“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 contrary, 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