When Icarus Fell

Icarus had always been told the world was in his hands and there were no boundaries to how high he could go. He had never believed it, but now that he finally did, it seemed he was the only one.

“Icarus, come down!” The shouts belonged to his father, Daedalus. His voice was distant, almost as if it were a memory. Icarus paid it no mind.

They had fled the Labyrinth in a rush. Haste was required if one wished to escape Minos, the Golden King.

Icarus had found the concept of Minos’s power intriguing and often thought about it as he lay awake at night, listening to his father’s snores as they echoed off the Labyrinth walls. To be able to turn everything he touched into gold sounded at first like a dream come to fruition, but he supposed it was a curse above all else, for Minos could not touch people or water or food or anything else without it becoming the precious metal. Even a blanket would be no solace to the King. It must have been lonely.

“Icarus!” His father’s voice pierced through his head again, and he glanced down at the churning ocean below. He was growing too high—he knew that—but despite his father’s warnings that the sun would melt the glue from his wings, the pulse in his chest told him to keep going.

There was something about pushing the limits that sent flames through his bones and released the tension at the base of his skull. He was aware this wasn’t safe, but it was the knowledge of that danger that captured his body and took control of it. He pushed higher.

“Icarus!” 

There was a sharp snap, and something hot licked at the bare skin of his neck. The wings had broken. He began his descent toward the water.

The legends would say this was the death of him, that he had ignored his father’s warnings, fallen from the sky in a ball of flames, and drowned in the sea and that was the end of it. They would be wrong. 

He did fall from the sky, kicking and screaming, his body on fire as he braced it for death, but when he landed it was on neither land nor water. It was in the arms of the god Apollo.

Icarus shook his head as he was placed in a patch of grass on the ground. They were no longer anywhere near an ocean, instead positioned at the mouth of a cave surrounded by grass, trees, and hyacinths. 

As he looked up to meet the god’s golden eyes, a wave of heat swept through his chest.

“You did that on purpose,” he said.

Apollo ignored the remark. It was almost as if he hadn’t heard it at all. “The sun is my responsibility, you know, but it will always be hot. There’s nothing I can do about it. You’re lucky I caught you.”

“Where are we?”

“You have a lot of nerve. Flying so high, demanding things from me…” Apollo clicked his tongue. “That’s why I couldn’t let you fall into the ocean like you were nothing. I believe you deserve another chance.”

As he stumbled to his feet, Icarus felt as if a haze had come over his mind, clouding his thoughts. “I did exactly what I was told not to do. I failed, and I was fine with it. I was fine with falling.”

“Good. You should be fine with falling. Those who never fail will never truly succeed because they will never be able to give themselves the room they need to grow,” Apollo said. “That’s why babies are born with their skulls in fragments rather than one fully fused bone. Their brains need room to grow.” 

Icarus was unamused. “So I’m a brain?”

Apollo’s thin lips quirked into an impish smile. “Indeed you are. In this metaphor, at least. Because I’m trying to get you to understand that yes, you will fall as you just did, but later you might thank the Fates for it. Because it’s making the conscious decision to get back up that will make you stronger. He who never competes will always lose. Remember that.”

“A poet he is.”

“The Muses would be jealous.” Apollo’s smile had only grown, nearly becoming a smirk. “No, they are some of those I hold dearest to my heart, and I should be embarrassed as their brother and the god of song if I too were not somewhat poetic or dramatic.”

Icarus’s face was so straight it almost hurt. “Okay but you did knock me down on purpose, right?”

“Oh, my dear boy.” Apollo sighed somewhat wistfully. “Obviously. Even gods get bored sometimes. Now, come.”

As he followed the god through trees and over boulders toward whatever plan was in store for him, Icarus felt the weight he’d carried in his chest since Minos had first imprisoned him and his father fade. It didn’t move to the pit of his stomach or the back of his neck or the curve of his shoulders as it usually did, but it evaporated.

Yes, the Icarus who had taken flight from Crete would never be heard from again, but not in the sense the stories would lead the masses to believe. He hadn’t died the day he fell, but he had become a different person because, with his descent, he had found opportunity. With Apollo. And there were no boundaries to what the new Icarus born that day could do.