Dusssie Read Online Free Page B

I don’t want to hear another word about mirrors and swords,” said my mother in knife-edged tones. “Get over it.”
    â€œI’ll never get over it! The three of us living peaceably at the very end of the known world, minding our own business, and that Perseus comes after us like—”
    â€œI don’t want to hear it!” Mom barked.
    â€œDusie has a right to know.” Aunt Stheno stopped walking and grabbed my arm, turning me to face her. “Like a trophy hunter on safari, that’s what, and for no reason except that we were accursed to be ugly. ‘Ew, Gorgons, let’s go hunt them,’ as if it were the same as bagging a warthog or a rhino. Kill a Gorgon, take the head home to Athena. He—”
    â€œStheno,” said Mother with iron in her voice, “that is enough. ”
    Aunt Stheno turned away and strode on. “Hurry up. They’ll be waiting,” she grumbled.
    She and Mom walked so fast I had to trot to keep up, as they led me along a winding path to a secret place between three giant boulders. There they stopped. Looking around, at first I saw nothing except the zigzag silhouette of the Dakota building in the distance, rocks all around and bare trees holding the sickle moon in their twiggy fingers.
    â€œGreetings, Medusa,” said a voice overhead. I looked up and gasped as an angel, no, a monster—a birdwoman—flew in and thumped down to stand beside me on scaly clawed feet that would have looked better on an ostrich. “Sorry,” she told me, seeing that she had frightened me. “I don’t get much chance to fly anymore. Daytime, I—”
    â€œGreetings, Medusa,” interrupted a honeyed growl from atop a nearby craggy stone. I jerked around to look. A woman’s head stared at me with glittering topaz eyes, her chin resting on her—paws. Great golden, clawed paws. Lion paws.
    Even before I felt Mom’s knuckles nudge me in the back, I knew that this was what I was supposed to not be afraid of. “Greetings, Sphinx,” I said shakily.
    A ripple of womanly laughter, approving and amused, washed around me. On top of another boulder I saw something with the head and arms and breasts of a woman but the body of a huge, thick snake. Atop a third boulder I saw a woman standing on all fours, her hands serving as forelegs, her haunches those of a dragon. And flying down out of the crescent moon came another birdwoman, this one with spiky white feathers around her neck. And then another, spreading black wings, and more, landing on the rocks or standing between the trees until I lost track of how many, until I heard my mother saying, “Are we all here?”
    â€œSiren can’t make it. She has a gig,” somebody said.
    â€œShe’s a nightclub singer,” Mom said to me, and then she started making introductions as if this cold, moonlit hill were our living room and I had walked in while she was having some friends over. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet my daughter. Dusie, sweetheart, take your scarf off.” She wanted them to see the evidence, I guess. Pressing my lips together to keep from saying anything rude, I yanked the covering off my head, but my snakes just huddled on my scalp, cowering. Which was pretty much what I felt like doing at the time.
    â€œEveryone, this is my daughter, Medusa,” Mom announced. She turned to me. “Honey, you’ve already met Sphinx—she’s a Grecian sphinx, not Egyptian, and she’s a Broadway consultant. And here are the Lamia sisters.” Mom nudged me toward the serpent woman and the dragon woman, both of whom nodded at me. “They are performance artists. It’s not a coincidence that we’re all here in New York; many of us are members of the artistic community.”
    I heard Aunt Stheno mutter, “As if I’m a sculptor?” Aunt Stheno worked as a bookkeeper. But all of a sudden I realized that