Chapter 3: Welcome to the Jungle

The rain didn't let up until sunrise. Gus pulled apart the cockpit with a screwdriver and put it back together murmuring consoling encouragements to the wires and gears.

Mavis and Johnny took turns using the cabin to change out of their wet clothes and laid their sleeping bags down the aisle. It took three tries but Mavis finally got the cell phone signal to pull through long enough to call her father and let him know what happened. The older vampire had seemed… relieved was too simple a word for it. It was like he was trying to sound grateful to hear her voice, lecture her for not calling sooner, and convince himself nothing would come of him swooping down thousands of miles to try and bring her back all at the same time. He promised to call Echidna and let them know about the accident before static overtook his voice and the call dropped.

"I used to think these were pretty cool," Mavis said, turning the phone over in her hands. "But it's not exactly reliable, is it?"

Johnny took the phone back. "Hey, nothing's perfect. At least you did get through. Now he won't think we've died horribly."

"True." Mavis yawned. "I didn't get a chance to tell him about the weird statues."

"Statues," Gus poked his head out from behind the curtain that closed off the cockpit. "What kind of statues?" he asked.

"We found all these animal statues when we went exploring. Birds and squirrels and stuff and a lot of them were in weird poses." Johnny demonstrated, bending his legs and stretching his arms out like he was running on all fours.

"How many?" the gremlin demanded.

"Lots. Scattered all over the place. Some were even stuck to tree branches."

"Stone?"

"Yeah, I guess."

Gus leapt out of the cockpit in a frenzy. "Keep the windows covered. If you hear a noise do not get out of the plane," he ordered, collecting the spare blanket and pillow he had intended to sleep in the cockpit with and moved into the cabin.

"What's the problem?" Mavis asked, still confused.

"Don't you kids know anything? All those statues can only mean we've landed in gorgon territory." He said it with an impressive amount of energy, as if the word alone was intended to inspire an intense reaction.

The two teenagers merely stared at him blankly.

"You know what a gorgon is, don't you?" Gus crossed his arms in an accusatory tone. "Don't they teach you softheads anything? Gorgons are the monsters with a nest of snakes growing outta their hair," his blunt fingers waved over his hat in an effort to illustrate, "and if you ever look one in the eye, then BAM!" his fist thumped against his seat. "You're turned instantly to stone…"

"That would explain the animals…" Johnny said, eyes wide.

"That's awful," Mavis shuddered. She couldn't imagine being stuck in one position for the rest of your life, not moving, not talking, not feeling. "Does it ever wear off?"

"Never." Gus said, dark and ominous. "You'll be stone forever. And the gorgon's eye doesn't care if you're animal, monster, or human," he glanced meaningfully at Johnny, "they turn everyone to stone. So, no more exploring around this island. We'll find a way out as soon as it's dark. Safer that way."

Johnny lay wide-awake in his sleeping bag. It wasn't Gus's awful snoring that kept him awake, or the dreadful scratchy feeling developing in his own throat, though that was part of it. He desperately needed to use a restroom. The plane didn't have one, obviously, and he'd have to step over Mavis's sleeping bag in order to get outside. And the pilot's gorgon warning was still fresh in his mind.

He should probably hold it until… what? Until night fell and they could leave? Until his bladder exploded? What was he thinking?

He crept around Mavis as quietly as he could, tiptoeing around several seats until finally making it to the door.

"Where are you going?"

Johnny froze. He pivoted slowly to see Mavis sitting up with a worried expression.

"I'm just going to… y'know, the bathroom… Not that there's a bathroom out there, but I have to… uh…"

"I get it, Johnny," she said, bluntly.

"Oh. Okay, I'll be right back then."

She nodded. "Be careful."

"C'mon babe, careful's my middle name!"

"I thought your middle name was James?"

"It's just an expression, Mavis," He cracked the door open and a ribbon of light streamed through. "Um, you might want to scoot back a little."

She shuffled awkwardly in her sleeping bag until she was far enough away that he could slip through the door and into the sunshine.

Jonathan hadn't been out in the daylight in months. He'd almost forgotten what it was like. The clouds from the night before had all burnt off. The sky was crystal blue and beautiful, not a trace of rain was left. Everything was bright, almost eerily so. For once he could see every detail in the rocks and grass at his feet. He didn't have to squint to make out the sloping edge of the island as it curved into the ocean. He thought of Mavis and wondered, with a hint of envy, what it would be like to see as well as she did in the dark.

He had to climb down a few feet from the plane in order to find a suitable tree to relieve himself under. A shadow passed behind him and when he turned to look he found nothing but trees and empty bushes. He sneezed. Maybe he was coming down with something.

He turned to head back when something shot past him and latched the sleeve of his jacket to the tree.

"Wha…" Johnny stared, stunned. Someone just shot an arrow at him! He pulled and ripped at his sleeve in a panic. Another arrow launched, catching his pant leg, and then another and another. In a split second he was thoroughly pinned to the tree like a hapless voodoo doll. One last arrow hit mere inches away from his right ear. He let out a yelp.

"Alright, who are you and what are you doing on my island?"

An arrow drawn tight against it's bow appeared level with his nose. Holding it back was a green woman wearing a well-worn jacket over a loose dress and a pair of thick, dark sunglasses. A cluster of angry, hissing snakes swarmed around her head. Johnny's eyes snapped shut.

