The Flame in the Maze

by Caitlin Sweet

  “She was here,” the girl whispered up at the king. “Gone, now.”

  Minos reached for the girl with one chipped, blackened hand. “Who are you?” he said.

  She rolled her head on the earth. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth and pooled beneath her cheek. “Melaina. Of Athens.” Her voice was so faint, and his crackling skin so loud, that he had to lean down next to her. Her eyes wandered, half-lidded, from his face to the sky, which was lightening from blue-black to blue-grey.

  “And where did Princess Phaidra go, Melaina of Athens?”

  “Not just her,” Melaina said thickly. “Ariadne too. The Prince of Athens. Icarus.”

  She reared up on her elbows. The trickle of blood became a gush. Deucalion knelt and eased her back down.

  Flame sizzled and spat as Minos breathed. “Where did they go, child?”

  “They were all here. They . . . are going to . . . the sea. To get Daedalus. To escape. From you.”

  “Icarus,” Minos said. “Daedalus. Theseus.” The crowd murmured and shifted.

  Melaina’s eyes were closed, now. Her own breaths were shallow, with long pauses between.

  “Which way, Melaina?” Deucalion said. He wove a net of silver wind across her face and she smiled, a little. “Melaina? Which way did they go?” Karpos bent over his shoulder, frowning, one hand on Deucalion’s back.

  Her smile looked sleepy. “There,” she murmured, waving limply, maybe at the east. “And Icarus flew.”

  Pasiphae stepped closer to her husband—as close as she could get, without touching the plumes of flame that were rising from his tattered skin. “He flew?” she snapped.

  Melaina gritted her teeth. More blood frothed between them. She squeezed her eyes shut and grasped at the grass and dirt with clawed fingers.

  “Girl,” the queen said, and Karpos said, “My Queen—she’s dead.”

  Minos threw his head back in a steaming, spitting arc. Sparks gushed from his mouth when he laughed. Deucalion took Karpos’s hand and held it tightly, as they watched the king.

  “And so the gods set me on a new path,” Minos said.

  “Husband?” Pasiphae’s voice was a growl.

  The king spun so that his body and his fire blurred. “I shall kill those who must die,” he said as he spun. The words rippled and hissed. He lifted his arms and sent plumes of fire up from his fingers and forearms, so high that the mountain’s peak and the darkness above it were lit brighter than day. The glow lingered and spread, pulsing with a web of silver lightning.

  He stopped whirling as suddenly as he’d started. “We go to the sea,” he said. “I shall make a few more offerings to the gods, before I give myself to them.”

  He set off down the path, past the crowd, which did not murmur, now. Pasiphae followed, and Deucalion and Karpos. Only Glaucus lingered, for a moment, leaning on his stick in the livid glare of his father’s godmark, gazing down at the dead girl on the ground.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Daedalus was a small, dark shadow in front of the shepherd’s hut. He heard my wings, Icarus thought, then: Don’t cry, for gods’ sake; you’ll fall out of the sky even more clumsily.

  Daedalus was crying. He wiped at the tears with the backs of his hands and moved his mouth soundlessly. “I know,” Icarus said breathlessly after he’d landed and sprawled and laughed. “I know,” he said again as his father touched his feathers, still cool and moist from the wind. “It was Phaidra—she did this—” and he told him quickly of the mountain rescue, and of Sotiria, and the people who were coming, even now, to the cliff above the little island.

  “So we have to go,” he finished. “Now. We have to see whether there is a ship, at least, so that we can give them some sort of warning, if we need to.” He paused. “I’ll carry you there,” he said in a rush. Daedalus cocked his head and frowned. “Yes, it’s tiring—but you weigh barely more than a child, Father. Here: put your arms around my neck, and climb onto my back.”

  The thought of Phaidra was enough to carry them both up off the ground and into the sky that was full of dawn, now so bright that Icarus felt his eyes shift and focus in an entirely new way. He wheeled higher and higher and angled his glide so that he’d be able to show his father the way he’d come. Daedalus made a high, keening noise that was so unlike anything Icarus had ever heard from him that he assumed it must be laughter.

