Flying Too High
Master craftsman Daedalus was working on his latest invention. It was something he termed as labyrinth.
His son Icarus came shuffling in. His head was down and he looked so unhappy.
“Hi, son,” Daedalus said as he glanced up from his work. “You look a little lost. Can I help?”
“I’m bored, and there’s nothing to do.” Icarus blew out his cheeks and sighed.
“How can you say that son, you’re young, with so much energy? Why are you bored?”
“I can’t find anything of interest. Because I’m stuck here while all my mates are going to exciting places.”
“Well, you can help me, if you would like to. An extra pair of hands will be terrific.”
“I don’t know how to invent things like you can, dad. It would turn out to be rubbish, not like your inventions.”
Truth is, Icarus didn’t want to learn; he is very lazy and relied on his friends to find things of interest to explore.
“I didn’t get my knowledge by standing around and saying that I’m bored. I studied my father when he was at work, and he taught me so many things,”his father said.
“I don’t know how to use those tools, dad, and I’m afraid I’ll hurt myself.”
“Then this will be your first lesson. First, you have to know how to hold the tools, and then how to manage them. Once you’ve learned this, it will be easy-peasy.”
Icarus was running out of excuses, and he stood pouting and scratching his head.
“Right, come on over here, and take hold of this piece of wood, that’s right son, well done. Now place this into that vice, and this will hold it tight so that you can work on it in comfort, remember, you’re in control.”
Icarus learned quickly and he, being arrogant, decided to take over from his father. The lad would backchat his father when he was teaching him. Icarus would say things like yes I know that, and I can do it by myself, I don’t need you.
However, things had turned really bad in their land, and they sought to leave.
“We have to invent something, dad, we need to leave very quickly.”
“Of course, son, but you know everything, so how about you inventing a way of escape?”
Icarus panicked, “Oh, come on, dad there’s no need to be like that. I don’t know what to do to help us escape.”
Daedalus shook his head, “No, you said you don’t need me, it’s all up to you now.”
“Please, dad, I didn’t mean it, and I’m sorry for what I said.” Icarus never meant a word of it, but he needed his dad’s help.
“Well, alright, I accept the apology. Since we need to crack on, as time is short.” Daedalus knew his son, and he knew he did not mean the apology; he needed his dad to invent their escape.
“Right, son, now go to the candle-maker’s and get as much wax as you can. When you’ve done that, go to farm and collect as many feathers as you can. Be quick about it.”
Daedalus knew it would be a lesson Icarus won’t forget. He knew the candle-maker and also the farmer and they owed him some favours. He had informed them that Icarus would be there to collect those items. He also told them to make it a hard task.
Icarus first went to the candle-maker and asked for lots of wax. “Oh great,” said the candle-maker. “You can sit there and melt all of those candles.”
“Oh what? I haven’t got time to do this, I need the wax now.”
The candle-maker told Icarus, “You want it; you melt it, the faster you go, the sooner you can go.” Icarus got on the candle-maker’s wick.
Icarus began the melting, grumbling all the while, “Stupid old fart, who does he think he is?”
Icarus got as much wax as his father told him to get, then he went to the farmer and asked the farmer for all of the feathers his dad had told him to bring home. “Oh, right then, you’d better get started, first you must catch all of those ducks and all of those chickens and the gobble of ganders. When you’ve done all of that, get plucking.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me, you mean I’ve got to catch them, kill them, and pluck them? It will take me the rest of the day. I need to get this lot back to my dad.”
“You’d better get started then, or you won’t make it.” The farmer smiled, “Well, at least it will save me a lot of work.” And then he chuckled. He could hear the ca- ching, he didn’t have to pay for labour and he’d make a profit. Icarus was too tired to grumble.
Icarus stumbled home loaded down with wax and feathers.
“Oh, there you are, son; I thought you’d got lost.”
“I want my bed, dad, I’ve worked so hard today. I’ve had to melt the wax, and catch all of the ducks, chickens and geese, and then I had to pluck them.”
“Oh, I see,” Daedalus said. “You sure you don’t want to help me with my invention then?”
“No, I don’t, I need to sleep.” Icarus slumped off to bed. Daedalus grinned from ear to ear, That’ll teach him.
The next morning, Icarus asked his father what his invention is.
“I will tell you this just once, Icarus. I have made you a costume of wax and wings from the feathers. I have put a spell on these things, so that you will be able to fly very high. But a word of caution, don’t fly near the sun, as it’s far too hot. We will kit up now, and then we must leave Crete, stay close to me when you fly.”