"Please-don't-turn-me-to-stone-I'm-so-young-and-my-girlfriend's-amazing-and-I-haven't-even-been-to-Seaworld…"

"Whoa…hey… hey, kid. Kid!" she shouted. "If I wanted to turn you to stone you'd be stone already. Alright? You can calm down now."

"You won't turn me to stone…" Johnny whimpered.

The gorgon let out a martyred sigh. "See these glasses…" she tapped a finger against a lens. "As long as I've got them on you'll be fine."

Johnny hesitantly cracked an eye open. "Glasses?"

She had lowered the bow and stood with one hand resting casually on her hip. Her head was cocked a little to the side as she regarded him but it was difficult to tell how angry or annoyed she was with the sunglasses obscuring half her face. After Johnny was convinced opening his eyes wouldn't result in instant petrifaction he sagged against the tree with relief.

"Now who are you and what are you doing here?" she repeated, firm but most of the harshness in her voice had cooled off.

"I'm… Johnny," he replied awkwardly. "My girlfriend and I are on vacation…"

"Kinda far from most tourist traps, kid," the gorgon said with a suspicious lilt.

"No, see, we're not tourists. Well, kind of. We were supposed to be staying with Echidna, but…"

"Echidna," every snake on the gorgon's head perked to attention. "How does a human know Echidna?"

"I don't." Johnny admitted. "My girlfriend… well, she doesn't either, but her dad, he's Count Dracula, y'know, blah-bluh-blah, and we're on this plane and kinda got stuck in the storm and had to land and we didn't know that anybody ah…. Achoo!" he suddenly sneezed violently.

"You coming down with something, kid?"

Johnny sniffed. "We might've stayed out in the rain a little too long."

"And why didn't you head over to Echidna's once the rain stopped?"

"That's what I was trying to explain," Johnny sighed. "My girlfriend's a vampire. She can't go out in the sunlight."

"A vampire?" she repeated skeptically. "A human dating a vampire…" She rolled over the sentence like it was part of some complicated riddle. Johnny suddenly felt himself grow defensive.

"Yeah. What of it?" he snapped.

She held up her hands apologetically. "Don't get excited, kid. It's just not something you run into everyday. Y'know they drink blood, right?"

"Blood substitutes."

"Whatever." Her hand waved dismissively, "so that's how you know about monsters like Echidna? Through your girlfriend?"

"Well, through her dad. Count Dracula. You've heard of him, right?"

"Vaguely, I didn't know he had a daughter."

"He does," Johnny paused, running Mavis's comment through his mind about how everyone freaks out when they learn about Dracula's daughter. This monster wasn't freaking out, but she wasn't warming up to him either. "You believe me, don't you?" he asked, tentatively.

"I feel like I shouldn't," she admitted, pushing a few snakes out of her face the way Mavis tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "It's kind of an insane story. Almost too insane for you to have made it up. But the only way for me to know for sure is if I take you to Echidna and check it out with her. Either way it gets you off my island."

"So… you can let me go now?" Johnny smiled hopefully.

The gorgon lightly smiled back and pulled the arrow next to his ear out with a sharp yank. "I'll have you know," she brandished the arrow's point so he could clearly see how sharp it was, "I missed you on purpose."

Johnny gulped. "I believe you."

"Don't take it personally," she continued, freeing up his legs and then his arms and swiftly stowing the arrows away into a quiver at her belt. When Johnny was finally safely on the ground he realized the gorgon wasn't much taller than he was. "But the last human who wandered onto this island tried to cut my head off," she said bluntly.

Johnny's hand went to his neck instinctively. "Yeah, I guess most humans haven't been very friendly with monsters."

"Not really," She shrugged. "To be honest, it wasn't exactly you I was worried about. But if one human pokes around this place like you were and starts blabbing to all his friends, sooner or later I'm gonna be overrun with people and either I'll get killed or I'll end up stoning somebody. Or both. Do you understand?"

There was a lot riding behind that one question. He wasn't just being asked to be forgiving about the intimidation routine or understanding of the fear that motivated it, he was being trusted with a secret. "I understand," he replied. "So, if I promised not to tell any humans about the island we'd be cool, right?"

"Cool?"

Johnny sometimes wondered how monsters could know a lot about human euphemisms and still not get basic slang. "Cool as in good, like you won't try to skewer me with more arrows."

"If Echidna trusts you than so can I. But you have to promise not to tell anyone, human or monster, about this place. Then we're cool."

"To be honest, I don't even know where we are." He admitted, sheepishly running a hand up the back of his neck.

The gorgon gave a quick, snorting laugh. "I guess your ignorance is a point in your favor. You're a pretty strange kid."

"Well, you're a pretty strange monster… ummm, what was your name?"

The gorgon paused, every snake on her head adjusting to stare him down. "Medusa," she said at last.

A/N: Medusa is most commonly known in Greek mythology as the monster slain by Perseus, who was able to cut her head off without being turned to stone by using his shield as a mirror (Eddie Izzard has a really funny bit on this btw). In some versions of the myth Medusa is the only one of her kind, sometimes there's a whole race of gorgons, usually she at least has two other sisters, Euryale and Sthenno, both of whom are immortal while Medusa was not (which never made any sense to me, I mean couldn't she have been an immortal that died due to loss of head? Can immortals survive decapitation, ancient Greeks? What gives?). Medusa was an archer in both the original and the remake of Clash of the Titans, she was also shown wearing sunglasses in the Percy Jackson movie and in an episode of Disney's Hercules so she could look at people without turning them to stone.