by Holub, Joan
By the time Hermes arrived on the coast of the Aegean Sea, at an open-air shopping market called an agora, Medusa was tired and hungry. So were her snakes.
“Why are we stopping here?” she asked, looking around. This was her hometown! Where she’d been born and lived until leaving for MOA. She hadn’t been back since, and this was pretty much the last place on Earth she wanted to be. So Hermes’ next words filled her with dread.
“Out you go,” he said. “The rest of these invitations are bound for lands too magical for you to visit. No mortals allowed.” He picked her up by the back of her chiton and set her on the ground.
She grabbed the side of the chariot and tried to scramble back inside. “No! Wait. What about your promise to take me to Mount Olympus?”
Hermes gave her a cocky farewell salute. “I’ll get you there as promised, but not until tomorrow.”
“What am I supposed to do till then?”
He shrugged as he lifted off. “Your parents live here, don’t they? Stay with them tonight and have a nice visit. But be back in this spot at nine sharp tomorrow morning when I swing by to pick you up on my way to MOA. If you’re not here on time, I won’t come looking for you.”
As he lifted higher, Medusa jumped back to avoid being whomped by the enormous white wings on the chariot’s sides, which had already begun to flap.
Watching Hermes sail away, she felt her heart sink. She did not want to be here.
Suddenly her stomach growled. Food vendors in the nearby agora were baking, and the smell of warm bread filled the air around her. It was way past lunchtime, and her snakes were droopy. They were starving too. “C’mon, guys. Let’s eat.”
Quickly she reached into her pocket and slipped on the stoneglasses she always carried. Athena had invented these spectacles for mortals to wear in Medusa’s presence, so they wouldn’t be turned to stone. But Medusa had discovered that if she wore a pair herself her gaze wouldn’t turn anyone to stone. Perhaps they would protect against her own reflection too, only she’d never been daring enough to peek into a mirror and find out!
Still, as she strolled through the agora, mortals ducked and ran for cover when they noticed her. Obviously they didn’t trust her not to rip the glasses off and glare them into statues. Their fear was a little embarrassing. Maybe even hurtful. No, she was just weak from hunger—that would explain why she was feeling so weirdly vulnerable.
Smirking at those she passed, she pretended she was pleased to have inspired such alarm. And a small part of her was pleased. After all, turning mortals to stone was the closest thing to immortal magic that she could do!
The agora was every bit as noisy as she remembered. Merchants were selling products brought from trade ships—linen from Egypt, spices from India, and dates from Phoenicia. Criers called out special deals and sales. One vendor announced that fresh fish had just arrived from the boats docked in the harbor. Prices were never firm, and shoppers all around her haggled loudly with the merchants. The rich among them pulled their money from their purses, but poor shoppers carried their few coins in their mouths to keep them safe from thieves.
Even though Medusa was starving, her snakes’ needs came first. She bought some dried peas from a booth and began tossing them into the air as she browsed through the shops. Her snakes snapped at the snacks, gobbling them down hungrily. When the peas were gone, she turned to go down a different aisle. Hearing whispers, she looked over her shoulder and saw that a bunch of townspeople had been following her. They were fascinated by the sight of her feeding her snaky hair.
“Show’s over!” she called. Making a scary face, she shooed everyone away. As she continued on through the agora, she noticed a crowd in one of the shops. The store was new since she’d last been here. The sign above its door read BE A HERO! Just then her stomach growled again. Mmm. Hero sandwiches, she thought.
But when she went inside, she discovered that it was a gift shop, not a restaurant. Still, the shop did sell some food, including hero sandwiches. She bought one to munch and noticed a familiar face on the sandwich packaging. It was that of Heracles—a mortal boy who also attended MOA. In fact, everything on the shelves in this shop bore the face, logo, or autograph of some mortal hero. Mostly they were Trojan War heroes. She saw Odysseus’s likeness on a tunic and Paris’s face on a heart-shaped box of candy.
“Welcome! It’s Medusa, right? Your snakes are a dead giveaway,” said a voice behind her.
