Dormia (5 page)

The highlight of his flying career, said Hill, came when he and a Soviet pilot named Yuri Napinoff, who was also famous for flying in his sleep, were asked to do a joint mission in the early 1970s, to show that the United States and the Soviet Union could get along. When the two pilots finally met in Moscow, Hill discovered that Yuri was actually a quarter Dormian on his mother's side. Hill wasn't entirely surprised. According to him, the globe was sprinkled with men and women like Hill and Yuri who had some kind of connection to Dormia and who yearned to go back, but could never find the way. During their mission, Hill and Yuri were supposed to practice dropping bombs into the Caspian Sea, but instead they flew over the Ural Mountains—for eighty-two hours straight—to try to catch a glimpse of Dormia. They saw nothing; it was too cloudy. Ever since, Hill had rather sadly given up hope that he would ever go home again. In time, he quit the air force and repeatedly turned down opportunities to become the spokesman for countless sleep-related products such as nightcaps, pajamas, earplugs, and of course, sleeping pills. Instead, he became a watch repairman in Chicago. His would be a quiet and uneventful life. Or so he thought. And then came the day when Hill saw the photo of the Dormian bloom in the pages of
American Botanist
and everything changed. He turned around and smiled at Alfonso.

From the look on her face, Judy was still unconvinced. "That's very interesting," she told Hill, "but I'd really like to know where we're going."

"We're going to Dormia," replied Hill matter-of-factly.

"We're flying directly to Dormia?" asked Alfonso in total disbelief.

"Oh goodness no," replied Hill. "I wish we could, but we'd never make it there in this plane. Besides there's a bigger problem, as I just explained: I have no idea where
exactly
Dormia is. We're flying to a little island off the western coast of Canada called Fort Krasnik. I'm friends with a highly placed longshoreman there by the name of Dusty Magrewski. Hopefully, he can help us book passage on a boat to Russia."

"You've got to be kidding," said Judy. "We are
not
going to Russia. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that I have a house to look after, we have a plant business to run, and Alfonso has school to attend."

"And all those things will be waiting for you when you return," replied Hill. "In the meantime, at least come as far as Fort Krasnik. They've got a great doctor who will fix Pappy right up. Then, if you still want to go home, I'll fly you back. Besides, I think you'll really enjoy meeting Dusty Magrewski."

"Why's that?" asked Alfonso.

"Well," said Hill, "for starters, Dusty knew both your father and me when we were kids. You see, we came through Fort Krasnik on our way from the Urals to Canada. So Dusty can vouch that I am who I say I am. Hopefully, that'll put your minds at ease."

"So then Dusty knows about Dormia?" asked Alfonso.

"No, no, no," replied Hill with a chortle. "Hardly anyone knows about Dormia except the sort of crackpots who believe in old wives' tales and a handful of actual Dormians like myself."

At that moment, Pappy stirred awake. Even in the gloom of the cabin, his face looked pale and sweaty. No one wanted to
look at his leg, which had begun to swell. "Dormia," he wheezed. "A-are you still tryin' to sell us your magic stories?"

"Perhaps this would interest you," said Hill. He reached deep into the inside of his leather jacket and fished out a small, well-worn pocket watch. "This timepiece is Dormian," he said as he handed it to Alfonso. "It's the only thing I brought with me. Take a look—open it."

Alfonso pressed down on a thick knob at the top and the cover of the smooth metal watch swung open, revealing an intricately painted tree on the inside of the cover. The tree bore little resemblance to the Dormian bloom, but it did have a number of flowers on it, and these flowers changed color every few seconds in the exact same manner as the bloom. Alfonso thought that this was very odd because the timepiece appeared to be a windup device with no batteries. How exactly were these leaves changing color? Directly beneath the image of the tree was a small numeric panel, much like the date wheel on an ordinary watch, but instead of providing a date, it simply read: 55.

"What does the fifty-five mean?" asked Alfonso.

