Chapter Eleven
The next few months for me are relatively good. Katniss and I actually develop a normal kind of relationship, I mean I can tell that she still doesn't feel the same way about me, but we're definitely firm friends. We sit around, and eat the cheese buns I make her, while she watches me sketch.
Slowly we develop a routine, Katniss's foot still isn't usable, so we sit up in her bedroom, trying to forget the horrors of our past. Mostly I sketch her, but she's not easy to draw, her facial expression changes so often.
But winter withdraws, and her foot starts to get better. I help her walk down stairs, some days, and others I just watch her walk on her own.
Only one day when I'm heading out of my front door with the intention of spending the day with Katniss again, something catches my eye. There's a car waiting outside her house, a car that can only have come from the Capitol. Alarmed I quickly knock on the door. Katniss's mother answers.
"Sorry Peeta, but you can't come in today, Katniss is having her bridal shoot," She explains happily.
Relieved, I walk back to my house, all the while thinking of the wedding. Will things change once Katniss and I are legally husband and wife? Will she discover some unknown feelings towards me? And children of course, the Capitol will expect children. I know that Katniss doesn't want them, and after what I've been through I'm reluctant too. But will that choice even be up to us? After all the trouble we've caused, it's a sad thought to think that we've kind of guaranteed any child of ours a place in the Games. Unless something changes first.
Just as I'm at my front door, I look up to the sky. A rainbow! Delighted I run inside to my easel, by the window. But it's no good, by the time I've mixed together a light azure blue, it's gone.
Sighing and thinking that seeing as I'm here I might as well paint something, I dig out my sketchbook, and start painting a portrait of Katniss.
I go to bed that night feeling almost content, but the feeling doesn't last long, because the nightmares come to me in full force.
I'm lying under the tracker jacker tree, only once the nest drops I don't get out of there in time. Huge lumps start to erupt on my skin, that burst covering me in a green sludge. The Katniss is hanging over me, only it's not my Katniss. There's a maddening glint in her beautiful eyes, and without warning her face starts to elongate. Dark fur grows over her in tufts, vicious fangs erupt from nowhere, and she looms above me. The only thing that hasn't changed is her eyes.
I awake in a cold sweat, muscles tensed. My breathing is shallow, and as usual I slowly remind myself that it wasn't real.
Dawn is breaking outside, and I know that it'll be pointless trying to get back to sleep.
By the time the suns up, I decide to walk in to town and help out in the bakery. I haven't seen my family for a while, as I've been spending all of my spare time with Katniss. As I walk down the path to town there's a definite air of spring in the air, and I hum to myself.
As I enter the square everyone else is just leaving for school, I give Delly a friendly wave, and she waves back. As I enter the bakery, I see my oldest brother Sol at the counter. He gives a roar of delight as he see's me, and rushes around the counter to greet me.
"Haven't seen you in ages Peeta," He says, ruffling my hair.
"Yeah I'm sorry, I've been busy," I say guiltily. Because it's true, I haven't seen nearly enough of my family lately.
"Oh it doesn't matter, I expect you've been busy with the wedding eh?" I he says good naturedly. "I can't believe it my baby brother married before me." He smiles at me fondly.
I laugh slightly uncomfortably, "Where's everyone else?" I ask.
"Oh they're all in the back finishing breakfast," He says, and I go through in to the house. My mother, father and second oldest brother Robus are sitting around our rickety old wooden table. They all smile as they see me, and I sit down to join them for breakfast.
"Hows Katniss?" my father asks, and I notice my mother purses her lips in disapproval. I ignore her.
"Oh she's on the mend, she slipped on some ice in the winter, and hurt her foot, but she's pretty much recovered now." I say. I take a slice of bread and eat it, before discovering that it's very stale. I offered my family some of my winnings so they didn't have to live their lives on stale leftovers from the bakery, but my father refused to take it.
