The Land of Stories--Worlds Collide

by Chris Colfer

  As Medusa gazed into her new eyes, her reflection started to transform, too. She watched in amazement as the hideous creature in the mirror slowly turned into a beautiful woman. Her head of snakes became a head of thick, sandy hair, her scaly skin became smooth and tanned, and her long coiled body became a voluptuous figure under a crimson toga. The Mirror of Truth had only changed Medusa’s reflection, but for the first time in decades, Medusa saw the woman she was before she was turned into a monster.

  Medusa wondered what other kinds of sorcery the cottage might contain. A door caught her eye on the other side of the room, and she went to it. Although it had several locks and bolts, the door was wide open and led to a steep staircase descending into a basement. Medusa slithered down the steps and discovered the twenty sleeping children under Morina’s dark spell.

  “Hello!” said a polite voice behind her.

  Medusa looked over her shoulder and found another mirror leaning against the basement wall. A cheerful frog man wearing a three-piece suit waved at her from inside it. For a brief second, Medusa instinctively covered her eyes to spare the frog man from being turned into stone, forgetting that the potion had transformed her eyes. It had been so long since Medusa had communicated with another living thing, she’d almost forgotten how.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” the frog man said.

  “What in Zeus’s name is that supposed to mean?”

  “Unfortunately, I’ve lost my memory,” he explained. “I’ve been searching for someone who might recognize me and help me remember, but so far you’re the only person I’ve found.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but we’ve never met,” Medusa said. “Believe me—I would know if we’d crossed paths.”

  “Well, that’s a shame,” the frog man said. “I guess I’ll have to keep searching. I’ve looked practically everywhere, but everything is empty. It makes me wonder if there’s a sale happening somewhere.”

  “How did you get inside the mirror?” Medusa asked.

  “Oh, I was cursed,” he explained. “I can’t remember who or what put me in here, nor when or how it happened, but I do know I was very upset about it.”

  “Was this cottage your home?” she asked.

  “Hmmm,” the frog man said as he looked around the basement. “It seems very familiar, but I don’t think it was my home, per se. I know very little about myself, but I can’t imagine I was the type who kept unconscious children in the basement.”

  Medusa took a second look at the mysterious children. For the first time, she noticed that their skin had a light glow, and even though they were all the size of children, many had the wrinkles and crow’s-feet of people much older.

  “What happened to them?” she asked.

  “Looks like they’re under some sort of spell,” he said.

  “I suppose that makes all of us kindred spirits.”

  “You mean, you’re cursed, too?” the frog man asked.

  Medusa shot him a look—wasn’t it obvious?

  “Well, it would be rude to just assume,” the frog man said. “Who cursed you, then? Was it the same person who cursed me or the children?”

  “That’s very unlikely,” Medusa answered. “I was damned by a jealous goddess in my home world. She turned my hair into snakes, covered my body in scales, and cursed my eyes to turn anyone they saw into stone. I was so ashamed of myself and terrified of harming people that I secluded myself on an island called Sarpedon. I lived on the island for years until I was captured and brought to this world.”

  “Who captured you?”

  “A terrible army of pirates, winged monkeys, and card soldiers,” she said. “They kept me blindfolded in a cage and used me to turn their enemies into stone. Eventually I escaped and have been searching the woods for a place to isolate myself ever since. The longer I roam, the more lives I ruin.”

  “If your eyes turn others into stone, how am I not a statue?” the frog man asked.

  “I drank a potion upstairs that returned my eyes to normal,” Medusa explained. “I’m not sure how long the potion will last, but there are hundreds more where it came from. They’re engraved with words like youth, beauty, and stamina—all the things I’m lacking.”

  “That’s wonderful!” the frog man said. “Suppose you drank all the potions—do you think it would turn you back into your human form?”

  Medusa hadn’t thought about it, but the idea mesmerized her.

  “It’s certainly worth a try,” she said.