“Wah?” Medusa replied around a mouthful of sandwich. Turning, she saw a short round man with slicked-back black hair and a dark mustache that formed huge stiff curls at either end. He bowed low, and she blinked in surprise. She’d never seen anyone wearing a bright yellow-and-black checkered tunic before.
“How fabulous that you’ve come to my shop! Such an honor!” As he spoke, he waved his arms, making grand sweeping gestures like a magician. “Ah, but you must allow me to introduce myself. Mr. Dolos, at your service.” He bowed low again. “Now hurry, hurry. Come this way. There’s no time to lose. Fame and fortune await!”
Medusa gulped her last bite of sandwich. She didn’t care about fame, but the word “fortune” drew her like a fly to honey. Abandoning her usual caution, she followed him across the store, weaving through the crowd of customers. Going behind the checkout counter, he began digging around in a box of papers on a shelf.
“Ah, here we are!” He slid a scroll across the counter to her. The word “contract” was written at the top, but his hand was covering most of the other words on it. With his other hand he held out a feather quill pen. “Just sign on the dotted line, and fame and fortune are yours!”
Medusa hesitated. “How much fortune are we talking about?”
He reached down under the counter and brought out a bag that was heavy with coins. “Twenty drachmas.” Her eyes widened, and he smiled, showing a row of shiny gold teeth. “And that’s just for starters.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Not a thing! By signing you agree to license your likeness. I’ll take things from there. Just imagine! Products you’ve endorsed will be sold in this very shop right alongside those of the famous hero Odysseus!” He waved a gloved hand to indicate the displays around the store.
“You mean Odysseus and these mortal heroes licensed their likenesses for all the products you sell? Heracles, too?” Medusa found it hard to believe that Heracles would do that.
“But of course!”
He pushed the contract and pen closer to her, hinting.
She looked down at it. “Shouldn’t I read it first?”
He twirled one end of his mustache between two fingers. “Ah! I can see you’re a smart girl! But I assure you it’s a simple, standard agreement. You license your image, and I sell products with it. Simple!” He winked.
Her snakes flicked their tongues at him, which meant they didn’t trust him. Usually they were right about people, but she was blinded by the flash of gold and ignored their warning. “Calm down,” she murmured to them. If Heracles had signed a contract, it must be on the up and up, right? So why shouldn’t she sign too?
But still she hesitated. “All those other products have heroes on them. I’m no hero,” she said.
“Ah, but I believe your image will make mortals feel like heroes!”
“Really?” Medusa couldn’t help feeling flattered.
Mr. Dolos nodded, looking very sincere. He leaned in, whispering now. “Confidentially, I think products with your image will blow my customers out of their sandals. You’ll be a bestseller!”
Remembering that everyone in the agora haggled, she said, “In that case I want thirty drachmas.”
Without hesitation Mr. Dolos reached under the counter and set another slightly smaller bag of drachmas on the counter beside the first bag. “Here you go. This is just the down payment. Every time I sell your image, you’ll earn more. It adds up, let me tell you. There’s money to be made in licensing.”
This guy was crazy to think people would buy produc
ts with her face on them. They ran from her face. But who cared! If he wanted to give her thirty drachmas for just signing her name, no way was she going to refuse. Dazzled by his persuasion and his gold, Medusa signed. Before the ink could even dry, he whisked the contract away, exclaiming, “Congratulations!”
A few minutes later she left the shop with thirty drachmas in her pockets and a smile on her face. Wow—what a great deal she’d just made!
“Hey, it’s Gorgonzola!” she heard someone yell.
In an instant the smile left her face. Glancing over one shoulder, she saw a bunch of kids from her old school. Ugh. She hated that nickname. Gorgonzola was a kind of smelly cheese, and since her last name was Gorgon, kids had used it to tease her. No one had teased her immortal sisters, though, for fear of being smote into oblivion.
Well, now she had her own weapon—her stoneifying gaze. And she’d show them!
