CHAPTER 15

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A Plan

Evening was coming on now. Kenny’s ears ached from the cold. He picked up his pace. By the time he got to the main plaza, he had worked things out in his mind: Doon and Lina weren’t where they usually were; they weren’t where they’d said they were going to be, either. No one seemed worried about this, so that meant Doon’s father and Mrs. Murdo hadn’t happened to talk to each other lately. And that meant that Kenny was now the only person who knew this secret.

So the question was, he thought as he crossed the plaza, where most of the shops were closed and only a few people hurried toward home, should he tell anyone that Lina and Doon were missing? Probably he should, but then, on the other hand, it was clear that they were missing on purpose. Maybe he shouldn’t give away their secret? Or not yet anyhow?

From around the corner by the town hall came someone walking very fast who stepped right in front of Kenny and caused him to dodge sideways to avoid a collision. “Oops,” said this person. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”

It was the girl named Lizzie. Kenny knew her just a little—she was a friend of Lina’s, and she was one of the few people he’d ever seen who had hair the color of apricots, though right now, her hair didn’t shine the way it had in the summer, and her face was pale, almost bluish.

“Oh, it’s you,” Lizzie said.

“I heard you were sick,” said Kenny. “Are you better?”

“I am,” Lizzie answered, “but I almost died of it. I coughed so hard I cracked one of my ribs. I thought I was going to cough my lungs right up out of my chest.” She looked at him rather proudly.

“That’s too bad,” said Kenny. He was thinking. Should he tell Lizzie about Lina and Doon? It felt wrong to tell Doon’s father and Mrs. Murdo, who would be upset and alarmed; that felt like a betrayal of whatever Doon and Lina’s plan was. But it was hard to keep the secret all to himself. He needed someone to talk it over with, someone he could trust. Could he trust Lizzie? He knew she’d been the girlfriend of that boy named Tick, who had deceived them all. But it wasn’t her fault she’d been deceived by him; everyone had.

Lizzie turned to go. Kenny hesitated another second, and then he said, “Have you seen Lina lately?”

“No,” said Lizzie. She looked into the air, thinking. “I haven’t seen her since . . . it must have been three or four days ago. Why?”

“Well, listen,” Kenny said. He took hold of Lizzie’s scarf and pulled her around the corner, where the wall kept them out of the wind. “Here’s what I just found out.”

As he explained the mystery, Lizzie listened with avid interest. So did Torren, who was hiding behind the stump of the tree that had burned last summer. He had decided he was sick and tired of being left behind and sick and tired of being left out of secrets, and he’d followed Kenny into town and ducked into his hiding place when Kenny ran into Lizzie. He thought the mystery of Lina and Doon was not only interesting but also infuriating. Once again, people had gone off on some kind of adventure without including him. It made him so mad that he couldn’t keep quiet.

“I bet I know where they went!” he cried, jumping out from behind the tree stump and nearly scaring Kenny and Lizzie out of their skins.

“You followed me,” said Kenny.

Torren ignored this. “We have to find them,” he said. “I can help.”

“It’s no use,” said Lizzie. “They have run away together.” She took hold of her hair and stuffed it down into her collar to keep the wind from blowing it around. “I always knew they liked each other in a special way. You could just tell.”

“Where would they go?” Kenny asked.

“Someplace cozy,” Lizzie said. “Where they could set things up like a real home. It would be so much fun,” she said wistfully.

“But they’re only thirteen,” said Kenny.

“That doesn’t matter. This is a whole new world! The rules aren’t the same.”

“You are being dumb,” Torren said. “That is not what Lina would do. I know that. She wouldn’t leave Poppy just to go off with Doon. I know she wouldn’t.”

“You’re too young to understand,” said Lizzie.

“I am not.” Torren glared at her. “I know what they did,” he said. “They were sick of being cold and not having enough to eat. So they went off to be roamers, to go someplace else and get away from everything. I bet someone in town has a wagon missing, and an ox. I bet they went toward the old city, because Lina knew the way from when she went before.”

