Kenny went up to him. “Hi, Doon’s father,” he said.
“Hi, Kenny.” Loris Harrow looked up from his work and smiled.
“What happened to your hand?” Kenny asked.
Doon’s father explained.
“Is it better?” Kenny asked.
“I think so,” said Doon’s father. “It feels a little . . . well, a little sore and swollen, but I guess that’s to be expected.”
“I’m looking for Doon,” Kenny said. “I can’t find him.”
“That’s because he isn’t here,” said Doon’s father. “He’s staying up at Doctor Hester’s house this week, helping out. He left yesterday.”
So Kenny turned around and started up the river road again, heading for the other end of the village. He moved along idly, stopping to observe a beetle lying on its back with its legs waving (he turned it over with a twig), and to pick up a blue feather that wasn’t too muddy, and to pitch a rock as far as he could throw it out into the field. He saw a few people down by the river. They had poles with them; they’d be hoping to catch fish.
By the time Kenny got to the doctor’s house, it was late afternoon. In the courtyard, Torren was sitting on a bench in a patch of sunlight. He was playing with one of his treasures, a toy airplane, making it climb and dive in the air. Poppy stood by his knee, breaking a twig into pieces. She was so bundled up that she looked like a small puffy package with feet.
“Hi, Torren,” Kenny said. “Is Doon here?”
“No. Why would he be? He’s probably down working at the Pioneer the way he always is.”
“Nope,” said Kenny. “I looked for him there. Where’s Lina?”
“She’s down there, too,” Torren said. “They needed some extra help, so she went. For three or four days. I think she was tired of being here and wanted a big change. Maddy came up to stay with us. She’s in the kitchen making soup.”
“Oh,” said Kenny. He thought about this. He could tell that someone had the facts wrong, but he wasn’t sure who.
Poppy pulled on his sleeve. “I breaked the stick,” she said.
“You did,” said Kenny. “Good girl.” He patted Poppy’s head. “How long has Lina been gone?”
“I don’t know.” Torren sent his airplane into a steep dive. “Just a couple of days, I think. Why?”
“Oh, nothing. I just wondered why . . . I just think it’s kind of strange that . . . Oh, well. Never mind. I have to get going now.”
“Going where?” said Torren, putting his airplane down. “And what’s strange?”
The door of the house opened just then, and Mrs. Murdo came out. There were stains on her shirt, and her hair straggled. Kenny could tell she was tired. “Hello, Kenny,” she said. “Poppy, it’s much too cold for you to be outside. Time for you to come in. You, too, Torren.”
“I’m not cold,” Torren said.
Mrs. Murdo shrugged. It was clear she was not up to arguing with him. “Come in when you are, then,” she said. She took Poppy’s hand, and they went back into the house.
“So I’m going,” said Kenny. “Bye.”
“But where are you going?”
“Nowhere. Just back into town.”
“Can I come with you? You can tell me what’s strange.”
“No,” Kenny said. He wished he hadn’t said a thing about it. “I’m just going home. I can’t be late for dinner.”
“No one ever tells me anything,” said Torren. He glowered at Kenny, but Kenny ignored him and went back out to the road.
He puzzled over what he’d heard as he walked toward town. Doon’s father thought Doon was at the doctor’s house, but he wasn’t. Torren thought Lina was at the Pioneer, but as far as Kenny could tell, she wasn’t. What did this mean? He concentrated hard on figuring it out and did not hear the steps behind him.
CHAPTER 15
________________________
A Plan
Evening was coming on now. Kenny’s ears ached from the cold. He picked up his pace. By the time he got to the main plaza, he had worked things out in his mind: Doon and Lina weren’t where they usually were; they weren’t where they’d said they were going to be, either. No one seemed worried about this, so that meant Doon’s father and Mrs. Murdo hadn’t happened to talk to each other lately. And that meant that Kenny was now the only person who knew this secret.
