THE CITY of EMBER

Jeanne DuPrau

Contents

The Instructions  1

1. Assignment Day 4

2. A Message to the Mayor     17

3. Under Ember    40

4. Something Lost, Nothing Found    54

5. On Night Street      70

6. The Box in the Closet      84

7. A Message Full of Holes    93

8. Explorations   113

9. The Door in the Roped-Off Tunnel 121

10. Blue Sky and Goodbye      132

11. Lizzie's Groceries  140

12. A Dreadful Discovery      155

13. Deciphering the Message   166

14. The Way Out   178

15. A Desperate Run     193

16. The Singing   213

17. Away    226

18. Where the River Goes      238

19. A World of Light    250

20. The Last Message    258

[SCANNER'S NOTE: This page and the next contain a map of Ember, followed by a blank page.]

The Instructions

When the city of Ember was just built and not yet

inhabited, the chief builder and the assistant builder,

both of them weary, sat down to speak of the future.

"They must not leave the city for at least two hundred

years," said the chief builder. "Or perhaps two

hundred and twenty."

"Is that long enough?" asked his assistant.

"It should be. We can't know for sure."

"And when the time comes," said the assistant,

"how will they know what to do?"

"We'll provide them with instructions, of course,"

the chief builder replied.

"But who will keep the instructions? Who can we

trust to keep them safe and secret all that time?"

"The mayor of the city will keep the instructions,"

said the chief builder. "We'll put them in a box with a

timed lock, set to open on the proper date."

1

"And will we tell the mayor what's in the box?" the

assistant asked.

"No, just that it's information they won't need and

must not see until the box opens of its own accord."

"So the first mayor will pass the box to the next

mayor, and that one to the next, and so on down

through the years, all of them keeping it secret, all that

time?"

"What else can we do?" asked the chief builder.

"Nothing about this endeavor is certain. There may be

no one left in the city by then or no safe place for them

to come back to."

So the first mayor of Ember was given the box,

told to guard it carefully, and solemnly sworn to

secrecy. When she grew old, and her time as mayor was

up, she explained about the box to her successor, who

also kept the secret carefully, as did the next mayor.

Things went as planned for many years. But the seventh

mayor of Ember was less honorable than the ones

who'd come before him, and more desperate. He was

ill--he had the coughing sickness that was common in

the city then--and he thought the box might hold a

secret that would save his life. He took it from its hiding

place in the basement of the Gathering Hall and

brought it home with him, where he attacked it with a

hammer.

But his strength was failing by then. All he managed

to do was dent the lid a little. And before he could

2

return the box to its official hiding place or tell his successor

about it, he died. The box ended up at the back

of a closet, shoved behind some old bags and bundles.

There it sat, unnoticed, year after year, until its time

arrived, and the lock quietly clicked open.

3

CHAPTER 1

Assignment Day

In the city of Ember, the sky was always dark. The only

light came from great flood lamps mounted on the

buildings and at the tops of poles in the middle of the

larger squares. When the lights were on, they cast a yellowish

glow over the streets; people walking by threw

long shadows that shortened and then stretched out

again. When the lights were off, as they were between

nine at night and six in the morning, the city was so

dark that people might as well have been wearing

blindfolds.

Sometimes darkness fell in the middle of the day.

The city of Ember was old, and everything in it,

including the power lines, was in need of repair. So

now and then the lights would flicker and go out.

These were terrible moments for the people of Ember.

As they came to a halt in the middle of the street or

stood stock-still in their houses, afraid to move in the

4

utter blackness, they were reminded of something they

preferred not to think about: that someday the lights

of the city might go out and never come back on.

But most of the time life proceeded as it always

had. Grown people did their work, and younger people,

until they reached the age of twelve, went to

school. On the last day of their final year, which was

called Assignment Day, they were given jobs to do.

The graduating students occupied Room 8 of the

Ember School. On Assignment Day of the year 241,

this classroom, usually noisy first thing in the

morning, was completely silent. All twenty-four

students sat upright and still at the desks they had

grown too big for. They were waiting.

The desks were arranged in four rows of six, one

behind the other. In the last row sat a slender girl

named Lina Mayfleet. She was winding a strand of her

long, dark hair around her finger, winding and

unwinding it again and again. Sometimes she plucked

at a thread on her ragged cape or bent over to pull on

her socks, which were loose and tended to slide down

around her ankles. One of her feet tapped the floor

softly.

In the second row was a boy named Doon

Harrow. He sat with his shoulders hunched, his eyes

squeezed shut in concentration, and his hands clasped

tightly together. His hair looked rumpled, as if he

hadn't combed it for a while. He had dark, thick

5

eyebrows, which made him look serious at the best of

times and, when he was anxious or angry, came

together to form a straight line across his forehead. His

brown corduroy jacket was so old that its ridges had

flattened out.

Both the girl and the boy were making urgent

wishes. Doon's wish was very specific. He repeated it

over and over again, his lips moving slightly, as if he

could make it come true by saying it a thousand times.

Lina was making her wish in pictures rather than in

words. In her mind's eye, she saw herself running

through the streets of the city in a red jacket. She made

this picture as bright and real as she could.

Lina looked up and gazed around the schoolroom.

She said a silent goodbye to everything that had been

familiar for so long. Goodbye to the map of the city of

Ember in its scarred wooden frame and the cabinet

whose shelves held The Book of Numbers, The Book of

Letters, and The Book of the City of Ember. Goodbye

to the cabinet drawers labeled "New Paper" and "Old

Paper." Goodbye to the three electric lights in the

ceiling that seemed always, no matter where you sat,

to cast the shadow of your head over the page you

were writing on. And goodbye to their teacher, Miss

Thorn, who had finished her Last Day of School

speech, wishing them luck in the lives they were

about to begin. Now, having run out of things to say,

she was standing at her desk with her frayed shawl

6

clasped around her shoulders. And still the mayor,

the guest of honor, had not arrived.

Someone's foot scraped back and forth on the

floor. Miss Thorn sighed. Then the door rattled open,

and the mayor walked in. He looked annoyed, as

though they were the ones who were late.

"Welcome, Mayor Cole," said Miss Thorn. She

held out her hand to him.

The mayor made his mouth into a smile. "Miss

Thorn," he said, enfolding her hand. "Greetings.

Another year." The mayor was a vast, heavy man, so big

in the middle that his arms looked small and dangling.

In one hand he held a little cloth bag.

He lumbered to the front of the room and faced

the students. His gray, drooping face appeared to be

made of something stiffer than ordinary skin; it rarely

moved except for making the smile that was on it now.

"Young people of the Highest Class," the mayor

began. He stopped and scanned the room for several

moments; his eyes seemed to look out from far

back inside his head. He nodded slowly. "Assignment

Day now, isn't it? Yes. First we get our education.

Then we serve our city." Again his eyes moved back

and forth along the rows of students, and again he

nodded, as if someone had confirmed what he'd

said. He put the little bag on Miss Thorn's desk

and rested his hand on it. "What will that service

be, eh? Perhaps you're wondering." He did his smile

7

again, and his heavy cheeks folded like drapes.

Lina's hands were cold. She wrapped her cape

around her and pressed her hands between her knees.

Please hurry, Mr. Mayor, she said silently. Please just let

us choose and get it over with. Doon, in his mind, was

saying the same thing, only he didn't say please.

"Something to remember," the mayor said, holding

up one finger. "Job you draw today is for three

years. Then, Evaluation. Are you good at your job?

Fine. You may keep it. Are you unsatisfactory? Is there

a greater need elsewhere? You will be re-assigned. It is extremely important," he said, jabbing his finger at the

class, "for all... work ... of Ember ... to be done. To

be properly done."

He picked up the bag and pulled open the drawstring.

"So. Let us begin. Simple procedure. Come up

one at a time. Reach into this bag. Take one slip of

paper. Read it out loud." He smiled and nodded. The

flesh under his chin bulged in and out. "Who cares to

be first?"

No one moved. Lina stared down at the top of her

desk. There was a long silence. Then Lizzie Bisco, one

of Lina's best friends, sprang to her feet. "I would like

to be first," she said in her breathless high voice.

"Good. Walk forward."

Lizzie went to stand before the mayor. Because of

her orange hair, she looked like a bright spark next to

him.

8

"Now choose." The mayor held out the bag with

one hand and put the other behind his back, as if to

show he would not interfere.

Lizzie reached into the bag and withdrew a tightly

folded square of paper. She unfolded it carefully. Lina

couldn't see the look on Lizzie's face, but she could

hear the disappointment in her voice as she read out

loud: "Supply Depot clerk."

"Very good," said the mayor. "A vital job."

Lizzie trudged back to her desk. Lina smiled at

her, but Lizzie made a sour face. Supply Depot clerk

wasn't a bad job, but it was a dull one. The Supply

Depot clerks sat behind a long counter, took orders

from the storekeepers of Ember, and sent the carriers

down to bring up what was wanted from the vast network

of storerooms beneath Ember's streets. The

storerooms held supplies of every kind--canned food,

clothes, furniture, blankets, light bulbs, medicine, pots

and pans, reams of paper, soap, more light bulbs-- everything the people of Ember could possibly need.

The clerks sat at their ledger books all day, recording

the orders that came in and the goods that went out.

Lizzie didn't like to sit still; she would have been better

suited to something else, Lina thought--messenger,

maybe, the job Lina wanted for herself. Messengers ran

through the city all day, going everywhere, seeing

everything.

"Next," said the mayor.

9

This time two people stood up at once, Orly

Gordon and Chet Noam. Orly quickly sat down again,

and Chet approached the mayor.

"Choose, young man," the mayor said.

Chet chose. He unfolded his scrap of paper. "Electrician's

helper," he read, and his wide face broke into a

smile. Lina heard someone take a quick breath. She

looked over to see Doon pressing a hand against his

mouth.

You never knew, each year, exactly which jobs

would be offered. Some years there were several good

jobs, like greenhouse helper, timekeeper's assistant, or

messenger, and no bad jobs at all. Other years, jobs like

Pipeworks laborer, trash sifter, and mold scraper were

mixed in. But there would always be at least one or two

jobs for electrician's helper. Fixing the electricity was

the most important job in Ember, and more people

worked at it than at anything else.

Orly Gordon was next. She got the job of building

repair assistant, which was a good job for Orly. She was

a strong girl and liked hard work. Vindie Chance was

made a greenhouse helper. She gave Lina a big grin as

she went back to her seat. She'll get to work with Clary,

Lina thought. Lucky. So far no one had picked a really

bad job. Perhaps this time there would be no bad jobs

at all.

The idea gave her courage. Besides, she had

reached the point where the suspense was giving her a

10

stomach ache. So as Vindie sat down--even before the

mayor could say "Next"--she stood up and stepped

forward.

The little bag was made of faded green material,

gathered at the top with a black string. Lina hesitated a

moment, then put her hand inside and fingered the

bits of paper. Feeling as if she were stepping off a high

building, she picked one.

She unfolded it. The words were written in

black ink, in small careful printing, pipeworks laborer,

they said. She stared at them.

"Out loud, please," the mayor said.

"Pipeworks laborer," Lina said in a choked

whisper.

"Louder," said the mayor.

"Pipeworks laborer," Lina said again, her voice

loud and cracked. There was a sigh of sympathy from

the class. Keeping her eyes on the floor, Lina went back

to her desk and sat down.

Pipeworks laborers worked below the storerooms

in the deep labyrinth of tunnels that contained

Ember's water and sewer pipes. They spent their days

stopping up leaks and replacing pipe joints. It was wet,

cold work; it could even be dangerous. A swift underground

river ran through the Pipeworks, and every

now and then someone fell into it and was lost. People

were lost occasionally in the tunnels, too, if they

strayed too far.

11

Lina stared miserably down at a letter B someone

had scratched into her desktop long ago. Almost anything

would have been better than Pipeworks laborer.

Greenhouse helper had been her second choice.

She imagined with longing the warm air and earthy

smell of the greenhouse, where she could have worked

with Clary, the greenhouse manager, someone she'd

known all her life. She would have been content as a

doctor's assistant, too, binding up cuts and bones.

Even street-sweeper or cart-puller would have been

better. At least then she could have stayed above

ground, with space and people around her. She

thought going down into the Pipeworks must be like

being buried alive.

One by one, the other students chose their jobs.

None of them got such a wretched job as hers. Finally

the last person rose from his chair and walked forward.

It was Doon. His dark eyebrows were drawn

together in a frown of concentration. His hands, Lina

saw, were clenched into fists at his sides.

Doon reached into the bag and took out the last

scrap of paper. He paused a minute, pressing it tightly

in his hand.

"Go on," said the mayor. "Read."

Unfolding the paper, Doon read: "Messenger." He

scowled, crumpled the paper, and dashed it to the

floor.

12

Lina gasped; the whole class rustled in surprise.

Why would anyone be angry to get the job of

messenger?

"Bad behavior!" cried the mayor. His eyes bulged

and his face darkened. "Go to your seat immediately."

Doon kicked the crumpled paper into a corner.

Then he stalked back to his desk and flung himself

down.

The mayor took a short breath and blinked furiously.

"Disgraceful," he said, glaring at Doon. "A childish

display of temper! Students should be glad to work

for their city. Ember will prosper if all ... citizens

... do ... their... best." He held up a stern finger as he said this and moved his eyes slowly from one face

to the next.

Suddenly Doon spoke up. "But Ember is not prospering!"

he cried. "Everything is getting worse and

worse!"

"Silence!" cried the mayor.

"The blackouts!" cried Doon. He jumped from his

seat. "The lights go out all the time now! And the

shortages, there's shortages of everything! If no one

does anything about it, something terrible is going to

happen!"

Lina listened with a pounding heart. What was

wrong with Doon? Why was he so upset? He was

taking things too seriously, as he always did.

13

Miss Thorn strode to Doon and put a hand on his

shoulder. "Sit down now," she said quietly. But Doon

remained standing.

The mayor glared. For a few moments he said

nothing. Then he smiled, showing a neat row of gray

teeth. "Miss Thorn," he said. "Who might this young

man be?"

"I am Doon Harrow," said Doon.

"I will remember you," said the mayor. He gave

Doon a long look, then turned to the class and smiled

his smile again.

"Congratulations to all," he said. "Welcome to

Ember's work force. Miss Thorn. Class. Thank you."

The mayor shook hands with Miss Thorn and

departed. The students gathered their coats and caps

and filed out of the classroom. Lina walked down the

Wide Hallway with Lizzie, who said, "Poor you! I

thought I picked a bad one, but you got the worst. I feel

lucky compared to you." Once they were out the door,

Lizzie said goodbye and scurried away, as if Lina's bad

luck were a disease she might catch.

Lina stood on the steps for a moment and gazed

across Harken Square, where people walked briskly,

bundled up cozily in their coats and scarves, or talked

to one another in the pools of light beneath the great

streetlamps. A boy in a red messenger's jacket ran

toward the Gathering Hall. On Otterwill Street, a man

pulled a cart filled with sacks of potatoes. And in the

14

buildings all around the square, rows of lighted windows

shone bright yellow and deep gold.

Lina sighed. This was where she wanted to be, up

here where everything happened, not down underground.

Someone

tapped her on the shoulder. Startled, she

turned and saw Doon behind her. His thin face looked

pale. "Will you trade with me?" he asked.

"Trade?"

"Trade jobs. I don't want to waste my time being a

messenger. I want to help save the city, not run around

carrying gossip."

Lina gaped at him. "You'd rather be in the Pipeworks?"

"Electrician's helper is what I wanted," Doon said.

"But Chet won't trade, of course. Pipeworks is second

best."

"But why?"

"Because the generator is in the Pipeworks," said

Doon.

Lina knew about the generator, of course. In some

mysterious way, it turned the running of the river into

power for the city. You could feel its deep rumble when

you stood in Plummer Square.

"I need to see the generator," Doon said. "I

have ... I have ideas about it." He thrust his hands into

his pockets. "So," he said, "will you trade?"

"Yes!" cried Lina. "Messenger is the job I want

15

most!" And not a useless job at all, in her opinion. People

couldn't be expected to trudge halfway across the

city every time they wanted to communicate with

someone. Messengers connected everyone to everyone

else. Anyway, whether it was important or not, the job

of messenger just happened to be perfect for Lina. She

loved to run. She could run forever. And she loved

exploring every nook and cranny of the city, which was

what a messenger got to do.

"All right then," said Doon. He handed her his

crumpled piece of paper, which he must have retrieved

from the floor. Lina reached into her pocket, pulled

out her slip of paper, and handed it to him.

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome," said Lina. Happiness sprang up

in her, and happiness always made her want to run.

She took the steps three at a time and sped down

Broad Street toward home.

16

CHAPTER 2

A Message to the Mayor

Lina often took different routes between school and

home. Sometimes, just for variety, she'd go all the way

around Sparkswallow Square, or way up by the shoe

repair shops on Liverie Street. But today she took the

shortest route because she was eager to get home and

tell her news.

She ran fast and easily through the streets of

Ember. Every corner, every alley, every building was

familiar to her. She always knew where she was, though

most streets looked more or less the same. All of them

were lined with old two-story stone buildings, the

wood of their window frames and doors long

unpainted. On the street level were shops; above the

shops were the apartments where people lived. Every

building, at the place where the wall met the roof, was

equipped with a row of floodlights--big cone-shaped

lamps that cast a strong yellow glare.

17

Stone walls, lighted windows, lumpy, muffled

shapes of people--Lina flew by them. Her slender legs

felt immensely strong, like the wood of a bow that flexes

and springs. She darted around obstacles--broken

furniture left for the trash heaps or for scavengers,

stoves and refrigerators that were past repair, peddlers

sitting on the pavement with their wares spread out

around them. She leapt over cracks and potholes.

When she came to Hafter Street, she slowed a

little. This street was deep in shadow. Four of its

streetlamps were out and had not been fixed. For a

second, Lina thought of the rumor she'd heard about

light bulbs: that some kinds were completely gone.

She was used to shortages of things--everyone was--but not of light bulbs! If the bulbs for the streetlamps

ran out, the only lights would be inside the buildings.

What would happen then? How could people find

their way through the streets in the dark?

Somewhere inside her, a black worm of dread

stirred. She thought about Doon's outburst in class.

Could things really be as bad as he said? She didn't

want to believe it. She pushed the thought away.

As she turned onto Budloe Street, she sped up

again. She passed a line of customers waiting to get

into the vegetable market, their shopping bags draped

over their arms. At the corner of Oliver Street, she

dodged a group of washers trudging along with bags of

laundry, and some movers carrying away a broken

18

table. She passed a street-sweeper shoving dust around

with his broom. I am so lucky, she thought, to have

the job I want. And because of Doon Harrow, of all

people.

When they were younger, Lina and Doon had

been friends. Together they had explored the back

alleys and dimly lit edges of the city. But in their fourth

year of school, they had begun to grow apart. It started

one day during the hour of free time, when the children

in their class were playing on the front steps of

the school. "I can go down three steps at a time," someone

would boast. "I can hop down on one foot!" someone

else would say. The others would chime in. "I can

do a handstand against the pillar!" "I can leapfrog over

the trash can!" As soon as one child did something, all

the rest would do it, too, to prove they could.

Lina could do it all, even when the dares got

wilder. She yelled out the wildest one of all: "I can

climb the light pole!" For a second everyone just stared

at her. But Lina dashed across the street, took off her

shoes and socks, and wrapped herself around the cold

metal of the pole. Pushing with her bare feet, she

inched upward. She didn't get very far before she lost

her grip and fell back down. The children laughed, and

so did she. "I didn't say I'd climb to the top," she

explained. "I just said I'd climb it."

The others swarmed forward to try. Lizzie

wouldn't take off her socks--her feet were too cold,

19

she said--so she kept sliding back. Fordy Penn wasn't

strong enough to get more than a foot off the ground.

Next came Doon. He took his shoes and socks off and

placed them neatly at the foot of the pole. Then he

announced, in his serious way, "I'm going to the top."

He clasped the pole and started upward, pushing with

his feet, his knees sticking out to the sides. He pulled

himself upward, pushed again--he was higher now

than Lina had been--but suddenly his hands slid and

he came plummeting down. He landed on his bottom

with his legs poking up in the air. Lina laughed. She

shouldn't have; he might have been hurt. But he

looked so funny that she couldn't help it.

He wasn't hurt. He could have jumped up,

grinned, and walked away. But Doon didn't take things

lightly. When he heard Lina and the others laughing,

his face darkened. His temper rose in him like hot

water. "Don't you dare laugh at me," he said to Lina. "I

did better than you did! That was a stupid idea anyway,

a stupid, stupid idea to climb that pole. ..." And as he

was shouting, red in the face, their teacher, Mrs.

Polster, came out onto the steps and saw him. She took

him by the shirt collar to the school director's office,

where he got a scolding he didn't think he deserved.

After that day, Lina and Doon barely looked at

each other when they passed in the hallway. At first it

was because they were fuming about what had hap-

20

pened. Doon didn't like being laughed at; Lina didn't

like being shouted at. After a while the memory of the

light-pole incident faded, but by then they had got out

of the habit of friendship. By the time they were

twelve, they knew each other only as classmates. Lina

was friends with Vindie Chance, Orly Gordon, and

most of all, red-haired Lizzie Bisco, who could run

almost as fast as Lina and could talk three times faster.

Now, as Lina sped toward home, she felt immensely

grateful to Doon and hoped he'd come to no harm in

the Pipeworks. Maybe they'd be friends again. She'd

like to ask him about the Pipeworks. She was curious

about it.

When she got to Greystone Street, she passed

Clary Laine, who was probably on her way to the

greenhouses. Clary waved to her and called out, "What

job?" and Lina called back, "Messenger!" and ran on.

Lina lived in Quillium Square, over the yarn

shop run by her grandmother. When she got to the

shop, she burst in the door and cried, "Granny! I'm a

messenger!"

Granny's shop had once been a tidy place, where

each ball of yarn and spool of thread had its spot in the

cubbyholes that lined the walls. All the yarn and thread

came from old clothes that had gotten too shabby to be

worn. Granny unraveled sweaters and picked apart

21

dresses and jackets and pants; she wound the yarn into

balls and the thread onto spools, and people bought

them to use in making new clothes.

These days, the shop was a mess. Long loops and

strands of yarn dangled out of the cubbyholes, and the

browns and grays and purples were mixed in with the

ochres and olive greens and dark blues. Granny's customers

often had to spend half an hour unsnarling the

rust-red yarn from the mud-brown, or trying to fish

out the end of a thread from a tangled wad. Granny

wasn't much help. Most days she just dozed behind the

counter in her rocking chair.

That's where she was when Lina burst in with her

news. Lina saw that Granny had forgotten to knot up

her hair that morning--it was standing out from her

head in a wild white frizz.

Granny stood up, looking puzzled. "You aren't a

messenger, dear, you're a schoolgirl," she said.

"But Granny, today was Assignment Day. I got my

job. And I'm a messenger!"

Granny's eyes lit up, and she slapped her hand

down on the counter. "I remember!" she cried. "Messenger,

that's a grand job! You'll be good at it."

Lina's little sister toddled out from behind the

counter on unsteady legs. She had a round face and

round brown eyes. At the top of her head was a sprig

of brown hair tied up with a scrap of red yarn. She

grabbed on to Lina's knees. "Wy-na, Wy-na!" she said.

22

Lina bent over and took the child's hands. "Poppy!

Your big sister got a good job! Are you happy, Poppy?

Are you proud of me?"

Poppy said something that sounded like, "Hoppyhoppyhoppy!"

Lina laughed, hoisted her up, and

danced with her around the shop.

Lina loved her little sister so much that it was like

an ache under her ribs. The baby and Granny were all

the family she had now. Two years ago, when the

coughing sickness was raging through the city again,

her father had died. Some months later, her mother,

giving birth to Poppy, had died, too. Lina missed her

parents with an ache that was as strong as what she felt

for Poppy, only it was a hollow feeling instead of a full

one.

"When do you start?" asked Granny.

"Tomorrow," said Lina. "I report to the messengers'

station at eight o'clock."

"You'll be a famous messenger," said Granny. "Fast

and famous."

Taking Poppy with her, Lina went out of the shop

and climbed the stairs to their apartment. It was a

small apartment, only four rooms, but there was

enough stuff in it to fill twenty. There were things

that had belonged to Lina's parents, her grandparents, and even their grandparents--old, broken, cracked,

threadbare things that had been patched and repaired

dozens or hundreds of times. People in Ember rarely

23

threw anything away. They made the best possible use

of what they had.

In Lina's apartment, layers of worn rugs and carpets

covered the floor, making it soft but uneven

underfoot. Against one wall squatted a sagging couch

with round wooden balls for legs, and on the couch

were blankets and pillows, so many that you had to

toss some on the floor before you could sit down.

Against the opposite wall stood two wobbly tables that

held a clutter of plates and bottles, cups and bowls,

unmatching forks and spoons, little piles of scrap

paper, bits of string wound up in untidy wads, and a

few stubby pencils. There were four lamps, two tall

ones that stood on the floor and two short ones that

stood on tables. And in uneven lines up near the ceiling

were hooks that held coats and shawls and nightgowns

and sweaters, shelves that held pots and pans,

jars with unreadable labels, and boxes of buttons and

pins and tacks.

Where there were no shelves, the walls had been

decorated with things of beauty--a label from a can of

peaches, a few dried yellow squash flowers, a strip of

faded but still pretty purple cloth. There were drawings,

too. Lina had done the drawings out of her imagination.

They showed a city that looked somewhat like

Ember, except that its buildings were lighter and taller

and had more windows.

One of the drawings had fallen to the floor. Lina

24

retrieved it and pinned it back up. She stood for a

minute and looked at the pictures. Over and over, she'd

drawn the same city. Sometimes she drew it as seen

from afar, sometimes she chose one of its buildings

and drew it in detail. She put in stairways and street

lamps and carts. Sometimes she tried to draw the people

who lived in the city, though she wasn't good at

drawing people--their heads always came out too

small, and their hands looked like spiders. One picture

showed a scene in which the people of the city greeted

her when she arrived--the first person they had ever

seen to come from elsewhere. They argued with each

other about who should be the first to invite her home.

Lina could see this city so clearly in her mind she

almost believed it was real. She knew it couldn't be,

though. The Book of the City of Ember, which all children

studied in school, taught otherwise. "The city of

Ember was made for us long ago by the Builders," the

book said. "It is the only light in the dark world.

Beyond Ember, the darkness goes on forever in all

directions."

Lina had been to the outer border of Ember. She

had stood at the edge of the trash heaps and gazed into

the darkness beyond the city--the Unknown Regions.

No one had ever gone far into the Unknown

Regions--or at least no one had gone far and returned.

And no one had ever arrived in Ember from the

Unknown Regions, either. As far as anyone knew, the

25

darkness did go on forever. Still, Lina wanted the other

city to exist. In her imagination, it was so beautiful,

and it seemed so real. Sometimes she longed to go

there and take everyone in Ember with her.

But she wasn't thinking about the other city now.

Today she was happy to be right where she was. She set

Poppy on the couch. "Wait there," she said. She went

into the kitchen, where there was an electric stove and

a refrigerator that no longer worked and was used to

store glasses and dishes so Poppy couldn't get at them.

Above the refrigerator were shelves holding more pots

and jars, more spoons and knives, a wind-up clock that

Granny always forgot to wind, and a long row of cans.

Lina tried to keep the cans in alphabetical order so she

could find what she wanted quickly, but Granny always

messed them up. Now, she saw, there were beans at the

end of the row and tomatoes at the beginning. She

picked out a can labeled Baby Drink and a jar of boiled

carrots, opened them, poured the liquid into a cup and

the carrots into a little dish, and took these back to the

baby on the couch.

Poppy dribbled Baby Drink down her chin. She

ate some of her carrots and poked others between the

couch cushions. For the moment, Lina felt almost perfectly

happy. There was no need to think about the fate

of the city right now. Tomorrow, she'd be a messenger!

She wiped the orange goop off Poppy's chin. "Don't

worry," she said. "Everything will be all right."

26

* * *

The messengers' headquarters was on Cloving Street,

not far from the back of the Gathering Hall. When

Lina arrived the next morning, she was greeted by

Messenger Captain Allis Fleery, a bony woman with

pale eyes and hair the color of dust. "Our new girl,"

said Captain Fleery to the other messengers, a cluster

of nine people who smiled and nodded at Lina. "I have

your jacket right here," said the captain. She handed

Lina a red jacket like the one all messengers wore. It

was only a little too large.

From the clock tower of the Gathering Hall came

a deep reverberating bong. "Eight o'clock!" cried Captain Fleery. She waved a long arm. "Take your stations!"

As the clock sounded seven more times, the

messengers scattered in all directions. The captain

turned to Lina. "Your station," she said, "is Garn

Square."

Lina nodded and started off, but the captain

caught her by the collar. "I haven't told you the rules,"

she said. She held up a knobby finger. "One: When a

customer gives you a message, repeat it back to make

sure you have it right. Two: Always wear your red

jacket so people can identify you. Three: Go as fast as

possible. Your customers pay twenty cents for every

message, no matter how far you have to take it."

Lina nodded. "I always go fast," she said.

"Four," the captain went on. "Deliver a message

27

only to the person it's meant for, no one else."

Lina nodded again. She bounced a little on her

toes, eager to get going.

Captain Fleery smiled. "Go," she said, and Lina

was off.

She felt strong and speedy and surefooted. She

glanced at her reflection as she ran past the window of

a furniture repair shop. She liked the look of her long

dark hair flying out behind her, her long legs in their

black socks, and her flapping red jacket. Her face,

which had never seemed especially remarkable, looked

almost beautiful, because she looked so happy.

As soon as she came into Garn Square, a voice

cried, "Messenger!" Her first customer! It was old

Natty Prine, calling to her from the bench where he

always sat. "This goes to Ravenet Parsons, 18 Selverton

Square," he said. "Bend down."

She bent down so that her ear was close to his whiskery mouth.

The old man said in a slow, hoarse voice, "My

stove is broke, don't come for dinner. Repeat."

Lina repeated the message.

"Good," said Natty Prine. He gave Lina twenty

cents, and she ran across the city to Selverton Square.

There she found Ravenet Parsons also sitting on a

bench. She recited the message to him.

"Old turniphead," he growled. "Lazy old fleaface.

He just doesn't feel like cooking. No reply."

28

Lina ran back to Gam Square, passing a group of

Believers on the way. They were standing in a circle,

holding hands, singing one of their cheerful songs. It

seemed to Lina there were more Believers than ever

these days. What they believed in she didn't know,

but it must make them happy--they were always

smiling.

Her next customer turned out to be Mrs. Polster,

the teacher of the fourth-year class. In Mrs. Polster's

class, they memorized passages from The Book of the

City of Ember every week. Mrs. Polster had charts on

the walls for everything, with everyone's name listed. If

you did something right, she made a green dot by your

name. If you did something wrong, she made a red

dot. "What you need to learn, children," she always

said, in her resonant, precise voice, "is the difference

between right and wrong in every area of life. And

once you learn the difference--" Here she would stop

and point to the class, and the class would finish the

sentence: "You must always choose the right." In every

situation, Mrs. Polster knew what the right choice was.

Now here was Mrs. Polster again, looming over

Lina and pronouncing her message. "To Annisette

Lafrond, 39 Humm Street, as follows," she said. "My

confidence in you has been seriously diminished since

I heard about the disreputable activities in which you

engaged on Thursday last. Please repeat."

It took Lina three tries to get this right. "Uh-oh, a

29

red dot for me," she said. Mrs. Polster did not seem to

find this amusing.

Lina had nineteen customers that first morning.

Some of them had ordinary messages: "I can't come on

Tuesday." "Buy a pound of potatoes on your way

home." "Please come and fix my front door." Others

had messages that made no sense to her at all, like Mrs.

Polster's. But it didn't matter. The wonderful part

about being a messenger was not the messages but the

places she got to go. She could go into the houses of

people she didn't know and hidden alleyways and little

rooms in the backs of stores. In just a few hours, she

discovered all kinds of strange and interesting things.

For instance: Mrs. Sample, the mender, had to

sleep on her couch because her entire bedroom, almost

up to the ceiling, was crammed with clothes to be

mended. Dr. Felinia Tower had the skeleton of a

person hanging against her living room wall, its

bones all held in place with black strings. "I study it," she said when she saw Lina staring. "I have to know

how people are put together." At a house on Calloo

Street, Lina delivered a message to a worried-looking

man whose living room was completely dark. "I'm saving

on light bulbs," the man said. And when Lina took

a message to the Can Cafe, she learned that on certain

days the back room was used as a meeting place for

people who liked to converse about Great Subjects.

"Do you think an Invisible Being is watching over us

30

all the time?" she heard someone ask. "Perhaps,"

answered someone else. There was a long silence. "And

then again, perhaps not."

All of it was interesting. She loved finding things

out, and she loved running. And even by the end of the

day, she wasn't tired. Running made her feel strong and

big-hearted, it made her love the places she ran

through and the people whose messages she delivered.

She wished she could bring all of them the good news

they so desperately wanted to hear.

Late in the afternoon, a young man came up to

her, walking with a sort of sideways lurch. He was an

odd-looking person--he had a very long neck with a

bump in the middle and teeth so big they looked as if

they were trying to escape from his mouth. His black,

bushy hair stuck out from his head in untidy tufts. "I

have a message for the mayor, at the Gathering Hall,"

he said. He paused to let the importance of this be

understood. "The mayor," he said. "Did you get that?"

"I got it," said Lina.

"All right. Listen carefully. Tell him: Delivery at

eight. From Looper. Repeat it back."

"Delivery at eight. From Looper," Lina repeated. It

was an easy message.

"All right. No answer required." He handed her

twenty cents, and she sprinted away.

The Gathering Hall occupied one entire side of

Harken Square, which was the city's central plaza. The

31

square was paved with stone. It had a few benches

bolted to the ground here and there, as well as a

couple of kiosks for notices. Wide steps led up to the

Gathering Hall, and fat columns framed its big door.

The mayor's office was in the Gathering Hall. So were

the offices of the clerks who kept track of which buildings

had broken windows, what streetlamps needed

repair, and the number of people in the city. There was

the office of the timekeeper, who was in charge of the

town clock. And there were offices for the guards who

enforced the laws of Ember, now and then putting

pickpockets or people who got in fights into the Prison

Room, a small one-story structure with a sloping roof

that jutted out from one side of the building.

Lina ran up the steps and through the door into a

broad hallway. On the left was a desk, and at the desk

sat a guard: "Barton Snode, Assistant Guard," said a

badge on his chest. He was a big man, with wide shoulders,

brawny arms, and a thick neck. But his head

looked as if it didn't belong to his body--it was small

and round and topped with a fuzz of extremely short

hair. His lower jaw jutted out and moved a little from

side to side, as if he were chewing on something.

When he saw Lina, his jaw stopped moving for a

moment and his lips curled upward in a very small

smile. "Good day," he said. "What business brings you

here today?"

"I have a message for the mayor."

32

"Very good, very good." Barton Snode heaved

himself to his feet. "Step this way."

He led Lina down the corridor and opened a door

marked "Reception Room."

"Wait here, please," he said. "The mayor is in his

basement office on private business, but he will be up

shortly."

Lina went inside.

"I'll notify the mayor," said Barton Snode. "Please

have a seat. The mayor will be right with you. Or pretty

soon." He left, closing the door behind him. A second

later, the door opened again, and the guard's small

fuzzy head re-appeared. "What is the message?" he

asked.

"I have to give it to the mayor in person," said

Lina.

"Of course, of course," said the guard. The door

closed again. He doesn't seem very sure about things,

Lina thought. Maybe he's new at his job.

The Reception Room was shabby, but Lina could

tell that it had once been impressive. The walls were

dark red, with brownish patches where the paint was

peeling away. In the right-hand wall was a closed door.

An ugly brown carpet lay on the floor, and on it stood

a large armchair covered in itchy-looking red material,

and several smaller chairs. A small table held a teapot

and some cups, and a larger table in the middle of the

room displayed a copy of The Book of the City of

33

Ember, lying open as if someone were going to read

from it. Portraits of all the mayors of the city since the

beginning of time hung on the walls, staring solemnly

from behind pieces of old window glass.

Lina sat in the big armchair and waited. No one

came. She got up and wandered around the room.

She bent over The Book of the City of Ember and read a

few sentences: "The citizens of Ember may not have

luxuries, but the foresight of the Builders, who filled

the storerooms at the beginning of time, has ensured

that they will always have enough, and enough is all

that a person of wisdom needs."

