The Search for Artemis (The Chronicles of Landon Wicker)

by Griffith, P. D.

  “Ah, I see.” Katie Leigh rested her head in the palm of her hand and started to drum her fingers in rhythmic time on her cheek. “I hadn’t thought about that. It is a bit of a random inquiry. Maybe they overheard someone talking about her and their curiosity was too much to stand. That happens to me all the time.”

  “Yeah, but you’re Katie Leigh Chapman. This is Brock and the Cranes. I don’t picture them holing themselves up in the Library searching for the answers to all of life’s questions.” Katie Leigh stopped drumming on her cheek for a moment to give Landon another contemptuous glare.

  “Well, I still think they must have overheard someone talking about Artemis. As you said, it isn’t something they would have encountered in their studies here, and based on Brock’s inability to even know the gender of the goddess, he obviously didn’t have any real prior knowledge on the subject, which leads me to stand by my hypothesis. But I have to give him some credit. He did know she had something to do with mythology, so there’s some underlying context there that at least pointed him in the right direction.”

  “Quick question, what do your parents do for a living?” Landon interjected.

  “My mother’s a psychologist and my father’s a doctor of anthropology.”

  “Ah, so that’s why you talk that way,” Landon said as if coming to a life changing realization.

  “Ha. Funny,” Katie Leigh replied, sounding less than amused. “But now that I’m thinking about it again, his reaction to my correcting him was a bit harsh. Maybe I surprised him . . . and they were trying to do this without anyone knowing. Yeah, that would make sense. I was a victim of circumstance. As they say, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “So now I think the real question isn’t why was he looking for Artemis, but who did he overhear talking about her that it made him so curious that he ran to the Library to find out anything he could on her?”

  Landon stared at a blank space on the ceiling as he followed Katie Leigh’s train of thought. She seemed to be onto something. The ‘why’ was obvious: Brock wanted to know who Artemis was. However, the motivation behind that search was the real mystery. Landon couldn’t explain it, but for some reason he couldn’t shake the feeling that Artemis was somehow linked to the mysterious girl.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SAND AND STONES

  Landon turned his late night attentions away from the comfort of fiction and literature and moved to the Folklore and Mythology section of the Library, scouring the shelves for anything that stood out. If the Gymnasium hadn’t blocked the Internet, he would have just searched for her on his laptop, but since that wasn’t an option, he took to the books.

  Thanks to his mother, he already knew who Artemis was in the mythological sense. But at his core, he expected to find something in the texts that would stand out—some reference or clue that would prove there was more to Artemis in this situation than just being an ancient Greek goddess.

  He started with Apollodorus’ Library and checked the entries on Artemis, then reread all the stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses that referenced Diana, Artemis’ Roman name. He reviewed Hesiod’s Theogony, and then by chance, while searching the other mythology books, happened upon a work by Callimachus, Hymn III to Artemis. With every book, Landon jotted notes in one of his course notebooks, writing everything he thought might be important.

  What he’d found was that Artemis was the goddess of the moon, the hunt, wild animals and wilderness, the patron of virgins, and midwife to the gods. She was the bringer and reliever of disease in women. After she was born on the island of Delos, she sat on her father Zeus’ lap and made a few wishes. First, she asked to always remain chaste; second, to have more names than her twin brother; and third, she desired a bow and arrows fashioned by the forgers of Olympus, the Cyclopes. She then asked for a hunting tunic, a number of young maidens, all chaste, and things to keep her revered by all. Zeus obliged all of her requests.

  She was a woman dedicated to her godly duties and the hunt, and took vengeance on anyone who dishonored or disappointed her. Artemis turned a man, Acteon, into a stag for accidentally stumbling across her bathing in a lake. She killed Adonis by sending a wild boar after him after he boasted he was a better hunter. She turned one of her maids, Callisto, into a bear for breaking her vow of chastity, even though she was raped. She even killed the seven daughters of Niobe because their mother had said she was better than her own, but these were only a few of the victims who felt the sting of her divine retribution.

  After a month of scouring the shelves of his beloved Library, Landon’s search for clues had gone cold. He felt he’d learned everything there was to know about the goddess, but hadn’t seen a single thing in the numerous texts that gave him any clue to what had sparked Brock’s sudden interest in the subject. Also, nothing jumped out at him that would support his theory that Artemis and the thief were somehow linked. It didn’t help that apart from Artemis, he had no idea for what he was looking.

  Defeated, Landon left the Library around two in the morning and headed back to the dormitories through the Administrative Tower. The hallways were dark and empty. He could hear his footsteps as the sound of his shoes against the hardwood reverberated off the walls.

  Landon enjoyed that walk. It provided a much needed moment for him to think and reflect. In recent weeks, it allowed him to contemplate his new findings and try to develop or adjust his standing theories on how every odd thing was related.

  After a quick thought on the metaphorical implications of Artemis in correlation to the Gymnasium, Landon turned the corner and found, to his surprise, a light breaking the darkness of the hallway, coming from Dr. Brighton’s office. The door was cracked, and the light streamed from a narrow opening and fanned out from the slender beam until it faded into the darkness.

