Coriolanus thought about his grandmother’s roses, which were still prized in the Capitol. The old woman nurtured them arduously in the roof garden that came with the penthouse, both out of doors and in a small solar greenhouse. She parceled out her flowers like diamonds, though, so it had taken a good bit of persuasion to get this beauty. “I need to make a connection with her. As you always say, your roses open any doors.” It was a testament to how worried his grandmother was about their situation that she had allowed it.
By now the smell of the car, musty and heavy with manure, had reached Coriolanus. They were transporting the tributes in livestock cars, and not very clean ones at that. He wondered if they had been fed and let out for fresh air, or just locked in after their reapings. Accustomed as he was to viewing the tributes on-screen, he had not prepared himself properly for this encounter in the flesh, and a wave of pity and revulsion swept through him. They really were creatures out of another world. A hopeless, brutish world.
Now he was trapped and on display, for the first time appreciating the animals’ inability to hide. Children had begun to chatter excitedly and point at his school uniform, drawing the attention of the adults. Faces were filling all the available space between the bars. But the real horror was a pair of cameras positioned at either end of the visitors.
Capitol News. With their omnipresent coverage and their saucy slogan, “If you didn’t see it here, it didn’t happen.”
Oh, it was happening. To him. Now.
A self-important little girl marched up beside them and pointed to a sign on the pillar at the edge of the enclosure. “It says, ‘Please don’t feed the animals.’”
“They’re not animals, though,” said Sejanus. “They’re kids, like you and me.”
“They’re not like me!” the little girl protested. “They’re district. That’s why they belong in a cage!”
“Who cares about these kids one way or another?”
“Possibly their families,” said Sejanus.
“You mean a handful of nobodies in the districts. So what?” Arachne boomed. “Why should the rest of us care which one of them wins?”
Livia looked pointedly at Sejanus. “I know I don’t.”
“I get more excited over a dogfight,” admitted Festus. “Especially if I’m betting on it.”
“So you’d like it if we gave odds to the tributes?” Coriolanus joked. “That would make you tune in?”
“Hardly rebels. Some of them were two years old when the war ended. The oldest were eight. And now that the war’s over, they’re just citizens of Panem, aren’t they? Same as us? Isn’t that what the anthem says the Capitol does? ‘You give us light. You reunite’? It’s supposed to be everyone’s government, right?”
“That’s the general idea. Go on,” Dr. Gaul encouraged him.
“Well, then it should protect everyone,” said Sejanus. “That’s its number-one job! And I don’t see how making them fight to the death achieves that.”
It was like the Hunger Games. Only they weren’t district kids. The Capitol was supposed to protect them. He thought of Sejanus telling Dr. Gaul it was the government’s job to protect everybody, even the people in the districts, but he still wasn’t sure how to square that with the fact that they’d been such recent enemies. But certainly the child of a Snow should be a top priority. He could be dead if Clemensia had written the proposal instead of him. He buried his head in his hands, confused, angry, and most of all afraid. Afraid of Dr. Gaul. Afraid of the Capitol. Afraid of everything. If the people who were supposed to protect you played so fast and loose with your life…then how did you survive? Not by trusting them, that’s for sure.
“My condolences on the loss of your friend,” the dean said.
“And on your student. It’s a difficult day for all of us. But the procession was very moving,” Coriolanus replied.
“Did you think so? I found it excessive and in poor taste,” said Dean Highbottom. Taken by surprise, Coriolanus let out a short laugh before he recovered and tried to look shocked. The dean dropped his gaze to Coriolanus’s blue rosebud. “It’s amazing, how little things change. After all the killing. After all the agonized promises to remember the cost. After all of that, I can’t distinguish the bud from the blossom.”
His girl. His. Here in the Capitol, it was a given that Lucy Gray belonged to him, as if she’d had no life before her name was called out at the reaping. Even that sanctimonious Sejanus believed she was something he could trade for. If that wasn’t ownership, what was? With her song, Lucy Gray had repudiated all of that by featuring a life that had nothing to do with him, and a great deal to do with someone else. Someone she referred to as “lover,” no less.
What had mattered then, what mattered still, was living without that fear. So he added a paragraph about his deep relief on winning the war, and the grim satisfaction of seeing the Capitol’s enemies, who’d treated him so cruelly, who’d cost his family so much, brought to their knees. Hobbled. Impotent. Unable to hurt him anymore. He’d loved the unfamiliar sense of safety that their defeat had brought. The security that could only come with power. The ability to control things. Yes, that was what he’d loved best of all.