She flipped a few pages. "The Gathering Hall

clock," she read, "measures the hours of night and day.

It must never be allowed to run down. Without it, how

would we know when to go to work and when to go

to school? How would the light director know when to

turn the lights on and when to turn them off again? It

is the job of the timekeeper to wind the clock

every week and to place the date sign in Harken Square

every day. The timekeeper must perform these duties

faithfully."

Lina knew that not all timekeepers were as faithful

as they should be. She'd heard of one, some years ago,

who often forgot to change the date sign, so that it

might say, "Wednesday, Week 38, Year 227" for several

days in a row. There had even been timekeepers who

forgot to wind the clock, so that it might stand at noon

34

or at midnight for hours at a time, causing a very long day or a very long night. The result was that no one

really knew anymore exactly what day of the week it

was, or exactly how many years it had been since the

building of the city--they called this the year 241, but

it might have been 245 or 239 or 250. As long as the

clock's deep boom rang out every hour, and the lights

went on and off more or less regularly, it didn't seem

to matter.

Lina left the book and examined the pictures of

the mayors. The seventh mayor, Podd Morethwart, was

her great-great--she didn't know how many greats--grandfather. He looked quite dreary, Lina thought. His

cheeks were long and hollow, his mouth turned down

at the corners, and there was a lost look in his eyes. The

picture she liked best was of the fourth mayor, Jane

Larket, who had a serene smile and fuzzy black hair.

Still no one came. She heard no sounds from the

hallway. Maybe they'd forgotten her.

Lina went over to the closed door in the right-hand wall. She pulled it open and saw stairs going up.

Maybe, while she waited, she'd just see where they went. She started upward. At the top of the first flight

was a closed door. Carefully, she opened it. She saw

another hallway and more closed doors. She shut the door and kept going. Her footsteps sounded loud on

the wood, and she was afraid someone would hear her

and come and scold her. No doubt she was not

35

supposed to be here. But no one came, and she

climbed on, passing another closed door.

The Gathering Hall was the only building in

Ember with three stories. She had always wanted to

stand on its roof and look out at the city. Maybe from

there it would be possible to see beyond the city, into

the Unknown Regions. If the bright city of her drawings

really did exist, it would be out there somewhere.

At the top of the stairs, she came to a door marked

"Roof," and she pushed it open. Chilly air brushed

against her skin. She was outside. Ahead of her was a

flat gravel surface, and about ten paces away she could

see the high wall of the clock tower.

She went to the edge of the roof. From there she

could see the whole of Ember. Directly below was

Harken Square, where people were moving this way

and that, all of them appearing, from this topdown

view, more round than tall. Beyond Harken Square,

the lighted windows of the buildings made checkered

lines, yellow and black, row after row, in all directions.

She tried to see farther, across the Unknown Regions,

but she couldn't. At the edges of the city, the lights were

so far away that they made a kind of haze. She could

see nothing beyond them but blackness.

She heard a shout from the square below. "Look!"

came a small but piercing voice. "Someone on the

roof!" She saw a few people stop and look up. "Who is

it? What's she doing up there?" someone cried. More

36

people gathered, until a crowd was standing on the

steps of the Gathering Hall. They see me! Lina

thought, and it made her laugh. She waved at the

crowd and did a few steps from the Bugfoot Scurry

Dance, which she'd learned on Cloving Square Dance

Day, and they laughed and shouted some more.

Then the door behind her burst open, and a huge

guard with a bushy black beard was suddenly running

toward her. "Halt!" he shouted, though she wasn't

going anywhere. He grabbed her by the arm. "What are

you doing here?"

"I was just curious," said Lina, in her most innocent

voice. "I wanted to see the city from the roof." She

read the guard's name badge. It said, "Redge Stabmark,

Chief Guard."

"Curiosity leads to trouble," said Redge Stabmark.

He peered down at the crowd. "You have caused a

commotion." He pulled her toward the door and

hustled her down all three flights of stairs. When they

came out into the waiting room, Barton Snode was

standing there looking flustered, his jaw twitching

from side to side. Next to him was the mayor.

"A child causing trouble, Mayor Cole," said the

chief guard.

The mayor glared at her. "I recall your face. From

Assignment Day. Shame! Disgracing yourself in your

new job."

"I didn't mean to cause trouble," said Lina. "I was

37

looking for you so I could deliver a message."

"Shall we put her in the Prison Room for a day or

two?" asked the chief guard.

The mayor frowned. He pondered a moment.

"What is the message?" he said. He bent down so that

Lina could speak into his ear. She noticed that he

smelled a little like overcooked turnips.

"Delivery at eight," Lina whispered. "From

Looper."

The mayor smiled a tight little smile. He turned to

the guard. "Just a child's antics," he said. "We will let it

go this time. From now on," he said to Lina, "behave

yourself."

"Yes, Mr. Mayor," said Lina.

"And you," said the mayor, turning to the assistant

guard and shaking a thick finger at him, "watch

visitors much ... more ... carefully."

Barton Snode blinked and nodded.

Lina ran for the door. Outside, the small crowd

was still standing by the steps. A few of them cheered

as Lina came out. Others frowned at her and muttered

words like "mischief" and "silliness" and "showoff."

Lina felt embarrassed suddenly. She hadn't meant to

show off. She hurried past, out into Otterwill Street,

and started to run.

She didn't see Doon, who was among those watching

her. He had been on his way home from his first

day in the Pipeworks when he'd come across the

38

cluster of people gazing up at the roof of the Gathering

Hall and laughing. He was tired and chilly. The

bottoms of his pants legs were wet, and mud clung to

his shoes and smeared his hands. When he raised his

eyes and saw the small figure next to the clock tower,

he realized right away that it was Lina. He saw her raise

her arm and wave and hop about, and for a second he

wondered what it would be like to be up there, looking

out over the whole city, laughing and waving. When

Lina came down, he wanted to speak to her. But he

knew he was filthy-looking and that she would ask him

questions he didn't want to answer. So he turned away.

Walking fast, he headed for home.

39

CHAPTER 3

Under Ember

That morning, Doon had arrived at the Pipeworks full

of anticipation. This was the world of serious work at

last, where he would get a chance to do something useful.

What he'd learned in school, and from his father,

and from his own investigations--he could put it all to

good purpose now.

He pushed open the heavy Pipeworks door and

stepped inside. The air smelled strongly of dampness

and moldy rubber, which seemed to him a pleasant,

interesting smell. He strode up a hallway where yellow

slickers hung from pegs on the walls. At the end of the

hallway was a room full of people, some of them

sitting on benches and pulling on knee-high rubber

boots, some struggling into their slickers, some buckling

on tool belts. A raucous clamor filled the room.

Doon watched from the doorway, eager to join in but

not sure what to do.

40

After a moment a man emerged from the throng.

He thrust out a hand. "Lister Munk, Pipeworks

director," he said. "You're the new boy, right? What

size feet do you have--large, medium, or small?"

"Medium," said Doon, and Lister found him a

slicker and a pair of boots. The boots were so ancient

that their green rubber was cracked all over, as if covered

with spiderwebs. He gave Doon a tool belt, too, in

which were wrenches and hammers, spools of wire

and tape, and tubes of some sort of black goop.

"You'll be in Tunnel 97 today," Lister said. "Arlin

Froll will go down with you and show you what to do."

He pointed at a short, delicate-looking girl with a

white-blond braid down her back. "She may not look

like an expert, but she is."

Doon buckled his tool belt around his waist and

put on his slicker, which, for some reason, smelled like

sweaty feet. "This way," said Arlin, without saying hello

or smiling. She wove through the crowd of workers to

a door marked "Stairway" and opened it.

Stone steps led so far down that Doon couldn't see

the end of them. On either side was a sheer wall of

dark reddish stone, glistening with dampness. There

was no railing. Along the ceiling ran a single wire from

which a light bulb hung every few yards. Water stood

in shallow pools on each stair, in the hollow worn into

the stones by years of footsteps.

They started down. Doon concentrated on his

41
feet--the clumsy boots made it hard not to stumble.

As they went deeper, he began to hear a low roar, so

low he seemed to hear it more with his stomach than

his ears. It grew louder and louder--was it a machine

of some kind? Maybe the generator?

The stairway came to an end at a door marked

"Main Tunnel." Arlin opened it, and as they stepped

through, Doon realized that the sound he had been

hearing wasn't a machine. It was the river.

He stood still, staring. Like most people, he had

never been really sure what a river was--just that it

was water that somehow flowed on its own. He'd

imagined it would be like the clear, narrow stream that

came out of the kitchen faucet, only bigger, and horizontal

instead of vertical. But this was something

entirely different--not a stream of water, but endless

tons of it pouring by. Wide as the widest street in

Ember, churning and dipping and swirling, the river

roared past, its turbulent surface like black, liquid glass

scattered with flecks of light. Doon had never seen

anything that moved so fast, and he had never heard

such a thunderous, heart-stopping roar.

The path they stood on was about six feet wide

and ran parallel to the river for farther than Doon

could see in both directions. In the wall along the path

were openings that must lead, Doon thought, to the

tunnels that branched everywhere below the city. A

42

string of lights like the one in the stairway hung high

up against the arched ceiling.

Doon knew he was standing beneath the north

edge of Ember. In school, you were taught to remember

the directions this way: north was the direction of

the river; south was the direction of the greenhouses;

east was the direction of the school; and west was the

direction left over, having nothing in particular to

mark it. All the Pipeworks tunnels branched off from

the main tunnel to the south, toward the city.

Arlin leaned toward Doon and shouted into his

ear. "First we'll go to the beginning of the river," she

said. She led him up the main tunnel for a long way.

They passed other people in yellow slickers, who

greeted Arlin with a nod and glanced curiously at

Doon. After fifteen minutes or so, they came to the east

edge of the Pipeworks, where the river surged up from

a deep chasm in the ground, churning so violently that

its dark water turned white and filled the air with a spray that wet Doon's face.

In the wall to their right was a wide double door.

"See that door right there?" Arlin shouted, pointing.

"Yes," Doon shouted back.

"That's the generator room."

"Can we go in?"

"Of course not!" said Arlin. "You have to have

special permission." She pointed back down the main

43

tunnel. "Now we'll go to the end of the river," she said.

She led him back, past the stairway door, all the

way to the west edge of the Pipeworks. There the river

flowed into a huge opening in the wall and vanished

into darkness.

"Where does it go?" Doon asked.

Arlin just shrugged. "Back into the ground, I

guess. Now let's find Tunnel 97 and get to work." She

pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket. "This

is the map," she said. "You have one in your pocket,

too. You have to use the map to find your way around

in here." The map looked to Doon like an immense centipede--the river arched across the top of the page

like the centipede's body, and the tunnels dangled

down from it like hundreds of long, long legs all tangled

up with each other.

To get to Tunnel 97, they followed a complicated

route through passageways lined with crusty, rusted

pipes that carried water to all the buildings of Ember.

Puddles stood on the floor of the tunnel, and water

dripped in brown rivulets down the walls. Just as in the

main tunnel, there was a string of bulbs along the

ceiling that provided dim light. Doon occupied his

mind by calculating how far underground he was.

From the river to the ceiling of the main tunnel must

be thirty feet or so, he thought. Above that were the

storerooms, which occupied a layer at least twenty feet high. So that meant he was fifty feet underground,

44

with tons of earth and rock and buildings above him.

The thought made him tense up his shoulders. He cast

a quick glance upward, as if all that weight might collapse

onto his head.

"Here we are," said Arlin. She was standing next to

a leak that spurted a stream of water straight out from

the wall. "We have to turn the shut-off valve, take the

pipe apart, put on a new connector, and stick it back

together again."

With wrenches, hammers, washers, and black

goop, they did this, getting soaked in the process. It

took them most of the morning and proved to Doon

that the city was in even worse shape than he'd suspected.

Not only were the lights about to fail and the

supplies about to run out, but the water system was

breaking down. The whole city was crumbling, and

what was anyone doing about it?

When the lunch break came, Arlin took her lunch

sack from a pocket in her tool belt and went off to

meet some friends a few tunnels away. "You stay right

here and wait until I get back," she said as she left. "If

you wander around, you'll get lost."

But Doon set out as soon as she disappeared.

Using his map, he found his way back to the main

tunnel, then hurried to the east end. He wasn't going to

wait for special permission to see the generator. He was

pretty sure he could find a way to get in on his own,

and he did. He simply stood by the door and waited for

45

someone to come out. Quite soon, a stout woman

carrying a lunch sack pushed open the door and

walked away. She didn't notice him. Before the door

could close again, Doon slipped inside.

Such a horrendous noise met him that he staggered

backward a few steps. It was an earsplitting,

growling, grinding, screaming noise, shot through

with a hoarse rackety-rackety sound and underscored

with a deep chugga-chugga-chugga. Doon clapped his

hands over his ears and stepped forward. In front of

him was a gigantic black machine, two stories high. It

was vibrating so hard it looked as if it might explode

any second. Several people wearing earmuffs were

busy around it. None of them noticed him come in.

He tapped one of them on the shoulder, and the

person jumped and whirled around. He was an old

man, Doon saw, with a deeply lined brown face.

"I want to learn about the generator!" Doon

screamed, but he might as well have saved his breath.

No one could be heard in the uproar. The old man

glared at him, made a shooing motion with his hand,

and turned back to work.

Doon stood and watched for a while. Beside the

huge machine were ladders on wheels that the workers

pushed back and forth and climbed up on to reach the

high parts. All over the room, greasy-looking cans and

tools littered the floor. Against the walls stood big bins

holding every kind of bolt and screw and gear and

46

lever and rod and tube, all of them black with age and

jumbled together. The workers scurried between the

bins and the generator or simply stood and watched

the thing shake.

After a few minutes, Doon left. He was horrified.

All his life he had studied how things worked--it was

one of his favorite things to do. He could take apart an

old watch and put it back together exactly as it had

been. He understood how the faucets in the sink

worked. He'd fixed the toilet many times. He'd made a

wheeled cart out of the parts of an old armchair. He

even had a hazy idea of what was going on in the

refrigerator. He was proud of his mechanical talent.

There was only one thing he didn't understand at all,

and that was electricity. What was the power that ran

through the wires and into the light bulbs? Where did

it come from? He had thought that if he could just get

a look at the generator, he would have the clue he

needed. From there, he could begin to work on a solution

that would keep the lights of Ember burning.

But one glimpse of the generator showed him how

foolish he was. He'd expected to see something whose

workings he could understand--a wheel turning, a

spark being struck, some wires that led from one point

to another. But this monstrous roaring thing--he

wondered if anyone understood how it worked. It

looked as if all they were doing was trying to keep it

from flying apart.

47

As it turned out, he was right. When the day was

over and he was upstairs taking off his boots and

slicker, he saw the old man from the generator room

and went to talk to him. "Can you explain to me about

the generator?" he asked. "Can you tell me how it

works?"

The old man just sighed. "All I know is, the river

makes it go."

"But how?"

The man shrugged. "Who knows? Our job is just

to keep it from breaking down. If a part breaks, we got

to put on a new one. If a part freezes up, we got to oil

it." He wiped his hand wearily across his forehead,

leaving a streak of black grease. "I been working on the

generator for twenty years. It's always managed to chug

along, but this year ... I don't know. The thing seems

to break down every couple minutes." He cracked a

wry smile. "Of course, I hear we might run out of light

bulbs before that, and then it won't matter if the

generator works or not."

Running out of light bulbs, running out of power,

running out of time--disaster was right around the

corner. That's what Doon was thinking about when he

stopped outside the Gathering Hall on his way home

and saw Lina on the roof. She looked so free and happy

up there. He didn't know why she was on the roof, but

he wasn't surprised. It was the kind of thing she did,

turning up in unexpected places, and now that she was

48

a messenger, she could go just about anywhere. But

how could she be so lighthearted when everything was

falling apart?

He headed for home. He lived with his father in a

two-bedroom apartment over his father's shop in

Greengate Square--the Small Items shop, which sold

things like nails, pins, tacks, clips, springs, jar lids,

doorknobs, bits of wire, shards of glass, chunks of

wood, and other small things that might be useful in

some way. The Small Items shop had overflowed

somewhat into their apartment above. In their front

room, where other people might display a nice teapot

on a tabletop or a few attractive squashes or tomatoes

on a shelf, they had buckets and boxes and baskets full

of spare items for the shop, things Doon's father had

collected but not yet organized for selling. Often these

items spilled over onto the floor. It was easy to trip

over things in this apartment, and not a good idea to

go barefoot.

Today Doon didn't stop in at the shop to see his

father before going upstairs. He wasn't in the mood for

conversation. He removed two buckets of stuff from

the couch--it looked like mostly shoe heels--and

flopped down on the cushions. He'd been stupid to

think he could understand the generator just by looking

at it, when other people had been working on it

their entire lives. The thing was, he had to admit, he'd

always thought he was smarter than other people. He'd

49

been sure he could learn about electricity and help

save the city. He wanted to be the one to do it. He had

imagined many times a ceremony in Harken Square,

organized to thank him for saving Ember, with the

entire population in attendance and his father beaming

from the front row. All Doon's life, his father had

been saying to him, "You're a good boy and a smart

boy. You'll do grand things someday, I know you will."

But Doon hadn't done much that was grand so far. He

ached to do something truly important, like finding

the secret of electricity, and, as his father watched, be

rewarded for his achievement. The size of the reward

didn't matter. A small certificate would do, or maybe a

badge to sew on his jacket.

Now he was stuck in the muck of the Pipeworks,

patching up pipes that would leak and break again in a

matter of days. It was even more useless and boring

than being a messenger. The thought made him suddenly

furious. He sat up, grabbed a shoe heel out of the

bucket at this feet, and hurled it with all his might. It

arrived at the front door just as the door opened. Doon

heard a hard thwack and a loud "Ouch!" at the same

moment. Then he saw the long, lean, tired-looking

face of his father in the doorway.

Doon's anger drained away. "Oh, I hit you, Father.

I'm sorry."

Doon's father rubbed the side of his head. He was

a tall man, bald as a peeled potato, with a high fore

50

head and a long chin. He had kind, slightly puzzled

gray eyes.

"Got me in the ear," he said. "What was that?"

"I got angry for a second," said Doon. "I threw one

of these old heels."

"I see," said his father. He brushed some bottle

tops off a chair and sat down. "Does it have to do with

your first day at work, son?"

"Yes," said Doon.

His father nodded. "Why don't you tell me about

it," he said.

Doon told him. When he was finished, his father

ran a hand across his bald head as if smoothing down

the hair that wasn't there. He sighed. "Well," he said, "it

sounds unpleasant, I have to admit. About the generator,

especially--that's bad news. But the Pipeworks is

your assignment, no way around it. What you get is

what you get. What you do with what you get,

though . . . that's more the point, wouldn't you say?"

He looked at Doon and smiled, a bit sadly.

"I guess so," Doon said. "But what can I do?"

"I don't know," said his father. "You'll think of

something. You're a clever boy. The main thing is to

pay attention. Pay close attention to everything, notice

what no one else notices. Then you'll know what no

one else knows, and that's always useful." He took off

his coat and hung it from a peg on the wall. "How's the

worm?" he asked.

51

"I haven't looked at it yet" said Doon. He went

into his room and came out with a small wooden box

covered with an old scarf. He set the box on the table

and took the scarf off, and he and his father both bent

over to look inside.

A couple of limp cabbage leaves lay on the bottom

of the box. On one of the leaves was a worm about an

inch long. A few days before school ended, Doon had

found the worm on the underside of a cabbage leaf he

was slicing up for dinner. It was a pale soft green, velvety

smooth all over, with tiny, stubby legs.

Doon had always been fascinated by bugs. He

wrote down his observations about them in a book he

had titled Crawling and Flying Things. Each page of the

book was divided lengthwise down the center. On the

left he drew his pictures, with a pencil sharpened to a

needle-like point: moth wings with their branching

patterns of veins; spider legs, which had minute hairs

and tiny feet like claws; beetles, with their feelers and

their glossy armor. On the right, he wrote what he

observed about each creature. He noted what it ate,

where it slept, where it laid its eggs, and--if he knew-- how long it lived.

This was difficult with fast-moving creatures like

moths and spiders. To learn anything about them, he

had to catch what glimpses he could as they lived their

lives out in the open. If he put them in a box, they

scrambled around for a few days and then died.

52

This worm, though, was different. It seemed perfectly

happy to live in the box Doon had made for it.

So far, it did only three things: eat, sleep (it looked like

sleeping, though Doon couldn't tell if the worm closed

its eyes--or even if it had eyes), and expel tiny black

poop balls. That was it.

"I've had it for five days now," said Doon. "It's

twice as big as it was when I got it. It's eaten two square

inches of cabbage leaf."

"You're writing all this down?"

Doon nodded.

"Maybe," said his father, "you'll find some interesting

new bugs in the Pipeworks."

"Maybe," said Doon. But to himself he said, No,

that's not enough. I can't go plodding around the

Pipeworks, stopping up leaks, looking for bugs, and

pretending there's no emergency. I have to find something

important down there, something that's going to

help. I have to. I just have to.

53

CHAPTER 4

Something Lost, Nothing Found

One day when Lina had been a messenger for several

weeks, she came home to find that Granny had thrown

all the cushions from the couch onto the floor, ripped

up a corner of the couch's lining, and was pulling out

wads of stuffing.

"What are you doing?" Lina cried.

Granny looked up. Wisps of sofa stuffing stuck to

the front of her dress and clung to her hair. "Something

is lost," she said. "I think it might be in here."

"What's lost, Granny?"

"I don't quite recall," said the old woman. "Something

important."

"But Granny, you're ruining the couch. What will

we sit on?"

Granny tore a bit more of the covering off the

couch and yanked out another puff of stuffing. "It

54

doesn't matter," she said. "I'll put it back together

later."

"Let's put it back now," Lina said. "I don't think

what's lost is in there."

"You don't know," said Granny darkly. But she sat

back on her heels, looking tired.

Lina began cleaning up the mess. "Where's the

baby?" she asked.

Granny gazed at Lina blankly. "The baby?"

"You haven't forgotten the baby?"

"Oh, yes. She's ... I think she's down in the shop."

"By herself?" Lina stood up and ran down the

stairs. She found Poppy sitting on the floor of the

shop, enmeshed in a tangle of yellow yarn. As soon as

she saw Lina, Poppy began to howl.

Lina picked her up and unwound the yarn, talking

soothingly, though she was so upset that her fingers

trembled. For Granny to forget the baby was dangerous.

Poppy could fall downstairs and hurt herself. She

could wander out into the street and get lost. Granny

had been forgetful lately, but this was the first time

she'd completely forgotten about Poppy.

When they got upstairs, Granny was kneeling on

the floor gathering up the white tufts of stuffing and

jamming them back into the hole she'd made in the

couch. "It wasn't in there," she said sadly.

"What wasn't?"

55

"It was lost a long time ago," said Granny. "My

father told me about it."

Lina sighed impatiently. More and more, her

grandmother's mind seemed caught in the past. She

could explain the rules of pebblejacks, which she'd last

played when she was eight, or tell you what happened

at the Singing when she was twelve, or who she'd

danced with at the Cloving Square Dance when she

was sixteen, but she would forget what had happened

the day before yesterday.

"They heard him talking about it when he died,"

she said to Lina.

"They heard who talking?"

"My grandfather. The seventh mayor."

"And what did they hear him say?"

"Ah," said her grandmother with a faraway look.

"That's the mystery. He said he couldn't get at it. 'Now

it is lost,' he said."

"But what was it?"

"He didn't say."

Lina gave up. It didn't matter anyway. Probably the

lost thing was the old man's left sock, or his hairbrush.

But for some reason, the story had taken root in

Granny's mind.

The next morning on her way to work, Lina

stopped in at the house of their neighbor, Evaleen

Murdo. Mrs. Murdo was brisk in her manner, and in

her person thin and straight as a nail, but she was kind

56

in her unsmiling way. Until a few years ago, she'd run

a shop that sold paper and pencils. But when paper

and pencils became scarce, her shop closed. Now she

spent her days sitting by her upstairs window, watching

people in the street with her sharp eyes. Lina told

Mrs. Murdo about her grandmother's forgetfulness.

"Will you look in on her sometimes and make sure

things are all right?" she asked.

"I will, certainly," said Mrs. Murdo, nodding twice,

firmly. Lina went away feeling better.

That day Lina was given a message by Arbin Swinn,

who ran the Callay Street Vegetable Market, to be

delivered to Lina's friend Clary, the greenhouse

manager. Lina was glad to carry this message, though

her gladness was mixed a little with sadness. Her father

had worked in the greenhouses. It still felt strange not

to see him there.

The five greenhouses produced all of Ember's

fresh food. They were out past Greengate Square, at

the farthest edge of the city. Nothing else was out there

but the trash heaps, great moldering, stinking hills that

stood on rocky ground and were lit by a few floodlights

high up on poles.

It used to be that no one went to the trash heaps

but the trash collectors, who dumped the trash and

left it. Now and then a couple of children might go

there to play, scrambling up the side of the heaps and

57

tumbling down. Lina and Lizzie used to go when

they were younger. They'd pull out the occasional

treasure--some empty cans, maybe an old hat or a

cracked plate. But not anymore. Now there were

guards posted at the trash heaps to make sure no one

poked around. Just recently, an official job called trash

sifter had been created. Every day a team of people

methodically sorted through the trash heaps in search

of anything that might be at all useful. They'd come

back with broken chair legs that could be used for

repairing window frames, bent nails that could

become hooks for clothes, even filthy rags, stiff with

dirt, that could be washed out and used to patch holes

in window blinds or mattress covers. Lina hadn't

thought about it before, but now she wondered about

the trash sifters. Were they there because Ember really

was running out of everything?

Beyond the trash heaps there was nothing at all-- that is, only the vast Unknown Regions, where the

darkness was absolute.

From the end of Diggery Street, Lina could see the

long, low greenhouses. They looked like big tin cans

that had been cut in half and laid on their sides. Her

breath came a little faster. The greenhouses were a

home to her, in a way.

She knew that she was most likely to find Clary

somewhere around Greenhouse 1, where the office

was, so that was where she headed first. A small tool

58

shed stood beside the door to Greenhouse 1; Lina

peeked into it but saw only rakes and shovels. So she

opened the greenhouse door. Warm, furry-smelling

}i    air washed over her, and all her love for this place

;     came rushing back. Out of habit, she gazed up toward

the ceiling, as if she might see her father there on

his ladder, tinkering with the sprinkler system, the

temperature gauges, and the lights.

The greenhouse light was whiter than the yellowish

light of the Ember streetlamps. It came from long % tubes that ran the length of the ceiling. In this light, the

leaves of the plants shone so green they almost hurt

Lina's eyes. On the days when she'd come here with her

I     father, Lina had spent hours wandering along the

I gravel paths that ran between the vegetable beds, snifff'

ing the leaves, poking her fingers into the dirt, and

I learning to tell the plants apart by their look and smell.

ft There were the beans and peas with their curly tenf

drils, the dark green spinach, the ruffled lettuce, and

the hard, pale green cabbages, some of them as big as a

newborn baby's head. What she loved best was to rub

the leaves of the tomato plant between her fingers and

breathe in their pungent, powdery smell.

A long, straight path led from one end of the

building to the other. About halfway down the path,

Clary was crouching by a bed of carrots. Lina ran

toward her, and Clary smiled, brushed the dirt from

her hands, and stood up.

59

Clary was tall and solid, with big hands and

knobby knuckles. She had a square jaw and square

shoulders, and brown hair cut in a short, squarish way.

You might have thought from looking at her that she

was a gruff, unfriendly person--but her nature was

just the opposite. She was more comfortable with

plants than with people, Lina's father had always said.

She was strong but shy, a person of much knowledge

but few words. Lina had always liked her. Even when

she was little, Clary did not treat her like a baby but

gave her jobs to do--pulling up carrots, picking

bugs off cabbages. Since her parents had died, Lina

had come many times to talk to Clary, or just to

work silently beside her. Clary was always kind to her,

and working with the plants took Lina's mind off her

grief.

"Well," said Clary. She smiled at Lina, wiped her

hands on her already grimy pants, and smiled some

more. Finally she said, "You're a messenger."

"Yes," said Lina, "and I have a message for you. It's

from Arbin Swinn. 'Please add four extra crates to my

order, two of potatoes and two of cabbages.'"

Clary frowned. "I can't do that" she said. "At least,

I can send him the cabbages, but only one small crate

of potatoes."

"Why?" asked Lina.

"Well, we have a sort of problem with the

potatoes."

60

"What is it?" asked Lina. Clary had a habit of

answering questions in the briefest possible way. You

had to keep asking and asking before she would believe

you really wanted to know and weren't just being

polite. Then she would explain, and you could see how

much she knew, and how much she loved her work.

"I'll show you," she said. She led the way to a bed

where the green leaves were spotted with black. "A new

disease. I haven't seen it before. When you dig up the

potatoes, they're runny inside instead of hard, and they

; stink. I'm going to have to throw out all the ones in this

bed. There are only a few beds left that aren't infected."

Most people in Ember had potatoes at every

I meal--mashed, boiled, stewed, roasted. They'd had

\ fried potatoes, too, in the days before the cooking oil

ran out.

|     "I'd hate it if we couldn't have potatoes anymore,"

I Lina said.

I     "I would, too," said Clary

*     They sat on the edge of the potato bed and talked

for a while, about Lina's grandmother and the baby,

about the trouble Clary was having with the beehives,

and about the greenhouse sprinkler system. "It hasn't

worked right since . . ." Clary hesitated and glanced

; sideways at Lina. "For a long time," she said. She didn't

I want to say "since your father died" Lina understood

that.

She stood up. "I should go," she said. "I have to

61

take Arbin Swinn the answer to his message."

"I hope you'll come again," said Clary. "You can

come whenever ... you can come any time." Lina said

thank you and turned to go.

But just outside the greenhouse door, she heard

running footsteps and a strange, high, sobbing sound.

Or rather, she heard sobs and then a wail, sobs and

then a shout, and then more sobs, getting louder. She

looked back toward the rear of the greenhouses,

toward the trash heaps. "Clary," she called. "There's

something..."

Clary came out and listened, too.

"Do you hear it?"

"Yes," said Clary. She frowned. "I'm afraid

it's... it's someone who..." She peered toward the crying

noise. "Yes . . . here he comes." Her strong hand

gripped Lina's shoulder for a moment. "You'd better

go," she said. "I'll take care of this."

"But what is it?"

"Never mind. Just go on."

But Lina wanted to see. Once Clary had walked

away, she ducked behind the toolshed. From there she

watched.

The noise came closer. Out beyond the trash

heaps, a figure appeared. It was a man, running and

stumbling, his arms flopping. He looked as if he was

about to fall over, as if he could hardly pick up his feet.

In fact, as he came closer he did fall. He tripped over a

62

hose and crumpled to the ground as if his bones had

dissolved.

Clary stooped down and said something to him in

a voice too low for Lina to hear.

The man was panting. When he turned over and

sat up, Lina saw that his face was scratched and his eyes

wide open in fright. His sobs had turned into hiccups.

She recognized him. It was Sadge Merrall, one of the

clerks in the Supply Depot. He was a quiet, long-faced

man who always looked worried.

Clary helped him to his feet. The two of them

came slowly toward the greenhouse, and as they got

closer Lina could hear what the man was saying. He

spoke very fast in a weak, trembly voice, hardly stopping

for breath. ". . . was sure I could do it. I said to

myself, Just one step after another, that's all, one step

after another. I knew it would be dark. Who doesn't

know that? But I thought, Well, dark can't hurt you. I'll

just keep going, I thought...."

He stumbled and sagged against Clary. "Careful,"

Clary said. They reached the door of the greenhouse,

and Clary struggled to open it. Without thinking, Lina

darted out from behind the toolshed and opened it for

her. Clary shot her a quick frown but said nothing.

Sadge didn't stop talking. "... But then the farther

I went the darker it was, and you can't just keep walking

into black dark, can you? It's like a wall in front of

you. I kept turning around to look at the lights of the

63

city, because that's all there was to see, and then I'd say

to myself, Don't look back, keep moving. But I kept

tripping and falling    The ground is rough out there,

I scraped my hands." He held up one hand and stared

at the red scratches on it, which oozed drops of blood.

They got him into Clary's office and sat him down

in her chair. He rambled on.

"Be brave, I said to myself. I kept going and going,

but then all of a sudden I thought, Anything could be

out here! There could be a pit a thousand feet deep

right in front of me. There could be... something that

bites. I've heard stories . . . rats as big as garbage

bins . . . And I had to get out of there. So I turned

around and I ran."

"Never mind," said Clary. "You're all right now.

Lina, get him some water."

Lina found a cup and filled it from the sink in the

corner. Sadge took it with a shaking hand and drank it

down.

"What were you looking for?" Lina asked. She

knew what she would have been looking for if she'd

gone out there. She'd thought about it countless times.

Sadge stared at her. He seemed to have to puzzle

over her question. Finally he said, "I was looking for

something that could help us."

"What would it be?"

"I don't know. Like a stairway that leads some

64

where, maybe. Or a building full of ... I don't know,

useful things."

"But you didn't find anything? Or see anything?"

Lina asked, disappointed.

"Nothing! Nothing! There is nothing out there!"

His voice became a shout and his eyes looked wild

again. "Or if there is, we can never get to it. Never! Not

without a light." He took a long, shaky breath. For a

while he stared at the floor. Then he stood up. "I think

I'm all right now. I'll be going."

With uncertain steps, he went down the path and

out the door.

"Well," said Clary. "I'm sorry that happened while

you were here. I was afraid you might be scared, that's

why I told you to go."

But Lina was full of questions, not fear. She had

heard tales of people who tried to go out into the

Unknown Regions. She had thought about it herself-- in fact, she'd wondered the same things as Sadge. She

had imagined making her way out into the dark and

coming to a wall in which she would find the door to

a tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel would be the

other city, the city of light that she had dreamed about.

All it would take was the courage to walk away from

Ember and into the darkness, and then to keep going.

It might have been possible if you could carry a

light to show the way. But in Ember, there was no such

65

thing as a light you could carry with you. Outside

lights were fixed to their poles, or to the roofs of

houses; inside lights were set into the ceiling or had

cords that had to be plugged in. Over the course of

Ember's history, various clever people had tried to

invent a movable light, but all of them had failed. One

man had managed to ignite the end of a stick of wood

by holding it against the electric burner on his stove.

He'd run across the city with the flaming stick, planning

to use it to light his journey. But by the time he

got to the trash heaps, his torch had gone out. Other

people latched on to his idea--one woman who lived

on Dedlock Street, very near the edge of the city, managed

to get into the Unknown Regions with her flaming

stick. But the stick burned quickly, and before she

could go far, the flame singed her hands and she threw

it down. Everyone who had tried to penetrate the

Unknown Regions had come back within a few hours,

their enterprise a failure.

Lina and Clary stood by the open door of the

greenhouse and watched Sadge shuffle toward the city.

As he neared the trash heaps, two guards who had

been sitting on the ground got to their feet. They

walked over to Sadge, and each of them took hold of

one of his arms.

"Uh-oh," said Clary. "Those guards are always

looking for trouble."

"But Sadge hasn't broken any law," said Lina.

66

"Doesn't matter. They need something to do.

They'll get some fun out of scaring him." One of the

guards was shaking his finger at Sadge and saying

something in a voice almost loud enough for Lina to

hear. "Poor man," said Clary with a sigh. "He's the

fourth one this year."

The guards were marching Sadge away now, one

on either side of him. Sadge looked limp and small

between them.

"What do you think is out in the Unknown

Regions, Clary?"

Clary stared down at the ground, where the light

from the greenhouse was casting long, thin shadows of

them both. "I don't know. Nothing, I guess."

"And do you think Ember is the only light in the

dark world?"

Clary sighed. "I don't know," she said. She gave

Lina a long look. Her eyes, Lina thought, looked a little

sad. They were a deep brown, almost the color of

the earth in the garden bed.

Clary put a hand in her pocket and drew something

out. "Look," she said. In the palm of her hand

was a white bean. "Something in this seed knows how

to make a bean plant. How does it know that?"

"I don't know," said Lina, staring at the hard, flat

bean.

"It knows because it has life in it," said Clary. "But

where does life come from? What is life?"

67

Lina could see that words were welling up in Clary

now; her eyes were bright, her cheeks were rosy.

"Take a lamp, for instance. When you plug it in, it

comes alive, in a way. It lights up. That's because it's

connected to a wire that's connected to the generator,

which is making electricity, though don't ask me how.

