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- Contents
- Title Page
- Quote
- The Message
- PART 1: Arrival
- 1. What Torren Saw
- 2. Out from Below
- 3. Through the Village
- 4. The Doctor’s House
- THE FIRST TOWN MEETING
- 5. The Pioneer
- 6. Breakfast with Disaster
- 7. A Day of New People
- 8. The Roamer and the Bike
- 9. Hard, Hungry Work
- 10. Restless Weeks
- 11. Tick’s Projects
- 12. Caspar Arrives with a Surprise
- 13. Taking Action
- PART 2: Travelers and Warriors
- 14. What Torren Did
- 15. A Long, Hot Ride
- 16. The Starving Roamer
- 17. Doon Accused
- THE SECOND TOWN MEETING
- 18. Caspar’s Quest
- 19. Unfairness, and What to Do About It
- 20. The City Destroyed
- 21. Attack and Counterattack
- 22. Discoveries
- THE THIRD TOWN MEETING
- 23. Getting Ready for War
- PART 3: The Decision
- 24. What Torren Planned
- 25. Dread at the Last Minute
- 26. The Weapon
- 27. Firefight
- 28. Surprising Truths
- THE FOURTH TOWN MEETING
- 29. Three Amazing Visits
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Also by Jeanne DuPrau
- Copyright Page
- “Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
- only light can do that.
- Hate cannot drive out hate;
- only love can do that.
- Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence,
- and toughness multiplies toughness
- in a descending spiral of destruction.”
- —Martin Luther King, Jr.,
- “Strength to Love,” 1963
- The Message
- Dear People of Ember,
- We came down the river from the Pipeworks and found the way to another place. It is green here and
- very big. Light comes from the sky. You must follow the instructions in this message and come on the
- river. Bring food with you. Come as quickly as you can.
- Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow
- CHAPTER 1
- What Torren Saw
- Torren was out at the edge of the cabbage field that day, the day the people came. He was supposed to
- be fetching a couple of cabbages for Dr. Hester to use in the soup that night, but, as usual, he didn’t see
- why he shouldn’t have some fun while he was at it. So he climbed up the wind tower, which he wasn’t
- supposed to do because, they said, he might fall or get his head sliced off by the big blades going round
- and round.
- The wind tower was four-sided, made of boards nailed one above the next like the rungs of a ladder.
- Torren climbed the back side of it, the side that faced the hills and not the village, so that the little
- group of workers hoeing the cabbage rows wouldn’t see him. At the top, he turned around and sat on
- the flat place behind the blades, which turned slowly in the idle summer breeze. He had brought a
- pocketful of small stones up with him, planning on some target practice: he liked to try to hit the
- chickens that rummaged around between the rows of cabbages. He thought it might be fun to bounce a
- few pebbles off the hats of the workers, too. But before he had even taken the stones from his pocket,
- he caught sight of something that made him stop and stare.
- Out beyond the cabbage field was another field, where young tomato and corn and squash plants were
- growing, and beyond that the land sloped up into a grassy hillside dotted, at this time of year, with
- yellow mustard flowers. Torren saw something strange at the top of the hill. Something dark.
- There were bits of darkness at first—for a second he thought maybe it was a deer, or several deer,
- black ones instead of the usual light brown, but the shape was wrong for deer, and the way these things
- moved was wrong, too. He realized very soon that he was seeing people, a few people at first and then
- more and more of them. They came up from the other side of the hill and gathered at the top and stood
- there, a long line of them against the sky, like a row of black teeth. There must have been a hundred,
- Torren thought, or more than a hundred.
- In all his life, Torren had never seen more than three or four people at a time arrive at the village from
- elsewhere. Almost always, the people who came were roamers, passing through with a truckload of
- stuff from the old towns to sell. This massing of people on the hilltop terrified him. For a moment he
- couldn’t move. Then his heart started up a furious pounding, and he scrambled down off the wind
- tower so fast that he scraped his hands on the rough boards.
- “Someone’s coming!” he shouted as he passed the workers. They looked up, startled. Torren ran at full
- speed toward the low cluster of brown buildings at the far end of the field. He turned up a dirt lane, his
- feet raising swirls of dust, and dashed through the gate in the wall and across the courtyard and in
- through the open door, all the time yelling, “Someone’s coming! Up on the hill! Auntie Hester!
- Someone’s coming!”
- He found his aunt in the kitchen, and he grabbed her by the waist of her pants and cried, “Come and
- see! There’s people on the hill!” His voice was so shrill and urgent and loud that his aunt dropped the
- spoon into the pot of soup she’d been stirring and hurried after him. By the time they got outside, others
- from the village were leaving their houses, too, and looking toward the hillside.
- The people were coming down. Over the crest of the hill they came and kept coming, dozens of them,
- more and more, like a mudslide.
- The people of the village crowded into the streets. “Get Mary Waters!” someone called. “Where’s Ben
- and Wilmer? Find them, tell them to get out here!”
- Torren was less frightened now that he was surrounded by the townspeople. “I saw them first,” he said
- to Hattie Carranza, who happened to be hurrying along next to him. “I was the one who told the news.”
- “Is that right,” said Hattie.
- “We won’t let them do anything bad to us,” said Torren. “If they do, we’ll do something worse to
- them. Won’t we?”
- But she just glanced down at him with a vague frown and didn’t answer.
- The three village leaders—Mary Waters, Ben Barlow, and Wilmer Dent—had joined the crowd by
- now and were leading the way across the cabbage field. Torren kept close behind them. The strangers
- were getting nearer, and he wanted to hear what they would say. He could see that they were terriblelooking
- people. Their clothes were all wrong—coats and sweaters, though the weather was warm, and
- not nice coats and sweaters but raggedy ones, patched, unraveling, faded, and grimy. They carried
- bundles, all of them: sacks made of what looked like tablecloths or blankets gathered up and tied with
- string around the neck. They moved clumsily and slowly. Some of them tripped on the uneven ground
- and had to be helped up by others.
- In the center of the field, where the smell of new cabbages and fresh dirt and chicken manure was
- strong, those at the front of the crowd of strangers met the village leaders. Mary Waters stepped to the
- front, and the villagers crowded up behind her. Torren, being small, wriggled between people until he
- had a good view. He stared at the ragged people. Where weretheir leaders? Facing Mary were a girl and
- a boy who looked only a little older than he was himself. Next to them was a bald man, and next to him
- a sharp-eyed woman holding a small child. Maybe she was the leader.
- But when Mary stepped forward and said, “Who are you?” it was the boy who answered. He spoke in a
- clear, loud voice that surprised Torren, who had expected a pitiful voice from someone so bedraggled.
- “We come from the city of Ember,” the boy said. “We left there because our city was dying. We need
- help.”
- Mary, Ben, and Wilmer exchanged glances. Mary frowned. “The city of Ember? Where’s that? We’ve
- never heard of it.”
- The boy gestured back the way they had come, to the east. “That way,” he said. “It’s under the
- ground.”
- The frowns deepened. “Tell us the truth,” said Ben, “not childish nonsense.”
- This time the girl spoke up. She had long, snarled hair with bits of grass caught in it. “It isn’t a lie,” she
- said. “Really. Our city was underground. We didn’t know it until we came out.”
- Ben snorted impatiently, folding his arms across his chest. “Who is in charge here?” He looked at the
- bald man. “Is it you?”
- The bald man shook his head and gestured toward the boy and the girl. “They’re as in charge as
- anyone,” he said. “The mayor of our city is no longer with us. These young people are speaking the
- truth. We have come out of a city built underground.”
- The people around him all nodded and murmured, “Yes” and “It’s true.”
- “My name is Doon Harrow,” said the boy. “And this is Lina Mayfleet. We found the way out of
- Ember.”
- He thinks he’s pretty great, thought Torren, hearing a note of pride in the boy’s voice. He didn’t look
- so great. His hair was shaggy, and he was wearing an old jacket that was coming apart at the seams and
- grimy at the cuffs. But his eyes shone out confidently from under his dark eyebrows.
- “We’re hungry,” the boy said. “And thirsty. Will you help us?”
- Mary, Ben, and Wilmer stood silent for a moment. Then Mary took Ben and Wilmer by the arms and
- led them aside a few steps. They whispered to each other, glanced up at the great swarm of strangers,
- frowned, whispered some more. While he waited to hear what they’d say, Torren studied the people
- who said they came from underground.
- It might be true. They did in fact look as if they had crawled up out of a hole. Most of them were
- scrawny and pale, like the sprouts you see when you lift up a board that’s been lying on the ground,
- feeble things that have tried to grow in the dark. They huddled together looking frightened. They
- looked exhausted, too. Many of them had sat down on the ground now, and some had their heads in the
- laps of others.
- The three village leaders turned again to the crowd of strangers. “How many of you are there?” Mary
- Waters asked.
- “About four hundred,” said the boy, Doon.
- Mary’s dark eyebrows jumped upward.
- Four hundred! In Torren’s whole village, there were only 322. He swept his gaze out over this vast
- horde. They filled half the cabbage field and were still coming over the hill, like a swarm of ants.
- The girl with the ratty hair stepped forward and raised a hand, as if she were in school. “Excuse me,
- Madam Mayor,” she said.
- Torren snickered. Madam Mayor! Nobody called Mary Waters Madam Mayor. They just called her
- Mary.
- “Madam Mayor,” said the girl, “my little sister is very sick.” She pointed to the baby being held by the
- sharp-eyed woman. It did look sick. Its eyes were half closed, and its mouth hung open. “Some others
- of us are sick, too,” the girl went on, “or hurt—Lotty Hoover tripped and hurt her ankle, and Nammy
- Proggs is exhausted from walking so far. She’s nearly eighty years old. Is there a doctor in your town?
- Is there a place where sick people can lie down and be taken care of?”
- Mary turned to Ben and Wilmer again, and they spoke to each other in low voices. Torren could catch
- only a few words of what they said. “Too many . . .” “. . . but human kindness . . .” “. . . maybe take
- afew in . . .” Ben rubbed his beard and scowled. Wilmer kept glancing at the sick baby. After a few
- minutes, they nodded to each other. Mary said, “All right. Hoist me up.”
- Ben and Wilmer bent down and grasped Mary’s legs. With a grunt they lifted her so that she was high
- enough to see out over the crowd. She raised both her arms and cried, in a voice that came from the
- depths of her deep chest, “People from Ember! Welcome! We will do what we can to help you. Please
- follow us!” Ben and Wilmer set her down, and the three of them turned and walked out of the cabbage
- field and toward the road that entered the village. Led by the boy and the girl, the crowd of shabby
- people followed.
- Torren dashed ahead, ran down the lane, and got up onto the low wall that bordered his house. From
- there, he watched the people from underground go by. They were strangely silent. Why weren’t they
- jabbering to each other? But they seemed too tired to speak, or too stupid. They stared at everything,
- wide-eyed and drop-jawed—as if they had never seen a house before, or a tree, or a chicken. In fact, the
- chickens seemed to frighten them—they shrank back when they saw them, making startled sounds. It
- took a long time for the whole raggedy crowd to pass Torren’s house, and when the last people had
- gone by, he jumped down off the wall and followed them. They were being led, he knew, to the town
- center, down by the river, where there would be water for them to drink. After that, what would
- happen? What would they eat? Where would they sleep? Not in my room, he thought.
- CHAPTER 2
- Out from Below
- The people from the dying city of Ember had come up into the new world only a few days before. The
- first to arrive had been Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow, bringing Lina’s little sister, Poppy, with them.
- From a ledge high up in the great cave that held their city, they’d thrown down a message, hoping
- someone would find it and lead the others out. Then they’d waited. At first they’d explored the wonders
- around them. But as the hours passed, they began to worry that their message had not been found and
- that they would be alone in this world forever.
- Then, in the late afternoon of the next day, Doon suddenly shouted, “Look! They’re coming!”
- Lina grabbed Poppy by the hand. All three of them ran toward the mouth of the cave. Who was it?
- Who was it coming from home? A woman emerged from the darkness first, and then two men, and then
- three children, all of them squinting against the bright light.
- “Hello, hello!” Lina called, leaping up the hill. She saw who it was when she got closer: the family
- who ran the Callay Street vegetable market. She didn’t know any of them well—she couldn’t even
- remember their names—and yet she was so glad to see them that tears sprang to her eyes. She flung her
- arms around each one in turn, crying, “Here you are! Look, isn’t it wonderful? Oh, I’m so glad you’re
- here! And are more coming?” The new arrivals were too breathless and amazed to answer, but it didn’t
- matter, because Lina could see for herself.
- They came out from the cave, shading their eyes with their hands. They came in bunches, a few of
- them and then minutes later a few more, stumbling out into a light a thousand times brighter than any
- they’d ever seen. They stared in astonishment, walked a few steps, and then just stood, dropping the
- sacks and bundles they carried, gazing, blinking. To Lina and Doon, who felt already that they
- belonged here, the refugees from Ember looked strange in this bright landscape of green grass and blue
- sky. They were so drab and dingy in their heavy, mud-colored clothes, their coats and sweaters in
- colors like stone and dust and murky water. It was as if they had brought some of Ember’s darkness
- with them.
- Doon suddenly leapt away, shouting, “Father! Father!” He threw himself against his stunned father,
- who fell backward, sat down on the ground, and burst into a combination of laughter and weeping to
- see his son again. “Youare here,” he gasped. “I wasn’t sure. . . . I didn’t know. . . .”
- All afternoon they came. Lizzie Bisco came, and others from the old High Class, along with Clary
- Laine from the greenhouses, and the doctor who had helped Lina’s granny, and Sadge Merrall, who had
- tried to go out into the Unknown Regions. Mrs. Murdo came, walking in her brisk, businesslike way,
- but giving a cry of joy when she saw Lina hurtling toward her. People came whose faces Lina
- recognized but whose names she didn’t remember, like the shoe repair man from Liverie Street, and the
- little puffy-faced woman who lived in Selverton Square, and the tall, black-haired boy with blue-gray
- eyes so light they looked like glints of metal. What was that tall boy’s name? She spent a second trying
- to recall it, but only a second. It didn’t matter. These were her people, the people of Ember. All of them
- were tired and all of them were thirsty. Lina showed them the little stream, and they splashed the water
- on their faces and filled their bottles there.
- “What about the mayor?” Lina asked Mrs. Murdo, but she just shook her head. “He’s not with us,” she
- said.
- Some of the older people looked terrified to be in such a huge place, a place that seemed to go on
- without borders in all directions. After they had stared nervously about them for a while, they sat down
- in the grass, hunched over, and put their heads to their knees. But the children ran around in ecstasy,
- touching everything, smelling the air, splashing their feet in the stream.
- By evening, 417 people had arrived—Doon kept track. As the light began to fade from the sky, they
- shared the food they had brought, and then, using their coats as blankets and their bundles as pillows,
- they lay down on the warm, rough ground and slept.
- The next morning they got ready to leave. Lina and Doon, when they first arrived, had spotted a
- narrow gray line that ran along the ground like a pencil stroke in the distance. They thought it might be
- a road. So the people of Ember, having no other clue about where to go, picked up their bundles and set
- out in that direction, a long, straggling line trailing across the hills.
- It was on this walk that Mrs. Murdo told Lina and Doon about leaving Ember. The three of them
- walked together, Mrs. Murdo with Poppy in her arms. Doon’s father walked behind them, leaning
- forward now and then to hear what Mrs. Murdo was saying.
- “I was the one who found your message,” Mrs. Murdo said. “It fell right at my feet. It was the day after
- the Singing. I was on my way home from the market, feeling sick with worry because you and Poppy
- had disappeared. Then there was your message.” She paused and looked up at the sky. She was keeping
- a couple of tears from falling, Lina saw.
- Mrs. Murdo composed herself and went on. “I thought it would be best to tell the mayor first. I wasn’t
- sure I trusted him, but he was the one who could most easily organize the leaving. I showed him your
- message, and then I waited to hear the city clock ringing out the signal for a meeting.”
- Mrs. Murdo paused to catch her breath. They were going uphill, over rough clumps of earth—hard
- walking for city people, whose feet were accustomed to pavement.
- “And was there a meeting?” Lina asked.
- “No,” said Mrs. Murdo. She plucked some burs off her skirt and shifted Poppy to her other shoulder.
- “Mercy,” she said. “It’s terribly hot.” She stood still for a moment, breathing hard.
- “So there was no meeting?” Lina prompted.
- Mrs. Murdo started walking again. “Nothing happened at all,” she said. “The clock didn’t chime. The
- guards didn’t come out and start organizing people. Nothing. But the lights kept flickering on and off. It
- seemed to me there was no time to lose.
- “So I went to the Pipeworks and showed your message to Lister Munk. We followed the directions,
- and we found the rock marked with E right away—because people were there already.”
- “But how could they be, if they didn’t have the directions?” Doon said. “Who was it?”
- “It was the mayor,” said Mrs. Murdo grimly, “and four of his guards. Looper was there, too, that boy
- who used to keep company with your friend Lizzie. They had huge, bulging sacks with them, piled up
- on the edge of the river, and they were loading the sacks into boats. The mayor was shouting at them to
- work faster.
- “Lister yelled, ‘What are you doing?’ but we didn’t need an answer. I could see what they were doing.
- They were going first. The mayor was making sure that he would get out, along with his friends and his
- loot, before anyone else.”
- Mrs. Murdo stopped talking. She trudged along, wiping sweat from her forehead. She frowned up at
- the hot, bright sky. Poppy whimpered.
- “Let me carry the child for a while, Mrs. Murdo,” said Doon’s father.
- “Thank you,” Mrs. Murdo said. She stopped and passed the squirming Poppy to Doon’s father, and
- they walked on.
- Lina waited a minute or so, and then she couldn’t wait any longer. “Well, what happened?” she said.
- “It was awful,” Mrs. Murdo said. “Everything happened at once. Two of the guards looked up at us
- and lost their balance and fell into the water. They grabbed hold of the loaded boats, which made the
- boats tip and dump their load into the river. The other guards and Looper knelt down and tried to reach
- them, but they were pulled in, too. In the midst of all this, the mayor jumped onto the one boat that was
- still upright, but as soon as he hit it, it turned over and he plunged into the river.” Mrs. Murdo
- shuddered. “He screamed, children. It was a horrible sound. He bobbed in the water like a giant cork,
- and then he went under. In just a few seconds, he and his guards were swept away. They were gone.”
- They walked in silence for a while, going downhill now. After a few minutes Mrs. Murdo went on.
- “So Lister and I went back up into the city, and we had the Timekeeper ring the bell for a public
- meeting. We tried to explain what to do, but as soon as people heard the first bit—that a way out of
- Ember had been found, and that it was in the Pipeworks—everyone began shouting and rushing around.
- Things turned into a terrible mess. People were in too much of a hurry even to ask questions. Hundreds
- of them poured through the streets of the city all at once, and outside the door of the Pipeworks a huge
- crowd pushed and shoved to get in, so many people, so panicky, that some were trampled and crushed.”
- “Oh!” cried Lina. “How horrible!” These were people she knew! It was too awful to think about.
- “Horrible indeed,” said Mrs. Murdo. She frowned out across the vast landscape surrounding them,
- where there were no people in sight at all. “It was impossible to control them,” she went on. “They
- rushed to the stairway—some people lost their footing and fell all the way down the stairs. Others ran
- right over them. And then when they realized that they were going to have to get into these little shells
- and float on the river, some people were so frightened that they turned around and tried to go up the
- stairs again, and some were so eager to get going that they jumped into the boats and capsized them and
- fell into the river and were drowned.” She raised her eyes to Lina’s. “I saw everything that happened,”
- she said. “I’ll never forget it.”
- Lina looked behind her at the citizens of Ember toiling across the hills. These were the ones who had
- made it out. “How many do you think were—left behind?” she asked Mrs. Murdo.
- Mrs. Murdo just shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Too many.”
- “And have the lights gone out forever now?”
- “I don’t know that either. But if they haven’t, they will soon.”
- Hot as she was, Lina shuddered. She and Doon exchanged a look. They were thinking the same thing,
- she was sure: their city was lost in darkness now, and anyone left there was lost, too.
- Later that day the refugees from Ember came to the road they had seen from afar. It was potholed and
- weed-cracked, but easier to walk on than the rough ground. It led alongside a creek that flowed swiftly
- over round, smooth rocks. In all directions, they saw nothing but endless expanses of grass. They
- shared the food they had brought with them, but it wasn’t much. Some of them soon grew weak with
- hunger. They grew faint from the heat, too, which was hard to bear for people used to the constant chill
- of Ember. Poppy cried when she was set down on her feet, and her face looked flushed and hot.
- Night came in the strange, gradual way so different from the sudden lights-out that signaled night in
- Ember. The travelers lay down on the ground and slept. They walked the next day, too, and the day
- after that. By then the food they had brought with them was gone. They traveled more and more slowly,
- stopping often to rest. Poppy was listless; her eyes were dull.
- Finally, around the middle of the following day, they trudged up still another hill, and from there they
- saw a sight that made many of them weep with relief. Farmed fields lay below them in a wide valley,
- and beyond the fields, where the stream they’d been following joined a river, was a cluster of low
- brown buildings. It was a place where people lived.
- Like the others, Lina was glad to see it. But it wasn’t a bit like the city she had imagined, the one she’d
- drawn pictures of back in Ember, the one she’d hoped to find in this new world. The buildings of that
- city had been tall and majestic and sparkling with light. That city must be somewhere else, she thought
- as she started down the hill. She’d find it—not today, but someday.
- CHAPTER 3
- Through the Village
- The woman who had greeted them led the people of Ember into the town. They went down a dusty
- street, past buildings that looked as if they’d been made out of the same brown earth that was
- underfoot. They were heavy-looking, imperfect buildings: their walls were fat and lumpy, rounded
- smooth at the corners. Lina saw cracks in the walls and crumbled places where bits of a window ledge
- or a step had fallen away.
- Paths and alleys and strips of garden wound between the houses. It was clear that no one had planned
- this place, not the way the Builders had planned Ember. This town must have grown, one bit added to
- the next and another bit added to that. Plants grew everywhere. In Ember, the only plants were in the
- greenhouses—unless you counted mold and fungus, which grew on the trash heaps and sometimes in
- kitchens and bathrooms. Here, flowers and vegetables grew together beside every house. Plants sprang
- up alongside the streets, climbed walls, crawled over fences, pushed up through cracks in stairways,
- tumbled out of big pots and over windowsills and even down from roofs.
- There were animals, too—huge, amazing, terrifying animals. In a fenced-in place at the edge of the
- town, Lina saw four brown animals much bigger than she was, with squarish heads and long, tasseled
- tails. Farther on, tethered to a post in front of a house, was a yellow-eyed creature with two spikes
- poking out of its head. When she walked by, it suddenly said, “Ma-a-a-a,” and she skittered away in
- fright.
- She turned to look for Doon, who had fallen a little behind. She found him stooping over, peering at
- some yellow flowers growing next to a wall. “Look at this,” he said when she came up beside him. He
- pointed to a flower’s tube-shaped center. “There’s a spider in there the exact same yellow as the
- flower.”
- There was. Only Doon would notice such a thing. Tugging at the sleeve of his jacket, she said, “Come
- on. Stay with us,” and she hurried him up toward the front of the line to join his father and Mrs. Murdo
- and Poppy.
- These four people—Poppy and Mrs. Murdo, Doon and his father—were Lina’s family now, and she
- wanted them close around her. Only Poppy was really related to her. But Mrs. Murdo was like a
- mother; she had taken Lina and Poppy into her house when their granny died, and she would have kept
- them with her if they hadn’t had to leave the city. Doon’s father was part of her family just because he
- was Doon’s father. And Doon himself—he was the one who’d been Lina’s partner in finding the way
- out of Ember. There was a tie between the two of them that could never be broken.
- On they walked, down one street and up another, around curves and down through narrow passages.
- Everywhere, people stared at them. Some leaned from open windows. Some sat up on roofs, their legs
- dangling over the side. Some stood still in the midst of work they’d been doing, their shovels or brooms
- in their hands. These people were taller and browner than the people of Ember. Were they friendly?
- Lina couldn’t tell. A few children waved and giggled.
- After a while, the refugees came out from the narrow streets into a wide-open area. This must be like
- Ember’s Harken Square, Lina thought, a place in the center of town where people gather. It wasn’t
- square, though. It was more like a rough half circle paved in dusty brown brick.
- “What is this place called?” Lina asked Mary Waters, who was walking just ahead of her.
- “The plaza,” Mary said.
- Plah-zuh.Lina had never heard that word before. It was her first new-world word.
- On one side of the plaza was the river. On the other side were stalls with thatched roofs and small
- buildings with display racks out in front holding faded-looking clothes, shoes with thick black soles,
- candles, brooms, pots of honey and jam, along with plenty of things that Lina didn’t recognize.
- A bigger building stood at the plaza’s far end. It had wide steps in front, a double door, and a tower
- with windows up high that looked out over the plaza. Next to it was a tremendous plant of some kind—
- a great pole, much higher than the building, with branches like graceful, down-sweeping arms and
- leaves like bristles.
- “What is that?” Lina asked a woman who was standing at the edge of the plaza, watching them go by.
- The woman looked startled. “That’s our town hall,” she said.
- “No, I mean the big plant next to it.”
- “Big plant? The pine tree?”
- “Pinetree!” said Lina. “I’ve never seen a pinetree.” Her second word:pinetree.
- The woman gave her an odd look. Lina thanked her and walked on.
- “Step this way, please,” said Mary, who was trying to keep the unruly refugees in order. “There’s
- plenty of water for you here—both in the river and in the fountain.” She pointed to the middle of the
- plaza, where there was a pool of water circled by a low wall. The water in the middle of the pool
- jumped up into a column of bubble and spray that splashed back down and jumped up again constantly.
- The people of Ember surged forward. Dozens ran to the edge of the river and bent down to bathe their
- faces with water. Dozens more crowded around the pool. Children splashed their hands in it, crawled
- up on the rim, and tried to reach the leaping water in the middle. Some of the children jumped in and
- had to be hauled out by their parents. People at the rear of the crowd pushed forward, but people at the
- front weren’t ready to be pushed. Suddenly there was yelling and jostling and water sloshing out onto
- the pavement. Lina slipped and fell down, and someone tripped over her and fell, too.
- “Please!” shouted Mary, her deep, loud voice rising above the uproar.
- “Order! Order!” shouted a man’s voice. Lina heard other voices, too, as she struggled to her feet, the
- voices of the villagers crowding in at the edges of the plaza.
- “Get back, Tommy, get away from them!”
- “Where did you say they came from? Under theground ?”
- “Are they people like us, Mama?” a child said. “Or some other kind?”
- Ofcourse we’re like you, thought Lina. Aren’t we? Are there more kinds of people than one? She got
- to her feet and wrung out the hem of her sweater, which was sopping wet. She spotted Mrs. Murdo on
- the other side of the plaza and headed toward her.
- The commotion finally subsided. The people of Ember, their thirst quenched, gazed about them in
- wonder. Everything was strange and fascinating to them. They stood with their heads craned back,
- gazing at the towering plants and the peeping creatures that flitted around in them; they stooped down
- to touch the bright flowers; they peered in doorways and windows. Children ran down the grassy bank
- to the river, tore off their shoes and socks, and dunked their feet in the water. Old people, exhausted
- from their long walk, lay down behind bushes and went to sleep.
- The three town leaders began moving among the people of their village, talking with them in low
- voices for a minute or two, then nodding and moving on. Lina saw these townspeople glance at the new
- arrivals with worried looks; they didn’t seem to know what to say. Lina could understand why. What
- would the mayor of Ember have done, for instance, if four hundred people had suddenly arrived from
- the Unknown Regions?
- By this time, the sky was beginning to darken. A few townspeople started calling the refugees together.
- “Come this way! Call your children! Please sit down!” They stood at the edges of the crowd with their
- arms stretched out and nudged people inward, until finally all four hundred people were squeezed into
- the plaza, gathered around the wide steps in front of the town hall, where the three leaders were
- standing.
- Mary Waters raised her arms above her head and stood that way without speaking for several seconds.
- She looked powerful, Lina thought, even though she was very short. The way she stood, with her feet
- planted slightly apart and her back straight, made her seem almost to be growing out of the ground. Her
- black hair was streaked with gray, but her face was smooth and strong-boned.
- Gradually people fell silent and turned their attention to her.
- “Greetings!” she cried. “My name is Mary Waters. This is Ben Barlow. . . .” She pointed to one of the
- men standing next to her, a wiry man with a stiff, gray, box-like beard jutting from his chin. He had two
- wrinkles, like the number eleven, between his eyebrows. “And this is Wilmer Dent,” she said, pointing
- to the other man. He was tall and thin, with wispy, rust-colored hair. He smiled a wavering smile and
- waggled a few fingers in greeting. “We are the three leaders of this village, which is called Sparks.
- Three hundred and twenty-two people live here. I understand that you come from a city three days’
- walk away. I must say, this is a . . . a surprise to us. We have not been aware of any post-Disaster
- settlements nearby, much less a city.”
- “What does ‘post-Disaster’ mean?” Lina whispered to Doon.
- “I don’t know,” Doon said.
- Mary Waters cleared her throat with a gruff sound and took a breath. “We will do our best for you
- tonight, and then tomorrow we will talk about . . . about your plans. Some of our households are willing
- to take in a few of you for the night—those with young children, and those who are old or ill. The rest
- of you may sleep here in the plaza. Those who go with the householders will share in their evening
- meal. Those who stay here will be given bread and fruit.”
- There was a scattering of applause from the people of Ember. “Thank you!” several voices cried out.
- “Thank you so much!”
- “What’s ‘bread’?” Lina whispered to Doon.
- He shrugged his shoulders.
- “Will all those who most need shelter for the night please stand?” Mary Waters called. “As I said—
- those with children, and the elderly and ill.”
- A rustle swept through the crowd as people got to their feet. Voices murmured, “Stand up, Father,”
- “You go, Willa,” “No, I’m all right, you go,” “Let Arno go, he’s sprained his foot.” Because of Poppy,
- Lina and Mrs. Murdo stood up. Doon remained sitting, and so did his father.
- The brilliant yellow ball in the sky was traveling downward now, and the shadows grew longer. Night
- was coming, and with the gathering darkness Lina’s spirits grew darker, too. She thought of the greenand-
- blue bedroom she’d moved into back at Mrs. Murdo’s house in Ember, the lovely room she had
- been so glad to have. She was homesick for it. Right now, she would have been happy to have a bowl
- of turnip soup and then crawl between the covers of the bed in that room, with Poppy next to her, and
- Mrs. Murdo out in the living room tidying up, and the great clock of Ember about to strike nine, the
- hour when the lights went out. She knew that this place—the village of Sparks—was alive, and that
- Ember was dead, and she would not want to go back there even if she could. But right now, as the air
- grew chilly and whispered against her skin, and a strange bed in a stranger’s house waited for her, she
- longed for what was familiar.
- Mary Waters was calling out names. At each name, someone from the village stepped up and said how
- many people that household could take.
- “Leah Parsons!”
- A tall woman in a black dress came forward. “Two people,” she said, and Mary Waters pointed at an
- old couple at the front of the crowd of refugees, who picked up their bags and followed the tall woman.
- “Randolph Bonito,” called Mary, and a big, red-faced man said, “Five.” The Candrick family, with
- their three small children, went with him.
- “Evers Mills.” “Four.”
- “Lanny McMorris.” “Two.”
- “Jane Garcia.” “Three.”
- It went on for a long time. The sky grew darker and the air cooler. Lina shivered. She untied her
- sweater from around her waist and put it on. Light and warmth must go together here, she thought:
- warm in the day, when the bright light was in the sky, and cool at night. In Ember, the lights made no
- heat at all, and the temperature was always the same.
- At the edges of the plaza, someone was raising a flame-tipped stick and lighting lanterns that hung
- from the eaves of buildings. They glowed deep yellow and red.
- Mary was pointing at Mrs. Murdo now. “You, ma’am,” she said. “Your child looks the sickest of
- anyone. We’ll send you home with our doctor.” She beckoned to a woman standing nearby, a tall, bony
- old woman with bushy gray hair chopped off just below her ears. She was wearing loose pants of faded
- blue and a rumpled tan shirt that was buttoned crookedly, so one side hung down lower than the other.
- “Dr. Hester will take you,” Mary said. “Dr. Hester Crane.”
- Lina stood up. She turned to Doon. “Will you be all right here?” she said. It made her uneasy to be
- separated from Doon and his father.
- “We’ll be fine,” Doon said.
- “No need to worry,” said his father, spreading a blanket on the ground.
- The doctor stooped down to look at Poppy, who drowsed in Mrs. Murdo’s arms. She put a hand on
- Poppy’s forehead—a big, knuckly hand, with veins like blue yarn. She pulled down the underside of
- Poppy’s eye. “Um-hm,” she said. “Yes. Well. Come along, I’ll do what I can for her.”
- Lina cast an anxious glance at Doon.
- “Come and find us in the morning,” Doon said. “We’ll be right here.”
- “This way,” the doctor said. “Oh, wait.” She scanned the mostly empty plaza. “Torren!” she called.
- Lina heard the slap of footsteps on brick and saw a boy running toward them out of the darkness.
- “We’re going home now,” the doctor said to him. “These people are coming with us.”
- The boy was younger than Lina. He had a strangely narrow face—as if someone had put a hand on
- either side of his head and pushed hard. His eyes were round blue dots. Above his high forehead, his
- light brown hair stood up in an untidy tuft.
- He glared sideways at Lina and said nothing. The doctor headed up the road beside the river, walking
- with a long stride, her hands in her pockets and her head bent forward as if she were looking for
- something on the ground.
- Staying close beside Mrs. Murdo, who was carrying the sleeping Poppy, Lina followed. The chilly
- evening air crept in through the threads of her sweater, and an insect hovering near her ear made a high,
- needle-like whine. The homesick feeling swelled so big inside her that she had to cross her arms tightly
- and clench her teeth to keep it from coming out.
- CHAPTER 4
- The Doctor’s House
- The sky had turned a deep blue now, almost black. At one edge shone a streak of brilliant crimson. In
- the houses of the village, one window and then another began to glow with a flickering yellow light.
- They walked and walked. Each time they came to a doorway, or a gate in a wall, or stairs leading
- upward, Lina hoped this might be the house. Back in Ember, where she’d had the job of messenger,
- she’d been a tireless runner; running was her greatest joy. Tonight it was hard just to walk. She was so
- tired her feet felt like bricks. But Dr. Hester walked on and on, with the boy trotting ahead of her
- sometimes, and sometimes lagging back to stare at Lina and Mrs. Murdo and Poppy, until they came to
- the outer edge of the village. There, standing somewhat apart, was a low-roofed house. Except for a
- glimmer of light on its two windows, reflected from the reddening sky, it was in darkness, huddled
- beneath a great brooding plant the shape of a huge mushroom.
- “Is that a pinetree?” Lina asked the doctor.
- “Oak tree,” the doctor said, so Lina understood that “tree” must mean all big plants, and they came in
- different kinds.
- A path led to a wooden gate, which the doctor opened. They came into a shadowy, leaf-littered
- courtyard paved with uneven bricks. On three sides were the three wings of the house, like a squarecornered
- U. The eaves of the roof sloped down to form a walkway all around. In the failing light, Lina
- could just see that the courtyard was crowded with plants, some growing in the ground and some in
- pots of all sizes. Vines wound up the columns of the walkway and crawled along the edge of the roof.
- “Come inside,” the doctor said. She led the way to a door in the central part of the house. She and the
- boy went in. Lina stopped just inside the doorway, and Mrs. Murdo came up behind her, Poppy in her
- arms. They stood peering into the gloom. There was an odd pungent smell—like mushrooms or leaf
- mold, only sharper.
- The doctor disappeared for a moment, and when she came back she held a lit candle. She moved
- around the room lighting more—two candles, three candles, four, until a wavery light filled the central
- part of the room. The corners remained in darkness.
- “Come in, come in,” the doctor said impatiently.
- Lina moved forward. She felt grit beneath the soles of her shoes, and the tickle of dust in her nose. She
- was in a long, low room with clutter everywhere—clothes draped over the backs of armchairs, a shoe
- on a saggy couch, a plate with some bits of food on it sitting on the windowsill. At one end of the room
- were two doors, both of them closed. At the back, a stairway rose into a dark square hole in the ceiling.
- At the other end of the room, in the corner, was an open doorway—leading, Lina guessed, to the
- kitchen. Beside this doorway was a kind of hollow in the wall, framed by stones and containing some
- sticks and scraps of paper.
- The doctor stooped down before this hollow place and held her candle to the sticks and paper there. In
- a moment, a flame leapt up. It was a bigger flame than Lina had ever seen, like a terrible orange hand,
- reaching up and out. Lina’s heart knocked hard against her ribs. She stepped backward, bumping into
- Mrs. Murdo. They stood staring, Mrs. Murdo with a hand clutching Lina’s shoulder.
- The doctor turned around and saw them. “What’s the matter?” she said.
- Lina couldn’t speak. Her eyes were fixed on the flames, which leapt higher and crackled.
- Mrs. Murdo tried to answer. “It’s, ah, it’s—” She inclined her head toward the end of the room, where
- the first flame had become a dozen flames, licking upward, sending out flashes of orange light.
- “Oh!” said the doctor. “The fire? You’re not used to fire?”
- Mrs. Murdo managed to smile apologetically. Lina just stared.
- “It stays in the fireplace,” the doctor said. “Not at all dangerous.”
- In Ember, there was never fire unless there was danger—someone’s electric wiring had frayed and
- ignited, or a pot holder had fallen on a stove’s electric burner. The only fire Lina had seen that wasn’t
- dangerous was the tiny flame of a candle. This fire scared her.
- In the window glass, reflections glimmered. The windows were set so deeply into the walls that there
- was a ledge at the bottom, wide enough to sit on. The boy, Torren, hiked himself up on one of these
- ledges and sat there, kicking his feet against the cabinet set in the wall below it. “Afraid of fire,” he said
- in a low, scornful voice.
- “Come in,” the doctor said. “You can sit over there, if you like.” She pointed to some chairs at the
- other end of the room, far from the fire, so that was where Lina and Mrs. Murdo sat. Poppy woke up
- enough to give a weak wail, and then she slumped into Mrs. Murdo’s lap. “This will likely be the last
- fire of the season, anyway,” said the doctor. “Nights will be getting warmer soon. We won’t need one.”
- A creak sounded from outside, and then rapid footsteps. Someone pounded on the door. Lina clutched
- Mrs. Murdo’s hand.
- But the doctor only sighed and moved to answer the knock. “Oh, it’s you, William,” she said. “What
- do you need?”
- “Some of that ointment,” said a man’s voice. “I need it right now. My wife cut her hand. It’s bleeding
- all over.”
- “Come in, come in, I’ll get it,” the doctor said, and she went into another room and rummaged around
- while the man stood shyly just inside the door, looking out of the corners of his eyes at Lina and Mrs.
- Murdo.
- The doctor brought him his jar of ointment, and he went away. No more than ten minutes later, another
- knock came, this time from a young woman who wanted some willow bark medicine for her sister, who
- had a pounding headache. Again the doctor rattled around in the other room. She came out with a small
- bottle, and the woman hurried off with it.
- “Are you the only doctor here?” Mrs. Murdo inquired.
- “Yes,” said Dr. Hester. “It’s a never-ending job.” She suddenly looked worried. “Did I give William
- the right jar? Yes, yes, the one on the third shelf, I’m sure I did.” She gave a frazzled sigh. “Now let’s
- tend to your little girl. Put her down here.” She patted the couch that stood against the wall. “And wrap
- her in this.” She retrieved a knitted blanket that had fallen on the floor, gave it a shake, and handed it to
- Mrs. Murdo. “I’ll give her a swallow of medicine.”
- Poppy accepted two spoonfuls of medicine—it was something reddish that Dr. Hester poured from a
- jar—and spit out the third, whimpering. Lina’s heart ached to see Poppy so sick. Most of the time,
- Poppy was a ball of energy, so quick and curious you never knew what she’d do next. She might chew
- up a valuable document, for instance, or trot off on an exploration of her own at exactly the wrong
- moment. Now she was limp and pale, like a little sprout that hadn’t been watered.
- Mrs. Murdo laid her on the bed. Lina sat by her and stroked her hair, and quite soon she went to sleep.
- The doctor disappeared into the kitchen, and Torren climbed the stairs and vanished into the room
- above.
- All at once Lina was overcome with tiredness. The disorderly house, the unfriendly boy, the fire . . . all
- of it was strange and disturbing. And Poppy was terribly sick, which worried Lina so much that she felt
- a little sick herself. She sat down by Mrs. Murdo and laid her head on Mrs. Murdo’s lap. She was
- vaguely aware of clattering and chopping noises coming from the kitchen, and then she dozed off into a
- confusing dream of lights and shadows. . . .
- “Dinner!” shouted Torren. Lina bolted upright, and he laughed. “Have you heard of food?” he said.
- “Have you heard of eating?”
- They sat at the table, all of them but Poppy, and the doctor ladled out something from a big bowl. Lina
- wasn’t sure what it was. Cold potatoes, she thought, and something else. She ate it because she was
- hungry. But when she had eaten she suddenly became so tired again that she could hardly move.
- “Quite tasty,” said Mrs. Murdo. “Thank you.”
- “Well,” said the doctor. “Certainly. You’re welcome.” She started to stand up, then sat down again,
- looking flustered. “Maybe you’d like to read? Or . . . walk around? Or . . .”
- “We’re a bit tired,” said Mrs. Murdo. “Perhaps we could go to bed.”
- Dr. Hester’s face brightened. “Bed, yes,” she said, standing up. “Of course, why didn’t I . . . Let’s see.
- Where will we put you?” She looked around, as if an extra bed might be hidden in the mess. “The loft, I
- suppose.”
- “No!” cried Torren. “That’s my room!”
- “It’s the only place with two beds,” said Dr. Hester. Picking up a candle, she made her way through the
- clutter to the stairway.
- “They’ll touch my things! And Caspar’s things!” cried Torren.
- “Don’t be silly,” said Dr. Hester, starting up the stairs.
- “But where will I sleep?” Torren wailed.
- “In the medicine room,” said Dr. Hester. Tears had appeared in Torren’s eyes, but the doctor didn’t
- notice. She disappeared into the loft, and for a few minutes Lina heard thumps and scrapes from above.
- “Come on up,” the doctor called.
- Lina climbed the stairs, and Mrs. Murdo came after, carrying Poppy. By the light of the doctor’s
- candle, Lina saw two beds under a sloping ceiling. There was a chest at the foot of each bed. Some
- clothes hung from hooks, and some boxes were neatly lined up on the sill of the one window.
- “Two beds, but three of you,” said the doctor, frowning. “We could . . . hmm. We could put the
- baby . . .”
- “It’s all right,” Lina said. “She’ll sleep with me.”
- And a few minutes later, she was in bed, Poppy in the crook of her arm, covers drawn over them.
- “Good night,” Mrs. Murdo said from the other bed, and the candle was blown out, and the room went
- dark—but not as dark as the rooms in Ember at night. Lina could still see a faint gray rectangle where
- the window was, because of the lights in the sky, the silver circle and the bright pinpoints. What are
- they called? she wondered. And who is Caspar? And how can the doctor stand to have that huge, awful
- fire right there on the floor of her house?
- Everything here was the opposite of Ember. Ember was dark and cold; this place was bright and hot.
- Ember was orderly; this place was disorderly. In Ember, everything was familiar to her. Here
- everything was strange. Will I learn to like it here? she wondered. Will I ever feel at home? She held
- Poppy tight against her and listened to her snuffly breathing for a long time before she fell asleep.
- The First Town Meeting
- While Lina slept, the three town leaders were holding a meeting. They sat at a table in the tower room
- of the town hall, which looked out over the plaza. Mary’s hands were clasped tightly in front of her.
- Ben scowled, his gray eyebrows bunched together, deepening the two lines between them. Wilmer
- pulled nervously on one ear and looked from Mary to Ben and back to Mary.
- “They can’t stay here,” said Mary. “There are too many of them. Where would we put them? How
- would we feed them?”
- “Yes,” said Wilmer. “But where can they go?”
