The Color Of Honor
They say you never forget your first love.
They're right.
I was only six, but I remember it, I remember her, clearly and vividly, as though the beauty of the moment had been cut from patterned cloth, and forever draped across my vision.
She was a tall, lithe girl, with a mocha skin bronzed by the sun into a deep, rich mahogany, and long dreadlocked hair, bleached with salt and sea winds into a dark, patinated gold, more layered and beautiful than my mother's collection of antique gilded picture frames. She balanced easily on her chariot, completely overshadowing the small, skinny boy beside her, whose pale flesh and light green eyes looked ashen and washed out in comparison.
Mawimbi Raftsmann. 17. Volunteer from District Four. Tribute in the Forty Eighth Annual Hunger Games.
Every time there was a closeup, her black eyes flashed with a Victor's power. My father instantly placed a bet on her. Our roomful of guests cheered and agreed, laying odds, and making predictions. Even I could tell almost immediately that she'd be the one to beat in the Games.
But she wasn't what I'd fallen in love with.
Carver, District Four's stylist, had outdone himself for her. She was swathed in watered silk of a brilliant, rich teal, that shimmered so alluringly in the flickering torchlight, you could swear it was moving. The bodice, and her arms, were covered in a foam of intricate lace, and everywhere there were gems, blue and green, and white and turquoise, purple, and pale, pale yellow, glinting and flashing, throwing darts of light like droplets of salt water from the rising tide. Her hair was interwoven with ropes of amethysts, and she was crowned with a jade circlet carved into the form of flowing seaweed, as though even it was caught in her pull. She was a crashing wave, inevitable, inexorable, at once utterly dominant and totally uncontrollable.
I couldn't take my eyes off her costume. It was beautiful, but it was more than that. It told you, quite clearly, who she was. You could tell what she liked, how she thought about things, what she did, who she loved. . .
And then, in that moment, I knew. I was being lied to. You couldn't actually tell all those things. Not about her. Not from a dress. At the most you might be able to tell what Carver liked, and did, and loved, but this girl, well. . . she was nothing but a tribute. Taken from her family, forced to participate in bloodsport for our amusement.
She may have volunteered, but only because. . . because. . .
Why would anyone volunteer to fight in the arena?
I didn't know then, and I somehow knew I couldn't ask.
"Cinnabar Cove, you get back from that television screen this instant!"
I had forgotten myself in my discoveries, and my mother had come in only to find me inches from the glowing rectangle. The procession had moved on to someone else, and I forgot about Mawimbi and her dress for the moment, focusing instead on my mother.
Harrow Cove, formerly of District Eleven. Victor of the Twenty Ninth Annual Hunger Games. My bedtime story had always been how she, fifteen and starving, had still managed to outrun the forest fire that had killed three of her remaining five opponents, and then how she had survived on grubs, and scorched tree bark, and muddy rainwater for the three days it took for the last two to destroy each other. All she'd had to do, she always said, finishing the story, was wait.
It hadn't occurred to me until last year to ask how she'd met my father, Jupiter Cove. He was the most prestigious cosmetic surgeon in the Capitol, I knew that, but mother didn't have any enhancements except for some delicate golden tattoos winding around her fingers. They were the sort of thing you could get at any decent body deco shop, and not the sort of thing someone like my father would ever stoop to. My five year old mind could not think of any reason they would ever have met.
She had paused a very long time before telling me that my father had rescued her from the nasty job she'd had to take after becoming a Victor, and that it had been a very special thing for him to do. No other victors had ever been able to move out of their District before - or since. But my father was so rich, and prestigious - why, he was President's Snow's personal cosmetic surgeon, after all - somehow, he had managed it. She was very thankful to him, and I should be too.
And I was.
But now I wanted to ask him why Mawimbi had volunteered, and I knew I could not ask.
No. . .
I could ask.
But would he tell me the truth?
If her dress was a lie, how much more of my world was also a lie?
Was my mother a lie? Was my father?
It was too much for a small boy who had just discovered the love of his life. So I turned away from the crowd of my father's friends, and paid little attention to the rest of the opening ceremonies. Instead I sat and ate a bowl of my favorite candied almonds, drank a glass of spiced milk, then went to bed.
My dreams that night were full of crashing waves, shimmering silk, and sharp, cruel laughter.
A few days later, we all gathered again - my father and mother, and several dozen of our richest friends - in our mansion's dining hall, to eat, and talk, and laugh, and watch the Tribute interviews. Of course, my parents could have afforded tickets to see them live, but mother told me they weren't going to go until I was old enough to enjoy the party afterward. Until then, they would celebrate at home.
That was the first year I understood why my mother looked sad when she told me this.
