When she got there, she stopped for a moment just to stare. The enormous old building looked to her like a wonderful place to live. She felt a sudden longing to have her own room there, back among her old friends and neighbors.
It was nearly evening by then. People were sitting on the hotel steps in the last rays of the setting sun, eating their dinners from their food parcels and talking. Some were down by the river, cooling their feet, splashing water onto their faces. Over by the farthest wing of the hotel, a few boys were gathered around another boy, who was sitting on a fallen tree talking to them. Maybe Doon was over there.
She wheeled her bike toward them—the ground here was too rough and weedy to ride on. Her old friends and neighbors called out to her as she passed, and she waved at them, glad to be back among people she knew.
When she got closer to the group of boys, she saw that Doon was among them. He and a couple of others were listening to that tall dark-haired boy—what was his name, Tigg? Tim? He’d been a cart puller in Ember, she thought. He laughed as she came up, a ringing, confident laugh, and all the other boys laughed, too.
She went up behind Doon and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around. She grinned at him. “Look, Doon!” she said. “I have a bike!”
He seemed astonished to see her. “Oh!” he said. “Lina!”
“Come and talk to me,” she said.
His eyes shifted back toward the tall boy. “Okay,” he said, but he didn’t move.
“Come on!” said Lina, tugging at his jacket.
They walked down toward the river. Lina leaned the bike against a tree, and she and Doon sat facing each other on the ground.
“What a huge place!” she said, waving an arm at the Pioneer Hotel, and talking fast in her eagerness. “What’s it like? Will you show me around? Poppy is a little better, and maybe in a couple of weeks we can come and live here, too. With you. And with everyone.”
Doon nodded. “That would be good,” he said.
“It’s kind of lonely at the doctor’s house,” Lina went on. “There’s a boy there who doesn’t like us, and the doctor is so busy she can hardly think, and her house is a mess, and I have to do a million chores.” She paused for breath. “Today we saw a roamer, Doon.”
“A roamer?”
She explained what a roamer was. Doon listened, but she saw his eyes veer back toward the group of boys.
“Who is that boy?” she asked. “The one who’s talking?”
“Tick Hassler,” said Doon.
Lina turned around and looked at him. He was handsome, she thought. His black hair was thick and glossy, and his face was all sharp angles, as if it had been carved from wood. “Is he a friend of yours?”
“Sort of,” said Doon. “I mean—I’m just getting to know him.”
“Oh,” said Lina. “Do you know which room Lizzie is in?”
Doon said he didn’t. “I don’t stay inside very much,” he said. “It’s kind of dark and dismal in there. What I like is being outside.” He pointed up into the branches of the tree, where little fluttery things were hopping around. “Remember when we first saw those?” he said. “When we’d just come up from Ember? I learned that they’re called birds. When you start really looking at them, you see there’s all different kinds. I’ve seen ones with a yellow chest, and ones with stripes on their wings, and ones with red heads. There’s even one that’s bright blue.” He gazed upward. “It’s strange, isn’t it? Why have all these different kinds, I wonder? Just for the fun of it?”
A burst of laughter came from the group of boys around Tick Hassler. Doon glanced over at them.
“Do you like it here, Doon?” Lina said. “In the village of Sparks, I mean?”
“I do,” said Doon. “I like it a lot.”
“Me too,” said Lina. “Mostly.”
“But it sort of worries me that we have to leave in six months,” Doon said. “There’s so much we need to learn.”
“Well, I guess so,” said Lina. “But maybe if we leave . . . I mean, I still wish . . .”
“Wish what?” said Doon when she trailed off.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She’d been going to say she wished they’d found the city she used to dream of. But she was afraid Doon might think that was silly.
The sun was going down. Shadows grew longer. “Show me your room before I have to go,” Lina said, “so I’ll know where to find you.”
Tick was walking away, and the other boys were following him. Doon gazed after them. “I can’t right now,” he said. “I will next time you come.”
