The People of Sparks: The Second Book of Ember (Books of Ember)

by Jeanne DuPrau

  Lina did not return, and this added to Doon’s glumness. According to the note she’d left Mrs. Murdo, she should have been back by now from wherever she’d gone. Doon’s feelings about her were divided between worry and anger. He tried not to think about her, since there was nothing he could do.

  Whenever he had a free moment, he holed up with a book and tried to forget about what was happening in the village. Edward Pocket brought him a steady supply. Edward was obsessed with his job. Every now and then Doon would ask him how it was going, and Edward would get a feverish look in his eyes and say, “Ah! It goes by inches, young Doon. By millimeters. I’ve done this much”—he held his thumb and forefinger a tiny distance apart—“and this much remains to be done.” He stretched his arms as far apart as they would go. “It’s a gargantuan task. I press forward, but will I finish in my lifetime? It is doubtful.” His fingers black with dust, he often came home in the evening later than the workers who went into the village, and he was so tired by then that he usually went straight to bed right after dinner, even though it was still light. Doon would hear him mumbling in his sleep inside the closet. He could make sense of only a few words. “Caterpillars,” Edward would say. “Cathedrals. Cattle. Chemistry. Christmas.” Then he’d groan and thrash about, banging his bony limbs against the closet door, and go silent for a while. When he muttered again, he’d be on to a different letter: “Hamlet. Harry Potter. Hawaii. Heart surgery. Hippopotamus. Hog farming.” Doon imagined that Edward’s mind was so stuffed with information by now that there wasn’t room for any more, and the excess had started leaking out in the night.

  Sometimes Doon passed the Sparks school on his way to work in the morning. It was a small building with a wide, open porch all around it, where the students often sat to do their lessons. The children of the village—there weren’t very many of them—went to school only a few hours a day, and only until they were ten years old. Kenny Parton went there. He would wave to Doon when he saw him going by, and before the trouble with the tomatoes, the other children would look at Doon curiously, a few of them smiling. But the first time Doon passed the school after the tomato trouble, he saw fifteen or twenty cold-eyed faces turned toward him. Someone shouted, “Get out of here!” and someone else threw a crumpled wad of paper over the porch railing at him. He walked faster, looking straight ahead. A moment later he heard the teacher scolding the class for rudeness, but not very sternly.

  The next day, as Doon and the others arrived at the Partons’ for lunch, Kenny peeked out from behind a corner of the house and beckoned to Doon. His eyes wide, his voice even softer and more timid than usual, he said, “You know at school yesterday?”

  Doon nodded.

  “I was sorry they yelled at you,” Kenny said. “They shouldn’t. You didn’t do it.”

  “How do you know?” said Doon, who was feeling crabby just then at all residents of Sparks. “Maybe I did.”

  Kenny shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” said Doon.

  “I can just tell,” said Kenny. “I can tell about people. You wouldn’t.” He gave Doon a quick, shy smile.

  Doon was touched. Kenny looked like a timid little wisp, but there was something strong inside him.

  “I wish you didn’t have to leave,” Kenny said.

  Doon smiled. “We’ll be here for a few more months,” he said.

  “Then what?” Kenny asked.

  “We go away and make our own town.”

  “Where?” asked Kenny.

  Doon shrugged. “I don’t know. Out in those empty places somewhere.”

  Kenny looked down at his feet. He stood for a minute in silence. Then he said, “That will be really hard. How will you get food?”

  “Grow it, I guess. Just the way you do here.”

  “But you’ll be leaving in the month of Chilling. That’s the beginning of winter. You can’t grow food in the winter,” Kenny said, looking up at Doon with worried eyes.

  “Winter?” said Doon. “What’s winter?”

  “You don’t have winter where you came from?” Kenny’s eyes grew very round. “You mean it’s always summer there?”

  Doon was confused and slightly alarmed by Kenny’s tone. “I don’t know those words,” he said.

  Kenny stared at Doon, his face blank with surprise. “Seasons,” he said. “They’re the seasons. In summer it’s hot. In winter it’s cold.”

