‘What?’ Daedalus asked. ‘No, that wouldn’t work.’
‘But you said “break out”.’
‘It’s a figure of speech. There’s no way to escape by land or sea. Minos has those routes covered. But there’s one way he can’t guard.’
Daedalus pointed at the sky.
Icarus nodded. ‘Springs on our shoes. We will jump to freedom!’
‘No.’
‘Trained pigeons! We’ll tie dozens of them to large lawn chairs and –’
‘No! Although you’re getting warmer. We’ll fly out of here under our own power!’
Daedalus told him the plan. He warned Icarus not to talk about it and to be ready to leave when he visited the Labyrinth again in two weeks.
After Icarus left, Daedalus went to work. His forge glowed day and night as he smelted bronze and hammered out pieces of his new contraption. By this point, he was getting old. His eyesight wasn’t as good as it used to be. His hands shook. His project required intricate sculpting and painstaking precision. After a few days he was wishing he’d gone with the pigeon-powered lawn chair idea.
Two weeks flew by.
When Icarus came back to visit, the boy was alarmed at how much frailer his father looked.
‘Dad, the guards were acting funny,’ Icarus warned. ‘They said something about telling you goodbye and this being our last visit.’
‘I knew it,’ Daedalus muttered. ‘The king is planning to execute me. We have to hurry!’
Daedalus opened his supply cabinet and pulled out his new invention – two sets of human-size bronze wings, each feather perfectly crafted, all the joints fully articulated.
‘Whoa,’ said Icarus. ‘Shiny.’
‘Do you remember our plan?’ Daedalus asked.
‘Yeah. Here, Dad, I’ll attach your wings.’
The old man wanted to argue. He would have preferred that his son be ready to go first, but he was exhausted. He let Icarus fasten the straps on his leather harness, then use hot wax to fuse the wings into place on his back and arms. It wasn’t a perfect design, but it was the best Daedalus could do on short notice with the supplies he had. The guards weren’t about to let him have any good adhesive. With superglue or duct tape, Daedalus could have conquered the world.
‘Hurry, son,’ Daedalus urged. ‘The guards will be bringing lunch soon …’
Or, if Minos really had decided to kill him, they might bring a guillotine instead of the usual cheese sandwich.
Icarus attached the last pinion to his father’s wrist. ‘There! You’re ready to fly. Now do mine.’
The old man’s hands shook. Several times, he spilled hot wax on his son’s shoulders, but Icarus didn’t complain.
Daedalus was about to do a final safety check when the workshop door burst open. King Minos himself stormed inside, flanked by guards.
The king looked at Daedalus and Icarus in their new bronze wings.
‘What have we here?’ Minos said. ‘Giant bronze chickens? Perhaps I should pluck you and make soup!’
One of the guards laughed. ‘Ha. Soup.’
‘Icarus, go!’ Daedalus kicked open the forge’s floor vent. A blast of hot air from below lifted Icarus into the sky.
‘Stop them!’ Minos yelled.
Daedalus spread his wings. The hot wind carried him aloft. The guards hadn’t brought bows, so all they could do was throw their swords and helmets while King Minos yelled and shook his fists. The inventor and his son soared away.
At first, the trip was awesome … kind of like the beginning of Phaethon’s sun-chariot ride, except without the sun-related tunes or the built-in Bluetooth. Icarus whooped with delight as they glided away from Crete.
‘We did it, Dad! We did it!’
‘Son, be careful!’ Daedalus cried, struggling to keep up. ‘Remember what I told you!’
‘I know!’ Icarus swooped down next to him. ‘Not too low, or the seawater will corrode the wings. Not too high, or the sun will melt the wax.’
‘Right!’ Daedalus said. ‘Stick to the middle of the sky!’
Again, that might sound familiar from Phaethon’s driver’s education class. The Greeks were all about staying in the middle, avoiding extremes. They were the original nation of Goldilockses – not too hot, not too cold, just right.
Of course that doesn’t mean they were any good at following the rule.
‘I’ll be careful, Dad,’ Icarus promised. ‘But first watch this! WOOHOO!’
