A/N This is a one-shot for the purposes of this exercise...but I think I want to expand this to multiple chapters. I have PLANS for these two. Let me know what you think.
Step 7: Holding
When the bow is held in the correct vertical position, then the bowstring and edge of the bow will be parallel. If it is not, then the bow is tilted away from vertical. Graeme Jeffrey Copyright Centenary Archers Club Inc. 1999-2008
They called her Merry, once.
And why not? Though life cannot be easy for anyone in 12, it may have been easier for her than most. She has never wanted for food; her mother is a known and skilled healer and is paid well, in money and other useful things, for her work. Her father is the town apothecary, as his father was the town apothecary, taking shipments from the Capitol off of the trains and doing business with the physicians and buying certain plants (blue cohosh...tansy root) in secret, picked from the forbidden woods and sold, also in secret, by her mother, to people desperate enough to make it worth her while, despite the danger.
Merry has always been beautiful. She has always been treated with that slight indulgence, deference even, afforded to the very attractive: skipped to the head of the line in exchange for a smile, treated to the best bread at the baker's, the best meat at the butcher's, the prettiest cloth at the milliner's store.
She has lived her life in a haze of beauty and protection. She and her two best friends Maysilee and Maryan (the mayor's daughters) go to their sixth Reaping knowing, with their brains, that it is possible they will be chosen. Six slips of paper, out of hundreds.
Knowing with their brains, but not in their hearts.
They stand there hand in hand, in the very heart of the seventeen-year-old section of the crowd, and wait for the four names (four names this year!) to pass the lips of the blithe Capitol servant before them. Maysilee, Maryan and Merry, blonde and rosy-cheeked, well-fed town girls, dressed in their best clothes, who know they are supposed to hate Berenice, the woman from the Capitol in the shiny silver, form-fitting dress and impossibly high heels, but secretly admire her clothes and her fancy speech and her style.
First comes Daisy Riggs, a fifteen-year-old from the Seam, a little slip of a thing with hollowed cheeks and huge eyes and legs like sticks. The three friends watch her sympathetically as she makes her way up to the stage, shaking and sweating, but their hearts are not touched. They have never sweated, never shaken.
Until now. Because the next name called is Maysilee Donner.
The girl herself nearly collapses with the shock of it. There are cries from the sidelines, from Maysilee's relatives probably, but it's impossible for Merry to tell. She is using all her efforts to keep Maysilee herself upright. She should, she knows, be offering words of encouragement, but all she can manage is, "May...Maysilee." Maysilee turns her head and her eyes are empty, in shock. She turns to her sister, supporting her on her other side, reaches up and kisses her once on the cheek. Maryan begins to sob. The three of them fall together in a clenching embrace (This is not happening...this cannot be happening), and then Maysilee breaks away and is gone, walking. Maryan grabs Merry's hand and Merry can hardly hold onto her, Maryan is sobbing so hard.
Two more names are called, the boys, Dug Brace and Haymitch Abernathy, both from the Seam. Merry knows neither of them. She can't take her eyes off of her friend, standing straight and tall on the stage, and then turning her back and walking into the Justice Building. Maysilee's parents rushing in after her; as the mayor and mayor's wife, they were onstage to witness the whole horrible thing. In their shock, they leave Maryan to fall to her knees in the crowd.
After a few minutes, a group of Peacekeepers come to take Maryan inside to say goodbye to her sister. She goes with them, staring straight ahead, legs working jerkily, mechanically, like she is numb. She is gone now, just as surely as her sister is gone.
Merry wanders away. It is impossible for her to go inside that building and say goodbye to her friend; to do that would be to admit that such a thing could happen. Has happened.
The square always empties quickly after the Reaping ceremony; people retreat back to the safety of their homes, relieved that none of their children were chosen. That they are safe for another year, or perhaps forever. Merry's parents have disappeared also, are perhaps waiting for her at home, the small house adjoining the apothecary shop. They may have gone with the Donners. She doesn't know.
