Chapter Fourteen: The Night Visit
Fire invades my dreams tonight.
I'm in District 12 again. Somehow I know there's a curfew and I'm out past it, but there's an ominous orange glow in the distance that beckons me slowly through the streets in my robe and nightdress. The glow gets brighter, the faint shouts growing louder, until it leads me to the square where there's absolute pandemonium, the same chaos that I saw from the districts on the screens during the Victory Tour. Buildings burning, flames spitting out of broken windows, screams echoing from every direction.
In the center of it all is the wooden post where Gale was beaten. But it's not just a wooden post anymore, it's been transformed into a pyre. They've already got someone up there awaiting their death. I push my way through the crowd to see who it is, a chill of dread billowing up inside me. My memories want it to be President Snow, but then I see him in the crowd closest to the pyre, the usual white rose pinned to his lapel standing out among the black of his suit, and he's smiling at me. I look to the person tied to the post, afraid it could still be Gale.
For a moment, I think it could be. He has the coloring of a man from the Seam, olive skin and dark hair and fond yet sorrowful eyes that immediately lock onto mine. But he's older, his features worn and weary from years in the mines. He's smiling sadly and mouthing my name.
"No!" I cry out, hurtling toward the pyre as if shoved from behind by my own epiphany. "NO! STOP!"
It's not Gale tied to the post this time. It's my father.
Peacekeepers appear at my side out of nowhere and grab at my arms, holding me back. I'm struggling, fighting, choking on smoke and sobs. Where is my bow? Where is my strength? I feel eleven and helpless again, wishing this was the mines so at least I could scream at him to run, maybe he could run…
"I volunteer!" comes a voice from the crowd. I know that voice, I've heard him say those words before, but not shouted with that much desperation. My head snaps in the direction of the voice, just as Peeta forces his way to the middle of the square. "I volunteer," he says again, quietly. "I volunteer as tribute."
For three seconds that makes no sense to me, and then my eyes widen as I realize what he means. "Peeta, no!"
Where Snow once stood, there is now Coin, and she smiles as she guides him up to the pyre like it's the reaping stage. He doesn't need her help; he marches into the fire that has already started and frees my father himself. The flames jump up higher and suddenly it is just Peeta there. My father is gone and Peeta has completely taken his place at the stake.
The sight of him veiled by an inferno is more than I can bear. I wrench myself away from the Peacekeepers and stumble across the square. This is all wrong. Peeta cannot die like this. Cinna may have had us both wear flames, but I am the Girl on Fire. It should be me. It should've been me. It has to be me!
Someone stops me again just before I can reach the pyre. All my fighting gets me is a face full of long red hair. I turn to see a girl whose face I can barely make out.
"Let go!" I yell at her. "Let go of me! I have to save him!"
I fight and I break away from her, but I haven't taken more than two steps toward the pyre before an arrow hits me in the chest, bringing me to my knees with a gasp. The shaft ignites and burns the rest away, leaving only the section that's buried in my heart. I think I should feel a white-hot pain, but instead I feel only cold, as if ice has spread through my veins like poison.
Despite all of this, I tell myself I can get back up, but when I look to the pyre, it is too late. The blaze is roaring, impenetrable, and someone has taken my bow and my arrows.
The only thing I can do is watch as the Boy on Fire is reduced to nothing but ash…
"PEETA!" I scream, lurching forward with a start.
The burning buildings are gone and so is the square, but my breathing is ragged and heavy like the air is still filled with smoke. No torches, no rioters, only a quiet darkness remains, and I have to adjust my eyes to it as I try to remember where I am. I push down on my palms and register that there's an unfamiliar bed beneath me. Not District 12, I remember, still hyperventilating. This is Castle Black, and other people live here. People who probably intended on sleeping through the night.
I throw a hand to my sweaty forehead, embarrassed but trying to reassure myself. I didn't scream that loud. Even in the stillness and quiet, maybe no one has heard me.
At once there's a storm of footsteps outside my room and the door crashes open, letting in a contained glow of light. For a split second, I expect it to be Peeta, and choke on a gasp as I jerk my head in his direction.
"What's going on? What's wrong?" he demands, looking around in alarm. Only then do I recognize the accent, as well as the head of dark curls.
"I'm sorry," I get out, still trying to settle my breathing. "It was just a dream."
Jon relaxes his shoulders, lowering the oil lamp. Relief turns to sheepish understanding. "I don't blame you. Your first night at Castle Black and you're forced to witness a burning. That's bound to give anyone nightmares."
My heart rate is finally starting to slow down. "Does that kind of thing happen every day?"
"No," Jon assures me. "That's not the way we do things around here."
"Well, the night terrors aren't out of the ordinary for me," I admit with a sigh, and note that his sword belt is hanging a bit crooked. He must've thrown it on in a hurry. "Sorry for waking you."
"You didn't," he replies softly. "I was already awake."
It occurs to me that I'm not the only one who has something keeping them up at night. "Oh, right. You have to worry about dealing with Stannis in the morning."
Immediately, a resigned look crosses his face. "What's done is done," he says after a moment. Then resignation transforms into embarrassment. "I'd better let you rest. I probably shouldn't have burst in like that without knocking."
"That's alright," I say. "For all you knew, it could have been one of those dead things."
Something about what I said seems to stall him just as he sets foot out the door, and he looks over his shoulder at me as if remembering something. Then we both hear a noise coming from outside, and a blur of orange darts around him and races into my room with a series of short but rapid meows.
"What are you doing here?" I demand as Buttercup leaps onto the bed. I'm surprised that he found me, surprised enough to give him a small scratch behind the ears before I realize what I'm doing. "I'm no princess."
