Sage advice

'Oh I think that we can be more inventive than that, Miss Stone. Don't you?'

I stare at the book in my hands, not really seeing it as unrestrained panic floods through my body. What did President Snow mean? It's been almost a month since I returned from the Victory Tour and my brain still refuses to settle on anything else. Have my actions placed my family and friends in danger once again? But even now, even when the fear seems to circulate through my body instead of blood, the thought of cooperating with the people who killed my mother as a traitor and who murdered my brother in the Hunger Games is repulsive.

'Maya, can you start dinner? I need to put Rosie down for a nap.' My sister's voice interrupts the stream of questions running through my mind and I look up to see her standing in the kitchen doorway, balancing a grizzling Rosie on her hip.

'Are you okay?' She asks bluntly; she's always been attuned to my feelings and it's always been nearly impossible for me to hide anything from her. I smooth my face into what I hope looks like an unconcerned expression and nod nonchalantly. My sister looks sceptical and I wonder why I'm even pretending; I've never been able to lie to her. Somehow she always knows.

I stand and cross over to her. Rosie reaches out for me as I approach. Her cheeks are an angry red colour and she's chewing on her fist.

'Are you being grumpy? Are those nasty teeth bothering you?' I ask, trying to keep my voice light. Unfortunately, it cracks on the last word and I grab Rosie to avoid my sister's concerned look. I swing her round and she chuckles reluctantly and removes her fist from her mouth so she can grab my hair instead. A dribble of saliva lands on my chin and I pretend to wince.

'Ew Maya Rose, yuck yuck yuck…' I pretend to bop her on the nose and she giggles for real.

'You're so good with her,' my sister says, as I hand her back the baby.

'I… I love you both.' My voice cracks again and I turn away to the scullery, hoping that Rosie takes a long time to settle so I have time to compose myself before the questions that my sister will ask; Saffron always says her mind and I've been sensing this particular questioning for some time now although I still have no idea what I'm going to say.

My hands shake as I chop onions on the scullery draining board, my thoughts returning to that last night in the Capitol once again and to President Snow's unconcealed threats.

'Your brother's death has understandably upset you. You are not thinking straight so I feel that it is only fair to warn you. What you are attempting will not succeed…'

'…it is only fair to warn you… it is only fair to warn you…'

The knife slips and I wince as I feel a sharp pain in the fleshy pad of my thumb. I drop the knife onto the heap of blood-spattered onion slices and turn on the tap, running the cut under a stream of icy water. Blood mingles with the clear water in the bottom of the sink, making strange patterns against the white enamel and my stomach contracts as the sight triggers unpleasant memories.

'Maya are you okay?' I didn't hear my sister arrive and I jump horribly. My thumb gives a particularly painful throb and I wince again.

'I'm fine…' My voice breaks on the word 'fine' and I hear my sister's footsteps behind me. She takes my injured hand gently in her own and inspects the damage. Then she grabs a clean tea towel off the drying rack and wraps it tightly around my hand.

'Come and sit down; it looks nasty.' She steers me into the kitchen and pushes me into the rocking chair by the fireplace. Then she grabs the first aid kit from the dresser and digs around inside it until she finds what she's looking for.

'I think it needs stitches.' She says, in a low voice, pulling out antiseptic wipes and a needle and thread.

I glance down at the tea towel, which is already soaked bright red and my head spins. The rust and salt smell of blood fills my nostrils. It smells of the arena and I fight to keep the memories at bay.

'What's bothering you, Maya? You've been on edge for weeks.' My sister asks bluntly as she cleans the cut with an antiseptic wipe that stings so badly that my eyes start to water.

'I…' I watch as my sister threads a curved needle with sterile thread but look away as she starts the stitching; since my return from the arena, anything that involves blood makes me feel faint and queasy. I try to detach myself from the sharp stinging and the slight tugging sensation but it's hard.

'How much of the Victory Tour did you watch?' I finally mutter, stalling because it's so hard to put it all into words.

'Enough.' Saff answers shortly, as she chops the thread with a pair of scissors. 'And now you're worried whether or not you did the right thing.'

I was right; there is no hiding anything from Saffron. Not only is she very attuned to my feelings but she's also better at putting them into words than I will ever be. I glance down at my hand as she winds thin gossamer-like gauze several times around my thumb and tapes it in place.

'Can we go into the garden?' I ask suddenly; I don't feel comfortable speaking in this new house. The walls are probably laced with hidden microphones and I imagine dozens of Capitol attendants listening with baited breath to see if I say something treasonous, something that will justify them bringing me in for questioning.