- No one spoke. They had no answer for that question. Outside the settlement of Sparks, the Empty
- Lands stretched for miles in all directions.
- “They could go up to Pine Gap,” said Wilmer. “Maybe.”
- Mary snorted and shook her head. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “That’s at least two weeks’ walk
- away. How could these feeble people travel that far? How could they carry enough food with them?
- Where would theyget enough food, unless we emptied our storehouse and gave them everything?”
- Wilmer nodded, knowing she was right. The people of Sparks knew of only three other settlements,
- and they’d heard from the roamers that those places were smaller and poorer than Sparks. Their
- inhabitants wouldn’t want extra mouths to feed, either.
- The three of them gazed out the window and down at the moonlit plaza, filled with strange sleeping
- people from a city under the earth. Four hundred of them, with no food, no possessions to speak of, and
- nowhere to go.
- “What I fail to understand,” said Ben, “is why this particular misfortune has happened to us.” He
- paused, looked into the air to his left, and frowned. This was a habit of his; he seemed to need a pause
- and a frown every now and then to put together his thoughts. Wilmer and Mary had gotten used to
- waiting through these pauses. “I don’t see that we deserve it,” Ben went on after a few seconds, “having
- labored as diligently as we have. And just when we are starting to prosper at last, after so many years of
- . . . well, adversity is a mild word for it.”
- The others nodded, thinking of the hard years. There’d been winters when people shivered in tents and
- ate chopped-up roots and shriveled nuts. There had been years of drought and plagues of tomato worms
- and devastating crop failures that meant people had nothing to eat for months but cabbage and potatoes.
- There had been times when people had to work so hard to stay alive that they sometimes died just from
- being too tired to go on. No one wanted to go back to those times.
- “So what do we do,” said Mary, “if they can’t stay and they can’t go? What is the right thing to do?”
- The others sat silent.
- “Well, there’s the Pioneer,” said Wilmer. “As a temporary solution.”
- “True,” said Ben.
- “A good thought,” said Mary, and Wilmer beamed. “So what about this,” Mary went on. “We’ll let
- them stay in the Pioneer. We’ll give them water and food—we do have some extra in the storehouse. In
- exchange, they work—they help in the fields, they help with building, they do whatever there is to do.
- We’d have to teach them how. As far as I can see, they know nothing. After a while, when they’re
- stronger, and when they know better how to get along, they can move on. They can set up their own
- village somewhere else.”
- “We’ll have to watch them carefully if we let them stay,” said Ben. “They’re strange. We don’t know
- what they might do.”
- “They seem fairly ordinary to me,” said Mary. “Except for the business about living in a cave.”
- “You believed that?” said Ben.
- Mary shrugged. “The question is, shall we let them stay?”
- “How long would we have to keep them,” asked Wilmer, “before they were ready to go?”
- “I don’t know. Maybe six months? Let’s see. It’s near the end of Flowering now.” Mary counted out
- the months on her fingers. “Shining, Burning, Browning, Cooling, Falling, Chilling. They could stay
- through the summer and fall seasons and leave at the end of Chilling.”
- “That would mean they’d be on their own for the winter,” Wilmer pointed out.
- “That’s right,” said Ben. “Are you suggesting we should keep them even longer? We’ll be stretching
- ourselves to keep them at all.”
- They fell silent again, considering this.
- Finally Mary spoke. “Shall we let them stay for six months, then?” she said. “And teach them as much
- as we can?”
- No one really liked this idea. They thought of the food the refugees would need, which would mean
- less for their own people, and the bother of teaching them all the skills they’d need to survive on their
- own. Each one—Mary, Wilmer, and especially Ben—wished the unfortunate cave people would simply
- vanish.
- But they weren’t going to vanish, and the leaders of Sparks knew that they must for the sake of their
- consciences do the right thing. They wanted to be wise, good leaders, unlike the leaders of the past,
- whose terrible mistakes had led to the Disaster. So they would be open-minded. They would be
- generous.
- With this in mind, the three leaders voted:
- Mary voted yes, the cave people should stay.
- Ben voted yes, reluctantly.
- Wilmer voted yes.
- So it was agreed: They would give them a place to stay. They would help them for six months. After
- that, the strangers would have to take care of themselves.
- Mary, Ben, and Wilmer shook hands on this agreement, but none of them said out loud what they were
- thinking: that even after six months, the people of Ember would be hard-pressed to start a town. The
- founders of Sparks had known carpentry and farming, and even so it had taken them two years just to
- build rough shelters and get the rocks out of the fields. They had known how to manage animals and
- build good soil, but still their animals sometimes died of disease and hunger in the many years when
- the crops failed. They had known to expect harsh weather, wolves, and bandits, and still they suffered
- losses from all three.
- The town leaders knew in their hearts that in this vast, empty country, where there were a thousand
- dangers the people of Ember did not understand, they wouldnever be able to take care of themselves.
- CHAPTER 5
- The Pioneer
- In the village the next morning, criers ran through the streets calling to the people of Sparks. They told
- them to bring out all their old blankets, pillows, towels, and rags, and any clothes they no longer
- needed. They were to heap these on the street in front of their houses. From the storehouse, people
- collected food—things that didn’t need to be cooked, like apples from the prior fall, and dried apricots,
- and bread, and big hunks of cheese. Doon, who had gotten up at the first sign of light in the sky,
- watched these preparations with rising excitement.
- By midday a caravan was moving southward out of the village. It was composed of strange vehicles
- that the villagers called “truck-wagons,” or just “trucks.” They were made of rusty metal and had four
- fat black wheels. At the front was a boxy part, like a metal chest with a rounded top, and behind that
- was a higher box with two seats in it where the drivers sat. The back of the truck was flat; this was
- where the crates of supplies were loaded. Attached to each of these trucks by sturdy ropes were two
- big, squarish, muscular animals, by far the most enormous animals Doon had ever seen. They made
- snuffling noises, and sometimes a low sort of groan.
- “What are they?” Doon asked someone walking near him.
- “Oxen,” the man answered. “Like cows, you know? That milk comes from?”
- Doon had never heard of cows. He had thought milk came as powder in a box. He didn’t say this, of
- course. He just nodded.
- “And what does ‘truck’ mean?” he asked. He understood the “wagon” part.
- The man looked surprised. “It just means ‘truck,’” he said. “You know—what people used to drive in
- the old times. There are millions of them, trucks and cars, everywhere. They used to run on their own,
- without oxen. They had engines in here.” He rapped on the front of the truck. “You poured stuff called
- gasleen on the engine, and it made the wheels turn. Now, since we don’t have gasleen anymore, we
- take the engines out, and that makes the trucks light and easy to pull.”
- Doon didn’t ask what “gasleen” was. He didn’t want to show his ignorance all at once. He’d spread his
- questions around, find out just a few things from one person at a time.
- He and his father walked along together beside one of the trucks. Doon had expected Lina to be with
- them, but by the time the caravan left she hadn’t come. That was all right. She’d easily find out where
- they’d gone and come later.
- Doon’s father still had sore muscles from the long walk of the days before, so Doon soon went ahead
- of him. He was bursting with energy and joy and simply could not walk slowly. He took deep breaths
- of sweet-smelling morning air. Over his head, the sky was a deep, clear blue, a thousand times bigger
- than the black lid that had covered Ember, and around him the green-and-golden land seemed to stretch
- away without end. Doon kept wondering where the edges were. He made his way to the front of the
- procession and asked Wilmer, who was trotting along with his arms swinging jauntily.
- “Edges?” said Wilmer, glancing down.
- “Yes. I mean, if I were standing way over there”—he pointed to the horizon, where the sky seemed to
- meet the land—“would I be at the edge of this place? And what’s beyond the edge?”
- “There is no edge,” said Wilmer, looking at Doon as if he must have something wrong with him. “The
- earth is a sphere—a huge, round ball. If you kept going and going, you’d eventually come back to
- where you started.”
- This nearly knocked the breath out of Doon, it was so strange and hard to comprehend. He thought at
- first that Wilmer was playing a joke on him, thinking he was a fool. But Wilmer’s expression was
- plainly puzzled, not sly. He must be telling the truth.
- There were a million mysteries here, Doon thought. He would explore them all! He would learn
- everything! That morning, he’d already learned the wordssun, tree, wind, star, andbird. He’d
- learneddog, chicken, goat, andbread.
- He had never in his life felt so good. He felt as huge as the land around him and as clear and bright as
- the air. No laboring in dank tunnels here; no running through dark streets to escape pursuit. Now he
- was out in the open, free. And he was powerful, too, in a way he hadn’t been before. He had done
- something remarkable—saved his people from their dying city—and, along with Lina, he would be
- known for that deed all his life. He gazed around at this new world full of life and beauty, and he felt
- proud to have brought his people here.
- The road passed the last houses of the village and ran along the river, which was wide and slow, with
- grasses bending along its banks. The trucks rattled. Clouds of dust billowed from their wheels. All
- around Doon rose a babble of voices as people pointed things out in tones of astonishment.
- “Look—something white floating in the sky!”
- “Did you see that little animal with the big tail?”
- “Do you feel that? The air ismoving !”
- Children darted every which way, daring each other to touch the broad sides of the oxen, plucking
- blossoms from the brambles at the edge of the road, jumping onto the trucks for a quick ride until they
- were shooed off again.
- And the sun shone down on everyone. The people of Ember loved the strange feeling of heat on the
- tops of their heads. They put their hands up often to touch their warm hair.
- The road went up a gentle rise and around a clump of trees. “Here we are!” cried Wilmer, sweeping his
- arm out proudly. “The Pioneer Hotel!”
- At the crest of the slope stood a building bigger than any Doon had ever seen. It was three stories high
- and very long, with a wing at each end perpendicular to the main part. Windows marched in three rows
- across its walls. In the center, overlooking a long field that sloped down to the river, was what must
- once have been a grand entrance—wide steps, a roof held up by columns, a double doorway. But the
- building was grand no more. It was very old, Doon could tell; its walls were gray and stained, and most
- of the windows were no more than dark holes. The roof had sagged inward in some places. Grass grew
- right up to the steps, and far down at the other end, Doon could see that a tree had fallen against the
- building and smashed a corner of it.
- Ben Barlow strode across the wide, weedy field in front of the hotel and climbed the steps. Wilmer
- followed. He leaned against a column, and Ben took a position on the top step and waited for the crowd
- of refugees to assemble before him. Doon wove among the people until he found his father again, and
- they stood together.
- Ben held up both hands and called, “Attention, please!” The crowd grew silent. “Welcome to your new
- home, the Pioneer Hotel,” he said.
- A cheer arose from the crowd. Ben frowned and held up both hands, palms out, and the cheer died
- away. “It is atemporary home only,” he said. “We cannot, of course, keep you here in Sparks on a
- permanent basis. To do so would severely strain our resources and no doubt cause resentment and
- deprivation among our people.” Ben cleared his throat and frowned into the air. Then he went on. “We
- have decided you may stay here for six months—through summer and fall, to the end of the month of
- Chilling. After that time, with the training you’ll receive from us, you will go out into the Empty Lands
- and found a village of your own.”
- The people of Ember glanced at each other in surprise. Found their own village? Some of them smiled
- eagerly at this idea; others looked uncertain. The city of Ember had been constructedfor them. All
- they’d ever had to do was repair work as the buildings got older. They’d never built anything from
- scratch. But, Doon said to himself, thinking about all this, I’m sure we could learn.
- Ben went on. “The Pioneer Hotel has seventy-five rooms,” he said, “plus a big dining room, a
- ballroom, offices, and a lobby. There will be adequate space for everyone.”
- Excited murmurs swept through the crowd. Doon started doing the math in his head. Four hundred and
- seventeen people divided by seventy-five rooms equaled five or six people per room. That sounded
- crowded, but maybe they were big rooms. And then there were the dining room and the ballroom,
- whatever that was, maybe those would hold ten or twenty people. . . .
- “Now, of course this building is somewhat less than fully functional,” Ben went on. “You won’t have
- water pumps here, as we do in the village. But the river is close, just down this slope, and the water is
- clean. The river will provide water for drinking, bathing, and washing clothes. Your toilets will be
- outside—you’ll start digging them tomorrow, once we’ve organized you into work teams. Today you’ll
- settle into your rooms.” He paused, frowning. The two lines between his eyebrows deepened. “There’s
- not much furniture left in the rooms,” he said. “Maybe a few rooms still have beds, but I think we’ve
- taken most of them by now. You’ll be sleeping on the floor.”
- “Sleeping on the floor!” The voice came from somewhere behind Doon. Its tone was somewhere
- between outrage and amused disbelief. Doon turned around to see whose it was. In the middle of the
- crowd he spotted a tall boy, a young man really, who seemed to be standing up on something—maybe a
- rock or tree stump—so he could look out over people’s heads. He was handsome in a sharp-edged way.
- His jaw was square-cornered. His shoulders were straight as a board. His dark hair was combed back
- from his face and slicked down, so his head looked neat and round and hard, and his eyes were as pale
- as bits of sky.
- Doon recognized this boy, though he didn’t know him—his name was Mick, or Trick, or Mack, or
- something like that.
- “On the floor, yes,” said Ben. “But we’ll give you as many blankets as we can.”
- The boy’s sharp voice came again, rising above the others. “One more question, sir: What about
- food?”
- The question rippled through the crowd: Yes, food. What will we eat?
- Ben raised his voice. “Please listen!” he shouted. “Listen!” All faces turned toward him again. Doon
- could see that Ben’s eyes were fixed on the boy with the sharp voice. Ben had the look of a teacher
- speaking to a slightly unruly class. “Eating will work this way,” he said. “You will be assigned to
- households in the village—four or five people to each house. At noontime, you’ll go there for your
- main meal.” He paused and frowned. “As for breakfast and dinner—your lunchtime family will give
- you food to take away with you, some to eat in the evening, and some to save for the next morning.
- They will be as generous as they can. But remember—we do not have anabundance of extra food. Your
- arrival means less for everyone.” He gazed at the crowd for a moment and took a breath. “Is that
- clear?” he said. “Any questions?”
- No one spoke for a moment, and then the tall boy said, “No, sir. Lead on.”
- So Ben led the way into the lobby of the ancient Pioneer Hotel. Doon and his father stayed close
- together, stepping carefully. It was hard to see. The only light came from the doorway behind them and
- from a hole in a great dirt-encrusted glass dome three stories above their heads. The floor was littered
- with chunks of fallen plaster and gritty with dirt that had blown in over the years.
- “This place needs work,” Doon whispered to his father.
- His father brushed a spiderweb away from his face. “Yes,” he said. “But we’re lucky to be here. We
- could be sleeping on the ground.”
- Ben led them down a hall to the left, to a vast room with high windows, where dusty sunshine slanted
- across the broken tiles of the floor. “This was the dining room,” Ben called out. Doon saw only a few
- chairs, lying on their sides, most of them with a leg broken or missing.
- Beyond the dining room was a room even more immense, with a raised platform at one end, a high
- ceiling, and a wooden floor. “The ballroom,” Ben said. “In earlier years, before the Disaster, musicians
- sat up there on the stage. People danced out here.” At the great high windows hung tatters of faded
- rose-colored cloth that had been curtains years ago.
- “Smells moldy in here.” It was that boy again. His clear, sharp voice carried over other voices even
- though it wasn’t much louder. “Reminds me of home.”
- People laughed. It was true—the smell of mold was common in the underground city of Ember. There
- was a bit of comfort in it.
- Doon suddenly remembered the name of this tall boy who kept speaking out. It was Tick—Tick
- Hassler. In Ember, Doon recalled, Tick had been a hauler. He had pulled carts full of produce from the
- greenhouses to the stores, and garbage from the stores out to the trash heaps. Doon hadn’t known him
- then, but he remembered seeing him, pulling his loaded cart with his whole long body slanted forward
- and a fierce grin of effort on his face. He’d pulled his carts faster than anyone else.
- Ben led them to the stairs, and they climbed to the floors above. Long, dim corridors lined with doors
- stretched the length of the building. Some of the doors were open. Doon looked through them as he
- passed. All the rooms were more or less the same: windows across one wall, a stained and faded carpet,
- a couple of broken lamps lying on the floor. A few of the rooms had beds, and several had other
- furniture—chests with their drawers hanging crookedly out, end tables, a chair or two. He stepped into
- some of the rooms and found that they had bathrooms as well, with rust-stained sinks and bathtubs that
- were homes to spiders.
- For the next couple of hours, people swarmed through the corridors and up and down the stairs, calling
- to each other as they chose their rooms and decided who to share them with. People grouped together,
- chose a room, then changed their minds and teamed up with another group. Shouts rang through the
- halls.
- “Jake! Down here!”
- “No, this one is better, it has a chair!”
- “Mama! Where are you?”
- “This room’s full! No more people!”
- Doon heard Tick’s voice ringing out over the others now and then. He wondered which room he was
- choosing, and who he was choosing to live with.
- Finally everyone was settled. Doon and his father chose a room on the second floor, room 215, along
- with two other people. One was Edward Pocket, who had been Ember’s librarian. He was a friend of
- Doon’s, in a way. He was old and often crabby, but he liked Doon, who had been a frequent visitor to
- the library. The other was Sadge Merrall, the man who had tried to venture out into the Unknown
- Regions beyond the city of Ember. For a while after that experience, he’d gone out of his mind with
- fright and raved in Harken Square about monsters and doom. He’d recovered somewhat since then. In
- spite of his terror, he’d managed to climb into one of the boats that took people out of the city to the
- new world. But he was still a fearful, trembling sort of person. Nearly everything about this unfamiliar
- place scared him. He refused to go near the window of their new room. “Something might come in,” he
- said. “There are things here that fly.”
- The four of them set to work fixing up the room. It was full of cobwebs, two of its three windows were
- broken, and bits of dry leaves and splinters of glass littered the carpet. It also had a dresser with three
- drawers, a padded armchair with a sunken seat, and two end tables with lamps.
- They took their socks off and used them as dust rags to sweep away the cobwebs. They picked up the
- leaves and glass and tossed them out the windows. They put the lamps out in the hall—they were
- useless, of course, since there was no electricity—and they lined up the dresser and end tables in the
- middle of the room to make a sort of wall dividing the space in two. There was enough room for Doon
- and his father to spread their blankets on the floor on one side, and Sadge to spread his on the other.
- Edward Pocket, who was very short, decided to spread his blanket on the floor of the large closet,
- which had a sliding door. He said he didn’t mind being slightly cramped; he liked the privacy.
- That night, Doon didn’t sleep much. He lay on his folded blankets and stared up through the window at
- the dark sky. His mind teemed with possibilities—so much to do, so much to learn! He felt suddenly
- older and stronger, though it had been less than a week since he’d left Ember. But he was a new person
- in this new world. He would do new things and be friends with new people. Maybe, he thought,
- remembering the voice that had stood out above the others that day, he’d be friends with Tick.
- CHAPTER 6
- Breakfast with Disaster
- Lina’s first morning in the doctor’s house did not go well. Poppy was still sleeping when she
- awakened, and so was Mrs. Murdo, so she got up quietly, put on the same pricker-stuck clothes she’d
- been wearing the day before, and went down the stairs. The doctor was standing by the table in what
- must have been her nightgown—a patched brown sack that hung to her knees. The hair at the back of
- her head was sticking up. She was leafing through a big book that lay on the table.
- “Oh!” said the doctor, seeing Lina. “You’re up. I was just looking for . . . I was trying to find . . . Well.
- I suppose it’s time for breakfast.”
- The doctor’s kitchen looked like a complete mess to Lina. In Ember, the kitchens had been spare,
- stocked with only what was needed—some shelves, an electric stove, a refrigerator. But in Dr. Hester’s
- kitchen there were a thousand things. Wide wooden counters ran along two sides, and on the counters
- was a jumble of jugs and pans and tubs and pitchers, big spoons and knives and scoops, and jars and
- bottles full of things that looked like pebbles and brown powder and tiny white teeth. There were
- baskets piled with vegetables Lina had never seen before. In the corner squatted a bulging black iron
- box. She thought it might be a cabinet, since there was a door in its front.
- “We’ll see if we have any eggs this morning,” said Dr. Hester. “That would be a start.”
- Torren appeared suddenly from the other room. “Eggs!” he cried. “I want one!”
- Eggs? Lina didn’t know what that meant. She followed the doctor and Torren through a door that led
- outside. Beyond the door was a place like an open-air version of the Ember greenhouses, only the
- plants growing here were far bigger and wilder, curling and twining and shooting upward with
- tremendous energy. Lina recognized some of them: bean vines climbed up frames of netting, tomato
- vines grew on wooden towers, chard and kale plants spurted up like big green fountains.
- In among the rows of plants, some fat, fluffed-up, two-legged creatures of the kind she’d seen on her
- way into town yesterday waddled along, poking at the ground with a sharp thing like a tooth that stuck
- out from their faces.
- “What are those?” asked Lina.
- “Chickens,” said the doctor. “We’ll check their nests and see if they’ve left us anything.” She bent
- down and went through the door of a wooden hut in the back of the garden, and when she came out she
- had spiderwebs in her hair and a white ball in her hand—not a round ball, but one that looked as if it
- had been stretched sideways. “Just one today,” she said.
- “I want it!” cried Torren.
- “No,” said the doctor. “You’ve had plenty of eggs. This one is for our guest.” She handed the egg to
- Lina, who took it gingerly. It was smooth and warm. She had no idea what it was. It felt more like a
- stone than food. Was it some sort of large bean? Or a fruit with a hard white peel?
- “Thank you,” she said doubtfully.
- “See, she doesn’t even want it!” Torren said. “She doesn’t even know what it is!” He gave her a hard
- shove, making her stagger sideways.
- “Quit that!” cried Lina. “You almost pushed me over!”
- “Torren—” said the doctor, stretching out a hand. But Torren ignored her.
- “I’ll push you again,” he said, and he did, harder.
- Lina stumbled backward and caught herself just in time to keep from falling into the cabbage bed. She
- felt a flash of fury. She raised her arm and threw the egg at Torren, and it hit him on the shoulder. But
- instead of bouncing off, it broke open, and a slimy yellow mess dripped down his shirt.
- “Now look what you’ve done!” Torren screamed. “It’s ruined!” He put his head down as if to run at
- Lina and butt her, but the doctor grabbed his arm.
- “Stop this,” she said.
- Lina was horrified. Disgusted, too. That yellow goop was something people ate? She was glad she
- didn’t have to. But she felt stupid for what she’d done. “I’m sorry I wrecked the egg,” she said. “I
- didn’t know what it was.”
- “You wrecked my shirt, too!” shouted Torren, wriggling in the doctor’s grasp.
- “But youpushed me,” Lina said.
- “Well, yes,” said the doctor in a weary voice. “That’s how it goes, doesn’t it? Someone pushes,
- someone pushes back. Pretty soon everything’s ruined.”
- “Everything?” said Lina. “But can’t his shirt be washed?”
- “Oh, yes, of course,” the doctor said. “I didn’t mean that. Never mind.” She let go of Torren. “I guess
- we’ll have bread and apricots for breakfast.”
- Mrs. Murdo had come downstairs now, leaving the still-sleeping Poppy in bed. They all had breakfast
- together. Lina ate five apricots. She loved them for their taste and for the feel of them, too—their rosyorange
- skins were velvety, like a baby’s cheek. She also liked the bread, which was toasted and
- crunchy, and the jam, which was dark purple and sweet. Mrs. Murdo kept saying, “My, this is tasty,”
- and asking questions about what bread was made of, and what a blackberry looked like, and why
- apricots had a sort of wooden rock in the middle. Dr. Hester seemed a bit flummoxed by these
- questions, but she did her best to explain. She was nice, Lina decided, but distracted. Her mind seemed
- to be elsewhere. She didn’t notice that Torren was putting all his apricot pits into his pocket, for
- instance—or maybe she didn’t care.
- When breakfast was over, Torren went up to the loft and came back down carrying a bulging bag.
- “These are mythings, ” he said loudly. “I don’t want anyone touching them.” He knelt down and
- opened the doors of the cabinet under the window seat and thrust the bag inside. “Caspar gave them to
- me, and anyone who touches them gets inbig trouble.” He closed the cabinet doors and glared at Lina.
- What an awful boy, Lina thought. How could nice Dr. Hester have such a horrid son?
- Lina had thought she’d go back to the plaza and find Doon right after breakfast. But she changed her
- mind when she went upstairs to waken her little sister. Poppy seemed so sick that Lina was frightened.
- She didn’t want to leave her. She brought her downstairs, and all that morning, Poppy lay on the couch,
- sometimes sleeping, sometimes wailing, sometimes just lying much too still with her mouth open and
- her breath coming in short gasps. Lina and Mrs. Murdo sat on either side of her, putting cool cloths on
- her forehead and trying to get her to drink the water and the medicine the doctor provided. “I don’t
- know what’s causing this child’s fever,” the doctor said. “All I can do is try to bring it down.”
- After all the walking of the days before, Lina was glad to sit still. She settled into a corner of the
- couch, her legs tucked under her, and watched the doctor dither about. She seemed to have a hundred
- things to do and a hundred things on her mind. She’d stand for a second staring into the air, murmuring
- to herself, “Now. All right. First I must look up . . . ,” and then dart over to her enormous book and
- shuffle through its pages. After a second or two, she’d suddenly set the book down and hurry off to the
- kitchen, where she would take a bottle of liquid or jar of powder down from a shelf and measure some
- of it into a pot. Or she’d dash out to the garden and come back with an armload of onions. Or she’d
- vanish out the back door and appear again with a sheaf of dried stems or leaves. It was hard to tell what
- she was doing, or if she was really accomplishing anything at all. Every now and then she would come
- back to Poppy and spoon some medicine into her mouth or put a cold, damp cloth on her forehead.
- “What is that enormous book?” Lina asked her.
- “Oh!” said the doctor. She always seemed a little startled to be spoken to. “Well, it’s about medicine.
- A lot of it is useless, though.” She picked up the book from the floor and riffled its pages. “You look up
- ‘infection’ and it says, ‘Prescribe antibiotics.’ What are antibiotics? Or you look up ‘fever’ and it says,
- ‘Give aspirin.’ Aspirin is some kind of painkiller, I think, but we don’t have it.”
- “We had aspirin in Ember,” said Mrs. Murdo, rather proudly. “Although I believe it had nearly run out
- by the end.”
- “Is that so,” said the doctor. “Well, what we have is plants. Herbs, roots, funguses, that sort of thing. I
- have a couple of old books that tell about which ones to use. Sometimes they work, sometimes they
- don’t.” She ran a hand through her short, wiry hair, making it poke out on one side. “So much to
- know,” she said, “and so much to do . . .” Her voice trailed off.
- “I suppose your son is a help to you,” said Mrs. Murdo.
- “My son?”
- “The boy, Torren.”
- “Oh,” said Dr. Hester. “He’s not my son.”
- “He’s not?” said Lina.
- “No, no,” the doctor said. “Torren and his brother, Caspar—they’re my sister’s boys. They live with
- me because their parents were killed in an avalanche years ago. They were in the mountains, on an icegathering
- trip.”
- “And the boy has no other relatives?” asked Mrs. Murdo.
- “He has an uncle,” said the doctor. “But the uncle didn’t want the trouble of bringing up the boys. He
- offered to have this house built for me if I’d take them on.” The doctor shrugged. “So I did.”
- “What is an avalanche?” Lina asked. “What are mountains?”
- “Lina,” said Mrs. Murdo. “It’s not polite to ask too many questions.”
- “I don’t mind,” the doctor said. “I forgot that you wouldn’t know these things. You really lived
- underground?”
- “Yes,” said Lina.
- Dr. Hester scrunched her gray eyebrows together. “But why would there be a city underground?”
- Lina said she didn’t know. All she knew was what was in the notebook she and Doon had found on
- their way out. It was a journal kept by one of the first inhabitants of Ember, who told of the fifty
- couples brought in from the outside world, each with two babies to raise in the underground city. “They
- thought there was some danger,” Lina said. “They made Ember as a place to keep people safe.”
- “It was that long ago, then,” said the doctor. “Before the Disaster.”
- “I don’t know,” said Lina. “I guess so. What disaster?”
- “The Disaster that just about wiped out the human race,” said Dr. Hester. “I’ll tell you about it
- sometime, but not right now. I have to go and see to Burt Webb’s infected finger.”
- “Can I ask one more question?” said Lina.
- The doctor nodded.
- “Why is this place called Sparks?”
- “Oh,” said the doctor, smiling a little. “It was the People of the Last Truck who gave it that name—our
- twenty-two founders. They were among the very few people who survived the Disaster. For a while
- they found food by driving around from one place to another in the old towns, using cars and trucks
- that still had a sort of energy-making stuff called gasleen—‘gas’ for short.”
- Cars and trucks? thought Lina. Gasleen? But she didn’t want to interrupt, so she didn’t ask.
- “When food and gas began to run out,” the doctor went on, “they decided it was time to start a new life
- somewhere else. They found one last truck that still had gas, and they loaded it up with supplies—food
- in cans and boxes, tools, clothes and blankets, seeds, everything useful they could find. Then they
- drove east, out across the Empty Lands, staying close to the river. Right here, the truck broke down.
- When they opened the hood, a great spray of sparks shot up out of the engine. So they decided to settle
- in this spot, and they named it Sparks.” The doctor stood up and looked around for her medicine bag.
- “It turned out to be a fitting name in another way,” she said. “Sparks are a beginning. We are the
- beginning of something here, or trying to be, the way a spark is the beginning of a fire.”
- “But fires are terrible,” said Lina.
- “Terrible or wonderful,” said the doctor, who had found her bag behind a chair and was heading out
- the door. “They can go either way.”
- Lina never did go down to the plaza that day. She didn’t think Doon would worry—he knew Poppy
- was sick, and he’d figure out that Lina had stayed with her. She would go and look for him tomorrow,
- she decided, and find out then what was happening to the people of Ember.
- Late in the afternoon, Lina went outside and sat on a rickety bench in the courtyard of the doctor’s
- house, waiting to see if anyone was going to make dinner. It seemed unlikely. The doctor was off
- treating someone’s toothache, and Mrs. Murdo was up in the loft with Poppy, who had started crying an
- hour ago and still had not stopped.
- A door opened, and Torren came outside. He sauntered over to Lina and stood in front of her.
- “Your sister is probably going to die,” he said.
- Lina jerked back. “She isnot. ”
- Torren shrugged. “Looks like it to me,” he said. “Looks to me like she has the plague.” He sat down on
- a wooden chair, where he could stare straight into Lina’s face. He was wearing a sort of undershirt—it
- was white and looked like a sack with holes for neck and arms—and his thin legs stuck out from baggy
- shorts of the same material. He had combed his hair so that it stood up like a tuft of grass at the top of
- his forehead, making his long, narrow face look even longer.
- “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lina said.
- “You don’t know about the Three Plagues?” said Torren in a tone of exaggerated surprise. “Or the
- Four Wars? You’ve never heard of the Disaster?”
- “I’ve heard of it,” said Lina. “But I don’t know what it is. I don’t know about anything here.”
- “Well, then, I’ll tell you,” he said. “You can’t go around being so ignorant.”
- She said nothing. She didn’t like this boy’s superior attitude, but she wanted to know everything there
- was to know. She would let him tell her, but she wasn’t going to ask him to.
- “It was a long time ago,” he said. He spoke in a precise, teacherly voice. “There were millions of
- people in the world then. They were all geniuses. They could make their voices travel around the world,
- and they could see people who were miles away. They could fly.” He paused, waiting, no doubt, for
- Lina to be amazed.
- Shewas amazed, but she wasn’t going to show it. Besides, he was probably lying. She just nodded.
- “They could make music come down out of the air. They had thousands of smooth roads and could go
- anywhere they wanted, really fast. They had pictures that moved.” He waited again. He took a few
- apricot pits from his pocket and rattled them idly in the palm of his hand.
- All right, she would ask. “What do you mean, pictures that moved?”
- “Didn’t think you’d know that one,” Torren said with a tight little smile. “They were huge pictures,
- taller than a house. They were called movies. You’d look at a wall and see a story happening on it, with
- voices and other sounds.”
- “How do you know all this?” asked Lina. She thought he might easily be making it up.
- “We learn it in school,” said Torren. “They teach usa lot about the old times, so we won’t forget.”
- “Have you seen a moving picture, then?”
- “Of course not,” he said. “You have to have electricity. There hasn’t been any for a long time.” He
- chucked one of the pits at a bird that was about to drink from the water dish. The splash scared it away.
- “We had electricity,” Lina said, glad to score a point over him. “We had it in Ember, until it ran out.
- We had street lights, and lamps in our houses, and electric stoves in the kitchen.”
- For a moment Torren looked dismayed. “But did you havemovies ?” he said.
- Lina shook her head. “Anyway,” she said, “what does all this have to do with my sister?”
- “I’m about to tell you, if you’d just let me.” The important tone came back into his voice. “So there
- were all these billions of people, but there got to be too many of them. They messed up the world. That
- was why the Three Plagues came. But before the Three Plagues, they had the Four Wars.” Once again
- he paused and looked at her in that infuriating way, lifting his thin eyebrows.
- “Just tell me,” she said. “Don’t look at me like that.”
- “You don’t know about the Four Wars?”
- “No. War—what’s that?”
- “A war is when one bunch of people fights with another bunch, when both of them want the same
- thing. Like for instance if there’s some good land, and two groups of people want to live there.”
- “Why can’t they both live there?”
- “They don’twant to live theretogether, ” he said, as if this were a stupid question. “Also you could
- have a war because of revenge. Say one group of people does something bad to another group, like
- steal their chickens. Then the first group does something bad back in revenge. That could start a war.
- The two groups would try to kill each other, and the ones who killed the most would win.”
- “They’d kill each other over chickens?”
- “That’s just an example. In the Four Wars, they were fighting over bigger things. Like who should get
- some big chunk of land. Or whether you should believe in this god or that god. Or who got to have the
- gold and the oil.”
- All of this was enormously confusing to Lina. She didn’t know the meaning of “god” or “gold,” and
- she wasn’t sure what he meant by “oil.” “You mean,” she said, thinking of the jars that had once been
- stocked in the storerooms of Ember, “the kind of oil you cook with?”
- Torren rolled his eyes. “Youreally don’t know anything,” he said. He flung the rest of the pits he was
- holding at three little red-headed birds pecking at the weeds between the bricks, and the birds scattered,
- cheeping. “This was really beautiful, valuable oil. Everyone wanted it, and there wasn’t enough of it to
- go around, so they fought over it.”
- “They hit each other?”
- “Much worse than that,” said Torren. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and in a low, husky
- voice told Lina about the weapons they had had in those days, the guns that let you kill people without
- even getting near them, and the bombs that could flatten and burn whole cities at once. “They set the
- cities on fire all over the world,” Torren said. His small eyes glittered. “And afterward came the
- plagues.”
- “I don’t know what a plague is,” Lina said.
- “A sickness,” said Torren. “The kind where one person catches it from another person, and it spreads
- around fast before you can stop it.”
- “We had one of those,” Lina said. “The coughing sickness—it would come sometimes and kill a lot of
- people and then go away again.”
- “We had three,” said Torren, as if three plagues were better than one. “There was the one where you
- wither away, like you’re starving to death; the one where you feel like you’re on fire and you die of
- heat; and the one where you suddenly can’t breathe. No one knew where they came from, they just rose
- up and swept over the whole world like a wind.”
- Lina shuddered. She was tired, all at once, of listening to Torren, who took such pleasure in describing
- horrors and saying words she didn’t understand.
- “So,” Torren said. “The Four Wars and the Three Plagues—those together were the Disaster. When it
- finally got over with, hardly any people were left. That’s why we had to start all over again.” He stood
- up and brushed away a twig that was clinging to his shorts. “We don’t have war anymore,” he said.
- “Our leaders say we must never have war again. And besides, there’s no one to fight against. But if we
- everdo have to have one, we’ll win, because we have the Terrible Weapon.”
- “The Terrible Weapon?” said Lina. “What’s that?”
- But just then Mrs. Murdo came out the door with Poppy in her arms. Lina jumped up and ran over to
- her. “Is she better?”
- “She’s a little better.” Poppy lay against Mrs. Murdo’s shoulder, her head turned sideways, her eyes
- dull. “Wy-na,” she said in a small voice. Lina ruffled her fine brown hair.
- Torren cast an indifferent glance at Mrs. Murdo and walked away across the courtyard. The gate
- clattered behind him.
- “Poppy doesn’t have a plague, does she?” Lina said.
- “A plague? Certainly not,” said Mrs. Murdo. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
- “That boy,” said Lina. “That horrible boy.”
- CHAPTER 7
- A Day of New People
- The next day, back in the plaza, Ben Barlow organized the residents of the Pioneer Hotel into teams.
- The teams would work together and eat lunch together. Each team would be led by someone from
- Sparks, who would decide where that team’s labor was most needed each day. Some days a team might
- work with the people of Sparks at the bakery or the shoe workshop or the wagon yard; other days they
- might do a job on their own, such as repairing a fence or digging a ditch. Sooner or later, nearly
- everyone would have done nearly every kind of work. This was the best way for them to learn, Ben
- said.
- Doon’s team included his father, two teachers from the Ember school (Miss Thorn and Mrs. Polster),
- Clary Laine, the greenhouse manager, and Edward Pocket, the librarian, who would join them for lunch
- but not work with them because he was so old.
- Doon found Lina in the crowd—the first time he’d seen her since they arrived. He told her about the
- Pioneer Hotel; she told him about the doctor’s house and what she’d learned from Torren about the
- Disaster. Lina and Mrs. Murdo were told they’d be a team of two with the job of helping Dr. Hester,
- since they were staying at her house. They were sent home, and all the other work teams went off to
- their first project: digging the hotel toilets.
- They went out into the scrubby woods behind the Pioneer. The work leaders had brought picks and
- shovels from town; they gave each person a tool. “You’ll dig fifty holes,” one of the leaders said, “each
- one six feet deep. Then you’ll build a shelter of scrap lumber around each one.”
- But the people of Ember had never done much digging or picking. They had to be shown how to put a
- foot on the shovel’s edge to drive it into the dirt, and how to lift the pick over their shoulders and bring
- it down hard. At first they scraped and hacked awkwardly at the hard, dry earth, grunting with effort,
- dislodging only a few crumbs of dirt with each stroke. After ten minutes of hard work, they’d made
- hardly more than shallow dips in the dirt. They were breathing fast. “Did you say sixfeet deep?”
- someone called out.
- “That’s right,” came the answer.
- So the Emberites set themselves to the task, which was for most of them the hardest work they’d ever
- done. After an hour, Doon had blisters on both hands and a kink in his neck. Some of the others had
- given up entirely and had flopped down onto the ground, dripping with sweat and aching in every
- muscle. Doon made himself keep going, but he was glad when the work finally stopped at noon and the
- team leaders marched them back into the town. He heard people murmuring to each other as they
- walked. “Do you think we’ll have to work like thisevery day ?” “It’ll make us strong, I guess.” “Or else
- kill us.”
- Each team was assigned to a different household for lunch. Doon’s team went with the Parton family.
- Through the streets of the village, they followed a stout, cheerful woman named Martha Parton, whose
- wide rear end wagged from side to side as she walked. “Here we are,” she said after a few minutes. She
- opened an unpainted wooden door and ushered her six guests inside. “Welcome to our home,” she said.
- Doon looked around the low-ceilinged room. At one end was a long wooden table; at the other, a
- couple of benches stood before a niche in the smoke-stained wall. Sitting on the benches were two
- people, who got up and came forward as Martha introduced them. “My husband, Ordney,” Martha said.
- He was tall and narrow, with a mustache like a brown toothbrush under his nose. “And my son,
- Kensington.”
- Kensington was a little younger than Doon, a skinny boy with yellow hair, big ears, and a freckled
- nose. He kept his eyes on the floor, except for a couple of quick, curious glances. “Hi,” he said to the
- floor in a soft, shy voice.
- “And these,” Martha Parton said to her family, sweeping her arm in the direction of the guests, “are the
- people from underground.” She raised her eyebrows at them. “You’re lucky to have found your way
- here,” she said. “The only other settlements we know of are little miserable ones hundreds of miles
- away. Everything else is just hard, rocky dirt, and ruins, and grass.”
- “And you’ve not only come to the right place,” added Ordney. “You’ve come at the right time. It’s
- taken years of hard work, but Sparks is finally doing well.”
- “Now!” said Martha, clapping her hands. “Time to eat!”
- They sat down at the big table, and Martha brought out dishes of food. “I suppose you’ve never tasted
- anything like this,” she said, handing around a bowl of fresh peas. “Just picked this morning. And this
- is pumpkin bread, made from what I canned of last year’s crop. Good, isn’t it? Did you have pumpkin
- bread where you came from?”
- “No, indeed,” said Doon’s father.
- “We did have peas, though,” said Clary. “Grown in our greenhouses.”
- “And very fine they were,” said Mrs. Polster loyally. “Though slightly smaller than these.”
- “Probably you haven’t had pickled carrots, either,” Martha said, passing the dish around. “These are
- from my mother’s famous recipe.”
- “We did have carrots,” said Mrs. Polster. “A nice pale orange, some of them fully four inches long.”
- “Is that right,” said Martha. “Ours are twelve inches, usually.”
- Miss Thorn picked delicately at her food, making a polite comment now and then. Edward Pocket ate
- with such a vigorous appetite that he had no time for talking. Kensington ate steadily and silently.
- Every time Doon glanced his way, he found the boy staring at him, but as soon as their eyes met,
- Kensington looked back at his plate.
- Ordney Parton cleared his throat. Apparently this meant he was going to speak, because his family all
- instantly looked at him. “I never knew,” he said, “that there was a kind of people who lived
- underground. Must feel strange to you here on the surface.”
- “Actually,” said Doon, “we aren’t a different kind of people. This place feels familiar, in a way,
- because we came from here originally.”
- “From here? Oh, I don’t think so,” said Martha. “You don’t look a bit like us. You’re so much—well,
- smaller, if you’ll pardon my saying so. And paler.”
- “True,” said Clary, “but I suppose that’s because of living in a dark place for so long. Everything is
- bigger and brighter here.”
- “But why do you think you came from here?” Martha asked.
- “Because of a notebook we found,” Doon said. “It was written by someone from this world who went
- to live in Ember right at the beginning. All the people of Ember came from this world.”
- “Is that so,” said Martha, eyeing Doon skeptically. “Well, I must say, it’s the strangest thingI’ve ever
- heard.”
- Doon’s father changed the subject. “You have such a fine, solid house,” he said. “What is it made of?”
- “Earth,” said Martha.
- “Pounded,” said Ordney. “Strong as stone.”
- “Thick walls,” said Martha. “They make it cool in hot weather and warm in cold.” She reached for
- another pickled carrot. “I suppose you lived in—what? Some sort of burrows?”
- “Stone houses,” said Edward Pocket, suddenly joining the conversation because his plate was empty.
- “Two stories. Extremely sturdy. Never too warm.”
- There was a silence.
- “Such a lovely lunch,” said Miss Thorn in a small voice.
- “Perfectly delicious,” Mrs. Polster declared. The others chimed in, and Martha beamed.
- They all rose from the table. Martha scurried into the kitchen and came out with a basket full of clothwrapped
- parcels. She handed one to each of her guests. “Your supper,” she said, “and breakfast.”
- “Thank you,” said Doon’s father. “You’re very generous.”
- They filed out the front door. Doon was the last to leave. Just as he stepped outside, he felt a light tap
- on his shoulder. He turned to see Kensington standing behind him, his eyes wide.
- “Aren’t you the one who found the way out?” he whispered.
- Doon nodded.
- “I thought so,” the boy said. He made a curious gesture—stuck out his hand with the fingers curled and
- the thumb straight up. Doon didn’t understand it, but he thought it must mean something good, because
- a shy smile went with it. “Call me Kenny,” the boy said, and he darted back through the door.
- Doon followed his father and the others down the street. He’s heard of me, he thought. He felt a
- pleasant sort of glow. Of course, Kenny was just a little boy; it was natural for a young boy to admire
- an older one.
