The People of Sparks (25 page)

It was a square room with windows on all sides. A table stood in the middle, with straight-backed chairs around it. Down below was the plaza, swarming with people. The noise was like the roar of water. Tick was at the front of the crowd—Doon could see the top of his head, like a shiny black stone, and his steel rod glinting in the sun.

Straight below were the steps of the town hall and the tops of the heads of the three leaders. To his right, the windows were partially blocked by the branches of the great pine tree that stood next to the town hall. When he looked out the windows toward the rear of the building, he saw the town hall roof below.

This was perfect. He could see what was going to happen; he could hear, too, because the windows were open. And, he realized, if he stayed here, he wouldn’t have to decide whether he was going to fight or not. This seemed a bit like cheating—but it was a relief, too. The thought of taking part in a bloody brawl had filled him with dread.

Standing to the side of the front window, Doon looked down. Right below him was Ben Barlow—he could see the wiry gray hair on the top of his head, and his hands waving furiously in the air. Mary Waters and Wilmer Dent had stepped up behind Ben. Mary tried to take him by the arm, but he shook her off. He made his hands into a megaphone for his mouth. “We will not be threatened!” he shouted. “We are in charge of this town! It is our place, we built it, we own it!” He yelled so loudly that his voice rasped and cracked. “You are destroying our way of life. You must go!”

The crowd rumbled. They pressed forward. Clouds came over the sun, and a vast shadow swept across the plaza.

“You may try to make us leave!” shouted Tick. “But we are here to stay!”

The air seemed to quiver with rage. Or was it just the wind? Everything was moving—the clouds raced overhead, the branches of the trees thrashed, the Emberites raised their motley weapons. Up on the roof of the tower, the flag of Sparks whipped and snapped on its pole—Doon could hear it, though he could not see it.

He felt the wind whirling through his mind as well. His father’s words came back to him.
When the fight is over, what do we have? A place destroyed. People who hate each other.
Standing above it all in the tower, he had the strange feeling of being separate, belonging neither to one side of the fight nor the other. Whose side was he on? Not on Ben’s, certainly. But not on Tick’s, either, with his warriors calling out threats, eager for a fight.

Ben held up his hand and shouted again. “We warned you! And we’re ready for you.” His voice was hoarse. “I’ll give you one last chance. Will you leave or not?” With his head thrust forward and his hands tightened into fists, he waited for an answer.

“No!” screamed Tick.

His army bellowed it out with him. “No!” “Never!” “No, no!”

Ben dashed to the door of the town hall. Wilmer went with him, and together they darted inside. Doon froze, afraid they might climb up to the tower. But they came out onto the steps again right away, pulling a thing of black metal that ran on wheels. For a moment the clamor of the crowd ceased as they craned their necks, trying to see over each other’s heads. Doon had a good view from where he stood, but still he had no idea what the thing was. He knew it must be the Weapon, but it looked almost like a great black insect. It stood on black iron legs. It had a complicated black iron body nearly as long as a truck, studded with hooks and boxes and points. A narrow scarf of ridged metal hung across it. It was ugly, Doon thought, like the skeleton of a monster.

Ben turned the thing so that it pointed out over the crowd. He stood behind it, his feet planted wide apart. “This is your last chance,” he shouted at the crowd. “Disperse! Or take the consequences.”

Mary Waters dashed toward him. “No, Ben!” she cried. “We can’t do this!”

Ben pushed her away. “We agreed!” he cried. “Stand back, Mary!”

Now the crowd in the plaza sensed danger and began to push backward. Tick cried, “Stand your ground!” but Doon saw him take a step back, too.

Ben squatted at the rear end of the Weapon. “Leave now, and take your gang of hoodlums with you!” he shouted. “Or I fire!”

Fire? thought Doon. What does he mean?

It was clear that Tick didn’t know, either. “You have one weapon,” he shouted, “but we have many!” And he raised the rod in his hand, and behind him his warriors did the same.

Ben gave a furious shout. He was crouched over the Weapon. Doon saw his bent back, and his arm jerking at the machine. Nothing happened. His arm jerked again, harder, and at the same time Mary rushed forward. She aimed a powerful kick at the nose of the Weapon, bumping it upward, and the Weapon, in a harsh machine voice, began to chatter.
Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh,
it went, turning its snout back and forth. People in the crowd began to scream.