  Unsure if he was inside, Landon softened his step and crept down the hall to avoid alerting his professor, who apparently was working late. In all the times Landon had taken this walk to the dormitories in the dark hours of the night, there had never been anyone still in the offices. Suddenly, a shadow briefly broke the light as Landon neared the door. Someone was definitely inside. In an instant, Landon had a realization. Could it not be his professor, but instead the thief returned to steal something else from the Gymnasium?

  The mere thought of catching the girl forced Landon to freeze in place. If he was to have any success in trapping her, he’d need to do it by surprise. Stealth was no longer a good idea, but a necessity.

  As daintily as he could, Landon proceeded toward the cracked doorway, inching closer and closer with silent steps. Once near, he pressed his body close to the wall and made sure not to break the beam of light—something like that could catch in the periphery of a person’s eye.

  He slowed his breathing and subtly leaned over to peek at what was going on inside. Rather than finding the mysterious intruder, he saw Dr. Brighton slouched over in his chair, staring at some large wooden object resting on his desk. The light that had drawn Landon in was coming from a desk lamp turned to shed as much light as possible on the wooden box.

  Consumed with curiosity, Landon gingerly opened the door and leaned his head inside.

  “Professor,” he whispered, “it’s Landon. Uh, what’re you doing up this late?”

  “I should ask you the same question,” Dr. Brighton returned without turning his head away from the object before him. “Please come in. Perhaps you can help me with something.”

  The office looked like Dr. Brighton’s classroom—eclectic—but on steriods. Reams of uncolated papers, books, small trinkets and creepy, articulated animal skeletons were stacked up on every surface, around filing cabinets, lining the walls, and covering large portions of the floor. The air smelled stale and musky from the old books and papers, and Landon could see little flecks of dust floating about. The single-filament light emitted a pale, y
ellow glow and cast sinister shadows against the contours and edges of the hodgepodge office. If Dr. Brighton weren’t sitting behind his desk, Landon would have thought the place had been ransacked. It was the antithesis of what Landon understood about his methodical and particular mentor. Shutting the door behind him, Landon entered the office and sat in the wooden chair opposite the desk.

  Dr. Brighton still never took his eyes off the wooden box that sat on the only clean surface in the room, and his complete focus on it drew Landon in. Then, in the silence, Landon heard a soft but steady ticking. It was a clock, or maybe a ticking time-bomb, but Landon leaned toward the former.

  “So, Landon,” Dr. Brighton said, still not diverting his focus away from the contraption. “Truthfully, what causes a student to be up at this hour? Surely you weren’t working on something course related.”

  “No,” Landon replied. “Nothing to do with classes. It’s just I’ve been trying to figure something out, and I get so caught up in it that I totally lose track of time.”

  “Understandable. Must be something terribly important to warrant such dedication. Most students I know wouldn’t dream of doing anything that cut into their valuable sleep time.” Dr. Brighton paused for a moment as his face contorted and he peculiarly glared at the clock. “But as Leo Tolstoy said, ‘The two most powerful forces are patience and time.’ If you accept that, I’m confident you will eventually find your answer.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Landon returned with trepidation. He felt a bit awkward having a conversation with someone who was so obviously focused on something else altogether, and that in turn, was making him nervous. “I’m sure I will.”

  “Anyways, to get to the reason I allowed you to come in. You see this clock here. Something is wrong with it, and I cannot figure out what exactly. Perhaps you can help me diagnose and correct the problem.”

  “Well, back home whenever the television or anything wasn’t working right, we’d just whack it until it got better.”

  Dr. Brighton let out a small laugh. “Ah, if only that would work here. I’m afraid this contraption would only get worse were I to ‘whack it.’ Clocks are very temperamental pieces of equipment.”

  “Well, what do you know is wrong with it so far?” Landon asked.

  “What? You don’t hear it?” Dr. Brighton returned quickly. “Listen.”

  Landon closed his eyes and tried to focus on whatever Dr. Brighton was hearing. Apart from the gentle hum of his breath and the almost inaudible electrical hissing of the lamp, all Landon could hear was the steady ticking of the gears turning in the clock.

  “What am I supposed to be hearing?” Landon asked hesitantly. He’d hope to impress his teacher with his natural ability to discern clock abnormalities via auditory stimulus, but not so much.

  “The ticking. This clock is a fraction of a second out of sync.”

  “Oh, of course,” Landon replied matter-of-factly. “The clock’s out of sync. I heard that, but I was thinking you were talking about some other problem with it. Is a fraction of a second something to worry over? That’s such a small amount.”

  “Were you not listening to what I said? ‘The two most powerful forces are patience and time.’ Time is so important that you must ensure it is precise and accurate. Unless this clock is fixed, it is useless. We must fix the problem now before it grows and throws everything off. If we allow this clock to continue, its inaccuracy will compound and eventually be a full second off, and then a minute and so on and so forth. Any ideas?”

  “Umm . . . ”

  “Try using your abilities. Maybe by searching it, you’ll see something I haven’t that might be causing the problem.”

