Dormia (11 page)

J
UST BEFORE
ten o'clock that night, Hill, Alfonso, and Bilblox left the windmill and headed out along the upper deck of the
Success Story
toward the ship's bridge. The night was dark and the sky shimmered with thousands of stars shining brilliantly. The ship itself was heading almost due north and the wind was already frosty with gusts of polar air. When the three arrived at the bridge, they encountered Shamus, who was standing at the wheel of the ship. The room was a mess of scattered maps, old sailing books, heavy rubber boots, ashtrays overloaded with used lumps of tobacco, and an old phonograph that was playing marching-band tunes from the 1920s. "Good evening," said Shamus wearily. "Sorry for the mess, but I pretty much live in this room. We're a wee bit short on help these days. Don't get
much sleep, but who's complaining? Not me. Oh, not me. Just head down that set of stairs and dinner will be served shortly."

"Thanks," said Alfonso.

"Don't thank me yet," he muttered. "If you can eat the slop that Hellen cooks then you've got a hardier stomach than I do."

"Who's Hellen?" asked Alfonso.

"You'll see," Shamus replied.

They parted ways with Shamus and headed down a narrow flight of stairs that led into a dining room of sorts. Actually, it was a small room with a billiards table in the middle that had been converted into a dining room table. Above the billiard table hung a crystal chandelier that looked as if it had belonged in an opera house. It was enormous—far too big for the small space—and the lowermost crystals actually touched the surface of the billiards table. Dust lay everywhere. The place smelled of rotting fish, stale books, mildewed wood, and burned cooking oil. As Alfonso took a seat at the billiards table, a small mouse scurried into the corner pocket.

"Hello, boys!" said a large, matronly woman who emerged from a door at the far end of the room. She wore an apron that nearly covered her entire body, a filthy-looking chef's hat, and a pair of large rubber gloves. "The name is Hellen. I am the cook, though I occasionally do the navigating as well. I expect you met Shamus already, and of course you've met the vice admiral, so now you've met the entire crew."

"The entire crew?" asked Bilblox with a dumbfounded look. "Ya mean there are just three of ya runnin' this whole ship?"

"That's right, honey," said Hellen. "The vice admiral doesn't take a liking to folks too quick. She prefers to operate with a bit of a skeleton crew. Keeps costs down. Of course, there have
been other members of the crew over the years, but they never seem to last."

Bilblox raised his eyebrows. "I see," he said.

"Anyway," said Hellen, "what can I get you fellows to eat?"

"What's on the menu?" asked Hill.

"Fried seal—that's all we ever serve."

"We'll take three of those," said Hill.

"Three fried seals coming up!" said Hellen cheerfully. "Do you want any hot sauce with that? It helps kill the taste and the germs as well."

Alfonso, Bilblox, and Hill all nodded.

While they were waiting for their fried seal, they heard the vice admiral's peg leg poking its way down the stairs. "At ease, gentlemen," she said as she entered the room. "How are my passengers doing?"

"We're doing just fine, Vice Admiral," said Hill.

"Good," she said. "Now tell me, Hill, do ya remember yer way around the ship at all? Last time ya were on board, when ya were just a little feller, ya and yer brother played around all day in every nook and cranny of this ship."

"I don't remember much," explained Hill. "But there are some things, like playing hide-and-seek with Leif in the
Success Story
's cargo hold or climbing ropes on the deck. But other than that, my memory gets pretty hazy. It's like I've got amnesia or something."

"Pity," said the vice admiral as she sat at the billiards table and lit her pipe. "Then ya've got no memory from before I found ya in the Urals?"

"Hardly any," said Hill. "In fact, I have no memory of leaving my parents at all. I've tried everything to remember what
they look like, but nothing works..." He let out a painful, drawn-out sigh.

"Well," said the vice admiral as she puffed on her pipe and sipped her beer, "it was really the oddest thing. I'd hired a fellow I knew in Barsh-yin-Binder to take me on a huntin' trip into the Ural Mountains. They have great big bears in those parts, a good bit bigger than the grizzlies in North America, and I was aimin' to shoot one. We must have traveled almost a week, passin' through some wild mountain passes, until we came to the edge of a fearsome forest known as Straszydlo. I'd have to say that it's just about the spookiest place I've ever visited. Anyway, we were aimin' to venture into them woods, when we found ya in an old horse-drawn sled. Not sure where the horse was. Ran off, I guess. Anyway, ya and yer brother were all by yer lonesome and fast asleep to boot. I couldn't believe it. Of course, I'm not much interested in kids—never have been—but I couldn't leave ya there to freeze and die. So we cut the huntin' trip short, hooked yer sled up to our horses, and took ya back to Barsh-yin-Binder."