- All afternoon, they worked on the toilet holes. Doon was ready to drop by the end of the day. When the
- work leaders let them go, he walked down the long slope of ground in front of the Pioneer Hotel to the
- river. Large stones bordered the water at this point; he found one that was flat on top and sank onto it,
- tired to his bones. The sun was setting; the western sky glowed pink. The trees on the other side of the
- river cast long, thin shadows across the ground. He sat for ten minutes or so, just gazing, his thoughts
- swirling slowly.
- It was going to take the people of Ember—all four hundred of them—several days just to build their
- outhouses. And already they were exhausted. How long before they got used to doing this kind of
- work? Doon couldn’t imagine feeling so tired day after day. He had blisters on his hands, his wrists and
- shoulders ached, and the back of his neck felt hot and sore, as if it had been burned. And he was strong
- and young! What about the older people and the younger children? Of course they’d all have to work if
- they expected to be fed, but—
- His thoughts were interrupted by footsteps crunching behind him.
- He turned. There was Tick Hassler, walking toward him across the field. Doon’s pulse quickened a
- little. Tick moved through the grass with a long stride, and when he came to the rocks alongside the
- river, he stepped from one to the next easily, never slipping or losing his balance. He raised a hand in
- greeting, and Doon waved back.
- “Thinking deep thoughts?” Tick said, coming up beside Doon and smiling down at him.
- “Not really,” said Doon. “Just watching things.”
- “Ah,” said Tick. He put his hands on his hips and gazed out across the river. The setting sun shone on
- his face, making it glow, and draped his long shadow over the rocks. Doon wished he would sit down
- and talk. After a while, Tick said, “I’ll tell you something.”
- Doon glanced up quickly. Tick’s eyes were a blue so light it was almost startling.
- “This is a very fine place you’ve brought us to,” Tick said.
- “Yes,” said Doon, pleased at being given the credit.
- “You deserve a lot of respect,” Tick said. “You may be just a kid, but you took action when things got
- desperate. You were brave.”
- Ordinarily, Doon didn’t pay much attention to what other people thought about him, but there was
- something about Tick that made it pleasing to have his good opinion. Somehow, he didn’t even feel
- insulted at being called “just a kid.” “Thank you,” he said. He thought surely Tick would sit down on
- the rock next to him now, and they would talk, but instead he stepped onto another rock, closer to the
- water, so that he had his back to Doon.
- They both gazed for a while at the reddening sky. Then Tick turned around and said, “Really a
- wonderful place. Just look at all this!” He swept his arm in a wide arc, taking in the groves of trees, the
- fields, the river, and the glowing red ball of the sun.
- “Yes,” said Doon. “Itis wonderful.”
- “We just need to get ourselves a little more comfortable,” Tick said. “I have ideas already. We could
- fix up this old building, first of all. Get people organized and working together. Get new glass for the
- windows, maybe. Pipe some water in from the river. What do you think?”
- “Sure,” said Doon.
- “Chet Noam wants to work with me,” Tick said. “Lizzie Bisco, too, and Allie Bright. How about
- you?”
- “Sure,” said Doon again, a little disappointed that Tick had talked to all these other people before him.
- “You’ll be great on the pipe project,” Tick said, “because of your experience.”
- Doon nodded. Actually, there were lots of things he’d rather do than work with pipes again, as he had
- in the Ember Pipeworks. But it might actually be fun to work on a plumbing project with Tick. Energy
- blazed from Tick’s keen blue eyes.
- “There’s so much we can do . . . ,” said Tick, and Doon waited to hear the end of his sentence, to hear
- what else he thought they could do, but Tick didn’t say any more. He just bent down, plucked a stone
- from between the bigger rocks, turned back to face the river again, and threw the stone with all his
- might. It sailed high up, a black dot against the scarlet sky, and came down with a splash in the shallow
- water on the far side of the river.
- Then he twisted around and smiled at Doon, an exuberant, radiant smile. “See you,” he said, and he
- stepped across the rocks, climbed up the riverbank, and went back toward the hotel.
- When he was gone, Doon picked up a stone and flung it as hard as he could. It plunked down in the
- middle of the river—not a bad throw, but not as good as Tick’s.
- CHAPTER 8
- The Roamer and the Bike
- Several days passed. Poppy would get a little better and then a little worse, and Lina and Mrs. Murdo
- stayed with her nearly all the time, putting cool rags on her forehead and trying to get her to drink the
- medicine the doctor gave her. When Mrs. Murdo wasn’t caring for Poppy, she was prowling around the
- medicine room, inspecting the doctor’s jumbled collection of herbs and potions and powders, making
- notes in a tiny notebook, and rearranging things, trying to create some order.
- Dr. Hester was often gone, seeing patients in the village, and when she was in the house she was doing
- ten things at once, or trying to, and being interrupted by patients who came to the door at all hours. It
- seemed to Lina that the people of Sparks were constantly cutting themselves, spraining their muscles,
- getting rashes, and falling ill. The doctor would give them medicine or bandage their wounds, and a
- few days later the patients would bring something in return—a basket of eggs, a jar of pickles, a bag of
- clean rags.
- Lina had never seen anyone so disorganized as the doctor. She peeked into the medicine room once
- when the doctor was out and was amazed at the clutter in there—shelves and cupboards and tables piled
- with stuff in bottles and stuff in boxes and stuff in jars, all higgledy-piggledy. How Dr. Hester found
- anything she couldn’t imagine.
- It took the doctor a couple of days even to get organized enough to figure out how Lina could help her.
- But when she did, she began giving her one chore after another, and sometimes several all at once,
- often forgetting that Lina didn’t know how to do them.
- “Could you go and water the asparagus?” she’d say. Then before Lina could ask what asparagus was,
- and where to find it, and what to put the water in, she’d say, “And then can you rip some of those rags
- in the kitchen basket into strips for bandages? And when you’ve done that, maybe you could wipe the
- floor in the medicine room—I spilled something the other day, I think over by the window. And the
- chickens, the chickens—they need to be fed.” And then she’d be out the door, leaving Lina to
- remember the string of tasks and figure out how to do them.
- Everything here seemed extremelyinconvenient to Lina. To get water, you had to go outside the gate to
- a pump and work a stiff handle up and down. To go to the bathroom, you had to go out in back of the
- house to a little smelly shed. There was no light at night except for candles, and at first she’d thought
- there was no stove to cook on. “Oh, yes,” said the doctor, “that’s the stove there”—she pointed to the
- thing like a black iron barrel in the corner of the kitchen—“but I hardly ever use it in the summer. Too
- much trouble to keep the fire going, and it’s too hot anyway. We mainly eat cold food in summer.”
- When she did want to cook something—boil a pot of water to cook an egg, for instance, or make tea—
- the doctor had to squat down, stuff some dry grass and twigs into the stove’s belly, and set them alight.
- Sometimes she used a match; sometimes she hit what looked like two rocks together until they made a
- spark and the grass caught fire. Then she had to feed in bigger and bigger twigs until the fire was
- finally hot enough. This fire seemed fairly safe to Lina, though she didn’t like to get too close to it; at
- least it was contained in its iron box. It wasn’t free to leap out at her like the fire in the fireplace.
- Fortunately, the doctor didn’t make another fire in the fireplace after that first night. As the days grew
- hotter and hotter, the nights were no longer cool. Extra warmth was the last thing they needed.
- One day—a week or so after Lina first came to the doctor’s house—a patient came with news to tell as
- well as a wound to bind. She was a scrawny young woman with brownish teeth. She had a bad scratch
- on her wrist where she’d scraped it against some rusty wire. “There’s a roamer in the village,” she said.
- “Just arrived this morning.”
- “What’s a roamer?” Lina asked.
- The doctor, tying a rag around her patient’s wrist, said, “Roamers go out into the Empty Lands and
- bring things back.”
- “From the old places,” added the patient. “The ruined places.”
- “My brother Caspar is a roamer!” said Torren. “And when I’m old enough, I’m going to be a roamer,
- too, and we’re going to be partners.”
- This was the first time Lina had sensed real happiness in Torren. His little eyes shone with hope.
- “That will be exciting,” Lina said. “Is it dangerous to be a roamer?”
- “Oh, yes. Sometimes you run into other roamers trying to get the same things you want. Sometimes
- you’re attacked by bandits. You have to fight them off. Caspar has a whip.”
- “A whip?”
- “A great long cord! As long as this room, almost. If people get in his way, he lashes them.” He lifted
- his arm overhead and brought it down as if he were lashing something. “Whhhhtt! Whhhhtt!” he said.
- “Now, stop that,” said the doctor absently, tying the final knot in the rag. The patient left, and Lina and
- the doctor and Torren, along with Mrs. Murdo, carrying Poppy, went down to the market plaza to see
- the roamer.
- A crowd had assembled in the plaza. Lina looked for Doon, but she didn’t see him. She saw only a few
- Emberites, in fact; most of them must have been working in other places. But a great many villagers
- were there, clustered around a big truck. The truck was loaded with barrels and crates, and on it stood a
- brown-skinned woman with wiry muscles in her arms and legs. “I have been in the far north,” she cried
- out in a shrill, strong voice, “out in remote corners of the Empty Lands. I have traveled roads where I
- saw no human being for weeks on end. And in these distant regions, I came across houses and farms
- that had never before been searched. I have treasures for you today.” She beckoned with a long brown
- arm. “Step up and look.”
- The crowd pressed forward. Apparently this roamer was known to the villagers. Some people called
- out greetings and questions.
- “Did you bring us any writing paper this time, Mackie?”
- “What about seeds?”
- “What about tools?”
- “And matches?”
- “And clothes? I’m so tired of wearing homemade patchwork!”
- “I have all that and more!” the woman called. “Come close. Special things first.” She bent over an
- open crate and rummaged around for a moment. When she stood up again, she was holding a blackened
- iron cooking pot, so big she had to use both hands to lift it. “What am I offered?” she cried.
- “Half a bushel of dried apricots!”
- “A bushel of peas!”
- “Barrel of cornmeal!”
- The woman listened, cocking her head, her eyebrows raised. She waited until the offers stopped, and
- then she pointed at a tall young woman with shiny black hair who had offered five loaves of apricot
- cornbread. “Done!” she said, and she lowered the pot into the young woman’s hands.
- For the next special thing, the roamer reached into a big cardboard box. She brought out a smaller box
- colored blue and held it high. “Soap flakes!” she cried. “Twenty-four boxes of them!”
- Dozens of people bid for these. They were all gone in minutes. Then came more cooking pans, two
- thick jackets of shiny material, rolls of rope, garden tools, books, a pair of scissors, some doorknobs,
- some nails. There were a few odd, useless things, too. For half a dozen carrots, one woman bought a
- pair of faucets, one with an H and one with a C. “What will you do with them?” asked Lina. People
- here got their water from long-handled pumps that stood at certain spots in the village. No one had
- indoor running water. “I’ll turn them upside down,” said the woman. “They’ll make good candle
- holders.”
- When the roamer brought out a handful of jewels, Lina gasped. She had never seen such things—
- necklaces and bracelets made of gleaming stones and silver chains. But only a few people seemed
- interested in them, and they bid hardly anything—one girl bid a couple of potatoes, but a man got them
- for a slightly used pair of sandals. “If my wife doesn’t want them,” he said, “I’ll use them to pretty up
- my oxen.”
- The roamer brought out the last of her wares—packets of paper, boxes of safety pins, some spoons and
- forks. The doctor stepped up to buy a set of small glass bottles.
- “Dr. Hester!” the roamer said. “Good to see you!”
- “And you, Mackie,” said the doctor. “It’s been a long time.”
- “I was hoping you’d be here,” the roamer went on. “I ran into your nephew the other day.”
- “Caspar?” cried Torren in a voice so piercing that several people looked up, startled. “Where is he?”
- “He was up in the apple country,” said Mackie. “I told him I was coming down here, and he said to tell
- you he’s heading for home.”
- “Is that right,” said the doctor. She was clearly not as excited as Torren. “We haven’t seen him for
- quite a while.”
- “One year, ten months, and nineteen days,” said Torren. “When will he be here? Did he say?”
- “Should be soon,” said the roamer. She was putting the little bottles into a cloth bag. “I’d guess within
- the next two weeks or so.”
- When the roamer’s sale was over, Lina walked home along the river road with the doctor and Mrs.
- Murdo and Poppy, who was asleep in Mrs. Murdo’s arms. Torren leapt ahead, his thin legs splaying out
- sideways. He bounced off steps, jumped onto walls, leapt up to grab branches of trees, and swung from
- them.
- As they neared the doctor’s house, Torren, who was way ahead of them by now, suddenly turned
- around and raced back. “You have to get out of our room!” he said to Lina and Mrs. Murdo. “My
- brother will want his own room, and he’ll want to be with me. You all have to move.”
- “Fine,” said Lina. “We will. We’ll go live with our own people as soon as Poppy’s well enough.”
- Torren’s narrow face lit up. “Good, good, good!” he cried. “When are you leaving?”
- “Nottoday, ” said Lina. “Not right thisminute. ”
- “But soon!” Torren cried. He skipped ahead of them again, through the gate and across the courtyard.
- The doctor said not to mind Torren, he was being rude because he was so excited. But it seemed to
- Lina that Dr. Hester didn’t see clearly when it came to Torren. He wasn’t rude just when he was
- excited, he was rude nearly all the time. The doctor was so pre-occupied with her work that she hardly
- noticed him. Maybe if she’d pay him more attention, Lina thought, he wouldn’t be so awful.
- But hewas awful, and Lina would be glad to get away from him. Two weeks, she thought. Then we’ll
- meet Caspar the Great, and if Poppy is well by then, Torren can have his room back and we’ll go and
- live with Doon and the others.
- Now and then, Lina saw people on wheels going by on the road in front of the doctor’s house. The
- only wheeled vehicles Lina had ever seen were the heavy wooden carts in Ember. But these people
- were riding beautiful, slender devices, two big wheels per person. They glided by, their feet going
- round and round. She wanted to do it, too! Sobadly, she wanted to. “What are they?” she asked the
- doctor.
- “Bikes, of course,” said the doctor. “You’ve never seen one?”
- “No,” said Lina, looking at a bike with longing. If she could have a bike, she thought, she could go
- even faster than when she ran. She could go so fast and so far. . . . She looked out toward the endless
- rolling hills. She could go everywhere. She could go to wherever the roads ended.
- “I wish I could ride one,” she said.
- “Well, you can, if you want,” said the doctor. “There’s an old one out behind the toolshed. I suppose it
- still works.”
- “There is?” Lina nearly dropped the basket of eggs she had just gathered. “May I get it now?”
- “I guess so,” said the doctor. “But would you mind watering the parsley first? And if you could just
- shell these peas . . . and maybe wash that spinach . . .”
- Lina did these tasks in a fever of impatience, and when she was finished she dashed out to the shed.
- The bike was leaning against the shed wall. It was old but beautiful—made of wires and slender pipes
- and rods, some of them silver under their coat of dust, and some of them red. Thin, weedy vines wove
- among the spokes of the bike’s wheels, and cobwebs draped its seat. Lina took hold of the two handles
- and pulled the bike from its nest. She wheeled it out onto the road in front of the house and brushed the
- cobwebs and dry leaves and bits of grass off it, and then she swung one leg over and settled herself on
- the seat.
- Now what?
- She spent the rest of the morning figuring it out. She pushed on the pedals, rolled forward, tipped over
- sideways, and had to put her feet down. She rolled forward again but didn’t know how to turn. She fell
- off. She heaved the bike upright and tried again. She fell off again. After an hour or so of this, she gave
- up and went inside for a while.
- And later, when she tried again, something had changed. She had the feel of it in her legs now, or
- somewhere in her. She rolled forward, she put a foot on the pedal and pushed, she rolled farther, she
- brought up the other foot, and magically, her body understood for a second what to do. She was sailing;
- her feet were going round and round. A smile broke over her face. She held on, feet going round,
- breath-less, breeze against her face—a whole long distance, maybe five yards, before suddenly she was
- nervous and dragged her feet along the ground to stop. She stood holding the handlebars, her mouth
- open in amazement.
- And by the end of the day she had it. She could ride back and forth on the road, she could stop
- whenever she wanted to. She could even turn around corners without putting a foot down.
- “I’m going to see Doon,” she told Mrs. Murdo. She was longing to see Doon, longing to talk to
- someone she really knew. Mrs. Murdo was fine, of course, but she was a grown-up. Lina wanted to be
- with afriend. She got on the bike and rode, sweeping down the river road, into the plaza, where she
- asked someone for directions, and out the other side of the town to the hotel.
- When she got there, she stopped for a moment just to stare. The enormous old building looked to her
- like a wonderful place to live. She felt a sudden longing to have her own room there, back among her
- old friends and neighbors.
- It was nearly evening by then. People were sitting on the hotel steps in the last rays of the setting sun,
- eating their dinners from their food parcels and talking. Some were down by the river, cooling their
- feet, splashing water onto their faces. Over by the farthest wing of the hotel, a few boys were gathered
- around another boy, who was sitting on a fallen tree talking to them. Maybe Doon was over there.
- She wheeled her bike toward them—the ground here was too rough and weedy to ride on. Her old
- friends and neighbors called out to her as she passed, and she waved at them, glad to be back among
- people she knew.
- When she got closer to the group of boys, she saw that Doon was among them. He and a couple of
- others were listening to that tall dark-haired boy—what was his name, Tigg? Tim? He’d been a cart
- puller in Ember, she thought. He laughed as she came up, a ringing, confident laugh, and all the other
- boys laughed, too.
- She went up behind Doon and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around. She grinned at him.
- “Look, Doon!” she said. “I have a bike!”
- He seemed astonished to see her. “Oh!” he said. “Lina!”
- “Come and talk to me,” she said.
- His eyes shifted back toward the tall boy. “Okay,” he said, but he didn’t move.
- “Come on!” said Lina, tugging at his jacket.
- They walked down toward the river. Lina leaned the bike against a tree, and she and Doon sat facing
- each other on the ground.
- “What a huge place!” she said, waving an arm at the Pioneer Hotel, and talking fast in her eagerness.
- “What’s it like? Will you show me around? Poppy is a little better, and maybe in a couple of weeks we
- can come and live here, too. With you. And with everyone.”
- Doon nodded. “That would be good,” he said.
- “It’s kind of lonely at the doctor’s house,” Lina went on. “There’s a boy there who doesn’t like us, and
- the doctor is so busy she can hardly think, and her house is a mess, and I have to do a million chores.”
- She paused for breath. “Today we saw a roamer, Doon.”
- “A roamer?”
- She explained what a roamer was. Doon listened, but she saw his eyes veer back toward the group of
- boys.
- “Who is that boy?” she asked. “The one who’s talking?”
- “Tick Hassler,” said Doon.
- Lina turned around and looked at him. He was handsome, she thought. His black hair was thick and
- glossy, and his face was all sharp angles, as if it had been carved from wood. “Is he a friend of yours?”
- “Sort of,” said Doon. “I mean—I’m just getting to know him.”
- “Oh,” said Lina. “Do you know which room Lizzie is in?”
- Doon said he didn’t. “I don’t stay inside very much,” he said. “It’s kind of dark and dismal in there.
- What I like is being outside.” He pointed up into the branches of the tree, where little fluttery things
- were hopping around. “Remember when we first saw those?” he said. “When we’d just come up from
- Ember? I learned that they’re called birds. When you start really looking at them, you see there’s all
- different kinds. I’ve seen ones with a yellow chest, and ones with stripes on their wings, and ones with
- red heads. There’s even one that’s bright blue.” He gazed upward. “It’s strange, isn’t it? Why have all
- these different kinds, I wonder? Just for the fun of it?”
- A burst of laughter came from the group of boys around Tick Hassler. Doon glanced over at them.
- “Do you like it here, Doon?” Lina said. “In the village of Sparks, I mean?”
- “I do,” said Doon. “I like it a lot.”
- “Me too,” said Lina. “Mostly.”
- “But it sort of worries me that we have to leave in six months,” Doon said. “There’s so much we need
- to learn.”
- “Well, I guess so,” said Lina. “But maybe if we leave . . . I mean, I still wish . . .”
- “Wish what?” said Doon when she trailed off.
- “Oh, I don’t know.” She’d been going to say she wished they’d found the city she used to dream of.
- But she was afraid Doon might think that was silly.
- The sun was going down. Shadows grew longer. “Show me your room before I have to go,” Lina said,
- “so I’ll know where to find you.”
- Tick was walking away, and the other boys were following him. Doon gazed after them. “I can’t right
- now,” he said. “I will next time you come.”
- “All right,” Lina said. She got up from the ground and swatted the leaves off her pants. She picked up
- her bike. “I’ll see you sometime,” she said, and she rode back to the doctor’s house feeling lonelier than
- she had before.
- CHAPTER 9
- Hard, Hungry Work
- Instead of getting easier as the days went on, work for the people of Ember got harder. It wasn’t just
- the work—it was the heat they had to work in. Every day was hotter than the last. Doon had never felt
- this warm in his life—it was like being cooked. All the people of Ember felt this way. They sweated,
- their skin turned red and stung and peeled off, and the brightness of the sky hurt their eyes. They got
- terrible headaches. Sometimes one of them would drop to the ground in a faint, just from being too hot.
- At times like these, people thought, This is a dreadful place we have come to. They put their hands over
- their eyes, missing the familiar darkness.
- The team leaders tried to be understanding when their workers drooped and fainted. But the people of
- Sparks were used to the heat; beside them, the people of Ember seemed like weaklings. A few times,
- Doon saw the leader of his team press his lips together and drum his fingers against his leg when one of
- the Emberites had to sit down and rest.
- Doon’s team leader was Chugger Frisk, a big, stubble-jawed man who didn’t talk much except to give
- directions. Every day he sent his team wherever it was most needed. Doon did all kinds of jobs over the
- next few weeks. He dug ditches for the pipes that conducted water from the river to the crops in the
- fields. He repaired the wagons that hauled the produce home from the fields. He milked the goats out in
- the goat pasture and made sure the water troughs for the oxen were full. He picked fruit, built fences,
- planted seeds, stirred vats of soap, and dug chicken droppings into the cabbage field.
- Except for being so hot, he didn’t mind the work. He was getting strong, and heliked being strong. He
- liked feeling the muscles in his arms getting harder, and he liked being taller (he knew he was taller,
- because his old pants were too short). The feeling of being a new person in this new world stayed with
- him. He would be thirteen soon—not a child any- more. Work was making him sturdy and ready for
- anything.
- Besides, as he worked he was finding out all kinds of things he wanted to learn. How did the pumps
- work that brought water up from the river to the fields? How was cheese made, and shoes, and candles?
- Where did they get the ice that kept things cold in their big ice house? What were the bushy-tailed
- animals that scurried up trees, and the long, rope-like animals that he sometimes almost stepped on in
- the grass? He wanted to know how houses were built, and what glass was made of, and how bicycles
- worked. It was exciting, having so much to learn. But every time he remembered that he and his people
- had less than six months to learn it—less than six months to master all the skills they’d need to build a
- town of their own—a worm of fear twisted in his stomach.
- Chugger wouldn’t answer questions. He was too busy giving directions or working. So Doon often
- asked his questions at lunch. Sometimes Ordney answered him, sometimes Martha did. Ordney’s
- answers were more like lectures, and Martha’s were more like boasts. After a while it was clear that
- both of them were getting tired of questions, so Doon asked fewer of them. One day, Kenny followed
- him outside after lunch and stretched up to whisper in his ear. “I can show you where there’s answers to
- your questions,” he said. “Want me to?”
- “Sure,” said Doon.
- “Right now?” said Kenny.
- “Okay,” said Doon.
- Kenny led him through the streets of the village, going first toward the river and then away from it,
- along a street that led out away from the houses and into a grove of oak trees.
- “There,” said Kenny, pointing ahead.
- At first Doon saw only the long line of a roof above the trees. Then the street opened out into a big
- empty space that, he could see, had once been covered with pavement. Now the pavement was cracked
- and weeds grew up through it. To the left of this span of pavement stood a huge building—a
- rectangular structure so tremendous it could have held both the Ember school and the Gathering Hall.
- At the end facing them were two massive wooden doors, which Kenny walked toward. “In the ancient
- days,” Kenny said, “you didn’t have to open these. They were made of glass, and they had eyes and
- opened as soon as they saw you.”
- “That can’t be,” said Doon.
- “It was, though,” Kenny said.
- Above the doors was a sign missing most of its letters. It was a long sign, so you could tell whatever it
- used to say was a long word, but now all it said was UPE ARK.
- “What does that mean?” Doon asked, pointing to the sign.
- “I don’t know,” Kenny said. “We just call it the Ark. It’s our storehouse. We’re going around to the
- back.”
- He led the way around the side of the building to a small door in the back wall, which he opened. He
- had to push hard, because something was behind the door that had to be shoved out of the way.
- Doon peered into the darkness. At first he couldn’t make out what he was seeing. Lumpy mountains
- appeared to fill the room to the ceiling and spread from wall to wall. He took a step forward, but his
- foot jammed against something hard on the floor.
- “There’s answers to everything in here,” said Kenny.
- As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Doon saw that the room was full of—was it boxes? No, they
- almost looked like books. They lay in toppling stacks, giant heaps, sliding mounds, as if they had been
- dumped in from an enormous bucket. Some of them lay open, with their pages crumpled. Some were so
- warped that their covers curved. A smell of ancient dust and mold arose from them. He reached down
- and picked one up. Its cover was furred with dust. He opened it and saw pages of tiny neat printing.
- Itwas a book, yes. Not like the books of Ember—these were much bigger and sturdier, and had much
- more writing. He riffled the pages—more dust flew up—but he couldn’t tell what the book was about.
- One page said, “Chapter XV. The Thermodynamics of Aluminum.” He had no idea what that meant.
- “This is amazing,” said Doon. “Can I take some back to the hotel?”
- “I guess so,” said Kenny. “No one will notice.”
- Doon set down the book about thermodynamics. He brushed his smudged fingers against his pants. He
- felt like a hungry person who had been led to an immense banquet, far more food than he could eat in
- his whole life. He was starving, all of a sudden, for the knowledge hidden in these books. He reached
- out and chose three of them blindly, not even looking at the titles.
- “Don’t you want some?” he said to Kenny.
- “No,” said Kenny. “I already read four books in school. That was enough. We learned about history.
- Pre and post.”
- “Pre and post?”
- “Pre-Disaster and post-Disaster.”
- “Oh,” said Doon. “What do you like to do, then?” he asked.
- “Just poke around,” said Kenny. “I poke around in the woods. You could come with me sometime,” he
- said, looking up at Doon with hopeful eyes. “If you want.”
- “Maybe I will,” Doon said, though he was thinking probably he wouldn’t. He had so many other things
- in mind to do. Besides, Kenny was a little young to be his friend.
- During the first week after the Emberites arrived, Martha Parton had showed off her cooking skills at
- lunch every day. She made mashed potato pie, fresh peas with chives, walnut croquettes, mushroom
- gravy, cheese popovers, red-onion-and-bean dumplings, scrambled eggs with tomato jam, apricot
- pudding, and apple butter cookies. Every time she brought in a new dish, she said, “I don’t imagine you
- had these where you came from,” or “This will be new to you,” and the Ember guests would say,
- “You’re right, we’ve never had this! We’ve never tasted anything so delicious! It’s wonderful!” and
- Martha’s mouth would crimp into a small, pleased smile.
- As time went on, however, the food at lunchtime became plainer. Martha got tired of making
- something new every day to impress her guests. What they found in their dinner and breakfast parcels
- became less interesting, too—usually it was some chunks of cornbread, ten or twelve carrot sticks, and
- a few slimy bits of goat cheese. If they were lucky, there might be a hard-boiled egg. Martha took to
- mentioning, as if it were a little joke, that even though the Partons were given extra food from the
- storehouse because of the extra people, itseemed as if they had less! Wasn’t that odd!
- Doon started to feel hungry a fair amount of the time, and he knew others did, too. His father never
- spoke of it, but Edward Pocket griped about the food every evening. “I know I’m old and small,” he’d
- say, polishing off the last crumbs of both his dinner and his breakfast, “but that doesn’t mean I can live
- on air.”
- One day Ordney made a disturbing announcement. The cabbage crop, he said, was going to be smaller
- than expected. Worms had got into it. They’d have only about two-thirds of the cabbage they had last
- year.
- After this, not only was the food at lunchtime plainer, but there was less of it. One week, they had
- string beans, last year’s pickled cabbage, and goat’s milk pudding for lunch four days in a row, and
- when they opened their baskets at dinnertime, they found only a bottle of cold potato soup to serve as
- both dinner and breakfast.
- Clary had started a garden just a few days after the Emberites arrived at the Pioneer Hotel. She cleared
- a patch of ground about forty feet square not far from the riverbank and planted seeds that she had
- brought from Ember. Children who were too little to go to work in the village helped her pull weeds
- and fetch buckets of water from the river. Old people sat in the shade giving her advice. After a while,
- green shoots appeared in rows on the patch of dirt, and Clary was out there every morning and every
- evening, tending them. In several weeks, there would be a little extra food for the people of Ember out
- in their own front yard.
- But it wouldn’t be nearly enough. Some people were already grumbling about their skimpy dinner
- parcels. One night, when Doon was in room 215 eating with his father and the others, he heard voices
- in the hall and went out to see a cluster of people a few doors down. Lizzie was there—Doon spotted
- the red cloud of her hair. Tick was there, too. His voice carried above the rest. “Well, I got three
- carrots, a plum, and a chunk of sour cheese,” he said. “Lucky me. That ought to keep me going for a
- while.”
- A few people laughed drily at this. Doon heard Lizzie giggle.
- “It’ll keep you going for maybe half an hour,” someone said. “I don’t know how they think we can
- work, with nothing but scraps to eat.”
- Along the hall, other doors opened, and other voices joined in.
- “All I got was some limp green beans and a few clumps of porridge!”
- “I’ve had carrot soup three days in a row!”
- Some people counseled patience. “We shouldn’t complain,” someone said. “It’s hard for them to give
- us food. We should be grateful for—”
- “I’m tired of being grateful!” someone else broke in. “They promised to feed us, but they’re starving
- us instead!”
- “It seems to me,” said Tick, “that we should do something about this. I think maybe I’ll mention the
- problem at lunch tomorrow. Maybe weall should. Maybe we should tell them it’s very hard to work
- when you’re hungry.”
- “I’ll tell them!” cried Lizzie’s high voice, and other voices rose in agreement. An excited, angry babble
- filled the hallway, drowning out those who spoke for patience. “I’ll speak up!” “We have to protest!”
- “Tick is so right!”
- “Tick for mayor!” someone shouted, laughing.
- For a second Tick looked surprised. Then his eyes glowed with pleasure. He raised a fist in the air.
- “We’ll stand up for ourselves!” he said, and the people around him roared and raised their fists, too.
- Doon turned to his father and Edward and Sadge, who had all come to the door to see what was going
- on. “We should tell the Partons,” he said. “If we’re working, we need enough to eat. It’s only fair.”
- “Of course, they don’thave to give usanything, ” said Doon’s father. “They’re giving what they think
- they can spare.” He looked sadly at the dry chunk of cornbread in his hand. “But I suppose it can’t hurt
- to mention it,” he said, “without being rude, of course. I imagine they’re doing the best they can.”
- Mrs. Polster agreed to be the one to bring the matter up. She did so at lunch the next day. They were
- having cold spinach soup.
- “I have a request,” she said firmly. She set down her soup spoon.
- Everyone looked toward her. Doon felt a jitter in his stomach.
- “We have noticed,” said Mrs. Polster, “that the food parcels you so generously give us have become
- considerablysmaller lately. We find that when we have eaten what is within, we are still, to be
- frank,hungry. This is a difficulty for us.”
- There was silence. Everyone stared at Mrs. Polster, who sat very calmly with her hands in her lap,
- waiting for an answer.
- “What?” said Martha Parton at last. “Did I hear right?”
- “I believe so,” said Mrs. Polster, “unless you have ear trouble. I said we are not getting quite enough to
- eat.”
- Martha laughed a one-note laugh, a laugh of disbelief. Kenny stopped chewing and looked frightened.
- Ordney drew himself up and cleared his throat. “I am surprised,” he said. “I had thought you people
- understood the situation.”
- “We do, indeed,” said Doon’s father hastily. “We’re very grateful for what you’ve done for us. It’s just
- that . . .”
- “We’re working quite hard,” said Clary.
- “It’s a very small amount . . . ,” said Miss Thorn timidly.
- “For both dinner and breakfast,” added Edward Pocket.
- “Last night,” said Doon, “I had a boiled egg and three carrots for dinner. And nothing for breakfast this
- morning.”
- There was a silence again, a terrible, vibrating silence.
- Then Ordney leaned forward, gripping the edge of the table with his fingertips. “Now, listen here,” he
- said. “We’re doing the best we can with what has been asked of us. And I must say, a great deal has
- been asked. Suddenly we’re supposed to feed twice as many people as before! More than twice as
- many!” He glared at the Emberites, shifting his eyes to each one in turn. “And yet we do not have twice
- as much food as we did before. It’s true that each family is being given a little extra from the storehouse
- for this emergency. But not much.Sparks village just does not have enough for four hundred extra
- people. Are we supposed to feed you instead of our own families? Why should we? Whoare you,
- anyway, you strangers from some city no one’s ever heard of?”
- By the end of this speech, Ordney’s face was a deep red and his voice was shaking with rage.
- Doon felt frozen. All he could think was,He’s right. Of course he’s right. But we’re right, too.
- Everyone else must have been thinking the same thing. They finished their soup in silence. At the end
- of the meal, Martha dumped the food parcels on the table instead of handing them out. They each took
- one, but Doon’s father was the only person who said thank you. Later, when Doon opened his parcel,
- he found a wedge of cabbage leaves turning yellow at the edges and a hunk of some sort of bean cake.
- His stomach clenched. They’re tired of helping us, he thought. What are we going to do?
- CHAPTER 10
- Restless Weeks
- Poppy was now almost well. She still slept more than usual, but when she wasn’t sleeping she tromped
- around the doctor’s house pulling spoons off the table and spilling cups of water and crumpling pages
- of books. That is, she was almost her old self. So Lina often asked Mrs. Murdo if it wasn’t time for
- them to go and live with the others at the Pioneer Hotel. Mrs. Murdo always said she wasn’t quite
- ready. They’d wait until the brother came, she said. Lina had a feeling the real reason was that she liked
- helping the doctor. She was always poring over the doctor’s big medicine books, and helping her pick
- her herbs and mix her remedies. So they stayed on.
- And Lina worked for the doctor. It wasn’t that she didn’t like working. But in Ember, she’d had an
- adventurous job, an important job. She’d run with her messages all over the city—running the way she
- loved to run, so fast she almost flew. It was hard for her to stay in one place all day. She felt restless
- and bored.
- She did a huge amount of cooking—well, not cooking exactly, since the doctor rarely wanted to bother
- making a fire in the stove, but chopping and peeling and slicing and mixing. She wiped up spilled
- medicines and herbal solutions from the counters, she swept dirt from the floor, she pulled down
- cobwebs from the ceiling. There were always rags to be torn into bandages. There were always herbs to
- be pounded into powder and bottles to be labeled and plants to be watered. While everyone else was out
- in the village, doing new, interesting things and meeting new people, Lina was stuck doinghousework.
- One day she asked the doctor if there was any extra paper she could use for drawing. There wasn’t, the
- doctor said, but if she could find blank pages at the backs of books, she could use those. So Lina tore
- out eight blank pages, the doctor gave her a pencil, and she began drawing whenever she had a few
- minutes of free time.
- Out of habit, she drew the city she had always drawn—she hardly knew how to draw anything else.
- But she thought that since she was here in the real world, she should be able to imagine the city much
- better than before. She remembered the first drawing she’d done with her colored pencils, back in
- Ember, when she’d made the sky blue instead of its normal black. She had thought it was just an
- imaginary thing, a little crazy, to draw a blue sky. But now look! The sky really was blue! She must
- have known it somehow, in some secret place in her mind. Something in her was a little bit magic,
- maybe—she could see beyond what was right in front of her eyes to things that used to be, or things
- that could be in the future.
- So she shut her eyes and tried to look deep into her imagination. But the old version of the city, the one
- she’d drawn so many times, seemed to be stamped inside her eyelids. She kept drawing the same thing
- —the tall buildings, the lighted windows. She added a few extras: some trees, a couple of trucks with
- their oxen, a chicken. But it didn’t look quite right. Would the buildings be taller than the trees? How
- much taller? Would there be chickens in the city? She felt discouraged. So she set aside her city
- drawings and tried to draw what she saw around her.
- She drew the lemon tree outside the doctor’s back door. She drew her bike. She drew the front of the
- doctor’s house, and the gate, and the grapevine over the door. Once a truck parked a little way up the
- road to unload some crates, and she dashed out with her paper and pencil and drew the truck and its
- oxen.
- But none of these gave her quite the same thrill as drawing the city. There was a feeling that went with
- drawing the city, a feeling of longing and excitement and mystery. It was as if her drawings of the city
- were a half-open window, a glimpse of something she couldn’t quite see clearly.
- Torren sometimes came up behind her when she was drawing and peered over her shoulder. Now and
- then he would point out some part of the picture that didn’t look right, but most of the time he didn’t
- comment at all. He was hopping with impatience these days, waiting for his brother to come home.
- “He’ll be bringing me something,” he said one day. “Every time he comes home, he brings me
- something.” He went to the window seat and took his bag of treasures from the cabinet underneath. “I’ll
- show you these,” he said to Lina, “if you promise not to touch them.”
- Lina wandered over. She didn’t want to appear too interested, since Torren was certainly never
- interested in anythingshe did, but she was curious about these prized possessions he’d been hiding.
- He reached into the bag and took out one thing at a time, placing it carefully on the window ledge.
- There were six things, all different. Lina could not identify a single one of them.
- “Caspar brought me these,” Torren said. He lined them up, making tiny adjustments to their positions
- until he got them just right. “They’re all extinct.”
- Lina took a step closer and bent down to look.
- “Don’t touch them!” Torren cried.
- “I’m not,” said Lina irritably. “Well, what are they?”
- Torren pointed to the first thing, which was shaped like a T and made of scratched silver metal. “An
- airplane,” Torren said. “It carried people through the air.”
- “Oh, come on,” said Lina. “It’s not even a foot long.”
- “Real airplanes did,” Torren said. “This is just amodel of a real airplane.”
- He pointed to the next one. “A tank,” he said. “It runs over people and crushes them.”
- “What’s the point of that?” Lina asked.
- Torren sighed at Lina’s stupidity. “It’s for fighting enemies,” he said.
- The next thing looked like a short, chubby bike. “Motorcycle,” said Torren. “It goes really fast.” Then
- came a battered silver tube. “Flashlight. You push this button, and light comes out.”
- “Show me,” Lina said.
- “It doesn’twork, ” said Torren. “I told you, all these are extinct.”
- The next thing was a black rectangle with rows of small colored buttons. “Remote,” said Torren.
- “What’s it for?”
- “It makes things happen when you press the buttons.”
- “What kind of things?”
- “Just things,” said Torren. “I don’t know. It’s very technical.”
- The last thing was different from all the rest. It seemed to be an animal, made of some stiff grayish
- material. It stood about ten inches high, on four thick feet. “Elephant,” said Torren. “As tall as a
- house.”
- “Tall as ahouse ?” Lina tried to imagine it. “You mean if I stood next to one I’d only come up to
- here?” She pointed at the creature’s knee.
- Torren swatted her hand away. “It was the biggest animal on earth,” he said. “If it wrapped its nose
- around you, you would die.”
- “I’d love to see one,” Lina said.
- “You can’t. There aren’t any more.” Torren spread his arms out, hiding his treasures from view. “You
- have to go away now,” he said. “You only get one look.”
- So Lina went out into the courtyard and picked a few green grapes, which turned out to be much too
- hard and sour to eat. Through the window, she could see Torren moving the tank and the motorcycle
- toward each other, and she could hear him making growling and crashing noises. What must the ancient
- world have been like, she wondered, with all these strange things moving around in it? Was it
- wonderful or terrible?
- One afternoon, when Lina was in the village picking up some salt for the doctor, she saw a long line of
- people at a clothing shop. A few Emberites were among them. Lizzie was in the line, wearing the black
- scarf around her neck that she’d worn ever since she arrived, to show that she was mourning for
- Looper, her boyfriend back in Ember.
- “Why are there so many people here?” Lina asked.
- “They have eyeglasses!” Lizzie said. “A roamer brought in a special load of them yesterday.”
- “Glasses? But you don’t wear glasses.”
- “These aredark glasses,” Lizzie said. “They call them sunglasses. They make it so the light doesn’t
- hurt your eyes as much.”
- Most of the people of Sparks already had sunglasses. A couple of the work leaders, understanding how
- much the light bothered the Emberites’ eyes, traded some extra wooden crates for a couple of boxes of
- the glasses and gave them out for free. Lina tried some on but didn’t like them because they made all
- the green look brownish. She also thought they made people look sneaky, as if they had evil secret
- plans.
- Lina liked going to the market plaza. It was always alive with people and animals, and the markets had
- things she’d never seen before—sandals made of old truck tires, hats and baskets woven of straw. It
- was a noisy, bustling, interesting place. It was also very messy.
- The animals made the mess. Goats and oxen, pulling carts in from the fields, left their big, smelly
- plops all over. These got cleaned up eventually—someone came and scraped them into buckets and
- took them away—but often this didn’t happen until halfway through the morning, and people had to
- step carefully until then and breathe in that powerful smell. This gave Lina a good idea. She would do a
- favor for the marketplace, she decided; everyone would appreciate it.
- So the next morning, just at dawn, she rode her bike down to the plaza with a big bucket hanging from
- the handlebars. She scooped up a load of cow plops and goat plops and dumped it into the river. Back
- and forth from the plaza to the river she went, scraping up one smelly, squashy load after another, and
- when she was just about to dump the last load, one of the shopkeepers arrived. She smiled at him,
- expecting some words of approval. But instead his face twisted in rage.
- “What are youdoing ?” he shouted. He started running toward her. “Dumping that good stuff in the
- river?” He seemed unable to believe his eyes. “What is the matter with you?”
- Good stuff? thought Lina. What was he talking about?
- He snatched the bucket out of her hand. “You people are—” He stopped. He pressed his lips together
- and closed his eyes for a moment. “All right,” he said in a tight voice. “I suppose you didn’t know. This
- stuff is precious. You do not throw it in the river!”
- Lina took a step backward. She felt as if she’d been slapped. “Oh!” she said. “Then what do you do
- with it?”
- “It goes out to the fields,” the man said. “It goes into the rotting pile, and when it’s ready they dig it
- into the ground. It’s fertilizer. I guess you’ve never heard of it.”
- “No,” said Lina. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I was trying to be helpful.”
- “The most helpful thing you people could do would be to . . . well, never mind.” He gave Lina a last
- disgusted look and walked away, leaving her with a half-filled bucket she didn’t know what to do with.
- She carried it out of the village and up the road, and when no one was around, she dumped its contents
- at the side of a field.
- It wasn’t only Lina who got into this kind of trouble. As time went on, she heard about other people
- doing or saying the wrong thing and irritating the people of Sparks. Sometimes it was because they
- seemed stupid. People from Ember were frightened by chickens, had never seen a cloud, and didn’t
- know the meaning of ordinary words likestorm andforest andcat andlemon . They knew nothing about
- history. They’d never heard of other countries. They didn’t even know that the earth was round like a
- ball. To the villagers, they seemed unbelievably dumb.
- On the other hand, they sometimes acted a bit superior, boasting of the things they’d had in their
- underground city. The villagers didn’t like hearing that in Ember people had had electric lights and
- flush toilets and hot and cold running water. Once when Lister Munk, who had been the Pipeworks
- supervisor, was telling a Sparks man about the generator, the man called him a liar. When Lister
- protested that he was telling the truth and implied that Sparks was a rather backward place compared to
- Ember, the man hit him. It took five people to break up the fight.
