‘Traitor! Traitor! Dirty Greek traitor!’
Daedalus lay bound and gagged in the middle of the giant arena, while all around him hundreds of angry Minoans stood on their seats chanting and waving their fists.
‘You gave away the secret of the maze,’ they yelled. ‘Because of you the Minotaur is dead.’
Then someone spat at him, someone else threw a handful of rotten figs and yoghurt, and pretty soon a shower of filthy garbage was hailing down on him. A lump of cold baked beans hit him splat on the nose.
‘Stop!’ A young boy raced out of the crowd and stood in front of Daedalus shouting. ‘Leave him alone. How dare you treat my father like this.’
‘That’s Icarus, the traitor’s son,’ replied a weedy voice in the crowd. ‘Kill him! Kill them both!’
And suddenly it wasn’t garbage the crowd was hurling. It was coins and stones and bricks.
Icarus was knocked to the ground. The crowd’s roar reached fever pitch. In a moment the traitors would be dead, but … NEEAAUUURGH!!! … there was the ear splitting screech of a bull’s horn being blown. The crowd hushed. King Minos had arrived. He spoke in a whisper but the whisper echoed round the whole arena.
‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘The Greek maze maker has betrayed us, and he and his son shall die. But not yet. Daedalus is the most cunning craftsman known to man. First he shall make me a new Minotaur, a mechanical monster so powerful that no one will be able to resist it … not even Theseus.’
By now the Greeks were well out of Minoan waters. The bright summer sun was shining, smiling dolphins were leaping in and out of the sea, and everyone was getting nicely tanned. One bunch were playing quoits with the death garlands the Minoans had given them, a girl was being sick over the side – but she wasn’t complaining – at least she was alive. Even the jet black sails looked a little less gloomy now.
Ahead of them lay the island of Naxos, shimmering in the sunlight. It was a magical island, covered with dark green forest skirted by little fringes of silver sand. Wisps of purple and crimson smoke appeared between the trees and the occasional sound of a flute echoed across the water, but no one appeared on the beach to watch the ship go by.
Ariadne was gazing in silence when Theseus interrupted her thoughts.
‘We won’t anchor here,’ he said. ‘I don’t fancy being ambushed in those woods.’
Ariadne found it hard to imagine why anyone on Naxos would want to ambush them – she was sure there were better things to do on the island than bash people over the head – but she said nothing. She just sat and listened to the haunting strains of the unseen flute player in the woods.
‘Not much longer now, and we’ll be home,’ Theseus went on, not noticing she was in a strange mood. ‘My father’ll be dead chuffed when I come sailing into the harbour and hoist a pair of white sails – and I can’t wait to see his face when he sees I’ve got a wife! I wonder if he’ll abdicate straight away.’
Still Ariadne didn’t speak.
‘Strictly between you and me, I’m dying to be in charge,’ said Theseus, pressing on. ‘When I’m King and you’re Queen, we’ll eliminate my uncle Laius, then you can stay at home and do the palace-work while I wipe out any countries that cause us trouble. Then we’ll go back to Minos and take our revenge on your father.’
Slowly Ariadne turned to him. ‘I’ve not escaped one tyrant just to marry another,’ she said softly.
But Theseus wasn’t listening. ‘I mean, you’ve got to be practical, haven’t you. If we don’t flatten them, they’ll flatten us, right?’ he said confidently, then patted Ariadne on the head and moved off towards the wheel house.
When suddenly …
Plop!
There was a little splash.
Theseus turned back and couldn’t believe his eyes. Ariadne had disappeared. In a flash he’d torn off his shirt and rushed to the side, sure she must have fallen in and was now waiting for him to rescue her in his strong arms.
But not at all. Instead, he saw his future wife confidently swimming through the water – long, powerful strokes – each one taking her farther away from him and nearer the island.
‘What are you doing?’ he shouted. ‘Come back!’
But Ariadne took no notice. She was out of the sea now and walking up the sand.
‘You can’t go off on your own!’ yelled Theseus. ‘You’re completely unprotected. Here – take this!’ and waved his short stubby sword round and round his head.
But Ariadne just kept walking towards the trees. Finally, the moment before she disappeared into the forest, she turned and waved goodbye. Then, just like that, she was gone.
Theseus stood there frowning, his sword’s ruby handle glinting in the sun, his mind completely befuddled. And he would never be any the wiser. Was she torn to pieces by ravenous wolves in the outskirts of the forest? Did she marry the flute player and start an orchestra? Maybe she learnt the magic of the island and became the High Priestess. Theseus would never know. Because he never saw her again.
Meanwhile back in the Kingdom of Minos, Daedalus and Icarus were imprisoned in a dark tower that was covered with ivy and surrounded by six muscular guards with faces as ugly as rotten tomatoes that someone’s just stood on. Icarus was let out to work each day on the prison farm while his father stayed locked in alone, hunched over his work bench, making a new monster for Minos, a robot one that could never be beaten. But every moment he was racking his brains thinking how to escape.