"Not sure," said Hill. "Ever since I got it, decades ago, that date wheel was stuck on the number one hundred and forty three. Then, about three months ago, it just started counting backwards—going down one number each day. I'll be darned if I know what exactly it means, but I have a hunch."

"What an odd watch," said Alfonso softly, almost to himself.

"Yeah," agreed Hill. "That timepiece has been with me since I left Dormia and it keeps perfect time, too, although it makes a strange ticking noise."

"What do you mean?" Alfonso asked. He brought the watch to his ear. Hill was right—it did make a strange sound that
went like this:
tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-TOCK tick-tick-tick-tick-TOCK TOCK-TOCK
(pause)
tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-TOCK tick-tick-TOCK TOCK-TOCK.

Alfonso looked at Hill. "It sounds like it's broken," he said.

"True enough," replied Hill. "And yet, as I said, it keeps perfect time."

"You still haven't convinced me," Pappy bitterly muttered. "You've got nothing but a bunch of cheap trinkets in the way of evidence as far as I am concerned."

Hill let out a deep, exasperated sigh.

"I don't know what else I can tell you," said Hill. "I've shown you everything." He glanced back at Pappy and Judy. His eyes wandered to the floor, where he saw the Gobi desert orchid. It appeared to be in very bad shape. The temperature was quite cold in the cabin of the plane and the orchid's stem was covered with a layer of frost and its flowers had withered.

Hill smiled. "I've got an idea," he said. "Judy, would you mind handing that orchid to Alfonso? Alfonso, I want you to take the orchid out of its pot and place it next to the bloom. Then I want you to take the bloom out of its pot as well."

"What?" Pappy shouted. "You can't re-pot a rare Gobi desert orchid on a plane. It'll die!"

"I'm afraid the orchid is already dead," replied Hill. He looked at Judy.

"All right," Judy said. "I'll play along." She handed the orchid to Alfonso.

Alfonso carefully removed the orchid from its container and placed it next to the bloom. Then he removed the bloom from its container. For a moment, nothing happened.

"I told you!" Pappy said. "Tomfoolery!"

"Wait!" exclaimed Judy. The frost on the orchid's stem was glistening. Over the next minute, they all watched with rapt attention as the frost melted into beads of water, the orchid's stem straightened, and the delicate purple and green petals unfurled and blossomed outward. Upon closer examination, Alfonso noticed that several small roots from the bloom had extended outward and connected with those of the orchid.

"Oh my word," mumbled Pappy. "I don't believe it."

"So I've finally gotten your attention," said Hill with a smile. "Good! Now, Alfonso, I want you to pull those two plants apart—but be careful—I don't want you to tear their roots."

Alfonso did as he was told. Very gently he pulled the Dormian bloom away from the Gobi desert orchid. The orchid immediately began to wither. Its stem wilted, its flower lost its petals, and the soil took on the color of dust.

"What happened?" asked Pappy.

"I think it's quite obvious," replied Hill. "The Dormian bloom revived your orchid."

"Little good that did," winced Pappy. "As soon as the plants were separated my orchid withered again."

"That's my point exactly!" he said. His eyes shone with a fierce determination. "Without the Dormian bloom the orchid returned to its natural state, which was close to death. It's exactly how
McBridge's
explains it."

Hill fixed his gaze on Alfonso. "The same exact thing is about to happen in Somnos—only on a much grander scale. Don't you see? When the Founding Tree of Somnos dies, the snow will reclaim its ground, winter will descend, and everything around the city will die: the trees, the bushes, the grass, the crops, then all the farm animals, and eventually—when all
the food is gone—the people will perish too. They'll freeze to death—freeze in walls of ice..."

Hill paused for a moment and fell into an eerie silence.

"I remember a story as a boy," he continued slowly, "about a Dormian city that froze over. An expedition force from Somnos went to this place—its name was Quartzor or Quartin or something like that. They found hundreds of Dormians frozen in walls of ice. Apparently, you could see entire families huddled together in frozen blocks. Their faces, which held these terrifying expressions, were perfectly preserved. My goodness, what an awful way to go."