  “If you think it’ll help.” Landon leaned forward in his chair and stared at the back of the clock. With a deep breath, he tapped into his abilities and became fuzzily aware of everything around him, including the wooden timekeeper sitting before him. “I just see the clock.”

  “Look deeper, Landon.”

  With another breath he attempted to focus his feeling solely on the clock. As he reached in deeper, he began to sense the gears and pieces that made up the mechanism inside, but they were hidden within a foggy haze. Landon still hadn’t garnered the sensitivity in his abilities that allowed him to see clearly through his gifts. “I don’t feel anything odd, but I really don’t know what I’m looking for.”

  “That does make it difficult,” Dr. Brighton said pensively as he stroked his chin. “Clocks are complex machines—gears, cogs, pins, dials, crystals, weights, needles and keys—understanding them is like understanding fate. Like every event in our lives, one affects the other until it results in the foreseen end.”

  Suddenly, Dr. Brighton’s eyes opened wide and gleamed with excitement. He then leaned away from the desk and raised his right hand, palm upward. The clock lifted off the desk and rose into the air until it was two feet above the tabletop.

  Following the clock on its upward path, Landon’s eyes moved up in their sockets as his head tilted backward. The clock hung there, suspended above their heads, and then in an instant, as if a silent bomb had exploded, the clock burst apart.

  To avoid the onslaught of debris and shrapnel, Landon instinctively shut his eyes and turned away, shielding himself, but nothing hit him. He waited a few moments, still unsure if it was safe to lower his guard, but the dead silence made him curious. He cracked his eyelids and looked around, but he never expected what he saw.

  The clock itself was nowhere to be seen, but its individual parts were scattered throughout the office. Each component suspended in the air, floating peacefully. Landon rose slowly from his chair to get a better look around. The gears, cogs, pins and crystals were everywhere around him, but seemingly undamaged. Landon looked over to Dr. Brighton, who had also risen to his feet and was walking around his desk. His head moved as he took in each piece of the clock hanging around him.

  As he reached out to touch a small gear, he began to speak. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? Man has no control over time. It merely passes us by and drives us to our inevitable deaths, yet we fight so hard to capture it.” Dr. Brighton continued to saunter around the office as he looked at the parts with a sense of wonderment in his eyes. “It takes every one of these parts, perfectly calibrated, to bottle just the measurement of time. People fight for power, for riches. They build guns and weapons believing those are what makes them invincible, yet none of them realize they are slaves to time. . . . Ah ha!”

  Dr. Brighton stopped dead in his tracks. Landon intently watched him, waiting to understand what his professor had seen. Delicately, Dr. Brighton extended his hand into the air and pinched an empty space above him. Landon found himself questioning the sanity of his teacher. After the tips of Dr. Brighton’s index finger and thumb closed around the invisible object, he pulled his hand to his chest, walked back to his seat, and sat down.

  Then, looking to fall asleep, Dr. Brighton shut his eyes before raising his head slightly as if he was concentrating on something. Landon watched as all the components of the clock—the dial, the gears, the pins, the needles, even the wooden boards of its frame—pulled in toward an invisible point on the desk. It reminded Landon of stars and planets being drawn into a black hole, but rather than disappearing into a massive circle of darkness, the pieces clinked and clanked until the clock, fully reformed, laid on Dr. Brighton’s desk. The subtle ticking of the working timepiece could be heard again.

  Landon sat in awe, his mouth hanging open as he stared in wonderment at the clock.

  “That was amazing!” he shouted excitedly.

  “Thank you, but I’m more excited that I found the source of the problem.” Dr. Brighton held up his hand, his fingers still pinched together.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s actually just a speck of sand.” Dr. Brighton shook his head slightly. “It still ba
ffles me that something so trivial can completely throw off the entire system.” The professor released his fingers. Landon watched for the sand to fall onto the tabletop, but it was too small for him to see. “Well, I’m exhausted,” Dr. Brighton continued, sounding spent. “I’ve been at this for hours. I believe it’s time for bed. You should do the same, Landon.”

  Dr. Brighton stood up and telekinetically pulled the clock into his arms. Landon followed suit and stood up, waiting to leave the office with his professor.

  “Oh, just because I’m curious,” Dr. Brighton started again as he stepped around the desk. “This extracurricular project you’re working on, what’s it about?”

  “Oh, I’ve just been researching Artemis. You know, the Greek goddess?”

  Dr. Brighton straightened suddenly and turned on his heels. He looked Landon dead in the eyes while he tightly clutched the clock in his hands.

  “Where did you hear that name?” he asked sternly.

  Landon felt a chill roll down his spine as a wave of awkward energy passed through him. He instantly regreted telling Dr. Brighton the truth.

  “I overheard someone in the hallway. Why?” he replied nervously. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Of course not.” Landon watched as Dr. Brighton appeared to relax a bit. “But if you want my opinion, I think you should be spending your nights in bed, resting, not holed up in the Library studying things that aren’t even a part of the curriculum.” Dr. Brighton moved to the door, opened it, and turned to Landon, ushering him to exit into the hallway. “Come on.”

  Landon stepped into the hall and watched as his professor turned off his office light and shut the door.

  “Good night, sir,” Landon said as he turned to go to his dorm room.