Then one day, the shadow of a bird flew past, and Ping! it gave Daedalus an idea. And, of course, since he was Daedalus, it was a dead clever idea – when Daedalus’ brain went ‘Ping!’, it was a ping worth listening to.
From now on, each evening Icarus smuggled feathers in his trousers from the farm’s dovecote and wax from the farm’s beehives. The guards used to laugh at the size of his bottom, stuffed full of stuff as it was, but Icarus didn’t mind. He knew he’d have the last laugh. And every night, father and son worked on their means of escape. At first it looked like they were making a tiny model of a bird’s wing. But then the model grew. And grew. After a couple of weeks they had made a huge wing, like the wing of a giant, swooping eagle. Then they made a second one, then a third, until hidden under their beds were two giant pairs of wings. They were going to fly to freedom.
At last the great day arrived. They waited impatiently for the sun to drop beneath the horizon, then strapped the massive wings tightly to their arms and shoulders and crawled out of the window of their cell onto the tiny ledge outside. It looked like a mile down to the bottom of the tower, and every gust of wind threatened to blow them off and send them crashing onto the rocks below.
‘I do hope my calculations were correct,’ said Daedalus nervously.
‘You’ve never been wrong before, Dad,’ replied Icarus.
‘No, I suppose I haven’t,’ agreed his father and jumped off the ledge.
WHOOOSH!!!
Down he dropped like a stone, spiralling towards the cruel rocks below. Icarus shut his eyes in horror … and missed the most incredible sight in the world. Daedalus began to wave his arms about, the wings started to flap, and suddenly his downward plummet came to a halt and he rose up gently into the air again. Soon he was level with his son.
‘You can open your eyes now,’ he said. ‘Come and join me.’
Icarus blinked in amazement. His Dad looked like a giant seagull with a very small beak.
‘Hang on a second,’ he replied. Then he squeezed back into the cell, grabbed the half completed monster his father had been working on, forced it out of the window, and KERBLANG! It smashed down right on the heads of the tomato-faced guards. They crashed to the ground, dazed and confused, and assumed it was some kind of dream when, in the bright moonlight, they looked up and saw two human-shaped birds fly away from the tower and head off towards Athens.
Soon Daedalus and Son, Inventors of Flying Machines Extraordinary, had left Minos’ kingdom far behind them and were speeding through the air like a pair of fighter planes. All through the night they flew until dawn broke.
‘Don’t fly too close to the sun,’ called Daedalus, ‘or the wax will melt!’
But Icarus just laughed. He was doing what no man had ever done before – he was flying. It was wonderful – he felt like a god.
He flew in loops.
In spirals.
Upside down.
Downside up.
He flew with one arm by his side and went round in circles. Then he flew with both arms by his side in a very amusing imitation, jiggity-jig, of an extremely drunk sparrow.
‘Don’t fly too close to the sun!’ his father yelled again, ‘OR THE WAX WILL MELT!!!’
But up and up went Icarus, higher and higher.
Only now there was something running down his body, down his legs and dripping into the sea – not that he noticed it.
He should have done.
It was melting wax.
And there were little white flurries like snow or tiny clouds – but he hardly noticed them either.
That was a mistake too.
They were doves’ feathers.
And then he wasn’t climbing any more, he was falling.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Until with a tiny splosh! he dropped into the sea.
For hours, Daedalus flew across the waves searching for Icarus. But he found nothing except a few wet feathers bobbing up and down on the surface of the quiet water. Eventually, broken hearted, he left his son to his watery grave and flew sadly away. Only he wasn’t heading for Athens now. He was flying away as far as he could, away from the Greeks, away from King Minos and away from all his memories … forever.
On board ship Theseus had been in a bad mood for days. Why had Ariadne left him like that? What was it she had wanted that he couldn’t give her? After all, he was a pretty decent bloke really. And he had a fantastically muscly chest. Women were so illogical.
He chewed on a peanut and stared out to sea. Far away, a bird dropped out of the sky and plunged into the water.
‘What’s it all about?’ thought Theseus. He didn’t know. Then suddenly, the moment came that they had all been waiting and praying for. ‘Land ho!’ shouted the boy in the crow’s nest. They rushed to the side of the boat, and, yes, there, far away on the horizon, sparkling like a jewel, was Athens. The fourteen young Athenians hugged each other and cried and cheered and danced all round the deck. Even the boy in the crows nest had a little dance with a crow. They were home.
The boat moved gracefully and proudly, its black sails billowing in the gentle wind, towards the white cliffs of Athens. At one point, if Theseus had been watching, he might have seen another figure dropping to his death – a man jumping off a cliff and smashing lifeless into the shingle. But Theseus wasn’t looking. He was home, he was safe and the celebrations could begin. The ship glided alongside the pier, and Theseus leapt ashore, waiting for the medals, the brass bands, the cascades of flowers.
But where he had expected happiness, there was only sorrow …
‘Your father King Aegeus is alive no longer,’ said his heartbroken old nurse. ‘He threw himself off the High Cliff when he saw your boat.’
