My feet back up automatically and I blend into the trees. I
cover my mouth with my glove to disperse the white of my breath in the icy air.
Adrenaline courses through me, wiping all the concerns of the day from my mind
as I focus on the immediate threat before me. What is going on? Has Thread
turned on the fence as an additional security precaution? Or does he somehow
know I've escaped his net today? Is he determined to strand me outside District
12 until he can apprehend and arrest me? Drag me to the square to be locked in
the stockade or whipped or hanged?
Calm down, I order myself. It's not
as if this is the first time I've been caught outside of the district by an
electrified fence. It's happened a few times over the years, but Gale was always
with me. The two of us would just pick a comfortable tree to hang out in until
the power shut off, which it always did eventually. If I was running late, Prim
even got in the habit of going to the Meadow to check if the fence was charged,
to spare my mother worry.
But today my family would never imagine I'd be in the woods.
I've even taken steps to mislead them. So if I don't show up, worry they will.
And there's a part of me that's worried, too, because I'm not sure it's just a
coincidence, the power coming on the very day I return to the woods.
I thought no one saw me sneak under the fence, but who knows?
There are always eyes for hire. Someone reported Gale kissing me in that very
spot. Still, that was in daylight and before I was more careful about my
behavior. Could there be surveillance cameras? I've wondered about this before.
Is this the way President Snow knows about the kiss? It was dark when I went
under and my face was bundled in a scarf. But the list of suspects likely to be
trespassing into the woods is probably very short.
My eyes peer through the trees, past the fence, into the
Meadow. All I can see is the wet snow illuminated here and there by the light
from the windows on the edge of the Seam. No Peacekeepers in sight, no signs I
am being hunted. Whether Thread knows I left the district today or not, I
realize my course of action must be the same: to get back inside the fence
unseen and pretend I never left.
Any contact with the chain link or the coils of barbed wire
that guard the top would mean instant electrocution. I don't think I can burrow
under the fence without risking detection, and the ground's frozen hard, anyway.
That leaves only one choice. Somehow I'm going to have to go over it.
I begin to skirt along the tree line, searching for a tree
with a branch high and long enough to fit my needs. After about a mile, I come
upon an old maple that might do. The trunk is too wide and icy to shinny up,
though, and there are no low branches. I climb a neighboring tree and leap
precariously into the maple, almost losing my hold on the slick bark. But I
manage to get a grip and slowly inch my way out on a limb that hangs above the
barbed wire.
As I look down, I remember why Gale and I always waited in
the woods rather than try to tackle the fence. Being high enough to avoid
getting fried means you've got to be at least twenty feet in the air. I guess my
branch must be twenty-five. That's a dangerously long drop, even for someone
who's had years of practice in trees. But what choice do I have? I could look
for another branch, but it's almost dark now. The falling snow will obscure any
moonlight. Here, at least, I can see I've got a snowbank to cushion my landing.
Even if I could find another, which is doubtful, who knows what I'd be jumping
into? I throw my empty game bag around my neck and slowly lower myself until I'm
hanging by my hands. For a moment, I gather my courage. Then I release my
fingers.
There's the sensation of falling, then I hit the ground with
a jolt that goes right up my spine. A second later, my rear end slams the
ground. I lie in the snow, trying to assess the damage. Without standing, I can
tell by the pain in my left heel and my tailbone that I'm injured. The only
question is how badly. I'm hoping for bruises, but when I force myself onto my
feet, I suspect I've broken something as well. I can walk, though, so I get
moving, trying to hide my limp as best I can.
My mother and Prim can't know I was in the woods. I need to
work up some sort of alibi, no matter how thin. Some of the shops in the square
are still open, so I go in one and purchase white cloth for bandages. We're
running low, anyway. In another, I buy a bag of sweets for Prim. I stick one of
the candies in my mouth, feeling the peppermint melt on my tongue, and realize
it's the first thing I've eaten all day. I meant to make a meal at the lake, but
once I saw Twill and Bonnie's condition, it seemed wrong to take a single
mouthful from them.
