The Amazing Flight of Darius Frobisher (9 page)

But none of those things happen in this story.

Darius did have a map now, though. And a wonderful book.

And an address for someone named Daedalus Panforth.

After a fifteen-minute walk, Darius turned onto Magnolia Terrace. The first thing he noticed was a hand-painted sign on a telephone pole.

As he quickened his pace, he saw a girl pedaling toward him on a bike with training wheels. A man, most likely her father, ran along beside her.

“Excuse me,” said Darius. “I’m looking for someone named Daedalus.”

“End of the street,” said the man as he ran by, “you can’t miss it.”

“Yippee!” said the girl. Darius watched the two of them until they disappeared around the corner.

When Darius turned back, he stopped in his tracks. His eyes bulged. His heart beat faster.

Down at the end of the short street sat a small house.

While the house itself was not spectacular, everything around it was.

The yard was overflowing with old bicycles of every description. They were lined up next to each other, stacked vertically, piled on top of one another, arranged so that there were little paths between the piles. An ancient picket fence with peeling white paint surrounded the yard, as if it were trying to keep the bikes from falling out of the yard onto the street. A few bike wheels hung over the fence, looking like they were trying to escape. The mailbox swung from the front forks of a bicycle frame that was stuck vertically into the ground.

Darius approached the house slowly, step by step, taking it all in. In one corner of the yard, under a cedar tree, he saw an enormous pile of handlebars. Fenders of every size, shape, and color lined the sidewalk. The porch was completely filled with wheels and tires, blocking the doorway. In the small side yard, a sculpture caught Darius’s eye. Welded-together gears, sprockets, kickstands, and countless other bicycle parts towered twenty feet into the air.

In front of the sculpture was a neat row of bicycles. A sign hung on one of them.

Darius thought this house was the most beautiful,

     wonderful,

          marvelous,

               and magnificent thing

                    he had ever seen.

His heart raced, and a pure, simple laugh bubbled up from deep inside him.

“Hello there,” a voice called out from somewhere above him. Darius looked up. Along the peak of the roof he saw another row of bikes lined up next to a tall antenna. Standing on top of the chimney, adjusting a bike on top of the antenna pole, was Daedalus, his white hair sticking out in all directions. He turned the bike he was holding this way and that, until he seemed to have it where he wanted. “There …,” said Daedalus. “No, there. There … there … there!”

Darius stared.

Daedalus took his hands away from the bike, watching to see if it would stay. The bike teetered back and forth, then stopped, balanced perfectly on the metal rod.

“Perfect,” Daedalus chortled. “This should help with the reception.”

He looked down at Darius. “Meet me in the back,” he called. He winked and disappeared on the other side of the roof.

Darius skirted the pile of handlebars and picked his way through the maze of bicycle remains. Like the front, the backyard was chock-full of bicycles, bicycle parts, and bicycle sculptures of every size and description. The old man was climbing down a trellis festooned with a jungle of vines. The large leaves sprawled out, hiding the porch like so many green elephant ears.

Daedalus leapt from the trellis and looked Darius up and down. The old man turned his head to one side and then the other, squinting his eyes as if he were looking to see if any parts had been put on in the wrong place. A quick grin broke out on his face.

“You found me,” he said. “I thought you would.”

Darius had been speechless ever since he had seen the house. But now he found his voice.

“I’ve been trying to find you! My rim is bent and I can’t fix it!”

“Oho! Bent rim. That’s right. It’s the worst. I bet you tried to fix it and botched the job completely. I bet the spokes look like Medusa’s hair! Nothing but a head full of snakes, you know! How’d you like to comb it?”

“A head full of snakes?” asked Darius.

“Right! That was after Venus got through with her. Venus, the goddess of beauty, was jealous of her, so she turned Medusa into
an ugly monster. How ugly, you ask? She was so ugly that one look at her would turn you to stone.”

“That’s ugly,” said Darius, nodding.

“Of course it is,” said Daedalus. “The Greeks didn’t mess around when it came to extremes.” He stopped suddenly and pointed to the book under Darius’s arm. “Greek myths! Excellent. That nice little volume is a good start, but …” He leaned forward and put his face close to Darius’s and whispered mysteriously, “There is more. Much, much more! More horrible. More wonderful. I can tell you. I know.” His eyebrows wiggled up and down as if they had lives of their own.

Daedalus straightened himself and paused a moment as if lost in thought, then he looked back at Darius, eyes bright and twinkling. “Now, listen, my young warrior—do your parents know where you are?”

“No,” said Darius. “I don’t have any parents. All I have now is Aunt Inga.”

“Hmm, I remember. Like Hera—Zeus’s wife.”

“She doesn’t have a husband. And she’s kind of strict.”

Daedalus scrunched up his face. “Well, all right. For the time being, you may come in, although I, too, am quite strict, at least about who works with me. Children shouldn’t wander around without their parents’ permission.”

“I told you, I don’t have any parents.”

