Sunrise on the Reaping

Something steels inside me, and I think, You are on a high horse, mister. And someday someone will knock you off it straight into your grave. I dismount the chariot and lay Louella down, taking a step back so Snow can’t pretend he doesn’t see her broken little bird body. Then I gesture to him and begin to applaud, giving credit where credit is due.

Spin this, Plutarch, I think.

In her sleep, Lou Lou’s rolled over onto her side. She holds on to my hand for dear life, her pulse beating fast like a baby bird’s heart.

I remember Louella’s hand taking mine on the train, and resist the impulse to pull away. “It’s okay, Lou Lou,” I whisper, sort of patting her side. “No one here will hurt you.”

I could try a lullaby to soothe her, but I don’t want to wake the others. Not much of a singer anyway, and I’m supposed to be practicing keeping watch for the arena. I think how Lenore Dove sings to me sometimes. Lonely for her, I close my eyes for a moment and let her voice find me….

“Oh Lenore Dove…are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

“No. Just hauled me in. Less about what I played, more about how it drew people. Everybody’s real upset this year, so many kids. They needed a place to be together, to raise their voices. Sometimes the hurt’s too bad to bear alone.”

So it wasn’t just her, playing her heart out in front of the Justice Building. A crowd had gathered. Sung the forbidden songs.

I wonder how Wyatt died and immediately feel certain he was protecting Lou Lou, the way no one had ever protected him. Including me. I ran off and left all the Newcomers to fend for one another. I know I had to if I was going to carry out Beetee’s plan, but it sure doesn’t feel good.

A fury rises up in me at the thought of Wyatt’s sacrifice and how the Capitol has pitted us tributes against one another in this poisonous beauty of an arena. The Games must end. Here. Now. Every death reinforces the importance of the arena plot succeeding.

The cannon fires to confirm [Lou Lou’s] death as her body goes limp. Whoever Lou Lou was, she’s moved on. Her slight, starved frame lies quiet, finally beyond the Capitol’s reach. I lean down and whisper into her bad ear. A personal message to the Gamemakers. “You did this to her. This is who you are.” And then for Lou Lou, I say the thing she no longer can. “Murderers.”

This is my poster. Right here. I give a wild victory cry and spin around shouting, “Did you all want a party? I’ll give you a party!”

Lightning flashes, a clap of thunder booms. I dance around the berm, bellowing the first thing that comes to mind for all of Panem to hear. A song too dangerous to sing—

They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
Yet let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee?
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Strange things indeed. A dead man calling out. His ghost. No, Lenore Dove said it was a bird. Birds. Jabberjays. The failed mutts let loose to die in District 12. But they defied the Capitol’s sentence of extinction by fathering a new species, mockingjays, before they vanished. Is that what makes the song dangerous? Immortalizing those wayward mutts in a song?

[Lenore Dove’s] eyes fixate on something in the distance. “See that?” she says hoarsely.

I turn my head and see the sun, just peeking over the horizon. “What? The sun?”

“Don’t you…let it…rise…” she gets out.

Tears choke me. “I can’t stop it. You know I can’t stop it.”

Her head jerks a bit to the side. “…on the reaping,” she whispers.

The raven. The unforgiving songbird. Repeatedly reminding me of President Snow’s crystal-clear message to me on my homecoming. That I will never get to love anyone ever again. Nevermore. Because he will make sure they end up dying a horrible death.

And so, I drive away anyone and everyone who could ever have been considered dear to me.

“But we can’t any of us do it alone. You demonstrated a lot of nerve and intelligence in the arena. We need your help.”

“Me?” I say in disbelief. “I am living proof that the Capitol always wins. I tried to keep that sun from rising on another reaping day, I tried to change things, and now everybody’s dead. You don’t want me.” […]

“We do want you. You shook up the Capitol, both figuratively and literally, with that earthquake. You were capable of imagining a different future. And maybe it won’t be realized today, maybe not in our lifetime. Maybe it will take generations. We’re all part of a continuum. Does that make it pointless?”