She walks slowly. Notices how the afternoon sun obliterates shadows, this time of year. Midsummer. When the sun reveals all, illuminates all.
Notices that she is sweating through the underarms of her lovely blue linen dress.
Ducks off the road to vomit in a clump of scrubby bushes.
...
She is grinding herbs in the silent shop when the singing begins.
There is an art to the mortar and pestle, a muscular twist of the forearm, a rolling grip of the fingers, that Merry has mastered after years. It's an art she can practice with her muscles while her mind is far away, and today her thoughts flee far from the empty house (her parents have gone, she knows not where, but she hasn't seen them since before the Reaping.). She grinds and gazes out the back window, not watching the front of the store as she ought to be, but today it hardly matters. No one will come.
She grinds and watches the sunlight disappear into the trees behind the shop. The back of their small lot abuts the edge of the district; there is a strip of brown, crisp grass and then, about fifteen yards back, the fence. And then the trees.
The light fades away to twilight, and she should long since have put down the mortar and pestle and gotten up, lit the stove, and started supper for her parents, who will surely return at any moment.
But no one appears, and instead of bustling about the place as she normally would, she is roused from her trance by the realization that she's humming along to a faintly audible melody. It's not familiar, but it must have repeated enough times that she's picked it up unconsciously: a lilting, gentle song. She can't hear the words, but it's only one voice singing, and it's coming from the grassy area in back of the shop.
The grinding eases, then stops, and her blue eyes narrow as she listens more closely. A single voice; a man. Singing behind their shop.
She is afraid, somehow, of scaring him, whoever he is. She sets the bowl down beside her softly and slowly, rises to her feet and purposely avoids the squeaky boards when crossing to the back door. The small shed blocks her view of the fence, but not of the trees beyond.
If he's there, he's seated on the white rock, a waist-level boulder jutting straight up out of the earth. The fence itself gives way to this boulder; it juts out into a V to go around the rock, which must have been there long before District 12 existed.
She creeps across the yard as silently as she can and slips around the side of the shed. Pokes her head around the corner...and there he is. Sitting on the rock, sure enough, hands resting on his knees, feet just touching the ground. Some kind of burlap bag on the grass next to him.
She knows him. Or at least, knows of him. Not his name, but she knows that he left school three years ago, that he trades with her father on occasion (the forbidden plants from the woods, the ones for which people will pay desperate amounts of money), that he lives across town. Near the Seam. She's never spoken to him, nor he to her; when he escaped his last Reaping she was a gangly child of fourteen.
She knew where he lived and what he traded, but she did not know he could sing.
His eyes are closed, and before he opens his mouth to begin his song again, he is merely average-looking. A strong, angular face, dark, longish hair all but obscuring one eye. Needing a shave. Tall and...not thin, exactly, the way Seam boys normally are, but bristling with a wiry strength.
But after he opens his mouth and begins to sing, he is beautiful.
His face is peace, all the angles smoothed. A rich tenor, much too full and expressive to possibly be coming from him.
'Are you going to Scarborough Fair?' he sings, and suddenly she wants to go to this place, wherever it is, and she has no doubt it is as fair as he claims.
'Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,' he sings, and she can taste each herb, green and smoky and bursting on her tongue.
'Remember me to one who lives there,' he sings, and she wonders who he means.
She begins to walk toward him across the brown, broken grass.
'For she once was a true love of mine.' And all at once his eyes are open, and he is silent again, and the spell is broken. He's looking straight at her. His mouth curls up to the side in a kind of half-smile, nervous but charming too. "He-hello," he says.
Her eyelids flutter as though she's just waking, and her hands begin to smooth the front of her dress. She doesn't answer him, instead taking an uncertain step backward. Suddenly very aware that she is alone.
He doesn't move from the rock. "So-sorry," he says, and his speech is hesitant, halting. Like he has to think hard about each word. "I didn't m-mean to dis-turb you. I di-didn't think anyone would be...here."
