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. I
will
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. Tick
needed
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—” What
did
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.”
“You
are
telling something, though,” said Lina. “Maybe you won’t tell who
did
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, “why
you two
came back and not Caspar.”
“He hadn’t finished what he wanted to do,” said Lina. “His mission.”
“What
was
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.”
“But
what
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.