Doon did have a wound, but Lizzie did not get to tend to it after all. Lina had already done that, and Doctor Hester said she’d done an excellent job. When they got back to Sparks late that night and the doctor undid the scarf that Lina had wrapped around Doon’s leg and Lizzie saw the blotchy purple swelling, she felt a little ill and was glad she hadn’t had to deal with it just after it happened. She wasn’t even jealous that Lina had been the one to save him. She’d sort of forgotten about all those rescuing visions as soon as she’d seen the two of them limping toward the wagon, weary and lame and smudged with dirt. They were both her friends, and she was glad they’d come home alive.
CHAPTER 24
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The Salvage Expedition
That night, no one asked many questions of Lina and Doon, seeing how exhausted they were. But the next morning, the town leaders gathered at the doctor’s house, along with Doon and his father, and they wanted information. Mary asked the question that was on everyone’s mind: “Doon,” she said, “you went into your old city, you say. Did you actually find useful things there? Food? Things we might use for trade?”
“Yes,” said Doon. “There’s enough to help us through the winter. I’m sure there is. And there’s also—” He glanced at Lina, who met his eyes with an almost unnoticeable smile. “I mean, there’s a lot. We have to go and bring things back.”
“Why should we believe you?” Ben Barlow said. “You’ve caused a great deal of trouble already, and this jaunt out into the wilderness might just be more of the same.”
Doon’s father gave Ben a hard look. “Why shouldn’t you believe him?” he said. “Has he not proved himself reliable in the past?”
“He has, Ben,” said Mary. “I think we can trust what he says.”
Wilmer pulled nervously at his ear. “Didn’t you say people are living there?”
“Yes,” said Doon. “But I think they’ll be gone very soon.”
“If we can bring back enough to ease our troubles,” said Mary, “we should go.”
So it was decided. Many people volunteered for the expedition, curious to see this underground city they’d heard about, and preparations commenced. Everyone pitched in. The candlemakers worked overtime, trucks and wagons were oiled and repaired, every spare sack and barrel and crate was found, tools and ropes and food supplies were gathered. The plan was to leave in a week, if the weather held.
On the second day of that week, after they’d spent a day sleeping and resting and eating, Doon and Lina met in an attic room in the Pioneer Hotel, a place that must once have been used for storing old furniture and cleaning supplies. It was a dusty, musty place, with cobwebs hanging from the rafters, but it had a window that looked out across the field in front of the hotel toward the river and let in a strong light they could see by. Their plan was to study, in secret, the diamond that Doon had brought back. They wanted to show it to no one until they knew what it was.
They discovered one thing right away. At the base of the diamond, within the circle of its gold collar, was a ridged hollow that looked like a socket for a light bulb, and indeed, when Doon found a bulb and screwed it in, it fit perfectly. But it didn’t light up. He tried moving something near the socket that looked like a switch; but still nothing happened. Was this because the bulb was burned out? Or because the switch didn’t work? Or what? But in any case, they could see that you could put in a light bulb, stand the diamond on its top, and if the bulb lit up, you’d have a kind of lamp.
They puzzled through the book of eight pages for clues. Lina sat on the floor by the window with the book on her lap, the dusty sunlight coming over her shoulder. Doon sat next to her with the diamond, which shimmered as the light hit it but stubbornly kept its secret.
“I don’t see anything in the book that we haven’t already gone over,” Lina said. “There’s just this, on the page at the end. It looks like it really is the last page of the book—I mean, there aren’t any ripped edges after it. There’s a half sentence at the top, I guess continued from the page before, which isn’t there. It says, ‘. . . celestial source, perfectly pure, and for human purposes, infinite.’ ”
“What does ‘celestial’ mean, I wonder?” said Doon. “And ‘infinite’?” He scrutinized the diamond’s underside again, holding it up into the light so he could see. Besides the socket for the bulb and the switch, there were wires within the diamond’s collar that looked as if they could be uncoiled. Carefully, he pulled them out, but he couldn’t tell what he was supposed to do with them. He tucked them back in again.