“All right,” Lina said. She got up from the ground and swatted the leaves off her pants. She picked up her bike. “I’ll see you sometime,” she said, and she rode back to the doctor’s house feeling lonelier than she had before.
CHAPTER 9
Hard, Hungry Work
Instead of getting easier as the days went on, work for the people of Ember got harder. It wasn’t just the work—it was the heat they had to work in. Every day was hotter than the last. Doon had never felt this warm in his life—it was like being cooked. All the people of Ember felt this way. They sweated, their skin turned red and stung and peeled off, and the brightness of the sky hurt their eyes. They got terrible headaches. Sometimes one of them would drop to the ground in a faint, just from being too hot. At times like these, people thought, This is a dreadful place we have come to. They put their hands over their eyes, missing the familiar darkness.
The team leaders tried to be understanding when their workers drooped and fainted. But the people of Sparks were used to the heat; beside them, the people of Ember seemed like weaklings. A few times, Doon saw the leader of his team press his lips together and drum his fingers against his leg when one of the Emberites had to sit down and rest.
Doon’s team leader was Chugger Frisk, a big, stubble-jawed man who didn’t talk much except to give directions. Every day he sent his team wherever it was most needed. Doon did all kinds of jobs over the next few weeks. He dug ditches for the pipes that conducted water from the river to the crops in the fields. He repaired the wagons that hauled the produce home from the fields. He milked the goats out in the goat pasture and made sure the water troughs for the oxen were full. He picked fruit, built fences, planted seeds, stirred vats of soap, and dug chicken droppings into the cabbage field.
Except for being so hot, he didn’t mind the work. He was getting strong, and he liked being strong. He liked feeling the muscles in his arms getting harder, and he liked being taller (he knew he was taller, because his old pants were too short). The feeling of being a new person in this new world stayed with him. He would be thirteen soon—not a child anymore. Work was making him sturdy and ready for anything.
Besides, as he worked he was finding out all kinds of things he wanted to learn. How did the pumps work that brought water up from the river to the fields? How was cheese made, and shoes, and candles? Where did they get the ice that kept things cold in their big ice house? What were the bushy-tailed animals that scurried up trees, and the long, rope-like animals that he sometimes almost stepped on in the grass? He wanted to know how houses were built, and what glass was made of, and how bicycles worked. It was exciting, having so much to learn. But every time he remembered that he and his people had less than six months to learn it—less than six months to master all the skills they’d need to build a town of their own—a worm of fear twisted in his stomach.
Chugger wouldn’t answer questions. He was too busy giving directions or working. So Doon often asked his questions at lunch. Sometimes Ordney answered him, sometimes Martha did. Ordney’s answers were more like lectures, and Martha’s were more like boasts. After a while it was clear that both of them were getting tired of questions, so Doon asked fewer of them. One day, Kenny followed him outside after lunch and stretched up to whisper in his ear. “I can show you where there’s answers to your questions,” he said. “Want me to?”
“Sure,” said Doon.
“Right now?”
said Kenny.
“Okay,” said Doon.
Kenny led him through the streets of the village, going first toward the river and then away from it, along a street that led out away from the houses and into a grove of oak trees.
“There,” said Kenny, pointing ahead.
At first Doon saw only the long line of a roof above the trees. Then the street opened out into a big empty space that, he could see, had once been covered with pavement. Now the pavement was cracked and weeds grew up through it. To the left of this span of pavement stood a huge building—a rectangular structure so tremendous it could have held both the Ember school and the Gathering Hall. At the end facing them were two massive wooden doors, which Kenny walked toward. “In the ancient days,” Kenny said, “you didn’t have to open these. They were made of glass, and they had eyes and opened as soon as they saw you.”
“That can’t be,” said Doon.
“It was, though,” Kenny said.
Above the doors was a sign missing most of its letters. It was a long sign, so you could tell whatever it used to say was a long word, but now all it said was UPE ARK.