Heading straight for the group of kids, she reached for the stoneglasses she wore, as if she planned to take them off. “Did I hear someone say they wanted to be turned into a marble statue?” she called out.
Shrieking, the kids ran off. Watching them, Medusa smirked and said to herself in a satisfied voice, “Humph! I didn’t think so.”
5
Home Unsweet Home
I’M HOME!” MEDUSA ANNOUNCED AS SHE THREW open the front door of the cottage where she’d grown up as a little girl. Her mom looked up from the seaweed stew she was cooking. Medusa wrinkled her nose. She hated seaweed stew. MOA’s ambrosia stew was much tastier.
Her mom, Ceto, looked over at her anxiously. “Dusa? Why are you home from school? What’s wrong? Are your sisters okay?” She waddled closer. She couldn’t help the way she walked; she was a sea monster, and all she could do was waddle or slither when she was on land. In the sea she could swim like a fish, though. Medusa and her sisters had inherited her swimming talent.
“Stheno and Euryale are fine,” said Medusa, looking around. “I am too, if anyone cares,” she added in a voice too soft for her mom to hear.
The house looked exactly the same as when she’d left it years ago to follow her sisters to MOA. She hadn’t come back here since, not even on holidays. One entire wall of the kitchen was covered with swimming medals and academic awards her sisters had won over the years. None of Medusa’s were on display, but she hadn’t expected them to be. Her parents had never made any secret of liking her sisters better than her.
“Phorcys! Your youngest daughter has finally come to visit,” her mom shouted toward the living room. “What do you think of that?”
Reading a scrollazine in his favorite chair, her dad, Phorcys, just grunted without looking over. He was a sea hog, and that was pretty much the way sea hogs talked—in gruntspeak.
“What in the world have you done with your hair?” her mom demanded in horror, seeming to just now notice the snakes. “Is that some kind of fad? Regular hair isn’t good enough for you now that you’re going to school with immortals?”
“It was an accident,” said Medusa as she went over to pour a drink from the water pitcher on the counter. “An invention mistake.”
“Well, it looks ridiculous. I certainly hope you’re not going to keep it that way.”
Medusa shrugged and set her drink aside. She doubted her hair was going to change no matter what her mom hoped. Athena had told her there was no way of reversing the effects of Snakeypoo (which Athena had actually originally named Snarkypoo).
“So how’s school?” her mom asked. “Have you finally come to your senses and realized you belong back here in Greece with other mortals? It’s about time. I don’t know why you had such foolish uppity ambitions in the first place. Like I always told you, no matter how much you study, you’ll never be immortal.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Medusa said, rolling her eyes. “Nice of you to tell me something I don’t already know.”
But her mom didn’t pick up on the sarcasm and just blabbered on. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here,” she said.
Medusa’s head jerked back in surprise. “You are?” Her parents were always glad to see her sisters, but they didn’t give a hoot about her. In fact, they hadn’t sent her a single letterscroll the whole time she’d been at MOA.
“Yes, I’ve packed up all the old stuff you left in your room,” her mom went on. “We plan to use your bedroom for storage. Since you’re here, you can help me take the boxes down to donate to charity.”
“You’re ditching my stuff?” Alarmed, Medusa didn’t wait for her mom to continue. Quickly she dashed from the kitchen through the living room to get to her bedroom. Along the way she passed dozens of framed sketches and paintings of her sisters. Some sat on the fireplace mantel, others on shelves or on side tables. But there were none of Medusa.
Her childhood bedroom was as small as a walk-in closet. Not surprising, since it actually had been a closet until she was born. There were no windows, so she lit a candle before going inside.
Sure enough, all of her stuff had been packed up into two boxes, which were sitting in the middle of her closet-room. Her bed, which had once filled most of the floor space, was already gone. Setting the candle in a holder, she kneeled and opened the first box. It was full of old clothes and sandals that didn’t fit her anymore, so she closed it and opened the second one.
This one was full of treasures. There were old shells she’d collected, an ancient coin she had found washed up on the seashore, and a mermaid doll she’d made out of sticks and sea grass. There were hundreds of drawings she’d made in first and second grade, before she’d left home.
