in putting the extraction drobots through their paces, as thus far they had only been tested with crash dummies. Beckett, on the other hand, was just dying to be yanked backwards into the air at high speed and dumped down a security chute, and he fervently hoped the ride would last much longer than the projected half a minute.

Myles forgot all about getting to bed on time. He was in action mode now as the countermeasure flares fanned out behind his head like fireworks, painting the undersides of passing cumuli. NANNI broadcast a message to his glasses, and Myles repeated it aloud to Beckett in melodramatic tones that he knew his brother would respond to, as it made him feel like he was on an adventure. And also because Myles had a weakness for melodrama, which he was aware he should at least attempt to control, as drama is the enemy of science.

‘Red alert!’ he called. ‘Extraction position.’

The twins had been drilled on this particular position so often that Beckett reacted to the command with prompt obedience – two words that he would never find written on any of his school report cards.

Extraction position was as follows: chin tucked low, arms stretched overhead, and jaw relaxed to avoid cracked teeth.

‘Ten seconds,’ said Myles, slipping his spectacles into a jacket pocket. ‘Nine, eight …’

Beckett also slipped something into his pocket before assuming the position: Whistle Blower.

‘Three,’ said Myles. ‘Two …’

Then the boy allowed his jaw to relax and spoke no more.

The two drobots shot from under the villa’s eaves and sped unerringly towards the twins. They maintained an altitude of two metres from the ground by dipping their rotors and adjusting their course as they flew, communicating with each other through coded clicks and beeps. With their gears retracted, the drobots resembled nothing more than old propeller hats that children used to wear in simpler times as they rode their bicycles.

The drobots barely slowed as they approached the twins, lowering micro-servo-cable arms that lassoed the boys’ waists, then inflated impact bags to avoid injuring their cargo.

‘Cable loop in place,’ said Myles, lowering his arms. ‘Bags inflated. Most efficient.’

In theory, the ride should be so smooth that his suit would not suffer one wrinkle.

‘No more science talk!’ shouted Beckett impatiently. ‘Let’s go!’

And go they did.

The servo cables retracted smoothly to winch the twins into the air. Myles noted that there had been no discernible impact on his spine, and while acceleration was rapid – zero to sixty miles an hour in four seconds according to his smartwatch – the ride was not jarring.

‘So far so good,’ he said into the wind. He glanced sideways to see Beckett ignoring the flight instructions, waving his arms around as though he were on a roller coaster.

‘Arms folded, Beck!’ he called sternly to his brother. ‘Feet crossed at the ankles. You are increasing your own drag.’

It was possible that Beckett could not hear the instructions, but it was probable that he simply ignored them and continued to treat their emergency extraction like a theme-park ride.

The journey was over almost as soon as it began, and the twins found themselves deposited in two small chimney-like padded tubes towards the rear of the house. The drobots lowered them to the safe room, then sealed the tubes with their own shells.

NANNI’s face appeared in a free-floating liquid speaker ball, which was held in shape by an electric charge. ‘Perhaps this would be a good time to activate the EMP? I know you’ve been dying to try it.’

Myles considered this as he unclipped the servo cable. Villa Éco was outfitted with a localised electromagnetic-pulse generator, which would knock out any electronic systems in the island’s airspace. The Fowls’ main electronics would not be affected, as the entire villa had a Faraday cage embedded in its walls, and the Fowl systems had back-ups that ran on optical cable. A little old-school, but, should the cage fail, the cable would keep systems ticking until the danger was past.

‘Hmm,’ said Myles. ‘That seems a bit drastic. What is the nature of the emergency?’

‘Sonic boom detected,’ said NANNI. ‘I would guess from a high-powered rifle.’

NANNI is guessing now, thought Myles. She really is developing.

‘Guessing is of little use to me, madam,’ said Myles. ‘Scientists do not guess.’

‘Oh yes, that’s right. Scientists hypothesise,’ said NANNI. ‘In that case, I hypothesise that the sonic boom was caused by a rifle shot.’

‘That’s better,’ said Myles. ‘How certain are you?’

‘Reasonably,’ replied NANNI. ‘If I had to offer a percentage, I would say seventy per cent.’

A sonic boom could be caused by many things, and the majority of those things were harmless. Still, Myles now had a valid excuse to employ the EMP, something he had been forbidden to do unless absolutely necessary.

It was, in fact, a judgement call.

Beckett, who had somehow become inverted in the delivery chute, tumbled on to the floor and asked, ‘Will the EMP hurt my insects?’

Beckett kept his extensive bug collection in the safe room so it would be safe.

‘No,’ said Myles. ‘Unless some of them are robot insects.’

Beckett pressed his nose to the terrarium’s glass and made some chittering noises.

‘No robots,’ he pronounced. ‘So activate the EMP.’

For once, Myles found himself in agreement with his brother. While the sonic boom could possibly be the by-product of a harmless event, it also might herald the arrival of an attack force hell-bent on wreaking vengeance on one Artemis or the other. Better to press the button and survive than regret not pressing it just before you died.

