he couldn’t reject the queen’s request.
He gripped the boy’s bony shoulders
and reminded him how much he loved
the palace, where he played with the prince.
The queen and Deucalion are calling for you.
I’ve decided you’ll leave me and live with them.
I’ll see you almost every day,
but I worry about what you might tell them.
Talos, remain on the middle track:
don’t talk too much or too little.
Follow my lead: before you speak
consider what that woman wants
to hear, and if it’s hard to decide,
adoration rarely fails.
Please, watch your words. We are exiles.
His hands trembled, and he hugged the boy
when the bronze colossus of the brainless king
defending his home from the fear of hubris
began to thirl the Athenians’ gaze.
Talos scampered between the bronze
legs and began his palatial life.
The queen gave him a kind of love
he never got from his greasy “father.”
Within a month, she removed every
secret his callow caution enclosed.
Talos loved honey and tickling
more than his uncle’s morbid wisdom.
Her giggle bassed his treble gossip
till the meeting Daedalus dreaded arrived.
When he sipped her wine, her slaves withdrew,
and her voice bobbed above whispers:
Talos has tattled, and I’ve tallied your crimes.
If Minos knew the naughty things
your “son” has told me, he would seal you inside
his bronze belly on a bright noon
while his lackeys built a bonfire beneath it.
His whiskers dripped, and he whacked the tiles
with his head until she held him back
and addressed the blot—blood, tears, and snot:
Oh Daedalus, I don’t intend
to reveal your secrets. You’re so ingenious.
I needed your blabbing boy to bring us
closer together. I’ve got my own
secret to tell, and I seek your help.
I know you’re someone who can sympathize
with outlandish love. She related how
the wish to lie with the white bull
made her hate her mother’s husk
and her father’s tarnish. She confessed her shame,
how her knees had pulsed and her palms needled
and the cows gurgled and the grass prickled,
her father waning, the white bull aloof.
Prayers and magic have miscarried.
I need your godless gadgetry.
He returned home with his helper Talos
and fabricated a cow coffin
whose hoofs could glide on hidden wheels.