World's End (2 page)

Alfonso said nothing for a long while. "So tell me," he said finally. "Why have all these Wanderers from Dormia come here?"

"Ha!" said Sophie with a dry laugh, as she lit a fresh cigarette. "I was hoping you might be able to tell me."

T
HANKS TO HIS SLEEPING-SELF,
which had apparently done a great deal of hustling, Alfonso had managed to rejoin the group without drawing any suspicion. He and his classmates spent several more days in Paris and then took the
Train à Grande Vitesse
—a high-speed train that averages two hundred miles per hour—south to the port town of Marseilles. As the train sped southward, Alfonso's thoughts remained fixed on the Wanderer named Sophie, and the giant hexagonal hole underneath the catacombs of Paris. What had caused this hole? And why had both Sophie and Alfonso been drawn there?

The first day in Marseilles was uneventful—a museum, a boring history lecture in the hotel lobby, a quick dinner, and then off to bed. The next day, however, the French club had a delicious, three-course lunch in the old city, where crumbling four-story buildings lined narrow, cobblestone streets. After their meal, the students boarded an old, decommissioned tugboat to take a tour of Marseilles' busy harbor. Alfonso felt overly full from lunch. As he sat in the bright sun, it was all too easy to put his head back and close his eyes.

Alfonso woke up from his nap feeling unsteady and vaguely aware that he was balanced precariously on the edge of something.

"Alfonso Perplexon!" shrieked a familiar voice. "Alfonso, have you lost your mind, mon cher? Get down from ze railing at once! Immédiatement, I say!"

Alfonso blinked cautiously and opened his eyes. He was perched on the railing of the tugboat, staring down into the water below, as if he were about to take a dive. Gusts of wind howled across the whitecaps.

"Alfonso!" cried the voice again. "I order you to git off of ze railing—tout de suite!"

Alfonso looked down and saw the French club's chaperone, Madame McKinnon, screaming at him in her French accent. Alfonso found it strange that Madame McKinnon always spoke with a French accent even though she was born and raised in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and had only been to France once before, on her honeymoon. In any case, she looked upset. No,
upset
wasn't the right word. She looked insanely angry.

The old captain of the tugboat didn't look too happy either. "Imbécile!" he snarled. "Idiot!"

At that very moment, Alfonso also noticed an insufferable redheaded boy named Charlie, who was urging him to jump. "Go on, do it, sleeper-boy!" sneered Charlie. "Do it like the old days! Want me to get your pajamas?" A few of Charlie's pals guffawed at this. At one point in time, Charlie and Alfonso had been friends, sort of. Charlie was one of the many kids in World's End who had once been fascinated by the bizarre and amazing things that Alfonso did in his sleep. But ever since Alfonso had started acting like a normal kid, most of Alfonso's so-called friends had abandoned him.

"Alfonso, mon cher, if you don't come down, right zis instant, I am zending you directly home to Minnie-zota!" hissed Madame McKinnon.

"Ce n'est pas drôle!" muttered the old sea captain.

"Okay, okay," said Alfonso drowsily. "I'm getting down right now. I promise. I don't know what..." But he never finished this sentence. Instead, he felt himself being pulled downward into a deep, dank well of utter blackness—a place where lingering thoughts and even dreams dissolved into nothingness. It was a place beyond sleep. He tried to fight it, but it was no use. His breathing slowed, his eyelids closed halfway, and then he leapt headlong into the choppy waters of the Mediterranean. It was a perfect dive and as soon as he surfaced, he began swimming with astounding speed toward a rusty freighter anchored several hundred meters away. The stern of the freighter was emblazoned with a Romanian flag and the name
Somnolenţă
.

"Mon dieu!" gasped Madame McKinnon.

The old ferry boat exploded into pandemonium. Charlie was jumping up and down and screaming that his "friend" was drowning. The other members of the French club began shouting and pointing. Madame McKinnon rushed to the bow and yelled at Alfonso in a voice that—quite suddenly—seemed to have no French accent at all.

The commotion attracted the attention of a motorboat belonging to the Marseilles Harbor Police that was idling nearby. The police gunned over to Alfonso and picked him neatly out of the water. Alfonso's hands and legs still moved in a swimming motion until the police laid him on the floor of the boat. At that point, Alfonso opened his eyes and looked up at the faces of three concerned police officers. He had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there. Despite the fact that he was shivering, he still felt drowsy. Alfonso sensed the pull of sleep, a deep hypnotic draw, like the undertow in the ocean. In the distance he could still see the Romanian freighter
Somnolenţă,
and the mere sight of it filled him with an inexplicable longing. His sleeping-self had risked his life in a feeble attempt to reach that boat. The only question was,
Why?