"So, if we fail to deliver the Dormian bloom, that's what is going to happen in Somnos?" asked Alfonso.

Hill nodded solemnly.

"And the date wheel on your watch, which has been ticking down, you think that's how many days we have to deliver the plant before Somnos freezes?"

Hill nodded again.

"Fifty-five days," said Alfonso. "That seems like plenty of time, doesn't it?"

"Oh, my dear boy," said Hill with a rather sad laugh, "I am afraid you haven't the faintest idea just how long and hard the journey will be. It could take us years to find Somnos."

S
EVERAL HOURS LATER
, the first light of dawn began to make its way over the horizon, and the plane's cabin warmed up. Everyone soon fell asleep as they flew across the Rocky Mountains and on toward the west coast of Canada.

Alfonso was the first to wake up. Immediately, he noticed that his left ear hurt, as if it had been punched. He straightened up in his seat. Something fell onto his lap. It was Hill's pocket watch—the one that kept time but ticked as if broken. Alfonso picked up the watch and stared at it. Its exterior had a curious pattern etched on it. It looked like this:

Alfonso pressed the watch to his left ear. It fit exactly where his ear hurt. For some reason, his sleeping-self had pressed the watch to his ear the entire time he had been asleep. Why?

He listened to the strange ticking for a while:
tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-TOCK tick-tick-tick-tick-TOCK TOCK-TOCK
(pause)
tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-TOCK tick-tick-TOCK TOCK-TOCK.
All of a sudden, he wondered if the ticking was a riddle.

Alfonso had always loved solving riddles. He had a giant book of them back home in World's End. Alfonso would often mull over a given riddle for hours at a time until his brain throbbed with pain. In his opinion, the key to solving the toughest riddles usually involved looking at them from another perspective. In other words, he had to forget about the watch all together and simply focus on the ticking itself. The first thing that came to mind was Morse code, which Alfonso had just learned about in his history class. The code, which was used during World War II, involved a series of short and long beeps, each of which stood for a different letter in the alphabet.
The ticking on Hill's watch also appeared to be a code, though it wasn't Morse code—it was something else. Alfonso furrowed his brow as he tried to figure it out. What did the
ticks
and
tocks
stand for? He knew he could solve this.

After several minutes of intense concentration, one possibility occurred to Alfonso: the ticks were numbers and the tocks were spaces. He grabbed a pen from his pocket and began scribbling on an old scrap of paper that he found on the floor. He wrote out the code: 6-4---6-2---. The ticking revealed two numbers: sixty-four and sixty-two. Excitedly, he woke everybody up and announced what he had discovered.

"There's no rhyme or reason to that broken old watch!" Pappy complained. "What you came up with doesn't even make sense! Sixty-four and sixty-two? What's that supposed to mean anyway?"

"I don't know," said Alfonso. "But it's got to mean something."

"I doubt it," said Pappy.

"Sixty-four and sixty-two," said Hill to himself. He appeared to be deep in thought. "Those numbers are very curious. You know, back in my air force days, I used to fly to Reykjavik, Iceland. You know what we pilots used to call that place? We called it 'sixty-four by twenty-one.' You know why? Because those were the city's coordinates: sixty-four degrees north latitude by twenty-one degrees west longitude."

"What's your point?" asked Pappy.

"My point is that I think that sixty-four and sixty-two are coordinates!" exclaimed Hill. His eyes quickly strayed toward an old atlas on the dashboard of the plane. "I think Alfonso has just come up with two coordinates—l atitude and longitude.
I'm guessing that it's sixty-four degrees north latitude by sixty-two degrees east longitude." He laughed. "What's the matter with me? All these years I thought that crazy ticking was just some mechanical defect."

Hill grabbed the atlas and matched up the numbers with the markings for latitude and longitude. They pointed to an area in the middle of the Ural Mountains. Hill grabbed Alfonso's pen and marked the spot.