"I don't remember—" began Hill.

"Figures," interrupted the vice admiral, who seemed slightly annoyed. "I go to the trouble of savin' yer life and ya don't remember a moment of it. And now here I am doin' ya a favor again. I must be the most generous vice admiral on the seven seas—"

Rather suddenly, a loud coughing echoed down the stairway from the bridge above. Then came the sound of Shamus's muttering.

"What's that ya say?" yelled the vice admiral.

"Nothing, madam," yelled Shamus. "Just something stuck in my throat."

Vice Admiral Purcheezie shook her head and took a puff on her pipe.

"What happened in Barsh-yin-Binder?" asked Alfonso. "What did you do with my dad and Uncle Hill once you arrived there?"

"Well, as ya can imagine, there are no proper orphanages in Barsh-yin-Binder so I took 'em back to Fort Krasnik where I entrusted 'em to Dusty Magrewski. And from there, well ya know the rest." She turned to look at Hill. "So ya still haven't told us why yer so eager to go back. Homesick, are ya? Tryin' to find yer family?"

"Something like that," replied Hill. "Plus, I want to show my nephew the Ural Mountains."

"It sounds to me as if yer lookin' for Dormia," replied the vice admiral as she took a long drag on her pipe. "Ya and Leif kept mutterin' about that imaginary place."

"You've heard of Dormia?" blurted out Alfonso.

"Of course!" said the vice admiral. "Every visitor to those parts has. It's the greatest wives' tale in all of northern Asia. People lookin' for adventure or people with no past, like yer uncle here, get caught up in it. They buy some cheap, dime-store book on fantastical places, like Atlantis or Dormia, and believe every last made-up word of it. Well, lemme tell ya—it's just as foolhardy as lookin' for the Fountain of Youth, and
much
more dangerous. The mountains and woods over there are filled with nasty beasts and dangerous sorts of men an' women."

"That's enough now," said Hill sternly. "I don't want you scaring Alfonso."

"He should be scared!" growled the vice admiral. She slapped the table with her meaty fist, stood up, and stared fiercely at Hill. "A boy of Alfonso's age has no business in those parts. And I ain't sure what kind of uncle would take him there either. Alfonso may trust ya—he's just a gullible young feller—but not me. Not for a minute! What are ya really up to anyway, Hill? How about ya come clean?"

Hill stared back at the vice admiral defiantly, but said nothing.

"Suit yerself," she grumbled. "But don't expect me to come to yer rescue if ya get into trouble in the dark woods of the Urals. I already done that once and ya can bet yer life I ain't gonna do it again."

"We'll be just fine," said Hill with a rather forced smile.

B
ACK IN THE
windmill, Alfonso, Bilblox, and Hill prepared for sleep. Bilblox lit a fire in the small stone fireplace, Hill found an extra stash of wool blankets in one of the closets, and Alfonso discovered an old music box that played a soothing Irish lullaby. When it finally came time to go to sleep, Alfonso noticed that his uncle had taken a clock off the wall and placed it on the nightstand by his bed. He was staring at it with fierce intensity.

"What are you doing with that?" Alfonso asked.

"It's broken," replied Hill sleepily. "I am going to repair it."

Bilblox looked confused. "Repair it when?" he asked.

"When I'm sleeping," said Hill with a yawn. "That's when I repair things."

Bilblox simply rolled his eyes. He had heard so many crazy things today that he no longer had the energy to ask questions.

"So you're focusing?" inquired Alfonso. "You're doing the same thing that I did before the ballast match?"

"More or less," replied Hill. "Only I'm using a slightly more advanced technique. It involves meditation. I'll stare at this clock and, all the while, I'll block out all other thoughts. I do this by repeating a sacred phrase—what the Hindus call a
mantra japa.
The mantra that I use sounds like this:
Aum namah Shivaya.
Basically, I just keep repeating this mantra—for exactly one hundred and eight times—and, afterward, I fall asleep almost right away. The next thing you know—presto!—my sleeping-self is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing. Well, most of the time anyway."