- Worst of all was the ravenous hunger of the Emberites. The village families were pleased that these
- strangers were so impressed by their fruits and vegetables, but they were also worried. Their leaders
- had told them the newcomers were to be fed, and all households were being supplied with extra food
- for the purpose. But the people of Ember never seemed to get full. They cleaned every last crumb off
- their plates, asked for seconds, finished those off, and then sat there looking hungry. The villagers
- resented it. Lina sometimes overheard them talking in the markets. “It’s too much to ask,” she heard a
- woman grumbling. “And these cavepeople are going to be here nearly five more months! Am I going to
- have to give them some of my strawberry crop? I don’t see why I should.” And another woman was
- even more direct. “I wish they’d just get out,” she said. “It’s hard enough to feed your own family,
- much less a bunch of strangers.”
- Lina wasn’t used to feeling unwanted. She didn’t like it. There were plenty of things about this place
- she didn’t like. The dust that coated her feet and legs, for instance, turning them a yellowish brown.
- The tiny bugs that bit her and made red itchy spots on her arms. The way the sun burned the back of her
- neck. This place wasn’t so perfect, she wanted to tell those crabby villagers. In Ember, for instance,
- they didn’t have so many mean, snotty people as they did here.
- Lina sometimes rode down to the Pioneer Hotel to see Doon. He always seemed glad to see her, but it
- wasn’t the same as it had been back in Ember, when they were involved in the desperate search for a
- way out of their doomed city. Doon showed her around the Pioneer, and he told her about the work he
- did and the people he ate his lunch with. But he seemed distracted, or troubled, as if he was trying to
- solve a problem that he wasn’t telling her about.
- Lina would ride back to the doctor’s house after these visits with thoughts struggling against each
- other in her mind. She missed the old Doon, her clever, adventurous partner. And she herself felt
- different here, too. She didn’t know what to do or how to be. Some of the people were trying to be
- kind, but there was so much unkindness mixed in with the kindness. To the people of Sparks, the
- people of Ember were just a nuisance. How could they stay in a place where they weren’t wanted?
- This world was huge. There must be another place in it for the people of Ember.
- CHAPTER 11
- Tick’s Projects
- By the month of Burning, it was so hot that the people of Ember felt as if they were trapped in a huge
- oven. The sun blazed down, the grasses dried to a brownish yellow, the roads were deep in dust. People
- gasped and sneezed and wilted. All they wanted was to lie down in the shade, or wade deep into the
- cool water of the river. But the work went on as always—in the ferocious heat, they hauled garbage,
- cleaned out the goat pens, pulled weeds in the fields, shoveled manure. When they flopped down on the
- ground to rest or stopped every few minutes for a drink of water, the workers of Sparks glared at them
- and grumbled. They suspected them of being lazy, and that made the people of Ember angry.
- Resentment increased on both sides, until any little accident could flare up into a fight.
- At the Pioneer Hotel, the mood grew more and more grim. At first, it had been rather fun to live there,
- especially for the smaller children, who explored the hidden corners of the huge old building, held races
- in the long corridors, and played colossal games of hide-and-seek. Lizzie Bisco liked going into the
- Ladies’ Room on the ground floor, where there was still a large fragment of mirror attached to the wall.
- She could see almost her entire self in it, which pleased her on the days when she had just washed her
- hair in the river or found a bit of colored cloth to use as a ribbon.
- But for the older people, the Pioneer Hotel quickly stopped feeling like a fine adventure. They didn’t
- like sleeping on piles of pine needles and dry grasses wrapped in bedspreads. It annoyed them to have
- to go to the river for water, and to have no indoor bathrooms, only outhouses full of bad smells and
- spiders. They worried that the candles might set things on fire, and they wanted real windows, with
- glass, to keep the bugs out. Almost two months had passed since they’d arrived in Sparks. In about four
- months, they would have to leave. If they didn’t like living in the hotel, they knew they’d like even less
- to start from nothing somewhere out in the wilderness. They imagined sleeping with no roof over their
- heads, having no protection at all from the sun or the bugs, and scratching through the grass for
- something to eat. No one liked the prospect. In the dim hallways, in the roofless, ruined lobby, and in
- the dusty ballroom, people gathered in little clusters and spoke to each other in worried tones, and
- sometimes their worry turned to anger and fear.
- One person, however, did not stand around talking: that was Tick Hassler. When he saw a problem, he
- did something about it. He’d become a sort of leader around the Pioneer Hotel, just by the force of his
- personality. He started what he called the Pioneer Hotel Rehabilitation Project. He explained his ideas
- to anyone who would listen, and the way he explained them made them seem instantly exciting and
- fun.
- “Here’s what we’ll do,” he said, the night he announced the first project. It was late evening of a very
- hot day, nearly dark, and a few people were still sitting out on the steps of the hotel, hoping for a cool
- breeze. Tick never seemed much affected by the heat. Everyone else was disheveled and sweaty by the
- end of the day, but Tick always managed to look neat, his hair combed so flat it looked almost polished,
- his bare arms and legs smooth and brown, his clothes—a plain black T-shirt and black shorts—never
- torn or stained. He wore his sunglasses almost all the time, and they gave him a commanding and
- slightly mysterious look.
- Doon was there the night Tick announced his first project. It was a relief, after a hard day, to be part of
- a group of people who were easy with each other, a group with a common purpose. Several of Doon’s
- classmates from the Ember school were part of it, and some boys who had been cart pullers with Tick,
- and quite a few others. There were some girls, too. Lizzie was always somewhere around Tick,
- listening eagerly as he talked, or trotting off on an errand of some sort for him. She had stopped
- wearing the black scarf that signified her mourning for Looper. “I’ve been sad long enough,” she told
- Doon. “Besides, Tick doesn’t think black looks good on me.” Now she wore her sunglasses all the
- time.
- “What we’re going to do,” said Tick, sitting on the low wall that bordered the steps, leaning forward
- with his elbows on his knees, and speaking in a way that made you feel his words were meant just for
- you, “is get ourselves organized. There’s a lot that needs to be done around here.” People nodded. “The
- first thing we need,” Tick went on, “is a gathering place, like the Gathering Hall back in Ember. And
- what’s the perfect spot for it?” He held out his hands, palms facing the sky, waiting for an answer.
- No one spoke.
- “This field, of course!” He swept an arm out, taking in the whole of the big field in front of the hotel,
- with its rough, weedy ground, scrawny trees, and chunks of concrete and other rubble. “We’re going to
- clear it out. We’re going to make it into a grand plaza, better than the one in the village. We can have
- meetings here, with our leader speaking to us from these steps.”
- “We don’t have a leader,” someone said.
- “But we will someday, once we decide who’s best for the job,” Tick said. “I’m going to start on it
- tomorrow—who wants to work with me?”
- And although they had already worked a full day, nearly all of them flung their hands up and
- volunteered. Doon did, too. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to clear the field and make a plaza; he
- wasn’t sure they really needed such a thing. After all, they’d be leaving here before long. But he wanted
- to be part of this; he didn’t want to be left out.
- The project got off to a great start: twenty or thirty people were out there every evening, pulling up
- weeds, digging out rubble, and hacking down trees. Tick was always there, working twice as fast and
- hard as anyone else and telling them all what terrific progress they were making. It was hard work, but
- somehow it was fun, too.
- Then one night Tick called everyone together and announced that he had a new idea. “We won’t stop
- working on the field,” he said, “but I’m going to take a team out to start on another project. We need to
- build a platform out over the river. It’ll get us out toward the deeper part, where we can swim and catch
- fish and maybe even launch a boat someday. There might be lots of places to explore besides this one.
- Who wants to work with me?”
- Of course everyone wanted to switch over to this new project. It sounded much more interesting than
- clearing the field. And besides, people wanted to be on the project Tick was working on.
- So a great many of them started helping with the new platform—the dock, Tick said it was called.
- They ripped boards off the old storage sheds behind the hotel, they piled up rocks in the river to make
- supports. The field project slowed way down. Hardly anyone was working on it anymore.
- And as the weeks went on, Doon began to see that this was how Tick’s projects went. He would have
- an idea and get everyone excited about it. They’d start in to work. Then after a while Tick would have
- an idea for a new project, and everyone would follow him to that one, while the old project withered
- away. What Tick seemed to like was the thrill of something new, and the power of being a leader. This
- slightly dimmed Doon’s admiration for Tick. But no one was perfect, after all. Tick had far more
- energy than most people, and far more ideas, even though they weren’t all good ones.
- In addition to helping with Tick’s projects, Doon had plenty of his own projects to keep him busy. In
- the early mornings, he helped Clary with the garden she’d put in near the river. He was working on a
- way to make watering easier for her. He’d seen a pump the villagers had constructed, which used the
- river’s current to push water out into the channels that watered the fields. This pump was fairly simple
- —a deep hole in the riverbank, with an arrangement of pipes and valves at the bottom. He thought he
- could figure out how to make one.
- In the evenings, by the last of the daylight, Doon read. He was choosing books from the room in back
- of the Ark every few days now. His choices at first were pretty random—he just grabbed whatever he
- could reach. But then he’d had a great idea for bringing some sort of order to this vast collection. One
- day, when he got back to room 215 after work, he’d found Edward Pocket standing by the window,
- frowning at the sky. Edward looked unhappy. His gnarled hands were tightened into fists, and his
- mouth was bunched up into a twisted knot.
- “Are you all right?” said Doon.
- “Oh, I’m fine,” said Edward. “I just love sitting around all day doing nothing.”
- “You’re bored,” said Doon.
- “Yes!” Edward cried. “Yes, yes, yes!” He raised both hands and grabbed wads of his frizzled gray hair
- and stretched his mouth into a mad grin. “They say I’m too old to work, but I’m not ready to freeze up
- and die. I don’t want to spend my dayschatting. Orsleeping. ” He said the words with contempt. “What
- am I supposed to do with myself?”
- And of course Doon had the answer. It was so obvious he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it
- before. “I know exactly what you can do,” he said, and he told Edward Pocket about the books.
- Now Edward spent all the daylight hours in the book room, sorting and organizing and arranging the
- books. He often picked out ones he thought Doon would like and brought them back to the hotel. In this
- way, Doon learned about bird migrations, cowboys, basketball, whales, mountain climbing, Egyptian
- history, dog training, French cooking, car repair, and dinosaurs, among other things. Edward even
- found a book calledScience Projects, in which there was a chapter that explained how to do an
- experiment that made electricity. The experiment required things Doon didn’t have, but he kept the
- book anyway, in case he ever got them. You never knew what was going to turn up in the loads the
- roamers brought to town.
- In the meantime, Tick carried on tirelessly with his projects. The dock never did get built. It kept
- getting torn apart by the river’s current. But other projects succeeded. One of Tick’s ideas was to hoist
- the flag of Ember over the Pioneer Hotel. Lottie Hoover, who had worked in one of Ember’s city
- offices, had rolled the flag up and tucked it into her bag just before she rushed down into the Pipeworks
- to leave. Doon didn’t really see the point of flying Ember’s flag over the hotel—everyone knew that it
- was the people of Ember who lived there—but he helped with the project, sawing the limbs off a tall,
- thin tree to make a flagpole. Soon the flag of the city of Ember, deep blue with a yellow grid, flapped
- above the Pioneer.
- “Beautiful,” said Tick, gazing up at it. He turned to the people gathered around him. “We have to show
- them,” he said, “that we’reproud of being the people of Ember. They have all the advantages right now.
- They control the food. They control the work teams. They’re taller than we are, and stronger. But we
- can’t let any of that matter. If we want them to respect us, we have to respect ourselves.”
- Several days later, as Doon was walking through the plaza, he noticed that a flag was also flying from
- the tower of the town hall. It was black with a spray of orange dots rising from the corner—sparks,
- Doon thought. He wondered if they’d had this flag all along, or if someone had made it and put it up
- after seeing the one at the Pioneer Hotel.
- CHAPTER 12
- Caspar Arrives with a Surprise
- Lina was sweeping the floor of the kitchen when she heard the thump and shuffle of hooves outside.
- There was a shout, in a man’s voice—“Hello-o-o! Where is everyone?”—and then a shriek from inside
- the house, running footsteps, and Torren’s voice screaming, “Caspar! Caspar! You’re home!”
- Lina flung down the broom and dashed to the door. There was Torren, clamped onto the front of a very
- large man, who was rumpling Torren’s hair and thumping him on the back. Behind the man was his
- truck, an especially large one, piled high with boxes and crates, pulled behind two huge oxen with
- curved horns. They stood breathing noisily, their sides going in and out.
- “Well, small brother,” said Caspar. “Glad to see me?”
- “Yes!” said Torren. He unwrapped his arms from around his brother’s trunk and gazed up at his face.
- “You were gone so long this time.”
- “I had to extend my route,” said Caspar. “Quite far, in fact.Quite far. The work of a roamer gets harder
- every year.”
- Lina could see Caspar’s resemblance to his brother, Torren—they both had the same small eyes and
- the same wispy light brown hair. But while Torren was narrow, Caspar was wide. He had a wide,
- round, rosy-pink face, with a glistening, round chin. It was almost a babyish-looking face, except for
- the tiny mustache on the upper lip, twisted at both ends into points.
- Dr. Hester, who had been picking peas, came out from the side of the house. “Welcome back,
- traveler,” she said.
- “Auntie Hester!” cried Caspar, flinging his arms wide. He stood that way while Dr. Hester walked
- toward him, and when she came close he gave her a hug that lifted her feet in their dusty slippers off
- the ground.
- “Don’t do that,” she said, her face squashed against Caspar’s shoulder.
- He dropped her back down. “Can’t help it,” he said. “You’re light as a feather.”
- “I’m not, either,” said the doctor, rubbing her neck. “You’re just showing off your muscles.”
- “Well,” said Caspar, “it’s true that being a roamer builds muscles.” He made a fist and flexed his
- meaty arm back and forth. “Heavy things to lift, you know. Someexceedingly heavy. Out near the
- Camp Range foothills a few months ago, I got stuck in the mud and had to lift the whole back end of
- the truck, which was loaded at the time with—”
- Torren jumped up and down at Caspar’s side. “Did you bring me a surprise?”
- Caspar looked startled. “A surprise?”
- “Yes, the way you always do. A surprise for me!”
- For a second Lina felt sorry for Torren; the look on his face was so hopeful. She had a feeling that
- Caspar was more important to Torren than Torren was to Caspar.
- Caspar laughed. He had the oddest laugh—hih-hih-hih-hih,all on one high, squeaky note. It was hardly
- a sound of pleasure at all. “Well,” he said, “as it happens, I did bring one surprise. It’s more of a
- surprise for everyone, though.” He looked back toward his truck. “Are you there?” he called.
- “Right here,” answered a gruff voice. From behind the truck stepped a woman almost as big as Caspar
- himself—a massive tree trunk of a woman, with swirls and tangles of red-brown hair falling to her
- shoulders. She was dressed in faded blue pants and a huge brown shirt. She looked at them, smiling
- slightly. Her eyes were blue and fierce.
- “This is Maddy,” said Caspar. “She’s my roaming partner.”
- From Torren there was silence. Dr. Hester held out her hand and said, “Welcome.” The big woman
- pumped the doctor’s hand firmly up and down three times, and then Dr. Hester glanced toward the
- house and saw Lina standing in the doorway.
- “Caspar,” she said, turning back to him. “Have you heard about what’s happened since you’ve been
- gone? About the people who came here from the underground city?”
- “I heard some tale like that,” said Caspar.
- “Lina is one of them,” Dr. Hester said. “Come here, Lina.”
- Lina walked out toward Caspar, who squinted at her and then thrust a hand into the pocket of his pants
- and pulled out a pair of slightly bent glasses, which he put on. He peered at her through their cracked
- lenses as she approached. When she got close, he held out an enormous hand. Lina shook it.
- “Underground, eh?” said Caspar. The cloudy glasses made his eyes look bigger and dimmer. “Some
- sort of mole people? But you’ve got no fur!” He laughed his squeaky laugh again. “Hih-hih-hih!”
- Lina smiled politely at this stupid joke. Something about Caspar seemed to be slightly off, she thought.
- “Lina’s sister, Poppy, is with us, as well,” Dr. Hester went on, “and their guardian, Mrs. Murdo.”
- During all this Torren had been standing very still. His narrow face had closed down: his eyes looked
- like tiny stones, and his mouth was pinched small. He was staring at Maddy. Suddenly he cried,
- “ButI’m supposed to be your partner!”
- Caspar blinked at him, as if he’d already forgotten he was there. “You?” he said. “You’re much too
- young.”
- “I’m almost eleven!” Torren yelled. “I’m big enough!”
- “Not quite, little brother,” Caspar said. He grinned at Maddy, who gazed back at him calmly. She was
- like a big rock, Lina thought. Her face didn’t move.
- Torren scowled. “Don’t call me little!” he shouted. He turned and ran toward the house.
- Caspar watched him go, lifting his eyebrows slightly. “It’s hard for children to accept change,” he said.
- “But they must learn, mustn’t they?”
- Dr. Hester said, “Our three guests have been sleeping in the loft, Caspar. They’ll have to sleep in the
- main room while you’re here.” She paused. “How long do you think you’ll stay?”
- “Just a night or two,” said Caspar. His face took on a serious look. “I’m on a particular mission this
- time. Heading for the city.”
- The city? thought Lina. What city?
- The doctor echoed her thought. “The city?” she said. “Why in the world would you go there?” She
- seemed astonished, as if she’d never heard before of anyone going to the city.
- “Because of this particular mission,” Caspar said. “Of a secret nature.”
- “I see,” said Dr. Hester. “All right, then. It’s nearly time to eat. Take your beasts down to the barn, and
- then come on in.”
- That night, Caspar talked a great deal about his exploits as a roamer. “In the northern forest lands,” he
- said, “I came upon some old cabins that still had glass in the windows. It was quite a trick to get the
- glass out without breaking it—took four days—but I managed. Did cut my hand a bit.” He extended his
- large hand and pointed out a tiny scar on the palm. “Quite a lot of blood from that. Then up near
- Hogmarsh, I found a very valuable item.” He gazed around at them, smiling slightly.
- “What was it?” asked Torren, who had forgotten for the moment to be mad at his brother.
- “An ancient statue,” said Caspar. “It depicts some very rare sort of bird, with a long neck and only one
- leg. You can see that it was once painted pink.” He paused to let the wonder of this sink in.
- “Pink, tink, stink,” said Poppy. “Pinky stinky.” She stared at Caspar and giggled.
- “Hush, Poppy,” said Lina.
- “Then in Ardenwood,” Caspar went on, idly twisting his tiny mustache, “I had to fend off a few
- bandits.”
- “Bandits?” cried Torren. “Really?”
- “Well, they might as well have been bandits,” Caspar said. “Turned out they had no weapons, but they
- were set on stealing from me, that’s for sure. I got rid of them fast with a few well-placed lashes.”
- Caspar sliced his arm through the air, as if he were cracking a whip. “And a good thing, too,” he went
- on, “because not far from there I located another special thing—several boxes of authentic, pre-Disaster
- arti-ficial flowers. They are made of very fine cloth, hardly faded at all.”
- “Artificial flowers?” said Lina, wondering why the people of Sparks would want fake flowers when
- they had real ones growing everywhere.
- “Yes,” said Caspar. “I have a sort of knack for finding unusual things.”
- Maddy didn’t join much in the conversation. Once Mrs. Murdo, being polite, asked her if she too
- enjoyed being a roamer, but she only smiled a little and said, “I don’t mind it. There are worse things to
- be.”
- Mrs. Murdo waited to hear about the worse things, but it seemed that was all she was going to say.
- When it was bedtime, Caspar went up into the loft and Torren dashed up after him. Maddy took
- Torren’s place in the medicine room, saying a brief good-night and closing the door firmly after her.
- The doctor helped Lina and Mrs. Murdo make up beds of pads and blankets on the couch and on the
- floor.
- “It sounds interesting to be a roamer,” Lina said.
- “I suppose so,” said the doctor.
- “And Caspar has a special knack for finding things?”
- The doctor bent over and spoke softly into Lina’s ear. “He has a knack for finding thewrong things,”
- she said. “He’s always bringing loads of things people already have, and not finding the things people
- really need. Artificial flowers,” she said wearily. “What are we going to do with artificial flowers?” The
- bed being made up, she went around the room and blew out all the candles but one. “He’s always been
- a bit odd,” said the doctor. “Looks as if he’s gotten even odder since he was here last. He tries hard,
- though, you can say that for him. He has high ambitions. He wants to be a famous roamer. He doesn’t
- know that he’s a bit famous already, among the other roamers—but not famous the way he’d like.”
- She handed the last candle to Lina and stumped off to her room.
- The next day was strange and unpleasant. Caspar sat in the big armchair telling stories about his
- adventures while Torren hovered around him asking questions. Lina listened for a while. She was
- curious about this work of roaming—it sounded exciting, like something she might want to do herself.
- But she soon got bored, because it seemed to her that Caspar never said much about the really
- interesting parts of his adventures. She wanted to hear what the faraway places were like, and how the
- old buildings looked, and everything that was in the buildings, but all Caspar talked about was how
- brave and clever he’d been to find the things he found, and what injuries he’d suffered in finding them.
- Maddy didn’t listen to Caspar; she spent most of her time in the courtyard or the garden, motionless
- and silent, gazing at the plants, her arms folded across her wide waist. Every now and then she plucked
- a leaf or blossom, rubbed it between her fingers, and sniffed it. Once she asked Lina what a certain
- plant was. “I’m not sure,” Lina said. “I only know a few of them.”
- “Then you know more than I do,” said Maddy, flashing Lina an unexpected smile. But other than that,
- she said almost nothing to anyone. She didn’t seem angry or unhappy, just off in her own world. Lina
- wondered about her but felt far too shy to ask questions.
- After a while, Caspar shooed Torren away, sat down at the table, and pulled some scraps of paper from
- his pocket. He spread them out and bent over them, and his jovial, boastful manner changed. He ran his
- finger along the lines of writing on the papers. He wrote on them with a stubby pencil. And as he did
- so, he frowned and muttered and mumbled to himself, words that sounded like nonsense to Lina except
- for an occasional string of numbers. “Mmmbgl bblbble 3578,” he would say. “Throobbm wullgm
- fflunnnph 44209.” She wandered up behind him and tried to look over his shoulder. After all, she had
- experience with torn documents and hard-to-decipher bits of writing. But Caspar twisted around and
- scowled at her, holding his hands over the papers. “Private! Private! Keep away,” he said. He wouldn’t
- let Torren see, either, so Torren sat on the window seat and sulked.
- Around midafternoon, the doctor rushed in the door looking even more frazzled than usual. Her shirt
- was smudged with blood, and her shirttails were half tucked in and half not. “I’m out of clean
- bandages,” she said. “Lina, did you do them? I need some. And I need that lavender extract—a bottle of
- it. No, I’d better get two bottles.” She hurried into the medicine room.
- Lina had forgotten all about the bandages. She dashed into the kitchen, pulled some rags from the
- basket, and tore them into strips. She took these to the doctor, who was on her knees, rummaging
- through a chest.
- “And,” said the doctor, “I’m going to have to make some mustard plasters tonight. You’ll need to go
- out into the orchard and gather me some mustard flowers. I’ll need a lot. Get the leaves, too, and the
- roots. I want the whole plant.” She found her bottles of oil, thrust them into her bag along with the
- bandages, and rushed out the door again.
- Lina felt her spirits sink down into her shoes. She didn’t want to gather mustard plants. It was too hot.
- It wasferociously hot. She was sick of being hot, having her neck damp beneath her long hair and her
- clothes sticking to her back. She was sick of doing chores. She shuffled out into the courtyard, where a
- few of the doctor’s seedlings were drying up in their pots. She trudged to the pump, filled a bucket, and
- splashed some water on each limp plant. Then she sat down in the shade of the grapevine and leaned
- against the wall beneath the window and thought about everything that was wrong.
- She was mad at the doctor for giving her so much work to do and hardly noticing when she did it. She
- was mad at Mrs. Murdo for not moving them out to the Pioneer Hotel. And she was lonely. She missed
- being with people she knew. Especially, she missed being with Doon in the old way, the way they’d
- been together when they were partners in Ember. Now he seemed to care more for his new friends than
- he did for her. Every time she thought about him, she felt a thud of pain, like a bruised place inside her.
- From the window just above her head, Lina heard Caspar’s voice. “Not now!” he said. “I have to do
- some planning. I need quiet.”
- The door opened, and Torren stormed out. He threw a furious glance at Lina but didn’t speak. He ran
- through the gate and up the road. He’s mad, too, thought Lina. Everyone’s mad.
- From inside, she heard Caspar’s voice again, startlingly near. He was talking to Maddy, who must
- have come in the kitchen door. Lina realized they were standing by the window, just behind her.
- “We’ll head out day after tomorrow,” said Caspar. “Starting early.”
- “Uh-huh,” said Maddy in her low, growly voice.
- “All those stories about germs still lurking there,” Caspar said, “they’re nonsense, you know. Those
- germs died out long ago.”
- “No doubt you’re right,” said Maddy.
- They were talking about the city! Lina sat very still and listened harder.
- “People talk about other kinds of danger there, too,” Caspar went on. “Bandits and so on. Doesn’t
- botherme. ”
- “Of course not,” Maddy said.
- “And anyway, even if there is danger,” said Caspar, “it’s worth the risk, because of what we’re going
- to find.”
- “You sound very sure that we’re going to find it,” said Maddy.
- “Of course I’m sure,” said Caspar. “Aren’t you?”
- The answer to this was just a grunt.
- They moved away from the window, and their voices grew fainter. Maddy spoke next. Lina couldn’t
- hear all of what she said, but she caught the words “How far?” and in Caspar’s answer she heard the
- words “day’s journey.” Then she heard steps clomping up the stairs to the loft, and the room went
- quiet.
- Lina sat very still. Her bad mood faded. Other thoughts swirled in her mind. She was remembering the
- sparkling city whose picture she had drawn so many times, the great city of light, the city she had
- always believed in. Now Caspar was planning to go there. It wasn’t dangerous anymore, and it was
- only a day’s journey away.
- She knew, of course, that the city Caspar was talking about had been damaged, like everything else, in
- the Disaster. The beautiful, shining city she had imagined must have been this city in the past, in the
- time before the Disaster. In her mind, she revised her vision of the city: some of the high towers would
- have toppled, and their windows would be broken. Stones from ruined buildings would have fallen into
- the street. Roofs would have caved in.
- But the idea that struck her was this: maybe the people of Ember were meant to restore the city.
- Perhaps their great job—the reason they had come up into this new world—was to live in the city and
- rebuild it, so that once again it was the glorious, shining city of Lina’s vision.
- This wassuch a beautiful idea. That night, she lay in bed thinking about it, and the more she thought,
- the more sure she was, and the more excited.
- CHAPTER 13
- Taking Action
- One evening Doon wandered off by himself toward the far corner of the hotel, where the trees grew
- thickly and the undergrowth beneath them was dense. He made his way into the woods, to a thicket of
- vines all woven together like thorny ropes. Little lumpy fruits, some red and some black, grew on these
- vines. Doon had already discovered that the red ones were hard and sour, but if left to ripen they turned
- black and sweet. He had been checking the vines regularly; each day there were more and more of the
- black ones. Today, he saw, there were more black berries than red. He began picking them. Some he ate
- right from the vine—they were sweet and juicy. Others he put in a basket he’d brought with him to take
- back to the others in room 215.
- He heard footsteps behind him. A voice—he recognized it instantly—called out, “Doon!” He turned
- around, and there was Tick striding toward him, smiling his dazzling smile.
- Doon stood up—he’d been squatting to reach for the berries on the lowest vines. “Look what I found,”
- he said, holding out a handful of berries to Tick.
- Tick took one and popped it into his mouth. His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Terrific!” he said. He
- took the rest of them from Doon’s palm. “So,” he said, “are you going to save us again?”
- “Save us?” said Doon, confused.
- “Yes, from starvation. You’re the hero of Ember. It’s about time for you to save us again.”
- It flustered Doon to be called a hero. He wasn’t sure if Tick was admiring him or making fun of him.
- He couldn’t think what to say next.
- Tick reached into the thicket and plucked a few berries for himself. “These are good,” he said. “Mind
- if I take some?”
- “They don’t belong to me,” said Doon. “Anyone can have them.”
- Tick hunted among the vines for a while, picking berries and popping them into his mouth. Then he
- said, “You know that building they call the Ark?”
- Doon nodded.
- “Ever been in it?”
- “No,” Doon said. “Just in the separate room at the back. They have books in there—you should see
- them, there must be thousands.”
- Tick didn’t comment on the books. “I went in there the other day,” he said. “They had me carry in a
- crate of pickled beets. It’s their storehouse, you know. They say they’re short of food. Hah!” Tick gave
- a laugh that was more like a bark. “That place isfull of food.”
- “Really?” said Doon.
- “Really,” said Tick, tossing three berries into his mouth. “There’s jars of preserved fruit, and sacks of
- dried fruit, and every kind of pickle, and bags of corn—loads and loads of food. And we get limp
- carrots for our dinners. I believe there’s a bit of stinginess going on.”
- Doon frowned. He thought of his father, looking with dismay last night at the scanty contents of his
- dinner parcel. He thought about what Ordney had said at lunch the week before:We just don’t have
- enough for four hundred extra people. Was this untrue after all?
- Tick had moved a few steps away and found a patch that was thick with berries. He was picking them
- rapidly, eating each one. When he spoke, his words sounded a little juicy. “I don’t know about you,” he
- said, “but I don’t like unfairness.”
- “I don’t, either,” said Doon. He walked over to Tick and offered him the handful of berries he’d just
- collected. Tick took them all.
- “I believe an unfair situation needs to be corrected,” Tick said.
- “Corrected how?”
- Tick wiped his red-stained fingers on his pants. “Well,” he said, “that’s something we have to figure
- out.”
- We,thought Doon. He liked that. Though he’d stopped taking part so often in Tick’s projects, still he
- admired Tick’s energy and felt his power. He was glad Tick had sought him out. He was glad that Tick
- seemed to consider him different from the others, smarter, more important. “You’re right,” he said.
- “We should do something.”
- Tick nodded. “I don’t trust these Sparks people,” he said. “In some ways, they seem very primitive. Do
- you know that they make fire by hitting two stones together?”
- “They do?” Doon hadn’t seen anyone starting a fire, since he was rarely in kitchens. He knew that the
- fire in the bakery was kept going all the time; he’d seen people going in there sometimes carrying
- candles that had gone out. “They don’t have matches?” he said.
- “Sometimes they do,” said Tick. “But not always. Matches seem to be rare.”
- “We should give them some of ours,” said Doon. All the people who’d come out of Ember had the
- matches that were supplied with the boats. The Emberites had hundreds of matches.
- “Oh, I don’t think so,” Tick said quickly. “We need them. We have to keep those for ourselves.”
- Doon wondered why, when they had so many; but he thought maybe matches figured somehow in
- Tick’s plans.
- “So you’re with me?” said Tick.
- “Sure,” said Doon. Then he hesitated. “With you in what?”
- “Action,” said Tick. “You took action before, when there was an urgent situation. We may need to take
- action again pretty soon.”
- Doon still didn’t know what Tick had in mind, but he asked no more questions. Tick had a way of
- letting you know that he’d given all the answers he was going to give. “All right,” Doon said. “I’m with
- you.”
- “Good,” said Tick. He held out his hand, and Doon shook it. Tick grinned and walked away.
- Doon watched him lope across the field. For a moment he was lost in his thoughts—food in the
- storehouse, stinginess, unfairness, figure something out, you’re with me. . . .When he came to himself
- again and glanced down at his hands, he was startled to see them streaked with blood. Had he scratched
- himself on the thorns of the vines? It took him a second to realize that what looked like blood was only
- berry juice, passed to his hand from Tick’s.
- Lina made a plan. She’d hide among the boxes and crates on Caspar’s truck, and she would ride that
- way to the city. It was only a day’s journey away. Surely she’d be able to find a way back. There must
- be other roamers on the roads.
- Of course, shecould just ask Caspar if she could go with him. But she was sure he’d say no. He was on
- some kind of important business. He wouldn’t want to be bothered with her. It was best to go secretly.
- Once she had seen the city, she would know if it was the place where the people of Ember were
- destined to live. She was sure she’d know as soon as she saw it. Then she could hop out of the truck
- and find her way back. Caspar might never see her at all.
- The next day, she tore part of a blank page out of one of the doctor’s books and wrote this note:
- Dear Mrs. M,
- I have gone with Caspar and Maddy on the truck. I will be back in two days or maybe three. There is
- something important I want to find out. Also I need a change from here. See you soon.
- Love, Lina
- Her plan was to wait until that night, when Mrs. Murdo was asleep, and tuck the note between the
- pages of the ancient, crumbling book she had been reading, something calledCharlotte’s Web. (She
- kept urging Lina to look at it, but Lina said she wasn’t that interested in spiders—it would be better for
- Doon.) Mrs. Murdo read only in the evening, so Lina would have at least a day’s head start before
- anyone knew where she was.
- A few doubts about her plan lurked in the back of Lina’s mind. She knew Mrs. Murdo would worry
- about her. Poppy would miss her. And Lina didn’t really like Caspar, or trust him, and she knew that he
- and Maddy would probably be angry if they found that she had come along. It was a bit of a risky
- journey she was embarking on. But anything truly important involved risks, didn’t it? She had taken a
- huge risk before, in the last days of Ember, and it had been the right thing to do. So probably this was
- the right thing, too. She was so sure the city was their destination, and she was so determined to see the
- city for herself, that she turned her mind away from her doubts. It would be an adventure, she told
- herself. She would be fine.
- She got up before the sun the next morning. She crept out of her bed on the floor one tiny motion at a
- time. Poppy didn’t stir, nor did Mrs. Murdo in her bed on the couch. In the half darkness, Lina put her
- clothes on and pulled the pillowcase bag she’d packed the night before from its hiding place in the
- window seat. She tucked her note between the pages of Mrs. Murdo’s book. Then, carrying her bag, she
- opened the door so softly it made no noise and went out into the courtyard.
- Just beyond the gate, the truck was standing ready. The oxen weren’t attached to it yet; they were
- down the road, at the barn, to be brought later by the stablehand.
- Lina climbed onto the back of the truck. Its metal bottom was gritty with dust and bits of dry grass. It
- was loaded with four large barrels, two bicycles strapped together, a box full of tubs and buckets, and
- four big wooden crates made of slats of wood spaced about an inch apart. The crates were taller than
- Lina and about four feet square—like small rooms, almost. Three of them were full of goods to be sold,
- but the fourth was empty—its contents had been sold in Sparks. That one would be Lina’s hiding place.
- Getting into it was easy. First she tossed her bag over the side, and then she climbed up the slats as if
- they were a ladder and jumped down in. The wood was rough and splintery, but she had prepared for
- that. She’d brought a small blanket from her bed. She spread this on the bottom of the crate and lay
- down on it, using her bag of supplies as a pillow. She was sure that if she lay very still, no one would
- see her.
- And she was right. An hour or so later—she didn’t know for sure how long, but the sun was now
- shining through the slats in the crate, and she could feel its warmth on her back—she heard the clatter
- of the gate latch, and voices. Torren’s first:
- “But I’d be helpful!” he said in a tearful, desperate wail. “I would! I know how to tie knots, and I can
- —”
- “Now, that’s enough,” said Caspar. “You’re not coming with us, get it through your hard little head.
- You’re not old enough. Roaming is a dangerous business, it’s not for children.”
- “She gets to go,” Torren said.
- “Of course. She’s not a child. She’s my partner.”
- Lina felt a jolt as the box holding Caspar’s and Maddy’s belongings was heaved up onto the truck.
- “Here comes Jo with the oxen, right on time,” said Caspar.
- The truck squeaked and trembled as the oxen were hitched to it. Lina heard the gate latch clatter again,
- and then the doctor’s voice: “When will you be back this way?”
- “Not for a while.” The truck slanted as Caspar got on. “Several months, is my guess. We’ve got a big
- route planned out.”
- “You should be takingme !” cried Torren. “You’ll be sorry you didn’t! I’ll tell on you! I’ll tell Uncle!”
- Caspar chuckled. “Uncle would not be interested,” he said. “He’s much too busy. Always has been.”
- There was the crack of a whip. “Goodbye, little brother,” Caspar called, and the truck jolted forward.
- CHAPTER 14
- What Torren Did
- All day, after Caspar and Maddy left, Mrs. Murdo wondered where Lina was. Had the doctor sent her
- on an errand? She asked, but the answer was no. Did Torren know where she was? He said he didn’t
- know and he didn’t care. Thinking maybe Lina had gone to the Pioneer Hotel to see Doon, Mrs. Murdo
- walked down there. But no one had seen her. By evening, when Lina was still missing, Mrs. Murdo
- was very worried.
- She found the note in her book that night. She frowned as she read it. This didn’t seem like a good idea
- to her. It was one of Lina’s rash, impulsive acts, and probably it was dangerous. Mrs. Murdo went
- downstairs, knocked on the doctor’s door, and showed her the note. “Can we send someone after
- them?” she said. “To bring her back?”
- But the doctor shook her head. “They’re a whole day ahead,” she said. “No one could catch up. Even if
- you could find someone willing to go.”
- So Mrs. Murdo went back to bed and tried to sleep. She told herself that Lina had survived many
- dangers before. But still she lay awake worrying most of the night.
- In the morning, at breakfast, Torren asked where Lina was and Mrs. Murdo told him. He jumped up
- from his chair. He threw down his piece of bread, which bounced on the table.“She went with them?”
- he cried. “She went with Caspar?”
- “Calm down,” said Dr. Hester.
- “No!” yelled Torren. “I won’t calm down! I hate her! I hate all you cave people! Why did you have to
- come here and ruin everything?” With a furious swipe of his hand, he knocked over Mrs. Murdo’s cup
- of tea. He kicked backward at his chair, which fell over, and he ran out of the room. Through the
- window, Mrs. Murdo saw him racing across the courtyard and out the gate.
- “Jealous,” said the doctor. “He wants Caspar all to himself. Heaven knows why.”
- “That boy craves attention,” said Mrs. Murdo. “I doubt that he cares who it comes from.”
- “I suppose you’re right,” said the doctor, looking at Mrs. Murdo with faint surprise.
- Torren sped down the river road, full of boiling rage.He was the one who should be sitting beside
- Caspar, not that fat Maddy and not the stupid cave girl.He should be there, riding on the truck, going
- away to be a roamer. But she had snuck off and done it instead, and he hated her for it. It was the worst
- thing that had happened to him in his whole life.
- He ran a long way, his feet pounding the dusty road, his fists pumping back and forth, furious tears
- streaming down his face. When he stopped, panting, he was way out in the tomato field, not far from
- the wind tower, where he had been the day the cave people came over the hill. He remembered how
- they had looked—like a swarm of horrible insects coming down toward the village.
- Now the cave people had settled in as if they were going to stay forever. They were eating food that
- should belong to Sparks people. They were wearing clothes that Sparks people had given them. They
- walked around in the streets of Sparks as if they belonged here. Torren wanted them gone.
- He stomped among the tomato plants, throwing punches at the air. “Get out of here, get out!” he cried,
- as if Lina and all the Emberites were there to hear him. His thoughts were like flames inside his head.
- He kept seeing Caspar on the seat of his truck with Maddy on one side of him and Lina on the other.
- The feeling that went with this picture was like a sharp stick in his stomach.
- If only he had one of those giant bombs they had in the old days! He imagined they were about the size
- of watermelons. He would shoot one at Lina!Pow! It would sail halfway to the city and drop right on
- Caspar’s truck and blow them all up! Then he would shoot another one at the Pioneer Hotel.Blam! It
- would flatten the building and blow up every one of the cave people. He longed to throw that big bomb.
- He could almost feel it in his hands.
- He’d come out at the end of the row of plants now, where a small whitewashed storage shed stood at
- the edge of the field. Crates of tomatoes were stacked nearby, ready to be distributed. Without thinking,
- Torren grabbed a tomato from the nearest crate and hurled it against the wall of the shed. It splattered.
- Red water dripped down the white wall. It felt so good to do this that he did it again. In a fury, he
- snatched up one tomato after another.Wham, wham, wham, he flung them with all his might, until the
- window of the shed splintered, the wall was a bleeding mess, and a long mound of broken red flesh lay
- on the ground.
- He stopped and took a breath. What would the farmers think when they sawthis ? Two whole crates of
- tomatoes, smashed. They’d be angry. But they wouldn’t know he had done it, would they? No one had
- seen him.
- And that was when an idea floated into Torren’s mind. A really excellent idea. He smiled, thinking
- about it. He threw one last tomato, aiming for the dark, glass-toothed hole of the broken window. There
- was a satisfying crash as the tomato knocked something over inside. Torren turned and ran, but he
- didn’t go all the way home.
- When Doon came through town that morning on the way to work, he found Mrs. Murdo waiting for
- him by the side of the road. She signaled to him with one finger, and he left the stream of workers and
- came over to her.
- “Lina has gone off,” she said. “I thought you should know.”
- “Gone off? Gone off where?”
- Mrs. Murdo produced a scrap of paper from the pocket of her skirt. “Read this,” she said.
- Doon read. He scrunched up his nose in puzzlement. He remembered Lina telling him something the
- other day about these people, Caspar and Maddy. What had she said? He tried to recall. He looked
- again at the note. “‘Something important,’ she says. What would that be?”
- Mrs. Murdo shrugged her thin shoulders. “She gets ideas in her head,” she said. Doon could see that
- she was worried, though she didn’t say so.
- “Well, she says she’ll be back in two or three days,” said Doon. “That’s not so long.”
- “The odd thing is,” said Mrs. Murdo, “that Caspar, when he left, said he wouldn’t be back for several
- months.”
- Doon frowned. What was Lina up to? He didn’t understand it. But he didn’t want to make Mrs. Murdo
- more worried than she was. “She must have some plan for getting back,” he said, handing back the
- note.
- “Of course,” said Mrs. Murdo briskly. She folded the note and replaced it in her pocket. “There’s no
- need to worry. I’ll have her come and find you as soon as she returns.”
- She headed back toward the doctor’s house, and Doon went toward the fields. He walked slowly to
- give himself time to think. He was upset about Lina. How could she be so foolish as to launch herself
- out into an unknown world with two unknown people? But in a way he wasn’t surprised. Lina was
- always eager to investigate new places. Look how she’d gone up to the roof of the Gathering Hall on
- the first day she became a messenger in Ember. Look how eager she’d been to go down into the
- Pipeworks. She probably just wanted to see what was outside of Sparks. As soon as she’d satisfied her
- curiosity, she’d be back.
- But Doon was upset about Lina for another reason, too, and it didn’t have to do with her safety. He
- was upset that she had gone exploring without him. All through the last days of Ember, they’d been
- partners. Now she had gone off on her own, leaving him here. He was annoyed, and he was hurt. He
- had to admit to himself that he hadn’t been a very good friend to Lina lately. Maybe he’d hurt her
- feelings by paying so much attention to Tick. But still—it wasLina who was his partner in important
- things. If she had an urgent reason for hitching a ride with Caspar, why hadn’t she told him? Why
- hadn’t she asked him to come along?
- He trudged toward the tomato field, head down, scuffing his shoes irritably in the dust, and so he
- didn’t notice until he was right up to it that a commotion was going on by the storage shed. Everyone
- was crowded around it, and Chugger the team leader was yelling. Doon hurried forward to see what
- was going on.
- “Wasted! Wasted!” Chugger was shouting. “Two whole crates, smashed! Who’s done this? And the
- shed plastered with muck, and the window broken!” He glared at the crowd of workers. “Any of you
- know about this?” he demanded. “Anyone know what mad person did this?”
- No one said a word. Doon stared with horror at the mess on the wall. It looked gory, as if it were
- smashed animals instead of just tomatoes. He could feel the rage of the person who had done it.
- “I don’t like this,” Chugger said darkly. “Nothing like this ever happened before you people arrived. I
- want it cleaned up right away. Walls washed, window fixed, mess cleared away. Get on it.”
- “Listen,” said someone. Doon turned to see—it was Tick speaking. “We didn’t do this. Don’t get all
- tough with us.”
- Chugger whipped around. “Who else would do it? Who else but one of you, always griping and
- grumbling?”
- “But we only just got here now—how could we have done it?” someone called out.