Our Interview Feast that year was beyond compare, with gilded cakes, sculpted pies, life sized artificial trees bearing sugared fruits with nuts delicately coated with chocolate instead of pits. There were huge chocolate geodes with flavored sugar crystals inside, and at least fifteen flavors of ice cream (which was as high as I could count, then), and a great deal more that I cannot remember, for as a six year old boy, hungry for sugar, I was only impressed by the desserts.
I remember only a few of the interview costumes from that year - the boy from One wore a cape of rose gold; the girl from Two had magnificent pink earrings; the girl from Seven wore a paper dress with hundreds of tiny folded paper leaves attached that swayed and danced when she walked; and the boy from Eleven wore a shirt that looked exactly like the skin of a peach.
Mostly though, I only had eyes for Four. Mawimbi was dressed like a wave again, only this time she had on a slip of the palest seafoam green, and a rippling overdress of clear shining plastic. I still don't know how Carver made it look like more than a rain poncho, but there was something about the curve of the cuts, the clarity of the color, and the contrast with the richness of her skin that made her, very simply, stunning. There was no foamy, lacy froth on this dress, instead, it suggested the clean, backlit curl of a wave in mid-descent. She was a sea goddess, an ocean nymph crystallized into immortality, the very soul of water, and I was definitely in love.
Not with her, but with what the right clothes could do for someone.
I wanted to do that.
She made quite an impression in the Water Dress, and my father and several of our guests made bets again.
When she died from dehydration six days later, I wept. My father explained to me what "irony" meant, and went on to sponsor the boy from District Two. No one in my home ever mentioned Mawimbi, or her dresses, ever again.
But I never forgot her.
I found the rest of that Hunger Games very dull, and I took to cutting dolls out of paper, and dressing them in scraps of bright paper, bits of ribbon, colored pebbles - anything I could find. It became a habit that lasted long after the Games were over. After that year's Victory Tour - the boy from Two had won - my mother finally noticed my growing obsession, and bought me a huge box of paper dolls, with tray after tray of patterned paper, scraps of cloth, and beads and baubles of every kind to dress them with - enough to satisfy the imagination of any growing boy.
A year after that, I started school, and my father called me into his study.
I trembled a little, for some reason I did not understand. My father had never been anything but good to me. But I was still trying to comprehend last year's realization that so much about my life might be a lie. And I couldn't ask him about it.
"So, your mother tells me you want to be a clothing designer?" he said, with his usual abstractedly kind tone.
But I was still inexplicably afraid, so I only nodded.
"Very well, " he said, shortly, "I'll have you put in the artist's fast track at school."
And that was all.
Four years later, I was top in all my design classes, and, even at eleven, my teachers were predicting great things.
All I had to do was wait.
That year, we had the gamemakers themselves over for a banquet on the second night of Training. It was quite the social event of the year.
The eight tables full of desserts were especially memorable.
I, of course, hated all of it.
At eleven, does any boy like grown-up things? Does any child of that age understand himself? I had been teased at school that day, and later had argued with my mother. I was viciously, relentlessly determined not to ever enjoy anything again.
"Why did you give me a girl's name, mom?" I had shouted, thinking only of the taunts of "Sin-na-mon is not-a-man! Sin-na-mon is not-a-man!" that had followed me across the schoolyard.
"I didn't, Cinna, love-"
"Don't call me love! I hate that!"
She finally had to shout back "I DIDN'T NAME YOU!"
It was a new idea, and it stalled me for a moment.
Into the silence, she added, "Your father called you "cinnabar", because it's vermilion red. Like. . . like blood. The symbol of life. The color of happiness, and. . . and honor."
At last, I asked the question that had been growing in me since I first saw Mawimbi and questioned why anyone would volunteer to be in the Hunger Games.
"Will my name go into the reaping in Eleven, mother?"
She broke down then, kneeling on the carpeted stairs where she had followed me when I tried to flee her presence.
"I. . . I don't know!" she wailed, in great, gasping sobs, "Your father wo. . . won't tell me. . . I don't th. . . think he knows either!"
We stared at each other, her crying coming in deep waves that crested more magnificently than Mawimbi's dress.
"And I can't ask him," I said, coldly, and turned my back and escaped to my room.
I almost stayed there for the rest of the night, but something, I never was certain what, called me down to the party a little after ten-thirty. Was it fate? Karma? Doom? I don't know, even yet.
I slipped by several tables, taking handfuls of my favorite dainties, trying to sneak a sip or two of champagne, and generally feeling profoundly miserable, when I found myself just outside the door to my father's study. The door was just barely open, but my ears were childishly sharp.
"It's killing me, Heavensbee," I heard my father say.
