It was the coldest chill she had ever felt, Natta thought, forcing herself to continue down the snow-covered street. The house she had a fireplace that was lit, with a small family and their cat all curled up in front of it, food on their plates. Natta looked down at her stomach and whimpered, tearing her eyes away from the happy family.
Sometimes she would walk by boys with big fat bellies and hers would scream, begging to be filled with food. She had eaten two days ago - a slice of bread with some cold goat cheese slathered over it. Natta's family was lucky in only one regard: Natta's youngest sister had a friend named Ami whose goat produced three bottles of milk a day - sometimes Natta's sister would be given one of those.
Otherwise, Natta would consider herself part of the unluckiest families in the world. It was just weeks after the canary had stopped singing, only a few weeks since her father had been blown to bits because the Capitol-hired supervisors wouldn't let them stop when they knew, they knew the next spark from a pickaxe striking coal could ignite the explosive balance of gases. She hated those god damned supervisors. They were the reason her father wasn't okay.
Natta stumbled a little further down the street. It was January's Day, and everyone who had a home was home. Natta had a home, but there had been no one on the streets today, no one to sell to. She looked down at her bundles of long matches. Damn those matches. Damn them to hell. Her brother Aris made them, all day until six when he had to run off in his leather jacket to some coal loading facility. And so at just past six, her mother shoved her outside with a bag of them, told her to come back with none of them, only money.
Natta wore a deep blue dress that must have once been nice, but now had holes and stains and smelled of ashes, where it had sat in storage for years until it fit her. Her shoes were too-big leather slippers, but they had fallen off her feet earlier in her attempts to run from an older boy brandishing a knife, so she wore only wet stockings.
She pulled her little grey shawl around her. It was really only a scrap of fabric, but she had nothing else.
She forced herself to walk through the square, to look away from the little sidestreet where she lived. She tore her eyes from her feet for only a minute to look. The house on the end of the street was dark. Maybe if she were a better match seller, a better match girl, it would be lit up. Natta wanted to go home. If she went home, her mother would strike her across the cheek, yell at her in front of Lara and Aris and Zelly. Then once they had all had their little bit of broth and bread (except Natta, because she had been bad), she would send Lara and Zelly off to bed and she would tell Aris to get the cane. They would hit her - thirteen strikes, twelve for her age and another for bad luck - across her back and look into her teary eyes and tell her she was useless, a no-good match girl.
It had happened two weeks ago, but when she had crawled into bed with her back burning and her eyes stinging with tears, Zelly had snuggled up in her lap and told her everything was okay and she would get her a big cup of goat's milk and a big slice of goat's cheese from Ami tomorrow.
But Ami's goat was out of milk and, these days, Zelly was out of patience. So Natta kept walking.
The bakery smelled like cinnamon rolls and orange cakes and fresh hot bread, and they had lights all lit up. She stumbled through the snow towards the bakery and fell to her knees on the steps. She clambered up the stone stairs and opened the door. She fumbled for the one half-credit coin in her pocket. The woman slowly dozing off behind the counter snarled at her. "What do you want?" Her voice was gruff, unfriendly.
"What can I get for a half-credit?" Natta asked, holding out her coin over the counter.
"Nothing. We don't cater to beggars or peasants like you, and we certainly don't sell to little girls who smell like dogs," the woman said. "Now leave before I get a Peacekeeper."
Natta gave her a glare and then turned and ran. She slammed the door and shoved the coin in her pocket, holding the bundle of long matchsticks under her left arm. She ran past her house and past the meat shop and down a little hill, when her lungs started to hurt and her stomach started to groan again. She gagged a little bit and tripped over the curb, landing on her stomach beside a little alley. She looked at her hands, scraped and bloody, and she started to cry. She yelled out for her father, yelled out for Zelly and for Lara, but not for Aris. Not for Aris or her mother or for anyone else. She crawled into the alley and wiped away the tears from her eyes with a corner of her shawl.
"They don't want me," she said despairingly, hugging her knees to her chest. She couldn't really feel her feet anymore, and she remembered she was wearing only wet, snow-covered stockings.
She looked at the matches scattered in the snow around her. Fire. Warmth. She reached for one and held it up to her face. She remembered Aris's words: they will burn for twenty seconds and they will burn in flames of blue and bright orange.
She drew it across the brick wall, watching it burst into bright flames of blue. She held it to her face, feeling the warmth flush through her face. Then it burnt out and she threw it down in the snow. She dug out her little roll of photos, crumpled up and shoved in her pocket. There was Lara and Zelly and Aris and her mother and her father and her, and there was them all together as a happy family, and the picture of less than a week after the explosion, with faces with blank expressions, arms crossed and eyes full of distress. First, she took out the picture of her mother.
She was running away and she was going to leave behind only ashes.
She lit a match and held it to the edge of the picture of her mother, quiet and smiling and beautiful. It lit up instantly, the corner in flames. "This is for hitting me, abandoning me, and this-" she tore it in half and lit the corner of the unlit half. "Is for making me sell those god damned matches!"
More tears. She took in her hands Aris's picture and lit it. "This is for making these stupid damned matches, and for treating me like I am less than you."
Lara's. "This is for not saying anything when Mother hits me."
Zelly's. "This is for pretending I don't exist when I get home at night."
The picture of the dejected family, with Aris the only one looking up. "This is for rejecting me once Father was gone."
The picture of the happy family. "And this is for making me feel like I'm not one of you." Ashes of what were once pictures of happy people were scattered in the pristine snow around her.
She started to sob, her tears falling into the snow or freezing on her face. She thought of happy families, with enough money and enough food, with daughters that they loved and fathers that weren't dead." Then she thought of the supervisors in the mines, not caring that there were other girls like her, girls with no fathers because they were greedy pigs.
She looked at her father's picture. "This is for not taking me with you." As the picture went up into flames, she curled up in a ball and buried her face in the snow, her tears freezing on her face and everything going numb from the cold.
"Natta." She looked up and saw brown boots, laced up only halfway. She saw dark blue denims, a leather coat and Natta saw the smiling face and the deep grey eyes of the Seam, the deep grey eyes of her father.
He had a match, and it was lit in its brilliant blue color. She stood to wrap her arms around her. "Father," she said, wiping frozen tears from her eyes.
"I missed you," he said back.
"I missed you too."
"Come on up and stomp on heaven with me."
He held her in his arms for a long time before she took his hand. They both looked to the stairs, white marble with gold railings that led up to the world above. She wasn't cold anymore. She wasn't hungry. She wasn't alone and she wasn't angry. She was just shocked and she was just. . .okay.
He led her up the stairs and she forgot about everything she thought her life was.