THE CITY OF

EMBER

Jeanne DuPrau

RANDOMHOUSE NEW

YORK

Contents

Title Page

Map

The Instructions

1. Assignment Day

2. A Message to the Mayor

3. Under Ember

4. Something Lost, Nothing Found

5. On Night Street

6. The Box in the Closet

7. A Message Full of Holes

8. Explorations

9. The Door in the Roped-Off Tunnel

10. Blue Sky and Goodbye

11. Lizzie’s Groceries

12. A Dreadful Discovery

13. Deciphering the Message

14. The Way Out

15. A Desperate Run

16. The Singing

17. Away

18. Where the River Goes

19. A World of Light

20. The Last Message

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Jeanne DuPrau

Copyright Page

The Instructions

When the city of Ember was just built andnot yet inhabited, the chief builder and theassistant builder, both of them weary, satdown to speak of the future.

“They must not leave the city for atleast two hundred years,” said the chiefbuilder. “Or perhaps two hundred andtwenty.”

“Is that long enough?” asked hisassistant.

“It should be. We can’t know for sure.”

“And when the time comes,” said theassistant, “how will they know what todo?”

“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 andsecret all that time?”

“The mayor of the city will keep theinstructions,” said the chief builder.“We’ll put them in a box with a timedlock, set to open on the proper date.”

“And will we tell the mayor what’s inthe box?” the assistant asked.

“No, just that it’s information theywon’t need and must not see until the boxopens of its own accord.”

“So the first mayor will pass the box tothe next mayor, and that one to the next,and so on down through the years, all ofthem keeping it secret, all that time?”

“What else can we do?” asked the chiefbuilder. “Nothing about this endeavor iscertain. There may be no one left in thecity by then or no safe place for them tocome back to.”

So the first mayor of Ember was giventhe box, told to guard it carefully, andsolemnly sworn to secrecy. When shegrew old, and her time as mayor was up,

she explained about the box to hersuccessor, who also kept the secretcarefully, as did the next mayor. Thingswent as planned for many years. But theseventh mayor of Ember was lesshonorable than the ones who’d comebefore him, and more desperate. He wasill—he had the coughing sickness that wascommon in the city then—and he thoughtthe box might hold a secret that wouldsave his life. He took it from its hidingplace in the basement of the GatheringHall and brought it home with him, wherehe attacked it with a hammer.

But his strength was failing by then. Allhe managed to do was dent the lid a little.And before he could return the box to itsofficial hiding place or tell his successor

about it, he died. The box ended up at theback of a closet, shoved behind some oldbags and bundles. There it sat, unnoticed,year after year, until its time arrived, andthe lock quietly clicked open.

CHAPTER 1

Assignment Day

In the city of Ember, the sky was alwaysdark. The only light came from great floodlamps mounted on the buildings and at thetops of poles in the middle of the largersquares. When the lights were on, theycast a yellowish glow over the streets;people walking by threw long shadowsthat shortened and then stretched out again.When the lights were off, as they were

between nine at night and six in themorning, the city was so dark that peoplemight as well have been wearingblindfolds.

Sometimes darkness fell in the middleof the day. The city of Ember was old, andeverything in it, including the power lines,was in need of repair. So now and then thelights would flicker and go out. Thesewere terrible moments for the people ofEmber. As they came to a halt in themiddle of the street or stood stock-still intheir houses, afraid to move in the utterblackness, they were reminded ofsomething they preferred not to thinkabout: that someday the lights of the citymight go out and never come back on.

But most of the time life proceeded as italways had. Grown people did their work,and younger people, until they reached theage of twelve, went to school. On the lastday of their final year, which was calledAssignment Day, they were given jobs todo.

The graduating students occupied Room8 of the Ember School. On AssignmentDay of the year 241, this classroom,usually noisy first thing in the morning,was completely silent. All twenty-fourstudents sat upright and still at the desksthey had grown too big for. They werewaiting.

The desks were arranged in four rowsof 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 andunwinding it again and again. Sometimesshe plucked at a thread on her ragged capeor bent over to pull on her socks, whichwere loose and tended to slide downaround her ankles. One of her feet tappedthe floor softly.

In the second row was a boy namedDoon Harrow. He sat with his shouldershunched, his eyes squeezed shut inconcentration, and his hands claspedtightly together. His hair looked rumpled,as if he hadn’t combed it for a while. Hehad dark, thick eyebrows, which madehim look serious at the best of times and,when he was anxious or angry, came

together to form a straight line across hisforehead. His brown corduroy jacket wasso old that its ridges had flattened out.

Both the girl and the boy were makingurgent wishes. Doon’s wish was veryspecific. He repeated it over and overagain, his lips moving slightly, as if hecould make it come true by saying it athousand times. Lina was making her wishin pictures rather than in words. In hermind’s eye, she saw herself runningthrough the streets of the city in a redjacket. She made this picture as bright andreal as she could.

Lina looked up and gazed around theschoolroom. She said a silent goodbye toeverything that had been familiar for so

long. Goodbye to the map of the city ofEmber in its scarred wooden frame andthe cabinet whose shelves held The Bookof Numbers, The Book of Letters, and TheBook of the City of Ember. Goodbye tothe cabinet drawers labeled “New Paper”and “Old Paper.” Goodbye to the threeelectric lights in the ceiling that seemedalways, no matter where you sat, to castthe shadow of your head over the page youwere writing on. And goodbye to theirteacher, Miss Thorn, who had finished herLast Day of School speech, wishing themluck in the lives they were about to begin.Now, having run out of things to say, shewas standing at her desk with her frayedshawl clasped around her shoulders. Andstill the mayor, the guest of honor, had notarrived.

Someone’s foot scraped back and forthon the floor. Miss Thorn sighed. Then thedoor rattled open, and the mayor walkedin. He looked annoyed, as though theywere the ones who were late.

“Welcome, Mayor Cole,” said MissThorn. 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 mayorwas a vast, heavy man, so big in themiddle that his arms looked small anddangling. In one hand he held a little clothbag.

He lumbered to the front of the roomand faced the students. His gray, drooping

face appeared to be made of somethingstiffer than ordinary skin; it rarely movedexcept for making the smile that was on itnow.

“Young people of the Highest Class,”the mayor began. He stopped and scannedthe room for several moments; his eyesseemed to look out from far back insidehis head. He nodded slowly. “AssignmentDay now, isn’t it? Yes. First we get oureducation. Then we serve our city.” Againhis eyes moved back and forth along therows of students, and again he nodded, asif someone had confirmed what he’d said.He put the little bag on Miss Thorn’s deskand rested his hand on it. “What will thatservice be, eh? Perhaps you’rewondering.” He did his smile again, and

his heavy cheeks folded like drapes.

Lina’s hands were cold. She wrappedher cape around her and pressed her handsbetween her knees. Please hurry, Mr.Mayor, she said silently. Please just let uschoose and get it over with. Doon, in hismind, was saying the same thing, only hedidn’t say please.

“Something to remember,” the mayorsaid, holding up one finger. “Job you drawtoday is for three years. Then, Evaluation.Are you good at your job? Fine. You maykeep it. Are you unsatisfactory? Is there agreater need elsewhere? You will be re-assigned. It is extremely important,” hesaid, jabbing his finger at the class, “forall . . . work . . . of Ember . . . to be done.

To be properly done.”

He picked up the bag and pulled openthe drawstring. “So. Let us begin. Simpleprocedure. Come up one at a time. Reachinto this bag. Take one slip of paper. Readit out loud.” He smiled and nodded. Theflesh under his chin bulged in and out.“Who cares to be first?”

No one moved. Lina stared down at thetop of her desk. There was a long silence.Then Lizzie Bisco, one of Lina’s bestfriends, sprang to her feet. “I would like tobe first,” she said in her breathless highvoice.

“Good. Walk forward.”

Lizzie went to stand before the mayor.Because of her orange hair, she lookedlike a bright spark next to him.

“Now choose.” The mayor held out thebag with one hand and put the other behindhis back, as if to show he would notinterfere.

Lizzie reached into the bag andwithdrew a tightly folded square of paper.She unfolded it carefully. Lina couldn’tsee the look on Lizzie’s face, but shecould hear the disappointment in her voiceas she read out loud: “Supply Depotclerk.”

“Very good,” said the mayor. “A vitaljob.”

Lizzie trudged back to her desk. Linasmiled at her, but Lizzie made a sour face.Supply Depot clerk wasn’t a bad job, butit was a dull one. The Supply Depotclerks sat behind a long counter, tookorders from the storekeepers of Ember,and sent the carriers down to bring upwhat was wanted from the vast network ofstorerooms beneath Ember’s streets. Thestorerooms 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 couldpossibly need. The clerks sat at theirledger books all day, recording the ordersthat came in and the goods that went out.Lizzie didn’t like to sit still; she wouldhave been better suited to something else,

Lina thought—messenger, maybe, the jobLina wanted for herself. Messengers ranthrough the city all day, going everywhere,seeing everything.

“Next,” said the mayor.

This time two people stood up at once,Orly Gordon and Chet Noam. Orly quicklysat down again, and Chet approached themayor.

“Choose, young man,” the mayor said.

Chet chose. He unfolded his scrap ofpaper. “Electrician’s helper,” he read, andhis wide face broke into a smile. Linaheard someone take a quick breath. Shelooked over to see Doon pressing a hand

against his mouth.

You never knew, each year, exactlywhich jobs would be offered. Some yearsthere were several good jobs, likegreenhouse helper, timekeeper’s assistant,or messenger, and no bad jobs at all.Other years, jobs like Pipeworks laborer,trash sifter, and mold scraper were mixedin. But there would always be at least oneor two jobs for electrician’s helper.Fixing the electricity was the mostimportant job in Ember, and more peopleworked at it than at anything else.

Orly Gordon was next. She got the jobof building repair assistant, which was agood job for Orly. She was a strong girland liked hard work. Vindie Chance was

made a greenhouse helper. She gave Linaa big grin as she went back to her seat.She’ll get to work with Clary, Linathought. Lucky. So far no one had picked areally bad job. Perhaps this time therewould be no bad jobs at all.

The idea gave her courage. Besides,she had reached the point where thesuspense was giving her a stomach ache.So as Vindie sat down—even before themayor could say “Next”—she stood upand stepped forward.

The little bag was made of faded greenmaterial, gathered at the top with a blackstring. Lina hesitated a moment, then puther hand inside and fingered the bits ofpaper. Feeling as if she were stepping off

a high building, she picked one.

She unfolded it. The words werewritten in black ink, in small carefulprinting. PIPEWORKS LABORER, they said.She stared at them.

“Out loud, please,” the mayor said.

“Pipeworks laborer,” Lina said in achoked whisper.

“Louder,” said the mayor.

“Pipeworks laborer,” Lina said again,her voice loud and cracked. There was asigh of sympathy from the class. Keepingher eyes on the floor, Lina went back toher desk and sat down.

Pipeworks laborers worked below thestorerooms in the deep labyrinth of tunnelsthat contained Ember’s water and sewerpipes. They spent their days stopping upleaks and replacing pipe joints. It waswet, cold work; it could even bedangerous. A swift underground river ranthrough the Pipeworks, and every now andthen someone fell into it and was lost.People were lost occasionally in thetunnels, too, if they strayed too far.

Lina stared miserably down at a letterB someone had scratched into her desktoplong ago. Almost anything would havebeen better than Pipeworks laborer.Greenhouse helper had been her secondchoice. She imagined with longing thewarm air and earthy smell of the

greenhouse, where she could have workedwith Clary, the greenhouse manager,someone she’d known all her life. Shewould have been content as a doctor’sassistant, too, binding up cuts and bones.Even street-sweeper or cart-puller wouldhave been better. At least then she couldhave stayed above ground, with space andpeople around her. She thought goingdown into the Pipeworks must be likebeing buried alive.

One by one, the other students chosetheir jobs. None of them got such awretched job as hers. Finally the lastperson rose from his chair and walkedforward.

It was Doon. His dark eyebrows were

drawn together in a frown ofconcentration. His hands, Lina saw, wereclenched into fists at his sides.

Doon reached into the bag and took outthe last scrap of paper. He paused aminute, pressing it tightly in his hand.

“Go on,” said the mayor. “Read.”

Unfolding the paper, Doon read:“Messenger.” He scowled, crumpled thepaper, and dashed it to the floor.

Lina gasped; the whole class rustled insurprise. Why would anyone be angry toget the job of messenger?

“Bad behavior!” cried the mayor. Hiseyes bulged and his face darkened. “Go to

your seat immediately.”

Doon kicked the crumpled paper into acorner. Then he stalked back to his deskand flung himself down.

The mayor took a short breath andblinked furiously. “Disgraceful,” he said,glaring at Doon. “A childish display oftemper! Students should be glad to workfor their city. Ember will prosper if all . .. citizens . . . do . . . their . . . best.” Heheld up a stern finger as he said this andmoved his eyes slowly from one face tothe next.

Suddenly Doon spoke up. “But Emberi s not prospering!” he cried. “Everythingis getting worse and worse!”

“Silence!” cried the mayor.

“The blackouts!” cried Doon. Hejumped from his seat. “The lights go outall the time now! And the shortages,there’s shortages of everything! If no onedoes anything about it, something terribleis going to happen!”

Lina listened with a pounding heart.What was wrong with Doon? Why was heso upset? He was taking things tooseriously, as he always did.

Miss Thorn strode to Doon and put ahand on his shoulder. “Sit down now,” shesaid quietly. But Doon remained standing.

The mayor glared. For a few moments

he said nothing. Then he smiled, showinga neat row of gray teeth. “Miss Thorn,” hesaid. “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 tothe class and smiled his smile again.

“Congratulations to all,” he said.“Welcome to Ember’s work force. MissThorn. Class. Thank you.”

The mayor shook hands with MissThorn and departed. The students gatheredtheir coats and caps and filed out of theclassroom. Lina walked down the WideHallway with Lizzie, who said, “Poor

you! I thought I picked a bad one, but yougot the worst. I feel lucky compared toyou.” Once they were out the door, Lizziesaid goodbye and scurried away, as ifLina’s bad luck were a disease she mightcatch.

Lina stood on the steps for a momentand gazed across Harken Square, wherepeople walked briskly, bundled up cozilyin their coats and scarves, or talked to oneanother in the pools of light beneath thegreat streetlamps. A boy in a redmessenger’s jacket ran toward theGathering Hall. On Otterwill Street, a manpulled a cart filled with sacks of potatoes.And in the buildings all around the square,rows of lighted windows shone brightyellow and deep gold.

Lina sighed. This was where shewanted to be, up here where everythinghappened, not down underground.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder.Startled, she turned and saw Doon behindher. His thin face looked pale. “Will youtrade with me?” he asked.

“Trade?”

“Trade jobs. I don’t want to waste mytime being a messenger. I want to helpsave the city, not run around carryinggossip.”

Lina gaped at him. “You’d rather be inthe Pipeworks?”

“Electrician’s helper is what I wanted,”

Doon said. “But Chet won’t trade, ofcourse. Pipeworks is second best.”

“But why?”

“Because the generator is in thePipeworks,” said Doon.

Lina knew about the generator, ofcourse. In some mysterious way, it turnedthe running of the river into power for thecity. You could feel its deep rumble whenyou stood in Plummer Square.

“I need to see the generator,” Doonsaid. “I have . . . I have ideas about it.” Hethrust his hands into his pockets. “So,” hesaid, “will you trade?”

“Yes!” cried Lina. “Messenger is the

job I want most!” And not a useless job atall, in her opinion. People couldn’t beexpected to trudge halfway across the cityevery time they wanted to communicatewith someone. Messengers connectedeveryone to everyone else. Anyway,whether it was important or not, the job ofmessenger just happened to be perfect forLina. She loved to run. She could runforever. And she loved exploring everynook and cranny of the city, which waswhat a messenger got to do.

“All right then,” said Doon. He handedher his crumpled piece of paper, which hemust have retrieved from the floor. Linareached into her pocket, pulled out herslip of paper, and handed it to him.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” said Lina.Happiness sprang up in her, and happinessalways made her want to run. She took thesteps three at a time and sped down BroadStreet toward home.

CHAPTER 2

A Message to the Mayor

Lina often took different routes betweenschool and home. Sometimes, just forvariety, she’d go all the way aroundSparkswallow Square, or way up by theshoe repair shops on Liverie Street. Buttoday she took the shortest route becauseshe was eager to get home and tell hernews.

She ran fast and easily through thestreets of Ember. Every corner, everyalley, every building was familiar to her.She always knew where she was, thoughmost streets looked more or less the same.All of them were lined with old two-storystone buildings, the wood of their windowframes and doors long unpainted. On thestreet level were shops; above the shopswere the apartments where people lived.Every building, at the place where thewall met the roof, was equipped with arow of floodlights—big cone-shapedlamps that cast a strong yellow glare.

Stone walls, lighted windows, lumpy,muffled shapes of people—Lina flew bythem. Her slender legs felt immenselystrong, like the wood of a bow that flexes

and springs. She darted around obstacles—broken furniture left for the trash heapsor for scavengers, stoves and refrigeratorsthat were past repair, peddlers sitting onthe pavement with their wares spread outaround them. She leapt over cracks andpotholes.

When she came to Hafter Street, sheslowed a little. This street was deep inshadow. Four of its streetlamps were outand had not been fixed. For a second, Linathought of the rumor she’d heard aboutlight bulbs: that some kinds werecompletely gone. She was used toshortages of things—everyone was—butnot of light bulbs! If the bulbs for thestreetlamps ran out, the only lights wouldbe inside the buildings. What would

happen then? How could people find theirway through the streets in the dark?

Somewhere inside her, a black worm ofdread stirred. She thought about Doon’soutburst in class. Could things really be asbad as he said? She didn’t want to believeit. She pushed the thought away.

As she turned onto Budloe Street, shesped up again. She passed a line ofcustomers waiting to get into the vegetablemarket, their shopping bags draped overtheir arms. At the corner of Oliver Street,she dodged a group of washers trudgingalong with bags of laundry, and somemovers carrying away a broken table. Shepassed a street-sweeper shoving dustaround with his broom. I am so lucky, she

thought, to have the job I want. Andbecause of Doon Harrow, of all people.

When they were younger, Lina andDoon had been friends. Together they hadexplored the back alleys and dimly litedges of the city. But in their fourth yearof school, they had begun to grow apart. Itstarted one day during the hour of freetime, when the children in their class wereplaying on the front steps of the school. “Ican go down three steps at a time,”someone would boast. “I can hop down onone foot!” someone else would say. Theothers would chime in. “I can do ahandstand against the pillar!” “I canleapfrog over the trash can!” As soon asone child did something, all the rest woulddo it, too, to prove they could.

Lina could do it all, even when thedares got wilder. She yelled out thewildest one of all: “I can climb the lightpole!” For a second everyone just staredat her. But Lina dashed across the street,took off her shoes and socks, and wrappedherself around the cold metal of the pole.Pushing with her bare feet, she inchedupward. She didn’t get very far before shelost her grip and fell back down. Thechildren laughed, and so did she. “I didn’tsay I’d climb to the top,” she explained. “Ijust said I’d climb it.”

The others swarmed forward to try.Lizzie wouldn’t take off her socks—herfeet were too cold, she said—so she keptsliding back. Fordy Penn wasn’t strongenough to get more than a foot off the

ground. Next came Doon. He took hisshoes and socks off and placed themneatly at the foot of the pole. Then heannounced, in his serious way, “I’m goingto the top.” He clasped the pole andstarted upward, pushing with his feet, hisknees sticking out to the sides. He pulledhimself upward, pushed again—he washigher now than Lina had been—butsuddenly his hands slid and he cameplummeting down. He landed on hisbottom with his legs poking up in the air.Lina laughed. She shouldn’t have; he mighthave been hurt. But he looked so funny thatshe couldn’t help it.

He wasn’t hurt. He could have jumpedup, grinned, and walked away. But Doondidn’t take things lightly. When he heard

Lina and the others laughing, his facedarkened. His temper rose in him like hotwater. “Don’t you dare laugh at me,” hesaid to Lina. “I did better than you did!That was a stupid idea anyway, a stupid,stupid idea to climb that pole. . . .” And ashe was shouting, red in the face, theirteacher, Mrs. Polster, came out onto thesteps and saw him. She took him by theshirt collar to the school director’s office,where he got a scolding he didn’t think hedeserved.

After that day, Lina and Doon barelylooked at each other when they passed inthe hallway. At first it was because theywere fuming about what had happened.Doon didn’t like being laughed at; Linadidn’t like being shouted at. After a while

the memory of the light-pole incidentfaded, but by then they had got out of thehabit of friendship. By the time they weretwelve, they knew each other only asclassmates. Lina was friends with VindieChance, Orly Gordon, and most of all,red-haired Lizzie Bisco, who could runalmost as fast as Lina and could talk threetimes faster.

Now, as Lina sped toward home, she feltimmensely grateful to Doon and hopedhe’d come to no harm in the Pipeworks.Maybe they’d be friends again. She’d liketo ask him about the Pipeworks. She wascurious about it.

When she got to Greystone Street, shepassed Clary Laine, who was probably onher way to the greenhouses. Clary wavedto her and called out, “What job?” andLina called back, “Messenger!” and ranon.

Lina lived in Quillium Square, over theyarn shop run by her grandmother. Whenshe got to the shop, she burst in the doorand cried, “Granny! I’m a messenger!”

Granny’s shop had once been a tidyplace, where each ball of yarn and spoolof thread had its spot in the cubbyholesthat lined the walls. All the yarn andthread came from old clothes that hadgotten too shabby to be worn. Grannyunraveled sweaters and picked apart

dresses and jackets and pants; she woundthe yarn into balls and the thread ontospools, and people bought them to use inmaking new clothes.

These days, the shop was a mess. Longloops and strands of yarn dangled out ofthe cubbyholes, and the browns and graysand purples were mixed in with the ochresand olive greens and dark blues. Granny’scustomers often had to spend half an hourunsnarling the rust-red yarn from the mud-brown, or trying to fish out the end of athread from a tangled wad. Granny wasn’tmuch help. Most days she just dozedbehind the counter in her rocking chair.

That’s where she was when Lina burstin with her news. Lina saw that Granny

had forgotten to knot up her hair thatmorning—it was standing out from herhead in a wild white frizz.

Granny stood up, looking puzzled. “Youaren’t a messenger, dear, you’re aschoolgirl,” she said.

“But Granny, today was AssignmentDay. I got my job. And I’m a messenger!”

Granny’s eyes lit up, and she slappedher hand down on the counter. “Iremember!” she cried. “Messenger, that’sa grand job! You’ll be good at it.”

Lina’s little sister toddled out frombehind the counter on unsteady legs. Shehad a round face and round brown eyes.

At the top of her head was a sprig ofbrown hair tied up with a scrap of redyarn. She grabbed on to Lina’s knees.“Wy-na, Wy-na!” she said.

Lina bent over and took the child’shands. “Poppy! Your big sister got a goodjob! Are you happy, Poppy? Are youproud of me?”

Poppy said something that sounded like,“Hoppyhoppyhoppy!” Lina laughed,hoisted her up, and danced with heraround the shop.

Lina loved her little sister so much thatit was like an ache under her ribs. Thebaby and Granny were all the family shehad now. Two years ago, when the

coughing sickness was raging through thecity again, her father had died. Somemonths later, her mother, giving birth toPoppy, had died, too. Lina missed herparents with an ache that was as strong aswhat she felt for Poppy, only it was ahollow feeling instead of a full one.

“When do you start?” asked Granny.

“Tomorrow,” said Lina. “I report to themessengers’ station at eight o’clock.”

“You’ll be a famous messenger,” saidGranny. “Fast and famous.”

Taking Poppy with her, Lina went outof the shop and climbed the stairs to theirapartment. It was a small apartment, only

four rooms, but there was enough stuff in itto fill twenty. There were things that hadbelonged to Lina’s parents, hergrandparents, and even their grandparents—old, broken, cracked, threadbare thingsthat had been patched and repaired dozensor hundreds of times. People in Emberrarely threw anything away. They madethe best possible use of what they had.

In Lina’s apartment, layers of worn rugsand carpets covered the floor, making itsoft but uneven underfoot. Against onewall squatted a sagging couch with roundwooden balls for legs, and on the couchwere blankets and pillows, so many thatyou had to toss some on the floor beforeyou could sit down. Against the oppositewall stood two wobbly tables that held a

clutter of plates and bottles, cups andbowls, unmatching forks and spoons, littlepiles of scrap paper, bits of string woundup in untidy wads, and a few stubbypencils. There were four lamps, two tallones that stood on the floor and two shortones that stood on tables. And in unevenlines up near the ceiling were hooks thatheld coats and shawls and nightgowns andsweaters, shelves that held pots and pans,jars with unreadable labels, and boxes ofbuttons and pins and tacks.

Where there were no shelves, the wallshad been decorated with things of beauty—a label from a can of peaches, a fewdried yellow squash flowers, a strip offaded but still pretty purple cloth. Therewere drawings, too. Lina had done the

drawings out of her imagination. Theyshowed a city that looked somewhat likeEmber, except that its buildings werelighter and taller and had more windows.

One of the drawings had fallen to thefloor. Lina retrieved it and pinned it backup. She stood for a minute and looked atthe pictures. Over and over, she’d drawnthe same city. Sometimes she drew it asseen from afar, sometimes she chose oneof its buildings and drew it in detail. Sheput in stairways and streetlamps and carts.Sometimes she tried to draw the peoplewho lived in the city, though she wasn’tgood at drawing people—their headsalways came out too small, and theirhands looked like spiders. One pictureshowed a scene in which the people of the

city greeted her when she arrived—thefirst person they had ever seen to comefrom elsewhere. They argued with eachother about who should be the first toinvite her home.

Lina could see this city so clearly in hermind she almost believed it was real. Sheknew it couldn’t be, though. The Book ofthe City of Ember, which all childrenstudied in school, taught otherwise. “Thecity of Ember was made for us long agoby the Builders,” the book said. “It is theonly light in the dark world. BeyondEmber, the darkness goes on forever in alldirections.”

Lina had been to the outer border ofEmber. She had stood at the edge of the

trash heaps and gazed into the darknessbeyond the city—the Unknown Regions.No one had ever gone far into theUnknown Regions—or at least no one hadgone far and returned. And no one hadever arrived in Ember from the UnknownRegions, either. As far as anyone knew,the darkness did go on forever. Still, Linawanted the other city to exist. In herimagination, it was so beautiful, and itseemed so real. Sometimes she longed togo there and take everyone in Ember withher.

But she wasn’t thinking about the othercity now. Today she was happy to be rightwhere she was. She set Poppy on thecouch. “Wait there,” she said. She wentinto the kitchen, where there was an

electric stove and a refrigerator that nolonger worked and was used to storeglasses and dishes so Poppy couldn’t getat them. Above the refrigerator wereshelves holding more pots and jars, morespoons and knives, a wind-up clock thatGranny always forgot to wind, and a longrow of cans. Lina tried to keep the cans inalphabetical order so she could find whatshe wanted quickly, but Granny alwaysmessed them up. Now, she saw, therewere beans at the end of the row andtomatoes at the beginning. She picked outa can labeled Baby Drink and a jar ofboiled carrots, opened them, poured theliquid into a cup and the carrots into alittle dish, and took these back to the babyon the couch.

Poppy dribbled Baby Drink down herchin. She ate some of her carrots andpoked others between the couch cushions.For the moment, Lina felt almost perfectlyhappy. There was no need to think aboutthe fate of the city right now. Tomorrow,she’d be a messenger! She wiped theorange goop off Poppy’s chin. “Don’tworry,” she said. “Everything will be allright.”

The messengers’ headquarters was onCloving Street, not far from the back of theGathering Hall. When Lina arrived thenext morning, she was greeted byMessenger Captain Allis Fleery, a bonywoman with pale eyes and hair the color

of dust. “Our new girl,” said CaptainFleery to the other messengers, a clusterof nine people who smiled and nodded atLina. “I have your jacket right here,” saidthe captain. She handed Lina a red jacketlike the one all messengers wore. It wasonly a little too large.

From the clock tower of the GatheringHall came a deep reverberating bong.“Eight o’clock!” cried Captain Fleery.She waved a long arm. “Take yourstations!” As the clock sounded sevenmore times, the messengers scattered inall directions. The captain turned to Lina.“Your station,” she said, “is GarnSquare.”

Lina nodded and started off, but the

captain caught her by the collar. “I haven’ttold you the rules,” she said. She held up aknobby finger. “One: When a customergives you a message, repeat it back tomake sure you have it right. Two: Alwayswear your red jacket so people canidentify you. Three: Go as fast aspossible. Your customers pay twenty centsfor every message, no matter how far youhave to take it.”

Lina nodded. “I always go fast,” shesaid.

“Four,” the captain went on. “Deliver amessage 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 andsurefooted. She glanced at her reflectionas she ran past the window of a furniturerepair shop. She liked the look of her longdark hair flying out behind her, her longlegs in their black socks, and her flappingred jacket. Her face, which had neverseemed especially remarkable, lookedalmost beautiful, because she looked sohappy.

As soon as she came into Garn Square,a voice cried, “Messenger!” Her firstcustomer! It was old Natty Prine, calling

to her from the bench where he always sat.“This goes to Ravenet Parsons, 18Selverton Square,” he said. “Bend down.”

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

The old man said in a slow, hoarsevoice, “My stove is broke, don’t come fordinner. Repeat.”

Lina repeated the message.

“Good,” said Natty Prine. He gave Linatwenty cents, and she ran across the city toSelverton Square. There she foundRavenet Parsons also sitting on a bench.She recited the message to him.

“Old turniphead,” he growled. “Lazy

old fleaface. He just doesn’t feel likecooking. No reply.”

Lina ran back to Garn Square, passing agroup of Believers on the way. They werestanding in a circle, holding hands, singingone of their cheerful songs. It seemed toLina there were more Believers than everthese days. What they believed in shedidn’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-yearclass. In Mrs. Polster’s class, theymemorized passages from The Book of theCity of Ember every week. Mrs. Polsterhad charts on the walls for everything,with everyone’s name listed. If you did

something right, she made a green dot byyour name. If you did something wrong,she made a red dot. “What you need tolearn, children,” she always said, in herresonant, precise voice, “is the differencebetween right and wrong in every area oflife. And once you learn the difference—”Here she would stop and point to theclass, and the class would finish thesentence: “You must always choose theright.” In every situation, Mrs. Polsterknew what the right choice was.

Now here was Mrs. Polster again,looming over Lina and pronouncing hermessage. “To Annisette Lafrond, 39Humm Street, as follows,” she said. “Myconfidence in you has been seriouslydiminished since I heard about the

disreputable activities in which youengaged on Thursday last. Please repeat.”

It took Lina three tries to get this right.“Uh-oh, a red dot for me,” she said. Mrs.Polster did not seem to find this amusing.

Lina had nineteen customers that firstmorning. Some of them had ordinarymessages: “I can’t come on Tuesday.”“Buy a pound of potatoes on your wayhome.” “Please come and fix my frontdoor.” Others had messages that made nosense to her at all, like Mrs. Polster’s. Butit didn’t matter. The wonderful part aboutbeing a messenger was not the messagesbut the places she got to go. She could gointo the houses of people she didn’t knowand hidden alleyways and little rooms in

the backs of stores. In just a few hours,she discovered all kinds of strange andinteresting things.

For instance: Mrs. Sample, the mender,had to sleep on her couch because herentire bedroom, almost up to the ceiling,was crammed with clothes to be mended.Dr. Felinia Tower had the skeleton of aperson hanging against her living roomwall, its bones all held in place withblack strings. “I study it,” she said whenshe saw Lina staring. “I have to know howpeople are put together.” At a house onCalloo Street, Lina delivered a message toa worried-looking man whose living roomwas completely dark. “I’m saving on lightbulbs,” the man said. And when Lina tooka message to the Can Café, she learned

that on certain days the back room wasused as a meeting place for people wholiked to converse about Great Subjects.“Do you think an Invisible Being iswatching over us all the time?” she heardsomeone ask. “Perhaps,” answeredsomeone else. There was a long silence.“And then again, perhaps not.”

All of it was interesting. She lovedfinding things out, and she loved running.And even by the end of the day, she wasn’ttired. Running made her feel strong andbig-hearted, it made her love the placesshe ran through and the people whosemessages she delivered. She wished shecould bring all of them the good news theyso desperately wanted to hear.

Late in the afternoon, a young man cameup to her, walking with a sort of sidewayslurch. He was an odd-looking person—hehad a very long neck with a bump in themiddle and teeth so big they looked as ifthey were trying to escape from his mouth.His black, bushy hair stuck out from hishead in untidy tufts. “I have a message forthe mayor, at the Gathering Hall,” he said.He paused to let the importance of this beunderstood. “The mayor,” he said. “Didyou get that?”

“I got it,” said Lina.

“All right. Listen carefully. Tell him:Delivery at eight. From Looper. Repeat itback.”

“Delivery at eight. From Looper,” Linarepeated. It was an easy message.

“All right. No answer required.” Hehanded her twenty cents, and she sprintedaway.

The Gathering Hall occupied one entireside of Harken Square, which was thecity’s central plaza. The square waspaved with stone. It had a few benchesbolted to the ground here and there, aswell as a couple of kiosks for notices.Wide steps led up to the Gathering Hall,and fat columns framed its big door. Themayor’s office was in the Gathering Hall.So were the offices of the clerks who kepttrack of which buildings had brokenwindows, 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. Andthere were offices for the guards whoenforced the laws of Ember, now and thenputting pickpockets or people who got infights into the Prison Room, a small one-story structure with a sloping roof thatjutted out from one side of the building.

Lina ran up the steps and through thedoor into a broad hallway. On the left wasa desk, and at the desk sat a guard:“Barton Snode, Assistant Guard,” said abadge on his chest. He was a big man,with wide shoulders, brawny arms, and athick neck. But his head looked as if itdidn’t belong to his body—it was smalland round and topped with a fuzz of

extremely short hair. His lower jaw juttedout and moved a little from side to side, asif he were chewing on something.

When he saw Lina, his jaw stoppedmoving for a moment and his lips curledupward in a very small smile. “Goodday,” he said. “What business brings youhere today?”

“I have a message for the mayor.”

“Very good, very good.” Barton Snodeheaved himself to his feet. “Step thisway.”

He led Lina down the corridor andopened a door marked “Reception Room.”