There was a new junior gamemaker this year - I hadn't heard what his name was, but I also hadn't heard the name "Heavensbee" before now. What was killing my father? I had to find out. I crept closer.
"I know, Jupiter, but you have to patient. These things take time."
"We don't have a lot of time left - he turns twelve this winter. Is my son a citizen of the Capitol, or is he a citizen of Eleven? Because if it's the latter, in his name goes in the reaping bowl with all the others. And I couldn't survive that, Plutarch, I just couldn't. And neither could Harrow." My father's voice sounded flat, defeated. . . dead.
There was a long pause, where the only sound was the pounding of my blood. When he spoke again, Plutarch Heavensbee's voice was almost too low to hear.
"Do you ever think we got it wrong, Jupiter?"
"Wrong?" The dead sound in my father's tone was still there
"Yes, after the dark days. Do you ever think. . . the Games. . ."
My father sighed, "Thinking like that, it's treas. . . . . . " and trailed off, not finishing the word. Suddenly, his voice came back to life. "Yes. Yes I do. I think the Games are wrong all the time. And be damned."
There was a smile in Plutarch Heavensbee's voice now, "Then, he's a Capitol citizen. I'll see to it."
My father hesitated. "And. . . your price?"
"Nothing you can't afford, my friend. Just information. . ."
I backed away from the door, desperate to distance myself from their conversation.
Treason!
That was what was killing my father. And not only would it kill him, it would kill us all. Destroy us all.
I fled back to my room, and buried my face in my bedsheets. I didn't cry, but I'm old enough to confess it now - I wanted to.
How much of my world was a lie?
All of it, it seemed.
The Hunger Games.
The gamemakers.
My father.
My mother.
Me.
We were all of us waves, killed by dehydration.
It was a lot to realize at eleven.
My misery rose in my throat, doubled and trebled by fear. What was going to happen? To us? To me? And what could I do about it?
Nothing.
I was eleven years old, and I could do nothing.
Except. . . . wait.
All at once, my world swam back into focus.
I could wait. I could survive.
I could think.
It was how my mother had won the Games, and it was how I could win. . . could win. . .
What was I trying to win? I would never be in the Games - wasn't that the unattainable goal of every child in Panem? I had already won, if that was the case. . .
No.
No, I hadn't won an exemption from the reaping, I had bought it. Stolen it. Or, at least my father had.
And then, I knew the truth.
Every Capitol citizen had stolen their life from the Districts.
I didn't want to be exempt - I wanted to be redeemed.
I wanted to win some self-respect. To earn my name. To truly be clothed in honor.
Up until that moment, my greatest ambition in life had been to become the most famous and richest clothing designer the Capitol had ever seen. Now, I chose rebellion.
It would have to be subtle, and I would have to be extremely patient, but I would find a way. I would become a tribute stylist. I would volunteer to enter the arena every year through my designs, and I would subvert the very idea of the Hunger Games.
Somehow.
I would.
And now, after years of waiting, I must admit, I never expected my chance to come so suddenly.
They say you never feel the same way as you did with your first love ever again.
They're wrong.
The moment I saw you volunteer, I knew.
I had asked to style District Twelve because they were small, and consistently overlooked in the Games. With their track record, I would have the greatest latitude, and the most space for experimentation.
But I had expected to wait fifteen, twenty years before I found them.
Or, more accurately, you, Katniss.
You volunteered for your sister with more than just love and desperation in your voice - you stood with a fire in your limbs, and a surety in your tone that only appears once in a generation. Looking at you, listening to you, I didn't have to wonder why you would volunteer to fight in the arena.
My girl, you were always a rebel, even if you didn't know it then.
I only had to look at you once, and I instantly bet everything on you.
The boy was a lucky bonus. Handsome, sincere, and, I was to learn, good-hearted and kind. Just exactly the foil you needed. I hope he survives the Quarter Quell too, because the rebellion is going to need a Mockingjay, and my Mockingjay needs her baker's son.
Even if she doesn't know it.
I hope you never have to read this, Katniss, my dear girl. I hope I'm in Thirteen with you, telling you all these things as we laugh at how silly we've made the Capitol look this time. I hope old Plutarch ends up giving this journal back to me, and I go on to design wedding gowns for your grandchildren.
I hope.
But I am a wave, and the day is very dry.
If I am not there with you, know this - you do not owe anyone but yourself. In a decent, honest world, good deeds might profitably be reduced to numbers, to be accounted for one by one, and repaid in full, but in the world we inhabit, where those on top steal the souls of those below, there is no room for anything but the better devils of our nature.
Fly far, my Mockingjay. May you never forget the color of your honor.
All my love,
Cinnabar Cove