Daedalus and Icarus went outside and took flight. They flew together and out through the stratosphere. At first Icarus was astounded by the stars and studied them for a while. The he saw the sun, oh he loved the sun, it is a golden orb, and it drew him. He so wanted to fly up and touch it.
Daedalus shouted for him to stop, but Icarus just ignored his father. Icarus said, “Stupid old fart, as if he can stop me. He can’t tell me what to do.”
Icarus flew right up and touched the sun. The wax melted and his feathers burned and he fell down into the sea and he drowned.
As he did so a Native American Indian was paddling his canoe. When Icarus fell into the sea, he caused the sea to rise. The Indian was capsized and was violently washed up onto the shore. The tiny village was swamped and many people died. It was a tsunami the like no one had ever seen before, or since.
Josie Smith
What’s in a name?
Herbert Atkinson rolled over and yawned, experiencing, just for a moment, that incomparable feeling of being suspended between the warmth and drowsiness of sleep and the horror of wakefulness.
The horror of wakefulness came to him that morning in the form of his somewhat domineering wife, Agatha.
“Come along, Herbert, your breakfast will be getting cold. I want to tidy the bedroom.”
Herbert always acknowledged what an efficient wife and good cook Agatha was.
Since he had retired, he had hoped to help a friend who ran a travelling funfair that had really unusual attractions. Agatha had hoped for many jobs to be finished now that Herbert had more time. She had dreams of a large pergola where she could entertain her female friends with tea and scones.
The pergola was a task in progress and Herbert genuinely intended to finish it for Agatha’s Birthday in August. They were, at this time, struggling through May. Herbert was horribly aware that June and July were important months for Fred and his fair.
Herbert had a sudden inspiration—he would arrange a holiday with Agatha at Soulcombe! Where Fred was to be based for two weeks at least… When he mooted the idea to Agatha she was, at first, less than enthusiastic.
“Are you mad? We have commitments, Herbert.”
“Like what? If you mean your presence at the W.I., dear, you would be missed, I know. But the very fact of your absence could make them appreciate how valuable is your contribution.”
Herbert put all his persuasive powers into getting Agatha to agree and even to be mildly enthusiastic.
Herbert and Agatha arrived in Soulcombe on the 4th of June, staying in a pleasant chalet with facilities. After settling in, Herbert suggested a walk along the promenade and there, at the far end, in a big field, was Fred’s Fair.
“Oh, look, Love, that looks interesting, we could have a look round this evening after a nice meal,” Herbert suggested.
“Ugh!! It looks a bit scruffy, don’t you think? Anyway, let’s have a little rest, then we can look later, after we’ve eaten.”
They went to a restaurant in a conservatory attached to a hotel where the ambiance and the service satisfied Agatha, and her mood was elevated when they were served their after-dinner brandy from a beautiful ornately decorated decanter.
After their meal they wandered along and were soon close to the Fair. Agatha looked up at a light which had just come on and said, “Oh dear. Did you see that, Herbert? There was a little fairy-like creature flying up to the light and it got frazzled. What a shame.”
Herbert gently shepherded Agatha into the Fair and a little old man, looking like an elf, welcomed them.
Suddenly Agatha was transfixed. “Look at that pool,”she said. There on the blue-lit pool was a lady riding on the back of a big fish which looked like a cross between an octopus and a porpoise. Further across the pool was a man in a sort of gondola.
Just then, Fred came along and welcomed them. Agatha remarked on the lady with the fish and Fred suggested, “Would you like to have a go, love? It’s quite safe—all plastic and mirrors, you know.”
“I would, please. I have always loved water activities.”
Fred called in the water rider, Mary who was pleased to show Agatha the procedure on the blow-up fish. Agatha was soon enjoying the activity, and when she finished Fred said, “I don’t suppose you would like to do the activity for a couple of weeks? You would be paid. You seem like a natural to me. Mary needs a break to go and see her parents. It would be a huge help to me. Tell you what, we are having a hog-roast tomorrow, so come and join in, and tell me what you decide.”
Later, Agatha said to Herbert, “That was such fun. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed being on the water – but what would you do, if I was a Fair worker for two weeks?”
“Don’t you worry about me, love. I expect Fred would have a few little jobs for me to help with. It would be a really good way to spend our holiday.”
“Very well.” Agatha giggled quite girlishly. “I will have to have a different name, so that if anybody sees me they will not know it’s me.” She thought Mermalade would be a good name.
