The Cassandra Curse

by Chantel Acevedo

  “Go on,” Elnaz said.

  “They turned out to be regular ducks,” Tomiko admitted at last.

  I would have laughed, except a couple of tourists were trying to reach a sword replica that was hanging over the cash register.

  Tomiko turned her attention to them. Her forehead glistened with sweat, and her hair was damp. At a flick of her wrists, the sword-stealing tourists began to dance an awkward tango. Tomiko seemed to be conducting the dancers—all visitors to the museum and employees, too—distracting them from whatever the sirens had sung in their ears. For her part, Elnaz was playing a tin whistle, flitting about the gift shop, her fingers flying over the instrument as the people danced. I noticed it then—they were dancing with a purpose. Tomiko and Elnaz were sending them outside, through the front doors, away from the siren song.

  We left them to it, running through the gift shop and entering the foyer. There, standing amid the rubble of a broken statue, stood Max.

  “Maya?” he asked, a bloody gash on his forehead. “Help me,” he said.

  Beside me, Maya began to remove her headphones.

  “No,” I said, and held them in place. “Nia, find out who he is.”

  Nia walked gracefully up to Max. “Smart Max,” she said. “Smartest boy at Miami Palms Middle. If you are Max, then this should be irresistible. Let’s talk, huh? Thermodynamics? Black holes?”

  Max swiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “What?” he asked.

  Nia pressed on. “Maybe it’s geology that floats your boat. Or organic chemistry.”

  Max tried getting around Nia. “Maya, help me,” he said.

  Beside me, Maya began to back away. “Something’s not right,” she whispered.

  Nia laughed. “Oh, I know,” she said. “You’re into chaos theory, aren’t you?”

  Max, or the thing in front of us pretending to be Max, bared its teeth. Then, in one fluid motion, as quick as batting an eye, Max became Leo, one of the triplets.

  Maya screamed and covered her face, and the siren rushed forward.

  “Get him,” Thalia said, making a grab for the siren, but the triplet shifted again. Now he was Violet Prado, sneering at us. Then he was Raquel. Each time, the siren opened his mouth to sing.

  I tapped my ears. “Can’t hear you. Sorry,” I said. “And I can’t let you have my friend here.”

  The siren seemed to consider us, realizing it was outnumbered. One minute he looked like Raquel, the next he was a tiny sparrow, flitting into the air and disappearing over the second-floor balcony.

  “It’s just you and me, bird,” Nia shouted, and tore up the stairs after it.

  “Be careful!” I yelled after her.

  Thalia, Maya, and I made our way through the rubble of the sculpture gallery and up a different set of stairs. Everywhere, museum visitors were making a mess of things. We inspired them to change course along the way, reaching out with muse magic the best we could, so that here and there, someone would stop what they were doing and start laughing at a remembered joke, or pause to try to piece together something that had been broken. “I’m going to get you out of here,” I reassured Maya. “The Great Bed is around the corner.” She was pale with fear.

  But when we rounded into the room where the Great Bed usually sat, we found that it had been upended, the bed’s beautiful canopy splintered in two.

  “Noooooo!” Thalia said. “Not the Great Bed of Ware. COME ON!” She stamped her foot, then caught sight of something under the bedsheets. Thalia yanked the sheet off to reveal a brown hen, her feathers fluffy, her legs tucked underneath her, as if she were sitting on an egg. “You,” Thalia said. The hen revealed a row of teeth.

  Thalia reached out and snatched the bird by the neck. “Why did the chicken cross the road?” Thalia asked it. The bird flapped and growled. Thalia unlatched one of the heavy leaded windows, and without thinking about it twice, tossed the bird out. “To get away from our headquarters, you horrid creature,” she shouted after it. The hen flapped away, squawking the whole time.

  Maya and I stared at her, speechless.

  “Remind me to always laugh at your jokes,” I said.

  Thalia smiled. “I’m sorry about the bed. That was a great entrance point,” she said, sighing.

  “So I’ve been told,” I said.

  “Two sirens down,” she added. “Where to now?”

  I thought it over. “The library,” I said. Up we went to level three. Things were quieter up there, the books untouched.

  An enormous crash resounded above us and we all jumped.