But a bean seed isn't connected to anything. Neither

are people. We don't have plugs and wires that connect

us to generators. What makes living things go is inside them somehow." Her dark eyebrows drew together

over her eyes. "What I mean is," she said finally, "something

is going on that we don't understand. They say

the Builders made the city. But who made the Builders?

Who made us7. I think the answer must be somewhere

outside of Ember."

"In the Unknown Regions?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know." She brushed

her hands together in a time-to-get-back-to-work way.

"Clary," said Lina quickly, "here's what I think."

Her heart sped up. She hadn't told this to anyone

before. "In my mind, I see another city." Lina watched

to see if Clary was going to laugh at her, or smile in

that overly kind way. She didn't, so Lina went on. "It

isn't like Ember; it's white and gleaming. The buildings

are tall and sort of sparkle. Everything is bright, not

just inside the buildings but all around them, too, even

up in the sky. I know it's just my imagination, but it

feels real. I think it is real."

68

Clary said, "Hmmm," and then she said, "Where

would such a city be?"

"That's what I don't know. Or how to get to it. I

keep thinking there's a door somewhere, maybe out in

the Unknown Regions--a door that leads out of

Ember, and then behind the door a road."

Clary just shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know,"

she said. "I have to get back to work. But here--take

this." She handed Lina the bean seed, took a little pot

from a shelf, scooped some dirt into it, and handed the

pot to Lina, too. "Stick the bean in here and water it

every day," she said. "It looks like nothing, like a little

white stone, but inside it there's life. That must be a

sort of clue, don't you think? If we could just figure it

out."

Lina took the seed and the pot. "Thank you," she

said. She wanted to give Clary a hug but didn't, in case

it would embarrass her. Instead, she just said goodbye

and raced back toward the city.

69

CHAPTER 5

On Knight Street

Granny's mind was getting more and more muddled.

Lina would come home in the evenings and find her

rifling through the kitchen cupboards, surrounded by

cans and jars with their lids off, or tearing the covers

off her bed and trying to lift up the mattress with her

skinny arms. "It was an important thing," she would

say, "the thing that was lost."

"But if you don't know what it was," said Lina,

"how will you know when you've found it?"

Granny didn't try to answer this question. She just

flapped her hands at Lina and said, "Never mind, never

mind, never mind," and kept on searching.

These days, Mrs. Murdo spent a great deal of time

sitting by their window rather than her own. She

would tell Granny she was just coming to keep her

company. "I don't want her to keep me company,"

70

Granny complained to Lina, and Lina said, "Maybe

she's lonely, Granny. Let her come."

Lina rather liked having Mrs. Murdo around--it

was a bit like having a mother there. She wasn't anything

like Lina's own mother, who had been a dreamy,

absent-minded sort of person. Mrs. Murdo was

mother-like in quite a different way. She made sure

they all ate a good breakfast in the morning--usually

potatoes with mushroom gravy and beet tea. She lined

up the vitamin pills by each person's plate and made

sure they were swallowed. When Mrs. Murdo was

there, shoes got picked up and put away, spills were

wiped off the furniture, and Poppy always had on

clean clothes. Lina could relax when Mrs. Murdo was

around. She knew things were taken care of.

Every week, Lina--like all workers between age

twelve and age fifteen--had Thursday off. One

Thursday, as she was standing in line at the Garn

Square market, hoping to get a bag of turnips for stew

that night, she overheard a startling conversation

between two people standing behind her.

"What I wanted," said one voice, "was some paint

for my front door. It hasn't been painted for years. It's

gray and peeling, horrible. I heard a store over on

Night Street had some. I was hoping for blue."

"Blue would be nice," said the other voice wistfully.

71

"But when I got there," the first voice continued,

"the man said he had no paint, never had. Disagreeable

man. All he had were a few colored pencils."

Colored pencils! Lina had not seen colored pencils

in any store for ages. Once she'd had two red ones, a

blue one, and a brown one. She'd used these for her

drawing until they were stubs too small to hold. Now

she had only one plain pencil left, and it was rapidly

growing shorter.

She longed to have colored pencils for her pictures

of the imaginary city. She had a feeling it was a colorful

place, though she didn't know what its colors might

be. There were other things, of course, on which her

money would be better spent. Granny's only coat was

full of holes and coming apart at the seams. But

Granny rarely went out, Lina told herself. She was

either at home or in her yarn shop. She didn't really

need a new coat, did she? Besides, how much could a

few pencils cost? She could probably get a coat for

Granny and some pencils.

So that afternoon she set out for Night Street. She

took Poppy with her. Poppy had learned how to ride

piggyback--she wrapped her legs around Lina's

waist and gripped Lina's throat with her small, strong

fingers.

On Budloe Street, people were standing in long

lines with their bundles of laundry at the washing stations.

The washers stirred the clothes in the washing

72

machines with long poles. In days past, the machines

themselves had whirled the clothes around, but not

one of them worked anymore.

Lina turned up Hafter Street, where the four

streetlamps were still out and a building crew was

repairing a partly collapsed roof. Orly Gordon called

out to her from high on a ladder, and Lina looked up

and waved. Farther on, she passed a woman with bits

of rope and string for sale and a man pulling a cart full

of carrots and beets to the grocery stores. At the corner,

a cluster of little children played catch with a rag ball.

The streets were alive with people today. Moving fast,

Lina threaded her way among them.

But as she went into Otterwill Street, she saw

something that made her slow down. A man was

standing on the steps of the Gathering Hall, shouting

and howling, and a crowd of people had gathered

around him. Lina went closer, and when she saw who

it was, her insides gave a lurch. It was Sadge Merrall.

His arms flailed wildly, and his eyes were stretched

wide open. In a high, rapid voice, he wailed out a

stream of words: "I have been to the Unknown

Regions!" he cried. "There is nothing, nothing, nothing

there! Did you think something out there might save

us? Ha! There's only darkness and monsters, darkness

and terrible deep holes, darkness forever! The rats are

the size of houses! The rocks are sharp as knives! The

darkness sucks your breath out! No hope for us out

73

there, oh no! No hope, no hope!" He went on like this

for a few minutes and then crumpled to the ground.

The people watching him looked at each other and

shook their heads.

"Gone mad," Lina heard someone say.

"Yes, completely," said someone else.

Suddenly Sadge sprang up again and resumed his

terrible shouting. The crowd stepped back. Some of

them hurried away. A few of them approached Sadge,

speaking in calming voices. They took him by the arms

and led him, still shouting, down the steps.

"Who dat? Who dat?" said Poppy in her small,

piercing voice. Lina turned away from the miserable

spectacle. "Hush, Poppy," she said. "It's a poor, sad

man. He doesn't feel good. We mustn't stare."

She headed toward Night Street, which ran along

Greengate Square. There a stringy-haired man sat

cross-legged on the ground playing a flute made out

of a drainpipe, and five or six Believers circled him,

clapping and singing. "Soon, soon, coming soon," they

sang. What's coming soon? Lina wondered, but she

didn't stop to ask.

Two blocks beyond, she came to a store that had

no sign in its window. This must be the one, she

thought.

At first it looked closed. Its window was dark. But

the door opened when she pushed on it, and a bell

attached to its doorknob clanked. From the back room

74

came a black-haired man with big teeth and a long

neck. "Yes?" he said.

Lina recognized him. He was the one who'd given

her the message for the mayor on her very first day of

work. His name was Hooper--no, Looper, that was it.

"Do you have pencils for sale?" she asked. It

seemed doubtful. The shop's shelves were empty

except for a few stacks of used paper.

Poppy squirmed on Lina's back and whimpered a

little.

"Sometimes," said Looper.

Poppy's whimper became a wail.

"All right, you can get down," Lina said to her.

She set her on the floor, where she tottered about

unsteadily.

"What I'd like to see," said Lina, "are your colored

pencils. If you have any."

"We have a few" said Looper. "They are somewhat expensive." He smiled, showing his pushy teeth.

"Could I see them?" said Lina.

He went into the back room and returned a moment later, carrying a small box, which he set down on the counter. He took the lid off. Lina bent forward

to look.

Inside the box were at least a dozen colored pencils--red, green, blue, yellow, purple, orange. They

had never even been sharpened; their ends were flat.

They had erasers. Lina's heart gave a few fast beats.

75

"How much are they?" she said.

"Probably too much for you," the man said.

"Probably not," said Lina. "I have a job."

"Good, good" the man said, smiling again. "No

need to take offense." He picked up the yellow pencil

and twirled it between his fingers. "Each pencil," he

said, "five dollars."

Five dollars! For seven, you could buy a coat--it

would be an old, patched coat, but still warm. "That's

too much," Lina said.

He shrugged and began to put the lid back on the

box.

"But maybe . . ." Lina's thoughts raced. "Let me

look at them again."

Once more the man lifted the lid and Lina bent

over the pencils. She picked one up. It was painted a

deep clear blue, and on its flat top was the blue dot of

the lead. The pink eraser was held on by a shiny metal

collar. So beautiful! I could buy just one, Lina thought.

Then I could save a little more and buy a coat for

Granny next month.

"Make up your mind," said the man. "I have other

customers who are interested, if you aren't."

"All right. I'll take one. No, wait" It was like

hunger, what she felt. It was the same as when her hand

sometimes seemed to reach out by itself to grab a piece

of food. It was too strong to resist. "1*11 take two," she

76

said, and a faint, dazzly feeling came over her at the

thought of what she was doing.

"Which two?" the man said.

There were more colors in that box of pencils than

in all of Ember. Ember's colors were all so much the

same--gray buildings, gray streets, black sky; even the

colors of people's clothes were faded from long use

into mud green, and rust red, and gray-blue. But these

colors--they were as bright as the leaves and flowers in

the greenhouse.

Lina's hand hovered over the pencils. "The blue

one," she said. "And ... the yellow one--no,

the...the..."

The man made an impatient noise in the back of

his throat.

"The green one," said Lina. "I'll take the blue and

the green." She lifted them out of the box. She took the

money from the pocket of her coat and handed it to

the man, and she put the pencils in her pocket. They

were hers now; she felt a fierce, defiant joy. She turned

to go, and that was when she saw that the baby was no

longer in the store.

"Poppy!" she cried. She whirled around. "Did you

see my little sister go out?" she asked the man. "Did

you see which way she went?"

He shrugged. "Didn't notice," he said.

Lina darted into the street and looked in both

77

directions. She saw lots of people, some children, but

no Poppy. She stopped an old woman. "Have you seen

a little girl, a baby, walking by herself? In a green

jacket, with a hood?" The old woman just stared at her

with dull eyes and shook her head.

"Poppy!" Lina called. "Poppy!" Her voice rose to a

shout. Such a little baby couldn't have gone far, she

thought. Maybe down toward Greengate Square,

where there were more people walking around. She

began to run.

And then the lights flickered, and flickered again,

and went out. Darkness slammed up in front of her

like a wall. She stumbled, caught herself, and stood

still. She could see absolutely nothing.

Shouts of alarm came from up and down the

street, and then silence. Lina stretched her arms out.

Was she facing the street or a building? Terror swept

through her. I must just stand still, she thought. The

lights will come on again in a few seconds, they always

do. But she thought of Poppy alone in the blackness,

and her legs went weak. I must find her.

She took a step. When she didn't bump into anything,

she took another step, and the fingers of her

right hand crumpled against something hard. The wall

of a building, she thought. Keeping her hand against it,

she turned left a little and took another step forward.

Then suddenly her hand touched empty air. This

78

would be Dedlock Street. Or had she passed Dedlock

Street already? She couldn't keep the picture of the

streets dear in her mind. The darkness seemed to fill

not just the city around her but the inside of her head

as well.

Heart pounding, she waited. Come back, lights,

she pleaded. Please come back. She wanted to call out

I     to Poppy, to tell her to stand still, not to be afraid, she

would come for her soon. But the darkness pressed

against her and she couldn't summon her voice. She

could hardly breathe. She wanted to claw the darkness

away from her eyes, as if it were someone's hands.

Small sounds came from here and there around

her--a whimpering, a shuffling. In the distance someone

called out incoherently. How many minutes had

gone by? The longest blackout ever had been three

minutes and fourteen seconds. Surely this was longer.

She could have endured it if she'd been on her

own. It was the thought of Poppy, lost, that she

couldn't stand--and lost because she had been paying

more attention to a box of pencils. Oh, she'd been selfish

and greedy, and now she was so, so sorry! She made

herself take another step forward. But then she

thought, What if I'm going away from Poppy?

She began to tremble, and she felt the sinking and dissolving

inside her that meant she was going to cry. Her

legs gave way like wet paper and she slid down until

79

she was sitting on the street, with her head on her

knees. Trembling, her mind a wordless whirl of dread,

she waited.

An endless time went by. A moan came from

somewhere to the left. A door slammed closed. Footsteps

started, then stopped. Into Lina's mind floated

the beginning of the worst question: What if the lights

never . . . ? She squeezed her arms around her knees

and made the question stop. Lights come back, she said

to herself. Lights come back, come back.

And suddenly they did.

Lina sprang up. There was the street again, and

people looking upward with their mouths hanging

open. All around, people started crying or wailing or

grinning in relief. Then all at once everyone started to

hurry, moving fast toward the safety of home in case it

should happen again.

Lina ran toward Greengate Square, stopping

everyone she passed. "Did you see a little girl walking

by herself just before the lights went out?" she asked.

"Green jacket with a hood?" But no one wanted to

listen to her.

On the Bee Street side of the square stood a few

people all talking at once and waving their arms. Lina

ran up to them and asked her question.

They stopped talking and stared at her. "How

could we have seen anyone? The lights were out,"

said Nammy Proggs, a tiny old woman whose back

80

was so bent that she had to twist her head sideways to

look up.

Lina said, "No, she wandered away before the lights

went out. She got away from me. She may have come

this direction."

"You have to keep your eye on a baby," Nammy

Proggs scolded.

"Babies need watching," said one of the women

who'd been singing with the Believers.

But someone else said, "Oh, a toddler? Green

jacket?" and he walked over to an open shop door and

called, "You have that baby in there?" and through the

door came someone leading Poppy by the hand.

Lina dashed to her and lifted her up. Poppy broke

into loud wails. "You're all right now," said Lina, holding

her tightly. "Don't worry, sweetie. You were just lost

a moment, now you're all right. I've got you, don't

worry." When she looked up to thank the person who'd

found her, she saw a face she recognized. It was Doon.

He looked the same as when she'd last seen him, except that his hair was shaggier. He had on the same baggy

brown jacket he always wore.

"She was marching up the street by herself," he

said. "No one knew who she belonged to, so I took her

into my father's shop."

"She belongs to me," Lina said. "She's my sister.

I was so afraid when she was lost. I thought she

might fall and hurt herself, or be knocked over,

81

or ... Anyway, thank you so much for rescuing her."

"Anyone would have," said Doon. He frowned and

looked down at the pavement.

Poppy had calmed down and was curled up

against Lina's chest with her thumb in her mouth.

"And your job--how is it?" Lina asked. "The

Pipeworks?"

Doon shrugged his shoulders. "All right," he said.

"Interesting, anyway."

She waited, but it seemed that was all he was going

to say. "Well, thank you again," she said. She hoisted

Poppy around to her back.

"Lucky for you Doon Harrow was around," said

Nammy Proggs, who'd been watching them with her

sideways glare. "He's a good-hearted boy. Anything

breaks at my house, he fixes it." She hobbled after Lina,

shaking a finger at her. "You'd better watch that baby

more carefully," she called.

"You shouldn't leave her alone," the flute player

added.

"I know," said Lina. "You're right."

When she got home, she put the tired baby to bed

in the bedroom they shared. Granny had been taking

an afternoon nap in the front room and hadn't noticed

the blackout at all. Lina told her that the lights had

gone out for a few minutes, but she didn't mention

anything about Poppy getting lost.

Later, in her bedroom, with Poppy asleep, she took

82

the two colored pencils from her pocket. They were

not quite as beautiful as they had been. When she held

them, she remembered the powerful wanting she had

felt in that dusty store, and the feeling of it was mixed

up with fear and shame and darkness.

83

CHAPTER 6

The Box in the Closet

It was strange how people didn't talk much about the

blackout. Power failures usually aroused lively discussion,

with clumps of people collecting on corners and

saying to each other, "Where were you when it happened?"

and "What's the matter with the electricians,

we should kick them out and get new ones," and that

sort of thing. This time, it was just the opposite. When

Lina went to work the next morning, the street was

oddly silent. People walked quickly, their eyes on the

ground. Those who did stop to talk spoke in low

voices, then hurried on their way.

That day, Lina carried the same message twelve

times. All the messengers were carrying it. It was simply

this, being passed from one person to another:

Seven minutes. The power failure had been more than

twice as long as any other so far.

84

Fear had settled over the city. Lina felt it like a cold

chill. She understood now that Doon had been speaking

the truth on Assignment Day. Ember was in grave

danger.

The next day a notice appeared on all the city's

kiosks:

TOWN MEETING

ALL CITIZENS ARE REQUESTED TO ASSEMBLE

IN HARKEN SQUARE AT 6 P.M. TOMORROW

TO RECEIVE IMPORTANT INFORMATION.

MAYOR LEMANDER COLE

What kind of important information? Lina wondered.

Good news or bad? She was impatient to hear it.

The next day, people streamed into Harken Square

from all four directions, crowding together so close

that each person hardly had room to move. Children

sat on the shoulders of fathers. Short people tried to

push toward the front. Lina spotted Lizzie and called a

greeting to her. She saw Vindie Chance, too, who had

brought her little brother. Lina had decided to leave

Poppy at home with Granny. There was too much danger

of losing her in a crowd like this.

The town clock began to strike. Six vibrating

bongs rang out, and a murmur of anticipation swept

through the crowd. People stood on tiptoe, craning

85

to see. The door of the Gathering Hall opened, and

the mayor came out, flanked by two guards. One

of the guards handed the mayor a megaphone, and

the mayor began to speak. His voice came through

the megaphone both blurry and crackly.

"People of Ember," he said. He waited. The crowd

fell silent, straining to hear.

"People of Ember," the mayor said again. He

looked from side to side. The light glinted off his

bald head. "Our city has experienced some slight diffcushlaylie.

Times like this require gresh peshn frush

all."

"What did he say?" people whispered urgently.

"What did he say? I couldn't hear him."

"Slight difficulties," someone said. "Requires great

patience from us all."

"But I stand here today," the mayor went on, "to

reassure you. Difficult times will pass. We are mayg

effri effiiff."

"What?" came the sharp whisper. "What did he

say?"

Those near the front passed word back. "Making

every effort," they said. "Every effort."

"Louder!" someone shouted.

The mayor's voice blared through the megaphone

louder but even less clear. "Wursh poshuling!" he said.

"Pank. Mushen pank. No rrrshen pank."

"We can't hear you!" someone else yelled. Lina felt

86

a stirring around her, a muttering. Someone pushed

against her back, forcing her forward.

"He said we mustn't panic," someone said. "He

said panic is the worst possible thing. No reason to

panic, he said."

On the steps of the Gathering Hall, the two guards

rhoved a little closer to the mayor. He raised the megaphone

and spoke again.

- ^"Slooshns!" he bellowed. "Arbingfoun!"

'Solutions," the people in front called to the

people in back. "Solutions are being found, he said."

"What solutions?" called a woman standing near

Lina. People elsewhere in the crowd echoed what the

woman had said. "What solutions? What solutions?"

Their cry became a chorus, louder and louder.

Again Lina felt the pressure from behind as people

moved forward toward the Gathering Hall. Jostling

arms poked her, bulky bodies bumped her and

crushed her. Her heart began to pound. I have to get

out of here! she thought.

She started ducking beneath arms and darting

into whatever space she could find, making her way

toward the rear of the crowd. Noise was rising everywhere.

The mayor's voice kept coming in blasts of

incomprehensible sound, and the people in the crowd

were either shouting angrily or yelping in fear of being

squashed. Someone stepped on Lina's foot, and her

scarf was half yanked off. For a few seconds she was

87

afraid she was going to be trampled. But at last she

struggled free and ran up onto the steps of the school.

From there she saw that the two guards were hustling

the mayor back through the door of the Gathering

Hall. The crowd roared, and a few people started hurling

whatever they could find--pebbles, garbage,

crumpled paper, even their own hats.

At the other side of the square, Doon and his

father battled their way down Gilly Street. "Move fast,"

his father said. "We don't want to be caught up in this

crowd." They crossed Broad Street and took the long

way home, through the narrow lanes behind the

school.

"Father," said Doon as they hurried along, "the

mayor is a fool, don't you think?"

For a moment his father didn't answer. Then he

said, "He's in a tough spot, son. What would you have

him do?"

"Not lie, at least," Doon said. "If he really has a

solution, he should have told us. He shouldn't pretend

he has solutions when he doesn't."

Doon's father smiled. "That would be a good

start," he agreed.

"It makes me so angry, the way he talks to us," said

Doon.

Doon's father put a hand on Doon's back and

steered him toward the corner. "A great many things

make you angry lately," he said.

88

"For good reason," said Doon.

"Maybe. The trouble with anger is, it gets hold of

you. And then you aren't the master of yourself anymore.

Anger is."

Doon walked on silently. Inwardly, he groaned. He

knew what his father was going to say, and he didn't

feel like hearing it.

"And when anger is the boss, you get--"

"I know," said Doon. "Unintended consequences."

"That's right. Like hitting your father in the ear

with a shoe heel."

"I didn't mean to."

"That's exactly my point."

They walked on down Pibb Street. Doon shoved

his hands into the pockets of his jacket and scowled at

the sidewalk. Father doesn't even have a temper, he

thought. He's as mild as a glass of water. He can't possibly

understand.

Lina was running. She'd already dismissed the

mayor's speech from her mind. She sped by people on

Otterwill Street going back to open their stores and

overheard snatches of conversation as she passed.

"Expects us to believe . . .," said one voice. "He's just

trying to keep us quiet," said another. "Heading

for disaster ..." said a third. All the voices shook

with anger and fear.

Lina didn't want to think about it. Her feet

89

slapped the stones of the street, her hair flew out

behind her. She would go home, she would make hot

potato soup for the three of them, and then she would

take out her new pencils and draw.

She climbed the stairs next to the yarn shop two at

a time and burst through the door of the apartment.

Something was on the floor just in front of her feet,

and she tripped and fell down hard on her hands and

knees. She stared. By the open closet door was a great

pile of coats and boots and bags and boxes, their contents

all spilled out and tangled up. A thumping and

rattling came from inside the closet.

"Granny?"

More thumps. Granny's head poked around the

edge of the closet door. "I should have looked in here a

long time ago," she said. "This is where it would be, of

course. You should see what's in here!"

Lina gazed around at the incredible mess. Into

this closet had been packed the junk of decades,

jammed into cardboard boxes, stuffed into old pillowcases

and laundry bags, and heaped up in a pile so

dense that you couldn't pull one thing out without

pulling all the rest with it. The shelf above the coatrack

was just as crammed as the space below, mostly with

old clothes that were full of moth holes and eaten away

by mildew. When she was younger, Lina had tried

exploring in this closet, but she never got far. She'd

pull out an old scarf that would fall to pieces in her

90

hands, or open a box that proved to be full of bent

carpet tacks. Soon she would shove everything back in

and give up.

But Granny was really doing the job right. She

grunted and panted as she wrenched free the closet's

packed-in stuff and tossed it behind her. It was clear

that she was having fun. As Lina watched, a bag of rags

came tumbling out the door, and then an old brown

shoe with no laces.

"Granny," said Lina, suddenly uneasy. "Where's the

baby?"

"Oh, she's here!" came Granny's voice from the

depths of the closet. "She's been helping me."

Lina got up from the floor and looked around. She

soon spotted Poppy. She was sitting behind the couch,

in the midst of the clutter. In front of her was a small

box made of something dark and shiny. It had a hinged

lid, and the lid was open, hanging backward.

"Poppy," said Lina, "let me see that." She stooped

down. There was some sort of mechanism on the edge

of the lid--a kind of lock, Lina thought. The box was

beautifully made, but it had been damaged. There were

dents and scratches in its hard, smooth surface. It

looked as if it had been a container for something

valuable. But the box was empty now. Lina picked it up

and felt around in it to be sure. There was nothing

inside at all.

"Was there something in this box, Poppy? Did you

91

find something in here?" But Poppy only chortled

happily. She was chewing on some crumpled paper.

She had paper in her hands, too, and was tearing it.

Shreds of paper were strewn around her. Lina picked

one up. It was covered with small, perfect printing.

92

CHAPTER 7

A Message Full of Holes

It was the printing that sparked Lina's curiosity. It was

not handwriting, or if it was, it was the neatest, most

regular handwriting she had ever seen. It was more like

the letters printed on cans of food or along the sides of

pencils. Something other than a hand had written

those words. A machine of some kind. This was the

writing of the Builders. And so this piece of paper

must have come from the Builders, too.

Lina gathered up the scraps of paper from the

floor and gently pried open Poppy's fists and mouth to

extract the crumpled wads. She put all this into the

dented box and carried it to her room.

That evening, Granny and the baby were both

asleep by a little after eight. Lina had nearly an hour to

examine her discovery. She took the scraps from the

box and spread them out on the table in her bedroom.

The paper was thick; at each torn edge was a fringe of

93

tangled fibers. There were many little pieces and one

big piece with so many holes that it was like lace. The

chewed bits were beyond saving--they were almost a

paste. But Lina spread out the big lacy piece and saw

that on one edge of it, which was still intact, was a column

of numbers. She collected all the dry scraps and

puzzled over them for a long time, trying to figure out

where they fit into the larger piece. When she had

arranged them as well as she could, this was what she

had:

Instru      r Egres

This offic doc    in stric

secur period of ears.

prepara     made for

in ha city,

as foil

1.    Exp

riv   ip ork .

2.    ston marked with E by r

dge

3.    adde down iverb nk

to edge appr      eight

low.

4.    acks to the

wat r, find door of bo

ker. He     hind small steel

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pan the right     . Rem

ey, open do .

5.    oat,  stocked with

nee uip ent. Bac

ont s eet.

6.    Usi   opes, lowe

ter. Head dow st . Us pa

av cks and assist over rap

7.    approx. 3 hours. Disem

. Follow    pat .

Lina could make sense of only a few words here

and there. Even so, something about this tattered document

was exciting. It was not like anything Lina had

ever seen. She stared at the very first word at the top of

the page, "Instru," and she suddenly knew what it must

be. She'd seen it often enough at school. It had to be

the beginning of "Instructions."

Her heart began knocking at her chest like a fist at

a door. She had found something. She had found

something strange and important: instructions for

something. But for what? And how terrible that Poppy

had found it first and ruined it!

It occurred to Lina that this might be what her

grandmother had been talking about for so long. Perhaps this was the thing that was lost. But of course not

knowing what had been lost, Granny wouldn't have

recognized the box when she saw it. She would have

95

tossed it out of the closet just as carelessly as she tossed

everything else. Anyhow, it didn't matter whether this

was the thing or not the thing. It was a mystery in

itself, whatever it was, and Lina was determined to

solve it.

The first step was to stick the scraps of paper

down. They were so light that a breath could scatter

them. She had a little bit of glue left in an old bottle.

Painstakingly, she put a dot of glue on each of the

scraps and pressed each one into its place on one of her

precious few remaining whole sheets of paper. She put

another piece of paper on top of this and set the box

on top to flatten everything down. Just as she finished,

the lights went out--she'd forgotten to keep an eye on

the clock on her windowsill. She had to undress and

get in bed in the dark.

She was too excited to sleep much that night.

Her mind whirled around, trying to think what the

message she'd found might be. She felt sure it had

something to do with saving the city. What if these

instructions were for fixing the electricity? Or for making

a movable light? That would change everything.

When the lights went on in the morning, she had

a few minutes before Poppy wakened to work at

the puzzle. But there were so many words missing!

How could she ever make sense of such a jumble?

As she pulled on her red jacket and tied the frayed

and knotted laces of her shoes, she thought about it.

96

If the paper was important, she shouldn't keep it to

herself. But who could she tell? Maybe the messenger

captain. She would know about things like official

documents.

"Captain Fleery," Lina said when she got to work,

"would you have time to come home with me later on

today? Just for a minute? I found something I'd like to

show you."

"Found what?" asked Captain Fleery.

"Some paper with writing on it. I think it might be

important."

Captain Fleery raised her skinny eyebrows. "What

do you mean, important?"

"Well, I'm not sure. Maybe it isn't. But would you

look at it anyway?"

So that evening Captain Fleery came home with

Lina and peered at the bits of paper. She bent down

and inspected the writing. "Foil?" she said. "Acks? Rem?

Ont? What kind of words are those?"

"I don't know," said Lina. "The words are all broken

up because Poppy chewed on them."

"I see," said Captain Fleery. She poked at the

paper. "This looks like instructions for something," she

said. "A recipe, I suppose. 'Small steel pan'--that would

be what you use to cook it with."

"But who would have such small, perfect writing?"

"That's the way they wrote in the old days,"

said Captain Fleery. "It could be a very old recipe."

97

"But then why would it have been kept in this

beautiful box?" She showed the box to Captain Fleery.

"I think it was locked up in here for some reason,

and you wouldn't lock up something unless it was

important...."

But Captain Fleery didn't seem to have heard her.

"Or," she said, "it could be a school exercise. Someone's

homework that never got turned in."

"But have you ever seen paper like this? Doesn't it

look as if it came from someplace else--not here?"

Captain Fleery straightened up. A look of puzzlement

came over her face. "There is nowhere but here,"

she said. She put both her hands on Lina's shoulders.

"You, my dear, are letting your imagination run away

with you. Are you overtired, Lina? Are you anxious? I

could put you on short days for a while."

"No," said Lina, "I'm fine. I am. But I don't know

what to do about..." She gestured toward the paper.

"Never mind," said Captain Fleery. "Don't think

about it. Throw it away. You're worrying too much-- I know, I know, we all are, there's so much to worry

about, but we mustn't let it unsettle us." She gave Lina

a long look. Her eyes were the color of dishwater.

"Help is coming," she said.

"Help?"

"Yes. Coming to save us."

"Who is?"

98

Captain Fleery bent down and lowered her voice,

as if telling a secret. "Who built our city, dear?"

"The Builders," said Lina.

"That's right. And the Builders will come again

and show us the way."

"They will?"

"Very soon," said Captain Fleery.

"How do you know?"

Captain Fleery straightened up again and clapped

a hand over her heart. "I know it here," she said. "And

I have seen it in a dream. So have all of us, all the

Believers."

So that's what they believe, Lina thought--and

Captain Fleery is one of them. She wondered how the

captain could feel so sure about it, just because she'd

seen it in a dream. Maybe it was the same for her as the

sparkling city was for Lina--she wanted it to be true.

The captain's face lit up. "I know what you must

do, dear--come to one of our meetings. It would lift

your heart. We sing."

"Oh," said Lina, "thank you, but I'm not sure

I... maybe sometime ..." She tried to be polite, but

she knew she wouldn't go. She didn't want to stand

around waiting for the Builders. She had other things

to do.

Captain Fleery patted her arm. "No pressure,

dear," she said. "If you change your mind, let me know.

1

99

But take my advice: forget about your little puzzle

project. Lie down and take a nap. Clears the mind."

Her narrow face beamed kindness down at Lina. "You

take tomorrow off," she said. She raised a hand goodbye

and went down the stairs.

Lina took advantage of her day off to go to the

Supply Depot to see Lizzie Bisco. Lizzie was quick and smart. She might have some good ideas.

At the Supply Depot, crowds of shopkeepers stood

in long, disorderly lines that stretched out the door.

They pushed and jostled and snapped impatiently

at each other. Lina joined them, but they seemed so

frantic that they frightened her a little. They must be very sure now that the supplies are running out, she

thought, and they're determined to get what they can

before it's too late.

When she got close to the head of the line, she

heard the same conversation several times. "Sorry,"

the clerk would say when a shopkeeper asked for ten

packets of sewing needles, or a dozen drinking glasses,

or twenty packages of light bulbs. "There's a severe

shortage of that item. You can have only one." Or else

the clerk would say, "Sorry. We're out of that entirely."

"Forever?" "Forever."

Lina knew that it hadn't always been this way.

When Ember was a young city, the storerooms were

full. They held everything the citizens could want--so

much it seemed the supplies would never run out.

100

Lina's grandmother had told her that schoolchildren

were given a tour of the storerooms as part of their

education. They took an elevator from the street level

to a long, curving tunnel with doors on both sides and

other tunnels branching off it. The guide led the tour

down the long passages, opening one door after

another. "This area," he would say, "is Canned Goods.

Next we come to School Supplies. And around this

bend we have Kitchenware. Next come Carpentry Tools." At each door, the children crowded against each

other to see.

"Every room had something different," Granny

told Lina. "Boxes of toothpaste in one room. Bottles of

cooking oil. Bars of soap. Boxes of pills--there were

twenty rooms just for vitamin pills. One room was

stacked with hundreds of cans of fruit. There was

something called pineapple, I remember that one

especially."

"What was pineapple?" asked Lina.

"It was yellow and sweet," said Granny with a

dreamy look in her eyes. "I had it four times before we

ran out of it."

But these tours had been discontinued long before

Lina was born. The storerooms, people said, were no

longer a pleasure to look at. Their dusty shelves stood

mostly empty now. It was rumored that in some rooms

nothing was left at all. A child seeing the rooms where

powdered milk had been stored, or the rooms that

101

stored bandages or socks or pins or notebooks, or-- most of all--the dozens of rooms that had once held

thousands of light bulbs--would not feel, as earlier

generations of children had, that Ember was endlessly

rich. Today's children, if they were to tour the storerooms,

would feel afraid.

Thinking about all this, Lina waited in the line of

people at Lizzie's station. When she got to the front,

she leaned forward with her elbows on the counter and

whispered, "Lizzie, can you meet me after you're

through with work? I'll wait for you right outside the

door." Lizzie nodded eagerly.

At four o'clock, Lizzie came trotting out the office

door. Lina said to her, "Will you come home with me

for a minute? I want to show you something."

"Sure," said Lizzie, and as they walked, Lizzie

talked. "My wrist is killing me from writing all day," she said. "You have to write in the tiniest letters to save

paper, so I get a terrible cramp in my wrist and my

fingers. And people are so rude. Today they were worse

than ever. I said to some guy, 'You can't have fifteen

cans of corn, you can only have three,' and he said,

'Look, don't tell me that, I saw plenty of cans in the

Pott Street market just yesterday,' and I said, 'Well,

that's why there aren't so many left today,' and he said,

'Don't be smart with me, carrot-head.' But what am I

supposed to do? I can't make cans of corn out of thin

air."

102

They passed through Harken Square, around the

Gathering Hall, and down Roving Street, where three

of the floodlights were out, making a cave of shadow.

"Lizzie," said Lina, interrupting the flow of talk. "Is

it true about light bulbs?"

"Is what true?"

"That there aren't very many left?"

Lizzie shrugged. "I don't know. They hardly ever

let us go downstairs into the storerooms. All we see are

the reports the carriers turn in--how many forks in

Room 1146, how many doorknobs in 3291, how many

children's shoes in 2249 ..."

"But when you see the report for the light bulb

rooms, what does it say?"

"I never get to see that one," said Lizzie. "That one,

and a few other ones like the vitamin report, only a few

people can see."

"Who?"

"Oh, the mayor, and of course old Flab Face." Lina

looked at her questioningly. "You know, Farlo Batten,

the head of the storerooms. He is so mean, Lina, you

would just hate him. He counts us late if we come in

even two minutes after eight, and he looks over our

shoulders as we're writing, which is awful because he

has bad breath, and he runs his finger over what we've

written and says, 'This word is illegible, that word is

illegible, these numbers are illegible.' It's his favorite

word, illegible."

103

When they came to Lina's street, Lina ducked her

head in the door of the yarn shop and said hello to

Granny, and then they climbed the stairs to the apartment.

Lizzie was talking about how hard it was to

stand up all day, how it made her knees ache, how her

shoes pinched her feet. She stopped talking long

enough to say hello to Evaleen Murdo, who was sitting

by the window with Poppy on her lap, and then she

began again as Lina led her into her bedroom.

"Lina, where were you when the big blackout

came?" she asked, but she went right on without waiting

for an answer. "I was at home, luckily. But it was

scary, wasn't it?"

Lina nodded. She didn't want to talk about what

had happened that day.

"I hate those blackouts," Lizzie went on. "People

say there's going to be more and more of them, and

that someday--" She stopped, frowned, and started

again. "Anyway, nothing bad happened to me. After

that, I got up and figured out a whole new way to do

my hair."