The next day they went back and told Fred their decision. Fred was overjoyed and said he had just the right fairy outfit for Agatha to wear. Herbert felt that this was stretching credibility but said nothing. There was a lovely little pony that neighed happily as soon as the moon appeared and the elfish man whose name was Alf went round bopping children with a rubber club then giving them a lollipop.
All in all the two of them had the most enjoyable holiday in the crazy magical Fair and Fred was helped over a difficult spot.
Reminiscing later they both said they were amazed at how the interlude had happened.
Linda Dalzell
FLIGHT
The lad hadn’t expected his father to be concerned about the menu. He was the thinker, the fixer, the clever one – that was what the King expected from him: solutions to all kinds of problems, particularly delicate and unusual ones, the kind of problems about which not a word should be breathed – not even to his own son, which was why the son was never surprised when things happened that he hadn’t expected.
The king liked roasted meat, cooked on a spit, the fat hissing and spitting in the fire beneath, the smell rising to the gods… the lad’s father always mentioned that, and the King always smiled, but the lad’s father always winked at his son, when the King wasn’t looking, as if there was something funny about the idea, as if it wasn’t quite… true. But the lad never asked his father about that. He knew his father didn’t tell him everything, and he avoided asking questions because he didn’t want to appear stupid.
He listened, though, carefully, and remembered what he heard, mostly, and tried to make sense of it – and he’d heard his father talking to the cook before the feast, and requesting roast fowl, geese, if possible… not that much meat on them, the cook had said, but his father had said that wasn’t important, and his father had asked what happened to the feathers, when the birds were plucked, and the cook had given him a funny look, but his father had said he had a use for them, they wouldn’t go to waste, they needn’t be taken to the midden – and as he turned to go away, he’d asked where the bee-hives were, and the cook had told him. Not the kind of thing his father usually bothered about, these simple, everyday, practical things.
I could have told him, thought his son, if he’d asked me. But he never does ask me, because he never thinks I know. But I do know the things that interest me. And bees interest me, because they can fly! And they’re near, and I can watch them… Birds are off and up and away and gone – unless they’re just sitting around gossiping and squabbling, and I have enough of that in the court, where I don’t really have a place…
My father doesn’t really have a place here, either – except to fix things that have gone wrong. And the King doesn’t like that. I’ve seen. That big mace, the one they carry in before him, the one that came from his ancestors, the one that gives him the right to have his say, the one that sits in front of him at feasts, the one he turns towards the next person he allows to speak – only the head, never the handle – I’ve seen him run his hand over it, grip it, as though he’d like to heft it and find out how few blows he’d need to let my father’s brains out of his skull. That’s what he envies. That’s the power he doesn’t have. The power that’s inside my father’s head.
I tell my father this – sometimes, when I think he’ll listen. When we’re on our own – and when he isn’t thinking. Mostly, he’s thinking. Not just about how to solve the King’s problems. About other things. Things he doesn’t tell me about. Maybe he doesn’t want to worry me. Maybe he doesn’t think I’ll understand them.
But he knows that I observe. Observation he tells me is the beginning of thought. So I tell him what I observe. Some of it. Not all of it.
When I tell him about the King, he says The King is at the mercy of the gods. I ask how bad that is, and he says The gods can be outwitted. Prometheus managed to fob them off with the scent of sacrifices, with the bits that smell good and look good – but aren’t.
I tell him that the King is at the mercy of his daughters. He laughs, and tells me I have a sharp eye. Before that he says he was at the mercy of his wife. When he says that, he doesn’t laugh. His face takes on that stone look it gets when he’s thinking, or remembering the thinking he’s had to do in the past, going over it again and again, to see if he could have done it better, or if he could do it better in the future. I know. I’ve seen his old drawings. Strange things. Things I don’t want to think about. I’ve heard that roaring in the night, too, echoing through the buildings, coming from that new wing of the palace that he designed and built himself. You wouldn’t think he’d want to be a mason. Workmen cut the stones and piled them ready, and he made frames from wood, with wheels and rope, so he could move them and lift them. The workmen had built the outer walls, and put on a roof with great stone tiles across beams that rested on pillars, all evenly spaced, he insisted on that. But what went inside, he built. And the first thing you saw, if you peeped in through the bars of the bronze gate that closed the entrance, was a blank wall. There were no windows.
