Artemis Fowl_ The Opal Deception - Eoin Colfer [70]
“Nobody’s that perfect. That’s how I knew.”
The trolls were hurrying now, swinging their hairy forearms forward to increase momentum. As their confidence returned, so did their voices. Their howls to the roof bounced back off the metal structure. Artemis drew his knees closer to his chin. The end. All over. Inconceivable that he should die this way, when there was so much to be done.
The howling made it hard to concentrate. The smell didn’t help either.
Holly gripped his shoulder. “Close your eyes, Artemis. You won’t feel a thing.”
But Artemis did not close his eyes. Instead he cast his gaze upward. Aboveground, where his parents were waiting to hear from him. Parents who never had the chance to be truly proud of him.
He opened his mouth to whisper a good-bye, but what he saw over his head choked the words in his throat.
“That proves it,” he said. “This must be a hallucination.”
Holly looked upward. A section of the hemisphere’s panel had been removed, and a rope was being lowered toward the temple roof. Swinging from the rope was what appeared to be a naked and extremely hairy rear end.
“I don’t believe it!” Holly exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “You took your sweet time getting here!”
She seemed to be conversing with a posterior. And then, even more amazingly, the posterior appeared to answer.
“I love you too, Holly. Now, close anything that’s open, because I’m about to overload these troll’s senses.”
For a moment Holly’s face was blank, then realization widened her eyes and sucked the blood from her cheeks. She grabbed Artemis by the shoulders.
“Lie flat with your hands over your ears. Shut your eyes and mouth. And whatever you do, don’t breathe in.”
Artemis lay on the roof. “Tell me there’s a creature on the other end of that posterior.”
“There is,” confirmed Holly. “But it’s the posterior we have to worry about.”
The trolls were seconds away by this point. Close enough for Holly and Artemis to see the red in their eyes and the years of dirt caked in every dreadlock.
Overhead, Mulch Diggums (for of course it was he) released a gentle squib of wind from his backside. Just enough to propel him in a gentle circle on the end of his rope. The circular motion was necessary to ensure an even spread of the gas he intended to release. Once he had completed three revolutions, he bore down internally and let fly with every bubble of gas in his bloated stomach.
Because trolls are by nature tunnel creatures, they are guided as much by their sense of smell as their night vision. A blinded troll can often survive for years, navigating his way to food and water supplies by smell alone.
Mulch’s sudden gaseous recyclings sent a million conflicting scent messages to each troll’s brain. The smell was bad enough, and the wind was sufficient to blow back the trolls’ dreadlocks, but the combination of scents inside the dwarf gas, including clay, vegetation, insect life, and everything else Mulch had eaten over the past few days, was enough to short out the trolls’ entire nervous systems. They collapsed to their knees, clasping their poor aching heads in taloned hands. One was so close to Artemis and Holly that its shaggy forearm rested across the LEP captain’s back.
Holly wriggled out from under the limb. “Let’s go,” she said, pulling Artemis to his feet. “The gas won’t put the trolls out for any longer than the light.”
Overhead, Mulch’s revolutions were slowing.
“I thank you,” he said with a theatrical bow, which is not easy on a rope. The dwarf scampered up the rope, gripping with fingers and toes, then lowered it to Artemis and Holly.
“Jump on,” he said. “Quickly.”
Artemis tested the rope skeptically. “Surely that strange creature is too small to haul both of us all the way up there.”
Holly placed her foot in a loop at the rope’s end. “True, but he’s not alone.”
Artemis squinted at the hemisphere’s missing panel. Another figure had appeared in the gap. The figure’s features were in deep shadow, but the silhouette was unmistakable.
“Butler!” he said through his smile. “You’re here.”
And suddenly,