Chapter Eleven.
District Nine.
Spelt Brassard, 16 years old;
District Nine Male.
He felt the gentle patter of rusty water trickle down from the pipes above, echoing throughout the cavernous room packed full of machinery. Bits of metal and gears that Spelt didn't really understand whirred around him and above his head. A small drop of water landed on him, dripped slowly down his neck and left a chill down his spine. Despite the whir of the machinery, there was nothing to be heard, nothing to distract Spelt nor make him feel breathless from the hum of a busy crowd or packed District.
Down here it was just him and him alone. And the rats, of course.
Spelt smiled as he ripped into a bread roll that his mother had made for his breakfast. As of an age that made him eligible to be reaped today, it was the one day of the year that Nine's authority – harsh and dictatorial – actually allowed a minute display of tenderness. It felt silly given the fact that it was only for something so callous as a Reaping, but a lot of kids enjoyed that they weren't expected to work. Spelt actually enjoyed keeping his hands busy and had volunteered to pick up another shift. It left him with something to do. Most kids would go and find their friends and occupy themselves with something – anything – to distract from the fear and gut-wrenching anxiety. Spelt didn't really have any of that. Work was the distraction for him. A welcome one.
He licked his fingers as he finished the bread roll and smiled at the warm bits of dried fruit that filled his belly and left him feeling only half-full. They didn't have much the Brassards but they had a tender, familial love that left Spelt feeling happy. He thought of his mother distracting herself over the cooking bowl – maybe having a bad day, or perhaps a good one – and a sad sort of smile pulled at the corner of Spelt's lips. He felt for her, he really did. Even after sixteen years of losing Spelt's twin brother at birth, she still longed for the pitter patter of another child's feet against the cold, cobbled floor. Spelt tried to be enough for her and she was by all means the most loving mother a son could have asked for. But that didn't mean he didn't occasionally notice the way she would lose herself in her melancholy, staring at Spelt with a longing in her eyes that he could never fulfil.
He understood it but it didn't make things easier. Another reason why Spelt preferred keeping himself busy at work. He had no friends as such. Down here in the rusty maze of pipes and complicated gears, Spelt enjoyed the hum of man's technological mastery.
There was a squeak as Spelt took a step forwards and the sad smile that had been on his face as he thought of his mother quickly vanished. In its place a light laugh left his lips as he bent under a pipe, pushing down on its red-coloured metal to ease himself into the crevice between a few of the larger bits of machinery below the factory's main floor.
He heard the squeak again, louder this time. "Where are you little guy?" Most of the time it wasn't just Spelt left with his thoughts and the humming of a live factory. This was the dark habitat of the rats and mice. Sometimes he felt like he was trespassing, not the other way around. That it wasn't fair for management to ask him to flush them out, catch them, dispose of them through any means necessary. It left Spelt with a bitter taste in his mouth. What made these small creatures any less significant than the harsh, brutish ways of the men above? Spelt never actually asked that question. He didn't want to get hit or lose his job and stop being able to support his parents with his upbringing. Besides, he wasn't really sure how to ask such a question to people that looked so stern and irritable.
Another reason why he preferred rats, mice and machinery. They didn't have a tendency to pull such disgruntled expressions at anything he might have said.
"Come on," Spelt continued, bending down even lower this time that his knee scuffed against the concrete. "I'm sure your friends have spoken about me. When have I ever listened to those idiots that want me to hurt you? I would never." He realised how foolish he would sound if someone actually heard him speaking to a rat. Yet Spelt didn't really mind. This job was seen as lower on the food chain even for a factory that loved to exploit the desperate. He never quite understood humanity's innate fear for rodents. Most people looked at them with either distaste or actually ran away. Spelt found them, like he did machinery, a blessed distraction from reality.
He took another tentative step forwards so he didn't accidentally step on something and felt his foot brush against a snare he'd set the other day. Spelt leaned closer and grinned warmly at the little rat that eyed him curiously, his nose twitching at the little bits of rope intertwined together.
Spelt had been given all sorts of rat poison and ways of flushing them out inhumanely. They had never actually made it down here. Spelt would do anything to help his parents like they'd helped him, but he'd rather lose his job than bring those things down with him. Maybe that was why he had no friends, because he found it easier to talk to things that weren't so difficult to comprehend and emotions that weren't always so obvious to understand, but so what? Spelt honestly didn't care what others thought of him. He had a heart and he always listened to what it had to say.
"I don't think my parents would like it if I took another one of you guys home," Spelt said as he managed to work the rat into the small cage he had by his side. It seemed cautious at first but when it realised there was no chance of danger, it scampered into the cage with enthusiasm. "Don't worry. I'll take you somewhere nice and safe."
If given the choice, Spelt would have spent all day down here rather than head up to the human world, where today marked the day where two of them would be whisked away to the Capitol, treated like the very animals that they despised. But he did not have that choice. He hurried along with the rat, taking care not to knock it against the pipes and made his way back up onto the ground floor.
Sunlight burned his eyes for a second, dizzying him. The rat squeaked again and Spelt smiled. Don't worry, Spelt thought. There's a lot worse out there. I haven't and nor will I ever be a part of it. He continued through the factory and safely released the rat away from the grounds.
