My feet back up and I blend in with the trees. I cover my mouth with my glove to disperse the white of my breath in the icy air. Adrenaline courses through me, wiping all concerns of the day from my mind as I concentrate on the immediate threat in front of me. What's going on? Has Thread turned on the fence as an additional security precaution? Or does he know that I have escaped his net today? Is he determined to trap me outside the district until he can apprehend me and arrest me? Drag me to the square to be locked in the stockade or whipped or hanged?
Calm down, I order myself. It's not the first time I have been trapped outside district by an electrified fence. It's happened a few times over the years, but Gale was always with me. The two of us would pick a comfortable tree to hang out in until the power was shut off, which it always did eventually. If I was running late, Prim got in the habit of going to the Meadow to check if the fence was charged, to spare my mom the worry.
Why do I have a feeling that today the power won't be shut off, and that I have to beat a ticking clock. I think. But today my family could never imagine that I would be in the woods. I've taken every step to mislead them. So if I don't show up, will they worry? And there's a part of me that's worried, too, because there's no possible way that it's a coincidence, the power coming back on the very day I return to the woods. Way beyond coincidence. I think.
I thought no one saw me sneak under the fence, but who knows? There are always eyes for hire. Someone reported Gale kissing me. Still that was in the broad daylight before I was more careful with my behavior. Could there be surveillance cameras? I wonder about this. Is this the way that President Snow knew about the kiss? It was dark when I went under and my face was bundled in a scarf. But the list of suspects to be trespassing in the woods is probably a short one. There goes that idea. I think.
My eyes peer through the trees, past the fence, into the Meadow. All I can see is wet snow illuminated here and there by the light from the windows on the edge of the Seam. No Peacekeepers in sight, no signs I'm being hunted. Whether Thread knows I left the district or not, my plan still remains the same: get back into the district unseen and act like nothing is out of the ordinary.
Any contact with the chain link or the coils of barbed wire that guard the top would mean instant electrocution. I don't think I can burrow under without risking detection, and the grounds frozen hard anyways. That leaves only one choice. Somehow I'm going to have to go over it.
I begin to skirt along the tree line, searching for a tree with a branch high enough to fit my needs. After about a mile, I come upon an old maple that might do. The trunk is too wide and icy to shinny up, though, there are no low branches. I climb a neighboring tree and leap precarious into the maple, almost losing my hold on the slick bark. But I manage to get a grip and slowly inch my way out on a limb that hangs above the barbed wire.
As I look down, I remember why Gale and I always waited in the woods instead of trying to tackle the fence. Bring high enough to avoid being fried means you gotta be at least twenty feet in the air. I guess my branch is twenty-five feet. Crap! I think, that's a dangerously long drop even for someone who has years of experience in trees. But what choice do I have? I could look for another branch, but it's almost dark now. The falling snow will obscure the moonlight. Here, at least, I got a snowbank to cushion my fall. Even if I could find another branch, which is doubtful, who knows what I will be jumping into? I throw my empty game bag around my neck and slowly lower myself until I'm hanging by my hands. For a moment, I gather my courage. Then I release my fingers.
There's a sensation of falling, then I hit the ground with a jolt that goes right up my spine. A second later my rear end hits the ground. I lie in the snow, darn near paralyzed, trying to assess the damage. Without standing, I can tell by the pain in my left heel and tailbone that I'm injured. The question is how bad. I'm hoping for bruise, but when I force myself on to my feet, I suspect that I've broken something as well. I can walk, though, so I to get moving, trying to hide the limp as best I can.
My mom and Prim can't know I was in the woods. I need to work up some sort of alibi, no matter how thin. Some shops in the square are still open, so I go in one and purchase white cloth for bandages. We're running low, anyway. In another, I buy a bag of sweets for Prim. I stick one of the candies in my mouth, feeling the peppermint melt on my tongue, and I realize it's the first thing I've eaten all day. I meant to make a meal at the lake, but once I saw Twill and Bonnie's condition, it seemed wrong to take a single mouthful from them.
