Chapter 3: Defending My Honor
It is a rainy Sunday afternoon in the Bakery. The shopfront is closed for the day, but that doesn't mean there isn't still work to do.
I've been living under the roof of the Mellarks for close to six weeks, and in that time, I have done my best to acclimate to the ways of the household. I mostly help with the cleaning, and sometimes with shunting labor, bringing up supplies from the basement that doubles as the Bakery's storeroom. But not with cooking, and never with baking. I am fairly confident in my lack of skill in the ways around the kitchen, despite our conservative district maintaining that the kitchen and the home rearing is woman's work. Plus, I'm quite certain that the Witch would never let me near any of the rolling pins or the ovens unless it's to clean them; Peeta probably had to haggle with his mother just to get me to clear and arrange the cakes and pastries in the display windows – confectionary delights which I'm always careful about handling. I wouldn't have enough to do to justify earning my keep, room and board otherwise.
On this particular gloomy day, I am left alone in the front of the store with Peeta's brother, Rye. I know the middle Mellark son mostly by reputation – until I had to drop out to care for Mother, he was a year ahead of Peeta and me in school. A champion on the wrestling squad, if memory serves, but then again, I only attended one match: the championship bout, which Peeta lost to his own sibling. But most of all, Rye was known for being a cut-up and a clown.
I keep my head down as I sweep behind the counter, but occasionally, I'll lift my head to keep him in my sights, if for no other reason than to track him. There's something I don't trust about the guy, and I only trust Peeta marginally better.
Also (though it's difficult to even admit in my own head), the boy aimlessly wiping down the dessert tables is not nearly as handsome as his younger brother, and Peeta is the one with burn marks on his face. I conclude it's because Rye more resembles his wench of a mother, and all the worse for him.
"So, where's your mother, workhouse?" Rye has only ever addressed me by the Merchant slang referring to Community Home brats in the close to a month and a half I've been here. I don't look up from where I'm pushing the dust bunnies towards the wastebasket in the corner.
"Leave my mother out of it," I mumble. "She's dead."
With any other normal, more sensitive person, that should be the end of it. But Rye just won't let it alone.
"What she die of?"
"None of your damn business," I snip. In truth, the district coroner had given Primrose and I the option of viewing and approving the death certificate, following Mother's autopsy. I hadn't brought myself to look, but had made Primrose review it. If she ever gets out of the Community Home alive and follows in our mother's footsteps as a Healer, she'll need to deal in some death certificates in those tragic moments when she might lose a patient.
"What's about your sister, then? She looks just like your mum."
I lift my head, glowering at him dangerously, warningly. "You'd better not say anything about her…" I growl.
Rye merely smirks. "Oh, I ain't saying nuthin'. Your sister…. she looks like a nice one. A regular bad'un, she is, or will be when she comes of age." I don't like the leering look in his eyes at all. "Just as well your mum ain't here to see her turn into a beauty whore."
"What did you say?!" I shout, hefting the broom menacingly.
"I said it's a good thing your mother died when she did so she don't see nice Aryan boys rip your sister's bit of skirt…."
I'm amazed Rye even gets that much filth out of his pie-hole. In any case, he's running his mouth so much, he isn't ready for me when I rush him, and all the less when I don't even waste time charging around the counter. I vault over it instead and drive him back with the broom like it's a bayonet. Rye stumbles into a dessert table and overturns it with a crash. I'm on him before he can get to his feet, deftly reversing my grip on the broom's handle and clobbering him over the head with the blunt end. Rye is hollering in pain and holding a hand to his skull, but I don't let him up, pursuing him around and around the bakery. Seizing a rolling pin, he attempts to parry my broom blows in the most bizarre of swordplay, but his fencing skills are nowhere near those of his wrestling and I disarm him quickly. In a bit of delicious schadenfreude, the rolling pin lands on Rye's foot, and he hollers like a stuck pig in his family's sideyard pigpen. Rye clumsily somersaults over the counter to get some space between us. Snarling, I windmill the broom around and out, sweeping the tabletop and forcing him to duck. The broom's thistles catch on some cups resting on a drying rack and they clatter to the floor.
I've just rounded the corner of the counter to bullrush Rye again and pin him down next to the wall when there is a pattering of running feet and the Witch rushes in. "Here, here now – what's going on here?!" she shrieks.
"She started it!" Rye shouts, pointing at me, and I almost grin viciously at how his finger appears to be shaking. The ass finally seems to remember that he is a wrestler for he attempts to turn the tide by suddenly running at me and grabbing me in a violent hold. I shriek and struggle and kick, my blue skirts swishing at my ankles as my knee comes up and connects with his groin. Rye grunts in pain and stumbles away, yet still I go for him, lest he think he can try and get fresh with me again.
Rye glares daggers at me. "You little wench! I'll show you some respect….!"
He barely takes one step towards me before a blur appears between us out of nowhere. There is a sharp CRACK! and another howl of pain, and I watch as Rye flails back into the wall, holding his nose. Peeta's immense breadth is now standing before me, apparently un-qualmed that he's just socked his brother in the face to defend me, his indentured servant.
"Peeta!" the Witch barks, at the moment the Baker belatedly stumbles into the front of the shop, clothes and hair damply plastered to his skin; he must have been doing some menial labor out in the rain. "How dare you hit your brother!"
I want to point out how, according to rumor, she is perfectly okay with hitting her own sons herself, but I hold my tongue.