- “Besides, we wouldn’t!” cried someone else. “We would never waste food!”
- More and more voices rose in protest. Doon added his, too, saying, “It wasn’t us, it couldn’t have
- been!” But Chugger just stood and scowled at them. Finally he yelled, “Quiet! Get to work!” Just after
- that Doon heard running footsteps behind him and turned to see Torren racing across the field. He was
- shouting in his shrill, high voice as he came.
- “I saw!” he cried, waving his arms. “Last night I was out here, and I saw!” He ran into the midst of the
- workers and stood panting, his little eyes wild. “I heard a thump, thump, thump, so I snuck up to see,
- and Idid see!”
- “Well, then,” said Chugger, “what did you see?”
- “I saw who threw the tomatoes! I saw who made that big mess and broke the window!” He stood with
- his neck poked forward and his skinny arms held tight to his sides. His whole body was trembling with
- excitement. His eyes scanned the group of workers. “It was him!” he shrieked, pointing straight at
- Doon. “It was him that did it! I saw him!”
- Doon was so shocked he couldn’t make a sound. He stood with his mouth open, staring at Torren.
- Around him, a few people spoke up. “He did not!” said someone. “He couldn’t have! Anyway, he
- wouldn’t.” “No,” someone else said. “He would never do that.”
- But Chugger seized his arm and pulled him roughly aside. “What do you have to say for yourself? Is
- this your doing?”
- Doon shook his head. “No,” he said. “No. That boy is lying.”
- “And why would he do that? Why would he take the trouble to come out here first thing in the
- morning to point to you and lie?”
- “I don’t know,” said Doon.
- Chugger released his arm with a push. “I’ll be keeping a special eye on you from now on,” he said.
- “But why?” said Doon. “I didn’t do this.”
- “How do I know that?” said Chugger. “It’s your word against his. And he’s one of us.”
- CHAPTER 15
- A Long, Hot Ride
- Lina lay very still—or as still as she could with the jolting of the truck over the rutted road. Her eyes
- were at the level of the space between the two lowest slats of the crate, so she could see out just enough
- to guess where they were—along the road by the river first, and then turning to go around the outskirts
- of the village. Occasionally she heard someone call a greeting to Caspar, and she heard Caspar’s voice
- returning it. Maddy never said anything that Lina could hear.
- After a while there were no more voices. The sun beat down on Lina’s back and she began to get
- terribly hot and uncomfortable. She thought it might be safe to sit up now. The sound of the wheels
- would muffle any sounds she made, and she was far enough toward the back of the truck so that Caspar
- and Maddy wouldn’t see her moving. So she unfolded herself. She peered out and saw emptiness—vast
- stretches of dry, brown-gold grass, no people, no houses. It was an enormous space; she had not
- realized any place could be so big.
- Sometime in the afternoon, because of the heat and the rocking motion of the truck and because there
- was nothing else to do, Lina went to sleep. When she awoke, she could tell right away that it was nearly
- evening. The air was cooler, and the sun was so low in the sky that she could no longer see it overhead;
- its slanting rays came between the slats of her crate.
- A cramp gripped her stomach. It was partly hunger—she hadn’t thought to bring any food with her.
- But it was mostly fear. They must be close to the city. And when they arrived, what would she do? And
- what would Caspar do when he found her?
- The truck slowed and came to a stop. Lina felt Caspar and Maddy jump down.
- “This looks like a good enough place,” said Caspar’s voice. “Near the water, anyhow.”
- “Looks all right to me.” That was Maddy’s voice.
- “I’ll take the animals down to the stream,” said Caspar. Lina heard clanking and slapping sounds as he
- unbuckled the harness, and then the slow thud of hooves as the oxen were led away.
- What was Maddy doing? Lina heard a few footsteps, some rustling among the grasses. Then there was
- silence. She had to move. Her legs were cramped and she had a pain in her back. Cautiously, she stood
- up. She stepped onto the first slat of the crate and then the second, and when she got high enough to
- look over the top edge, the first thing she saw was Maddy, sitting on the ground a few feet from the end
- of the truck, leaning against a tree and staring right at her.
- “Well, well,” said Maddy. “Look who’s here.”
- Lina just stared. She couldn’t move.
- Maddy heaved herself up from the ground and came over to the truck. She regarded Lina with a look
- that was half puzzled and half amused. “What in the world are you doing here?”
- “I want to see the city,” said Lina.
- “Don’t you know it’s a five-day journey? How did you expect to ride in a crate all that time? And not
- be discovered?”
- “Five days? I thought it was one day.”
- Maddy just shook her head. “What are we supposed to do with you?”
- “I don’t know,” said Lina. She felt a trembling start up in her stomach. She should never have come.
- There was a long pause before Maddy spoke again. Then she said, “Listen. It would suit me fine if you
- came along to the city, if you’re sure you want to.”
- “I do want to,” Lina said, though she wasn’t really sure.
- “Good,” said Maddy, “because it looks like you have no choice.” She smiled. It wasn’t an unfriendly
- smile, but there was a quirk in it that seemed to say, What a situation. “Stay there, then,” she said. “I’ll
- be back.” She stamped away.
- Lina watched Maddy heading toward a strip of green grasses and low trees that must border the
- stream; at the edge of this strip she could see Caspar and the oxen. In all directions, the landscape was
- the same she’d seen that morning—gently rolling, empty of buildings, covered with brown-gold grass.
- Here and there stood low, dark green, mushroom-shaped trees. Three of them stood near the truck, their
- leaves dusty, their trunks thick and gnarled. The sun had gone down behind the hills in the west, and
- the sky there was scarlet. Though the air was still warm, Lina shivered. She sat back down in the crate,
- pulled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. Somewhere a bird sang its goingto-
- bed song.
- Then suddenly there were loud footsteps and Caspar’s voice coming toward her, and in a moment
- Caspar’s fist thudding against the crate. “Come out!” he said.
- Lina climbed out and stood on the truck looking down at him.
- “Jump down!” he said.
- She jumped down.
- Caspar glared at her. “So,” he said. “A stowaway. What were you trying to do? Cause trouble? That’s
- your idea of fun?”
- “No,” Lina said. “I want to see the city.”
- “What for?” A look of suspicion passed over Caspar’s face. “What do you know about the city?”
- “Nothing,” said Lina. She wasn’t going to tell Caspar about her vision of the city, or what the city
- might be for the people of Ember. “I just want to see it.”
- “Well, too bad,” said Caspar. “Why should I take you there? Why would I want an extra person to
- feed? A kid to look after? Your ride stops right here. You can go back where you came from.”
- “One second,” said Maddy. “Listen to me before you decide. She could be useful to us.”
- “Don’t be ridiculous.” Caspar whacked his two big hands together as if to dismiss the subject.
- “Yes, she could,” said Maddy. “When you’re looking for something in a ruined place—you know how
- it is. Small spaces, sometimes. Tippy rubble where you need to step carefully. A small, light person
- could go where we couldn’t.”
- Caspar took a step back and studied Lina, still glowering. Lina tried to look as small and light as she
- could.
- “As for food,” said Maddy, “she can share mine.”
- “Ridiculous,” said Caspar again. But he kept his eyes on Lina. She could see he was thinking.
- “Come on, Caspar,” Maddy said. “Let’s take her. We don’t have much choice, after all. The only other
- thing we can do is leave her out here by herself.” She turned to Lina. “If we let you come,” she said,
- “you’ll have to work for us. You’ll have to do what we say.”
- “All right,” Lina said, though she wasn’t sure it was all right at all. Maybe it would be better to give up
- seeing the city and try to get back to Sparks from here. But how would she do that? She’d never be able
- to find her way. And the Empty Lands frightened her; she didn’t want to be alone in such a vast, wild
- place. “But how will I get back again? Will you take me?”
- “You should have thought of that when you climbed onto the truck,” said Caspar. “That’s your
- problem, not ours.” He turned to Maddy. “Right, partner?”
- “Certainly,” Maddy said. “Now let’s get settled for the night. The first thing we need is some kindling.
- Lina and I will go and gather it.”
- Lina followed her out toward the trees. Once they were in among them, Maddy bent down and spoke
- to her in a low voice. “Don’t worry. You were foolish to do this, but I won’t let harm come to you. And
- I’ll see you get home again, somehow.” She straightened up again. “Now,” she said. “Gather up some
- dry twigs and sticks and a few tufts of dry grass.”
- They carried the sticks and grass back to where the truck was parked. There Maddy scraped out a
- shallow hole in the ground with the heel of her shoe. In the hole she set the smallest splinters of wood,
- arranging them in a sort of square. Over these she placed some sticks, and on top of those she added
- larger branches. She tucked in some handfuls of dried grass at the bottom of this stick building.
- Until this point, Lina did not understand what she was doing. But when she pulled from her pocket a
- little cloth-wrapped package, unwrapped it, and took out a short blue-tipped stick, she knew. She took
- in a quick breath and stepped backward.
- Maddy held up one of the matches and said, “Have you ever seen one of these?”
- “Yes,” said Lina.
- “You’re lucky, then,” said Maddy. “They’re rare.”
- She struck the match across a rock and the blue tip burst into flame. She held it to the grass, and the
- grass sizzled and flared up.
- “Come and stand close,” she said to Lina. “We need to shield this from the breeze until it gets going.”
- But Lina stayed where she was, staring. The little flame at the heart of the stack of sticks flickered. It
- reached for the splintered end of a stick, caught it, set it aflame. The sizzling grew to a hissing, and then
- to a crackling. Flames jumped, and jumped higher, and there again was the orange hand stretching
- upward with its pointed fingers, waving, leaning toward her.
- Lina stumbled backward. She didn’t want to be afraid—Caspar and Maddy weren’t. Caspar had come
- back now and was crouching right beside the fire, feeding it with sticks and grass. But for Lina it was
- as if the flames were shrieking a message at her: Run, run, run! She stood twenty feet away, staring at
- the fire with a pounding heart. The wind blew a ribbon of smoke at her, and when she breathed, it stung
- the back of her throat.
- Maddy noticed, after a while, that she was out there. “Come closer, Lina,” she called. “It won’t hurt
- you.”
- But Lina could not get her feet to walk toward that hissing, snapping blaze. It might not hurt Maddy
- and Caspar; but if she were to stand near it, she was sure it would reach for her with that orange hand,
- flick its fingers against the ends of her hair or the hem of her shirt, and she too would flare up. “I’m all
- right here,” she said. “I don’t want to be near it.”
- Caspar laughed. Maddy lumbered to her feet and came beside Lina. She put an arm around her.
- “You’re shaking,” she said. “Well, never mind. You don’t have to be by the fire if you don’t want to.”
- From a box on the truck, she took what they called “travelers’ cakes”—lumps a little smaller than a
- fist, made of Lina knew not what—and she and Caspar stuck them on the end of long sticks and roasted
- them over the flames. “You have to get fond of these if you’re a roamer,” Caspar said. “They keep well,
- that’s their best quality. You need them for those long stretches where there’s no other food to be
- found.”
- They were dry and tasteless, but Lina was hungry, so she didn’t mind much. She ate hers standing up,
- and she licked her fingers when she was through.
- She wondered where they were going to sleep. There was no room on the truck, so she supposed
- they’d have to lie on the ground. It was quite dark now. A breeze had come up. From somewhere far
- away, she heard an animal noise:yip-yip-yip, then a long wail, then an eerie chorus of wails. “What’s
- that?” she asked Maddy.
- “Wolves,” Maddy said. “Out hunting. They’re not very close, don’t worry.”
- Lina shivered. The darkness here was so enormous, and so full of terrible things. In Ember, except
- when there was a blackout, people were almost always safe in their beds when darkness came. Lina
- wasn’t used to being outside at night. She thought about Mrs. Murdo, who would be getting into bed in
- the doctor’s attic room right now. Mrs. Murdo would be worried about her. Poppy would be saying,
- “Where Wyna?” No one would imagine that she was out in this great emptiness, with nothing between
- her and the sky.
- Maddy took some rolled-up blankets from the truck and spread them on the ground. She put two of
- them close to the fire. The third she offered to Lina. “Put this wherever you want to sleep,” she said.
- Lina walked over to take the blanket, and as she did, Caspar tossed a big branch onto the fire. Sparks
- sprayed up. Some flew sideways, caught by the wind. Lina jumped away, but a few sparks landed on
- her sock. She stamped her foot frantically, but this only made the sparks burn brighter. The threads of
- her sock glowed. On her ankle she felt a pain like a fierce bite. “No!” she cried. “Get it off me!” She
- shook her leg and clawed at her sock with her hand. Panic rose up in her, and she would have taken off
- running if Maddy had not blocked her path and grabbed her in strong arms. Once she’d stopped her, she
- bent down and put a hand over the burning place in Lina’s sock, and when she took her hand away the
- glow was out.
- But the pain was still there. Maddy took off Lina’s shoe and sock and poured cold water on the burn,
- but it didn’t help much. All night, Lina huddled on the ground under the thin blanket, gritting her teeth
- against the pain on her leg and wishing she had never come on this awful journey.
- CHAPTER 16
- The Starving Roamer
- The next morning, after a breakfast of plums and coarse bread, they set out again. Maddy made Lina a
- place to sit at the back of the truck, between two of the crates. She took the blankets they’d slept on and
- spread them on the rough floor of the truck. Lina could sit on the blankets, lean against the nearest
- crate, and dangle her legs over the truck’s back edge. The burn still hurt this morning; it was a reddish,
- angry-looking blister. After a while, as the sun came up and sweet grassy smells arose from the earth,
- Lina began to enjoy herself again. She watched the countryside fall away behind the truck, stretches of
- brown-gold grass as big as the sky, trees like hairy spikes, rocky slopes.
- And this is how it was for four more days. At night they would find a place by a stream to sleep, if they
- could find a stream. They passed other ox-pulled cars and trucks on their way, both going their
- direction and coming back. They would stop and talk with these roamers and sometimes trade with
- them for food. Caspar always asked if they’d been to the city. Very few of them had. The ones that had
- been there just shook their heads when Caspar asked if they’d found anything interesting. “It’s a waste
- of time to go there,” they said. “Don’t bother.” Most of the roamers they met had been scavenging in
- what they called the suburbs, which Lina understood to mean towns that lay around the city.
- Caspar and Maddy hardly spoke to her at all during the day. Around noon they would stop the truck
- and get something to eat from the chest of provisions they had brought. At first there was dried fruit,
- but they soon used that up. After that it was travelers’ cakes, morning, noon, and night.
- Caspar always went to sleep right after he’d filled his belly. He lay back on the ground and snored.
- Then Maddy would beckon to Lina with a tilt of her head, and they would walk away from Caspar and
- find a place to sit, often beneath a tree, one of those trees that spread their branches out like the top of a
- big mushroom. They would sit in the soft grass and look up at the sky through the tree’s branches.
- Sometimes a breeze swept across the land and brought them the scent of dusty earth and dry weeds.
- After lunch on their second day of traveling, Lina asked Maddy where she came from.
- “A horrible place,” was all she said.
- “Horrible in what way?”
- “Small, cold, and poor. Houses made of old boards. Bad soil for growing things, never enough food. A
- place that was withering.”
- “What does that mean, withering?” Lina asked.
- “It means shrinking and dying. Things were getting worse there. There was too much sickness, too
- much hunger, too much unhappiness. People were always quarreling, and a lot of them were leaving. It
- was ending, the place where I came from. I wanted to be somewhere that was beginning.”
- “Our city was ending, too,” said Lina. She looked up at the blue sky and thought about the sky in
- Ember: utter blackness, not a speck of light. No lights shone anywhere in Ember now. “There’s no one
- left in our city,” she said.
- “Sparks is a place that’s beginning,” said Maddy. “If it can get past the hard spots.”
- “Hard spots?”
- “Yes, like suddenly having to take in four hundred people.”
- “Oh,” said Lina, remembering the conflicts in the village and all the reasons she’d wanted to get away
- from there. Her heart sank. “Maybe by the time we get back, that will all be over, all that trouble,” she
- said.
- “Maybe,” said Maddy. “I hope so. Sparks is a whole lot better than where I came from.”
- “I can understand why you wanted to leave that place,” said Lina.
- “Pretty badly,” said Maddy. “Bad enough to take up with a fool.”
- “Fool?”
- Maddy just tipped her head toward the sleeping Caspar.
- “You came with him just to get away?” Lina whispered.
- Maddy nodded. “Roamers hardly ever came to our little settlement,” she said, “mainly because we had
- nothing to trade. Caspar was only the second one I’d ever seen. I thought I might never see another, so I
- grabbed the chance.”
- “Why couldn’t you just leave by yourself?”
- “I thought of it,” Maddy said. “But I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know the roads, or where the
- settlements were. I didn’t know how I’d get food. I guess I wasn’t quite bold enough to go alone.”
- “When you got to Sparks, you could have stayed there,” Lina said. “You didn’t have to keep traveling
- with him.”
- “I would have stayed,” said Maddy, “if I hadn’t promised to help him on this quest of his. I try to
- honor my promises, if I possibly can.”
- That afternoon, as they traveled on across the rolling hills, Lina thought about places that were ending
- and places that were beginning. She knew about endings. Now she wanted to be part of a beginning.
- Maybe the people of Ember could begin again in the city. If not . . . well, she wouldn’t think about that
- until she had to.
- On the second night, they pulled up beside the ruins of a town. Not much was left of it, but you could
- see that once there had been hundreds of houses. The concrete foundations, overgrown with weeds,
- lined up along curved streets. Here and there a wall or a chimney was still standing. Caspar stopped the
- truck just beyond the outer row of ruins, and Maddy went around to the back and opened the trunk that
- held their dwindling supply of food. They had stopped beside a ditch where a trickle of water ran. It
- was green, scummy water, but Lina drank it anyway. It was all there was.
- Caspar seemed especially grouchy. His pink face was splotched and damp, and his eyes looked
- inflamed. He had forgotten to twist his mustache into points, and it hung down at the corners of his
- mouth. He dug a crumbling travelers’ cake from the trunk and glowered at Maddy. “What’s the matter
- with you, anyway?” he said. “You haven’t been very chatty lately.”
- “I’m never chatty,” said Maddy calmly.
- Caspar took a savage bite of his cake. “It’s like traveling with a tree stump,” he said. “I thought you
- were going to be a pleasant and helpful companion.”
- Maddy did not reply to this. She chewed serenely, gazing out over the acres of fallen houses. Lina
- realized there was a certain beauty in Maddy that she hadn’t seen before. Her back was straight, she
- held her head high, and there was something unswayable in her. The bones of her face were strong, and
- her gaze was firm. There was nothing fluttery about her. You could see that Caspar was finding out that
- she was not what he’d taken her for at first. She was more than he’d bargained for.
- On the third day, near evening, they saw a truck coming toward them from a great distance away. They
- were on a long, straight road with few trees or buildings to block their view, just the dry brown grass
- and a few ancient fences leaning over and flocks of birds rising, swooping through the air, and
- fluttering down again. Up ahead came this dark dot, toiling forward. In twenty minutes or so, the two
- trucks drew near.
- Lina stood behind Caspar and Maddy, looking forward. This roamer looked poor. He had only one ox,
- a shaggy, swaybacked animal, and on his truck there were only two crates, not four as on Caspar’s. The
- man himself was almost as shaggy as his ox. His hair was long and his beard lay like a hairy brown bib
- against his chest. As he came closer, he stood up on his truck and shaded his eyes with his hand,
- peering at them.
- “Watch out for this one,” Caspar said. “Could be a bandit. Looks bad and mean and dangerous.”
- When the other truck was twenty or thirty feet away, its driver suddenly hauled on the traces. His ox
- veered, and the truck turned sideways so that it blocked the road. Lina couldn’t tell if he’d done this on
- purpose. His movements were jerky, as if something was wrong with him. He climbed down from his
- truck and stood in front of it, his neck tucked down and his shoulders hunched as high as his ears. His
- eyes glittered in his hairy face. He stood there like that, saying nothing, waiting for them.
- Caspar stopped the truck. He stood up and leaned forward. “Out of my way, you ragged wretch! Move
- that flea-bitten rig!”
- The roamer came a few paces closer. His mouth opened—a hole in the tangle of beard—but no words
- came out.
- Lina could see the back of Caspar’s neck flush deep red. “I said,Out of my way! ” He snatched up his
- whip and sent the long lash curling out toward the man and snapped it a few feet from his face. The
- roamer let out a howl. He lurched toward them.
- All this happened in only a minute or so. Lina’s heart was beating wildly.Was this a bandit? Was he
- going to attack them? She ducked down behind a crate and peered between the slats.
- Caspar raised the whip again. “Come any closer and I’ll cut you to shreds!” he shouted.
- But before he could lash out, Maddy grabbed his arm. “Wait,” she said. Caspar tried to shake her off,
- but she yanked at him so hard he lost his balance and sat down again. “Why not find out what the man
- wants before you attack him?” she said.
- Caspar struggled against her, but she was strong. She managed to wrench the whip out of his hand.
- Then she jumped down and confronted the other roamer, who had halted just in front of the truck.
- “What do you want from us?” she said to him, standing squarely in his path, her hands on her wide
- hips. “Why have you stopped us like this?”
- The roamer backed up a step. He looked at her with his mouth hanging open. He was grubby, Lina
- saw. His hands and his bare feet were nearly black with dirt. He mumbled something.
- Maddy bent closer to him. “What?”
- He mumbled again.
- She turned to Caspar, who had climbed down from the truck and was approaching with his fists
- clenched. “He says he’s out of cakes.” She turned back to the man. “How long since you’ve eaten?”
- The man stared at his hands. He had long, filthy fingernails. His fingers twitched. “Three days,” he
- croaked. “Just crumbs . . . three days.”
- “Well,” said Caspar, “if you think we’re going to supply you with food, you’re very mistaken.”
- “Surely we can spare a couple of cakes,” Maddy said.
- Caspar’s face was dark red. “We cannot,” he said. “We are on a special mission, extremely important.
- We need that food for ourselves—allof it.”
- Lina thought this was unreasonable. “He can have one of mine,” she said.
- Caspar whirled around. “No!” he said. “You’re going to need your strength.”
- “You’re being ridiculous,” said Maddy, but Caspar reached out and pushed her. “Back in the truck,” he
- said. “And you”—turning back to the roamer —“get your rattletrap out of my way, if you want to stay
- alive.”
- From the roamer came a sound Lina had never heard before from a human being—a hoarse hissing
- sound, as if he were spitting a stream of fire straight at Caspar’s face. He did this twice, and then he
- turned away and scuttled back to his truck. He pulled on the ox’s traces and it moved a few feet along,
- just far enough for Caspar to drive his truck past it. Caspar yelled at him one more time as he passed:
- “You shouldn’tbe a roamer if you can’t feed yourself!” He cracked his whip at the man and drove on.
- Lina climbed into a crate and sat with her head on her knees for a while after this. She was horrified by
- the starving, filthy roamer. How did he come to be in such a state? Was it his own fault? Was he a
- madman? But Caspar could have given himsomething, couldn’t he? Or were they so low on food that
- losing any of it really would harm them? Her stomach lurched; she felt queasy. But she didn’t know if
- it was hunger or horror at what she’d just seen.
- That night, Lina woke up for a moment and heard the oxen making unsettled noises. She heard a
- creaking sound, too. But the sounds stopped, and she went back to sleep. In the morning, Maddy
- discovered they had been robbed.
- “Well, well,” she said, opening the food chest. “Look here.”
- “What?” said Caspar, who was wetting his mustache with spit and twisting it into points.
- “Someone’s been into our food,” said Maddy. “I wonder who.”
- Caspar jumped to his feet. “Into our food?”
- “He didn’t get much,” Maddy said. “Just three or four, I’d guess.” She put her hand in the chest and
- felt around. “But he left us something.”
- Sputtering with rage, Caspar hauled himself up onto the truck. When he looked into the food chest, he
- let out a string of furious swear words.
- Lina crept out from under her blanket and stood up. “What is it?” she said. “What happened?”
- “Our friend from yesterday has been for a visit,” said Maddy. “We wouldn’t give him what he wanted,
- so he took it. And left something for us, too.”
- “Left what?” said Lina. Caspar was shaking with fury. His face was dark red.
- “Looks like dirt,” said Maddy. “I think he took what he wanted and dumped a bag of dirt on the rest.”
- She wrinkled her nose. “Might be some ox droppings in here, too.”
- “The skunk!” Caspar cried. “The miserable rat!”
- “In my opinion,” said Maddy, “you should have given him a couple of cakes in the first place.”
- “I didn’t ask for your opinion,” said Caspar.
- “You’re going to get it anyway,” said Maddy, suddenly fierce. “You turned a crazy old guy into an
- enemy in less than two minutes.You did it. You’ve done it over and over, I’ve seen you: you approach
- people like an enemy andbam!, they turn into one, whether they were to begin with or not.”
- “It’s my policy to be ready to defend myself,” Caspar said, scowling. “At any moment.”
- “Fine,” said Maddy. “So now, because of your policy, we’re out four cakes instead of two, and we
- have a lot of dirt on the rest.” She closed the chest, stood up, and glared at Caspar with a mixture of
- anger and scorn. “If you ask me, making friends is a better defense than making enemies.”
- “I didn’t ask you,” said Caspar.
- On the fourth day, they went uphill hour after hour. The heat was terrible. The only water they found
- was at the bottom of a deep ravine. All three of them scrambled down, half stepping and half sliding,
- carrying Caspar’s biggest pots, and, sweating and gasping, they lugged the filled pots back up so that
- the oxen could drink.
- Then they went uphill some more. It was late afternoon by the time they came to the top of the ridge.
- Lina was so tired by that time and so hot that she felt like a boiled vegetable, limp and runny. She was a
- bit dazed, too, only half awake, and so she was startled when the truck jolted to a stop and she heard
- sharp exclamations from Caspar and Maddy. She jumped down and went around to the front. A
- tremendous view of land and water lay before her. Such immense water she had never seen—greenblue,
- glinting in the rays of the late sun, white ripples racing across its surface. To her right, it stretched
- as far as she could see, but straight ahead she could see the shore on the other side—green trees
- covering the ground, and hills rising beyond.
- “The bay,” said Caspar. “This means we’re almost there. We go around the end of it and then north.”
- “When do we get to the city?” Lina said.
- “Tomorrow,” said Caspar. His wide face broke into a grin, and he laughed his high, weird laugh. He
- opened and closed his fingers, stretching and gripping, as if he were imagining taking hold of
- something. “We’ll be there tomorrow, and then our work begins.”
- CHAPTER 17
- Doon Accused
- Word of the tomato throwing, and Torren’s accusation of Doon, spread quickly through Sparks. Some
- people believed Torren, some didn’t. But no one could prove who was telling the truth. Torren said
- he’d seen what he’d seen in the middle of the night, when he couldn’t sleep and took a walk to the field
- to look at the stars. Doon said he’d been home all night, sleeping, and that his father and the others in
- his room knew it. But people said he could have slipped quietly out without anyone knowing, couldn’t
- he? He could have gone down there and done his mischief and come back, and they all would have
- thought he’d been sleeping the whole night.
- At noon that day, when he and the others showed up at the Partons’ house for their midday meal, no
- one spoke to them. Martha let them in, and they sat down at the table, where places had been set for
- them as usual. Doon’s father said, “Good day,” and Mrs. Polster said, “How are you?” and Miss Thorn
- and Edward Pocket looked around at the family’s stony faces and tried to smile. Ordney put food on
- their plates (was it an even smaller amount than usual?) and passed the plates to them. Kenny ate tiny
- mouthfuls. His eyes darted nervously from face to face. But no one spoke.
- Finally Doon’s father said, “Excuse me, but perhaps there’s been a mistake.”
- Martha looked at him coldly. “I don’t believe so,” she said.
- “Perhaps you’re thinking,” Doon’s father went on, “that my son Doon actually did what he has been
- accused of.”
- “In this household,” said Martha, “we do not approve of wasting food.”
- “Neither do we!” cried Doon. “I would never do such a thing! Ididn’t do it.” All eyes turned toward
- Doon. He could feel a red flush rising in his face. “Really,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “I didn’t.”
- “Who did, then?” said Ordney.
- “I don’t know,” said Doon.
- “No one knows,” said Mrs. Polster in her firmest voice. “Certainly we aren’t going to believe the word
- of one unhappy little boy against the word of this young man, who has proved himself so outstanding.”
- “Why not?” said Martha. “Torren Crane is a decent boy, as far as I know. I don’t see why you call him
- unhappy.”
- “All you have to do is look at him,” Mrs. Polster said.
- Miss Thorn nodded. “I do think she’s right,” she murmured.
- “Well,one of you people must have done it,” Martha said. “Certainly none ofus would have.”
- “Nothing has been proved one way or the other,” said Doon’s father. “It would be unfair to draw any
- conclusions.”
- There was an uncomfortable silence. Everyone focused on eating. When it was time to leave, Kenny
- passed out the food parcels, and as he handed one to Doon, he silently mouthed three words:I believe
- you.
- At least one person was on his side, Doon thought. It made him feel better, but only a little.
- In the end, because it was one person’s word against another’s and there was no proof either way,
- nothing was done. Officially, the identity of the tomato thrower remained a mystery. But the effect of
- all this was to make the people of Sparks and the people of Ember even more resentful and suspicious
- of each other than they had been before.
- Doon felt unfriendly eyes following him wherever he went. At first he tried to explain when people
- glared at him that way. He spoke reasonably. “Why would I get up and walk all the way into a field in
- the middle of the night to throw tomatoes at a wall?” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.” But people
- didn’t seem interested in reason. He was one ofthem, and that meant he was strange and might do
- anything. So Doon stopped trying to explain. He kept his eyes on the ground and ignored the people
- who muttered darkly as he passed by.
- It wasn’t just Doon who suffered from the tomato incident. It was all the refugees from Ember.
- Sometimes the villagers called them names right out loud on the street. It was as if those smashed
- tomatoes had brought all the quietly rumbling resentments out into the open. The town simmered like a
- pot about to boil over.
- One morning Doon found a crowd gathered in the plaza when he came into town for work. Both
- Sparks people and Ember people were clustered together, looking at something. He edged between
- them to see what it was. Across the pavement, someone had scrawled a message. It looked as if it had
- been written in mud. The sloppy, runny letters said:
- THEY MUST GO!
- The crowd stared at it silently. A few of the villagers seemed embarrassed. They looked sideways at
- the Emberites and shook their heads. “Mean,” someone muttered. But others scowled. One man,
- noticing Doon, glared at him so angrily that Doon felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. This
- message was there because of him; he knew it. He put his head down and hurried away.
- At the hotel that night, people were upset. They clustered in buzzing groups out by the front steps,
- talking about the words painted on the plaza. Doon saw Tick striding among them, speaking with
- everyone, his face flushed and his eyes glittering. When he came toward Doon, he paused. “They’ve
- turned against us,” he said. “I knew they would. We mustn’t stand for it.” And he plunged back into the
- crowd.
- A day passed, and then another. The sun blazed down, but Doon felt as if darkness had invaded him.
- Protests and questions raged through his mind. Why had Torren pointed at him? Was it just at random,
- or had he singled him out for some reason? Why did Chugger believe Torren and not believe him? Who
- had written the muddy message on the bricks of the plaza?
- Lina did not return, and this added to Doon’s glumness. According to the note she’d left Mrs. Murdo,
- she should have been back by now from wherever she’d gone. Doon’s feelings about her were divided
- between worry and anger. He tried not to think about her, since there was nothing he could do.
- Whenever he had a free moment, he holed up with a book and tried to forget about what was
- happening in the village. Edward Pocket brought him a steady supply. Edward was obsessed with his
- job. Every now and then Doon would ask him how it was going, and Edward would get a feverish look
- in his eyes and say, “Ah! It goes by inches, young Doon. By millimeters. I’ve done this much”—he
- held his thumb and forefinger a tiny distance apart—“and this much remains to be done.” He stretched
- his arms as far apart as they would go. “It’s a gargantuan task. I press forward, but will I finish in my
- lifetime? It is doubtful.” His fingers black with dust, he often came home in the evening later than the
- workers who went into the village, and he was so tired by then that he usually went straight to bed right
- after dinner, even though it was still light. Doon would hear him mumbling in his sleep inside the
- closet. He could make sense of only a few words. “Caterpillars,” Edward would say. “Cathedrals.
- Cattle. Chemistry. Christmas.” Then he’d groan and thrash about, banging his bony limbs against the
- closet door, and go silent for a while. When he muttered again, he’d be on to a different letter: “Hamlet.
- Harry Potter. Hawaii. Heart surgery. Hippopotamus. Hog farming.” Doon imagined that Edward’s
- mind was so stuffed with information by now that there wasn’t room for any more, and the excess had
- started leaking out in the night.
- Sometimes Doon passed the Sparks school on his way to work in the morning. It was a small building
- with a wide, open porch all around it, where the students often sat to do their lessons. The children of
- the village—there weren’t very many of them—went to school only a few hours a day, and only until
- they were ten years old. Kenny Parton went there. He would wave to Doon when he saw him going by,
- and before the trouble with the tomatoes, the other children would look at Doon curiously, a few of
- them smiling. But the first time Doon passed the school after the tomato trouble, he saw fifteen or
- twenty cold-eyed faces turned toward him. Someone shouted, “Get out of here!” and someone else
- threw a crumpled wad of paper over the porch railing at him. He walked faster, looking straight ahead.
- A moment later he heard the teacher scolding the class for rudeness, but not very sternly.
- The next day, as Doon and the others arrived at the Partons’ for lunch, Kenny peeked out from behind
- a corner of the house and beckoned to Doon. His eyes wide, his voice even softer and more timid than
- usual, he said, “You know at school yesterday?”
- Doon nodded.
- “I was sorry they yelled at you,” Kenny said. “They shouldn’t. You didn’t do it.”
- “How doyou know?” said Doon, who was feeling crabby just then at all residents of Sparks. “Maybe I
- did.”
- Kenny shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
- “Why not?” said Doon.
- “I can just tell,” said Kenny. “I can tell about people. You wouldn’t.” He gave Doon a quick, shy
- smile.
- Doon was touched. Kenny looked like a timid little wisp, but there was something strong inside him.
- “I wish you didn’t have to leave,” Kenny said.
- Doon smiled. “We’ll be here for a few more months,” he said.
- “Then what?” Kenny asked.
- “We go away and make our own town.”
- “Where?” asked Kenny.
- Doon shrugged. “I don’t know. Out in those empty places somewhere.”
- Kenny looked down at his feet. He stood for a minute in silence. Then he said, “That will be really
- hard. How will you get food?”
- “Grow it, I guess. Just the way you do here.”
- “But you’ll be leaving in the month of Chilling. That’s the beginning of winter. You can’t grow food
- in the winter,” Kenny said, looking up at Doon with worried eyes.
- “Winter?” said Doon. “What’s winter?”
- “You don’t havewinter where you came from?” Kenny’s eyes grew very round. “You mean it’s
- alwayssummer there?”
- Doon was confused and slightly alarmed by Kenny’s tone. “I don’t know those words,” he said.
- Kenny stared at Doon, his face blank with surprise. “Seasons,” he said. “They’re the seasons. In
- summer it’s hot. In winter it’s cold.”
- “That’s all right, then,” said Doon, relieved. “We’re used to cold.”
- “But you can’t grow food in the winter. It’sreally cold. And clouds come over the sun. And it rains.”
- “Rains?”
- Kenny was so amazed that his mouth dropped open. He flung his arms up and wiggled his fingers like
- drops sprinkling down. “Rain! When water comes from the sky! And the river rises, and sometimes it
- floods! And the dirt turns to mud!”
- Doon felt as if his mind had suddenly stopped. He stared at Kenny’s wiggling fingers and tried to grasp
- what he was saying. Water dropped from the sky? But—people’s clothes would get wet. Everyone
- would have to stay inside. And if they couldn’t grow food . . . “Wait,” he said. “You mean the town
- leadersknow it will be winter when we leave? Theyknow it will be cold and wet?”
- “I guess so,” Kenny said. He lowered his eyes, then looked up again. “Probably they mean to send
- food with you,” he said. “To get you through the winter. That must be it.” He gave a small, hopeful
- smile. “That must be it,” he said again, and he darted away toward the front door and went into the
- house.
- Doon followed. His vision of the future, already shadowed by anxiety, had just grown several shades
- darker.
- One morning a week or so later, as Doon came out the door of room 215, he nearly bumped into Tick
- Hassler, who was running at full speed down the hall. “Something’s happened!” Tick called to him.
- “What?” said Doon, breaking into a run himself to keep up with Tick.
- “I don’t know,” Tick said. “But I heard people out in front, shouting.”
- Tick must have jumped out of bed and not taken time to do anything but throw on his clothes, Doon
- thought. He hadn’t combed his hair, he hadn’t tied his shoes, he hadn’t even washed his face—there
- were gray smudges on his neck and below his ear. In the usually well-groomed Tick, these were signs
- of serious alarm. Doon’s heart beat faster. He took the stairs three at a time, crossed the lobby, and, still
- following Tick, pushed through the front door.
- Outside, a crowd stood in the field, staring up at the hotel. Doon ran out to join them and turned around
- to see what they were seeing.
- Someone had scrawled words on the walls of the Pioneer—tremendous black letters, rough and
- scratchy, as if written with burnt wood. “GO BACK TO YOUR CAVE,” said the message, over and
- over. “GO BACK TO YOUR CAVE. GO BACK TO YOUR CAVE.” The few ground-floor windows
- that hadn’t already been broken were broken now.
- Doon stood staring for a minute, feeling sick, and then anger rose in him. This was the work of
- whoever had slopped that mud message onto the plaza—another ugly message, bolder this time.
- Around him the others were rushing forward, shouting, staring at the scrawled words. Some of them
- stood silent and glum, with arms folded or hands in pockets. Others shook their fists in the air and
- vowed revenge. Tick was more furious than anyone, but he didn’t yell. Doon watched him weaving
- through the crowd, seizing one person after another by the arm, talking in a voice as sharp as a blade
- but low and steady. His light blue eyes glinted like steel.
- “It’s what I thought,” Tick said. “This shows it. They’ve pretended to be kind, but their kindness isn’t
- real. Here’s what we can know from now on: they hate us.” He narrowed his eyes, lowered his voice
- almost to a hiss, and said it again. “They hate us.They want to get rid of us. Well, I’ll tell you what.”
- People all around turned toward him. “They want us to leave, but I’m not leaving. Are you?” He
- scanned the crowd.
- “No,” said someone.
- Doon thought about what Kenny had told him: winter, cold, rain. Maybe Tick is right, he thought.
- Theydo hate us.
- “Do youlike being called cavepeople?” Tick cried. “Do youlike being told to crawl back into a cave?”
- And angry voices, twenty, fifty, a hundred of them, cried, “No, no!”
- Doon went up close to the wall of the hotel and examined the words scratched there. He pictured the
- people who had done it, clutching their burnt chunks of wood, writing with big, angry strokes in the
- dark of the night. Yes, Tick was right. Hatred seethed in those jagged letters. He felt almost as if their
- strokes had scraped open his skin.
- The Second Town Meeting
- The three town leaders called a meeting after these unpleasant incidents—the tomato-throwing, and the
- graffiti on the plaza and on the hotel wall. They met in the tower room of the town hall to talk.
- “This is unfortunate,” Mary said. “I’m afraid these spiteful deeds will cause bad feelings to get worse
- on both sides.”
- Wilmer nodded. “Feelings are already bad,” he said.
- “These cavepeople,” said Ben, “are not as civilized as we are. People who will destroy two whole
- crates of tomatoes might do anything.”
- “We don’t know for sure that one of them did it,” Mary said.
- “Come now, Mary,” said Ben. “I think it’s safe to assume.”
- “And what about the people who wrote ‘Go Back to Your Cave’ on the hotel walls?” said Mary.
- “The problem is,” said Ben, “we don’t know who did that. But I must say that I think they were
- expressing an understandable frustration. These cavepeople have adversely impacted our way of life.
- The food we give them comes out of the mouths of our own people.”
- “We do have a bit of a surplus in the storehouse,” said Mary.
- “But why should we use it forthem ? It’s our protection against hard times.” Ben smoothed his beard
- and went on. “I have a rule to suggest,” he said. “I think it would be best if the cavepeople didn’t eat in
- the homes of families anymore. I think it’s too hard on our families to have strangers eating with them
- every day. It would be better if the families simply hand them their food parcels when they arrive. They
- can eat somewhere else.”
- “Where?” asked Mary.
- Ben waved a hand in the direction of the river. “On the riverbank,” he said. “Or at the edge of a field.
- Or on the road. I really don’t care where they eat,” he said, “as long as they don’t intrude on our
- households.”
- “Quite a few people have complained of the inconvenience,” said Wilmer. “The Parton family seems
- the most unhappy.”
- “That’s because they have that evil boy,” said Ben. “The one who threw the tomatoes.”
- “We don’t know that he’s the one who threw them,” said Mary.
- “We are as sure as we need to be,” said Ben.
- So they voted: should they make that rule?
- Mary voted no.
- Ben voted yes.
- Wilmer hesitated for several seconds, his eyes darting between Mary and Ben. Finally he voted yes.
- “I suppose this will make things better,” said Wilmer.
- “I’m sure it will,” said Ben. “We need to make it clear that this town belongs to us. This isour place,
- and these people are only here because of our generosity.”
- “I think wehave made it clear,” said Mary. “We went to all that trouble to make a flag and put it up on
- the town hall.”
- “No doubt that will help,” said Ben. “Still, we must constantly reinforce the message: if they don’t
- behave themselves, they can’t expect to stay here even as long as six months.”
- “They’ve just begun to get used to things,” said Mary. “They’re not ready to leave.”
- “That,” said Ben, “is not our problem.”
- CHAPTER 18
- Caspar’s Quest
- On the last night of their journey to the city, the travelers stayed in a real house. It was roofless, but
- most of its walls still stood, providing shelter from the wind that blew strongly off the water. There was
- no furniture in the house, of course. They sat on the bare floor.
- Caspar was excited that night. He talked so much that he almost forgot to eat—his third travelers’ cake
- sat on his knee getting cold. At one point, he turned to face Lina. “Now, listen,” he said. “I’m going to
- tell you something, so you’ll understand the importance of what we’re doing.” He paused. Then he
- spoke in a low, vibrating voice. “I happen to know,” he said, “that there is a treasure in the city.”
- “There is?” said Lina. “How do you know?”
- “Old rhymes and songs speak of it,” said Caspar.
- “The trouble is,” said Maddy, “those old rhymes and songs don’t make sense anymore. If they ever
- did.”
- “They make sense to me,” Caspar said. “But that’s because I’ve studied them carefully and have found
- out their deeper meaning.”
- “What do the old rhymes say?” Lina asked.
- “Various things,” said Caspar, “depending on what version you hear. But they’re always about a
- treasure in an ancient city.” He looked into the air and sang tunelessly: “‘There’s buried treasure in the
- ancient city. Remember, remember from times of old. . . .’ One of them starts like that.”
- “Why hasn’t anyone searched for the treasure before?” asked Lina.
- “I’m sure many people have,” Caspar said. “But no one has found it.”
- “How do you know?” Lina asked.
- “Because obviously, if someone had, we would have heard about it.”
- Lina thought about this. She saw some holes in Caspar’s logic. Someone could have found the
- treasure, taken it away, and never said a word.
- “Another problem,” said Maddy, “is that these rumors never say what city the treasure is in. It could be
- some city a thousand miles away.”
- Caspar gave an exasperated sigh and set down his cup of water. He raised two fingers and pointed
- them at Maddy. “Listen,” he said. “Be logical. It’shere that the rumors are passed around. I’ve never
- heard them in the far north, where I was last year. I’ve never heard them in the far east, either. This talk
- of treasure in a city—I hear ithere, and within a hundred or so miles of here.”
- “Still,” Maddy said. “There are at least three ancient cities within a hundred miles of here.”
- “But only onegreat ancient city,” said Caspar. “That’s the one we’re going to.”
- “A city is big,” Lina said, remembering the myriad streets and buildings of Ember. “How will you
- know where in the city to look for the treasure?”