  “That’s all right, then,” said Doon, relieved. “We’re used to cold.”

  “But you can’t grow food in the winter. It’s really cold. And clouds come over the sun. And it rains.”

  “Rains?”

  Kenny was so amazed that his mouth dropped open. He flung his arms up and wiggled his fingers like drops sprinkling down. “Rain! When water comes from the sky! And the river rises, and sometimes it floods! And the dirt turns to mud!”

  Doon felt as if his mind had suddenly stopped. He stared at Kenny’s wiggling fingers and tried to grasp what he was saying. Water dropped from the sky? But—people’s clothes would get wet. Everyone would have to stay inside. And if they couldn’t grow food . . . “Wait,” he said. “You mean the town leaders know it will be winter when we leave? They know it will be cold and wet?”

  “I guess so,” Kenny said. He lowered his eyes, then looked up again. “Probably they mean to send food with you,” he said. “To get you through the winter. That must be it.” He gave a small, hopeful smile. “That must be it,” he said again, and he darted away toward the front door and went into the house.

  Doon followed. His vision of the future, already shadowed by anxiety, had just grown several shades darker.

  One morning a week or so later, as Doon came out the door of room 215, he nearly bumped into Tick Hassler, who was running at full speed down the hall. “Something’s happened!” Tick called to him.

  “What?” said Doon, breaking into a run himself to keep up with Tick.

  “I don’t know,” Tick said. “But I heard people out in front, shouting.”

  Tick must have jumped out of bed and not taken time to do anything but throw on his clothes, Doon thought. He hadn’t combed his hair, he hadn’t tied his shoes, he hadn’t even washed his face—there were gray smudges on his neck and below his ear. In the usually well-groomed Tick, these were signs of serious alarm. Doon’s heart beat faster. He took the stairs three at a time, crossed the lobby, and, still following Tick, pushed through the front door.

  Outside, a crowd stood in the field, staring up at the hotel. Doon ran out to join them and turned around to see what they were seeing.

  Someone had scrawled words on the walls of the Pioneer—tremendous black letters, rough and scratchy, as if written with burnt wood. “GO BACK TO YOUR CAVE,” said the message, over and over. “GO BACK TO YOUR CAVE. GO BACK TO YOUR CAVE.” The few ground-floor windows that hadn’t already been broken were broken now.

  Doon stood staring for a minute, feeling sick, and then anger rose in him. This was the work of whoever had slopped that mud message onto the plaza—another ugly message, bolder this time. Around him the others were rushing forward, shouting, staring at the scrawled words. Some of them stood silent and glum, with arms folded or hands in pockets. Others shook their fists in the air and vowed revenge. Tick was more furious than anyone, but he didn’t yell. Doon watched him weaving through the crowd, seizing one person after another by the arm, talking in a voice as sharp as a blade but low and steady. His light blue eyes glinted like steel.

  “It’s what I thought,” Tick said. “This shows it. They’ve pretended to be kind, but their kindness isn’t real. Here’s what we can know from now on: they hate us.” He narrowed his eyes, lowered his voice almost to a hiss, and said it again. “They hate us. They want to get rid of us. Well, I’ll tell you what.” People all around turned toward him. “They want us to leave, but I’m not leaving. Are you?” He scanned the crowd.

  “No,” said someone.

  Doon thought ab
out what Kenny had told him: winter, cold, rain. Maybe Tick is right, he thought. They do hate us.

  “Do you like being called cavepeople?” Tick cried. “Do you like being told to crawl back into a cave?”

  And angry voices, twenty, fifty, a hundred of them, cried, “No, no!”

  Doon went up close to the wall of the hotel and examined the words scratched there. He pictured the people who had done it, clutching their burnt chunks of wood, writing with big, angry strokes in the dark of the night. Yes, Tick was right. Hatred seethed in those jagged letters. He felt almost as if their strokes had scraped open his skin.

