Dormia (17 page)

***

For the first few days on the ice, everyone spent a lot of time just staring around, amazed that they were on a ship that was skating steadily across the polar icecap. The ice wasn't the dull-looking stuff that floats on the surface of cold drinks. The vice admiral had done her homework well. The ice fields that they were skating across were made of thick old sea ice, the type that takes on a wondrous blue-green color. It wasn't smooth like new ice, but the bumps weren't large enough to be uncomfortable. The air had become much colder and soon the deck and every other exposed piece of the ship grew a thick layer of frost. Shamus brought up Russian polar jackets and thick Eskimo mukluks for everyone to wear. It was so cold that they began wearing them even at breakfast and dinner.

Thanks to all the ice, the bloom was in great health. It was still about the same size as when they had left World's End, but the leaves were green and vibrant, and the colors of the flower became more intense. Still, every time Alfonso checked on the bloom, which was at least once a day, he couldn't help glancing at the little scar on the stem of the plant where they had snipped off a leaf and burned it. He felt uneasy every time he looked at it. Lars had made it quite clear that burning the leaf of a Founding Tree or a Dormian bloom was "the greatest crime that anyone could commit." After all, this was what Nartam had done! The very thought of this made Alfonso's gut tighten into a knot.

Alfonso's real concern, however, was Bilblox. Just as Lars had predicted, Bilblox was beginning to go blind. The longshoreman
couldn't see anything for several hours each day. Bilblox stuck to the story that this was simply a result of snow blindness—a temporary form of blindness caused by the sun reflecting off the ice and snow. Of course, Alfonso knew that this wasn't true. Again and again, he recalled exactly what Lars had told him: "Once his vision begins to disappear, the only way he will regain it is by burning the plant again and using more of the ash ... I don't care who this person is, he can no longer be trusted." Alfonso wanted to share this information—whether it was true or not—with both Hill and Bilblox. It seemed like the right thing to do. After all, they were all in this together. The problem was this: Alfonso didn't want to make Bilblox angry or give him any ideas about burning the plant. In truth, Alfonso wasn't sure that Bilblox could be trusted; and so he decided to remain silent on the subject of Bilblox's blindness.

In the end, Alfonso resolved that he should at least tell Hill the gist of what Lars had said. So, one afternoon when the two of them were alone in the windmill, Alfonso explained what had happened on the iceberg. Hill listened with rapt attention as Alfonso retold the story of Nartam and how he was a fallen Dormian. Hill became even more excited upon learning that Alfonso—
his very own nephew
—was a legendary Great Sleeper of Dormia. "I knew there was something special about you!" said Hill gleefully. "I guess your father did too—or at least his sleeping-self did. That's why he carved that medallion in his sleep. I only wish Leif were here to see all of this. It's fantastic! You'll be famous in Dormia. You'll be the sort of person that kids learn about in their sleeping classes."

"Sleeping classes?" inquired Alfonso. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about school," said Hill somewhat defensively. "I don't recall much from my school days in Somnos, but I do remember focusing on the basics at an early age: reading, mathematics, and sleeping."

Alfonso sat up in his chair. "You had a class in sleeping?"

"Of course," Hill replied. "We're a land of sleepers, after all. We took it quite seriously."

"What do you remember from sleeping class?" Alfonso asked. "Maybe something can help me."

"I don't remember much," replied Hill with a dejected sigh. "I remember the lovely redhead who sat in front of me in level one sleeping. I recall our teacher, Dr. Soskis, who was an awful snorer. And I remember something called the ten-second counting game ... no, wait ... the ten-second drill ... yes, that's what it was. The ten-second drill. If my memory rings true, the idea was that you counted to ten, and that with each number you got a bit drowsier, so that by ten, you were totally asleep. I prefer my one hundred and eight chants, but then again I was never interested in sleep classes anyway."

"Why ten seconds?" Alfonso persisted.

"That was the starting point," replied Hill. "With practice, you could stuff the ten-second period of falling asleep into eight seconds, or six or even less. I was never much good at it, but that shouldn't stop you."

"I'll try it!" declared Alfonso.

He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and began counting to ten. He said each number slowly, as if he didn't want to let it go. It didn't work. He succeeded in getting drowsy, but not in falling asleep. So he tried it again, only this time he continued counting all the way to twenty, and by the time he said
seventeen
he managed to fall asleep. He spent the next few hours working on this drill and, eventually, he was able to fall asleep exactly as he muttered the word
ten.

