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.

Lina scanned the crowd. Where was Doon? Where was Mrs. Murdo? She didn’t see either of them—she could hardly see anything. Smoke filled the air. All she could see was a shadowy tumult of people. Only the flames were bright. The pine tree was a column of fire—within it, Lina could see the tree’s black skeleton. When a great branch broke off and fell, crashing into the shrubbery below and setting it alight, a terrified clamor arose from the people of Ember, and now instead of pressing backward many of them turned and ran.

Lina stayed where she was. She felt as if she were being gripped by two huge hands. One pulled her backward, away from the fire, back toward the streets of the town, through which she could run to safety. The other pulled her forward into danger, urging her to do what she suddenly knew was right. It was the good thing. It was what she’d been waiting for. But she didn’t want to do it. I can’t, she thought. I don’t want to. I’m too afraid. Someone else will do it. Not me, not me. I can’t.

At that moment, the tower collapsed. Its walls crumpled, the roof caved in, and flames shot up from the hole. The flagpole came hurtling down like a spear. The blackened walls leaned and toppled.

And then the fire was everywhere. Flaming branches and tufts of needles, blown by the wind, landed in the dry grass at the edge of the plaza, and in the trees by the river, and on the thatched roofs of the market stalls. “There!” cried the people in the bucket line, pointing. “There! And over there!” The lines twisted around, the buckets traveled faster and faster from hand to hand, and those at the front of the lines tossed the water this way and that. But there were too many fires, and not enough people to keep up with them.

It’s now, thought Lina. I have to do it. I will do it.

Quickly then, before she could change her mind, she ran. She ran with a hammering heart, with her head down and her hands in fists. She ran as if fighting a powerful wind, out across the plaza by herself, and when she reached the nearest bucket line she pushed her way in.

“Traitor!” shrieked a voice behind her. It was Tick’s voice, that voice like a cutting blade. Lina heard it, but she paid no attention. “Traitor, traitor!” Tick cried again, and his warriors echoed him. “Traitor!” they yelled, jumping backward when the sparks flew too close.

 

Doon got out of the tower just in time. He’d had to almost throw Torren down the stairs and then take them three at a time himself. Torren ran off somewhere as soon as he went out the back door, but Doon dashed around to the plaza, staying close to the market stalls, and joined the crush of Emberites at the south end. Panting, he stared back at the ruin he had escaped from—the black spine of the pine tree, the smoldering boards of the town hall. He watched as the flames consumed the building and the tower collapsed. He saw the fire lines snaking among the scattered blazes, and he heard Tick’s laugh ringing out over the clamor. “Burn, burn!” yelled Tick, and other voices chimed in with his. “Let it burn! Serves them right!”

For a moment Doon stood there, stunned, his mind a blank. It seemed that war surged around him, but not the war he had imagined. Where did he belong in this battle? Who was his enemy, where were his friends? Noise and confusion assailed him. His eyes stung. His legs were shaking.

And then he saw Lina break away from the crowd and run across the plaza. He heard Tick and his warriors screaming, “Traitor!” And he felt as if suddenly his eyes had opened (though they hadn’t been closed) and he had awakened from a bad dream. The air around him seemed to become clear. Strength returned to his legs. He edged between the people in front of him, burst out of the crowd, and ran the same direction as Lina—toward the fire lines.

And seeing what Lina and Doon had done, others followed. Clary pushed through the crowd and ran forward, and Mrs. Murdo went after her, taking long, quick strides and holding up her skirts. Then came the Hoover sisters, and Doon’s father, and fragile Miss Thorn, and five more people, and three more after that. They ran with their hands before their mouths or their arms over their heads, shielding themselves from smoke and falling embers, and they added themselves to the bucket brigade and began hauling water.

More and more of the people of Ember followed. At last the only ones not fighting the fire were Tick and a few of his men. Wearing half-stubborn, half-frightened expressions, they clustered at the far end of the plaza, shouting, “Traitors!” now and then, with their useless weapons dangling from their hands.