This is one of the few good things about 13. Getting Gale back. With the pressure of the Capitol’s arranged marriage between Peeta and me gone, we’ve managed to regain our friendship. He doesn’t push it any further – try to kiss me or talk about love. Either I’ve been too sick, or he’s willing to give me space, or he knows it’s just too cruel with Peeta in the hands of the Capitol. Whatever the case, I’ve got someone to tell my secrets to again.
Haymitch is still dead to the world. Since nothing else has worked, I fill a basin with icy cold water, dump it on his head, and spring out of the way. A guttural animal sound comes from his throat. He jumps up, kicking his chair a metre behind him and wielding a knife. I forgot he always sleeps with one clutched in his hand. I should have prised it from his fingers, but I’ve had a lot on my mind. Spewing profanities, he slashes the air a few moments before coming to his senses.
The ability to control things. Yes, that was what he’d loved best of all.
I give the people of 13 something I have withheld from them: credit. For staying alive against all odds.
Having an eye for beauty isn’t the same thing as a weakness,” Peeta points out. “Except possibly when it comes to you.
Over the past seventy-five years, they’ve learned to be self-sufficient, turned their citizens into an army, and built a new society with no help from anyone.
Everyone inside the barricade is a child. Toddlers to teenagers. Scared and frostbitten. Huddled in groups or rocking numbly on the ground. They aren’t being led into the mansion. They’re penned in, guarded on all sides by Peacekeepers. I know immediately it’s not for their protection. If the Capitol wanted to safeguard them, they’d be down in a bunker somewhere. This is for Snow’s protection. The children form his human shield.
Gradually, I’m forced to accept who I am. A badly burned girl with no wings. With no fire. And no sister.
They would be even more powerful if that pox epidemic hadn’t flattened their birthrate and made them so desperate for a new gene pool and breeders.
See, like this. I’m smiling at you even though you’re aggravating me.
One time, when I was in a hide in a tree, waiting motionless for game to wander by, I dozed off and fell three metres to the ground, landing on my back. It was as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and I lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything. That.
It’s like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years. But there are much worse games to play.
At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old an rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means goodbye to someone you love.
A hovercraft marked with the Capitol’s seal materializes directly over the barricaded children. Scores of silver parachutes rain down on them. Even in this chaos, the children know what silver parachutes contain.
Food. Medicine. Gifts. They eagerly scoop them up, frozen fingers struggling with the strings. The hovercraft vanishes, five seconds pass, and then about twenty parachutes simultaneously explode.
While I’ve been ruminating on the availability of trees, Peeta has been struggling with how to maintain his identity.
The snow’s red and littered with undersized body parts. Many of the children die immediately, but others lie in agony on the ground. Some stagger around mutely, staring at the remaining silver parachutes in their hands, as if they still might have something precious inside. I.
Peeta might have done a lot of damage tonight.
The snow’s red and littered with undersized body parts. Many of the children die immediately, but others lie in agony on the ground. Some stagger around mutely, staring at the remaining silver parachutes in their hands, as if they still might have something precious inside. I can tell the Peacekeepers didn’t know this was coming by the way they are yanking away the barricades, making a path to the children.
The cease-fire’s clearly President Snow’s idea. But it seems so reasonable coming out of Peeta’s mouth.