She nods. Why is he so nervous? Normally, with a boy (a man, she corrects herself) she would turn on Playful Merry, and comment on how lucky he is that she happened to be here after all. Or haughty, Town Merry, and ask just what he thinks he's doing here in the first place. But today, she has the energy for none of her usual beautiful-girl games.
So she just says what she wants to say. "No one is here." It's true, in a way. She steps closer to him again. "What was that song?"
He stares at her for a few moments; she can see him considering what, and whether, he should tell her. He can't lie easily, she thinks, and wonders why she is reassured by this. "An...an old one," he finally says, with that curly half-smile.
Merry squints her eyes at him. "How old?"
"Oh..." He grins fully at her, and she catches a glimpse of beauty again as his angular face rounds out, and his eyes crinkle at the edges. "About a th-thousand years or so." He glances down at his soft leather boots, and then quickly up at her, clearly to see if she believes him. His eyelashes are long and sooty-black.
A laugh, and actual laugh, bubbles up in her throat, and her stomach flutters queerly. "No. Not really!"
He nods, and studies his shoes again. "It's true."
She smiles. "And how did you come to know it?" She takes a few more steps toward him, without realizing she's done it. She's close enough to see the small scratches on his hands and forearms, the callouses on his fingers. His muddy boots, the cuffs of his pants wet.
His face turns from shyly jovial to mock-serious, and she feels absurdly like laughing again as he answers, "That...is m-my secret." Then he grins again, and her stomach most decidedly flip-flops. "There's a wo-woman's part for it, too. I could teach you..."
"God, no!" She actually does laugh this time, in mock-horror. "I can't sing. At least...not like you."
Silence. And then, "What's your name?" she asks, because surely when he tells her, she'll recognize it. Surely a talent like his has not gone unnoticed, even in a place like 12.
"P-" he starts, then frowns, seeming frustrated. Silence for another few seconds. Then, "Paul Everdeen," he tells her, and the way he looks up at her suddenly, again, right into her eyes, making her insides burn, makes her think that he's been waiting to tell her this for a long time.
But that's absurd.
"And yo-yours?" he asks, frowning and closing his eyes against the slight hitch in his voice.
She frowns at him. "You must know it already; you trade with my father all the time."
"I wa-want to hear you say it."
An odd request. But she does say it. "Mer..." she starts, then lets her voice trail off. She cannot be Merry, for him. Not after today. She will never be Merry any more.
"Merideth Treadwell."
A slow smile spreads across his face, rounding its angles again, making him a thing of beauty. He closes his eyes like he's going to sing again, and she finds herself holding her breath. "Ju-just like a piece of mu-music," he says, then studies his boots with a frown. Again, she wonders why he is so nervous, what is stopping his voice.
"Mer-ry!" A shrill singsong voice from the shop behind her carries out into the yard, and Merideth starts and spins around. Her parents are home, no doubt wondering about the cold, dark shop.
"I'll be right there!" she calls, unnecessarily loudly.
When she turns back around, the rock is empty; Paul Everdeen has melted back into the woods somehow, there being nowhere else he could have gone.
Merideth is left hugging her own elbows in the sudden chill of full darkness, wondering whether she just imagined him after all.
...
But in the sleepy half-light of the following dawn...through her open window drifts the sound of every mockingjay in the woods singing Paul's Scarborough Fair song to greet the day. The thousand-year-old melody that makes the hollow pit in her chest fill with fire, just remembering his voice. The trees are full of melancholy and longing.
This is no dream.
...
"The baker's boy was here asking after you again, this afternoon."
"Hmm?" Merideth looks up from her half-eaten dinner. The squirrel-and-greens stew tastes bland, like paper, and she has been chewing the same bite for what seems like an hour. It would have tasted better if she'd made it, but her time had been otherwise occupied today. She'd barely made it home for dinner.
