Chapter One
The snow crunched loudly beneath our feet. Spuckler Boach was out in front,
whistling a cheerful little tune, while Mr. Beeba huffed and puffed along, great
clouds of breath trailing behind his bright yellow tufts of hair. Poog, his
custom-made coat snugly concealing most of his round little body, floated
steadily by my shoulder like some kind of alien bodyguard. And just behind me,
rolling and squeaking over the surface of the snow on his four rusty wheels, was
Spuckler's robot, Gax. We must have made a pretty funny-looking group.
The morning sky was a bright, cloudless blue. It stretched from snow-covered
hills on one side of us to jagged purple peaks on the other. Judging by the
steep incline of the road, we were heading into the mountains. A bracing cold
breeze blew directly into our faces, making me wish we could head in the
opposite direction and somehow still get where we wanted to g ... read full excerpt from Akiko in the Castle of Alia Rellapor ebook