By the time I reach my house, my left heel will bear no
weight at all. I decide to tell my mother I was trying to mend a leak in the
roof of our old house and slid off. As for the missing food, I'll just be vague
about who I handed it out to. I drag myself in the door, all ready to collapse
in front of the fire. But instead I get another shock.
Two Peacekeepers, a man and a woman, are standing in the
doorway to our kitchen. The woman remains impassive, but I catch the flicker of
surprise on the man's face. I am unanticipated. They know I was in the woods and
should be trapped there now.
“Hello,” I say in a neutral voice.
My mother appears behind them, but keeps her distance. “Here
she is, just in time for dinner,” she says a little too brightly. I'm very late
for dinner.
I consider removing my boots as I normally would but doubt I
can manage it without revealing my injuries. Instead I just pull off my wet hood
and shake the snow from my hair. “Can I help you with something?” I ask the
Peacekeepers.
“Head Peacekeeper Thread sent us with a message for you,”
says the woman.
“They've been waiting for hours,” my mother adds.
They've been waiting for me to fail to return. To confirm I
got electrocuted by the fence or trapped in the woods so they could take my
family in for questioning.
“Must be an important message,” I say.
“May we ask where you've been, Miss Everdeen?” the woman
asks.
“Easier to ask where I haven't
been,” I say with a sound of exasperation. I cross into the kitchen, forcing
myself to use my foot normally even though every step is excruciating. I pass
between the Peacekeepers and make it to the table all right. I fling my bag down
and turn to Prim, who's standing stiffly by the hearth. Haymitch and Peeta are
there as well, sitting in a pair of matching rockers, playing a game of chess.
Were they here by chance or “invited” by the Peacekeepers? Either way, I'm glad
to see them.
“So where haven't you been?” says Haymitch in a bored
voice.
“Well, I haven't been talking to the Goat Man about getting
Prim's goat pregnant, because someone gave me completely inaccurate information
as to where he lives,” I say to Prim emphatically.
“No, I didn't,” says Prim. “I told you exactly.”
“You said he lives beside the west entrance to the mine,” I
say.
“The east entrance,” Prim corrects me.
“You distinctly said the west, because then I said, 'Next to
the slag heap?' and you said, 'Yeah,'“ I say.
convert midi to mp3
“The slag heap next to the east entrance,” says Prim
patiently.
“No. When did you say that?” I demand. “Last night,” Haymitch
chimes in.
“It was definitely the east,” adds Peeta. He looks at
Haymitch and they laugh. I glare at Peeta and he tries to look contrite. “I'm
sorry, but it's what I've been saying. You don't listen when people talk to
you.”
“Bet people told you he didn't live there today and you
didn't listen again,” says Haymitch.
“Shut up, Haymitch,” I say, clearly indicating he's
right.
Haymitch and Peeta crack up and Prim allows herself a
smile.
“Fine. Somebody else can arrange to get the stupid goat
knocked up,” I say, which makes them laugh more. And I think, This is why they've made it this far, Haymitch and Peeta. Nothing
throws them.
I look at the Peacekeepers. The man's smiling but the woman
is unconvinced. “What's in the bag?” she asks sharply.
I know she's hoping for game or wild plants. Something that
clearly condemns me. I dump the contents on the table. “See for yourself.”
“Oh, good,” says my mother, examining the cloth. “We're
running low on bandages.”
Peeta comes to the table and opens the candy bag. “Ooh,
peppermints,” he says, popping one in his mouth.
“They're mine.” I take a swipe for the bag. He tosses it to
Haymitch, who stuffs a fistful of sweets in his mouth before passing the bag to
a giggling Prim. “None of you deserves candy!” I say.
“What, because we're right?” Peeta wraps his arms around me.
I give a small yelp of pain as my tailbone objects. I try to turn it into a
sound of indignation, but I can see in his eyes that he knows I'm hurt. “Okay,
Prim said west. I distinctly heard west. And we're all idiots. How's that?”
“Better,” I say, and accept his kiss. Then I look at the
Peacekeepers as if I'm suddenly remembering they're there. “You have a message
for me?”
