Myles’s vision was blurred now, perhaps from the myopia, or perhaps from the intensity of his concentration, but it seemed to him that Beckett’s pink scar glowed, and he felt his own scar twitch in response, seeking the contact.
If we freeze this moment and examine the psychology, some might say that all this palaver seems a bit much for something that amounts to little more than a pinkie promise, but those people hugely underestimate the power of a connection between those born of the same pregnancy. Twins are often at a loss to describe this connection to singletons, but Myles Fowl, unsurprisingly, has tried. He hypothesized in an article for the Journal of Biological Sciences that regarding the emotional pull that exists between twins, we are permanently beyond each other’s event horizons, so to speak, and the mental fortitude necessary to escape that force could possibly have actual physical implications for the amygdala. While Beckett once wrote in rainbow pencil for his English teacher that Myles is like the other me, but boring.
Both boys were correct.
And the sacred wrist bump was a potent reminder to the Fowl Twins of their mental and physical bond. As babies in their double cradle, the twins often slept with their scars aligned, which supposedly reminded them of their time in the womb, and since those days they had used the wrist bump to seal every promise they had made to each other.
It was their thing.
Their gesture.
No one had ever forced it upon them until now.
Myles lifted his hand, and the closer it moved to Beckett’s wrist, the stronger the attraction grew until the scars synched and the twins felt a wave of contentment wash over them, smothering their anxiety somewhat.
Artemis Senior felt jealous of their zen calm. “I wish I had a mystical scar,” he said. “Better than yoga. Now promise you will do as I say.”
“We promise,” said Myles, a little too quickly.
Artemis Senior zipped his top up to his chin. “One last desperate roll of the dice, eh, son? Now do it properly. Say the magic words.”
“We will do as you say,” said the twins in unison. “Wrist-bump promise.”
Their father was satisfied. “And so it shall be.”
Myles lowered his hand, coming out of the shared mindset into the real world.
“And now I suppose we must seek out Mother in the main house and get busy with our chores.”
Myles said the word chores with the contempt he usually reserved for Einstein.
“Just you, Myles,” said Artemis Senior, and the angry slash in his brow softened. “Beckett has a job to do.”
A person didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what that job might be, but Myles was a genius and so he figured it out all the faster, and his heart ached for his brother.
TROLLS are usually and correctly thought of as humongous, shaggy fellows with quite the aggressive attitude and, indeed, the destructive capability to back this up, but Beckett’s friend Whistle Blower was one of a diminutive breed known as toy trolls and stood barely eight inches tall. This is not to say there was a proportional decrease in aggression—in fact, Whistle Blower was, if anything, more pugnacious than his gigantic counterparts, but as Beckett explained to Myles, much of the little chap’s bellicose attitude could be attributed to social anxiety. This was a statement that Myles appreciated, as he himself had but a single non-Fowl friend, plus he’d introduced the phrase social anxiety at one of his breakfast lectures and so was delighted to hear his twin apply it in a real-world situation, confirming his belief that Beckett could whip out the smarts when it suited him.
The point being that, as a part of this new best behavior routine, Beckett had been instructed to cut his tiny friend loose, as having a troll on the island quite clearly violated the fraternizing with fairies rule. All of which led to Beckett being dispatched to the Dalkey Island beach to break the news to Whistle Blower.
The troll was there before him, perched on his feeding rock and gnawing at a hank of something that had probably been alive until recently. From a distance, one might easily have mistaken the troll for an action figure from some fantasy series with his blue-gray fur, pronounced musculature, and squashed, pug-like features. Take heed when I urge you not to toss a pebble at the feet of any presumed action figure you may encounter in a remote area, just in case the figure is actually a toy troll that could easily dismember you and consume at least one of your limbs before you have the time to say Wait a minute, that’s not a—
Luckily for Beckett, he was the toy troll’s only human friend, because, as previously mentioned, Beckett was a trans-species polyglot and could converse with Whistle Blower, who had a uniquely sophisticated vocabulary for a troll. In the interests of clarity and expedience, the following conversation, though conducted through the medium of Trollish speech and gesture, will be documented in English.
Beckett sat down on the rock beside his troll friend. “What are you doing there, pal?”
“Eating untainted meat that I caught deep in the tunnels,” said Whistle Blower. “My diet is all organic, and I try to stay clear of polluted ground, so I have to go deep.”
Anyone eavesdropping on this grunted conversation would never have guessed that a troll’s vocabulary included the words organic or polluted, and usually it did not. But Beckett had, for once, taken on the role of lecturer and recently warned the troll about the effects of soil and water pollution on the mind.
Beckett sighed heavily.
“So, what’s up, Beck?” asked the troll. “I’m getting a weird vibe. Like you have bad news.”
“I do have bad news,” said the human boy. “The worst, actually.”
Whistle Blower froze, the hank of meat halfway to his mouth. “Don’t tell me Myles wants to hang out with us again. I have tusk-ache from trying to teach him my language the last time. The guy is a dope.”
The gesture for dope was a tug on the left ear, as apparently there had once been a bent-eared troll whose dopiness was legendary.
“That’s not the news,” said Beckett. And then he felt obliged to add, “And Myles is not a dope.”
“He is so a dope,” insisted Whistle Blower, combing his stiff mohawk with greasy fingers. “He can’t climb, he can’t dig, and he can’t fight. That all spells dope in the troll world.”
Myles would have been proud of his twin had he heard the next sentence. “There are multiple intelligences, Whistle, and Myles is the best at most of them.”
The toy troll grunted an If you say so and then asked, “What’s the bad news, then?”
Beckett tried to organize his sentences mentally for a moment. Usually he left the transmission of information to Myles, but he was on his own this time.
“The bad news is this,” he said, still not sure which words were going to come out. “The fairies know that you and I are meeting up. They’re watching us right now from up high, beyond the sky, with a magic spyglass.”
Whistle Blower raised both of his shaggy eyebrows. “Magic spyglass? I know what satellite surveillance is, buddy. I thought Myles bamboozled that.”
“He did,” said Beckett. “But then we exploded a jet, and Father met with the fairies, and now we are up the creek without a paddle.”
“Up the creek without a paddle?” asked Whistle Blower. “Do you mean we’re caught in a dwarf’s jet stream without a bandanna?”