It seemed to Lina that Lizzie was like a clock

wound too tightly and running too fast. She'd always

been a little this way, but today she was more so than

ever. Her gaze skipped from one spot to another, her

fingers twiddled with the edge of her shirt. She looked

III   paler than usual, too. Her freckles stood out like little

smudges of dirt on her nose.

104

"Lizzie," said Lina, beckoning toward the table in

the corner of her room. "I want to show you--"

But Lizzie wasn't listening. "You're so lucky to be a

messenger, Lina," she said. "Is it fun? I wish I could

have been one. I would have been so good at it. My job

is so boring."

Lina turned and looked at her. "Isn't there anything you like about it?"

Lizzie pursed her lips in a tiny smile and looked

sideways at Lina. "There's one thing," she said.

"What?"

"I can't tell you. It's a secret."

"Oh," said Lina. Then you shouldn't have mentioned

it at all, she thought.

"Maybe I'll tell you someday," said Lizzie. "I don't

know."

"Well, I like my job," Lina said. "But what I wanted

to talk to you about was what I found yesterday. It's

this."

She lifted the box away and took up the piece of

paper covering the patched-together document. Lizzie

gave it a quick look. "Is it a message someone gave you?

That got torn up?"

"No, it was in our closet. Poppy was chewing on it,

that's why it's torn up. But look at the writing on it.

Isn't it strange?"

"Uh-huh," said Lizzie. "You know who has beautiful

handwriting? Myla Bone, who works with me.

105

You should see it, it's got curly tails on the y's and the

g's, and fancy loops on the capital letters. Of course

Flab Face hates it, he says it's illegible...."

Lina slid the piece of paper back over the pasted

down scraps. She wondered why she had thought

Lizzie would be interested in what she'd found. She'd

always had fun with Lizzie. But their fun was usually

with games--hide-and-seek, tag, the kinds of games

where you run and climb. Lizzie never had been much

interested in anything that was written on paper.

So Lina quietly put the document back in its place,

and she sat down with Lizzie on the floor. She listened

and listened until Lizzie's chatter ran down. "I'd better

go," Lizzie said. "It was fun to see you, Lina. I miss you."

She stood up. She fluffed her hair. "What was it you

wanted to show me? Oh, yes--the fancy writing. Really

nice. Lucky you to find it. Come and see me again

soon, all right? I get so bored in that office."

Lina made beet soup for dinner that night, and

Poppy spilled hers and made a red lake on the table.

Granny stared into her bowl, stirring and stirring the

soup with her spoon, but she didn't eat. She didn't feel

quite right, she told Lina; after a while she wandered

off to bed. Lina cleaned up the kitchen quickly. As soon

as her chores were out of the way, she could get back to

studying her document. She washed Poppy's clothes.

She sewed on the buttons that had come off her mes-

106

senger jacket. She picked up the rags and sacks and

boxes and bags that Granny had tossed out of the

closet. And by the time she had done all this and put

Poppy to bed, she still had almost half an hour to study

the fragments of paper.

She sat down at her desk and uncovered the document.

With her elbows on either side of it and her

chin resting in her hands, she pored over it. Though

Lizzie and Captain Fleery had paid it no attention,

Lina still thought this torn-up page must be important.

Why else would it have been in such a cleverly

fastened box? Maybe she should show it to the mayor,

she thought reluctantly. She didn't like the mayor. She

didn't trust him, either. But if this document was

important to the future of the city, he was the one who

should know about it. Of course, she couldn't ask the

mayor to come to her house. She pictured him puffing

up the stairs, squeezing through the door, looking disapprovingly

at the clutter in their house, recoiling

from Poppy's sticky hands--no, it wouldn't do.

But she didn't want to take her carefully patched

together document to the Gathering Hall, either. It was

just too fragile. The best thing to do, she decided, was

to write the mayor a note. She settled down to do this.

She found a fairly unspoiled half-piece of paper,

and, using a plain pencil (she wasn't going to waste her

colored ones on the mayor), she wrote:

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Dear Mayor Cole,

I have discovered a document that was in the closet. It is instructions for something. I believe it is important because it is written

in very old printing. Unfortunately it got chewed up by my sister, so it is not all there.

But you can still read some parts of it, such as:

marked with E

find door of bo

small steel pan

I will show you this document if you want to see it.

Sincerely yours,

Lina Mayfleet, Messenger

34 Quillium Square

She folded the note in half and wrote "Mayor

Cole" on the front. On her way to work the next

morning, she took it to the Gathering Hall. No one was

sitting at the guard's desk, so Lina left the note there,

placed so that the guard would see it when he arrived.

Then, feeling that she had done her duty, she went off

to her station.

Several days went by. The messages Lina carried were

full of worry and fear. "Do you have any extra Baby

Drink? I can't find it at the store." "Have you heard

what they're saying about the generator?" "We can't

come tonight--Grandpa B. won't get out of bed."

Every day when she got home from work, Lina

asked Granny, "Did a message come for me?" But there

was nothing. Maybe the mayor hadn't gotten her note.

Maybe he'd gotten it and paid no attention. After a

week, Lina decided she was tired of waiting. If the

mayor wasn't interested in what she'd found, too bad

for him. She was interested. She would figure it out

herself.

Twice during the week, when Poppy and Granny

were both asleep, she'd had a little free time. She'd

spent this time making a copy of the document, in case

anything happened to the fragile original. It had taken

her a long time. She used one of her few remaining

pieces of paper--an old label, slightly torn, from a can

of peas. The copy was as accurate as she could make it,

with the missing bits between the letters carefully indicated

as dashes. She had tucked it under the mattress

of her bed for safekeeping.

Now she finally had a whole free evening. Poppy

and Granny were both asleep, and the apartment was

tidy. Lina sat down at her table and uncovered the

patched-together document. She tied back her hair so

it wouldn't keep falling in her face, and she put a piece

of paper next to her--blank except for a little bit of

Poppy's scribbling--to write down what she decoded.

She started with the title. The first word she'd

already figured out. It had to be "Instructions." The

109

next word could be "for." Then came "Egres"--she

wasn't sure about that. Maybe it was someone's name.

Egresman. Egreston. "Instructions for Egreston." She

decided to call it "The Instructions" for short.

She went on to the first line. "This offic doc"

probably meant "This official document." Maybe

"secur" meant "secure." Or "security." Then there were

the words "period" and "ears" and "city." But after that,

so much was missing.

She studied the line next to the number 1. Exp. That could be Expect or Expert or so many things. She

moved on to riv. That might be part of a word like

"drive" or "strive." What could ip and ork possibly be?

They were so close together, maybe they were part of

one word. What ended with -ip? Whip, Lina thought. Trip. Slip. What ended with -ork? Fork came to mind

immediately. Tripfork. Slipfork. Nothing she could

think of made sense.

Maybe it wasn't fork. What else ended in ork? Starling at the beginning of the alphabet, Lina went

through all the words that rhymed with fork. Most of

them were nonsense: bork, dork, gork, hork, jork. ... This isn't going to work, she thought miserably.

Oh... workl The word could be work.

Then what would the first part be? Tripwork? Flip

work? But maybe there was a letter between the p and

the w. Dipswork? Pipswork?

Suddenly it came to her. Pipeworks. Pipeworks!

110

That had to be it. Something in this message was about

the Pipeworks!

Lina looked back at Exp and riv. Riv! That could be riverl Rapidly she ran her eyes down the page. In line

3, she saw iverb nk--that looked like riverbank. The

word door jumped out at her from line 4, whole on its

scrap of paper. Lina took a quick breath. A door! What

if it was the one she'd wished for, the one that led to the

other city? Maybe her city was real after all, and these

were instructions for finding it!

She wanted to leap from her chair and shout. The

message had something to do with the river, a door,

and the Pipeworks. And who did she know who knew

about the Pipeworks? Doon, of course.

She pictured his thin, serious face, and his eyes

looking out searchingly from beneath his dark eyebrows.

She pictured how he used to bend over his work at school, holding his pencil in a hard grip, and how, during free time, he was usually off by himself in a

corner studying a moth or a worm or a taken-apart

clock. That was one thing, at least, that she liked about Doon: he was curious. He paid attention to things.

And he cared about things, too. She remembered

how he'd been on Assignment Day, so furious at the

mayor, so eager to trade his good job for her bad one so he could help save the city. And he'd taken

Poppy inside his father's shop on the day of the blackout so she wouldn't be afraid.

111

Why had she stopped being friends with Doon?

She vaguely recalled the incident of the light pole. It

seemed silly now, and long ago. The more she thought

about Doon, the more it seemed he was the very person--the only person--who might be interested in

what she had found.

She placed the plain sheet of paper over the

Instructions and put the box on top. I'll go and find

Doon, she thought. Tomorrow was Thursday--their

day off. She would find him tomorrow and ask for his

help.

112

CHAPTER 8

Explorations

Doon had taken to wandering the Pipeworks alone. He

would go to his assigned tunnel and do his job

quickly--once you got good at using your wrenches and brushes and tubes of glue, it wasn't hard. Most of

the workers did their jobs quickly and then gathered in

little groups to play cards or have salamander races or just talk and sleep.

But Doon didn't care about any of that. If he was going to be stuck in the Pipeworks, he would at least

not waste the time he had. Since the long blackout,

everything seemed more urgent than ever. Whenever

the lights flickered, he was afraid the ancient generator

might be shuddering to a permanent halt.

So while the others lounged around, he headed

out toward the edges of the Pipeworks to see what he

could see. "Pay attention," his father had said, and

113

that's what he did. He followed his map when he

could, but in some places the map was unclear. There

were even tunnels that didn't show up on the map at

all. To keep from getting lost, he dropped a trail of

things as he walked--washers, bolts, pieces of wire,

whatever he had in his tool belt--and then he picked

them up on his way back.

His father had been at least a little bit right: there

were interesting things in the Pipeworks if you paid

attention. Already he had found three new crawling

creatures: a black beetle the size of a pinhead, a moth

with furry wings, and the best of all, a creature with a

soft, shiny body and a small, spiral-patterned shell

on its back. Just after he found this one, while he

was sitting on the floor watching in fascination as the

creature crept up his arm, a couple of workers came by

and saw him. They burst into laughter. "It's bug-boy!"

one of them said. "He's collecting bugs for his lunch!"

Enraged, Doon jumped up and shouted at them.

His sudden motion made the creature fall off his arm

to the ground, and Doon felt a crunch beneath his

foot. The laughing workers didn't notice--they tossed

a few more taunts at him and walked on--but Doon

knew instantly what he'd done. He lifted his foot and

looked at the squashed mess underneath.

Unintended consequences, he thought miserably.

He was angry at his anger, the way it surged up

and took over. He picked the bits of shell and goo off

114

the sole of his boot and thought, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.

In the days that followed, Doon went farther and farther into the Pipeworks, holding on to the hope that he might find something not only interesting but important. But what he found didn't seem importan at all. Once he came upon an old pair of pliers that

someone had dropped and left behind. Twice he found a coin. He discovered a supply closet that appeared to have been completely forgotten, but all it held were some boxes of plugs and washers and a rusty box containing shriveled bits of what must once have been someone's lunch.

He found another supply closet at the far south

end of the Pipeworks--at least, he assumed that's what

it was. It was at the end of a tunnel with a rope strung

across it; a sign hanging from the rope said, "Caved In.

No Entry" Doon entered anyway, ducking under the

rope. He found no sign of a cave-in, but there were

no lights. He groped his way forward for twenty steps

or so, and there the tunnel ended in a securely locked

door--he couldn't see it, but he felt it. He retraced

his steps, ducked back under the rope again, and

walked on. A short distance away, he found a hatch in

the ceiling of the tunnel--a square wooden panel that

must lead, he thought, up into the storerooms. If he'd

had something to stand on, he could have reached it

and tried to open it, but it was about a foot above his

115

upstretched hand. Probably it was locked anyhow. He

wondered if the Builders had used openings like this

one during the construction of the city to get more

easily from one place to another.

On days when his job was near the main tunnel,

he sometimes walked along the river after he'd finished

working. He stayed away from the east end, where the

generator was; he didn't want to think about the generator.

Instead, he went the other way, toward the place

where the river rushed out of the Pipeworks. The path

grew less level at this end, and less smooth. The river

here was bordered with clumps of wrinkled rock that

seemed to grow out of the ground like fungus. Doon

liked to sit on these clumps, running his fingers along

the strange creases and crevices that must have been

carved somehow by running or dripping water. In

some places there were grooves that looked almost like

writing.

But as for things of importance, Doon found

none. It seemed that the Pipeworks was no use after all

to a person who wanted to save the city. The generator

was hopeless. He would never understand electricity.

He used to think he could use electricity to invent a

movable light, if he studied hard enough. He took

apart light bulbs; he took apart the electric outlets on

the wall to see how the wires inside wound together

and, in the process, got a painful, vibrating jolt all

through his body. But when he tried to wind wires

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of his own together in exactly the same way, nothing

happened. It was what came through the wires that

made the light, he finally understood, and he had no

idea what that was.

Now he could see only two courses of action: he

could give up and do nothing, or he could start to

work on a different kind of movable light.

Doon didn't want to give up. So on his day off one

Thursday, he went to the Ember Library to look up fire.

The library occupied an entire building on one

side of Bilbollio Square. Its door was at the end of a

short passage in the middle of the building. Doon

went down the passage, pushed open the door, and

walked in. No one was there except for the librarian,

ancient Edward Pocket, who sat behind his desk writing

something with a tiny pencil clutched in his

gnarled hand. The library had two big rooms, one for

fiction, which was stories people made up out of their

imaginations, and the other for fact, which was information

about the real world. The walls of both rooms

were lined with shelves, and on most of the shelves

were hundreds of packets of pages. Each packet was

held together with stout loops of string. The packets

leaned against each other at angles and lay in untidy

stacks. Some were thick, and some were so slim that

only a clip was needed to hold them together. The

pages of the oldest packets were yellowed and warped,

and their edges were uneven rows of ripples.

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These were the books of Ember, written over the

years by its citizens. They contained in their dose

written pages much that was imagined and everything

that was known.

Edward Pocket looked up and nodded briefly at

Doon, one of his most frequent visitors. Doon nodded

back. He went into the fact room, to the section of

shelves labeled "F." The books were arranged by subject,

but even so, it wasn't easy to find what you

wanted. A book about moths, for instance, might be

under "M" for moths, or "I" for insects, or "B" for bugs.

It might even be under "F" for flying things. Usually

you had to browse through the entire library to make

sure you'd found all the books on one subject. But

since he was looking for "fire," he thought he might as

well start with "F."

Fire was rare in Ember. When there was a fire, it

was because there had been an accident--someone

had left a dishtowel too close to an electric burner on

a stove, or a cord had frayed and a spark had flown out

and ignited curtains. Then the citizens would rush in

with buckets of water, and the fire was quickly

drowned. But it was, of course, possible to start a fire

on purpose. You could hold a sliver of wood to the

stove burner until it burst into flame, and then for a

moment it would flare brightly, giving off orange light.

The trick was to find a way to make the light last.

If you had a light that would keep going, you could go

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out into the Unknown Regions and see what was there.

Finding a way to explore the Unknown Regions was

the only thing Doon could think of to do.

He took down a book from the "F" shelf. Fungus, it was called. He put it back. The next book was called How to Repair Furniture. He put that back, too. He

went through Foot Diseases, Fun with String, Coping

with Failure, and Canned Fruit Recipes before he finally

found a book called All About Fire. He sat down at one

of the library's square tables to read it.

But the person who had written the book knew no

more about fire than Doon. Mostly the book described

the dangers of fire. A long section of it was about a

building in Winifred Square that had caught fire forty

years ago, and how all its doors and all its furniture

had burned up and smoke had filled the air for days.

Another part was about what to do if your oven caught

on fire.

Doon closed the book and sighed. It was useless. He could write a better book than that. He got up

and wandered restlessly around the library. Sometimes

you could find useful things just by choosing

randomly from the shelves. He had done this many

times--just reached out and grabbed something-- in the hope that by accident he might come upon the

very piece of information he needed. It would be

something that another person had written down

without understanding its significance, just a sentence

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or two that would be like a flash of light in Doon's

mind, fitting together with things he already knew to

make a solution to everything.

Although he'd often found something interesting

in these searches, he'd never found anything important. Today was no different. He did come across a collection

called Mysterious Words from the Past, which he

read for a while. It was about words and phrases so old

that their meanings had been forgotten. He read a few

pages.

Heavens above

Indicates surprise. What "heavens" means

is unclear. It might be another word for

"floodlight."

Hogwash

Means "nonsense," though no one knows

what a "hog" is or why one would wash it.

Batting a thousand

Indicates great success. This might possibly

refer to killing bugs.

All in the same boat

Means "all in the same predicament."

The meaning of "boat" is unknown.

Interesting, but not useful. He put the book back

on the shelf and was about to leave when the door of

the library opened, and Lina Mayfleet came in.

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CHAPTER 9

The Door in the Roped-Off Tunnel

Lina saw Doon immediately--he was reaching up to

set a book back on its shelf. He saw her, too, when he

turned around, and his dark eyebrows flew up in surprise

as she hurried over to him.

"Your father told me you were here," she said.

"Doon, I found something. I want to show it to you."

"To me? Why?"

"I think it's important. It has to do with the

Pipeworks. Will you come to my house and see it?"

"Now?" Doon asked.

Lina nodded.

Doon grabbed his old brown jacket and followed

Lina out of the library and across the city to Quillium

Square.

Granny's shop was closed and dark when they

arrived, and so Lina was surprised when they went

upstairs and saw Evaleen Murdo sitting in her place by

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the window. "Your grandmother's in her bedroom"

Mrs. Murdo said. "She didn't feel well, so she asked me

to come."

Poppy was sitting on the floor, banging a spoon on

the leg of a chair.

Lina introduced Doon, then led him into the

room she shared with Poppy. He looked around, and

Lina felt suddenly self-conscious, seeing her room

through his eyes. It was a small room with a lot

crammed into it. There were two narrow beds, a very

small table that fit into a corner, and a four-legged

stool to sit on. On the wall, clothes hung from hooks,

and more clothes were strewn untidily on the floor.

Beneath the window was a brown stain made by the

bean seed in its pot on the windowsill. Lina had been

watering it every night because she'd promised Clary

she would, but it was still nothing but dirt, flat and

unpromising.

A couple of shelves beside the window held Lina's

important possessions: the pieces of paper she'd collected

for drawing, her pencils, a scarf with a silver

thread woven through it. On the parts of the wall that

had no hooks and no shelves, she had pinned up some

of her pictures.

"What are those?" Doon asked.

"They're from my imagination," Lina said, feeling

slightly embarrassed. "They're pictures of... another

city."

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"Oh. You made it up."

"Sort of. Sometimes I dream of it."

"I draw, too" said Doon. "But I draw other kinds

of things."

"Like what?"

"Mostly insects" said Doon. He told her about his collection of drawings and the worm he was currently

observing.

To Lina, this sounded far less interesting than an undiscovered city, but she didn't say so. She led Doon

I over to the table. "Here's what I want to show you," she

I said. She lifted the metal box. Before she could reach

for the papers underneath, Doon took the box and started examining it.

"Where did this come from?" he asked.

"It was in the closet," Lina said. She told him about

Granny's wild search and about finding the box with

its lid open and Poppy with paper in her mouth. As she

talked, Doon turned the box over in his hands, opened

and closed its lid, and peered at the latch.

"There's some sort of odd mechanism here," he

said. He tapped at a small metal compartment at the

front of the box. "I'd like to see inside this."

"Here's what was in the box," said Lina, lifting the

covering paper from her patchwork of scraps. "At least,

it's what's left of what was in there."

Doon bent over, his hands on either side of the

paper.

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Lina said, "It's called 'Instructions for Egreston.'

Or maybe 'Egresman.' Someone's name, anyhow.

Maybe a mayor, or a guard. I just call it 'The Instructions.'

I told the mayor about it--I thought maybe it

was important. I wrote him a note, but he hasn't

answered. I don't think he's interested."

Doon said nothing.

"You don't have to hold your breath," said Lina. "I

glued the pieces down. Look," she said, pointing. "This

word must be Pipeworks. And this one river. And look

at this one--door."

Doon didn't answer. His hair had fallen forward,

so Lina couldn't see the expression on his face.

"I thought at first," Lina went on, "that it must be

instructions for how to do something. How to fix the

electricity, maybe. But then I thought, What if it's

instructions for going to another place?" Doon said

nothing, so Lina went on. "I mean someplace that isn't

here, like another city. I think these instructions say,

'Go down into the Pipeworks and look for a door.'"

Doon brushed the hair back from his face, but he

didn't straighten up. He gazed at the broken words and

frowned. "Edge," he murmured. "Small steel pan. What

would that mean?"

"A frying pan?" said Lina. "But I don't know why

there'd be a frying pan in the Pipeworks."

But Doon didn't answer. He seemed to be talking

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to himself. He kept reading, moving a finger along the

lines of words. "Open," he whispered. "Follow."

Finally he turned to look at Lina. "I think you're

right," he said. "I think this is important."

"Oh, I was sure you'd think so!" Lina cried. She

was so relieved that her words poured out in a rush.

"Because you take things seriously! You told the truth

to the mayor on Assignment Day. I didn't want to

believe it, but then came the long blackout, and I

knew--I knew things were as bad as you said." She

stopped, breathless. She pointed to a word on the document.

"This door," she said. "It has to be a door that

leads out of Ember."

"I don't know," said Doon. "Maybe. Or a door that

leads to something important, even if it isn't that."

"But it must be that--what else could be important

enough to lock up in a fancy box?"

"Well... I suppose it could be a storage room with

some special tools in it or something--" A look of surprise

came over his face. "Actually, I saw a door where

I didn't expect to see one--out in Tunnel 351. It was

locked. I thought it was an old supply closet. I wonder

if that could be it."

"It must be!" cried Lina. Her heart sped up.

"It wasn't anywhere near the river," Doon said

doubtfully.

"That doesn't matter!" Lina said. "The river goes

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through the Pipeworks, that's all. It's probably something

like, cGo down by the river, then go this way, then

that way...'"

"Maybe," said Doon.

"It must be!" Lina cried. "I know it is! It's the door

that leads out of Ember."

"I don't know if that makes sense," said Doon. "A

door in the Pipeworks could only lead to something

underground, and how could that..."

Lina had no patience for Doon's reasoning. She

wanted to dance around the room, she was so excited.

"We have to find out," she said. "We have to find out

right away!"

Doon looked startled. "Well, I can go and try

the door again," he said. "It was locked before, but I

suppose..."

"I want to go, too," said Lina.

"You want to come down into the Pipeworks?"

"Yes! Can you get me in?"

Doon thought for a moment. "I think I can. If you

come just at quitting time and wait outside the door,

I'll stay out of sight until everyone has gone, and then

I'll let you in."

"Tomorrow?"

"Okay. Tomorrow."

Lina stopped at home the next day only long enough

to change out of her messenger jacket, and then she

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dashed across town to the Pipeworks. Doon met her

just outside the door, and she followed him inside,

where he handed her a slicker and boots to put on.

They descended the long stone stairway, and when

they came out into the main tunnel, Lina stood still, staring at the river. "I didn't know the river was so big,"

she said, after she found her voice.

"Yes," said Doon. "Every few years, they say, someone

falls in. If you fall in, there's no hope of fishing you

out. The river swallows you and sweeps you away."

Lina shivered. It was cold down here, a cold that

she felt all the way through, cold flesh, cold blood, cold

bones.

Doon led her up the path beside the water. After a

while they came to an opening in the wall, and they

turned into it and left the river behind. Doon led the

way through winding tunnels. Their rubber boots

splashed in pools of water on the floor. Lina thought

how awful it would be to work down here all day, every f    day. It was a creepy place, a place where it seemed people didn't belong. That black river ... it was like something

in a bad dream.

"You have to duck here," said Doon.

They had come to a roped-off tunnel. "But there's

no light in there," Lina said.

"No," said Doon. "We have to feel our way. It isn't

far." He ducked under the rope and went in, and Lina

did the same. They stepped forward into the dark. Lina

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kept a hand against the damp wall and placed her feet

carefully.

"It's right here" said Doon. He had stopped a few

feet ahead of Lina. She came up behind him. "Put your

hands out," he said. "You'll feel it."

Lina felt a smooth, hard surface. There was a

round metal knob, and below the knob, a keyhole. It

seemed an ordinary door--not at all like the entrance

to a new world. But that was what made things so

exciting--nothing was ever how you expected it to be.

"Let's try it," she whispered.

Doon took hold of the knob and twisted.

"Locked," he said.

"Is there a pan anywhere?"

"A pan?"

"The instructions said 'small steel pan.' Maybe that

would have the key in it."

They felt around, but there was nothing--just the

rocky walls. They patted the walls, they put their ears

to the door, they jiggled the knob and pulled it and

pushed it. Finally Doon said, "Well, we can't get in. I

guess we'd better go."

And that was when they heard the noise. It was a

scuffling, scraping noise that seemed to be coming

from somewhere nearby. Lina stopped breathing. She

clutched Doon's arm.

"Quick," Doon whispered. He made his way back

toward the lighted tunnel, with Lina following.

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They ducked under the rope and rounded a turn,

then stopped, stood still, and listened. A harsh scraping

sound. A thud. A pause ... and then the sound of

an impact, a short, explosive breath, and a muttered

word in a gruff, low voice.

Then slow footsteps, getting closer.

They flattened themselves against the wall and

stood motionless. The footsteps stopped briefly, and

there was another grunt. Then the steps continued, but

seemed to be fading. In a moment, from a distance,

there was another sound: the chink of a key turning in

a lock, and the click of a latch opening.

Lina made an astonished face at Doon. Someone had gone down the roped tunnel and opened the door!

She put her mouth close to Doon's ear. "Shall we try to

see who it is?" she whispered.

Doon shook his head. "I don't think we should,"

he said. "We should go."

"We could just peek around the corner."

It was too tempting not to try. They crept forward

to the place where the tunnel turned. From there they

could see the entrance to the roped tunnel. Holding

their breath, they watched.

And in a minute, they heard a thump and click-- the door closing, the lock turning--and footsteps once

again, this time quick. A long leg stepped over the

rope, and the person it belonged to turned and walked

away. All they saw was his back--a dark coat, dark

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untidy hair. He walked with a lurching motion that

struck Lina as somehow familiar. In a few seconds, he

had vanished into the shadows.

When they came up out of the Pipeworks, they

stripped off their boots and slickers and hurried out

into Plummer Square, where they flopped down on a

bench and burst into furious talk.

"Someone got there before us!" said Lina.

Doon said, "He was walking slowly when he went

in--as if he was looking for something. And he walked

fast when he came out..."

"As if he'd found something! What was it? I can't

stand not to know!"

Doon jumped up. He paced back and forth in

front of the bench.

"But how did he get the key?" he asked. "Did he

find Instructions like the ones you found? And how

did he get into the Pipeworks? I don't think he works

there."

"There's something familiar about the way he

walks," said Lina. "But I don't know why."

"Well, anyhow, he opened that door and we can't,"

said Doon. "If it does go somewhere, if it does lead out

of Ember, he'll be telling the whole city pretty soon.

He'll be a hero." Doon sat down again. "If he's found

the way out, we'll be glad, of course," he said glumly. "It

doesn't matter who finds it, as long as it helps the city."

130

"That's right," Lina said.

"It's just that I thought we were going to find it,"

said Doon.

"Yes," Lina said, thinking how grand it would have

been to stand before all of Ember, announcing their

discovery.

They sat without talking for a while, lost in their

own thoughts. A man pulling a cart full of wood scraps

went by. A woman leaned from a lighted window on

Gappery Street and called out to some boys playing in

the square below. A couple of guards, in their red and

brown uniforms, ambled across the square, laughing.

The town clock rang out six deep booms that Lina

could feel, like shudders, beneath her ribs.

Doon said, "I guess what we do now is wait to see

if there's an announcement."

"I guess so," said Lina.

"Maybe that door is nothing special after all," said

Doon. "Maybe it's just an old unused supply closet."

But Lina wasn't ready to believe that. Maybe it

wasn't the door out of Ember, but it was a mystery

nevertheless--a mystery connected, she was sure, to

the bigger mystery they were trying to solve.

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CHAPTER 10

Blue Sky and Goodbye

Lina slept restlessly that night. She had frightening

dreams in which something dangerous was lurking in

the darkness. When the lights went on in the morning

and she opened her eyes, her first thought was of the

door in the Pipeworks--and then right away she felt a

thud of disappointment, because the door was locked

and someone else, not her, knew what was behind it.

She went in to wake Granny. "Time to get up," she

said, but Granny didn't answer. She was lying with her

mouth half open and breathing in a strange hoarse

way. "Don't feel too good," she finally said in a weak

voice.

Lina felt Granny's forehead. It was hot. Her hands

were very cold. She ran for Mrs. Murdo and after that

to Cloving Square to tell Captain Fleery she would

not be coming to work today. Then she ran to Oliver

Street, to the office of Dr. Tower, where she banged on

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the door until the doctor opened it.

Dr. Tower was a thin woman with uncombed hair

and shadows under her eyes. When she saw Lina, she

seemed to grow even more tired.

"Dr. Tower," Lina said, "my grandmother is sick.

Will you come?"

"I will," she said. "But I can't promise to help her.

I'm low on medicine."

"But come and look. Maybe she doesn't need

medicine."

Lina led the doctor the few blocks to her house.

When she saw Granny, the doctor sighed. "How are

you, Granny Mayfleet?" she asked.

Granny looked at the doctor Wearily. "I think ill,"

she said.

Dr. Tower laid a hand across her forehead. She

asked her to stick out her tongue, and she listened to

her heart and her breathing.

"She has a fever" the doctor told Lina. "You'll need

to stay home with her today. Make her some soup. Give

her water to drink. Put rags in cool water and lay them

across her forehead." She picked up Granny's bony

hand in her rough, reddish one. "What's best for you is

to sleep today," she said. "Your good granddaughter

will take care of you."

And all day, that's what Lina did. She made a thin

soup of spinach and onions and fed it to Granny a

spoonful at a time. She stroked Granny's forehead,

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held her hand, and talked to her about cheerful things.

She kept Poppy as quiet as she could. But as she did all

this, in the back of her mind was the memory of the

days of her father's illness, when he seemed to grow

dim like a lamp losing power, and the sound of his

breathing was like water gurgling through a dogged

pipe. Though she didn't want to, she also remembered

the evening when her father let out one last short

breath and didn't take another, and the morning a few

months later when Dr. Tower emerged from her

mother's bedroom with a crying baby and a face that

was heavy with bad news.

In the late afternoon, Granny got restless. She

lifted herself up on one elbow. "Did we find it?" she

asked Lina. "Did we ever find it?"

"Find what, Granny?"

"The thing that was lost," Granny said. "The old

thing that my grandfather lost..."

"Yes," said Lina. "Don't worry, Granny, we found

it, it's safe now."

"Oh, good." Granny sank back onto her pillows

and smiled at the ceiling. "What a relief," she said. She

coughed a couple of times, closed her eyes, and fell

asleep.

Lina stayed home from work the next day as well.

It was a long day. Granny dozed most of the time.

Poppy, delighted to have Lina at home to play with,

kept toddling over with things she found--dust rags,

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kitchen spoons, stray shoes--and whacking them

against Una's knees, saying, "Play wif dis! Play wif dis!"

Lina was glad to play with her, but after a while she'd

had enough of spoon-banging and rag-tugging and

shoe-rolling. "Let's do something else," she said to

Poppy. "Shall we draw?"

Granny had drunk a full cup of soup for dinner

and was falling asleep again, so Lina got out her

colored pencils and two of the can labels she'd been

saving--they were white on the back and made good

enough drawing paper, if you flattened them out. With

their sharpest kitchen knife, she whittled the pencils

into points. She gave the green pencil and one can label

to Poppy, and she herself took the blue pencil and

smoothed out the other can label on the table.

What would she draw? Taking hold of a pencil was

like opening a tap inside her mind through which her

imagination flowed. She could feel the pictures ready

to come out. It was a sort of pressure, like water in a

pipe. She always thought she would draw something

wonderful, but what she actually drew never quite

matched the feeling. It was like when she tried to tell a

dream--the words never really captured how it felt.

Poppy was grasping the pencil in her fist and making

a wild scribble. "Lookit!" she cried.

"Lovely," said Lina. Then, without even a dear idea

of what it was to be, she began her own picture. She

started on the left side of the can label. First she drew

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a tall, narrow box--a building. Then more boxes next

to it--a cluster of buildings. Next she drew a few tiny

people walking on the street below the buildings. It

was what she nearly always drew--the other city--and

every time she drew it, she had the same frustrating

feeling: there was more to be drawn. There were other

things in this city, there were marvels there--but she

couldn't imagine what they were. All she knew was that

this city was bright in a different way from Ember.

Where the brightness came from she didn't know.

She drew more buildings and filled in the windows

and doors; she put in streetlamps; she added a

greenhouse. All the way across the paper, she drew

buildings of different sizes. All the buildings were

white, because that was the color of the paper.

She set her pencil down for a moment and studied

what she'd done. It was time to fill in the sky. In the

pictures she'd done with regular pencils, the sky was its

true color, black. But this time she made it blue, since

she was using her blue pencil. Methodically, as Poppy

scratched and scribbled beside her, Lina colored in the

space above the buildings, her pencil moving back and

forth in short lines, until the entire sky was blue.

She sat back and looked at her picture. Wouldn't it

be strange, she thought, to have a blue sky? But she

liked the way it looked. It would be beautiful--a blue

sky.

Poppy had started using her pencil to poke holes

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in her paper. Lina folded up her own picture and took

Poppy's away from her. "Time for dinner," she said.

Sometime deep in the night, Lina woke suddenly,

thinking she'd heard something. Had she been dreaming?

She lay still, her eyes open in the darkness. The

sound came again, a weak, trembling call: "Lina..."

She got up and started for Granny's room.

Though she had lived in the same house all her life, she

still had trouble finding her way at night, when the

darkness was complete. It was as if walls had shifted

slightly, and furniture moved to new places. Lina

stayed close to the walls, feeling her way along. Here

was her bedroom door. Here was the kitchen and the

table--she winced as she stubbed her toe on one of its

legs. A little farther and she'd come to the far wall and

the door to Granny's room. Granny's voice was like a

thin line in the dark air. "Lina ... Come and help ... I

need..."

"I'm coming, Granny," she called.

She stumbled over something--a shoe, maybe-- and fell against the bed. "Here I am, Granny!" she said.

She felt for Granny's hand--it was very cold.

"I feel so strange," said Granny. Her voice was a

whisper. "I dreamed ... I dreamed about my baby...

or someone's baby..."

Lina sat down on the bed. Carefully she moved her

hands over the narrow ridge of her grandmother's

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body until she came to her shoulders. There her fingers

tangled in the long wisps of Granny's hair. She pressed

a finger against the side of Granny's throat to feel for

her pulse, as the doctor had shown her. It was fluttery,

like a moth that has hurt itself and is flapping in

crooked circles.

"Can I get you some water, Granny?" Lina asked.

She couldn't think what else to do.

"No water," Granny said. "Just stay for a while."

Lina tucked one foot underneath her and pulled

part of the blanket over her lap. She took hold of

Granny's hand again and stroked it gently with one

finger.

For a long time neither of them said anything.

Lina sat listening to her grandmother's breathing. She

would take a deep, shuddering breath and let it out in

a sigh. Then there would be a long silence before the

next breath began. Lina closed her eyes. No use keeping

them open--there was nothing to see but the dark.

She was aware only of her grandmother's cold, thin

hand and the sound of her breathing. Every now and

then Granny would mumble a few words Lina

couldn't make out, and then Lina would stroke her

forehead and say, "Don't worry, it's all right. It's almost

morning," though she didn't know if it was or not.

After a long time, Granny stirred slightly and

seemed to come awake. "You go to bed, dear," she said.

138

"I'm all right now." Her voice was clear but very faint.

"You go back to sleep."

Lina bent forward until her head rested against

Granny's shoulder. Granny's soft hair tickled her face.

"All right, then," she whispered. "Good night, Granny."

She squeezed her grandmother's shoulders gently, and

as she stood up a wave of terrible loneliness swept over

her. She wanted to see Granny's face. But the darkness

hid everything. It might still be a long time until

morning--she didn't know. She groped her way back

to her own bed and fell into a deep sleep, and when,

hours later, the clock tower struck six and the lights

came on, Lina went fearfully into her grandmother's

room. She found her very pale and very still, all the life

gone out of her.

