Kid Icarus

by Daedalus Minos

The boy stood at the top of the stairs and gave his cardboard wings an experimental flap before settling his cobalt eyes on the bottom. The stairs were long and high, at least 100 feet or so it seemed to the boy, and there was precious little room between the last step and the front door, perhaps 6 feet. The boy stared, intense and calculating, the kind of stare you saw on Clint Eastwood as he sized up his opponent before they drew or the kind of stare you saw the engineers at NASA when they looked from the moon to a rocket and back again before saying to President Kennedy, “Yeah, we can do that for you,” or the kind look you get on a small boy with too little adult supervision and too much cardboard. His calculations now complete the boy smiled. The small table near the door with the vase mom loves? Accounted for. The umbrella stand full of umbrellas no one used? Factored in. Wind speed? Less than a knot from the A/C vent. The boy took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened his eyes again he was not standing on the top the stairs, but on the edge of an impossibly high cliff with distant oceans waves crashing against the rocks so far below that you would be tempted to think you were imagining them. As the boy stared ahead he saw a blue sky with wisps of white clouds adding nice a contrast. High above all this was the sun, the giant ball of flaming gas that has been both worshiped and feared throughout mankind’s existence. A wry grin came onto the boy’s face, the kind of grin that helped make Harrison Ford famous. The boy put one foot behind him. He rocked his weight back. He rocked his weight forward. The boy leaped into the air, cardboard wings spread, and smiling with the beautiful innocence of youth.