"You really seem to have mastered this," said Hill proudly at the end of the day. "Here, let me have a try. I bet you I can still do it." He sat down, closed his eyes halfway, and began to count out loud. Alfonso watched silently. By the seventh second, Hill's head drooped and Alfonso was sure he would make it to ten right on time. At eight, Hill's jaw opened. At nine, however, something unexpected happened. Bilblox, who had spent the day in the mess hall, burst in through the front door of the windmill. Hill had just finished saying
nine
when the door clattered open. Hill's reaction to the noise was completely bizarre: he leapt to his feet and crouched low to the ground like a panther about to pounce. Hill's eyes fluttered heavily—not quite awake and not yet asleep.

"Uncle Hill?" said Alfonso.

Hill twirled to face Alfonso in a blindingly fast movement. His entire face quivered with excitement, as if every muscle was poised for action. A second later, his body relaxed into a normal position and his eyes opened fully.

"Wh-wh-what happened?" muttered Hill. He looked around the room and saw Bilblox standing in the doorway.

"You!" he said. "I heard you kick open the door and then everything was happening at once, like my mind was drowning." He shook his head to clear it and turned to Alfonso. "What happened? Did I fall asleep?"

"I'm not sure," replied Alfonso. In truth, it wasn't clear whether Hill had been awake or asleep. Rather suddenly, Alfonso recalled his conversation with Lars, who spoke of Great
Sleepers and their ability to balance between waking and sleeping. Could Hill have stumbled into hypnogogia?

"Bilblox, could you do that again?" Alfonso asked. "I'm going to count to ten and when I say 'nine,' I want you to slam the front door."

"This is ridiculous," said Hill.

"Let me just try it," replied Alfonso. He looked at Bilblox, who nodded that he was ready.

Alfonso sat back down and made sure the area around him was clear. He began the count, focusing not only on the numbers, but also on the spaces between them. At six, his eyes grew heavy and his muscles began to relax. His legs and arms jerked in preparation for sleep. At seven, his eyes closed halfway and his head drooped toward his chest. At eight, his mind began to shut down all conscious thought and his lips could only barely mouth the word
nine.
Then,
wham!
Bilblox slammed the front door. Alfonso's legs spasmed and he fell from his chair.

As he lay there, Alfonso discovered he had entered another world. It was a world where the slightest action was as clear as a hammer blow to his head. He heard Hill approaching, his footsteps loud on the wooden floor, his voice concerned, but then he also heard Hill's shoelaces rubbing against each other, the scratching of Hill's big toe against the inner wall of his sneakers, the rumbling of hunger in Bilblox's stomach, the vice admiral's pen scratching along a blank sheet of paper twenty feet below them, a peeler in Hellen's hand slicing off potato skin, the awful scratch of the skating blades cutting into the ice, the creak of the snow as it shifted under the
Success Story,
the slow heartbeat of thousands of semihibernating fish, and even the distant, low calls of two humpback whales. These noises
and billions of others washed over Alfonso like a tidal wave and he felt as if his brain itself were crumbling like a sandcastle in the surf.

Slowly, Alfonso opened his eyes. He could see everything: the dust that swirled around him in a frenzy, the tiny wads of dirt underneath Hill's fingernails, each woven thread on Bilblox's red plaid shirt, and the beady eyes of an ant hiding in a dark corner of the windmill.

Confronted with all this intense stimulation, Alfonso felt disoriented and dizzy. He couldn't shut down his ears or eyes, so instead he tried to focus. He knew he was in danger of throwing up his breakfast. He staggered toward the stove and looked above it at the mantel, where he saw an hourglass slowly dropping grains of sand from the upper chamber to the lower. Bilblox had found this hourglass under one of the beds and they had been using it to help keep time. Alfonso now brought all of his concentration to bear on this device. In his highly alert state, it was easy to look at the hourglass and see each individual grain of sand as it passed through the narrow opening in the middle and fell into the lower chamber. Gradually, the nausea in Alfonso's stomach began to dissipate. He forced himself to concentrate as hard as he could. He imagined that the world was made up of only him and the hourglass. It was hard to do, but eventually the other noises and sights began to diminish until they were only a murmur in the background. Still, it took massive concentration. He was holding back an ocean with only the power of his mind and any letup would cause him to drown. The effort proved unbearably difficult. Alfonso quickly became exhausted. The world spun around him, and he fell onto the floor, unconscious.

