Artemis Fowl_ The Opal Deception - Eoin Colfer [59]
Something nudged Holly’s arm. An aqua-pod. It was anchored to the grille by a plastic tie. Opal’s face filled the small screen sealed inside, and her grin filled most of her face. She was saying something again and again on a short loop. The words were inaudible over the din of sluice and bubble, but the meaning was clear: I beat you again.
Holly grabbed the aqua-pod, ripping it from its tether. The effort threw her from the slipstream into the relatively calm surrounding waters. Her strength was gone, and she had no option but to go where the river led her. Artemis dragged himself from the flat face of the grille, using the last of his oxygen to kick his legs, just twice.
He was free of the whirlpool, floating along after Holly toward a dark mound farther down the river. Air, he thought with keen desperation, I need to breathe. Not soon. Now. If not now, never.
Artemis broke the surface mouth first. His throat was sucking down air before the water cleared. The first breath came back up, laced with fluid, but the second was clear, and the third. Artemis felt the strength flow back into his limbs like mercury in his veins.
Holly was safe. Lying on a dark island in the river. Her chest heaved like a bellows and the aqua-pod lay beneath her splayed fingers.
“Uh-uh,” said Opal Koboi on-screen. “So-o-o predictable.” She said it over and over, until Artemis struggled from the shallow water, climbed on the mound, and found the MUTE button.
“I am really starting to dislike her,” he panted. “She may come to regret little touches like the underwater television, because it’s things like this that give me the motivation to get out of here.”
Holly sat up, looking around. They were sitting on a mound of rubbish. Artemis guessed that since Opal had welded the grille across the filter pipe, the current had swept everything that the trolls discarded to this shallow spot. A small island of junk in the river bend. There were disembodied robot heads on the heap, along with battered statues and troll remains. Troll skulls with the thick wedge of forehead bone and rotting pelts.
At least those particular trolls could not eat them. The dangerous trolls that had followed them were working themselves up into a lather again along the banks on both sides. But there was at least twenty feet of six-inch-deep water separating them from the land. They were safe, for the moment.
Artemis felt memories attempting to break through to the surface. He was on the verge of remembering everything, he was certain of it. He sat completely still, willing it to happen. Unconnected images flashed behind his eyes: a mountain of gold, green scaly creatures snorting fireballs, Butler packed in ice. But the images slid from his consciousness like drops of water off a windshield.
Holly sat up. “Anything?”
“Maybe,” said Artemis. “Something. I’m not sure. Everything is happening so fast. I need time to meditate.”
“We’re out of time,” said Holly, climbing to the top of the junk pile. Skulls cracked beneath her feet. “Look.”
Artemis turned toward the left bank. One of the trolls had picked up a large rock and raised it over his head. Artemis tried to make himself small. If that rock hit, they would both be gravely injured, at the very least.
The troll grunted like a tennis pro serving, spinning the rock into the river. It barely missed the pile, landing with a huge splash in the shallow waters.
“A poor shot,” said Holly.
Artemis frowned. “I doubt it.”
A second troll grabbed a missile, and a third. Soon all the brutes were hurling rocks, robot parts, sticks, or whatever they could get their hands on toward the rubbish heap. Not one hit the shivering pair huddled on the pile.
“They keep missing,” said Holly. “Every one of them.”
Artemis’s bones ached from cold, fear, and sustained tension.
“They’re not trying to hit us,” he said. “They’re building a bridge.”
Tara, Ireland; Dawn
The fairy shuttleport in Tara was the biggest in Europe. More than eight thousand tourists a year passed