Chapter 1: Townie Versus Seamer
Blanketed with a continuous layer of cold dust that hangs in the air like a thick layer of fog, District 12 has always had the atmosphere of a ghost town. This tiny backwater, shoved into a corner of Panem almost like an afterthought, is truly the end of the line. Get a little beyond the immediate vicinity of the Justice Building and there is nothing but the squalor of shantytowns as far as the eye can see.
These falling-down shacks are collectively known as "the Seam," and it is where the poorest of Twelve's poor scrape together their meager existence. Almost all of the men are coal miners by trade, the womenfolk wives and homemakers – though there are a few who manage to make an, if not quite honest living, then a decent one, selling contraband wares in the Hob black market. Marrying young is common, and children with olive tones are birthed like rabbits. The slums of the poorest district in Panem – where you can starve, fuck, get pregnant and die in squalid safety.
The one little enclave that escapes that fate only extends a couple of miles directly beyond the Justice Building – houses of brick and stone instead of rotting wood, cobblestoned streets instead of dust and gravel. This is the Merchant sector of the district, pretty much all of which is populated by folk of Aryan looks, blue eyes and blonde hair. The closest thing to an elite in this pathetic district, many of these people likely had ancestors who hailed from District 1, at least before the war. Here, though, they go by another name, a rather unkind one – "Townies."
No one is really sure how or why the resentment started. Some posit that it began when Belle Everdeen, the beautiful girl from Town who was the daughter of the respected apothecary, ran off and eloped with a Seam miner. Slept with him, got knocked up with his babies – two pretty girls. But then her handsome miner died in a fiery explosion, and she sank into a deep depression.
But the animosity between Townies and "Seamers," as the more common folk are known, dates back far beyond one outlying case of a wayward Merchant's daughter sleeping with Seam trash. It dates back farther than the adventures of a Seam boy coming home a Victor from the dreaded Hunger Games – one of only two in over seventy-five years – in place of his fair-haired and skinned district partner and ally who placed fifth. The hatred likely rose like the ashes from the ruins of the Dark Days. Whatever the origins, Townies and Seamers rarely associate with each other now. A few brave coal-dusters are able to make stilted trades with the businessmen, always on the sly in back alleys. But outside of the one case of Belle Everdeen, you never, ever sleep with a Townie if you're a Seamer. Or a Seamer if you're a Townie – not even at the Slag Heap, where the moans of passion are commonly heard.
It has gotten so deadly, this resentment between the haves and the have-nots, that rival gangs have formed and mixed it up along the dividing line between Seam and Town.
To the outside observer, these gangs of the Seamers and the Townies are not as organized and sophisticated as, say, the Career pack or any other alliance in the Hunger Games. Between them, they cause some minor headaches for the Peacekeepers, but in a backwater like this, the white-plated cadets from the Capitol are hard-pressed to find any way to stop them. Some officers see the gangs doing more good, inasmuch as it keeps the district divided even more than the Games do – and thus, lower the chances of a united Twelve rebelling against the Capitol.
An overcast morning, with the sun straining valiantly to poke between the clouds as well as the coal dust, finds one Townie on the wrong side of the tracks, scratching an obscene message into the back-alley wall of the Hob. A pair of looming shadows is all that makes the ne'er-do-well halt in his chicken-scratch scrawling, and seeing the two Seamers coming for him, he bolts, leading them deep into Town. Another pair of fair-haired kids give chase to these dusky assailants.
"Hey, Townies!" The first Town boy dodges and weaves until he is finally ringed in in the cobblestoned stretch of the school play-yard, the stone statues of Twelve's pair of Victors looming over him as the Seam devils close in. "Townies! Townies!"
The Seamers set themselves upon him but are soon overwhelmed by more Townies dashing into the school play-yard to help their friend. A furious fistfight ensues, brawling and sprawling enough that a piercing whistle is soon heard. Head Peacekeeper Romulus Thread comes dashing up, gun drawn, a redheaded and a younger lieutenant by the name of Darius huffing and puffing behind him.
"All right, all right! Break it up there! You hoodlums!" The kicking and punching halts as the Peacekeepers draw up. With a pepper-gray head of hair and stubble to match it, the contrast this creates with the redness in Thread's face is almost amusing. Nothing about his demeanor is, though, as he turns angrily to the Seamers. His beady eyes quickly pick out their leader, and to his credit, the Head Peacekeeper is not intimidated by how the burly youth has a couple of inches on him in height.
Gale Hawthorne, aged 20, glowers at the man, barely suppressing a sneer. He hates all things Capitol, and only little more than a year installed in his post, Thread is every bit an elitist Capitolite. Then again, so was Cray, his predecessor in the job, but Cray assimilated into Twelve's ways after being plied with good venison and women; in return, he let the warring factions of Townies and Seam tire each other out and left the district alone. No more of that now. Thread has a vested interest in keeping Twelve subjugated, and has seemingly come to decide that the gang wars hurt more than they might help keeping the district as a whole divided – and help others forget who the real enemy is.
It also is infuriating that, even more than sticking his Capitol nose in business that's not his, Thread has come to decide that, whenever a gang fight breaks out, it is always the Seamers' fault. Just because the Townies, with their fair hair and fair skin, look closer to what Capitolites consider beauty. Rye Mellark, the Townie's leader and the cut-up middle son of the Baker, starts fights more often than he finishes them, but that doesn't mean a whit to Thread.
"All right, Hawthorne, get your coal rats out of here!" Thread sneers.
