Medea the Enchantress Read online

  Whoosh! Suddenly a woman-size tornado appeared in the classroom doorway in a swirl of long red hair, a dress draped with veils, and tons of showy jewelry. Circe had arrived! After coming to an abrupt stop, she flung the cape she carried aside with a dramatic flourish and favored the Hero-ology students with a simple bow of her head.

  “Good morning, class! I’m Sorceress Circe, principal of Enchantment Academy. I hope you haven’t been up to any mischief with your teacher away. Not without me here to enjoy the fun, at any rate.” Her merry laughter rang out, causing students to smile.

  “She sure knows how to make an entrance,” murmured a goddessgirl standing near Medea. She had gray-blue eyes and wore a blue chiton. And even though her long, wavy brown hair was done up in a high twist held in place by a small stick of polished wood, Medea recognized her right off. The brainy Athena! Her dad was Zeus, King of the Gods and Ruler of the Heavens, as well as principal of MOA.

  Standing alongside Athena was a beautiful golden-haired goddessgirl dressed in pink and wearing a chunky painted bronze bracelet and matching necklace. Definitely Aphrodite. These two were among the most popular goddessgirls at MOA! As with all immortals, their skin looked like it had been lightly powdered with delicate sparkles of glitter that glinted when the light hit them just so. Medea had heard about that phenomenon, but it was amazing to see it for herself.

  “Yeah, I love her style!” Aphrodite agreed with Athena. Casually gesturing toward Medea, who was directly in the two goddessgirls’ line of sight, Aphrodite added, “And those Enchantment Academy uniforms are really fab.” Medea and Glauce were wearing the official uniform of their school—a red chiton edged with gold trim and emblazoned with the swirly gold EA logo. Medea had accessorized with her favorite braided gold belt, matching ruby-studded gold hair hoop, and gold lace-up sandals.

  When Medea smiled at Aphrodite and Athena, the two girls smiled back. Noticing this interaction, Glauce stepped in front of Medea and smiled at the girls too.

  “Class?” When Circe spoke just then, all eyes turned her way. “Many of you may already know that Mr. Cyclops is away at Giant-Con, a convention of giants on the island of Hypereia.” As she spoke, she wound her way grandly around the room, her dress and veils fluttering out behind her like sails, even though there was no wind. “During his absence this week I’ll be substitute-teaching all Hero-ology classes. Today each class will begin a different group quest that will end on Friday.”

  Hearing this short deadline, some students gasped. Then a boy with turquoise eyes said, “I bet this will be the adventure Pheme wrote about in Teen Scrollazine!” The two godboys beside him nodded and looked over at a girl with short orange hair and small, glittery orange wings. A tiny thrill zinged through Medea. Because this was surely Pheme, the goddessgirl of gossip herself!

  And the boy who had spoken had to be Poseidon, godboy of the sea! Medea recognized him from drawings in Teen Scrollazine, as well as from the three-pronged pitchfork-like trident he held. His two godboy buds she could also identify from pictures in past issues of Teen Scrollazine. They were Apollo, godboy of prophecy and music among other things, and Ares, the godboy of war.

  Medea grinned to herself. Happy she was able to recognize so many faces, she thought: See, Dad? Stuff you see in Teen Scrollazine can come in handy!

  “Yes, it’s not much time,” Circe continued, having heard the students’ concerned gasps. “Things will move at a quick pace this week, with lots of events requiring magic. For anything advanced you may come to me. For instances where simple magic is required, you may consult my two able assistants and enchantresses in training, Medea and Glauce.” Circe’s many bracelets and rings flashed as she gestured in the direction of the two girls.

  Medea smiled and gave a shy little wave to everyone. However, Glauce bowed, waving her wand with a grand flourish that left a sparkly trail of letters hanging in midair. Letters that spelled: HI, MOA!

  Why didn’t I think of doing something spectacular like that? wondered Medea. Because she wasn’t as socially confident as Glauce, that’s why. Nor as showy. Her frenemy’s move had been perfectly planned to impress.