  “That would be the ceramics gallery,” Thalia said, her brow furrowed. “It’s my mum’s favorite spot in the museum.” She bit her lip, then seemed to decide something. “I’m on it, Callie. Wish me luck. And Maya, be safe,” she said.

  “Fight the good fight,” Maya told her.

  With a wink, Thalia left us alone in the library. The door closed behind her and all went quiet.

  Maya slipped her hand into mine. She pulled the headphones off her head. “Tell me what’s going on, Callie,” she implored.

  And I did, leaving out the part where Maya was a Fated One. It seemed like a lot of pressure to know a thing like that. When she asked, “But why me?” I merely said:

  “Because you inspired us, Maya,” and she seemed to stand a little straighter after that. “But you can’t tell anyone about the muses. I don’t know for sure, but it’s probably rule number fifteen or something: a muse’s identity must be kept secret.”

  “It’s rule number six, actually,” came a voice by the door.

  “Ms. Rinse!” Maya said.

  “Wendy,” I hissed.

  She laughed. “You’ve done your homework. For once. Looking for help?” Ms. Rinse pointed toward the spiral staircase. “Go on. See what you find.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “Sure thing. Like we’re going to do anything you tell us to,” I said, without realizing that Maya was already halfway up the stairs, Mela’s headphones dangling from her hands.

  But how had she made Maya do it? Ms. Rinse’s muse magic had been taken away, and I didn’t see any sirens helping her out. Unless.

  The searchlights.

  She’d been to Tycho’s grave. I rushed to a window that faced the courtyard below. There it was, the plaque to Tycho’s tomb, lying on the ground. I could even see tiny white bones scattered on the lawn.

  Again, Ms. Rinse laughed. “Lost Muse no longer,” she said. “Callie, the lights are gone. Annie tried hard, poor thing. But I have powers now that you cannot imagine.”

  “You leave my aunt alone!” I said.

  Ms. Rinse waved lazily at me. “Up you go. Find your ‘Fated One.’ Fat lot of good it will do you.”

  Shaking, I chased after Maya, all the way to Clio’s office, the door of which was wide open. “Hey,” I said to Maya, and she seemed to snap out of it.

  “How did I get up here?” she asked, and I slipped the headphones back on her head, clicking Mela’s country music back on.

  “Thanks!” Maya shouted. We hadn’t noticed yet what was happening in Clio’s office.

  There, frozen in time, were Clio, Paola, and Etoro.

  I ran toward them. “Wake up!” I shouted. I grabbed the lapels of Clio’s jacket and shook her hard. “Unfreeze them, Clio. Don’t listen to Ms. Rinse! Don’t do what she says!”

  But it was no use. Rinse had caught them by surprise and used muse magic and siren song against them, compelling Clio to turn on the others and herself.

  “What do we do?” Maya shouted.

  “Yoo-hoo? Girls?” Ms. Rinse called after us. I could hear her heels clicking on the marble floors.

  I pulled open Clio’s desk drawers, throwing papers and office supplies to the floor. “Where is it?” I muttered to myself. When I’d almost lost hope, my fingers brushed cold, rough metal.

  The bronze key! It was the same one Clio had used to get into the museum’s stores.

  “Come on,” I said, and led May
a down a corridor and through a wide door, leading her deep into the V and A storage rooms. I slipped the heavy key into the lock, pulled on the bat-shaped door handle, and heaved the door open. Maya stuck close by as I led her through the aisles.

  “Where are they? Where are they?” I muttered as we checked each row.

  Then I found them—the curses. Tiny boxes full of gods-knew-what. I couldn’t use my magic against Ms. Rinse. She’d already resisted me more than once. But could she resist a curse? The Cassandra Curse had worked on me. One of these had to work on Ms. Rinse. “Your backpack?” I asked Maya, and she handed it over. I unzipped it, pulled out the Rubik’s Cube, and handed it to Maya. Then I swept my arm along the shelf and dumped all the other curses into the bag.

  Maya held the scrambled cube in her hands.

  “Do your thing,” I told her, and she started to work it out, her fingers flying over the toy like a blur. “But stop short of solving it, okay? Whatever you do, don’t solve it until I say so!”