So the question was, he thought as he crossed the plaza, where most of the shops were closed and only a few people hurried toward home, should he tell anyone that Lina and Doon were missing? Probably he should, but then, on the other hand, it was clear that they were missing on purpose. Maybe he shouldn’t give away their secret? Or not yet anyhow?
From around the corner by the town hall came someone walking very fast who stepped right in front of Kenny and caused him to dodge sideways to avoid a collision. “Oops,” said this person. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”
It was the girl named Lizzie. Kenny knew her just a little—she was a friend of Lina’s, and she was one of the few people he’d ever seen who had hair the color of apricots, though right now, her hair didn’t shine the way it had in the summer, and her face was pale, almost bluish.
“Oh, it’s you,” Lizzie said.
“I heard you were sick,” said Kenny. “Are you better?”
“I am,” Lizzie answered, “but I almost died of it. I coughed so hard I cracked one of my ribs. I thought I was going to cough my lungs right up out of my chest.” She looked at him rather proudly.
“That’s too bad,” said Kenny. He was thinking. Should he tell Lizzie about Lina and Doon? It felt wrong to tell Doon’s father and Mrs. Murdo, who would be upset and alarmed; that felt like a betrayal of whatever Doon and Lina’s plan was. But it was hard to keep the secret all to himself. He needed someone to talk it over with, someone he could trust. Could he trust Lizzie? He knew she’d been the girlfriend of that boy named Tick, who had deceived them all. But it wasn’t her fault she’d been deceived by him; everyone had.
Lizzie turned to go. Kenny hesitated another second, and then he said, “Have you seen Lina lately?”
“No,” said Lizzie. She looked into the air, thinking. “I haven’t seen her since . . . it must have been three or four days ago. Why?”
“Well, listen,” Kenny said. He took hold of Lizzie’s scarf and pulled her around the corner, where the wall kept them out of the wind. “Here’s what I just found out.”
As he explained the mystery, Lizzie listened with avid interest. So did Torren, who was hiding behind the stump of the tree that had burned last summer. He had decided he was sick and tired of being left behind and sick and tired of being left out of secrets, and he’d followed Kenny into town and ducked into his hiding place when Kenny ran into Lizzie. He thought the mystery of Lina and Doon was not only interesting but also infuriating. Once again, people had gone off on some kind of adventure without including him. It made him so mad that he couldn’t keep quiet.
“I bet I know where they went!” he cried, jumping out from behind the tree stump and nearly scaring Kenny and Lizzie out of their skins.
“You followed me,” said Kenny.
Torren ignored this. “We have to find them,” he said. “I can help.”
“It’s no use,” said Lizzie. “They have run away together.” She took hold of her hair and stuffed it down into her collar to keep the wind from blowing it around. “I always knew they liked each other in a special way. You could just tell.”
“Where would they go?” Kenny asked.
“Someplace cozy,” Lizzie said. “Where they could set things up like a real home. It would be so much fun,” she said wistfully.
“But they’re only thirteen,” said Kenny.
“That doesn’t matter. This is a whole new world! The rules aren’t the same.”
“You are being dumb,” Torren said. “That is not what Lina would do. I know that. She wouldn’t leave Poppy just to go off with Doon. I know she wouldn’t.”
“You’re too youn
g to understand,” said Lizzie.
“I am not.” Torren glared at her. “I know what they did,” he said. “They were sick of being cold and not having enough to eat. So they went off to be roamers, to go someplace else and get away from everything. I bet someone in town has a wagon missing, and an ox. I bet they went toward the old city, because Lina knew the way from when she went before.”
Kenny listened to these ideas without saying anything much. Possible, but not right, he thought. Even though Torren lived in the same house as Lina, and Lizzie had known both Lina and Doon in Ember, neither one seemed really to know them very well.
