Evidently I was not thinking straight when I agreed to participate in
Teens Can Write, Too! blog chain this month. Because this month's prompt is, "Write a retelling of your favorite fairytale, myth, or legend," and it means that you will all be subjected to my writing. Apologies. Bumblebee.
So, I chose to retell the story of Icarus from Greek mythology. This story has some meaning to me because it was the first Greek myth I ever heard (and so started my small obsession with different mythologies), and I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about it. See, the original is one of those kids-you-better-listen-to-your-parents-or-there-will-be-extreme-consequences-like-you-will-DIE stories. So Daedalus and his son, Icarus, get put in jail by King Minos and y'know, since Daedalus is such a genius, he builds them each a pair of wings to escape. But his less-genius son doesn't listen when his dad tells him not to fly too close to the water or the sun, or the wings will melt. So...he dies. Supposedly, he gets caught up in his own awesome flyingness. I never really liked this. And so...my take on it is pasted below. Don't come after me with pitchforks, kay? Kay.
FALL
Footsteps. They are my greatest fear.
Footsteps mean pain. Humiliation. Anger. Footsteps mean that
someone is coming, and that is never good for us.
My mouth tastes like metal, from the cell and my blood. It
tastes like darkness, because that is all I’ve been for so, so long.
Footsteps. My heart.
I hear nothing else.
The door opens wide and then the guards are standing above
me, and the air around me is stale with their breaths and ale and sweat. They
take my arms and drag me in a thousand directions. I hear my father crying out
my name, and he is answered with only footsteps and laughter and their echoes,
because my voice was among the first pieces of me to die. I can make out my
father’s vague shadow, held back by another guard as the rest pull me beyond
his reach. Fingers beneath rough gloves grasp my chin and shove it in his
direction, so he can watch my face as they beat me.
There is a whisper of old words above me, a taunt or warning
from the king—I cannot be bothered to care. I hear my father say my name again.
Then.
Everything tastes of metal.
***
I dream of the sun, but I can only conjure up a weak, watery
thing. I have lost track of the days since I saw it last; I have lost the
memory of warmth. I remember only that I used to close my eyes and lift my face
to the sky, and I would see red, red, red.
Red. Even this color is faint. I am a shadow that bleeds
black blood, hidden in a darkness made of invisible shapes.
Sun. Red. Dreams. Sea. Sky. Wind.
I remember the words.
I only remember the words.
***
I flinch at his touch, and stagnant air rushes into my mouth
as I gasp a plea that no one can hear. The floor of the cell is cold, damp
against my cheek, and I am not alone. The latter is what I fear.
Please. I consider the shape of the word on my lips,
because my pride broke when my mind did. It sits on my tongue, patient, but my
throat can’t gather the sound.
The fingers stay on my face, almost tentative, stroking back
my matted hair and circling the bruises. Not the leather touch of guards. But
the calloused, dry touch of my father, roughened by dreams and failures.
He says my name. He says it again, again, again.
I say nothing. I close my eyes and do not allow myself this
moment, because it is passing.
He whispers things, escape, leave this place, back
home. Wonderful dreams, wonderful failures.
But then he is pulling me upright, and there is so much
pain, a thousand small agonies and a thousand greater ones. I am too tired to
scream. I let him drag me to my feet, and I am too tired to ask why.
He straps things to my arms, leather that makes my heart
twist and clench and listen for footsteps. My breath breaks and I know nothing
but fear, fear, fear. The leather tightens, and gently, my father’s hand turns
my face around, saying incomprehensible words. My eyes blur and my vision
shifts, and I know, suddenly, that I am dreaming.
For when I turn, I see that my father has given me wings.
And through my fractured vision, I see that he has sprouted
them, too. Light, lovely things made of metal and a thousand feathers and
countless other things that the guards have left unwanted. This is why the king
fears my father. This is why we are here—not for my father’s genius, nor his
deceit, but because he knows how to take broken things and make them beautiful.
He says my name again and tells me to look at him, his lips
moving in shapes that finally, I recognize. Stay out of the sun, stay above
the water, or the wings will give way. He does not let me look away until
I nod, and then he takes me to the door. It takes only a single moment for my
father to open it, and a strange thing rises inside me, a dark sadness twisted
around a distant, bitter smile, because my father made this cage, and all of its secrets are his. The king
didn’t chain him. I did.
He takes me out into the hallway and my heart fights inside
me, my blood cold as everything I am stills, listening for footsteps. But my father
is standing by a window in the tower, and behind him is the wide, wide sea,
calling. The light is blinding and piercing and wonderful, and I breathe as
though I could capture the sunshine in my chest.
My father swings his arm back and the glass shatters into a
thousand stars, and I lean forward and fall.
My stomach clenches and my heart is lost. The rocks and the
ocean spell out my beautiful death, and I have never been more alive.
And then I spread my wings. I soar. The wind lifts me and
sends me spiraling upwards, and the sky cries my name. The air smells of salt
and sunshine and a boundless world, and my name comes from a thousand and one
directions.
So alive. I am so alive.
I lift my face upwards, drinking the sun. It stretches its
fingers towards me and lures my sweat from my skin. My wings are wide, bending
as the sky does, and I stretch higher, higher. The blue is endless, above me and
below me and around me, and I have forgotten which is the sky and which is the
sea, for there are suns on either side of me.
Then.
The wings.
My father’s words come back too late, after I have renounced
sanity and given up sense. I am flying down and falling up, and the sea and sky
are open to me. There are a thousand feathers swirling, catching the sun on
their melting tips, and I am falling surrounded in so, so much light.
My father cries my name.
Then a flurry of color, and a passing, and then nothing.
There is no pain.
There are no footsteps.