Peeta merely rounds on her, cobalt blue eyes flashing. "I won't have him untowardly touching a district lady!" I feel my cheeks flush pink. No one's ever deigned to call me a lady.
The Witch merely chuckles with derisive amusement. "I'd hardly call a Seam slut like her a lady – especially one so short-tempered as to physically attack another!" And she sends me a truly vile glare.
"It's true!" Rye squeaks, the timbre in his voice hilariously altered by the way he is pinching his shattered nose. "She came at me first!"
Peeta and I lock eyes, and when his gaze shifts down, I blush further and sheepishly lower the broom. "With a broomstick? Rye, you whiny little bitch – you've faced off against unarmed wrestlers more intimidating than her! You're losing your touch…"
"He attacked me first!" I blast out, which is the truth, from a certain point of view.
"With what?" the Witch scoffs.
"He called my sister and mother names!" I cry.
"And so what if he did? They likely deserved what he said – and worse!"
"It's a LIE!" I shriek at her, balling my hands into fist.
"Well, I believe her," Peeta speaks up.
I blink at him, staring at him. "You do?"
The Witch looks tongue-tied for a fraction of a second. "You do? Preposterous! Peeta, you can't possibly believe a little Seam slut like her…"
"Miriam…" the Baker rumbles warningly, no doubt in regards to her using such a slur, though it's weak.
Peeta shows remarkable courage facing down his mother's wicked words as he nods firmly. "I believe Katniss. Really, Mother, do you even know your own son at all? If Rye were a bird, he'd be the squawkiest jabberjay this side of the Great River! About time someone made him shut his mouth." And he sends me an almost admiring look. The one corner of his mouth makes the smile cruelly twisted, thanks to the burn marks on the side of his face, but I nonetheless have to concede that I rather like his smile. Feeling an odd flutter in my chest, I give him my best grin back, grudgingly grateful.
The scuffle is mercifully interrupted by a loud knock coming from the back loading dock door, the sound of the metal echoing into the front of the shop over the rain.
The Witch throws up her hands. "Don't people know we're closed…?" she mutters darkly.
"I'll see who it is," the Baker scrambles into the narrow rear hall. Rye hobbles off to sulk, leaving Peeta and me to right the overturned desert table. When Peeta's fingers close over the shaft of the broom, brushing against mine, I suck in a gasp. Electricity shoots up my skin where our hands touch and I instinctively jerk back.
Peeta grins bashfully. "I was just going to sweep up the glass shards." He points to where some of the cups fell and broke. Heat blooming on my face with shame, I pass him the broom and watch him as he works. I'm interrupted in my viewing by the Baker returning.
"Katniss, there is a young gentleman calling on you. A young Master Hawthorne."
Gale. I feel my stomach swoop and I bustle past the Baker into the narrow hallway and out the metal door onto the back loading dock.
I find Gale on the stone ramp, just within the awning and yet still managing to get soaked to the bone in this downpour. I dash up to him and he catches me, holding me to his chest.
"Thank Panem! I found you! I've had to ask around with just about everybody; when Prim told me you'd been purchased like a slave by some Merchant, I feared the worst…"
"You've seen Prim?" I lean back, gazing up into his face with my arms still looped about his neck.
"Mrs. Merwick only allowed me a few minutes with her when I went to check on you both…"
"Is she all right? Does she look like she's been touched?" I ramble, fretting.
Gale makes a face, knowing exactly what I mean by 'touched.' "No. I asked her repeatedly and she swore she hasn't been taken advantage of."
I let out a huge sigh of relief, jerking when Gale grips me by the shoulders and gives me a little shake. "Is it true? You've been made a slave to the Baker?"
"Not a slave. I'm under contract as an indentured servant." I shrug. "I'll be freed from my indentures the day I turn 21, which by that time will mean Prim would only have a year left in the Community Home."
"If either of you last that long!" Gale looks dismayed. "Why didn't the damn Baker buy both you and Prim then?"
"His family could only afford to bring on one of us, and he wanted me!" I explain.
"For what?" Gale sneers, and I bristle at just what is implying. Despite my earlier musings, the Baker has proven himself to be a kind man, and though he might have every reason to, with how cruel she is, he would never cheat on his wife, least of all with me. And Peeta…
Gale is quickly looking like a drowned rat, fuming and gnashing his teeth in the rain. "You working as a cook-and-clean and worse to some Townies? No! I won't have it!" And taking my hand, he begins to tug me out into the thunderstorm. "Come on!"
"Where are we going…? Gale, I can't!"
"If this is about whatever contract you're under, we'll convince the Baker to relieve you of your situation early! You'll come live with Mama and me, and between the two of us, we'll save up enough nest egg to buy Prim out of the Home!"
"Gale, I can only get out of my own contract if I were to have enough coin to buy my freedom. Only the Baker can free me at his pleasure, and likely won't before the contract expires on my 21st birthday!" I wrench my hand away; Gale turns to gawp at me, shocked.
"Catnip…"
"Besides, if I have my way, I'll have saved up enough of my earnings in four years that when I'm freed, I'll be able to buy Prim out of the Home myself!"
"That's your plan?" Gale looks deeply skeptical, even frightened for me. "What if it's too late by then?"
I can't afford to think like that – for either Prim or for myself. Putting on my bravest smile, I clap Gale on the shoulder.
"Go, Gale. I know what I'm doing."
Giving me one last look, my hunting partner departs, leaving me to inundate myself in the pounding rain.