Victoria leaned closer to examine the pod. It took a moment for her to realize that everyone else was looking at her. "What?" she said.
"What are you waiting for?" Haymitch said. "Get in there! It's not just a chance to get this place to let us go, it's a chance to study something the Ancients built from the inside out! It's the chance of a thousand lifetimes! Don't you see that?"
"I do," she said with a quaver in her voice. "But I shouldn't. Peeta's right, we aren't ready even to know this place could exist, because we can't handle getting what we wish for. If we could learn enough to control it and even replicate it, that would be the end of us. Maybe that was what ended the Ancients. Then there's something else: If I go in there, it has to be a one-way ticket. It's the chance of a thousand lifetimes, but it would be the work of a thousand lifetimes... and I would rather have one with you."
"No, it cannot be you," Romulus said. He dropped the shovel and looked to Gale. "It must be one of us. I think we understand each other enough to know, we are not so different. We are both men willing to do a terrible thing if it must be done, and suffer terribly for it. We both know what must be done now, and it is better if I do it, because you are the better man."
Gale extended a hand, and they shook. Johanna lunged to Gale's side. "What are you thinking?" she shrieked. "Are you seriously going to trust him with this?" She grabbed Romulus by the arm. "What are you going to do?"
"What Peeta said must be done," Romulus said. "Burn this place to the ground. You could say, I have had practice." Johanna embraced him before he could trudge away.
Peeta carried Rosanna through a thick fog. From all around them, he could hear voices crying out, and once he saw an open door in the rock. There had to be dozens, if not hundreds. "Go uphill, through the trees!" he shouted after a large group he heard passing by. "The way out is through there!" He marched toward a light at the edge of the dead forest, and somehow, he was not surprised to find a paved walkway, marked with dashes of neon green.
The path led up and up, until he cleared the mist and found himself at the lakeside forest. Except, there was no more lake, but only a basin full of mist. Peeta guessed that the mist was formed of what actual water had been in the lake, somehow flash-vaporized to prevent an instant flood at the failure of a force field covering the simulated wasteland beneath. He could hear shouts from below, and feet quickly making their way up. They were probably bettwer off than the people up here, who he could hear crying out in confusion and grief.
He froze at the sound of his own name. He looked to see a woman and a girl headed toward him, and something about their look made him guess, "Twill and Bonnie, from Eight."
"Yes," the woman said. "Katniss helped us, when we were trying to make our way to Thirteen."
He nodded. "She told me about you. You have to leave. There will be marked paths, like this one."
"That's what we were planning on," Twill said. "The problem is my husband, we were talking over lunch when he stopped talking, went to our bedroom and laid down."
Peeta swallowed. "Don't worry, ma'am," he said. He placed Rosanna in Twill's arms. "Here, carry her. I'll... I'll take care of your husband."
"Thank you," Twill said, and hurried away. Peeta sat down, and surveyed the landscape. Everywhere, the trees were changing. Golden leaves were turning brown and falling, already withered and crumbling as they hit the ground. Here and there, dead branches followed the leaves, and in the near distance, a tree fell over and split like old tinder. He did not need any of Johanna's lectures on forests to know that this was not an accelerated autumn, but drought and the death of a forest- and with dead and dry trees came fire.
Suddenly, a figure burst from the earth like a legendary revenant. Peeta jumped up in shock. It was Thread, not wielding his shovel or bearing the sack cloth of a Confessor, but proudly wearing the uniform of Head Peacekeeper. He unwound a whip, and lashed it in warning. "Run!" shouted Thread, and identical cries could be heard from every direction. "Run, or you will burn!"
Johanna took the lead as they ran. Already smoke was rising from the deeper woods. They followed the path along the east side of the lake. There were people with them, but not enough. She could here Peeta shouting somewhere close by, and Romulus's doubles were everywhere. "Yeah, yeah, we're going," Gale said as Romulus lashed his whip.
"I'm not," Johanna said. "Not yet." She moved toward one particular cabin, across the lake from Haymitch's great lodge.
Jan Donner was crouching on the floor next to Maysilee's limp body, weaping. Thread stood over him, roaring, "Run! Your daughter is dead, she died almost thirty years ago! You saw her die! You remember! Now leave her, or you will watch her burn again!"
