Dormia (25 page)

Bilblox thrust his paddle into the water and helped steer the coffin to shore. Soon they were standing on the pebble beach. They walked over to the grid of doorways and the drawing of Prince Binder. At the foot of Prince Binder lay a stone tablet with an inscription that had been written out in four different languages. One language appeared to be English, the second was French, the third was Russian, and the fourth was unrecognizable to Alfonso. The inscription in English read:

I can run,
But cannot walk,
Sometimes sing,
But never talk.

I lack arms,
But have hands.
I've no head,
But do not lack a face.

If you're punctual,
And quite spry,
The door will open,
And let you through.

"It's a riddle," said Alfonso.

Both of them stared at the tablet intently.

"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense," said Bilblox. "I mean, that statue's got arms and a head."

Alfonso walked over and tried opening one of the doors on the grid. It was locked. Nearby, there was a series of toeholds in
the wall that enabled a person to climb up with relative ease and Alfonso soon tried every door in the entire grid. They were all locked.

"Now what?" asked Bilblox.

The two of them sat down on the pebble beach and continued to think about the riddle. Eventually, Bilblox broke out a loaf of bread from one of his packs and the two of them devoured it greedily. Finally, Alfonso turned to Bilblox and asked him what time it was. Bilblox showed Alfonso his watch, which indicated that it was now a quarter to three in the morning. Alfonso let out a deep sigh. It was so late. Would they ever get out?

It was so
late.
Alfonso read the tablet again.
Punctual.
Why would they need to be on time? Where did they need to be punctual? "Wait a minute!" cried Alfonso. "The riddle! It's about a clock!"

"Huh?"

"Think about it," said Alfonso. "A clock runs, but doesn't walk. It sings—whenever its bells chime—but it never talks. It has hands, but no arms. And it has a face, but no head."

"Yer right!" exclaimed Bilblox. "So then the rhyme means—"

"It means that the drawing of Prince Binder is actually a clock that's giving us an exact time," said Alfonso. "It's giving us a time when one of the doors will unlock."

"When?"

"It looks like around two fifty-five," said Alfonso. "You see, Prince Binder's short hand is almost pointing at three and his long hand is pointing at five minutes till."

"Holy cow—yer right!" said Bilblox. "But which door will open?"

"It could be the one in the top left corner," said Alfonso. "He seems to be pointing to that one."

Alfonso scrambled back up the beach to the grid of doorways. He climbed his way up to the door in the top left corner and found a narrow ledge directly in front. He inched his way out onto the ledge until he was standing in front of a large brass doorknob. Alfonso glanced at Bilblox's watch, which he had taken with him. It said two fifty-three.

"It's two fifty-three!" yelled Bilblox.

Exactly two minutes later, Alfonso heard a soft click within the brass door handle. He seized the door handle, turned the knob, and the door opened. He stumbled inside.

"Sounds like you opened it!" yelled Bilblox from down below. "Whaddya find?"

"It's a tunnel," yelled Alfonso. "And there's even a few coils of rope on the ground. It ought to help us get the coffin up here."

"Where does the tunnel lead?" yelled Bilblox.

"I have no idea," replied Alfonso.

T
HE PITCH-BLACK
tunnel led down for almost a mile. At one point, Bilblox stopped and asked if they could rest. He was panting and exhausted. He set down the coffin and then lay on the floor of the tunnel. It was impossible to see anything in the darkness, but Alfonso ran his bare hands across Bilblox's bandages. Bilblox winced. The bandages were wet and sticky. His wounds had likely reopened. Alfonso suggested that they stop for a few hours. Bilblox refused. "We gotta get out of here," he said as he struggled to his feet. "Then we'll rest."

The tunnel ended in a small, circular room lined with red bricks. A very narrow skylight in the ceiling allowed a shaft of moonlight to enter the room. It was their first glimpse of the outside in over a day and they looked up at it hungrily. On
the wall they saw what looked to be a piece of rope draped around an old brass ring. Bilblox gave it a curious tug. It tore as easily as tissue.

"I hope we didn't need to use it," Bilblox remarked.