  He craned to find his friends, with this new vision that was so keen it almost hurt him—and he found fire instead. The king, who was made of flames that reached up like incandescent, rippling fingers. Black smoke wreathed him, with the fire, but Icarus could still see the solid lines of his limbs and skull. Ranks and ranks of people followed him, but at some distance. He flowed out ahead of them, scoring a smouldering trench into the earth as he went.

  Where are they? Icarus thought, dipping wildly, hardly hearing his father’s shout—and then, through a wisp of cloud, he saw them: six small, flattened shapes. They were struggling: bending, lurching, a couple falling behind the others, forcing the rest to slow, too. King Minos was closer to them than he was to his own people. They’re too weak—of course they are, Icarus thought. I have to help—but even as he tucked his head down and prepared to dive toward them, he knew it would do no good. You’d save Phaidra, maybe one other, and then be too tired yourself to save the others. No. It cannot be your choice. Go back; see if there’s a ship. Gods and gulls, let there be a ship.

  He sang warning and strength to them, as he turned away. He sang, “Faster, friends,” and other things that weren’t words, and barely even thoughts. As he did, his head swam with dizziness and the skin under his feathers lifted in a long, cold shudder. Daedalus tightened his hold, which made the dizziness subside—but as Icarus flew back toward the sea, he felt fear settle like stones in his belly.

  The water was white-gold with rising sun so bright that he could see nothing except flatness that curved a bit, where his vision ended. As his eyes adjusted to the dazzle, he saw wave ripples on the sea—and a tiny, solid patch of darkness caught among them.

  “There it is!” he cried up to Daedalus, not sure if words or song were coming out of his mouth.

  The ship was well up the coast: long and low in the water, shaped like the Athenian models his father had made for him to play with, as a child. Twig oars bristled from its sides. A white sail was lashed against its mast.

  The moment after he’d called, a tremor of exhaustion shook him. He sucked at the wind and imagined Phaidra’s arms and lips, and the angle of her neck, beneath her hair—but his weariness dragged him down toward the ragged line of cliff. He spun, and Daedalus’s arms and legs slipped and squeezed. No no no, Icarus thought. He flapped desperately, and flexed his legs and talons because the ground was whirling up to meet them and he had no idea what else to do.

  The force of their landing threw them apart, and nearly over the cliff’s edge. Daedalus scrambled to sit, his legs dangling; Icarus lay for a moment longer with his cheek in the grass and dirt. Already some of his feathers were withdrawing into his skin, leaving trails of pain in their wake. He watched one of his slender wing bones warp and thicken, and he moaned because it hurt, and because he couldn’t change—not yet.

  “Uh,” his father said from above him. “Uh.”

  “Fine,” Icarus said, “Up, yes.” His voice was changing too, or maybe his ears; maybe both. As soon as he was standing he had to bend over again to retch up a thick, yellowish ooze that tasted like rot.

  “The ship,” he gasped, when he’d finished, and wiped his mouth on the feathers that still covered the back of his hand. “It’s well away from the island—too far—I wanted to be able to fly you there right away, but now I’m so tired . . . I should be flying back for them, but I can’t, and the king is so close behind them.”

  Daedalus put his hand on Icarus’s. “Wait,” Icarus heard him say, through a b
uzzing that had started in his ears. “Nothing to do except wait.”

  And so they did, as the sun climbed over the sea. Icarus tried not to look too often at the ship, which seemed to be crawling south, toward them; he fixed his gaze on the island instead, with its tree and eagle’s nest. He remembered how he’d longed to reach it, before his wings had worked. Before Phaidra—and then he remembered her tiny, helpless shape and the king’s fire, and he stood up to wait, facing the way she and the others would come.

  When they finally did, Asterion’s horns were the first things Icarus saw, flashing in the sun that was now almost directly overhead. The horns, and his hair, and Phaidra’s—and then all of them were in sight, moving far too slowly toward the cliff. Icarus ran to them, though his legs didn’t feel as if they belonged to him: they were slow and leaden, and he stumbled over his own feet, which ended in both toes and talons.

  “He’s so close,” Phaidra gasped when her arms were around him and her head was on his shoulder. Feathers prickled instantly, reaching for her.

