Akiko in the Sprubly Islands Read Online Free PDF Page A

said after a pause. “We won’t start sinkin’ for another day or two, I bet. . . .”

    The thought of the raft having holes of any size was not reassuring. Neither was the possibility of us floating around like this for days and days! I decided to see if we couldn’t speed things up a little.
    “Mr. Beeba,” I asked, “is there any limit to how high up in the air Poog can fly?”
    “I don’t think so,” he answered absentmindedly, staring off across the waves. Spuckler busied himself rearranging some of the pieces of equipment inside Gax’s body.
    “Well, then, maybe Poog can help us find the Sprubly Islands,” I suggested.
    There was a brief pause. Poog turned to face me.
    “What are you getting at, Akiko?” Mr. Beeba asked, leaning forward with a puzzled expression.
    “If Poog could fly up, way up into the air,” I explained, “he might be able to see where the Sprubly Islands are. Then he could come back down and tell us what direction to go in and we could all paddle with our hands until we started heading in the right direction.”
    “Very clever,” Mr. Beeba answered, sitting up straight. “Let’s see if I can persuade Poog to take your plan into consideration.”
    But before Mr. Beeba could say another word, Poog began slowly floating up into the air. He rose higher and higher, like a child’s lost balloon, until all we could see was a tiny purple speck against the sky hundreds of feet above us. Spuckler stopped working on Gax and looked up to see what Poog was doing.
    “Astonishing!” Mr. Beeba said, shading his eyes with his hands as he followed Poog’s progress. “I’ve never seen Poog act so quickly on a request like that. You’ve really got a
way
with him, Akiko.”
    “Really?” I asked, smiling. My face suddenly felt very warm, and I realized that I was blushing.
    “Indeed,” he answered, a hint of jealousy coming into his voice, “Poog doesn’t often do the things
I
ask of him, and I’ve known him for a lot longer than you have!”
    “It’s, uh, probably just a coincidence,” I said with a nervous chuckle.
    “Oh no, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba said with grave seriousness. “Mark my words: There’s a special connection between you and Poog, one that I’ve seen developing from the moment you two met.”
    There was a long pause as I thought about Mr. Beeba’s words. I looked up at the distant purple dot in the sky that was Poog and wondered what it meant to have a special connection to this strange floating alien. Somehow I sensed that there was more to it than Poog doing the things I asked of him. What would happen if Poog asked
me
to do something? Would I be able to do it?
    A moment later Poog slowly floated back down to our raft. As usual it was hard to see much of an expression on his face, but I think I saw him smiling just a little. He turned to Mr. Beeba and blurted out a brief series of high-pitched syllables.
    “Your scheme is a success, Akiko!” Mr. Beeba announced. “Poog has spotted the islands just a mile or two away, and the current is already carrying us in the right direction.”
    Spuckler let out a big whoop and I breathed a sigh of relief. Our luck was finally improving! We all started paddling like crazy, trying to get the raft to move as fast as possible. Before long my arms were very sore and I had to take a break. Mr. Beeba soon joined me, but Spuckler kept paddling for almost half an hour. Finally I began to see the silhouettes of trees on the horizon, hazy and blue in the late-afternoon sunlight.
    “Everybody look over there!” I shouted, leaning over the edge of the raft and pointing frantically. “It’s one of the Sprubly Islands!”

Soon we were only half a mile or so from the shore. From what I could see, the beach appeared to be wide and sandy, with huge black boulders jutting out all over the place. As we floated closer, the raft got caught in a current that swiftly carried us toward land.
    “Everybody hunker down, now,” Spuckler