Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl. The Lost Colony

He tried to call out to Butler, but it was too late. If the word late can be used in a place where time does not exist. The rent had expanded to envelop both him and the demon. The architecture and population of

Barcelona faded slowly like spirits to be replaced first by a purple fog, then a galaxy of stars. Artemis experienced feverish heat, then bitter cold. He felt sure that if he materialized fully he would be scorched to cinders, then his ashes would freeze and scatter across space.

Their surroundings changed in a flash, or maybe a year, it was impossible to tell. The stars were replaced by an ocean, and they were underneath it. Strange deep-sea creatures loomed from the depths, luminous tentacles scything the water all around them. Then there was a field of ice, then a red landscape, the air filled with fine dust. Finally they were looking at Barcelona again. But different. The city was younger.

The demon howled and gnashed its pointed teeth, abandoning all attempts to speak English. Luckily, Artemis was one of two humans in any dimension who spoke Gnommish, the fairy language.

'Calm yourself, friend,' he said. 'Our fate is sealed. Enjoy these wondrous sights.'

The demon's howl ceased abruptly, and he dropped Artemis's hand.

'Speak you fairy tongue?'

'Gnommish,' corrected Artemis. 'And better than you, I might add.'

The demon fell silent, regarding Artemis as though he was some kind of fantastic creature. Which, of course, he was. Artemis, for his part, spent what could possibly be the last few moments of his life, observing the scene before him. They were materializing at a building site. It was the

Casa Mila, but not yet completed. Workmen swarmed across scaffolding erected at the front of the building and a swarthy bearded man stood scowling at a sheet of architectural drawings.

Artemis smiled. It was Gaudi himself. How amazing.

The scene solidified, colours painting themselves brighter.

Artemis could smell the dry Spanish air now, and the heavy tangs of sweat and paint.

'Excuse me?' said Artemis in Spanish.

Gaudi looked up from the drawings, and his scowl was replaced with a look of utter disbelief. There was a boy stepping from thin air. Beside him a cowering demon.

The brilliant architect absorbed every detail of the tableau, committing it to his memory forever.

'Si?' he said hesitantly.

Artemis pointed to the top of the building. 'You've got some mosaics planned for the roof. You might want to rethink those. Very derivative.'

Then boy and demon disappeared.

Butler did not panic when a creature stepped out of the hole in time.

Then again, he was trained not to panic, no matter how extreme the situation. Unfortunately nobody else at the Passeig de Gracia intersection had attended Madam Ko's Personal Protection Academy and so they proceeded to panic just as loudly and quickly as they could. All except the curly-haired girl and the two men with her.

When the demon appeared, the public froze. When the creature disappeared they un-froze explosively. The air was rent with the sounds of shouting and screaming. Drivers abandoned their cars, or simply drove them into store windows to escape. A wave of humans withdrew from the point of materialization as though repelled by an invisible force. Again, the girl and her companions bucked the trend, actually running towards the spot where the demon had shown up. The man with the crutches displayed remarkable agility for one who was supposedly injured.

Butler ignored the pandemonium, concentrating on his right hand. Or rather where his right hand had been a second earlier. Just before Artemis fizzled into another dimension, Butler had managed to get a grip on his shoulder. Now the disappearing virus had claimed his own hand. He was going wherever Artemis had gone. He could still feel his young charge's bony shoulder in his grip.

Butler fully expected his arm to vanish, but it didn't. Just the hand. He could still feel it in an underwater-pins-and-needles kind of way. And he could still feel Artemis.

'No, you don't,' he grunted, tightening his invisible grip. 'I've put up with too much hardship over the years for you to disappear on me now.'

And so Butler reached down through the decades and yanked his young charge back from the past.

Artemis didn't come easy. It was like dragging a boulder through a sea of mud, but Butler was not the kind of person that gave up easily. He planted his feet and put his back into it. Artemis popped out of the twentieth century and landed sprawling in the twenty-first.

'I'm back,' said the Irish boy, as if he had simply returned from an everyday errand. 'How unexpected.'

Butler picked his principal up and gave him a perfunctory examination.

'Everything is in the right place. Nothing broken. Now, Artemis, tell me, what is twenty-seven multiplied by eighteen point five?'

Artemis straightened his suit jacket. 'Oh, I see, you're checking my mental faculties. Very good. I suppose it's conceivable that time travel could affect the mind.'

'Just answer the question!' insisted Butler.

'Four hundred and ninety-nine point five, if you must know.'

'I'll take your word for it.'

The giant bodyguard cocked his head to one side. 'Sirens. We need to get out of this area, Artemis, before I'm forced to cause an international incident.'

He hustled Artemis to the other side of the road, to the only car still idling there. Maria looked a little pale, but at least she had not abandoned her clients.

'Well done,' said Butler, flinging open the rear door. 'Airport. Stay off the motorway as much as possible.'

Maria barely waited until Butler and Artemis were belted, before burning rubber down the street, ignoring the traffic lights. The blonde girl and her companions were left on the roadside behind them.

Maria glanced at Artemis in the mirror. 'What happened out there?'

