The Flight and Fall of Icarus
Daedalus was an inventor and architect who worked for King Minos of Crete, and it was he who designed a labyrinth to hold the Minotaur - a great half-man, half-beast monster who fed on human flesh. When Theseus came to the king's palace at Knossos to slay the Minotaur, Daedalus was shamed into helping him escape by Ariadne, and he gave her a ball of golden thread that Theseus used to guide himself out of the maze.
When King Minos discovered that Daedalus had betrayed him, he ordered that Daedalus and his son Icarus be locked up in the labyrinth as a punishment. Being a clever inventor, Daedalus plotted an escape, and he came up with a brilliant idea: if they could lure some birds into the labyrinth, the men could steal their feathers. Then, using a mix of wax and reeds of varying lengths, he constructed two pairs of wings: one for himself, and one for his son.
When he was finished, he strapped his son into his wings, and said, "listen, son: these wings are very fragile - if we're to fly away from this island, you need to make sure you don't go too close to the ocean, otherwise the spray from the water will get your feathers damp and you'll fall."
Icarus nodded: "Got it, Dad; not too close to the water."
"And," continued Daedalus, "you can't go too high either, otherwise the heat from the sun's rays will warm your wax too much, and your feathers will start falling out."
Icarus nodded again, this time a little slower. "So... not too low... and not too high," he said.
"That's right," said Daedalus, "you need to fly very carefully, but don't worry - I'll be right behind you, telling you what to do."
Once Daedalus had strapped his own wings on, the two of them leapt from the island of Crete into the ocean below, with the warm air lifting them immediately up into the sky. They soon found that by flapping their arms like birds they had great control over their flight, and together they soared away from Crete, towards safety.
It wasn't long, though, until Icarus started really enjoying his flight. He tried flying a bit lower, then he tried flying a bit higher. He tried flying a bit faster, then he tried flying a bit slower. "It's just like being a bird," he said to himself, grinning broadly.
Soon they could see land approaching in the distance, and Daedalus flew ahead to see where they were going to land. Left alone for a moment, Icarus decided this would be a good time to enjoy himself - they were almost at land, after all. So he flew higher and higher, enjoying the warm sun on his skin, and soon he could almost touch the clouds.
Further ahead, Daedalus turned around and could see his son was getting very high - so high he was just a small dot in the distance. "Stop, Icarus," he shouted, "it's too dangerous to fly up there!" But Icarus was too far away to hear, and was flying even higher still.
Icarus closed his eyes and revelled in the freedom that flight gave him, not realising that the heat from the sun was slowly melting his wings, and feathers were already starting to fall away.
In the distance, Daedalus turned around and starting flying back to his son, shouting all the way. But he was too late: Icarus's feathers now were falling away by the handful, and when Icarus finally heard his father's frantic shouts he opened his eyes to see his wings almost gone.
Panicking, Icarus flapped his arms desperately, but nothing could save him now - the reeds that were tied to his arms were now all but bare of feathers, and he fell from the sky.
Daedalus watched helplessly as his son fell all the way from the clouds into the ocean below, just south of the island of Samos, and by the time he arrived where Icarus fell all that was left were a few feathers bobbing about on the water.
Much later, his body washed ashore on a nearby island, where Heracles later found it and buried it. Even today this island is called Icaria after the unfortunate youth.
