The Magic Spectacles Read Online Free PDF Page B

wall of a fishbowl.
    This is it, he thought suddenly, although he didn’t really know what he meant. But what he saw didn’t surprise him at all, not like it would have yesterday. He was ready for it. It was what the coin and the fish skeletons and the windy morning had been pointing toward all along, like signs along a road.
    He flipped the catch on Mrs. Owlswick’s window and pushed it open.
    “What are you doing?” Danny asked, putting down his book. “Let me try the glasses. Ahab woke up at the sound of Danny’s voice. He stood up and stretched then walked over and looked out through the window at the front porch.
    “I’m opening the window, John said. “There’s something funny outside. Hold on.”
    “There’s nothing funny outside.” Danny looked past him through the window. Penny, the next-door-neighbor’s cat, was asleep on the front porch swing. But besides Penny, the porch was empty. “Let me try them,” Danny said.
    John shook his head. “Wait.” He looked again. It didn’t matter whether the window was open or closed. As long as he wore the spectacles he could See the meadow and the woods and the house. He took them off and handed them to Danny, and there was the front porch again, with Penny leaping on the swing.
    “What is it?” Danny asked, looking through the spectacles. “It’s like a movie on the glasses or something.”
    “I don’t think so,” John said after a moment. “I think it’s real.” “I’m going to find out,” Danny said.
    “Wait,” John said when Danny unhooked the window screen. “You can wait here if you want to,” Danny said. He pushed the screen open.
    “We’re not supposed to climb out the window,” John said, suddenly scared of what they might find out there. But Danny had already leaned across the sill and started to crawl through. “We can if there’s a fire,” he said. “There isn’t any fire.”
    It was too late. Danny slid from the windowsill. And in that instant he vanished. Ahab put his paws on the sill and stuck his head out, sniffing the air.
    Then a strange thing happened. Danny’s arm, all by itself, shoved in through the open window, past Ahab’s head. It stayed there, sort of hanging for a second, floating in the air and holding onto the spectacles.
    John took them and put them on, then put his head out the window. There was his brother again, standing in the high grass of the meadow.
    “Send Ahab,” Danny said to him. John put the spectacles on Ahab and boosted him up onto the window sill. “Jump!” he shouted, and Ahab jumped, vanishing suddenly in the air, just as Danny had vanished.
    A moment later Danny looked in at the window again, wearing the glasses. “C’mon,” he said to John. “What are you waiting for? Ahab wants to chase rabbits. I’m holding on to his collar.”
    “Are there rabbits out there?” asked John. He wanted a good reason to go, unlike Danny, who almost never needed a reason to do anything. “Sure there’s rabbits,” Danny said. “And a creek, too. You saw it.”
    “Yeah,” John said. “Maybe…”
    “Forget maybe,” Danny said. “Only for a second.”
    “I’m going to bring some stuff,” John said.
    “What stuff? We don’t need any stuff. We aren’t going anywhere far.”
    “Just some Halloween candy,” John said, picking up a backpack from behind the bedroom door. “We’ll need a snack.” He turned around and started out of the bedroom. He wasn’t really interested in the candy; he just wanted another minute to think up a reason not to go. And yet he knew that he
would
go. Clearly he and Danny had been bound for the land beyond the window all day long, almost falling toward it, like Alice down the rabbit hole.
    Their mom was busy upstairs. He could hear the vacuum going. Their father was in the garage, cutting up wood to build a bookcase. They would think he and Danny were out playing around in the neighborhood. There wouldn’t be any problem. Nothing would go wrong.
    There