For as long as Icarus could remember, his father had loved watching birds.
The hobby had begun soon after they had arrived in Knossos. The king there had hired Daedalus to design a prison that could contain one of the more monstrous of the kingdom's secrets, and from the day Icarus' father had begun work on the Labyrinth, he had taken the boy with him every morning, every evening and every free moment they had together to watch the birds.
"Observe how they fly," the older man had said. "They can teach us about the currents of the air, and how to ride them."
Or: "Look at this bird, and how long its wings are, compared to its body."
Or: "See these feathers, and how different they are from these others. Why do you think they are different?"
Or: "See the sharp beak of the bananaquit, how like a knife it is! We must always avoid these birds when they swarm."
Spring gave way to summer, and when summer's leaves fell from the trees, winter arrived; and though the years passed and the construction of the Labyrinth was complete, they remained in Knossos. The king paid Daedalus generously to improve the royal bath, which he did by designing a shower with water both hot and cold, and still the promised day of departure never arrived.
Icarus would broach the subject with his father, but Daedalus would laugh and rough the young man's hair as though he were still a boy, and tell him to gather more feathers for their studies.
And then one day Daedalus took his son to the highest tower of the palace, and Icarus realized that his father had seen from the beginning the trap Minos had set, and had for years been planning their escape. The outfits he had made for them looked ridiculous, but Icarus knew they would work. He had joined his father in studying the birds of the Aegean and Adriatic seas for over 20 years, and he knew they would fly.
But before they did, Daedalus had two words of advice for his son. “One, don't fly too close to the sea. The feathers will become waterlogged, and you will fall into the sea, and drown. And two, don't fly too high. The sun is the chariot of Helios; and it moves in spheres too glorious, too awesome for mortals. If you go too close, you will be consumed in its fire.”
And with that, the older man led the way to freedom. With a mighty shout he threw himself from the top of the palace, and began flying to his home on the distant mainland shore. WIth a whoop and a holler, Icarus followed, taking time to circle the town below and share his opinion of the king, before flying out of the reach of the archers and joining his father over the sea.
Their flight took them along the path of the wind, well above the waves below and the ships that passed through them. They overtook and startled a flock of surprised gulls, and flew on as the day grew brighter and the sun rose steadily higher.
The sun.
Icarus contemplated it as it rose in the sky. It was an inspiring thing on the ground, but here in the air it was more than merely inspiring. Its light was brighter, so that he could see every detail on his arm more clearly. He could feel its heat more keenly, so that it warmed him more deeply. It was foreboding and dangerous, but welcoming at the same time.
He flew higher.
"Icarus," his father called from below. "Not so high!"
For a moment, he hesitated and nearly descended to his father's level, but then he stayed himself. He could hear the music of the sun where he was flying, and it was an invigorating thing, a vibrant tenor voice accompanied by pipes and a steady beat like horse hooves. His arms had been growing tired from flying, yet now they felt not rested but renewed. He was not stronger than before, but the sun gave him more endurance than he had known.
He imagined the world from the vantage of the sun, and saw at once how imaginary the boundaries were among the different city-states of Greece. What was Crete? What Sparta, or Athens or Thebes? All were Greece, and all the people in them were Greeks, born ultimately from the same rocks that Deucalion and Pyrrha had thrown over their shoulders.
"Icarus!" a voice called.
Inspired he lifted his head and unwitting flew closer to the awesome chariot of the sun. The light here was brighter still, the warmth was deeper, and his view was grander. There were lands beyond Achaea, beyond Peloponnesia, beyond even Persia. There were peoples who lived there, ignorant of Zeus and Olympus, and yet the sun visited them as well, lighting their days, growing their crops and watching over them from dawn to desk.
There was a voice Icarus heard, from afar off. It was shouting a warning about something, but its words were faint nonsense. The sun was calling him, further up and further in, and so he went.
The light was impossibly bright now. He could see not just the hairs on his skin, but the muscles beneath the skin as well, and the bones that they were stretched over. The music of the sun was now all he could hear, but he was beginning to understand the meaning of its song. Crete was special, it sang; and Athens was special. But all lands were special, and all lands were loved, for the same sun to visit each one in its turn. Icarus could see the whole world turning below him, its kingdoms and empires too numerous for him to count; and in the light of that awesome sun and its all-consuming fire he saw the people as they were, and loved them; and as he flew higher still, a hand reached out and took his, and his mortality burned away.