  A mutual smile stretched across their faces, but the frog man’s smile faded when a troubling thought crossed his mind.

  “Say, where do you think all that youth, beauty, and stamina came from?” he asked.

  Medusa was so pleased with the results, she hadn’t stopped to wonder how the potions were made. Her eyes wandered back to the sleeping children, and it dawned on her just how drained of youth, beauty, and stamina they appeared to be. It suddenly became clear where the potions were coming from, and Medusa felt sick to her stomach.

  “Hera Almighty,” she gasped. “It’s coming from the children! Their life force is being drained into potion bottles!”

  The mythical monster was overwhelmed with guilt. She knelt on the floor and began to weep. With no handkerchief to dry her eyes, Medusa used the empty bottle of rejuvenation to collect her tears. She cried so hard, it wasn’t long before the bottle was overflowing.

  “There, there,” the frog man comforted her. “It was just an accident. You wouldn’t have drunk the potion if you’d known what it was.”

  “But I would!” Medusa confessed. “For the first time in decades, I’ve found a way to break the curse! I’ve found a cure for this miserable existence! There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get rid of the monster I’ve become! I just wish it didn’t have to come at such a terrible price!”

  Medusa’s admitted selfishness made her cry even harder than she had before. For reasons unknown to him, the frog man sympathized with her dark confession. He went silent for a few moments and gathered the right words to advise her with.

  “If you ask me, there are two options at hand. Both will change you, but only one will get rid of the monster forever.”

  “What’s the first option?” she asked.

  “You can drink all the potions upstairs and return to the woman you were before the curse. You’ll never turn another soul into stone and never see a monster in the mirror again. But if you steal from these children, you won’t look like a monster anymore—you’ll just be one. And that’s much worse, in my opinion.”

  “And the second option?”

  “You can restore all the bottled youth, beauty, and stamina to their rightful owners,” the frog man explained. “It won’t change how you look, but it will change how you look at yourself. From then on, every time you pass a mirror and see your reflection, you won’t see a hideous monster; you’ll see a woman who chose to help others instead of helping herself. And anyone who looks into a mirror and sees who they are, over what they are—well, it’s impossible to curse someone like that.”

  Medusa thought about the frog man’s words and knew he was right. She wiped her tears, lifted herself from the floor, and slithered up the stairs. A few moments later she returned with as many potion bottles as she could carry. She made several trips up and down the stairs until every bottle was in the basement. One by one, she twisted off each golden cap and poured the potions into the mouths of the sleeping children.

  Little by little, the stolen youth, beauty, and stamina returned to their rightful owners. The children’s skin stopped glowing; they opened their heavy eyes and looked around the basement in a daze. They were too groggy to get up or keep their eyes open for long, but each child felt Morina’s curse disappear from their body. One of the little boys stayed conscious long enough to look up at Medusa. She cowered in the corner of the basement, afraid her appearance would frighten the child. The boy wasn’t scared at all; on the con
trary, he smiled at her.

  “You must be an angel,” he whispered. “Thank you for saving us.”

  Just like all the other children, the boy closed his eyes and began to sleep off the lingering effects of the curse. Medusa had been called many things since being cursed, but this was the first time someone called her an angel.

  “The children must be delirious if they think I’m an angel,” she said.

  “I’d say it’s quite fitting, actually,” the frog man said. “It takes a very special person to commit such a selfless act.”

  Although she was too modest to agree, Medusa nodded.

  “You were right,” she said. “From now on, every time I pass a mirror, I won’t see my hideous reflection, I’ll only be reminded of helping these children.”

  Suddenly, the mirror began to glow as brightly as the sun. Beams of light wrapped around the frog man’s body and pushed him through the plate of glass as if it were made of water. The frog man collapsed on the basement floor and the mirror returned to normal.

  “I’m… I’m… I’m free!” he cheered. “The curse is broken!”

  As soon as he got to his feet, the frog man’s memories returned like a river bursting through a broken dam.