  “I know.” Icarus buried his face in her hair and breathed in a scent which was new and already beloved. “But the ship’s nearly here. I’ll get all of you onto it before the king catches up.”

  Alphaios crumpled, when they got to the cliff. He lay on his side, his eyes closed as Ariadne stood above him, stooped, sweatier than Icarus had ever seen her, even after a dance. Theseus knelt with a hand on the bloodied place where his wound had been. His brow was furrowed; Icarus assumed he was speaking to the ship’s captain with his mind-voice. Chara limped past everyone and sat down heavily, slipping her legs over the ledge. She held up a hand and looked over her shoulder at Asterion—but he wasn’t looking at her. His muscles twitched and strained as he dragged himself toward Daedalus, who was waiting with his gaze cast down.

  When Asterion reached him, Daedalus’s eyes flickered up and over his naked body, with its streaks of scars, sweat, blood and dirt. Then, slowly, Daedalus knelt and bent his head.

  After a silence that seemed very long, Asterion said, “No.” His voice shook; so did the hand he set on Daedalus’s head. “Stand. Stand with us.”

  Daedalus did. He made noises that Icarus understood, and that he knew Asterion would not. Icarus said, “He had no idea what the king and Ariadne were plotting. Had no idea they’d put you in there too. He’s hated himself all these years, for what happened to you, and to the Athenians. He—”

  “Enough,” Asterion said gently to Daedalus, whose noises sputtered into silence. “Please.” He paused and tipped his head up to the white-golden-blue above.

  I can’t imagine how he feels now, looking at the sky, Icarus thought. Even I can’t imagine this.

  Asterion sucked in a breath that made the space beneath his ribs go briefly hollow. His eyes were back on Daedalus. “Do you know, Master Daedalus, what I have always thought of first, when I’ve thought of you? That night when you filled the room at Knossos with all kinds of mechanical beasts—when you spoke my brother Androgeus’s name, even though you knew it would enrage the king. That night.”

  “Icarus,” Phaidra said quietly, into the silence. They all followed her pointing finger; they all saw the shimmer of heat that was warping the air, and the drift of black smoke that was rising.

  “We should go down to the ledge,” Phaidra said.

  Icarus shook his head. “I won’t have enough room there—I’ll need to run”—because I’m so horribly tired, so dizzy; gods, I just want to lie down with Phaidra and sleep. “Father,” he said, “let me take you first.”

  Now Daedalus shook his head, wildly. “No—not me—me last.”

  Ariadne, who couldn’t possibly have understood him, said, “Asterion should go last: he’s the only one strong enough to fend off the king.”

  Asterion sucked in his breath. Chara said, “No. He’s not changing—not again. And anyway, he may be too weak to.”

  And so Asterion went first. “He’s survived this long,” Chara said as Asterion and Icarus were hovering, Asterion’s feet just above her head. “Do not drop him.” Asterion’s grin made Icarus feel suddenly stronger.

  “I’ll be careful,” he said, and launched them off the cliff.

  Waves, sun, reflected sky and real sky—the world spun around him. The ship dipped and wobbled. He remembered the clarity of his first flight, only hours earlier, and tried to believe that this, now, was the same vision, the same muscles and feathered skin. The ship wobbled nearer. He saw men on the deck, some standing, some bent over, rowing. They bobbed as if the deck were water and they were seabirds; he blinked and focused only on the weathered planks. He wheeled, dived, and fell. His vision went white, and his ears filled with a piercing noise that drowned out every other sound.

  Asterion’s hand on his shoulder brought him back. “Think of Phaidra,” Icarus heard him say. “Think of her now, Icarus: you need to go back.”

  He did. He cleared the cliff, but only barely.

  Minos’s smoke was much thicker, now. The heat-warped air was red.

  Chara was next. Twice Icarus swooped dangerously close to the waves—once because he was so tired, and her grip kept loosening, and once immediately after that, because they were both laughing so giddily that he couldn’t stay aloft. “Gods, I missed you,” she cried, and he sang joy back to her in his mother’s voice before he bore her down to the ship.