Doon couldn’t see at first what the Weapon was doing. What was the point of its loud, furious shuddering? The noise was horrible, but the Weapon was staying in one place, not flying out into the crowd. Was it shooting something out of its— Yes! Across the plaza, over the heads of the people, Doon saw a line of holes punching into a wall, splintering a window—

But the Weapon suddenly stopped its chattering. Doon looked down and saw Ben give it a furious shake, and shake it again, pounding on its nose to aim it lower as the crowd yelled in panic and scrambled backward, and Mary shouted and tried to rush toward Ben, but Wilmer grabbed her arm—

And then the Weapon exploded.

No chattering this time, just a spurt of fire that shot from the Weapon’s rear end, knocked Ben flat on his back, and toppled the Weapon forward so that it stood on its nose. This made the fire shoot straight upward, a column of bright orange, scattering sparks and reaching toward the branch of the pine tree that hung over the town hall steps.

From his place in the tower, Doon watched, horrified. Where was his father in that frenzied crowd? Where was Lina? Below him, the pine tree was on fire. The building would be on fire, too, in a minute, because the tree stood right up against it. Smoke was already curling through the windows. He had to get out.

And that was when he heard a scream—not from the plaza below, but from somewhere above him. A bird? An animal in the pine tree? A second later, an echoing scream arose from the crowd. Doon heard someone cry, “The tree! Up in the tree! Someone’s there!”

Doon was at the door, ready to flee down the stairs. But he heard the scream again, and it sounded close. He darted back into the tower room and ran to the window that faced the tree. The lower branches of the pine tree were a mass of flame. He could hear the rush and roar as the fire raced among the dry needles. When he turned his gaze upward, he saw what the screaming was about: a boy was clinging to a branch a little higher up than the tower roof, hugging the trunk of the tree and screaming in terror as the fire swept upward.

Kenny! Doon thought. Was it? He couldn’t tell for sure. But he knew he couldn’t leave him there. Maybe somehow he could get him in through the window. He opened it as far as he could—it was the kind of window that swung outward on hinges—and then he grabbed one of the chairs from around the table. Holding it by its back, he thrust it out the window as far as he could.

“Climb down!” he shouted to the boy in the tree. “Climb down, quick!”

The boy saw him—and with a start Doon realized who he was. It wasn’t Kenny at all. It was Torren, the one who had started so much trouble, the one who had pointed a lying finger at Doon. For one furious second, Doon felt the urge to leave Torren to his fate and get himself out of the tower as fast as he could. But he pushed that thought away and shouted louder: “Hurry! Get down here!”

Torren clambered down through the branches, down toward the flames beneath him. When he was opposite the tower window, he was still too far away to reach the legs of the chair. He edged out along a branch, but it was a slender branch and bent under his weight.

“Jump!” Doon yelled. “Jump! And catch the chair legs! I’ll pull you in!”

Torren crawled backward to where the branch was sturdier. He stood up. Then he froze. He stood clutching the tree trunk, staring down at the flames, his mouth a dark O.

“Jump!” screamed Doon again. Smoke was pouring into the tower room now. “Hurry! You can do it!”

A gust of wind. The flames leapt. Now the branches just below Torren’s feet were blazing, and suddenly he made up his mind—Doon could see the moment of decision in his face. He clamped his lips tight. He fastened his gaze to the chair dangling out the window. And then he pushed himself away from the trunk with his hands and flung himself toward the tower. His hands caught the rung between the chair legs, and Doon’s whole body was yanked forward. He almost lost his grip on the chair, but not quite. “Hang on!” he yelled. With all his strength, he hauled the chair upward, and when Torren’s hands were within reach, he grabbed one of them, and then both of them, letting the chair topple back into the room. One last heave, and Torren was in the tower room, shaking so violently he could hardly stand.

“Now,” said Doon, “let’s go.”

He headed for the door. Over the sill of the window Torren had just come through crept a row of flames like sharp orange claws.

