The Search for Artemis (The Chronicles of Landon Wicker) (13 page)

“You have to be patient. These gifts, . . . they are ‘like the seed put in the soil—the more one sows, the greater the harvest.’”

“What are you talking about?” Landon asked, exasperated.

“Your gifts—they are as a seed, dormant within you until they’re ready to spring forth and grow. In your case, that seed has but germinated into a tiny sprout, searching for the light of the sun. Once it finds it, the sprout will grow into a magnificent tree. With water, proper care and patience, that sprout will take root and thrive. You just have to help it get there.”

Landon stood there without as much as a sound, his head downturned toward the floor. Dr. Brighton walked to him and rested his hand upon Landon’s shoulder again.

“Don’t worry. This is your first day. You’ll get it in time.”

• • • • •

“So, you’re the great Landon Wicker.”

Following his training, Landon returned to his room, hoping to be alone with his thoughts, only to find Brock had returned. He rested on his disheveled bed, leaning against the headboard with his hands cupped behind his head and his legs casually crossed on the mattress.

“Landon Wicker? . . . Yes. Great? . . . Far from it.”

Landon drifted over to his desk and flopped languidly into his chair. He then proceeded to stare at the wall and shift the copy of
Treasure Island
back and forth on the desk with his hand.

“Oh, so modest,” retorted Brock, who sat up and leaned off the edge of the bed. “I saw the photo. Looks like you could almost be as good as me.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not a threat to you in the least,” Landon moped. “If today was any indication, I’m sure they’ll be throwing my useless butt to the curb in no time.”

“Oh, trust me,”—Brock chuckled—“you aren’t a threat.”

The mattress squeaked as Brock stood up and walked with his chest up over to Landon’s desk. He leaned over it with one arm on the desk. The book Landon fiddled with shot up from the table and into Brock’s outstretched hand.

“Okay, Landon,” Brock said after examining the book and setting it back onto the desk. He intentionally made it clap on the surface on impact to garner Landon’s full attention. “Right now, we’re cool, and we’ll stay cool until the day when you wake up forgetting that I’m Brock Holbrooke. . . . And you? . . . You’re just a temporary fad. You feel me?”

Landon stared at Brock, mentally piecing together the subtle threat hidden behind his calm demeanor, but he soon realized Brock was still holding out for a response, so he replied.

“Yeah . . . I got it.”

“Awesome.” Brock pushed lightly off the desk and walked over to the door, and with one foot in the hallway, he continued, “Welcome to the Gymnasium, roomie.”

Once the door closed, Landon let out a deep sigh. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath. As he leaned back in his chair, he thought to himself,
And this is only my first day!

LATE NIGHT
WANDERINGS

It was late in the night in mid-October. Everyone in the Gymnasium had retired to their rooms for the evening except Landon, who sat awake under the amber light of a reading lamp in a deep alcove of the Library. Polishing off the last few pages of
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
, he read comfortably in an oversized, tufted, leather chair
.
While reading it, he could hear the amusing voices his mother would use for each of the fantastical characters when she read it to him aloud.
Alice in Wonderland
had been her favorite book. He always seemed to select books that reminded him of her. He started with
Treasure Island
and in the weeks since, had moved to
The Jungle Book
,
Call of the Wild
,
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
,
The Hobbit
, and now the Lewis Carroll classic.

Almost two months had passed since he came to the Gymnasium, and he spent nearly every night in the same alcove on the fifth floor of the Library, working his way through one novel after another. It was the only way he could escape the nightmares. Every night the same horrifying scene played in his head moments after drifting to sleep.

He’s walking through a dimly lit hallway. The walls are barren and painted in a sickly beige color. With every step the space grows brighter from a light emanating through the cracks around a single black door. As he approaches, the door creaks open on its own. Passing through, Landon emerges into a large, empty stone chamber with only a massive white flame burning under a glass dome in the center.

He starts to hear a faint cry echoing off the cold walls. With every step, the cry morphs and changes until it settles into the painful wails of his mother. The screams grow to a deafening volume as he approaches the flame. Hoping to get a better look at the inferno under the glass, he presses his body against the dome. The bright white flames dance up from an unknown source, blazing out of invisible embers, and flickering in and out of focus. His mother’s face appears, screaming in agony and fear. Tears stream from her bloodshot eyes.

Landon reaches to help her, to pull her from the infernal flames, but his hand is hindered by the hemisphere of glass. He pounds his fists on it, hoping to shatter the clear barrier, but with every stroke of his fists, the glass holds, yet his mother’s wails escalate and become more blood curdling. He then fights to lift the dome off the ground, release the flame and save his pained mother, but it is sealed shut, secured to the stone floor with a heavy chain and lock. Now crying himself, he fights with the chain, but to no avail; he’s powerless to save her. Standing outside of the dome, he can only watch as his mother screams in agony.

Suddenly, Landon sees a reflection of something in the glass. When he turns and looks, he finds an ax resting perfectly on a stone pedestal; its sharp blade gleams in the firelight. He quickly grabs it, and with a single swipe, the lock on the dome is undone. After tossing the ax aside, he begins to wrestle with the heavy chain, working to unravel it from the base of the dome. All the while, his mother’s cries continue to ring in his ears.

Once the final link is pulled free, Landon presses against the glass, hoping to slide it aside, but rather than move, the dome cracks under the weight of his fingers. The tiny fissures snake and split, covering the massive dome in a network of rigid lines until the entire thing shatters. Thousands of pieces of broken glass fall into the fire and disappear.