  “I can remember!” he announced. “I remember where I was born, I remember where I grew up, I remember all the places I lived, I remember the faces of my loved ones—and I remember my name!”

  “What is it?” Medusa asked.

  “Charles Carlton Charming, but my friends call me Froggy.”

  The restored frog man paused as a very critical memory surfaced.

  “Oh my word—Alex and Conner! I was trying to warn them about the Literary Army when my memory faded! I was searching for a place where they might be hiding! I need to find them and the royal families before it’s too late!”

  “Did you say royal families?” Medusa asked. “Because I could have sworn I saw a bunch of royal families in an abandoned mine not far from here. They were hiding with loads of other people, but they all turned into stone before I could get a good look at them.”

  Froggy’s heart practically fell into his stomach at the thought of his friends and family being turned into statues.

  “Is there a way to transform someone back after they’ve been turned to stone?” he asked with large, desperate eyes.

  “Actually, there might be,” Medusa said. “After the goddess transformed me into a monster, she said only tears of the damned can soothe the eyes of the cursed. I thought it was just vindictive banter, but perhaps it was instructions. Take the bottle of my tears, pour them into the eyes of the statues, and it may reverse the damage.”

  She handed him the rejuvenation bottle filled with her teardrops.

  “Thank you!” Froggy said. “How do I get to the abandoned mine from here?”

  “I’ll take you there, but first, I need a favor from you,” she said.

  “Yes, of course! Anything!”

  “Eventually the rejuvenation potion will wear off and my old eyes will return,” Medusa said. “I need someplace to go where I won’t harm others—a place I can live where no one will ever find me.”

  “I know just the place,” Froggy said. “I used to live in a hole up the river from here. It’s not much, but it’s very cozy. There are hundreds of books there and a nice chair beside a fireplace where you can sit and keep warm. As a matter of fact, most of the books in my collection were on the subject of curses—there may be a remedy for yours within their pages! If you take me to the abandoned mine, I’ll tell you exactly how to find it.”

  Medusa was delighted by the description. “It sounds like a paradise,” she said. “Now follow me—I’ll show you to the mine.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BACKUP

  Conner had only been gone for eighteen hours, but his friends and characters at the Saint Andrew’s Children’s Hospital had grown twice as restless since he left. It was almost ten o’clock at night and all the pirates, superheroes, Cyborgs, mummies, literary characters, and fairy-tale characters were wide awake. Every passing hour spent in the commissary felt like it was longer than the one before. They were itching for something productive to do and running out of ways to entertain themselves.

  After their I Love Lucy marathon was finished, the pirates of Starboardia discovered a steamy soap opera on Telemundo. Auburn Sally, Admiral Jacobson, and the entire Dolly Llama crew couldn’t look away from the Latin American actors’ passionate performances. They felt their faces blush at every turn of the scandalous story.

  “Does anyone know what they’re saying?” Winking Wendy asked.

  “I don’t understand a word, but I feel everything,” Somersault Sydney said.

  Across the commissary, the characters from “The Adventures of Blimp Boy” passed the time by teaching the characters from the Sherwood Forest how to gamble. It didn’t matter how many times Beau Rogers and his great-aunt Emgee repeated the rules, the Merry Men had a hard time soaking up the concept of poker.

  “AHA! THE ODDS ARE IN MY FAVOR AGAIN!” Robin Hood boasted. “I HAVE THREE KINGS AND TWO ACES! GOOD LUCK BEATING THAT!”

  The archaeologists folded their cards before they even had a chance to look at them.

  “Robin, for the tenth time, you’re not supposed to reveal your cards until the end,” Beau said. “The whole point is to make us think you have a good hand—you don’t just come out and say it.”

  The Prince of Thieves let out a haughty laugh. “BUT I HAVE FOOLED YOU,” he said, and revealed his cards. “BEHOLD, A PAIR OF TWOS! NOT ONLY HAVE I DECEIVED YOU, BUT I’VE DONE IT IN RECORD TIME! I DARE SAY THE STUDENT HAS BECOME THE TEACHER. NOW SLIDE OVER MY EARNINGS!”