Jon grins, chuckling a little at our reunion. "You are to him."
This earns an automatic snort from me. "Yeah, right," I say, despite scratching some more under his chin. "He helps me sleep sometimes, but I think tonight that's out of the question."
Buttercup finds a spot to declare his own and makes himself comfortable next to me. After a few seconds, I realize that my room is cold, that the door is still open and Jon hasn't left yet. I look up and find him lingering in the doorway, considering me, his brow furrowed in deep thought.
"Have you been on top of the Wall yet, Katniss?" he asks.
The question makes me blink. "I'm allowed to do that?" I ask, sitting up straighter. For some reason I assumed only the men of the Night's Watch could go up there. Though, now that he mentions it, I remember seeing the red dot of Melisandre gazing down at me.
"Visitors are allowed up there, yes," Jon confirms. "The view's better in daylight, but… if you can't sleep and neither can I…" He trails off with a shrug and a glance out the door.
"Right. Might as well." Pushing off the blankets, I turn and swing my legs off the edge of the bed. This disturbs Buttercup, who meows in complaint. "Oh, I know. How dare I move! Your life is just awful…" Realizing I'm talking to a cat like some kind of crazy person, I glance over at Jon. "I'll be out in a minute. Let me just put on something warm."
Jon nicely hides his smile. "I'll leave you to it," he says, and closes the door behind him.
After changing, pulling on my boots, and slipping into the comforting embrace of my father's hunting jacket along with a few more layers, I almost head out the door, but fall back at the sight of my bag. I pick through a few things to put in my jacket pockets, then dig out the silver parachute and retrieve the medallion, which I put on around my neck. If I'm going up on top of the Wall for the first time, then at least in some form I want Prim to be there with me.
Buttercup stretches out on the bed, watching me. I feel kind of bad that he came back to sleep in my room instead and I'm just leaving, but that's not my fault. Anyway, it's not like I can bring him up there with me. Dumb cat would probably fall off the edge or something.
"You should've stayed with Shireen," I tell him, though I do pet him goodbye.
Jon meets me outside, bundled in furs, and we cross the courtyard to the platform with the elevator. Maybe elevator's not the right word for it. It's more of a crude cage, iron and wood, drawn up the wall by metal chains. As I step in and look around, waiting for Jon to pull the bell rope, I'm reminded of the one back in District 13. Except this cage is old and rickety, and with a sudden jerk, instead of sending me hundreds of feet underground, it carries me up towards the sky.
As far as elevators go, this cage may be see-through like the one in the Training Center, but it moves like the dark creaky thing in District Twelve's old Justice Building. A snail's pace, creeping inch by inch rather than shooting us up into the air. Considering the size of the Training Center compared to the Wall they've got here, I think this place needs it more. At this rate, I think it might take a lot longer than the Training Center's measly minute to get to the top.
"How tall is this Wall, anyway?" I ask, clutching the iron bars as I stare out at the tops of Castle Black's towers, which are slowly but surely shrinking below us.
"Seven hundred feet," Jon replies. "And a hundred leagues long."
"Seven hundred…?" I squint over my shoulder in disbelief, taking in the fortification of ice that keeps going behind him as the cage continues to climb. "Is this man-made?"
"Legends say it was built eight thousand years ago by Brandon the Builder, the founder of House Stark." A gust of frigid wind rattles the cage, and Jon glances up and out to make sure the chains weathered it alright, before looking back to me. "It was meant as a defense against the return of the Others after the Long Night."
"Others?" I echo. But it sounds like just another term for undead monsters, so I move on to a more pressing question. "Wait a minute. What's the Long Night?"
Jon looks amused at all my questions. "You really aren't from around here, are you?"
His chuckle makes me feel a little defensive for whatever reason. He's right, I'm not, but still. "I mean, in Panem, 'The Dark Days' is what we used to call the time of the First Rebellion and its collapse," I offer with a shrug, "so I'm guessing 'The Long Night' has something to do with an age of hopelessness, probably darkness and war."
"Darkness, yes," Jon agrees. "It was a winter that lasted a generation, and all the terror that came with it. Freezing, famine, White Walkers… until the Battle for the Dawn, when The Children of the Forest and the First Men defeated them and drove them north, as far north as they could go."
"And that's when the Wall went up?" I ask. We're well above Castle Black by now, and I think I see a small village in the distance. Or the smoking remains of one. "To keep them out?"
Jon presumably nods behind me. "It's said that the Wall has powerful magic spells built into it by the Children of the Forest, which prevent the White Walkers from passing through."
His words bring thoughts of Benjen to mind, and I turn to look upon the Wall with a renewed sense of wonder. "The dead cannot pass," I murmur.
"What's that?" Jon asks.
"Just something your uncle told me," I say, bracing myself carefully against the door of the cage. "'As long as the Wall stands, the dead cannot pass beyond it.'" As immense and mighty as it is, I wonder if there's anything that could bring it down. Then I think of the battle that occurred here, with the mammoths and the giants and the charge on Castle Black. "If that's the case, why did the wildlings attack it the other night?"
Jon is quiet for a moment. "They don't want to be on the wrong side of it when winter comes."
"And winter is coming," I say, remembering those are the words of House Stark. Though it damn well feels like it's already here. I wrap myself up tighter in my layers, hoping it won't get much colder than this.
A/N: Cutting this chapter in half here so that I'm only a day late! I'm having a little too much fun with the second half and it's getting away from me. But thanks for the faves, follows, and reviews! Katniss may not feel like she has to be the Mockingjay anymore, but she could still have a role to play...