Chapter 3
Peeta's story
"You have arrived at District 12." a pleasant automated voice comes out from a hidden speaker in the train. At last we have reached home. I stretch and yawn before getting up from my seat. It's been a long trip from District 4. A few days ago, I went there to visit Anne who is having a baby, named after his father for short, Finn. When I came to her lovely house at the sandy beach of District 4, she was really happy, singing to her child. How I wish Katniss could be really joyful like that. All she does nowadays is to stay at home, mourning for Prim or being harassed by nightmares when she dozes off. Or going to the woods to hunt on exceptionally bad days. But she doesn't shoot a deer. One time when I was looking for some root for a bread mixture I was making, I went further into the woods and saw her punching an oak tree with her bare bloody hands. She was screaming 'I'll kill you Snow! I'll kill you Gale!'. I thank the skies that Gale wasn't anywhere near at that time.
I tried to pacify her and calm her nerves. She just started crying. Tears came down in torrents and she just said 'Prim' over and over again. Poor Katniss, who saved me from a slow painful death by going for that feast in the Games. I had to carry her back because she just wouldn't budge. At least she seemed OK when I left District 12. She didn't want to go and see Anne although I invited her to. I guess when people mourn, they do it for a long time.
I take my bag and step off the train. I walk briskly to my bakery first to check things out since I've been gone for some time. It's still new, only three months old, from the time they laid the last brick. However, when I open the door, I see nobody except for the shelves of baked goods and Joseph, one of the assistants I hired recently. "Where's everyone?" I ask. Usually there would be lots of customers about buying bread or cheese buns. Cheese buns, Katniss's favourite. Perhaps I should get some for her later. She never refuses them.
Joseph, a man of a few words, just says 'arh' and points at a crumpled heap of ashes and smoldering rubble across the road. It looks worse than the burnt bread I tossed to Katniss the first time I saw her. "Another fire?" I say in disbelief. "Great. I've got to go." I leave my bag at the counter and rush to the crowd that is gathering around the remains of the charred building. Firemen are squirming around, carrying tools, burn victims, stretchers and a hysterical woman screaming 'my baby, my baby'. In fact, two have to carry her while another attempts to pacify her softly. I feel bad for her and hope her child has somehow been rescued by the firemen.
Then I see Gale Hawthorne in a fireman's gab, minus the helmet. He's scrambling through the blackish wreckage, shouting "Katniss! Katniss!" Katniss? The Girl on Fire? Did she purposely burnt the house down on her so that she could escape from her sorrows? Did she went visiting and somehow the kitchen blew up? Did she saw the fire in the first place and came in to save somebody? In my heart, I hope it's the third option that contributed to her being in a fire. "Gale!" I shout. He turns, perplexed. "What's happened?" I say rather breathlessly. "She went into the house when it was a fire to save a kid and all of a sudden it just blew! Damn the bloody alcohol stored there. Good thing it wasn't Haymitch's house that was on fire or else the entire Seam would have been vaporised in a thrice! With all that white wine! But now I don't know whether Katniss made it with the kid! This G-" He stops short in his oath, only to yell "Catnip! Catnip!" I don't shout frantically like him, but I rush over to the hand that is pocking out of a heap of rubble. I quickly start clearing rubble from the top. I don't care about the sharp splinters that make mini-cuts on my hands. Several strong men come to help me.
Within minutes, we have successfully cleared a lot of the wreckage to save the poor survivor. I hope he or she is still breathing. Wait a second...it's a she. It's Katniss.
The Girl on Fire, the Mockingjay lays motionless on the ground. Her dirt face and her ash-covered, but still smooth braid reminds me of her being airlifted by the hovercraft from the arena before I was captured. Her clothes are torn and blackened in twenty different places. Her eyes are closed, making her look as if she were sleeping. She looks better when she sleeps. At least she doesn't scowl. Well, she did when I pointed it out to her during our first Games.
"Look here! What's under her?" cries a burly man wearing a singlet. I gently push Katniss off, only to reveal a crying girl wearing a fireman mask. She is wrapped in the coat I recognise as Katniss's. I get it now. Katniss actually saved a child from being killed by the fire. The debris that could have killed the weak child injured Katniss instead. She sacrificed her mask for the child so that she would not be suffocated by the lack of oxygen and breath in the poisonous gas released by the flames. No sacrifice and act of courage could be greater than this. Besides, Katniss was still afraid of flames when I left to visit Anne. She refused to go near a candle lit in a thrift shop near the station.
Gale lifts the child up from Katniss's battered body. The hysterical owman I saw earlier appears on the scene. The look that comes on her face is priceless when she sees her child, well and alive. "Sarah!" she screams with a mother's love bursting from her lips. "Mommy!" the child squeals as Gale carries her to the woman. For a moment or two, they both just hug each other and cry. "I thought you were dead! But who saved you?" she says. Then they turn towards Katniss, who is being lifted onto a stretcher. "The Mockingjay." the child says in a broken voice.