Max Stone and the Lost Star of Zirdon Read Online Free

straight for the middle of the vortex. All around him the storm roared angrily, clouds swirling, and leaves swooshing from everywhere. Below, he heard trash cans fall over and spill out their contents. He saw his Gran’s garden furniture swished off the ground and hurled over the hedge. He could hear the snapping of tree branches, maybe even whole trees themselves, as the wind wreaked havoc.
    This was a real live tornado and Max Stone was caught in the eye of it. There was nothing he could do.
    The pull on the stone grew stronger and Max, with the box still clutched under his arm, rose further up into the air. He glanced below to his Gran’s house, a huge big old house that now looked like a tiny spec.
    Higher and higher he rose, the stone now moving at a terrific speed, as they hurtled towards the gateway in the sky.
    For a moment his flight upwards slowed slightly and he thought there was hope - hope he might safely return to the ground.
    But his hope was short-lived as the stone gave one last enormous surge and he and the stone disappeared into the doorway to another dimension.
    Max Stone disappeared out of this world and into the next.

CHAPTER THREE
    OUT OF THIS WORLD
    Max felt himself being hurled from the rift and he crashed heavily to the ground. Instinctively he protected the box and rolled over onto his shoulder in a tight ball. He tried to break his fall but he hurt his left ankle when he landed. It hurt like crazy.
    Max looked around at where he was and it frightened him. He didn’t recognise anything. This was a totally alien place. The sky burned of fire and where at home the sky was blue and you could see the sun, here it flared red and he could see planets dotted about. He was sure he had landed on some alien planet, nestled in a gathering of unknown stars.
    The landscape too was different from home. It was scorched and burnt. He could see no trees, and no signs of life. All he could see were huge large rocks and boulders scattered about in large heaps.
    â€˜Where am I?’ he asked out loud. He picked himself up from the dusty ground, and brushed off the red coloured sand from his sweatshirt.
    He winced as he put pressure on his leg. His foot really hurt. He still held the stone in his right hand - it was no longer stuck to him and he flung it angrily at the ground ‘Get away from me’ he shouted at it, worried now at where he was and frightened that he was lost and alone.
    On his palm the stone had left its mark, four blades in the star shape. There was a small diamond shaped crystal at the centre. He looked at the front of the box that he still clutched and the symbols matched exactly. He had second thoughts about throwing away the stone, thinking it might be of some use or value somehow. Besides, it was his only real connection to home and it seemed a little foolish to just throw it away.
    He opened the wooden box and put the stone inside. His eye caught the map and he took it out. It made no sense to him with the alien symbols, and the strange names. He just couldn’t make any sense of it. On the map there were areas where there were no markings and he guessed that if this was a map of this planet then he was probably in one of these.
    But where?
    Right in the centre of the map stood the ‘City of Elgonze’ and just to the north was the house of Mar-Hoc-Seia. Clearly, he was nowhere near the large Zagger Zee River marked on the top left. If he was, surely there would have been some life-trees or something. Just then a strange-looking bird screeched high in the sky. Max looked up and saw instantly that this was no bird. This looked more like a flying dinosaur, a pterodactyl. Its large beak was sharp and pointed and its wings were not of feathers but of thick leathery brown skin. At the end of the flying creature’s wings were sharp-looking talons that glinted even from so far away. It squawked noisily as it flew overhead and began to circle around where Max