Fiction
3 min
Ílios
Abigail Zwahlen
In the beginning, there was darkness. There was darkness, there was light, and there was a little boy born with his eyes open, his first word heavy on his lips:
"Ílios."
Sun.
The boy had been cursed by the gods, his legs paralyzed and broken. From the time he was young he knew there was a reason the gods were paying attention. He just didn't know why.
At age six, he crafted a pair of crutches from firewood, and, in the early morning before Helios had awoken, struggled outside. With both legs paralyzed, even the aid of crutches was not enough. He threw them to the ground, and crawled up the hill on his arms, a slow and painful trial. When the orange beams pierced his eyes, his heart pounded:
Ílios.
Ílios.
Ílios.
From then on, the boy remembered the word he was born with heavy on his lips. Remembering was not enough.
The crutches were far from his last creation. New tools for crafting wood, sculptures that seemed to come to life, and mechanical beasts that did. And every night, the boy sketched and crafted, trying and failing to invent something that would lift his broken body off the earth. And every night, he whispered:
"Ílios".
His reputation spread across Greece to an island, and the boy found himself with an offer from a king. The boy could be his inventor, bear his crest and have enough materials to create whatever he wanted, even a way to reach the sun.
The inventor was worked hard through the night, catching sleep just as the sun's pink rays crawled across his table. His only companions were the king, a maid with golden hair, and then, after weeks of solitude and intense work, the queen herself.
The queen spoke of a curse by the gods, one very different from the inventor's: cursed to love another, though they could never be. The inventor was eager to help her, a new challenge he had never encountered, and the queen rewarded him greatly with the ability to wander around the island as he wished.
Nine months the inventor spent exploring the island with the help of a wheeled contraption, getting to know the maid with the golden hair, and building invention after invention for the king, and for the first time, he felt free.
But then, the Queen's child was born with a curse of its own. Only his mother radiated pure joy at the half-child, half-bull.
The queen was all too eager to tell anyone who would listen that the beast's father was the king's own bull.
The King was all too eager to punish all who had taken away his wife, including the inventor.
For ten years, the beast was tied up deep in the earth, under the castle. Beside him, the inventor was imprisoned. His hands weren't bound. His cell was unlocked. He was as much a prisoner of the king as he was a prisoner of his own body. His only way out was to design a new prison for the illegitimate monster. Every night, he heard the beast howl, a beast that would never see the sun, and his heart hammered:
Ílios.
Ílios.
Ílios.
When construction on the labyrinth was finally completed, the inventor was taken up to his old rooms and the king assigned him a new project: a tower, taller than a hundred men, with no way out. It was almost like it was back to the old days, except now he had a wife. Now he had a son with golden hair.
When the tower was completed, the inventor and his son were escorted by the king himself. When they got to the uppermost rooms, the inventor's heart pounded. The orange beams pierced through the top window, closer than ever before. He was beyond even the clouds.
And then the door locked.
He was still being punished by the king, and would be locked up here for the rest of his days, away from the maid with golden hair. If the king could not have his wife anymore, neither could the inventor.
The father knew they had to escape. He was born trapped in his own body, and his son could not live trapped too.
For ten years the boy gathered feathers from the sea birds that landed on the tower, and the father, feverishly determined, stayed close to the sun, melting them together with wax from the candles.
When it was done, he fit the creation on his son's back and then his own. His son, stronger than his feeble, broken father, threw him off the tower, then jumped himself. The wings caught on the breeze, and they flew like gods between a blue ocean and bluer sky.
The son had never known anything but the sky, so he was not afraid. The father, so tied down to the earth, knew the risks. Too close to the ocean, the wings would dampen. Too close to the sun, and the wax would melt. His heart pounded more furiously than ever.
Ílios.
Ílios.
Ílios.
It was his broken body that saved him. His legs weighed him down, keeping him from the crest of the sky. But his son swooped upwards toward the sun, and to his father's dismay, the wings frayed. White feathers across a blue sky, a boy breaking against a dark sea.
The son had never known anything but the sky, but even the known can bring tragedy.
In the end, the boy, the inventor, the father, Daedalus, landed on an island he named after his son, alone and broken.
In the end, there was darkness, there was a broken father, cursed by the gods to always reach for something he could not have. Cursed with a broken heart that hammered:
Yiós.
Yiós.
Yiós.
Son.
Son.
Son.
This was an entry for a writing contest held in conjunction with Center for Fiction and The Decameron Project
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