“Wait here, please,” he said. “The

mayor is in his basement office on privatebusiness, but he will be up shortly.”

Lina went inside.

“I’ll notify the mayor,” said BartonSnode. “Please have a seat. The mayorwill be right with you. Or pretty soon.” Heleft, closing the door behind him. Asecond later, the door opened again, andthe guard’s small fuzzy head re-appeared.“What is the message?” he asked.

“I have to give it to the mayor inperson,” said Lina.

“Of course, of course,” said the guard.The door closed again. He doesn’t seemvery sure about things, Lina thought.

Maybe he’s new at his job.

The Reception Room was shabby, butLina could tell that it had once beenimpressive. The walls were dark red,with brownish patches where the paintwas peeling away. In the right-hand wallwas a closed door. An ugly brown carpetlay on the floor, and on it stood a largearmchair covered in itchy-looking redmaterial, and several smaller chairs. Asmall table held a teapot and some cups,and a larger table in the middle of theroom displayed a copy of The Book of theCity of Ember, lying open as if someonewere going to read from it. Portraits of allthe mayors of the city since the beginningof time hung on the walls, staring solemnlyfrom behind pieces of old window glass.

Lina sat in the big armchair and waited.No one came. She got up and wanderedaround the room. She bent over The Bookof the City of Ember and read a fewsentences: “The citizens of Ember may nothave luxuries, but the foresight of theBuilders, who filled the storerooms at thebeginning of time, has ensured that theywill always have enough, and enough isall that a person of wisdom needs.”

She flipped a few pages. “TheGathering Hall clock,” she read,“measures the hours of night and day. Itmust never be allowed to run down.Without it, how would we know when togo to work and when to go to school?How would the light director know whento turn the lights on and when to turn them

off again? It is the job of the timekeeper towind the clock every week and to placethe date sign in Harken Square every day.The timekeeper must perform these dutiesfaithfully.”

Lina knew that not all timekeepers wereas faithful as they should be. She’d heardof one, some years ago, who often forgotto change the date sign, so that it mightsay, “Wednesday, Week 38, Year 227”for several days in a row. There had evenbeen timekeepers who forgot to wind theclock, so that it might stand at noon or atmidnight for hours at a time, causing avery long day or a very long night. Theresult was that no one really knewanymore exactly what day of the week itwas, or exactly how many years it had

been since the building of the city—theycalled this the year 241, but it might havebeen 245 or 239 or 250. As long as theclock’s deep boom rang out every hour,and the lights went on and off more or lessregularly, it didn’t seem to matter.

Lina left the book and examined thepictures of the mayors. The seventhmayor, Podd Morethwart, was her great-great—she didn’t know how many greats—grandfather. He looked quite dreary,Lina thought. His cheeks were long andhollow, his mouth turned down at thecorners, and there was a lost look in hiseyes. The picture she liked best was of thefourth mayor, Jane Larket, who had aserene smile and fuzzy black hair.

Still no one came. She heard no soundsfrom the hallway. Maybe they’d forgottenher.

Lina went over to the closed door in theright-hand wall. She pulled it open andsaw stairs going up. Maybe, while shewaited, she’d just see where they went.She started upward. At the top of the firstflight was a closed door. Carefully, sheopened it. She saw another hallway andmore closed doors. She shut the door andkept going. Her footsteps sounded loud onthe wood, and she was afraid someonewould hear her and come and scold her.No doubt she was not supposed to behere. But no one came, and she climbedon, passing another closed door.

The Gathering Hall was the onlybuilding in Ember with three stories. Shehad always wanted to stand on its roof andlook out at the city. Maybe from there itwould be possible to see beyond the city,into the Unknown Regions. If the brightcity of her drawings really did exist, itwould be out there somewhere.

At the top of the stairs, she came to adoor marked “Roof,” and she pushed itopen. Chilly air brushed against her skin.She was outside. Ahead of her was a flatgravel surface, and about ten paces awayshe could see the high wall of the clocktower.

She went to the edge of the roof. Fromthere she could see the whole of Ember.

Directly below was Harken Square,where people were moving this way andthat, all of them appearing, from this top-down view, more round than tall. BeyondHarken Square, the lighted windows of thebuildings made checkered lines, yellowand black, row after row, in all directions.She tried to see farther, across theUnknown Regions, but she couldn’t. At theedges of the city, the lights were so faraway that they made a kind of haze. Shecould see nothing beyond them butblackness.

She heard a shout from the squarebelow. “Look!” came a small but piercingvoice. “Someone on the roof!” She saw afew people stop and look up. “Who is it?What’s she doing up there?” someone

cried. More people gathered, until acrowd was standing on the steps of theGathering Hall. They see me! Linathought, and it made her laugh. She wavedat the crowd and did a few steps from theBugfoot Scurry Dance, which she’dlearned 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 beardwas suddenly running toward her. “Halt!”he shouted, though she wasn’t goinganywhere. He grabbed her by the arm.“What are you doing here?”

“I was just curious,” said Lina, in hermost innocent voice. “I wanted to see thecity from the roof.” She read the guard’s

name badge. It said, “Redge Stabmark,Chief Guard.”

“Curiosity leads to trouble,” saidRedge Stabmark. He peered down at thecrowd. “You have caused a commotion.”He pulled her toward the door and hustledher down all three flights of stairs. Whenthey came out into the waiting room,Barton Snode was standing there lookingflustered, his jaw twitching from side toside. Next to him was the mayor.

“A child causing trouble, Mayor Cole,”said the chief guard.

The mayor glared at her. “I recall yourface. From Assignment Day. Shame!Disgracing yourself in your new job.”

“I didn’t mean to cause trouble,” saidLina. “I was looking for you so I coulddeliver a message.”

“Shall we put her in the Prison Roomfor a day or two?” asked the chief guard.

The mayor frowned. He pondered amoment. “What is the message?” he said.He bent down so that Lina could speakinto his ear. She noticed that he smelled alittle 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’santics,” 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 tothe assistant guard and shaking a thickfinger at him, “watch visitors much . . .more . . . carefully.”

Barton Snode blinked and nodded.

Lina ran for the door. Outside, the smallcrowd was still standing by the steps. Afew of them cheered as Lina came out.Others frowned at her and muttered wordslike “mischief” and “silliness” and“show-off.” Lina felt embarrassedsuddenly. 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 amongthose watching her. He had been on hisway home from his first day in thePipeworks when he’d come across thecluster of people gazing up at the roof ofthe Gathering Hall and laughing. He wastired and chilly. The bottoms of his pantslegs were wet, and mud clung to his shoesand smeared his hands. When he raisedhis eyes and saw the small figure next tothe clock tower, he realized right awaythat it was Lina. He saw her raise her armand wave and hop about, and for a secondhe wondered what it would be like to beup there, looking out over the whole city,laughing and waving. When Lina came

down, he wanted to speak to her. But heknew he was filthy-looking and that shewould ask him questions he didn’t want toanswer. So he turned away. Walking fast,he headed for home.

CHAPTER 3

Under Ember

That morning, Doon had arrived at thePipeworks full of anticipation. This wasthe world of serious work at last, wherehe would get a chance to do somethinguseful. What he’d learned in school, andfrom his father, and from his owninvestigations—he could put it all to goodpurpose now.

He pushed open the heavy Pipeworksdoor and stepped inside. The air smelledstrongly of dampness and moldy rubber,which seemed to him a pleasant,interesting smell. He strode up a hallwaywhere yellow slickers hung from pegs onthe walls. At the end of the hallway was aroom full of people, some of them sittingon benches and pulling on knee-highrubber boots, some struggling into theirslickers, some buckling on tool belts. Araucous clamor filled the room. Doonwatched from the doorway, eager to joinin but not sure what to do.

After a moment a man emerged from thethrong. He thrust out a hand. “Lister Munk,Pipeworks director,” he said. “You’re thenew boy, right? What size feet do you

have—large, medium, or small?”

“Medium,” said Doon, and Lister foundhim a slicker and a pair of boots. Theboots were so ancient that their greenrubber was cracked all over, as if coveredwith spiderwebs. He gave Doon a toolbelt, too, in which were wrenches andhammers, spools of wire and tape, andtubes of some sort of black goop.

“You’ll be in Tunnel 97 today,” Listersaid. “Arlin Froll will go down with youand show you what to do.” He pointed at ashort, delicate-looking girl with a white-blond braid down her back. “She may notlook like an expert, but she is.”

Doon buckled his tool belt around his

waist and put on his slicker, which, forsome reason, smelled like sweaty feet.“This way,” said Arlin, without sayinghello or smiling. She wove through thecrowd of workers to a door marked“Stairway” and opened it.

Stone steps led so far down that Dooncouldn’t see the end of them. On eitherside was a sheer wall of dark reddishstone, glistening with dampness. Therewas no railing. Along the ceiling ran asingle wire from which a light bulb hungevery few yards. Water stood in shallowpools on each stair, in the hollow worninto the stones by years of footsteps.

They started down. Doon concentratedon his feet—the clumsy boots made it hard

not to stumble. As they went deeper, hebegan to hear a low roar, so low heseemed to hear it more with his stomachthan his ears. It grew louder and louder—was it a machine of some kind? Maybe thegenerator?

The stairway came to an end at a doormarked “Main Tunnel.” Arlin opened it,and as they stepped through, Doonrealized that the sound he had beenhearing wasn’t a machine. It was the river.

He stood still, staring. Like mostpeople, he had never been really surewhat a river was—just that it was waterthat somehow flowed on its own. He’dimagined it would be like the clear,narrow stream that came out of the kitchen

faucet, only bigger, and horizontal insteadof vertical. But this was somethingentirely different—not a stream of water,but endless tons of it pouring by. Wide asthe widest street in Ember, churning anddipping and swirling, the river roaredpast, its turbulent surface like black,liquid glass scattered with flecks of light.Doon had never seen anything that movedso fast, and he had never heard such athunderous, heart-stopping roar.

The path they stood on was about sixfeet wide and ran parallel to the river forfarther than Doon could see in bothdirections. In the wall along the path wereopenings that must lead, Doon thought, tothe tunnels that branched everywherebelow the city. A string of lights like the

one in the stairway hung high up againstthe arched ceiling.

Doon knew he was standing beneath thenorth edge of Ember. In school, you weretaught to remember the directions thisway: north was the direction of the river;south was the direction of thegreenhouses; east was the direction of theschool; and west was the direction leftover, having nothing in particular to markit. All the Pipeworks tunnels branched offfrom the main tunnel to the south, towardthe city.

Arlin leaned toward Doon and shoutedinto his ear. “First we’ll go to thebeginning of the river,” she said. She ledhim up the main tunnel for a long way.

They passed other people in yellowslickers, who greeted Arlin with a nodand glanced curiously at Doon. Afterfifteen minutes or so, they came to the eastedge of the Pipeworks, where the riversurged up from a deep chasm in theground, churning so violently that its darkwater turned white and filled the air witha spray that wet Doon’s face.

In the wall to their right was a widedouble 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 haveto have special permission.” She pointedback down the main tunnel. “Now we’llgo to the end of the river,” she said.

She led him back, past the stairwaydoor, all the way to the west edge of thePipeworks. There the river flowed into ahuge opening in the wall and vanished intodarkness.

“Where does it go?” Doon asked.

Arlin just shrugged. “Back into theground, I guess. Now let’s find Tunnel 97and get to work.” She pulled a foldedpiece of paper from her pocket. “This isthe map,” she said. “You have one in yourpocket, too. You have to use the map to

find your way around in here.” The maplooked to Doon like an immense centipede—the river arched across the top of thepage like the centipede’s body, and thetunnels dangled down from it likehundreds of long, long legs all tangled upwith each other.

To get to Tunnel 97, they followed acomplicated route through passagewayslined with crusty, rusted pipes that carriedwater to all the buildings of Ember.Puddles stood on the floor of the tunnel,and water dripped in brown rivulets downthe walls. Just as in the main tunnel, therewas a string of bulbs along the ceiling thatprovided dim light. Doon occupied hismind by calculating how far undergroundhe was. From the river to the ceiling of the

main tunnel must be thirty feet or so, hethought. Above that were the storerooms,which occupied a layer at least twenty feethigh. So that meant he was fifty feetunderground, with tons of earth and rockand buildings above him. The thoughtmade him tense up his shoulders. He casta quick glance upward, as if all thatweight might collapse onto his head.

“Here we are,” said Arlin. She wasstanding next to a leak that spurted astream of water straight out from the wall.“We have to turn the shut-off valve, takethe pipe apart, put on a new connector,and stick it back together again.”

With wrenches, hammers, washers, andblack goop, they did this, getting soaked in

the process. It took them most of themorning and proved to Doon that the citywas in even worse shape than he’dsuspected. Not only were the lights aboutto fail and the supplies about to run out,but the water system was breaking down.The whole city was crumbling, and whatwas anyone doing about it?

When the lunch break came, Arlin tookher lunch sack from a pocket in her toolbelt and went off to meet some friends afew tunnels away. “You stay right hereand wait until I get back,” she said as sheleft. “If you wander around, you’ll getlost.”

But Doon set out as soon as shedisappeared. Using his map, he found his

way back to the main tunnel, then hurriedto the east end. He wasn’t going to waitfor special permission to see thegenerator. He was pretty sure he couldfind a way to get in on his own, and hedid. He simply stood by the door andwaited for someone to come out. Quitesoon, a stout woman carrying a lunch sackpushed open the door and walked away.She didn’t notice him. Before the doorcould close again, Doon slipped inside.

Such a horrendous noise met him that hestaggered backward a few steps. It was anearsplitting, growling, grinding, screamingnoise, shot through with a hoarse rackety-rackety sound and underscored with ad e e p chugga-chugga-chugga. Doonclapped his hands over his ears and

stepped forward. In front of him was agigantic black machine, two stories high.It was vibrating so hard it looked as if itmight explode any second. Several peoplewearing 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 whirledaround. 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 havesaved his breath. No one could be heardin the uproar. The old man glared at him,made a shooing motion with his hand, andturned back to work.

Doon stood and watched for a while.Beside the huge machine were ladders onwheels that the workers pushed back andforth and climbed up on to reach the highparts. All over the room, greasy-lookingcans and tools littered the floor. Againstthe walls stood big bins holding everykind of bolt and screw and gear and leverand rod and tube, all of them black withage and jumbled together. The workersscurried between the bins and thegenerator or simply stood and watched thething shake.

After a few minutes, Doon left. He washorrified. All his life he had studied howthings worked—it was one of his favoritethings to do. He could take apart an oldwatch and put it back together exactly as it

had been. He understood how the faucetsin the sink worked. He’d fixed the toiletmany times. He’d made a wheeled cart outof the parts of an old armchair. He evenhad a hazy idea of what was going on inthe refrigerator. He was proud of hismechanical talent. There was only onething he didn’t understand at all, and thatwas electricity. What was the power thatran through the wires and into the lightbulbs? Where did it come from? He hadthought that if he could just get a look atthe generator, he would have the clue heneeded. From there, he could begin towork on a solution that would keep thelights of Ember burning.

But one glimpse of the generatorshowed him how foolish he was. He’d

expected to see something whoseworkings he could understand—a wheelturning, a spark being struck, some wiresthat led from one point to another. But thismonstrous roaring thing—he wondered ifanyone understood how it worked. Itlooked as if all they were doing wastrying to keep it from flying apart.

As it turned out, he was right. When theday was over and he was upstairs takingoff his boots and slicker, he saw the oldman from the generator room and went totalk to him. “Can you explain to me aboutthe generator?” he asked. “Can you tell mehow it works?”

The old man just sighed. “All I know is,the river makes it go.”

“But how?”

The man shrugged. “Who knows? Ourjob is just to keep it from breaking down.If a part breaks, we got to put on a newone. If a part freezes up, we got to oil it.”He wiped his hand wearily across hisforehead, leaving a streak of black grease.“I been working on the generator fortwenty years. It’s always managed to chugalong, but this year . . . I don’t know. Thething seems to break down every coupleminutes.” He cracked a wry smile. “Ofcourse, I hear we might run out of lightbulbs before that, and then it won’t matterif the generator works or not.”

Running out of light bulbs, running outof power, running out of time—disaster

was right around the corner. That’s whatDoon was thinking about when he stoppedoutside the Gathering Hall on his wayhome and saw Lina on the roof. Shelooked so free and happy up there. Hedidn’t know why she was on the roof, buthe wasn’t surprised. It was the kind ofthing she did, turning up in unexpectedplaces, and now that she was a messenger,she could go just about anywhere. Buthow could she be so lighthearted wheneverything was falling apart?

He headed for home. He lived with hisfather in a two-bedroom apartment overhis father’s shop in Greengate Square—the Small Items shop, which sold thingslike nails, pins, tacks, clips, springs, jarlids, doorknobs, bits of wire, shards of

glass, chunks of wood, and other smallthings that might be useful in some way.The Small Items shop had overflowedsomewhat into their apartment above. Intheir front room, where other people mightdisplay a nice teapot on a tabletop or afew attractive squashes or tomatoes on ashelf, they had buckets and boxes andbaskets full of spare items for the shop,things Doon’s father had collected but notyet organized for selling. Often these itemsspilled over onto the floor. It was easy totrip over things in this apartment, and not agood idea to go barefoot.

Today Doon didn’t stop in at the shopto see his father before going upstairs. Hewasn’t in the mood for conversation. Heremoved two buckets of stuff from the

couch—it looked like mostly shoe heels—and flopped down on the cushions. He’dbeen stupid to think he could understandthe generator just by looking at it, whenother people had been working on it theirentire lives. The thing was, he had toadmit, he’d always thought he was smarterthan other people. He’d been sure hecould learn about electricity and help savethe city. He wanted to be the one to do it.He had imagined many times a ceremonyin Harken Square, organized to thank himfor saving Ember, with the entirepopulation in attendance and his fatherbeaming from the front row. All Doon’slife, his father had been saying to him,“You’re a good boy and a smart boy.You’ll do grand things someday, I knowyou will.” But Doon hadn’t done much that

was grand so far. He ached to dosomething truly important, like finding thesecret of electricity, and, as his fatherwatched, be rewarded for hisachievement. The size of the rewarddidn’t matter. A small certificate woulddo, or maybe a badge to sew on his jacket.

Now he was stuck in the muck of thePipeworks, patching up pipes that wouldleak and break again in a matter of days. Itwas even more useless and boring thanbeing a messenger. The thought made himsuddenly furious. He sat up, grabbed ashoe heel out of the bucket at this feet, andhurled it with all his might. It arrived atthe 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 hisfather in the doorway.

Doon’s anger drained away. “Oh, I hityou, Father. I’m sorry.”

Doon’s father rubbed the side of hishead. He was a tall man, bald as a peeledpotato, with a high forehead and a longchin. He had kind, slightly puzzled grayeyes.

“Got me in the ear,” he said. “What wasthat?”

“I got angry for a second,” said Doon.“I threw one of these old heels.”

“I see,” said his father. He brushedsome bottle tops off a chair and sat down.

“Does it have to do with your first day atwork, son?”

“Yes,” said Doon.

His father nodded. “Why don’t you tellme about it,” he said.

Doon told him. When he was finished,his father ran a hand across his bald headas if smoothing down the hair that wasn’tthere. He sighed. “Well,” he said, “itsounds unpleasant, I have to admit. Aboutthe generator, especially—that’s badnews. But the Pipeworks is yourassignment, no way around it. What youget is what you get. What you do withwhat you get, though . . . that’s more thepoint, wouldn’t you say?” He looked at

Doon and smiled, a bit sadly.

“I guess so,” Doon said. “But what canI do?”

“I don’t know,” said his father. “You’llthink of something. You’re a clever boy.The main thing is to pay attention. Payclose attention to everything, notice whatno one else notices. Then you’ll knowwhat no one else knows, and that’s alwaysuseful.” He took off his coat and hung itfrom a peg on the wall. “How’s theworm?” he asked.

“I haven’t looked at it yet,” said Doon.He went into his room and came out witha small wooden box covered with an oldscarf. He set the box on the table and took

the scarf off, and he and his father bothbent over to look inside.

A couple of limp cabbage leaves lay onthe bottom of the box. On one of the leaveswas a worm about an inch long. A fewdays before school ended, Doon had foundthe worm on the underside of a cabbageleaf he was slicing up for dinner. It was apale soft green, velvety smooth all over,with tiny stubby legs.

Doon had always been fascinated bybugs. He wrote down his observationsabout them in a book he had titledCrawling and Flying Things. Each pageof the book was divided lengthwise downthe center. On the left he drew hispictures, with a pencil sharpened to a

needle-like point: moth wings with theirbranching patterns of veins; spider legs,which had minute hairs and tiny feet likeclaws; beetles, with their feelers and theirglossy armor. On the right, he wrote whathe observed about each creature. He notedwhat it ate, where it slept, where it laid itseggs, and—if he knew—how long it lived.

This was difficult with fast-movingcreatures like moths and spiders. To learnanything about them, he had to catch whatglimpses he could as they lived their livesout in the open. If he put them in a box,they scrambled around for a few days andthen died.

This worm, though, was different. Itseemed perfectly happy to live in the box

Doon had made for it. So far, it did onlythree things: eat, sleep (it looked likesleeping, though Doon couldn’t tell if theworm closed its eyes—or even if it hadeyes), and expel tiny black poop balls.That was it.

“I’ve had it for five days now,” saidDoon. “It’s twice as big as it was when Igot it. It’s eaten two square inches ofcabbage leaf.”

“You’re writing all this down?”

Doon nodded.

“Maybe,” said his father, “you’ll findsome interesting new bugs in thePipeworks.”

“Maybe,” said Doon. But to himself hesaid, No, that’s not enough. I can’t goplodding around the Pipeworks, stoppingup leaks, looking for bugs, and pretendingthere’s no emergency. I have to findsomething important down there,something that’s going to help. I have to. Ijust have to.

CHAPTER 4

Something Lost, Nothing Found

One day when Lina had been a messengerfor several weeks, she came home to findthat Granny had thrown all the cushionsfrom the couch onto the floor, ripped up acorner of the couch’s lining, and waspulling out wads of stuffing.

“What are you doing?” Lina cried.

Granny looked up. Wisps of sofastuffing stuck to the front of her dress andclung to her hair. “Something is lost,” shesaid. “I think it might be in here.”

“What’s lost, Granny?”

“I don’t quite recall,” said the oldwoman. “Something important.”

“But Granny, you’re ruining the couch.What will we sit on?”

Granny tore a bit more of the coveringoff the couch and yanked out another puffof stuffing. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.“I’ll put it back together later.”

“Let’s put it back now,” Lina said. “Idon’t think what’s lost is in there.”

“You don’t know,” said Granny darkly.But she sat back on her heels, lookingtired.

Lina began cleaning up the mess.“Where’s the baby?” she asked.

Granny gazed at Lina blankly. “Thebaby?”

“You haven’t forgotten the baby?”

“Oh, yes. She’s . . . I think she’s downin the shop.”

“By herself?” Lina stood up and randown the stairs. She found Poppy sittingon the floor of the shop, enmeshed in atangle of yellow yarn. As soon as she sawLina, Poppy began to howl.

Lina picked her up and unwound theyarn, talking soothingly, though she was soupset that her fingers trembled. ForGranny to forget the baby was dangerous.Poppy could fall downstairs and hurtherself. She could wander out into thestreet and get lost. Granny had beenforgetful lately, but this was the first timeshe’d completely forgotten about Poppy.

When they got upstairs, Granny waskneeling on the floor gathering up thewhite tufts of stuffing and jamming themback into the hole she’d made in thecouch. “It wasn’t in there,” she said sadly.

“What wasn’t?”

“It was lost a long time ago,” said

Granny. “My father told me about it.”

Lina sighed impatiently. More andmore, her grandmother’s mind seemedcaught in the past. She could explain therules of pebblejacks, which she’d lastplayed when she was eight, or tell youwhat happened at the Singing when shewas twelve, or who she’d danced with atthe Cloving Square Dance when she wassixteen, but she would forget what hadhappened the day before yesterday.

“They heard him talking about it whenhe 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 afaraway look. “That’s the mystery. Hesaid 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’sleft sock, or his hairbrush. But for somereason, the story had taken root inGranny’s mind.

The next morning on her way to work,Lina stopped in at the house of theirneighbor, Evaleen Murdo. Mrs. Murdo

was brisk in her manner, and in her personthin and straight as a nail, but she waskind in her unsmiling way. Until a fewyears ago, she’d run a shop that sold paperand pencils. But when paper and pencilsbecame scarce, her shop closed. Now shespent her days sitting by her upstairswindow, watching people in the streetwith her sharp eyes. Lina told Mrs. Murdoabout her grandmother’s forgetfulness.“Will you look in on her sometimes andmake sure things are all right?” she asked.

“I will, certainly,” said Mrs. Murdo,nodding twice, firmly. Lina went awayfeeling better.

That day Lina was given a message byArbin Swinn, who ran the Callay StreetVegetable Market, to be delivered toLina’s friend Clary, the greenhousemanager. Lina was glad to carry thismessage, though her gladness was mixed alittle with sadness. Her father had workedin the greenhouses. It still felt strange notto see him there.

The five greenhouses produced all ofEmber’s fresh food. They were out pastGreengate Square, at the farthest edge ofthe city. Nothing else was out there but thetrash heaps, great moldering, stinking hillsthat stood on rocky ground and were lit bya few floodlights high up on poles.

It used to be that no one went to the

trash heaps but the trash collectors, whodumped the trash and left it. Now and thena couple of children might go there toplay, scrambling up the side of the heapsand tumbling down. Lina and Lizzie usedto go when they were younger. They’dpull out the occasional treasure—someempty cans, maybe an old hat or a crackedplate. But not anymore. Now there wereguards posted at the trash heaps to makesure no one poked around. Just recently,an official job called trash sifter had beencreated. Every day a team of peoplemethodically sorted through the trashheaps in search of anything that might be atall useful. They’d come back with brokenchair legs that could be used for repairingwindow frames, bent nails that couldbecome hooks for clothes, even filthy

rags, stiff with dirt, that could be washedout and used to patch holes in windowblinds or mattress covers. Lina hadn’tthought about it before, but now shewondered about the trash sifters. Werethey there because Ember really wasrunning out of everything?

Beyond the trash heaps there wasnothing at all—that is, only the vastUnknown Regions, where the darknesswas absolute.

From the end of Diggery Street, Linacould see the long, low greenhouses. Theylooked like big tin cans that had been cutin half and laid on their sides. Her breathcame a little faster. The greenhouses werea home to her, in a way.

She knew that she was most likely tofind Clary somewhere around Greenhouse1, where the office was, so that waswhere she headed first. A small tool- shedstood beside the door to Greenhouse 1;Lina peeked into it but saw only rakes andshovels. So she opened the greenhousedoor. Warm, furry-smelling air washedover her, and all her love for this placecame rushing back. Out of habit, she gazedup toward the ceiling, as if she might seeher father there on his ladder, tinkeringwith the sprinkler system, the temperaturegauges, and the lights.

The greenhouse light was whiter thanthe yellowish light of the Emberstreetlamps. It came from long tubes thatran the length of the ceiling. In this light,

the leaves of the plants shone so greenthey almost hurt Lina’s eyes. On the dayswhen she’d come here with her father,Lina had spent hours wandering along thegravel paths that ran between thevegetable beds, sniffing the leaves, pokingher fingers into the dirt, and learning totell the plants apart by their look andsmell. There were the beans and peas withtheir curly tendrils, the dark greenspinach, the ruffled lettuce, and the hard,pale green cabbages, some of them as biga newborn baby’s head. What she lovedbest was to rub the leaves of the tomatoplant between her fingers and breathe intheir pungent, powdery smell.

A long, straight path led from one endof the building to the other. About halfway

down the path, Clary was crouching by abed of carrots. Lina ran toward her, andClary smiled, brushed the dirt from herhands, and stood up.

Clary was tall and solid, with big handsand knobby knuckles. She had a squarejaw and square shoulders, and brown haircut in a short, squarish way. You mighthave thought from looking at her that shewas a gruff, unfriendly person—but hernature was just the opposite. She wasmore comfortable with plants than withpeople, Lina’s father had always said. Shewas strong but shy, a person of muchknowledge but few words. Lina hadalways liked her. Even when she waslittle, Clary did not treat her like a babybut gave her jobs to do—pulling up

carrots, picking bugs off cabbages. Sinceher parents had died, Lina had come manytimes to talk to Clary, or just to worksilently beside her. Clary was always kindto her, and working with the plants tookLina’s mind off her grief.

“Well,” said Clary. She smiled at Lina,wiped her hands on her already grimypants, and smiled some more. Finally shesaid, “You’re a messenger.”

“Yes,” said Lina, “and I have amessage 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,” shesaid. “At least, I can send him the

cabbages, but only one small crate ofpotatoes.”

“Why?” asked Lina.

“Well, we have a sort of problem withthe potatoes.”

“What is it?” asked Lina. Clary had ahabit of answering questions in thebriefest possible way. You had to keepasking and asking before she wouldbelieve you really wanted to know andweren’t just being polite. Then she wouldexplain, and you could see how much sheknew, and how much she loved her work.

“I’ll show you,” she said. She led theway to a bed where the green leaves were

spotted with black. “A new disease. Ihaven’t seen it before. When you dig upthe potatoes, they’re runny inside insteadof hard, and they stink. I’m going to haveto throw out all the ones in this bed. Thereare only a few beds left that aren’tinfected.”

Most people in Ember had potatoes atevery meal—mashed, boiled, stewed,roasted. They’d had fried potatoes, too, inthe days before the cooking oil ran out.

“I’d hate it if we couldn’t have potatoesanymore,” Lina said.

“I would, too,” said Clary.

They sat on the edge of the potato bed

and talked for a while, about Lina’sgrandmother and the baby, about thetrouble Clary was having with thebeehives, and about the greenhousesprinkler system. “It hasn’t worked rightsince . . .” Clary hesitated and glancedsideways at Lina. “For a long time,” shesaid. She didn’t want to say “since yourfather died.” Lina understood that.

She stood up. “I should go,” she said. “Ihave to take Arbin Swinn the answer tohis message.”

“I hope you’ll come again,” said Clary.“You can come whenever . . . you cancome any time.” Lina said thank you andturned to go.

But just outside the greenhouse door,she heard running footsteps and a strange,high, sobbing sound. Or rather, she heardsobs and then a wail, sobs and then ashout, and then more sobs, getting louder.She looked back toward the rear of thegreenhouses, 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’mafraid it’s . . . it’s someone who . . .” Shepeered toward the crying noise. “Yes . . .here he comes.” Her strong hand grippedLina’s shoulder for a moment. “You’d

better go,” she said. “I’ll take care ofthis.”

“But what is it?”

“Never mind. Just go on.”

But Lina wanted to see. Once Clary hadwalked away, she ducked behind thetoolshed. From there she watched.

The noise came closer. Out beyond thetrash heaps, a figure appeared. It was aman, running and stumbling, his armsflopping. He looked as if he was about tofall over, as if he could hardly pick up hisfeet. In fact, as he came closer he did fall.He tripped over a hose and crumpled tothe ground as if his bones had dissolved.

Clary stooped down and said somethingto him in a voice too low for Lina to hear.

The man was panting. When he turnedover and sat up, Lina saw that his facewas scratched and his eyes wide open infright. His sobs had turned into hiccups.She recognized him. It was Sadge Merrall,one of the clerks in the Supply Depot. Hewas a quiet, long-faced man who alwayslooked worried.

Clary helped him to his feet. The two ofthem came slowly toward the greenhouse,and as they got closer Lina could hearwhat the man was saying. He spoke veryfast in a weak, trembly voice, hardlystopping for breath. “. . . was sure I coulddo it. I said to myself, Just one step after

another, that’s all, one step after another. Iknew it would be dark. Who doesn’t knowthat? But I thought, Well, dark can’t hurtyou. I’ll just keep going, I thought. . . .”

He stumbled and sagged against Clary.“Careful,” Clary said. They reached thedoor of the greenhouse, and Clarystruggled to open it. Without thinking, Linadarted out from behind the toolshed andopened it for her. Clary shot her a quickfrown but said nothing.

Sadge didn’t stop talking. “. . . But thenthe farther I went the darker it was, andyou can’t just keep walking into blackdark, can you? It’s like a wall in front ofyou. I kept turning around to look at thelights of the city, because that’s all there

was to see, and then I’d say to myself,Don’t look back, keep moving. But I kepttripping and falling. . . . The ground isrough out there, I scraped my hands.” Heheld up one hand and stared at the redscratches on it, which oozed drops ofblood.

They got him into Clary’s office and sathim down in her chair. He rambled on.

“Be brave, I said to myself. I kept goingand going, but then all of a sudden Ithought, Anything could be out here! Therecould be a pit a thousand feet deep right infront of me. There could be . . . somethingthat bites. I’ve heard stories . . . rats as bigas garbage bins . . . And I had to get out ofthere. So I turned around and I ran.”

“Never mind,” said Clary. “You’re allright now. Lina, get him some water.”

Lina found a cup and filled it from thesink in the corner. Sadge took it with ashaking hand and drank it down.

“What were you looking for?” Linaasked. She knew what she would havebeen looking for if she’d gone out there.She’d thought about it countless times.

Sadge stared at her. He seemed to haveto puzzle over her question. Finally hesaid, “I was looking for something thatcould help us.”

“What would it be?”

“I don’t know. Like a stairway that

leads somewhere, maybe. Or a buildingfull of . . . I don’t know, useful things.”

“But you didn’t find anything? Or seeanything?” Lina asked, disappointed.

“Nothing! Nothing! There is nothing outthere!” His voice became a shout and hiseyes looked wild again. “Or if there is,we can never get to it. Never! Not withouta light.” He took a long, shaky breath. Fora while he stared at the floor. Then hestood up. “I think I’m all right now. I’ll begoing.”

With uncertain steps, he went down thepath and out the door.

“Well,” said Clary. “I’m sorry that

happened while you were here. I wasafraid you might be scared, that’s why Itold you to go.”

But Lina was full of questions, not fear.She had heard tales of people who tried togo out into the Unknown Regions. She hadthought about it herself—in fact, she’dwondered the same things as Sadge. Shehad imagined making her way out into thedark and coming to a wall in which shewould find the door to a tunnel, and at theend of the tunnel would be the other city,the city of light that she had dreamedabout. All it would take was the courageto walk away from Ember and into thedarkness, and then to keep going.