By the time I reach the house, my left heel will bear no weight at all. I decide to tell my mom I was trying to mend a leak in the roof of our old house and slid off. As for the missing food, I'll just be vague about who I handed it out to. I drag myself to the door, all ready to collapse in front of the fire. But instead, I get another shock.
Two Peacekeepers, a man and a woman, are standing in the doorway to our kitchen. It never rains, but it pours. I think. The woman remains impassive, but I register a flicker of surprise on the man's face. They weren't expecting me. They know I was in the woods and should be trapped there now.
"Hello," I say in a neutral voice.
My mom appears behind them, but keeps her distance. "Here she is, just time for dinner, she says a little too brightly. I'm beyond late for dinner.
I consider removing my boots as I normally would but doubt I could without revealing my injuries. Instead I pull my hood off and shake the snow from my hair. "Can I help you with something?" I ask the Peacekeepers.
"Head Peacekeeper Thread sent us with a message for you," says the woman.
"They've been waiting for hours," my mom adds.
They've been waiting for me to fail to return. To confirm I electrocuted by the fence or trapped in the woods so they could take my family in for questioning.
"Must be an important message," I say.
"May we ask where you have been, Miss Everdeen?" the woman asks.
"Might be easier ask where I haven't been," I say with a sound of exasperation. I cross into the kitchen, forcing myself to use my foot normally even though every step is excruciating. I pass between the Peacekeepers and make it to the table alright. I fling my bag down and turn to see Prim standing stiffly by the hearth. Haymitch and Peeta are here as well, sitting in a pair of matching rockers, playing a game of chess. Were they here by chance or were they "invited" by the Peacekeepers. Either way, I'm glad they're here. Peeta looks up at me, and I wink at him.
"So where haven't you been?" Haymitch asks in bored voice.
"Well I haven't been talking to the Goat Man about getting Prim's goat pregnant, because someone gave me completely inaccurate information as to where he lives," I say emphatically to Prim.
"No I didn't," Prim says. "I told you exactly."
"You said that he lived next to the west entrance to the mines," I say.
"The east entrance," Prims corrects me.
"You distinctly said the west, because I said 'Next to the slag heap?' and you said 'Yeah,'" I say.
I look at mom in my peripheral vision and she is trying not to laugh at me and Prim bickering like two children, which isn't much of a stretch.
"The slag heap is next to the east entrance," say Prim patiently.
"No. When did you say that?" I demand.
"Last night." Haymitch chimes in.
"It's was definitely the east," Peeta says. He looks at Haymitch and they both laugh. I swing my arms to full extension and glare at Peeta and he tries to look contrite. "I'm sorry, but it's what I've been saying. You don't listen when people talk to you."
"Bet people told you he didn't live there today and you didn't listen," says Haymitch.
"Uh! Shut up, Haymitch," I say, clearly indicating he was right.
Haymitch and Peeta crack up and Prim allows herself a smile.
"Fine. Somebody else can arrange to get the stupid goat knocked up," I say, which makes them laugh. And I think, This is why they've made it this far, Haymitch and Peeta. Nothing throws them.
I look at the Peacekeepers. The man is smiling, but the woman is unconvinced. Everyone's a critic. I think. "What's in the bag?" she asks sharply.
I know she's hoping to find game or wild plants. Something that clearly condemns me. I dump the contents on the table. "See for yourself."
"Oh, good," says my mom, examining the cloth. "We're running low on bandages."
Peeta comes to the table and opens the bag of candy. "Oh, peppermints," he says, popping one in his mouth.
"They're mine." I take a swipe for the bag. He tosses it to Haymitch, who stuffs a fistful of sweets in his mouth before passing the bag to a giggling Prim.
"None of you deserve candy!" I say.
"What, because we're right?" Peeta wraps an arm around me. I give a small yelp a pain as my tailbone objects. I try to turn it into a sound of indignation, but I can see in his eyes that he knows I'm hurt. "Okay, Prim said west. I distinctly heard west. And we're all idiots, How's that?"
"Better," I say and accept his kiss. The kiss must have went longer than I expected because I heard Haymitch clear his throat. Then I remembered that the two Peacekeepers. "You had a message for me?"
