The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #3) - Sayantani DasGupta Page 0,35
a very familiar myth. Her curly hair was weaving around her head like it had a mind of its own. It looked alarmingly like, well, a headful of snakes.
“Haven’t you guessed who I am?” she hissed. Her eyes glinted dangerously behind her pink cat-eye glasses. And her hair was looking more and more snaky by the second. “I thought you knew your Greek myths!”
“Medusa?” I squeaked, thinking of the story I’d read about so many times with Zuzu. But if this was Medusa, why wasn’t I already turned to stone?
“Wrong!” Principal Chen—or who I still thought of as Principal Chen—sneered and spit on the ground. She went on in a whiny voice, “Everybody’s so terrified of my sister. It’s always about Medusa … I mean, MEDU-SA, MEDU-SA, MEDU-SA! What about me, huh? What about Stheno and our other sister Euryale? Just because we can’t turn people to stone, no one remembers to fear us—oh, nooooo. We’re just the cut-rate Gorgons, aren’t we? I’m just the middle sister, aren’t I? I mean, like, it’s so unfair!”
What? Maybe she wasn’t Medusa, but standing before me was one of her Gorgon sisters! I was starting to really freak, my body shaking not just from the freezing February temperatures, but from fear. I didn’t have my weapons, I didn’t have my friends, I didn’t even have my lizard anymore. What was I going to do?
Principal Chen, aka the Gorgon Stheno, approached me with her claws out and teeth bared. I nervously retreated, my back almost against the brick wall of the school.
“You’re not even really pregnant!” I said, pointing at her suddenly flat belly.
Stheno couldn’t reply, because just then, a voice came out of the skies. “Unhand that princess!” someone yelled, and then there was a torrent of arrows raining down toward the Gorgon-slash-principal. Under the assault, the Chenmeister turned more and more into her Gorgon form, her body becoming more lionlike, and great big wings sprouting from her back. With her skirt suit and jacket still on, she looked seriously strange. Plus there were what looked like horns peeking out from under her snaky locks!
I turned around, hoping that my rescuer was somehow, miraculously, Neel; that he’d gotten the lizard-gram and made it across the dimensions in the last few minutes. But of course, it wasn’t. Instead, for whatever shocking reason, the person wielding a very familiar-looking bow and shooting arrows at our Gorgon-slash-principal was none other than the too-perfect-looking boy Ned, riding on, of all things, a giant eagle!
Yo, this was some wacky sort of magic trick.
Unhand that princess!” Ned shouted again. At some point, I’d have to figure out how he knew about my identity. But first, survival and getting away from this principal-slash-mythical-beast-monster.
“You!” shrieked the Gorgon formerly known as Principal Chen. “A year’s worth of hard labor detention! Suspension by your teeth in midair! Off-planetary expulsion!”
“Oh yeah? Well, how about a haircut, you googly goon?” Ned let a few more arrows fly with his words.
“What are you doing with my weapons?” I recognized the arrows as well as the distinctive ash-colored bow in his hands. “You stole those from me!”
“Um, how about I brought them back after you lost them in a tree? Don’t worry, darlin’, I’ll return them just as soon as I finish saving your life,” said Ned as his eagle flapped its giant wings, creating even more freezing wind to add to what was already swirling around us.
Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I noticed some blue butterflies flying by over Ned’s shoulder. But that couldn’t be right. What would butterflies be doing in New Jersey in February?
Principal Chen roared, far more of a monster than a school administrator now. “Go away, you pale yellow tree monster! Your country’s food is terrible, and your stories are gross! That one about the eyeball! UGH!”
“Worry about your own gross stories, you cut-rate excuse for a Gorgon!” Ned’s eagle swooped down and then up in the nick of time as Principal Stheno’s grasping claws almost caught the bird’s legs. As the bird banked hard right, huge against the gray-white sky, I saw that it had snatched the principal’s bright pink handbag with its claws. With a loud caw, the eagle dropped the overstuffed purse, making used tissues, chewing gum wrappers, and a giant sheaf of detention slips roll out onto the icy ground.
The rolling detention slip bundle crashed into some other trash near the dumpsters. Stheno shrieked and recoiled. Surprised at her reaction, I looked more carefully.