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CHAPTER 11

Lizzie's Groceries

Lina spent all that day in Mrs. Murdo's house, which

was just like theirs, only neater. There was one couch,

and one fat chair covered in fuzzy striped material, and

one big table, only Mrs. Murdo's table wasn't wobbly

like theirs. On the table was a basket, and in the basket

were three turnips, each of them lavender on one end

and white on the other. Mrs. Murdo must have put

them there, Lina thought, not just because she was

going to have them for dinner, but also because they

were beautiful.

Lina sat sideways on the couch with her legs

stretched out, and Mrs. Murdo covered her with a soft

gray-green blanket. "This will keep you warm," she

said, tucking it around Lina's legs. Lina didn't really

feel cold but she did feel sad, which was in a way

the same. The blanket felt good, like someone holding

her. Mrs. Murdo gave Poppy a long purple scarf to

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play with and made a creamy mushroom soup with

potatoes, and all day Lina stayed there, snuggled under

the blanket. She thought about her grandmother, who

had had a long and mostly cheerful life. She cried some

and fell asleep. She woke up and played with Poppy.

The day had a strange but comforting feel to it, like a

rest between the end of one time and the beginning of

another.

On the morning of the next day, Lina got up and

got ready to go to work. Mrs. Murdo gave her beet tea

and spinach hash for breakfast. "The Singing's coming

up soon," she remarked to Lina as they ate. "Do you

know your part?"

"Yes," said Lina. "I remember it pretty well from

last year."

"I rather like the Singing," said Mrs. Murdo.

"I love it," Lina said. "I think it's my favorite day of

the year." Once a year, the people of the city came

together to sing the three great songs of Ember. Just

thinking of it made Lina feel better. She finished her

breakfast and put on her red jacket.

"Don't worry about Poppy, I'll take care of her,"

said Mrs. Murdo as Lina headed for the door. "When

you come back this evening, we'll talk about how to

proceed."

"Proceed?" said Lina.

"Well, you can't live by yourselves, just the two of

you, can you?"

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"We can't?"

"Certainly not," said Mrs. Murdo sternly. "Who's

to take care of Poppy while you go off delivering

messages? You must move in here with me. I have an

empty bedroom, after all, and quite a nice one. Come

and look."

She opened a door at the far end of the living

room, and Lina peeked in. She had never seen such

a beautiful, cozy room. There was a big, lumpy bed

covered with a faded blue blanket, and at its head four

plump pillows. Next to the bed was a chest of drawers

with drawer handles shaped like teardrops and a

mirror attached to the top. The carpets on the floor

were all different shades of blue and green, and in the

corner was a sturdy square table and a chair with a

back like a ladder. "This will be your room," said Mrs.

Murdo. "Yours and Poppy's. You'll have to share the

bed, but it's big enough."

"It's lovely," Lina said. "You're so kind, Mrs.

Murdo."

"Well" said Mrs. Murdo briskly, "it's just common

sense. You need a place. I have one. You go on now, and

I'll see you this evening."

Three days had passed since Lina and Doon had seen

the man in the Pipeworks, and there hadn't been

any special announcements. So if that man had discovered

a way out of Ember, he was keeping the news

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to himself. Lina couldn't understand why.

As Lina ran through the city with her messages on

her first day back to work, it seemed to her that the

mood of the people was even gloomier than before.

There were long, silent lines at the markets, and knots

of people gathered in the squares, talking in low voices.

Many shop*--more each day, it seemed--displayed

signs in their windows saying "Closed" or "Open Mon.

Tues. only." Every now and then, the lights flickered,

and people stopped and looked up in fright. When the

flickering ended and the lights stayed lit, people just

took a breath and walked on.

Lina delivered her messages as usual, but inside

she felt strange. Everywhere she ran, she heard the

same words, like a drumbeat, in her mind: alone in the

world, alone in the world. It wasn't exactly true. She had

Poppy. She had friends. And she had Mrs. Murdo, who

was somewhere between a friend and a relative. But

she felt as if she had suddenly gotten older in the last

three days. She was a sort of mother herself now. What

happened to Poppy was more or less up to her.

As the day went on, she stopped thinking alone in

the world and began thinking about her new life at

Mrs. Murdo's. She thought about the blue-green room

and planned how she would arrange her pictures on

the walls. The one she'd drawn with her blue pencil

would look especially nice, because it would match the

color of the rugs. She could bring her pillows from

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home and add them to the ones on the bed, and then

she'd have six altogether--and maybe she could find

some old blue dresses or shirts and make pillow covers

for them. The blue-green room, the orderly apartment,

the meals cooked, and the blankets tucked in

cozily at night--all this gave her a feeling of comfort, almost luxury. She was grateful for Mrs. Murdo's kindness.

I am not ready yet to be alone in the world, she

thought.

Late that afternoon, Lina was given a message to

take to Lampling Street. She delivered the message

and, as she was coming back out onto the street,

caught sight of Lizzie coming out the door of the

Supply Depot--her orange hair was unmistakable.

"Lizzie!" Lina called out.

Lizzie must not have heard her. She kept on going.

Lina called again. "Lizzie, wait!" This time it was clear

that Lizzie had heard, but instead of stopping, she

walked faster. What's the matter with her? Lina wondered.

She ran after her and grabbed the back of her

coat. "Lizzie, it's me!"

Lizzie stopped and turned around. "Oh!" she said.

Her face was flushed. "It's you. Hi! I thought it was... I

didn't realize it was you." She smiled brightly, but there

was a distracted look in her eyes. "I was just going

home," she said. Her arms were wrapped around a

small bulging sack.

"I'll walk with you," said Lina.

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"Oh," said Lizzie. "Oh, good." But she didn't look

pleased.

"Lizzie, something sad has happened," Lina said.

"My grandmother died."

Lizzie gave her a quick sideways glance, but she

didn't stop walking. "That's too bad," she said absently.

"Poor you"

What was wrong with her? Lizzie was ordinarily so

interested in other people's misfortunes. She could be

sincerely sympathetic, too, when she wasn't wrapped

up in her own troubles.

Lina changed the subject. "What's in the sack?" she

asked.

"Oh, just some groceries," said Lizzie. "I stopped at

the market after work."

"You did?" Lina was confused. She had seen Lizzie

not two minutes ago leaving the storeroom office.

Lizzie didn't answer. She began walking and talking

quite fast. "It was so busy today at work. Work is so

hard, isn't it, Lina? I think work is much harder than

school, and not as interesting. You do the same thing

every day. I get so tired, don't you, running around all

day?"

Lina started to say that she liked running and

hardly ever got tired, but Lizzie didn't wait for her to

answer.

"Oh, well, at least there are some good things

about it. Guess what, Lina? I have a boyfriend. I met

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him at work. He really likes me--he says my hair is the

exact color of a red-hot burner on a stove"

Lina laughed. "It's true, Lizzie" she said."You look

like your head is on fire."

Lizzie laughed, too, and lifted one hand to fluff her

hair. She puckered her lips and fluttered her eyelashes.

"He says I'm as beautiful as a red tomato."

They were crossing Torrick Square now. It was

crowded in the square. People had just left work and

were lining up at the shops and hurrying along with

packages. A cluster of children sat on the pavement,

playing some sort of game.

"Who is this boyfriend?" asked Lina.

But just at that moment, Lizzie tripped. She'd been

strutting along being beautiful, not paying attention to

her feet, and the edge of her shoe caught on an uneven

place in the pavement. She staggered and fell, and as

she fell she lost her grip on the sack. It hit the ground

and toppled sideways, and some cans spilled out. They

rolled in all different directions.

Lina reached for Lizzie's arm. "Did you hurt yourself?"

she asked, but Lizzie went scrambling after the

cans so quickly it was clear she wasn't hurt. Wanting to

help, Lina went after the cans, too. Two had rolled

under a bench. Another was going toward the children,

who were on their feet now, watching Lizzie's wild

spider-like motions. Lina picked up the cans under the

146

bench, and for a second her breath stopped. One of

them was a can of peaches. "Peaches," it said right on

it, and there was a picture of a yellow globe. No one she

knew had seen a can of peaches in years. She looked at

the other one. It was just as amazing--"Creamed

Corn," it said. Una remembered having creamed corn

once, as a thrilling treat, when she was five years old.

There was a shout She looked up. One of the

children had picked up a can. "Look at this!" he

cried, and the other children gathered around him.

"Applesauce!" he said, and the children murmured,

"Applesauce, applesauce," as if they had never heard

the word before.

Lizzie was on her feet. She had all the cans except

for the two in Lina's hands and the one the child had

picked up. She stood there for a moment, her eyes

flicking back and forth from Lina to the children. Then

she smiled, a bright fake-looking smile. "Thanks for

helping me," she said. "I found these on a back shelf at

the market. What a surprise, huh? You can keep those."

She waved the back of her hand at the children, waved

again at Lina, and then took off, holding the sack by

its neck so it hung beside her and banged against her

legs.

Lina didn't follow her. She walked home, thinking

about Lizzie's sack of cans. You simply did not find

cans of peaches and applesauce and creamed corn on

147

the back shelves of markets. Lizzie was lying. And if the

cans hadn't come from a market, where had they come

from? There was only one answer: they had come from

the storerooms. Somehow, Lizzie had gotten them

because she worked in the storeroom office. Had she

paid for them? How much? Or had she taken them

without paying?

Mrs. Murdo had cooked a dinner of beet-and

bean stew for them that night When Lina showed her

the two cans, she gasped in astonishment. "Where did

you get these?" she asked.

"From a friend," said Lina.

"And where did your friend get them?"

Lina shrugged. "I don't know."

Mrs. Murdo frowned slightly but didn't ask any

more questions. She opened the cans, and they had a

feast: creamed corn with their stew, and peaches for

dessert It was the best meal Lina had had in a very

long time--but her enjoyment of it was tainted just a

little by the question of where it had come from.

The next morning, Lina headed for Broad Street.

Before she started delivering messages today, she was

going to have a talk with Lizzie.

She spied her half a block from the storeroom

office. She was sauntering along looking in shop windows.

A long green scarf was wound around her neck.

Lina ran up swiftly behind her. "Lizzie," she said.

148

Lizzie whirled around. When she saw Lina, she

flinched. She didn't say anything, just turned around

and kept walking.

Lina caught hold of one end of the green scarf and

jerked Lizzie to a halt. "Lizzie!" she said. "Stop!"

"What for?" Lizzie said. "I'm going to work." She

tried to pull away, but she didn't get far, because Lina

had a firm grip on her scarf.

Lina spoke in a low voice. There were people all

around them--a couple of old men leaning against the

wall, a group of chattering children just ahead, workers

going toward the storerooms--and she didn't want

to be overheard. "You have to tell me where you got

those cans," she said.

"I told you. I found them on a back shelf at the

market. Let go of my scarf." Lizzie tried to wrench her

scarf out of Lina's grip, but Lina held on.

"You didn't," Lina said. "No market would just forget

about things like that. Tell me the truth." She gave

a yank on the end of the scarf.

"Stop it!" Lizzie reached out and grabbed a handful

of Lina's hair. Lina yelped and pulled harder on the

scarf, and the two of them scuffled, snatching at each

other's hair and coats. They knocked against a woman

who snapped at them angrily, and finally they toppled

over, sitting down hard on the pavement.

Lina was the first one to laugh. It was so much like

what they used to do in fun, chasing each other and

149

screaming with laughter. Now here they were again,

nearly grown girls, sitting in a heap on the pavement.

After a moment, Lizzie laughed, too. "You dope,"

she said. "All right, I'll tell you. I sort of wanted to anyway."

Lizzie leaned forward with her elbows on her

knees and lowered her voice. "Well, it's this," she said.

"There's a storeroom worker named Looper. He's a

carrier. Do you know him? He was two classes ahead of

us. Looper Windly."

"I know who he is," said Lina. "I took a message

for him on my first day of work. Tall, with a long

skinny neck. Big teeth. Funny-looking."

Lizzie looked hurt. "Well, I wouldn't describe him that way. I think he's handsome."

Lina shrugged. "Okay. Go on."

"Looper explores the storerooms. He goes into

every room that isn't locked. He wants to know the true situation, Lina. He's not like most workers, who

just plod along doing their jobs and then go home. He

wants to find things out."

"And what has he found out?" Lina asked.

"He's found out that there's still a little bit left of

some rare things, just a few things in rooms here and

there that have been forgotten. You know, Lina," she

said, "there are so many rooms down there. Some of

them, way out at the edges, are marked 'Empty* in the

ledger book, and so no one ever goes there anymore.

But Looper found out that they're not all empty."

150

"So he's been taking things."

"Just a few things! And not often."

"And he's giving some to you."

"Yes. Because he likes me." Lizzie smiled a little

smile and hugged her arms together. I see, Lina

thought. She feels thatvray about Looper.

"But Looper's stealing," said Lina. "And Lizzie--he

isn't just stealing things for you. He has a store! He

steals things and sells them for huge prices!"

"He does not," said Lizzie, but she looked worried.

"He does. I know because I bought something

from him just a few weeks ago. He has a whole box of

colored pencils."

Lizzie scowled. "He never gave me any colored

pencils."

"He shouldn't be giving you anything--or selling

things. Don't you think everyone should know about

this food he found?"

"No!" Lizzie cried. "Because listen. If there's only

one can of peaches left, only one person gets to have it,

right? So why should everyone know? They'd just end

up fighting over it. What good would that be?" Lizzie

reached out and put a hand on Lina's knee. "Listen,"

she said. "I'll ask Looper to find some good stuff for

you, too. I know he will, if I ask him."

Before she had time to think, Lina heard herself

saying, "What kind of good stuff?"

Lizzie's eyes gleamed. "There's two packages of

151

colored paper, he told me. And some cough medicine.

And there's three pairs of girls' shoes."

It was treasure. Colored paper! And cough

medicine to cure sickness, and shoes... she hadn't had

new ones for almost two years. Lina's heart raced.

What Lizzie said was true: if everyone knew there were

still a few wonderful things in the storerooms, people

would fight each other trying to get them. But what if

no one knew? What difference would it make if she

had the colored paper, or the shoes? She suddenly

wanted those things so badly she felt weak. A picture

arose in her mind's eye--the shelves at Mrs. Murdo's

house stocked with good things, and the three of them

happier and safer than other people.

Lizzie leaned closer and lowered her voice.

"Looper found a can of pineapple. I was going to split

it with him, but I'll give you a bite if you promise not

to tell."

Pineapple! That delectable long-lost thing that her

grandmother had told her about. Was there anything

wrong with having a bite of it, just to see what it was

like?

"I've already tasted peaches, applesauce, and a thing

called fruit cocktail," said Lizzie. "And prunes and

creamed corn and cranberry sauce and asparagus ..."

"All thatf" Lina was astonished. "Then there's a lot

of special things like that still?"

152

"No," said Lizzie. "Not a lot at all. In fact, we've

finished all those."

"You and Looper?"

Lizzie nodded, smiling smugly. "Looper says it's all

going to be gone soon anyway, why not live as well as

we can right now?"

"But Lizzie, why should you get all that? Why you

and not other people?"

"Because we found it. Because we can get at it."

"I don't think it's fair," said Lina.

Lizzie spoke as if she were talking to a not-very

bright child. "You can have some, too. That's what I'm telling you. There are still a few good things left."

But that wasn't the unfairness Lina was thinking

of. It was that just two people were getting things that

everyone would have wanted. She couldn't think how

it should have been done. You couldn't divide a can of

applesauce evenly among all the people in the city.

Still, something was wrong with grabbing the good

things just because you could. It seemed not only

unfair to everyone else but bad for the person who was

doing it, somehow. She remembered the hunger she'd

felt when Looper showed her the colored pencils. It

wasn't a pleasant feeling. She didn't want to want

things that way.

She stood up. "I don't want anything from

Looper."

153

Lizzie shrugged. "Okay" she said, but there was a

look of dismay on her small pale face. "Too bad for

you."

"Thanks anyway," said Lina, and she set off across

Torrick Square, walking fast at first and then breaking

into a run.

154

CHAPTER 12

A Dreadful Discovery

About a week after he and Lina had seen the man come

out the mysterious door, Doon was assigned to fix a

clog in Tunnel 207. It turned out to be easy. He undid

the pipe, rammed a long thin brush down it, and a jet

of water spurted into his face. Once he'd put the pipe

back together, he had nothing else to do. So he decided

to go out to Tunnel 351 and take another look at the

locked door. It was strange, he thought, that no

announcement about a way out of Ember had come.

Maybe that door had not been what they thought it

was.

So he set out for the south end of the Pipeworks.

When he came to the roped-off passage in Tunnel 351,

he ducked in and walked along through the dark,

feeling his way. He was pretty sure the door would be

locked as usual. His mind was on other things. He was

thinking of his green worm, which had been behaving

155

oddly, refusing to eat and hanging from the side of its

box with its chin tucked in. And he was thinking about

Lina, whom he hadn't seen for several days. He wondered

where she was. When he came to the door, he

reached absently for the knob, and what he felt startled

him so much that he snatched his hand back as if he'd

been stung. He felt again, carefully. There was a key in

the lock!

For a long moment, Doon stood as still as a statue.

Then he took hold of the doorknob and turned it. Very

slowly, he pushed on the door. It swung inward without

a sound.

He opened it only a few inches, just enough to

peer around the edge. What he saw made him gasp.

There was no road, or passage, or stairway behind

the door. There was a brightly lit room, whose size he

could not guess at because it was so crowded with

things. On all sides were crates and boxes, sacks and

bundles and packages. There were mounds of cans,

heaps of clothes, rows of jars and bottles, stacks of

light-bulb packages. Piles rose to the low ceiling and

leaned against the walls, blocking all but a small space

in the center. In that small space, a little living room

had been set up. There was a greenish rug, and on the

rug an armchair and a table. On the table were dishes

smeared with the remains of food, and in the armchair

facing Doon was a great blob of a person whose head

was flopped backward, so that all Doon could see of it

156

was an upthrust chin. The blob stirred and muttered,

and Doon, in the second before he stepped back and

pulled the door closed, caught a glimpse of a fleshy ear,

a slab of gray cheek, and a loose, purplish mouth.

That day, Lina had more messages to carry than ever.

There had been five blackouts in a row during the

week. They were all fairly short--the longest was four

and a half minutes, Lina had heard--but there had

never been so many so close together. Everyone was

nervous. People who might ordinarily walk to someone's

house were sending messages instead. Often they

didn't even come out into the street but beckoned to a

messenger from their doorway.

By five o'clock, Lina had carried thirty-nine

messages. Most of them were more or less the same:

"I'm not coming to the meeting tonight, decided to

stay home." "I won't be in to work tomorrow." "Instead

of meeting me in Cloving Square, why don't you come

to my house?" The citizens of Ember were hunkering

down, burrowing in. Fewer people stood around talking

in groups under the lights in the squares. Instead,

they would pause briefly to murmur a few words to

each other and then hasten onward.

Lina was on her way home to Mrs. Murdo's--she

and Poppy had moved in with all their things--when

she heard rapid footsteps. Startled, she turned and saw

Doon racing toward her.

157

At first he was so out of breath he couldn't speak.

"What is it? What is it?" said Lina.

"The door," he panted. "The door in 351.1 opened

it."

Lina's heart leapt. "You did?"

Doon nodded.

"Is it the way out?" Lina whispered fiercely.

"No," Doon said. He glanced behind him. Clutching

Lina's arm, he pulled her into a shadowy spot on

the street "It doesn't lead out of Ember," he whispered.

"It leads to a big room."

Lina's face fell. "A room? What's in there?"

"Everything. Food, clothes, boxes, cans. Light

bulbs, stacks of them. Everything. Piles and piles up to

the ceiling." His eyes grew wide. "And someone was

there, in the middle of it all, asleep."

"Who?"

A look of horror passed over Doon's face. "The

mayor," he said. "Conked out in a big armchair, with an

empty plate in front of him."

"The mayor!" Lina whispered.

"Yes. The mayor has a secret treasure room in the

Pipeworks."

They stared at each other, speechless. Then Doon

suddenly stamped hard on the pavement. His face

flushed red. "That's the solution he keeps telling us

about. It's a solution for him, not the rest of us. He

gets everything he needs, and we get the leftovers! He

158

doesn't care about the city. All he cares about is his fat

stomach!"

Lina felt dizzy, as if she'd been hit on the head.

"What will we do?" She couldn't think, she was so

stunned.

"Tell everyone!" said Doon. He was shaking with

anger. "Tell the whole city the mayor is robbing us!"

"Wait, wait." Lina put a hand on Doon's arm and

concentrated for a minute. "Come on," she said at last.

"Let's go sit in Harken Square. I have something to tell

you, too."

At the north end of Harken Square stood a circle of

Believers, clapping their hands and singing one of their

songs. Lately they seemed to be singing more loudly

and cheerfully than ever. Their voices were shrill.

"Coming soon to save us!" they wailed. "Happy, happy day!"

Near the Gathering Hall steps, something unusual

was happening. Twenty or so people were pacing

around and around, carrying big signs painted on old

planks and on big banners made of sheets. The signs

said "WHAT solutions, Mayor Cole?" and "We want

ANSWERS!" Every now and then the demonstrators

would yell these slogans out loud. Lina wondered if the

mayor was paying any attention.

Doon and Lina found an empty bench on the

south side of Harken Square and sat down.

159

"Now, listen," said Lina.

"I am listening," said Doon, though his face was

still red and the look on his face was stormy.

"I saw Lizzie coming out of the storerooms yesterday,"

Lina said. She told him about the cans, and

Lizzie's new friend, Looper, and what Looper was

doing.

Doon pounded his fist on his leg. "That's two of

them doing it, then," he said.

"Wait, there's more. Remember how I thought

there was something familiar about the man who came

out the door? I've remembered what. It was that way

he walked, sort of dipping over sideways, and also that

hair, that black hair all unbrushed and sticking out

I've seen him twice. I don't know why I didn't remember

who it was right away--maybe because I've only

seen him from the front. I took a message for him on

my first day."

Doon was jiggling with impatience. "Well, who

was it, who was it?"

"It was Looper. Looper, who works in the storerooms.

Lizzie's boyfriend. And Doon--" Lina leaned

forward. "It was a message to the mayor that he gave

me, and it was this: 'Delivery at eight."'

Doon's mouth dropped open. "So that means..."

"He's taking things from the storeroom for the

mayor. And he's giving some to Lizzie, and selling

some in his store."

160

"Oh!" cried Doon. He slapped his hand against his

head. "Why didn't I get it before? There's a hatch in the

ceiling near Tunnel 351. It must go right up into the

storerooms. Looper comes through there! That's what

we heard that day, remember? A sort of scraping--that

would have been the hatch opening. Then a thud--his

sack of stuff dropping through--and then a sound like

someone jumping down and landing hard on the

ground."

"And then walking slowly--"

"Because he was carrying a load!"

"And walking quickly on the way out because he'd

left it all for the mayor." Lina took a deep breath. Her

heart was drumming and her hands were cold. "We

have to think what to do," she said. "If this were an

ordinary situation, the mayor would be the one to tell."

"But the mayor is the one committing the crime,"

said Doon.

"So then we should tell the guards, I guess," said

Lina. "They're next in authority to the mayor. Though

I don't like them much," she added, remembering how

she'd been so roughly hustled down the stairs from the

roof of the Gathering Hall. "Especially the chief

guard."

"But you're right," Doon said. "We should tell the

guards. They'll go down into the Pipeworks and see for

themselves that we're telling the truth. Then they can

arrest the mayor and have all the stuff put back in the

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storerooms, and then they can tell the city what's been

going on."

"That's a much better idea," said Lina. "Then you

and I can get back to what's more important."

"What?"

"Figuring out the Instructions. Now that we know

that the door we found wasn't the right one, we have to find the right one."

"I don't know," said Doon. "We might be all wrong

about those Instructions. They could just be about

some old Pipeworks tool closet." He made a sour

face. '"Instructions for Egreston.' Who's Egreston? Or

Egresman? Or whoever it was? Why couldn't he have

been just an especially stupid Pipeworks guy who

needed instructions to find his way around?" He

shook his head. "I don't know. I think maybe those

Instructions are just hogwash."

"Hogwash? What's that?"

"It means nonsense. I read it in a book in the

library."

"But they can't be nonsense! Why would they have

been kept in a box like that? With the strange lock?"

But Doon didn't want to think about the

Instructions right then. "We'll figure it out tomorrow,"

he said. "Right now, let's go find the guards."

"Wait," said Lina, catching hold of the sleeve of his

jacket. "I have one more thing to tell you."

"What?"

162

"My grandmother died."

"Oh!" Doon's face fell. "That's so sad," he said. "I'm

sony." His sympathy made tears spring to Una's eyes.

Doon looked startled for a moment, and then he took

a step toward her and wrapped his arms around her.

He gave her a squeeze so quick and tight that it made

her cough, and then it made her laugh. She realized all

at once that Doon--thin, dark-eyed Doon with his

troublesome temper and his terrible brown jacket and

his good heart--was the person that she knew better

than anyone now. He was her best friend.

"Thanks," she said. "Well." She smiled at him.

"Let's go and talk to the guard."

They crossed the square and climbed the steps of

the Gathering Hall. Sitting at the big reception desk

outside the door of the mayor's office was the assistant

guard, Barton Snode, the same one Lina had encountered

her first time here. Snode looked bored. His

elbows were on the desk, and his chin was moving very

slowly from side to side.

"Sir," said Doon, "we need to speak with you."

The guard looked up. "Certainly" he said. "Go

right ahead."

"In private," said Lina.

The guard looked puzzled. His small eyes darted

back and forth. "This is private," he said. "No one here

but me."

"But anyone could come along," said Doon. "What

163

we have to say is secret, and very important."

"Very important?" said Snode. "Secret?" His face

brightened. Grunting, he raised himself up from his

chair and motioned them into a narrow hallway off to

the side of the main hall. "What is it?" he said.

They told him. As they spoke, interrupting each

other to make sure they got in all the details, the

guard's eyebrows gradually lifted higher and higher

over his eyes. "You saw this room?" he said. "This is

true? Are you sure?" He was chewing faster now. "You

mean the mayor ... you mean the mayor is ..."

At that moment, a little way down the hall, a

door opened. Through it came three more guards,

including--Lina spotted him by his beard--the chief

guard. They strode forward, talking to each other in

low voices, and as they passed, the chief guard threw a

quick glance at Lina. Does he recognize me? Lina wondered.

She couldn't tell.

Barton Snode finished his sentence in a husky

whisper. "You mean ... the mayor is stealing?"

"That's right," said Doon. "We thought you should

be informed, because who else can arrest the mayor?

And once you've done that, the guards can put all the

things he's stolen back where they came from."

"And then tell the city that a new mayor has to be

found," added Lina.

Barton Snode leaned heavily against the wall

and rubbed a hand over his chin. He seemed to be

164

thinking. "Something must be done," he said. "This is

shocking, shocking." He started back toward his desk,

and Doon and Lina followed. "I will make a note," he

said, taking a pencil from the desk drawer. Lina

watched as he wrote slowly on a scrap of paper:

"Mayor stealing. Secret room."

When he'd finished, he let out a satisfied breath.

"Very good," he said. "Action will be taken, you may be

sure. Some sort of action. Quite soon."

"Good," said Doon.

"Thank you," said Lina, and they turned to leave.

The three guards were standing by the main door

of the Gathering Hall as Doon and Lina went out. The

chief guard moved aside to make way for them, and

they went through the door and out onto the wide

front steps. Lina glanced over her shoulder. Before the

door swung closed, she saw the chief guard striding

toward the reception desk, where Barton Snode was

standing up, leaning forward, his eyes shining with

important news.

165

CHAPTER 13

Deciphering the Message

Doon headed for home, and Lina went in the opposite

direction across Harken Square. The little group of

Believers had gone, but the protesters with their signs

continued to pace back and forth. A few of them

were still shaking their fists in the air and yelling, but

most of them tramped silently, looking tired and

discouraged. Lina felt a bit that way, too. Once Doon

said he'd seen a door, she was sure that the door he'd

found and the door in the Instructions were the same.

She had had such hopes for that door in the

Pipeworks. But hoping so hard had made her jump to

conclusions. She'd gone a little too fast. She always

went fast. Sometimes it was a good thing and sometimes

not.

Now Doon thought the Instructions were nothing

important after all. She didn't want him to be right.

She didn't believe he was, even now. But her thoughts

166

felt like a mess of tangled yarn. She needed someone

wise and sensible to help her sort things out. She

headed for Glome Street

Though it was nearly six o'clock, she found Clary still

in her workroom, at the far end of Greenhouse 1. It

was a small, crowded room. Pots and trowels cluttered

a high table at one end. Above the table were shelves

full of bottles of seeds, and boxes of string, wire, and

various kinds of powders. Clary's desk was a rickety

table, littered with scraps of paper, all of them covered

with notes in her neat, round handwriting. Two

rickety chairs went with the rickety table, one on each

side. Lina sat down facing Clary. "I have to tell you

some important things," she said. "And they're all

secret."

"All right," said Clary. "I can keep secrets." She was

wearing a patched shirt that had faded from blue to

gray. Her short brown hair was tucked behind her ears,

and a bit of leaf clung to it on the right-hand side. She

folded her arms in front of her on the desk. She looked

square and solid.

"The first thing is," Lina began, "that I found the

Instructions. But Poppy had chewed them up."

"The Instructions," said Clary. "I'm not familiar

with them."

Lina explained. She went on to explain everything--how

she'd shown the Instructions to Doon,

167

what they had figured out, how he'd searched the

Pipeworks and found the door, and what he'd seen

when he opened the door.

Clary made an unhappy sound and shook her

head. "This is very bad," she said. "And sad, too. I

remember when the mayor was first starting out. He

has always been foolish, but not always wicked. I'm

sorry to know that the worst side of him has won out."

Clary's dark brown eyes seemed to grow deeper and

sadder. "There is so much darkness in Ember, Lina. It's

not just outside, it's inside us, too. Everyone has some

darkness inside. It's like a hungry creature. It wants

and wants and wants with a terrible power. And the

more you give it, the bigger and hungrier it gets."

Lina knew. She had felt it in Looper's shop as she

hovered over the colored pencils. For a moment, she

felt sorry for the mayor. His hunger had grown so

big it could never be satisfied. His huge body couldn't

contain it. It made him forget everything else.

Clary let out a long breath, and a few of the scraps

of paper on her desk fluttered. She ran her fingers

through her hair, felt the bit of leaf, and plucked it out.

Then she said, "About these Instructions."

"Oh, yes," said Lina. "They might be important, or

they might not be. I don't know anymore."

"I'd like to see them, if you'd let me."

"Of course you can see them--but you'll have to

come home with me."

168

"I'll come now, if that's all right," said Clary.

"There's plenty of time before lights out."

Lina led Clary up the stairs and into her new bedroom

at Mrs. Murdo's. "Nice room," Clary said, looking

around with interest. "And I see you have a sprout."

"A what?" said Lina.

"Your bean," said Clary, pointing at the little pot of

dirt on the windowsill.

Lina bent to see what Clary was talking about.

Sure enough, the dirt was heaving up a little. She

touched the pushed-up part, brushed away the dirt,

and discovered a pale green loop. It looked like a neck,

as if a creature in the bean were trying to escape but

hadn't yet managed to pull its head out. Of course she

already knew that plants grew from seeds. But to have

put that flat white bean in the dirt, to have almost forgotten

about it, and now to see it forcing its way up

into the air...

"It's doing it!" she said. "It's coming to life!"

Clary nodded, smiling. "Still amazes me every

time I see it," she said.

Lina brought out the Instructions, and Clary sat

down at the table to study them. She puzzled over the

patchwork of scraps for a long time, tracing the lines

with her finger, murmuring the parts of words.

"What you've figured out so far seems right

to me," she said. "I think 'ip ork' must be 'Pipeworks.'

169

And 'iverb nk' must be 'riverbank.' So this bit must be

'down riverbank'--then there's a big space here--'to

edge.' Edge of what, I wonder? And does it mean 'down

riverbank' as in 'walk alongside the river'?"

"Yes, I think so," Lina said.

"Or does it mean go down the riverbank itself,

down the bank toward the water? Maybe 'edge* means

'edge of the water.'"

"It couldn't mean that. The bank goes straight

down like a wall. You couldn't go down to the edge of

the water, you'd fall in." Lina pictured the dark, swift

water and shivered.

"This word," said Clary, putting a finger on the

paper. "Maybe it isn't 'edge,' maybe it's something else.

It could be 'hedge.' Or 'pledge.' Those don't make much

sense. But it could be 'ledge' or 'wedge."*

Lina saw that Clary was no better at deciphering

the puzzle than she was. She sighed and sat down on

the end of her bed. "It's hopeless," she said.

Clary straightened up quickly. "Don't say that.

This torn-up piece of paper is the most hopeful thing

I've ever seen. Do you know what this word is?" She

pointed to the word at the top of the paper, Egres.

"Someone's name, isn't it? The title would be

'Instructions for Egreston,' or maybe 'Egresman,' or

something like that. The person the instructions were

for."

"I don't think so," said Clary. "If you add an s to

170

^ this word, right where this tear in the paper is, you get

$|^, 'Egress.' Do you know what that means?"

"No," said Lina.

"T

'It means 'the way out.' It means 'the exit.' The title

of this document is 'Instructions for Egress.'"

When Clary left, there was still over an hour before

lights out. Lina raced across the city to Greengate

Square. She glanced in the window of the Small Items

shop, where Doon's father was reaching for something

on a shelf, and then she dashed up the stairs and

knocked on the door of Doon's apartment. Right away,

she heard quick steps and Doon opened the door.

"I have something exciting to tell you," Lina said

breathlessly.

"Come in, then."

Lina went across the cluttered room to stand by a

lamp. She pulled from her pocket a tiny piece of paper

on which she had written "Egres." "Look at this word,"

she said.

"It's from the title of the Instructions. Someone's

name," said Doon.

"No," said Lina. "It's meant to be 'Egress,' with two

s's. I showed the Instructions to Clary, and she told me.

It means 'the way out.'"

"The way out!" cried Doon.

"Yes! The way out. The exit. It's instructions for

the way out of Ember!"

171

"So it is real," Doon said.

"It is. We have to figure out the rest. Or as much of

the rest as possible. Can you come now?"

He darted into his room, emerged with his jacket,

and they ran.

"All right" said Lina. They were on the floor of the

blue-green room at Mrs. Murdo's. "Let's take the first

line." She moved her finger along it slowly.

1.    Exp

riv   ip ork.

"We know that 'ip ork' is Pipeworks," she said.

'"Exp' could be 'expand,' or 'explore,' or 'expose'..."

"There's a big space between 'Exp' and the rest,"

said Doon. "There must be more words in there."

"But who knows what they are? Let's move on."

Lina swept her straggly hair impatiently back from her

face. "Look at number two."

2.    ston marked with E by r

dge

Lina put her ringer on ston. "What could that be?"

"Maybe 'piston,'" said Doon. "That's part of a

machine, like the generator. Or maybe it's 'astonish.' Or

it could be..."

172

"I bet it's just plain 'stone,'" said Lina. "There's a

lot of stone in the Pipeworks."

Doon had to admit this was probably right. "So

then," he said, "it would be 'stone marked with E....'"

He frowned at the next bit. "This must be 'river's edge.'

'Stone marked with E by the river's edge.'"

They looked at each other in delight. "E for

Egress!" cried Lina. "E for Exit!"

They bent over the document again. "There's not

much left of this next line," said Doon.

3.    adde down iverb nk

to edge appr      eight

low.

"Just this part--which must say, 'down riverbank

to edge'... something."

'"Edge of water' would make sense. But right after

'edge' there's 'app.' What would that be?" Doon sat

back on his heels and gazed up at the ceiling, as if the

answer might be there. Lina muttered, "down riverbank

to edge, edge." She thought of Clary's guesses

about that line. "Maybe it's 'ledge,'" she said. "'Down

riverbank to ledge.' There could be a ledge down near

the water."

"Yes, that must be right. There's a stone marked

with E, and down the riverbank at that point there's a

ledge. I think we're getting it."

173

Once again they crouched over the page, their

heads close together. "Okay" Doon said. "Line 4."

4.    acks to the

wat r,      find door of bo

ker. He     hind small steel

pan the right     . Rem

ey, open do .

"This is where it says 'door,'" Lina said. "Somehow

the door is by the ledge. Does that make sense?"

"And there's that "small steel pan'--what can that

mean? What would a pan have to do with anything?"

