"Katniss."

Her father's gentle voice floated down to the seven-year-old girl in her hiding place by the honeysuckle tree. She ignored it and clutched her knees to her chest, unconsciously rocking back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Anything to drown out the angry screams in her head, but still her mother's words echoed in her brain.

"Katniss! What were you thinking?! Do you know what you could have done?!"

"Katniss."

"Don't ever sing that again, do you hear me?!"

Mother had never yelled at her like that before. Was it because she hated her oldest daughter? "Katniss." A little more urgently now.

Maybe that was it. She hadn't yelled at three-year-old Prim. Why was this her fault? She wasn't trying to be naughty. The lovely day now seemed tainted from the discord in the little household; the air didn't feel as warm, nor the grass as soft as it had ten minutes ago.

The girl shuddered slightly as she felt a shadow block the sun, causing the spring breeze to dance ever colder on her shoulders and neck. It seemed even Nature shared her mother's distaste for her.

"Katniss, you shouldn't be angry at your mother...or frightened of her." The voice said, regret easily palpable in his deep timbres as Mr. Everdeen crouched next to his daughter. "She loves you."

"Then why'd she yell at you? At me?" Katniss spoke at last, tones heavy with accusation, yet the slight cracking on the last two words revealed the true hurt behind her angry words. "It was just a stupid game, a stupid song that you taught us."

The dark-haired girl glanced up at her father at this, watching conflicting emotions tug at his strong features. He knew that she didn't really think the simple song was stupid, but she could tell by his silence that her barbed words still stung. He disliked being on the harsh end of his wife's infrequent outbursts even less than she did.

"Why?" She asked again, when the quiet between them had grown loud enough to hear her own heartbeat. She paused and then clarified. "Why can't we sing 'The Hanging Tree'? What's so bad about it?"

"There are some things better left in the past." Everdeen released a long sigh, bending to look into her averted face. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have taught you two that song."

"We were just playing." Katniss scowled a little, wiping away the traitorous tears that had previously fallen unheeded with a grimy hand. "We didn't mean to be bad."

"I know, sweetheart."

Another pause.

"Will you forgive me?" He asked quietly.

That broke her resentment, the arrow of love flying high above her wall of anger, as she turned to him and allowed him to envelop her in a tender embrace. Father and daughter were too close for disputes to ever stand for long between them.

"Will you tell me now, tell me why that song made Mother shout?" This came out softly, a breath of a question that drifted lazily into the cool air, tinged with both uncertainty and hope. Forbidden knowledge would forever keep its primeval allure, no matter the consequences that lurked in the shadows.

Another sigh, heavier this time, as she watched her father read her countenance, sizing up her ability to weather the tale behind the simple verses, divining if she could stand whatever horrors made her mother react so violently to the sisters' playing earlier.

Apparently he found some confirmation in her steadfast gaze, as if he knew that his independent daughter could benefit from such a story.

Such a story… He thought sadly.

"And if I tell you, Katniss, will you promise not sing 'The Hanging Tree' around your mother and not to repeat what I'm about to say?"

Katniss nodded, pupils widening in anticipation as she nudged herself closer, the prickly grass tickling her bare ankles.

"And you can't tell Prim either, not until she's older, promise?"

"I promise." She whispered, as if the very trees or the ground might overhear and betray her confidence. Whatever this dark tale was that caused grown women to blanch and gentle voices to rise in anger, her father obviously trusted her enough to share it with her. That was what caused the warm little glow that bloomed in her chest, washing away any vestiges of her hurt feelings as she waited for him to start. "It can be our secret." She added confidentially, enjoying the air of mystery that surrounded them.

Her father's lips quirked slightly upwards as he settled himself more comfortably among the bobbing daisies and cheerful dandelions. "Yes, our secret." He paused, turning his head to watch a robin flit across the soft blue sky that lovingly spread its folds about the entire Meadow.

"The tale I'm about to tell has been handed down for years; my father, your grandpa, was a young boy at the time, and it was he who told me this story." He gazed into the distance, old memories resurfacing and treading telling marks across his features. "Almost every grown adult in 12 knows this tale well, for it sits in the back of all our minds, ever ready to remind us of the cost that was paid-for good and ill."

He stopped for a moment to collect his thoughts, and while Katniss didn't completely understand all of what he had said, she nodded for him to continue. He cleared his throat, and commenced.

"It started over sixty years ago, several years before the Dark Days began..."