Filled with excitement, he made another pair for his son. When they were finished, Daedalus fastened them to his shoulders and found himself lifted upwards, where he hung poised in the air.

The sun shone on the bright feathers the breezes ruffled them. And sometimes he took bits of wax and worked it into strange shapes with his fingers. Icarus played about on the beach happily while his father worked, chasing the feathers that blew away in the strong wind that swept the island. The smallest feathers he pressed into the soft wax, and the large ones he tied on with thread. Daedalus then melted some wax and made a skeleton in the shape of a bird’s wing. As thousands of gulls soared over the island, Icarus soon collected a huge pile of feathers. He called his son Icarus to him and told the boy to gather up all the feathers he could find on the rocky shore. “Minos may control the land and sea,” he said, “but he does not control the air. Several times he tried by bribery to stow away on one of the vessels sailing from Crete, but King Minos kept strict watch over them, and no ships were allowed to sail without being carefully searched.ĭaedalus was an ingenious artist and was not discouraged by his failures. In time, with the help of his young son, Icarus, Daedalus managed to escape from the tower, only to find himself a prisoner on the island. While visiting Crete, King Minos, the ruler of the island, became angry with him, and ordered him shut up in a high tower that faced the lonely sea.

Once long ago in Greece there lived a famous mechanic named Daedalus. By Sally Benson (CHILDCRAFT, 1968 EDITION, VOL.2, PP.

The flight of icarus short story