"Why do ya do it one hundred and eight times?" asked Bilblox skeptically.

"Oh that's easy," said Hill. "It turns out that one hundred and eight is a magical number. Didn't you know that? I've read quite a few books on this subject matter and let me tell you the facts: the Hindu gods have one hundred and eight names. There are exactly one hundred and eight sins in Tibetan Buddhism. Chinese astrologists believe that there are one hundred and eight sacred stars. The number of stitches on a baseball is, yes, one hundred and eight. The number of episodes of my favorite TV show—
Dr. Who
—that were accidentally destroyed in the nineteen-seventies, once again, one hundred and eight."

"Wow," said Alfonso. "So all this helps you control what you do in your sleep?"

"My dear, dear nephew," said Hill with a laugh. "The power of sleep is a very mysterious thing. There is no guaranteed or certain way to control it. Goodness knows, some nights I've gone to sleep meditating on the image of a broken watch, but as soon as I drift off, my sleeping-self overrules this and heads across town to get a burrito. That's the way it was with those copies of
American Botanist
that I kept buying. I didn't intend to do that. My sleeping-self just did it. But the things that we do in our sleep almost always have a reason behind them. After all, those copies of
American Botanist
led me to you."

"It's just like me growing the Dormian bloom," added Alfonso. "I didn't understand what I was doing at the time, but I guess there was a reason for it."

"Exactly," said Hill. "Whatever you did in your sleep was done for a reason. Or at least, I think so."

"That makes me feel a bit better," said Alfonso with a smile. "Hey, would it be all right if I tried your meditation technique?"

"Sure," said Hill. He handed Alfonso the broken clock. "Why don't you try to fix this tonight?"

Alfonso nodded. He said goodnight to Hill and Bilblox and immediately began concentrating on the clock. As he did this, Alfonso repeated the ancient Hindu words—
Aum namah Shivaya
—exactly 108 times. As soon as he was done, Alfonso drifted off into a very deep sleep. He slept very soundly and, the next thing he knew, it was morning. At first, he was disappointed. Nothing had happened. Then, rather hazily, he became aware of a noise in the room—
tick, tick, tick
—it was the clock. It was on the wall, ticking away perfectly.

***

It didn't take long before Alfonso, Hill, and Bilblox settled into the routine of life on the
Success Story.
Each night, just before they all went to bed, Hill usually gave Alfonso a new task to do in his sleep—cleaning the windmill, mending some socks, organizing a box of cargo, or even reading a book on how to sail a ship. Alfonso then meditated, went to sleep, and promptly got to work. "I've never seen a boy work harder in his sleep," marveled Hill. "And I can't believe how quickly he picked up this technique." Alfonso was thrilled with his progress, although he still had no memories of what he did while sleeping.

On most mornings, the three of them woke up around eight and proceeded directly to the mess for breakfast. Hellen always served the exact same meal: twenty-year-old hardtack, coffee, and fried seal. It was a disgusting combination, but they all got used to it, mainly by drenching every meal with generous amounts of hot sauce. Sometimes the vice admiral came down and joined them. She often shared stories about her distinguished family, especially Nils A. E. Nordenskjöld. Of course, the stories were extremely long and often quite boring—filled with details of highly complicated nautical maneuvers—but it helped pass the time. Gradually, the days began to blend together. The only thing that marked the passage of time was the date wheel on Hill's watch, which was steadily working its way down to zero. According to the vice admiral, it would take them almost a month to complete the journey to Barsh-yin-Binder.
This wouldn't leave them much time to find Somnos. Not much time at all.

Generally, in the early afternoons, Alfonso scraped ice off the deck of the ship and gave what he collected to his Dormian bloom. He had discovered that the plant thrived on a diet of ice and winter sunshine. Later, after dinner, he would read in the windmill. On one such evening, just as he was drifting off to sleep with a book in his lap, Alfonso was startled by a shout from his uncle Hill.

"Dash it all!" yelled Hill. "We probably shouldn't do it, but it might answer some questions."

"What are ya talkin' about?" an annoyed Bilblox asked.