Chapter 16: Mrs. Mellark

Adorned in my mother's wedding dress – a family heirloom that she passed down to Kaydilyn and me, and that I one day hope to pass down to any future daughter of mine – my hair in ringlets, I stand in my mansion's sitting room over a blazing hearth. Surrounded by family and friends, I smile happily as Danny slips the ring on my finger and then feeds me a piece of bread that he baked himself.

"Maysilee Katherine Donner, with this ring, I thee wed."

I beam at him, presenting him with his own ring and feeding him another piece of bread. "Dannel Mellark, with this ring, I thee wed." Then, spontaneously, I add: "I love my husband."

The preacher man looks between us both with a smile. "I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."

Beaming, I melt into Danny's arms and he kisses me passionately, lifting me so that my feet leave the ground and he spins me about as I deepen the kiss. Around us, our loved ones burst into applause and cheers.

When he sets me down and we break apart, smiling into each other's eyes, I turn into my new husband with a potent blush, giddy as I stare out at all the people who love me.

Merle Undersee, my brother-in-law, is the first one to us, enthusiastically pumping Danny's hand. "Never thought we'd make an honest woman out of this Victor! Hurrah! Congratulations, you two."

Kaydilyn flits over to me, mascara running and we kiss cheeks happily. "I'm so ecstatic for you, sissy! He's a handsome guy to keep around."

I gaze up at Danny, eyes shining. "I think I will. He's the only one I know who would let me eat him out of house and home."

Slinging an arm around me, Danny throws back his head and laughs the most beautiful laugh I've ever heard from him. "Imagine this – the most charismatic brother-in-law, the best sister-in-law and the prettiest wife!" The grins can't seem to come off our faces as Danny and I lean in and kiss again lightly.

He proposed to me while I was still in the Justice Building, waiting to guide my two Seam tributes for the 52nd Hunger Games to the train. Freed from the Reaping forever just moments before, my boyfriend of eighteen months poured out his heart and asked me to marry him. Eyes brimming with tears, I gleefully accepted, pulling Danny to me and kissing him goodbye, promising that I would see him after I came home from the Games. We may not have been each other's first love. We may be each other's second choice, but if I could envision myself being married to anyone at present, it would be Danny. I hid the engagement ring in the folds of my dress and kept it close to me religiously; I didn't want the media, and least of all Snow, getting wind of my impending nuptials.

Both of my protégés for the 52nd Games this year died in the bloodbath, just as both my tributes died there the year before. I had hoped to guide another Twelve kid through my first year as a mentor, but it was not to be – Lyme Tanner, a niece of the District 2 Victor Granyte Tanner, won it all that year, ensuring the final house in their Victors' Village would be occupied at last. With no district having to take another Victor out on loan anymore, Brutus was the one to guide Lyme to Victory. Afterwards, at Lyme's final interview, he could tell how disappointed I was.

"Don't take it to heart. And don't get discouraged," my old mentor told me. "There's only been one time that a district has ever racked up consecutive wins, and it was decades ago. I highly doubt such a thing will ever happen again, at least not for a long while."

"Which District was it?" I wanted to know. I was soon sorry I asked.

Brutus grinned guiltily. "Us. Boudicca won the 17th Games, and then mentored Granyte to Victory the following year."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"Well…. yes," Brutus had finished lamely. "But I can understand why it wouldn't." I didn't bother trying to remind him that he technically now has back-to-back wins as a mentor, just for different districts. He had patted me on the shoulder. "Just be patient, Maysilee. You'll get yourself a Victor someday."

Considering that forty years elapsed between Lucy Gray Baird's triumph and my own, I'm not holding out much hope.

Daddy now approaches me, his newly married eldest daughter, and embraces me warmly, tears in his eyes. "I never thought I'd live to see this day," he murmurs to me. Frankly, I never thought I'd be married at only 18, or even live long enough to be 18, but with both his daughters happily married in less than two years, I let Daddy savor the moment. He clearly is pleased. "You chose well, Maysie Bird. I love you." Stepping back, he shakes Danny's hand. "Congratulations, son."