He felt unbearably frustrated. This beautiful, strange object, which seemed to be a light, left by the Builders for the people of Ember—he held it in his hands but couldn’t make it work. In Ember, lights worked by electricity, and electricity was right there in the walls of the houses. You put a plug into a socket, and the electricity came through. But this light had no plug, unless there was one that Trogg had lost, and even if there had been, there was nothing here in Sparks to plug it into. So how did the diamond get its power?
They found the answer a short time later. They didn’t know at first why they’d found it—all they knew was that the light suddenly worked. But in the next few days, as they did one experiment after another and casually asked Ms. Buloware, the schoolteacher, for some word definitions, they began to understand. And once they understood, they made their plan.
______
During that week, Torren was in a state of unbearable excitement. Thrilling and mysterious things were going on all around him, and at last he was part of it, not left out. Or at least not completely left out. He’d helped to rescue Lina and Doon, and he would be going on the expedition. Sometimes, though, he had the feeling there were things he wasn’t being told. Lina had the look of someone with a secret, a happy one: she hummed a lot, and often when Torren was talking to her, she didn’t pay attention, as if she was thinking about something else.
Doon and his father came up to the doctor’s house one day. While Doon’s father was having his hand treated by the doctor, Doon and Lina went into a corner and talked together in whispery voices. Torren tried to lurk around nearby and overhear them, but Lina shooed him away. After that, Doon wanted to see Torren’s treasures, so Torren got them out of the trunk where he kept them and lined them up—the airplane, the elephant, the remote, the box of light bulbs. “They’re great,” Doon said. He tapped the box of light bulbs. “How many are in here?”
“Forty-eight,” said Torren proudly. “Well, no, forty-seven, because you took one for your generator.”
“That’s right,” Doon said. “You’re lucky to have them. Someday, they might come in handy.”
At last the day of departure arrived. The morning dawned chilly but clear. All those who would be making the trip gathered in the plaza. They swarmed around, toting empty bags and boxes to bring things back in, loading them onto four trucks, hitching up oxen, and all the time calling out to each other in loud or anxious or excited voices. Ben Barlow strode around making sure that the only people going were good walkers, since there wouldn’t be room for anyone to ride on the trucks on the way back (except for Doon, because of his injured ankle). Mary Waters reminded people to follow the lead of those from Ember, who knew where they were going, and Wilmer Dent fussed with the buttons on his coat, looking nervous.
“Where’s Doon?” Torren asked Lina.
“He’s coming,” she said, but she looked a little worried, scanning the crowd and not finding him, and very relieved, when at the last minute he came into the plaza, red in the face from hurrying, still limping a little, and carrying a bulky pack on his back.
Mary gave the order. “Let’s go!” she cried, and with squeaks and rattles from the trucks and the bawling of the oxen, the caravan headed up the north road, around the far edge of the squash field, and up into the hills.
They traveled all day, and at nightfall they reached a sheltered valley where they made camp for the night. Another day of
travel, and by the evening of the next day, they’d arrived at the cave entrance. The last of the sunlight came at a slant, throwing shadows eastward across the grass. The caravan halted, and everyone gathered around and stared at the arched opening in the wall of the mountainside. It didn’t look very big or grand, not like the entrance to a city.
“That’s where we came out of Ember,” Doon shouted to them, standing up on the lead wagon. “And up around there”—he pointed to the right—“is where we go in.”
But they’d need to spend another night in the open first and go down into the city in the morning. The trucks were lined up to make a barrier against the wind, and people scattered out across the hillside to break the low, dead branches from trees for their fires. Soon orange flames leapt in the darkness like waving hands.
Torren lay awake a long time that night. He was thinking that this was how it would be to be a roamer, except you’d be out here all alone in the wilderness and you’d have to make your own fire. And how would you sleep if you had to keep watch against wolves? It seemed hard. Maybe he’d decide to be something else.