  We went back down to the library, where Rinse now stood, flanked by two tall women and one man, who might be beautiful if they weren’t completely covered by black feathers. Letty, Lisa, and Leo were grown now, and they narrowed their eyes at the same time. In sync, they bent at the knees, as if ready to pounce. They hissed, and I could smell their nasty coffee breath in the air. Even as I watched, more wings sprouted from their backs, the feathers there as red and bright as fresh blood.

  And before them were Thalia, Mela, and Nia, their hands lifted in our direction, their lips curled in anger.

  Rinse, still in her blue polka-dot dress, gave a little twirl.

  “It’s over, young ones. The age of the muses is done. I’ll fix the world’s problems alone, thank you very much. I am all the inspiration the world needs,” she said.

  Thalia cocked her head to the side and suddenly, everything seemed very funny—from Rinse’s dumb dress, to Maya’s silly braids. “Thalia, stop it,” I said, giggling. I doubled over in laughter.

  Then, all at once, I thought of Tia Annie. A wave of grief knocked me to my knees. My tia. I missed her so much. Was she okay? What if I just went down to Tycho’s tomb and stayed there, with her? What then? Maybe this awful feeling would go away.

  A flash of understanding pierced the sadness. I never gave up this easily. This was muse magic. I lifted my eyes and caught Mela’s hard stare.

  “Mela,” I said, sobbing, “don’t. Please.”

  Maya was shaking my shoulder. “My backpack!” she was shouting. She held open her rainbow backpack. I could see the outline of the Rubik’s Cube under her shirt, where she’d hidden it.

  With trembling hands, I picked out a box encrusted in sapphires. I had no idea what was inside, and I didn’t want to hurt my friends. If we could make sure the curse was aimed at Ms. Rinse, or the sirens, then maybe we could stop them, or at least slow them down.

  “We have to be careful, Maya,” I said through tears. “Those are my friends.”

  “What have you got there?” Ms. Rinse asked. She took a step forward. Before I could think of something to say, Maya ripped the box from my hands and lobbed it at Mela.

  “No!” I shouted.

  The box opened in the air. We heard a loud pop as the box fell to the floor. A tiny paw poked out of the box, and out came a fluffy kitten. Then another cat followed the first. Calicos, white cats, black cats, out they came, ten, twenty, thirty kittens. I grabbed onto Maya’s shirt and started to pull her back, just in case the cats were actually tiny monsters of some kind. The cats surrounded Mela, rubbing their heads over her legs. “Kitties!” she cried out. I flinched and covered my face. But Mela just sat among the cats, picking them up one at a time and rubbing her nose into their fur. Soon, she was covered in kittens, and was smiling so hard I thought she might explode with happiness.

  The sirens screeched and flapped their red wings, hovering a few feet off the floor, afraid of the cats. Ms. Rinse growled at them. “You cowards,” she hissed. “Nia, darling. Your turn,” she said. The room filled with a light so bright that it hurt to keep my eyes open.

  “Look!” Maya said, and pointed out a window. The moon was close, closer than I’d ever seen it. It filled the sky, bleaching it white.

  “Nia!” I shouted, but she was deep in concentration, her dark eyes turning to amber again.

  “Who needs a telescope to see the moon when you can just bring it down to your level,” Nia said, her voice different. Distant.

  “Well done, young one!” Rinse cried out, cackling.

  Had Nia really brought down the moon, or had she only put the thought of it in our heads? Either way, my eyes felt like they were burning. In the brightness, I fished for another box and blindly sent it flying, hoping it went Nia’s way. It opened on the ground before Nia. The moon was back in place like a tiny slice in the sky, and we watched as Nia started to rise into the air. “Wha—?” she yelped as she floated right to the top of the ceiling.

  “Anti-gravity! Cool!” Maya said, running toward the box. I held her back.

  “Now is not the time to geek out on me,” I said, but Nia was, indeed, geeking out, doing somersaults in the air like a real astronaut, whooping and cheering as she flipped.

  I peered into the bag again. These weren’t curses. These were gifts!

  “Thalia, catch!” I said, throwing a box at Thalia. She caught the box. It opened on its own, and music started to play.

  “Oh, I know what this is! It’s a classic. Cheers!” she shouted, as a jack-in-the-box popped up, startling the sirens and launching them skyward.

  “Chickens,” Thalia sneered at them, pushed the little clown back into the box, sat cross-legged on the floor, and waited for the music to start up again.