It might have been possible if you could

carry a light to show the way. But inEmber, there was no such thing as a lightyou could carry with you. Outside lightswere fixed to their poles, or to the roofs ofhouses; inside lights were set into theceiling or had cords that had to be pluggedin. Over the course of Ember’s history,various clever people had tried to invent amovable light, but all of them had failed.One man had managed to ignite the end ofa stick of wood by holding it against theelectric burner on his stove. He’d runacross the city with the flaming stick,planning to use it to light his journey. Butby the time he got to the trash heaps, historch had gone out. Other people latchedon to his idea—one woman who lived onDedlock Street, very near the edge of thecity, managed to get into the Unknown

Regions with her flaming stick. But thestick burned quickly, and before she couldgo far, the flame singed her hands and shethrew it down. Everyone who had tried topenetrate the Unknown Regions had comeback within a few hours, their enterprise afailure.

Lina and Clary stood by the open doorof the greenhouse and watched Sadgeshuffle toward the city. As he neared thetrash heaps, two guards who had beensitting on the ground got to their feet. Theywalked over to Sadge, and each of themtook hold of one of his arms.

“Uh-oh,” said Clary. “Those guards arealways looking for trouble.”

“But Sadge hasn’t broken any law,”said Lina.

“Doesn’t matter. They need somethingto do. They’ll get some fun out of scaringhim.” One of the guards was shaking hisfinger at Sadge and saying something in avoice almost loud enough for Lina to hear.“Poor man,” said Clary with a sigh. “He’sthe fourth one this year.”

The guards were marching Sadge awaynow, one on either side of him. Sadgelooked limp and small between them.

“What do you think is out in theUnknown Regions, Clary?”

Clary stared down at the ground, where

the light from the greenhouse was castinglong, thin shadows of them both. “I don’tknow. Nothing, I guess.”

“And do you think Ember is the onlylight in the dark world?”

Clary sighed. “I don’t know,” she said.She gave Lina a long look. Her eyes, Linathought, looked a little sad. They were adeep brown, almost the color of the earthin the garden bed.

Clary put a hand in her pocket and drewsomething out. “Look,” she said. In thepalm of her hand was a white bean.“Something in this seed knows how tomake a bean plant. How does it knowthat?”

“I don’t know,” said Lina, staring at thehard, flat bean.

“It knows because it has life in it,” saidClary. “But where does life come from?What is life?”

Lina could see that words were wellingup in Clary now; her eyes were bright, hercheeks were rosy.

“Take a lamp, for instance. When youplug it in, it comes alive, in a way. Itlights up. That’s because it’s connected toa wire that’s connected to the generator,which is making electricity, though don’task me how. But a bean seed isn’tconnected to anything. Neither are people.We don’t have plugs and wires that

connect us to generators. What makesliving things go is inside them somehow.”Her dark eyebrows drew together overher eyes. “What I mean is,” she saidfinally, “something is going on that wedon’t understand. They say the Buildersmade the city. But who made theBuilders? Who made us? I think theanswer must be somewhere outside ofEmber.”

“In the Unknown Regions?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know.” Shebrushed her hands together in a time-to-get-back-to-work way.

“Clary,” said Lina quickly, “here’swhat I think.” Her heart sped up. She

hadn’t told this to anyone before. “In mymind, I see another city.” Lina watched tosee if Clary was going to laugh at her, orsmile in that overly kind way. She didn’t,so Lina went on. “It isn’t like Ember; it’swhite and gleaming. The buildings are talland sort of sparkle. Everything is bright,not just inside the buildings but all aroundthem, too, even up in the sky. I know it’sjust my imagination, but it feels real. Ithink it is real.”

Clary said, “Hmmm,” and then she said,“Where would such a city be?”

“That’s what I don’t know. Or how toget to it. I keep thinking there’s a doorsomewhere, maybe out in the UnknownRegions—a door that leads out of Ember,

and then behind the door a road.”

Clary just shrugged her shoulders. “Idon’t know,” she said. “I have to get backto work. But here—take this.” She handedLina the bean seed, took a little pot from ashelf, scooped some dirt into it, andhanded the pot to Lina, too. “Stick thebean in here and water it every day,” shesaid. “It looks like nothing, like a littlewhite stone, but inside it there’s life. Thatmust be a sort of clue, don’t you think? Ifwe could just figure it out.”

Lina took the seed and the pot. “Thankyou,” she said. She wanted to give Clary ahug but didn’t, in case it would embarrassher. Instead, she just said goodbye andraced back toward the city.

CHAPTER 5

On Night Street

Granny’s mind was getting more and moremuddled. Lina would come home in theevenings and find her rifling through thekitchen cupboards, surrounded by cansand jars with their lids off, or tearing thecovers off her bed and trying to lift up themattress with her skinny arms. “It was animportant thing,” she would say, “the thingthat was lost.”

“But if you don’t know what it was,”said Lina, “how will you know whenyou’ve found it?”

Granny didn’t try to answer thisquestion. She just flapped her hands atLina and said, “Never mind, never mind,never mind,” and kept on searching.

These days, Mrs. Murdo spent a greatdeal of time sitting by their window ratherthan her own. She would tell Granny shewas just coming to keep her company. “Idon’t want her to keep me company,”Granny complained to Lina, and Lina said,“Maybe she’s lonely, Granny. Let hercome.”

Lina rather liked having Mrs. Murdo

around—it was a bit like having a motherthere. She wasn’t anything like Lina’s ownmother, who had been a dreamy, absent-minded sort of person. Mrs. Murdo wasmother-like in quite a different way. Shemade sure they all ate a good breakfast inthe morning—usually potatoes withmushroom gravy and beet tea. She linedup the vitamin pills by each person’s plateand made sure they were swallowed.When Mrs. Murdo was there, shoes gotpicked up and put away, spills werewiped off the furniture, and Poppy alwayshad on clean clothes. Lina could relaxwhen Mrs. Murdo was around. She knewthings were taken care of.

Every week, Lina—like all workersbetween age twelve and age fifteen—had

Thursday off. One Thursday, as she wasstanding in line at the Garn Square market,hoping to get a bag of turnips for stew thatnight, she overheard a startlingconversation between two people standingbehind her.

“What I wanted,” said one voice, “wassome paint for my front door. It hasn’tbeen painted for years. It’s gray andpeeling, horrible. I heard a store over onNight Street had some. I was hoping forblue.”

“Blue would be nice,” said the othervoice wistfully.

“But when I got there,” the first voicecontinued, “the man said he had no paint,

never had. Disagreeable man. All he hadwere a few colored pencils.”

Colored pencils! Lina had not seencolored 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 herdrawing until they were stubs too small tohold. Now she had only one plain pencilleft, and it was rapidly growing shorter.

She longed to have colored pencils forher pictures of the imaginary city. She hada feeling it was a colorful place, thoughshe didn’t know what its colors might be.There were other things, of course, onwhich her money would be better spent.Granny’s only coat was full of holes andcoming apart at the seams. But Granny

rarely went out, Lina told herself. She waseither at home or in her yarn shop. Shedidn’t really need a new coat, did she?Besides, how much could a few pencilscost? She could probably get a coat forGranny and some pencils.

So that afternoon she set out for NightStreet. She took Poppy with her. Poppyhad learned how to ride piggyback—shewrapped her legs around Lina’s waist andgripped Lina’s throat with her small,strong fingers.

On Budloe Street, people were standingin long lines with their bundles of laundryat the washing stations. The washersstirred the clothes in the washingmachines with long poles. In days past, the

machines themselves had whirled theclothes around, but not one of themworked anymore.

Lina turned up Hafter Street, where thefour streetlamps were still out and abuilding crew was repairing a partlycollapsed roof. Orly Gordon called out toher from high on a ladder, and Lina lookedup and waved. Farther on, she passed awoman with bits of rope and string forsale and a man pulling a cart full ofcarrots and beets to the grocery stores. Atthe corner, a cluster of little childrenplayed catch with a rag ball. The streetswere alive with people today. Movingfast, Lina threaded her way among them.

But as she went into Otterwill Street,

she saw something that made her slowdown. A man was standing on the steps ofthe Gathering Hall, shouting and howling,and a crowd of people had gatheredaround him. Lina went closer, and whenshe saw who it was, her insides gave alurch. It was Sadge Merrall. His armsflailed wildly, and his eyes were stretchedwide open. In a high, rapid voice, hewailed out a stream of words: “I havebeen to the Unknown Regions!” he cried.“There is nothing, nothing, nothing there!Did you think something out there mightsave us? Ha! There’s only darkness andmonsters, darkness and terrible deepholes, darkness forever! The rats are thesize of houses! The rocks are sharp asknives! The darkness sucks your breathout! No hope for us out there, oh no! No

hope, no hope!” He went on like this for afew minutes and then crumpled to theground. The people watching him lookedat each other and shook their heads.

“Gone mad,” Lina heard someone say.

“Yes, completely,” said someone else.

Suddenly Sadge sprang up again andresumed his terrible shouting. The crowdstepped back. Some of them hurried away.A few of them approached Sadge,speaking in calming voices. They took himby the arms and led him, still shouting,down the steps.

“Who dat? Who dat?” said Poppy in hersmall, 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, whichran along Greengate Square. There astringy-haired man sat cross-legged on theground playing a flute made out of adrainpipe, and five or six Believerscircled him, clapping and singing. “Soon,soon, coming soon,” they sang. What’scoming soon? Lina wondered, but shedidn’t stop to ask.

Two blocks beyond, she came to a storethat had no sign in its window. This mustbe the one, she thought.

At first it looked closed. Its window

was dark. But the door opened when shepushed on it, and a bell attached to itsdoorknob clanked. From the back roomcame a black-haired man with big teethand a long neck. “Yes?” he said.

Lina recognized him. He was the onewho’d given her the message for themayor on her very first day of work. Hisname was Hooper—no, Looper, that wasit.

“Do you have pencils for sale?” sheasked. It seemed doubtful. The shop’sshelves were empty except for a fewstacks of used paper.

Poppy squirmed on Lina’s back andwhimpered a little.

“Sometimes,” said Looper.

Poppy’s whimper became a wail.

“All right, you can get down,” Lina saidto her. She set her on the floor, where shetottered about unsteadily.

“What I’d like to see,” said Lina, “areyour colored pencils. If you have any.”

“We have a few,” said Looper. “Theyare somewhat expensive.” He smiled,showing his pushy teeth.

“Could I see them?” said Lina.

He went into the back room andreturned a moment later, carrying a smallbox, which he set down on the counter. He

took the lid off. Lina bent forward to look.

Inside the box were at least a dozencolored pencils—red, green, blue, yellow,purple, orange. They had never even beensharpened; their ends were flat. They haderasers. Lina’s heart gave a few fast beats.

“How much are they?” she said.

“Probably too much for you,” the mansaid.

“Probably not,” said Lina. “I have ajob.”

“Good, good,” the man said, smilingagain. “No need to take offense.” Hepicked up the yellow pencil and twirled itbetween his fingers. “Each pencil,” he

said, “five dollars.”

Five dollars! For seven, you could buya coat—it would be an old, patched coat,but still warm. “That’s too much,” Linasaid.

He shrugged and began to put the lidback on the box.

“But maybe . . .” Lina’s thoughts raced.“Let me look at them again.”

Once more the man lifted the lid andLina bent over the pencils. She picked oneup. It was painted a deep clear blue, andon its flat top was the blue dot of the lead.The pink eraser was held on by a shinymetal collar. So beautiful! I could buy just

one, Lina thought. Then I could save alittle more and buy a coat for Granny nextmonth.

“Make up your mind,” said the man. “Ihave other customers who are interested,if you aren’t.”

“All right. I’ll take one. No, wait.” Itwas like hunger, what she felt. It was thesame as when her hand sometimes seemedto reach out by itself to grab a piece offood. It was too strong to resist. “I’ll taketwo,” she said, and a faint, dazzly feelingcame over her at the thought of what shewas doing.

“Which two?” the man said.

There were more colors in that box ofpencils than in all of Ember. Ember’scolors were all so much the same—graybuildings, gray streets, black sky; even thecolors of people’s clothes were fadedfrom long use into mud green, and rust red,and gray-blue. But these colors—theywere as bright as the leaves and flowersin the greenhouse.

Lina’s hand hovered over the pencils.“The blue one,” she said. “And . . . theyellow one—no, the . . . the . . .”

The man made an impatient noise in theback of his throat.

“The green one,” said Lina. “I’ll takethe blue and the green.” She lifted them

out of the box. She took the money fromthe pocket of her coat and handed it to theman, and she put the pencils in her pocket.They were hers now; she felt a fierce,defiant joy. She turned to go, and that waswhen she saw that the baby was no longerin the store.

“Poppy!” she cried. She whirledaround. “Did you see my little sister goout?” she asked the man. “Did you seewhich way she went?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t notice,” he said.

Lina darted into the street and looked inboth directions. She saw lots of people,some children, but no Poppy. She stoppedan old woman. “Have you seen a little

girl, a baby, walking by herself? In agreen jacket, with a hood?” The oldwoman just stared at her with dull eyesand shook her head.

“Poppy!” Lina called. “Poppy!” Hervoice rose to a shout. Such a little babycouldn’t have gone far, she thought.Maybe down toward Greengate Square,where there were more people walkingaround. She began to run.

And then the lights flickered, andflickered again, and went out. Darknessslammed up in front of her like a wall. Shestumbled, caught herself, and stood still.She could see absolutely nothing.

Shouts of alarm came from up and

down the street, and then silence. Linastretched her arms out. Was she facing thestreet or a building? Terror swept throughher. I must just stand still, she thought. Thelights will come on again in a fewseconds, they always do. But she thoughtof Poppy alone in the blackness, and herlegs went weak. I must find her.

She took a step. When she didn’t bumpinto anything, she took another step, andthe fingers of her right hand crumpledagainst something hard. The wall of abuilding, she thought. Keeping her handagainst it, she turned left a little and tookanother step forward. Then suddenly herhand touched empty air. This would beDedlock Street. Or had she passedDedlock Street already? She couldn’t

keep the picture of the streets clear in hermind. The darkness seemed to fill not justthe city around her but the inside of herhead as well.

Heart pounding, she waited. Comeback, lights, she pleaded. Please comeback. She wanted to call out to Poppy, totell her to stand still, not to be afraid, shewould come for her soon. But the darknesspressed against her and she couldn’tsummon her voice. She could hardlybreathe. She wanted to claw the darknessaway from her eyes, as if it weresomeone’s hands.

Small sounds came from here and therearound her—a whimpering, a shuffling. Inthe distance someone called out

incoherently. How many minutes had goneby? The longest blackout ever had beenthree minutes and fourteen seconds. Surelythis was longer.

She could have endured it if she’d beenon her own. It was the thought of Poppy,lost, that she couldn’t stand—and lostbecause she had been paying moreattention to a box of pencils. Oh, she’dbeen selfish and greedy, and now she wasso, so sorry! She made herself takeanother step forward. But then she thought,What if I’m going away from Poppy? Shebegan to tremble, and she felt the sinkingand dissolving inside her that meant shewas going to cry. Her legs gave way likewet paper and she slid down until she wassitting on the street, with her head on her

knees. Trembling, her mind a wordlesswhirl of dread, she waited.

An endless time went by. A moan camefrom somewhere to the left. A doorslammed closed. Footsteps started, thenstopped. Into Lina’s mind floated thebeginning of the worst question: What ifthe lights never . . . ? She squeezed herarms around her knees and made thequestion stop. Lights come back, she saidto herself, Lights come back, come back.

And suddenly they did.

Lina sprang up. There was the streetagain, and people looking upward withtheir mouths hanging open. All around,people started crying or wailing or

grinning in relief. Then all at onceeveryone started to hurry, moving fasttoward the safety of home in case it shouldhappen again.

Lina ran toward Greengate Square,stopping everyone she passed. “Did yousee a little girl walking by herself justbefore the lights went out?” she asked.“Green jacket with a hood?” But no onewanted to listen to her.

On the Bee Street side of the squarestood a few people all talking at once andwaving their arms. Lina ran up to them andasked her question.

They stopped talking and stared at her.“How could we have seen anyone? The

lights were out,” said Nammy Proggs, atiny old woman whose back was so bentthat she had to twist her head sideways tolook up.

Lina said, “No, she wandered awaybefore the lights went out. She got awayfrom me. She may have come thisdirection.”

“You have to keep your eye on a baby,”Nammy Proggs scolded.

“Babies need watching,” said one of thewomen who’d been singing with theBelievers.

But someone else said, “Oh, a toddler?Green jacket?” and he walked over to an

open shop door and called, “You have thatbaby in there?” and through the door camesomeone leading Poppy by the hand.

Lina dashed to her and lifted her up.Poppy broke into loud wails. “You’re allright now,” said Lina, holding her tightly.“Don’t worry, sweetie. You were just losta moment, now you’re all right. I’ve gotyou, don’t worry.” When she looked up tothank the person who’d found her, she sawa face she recognized. It was Doon. Helooked the same as when she’d last seenhim, except that his hair was shaggier. Hehad on the same baggy brown jacket healways wore.

“She was marching up the street byherself,” he said. “No one knew who she

belonged to, so I took her into my father’sshop.”

“She belongs to me,” Lina said. “She’smy sister. I was so afraid when she waslost. I thought she might fall and hurtherself, or be knocked over, or . . .Anyway, thank you so much for rescuingher.”

“Anyone would have,” said Doon. Hefrowned and looked down at thepavement.

Poppy had calmed down and wascurled up against Lina’s chest with herthumb in her mouth. “And your job—howis it?” Lina asked. “The Pipeworks?”

Doon shrugged his shoulders. “Allright,” he said. “Interesting, anyway.”

She waited, but it seemed that was allhe was going to say. “Well, thank youagain,” she said. She hoisted Poppyaround to her back.

“Lucky for you Doon Harrow wasaround,” said Nammy Proggs, who’d beenwatching them with her sideways glare.“He’s a good-hearted boy. Anythingbreaks at my house, he fixes it.” Shehobbled after Lina, shaking a finger at her.“You’d better watch that baby morecarefully,” she called.

“You shouldn’t leave her alone,” theflute player added.

“I know,” said Lina. “You’re right.”

When she got home, she put the tiredbaby to bed in the bedroom they shared.Granny had been taking an afternoon napin the front room and hadn’t noticed theblackout at all. Lina told her that the lightshad gone out for a few minutes, but shedidn’t mention anything about Poppygetting lost.

Later, in her bedroom, with Poppyasleep, she took the two colored pencilsfrom her pocket. They were not quite asbeautiful as they had been. When she heldthem, she remembered the powerfulwanting she had felt in that dusty store,and the feeling of it was mixed up withfear and shame and darkness.

CHAPTER 6

The Box in the Closet

It was strange how people didn’t talkmuch about the blackout. Power failuresusually aroused lively discussion, withclumps of people collecting on cornersand saying to each other, “Where wereyou when it happened?” and “What’s thematter with the electricians, we shouldkick them out and get new ones,” and thatsort of thing. This time, it was just the

opposite. When Lina went to work thenext morning, the street was oddly silent.People walked quickly, their eyes on theground. Those who did stop to talk spokein low voices, then hurried on their way.

That day, Lina carried the samemessage twelve times. All the messengerswere carrying it. It was simply this, beingpassed from one person to another: Sevenminutes. The power failure had been morethan twice as long as any other so far.

Fear had settled over the city. Lina feltit like a cold chill. She understood nowthat Doon had been speaking the truth onAssignment Day. Ember was in gravedanger.

The next day a notice appeared on allthe city’s kiosks:

TOWN MEETING

ALL CITIZENS ARE REQUESTED TOASSEMBLE

IN HARKEN SQUARE AT 6 P.M.TOMORROW

TO RECEIVE IMPORTANTINFORMATION.

MAYOR LEMANDER COLE

What kind of important information?Lina wondered. Good news or bad? Shewas impatient to hear it.

The next day, people streamed intoHarken Square from all four directions,crowding together so close that eachperson hardly had room to move. Childrensat on the shoulders of fathers. Shortpeople tried to push toward the front. Linaspotted Lizzie and called a greeting to her.She saw Vindie Chance, too, who hadbrought her little brother. Lina haddecided to leave Poppy at home withGranny. There was too much danger oflosing her in a crowd like this.

The town clock began to strike. Sixvibrating bongs rang out, and a murmur ofanticipation swept through the crowd.People stood on tiptoe, craning to see. Thedoor of the Gathering Hall opened, and themayor came out, flanked by two guards.

One of the guards handed the mayor amegaphone, and the mayor began to speak.His voice came through the megaphoneboth blurry and crackly.

“People of Ember,” he said. He waited.The crowd fell silent, straining to hear.

“People of Ember,” the mayor saidagain. He looked from side to side. Thelight glinted off his bald head. “Our cityhas experienced some slightdiffcushlaylie. Times like this requiregresh peshn frush all.”

“What did he say?” people whisperedurgently. “What did he say? I couldn’thear him.”

“Slight difficulties,” someone said.“Requires great patience from us all.”

“But I stand here today,” the mayorwent on, “to reassure you. Difficult timeswill pass. We are mayg effn effuff.”

“What?” came the sharp whisper.“What did he say?”

Those near the front passed word back.“Making every effort,” they said. “Everyeffort.”

“Louder!” someone shouted.

The mayor’s voice blared through themegaphone louder but even less clear.“Wursh poshuling!” he said. “Pank.Mushen pank. No rrrshen pank.”

“We can’t hear you!” someone elseyelled. Lina felt a stirring around her, amuttering. Someone pushed against herback, forcing her forward.

“He said we mustn’t panic,” someonesaid. “He said panic is the worst possiblething. No reason to panic, he said.”

On the steps of the Gathering Hall, thetwo guards moved a little closer to themayor. He raised the megaphone andspoke again.

“Slooshns!” he bellowed.“Arbingfoun!”

“Solutions,” the people in front calledto the people in back. “Solutions are being

found, he said.”

“What solutions?” called a womanstanding near Lina. People elsewhere inthe crowd echoed what the woman hadsaid. “What solutions? What solutions?”Their cry became a chorus, louder andlouder.

Again Lina felt the pressure frombehind as people moved forward towardthe Gathering Hall. Jostling arms pokedher, bulky bodies bumped her and crushedher. Her heart began to pound. I have toget out of here! she thought.

She started ducking beneath arms anddarting into whatever space she couldfind, making her way toward the rear of

the crowd. Noise was rising everywhere.The mayor’s voice kept coming in blastsof incomprehensible sound, and thepeople in the crowd were either shoutingangrily or yelping in fear of beingsquashed. Someone stepped on Lina’sfoot, and her scarf was half yanked off.For a few seconds she was afraid she wasgoing to be trampled. But at last shestruggled free and ran up onto the steps ofthe school. From there she saw that thetwo guards were hustling the mayor backthrough the door of the Gathering Hall.The crowd roared, and a few peoplestarted hurling whatever they could find—pebbles, garbage, crumpled paper, eventheir own hats.

At the other side of the square, Doon

and his father battled their way downGilly Street. “Move fast,” his father said.“We don’t want to be caught up in thiscrowd.” They crossed Broad Street andtook the long way home, through thenarrow lanes behind the school.

“Father,” said Doon as they hurriedalong, “the mayor is a fool, don’t youthink?”

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 hereally has a solution, he should have toldus. He shouldn’t pretend he has solutionswhen he doesn’t.”

Doon’s father smiled. “That would be agood start,” he agreed.

“It makes me so angry, the way he talksto us,” said Doon.

Doon’s father put a hand on Doon’sback and steered him toward the corner.“A great many things make you angrylately,” he said.

“For good reason,” said Doon.

“Maybe. The trouble with anger is, itgets hold of you. And then you aren’t themaster of yourself any-more. Anger is.”

Doon walked on silently. Inwardly, hegroaned. He knew what his father wasgoing to say, and he didn’t feel like

hearing it.

“And when anger is the boss, you get—”

“I know,” said Doon. “Unintendedconsequences.”

“That’s right. Like hitting your father inthe 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 ofhis jacket and scowled at the sidewalk.Father doesn’t even have a temper, hethought. He’s as mild as a glass of water.

He can’t possibly understand.

Lina was running. She’d alreadydismissed the mayor’s speech from hermind. She sped by people on OtterwillStreet going back to open their stores andoverheard snatches of conversation as shepassed. “Expects us to believe . . . ,” saidone voice. “He’s just trying to keep usquiet,” said another. “. . . Heading fordisaster . . . ,” said a third. All the voicesshook with anger and fear.

Lina didn’t want to think about it. Herfeet slapped the stones of the street, herhair flew out behind her. She would gohome, she would make hot potato soup for

the three of them, and then she would takeout her new pencils and draw.

She climbed the stairs next to the yarnshop two at a time and burst through thedoor of the apartment. Something was onthe floor just in front of her feet, and shetripped and fell down hard on her handsand knees. She stared. By the open closetdoor was a great pile of coats and bootsand bags and boxes, their contents allspilled out and tangled up. A thumping andrattling came from inside the closet.

“Granny?”

More thumps. Granny’s head pokedaround the edge of the closet door. “Ishould have looked in here a long time

ago,” she said. “This is where it wouldbe, of course. You should see what’s inhere!”

Lina gazed around at the incrediblemess. Into this closet had been packed thejunk of decades, jammed into cardboardboxes, stuffed into old pillowcases andlaundry bags, and heaped up in a pile sodense that you couldn’t pull one thing outwithout pulling all the rest with it. Theshelf above the coatrack was just ascrammed as the space below, mostly withold clothes that were full of moth holesand eaten away by mildew. When she wasyounger, Lina had tried exploring in thiscloset, but she never got far. She’d pullout an old scarf that would fall to piecesin her hands, or open a box that proved to

be full of bent carpet tacks. Soon shewould shove everything back in and giveup.

But Granny was really doing the jobright. She grunted and panted as shewrenched free the closet’s packed-in stuffand tossed it behind her. It was clear thatshe was having fun. As Lina watched, abag 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 voicefrom the depths of the closet. “She’s beenhelping me.”

Lina got up from the floor and lookedaround. She soon spotted Poppy. She wassitting behind the couch, in the midst of theclutter. In front of her was a small boxmade of something dark and shiny. It had ahinged lid, and the lid was open, hangingbackward.

“Poppy,” said Lina, “let me see that.”She stooped down. There was some sortof mechanism on the edge of the lid—akind of lock, Lina thought. The box wasbeautifully made, but it had been damaged.There were dents and scratches in itshard, smooth surface. It looked as if it hadbeen a container for something valuable.But the box was empty now. Lina picked itup and felt around in it to be sure. Therewas nothing inside at all.

“Was there something in this box,Poppy? Did you find something in here?”But Poppy only chortled happily. She waschewing on some crumpled paper. Shehad paper in her hands, too, and wastearing it. Shreds of paper were strewnaround her. Lina picked one up. It wascovered with small, perfect printing.

CHAPTER 7

A Message Full of Holes

It was the printing that sparked Lina’scuriosity. It was not handwriting, or if itwas, it was the neatest, most regularhandwriting she had ever seen. It wasmore like the letters printed on cans offood or along the sides of pencils.Something other than a hand had writtenthose words. A machine of some kind.This was the writing of the Builders. And

so this piece of paper must have comefrom the Builders, too.

Lina gathered up the scraps of paperfrom the floor and gently pried openPoppy’s fists and mouth to extract thecrumpled wads. She put all this into thedented box and carried it to her room.

That evening, Granny and the babywere both asleep by a little after eight.Lina had nearly an hour to examine herdiscovery. She took the scraps from thebox and spread them out on the table inher bedroom. The paper was thick; at eachtorn edge was a fringe of tangled fibers.There were many little pieces and one bigpiece with so many holes that it was likelace. The chewed bits were beyond saving

—they were almost a paste. But Linaspread out the big lacy piece and saw thaton one edge of it, which was still intact,was a column of numbers. She collectedall the dry scraps and puzzled over themfor a long time, trying to figure out wherethey fit into the larger piece. When she hadarranged them as well as she could, thiswas what she had:

Lina could make sense of only a fewwords here and there. Even so, somethingabout this tattered document was exciting.It was not like anything Lina had everseen. She stared at the very first word atthe top of the page, “Instru,” and shesuddenly knew what it must be. She’dseen it often enough at school. It had to bethe beginning of “Instructions.”

Her heart began knocking at her chestlike a fist at a door. She had foundsomething. She had found somethingstrange and important: instructions forsomething. But for what? And howterrible that Poppy had found it first andruined it!

It occurred to Lina that this might bewhat her grandmother had been talkingabout for so long. Perhaps this was thething that was lost. But of course notknowing what had been lost, Grannywouldn’t have recognized the box whenshe saw it. She would have tossed it out ofthe closet just as carelessly as she tossedeverything else. Anyhow, it didn’t matterwhether 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 ofpaper down. They were so light that abreath could scatter them. She had a littlebit of glue left in an old bottle.Painstakingly, she put a dot of glue oneach of the scraps and pressed each one

into its place on one of her precious fewremaining whole sheets of paper. She putanother piece of paper on top of this andset the box on top to flatten everythingdown. Just as she finished, the lights wentout—she’d forgotten to keep an eye on theclock on her windowsill. She had toundress and get in bed in the dark.

She was too excited to sleep much thatnight. Her mind whirled around, trying tothink what the message she’d found mightbe. She felt sure it had something to dowith saving the city. What if theseinstructions were for fixing the electricity?Or for making a movable light? Thatwould change everything.

When the lights went on in the morning,

she had a few minutes before Poppywakened to work at the puzzle. But therewere so many words missing! How couldshe ever make sense of such a jumble? Asshe pulled on her red jacket and tied thefrayed and knotted laces of her shoes, shethought about it. If the paper wasimportant, she shouldn’t keep it to herself.But who could she tell? Maybe themessenger captain. She would know aboutthings like official documents.

“Captain Fleery,” Lina said when shegot to work, “would you have time tocome home with me later on today? Justfor a minute? I found something I’d like toshow you.”

“Found what?” asked Captain Fleery.

“Some paper with writing on it. I thinkit might be important.”

Captain Fleery raised her skinnyeyebrows. “What do you mean,important?”

“Well, I’m not sure. Maybe it isn’t. Butwould you look at it anyway?”

So that evening Captain Fleery camehome with Lina and peered at the bits ofpaper. She bent down and inspected thewriting. “Foll?” she said. “Acks? Rem?Ont? What kind of words are those?”

“I don’t know,” said Lina. “The wordsare all broken up because Poppy chewedon them.”

“I see,” said Captain Fleery. She pokedat the paper. “This looks like instructionsfor something,” she said. “A recipe, Isuppose. ‘Small steel pan’—that would bewhat you use to cook it with.”

“But who would have such small,perfect writing?”

“That’s the way they wrote in the olddays,” said Captain Fleery. “It could be avery old recipe.”

“But then why would it have been keptin this beautiful box?” She showed the boxto Captain Fleery. “I think it was lockedup in here for some reason, and youwouldn’t lock up something unless it wasimportant. . . .”

But Captain Fleery didn’t seem to haveheard her. “Or,” she said, “it could be aschool exercise. Someone’s homeworkthat never got turned in.”

“But have you ever seen paper likethis? Doesn’t it look as if it came fromsomeplace else—not here?”

Captain Fleery straightened up. A lookof puzzlement came over her face. “Thereis nowhere but here,” she said. She putboth her hands on Lina’s shoulders. “You,my dear, are letting your imagination runaway with you. Are you overtired, Lina?Are you anxious? I could put you on shortdays for a while.”

“No,” said Lina, “I’m fine. I am. But I

don’t know what to do about . . .” Shegestured toward the paper.

“Never mind,” said Captain Fleery.“Don’t think about it. Throw it away.You’re worrying too much—I know, Iknow, we all are, there’s so much toworry about, but we mustn’t let it unsettleus.” She gave Lina a long look. Her eyeswere the color of dishwater. “Help iscoming,” she said.

“Help?”

“Yes. Coming to save us.”

“Who is?”

Captain Fleery bent down and loweredher voice, as if telling a secret. “Who built

our city, dear?”

“The Builders,” said Lina.

“That’s right. And the Builders willcome again and show us the way.”

“They will?”

“Very soon,” said Captain Fleery.

“How do you know?”

Captain Fleery straightened up againand clapped a hand over her heart. “Iknow it here,” she said. “And I have seenit in a dream. So have all of us, all theBelievers.”

So that’s what they believe, Lina

thought—and Captain Fleery is one ofthem. She wondered how the captaincould feel so sure about it, just becauseshe’d seen it in a dream. Maybe it was thesame for her as the sparkling city was forLina—she wanted it to be true.

The captain’s face lit up. “I know whatyou must do, dear—come to one of ourmeetings. It would lift your heart. Wesing.”

“Oh,” said Lina, “thank you, but I’m notsure I . . . maybe sometime . . .” She triedto be polite, but she knew she wouldn’tgo. She didn’t want to stand aroundwaiting for the Builders. She had otherthings to do.

Captain Fleery patted her arm. “Nopressure, dear,” she said. “If you changeyour mind, let me know. But take myadvice: forget about your little puzzleproject. Lie down and take a nap. Clearsthe mind.” Her narrow face beamedkindness down at Lina. “You taketomorrow off,” she said. She raised ahand goodbye and went down the stairs.

Lina took advantage of her day off to goto the Supply Depot to see Lizzie Bisco.Lizzie was quick and smart. She mighthave some good ideas.

At the Supply Depot, crowds ofshopkeepers stood in long disorderly linesthat stretched out the door. They pushedand jostled and snapped impatiently at

each other. Lina joined them, but theyseemed so frantic that they frightened her alittle. They must be very sure now that thesupplies are running out, she thought, andthey’re determined to get what they canbefore it’s too late.

When she got close to the head of theline, she heard the same conversationseveral times. “Sorry,” the clerk wouldsay when a shopkeeper asked for tenpackets of sewing needles, or a dozendrinking glasses, or twenty packages oflight bulbs. “There’s a severe shortage ofthat item. You can have only one.” Or elsethe clerk would say, “Sorry. We’re out ofthat entirely.” “Forever?” “Forever.”

Lina knew that it hadn’t always been

this way. When Ember was a young city,the storerooms were full. They heldeverything the citizens could want—somuch it seemed the supplies would neverrun out. Lina’s grandmother had told herthat schoolchildren were given a tour ofthe storerooms as part of their education.They took an elevator from the street levelto a long, curving tunnel with doors onboth sides and other tunnels branching offit. The guide led the tour down the longpassages, opening one door after another.“This area,” he would say, “is CannedGoods. Next we come to School Supplies.And around this bend we haveKitchenware. Next come CarpentryTools.” At each door, the childrencrowded against each other to see.

