The People of Sparks (3 page)

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 the
ground
?”

“Are they people like us, Mama?” a child said. “Or some other kind?”

Of
course
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 green-and-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.