Gale doesn't move a tick. Thread's teeth gnash. "Please. This is my beat, you know, and I'd like to keep it quiet."
Gale finally gives a jerk of his head, and he and his Seamers prowl out of the school play-yard.
The Townies may have won the bout, but only because the Peacekeepers are quietly on their side. And you wouldn't know it when Thread growls at the blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids, "And you all beat it too! Say goodbye to the kiddies, Freeman." Darius Freeman, one of the few holdovers from Cray's regime, is actually friendly once you get to know him, but that might be due more to his youth than anything else. Blotted out in the shadow of Thread's looming presence, the handsome younger officer often appears weak-chinned and feeble, especially now as he hustles after his superior.
Rye surveys his troops. They are all still itchy, antsy, pent-up with energy they were halted in exerting by the quelling of a fight they didn't get to finish.
"Hate those Seam rats! Gotta squash them!"
"Rise to the top!"
"Blow 'em in their own mines!"
"Easy, fellas! Come on, Townies, huddle up!" Rye leads his faithful out of the play-yard and down into the back alley behind his father's bakery. Most Town kids inherit their families' businesses, either by virtue of being the first-born or marrying into another prominent family. Rye has always known that the Bakery was his eldest brother, Bannock's destiny, not his, and he's never had a desire to marry anyone anyway. Though he loves to have fun with his on-again, off-again girl Delly.
Scanning the faces of his soldiers, Rye stops and does a double-take on the copper-haired crew cut of one dirtied face. Speaking of girls…
"Beat it, Jo!"
Johanna Mason, a District 7 ex-pat who apparently cut and ran, wandering all the way from the lumberyards there to the seam lines here, scowls and tries to muscle her way into staying. "Come on, Mellark, you gotta let me into the gang! Didn't you see me in that scrap? I was smashing!"
"BEAT IT!" The Townies expel her, and Jo stomps off out of the alley, her androgynous countenance doing nothing to help her cement a place in the gang.
"Those Seamers started it!" Ray "Action" Donner, son of the candy store owner, whines.
"And we're gonna finish it!" Rye assures him. "I'm fixing to ask Hawthorne for a war council at the Harvest Festival Dance tonight!"
"Aw, gee," Damien Cartwright, Delly's little brother, gulps. "For what?"
"To negotiate terms and have ourselves a rumble! A rumble to decide who owns this district once and for all!"
"And rise to the top!" Action is exultant.
"Terms will be laid out judiciously – if Hawthorne agrees," Rye muses. "They might say blades… they might say pickaxes, miners that they are. They might say zip guns…"
"Zip guns? Aw, gee," Damien whimpers. "But only Peacekeepers' allowed firearms! Supposing they do say guns…"
"…. We'll just have to swipe a few from the Barracks, won't we?" Rye shrugs. "I'm not saying they will ask for guns, I'm saying that they might – and we gotta be prepared. Now, what's our move, Townies?"
"I say go, go!" Action hollers.
"Tear 'em!"
"Sock 'em!"
"What do you say, Rye?" Mist Berryhill, Rye's trusted second, asks.
"I say we have to hold this turf like we've always held it – with skin! But if Hawthorne says blades…. I say blades! If they say guns or pick-axes, I say guns or pick-axes!"
"YEAH!"
"All right, cats, we rumble! Now, protocol for a war council states I take a lieutenant with me to set the whole thing up!"
"That's Mis…" Damien starts to say.
"That's me!" Action crows.
"That's Peeta," Rye corrects, sending a conciliatory look Mist's way.
"Aw, who needs Peeta?" Action whines at the mention of Rye's baby brother.
"We need Peeta!" Rye lays down the law. "My brother helped me start the Townies!"
"He don't belong anymore!" Action insists. "Had to go scrounge to that drunk of a Victor for a crummy job!"
"Job or not, he'll come through for us! Peeta's always come through for us, and he always will! I'll talk to him and he'll come onboard – you'll see!" Rye reassures. "Now, let's move out, boys! We got a dance to dress for…. then the Seamers will really see a harvest come due!" The Townies take to the streets with renewed vigor, ready to dominate.
Hours later, Rye is standing agog in the backyard of mansion belonging to that drunk Abernathy, watching his baby brother turn down an opportunity to facilitate the war council. Peeta's excuse? He has to feed the sloshed Victor's geese – plus clear out the man's empty beer bottles, as he is doing now, bringing opened and used crates of them up from the basement.
"Peeta…. we need you if we're going to war! I made it cool with the guys when you decided to take a leave of absence. Why ya getting cold feet coming back now?"
Peeta smiles to himself, shaking his head. "I don't know how to explain it. But… I feel like something else is waiting for me."
"What? The Reaping? We've all got that waiting for us!" A slight pause, and Rye's orbs expand. "The arena? You night-training with ol' Abernathy to volunteer? Are you mad? Is that why you took this job schlepping his trash?"
"No! No! Something… else. I…. I don't know what's coming, only that something is!"
"But you have to at least come to the dance!" Rye pleads. "We've always gone to the Harvest Festival every year!" He decides to make one last play. "Peeta, I already told the guys you'd be there…. If you don't show, I'll be labeled a wuss."
Peeta sighs. "What time?"
"10:00, in the Square."
"… All right. If Haymitch agrees to let me off in time."
Rye whoops, and the brothers shake on it.
"Womb to tomb?"
"Birth to earth, and I'll live to regret this!" Peeta slaps palms.
"Who knows? Maybe whatever you think's coming will be shaking it at the dance tonight!" Rye cackles as he dashes out of the Victors' Village.