“Every room had something different,”Granny told Lina. “Boxes of toothpaste inone room. Bottles of cooking oil. Bars ofsoap. Boxes of pills—there were twentyrooms just for vitamin pills. One roomwas stacked with hundreds of cans offruit. There was something calledpineapple, I remember that oneespecially.”

“What was pineapple?” asked Lina.

“It was yellow and sweet,” said Grannywith a dreamy look in her eyes. “I had itfour times before we ran out of it.”

But these tours had been discontinuedlong before Lina was born. Thestorerooms, people said, were no longer a

pleasure to look at. Their dusty shelvesstood mostly empty now. It was rumoredthat in some rooms nothing was left at all.A child seeing the rooms where powderedmilk had been stored, or the rooms thatstored bandages or socks or pins ornotebooks, or—most of all—the dozens ofrooms that had once held thousands oflight bulbs—would not feel, as earliergenerations of children had, that Emberwas endlessly rich. Today’s children, ifthey were to tour the storerooms, wouldfeel afraid.

Thinking about all this, Lina waited inthe line of people at Lizzie’s station.When she got to the front, she leanedforward with her elbows on the counterand whispered, “Lizzie, can you meet me

after you’re through with work? I’ll waitfor you right outside the door.” Lizzienodded eagerly.

At four o’clock, Lizzie came trotting outthe office door. Lina said to her, “Willyou come home with me for a minute? Iwant to show you something.”

“Sure,” said Lizzie, and as they walked,Lizzie talked. “My wrist is killing mefrom writing all day,” she said. “You haveto write in the tiniest letters to save paper,so I get a terrible cramp in my wrist andmy fingers. And people are so rude.Today they were worse than ever. I saidto some guy, ‘You can’t have fifteen cansof corn, you can only have three,’ and hesaid, ‘Look, don’t tell me that, I saw

plenty of cans in the Pott Street market justyesterday,’ and I said, ‘Well, that’s whythere aren’t so many left today,’ and hesaid, ‘Don’t be smart with me, carrot-head.’ But what am I supposed to do? Ican’t make cans of corn out of thin air.”

They passed through Harken Square,around the Gathering Hall, and downRoving Street, where three of thefloodlights were out, making a cave ofshadow.

“Lizzie,” said Lina, interrupting theflow of talk. “Is it true about light bulbs?”

“Is what true?”

“That there aren’t very many left?”

Lizzie shrugged. “I don’t know. Theyhardly ever let us go downstairs into thestorerooms. All we see are the reports thecarriers turn in—how many forks in Room1146, how many doorknobs in 3291, howmany children’s shoes in 2249 . . .”

“But when you see the report for thelight bulb rooms, what does it say?”

“I never get to see that one,” saidLizzie. “That one, and a few other oneslike the vitamin report, only a few peoplecan see.”

“Who?”

“Oh, the mayor, and of course old FlabFace.” Lina looked at her questioningly.

“You know, Farlo Batten, the head of thestorerooms. He is so mean, Lina, youwould just hate him. He counts us late ifwe come in even two minutes after eight,and he looks over our shoulders as we’rewriting, which is awful because he hasbad breath, and he runs his finger overwhat we’ve written and says, ‘This wordis illegible, that word is illegible, thesenumbers are illegible.’ It’s his favoriteword, illegible.”

When they came to Lina’s street, Linaducked her head in the door of the yarnshop and said hello to Granny, and thenthey climbed the stairs to the apartment.Lizzie was talking about how hard it wasto stand up all day, how it made her kneesache, how her shoes pinched her feet. She

stopped talking long enough to say hello toEvaleen Murdo, who was sitting by thewindow with Poppy on her lap, and thenshe began again as Lina led her into herbedroom.

“Lina, where were you when the bigblackout came?” she asked, but she wentright on without waiting for an answer. “Iwas at home, luckily. But it was scary,wasn’t it?”

Lina nodded. She didn’t want to talkabout what had happened that day.

“I hate those blackouts,” Lizzie wenton. “People say there’s going to be moreand 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 wholenew way to do my hair.”

It seemed to Lina that Lizzie was like aclock wound too tightly and running toofast. She’d always been a little this way,but today she was more so than ever. Hergaze skipped from one spot to another, herfingers twiddled with the edge of her shirt.She looked paler than usual, too. Herfreckles stood out like little smudges ofdirt on her nose.

“Lizzie,” said Lina, beckoning towardthe table in the corner of her room. “I wantto 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. Iwould have been so good at it. My job isso boring.”

Lina turned and looked at her. “Isn’tthere anything you like about it?”

Lizzie pursed her lips in a tiny smileand looked sideways at Lina. “There’sone thing,” she said.

“What?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.”

“Oh,” said Lina. Then you shouldn’thave 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. “Butwhat I wanted to talk to you about waswhat I found yesterday. It’s this.”

She lifted the box away and took up thepiece of paper covering the patched-together document. Lizzie gave it a quicklook. “Is it a message someone gave you?That got torn up?”

“No, it was in our closet. Poppy waschewing on it, that’s why it’s torn up. Butlook at the writing on it. Isn’t it strange?”

“Uh-huh,” said Lizzie. “You know whohas beau-tiful handwriting? Myla Bone,who works with me. You should see it,

it’s got curly tails on the y’s and the g’s,and fancy loops on the capital letters. Ofcourse Flab Face hates it, he says it’sillegible. . . .”

Lina slid the piece of paper back overthe pasted-down scraps. She wonderedwhy she had thought Lizzie would beinterested in what she’d found. She’dalways had fun with Lizzie. But their funwas usually with games—hide-and-seek,tag, the kinds of games where you run andclimb. Lizzie never had been muchinterested in anything that was written onpaper.

So Lina quietly put the document backin its place, and she sat down with Lizzieon the floor. She listened and listened

until Lizzie’s chatter ran down. “I’d bettergo,” Lizzie said. “It was fun to see you,Lina. I miss you.” She stood up. Shefluffed her hair. “What was it you wantedto show me? Oh, yes—the fancy writing.Really nice. Lucky you to find it. Comeand see me again soon, all right? I get sobored in that office.”

Lina made beet soup for dinner thatnight, and Poppy spilled hers and made ared lake on the table. Granny stared intoher bowl, stirring and stirring the soupwith her spoon, but she didn’t eat. Shedidn’t feel quite right, she told Lina; aftera while she wandered off to bed. Linacleaned up the kitchen quickly. As soon asher chores were out of the way, she couldget back to studying her document. She

washed Poppy’s clothes. She sewed onthe buttons that had come off hermessenger jacket. She picked up the ragsand sacks and boxes and bags that Grannyhad tossed out of the closet. And by thetime she had done all this and put Poppyto bed, she still had almost half an hour tostudy the fragments of paper.

She sat down at her desk and uncoveredthe document. With her elbows on eitherside of it and her chin resting in her hands,she pored over it. Though Lizzie andCaptain Fleery had paid it no attention,Lina still thought this torn-up page must beimportant. Why else would it have been insuch a cleverly fastened box? Maybe sheshould show it to the mayor, she thoughtreluctantly. She didn’t like the mayor. She

didn’t trust him, either. But if thisdocument was important to the future ofthe city, he was the one who should knowabout it. Of course, she couldn’t ask themayor to come to her house. She picturedhim puffing up the stairs, squeezingthrough the door, looking disapprovinglyat the clutter in their house, recoiling fromPoppy’s sticky hands—no, it wouldn’t do.

But she didn’t want to take her carefullypatched- together document to theGathering Hall, either. It was just toofragile. The best thing to do, she decided,was to write the mayor a note. She settleddown to do this.

She found a fairly unspoiled half-pieceof paper, and, using a plain pencil (she

wasn’t going to waste her colored ones onthe mayor), she wrote:

Dear Mayor Cole,

I have discovered a documentthat was in the closet. It isInstructions for something. I believeit is important because it is writtenin very old printing. Unfortunatelyit got chewed up by my sister, so itis not all there. But you can stillread some bits of it, such as:

marked with E

find door of bo

small steel pan

I will show you this document ifyou want to see it.

She folded the note in half and wrote“Mayor Cole” on the front. On her way towork the next morning, she took it to the

Gathering Hall. No one was sitting at theguard’s desk, so Lina left the note there,placed so that the guard would see it whenhe arrived. Then, feeling that she had doneher duty, she went off to her station.

Several days went by. The messages Linacarried were full of worry and fear. “Doyou have any extra Baby Drink? I can’tfind it at the store.” “Have you heard whatthey’re saying about the generator?” “Wecan’t come tonight—Grandpa B. won’t getout of bed.”

Every day when she got home fromwork, Lina asked Granny, “Did a messagecome 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 tiredof waiting. If the mayor wasn’t interestedin what she’d found, too bad for him. Shewas interested. She would figure it outherself.

Twice during the week, when Poppyand Granny were both asleep, she’d had alittle free time. She’d spent this timemaking a copy of the document, in caseanything happened to the fragile original.It had taken her a long time. She used oneof her few remaining pieces of paper—anold label, slightly torn, from a can of peas.The copy was as accurate as she couldmake it, with the missing bits between theletters carefully indicated as dashes. She

had tucked it under the mattress of her bedfor safekeeping.

Now she finally had a whole freeevening. Poppy and Granny were bothasleep, and the apartment was tidy. Linasat down at her table and uncovered thepatched-together document. She tied backher hair so it wouldn’t keep falling in herface, and she put a piece of paper next toher—blank except for a little bit ofPoppy’s scribbling—to write down whatshe decoded.

She started with the title. The first wordshe’d already figured out. It had to be“Instructions.” The next word could be“for.” Then came “Egres”—she wasn’tsure about that. Maybe it was someone’s

name. Egresman. Egreston. “Instructionsfor Egreston.” She decided to call it “TheInstructions” for short.

She went on to the first line. “This officdoc” probably meant “This officialdocument.” Maybe “secur” meant“secure.” Or “security.” Then there werethe words “period” and “ears” and “city.”But after that, so much was missing.

She studied the line next to the number1. Exp. That could be Expect or Expert orso many things. She moved on to riv. Thatmight be part of a word like “drive” or“strive.” What could ip and ork possiblybe? They were so close together, maybethey were part of one word. What endedwith -ip? Whip, Lina thought. Trip. Slip.

What ended with -ork? Fork came to mindimmediately. Tripfork. Slipfork. Nothingshe could think of made sense.

Maybe it wasn’t fork. What else endedi n -ork? Starting at the beginning of thealphabet, Lina went through all the wordsthat rhymed with fork. Most of them werenonsense: bork, dork, gork, hork, jork. . .. This isn’t going to work, she thoughtmiserably. Oh . . . work! The word couldbe work.

Then what would the first part be?Tripwork? Flipwork? But maybe therewas a letter between the p and the w.Dipswork? Pipswork?

Suddenly it came to her. Pipeworks.

Pipeworks! That had to be it. Something inthis message was about the Pipeworks!

Lina looked back at Exp and riv. Riv!That could be river! Rapidly she ran hereyes down the page. In line 3, she sawiverb nk—that looked like riverbank. Theword door jumped out at her from line 4,whole on its scrap of paper. Lina took aquick breath. A door! What if it was theone she’d wished for, the one that led tothe other city? Maybe her city was realafter all, and these were instructions forfinding it!

She wanted to leap from her chair andshout. The message had something to dowith 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, andhis eyes looking out searchingly frombeneath his dark eyebrows. She picturedhow he used to bend over his work atschool, holding his pencil in a hard grip,and how, during free time, he was usuallyoff by himself in a corner studying a mothor a worm or a taken-apart clock. Thatwas one thing, at least, that she liked aboutDoon: he was curious. He paid attentionto things.

And he cared about things, too. Sheremembered how he’d been onAssignment Day, so furious at the mayor,so eager to trade his good job for her badone so he could help save the city. And

he’d taken Poppy inside his father’s shopon the day of the blackout, so she wouldn’tbe afraid.

Why had she stopped being friends withDoon? She vaguely recalled the incidentof the light pole. It seemed silly now, andlong ago. The more she thought aboutDoon, the more it seemed he was the veryperson—the only person—who might beinterested in what she had found.

She placed the plain sheet of paperover the Instructions and put the box ontop. I’ll go and find Doon, she thought.Tomorrow was Thursday—their day off.She would find him tomorrow and ask forhis help.

CHAPTER 8

Explorations

Doon had taken to wandering thePipeworks alone. He would go to hisassigned tunnel and do his job quickly—once you got good at using your wrenchesand brushes and tubes of glue, it wasn’thard. Most of the workers did their jobsquickly and then gathered in little groupsto play cards or have salamander races orjust talk and sleep.

But Doon didn’t care about any of that.If he was going to be stuck in thePipeworks, he would at least not wastethe time he had. Since the long blackout,everything seemed more urgent than ever.Whenever the lights flickered, he wasafraid the ancient generator might beshuddering to a permanent halt.

So while the others lounged around, heheaded out toward the edges of thePipeworks to see what he could see. “Payattention,” his father had said, and that’swhat he did. He followed his map whenhe could, but in some places the map wasunclear. There were even tunnels thatdidn’t show up on the map at all. To keepfrom getting lost, he dropped a trail ofthings as he walked—washers, bolts,

pieces of wire, whatever he had in histool belt—and then he picked them up onhis way back.

His father had been at least a little bitright: there were interesting things in thePipeworks if you paid attention. Alreadyhe had found three new crawlingcreatures: a black beetle the size of apinhead, a moth with furry wings, and thebest of all, a creature with a soft, shinybody and a small, spiral-patterned shellon its back. Just after he found this one,while he was sitting on the floor watchingin fascination as the creature crept up hisarm, a couple of workers came by andsaw him. They burst into laughter. “It’sbug-boy!” one of them said. “He’scollecting bugs for his lunch!”

Enraged, Doon jumped up and shoutedat them. His sudden motion made thecreature fall off his arm to the ground, andDoon felt a crunch beneath his foot. Thelaughing workers didn’t notice—theytossed a few more taunts at him andwalked on—but Doon knew instantly whathe’d done. He lifted his foot and looked atthe squashed mess underneath.

Unintended consequences, he thoughtmiserably. He was angry at his anger, theway it surged up and took over. He pickedthe bits of shell and goo off the sole of hisboot and thought, I’m sorry. I didn’t meanto hurt you.

In the days that followed, Doon wentfarther and farther into the Pipeworks,

holding on to the hope that he might findsomething not only interesting butimportant. But what he found didn’t seemimportant at all. Once he came upon anold pair of pliers that someone haddropped and left behind. Twice he found acoin. He discovered a supply closet thatappeared to have been completelyforgotten, but all it held were some boxesof plugs and washers and a rusty boxcontaining shriveled bits of what mustonce have been someone’s lunch.

He found another supply closet at thefar south end of the Pipeworks—at least,he assumed that’s what it was. It was atthe end of a tunnel with a rope strungacross it; a sign hanging from the ropesaid, “Caved In. No Entry.” Doon entered

anyway, ducking under the rope. He foundno sign of a cave-in, but there were nolights. He groped his way forward fortwenty steps or so, and there the tunnelended in a securely locked door—hecouldn’t see it, but he felt it. He retracedhis steps, ducked back under the ropeagain, and walked on. A short distanceaway, he found a hatch in the ceiling of thetunnel—a square wooden panel that mustlead, he thought, up into the storerooms. Ifhe’d had something to stand on, he couldhave reached it and tried to open it, but itwas about a foot above his upstretchedhand. Probably it was locked anyhow. Hewondered if the Builders had usedopenings like this one during theconstruction of the city to get more easilyfrom one place to another.

On days when his job was near themain tunnel, he sometimes walked alongthe river after he’d finished working. Hestayed away from the east end, where thegenerator was; he didn’t want to thinkabout the generator. Instead, he went theother way, toward the place where theriver rushed out of the Pipeworks. Thepath grew less level at this end, and lesssmooth. The river here was bordered withclumps of wrinkled rock that seemed togrow out of the ground like fungus. Doonliked to sit on these clumps, running hisfingers along the strange creases andcrevices that must have been carvedsomehow by running or dripping water. Insome places there were grooves thatlooked almost like writing.

But as for things of importance, Doonfound none. It seemed that the Pipeworkswas no use after all to a person whowanted to save the city. The generator washopeless. He would never understandelectricity. He used to think he could useelectricity to invent a movable light, if hestudied hard enough. He took apart lightbulbs; he took apart the electric outlets onthe wall to see how the wires insidewound together and in the process, got apainful, vibrating jolt all through his body.But when he tried to wind wires of hisown together in exactly the same way,nothing happened. It was what camethrough the wires that made the light, hefinally understood, and he had no ideawhat that was.

Now he could see only two courses ofaction: he could give up and do nothing, orhe could start to work on a different kindof movable light.

Doon didn’t want to give up. So on hisday off one Thursday, he went to theEmber Library to look up fire.

The library occupied an entire buildingon one side of Bilbollio Square. Its doorwas at the end of a short passage in themiddle of the building. Doon went downthe passage, pushed open the door, andwalked in. No one was there except forthe librarian, ancient Edward Pocket, whosat behind his desk writing something witha tiny pencil clutched in his gnarled hand.The library had two big rooms, one for

fiction, which was stories people made upout of their imaginations, and the other forfact, which was information about the realworld. The walls of both rooms werelined with shelves, and on most of theshelves were hundreds of packets ofpages. Each packet was held together withstout loops of string. The packets leanedagainst each other at angles and lay inuntidy stacks. Some were thick, and somewere so slim that only a clip was neededto hold them together. The pages of theoldest packets were yellowed andwarped, and their edges were unevenrows of ripples.

These were the books of Ember, writtenover the years by its citizens. Theycontained in their close-written pages

much that was imagined and everythingthat was known.

Edward Pocket looked up and noddedbriefly at Doon, one of his most frequentvisitors. Doon nodded back. He went intothe fact room, to the section of shelveslabeled “F.” The books were arranged bysubject, but even so, it wasn’t easy to findwhat you wanted. A book about moths, forinstance, might be under “M” for moths, or“I” for insects, or “B” for bugs. It mighteven be under “F” for flying things.Usually you had to browse through theentire library to make sure you’d found allthe books on one subject. But since he waslooking for “fire,” he thought he might aswell start with “F.”

Fire was rare in Ember. When therewas a fire, it was because there had beenan accident—someone had left adishtowel too close to an electric burneron a stove, or a cord had frayed and aspark had flown out and ignited curtains.Then the citizens would rush in withbuckets of water, and the fire was quicklydrowned. But it was, of course, possibleto start a fire on purpose. You could holda sliver of wood to the stove burner untilit burst into flame, and then for a momentit would flare brightly, giving off orangelight.

The trick was to find a way to make thelight last. If you had a light that wouldkeep going, you could go out into theUnknown Regions and see what was there.

Finding a way to explore the UnknownRegions was the only thing Doon couldthink of to do.

He took down a book from the “F”shelf. Fungus, it was called. He put itback. The next book was called How toRepair Furniture. He put that back, too.He went through Foot Diseases, Fun withString, Coping with Failure, and CannedFruit Recipes before he finally found abook called All About Fire. He sat downat one of the library’s square tables toread it.

But the person who had written thebook knew no more about fire than Doon.Mostly the book described the dangers offire. A long section of it was about a

building in Winifred Square that hadcaught fire forty years ago, and how all itsdoors and all its furniture had burned upand smoke had filled the air for days.Another part was about what to do if youroven caught on fire.

Doon closed the book and sighed. Itwas useless. He could write a better bookthan that. He got up and wanderedrestlessly around the library. Sometimesyou could find useful things just bychoosing randomly from the shelves. Hehad done this many times—just reachedout and grabbed something—in the hopethat by accident he might come upon thevery piece of information he needed. Itwould be something that another personhad written down without understanding

its significance, just a sentence or two thatwould be like a flash of light in Doon’smind, fitting together with things healready knew to make a solution toeverything.

Although he’d often found somethinginteresting in these searches, he’d neverfound anything important. Today was nodifferent. He did come across a collectioncalled Mysterious Words from the Past,which he read for a while. It was aboutwords and phrases so old that theirmeanings had been forgotten. He read afew pages.

Heavens above

Indicates surprise. What“heavens” means is unclear. Itmight be another word for“floodlight.”

Hogwash

Means “nonsense,” though noone knows what a “hog” is orwhy one would wash it.

Batting a thousand

Indicates great success. Thismight possibly refer to killingbugs.

All in the same boat

Means “all in the samepredicament.” The meaning of“boat” is unknown.

Interesting, but not useful. He put thebook back on the shelf and was about toleave when the door of the library opened,and Lina Mayfleet came in.

CHAPTER 9

The Door in the Roped-OffTunnel

Lina saw Doon immediately—he wasreaching up to set a book back on its shelf.He saw her, too, when he turned around,and his dark eyebrows flew up in surpriseas she hurried over to him.

“Your father told me you were here,”

she said. “Doon, I found something. I wantto show it to you.”

“To me? Why?”

“I think it’s important. It has to do withthe Pipeworks. Will you come to myhouse and see it?”

“Now?” Doon asked.

Lina nodded.

Doon grabbed his old brown jacket andfollowed Lina out of the library andacross the city to Quillium Square.

Granny’s shop was closed and darkwhen they arrived, and so Lina wassurprised when they went upstairs and

saw Evaleen Murdo sitting in her place bythe window. “Your grandmother’s in herbedroom,” Mrs. Murdo said. “She didn’tfeel well, so she asked me to come.”

Poppy was sitting on the floor, banginga spoon on the leg of a chair.

Lina introduced Doon, then led him intothe room she shared with Poppy. Helooked around, and Lina felt suddenlyself-conscious, seeing her room throughhis eyes. It was a small room with a lotcrammed into it. There were two narrowbeds, a very small table that fit into acorner, and a four-legged stool to sit on.On the wall, clothes hung from hooks, andmore clothes were strewn untidily on thefloor. Beneath the window was a brown

stain made by the bean seed in its pot onthe windowsill. Lina had been watering itevery night because she’d promised Claryshe would, but it was still nothing but dirt,flat and unpromising.

A couple of shelves beside the windowheld Lina’s important possessions: thepieces of paper she’d collected fordrawing, her pencils, a scarf with a silverthread woven through it. On the parts ofthe 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,” Linasaid, feeling slightly embarrassed.“They’re pictures of . . . another city.”

“Oh. You made it up.”

“Sort of. Sometimes I dream of it.”

“I draw, too,” said Doon. “But I drawother kinds of things.”

“Like what?”

“Mostly insects,” said Doon. He toldher about his collection of drawings andthe worm he was currently observing.

To Lina, this sounded far lessinteresting than an undiscovered city, butshe didn’t say so. She led Doon over tothe table. “Here’s what I want to showyou,” she said. She lifted the metal box.Before she could reach for the papersunderneath, Doon took the box and started

examining it.

“Where did this come from?” he asked.

“It was in the closet,” Lina said. Shetold him about Granny’s wild search andabout finding the box with its lid open andPoppy with paper in her mouth. As shetalked, Doon turned the box over in hishands, opened and closed its lid, andpeered at the latch.

“There’s some sort of odd mechanismhere,” he said. He tapped at a small metalcompartment at the front of the box. “I’dlike to see inside this.”

“Here’s what was in the box,” saidLina, lifting the covering paper from her

patchwork of scraps. “At least, it’s what’sleft of what was in there.”

Doon bent over, his hands on eitherside of the paper.

Lina said, “It’s called ‘Instructions forEgreston.’ Or maybe ‘Egresman.’Someone’s name, anyhow. Maybe amayor, or a guard. I just call it ‘TheInstructions.’ I told the mayor about it—Ithought maybe it was important. I wrotehim a note, but he hasn’t answered. I don’tthink 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 wordmust be Pipeworks. And this one river.And look at this one—door.”

Doon didn’t answer. His hair had fallenforward, so Lina couldn’t see theexpression on his face.

“I thought at first,” Lina went on, “that itmust be instructions for how to dosomething. How to fix the electricity,maybe. But then I thought, What if it’sinstructions for going to another place?”Doon said nothing, so Lina went on. “Imean someplace that isn’t here, likeanother city. I think these instructions say,‘Go down into the Pipeworks and look fora door.’”

Doon brushed the hair back from hisface, but he didn’t straighten up. He gazedat the broken words and frowned. “Edge,”he murmured. “Small steel pan. Whatwould that mean?”

“A frying pan?” said Lina. “But I don’tknow why there’d be a frying pan in thePipeworks.”

But Doon didn’t answer. He seemed tobe talking to himself. He kept reading,moving a finger along the lines of words.“Open,” he whispered. “Follow.”

Finally he turned to look at Lina. “Ithink you’re right,” he said. “I think this isimportant.”

“Oh, I was sure you’d think so!” Linacried. She was so relieved that her wordspoured out in a rush. “Because you takethings seriously! You told the truth to themayor on Assignment Day. I didn’t wantto believe it, but then came the longblackout, and I knew—I knew things wereas bad as you said.” She stopped,breathless. She pointed to a word on thedocument. “This door,” she said. “It has tobe a door that leads out of Ember.”

“I don’t know,” said Doon. “Maybe. Ora door that leads to something important,even if it isn’t that.”

“But it must be that—what else couldbe important enough to lock up in a fancybox?”

“Well . . . I suppose it could be astorage room with some special tools in itor something—” A look of surprise cameover his face. “Actually, I saw a doorwhere I didn’t expect to see one—out inTunnel 351. It was locked. I thought it wasan old supply closet. I wonder if thatcould be it.”

“It must be!” cried Lina. Her heart spedup.

“It wasn’t anywhere near the river,”Doon said doubtfully.

“That doesn’t matter!” Lina said. “Theriver goes through the Pipeworks, that’sall. It’s probably something like, ‘Godown 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,” saidDoon. “A door in the Pipeworks couldonly lead to something underground, andhow could that . . .”

Lina had no patience for Doon’sreasoning. She wanted to dance around theroom, she was so excited. “We have tofind out,” she said. “We have to find outright away!”

Doon looked startled. “Well, I can goand 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 thePipeworks?”

“Yes! Can you get me in?”

Doon thought for a moment. “I think Ican. If you come just at quitting time andwait outside the door, I’ll stay out of sightuntil everyone has gone, and then I’ll letyou in.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Okay. Tomorrow.”

Lina stopped at home the next day onlylong enough to change out of hermessenger jacket, and then she dashedacross town to the Pipeworks. Doon mether just outside the door, and she followedhim inside, where he handed her a slickerand boots to put on. They descended thelong stone stairway, and when they cameout into the main tunnel, Lina stood still,staring at the river. “I didn’t know theriver was so big,” she said, after shefound 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. Theriver swallows you and sweeps you

away.”

Lina shivered. It was cold down here, acold that she felt all the way through, coldflesh, cold blood, cold bones.

Doon led her up the path beside thewater. After a while they came to anopening in the wall, and they turned into itand left the river behind. Doon led theway through winding tunnels. Their rubberboots splashed in pools of water on thefloor. Lina thought how awful it would beto work down here all day, every day. Itwas a creepy place, a place where itseemed people didn’t belong. That blackriver . . . it was like something in a baddream.

“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 ourway. It isn’t far.” He ducked under therope and went in, and Lina did the same.They stepped forward into the dark. Linakept a hand against the damp wall andplaced her feet carefully.

“It’s right here,” said Doon. He hadstopped a few feet ahead of Lina. Shecame up behind him. “Put your hands out,”he said. “You’ll feel it.”

Lina felt a smooth, hard surface. Therewas a round metal knob, and below the

knob, a keyhole. It seemed an ordinarydoor—not at all like the entrance to a newworld. But that was what made things soexciting—nothing was ever how youexpected 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, theyjiggled the knob and pulled it and pushedit. Finally, Doon said, “Well, we can’t getin. I guess we’d better go.”

And that was when they heard the noise.It was a scuffling, scraping noise thatseemed to be coming from somewherenearby. Lina stopped breathing. Sheclutched Doon’s arm.

“Quick,” Doon whispered. He made hisway back toward the lighted tunnel, withLina following. They ducked under therope and rounded a turn, then stopped,stood still, and listened. A harsh scrapingsound. A thud. A pause . . . and then thesound of an impact, a short, explosivebreath, and a muttered word in a gruff,

low voice.

Then slow footsteps, getting closer.

They flattened themselves against thewall and stood motionless. The footstepsstopped briefly, and there was anothergrunt. Then the steps continued, butseemed to be fading. In a moment, from adistance, there was another sound: thechink of a key turning in a lock, and theclick of a latch opening.

Lina made an astonished face at Doon.Someone had gone down the roped tunneland opened the door! She put her mouthclose to Doon’s ear. “Shall we try to seewho it is?” she whispered.

Doon shook his head. “I don’t think weshould,” he said. “We should go.”

“We could just peek around thecorner.”

It was too tempting not to try. Theycrept forward to the place where thetunnel turned. From there they could seethe entrance to the roped tunnel. Holdingtheir breath, they watched.

And in a minute, they heard a thump andclick—the door closing, the lock turning—and footsteps once again, this timequick. A long leg stepped over the rope,and the person it belonged to turned andwalked away. All they saw was his back—a dark coat, dark untidy hair. He

walked with a lurching motion that struckLina as somehow familiar. In a fewseconds, he had vanished into theshadows.

When they came up out of the Pipeworks,they stripped off their boots and slickersand hurried out into Plummer Square,where they flopped down on a bench andburst into furious talk.

“Someone got there before us!” saidLina.

Doon said, “He was walking slowlywhen he went in—as if he was looking forsomething. And he walked fast when he

came out . . .”

“As if he’d found something! What wasit? I can’t stand not to know!”

Doon jumped up. He paced back andforth in front of the bench.

“But how did he get the key?” he asked.“Did he find Instructions like the ones youfound? And how did he get into thePipeworks? I don’t think he works there.”

“There’s something familiar about theway he walks,” said Lina. “But I don’tknow why.”

“Well, anyhow, he opened that doorand we can’t,” said Doon. “If it does gosomewhere, 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. “Ifhe’s found the way out, we’ll be glad, ofcourse,” he said glumly. “It doesn’t matterwho finds it, as long as it helps the city.”

“That’s right,” Lina said.

“It’s just that I thought we were going tofind it,” said Doon.

“Yes,” Lina said, thinking how grand itwould have been to stand before all ofEmber, announcing their discovery.

They sat without talking for a while,lost in their own thoughts. A man pulling acart full of wood scraps went by. Awoman leaned from a lighted window on

Gappery Street and called out to someboys playing in the square below. Acouple of guards, in their red and brownuniforms, ambled across the square,laughing. The town clock rang out sixdeep booms that Lina could feel, likeshudders, beneath her ribs.

Doon said, “I guess what we do now iswait to see if there’s an announcement.”

“I guess so,” said Lina.

“Maybe that door is nothing specialafter all,” said Doon. “Maybe it’s just anold 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—amystery connected, she was sure, to thebigger mystery they were trying to solve.

CHAPTER 10

Blue Sky and Goodbye

Lina slept restlessly that night. She hadfrightening dreams in which somethingdangerous was lurking in the darkness.When the lights went on in the morningand she opened her eyes, her first thoughtwas of the door in the Pipeworks—andthen right away she felt a thud ofdisappointment, because the door waslocked and someone else, not her, knew

what was behind it.

She went in to wake Granny. “Time toget up,” she said, but Granny didn’tanswer. She was lying with her mouth halfopen and breathing in a strange hoarseway. “Don’t feel too good,” she finallysaid in a weak voice.

Lina felt Granny’s forehead. It was hot.Her hands were very cold. She ran forMrs. Murdo and after that to ClovingSquare to tell Captain Fleery she wouldnot be coming to work today. Then she ranto Oliver Street, to the office of Dr.Tower, where she banged on the dooruntil the doctor opened it.

Dr. Tower was a thin woman with

uncombed hair and shadows under hereyes. When she saw Lina, she seemed togrow even more tired.

“Dr. Tower,” Lina said, “mygrandmother is sick. Will you come?”

“I will,” she said. “But I can’t promiseto help her. I’m low on medicine.”

“But come and look. Maybe she doesn’tneed medicine.”

Lina led the doctor the few blocks toher house. When she saw Granny, thedoctor sighed. “How are you, GrannyMayfleet?” she asked.

Granny looked at the doctor blearily. “Ithink ill,” she said.

Dr. Tower laid a hand across herforehead. She asked her to stick out hertongue, and she listened to her heart andher 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 todrink. Put rags in cool water and lay themacross her forehead.” She picked upGranny’s bony hand in her rough, reddishone. “What’s best for you is to sleeptoday,” she said. “Your goodgranddaughter will take care of you.”

And all day, that’s what Lina did. Shemade a thin soup of spinach and onionsand fed it to Granny a spoonful at a time.She stroked Granny’s forehead, held her

hand, and talked to her about cheerfulthings. She kept Poppy as quiet as shecould. But as she did all this, in the backof her mind was the memory of the days ofher father’s illness, when he seemed togrow dim like a lamp losing power, andthe sound of his breathing was like watergurgling through a clogged pipe. Thoughshe didn’t want to, she also rememberedthe evening when her father let out one lastshort breath and didn’t take another, andthe morning a few months later when Dr.Tower emerged from her mother’sbedroom with a crying baby and a facethat was heavy with bad news.

In the late afternoon, Granny gotrestless. She lifted herself up on oneelbow. “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 herpillows and smiled at the ceiling. “What arelief,” she said. She coughed a couple oftimes, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.

Lina stayed home from work the nextday as well. It was a long day. Grannydozed most of the time. Poppy, delightedto have Lina at home to play with, kept

toddling over with things she found—dustrags, kitchen spoons, stray shoes—andwhacking them against Lina’s knees,saying, “Play wif dis! Play wif dis!” Linawas glad to play with her, but after awhile she’d had enough of spoon-bangingand rag-tugging and shoe-rolling. “Let’sdo something else,” she said to Poppy.“Shall we draw?”

Granny had drunk a full cup of soup fordinner and was falling asleep again, soLina got out her colored pencils and twoof the can labels she’d been saving—theywere white on the back and made goodenough drawing paper, if you flattenedthem out. With their sharpest kitchen knife,she whittled the pencils into points. Shegave the green pencil and one can label to

Poppy, and she herself took the bluepencil and smoothed out the other canlabel on the table.