Like my father, then. No way to see inside. Sometimes, I think it would be easier if he really were a statue. I might know what to do then. What offerings to leave, the way you know with gods – or, if you don’t know, then the priest or priestess tells you. But my father’s not a god, which makes it harder.
But I know ways to make the stone move. I tell him something he doesn’t yet know. I tell him that I’ve seen Ariadne spinning.
That makes the statue stir.
They say that my father’s statues can move on their own, that if they weren’t chained down, they’d be running and dancing all over the place – only at night, though, when they don’t think anyone’s watching. If people really thought the statues could do that, they’d smash them. Maybe that’s one reason why the King fingers his mace so often when he’s looking at my father. It’s not true, though, about the statues. It’s just a good story – maybe my father put it about, to impress people, or to scare them. Turning stone into flesh – that’s not something my father can do. You need magic to do that. And my father doesn’t believe in magic. His skill lies the other way: turning flesh into stone.
But he turns back into flesh when I tell him about Ariadne. I’d overheard him warning the King, when he built the big building with the bronze-barred gate and the blank wall, Don’t let your daughters spin he said, and the King had asked why not? And my father had invented a tale about the danger of pricking their fingers, claimed he’d seen something in a scrying-bowl. It was a lie. He doesn’t do that kind of thing. What logic can’t show him, he’s blind to.
The fool my father says the old fool. He wants women to spin, as if they’re not capable of doing anything else. And he doesn’t understand where a thread can lead…
I have his attention now, which is rare enough, so I tell him some more. I usually have an eye on Ariadne – not to spy, just for my own pleasure. Anyone who looks at Ariadne will have pleasure – unless they’re envious of her – but after a while even they’ll have to admit she’s more beautiful than they are. I know just how I’d like her to look at me. She never has looked at me, but that doesn’t stop me knowing how I’d like her to.
I tell my father that I’ve seen Ariadne looking at that young blond-haired Greek, the one who’s due to be sacrificed… well, that’s what everyone assumes is going to happen, but if a building doesn’t have any windows, then you can’t see what happens inside, and at least it stops the roaring for a while… and if Ariadne looks at you like that, then there’s only one way you can look back at her… and what might happen after that is something I’m old enough to have very lively dreams about. But I don’t tell my father that.
To begin with, a smile crinkles my father’s eyes, because the young Greek is from Athens, which is where my father’s from, I know, though he never talks about why he left. But before the crinkling even reaches his nose, the stone’s taken over again, and the eye-sockets have become deep with concern. Logic has told him what’s going to happen. Logic has terrible power. I’ve watched logic operating inside my father before. If statues do move, then it is by logic – by mechanism, by cause and consequence, not by their own will. Logic replaces will and feeling.
That was when he got up from where we were talking, and went to the cook. I followed – he didn’t notice, why would he? – and overheard. The cook queried the instructions – but my father is usually plausible, and people know that the King has given him authority, and it was a special feast. The King always gives a special feast to the people he’s about to sacrifice. An old-fashioned man, as my father said, keeping up the old ways, revering the gods.
But the gods aren’t everything. I know that. I know that because I listen and observe. I observe things that my father doesn’t notice, because he doesn’t think they’re important..
There are wolves round here. I hear them every night, howling. I think they talk to each other. Sometimes, I think I can understand them. They also talk to the moon. Maybe she’s their goddess. But one night, I heard a different kind of howl. I didn’t tell my father. He doesn’t hear these things. I couldn’t have explained to him how I knew it was different. I didn’t know. I felt.
So I went out to see, in the moonlight, and I found that the shepherds had set a trap, and a wolf was caught, and howling. And the other wolves weren’t coming to help. Why would that be? They’re a pack. They hunt together. Unless… I’ve heard about these things. They say it’s common up in Thessaly. That’s where the magic comes from.
So I freed the wolf, and watched it limp off, and noted the direction. And next day, I went up, and walked where I’d seen it go, and there was a little old woman in a hut, stones in a circle with a roof made of branches, and herb-smelling smoke, and when she saw me, she smiled and beckoned me in.
And that’s how I know things my father doesn’t.
The feast is going well. The blond-haired Greek seems strangely happy. Does he really not know what’s before him? He wants to share wine with the guards. I feel my father beside me stiffen like a statue. The King has had more than his share of wine, and seems to be enjoying the irony with cruel delight. He gives permission with a lordly wave. While the King is still making that gesture of permission, my father takes advantage of it to make our excuses, and we retire to our chamber at the top of the tower which we inhabit on our own. (Of course inventors live on their own, and others live as far away from them as they can – who knows what they might invent?!)
