Medusa the Rich Read online

  “So, what’s our plan for when we finally find the pirate ship?” Artemis asked as they left the tour ship behind.

  “You’ll drop me off,” Medusa said. “The pirate king said to come alone.”

  Aphrodite shot her a quick, worried glance from the front seat. “I don’t think that’s such a good—”

  “I’m the only one who can supply the ransom,” Medusa interrupted to add. She held up her gloved right hand meaningfully. “After I turn a few things to gold, I’m sure they’ll let Dionysus go.”

  Athena turned around in her seat. “But what if they don’t? What if they try to capture you, too?”

  Medusa pointed to her stoneglasses. “No problem. I’ll just whip these bad boys off and turn them all to stone!”

  The other girls gasped, but then Athena said, “Well, if it has to come to that . . . as a last resort—”

  “And only if extreme measures are necessary—” added Aphrodite.

  “Then do what you have to do,” finished Artemis.

  While they continued to hunt for the pirate ship, Aphrodite, Athena, and Artemis pumped Medusa for more details about her visit to Phrygia. Were they just trying to keep her mind off her worries? she wondered. Whatever the reason, the distraction helped.

  When Medusa described King Midas’s rose garden, everyone immediately thought of Persephone, agreeing that she would have loved to see it. “Too bad she’s at home for the weekend with her mom. She’ll be disappointed she didn’t get to come along to help us,” said Artemis.

  After searching the sea for more than an hour, they were beginning to wonder if they’d ever find the right ship. But then Medusa spotted one a little outside the search area that had grapevines running up its masts. “Look! That’s got to be it,” she said excitedly.

  The other three girls stared. “What makes you so sure?” asked Athena.

  “See those grapevines curling up the ship’s masts?” Medusa said matter-of-factly. “Dionysus is god of the grape, right? I’m guessing he caused those vines to grow as a signal to me that he’s on board that ship.”

  “Smart thinking!” said Athena.

  Medusa smiled, though she wasn’t really sure if Athena’s remark had been directed at Medusa’s smarts or at Dionysus’s smarts.

  As they approached the ship, Medusa realized she had a bit of a problem. “Uh-oh. Just remembered I can’t swim anymore.” She pointed at her snakes. “Too heavy. I’ll sink. Maybe even drown.” Not to mention she might possibly turn the entire Aegean Sea to solid gold like she had the MOA pool! “Can you guys hover low and long enough for me to climb down the side of the cart onto the ship’s deck?”

  Aphrodite nodded. “I think so.”

  Before dipping closer to the ship, Athena cast a spell over the swan cart to keep the pirates from seeing them:

  “Cart, fly us all unseen below.

  One, two, three. Ready, set, go!”

  As the swans dove toward the ship, Medusa studied the layout of its deck. “After I’ve rescued Dionysus, we’ll take down the grapevines as a signal that we’re ready for you to pick us up,” she told the others.

  “Okay,” Athena agreed. “But in the meantime, as a precaution, we’ll try to find my dad. Just in case it turns out we need his help.”

  “And if the grapevines aren’t down in an hour, we’ll come after you regardless,” Artemis added.

  With that settled, the invisible swans swooped so low that the girls could feel the sea spray. When they were only a few feet above the ship, Medusa clambered over the side of the cart and dropped onto the deck.

  The pirates on board were busy at various tasks, pumping out the seawater that constantly leaked aboard any wooden ship, scrubbing the decks, and mending sails and ropes.

  Medusa tiptoed across the deck. Score! She reached Dionysus without anyone noticing her. He was sitting with his back to her, his hands around a mast, his wrists lashed together with rope. She tapped him on the shoulder, whispering, “Shh, it’s me.”

  “Medusa?” He whipped his head around to look at her. His violet eyes widened as he took in the golden snake crown on top of her head. “What happened?” he gasped. “And where’s Zeus?” he asked, craning his neck to look beyond her. “When I told the pirate king to send his note to you, I expected you would take it to Principal Zeus.”

  “He wasn’t around,” Medusa told him quickly. “So I came in an invisible cart with Athena, Aphrodite, and Artemis. They’re off looking for him now.”