What would she draw? Taking hold of apencil was like opening a tap inside hermind through which her imaginationflowed. She could feel the pictures readyto come out. It was a sort of pressure, likewater in a pipe. She always thought shewould draw something wonderful, butwhat she actually drew never quitematched the feeling. It was like when shetried to tell a dream—the words neverreally captured how it felt.

Poppy was grasping the pencil in herfist and making a wild scribble. “Lookit!”she cried.

“Lovely,” said Lina. Then, without evena clear idea of what it was to be, shebegan her own picture. She started on theleft side of the can label. First she drew atall, narrow box—a building. Then moreboxes next to it—a cluster of buildings.Next she drew a few tiny people walkingon the street below the buildings. It waswhat she nearly always drew—the othercity—and every time she drew it, she hadthe same frustrating feeling: there wasmore to be drawn. There were other thingsin this city, there were marvels there—butshe couldn’t imagine what they were. Allshe knew was that this city was bright in adifferent way from Ember. Where thebrightness came from she didn’t know.

She drew more buildings and filled in

the windows and doors; she put instreetlamps; she added a greenhouse. Allthe way across the paper, she drewbuildings of different sizes. All thebuildings were white, because that wasthe color of the paper.

She set her pencil down for a momentand studied what she’d done. It was timeto fill in the sky. In the pictures she’d donewith regular pencils, the sky was its truecolor, black. But this time she made itblue, since she was using her blue pencil.Methodically, as Poppy scratched andscribbled beside her, Lina colored in thespace above the buildings, her pencilmoving back and forth in short lines, untilthe entire sky was blue.

She sat back and looked at her picture.Wouldn’t it be strange, she thought, tohave a blue sky? But she liked the way itlooked. It would be beautiful—a blue sky.

Poppy had started using her pencil topoke holes in her paper. Lina folded upher own picture and took Poppy’s awayfrom her. “Time for dinner,” she said.

Sometime deep in the night, Lina wokesuddenly, thinking she’d heard something.Had she been dreaming? She lay still, hereyes open in the darkness. The soundcame again, a weak, trembling call: “Lina. . .”

She got up and started for Granny’sroom. Though she had lived in the samehouse all her life, she still had troublefinding her way at night, when thedarkness was complete. It was as if wallshad shifted slightly, and furniture movedto new places. Lina stayed close to thewalls, feeling her way along. Here washer bedroom door. Here was the kitchenand the table—she winced as she stubbedher toe on one of its legs. A little fartherand she’d come to the far wall and thedoor to Granny’s room. Granny’s voicewas 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 Iam, Granny!” she said. She felt forGranny’s hand—it was very cold.

“I feel so strange,” said Granny. Hervoice was a whisper. “I dreamed . . . Idreamed about my baby . . . or someone’sbaby . . .”

Lina sat down on the bed. Carefully shemoved her hands over the narrow ridge ofher grandmother’s body until she came toher shoulders. There her fingers tangled inthe long wisps of Granny’s hair. Shepressed a finger against the side ofGranny’s throat to feel for her pulse, asthe doctor had shown her. It was fluttery,like a moth that has hurt itself and isflapping in crooked circles.

“Can I get you some water, Granny?”Lina asked. She couldn’t think what elseto do.

“No water,” Granny said. “Just stay fora while.”

Lina tucked one foot underneath her andpulled part of the blanket over her lap.She took hold of Granny’s hand again andstroked it gently with one finger.

For a long time neither of them saidanything. Lina sat listening to hergrandmother’s breathing. She would take adeep, shuddering breath and let it out in asigh. Then there would be a long silencebefore the next breath began. Lina closedher eyes. No use keeping them open—

there was nothing to see but the dark. Shewas aware only of her grandmother’scold, thin hand and the sound of herbreathing. Every now and then Grannywould mumble a few words Lina couldn’tmake out, and then Lina would stroke herforehead and say, “Don’t worry, it’s allright. It’s almost morning,” though shedidn’t know if it was or not.

After a long time, Granny stirredslightly and seemed to come awake. “Yougo to bed, dear,” she said. “I’m all rightnow.” Her voice was clear but very faint.“You go back to sleep.”

Lina bent forward until her head restedagainst Granny’s shoulder. Granny’s softhair tickled her face. “All right, then,” she

whispered. “Good night, Granny.” Shesqueezed her grandmother’s shouldersgently, and as she stood up a wave ofterrible loneliness swept over her. Shewanted to see Granny’s face. But thedarkness hid everything. It might still be along time until morning—she didn’t know.She groped her way back to her own bedand fell into a deep sleep, and when,hours later, the clock tower struck six andthe lights came on, Lina went fearfully intoher grandmother’s room. She found hervery pale and very still, all the life goneout of her.

CHAPTER 11

Lizzie’s Groceries

Lina spent all that day in Mrs. Murdo’shouse, which was just like theirs onlyneater. There was one couch, and one fatchair covered in fuzzy striped material,and one big table, only Mrs. Murdo’stable wasn’t wobbly like theirs. On thetable was a basket, and in the basket werethree turnips, each of them lavender onone end and white on the other. Mrs.

Murdo must have put them there, Linathought, not just because she was going tohave them for dinner, but also becausethey were beautiful.

Lina sat sideways on the couch with herlegs stretched out, and Mrs. Murdocovered her with a soft gray-greenblanket. “This will keep you warm,” shesaid, tucking it around Lina’s legs. Linadidn’t really feel cold but she did feel sad,which was in a way the same. The blanketfelt good, like someone holding her. Mrs.Murdo gave Poppy a long purple scarf toplay with and made a creamy mushroomsoup with potatoes, and all day Linastayed there, snuggled under the blanket.She thought about her grandmother, whohad had a long and mostly cheerful life.

She cried some and fell asleep. She wokeup and played with Poppy. The day had astrange but comforting feel to it, like a restbetween the end of one time and thebeginning of another.

On the morning of the next day, Lina gotup and got ready to go to work. Mrs.Murdo gave her beet tea and spinach hashfor breakfast. “The Singing’s coming upsoon,” she remarked to Lina as they ate.“Do you know your part?”

“Yes,” said Lina. “I remember it prettywell from last year.”

“I rather like the Singing,” said Mrs.Murdo.

“I love it,” Lina said. “I think it’s myfavorite day of the year.” Once a year, thepeople of the city came together to sing thethree great songs of Ember. Just thinkingof it made Lina feel better. She finishedher breakfast and put on her red jacket.

“Don’t worry about Poppy, I’ll takecare of her,” said Mrs. Murdo as Linaheaded for the door. “When you comeback this evening, we’ll talk about how toproceed.”

“Proceed?” said Lina.

“Well, you can’t live by yourselves,just the two of you, can you?”

“We can’t?”

“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Murdosternly. “Who’s to take care of Poppywhile you go off delivering messages?You must move in here with me. I have anempty bedroom, after all, and quite a niceone. Come and look.”

She opened a door at the far end of theliving room, and Lina peeked in. She hadnever seen such a beautiful cozy room.There was a big lumpy bed covered witha faded blue blanket, and at its head fourplump pillows. Next to the bed was achest of drawers with drawer handlesshaped like teardrops and a mirrorattached to the top. The carpets on thefloor were all different shades of blue andgreen, and in the corner was a sturdysquare table and a chair with a back like a

ladder. “This will be your room,” saidMrs. Murdo. “Yours and Poppy’s. You’llhave to share the bed, but it’s big enough.”

“It’s lovely,” Lina said. “You’re sokind, Mrs. Murdo.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Murdo briskly, “it’sjust common sense. You need a place. Ihave one. You go on now, and I’ll see youthis evening.”

Three days had passed since Lina andDoon had seen the man in the Pipeworks,and there hadn’t been any specialannouncements. So if that man haddiscovered a way out of Ember, he was

keeping the news to himself. Lina couldn’tunderstand why.

As Lina ran through the city with hermessages on her first day back to work, itseemed to her that the mood of the peoplewas even gloomier than before. Therewere long, silent lines at the markets, andknots of people gathered in the squares,talking in low voices. Many shops—moreeach day, it seemed—displayed signs intheir windows saying “Closed” or “OpenMon. Tues. Only.” Every now and then,the lights flickered, and people stoppedand looked up in fright. When theflickering 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. Everywhereshe ran, she heard the same words, like adrumbeat, in her mind: alone in the world,alone in the world. It wasn’t exactly true.She had Poppy. She had friends. And shehad Mrs. Murdo, who was somewherebetween a friend and a relative. But shefelt as if she had suddenly gotten older inthe last three days. She was a sort ofmother herself now. What happened toPoppy was more or less up to her.

As the day went on, she stoppedthinking alone in the world and beganthinking about her new life at Mrs.Murdo’s. She thought about the blue-greenroom and planned how she would arrangeher pictures on the walls. The one she’ddrawn with her blue pencil would look

especially nice, because it would matchthe color of the rugs. She could bring herpillows from home and add them to theones on the bed, and then she’d have sixaltogether—and maybe she could findsome old blue dresses or shirts and makepillow covers for them. The blue-greenroom, the orderly apartment, the mealscooked, and the blankets tucked in cozilyat night—all this gave her a feeling ofcomfort, almost luxury. She was gratefulfor Mrs. Murdo’s kindness. I am not readyyet to be alone in the world, she thought.

Late that afternoon, Lina was given amessage to take to Lampling Street. Shedelivered the message and, as she wascoming back out onto the street, caughtsight of Lizzie coming out the door of the

Supply Depot—her orange hair wasunmistakable. “Lizzie!” Lina called out.

Lizzie must not have heard her. She kepton going. Lina called again. “Lizzie,wait!” This time it was clear that Lizziehad heard, but instead of stopping, shewalked faster. What’s the matter with her?Lina wondered. She ran after her andgrabbed the back of her coat. “Lizzie, it’sme!”

Lizzie stopped and turned around.“Oh!” she said. Her face was flushed.“It’s you. Hi! I thought it was . . . I didn’trealize it was you.” She smiled brightly,but there was a distracted look in hereyes. “I was just going home,” she said.Her arms were wrapped around a small

bulging sack.

“I’ll walk with you,” said Lina.

“Oh,” said Lizzie. “Oh, good.” But shedidn’t look pleased.

“Lizzie, something sad has happened,”Lina said. “My grandmother died.”

Lizzie gave her a quick sidewaysglance, but she didn’t stop walking.“That’s too bad,” she said absently. “Pooryou.”

What was wrong with her? Lizzie wasordinarily so interested in other people’smisfortunes. She could be sincerelysympathetic, too, when she wasn’twrapped up in her own troubles.

Lina changed the subject. “What’s in thesack?” she asked.

“Oh, just some groceries,” said Lizzie.“I stopped at the market after work.”

“You did?” Lina was confused. She hadseen Lizzie not two minutes ago leavingthe storeroom office.

Lizzie didn’t answer. She beganwalking and talking quite fast. “It was sobusy today at work. Work is so hard, isn’tit, Lina? I think work is much harder thanschool, and not as interesting. You do thesame thing every day. I get so tired, don’tyou, running around all day?”

Lina started to say that she liked running

and hardly ever got tired, but Lizzie didn’twait for her to answer.

“Oh, well, at least there are some goodthings about it. Guess what, Lina? I have aboyfriend. I met him at work. He reallylikes me—he says my hair is the exactcolor of a red-hot burner on a stove.”

Lina laughed. “It’s true, Lizzie,” shesaid. “You look like your head is on fire.”

Lizzie laughed, too, and lifted one handto fluff her hair. She puckered her lips andfluttered her eyelashes. “He says I’m asbeautiful as a red tomato.”

They were crossing Torrick Squarenow. It was crowded in the square.

People had just left work and were liningup at the shops and hurrying along withpackages. A cluster of children sat on thepavement, 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 theedge of her shoe caught on an unevenplace in the pavement. She staggered andfell, and as she fell she lost her grip on thesack. It hit the ground and toppledsideways, and some cans spilled out. Theyrolled in all different directions.

Lina reached for Lizzie’s arm. “Did youhurt yourself?” she asked, but Lizzie went

scrambling after the cans so quickly it wasclear she wasn’t hurt. Wanting to help,Lina went after the cans, too. Two hadrolled under a bench. Another was goingtoward the children, who were on theirfeet now, watching Lizzie’s wild spider-like motions. Lina picked up the cansunder the bench, and for a second herbreath stopped. One of them was a can ofpeaches. “Peaches,” it said right on it, andthere was a picture of a yellow globe. Noone she knew had seen a can of peaches inyears. She looked at the other one. It wasjust as amazing—“Creamed Corn,” it said.Lina remembered having creamed cornonce, as a thrilling treat, when she wasfive years old.

There was a shout. She looked up. One

of the children had picked up a can. “Lookat this!” he cried, and the other childrengathered around him. “Applesauce!” hesaid, and the children murmured,“Applesauce, applesauce,” as if they hadnever heard the word before.

Lizzie was on her feet. She had all thecans except for the two in Lina’s handsand the one the child had picked up. Shestood there for a moment, her eyes flickingback and forth from Lina to the children.Then she smiled, a bright fake-lookingsmile. “Thanks for helping me,” she said.“I found these on a back shelf at themarket. What a surprise, huh? You cankeep those.” She waved the back of herhand at the children, waved again at Lina,and then took off, holding the sack by its

neck so it hung beside her and bangedagainst her legs.

Lina didn’t follow her. She walkedhome, thinking about Lizzie’s sack of cans.You simply did not find cans of peachesand applesauce and creamed corn on theback shelves of markets. Lizzie was lying.And if the cans hadn’t come from amarket, where had they come from? Therewas only one answer: they had come fromthe storerooms. Somehow, Lizzie hadgotten them because she worked in thestoreroom office. Had she paid for them?How much? Or had she taken them withoutpaying?

Mrs. Murdo had cooked a dinner ofbeet-and-bean stew for them that night.

When Lina showed her the two cans, shegasped in astonishment. “Where did youget 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’task any more questions. She opened thecans, and they had a feast: creamed cornwith their stew, and peaches for dessert. Itwas the best meal Lina had had in a verylong time—but her enjoyment of it wastainted just a little by the question ofwhere it had come from.

The next morning, Lina headed for BroadStreet. Before she started deliveringmessages today, she was going to have atalk with Lizzie.

She spied her half a block from thestoreroom office. She was saunteringalong looking in shop windows. A longgreen scarf was wound around her neck.

Lina ran up swiftly behind her.“Lizzie,” she said.

Lizzie whirled around. When she sawLina, she flinched. She didn’t sayanything, just turned around and keptwalking.

Lina caught hold of one end of the greenscarf and jerked Lizzie to a halt. “Lizzie!”she said. “Stop!”

“What for?” Lizzie said. “I’m going towork.” She tried to pull away, but shedidn’t get far, because Lina had a firmgrip on her scarf.

Lina spoke in a low voice. There werepeople all around them—a couple of oldmen leaning against the wall, a group ofchattering children just ahead, workersgoing toward the storerooms—and shedidn’t want to be overheard. “You have totell me where you got those cans,” shesaid.

“I told you. I found them on a back shelf

at the market. Let go of my scarf.” Lizzietried to wrench her scarf out of Lina’sgrip, but Lina held on.

“You didn’t,” Lina said. “No marketwould just forget about things like that.Tell me the truth.” She gave a yank on theend of the scarf.

“Stop it!” Lizzie reached out andgrabbed a handful of Lina’s hair. Linayelped and pulled harder on the scarf, andthe two of them scuffled, snatching at eachother’s hair and coats. They knockedagainst a woman who snapped at themangrily, 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 screaming withlaughter. Now here they were again,nearly grown girls, sitting in a heap on thepavement.

After a moment, Lizzie laughed, too.“You dope,” she said. “All right, I’ll tellyou. I sort of wanted to anyway.” Lizzieleaned forward with her elbows on herknees and lowered her voice. “Well, it’sthis,” she said. “There’s a storeroomworker named Looper. He’s a carrier. Doyou know him? He was two classes aheadof us. Looper Windly.”

“I know who he is,” said Lina. “I took amessage for him on my first day of work.Tall, with a long skinny neck. Big teeth.

Funny-looking.”

Lizzie looked hurt. “Well, I wouldn’tdescribe him that way. I think he’shandsome.”

Lina shrugged. “Okay. Go on.”

“Looper explores the storerooms. Hegoes into every room that isn’t locked. Hewants to know the true situation, Lina.He’s not like most workers, who just plodalong doing their jobs and then go home.He wants to find things out.”

“And what has he found out?” Linaasked.

“He’s found out that there’s still a littlebit left of some rare things, just a few

things in rooms here and there that havebeen forgotten. You know, Lina,” she said,“there are so many rooms down there.Some of them, way out at the edges, aremarked ‘Empty’ in the ledger book, and sono one ever goes there anymore. ButLooper found out that they’re not allempty.”

“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.” Lizziesmiled a little smile and hugged her armstogether. I see, Lina thought. She feels thatway about Looper.

“But Looper’s stealing,” said Lina.“And Lizzie—he isn’t just stealing thingsfor you. He has a store! He steals thingsand sells them for huge prices!”

“He does not,” said Lizzie, but shelooked worried.

“He does. I know because I boughtsomething from him just a few weeks ago.He has a whole box of colored pencils.”

Lizzie scowled. “He never gave me anycolored pencils.”

“He shouldn’t be giving you anything—or selling things. Don’t you think everyoneshould know about this food he found?”

“No!” Lizzie cried. “Because listen. If

there’s only one can of peaches left, onlyone person gets to have it, right? So whyshould everyone know? They’d just endup fighting over it. What good would thatbe?” Lizzie reached out and put a hand onLina’s knee. “Listen,” she said. “I’ll askLooper to find some good stuff for you,too. I know he will, if I ask him.”

Before she had time to think, Lina heardherself saying, “What kind of good stuff?”

Lizzie’s eyes gleamed. “There’s twopackages of colored paper, he told me.And some cough medicine. And there’sthree pairs of girls’ shoes.”

It was treasure. Colored paper! Andcough medicine to cure sickness, and

shoes . . . she hadn’t had new ones foralmost two years. Lina’s heart raced.What Lizzie said was true: if everyoneknew there were still a few wonderfulthings in the storerooms, people wouldfight each other trying to get them. Butwhat if no one knew? What differencewould it make if she had the coloredpaper, or the shoes? She suddenly wantedthose things so badly she felt weak. Apicture arose in her mind’s eye—theshelves at Mrs. Murdo’s house stockedwith good things, and the three of themhappier and safer than other people.

Lizzie leaned closer and lowered hervoice. “Looper found a can of pineapple. Iwas going to split it with him, but I’ll giveyou a bite if you promise not to tell.”

Pineapple! That delectable long-lostthing that her grandmother had told herabout. Was there anything wrong withhaving a bite of it, just to see what it waslike?

“I’ve already tasted peaches,applesauce, and a thing called fruitcocktail,” said Lizzie. “And prunes andcreamed corn and cranberry sauce andasparagus . . .”

“All that?” Lina was astonished. “Thenthere’s a lot of special things like thatstill?”

“No,” said Lizzie. “Not a lot at all. Infact, we’ve finished all those.”

“You and Looper?”

Lizzie nodded, smiling smugly. “Loopersays it’s all going to be gone soonanyway, why not live as well as we canright now?”

“But Lizzie, why should you get allthat? Why you and not other people?”

“Because we found it. Because we canget at it.”

“I don’t think it’s fair,” said Lina.

Lizzie spoke as if she were talking to anot-very-bright child. “You can havesome, too. That’s what I’m telling you.There are still a few good things left.”

But that wasn’t the unfairness Lina wasthinking of. It was that just two peoplewere getting things that everyone wouldhave wanted. She couldn’t think how itshould have been done. You couldn’tdivide a can of applesauce evenly amongall the people in the city. Still, somethingwas wrong with grabbing the good thingsjust because you could. It seemed not onlyunfair to everyone else but bad for theperson who was doing it, somehow. Sheremembered the hunger she’d felt whenLooper showed her the colored pencils. Itwasn’t a pleasant feeling. She didn’t wantto want things that way.

She stood up. “I don’t want anythingfrom Looper.”

Lizzie shrugged. “Okay,” she said, butthere was a look of dismay on her smallpale face. “Too bad for you.”

“Thanks anyway,” said Lina, and sheset off across Torrick Square, walking fastat first and then breaking into a run.

CHAPTER 12

A Dreadful Discovery

About a week after he and Lina had seenthe man come out the mysterious door,Doon was assigned to fix a clog in Tunnel207. It turned out to be easy. He undid thepipe, rammed a long thin brush down it,and a jet of water spurted into his face.Once he’d put the pipe back together, hehad nothing else to do. So he decided togo out to Tunnel 351 and take another look

at the locked door. It was strange, hethought, that no announcement about a wayout of Ember had come. Maybe that doorhad not been what they thought it was.

So he set out for the south end of thePipeworks. When he came to the roped-off passage in Tunnel 351, he ducked inand walked along through the dark, feelinghis way. He was pretty sure the doorwould be locked as usual. His mind wason other things. He was thinking of hisgreen worm, which had been behavingoddly, refusing to eat and hanging from theside of its box with its chin tucked in. Andhe was thinking about Lina, whom hehadn’t seen for several days. Hewondered where she was. When he cameto the door, he reached absently for the

knob, and what he felt startled him somuch that he snatched his hand back as ifhe’d been stung. He felt again, carefully.There was a key in the lock!

For a long moment, Doon stood as stillas a statue. Then he took hold of thedoorknob and turned it. Very slowly, hepushed on the door. It swung inwardwithout a sound.

He opened it only a few inches, justenough to peer around the edge. What hesaw made him gasp.

There was no road, or passage, orstairway behind the door. There was abrightly lit room, whose size he could notguess at because it was so crowded with

things. On all sides were crates andboxes, sacks and bundles and packages.There were mounds of cans, heaps ofclothes, rows of jars and bottles, stacks oflight-bulb packages. Piles rose to the lowceiling and leaned against the walls,blocking all but a small space in thecenter. In that small space, a little livingroom had been set up. There was agreenish rug, and on the rug an armchairand a table. On the table were dishessmeared with the remains of food, and inthe armchair facing Doon was a great blobof a person whose head was floppedbackward, so that all Doon could see of itwas an upthrust chin. The blob stirred andmuttered, and Doon, in the second beforehe stepped back and pulled the doorclosed, caught a glimpse of a fleshy ear, a

slab of gray cheek, and a loose, purplishmouth.

That day, Lina had more messages to carrythan ever. There had been five blackoutsin a row during the week. They were allfairly short—the longest was four and ahalf minutes, Lina had heard—but therehad never been so many so close together.Everyone was nervous. People who mightordinarily walk to someone’s house weresending messages instead. Often theydidn’t even come out into the street butbeckoned to a messenger from theirdoorway.

By five o’clock, Lina had carried thirty-

nine messages. Most of them were moreor less the same: “I’m not coming to themeeting tonight, decided to stay home.” “Iwon’t be in to work tomorrow.” “Insteadof meeting me in Cloving Square, whydon’t you come to my house?” Thecitizens of Ember were hunkering down,burrowing in. Fewer people stood aroundtalking in groups under the lights in thesquares. Instead, they would pause brieflyto murmur a few words to each other andthen hasten onward.

Lina was on her way home to Mrs.Murdo’s—she and Poppy had moved inwith all their things—when she heardrapid footsteps. Startled, she turned andsaw Doon racing toward her.

At first he was so out of breath hecouldn’t speak.

“What is it? What is it?” said Lina.

“The door,” he panted. “The door in351. I opened it.”

Lina’s heart leapt. “You did?”

Doon nodded.

“Is it the way out?” Lina whisperedfiercely.

“No,” Doon said. He glanced behindhim. Clutching Lina’s arm, he pulled herinto a shadowy spot on the street. “Itdoesn’t lead out of Ember,” he whispered.“It leads to a big room.”

Lina’s face fell. “A room? What’s inthere?”

“Everything. Food, clothes, boxes,cans. Light bulbs, stacks of them.Everything. Piles and piles up to theceiling.” His eyes grew wide. “Andsomeone was there, in the middle of it all,asleep.”

“Who?”

A look of horror passed over Doon’sface. “The mayor,” he said. “Conked outin a big armchair, with an empty plate infront 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 thepavement. His face flushed red. “That’sthe solution he keeps telling us about. It’sa solution for him, not the rest of us. Hegets everything he needs, and we get theleftovers! He doesn’t care about the city.All he cares about is his fat stomach!”

Lina felt dizzy, as if she’d been hit onthe head. “What will we do?” Shecouldn’t think, she was so stunned.

“Tell everyone!” said Doon. He wasshaking with anger. “Tell the whole citythe mayor is robbing us!”

“Wait, wait.” Lina put a hand onDoon’s arm and concentrated for a minute.“Come on,” she said at last. “Let’s go sitin Harken Square. I have something to tellyou, too.”

At the north end of Harken Square stood acircle of Believers, clapping their handsand singing one of their songs. Lately theyseemed to be singing more loudly andcheerfully than ever. Their voices wereshrill. “Coming soon to save us!” theywailed. “Happy, happy day!”

Near the Gathering Hall steps,something unusual was happening. Twentyor so people were pacing around and

around, carrying big signs painted on oldplanks and on big banners made of sheets.The signs said “WHAT solutions, MayorCole?” and “We want ANSWERS!”Every now and then the demonstratorswould yell these slogans out loud. Linawondered if the mayor was paying anyattention.

Doon and Lina found an empty bench onthe south side of Harken Square and satdown.

“Now, listen,” said Lina.

“I am listening,” said Doon, though hisface was still red and the look on his facewas stormy.

“I saw Lizzie coming out of thestorerooms yesterday,” Lina said. She toldhim about the cans, and Lizzie’s newfriend, Looper, and what Looper wasdoing.

Doon pounded his fist on his leg.“That’s two of them doing it, then,” hesaid.

“Wait, there’s more. Remember how Ithought there was something familiarabout the man who came out the door?I’ve remembered what. It was that way hewalked, sort of dipping over sideways,and also that hair, that black hair allunbrushed and sticking out. I’ve seen himtwice. I don’t know why I didn’tremember 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 inthe storerooms. Lizzie’s boyfriend. AndDoon—” Lina leaned forward. “It was amessage to the mayor that he gave me, andit was this: ‘Delivery at eight.’”

Doon’s mouth dropped open. “So thatmeans . . .”

“He’s taking things from the storeroomfor the mayor. And he’s giving some toLizzie, and selling some in his store.”

“Oh!” cried Doon. He slapped his hand

against his head. “Why didn’t I get itbefore? There’s a hatch in the ceiling nearTunnel 351. It must go right up into thestorerooms. Looper comes through there!That’s what we heard that day,remember? A sort of scraping—thatwould have been the hatch opening. Thena thud—his sack of stuff dropping through—and then a sound like someone jumpingdown and landing hard on the ground.”

“And then walking slowly—”

“Because he was carrying a load!”

“And walking quickly on the way outbecause he’d left it all for the mayor.”Lina took a deep breath. Her heart wasdrumming and her hands were cold. “We

have to think what to do,” she said. “If thiswere an ordinary situation, the mayorwould be the one to tell.”

“But the mayor is the one committingthe crime,” said Doon.

“So then we should tell the guards, Iguess,” said Lina. “They’re next inauthority to the mayor. Though I don’t likethem much,” she added, remembering howshe’d been so roughly hustled down thestairs from the roof of the Gathering Hall.“Especially the chief guard.”

“But you’re right,” Doon said. “Weshould tell the guards. They’ll go downinto the Pipeworks and see for themselvesthat we’re telling the truth. Then they can

arrest the mayor and have all the stuff putback in the storerooms, and then they cantell the city what’s been going on.”

“That’s a much better idea,” said Lina.“Then you and I can get back to what’smore important.”

“What?”

“Figuring out the Instructions. Now thatwe know that the door we found wasn’tthe right one, we have to find the rightone.”

“I don’t know,” said Doon. “We mightbe all wrong about those Instructions.They could just be about some oldPipeworks tool closet.” He made a sour

face. “‘Instructions for Egreston.’ Who’sEgreston? Or Egresman? Or whoever itwas? Why couldn’t he have been just anespecially stupid Pipeworks guy whoneeded instructions to find his wayaround?” He shook his head. “I don’tknow. I think maybe those Instructions arejust hogwash.”

“Hogwash? What’s that?”

“It means nonsense. I read it in a bookin the library.”

“But they can’t be nonsense! Whywould they have been kept in a box likethat? With the strange lock?”

But Doon didn’t want to think about the

Instructions right then. “We’ll figure it outtomorrow,” he said. “Right now, let’s gofind the guards.”

“Wait,” said Lina, catching hold of thesleeve of his jacket. “I have one morething to tell you.”

“What?”

“My grandmother died.”

“Oh!” Doon’s face fell. “That’s sosad,” he said. “I’m sorry.” His sympathymade tears spring to Lina’s eyes. Doonlooked startled for a moment, and then hetook a step toward her and wrapped hisarms around her. He gave her a squeeze soquick and tight that it made her cough, and

then it made her laugh. She realized all atonce that Doon—thin, dark-eyed Doonwith his troublesome temper and histerrible brown jacket and his good heart—was the person that she knew better thananyone now. He was her best friend.

“Thanks,” she said. “Well.” She smiledat him. “Let’s go and talk to the guard.”

They crossed the square and climbedthe steps of the Gathering Hall. Sitting atthe big reception desk outside the door ofthe mayor’s office was the assistant guard,Barton Snode, the same one Lina hadencountered her first time here. Snodelooked bored. His elbows were on thedesk, and his chin was moving veryslowly from side to side.

“Sir,” said Doon, “we need to speakwith you.”

The guard looked up. “Certainly,” hesaid. “Go right ahead.”

“In private,” said Lina.

The guard looked puzzled. His smalleyes darted back and forth. “This isprivate,” he said. “No one here but me.”

“But anyone could come along,” saidDoon. “What we have to say is secret, andvery important.”

“Very important?” said Snode.“Secret?” His face brightened. Grunting,he raised himself up from his chair andmotioned 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 theygot in all the details, the guard’s eyebrowsgradually lifted higher and higher over hiseyes. “You saw this room?” he said. “Thisis true? Are you sure?” He was chewingfaster now. “You mean the mayor . . . youmean the mayor is . . .”

At that moment, a little way down thehall, a door opened. Through it came threemore guards, including—Lina spotted himby his beard—the chief guard. They strodeforward, talking to each other in lowvoices, and as they passed, the chief guardthrew a quick glance at Lina. Does he

recognize me? Lina wondered. Shecouldn’t tell.

Barton Snode finished his sentence in ahusky whisper. “You mean . . . the mayoris stealing?”

“That’s right,” said Doon. “We thoughtyou should be informed, because who elsecan arrest the mayor? And once you’vedone that, the guards can put all the thingshe’s stolen back where they came from.”

“And then tell the city that a new mayorhas to be found,” added Lina.

Barton Snode leaned heavily against thewall and rubbed a hand over his chin. Heseemed to be thinking. “Something must be

done,” he said. “This is shocking,shocking.” He started back toward hisdesk, and Doon and Lina followed. “I willmake a note,” he said, taking a pencil fromthe desk drawer. Lina watched as hewrote slowly on a scrap of paper: “Mayorstealing. Secret room.”

When he’d finished, he let out asatisfied 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 turnedto leave.

The three guards were standing by the

main door of the Gathering Hall as Doonand Lina went out. The chief guard movedaside to make way for them, and they wentthrough the door and out onto the widefront steps. Lina glanced over hershoulder. Before the door swung closed,she saw the chief guard striding towardthe reception desk, where Barton Snodewas standing up, leaning forward, his eyesshining with important news.

CHAPTER 13

Deciphering the Message

Doon headed for home, and Lina went inthe opposite direction across HarkenSquare. The little group of Believers hadgone, but the protesters with their signscontinued to pace back and forth. A few ofthem were still shaking their fists in the airand yelling, but most of them trampedsilently, looking tired and discouraged.Lina felt a bit that way, too. Once Doon

said he’d seen a door, she was sure thatthe door he’d found and the door in theInstructions were the same. She had hadsuch hopes for that door in the Pipeworks.But hoping so hard had made her jump toconclusions. She’d gone a little too fast.She always went fast. Sometimes it was agood thing and sometimes not.

Now Doon thought the Instructionswere nothing important after all. Shedidn’t want him to be right. She didn’tbelieve he was, even now. But herthoughts felt like a mess of tangled yarn.She needed someone wise and sensible tohelp her sort things out. She headed forGlome Street.

Though it was nearly six o’clock, shefound Clary still in her workroom, at thefar end of Greenhouse 1. It was a small,crowded room. Pots and trowels cluttereda high table at one end. Above the tablewere shelves full of bottles of seeds, andboxes of string, wire, and various kinds ofpowders. Clary’s desk was a ricketytable, littered with scraps of paper, all ofthem covered with notes in her neat, roundhandwriting. Two rickety chairs went withthe rickety table, one on each side. Linasat down facing Clary. “I have to tell yousome important things,” she said. “Andthey’re all secret.”

“All right,” said Clary. “I can keepsecrets.” She was wearing a patched shirtthat 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 ofher on the desk. She looked square andsolid.

“The first thing is,” Lina began, “that Ifound the Instructions. But Poppy hadchewed them up.”

“The Instructions,” said Clary. “I’m notfamiliar with them.”

Lina explained. She went on to explaineverything—how she’d shown theInstructions to Doon, what they hadfigured out, how he’d searched thePipeworks and found the door, and whathe’d seen when he opened the door.

Clary made an unhappy sound andshook her head. “This is very bad,” shesaid. “And sad, too. I remember when themayor was first starting out. He hasalways been foolish, but not alwayswicked. I’m sorry to know that the worstside of him has won out.” Clary’s darkbrown eyes seemed to grow deeper andsadder. “There is so much darkness inEmber, Lina. It’s not just outside, it’sinside us, too. Everyone has somedarkness inside. It’s like a hungrycreature. It wants and wants and wantswith a terrible power. And the more yougive it, the bigger and hungrier it gets.”

Lina knew. She had felt it in Looper’sshop as she hovered over the coloredpencils. For a moment, she felt sorry for

the mayor. His hunger had grown so big itcould never be satisfied. His huge bodycouldn’t contain it. It made him forgeteverything else.

