I wander in the woods, completely lost. All I need is some time to think. To think about his betrayal. To think of his face when he left, all smiles, for his new life. Without me. I choke on the tears that have built up in my throat. Eventually they slide down my cheeks, and then the coughing and sobbing is too much and I have to sit down on a rock and wait. All of it is too much. His final goodbye. The look in her eye as she looked back at me. Her bridal train floating behind her. Grinning like she couldn't be happier. The look in her eye betrayed her. Like she would stab him in their bed and put his body where I could find it.
And I hoped when she did it, she'd remember how she limped ever so slightly at her wedding. I hoped on their first night together, she'd see that scar on her ankle and be reminded of me. I hoped he'd see it and be reminded of the fortune-telling game we used to play. We'd look at their ankles and tell them what bad deeds they would do. A clear ankle meant only good deeds would be done. A mark like that was the mark of a murderer.
It won't matter. What has he ever done for you?
He's my brother. What hasn't he done for me?
He didn't protect you when they came for you. He sat upstairs like a coward and let them take you.
That was different.
How? How was it different from all those other times? I'm doing you a favor, really, by taking him. He was only your brother.
Do you want to keep talking?
I do, in fact. First of all, that tone of voice really doesn't suit you. You just don't seem like someone who would claw me.
Try me.
You'll be arrested. Your brother would hate you – you, his sister, murdering his bride!
Who said I was going to kill you?
What are you – get off me, imbecile! What did you do – AUGH! How DARE you! You're lucky my dress will hide this mark, brat.
You'll be lucky if he doesn't see it.
When I look up, it's evening. My throat aches and my head is throbbing. So maybe it's just a hallucination. A mirage. Because when I look up, I'm positive there's a little concrete house by the lake. I walk to it. I'm surprised I can, with the stiffness in my limbs. Inside the little house, a small pile of split logs sits next to a fireplace. There are scraps of wood around it, and a termite nest in a corner suggests that the pile may once have been bigger. Ashes, a few bits of charcoal, and a handprint in the dust reside inside the fireplace. The handprint's about the size of mine, and barely visible. It's very old, probably. The only way I have of knowing it's there is that the dust surrounding it is slightly thicker. I grasp a twisted metal fire poker by the handle. It's cold and dusty, too, like it's been here for decades. Maybe it has. Maybe years and years ago, a girl my age came to this little house, started its final fire, and left this poker here. Maybe she had an image of some lone stranger, sometime far in the future, wandering lost in the wilderness and coming upon this small place of refuge, with the pile of split logs, the hearth, the poker. Wondering how it came to be.
I take off my clothes and bathe in the shallowest part of the lake, then dry off and sit on the bank. I've never been this far from the fence of District 12. It's odd, really, that we still have one. Since the Second Rebellion seventy years ago, there's been no reason to escape and nothing larger than a raccoon comes anywhere near the district.
The light of the setting sun glints off of something under a pile of leaves. I brush them off and come across a bow, pure black and exquisitely curved. It somehow suggests the wings of a bird. The thing the light caught is a clear, shiny cover wrapped around the bow. I carefully remove it and let my fingers glide over the bow, light as a moth's touch. I spread the leaves around a little more, hoping to find a sheath or even a single arrow. I'm rewarded with a sleek sheath with twenty-four perfect arrows, points down. I take the cover off of it and sling it over my shoulder. Standing, I nock an arrow and draw the bow, pointing it at various trees. I'm just messing around, but when a rabbit comes into view, I don't hesitate to release the string. The arrow kills the poor creature almost on contact, sinking into its chest.
I congratulate myself on the good shot and pick it up. It's good I found something, because I'm starting to get hungry. I'm about to start a fire in the little house's hearth when I realize – I need to skin it, and find a way to get all of the blood out. I have no idea how to do those things. So I throw the carcass as far as I can out the window, so as not to bring the predators. It's starting to get chilly, so, of course, I start a fire. Leaning against the wall, I let the fire dry my thick black hair, let its light sting my eyes. Maybe if I stare long enough, it will mar their beautiful blue, so much like my grandfather Peeta's, my mother Primrose's, my brother Octavian's. Just thinking of Octavian hurts. There was another Octavian long ago – my great-grandfather, Octavian Everdeen, father of Katniss Everdeen, mother of Primrose Mellark, mother of Octavian and Lucilia Collins. My brother and I. To think we're descended from the hero of the Second Rebellion. Everyone's always telling us how incredible our grandmother is. Was. She died last month. I'm losing everyone, now.
Maybe this is how Katniss felt. People think she was so incredible, and she was, until the Games. Then she lost Rue, then Mags, then Peeta, Finnick, my mother's namesake, her sister, Primrose. She got Peeta back, eventually. But no one else. She had my mother and her brother, Finnick Mellark. Finnick was lost in the woods when Katniss took him hunting. She turned her back for a second too long, and my twelve-year-old uncle disappeared.
Peeta, her husband, died two years ago. Mother says Katniss was sad in the best of times, horribly depressed in the worst. In the past years, she's been worse than anyone I've ever seen. I wonder if she was like that in the weeks following her sister's death.
In my dream, we're having a family get-together, and everyone is alive and happy. We talk and eat, and before long, more people have arrived, not family members, as far as I know. Primrose, my great-aunt, teases a man with graying hair and eyes to match. Katniss and Peeta sit in a corner, talking to a man and woman with dark hair and sea-green eyes, while a gorgeous young man, probably their son, stuffs himself with anything and everything. My parents are watching my uncle, who's actually younger than me, follow the young man around. My parents! Mother, so bright and happy, as if she's never worked a day in her life. Father, alive! Not dead from food poisoning, but talking with my mother like he used to. It's been so long since I've seen him like this.
The young man has finally stopped eating and begins to flirt with me, but from behind me, Octavian steps out. My heart skips a beat, though I'm not sure why. Is it joy at seeing him again, when I thought he was gone forever? Or is it because maybe he is gone forever? So many of these people are dead. Father. My uncle, Finnick. Katniss and Peeta. Primrose. The older man with green eyes, who I now realize must be Finnick Odair. Who knows how many others?
This realization wakes me. It's dawn now. I stand, work the cramps out of my limbs, and gasp when my gaze finds the door. A lone wolf is sitting there, staring at me. My first impulse is to run, but where to? He's in front of the door, and I can't fit through any of the windows. Before I quite know what I'm doing, my hand is reaching out and scratching his head. He seems to like it, since he's not biting my hand off. Then he walks a few paces out the door and turns around, as if checking to see if I'm following. I go after him and he continues to walk, looking back occasionally. In no time at all, he's taken me back to the fence. He licks his nose, and only then do I notice a bit of fur on his tongue. He must have found the rabbit, though why or how he led me back to the district, I'll never know. I open the gate, and he enters without hesitation. Maybe he's someone's pet. So I close the gate behind us and leave him at the fence – or so I think. When I get home, I almost close the door in his face.
He refuses to be trained, mostly. All he knows is how to stay when I or my mother tell him to, and how to follow me when we don't. Vick Hawthorne III teaches me to hunt, and soon I can skin a rabbit in two seconds. We eat rabbit and squirrel a lot more than the beef and pork available at the market. I go back to the lake often and sometimes stay a night in the house, which I call the Wolf House. And without either of us ever saying it, the wolf and I become a team. I name him Octavian.