BEYOND THE LOOKING-GLASS: Book One in the BEYOND Series Read Online Free PDF

caught the egg-man’s trouser leg, and yanked with all his might.
    Humpty-Dumpty came crashing down the ground, barely missing the weeping lion and its companions.
    “Why did you do that?” Nikki exclaimed.
    Anton slicked back his dark hair and adjusted his tunic. “Simple. I like my eggs scrambled. Shall we proceed?”
    As they moved on, a group of mounted horsemen who had been on maneuvers in a nearby field rushed up. They began a desperate attempt to put the fat egg-man back together.
    Anton was in a foul mood as he walked down the highway. A small boy in a floppy straw hat now blocked his way. The youngster had a bucket of white paint in one hand, and a brush in the other.
    “Out of my way, urchin,” Anton barked.
    The freckle-faced boy put down his bucket and waved his paint brush in Anton’s face.
    “You cain’t tell me what ta do, mister. You ain’t a sheriff or a kin of mine.”
    Anton kicked over the paint bucket and put his powerful hands out as if he were about to strangle the impudent waif.
    The farm boy’s eyes widened in terror as he ran off hollering: “Aunt Polly! Aunt Polly!”
    Anton and Nikki didn’t wait around to receive a scolding from Aunt Polly. In minutes the high stone wall was far behind them.
     
    *

SEVEN
     
    The landscape around the highway was changing. Fields of colorful poppies and wildflowers giving way to ugly thickets with gnarled and twisted limbs. The peaceful sky above was disappearing behind ominous dark clouds.
    At first, Kellen thought the clouds were weather-related. But as ash slowly drifted down around his shoulders, he realized the air was thick with black soot. The yellow bricks were gone. Now they were walking on filthy cobblestones. And there were all kinds of ugly potholes filled with brackish and foul-smelling fluids. Dark shapes of a city loomed in the distance.
    “What’s happening?” Aleeta asked.
    “I don’t know. But I don’t like it. Keep your eyes open.”
    When they entered the strange town, Kellen was stunned by what he saw. Dilapidated old nineteenth-century buildings were jammed together on each side of what appeared to be the main street. The humid air was thick with eye-burning coal smoke from a thousand belching chimney pots.
    Horse-drawn omnibuses thundered by, splashing Kellen and Aleeta with stinking sewer water from an open gutter system. And up and down the streets, sweepers were hard at work scooping up their daily pounds of horse droppings.
    The two of them stepped along, gingerly trying to avoid as much raw garbage as possible. They passed large crowds of costermongers hawking their bins of freshly-cut flowers, fruits, fish, and baked goods. A few vendors were pushing their goods around in rickety wooden barrows.
    Aleeta clapped her hands together. “Oh, Kel. Isn’t this marvelous. It’s old London just the way Dickens described it.”
    Kellen wasn’t as enthusiastic as his ex-wife. Yeah. It certainly is the stink hole he wrote about in all those stories .
    As the street crowd grew thicker, Kellen suddenly felt a sharp bump. Someone had brushed by him and quickly darted off.
    He felt his back pocket. His wallet was gone.
    A small figure in a dark cap and ragged clothing was running down the street.
    “Stop,” he called out. “Stop thief!”
    He took off after the pickpocket, dodging around street hawkers and their bins of goods. He rammed his way roughly through a dense mob of beggars, drunks, prostitutes and some gaudily dressed vagabonds. In a minute, he was upon the little thief. He reached out and grabbed the tiny felon by the back of the collar.
    The diminutive wallet-snatcher turned to face Kellen. The cap fell off and an ocean of yellow curls spilled out. It was a little girl dressed in an Alpine costume.
    Aleeta caught up to them and gasped. “Why it’s Heidi. I’d know her anywhere.”
    “Are you sure?” Kellen asked.
    “I’m not sure of anything. Except she doesn’t belong in this Dickens town.”
    “Please,