Samiha Tasnim

Why aren't I allowed to be indefinitely incomplete, too?




“Our lives aren't so different from a crossword puzzle, sure. But the thing about life is we don't get to draw the grid; we take the rows and columns we're given. Our bodies, parents, mental health issues, all that. What we do get to do is fill the cells. And rather than filling mine with anxiety over medical school or Greek politics—instead of feeling trapped by my circumstance—I fill them with arbitrary words. An eight-letter word for ‘snowstorm' or a three-letter word for ‘soda.' Silly shit that's true but doesn't mean anything. I can live with my downs and acrosses; I accept the larger truths of my life. But I don't take the cells so seriously.”




It was the opposite of a walk of shame. It was a walk of game. Stride of pride. Pace of Ace.

‘Don't be alarmed, Mister Xuan,' smiled Artemis. ‘The weapons will not be used on you.'
Nguyen didn't seem reassured.
‘No,' continued Artemis. ‘Butler could kill you a hundred different ways without the use of his armoury. Though I'm sure one would be quite sufficient.'

Artemis cracked his knuckles. Time to do what he did best - plot dastardly acts.

Foaly was a paranoid centaur, convinced that human intelligence agencies were monitoring his transport and surveillance network. To prevent them reading his mind, he wore a tinfoil hat at all times.

Confidence is ignorance,' advised the centaur. ‘If you're feeling cocky, it's because there's something you don't know.'

‘Arrrrgh,' said one of the dock hands. It was all he could manage.
Butler raised an eyebrow. ‘Argh? Pathetic and inarticulate. Nice combination. Your mothers must be so proud.'

If I win, I'm a prodigy. If I lose then I'm mad. That's the way history is written.


‘Well, he's only twelve years old. And that's young, even for a human.'
Root snorted, jacking a new battery into his tri-barrelled blaster.
‘Too much damned TV. Thinks he's Sherlock Holmes.'
‘That's Professor Moriarty,' corrected Foaly.
‘Holmes, Moriarty, they both look the same with the flesh scorched off their skulls.'

Artemis put on his best sinister face. Evil, he told himself, evil but highly intelligent. And determined, don't forget determined. He put a hand on the doorknob. Steady now. Deep breaths, and try not to think about the possibility that you have misjudged this situation and are about to be shot dead. One, two, three...He opened the door.
‘Good evening,' he said, every inch the gracious host, albeit a sinister, evil, intelligent and determined one.

Pathetic really: I don't like lollipops. No self-respecting criminal mastermind would be caught dead even using the word lollipops. He really would have to put together a database of witty responses for occasions such as this.

‘Take cover?'
‘Yes, Butler. Cover. I thought speaking in primal terms would be the quickest route to your cognitive functions. Obviously I was mistaken.'

No one built weapons of cruelty like the Mud Men.

So would also their house, some time, return into the earth, their bodies also. Each had his turn at this earth.

Words were to her things to be caught one by one and released with difficulty.

The glasses vibrate with little screams when I touch them. If I pick them up, they'll shatter. “


For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. For one breath everything feels better.


She offered herself to the big, bad wolf and didn't scream when he took the first bite.


Why? You want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and peels off, roll in coarse salt, then pull on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight. Smoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and bitch and whore and worst of all “a disappointment.” Puke and starve and cut and drink because you don't want to feel any of this. Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it's too late because you are main-lining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can't stop. Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everysinglething is wrong with you.
“Why?” is the wrong question. Ask “Why not?”


The crap we put up with when we're awake every day—school, house, house, mall, world—is bad enough. Shouldn't I at least get a break when I'm asleep? Or, if I'm doomed to be haunted by ghosts, shouldn't they only work at night, and dissolve when hit by sunlight?


In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves, and sometimes we do such a good job, we lose track of reality.


If I had lady-spider legs, I would weave a sky where the stars lined up. Mattresses would be tied down tight to their trucks, bodies would never crash through windshields. The moon would rise above the wine-dark sea and give babies only to maidens and musicians who had prayed long and hard. Lost girls wouldn't need compasses or maps. They would find gingerbread paths to lead them out of the forest and home again.


When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out. But it's a lie.


I'm learning how to be angry and sad and lonely and joyful and excited and afraid and happy. I am learning how to taste everything.


The tiny elf dancer became a wooden doll whose strings were jerked by people not paying attention.

Your little schemes have a tendency to get people hurt. Usually the people who care about you.


‘aurum potestas est' — ‘Gold is power'


When the moment comes will you take your chance to be a hero?'


I never tell anybody exactly how clever I am. They would be too scared.


‘Bury you alive? That's terrible! You'd be screaming and clawing the dirt. I could get nightmares.'
‘I promise to lie still. Anyway, I deserve it. I did call you a pair of overdeveloped, single-celled Cro-Magnons.'


Artemis was well aware of his talents. He was a plotter, a schemer, a planner of dastardly deeds.


‘Mulch. Of all the fairy People, I will miss your services the most. We could have had such a future together.'
Mulch looked a touch teary. ‘True. With your brains and my special talents.'
‘Not to mention your mutual lack of morals,' interjected Holly.
‘No bank on the planet would have been safe,' completed the dwarf. ‘A missed opportunity.'


I am Artemis Fowl, the latest in the Fowl crime dynasty, and I will not be turned from my path.

‘I thought you were one of a kind, Artemis, but that girl is a smart one.'
‘Yes,' said Artemis, musing. ‘She's a regular juvenile criminal mastermind.'
Below ground, in Section Eight HQ, Foaly groaned into his microphone. ‘Great,' he said. ‘Now there are two of you.'


I am young enough to believe in magic and old enough to understand how it works.


Oh, shut up, responded her irritated side eloquently.


‘How do you like the plan so far?'
‘Well, I don't like the first bit and I don't know the last bit. So, I'm really hoping the middle bit is exceptional.'


Why is it, he wondered, that the smart ones always think that they're invincible?


Even No1 was entranced. ‘What is that?'
Qwan fluttered his fingers, causing the monkey to somersault.
‘It's a simple magical construct. Instead of allowing the sparks to roam on instinct, I marshal them into a recognizable form. It takes time and effort, but in time you will have this micro-control too.'
‘No,' said No1. ‘I mean what is that?'
Qwan sighed. ‘It's a monkey.'


‘I know magic can be stolen,' said Artemis. ‘Because I stole some myself.'


Holly had been dead and now she was alive.
Artemis's hand tingled with the phantom memory of a gun it may or may not have held moments before.
There will be consequences for this, he thought. You can't alter events in time and be unaffected. But whatever the consequences are, I will bear them, because the alternative is too terrible.


Artemis focused on the important things he had left behind, and realized that they were all people. Mother, Father, Butler, Foaly and Mulch. Possessions that he had believed important now meant nothing.