The Lightning Thief

move.
    “Do you really want to help the gods?” Medusa asked. “Do you understand what awaits you on this foolish quest, Percy? What will happen if you reach the Underworld? Do not be a pawn of the Olympians, my dear. You would be better off as a statue. Less pain. Less pain.”
    “Percy!” Behind me, I heard a buzzing sound, like a two-hundred-pound hummingbird in a nosedive. Grover yelled, “Duck!”
    I turned, and there he was in the night sky, flying in from twelve o’clock with his winged shoes fluttering, Grover, holding a tree branch the size of a baseball bat. His eyes were shut tight, his head twitched from side to side. He was navigating by ears and nose alone.
    “Duck!” he yelled again. “I’ll get her!”
    That finally jolted me into action. Knowing Grover, I was sure he’d miss Medusa and nail me. I dove to one side.
    Thwack!
    At first I figured it was the sound of Grover hitting a tree. Then Medusa roared with rage.
    “You miserable satyr,” she snarled. “I’ll add you to my collection!”
    “That was for Uncle Ferdinand!” Grover yelled back.
    I scrambled away and hid in the statuary while Grover swooped down for another pass.
    Ker-whack!
    “Arrgh!” Medusa yelled, her snake-hair hissing and spitting.
    Right next to me, Annabeth’s voice said, “Percy!”
    I jumped so high my feet nearly cleared a garden gnome. “Jeez! Don’t do that!”
    Annabeth took off her Yankees cap and became visible. “You have to cut her head off.”
    “What? Are you crazy? Let’s get out of here.”
    “Medusa is a menace. She’s evil. I’d kill her myself, but . . .” Annabeth swallowed, as if she were about to make a difficult admission. “But you’ve got the better weapon. Besides, I’d never get close to her. She’d slice me to bits because of my mother. You—you’ve got a chance.”
    “What? I can’t—”
    “Look, do you want her turning more innocent people into statues?”
    She pointed to a pair of statue lovers, a man and a woman with their arms around each other, turned to stone by the monster.
    Annabeth grabbed a green gazing ball from a nearby pedestal. “A polished shield would be better.” She studied the sphere critically. “The convexity will cause some distortion. The reflection’s size should be off by a factor of—”
    “Would you speak English?”
    “I am !” She tossed me the glass ball. “Just look at her in the glass. Never look at her directly.”
    “Hey, guys!” Grover yelled somewhere above us. “I think she’s unconscious!”
    “ Roooaaarrr !”
    “Maybe not,” Grover corrected. He went in for another pass with the tree branch.
    “Hurry,” Annabeth told me. “Grover’s got a great nose, but he’ll eventually crash.”
    I took out my pen and uncapped it. The bronze blade of Riptide elongated in my hand.
    I followed the hissing and spitting sounds of Medusa’s hair.
    I kept my eyes locked on the gazing ball so I would only glimpse Medusa’s reflection, not the real thing. Then, in the green tinted glass, I saw her.
    Grover was coming in for another turn at bat, but this time he flew a little too low. Medusa grabbed the stick and pulled him off course. He tumbled through the air and crashed into the arms of a stone grizzly bear with a painful “Ummphh!”
    Medusa was about to lunge at him when I yelled, “Hey!”
    I advanced on her, which wasn’t easy, holding a sword and a glass ball. If she charged, I’d have a hard time defending myself.
    But she let me approach—twenty feet, ten feet.
    I could see the reflection of her face now. Surely it wasn’t really that ugly. The green swirls of the gazing ball must be distorting it, making it look worse.
    “You wouldn’t harm an old woman, Percy,” she crooned. “I know you wouldn’t.”
    I hesitated, fascinated by the face I saw reflected in the glass—the eyes that seemed to burn straight through the green tint, making my arms go weak.
    From the cement grizzly, Grover moaned, “Percy, don’t listen to her!”
    Medusa cackled. “Too late.”
    She lunged at me with her talons.
    I slashed up with my sword, heard a sickening shlock! , then a hiss like wind rushing out of a cavern—the sound of a monster disintegrating.
    Something fell to the ground next to my foot. It took all my willpower not to look. I could feel warm ooze soaking into my sock, little dying snake heads tugging at my shoelaces.
    “Oh, yuck,” Grover said. His eyes were still tightly closed, but I guess he could