“Right. Right. Sorry to hear that. But for today—let’s see. Twenty-six by one and a half, that’s my guess. Come with me.” He turned and walked up the steps, across the back porch, and into the house.

Darius took a deep breath and followed the strange and wonderful man inside.

10
Inside Daedalus’s House

I
nside the back door, Darius looked around. To his left he could see a kitchen, very simple and sparse, with dishes stacked in the sink. On the right was a small study. The shelves lining the walls were filled with books. Hundreds of other volumes stood piled on the floor and overflowed out into the small hallway.

Directly in front of him Darius saw Daedalus standing by a narrow doorway. The old man flipped on a light switch and started down a flight of stairs into the basement. Darius followed him, marveling at all the drawings and photographs taped and thumbtacked along the staircase walls. Every picture, whether it was a snapshot or a drawing made by children’s hands, showed boys and girls smiling proudly beside their bicycles. He recognized Daedalus in many of the pictures.

Darius stepped down into the basement and looked around in surprise. It was the exact opposite of what he had seen on the outside. The basement was an immaculate and perfectly organized bicycle workshop. The magical space held every kind of bike part imaginable, placed in the most orderly fashion. Front forks had been hung with care from a rack on one wall, along with seats and sprockets and frames. Deflated inner tubes of different sizes had been neatly draped over a series of nails in
the ceiling. Along another wall, clipped to a pegboard, was the most wonderful array of horns, lights, and bells Darius had ever seen. Above a long workbench against the far wall was another enormous pegboard covered with tools of every size and description. A bike stood on the workbench, half put together. Darius felt his body shake with excitement. He was sure he was dreaming.

“Wow,” he said to himself, “this is bike heaven!”

“The discardings of a careless world, my good man,” Daedalus said in a grand voice, “left for rag and bone pickers like me to save from the horrors of some gigantic landfill. Wasteful, wasteful! But then, it gives me something to do. I don’t make much money. But I need little. The less I have, the less I have to worry about.” Daedalus moved to the far corner of the workbench and turned on a radio. A man’s voice boomed out, hitting an exceptionally high note. “There!” shouted Daedalus. “My adjustments to the antenna were successful! Listen—it’s Puccini!”

“I’ve heard of him,” said Darius. “My dad played opera for me all the time.”

“Did he?” Daedalus asked enthusiastically. “What an excellent fellow!”

“Yes,” said Darius, and for a moment, he could see his father in his imagination and hear the
ching ching ching
of the coins in his father’s pocket. Something about being in this basement made his father seem close.

Daedalus turned off the radio. “Let’s see.” He reached up to a long rack of rims and sorted through them.

“Twenty-six by one and a half, twenty-six by one and a half,” he mumbled to himself. Then he pulled off four or five rims and took down the one behind them.

“Twenty-six by one and a half,” said Daedalus, handing it to Darius. “It’s a bit worn, but perfectly round.”

“Thanks,” Darius murmured. “But I’m afraid I don’t have any money.”

“Oh, fine,” laughed Daedalus, “another customer with no money!” He didn’t seem to be at all bothered that Darius couldn’t pay. “You hold on to that rim, my good man, while I finish a little job I was working on. In the meantime, feel free to look around.”

Darius hardly knew where to look first. In this wonderful workshop all the bike parts seemed to be almost alive—each wheel and hub and frame carrying a promise of something that might be. He turned slowly, trying to take everything in. His eyes fell upon a picture hanging over the workbench. It was obviously old—the paper was yellowed and curled up at the corners. Darius stood on tiptoe and stared. It was a colored pencil drawing of a boy on a red bike. The bike was suspended in the air, supported by large balloons attached to each fender. Birds were flying around the boy on the bike, and the boy was waving his hand, wearing a very large smile.

“Who’s that?” asked Darius. “Is it real?”

“What’s real and what’s true?” asked Daedalus. “They say that when Orpheus played on his harp, the trees walked nearer so they might hear him. Do you believe that?”

“I don’t think so,” he answered honestly.

“Then you miss the point entirely. It’s not whether the trees could walk—it’s how beautifully Orpheus played.” Daedalus paused and looked up at the picture. “That’s a boy’s dream,” he said. “That’s what that is.”

“What boy?”

“The boy in the picture, of course. Now, listen, you have your rim. Can you put it on yourself? I expect you can. And it’s getting close to ten o’clock. Aren’t you afraid of your Aunt Inga eating you alive?”

The mention of Aunt Inga brought Darius back to earth, away from the boy on the bike. “Omigosh, you’re right. I have to go.”

Darius headed for the steps, where he stopped again. There underneath the basement stairs, he saw the bike—the bizarre piece of machinery that Darius had seen Daedalus riding through the air over the housetops. He turned back to Daedalus.

“It was
you
, wasn’t it? There’s the bike you were riding! You know how to fly on a bike.”

“Impossible,” said Daedalus. “Inconceivable.”

“But your bike was flying! That’s a miracle! How do you do it?”

“I don’t,” answered Daedalus. “You saw nothing of the sort. Must be loony.”