The Flame in the Maze (21 page)

“Father. What is it? What were you doing?” But he knew. He could almost see Daedalus crouching in the darkness, lifting his fingers to the lock. His fingers that could make nothing, but that could feel. The rust; the tiny crack between lock and wall. The keyhole. All this Icarus could imagine—the actions, but not the thoughts. “What?”

Daedalus leaned forward so that his nose was nearly touching a spray of translucent threads that clung to the stone. The threads were alive, somehow, without sunlight or wind: Icarus could see this. They'd put out buds that looked like minuscule mushrooms—and maybe that was what they were. Cave mushrooms. Daedalus ran his nose and forehead across the web, then lurched a few paces, until he was standing beneath one of the stalactites that hung from the ceiling. He tipped his face up to it. Raised his right arm.

He's thought of something,
Icarus thought
. He's still godmarked, even if he has no hands and no mouth.
But his father stood there for so long, motionless and staring, that at last Icarus thought,
Maybe not; maybe he's just confused
, and took a step toward him.

Something dripped from the stalactite's point and landed on one of Daedalus's bulbous knuckles. It was a swift, tiny movement, but Icarus saw his father's body begin to tremble. His wide, shining eyes found Icarus's.

“What?” Icarus said eagerly. “What have you thought of?”

Daedalus pointed his chin at the moisture that gleamed on his finger, then at the strange plant webbing on the wall.

“Yes, yes: I see these things. What of them?”

Daedalus held both his hands up beneath the stalactite. He waved them, mimed something urgent and sweeping. Icarus shook his head.

“I'm sorry—I don't understand. But you do. I see that you do. That's enough.”

It wasn't, though. There was no other way out, and no silver flowed, any more, from Daedalus's fingers, and Icarus didn't understand. He sat down and watched his father holding his hands toward the invisible sky as the air breathed blue and gold.

It took Icarus far too long to understand. He stared as, hour after hour, his father raised one arm and then another beneath the stalactite. He stared from the knob of drippings that had grown beneath the stalactite to his father's twisted hands and still didn't understand—not until, one day or night, the pulsing light caught the wet glint on Daedalus's skin.

Icarus leapt to his feet, dropping the bread he'd been tearing into bits. “New fingers,” he gasped as he strode the four steps to where his father was standing. He seized one of Daedalus's wrists, turned it more gently so that he could see his hands. The broken, lumpy fingers were coated in dampness—but beneath that were other layers that shone more dully, as if they'd already dried.

“Do you think . . .”
Will Great Creator Zeus take pity on you and give your godmark back to remade hands?
There were so many things Icarus didn't dare say out loud.

“Ech,” Daedalus said. He waggled the fingers of his right hand. His lips curled, and Icarus thought for a moment that his father was going to cry—but then he realized that he was smiling.

For a long while, Icarus watched Daedalus every time he stood beneath the stalactite. This very quickly made him insane with impatience: the dripping was so slow, and his father so motionless, except for the shifting of his arms—it was unbearable. There was a measure of relief whenever Daedalus shuffled over to the section of wall that was covered with splayed, translucent plants—because he was moving, at last, and because when he wound the sticky plant threads around the hardened drippings it seemed as if he was making sudden, swift progress. But he wasn't. The fingers hardly seemed to grow. They thickened a bit, but even after Theron's fourth visit to the cave they hardly extended past Daedalus's actual fingers.

Around this fourth month, though, Icarus's impatience smoothed away. Time didn't matter, after all. Better to grow the false bone carefully, to be sure of its strength, so that it wouldn't snap the moment Daedalus touched the lock.
Ariadne and Minos will still be there, above, whenever we get out
.
Imagine their surprise. Imagine her eyes as you hurt her.

Patience settled over him, breathing like the constant, changing light in the empty dark.

Daedalus drew pictures in the dirt.

Icarus recognized some of them: Levers, a sun with rays, rising steam, gears. Water pouring from bulging bladders that Icarus knew were made of cows' stomachs—because he'd seen them. He'd been beneath the Goddess's mountain, watching as the corridors grew beneath pick axes and shovels and his father's machines and glowing hands. Icarus had seen the gears as they turned for the first time, moved by gouts of steam or falling water, so deep within the stone that he could barely breathe. He'd stood at the centre of the altar, his hands on the brimming food jars, and stared at the corridors that changed with a screaming of stone and iron, and no man's hand upon them.

He hadn't understood how any of this happened. He still didn't. But when Daedalus drew pictures in the dirt with his stone fingers, Icarus recognized everything.

One day or night, Daedalus's hand faltered as he was drawing circles. He'd already drawn five, and Icarus knew what they were: the polished black pipes that brought sunlight, wind and rain down into the altar chamber.