  “But your snakes!” he said, his eyes going to the top of her head again. “Did King Midas accidentally touch—”

  “No,” Medusa shook her head, then almost toppled over at the shifting of the unaccustomed weight of the snakes. She showed him her gloved hand. “He didn’t want the golden touch after all, so he transferred it to me.” She felt her face cloud up. “I thought I would like it, but now I only wish I could get rid of it too.” Then, forcing a smile, she said, “But at least it’ll give me the power to pay your ransom!”

  Suddenly one of the pirates glanced their way. “Hey! Who are you? What are you doing here?” he yelled, dropping the sail he’d been mending. And just like that, Medusa was discovered.

  The ship’s crew surrounded her and Dionysus, their eyes glued in greedy wonder to her golden snake crown. In short order the pirate king was informed of her presence, and he came down from the ship’s bridge to confront her.

  She hadn’t expected him to look so noble and handsome. He was dressed in a clean white tunic and a dashing sky-blue cloak, and his curly brown hair hung to his shoulders. Below a finely chiseled nose he sported a neatly trimmed mustache and beard.

  “I’ve come to pay the ransom to free your prisoner,” Medusa declared.

  Twirling the ends of his mustache, the pirate king looked around suspiciously. “Are you alo-ho-hone?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Medusa assured him. If the situation hadn’t been so dangerous, she might’ve giggled—because he talked just like he’d written his letter, with all that ho-ho stuff.

  His eyes went to the top of her head. “Good,” he said. “Give me that unusual golden snake crown of yours, and we’ll let you and Dionysus go-ho-ho free.”

  Dionysus glared at him, but the glare was wasted, since the pirate king wasn’t looking his way.

  Though her heart was beating fast, Medusa said calmly, “Sorry. Not possible. Even if I wanted to give it to you, I couldn’t.” She hesitated for a moment. “You see,” she said, “it’s attached.” She pulled gently on the golden snakes to prove it.

  A flash of surprise came over the pirate king’s face, but it was soon replaced by a cruel smile that made him look considerably less handsome. “No-ho-ho problem,” he said, shoving aside his sky-blue cloak to reveal the gleaming sword at his side. “I can just chop off your head!”

  “How dare you even suggest such a thing!” shouted Dionysus. “If I had my full powers right now, I’d—” His words petered out. In frustration he tugged his bound wrists against the mast, as if hoping to saw through the rope.

  “Pipe down!” the pirate king snarled at him.

  “Why can’t you use your magic to free yourself?” Medusa whispered to Dionysus.

  “Didn’t you know?” he whispered back. “Whenever I use my magic to grant a wish, my powers are weakened for three days afterward. These pirates captured me after I took my goat home and was on my way back to MOA. I couldn’t fight them with magic. After giving King Midas the golden touch, I barely had enough magic left to run these vines up the masts.”

  The pirate king took a menacing step toward them. “Stop that whispering!”

  “Here’s the deal,” Medusa told the pirate, eyeing his sword with trepidation. “You can’t have my crown, but I’ll give you all the gold you want. After you release Dionysus.”

  The pirate king folded his arms, lifting a skeptical eyebrow.

  She pulled off her glove. “Don’t believe me? Here, I’ll show you.” She reached out with her rig
ht index finger and touched a coiled length of rope that lay nearby. Immediately gold sparkles zipped around and around the entire length of the rope coil, turning it to bright gold.

  “Amazing! Wow! We’re rich!” marveled the pirates. Several of them sprung forward to touch the golden rope. One even lifted the end of it to his mouth and bit down to test that it was real gold.

  Medusa slipped her glove back on. “Well?” she said to the pirate king.

  He cocked his head. “Mind-blow-ho-ho-ing!” Then he nodded toward the two biggest and burliest members of his crew. “Seize her!”

  Before Medusa could think what to do, the pirates had bent her arms behind her back and tied her hands together, which made it impossible for her to remove her glove to turn them to gold—or to take off her stoneglasses to turn them to stone!

  Shaking with fury, Dionysus shouted, “You let her go, you . . . you rotten, disreputable pirates!”

  “No-ho-ho way,” the pirate king told him calmly. “But don’t worry. I’ve decided not to chop off her head after all. With that go-ho-holden touch of hers, she’s worth far more to us pirates alive than dead.”