“What does that mean?” Doon asked, pointing to the sign.
“I don’t know,” Kenny said. “We just call it the Ark. It’s our storehouse. We’re going around to the back.”
He led the way around the side of the building to a small door in the back wall, which he opened. He had to push hard, because something was behind the door that had to be shoved out of the way.
Doon peered into the darkness. At first he couldn’t make out what he was seeing. Lumpy mountains appeared to fill the room to the ceiling and spread from wall to wall. He took a step forward, but his foot jammed against something hard on the floor.
“There’s answers to everything in here,” said Kenny.
As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Doon saw that the room was full of—was it boxes? No, they almost looked like books. They lay in toppling stacks, giant heaps, sliding mounds, as if they had been dumped in from an enormous bucket. Some of them lay open, with their pages crumpled. Some were so warped that their covers curved. A smell of ancient dust and mold arose from them. He reached down and picked one up. Its cover was furred with dust. He opened it and saw pages of tiny neat printing. It was a book, yes. Not like the books of Ember—these were much bigger and sturdier, and had much more writing. He riffled the pages—more dust flew up—but he couldn’t tell what the book was about. One page said, “Chapter XV. The Thermodynamics of Aluminum.” He had no idea what that meant.
“This is amazing,” said Doon. “Can I take some back to the hotel?”
“I guess so,” said Kenny. “No one will notice.”
Doon set down the book about thermodynamics. He brushed his smudged fingers against his pants. He felt like a hungry person who had been led to an immense banquet, far more food than he could eat in his whole life. He was starving, all of a sudden, for the knowledge hidden in these books. He reached out and chose three of them blindly, not even looking at the titles.
“Don’t you want some?” he said to Kenny.
“No,” said Kenny. “I already read four books in school. That was enough. We learned about history. Pre and post.”
“Pre and post?”
“Pre-Disaster and post-Disaster.”
“Oh,” said Doon. “What do you like to do, then?” he asked.
“Just poke around,” said Kenny. “I poke around in the woods. You could come with me sometime,” he said, looking up at Doon with hopeful eyes. “If you want.”
“Maybe I will,” Doon said, though he was thinking probably he wouldn’t. He had so many other things in mind to do. Besides, Kenny was a little young to be his friend.
During the first week after the Emberites arrived, Martha Parton had showed off her cooking skills at lunch every day. She made mashed potato pie, fresh peas with chives, walnut croquettes, mushroom gravy, cheese popovers, red-onion-and-bean dumplings, scrambled eggs with tomato jam, apricot pudding, and apple butter cookies. Every time she brought in a new dish, she said, “I don’t imagine you had these where you came from,” or “This will be new to you,” and the Ember guests would say, “You’re right, we’ve never had this! We’ve never tasted anything so delicious! It’s wonderful!” and Martha’s mouth would crimp into a small, pleased smile.
As time went on, however, the food at lunchtime became plainer. Martha got tired of making something new every day to impress her guests. What they found in their dinner and breakfast parcels became less interesting, too—usually it was some chunks of cornbread, ten or twelve carrot sticks, and a few slimy bits of goat cheese. If they were lucky, there might be a hard-boiled egg. Martha took to mentioning, as if it were a little joke, that even though the Partons were given extra food from the storehouse because of the extra people, it seemed as if they had less! Wasn’t that odd!
Doon started to feel hungry a fair amount of the time, and he knew others did, too. His father never spoke of it, but Edward Pocket griped about the food every evening. “I know I’m old and small,” he’d say, polishing off the last crumbs of both his dinner and his breakfast, “but that doesn’t mean I can live on air.”
One day Ordney made a disturbing announcement. The cabbage crop, he said, was going to be smaller than expected. Worms had got into it. They’d have only about two-thirds of the cabbage they had last year.
After this, not only was the food at lunchtime plainer, but there was less of it. One week, they had string beans, last year’s pickled cabbage, and goat’s milk pudding for lunch four days in a row, and when they opened their baskets at dinnertime, they found only a bottle of cold potato soup to serve as both dinner and breakfast.
