The Fire of Prometheus - Chapter 5

After leaving Blakeney’s office, the pair made their way straight down the first hall to a nondescript wooden door, which the older man opened to reveal some kind of grand entryway. 

    Right in the middle of the beautiful, white marble flooring was a fountain with a statue of a nude woman—maybe Aphrodite? James thought—and winged cherubs shooting water out of their mouths across her sprawled frame. 

    The walls weren’t paneled with wood, but instead retained the same white granite as the exterior. Here, unlike the unadorned exterior, exquisite painted carvings of cherubs, laurels, heavenly bodies, and lounging figures graced the walls at what at first seemed random. The more James stared in wide-eyed wonder, the more he recognized the pattern of it all. The cherubs were dancing in the air around the bodies, throwing laurels at their feet while the reclined figures themselves seemed to be studying representations of the stars and planets.

    It was like nothing he had ever seen before. 

    Glancing up, he saw that the ceiling swept all the way up four floors, ending in an arch that ran the length of the main thoroughfare. The paintings covering the arched ceiling would have been more at home in the Sistine Chapel than in a school: Zeus flying through thunderclouds holding a lightning bolt and Poseidon swirling in the sea with his trident held high, all painted in painstaking detail. Finally ending his tourist-like gawking, James noticed that several students were giving him an I think you’re crazy look. Blakeney chuckled softly. “Come on. Let’s not spend all our time in the foyer.”

    HE led James through the bench-lined main hallway, and about halfway down he noticed the upper floors all had hallways that opened to the floors below like balconies. The banisters of the walkways were also intricately carved, but with various versions of vines, flowers, and leaves. 

    About a hundred feet further ahead, a gloriously painted wall jutted straight up from the second floor to the roof, effectively bisecting the entire hall with an arched tunnel. They walked under the stepped ceiling and James noticed that colorful tiles were used to create a mosaic. 

    This place is incredible! 

    Up ahead, the hall opened up a bit around what appeared to be the base of another statue. Not knowing his eyes could get any wider, James stepped out from under the arched hallway into a broad interior courtyard, and his curious gaze settled onto a massive statue of Athena—the goddess of wisdom. Students were walking to and fro and studying on the benches that surrounded the goddess. At a loss for words, James finally managed to stutter, “H-how . . . big is it?”

    “Our statue of Athena? She is approximately thirty feet in height. Quite a job to clean! Some students of ours undertook the task of carving her in the early sixties and she took about four years to complete. I guess they decided that she should grace the main gathering place inside Great Olympus Hall. She has stood there ever since,” Blakeney said affectionately.

    “That’s . . . amazing! Students built that?”

    “Yes—hard to believe, isn’t it? What did I tell you about talent around here?”

    Tearing his eyes away from the statue, James studied the massive room. Marble staircases swept upwards at either end, leading to a second-floor balcony that wrapped around the entirety of it all, carved just as intricately as the upper floor hallways he had seen earlier. Glancing up, James saw the ceiling was once again an arch spanning the room and painted similarly to the one on the other side of the building. Still shaking his head in awe, James asked, “What’s that out there?”

    Blakeney looked and realized he was asking about the outer courtyard. It was placed center stage and the far wall was paneled completely in glass. “That’s the main courtyard, or quad, or whatever you’d like to call it. It’s situated in the very center of the entire complex and provides an outdoor area where students can study or gather to converse and what have you. We’ll check that out in a moment. Come on. Over here to the left is our library.”

    The two of them ventured left around the statue and across the room toward a series of glass windows built into archways along the wall. Now that he was paying attention to something other than the statue, he could see the glassed archways were spaced at even intervals along the walls of two floors. 

    Blakeney broke James’s focus and said, “The library here spans the entire left side of the main hall and is two stories.” He held open the door and led James inside before continuing. “The material is . . . let’s just say exhaustive. Since we have been here longer than our nation’s capital, we have been blessed to obtain and acquire books and material that is not only classic and ancient, but rare as well. Just about every subject you can think of can be found within the walls of our library—and those that cannot can always be searched on the net. You can see that we have ample amounts of comfortable chairs, couches, desks, and tables everywhere you look for study or lounging. Over there in the corner we have a small cafe that serves coffees, cappuccinos, and espressos for those who desire to burn the midnight oil.” 

