The People of Sparks Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Quote

  The Message

  PART 1: Arrival

  1. What Torren Saw

  2. Out from Below

  3. Through the Village

  4. The Doctor’s House

  THE FIRST TOWN MEETING

  5. The Pioneer

  6. Breakfast with Disaster

  7. A Day of New People

  8. The Roamer and the Bike

  9. Hard, Hungry Work

  10. Restless Weeks

  11. Tick’s Projects

  12. Caspar Arrives with a Surprise

  13. Taking Action

  PART 2: Travelers and Warriors

  14. What Torren Did

  15. A Long, Hot Ride

  16. The Starving Roamer

  17. Doon Accused

  THE SECOND TOWN MEETING

  18. Caspar’s Quest

  19. Unfairness, and What to Do About It

  20. The City Destroyed

  21. Attack and Counterattack

  22. Discoveries

  THE THIRD TOWN MEETING

  23. Getting Ready for War

  PART 3: The Decision

  24. What Torren Planned

  25. Dread at the Last Minute

  26. The Weapon

  27. Firefight

  28. Surprising Truths

  THE FOURTH TOWN MEETING

  29. Three Amazing Visits

  Journey Through The Books Of Ember

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Jeanne DuPrau

  Copyright Page

  “Darkness cannot drive out darkness;

  only light can do that.

  Hate cannot drive out hate;

  only love can do that.

  Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence,

  and toughness multiplies toughness

  in a descending spiral of destruction.”

  —Martin Luther King, Jr.,

  “Strength to Love,” 1963

  The Message

  Dear People of Ember,

  We came down the river from the 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 quickly as you can.

  Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow

  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 Lina 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 322. 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 there, 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.

  CHAPTER 2

  Out from Below

  The people from the dying city of Ember had come up into the new world only a few days before. The first to arrive had been Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow, bringing Lina’s little sister, Poppy, with them. From a ledge high up in the great cave that held their city, they’d thrown down a message, hoping someone would find it and lead the others out. Then they’d waited. At first they’d explored the wonders around them. But as the hours passed, they began to worry that their message had not been found and that they would be alone in this world forever.

  Then, in the late afternoon of the next day, Doon suddenly shouted, “Look! They’re coming!”

  Lina grabbed Poppy by the hand. All three of them ran toward the mouth of the cave. Who was it? Who was it coming from home? A woman emerged from the darkness first, and then two men, and then three children, all of them squinting against the bright light.

  “Hello, hello!” Lina called, leaping up the hill. She saw who it was when she got closer: the family who ran the Callay Street vegetable market. She didn’t know any of them well—she couldn’t even remember their names—and yet she was so glad to see them that tears sprang to her eyes. She flung her arms around each one in turn, crying, “Here you are! Look, isn’t it wonderful? Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! And are more coming?” The new arrivals were too breathless and amazed to answer, but it didn’t matter, because Lina could see for herself.

  They came out from the cave, shading their eyes with their hands. They came in bunches, a few of them and then minutes later a few more, stumbling out into a light a thousand times brighter than any they’d ever seen. They stared in astonishment, walked a few steps, and then just stood, dropping the sacks and bundles they carried, gazing, blinking. To Lina and Doon, who felt already that they belonged here, the refugees from Ember looked strange in this bright landscape of green grass and blue sky. They were so drab and dingy in their heavy, mud-colored clothes, their coats and sweaters in colors like stone and dust and murky water. It was as if they had brought some of Ember’s darkness with them.

  Doon suddenly leapt away, shouting, “Father! Father!” He threw himself against his stunned father, who fell backward, sat down on the ground, and burst into a combination of laughter and weeping to see his son again. “You are here,” he gasped. “I wasn’t sure. . . . I didn’t know. . . .”

  All afternoon they came. Lizzie Bisco came, and others from the old High Class, along with Clary Laine from the greenhouses, and the doctor who had helped Lina’s granny, and Sadge Merrall, who had tried to go out into the Unknown Regions. Mrs. Murdo came, walking in her brisk, businesslike way, but giving a cry of joy when she saw Lina hurtling toward her. People came whose faces Lina recognized but whose names she didn’t remember, like the shoe repair man from Liverie Street, and the little puffy-faced woman who lived in Selverton Square, and the tall, black-haired boy with blue-gray eyes so light they looked like glints of metal. What was that tall boy’s name? She
spent a second trying to recall it, but only a second. It didn’t matter. These were her people, the people of Ember. All of them were tired and all of them were thirsty. Lina showed them the little stream, and they splashed the water on their faces and filled their bottles there.

  “What about the mayor?” Lina asked Mrs. Murdo, but she just shook her head. “He’s not with us,” she said.

  Some of the older people looked terrified to be in such a huge place, a place that seemed to go on without borders in all directions. After they had stared nervously about them for a while, they sat down in the grass, hunched over, and put their heads to their knees. But the children ran around in ecstasy, touching everything, smelling the air, splashing their feet in the stream.

  By evening, 417 people had arrived—Doon kept track. As the light began to fade from the sky, they shared the food they had brought, and then, using their coats as blankets and their bundles as pillows, they lay down on the warm, rough ground and slept.

  The next morning they got ready to leave. Lina and Doon, when they first arrived, had spotted a narrow gray line that ran along the ground like a pencil stroke in the distance. They thought it might be a road. So the people of Ember, having no other clue about where to go, picked up their bundles and set out in that direction, a long, straggling line trailing across the hills.

  It was on this walk that Mrs. Murdo told Lina and Doon about leaving Ember. The three of them walked together, Mrs. Murdo with Poppy in her arms. Doon’s father walked behind them, leaning forward now and then to hear what Mrs. Murdo was saying.

  “I was the one who found your message,” Mrs. Murdo said. “It fell right at my feet. It was the day after the Singing. I was on my way home from the market, feeling sick with worry because you and Poppy had disappeared. Then there was your message.” She paused and looked up at the sky. She was keeping a couple of tears from falling, Lina saw.