‘Why?’ asked Theseus incredulously.
‘He saw the black sails and thought you were dead. You forgot to change the sails to white.’
Theseus cried for a long time – deep racking sobs of guilt and sorrow. He couldn’t make any sense of things. Then a thought struck him.
He looked up, wiped the tears from his eyes and said, ‘That means I’m King, doesn’t it?’
Back on his island, Minos lifted up the smashed remains of his mechanical Minotaur and hurled them into the sea. He was shaking with fury. Daedalus had tricked him twice. First he’d shown Theseus how to kill the Minotaur – and now he’d escaped from prison. Wherever he was hiding, Minos would find him, and when he found him, he would kill him … very slowly.
He picked something up from the seashore and gave his fawning courtiers a crooked smile. He had an idea. And King Minos loved his own ideas.
‘I shall hold a competition,’ he announced, ‘open to anyone in the whole world. You see this tiny seashell, so small that you have to squint to get a good look at it. You see how it spirals round and round like a maze.’
The courtiers put on their glasses and clustered round.
‘The first person cunning enough to pass a thread through every spiral of this shell shall win a fabulous prize – a life size bull of solid gold, with diamonds for eyes.’
‘But who could perform such an impossible task, oh wise and magnificent Lord?’ asked a particularly creepy courtier.
‘Only one man in the world,’ replied Minos. ‘Our friend the maze maker. When the prize has been won, I’ll have found Daedalus.’ And then he laughed. The nastiest, cruellest laugh you ever heard.
At that moment Daedalus was carrying a lavatory into the palace of the King of Sicily. He put it down among a clutter of shower curtains and taps and bathroom suites, and began to route a pipe towards the guest bedroom.
The Sicilians were an easy going bunch. They slept a lot, danced a lot, and they didn’t have regular meal times or inside plumbing. If they wanted a shower they’d use a waterfall, if they wanted a bath they’d lie in the sea. But the King didn’t want to appear old-fashioned so, when Daedalus had appeared in Sicily alone and un-smiling, he’d been invited to install running water at the palace.
As Daedalus screwed on another section of plumbing, a jewelled crown popped up from behind an up-turned bath and the King said, ‘I hope I’m not interrupting, but do you remember me asking you yesterday if you could pass a thread through the spirals of that shell I gave you?’
‘Er … Yes,’ said Daedalus vaguely, as he lay on his back behind a wash basin, fiddling away at a U-bend. Then he reached into his back pocket and passed something to the King. ‘Here it is.’
Greedily the King snatched it and peered at it through an ivory magnifying glass. Sure enough, there was a tiny silk thread through every one of the shell’s spirals.
‘Brilliant!’ exclaimed the King. ‘How on earth did you do it?’
‘Oh, it wasn’t much of a problem,’ replied Daedalus. ‘I trained an ant to come when I called it, then tied the thread to its back leg, pushed it into the shell and kept on calling it until it crawled round and round and came out the other end. Pass me that adjustable spanner, would you?’ he said and went on with his pipe laying.
The King rushed out of the room and began drafting a letter claiming his prize.
Within days Minos had arrived.
‘Congratulations,’ he said to the Sicilian King as he presented him with the golden bull. ‘Tell me, did you solve the problem single handed?’
‘Yes,’ replied the King, ‘virtually … Well, I mean. I had a little help from my plumber.’
‘Your plumber!’ hissed Minos and one corner of his mouth began to twitch. ‘May I meet him?’
‘Certainly,’ replied the King magnanimously. ‘Tonight we’ll hold a celebration banquet and I shall invite him. In the meantime perhaps you’d like a bath. I’ve got a superb new guest bedroom with plenty of modern hot and cold water.’
Behind the King a curtain moved. It was as though someone had been listening.
Early that evening Minos lay in his bath smiling. Very soon he’d see Daedalus again and then the fun would begin. He smiled and slowly squeezed his bar of soap until it looked like porridge.
At that moment a trickle of hot water began to run out of the hot tap. ‘Typical shoddy Sicilian workmanship!’ thought Minos and leaned forward to turn it off – but the tap came away in his hands. Then hot water began running out of the cold tap – a second later Minos found himself with two taps in his hands. And now the water was getting hotter and hotter and the bathroom was filling with steam. In panic Minos tried to get out of the bath – but it was no use – now there was water pouring down from the ceiling. Scalding hot water. And a second later there was water shooting out of the walls – burning hot water.
Minos gave a scream of terror and fear – a scream that sounded like a bull in a slaughterhouse, or the death agonies of the Minotaur. He clambered to his feet in blind panic, then he slipped on the porridgy soap and crashed back into the bath.
There was a hissing sound. Then silence. Minos lay under the bath water – dead clean and dead dead.
In the next room, Daedalus slowly turned a stop-cock and the water stopped. For the first time in months he gave a little smile. ‘That’s for my son Icarus,’ he said.