Clary had started a garden just a few days after the Emberites arrived at the Pioneer Hotel. She cleared a patch of ground about forty feet square not far from the riverbank and planted seeds that she had brought from Ember. Children who were too little to go to work in the village helped her pull weeds and fetch buckets of water from the river. Old people sat in the shade giving her advice. After a while, green shoots appeared in rows on the patch of dirt, and Clary was out there every morning and every evening, tending them. In several weeks, there would be a little extra food for the people of Ember out in their own front yard.
But it wouldn’t be nearly enough. Some people were already grumbling about their skimpy dinner parcels. One night, when Doon was in room 215 eating with his father and the others, he heard voices in the hall and went out to see a cluster of people a few doors down. Lizzie was there—Doon spotted the red cloud of her hair. Tick was there, too. His voice carried above the rest. “Well, I got three carrots, a plum, and a chunk of sour cheese,” he said. “Lucky me. That ought to keep me going for a while.”
A few people laughed drily at this. Doon heard Lizzie giggle.
“It’ll keep you going for maybe half an hour,” someone said. “I don’t know how they think we can work, with nothing but scraps to eat.”
Along the hall, other doors opened, and other voices joined in.
“All I got was some limp green beans and a few clumps of porridge!”
“I’ve had carrot soup three days in a row!”
Some people counseled patience. “We shouldn’t complain,” someone said. “It’s hard for them to give us food. We should be grateful for—”
“I’m tired of being grateful!” someone else broke in. “They promised to feed us, but they’re starving us instead!”
“It seems to me,” said Tick, “that we should do something about this. I think maybe I’ll mention the problem at lunch tomorrow. Maybe we all should. Maybe we should tell them it’s very hard to work when you’re hungry.”
“I’ll tell them!” cried Lizzie’s high voice, and other voices rose in agreement. An excited, angry babble filled the hallway, drowning out those who spoke for patience. “I’ll speak up!” “We have to protest!” “Tick is so right!”
“Tick for mayor!” someone shouted,
laughing.
For a second Tick looked surprised. Then his eyes glowed with pleasure. He raised a fist in the air. “We’ll stand up for ourselves!” he said, and the people around him roared and raised their fists, too.
Doon turned to his father and Edward and Sadge, who had all come to the door to see what was going on. “We should tell the Partons,” he said. “If we’re working, we need enough to eat. It’s only fair.”
“Of course, they don’t have to give us anything,” said Doon’s father. “They’re giving what they think they can spare.” He looked sadly at the dry chunk of cornbread in his hand. “But I suppose it can’t hurt to mention it,” he said, “without being rude, of course. I imagine they’re doing the best they can.”
Mrs. Polster agreed to be the one to bring the matter up. She did so at lunch the next day. They were having cold spinach soup.
“I have a request,” she said firmly. She set down her soup spoon.
Everyone looked toward her. Doon felt a jitter in his stomach.
“We have noticed,” said Mrs. Polster, “that the food parcels you so generously give us have become considerably smaller lately. We find that when we have eaten what is within, we are still, to be frank, hungry. This is a difficulty for us.”
There was silence. Everyone stared at Mrs. Polster, who sat very calmly with her hands in her lap, waiting for an answer.
“What?” said Martha Parton at last. “Did I hear right?”
“I believe so,” said Mrs. Polster, “unless you have ear trouble. I said we are not getting quite enough to eat.”
Martha laughed a one-note laugh, a laugh of disbelief. Kenny stopped chewing and looked frightened. Ordney drew himself up and cleared his throat. “I am surprised,” he said. “I had thought you people understood the situation.”
“We do, indeed,” said Doon’s father hastily. “We’re very grateful for what you’ve done for us. It’s just that . . .”
“We’re working quite hard,” said Clary.
“It’s a very small amount . . . ,” said Miss Thorn timidly.