"Sir," Danny nods to his father-in-law deferentially.

"Challah and I will have to discuss revising some terms of our business contract, in the interest of ethics, you know. Your father and I don't want any misconstrued appearances about you lovebirds' happiness…."

I break away from the men to rush into the arms of my best friend with a cry. Belle is looking exquisite in her Maid of Honor gown, and she beams wetly at me.

"You're so beautiful…." she whimpers, wiping at her eyes. "Congratulations and many blessings on you both!"

"Thank you," I giggle. I probe her eyes searchingly. "Are you… OK?" I hesitantly float. "Being here?"

Belle's radiance wobbles just a bit but she nods firmly. "Absolutely. Danny and I had talked it through a long time ago, and we're good." Her lips upturn back into a grin. "He's a lucky man – I know. You have one of the best."

I glance back at my husband with fondness and deep love. "Yes, I do."

A tall and striking figure soon sidles up to us both, and Belle shyly tucks into his side. Glen is bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Always in the mood for a party. And it was a truly lovely ceremony. May I?" he glances down at Belle, gesturing to me, as if he needs to ask for permission.

"Please," Belle shrugs.

"Congratulations," Glen smiles at me winningly as he stoops to peck my cheek. My cheeks glow pink, and he laughs. "Look at her, the blushing bride! She's as red as those tributes that come out of Five!"

BAM! Just like that, I flash back to holding the hand of the dying boy from 5 in my Games, Haymitch kneeling on his other side.

"Maysilee…. Maysilee!" I snap back to myself, eyes coming to rest on Belle's concerned face. "Are you all right?"

I gulp. "Yeah. I'm fine."

Glen is also eyeing me with big-brotherly concern. "If you're sure…." He takes his girlfriend's hand. "Come and dance?"

She nods eagerly, and he leads her out through the back patio doors and onto the dance floor that is really my back lawn. I watch how they hold each other so closely, and can't help but admire them as a couple. They look…. quite natural together.

I sense my father draw up beside me, his piercing blue eyes smoldering on my best friend and her lover. "What's he doing here?" he sneers. Just like at Kaydilyn and Merle's Toasting, Glen is the only Seamer in attendance.

"Belley is my Maid of Honor; she needed a plus one. Besides, I invited him. It's my wedding day. Now sit down, have a glass of wine, and shut up." He blinks as he turns to me, flinching at my sharp tone, but I just eye him warningly. If I have to act like a Bridezilla for just this one moment, I will do it, to defend my friends. And Glen is my friend, and what he said was true: this truly was a wonderful Toasting, and it was all the better for his being here. I don't know how Danny feels about the subject (he was quiet when we were going over the guest list) but I have sensed that like Belle, he has gotten over it. He certainly seems to enjoy kissing me, making love to me and generally fooling around. It was a whirlwind courtship, to be sure, and an even hastier engagement – I insisted on us getting married as soon as possible the minute I arrived home from the Capitol, forgoing the church wedding we had tentatively arranged for the winter, during late-night phone calls from my room in the Training Center – but I am happier than I have ever been. I am in love with a man who cares for me deeply, and as long as we have each other, the temptations of other coping mechanisms like drugs and booze can be kept at bay. After all, Brutus once cracked that sex isn't the worst addiction to have, out of all the ones Victors use, and with my growing experience and how I love being intimate with Danny, I can afford to be addicted to this.

As I scan the crowd of faces, I think I see, for just a moment, a face I have missed every day for two years. Two years exactly as I realize, with a jolt, that today is July 20th. Two years ago today, I lost him.

The vision of Haymitch just smiles and winks at me before vanishing, and I tamp down a sob.


