The Second Streets

Answers and Questions

Chapter 4

Answers and Questions

Christopher took the microphone from the mayor.

"Look, everyone, I'm really happy to have won and all, but there's something far more important. My sister Ember was ahead of me, yet she's not here." The crowd gasped. The mayor took back his microphone.

"W- w- well," he stuttered. "This is...    unprecedented. Maybe she got lost? Fourteen is a little young." Christopher shook his head.

"No way," he said, not bothering to take the microphone back. The mayor would take care of the general announcement later. He had to get the facts out. "Ember's been riding this trail since she was nine, when I first raced. She competed last year and had excellent times. She knows it better than the back of her hand." By this time, two other riders had come in.

"Maybe she's injured. You might have passed her and not noticed," suggested the mayor.

"She would have called out. If not to me, to one of them." Christopher gestured to the two behind him. The mayor accepted his logic. The girl's brother would know her better than he did.

"All right. I'll organize search parties as soon as the race ends."

Xanda stood and pulled the spit from the fire. The bird's skin was blackened. Xanda pulled out a knife and sliced off a wing. The meat inside was a warm brown, roasted perfectly. She cut all the meat off the bird and placed it on the stone next to her. She then proceeded to dice the meat. Dividing the pile into five even portions, she handed a small pile to each of her friends and kept the last one. She then divided the bones the same way.

Ember stood awkwardly as the others ate. The devoured the meat and gnawed on the bones to catch any food Xanda had missed. When the group was finished, Xanda stood.

"I'm off to Pond 17," she said. "Bring the newcomer to the Center. Teach her our ways. With such a small number of years behind her, she's got quite a while left with us." With that, she exited along the path Ember had come from.

Ember followed the other three down a winding passage. Soon, they reached a large, open cavern. A few other families were in the area as well.

"This area is known as the Center. There should be a Town Square in Upper Greendale about here. If you know the map up there, then you know the map here," Tristan said.

"Oh, yeah! Those two streets at a right angle must be the equivalent of Shark Tooth and Pine, meaning that...    " she continued muttering her way through Greendale's map compared to the second streets.

"In Upper Greendale, are your storm drains numbered?" Tristan asked. Ember paused, hesitating.

"I...    think so? Yeah. The one on my street is forty-eight."

"So you live far to the edge, then. There are fifty total drains, numbered by location. The farther out the drain is from the center, the larger the number," he explained.

"So, when Xanda said she was going to Pond Seventeen, did she mean the seventeenth storm drain?"

"Exactly."

"But where does the "Pond" part come in?" Ember asked.

"The very first people down here in the second streets actually dug ponds a small distance from the storm drain and connected it through pipes. We use them as our main water source."

"Why the distance? Why not just put them right there?"

"The ponds are pretty deep with all the rain you first streeters get. If you had fallen not onto solid ground but into a seemingly bottomless pool,  chances are you would have drowned, and we'd have a dead body in our water source."

"Oh...         " said Ember. "Yeah, that's true. But at least my arm wouldn't be broken."

"But you'd be dead," countered Tristan. Ember shook her head.

"Yeah, let's not go there now. Are you actually related to Xanda and the others?"

"Xanda is actually the only one I'm not related to. She came here at age two, and I took her in. We may seem crude and animalistic to someone raised in the upper like you, but we aren't heartless or cruel. Emily and Colton are twins, and Chad is two years younger, and they're all my grandkids. Their parents- my daughter and her husband- didn't survive down here. The second streets have their ways of...    sorting...     the citizens."

"Sorting?" Ember asked, a boulder of dread appearing in her stomach.

"Sometimes garbage falls with the the water. We get most of our food the same way, so it's never the best of pickings, and food can get scarce. There are filters before the ponds that block it from getting into the water, leaving it to us to sort it out. There's also disease down here, but no medicine to help us through it. Then, of course, there are the Chentagues."

"What are shen, um, what was it?" Ember was feeling worse and worse about her situation.

"Not what, Ember. Who," Tristan corrected. "The Chentagues are a group of people down here. I can hardly even call those monsters people. They don't want to share the second streets with us. Their main goal is to either convert us...          or kill us."