'No questions,' said Butler curtly. 'Eyes on the road. Drive.'

He knew better than to ask questions himself. Artemis would explain all about the strange creature and the shining rift when he was ready.

Artemis remained silent as the limousine swung down towards Las Ramblas and from there into the labyrinthine backstreets of downtown Barcelona.

'How did I get here?' he said eventually. Musing aloud. 'Or rather why aren't we there? Or why aren't we then? What anchored us to this time?'

He looked at Butler. 'Are you wearing any silver?'

Butler grimaced sheepishly. 'You know I never usually wear jewellery, but there is this.' He shot one cuff. There was a leather bracelet on his wrist, with a silver nugget in the centre. 'Juliet sent it to me. From Mexico. It's to ward off evil spirits apparently. She made me promise to wear it.'

Artemis smiled broadly. 'It was Juliet. She anchored us.' He tapped the silver nugget on Butler's wrist. 'You should give your sister a call. She saved our lives.'

As Artemis tapped his bodyguard's wristband, he noticed something about his own fingers. They were his fingers, no doubt about it. But different somehow. It took him a moment to realize what had happened.

He had, of course, done some theorizing on the hypothetical results of interdimensional travel, and concluded that there could possibly be some deterioration of the original, as with a computer program that has been copied once too often. Streams of information could be lost in the ether.

As far as Artemis could tell, nothing had been lost, but now the index finger on his left hand was longer than the second finger. Or more accurately, the index finger had swapped places with the second finger.

He flexed the fingers experimentally.

'Hmm,' noted Artemis Fowl. 'I am unique.'

Butler grunted. 'Tell me about it,' he said.

haven city, the lower elements

Holly Short's career as an elfin private investigator was not working out as well as she'd hoped. This was mainly because the Lower Elements' most popular current events show had run not one, but two specials on her over the past few months. It was difficult to go undercover when her face was forever popping up on cable reruns.

'Surgery?' suggested a voice in her head. This voice was not the first sign of madness; it was her partner, Mulch Diggums, communicating from his mike to her earpiece.

'What?' she said, her voice carrying to her own microphone, a tiny flesh-coloured chip glued to her throat.

I m looking at a poster of your famous face, and I'm thinking that you should have some cosmetic surgery if we want to stay in business. And I mean real business, not this bounty-hunting game. Bounty hunters are the lowest of the low.'

Holly sighed. Her dwarf partner was right. Even criminals were considered more trustworthy than bounty hunters.

'A few implants and a reshaped nose and even your best friend wouldn't recognize you,' continued Mulch Diggums. 'It's not as if you're a beauty queen.'

'Forget it,' said Holly. She was fond of the face she had. It reminded her of her mother's.

'What about a skin spray? You could go green, disguise yourself as a sprite.'

'Mulch? Are you in position?' snapped Holly.

'Yep,' came the dwarf's reply. 'Any sign of the pixie?'

'No, he's not up and about yet, but he will be soon. So stop the chatter and just get ready.'

'Hey, we're partners now. No more criminal and police officer. I don't have to take orders from you.'

'Get ready, please.'

'No problem. Mulch Diggums, lowlife bounty hunter, signing off.'

Holly sighed. Sometimes she missed the discipline of the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance Division. When an order was given, it was followed. Although if she was honest, Holly had to admit she had got herself into trouble more than once for disobeying a direct command.

She had only survived in LEPrecon for as long as she had because of a few high-profile arrests. And because of her mentor, Commander Julius Root.

Holly felt her heart lurch as she remembered, for the thousandth time, that Julius was dead. She could go for hours without thinking about it, then it would hit her. Every time like the first time.

She had quit the LEP because Julius's replacement had actually accused her of murdering the Commander. Holly figured with a boss like that, she could do the fairy People ignore good outside the system. It was starting to look like she had been dead wrong. In her time as LEPrecon

Captain she had been involved in putting down a goblin revolution, thwarting a plan to expose the subterranean fairy culture to the humans and reclaiming stolen fairy tech-Jiology from a Mud Man in Chicago.

Now she was tracking a fish smuggler who had skipped out on his bail.

Not exactly national security stuff.

'What about shin extensions?' said Mulch, interrupting her thoughts. 'You could be taller in hours.'

Holly smiled. As irritating as her partner was, he could always cheer her up. Also, as a dwarf, Mulch had special talents which came in very handy in their new line of business. Until recently, he had used these skills to break into houses and out of prisons, but now he was on the side of the angels, or so he swore. Unfortunately, all fairies knew that a dwarf's vow to a non-dwarf wasn't worth the spit-sodden handshake that sealed the deal.

'Maybe you could get a brain extension,' Holly retorted.

Mulch chortled. 'Oh, brilliant. I must write that one down in my witty retorts book.'

Holly was trying to come up with an actual witty retort, when their target appeared at the motel-room door. He was a harmless-looking pixie, barely half a metre high, but you didn't have to be tall to drive a lorry of fish. The smuggling bosses hired pixies as drivers and couriers because they looked so innocent and childlike. Holly had read this pixie's jacket, and she knew that he was anything but innocent.