"But look, but look." Lina tapped the paper

urgently. "Here it says 'he' and here it says 'ey.' It's

talking about a key!"

"But what is it a door to?" said Doon, sitting back.

"Remember, we thought about this before. A door in

the bank of the river would lead under the Pipeworks."

Lina pondered this. "Maybe it leads to a long

tunnel that goes way out beyond Ember, and then

gradually up and up until it comes out at the other

city."

"What other city?" Doon glanced up at the drawings

tacked to the walls of Lina's room. "Oh," he said.

"You mean that city."

"Well, it could be."

174

Doon shrugged. "I suppose so. Or it could be

another city exactly like this one."

That was a gloomy thought. Both of them felt

their spirits sink a little at the idea. So they turned back

to the task of deciphering.

"Next line," said Lina.

But Doon sat back on his heels again. He stared

into the air, half smiling. "I have an idea," he said. "If

we do find the way out, we'll need to announce it to

everyone. Wouldn't it be splendid to do it during the

Singing? Stand up there in front of the whole city and

say we've found it?"

"It would be," Lina said. "But that's only two days

away."

"Yes. We have to hurry."

They were bending again over the glued-down

fragments when Doon remembered that he should

check the time. It was a quarter to nine. He barely had

time to get home.

"Game again tomorrow," said Lina. "And while

you're at work, look for the rock marked with E."

That night, Doon had trouble sleeping. He couldn't

find a comfortable position on his bed. It seemed to be

made up of nothing but lumps and wrinkles, and it

squeaked and groaned every time he moved. He flailed

around so much that the noise woke his father, who

175

came to his room and asked, "What is it, son? Nightmares?"

"No,"

said Doon. "Just can't sleep"

"Are you worrying? Frightened of anything?"

Doon wanted to say, Yes, Father. I'm worried

because the mayor of our city is taking for himself the

things that people need, and I'm afraid because any

day our lights could go out forever. I'm worried and

afraid a lot of the time, but I'm also excited because I

think there is a way out, and we might find it--and all

those feelings are whirling around in my head, which

makes it hard to sleep.

He could have told his father everything. His

father would have plunged in with great enthusiasm.

He would have helped them decipher the Instructions

and expose the mayor's thievery; he would even

have come down into the Pipeworks and helped search

for the rock marked with E. But Doon wanted to

keep these things to himself for now. Tomorrow, the

guards would announce that an alert young boy had

uncovered the mayor's crime, and his father, hearing

the announcements along with the rest of Ember,

would turn to the person next to him and say, "That's

my son they're talking about! My sonV

So in answer to his father's question, he simply

said, "No, Father, I'm all right."

"Well, then, see if you can't lie still," said his father.

"Good night, son," he added, and closed the door.

176

Doon smoothed out his covers and pulled them up to

his chin. He closed his eyes. But still he couldn't sleep.

So he tried a method that had often worked for

him before. He would choose a place he knew well-- the school, for instance--and imagine himself walking

through it, picturing it as he went in minute detail.

Often his thoughts would wander, but he would always

bring them back to the imaginary journey, and something

about doing this would often make him sleepy.

This night he decided to retrace his explorations of the

Pipeworks. He held his mind to the task for a long

time, picturing, with all the clarity he could muster,

everything he had seen in that underground realm-- the long stairway, the tunnels, the door, the path along

the river, the rocks along the path. He felt sleep

drawing closer, a heaviness in his limbs, but just as he

was about to give in to it, he saw in his mind's eye the

wrinkled rocks that bordered the river at the west

end of the Pipeworks, the rocks whose strange ridges

and creases had reminded him of writing. His eyes

flew open in the dark, his heart began to hammer, and

he gave up on sleeping and lay in a state of terrible

impatience for the rest of the night.

177

CHAPTER 14

The Way Out

The next day was Song Rehearsal Day. Everyone was

let off from work at twelve o'clock to practice for

the Singing. It was a slow morning for messages. Lina

had a lot of time to sit at her station in Gam Square

and think. She put her elbows on her knees, rested her

chin in her hands, and stared down at the pavement in

front of the bench, which was worn smooth by the

many feet that had passed there. She thought about the

mayor, down in his room full of plunder, gorging on

peaches and asparagus and wrapping his huge body in

elegant new clothes. She thought of his great stack of

light bulbs and shook her head in bewilderment. What

was he thinking? If he still had light bulbs when everyone

else in Ember had run out, would he enjoy sitting

in his lit room while the rest of the city drowned in

darkness? And when the power finally ran out for

178

good, all his light bulbs would be useless. Possessions

couldn't save him--how could he have forgotten that?

He must be thinking the same way as Looper: everything

was hopeless anyhow, so he'd live it up while he

could.

She leaned back against the bench, stretched her

legs out, and took a long breath. Very soon, the guards

would storm into the secret room and seize the mayor

as he sat stuffing himself on stolen goodies. Maybe

they already had. Maybe today the stunning news

would come: Mayor Arrested! Stealing from Citizens!

Maybe they'd announce it at the Singing, so everyone

could hear it.

No one came with any messages to be delivered, so

after a while Lina left her station and found a step to sit

on in an alley off Calloo Street. She pulled back her

hair and braided it to keep it from sliding around.

Then she took from her pocket the copy of the Instructions

she'd made just after she sent her note to the

mayor. She unfolded it and began to study it.

This is what she was doing when, a little before

twelve o'clock, she looked up to see Doon running

toward her. He must have come straight from the

Pipeworks--he had a big damp patch of water on one

leg of his pants. He spoke in an excited rush. "I've been

looking all over for you!" he said. "I've found it!"

"Found what?"

179

"The E! At least it looks like an E. It must be an E,

though you wouldn't know it if you weren't looking for

it...."

"You mean the rock marked with an E? In the

Pipeworks?"

"Yes, yes, I found it!" He stood breathing hard, his

eyes blazing. "I'd seen it before, hut I didn't think of it

as an E then, just a squiggle that looked like writing.

There are all these rocks that look like they're covered

with writing."

"Which rocks? Where is it?" Lina was on her feet

now, bouncing with excitement.

"Down at the west end of the river. Near where it

goes into that great hole in the Pipeworks wall." He

paused, trying to catch his breath. "And listen," he said.

"We could go there right now."

"Right now?"

"Yes, because of rehearsals. Everyone's going

home, so the Pipeworks will be closed and empty."

"But if it's closed, how will we get in?"

Grinning, Doon produced a large key from his

pocket. "I ducked into the office on my way out and

borrowed the spare key," he said. "Lister--he's the

Pipeworks director--was in the bathroom practicing

his singing. He won't miss the key today. And

tomorrow, everyone will be off work." He did an

impatient shuffle. "So come on," he said.

The town clock struck the first of its twelve noon

180

time booms. Lina stuffed her copy of the Instructions

back in her pocket. "Let's go."

The Pipeworks was empty and silent. Lina and Doon

went up the hallway past the rows of boots and the

slickers hanging on their hooks. They didn't take any

of these for themselves. This was not a Pipeworks

tunnel they were about to enter, they were sure; it

wouldn't be dripping with water or lined with spurting

pipes.

They went down the long stairway and out into

the main tunnel, where the river thundered alongside

the path, its dark surface strewn with flecks of light.

Doon led the way along the river's edge. As they

neared the west end, Lina saw the rocky outcroppings

Doon had described to her. They were strange bulging

shapes creased with lines like the faces of the very old.

Not far beyond, Lina could see the place where the

river disappeared into a great hole in the Pipeworks

wall.

Doon knelt down beside a clump of stones. He ran

a finger over their convoluted surface. "Look here," he

said. Lina stooped down and peered at the deeply

carved lines. It was hard to see the E at first, because it

was surrounded by such a tangle of other lines, and

because she was expecting it to be an E drawn with

straight strokes. But once she saw it--an E drawn with

curving lines, a script E--she was sure it had been

181

carved on purpose: it was centered on its stone, and its

lines were deep and even.

"So from here we should look down at the river,"

said Doon. "That's what the Instructions said, 'down

riverbank to ledge."'

He lay on his stomach next to the rock and inched

forward until his head hung out over the edge of the

path. Lina watched him anxiously. His elbows stuck up

on either side of him, and his head, bent down, was

nearly invisible. He stayed that way for long seconds.

Then he shouted, "Yes! I see something!" and

scrambled to his feet again. "You do it," he said. "Look

at the riverbank right below us."

Lina did as he had. She lay down and pulled herself

forward until her head was over the edge. Eight

feet or so below her, she saw the black water churning

by. She tucked her chin in and looked at the riverbank.

It was a sheer rock wall, straight up and down and slick

with spray, and at first that was all she saw. But she kept

looking and before long could make out short iron

bars bolted into the bank, one below the next, almost

directly below her. They were like the rungs of a ladder.

They were a ladder, she realized. The bars provided a

way to climb down the riverbank. Not a very appealing

way--the bars looked slippery, and the water below

was so terribly fast. And because of the dimness and

the flying spray, she couldn't actually see if there was a

ledge at the bottom or not. But the E was clearly an E,

182

and the bars were clearly a ladder. This must be the

right place.

"Who'll go first?" said Doon.

"You can," Lina said, getting to her feet and stepping

away.

"All right." Doon turned so that his back was to the

river, and he eased himself carefully over the rocks,

feeling for the first rung with his foot. Lina watched as

he sank out of sight, little by little. After a few moments

his voice called up from below: "I'm down! Now you

come!"

Lina inched backward, just as Doon had, letting

one foot dangle over the edge, lower and lower, until it

touched the first rung of the ladder. She shifted her

weight to that foot, clinging with cold fingers to a

ridge in the rock, and lowered herself slowly until

she was standing on the rung with both feet. Her heart

was beating so hard she was afraid it would shake her

fingers loose from their grip.

Now she had to move downward. She felt for the

next rung with her foot, found it, let herself down. It

would have been easy if it hadn't been for the river

waiting below to swallow her.

"You're almost here!" called Doon. His voice came

from right below her. "There's a ledge--one more rung

and you'll feel it."

She did feel it, solid beneath her foot. For a

second, she stood there, still clutching the ladder. The

183

surging water was only inches below her now. Don't

think about it, she told herself. She moved sideways

two steps to stand next to Doon, and there in front of

them was a rectangular space carved out of the river

wall, rather like the entry hall of a building. It was perhaps

eight feet wide and eight feet high, and would

have been invisible from anywhere else in the

Pipeworks. You had to have climbed down the riverbank

to see it.

They stepped into this entry hall and walked a few

steps. Enough light to see by came from the tunnel

behind them.

Lina stopped. "There's the door!" she said.

"What?" said Doon. The water roared so loudly

they had to shout to be heard.

"The door!" Lina yelled happily.

"Yes!" Doon yelled back. "I see it!"

At the end of the passage was a wide, solid

looking door. It was dull gray, mottled with greenish

and brownish blotches that looked like mildew. Lina

put her palms against it. It was metal, and it felt

cold. The door had a metal handle, and just below the handle was a keyhole.

Lina reached into the pocket of her pants for her

copy of the Instructions. She unfolded it, and Doon

looked over her shoulder. Together they squinted at

the paper in the dim light from the main tunnel.

184

"This is the part, right here," she said, pointing:

3.    adde down iverb nk

to edge appr      eight

low.

4.    acks to the

wat r, find door of bo

ker. He     hind small steel

pan the right     . Rem

ey, open do .

Lina ran her finger along line number 3. "This

must say, 'Something something down riverbank to

ledge approximately eight feet below.' That's what

we've just done. Then four is something about . . .

'backs to the water, find door... something.' And then

'He hind'--that must be 'key behind,' and then there's

the small steel pan. Do you see a small steel pan?"

Doon was still studying the paper. "It says 'right.'

We should look to the right of the door."

And quite easily they found it. It wasn't a pan at

all, but a small square of steel embedded in the wall. "A

steel panel," said Lina. She ran her fingers across it and

felt a dent at one side. When she pressed there, the

panel sprang open easily and silently, as if it were glad

to have been finally found. Inside, a silver key was

hanging on a hook.

185

Lina reached for it and then drew her hand back.

"Shall I do it?" she said. "Or shall you?"

"You do it" said Doon.

So she took the key from its hook and put it in the

keyhole. She turned it and felt a click. She grasped the

door handle and pushed, but nothing happened. She

pushed harder. "It won't budge," she said.

"Maybe it opens outward," said Doon.

Lina pulled. The door still didn't move. "It has to

open," she said. "We unlocked it!" She pulled and

pushed and hauled on the handle--and the door

moved, not inward or outward but sideways. "Oh, this is how it goes!" cried Lina. She pulled the handle to the

left, and with a deep rasping sound, the door slid away,

into a slot in the wall. Behind it was a space of utter

darkness.

They stared. Lina had expected to see something

when the door opened. She had thought there would

be light behind it, and a path or road.

"Shall we go in?" said Lina.

Doon nodded.

Lina stepped across the threshold. The air had a

dank, stuffy smell. She turned to the right and put her

right hand against the wall. It was smooth and flat. The

floor, too, was smooth.

-^ "There might be a light switch," she said. She

patted the wall just inside the door, from the floor to as

high as she could reach, but found nothing.

186

Doon turned left and felt on the other side, with

the same result. "Nothing," he said.

Very slowly, keeping a hand to the wall and

tapping the floor cautiously with their feet before

every step, Doon and Lina made their way in opposite

directions. Each of them soon came to a corner and

turned again. Now they were going deeper into the

dark. They both had the same thought: Is the way out

of Ember a long dark tunnel? Must we go mile after

mile in absolute darkness?

But suddenly Lina gave a yelp of surprise. "Something's

here on the floor," she said. Her foot had

banged against a hard object. She knelt down and

touched it cautiously with her hands. It was a metal

cube, about a foot square. "It's a box, I think. Two

boxes," she added as she explored farther.

Doon took a step toward her in the darkness, and

his knees banged into a hard edge. "There's something

else here, too," he said. "Not a box." He ran his hands

along it. "It's big and has a curved edge."

"The boxes are small enough to lift," said Lina.

"Let's take them out where it's lighter and see what

they are. Come and help."

Doon made his way to Lina and picked up one of

the boxes. They walked back through the door and set

the boxes down a few feet from the river's edge. They

were made of dark green metal and had gray metal

handles on top and a kind of latch on the side. The

187

latches opened easily. Lina and Doon raised the hinged

lids and looked inside.

What they saw puzzled and disappointed them.

Una's box was full of smooth white rods, each about

ten inches long. At the end of each one, a little bit of

string poked out In Doon's box were dozens of small

packets wrapped in a slippery material. He opened one

and found a lot of short wooden sticks, each with a

blue blob on the end. Both boxes had a label on the

inside of the lid. The label on Lina's box said "Candles."

The label on Doon's said "Matches," and under it was a

white, inch-wide strip of some kind of rough, pebbly

material.

"What does 'Candles' mean?" Lina said, puzzled.

She took out one of the white rods. It felt slick, almost

greasy.

"And what does 'Matches' mean?" said Doon.

"Matches what?" He took one of the small sticks from

its packet. The blue stuff on the end was not wood.

"Could it be something to write with? Like a pencil? Maybe it writes blue."

"But what's the point of a whole box of tiny pencils?"

asked Lina. "I don't understand."

Doon frowned at the little blue-tipped stick. "I

don't see what else it could be," he said finally. "I'll try

writing something with it."

"On what?"

188

Doon looked around. The floor was too damp

from the spray of the river to write on. "I could try it

on the Instructions," he said, Lina handed them to

him. Carefully, he rubbed the blue end of the stick

along the edge of the paper. It didn't leave a mark. He

rubbed it along his arm. No mark there, either.

"Try this white stuff," Lina said, pointing to the

white strip inside the lid of the box.

He scraped the blue tip across the rough surface.

Instantly, the end of the stick burst into flame. Doon

cried out and flung the stick away. It landed on the

floor a few feet off, where it burned brightly for a

moment and then sputtered out.

They stared at each other, their mouths open in

astonishment. There was a strange sharp smell in the

air that smarted in their noses.

"It makes fire!" said Doon. "And light!"

"Let me try one," said Lina. She took a stick from

the box and ran it across the rough strip. It blazed

up fiercely, but she managed to hold on to it for a

moment. Then she felt the heat on her fingers and let

go, and the flaming stick dropped over the ledge and

into the river.

"Fire sticks," said Doon. "Are they what saves

Ember?"

"I don't see how they could be," said Lina. "They're

so small. They go out too fast." She shivered. This was

189

not turning out the way she'd thought it would. She

held up one of the white things. "Anyway, what are

these for?"

Doon shook his head in bewilderment. "Maybe a

candle is a kind of handle," he said. "Maybe you tie the

stick on with the string, and then you can hold it

longer while it burns."

"It would still go out just as fast," Lina said.

"Yes," said Doon. "But it's all I can think of. Let's

try it."

With a great deal of effort, they looped the string

of a rod around one of the sticks. Lina held the rod

while Doon scraped the blue tip into flame. They

watched the stick flare brightly, making shadows jump

up behind them. The wood turned black, and the

charred firestick crumbled and dropped to the ground.

But the light didn't go out. The string itself had caught

fire. As they watched, it sputtered and smoked and

then burned steadily, filling the little room with a

warm glow.

"It's the movable light," said Doon in awe.

All Lina's excitement flooded back. "And now, and

now--" she said, "we can go back into the room and

see what's there"

They went back down the passage to the doorway

and stepped inside. Lina held the movable light at

arm's length before her. In its flickering glow they saw

something made of silvery metal. They walked slowly

190

around, examining it. It was long and low, filling up

the center of the room. One end of it came to a point.

The other end was flat. Across the open middle

stretched two metal strips. Four stout ropes were

attached to the outside, one at each end and one on

|; each side. And on the floor of the thing were two poles,

each flattened at one end.

- "Look," said Lina. "There's a word on its side."

»They squatted at the pointed end and held the

flame near the word. It said, in square black letters,

^BOAI"

"Boat" repeated Doon. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know," said Lina. "And here's another

word, on these poles: 'Paddles.' The only paddle I know

is the one Mrs. Polster uses on kids who misbehave in

school."

Once again, she took her copy of the Instructions

from her pocket and consulted it, holding it in the light

of the flame. "Look," she said, "right here: 'oat' must be

'boat.'"

5.    oat,  stocked with

nee   uip ent. Bac

ont s eet.

"And the next part must say, 'stocked with necessary

equipment," said Doon. "That must be what's in

the boxes."

191

"Then there's this." Una ran her finger along the

next line.

6. Usi      opes, lowe

ter. Head dow st . Us pa

av cks and assist over rap

"This word must be 'ropes,'" she said. "Then

'lower'. . . and then . . . would this word be 'downstairs'?

Maybe it says, 'head downstairs'?"

"That doesn't make sense," said Doon. "There

aren't any stairs, except the ones that go up." He

frowned at the word, and then he took a short, sharp

breath. "Downstream," he said. "The word must be

'downstream.' It must say something like, 'Use the

ropes to lower the boat, and head downstream.'" He

looked up at Lina and spoke in a voice full of wonder.

"The boat goes on the water. It's something to ride in."

They stared at each other in the flickering light,

realizing what this meant. There was no tunnel leading

out of Ember. The way out was the river. To leave

Ember, they must go on the river.

192

CHAPTER 15

A Desperate Run

"But this can't be right," said Doon. "If the river is the

way out of Ember, why is there just one boat? It's only

big enough for two people."

"I don't know," said Lina. "It is strange."

"Let's look around some more."

They stood up. Doon went back to where they'd

left the boxes and got another candle. He brought it

into the boat room and lit it, and the room grew twice

as bright Right away they saw what they hadn't

noticed before: in the back wall was a door almost as

wide as the whole room. When they went up to it they

could see that it, too, was a sliding door. Doon took

hold of the handle that was on the right and pulled

sideways, and the door rolled smoothly open to reveal

more darkness.

They stepped in. They could guess from the

echoing sound of their voices when they spoke that

193

they were in a tremendous room, though the ceiling

was low--they could see it just over their heads. The

candlelight glinted off something shiny, and as they

went in farther they could see that the room was filled

with boats, row upon row of them, all just like the one

in the first room. "There must be hundreds," Lina

whispered.

"Enough for everyone, I suppose," said Doon.

They wandered around a bit, but there wasn't

really much to see. All the boats were the same. Each

one contained two metal boxes and two paddles. The

room was cold, and the air felt heavy in their lungs.

The candle flames burned weakly. So they went back to

the small room and slid the door closed behind them.

"I guess," said Lina, "that this first boat is meant as a

sort of sample. We learn what's what on the one that

has signs. 'Boat.1 'Paddles.' 'Candles.' 'Matches.'"

They went back out to the river's edge. Lina blew

out her candle and began closing up the boxes they'd

opened.

Doon blew out his, too. "I'm going to take my

candle with me," he said, "to look at later. I want some

matches as well.1' He took a packet of matches from the

box and tucked it inside his shirt.

Lina returned the boxes to the boat room and

slid the door closed. Then she and Doon stood

together on the ledge and gazed down. Less than a foot

194

below, the river rushed by. A short distance down

Stream it plunged into the dark mouth in the wall and

disappeared.

"Well," he said, "we've found it."

"We've found it," Lina repeated, wonderingly.

"And tomorrow, at the start of the Singing," said

Doon, "we'll stand up in Harken Square and tell the

whole city."

When they came up out of the Pipeworks, it was nearly

six o'clock. They hadn't realized they'd been down

there so long; both Doon's father and Mrs. Murdo

would be wondering where they were. They stood for

a moment under a lamppost, just long enough to agree

on a time to meet the next day and plan their

announcement. Then they hurried home. When

Doon's father asked why he was so late, he said his song

rehearsal had gone long. He wanted to shout out to his father, We've found the way out! We're saved! But he held himself in for the sake of his moment of glory.

Tomorrow, when his father saw him on the steps of

the Gathering Hall, he would be so overcome with

surprise and pride that he would go weak in the knees,

and the people standing next to him would have to

catch him and hold him up.

And the announcement about the thieving mayor!

That would probably happen tomorrow, too. Doon

195

had almost forgotten it in the excitement of finding the

boats. The mayor's arrest and the city's rescue, both at

once! It was going to be an amazing day. Racing

thoughts kept Doon awake almost until morning.

The day of the Singing was a holiday for the entire

city; all the stores and other businesses were closed.

This meant that Doon didn't have to go to the

Pipeworks. His father didn't have to go to his shop,

either, but he was going to go anyhow. If he wasn't in

his shop, fussing with his merchandise, he didn't know

what to do with himself.

Doon dawdled over his breakfast of carrot sticks

and mashed turnips, waiting for his father to go. He

wanted to get ready for the journey down the river.

They probably wouldn't leave for a few days--he and

Lina would make their announcement tonight, and

people would need time to get organized before they

could leave the city--but he was too excited to sit

around doing nothing.

As soon as his father left, Doon slipped the case off

his pillow. This would be his traveling pack. He put in

the candle and the matches. He put in the key he'd

borrowed from the Pipeworks office. He put in a good

sized piece of rope that he'd found at the trash heaps

and had been saving for years and a bottle for water.

He put in an ancient folding knife that his father had

given him, which had come down through generations

of his family and which he used to chop off his bangs

196

when they got so long they tickled his eyelids. He put

in some extra clothes, in case he got wet, and some

paper and a pencil, so that he could write a record of

the journey. Along with these things, he crammed in a

small blanket--it might be cold in the new city--and

a packet of food: six carrots, a handful of vitamins,

some peas and mushrooms wrapped in a lettuce leaf,

two boiled beets, and two boiled turnips. That should

be enough. Surely, when they got to where they were

going, the people who lived there would give them

something to eat. He tied the top of the pillowcase in a

knot, and then he untied it again. He might want to

add something else.

He stood in the middle of the apartment and

looked around at the jumble of stuff. There was

nothing else here that he wanted to take with him-- no, there was one thing. He went back into his room.

From beneath his bed he pulled out the pages of his

bug book. He leafed through it The white spider. The

moth with the zigzag pattern on its wings. The bee,

striped brown and yellow on its rear end. He looked at

his drawings for a long time, memorizing their beauty

and strangeness. Tiny fringes of hair, minute claws,

jointed legs. Should he take this with him? There

might not be creatures like this where they were going.

He might never see such things again.

But no, he'd leave it behind--his pack should be

small and light He put the bug book back under his

197

bed and pulled out the box where he kept the green

worm. He drew back the scarf to check his captive one

more time. Several days before, the worm had done a

curious thing: it had wrapped itself up in a blanket of

threads. Since then it had hung motionless from a bit

of cabbage stem. Doon had been watching it carefully.

Either it was dead, or it was undergoing the change

that he'd read about in a library book but could hardly

believe was true--the change from a crawling thing to

a flying thing. So far, the bundled-up worm had shown

no signs of life.

But now he saw that it was wriggling. The whole

wrapped-up bundle, which was shaped like a large

vitamin pill, bent slightly from side to side, then was

still, then bent back and forth again. Something was

pushing at the top end of it, and in a moment the

threads there split apart and a dark furry knob

emerged. Doon watched, holding his breath. Next

came two hairlike legs, which clawed and plucked at

the blanket. In a few minutes the whole creature was

out. Egress, thought Doon with a smile. The creature's

wings were crushed flat against its body at first, but

soon they opened, and Doon saw what his green worm

had become: a moth with light brown wings. He lifted

the box and carried it to the window. He opened the

window and held the box out into the air. The moth

waved its feathery feelers and took a few steps along

the wilted cabbage leaf. For several minutes, it stood

198

still, its wings trembling slightly. Then it fluttered up

into the air, rising higher and higher until it was just a

pale spot against the dark sky.

Doon watched until the moth disappeared. He

knew he had seen something marvelous. What was the

power that turned the worm into a moth? It was

greater than any power the Builders had had, he was

sure of that. The power that ran the city of Ember

was feeble by comparison--and about to run out.

For a few minutes he stood by the window, looking

out over the square and thinking again about what

to pack for his journey. Should he put in anything like

nails or wire? Would he need money? Should he take

some soap?

Then he laughed and struck a hand against his

head. He kept forgetting that the entire population of

the city would be with him on the trip. If he needed

something he didn't have, someone would surely be

able to supply it.

So he tied a knot in his pillowcase and was about

to close the window when he caught sight of three

burly men wearing the red and brown uniform of the

city guards striding into the square. They stopped and

looked around for a moment. Then one of them confronted

old humpbacked Nammy Proggs, who was

standing not far from the entrance to the Small Items

shop. The guard towered over her, and she twisted her

head sideways and squinted up at him. Doon could

199

hear the guard's voice clearly: "We're looking for a boy

named Harrow."

"Why?" said Nammy.

"Spreading vicious rumors" was the answer. "Do

you know where he is?"

Nammy hesitated a moment, and then she said,

"Went off to the trash heaps just a minute ago." The

guard nodded curtly and beckoned to his companions.

They marched away.

Spreading vicious rumors! Doon was so stunned that he stood still as stone for a long minute. What

could they possibly mean? But there was only one

answer. It had to be what they'd told the assistant

guard about the mayor. Why were they calling it a

vicious rumor? It was the truth! He didn't understand

it.

He did understand, though, that Nammy Proggs

had done him a favor. She must have seen that the

guards meant him no good. She had protected him, at

least for the moment, by sending the guards to the

wrong place.

Doon forced his mind to slow down and think.

Why did the guards think he and Lina were lying?

Obviously, they hadn't investigated the room in

Tunnel 351. If they had, they'd have known he and

Lina were telling the truth.

He could think of only one other possibility. The

guards--at least some of them--already knew what

200

the mayor was doing. They knew about it and wanted

it to stay a secret. And why? It was clear: the guards,

too, were getting things from the storerooms.

It had to be the answer. For a moment, the fear

he'd felt when he saw the guards was replaced by rage.

The familiar hot wave rose in him, and he wanted to

grab a handful of his father's nails or pot shards and

throw them against the wall. But all at once he remembered:

if the guards were after him, they'd be after

Lina, too. He had to warn her. He dashed down the

stairs, his anger turning into power for his running

feet.

After discovering the room full of boats, Lina had

come home to Mrs. Murdo's with the sound of the

river still in her ears. It was like a huge, powerful voice,

roaring at the top of its lungs. Deep inside herself

Lina felt an answering call, as if she, too, contained a

drop of the same power. She would ride on the river-- she could hardly believe it--and it might take her to

the shining city she had dreamed of, or it might

drown her. What she had imagined before--the

smooth, gently sloping path leading out--now seemed

childish. How could the way into a new world be so

easy? She dreaded going on the river, but she was ready

for it, too. She longed to go.

She slept that night in the beautiful blue-green

room, in the big, lumpy bed with Poppy next to her.

201

She felt safe here. Mrs. Murdo came in and tucked the

covers around her. She sat on the edge of the bed and

sang an odd little song to Poppy--something about

rock-a-bye baby, in the treetops. "What are treetops?"

Lina asked, but Mrs. Murdo didn't know. "It's a very

old song," she said. "It's probably nonsense words."

She said good night and went out into the living

room, where Lina could hear her humming quietly

as she tidied up. She was so orderly. She never left

her stockings draped over the back of a chair, or her

sewing spread out all over the table. Lina closed her

eyes and waited for sleep.

But her thoughts kept tumbling around. So much

was going to happen tomorrow--the whole city would

be in an uproar. People would stream down into the

Pipeworks to see the boats. They'd be excited, shouting

and laughing and crying, packing up their belongings,

and surging through the streets. If they couldn't all fit

into the boats, there would be fights. Some people

might get hurt. It was going to be a mess. She'd have to

keep her little family close around her--Poppy, Mrs.

Murdo, and Doon, and perhaps Doon's father and

Clary. Through it all, she would hold tight to Poppy so

no harm could come to her.

It seemed she had barely closed her eyes when she felt

Poppy's hard little heels banging against her shins.

"Time-a get up! Get up!" Poppy chirped.

202

She got out of bed and dressed herself and Poppy.

In the kitchen, Mrs. Murdo was mashing potatoes for

breakfast. How lovely, Lina thought, to have breakfast

cooked for her--to hear water bubbling in the pot, and

to find a bowl and a spoon set out on the table, and

vitamins lined up neatly beside a cup of beet tea. I

could live here forever, Lina thought, before she

remembered that in a day or two they would all be

leaving.

There was a sudden banging on the front door.

Mrs. Murdo dried her hands and went to answer it, but

before she'd taken three steps the banging came again.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Mrs. Murdo cried, and

when she opened the door, there was Doon.

His face was flushed, and he was breathing hard.

He had a bulging pillowcase slung over his shoulder.

He looked past Mrs. Murdo to Lina. "I have to talk

to you," he said. "Right now, but..." He threw a doubtful

glance at Mrs. Murdo.

Lina scrambled up from the table. "In here," she

said, towing him toward the blue-green room.

When she had closed the door, Doon told her

what had happened. "They'll come for you, too," he

said, "any minute. We have to get out of here. We have

to hide from them."

Lina could hardly make sense of what he was

saying. They were in trouble7. Her legs went shaky at

the knees. "Hide?" she said. "Hide where?"

203

"We could go to the school--no one would be

there today--or the library. It's almost always open,

even on holidays." He hopped impatiently from foot to

foot "But we have to go fast, we have to go now. They

have signs up about us all over the city!"

"Signs?"

"Telling people to report us if they see us!"

Lina felt as if a swarm of insects was inside her

head, buzzing so loudly she couldn't think. "How long

do we have to hide? All day?"

"I don't know--we don't have time to think

about it. Lina, they could be outside the door this

minute."

The urgency in his voice convinced her. On the

way through the living room she gave Poppy a quick

kiss and called, "Bye, Mrs. Murdo. We have some emergency

work to do. If anyone comes asking for me, say

111 be back later." They were down the stairs before

Mrs. Murdo could ask any questions.

Once in the street, they ran. "Where to?" Lina said.

"The school," Doon answered.

They took Greystone Street, staying within the

shadows as much as they could. As they passed the

shoe shop, Lina saw a white piece of paper stuck up on

the window. She glanced at it and her heart gave a wild

jump. Her name and Doon's were written on it in big

black letters:

204

DOON HARROW AND LINA MAYFLEET

WANTED FOR SPREADING VICIOUS RUMORS

IF YOU SEE THEM

REPORT TO MAYOR'S CHEIF GUARD.

BELIEVE NOTHING THEY SAY.

REWARD

She snatched the poster off the window, crumpled

it up, and tossed it into the nearest trash can. In the

next block, she tore down two more, and Doon ripped

one off a lamppost. But there were too many to get

them all, and they didn't have time to waste.

They ran faster. On this holiday, people slept

late, and because the stores were closed, the streets

were nearly empty. Still, they took the long route all the

way out by the beehives to avoid Sparkswallow Square,

where a few people might be standing around

and talking. They ran past the greenhouses and up

Dedlock Street. As they crossed Night Street, Lina

glanced to her left. Two blocks away, a couple of guards

were crossing to Greengate Square. She tapped Doon's

shoulder and pointed. He saw, and they ran faster. Had

they been noticed? Lina thought not; they would have

heard a shout if the guards had seen them.

They got to the school and went in through the

back door. In the Wide Hallway, their footsteps echoed

on the wooden floor. It was strange to be here again,

205

and to be here alone, without the clatter and chatter of

other children. The hallway with its eight doors

seemed smaller to Lina than it had when she was a

student, and shabbier. The planks of the floor were

scuffed gray, and there was a cloud of finger smudges

around the doorknob of every door.

They went into Miss Thorn's room and, out of

habit, sat at their old desks. "I don't think they'll look

for us here," said Doon. "If they do, we can crawl into

the paper cabinet." He set his pack down next to him

on the floor.

For a while they just sat there, getting their breath

back. They hadn't turned the light on, so the room was

dim--the only light came from beneath the blind over

the window.

"Those posters," Lina said after a while.

"Yes. Everyone will see them."

"What will they do to us if they catch us?"

"I don't know. Something to keep us from telling

what we know. Put us in the Prison Room, maybe."

Lina ran her finger along the B carved in the desktop.

It felt like a very long time since she'd last sat at

this desk. "We can't hide in here forever," she said.

"No," said Doon. "Just until it's time for the

Singing. Then when everyone is gathered in Harken

Square, we'll go and tell about the boats and the mayor.

Won't we? I haven't really thought about it--I haven't

had a chance to think at all this morning."

206

"But the guards are always there at the Singing,

standing next to the mayor," said Lina. "They'd grab us

as soon as we opened our mouths."

Doon's eyebrows came together in a dark line.

"You're right. So what will we do?"

It was like finding yourself on a dead-end street, Lina thought. There was no way out. She stared

blankly at the things that had once been her daily

companions--the teacher's desk, the stacks of paper, The Book of the City of Ember on its special shelf. The old words ran through her head: "There is no place but

Ember. Ember is the only light in the dark world." She

knew now that this wasn't true. There was someplace

else--the place where the boats would take them.

As if Doon had read her thoughts, he looked up.

"We could go."

"Go where?" she said, though she knew right away

what he meant.

"Wherever the river leads," he said. He gestured

to the pillowcase sack. "I packed up my bag this morning--I'm all ready. I'm sure I have enough for

you, too."

Lina felt her heart shrink a little. "Go by ourselves?"

she said. "Without telling anyone?"

"We will tell them." Doon was on his feet now. He

went to the cabinet and got a sheet of paper. "We'll

write a note explaining everything--a note to someone

we trust, someone who'll believe us."

207

"But I can't just leave," said Una. "How could I

leave Poppy? And not even say goodbye to her? Not

know where I'm going, or if I'm ever coming back?

How could you go without saying goodbye to your

father?"

"Because," said Doon, "once they find the boats,

the rest of Ember will follow us. It's not as if we're

leaving them forever." He strode across the room and

rummaged in Miss Thorn's desk. "Who shall we write

the message to?"

Lina wasn't sure about this idea, but she couldn't,

at the moment, think of a better one. So she said, "We

could write it to Clary. She's seen the Instructions.

She'll believe what we say. And she lives close by--just

up in Torrick Square."

"Okay," said Doon. He pulled a pencil from the

desk drawer. "Really," he said, "this is a perfect idea. We

can get away from the guards and leave our message

behind us. And we can be the first ones to arrive in the

new city! We should be the first, because we discovered

the way."

"Well, that's true." Lina thought for a minute.

