The Search for Artemis (The Chronicles of Landon Wicker) (19 page)

Riley and Landon sat unresponsive. They were waiting for an explanation.

“He said ‘he.’ He!” Katie Leigh raised her voice, but when the heads of numerous people bolted around to look at them, she crouched back down and whispered again.

“Come on, Landon. You already said it. Artemis is a
goddess
.” She waited for a nod of understanding, but one never came. “God, you both are dense. Artemis is a goddess. . . . Goddesses are women. . . . Brock called her, ‘he.’ Obviously I had to correct him. I turned around in my chair and just said, ‘She, she’s got to be mentioned in here somewhere.’ I guess he didn’t like that so much because next thing I know I’m being thrown out of my chair and against the bookcase, and that’s it. A minute later and you two were running in. But so you both know, I had everything under control. I am Katie Leigh Chapman, aren’t I? I only screamed because he surprised me.”

“That’s it? That’s why Landon and I are now doomed for all eternity?” Riley appeared to be somewhere between shock and infuriation. “We risked our future happiness all because you couldn’t let a little slip of the tongue go by? I—I can’t even look at you right now. I’ve got to go.”

This time Riley stood up and stormed from the cafeteria, but not without a considerable number of glares and huffs as he made his way to the door. Landon was still sitting on the bench. His eyes moved slowly around in his head, shifting from the upper right and left corners of his socket, as if he were literally attempting to search his brain for an answer.

“So,” he finally started after racking his brain with no result. “Why were they there in the first place?”

“In the Library?” Katie Leigh asked, a bit confused. “I told you . . . to look up Artemis.”

“Brilliant work, Watson. Simply brilliant. I think you’ve cracked the case.”

Katie Leigh’s face shifted to the same scornful glare she’d been giving Riley a bit earlier—she obviously wasn’t a fan of sarcasm.

Landon paid her no mind. “What I mean is, why would they be looking up Artemis? It’s not like mythology is part of our curriculum. It definitely isn’t a part of our training. And as far as I can tell, our tutoring sessions are filled with math and science, not ancient folklore. So why would they be looking that up?”

“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.

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, yellow 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.”