AN: I have not offically decided such yet, but there is a chance that the next chapter may be the last for this fic-just a head's up.
Early in the morning, about two days after the announcement that the people of Ember would not be permitted to take lunch with their host families was passed, Doon awoke-sore and still tired, as usual-to the sound of loud cheering.
The cheering did not sound happy, however. It sounded more like an already-enraged crowd getting even more riled up.
"What's going on?" Doon asked his father, getting up and rummaging around for his clothes. He had to brush a few fleas off of his vest before he tossed it on over his thin, patch-filled sweater. Under most circumstances, he would have tried to get a closer look at them before ending their nasty little flea-lives, but he was anxious to get closer to his father to hear his likely-to-be-quiet reply. And besides, fascination with bugs or no fascination with bugs, he didn't want to get bitten. A little boy he'd met (one of the few people of Sparks who seemed to genuinely like him) once or twice, Kenny, had told him that there were more fleas in the summer. There seemed to be quite a few in the Pioneer now; he shuddered at the thought of more.
Doon's father leaned in from one of the few windows that wasn't broken (though it stuck a bit whenever somebody tried to open it). "The people are revolting."
"You're telling me," Edward Pocket, only half-listening, looking dazed and short-tempered, muttered.
"No," said Mr. Harrow, holding back a faint-barely detectible-laugh. "I mean, they're literally revolting. Or, at least, thinking about it…a lot…"
"Who's the one talking now?" Doon asked, looking out the window at a boy maybe a little older than himself standing on a wooden crate turned upside-down. He appeared to be the one getting the most wild angry-cheers. A few fists pumped in the air at every other word he spoke.
"Tick," his father told him. "I think he was a cart puller or something back in Ember."
Doon remembered him from Ember, but just barely. He wasn't sure if they'd ever said more than two words to each other. They had, once, but that was with the group of other boys, and Tick, though clearly quite the dominating force at the moment, had been a background-hanger more than anything else.
"Who the heck names their kid 'Tick'?" Edward Pocket grumped, blowing on his cold, wrinkled hands.
"Looks like Peter's saying something now," Mr. Harrow put in, ignoring Edward's rhetorical question.
"Pevensie?" Doon said, as if there could have been another Peter his father meant.
For some reason, Peter Pevensie didn't strike Doon as the kind of person who would encourage the mob-violence Tick seemed semi-desperate to ignite. And he wasn't, it turned out. Peter was trying to get everyone to calm down and stop cheering for Tick. It seemed, though, like Tick wanted attention and reverence even more than he wanted a 'revolt' against the people of Sparks (or at least, he said, as a starter, the leaders). And Peter wasn't letting him have it.
For a moment, Tick stood on his crate, glaring down at Peter; and Peter stared right back at him, neither willing to break eye-contact first.
"Tick," Peter said in a kingly, final voice; the one nobody from Ember except for Edmund, Lucy, Aunt Polly, and the Professor understood the origins of, "listen to me." He tightened his stare, locking it in even more firmly. "This must end…This must end before it starts."
"Idiot," Tick shouted, pumped by those he figured were on his side, not considering how stupid he was being to call someone who he could not have possibly taken in a fight an idiot. "Don't you see that we can't stand by and be bullied and starved like this?"
"What are you really after?" Peter arched an eyebrow. "Peace? Happiness for everyone involved? Or do you just want it to come to clean battle so you can look impressive?"
There was some whispering in the crowd. They'd been listening to Tick, but what Peter was saying seemed to make sense. Tick always had, those who'd known him for a long time suddenly remembered, liked attention. Hadn't he over-turned carts and made fusses just to get people to notice him? This wasn't about justice, many of them realized, their eyes finally being opened, this was about Tick and what he wanted. He wanted battle-war, even.
Tick looked furious; he knew that Peter had seen right through him. "Fine, then." The expression on his face changed ever so slightly. "Tell us, O Leader Boy, Mr. I-found-the-way-out-so-I-know-best-in-everything, what are we going to do?"
