Daedalus and Icarus finally gets posted! Woo-hoo!! Not a particularly long story but a touching myth nonetheless and almost a sequel to Theseus and the Minotaur. Of course, all myths are sequels really, all leading from one to the other. Read Ovid's Metamorphoses and you'll see what I mean! So, here we go...
When King Minos of Crete found out that his son, the Minotaur, had been killed and Theseus had escaped with his daughter, he was angry with Daedalus for not building a complex enough labyrinth. In revenge, he imprisoned the inventor in there with his young son Icarus. Determined to escape from this unfair punishment, Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings, each on a wooden frame, lined with many feathers which were fixed with beeswax.
When the inventor had finished, he and his son climbed up to the highest part of the labyrinth, catching the wind and looking down into the sea which surrounded the walls. They fixed their wings on each other and planned their escape. Daedalus told Icarus that he was to keep his arms wide apart so as to catch even the slightest breath of wind and to keep close behind his father, keeping a straight course between the sun and the sea.
"For if you fly too close to the sea, your feathers will dampen and you will drown under the weight of the frame. If you fly too close to the sun however, the beeswax will melt and the feathers will loosen. Remember these words and you will be safe."
The two of them then leapt from the walls, Daedalus going first and Icarus following closely behind. However, Icarus soon became bolder as he flew effortlessly in the skies and left his father's straight course of flight to twirl and loop in the air. As his loops became bolder, he flew higher and forgot his father's warning. All too late, he noticed the feathers falling off the frame for he had flown too close to the sun. He called out to his father as he fell from the sky and into the sea where he drowned.
Daedalus had heard his cries but it was too late for Icarus had already fallen. He recovered the body which had swept up onto a nearby island and buried it there, naming it 'Icaria'. He then flew on and found refuge in Etna's land.