Her mother's expectant, wide-eyed look tells her that the previous statement needs some kind of response. "Oh," she manages.
"Young Timm sure has been coming around a lot lately," her father grumbles, but the small smile he gives her mother lets her know that the visits aren't entirely unwelcome.
Young Timm has been oddly persistent lately. Young Timm has been a fixture around the apothecary's shop for Merideth's entire adolescence. When she was fifteen her parents gave permission for dating, and the very next day Timm had been at her door with a bunch of flowers and a big smile. He was chivalrous with her and courteous to her parents, almost as if it had been planned between the three of them, with Merideth given no say.
The pale little boy Merideth knew as Timmy Mellark, called Young Timm by the townspeople to differentiate him from his father, has somehow become her beau. She's not entirely averse to the idea, but, well…she has never given it much thought. He was just there, and she was here, and both their families had been thrilled. It had just kind of happened.
And it's not as though he's bad-looking: he's fair and blue-eyed, like her (they look enough alike to be brother and sister), and of a strong, stocky build, a square jaw, large but gentle hands. It's not as though he's bad-tempered: on the contrary, he has a jovial good temper, a self-depracating and never-cruel sense of humor, a gift for always saying the right thing. He could have any girl he wanted, and many want him; but, he seems to want Merideth.
It should be perfect.
After two years of going with him, and many warm and pleasurable kisses behind the brick ovens at his place and on the white rock at her place, and even a few sweaty, clandestine, rather painful and awkward evenings in the Meadow which she hopes no one knows about…she supposes she must love him.
She'd always thought love would feel different. Less…comfortable.
"Did he say he would come back tonight?" she asks, because she knows she's expected to ask.
"No, he said he needed to work late," her mother says, setting aside her napkin and rising from the table. "He hasn't seen you since…well, since Friday." The Reaping is never mentioned by name, not ever. Merideth has not heard Maysilee's name uttered by a single soul since she was taken four days ago. "He's been concerned."
Merideth cannot quell a twinge of annoyance.
Her mother continues, "We'll be out tonight, anyway. If he wants to come over after he's through…"
Merideth doesn't look up. "I'll see. Maybe I'll take a walk over there after I close up."
Silence, and she can feel her parents shooting questioning looks at one another. Then her father clears his throat. "Well, let's go," he says. Merideth doesn't ask where they are going, and they do not tell her. The less that you know, sometimes, the better.
...
She wasn't around to start dinner for her mother, this afternoon, because she'd taken the long way home. She'd had to take some willow bark tea and sleep syrup to the Vick house out by the Seam, after school; 4 of the 5 children had the chicken pox; the mother and the eldest daughter, Hazelle, were trying to care for all of them, and had finally broken down and sent for medicine. Her mother had warned her not to give them a thing if they didn't even have anything to trade, and that made her just angry enough to resolve not to return home in a hurry.
She smiled at Hazelle when she answered the door; the girl, a tall, dark beauty, is in the same class at school, but they don't have many friends in common. Hazelle gave a wan smile in return, but said nothing.
"You can give them the tea every four hours or so," she instructed Hazelle and her mother. "That should bring their fever down. You only need a drop or two of sleep syrup added to the tea, and that should…quiet them down for the night." She snuck a glance over at the big bed in the corner, which contained four crowded, sweaty, itchy, fidgety and generally miserable little bodies. The two youngest ones were wailing, scratching themselves bloody. "And baking soda mixed with water is good for the itching."
The mother frowned at her, and Merideth remembered: they probably didn't have baking soda.
"I…can try to get some at the Mellark's for you…"
"No," the mother cut in. "This will be fine. How much do I owe you for everything?" She reached for an old tin high up on a shelf.
Merideth panicked, taking in the tiny, cramped house, the sick kids in the bed, Hazelle at the stove, putting a kettle on to boil and looking everywhere but at her beautiful, blonde classmate. "Oh please…no. I can't…you keep it. Please. Nothing."