  “Enough of this,” Ms. Rinse said, her voice deep and quiet. She snapped her fingers and Thalia dropped the box. Mela pushed the kittens off her lap and rose to her feet, while Nia sank slowly down to the ground.

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  “Like I said, the searchlights hold more power than you can know.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked, buying time. Again and again, I willed my magic to come, but it was like trying to start a stalled-out car. The engine revved and revved, but it just wouldn’t start.

  Ms. Rinse stalked around the room. She picked up a kitten by the scruff of the neck and started stroking its fur. “Why? Vengeance, obviously. Your sweet little tia really ruined things for me. And we were once best friends, if you can believe that,” she said.

  “You ruined your own life!” I shouted.

  Ms. Rinse dropped the kitten. It landed on its paws and skittered away. “Hardly,” she said. “I would have done good things in the world with that power.” Ms. Rinse approached Maya, who trembled, but did not run. “And you, you unbelievable nerd. How you irritate me with your ideas and hope. You think you’re a real scientist. I was the Muse of science. Me!”

  “There are thousands of scientists in the world. Why Maya?” I felt like I’d been asking that question all along.

  Ms. Rinse stopped. She grabbed hold of one of Maya’s braids and pulled her down, so that she couldn’t stand up straight anymore. “It’s got nothing to do with Maya. It’s you. Your aunt took a little trip to Mount Olympus and secured unimaginable powers for you. And then she made it so that my powers were taken from me,” Ms. Rinse roared. “HOW. IS. THAT. FAIR?” she asked, pulling Maya down farther with each word.

  “Let her go!” I shouted. The top of my head felt like it was on fire. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Nia, Mela, and Thalia blinking and holding their heads, as if they were waking up from a long nap. The sirens hissed and hovered over the floor.

  “It’s not fair, that’s what,” Ms. Rinse said. “Our powers are not infinite. They are zero-sum. Your nerdy Fated One here knows what that means. Our powers are divvied up from one source, and you have the lion’s share. I deserve that share,” she whispered, then finally let Maya go.

  I too
k a deep breath. “Fine. You wanted my powers. Why not just come after me?” I asked. She might have in a million different ways, I thought. I would have followed her anywhere at school, into a supply closet, or up onto the third floor. She could have used any excuse, and I would have gone with her to a place where nobody could help me. I had trusted her, after all.

  Ms. Rinse started pacing the room as she talked. “Did you think that what happened on the Metrorail was an accident? Are you that stupid?”

  The train door! Ms. Rinse had done that?

  “Don’t act so surprised, Calliope. Think. Who did you give up your safe seats for? A nice old lady and her nice old husband.”

  At that, the sirens that had been Leo and Letty stepped forward and gave a little bow.

  I could feel my hands clenching at my sides. Raquel and I had given up our safe seats to an elderly couple. They had been so sweet.

  Ms. Rinse huffed in exasperation. “And I even had them offer you candy. Poisoned candy, naturally, but you didn’t even take it.”

  Inside, I was shaking. We’d come really close to disaster that day. But I hadn’t realized just how close a call it had been. “Honestly, nobody likes those strawberry candies,” I said.

  “SHUT UP!” Ms. Rinse shouted, so loudly that the glass in the bookcases tinkled against their frames. She kept on shouting, “I didn’t expect your powers to be as strong as they were. Nobody makes heroes on their first try. But you did on that train. I’m no fool. If I couldn’t get to you directly, if I couldn’t stop you from becoming a muse, then I’d get to your Fated One. I’d ruin her. You’d be a failure from the start. Then Annie would know that her sacrifices were for nothing.”

  I opened my mouth to ask what she meant about sacrifices, but with another snap of Ms. Rinse’s fingers, it was my turn to go up, up, up, until I was flattened against the ceiling, sliding slowly to an open upper window. I gripped the tin tiles of the ceiling with my fingertips, but it was no use. Ms. Rinse moved me around like a magnet on the surface of a refrigerator.

  “Calliope, Muse of the epic poem, Maker of Heroes,” Rinse said. “Enjoy your trip to Mount Olympus. One-way ticket, my dear. The air might get thin in the upper atmosphere. Hope you can hold your breath,” she said.