His skin is tan and sweat streams down his face, transforming his collarbones into reservoirs and bronzing his face in a copper mask with the help of its compatriot, the sun. Standing with bare toes gripping the sandstone, he releases one side of the window to hold his hand like a visor as he squints into the ocean channel. Far below, the waves wink and dimple, and apprehension shudders his body. He clamps his hand back onto the window and the knuckles whiten.
He glances behind him. He edges his body sideways on the sill, bending his knees until he is facing not into his cell, not out to the seaspray, but towards the window’s wall, beard hairs brushing stone.
“Now, son, step onto the sill behind me – carefully! Careful! – Now tie the apparatus around my shoulders as we practiced, just the way yours is attached to your back – only better tie it more securely on me. I’m an old man, after all, and heavy. There . . . a jot tighter. . . . loop around the silk one last time.”
He grunts as the boy jerks the tie tight. The ocean is cold and deep beneath its green glass surface, a deathly beauty. What a thrill it will be to smash its inscrutability. Again, he raises one hand to his brow and stares, this time to the horizon where out of the eternity peeks a thin strip of brown. From island to island man leaps without rest, a flea in a world of flat cattle backs, crossing voids of space with trepidation lest he fall. Daedalus imagines the slap of the hard water, then the sensation of choking – flailing arms and legs and voiceless screams as the salt pours into his mouth and pulls him down by his tunic to a seafloor graveyard littered with broken masts and lonely femurs. He shudders again. As long as he stays high, seaspray will never saturate his gull wings. Nor Icarus’s – Icarus of the white skin and sparking eyes. A smile twists Daedalus’s mouth at the bare thought of his son.
“Father, let me go first.”
Daedalus notes the tenuous excitement in the words and frowns.
“Be sure not to fly close to the waves.”
“Yes, Father.” The words are respectful, but the boy’s tone betrays his impatience.
“And remember to fall like the seagulls do. Angle and come out straight.”
“Yes, Father, I know!”
Daedalus feels insects flutter in his stomach. Adrenaline sparks his eyes, and a sensation of might swells his heart as he looks at the distant strip of land. There is no need to fear. When have his inventions ever failed?
“Now, Icarus! Now! Show the gods our might!”