The mother acted like she hadn't heard. She held out two coins, and Merideth could clearly see that there were only two coins left in the tin. Half of their money. There is no way. But from the look on the mother's face, and the way Hazelle's spine stiffened as she stood across the room, Merideth knew she would have to take something. Seam people hated owing anyone, especially someone like her.
And then, inspiration struck. "My father always likes eggs," she offered, in the softest possible voice that will still carry.
Hazelle and her mother both looked up sharply. The oldest boy in the bed, about 11, glanced at Merideth too, and then quickly away. Officially, the Vicks did not keep chickens. Officially, no one in 12 did. Chickens were regulated animals, bred and raised in 10, their meat and eggs shipped in on trains and sold by the butcher to those who could afford them. Meaning, practically no one in 12.
Unofficially, the Vick children had been eating and sharing egg sandwiches at school for as long as anyone could remember, their neighborhood enjoyed chicken stew and chicken pie and chicken soup when the eggs became scarce, and the tiny shed in their backyard exhaled feathers when the door was opened. The animals could not see the light of day and Merideth was sure they were as sickly and starved as any creature in 12. But still…they were there.
Hazelle's mother gave her a curt nod, and Hazelle disappeared out the back, grabbing a square of cloth on her way out. The silence in the little house was deafening until she returned, the cloth full and knotted at the top.
"A dozen," she breathed, looking Merideth in the eye with a nod. They were square.
"So many…surely not," said Merideth.
"It's a fair trade," the mother said, a small smile forcing its way onto her lined face as she returned the two coins to the tin.
Over in the corner, the two little ones had started crying again as Merideth left.
She peeked in the cloth as soon as she rounded the corner away from the Vicks' house, and the eggs were brown and blue and green, each one large enough to nestle in the palm of her hand. She knotted the cloth again and walked on, trying not to calculate in her mind what a dozen chicken eggs might be worth, and exactly how many meals she was taking away from those sick children.
She'd never walked much in this part of 12, miles away from the safety and order of the Town. She didn't dare ask herself why she was doing so today. She didn't know, until she saw him, that she had been looking for him.
But there he was in front of her, coming out of a long, narrow lane lined with what could only be called shacks. Paul Everdeen, tall and lean, walking briskly down the lane with a sack slung over his back. There was a fluidity in his movements that made her think of a cat. He looked everyone in the eye and nodded as they passed him.
He was humming softly, to himself. He had not seen her.
Merideth ducked behind the nearest house, face flaming. She peeked out to watch his rapidly retreating form almost out of sight, then slunk out into the lane again. What in the world would she say if he saw her? She tripped along, hardly noticing where her feet fell, following him at a distance.
Embarrassed, suddenly. What was she doing? Keeping him in view, she slowed her steps and looked around, examining each doorway, trying to seem as though she was looking for a particular address. Perhaps the bundle in her hands would make people think she was making a delivery.
I was making a delivery, she thought.
She followed him to the very edge of the Seam, where the houses became fewer and fewer, although the ragged work crews were adding more all the time. He walked more and more quickly the farther he got from the town, his movements freer and more fluid. She almost lost him when he slipped between two houses, the last standing on the edge of the Seam. Then he disappeared into the Meadow beyond.
Already breathless, she picked up her pace, darting recklessly between the same two houses, and managed to catch sight of him across the Meadow as he ducked to the ground, twisted his body through an impossibly small opening under the fence, and slipped off into the woods.
Merideth stood still in shock, hugging one arm around herself. She had never seen anyone leave the district before. No one who lived here, anyway. She glanced around, but no one else seemed to be walking this far out. Why am I doing this? I should go home. But her legs had their own ideas, and they carried her across the grassy meadow to the spot where he'd disappeared.
It was so quiet here. The trees beyond the fence rustled with the gentle movements of the air; the sun filtered through the leaves and dappled the earth. Green ferns, soft moss, dead and decaying leaves, slender young saplings covered the ground. She saw all this through the ugly metal links of the fence, but she could no longer see Paul Everdeen, did not know which direction he'd chosen.