"How long do you think it will take before the rest of

them find the boats and come? It's a lot of people to

get organized." She numbered on her fingers the things

that would have to happen. "Clary will have to get the

head of the Pipeworks to go down with her and find

the boats. Then she'll have to make the announcement

208

to the city. Then everyone in Ember will have to pack

up their things, troop down to the river, get all those

boats out of that big room, and load themselves in. It

could be a big mess, Doon. Poppy will need me." She

pictured frenzied crowds of people, and Poppy tiny

and lost among them.

"Poppy has Mrs. Murdo," said Doon. "She'll be

fine. Really. Mrs. Murdo is very organized."

It was true. The thought of taking Poppy with her

on the river, which had darted into Lina's mind, darted

out again. I'm only being selfish, she thought, to want

to have her with me. It's too dangerous to take her.

Mrs. Murdo will bring her in a day or two. This seemed

the most sensible plan, though it made her so sad that

it cast a shadow over the thrill of going to the new city.

"What if something goes wrong?" she said.

"Nothing will go wrong! It's a good plan, Lina.

We'll be there ahead of everyone else--we can

welcome them when they come, we can show them

around!" Doon was bursting with eagerness. His eyes

shone, and he jiggled up and down.

"Well, all right," Lina said. "Let's write our

message, then."

Doon wrote for a long time. When he was

finished, he showed what he'd written to Lina. He'd

explained how to find the rock with the E, how to go

down to the boat room, even how to use the candles.

"It's good," she said. "Now we have to deliver it."

209

She paused a moment to see if she had any courage

inside her. She found that she did, along with sadness

and fear and excitement "I'll deliver it," she said. "I'm

the messenger, after all. I know back ways to go, where

no one will see me." An idea struck her. "Doon, maybe

Clary will be home! Maybe she would keep us safe and

help us tell what we know, and we won't have to leave

right now."

Doon quickly shook his head. "I doubt it," he said.

"She's probably with her singing group, getting ready.

You'll just have to leave the note under her door."

Lina could tell from his tone of voice that Doon

didn't really want Clary to be home. She supposed he

had his heart set on their going down the river by

themselves. Doon glanced up at the clock on the

schoolroom wall. "It's a little after two," he said. "The

Singing begins at three. After that, everyone will be in

Harken Square and the streets will be empty. I think we

can get to the Pipeworks safely then--why don't we

leave about a quarter after three."

"You still have the key?"

Doon nodded.

"So after I've delivered the note to Clary, I'll come

back here," said Lina.

"Yes. And then we'll wait until three-fifteen, and

then we'll go."

Lina got up from the cramped desk and went to

the window. She moved the blind a little and peered

210

out. There was no one in the street. The dusty schoolroom

was very quiet. She thought about Doon's father,

who would be frantic when he saw his son's name on

those posters and then realized later that Doon had

disappeared. She thought about Mrs. Murdo, who

might already have seen the posters, and who would be

frightened if guards came looking for Lina and terrified

if Lina didn't come home by nightfall. She tried

not to think about Poppy at all; she couldn't bear it.

"Give me the note," she said to Doon at last. She

folded the piece of paper carefully and put it in the

pocket of her pants. "Back soon," she said, and went

out of the room and down the hall to the rear door of

the school.

Doon went to the window to watch her go. He

moved the blind aside just enough to see out into Pibb

Street. There she was, running in that long-legged way,

with her hair flying. She started across Stonegrit Lane.

Just before she reached the other side, Doon's breath

stopped in his throat. Two guards rounded the corner

from Knack Street, directly ahead of her. One of them

was the chief guard. He leapt forward and shouted so

loudly Doon could hear him plainly through the glass:

"That's her! Get her!"

Lina reversed her direction in an instant. She

raced back down Pibb Street, turned down School

Street toward Bilbollio Square, and vanished from

Doon's sight. The guards ran after her, shouting. Doon

211

watched, sick with horror. She's much faster than they

are, he told himself. Shell lose them--she knows

places to hide. He stood frozen next to the window,

hardly breathing. They won't catch her, he thought.

I'm sure they won't catch her.

212

CHAPTER 16

The Singing

When Lina heard the guards shout, terror shot

through her. She ran faster than she ever had before,

her heart pounding wildly. Behind her, the guards kept

up their shouting, and she knew that if other guards

were nearby they would come running. She had to find

a hiding place. Ahead of her was Bilbollio Square--was

there a spot she could duck into? And like an answer,

Doon's words came back to her: "The library. It's

almost always open, even on holidays." She didn't have

time to think. She didn't ask herself whether Edward

Pocket would be willing to hide her, or whether there

would even be a good place to hide in the library. She

just ran for the passageway that led to the library door

and darted down it.

But the library door wouldn't open. She turned

the knob frantically, she pulled and pushed, and then,

at the same time that she heard the running footsteps

213

of the guards coming into the square, she saw the small

handwritten sign stuck to the door: "Closed for the

Singing." The guards were very near now. If she ran,

they would see her. She flattened herself against the

wall, hoping they wouldn't think to look in the library

passage.

But they did. "Here she is!" yelled one of the

guards. She tried to shoot past him, but the passage

was too narrow, and he caught her by the arm. She

pulled and twisted and kicked, but the chief guard had

her now, too. He gripped her other arm with

fingers that felt like iron. "Stop your struggling!" he

shouted.

Lina reached up and grabbed a handful of his

wiry beard. She pulled with all her might, and the chief

guard roared, but he didn't let go. He yanked her forward,

almost off the ground, and the two guards

dragged her across the square at an awkward, lopsided

pace that made her stumble over her own feet.

"You're hurting me!" Lina said. "Don't hold so

tight!"

"Don't you tell us what to do," said the chief

guard. "We'll hold you tight till we get you where

you're going."

"Where is that?" said Lina. She was so enraged at

her bad luck that she almost forgot to be afraid.

"You're going to see the mayor, missy," said the

chief guard. "He'll decide what to do with you."

214

"But I haven't done anything wrong!"

"Spreading vicious rumors," said the guard.

"Telling dangerous lies calculated to cause civic

unrest."

"It's not a lie!" she said. But the guard gripped her

arm even more tightly and gave her a shove so she

stumbled sideways.

"No talking," he said, and they walked the rest of

the way in grim silence.

A few people had already gathered in Harken

Square, though the workers were still getting it ready

for the Singing. Street-sweepers crossed the square

back and forth, pushing their brooms. Someone

appeared at a second-floor window of a building on

Gilly Street and unfurled one of the banners that was

always displayed for the Singing--a long piece of red

cloth, faded after years of use but still showing its

design of wavy lines, representing the river, the source

of all power. That was for "The Song of the River."

There would be a banner on the Broad Street side of

the square, too, this one deep yellow-gold with a

design like a grid to represent "The Song of the City,"

and another banner on the Otterwill side for "The

Song of Darkness," perfectly black except for a narrow

yellow edge.

The guards marched Lina up the steps of the

Gathering Hall and through the wide doorway. They

took her down the main corridor, opened the door at

215

the end, and gave her one last push, a push that caused

her to stagger forward in an undignified way and

bump up against the back of a chair.

It was the same room she'd been in that other,

much happier day--her first day as a messenger.

Nothing had changed--the frayed red curtains, the

armchairs with the upholstery worn thin, the hideous

mud-colored carpet. The portraits on the wall looked

down at her sorrowfully.

"Sit there," said the chief guard. He pointed at a

small, hard-looking chair that faced the large armchair.

Lina sat. Next to the chair was the small table she

remembered from before, with the china teapot and a

tray of china teacups with chips around their edges.

The chief guard left the room--to find the mayor,

Lina supposed. The other one stood silently with his

arms folded across his chest. Nothing happened for a

while. Lina tried to think about what she would say to

the mayor, but her mind wouldn't work.

Then the door to the front hall opened, and the

mayor came in. It was the first time Lina had seen him

up close since she had delivered Looper's message to

him. He seemed even more immense. His baggy face

was the color of a mushroom. He wore a black suit that

stretched only far enough across his vast belly for one

button to connect with its buttonhole.

He moved ponderously across the room and settled

into the armchair, filling it completely. Next to his

216

chair was a table, and on the table was a brass bell the

size of a fist. The mayor gazed for a moment at Lina

with eyes that looked like the openings of tunnels, and

then he turned to the guard.

"Dismissed," he said, waving the back of his hand

at him. "Return when I ring the bell."

The guard left. The mayor swung his gaze back to

Lina. "I am not surprised," he said. He lifted one arm

and pointed a finger at Lina's face. "You have been in

trouble before. Going where you shouldn't."

Lina started to speak, but the mayor held up his

hand. It was an oddly small hand, with short fingers

like ripe pea pods.

"Curiosity," said the mayor. "A dangerous quality.

Unhealthy. Especially regrettable in one so young."

"I'm twelve," said Lina.

"Silence!" said the mayor. "I am speaking." He

wriggled slightly from side to side, wedging himself

more firmly into the chair. He'll need to be pried out

of it, Lina thought.

"Ember, as you know," the mayor went on, "is in

a time of difficulty. Extraordinary measures are

necessary. This is a time when citizens should be most

loyal. Most law-abiding. For the good of all."

Lina said nothing. She watched how the flesh

under the mayor's chin bulged in and out as he spoke,

and then she turned her eyes from this unpleasant

sight and looked carefully around the room. She was

217

thinking now, calculating, but not about what the

mayor was saying.

"The duties of a mayor," said the mayor,

"are ... complex. Cannot be understood by regular citizens,

particularly children. That is why ..." he went

on, leaning slightly forward so that his stomach

pushed farther out along his lap, "certain things must

remain hidden from the public. The public would not

understand. The public must have faith," said the

mayor, once again holding up his hand, this time with

a finger pointing to the ceiling, "that all is being done

for their benefit. For their own good."

"Hogwash," said Lina.

The mayor jerked backward. His eyebrows came

down over his eyes, making them into dark slits. "What?" he said. "Surely I heard you incorrectly."

"I said hogwash," said Lina. "It means--"

"Do not presume to tell me what it means!"

the mayor cried. "Impudence will make things worse

for you." He was breathing heavily, and his words

came out with spaces between them. "A misguided

child ... such as yourself ... requires ... a forceful

lesson." His short fingers gripped the arms of the chair.

"Perhaps," he said, "your curiosity has led you to

wonder ... about the Prison Room. What could it be

like, eh? Dark? Cold? Uncomfortable?" He made the

smile that Lina remembered from Assignment Day.

His lips pulled away from his small teeth; his gray

218

cheeks folded. "You will have a chance to find out.

You will become ... closely acquainted ... with the

Prison Room. The guards will escort you there. Your

accomplice--another known troublemaker--will join

you, as soon as he is located."

The mayor turned to look for the bell. This was

the moment when Lina had planned to make a dash

for freedom--she thought she had a slim chance to

succeed if she moved fast enough--but something

happened in that instant that gave her a head start.

The lights went out.

There was no flicker this time, just sudden, complete

darkness. It was fortunate that Lina had already

planned her move and knew exactly which way to go.

She leapt up, knocking over her chair. With her arm,

she made a wide swipe and knocked over the table next

to the chair as well. The furniture thumping to the

floor, the teapot shattering, and the mayor's enraged

shouts made a clamor that covered the sound of her

footsteps as she dashed to the stairway door. Was it

unlocked? She reached for the knob. Grunts and

squeaks told her that the mayor was struggling to rise

from his chair. She turned the knob and pulled, and

the door sprang open. She closed the door behind her

and leapt upward two steps at a time. Even in the pitch

dark, she could climb stairs. In the room, the bell

clanged and clanged, and the mayor bellowed.

When she got to the first landing, she heard the

219

guards shouting. There was a crash--someone must

have fallen over the toppled chair or table. "Where is

she?" someone yelled. "Must have run out the door!"

Did they know which door? She didn't hear footsteps

behind her.

If she could make it to the roof--and if from the

roof she could jump to the roof of the Prison Room

and from there to the street--then maybe she could

escape. Her lungs were on fire now, her breath was

burning her throat, but she climbed without stopping,

and when she came to the top, she burst through the

door to the roof and ran out.

And that was when the lights came back on. It was

as if the blackout had been arranged especially for her.

I am so lucky, she thought, so extremely lucky! Ahead

of her was the clock tower. She went around to the

other side of it. No dancing on the roof this time.

A low wall ran along the edge of the building. Lina

approached it cautiously and peered out over the

swarm of people assembling in Harken Square.

Directly below her was the entrance of the Gathering

Hall, and as she watched, two guards dashed out the

door and down the steps. Good--they had gone the

wrong way! They must think she'd escaped into

the crowd. For the moment, she was safe. The clock in

the tower began to chime. Three great booms rang out.

It was time for the Singing to begin.

Lina gazed down at the people of Ember, gathered

220

to sing their songs. They stood so close together that

she could see only their faces, which were lifted up

toward the sky, with the hard bright lights shining

down on them. They were silent, waiting for the Songmaster to appear on the Gathering Hall steps. There

was a strange hush, as if the city were holding its

breath. Of the whole Ember year, Lina thought, this

hush before the Singing was one of the most exciting

moments. She remembered other years, when she had

stood with her parents, too short to see the Songmaster's signal, too short to see anything but people's

backs and legs, and waited for the first note to thunder

out. She felt her heart move at that moment, every

year. The sound would rise in waves around her like

water, almost as if it could lift her off the ground.

Now suddenly the moment came again. From

hundreds of voices rose the first notes of "The Song of

the City," deep and strong. She felt as she had all the

years before: a quivering inside, as though a string

under her ribs had been plucked, and a rush of joy and

sadness mixed together. The deep, rumbling chords of

the song filled Harken Square. Lina felt that she might

step off the edge of the building and walk across the

air, it seemed so solid with sound.

"The Song of the City" was long--there were

verses about "streets of light and walls of stone," about

"citizens with sturdy hearts," about "stored abundance

never-ending." (Not true, Lina thought.) But at last,

221

"The Song of the City" wound down to its end. The

singers held the final note, which grew softer and

softer, and then there was silence again. Lina looked

out at the lighted streets spreading away in every direction,

the streets she knew so well. She loved her city,

worn out and crumbling though it was. She looked up

at the clock: ten minutes after three. Doon would be

getting ready to leave for the Pipeworks. She didn't

know whether he'd seen her being captured--if he

had, he would be wondering if she'd been locked

into the Prison Room. He'd be wondering if he should

try to rescue her, or if he should go down the river by

himself.

She should be hurrying to join him--but a sadness

held her back, like a heavy stone in her chest. She bent her face into the palms of her hands and pressed

hard against her closed eyes. How could she go away

from Ember and leave Poppy behind? Because if she

went, she must leave Poppy behind, mustn't she? How

could she take her on a journey of such danger?

"The Song of the River" startled her when it

began--the men's voices, low and rolling, swelling

with power, and then the women's voices coming in

above with a complicated melody that seemed to fight

the current. Lina listened, unable to move. "The Song

of the River" made her uneasy--it always had. With its

rolling, relentless rhythm, it seemed to urge her

onward, saying, Go down, go away, go now. The more

222

she listened, the more she felt something like the

motion of the river in her stomach, a churning, sickening

feeling.

Then came "The Song of Darkness" the last of the

three songs, and the one most filled with longing and

majesty. The soul of Ember was in this song. Its

tremendous chords held all the sorrow and all the

strength of the people of the city. The song reached its

climax: "Darkness like an endless night," sang the

hundreds of voices, so powerfully the air seemed to

shiver.

And at that moment, the lights once more went

out. The voices faltered, but only for an instant. Then

they rose again in the darkness, stronger even than

before. Lina sang, too. She stood up and sang with all

her might into the deep, solid blackness.

The last notes echoed and faded into a terrible

silence. Lina stood utterly still. Will it end like this, she

thought, at the finish of the last song? She felt the cold

stone of the clock tower behind her back. She waited.

Then an idea came to her that made her skin

prickle. What if she were to shout into the silence right

now? What if she were to say, Listen, people! We've found the way out of Ember! It's the river--we go on the river! She could announce the astounding news, just as

she and Doon had planned to do, and then--and then

what would happen? Would the guards rush to the

roof and seize her? Would the people in the square

223

think her news was just a child's wishful thinking, or

would they listen and be saved? She could feel the

words pushing upward in her throat, she wanted so

much to say them. She took a deep breath and leaned

forward.

But before she could speak, a rumble of voices

arose below. Someone shouted, "Don't move!" and

someone else shrieked. The rumble rose to a roar, and

then cries flew into the darkness from everywhere. The

crowd was erupting into panic.

There was no hope of being heard now. Lina

clutched the edge of the clock tower as if the tumult

below might cause her to fall. She strained her eyes

against the darkness. Without light, she could go

nowhere. Lights, come back on, she prayed. Come

back on.

Then she saw something. At first, she thought her

eyes were tricking her. She closed them tightly and

opened them again. It was still there: a tiny point of

light, moving. As she watched, it moved along slowly

in a straight line. Then it turned and moved in a

straight line again. Was it on River Road? She couldn't

tell. But suddenly she knew what it was. It was Doon,

with a candle. Doon, going toward the Pipeworks in

the dark.

And she wanted to go, too. She could feel it all

through her, the urge to run and meet him and find

the way out of Ember, to the new place. She listened to

224

the shouts and wails of the terrified people in the

square below. She thought of Mrs. Murdo down there

in the dark, being bumped and pushed, with her arms

wrapped tightly around Poppy, trying to protect her,

and all at once everything seemed clear. Lina knew

what she would do--if only the lights would come

back on, if only this was not the very last blackout in

the history of Ember. Watching the tiny light following

its steady course, she made a wish with the whole force

of her heart and mind.

Then the floodlights flickered--there was a great

cry of hope from the crowd--and the lights came on

and stayed on. Lina ran to the back edge of the roof,

dropped easily down onto the roof of the Prison

Room, and, seeing no guards in the crowd that was

now streaming into the street, she jumped from there

to the ground and joined the throng of people. She

made her way down Greystone Street, going at the

same pace as everyone else so she wouldn't stand out.

When she came to the trash-can enclosure behind the

Gathering Hall, she squatted down and hid. Her heart

was beating fast, but she felt strong and purposeful

now. She had her plan. As soon as she spotted Mrs.

Murdo and Poppy on their way home, she'd put it into

action.

225

CHAPTER 17

Away

At three-twenty, Doon took his pillowcase pack, left

the school by the back door, and started up Pibb Street.

He went fast--the lights had gone out for a few

minutes just before three, and he was nervous about

being outside. He planned to take the long way to the

Pipeworks, out at the very edge of the city, to avoid any

guards that might still be looking for him.

He was filled with dread about Lina. He wouldn't

know what had happened to her until he got to the

Pipeworks and she either showed up or didn't. All he

could do now was run.

He raced down Knack Street. It was strange to be

out in the city with the streets so utterly deserted. Without the people passing back and forth, the streets

seemed wider and darker. Nothing moved but himself,

his shadow, and his fleeting reflection in shop windows

226

he passed. In Selverton Square, he saw a kiosk where

the poster with his and Lina's names on it had been

pinned up. Everyone in the city must have seen these

posters by now. He was famous, he thought wryly,

but not in the way he'd wanted. There would be no

glorious moment on the Gathering Hall steps after all.

Instead of making his father proud, he would cause

him dreadful worry.

This thought made him so sad that his knees felt

suddenly wobbly. How could he just vanish without a

word? But it was too late now, he couldn't go back. If

only there was some way to send him a message--and

in a moment, he realized there was. He stopped, fished

in his pack for the paper and pencil he had brought,

and scribbled on it, "Father--We have found the way

out--it was in the Pipeworks after all! You will know

about it tomorrow. Love, Doon." He folded this in

quarters, wrote "Deliver to Loris Harrow" in big letters

on the outside, and pinned it to the kiosk. There! That

was the best he could do. He would have to trust that

someone would deliver it.

In the distance, he heard the faint sound of

singing. He listened--it was "The Song of the River," just ending. "Far below, like the blood of the earth,

From the center of nowhere rushing forth," he sang under his breath. Like everyone in Ember, he knew

the words of the three songs by heart. He sang along

227

softly with the faraway singers:

"Making the light for the lamps of Ember,

Older than anyone can remember,

Faster than anything anyone knows,

The river comes and the river goes"

Up Rim Street now to River Road. He was halfway

there. The singers were starting on "The Song of Darkness."

It was his favorite, with its powerful, deep

harmonies--he was a little sorry to be missing it. He

went up the Pott Street side of empty Riverroad

Square, where another poster hung crookedly on the

kiosk, and he was headed toward North Street when

suddenly the lights flickered and went out.

He jolted to a stop. Stand still and wait--that was

his automatic response. In the distance he heard a dip

in the sound of the singing, some startled voices breaking

the flow, but then the song rose again, defying the

darkness. For a moment all thoughts vanished from

Doon's mind; there was nothing but the fearless words

of the song:

"Black as sleep and deep as dreaming,

Darkness like an endless night.

Yet within the streets of Ember

Bright and bravely shines our light."

228

He sang, standing still in the blackness. When the

song ended, he waited. The lights would surely come

back soon. For a few minutes there was silence, and

then, far away but piercingly clear, he heard a scream.

More screams and shouts followed, the sounds of

panic. He felt the panic himself, like a hand taking hold

of him, making him want to leap up and fling himself

against the dark.

But suddenly, with a flash of joy, he remembered:

he didn't have to wait for the lights to come back on.

He had what no citizen of Ember had ever had

before--a way to see in the dark. He set his pack down,

untied the knot at the top, and groped around inside

until he felt the candle. Down in a corner, he found the

little packet of matches. He scraped a match against

the pavement, and it flared up instantly. He held the

flame to the string on the candle, and the string began

to burn. He had a light. He had the only light in the

entire city.

The candle didn't cast its light very far, but it was

enough to see at least the pavement in front of him. He

went slowly along Pott Street, then turned left on

North Street. At the end of the street was the wall of

the Pipeworks office.

When he got to the Pipeworks entrance, no one

was there. A little cloud of moths came to flutter

around the flame of his candle, but otherwise nothing

229

moved in Plummer Square. There was nothing to do

but wait. Doon blew the candle out--he didn't want to

use it all up in case the lights stayed off a long time-- and squatted down on the pavement, setting down his

bundle and leaning against one of the big trash cans.

He waited, listening to the distant shouts--and at last

the lights blinked, blinked again, and came on.

Lina was nowhere in sight. If the guards had found

her and taken her... But Doon preferred not to think

about that yet. He would wait for a white--she would

have been delayed by the blackout if she was on her

way. He couldn't see the clock tower from here, but it

was probably not quite four o'clock.

What if she didn't come? The Singing was over, the

people were dispersing throughout the city, and the

guards, no doubt, would soon resume their search for

him. Doon clasped his arms together and pressed

them hard against his stomach, trying to stop the

queasy fluttering.

If she didn't come, Doon had two choices: he

could stay in the city and do what he could to save

Lina, or he could go in the boat by himself and hope

Lina could somehow free herself and tell the people of

Ember about the way out. He didn't like either of these

plans; he wanted to go down the river, and he wanted

to go with Lina.

Doon stood up and hoisted his sack again. He

was too restless to keep sitting. He walked down

230

to Gappery Street and looked in both directions. Not

a single person was in sight. He walked to Plummer

Street, thinking that perhaps Lina was coming by way

of the city's edge, as he had, to avoid being seen. But no

one was there; he didn't even see anyone when he went

past Subling Street to the very end of the city. He had

to decide what to do.

He went and stood in the doorway of the

Pipeworks. Think, he said to himself. Think! He was

not even sure he could make the river journey by himself.

How would he get the boat into the water? Could

he lift it without help? On the other hand, how could

he help Lina if she was in the hands of the mayor's

guards? What could he possibly do that would not just

get himself caught, too?

He felt sick. His hands were cold. He stepped out

of the doorway and scanned the square once again.

Nothing moved but the moths around the lights.

And then down Gappery Street Lina came running.

She came slantwise across the square, and he

dashed to meet her. She was hugging a bundle to her

chest.

"I've come, I'm here, I almost didn't make it," she

said, breathing so hard she could barely talk. "And

look." She folded back the blanket of her bundle. Doon

saw a curl of brown hair and two wide frightened eyes.

"I've brought Poppy."

Doon was so glad to see Lina that he didn't mind

231

at all that Poppy was coming with them, making a

risky journey even riskier. Relief and excitement

flooded through him. They were going! They were

going!

"Okay," he said. "Come on!"

With his borrowed key, he opened the Pipeworks

door, and they hurried past the yellow slickers on their

hooks and the lines of rubber boots. Doon dashed into

the Pipeworks office long enough to replace the key on

its hook, and then they pulled open the stairway door

and started down. Lina stepped slowly because of

Poppy, and Poppy clung to her neck, unusually quiet,

sensing the strangeness and importance of what was

happening. At the bottom of the stairs, they came out

into the main tunnel and walked down the path to the

west until they came to the marked rock.

"How are we going to get Poppy down there?"

Doon asked.

Lina said, "I'll fasten her to my chest." Setting

Poppy down, Lina took off the coat and the sweater

she was wearing. With Doon's help, she made her

sweater into a sling for Poppy, tying its sleeves behind

her neck. Then she put her coat back on and buttoned

it up.

Doon looked doubtfully at this bulky arrangement.

"Will you be able to climb down, carrying her

like that? Will you be able to reach around her and

hold on to the rungs?"

232

"Yes," said Lina. Now that she had Poppy with

her, she felt brave again. She could do whatever she

needed to.

Doon went down first. Lina followed- "Stay very

still, Poppy," she said. "Don't squirm." Poppy did stay

still, but even so it was not easy going down the ladder

with her extra weight. Una's arms were just long

enough to reach past Poppy and hold on to the ladder.

She descended very slowly. When she got to the ledge,

she stepped sideways, gripped the hand Doon held out

for her, and, with a deep breath of relief, came into the

entryway.

They walked to the back of the entry hall, and

Doon opened the steel panel and took out the key. He

slid aside the door to the room where the single boat

was, and they went in. Doon took his candle from his

sack and lit it. Lina unwrapped Poppy and sat her

down at the back of the room. "Don't move from

there," she said. Poppy put her thumb in her mouth,

and Doon and Lina set to work.

Doon's sack went in the pointed end of the boat,

which they decided must be the front. They put the

boxes of candles and matches into the rear of the boat.

It was clear they'd been designed to go there; they fit

snugly.

The poles labeled "Paddles" were a mystery. Lina

thought maybe they were weapons, meant for fending

off hostile creatures. Doon thought they might fit

233

across the boat somehow to make railings to brace

yourself against, but he couldn't get them to work in

this way. Finally they decided just to leave the paddles

in the bottom of the boat and figure out what they

were for as they went along.

Doon dripped a bit of wax on the floor and stood

his candle up in it, so he'd have both hands free. "Let's

see if we can lift the boat," he said.

With Doon at the rear and Lina at the front,

they found they could lift the boat with ease. It

was amazingly light, even with the boxes and pack

inside it. They set it down again. The next step was to

get it in the water somehow, and then get in it themselves.

"We

can't just drop it in," Lina said. "The river

would grab it right away."

"That must be what the ropes are for," said Doon.

"We lower it in by holding on to the ropes. And tie the

ropes to something to keep it from moving."

"To what?"

"They must have put a peg or something in the

wall to tie it to." Doon went back out to the edge of the

river and got down on his knees. Leaning over, he felt

with one hand along the bank below. At first there was

only smooth, slippery rock. He moved his hand slowly

back and forth, up and down. River water splashed

against his fingers. At last he felt something--a metal

rod attached to the river wall, like the rungs of the

234

ladder they had climbed down. "I've found it," he

called.

He got up again and went back to the boat room.

"Let's carry the boat out," he said. He and Lina lifted it

and, taking small steps, moved it forward. As they went

out the door, Poppy began to wail.

"Don't cry!" Lina called to her. "Stay right there!

We'll be back in a second."

They carried the boat right to the edge of the

water and set it down carefully, its front end pointing

downstream. Doon knelt again, feeling for the metal

rod. "Hand me the end of the rope," he said.

Which rope? Lina thought for a second. She

realized it had to be the one attached to the side of the

boat nearest her--that would be the side closest to the

riverbank when they put the boat in. She uncoiled

the rope, ran it around the boat, and handed its end

down to Doon, who lay on his stomach with his head

hanging over the edge and knotted the rope to the

metal rung in the wall. He got to his feet again, wiping

water from his face.

"Now," Doon said, "we can put the boat in the

water."

Another wail came from the boat room. "I'm coming,"

Lina called, and dashed back for Poppy. She

hoisted her up and spoke into her ear, in the voice she

used for announcing an exciting game: "We're going

on an adventure, Poppy. We're going for a ride, a ride

235

in the water! It will be fun, sweetie, you'll see." She blew

out the candle Doon had left and carried Poppy to the

river's edge.

"Are we ready?" said Doon.

"I guess we are." Goodbye to Ember, Lina thought.

Goodbye to everyone, goodbye to everything. For a

second, a picture of herself arriving in the bright city

of her dreams flashed into her mind, and then it faded

and was gone. She had no idea what lay ahead.

She set Poppy down against the wall of the entry

passage. "Sit here," she told her. "Don't move until I tell

you to." Poppy sat, her eyes wide, her plump legs sticking

out in front of her.

Lina took hold of the rope at the rear of the boat.

Doon took hold of the rope at the front. They heaved

the boat up and stretched sideways to swing it out over

the water. It tipped alarmingly from side to side. "Let it

down!" yelled Lina. They both let the ropes slide

through their hands, and the boat fell and hit the water

with a slap. It bounced and rocked and pulled against

its tether, but Doon's knot held. The boat stayed in

place, waiting for them.

"Here I go!" Doon cried. He bent over, gripped the

rim of the boat with one hand, turned backward, and

stepped in. The boat tipped sideways under his weight.

Doon staggered a step, and then found his balance. "All

right!" he yelled. "Hand me Poppy!"

Lina lifted Poppy, who began to howl and kick at

236

die sight of the bucking boat and the churning water.

But Doon's arms were right there, and Lina thrust her

into them. A second later, she jumped in herself, and

then all three of them were tossed to the floor of the

boat by its violent rocking.

Doon managed to get to his feet. He hauled on the

rope that held the boat to the bank until he was close

enough to reach the knot. He struggled with it. Water

splashed into his face. He yanked at the knot, loosened

it, pulled the rope free--and the boat shot forward.

237

CHAPTER 18

Where the River Goes

For a second, Lina saw the banks of the river streak

by. Ahead was the opening of the tunnel, like an

enormous mouth. They plunged into it and left the

light of the Pipeworks behind. In complete darkness,

the boat pitched and rolled, and Lina, in the bottom of

it, banged from side to side, gripping Poppy with one

arm and grabbing with the other hand for anything to

hold on to. Doon slid into her, and she slid into the

boxes. Poppy was shrieking wildly.

"Doon!" Lina shouted, and he shouted back,

"Hold on! Hold on!" But she kept losing her grip on

the edge of the boat and being flung sideways. She was

terrified that Poppy would slam into the metal bench,

or be torn from her arms and tossed into the river.

The boat hit something and shuddered, then

raced on. It felt like being swallowed, this rushing

238

through the dark, with the river roaring like a thouIsand

voices.

Lina's legs were tangled with Doon's, and Poppy's

arms were so tight around her neck that she could

hardly breathe. But it was the dark that was most

terrible--going so fast into the dark. She closed her eyes. If they were going to smash

into a wall or plunge into a bottomless hole, there was

nothing she could do about it. All she could do was

hold tight to Poppy. She did that, for what seemed a

long time.

And then at last the current slowed, and the boat

stopped thrashing about so wildly. Lina managed to sit

up, and she felt Doon moving, too. Poppy's shrieks

turned to whimpers. The darkness was still complete,

but Lina sensed space above and around her. Where

were they? She had to see.

"Doon!" she said. "Are you all right? Can you find

us a candle?"

"I'll try," Doon said. She felt him scramble past her

to the back of the boat, and she heard a scrape as he

pulled a box out from its place under the bench. "Can't

find the latch!" Doon said. Then a second later, "There,

I've got it. This is the matches, so this one must be

candles." More scraping and banging. The boat

lurched, Lina slid forward. Doon slid, too, and

slammed into her back. He gave a yell of rage.

239

"Dropped the match! Hold on, I almost had it." Long

seconds of scrambling and clattering. Then a light

flared up, and Doon's shadowed face appeared above

it. He touched the match to a candle, and the light

grew steadier.

It was only a small flame, but it cast glints of light

on the tunnel walls and the silky surface of the water.

The tunnel had an arched ceiling, Lina saw, like the

tunnels of the Pipeworks, but it was much wider than

those tunnels. The river ran through it like a moving

road.

"Can you light another?" Lina asked. Doon

nodded and turned back to the boxes, but once again

the boat struck something, causing a spray of water to

slap into them and put the candle out.

It was several minutes before Doon managed to

light it again, and more before he finally had two burning

at once. He jammed one of them into a space

between the bench and the side of the boat, and he

held the other in his hand. His hair was flattened

against his forehead, and dripping. His brown jacket

was torn at the shoulder. "That's better," he said.

It was better--not only did they have light to see

by, but the current was slower, and the boat sailed

more smoothly. Lina was able to unwrap Poppy from

her neck and look around. Ahead she could see that

the tunnel curved. The boat swung into the curve,

banged against the wall, straightened itself, and

240

sped on. "Hand me a candle, too," she said.

Doon gave Lina the candle he was holding and lit

another. They found places to wedge all three candles

into the frame of the boat, so they could keep their

hands free. For a while they rushed along almost

silently, the river having become nearly as smooth as a

sheet of glass.

Then suddenly the current slowed even more,

and the tunnel opened out. "WeVe come into a room,"

said Lina. Far overhead arched a vaulted ceiling.

Columns of rock hung down from it, and columns of

rock rose from the water, too, making long shadows

that turned and mingled as the boat floated among

them. They glimmered in the candlelight, pink and

pale green and silver. Their strange lumpy shapes

looked like something soft that had frozen--like

towers of mashed potatoes, Lina thought, that had

hardened to stone.

Now and then the boat bumped into one of these

columns, and they found that they could use a paddle

to knock themselves free again. In this way they

crossed the room to the other side, where again the

passage narrowed and the current ran faster.

Much faster. It was as if the boat were being pulled

forward by a powerful hand. The water grew rough

again, and splashes of spray put out their candles. Lina

and Doon huddled in the bottom of the boat with

Poppy between them, their arms clasped around her.

241

They clenched their teeth and squeezed their eyes shut,

and soon there was nothing in their minds but the roll

and plunge of the boat and nothing in their bodies

but the effort not to be thrown out. Once, the sound

of the river rose to a crashing, and the front of the

boat tipped downward, and they were pitched about so

violently that it seemed they were tumbling down

stairs--but that lasted only a few seconds, and then

they were streaming onward as before.

Lina lost track of time. But a while later, maybe

a few minutes, maybe an hour, the current slowed.

The candles they'd stuck in the boat had been knocked

overboard, so Doon lit new ones. They saw that they

had come to another pool. There were no lumpy

columns of rock here; nothing interrupted the wide

flat surface of the water, which stretched out before

them in the flickering light from their candles. The

ceiling was smooth and only about ten feet above

their heads. The boat drifted, as if it had lost its

sense of direction. Using a paddle to poke against the

walls, Doon guided the boat around the edge of the

pool.

"I don't see where the river goes on," said Doon. "Do you?"

"No," said Lina. "Unless it's there, where it flows

into that little gap." She pointed to a crack in the wall

only a few inches wide.

"But the boat can't go there."

242

"No, it's much too small."

He poled the boat forward. Their shadows moved

with them along the wall.

"Wanna go home," said Poppy.

"We're almost there," Lina told her.

"We certainly can't go back the way we came," said

Doon.

"No." Lina dipped a hand in the water. It was so

cold it sent an ache up her arm.

"Could this be the end?" said Doon. His voice

sounded flat in this dosed-in place.

"The end?" Lina felt a shiver of fear.

"I mean the end of the trip," Doon said. "Maybe

we're supposed to get out over there." He pointed to a

wide expanse of rock that sloped back into the darkness

on one side of the pool. Everywhere else, the walls

rose straight out of the water.

He poled the boat over to the rock slope. The boat

scraped bottom here--the water was shallow. "I'll get

out and see if this goes anywhere " said Lina. "I want to

be on solid ground again, anyway." She handed Poppy

to Doon and stood up. Holding a candle, she put one

foot over the edge of the boat and into the cold water,

and she waded ashore.

The way did not look promising. The ground

sloped upward, and the ceiling sloped downward. As

she went farther back she had to stoop. A few yards in,

a tumbled heap of rocks blocked the way. She inched

243

around them, turning sideways to squeeze through the

narrow space, and crept forward, holding the candle

out in front of her. This goes nowhere, she thought.

