Lilies, thought Artemis. Sweet, yet tinged with sickness.
Angeline’s eyes opened abruptly, round with panic. Her back arched as she sucked a breath through a constricted windpipe, clutching at the air with clawed hands. Just as suddenly she collapsed, and Artemis thought for a terrible moment that she was gone.
But then her eyelids fluttered and she reached a hand for him.
“Arty,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper. “I am having the strangest dream.” A short sentence, but it took an age to complete, with a rasped breath between each word.
Artemis took his mother’s hand. How slender it was. A parcel of bones.
“Or perhaps I am awake and my other life is a dream.”
Artemis was pained to hear his mother speak like this; it reminded him of the odd turns she used to suffer from.
“You’re awake, Mother, and I am here. You have a light fever and are a little dehydrated, that’s all. Nothing to be concerned about.”
“How can I be awake, Arty?” said Angeline, her eyes calm in black circles. “When I feel myself dying. How can I be awake when I feel that?”
Artemis’s feigned calm was knocked by this.
“It’s the . . . fever,” he stammered. “You’re seeing things a little strangely. Everything will be fine soon. I promise.”
Angeline closed her eyes. “And my son keeps his promises, I know. Where have you been these past years, Arty? We were so worried. Why are you not seventeen?”
In her delirium, Angeline Fowl saw through a haze of magic to the truth. She realized that he had been missing for three years and had come home the same age as he had gone away.
“I am fourteen, Mother. Almost fifteen now, still a boy for another while. Now close your eyes, and when you open them again, all will be well.”
“What have you done to my thoughts, Artemis? Where has your power come from?”
Artemis was sweating now. The heat of the room, the sickly smell, his own anxiety.
She knows. Mother knows. If you heal her, will she remember everything?
It didn’t matter. That could be dealt with in due time. His priority was to mend his parent.
Artemis squeezed the frail hand in his grip, feeling the bones grind against each other. He was about to use magic on his mother for the second time.
Magic did not belong in Artemis’s soul and gave him lightning-bolt headaches whenever he used it. Though he was human, the fairy rules of magic held a certain sway over him. He was forced to chew motion sickness tablets before entering a dwelling uninvited, and when the moon was full, Artemis could often be found in the library listening to music at maximum volume to drown out the voices in his head—the great commune of magical creatures. The fairies had powerful race memories, and they surfaced like a tidal wave of raw emotion, bringing migraines with them.
Sometimes Artemis wondered if stealing the magic had been a mistake, but recently the symptoms had stopped. No more migraines or sickness. Perhaps his brain was adapting to the strain of being a magical creature.
Artemis held his mother’s fingers gently, closed his eyes, and cleared his mind.
Magic. Only magic.
The magic was a wild force and needed to be controlled. If Artemis let his thoughts ramble, the magic would ramble too, and he could open his eyes to find his mother still sick but with different-color hair.
Heal, he thought. Be well, Mother.
The magic responded to his wish, spreading along his limbs, buzzing, tingling. Blue sparks circled his wrists, twitching like schools of tiny minnows. Almost as if they were alive.
Artemis thought of his mother in better times. He saw her skin radiant, her eyes shining with happiness. Heard her laugh, felt her touch on his neck. Remembered the strength of Angeline Fowl’s love for her family.
That is what I want.
The sparks sensed his wishes and flowed into Angeline Fowl, sinking into the skin of her hand and wrist, twisting in ropes around her gaunt arms. Artemis pushed harder, and a river of magical flickers flowed from his fingers into his mother.
Heal, he thought. Drive out the sickness.
Artemis had used his magic before, but this time was different. There was resistance, as though his mother’s body did not wish to be healed and was rejecting the power. Sparks fizzled on her skin, spasmed, and winked out.
More, thought Artemis. More.
He pushed harder, ignoring the sudden blinding headache and rumbling nausea.
Heal, Mother.
The magic wrapped his mother like an Egyptian mummy, snaking underneath her body, raising her six inches from the mattress. She shuddered and moaned, steam venting from her pores, sizzling as it touched the blue sparks.
She is in pain, thought Artemis, opening one eye a slit. In agony. But I cannot stop now.
Artemis dug down deep, searching his extremities for the last scraps of magic inside him.