The Fowl Twins: Prologue–Chapter 3

For ten thousand years, fairies have used our magic and technology to shield ourselves from prying eyes, and to heal the beleaguered Earth mother, Danu.

But there is always one maverick who does not care a fig for fairy mosaics and is hell-bent on reaching the surface.

But nevertheless, over the course of five years, Lord Teddy managed to track down several of these elusive oldsters, finding them all to be either tediously virtuous, which was of little use to him, or lucky, which could neither be counted on nor stolen.

When Lord Teddy came upon the envelope from AAMSL in his pile of mail, he sliced it open listlessly, fully expecting that the Brother Colman excursion had been a bally waste of precious time and shrinking fortune.

The laboratory report was brief and cursory in the way of scientists:
The supplied specimen, it read, is in the four-hundred- to five-hundred-year-old age range.

Myles became ever more fastidious, 3-D-printing a fresh suit every day and taming his wild jet-black Fowl hair with a seaweed-based gel that both moisturized the scalp and nourished the brain, while Beckett made zero attempt to tame the blond curls that he had inherited from his mother's side of the family, and continued to sulk when he was forced to wear any clothes, with the exception of the only article he never removed—a golden necktie that had once been Gloop.

The twins’ father was once the world's preeminent crime lord, but he had a change of heart and reinvented himself as a champion of the environment.

Myles and Beckett’s older brother, Artemis the Second, had also been quite the criminal virtuoso, hatching schemes involving massive amounts of gold bullion, fairy police forces, and time travel, to name but a few.

The design was modern but utilitarian, with a nod to the island's monastic heritage in the curved walls of its outbuildings, which were constructed with straw bales.

They are, however, quite feral and only slightly more sentient than the average hound.

Another interesting point about trolls is that fairy scholars of their pathologies have realized that trolls are highly susceptible to chemically induced psychosis while also tending to nest in chemically polluted sites, in much the same way as humans are attracted to the sugar that poisons them.

The supersonic cellophane slug made a distinctive yodeling noise as it sped through the air, and impacted the toy Ridgeback square in the solar plexus, releasing its payload in a sparkling globule that quickly sprawled over the tiny creature, wrapping it in a restrictive layer of cellophane before it could do much more than squeak in indignation.

But the boy chided himself, remembering that Angry Hamster was a sculpture that he himself had constructed from chewed paper and bodily fluids and therefore not a living thing, and so he would have to revise his guess as to what this tumbling figure might be.

Beckett turned to show Myles his beach salvage, though his brother had always been a little snooty when it came to toys, claiming they were for children even though he was patently himself a child and would be for a few more years.

Myles noted that there had been no discernible impact on his spine, and while acceleration was rapid—zero to sixty miles an hour in four seconds smartwatch—the ride was not jarring.

Surprise the second: The troll was tiny. Who ever heard of a tiny troll?
Surprise the last (for the moment): Flying boys had sequestered his prey.

Off the battlefield, it was unseemly to shoot anything except pheasant, unless one were engaged in a duel.

Hybrids are common enough among the fairy folk, especially since the families were forced into close quarters underground, but even so, they are each and every one idiosyncratic, for all hybrids are as unique as snowflakes and the manifestation of their magical abilities is unpredictable.

In Lazuli Heitz’s case, her magic had resolutely refused to manifest itself in any shape or form.

And just in case there was any lingering doubt, Lazuli’s skin and eyes were the aquamarine blue of Atlantean pixies, but her hair was the fine flaxen blond associated with Amazonian elves.

It was exceedingly exasperating for a pixel not to possess the magical phenotypic trait, especially since her driving ambition was to achieve the rank of captain in the LEPrecon, a post where abilities such as the mesmer, invisibility, and healing powers would most certainly prove to be boons.

Fortunately for Heitz, her obdurate streak, sharp mind, and dead eye with an oxalis pistol had so far carried her through two years of intense training in the LEP Academy and now to specialist duty in a safe zone.

A specialist’s mettle was often stress-tested by mocking up an emergency and observing how the cadet coped.

Rookies referred to this testing as being thrown a stinkworm, because, as every fairy knew, if a person was thrown an actual stinkworm and they mishandled it, there would be an explosive, viscous, and foul-smelling outcome.

All this speculation took Lazuli perhaps three seconds, thanks to her sharp mind.

Lazuli reached into one of the myriad pockets in her suit and drew out a pressurized pod of chromophoric camouflage filaments held together by reinforced spider silk.

As she fell, Lazuli had the presence of mind to notice a ragged shroud of Filabuster filaments assemble around the small island, rendering it invisible to anyone outside the field.

Though perhaps her thoughts were not so lucid. Perhaps they were more as follows: Aaaargh! Sky! Rescue! D’Arvit!

To explain: As the twins were so dissimilar in everything except for physiognomy, it was not unusual for the actions of the one to confound the mind of the other.

To explain: As the twins were so dissimilar in everything except for physiognomy, it was not unusual for the actions of the one to confound the mind of the other.

Myles had lost count of how many times Beckett's attempted conversations with wildlife had bewildered his logical brain, and Beckett, for his part, was flummoxed on an hourly basis by his brother's scientific lectures.

First, the AI located a dissipating bullet vapor trace and followed it back to the mainland to find that there was a camouflaged sniper there, a hirsute chap with an antique Russian Mosin-Nagant rifle, which would be over eighty years old, if NANNI was correct.

Artemis had set a twenty-two-digit security code on his door that he did not realize Myles had suggested to him subliminally by whispering into his ear every night for a week as he slept.

“I just am,” said Beckett, which was an often-employed phrase guaranteed to drive Myles into paroxysms of indignant rage.

It was undeniable that this was a touch melodramatic, but Myles felt justified in indulging his weakness, as there was a rappelling nun at the front door.

Now, one and a half centuries later, the duke’s general mood had not improved much, though he tended to take out his frustrations on other people’s property rather than his own and let his irritation fester in his stomach acid.

Whistling, Teddy old boy? Surely you ought to be sinking into your usual vengeful funk.
But no, he was verging on the exuberant.

Each item was embossed with a copy of the famous Modigliani line portrait of the duke from 1915.

The second boy was making bird noises at passing seagulls, while the woman in black plied the bespectacled kid with questions that he blithely ignored, maintaining both his eye contact with Lazuli and a broad grin.

The ad hoc plan had been to clamp herself on to the skids, but there were already armed soldiers occupying those spots, so Lazuli had no choice but to slip between the troops, careful not to nudge against the automatic weapons, for it was a universal truth that warriors of any species do not like their guns being touched.