One down, however many more to go. But not today.
Today was different.
Today was a special kind of cruel.
Iva Giorgi, 17 years old;
District Nine Female.
"Slower, Iva, no – no I –"
"Mum," Iva said, picking up the trowel and shaking it, "it's soil, it's a flower, what do you think is going to happen?"
Her mother chuckled and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. It was baking hot, almost suffocating with the sun glaring down and the two Giorgi women with nothing but scuffed up hats to protect themselves. Her mother seemed to enjoy it whilst Iva on the other hand hated it. But if her mother liked it, then Iva could stomach the blistering weather.
"The flowers are only going to grow if you want them to, Iva." She moved closer to her daughter and took the trowel out of Iva's hands. "Nature isn't stupid. If you care for the flowers, they'll blossom. If you will them to die, then nothing will happen."
Iva just stared at her mother. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay," Iva repeated. What else was she supposed to say? Her mother could go on – heart of gold, skin callused through years of hard work and gruelling existence – but Iva was hardly anything like her. She would hurt anything or anyone that dared lay a hand on this precious woman, more precious than Iva herself, but that didn't mean she had to look at a bed of flowers and feel anything except what is the point?
"See," her mother began to say, patting down the soil, sprinkling an array of different seeds and levelling the topsoil so it allowed room for growth. "It needs a lighter touch."
Iva continued to watch her mother work and admired the spirit the woman had. Truthfully, Iva was almost jealous. She had a nice word to say about anyone and everyone despite everything they'd been through together. Their lack of anything material except a bit of soil and a wooden shack on the outskirts of the District left much to be despised and envied, but Iva's mother had little of that. It had rubbed off enough on Iva for her to feel nearly the exact same way. As long as people stayed out of her business, didn't try to stick their noses where it didn't belong, then it suited Iva just fine.
"Are we walking to the Square together?" Iva's mother asked her daughter as she continued to work on the flowers.
"Yes," Iva said. "Why wouldn't we?"
"You might have arranged otherwise? A lot of kids seem to find comfort in being with each other."
"Those are the other kids," Iva said. "I'm fine walking with you."
Her mother laughed heartily. "I'll try not to embarrass you."
Iva smiled – it wasn't anything major, nothing loud or bright or overly positive, but a smile nonetheless – and picked up another trowel to help her mother. She felt guilty letting her do all the hard work. Even if she didn't quite understand the point, Iva knew the right thing to do was to put in the effort needed.
"It's been a while since I went to school, you know."
"I do," her mother sighed. "I don't mean it to be this hard, but if school isn't made compulsory and right now being in this predicament we're in, I just can't justify you going. I am sorry, Iva, truly I-"
"-it's fine. I don't need to go."
"But your friends?"
Iva shrugged her shoulders indifferently. "Haven't had the time to make them." Or the energy. She didn't mean anyone in this District – especially the other impoverished, hard-working kids – any harm, but that didn't mean she had to make her acquaintance with any of them. It had always just been Iva and her mother, through thick and thin, side by side, facing the world off. Iva knew her mother didn't see it that way but it was hard for Iva not to. "Some of the girls … they talk funny. The boys too. It's like they don't understand where we live, what we have to do every day. It's hard not to find it irritating."
"You sound like you're my age, Iva."
For a moment she found herself getting embarrassed but smothered that quickly. Even around her mother – the light of Iva's life – she sometimes felt like she didn't want to give too much away. She might take it in the wrong direction, or read too much into something that just wasn't there. Iva didn't need the hassle.
"I just mean they make things so much more complicated than they need to be." Iva heard her voice growing louder, firmer as she thought about the shallowness of some of the children, some of the kids she was sure didn't have their fingers in the mud or were at risk of slicing open skin if they weren't too careful especially when there was less food going around and money was scarce. "I don't need that place. I'm fine working with you. It's not right for you to do everything."
"You help me more than you know."
Iva could hear noise begin to rise from the small wooden fence they'd erected a couple of months ago. A few metres down the dirt path, a family was leaving their house, a teenage girl Iva recognised running ahead to catch up with another familiar face. Iva watched the two of them giggle and link arms, traipsing ahead of their families.
She wondered what they were thinking about, or what they were discussing, and for a moment she thought they noticed her looking over at the two of them. She immediately looked back down in the mud and made her hands busy. The last thing she needed was for them to recognise Iva and potentially walk over and speak to her. Iva knew what to say, how to be polite, how to actually be the decent human being she'd been raised to be.
But that didn't mean she wanted them to, nor anyone for that matter.
It's me and my mother, Iva thought as the two of them put their trowels away and took a step back to admire their work. It looked like nothing had actually changed, in Iva's opinion, but her mother was beaming with pride and for that Iva felt the pit of her stomach glow a little. I have to be here for her. I'm all she has, and she is all I have. I wouldn't change it for the world.
I can't promise that once we get past these pre-reaping chapters that updates will be daily like they currently are. But right now we are literally three districts away so I'm trying to keep up the pace.
I do apologise to those that I can see really are trying to catch up and then I go and post another chapter – it means a lot to see everyone reading and reviewing!