Peter blinked coolly, unfazed. If Tick had expected to shake him up with his demands, he was instantly disappointed. Inside, the former high king felt a little nervous, a very little bit like his stomach might possibly do a summersault or two, but not enough for it to be visible.
"Our only hope," said Peter after a moment quick reflection, "is to send one of ours to talk with them. Maybe get a real negotiation going. Striking at them without first trying to get to the root of the matter would kill us, we aren't strong enough. And, you know what? Tick knows that. Or he would if he had a brain that worked."
"Wrap it up, Pevensie," Tick growled.
"Who should we send?" Peter asked the crowd, ignoring Tick. "My personal suggestion would be to make sure it was someone strong and firm but not imposing. We don't want them to think we're threatening them."
"I would not take it upon myself," Tick here changed sides for a passing moment, thinking his friends would cheer for him and perhaps pick him to be the one to go. "…Unless it were urged on me, if anyone-"
"Good," said Peter, smirking. "Because no one is going to urge it upon you, I believe."
There were a few snickers at this, and Tick's face went very red. Then, a smallish voice called up and Peter turned half-way around to see a boy who was probably closer to his own age than Tick's but was so short and growth-stunted that he actually looked younger than them both; he had coppery-coloured hair and a pinched, nervous face that, though not exactly beaming with goodness, appeared honest enough.
"But," the boy said, daring to cup his hands around his mouth to make his small, mousy tone a bit louder, "why not Tick? After all, it was Tick that figured it out about the town leaders trying to poison us and all. Tried to kill some of us off like rats so that we couldn't out-number them, they did. Tick's a hero for figuring it out and making sure we stopped drinking the milk in time."
Peter didn't know what the boy was talking about. "What milk? This is the first I've heard about any poisoning."
"Oh, don't you know?" Lizzie, Lina's ex-friend, chimed in (she had a crush on Tick, finally having gotten over Looper). "Some of us weren't feeling very well and were down at the town hall. I live with a host family now, of course, but I went to visit my friends there. There were about, I think, six…no, maybe ten…of us total."
Peter nodded in a 'go on,' sort of way.
"Well, the town leaders left milk on the doorstep for us…fresh milk…still warm from those big animals…what are they called again? It's still weird to think that it doesn't just come from tin cans like in Ember."
"A cow," someone told her.
"Right," Lizzie went on. "It was still warm from the cow."
Peter thought he saw a shadowy cloud of pride cross over Tick's face, but not the sort of pride a person feels when they have done something good; rather, it appeared to be the sort of pride a person has when they have done something cruel and wicked and think not only that they are going to get away with it but also that it will benefit them somehow. Ruling for fifteen years had taught him, to some degree, to read a face; and Tick's was far more of an open book than anyone present realized.
"Lizzie," Peter interrupted, putting a hand up, "did you see the town leaders leave it?"
"No," she admitted. "But, well, Tick did, and there was a note."
"All right, keep going then. Sorry."
"We drank the milk-or at least we started to-but it had this funny aftertaste and some of us were starting to feel very sick. Poor Tick, who drank his much quicker than us because he was so thirsty-" here she paused and twisted her face into the closest thing to a sympathetic expression she could manage and glanced over at said Tick "-he was the one who figured it out. He even taught us how to force ourselves to vomit it up."
"Oh, he did, did he?" Peter thought he was beginning to understand exactly what had happened.
Gael, Doctor Hester's little daughter, had claimed to see someone sneaking into their barn. She said she thought they were stealing milk. It had been in the middle of the night and she'd woken up Susan who had been convinced little Gael was only dreaming and told her to go back to sleep again. But the next morning, the cow didn't have any milk to give them-and Pearl (which was what Gael had named their family cow) had never failed them before.
That thief could jolly well have been Tick. He was clever, Peter thought, but not clever enough. He hadn't thought through everything, not quite everything.