Johanna slapped the Romulus-Mutt. "Try giving her something to run to, not from!" she shouted. Then she knelt beside old Jan. "Jan... Jan, it's me, Johanna. Your granddaughter."
He looked up at her. "That was a lie. My daughter Maysillee died. Her sister married the mayor and she had a daughter, but they would not let me see her because I would hold her too tight and not let her go. And then I was on the streets, and I would see little children, and try to hold them... and now they are gone, too. Burnt."
"I know," Johanna said, taking his hand. "They lied to you, and they lied to me to. But I remember I told you, I could have liked it if it were true."
"I remember," he said. "Was it true?"
"If it was not, do you think I would be here?" Then Jan took her hand, and as they walked they started to sing "Hanging Tree".
Peeta followed the trail to a door in the rock that opened into a long, long tunnel. He was not the first to arrive, but the score or so who preceded him only stood, gazing in fear and doubt. Romulus stood by the tunnel mouth. "Remember," the peacekeeper said as Peeta approached, "forget." Peeta nodded and stepped inside. It seemed like only a few paces before he was at the end of a tunnel, at the base of a stairway. He looked over his shoulder, and saw the mirror surface of a force field.
At the top of the stairs, he found himself at the foot of the Hanging Tree. A company worth of soldiers had gathered in and around the clearing, with a generous support staff of Restorers and specialists from Thirteen. None of them looked happy. "I am Peeta Mellark!" he shouted. "Are you looking for me?"
By the time Gale and his party arrived, more than a hundred people were gathered, and more were coming, much faster than those who had arrived could go through. Rather than try to approach, Gale igave instructions to try to direct the throng. He went with Johanna and Donner to the porch of the concrete cabin. From there, Jan's stentorian voice got people's attention, and Gale directed with gestures of Romulus' shovel. Screams rose from the crowd at an explosion from the far side of the lake, where Peeta's cabin would be, and Gale feared a stampede. "Hurry, but do not panic!" he shouted. "That house was already evacuated. It had to be destroyed. All of them do."
Things did go faster after that. Gale saw Haymitch and Victoria join the thinning flow from the west, and Gale waved them on. Haymitch looked back toward his lodge, just in time to see it go up in a great fireball. Victoria put an arm on his shoulder, and he took her hand and jogged for the tunnel.
"Go," Gale said to Johanna. She kissed him, and took Donner's arm. There was still a large crowd at the tunnel, but they were moving, and only thin trickles were coming behind them. The woods were burning merrily, and a house was exploding every fifteen or twenty seconds. By his best guesstimate, just over 300 had come to the tunnel. He had to be sure. He started to step down from the porch.
"Those who came here never thrived," a voice said. Gale looked to see Thread, not the Peacekeeper or the Confessor, but a younger man in a civil service uniform. "Most were gone within five years."
"Is this all?" Gale pressed insistently.
Thread shook his head. "Those who remain are not many, and they truly cannot leave. What will come will be kinder to them than sending them out. It will be kinder to me as well."
"I will remember you," Gale said, and then he ran.
He emerged from the tunnel in a scene of chaos. Evacuees were everywhere, sweeping away the formations of soldiers and support staff in waves of bewildered disorder. Gale was pushed into a space they had managed to keep clear. Someone in very official dress was asking questions to Peeta, while he only shook his head. Johanna was there, too, next to Jan Donner, who had Rosanna in his lap. He stroked her hair with almost painful gentleness, and she smiled at him. Gale looked back at the tree. It was as dead and dry as the ones in the Place. Already, branches were falling, causing a general retreat. As he watched, the door between the roots shut, and the trunk split open. The tree burst into flames, and in the same instant the earth shook at a flash of light like the rising sun from just over the mountains.
"That's it for Paradise," he said.
Johanna threw her arms around him and kissed him on the neck. "I don't care. I have you, and this time I'm never letting you get away."
"Are you going to eat me?" he said. She was starting to nibble.
"Hmmm..." She twirled her hair as if contemplating. "Only if you don't work out as a stud."