  The superheroes from “The Ziblings” were in the middle of a heated round of charades with the space explorers from “Galaxy Queen.” Blaze, Whipney, and Morph were one team, while the Cyborg Queen, Commander Newters, and Professor Wallet were on the other.

  “It’s an elephant!” Blaze called out.

  “That’s right!” Morph said, and quickly moved on.

  “It’s a satellite dish!” Whipney guessed.

  “Yes!” Morph said, and went to the next paper.

  “It’s a toy box!” Blaze said.

  “That’s it!” Morph said. “Boy, we’re really good at this!”

  “Of course you’re doing well!” the Cyborg Queen complained. “You’re literally transforming into whatever the paper says! I don’t see how this is a fair game!”

  Meanwhile, Trollbella got roped into playing a game of hide-and-seek with the Lost Boys from Neverland. The troll queen counted to a hundred while the boys hid, but when she was done counting, instead of searching for them, Trollbella had a seat and flipped through a magazine.

  “Aren’t you going to find them?” the Tin Woodman asked her.

  “I was, but then I had an epiphany,” Trollbella said. “If I want boys to stop playing games with me, I’ve got to stop playing games with boys.”

  “Even hide-and-seek?” the Tin Woodman asked.

  “Especially hide-and-seek,” Trollbella said in total seriousness. “Who we are on the playground is who we are in life, and I’m done being a seeker. If someone wants to be my Troblin King, he’s just gonna have to find me.”

  Charlotte stood by the window and watched the characters getting fresh air outside. Peter Pan and Bolt competed in several rounds of a questionable activity they called Who Can Fly Closest to the Moon Without Passing Out. Lester, the Rosary Chicken, and Blubo were picking at bugs in the lawns surrounding the hospital. Bones, the mummified dog from the Pyramid of Anesthesia, buried the parts of his body that fell off. Unbeknownst to him, Clawdius was digging them back up and burying them in other spots.

  The Blissworm inched up a tree, hung upside down from a branch, and blew Charlotte a kiss good-bye, and then its soft body slowly hardened into a cocoon—which was very surprising, since Conner had never mentioned anything about it having a metamorphosis. The space worm even place
d a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the corner of its chrysalis.

  Although there was plenty to distract her, nothing could take Charlotte’s mind off her children. Every additional hour she didn’t hear from Conner was more torturous than the previous one. The delayed communication made her fear that something was wrong—very wrong.

  The commissary doors swung open and Bob entered with a mummy who had slipped out without Charlotte noticing.

  “Look who I found in the emergency room,” Bob said.

  The mummy had two large burn marks on the wraps covering his heart.

  “What happened to his chest?” Charlotte asked.

  “Apparently two paramedics found him roaming the parking lot,” Bob said. “They checked his pulse and took him to Emergency right away. The nurses were trying to revive him when I got there. I had to make him sign a DNR to get them to stop.”

  “He must have walked right past me,” Charlotte said. “I’ve been trying to keep everyone stimulated while we wait to hear from Conner, but there’s only so much they can do. You know things are dull when the dead start wandering off.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself—you’ve got a lot on your mind,” Bob said. “Speaking of which, any word from Conner?”

  “Nothing,” she said with a heavy sigh. “I’ve tried calling a dozen times, but no one is answering. I know I worry about them constantly, but I can’t fight a feeling that something terrible has happened. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I feel like they both need me.”

  Bob and Charlotte were distracted when the pirates from Starboardia started moaning at the television.

  “What’s going on?” Charlotte asked.

  “Some lady came on the screen and interrupted our show!” Fish-Lips Lucy grumbled. “And Maria was just about to catch José being unfaithful!”

  Bob and Charlotte glanced at the screen to see what they were talking about. President of the United States Katherine Walker was sitting at her desk in the Oval Office, about to give a national address.