The People of Sparks (23 page)

And that was when Doon’s vague, uneasy feelings came together into one clear understanding: Tick
wants
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 no
place
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 be
in
the war, he thought. He could get hurt. The Weapon might accidentally get
him
instead of the cavepeople. He just wanted to
see
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 were
dead
?”

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 I
had
thought about it”—she frowned, remembering—“I’d probably have figured you wouldn’t
want
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 on
here
?” 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 you
tell
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 why
isn’t
he here, where is he? When is he coming?” and getting no answers.