Free The Amazing Flight of Darius Frobisher by Bill Harley

“I still need to find a real person named Daedalus,” he said. “He lives around here somewhere. He fixed my bicycle.”
    “Oh! Why didn’t you tell me before I went on and on about that myth? Let’s see. We can look in the phone book,” said Ms. Bickerstaff. “Does he have a last name?”
    “I don’t know. I just know his name is Daedalus.”
    “If we don’t know his last name, we’ll have to look a little harder. It will be our own little labyrinth, with Daedalus waiting at the end. Come on over here to the computer and let’s see what we can find.”
    It was like finding the way out of a maze. For the next ten minutes, Ms. Bickerstaff’s fingers danced over the keyboard. When her search came to a dead end, she tried another route. Finally, a name popped up on the screen. The first name was Daedalus. The last name was Panforth. He lived on a street called Magnolia Terrace.
    “Do you know where that is?” asked Ms. Bickerstaff.
    “No,” said Darius, “but I can find it on a map.”
    And he did.
    As Darius was leaving the library, Ms. Bickerstaff held out a book. “Can you take just one book home?” she asked.
    “I can try,” Darius said, taking the large book in his hands. The cover showed a man flying above the earth in a chariot being pulled by four white horses, and the title was
D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths
. Darius opened the book. It was old and worn—the pages were soft and frayed on the edges—it had been read many times. He turned to the first page. “In olden times,” it began, “when men still worshipped ugly idols, there lived in the land of Greece a folk of shepherds and herdsmen who cherished light and beauty.”
    That sounded good to him.
    “Thanks,” said Darius. “Thanks for everything.”
    “You’re very welcome, Darius,” said Ms. Bickerstaff. Darius noticed the smile on her face, but he didn’t see the tears in her eyes.
    You’re probably wishing that Ms. Bickerstaff would stop Darius and ask him out to lunch, and he could tell her his whole story, and she would know just what to do.
    Or that Ms. Bickerstaff would tell Darius that he could sleep in the library in a featherbed surrounded by thousands of books.
    Or that Ms. Bickerstaff was one of those rare librarians who was actually paid what she deserved for all of her hard work and that she would adopt Darius and he would come live in her huge mansion, also filled with thousands of books.
    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