Thank you to everyone who's been reading my story so far; it's my first story that I've ever published anywhere, and I'm so happy to see so many people reading it, and I hope you keep reading it! Tell me what you like and don't like so far about my story, and please, just enjoy!
Chapter 3.- Oak Peacewood
I scream as I throw the ax as hard as I can, watching it spin through the air and lodge in a nearby tree. I run over, wrench it out again, and throw it at another tree. Aldar seems to emerge from thin air, or just quietly from behind a tree. "Whoa, Oak, calm down," he says, looking at the still quivering ax in the tree. "I will NOT calm down, Aldar! I am seventeen years old, and I don't need this! I didn't fight in the war, I didn't have ANYTHING to do with it! And yet, I am the one being punished!" "You don't know that! Oak, you don't know you're going to be chosen!" I slump to the ground against the pine tree. "It doesn't matter if I'm chosen or not, Aldar! Someone I know is going to be chosen, and at least one of them is going to be killed!"
Aldar leans against the tree closest to him and pulls the ax out. He turns it over and over in his hands, wiping off the bark that clings to its blade. "I'd volunteer for you, you know that Oak?" "But you can't. And I wouldn't let you anyway." I push my thick dark hair behind my ear. "We should be working, Oak. It's not a holiday." Aldar walks over to me and hands my ax back. "Careful with this. You could hurt someone with it." Aldar disappears between the trees just as he had come. I stand up, brushing the needles from my pants.
I walk out of the woods and find my logging team. Forest looks up and wipes his forehead with his arm. "Where'd you go, Oak? We've been having an awful time without you!" I pick up the end of the saw. "I had to go let off some steam, sorry," I say. Sable, pushing her brown braid behind her shoulder, says, "The Peacekeeper in charge just asked where the third of our team was; I had to lie and tell him you went to get water. He barely let us off." "Sorry," I say, turning my attention to the next tall tree. "Let's bring it down," I say. Now that we're seventeen, we work after school three days out of the week. Once we're eighteen we'll leave school completely. Aldar has been my best friend since we were little, even though he's a year older than I am. And Forest and Sable and I have always known each other, since we're all the same age, seventeen.
The Peacekeeper walks past again. "Get working! Lazy! If I see you doing nothing again I'll take all three of you straight to the whipping block." I glare at the helmeted head, but it won't do any good. I resent the Peacekeepers being in our District, I resent the power they have over us. It's been more than a year since the uprising against the Capitol was ended, and we feel its impact every day. I know I wanted the Capitol brought down, but I did not raise a finger against it. I did nothing, nothing, in the rebellion, and I am the one who might be killed for it. While I push and pull the saw against the tree bark, I wonder, why aren't the people who instigated the rebellion being punished? Then I realise: they are. They are receiving the ultimate punishment by watching their children die for their actions. And I get the worst of it.
It's well past dusk by the time the horn goes, ending the work day. I trudge home to find my mother in front of the stove, wood chips in her hair. "Mother," I say, and walk over to embrace her. Her tired and worn face breaks into a soft smile. "Hello, Oak." We eat our supper in comfortable silence, then get up to go to bed. My bed is a thin mattress in the corner of my mother's room. I curl up on its uncomfortable hardness. "Goodnight, Mother," I say, hearing her soft breathing across the room. I can't sleep though. I stare at the ceiling, thinking about what will happen next week, and whose name will be chosen. And I know, I just know, that when the name is pulled out of the bowl, the paper will say Oak Peacewood.