  Twirling his mustache again, he turned back toward Medusa. “One thing confuses me, though-ho-ho. How did you get the touch? I’d never even heard of it until I read about it in the latest Fierce Pirates Periodical. The article said a certain King Midas had acquired it.”

  So that’s where he got his information about King Midas! thought Medusa. She’d been sure that Dionysus wouldn’t have told the pirates about the king, so she’d been wondering. But how had the Fierce Pirates Periodical gotten wind of the information? Not from Pheme this time. She’d been far away at MOA, not anywhere near Phrygia on Friday and Saturday, when the whole golden-touch wish had happened.

  Then, in a flash, the answer came to her. Tanis! It must’ve been her. King Midas’s cook had seen the golden rosebushes, and maybe the gold things inside the cottage too. And she’d overheard Medusa and King Midas talking about the golden touch. She must’ve told everyone in the village, and then word had somehow spread to a writer for the Fierce Pirates Periodical. And Tanis had run away before Midas had transferred the golden touch to Medusa, so she hadn’t known about that.

  Medusa saw no harm in explaining to the pirate king what had happened, so she did. At the same time she began shaking her head from side to side, trying to dislodge her stoneglasses. But they stubbornly refused to budge from the bridge of her nose.

  “What do you mean, no-ho-ho?” demanded the pirate king.

  “Er, I didn’t say ‘no,’ ” Medusa said in confusion. Had he asked her a question that she’d somehow missed while concentrating on trying to remove her stoneglasses?

  “Then why were you shaking your head?” the pirate king asked.

  “Oh. That. Um, my glasses are pinching my nose,” she lied. “I was trying to shift them.”

  The pirate king rolled his eyes. “Somebody help her out,” he said.

  Huh? He and his gang must not know about her stone gaze, Medusa thought in surprise. Awesome!

  A pirate with a hook on the end of his arm instead of a hand reached over and snagged the glasses off her face.

  “Aha!” she said in triumph as her stoneglasses clattered to the deck. “Now you’ll get what you deserve. I’ll turn you all to stone!” She whipped her head this way and that, staring ferociously at the pirate king and his crew. But nothing happened. Her stone gaze wasn’t working!

  “Your ability to turn mortals to stone must have been bound up with your snakes,” guessed Dionysus.

  Or maybe she’d lost it when she’d first gotten the golden touch, thought Medusa. Either way this was bad news.

  “Ho-ho-ho!” laughed the pirate king. “You’ll turn us to sto-ho-hone, will you?” He picked up her stoneglasses and set them back on her face. “I like your swagger, girl. So I’m adding you to my crew. As long as you do as I say, you and grapevine boy are safe. Which means that whenever I ask you to turn an object into go-ho-hold, you do it. Now, welcome aboard! You’ll learn to like it here after a year or two.”

  Before he left for the bridge, he ordered the two burly pirates who had bound her hands behind her back to secure her tied wrists to a heavy spool of rope. She was truly stuck now. She wouldn’t be able to move around the ship.

  Medusa was mortified that her plan had gone so wrong. “I’m sorry I flubbed your rescue,” she whispered to Dionysus when the pirates had all gone back to their work. At least they could still talk, since they’d been left facing each other, seated only a few feet apart.

  Dionysus sighed. “Not your fault. Besides, my powers will return in a couple more days and then we’ll be outta here.”

  “A couple more days?” But what about her snakes? She wanted them back to normal as soon as possible. If possible. She scanned the skies. “Athena, Aphrodite, and Artemis said they’d come looking for us an hour after they dropped me off. If they’ve found Zeus, they’ll bring him.”

  “If only I had my full magical powers!” Dionysus lamented. His hands balled into fists of frustration. “Then none of this would have happened and we’d both be back at MOA.”

  “You said your magic is weakened for three days after granting a wish,” said Medusa. “What does that mean exactly?”

  “It means for another day and a half, I can only do the smallest, simplest spells, like running grapevines up ship’s masts. I can’t do any magic strong enough to free us,” Dionysus replied. Then he added, “But I can help your snakes.”

  “You can? How?” Medusa asked, perking up.