Lizzie and Torren argued back and forth. Lizzie said again that Torren was too young to understand and talked about someone named Looper back in Ember that she would have gone off with if he’d asked her to, and Torren said that anybody would want to be a roamer if they could, even if they had to steal a wagon to do it, and that his brother Caspar was a roamer and that when he was old enough, he and Caspar would be a team.
Finally, Lizzie turned to Kenny. “You’re not saying anything,” she said. “Who do you think is right, me or him?”
“Well, I think neither one,” said Kenny. “What I think is, they wanted to be helpful. There’s hardship here, just the way there was hardship in their city before, and they wanted to help then.”
Lizzie and Torren both stared at him and said nothing for a moment. Then Lizzie said, “You might be right.”
“Might be,” said Torren.
“So if they wanted to help,” Lizzie went on, “where would they go?”
“Someplace where they could find things we don’t have.”
“But where is that? No one around here has anything.”
Kenny looked up at the sky, thinking. He rubbed his chin. If he wanted to help, what would he do? Where would he go? “Maybe up north?” he said. “Maybe they caught a ride with that roamer who was here.”
“But once they got there, how could they buy things?” said Lizzie. “They had nothing to trade with.”
“That’s true.”
Lizzie frowned, thinking. “Maybe the ancient ruined city? Maybe when Lina went there, she saw things that were still left.”
“No,” said Torren, “if there’d been good things still there, Caspar would have brought them back.”
They were stumped. They stood there in the cold alley, their ears and tips of their noses getting more and more chilly. Lizzie wound her scarf around her head. She coughed. “It’s so much colder here than it was in Ember,” she complained. “And the air here isn’t just cold, it moves and slices into you, which makes it worse.” She coughed again, a raspy cough that made her eyes water. “And in Ember,” she went on, “no water or ice falls out of the sky the way it does here, and even though people got sick there, at least they had medicine that sometimes helped a little bit. In Ember . . .” She stopped. “Oh,” she said.
“Oh, what?” said Torren.
“I think I know where they went,” said Lizzie.
“To Ember!” Kenny cried. “I bet you’re right! But is anything left there?”
“Might be,” said Lizzie. “At least a little bit. Probably more than here.”
“Then that’s it. That’s where they went.” Kenny felt sure of it. It felt right for both Lina and Doon: they wanted to help, they knew their old city, and they were brave enough to try to go there on their own.
“So what should we do?” Lizzie said. “Go after them and tell them it’s too dangerous, and they should come back?”
“Is it dangerous?” Kenny asked.
“It must be,” Lizzie said. “It’s dark there now. And how would they even get in? They couldn’t go up that river.” She swiped at her runny nose. “I think their minds must have got a little bit unhinged by the cold and the trouble here and everything.”
“We should rescue them!” cried Torren. “I don’t mind going out into the wilderness. It will be good practice for when I’m a roamer.”
“But we don’t know the way,” said Kenny.
“I could remember it, maybe,” Lizzie said. “It’s up there.” She waved her hand in a vague northeasterly direction.
“We can’t catch up with them,” Kenny said. “They’ve been gone too long. Maybe they’re already on their way back. Or maybe they’ve had an accident and they’re stuck out there. If we went up on the hill beyond the far field, we might see them. Then we could go and help.”
Torren was jumping up and down by now, his eyes shining and coat flapping. “We have to go soon!” he cried.
“But not in the night.” Lizzie wrapped her jacket closer around her.
“Tomorrow,” said Kenny. “We could meet at the far field early, right at sunrise. Okay? We’ll just go up and look.”
“Okay!” cried Torren. “We’ll go tomorrow!” He jumped up and thumped the wall with his fist. A few yards away, a window was pushed open, and in a moment Ben Barlow poked his head out. “What’s all that commotion?” he called, but no one was there.