I spend the rest of the day, down at the bakery. It's hard work, but it keeps me busy which is what I need. Also it's nice to spend some time with my brothers, who mercilessly tease me about Katniss, but it's all in good fun, so I laugh back at them.
In the late afternoon I bid them goodbye, promising to come to dinner sometime in the week. I'm just shutting the door, when I hear someone call my name.
"Hey Peeta!" I look around and see Delly calling me across the square. I walk over to her smiling.
"Guess what Peeta? The teachers at school said there was mandatory programming tonight, I think that it's Katniss's wedding shoot, I heard they did it yesterday!" Delly looks breathless and exited.
I fix a smile on my face too, "oh that's brilliant Delly, she's going to look so beautiful," I say.
Delly actually squeals with excitement, "You're both going to be so happy!" She says beaming widely. "Anyway I've got to go," and she turns and runs back across the square.
'One of us is going to be happy,' I think sadly as I wander back towards the Victors Village.
I get something to eat, and at seven thirty I go in to the living room and switch the television on.
Delly is right. Sure enough, there's Caesar Flickerman, speaking before a standing-room-only crowd in front of the Training Centre, talking to an appreciative crowd about our upcoming nuptials. He introduces Cinna, who became an overnight star with his costumes for Katniss in the Games, and after a minute of good-natured chitchat, we're directed to turn our attention to a giant screen.
Initially, Cinna designed two dozen wedding gowns. Since then, there's been the process of narrowing down the designs, creating the dresses, and choosing the accessories. Apparently, in the Capitol, there were opportunities to vote for your favourites at each stage. Then I'm bombarded with pictures of Katniss in the final six dresses. Creamy lace and pink roses, Ivory satin and gold tattoos, a sheath of diamonds and jewelled veil, heavy white silk and sleeves that fall from her wrists to the floor, and pearls. I kind of zone out around the fourth dress. It's not that she doesn't look beautiful because she does, it's just that this is the Capitols vision of her, not mine.
"Let's get Katniss Everdeen to her wedding in style!" Caesar hollers to the crowd. I'm about to shut off the television, but then Caesar is telling us to stay tuned for the other big event of the evening. "That's right, this year will be the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Hunger Games, and that means it's time for our third Quarter Quell!"
I freeze, the quell isn't for months yet, so I'm wondering what they're going to do for it this early? It's going to be my first year as a mentor, and I'm dreading every second of it.
The anthem plays, and my throat tightens as President Snow takes the stage. He's followed by a young boy dressed in a white suit, holding a simple wooden box. The anthem ends, and President Snow begins to speak, to remind us all of the Dark Days from which the Hunger Games were born. When the laws for the Games were laid out, they dictated that every twenty-five years the anniversary would be marked by a Quarter Quell. It would call for a glorified version of the Games to make fresh the memory of those killed by the districts' rebellion.
President Snow goes on to tell us what happened in the previous Quarter Quells. "On the twenty-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that their children were dying because of their choice to initiate violence, every district was made to hold an election and vote on the tributes who would represent it."
I wonder how that would have felt. Picking the kids who had to go. It is worse, I think, to be turned over by your own neighbors than have your name drawn from the reaping ball.
"On the fiftieth anniversary," the president continues, "as a reminder that two rebels died for each Capitol citizen, every district was required to send twice as many tributes."
I imagine facing a field of forty-seven instead of twenty-three. Worse odds, less hope, and ultimately more dead kids. That was the year Haymitch won... .
"And now we honour our third Quarter Quell," says the president. The little boy in white steps forward, holding out the box as he opens the lid. We can see the tidy, upright rows of yellowed envelopes. Whoever devised the Quarter Quell system had prepared for centuries of Hunger Games. The president removes an envelope clearly marked with a 75. He runs his finger under the flap and pulls out a small square of paper. Without hesitation, he reads, "On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors."
I sit frozen for a few seconds, processing the information. Existing pool of victors? We were meant to be safe. But for us The Hunger Games are about to begin all over again. We're going back in to the arena.