"From Head Peacekeeper Thread," says the woman. "He wanted you to know that the fence surrounding District 12 will now have electricity twenty-four hours a day."
"Didn't it already?" I ask, a little innocently.
"He thought you might be interested in passing this information along to your cousin," says the woman.
"Thank you. I'll tell him that. I'm sure we'll all sleep soundly now that the lapse in security is addressed." I know I'm pushing things, but the comment give me a sense of satisfaction.
The woman's jaw tightens. None of this has gone as planned, but she has no further orders. She gives me a curt nod and leaves, the man trailing in her wake. When my mom has locked the door behind them, I slump against Peeta. Peeta's arm automatically wraps around my back and his other hand cradles my neck like the night before the Games, and I feel myself start to break a little at the strength of his embrace.
"Don't you think you were pushing it just a little there?" Haymitch harped.
"Never mind that, what is?" says Peeta, holding me steady.
"Oh, I banged up my left foot. The heel. And my tailbone has had a very bad day, too." He helps me over to one of the rockers and I lower myself onto the padded cushion.
My mom ease off my boot. "What happened?"
"I slipped and fell." Four pairs of eyes stared at me in disbelief. "On some ice." But we all know that the house is bugged and it's not safe to talk openly. Not here, not now.
Having stripped off my sock, my mom's fingers probe the bones in my heel and I wince. "There might be a break," she says. She checks my other foot. "This one seems alright." She judges my tailbone to be badly bruised.
Prim's dispatched to get my pajamas and robe. When I'm changed, my mom makes a snow pack for my left heel and props it up on a hassock. I eat three bowls of stew and half a loaf of bread while the others dine at the table. I stare at the fire, thinking of Bonnie and Twill, hoping the heavy, wet snow covered my tracks.
Prim comes and sits next to me on the floor leaning her head against my knee. We suck on peppermints as I brush her soft blond hair back behind an ear. "How was school?" I ask.
"All right. We learn about coal by-products." she says. We stare at the fire for a while. "Are you going to try on your wedding dresses?"
"Not tonight. Tomorrow probably," I say.
"Wait until I get home, okay?" she says.
"Sure." If they don't arrest me first.
My mom gives me a cup of chamomile tea with a dose a sleep syrup, and my eyes begin to droop immediately. She wraps my bad foot, and Peeta volunteers to get me to bed. I start out by leaning on his shoulder, but I'm so wobbly that he just scoops me up and take me upstairs. Before we are out of sight of everyone else I gently, and lightly kiss Peeta's cheek. He tucks me in and says good night but I catch his hand and hold him there. A side effect of sleep syrup is that it makes people less inhibited, like white liquor, and I know I have to control my tongue. But I don't want him to go. In fact, I want him to climb in bed with me, for old time sake. To be there when the nightmares hit. For reasons I can't quite form, I know I can't ask that. Not here. Not like this.
This being that there could be listen devices in the room. I think. "Don't go yet. Not until I fall asleep." I say.
Peeta sits on the side of my bed, warming my hand in both of his. "With you being late, I thought you might have changed your mind. Not being here for dinner."
I'm foggy, but I have enough sense to make out what Peeta meant. With the fence going on and the Peacekeepers waiting for me when I showed up and mostly me showing up late. He thought I made a run for it, and possibly ran with Gale in tow. I hope he doesn't think I would take Gale over him. I think.
"No, I'd have told you," I say. I pull his hand up and lean my cheek against the back of it, taking in the faint smell of cinnamon and dill from the breads he must have baked today. I want to tell him about Twill and Bonnie and the uprising and the fantasy of District 13, but it's not safe and I feel myself slipping away, so I get one more sentence out. "Stay with me."
Just as the last tendrils of the sleep syrup are about to pull me under, I hear Peeta whisper one word. "Always."