But Lucy Gray was his tribute, headed into the arena. And even if the circumstances were different, she’d still be a girl from the districts, or at least not the Capitol. A second-class citizen. Human, but bestial. Smart, perhaps, but not evolved. Part of a shapeless mass of unfortunate, barbaric creatures that hovered on the periphery of his consciousness.
“But surely, you’re not comparing our children to theirs?” asked Lucky. “One look tells you ours are a superior breed.”
“One look tells you ours have had more food, nicer clothing, and better dental care,” said Dean Highbottom. “Assuming anything more, a physical, mental, or especially a moral superiority, would be a mistake. That sort of hubris almost finished us off in the war.”
“My cousin said to remember this isn’t of our making. That we’re still children, too.”
“That doesn’t help, somehow. Being used like this,” said Lysistrata sadly. “Especially when three of us are dead.”
Used? Coriolanus had not thought of being a mentor as anything but an honor. A way to serve the Capitol and perhaps gain a little glory. But she had a point. If the cause wasn’t honorable, how could it be an honor to participate in it? He felt confused, then manipulated, then undefended. As if he were more a tribute than a mentor.
Another student, or even the Coriolanus of a couple of weeks ago, would have protested this situation. Insisted on calling a parent or guardian. Pleaded. But after the snake attack on Clemensia, the aftermath of the bombing, and Marcus’s torture, he knew it would be pointless. If Dr. Gaul decided he was to go into the Capitol Arena, that’s where he would go, even if his prize was not at stake. He was just like the subjects of her other experiments, students or tributes, of no more consequence than the Avoxes in the cages. Powerless to object.
“What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, education, family background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state.”
“So, if I’m a vicious animal, then who are you? You’re the teacher who sent her student to beat another boy to death!”
Human speech had vanished, and what remained was a musical chorus of Arlo and Lil’s exchange.
“Mockingjays,” grumbled a soldier in front of him. “Stinking mutts.”
Coriolanus remembered talking to Lucy Gray before the interview.
“Well, you know what they say. The show’s not over until the mockingjay sings.”
“The mockingjay? Really, I think you’re just making these things up.”
“Not that one. A mockingjay’s a bona fide bird.”
“And it sings in your show?”
“Not my show, sweetheart. Yours. The Capitol’s anyway.”
This must be what she’d meant. The Capitol’s show was the hanging. The mockingjay was some sort of bona fide bird. […] Coriolanus felt sure he’d spotted his first mockingjay, and he disliked the thing on sight.
“I believe I said you could fight for the tributes, meaning you might be able to procure more humane conditions for them,” Coriolanus corrected him.
“Humane conditions!” Sejanus burst out. “They’re being forced to murder each other!”
It reminded me of my stint in the arena. It’s one to thing to speak of humans’ essential nature theoretically, another to consider it when a fist is smashing into your mouth. Only this time I felt more prepared. I’m not as convinced that we are all as inherently violent as you say, but it takes very little to bring the beast to the surface, at least under the cover of darkness. I wonder how many of those miners would have thrown a punch if the Capitol could have seen their faces?
It seemed a waste to be on guard, where clearly nothing ever happened, when he could be holding her in his arms. He felt trapped here on base, while she could freely roam the night. In some ways, it had been better to have her locked up in the Capitol, where he always had a general idea of what she was doing.
Free to speak his mind? Of course, he did. Well, within reason. He didn’t go around shooting his mouth off about every little thing. What did she mean? She meant what he thought about the Capitol. And the Hunger Games. And the districts. The truth was, most of what the Capitol did, he supported, and the rest rarely concerned him. But if it came to it, he’d speak out. Wouldn’t he? Against the Capitol? Like Sejanus had? Even if it meant repercussions? He didn’t know, but he felt on the defensive.
Everyone’s born as clean as a whistle—
As fresh as a daisy
And not a bit crazy.
Staying that way’s a hard row for hoeing—
As rough as a briar,
Like walking through fire.
Many fluttered into the sky, but the song had spread, and the woods were alive with it. “Lucy Gray! Lucy Gray!” Furious, he turned this way and that and finally blasted the woods in a full circle, going around and around until his bullets were spent. He collapsed on the ground, dizzy and nauseous, as the woods exploded, every bird of every kind screaming its head off while the mockingjays continued their rendition of “The Hanging Tree.” Nature gone mad. Genes gone bad. Chaos.
He went to the bathroom and emptied his pockets. The lake water had reduced his mother’s rose-scented powder to a nasty paste, and he threw the whole thing in the trash. The photos stuck together and shredded when he tried to separate them, so they went the way of the powder. Only the compass had survived the outing.
“Because we credit them with innocence. And if even the most innocent among us turn to killers in the Hunger Games, what does that say? That our essential nature is violent,” Snow explained.