  “Shh,” said Dionysus. He cocked his head toward a peg-leg pirate who had just appeared. They waited until he’d stumped by before they continued talking. “I had a feeling King Midas might change his mind about his wish,” Dionysus explained. “So as I was taking Silenus back home, I filled a vial of water in the Pactolus River. Its waters are magical and can undo the effects of unwise wishes.”

  She saw one of his arms move against the mast he was lashed to and knew he must’ve touched the curly vine on it with his bound hands. Instantly a piece of vine unwound itself from the mast. “Get the vial from my pocket,” he commanded the vine. Obediently it snaked into his tunic pocket and snagged the vial. Then Dionysus directed the vine to open the vial and shake drops of water over the top of Medusa’s golden snake crown.

  And voila! Medusa felt one of her snakes wiggle. Then another. Then a dozen as all of her snakes wriggled back to life.

  Overjoyed, she called each of them by name in soft, delighted tones. “Viper, Flicka, Pretzel, Snapper, Twister, Slinky, Lasso, Slither, Scaly, Emerald, Sweetpea, Wiggle! I’ve missed you all so much!” Her snakes snuggled up to her, curling and uncurling along her neck and cheeks.

  “I think they’re happy to see you again too,” Dionysus said with a grin.

  Suddenly Medusa got an idea. “Flicka, Slinky,” she whispered, “take off my glasses, please.” When the snakes obeyed, curling around the glasses and pulling them away, Medusa tried an experiment. There was a pile of fresh fish lying in the middle of the deck only a few feet away. She stared into one of the fish’s eyes. Instantly the fish turned to stone. “Sorry about that, buddy,” she murmured. The fish had been destined to become the pirates’ dinner soon anyway, but she still felt she should apologize.

  Dionysus had been watching her experiment. He and Medusa exchanged a meaningful look as Flicka and Slinky replaced her glasses on her face again.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Pirate King!” Medusa called out loudly. “There’s something over here I think you ought to see!”

  12

  Riches

  WHAT IS IT?” THE PIRATE king called out irritably. Stomp! Stomp! He left the ship’s bridge again to make his way down to Medusa. “You think I have nothing better to do than keep coming o-ho-ver here? You think it’s easy running a pirate ship? It’s not all plundering temples and ships and ho-holding passengers for ransom, you know-ho-ho. Our course has to be carefully
navigated, the ship needs constant repairs, supplies and water have to be brought in, and . . . huh?”

  Abruptly he froze, a look of astonishment on his face. Because he’d finally noticed that Medusa’s golden snake crown had been replaced by live writhing snakes! Which were doing their best to act menacing by flicking their tongues and hissing at him and his crew.

  “Sooo-ho sorry,” Medusa told the pirates sweetly, though she wasn’t really sorry at all. “It seems I’ve lost my golden touch.” She smiled. “But the good news is, I’ve regained my stony stare.”

  “Uh-huh. Right,” scoffed the pirate king. Clearly he didn’t believe her. Not put off by her snakes in the least, he waved a hand toward them. “I don’t know how you managed this, but if it means you can’t make gold for me any longer, then you aren’t worth keeping around, are you? So either make some gold right now to prove you still can, or”—he waved a hand toward Dionysus—“I’ll make your friend walk the plank.” He grinned evilly. “Speaking of sto-ho-hones, I bet he would sink just like one.”

  “I’m not joking about my stone gaze,” Medusa warned.

  “And I’m not joking about the go-ho-hold.” Scowling at her, he slammed one fist into the palm of his other hand. “Make some. Now!” When she didn’t, the pirate king made good on his threat. He called over two burly pirates—the same ones who had captured and bound her—to get Dionysus.

  “No! Stop!” Medusa cried out in alarm. She pointed at the lone stone-dead fish among the fresh ones piled up on the deck just a few feet away. “Look over there if you don’t believe me!” she exclaimed. “What I did to that fish, I can do to you, too. To all of you!” she emphasized, swiveling her head to glare in turn at each member of the crew.

  Some of them began to shift their feet and murmur nervously among themselves, but the pirate king only laughed at her. “Ho-ho,” he said. “Nice try!”

  “I’d listen to her if I were you,” Dionysus warned as the burly pirates used their knives to cut through the ropes binding his hands. They hoisted him up like a sack of potatoes and brought him over to where the pirate king stood.