'I need some herbs anyway,' Saff says, nodding and crossing over to the kitchen door.

It opens into a small garden with a few ornate flower beds full of cultivated Capitol flowers. Although they are pretty, the colours and the scents seem somehow contrived beside the wild flower meadows by the District boundary. Saff transplanted a few herb bushes after we moved here, squashing them in between the roses, tulips and hydrangeas. They didn't seem to appreciate it much though; the soil here is different from the rest of the District, probably because it's never been used for growing crops before and has never been fortified with compost or manure. Saff bends over a bedraggled-looking sage plant and starts to pick off the best looking leaves.

'I wanted… I thought that I knew what I wanted.' I think back to the conversation I had with Seeder beside the train tracks in District Four and shiver as I remember my certainty; I was so sure that I wanted to follow in my mother's footsteps. Where is that certainty now and why do I feel so confused?

'I wanted to stop the Capitol from ripping apart more families,' I say suddenly, my voice barely above a whisper. 'But I'm scared. I'm scared that the Capitol will retaliate before anything can happen. And anyway, what can I hope to achieve? I'm just a twelve year old. This is bigger than I ever imagined. I was just angry about Mum and about Sheb and I didn't want to cooperate.' My eyes fill with tears but I've finally said it out loud; the fact that I never intended for this to become as big as it has.

And then I tell Saff everything: The combined revulsion and confusion that I felt, standing in front of the Justice Building in Twelve. My certainty that night beside the train tracks in Four. And finally President Snow's threats and how scared I am that he will target my family and friends to punish me. My sister doesn't interrupt and lets me talk myself into silence. She then wraps her arms around me, pulling me close and kissing the top of my head. She smells of sage, baby powder and warmth and I find myself relaxing into her embrace.

'I know how confusing this must be…' I feel her breath stirring the hair on the top of my head as she talks. '…I'm so proud of you. If you help to ignite one District against the Capitol then you've achieved something amazing.'

'But everything I do comes back to you, Dad and Rosie.' I protest, pulling myself out of her embrace. 'If I can't keep the three of you safe then what was the point of it all?' My sister gives a strangled laugh and pulls me close again.

'Maya, you don't have to protect us. We're with you. Me, Dad, Rue, even little Rosie. We're all on your side.'

'But I don't want you to get hurt,' I scrub fiercely at my face to wipe away the tears.

'Maya…' Saff doesn't finish her sentence but she doesn't need to because I see the message clearly in her eyes: They've already hurt us.

We stand, entwined around each other until my sister finally pulls away, wiping her eyes. 'Rue will be here soon and I haven't even started dinner.'

She stoops to pick up the sage leaves from the grass where she dropped them when we hugged and moves towards the kitchen. I start after her, knowing that she will appreciate some help with the food preparations but I glance up at my father's bedroom window and hesitate, biting my bottom lip in confusion and sadness: The window is shut and the heavy curtains are pulled so that no light can get through into the room beyond. I know that my father will still be in bed, lying there alone in the dark. He has barely moved for over a week now and either Saff or I have been bringing his meals to his room. Every few days, Saff cajoles him into taking a bath whilst I change the bed sheets, but our combined efforts do little to remove the scent of musty sadness that seems to cling to him. The move to this new house hasn't done anything to help his crippling depression. In fact, he seems even more confused and lost than ever and he barely eats; I'm forever carrying untouched plates of food to the garbage. I'm scared that he'll waste away because he wasn't large to begin with. His cheeks have that hollow, pinched look that his all too common in this District. It's frustrating and wrong because the food is there; for the first time ever we have more food than we can eat, more variety than we've ever had before but it hasn't made the slightest bit of difference. I sigh, wondering if there's anything I can do to help him; it's been more than nine months since my mother was killed but he's as unreachable as ever and I'm scared that he has gone for good.

Ignoring the prickling of new tears in the corner of my eyes, I walk into the kitchen. My sister is chopping meat at the table and I cross over to her and pick up a knife, wincing as the movement tightens the stitches in my thumb.

'Don't get the dressing dirty, Maya.' My sister cautions and I nod and grab a plastic glove from the sink and pull it over my hand.

I chop the vegetables haphazardly into chunks of varying sizes and throw them into a large saucepan filled with water. My mind is still racing ahead and I'm not at all focused on what I'm doing. I've moved on to dicing herbs when I feel my sister's hand on my arm and look up.