  Feeling like she’d totally bombed in some kind of unspoken contest, Medea tried to make up for her earlier lack of coolness by imitating Glauce. Even as she bowed and waved her wand to leave a trail of her own sparkly letters, Medea knew that copying was the wrong thing to do. She wasn’t Glauce. She should just be herself. How many times had her aunt told her that?

  As Medea straightened again, Glauce lifted an eyebrow at her and made a tsking sound. “Really?” she said, glancing toward Medea’s trail of letters.

  Oh no! Medea’s heart plummeted when she looked over too. In her anxious rush she’d misspelled her sparkle message as HI, MOO!

  “Oops,” she said. Luckily, the letters faded quickly. But not before most of the class had seen them, she guessed from the quiet giggles that ran through the room. She had hoped to leave a great impression here at MOA. And right off the bat she’d totally bungled!

  Not seeming to notice anything amiss, Circe spread her arms wide, bracelets jangling. “Let’s get to it! Now, I understand from Mr. Cyclops that you completed an assignment earlier this year in which you guided certain mortal heroes—including the famous Odysseus—on some Earth adventures. In this week’s project you’ll help another great hero attempt to cross a dangerous sea. And what does a sailor need to go on a heroic voyage?”

  “A ship!” Athena called out.

  “A crew!” shouted Apollo.

  “Good answers! And that’s where all of you come in,” said Circe, clapping her hands in delight. “This morning you’ll each be assigned a new hero who will be part of the great heroic leader’s crew. Mr. Cyclops left little hero statues for us somewhere in this classroom,” she said, glancing around. “As soon as I locate them and pass them out, we’ll move ahead. For now, students, please start removing your old heroes from the game board to make room.” So saying, Circe motioned toward the Ping-Pong-size table in the middle of the floor. The “game board,” Medea figured.

  Looking around, Medea saw that some of the students were gazing at her a bit uncertainly. Had her mistakes with wand holding and introducing herself with a MOO caused them to doubt her ability as an enchantress? Probably. And Glauce’s scoffing reactions to those mistakes undoubtedly hadn’t helped. She felt sure the immortals would all ignore her and flock to Glauce if they needed tips or had questions this week. Frustration welled up inside her. Jealousy, too.

  Truth was, Medea had long envied Glauce’s magical abilities, though she wasn’t a bit proud of that fact. If envy were a wart or a bruise, she would remove it from herself with a tap of her magic wand. Unfortunately, wands couldn’t remove feelings.

  While Circe began searching Mr. Cyclops’s desk drawers and supply closet shelves for the new hero statues, Medea headed across the room. Maybe some immortals over by that game board table hadn’t noticed her wand-spelling error and already written her off as an idiot. Or else decided she’d intended to insult them by calling them a bunch of cows. (HI, MOO!) Argh!

  A huge, realistic-looking three-dimensional map covered the table’s entire surface, Medea saw once she went closer. She walked around the table, studying the map’s features.

  There were roads, villages, and castles with moats around them. And labeled by name were various countries, islands, and seas. The tallest mountain stood nearly a foot high, and the oceans and seas had actual moving waves with strange, scaly beasts peeking from them. She dipped the tip end of her wand into the Mediterranean Sea, testing its depth. Instantly a real sea monster about six inches long leaped from the water. It momentarily twined around her wand, then let go and splashed back into the sea!

  She gasped in surprise. “Mega-cool!”

  “I know, isn’t it?” said the goddessgirl Athena, who’d come up behind her. She introduced herself, though Medea already knew who she was, of course, and then said, “You’re Medea, right?”
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br />   Medea smiled and nodded, then watched as Athena reached out to the game board and picked up a three-inch-tall hero statue that must have been left over from their previous assignment. The carved mortal guy in her hand wore gold sandals and a white toga, and had an adventurous gleam in his eyes.

  Speaking to the statue, Athena said, “So long, Odysseus. You were the best!” Everyone on Earth knew she had greatly helped this Greek hero in fighting the Trojan War and in finding his way back home to Greece afterward. But how had she done all that from here at MOA?

  “So how does this game board work exactly?” Medea asked before Athena could leave the table.

  “Well, we move our hero statues around on it while trying to help them reach their goals,” the goddessgirl explained. “Whatever happens to the heroes here on the board actually happens to them in real life down on Earth.”