“Are you sorry?” Icarus said, as his father's strange, pointed finger hovered over the pebbles and earth.

Daedalus's eyes were closed. Icarus watched him squeeze them tighter, and swallow convulsively.

“Father?”

His eyes opened slowly. “Eaeeun,” he said.

“Yes,” Icarus said. “Asterion.”

“Eh . . . eh . . . Ah-hee. . . .”

“And Athenians. Yes.” And suddenly, from nowhere he'd expected, he felt rage. It rose into his chest and mouth, so hot that it hurt him. He saw himself grasping his father's wrists; saw himself squeezing until his own tendons bulged, as if they'd break. “Asterion and Athenians. And you've killed them—for what? For
what
?”

Daedalus opened his eyes. They were darting and wild—Icarus remembered all the times they'd been like this when he'd been a boy, and how afraid they'd made him. Now he gazed into them and said, “Well?”

His father gazed down at the markings he'd made. He leaned away from Icarus and traced more lines—these ones sunlight or maybe moonlight, streaming down onto the carved snakes that Icarus knew writhed motionlessly over the Goddess's altar. When Daedalus was finished, he let his hand fall to the ground. He turned to Icarus and opened his mouth wide, so that all Icarus could see was deep, wet darkness, and the ruin of what had been his father's tongue.

“Yes,” Icarus said—calmly, because the anger had gone. “Yes, I suppose the gods have punished you.”
And me. And me, because now I'll never fly
.

Daedalus's shoulders were heaving. His false fingertips scratched at the pictures, smudging them to nothing but dirt and pebbles.

“Father?”

Daedalus choked. His chest heaved, and he pitched forward. Icarus caught him before he fell and wrapped his arms around him to keep him steady. “I'm sorry,” Icarus whispered. “I know you had to. I know Minos was . . . I know. Father—please don't cry”—but he was crying too, thinking of Asterion and the others, trapped with levers and steam and gears; thinking of his father, who'd thrown his head back and laughed as he carved tiny bulls into the golden stone of Knossos for the Princess Ariadne.

“I'm sorry,” Icarus said again, into Daedalus's stinking, matted hair.

Almost four years. Icarus knew, because he counted Theron's visits and held the numbers in his head with effortless desperation. Forty-four months passed before Daedalus said, “They're ready.”

Part of Icarus didn't believe the number.
I lost track at some point
, he thought, more than once.
I added months because it's felt like so long since we were shut up in here. Or maybe
Theron's changed the pattern of his visits, and he's now coming twice a month, and it's only been two years.
But the rest of Icarus knew: Theron's routine hadn't changed. Icarus's mind had been clear, every time he'd put a scratch on the wall after one of the visits. His mind was clear, and his hair fell between his shoulder blades to the middle of his back, and his father's hair was just as long and all white.

Almost four years without wind, sun, stars, moon, cloud; without other voices that spoke words that weren't broken. Icarus understood the broken words, though. He heard Daedalus say, “They're ready,” though what his father had really said, with his tongueless mouth, was, “Ay eh-eey.” Icarus understood. He would have understood even if Daedalus had made no sounds; if he'd only waved his new claws and rolled his wide, anguished eyes.

Icarus leaned forward and reached for Daedalus's hands. His father flinched but let Icarus touch them. Long, hinged digits that looked like fleshless bone. Little bits of cave, grown from stalactites and sticky plants and time. Their tips were thin and sharp as needles.

He remembered when Daedalus had tried to tell him what he'd do, as he gestured up at the dripping stalactite. It had taken Icarus a very long time to understand—and when he finally had, all he felt was fear, because what if Theron saw them, and understood more quickly than Icarus had?

“Good,” he said now. “And good timing: Theron won't be back for weeks. We'll have some time, if we . . .”
If we manage to get out
, he thought, as the words lodged in his throat.

He touched the place on Daedalus's right hand where flesh ended and stone began. White, almost transparent threads bound the two parts together, strung like spider's web, loose but clinging. Icarus remembered, too, the first time he'd seen these same threads on the cave walls, nearly four years ago. They'd filled him with hope—them, and the tiny mushrooms that poked out from crevasses in the rock. Growing things in a place of stillness. He wondered if the thread-veins on his father's hands would someday sprout tiny mushrooms.

“Let's go, then,” Icarus said.

Daedalus stared at him and didn't move. Icarus's own limbs felt as heavy as they had when he'd nearly drowned after throwing himself off a waterfall. (What did waterfalls look like? How did sunlight strike the mist and turn it into rainbows? Sometimes he could almost see.)

“Come on, then. To the door!” Icarus stood, still holding his father's new hand. “To the door that we will
open
, despite King Minos's best efforts!”