  Back on the cliff, Alphaios stepped toward him. “No,” Icarus panted, “Ariadne now”—Because she mustn’t be alone with my father. But Daedalus waved his good hand at Alphaios and grunted another stream of broken “nos.”

  Alphaios felt far heavier than he had been at the mountain—and suddenly the leaden sensation was back, more intense than ever. Alphaios tumbled off Icarus’s listing back well above the deck. I’ve killed him, Icarus thought dimly. I’m a danger to all of us. He heard himself screech fear, when only moments before he’d been so happy—and he heard Chara call, “He’s fine, Icarus! Go on, if you can: go on.” Phaidra raised her arms to him and he straightened up and went.

  The first thing he heard, after he slammed into the earth, was shouting. He didn’t look toward it, when he staggered to his feet. Why would he, when he knew what he’d see?

  He was so dizzy he could barely make out Ariadne and Daedalus—but they were both there: she hadn’t pushed him off the cliff. “Father,” he whispered. “You now.” But Daedalus shook his head as he had before and gestured at Ariadne. Icarus had no will left to argue.

  “You’d have left me here,” she said. She was very close; he could feel her breath. “If I’d been last.”

  “Maybe,” he heard himself say. He wondered if he were feverish.

  “You won’t drop me into the sea, will you? Icarus. Think of how much we share. Remember: we were children together.” Her voice was shaking.

  “Yes,” he said, trying to get his breath, to slow his heart. “I remember everything. Are you sorry, Princess? For any of it?”

  In her silence, Minos’s voice rose above the others—shouting his children’s names, one by one. Shouting Icarus’s name too, and Daedalus’s. The words were garbled, but Icarus understood each of them.

  His vision cleared a bit; he saw Ariadne’s scarlet lips, slightly parted, and her bright, steady gaze. He said, “I won’t be the one to decide your fate. That’s up to Theseus, or the gods, or Chara. I suppose you’ll think me weak for this, too.”

  Phaidra, he thought—but it was barely enough. He strained his way back into the sky. The wind pulled him sideways and up and down; he gulped as if he were swimming, not flying.

  The deck was cool against his cheek. Phaidra’s lips were cool. He clasped her hands to his chest, which was part feathers, part flesh. “My love,” she said. “There’s just your father, now. Just him—and then we’re free.”

  Icarus blinked, after he’d tumbled back onto the cliff’s edge. The blinking was
very difficult, and seemed to take a very long time.

  “Up,” Daedalus said, as he had before.

  Icarus rose. He was crying: everything wavered in tears he couldn’t feel. Everything, including Minos. The king was close enough that Icarus could see his smile, through the smoke and flame. The white, white teeth in his blackened skin.

  “I can’t do it, Father,” Icarus said. “Can’t carry you. I’m so sorry.”

  Daedalus was holding something—Icarus noticed this only now. Wings. The wings his father had made, month after month, from branches and his son’s plucked feathers.

  Behind them—so close—Minos cackled and snapped.

  “Up,” Daedalus said again.

  They turned and leapt together into the air above the sea.

  Chara hadn’t been able to draw a deep, clean breath since the wind had taken it away, over the water. She still felt like laughing, but she couldn’t. She wanted to gabble all the words that were crowding her throat, where her breath should have been, but she couldn’t. She turned to look at Asterion; she put a hand in his thick, warm hair and smiled at his smile.

  Daedalus and Icarus were small but distinct, on the cliff. I love them both, she thought. When she turned back to the deck behind her, she thought, I love all of them—even Ariadne, somehow. Even the princess, who was gripping the side next to Theseus, her bright, hungry gaze on the open sea.

  Everyone started, when Icarus and Daedalus jumped. Phaidra gave a strangled cry—because the moment their feet left the ground, Minos was behind them on the ledge. He was a swift, flaring, stilling blur that lit the sky around him to a brightness beyond noon.

  Daedalus was gliding—too high, which was better than too low. How does he have wings? Chara thought. The feathers matched Icarus’s, but they glowed, too, with the silver of Daedalus’s godmark.

  Above him, Icarus weaved and dipped.

  Pasiphae was on the cliff, now. Deucalion. Karpos. Farewell, all of you, Chara thought, as Asterion’s hand clutched convulsively at hers.