“From Head Peacekeeper Thread,” says the woman. “He wanted
you to know that the fence surrounding District Twelve will now have electricity
twenty-four hours a day.”
“Didn't it already?” I ask, a little too innocently.
“He thought you might be interested in passing this
information on to your cousin,” says the woman.
“Thank you. I'll tell him. I'm sure we'll all sleep a little
more soundly now that security has addressed that lapse.” I'm pushing things, I
know it, but the comment gives me a sense of satisfaction.
The woman's jaw tightens. None of this has gone as planned,
but she has no further orders. She gives me a curt nod and leaves, the man
trailing in her wake. When my mother has locked the door behind them, I slump
against the table.
“What is it?” says Peeta, holding me steadily.
“Oh, I banged up my left foot. The heel. And my tail-bone's
had a bad day, too.” He helps me over to one of the rockers and I lower myself
onto the padded cushion.
My mother eases off my boots. “What happened?”
“I slipped and fell,” I say. Four pairs of eyes look at me
with disbelief. “On some ice.” But we all know the house must be bugged and it's
not safe to talk openly. Not here, not now.
Having stripped off my sock, my mother's fingers probe the
bones in my left heel and I wince. “There might be a break,” she says. She
checks the other foot. “This one seems all right.” She judges my tailbone to be
badly bruised.
Prim's dispatched to get my pajamas and robe. When I'm
changed, my mother makes a snow pack for my left heel and props it up on a
hassock. I eat three bowls of stew and half a loaf of bread while the others
dine at the table. I stare at the fire, thinking of Bonnie and Twill, hoping
that the heavy, wet snow has erased my tracks.
Prim comes and sits on the floor next to me, leaning her head
against my knee. We suck on peppermints as I brush her soft blond hair back
behind her ear. “How was school?” I ask.
“All right. We learned about coal by-products,” she says. We
stare at the fire for a while. “Are you going to try on your wedding
dresses?”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow probably,” I say.
“Wait until I get home, okay?” she says.
“Sure.” If they don't arrest me
first.
My mother gives me a cup of chamomile tea with a dose of
sleep syrup, and my eyelids begin to droop immediately. She wraps my bad foot,
and Peeta volunteers to get me to bed. I start out by leaning on his shoulder,
but I'm so wobbly he just scoops me up and carries me upstairs. He tucks me in
and says good night but I catch his hand and hold him there. A side effect of
the sleep syrup is that it makes people less inhibited, like white liquor, and I
know I have to control my tongue. But I don't want him to go. In fact, I want
him to climb in with me, to be there when the nightmares hit tonight. For some
reason that I can't quite form, I know I'm not allowed to ask that.
“Don't go yet. Not until I fall asleep,” I say.
Peeta sits on the side of the bed, warming my hand in both of
his. “Almost thought you'd changed your mind today. When you were late for
dinner.”
I'm foggy but I can guess what he means. With the fence going
on and me showing up late and the Peacekeepers waiting, he thought I'd made a
run for it, maybe with Gale.
“No, I'd have told you,” I say. I pull his hand up and lean
my cheek against the back of it, taking in the faint scent of cinnamon and dill
from the breads he must have baked today. I want to tell him about Twill and
Bonnie and the uprising and the fantasy of District 13, but it's not safe to and
I can feel myself slipping away, so I just get out one more sentence. “Stay with
me.”
As the tendrils of sleep syrup pull me down, I hear him
whisper a word back, but I don't quite catch it.
My mother lets me sleep until noon, then rouses me to examine
my heel. I'm ordered to a week of bed rest and I don't object because I feel so
lousy. Not just my heel and my tailbone. My whole body aches with exhaustion. So
I let my mother doctor me and feed me breakfast in bed and tuck another quilt
around me. Then I just lie there, staring out my window at the winter sky,
pondering how on earth this will all turn out. I think a lot about Bonnie and
Twill, and the pile of white wedding dresses downstairs, and if Thread will
figure out how I got back in and arrest me. It's funny, because he could just
arrest me, anyway, based on past crimes, but maybe he has to have something
really irrefutable to do it, now that I'm a victor. And I wonder if President
Snow's in contact with Thread. I think it's unlikely he ever acknowledged that
old Cray existed, but now that I'm such a nationwide problem, is he carefully
instructing Thread what to do? Or is Thread acting on his own? At any rate, I'm
sure they'd both agree on keeping me locked up here inside the district with
that fence. Even if I could figure out some way to escape—maybe get a rope up to
that maple tree branch and climb out—there'd be no escaping with my family and
friends now. I told Gale I would stay and fight, anyway.