Benjamin had said, very directly, that he was not going to give the people of Ember anything 'extra'; he had made that more than clear. Tick might have taken that into account in that he chose only a few slow-witted persons who were either gullible or else easily frightened, seen to it that they were the only ones in the town hall at the moment, and carried out his plan. How else would he have been able to pretend that he was teaching them to induce vomiting spur of the moment? He would have had to have practiced. That is, if he didn't want any of his fellow Emberties dead.
The real question was, how did Tick manage to keep the little milk episode quiet until now? Why wasn't a panic started? Peter's best guess was that Tick had told them all that he planned to get revenge on the town leaders-or some other similar rot-and not to tell anyone, especially the grown-ups, what had happened.
"Very clever, Tick." Peter grinned at him, the smile more of a grimace than anything else.
"Thank you."
"No," Peter sighed. "Thank you, Tick. For trying to start a war."
"What?" he exclaimed, confused. Clearly this wasn't going quite as planned. "Me? Trying to start a war? No, not me, it was the people of Sparks; treating us as they do, and then, on top of it all, trying to poison us a few at a time…"
Peter folded his arms across his chest. "Oh really? Is that the story you truly and honestly want to stick with, Tick? This is your last chance to confess. If I were you, in as deep of trouble as you will likely find yourself in a few moments from now, I would take it."
"Confess!" Tick practically spat. "I have nothing to confess to!"
"Fine." Peter reached up, grabbed the front of the collar of Tick's shirt and pulled him down off of the crate.
"Hey, what do you think you're doing?" He protested as Peter climbed up onto the crate; but no one paid Tick any mind at the moment except for Lizzie, who was continuing to gaze at him fondly.
It took a moment for Peter to find his balance. Tick had slightly smaller feet and his weight, while pound-wise not a significant difference from Peter's, was distributed differently as their body types were polar-opposites. He had to step more carefully to avoid cracking one of the weaker slates and getting nothing but a twisted ankle for all his pains.
In a loud, clear voice, the sort people always listened to when Peter used, he explained Tick's plan in full-even sharing the details of Gael's supposed 'nightmare' and the missing milk.
"Don't believe him!" Tick shouted.
But, really, it was more than apparent that everybody did, and without question. Even Lizzie's facial expression changed from infatuated to infuriated.
"I vote for Peter," Lizzie was actually the first to shout. "He should go and talk to the town leaders!"
"Lizzie," Tick cried out, knowing she had liked him. "Poppet!"
"Don't 'poppet' me!" she hissed through her teeth. "You sneaky little worm. I never want to see you again, Tick."
"Humph," growled Tick. "Don't need you."
"Oh!" Lizzie put her hand to her heart. "You don't need me? This is really it? Oh, Tick, say it isn't so!"
Peter rolled his eyes. "Perhaps the two of you would like to continue this conversation elsewhere?" he suggested. "After all, Tick, I don't think, if I were you, I'd want to wait around here any longer than need be." His eyes shifted over to a group of angry-faced Ember-boys clenching their fists and leering in Tick's general direction.
"Come, Lizzie." He took Peter's advice.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," she bawled in a very over-the-top sort of voice.
"Lizzie!" he snapped.
"Coming!" She, ever one of the ficklest minded girls to walk the planet, went with him.
So it was Peter, everyone agreed, that should go and speak to the town leaders in their behalf. Few had any hope that it would do much good, as plenty of them had tried-including probably Peter as well, come to think of it-to speak up before, but anything was worth a try.
Thinking over what he must do, he finally settled in his mind that he would try to see if he couldn't talk to Marianne alone first. Marianne seemed the most tender-hearted of the three, and it had been her, far more than the other two, who'd at least tried to stick up for the people of Ember. And, if she hadn't always done such a good job of it, well, maybe that was what Peter had to talk to her about.
