Once upon a time, there was a boy who grew up on an island with his father. They were trapped there, and walked through a maze of their own making. It had been the two of them always, a great beast and his pale shadow. The boy learned the hard way to listen always to his father, because father’s knew best. He was warned never to climb the walls of the caldera in which they lived.
This was what Daedalus said:
“Icarus, don’t climb so high. It is dangerous, and I know what is best for you. Stay with me always, so I can keep you safe.”
But Icarus did not listen, for he was a free spirit, and was not made to be bound to a place. One day, something marvellous happened. A figure appeared to him, walking perilously close to the rocky rim of the cliff. Icarus called and called, and only when Daedalus set his teeth to the flesh of his son did the boy fall silent. The figure vanished from view, and darkness fell upon the island prison. In the days and months that followed, Icarus secretly studied the stone walls, kept company by the shadowed figure above, who tracked the movements of the silver & ivory boy as steady and true as the sun as it arced above the circle of the only world Icarus had ever known.
Sometimes when the wind died down, he could hear the voice of a stranger calling to him through the only break in the canyon walls, a dark and damp crevice too narrow for even the slip of a boy that Icarus was to navigate. Whenever Daedalus was resting, Icarus would sneak away and pressing his face into that dank fissure as far as he could he’d call out in hushed and desperate tones, flinching with exhilaration every time he caught a glimpse of movement, or heard a stranger whispering back to him.
Ruminating on these mystery figures, late at night beneath the stars with Daedalus breathing deep and steady beside him in slumber, Icarus found the names of these new companions of his. Loyal, persistent souls who had come for him, opening up the mind and eyes of Icarus to the concept that there was so much more than this place, his domineering father, and the choking dullness of his life. Apollo and Poseidon. They were among the many figures Daedalus spoke to him of. A soul as bright as the sun so distant above them, and a heart as restless as that unseen and unceasing sound that Daedalus called the sea.
Apollo was waiting up there to guide him, and beyond the sight of the silver boy, Poseidon always beckoned him ‘join me’. And so, one day, before dawn broke, Icarus risked his life to scale the steeply sloping side of the caldera that had been a cage to him, and by the time the sun danced through the tangled silver locks of the lost boy’s mane and turning them gold, he was far beyond the reach of his father. Daedalus tore up the earth far beneath Icarus, raging in the shadow of his son, driven wild by fear and rendered silent after screaming his throat raw.
“Foolish boy, you go to your death! Come down Icarus. We are not meant to fly so high...”
But Icarus didn’t listen. And he climbed to the very top of those towering walls. Energy spent, his legs trembled, and he teetered at the cusp of his world and fell right off its edge. His mouth opened, but any cry of fear was torn away from him. The boy with the restless heart, who’d dreamed so oft of soaring among the very stars he loved so fondly, who’d longed for the warm and brilliantly bright embrace of Apollo found that his proverbial wings had been clipped by the biting wind. He fell so far, but there was no fear in him. Poseidon was waiting for him, see, with arms opened wide.
The fine-boned and fragile silver figure splashed into the sea, and barely conscious, allowed it to bear him into the great unknown.
Icarus had woken with a start, and staggered up a sandy embankment, spluttering salt water. He gaped in bewilderment at the strange sights surrounding him, soft golden eyes darkening with the terror he felt. It was nothing like the only place he’d ever known – an emerald grove, with its glistening stream, protected perhaps a little too well by the jagged rocky outcrop encircling it. Everything was so flat here, except for a giant rocky monument in the distance that frightened Icarus with its magnitude, and there was so much of everything that the poor creature was instantly overwhelmed.
There were figures approaching, ones that looked like Daedalus except for the fact that they were all wrong and they called to him with their unfamiliar voices, asking questions and saying things that Icarus didn’t understand. What did ‘lost’ mean? And how could he possibly tell them where he had come from, when he had no idea where he was now? He did not know how he’d got here. Insticntively he fled, running haphazardly, crying out two names, three. Apollo! Poseidon? Daedalus, where are you?!
Eventually, completely spent of energy, and almost feverish with exhaustion and terror combined, Icarus pressed himself into the midst of a close-growing stand of silver birch trees, trembling so hard that it felt as though his bones would rattle loose from their joints. Whenever he caught a flicker of movement, his head would swivel and his golden eyes would roll wide in fear before he’d press them tightly closed. In any case, none came close enough to bother him. No doubt his erractic behaviour and fraught state proved to be a deterrent for some. Others did not notice him at all, quiet as he was hunkered down and blending in with the silvery trunks.
It was the voice of another, ringing out across the open meadow from a source uncomfortably close, that turned Icarus out of his hiding place. His heart leapt in his chest, sending him surging forward in sudden fright, spurring him into flight. But his weakness and his hope had him stumbling. Somehow managing to regain his footing, the silver male, hips shrouded white, swivelled towards the pale figure that had spoken. White like the moon, but eerie, like a ghost. Icarus did not understand, but still he sensed that this Daedalus-but-not-Daedalus was in some ntrinsic way very different from himself, and his father. The scent on the wind carried lighter notes to it, and the voice of this pallid creature did not reverb so deeply in Icarus’s breast, the ways Daedalus’s always had.
Icarus, who in many ways was still a boy, young in mentality though he had long since matured physically, innocent to the ways of the world, understood nothing of where he was, or what the figure before him way. But something this strange phantom had said meant something to him. “You,” he rasped hoarsely, throat stinging anew from the saltwater that had scoured it raw, gold eyes gleaming with uncertainty and hope all at once. “You know Demeter, Persephone?” These were names from the tales that Daedalus had told Icarus, many times before. If anyone could help him find Apollo and Poseidon, surely it would be one of these? “Take me to them,” Icarus pleaded desperately. Surely Apollo or Poseidon would know the way to lead him back home? Poor, trembling thing, how was he to know that what he asked was impossible?
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