Free The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau Page B

them.
    Everything here seemed extremely
inconvenient
to Lina. To get water, you had to go outside the gate to a pump and work a stiff handle up and down. To go to the bathroom, you had to go out in back of the house to a little smelly shed. There was no light at night except for candles, and at first she’d thought there was no stove to cook on. “Oh, yes,” said the doctor, “that’s the stove there”—she pointed to the thing like a black iron barrel in the corner of the kitchen—“but I hardly ever use it in the summer. Too much trouble to keep the fire going, and it’s too hot anyway. We mainly eat cold food in summer.”
    When she did want to cook something—boil a pot of water to cook an egg, for instance, or make tea—the doctor had to squat down, stuff some dry grass and twigs into the stove’s belly, and set them alight. Sometimes she used a match; sometimes she hit what looked like two rocks together until they made a spark and the grass caught fire. Then she had to feed in bigger and bigger twigs until the fire was finally hot enough. This fire seemed fairly safe to Lina, though she didn’t like to get too close to it; at least it was contained in its iron box. It wasn’t free to leap out at her like the fire in the fireplace. Fortunately, the doctor didn’t make another fire in the fireplace after that first night. As the days grew hotter and hotter, the nights were no longer cool. Extra warmth was the last thing they needed.
    One day—a week or so after Lina first came to the doctor’s house—a patient came with news to tell as well as a wound to bind. She was a scrawny young woman with brownish teeth. She had a bad scratch on her wrist where she’d scraped it against some rusty wire. “There’s a roamer in the village,” she said. “Just arrived this morning.”
    “What’s a roamer?” Lina asked.
    The doctor, tying a rag around her patient’s wrist, said, “Roamers go out into the Empty Lands and bring things back.”
    “From the old places,” added the patient. “The ruined places.”
    “My brother Caspar is a roamer!” said Torren. “And when I’m old enough, I’m going to be a roamer, too, and we’re going to be partners.”
    This was the first time Lina had sensed real happiness in Torren. His little eyes shone with hope.
    “That will be exciting,” Lina said. “Is it dangerous to be a roamer?”
    “Oh, yes. Sometimes you run into other roamers trying to get the same things you want. Sometimes you’re attacked by bandits. You have to fight them off. Caspar has a whip.”
    “A whip?”
    “A great long cord! As long as this room, almost. If people get in his way, he lashes them.” He lifted his arm overhead and brought it down as if he were lashing something. “Whhhhtt! Whhhhtt!” he said.
    “Now, stop that,” said the doctor absently, tying the final knot in the rag. The patient left, and Lina and the doctor and Torren, along with Mrs. Murdo, carrying Poppy, went down to the market plaza to see the roamer.
    A crowd had assembled in the plaza. Lina looked for Doon, but she didn’t see him. She saw only a few Emberites, in fact; most of them must have been working in other places. But a great many villagers were there, clustered around a big truck. The truck was loaded with barrels and crates, and on it stood a brown-skinned woman with wiry muscles in her arms and legs. “I have been in the far north,” she cried out in a shrill, strong voice, “out in remote corners of the Empty Lands. I have traveled roads where I saw no human being for weeks on end. And in these distant regions, I came across houses and farms that had never before been searched. I have treasures for you today.” She beckoned with a long brown arm. “Step up and look.”
    The crowd pressed forward. Apparently this roamer was known to the villagers. Some people called out greetings and questions.
    “Did you bring us any writing paper this time, Mackie?”
    “What about seeds?”
    “What