***

That night, Madame McKinnon led her students back to their hotel, a nondescript brick building overlooking the old port. Fittingly, it was named Le Vieux Port. The hotel appeared to be in a bad neighborhood. It sat across the street from a pharmacy that had been robbed the night before and, when Alfonso and the others returned from their boat ride, several police officers were questioning the hotel clerk as to whether he had seen any suspicious activity.

Alfonso didn't pay too much attention to the police because he had other things to worry about. Presently, a red-faced Madame McKinnon was informing him that she had just made arrangements for him to return home to Minnesota—tout de suite! At dinner, Alfonso sat by himself. Charlie and his gang of friends huddled at a nearby table, giggling and talking about Alfonso. In a loud voice, Charlie claimed Alfonso was drunk from French wine when he jumped off the tourist boat.

Alfonso didn't mind them; he was far too preoccupied with what had just happened in the harbor. Why, wondered Alfonso, had he fallen asleep and leapt into the chilly waters of the Mediterranean? Why was his sleeping-self acting up all of a sudden? The previous night, for example, he somehow had managed to gash his right hand in his sleep. The cut required six stitches from a local doctor, at the rate of thirty Euros a stitch.

Alfonso knew intuitively that there must be a reason for his sleeping antics—there was always one. He suspected the reason involved Dormia. Alfonso's sleeping-self was mysteriously and inextricably connected to the Founding Tree in Somnos. Alfonso sensed that the tree was pulling him, beckoning him into slumber. Even now, as he sat in the hotel's dining room, sleep was descending on him.

He finished his food quickly and walked to the fourth floor, where he and Charlie shared a small hotel room. It was a stroke of bad luck for Alfonso that Charlie had been assigned as his roommate for the entire trip. Their room was tiny, with barely enough space for two beds. To make matters worse, the walls were very thin, so thin that Alfonso could hear a young couple next door having a heated disagreement. It didn't matter. Alfonso was tired enough to sleep through nearly anything. He sank into his narrow bed, pressed his face into the sheets—which smelled faintly of cigarettes and cheap cologne—and immediately drifted off to sleep.

By the time Charlie entered the room, Alfonso was out cold, snoring loudly in apparent harmony with the room's hissing radiators. Charlie loudly harrumphed and "accidentally" bumped into Alfonso's bed, but Alfonso did not stir. Charlie gave up and soon fell asleep as well. The rest of the night went by uneventfully, until dawn broke.

It was at that moment that Alfonso got up from bed and began to dress. In less than a minute, he silently packed his backpack and made his bed. He yawned and walked to the door. His eyelids trembled in a half-closed position. Anyone who saw him would have thought that he was sleepwalking. The door creaked open and in the blink of an eye, Alfonso vanished.

Some time later, Charlie woke up and realized Alfonso was gone. For some reason, Charlie was trembling, even though it was quite warm in the room. A whistle blew from a ship in the distance.

"H-Hello?" whispered Charlie. "Alfonso? Are you there?"

No answer. Charlie was spooked. He turned on the light and saw the neatly made bed.

The whistle from the harbor blew again. It was the same Romanian freighter that Alfonso had swum toward the previous day, the
Somnolenţă,
and it was about to leave port. Charlie looked out toward the noise. He squinted hard. In the distance, he saw Alfonso running squirrel-like across the heavy rope line that lashed the freighter to the port. The rope shone with morning frost, but Alfonso never lost his footing. When he reached the freighter, he dove into an open porthole. Moments later, the rope fell into the water and the freighter pulled out of Marseilles' old harbor into the open seas of the Mediterranean.

A
LFONSO YAWNED AWAKE
in a dim swath of light, rolled over onto his side, and suddenly cried out in pain. Instead of the mattress in Le Vieux Port, he felt coils of coarse rope and various sharp objects underneath him. Confused, Alfonso struggled to his feet. He had been sleeping on a tangle of old fishing nets dotted with hooks. Several feet away, a half-open porthole pitted with rust and salt allowed in weak streams of sun.

He walked over to the window and stared outside at a horizon filled with choppy water. The sun appeared low in the sky. At first he thought it might be dawn, but then he realized that the sun was actually sinking and it was dusk. He had been asleep for at least a full day, maybe more.

Alfonso glanced about and noticed his backpack lying nearby on the floor. He rummaged through his belongings and quickly found his passport and three hundred U.S. dollars. Alfonso sighed in relief. He then emptied the rest of his backpack and found two books that he had brought with him from Minnesota, a bottle of water, a glass sphere that looked almost like a paperweight, and a few tabs of French chocolate.

Although it appeared empty, his backpack still felt rather clunky. Alfonso examined it at every angle and discovered to his surprise that something was hidden between the coarse exterior fabric and the plastic brace. The outline was hard and rectangular. Alfonso examined the stitching inside the pack and noticed that a row of thread had been cut. The discovery of this mysterious package set his heart thumping. He laid the backpack on his lap and sat perfectly still. He heard only the rhythmic creak of wood planks straining against each other and the droning of the ship's engine. Alfonso took a deep breath and inserted his hand into the small opening in the pack. He pushed his hand downward until he reached the hard rectangular package and slowly withdrew it from its hiding place.

The package was exactly five inches wide by seven inches long and wrapped tightly in gauze. Alfonso unwound the gauze, revealing a metal tin embossed with the following words:

 

POLYVALENT CROTALID ANTIVENIN

 

He examined the package carefully and hesitantly popped off the lid to the tin. Inside lay two medical syringes with razor-sharp needles attached, and two small glass bottles of a clear liquid nestled between them.

"What is Polyvalent Crotalid Antivenin and where did this come from?" Alfonso asked himself aloud. He began to put the medicine away when he noticed the gash on his right hand. His mind instantly flashed back to the pharmacy across the street from his hotel in Marseilles. The pharmacy's front window had been smashed. Someone had robbed the place, and suddenly Alfonso knew without a doubt that he was the one who had done it.

Over the next hour, Alfonso investigated the rest of the freighter's hold. It was at least half empty. Aside from the torn fishing nets and rusty hooks, there were a few empty cardboard boxes, some old tools, and in the corner, several dozen crates of dates. Upon seeing the dates, Alfonso realized that he was famished. In fact, he didn't remember ever being so hungry in his life. Alfonso took some dates back to his corner of the hold and sat down to eat. Then, suddenly, the door to the deck opened and a ladder slid down. Alfonso heard voices, and he shrank further into the darkness.

Three sailors clumped heavily down the ladder, carrying boxes. They spoke in French and loudly discussed Marseilles—where they had found the best bouillabaisse, the best cheap hotel, and the best card games. For half an hour, they transferred boxes of dates from the deck to the hold while Alfonso sat in his corner, barely daring to breathe. At one point, Alfonso heard one of the sailors ask when they would arrive in "Alexandre."

"Deux heures," replied another. "C'est bien, l'Alexandre. Tu verras!" Alfonso furrowed his brow. That couldn't be. The freighter would arrive in Alexandria, Egypt, in two hours? His head swam. He must have been asleep for a very long time—days. Alfonso didn't notice the sailors pulling up the ladder and shutting the door to the hold.

"Alexandria," Alfonso whispered to himself. "Just like the book."

He reached for his backpack and pulled out the two books that he had brought with him. The first was a book that he had originally obtained in Somnos. It was titled
The Basics of Speaking Dormian,
by Dr. Gregor Axel Oxenstjerna. Alfonso had been studying the book for the past several years and now, thanks to his studies, he was reasonably fluent in the Dormian language. Of course, he had no one to converse with, so it was quite possible that his pronunciation was atrocious. Nonetheless, Alfonso was Dormian and he felt that he should know his ancestral language. After all, he wasn't just any Dormian. He was a hero of Somnos—the boy who saved the city and earned the title of Great Sleeper.

The second book, the smaller of the two, was
Architecture of Ancient Alexandria: A Detailed Field Guide
by Dr. Jarislav Lüt-zen. This was a very unlikely book for a fifteen-year-old boy to be reading in his spare time. But there was a reason. Alfonso's father, Leif Perplexon, had actually purchased this book from an online bookseller roughly six years ago. Alfonso still vividly remembered the day the book had arrived. A delivery man brought the book to their house around nine o'clock on a Saturday morning. Leif had read the book carefully for several hours. Finally, he set the book down and went for a swim in Lake Witekkon, near their house. Midway through the swim, storm clouds moved in and the lake was hit with rain and lightning.