He did loops and twirls. He dive-bombed the waves, then soared up and tried to touch the clouds. Daedalus yelled at him to stop, but you know us crazy kids. Give us wings and all we want to do is fly.
Icarus kept saying, ‘Just one more time! These wings are great, Dad!’
Daedalus couldn’t do much to stop him. The old guy was having enough trouble just staying aloft. Now that they were over the middle of the sea, he couldn’t exactly stop to rest.
Icarus thought, I wonder how high I can go. Dad’s wings will hold up. Dad is awesome! He’s super smart!
Icarus shot into the clouds. Somewhere below, he heard his dad yelling, but Icarus was too busy enjoying the adrenalin rush.
I can touch the sun! he told himself. I can totally touch the sun!
He totally couldn’t touch the sun.
The wax points melted. The bronze feathers began to moult.
With a loud metallic RRRIPP – like a bag of cans in a trash compactor – the wings peeled away. Icarus fell.
Daedalus screamed until his throat was sore, but there was nothing he could do. His son plummeted three hundred feet and hit the water, which from that height might as well have been tarmac.
Icarus sank beneath the waves.
In his honour, that stretch of water is still called the Icarian Sea, though why you’d want to be memorialized by the thing that killed you I’m not sure. If I ever bite it, please don’t let them dedicate the Percy Jackson Memorial Brick Wall, the Percy Jackson Very Sharp Spear, or the Percy Jackson Memorial Sixteen-Wheeler Going a Hundred Miles an Hour. I would not feel honoured.
Heartbroken, Daedalus was tempted to give up. He could simply fall into the sea and die, joining his son in the Underworld. But his survival instinct was pretty strong. So was his instinct for revenge. Minos had driven them to this escape plan. Minos was responsible for his son’s death. The king needed to pay.
The inventor flew on into the night. He had more things to invent, more trouble to cause and at least one really satisfying death to arrange.
Daedalus made it all the way to the island of Sicily, off the southwest tip of Italy. That’s like five hundred miles from Crete, which is a long way for an old dude flapping metal wings.
When he landed, he was the first person ever to use that lame gag I just flew in from Crete and, boy, are my arms tired!
Fortunately, the Sicilians didn’t apply the death penalty for corny jokes.
They took Daedalus to meet the local king, a guy named Cocalus, and the king couldn’t believe his luck. Nobody famous ever came to Sicily!
‘Oh, my gods!’ The king leaped out of his throne. ‘Daedalus? The Daedalus?’ King Cocalus started fangirling all around the throne room. ‘Can I get a photo with you? Will you sign my crown? I can’t believe it! The Daedalus, in my kingdom. I have to tell all the neighbouring kings. They’ll be so jealous.’
‘Um, yeah, about that …’ Daedalus explained that he’d just escaped from King Minos, who had the most powerful navy in the Mediterranean and would no doubt be looking for him. ‘Maybe it’s best if we keep my presence here on the down-low.’
Cocalus’s eyes widened. ‘Riiight. The down-low. Got it! If you work for me, you can have whatever you want. We’ll keep your identity a secret. We’ll give you a code name like … Not-Daedalus! No one will suspect a thing!’
‘Um –’
‘Or how about Maedalus? Or Jimmy?’
Daedalus realized he had some work ahead of him. He’d have to make sure the royal brain didn’t get p
ulled over for going under the speed limit. Still, it beat sitting in the Labyrinth.
Soon, Daedalus was the king’s most trusted adviser. He could read entire sentences, spell words, even do maths. Truly, he was a wizard.
King Cocalus was as good as his word. (As long as you didn’t ask him to spell his word.) He kept Daedalus’s secret. He gave the old inventor a suite of rooms in the palace, a new workshop, even a good tool set from Ace Hardware in Athens, which was not easy to import.
Of course Sicily wasn’t Crete. Cocalus didn’t have nearly as much power or wealth as Minos, so Daedalus didn’t have as many resources to work with. But he was definitely appreciated. He was the biggest thing that had ever happened in that part of the world. He sort of liked the attention.
Cocalus might have been a doofus, but the king’s three daughters were all smart, with a ruthless streak. Daedalus thought they might make fine rulers some day. He began tutoring them on the basics of being a monarch – maths, reading, writing, warfare, basic torture, tax collection, advanced torture and tax collection with advanced torture. The princesses were quick learners.