We must prepare to go says my father. I look at him. The guards will be drugged with the wine he says. The Princess will give the young Greek a ball of thread with which he can find his way in and out of the Maze I made – he will kill the Monster that lives in the middle of it, and run off with the Princess. And the King will not be happy. The prison I built for his wife’s son was supposed to be secure.
He need say no more. He says no more. He is melting wax that he got from the bee-hives, and coating my arms and covering them with the goose-feathers he begged from the cook. I note carefully what he does, and prepare to do the same for him. While I am working on his first arm, I mention Perseus, the slayer of snake-haired Medusa, the Gorgon, and how he flew. My father laughs. Fairy-tales! he says. Wings on his sandals? He’d hang upside down – if his feet didn’t slip out of them first!
Our wings are complete. We go on to the balcony that surrounds the tower. The eastern edge of the world has a rim of light. My father hesitates, though we can hear noises from below. The guards have awoken, discovered the flight of Ariadne and her blond-haired Greek lover, and what has happened in the building without windows.
For once, I feel I need to show my father the way. Soldiers are surrounding the foot of the tower, preparing to break in. How long before they fetch archers?
I tell my father that I will jump first – but he grabs my hand so tightly that it hurts. No he says, and I ask why. He says he has a memory of a boy, falling from a tower like this. I ask him if the boy flew. He turns his face away from me, but does not let go of my hand. Holding my hand is not something he does often. He tells me that the boy fell to the ground, and died, and that he was blamed for it. In one movement, he lets go of my hand, and throws himself off the tower.
I watch, as the air catches under his outstretched arms. His descent slows, then ceases. Already the wind, and the impetus of his leap, have carried him away from the tower, though not yet quite out of bowshot.
Now I launch myself into space, and begin to sense at once how the air itself rises beneath me and carries me upwards, I circle with it, rising, rising…
I take to this new world more readily than my father. For once in my life, I am in my true element. I rise. I soar. Far below, cautious, logical, ungainly, my father is looking up at me. I think he may be trying to call out to me, but already I am too high above him to hear him. He seems to be making gestures, but they interfere with his smooth flying, and remain incomprehensible. He seems to be sinking lower and lower. Does he want to drag me down to his level? Surely I have the right to be my own person?
What was bound to happen, happens. Is it just logic? Is it the envy of Helios? Whatever may be the cause, the effect is clear: the wax melts, the feathers are shed like a flower’s petals after it has bloomed, and the consequence is that Icarus falls out of the sky where he had felt, for once in his life, so much at home.
His father circles over the place where his son’s body was swallowed by the waves. He cannot beg Poseidon or any other of the ocean’s deities to return to him the flesh of which he was fonder than he ever showed, because he does not believe in them, or want to submit himself to them, and so he makes his slow, lonely, lengthy way to Sicily.
A bent old woman, outside her stone hut, has been looking at the sky since just before dawn, and seen it all. She limps down to the shore – her leg, injured in the trap, is mending – and looks out at the sea.
She sees a vessel on it that others do not see. She sees much that others do not see. One of these years – perhaps sooner than she wants – this vessel with its single crewman will come for her, as it will for all of us, whether we see it or not. At the moment, it bears one passenger, sprawled lifeless in the bottom of it, a boy, a young man, with the remnants of wax on his arms and a feather clinging here and there.
The vessel makes for the shore. She knows that there is an entrance here to the Dark River which flows down to, and through, the Underworld. She steps into the shallows, and blocks its passage.
What do you have there? she asks. A boy the ferryman answers. And how did he come to you? she asks. He flew the ferryman answers. The old woman laughs. Nonsense! Flew? A boy? You have made a mistake she says, and gestures with her staff into the boat, behind the ferryman, where his passenger is lying.
The ferryman turns round and looks. He could have sworn there was a boy there, a young man, that he had dragged from the sea – but now all he can see – and he has to peer to see it – is a colourful, but bedraggled, butterfly.
The old woman touches it with her staff. Its limp wings stiffen, one by one. It shakes itself. The ferryman can see the drops of water silver in the sun. The creature flutters up in a spiral, then makes for the old woman and settles on the shawl that covers her shoulders. It folds its wings neatly, becoming almost invisible. The pair turn away from the shore and begin a slow walk up the hill to a stone hut with a roof of branches and a dark doorway, while the ferryman resignedly poles his way into a different darkness, leaving magic behind.
Mike Rogers
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