Stage Two: Her Quotes
On the second day of the Games, Renata surveyed the arena floor from the tree she had made her bed. Her stomach grumbled, but she'd gone long stretches of time without eating, being too absorbed in a book to care. She would be fine.
The loneliness nagged her, though. The silence.
She said, softly, as the sun came up and hit her red hair,
"Into this wild abyss, the womb of nature and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend
Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while,
Pondering her voyage . . ." (1)
She'd seen books burned in the town square, heard of houses burned to cinders. Her teacher was once whipped in public because he'd said "'Tis better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" in front of a Peacekeeper. If the Capitol realized what she said, her auntie could be targeted. But she needed the words, the way that they took the loneliness and fear and chaos around her and framed it into something beautiful and clear, something she can understand and manipulate. She needed the words more than ever.
ooo
Days later. She was stalking the woods, looking for food, when she heard singing – an untrained voice, a little hoarse, but clear – and sad.
"Here it's safe, and here it's warm, here the daisies'll guard you from every harm," floated on the air to a tune as rhythmic as a cradle rocking.
Renata wanted to find that voice, write down the words, so she crept forward, stopping when she heard the cannon blast. She was just in time to see the District 12 girl weave flowers into the hair of the little black girl from District 11.
Renata wanted to spring forward and offer an alliance, however brief, but she saw the bow and quivers. The District 12 girl was like Artemis, the Greek goddess of all wild and innocent things, who killed a man for having seen her naked. This girl – the girl who was on fire – would despise Renata for seeing her at her most vulnerable, with salt water bathing her dirty face.
It wasn't until Renata was far away that she remembered that the entire nation witnessed that death, and that the District 12 girl knew that. Being so hungry, she forgot things from time to time. But it was too late. The moment that they might have allied had passed.
But still, when she saw the face of Rue projected in the sky, she asked, as the anthem played, "Lord, what can the harvest hope for, but the care of the Reaper Man?" (2)
ooo
Between her moments of triumph, when she avoided the bombs around the Career's food, and her successful flights and thefts, sometimes she tumbled into despair. When cold rain pelted her, she kept herself warm by reciting poems, all the poems she could remember, against the noise of rainfall. But the ones that come easiest to her were the poems of hopelessness, and anger, and fear, and, of course, hunger.
ooo
The day before Renata's death, she was giddy as could be. Heedless of the dangers outside of the arena, she proudly recited,
"The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations.
Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field:
Let her look up into the heavens and laugh in the bright air;
With the enchainèd soul shut up in darkness and in sighing…
They look behind at every step and think it is a dream,
Singing, 'The Sun has left his blackness, and has found a fresher morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion and Wolf shall cease.'" (3)
She dances, or tries to. She stumbles from one tree to another. She is in the final five. Or perhaps four. Or three. She is so clever. She is bound to win. And then she will be free and gladly chain herself to her books, her books that have saved her. She is so hungry, her head is gone light and the ground sometimes tilts under her.
She will live forever.
1. From Paradise Lost, by John Milton, also the epigraph to Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass.
2. From Reaper Man, by Sir Terry Pratchett. Now, she understands, and wants to get home so she can reread it.
3. Modified, for length, from America: A Prophecy, by William Blake, also the epigraph to Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass. All of these books existed as ghosts of themselves within Panem's bootleg book market.
