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You think, now, that maybe the warning was not for your
eyes, after all.

Dad had looked at the sun, had met its gaze. He knew
what it felt like to want. You yearn for it now - to climb
higher, fly faster, to soar up and up and up until the light
is at your fingertips. You could touch it. You know that,
like you know that you loved that girl, like you know that
you will never be as brilliant as your father, like you know
all those things that defy the kind of evidence you type up
into lab reports and bibliographies. To touch the sun -
why not? You are flying over this labyrinthian city, the
place you always thought you'd die. Nothing is impossible
anymore. Dad knew. Perhaps that's why he told you not
to touch it, too. There is no going back from this.

He is ahead of you, still visible but moving faster, but
you change course, corkscrewing upward toward the
beckoning fire in the sky. For once in your life, you think,
maybe you can finally be good enough.

v. You know you have gone too far the instant before
the inevitable. Something is burning your back, wax
running little rivers and searing your skin, and then your
wings are slipping, falling. You panic, press them back
onto the harness with one hand, willing them to stay, but
it's too late. You are plummeting, and they will fall if you
let go, and you will fall regardless, and somewhere, too far
away to rush to your aid, your father is screaming your
name.

vi. It doesn't hurt when you hit the water. You barely
even feel the cold. The force knocks you breathless, but
you fight your way to the top for one more breath before
your wings, fastened crooked and useless to the harness by
the newly-cooled wax, drag you under, under, under. You
sink, your lungs inflated with your last gasp of oxygen,

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