For the next few days, I jump every time there's a knock on
the door. No Peacekeepers show up to arrest me, though, so eventually I begin to
relax. I'm further reassured when Peeta casually tells me the power is off in
sections of the fence because crews are out securing the base of the chain link
to the ground. Thread must believe I somehow got under the thing, even with that
deadly current running through it. It's a break for the district, having the
Peacekeepers busy doing something besides abusing people.
Peeta comes by every day to bring me cheese buns and begins
to help me work on the family book. It's an old thing, made of parchment and
leather. Some herbalist on my mother's side of the family started it ages ago.
The book's composed of page after page of ink drawings of plants with
descriptions of their medical uses. My father added a section on edible plants
that was my guidebook to keeping us alive after his death. For a long time, I've
wanted to record my own knowledge in it. Things I learned from experience or
from Gale, and then the information I picked up when I was training for the
Games. I didn't because I'm no artist and it's so crucial that the pictures are
drawn in exact detail. That's where Peeta comes in. Some of the plants he knows
already, others we have dried samples of, and others I have to describe. He
makes sketches on scrap paper until I'm satisfied they're right, then I let him
draw them in the book. After that, I carefully print all I know about the
plant.
It's quiet, absorbing work that helps take my mind off my
troubles. I like to watch his hands as he works, making a blank page bloom with
strokes of ink, adding touches of color to our previously black and yellowish
book. His face takes on a special look when he concentrates. His usual easy
expression is replaced by something more intense and removed that suggests an
entire world locked away inside him. I've seen flashes of this before: in the
arena, or when he speaks to a crowd, or that time he shoved the Peacekeepers'
guns away from me in District 11. I don't know quite what to make of it. I also
become a little fixated on his eyelashes, which ordinarily you don't notice much
because they're so blond. But up close, in the sunlight slanting in from the
window, they're a light golden color and so long I don't see how they keep from
getting all tangled up when he blinks.
One afternoon Peeta stops shading a blossom and looks up so
suddenly that I start, as though I were caught spying on him, which in a strange
way maybe I was. But he only says, “You know, I think this is the first time
we've ever done anything normal together.”
“Yeah,” I agree. Our whole relationship has been tainted by
the Games. Normal was never a part of it. “Nice for a change.”
Each afternoon he carries me downstairs for a change of
scenery and I unnerve everyone by turning on the television. Usually we only
watch when it's mandatory, because the mixture of propaganda and displays of the
Capitol's power—including clips from seventy-four years of Hunger Games — is so
odious. But now I'm looking for something special. The mockingjay that Bonnie
and Twill are basing all their hopes on. I know it's probably foolishness, but
if it is, I want to rule it out. And erase the idea of a thriving District 13
from my mind for good.
My first sighting is in a news story referencing the Dark
Days. I see the smoldering remains of the Justice Building in District 13 and
just catch the black-and-white underside of a mockingjay's wing as it flies
across the upper right-hand corner. That doesn't prove anything, really. It's
just an old shot that goes with an old tale.
However, several days later, something else grabs my
attention. The main newscaster is reading a piece about a shortage of graphite
affecting the manufacturing of items in District 3. They cut to what is supposed
to be live footage of a female reporter, encased in a protective suit, standing
in front of the ruins of the Justice Building in 13. Through her mask, she
reports that unfortunately a study has just today determined that the mines of
District 13 are still too toxic to approach. End of story. But just before they
cut back to the main newscaster, I see the unmistakable flash of that same
mockingjays wing.
The reporter has simply been incorporated into the old
footage. She's not in District 13 at all. Which begs the question, What is?
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