As soon as the last of our guests have exited the Village, Danny sweeps me off my feet and carries me grandly across our threshold. With a shocked squeal, I let him, and he doesn't set me down until he has carried me all the way to our room. To our bed. Smirking impishly, I tackle him, pinning him to the mattress as I sexily move to straddle him.

"What are you going to do to me… Mrs. Mellark?" There is a devilish glint in Danny's eyes that almost reminds me of…. someone else I once knew.

I grin naughtily. "You'll find out." And dipping my head, I kiss him sensuously, moaning as his large fingers undress me from my wedding gown with surprising delicateness. Lifting my hips, I sink down on him, slowly undulating my body as I make sweet love to him.

"Huhhh… Uhhhh…. Ermmm….. Hmmmm… I love you," I croon.

He whimpers and shoots up into me far too quickly, but I just giggle and rub myself against him until I too reach completion.

I jerk awake with a start a few hours later, sweaty and naked and wrapped in the arms of my husband, who is snoring peacefully beside me. Pecking his lips softly, I extract myself from his warm embrace and wrap my nightgown about me, stealing from the bedroom softly. Danny doesn't stir, and I smile at his slumbering form tenderly before stealing out into the night.

A light summer rain has begun to fall, but I don't pay it any mind; the droplets are almost lukewarm against my skin, so I won't catch a chill. I am already working hard enough to try and banish from my mind the horrifying image that awoke me, of my girl this year being bludgeoned to death by the eventual Victor – a gutsy and insufferable rogue from District 7 by the name of Blight Gavin. By the light of the streetlamps, I traverse down the hill, pass through the Seam and enter Town proper. I don't stop until I reach the yard of the district school, just ahead of the Square and the Justice Building. In the shadow of two looming stone monuments, I gaze up at the one to my left.

Lucy Gray Baird snarls viciously out at something invisible in the distance, a sundress swishing down past her knees – in her day, tributes were apparently thrown into the arena in the clothes they were Reaped in, which probably made surviving harder. The outfits tributes wear now are much more utilitarian and practical, tailored to the arena's particular elements. Lucy holds what looks like a rattler aloft, its poisonous fangs bared as much as the teeth of its master. Though no one of my generation has ever seen the tape (and I've watched quite a few reruns, both during and after Games season), and although few people who knew her remain alive in Twelve, it is the general consensus that this moment – frozen in stone and in time – comes from an actual sequence in Lucy Gray's Games. It may even be the moment that put her on the final path to Victory. The implications are impressive: a tribute somehow taming a mutt and then wielding it as a weapon. It makes the statue to my right look drab my comparison.

The sculptor who unveiled my statue in the schoolyard this past winter was clearly trying to have the best of both worlds: I look at once both beautiful and deadly, my naginata hoisted above my head while in my other hand, I put the hollow end of the blowpipe to my lips, prepared to shoot. I've always thought the image more silly than intimidating; I look like a murderous Pied Piper.

Danny told me the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin one night several weeks ago, as a sort of pillow talk after we spent hours upon hours slowly and tenderly fucking each other between the sheets. According to the version Haymitch relayed to him, the Pied Piper of Hamlin played his beautiful music to lure children to cliffs on the edge of town, and then ultimately, to their deaths.

Am I like him? Am I the Pied Piper of District 12, beckoning the tributes chosen to their deaths, fattening them up with foodstuffs and riches before the slaughter? Twice now, I have brought a pair of children to the arena, and twice I have failed to bring even one of them back with me alive. I know she isn't exactly a model I can turn to for commiseration – Lucy Gray Baird disappeared before she could mentor any tributes, and even then, the concept of former Victors mentoring future ones was still being refined, in the first decade or two of the Games. Still, I can't help but wonder….

"What would you do?" The marble goddess above me does not answer; I do not expect one. Sighing, drawing my dressing gown around myself, I steal back up across the district and to my mansion high on the hill. Back to my sweet husband…. and back to my life.