- A crafty look came over Caspar’s face. He smiled, with his lips pressed together and his eyes
- narrowed. “That’s where my careful study comes in,” he said. “Many, many hours of study. I’ve
- written down every version of the rhyme I’ve heard—which is a great many, forty-seven to be exact.
- I’ve compared them, word for word, letter for letter.Then —” Caspar paused. He looked at them in a
- way Lina recognized—it was the same way Torren looked when he was about to make a big
- impression. “ThenI applied my skill with numbers.”
- “Numbers?” said Lina.
- “That’s right. What you do is, you count the letters in the words. You count in all different ways, until
- you start to see a pattern. The pattern is the key to the code, and the code tells you the secret of the
- message.” He sat back, looking highly pleased with himself.
- “And the secret of the message . . . ,” Lina said, confused.
- “Is the location of the treasure, of course!” Caspar slapped a hand on his big thigh. “It’s obvious, once
- you’ve figured it out. Street numbers, building numbers—it’s all there.”
- “Well, then,” said Maddy, “what is the location of the treasure?”
- Caspar jerked his head back. “You think I’d tell you?” he said.
- “I thought I was your partner in this,” said Maddy.
- “You’ll know when it’s time,” said Caspar. “Until then, the information stays strictly with me.”
- Lina glanced at Maddy in time to see her rolling her eyes toward the sky.
- That night, Lina couldn’t sleep. Animal sounds kept her awake—scrambling and snuffling just beyond
- the walls, and a strange hooting in the distance. Dark thoughts troubled her, too. Caspar’s search
- sounded all wrong somehow. She didn’t want to help him. The thought of it filled her with dread. She
- lay on the hard floor of the house, staring at the black sky, feeling worse and worse, until finally she
- decided she must try to think about something else. So she said to herself, over and over for a long
- time, “Tomorrow I’ll see the city, tomorrow I’ll see the city.”
- They traveled the next day, mile after mile, along a road that was nearly straight, though they had to
- trace a winding path around the places where the pavement was pitted or thrust up or crumbled away.
- On their right was the vast green sheet of water, bordered by waving grasses where great white birds
- stood knee-deep in pools and rose like floating paper, and flocks of black birds flew up trilling into the
- air, their shoulders red as blood. On the left was a forest of trees so thick they hid all but the briefest
- glimpses of the ruined buildings among them.
- Lina’s excitement was rising. She rode standing up now. She’d climbed back into the crate and stuck
- her feet between the third and fourth slats of the side, which put her at the right height for holding on to
- the top edge and looking forward. She could see over Caspar’s and Maddy’s heads to the rear ends of
- the oxen, their sharp hip bones sticking up, left-right, left-right, their tasseled tails switching back and
- forth. The sun sank lower in the sky until it was directly ahead, blazing straight into Lina’s eyes. “We’ll
- be there before night,” Caspar said.
- The road began to slope upward. Hills rose on either side, and soon Lina could no longer see the water,
- just the brown humps of the hills, spotted with clumps of trees and scarred here and there by the
- remains of old roads and buildings. The air was cooler. They rounded a curve—and all at once the city
- lay before them.
- CHAPTER 19
- Unfairness, and
- What to Do About It
- In the days after the hateful words had been scrawled on the wall, Doon went to work grudgingly. He
- didn’t want to work with people who did such awful things. He had to remind himself that they
- weren’tall ignorant brutes, and that theywere still giving the Emberites shelter and food—even though
- they were no longer allowing them to eat with their lunchtime families, and even though they were
- planning to send them out to fend for themselves in the winter. But the people who had written those
- words—no one was trying to find out who they were, no one was punishing them. Who was the one
- getting the evil looks and being called bad names?He was, he who had done nothing! He couldn’t stand
- thewrongness of it. He felt it physically, as if he were wearing clothes that were too tight, a shirt that
- pinched him under the arms, pants that were too short and too snug. Unfair, unfair, he kept thinking. He
- couldn’tbear unfairness.
- One day he was assigned to clean the fountain in the center of the plaza. Chugger handed him his tools
- for the job: a bucket, a long stick with a metal scraper on one end, and a pile of rags.
- Chugger lifted up one of the bricks in the pavement near the fountain. Under it was a round handle.
- “You turn this off first,” he said. “It shuts off the water coming in from the river.” He gave it several
- turns, and the spouting water in the middle of the fountain dipped and vanished. “Now the water in the
- basin will drain through the outflow pipe,” Chugger said. “It goes back into the river. When the basin is
- empty, you climb in there and scrub. I want this thing clean as a drinking glass when you’re through.”
- Chugger left, and Doon watched the water level slowly going down. The lower it got, the more green
- scum was revealed. It coated the inside of the fountain like slimy fur.
- He plunged his stick into the water, scraped it along the fountain’s inner wall, and pulled it out again.
- Wet green strings swung from the end of it, and he shook them off into the bucket. He thrust the stick
- in again, scraped again, brought up more muck. Into the bucket it went. For the next ten minutes, he
- scraped the bottom and sides of the fountain with his stick and filled the bucket with slippery strands of
- scum, along with a few apricot pits, dead bugs, and rotting leaves.
- The water was about half gone now, but it seemed to be draining very slowly. Probably, Doon
- reasoned, this was because the outflow pipe was getting blocked up with all the loosened scum being
- drawn toward it. But because the water was so murky, he couldn’t see where the outflow pipe was.
- At that moment, Chugger came up behind him. “What the heck is taking you so long?” he said. “If you
- had any sense, you’d have figured out the drain is clogging up.” He grabbed the stick out of Doon’s
- hands and began probing in the water.
- “Idid figure that out,” Doon said, “but I couldn’t see where it was because—”
- “There!” said Chugger, who wasn’t listening. He’d pried loose a clump of soggy crud, and the water
- level was once more going down. He thrust the stick toward Doon again. “Now get busy. And try using
- your brain once in a while, if you have one.” He stalked off.
- Doon clamped his teeth together to hold in the rage that boiled up in him. He glared at the retreating
- back of Chugger and imagined throwing his stick so that it hit him right between the shoulder blades.
- I hate being talked to that way, he thought. As if I’m a moron. Why does he get to talk to me like that?
- When the water had all drained out of the fountain, Doon took his shoes off, grabbed a handful of rags,
- and climbed in. On his knees in the green slime that covered the bottom, he wiped and scrubbed. Now
- and then people came by and peered in at him. “Ugh,” they’d say as they passed, or “Yuck.” It felt as if
- they were saying ugh and yuck about him—not surprising, since he was now just about as filthy as the
- rags he was using. No one said, “Good job!” or said they were pleased the fountain was getting cleaned.
- When he finally finished, he opened the inflow valve and plugged the outflow valve, and once again
- the water leapt from the central pipe and the fountain began to fill. Doon sat down on the rim and put
- his bare feet in the water to rinse them off. He stayed there for a minute, resting. The cool, clean water
- felt good.
- Chugger came around the corner. “What are youdoing ?” he yelled. He strode toward Doon. “I don’t
- know how you do it where you’re from,” he said, “but here when we work, we work. We don’t sit
- around gazing at the sky.”
- Doon started to say he was not gazing at the sky, he was taking a one-minute rest. But when he opened
- his mouth to speak, the rush of anger that came up through his body was so volcanic that he closed his
- mouth again and sat there shaking, his face flushed and burning, afraid he would explode if he tried to
- say a word.Do not get angry, he told himself, remembering the advice his father had given him so
- many times.When anger is in control, you get unintended consequences.
- “You don’t speak when you’re spoken to?” said Chugger. “Maybe you didn’t hear me. Maybe I need
- to make it clearer.” He took a deep breath. His voice came out in a hoarse bellow: “Get moving, you
- stupid barbarian! Now!” He seized Doon by the arm and yanked him backward.
- That was when Doon felt his rage shooting up like steam, unstoppable.
- “Let go of me!” he screamed. “I’m not the barbarian! You are!You are!” He tried to jerk away from
- Chugger, but Chugger held on. Doon pulled harder, wrenching his whole body sideways and slamming
- against the bucket, which was next to him on the rim of the fountain. The bucket went flying, spewing
- its slimy contents over a girl who happened to be passing by. She screamed and slapped at the stinking
- green sludge running down the front of her shirt. People rushed up to her and shouted angrily at Doon,
- who gave one more frantic pull and finally freed himself from Chugger’s grasp.
- For a second he and Chugger stood glaring at each other. Doon knew how he must look to the people
- around him: clumsy, filthy, wild-eyed, and, worse than that—a violent boy, the kind of boy who would
- waste good food, the kind of boy whose ugly, fiery temper could cause real damage.
- He turned and stalked away. No one tried to stop him. He realized when he’d gone a short distance that
- he’d forgotten to pick up his shoes, but he wasn’t going to go back for them. He ran barefoot all the
- way to the Pioneer.
- I’ve done it now, he thought. I’ve made everything worse. And yet none of it is my fault. I was trying
- hard to do my job, and trying even harder not to get angry. But look what happens.
- The unfairness of it, the tremendous injustice, felt like a stone in his heart.
- “We will do something about this,” Tick said to Doon that night. They were standing by the hotel’s
- back stairs, where they’d encountered each other on the way in from the outhouses. “You are being
- abused. We all are. We mustn’t stand for it.”
- Doon nodded. He had told Tick about winter, and now Tick was more outraged than ever. The look on
- his face was hard and determined. Doon admired Tick’s strength, and the way he always seemed to
- know what to do. He himself was never so absolutely clear. He saw too many sides of things; it
- confused him.
- “What should we do?” he asked.
- “Strike back,” said Tick. “They have attacked us, more than once, in many ways. It’s time for them to
- find out that if they hurt us, they’ll get hurt, too.”
- They’ll get hurt.Was this the right thing? But it did seem fair. After all, wrong should be punished.
- “How do we do it?” said Doon.
- “Many possibilities,” said Tick. He leaned against the wall beside the stairs. He had a red patch on his
- arm, Doon noticed, that he kept scratching at; it was the first time Doon had seen that Tick, too,
- suffered from the bites and scrapes that plagued the rest of them. He isn’t perfect, Doon reminded
- himself; he isn’t always right about everything.
- “We could refuse to work,” Tick went on. “But everyone would have to refuse, and I’m not sure
- everyone would. It would be better to take direct action.”
- “Action about what?” asked Doon.
- “About food. We don’t get enough. This is an injusticeall of us feel. So what about this: we storm the
- storehouse and take what we need by force.”
- “Steal food?” said Doon.
- “It isn’t stealing. It’s evening things out. It’s getting what should rightfully be ours.” There was not a
- hint of uncertainty in Tick’s voice.
- Doon thought about this. It did make sense. You had to act against injustice, didn’t you? You couldn’t
- just let it happen.
- “I know lots of people who’ll join us,” Tick said. “I’ll call them together. We’ll have a meeting and
- make a plan.” He started up the stairs and then turned around and looked down on Doon. “But first,” he
- said, “we have to arm ourselves.”
- “We do?”
- “Of course. We need to make sure we’ll defeat our enemy.”
- “What do we arm ourselves with?”
- “I’ll tell you,” Tick said, “when we meet. Tomorrow night, after dinner, out at the head of the road.”
- CHAPTER 20
- The City Destroyed
- When the city came into view before them, the three travelers stood speechless, gazing out over ranges
- of hills standing dark against the western sky. They could see that this had once been a city—to the
- right, a cluster of tall buildings still stood, tall beyond anything Lina had imagined. But they were no
- more than shells of buildings, hollow and broken, their windows only holes. Through some of them
- Lina could see the sky, turned scarlet by the sunset.
- All else was a windswept wasteland. Whatever buildings had once been here had long ago fallen and
- crumbled into the ground. Earth and dust and sand had blown across them, and grass had grown over
- them, softening their outlines. Here and there traces of ruins remained—they looked from this distance
- like outcrops of stone, hardly more than jagged places on the smooth slopes. Faint lines of shadow
- showed where streets must once have been.
- Lina stared, trembling. This was far, far from the city she had imagined. Not even the version she’d
- revised for the Disaster had looked like this. This couldn’t be called a city at all anymore. It was the
- ghost of a city.
- Even Caspar seemed daunted. He craned for-ward, his hand shading his eyes. “It looks somewhat
- destroyed,” he said.
- “It looks completely destroyed,” said Maddy.
- They got down from the truck and stood beside the oxen.
- “A trick of the light,” said Caspar, squinting harder. He pulled his glasses from his pocket and put
- them on. “When we get closer, no doubt it will look different.”
- “How do you plan to get closer?” Maddy asked him, and for the first time Lina saw that a few yards in
- front of them, the road came to an end. There was an edge of broken pavement, and beyond it a great
- slab of roadway slanted downward. It had stood on pillars once; you could see a few of the pillars still
- standing, and rods of thick wire twisting out of them. From here on, the road was a chaos of concrete,
- gigantic chunks leaning against each other. There was no way the truck could go on.
- The sun was nearly down now, and the brilliant red of the sky was fading. Between the ruined
- buildings drifted a gray mist, and the wind blew more sharply. Some white birds soared high above,
- screaming.
- “It used to be so beautiful,” said Maddy. “I’ve seen pictures of it in books.” There was a tremor in her
- voice. Lina looked up and saw that tears stood in her eyes. “I knew it was destroyed,” Maddy said. “But
- not like this.”
- “What happened to it?” Lina asked.
- “It was the wars,” said Maddy. “They must have been . . .” She shook her head. “They must have been
- terrible,” she said.
- “What were they about?” Lina asked.
- Maddy shrugged. “I don’t know.”
- “And the people who lived here? What happened to them?”
- “All killed, I suppose,” said Maddy. “Or most of them.”
- Caspar was frowning at the shadowy wilderness that lay below. “In the daylight,” he said, “I’ll be able
- to see how to proceed.”
- “Proceed!” Maddy grabbed Caspar’s arm and wrenched him around to face her. “Are you out of your
- mind?”
- Caspar yanked his arm away. “No,” he said. “I am not.”
- Maddy swept her hand out toward the city. “It’s miles and miles of buried rubble!” she cried. “Streets
- buried under fallen bricks and broken glass! Mountains of concrete and melted metal! Sand and earth
- blown over it all, and grass growing on it!”
- Caspar nodded, his face grim. “Right,” he said. “A challenge. You were right about bringing this one
- along.” He tipped his head toward Lina. “Someone small and light, that’s what I’ll need. Going to have
- to do some tunneling.”
- “No, Caspar,” said Maddy. “You must give up this idea. You can’t find anything there.”
- “I can,” said Caspar. “I can find it, I have the numbers, I have it all worked out.” He plunged one hand
- into his pocket and scrabbled around and brought out a scrap of paper. He snatched his glasses off, put
- the paper up close to his eyes, and squinted at it. Lina took a step closer to him and peered sideways.
- The paper was black with scribbling, a tangle of words and numbers and cross-outs. “Forty-seven east,”
- muttered Caspar. “Three ninety-five west.” His eyes flicked back and forth between the paper and the
- dark hills before him, flicked faster and faster. “Seventy-one,” he mumbled. “It’s just a matter of . . . In
- the daylight . . .” He caught sight of Lina. “What areyou staring at?” he said.
- “Nothing,” said Lina. She felt suddenly sick and frightened. Maddy was right. Casparwas out of his
- mind.
- The sun disappeared behind the farthest hill, and darkness fell. Maddy turned back toward the truck.
- “We’ll camp right here tonight,” she said. “We still have enough water in the buckets.”
- They set their blankets on the side of the truck away from the wind, but Lina shivered and couldn’t
- sleep. After days of longing to arrive at the city, she wanted nothing now but to leave. This was a
- terrible place, full of angry ghosts and sad ones. When she closed her eyes, she seemed to hear their
- voices—shouts and screams and a dreadful sobbing—and to see flashes of fire in the smoky sky, and
- sheets of flame sweeping through the streets.
- A wail escaped from her. She couldn’t help it, she felt so afraid and miserable. A moment later, she
- heard Maddy’s voice close to her ear. “Let’s talk for a while,” Maddy said.
- “Okay,” said Lina. She sat up, wrapping her blanket around her. Caspar was pacing up and down on
- the other side of the truck, muttering to himself. “What about him?” she said.
- “Don’t worry,” answered Maddy. “He’s lost in his calculations.”
- A gust of wind shook the truck. Its loose fender clattered.
- “I hate it here,” said Lina.
- “Yes,” said Maddy. “Terrible things happened in this place. You can still feel it.”
- “Were the people in those old days extremely evil?” Lina asked.
- “No more than anyone,” Maddy said.
- “But then why did the wars happen? To wreck your whole city—almost your whole world—it seems
- like something only evil people would do.”
- “No, not evil, at least not at first. Just angry and scared.” Maddy was silent for a moment. Caspar’s
- footsteps came closer, crunching on the gravelly ground, and then receded again. Lina inched a little
- closer to Maddy. “It’s like this,” Maddy said at last. “Say the A people and the B people get in an
- argument. The A people do something that hurts the B people. The B people strike back to get even.
- But that just makes the A people angry all over again. They say, ‘You hurt us, so we’re going to hurt
- you.’ It keeps on like that. One bad thing leads to a worse bad thing, on and on.”
- It was like what Torren had said when he was telling her about the Disaster. Revenge, he’d called it.
- “Can’t it be stopped?” said Lina. She shifted around under her blanket, trying to find a place to sit
- where rocks weren’t digging into her.
- “Maybe it can be stopped at the beginning,” Maddy said. “If someone sees what’s happening and is
- brave enough to reverse the direction.”
- “Reverse the direction?”
- “Yes, turn it around.”
- “How would you do that?”
- “You’d do something good,” said Maddy. “Or at least you’d keep yourself from doing something
- bad.”
- “But how could you?” said Lina. “When people have been mean to you, why would you want to be
- good to them?”
- “Youwouldn’t want to,” Maddy said. “That’s what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is
- hard. Much harder than being bad.”
- Lina wondered if she was strong enough to be good. She didn’t feel strong at all right now.
- “Time to sleep,” said Maddy.
- Lina pulled the blankets over her head, but still she could feel the wind and hear the oxen making low,
- uneasy sounds. She heard Caspar still pacing, too, and muttering under his breath.
- I want to go home, she thought. And for the first time, the picture that arose in her mind was not of the
- dark, familiar buildings of Ember but of Sparks under its bright sky. She thought of Dr. Hester’s house,
- and the garden blooming in the sun, and the doctor puttering with her hundred plants. She thought of
- Mrs. Murdo sitting in the doctor’s courtyard, basking in the warmth, and Poppy playing with a spoon
- beside her. Even Torren was in the picture, proudly arranging his possessions on a window ledge.
- And of course there was Doon. He should have been her partner on this journey. If he were here with
- her, she’d feel less afraid. She missed him. Maybe when she got back to Sparks, he’d be tired of
- hanging around that boy named Tick and be ready to be her friend again.
- CHAPTER 21
- Attack and Counterattack
- The morning after the trouble at the fountain, Doon awoke to a clamor rising through his window from
- the front of the hotel. He looked out, but he could see only the tops of people’s heads, all clustered
- around the front steps. He ran downstairs with his shirt still unbuttoned, flapping around him, to see
- what was happening.
- The doors of the hotel stood open. Through them, he saw that a heap of trash had been dumped on the
- front steps. He went closer and looked. The pile seemed to consist of rotten vegetables and filthy rags,
- scattered all over with shiny green leaves and sharp twigs and long creepers pulled up by their dirty
- roots.
- Doon stared at it with the same sick feeling he’d had when he saw the black words on the hotel walls.
- It wasn’t so much the pile itself that made him feel sick; it was that whoever did this hated the people of
- Ember, and hated Doon himself in particular. This was an act of revenge.
- He went outside, edging around the pile. Clary was standing on the step just below it, peering down at
- the leaves and branches. “Why would they bother to scatter leaves on everything?” she said. “And
- they’re all the same kind, too.” She picked up a sprig and looked closely at the bright green leaves,
- rubbing them between her fingers, sniffing them. “Strange,” she said.
- But most people were too upset to pay attention to the contents of the pile. An angry buzz filled the air,
- and now and then one voice or another rose above the rest. “This is an outrage!” It was a clear, sharp
- voice—Tick’s, Doon was sure. Then a high voice: “I hate them, I hate them!” That must be Lizzie—
- and sure enough, there she was, standing near Tick, dunking her shoes in a bucket of water to get the
- dirt stains off.
- After a while, Tick climbed the steps and clapped his hands. “All right, everyone!” he called. “We’ve
- been attacked again—and this is worse than the first time. It’s a disgusting insult, and it fills us with
- rage. But all we can do right now is get this mess off our doorstep. Let’s get busy and clean it up.”
- Everyone did. They picked up armloads of the leafy vines and carried them away. They shoved the
- garbage down onto the ground and kicked it into the bushes. They brought buckets of water up from the
- river and sloshed them over the steps until everything was more or less clean. Tick supervised all this,
- calling out directions—though he didn’t do any of the actual work himself, Doon noticed. Doesn’t want
- to get his clothes dirty, thought Doon rather grumpily.
- When the cleanup was done, people stood around and argued. Some were for marching down to the
- town that very minute, confronting the town leaders, and demanding that the vandals be punished.
- Other people said no, it wasn’t good to cause trouble, it would just make everything more unpleasant,
- and anyway, it wasn’t thewhole village that was against them, onlysome of them.
- “But which ones?” someone yelled. “And how do we stop them? They have to be stopped!”
- “I’m tired of being blamed and punished!” cried someone else.
- “I’m tired of being starved!”
- “And what about winter?” someone yelled. The word had spread, and people had added this to their
- list of grievances.
- “Are we just going to sit here and take this treatment?”
- “No! No! No!”
- Doon could see Tick moving through the crowd, bending to speak into the ear of one person and then
- another. As people listened, their eyes narrowed and their lips tightened, and they turned to Tick and
- nodded.
- The shouting died down after a while, because people couldn’t agree on a course of action. If they
- didn’t go to work, they wouldn’t get any lunch. So most of them went back to their ordinary routines:
- they washed their hands and faces in the river, they ate what remained in their parcels for breakfast, and
- they headed up the road toward the village.
- Doon and his father went, too, though Doon went reluctantly.
- “Father,” he said, “this is the third time they’ve attacked us. Don’t you think we have to do
- something?”
- “What do you propose to do?” his father said.
- “I don’t know,” said Doon. “But we have to dosomething. We can’t just let ourselves betrampled, can
- we?”
- “Son,” said Doon’s father, “I don’t know the answer. We’re in a tough situation here.” He clasped his
- hands behind his back and walked for a while looking down at the road. “It does seem that something is
- called for,” he said finally. “The trouble is that violence just leads to more violence. So I don’t know.”
- Doon’s team was assigned to the cornfield that day. He and his father spent hours on their knees,
- yanking prickly weeds out of the ground. Doon’s arm itched. He kept having to stop and scratch it. Was
- a mosquito biting him? He scratched and scratched again. It felt like fifty mosquito bites, not one. He
- had them on his other arm, too. Both arms itched like crazy. Finally he stopped working and held his
- arms out in front of him. From wrist to elbow, they were carpeted with red lumps.
- “Look, Father!” he cried. “I have a rash! Whatis it?”
- “I don’t know, son,” his father said, “but I have it, too.”
- The itchy rash spread over the arms and hands and faces of all the Emberites who had helped with the
- cleanup that morning. “Whatis this?” people said as they worked in the bakery and the bike shop, the
- brickyard and the tomato fields. They itched, they scratched, and the rash spread and oozed and itched
- still more.
- The villagers knew what it was. “Poison oak,” they said. They explained about the oil on the leaves,
- how you only had to touch it to get the rash. “You must have been out scrambling around in the
- woods,” they said. But the Emberites had not been scrambling in the woods. They knew how they’d
- been poisoned. Someone had done it to them on purpose.
- Fury spread among the Emberites like a fire. Those who’d heard about the poison oak raged about it to
- those who hadn’t, and before long everyone knew. Diggers threw down their shovels. Fruit pickers
- pushed the ladders to the ground and stalked out of the orchard. Someone in the bakery flung a great
- clump of dough at the supervisor, and someone in the egg shop hurled three eggs at the wall. The
- terrible itching aggravated everyone’s anger, and before long the people of Ember began to gather in
- the streets and in the plaza, and the gathering became a crowd, and the crowd became a mob.
- Doon ran into the village with the other field workers, and he found himself in the middle of this mob.
- He heard Tick’s voice from somewhere nearby: “They gave us poison! What shall we give them?”
- When there was no response but a confused babble, the question came again, louder: “What shall we
- givethem ?”
- This time an answer came: a crash, and a tinkling of shattered glass. Someone had thrown a rock
- through the window of the town hall. Cheers arose, and all around him Doon saw people suddenly
- bending over, looking for rocks to throw. More crashes. More yells.
- People started snatching things from the stalls. A jar of jam came sailing overhead. Arms reached up to
- catch it, but it fell past them and landed a few feet from Doon, smashing open and splattering his legs
- with sticky red goo and splinters of glass. He saw people stuffing muffins into their pockets, and he saw
- Tick with his arm stretched backward, ready to throw a rock at the windows of the tower. He saw Miss
- Thorn running with her hands shielding her head, and the Hoover sisters backing up into the egg shop,
- trying to get away. He was frightened, suddenly.
- At that moment, the doors of the town hall opened, and Ben Barlow strode out. His face was twisted
- with rage. “Stop them!” he shouted. “Stop these thieves and vandals!”
- “You poisoned us!” shouted someone in the crowd.
- “We’ve had enough!” shouted someone else, and threw a potato right at Ben. It hit him in the stomach,
- and he bent over, his mouth dropping open.
- A roar came from the crowd. Tick’s voice rose above the others: “Fill your pockets!” he screamed.
- “Fill your pockets and run!”
- There was a mad scramble, and then the Emberites pushed their way out of the plaza and raced down
- the streets to the river road. Doon ran, too. He saw Tick up ahead of him, sprinting fast, his shirttails
- flying.
- Now we really are thieves and vandals, Doon thought. Was this a bad thing? Or was it exactly what the
- people of Sparks deserved?
- That night, Tick went up and down the corridors of the hotel, knocking on doors and urging people to
- come to his meeting. They did come—at least a hundred of them, by Doon’s count. They gathered at
- the head of the road as the daylight was fading. Doon saw Chet and Gill and Allie and Elvan from his
- old class at the Ember school, along with people he knew from the Pipeworks, people he knew from
- Ember’s shops, and others. Most of them were boys and men, but there were women and girls, too.
- Most were silent, but some whispered excitedly to each other. They formed a semicircle in front of
- Tick, who had climbed onto a tree stump. Doon saw Lizzie standing near Tick, gazing up at him wideeyed.
- The moon shone behind Tick’s head; it gave a silver edge to his hair but left his face in darkness.
- “All right,” Tick said. His voice was quiet, but instantly the whispering stopped. “Our time has come.
- They have attacked us three times now. Today we showed them a little of our anger. We made them
- understand that we won’t be taken advantage of any- more. They must know that if they hurt us, they
- will be hurt, too. We will strike back. We are warriors now.”
- Murmurs of approval rumbled through the crowd. Doon, who was standing at the rear, heard several
- people echo Tick’s words: “Strike back, yes, we have to strike back. We are warriors.”
- “We must be ready,” Tick said. “When the next confrontation comes, we won’t be as disorganized as
- we were today. We’ll have a plan. And we’ll be armed.”
- More murmurs, and a ripple of excitement.
- “How will we arm ourselves?” Tick asked. He answered the question himself. “We have what we need
- right here where we live,” he said. “Look in your bathrooms. You’ll find strong metal rods there, just
- the right length, and enough for everyone.”
- People looked at each other in puzzlement. Metal rods in the bathroom? But Doon knew immediately
- what Tick meant: the towel racks. Take them off the wall, and you have a sturdy weapon that could do
- real damage—bruise soft flesh, even break hard bone.
- Tick waited until the word was passed through the crowd and everyone understood about the weapons
- in the bathrooms. Then he said, “There are other ways to arm yourself, too. Did you bring a knife with
- you from Ember? Are there still slivers of glass left in the windows of your room? Have you noticed
- that some of the stones by the river are just the size to fit in a fist?”
- Again, he waited. All around Doon, people were nodding and whispering. Doon tried to imagine what
- the uprising earlier that day would have been like if the rioters had been swinging steel rods and
- striking out with knives and broken glass. People would have been hurt; there would have been blood.
- But think of the hurt the villagers had inflicted on the Emberites—the pangs of hunger, the humiliation,
- the name calling, the terrible itchy rash. Didn’t one hurt deserve another? Wasn’t he simply being
- squeamish to shrink from it? He would have to strengthen himself, he thought—not just his body, but
- his spirit, his will. It would take a kind of strength he didn’t have yet to strike another person with the
- intent to harm.
- Tick was bending forward now and speaking in a softer voice. People shushed each other and listened.
- “Go back now and sleep, my warriors,” Tick said. “In the next days, prepare your weapons and prepare
- your will. Remember how you felt when you saw those ugly words scrawled on our walls. Remember
- how you felt when the poison rash crawled up your arms. The people of Sparks will wrong us again, we
- can be sure of that. When it happens, we’ll be ready.”
- After the meeting, Doon walked back to the hotel feeling vaguely uneasy. Tick must be right, but
- somehow Doon couldn’t feel wholehearted about being a warrior. Was it because he was a coward? He
- didn’t want to be a coward. He didn’t really think he was one. What was his problem, then?
- CHAPTER 22
- Discoveries
- When Lina awoke the next morning, she thought there was something wrong with her eyes. Everything
- had gone gray. She sat up and looked around. No, it wasn’t her eyes—it was the air that was wrong. It
- was so thick she could hardly see through it. The truck was merely a dark shadow. The buildings of the
- city had vanished entirely.
- From somewhere in the murk, she heard Caspar’s voice. He was muttering to himself, as he had been
- the night before, but she could hear only a low, growly sound, no words.
- A dark shape appeared and moved toward her. It was Maddy. She bent over and whispered, “Don’t get
- up yet. Lie back down.”
- “What’s wrong with the air?” Lina asked her.
- “It’s called fog,” Maddy said. “It comes in off the water. Now lie down. Curl up.”
- Lina lay down and pulled the blanket up under her chin. Maddy knelt beside her and whispered,
- “Pretend you’re sick. Moan and groan a little. Refuse to get up. I’ll explain later.”
- Lina followed instructions. She stared up into the swirling grayness and whimpered a little. It wasn’t
- hard to pretend she didn’t feel good. She’d rarely felt so cold and miserable in her life.
- She saw Maddy and Caspar huddling together, two shadowy humps in the fog. They were talking, and
- their voices rose, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying.
- She must have gone to sleep again. When she opened her eyes, the fog was thinner. A pale sun like a
- circle of paper shone through it. Without sitting up, she looked around for Maddy and saw her sitting
- on the back of the truck, eating. She didn’t see Caspar anywhere.
- “Maddy,” she whispered.
- Maddy jumped down and came over to her. “You can get up now,” she said. “He’s gone.”
- Lina sat up. “Gone?”
- Maddy nodded. “Into the ruins. He won’t give up this notion of finding treasure. Something in his
- mind has slipped, I think. He wasn’t all that steady to begin with, and now he’s lost his balance.” She
- took Lina’s hand and pulled her to her feet, and together they folded the blanket. “He wants you to help
- him with his search—go into the small spaces where he can’t go. I told him you’d help tomorrow but
- today you weren’t well. So he went off to look around by himself. ‘Preliminary exploration,’ he called
- it.”
- “I don’t want to help him,” Lina said.
- “You aren’t going to,” said Maddy. “We’re leaving.”
- “We are? When? How?” Lina asked.
- “Now,” said Maddy. “Come and help me.”
- Maddy climbed up onto the truck, unstrapped the two bicycles, and handed them down to Lina. She
- opened the food chest and took out some of the remaining travelers’ cakes, along with two water
- bottles, and she wrapped these in blankets and tied them with rope.
- “Here,” she said to Lina. “This pack is yours, and this bike.”
- “You mean we’re going to ride all the way back to Sparks?” Lina thought with horror of the vast,
- empty distance, and the blazing heat.
- “We won’t have to ride all the way,” Maddy said. “There are lots of roamers. Someone will help us.”
- “And we just leave Caspar here by himself?” Lina wasn’t sure that even someone as unlikable as
- Caspar should be abandoned in this terrible place.
- “He’ll be fine,” said Maddy. “He has his truck and all his supplies. He doesn’t need us.”
- So they tied the packs onto their backs. They walked the bikes across the rubbly part of the road until
- they came to the place where it opened out into the long downhill curve. Just then the fog lifted and the
- air came clear. Lina turned around to take a last look at the city, the city she’d had such hopes for, the
- city she thought might be a home for the people of Ember. In the sunlight, it looked more sad than
- terrible. Over the rolling, grass-covered mounds, the skeletons of the old towers stood like watchmen.
- The trees bent their backs before the wind, and the wind swept ripples across the surface of the green
- water that wrapped around the city’s edges. Maybe, thought Lina, the sparkling city she’d seen in her
- mind was a vision from the distant future, not the distant past. Maybe someday the people of Ember—
- or the great-great-grandchildren of today’s people of Ember—would come back here and build the city
- again.
- “All right,” said Maddy. “Let’s ride.”
- Lina flung her leg over the bike and settled herself on the seat. This was a bigger bike than the one she
- was used to. She gripped the handlebars, gave a push with her foot, and she was off.
- From the start, the bike moved so fast she hardly had to pedal. She zoomed forward, going far faster
- than even her fastest running. The wind in her face swept her hair out behind her, shot through her
- clothes, nearly peeled back her eyelids. The bumps in the road made the handlebars buck like
- something alive—she held on with a steel grip. It was absolutely terrifying and absolutely joyful. Down
- the long hill they went, she and Maddy alone on the wide, empty highway, no need to pedal at all, only
- steer around broken places or bits of debris. The fast air came into Lina’s mouth and buffeted down
- into her lungs, and she laughed out loud, it was such a glorious freedom. When the slope leveled out a
- little, she steered the bike in big curves, back and forth, and Maddy did, too. They whooped and
- laughed and raced each other, and alongside them the white birds swooped, too, screeching in their
- shrill voices.
- Then came a long stretch of flat road and hard pedaling. With many stops for resting and eating and
- drinking water, they rode all day. Lina’s seat was sore and her legs grew tired. Blisters rose on her
- hands from holding so tight to the handlebars. But Maddy said, “Just a little farther, a little farther, and
- then we’ll stop,” and Lina kept going, finding strength when she thought it was gone, until at last, at the
- end of the day, they came to the place where the water ended and they could begin to turn eastward
- toward the hills.
- Here they stopped for the night. They found a creek with a trickle of clear water running along the
- bottom. Maddy said the round green leaves that grew on the creek’s banks were good to eat, so they
- had those with their travelers’ cakes, along with some wild onions and a few blackberries they found
- deep in a thicket of bramble. There was no cold wind here, as there had been near the city. The evening
- was warm and still, except for the chirping of frogs in the creek. They spread their blankets on the
- ground. Some-where in the dark, an owl hooted softly and another answered. Maddy was lying on her
- back with her hands clasped over her wide stomach. To Lina, gazing at her profile against the sky, she
- looked like a small range of hills, solid and comforting. So Lina dared to ask a question that had been
- troubling her.
- “Maddy,” she said, “could there ever be another Disaster like the one that came before? Or even
- worse? What if every single person and every single animal was killed?”
- “Don’t worry,” said Maddy. “People didn’t make life, so they can’t destroy it. Even if we were to wipe
- out every bit of life in the world, we can’t touch the place life comes from. Whatever made plants and
- animals and people spring up in the first place will always be there, and life will spring up again.”
- Maddy turned over and tugged her blanket around her neck. “Time to sleep now,” she said. “More hard
- riding tomorrow.”
- In the morning, they were on their way as soon as the sun rose. Lina groaned as she got on her bike
- again—her muscles were sore from yesterday. But she soon warmed up, and for a long time the road
- was flat and the riding was easy.
- After an hour or so, Lina spotted something moving up ahead of them, a dot in the distance. “Look!”
- she called to Maddy, who was a little way behind her, and she pointed. “I think it’s a truck! Maybe a
- roamer!”
- In ten minutes or so, they had caught up to it. The man driving the truck turned when he heard them
- calling. Surprise lit up his face, and he halted his oxen and jumped down.
- “Greetings!” he cried. “Glad to see some travelers! Haven’t met anyone on the road for four days.”
- He was a short, stocky man with a wild fuzz of black hair that stood out several inches all around his
- head. Pelton Moss was his name, and he was indeed a roamer, as was easy to see from the crates and
- barrels on his truck. All his containers were nearly empty, though. He had sold his most recent load of
- goods to a remote south-bay settlement. Now he was heading back in the direction of Sparks. “I’ll take
- you with me,” he said, “if you’ll help with my collecting on the way.”
- And so for five days, Lina got to be a roamer. At every ancient abandoned town, they stopped and
- combed through the derelict houses. Not much was left; these houses had been picked nearly clean in
- the last two hundred years. But sometimes, if they looked carefully, they found things the previous
- roamers had overlooked, or things they had thought worthless.
- Lina loved these searches. In some ways, it was like being a messenger back in Ember—she could go
- everywhere, look in every forgotten corner, and if she was lucky make discoveries. And she was lucky.
- She found a silver locket with a picture of someone inside, though the picture was so old and stained
- she couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a baby. She found a small, round pane of glass with a handle. The
- glass made whatever you looked at appear bigger. “A magnifying glass,” said Pelton. “Nice.” She
- found a tiny red truck with wheels that still turned. She found a strip of leather with a buckle and two
- round metal pieces attached to it. It was too short to be a belt. There were words on the metal circles,
- but they were so worn she couldn’t read them. “That’s a dog collar,” Pelton told her. “Not very useful,
- but interesting.”
- At a house that stood by itself far out in a field, she opened a cabinet on a back porch, where the screen
- was hanging in brown flaps. In the cabinet was a box that said “Monopoly” in faded letters on its lid.
- Inside were tiny dotted cubes and tiny bits of wood shaped like houses. “Wonderful!” Pelton
- exclaimed. “Extremely rare!” There was another box in the cabinet with a picture of a garden on top
- and a heap of oddly shaped pieces of cardboard inside. And at the back of the cabinet, in a clutter of
- broken dolls, torn pages from books, and little jars of dried-up paint, Lina found a bar of metal about
- three inches long that Pelton said was a magnet. “Put it up against the truck,” he said. “It’ll stick right
- on there.”
- Even as she enjoyed the searching, though, Lina couldn’t help imagining how it would be for the
- people of Ember to come out into this empty land and try to start a town. How would they turn the
- hard, cracked earth into fields of crops? What would they build houses with? What would they eat
- while they chopped at the soil and put together their shelters? A picture rose in her mind of Ember’s
- four hundred people scattered across the brown fields like a flock of lost birds, scratching in the dry
- grass for seeds or bugs, huddling for shade beneath the few trees, trying to build shelters of sticks or
- straw. She shuddered and made the picture go away. It was best to keep her attention on searching.
- Maddy didn’t do much searching. She didn’t care for bending over and creeping underneath things and
- wedging her large self into small spaces. While Lina and Pelton hunted, she walked around in the fields
- and the overgrown gardens behind the houses, looking for old fruit trees, wild grapevines, and the kinds
- of leaves, roots, nuts, and mushrooms that were all right to eat. Lina would look out the window of the
- house she was poking through and see Maddy wading through knee-high grass toward a gnarled old
- apple tree. Or she’d see her wide back in among the bushes as she picked berries. Sometimes Maddy
- simply sat. Lina would see her settled into an ancient lawn chair, gazing across a field or up a street, not
- moving at all. What was she thinking about? Lina wondered at those times. She looked so serious.
- On the evening of the third day, they stopped by a wide, slow part of the river. As the sun went down,
- they sat on the riverbank, drinking cool tea that Pelton made with mint leaves, and they talked. Pelton
- told about the places he’d seen, and Maddy and Lina told about Caspar’s quest in the city, his mad
- study of the old songs about treasure.
- “Oh, yes,” said Pelton. “I’ve heard those old rhymes all my life, and my father before me heard them,
- too. It’s an old verse, or a song, I think, come down from years ago and scrambled, probably, in the
- process. Everyone says it in a different way. Something like this.” He sang in a sweet but off-key voice:
- “There’s buried treasure in the ancient city.
- Remember, remember from times of old.
- What’s hidden will come to light again.
- It’s far more precious than diamonds and gold.
- “That’s the way I heard it, from an old man who lives up in the mountains near Angel Rock. Then I
- heard another version from Maggie Pierce, over by Falter. She sings it like this:
- “Remember the city, the city remember,
- Where treasure is hidden under the ground.
- The city, the city, always remember,
- That’s where the treasure will be found.”
- Lina stared at him. Her mouth dropped open, her eyebrows flew upward, and her heart thudded in her
- chest.
- He laughed. “What are you looking so amazed at? Think you’re going to go find this treasure? Nobody
- believes those old things anymore. They’re nursery nonsense, old jingles made up to put babies to
- sleep.”
- “Some still believe it,” said Maddy. “But it’s only those with a bit of madness in them. And a good
- measure of greed.”
- “That’s right,” said the roamer. “I’ve known a few like that. One of ’em was sure it was in the old city
- of Sanazay and spent his whole life digging through the ruins, looking for it. Finally died when a
- chimney fell on him.”
- Maddy snorted. “Such nonsense people believe,” she said.
- Lina was shaking her head. She began to smile. “No, no,” she said. “No, you have it wrong.” She
- laughed, she couldn’t help it. “It isn’t nonsense, it’s true. I’m sure, I’m sure!” What she suddenly knew
- seemed so wonderful and astonishing that she leapt up and clapped her hands and laughed again.
- “You’re a silly one,” said the roamer.
- “I’m not silly! The city in that rhyme—it’s the city I come from!”
- The roamer cast a sideways glance at Maddy. “What’s the matter with her?” he said. “Has she got a
- fever?”
- Maddy reached up for Lina’s hand. “Calm down now,” she said. “Tell us what you’re talking about.”
- So Lina explained. “Sing the first line again, the first line of the second song,” she said.
- Pelton eyed her strangely, but he sang: “Remember the city, the city remember, where treasure is
- hidden under the ground.”
- “That first line,” said Lina. “I’m sure it’s meant to be ‘Remember the city, the city ofEmber. ’ That’s
- the name of my home. It was under the ground.”
- “Not sure I believethat, ” said Pelton.
- “I think it’s true,” said Maddy. “They all say it, all the ones who came from there.”
- “And what about the treasure, then?” Pelton asked.
- “It wasus !” cried Lina. “We were the treasure, the people of Ember!” She felt a swell of love all of a
- sudden for her old city. “Sing that first song again, the last lines of it.”
- Pelton sang: “What’s hidden will come to light again. It’s far more precious than diamonds and gold.”
- “You see?” said Lina. “Come to light! We came up into the light! And we were more precious than
- diamonds and gold because they thought we might be the last people—the only ones left.”
- The three of them gazed at each other in wonder. “I believe she’s right,” said Maddy at last.
- “Maybe so,” said Pelton. He stared curiously at Lina. “You livedunderground ?”
- So then for the rest of the evening, Lina told about the city of Ember, and how she had been a
- messenger there, and how she and Doon had found the way out. It was late when they finally lay down
- for the night. Lina couldn’t sleep at first, thinking of the old songs and what they meant. Someone, long
- ago, had hoped that at least a few people would survive and had wanted them to remember her city and
- the treasure it held, the treasure that was most valuable of all—herself, her family, and all the
- generations of people who had lived in that secret place, their purpose, though they didn’t know it, to
- make sure that human beings did not vanish from the world, no matter what happened above.
- The Third Town Meeting
- After the rampage in the plaza, the three town leaders went up to the tower room for an urgent
- meeting. They flopped into their chairs and sat without speaking for a few moments, staring down at
- the mess below.
- “What do we do now?” said Wilmer.
- Ben curled both hands into fists and set them on the table in front of him. “The cavepeople,” he said,
- “must leave.”
- “Leave?” said Mary.
- “Leave,” said Ben. “They must go away from here.”
- “But they haven’t been here six months yet,” said Wilmer.
- “They must go now,” said Ben. “It’s better for them anyhow, to leave before winter really sets in.”