The fire is unbelievably intense, and now unrestricted, it begins to grow into a raging inferno, hell-bent on destroying anything in its path. Landon reaches in to try and find his mother, but only finds searing pain as the fire touches his skin. He tries again and again, reaching in only to be doused in painful flames. The heat pushes him back until he’s up against the stone wall, with no escape and no hope of rescuing his tortured mother.

Landon’s body is consumed by the flames; its scorching tendrils burn his body and devour him. As the last ounce of his body is consumed, his vision is overcome by a blazing white light and he hears one final, piercing scream.
. . .

. . . Then he wakes up, drenched in sweat and out of breath.

He found the Library as a sanctuary. The book-lined walls reminded him of the forts he and his mother would make when he was a kid, piling up her collections like bricks until they constructed sturdy walls strong enough to keep out the invading forces of evil. The books were safe, and he’d read them until his eyelids wouldn’t allow him to concentrate any longer.

Some nights, however, he’d take a break from the detailed stories and spend his time attempting to hone his skills, working to stack books and file them on the shelves with his powers. Since his first day of training, Landon’s abilities hadn’t progressed to what was expected of a new recruit. Unlike most, who experienced issues turning off their gifts after their apocratusis, Landon appeared to have more difficulty in accessing his. Fortunately for him, it made the blocking side of Thought Reception easy, but unfortunately, his work in all other aspects of his training was riddled with embarrassing accidents or the nonexistent use of his abilities. It started with the marbles on the first day of Telekinetics training but had progressed to getting knocked unconscious by a flying disc he “summoned” and one unfortunate incident in the Library where he forced every bookshelf on the entire fifth floor to fall over. The admiration and high praise he received when he first arrived at the Gymnasium quickly turned to laughter and avoidance as stories of his training mishaps spread through the student body.

His lack of progress also resulted in numerous meetings with different faculty members, and as time passed into autumn, these meetings seemed to become more agonizing and frequent. Each one attempted to help him through his problems with none truly being able to do so. But even if it was ever so slight, he had improved.

• • • • •

Back in mid-September, the blistering heat of August transitioned to day after day of showers and thunderstorms. He had just finished lunch and was passing through the Atrium on the way to his tutoring session in the Administrative Tower. As another storm rolled in over the mountains, dark clouds covered the sky, and the sound of large raindrops colliding with the massive dome overhead reverberated through the open rotunda.

Landon stared up at the massive tree growing out of the Atrium’s floor, wondering how it managed to grow so large in its confined space when its brothers grew freely outside the facility in the open valley. When he looked down, Peregrine stood in front of him.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize you were there.”

“No need to apologize. I came to you, Landon Wicker,” Peregrine replied. As Landon looked at her, he felt that there was something strange about her, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“How’d you know it was me?” Landon asked, perplexed.
How was she able to find me in her condition? Where’s her walking cane, guide dog or person to bring her around?
Landon had yet to officially meet Peregrine; they neither shared a single training session nor lived on the same floor of the Student Tower. He occasionally noticed her in the cafeteria. She typically ate alone.

“It’s not very hard,” she returned. “Anyways, I think I can help you.”

“Help me? With what?” Landon couldn’t help but stare at her vibrant violet eyes as they pointed blankly at his left shoulder. They shone like amethysts, even in the muted, gloomy light of the storm.

“I’m blind, not deaf. Everyone’s been talking about you and your . . . problems,” she said. “I think I can help you. Meet me back here at two a.m. tonight. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t stare.”

Landon looked away, embarrassed at the chance that he’d inadvertently offended her, but when he looked back, she was gone. He spun around. She was nowhere in sight.

• • • • •

“I think you should go,” Katie Leigh suggested at dinner after hearing the story of Landon’s odd encounter.

“Are you crazy?” Riley added. “Peregrine is the worst lifter in the Gymnasium! What on Earth would she help Landon with?”

“It has been four weeks since he came here, and he still can’t make anything happen on purpose, right?” Katie Leigh turned to Landon. “Haven’t you said that every time you’ve used your powers, that you didn’t actually mean to?”

Landon embarrassingly replied, “Yeah.”

“He doesn’t need her help,” Riley scoffed. “He’ll be lifting buses again in no time. He just has to find his footing.”

Katie Leigh looked back at Riley, disgusted. “Riley, you’ve been saying that since ‘The Marble Incident.’ Landon has tried everything: my sage advice, your useless tips. Even the professors can’t seem to get him going. If she says she can help, I think he should try it. Granted, it’s a bit strange she wants to meet you in the middle of the night, but what can it hurt?”

“What can it hurt?” Riley exclaimed, seeming shocked by Katie Leigh’s stance on the matter. “If anyone finds them together, it can destroy what little bit of status he still has.”

Katie Leigh huffed loudly as she rolled her eyes. “When will you face it that you’re never going to be sitting with the likes of Brock Holbrooke and his gang.”

“You saw the photo. If Landon can figure himself out, he could own this place.”

“But right now, nothing is working, which is exactly why he needs to go and meet with Peregrine tonight.”

Riley and Katie Leigh continued as if Landon wasn’t even at the table. They bickered and fought over a decision that wasn’t even theirs to make. Landon eventually realized he would need to make up his own mind alone, so as they continued to bicker, he got up to leave the cafeteria.

“Wait! You’re leaving?” Katie Leigh asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” Landon answered.

“Well,” Riley interjected. “What’re you gonna do about tonight?”

“I have no idea,” Landon said as he turned and walked away.

The hours after dinner went by slowly. Landon heard the other students socializing in the hallway as they went into their respective rooms for the night while he lay on his bed looking up at the ceiling. Around midnight, Brock entered the room and went to bed without exchanging a single word. Landon paid him no mind and remained laying atop his sheets deep in thought.