Clary let out a long breath, and a few ofthe scraps of paper on her desk fluttered.She ran her fingers through her hair, feltthe bit of leaf, and plucked it out. Then shesaid, “About these Instructions.”

“Oh, yes,” said Lina. “They might beimportant, or they might not be. I don’tknow anymore.”

“I’d like to see them, if you’d let me.”

“Of course you can see them—butyou’ll have to come home with me.”

“I’ll come now, if that’s all right,” saidClary. “There’s plenty of time beforelights out.”

Lina led Clary up the stairs and into hernew bedroom at Mrs. Murdo’s. “Niceroom,” Clary said, looking around withinterest. “And I see you have a sprout.”

“A what?” said Lina.

“Your bean,” said Clary, pointing at thelittle pot of dirt on the windowsill.

Lina bent to see what Clary was talkingabout. Sure enough, the dirt was heavingup a little. She touched the pushed-up part,

brushed away the dirt, and discovered apale green loop. It looked like a neck, asif a creature in the bean were trying toescape but hadn’t yet managed to pull itshead out. Of course she already knew thatplants grew from seeds. But to have putthat flat white bean in the dirt, to havealmost forgotten about it, and now to see itforcing its way up into the air . . .

“It’s doing it!” she said. “It’s coming tolife!”

Clary nodded, smiling. “Still amazesme every time I see it,” she said.

Lina brought out the Instructions, andClary sat down at the table to study them.She puzzled over the patchwork of scraps

for a long time, tracing the lines with herfinger, murmuring the parts of words.

“What you’ve figured out so far seemsright to me,” she said. “I think ‘ip ork’must be ‘Pipeworks.’ And ‘iverb nk’ mustbe ‘riverbank.’ So this bit must be ‘downriverbank’—then there’s a big space here—‘to edge.’ Edge of what, I wonder? Anddoes it mean ‘down riverbank’ as in ‘walkalongside the river’?”

“Yes, I think so,” Lina said.

“Or does it mean go down the riverbankitself, 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 godown to the edge of the water, you’d fallin.” Lina pictured the dark, swift waterand shivered.

“This word,” said Clary, putting afinger on the paper. “Maybe it isn’t‘edge,’ maybe it’s something else. It couldbe ‘hedge.’ Or ‘pledge.’ Those don’tmake much sense. But it could be ‘ledge’or ‘wedge.’”

Lina saw that Clary was no better atdeciphering the puzzle than she was. Shesighed and sat down on the end of her bed.“It’s hopeless,” she said.

Clary straightened up quickly. “Don’tsay that. This torn-up piece of paper is the

most hopeful thing I’ve ever seen. Do youknow what this word is?” She pointed tothe word at the top of the paper, Egres.

“Someone’s name, isn’t it? The titlewould be ‘Instructions for Egreston,’ ormaybe ‘Egresman,’ or something like that.The person the instructions were for.”

“I don’t think so,” said Clary. “If youadd an s to this word, right where this tearin the paper is, you get ‘Egress.’ Do youknow what that means?”

“No,” said Lina.

“It means ‘the way out.’ It means ‘theexit.’ The title of this document is‘Instructions for Egress.’”

When Clary left, there was still over anhour before lights out. Lina raced acrossthe city to Greengate Square. She glancedin the window of the Small Items shop,where Doon’s father was reaching forsomething on a shelf, and then she dashedup the stairs and knocked on the door ofDoon’s apartment. Right away, she heardquick 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 tostand by a lamp. She pulled from her

pocket a tiny piece of paper on which shehad 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 theInstructions to Clary, and she told me. Itmeans ‘the way out.’”

“The way out!” cried Doon.

“Yes! The way out. The exit. It’sinstructions for the way out of Ember!”

“So it is real,” Doon said.

“It is. We have to figure out the rest. Or

as much of the rest as possible. Can youcome now?”

He darted into his room, emerged withhis jacket, and they ran.

“All right,” said Lina. They were on thefloor of the blue-green room at Mrs.Murdo’s. “Let’s take the first line.” Shemoved her finger along it slowly.

“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 bemore words in there.”

“But who knows what they are? Let’smove on.” Lina swept her straggly hairimpatiently back from her face. “Look atnumber 2.”

Lina put her finger on ston. “Whatcould that be?”

“Maybe ‘piston,’” said Doon. “That’s

part of a machine, like the generator. Ormaybe it’s ‘astonish.’ Or it could be . . .”

“I bet it’s just plain ‘stone,’” said Lina.“There’s a lot of stone in the Pipeworks.”

Doon had to admit this was probablyright. “So then,” he said, “it would be‘stone marked with E. . . .’” He frownedat the next bit. “This must be ‘river’sedge.’ ‘Stone marked with E by the river’sedge.’”

They looked at each other in delight. “Efor Egress!” cried Lina. “E for Exit!”

They bent over the document again.“There’s not much left of this next line,”said Doon.

“Just this part—which must say, ‘downriverbank to edge’ . . . something.”

“‘Edge of water’ would make sense.But right after ‘edge’ there’s ‘app.’ Whatwould that be?” Doon sat back on hisheels and gazed up at the ceiling, as if theanswer might be there. Lina muttered,“down riverbank to edge, edge.” Shethought of Clary’s guesses about that line.“Maybe it’s ‘ledge,’” she said. “‘Downriverbank to ledge.’ There could be aledge down near the water.”

“Yes, that must be right. There’s a stonemarked with E, and down the riverbank atthat point there’s a ledge. I think we’regetting it.”

Once again they crouched over thepage, their heads close together. “Okay,”Doon said. “Line 4.”

“This is where it says ‘door,’” Linasaid. “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 panhave to do with anything?”

“But look, but look.” Lina tapped thepaper urgently. “Here it says ‘ke’ and hereit says ‘ey.’ It’s talking about a key!”

“But what it is a door to?” said Doon,sitting back. “Remember, we thoughtabout this before. A door in the bank ofthe river would lead under thePipeworks.”

Lina pondered this. “Maybe it leads toa long tunnel that goes way out beyondEmber, and then gradually up and up untilit comes out at the other city.”

“What other city?” Doon glanced up atthe drawings tacked to the walls of Lina’sroom. “Oh,” he said. “You mean thatcity.”

“Well, it could be.”

Doon shrugged. “I suppose so. Or itcould be another city exactly like thisone.”

That was a gloomy thought. Both ofthem felt their spirits sink a little at theidea. So they turned back to the task ofdeciphering.

“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 wayout, we’ll need to announce it to everyone.Wouldn’t it be splendid to do it during theSinging? Stand up there in front of thewhole city and say we’ve found it?”

“It would be,” Lina said. “But that’sonly two days away.”

“Yes. We have to hurry.”

They were bending again over theglued-down fragments when Doonremembered that he should check the time.It was a quarter to nine. He barely hadtime to get home.

“Come again tomorrow,” said Lina.“And while you’re at work, look for the

rock marked with E.”

That night, Doon had trouble sleeping. Hecouldn’t find a comfortable position on hisbed. It seemed to be made up of nothingbut lumps and wrinkles, and it squeakedand groaned every time he moved. Heflailed around so much that the noise wokehis father, who came to his room andasked, “What is it, son? Nightmares?”

“No,” said Doon. “Just can’t sleep.”

“Are you worrying? Frightened ofanything?”

Doon wanted to say, Yes, Father. I’m

worried because the mayor of our city istaking for himself the things that peopleneed, and I’m afraid because any day ourlights could go out forever. I’m worriedand afraid a lot of the time, but I’m alsoexcited because I think there is a way out,and we might find it—and all thosefeelings are whirling around in my head,which makes it hard to sleep.

He could have told his fathereverything. His father would have plungedin with great enthusiasm. He would havehelped them decipher the Instructions andexpose the mayor’s thievery; he wouldeven have come down into the Pipeworksand helped search for the rock markedwith E. But Doon wanted to keep thesethings to himself for now. Tomorrow, the

guards would announce that an alert youngboy had uncovered the mayor’s crime, andhis father, hearing the announcementsalong with the rest of Ember, would turnto the person next to him and say, “That’smy son they’re talking about! My son!”

So in answer to his father’s question, hesimply said, “No, Father, I’m all right.”

“Well, then, see if you can’t lie still,”said his father. “Good night, son,” headded, and closed the door. Doonsmoothed out his covers and pulled themup to his chin. He closed his eyes. But stillhe couldn’t sleep.

So he tried a method that had oftenworked for him before. He would choose

a place he knew well—the school, forinstance—and imagine himself walkingthrough it, picturing it as he went in minutedetail. Often his thoughts would wander,but he would always bring them back tothe imaginary journey, and somethingabout doing this would often make himsleepy. This night he decided to retracehis explorations of the Pipeworks. Heheld his mind to the task for a long time,picturing, with all the clarity he couldmuster, everything he had seen in thatunderground realm—the long stairway, thetunnels, the door, the path along the river,the rocks along the path. He felt sleepdrawing closer, a heaviness in his limbs,but just as he was about to give in to it, hesaw in his mind’s eye the wrinkled rocksthat bordered the river at the west end of

the Pipeworks, the rocks whose strangeridges and creases had reminded him ofwriting. His eyes flew open in the dark,his heart began to hammer, and he gave upon sleeping and lay in a state of terribleimpatience for the rest of the night.

CHAPTER 14

The Way Out

The next day was Song Rehearsal Day.Everyone was let off from work at twelveo’clock to practice for the Singing. It wasa slow morning for messages. Lina had alot of time to sit at her station in GarnSquare and think. She put her elbows onher knees, rested her chin in her hands,and stared down at the pavement in frontof the bench, which was worn smooth by

the many feet that had passed there. Shethought about the mayor, down in his roomfull of plunder, gorging on peaches andasparagus and wrapping his huge body inelegant new clothes. She thought of hisgreat stack of light bulbs and shook herhead in bewilderment. What was hethinking? If he still had light bulbs wheneveryone else in Ember had run out,would he enjoy sitting in his lit roomwhile the rest of the city drowned indarkness? And when the power finally ranout for good, all his light bulbs would beuseless. Possessions couldn’t save him—how could he have forgotten that? He mustbe thinking the same way as Looper:everything was hopeless anyhow, so he’dlive it up while he could.

She leaned back against the bench,stretched her legs out, and took a longbreath. Very soon, the guards would storminto the secret room and seize the mayoras he sat stuffing himself on stolengoodies. Maybe they already had. Maybetoday 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 bedelivered, so after a while Lina left herstation and found a step to sit on in analley off Calloo Street. She pulled backher hair and braided it to keep it fromsliding around. Then she took from herpocket the copy of the Instructions she’dmade just after she sent her note to the

mayor. She unfolded it and began to studyit.

This is what she was doing when, alittle before twelve o’clock, she looked upto see Doon running toward her. He musthave come straight from the Pipeworks—he had a big damp patch of water on oneleg of his pants. He spoke in an excitedrush. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”he said. “I’ve found it!”

“Found what?”

“The E! At least it looks like an E. Itmust be an E, though you wouldn’t know itif you weren’t looking for it. . . .”

“You mean the rock marked with an E?

In the Pipeworks?”

“Yes, yes, I found it!” He stoodbreathing hard, his eyes blazing. “I’d seenit before, but I didn’t think of it as an Ethen, just a squiggle that looked likewriting. There are all these rocks that looklike they’re covered with writing.”

“Which rocks? Where is it?” Lina wason her feet now, bouncing withexcitement.

“Down at the west end of the river.Near where it goes into that great hole inthe Pipeworks wall.” He paused, trying tocatch his breath. “And listen,” he said.“We could go there right now.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, because of rehearsals.Everyone’s going home, so the Pipeworkswill be closed and empty.”

“But if it’s closed, how will we getin?”

Grinning, Doon produced a large keyfrom his pocket. “I ducked into the officeon my way out and borrowed the sparekey,” he said. “Lister—he’s thePipeworks director—was in the bathroompracticing his singing. He won’t miss thekey today. And tomorrow, everyone willbe off work.” He did an impatient shuffle.“So come on,” he said.

The town clock struck the first of itstwelve noontime booms. Lina stuffed hercopy of the Instructions back in herpocket. “Let’s go.”

The Pipeworks was empty and silent. Linaand Doon went up the hallway past therows of boots and the slickers hanging ontheir hooks. They didn’t take any of thesefor themselves. This was not a Pipeworkstunnel they were about to enter, they weresure; it wouldn’t be dripping with wateror lined with spurting pipes.

They went down the long stairway andout into the main tunnel, where the riverthundered alongside the path, its dark

surface strewn with flecks of light.

Doon led the way along the river’sedge. As they neared the west end, Linasaw the rocky outcroppings Doon haddescribed to her. They were strangebulging shapes creased with lines like thefaces of the very old. Not far beyond, Linacould see the place where the riverdisappeared into a great hole in thePipeworks wall.

Doon knelt down beside a clump ofstones. He ran a finger over theirconvoluted surface. “Look here,” he said.Lina stooped down and peered at thedeeply carved lines. It was hard to see theE at first, because it was surrounded bysuch a tangle of other lines, and because

she was expecting it to be an E drawnwith straight strokes. But once she saw it—an E drawn with curving lines, a scriptE—she was sure it had been carved onpurpose: it was centered on its stone, andits lines were deep and even.

“So from here we should look down atthe river,” said Doon. “That’s what theInstructions said, ‘down riverbank toledge.’”

He lay on his stomach next to the rockand inched forward until his head hung outover the edge of the path. Lina watchedhim anxiously. His elbows stuck up oneither side of him, and his head, bentdown, was nearly invisible. He stayed thatway for long seconds. Then he shouted,

“Yes! I see something!” and scrambled tohis feet again. “You do it,” he said. “Lookat the riverbank right below us.”

Lina did as he had. She lay down andpulled herself forward until her head wasover the edge. Eight feet or so below her,she saw the black water churning by. Shetucked her chin in and looked at theriverbank. It was a sheer rock wall,straight up and down and slick with spray,and at first that was all she saw. But shekept looking and before long could makeout short iron bars bolted into the bank,one below the next, almost directly belowher. They were like the rungs of a ladder.They were a ladder, she realized. Thebars provided a way to climb down theriverbank. Not a very appealing way—the

bars looked slippery, and the water belowwas so terribly fast. And because of thedimness and the flying spray, she couldn’tactually see if there was a ledge at thebottom or not. But the E was clearly an E,and the bars were clearly a ladder. Thismust be the right place.

“Who’ll go first?” said Doon.

“You can,” Lina said, getting to her feetand stepping away.

“All right.” Doon turned so that hisback was to the river, and he easedhimself carefully over the rocks, feelingfor the first rung with his foot. Linawatched as he sank out of sight, little bylittle. After a few moments his voice

called up from below: “I’m down! Nowyou come!”

Lina inched backward, just as Doonhad, letting one foot dangle over the edge,lower and lower, until it touched the firstrung of the ladder. She shifted her weightto that foot, clinging with cold fingers to aridge in the rock, and lowered herselfslowly until she was standing on the rungwith both feet. Her heart was beating sohard she was afraid it would shake herfingers loose from their grip.

Now she had to move downward. Shefelt for the next rung with her foot, foundit, let herself down. It would have beeneasy if it hadn’t been for the river waitingbelow to swallow her.

“You’re almost here!” called Doon. Hisvoice came from right below her.“There’s a ledge—one more rung andyou’ll feel it.”

She did feel it, solid beneath her foot.For a second, she stood there, stillclutching the ladder. The surging waterwas only inches below her now. Don’tthink about it, she told herself. She movedsideways two steps to stand next to Doon,and there in front of them was arectangular space carved out of the riverwall, rather like the entry hall of abuilding. It was perhaps eight feet wideand eight feet high, and would have beeninvisible from anywhere else in thePipeworks. You had to have climbeddown the riverbank to see it.

They stepped into this entry hall andwalked a few steps. Enough light to see bycame from the tunnel behind them.

Lina stopped. “There’s the door!” shesaid.

“What?” said Doon. The water roaredso 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 brownishblotches that looked like mildew. Lina puther palms against it. It was metal, and itfelt cold. The door had a metal handle,

and just below the handle was a keyhole.

Lina reached into the pocket of herpants for her copy of the Instructions. Sheunfolded it, and Doon looked over hershoulder. Together they squinted at thepaper in the dim light from the maintunnel.

“This is the part, right here,” she said,pointing:

Lina ran her finger along line number 3.“This must say, ‘Something somethingdown riverbank to ledge approximatelyeight feet below.’ That’s what we’ve justdone. Then 4 is something about . . .‘backs to the water, find door . . .something.’ And then ‘Ke hind’—that mustbe ‘key behind,’ and then there’s the smallsteel pan. Do you see a small steel pan?”

Doon was still studying the paper. “Itsays ‘right.’ We should look to the right ofthe door.”

And quite easily they found it. It wasn’ta pan at all, but a small square of steelembedded in the wall. “A steel panel,”

said Lina. She ran her fingers across it andfelt a dent at one side. When she pressedthere, the panel sprang open easily andsilently, as if it were glad to have beenfinally found. Inside, a silver key washanging on a hook.

Lina reached for it and then drew herhand back. “Shall I do it?” she said. “Orshall you?”

“You do it,” said Doon.

So she took the key from its hook andput it in the keyhole. She turned it and felta click. She grasped the door handle andpushed, but nothing happened. She pushedharder. “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 unlockedit!” She pulled and pushed and hauled onthe handle—and the door moved, notinward or outward but sideways. “Oh,this is how it goes!” cried Lina. Shepulled the handle to the left, and with adeep rasping sound, the door slid away,into a slot in the wall. Behind it was aspace of utter darkness.

They stared. Lina had expected to seesomething when the door opened. She hadthought there would be light behind it, anda path or road.

“Shall we go in?” said Lina.

Doon nodded.

Lina stepped across the threshold. Theair had a dank, stuffy smell. She turned tothe right and put her right hand against thewall. It was smooth and flat. The floor,too, was smooth.

“There might be a light switch,” shesaid. She patted the wall just inside thedoor, from the floor to as high as shecould reach, but found nothing.

Doon turned left and felt on the otherside, with the same result. “Nothing,” hesaid.

Very slowly, keeping a hand to the walland tapping the floor cautiously with their

feet before every step, Doon and Linamade their way in opposite directions.Each of them soon came to a corner andturned again. Now they were going deeperinto the dark. They both had the samethought: Is the way out of Ember a longdark tunnel? Must we go mile after mile inabsolute darkness?

But suddenly Lina gave a yelp ofsurprise. “Something’s here on the floor,”she said. Her foot had banged against ahard object. She knelt down and touched itcautiously with her hands. It was a metalcube, about a foot square. “It’s a box, Ithink. Two boxes,” she added as sheexplored farther.

Doon took a step toward her in the

darkness, and his knees banged into a hardedge. “There’s something else here, too,”he said. “Not a box.” He ran his handsalong 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’slighter and see what they are. Come andhelp.”

Doon made his way to Lina and pickedup one of the boxes. They walked backthrough the door and set the boxes down afew feet from the river’s edge. They weremade of dark green metal and had graymetal handles on top and a kind of latch onthe side. The latches opened easily. Linaand Doon raised the hinged lids andlooked inside.

What they saw puzzled anddisappointed them. Lina’s box was full ofsmooth white rods, each about ten incheslong. At the end of each one, a little bit ofstring poked out. In Doon’s box weredozens of small packets wrapped in aslippery material. He opened one andfound a lot of short wooden sticks, eachwith a blue blob on the end. Both boxeshad a label on the inside of the lid. Thelabel on Lina’s box said “Candles.” Thelabel on Doon’s said “Matches,” andunder it was a white, inch-wide strip ofsome kind of rough, pebbly material.

“What does ‘Candles’ mean?” Linasaid, puzzled. She took out one of thewhite rods. It felt slick, almost greasy.

“And what does ‘Matches’ mean?” saidDoon. “Matches what?” He took one ofthe small sticks from its packet. The bluestuff on the end was not wood. “Could itbe something to write with? Like a pencil?Maybe it writes blue.”

“But what’s the point of a whole box oftiny pencils?” asked Lina. “I don’tunderstand.”

Doon frowned at the little blue-tippedstick. “I don’t see what else it could be,”he said finally. “I’ll try writing somethingwith it.”

“On what?”

Doon looked around. The floor was too

damp from the spray of the river to writeon. “I could try it on the Instructions,” hesaid. Lina handed them to him. Carefully,he rubbed the blue end of the stick alongthe edge of the paper. It didn’t leave amark. He rubbed it along his arm. Nomark there, either.

“Try this white stuff,” Lina said,pointing to the white strip inside the lid ofthe box.

He scraped the blue tip across the roughsurface. Instantly, the end of the stick burstinto flame. Doon cried out and flung thestick away. It landed on the floor a fewfeet off, where it burned brightly for amoment and then sputtered out.

They stared at each other, their mouthsopen in astonishment. There was a strangesharp smell in the air that smarted in theirnoses.

“It makes fire!” said Doon. “And light!”

“Let me try one,” said Lina. She took astick from the box and ran it across therough strip. It blazed up fiercely, but shemanaged to hold on to it for a moment.Then she felt the heat on her fingers andlet go, and the flaming stick dropped overthe ledge and into the river.

“Firesticks,” said Doon. “Are they whatsaves Ember?”

“I don’t see how they could be,” said

Lina. “They’re so small. They go out toofast.” She shivered. This was not turningout the way she’d thought it would. Sheheld 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,” hesaid. “Maybe you tie the stick on with thestring, and then you can hold it longerwhile it burns.”

“It would still go out just as fast,” Linasaid.

“Yes,” said Doon. “But it’s all I canthink 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 theblue tip into flame. They watched the stickflare brightly, making shadows jump upbehind them. The wood turned black, andthe charred firestick crumbled anddropped to the ground. But the light didn’tgo out. The string itself had caught fire. Asthey watched, it sputtered and smoked andthen burned steadily, filling the little roomwith a warm glow.

“It’s the movable light,” said Doon inawe.

All Lina’s excitement flooded back.“And now, and now—” she said, “we cango back into the room and see what’sthere.”

They went back down the passage to thedoorway and stepped inside. Lina held themovable light at arm’s length before her.In its flickering glow they saw somethingmade of silvery metal. They walkedslowly around, examining it. It was longand low, filling up the center of the room.One end of it came to a point. The otherend was flat. Across the open middlestretched two metal strips. Four stoutropes were attached to the outside, one ateach end and one on each side. And on thefloor of the thing were two poles, eachflattened at one end.

“Look,” said Lina. “There’s a word onits side.” They squatted at the pointed endand held the flame near the word. It said,in square black letters, “BOAT.”

“Boat,” repeated Doon. “What does thatmean?”

“I don’t know,” said Lina. “And here’sanother word, on these poles: ‘Paddles.’The only paddle I know is the one Mrs.Polster uses on kids who misbehave inschool.”

Once again, she took her copy of theInstructions from her pocket and consultedit, holding it in the light of the flame.“Look,” she said, “right here: ‘oat’ mustbe ‘boat.’”

“And the next part must say, ‘stockedwith necessary equipment,” said Doon.“That must be what’s in the boxes.”

“Then there’s this.” Lina ran her fingeralong the next line.

“This word must be ‘ropes,’” she said.“Then ‘lower’ . . . and then . . . would thisword 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, andthen he took a short, sharp breath.“Downstream,” he said. “The word mustbe ‘downstream.’ It must say somethinglike, ‘Use the ropes to lower the boat, andhead downstream.’” He looked up at Linaand spoke in a voice full of wonder. “Theboat goes on the water. It’s something toride in.”

They stared at each other in theflickering light, realizing what this meant.There was no tunnel leading out of Ember.The way out was the river. To leaveEmber, they must go on the river.

CHAPTER 15

A Desperate Run

“But this can’t be right,” said Doon. “Ifthe river is the way out of Ember, why isthere just one boat? It’s only big enoughfor two people.”

“I don’t know,” said Lina. “It isstrange.”

“Let’s look around some more.”

They stood up. Doon went back towhere they’d left the boxes and gotanother candle. He brought it into the boatroom and lit it, and the room grew twiceas bright. Right away they saw what theyhadn’t noticed before: in the back wallwas a door almost as wide as the wholeroom. When they went up to it they couldsee that it, too, was a sliding door. Doontook hold of the handle that was on theright and pulled sideways, and the doorrolled smoothly open to reveal moredarkness.

They stepped in. They could guess fromthe echoing sound of their voices whenthey spoke that they were in a tremendousroom, though the ceiling was low—theycould see it just over their heads. The

candlelight glinted off something shiny,and as they went in farther they could seethat the room was filled with boats, rowupon row of them, all just like the one inthe first room. “There must be hundreds,”Lina whispered.

“Enough for everyone, I suppose,” saidDoon.

They wandered around a bit, but therewasn’t really much to see. All the boatswere the same. Each one contained twometal boxes and two paddles. The roomwas cold, and the air felt heavy in theirlungs. The candle flames burned weakly.So they went back to the small room andslid the door closed behind them. “Iguess,” said Lina, “that this first boat is

meant as a sort of sample. We learnwhat’s what on the one that has signs.‘Boat.’ ‘Paddles.’ ‘Candles.’ ‘Matches.’”

They went back out to the river’s edge.Lina blew out her candle and beganclosing up the boxes they’d opened.

Doon blew out his, too. “I’m going totake my candle with me,” he said, “to lookat later. I want some matches as well.” Hetook a packet of matches from the box andtucked it inside his shirt.

Lina returned the boxes to the boatroom and slid the door closed. Then sheand Doon stood together on the ledge andgazed down. Less than a foot below, theriver rushed by. A short distance

downstream it plunged into the dark mouthin the wall and disappeared.

“Well,” he said, “we’ve found it.”

“We’ve found it,” Lina repeated,wonderingly.

“And tomorrow, at the start of theSinging,” said Doon, “we’ll stand up inHarken Square and tell the whole city.”

When they came up out of the Pipeworks,it was nearly six o’clock. They hadn’trealized they’d been down there so long;both Doon’s father and Mrs. Murdo wouldbe wondering where they were. They

stood for a moment under a lamppost, justlong enough to agree on a time to meet thenext day and plan their announcement.Then they hurried home. When Doon’sfather asked why he was so late, he saidhis song rehearsal had gone long. Hewanted to shout out to his father, We’vefound the way out! We’re saved! But heheld himself in for the sake of his momentof glory. Tomorrow, when his father sawhim on the steps of the Gathering Hall, hewould be so overcome with surprise andpride that he would go weak in the knees,and the people standing next to him wouldhave to catch him and hold him up.

And the announcement about thethieving mayor! That would probablyhappen tomorrow, too. Doon had almost

forgotten it in the excitement of finding theboats. The mayor’s arrest and the city’srescue, both at once! It was going to be anamazing day. Racing thoughts kept Doonawake almost until morning.

The day of the Singing was a holidayfor the entire city; all the stores and otherbusinesses were closed. This meant thatDoon 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. Ifhe wasn’t in his shop, fussing with hismerchandise, he didn’t know what to dowith himself.

Doon dawdled over his breakfast ofcarrot sticks and mashed turnips, waitingfor his father to go. He wanted to get

ready for the journey down the river. Theyprobably wouldn’t leave for a few days—he and Lina would make theirannouncement tonight, and people wouldneed time to get organized before theycould leave the city—but he was tooexcited to sit around doing nothing.

As soon as his father left, Doon slippedthe case off his pillow. This would be histraveling pack. He put in the candle andthe matches. He put in the key he’dborrowed from the Pipeworks office. Heput in a good-sized piece of rope that he’dfound at the trash heaps and had beensaving for years and a bottle for water. Heput in an ancient folding knife that hisfather had given him, which had comedown through generations of his family

and which he used to chop off his bangswhen they got so long they tickled hiseyelids. He put in some extra clothes, incase he got wet, and some paper and apencil, so that he could write a record ofthe journey. Along with these things, hecrammed in a small blanket—it might becold in the new city—and a packet offood: six carrots, a handful of vitamins,some peas and mushrooms wrapped in alettuce leaf, two boiled beets and twoboiled turnips. That should be enough.Surely, when they got to where they weregoing, the people who lived there wouldgive them something to eat. He tied the topof the pillowcase in a knot, and then heuntied it again. He might want to addsomething else.

He stood in the middle of the apartmentand looked around at the jumble of stuff.There was nothing else here that hewanted to take with him—no, there wasone thing. He went back into his room.From beneath his bed he pulled out thepages of his bug book. He leafed throughit. The white spider. The moth with thezigzag 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, jointedlegs. Should he take this with him? Theremight not be creatures like this where theywere going. He might never see suchthings again.

But no, he’d leave it behind—his pack

should be small and light. He put the bugbook back under his bed and pulled outthe box where he kept the green worm. Hedrew back the scarf to check his captiveone more time. Several days before, theworm had done a curious thing: it hadwrapped itself up in a blanket of threads.Since then it had hung motionless from abit of cabbage stem. Doon had beenwatching it carefully. Either it was dead,or it was undergoing the change that he’dread about in a library book but couldhardly believe was true—the change froma crawling thing to a flying thing. So far,the bundled-up worm had shown no signsof life.

But now he saw that it was wriggling.The whole wrapped-up bundle, which

was shaped like a large vitamin pill, bentslightly from side to side, then was still,then bent back and forth again. Somethingwas pushing at the top end of it, and in amoment the threads there split apart and adark furry knob emerged. Doon watched,holding his breath. Next came two hairlikelegs, which clawed and plucked at theblanket. In a few minutes the wholecreature was out. Egress, thought Doonwith a smile. The creature’s wings werecrushed flat against its body at first, butsoon they opened, and Doon saw what hisgreen worm had become: a moth with lightbrown wings. He lifted the box andcarried it to the window. He opened thewindow and held the box out into the air.The moth waved its feathery feelers andtook a few steps along the wilted cabbage

leaf. For several minutes, it stood still, itswings trembling slightly. Then it flutteredup into the air, rising higher and higheruntil it was just a pale spot against thedark sky.

Doon watched until the mothdisappeared. He knew he had seensomething marvelous. What was thepower that turned the worm into a moth? Itwas greater than any power the Buildershad had, he was sure of that. The powerthat ran the city of Ember was feeble bycomparison—and about to run out.

For a few minutes he stood by thewindow, looking out over the square andthinking again about what to pack for hisjourney. Should he put in anything like

nails or wire? Would he need money?Should he take some soap?

Then he laughed and struck a handagainst his head. He kept forgetting thatthe entire population of the city would bewith him on the trip. If he neededsomething he didn’t have, someone wouldsurely be able to supply it.

So he tied a knot in his pillowcase andwas about to close the window when hecaught sight of three burly men wearingthe red and brown uniform of the cityguards striding into the square. Theystopped and looked around for a moment.Then one of them confronted oldhumpbacked Nammy Proggs, who wasstanding not far from the entrance to the

Small Items shop. The guard towered overher, and she twisted her head sidewaysand squinted up at him. Doon could hearthe guard’s voice clearly: “We’re lookingfor a boy named Harrow.”

“Why?” said Nammy.

“Spreading vicious rumors,” was theanswer. “Do you know where he is?”

Nammy hesitated a moment, and thenshe said, “Went off to the trash heaps justa minute ago.” The guard nodded curtlyand beckoned to his companions. Theymarched away.

Spreading vicious rumors! Doon wasso stunned that he stood still as stone for a

long minute. What could they possiblymean? But there was only one answer. Ithad to be what they’d told the assistantguard about the mayor. Why were theycalling it a vicious rumor? It was the truth!He didn’t understand it.

He did understand, though, that NammyProggs had done him a favor. She musthave seen that the guards meant him nogood. She had protected him, at least forthe moment, by sending the guards to thewrong place.

Doon forced his mind to slow downand think. Why did the guards think he andLina were lying? Obviously, they hadn’tinvestigated the room in Tunnel 351. Ifthey had, they’d have known he and Lina

were telling the truth.

He could think of only one otherpossibility. The guards—at least some ofthem—already knew what the mayor wasdoing. They knew about it and wanted it tostay a secret. And why? It was clear: theguards, too, were getting things from thestorerooms.

It had to be the answer. For a moment,the fear he’d felt when he saw the guardswas replaced by rage. The familiar hotwave rose in him, and he wanted to grab ahandful of his father’s nails or pot shardsand throw them against the wall. But all atonce he remembered: if the guards wereafter him, they’d be after Lina, too. He hadto warn her. He dashed down the stairs,

his anger turning into power for hisrunning feet.

After they discovered the room full ofboats, Lina had come home to Mrs.Murdo’s with the sound of the river still inher ears. It was like a huge, powerfulvoice, roaring at the top of its lungs. Deepinside herself Lina felt an answering call,as if she, too, contained a drop of the samepower. She would ride on the river—shecould hardly believe it—and it might takeher to the shining city she had dreamed of,or it might drown her. What she hadimagined before—the smooth, gentlysloping path leading out—now seemedchildish. How could the way into a new

world be so easy? She dreaded going onthe river, but she was ready for it, too. Shelonged to go.

She slept that night in the beautiful blue-green room, in the big lumpy bed withPoppy next to her. She felt safe here. Mrs.Murdo came in and tucked the coversaround her. She sat on the edge of the bedand sang an odd little song to Poppy—something about rock-a-bye baby, in thetreetops. “What are treetops?” Lina asked,but Mrs. Murdo didn’t know. “It’s a veryold song,” she said. “It’s probablynonsense words.”

She said good night and went out intothe living room, where Lina could hearher humming quietly as she tidied up. She

was so orderly. She never left herstockings draped over the back of a chair,or her sewing spread out all over thetable. Lina closed her eyes and waited forsleep.

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 thePipeworks to see the boats. They’d beexcited, shouting and laughing and crying,packing up their belongings, and surgingthrough the streets. If they couldn’t all fitinto the boats, there would be fights. Somepeople might get hurt. It was going to be amess. She’d have to keep her little familyclose around her—Poppy, Mrs. Murdo,and Doon, and perhaps Doon’s father and

Clary. Through it all, she would hold tightto Poppy so no harm could come to her.

It seemed she had barely closed her eyeswhen she felt Poppy’s hard little heelsbanging against her shins. “Time-a get up!Get up!” Poppy chirped.

She got out of bed and dressed herselfand Poppy. In the kitchen, Mrs. Murdowas mashing potatoes for breakfast. Howlovely, Lina thought, to have breakfastcooked for her—to hear water bubbling inthe pot, and to find a bowl and a spoon setout on the table, and vitamins lined upneatly beside a cup of beet tea. I couldlive here forever, Lina thought, before she

remembered that in a day or two theywould all be leaving.