'Maya, there's someone at the door.' I must've missed the knock in my preoccupation. I throw down my knife and wipe my hands on my jumper before sliding off the stool and walking briskly out of the kitchen.

I know that Rue is upset as soon as I open the door; her lips tremble and she looks like she is trying to hold back tears. My heart skips in nervous anticipation.

'Is it Fern?' Rue's sister Fern is still weak from the illness she had last year; she caught pneumonia, a common complication after measles and it has left her with a weak chest. Rue's parents won't take any money off me but I give them food at every possible opportunity. Last week, I even visited the apothecary and bought some medicine for Fern although it doesn't seem to have made the slightest bit of difference yet.

'No, Fern is fine but…' Rue bites her lip in a way that reminds me very strongly of myself when I am trying to hold back a wave of emotion. 'Do you remember Martin?' I rack my brains but finally am forced to shake my head. 'You know; Tansy's older brother. The one who wasn't quite right…' As Rue chokes on her words I suddenly know who she is talking about and my heart sinks. Tansy was a girl in my year at school and we were quite close for a time until my mother was killed. Then she, like so many others, started to treat me like a pariah. I can't say I've thought about her or her brother for nearly a year.

'Maya, he's dead…' Tears start to seep out of Rue's eyes and my heart sinks. '…he took a pair of night vision glasses from the orchards... the ones we use when we're too high up for the floodlights. He only wanted to play with them but…' I feel a jolt of combined nausea and anger in the pit of my stomach because I know without Rue telling me what has happened.

'…they killed him, Maya… the Peacekeepers. They shot him in the head right in front of us. He didn't mean any harm and…' Rue is crying properly now and I pull her into a hug. My own eyes are dry and blazing; although I am sad, I also feel an unparalleled anger and it makes me feel slightly dizzy. This is exactly why I decided to fight the Capitol. They have murdered another child without cause.

'Rue, that's horrible. He didn't deserve that.' I don't know what else to say.

Dinner is a subdued affair; none of us feel much like talking and little Rosie grizzles in her highchair as Saff coaxes her into eating a few bites of mushed-up rabbit stew. She doesn't seem to be that impressed and prefers to chew on the spoon, pressing it against her sore gums and dribbling all over her bib. Rue's news has taken away my own appetite and I play with the food on my plate, finally pushing it away feeling slightly nauseous.

After dinner I walk Rue back to her home in companionable silence. I give her a hug and hand her mother a large leather bag full of food before I turn to leave; it's the least I can do since they won't accept any money. As I pass my old shack, I can't help but look back over my shoulder and on an impulse, I suddenly turn back towards it and push open the rickety door. I step into the familiar living area, my eyes taking in the pitted wooden table standing in the centre of the room, the wobbly chairs, the curtains made of grain sacks and the smoke-blackened metal hearth. My heart wrenches with homesickness and longing as the memories flood through me: Sheb tap dancing on the table to entertain me when I was ill and my mother laughing by the hearth when my father sang a rude song. My father giving me a hand-carved toy horse for fourth my birthday so I could join in with Sheb's game of knights.

Inexplicably, I find myself smiling through my tears. This is the first time that I've revisited our shack since my return from the Games. I was afraid that it would trigger too many painful memories so even when I've visited Rue, I always looked the other way as I passed my old home. In a way, I was right. But I've realised that I'd rather remember than forget. This is the place where I will always feel closest to my mother and my brother.

As soon as I shut the door behind me, I start to run. Now that I no longer have to work in the orchards or go to school, I am never physically tired and so I find it hard to drop off to sleep, especially when I'm so worried. Chaff suggested alcohol and Seeder suggested exercise. I went with Seeder's option.

It's a forty five minute brisk walk from my old house to Victor's Village but I can run it in a quarter of that time. I add some distance by looping around the orchards where I used to work. It still feels odd to watch the people gathering in the late apple harvest and not be among them. Darkness has started to fall and the Peacekeepers have already lit the huge electric floodlights that will illuminate the trees so that work can continue throughout the night. Nearly all of the trees have now been stripped of their fruit. In a week's time the workers will be sent to another part of the District to begin the gourd harvest; pumpkin, squash, courgettes and other similar vegetables.

I speed up as I run past two Peacekeepers, dressed in their other-worldly white uniforms with their guns hanging loosely in their arms. I recall what they did to a simple minded boy earlier today and a burst of anger and adrenaline sets my legs flying.


I am very very sorry for the long wait between updates... had horrible writers block but I'm hoping that it's over now! Hope you enjoy and don't forget to let me know what you think.