They examined the room by the light of the moon and soon found a wooden trapdoor on the floor. It was covered in dirt but unlocked. Bilblox lifted it and immediately the deafening roar of the waterfall filled the small room. It was unclear where the trapdoor led, since the opening was filled with overgrown ferns and a thick mist. Bilblox fingered a rusted metal ring jutting just below the trapdoor opening. "I betcha that rope was to lower ourselves," he said. "I guess we have to jump."

"No, if we're careful, I think we can just climb down," said Alfonso. "I think I can see a ledge down there."

"Be careful," said Bilblox.

Alfonso nodded and began lowering himself down, brick by brick, through the trapdoor. The bricks were old and thick, and the mortar between them easily crumbled, which gave Alfonso good handholds. Soon he was in the middle of the ferns, covered in mist. About ten feet down, the chimneylike tunnel ended in a mossy ledge, slick with water. Directly in front was a wall of roaring water—the waterfall. The air was filled with thick droplets of water. Alfonso quickly realized that the only way out was to jump through the wall of water. There was no way to tell how far they were from the bottom of the falls, nor what would happen if they jumped through. They would have to leap blindly into the water. Alfonso climbed back up to explain the situation to Bilblox. The longshoreman looked pale and extremely sick. A lump rose in Alfonso's throat.

"What'd the doctor say about this?" Bilblox rasped.

"Nothing," replied Alfonso.

They looked at each other. They both knew their only choice was to jump into the wall of onrushing water.

"I'll go first," said Alfonso.

"Not this time," replied Bilblox with a weak smile. "It's my turn. We longshoremen are as comfortable in water as fish."

Bilblox groped his way through the trapdoor, climbed down slowly, and in a few minutes called for Alfonso to drop the coffin through the trapdoor. Alfonso shoved the coffin down. Bilblox caught it but yelped at the same time. There was no doubt that Van Bambleweep's dressing to the wounds had torn open. Alfonso quickly climbed down and joined Bilblox on the ledge. Bilblox was standing only inches from the wall of water. He weakly lifted his burly arm, shouted, "Longshoremen, ho!" and plunged into the water while holding onto the coffin. In less than a second, he was gone.

Alfonso inched over to the spot where Bilblox had been. He tightened the straps on his sealskin backpack, took a deep breath, and plunged into the wall of water. At first it felt like he was being hit, and his first thought was for Bilblox: could his friend survive this pummeling? Then he had the eerie feeling of being weightless. After what seemed like an extremely long period of falling, he was underwater and being pushed even further down.

He kicked as hard as he could and soon the current released its hold. Alfonso opened his eyes underwater and saw bubbles everywhere rising with him. Less than a minute later, he popped out of the water, gasping. He turned around and saw the magnificent waterfall about a hundred feet away, tumbling, crashing, and roaring in all of its foam-flecked glory.

"Hullo!" called a voice. "Alfonso—are you there?"

Alfonso looked around and saw Bilblox, floating on the coffin, about fifty feet away. Alfonso waved excitedly and swam toward Bilblox. He caught up and clambered aboard the coffin.

"Amazing," said Alfonso. "You know, you could look at the waterfall for a million years and never find the opening that we jumped through."

Bilblox nodded weakly, but said nothing.

Alfonso looked around and breathed in the fresh night air. At last, they were no longer underground! Steam rose from the warm river water, but the riverbanks were covered with snow. They should have been freezing—t hey were sopping wet and it was midwinter—but the clouds of hot steam from the river kept them surprisingly warm.

Alfonso glanced over at Bilblox and discovered that his friend was lying face-down on the coffin. He was in awful shape. His bandages were torn and tattered and most of his clothes were covered in blood.

Alfonso could barely speak. "B-Bilblox?" he stammered.

"I can't feel my body," said Bilblox quietly.

***

The coffin traveled down the river quickly and soon they were several miles away from the waterfall. The darkness began to lift and Alfonso stared at his surroundings: they were floating down a steaming river that twisted its way along the bottom of a snow-filled canyon.

