The Diamond of Darkhold - 4 (5 page)

She went down to the Ark early the next morning. It was a blustery day. Clouds rose from the western horizon, immense, looking like carved wood painted white with blue shadows. Up on the roof of the main part of the building, workers were ripping away rotted, sodden wood, hurrying to repair the hole before the next rain. The roof of the back room, where Edward Pocket was making his library, hadn’t been damaged, and some people had grumbled about that. Why couldn’t the useless books have gotten ruined instead of the food?

Doon was standing outside the back room door. The wind flapped his jacket. He wasn’t wearing the old brown jacket he’d always worn before. In just the last month or so, that one had gotten impossibly small for him, and he now had a dark green one that came from the donation pile the people of Sparks had put together for their new citizens. It was a bit frayed around the cuffs, but at least his bare wrists didn’t poke out from the sleeves.

“Come inside,” Doon said, “out of the wind.” He led her into the back room, where a giant heap of books had accumulated over the years. They picked their way among the tumbled piles in the dim light coming from the one dirty window. Doon made two book stacks for them to sit on. Before Lina could say anything, he began explaining. “I know you think I’ve lost my mind,” he said.

“Well,” Lina said, “I do think so, sort of. I don’t see how we could find our way to Ember. Even if we could, it would take too long to get there—we’d have to be out in the cold at night. It took us four days to get to Sparks after we came out of Ember.”

“But you and I could go much faster,” Doon said. “When we came from Ember, we had old people and small children with us, and we didn’t know where we were going. You and I could do it in one long day’s walk, I’m sure.”

“But even if we could get there,” said Lina, “we couldn’t get into the city. We couldn’t go against the current up the river.”

“I know,” said Doon. “But we might be able to get in from above. I’m thinking we could go back to that ledge we threw the message from. We could check the slope of the cliff. Maybe we could get down it.”

“But even if we could get down,” Lina said, “the city’s completely dark. We’d never find anything there—even if we
did
know what we were looking for.”

“But we have candles now,” Doon said. “We’ll take lots of them with us. I’ll study every word of that book for clues about what we’re looking for and where it is. And listen—we might not find the thing in the book, but we could find other things. There might still be food there. Or medicine. Remember that salve we used to rub on cuts? If some of that was left, it could help my father. He won’t say so, but I can tell his hand hurts him terribly. It might be infected.”

“I remember that salve,” Lina said. “It was called Anti-B. I think we still had an old tube of it at Granny’s, mostly empty.”

“Even a little would help,” Doon said. “And there might be other useful things people could trade with. We could find out.”

Lina could see how excited he was, how much he wanted to do this. To her it seemed dangerous, difficult, and probably hopeless. But she had to admit that his excitement inspired her a bit. Life had been hard and dull lately; an adventure would change that. She wasn’t a bit sure that Doon’s plans would succeed. Things were always so much neater in a person’s imagination than they were in real life. But just to go on a journey, even if they found nothing and had to turn right around and come home . . . She was tempted.

“But we can’t just disappear,” Lina said. “People would worry.” She remembered how terribly anxious Mrs. Murdo had been the two times before when she’d gone away without saying where she was going: when she left Ember on the day of the Singing, and just a few months ago when she went off to the ancient ruined city. She didn’t want to put Mrs. Murdo through that again.

But Doon had all this figured out, too. It was complicated, but he was sure it would work. Lina, he said, must go and talk to Maddy. She was the one who’d come to town during the summer with Torren’s brother, Caspar, and stayed on, after Caspar’s quest failed, to help with the garden. There wasn’t much to do on the garden in winter, so Maddy would have extra time. Lina should ask her if she’d be willing to move to the doctor’s house for a few days and help Mrs. Murdo. If Maddy said yes—Doon was sure she would—Lina should tell Mrs. Murdo that she needed a bit of a change and would like to stay at the Pioneer for a while. “Tell her that you and Maddy will just switch places,” he said. “Then, once Maddy has left, I’ll tell my father I’m going to stay with you at the doctor’s house for a few days because you need some extra help.”

“But won’t your father wonder why we need Maddy
and
you?” Lina asked.

“No. With so many people sick and the doctor always away, he’ll know she needs lots and lots of help.”

The sun went behind a cloud, and the light in the room grew even dimmer than before. Lina pondered. Her sensible self and her adventurous self tugged against each other. She looked at the serious expression in Doon’s dark eyes. He was determined to do this. She wasn’t sure if he was being brave or reckless, wise or foolish. Maybe a little of each.

“So,” Doon said, “shall we go?”

She thought of the empty lands, the wolves that ranged there, the rain and cold and wind. She thought of peeling potatoes, cleaning the outhouse, washing medicine bottles, hanging up laundry. She thought of Ember, where—just possibly—something important might be waiting for them. She pushed her doubts aside and took a deep breath.

“All right,” she said. “We’ll go.”

Doon nodded, not smiling. “I knew you’d say that.”

CHAPTER 4
_______________

Plans for a Journey

“All right,” said Doon. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Behind him, dust particles hung in the light from the window. “Now, this is my plan. We’ll leave three days from now, as long as it’s a clear day. If it isn’t, we’ll have to wait—we can’t risk getting caught in rain or snow. We’ll go as early in the morning as we can, just before the sun comes up, and we’ll walk fast and steadily all day. That should get us there by evening. We’ll camp for the night inside the cave entrance. We’ll have blankets to keep us warm. We could make a fire in there. And then in the morning we’ll explore. We’ll see if it’s possible to go into the city.”

“And then what?” Lina asked.

“By then,” said Doon, “I will have studied that book. I’ll know what we should do.”

“But Doon, what if you can’t figure out any clues? There’s the whole huge dark city, hundreds of rooms, all the storerooms, the Pipeworks. . . .”

