Dormia by Jake Halpern Page B

lullaby. When it finally came time to go to sleep, Alfonso noticed that his uncle had taken a clock off the wall and placed it on the nightstand by his bed. He was staring at it with fierce intensity.
    "What are you doing with that?" Alfonso asked.
    "It's broken," replied Hill sleepily. "I am going to repair it."
    Bilblox looked confused. "Repair it when?" he asked.
    "When I'm sleeping," said Hill with a yawn. "That's when I repair things."
    Bilblox simply rolled his eyes. He had heard so many crazy things today that he no longer had the energy to ask questions.
    "So you're focusing?" inquired Alfonso. "You're doing the same thing that I did before the ballast match?"
    "More or less," replied Hill. "Only I'm using a slightly more advanced technique. It involves meditation. I'll stare at this clock and, all the while, I'll block out all other thoughts. I do this by repeating a sacred phrase—what the Hindus call a
mantra japa.
The mantra that I use sounds like this:
Aum namah Shivaya.
Basically, I just keep repeating this mantra—for exactly one hundred and eight times—and, afterward, I fall asleep almost right away. The next thing you know—presto!—my sleeping-self is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing. Well, most of the time anyway."
    "Why do ya do it one hundred and eight times?" asked Bilblox skeptically.
    "Oh that's easy," said Hill. "It turns out that one hundred and eight is a magical number. Didn't you know that? I've read quite a few books on this subject matter and let me tell you the facts: the Hindu gods have one hundred and eight names. There are exactly one hundred and eight sins in Tibetan Buddhism. Chinese astrologists believe that there are one hundred and eight sacred stars. The number of stitches on a baseball is, yes, one hundred and eight. The number of episodes of my favorite TV show—
Dr. Who
—that were accidentally destroyed in the nineteen-seventies, once again, one hundred and eight."
    "Wow," said Alfonso. "So all this helps you control what you do in your sleep?"
    "My dear, dear nephew," said Hill with a laugh. "The power of sleep is a very mysterious thing. There is no guaranteed or certain way to control it. Goodness knows, some nights I've gone to sleep meditating on the image of a broken watch, but as soon as I drift off, my sleeping-self overrules this and heads across town to get a burrito. That's the way it was with those copies of
American Botanist
that I kept buying. I didn't intend to do that. My sleeping-self just did it. But the things that we do in our sleep almost always have a reason behind them. After all, those copies of
American Botanist
led me to you."
    "It's just like me growing the Dormian bloom," added Alfonso. "I didn't understand what I was doing at the time, but I guess there was a reason for it."
    "Exactly," said Hill. "Whatever you did in your sleep was done for a reason. Or at least, I think so."
    "That makes me feel a bit better," said Alfonso with a smile. "Hey, would it be all right if I tried your meditation technique?"
    "Sure," said Hill. He handed Alfonso the broken clock. "Why don't you try to fix this tonight?"
    Alfonso nodded. He said goodnight to Hill and Bilblox and immediately began concentrating on the clock. As he did this, Alfonso repeated the ancient Hindu words—
Aum namah Shivaya
—exactly 108 times. As soon as he was done, Alfonso drifted off into a very deep sleep. He slept very soundly and, the next thing he knew, it was morning. At first, he was disappointed. Nothing had happened. Then, rather hazily, he became aware of a noise in the room—
tick, tick, tick
—it was the clock. It was on the wall, ticking away perfectly.
    ***
    It didn't take long before Alfonso, Hill, and Bilblox settled into the routine of life on the
Success Story.
Each night, just before they all went to bed, Hill usually gave Alfonso a new task to do in his sleep—cleaning the windmill, mending some socks, organizing a