A
LFONSO
woke up sometime later, sputtering, as freezing water poured over him. He opened his eyes. Hill and Bilblox crowded above him, their faces etched with concern.

"Alfonso?" Hill said slowly. "Are you all right?"

Alfonso nodded weakly.

"Ya've been passed out for hours. We've been tryin' to wake ya up, but nothin' was workin'," said Bilblox.

Alfonso took a deep breath of air and then exhaled. Slowly, he came to his senses. The first thing he noticed was how incredibly still the ship seemed. Maybe it was just an aftereffect of the trance he had been in.

"Wh-what's going on?" he asked.

"There's a problem on the ice," replied Bilblox. "We had to stop."

As soon as Alfonso could stand on his own two feet, he joined the rest of the crew in the ship's mess hall. Alfonso still felt shaky from his jaunt into hypnogogia, but he was desperately curious to see why the
Success Story
had come to a stop. It was clear that they were nowhere near Barsh-yin-Binder. When he glanced out the front door of the windmill, all Alfonso could see was miles and miles of pack ice.

"Ah, there y'are!" said the vice admiral. "Fine time to wake up! Just look at the mess we've run into." She used her good hand to unfurl a large map on the billiards table. It was of the entire North Pole region. Using one of her old, gnarled fingers, the vice admiral pointed to a section of sea that said "Presumed to be solid ice in winter."

"What does 'presumed to be solid ice' mean?" asked Alfonso.

"It means we're in trouble because we don't know what's ahead of us," snapped the vice admiral. She explained that, a few hours ago, they had come upon an expanse of open water, which appeared to be at least fifty miles across. They couldn't float across because they didn't want to risk doing another water-to-ice transition. From the eagle's nest Shamus had seen a number of ice-filled pathways that spider-webbed across the open water ahead of them. The problem was this: they had no idea which one of these icy pathways would lead them all the way across the water to the solid ice on the other side. "So ya see, it's kind of like a maze," said the vice admiral. "And we need to find which pathway is the right one to take."

"How will we do that?" asked Alfonso.

"That's where ya come in," said the vice admiral. "We need a higher perspective on things. Hellen remembered that we have an old hot-air balloon in the cargo hold. Arctic explorers have been usin' balloons like these since the days of Amundsen and Scott. Hellen is down there now getting it ready for you."

"For me? I just woke up and I still don't feel good."

"Too bad," the vice admiral curtly replied. "Yer the only one light enough. As I mentioned, it's a very old hot-air balloon. We'll need ya to go up in it and sketch a map of the best route to take. Think ya can do it?"

"I don't think so," said Alfonso.

"Oh, I'm certain ya can," said the vice admiral. "Besides, ya don't have a choice—either ya do it or we all freeze to death out here."

Everyone soon gathered on the deck around the steadily inflating hot-air balloon. A makeshift stove dangled above the tiny wicker basket that would hold Alfonso. Shamus shoveled coal into the stove as they watched puffs of smoke emerge from a long, skinny funnel that went into the actual balloon. The funnel was filling the patchwork balloon with the warm air that would, in theory, make the whole contraption rise.

Hellen commanded Alfonso to climb into the wicker basket. A rope tied to the basket would allow them to guide the balloon up and then pull it back down after Alfonso finished with his observations. The vice admiral handed Alfonso a pad and pencil.

"Just tug on the rope when you're finished," said Hellen with a smile. "And we'll pull you down 'fore you know it."

"Okay," said Alfonso as he climbed into the wicker basket. He tried to sound confident. "That sounds easy enough."

Once seated inside the basket, Alfonso raised his hand and
gave a thumbs-up sign. Shamus released the rope. The balloon shot up. Alfonso sat in the bottom of the basket and held on tight as the wind whistled through the wicker. The balloon seemed even more unsteady and fragile than it looked when tethered to the ship. It bounced wildly as the wind gusted. Several embers from the stove landed on the wicker and burned for a few seconds before dying out. One landed on Alfonso's head and burned away a small patch of his hair before he managed to get it out.