    James threw him a look that said yeah, right. 

    “Yes, I assure you we have quite a few of those on the weekends,” Blakeney confirmed. He paused while he looked around the vast room, seeming to search for a certain someone. 

    An older man in shirtsleeves with graying brown hair emerged from behind a bookshelf and as soon as Blakeney spotted him, he was waved over. “Robert, you’re back, I see. Good trip, yes?” The man in shirtsleeves asked in a crisp British accent.

    “It was a good and successful trip, Arthur.” Turning to James, Blakeney said, “James, this is Arthur Worthington, our archivist and historian. Arthur, this is James Olympia.”

    “How do you do James?” asked Arthur.

    “Uh, good sir. A little in shock actually.”

    Arthur laughed softly. “Happens a lot. So . . . you’re the lad who Director Blakeney here went to go see. Well, I’m glad you chose to study with us. Are you enjoying the sights so far?”

    “Yes, sir. Everything is . . . different. But I think I’m going to love it here.”

    “Indeed. Well, I won’t keep you any longer and I do have some things to attend to, so if you’ll kindly excuse me. Nice to meet you, James.”

    “You too, Mr. Worthington,” he said.

    “Oh, please just call me Arthur.”

    With a nod, the British historian walked off to a far corner of the library. Blakeney turned to James and said, “He’s a great man and extremely knowledgeable. Always open for discussing history and answering questions, so don’t be afraid to converse with him. All right. Over there”—he pointed—“you can see the stairway that leads to the second floor of the library and there you have it. That’s that. You wanted to check out the courtyard, right?”

    “Oh, yeah,” James responded gleefully.

    The director led him past the studying students towards an exit facing a window-lined back hallway. As James was passing by, he couldn’t help but notice how attractive several of the female students were. Apparently a few of them were having some of the same thoughts about him, and he caught a couple of girls checking him out. Almost to the exit doors, he spotted a girl with red hair, sitting alone and reading what appeared to be an architectural magazine. Hearing the whispers of some of the girls nearby, she glanced up quickly from behind her black-framed glasses to see what the commotion was about. Eyes darting, she briefly met James’s steady gaze before turning back to her magazine, brushing him off as if finding nothing of any substance. 

    He shrugged and continued to follow Blakeney to the door. Right before walking out into the hallway, he chanced a quick glance back at the girl, only to see her still enraptured in study. Something about her tugged at James in a way he couldn’t quite explain. Before he could think about it any further, Blakeney interrupted his thoughts. “James? James!? Are you coming?”

    He shook his head to clear it and said, “What? Oh, yeah . . . right. Courtyard.”

    Laughing and shaking his head knowingly, Blakeney led the way outside.

    The courtyard was well-manicured and served to only enhance the beauty of the building behind them. Even though it was in the middle of January, the grass had somehow retained its green. James could see the bare branches of various trees and bushes, as well as flower beds spread throughout, just waiting to be planted. 

    White stone benches sat throughout the entire courtyard, with a few situated at the four corners around more fountains. The two fountains closest to him were the only ones he could see with clarity: what looked like small women with twigs and leaves sewn into their hair were dancing and leaping while spraying water from their mouths. In one fountain, what he knew to be a satyr seemed to caress one of the women’s arms. 

    On the far side of the courtyard, a very large, columned, Parthenon-type building loomed. Not for the first time, James thought about how overwhelming the entire . . . everything had been so far. Looking straight ahead, he noticed a depression in the very center of the yard and a half-circled wall of polished black marble sunk into it. For the first time since beginning the tour, James took the lead, with Blakeney following. 