“I know, I know,” Doon said. “If I can’t find clues in the book, we’ll look to see if there’s food and supplies, enough to help Sparks through the winter. There might be! People left food behind in their kitchens. There’s probably still a little in the storerooms. The mayor had his hoard. You never know what we might find.”

“Hmm,” Lina said doubtfully.

Doon went on. “We’ll spend one day in the city, camp again that night, and then we’ll come back the next day.” He finished with a brisk nod.

Lina could tell he was pleased by his plan and eager to carry it out. “Well, maybe—” she said.

Doon stood up and flung his hands out.
“Lina!”
he cried, clearly exasperated. “People are in trouble here and we might be able to help! What if we find canned food? What if we find medicine for my father’s hand? And besides.” He paused, and his eyes gleamed. “We have a book called
For the People from Ember
! There’s something up there
for us.
How could we not go looking for it?”

“You’re right,” she said. Again came the darting feeling that could have been either excitement or fear. “But just in case something goes wrong,” she added, “someone should know where we really are. I’ll leave a note for Mrs. Murdo—somewhere she won’t find it until we’re gone.”

Doon agreed. Then he took a piece of paper from his pocket. “I’ve made a list of things we need to take with us,” he said. He handed the paper to Lina. She read through it. The list was long: warm clothes, a blanket, candles, matches, dried food, bottles for water. . . . Lina read on.

“You’ll need a pack you can carry on your back,” Doon said. “Can you make one?”

“I guess so,” Lina said.

“We’ll meet in three days,” Doon said. “Where the river road goes out into the fields, at the north end of town.”

“All right,” Lina said. She saw in Doon the determination he’d had on that last day of school in Ember, when everything began, when he’d thrown down his job assignment and outraged the mayor, when he’d shouted out that the city was headed for disaster unless something was done. He wasn’t shouting now. But he had that same fierce look in his eyes.

At that moment, the door opened, and Edward Pocket came in. “Aha,” he said. “Do I have two helpers this morning instead of only one?”

Doon said, “No, I just had to talk to Lina for a minute; she’s going.”

“Don’t you want to see my latest find first?” Edward said. He rummaged through a heap of books near the door and brought out one with a bent purple cover. “I read this yesterday,” he said. “It’s one of the strangest yet.” He showed them the title:
Famous Fairy Tales.
“I read the whole thing,” Edward said, “but I’m still not sure what a fairy is. Some sort of combination of a person and an insect, I think. The strangest things happen in these stories.”

“Like what?” Lina asked, peering at the pages of the book as Edward flipped through it. There were pictures, and if she hadn’t been in the middle of such an important conversation with Doon, she would have liked to look at them.

“Oh,” said Edward, “mostly terrible things. People turn into frogs, or go to sleep for a thousand years, or fight with huge lizards. I doubt that these things are true. But even if they are, everything almost always turns out quite well. Nearly all the stories have the same last sentence: ‘They lived happily ever after.’ Of course, that can’t be true, either.”

“It can’t?” Lina said. It sounded lovely to her: happily ever after.

Doon was jiggling a foot impatiently.

“Of course not,” said Edward, “unless this world we’re in now works in a whole different way from the one where we used to live.”

“Lina,” said Doon. “I’ll walk out with you.”

“May I borrow that book sometime?” Lina asked Edward. He said of course she could, and she thanked him and went outside with Doon.

“So we’ll meet in three days,” Doon said once they were several steps away from the door. “We’ll go early,
really
early, before anyone is up. Can you be there just before sunrise?”

“I’ll be there,” Lina said. It will be all right, she told herself. We’ll be gone only a few days. It will be fine.

It was easy to get Maddy to come help Mrs. Murdo. When Lina found her, she was by the riverbank, making her way slowly along, head down. Maddy was the kind of person who seems scary at first. She was big, and she didn’t smile much, and she wasn’t in the least chatty. But Lina had learned that there was kindness behind Maddy’s stern appearance, so she approached her now without hesitation.

Maddy was wearing a green cape that made her look even larger than she was. Her wild swirl of red-brown hair fell in tangles on either side of her face. She glanced up when she heard Lina coming, nodded, and went back to her task.

“I’m gathering round lettuce,” she said when Lina asked what she was doing. She showed Lina a basket full of small round leaves. “It’s good for you, and it doesn’t taste too bad.”

When Lina explained about needing a change and asked Maddy if she’d trade places with her for a few days, Maddy said right away that she would. “There isn’t much going on here except building right now,” she said. “And building is not my specialty.” So they arranged it: in three days, Maddy and Lina would change places.

Persuading Mrs. Murdo was a little harder. She didn’t understand why Lina would choose this difficult time to go away.

“But it’s
because
it’s a difficult time,” Lina said, following after Mrs. Murdo as she went from one task to another—poking the fire, sweeping dirt out the door, wringing out clothes that had been soaking in a bucket. “I need a break from it. And Maddy needs a change, too. She’ll be just as much of a help as me. More, even.”

“Maddy is a capable person, it’s true,” Mrs. Murdo conceded, scraping candle drippings from the table.

“It’s only for a few days,” said Lina. She gave Mrs. Murdo her best pleading look, although there was still a little bit of her that wished to be forbidden, so she wouldn’t have to go.

But Mrs. Murdo gave in. So there would be no backing out, and Lina began to get ready. For the next three days, she spent a lot of time trying to do things without being noticed. She said she was tired and went to her room to work on sewing sacks together to make a backpack. She kept a sharp eye out for everyone’s comings and goings, and when no one was around, she took candles and matches from the cupboard. She took ten matches, hoping that Mrs. Murdo, who was very good at keeping the fire going, wouldn’t notice.

Two nights before they were to leave, she wrote the note for Mrs. Murdo: