The City of Ember: Chapters 3–7

That morning, Doon had arrived at the Pipeworks full of anticipation. This was the world of serious work at last, where he would get a chance to do something useful.

A raucous clamor filled the room.

After a moment a man emerged from the throng.

Wide as the widest street in Ember, churning and dipping and swirling, the river roared past, its turbulent surface like black, liquid glass scattered with flecks of light.

After fifteen minutes or so, they came to the east edge of the Pipeworks, where the river surged up from a deep chasm in the ground, churning so violently that its dark water turned white and filled the air with a spray that wet Doon’s face.

Puddles stood on the floor of the tunnel, and water dripped in brown rivulets down the walls.

Wisps of sofa stuffing stuck to the front of her dress and clung to her hair.

Nothing else was out there but the trash heaps, great moldering, stinking hills that stood on rocky ground and were lit by a few floodlights high up on poles.

What she loved best was to rub the leaves of the tomato plant between her fingers and breathe in their pungent, powdery smell.

But the stick burned quickly, and before she could go far, the flame singed her hands and she threw it down.

“Blue would be nice,” said the other voice wistfully.

The mayor’s voice kept coming in blasts of incomprehensible sound, and the people in the crowd were either shouting angrily or yelping in fear of being squashed.

The chewed bits were beyond saving — they were almost a paste. But Lina spread out the big lacy piece and saw that on one edge of it, which was still intact, was a column of numbers.

Painstakingly, she put a dot of glue on each of the scraps and pressed each one into its place on one of her precious few remaining whole sheets of paper.

He counts us late if we come in even two minutes after eight, and he looks over our shoulders as we’re writing, which is awful because he has bad breath, and he runs his finger over what we’ve written and says, ‘This word is illegible, that word is illegible, these numbers are illegible.’