The Magic Spectacles by James P. Blaylock Read Free Book Online

Kettle
    It was easy to find the place where the window had been. The grass was still smashed down beneath it, and there was a little trail of flattened grass leading toward the bridge. But through the broken spectacles, John could see only empty meadow, and it was hard to imagine that there had ever been a window there at all. The quiet breeze stirred the flowers and the tall grass, and the afternoon was lonesome and strange. Even Ahab stood still and looked around uneasily, listening to the airy piping of goblin flutes way off in the woods.
    Maybe the window had moved. Maybe the wind had blown it somewhere – off toward the woods or across the meadow or down toward the sea….
    But there was no window to be seen in any direction. And through the broken spectacles everything looked flat, like a painting on a piece of glass. The magic had gone out of them; the window had vanished.
    “Let me try them,” Danny whispered, and John handed him the spectacles without saying anything, even though he knew they wouldn’t work. Leaves drifted past on the wind. The eastern sky was shadowy gray, and the evening was getting cold.
    “I don’t know why you had to go and drop them,” Danny said after a moment. He handed the spectacles back to John. “You should have had them in your pocket.”
    “It wasn’t my fault that they broke,” John said, putting them back on.
“You
were the one that knocked me over. Why didn’t you watch out? And I told you not to crawl through the window anyway, didn’t I? I knew it was a bad idea.’
    “I didn’t
make
you come,” Danny said. He picked up a rock and threw it hard, right at where the window had been.
    “Don’t!” John said.
    “Why? There’s nothing there anyway, now that you broke the glasses.” He threw another rock.
    “The problem was you picking up the coin from the fountain,” John said. “I told you that’s bad luck, taking coins out of a wishing well. That’s what got us here.”
    “Yeah,” Danny said, “except that it wasn’t a wishing well. And besides, the glasses would have got us home again anyway, if they weren’t broken.”
    John said nothing. There was no use. They couldn’t argue the glasses back together again. And the mention of home reminded him that on Pine Street the streetlights would just be coming on. There would be lamps glowing in people’s living rooms and fires in fireplaces. He remembered the cherry pies that had been baking in the oven, and he wondered if his mother and father would eat any of the pie if he and Danny didn’t show up by dinnertime. Maybe they wouldn’t eat at all. They’d be out in the neighborhood, going door to door. Probably they would call the police….
    (Chapter 10 continues after illustration)

A big sycamore leaf blew past just then, nearly bumping John’s nose. Something yanked on the spectacles, and they were jerked around sideways. He grabbed the brass frame and swatted at the leaf with his other hand. The leaf went spinning away, and he heard the hollering of a very small voice, like a radio with the volume turned too far down.
    “Look!” Danny shouted, pointing at the leaf.
    John saw it at the same time: there was a tiny man riding on it, holding onto the stem as if it were the tiller of a boat. He wore a hat the size of a pea. More leaves sailed toward them in a long line out of the woods. They were shaped like dried stars with the points turned up and were painted autumn colors. On each leaf sat a man about the size of a water beetle.
    One of the leaves swerved toward John’s face again. The little man riding on it grabbed at the spectacles, and John stepped backward and out of the way. This one didn’t have a hat on. He was bald on top, like the goblins, and he wore a vest and striped pants. Under his arm he had a tiny fishing pole, and between his crossed legs there was a heap of colored glass chips.
    More leaves blew past, maybe twenty in all. Most of the leaf sailors carried fishing poles and