Kenny listened to these ideas without saying anything much. Possible, but not right, he thought. Even though Torren lived in the same house as Lina, and Lizzie had known both Lina and Doon in Ember, neither one seemed really to know them very well.

Lizzie and Torren argued back and forth. Lizzie said again that Torren was too young to understand and talked about someone named Looper back in Ember that she would have gone off with if he’d asked her to, and Torren said that anybody would want to be a roamer if they could, even if they had to steal a wagon to do it, and that his brother Caspar was a roamer and that when he was old enough, he and Caspar would be a team.

Finally, Lizzie turned to Kenny. “You’re not saying anything,” she said. “Who do you think is right, me or him?”

“Well, I think neither one,” said Kenny. “What I think is, they wanted to be helpful. There’s hardship here, just the way there was hardship in their city before, and they wanted to help then.”

Lizzie and Torren both stared at him and said nothing for a moment. Then Lizzie said, “You might be right.”

“Might be,” said Torren.

“So if they wanted to help,” Lizzie went on, “where would they go?”

“Someplace where they could find things we don’t have.”

“But where is that? No one around here has anything.”

Kenny looked up at the sky, thinking. He rubbed his chin. If he wanted to help, what would he do? Where would he go? “Maybe up north?” he said. “Maybe they caught a ride with that roamer who was here.”

“But once they got there, how could they buy things?” said Lizzie. “They had nothing to trade with.”

“That’s true.”

Lizzie frowned, thinking. “Maybe the ancient ruined city? Maybe when Lina went there, she saw things that were still left.”

“No,” said Torren, “if there’d been good things still there, Caspar would have brought them back.”

They were stumped. They stood there in the cold alley, their ears and tips of their noses getting more and more chilly. Lizzie wound her scarf around her head. She coughed. “It’s so much colder here than it was in Ember,” she complained. “And the air here isn’t just cold, it moves and slices into you, which makes it worse.” She coughed again, a raspy cough that made her eyes water. “And in Ember,” she went on, “no water or ice falls out of the sky the way it does here, and even though people got sick there, at least they had medicine that sometimes helped a little bit. In Ember . . .” She stopped. “Oh,” she said.

“Oh, what?” said Torren.

“I think I know where they went,” said Lizzie.

“To Ember!” Kenny cried. “I bet you’re right! But is anything left there?”

“Might be,” said Lizzie. “At least a little bit. Probably more than here.”

“Then that’s it. That’s where they went.” Kenny felt sure of it. It felt right for both Lina and Doon: they wanted to help, they knew their old city, and they were brave enough to try to go there on their own.

“So what should we do?” Lizzie said. “Go after them and tell them it’s too dangerous, and they should come back?”

“Is it dangerous?” Kenny asked.

“It must be,” Lizzie said. “It’s dark there now. And how would they even get in? They couldn’t go up that river.” She swiped at her runny nose. “I think their minds must have got a little bit unhinged by the cold and the trouble here and everything.”

“We should rescue them!” cried Torren. “I don’t mind going out into the wilderness. It will be good practice for when I’m a roamer.”

“But we don’t know the way,” said Kenny.

“I could remember it, maybe,” Lizzie said. “It’s up there.” She waved her hand in a vague northeasterly direction.

“We can’t catch up with them,” Kenny said. “They’ve been gone too long. Maybe they’re already on their way back. Or maybe they’ve had an accident and they’re stuck out there. If we went up on the hill beyond the far field, we might see them. Then we could go and help.”

Torren was jumping up and down by now, his eyes shining and coat flapping. “We have to go soon!” he cried.

“But not in the night.” Lizzie wrapped her jacket closer around her.

“Tomorrow,” said Kenny. “We could meet at the far field early, right at sunrise. Okay? We’ll just go up and look.”

“Okay!” cried Torren. “We’ll go tomorrow!” He jumped up and thumped the wall with his fist. A few yards away, a window was pushed open, and in a moment Ben Barlow poked his head out. “What’s all that commotion?” he called, but no one was there.