After a long moment, Daedalus leaned into Icarus and rose. They'd done this countless times, over the years, but his father's body felt especially frail now—so bony that Icarus's fingers grasped for skin and found only tendon.
How strange that I'm the strong one
, Icarus thought. They ducked into the low tunnel that led to the door. Icarus had lain here, the day Minos and Ariadne had come and gone. He'd curled up and pressed his face into the dirt until his open eyes stung and rocks scored his cheeks. He'd listened to his father's moaning, and the silence that came after. He'd held the king's and princess's faces in his mind for a bit, then covered them both with red until they were invisible.

He and Daedalus never used this tunnel anymore; only Theron did, when he brought them their food. But Icarus thought of the last time he'd been here, and knew precisely what he'd see now: the rusted lock; the ever-so-slight space between it and the rusted door. Daedalus had seen these things too, that day years ago when Icarus had gone looking for the pirates' other way out. Daedalus had seen, and known immediately what he'd do.

The door seemed even rustier than it had before: salt mist and fog and waves brushing it, always. Icarus put his ear to it but couldn't hear the waves—just a dull silence.

Talons longer than his own stroked his back. “Ihus.”

“Yes,” Icarus said, drawing away from the door. “I know. It's time.”
I just had to delay a little longer, because if this doesn't work, we'll both go mad.

Daedalus didn't delay. He slid one of his new fingertips into the lock, as confidently and smoothly as if he'd practiced the motion here before. He hadn't, Icarus knew. He'd sat or stood, growing stone and fungus threads, and had never once gone to the door. Now he leaned forward, his brows drawn together, his back hunched so that his shoulder blades looked like sharp little wings, and moved his finger slowly within the lock.

Nothing.

Icarus tried to quiet his own breathing, which was all he could hear. Sweat was easing its clammy way down his spine, flattening downy feathers as it went. He could feel the prickle of other feathers starting, and he could see them, too: in the half-darkness, his skin was speckled with points of silver. It was as if his blighted mark could sense the open air.

Nothing.

Daedalus bent his head to his chest for a moment. Icarus shifted on his knees so that he'd be ready to touch his father, if necessary—restrain him, or catch at his flailing claws. But Daedalus lifted his head and raised his other hand and closed his eyes.

Silver light kindled along the length of one finger, then along all the others, until his hand looked molten and the tunnel seemed flooded with moonlight.
A true crafting
, Icarus thought, not caring, any more, that his breathing was so loud.
A machine like all the others he's made: godmarked and strong—O gods and goddesses,
please
.

The silver began to fade, as it always did, once the machine was ready. Daedalus slid another fingertip into metal. He closed his eyes again, and so did Icarus.

The lock clicked.

For a moment there was silence. Then Icarus made a sound that was part whoop and part sob. He scrambled the short distance to the door and put his hand next to his father's on the ring that would open it.

Daedalus didn't move. He was gazing at his new fingers, pressing his lips into a line that was neither smile nor frown. Icarus remembered, suddenly, how his father had been in his workshops; how he'd bounced on the balls of his feet, or danced from one table to another, or laughed as he chiseled a shape into marble, waggling his brows to make Icarus laugh too.

“Father.” His voice shook. “Move just a little, so I can open it.”

Daedalus lowered his head to Icarus's shoulder with a sigh that shuddered through them both. His hand slid away from the ring, and Icarus's tightened on it.

The door screamed as it always did, though it was much louder, this close. It opened inward, so Icarus and Daedalus shuffled back on their knees to make room for it. Daylight followed them: a swift cascade of it, which made Icarus cry out again and grind his fists against his closed eyes. He rubbed at tears and turned to his father in the sun.

“You first,” he said. Daedalus nodded and shuffled forward again. He set his palms on the ground so that his stone fingers extended like crab's legs, touching nothing but air. He crawled under and out, and Icarus did too, and they sat side-by-side on the ledge above the sea.

Icarus saw only a blur of colours and light, at first: the white-blue of the sky, the dazzle of the water, the brown and green of a shape that slowly resolved itself into an island that hunkered below them, not far from the cliff. Once the island snapped clear in his vision, so did other things: streaks of cloud; gulls wheeling high, from cloud to open blue; gulls wheeling low, diving and surfacing with fish gleaming and lashing in their beaks.

Nearly four years
, he thought.

Feathers hissed up through his skin, from his neck to his ankles. He felt his mouth and nose warping into beak for the first time since Minos had put them in the cave, and he whimpered at the pain, and his hunger for it.

The ledge was very narrow; Icarus hadn't known how narrow, before, because the king had brought them at night. Now he watched his father lean his back against the edge of the open door and swing his legs out over the long drop to the sea, and he forgot his pain and laughed like a child.

“Come,” he gasped, when he'd had enough of laughing (though not enough of the wind that bent his feathers and lashed his hair around his face—never enough of that). “Let's go up.”

He stood, but Daedalus didn't move.

“Father?”—and the last of his laughter died as Daedalus looked up at him.

“Uh-er,” he said. “Rah-hay.”
Mother. Naucrate. Running from the cave and leaping from here—from this place, with her hair and skin on fire, singing as she fell.

Icarus sat back down. He said nothing. He stared at his father's face—at the lines that had been invisible in the cave, branching like deep, dry riverbeds across his skin—and tried to remember hers.

After a time Daedalus stirred. “Let's go now,” Icarus heard him say.

Icarus remembered where the chiseled steps were, but they were so shallow, so indistinguishable from the cliff face, that it took him a few moments to find them. When he did he set his taloned, bristly hands to them and glanced at Daedalus and said, “Come
on
!”—clearly enough, despite his part-beak and his shrinking, thickening tongue.

Daedalus didn't move. Even his legs lay still against the stone. His eyes were fixed on the island. Icarus followed his gaze and saw a dead tree among the green ones. An eagle was perched on a nest there, snugly wedged between two thick, bare branches. Its young were craning up, crying and gaping; Icarus could hear them, could see their straining pink gullets. His own flesh rippled as his shoulder blades tried to turn into wings. He wrenched himself around, away from the sight of the nest.

“Father?”

Daedalus tipped his head up. His eyes shone with light.

“Here: look! The steps up: we'll follow them and see where we are.” The words were difficult, squeezed in his changing throat, but that wasn't why he stopped speaking. His father's eyes stopped him. His eyes, and the thin, hinged claws he lifted and held in the bright air between them. His lips, forming sounds that would never be whole, but that Icarus understood.

I can't climb with these. And if I could climb, I wouldn't. Theron would tell Minos we were gone. We wouldn't be able to leave the island. Everyone watching. We're supposed to be dead! The king would hunt us. He'd kill us, this time.

“No.” Icarus's beak was easing back into lips. The salt spray stung them terribly. “You have to try. If your fingers break I'll push you from below—I'll get you to the top, and we'll just look around a little—we'll go back to the cave afterward to decide what to do.”

No
. Daedalus didn't need to thrust out any more slurred words. Icarus heard them all in his own head.
If the fingers break we won't be able to grow more for months, for years. We won't be able to lock the door again, let alone open it. We'll be stranded, in hiding, waiting for Minos to find us.

“I'll go up,” Icarus said, quite clearly. “Just for a bit, this time. I'll come back as soon as I've seen what's up there. I promise. I'll come back very soon.”

“Ech,” Daedalus said.
Yes. Take care.

“I will,” said Icarus. He bent and kissed the tangled white hair at the top of his father's head, and then he set his hands and feet to the steps.

He was dizzy by the time he reached the top, and the effort of easing his forehead and eyes over the edge made all his muscles tremble. Grass tickled his nose. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them wide, stretching up so that he'd be able to see above the grass. He saw more grass, and a bush with white blossoms.
Spring
, he thought.
The green and flowers. The coolness of the wind. Spring—by all the gods and fishes, as Asterion and Chara might've said.

Icarus pulled himself slowly up over the cliff edge and rolled onto his back, panting. Four years in a cave, in the dark. Four years of sitting, stretching, crawling, lying curled up on threadbare blankets. Holding onto his father's hands when he tried to pummel his own face with them. And now this climb, this light; he had no idea how to keep moving. If Theron had loomed over him with a sword, Icarus would only have spread his feathered arms against the grassy, stony ground and waited.

But Theron didn't loom. A gull did, at Icarus's left shoulder.
Spring
, he thought again, blinking at its patchy black head.
In summer its head feathers will be glossy black. I remember this.
It took one of his own feathers in its black-banded beak and tugged. He whistled sharply at it—clumsily and incoherently.
Mother would've known exactly what to say to a gull
, he thought, and for a moment he saw her there above him, smiling and reaching, and he could hardly breathe.

When he finally stood up, the world tipped around him. He laughed and bit his lip to stop himself; what if there were people standing just beyond the bush? There weren't, of course: there was just a vast, sloping expanse of grass and blossomy bushes and tumbled stones. No roads, or even paths. He and the gull were the only living creatures about—and when he turned to it, it waddled and flapped its way into the sky, where it soared so gracefully that he wrenched himself around again, away from the sight of it.

He set off walking, though it was more like a stumble. He was still dizzy: too much space; he felt tall and tippy, not bowed and small as he did in the cave. The ground unfurled beneath him, rippling like cloth.
Chara
, he thought.
You'd let me lean on you
.
Glaucus would lend me his staff. It never did make a decent sword. Ariadne swore a hundred times that she'd break it across his head.