  The Second Town Meeting

  The three town leaders called a meeting after these unpleasant incidents—the tomato-throwing, and the graffiti on the plaza and on the hotel wall. They met in the tower room of the town hall to talk.

  “This is unfortunate,” Mary said. “I’m afraid these spiteful deeds will cause bad feelings to get worse on both sides.”

  Wilmer nodded. “Feelings are already bad,” he said.

  “These cavepeople,” said Ben, “are not as civilized as we are. People who will destroy two whole crates of tomatoes might do anything.”

  “We don’t know for sure that one of them did it,” Mary said.

  “Come now, Mary,” said Ben. “I think it’s safe to assume.”

  “And what about the people who wrote ‘Go Back to Your Cave’ on the hotel walls?” said Mary.

  “The problem is,” said Ben, “we don’t know who did that. But I must say that I think they were expressing an understandable frustration. These cavepeople have adversely impacted our way of life. The food we give them comes out of the mouths of our own people.”

  “We do have a bit of a surplus in the storehouse,” said Mary.

  “But why should we use it for them? It’s our protection against hard times.” Ben smoothed his beard and went on. “I have a rule to suggest,” he said. “I think it would be best if the cavepeople didn’t eat in the homes of families anymore. I think it’s too hard on our families to have strangers eating with them every day. It would be better if the families simply hand them their food parcels when they arrive. They can eat somewhere else.”

  “Where?” asked Mary.

  Ben waved a hand in the direction of the river. “On the riverbank,” he said. “Or at the edge of a field. Or on the road. I really don’t care where they eat,” he said, “as long as they don’t intrude on our households.”

  “Quite a few people have complained of the inconvenience,” said Wilmer. “The Parton family seems the most unhappy.”

  “That’s because they have that evil boy,” said Ben. “The one who threw the tomatoes.”

  “We don’t know that he’s the one who threw them,” said Mary.

  “We are as sure as we need to be,” said Ben.

  So they voted: should they make that rule?

  Mary voted no.

  Ben voted yes.

  Wilmer hesitated for several seconds, his eyes darting between Mary and Ben. Finally he voted yes.

  “I suppose this will make things better,” said Wilmer.

  “I’m sure it will,” said Ben. “We need to make it clear that this town belongs to us. This is our place, and these people are only here because of our generosity.”

  “I think we have made it clear,” said Mary. “We went to all that trouble to make a flag and put it up on the town hall.”

  “No doubt that will help,” said Ben. “Still, we must constantly reinforce the message: if they don’t behave themselves, they can’t expect to stay here even as long as six months.”

  “They’ve just begun to get used to things,” said Mary. “They’re not ready to leave.”

  “That,” said Ben, “is not our problem.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Caspar’s Quest

  On the last night of their journey to the city, the travelers stayed in a real house. It was roofless, but most of its walls still stood, providing shelter from the wind that blew strongly off the water. There was no furniture in the house, of course. They sat on the bare floor.

  Caspar was excited that night. He talked so much that he almost forgot to eat—his third travelers’ cake sat on his knee getting cold. At one point, he turned to face Lina. “Now, listen,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something, so you’ll understand the importance of what we’re doing.” He paused. Then he spoke in a low, vibrating voice. “I happen to know,” he said, “that there is a treasure in the city.”

  “There is?” said Lina. “How do you know?”

  “Old rhymes and songs speak of it,” said Caspar.

  “The trouble is,” said Maddy, “those old rhymes and songs don’t make sense anymore. If they ever did.”

  “They make sense to me,” Caspar said. “But that’s because I’ve studied them carefully and have found out their deeper meaning.”

  “What do the old rhymes say?” Lina asked.

  “Various things,” said Caspar, “depending on what version you hear. But they’re always about a treasure in an ancient city.” He looked into the air and sang tunelessly: “‘There’s buried treasure in the ancient city. Remember, remember from times of old. . . .’ One of them starts like that.”

  “Why hasn’t anyone searched for the treasure before?” asked Lina.

  “I’m sure many people have,” Caspar said. “But no one has found it.”