    Crossing the courtyard in the direction of the marbled wall, he felt a strange pull towards the inscription on its face. Coming closer, he saw a large, broad-lipped, bronze basin sitting in front of the half-moon marble wall. The sight entranced him as he took in the dancing flames suspended in midair above the basin. Drawing ever closer, James stepped down a few steps and settled where he could successfully read the words chiseled into the dark, polished surface of the wall. 

The Fire of Prometheus

Given in remembrance

for the great sacrifices of those

who have graced these halls

In remembrance

of the lives lost seeking truth,

  freedom, and justice

In remembrance

For we are the hope of mankind and the light in a dark world

   

    James hadn’t realized he had been reading the lines out loud until Blakeney turned to him and said, “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

    For a moment James could only nod slowly, lost in thought of what the inscribed words meant. Until now, he had never witnessed so few words that meant so much. Just reading them moved him to want to be a better person, in a way. It was a strange feeling—but then again, maybe that was the whole point of the monument being here in the first place; being descendants of gods and all. Sacrifice? Freedom? Justice? James thought those words had lost much of their true meaning in modern times and were, more often than not, just used as rhetoric in political campaigns. Waking up from his deep reverie, he looked at Blakeney. “Yeah. It is.” He paused for a moment and studied the flickering flames. “What keeps the fire going? It doesn’t look connected to the bowl in any way.”

    “There is no fuel. The fire doesn’t need it. That’s the actual fire Prometheus first gave to humanity thousands of years ago. Nothing disrupts it. Not wind. Not rain. The flames you see here have always burned brightly,” Blakeney concluded with a smile. He seemed to be lost in thoughts of his own for a moment. “The story I promised you about this school and its proximity to D.C.—you remember?”

    James nodded.

    “Well, when the original building was finished in 1751, legend has it the first director was walking along these fields here and noticed a bronze basin with a flame dancing in the middle of it. Now, just the day prior to this, there was no basin and no flame. It was as if it had appeared out of nowhere. Sure it was a sign from the gods, he called upon the architects of the original building to begin a design for the future, believing even more space would be needed. The only guidelines were that it would have to be big enough to handle at least four hundred students—a number almost unheard of at the time—and it be built around this fire.

    Dr. William Thornton completed the design several years later. In fact, because of how well he did, he was eventually called upon by George Washington to aid with the construction of the White House. Little did those original architects know that when they settled the Academy here wanting some privacy, the capital of our nation would actually be moved not more than thirty miles away.”

    “So, they wanted privacy but got this?” He laughed. “Well, that’s irony for you.”

    Blakeney laughed along with him before saying, “Come on, it’s almost dinnertime, and I’m sure you’ll want to get settled in your room before you check out the dining hall.”

    The pair turned back towards the glass wall of the main hall and made their way through the courtyard. They stepped through the doors, walked down the windowed hallway to the right, and arrived at a set of broad spiraling stairs with a statue of Hermes at the base. “All right. This is where I leave you. These doors here”—Blakeney pointed to the double doors opposite them in the center of the wall—“lead to the respective floor of each dormitory. Follow the steps up onto the third-floor landing and you’ll find your room down at the end. Remember B320; B for boys, 3 for the floor, and 20 for the room. I’ll swing by to pick up the suitcases sometime later tonight. Okay?” 

    “Sounds good, sir.”

    “Oh, before I forget.” The older man stopped him. “We use tablets around here a lot, so I took the liberty of ordering you an iPad. It should get here tomorrow or the next day. And in order to help you out with spending and personal money, part of your scholarship has been set up to transfer $400 per month into a bank account that I set up in your name. I know you won’t need much money here at school, but you may want to buy extra clothing, additional hygiene items, and whatnot in the future, so there you have it. The check card will be here by the end of the week.”

    James was at a bit of a loss for words. He had never had much money to himself. “Um . . . wow. Thank you. I really don’t know what else to say. Really, I . . . uh . . . just, thank you for everything, Mr. Blakeney.”

    “Not a problem, James. I hope you like it here.”

    “I’m sure I will,” James said, before heading up the stairs to his new home.