We're trapped.

But a few steps farther along, she found she could

stand up straight again, and a few steps beyond that

she turned a corner, and suddenly the candlelight

shone on a wide path, with a high ceiling and a smooth

floor. Lina gave a wild shout. "Here it is!" she cried. "It's

here! There's a path!"

Doon's voice came from far away. She couldn't tell

what he was saying. She made her way back toward the

boat, and when it came in sight she yelled again, "I

found a path! A path!"

Doon scrambled out and waded ashore, carrying

Poppy. He set her down, and then he and Lina took

hold of the boat and hauled it as far as they could up

the slope of rock. Poppy caught the excitement. She

shouted gleefully, waving her fists like little dubs, and

stomped around, glad to be on her feet again. She

found a pebble and plunked it into the water, crowing

happily at the splash it made.

"I want to see the path," said Doon.

"Go up that way," Lina told him, "and around the

pile of rocks. I'll stay here and take things out of the

boat."

Doon went, taking another candle from the box in

the boat. Lina sat Poppy down in a kind of nook

244

formed by a roundish boulder and a hollow in the

wall. "Don't move from here," she said. Then she

pulled Doon's bundle from under the seat of the boat.

It was damp, but not soaked. Maybe the food inside

would still be all right. She was hungry all of a sudden.

She'd had no dinner, she remembered. It must be the

middle of the night by now, or maybe even morning

again.

She carried Doon's bundle ashore, along with the

boxes of candles and matches, and as she set them

down, Doon came back. His eyes were glowing, the

reflection of a tiny flame dancing in each one. "That's

it for sure," he said. "We've made it" Then his eyes

shifted. "What's Poppy got?" he asked.

Lina whipped around. In Poppy's hands was

something dark and rectangular. It wasn't a stone. It

was more like a packet of some kind. She was plucking

and pulling at it. She lifted it to her mouth as if to tear

it with her teeth--and Lina jumped to her feet. "Stop!"

she shouted. Poppy, startled, dropped the packet and

began to cry.

"It's all right, never mind" Lina said, retrieving

what Poppy had been about to chew on. "Come

and have some dinner now. Hush, we're going to have

dinner. I'm sure you're hungry."

In the light of Doon's candle, with Poppy squirming

on Lina's lap, they examined Poppy's find. The

packet was wrapped in slippery, greenish material and

245

bound up with a strap. It wasn't wrapped very well;

it looked as if someone had bundled it up quickly. The

material was loose, and blotched with whitish mold.

Lina edged the strap off carefully. It was partly

rotten; on the end of it was a small square buckle,

covered with rust. She folded back the wrapping.

Doon took a sharp breath. "It's a book," he said.

He moved his candle closer, and Lina opened the

brown cover. The pages inside had faint blue lines

across them, and someone had written along these

lines in slanted black letters, which were not neat like

the writing in the library books, but sprawling, as if the

writer had been in a hurry.

Doon ran his finger under the first line. "It says, They tell uswe... learn?... No, leave. They tell us we

leave tonight."

He looked up and met Lina's eyes.

"Leave?" said Lina. "From where?"

"From Ember?" Doon asked. "Could someone

have come this way before us?"

"Or was it someone leaving the other city?"

Doon looked down at the book again. He riffled

through the pages--there were many of them.

"Let's save it," said Lina. "We'll read it when we get

to the new city."

Doon nodded. "It'll be easier to see there."

So Lina wrapped up the book again and tied it

securely into Doon's bundle. They sat on the rock shelf

246

^$br a while, eating the food Doon had brought. The

candles wedged in the boat still shone steadily, and

their light was cozy, like lamplight. It made golden

shapes on the still surface of the pond.

Doon said, "I saw the guards run after you. Tell me

what happened."

Lina told him.

"And what about Poppy? What did you tell Mrs.

Murdo?"

"I told her the truth--at least I hope it's the truth.

I caught up with her on her way home after the

Singing. She'd seen the posters--she was terrified-- but before she could ask questions, I just said she must

give Poppy to me. I said I was taking her to safety.

Because that's what I suddenly realized on the roof of

the Gathering Hall, Doon. I'd been thinking before

that I had to leave Poppy because she'd be safe with

Mrs. Murdo. But when the lights went out, I suddenly

knew: There is no safety in Ember. Not for long. Not

for anyone. I couldn't leave her behind. Whatever happens

to us now, it's better than what's going to happen

there."

"And did you explain all that to Mrs. Murdo?"

"No. I was in a terrible hurry to get to the

Pipeworks and meet you, and I knew I had to go while

there were still crowds in the street, so it would be

harder for the guards to see me. I just said I was taking

Poppy to safety. Mrs. Murdo handed her over, but she

247

sort of sputtered, 'Where?' and 'Why?' And I said,

'You'll know in a few days--it's all right' And then I

ran."

"So you gave her the note, then?" said Doon. "The

one meant for Clary?"

"Oh!" Lina stared at him, stricken. "The message

to Clary!" She put her hand in her pocket and pulled

out the crumpled piece of paper. "I forgot all about it!

All I was thinking of was getting Poppy and getting to

you."

"So no one knows about the room full of boats."

Lina just shook her head, her eyes wide. "How will

we get back to tell them?"

"We can't."

"Doon," said Lina, "if we'd told people right away,

even just a few people ... if we hadn't decided to be

grand and announce it at the Singing..."

"I know," said Doon. "But we didn't, that's all.

We didn't tell, and now no one knows. I did leave a

message for my father, though." He told Lina about

pinning his last-minute message to the kiosk in

Selverton Square. "I said we'd found the way out, and

that it was in the Pipeworks. But that's not much

help."

"Clary has seen the Instructions," Lina said. "She

knows there's an egress. She might find it."

"Or she might not."

There was nothing to be done about it, and so they

248

put the supplies back into Doon's pillowcase and got

ready to go. Lina used Doon's rope to make a leash for

Poppy. She tied one end around Poppy's waist and the

other around her own. She filled her pockets with

packs of matches, and Doon put all the remaining

candles in his sack--in case they'arrived in the new

city at night. He filled his bottle with river water, lit a

candle for himself and one for Lina, and thus

equipped, they left the boat behind and crept up the

rocky shelf to the path.

249

CHAPTER 19

A World of Light

As they squeezed past the rocks at the entrance to the

path, Doon thought he saw the candlelight glance off a

shiny place on the wall. He stopped to look, and when

he saw what it was, he called out to Lina, who was a few

steps ahead of him. "There's a notice!"

It was a framed sign, bolted to the stone, a printed

sheet behind a piece of glass. Dampness had seeped

under the glass and made splotches on the paper, but

by holding their candles up close, they could read it.

welcome, Refugees from Ember!

This is the final stage of your journey.

Be prepared for a climb

that will take several hours.

Fill your bottles with water from the river.

We wish you good fortune,

The Builders

250

"They're expecting us!" said Lina.

"Well, they wrote this a long time ago," Doon said.

"The people who put it here must all be dead by

now."

"That's true. But they wished us good fortune. It

makes me feel as if they're watching over us."

"Yes. And maybe their great-great-great-grandchildren

will be there to welcome us."

Encouraged, they started up the path. Their

candles made only a feeble glow, but they could tell

that the path was quite wide. The ceiling was high over

their heads. The path seemed to have been made for a

great company of people. In some places, the ground

beneath their feet was rutted in parallel grooves, as if a

wheeled cart of some kind had been driven over it.

After they had walked awhile, they realized that they

were moving in long zigzags. The path would go in one

direction for some time and then turn sharply and go

the opposite way.

As they went along, they talked less and less; the

path sloped relentlessly upward, and they needed their

breath just for breathing. The only sound was the light pat-pat of their footsteps. Lina and Doon took turns

carrying Poppy on their backs--she had gotten tired of

walking very soon and cried to be picked up. Twice,

they stopped and sat down to rest, leaning against the

walls of the passage and taking drinks from Doon's

bottle of water.

251

"How many hours do you think we've been

walking?" Lina asked.

"I don't know," Doon said. "Maybe two. Maybe three. We must be nearly there."

They climbed on and on. Their first candles had

long ago burned down to the last inch, as had their

second candles. Finally, when their third ones were

about halfway gone, Lina began to notice that the air

smelled different. The cold, sharp-edged rock smell of

the tunnel was changing to something softer, a strange,

lovely smell. As they rounded a corner, a gust of this

soft air swept past them, and their candles went out.

Doon said, Til find a match," but Lina said, "No,

wait Look."

They were not in complete darkness. A faint haze

of light shone in the passage ahead of them. "It's the

lights of the city," breathed Lina.

Lina set Poppy down. "Quick, Poppy," she said,

and Poppy began to trot, keeping close at Lina's heels.

The strange, lovely smell in the air grew stronger. The

passage came to an end a few yards farther along, and

before them was an opening like a great empty doorway.

Without a word, Lina and Doon took hold of each

other's hands, and Lina took hold of Poppy's. When

they stood in the doorway and looked out, they saw no

new city at all, but something infinitely stranger: a land

vast and spacious beyond any of their dreams, filled

with air that seemed to move, and lit by a shining

252

silver circle hanging in an immense black sky.

In front of their feet, the ground swept away in a

long, gentle slope. It was not bare stone, as in Ember;

something soft covered it, like silvery hair, as high as

their knees. Down the slope was a tumble of dark,

rounded shapes, and then another slope rose beyond

that. Way off into the distance, as far as they could see,

the land lay in rolling swells, with clumps of shadow in

the low places between them.

"Doon!" cried Lina. "More lights!" She pointed at

the sky.

He looked up and saw them--hundreds and hundreds

of tiny flecks of light, strewn like spilled salt

across the blackness. "Oh!" he whispered. There was

nothing else to say. The beauty of these lights made his

breath stop in his throat.

They took a few steps forward. Doon bent to feel

the strands that grew out of the ground, almost higher

than Poppy's head; they were cool and smooth and

soft, and there was dampness on them.

"Breathe," said Lina. She opened her mouth and

took in a long breath of air. Doon did the same.

"It's sweet," he said. "So full of smells."

They held their hands out to feel the long stems as

they waded slowly through them. The air moved

against their faces and in their hair.

"Hear those sounds?" said Doon. A high, thin

chirruping sound came from somewhere nearby. It

253

was repeated over and over, like a question.

"Yes," said Lina. "What could it be?"

"Something alive, I think. Maybe some kind of

bug."

"A bug that sings." Lina turned to Doon. Her face

was shadowy in the silver light. "It's so strange here,

Doon, and so huge. But I'm not afraid."

"No. I'm not either. It feels like a dream."

"A dream, yes. Maybe that's why it feels familiar. I

might have dreamed about this place."

They walked until they came to where the dark

shapes billowed up from the ground. These were

plants, they discovered, taller than they were, with

stems as hard and thick as the walls of houses, and

leaves that spread out over their heads. On the slope

beside these plants, they sat down.

"Do you think there is a city here somewhere?"

Lina asked. "Or any people at all?"

"I don't see any lights," Doon said, "even far off."

"But with this silver lamp in the sky, maybe they

don't need lights."

Doon shook his head doubtfully. "People would

need more light than this," he said. "How could you see

well enough to work? How could you grow your food?

It's a beautiful light, but not bright enough to live by."

"Then what shall we do, if there's no city, and no

people?"

"I don't know. I don't know." Doon didn't feel like

254

thinking. He was tired of figuring things out. He

wanted to look at this new world, and take in the scent

of it and the feel of it, and figure things out later.

Lina felt the same way. She stopped asking questions,

drew Poppy onto her lap, and gazed in silence at

the glimmering landscape. After a while, she became

aware that something strange was happening. Surely,

when she had first sat down, the silver circle was just

above the highest branch of the tall plant. Now the

branch cut across it. As she watched, the circle sank

very slowly down, until it was hidden, except for a

gleam of brightness, behind the leaves.

"It's moving," she said to Doon.

"Yes."

A little later, it seemed to her that her eyes were

blurring. There was a fuzziness in the sky, especially

around the edges. It took a while for her to realize what

was making the fuzziness.

"Light," she said.

"I see it," said Doon. "It's getting brighter."

The edge of the sky turned gray, and then pale

orange, and then deep fiery crimson. The land stood

out against it, a long black rolling line. One spot along

this line grew so bright they could hardly look at it, so

bright it seemed to take a bite out of the land. It rose

higher and higher until they could see that it was a

fiery circle, first deep orange and then yellow, and too

bright to look at any longer. The color seeped out of

255

the sky and washed over the land. Light sparkled on

the soft hair of the hills and shone through the lacy

leaves as every shade of green sprang to life around

them.

They lifted their faces to the astonishing warmth.

The sky arched over them, higher than they could

have imagined, a pale, clear blue. Lina felt as though

a lid that had been on her all her life had been lifted

off. Light and air rushed through her, making a song,

like the songs of Ember, only it was a song of joy.

She looked at Doon and saw that he was smiling and

crying at the same time, and she realized that she was,

too.

Everything around them was springing to life. A

glorious racket came from the branches--tweedling

notes, peeps, burbles, high sharp calls. Bugs? wondered

Doon, imagining with awe the bugs that could make

such sounds. But then he saw something fly from a

cluster of leaves and swoop down low across the

ground, making a clear, sweet call as it flew. "Did you

see that?" he said to Lina, pointing. "And there's

another one! And there!"

"There there there there!" repeated Poppy, leaping

from Lina's lap and whirling around, pointing in every

direction.

The air was full of them now. They were much too

large to be insects. One of them lit nearby on a stem. It

looked at them with two bright black eyes and, open

256

ing its mouth, which was pointed like a thorn, sent

forth a little trill.

"It's speaking to us," said Doon. "What could it

be?"

Lina just shook her head. The little creature

shifted its clawlike feet on the stem, flapped its brown

wings, and trilled again. Then it leapt into the air and

was gone.

They leapt up, too, and threw themselves into

exploration. The ground was alive with insects--so

many that Doon just laughed in helpless wonder.

Flowers bloomed among the green blades, and a

stream ran at the foot of the hill. They roamed over the

green-coated slopes, running, sliding, calling out to

each other with each new discovery, until they were

exhausted. Then they sat down by the entrance to the

path to eat what was left of their food. They untied

Doon's bundle, and Lina suddenly cried out. "The

book! We forgot about the book!"

There it was, wrapped in its blotched green cloth.

"Let's read it out loud while we eat," said Doon.

Lina opened the fragile notebook and laid it on

the ground in front of her. She picked up a carrot with

one hand, and with the other she kept her place on the

scribbled page. This is what she read.

257

CHAPTER 20

The Last Message

Friday

They tell us we leave tonight. I knew it

would be soon--the training has been over for

nearly a month now--but still it feels sudden,

it feels like a shock. Why did I agree to do this?

I am an old woman, too tired to take up a

new life. I wish now that I'd said no when they

asked me.

I have put everything I can into my one

suitcase--clothes, shoes, a good wind-up clock,

some soap, an extra pair of glasses. Bring no

books, they said, and no photographs. We have

been told to say nothing, ever again, about the

world we come from. But I am going to take this

notebook anyhow. I am determined to write

down what happens. Someday, someone may

need to know.

258

Saturday

I went to the train station yesterday

evening, as they told me to, and got on the train

they told me to take. It took us through Spring

Valley, and I gazed out the window at the fields

and houses of the place I was saying goodbye

to--my home, and my family's home for

generations. I rode for two hours, until the train

reached a station in the hills. When I arrived,

they met me--three men in suits--and drove

me to a large building, where they led me

down a corridor and into a big room full of

other people--all with suitcases, most with gray

or white hair. Here we have been waiting now

for more than an hour.

They have spent years and years making

this plan. It's supposed to ensure that, no

matter what happens, people won't disappear

from the earth. Some say that will never happen

anyhow. I'm not so sure. Disaster seems very

close. Everything will be all right, they teU us,

but only a few people believe them. Why, if it's

going to be all right, do we see it getting worse

every day?

And of course this plan is proof that they

think the world is doomed. All the best scientists

and engineers have been pulled in to work on it

Extraordinary efforts have been made--efforts

259

that would have done more good elsewhere. I

think it's the wrong answer. But they asked me

if I would go--I suppose because I've spent my

life on a farm and I know about growing food.

In spite of my doubts, I said yes. I'm not sure

why.

There are a hundred of us, fifty men and

fifty women. We are all at least sixty years old.

There will be a hundred babies, too--two

babies for each pair of "parents." I don't know

yet which one of these gentlemen I'll be matched

with. We are all strangers to one another. They

planned it that way; they said there would be

fewer memories between us. They want us to

forget everything about the lives we've led and

the places we've lived. The babies must grow up

with no knowledge of a world outside, so that

they feel no sorrow for what they have lost.

I hear some noises across the room. I think

it's the babies arriving.... Yes, here they come,

each being carried by one of those gray-suited

men. So many of them! So small! Little

scrunched-up faces, tiny fists waving. I must

stop for now. They're going to pass them out.

Later

We're traveling again, on a bus this time. It

is night, I think, though it's hard to be sure

260

because they have boarded up the windows of

the bus from the outside. They don't want us to

know where we're going.

I have a baby on my lap--a girl She has a

bright pink face and no hair at all. Stanley, who

sits next to me, holds a boy baby, with brown

skin and a few tufts of black hair. Stanley and I

are the keepers of these children. Our task is to

raise them in this new place we're going to. By

the time they are twenty or so, we'll be gone.

They'll be on their own, making a new world.

Stanley and I have named these children

Star and Forest.

Sunday

The buses have stopped, but they have not

allowed us to get out yet. I can hear crickets

singing, and smell the grass, so we must be in

the country, and it must be night. I am very

tired.

What kind of place can this be, safe from

earthly catastrophes? Ml I can guess is that it

must be underground. The thought fills me with

dread. I'll try to sleep a little now.

Later

There was no chance to sleep. They called

us off the buses, and we stepped out into a

261

landscape of rolling hills, in full moonlight.

"That's the way well be going in," they told us,

pointing to a dark opening in the hill we stood

on. "Form a line there, please." We did so. It was

very quiet, except for the squalling of a few of

the babies. If the others were like me, they were

saying goodbye to the world. I reached down to

touch the grass and breathed deeply to smell the

earth. My eyes swept over the silver hills, arid I

thought of the animals prowling softly in the

shadows or sleeping in their burrows, and the

birds standing beneath the leaves of the trees,

with their heads tucked under their wings. Last,

I raised my eyes to the moon, which smiled

down on us from a long, cold distance away.

The moon will still be here when they come out,

I thought. The moon and the hills, at least.

The opening led us into a winding passage

that ran steeply downhill for perhaps a mile. It

was hard going for me; my legs are not strong

anymore. We moved very slowly. The last part

was the worst a rocky slope where it was easy to

miss your footing and slip. This led down to a

pool. By the shore of the pool our group of aged

pioneers gathered. Motorboats were waiting

here for us, equipped with lanterns.

"When it's time for people to leave this

262

place, is this the way they will come?" I asked

our pilot, who has a kind face. He said yes.

"But how will they know there's a way out, if no one tells them?" I said. "How will they

know what to do?"

"They're going to have instructions," said

the pilot. "They won't be able to get at the

instructions until the time is right. But when

they need them, the instructions will be there."

"But what if they don't find them? What if

they never come out again?"

"I think they will. People find a way

through just about anything."

That was all he would say. I am writing

these notes while our pilot loads the boat. I hope

he doesn't notice.

"It ends there," said Lina, looking up.

"He must have noticed," said Doon. "Or she was

afraid he would, so she decided to hide it instead of

taking it with her."

"She must have hoped someone would find it."

"Just as we did." He pondered. "But we might not

have, if it hadn't been for Poppy."

"No. And we wouldn't have known, that we came

from here."

The fiery circle had moved up in the sky now, and

263

the air was so warm that they took off their coats.

Absently, Doon dug his finger into the ground, which

was soft and crumbly. "But what was the disaster that

happened in this place?" he said. "It doesn't look

ruined to me."

"It must have happened a long, long time ago,"

said Lina. "I wonder if people still live here."

They sat looking out over the hills, thinking of the

woman who had written in the notebook. What had

her city been like? Lina wondered. Like Ember in some

way, she imagined. A city with trouble, where people

argued over solutions. A dying city. But it was hard to

picture a city like Ember here in this bright, beautiful

place. How could anyone have allowed such a place to

be harmed?

"What do we do now?" asked Lina. She wrapped

the notebook in its covering again and set it aside. "We

can't go back up the river and tell them all to come

here."

"No. We could never make the boat go against that

current."

"Are we here alone, then, forever?"

"Maybe there's another way in, some way that lets

you walk down to Ember. Or maybe there's another

river that runs the other way. We have candles now, we

could cross the Unknown Regions if we found a way to

get there."

This was the only plan they could come up with.

264

So, all day long, they searched for another way in.

Under the brow of the hill, they found a hole where a

stream wandered into the dark. The water was good to

drink, but the hole was far too small for them to fit

through. There were gullies full of shrubs, and Lina

and Doon crawled among the leaves and prickly

branches, but found no openings. Bugs buzzed around

their ankles and past their eyes; brown earth stained

their hands, and pebbles got into their shoes. Their

thick, dark, shabby clothes got all full of prickly things,

and since they were much too hot anyhow, they took

most of them off. They had never felt such warmth

against their skin and such soft air.

When the bright circle was at the top of the sky,

they sat for a while in the shade of one of the tall plants

on the side of the hill, in a place where the thick brush

gave way to a clearing. Poppy went to sleep, but Lina

and Doon sat looking out over the land. Green was

everywhere, in different shades, like a huge, brilliant,

gorgeous version of the overlapping carpets back in

the rooms of Ember. Far away, Lina saw a narrow gray

line curving like a pencil stroke across a sweep of

green. She pointed this out to Doon, and both of them

squinted hard at it, but it was too far away to see

clearly.

"Could it be a road?" said Lina.

"It could," said Doon.

"Maybe there are people here after all."

265

"I hope so " said Doon. "There's so much I want to

know."

They were still gazing at the far-off bit of gray

when they heard something moving in the brush

nearby. Leaves rustled. There was a scraping, shuffling

sound. They stiffened and held their breath. The

shuffling paused, then started up again. Was it a

person? Should they call out? But before they

could decide what to do, a creature stepped into the

clearing.

It was about the same size as Poppy, only lower to

the ground, because it walked on four legs instead

of two. Its fur was a deep rust-red. Its face was a long

triangle, its ears stood up in points, and its black eyes

shone. It trotted forward a few steps, absorbed in its

own business. Behind it floated a thick, soft-looking

tail.

All at once it saw them and stopped.

Lina and Doon stayed absolutely still. So did the

creature. Then it took a step toward them, paused,

tilted its head a little as if to get a better look, and took

another step. They could see the sheen of its fur and

the glint of light in its eyes.

For a long moment, they stayed like this, frozen,

staring at one another. Then, unhurriedly, the creature

moved away. It pushed its nose among the leaves on

the ground, wandering back toward the bushes, and

266

when it raised its head again, they saw that it was holding

something in its white teeth, something round and

purplish. With a last glance at them, it leapt toward the

bushes, its tail sailing, and disappeared.

Lina let out her breath and turned to look at

Doon, whose mouth was open in astonishment. His

voice shaky, he said, "That was the most wonderful

thing I have ever seen, ever in my whole life."

"Yes."

"And it saw us," Doon said, and Lina nodded. They

both felt it--they had been seen. The creature was

utterly strange, not like anything they had ever known,

and yet when it looked at them, some kind of recognition

passed between them. "I know now," said Doon.

"This is the world we belong in."

A few minutes later, Poppy woke up and made

fretful noises, and Lina gave her the last of the peas

in Doon's pack. "What was that, do you think, in the

creature's mouth?" she asked. "Would it be something

we could eat, a fruit of some kind? It looked like the

pictures of peaches on cans, except for the color."

They got up and poked around, and soon they

came across a plant whose branches were laden with

the purple fruits, about the size of small beets, only

softer. Doon picked one and cut it open with his knife.

There was a stone inside. Red juice ran out over his

267

hands. Cautiously, he touched his tongue to it.

"Sweet" he said.

"If the creature can eat it, maybe we can, too," said

Lina. "Shall we?"

They did. Nothing had ever tasted better. Lina cut

the stones out and gave chunks of the fruit to Poppy.

Juice ran down their chins. When they had eaten five

or six apiece, they licked their sticky fingers clean and

started to explore again.

They went higher up the slope they were on,

wading through flowers as high as their waists, and

near the top they came upon a kind of dent in the

ground, as if a bit of the earth had caved in. They

walked down into it, and at the end of the dent they

found a crack about as tall as a person but not nearly

as wide as a door. Lina edged through it sideways and

discovered a narrow tunnel. "Send Poppy through," she

called back to Doon, "and come yourself." But it was

dark inside, and Doon had to go back to where he'd

left his pack to get a candle. By candlelight, they crept

along until they came to a place where the tunnel

ended abruptly. But it ended not with a wall but

with a sudden huge nothingness that made them gasp

and step back. A few feet beyond their shoes was a

sheer, dizzying drop. They looked out into a cave so

enormous that it seemed almost as big as the world

outside. Far down at the bottom shone a cluster of

lights.

268

"It's Ember," Lina whispered.

They could see the tiny bright streets crossing each

other, and the squares, little chips of light, and the dark

tops of buildings. Just beyond the edges was the

immense darkness.

"Oh, our city, Doon. Our city is at the bottom of a

hole!" She gazed down through the gulf, and all of

what she had believed about the world began to slowly

break apart. "We were underground," she said. "Not

just the Pipeworks. Everything!" She could hardly

make sense of what she was saying.

Doon crouched on his hands and knees, looking

over the edge. He squinted, trying to see minute specks

that might be people. "What's happening there, I

wonder?"

"Could they hear us if we shouted?"

"I don't think so. We're much too far up."

"Maybe if they looked into the sky they'd see our

candle," said Lina. "But no, I guess they wouldn't. The

streetlamps would be too bright."

"Somehow, we have to get word to them," said

Doon, and that was when the idea came to Lina.

"Our message!" she cried. "We could send our

message!"

And they did. From her pocket, Lina took the

message that Doon had written, the one that was

supposed to have gone to Clary, explaining everything.

In small writing, they squeezed in this note at the top:

269

Dear People of Ember,

We came down the river from teh Pipeworks and found the way to another place. It is green here and very big. Light comes from the sky. You. must follow the instructions in this message and come on the river. Bring food with you. Come as quicklyy as you can.

Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow

Thqr wrapped the message in Doon's shirt and

put a rock inside it. Then they stood in a row at the

edge of the chasm, Doon in the middle holding

Poppy's hand and Una's. Lina took aim at the heart of

the city, far beneath her feet. With all her strength, she

cast the message into the darkness, and they watched

as it plunged down and down.

Mrs. Murdo, walking even more briskly than usual to

keep her spirits up, was crossing Harken Square when

something fell to the pavement just in front of her with

a terrific thump. How extraordinary, she thought,

bending to pick it up. It was a sort of bundle. She

began to untie it.

270

Will Mrs. Murdo understand the note?

Will the rest of the citizens of Ember

escape? Turn the page for the first chapter

t     of The People of Sparks, the thrilling sequel

to The City of Ember, and find out!

CHAPTER 1

What Torren Saw

Torren was out at the edge of the cabbage field that

day, the day the people came. He was supposed to be fetching a couple of cabbages for Dr. Hester to use in

the soup that night, but, as usual, he didn't see why he

shouldn't have some fun while he was at it. So he

climbed up the wind tower, which he wasn't supposed

to do because, they said, he might fall or get his head

sliced off by the big blades going round and round.

The wind tower was four-sided, made of boards

nailed one above the next like the rungs of a ladder.

Torren climbed the back side of it, the side that faced

the hills and not the village, so that the little group of

workers hoeing the cabbage rows wouldn't see him. At

the top, he turned around and sat on the flat place

behind the blades, which turned slowly in the idle

summer breeze. He had brought a pocketful of small

stones up with him, planning on some target practice:

he liked to try to hit the chickens that rummaged

around between the rows of cabbages. He thought it

might be fun to bounce a few pebbles off the hats of

the workers, too. But before he had even taken the

stones from his pocket, he caught sight of something

that made him stop and stare.

Out beyond the cabbage field was another field,

where young tomato and corn and squash plants were

growing, and beyond that the land sloped up into a

grassy hillside dotted, at this time of year, with yellow

mustard flowers. Torren saw something strange at the

top of the hill. Something dark.

There were bits of darkness at first—for a second

he thought maybe it was a deer, or several deer, black

ones instead of the usual light brown, but the shape

was wrong for deer, and the way these things moved

was wrong, too. He realized very soon that he was seeing

people, a few people at first and then more and

more of them. They came up from the other side of the

hill and gathered at the top and stood there, a long line

of them against the sky, like a row of black teeth. There

must have been a hundred, Torren thought, or more

than a hundred.

In all his life, Torren had never seen more than

three or four people at a time arrive at the village from

elsewhere. Almost always, the people who came were

roamers, passing through with a truckload of stuff

from the old towns to sell. This massing of people on

the hilltop terrified him. For a moment he couldn't

move. Then his heart started up a furious pounding,

and he scrambled down off the wind tower so fast that

he scraped his hands on the rough boards.

"Someone's coming!" he shouted as he passed the

workers. They looked up, startled. Torren ran at full

speed toward the low cluster of brown buildings at the

far end of the field. He turned up a dirt lane, his feet

raising swirls of dust, and dashed through the gate in

the wall and across the courtyard and in through the

open door, all the time yelling, "Someone's coming! Up

on the hill! Auntie Hester! Someone's coming!"

He found his aunt in the kitchen, and he grabbed

her by the waist of her pants and cried, "Come and see!

There's people on the hill!" His voice was so shrill and

urgent and loud that his aunt dropped the spoon into

the pot of soup she'd been stirring and hurried after

him. By the time they got outside, others from the village

were leaving their houses, too, and looking toward

the hillside.

The people were coming down. Over the crest of

the hill they came and kept coming, dozens of them,

more and more, like a mudslide.

The people of the village crowded into the streets.

"Get Mary Waters!" someone called. "Where's Ben and

Wilmer? Find them, tell them to get out here!"

Torren was less frightened now that he was surrounded

by the townspeople. "I saw them first," he said

to Hattie Carranza, who happened to be hurrying

along next to him. "I was the one who told the news."

"Is that right," said Hattie.

"We won't let them do anything bad to us," said

Torren. "If they do, we'll do something worse to them.

Won't we?"

But she just glanced down at him with a vague

frown and didn't answer.

The three village leaders—Mary Waters, Ben Barlow,

and Wilmer Dent—had joined the crowd by now

and were leading the way across the cabbage field. Torren

kept close behind them. The strangers were getting

nearer, and he wanted to hear what they would say. He

could see that they were terrible-looking people. Their

clothes were all wrong—coats and sweaters, though

the weather was warm, and not nice coats and sweaters

but raggedy ones, patched, unraveling, faded, and

grimy. They carried bundles, all of them: sacks made of

what looked like tablecloths or blankets gathered up

and tied with string around the neck. They moved

clumsily and slowly. Some of them tripped on the

uneven ground and had to be helped up by others.

In the center of the field, where the smell of new

cabbages and fresh dirt and chicken manure was

strong, those at the front of the crowd of strangers met

the village leaders. Mary Waters stepped to the front,

and the villagers crowded up behind her. Torren, being

small, wriggled between people until he had a good

view. He stared at the ragged people. Where were their

leaders? Facing Mary were a girl and a boy who looked

only a little older than he was himself. Next to them

was a bald man, and next to him a sharp-eyed woman

holding a small child. Maybe she was the leader.

But when Mary stepped forward and said, "Who

are you?" it was the boy who answered. He spoke in a

clear, loud voice that surprised Torren, who had

expected a pitiful voice from someone so bedraggled.

"We come from the city of Ember," the boy said. "We

left there because our city was dying. We need help."

Mary, Ben, and Wilmer exchanged glances. Mary

frowned. "The city of Ember? Where's that? We've

never heard of it"

The boy gestured back the way they had come, to

the east "That way," he said. "It's under the ground."

The frowns deepened. "Tell us the truth," said Ben,

"not childish nonsense."

This time the girl spoke up. She had long, snarled

hair with bits of grass caught in it. "It isn't a lie" she

said. "Really. Our city was underground. We didn't

know it until we came out."

Ben snorted impatiently, folding his arms across

his chest "Who is in charge here?" He looked at the

bald man. "Is it you?"

The bald man shook his head and gestured toward

the boy and the girl. "They're as in charge as anyone,"

he said. "The mayor of our city is no longer with us.

These young people are speaking the truth. We have

come out of a city built underground."

The people around him all nodded and murmured,

"Yes" and "It's true."

"My name is Doon Harrow," said the boy. "And

this is Una Mayfleet. We found the way out of Ember."

He thinks he's pretty great, thought Torren, hearing

a note of pride in the boy's voice. He didn't look so

great. His hair was shaggy, and he was wearing an old

jacket that was coming apart at the seams and grimy at

the cuffs. But his eyes shone out confidently from

under his dark eyebrows.

"We're hungry," the boy said. "And thirsty. Will

you help us?"

Mary, Ben, and Wilmer stood silent for a moment.

Then Mary took Ben and Wilmer by the arms and led

them aside a few steps. They whispered to each other,

glanced up at the great swarm of strangers, frowned,

whispered some more. While he waited to hear what

they'd say, Torren studied the people who said they

came from underground.

It might be true. They did in fact look as if they

had crawled up out of a hole. Most of them were

scrawny and pale, like the sprouts you see when you

lift up a board that's been lying on the ground,

feeble things that have tried to grow in the dark. They

huddled together, looking frightened. They looked

exhausted, too. Many of them had sat down on the

ground now, and some had their heads in the laps of

others.

The three village leaders turned again to the crowd

of strangers. "How many of you are there?" Mary

Waters asked.

"About four hundred," said the boy, Doon.

Mary's dark eyebrows jumped upward.

Four hundred! In Torren's whole village, there

were only three hundred and twenty-two. He swept his

gaze out over this vast horde. They filled half the cabbage

field and were still coming over the hill, like a

swarm of ants.

The girl with the ratty hair stepped forward and

raised a hand, as if she were in school. "Excuse me,

Madam Mayor," she said.

Torren snickered. Madam Mayor! Nobody called

Mary Waters Madam Mayor. They just called her

Mary.

"Madam Mayor," said the girl, "my little sister is

very sick." She pointed to the baby being held by the

sharp-eyed woman. It did look sick. Its eyes were half

closed, and its mouth hung open. "Some others of us

are sick, too," the girl went on, "or hurt—Lotty Hoover

tripped and hurt her ankle, and Nammy Proggs is

exhausted from walking so far. She's nearly eighty

years old. Is there a doctor in your town? Is there a

place where sick people can lie down and be taken care

of?"

Mary turned to Ben and Wilmer again, and they

spoke to each other in low voices. Torren could catch

only a few words of what they said. "Too many . . ."

"... but human kindness .. ." ". .. maybe take a. few

in..." Ben rubbed his beard and scowled. Wilmer kept

glancing at the sick baby. After a few minutes, they

nodded to each other. Mary said, "All right. Hoist me

up."

Ben and Wilmer bent down and grasped Mary's

legs. With a grunt, they lifted her so that she was high

enough to see out over the crowd. She raised both her

arms and cried, in a voice that came from the depths of

her deep chest, "People from Ember! Welcome! We will

do what we can to help you. Please follow us!" Ben and

Wilmer set her down, and the three of them turned

and walked out of the cabbage field and toward the

road that entered the village. Led by the boy and the

girl, the crowd of shabby people followed.

Torren dashed ahead, ran down the lane, and got

up onto the low wall that bordered his house. From

here, he watched the people from underground go by.

They were strangely silent Why weren't they jabbering

to each other? But they seemed too tired to speak, or

too stupid. They stared at everything, wide-eyed and

drop-jawed—as if they had never seen a house before,

or a tree, or a chicken. In fact, the chickens seemed to

frighten them—they shrank back when they saw them,

making startled sounds. It took a long time for the

whole raggedy crowd to pass Torren's house, and when

the last people had gone by, he jumped down off the

wall and followed them. They were being led, he knew,

to the town center, down by the river, where there

would be water for them to drink. After that, what

would happen? What would they eat? Where would

they sleep? Not in my room, he thought.

JEANNE DuPRAU has been a teacher,

an editor, and a technical writer. She

lives in Menlo Park, California, where

she keeps a big garden and a small dog. The City of Ember is her first novel.