Waltz of the Flowers
At the Academy, while her nutcracker feet are scabbing over and her brother's hands are dancing light-years away over somebody else's wounds, they give her missions sometimes. This one reeks. She can't tell you about it, but she'll show you, if you can hold your breath long enough to come look.
Samoa's a couple years younger than she is, but she's been here longer, and still her words string up flatter than River's, less cryptic. Most people's do, because most people couldn't get into each other's heads before they came here and don't get lost in translation when they try to come back out. "It used to be a reality show when they had it in the old country," she says during training. She's better at dagger practice than River, and River doesn't like that. "Back before the terraforming, you know, when people still lived in Panem. It was entertainment for the Capitol and a way of keeping everybody else in line, but then it got thrown out after a revolution. That's why they don't teach it in schools anymore, because the bad guys won that time, and they don't want us knowing about it."
"I think they know we get bruised, too," says River, "because nutcrackers work both ways and that's what the Academy wants, it makes us jagged little mites, easier to flick, harder to hold." She tosses another series but it's to no avail—they are too shaky to land. Simon got the doctor hands. She doesn't ask who told Samoa, because it doesn't matter; she or River or both are going to get killed tomorrow, and "It isn't why that matters here. Do is."
Samoa doesn't say anything, which is just as well; there isn't any time for all of the filler in her head, and it's making it hard for River to think. Her say is an extension of her think, and she doesn't need Samoa to make sense, but Samoa can't hear her, that's why they all think she's crazy, but she isn't crazy, she just can't get the dialect right. "It's a problem in the hands, Simon got the hands, I can see the targets like this—" she closes her eyes and throws just as well (or badly) "—and do out the physics just fine, but my aim's not narrow," River is anything but narrow, that's going to make her either very dangerous or very tipsy when they get out into the arena. "That's why they're doing these again here. There are twenty-four children blazing out with knives on tomorrow, and twenty-three of them aren't going to try hard enough, and at least six of those are going to kill themselves before they can get caught. They're not wasting their ammunition, just weeding out the faulty ones."
"Do you think I could win it?" Samoa asks, missing this throw and pupils dilating.
"You don't want to take people out, but you will." Samoa thinks she's going to enlighten the masses when she gets out, like she can hold out, like she's root instead of putty, but they're all putty, even River. "We're all going to be packaged up new car smell and ready to shoot."
If they want her to kill, she'll bloody her eyes, sure, she'll make guns into petals and squeeze the thorns tight-tight in her dagger hands, scalpel hands, she'll find the place where she can throw them unblinking, but she just wants to do this without shaking, she's got to grow snares if she's going to be an example. River doesn't want to be herself anymore—she can see too wide to forget about the dreams, and there is no undoing, only unraveling. River just wants to find a way to think and breathe at the same time. It's probably better if she gets Samoa before Samoa can get anybody else out there; she has so much religion bottled up in there, and it's a lesser loss if River becomes this than if Samoa does, so the next day she becomes River's first surgery, and then River sees and says nothing at all.