Next morning, the wind was finally down and the air was a little warmer. Everyone rose early, eager to get started, just as the last stars were fading from the sky. But there were things to do before the descent into the city. People needed to eat, and they needed to get organized; and Lina and Doon had to put into action—or try to—the plan they’d kept secret from everyone. Now that they were here, about to make all this happen, Lina felt a fluttering in her stomach, and Doon realized that his heart was thumping a little faster.
While everyone was eating breakfast, Doon turned to Lina. “Let’s go,” he said quietly. He picked up his backpack, and he and Lina walked together behind the wagons and headed for the grove of trees.
CHAPTER 25
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Light for the Journey
The door to the windowless room was just as they had left it—propped open about an inch with a stick. Inside, Doon set his backpack on the small table, which they’d stood upright when they were here before, and reached inside. He brought out a light bulb. “The reason I was late getting to the plaza the day we left,” he said, “was that I had to wait ’til Torren was out of the house so I could go in and get these, and then I had to wrap them all up in Doctor Hester’s rags and bandages so they wouldn’t clink against each other in my pack and break. It took longer than I thought it would.”
“But you got all of them?” Lina asked.
“I did. So here we go.”
Once again, they opened the small door in the wall and moved the handle, and once again the panels slid upward and revealed the rows of diamonds.
“Now,” said Doon. “We need to get one working.” Gingerly, he lifted a diamond from the lowest shelf. He carried it outside, along with one of the light bulbs. Lina followed. They found a clearing among the trees, and Doon placed the diamond on the ground, in the full light of the sun, standing it upright on its collar of golden metal.
“Now we wait,” Doon said.
They sat down on a fallen tree, side by side. They heard the voices of the people of Sparks in the distance, cheerful and excited. A bird hopped in the branches above their heads, making a tiny pip-pip sound, answered by another pip-pip farther off. A cloud of gnats danced in the sunlight.
The blue diamond sat there unchanged. They waited some more.
“Is it time?” Lina said at last.
“I think so.”
They stood up. Doon picked up the diamond and turned it over. He screwed in a light bulb, flicked the switch, and the bulb lit up. It shone with the brilliance of a hundred candles, blasting their faces with light.
Then they ran, Doon carrying the diamond with its shining light bulb high above his head, back to where the people stood eating their breakfasts on the mountainside. “Look!” Doon shouted, and Lina shouted, too: “Look, everyone!”
People dropped their food and stared. Voices rang out from everywhere. “What is it?” “Where did it come from?”
“Is it magic?” someone called.
“No, not magic,” said Doon. “It’s electricity!”
“Electricity?” yelled Torren. “Like with your generator?”
Everyone crowded around. They gawked at the shining light bulb—a miracle, its steady beam bright even in the morning sun.
“But I don’t get it,” Kenny said. “What makes it shine?”
“It makes electricity from sunlight,” said Doon.
“No,” said Ben Barlow, craning his head forward and frowning. “Impossible.”
“And yet there it is,” said Mary Waters.
Doon’s father spoke up. “Son,” he said, “you’ve brought this thing out of nowhere. How did you find it? How do you know about it? I think you need to explain.”
So Doon and Lina explained together, telling the whole story—or almost the whole story. They left out the part about the wolves. Telling that, they knew, could only cause trouble. Mrs. Murdo would have nightmares about it. Doon’s father would be aghast at the terrible risks they’d taken. The villagers might want to go after the wolves and kill them, though the wolves were only doing what all creatures do—trying to stay alive. So Lina and Doon did not mention those moments of terror and danger. They kept that part of the story to themselves, like a dark stone that was the secret partner of the bright jewel they’d brought back.
People wanted to touch the diamond and examine it. Hands reached out, shoulders bumped. Ben pushed through, saying, “Make way, please, I need to see this,” and Wilmer Dent edged in sideways, and Lizzie said, “We had electricity in Ember; everybody had it.”