- “They won’t want to leave,” said Wilmer, tugging anxiously at a strand of his hair. “I think they
- understand now that there’s nowhere for them to go.”
- “Theymust go,” said Ben. “We can never feel safe while they are here. If they refuse to go, we will
- force them to. We have the means to do it.”
- There was a long silence. Ben and Mary glared at each other. Wilmer’s eyes darted anxiously between
- them.
- At last, Mary set the palms of her hands on the table and took a long breath. “You are speaking of the
- Weapon,” she said.
- “That’s right,” said Ben. “We have it for situations of dire emergency. I think we have an emergency
- now.”
- “We’ve never used it before,” said Wilmer. “We don’t even know how to work it.”
- “I think it is unwise to use it,” said Mary. “We have always tried our best not to repeat the mistakes of
- our ancestors. Using the Weapon would be the first step down the path they took.”
- “We may not actually have touse the Weapon,” said Ben. “All we have to do is threaten them with it.
- Just the sight of it will make them do what we say—that is, leave.”
- “What you are proposing,” said Mary, “is sending four hundred people to their deaths.”
- “Not necessarily,” said Ben. “The village of Sparks started with almost nothing, why shouldn’t they?”
- “It’s not true that we started with nothing. The founders of Sparks came here from the old cities, in a
- truck loaded with enough food and supplies to keep them going for months. These people have nothing
- at all.”
- “We will send a truck with them, then,” said Ben. “With barrels of water, some food, and some basic
- supplies.”
- “That would last them about a week,” said Mary. “Besides, they have no skills. They haven’t had time
- to learn them.”
- Ben sighed impatiently. “Are we supposed to subject our own people to hardship and danger because
- of a bunch of refugees from a cave? Isn’t it our job toprotect our own people?”
- “But if they rebel against this order,” said Wilmer, “then what?”
- “I thought I had made that clear,” said Ben. “We use force. It is our only option.” He pondered for a
- moment, frowning into the air above Wilmer’s head. “We’ll put the Weapon on a truck and take it to
- the hotel. If they put up any resistance, it’ll be right there, ready to use.” He thumped a fist on the table.
- “I say we give them a day to prepare. The day after tomorrow they will leave Sparks. All of them. For
- good. Shall we vote on it?”
- They nodded.
- “I vote yes,” said Ben. “They must leave.”
- “I vote no,” said Mary.
- Wilmer stared down at his hands. He swallowed. He took a shaky breath. “I . . . ,” he said. “I vote . . . I
- vote yes.”
- So it was decided. They would make the announcement that very night, calling the people of Ember
- together after they were through with work and before they went back to the hotel. Ben would be the
- one to tell them. He would make it clear that the decision was final.
- CHAPTER 23
- Getting Ready for War
- The announcement shocked the people of Ember. That evening, they swarmed through the halls of the
- Pioneer Hotel in an uproar. People wept and shouted and moaned. In the lobby, Doon encountered a
- group of people embroiled in a huge argument.
- “It’s the fault of that Hassler boy,” shouted someone. “He was the one who started the riot. He was
- egging people on.”
- “No! He stood up for us! He gave them what they deserved!” cried someone else.
- “He’s a troublemaker!”
- “He’s a hero!”
- Doon started up the stairs. Halfway up, he passed Lizzie. Her face was flushed with excitement. She
- grabbed his arm. “He won’t let them kick us out,” she said, “will he?”
- “Will who?” said Doon.
- “Tick. I’m sure he’ll save us. He’s so brave, isn’t he? He’ll make them change their minds.” She
- hurried on down the stairs.
- It was many hours before people went to sleep that night. The noise in the hallways went on and on, as
- some people wailed that they were all going to die, and others vowed to fight, and others gathered up
- their belongings and stuffed them into sacks. Sadge was so frightened by what was happening that he
- curled up in the corner with his blanket over his head. But Doon and his father and Edward Pocket sat
- talking for a long time.
- “I don’t see how we could make a town from nothing out in the Empty Lands,” said Doon. “I don’t
- believe they ever thought we could. We’d starve trying to do it. Wecan’t go—they can’t make us.”
- His father, who sat leaning against the wall with his knees up, shook his head sadly. “I don’t know,” he
- said. “This Weapon they have—they could use that to force us out.”
- “But what could it be?” Doon said. “Just one weapon? I don’t understand it.”
- “To be effective,” said Edward Pocket in his most learned tone, “a weapon must come into contact
- with the person or persons it is used against. The question is, how can one weapon be effective against
- four hundred people? My guess is that it’s something very large that could be made to fall on us and
- crush us.”
- “But where could they hide it, if it’s that large?” asked Doon. “It would have to be as big as a
- mountain.”
- “It could be an animal,” said Doon’s father. “They might have it in a cage in the basement of the town
- hall. Something very fierce that they would let loose on us.”
- “Or it might be something like the poison oak, only worse,” said Doon. “Some sort of poison that they
- could spray at us.”
- His father nodded thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said. “That could be it.”
- “But Father,” said Doon, “we have to fight them, don’t you think? No matter what the Weapon is. We
- can’t just leave. It’s so unfair!”
- Edward Pocket, who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, scrambled to his feet. He clenched
- both fists and raised them as if ready to pound someone. “I’m not leaving!” he shouted. “Let them try
- and make me! I’ll chain my leg to their big old tree!”
- From under his blanket, Sadge moaned.
- “Besides,” Edward went on, “I have work to do here. They need me. They need all of us!” He sat down
- again. “Probably tomorrow they’ll change their minds.”
- “I don’t think so,” said Doon’s father. “That Ben sounded serious to me.”
- “So what do we do, then, Father?” asked Doon. “We fight, don’t we?”
- Doon’s father sighed. He stretched his long legs out in front of him and stared down at his knees.
- “Think about what it would mean to fight,” he said. “Say we barricade ourselves here in the hotel and
- refuse to leave. They come at us with their Weapon, whatever it is. Some of us are hurt, some die. We
- go out to meet them with whatever weapons we can find—sticks, maybe, or pieces of broken glass. We
- battle each other.” He ran his hand across his head and sighed again. “Maybe they set fire to the hotel.
- Maybe we march into the village and steal food from them and they come after us and beat us. We beat
- them back. In the end, maybe we damage them so badly that they’re too weak to make us leave. What
- do we have? Friends and neighbors and families dead. A place half destroyed, and those left in it full of
- hatred for us. And we ourselves will have to live with the memory of the terrible things we have done.”
- Doon pictured all this as his father spoke. He hadn’t really imagined before what fighting would be
- like. “But still,” he said. “At least some of us would survive and have a place to live. If we go out into
- the Empty Lands, we’ll all die.”
- His father just shook his head. “I don’t know, Doon. I have to admit, I just don’t know what we should
- do.”
- “I know whatI’m going to do,” said Edward Pocket.
- “What?” asked Doon.
- “Go to bed,” said Edward. He stamped over to his closet and crawled in. “Wake me up,” he said,
- “when you’ve got all this figured out.”
- An hour or so later, the noise of marching sounded in the hallway, and thethump-thump of knocks on
- doors, one after the other. Tick’s voice rang out: “Calling all fighters!” he shouted. “All fighters! All
- those who refuse to be banished! Meet at the head of the road. We must make our plan!” The footsteps
- passed, and Doon heard the same message repeated farther down the hall, and again farther yet.
- He put his clothes and shoes back on. In spite of what his father had said, he still didn’t think the
- people of Ember should agree to go quietly out into the wilderness. Somehow, they must resist—and
- Tick was the only one with a plan.
- The hall was full of people, a few of them murmuring quietly to each other, most of them silent. All
- were heading for the stairs. Outside, the night was warm, but a restless wind stirred in the trees and
- scraps of cloud flew across the stars. With the others, Doon headed for the meeting place.
- Tick stood in a patch of moonlight, the dense shrubbery behind him. When people had gathered
- around, he held up his rod, and all whispering died away.
- “Listen carefully,” Tick said. He spoke in a level voice, not loudly, but every word was sharp and
- clear. “The day we’ve been ordered to leave—the day after tomorrow—we will assemble at dawn, at
- the front of the hotel. Have your weapons with you. There are still many people who haven’t made up
- their minds to fight, and a few who are ready to go meekly into the Empty Lands, following orders. We
- want to change their minds. Flash your weapons! Shout our battle cry: ‘We will not go!’ Remind them
- of the black words of hatred scrawled in mud on the plaza and on the walls of our hotel, and the poison
- leaves on the doorstep. We will make those cowards ashamed of their weakness. We will make them
- understand that obedience to evil commands is a disgrace. Most of them, maybe all of them, will join
- us. And once they have, we will march into the village, loud and defiant and strong, and in the plaza we
- will confront the town leaders and make our demands.”
- A few people raised their fists and shouted approval.
- “What are our demands?” Doon asked. He was standing at the front of the crowd, just a few feet from
- Tick.
- “They are these,” said Tick. “We demand to be made full citizens of this town, not cast out into the
- wilderness. We demand to be properly fed. We demand decent places to stay. We demand the end to
- unfair rules and insults.”
- These seemed reasonable things to ask for, Doon thought. “And if they refuse to agree to our
- demands?” he asked.
- “Then of course we fight.”
- “But they have this Terrible Weapon they talk about,” said Doon. “What about that?”
- Others echoed his question. “Yes, what about it?”
- Tick smiled. His teeth showed white in the moonlight. “They have one weapon,” he said. “We have
- many. And each weapon, in the right hands, is an engine of power.” His voice grew louder. “We will
- attack them,” he cried, “like this!” He raised his steel rod and brought it slashing down so that the air
- whistled around it. The end cut into the ground. He raised it again and whipped it back and forth,
- striking tree trunks so hard he gashed their bark. He whirled around and battered the bushes behind
- him. “You cannot defeat us!” he cried to an imaginary enemy. “Right is on our side! We will have your
- blood! We will break your bones!” He went into a frenzy of stabbing and slicing, thrashing wildly
- among the bushes. Leaves flew, twigs snapped.
- Something fluttered and fell. Doon saw it. So did Tick. He stopped for a moment and glanced down.
- At his feet was a half-grown baby bird that must have been huddled deep within the bushes. It flopped
- onto its side, its beak gaping.
- “You see?” Tick cried. “The enemy falls at my feet!” He raised his rod. “With one blow I—”
- Doon stepped forward and grabbed Tick’s arm. “Don’t,” he said.
- Tick tried to pull away. Then he relaxed and lowered his weapon. He grinned. “Okay,” he said. “I
- think it’s dead anyhow.” He stuck the toe of his shoe beneath the bird and flipped it away, into the
- grass. “But you get the idea,” he said, turning back to his warriors. “Imaginehundreds of us doing that!
- We’ll be unbeatable.” His face was alight with glee.
- And that was when Doon’s vague, uneasy feelings came together into one clear understanding:
- Tickwants war. The thought of war excites him and makes him happy. But not me. The thought of war
- makes me sick.
- Doon’s way parted from Tick’s that night. He walked back to the hotel and up the stairs slowly, his
- heart heavy. He still didn’t know what he was going to do the day after tomorrow. All he knew was that
- he did not want Tick for his commander. He would command himself.
- CHAPTER 24
- What Torren Planned
- Torren heard the news from old Sal Ramirez, who came in the evening to have the doctor look at his
- infected eye.
- “They’ve been ordered out,” said Sal as Dr. Hester stood over him, pulling his eyelid down. “The
- cave-people. They have to leave. Day after tomorrow.”
- “That can’t be true,” said the doctor. She dipped a spoon into a small glass jar full of clear liquid. “Tip
- your head back,” she said. She dripped drops into Sal’s eye.
- “It is true,” said Sal. “Ben told ’em to go.”
- “But how can they?” said the doctor. “There’s noplace for them to go.”
- “Some of ’em refused,” said Sal. “They said they’d fight.” He wiped his eyes. “Ben said he’d bring out
- the Weapon if they did.”
- “The Weapon!” The doctor set the jar down on the table and stared at Sal. “Has Ben gone out of his
- mind?”
- “Don’t know,” said Sal.
- Torren listened from his place on the window seat, shivering with excitement. There was going to be a
- war, right here in Sparks! And the terrible Weapon would be used at last—on the cavepeople! He had
- always wanted to know what it was. Now he’d find out.
- Sal left, with a bandage pressed to his eye. The doctor sat down at the table and stared out the window
- at the flame-colored streak in the western sky. “How have we come to this?” she said, but she didn’t
- seem to be asking Torren.
- The look on her face caused a little fear to mix with Torren’s excitement. He didn’t want to bein the
- war, he thought. He could get hurt. The Weapon might accidentally gethim instead of the cavepeople.
- He just wanted tosee the war, not fight in it.
- “Where will the war be?” he asked the doctor.
- “What?” She looked at him as if she’d forgotten he was there.
- “The war,” he said. “Day after tomorrow. Where will it be?”
- “You’re talking nonsense,” said the doctor. “If there’s a war, it will be everywhere.” She stood up
- slowly, hoisting herself with an arm on the table. Her face looked heavy, and she shuffled to her room
- without saying good night.
- Torren went to bed and lay there a long time with his mind racing. He decided he would get up before
- anyone else the day after tomorrow, the day the war would begin. He would get dressed. He would take
- a hunk of cornbread from the kitchen and put it in his pocket. He would take a knife, too, in case the
- war came close to him. Then he would go down to the plaza and climb to the top of the big pine tree, so
- high up that he’d be hidden from below. From there, he would be able to see everything.
- CHAPTER 25
- Dread at the Last Minute
- As Pelton’s truck drew near the village of Sparks, Lina was more and more impatient. She longed to
- see Poppy and Mrs. Murdo and Doon. “Another day’s travel,” Pelton said. “We’ll be in Sparks by
- tomorrow morning.”
- Lina was too excited to sleep much that night. Her mind galloped forward to the people she would see
- tomorrow, and backward to everything she’d seen on her journey. She finally fell asleep a few hours
- before morning, and when she awoke, she could feel immediately that something in the air had
- changed. A wind had arisen, a warm, gusty wind that bent the brown grasses and rattled in the leaves of
- the trees. The blue of the sky had faded to a hazy gray, and the heat seemed more fiery than ever. She
- felt something unsettling in the air, a warning, like the first traces of fever when an illness is coming on.
- “Could be nearly a hundred degrees today,” said Pelton. “But in a week or two the heat will start to
- slack off. The season’s changing. You can feel it in the wind.”
- They started out early. After only an hour or so, Lina could see the fields and buildings of Sparks in
- the distance. She stood up—she was sitting on the front seat of the truck between Maddy and Pelton—
- and shielded her eyes with her hand to see better. There it was—and now it looked like home to her, the
- solid little brown houses, the tidy fields around them. When they came to the road that led to the
- Pioneer Hotel, Lina had a sudden idea. “Let me off here,” she said. “I want to tell Doon I’m back. I’ll
- walk the rest of the way.”
- She thanked Pelton for all his help, and he thanked her in return. “Take a few of the things you found,”
- he said, “whatever you like.” She rummaged through the crate until she found the magnifying glass, the
- magnet, and the little red truck, and she tucked these into her pack.
- “I’ll go into town and help Pelton with the trading,” Maddy said to Lina. “I’ll meet you later at the
- doctor’s house.”
- Lina jumped down from the truck. Her legs strong and springy, her hair flying in the wind, she ran up
- the road toward the hotel.
- She expected to see people at the river, washing, and people sitting on the hotel steps eating their
- breakfasts, getting ready for work. But the grounds of the hotel were empty, and when she went inside,
- she found people milling about the lobby in confusion. Some of them were crying—she saw the two
- Hoover sisters, one wailing, the other trying to comfort her, and she saw old Nammy Proggs sitting on
- a rolled-up blanket, grumbling to herself. People were arguing with each other—she heard angry
- voices, and questioning voices, and voices full of fear.
- For a second she just stood looking, wondering what was happening. Then someone spotted her.
- “Lina!” Her name rang out over the hubbub. Faces turned toward her, and people rushed up to her and
- crowded around her. “You’re back! Where have you been? We thought you’d disappeared forever!”
- She saw Clary’s face, smiling, and she heard the voices of friends from school, and Captain Fleery of
- the Ember messengers, and someone who used to work in the shoe store. “Are you all right?” they said.
- “What a time to come back! Why did you leave? Where have you been?” Hands reached for her, arms
- wrapped her in hugs. She saw a red head bouncing up and down as Lizzie jumped in the air, trying to
- see over the crowd, and she saw Mrs. Polster beaming at her, and Miss Thorn at her side.
- “I’m fine, I’m fine!” she said. “I’m so happy to be back! But what’s going on here? And where’s
- Doon?”
- “I’m here!” It was Doon’s voice. There he was, just coming down the stairs. She broke away from the
- welcoming crowd and ran over to him. He didn’t speak, just reached out an arm and grabbed her hand.
- The look on his face startled her. Was he angry?
- “Come outside,” he said.
- She followed him down a passage and out a door in the back of the hotel. There was a small concrete
- terrace there, bordered by a low wall. Behind the wall, the drooping branches of a dusty tree stirred in
- the wind. Doon sat down on the wall and pulled her down next to him.
- For a moment he said nothing. When he spoke, his voice came out in a rough shout.“Where have you
- been?” he said. “Don’t you know how everyone has worried about you? Don’t you know everyone has
- thought you weredead ?”
- Lina shrank back. “I didn’t mean to be gone so long,” she said. “It was a mistake. I thought—”
- “Nearly a month you’ve been gone!” Doon said.
- “It was because of the city, Doon. I thought the city would be like those drawings I made. I thought
- maybe we could go there, all of us, and live there, and . . . and be happy,” she finished weakly.
- “You could have told me you were going,” Doon said. “I might have wanted to go, too. Did you think
- of that?”
- “I didn’t really think at all,” Lina said, “I just saw the chance and went. But if Ihad thought about it”—
- she frowned, remembering—“I’d probably have figured you wouldn’twant to come. Because you were
- too busy with that . . . that Tick.”
- Doon’s face fell. “Oh,” he said. “Well, you’re right. I guess I was . . . I thought Tick might be . . .”
- Doon stopped, looking flustered. “I’m sorry,” he said.
- “I’m sorry, too,” said Lina. They were silent for a moment. Then Lina said, “Shall we forgive each
- other?”
- “All right,” said Doon. He smiled.
- Lina smiled back. “But what’s going onhere ?” she asked. “Why is everyone so upset?”
- “They’ve ordered us out, Lina! They’ve told us we have to leave tomorrow morning!”
- “What?” Lina could not take this in. “Who has to leave?”
- “All of us! All the people of Ember!”
- “And go where?”
- “Out into the Empty Lands. We have to make a new life for ourselves, they said. On our own.”
- Lina’s mouth dropped open. A wild confusion filled her mind. “But how can we? What would we eat?
- Where would we live?” Again the frightening picture rose in her mind—the people of Ember scattered
- like fallen birds across a vast, dry landscape. “There are wolves out there,” she said, “and bandits!”
- “I know,” said Doon. “And it will be winter soon. Have you heard of winter?”
- Lina shook her head. When Doon explained, her eyes widened in shock.
- “All this time you’ve been gone, Lina, they’ve done terrible things to us. The first thing was that boy
- Torren.” He told her about the smashed tomatoes that Torren blamed on him.
- “He said he saw you?” Lina said, outraged. “Why would he do that?”
- Doon shrugged. “Ask him. I don’t know.” He went on to tell her what else had happened. “They’ve
- thrown us out of their houses! They’ve written hateful words on our walls. They’ve poisoned us with
- leaves!”
- “But why? What did we do to them?” Lina said. The wind blew her hair forward over her shoulders.
- She clutched a handful of tangled strands to hold them still.
- “We ate their food,” said Doon. “That was the main thing. But other things happened, too.” He told her
- about the riot in the plaza, and about what happened at the fountain. “Now,” he said, “they’ve
- threatened to use their Weapon on us if we don’t leave. So Tick says we’ll use our weapons on them.”
- “Our weapons? What weapons?”
- Doon sighed. For the first time, Lina noticed how thin he was. She saw the shadows beneath his eyes.
- “There’s so much to tell you,” Doon said. “And we only have today.”
- “But I haven’t even been home,” Lina said. “I have to see Poppy, and Mrs. Murdo. Are they still at the
- doctor’s? Is Poppy all right?” A scattering of dry leaves blew against her legs. The wind whipped her
- hair. The whole world had changed suddenly, just in the last half hour. Her throat tightened, and she
- felt tears threatening.
- “Yes, they’re still at the doctor’s,” Doon said. “Come on, I’ll go with you. We’ll talk there.”
- “Wait,” said Lina. “I brought you a present. Two presents.” She unrolled the pack she’d carried all the
- way from the city, took out the magnet and the magnifying glass, and handed them to Doon. “This one
- is a magnet,” she said. “If you put it against metal, it sticks there. I guess it isn’t very useful, but it’s
- interesting. The other one is for making things bigger—I mean, making them look bigger.”
- “Thank you,” Doon said. He examined his presents curiously. He held the glass up and peered through
- it at the back of the hotel.
- “Look at something small,” Lina said. “Like a leaf or a bug.”
- Doon riffled among the leaves on the ground and found an ant, which he set on the palm of his hand.
- Holding the glass above the ant, he looked through it. “Oh!” he said. “Look! You can see its knee
- joints! And even . . .” He trailed off, absorbed in looking. Then he raised his eyes to Lina. “It’s like a
- miracle!” he said. He blew the ant from his palm and looked around until he found a beetle. “Look at
- this!” he cried. “You can see it chewing!” He tried a feather, and a bit of moth wing, and a blade of
- grass.
- “This is such an amazing world,” he said finally, putting the glass and the magnet into his pocket. “I
- love it here, except for the troubles with people.”
- Lina and Doon went through the village and up the road to the doctor’s house. It was still early
- morning when they got there—when they came through the door, they saw everyone at the table, eating
- breakfast. Mrs. Murdo was facing the door, so she saw them first. She stood up, her spoon still in her
- hand. She stared for a second, her eyes round, her mouth open, words trying to come out of it. Then she
- rushed toward Lina and wrapped her in a hug. At the same time, Poppy jumped down from the bench,
- dashed toward Lina, and hugged her knees. The doctor stood up and watched this reunion wide-eyed.
- Torren leapt up, too, but not to hug Lina. He ran to the door and looked out, and then he cried,
- “Where’s Caspar? Isn’t he here, too? Where is he?” But no one paid attention to him. They were too
- busy fussing over Lina, asking questions and not giving her a chance to answer. “Where have you
- been? Are you all right? Why didn’t youtell us . . . Do you know what’s happening here?”
- Poppy yelled, “Wyna, Wyna, pick me up! Pick me up!” And the doctor, thrown into a state of even
- more confusion than usual, murmured, “Some tea? Or . . . let’s see. Why don’t we all . . . So glad
- you’re . . .” And all around the edges was Torren, pulling at Lina’s sleeve, saying, “But whyisn’t he
- here, where is he? When is he coming?” and getting no answers.
- When things calmed down a little, Lina said, “Maddy will be coming soon. She stayed in town to help
- the roamer for a while.”
- Mrs. Murdo stopped smiling and grew stern. “Lina,” she said, “how could you go off like that and not
- talk to me first? And just leave that careless little note, which was not, I would point out, true. Three
- days, you said. It’s been twenty-eight! That was a thoughtless, foolish thing to do.”
- “I know,” Lina said. “I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t know I’d be gone so long.” She explained how,
- when she overheard Caspar, she’d thought he’d said “a day’s journey” when really he’d said “five
- days’ journey.” “And then,” she said, “other things happened, and . . . it took a long time.”
- “Yes,” said Mrs. Murdo. “And we had a long, long time to worry about you.” She picked up Lina’s
- pack, which Lina had dropped on the floor, and set it on the window seat. “And you know what’s
- happened here? You know we’ve been ordered to leave tomorrow?”
- “I know,” Lina said. “But I can’t believe it’s true.”
- “It’s true,” said Mrs. Murdo. “It doesn’t please me a bit, but what to do about it I don’t know. Come
- and have some breakfast.”
- Lina and Doon sat down at the table, where the others had been eating raspberries and cream. Though
- Lina was so thoroughly sick of travelers’ cakes that all real food should have looked good to her, she
- had no appetite. Her stomach was in a knot.
- “I can’t eat,” she said. “I’m not hungry. I have to—Doon and I have to talk.”
- “At least take an apple,” said Mrs. Murdo.
- “First of the season,” the doctor added. “From up north.”
- Lina took the hard red fruit, and she and Doon went outside. The heat was baking now. They went
- through the courtyard, where the doctor’s plant pots were mostly empty, the plants having either been
- put into the ground or died. The ones still there struggled in the heat, limp or brown. They crossed the
- road and walked down to the riverbank. Even the river was suffering in the heat—it no longer flowed
- deep and smooth but ran in streams between the exposed stones. Its edges were yellow-green and
- smelly.
- They sat on the ground. Lina said, “It would take me hours to tell you everything I’ve seen. But listen,
- this is the main thing: people had a beautiful city, and they wrecked it.”
- “On purpose?” said Doon.
- “With wars. With fighting. It was horrible, Doon!” She shuddered, remembering. “That war—it sort of
- whispered to me. There was a moment when I could hear screams. I could see flames.”
- “And there’s nothing left?”
- “Almost nothing.”
- “And all across the Empty Lands—are there houses?”
- “Some. But they’re old and falling down. Mostly it’s fields and fields of brown grass. There’s howling
- animals. If we had to go out there and try to live—well, we couldn’t.”
- “That’s why some people—a lot of people—want to fight.” Doon told her about Tick, and the weapons
- he and his warriors had gathered. He explained the plan—how they would go into the village
- tomorrow, refusing to leave, prepared to fight. And he told her about the Terrible Weapon the town
- leaders had threatened to use.
- “Yes,” Lina said, “I’ve heard about the Weapon, too. Torren mentioned it one time. But what is it?”
- “We don’t know,” Doon said.
- “If it’s from the old times,” Lina said, “then it is so terrible that Tick’s little weapons would be like—
- like twigs against it. The old weapons could burn whole cities.” She clasped her arms across her
- stomach and bent forward. Everything inside her felt cramped, knotted up. Her hands were slick with
- sweat. “There can’t be war,” she said.
- “But we can’t leave, either,” said Doon.
- They sat watching the water struggle along between the rocks. The sun blazed down, burning the backs
- of their necks.
- “Don’t you think,” said Doon, “that fighting would be better than just giving in? At least it’sdoing
- something.”
- “I don’t know,” said Lina. “It scares me.” She ran her finger over the glossy red skin of the apple Mrs.
- Murdo had given her. “I talked a lot to Maddy on my journey,” she said at last. “She’s wise, Doon. She
- told me how war gets started. It’s when people say, ‘You hurt me, so I’ll hurt you back.’”
- “But that’s just how people are,” said Doon. “Of course when people hurt you, you want to get back at
- them.”
- “And then they want to get back at you. And then you want to get back at them again, only worse. It
- goes on and on, unless someone stops it.”
- “Stops it how?”
- “You have to catch it soon, Maddy said. As soon as you see it starting, you have to stop it. Otherwise,
- it can be too late.”
- “Buthow do you stop it?”
- “You have to reverse the direction,” said Lina. “That’s what Maddy told me. She said that if someone
- had been brave enough, the wars might not have started in the first place.”
- “But Lina!” Doon slapped his hand down on the ground next to him. “What does thatmean ? How do
- youdo it?”
- Lina wasn’t entirely clear about this. She took a bite of the red fruit the doctor had handed her. It
- looked as hard as a polished stone, but the juice that burst into her mouth was sweet. “I think it’s this,”
- she said. She chewed and swallowed. “Instead of getting back at the other side with something just as
- bad as they did to you—or something worse—you do somethinggood. Or at least you keep yourself
- from doing something bad.” She took another bite of the apple. “I think that’s it. One bad thing after
- another leads to worse things. So you do a good thing, and that turns it around.”
- Doon sighed. “That’s not very helpful,” he said. “How are we supposed to do something good for
- these people who have done so many bad things to us? Why would we even want to?”
- “Well, that’s it,” said Lina, wiping apple juice off her chin. “You don’t want to, but you do anyway.
- That’s what makes it hard. Maddy said it was very hard. It’s much harder to be good than bad, she
- said.”
- “So what do we do, then?” said Doon. His tone was bitter. “Say we’ll be happy to work without food?
- Say we’ll always be nice no matter what they do to us?”
- “No,” said Lina. “That can’t be right.”
- “Or should we just go quietly out into the Empty Lands and not bother them anymore?”
- “No,” said Lina. “That can’t be right, either.” She stared at the water rippling by. She was thinking
- hard. “We don’t want to leave,” she said. “And we don’t want to fight. Do you think those are theonly
- two choices?”
- “What else could there be? If we don’t fight, they’ll make us leave. If we don’t leave, we’ll have to
- fight.”
- Lina discovered a tough part in the center of the apple, surrounding some brown seeds. She picked at
- the seeds with her fingernail. “There must be some other way,” she said. “What if we all just sit down
- in front of the hotel and refuse to move? We don’t leave, but we don’t fight? They wouldn’t use their
- weapon on us if we weren’t fighting, would they?”
- “I don’t know,” said Doon. “They might.”
- “I don’t think they would,” Lina said. “They’re notbad people.”
- “But we couldn’t sit there forever,” Doon said. “Sooner or later, they’d make us leave. They’d pick us
- all up one by one and load us onto trucks and drive us away.”
- “Maybe they wouldn’t,” said Lina. “Maybe we could talk, and work something out.”
- “I don’t think so,” said Doon. “Tick and his warriors would never just sit. Theywant to fight.”
- Lina drew up her knees and rested her chin on them. Something good, she thought. What good act
- would turn things around?
- “We could volunteer to be roamers,” she said. “A whole lot of us, so they wouldn’t have to feed us,
- and we could bring things back to them.”
- “We don’t know how to be roamers,” said Doon. “We don’t have trucks. Or oxen. We wouldn’t know
- where to go.”
- “We could say we’ll do all the worst jobs,” Lina said.
- “But that wouldn’t be fair,” said Doon impatiently. “Why should we? That’s no good.” He stood up,
- slapping the dry grass from his pants. “I think it’s too late for any of that. None of it’s going to work.”
- Lina stayed where she was, still thinking. She desperately wanted to find an answer, but no answer
- came to her. Her spirits sank, and she suddenly felt tired. “Well, then, we just have to be on the
- lookout,” she said. “Some chance might turn up. We have to watch for it. I don’t know what else to
- do.” She knew how weak and silly this sounded.
- But to her surprise, Doon smiled a little. “That’s like what my father told me when I was working in
- the Pipeworks. ‘Pay attention,’ he said. It was a good idea then. I suppose it still is. Anyway, I guess
- it’s the best we can do.”
- Lina dropped her apple core on the ground and scuffed some dirt over it, and they trudged back to the
- doctor’s house. Doon stayed there for lunch instead of going to the Partons’, and then he headed back
- to the hotel. Lina meant to spend the rest of the day thinking as hard as she could about the choice she’d
- have to make tomorrow. She sat on the window seat, sideways, her legs stretched out, and she tried to
- get her mind to produce ideas. But she kept coming up against the two walls: fight (she didn’t want to
- fight) or leave (she didn’t want to leave). A slow fly buzzed against the window. Wind stirred in the
- grape leaves outside. Think, thought Lina. Pay attention. And then she fell asleep.
- CHAPTER 26
- The Weapon
- Morning came. Doon got up. He had to be ready for anything. So he rolled up his blankets and made a
- pack for all his clothes, everything he had. His father and the others did the same. Downstairs, out in
- front of the hotel, the people of Ember were gathering and swarming about, loud and distressed and
- confused. Tick roamed among them, urging courage, inspiring them to stand up for their rights, telling
- them the time had come for battle. His eyes flashed with a cold light. His voice rang out like the high,
- urgent tone of a bell. Very often, the people he spoke to seemed to catch fire from his words and be
- filled with the burning desire to fight.
- Over half the people of Ember joined with Tick to be warriors. Some of them had wrenched the towel
- racks from their bathroom walls; others grabbed rocks or branches to use as weapons. They started
- down the road to the village, and the rest of the Emberites followed in a confused mass.
- Doon went, too. The morning sun, already hot, blazed down on him; wind riffled his hair and his shirt.
- His mind was in turmoil, his heart thudding like a fist in his chest. Tick and his warriors, carrying their
- towel racks, their sink pipes, their shards of glass, strode along roaring their battle cry: We will not go!
- We will not go! More and more people picked up the chant as they came into the streets of the village,
- and at doors and windows faces appeared, shocked faces, and people still in their nightgowns. They
- shouted to each other—Look, the cavepeople are coming! They’re coming into town! Other windows
- flew open, and doors, and people stepped out into the streets, unsure whether to be angry or afraid.
- All the people of Ember had come. No one stayed behind to wait for the trucks that would take them
- out into the Empty Lands. All of them had to know what was going to happen. They had to be there,
- whatever it was.
- They poured into the plaza and stood packed together, the warriors roaring and the others nervous,
- some of them half hiding in doorways or behind trees, afraid of what was going to happen, not sure if
- they wanted to be part of it or not.
- Tick roared out his challenge. “People of Sparks! We refuse to leave! We are here to make our
- demands, and if you will not meet them, we will fight!”
- “We will fight!” roared the warriors.
- Others looked at each other fearfully. Will we?
- From a side street Ben Barlow appeared, running. He bounded up onto the steps of the town hall, faced
- the crowd, and yelled back. “What are you doing here? This is an outrage, this is unacceptable! You are
- leaving today, leaving here for good.”
- “We will not go!” screamed the crowd.
- “Wilmer! Mary!” shouted Ben. The other two leaders followed him up onto the steps.
- “Clear out, now!” they shouted. “Back to the hotel! Move back, move back!” They stood in front of
- the crowd and tried to press them backward, but it was no use. There were simply too many Emberites.
- Ben darted at Tick and tried to grab him, but Tick struck him with his rod, and he lurched sideways,
- clutching his arm. No one had expected the Emberites to have weapons.
- Doon was standing on the river side of the plaza, slightly apart from the main crowd. He had the
- feeling things were right on the edge of chaos, right on the edge between being in control and being out
- of control. It was frightening—the yelling, the waving of weapons, the people of Ember filling the
- plaza and the people of Sparks crowding in around the edges, their faces full of rage and fear. Maybe,
- thought Doon, the leaders will be willing to discuss our demands. Maybe we can talk, and everything
- will be all right. It was the only ray of hope he could see.
- “These are our demands!” cried Tick. “Listen carefully!”
- But Ben just screamed back. “We’ve heard enough from you! We’re finished talking to you! No more
- talking. No more demands!”
- When he heard that, Doon felt a jolt of fury. It launched him into action. He sprang up onto the bench
- next to him and shouted at the top of his lungs at Ben: “At leastlisten !”
- That drew the attention of Chugger, who was standing near him. He lunged at Doon, but Doon leapt
- away. He heard Ben’s voice shout, “Catch that boy!” Angry faces turned toward him, arms reached to
- grab him. He ducked and swerved and wove his way along the edge of the crowd, and as soon as he
- was in the clear, he ran.
- But he didn’t go far. He had to stay close to the plaza; he had to know what was going to happen. He
- ran up the river road and darted behind the town hall, where a few garbage barrels stood by the back
- door. He paused for a moment. Was anyone following him? From the plaza came a roar and then a
- voice shouting. What was happening? Doonhad to know.
- He pushed against the town hall’s back door. It opened easily and he slipped inside. A hallway led
- toward the front of the building. On his right was a flight of stairs. Surely, he thought, no one was in
- here. They were all outside, dealing with the army of Emberites. He ran up the stairs, and at the top, he
- found himself in the tower room.
- It was a square room with windows on all sides. A table stood in the middle, with straight-backed
- chairs around it. Down below was the plaza, swarming with people. The noise was like the roar of
- water. Tick was at the front of the crowd—Doon could see the top of his head, like a shiny black stone,
- and his steel rod glinting in the sun.
- Straight below were the steps of the town hall and the tops of the heads of the three leaders. To his
- right, the windows were partially blocked by the branches of the great pine tree that stood next to the
- town hall. When he looked out the windows toward the rear of the building, he saw the town hall roof
- below.
- This was perfect. He could see what was going to happen; he could hear, too, because the windows
- were open. And, he realized, if he stayed here, he wouldn’t have to decide whether he was going to
- fight or not. This seemed a bit like cheating—but it was a relief, too. The thought of taking part in a
- bloody brawl had filled him with dread.
- Standing to the side of the front window, Doon looked down. Right below him was Ben Barlow—he
- could see the wiry gray hair on the top of his head, and his hands waving furiously in the air. Mary
- Waters and Wilmer Dent had stepped up behind Ben. Mary tried to take him by the arm, but he shook
- her off. He made his hands into a megaphone for his mouth. “We will not be threatened!” he shouted.
- “We are in charge of this town! It is our place, we built it, we own it!” He yelled so loudly that his
- voice rasped and cracked. “You are destroying our way of life. You must go!”
- The crowd rumbled. They pressed forward. Clouds came over the sun, and a vast shadow swept across
- the plaza.
- “You may try to make us leave!” shouted Tick. “But we are here to stay!”
- The air seemed to quiver with rage. Or was it just the wind? Everything was moving—the clouds raced
- overhead, the branches of the trees thrashed, the Emberites raised their motley weapons. Up on the roof
- of the tower, the flag of Sparks whipped and snapped on its pole—Doon could hear it, though he could
- not see it.
- He felt the wind whirling through his mind as well. His father’s words came back to him.When the
- fight is over, what do we have? A place destroyed. People who hate each other. Standing above it all in
- the tower, he had the strange feeling of being separate, belonging neither to one side of the fight nor the
- other. Whose side was he on? Not on Ben’s, certainly. But not on Tick’s, either, with his warriors
- calling out threats, eager for a fight.
- Ben held up his hand and shouted again. “We warned you! And we’re ready for you.” His voice was
- hoarse. “I’ll give you one last chance. Will you leave or not?” With his head thrust forward and his
- hands tightened into fists, he waited for an answer.
- “No!” screamed Tick.
- His army bellowed it out with him. “No!” “Never!” “No, no!”
- Ben dashed to the door of the town hall. Wilmer went with him, and together they darted inside. Doon
- froze, afraid they might climb up to the tower. But they came out onto the steps again right away,
- pulling a thing of black metal that ran on wheels. For a moment the clamor of the crowd ceased as they
- craned their necks, trying to see over each other’s heads. Doon had a good view from where he stood,
- but still he had no idea what the thing was. He knew it must be the Weapon, but it looked almost like a
- great black insect. It stood on black iron legs. It had a complicated black iron body nearly as long as a
- truck, studded with hooks and boxes and points. A narrow scarf of ridged metal hung across it. It was
- ugly, Doon thought, like the skeleton of a monster.
- Ben turned the thing so that it pointed out over the crowd. He stood behind it, his feet planted wide
- apart. “This is your last chance,” he shouted at the crowd. “Disperse! Or take the consequences.”
- Mary Waters dashed toward him. “No, Ben!” she cried. “We can’t do this!”
- Ben pushed her away. “We agreed!” he cried. “Stand back, Mary!”
- Now the crowd in the plaza sensed danger and began to push backward. Tick cried, “Stand your
- ground!” but Doon saw him take a step back, too.
- Ben squatted at the rear end of the Weapon. “Leave now, and take your gang of hoodlums with you!”
- he shouted. “Or I fire!”
- Fire? thought Doon. What does he mean?
- It was clear that Tick didn’t know, either. “You have one weapon,” he shouted, “but we have many!”
- And he raised the rod in his hand, and behind him his warriors did the same.
- Ben gave a furious shout. He was crouched over the Weapon. Doon saw his bent back, and his arm
- jerking at the machine. Nothing happened. His arm jerked again, harder, and at the same time Mary
- rushed forward. She aimed a powerful kick at the nose of the Weapon, bumping it upward, and the
- Weapon, in a harsh machine voice, began to chatter.Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh, it went, turning its
- snout back and forth. People in the crowd began to scream.
- Doon couldn’t see at first what the Weapon was doing. What was the point of its loud, furious
- shuddering? The noise was horrible, but the Weapon was staying in one place, not flying out into the
- crowd. Was it shooting something out of its— Yes! Across the plaza, over the heads of the people,
- Doon saw a line of holes punching into a wall, splintering a window—
- But the Weapon suddenly stopped its chattering. Doon looked down and saw Ben give it a furious
- shake, and shake it again, pounding on its nose to aim it lower as the crowd yelled in panic and
- scrambled backward, and Mary shouted and tried to rush toward Ben, but Wilmer grabbed her arm—
- And then the Weapon exploded.
- No chattering this time, just a spurt of fire that shot from the Weapon’s rear end, knocked Ben flat on
- his back, and toppled the Weapon forward so that it stood on its nose. This made the fire shoot straight
- upward, a column of bright orange, scattering sparks and reaching toward the branch of the pine tree
- that hung over the town hall steps.
- From his place in the tower, Doon watched, horrified. Where was his father in that frenzied crowd?
- Where was Lina? Below him, the pine tree was on fire. The building would be on fire, too, in a minute,
- because the tree stood right up against it. Smoke was already curling through the windows. He had to
- get out.
- And that was when he heard a scream—not from the plaza below, but from somewhere above him. A
- bird? An animal in the pine tree? A second later, an echoing scream arose from the crowd. Doon heard
- someone cry, “The tree! Up in the tree! Someone’s there!”
- Doon was at the door, ready to flee down the stairs. But he heard the scream again, and it sounded
- close. He darted back into the tower room and ran to the window that faced the tree. The lower
- branches of the pine tree were a mass of flame. He could hear the rush and roar as the fire raced among
- the dry needles. When he turned his gaze upward, he saw what the screaming was about: a boy was
- clinging to a branch a little higher up than the tower roof, hugging the trunk of the tree and screaming
- in terror as the fire swept upward.
- Kenny! Doon thought. Was it? He couldn’t tell for sure. But he knew he couldn’t leave him there.
- Maybe somehow he could get him in through the window. He opened it as far as he could—it was the
- kind of window that swung outward on hinges—and then he grabbed one of the chairs from around the
- table. Holding it by its back, he thrust it out the window as far as he could.
- “Climb down!” he shouted to the boy in the tree. “Climb down, quick!”
- The boy saw him—and with a start Doon realized who he was. It wasn’t Kenny at all. It was Torren,
- the one who had started so much trouble, the one who had pointed a lying finger at Doon. For one
- furious second, Doon felt the urge to leave Torren to his fate and get himself out of the tower as fast as
- he could. But he pushed that thought away and shouted louder: “Hurry! Get down here!”
- Torren clambered down through the branches, down toward the flames beneath him. When he was
- opposite the tower window, he was still too far away to reach the legs of the chair. He edged out along
- a branch, but it was a slender branch and bent under his weight.
- “Jump!” Doon yelled. “Jump! And catch the chair legs! I’ll pull you in!”
- Torren crawled backward to where the branch was sturdier. He stood up. Then he froze. He stood
- clutching the tree trunk, staring down at the flames, his mouth a dark O.
- “Jump!” screamed Doon again. Smoke was pouring into the tower room now. “Hurry! You can do it!”
- A gust of wind. The flames leapt. Now the branches just below Torren’s feet were blazing, and
- suddenly he made up his mind—Doon could see the moment of decision in his face. He clamped his
- lips tight. He fastened his gaze to the chair dangling out the window. And then he pushed himself away
- from the trunk with his hands and flung himself toward the tower. His hands caught the rung between
- the chair legs, and Doon’s whole body was yanked forward. He almost lost his grip on the chair, but not
- quite. “Hang on!” he yelled. With all his strength, he hauled the chair upward, and when Torren’s hands
- were within reach, he grabbed one of them, and then both of them, letting the chair topple back into the
- room. One last heave, and Torren was in the tower room, shaking so violently he could hardly stand.
- “Now,” said Doon, “let’s go.”
- He headed for the door. Over the sill of the window Torren had just come through crept a row of
- flames like sharp orange claws.