  “Yeah, and we get graded on how well our hero succeeds,” added Aphrodite, who’d come over too. She removed a small statue from the 3-D map as well. When she turned him to face Medea, Medea noted that Aphrodite’s bronze-painted fingernails perfectly matched her stunning jewelry. She certainly lived up to her title, the goddessgirl of love and beauty!

  “This was my hero for our first assignment. Paris, a Greek prince,” Aphrodite told her.

  “Paris, the guy that fell in love with Helen of Troy?” said Medea. She had learned the history of the Trojan War at school.

  “Right,” said Aphrodite, looking pleased that Medea had heard of her hero. She pointed at the map. “Like Athena said, whatever happens to the heroes on the board actually happens to the real-life heroes. It’s kind of like a chess game, only more interesting.”

  “Whoa! So you guys actually get to boss around famous heroes like Odysseus and Paris?” Medea asked.

  “We think of it more like guiding them,” Athena replied.

  Medea wrinkled her nose. “My dad always likes to say he’s guiding me, too, when really he’s bossing me around.”

  Apparently Athena could relate to this because she laughed with good humor. “I totally get what you’re saying. My dad can be the same way!”

  “Really? Zeus constantly asks if you got your homework done? And picks your friends?” Medea asked in surprise.

  “Well, maybe not that, but—” began Athena.

  “He does zap her friends with little thunderbolts,” interrupted Aphrodite. “Not on purpose, but still. And I think he sometimes expects a lot more from her than from other students. Right, Athena?”

  “I don’t mind that last part,” Athena mused, grinning. “But those zaps are kind of an embarrassment. As well as a real pain!”

  Medea shifted from one foot to the other and remained silent. She knew all about zapping. Little did these goddessgirls know that with a flash of her eyes she could heat their entire game board so hot it would melt! But that would only happen if something or someone made her really upset.

  “Athena! Aphrodite!” a voice suddenly gushed. Glauce had come over, and now she wedged herself between Medea and the two goddessgirls. “I have absolutely got to tell you how much I loved The Iliad and The Odyssey! I read both scrollbooks three times. Odysseus and Paris are sooo adorable. I mean, Paris played such a key role in The Iliad. And Odysseus was the star of both stories!”

  Aphrodite smiled at Glauce, then spoke to the dark-haired prince statue she held. “You are pretty adorable, Paris. But into the cabinet you go. Nothing personal, but we’re being reassigned to new heroes on a new adventure.” With that, she headed across the room to set Paris on a cabinet shelf, just as other students were doing with their little statues.

  Something brushed the top of Medea’s head as a girl came up beside her to reach for another hero. Medea lifted a hand and found herself touching—a snake!? Along with a bunch of other snakes, it was attached to the top of the girl’s head and had wiggled over to check Medea out. With pale-green skin and snakes for hair, this girl could only be the mortal MOA student Medusa!

  “There you are, King Menelaus,” Medusa said as she snatched a crowned statue from the game board. Now the green girl turned to Medea and Glauce. “So what else can you guys do with your wands besides spell out sparkly greetings?”

  At the sight of the girl’s squirming snakes, Glauce’s eyes went wide and she took a quick step back. She’d always been afraid of creepy-crawly things. However, Medea wasn’t. “All kinds of stuff,” she answered Medusa. “Like slow things down or speed them up, or transform one thing into another. We can even cloak people and objects—make them invisible, I mean. The hardest subjects to work magic on are anything far away.”

  “Like how far away could your magic go?” asked Athena, cocking her head.

  Medea shrugged and gestured out the nearest classroom window. “Really far. Farther than you can even see.” This was true for most students. But ever since the tomato incident, she had struggled with this aspect of magic, mostly due to a lack of confidence.

  “Also, our wands can transport us almost anywhere, too,” Glauce added. “Good thing for Medea, since her dad won’t let her board at school like everyone else, even though Principal Circe is her aunt. Poor Medea’s the only one at Enchantment Academy who has to ‘wand’ herself to school and back home every day. A three-thousand-mile round-trip! Can you imagine?” She hugged Medea. Whether in true sympathy or just for show, Medea wasn’t sure.