CHAPTER 16
________________________
A Night with Maggs
“All right,” said Maggs. “Now I’ll show you where I got that book.” She had dropped Lina’s picture message from the cliff and come back. The sky was growing rapidly darker, as the sun was setting and the rain clouds rising, so Maggs unhooked a lantern from the side of her wagon. It was a tin-can lantern with a candle burning inside, much like the lanterns used in Sparks. “Follow me,” she said. She headed for the grove of trees to the left of the cave entrance, the place where Lina had gathered kindling the night before. They went in among the thickets of brush and stickery branches. “It was in here somewhere,” Maggs said, stomping through the undergrowth. “I wasn’t the one who found it—that was Wash—but he showed it to the rest of us afterward.”
It was dark among the trees; not much light from the sky filtered through. Maggs’s lantern made a spot of gold ahead of Lina, and she went fast to keep up with it. After a few minutes, the ground rose slightly uphill. Maggs edged between the thickly growing tree trunks, and Lina followed, her feet swishing through deep layers of leaves.
“Here we go,” said Maggs. Lina came up behind her and saw what she’d glimpsed before: a faint reflection glinting through the woods ahead. “Now, watch your step,” said Maggs. “We’re close.”
A moment later, Maggs cried, “Ouch!” and stopped so abruptly that Lina almost bumped into her. “Stubbed my toe,” Maggs grumped. She kicked away some leaves, and beneath them Lina saw a step—square-cornered, smooth, clearly man-made. And just beyond the step, the light glinted on metal. She stared in amazement. There was a door in the mountainside. It had a metal handle, and a metal border ran along its edges.
The door swung open with a creak when Maggs pulled on its handle. “There might be bats or animals in here,” Maggs said. “You better let me go in first.” She stepped inside. “No bats, no animals,” she announced. So Lina followed her in. The lantern showed them a plain, windowless room, completely empty except for a small metal table that lay on its side on the floor. A few leaves, no doubt blown in by the wind, were scattered near the threshold. That was all.
“The book was in here?” said Lina. “There wasn’t anything else in the room?”
“Oh, yes,” said Maggs. “There was the jewel. Wash took that, of course. He gave me the book for starting fires.”
“The jewel?” Lina asked. “What was the jewel?”
“A diamond,” Maggs said. “That’s what Wash said it was. Just like in that song I sang you. Beautiful thing. He’ll be able to get a good price for it someday.”
Lina was mystified and disappointed. The book must be about the jewel. But why would you need a book about a jewel? Jewels were just for decoration. Anyhow, the jewel was gone. There wouldn’t be much to tell Doon after all.
“Well, thanks for showing me,” Lina said.
“You’re welcome,” said Maggs. “Now we need to get back to my wagon and get g
oing if we’re going to make any progress at all before dark.”
They didn’t make much progress. They walked for half an hour or so, and then the light was entirely gone from the sky. “Time to set up camp,” Maggs said. “Over there looks like a good place.”
Herding the sheep with shouts and pokes, she headed for a clump of low-spreading oak trees, and when the wagon was under their branches, she halted the horse that was towing it and unhooked his harness.
“What’s that horse’s name?” Lina asked.
“Happy,” said Maggs.
“He doesn’t look happy,” Lina said.
“Well, he used to be. He’s old, and it’s hard to be happy when you’re old.”
Lina wondered if this was true. She thought not. Her granny had been old, and she was usually happy. If this horse had enough to eat and didn’t have to work so hard, she’d bet he’d be happy, too. She gave his bony flank a pat.
“We’ll make our fire right here,” Maggs said, hacking at the ground with the heel of one boot. “Better do it quick, before the rain comes. Get some kindling.”
Lina scurried around, gathering up grass and twigs and branches and carrying it all to Maggs. Soon Maggs had built a sturdy stack, with the kindling on the bottom and bigger sticks on top. “Now to get a flame,” she said. She took a couple of stones out of a little pouch attached to her belt.
“Wait,” said Lina. “I have a match.” She took off her pack, reached inside, and pulled out a match.
Maggs looked at it greedily. “How many have you got?” she asked. “I used up the one I got from you.”
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