- CHAPTER 27
- Firefight
- Lina was on the side of the plaza farthest from the river when Tick called out his demands and Doon
- yelled, “At leastlisten !” When she heard his voice, she tried to make her way toward him, but the
- crowd was so dense and turbulent that she couldn’t get through. Tick’s warriors were everywhere. The
- sun flashed off their steel rods and pipes and jagged pieces of glass. She was worming her way among
- the dozens of shoving and shouting people when Ben fired the Weapon.
- She heard the sound, a chain of loud pops, and the people in front of her screamed and scrambled
- backward. Lina ducked and put her hands over her head. She stayed that way as people pressed past her
- and stumbled over her, and in a moment the popping noise stopped. Then there was a bang, and more
- shouts, and when she dared to stand up and look, she saw that the pine tree was on fire.
- The flames were small at first, creeping along just one branch, with sudden flashes as dry bunches of
- pine needles caught fire. But in seconds the flames grew bigger. They leapt and crackled. Black smoke
- rose in a pillar into the air. The crowd pressed backward, crashing against each other. The people of
- Ember, for whom fire was a rare and terrible danger, stared upward with their eyes wide and their
- mouths gaping. Some of them screamed. Some were too frightened to make a sound.
- Such a terror came over Lina that she couldn’t move, except to stagger a few feet back along with the
- crowd. Her eyes were fixed on the flames—the terrible orange hands, reaching up into the branches of
- the tree. A voice in her mind screamed, “Run! Run!” but she couldn’t run. Her legs wouldn’t work. It
- was all they could do just to hold her up.
- A voice cried out, “Someone’s in the tree!” and Lina looked up through the smoke just long enough to
- see the upper branches thrashing and get a glimpse of something white moving among them. Then she
- was surrounded again by struggling people. She tripped over a piece of pipe rolling on the pavement
- and fell to her knees. When she managed to get to her feet again, the mass of people had pressed back
- behind her, and she found herself near the front of the crowd.
- On the steps of the town hall, she saw Ben lying motionless, sprawled on his back. Wilmer bent over
- him, and Mary Waters shouted, “Fire truck! Fire truck!” The fire had leapt from the pine tree to the
- town hall tower—flames licked up its wall.
- That was when Lina heard a wild laugh from behind her. “Let it burn!” someone cried. “Let it burn!
- It’s their punishment! They deserve it!” She recognized the voice. It was Tick. Others took up the cry.
- “Let it burn!” they shouted, and a chorus of voices raised a harsh, triumphant cheer.
- The people of Ember were packed together at the far south end of the plaza now, as far from the town
- hall and the fire as they could get. A few ran into the streets to get away, but most of them waited to see
- what was going to happen. They stayed at a safe distance, hovering between terror and fascination, and
- watched as the flames streaked up the sides of the tower.
- The people of Sparks were running in all directions. Shopkeepers grabbed buckets and ran to the river
- and filled them with water, but most of the fire was high above their heads, impossible to reach. They
- flung the water into the air and then stood with empty buckets, watching the tower burn.
- The two fire trucks arrived, their drivers standing up and lashing the oxen to make them trot. Water
- sloshed from the big barrels on the trucks’ beds. As soon as the trucks stopped, people jumped up onto
- them, grabbed buckets, and began dipping buckets in the water.
- “Fire line! Fire line!” the cry went up, and the villagers, who must have practiced this many times,
- formed straggling lines stretching out to the fire from the truck at the edge of the plaza. Burning twigs
- broke from the pine tree and blew in the wind, and new fires started up here and there. The people in
- the fire lines flung water in all directions, but for the few flames each bucket of water doused, it seemed
- ten new ones sprang up.
- Lina’s heart was beating so hard it drowned out all her thoughts. She wanted to run, to get away from
- here, but something paralyzed her. Part of it was fear of the fire. Part was fear of something else, fear of
- an idea that was trying to come to the surface of her mind. She didn’t want to hear it.Pay attention, a
- voice whispered to her. She tried to push it away.
- Faster and faster, the people on the truck dipped the buckets into the barrels, dipped, filled, and handed
- the buckets to those in the line, who passed them along from hand to hand. The last person in line, the
- one standing nearest the flames, flung the water, which hissed and steamed and put out a few flames.
- Tick and his warriors, along with the rest of the people of Ember, watched all this as if it were a
- frightening but fascinating show. Tick and a few others cheered. But most people just gazed goggleeyed
- as the flames blackened the town hall. When the wind blew sparks toward them, they shrieked and
- pressed back farther.
- Lina scanned the crowd. Where was Doon? Where was Mrs. Murdo? She didn’t see either of them—
- she could hardly see anything. Smoke filled the air. All she could see was a shadowy tumult of people.
- Only the flames were bright. The pine tree was a column of fire—within it, Lina could see the tree’s
- black skeleton. When a great branch broke off and fell, crashing into the shrubbery below and setting it
- alight, a terrified clamor arose from the people of Ember, and now instead of pressing backward many
- of them turned and ran.
- Lina stayed where she was. She felt as if she were being gripped by two huge hands. One pulled her
- backward, away from the fire, back toward the streets of the town, through which she could run to
- safety. The other pulled her forward into danger, urging her to do what she suddenly knew was right. It
- was the good thing. It was what she’d been waiting for. But she didn’t want to do it.I can’t, she
- thought.I don’t want to. I’m too afraid. Someone else will do it. Not me, not me. I can’t.
- At that moment, the tower collapsed. Its walls crumpled, the roof caved in, and flames shot up from
- the hole. The flagpole came hurtling down like a spear. The blackened walls leaned and toppled.
- And then the fire was everywhere. Flaming branches and tufts of needles, blown by the wind, landed
- in the dry grass at the edge of the plaza, and in the trees by the river, and on the thatched roofs of the
- market stalls. “There!” cried the people in the bucket line, pointing. “There! And over there!” The lines
- twisted around, the buckets traveled faster and faster from hand to hand, and those at the front of the
- lines tossed the water this way and that. But there were too many fires, and not enough people to keep
- up with them.
- It’s now, thought Lina. I have to do it. Iwill do it.
- Quickly then, before she could change her mind, she ran. She ran with a hammering heart, with her
- head down and her hands in fists. She ran as if fighting a powerful wind, out across the plaza by
- herself, and when she reached the nearest bucket line she pushed her way in.
- “Traitor!” shrieked a voice behind her. It was Tick’s voice, that voice like a cutting blade. Lina heard
- it, but she paid no attention. “Traitor, traitor!” Tick cried again, and his warriors echoed him. “Traitor!”
- they yelled, jumping backward when the sparks flew too close.
- Doon got out of the tower just in time. He’d had to almost throw Torren down the stairs and then take
- them three at a time himself. Torren ran off somewhere as soon as he went out the back door, but Doon
- dashed around to the plaza, staying close to the market stalls, and joined the crush of Emberites at the
- south end. Panting, he stared back at the ruin he had escaped from—the black spine of the pine tree, the
- smoldering boards of the town hall. He watched as the flames consumed the building and the tower
- collapsed. He saw the fire lines snaking among the scattered blazes, and he heard Tick’s laugh ringing
- out over the clamor. “Burn, burn!” yelled Tick, and other voices chimed in with his. “Let it burn!
- Serves them right!”
- For a moment Doon stood there, stunned, his mind a blank. It seemed that war surged around him, but
- not the war he had imagined. Where did he belong in this battle? Who was his enemy, where were his
- friends? Noise and confusion assailed him. His eyes stung. His legs were shaking.
- And then he saw Lina break away from the crowd and run across the plaza. He heard Tick and his
- warriors screaming, “Traitor!” And he felt as if suddenly his eyes had opened (though they hadn’t been
- closed) and he had awakened from a bad dream. The air around him seemed to become clear. Strength
- returned to his legs. He edged between the people in front of him, burst out of the crowd, and ran the
- same direction as Lina—toward the fire lines.
- And seeing what Lina and Doon had done, others followed. Clary pushed through the crowd and ran
- forward, and Mrs. Murdo went after her, taking long, quick strides and holding up her skirts. Then
- came the Hoover sisters, and Doon’s father, and fragile Miss Thorn, and five more people, and three
- more after that. They ran with their hands before their mouths or their arms over their heads, shielding
- themselves from smoke and falling embers, and they added themselves to the bucket brigade and began
- hauling water.
- More and more of the people of Ember followed. At last the only ones not fighting the fire were Tick
- and a few of his men. Wearing half-stubborn, half-frightened expressions, they clustered at the far end
- of the plaza, shouting, “Traitors!” now and then, with their useless weapons dangling from their hands.
- CHAPTER 28
- Surprising Truths
- Fighting the fire was so hard that Lina forgot to be afraid. Everything but firefighting was erased from
- her mind. Her hands reached for the next bucket, over and over and over, and when a warning cry arose
- she would look up to see where the danger was and dart out of its way. The water in the barrels soon
- ran out, and the rear ends of the lines had to move back to scoop water directly from the river, which
- meant a longer distance for the buckets to travel. The lines snaked left and right, moving to follow the
- fires, which sprang up in the dry grass like a crop of terrible weeds.
- In the smoke-dimmed air, people looked like ghosts, swarming every which way, shouting at each
- other. Once Lina caught sight of Doon. He had jumped into the fountain and was bent over, as if fishing
- with his hand for something at the bottom. He jumped out again, soaking wet, and in a moment the
- fountain began to overflow, and the water spread, running toward the flames in the grass at the plaza’s
- edge. Oh, Doon, hooray! Lina thought.
- She saw Maddy, too, several times, appearing and disappearing in the swarm of firefighters,
- sometimes calling out instructions or warnings, sometimes just passing along the buckets, her hair
- flying in the wind.
- It was the wind they fought against as much as the fire. It blew in unruly gusts, and the flames leaned
- and stretched before it, reaching for new things to burn. But there were twice as many people fighting
- the fire now, and before long the people began to win. The flames became flickers, put out with a
- shovelful of dirt or a splash from a bucket, and finally no trace of orange remained in sight. The plaza
- was a landscape of ashy puddles and smoldering black heaps, looking strangely open without the town
- hall and the pine tree.
- Then for a few moments, people just stood and stared at each other. All of them had smoke-darkened
- faces and ash-dusted hair and damp, grimy clothes. The people of Ember were just as grubby as the
- people of Sparks; everyone looked more or less the same.
- Lina went searching for Doon. She couldn’t find him, but she did find Mrs. Murdo sitting on the
- ground at the north end of the plaza. Her bun had slid all the way off the top of her head and was
- hanging beneath one ear. Her skirt was dotted with burn holes. “Are you all right?” Lina asked her.
- “I believe so,” Mrs. Murdo said. “And you?”
- “I’m fine,” said Lina.
- “Yes, you are,” said Mrs. Murdo, giving Lina a long look. “Very fine indeed.” She held out an arm.
- “Help me up,” she said, “and we’ll go back to the doctor’s house and get ourselves decent again.”
- When the fire was out and all the firefighters were exhausted and wet and dirty, Doon discovered that
- his legs felt shaky again, and he went down through the village streets until he found a shady place
- under a tree where he could sit for a while. People trudged by him, heading for their homes, and the
- people of Ember passed, too, going back to the hotel, which that morning they’d thought they might be
- leaving forever. Doon didn’t call out to anyone. He felt too tired even to talk. He just wanted to rest a
- minute before facing whatever was going to come next.
- But he hadn’t been sitting there very long before he saw Kenny coming up the road, and when Kenny
- spotted him he came over and sat down. “I saw you,” he said. “You pulled Torren in from the tree.”
- Doon nodded.
- “I knew you were that kind of person,” Kenny said. Bits of ash sprinkled his blond hair, as if someone
- had shaken pepper on his head.
- “What kind?” said Doon.
- “The brave kind,” Kenny said. “The good kind. Not like that other boy.”
- “What other boy?”
- Kenny leaned back against the trunk of the tree and stretched out his legs. “The one who was yelling
- for people to fight. That one with the pale eyes.”
- “Tick,” said Doon.
- “Yes. I knew he wasn’t a good one, ever since I saw him in the woods that day.”
- “What day?” Doon said.
- “That day when he was out there with bags on his hands,” Kenny said.
- Doon turned to stare at Kenny. “Bags? Why? What was he doing?”
- “Cutting vines,” said Kenny.
- “What kind of vines?” Doon asked. His heart was starting to pound.
- “Well, I wasn’t close to him. I’m not sure. But it was something he didn’t want to touch, I guess. Like
- poison oak.”
- “Poison oak? Why would he cut poison oak vines?”
- “I heard what happened,” said Kenny. “About the leaves on the hotel steps. They thought we did it, but
- I don’t think so.”
- Doon’s thoughts were racing. He was remembering things: how Tick had an itchy patch on his arm
- days before the stuff appeared on the hotel steps; how he led the cleanup but didn’t participate himself;
- how he had smudges on his neck the morning that “GO BACK TO YOUR CAVE” was written on the
- hotel walls; how he stirred everyone up, fed their anger, by reminding them of those two attacks over
- and over again.
- And as if his mind had been full of clouds but now was clear, he understood. Tickneeded all that anger
- and outrage. The more upset people were, the more of them would want to fight. And the more fighters
- there were, the more people for Tick to lead. Tick wanted power. He wanted glory. He wanted war,
- with himself in command. He had raised his army by attacking his own people.
- Doon was breathing fast. His hands were cold and shaky. He knew, suddenly, that this changed
- everything. It meant that the people of Sparks had not attacked the people of Ember after all. Their
- fears and suspicions had made them unkind and selfish, but—except maybe for the muddy words in the
- plaza—they had not attacked. And if there hadn’t been the writing on the wall and the poison oak, there
- probably wouldn’t have been the riot in the plaza. And if there hadn’t been the riot, the town leaders
- might not have decided that the Emberites had to leave.
- Doon jumped to his feet.
- Startled, Kenny said, “What’s the matter?”
- “You’ve told me something important,” Doon said. He held out a hand and pulled Kenny up. “I have
- to—I have to—” Whatdid he have to do? He had to talk to someone. He had to explain. “I have to get
- going,” he said to Kenny, and he headed back up the road toward the village center again, thinking
- about whom he should talk to, and what he should say.
- The doctor was standing out in front of her house with Poppy at her side when Lina and Mrs. Murdo
- arrived. Poppy came galloping toward them. “Wyna!” she yelled. “I saw fi-oh! I saw fi-oh!”
- “Are you hurt?” Dr. Hester asked.
- “Just tired,” said Lina.
- “And dirty,” said Mrs. Murdo.
- “Dirty, dirty,” said Poppy, tugging at Lina’s shirt and trotting along beside her.
- Torren was sitting on the sofa with his feet in a tub of water.
- “What happened to you?” asked Lina.
- “I got burns on my feet,” Torren said.
- “On your feet? How did you do that?”
- “You didn’t see?” said Mrs. Murdo.
- “See what?” said Lina.
- So Mrs. Murdo told her. “I don’t know why Doon was up in that tower to begin with,” she said, “but it
- was a lucky thing for Torren that he was.”
- Lina raised her eyebrows at Torren. “Doon told me what you said about him. Aren’t you ashamed,
- now that he’s saved your life?”
- Torren didn’t answer. He stared down at his feet.
- “You lied,” Lina said. “You blamed Doon for something he didn’t do.”
- Torren slumped down into the sofa pillows.
- “He didn’t throw those tomatoes!” said Lina. “He would never do such a thing. Why did you say he
- did?”
- “It was a mistake,” said Torren in a muffled voice.
- “Well, who did it, then?”
- “Someone else.”
- “Who?”
- “Just someone. I’m not telling.”
- “Youare telling something, though,” said Lina. “Maybe you won’t tell whodid do it, but you have to
- tell that Doon didn’t.” She shuffled through the clutter on the table and found a scrap of paper. “Here,”
- she said, handing it to Torren with a pencil. “Write on here that you told a lie about Doon. Sign your
- name.”
- Scowling, Torren wrote. He handed the note to Lina, who headed for the door. “I’m going back to the
- village,” she said. “Just for a little while. I’ll be home by dinnertime.”
- After dinner that evening, Lina did a lot of talking. Mrs. Murdo and the doctor wanted to know what
- was out there in the Empty Lands, and how it was to be a roamer, and what the city was like. Maddy,
- sitting on the window seat with a cup of tea, put in a word now and then, but mainly she let Lina tell the
- story. Torren sat on the couch with his feet stretched out—the doctor had wrapped them in rag
- bandages—and pretended not to listen, but every now and then he couldn’t help asking a question.
- Usually his questions had to do with Caspar.
- “I don’t understand,” he said, “whyyou two came back and not Caspar.”
- “He hadn’t finished what he wanted to do,” said Lina. “His mission.”
- “Whatwas his mission?” cried Torren. “You must have found out.”
- “We did find out,” Lina said. She glanced uncertainly at Maddy.
- “Your brother,” said Maddy, “is looking for something he will never find. When he realizes that, he
- will come home.”
- “Butwhat is he looking for?” Torren said. He reared up on his elbows and glared at Maddy.
- “He is looking for a treasure,” said Maddy. “But he doesn’t recognize it even when it’s right in front of
- him.”
- “Did he forget his glasses?” Torren said.
- “No, no. But he has trouble seeing even with his glasses on.”
- Lina didn’t like Torren any better than she ever had, but she did feel a little sorry for him. So she
- fetched glasses of honey water for him that evening, and she gave him the little red truck she’d found as
- a roamer. Poppy seemed to think all this was a kind of party for Torren. She joined in by bringing him
- things to play with—spoons, socks, potatoes. When it was bedtime, they carried him into the medicine
- room, and then Lina went with Mrs. Murdo and Poppy up into the loft.
- Mrs. Murdo unpinned her hair, which fell around her shoulders in strands clumped together with soot.
- “I have something to say to you,” she said to Lina.
- Lina’s heart sank. Whatever it was, she was sure she deserved it.
- “I saw what you did,” Mrs. Murdo said. “You did a remarkable thing, running out alone like that.
- Quite courageous.”
- “Well, I had to,” said Lina.
- Mrs. Murdo raised her eyebrows questioningly.
- Lina was too tired to explain about trying to do a good thing to change the direction, and how she had
- hoped that someone else might do it so she wouldn’t have to, but nobody did. So she just shrugged her
- shoulders and said nothing.
- Mrs. Murdo ran a comb through her hair. “I believe a great many of us were thinking of doing the
- same thing,” she said. “But no one quite had the courage. Only you.”
- “I didn’t feel courageous,” said Lina. “I felt afraid.”
- “That makes it all the braver,” said Mrs. Murdo.
- Lina felt a glow, like a little flame inside her—no, not a flame, a light bulb, that was better. A little
- light bulb was glowing in her heart.
- “I believe I’m more tired than I’ve ever been in my life,” said Mrs. Murdo. “And tomorrow there’s
- more to face.”
- “Tomorrow?” For a moment Lina couldn’t remember what had to be faced tomorrow.
- “Well, yes,” said Mrs. Murdo. “I suppose tomorrow we’ll find out if they’re still planning to make us
- all leave.”
- The Fourth Town Meeting
- That night, the wind cleaned the smoke from the air, and in the morning the sky was a brilliant blue
- and the air felt tingly. The sunlight was warm, but it had a new quality, thinner and sharper. The season
- was changing.
- A messenger from town arrived at the hotel that morning. Doon, who happened to be the first person
- up, ran into him on the hotel steps. “Tell your people,” said the messenger, “that the leaders of Sparks
- wish to meet with the people of Ember at noon today. They will come to the hotel ballroom.”
- Doon conveyed this message to the next several people he saw, and they told others, and soon everyone
- knew. At noon, they assembled in the ballroom. Doon stood with his father in the midst of the
- crowd. All around him, he heard uneasy murmurings. Would this be more bad news? He heard Miss
- Thorn whisper to someone, “I’m so nervous, I have a stomachache.” He was nervous, too; his hands
- were damp.
- At a few minutes after twelve, Mary Waters and Wilmer Dent came into the ballroom. With them were
- four men carrying a stretcher on which Doon saw a blanket-draped figure. The stiff gray beard jutting
- up from the chin told him it was Ben Barlow. Dr. Hester walked beside him, and with her were Mrs.
- Murdo, Lina, and Poppy. Other townspeople followed, lining up around the edges of the room—Doon
- recognized storekeepers and team leaders (including Chugger), along with many of the families of
- Sparks. The Partons were there; he saw Kenny trotting behind his parents.
- Doon raised his arm and called to Lina, and she came to stand beside him. “Is Ben badly hurt?” Doon
- whispered.
- “I think so,” Lina whispered back. “The doctor says he was hit in the shoulder. She said the blast
- almost blew off his arm.”
- “Listen,” Doon said. “I have to tell you something important.” And in the next few minutes, as the
- town leaders and the men carrying Ben mounted the steps to the stage, he whispered to Lina what he’d
- discovered about Tick.
- “Really?” she kept saying. “Really?Howcould he? I can’tbelieve it!”
- “And last night,” Doon whispered, “I went and found Tick, and I told him I knew, and he said—”
- But at that moment, Mary Waters held up her hands for quiet. Doon stopped whispering and turned his
- eyes to the stage. The men had set the stretcher down and propped one end of it on a chair, so that Ben
- lay at a slant. A bandage covered one of his eyes. He glared out at the audience with the other.
- When Mary spoke, there was a slight quaver in her deep voice.
- “We are here to talk of serious matters,” she said. “Ben was badly injured yesterday, but he has
- insisted on coming. We all wish to speak with you face to face.” She paused. “First of all, I must tell
- you this.”
- Doon felt his stomach lurch.
- “We have realized,” Mary said, “that we cannot ask you to leave here. Your generosity yesterday has
- helped us remember our own.”
- No one spoke, but the people of Ember glanced at each other and let out breaths of relief. Doon
- bumped his shoulder against Lina’s, and they grinned. “Yesterday,” Mary went on, “when our Weapon
- exploded and the fire went out of control, a child of Ember crossed the line that divided us from each
- other. We are grateful to her for leading the way.”
- “Lina! Lina!” cried a few scattered voices—Lina thought she heard Maddy’s voice among them. Doon
- startled her by yelling, “Lina the brave!” right in her ear.
- “I want to say,” Mary continued, “that we have made mistakes and we are sorry for them. We had
- good intentions, at the beginning. We did our best to help you. But when it got hard, we closed our
- hearts.”
- Wilmer Dent smiled apologetically. “We were worried—” he began.
- Ben interrupted him. His voice was hoarse and weak, and he seemed to be having trouble breathing.
- Doon strained to hear him. “We were justifiably . . . concerned,” he croaked. “About critical . . . food
- shortages. Attempting to ensure . . . the safety of . . . our own people.” He made a kind of wheezing,
- gasping sound. “Under . . . standably,” he added.
- Wilmer shrugged his shoulders, still smiling nervously. “It was just that we were—”
- “Afraid,” said Mary. “We were afraid, let us say it right out. We were afraid that you would ruin
- everything for us. We were almost on the edge of prosperity. We feared that you would push us back
- into deprivation.”
- There was a silence then in which no one knew what to say.
- “So we tried to get rid of the problem instead of solving it,” Mary went on. “Fortunately, both our
- plans and yours were thwarted.” She stepped forward and gazed out at the crowd. Her eyes met Doon’s
- and held them for a second. “Just last night,” she said, “I learned two things that have changed my
- picture of what has happened here. The first is this: we still don’t know who wrote the muddy words on
- the plaza—we may never know—but the other attacks on the people of Ember, the ugly writings on the
- walls of the Pioneer and the poison oak on the doorstep, were not carried out by Sparks villagers at all.”
- The Emberites turned to each other with puzzled looks and murmured confusedly. “But how could—”
- “But who would—” “What does she mean?”
- “It was young Doon Harrow who explained it to me,” said Mary. “I’d like him to explain it to us all, if
- he will.” She nodded to Doon and gestured upward with her hand.
- So Doon stood up. He told the assembled people the same thing he’d told Mary the night before when
- he came to her house late in the evening.
- “It can’t be true!” someone cried out—Doon thought it was Allie Bright, who had been Tick’s righthand
- man.
- “Itis true,” Doon said. “Tick told me himself last night. He said it was just good strategy. He said he
- knew there was going to be war, and he needed to raise a strong army. When people are attacked, he
- said, they get mad, and angry people are the best warriors. So he decided tomake people angry. He told
- me he got a good idea for how to do it when he saw those muddy words in the plaza.”
- At that, a roar swelled up and filled the ballroom. People shouted, “Where is he?” and twisted around
- to look for Tick. A few of them began barging through the audience trying to find him.
- Doon called out, “Wait! Listen! He isn’t here.”
- The commotion quieted down. People turned toward Doon.
- “Last night when I talked to him, Tick was stuffing everything he owns into a sack,” said Doon. “He
- told me he was leaving. He said he couldn’t live anymore with cowards and traitors. He’d heard a
- roamer was coming through the village today, and he planned to catch a ride with him. Some others are
- going, too. They’re going to the settlement in the far south, Tick said, where they hope to have a better
- welcome than they got here.”
- A great clamor greeted this announcement. Some people laughed, some shouted, “Good riddance,” and
- some just grumbled and shook their heads.
- Finally Mary raised her hands again and called, “Please! Quiet! I have more to say.”
- People grew silent again and listened.
- “I said that I had learnedtwo things,” she said. “The second is this: the incident that set off this chain of
- violent events did not happen as we thought. It was not Doon Harrow who destroyed those crates of
- tomatoes.”
- This came as no surprise to the people of Ember, who had never believed Doon guilty in the first place.
- But the villagers at the meeting looked startled. Doon saw Martha Parton flick her eyes toward him, her
- eyebrows flying upward, and he saw Ordney give him a quizzical look. Behind them, Kenny smiled a
- sunny smile.
- “Torren Crane has taken back the statement he made,” Mary said. “He did not, after all, see Doon
- Harrow throw those tomatoes. He still refuses to say whodid throw them. We must make up our own
- minds about that. But I believe we can be sure that it was not a person from Ember.”
- At that, a cheer arose from the crowd, a loud, disorderly cheer, and Doon was so astonished that he
- nearly fell over. Lina grabbed his arm. “I made him write it down on paper!” she yelled into his ear. “I
- took the paper to Mary last night!”
- When the cheering subsided, Mary continued. “We should take note,” she said, “of how easy it is to
- bring out the worst in us. The actions of a few troubled individuals fanned resentments into violence.
- Only an accident kept us from murdering each other.”
- She turned around to face Ben, whose head was lolling sideways, his eyelids drooping. “Ben has
- something to say now. Ben? Are you able?”
- The doctor, standing next to Ben, nudged his shoulder gently, and Ben opened his eyes.
- “Can you make your statement, Ben?” asked Mary.
- Ben frowned at the ceiling. The audience waited. Finally he spoke. “I have been told,” he said, “. . .
- that Doon Harrow . . .” He stopped. Frowned again. “I wish to thank . . . young man named Doon
- Harrow . . .” He took a shaky breath. “For rescuing . . . foolish nephew.”
- What? thought Doon. What’s he talking about?
- Ben scowled. He appeared to be gathering his strength. “Foolish nephew Torren Crane,” he rasped, “in
- the . . . pine tree. Who could have been killed . . .” Ben’s voice sank to a whisper, and the audience
- strained to hear. “. . . By my foolish actions.”
- Doon stood stunned. Torren was Ben’s nephew? That was a surprise. But it was even more of a
- surprise to hear Ben almost apologizing for what he’d done.
- Lina was thumping Doon on the back. Someone behind him cried out, “Three cheers for Doon!” and
- three cheers rang out in the ballroom. Doon just stood there, with what he thought was probably a silly
- smile on his face.
- Then Mary stepped forward and called for quiet again. Her voice grew steady and businesslike.
- “Now,” she said, “we must look to our future. You will not get everything you want. Neither will we.
- All of us will suffer, perhaps even be in danger. There will be more mouths to feed—but more hands to
- do the work, too. And though we may have a shortage of food, we have no shortage of work.” She
- paused. She smiled a little. Her eyes passed over the people in the room, and Doon felt her gaze almost
- like a reassuring touch. “The main thing,” she said, “is this: we will refuse to be each other’s enemies.
- We will renounce violence, which is so easy to start but so hard to control. We will build a place where
- we can all live in peace. If we hold to that, everything is possible.”
- Someone clapped. Doon turned around and saw his father, clapping with his hands held high in the air.
- “There is much to be worked out,” Mary said. “It won’t be easy, but we’ll talk about it together.” She
- paused for a second, and a change came over her face—the beginning of a smile. “One more thing,” she
- said. “We will no longer speak of ‘the people of Sparks’ and ‘the people of Ember.’ From now on, we
- areall the people of Sparks.”
- A rustle swept through the crowd. Both Doon and Lina felt a pang of sorrow. To call themselves
- people of Sparks meant leaving behind the last trace of their old home—its name. The villagers, too,
- felt a pang; for them it was a pang of fear. These were their people now? Could they really live
- peacefully together?
- But the sorrow and the fear lasted only a few seconds. Everyone was tired of sorrow and fear.
- Whatever lay ahead, they thought, would probably be better. They were willing to try it.
- After that, they turned to the practical details.
- “Actually,” said Alma Hogan, the storehouse manager, “there’s a fair amount of food in the
- storehouse. It’s just that we never like to use it all up. This year, we’ll expect to use it all and hope we
- can replenish it next year. I’m afraid a great deal of it is pickles, though. By the end of winter, we may
- all be eating more pickles than anything else.”
- Doon’s father mentioned politely that the hotel residents would have to have decent houses sooner or
- later. Mary said they would start building some of them now out behind the meadow. The best of
- Sparks’s builders would be in charge, and they would teach the Emberites construction. “The houses
- will be small,” Mary said, “and we’ll be able to build only a few before the rains come. Most of you
- will have to spend the winter in the hotel.”
- Clary stood up to announce that her garden was producing well; in addition to cucumbers, melons, and
- peppers, she had grown nearly a hundred butternut squashes, which would keep well through the
- winter. That would help a little. The villagers looked at her curiously. Butternut squashes? They had
- never heard of them. “I grew them from seeds I brought from Ember,” Clary said. “I brought all the
- seeds I had, all kinds. Next year I’ll be able to grow more.”
- Mrs. Murdo said she had learned a great deal in her time with the doctor. She would like to be
- Assistant Doctor. “It’s clear that this community needs more than one,” she said.
- “I know something about plants,” said Maddy, speaking up for the first time. “I wish to be Assistant
- Hotel Gardener, with Clary Laine.”
- Edward Pocket said he demanded to be made Official Librarian. Mary looked surprised. “We don’t
- have a library,” she said.
- “Exactly right,” said Edward. “You have a dis-orderly heap of books. I have made great progress with
- them, however. I invite you to come by and see.”
- Ben Barlow kept muttering dire warnings about crop failures and vitamin deficiencies and epidemics,
- but Mary said they would cope with those problems when and if they actually occurred.
- Little by little, people began to feel interested in how this new arrangement was going to work. There
- were endless questions. What if there were arguments? How would they be settled? Would the
- Emberites go back to eating with their lunchtime families? Would they get enough for dinner and
- breakfast? What would happen when they needed things other than food, like shoes or soap or hats?
- “The trouble is,” said Mrs. Polster, “we don’thave anything. We can’t trade for the goods at the market
- because we don’t have anything you’d want.”
- But Doon saw the solution to this right away. “We do!” he said. Mrs. Polster raised her eyebrows at
- him. She wasn’t used to being contradicted. “We haveone thing that you need,” said Doon. “Matches!
- We still have a lot left. We could use them to trade with, at least for a while. Two matches for a pair of
- shoes, say.”
- People laughed and clapped—it was perfect. Ben said in his opinion a pair of shoes was worth at
- leastfive matches, but no one paid much attention.
- “All of this has to be worked out,” Mary said. “It’s going to involve disagreement, and it’s going to
- involve hardship. But we have endured hardship before. We can do it again.”
- Wilmer sighed. “It’s just that we hoped we wouldn’t have to,” he said.
- Mary shot him a stern look. “We can do it again,” she repeated. “And we will.”
- CHAPTER 29
- Three Amazing Visits
- Lina gave up on trying to persuade Mrs. Murdo to move to the hotel. Since they’d all have their own
- houses sooner or later, they might as well stay at the doctor’s house until then. Besides, Mrs. Murdo
- was so intent on learning to be Assistant Doctor that it seemed unkind to take her away.
- Lina and Maddy took on the job of harvesting and preserving the produce from the doctor’s vegetable
- garden. Every morning they picked baskets of tomatoes and beans and peppers and corn and squash.
- Every afternoon, they sliced tomatoes and laid them in the sun to dry; they took dried beans out of their
- pods and put them in jars; they cooked peppers and packed them in olive oil; they tied bunches of herbs
- with string and hung them up to dry. Poppy puttered around their feet, “helping” by sprinkling dry
- leaves here and there or banging spoons on pots. Even Torren, whose feet were healing, often chose to
- hang around with Lina and Maddy. He said he knew how to make a garlic braid, so they gave him a
- basket of garlic, and he made one.
- One afternoon, as she and Maddy were cutting green beans for dinner, Lina heard wheels crunching on
- the road outside. The next moment, she heard the whuffling of an ox, and then Torren sprang up and
- limped as fast as he could to the front of the house. Uh-oh, thought Lina. Is it who I think it is?
- It was. There was Caspar’s battered truck, and there was Caspar just climbing out of it. He looked
- grubby. His mustache drooped. Torren ran toward him, crying, “Caspar! Caspar!” And Caspar smiled
- in a tired way.
- “Hey, brother,” he said. He thumped Torren’s back a couple of times. Then he started toward the
- house. Lina and Maddy went out to meet him.
- When he saw them, he stopped and glared. “Deserters,” he said. But he didn’t seem to have the energy
- to berate them further. He trudged into the house and plunked down on the couch. Torren plunked
- down beside him.
- “I’ve been waiting andwaiting for you,” Torren said. “Why didn’t you come back with them?” He
- flicked his hand toward Lina and Maddy.
- “I had important work to do,” said Caspar. “Which they didn’t want to help with.”
- “And what happened with your work?” asked Maddy, standing by the door. “Did you find what you
- wanted to find?”
- Caspar didn’t even look at her. He closed his eyes and slumped against the back of the couch. “My
- numbers,” he said, “need readjusting. They were completely right except for one thing.”
- “What thing was that?” asked Maddy.
- “Wrong city,” said Caspar, still without opening his eyes. “I have reworked the numbers. Tomorrow I
- head north.”
- Maddy and Lina exchanged a look.
- Caspar turned his head toward Maddy and squinted at her. “I don’t suppose you want to come,” he
- said.
- “No, thank you,” said Maddy. “I plan to stay here, where something with real potential is beginning.”
- Torren tugged on Caspar’s arm. “Did you bring me something this time?” he asked.
- Caspar opened his eyes. He looked at the ceiling for a while. “Well, yes,” he said. “I did.”
- “What?” shrieked Torren. “What is it? Can I have it now?”
- “It’s out in the truck,” said Caspar. “I found a whole crate of them, very unusual. You can have one.”
- “One what? Let’s go get it!” Torren darted to the door.
- Caspar heaved himself up and they went outside. Lina watched as Caspar rooted around in one of his
- crates. He came up with something she recognized with a start. She hadn’t seen one for a long time—it
- was like seeing something that belonged to an old friend, now dead.
- “What is it?” said Torren.
- “A light bulb,” said Caspar. “I found a case of forty-eight of them, all unused.”
- “But what does it do?” Torren asked, peering into the light bulb as if he expected to see something
- alive in there. He tapped the glass with his fingernail.
- “It gives light,” said Caspar. “If you have electricity.”
- “But we don’t have electricity.”
- “That’s right,” Caspar said wearily. “So you hold on to it, in case someday we do.”
- Torren went to the window seat and sat there turning the bulb around and around in his hands. Lina
- watched him, thinking about Ember. People had figured it out once, she thought. They could figure it
- out again.
- A few days after Caspar left, there was another visitor to the doctor’s house. Lina was out in the
- courtyard at the time, cracking walnuts with a rock. She saw someone approaching the gate, a bent
- figure walking slowly and somehow crookedly. She stood up. The person seemed to be having trouble
- with the gate latch, so she went to help, and that was when she realized it was Ben Barlow. His injured
- arm was bandaged and strapped to his side, and the jacket he wore was draped over it with the sleeve
- hanging empty. That was why he looked lopsided.
- “Good afternoon,” said Ben. “I wonder if Torren is here.”
- “He is,” said Lina. “I’ll get him.”
- She found Torren out in back of the house, sitting under a tree, eating a hunk of bread. “Your uncle has
- come to see you,” she said.
- Torren stared at her. “My uncle?” He sounded both excited and scared. He jumped up, shoving the
- bread into his pocket.
- When Ben saw Torren coming toward him, he frowned. Then, as if catching himself, he changed his
- expression to a smile. “Hello, nephew,” he said. “How are you getting on?”
- Torren looked wary. “Fine,” he said.
- “Good,” said Ben. He stroked his beard. Lina wondered if that was all he had to say.
- Torren filled the silence. “Is your arm still attached to you?” he said.
- “Yes,” said Ben. “Just barely.” He started to frown into the air again and then thought better of it. He
- sat down on a bench. “Well,” he said. “I thought I’d just come and see you. Haven’t seen you for a
- while.”
- “Years,” said Torren.
- “Well, yes. Busy life, you know, being a town leader. Many decisions to make. Matters of right and
- wrong to . . . to grapple with.”
- “Oh,” said Torren. Lina could tell he was thinking the same thing she was: Why has he come?
- “Sometimes one makes the right decision,” said Ben. “Sometimes not.”
- “I guess so,” said Torren.
- Ben readjusted his bandaged arm. Lina saw that his beard was not as neatly trimmed as usual. Probably
- he had a hard time doing it with his left hand. She was pretty sure Ben didn’t have a wife—she’d never
- heard mention of one.
- “Well,” said Ben. “You were fortunate, weren’t you, getting pulled out of that tree?”
- “Yes,” said Torren.
- “I am forced to acknowledge,” said Ben, “that it was my fault. That fire.”
- “I guess so,” said Torren.
- “An accident,” said Ben, “but one that did not have to happen.”
- “Uh-huh,” said Torren.
- Ben got to his feet with painful slowness. “So,” he said. “Enjoyable talking with you. No doubt we
- should get to know each other. You must come by for a visit sometime, though of course I’m rarely
- home.”
- “You’re very busy,” said Torren.
- “That’s right,” said Ben. He made his way toward the gate with his limping step. As he went out, he
- waved over his shoulder with his good hand, but he didn’t turn around. Slowly, he started back toward
- the village.
- “That was an apology,” Lina said to Torren when Ben was gone. “He’s sorry for doing what he did. I
- guess he’s sorry for not being a good uncle, too—for not taking you to live with him.”
- “Livewith him?” said Torren. He made a horrible face.
- “Well, I thought you weren’t happy living with Dr. Hester,” Lina said. “You neverseem very happy.”
- “I amtoo happy,” said Torren crossly. He sat down on the bench that Ben had just left and pulled the
- hunk of bread from his pocket. A few little birds were hopping nearby. Absently, Torren tossed them
- some crumbs. He seemed to be thinking. “Ilike it here,” he said to Lina, and he looked up at her with
- his eyes all round, as if he had only just discovered this himself.
- The next day, Doon came to the door of the doctor’s house carrying a sack. Kenny was with him,
- standing slightly behind Doon and peering curiously past him into the room.
- “I have to show you this,” Doon said to Lina. “I made it with the present you brought me.”
- “He’s kind of a genius,” Kenny said. “He already showed me.”
- Doon set the sack on the window seat. It was only just after dinnertime, but the days were shorter now,
- and the sun was nearly down. Dr. Hester had already lit two candles. She and Mrs. Murdo and Maddy
- were sitting at the table shelling lima beans. Poppy was sitting with them, tearing the bean pods into
- little pieces. All four came over to see what Doon had brought.
- Torren came, too. He was actually more interested in showing Doon whathe had than in seeing what
- was in the sack. “I got a present from Caspar,” he said.
- “Great,” said Doon, but he wasn’t really listening. Lina could see how excited he was about whatever
- he had in the sack. His eyes shone in the candlelight, and his hands fidgeted impatiently with the string
- around the sack’s neck. When he got it untied, he reached into the sack and brought out a small device
- made of wood and metal—some sort of machine, Lina thought. It had a coil of wire, and inside the coil
- she saw the magnet she’d given Doon. There was a handle that looked as if it would make something
- turn. Lina, not being much interested in machines, was a little disappointed.
- It was clear that Torren was disappointed, too. “Want to see my present from Caspar?” he said.
- “In a minute,” said Doon. “Let me show you this first.”
- “What does it do?” Lina asked.
- “Is it some kind of a can opener?” asked Mrs. Murdo.
- “Or maybe it’s a sort of mixer?” said the doctor.
- “Or a drill?” said Maddy.
- “Nope,” said Doon happily, and Kenny, his face shining with the shared secret, whispered, “Nope,”
- too. “You won’t believe it,” Doon went on, “but it makes electricity. I found the directions for it in a
- book calledScience Projects, but I couldn’t try it out before because I didn’t have a magnet. I didn’t
- even know what a magnet was. But then you brought me one, Lina! And just the other day I
- remembered about this project.” He took the machine over to the table and set it down. “What you do
- is, you turn this crank, and that turns the magnet, and that generates the electricity and runs it down
- these wires. It’s supposed to be enough to light a light bulb. The trouble is, I can’t test it because I
- couldn’t find any light bulbs that weren’t broken.”
- Torren started jumping up and down. He pounded on Doon’s arm. “My present from Caspar! My
- present from Caspar!” he yelled. He bolted into the medicine room.
- “What’s the matter with—” said Doon, but Lina broke in.
- “Doon!” she said. “His present from Caspar was a light bulb! Unused!”
- Torren came out of the medicine room carrying the light bulb encased in both hands, walking now, fast
- but with stiff legs, being extremely careful. “You won’t break it, will you?” he said to Doon. “Your
- experiment won’t blow it up, will it?”
- Doon gazed at the light bulb as if it was the most wonderful thing he’d ever seen. Gingerly, he reached
- for it. “I’ll be very, very careful,” he said. “You can help me, Torren. Hold the light bulb right here.”
- He showed Torren where to put the bulb, and he wound two loose wires around its metal end.
- “Now,” he said. “Blow out the candles.”
- Lina blew them out. The room went dark.
- Doon began turning the crank of his machine.
- At first nothing happened except that the magnet turned around. Doon cranked faster. And faster. And
- a glimmer appeared in the light bulb, first a glimmer and then a glow, and then the bulb shone with a
- faint but steady white light.
- Lina shrieked. Poppy shrieked, too, because Lina had, and both the doctor and Mrs. Murdo gasped and
- broke into applause. Kenny beamed, glancing between the light bulb and Doon’s face. Torren was
- being too careful to make a noise, but his eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped open.
- For almost three minutes, until his hand got tired, Doon turned the crank of his machine around and
- around. The doctor wagged her head in wonder, Mrs. Murdo turned her face away to hide her tears, and
- Torren held on tight to the light bulb even though it was getting very warm. Lina gazed at the light
- shining on everyone’s faces. Full to the brim with hope and love and joy, she watched the little light
- bulb shining like a promise in the night.
- Acknowledgments
- My gratitude to my patient agent, Nancy Gallt, my skilled editor, Jim Thomas, and my unfailingly
- supportive friend Susie Mader.
- JEANNE DU PRAU has been a teacher, an editor, and a technical writer.The People of Sparks is her
- second novel and the sequel to the highly acclaimedThe City of Ember . Ms. DuPrau lives in Menlo
- Park, California, where she keeps a big garden and a small dog.
- Also by Jeanne DuPrau
- THE CITY OF EMBER
- Text copyright © 2004 by Jeanne DuPrau.
- All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the
- United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and
- simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
- www.randomhouse.com/kids
- Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
- DuPrau, Jeanne.
- The people of Sparks / by Jeanne DuPrau. — 1st ed.
- p. cm.
- SUMMARY : Having escaped to the Unknown Regions, Lina and the others seek help from the village
- people of Sparks.
- eISBN 0-375-89050-5
- [1. Fantasy.] I. Title. PZ7.D927Pe 2004 [Fic]—dc22 2003020760
- RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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