So, thought Myles, I should activate the EMP. But before I do …

Myles rooted in the steel rubbish bin until he found some aluminium foil that he had been using for target practice with one of his many lasers. He used it to quickly wrap his spectacles then stuffed them down to the bottom of the bin. This would protect the lite version of NANNI that lived in the eyeglasses in the event that both his safeguards failed.

‘I concur,’ said Myles. ‘Activate the EMP, NANNI. Tight radius, low intensity. No need to knock out the mainland.’

‘Activating EMP,’ said NANNI, and promptly collapsed in a puddle on the floor as her own electronics had not yet been converted to optical cable.

‘See, Beck?’ said Myles, lifting one black loafer from a glistening wet patch. ‘That is what we scientists call a design flaw.’

Lord Bleedham-Drye was doubly miffed and thrice surprised by the developments on Dalkey Island.

Surprise number one: Brother Colman spoke the truth, and trolls did indeed walk the Earth.

Surprise the second: the troll was tiny. Whoever heard of a tiny troll?

Surprise the last (for the moment): flying boys had sequestered his prey.

‘What on earth is going on?’ he asked no one in particular.

The duke muttered to himself, ‘These Fowl people seem prepared for full-scale invasion. They have flare countermeasures. Drones flying off with children. Who knows what else? Anti-tank guns and trained bears, I shouldn’t wonder. Even Churchill couldn’t take that beach.’

It occurred to Lord Teddy that he could blow up the entire island for spite. He was partial to a spot of spite, after all. But, after a moment’s consideration, he dismissed the idea. It was a cheery notion, but the person he would be ultimately spiting was none other than the Duke of Scilly, i.e. his noble self. He would hold his fire for now, but, when those boys re-emerged from their fortified house, he would be ready with his trusty rifle. After all, he was quite excellent with a gun, as his last shot had proven. Off the battlefield, it was unseemly to shoot anything except pheasant, unless one were engaged in a duel. Pistols at dawn, that sort of thing. But he would make an exception for a troll, and for those blooming Fowl boys.

Lord Teddy loaded the rifle with traditional bullets and set it on the balcony floor, muzzle pointed towards the island.

You can’t stay in that blasted house forever, my boys, he thought. And the moment you poke your noses from cover, Lord Teddy Bleedham-Drye shall be prepared.

He could wait.

He was prepared to put in the hours. As the duke often said to himself: one must spend time to make time.

Teddy lay sandwiched between a yoga mat and a veil of camouflage that had served as a hide of sorts for almost a month now, and ran a sweep of the island through his night-vision monocular. The whole place was lit up like a fairground with roaming spotlights and massive halogen lamps. There was not a millimetre of space for an intruder to hide.

Clever chappies, these Fowls, thought the duke. The father must have a lot of enemies.

Teddy sat up, fished a boar-bristle brush from his duffel bag, and began his evening ritual of one hundred brushes of his beard. The beard rippled and glistened as he brushed, like the pelt of an otter, and Teddy could not help but congratulate himself. A beard required a lot of maintenance, but, by heaven, it was worth it.

He had only reached stroke seven when the duke’s peripheral vision registered that something had changed. It was suddenly darker. He looked up, expecting to find that the lights had been shut off on Dalkey Island, but the truth was more drastic.

The island itself had disappeared.

Lord Teddy checked all the way to the horizon with his trusty monocular. In the blink of an eye, the entirety of Dalkey Island had vanished with only an abandoned stretch of wooden jetty to hint that the Fowl residence might ever have existed at the end of it.

Lord Bleedham-Drye was surprised to the point of stupefaction, but his manners and breeding would not allow him to show it.

‘I say,’ he said mildly. ‘That’s hardly cricket, is it? What has the world come to when a chap can’t bag himself a troll without entire land masses disappearing?’

Lord Teddy Bleedham-Drye’s bottom lip drooped. Quite the sulky expression for a hundred-and-fifty-year-old. But the duke did not allow himself to wallow for long. Instead, he set his mind to the puzzle of the disappearing island.

‘One can’t help but wonder, Teddy old boy,’ mused the duke to the mirror on the flat side of his brush, ‘if all this troll malarkey is indeed true, then is the rest also true? What Brother Colman said vis-à-vis elves, pixies and gnomes all hanging around for centuries? Is there, in fact, magic in the world?’

He would, Lord Teddy decided, proceed under the assumption that magic did exist, and therefore, by logical extension, magical creatures.

‘And so it is only reasonable to assume,’ Teddy said, ‘that these fairy chaps will wish to protect their own, and perhaps send their version of the cavalry to rescue the little troll. Perhaps the cavalry has already arrived, and this disappearing-island trick is actually some class of a magical spell cast by a wizard.’

The duke was right about the cavalry. The fairy cavalry had already arrived.

One fairy, at least.

But he was dead wrong about a wizard casting a spell. The fairy responsible for the disappearing-island trick was a far cry indeed from being a wizard, and could no more cast a spell than a frog could turn itself into a prince. She had made a split-second decision to use the only piece of equipment available to her, and was now pretty certain that her decision was absolutely the wrong one.