Dormia, p.4
Dormia, page 4
"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."
Chapter 5
A DEN OF SMUGGLERS
SEVERAL 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.
"You did it!" yelled Hill. He leaned over and gave Alfonso a giant bear hug. "That's where we've got to go! And to think that over all these years, the first clue to finding Dormia was ticking away in my pocket."
"What do you think we'll find there?" asked Alfonso.
"I'm not sure," said Hill. "I wish I could say that we'll find Somnos, but I doubt it will be that easy. After all, this place has remained hidden for thousands of years. But by Jove, this is a very good start!"
Alfonso turned and looked at Judy and Pappy. His eyes shined with excitement.
"Hmph," muttered Pappy, but he said nothing further.
***
Several hours later, Hill and Alfonso were walking along an old wooden boardwalk in the seaside town of Fort Krasnik, looking for any sign of Dusty Magrewski and the doctor's office. They had left Pappy in the seaplane—he was in no shape to walk—and Judy had insisted on staying with her father.
At first glance, Fort Krasnik looked like a massive boulder jutting out of the sea. There were no trees, grass, or vegetation of any kind. All the structures on the island—even the distant rooftops and lampposts—were made of the same dreary-looking gray stone. The only trace of color came from the boardwalk, which was painted a dull blue. The boardwalk was lined with a number of dilapidated shops. One shop advertised "peg legs and wooden teeth," another boasted "the best glass eyes in the North Pacific," and yet another had a display window filled with hundreds of razor-sharp daggers. The boardwalk itself was packed with pedestrians—mainly fishermen with dirty beards and leathery skin. There were also at least a dozen men rolling dice in the gutter and yelling. One of them, who appeared to have just won a sizable jackpot, was brandishing a knife and yelling,"Keep yer distance boys, keep yer distance. 'Dis jackpot is mine and I intend to keep 'er."
"Don't be nervous," Hill shouted to Alfonso above the din of the crowd. "This has always been a rough place, but they usually don't harm kids." He lifted his arm just in time to deflect a bottle that had been thrown out the window of a nearby bar. "Just don't get anyone mad," he added. "And, of course, always watch for flying bottles."
As they continued onward, Hill assumed the role of a tour guide and began spouting bits of history, as if they were a family on vacation. According to Hill, Fort Krasnik was founded by a group of surly Russian sailors who rebelled against their captain during the infamous Long Voyage of 1703. After eating all of the biscuits aboard their ship and throwing their captain into the icy waters of the North Pacific, the sailors landed on a small rocky island that they named Fort Krasnik, after the Krasnik Bakery in St. Petersburg, which made a particularly tough, jaw-breaking biscuit. These sailors vowed never to return to the high seas. Instead, they built docks and shops along the shore and dubbed themselves "along-the-shore-men" or simply "longshoremen."
The longshoremen of Fort Krasnik, who never had much regard for rules or regulations, soon developed a reputation as masters of the black market. They bought, sold, and traded stolen goods of all kinds. As a result, smuggling boats from all over the world came to do business on this island, which operated as its own little nation-state. Hill knew about the place because he and Leif had passed through on their way to North America.
"So how exactly did you and my dad get here from the Urals anyway?" asked Alfonso.
"Now that's a good question," replied Hill calmly as they walked past two old sailors fighting over a scrap of stale bread. "As I've told you, I was just eight years old when I left Dormia, so my memory is rather fuzzy, but I do remember some things. I know that Leif and I got lost outside the city of Somnos. Terrible day that was. We wandered through the city's gates and strayed into the surrounding mountains. Somehow we ended up in this very deep and dark forest. For several days we just huddled there—cold, starving, and alone. And then, well, er..."
"What?" asked Alfonso. "What happened next?"
"That's the thing," confessed Hill sheepishly. "It's kind of a blank. The next thing I can remember is being on this old ship bound for North America. The finer points of how exactly we got onto the ship are still a complete mystery to me."
"The ship's captain was a woman smuggler en route to Fort Krasnik. When the ship finally laid anchor, the old sea captain—who never had any interest in children—handed Leif and me over to a longshoreman friend of hers named Dusty Magrewski. It all worked out rather well because Dusty had always wanted children of his own, but over the years, he had been too busy with his work. Dusty took us in and he became almost like a father to us—that is, until we ran away."
"Why did you run away?" Alfonso asked.
"Never mind that," said Hill awkwardly. "Oh, would you look at that! We're here!"
Hill came to an abrupt halt in front of a large stone warehouse with two enormous sliding doors in front. Directly above the doors hung a sign that read:
* * *
The Brotherhood of Magrewski
Longshoremen, Est. 1737
SHIPPERS, SMUGGLERS & RUFFIANS FOR HIRE
"We won't ask how you got it, but we'll make
sure you keep it."
President: Dusty "Mad Dog" Magrewski
* * *
In the distance a whistle blew and longshoremen began streaming out of the front doors. Apparently, this was their lunch break. Hill and Alfonso stood to the side to avoid the mad rush. The longshoremen were of all shapes and sizes but most had the same thick upper body that comes from the daily lifting and moving of heavy objects. They all wore strudy jeans and hooded canvas jackets but there was something else about them that made them all look alike: they all had muttonchops, long sideburns that ended just below their mouths.
"That was the fashion a long ways back," Hill explained. "And once Fort Krasnik longshoremen have hit upon a way of doing things, they don't like to change. You'll see—they're a stubborn bunch and quick to suspicion. But it's for survival purposes. If they were nice to everyone, they'd probably get more visitors, and that's exactly what they don't want."
"And these guys are all longshoremen?" asked Alfonso.
"They're Magrewskis," replied Hill. "They're all members of the Magrewski Brotherhood, which is one of the two ancient brotherhoods of longshoremen in this city." Hill went on to explain that the Magrewskis were established in 1737 by a sailor named Ivan Magrewski. Ivan had a half-brother named Boris Popov and the two men couldn't stand each other. According to legend, both men had taken turns burning down each other's houses for over thirty years. Eventually, Boris founded his own brotherhood—known as the Popov Longshoremen—and the two groups had been competing, fighting, and cursing one another ever since.
