In Icarus' Shadow Page 8

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  Thomas woke some hours later to find Nadia slumped over her desk, breathing slowly and evenly. He saw the open web browser on her screen and the half-dozen tabs she had had open when she fell asleep; at least several pages of notes were beside her and he quietly picked them up to peruse them. She had noted many of the pieces of information conflicted with one another, some even stating that the constellation of Orion was identified in some of the stories of Orion himself, meaning they were not necessarily one and the same from a mythological standpoint. Still, she had been up all night writing this information out; there had to be something they could use out of the events attributed to Orion's life. Events taken together could become a story and that's what they needed, even if some of the details weren't quite right. Something to suggest the character of Black's unknown employer.

  Orion's birth had two main stories that pertained to it. One was that he was the son of Poseidon and Euryale, the daughter of King Minos of Crete; the very same king who had banished his wife's half-bull son, Asterion the Minotaur, into the labyrinth. As a child of the sea god, Orion was supposedly granted the ability to walk across water with ease, though other stories stated he was so large he merely walked along the bottom with his head and shoulders above the waves. The other version of his birth story was even more outlandish. Hyrieus, an old farmer who made his home in Thebes, had offered hospitality to three travelling strangers one night. After supper, they asked him if there was any wish he held and he told them that he regretted having no son of his own. Taking the hide of the oxen Hyrieus had provided for dinner, the three strangers urinated upon it and buried it in the earth, instructing Hyrieus to dig it up in ten months' time. When he did, he found Orion. The three strangers, supposedly, were the gods Zeus, Poseidon and Hermes; it was in return for the old man's generosity that they had granted his wish. Thomas made sure to note that both stories involved Poseidon as a father, of sorts; the least he could do was keep the myriad mythological figures organized.

  The events of Orion's life, fortunately, were more readily agreed upon, or at the very least were less contradictory despite being told by different individuals. Travelling to the island of Chios, Orion fell in love with the daughter of Oenopion, the island's ruler. He attempted to win her approval, but met with limited success despite being described as the most handsome of earth-born men. One night, after drinking too much wine, he attempted to force himself upon the subject of his affection, but was foiled by her father's intervention. Outraged by the hunter's drunken attempt to steal his daughter's virtue, Oenopion blinded Orion on the spot and sent him away from Chios. Heading north, Orion came next upon the isle of Lemnos, the favoured land of Hephaestus, another of the Olympian deities. Having been lamed himself, the god of the forge took pity on the blinded Orion. He asked one of his apprentices, named Cedalion, to serve as Orion's eyes for a time; the blinded man carried the youth upon his shoulders as he continued on his way. Receiving instructions from an oracle, the pair travelled to the east. When morning came, Cedalion directed Orion to look directly at the rising sun and, upon doing so, the hunter found his vision miraculously restored.

  Orion was also mentioned in the mythology surrounding the Pleiades star cluster. The Pleiades, in mythology, were seven sisters; namely the daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Apparently one to fall in love easily, Orion was mesmerized by the Pleiades the moment he saw them and took to chasing them hither and yon across the land. He continued chasing them until Zeus scooped the sisters and their mother from the ground and placed them in the sky for safekeeping. Atlas, Thomas noted, was absent from the story because he had been sentenced by Zeus to hold up the sky long before, after a mythological event known as the 'Titanomachy'.

  The stories around Orion's death were the most confusing by far and held the greatest number of conflicts and alternate versions. In one tale of his death he bragged of his skill to the goddess of the hunt, Artemis, that he could kill any beast upon the earth. The earth itself punished his presumptuousness by creating Scorpio, the scorpion, to poison him. The goddess herself then asked Zeus to place the hunter among the stars in recognition of his skill in life. In another version, he again demonstrated his weakness to alcohol when he attempted to ravish Artemis and in her anger she brought Scorpio forth from the earth to sting him. In yet another variation, Orion was killed attempting to save Artemis' mother, Leto, from the same scorpion. A well-known, more dramatic version, had it that Orion and Artemis had been in love, so much so that the goddess of the hunt had been seriously considering breaking her vows of chastity to marry the earth-born; her twin brother, Apollo, had disapproved of this. One day, while Orion was swimming far from shore, Apollo pointed his distant shape out to Artemis and challenged her to strike it with an arrow. Accepting his challenge, she did so and only later learned her arrow had struck her beloved. Artemis then placed his outline among the stars to honour and remember him by.

  Thomas found his own head spinning as he tried to find some common thread to string the stories together. The only common themes between most of the accounts of Orion's death were the Scorpion and Artemis herself, with both appearing in some capacity in virtually all of them. The goddess of the hunt was a logical inclusion in the story of a great hunter, he supposed. Still, the character of Orion did not seem appealing as an alias for a criminal, unless he prided himself on his hunting skill. And considering the earth-born giant supposedly hunted with a club made entirely of bronze, this did not really lend itself to the modern day idea of hunting. Scorpio would have been a better moniker given its success against the hunter, but that had not been the name used. He sighed, disappointed that he could not find anything more from Nadia's notes. He could only imagine how put out she would be upon waking to find her late night had been fruitless. Leaning against the back of the couch, he rested his head against the wall to clear his head.