Daedalus also did a ton of stuff for the locals. He introduced indoor plumbing. He built nice buildings. He taught the people how to tell if their clothes were on inside out. It was quite a Renaissance down there in Cocalus’s kingdom. If you go to Sicily today, you can still see some of the stuff Daedalus built: the thermal baths in Selinus, a water reservoir in Hybla, an aqueduct and some fortifications in Camicos, the temple of Apollo in Cumae and don’t miss the giant dancing bronze sloth in Palermo. (Okay, that last one isn’t there any more, which is a bummer. It must’ve been awesome.) Daedalus became so popular that he started piling up gifts from the grateful people. Many Sicilians named their kids Jimmy or Not-Daedalus in his honour.
Daedalus figured that sooner or later the Cretan navy would come calling, so he built King Cocalus a new castle high on a cliff. Its one entry gate was at the top of a steep path, and four men could easily defend it against an entire army. On the downside, that made for a real bottleneck situation during rush hour.
For a while, life was good. Some nights, Daedalus could even sleep without having nightmares about Queen Pasiphaë in her fake-cow costume, or Icarus falling into the sea, or his nephew Perdix tumbling off the Acropolis.
But King Minos hadn’t forgotten about the inventor. He gathered his fleet and slowly made his way around the Mediterranean, searching for Daedalus in every city. Minos was clever about it. Instead of banging on doors and threatening people, he set out bait that he figured Daedalus couldn’t resist.
Minos said he was holding a contest to find the most ingenious person in the world. Whoever could thread a cord through a conch shell without breaking the shell would win eternal fame and an ass-load of gold. (By which I mean as much gold as could be carried by a strong donkey. Jeez, you people. What did you think I meant?)
Why did Minos pick the conch-shell challenge? Maybe he wanted to start a new fashion trend with extremely large seashell necklaces. If you’ve ever seen a conch shell, you know they’re really curly on the inside. You can get your hand in partially, but it’s impossible to coax a thread all the way through the spiral and out of the top – especially not with the technology they had back then.
Word of the contest spread. A lot of people wanted eternal fame. An ass-load of gold didn’t sound too bad, either.
When Daedalus heard about the challenge, he just smiled. He had predicted that Minos would try something like this sooner or later.
He went to see King Cocalus. ‘Your Majesty, about this conch-shell contest … I intend to enter it and win.’
The king frowned. ‘But if you send in the winning entry, even if you do so under a fake name, won’t Minos suspect it’s you?’
‘Yes.’
‘But … then he’ll come here. He’ll demand to see the winner and –’
‘Right.’
‘Wait … you want him to come here?’
Daedalus realized he still had some work to do on the king’s brain-speed capacity. ‘Yes, my friend. Don’t worry. I have a plan.’
Cocalus was a little nervous about confronting the most powerful king in the Mediterranean, but he loved Daedalus. He didn’t want to lose his best adviser. He went along with what the inventor said.
First, Daedalus solved the conch-shell puzzle. That was easy. He drilled a tiny hole at the top, where the shell came to a point. He put a little drop of honey around the edge of the hole. Then he found an ant and carefully tied a silken thread around the little guy’s body. (Don’t try this at home unless you’ve got tons of time, infinite patience and a very good magnifying glass.)
Daedalus nudged the ant inside the shell. The ant smelled the honey at the top and took off through the spirals, dragging the thread behind it. The ant popped out of the hole and – ta-da! – one threaded conch shell.
Daedalus gave the conch to King Cocalus, who sent it to Minos, whose fleet was now trolling off the coast of Italy.
A few weeks later, Minos received the shell, along with a note that read:
Solved your little puzzle. What else you got?
Come and give me my reward.
I’m in Cocalus’s palace in Sicily.
XOX,
Not-Daedalus
Minos saw through this clever pseudonym.
‘It’s Daedalus!’ he cried. ‘Quickly, we must sail for Sicily!’
His fleet anchored off the southern coast of the island. The place where he landed was immediately named Minoa in honour of the king’s arrival. Like I said, not much happened in Sicily back then. Still, can you imagine every place you visit being named after you?