But Doon backed away. “Wait!” he cried. “We have to get started! We don’t have much time.” From his bulging pack, he extracted the box of light bulbs that he’d “borrowed” from Torren.
Torren shrieked. “Those are mine!”
“Yes,” said Doon, “and you’ll be proud to know they’re going to be used for something so important.”
Lina and Doon climbed up onto one of the trucks. Raising their voices so everyone could hear, they took turns explaining what the scavengers should expect when they went down into Ember—the narrow path that led along the cave wall, the Unknown Regions, and the chasm. (They’d be laying a sturdier bridge across it with planks and pipes brought from Sparks.) “We’ll know right away if people are still there,” Doon said, “because we’ll see their fire. But I think they’ve probably gone already.” He explained that there would be search teams, each one led by former citizens of Ember. The teams would go to all the different neighborhoods, collect anything useful, and pile it in certain spots. The team led by Doon and his father would go down into the Pipeworks. Lina and Lizzie would lead a team to the storerooms. Clary Laine would lead a team to Ember’s greenhouses, where she had been the manager, and Edward’s team would check the library and the school. Other teams would cover the rest of the city.
The search would go on for about eight hours. Doon chose Martha Parton to keep track of the time by burning eight candles, one after another, in Harken Square. (Privately, he hoped that the Troggs might have left their hourglass behind, but he couldn’t count on that.) At the end of eight hours, Martha would blow three blasts on a loud whistle. Then the teams would carry all they’d collected back through the Unknown Regions, put things into packs, carry them up to the top, and load them into the trucks to be taken back to Sparks.
It took nearly an hour to make the preparations. Doon gave each of the team leaders a diamond and a light bulb, and each person stood his or her diamond in the sun and waited while it soaked up light. (Doon had tested this, back in Sparks: in about fifteen minutes, a diamond could take in a charge that would last at least eight hours.) Meanwhile, Lina, who had brought along a ball of string, cut short lengths of it and passed them out to all those who would be leading the search teams. She also gave each person several sacks, which they’d use for collecting, as well as a few
candles, just in case any of the light bulbs failed. (She and Doon had brought with them all the matches they’d saved from their trip.)
When enough time had gone by, people screwed in their light bulbs, flicked their switches, and jumped and yelped and laughed gleefully as the bulbs lit up. Maddy, who wasn’t one for jumping and laughing, gave one of her rare smiles. “So,” she said, “Caspar’s ridiculous quest had one good result after all.”
“Now tie one end of the string around the ring,” Lina said, “and the other to your belt. That way you can carry the light and leave your hands free.”
It worked pretty well, for a plan made up on the basis of so little knowledge. Doon and Lina led people the short distance up the slope to the crack in the mountainside. The two of them went in first, carrying only Doon’s small generator. Once they were standing on the ledge, Doon stopped cranking, and they looked down. No light. Not even the faintest glow. “They’ve left,” said Doon, and Lina said, “Good.”
Then began the process of leading nearly a hundred people down the long, narrow path along the cave wall. Their diamond lights lit the way far better than candles, but still the going was hard, and many people were terrified. There were shrieks from those who tripped on a rock or stumbled too close to the path’s edge and wails from those overcome by fear of the long descent into darkness. But at last the whole troop trudged out across the Unknown Regions, crept and tottered and screamed their way across the bridge over the chasm, and entered the city.
The stink of old smoke filled the air. The teams took a few minutes to organize themselves and recover from the ordeal of the descent, and then they spread out, moving through the streets to their assigned neighborhoods. For hour after hour, they poked into every room, hall, and stairway, every cupboard and cabinet, every nook and cranny, collecting what was useful and leaving what was not. It was a thorough search, but not a quick one. The former citizens of Ember were constantly seized by memories and often insisted on going blocks out of their way to visit the house they’d lived in or the place where they’d worked to pick up some small treasure they’d left behind; and the people of Sparks were so astonished by the city that they asked a million questions and sometimes just came to a halt and stared.