Air Born | Generation Icarus #1

Victoria - The Legend of Icarus

An hour later, we weren't much more enlightened than when we'd started.

"How can four websites say four completely different things?" Tyler threw his hands up in the air and began pacing around the tiny campsite. "Yes, birds need tails to fly. No, they don't. It depends on the bird. Tails are only for steering, not lift—"

"It's the internet, anyone can post anything they want on there," I said, calmly clearing the results for about the fifteenth time. "There's no guarantee they aren't just typing up what they think is true, without any evidence."

Miguel leaned back on his wing elbows, his black feathers bending against the ground. "We will just have to have faith that the right solution will present itself."

"I guess that makes it dinner time," Tyler said.

As Miguel levered himself up to help, I absently tapped a few more random, vaguely flight-related words into the search engine, and scrolled through the results.

Several pages in, I finally tapped on something completely unexpected.

The Legend of Icarus.

The architect Daedalus, designer of the legendary Minotaur's Labyrinth, was locked in a tower on the island of Crete with his son Icarus because his employer, King Minos, discovered he had given away the Labyrinth's secret. Daedalus used wax from their candles and the feathers of the tower's seabirds to make two sets of wings, which they used to escape. Icarus, overcome with the joy of flying, flew too high and too close to the sun. The wax in his wings melted, and the feathers fell out. He tumbled into the sea and drowned.

I stared at the black-and-white illustration of Daedalus and Icarus flying away from the tower.

"What have you found, Tori?"

Turning the phone so Miguel could see too, I read it out to Tyler.

"Depressing," Tyler said, and continued sorting through our pooled food supplies.

My gaze was continually drawn back to the illustration at the bottom of the page. Curiously, I zoomed in on the screen until all I could see was the wax-and-wood wing.

Something began to click over in my brain.

"Guys ..." I said hesitantly. Tyler and Miguel stopped what they were doing and looked at me. I took a deep breath. "What if we made ourselves some tails?"