There was a sudden banging on thefront door. Mrs. Murdo dried her handsand went to answer it, but before she’dtaken three steps the banging came again.“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Mrs. Murdocried, and when she opened the door,there was Doon.

His face was flushed, and he wasbreathing hard. He had a bulgingpillowcase slung over his shoulder.

He looked past Mrs. Murdo to Lina. “Ihave to talk to you,” he said. “Right now,but . . .” He threw a doubtful glance atMrs. Murdo.

Lina scrambled up from the table. “Inhere,” she said, towing him toward theblue-green room.

When she had closed the door, Doontold her what had happened. “They’llcome for you, too,” he said, “any minute.We have to get out of here. We have tohide from them.”

Lina could hardly make sense of whathe was saying. They were in trouble? Herlegs went shaky at the knees. “Hide?” shesaid. “Hide where?”

“We could go to the school—no onewould be there today—or the library. It’salmost always open, even on holidays.”He hopped impatiently from foot to foot.

“But we have to go fast, we have to gonow. They have signs up about us all overthe city!”

“Signs?”

“Telling people to report us if they seeus!”

Lina felt as if a swarm of insects wasinside her head, buzzing so loudly shecouldn’t think. “How long do we have tohide? All day?”

“I don’t know—we don’t have time tothink about it. Lina, they could be outsidethe 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 emergencywork to do. If anyone comes asking forme, say I’ll be back later.” They weredown the stairs before Mrs. Murdo couldask any questions.

Once in the street, they ran. “Whereto?” Lina said.

“The school,” Doon answered.

They took Greystone Street, stayingwithin the shadows as much as they could.As they passed the shoe shop, Lina saw awhite piece of paper stuck up on thewindow. She glanced at it and her heartgave a wild jump. Her name and Doon’swere written on it in big black letters:

DOON HARROW AND LINAMAYFLEET

WANTED FOR SPREADINGVICIOUS RUMORS

IF YOU SEE THEM, REPORT TO MAYOR’S CHIEF

GUARD.

BELIEVE NOTHING THEY SAY.

REWARD

She snatched the poster off the window,crumpled it up, and tossed it into thenearest trash can. In the next block, she

tore down two more, and Doon ripped oneoff a lamppost. But there were too many toget them all, and they didn’t have time towaste.

They ran faster. On this holiday, peopleslept late, and because the stores wereclosed, the streets were nearly empty.Still, they took the long route all the wayout by the beehives to avoidSparkswallow Square, where a fewpeople might be standing around andtalking. They ran past the greenhouses andup Dedlock Street. As they crossed NightStreet, Lina glanced to her left. Twoblocks away, a couple of guards werecrossing to Greengate Square. She tappedDoon’s shoulder and pointed. He saw, andthey ran faster. Had they been noticed?

Lina thought not; they would have heard ashout if the guards had seen them.

They got to the school and went inthrough the back door. In the WideHallway, their footsteps echoed on thewooden floor. It was strange to be hereagain, and to be here alone, without theclatter and chatter of other children. Thehallway with its eight doors seemedsmaller to Lina than it had when she was astudent, and shabbier. The planks of thefloor were scuffed gray, and there was acloud of finger smudges around thedoorknob of every door.

They went into Miss Thorn’s room and,out of habit, sat at their old desks. “I don’tthink they’ll look for us here,” said Doon.

“If they do, we can crawl into the papercabinet.” He set his pack down next to himon the floor.

For a while they just sat there, gettingtheir breath back. They hadn’t turned thelight on, so the room was dim—the onlylight came from beneath the blind over thewindow.

“Those posters,” Lina said after awhile.

“Yes. Everyone will see them.”

“What will they do to us if they catchus?”

“I don’t know. Something to keep usfrom telling what we know. Put us in the

Prison Room, maybe.”

Lina ran her finger along the B carvedin the desktop. It felt like a very long timesince she’d last sat at this desk. “We can’thide in here forever,” she said.

“No,” said Doon. “Just until it’s timefor the Singing. Then when everyone isgathered in Harken Square, we’ll go andtell about the boats and the mayor. Won’twe? I haven’t really thought about it—Ihaven’t had a chance to think at all thismorning.”

“But the guards are always there at theSinging, standing next to the mayor,” saidLina. “They’d grab us as soon as weopened our mouths.”

Doon’s eyebrows came together in adark line. “You’re right. So what will wedo?”

It was like finding yourself on a dead-end street, Lina thought. There was noway out. She stared blankly at the thingsthat had once been her daily companions—the teacher’s desk, the stacks of paper,The Book of the City of Ember on itsspecial shelf. The old words ran throughher head: “There is no place but Ember.Ember is the only light in the dark world.”She knew now that this wasn’t true. Therewas someplace else—the place where theboats would take them.

As if Doon had read her thoughts, helooked up. “We could go.”

“Go where?” she said, though she knewright away what he meant.

“Wherever the river leads,” he said. Hegestured to the pillowcase sack. “I packedup 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 byourselves?” she said. “Without tellinganyone?”

“We will tell them.” Doon was on hisfeet now. He went to the cabinet and got asheet of paper. “We’ll write a noteexplaining everything—a note to someonewe trust, someone who’ll believe us.”

“But I can’t just leave,” said Lina.

“How could I leave Poppy? And not evensay goodbye to her? Not know where I’mgoing, or if I’m ever coming back? Howcould you go without saying goodbye toyour father?”

“Because,” said Doon, “once they findthe boats, the rest of Ember will followus. It’s not as if we’re leaving themforever.” He strode across the room andrummaged in Miss Thorn’s desk. “Whoshall we write the message to?”

Lina wasn’t sure about this idea, but shecouldn’t, at the moment, think of a betterone. So she said, “We could write it toClary. She’s seen the Instructions. She’llbelieve what we say. And she lives closeby—just up in Torrick Square.”

“Okay,” said Doon. He pulled a pencilfrom the desk drawer. “Really,” he said,“this is a perfect idea. We can get awayfrom the guards and leave our messagebehind us. And we can be the first ones toarrive in the new city! We should be thefirst, because we discovered the way.”

“Well, that’s true.” Lina thought for aminute. “How long do you think it willtake before the rest of them find the boatsand come? It’s a lot of people to getorganized.” She numbered on her fingersthe things that would have to happen.“Clary will have to get the head of thePipeworks to go down with her and findthe boats. Then she’ll have to make theannouncement to the city. Then everyonein Ember will have to pack up their things,

troop down to the river, get all those boatsout of that big room, and load themselvesin. It could be a big mess, Doon. Poppywill need me.” She pictured frenziedcrowds of people, and Poppy tiny and lostamong them.

“Poppy has Mrs. Murdo,” said Doon.“She’ll be fine. Really. Mrs. Murdo isvery organized.”

It was true. The thought of taking Poppywith her on the river, which had dartedinto Lina’s mind, darted out again. I’monly being selfish, she thought, to want tohave her with me. It’s too dangerous totake her. Mrs. Murdo will bring her in aday or two. This seemed the most sensibleplan, though it made her so sad that it cast

a shadow over the thrill of going to thenew city. “What if something goeswrong?” she said.

“Nothing will go wrong! It’s a goodplan, Lina. We’ll be there ahead ofeveryone else—we can welcome themwhen they come, we can show themaround!” Doon was bursting witheagerness. His eyes shone, and he jiggledup and down.

“Well, all right,” Lina said. “Let’swrite our message, then.”

Doon wrote for a long time. When hewas finished, he showed what he’dwritten to Lina. He’d explained how tofind the rock with the E, how to go down

to the boat room, even how to use thecandles.

“It’s good,” she said. “Now we have todeliver it.” She paused a moment to see ifshe had any courage inside her. She foundthat she did, along with sadness and fearand excitement. “I’ll deliver it,” she said.“I’m the messenger, after all. I know backways to go, where no one will see me.”An idea struck her. “Doon, maybe Clarywill be home! Maybe she would keep ussafe and help us tell what we know, andwe won’t have to leave right now.”

Doon quickly shook his head. “I doubtit,” he said. “She’s probably with hersinging group, getting ready. You’ll justhave to leave the note under her door.”

Lina could tell from his tone of voicethat Doon didn’t really want Clary to behome. She supposed he had his heart seton their going down the river bythemselves. Doon glanced up at the clockon the schoolroom wall. “It’s a little aftertwo,” he said. “The Singing begins atthree. After that, everyone will be inHarken Square and the streets will beempty. I think we can get to the Pipeworkssafely then—why don’t we leave about aquarter after three.”

“You still have the key?”

Doon nodded.

“So after I’ve delivered the note toClary, 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 andwent to the window. She moved the blinda little and peered out. There was no onein the street. The dusty schoolroom wasvery quiet. She thought about Doon’sfather, who would be frantic when he sawhis son’s name on those posters and thenrealized later that Doon had disappeared.She thought about Mrs. Murdo, who mightalready have seen the posters, and whowould be frightened if guards camelooking for Lina and terrified if Linadidn’t come home by nightfall. She triednot to think about Poppy at all; shecouldn’t bear it.

“Give me the note,” she said to Doon atlast. She folded the piece of papercarefully and put it in the pocket of herpants. “Back soon,” she said, and went outof the room and down the hall to the reardoor of the school.

Doon went to the window to watch hergo. He moved the blind aside just enoughto see out into Pibb Street. There she was,running in that long-legged way, with herhair flying. She started across StonegritLane. Just before she reached the otherside, Doon’s breath stopped in his throat.Two guards rounded the corner fromKnack Street, directly ahead of her. Oneof them was the chief guard. He leaptforward and shouted so loudly Dooncould hear him plainly through the glass:

“That’s her! Get her!”

Lina reversed her direction in aninstant. She raced back down Pibb Street,turned down School Street towardBilbollio Square, and vanished fromDoon’s sight. The guards ran after her,shouting. Doon watched, sick with horror.She’s much faster than they are, he toldhimself. She’ll lose them—she knowsplaces to hide. He stood frozen next to thewindow, hardly breathing. They won’tcatch her, he thought. I’m sure they won’tcatch her.

CHAPTER 16

The Singing

When Lina heard the guards shout, terrorshot through her. She ran faster than sheever had before, her heart poundingwildly. Behind her, the guards kept uptheir shouting, and she knew that if otherguards were nearby they would comerunning. She had to find a hiding place.Ahead of her was Bilbollio Square—wasthere a spot she could duck into? And like

an answer, Doon’s words came back toher: “The library. It’s almost always open,even on holidays.” She didn’t have time tothink. She didn’t ask herself whetherEdward Pocket would be willing to hideher, or whether there would even be agood place to hide in the library. She justran for the passageway that led to thelibrary door and darted down it.

But the library door wouldn’t open. Sheturned the knob frantically, she pulled andpushed, and then, at the same time that sheheard the running footsteps of the guardscoming into the square, she saw the smallhandwritten sign stuck to the door:“Closed for the Singing.” The guards werevery near now. If she ran, they would seeher. She flattened herself against the wall,

hoping they wouldn’t think to look in thelibrary passage.

But they did. “Here she is!” yelled oneof the guards. She tried to shoot past him,but the passage was too narrow, and hecaught her by the arm. She pulled andtwisted and kicked, but the chief guard hadher now, too. He gripped her other armwith fingers that felt like iron. “Stop yourstruggling!” he shouted.

Lina reached up and grabbed a handfulof his wiry beard. She pulled with all hermight, and the chief guard roared, but hedidn’t let go. He yanked her forward,almost off the ground, and the two guardsdragged her across the square at anawkward, lopsided pace that made her

stumble over her own feet.

“You’re hurting me!” Lina said. “Don’thold so tight!”

“Don’t you tell us what to do,” said thechief guard. “We’ll hold you tight till weget you where you’re going.”

“Where is that?” said Lina. She was soenraged at her bad luck that she almostforgot to be afraid.

“You’re going to see the mayor, missy,”said the chief guard. “He’ll decide what todo with you.”

“But I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“Spreading vicious rumors,” said the

guard. “Telling dangerous lies calculatedto cause civic unrest.”

“It’s not a lie!” she said. But the guardgripped her arm even more tightly andgave her a shove so she stumbledsideways.

“No talking,” he said, and they walkedthe rest of the way in grim silence.

A few people had already gathered inHarken Square, though the workers werestill getting it ready for the Singing. Street-sweepers crossed the square back andforth, pushing their brooms. Someoneappeared at a second-floor window of abuilding on Gilly Street and unfurled oneof the banners that was always displayed

for the Singing—a long piece of red cloth,faded after years of use but still showingits design of wavy lines, representing theriver, the source of all power. That wasfor “The Song of the River.” There wouldbe a banner on the Broad Street side of thesquare, too, this one deep yellow-goldwith a design like a grid to represent “TheSong of the City,” and another banner onthe Otterwill side for “The Song ofDarkness,” perfectly black except for anarrow yellow edge.

The guards marched Lina up the stepsof the Gathering Hall and through the widedoorway. They took her down the maincorridor, opened the door at the end, andgave her one last push, a push that causedher to stagger forward in an undignified

way and bump up against the back of achair.

It was the same room she’d been in thatother, much happier day—her first day asa messenger. Nothing had changed—thefrayed red curtains, the armchairs with theupholstery worn thin, the hideous mud-colored carpet. The portraits on the walllooked down at her sorrowfully.

“Sit there,” said the chief guard. Hepointed at a small, hard-looking chair thatfaced the large armchair. Lina sat. Next tothe chair was the small table sheremembered from before, with the chinateapot and a tray of china teacups withchips around their edges.

The chief guard left the room—to findthe mayor, Lina supposed. The other onestood silently with his arms folded acrosshis chest. Nothing happened for a while.Lina tried to think about what she wouldsay to the mayor, but her mind wouldn’twork.

Then the door to the front hall opened,and the mayor came in. It was the firsttime Lina had seen him up close since shehad delivered Looper’s message to him.He seemed even more immense. Hisbaggy face was the color of a mushroom.He wore a black suit that stretched onlyfar enough across his vast belly for onebutton to connect with its buttonhole.

He moved ponderously across the room

and settled into the armchair, filling itcompletely. Next to his chair was a table,and on the table was a brass bell the sizeof a fist. The mayor gazed for a moment atLina with eyes that looked like theopenings of tunnels, and then he turned tothe guard.

“Dismissed,” he said, waving the backof his hand at him. “Return when I ring thebell.”

The guard left. The mayor swung hisgaze back to Lina. “I am not surprised,” hesaid. He lifted one arm and pointed afinger at Lina’s face. “You have been introuble before. Going where youshouldn’t.”

Lina started to speak, but the mayorheld up his hand. It was an oddly smallhand, with short fingers like ripe peapods.

“Curiosity,” said the mayor. “Adangerous quality. Unhealthy. Especiallyregrettable in one so young.”

“I’m twelve,” said Lina.

“Silence!” said the mayor. “I amspeaking.” He wriggled slightly from sideto side, wedging himself more firmly intothe chair. He’ll need to be pried out of it,Lina thought.

“Ember, as you know,” the mayor wenton, “is in a time of difficulty.

Extraordinary measures are necessary.This is a time when citizens should bemost loyal. Most law-abiding. For thegood of all.”

Lina said nothing. She watched how theflesh under the mayor’s chin bulged in andout as he spoke, and then she turned hereyes from this unpleasant sight and lookedcarefully around the room. She wasthinking now, calculating, but not aboutwhat the mayor was saying.

“The duties of a mayor,” said themayor, “are . . . complex. Cannot beunderstood by regular citizens,particularly children. That is why . . . ,” hewent on, leaning slightly forward so thathis stomach pushed farther out along his

lap, “certain things must remain hiddenfrom the public. The public would notunderstand. The public must have faith,”said the mayor, once again holding up hishand, this time with a finger pointing to theceiling, “that all is being done for theirbenefit. For their own good.”

“Hogwash,” said Lina.

The mayor jerked backward. Hiseyebrows came down over his eyes,making them into dark slits. “What?” hesaid. “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 willmake things worse for you.” He wasbreathing heavily, and his words came outwith spaces between them. “A misguidedchild . . . such as yourself . . . requires . . .a forceful lesson.” His short fingersgripped the arms of the chair. “Perhaps,”he said, “your curiosity has led you towonder . . . about the Prison Room. Whatcould it be like, eh? Dark? Cold?Uncomfortable?” He made the smile thatLina remembered from Assignment Day.His lips pulled away from his small teeth;his gray cheeks folded. “You will have achance to find out. You will become . . .closely acquainted . . . with the PrisonRoom. The guards will escort you there.Your accomplice—another knowntroublemaker—will join you, as soon as

he is located.”

The mayor turned to look for the bell.This was the moment when Lina hadplanned to make a dash for freedom—shethought she had a slim chance to succeedif she moved fast enough—but somethinghappened in that instant that gave her ahead start.

The lights went out.

There was no flicker this time, justsudden, complete darkness. It wasfortunate that Lina had already planned hermove and knew exactly which way to go.She leapt up, knocking over her chair.With her arm, she made a wide swipe andknocked over the table next to the chair as

well. The furniture thumping to the floor,the teapot shattering, and the mayor’senraged shouts made a clamor thatcovered the sound of her footsteps as shedashed to the stairway door. Was itunlocked? She reached for the knob.Grunts and squeaks told her that the mayorwas struggling to rise from his chair. Sheturned the knob and pulled, and the doorsprang open. She closed the door behindher and leapt upward two steps at a time.Even in the pitch dark, she could climbstairs. In the room, the bell clanged andclanged, and the mayor bellowed.

When she got to the first landing, sheheard the guards shouting. There was acrash—someone must have fallen over thetoppled chair or table. “Where is she?”

someone yelled. “Must have run out thedoor!” Did they know which door? Shedidn’t hear footsteps behind her.

If she could make it to the roof—and iffrom the roof she could jump to the roof ofthe Prison Room and from there to thestreet—then maybe she could escape. Herlungs were on fire now, her breath wasburning her throat, but she climbedwithout stopping, and when she came tothe top, she burst through the door to theroof and ran out.

And that was when the lights came backon. It was as if the blackout had beenarranged especially for her. I am so lucky,she thought, so extremely lucky! Ahead ofher was the clock tower. She went around

to the other side of it. No dancing on theroof this time.

A low wall ran along the edge of thebuilding. Lina approached it cautiouslyand peered out over the swarm of peopleassembling in Harken Square. Directlybelow her was the entrance of theGathering Hall, and as she watched, twoguards dashed out the door and down thesteps. Good—they had gone the wrongway! They must think she’d escaped intothe crowd. For the moment, she was safe.The clock in the tower began to chime.Three great booms rang out. It was timefor the Singing to begin.

Lina gazed down at the people ofEmber, gathered to sing their songs. They

stood so close together that she could seeonly their faces, which were lifted uptoward the sky, with the hard bright lightsshining down on them. They were silent,waiting for the Songmaster to appear onthe Gathering Hall steps. There was astrange hush, as if the city were holding itsbreath. Of the whole Ember year, Linathought, this hush before the Singing wasone of the most exciting moments. Sheremembered other years, when she hadstood with her parents, too short to see theSong-master’s signal, too short to seeanything but people’s backs and legs, andwaited for the first note to thunder out. Shefelt her heart move at that moment, everyyear. The sound would rise in wavesaround her like water, almost as if it couldlift her off the ground.

Now suddenly the moment came again.From hundreds of voices rose the firstnotes of “The Song of the City,” deep andstrong. She felt as she had all the yearsbefore: a quivering inside, as though astring under her ribs had been plucked,and a rush of joy and sadness mixedtogether. The deep, rumbling chords of thesong filled Harken Square. Lina felt thatshe might step off the edge of the buildingand walk across the air, it seemed so solidwith sound.

“The Song of the City” was long—therewere verses about “streets of light andwalls of stone,” about “citizens withsturdy hearts,” about “stored abundancenever-ending” (Not true, Lina thought).But at last, “The Song of the City” wound

down to its end. The singers held the finalnote, which grew softer and softer, andthen there was silence again. Lina lookedout at the lighted streets spreading away inevery direction, the streets she knew sowell. She loved her city, worn out andcrumbling though it was. She looked up atthe clock: ten minutes after three. Doonwould be getting ready to leave for thePipeworks. She didn’t know whether he’dseen her being captured—if he had, hewould be wondering if she’d been lockedinto the Prison Room. He’d be wonderingif he should try to rescue her, or if heshould go down the river by himself.

She should be hurrying to join him—buta sadness held her back, like a heavystone in her chest. She bent her face into

the palms of her hands and pressed hardagainst her closed eyes. How could she goaway from Ember and leave Poppybehind? Because if she went, she mustleave Poppy behind, mustn’t she? Howcould she take her on a journey of suchdanger?

“The Song of the River” startled herwhen it began—the men’s voices, low androlling, swelling with power, and then thewomen’s voices coming in above with acomplicated melody that seemed to fightthe 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 heronward, saying, Go down, go away, gonow. The more she listened, the more she

felt something like the motion of the riverin her stomach, a churning, sickeningfeeling.

Then came “The Song of Darkness,” thelast of the three songs, and the one mostfilled with longing and majesty. The soulof Ember was in this song. Its tremendouschords held all the sorrow and all thestrength of the people of the city. The songreached its climax: “Darkness like anendless night,” sang the hundreds ofvoices, so powerfully the air seemed toshiver.

And at that moment, the lights oncemore went out. The voices faltered, butonly for an instant. Then they rose again inthe darkness, stronger even than before.

Lina sang, too. She stood up and sang withall her might into the deep, solidblackness.

The last notes echoed and faded into aterrible silence. Lina stood utterly still.Will it end like this, she thought, at thefinish of the last song? She felt the coldstone of the clock tower behind her back.She waited.

Then an idea came to her that made herskin prickle. What if she were to shoutinto the silence right now? What if shewere to say, Listen, people! We’ve foundthe way out of Ember! It’s the river—wego on the river! She could announce theastounding news, just as she and Doon hadplanned to do, and then—and then what

would happen? Would the guards rush tothe roof and seize her? Would the peoplein the square think her news was just achild’s wishful thinking, or would theylisten and be saved? She could feel thewords pushing upward in her throat, shewanted so much to say them. She took adeep breath and leaned forward.

But before she could speak, a rumble ofvoices arose below. Someone shouted,“Don’t move!” and someone elseshrieked. The rumble rose to a roar, andthen cries flew into the darkness fromeverywhere. The crowd was erupting intopanic.

There was no hope of being heard now.Lina clutched the edge of the clock tower

as if the tumult below might cause her tofall. She strained her eyes against thedarkness. Without light, she could gonowhere. Lights, come back on, sheprayed. Come back on.

Then she saw something. At first, shethought her eyes were tricking her. Sheclosed them tightly and opened themagain. It was still there: a tiny point oflight, moving. As she watched, it movedalong slowly in a straight line. Then itturned and moved in a straight line again.Was it on River Road? She couldn’t tell.But suddenly she knew what it was. It wasDoon, with a candle. Doon, going towardthe Pipeworks in the dark.

And she wanted to go, too. She could

feel it all through her, the urge to run andmeet him and find the way out of Ember,to the new place. She listened to theshouts and wails of the terrified people inthe square below. She thought of Mrs.Murdo down there in the dark, beingbumped and pushed, with her armswrapped tightly around Poppy, trying toprotect her, and all at once everythingseemed clear. Lina knew what she woulddo—if only the lights would come backon, if only this was not the very lastblackout in the history of Ember. Watchingthe tiny light following its steady course,she made a wish with the whole force ofher heart and mind.

Then the floodlights flickered—therewas a great cry of hope from the crowd—

and the lights came on and stayed on. Linaran to the back edge of the roof, droppedeasily down onto the roof of the PrisonRoom, and, seeing no guards in the crowdthat was now streaming into the street, shejumped from there to the ground andjoined the throng of people. She made herway down Greystone Street, going at thesame pace as everyone else so shewouldn’t stand out. When she came to thetrash-can enclosure behind the GatheringHall, she squatted down and hid. Herheart was beating fast, but she felt strongand purposeful now. She had her plan. Assoon as she spotted Mrs. Murdo andPoppy on their way home, she’d put it intoaction.

CHAPTER 17

Away

At three-twenty, Doon took his pillowcasepack, left the school by the back door, andstarted up Pibb Street. He went fast—thelights had gone out for a few minutes justbefore three, and he was nervous aboutbeing outside. He planned to take the longway to the Pipeworks, out at the very edgeof the city, to avoid any guards that mightstill be looking for him.

He was filled with dread about Lina.He wouldn’t know what had happened toher until he got to the Pipeworks and sheeither showed up or didn’t. All he coulddo now was run.

He raced down Knack Street. It wasstrange to be out in the city with the streetsso utterly deserted. Without the peoplepassing back and forth, the streets seemedwider and darker. Nothing moved buthimself, his shadow, and his fleetingreflection in shop windows he passed. InSelverton Square, he saw a kiosk wherethe poster with his and Lina’s names on ithad been pinned up. Everyone in the citymust have seen these posters by now. Hewas famous, he thought wryly, but not inthe way he’d wanted. There would be no

glorious moment on the Gathering Hallsteps after all. Instead of making his fatherproud, he would cause him dreadfulworry.

This thought made him so sad that hisknees felt suddenly wobbly. How could hejust vanish without a word? But it was toolate now, he couldn’t go back. If onlythere was some way to send him amessage—and in a moment, he realizedthere was. He stopped, fished in his packfor the paper and pencil he had brought,and scribbled on it, “Father—We havefound the way out—it was in thePipeworks after all! You will know aboutit tomorrow. Love, Doon.” He folded thisin quarters, wrote “Deliver to LorisHarrow” in big letters on the outside, and

pinned it to the kiosk. There! That was thebest he could do. He would have to trustthat someone would deliver it.

In the distance, he heard the faint soundof singing. He listened—it was “The Songof the River,” just ending. “Far below,like the blood of the earth, From thecenter of nowhere rushing forth,” hesang under his breath. Like everyone inEmber, he knew the words of the threesongs by heart. He sang along softly withthe faraway singers:

“Making the light for thelamps of Ember,

Older than anyone can

remember,

Faster than anything anyoneknows,

The river comes and the rivergoes.”

Up Rim Street now to River Road. Hewas halfway there. The singers werestarting on “The Song of Darkness.” It washis favorite, with its powerful, deepharmonies—he was a little sorry to bemissing it. He went up the Pott Street sideof empty Riverroad Square, where anotherposter hung crookedly on the kiosk, and hewas headed toward North Street whensuddenly the lights flickered and went out.

He jolted to a stop. Stand still and wait—that was his automatic response. In thedistance he heard a dip in the sound of thesinging, some startled voices breaking theflow, but then the song rose again, defyingthe darkness. For a moment all thoughtsvanished from Doon’s mind; there wasnothing but the fearless words of the song:

“Black as sleep and deep asdreaming,

Darkness like an endless night.

Yet within the streets of Ember

Bright and bravely shines ourlight.”

He sang, standing still in the blackness.When the song ended, he waited. Thelights would surely come back soon. For afew minutes there was silence, and then,far away but piercingly clear, he heard ascream. More screams and shoutsfollowed, the sounds of panic. He felt thepanic himself, like a hand taking hold ofhim, making him want to leap up and flinghimself against the dark.

But suddenly, with a flash of joy, heremembered: he didn’t have to wait forthe lights to come back on. He had whatno citizen of Ember had ever had before—a way to see in the dark. He set his packdown, untied the knot at the top, and

groped around inside until he felt thecandle. Down in a corner, he found thelittle packet of matches. He scraped amatch against the pavement, and it flaredup instantly. He held the flame to the stringon the candle, and the string began to burn.He had a light. He had the only light in theentire city.

The candle didn’t cast its light very far,but it was enough to see at least thepavement in front of him. He went slowlyalong Pott Street, then turned left on NorthStreet. At the end of the street was thewall of the Pipeworks office.

When he got to the Pipeworks entrance,no one was there. A little cloud of mothscame to flutter around the flame of his

candle, but otherwise nothing moved inPlummer Square. There was nothing to dobut wait. Doon blew the candle out—hedidn’t want to use it all up in case thelights stayed off a long time—and squatteddown on the pavement, setting down hisbundle and leaning against one of the bigtrash cans. He waited, listening to thedistant shouts—and at last the lightsblinked, blinked again, and came on.

Lina was nowhere in sight. If the guardshad found her and taken her . . . But Doonpreferred not to think about that yet. Hewould wait for a while—she would havebeen delayed by the blackout if she wason her way. He couldn’t see the clocktower from here, but it was probably notquite four o’clock.

What if she didn’t come? The Singingwas over, the people were dispersingthroughout the city, and the guards, nodoubt, would soon resume their search forhim. Doon clasped his arms together andpressed them hard against his stomach,trying to stop the queasy fluttering.

If she didn’t come, Doon had twochoices: he could stay in the city and dowhat he could to save Lina, or he could goin the boat by himself and hope Lina couldsomehow free herself and tell the peopleof Ember about the way out. He didn’t likeeither of these plans; he wanted to godown the river, and he wanted to go withLina.

Doon stood up and hoisted his sack

again. He was too restless to keep sitting.He walked down to Gappery Street andlooked in both directions. Not a singleperson was in sight. He walked toPlummer Street, thinking that perhaps Linawas coming by way of the city’s edge, ashe had, to avoid being seen. But no onewas there; he didn’t even see anyone whenhe went past Subling Street to the very endof the city. He had to decide what to do.

He went and stood in the doorway ofthe Pipeworks. Think, he said to himself.Think! He was not even sure he couldmake the river journey by himself. Howwould he get the boat into the water?Could he lift it without help? On the otherhand, how could he help Lina if she wasin the hands of the mayor’s guards? What

could he possibly do that would not justget himself caught, too?

He felt sick. His hands were cold. Hestepped out of the doorway and scannedthe square once again. Nothing moved butthe moths around the lights.

And then down Gappery Street Linacame running. She came slantwise acrossthe square, and he dashed to meet her. Shewas hugging a bundle to her chest.

“I’ve come, I’m here, I almost didn’tmake it,” she said, breathing so hard shecould barely talk. “And look.” She foldedback the blanket of her bundle. Doon sawa curl of brown hair and two widefrightened eyes. “I’ve brought Poppy.”

Doon was so glad to see Lina that hedidn’t mind at all that Poppy was comingwith them, making a risky journey evenriskier. Relief and excitement floodedthrough him. They were going! They weregoing!

“Okay,” he said. “Come on!”

With his borrowed key, he opened thePipeworks door, and they hurried past theyellow slickers on their hooks and thelines of rubber boots. Doon dashed intothe Pipeworks office long enough toreplace the key on its hook, and then theypulled open the stairway door and starteddown. Lina stepped slowly because ofPoppy, and Poppy clung to her neck,unusually quiet, sensing the strangeness

and importance of what was happening. Atthe bottom of the stairs, they came out intothe main tunnel and walked down the pathto the west until they came to the markedrock.

“How are we going to get Poppy downthere?” Doon asked.

Lina said, “I’ll fasten her to my chest.”Setting Poppy down, Lina took off the coatand the sweater she was wearing. WithDoon’s help, she made her sweater into asling for Poppy, tying its sleeves behindher neck. Then she put her coat back onand buttoned it up.

Doon looked doubtfully at this bulkyarrangement. “Will you be able to climb

down, carrying her like that? Will you beable to reach around her and hold on to therungs?”

“Yes,” said Lina. Now that she hadPoppy with her, she felt brave again. Shecould do whatever she needed to.

Doon went down first. Lina followed.“Stay very still, Poppy,” she said. “Don’tsquirm.” Poppy did stay still, but even soit was not easy going down the ladderwith her extra weight. Lina’s arms werejust long enough to reach past Poppy andhold on to the ladder. She descended veryslowly. When she got to the ledge, shestepped sideways, gripped the hand Doonheld out for her, and, with a deep breath ofrelief, came into the entryway.

They walked to the back of the entryhall, and Doon opened the steel panel andtook out the key. He slid aside the door tothe room where the single boat was, andthey went in. Doon took his candle fromhis sack and lit it. Lina unwrapped Poppyand sat her down at the back of the room.“Don’t move from there,” she said. Poppyput her thumb in her mouth, and Doon andLina set to work.

Doon’s sack went in the pointed end ofthe boat, which they decided must be thefront. They put the boxes of candles andmatches into the rear of the boat. It wasclear they’d been designed to go there;they fit snugly.

The poles labeled “Paddles” were a

mystery. Lina thought maybe they wereweapons, meant for fending off hostilecreatures. Doon thought they might fitacross the boat somehow to make railingsto brace yourself against, but he couldn’tget them to work in this way. Finally, theydecided just to leave the paddles in thebottom of the boat and figure out what theywere for as they went along.

Doon dripped a bit of wax on the floorand stood his candle up in it, so he’d haveboth hands free. “Let’s see if we can liftthe boat,” he said.

With Doon at the rear and Lina at thefront, they found they could lift the boatwith ease. It was amazingly light, evenwith the boxes and pack inside it. They set

it down again. The next step was to get itin the water somehow, and then get in itthemselves.

“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 onto the ropes. And tie the ropes tosomething to keep it from moving.”

“To what?”

“They must have put a peg or somethingin the wall to tie it to.” Doon went backout to the edge of the river and got downon his knees. Leaning over, he felt withone hand along the bank below. At first

there was only smooth, slippery rock. Hemoved his hand slowly back and forth, upand down. River water splashed againsthis fingers. At last he felt something—ametal rod attached to the river wall, likethe rungs of the ladder they had climbeddown. “I’ve found it,” he called.

He got up again and went back to theboat room. “Let’s carry the boat out,” hesaid. He and Lina lifted it and, takingsmall steps, moved it forward. As theywent out the door, Poppy began to wail.

“Don’t cry!” Lina called to her. “Stayright there! We’ll be back in a second.”

They carried the boat right to the edgeof the water and set it down carefully, its

front end pointing downstream. Doon kneltagain, feeling for the metal rod. “Hand methe end of the rope,” he said.

Which rope? Lina thought for a second.She realized it had to be the one attachedto the side of the boat nearest her—thatwould be the side closest to the riverbankwhen they put the boat in. She uncoiled therope, ran it around the boat, and handed itsend down to Doon, who lay on hisstomach with his head hanging over theedge and knotted the rope to the metal rungin the wall. He got to his feet again,wiping water from his face.

“Now,” Doon said, “we can put theboat in the water.”