My mom lets me sleep until noon, and then rouses me to check my heel. I'm ordered a week of bed rest and I don't object because I feel so lousy. Not just my heel and tailbone. But my whole body aches with exhaustion. So I let my mom doctor and feed me breakfast in bed and tuck another quilt around me. Then I just lie there, staring out my window at the winter sky, pondering how on earth this will all turn out. I think a lot about Bonnie and Twill, and the pile of white wedding dresses downstairs, and if Thread figured out how I got back in and arrest me. It's funny, because he could just arrest me, anyway, based on past crimes, but maybe he has to have something a little more irrefutable to do it, now that I'm a victor. And I wonder if President Snow is in contact with Thread. I think it's unlikely that he will ever acknowledge that old Cray existed, but now that I'm a nationwide, is he carefully instructing Thread what to do? Or is Thread acting on his own. At any rate, I'm sure they'd both agree on keeping me locked up here in the district with the fence.
For the next few days, I jump whenever there's a knock at the door. No Peacekeeper shows up to arrest me, though, so I eventually begin to relax. I'm further assured when Peeta tells me casually that the power is off in certain sections of the fence because crews are securing the base of the chain link to the ground. Thread must believe I somehow got under the thing, even with the deadly current running through it. It's a break for the district, to have the Peacekeepers busy doing something else besides abusing people.
Peeta comes by every day to bring me cheese buns and begins to help on my family book. It's an old thing, made of parchment and leather. Some herbalist on my mom's side of the family started it ages ago. The books composed page after page of ink drawings of plants with description of their medical uses. My dad added a section on edible plants that was my guidebook to keeping us alive after his death. For a long time, I wanted to record my own knowledge in it. Things I've learned from experience or from Gale, and the information that I picked up when I was training for the Games. I didn't because I'm no artist and it's so crucial the pictures are drawn in exact detail. That's where Peeta comes in. Some of the plants he knows already, others we have dried samples of, and others I have to describe. He makes sketches on scrap paper until I'm satisfied, then I let him draw them in the book. After that, I carefully print everything I know about the plant.
It's quiet, absorbing work that helps take my mind off my troubles. I like to watch his hands as he works, making a blank page bloom with ink, adding touches of color to our previously black and yellowish book. His face takes on a special look when he concentrates. His usual easy expression is replaced by something more intense and removed that suggests an entire world is locked away inside him. I've seen flashes of this before: in the arena, or when he speaks to the crowd. I don't quite know what to make of it. I also become fixated on his eye lashes, which you ordinarily don't see because their blond. But up close, in the sunlight slanting in from the window, they're a light golden color and so long I don't know how they from getting all tangle up when he blinks. I lean over and lightly kiss his cheek. Peeta stops in mid stroke, smiling up at me, then returns to his attention to the book.
One afternoon Peeta stops shading a blossom and looks up suddenly that I start, but all he says, "You know, I think this is the first time we've done anything normal together."
I lean in and kiss him on the lips, and I get a few more. "Yeah." I agree. Our whole relationship had been tainted by the Games. Normal was never a part of it. "Nice for a change."
Each afternoon he carries me downstairs for a change of scenery and I unnerve everybody by turning on the television. Usually we watch it only when it's mandatory, because a mix of propaganda and displays of Capitol power – including clip from seventy-four years of Hunger Games – is so odious. But now I'm looking for something special. The mockingjay that Bonnie and Twill are basing all their hopes on. I know its foolishness, but if it is, I want to rule it out. And erase the idea of a thriving District 13 from my mind for good.
My first sighting is in the news story referencing the Dark Days. I see the smoldering remains of the Justice Building in District 13 and just catch the black-and-white underside of a mockingjay's wing as it flies across the upper right-hand corner. That doesn't prove anything, really, it's just an old shot goes with an old tale.
However, serval days later something else grabs my attention. The main newscaster is reading a piece about a graphite shortage affecting the manufacturing of items in District 3. They cut to what is supposed to be live footage of a female reporter, encased in a protective suit, standing in front of the ruins of the Justice Building in 13. Through her mask, she reports that unfortunately a study today has just determined that the mines are still too toxic to approach. End of story. But before they cut back to the main newscaster, I see the unmistakable flash of that same mockingjay's wing.
The reporter has simply been incorporated into the old footage. She's not in District 13 at all. Which begs the question, What is?