The City of Ember: Chapters 17–20

Nothing moved but himself, his shadow, and his fleeting reflection in shop windows he passed.

The Singing was over, the people were dispersing throughout the city, and the guards, no doubt, would soon resume their search for him.

Doon clasped his arms together and pressed them hard against his stomach, trying to stop the queasy fluttering.

They both let the ropes slide through their hands, and the boat fell and hit the water with a slap. It bounced and rocked and pulled against its tether, but Doon’s knot held.

Columns of rock hung down from it, and columns of rock rose from the water, too, making long shadows that turned and mingled as the boat floated among them.

He pointed to a wide expanse of rock that sloped back into the darkness on one side of the pool.

The pages inside had faint blue lines across them, and someone had written along these lines in slanted black letters, which were not neat like the writing in the library books, but sprawling, as if the writer had been in a hurry.

“Oh!” Lina stared at him, stricken.

In some places, the ground beneath their feet was rutted in parallel grooves, as if a wheeled cart of some kind had been driven over it.

They could see the sheen of its fur and the glint of light in its eyes.

They got up and poked around, and soon they came across a plant whose branches were laden with the purple fruits, about the size of small beets, only softer.

By candlelight, they crept along until they came to a place where the tunnel ended abruptly. But it ended not with a wall but with a sudden huge nothingness that made them gasp and step back.