The People of Sparks (24 page)

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’s
doing
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.”

“But
how
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 that
mean
? How do you
do
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 something
good.
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 the
only
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 not
bad
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. They
want
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 least
listen
!”

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? Doon
had
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.