But she saw, for the first time, the gap under the chain link fence. Had the fence still been electrified (as it had been all the time, when she was a small child), there would have been no way to squeeze underneath without receiving a deadly shock. She wondered if there was a similar gap underneath the fence behind the Apothecary.
She glanced behind her, but there was no one in the Meadow, no one around the few Seam houses.
A chickadee called somewhere close by, and was answered by another chickadee, farther inside the woods. And then by a mockingjay, who took the dee-dee-dee call and made it a roving melody, a beautiful and wistful song. A few more mockingjays heard it, and couldn't resist joining in, until the whole expanse of woods beyond the fence was a cacophony of music. She wondered if Paul could hear it too.
She listened for a few minutes, a smile playing about her lips. Then she quickly undid the knot in the square of cloth, selected one blue egg and one green (the largest ones, at the bottom of the bundle) and set them carefully upon a large leaf, on the ground in front of the fence where he had disappeared.
She thought for a moment, then took a handkerchief from the pocket of her dress and wrapped the eggs, to keep them from thieves, animal and human alike.
Then, satisfied, she crept back home.
...
She wipes down the countertops in the Apothecary with a damp rag, but slowly, slowly. This is her last task of the evening, and after this is done she'll have no reason not to go to the baker's to see Timm. Who will want to fold her in his strong arms and comfort her, tell her they've got only one more year of Reaping to get through and then…and then…
Her throat constricts and she tastes bile, and in the next instant there is a soft rapping at the back door of the shop. She drops the polishing rag to the floor and turns, a slow ember burning from inside her chest as her legs betray her again. She moves forward, clasping her hands together, palms sweaty, and she rubs them dry on her apron before reaching forward to grasp the door latch.
But she can't open the door. Her hand is on the latch, and the ember inside her is flaring up because she knows who this is. And opening the door to him will mean…she isn't sure what. But there is a line, and she's about to cross it.
Merideth squeezes the latch and pulls the door open, and it's him. Paul Everdeen.
He is frowning, his mouth drawn into a tight line, and one hand is held up, the knuckles ready to rap on the door again. His mouth pops open into an "o" and she sees that he is cradling his other hand in the crook of his elbow. There are streamlets of blood on one leg of his pants, in splotches all over his shirt, all over the game bag which is now tied to his belt.
Their eyes meet, and the ember in her chest puffs into a flame, licking the insides of her ribs, stealing her air.
"Come in."
...
A/N The song Paul sings is, of course, Scarborough Fair, the ballad made famous by Simon and Garfunkel. It is an old English ballad whose lyrics date back many centuries, and resemble the lyrics of a Scottish ballad of 1670 titled The Elfin Knight, though it may in fact be much older. -Thank you, Wikipedia
Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Remember me to one who lives there, For once she was a true love of mine.
Tell her to make me a cambric shirt, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Without any seam or needlework, Then she shall be a true lover of mine.
Tell her to wash it in yonder well, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Where never spring water or rain ever fell, And she shall be a true lover of mine.
Tell her to dry it on yonder thorn, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Which never bore blossom since Adam was born, Then she shall be a true lover of mine.
Now he has asked me questions three, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
I hope he'll answer as many for me Before he shall be a true lover of mine.
Tell him to buy me an acre of land, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
Betwixt the salt water and the sea sand, Then he shall be a true lover of mine.
Tell him to plough it with a ram's horn, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
And sow it all over with one pepper corn, And he shall be a true lover of mine.
Tell him to shear it with a sickle of leather, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme;
And bind it up with a peacock feather. And he shall be a true lover of mine.
Tell him to thrash it on yonder wall, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,
And never let one corn of it fall, Then he shall be a true lover of mine.
When he has done and finished his work. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme:
Oh, tell him to come and he'll have his shirt, And he shall be a true lover of mine.
