Eoin Colfer: Artemis Fowl. The Lost Colony

She skirted a street-cleaning robot, turning on to Crystal. The narrow street was a service lane for the main shopping plaza, and consisted mostly of delivery bays. The rest of the units were rented out for storage. Holly was surprised to find Doodah directly in front of her, rummaging in his pocket, presumably for the access chip to his unit.

Something must have held him up for a minute. Maybe he had ducked behind a crate to avoid the Wheelies. Whatever. She had another shot at him.

Doodah looked up, and all Holly could do was wave.

'Morning,' she said.

Doodah shook a tiny fist at her. 'Don't you have better things to do, elf? All I do is smuggle a few fish.'

The question cut Holly deeply. Was this really the best way to help the

People? Surely Commander Root had wanted more from her? In the past few months she had gone from top priority surface operations, to chasing down fish smugglers in a back alley. That was quite a drop.

She showed Doodah her hands. 'I don't want you to get hurt, so stand perfectly still.'

Doodah chuckled. 'Hurt? By you? Not likely.'

'No,' said Holly. 'Not by me. By him.' She pointed at the patch of mud under Doodah's feet.

'Him?' Doodah looked down suspiciously, suspecting a trap. His suspicions were absolutely correct. The ground beneath his feet fizzled slightly as the surface earth shivered and bounced.

'What?' said Doodah, lifting one foot. He would doubtless have stepped off the patch, if he'd had time. But what happened next, happened very quickly.

The ground did more than just collapse, it was sucked from below Doodah with a sickening slurping sound. A hoop of teeth cut through the earth, followed by a huge mouth. There was a dwarf on the other end of the mouth, and he breached the ground like a dolphin jumping, driven apparently by gas from his rear end. The ring of teeth closed round Doodah, swallowing him to the neck.

Mulch Diggums, for of course it was he, settled back into his tunnel,

taking the unfortunate pixie with him. Doodah, it has to be said, did not look quite so cocky as he had a second ago.

'A d-dwarf,' he stammered. 'I thought your People didn't like the law.'

'Generally they don't. But Mulch is an exception. You don't mind if he doesn't answer you himself; he might accidentally bite your head off.'

Doodah squirmed suddenly. 'What's he doing?'

'I imagine he's licking you. Dwarf spittle hardens on contact with air. As soon as he opens his mouth, you'll be locked up tight as a chick in an egg.'

Mulch winked at Holly. It was about as much as he could gloat at the moment, but Holly knew that he would spend the next several days boasting about his skills.

Dwarfs can tunnel through kilometres of earth. Dwarfs have jet-powered rear ends. Dwarfs can produce two litres of rock spittle every hour. What have you got? Besides a famous face that keeps blowing our cover?

Holly peered into the hole, the toe of one boot hooked over the edge.

'OK, partner. Good job. Now, can you please spit out the fugitive.'

Mulch was happy to oblige. He hawked Doodah on to the lane's surface, then clambered up himself, rehingeing his jaw.

'This is disgusting,' moaned Doodah, as the viscous spittle solidified on his limbs. 'It stinks too.'

'Hey,' said Mulch, injured. 'The smell is not my fault. If you rented storage in a cleaner lane. .'

'Oh yeah, stinky? Well, this is what I think of you.' Doodah attempted a pixie hex gesture, but fortunately the rock spittle froze his arm before he could complete it.

'OK, you two. Cut it out,' said Holly. 'We have thirty minutes to get this little guy to the LEP before the spittle loosens up.'

Mulch peered over her shoulder towards the mouth of the lane. He turned suddenly pale underneath his coating of wet earth, and his beard hair bristled nervously.

'You know something, partner,' he said. 'I don't think we're going to need thirty minutes.'

Holly turned away from her prisoner. There were half a dozen elves blocking the entrance to the lane. They were LEP, or something very like it. They wore plain clothes with no markings or insignia of any kind.

They were official, though. The heavy artillery cradled in their elbows attested to that. Holly noticed with some relief that none of the guns were pointed at her or Mulch.

One of the elves stepped forward, popping the visor on her helmet.

'Hello, Holly,' she said. 'We've been looking for you all morning. How've you been?'

Holly swallowed a relieved sigh. It was Wing Commander Vinyaya, a long-time supporter of Holly and Julius Root. Vinyaya had blazed the trail for all females in the forces. In a five-hundred-year career she had done everything from leading a Retrieval team to the dark side of the moon, to heading up the liberal vote on the fairy Council. In addition to this, she had been Holly's flight instructor in the Academy.

'Fine, Commander,' said Holly.

Vinyaya nodded at the solidifying mass of rock spittle.

'Keeping busy, I see.'

'Yes. That's Doodah Day. The fish smuggler. Quite a catch.'

The commander frowned. 'You're going to have to cut him loose, Holly. We have bigger snails to pop.'

Holly placed her boot on Doodah's midriff. She was reluctant to jump through LEP hoops, even for an undercover wing commander.

'What kind of snails?'

Vinyaya's frown deepened, cutting a slash between her brows.

'Can we talk in the car, Captain? The regulars are on the way.' Captain?

Vinyaya had referred to her by her old rank? What was going on here?

If the regulars were LEP, who were these fairies?

'I don't trust the force as much as I used to, Commander. You need to give me something before we go anywhere.'

Vinyaya sighed. 'Firstly, Captain, we're not the force. Not the one you think, anyway. Secondly, you want me to give you something? I'll give you two words. Care to hazard a guess what they are?'

Holly knew at once. She felt it.

'Artemis Fowl,' she whispered.

'That's right,' confirmed Vinyaya. 'Artemis Fowl. Now, are you and your partner prepared to come with us?'

'Where are you parked?' asked Holly.

Vinyaya and her mysterious unit obviously had a serious budget. Not only were their weapons state of the art, but their transportation was way out of the usual LEP league. Within seconds of scraping Doodah

Day and slipping a tracker into his boot, Holly and Mulch were strapped into lounger seats in the back of a stretch armoured vehicle. They weren't prisoners exactly, but Holly couldn't help feeling that she wasn't in control of her destiny any more.

Vinyaya took off her helmet, shaking out long silver hair. Holly was surprised.

The commander smiled. 'You like the colour? I got fed up dyeing it.'

'Yes. It suits you.'

Mulch raised a finger. 'Sorry to interrupt the salon chat, but who are you people? You're not LEP, I'll bet my bum-flap on it.'

Vinyaya swivelled to face the dwarf. 'How much do you know about demons?'

Mulch checked the vehicle's cooler and was delighted to find sim-chicken and nettle beer. He liberated both.

'Demons. Not a lot. Never seen one myself.'

'What about you, Holly? Remember anything from school?'

Holly was intrigued. Where could this conversation be going? Was this a test of some kind? She thought back to her history classes in Police Academy.

'Demons. The eighth family of the fairy People. Ten thousand years ago, after the Battle of Taillte, they refused to move underground, opting instead to lift their island out of time and live there in isolation.'

Vinyaya nodded. 'Very good. So they assembled their circle of warlocks and cast a time spell over the island of Hybras.'

'They disappeared off the face of the Earth,' recited Mulch. 'And no one's seen a demon since.'