Medusa kept digging, searching until she found a particular set of scrolls. She unrolled them on the floor and studied one of the many Queen of Mean comic strips she’d drawn when she was little. She was the star of every comic. A superhero!
Her drawings were mostly stick figures with big O-shaped heads. But she’d added touches to the characters that had made them individuals. The comics were almost like a diary, because the drawings showed things that had happened to her during the years she’d lived at home.
Even with the candle she could barely see in her dark bedroom. Taking the whole set of comic-scrolls and the candle, she went across the hall to the room her sisters had shared. Not a thing had been changed in their room since they’d left home. Their frilly green bedspreads were freshly washed in case they dropped by to visit. Their books, toys, and dolls still sat on shelves that had been recently dusted.
Medusa walked over and flopped down right in the middle of one of those perfectly made beds. Lying on her stomach, she began reading the comics. Her snakes peered at them too, as if curious about her childhood.
As the Queen of Mean she had used something she’d called payback magic to get even with dastardly evildoers. (Evildoers were basically whoever treated her badly.) Her weapon was a magic cheese. When she held it high and yelled “gorgonzola,” her enemies turned into cheese.
She wasn’t sure why she’d chosen to have the queen-superhero shout that horrid nickname, since she hated it. Maybe it was because turning the name against her enemies had drained away some of its power to hurt her.
She laughed at the comic where she turned a kid into cheese for stealing her lunch money. And at the one where she turned her sisters into cheese for making her miss the end-of-the-year first-grade party. They’d ratted her out about her messy room, and her parents had insisted she stay home and clean it. The party, called the Fin-derella Ball, had been sea-themed. Her sisters had dressed up as twin sea nymphs. In her comic strip they’d turned into twin cheeses when the clock struck twelve.
“Ha-ha-ha!” She chuckled to herself. She’d been pretty hilarious as a little kid, even if she did say so herself. Before she could even write, she could draw pretty well. She’d forgotten that. Resting her chin on one hand, she kept reading, laughing softly. But after a while she started to yawn now and then too. Her head began to nod and her eyelids grew heavy.
Next thing she knew, her mom was screec
hing at her. “Dusa! What are you doing in here?”
“Huh?” Rubbing her eyes, Medusa sat up and looked around. It was morning, and she was lying on one of her sisters’ beds. What was she doing back at home? Was this a dream—that is, a nightmare?
Then she remembered all that had gone on the day before. “What time is it?” Leaping from the bed, she checked the sundial outside and saw it was nearly nine o’clock. She was supposed to be meeting Hermes for a ride back to Mount Olympus!
In a flash Medusa scooped up her Queen of Mean comic-scrolls. Clutching them to her chest, she hurried off. “Bye, Mom!” But her mom was already busy smoothing out the wrinkles she’d made in her sister’s bedspread and only gave her a casual wave. She didn’t even ask where she was going or if she’d be back.
Her dad was sitting at the table having seaweed flakes for breakfast as she dashed past. “Bye, Dad!” she called to him, but he only grunted in reply.
Medusa was breathing hard by the time she reached the spot where Hermes had told her to wait. But there was no Hermes and no chariot. Oh, no! Was she too late? Had he already come and gone? She stared at the sky anxiously.
“Medusa Gorgon! Is that really you?”
Medusa slipped on her stoneglasses before looking around to see who’d spoken. It was a girl who had been in her second-grade class here at her old school. A pot of water was balanced atop her head, and she was holding its handle with one hand.
“I knew it!” the girl said in excitement. “I’m Echidne, remember?” She glanced at the snakes on Medusa’s head. “So it’s true about your hair.”
Medusa looked upward, scanning the sky. Still no Hermes. She glanced at the girl again. She’d been pretty nice—nicer than most of the other kids, as Medusa recalled. “Yeah, it’s true. Um, are you headed to school?”
Echidne laughed. “Girls can’t attend school after second grade around here, remember? I’m training to be a water-carrier,” she said proudly.