Another wail came from the boat room.“I’m coming,” Lina called, and dashedback for Poppy. She hoisted her up andspoke into her ear, in the voice she usedfor announcing an exciting game: “We’regoing on an adventure, Poppy. We’regoing for a ride, a ride in the water! Itwill be fun, sweetie, you’ll see.” Sheblew out the candle Doon had left andcarried 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, apicture of herself arriving in the bright cityof her dreams flashed into her mind, andthen it faded and was gone. She had no

idea what lay ahead.

She set Poppy down against the wall ofthe entry passage. “Sit here,” she told her.“Don’t move until I tell you to.” Poppysat, her eyes wide, her plump legs stickingout in front of her.

Lina took hold of the rope at the rear ofthe boat. Doon took hold of the rope at thefront. They heaved the boat up andstretched sideways to swing it out over thewater. It tipped alarmingly from side toside. “Let it down!” yelled Lina. Theyboth let the ropes slide through theirhands, and the boat fell and hit the waterwith a slap. It bounced and rocked andpulled against its tether, but Doon’s knotheld. 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 boattipped sideways under his weight. Doonstaggered a step, and then found hisbalance. “All right!” he yelled. “Hand mePoppy!”

Lina lifted Poppy, who began to howland kick at the sight of the bucking boatand the churning water. But Doon’s armswere right there, and Lina thrust her intothem. A second later, she jumped inherself, and then all three of them weretossed to the floor of the boat by itsviolent rocking.

Doon managed to get to his feet. Hehauled on the rope that held the boat to thebank until he was close enough to reachthe knot. He struggled with it. Watersplashed into his face. He yanked at theknot, loosened it, pulled the rope free—and the boat shot forward.

CHAPTER 18

Where the River Goes

For a second, Lina saw the banks of theriver streak by. Ahead was the opening ofthe tunnel, like an enormous mouth. Theyplunged into it and left the light of thePipeworks behind. In complete darkness,the boat pitched and rolled, and Lina, inthe bottom of it, banged from side to side,gripping Poppy with one arm and grabbingwith the other hand for anything to hold on

to. Doon slid into her, and she slid into theboxes. Poppy was shrieking wildly.

“Doon!” Lina shouted, and he shoutedback, “Hold on! Hold on!” But she keptlosing her grip on the edge of the boat andbeing flung sideways. She was terrifiedthat Poppy would slam into the metalbench, or be torn from her arms and tossedinto the river.

The boat hit something and shuddered,then raced on. It felt like beingswallowed, this rushing through the dark,with the river roaring like a thousandvoices.

Lina’s legs were tangled with Doon’s,and Poppy’s arms were so tight around

her neck that she could hardly breathe. Butit was the dark that was most terrible—going so fast into the dark.

She closed her eyes. If they were goingto smash into a wall or plunge into abottomless hole, there was nothing shecould do about it. All she could do washold tight to Poppy. She did that, for whatseemed a long time.

And then at last the current slowed, andthe boat stopped thrashing about sowildly. Lina managed to sit up, and shefelt Doon moving, too. Poppy’s shrieksturned to whimpers. The darkness wasstill complete, but Lina sensed spaceabove 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 himscramble past her to the back of the boat,and she heard a scrape as he pulled a boxout from its place under the bench. “Can’tfind the latch!” Doon said. Then a secondlater, “There, I’ve got it. This is thematches, so this one must be candles.”More scraping and banging. The boatlurched, Lina slid forward. Doon slid, too,and slammed into her back. He gave a yellof rage. “Dropped the match! Hold on, Ialmost had it.” Long seconds ofscrambling and clattering. Then a lightflared up, and Doon’s shadowed faceappeared above it. He touched the matchto a candle, and the light grew steadier.

It was only a small flame, but it castglints of light on the tunnel walls and thesilky surface of the water. The tunnel hadan arched ceiling, Lina saw, like thetunnels of the Pipeworks, but it was muchwider than those tunnels. The river ranthrough it like a moving road.

“Can you light another?” Lina asked.Doon nodded and turned back to theboxes, but once again the boat strucksomething, causing a spray of water toslap into them and put the candle out.

It was several minutes before Doonmanaged to light it again, and more beforehe finally had two burning at once. Hejammed one of them into a space betweenthe bench and the side of the boat, and he

held the other in his hand. His hair wasflattened against his forehead, anddripping. His brown jacket was torn at theshoulder. “That’s better,” he said.

It was better—not only did they havelight to see by, but the current was slower,and the boat sailed more smoothly. Linawas able to unwrap Poppy from her neckand look around. Ahead she could see thatthe tunnel curved. The boat swung into thecurve, banged against the wall,straightened itself, and sped on. “Hand mea candle, too,” she said.

Doon gave Lina the candle he washolding and lit another. They found placesto wedge all three candles into the frameof the boat, so they could keep their hands

free. For a while they rushed along almostsilently, the river having become nearly assmooth as a sheet of glass.

Then suddenly the current slowed evenmore, and the tunnel opened out. “We’vecome into a room,” said Lina. Faroverhead arched a vaulted ceiling.Columns of rock hung down from it, andcolumns of rock rose from the water, too,making long shadows that turned andmingled as the boat floated among them.They glimmered in the candlelight, pinkand pale green and silver. Their strangelumpy shapes looked like something softthat had frozen—like towers of mashedpotatoes, Lina thought, that had hardenedto stone.

Now and then the boat bumped into oneof these columns, and they found that theycould use a paddle to knock themselvesfree again. In this way they crossed theroom to the other side, where again thepassage narrowed and the current ranfaster.

Much faster. It was as if the boat werebeing pulled forward by a powerful hand.The water grew rough again, and splashesof spray put out their candles. Lina andDoon huddled in the bottom of the boatwith Poppy between them, their armsclasped around her. They clenched theirteeth and squeezed their eyes shut, andsoon there was nothing in their minds butthe roll and plunge of the boat and nothingin their bodies but the effort not to be

thrown out. Once, the sound of the riverrose to a crashing, and the front of the boattipped downward, and they were pitchedabout so violently that it seemed they weretumbling down stairs—but that lasted onlya few seconds, and then they werestreaming onward as before.

Lina lost track of time. But a whilelater, maybe a few minutes, maybe anhour, the current slowed. The candlesthey’d stuck in the boat had been knockedoverboard, so Doon lit new ones. Theysaw that they had come to another pool.There were no lumpy columns of rockhere; nothing interrupted the wide flatsurface of the water, which stretched outbefore them in the flickering light fromtheir candles. The ceiling was smooth and

only about ten feet above their heads. Theboat drifted, as if it had lost its sense ofdirection. Using a paddle to poke againstthe walls, Doon guided the boat aroundthe 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.” Shepointed to a crack in the wall only a fewinches wide.

“But the boat can’t go there.”

“No, it’s much too small.”

He poled the boat forward. Theirshadows 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 wecame,” 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 closed-inplace.

“The end?” Lina felt a shiver of fear.

“I mean the end of the trip,” Doon said.“Maybe we’re supposed to get out overthere.” He pointed to a wide expanse ofrock that sloped back into the darkness on

one side of the pool. Everywhere else, thewalls rose straight out of the water.

He poled the boat over to the rockslope. The boat scraped bottom here—thewater was shallow. “I’ll get out and see ifthis goes anywhere,” said Lina. “I want tobe on solid ground again, anyway.” Shehanded Poppy to Doon and stood up.Holding a candle, she put one foot overthe edge of the boat and into the coldwater, and she waded ashore.

The way did not look promising. Theground sloped upward, and the ceilingsloped downward. As she went fartherback she had to stoop. A few yards in, atumbled heap of rocks blocked the way.She inched around them, turning sideways

to squeeze through the narrow space, andcrept forward, holding the candle out infront of her. This goes nowhere, shethought. We’re trapped.

But a few steps farther along, she foundshe could stand up straight again, and afew steps beyond that she turned a corner,and suddenly the candlelight shone on awide path, with a high ceiling and asmooth floor. Lina gave a wild shout.“Here it is!” she cried. “It’s here! There’sa path!”

Doon’s voice came from far away. Shecouldn’t tell what he was saying. Shemade her way back toward the boat, andwhen it came in sight she yelled again, “Ifound a path! A path!”

Doon scrambled out and waded ashore,carrying Poppy. He set her down, and thenhe and Lina took hold of the boat andhauled it as far as they could up the slopeof rock. Poppy caught the excitement. Sheshouted gleefully, waving her fists likelittle clubs, and stomped around, glad tobe on her feet again. She found a pebbleand plunked it into the water, crowinghappily at the splash it made.

“I want to see the path,” said Doon.

“Go up that way,” Lina told him, “andaround the pile of rocks. I’ll stay here andtake things out of the boat.”

Doon went, taking another candle fromthe box in the boat. Lina sat Poppy down

in a kind of nook formed by a roundishboulder and a hollow in the wall. “Don’tmove from here,” she said. Then shepulled Doon’s bundle from under the seatof the boat. It was damp, but not soaked.Maybe the food inside would still be allright. She was hungry all of a sudden.She’d had no dinner, she remembered. Itmust be the middle of the night by now, ormaybe even morning again.

She carried Doon’s bundle ashore,along with the boxes of candles andmatches, and as she set them down, Dooncame back. His eyes were glowing, thereflection of a tiny flame dancing in eachone. “That’s it for sure,” he said. “We’vemade it.” Then his eyes shifted. “What’sPoppy got?” he asked.

Lina whipped around. In Poppy’s handswas something dark and rectangular. Itwasn’t a stone. It was more like a packetof some kind. She was plucking andpulling at it. She lifted it to her mouth as ifto tear it with her teeth—and Lina jumpedto her feet. “Stop!” she shouted. Poppy,startled, dropped the packet and began tocry.

“It’s all right, never mind,” Lina said,retrieving what Poppy had been about tochew on. “Come and have some dinnernow. Hush, we’re going to have dinner.I’m sure you’re hungry.”

In the light of Doon’s candle, withPoppy squirming on Lina’s lap, theyexamined Poppy’s find. The packet was

wrapped in slippery, greenish materialand bound up with a strap. It wasn’twrapped very well; it looked as ifsomeone had bundled it up quickly. Thematerial was loose, and blotched withwhitish mold.

Lina edged the strap off carefully. Itwas partly rotten; on the end of it was asmall 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, andLina opened the brown cover. The pagesinside had faint blue lines across them,and someone had written along these linesin slanted black letters, which were notneat like the writing in the library books,

but sprawling, as if the writer had been ina hurry.

Doon ran his finger under the first line.“It says, They tell us we . . . 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. “Couldsomeone have come this way before us?”

“Or was it someone leaving the othercity?”

Doon looked down at the book again.He riffled through the pages—there weremany of them.

“Let’s save it,” said Lina. “We’ll readit when we get to the new city.”

Doon nodded. “It’ll be easier to seethere.”

So Lina wrapped up the book again andtied it securely into Doon’s bundle. Theysat on the rock shelf for a while, eating thefood Doon had brought. The candleswedged in the boat still shone steadily,and their light was cozy, like lamplight. Itmade golden shapes on the still surface ofthe pond.

Doon said, “I saw the guards run afteryou. Tell me what happened.”

Lina told him.

“And what about Poppy? What did youtell Mrs. Murdo?”

“I told her the truth—at least I hope it’sthe truth. I caught up with her on her wayhome after the Singing. She’d seen theposters—she was terrified—but beforeshe could ask questions, I just said shemust give Poppy to me. I said I was takingher to safety. Because that’s what Isuddenly realized on the roof of theGathering Hall, Doon. I’d been thinkingbefore that I had to leave Poppy becauseshe’d be safe with Mrs. Murdo. But whenthe lights went out, I suddenly knew:There is no safety in Ember. Not for long.Not for anyone. I couldn’t leave herbehind. Whatever happens to us now, it’sbetter 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 tothe Pipeworks and meet you, and I knew Ihad to go while there were still crowds inthe street, so it would be harder for theguards to see me. I just said I was takingPoppy to safety. Mrs. Murdo handed herover, but she sort of sputtered, ‘Where?’and ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘You’ll know in afew days—it’s all right.’ And then I ran.”

“So you gave her the note, then?” saidDoon. “The one meant for Clary?”

“Oh!” Lina stared at him, stricken. “Themessage to Clary!” She put her hand in herpocket and pulled out the crumpled piece

of paper. “I forgot all about it! All I wasthinking of was getting Poppy and gettingto you.”

“So no one knows about the room fullof 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 peopleright away, even just a few people . . . ifwe hadn’t decided to be grand andannounce it at the Singing . . .”

“I know,” said Doon. “But we didn’t,that’s all. We didn’t tell, and now no oneknows. I did leave a message for my

father, though.” He told Lina about pinninghis last-minute message to the kiosk inSelverton Square. “I said we’d found theway out, and that it was in the Pipeworks.But that’s not much help.”

“Clary has seen the Instructions,” Linasaid. “She knows there’s an egress. Shemight find it.”

“Or she might not.”

There was nothing to be done about it,and so they put the supplies back intoDoon’s pillowcase and got ready to go.Lina used Doon’s rope to make a leash forPoppy. She tied one end around Poppy’swaist and the other around her own. Shefilled her pockets with packs of matches,

and Doon put all the remaining candles inhis sack—in case they arrived in the newcity at night. He filled his bottle with riverwater, lit a candle for himself and one forLina, and thus equipped, they left the boatbehind and crept up the rocky shelf to thepath.

CHAPTER 19

A World of Light

As they squeezed past the rocks at theentrance to the path, Doon thought he sawthe candlelight glance off a shiny place onthe wall. He stopped to look, and when hesaw 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 ofglass. Dampness had seeped under theglass and made splotches on the paper, butby holding their candles up close, theycould read it.

Welcome, Refugees fromEmber!

This is the final stage of yourjourney.

Be prepared for a climb

that will take several hours.

Fill your bottles with waterfrom the river.

We wish you good fortune,

The Builders

“They’re expecting us!” said Lina.

“Well, they wrote this a long time ago,”Doon said. “The people who put it heremust all be dead by now.”

“That’s true. But they wished us goodfortune. It makes me feel as if they’rewatching over us.”

“Yes. And maybe their great-great-great-grandchildren will be there towelcome us.”

Encouraged, they started up the path.

Their candles made only a feeble glow,but they could tell that the path was quitewide. The ceiling was high over theirheads. The path seemed to have beenmade for a great company of people. Insome places, the ground beneath their feetwas rutted in parallel grooves, as if awheeled cart of some kind had beendriven over it. After they had walkedawhile, they realized that they weremoving in long zigzags. The path would goin one direction for some time and thenturn sharply and go the opposite way.

As they went along, they talked less andless; the path sloped relentlessly upward,and they needed their breath just forbreathing. The only sound was the lightpat-pat of their footsteps. Lina and Doon

took turns carrying Poppy on their backs—she had gotten tired of walking verysoon and cried to be picked up. Twice,they stopped and sat down to rest, leaningagainst the walls of the passage and takingdrinks from Doon’s bottle of water.

“How many hours do you think we’vebeen walking?” Lina asked.

“I don’t know,” Doon said. “Maybetwo. Maybe three. We must be nearlythere.”

They climbed on and on. Their firstcandles had long ago burned down to thelast inch, as had their second candles.Finally, when their third ones were abouthalfway gone, Lina began to notice that the

air smelled different. The cold, sharp-edged, rock smell of the tunnel waschanging to something softer, a strange,lovely smell. As they rounded a corner, agust of this soft air swept past them, andtheir candles went out.

Doon said, “I’ll find a match,” but Linasaid, “No, wait. Look.”

They were not in complete darkness. Afaint haze of light shone in the passageahead of them. “It’s the lights of the city,”breathed Lina.

Lina set Poppy down. “Quick, Poppy,”she said, and Poppy began to trot, keepingclose at Lina’s heels. The strange, lovelysmell in the air grew stronger. The

passage came to an end a few yardsfarther along, and before them was anopening like a great empty doorway.Without a word, Lina and Doon took holdof each other’s hands, and Lina took holdof Poppy’s. When they stood in thedoorway and looked out, they saw no newcity at all, but something infinitelystranger: a land vast and spacious beyondany of their dreams, filled with air thatseemed to move, and lit by a shiningsilver circle hanging in an immense blacksky.

In front of their feet, the ground sweptaway in a long, gentle slope. It was notbare stone, as in Ember; something softcovered it, like silvery hair, as high astheir knees. Down the slope was a tumble

of dark, rounded shapes, and then anotherslope rose beyond that. Way off into thedistance, as far as they could see, the landlay in rolling swells, with clumps ofshadow in the low places between them.

“Doon!” cried Lina. “More lights!” Shepointed at the sky.

He looked up and saw them—hundredsand hundreds of tiny flecks of light, strewnlike spilled salt across the blackness.“Oh!” he whispered. There was nothingelse to say. The beauty of these lightsmade his breath stop in his throat.

They took a few steps forward. Doonbent to feel the strands that grew out of theground, almost higher than Poppy’s head;

they were cool and smooth and soft, andthere was dampness on them.

“Breathe,” said Lina. She opened hermouth and took in a long breath of air.Doon did the same.

“It’s sweet,” he said. “So full ofsmells.”

They held their hands out to feel thelong stems as they waded slowly throughthem. The air moved against their facesand in their hair.

“Hear those sounds?” said Doon. Ahigh, thin chirruping sound came fromsomewhere nearby. It was repeated overand over, like a question.

“Yes,” said Lina. “What could it be?”

“Something alive, I think. Maybe somekind 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 adream.”

“A dream, yes. Maybe that’s why itfeels familiar. I might have dreamed aboutthis place.”

They walked until they came to wherethe dark shapes billowed up from theground. These were plants, they

discovered, taller than they were, withstems as hard and thick as the walls ofhouses, and leaves that spread out overtheir heads. On the slope beside theseplants, they sat down.

“Do you think there is a city heresomewhere?” Lina asked. “Or any peopleat 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 enoughto live by.”

“Then what shall we do, if there’s nocity, and no people?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Doondidn’t feel like thinking. He was tired offiguring things out. He wanted to look atthis new world, and take in the scent of itand the feel of it, and figure things outlater.

Lina felt the same way. She stoppedasking questions, drew Poppy onto herlap, and gazed in silence at the glimmeringlandscape. After a while, she becameaware that something strange was

happening. Surely, when she had first satdown, the silver circle was just above thehighest branch of the tall plant. Now thebranch cut across it. As she watched, thecircle sank very slowly down, until it washidden, 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 hereyes were blurring. There was a fuzzinessin the sky, especially around the edges. Ittook a while for her to realize what wasmaking the fuzziness.

“Light,” she said.

“I see it,” said Doon. “It’s gettingbrighter.”

The edge of the sky turned gray, andthen pale orange, and then deep fierycrimson. The land stood out against it, along black rolling line. One spot along thisline grew so bright they could hardly lookat it, so bright it seemed to take a bite outof the land. It rose higher and higher untilthey could see that it was a fiery circle,first deep orange and then yellow, and toobright to look at any longer. The colorseeped out of the sky and washed over theland. Light sparkled on the soft hair of thehills and shone through the lacy leaves asevery shade of green sprang to life aroundthem.

They lifted their faces to the astonishingwarmth. The sky arched over them, higherthan they could have imagined, a pale,clear blue. Lina felt as though a lid thathad been on her all her life had been liftedoff. Light and air rushed through her,making a song, like the songs of Ember,only it was a song of joy. She looked atDoon, and saw that he was smiling andcrying at the same time, and she realizedthat she was, too.

Everything around them was springingto life. A glorious racket came from thebranches—tweedling notes, peeps,burbles, high sharp calls. Bugs? wonderedDoon, imagining with awe the bugs thatcould make such sounds. But then he sawsomething fly from a cluster of leaves and

swoop down low across the ground,making a clear, sweet call as it flew. “Didyou see that?” he said to Lina, pointing.“And there’s another one! And there!”

“There there there there!” repeatedPoppy, leaping from Lina’s lap andwhirling around, pointing in everydirection.

The air was full of them now. Theywere much too large to be insects. One ofthem lit nearby on a stem. It looked atthem with two bright black eyes and,opening its mouth, which was pointed likea thorn, sent forth a little trill.

“It’s speaking to us,” said Doon. “Whatcould it be?”

Lina just shook her head. The littlecreature shifted its clawlike feet on thestem, flapped its brown wings, and trilledagain. Then it leapt into the air and wasgone.

They leapt up, too, and threwthemselves into exploration. The groundwas alive with insects—so many thatDoon 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-coatedslopes, running, sliding, calling out toeach other with each new discovery, untilthey were exhausted. Then they sat downby the entrance to the path to eat what wasleft of their food. They untied Doon’sbundle, and Lina suddenly cried out. “The

book! We forgot about the book!”

There it was, wrapped in its blotchedgreen cloth.

“Let’s read it out loud while we eat,”said Doon.

Lina opened the fragile notebook andlaid it on the ground in front of her. Shepicked up a carrot with one hand, and withthe other she kept her place on thescribbled page. This is what she read.

CHAPTER 20

The Last Message

Friday

They tell us we leave tonight. I

knew it would be soon—the traininghas been over for nearly a monthnow—but still it feels sudden, itfeels like a shock. Why did I agreeto do this? I am an old woman, tootired to take up a new life. I wishnow that I’d said no when theyasked me.

I have put everything I can intomy one suitcase—clothes, shoes, agood wind-up clock, some soap, anextra pair of glasses. Bring nobooks, they said, and nophotographs. We have been told tosay nothing, ever again, about theworld we come from. But I am goingto take this notebook anyhow. I amdetermined to write down what

happens. Someday, someone mayneed to know.

Saturday

I went to the train stationyesterday evening, as they told meto, and got on the train they told meto take. It took us through SpringValley, and I gazed out the windowat the fields and houses of the placeI was saying goodbye to—my home,and my family’s home forgenerations. I rode for two hours,until the train reached a station inthe hills. When I arrived, they metme—three men in suits—and droveme to a large building, where they

led me down a corridor and into abig room full of other people—allwith suitcases, most with gray orwhite hair. Here we have beenwaiting now for more than an hour.

They have spent years and yearsmaking this plan. It’s supposed toensure that, no matter whathappens, people won’t disappearfrom the earth. Some say that willnever happen anyhow. I’m not sosure. Disaster seems very close.Everything will be all right, theytell us, but only a few people believethem. Why, if it’s going to be allright, do we see it getting worseevery day?

And of course this plan is proofthat they think the world is doomed.All the best scientists and engineershave been pulled in to work on it.Extraordinary efforts have beenmade—efforts that would have donemore good elsewhere. I think it’sthe wrong answer. But they askedme if I would go—I suppose becauseI’ve spent my life on a farm and Iknow about growing food. In spiteof my doubts, I said yes. I’m notsure why.

There are a hundred of us, fiftymen and fifty women. We are all atleast sixty years old. There will be ahundred babies, too—two babies foreach pair of “parents.” I don’t

know yet which one of thesegentlemen I’ll be matched with. Weare all strangers to one another.They planned it that way; they saidthere would be fewer memoriesbetween us. They want us to forgeteverything about the lives we’ve ledand the places we’ve lived. Thebabies must grow up with noknowledge of a world outside, sothat they feel no sorrow for whatthey have lost.

I hear some noises across theroom. I think it’s the babiesarriving. . . . Yes, here they come,each being carried by one of thosegray-suited men. So many of them!So small! Little scrunched-up faces,

tiny fists waving. I must stop fornow. They’re going to pass themout.

Later

We’re traveling again, on a busthis time. It is night, I think, thoughit’s hard to be sure because theyhave boarded up the windows of thebus from the outside. They don’twant us to know where we’re going.

I have a baby on my lap—a girl.She has a bright pink face and nohair at all. Stanley, who sits next tome, holds a boy baby, with brownskin and a few tufts of black hair.

Stanley and I are the keepers ofthese children. Our task is to raisethem in this new place we’re goingto. By the time they are twenty orso, we’ll be gone. They’ll be ontheir own, making a new world.

Stanley and I have named thesechildren Star and Forest.

Sunday

The buses have stopped, but theyhave not allowed us to get out yet. Ican hear crickets singing, and smellthe grass, so we must be in thecountry, and it must be night. I amvery tired.

What kind of place can this be,safe from earthly catastrophes? AllI can guess is that it must beunderground. The thought fills mewith dread. I’ll try to sleep a littlenow.

Later

There was no chance to sleep.They called us off the buses, and westepped out into a landscape ofrolling hills, in full moonlight.“That’s the way we’ll be going in,”they told us, pointing to a darkopening in the hill we stood on.“Form a line there, please.” We didso. It was very quiet, except for the

squalling of a few of the babies. Ifthe others were like me, they weresaying goodbye to the world. Ireached down to touch the grassand breathed deeply to smell theearth. My eyes swept over the silverhills, and I thought of the animalsprowling softly in the shadows orsleeping in their burrows, and thebirds standing beneath the leaves ofthe trees, with their heads tuckedunder their wings. Last, I raised myeyes to the moon, which smileddown on us from a long, colddistance away. The moon will stillbe here when they come out, Ithought. The moon and the hills, atleast.

The opening led us into a windingpassage that ran steeply downhillfor perhaps a mile. It was hardgoing for me; my legs are not stronganymore. We moved very slowly.The last part was the worst: a rockyslope where it was easy to miss yourfooting and slip. This led down to apool. By the shore of the pool ourgroup of aged pioneers gathered.Motorboats were waiting here forus, equipped with lanterns.

“When it’s time for people toleave this place, is this the way theywill come?” I asked our pilot, whohas a kind face. He said yes.

“But how will they know there’s a

way out, if no one tells them?” Isaid. “How will they know what todo?”

“They’re going to haveinstructions,” said the pilot. “Theywon’t be able to get at theinstructions until the time is right.But when they need them, theinstructions will be there.”

“But what if they don’t findthem? What if they never come outagain?”

“I think they will. People find away through just about anything.”

That was all he would say. I am

writing these notes while our pilotloads the boat. I hope he doesn’tnotice.

“It ends there,” said Lina, looking up.

“He must have noticed,” said Doon.“Or she was afraid he would, so shedecided to hide it instead of taking it withher.”

“She must have hoped someone wouldfind it.”

“Just as we did.” He pondered. “Butwe might not have, if it hadn’t been forPoppy.”

“No. And we wouldn’t have known that

we came from here.”

The fiery circle had moved up in thesky now, and the air was so warm thatthey took off their coats. Absently, Doondug his finger into the ground, which wassoft and crumbly. “But what was thedisaster that happened in this place?” hesaid. “It doesn’t look ruined to me.”

“It must have happened a long, longtime ago,” said Lina. “I wonder if peoplestill live here.”

They sat looking out over the hills,thinking of the woman who had written inthe 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 dyingcity. But it was hard to picture a city likeEmber here in this bright, beautiful place.How could anyone have allowed such aplace to be harmed?

“What do we do now?” asked Lina. Shewrapped the notebook in its coveringagain and set it aside. “We can’t go backup the river and tell them all to comehere.”

“No. We could never make the boat goagainst that current.”

“Are we here alone, then, forever?”

“Maybe there’s another way in, someway that lets you walk down to Ember. Or

maybe there’s another river that runs theother way. We have candles now, wecould cross the Unknown Regions if wefound a way to get there.”

This was the only plan they could comeup with. So, all day long, they searchedfor another way in. Under the brow of thehill, they found a hole where a streamwandered into the dark. The water wasgood to drink, but the hole was far toosmall for them to fit through. There weregullies full of shrubs, and Lina and Dooncrawled among the leaves and pricklybranches, but found no openings. Bugsbuzzed around their ankles and past theireyes; brown earth stained their hands, andpebbles got into their shoes. Their thick,dark, shabby clothes got all full of prickly

things, and since they were much too hotanyhow, they took most of them off. Theyhad never felt such warmth against theirskin and such soft air.

When the bright circle was at the top ofthe sky, they sat for a while in the shade ofone of the tall plants on the side of the hill,in a place where the thick brush gave wayto a clearing. Poppy went to sleep, butLina and Doon sat looking out over theland. Green was everywhere, in differentshades, like a huge, brilliant, gorgeousversion of the overlapping carpets back inthe rooms of Ember. Far away, Lina saw anarrow gray line curving like a pencilstroke across a sweep of green. Shepointed this out to Doon, and both of themsquinted 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.”

“I hope so,” said Doon. “There’s somuch I want to know.”

They were still gazing at the far-off bitof gray when they heard something movingin the brush nearby. Leaves rustled. Therewas a scraping, shuffling sound. Theystiffened and held their breath. Theshuffling paused, then started up again.Was it a person? Should they call out? Butbefore they could decide what to do, acreature stepped into the clearing.

It was about the same size as Poppy,only lower to the ground, because itwalked on four legs instead of two. Its furwas a deep rust-red. Its face was a longtriangle, its ears stood up in points, and itsblack eyes shone. It trotted forward a fewsteps, 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 steptoward them, paused, tilted its head a littleas if to get a better look, and took anotherstep. They could see the sheen of its furand 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. Itpushed its nose among the leaves on theground, wandering back toward thebushes, and when it raised its head again,they saw that it was holding something inits white teeth, something round andpurplish. With a last glance at them, itleapt toward the bushes, its tail sailing,and disappeared.

Lina let out her breath and turned tolook at Doon, whose mouth was open inastonishment. His voice shaky, he said,“That was the most wonderful thing I haveever seen, ever in my whole life.”

“Yes.”

“And it saw us,” Doon said, and Linanodded. They both felt it—they had beenseen. The creature was utterly strange, notlike anything they had ever known, and yetwhen it looked at them, some kind ofrecognition passed between them. “I knownow,” said Doon. “This is the world webelong in.”

A few minutes later, Poppy woke up andmade fretful noises, and Lina gave her thelast of the peas in Doon’s pack. “Whatwas that, do you think, in the creature’smouth?” she asked. “Would it besomething we could eat, a fruit of somekind? It looked like the pictures ofpeaches on cans, except for the color.”

They got up and poked around, andsoon they came across a plant whosebranches were laden with the purplefruits, about the size of small beets, onlysofter. Doon picked one and cut it openwith his knife. There was a stone inside.Red juice ran out over his hands.Cautiously, he touched his tongue to it.“Sweet,” he said.

“If the creature can eat it, maybe wecan, too,” said Lina. “Shall we?”

They did. Nothing had ever tastedbetter. Lina cut the stones out and gavechunks of the fruit to Poppy. Juice randown their chins. When they had eatenfive or six apiece, they licked their stickyfingers clean and started to explore again.

They went higher up the slope theywere on, wading through flowers as highas their waists, and near the top they cameupon a kind of dent in the ground, as if abit of the earth had caved in. They walkeddown into it, and at the end of the dentthey found a crack about as tall as aperson but not nearly as wide as a door.Lina edged through it sideways anddiscovered a narrow tunnel. “Send Poppythrough,” she called back to Doon, “andcome yourself.” But it was dark inside,and Doon had to go back to where he’dleft his pack to get a candle. Bycandlelight, they crept along until theycame to a place where the tunnel endedabruptly. But it ended not with a wall butwith a sudden huge nothingness that madethem gasp and step back. A few feet

beyond their shoes was a sheer, dizzyingdrop. They looked out into a cave soenormous that it seemed almost as big asthe world outside. Far down at the bottomshone a cluster of lights.

“It’s Ember,” Lina whispered.

They could see the tiny bright streetscrossing each other, and the squares, littlechips of light, and the dark tops ofbuildings. Just beyond the edges was theimmense darkness.

“Oh, our city, Doon. Our city is at thebottom of a hole!” She gazed downthrough the gulf, and all of what she hadbelieved about the world began to slowlybreak apart. “We were underground,” she

said. “Not just the Pipeworks.Everything!” She could hardly make senseof what she was saying.

Doon crouched on his hands and knees,looking over the edge. He squinted, tryingto 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 farup.”

“Maybe if they looked into the skythey’d see our candle,” said Lina. “But no,I guess they wouldn’t. The streetlampswould be too bright.”

“Somehow, we have to get word to

them,” said Doon, and that was when theidea came to Lina.

“Our message!” she cried. “We couldsend our message!”

And they did. From her pocket, Linatook the message that Doon had written,the one that was supposed to have gone toClary, explaining everything. In smallwriting, they squeezed in this note at thetop:

Dear People of Ember,

We came down the river from thePipeworks and found the way toanother place. It is green here and

very big. Light comes from the sky.You must follow the instructions inthis message and come on the river.Bring food with you. Come asquickly as you can.

They wrapped the message in Doon’sshirt and put a rock inside it. Then theystood in a row at the edge of the chasm,Doon in the middle holding Poppy’s handand Lina’s. Lina took aim at the heart ofthe city, far beneath her feet. With all herstrength, she cast the message into the

darkness, and they watched as it plungeddown and down.

Mrs. Murdo, walking even more brisklythan usual to keep her spirits up, wascrossing Harken Square when somethingfell to the pavement just in front of herwith a terrific thump. How extraordinary,she thought, bending to pick it up. It was asort of bundle. She began to untie it.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to the friends whoread and commented helpfullyon my manuscript: Susie Mader,Patrick Daly, Andrew Ramer,Charlotte Muse, Sara Jenkins,Mary Dederer, and Pat Carr.My gratitude to my agent, NancyGallt, who brought The City ofEmber into the light, and myeditor, Jim Thomas, who madeit the best book it could be. Andmy love and thanks to mymother, my first and best writingteacher.

JEANNE DUPRAU is the bestselling authoro f The City of Ember, The People ofSparks, and The Prophet of Yonwood. Shelives in Menlo Park, California, whereshe keeps a big garden and a small dog.

To learn more about Jeannie,visit her Web site atwww.jeanneduprau.com.

Also by Jeanne DuPrau

THE CITY OF EMBER

THE PROPHET OF YONWOOD

Text copyright © 2003 by Jeanne DuPrau.

Map by Chris Riely.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in theUnited States by Random House Children’s Books,

a division of Random House, Inc., New York,

and simultaneously in Canada by Random House ofCanada Limited, Toronto.

www.randomhouse.com/kids

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

DuPrau, Jeanne.

The city of Ember / by Jeanne DuPrau.

p. cm.

SUMMARY: In the year 241, twelve-year-old Lina tradesjobs on Assignment Day

to be a messenger, to run to new places in her belovedbut decaying city,

perhaps even to glimpse Unknown Regions.

[1. Fantasy.] I. Title. PZ7.D927 Ci 2003 [Fic]—dc212002010239

RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registeredtrademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-375-89080-2

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