“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—all of 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’t be 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 him something, 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 and bam!, 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—green-blue, 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! I didn’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 of us 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 of them, 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?
The People of Sparks: The Second Book of Ember (Books of Ember) Page 13