"Bilblox—let's pull ashore, okay?" asked Alfonso.

Bilblox didn't reply. Alfonso scooted over and saw that Bilblox was barely conscious. He was shivering uncontrollably and his face was flushed with fever.

Alfonso quickly navigated the coffin toward shore. Once there, he left Bilblox slumped over the coffin and built a fire. With a great deal of coaxing, Alfonso eventually got Bilblox to stand up, limp over to the fire, and take off his wet clothing. Bilblox promptly lay down and closed his eyes.

Alfonso noticed that the coffin had been considerably banged-up during their journey through the catacombs. Although it was still solid enough to float, the wheels that made it easy to transport had snapped off. This wasn't a problem for as long as they floated, but it would make things much harder afterward. Luckily, Alfonso's backpack was in much better shape. The sealskin coverings had worked perfectly. The food, matches, all of their extra clothes, several heavy blankets, and most importantly, the Dormian bloom were safe and dry. In Bilblox's bag, Alfonso also found an extra set of bandages and a jar of Dr. Van Bambleweep's Wheatgrass Wound and Scar-Healing Ointment.

While Bilblox was sleeping, Alfonso unwrapped his bloody bandages and applied a fresh layer of ointment. The longshoreman didn't budge. Miraculously, hardly any of the stitches had ruptured. Alfonso applied fresh bandages, covered Bilblox with several blankets, and then turned his attention back to the Dormian bloom.

Alfonso opened the roof of the top hat. The branches and leaves of the Dormian bloom exploded outward like a puppet from a jack-in-the-box. Quite clearly, it would be impossible to cram the plant back into the top hat. The thing was simply too
big. Within the last week or so, the Dormian bloom had been growing by leaps and bounds. It now weighed close to twenty pounds in Alfonso's estimation. He watched as the petals on the plant's flower changed color from yellow to orange to maroon to purple. It seemed to be in fine health. Alfonso was about to put the plant back into the sealskin bag when he was distracted by a noise. It was the sound of someone muttering. Alfonso nervously glanced over his shoulder.

It was Spack.

The loafer was sitting up in her coffin. She wore a dirty painter's smock on top of several tattered shirts, and brightly colored pants tied with a coarse burlap rope. Her chin was covered with dried bits of food. Her frizzy hair was so unkempt that it looked as if she had stuck her finger in an electric socket. At that moment, her green-gray eyes were fixed with a fierce intensity on the Dormian bloom.

"What a stroke of luck ... It's fallen right into my hands!" muttered Spack.

Alfonso immediately returned the bloom back to the sealskin bag. He looked again at Spack, but the strange woman had fallen back asleep, and the coffin door was locked shut.

***

Bilblox slept the entire day and that night as well. Alfonso decided to stay put by the side of the river until Bilblox felt better. During this time, Spack kept herself locked inside her coffin and Alfonso worked almost continuously, gathering wood, stoking the fire, cooking food, and dressing Bilblox's wounds.

Throughout the second day Bilblox had a high fever. His forehead and cheeks burned with the heat of a furnace and he moaned pitifully. He was never fully awake, nor completely asleep. Finally, on the third day, Bilblox's fever broke. That evening, he sat up, ate an entire bowl of porridge, and began talking clearly. On the morning of the fourth day, Alfonso awoke and found him eating breakfast.

"Feeling better?" asked Alfonso.

Bilblox smiled. "Yer not kiddin'!" he exclaimed. "I feel like I just woke up from a nightmare. I can even see pretty well. Can ya believe my luck? How long was I sleepin' for?"

"Three days," said Alfonso.

"No kiddin'," said Bilblox.

Looking around, Bilblox declared that this particular place reminded him a little bit of Fort Krasnik. He stopped for a minute and then changed his mind. "There's somethin' weird about this place," he said. "Like it's been empty forever, ya know?" A sudden wind jostled the treetops and made the bare branches clatter against one another. Bilblox shivered and threw the coffee grounds from his cup into the coals of the fire. "Let's get outta here," he said. "This place is givin' me the willies. I don't know, maybe it's because we're travelin' on a coffin."