CHAPTER 27

                    
Firefight

Lina was on the side of the plaza farthest from the river when Tick called out his demands and Doon yelled, “At least
listen
!” When she heard his voice, she tried to make her way toward him, but the crowd was so dense and turbulent that she couldn’t get through. Tick’s warriors were everywhere. The sun flashed off their steel rods and pipes and jagged pieces of glass. She was worming her way among the dozens of shoving and shouting people when Ben fired the Weapon.

She heard the sound, a chain of loud pops, and the people in front of her screamed and scrambled backward. Lina ducked and put her hands over her head. She stayed that way as people pressed past her and stumbled over her, and in a moment the popping noise stopped. Then there was a bang, and more shouts, and when she dared to stand up and look, she saw that the pine tree was on fire.

The flames were small at first, creeping along just one branch, with sudden flashes as dry bunches of pine needles caught fire. But in seconds the flames grew bigger. They leapt and crackled. Black smoke rose in a pillar into the air. The crowd pressed backward, crashing against each other. The people of Ember, for whom fire was a rare and terrible danger, stared upward with their eyes wide and their mouths gaping. Some of them screamed. Some were too frightened to make a sound.

Such a terror came over Lina that she couldn’t move, except to stagger a few feet back along with the crowd. Her eyes were fixed on the flames—the terrible orange hands, reaching up into the branches of the tree. A voice in her mind screamed, “Run! Run!” but she couldn’t run. Her legs wouldn’t work. It was all they could do just to hold her up.

A voice cried out, “Someone’s in the tree!” and Lina looked up through the smoke just long enough to see the upper branches thrashing and get a glimpse of something white moving among them. Then she was surrounded again by struggling people. She tripped over a piece of pipe rolling on the pavement and fell to her knees. When she managed to get to her feet again, the mass of people had pressed back behind her, and she found herself near the front of the crowd.

On the steps of the town hall, she saw Ben lying motionless, sprawled on his back. Wilmer bent over him, and Mary Waters shouted, “Fire truck! Fire truck!” The fire had leapt from the pine tree to the town hall tower—flames licked up its wall.

That was when Lina heard a wild laugh from behind her. “Let it burn!” someone cried. “Let it burn! It’s their punishment! They deserve it!” She recognized the voice. It was Tick. Others took up the cry. “Let it burn!” they shouted, and a chorus of voices raised a harsh, triumphant cheer.

The people of Ember were packed together at the far south end of the plaza now, as far from the town hall and the fire as they could get. A few ran into the streets to get away, but most of them waited to see what was going to happen. They stayed at a safe distance, hovering between terror and fascination, and watched as the flames streaked up the sides of the tower.

The people of Sparks were running in all directions. Shopkeepers grabbed buckets and ran to the river and filled them with water, but most of the fire was high above their heads, impossible to reach. They flung the water into the air and then stood with empty buckets, watching the tower burn.

The two fire trucks arrived, their drivers standing up and lashing the oxen to make them trot. Water sloshed from the big barrels on the trucks’ beds. As soon as the trucks stopped, people jumped up onto them, grabbed buckets, and began dipping buckets in the water.

“Fire line! Fire line!” the cry went up, and the villagers, who must have practiced this many times, formed straggling lines stretching out to the fire from the truck at the edge of the plaza. Burning twigs broke from the pine tree and blew in the wind, and new fires started up here and there. The people in the fire lines flung water in all directions, but for the few flames each bucket of water doused, it seemed ten new ones sprang up.

Lina’s heart was beating so hard it drowned out all her thoughts. She wanted to run, to get away from here, but something paralyzed her. Part of it was fear of the fire. Part was fear of something else, fear of an idea that was trying to come to the surface of her mind. She didn’t want to hear it.
Pay attention,
a voice whispered to her. She tried to push it away.

Faster and faster, the people on the truck dipped the buckets into the barrels, dipped, filled, and handed the buckets to those in the line, who passed them along from hand to hand. The last person in line, the one standing nearest the flames, flung the water, which hissed and steamed and put out a few flames.

Tick and his warriors, along with the rest of the people of Ember, watched all this as if it were a frightening but fascinating show. Tick and a few others cheered. But most people just gazed goggle-eyed as the flames blackened the town hall. When the wind blew sparks toward them, they shrieked and pressed back farther.