  “Circe’s your aunt?” Athena asked. She smiled at Medea’s nod, then added, “Well, if your magic is anything as powerful as hers, and you decide to use it against our heroes, they had better beware. On Odysseus’s trip home after the Trojan War, Circe turned his entire crew into pigs and then sent him to the Underworld for a while!”

  “Yeah, I read that. Sorry! I promise—no pig transformations this time!” Medea laughed, and Athena joined in.

  Glauce frowned. “Well, no offense to Medea . . . ,” she began. Medea cringed. Uh-oh! Whenever Glauce started a sentence this way, the next thing she said would likely hurt someone’s feelings. Usually Medea’s! Sure enough, Glauce went on to say, “But she can’t always control her magic. She should come with a warning label that says, ‘Don’t upset me, because you won’t like what happens.’ ”

  “So what happens?” Apollo asked Medea. He and some other guys in class had come over to remove their heroes from the map too.

  Before Medea could reply, Glauce exclaimed, “She could fry you with just one look!” Then she held her fingers up near her eyes and made flicking motions to indicate zapping rays.

  “Whoa! Awesome!” said Ares and Heracles, overhearing and looking impressed.

  “Yeah!” Apollo nodded.

  Athena looked awed as well.

  “Interesting,” said Medusa, giving Medea a fist bump. “Kind of similar to my stone-gaze power, then.” Medea had read that Medusa could turn mortals to stone by looking directly into their eyes. Luckily for Medea, Glauce, and the mortals who attended MOA, Medusa was wearing stoneglasses today that prevented her from accidentally turning them into statues!

  By now this green girl must be kind of used to her snake hair and her strange eye power making her different from other mortals. But if Medea’s own weird power helped Medusa feel like less of an oddball, then Medea was glad of it.

  Glauce looked somewhat disappointed by everyone’s approval of Medea’s fry power. Though pleased at that approval, Medea wanted to change the subject. Because she had a hunch the boys were about to ask for a demonstration. And her power was no joking matter!

  “Aha! Here they are!” Circe called to the class.

  Relieved at the interruption, Medea pointed to her aunt, who was holding a large trophy cup. “Oh, good. Looks like my aunt Circe found your new heroes!”

  3

  Jason

  QUICKLY ATHENA, MEDUSA, AND THE boys hurried off to set their heroes in a cabinet along the wall like Aphrodite had. Other students who hadn’t yet done so also rushed over to remove their old hero statues from the game board and stow them aw
ay.

  Coming to stand in the center of the classroom now, Circe held out the trophy cup labeled FIRST-PERIOD HERO-OLOGY to show the students that it was piled high with little wooden statues. These new heroes were only about an inch tall, which was a third the size of Odysseus and the previous statues. Each had a tiny scroll attached to it by a ribbon. Four more such cups full of little heroes sat in the cabinet behind the teacher’s desk, each labeled for students in the second- through fifth-period Hero-ology classes.

  “There are about fifty heroes assigned to first period, plus some troublemaking characters who will try to defeat the heroes,” Circe told them. “This means that many of you will need to guide more than one character.” Murmurs swept the room. This would be a complicated project!

  While everyone watched, Circe pointed her wand at the contents of the trophy cup and began to chant:

  “Fly to those you are assigned,

  With no hero left behind!”

  At her command the tiny scrolls sprouted wings. Lifting the statues they were tethered to out of the trophy cup, they began to flutter around the room like a swarm of determined dragonflies. Zzzz. Zzzz. One by one, each found a student to land on.

  Athena caught the small statue that dropped into her hands. “I got Argus, the shipbuilder!” she said after reading the small scroll attached to it.

  “Seems appropriate. After all, you invented the whole concept of the ship,” said Aphrodite.

  Athena nodded, heading for the game board. “Argus’s scroll says to set him in the city of Iolcus so he can start building a ship right away. I’ll design one that’s big enough to seat fifty heroes. Sound good, little guy?” Not surprisingly, the statue of Argus didn’t reply. Because he was only a wooden game piece. By moving him, though, Athena was causing the real Argus down on Earth to move too.