It’d be kind of annoying.
Mom: Did you go to New Jersey last night?
Me: Um, no. Why do you ask?
Mom: Because there’s a town named Percyopolis there now!
King Cocalus sent messengers to greet Minos. They invited the king to the palace for a chat.
Minos looked up at the clifftop fortress with its narrow winding approach and its easily defendable gate. He realized it would be impossible to take by force. He guessed Daedalus must have constructed the place.
Minos gritted his teeth and decided to play along. Accompanied by a dozen guards and servants, he followed the messengers to King Cocalus’s audience chamber.
The king sat nervously on his throne. Behind him stood three young redheaded ladies whom Minos assumed were the king’s daughters.
‘My friend Minos!’ Cocalus said.
Minos scowled. He’d never met Cocalus. He didn’t want to be friends. ‘I understand someone at your court solved my puzzle,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes!’ Cocalus grinned. ‘My trusted adviser, Not-Daedalus. He’s awesome!’
‘Let’s cut through the Mist, shall we?’ Minos growled. ‘I know you are harbouring the fugitive Daedalus.’
Cocalus’s smile faded. ‘Um, well –’
‘How did he solve the conch-shell problem?’
‘He, um … with an ant, if you can believe it. He tied a silk thread around the little guy, then coaxed it through the shell by putting a drop of honey at the other end.’
‘Ingenious,’ Minos said. ‘Turn Daedalus over to me and we’ll have no problem. Fail to do so and you will have Crete as an enemy. Believe me, you don’t want that.’
Cocalus turned pale, which pleased Minos. He was way past the days of giving away free bobbleheads in the hope that people would like him. Now he was older and wiser. He just wanted to terrify and kill people.
One of King Cocalus’s daughters inched forward. She whispered in her father’s ear.
‘What are you saying, girl?’ Minos demanded.
The princess met his eyes. ‘My lord, Daedalus is our teacher and friend. Turning him over to you would be treachery.’
Minos clenched his jaw. This girl defending the inventor reminded him of his own daughter, Ariadne – and that was a painful subject, as you’ll find out i
n the next chapter.
‘Princess, your loyalty is misplaced,’ Minos warned. ‘Daedalus also instructed my daughter. He poisoned her mind and she betrayed me to my enemies. Give me Daedalus now!’
King Cocalus cleared his throat. ‘Of course, of course! But, um, there was some mention of a reward for solving the puzzle … ?’
Minos understood greed.
He clapped his hands and his servants brought forward several heavy chests – an ass-load of gold, minus the ass.
‘It’s yours,’ Minos said. ‘Give me Daedalus and I’ll leave in peace.’
‘Deal!’ Cocalus wiped his brow with relief. ‘Guards –’
‘Father, wait.’ The eldest princess set her hand on his arm. ‘Your word is law. Obviously, we must do what King Minos asks. But shouldn’t we entertain our guest properly first? He has travelled for many months. He must be weary. Tonight, let us give Minos a luxurious bath, fresh clothes and a feast. Then, in the morning, we will send him on his way with his prisoner and many presents.’ She favoured King Minos with a flirty little smile. ‘My sisters and I would be honoured to see to your bath personally.’
Zowie, thought King Minos. This could work.
He figured he’d won. He could see the greed and fear in King Cocalus’s eyes. Sicily wouldn’t dare risk a war with Crete. It had been a long, tiring trip, and he wasn’t anxious to get back on a ship and sail home. Having three beautiful princesses prepare his bath and serve him a feast didn’t sound so bad.
‘I accept,’ Minos said. ‘Show me the hospitality of … Sicily.’
The three princesses escorted him to a lovely suite of rooms. They complimented him on his wealth, power and good looks. They convinced him to leave his guards behind. After all, he was among friends! What did a big, strong king have to fear from three girls?
They took Minos to the baths, where a steaming tub awaited, filled with fancy rose-scented bubble bath. As the old dude eased himself in, the princesses averted their eyes to protect their modesty (and also because he was old and hairy and gross and they didn’t want to see).
‘Ahhhh,’ Minos said. ‘This is the life.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ said the eldest princess. ‘It’s also your death.’