  “How do you know?” Lina asked.

  “Because obviously, if someone had, we would have heard about it.”

  Lina thought about this. She saw some holes in Caspar’s logic. Someone could have found the treasure, taken it away, and never said a word.

  “Another problem,” said Maddy, “is that these rumors never say what city the treasure is in. It could be some city a thousand miles away.”

  Caspar gave an exasperated sigh and set down his cup of water. He raised two fingers and pointed them at Maddy. “Listen,” he said. “Be logical. It’s here that the rumors are passed around. I’ve never heard them in the far north, where I was last year. I’ve never heard them in the far east, either. This talk of treasure in a city—I hear it here, and within a hundred or so miles of here.”

  “Still,” Maddy said. “There are at least three ancient cities within a hundred miles of here.”

  “But only one great ancient city,” said Caspar. “That’s the one we’re going to.”

  “A city is big,” Lina said, remembering the myriad streets and buildings of Ember. “How will you know where in the city to look for the treasure?”

  A crafty look came over Caspar’s face. He smiled, with his lips pressed together and his eyes narrowed. “That’s where my careful study comes in,” he said. “Many, many hours of study. I’ve written down every version of the rhyme I’ve heard—which is a great many, forty-seven to be exact. I’ve compared them, word for word, letter for letter. Then—” Caspar paused. He looked at them in a way Lina recognized—it was the same way Torren looked when he was about to make a big impression. “Then I applied my skill with numbers.”

  “Numbers?” said Lina.

  “That’s right. What you do is, you count the letters in the words. You count in all different ways, until you start to see a pattern. The pattern is the key to the code, and the code tells you the secret of the message.” He sat back, looking highly pleased with himself.

  “And the secret of the message . . . ,” Lina said, confused.

  “Is the location of the treasure, of course!” Caspar slapped a hand on his big thigh. “It’s obvious, once you’ve figured it out. Street numbers, building numbers—it’s all there.”

  “Well, then,” said Maddy, “what is the location of the treasure?”

  Caspar jerked his head back. “You think I’d tell you?” he said.

  “I thought I was your partner in this,” said Maddy.

  “You’ll know when it’s time,” said Caspar. “Until then, the information stays strictly with me.”


  Lina glanced at Maddy in time to see her rolling her eyes toward the sky.

  That night, Lina couldn’t sleep. Animal sounds kept her awake—scrambling and snuffling just beyond the walls, and a strange hooting in the distance. Dark thoughts troubled her, too. Caspar’s search sounded all wrong somehow. She didn’t want to help him. The thought of it filled her with dread. She lay on the hard floor of the house, staring at the black sky, feeling worse and worse, until finally she decided she must try to think about something else. So she said to herself, over and over for a long time, “Tomorrow I’ll see the city, tomorrow I’ll see the city.”

  They traveled the next day, mile after mile, along a road that was nearly straight, though they had to trace a winding path around the places where the pavement was pitted or thrust up or crumbled away. On their right was the vast green sheet of water, bordered by waving grasses where great white birds stood knee-deep in pools and rose like floating paper, and flocks of black birds flew up trilling into the air, their shoulders red as blood. On the left was a forest of trees so thick they hid all but the briefest glimpses of the ruined buildings among them.

  Lina’s excitement was rising. She rode standing up now. She’d climbed back into the crate and stuck her feet between the third and fourth slats of the side, which put her at the right height for holding on to the top edge and looking forward. She could see over Caspar’s and Maddy’s heads to the rear ends of the oxen, their sharp hip bones sticking up, left-right, left-right, their tasseled tails switching back and forth. The sun sank lower in the sky until it was directly ahead, blazing straight into Lina’s eyes. “We’ll be there before night,” Caspar said.

  The road began to slope upward. Hills rose on either side, and soon Lina could no longer see the water, just the brown humps of the hills, spotted with clumps of trees and scarred here and there by the remains of old roads and buildings. The air was cooler. They rounded a curve—and all at once the city lay before them.