Secretly, he thought, strange as it might sound, that out of them all, the one he should most like to talk to was that stubborn twit Benjamin. Peter felt, much as he was beginning to dislike the man for all the problems he was inflicting upon the people of Ember, that he understood him-maybe a little bit. What would himself have done, he wondered, back in Narnia if suddenly hundreds of Telmarines (people of the country of Telmar; they were neither foes nor allies of Narnia, they were just sort of there) had shown up during one of Narnia's rougher years and asked for help? Peter hoped that he would have been good to them, kind at all costs, but there were moments when he, upon reflection, wondered if he truly would have been. Or would Susan-bless her tender heart-have had to convince him to give more than the basics, in spite of economic problems that might ignite? But Benjamin would never grant him an audience; he thought of Peter as 'only a kid', and he knew this was so without being told.
No, first he must go to Marianne and speak with her. He would explain Tick's poisoned milk plan, thus quickly showing that he wasn't being bias towards his own people. Then, perhaps, if she hadn't turned him away, he could try and add that, even if the food amounts given were not increased, they should still be allowed to eat where they liked. What harm, really, would it do to have things back they way they'd been before? What had they, the people of Ember, done that had caused them to become angry and turn them out like that?
She would listen, Peter told himself, he would do his best to see to it that she did. Yet, his heart was heavy and his nerves were shot. Supposing she didn't listen after all? Or, worse, if she did and could-or would-not go up against Benjamin and Wilhelm.
He shivered from more than just the cold air as he stood on the porch of the house he was told Marianne lived in, rapping his knuckles on the door.
The door swung open, and, to Peter's great surprise, it was Benjamin who stood there, not Marianne.
"What do you want?" he demanded when he saw it was an Ember-boy.
Glancing over his shoulder, Peter noticed the Sparks-bred children who had given him the directions supposedly to Marianne's house, hiding behind a brown, leafless bush, snickering into their palms.
Nice, he thought, that's real nice; and you wonder why we don't like you.
"I was looking to speak with Marianne, sir," said Peter, at last, when he steadied himself and decided that it would be highly undignified to turn on his heels and run like the wind.
Benjamin's eyes narrowed. "She doesn't live here."
"There's been a mistake, Sir," Peter apologized quickly, deciding not to sell out the Sparks-children, since Benjamin wouldn't believe him anyway. "I'm sorry."
"She's a busy woman, you know," Benjamin told him shortly. "She doesn't have time to talk to troublesome little kids."
Troublesome? Little? Peter wondered if there was anything decent in that whole sentence, anything that wasn't offensive. He tried, but he could find nothing. The whole phrase was little more than a complete insult.
"With all due respect, I'd rather have her tell me that herself than you. I know she is busy, I understand that. But I have to talk to her. It's very important."
"What could you possibly have to say to her that you can't say to me?"
"I thought she would listen," Peter said, his voice surprisingly level. "If you would listen, I'd just as soon talk to you. You won't, though, will you?"
"Let me get this straight," huffed Benjamin, coming out all the way onto the porch and shutting the door behind himself; "you're telling me that I don't listen?"
"Yes, that's it exactly."
"Cheeky."
Peter shrugged his shoulders.
"I could throw you off of this porch."
"I'd like to see you try."
"Again, that was cheeky. And, quite frankly, insolent as well. Where are your parents?"
"Dead."
"Oh." Benjamin wasn't completely heartless, even if he seemed it sometimes, and he hadn't been expecting that. It had been a little difficult, in light of everything, for him to keep track of all the different families; and he hadn't remembered that Peter, his brother, and his stepsisters were orphans.
Peter sighed heavily.
"Marianne lives across the path behind where you're standing," Benjamin gave in. "Two houses down from being parallel to my own."
"Thank you," Peter said, and started to turn around to leave.
"But, as you're already here," Benjamin stopped him. "I could save you the bother of a the trip and listen." The sky was dark gray above them. "Looks like sleet, anyway."
"All right," Peter agreed. "It does look rather like sleet."
AN: Reviews always welcome!
