Chapter Thirty-Five: The Missing Pieces
I might've guessed it from my time with Shireen, but a fortnight passes a lot faster than I thought it would.
Life at Castle Black without a Baratheon army to feed and entertain is a bit of an adjustment, but so was taking care of my family at eleven, finding refuge at Thirteen after the Capitol bombed Twelve, and being sent back to Twelve after Coin's assassination. As always, I make do, and the days blink by in a blur as I find ways to fill the Shireen-shaped hole in them.
There's Sam and Gilly, of course. I rejoin them, Maester Aemon, and Little Sam after binge-watching the footage and manage to act like nothing is amiss, even though my mind is already brimming with theories. Sitting next to them while Sam goes over papers and raven scrolls, and Gilly tends to Aemon and brings him his meals, I hold baby Sam in my arms and try to put my thoughts together regarding the fate of Lucy Gray. By late afternoon, from the maester's quarters to working with Gilly in the kitchens, I have a list of possibilities going.
One is that she broke it off with Snow after surviving the Games and flew away, as songbirds are wont to do, which was why he was so bitter towards the districts, thinking them heartless and ungrateful, but that seemed too pathetic even for Snow. Another is that the repentant Covey ex-lover from the interview song came back into the picture, relieved that she survived the arena and begging for another chance, and she made her choice and they ran away together. Or maybe Snow killed him and Lucy in a jealous rage. Which would explain why I know so little about this mysterious sixth Covey member, but that just adds another body on top of the one that was never found.
Death or disappearance, whatever her fate, I soon notice that most of my ideas stem from petty daydreams where Lucy broke Snow's heart. But what if he broke hers? Or maybe they both ended up hurting each other. Maybe she trusted him when she shouldn't have, and maybe he realized she wasn't who he thought she was. Once his precious victor and songbird had lost her novelty, her charm... what would Snow do with her then?
Before supper, Jon dredges me free of those thoughts when he seeks me out to discuss Hardhome further. We walk along the courtyard toward the dining hall as he gives me the gist of things, some of which I already know. There's been thousands of years of enmity between the Night's Watch and the wildlings, but there was also infighting between the various wildling tribes before Mance united them. With him gone, they'll look to a man named Tormund to lead, so Jon will be bringing him along, but we should still expect some hostility and unrest.
Unrest I can deal with, so we move on to preparations and travel. He almost balks when I admit I've never ridden a horse before. "Well, not directly on one," I say, and mention the chariots from the tribute parade. Those horses liked me, and I do know how to get them to stop and go.
Jon isn't convinced. "Three to five days is a long way to travel for a beginner," he warns.
Resolute, I cross my arms. "Gale probably has less experience with horses than I do, and he's riding one right now," I counter.
"And on a journey four times as long, he's likely to be miserable," says Jon.
We eventually settle on a solution. Jon suggests that I take a horse and practice riding every day until we leave. That way, at least I'll have some experience, and the horse will have time to get used to me. He simply asks that I bring Ghost with me for protection, and so he can get exercise and time to roam beyond the Wall. If anything goes wrong with the horse, like there's an accident or something, Ghost can come back to the Wall for help. I like the idea since it's a good excuse to go out and receive things from Beetee now that I might not need to go hunting as often.
The next morning, after I feed the ravens, Jon fetches from the stables a beautiful black horse with white spots on its muzzle and legs. When he gives me his hand to help me onto her, I stare at it for a moment as the scene in the zoo of Snow presenting his hand to Lucy resurfaces in my mind. Blinking the thought away, I accept the gesture and easily climb onto the saddle. There aren't any active cameras. He's not putting on a performance for anyone. This is just Jon being Jon.
He keeps the horse steady and calm as I get a feel for the saddle and the reins. There are a few men training in the courtyard, but the only person I notice really paying any attention to us is Olly. He watches with wariness, somewhat like Buttercup in the courtyard yesterday, eyebrows scrunched up with question as if even the sight of me on a horse is suspicious to him. Though, in his defense, I don't usually need a horse when I go hunting. Or Ghost, who follows me to the opening gate as I approach it at a safe trot.
Ghost and I take quickly to the arrangement. I'm not a complete natural or anything, and it takes a few days to get used to it, but riding agrees with me. It gets me to the lake and the weirwood tree faster, and you can't feel the wind blowing through your hair when you travel by train or hovercraft, or bond with them like you can with horses. Of course, trains and hovercrafts aren't startled by direwolves, but Jon made sure to choose a horse that knows Ghost well enough, and Ghost is happy to maintain a comfortable distance as we venture through the woods together.
My running theory is that Jon only inhabits Ghost's body when he's asleep, so I'm counting on that when I stop by the weirwood tree and receive parachutes from Beetee. Ghost cocks his head as soon as he hears the chirp, and watches intently as they drop down, but save for a few inquisitive wolf noises when I talk to Beetee, he doesn't make a huge fuss about it. Even stops being fazed by it after a few days of this, electing to wander or get a drink from the lake while Beetee and I discuss updates on the drone or the Games or Lucy Gray.
The first day I'm out there, it's lucky we bring up the drone when we do, because Beetee goes to check on it and finds that it's flying east over nothing but ocean. He makes it turn around and head back to land while he's still connected to me, and later adjusts its course north to Storrold's Point. He laughs over the mistake, so at least he's enjoying himself, but he does wonder what he would see if he kept going east.
"If it doesn't run out of battery and fall into the water?" I ask. "Skagos, maybe, if you're lucky. You're too far north to reach Essos."
"Then going west after this is my best bet," Beetee considers. "After Hardhome, that is. West and then north, to the Fist of the First Men and beyond."
"Well, have fun exploring the north. But don't go too far away," I say. "I don't think the white walkers are going backwards."
"Unless, of course, they're pulling a Lucy Gray and playing snake," he says with a laugh. I don't get it, so I respond with confused silence. Beetee awkwardly attempts to explain, "You see, Snake is a very old game that used to be played on computers, where… never mind. Don't worry, Katniss, I'll see what there is to see and then come back around. But first, to Hardhome."
Sure enough, that evening after supper, Beetee connects to my earpiece to let me know that he got Hardhome within his sights, lit up by wildling campfires, before he landed the drone in a discreet location outside a wooden gate and recalled it there so as not to arouse suspicion. The second morning I go out for riding practice, Beetee informs me he already released the drone again at first light and flew it over Hardhome, and with no white walkers in sight, he's got it flying west while he studies the footage. I remind him not to forget about it and to consult the map I recorded since I'm pretty sure, being on a peninsula, there's a stretch of Shivering Sea between Hardhome and the rest of the north.
Personally, I think he should've just released it at Craster's Keep again and gone north from there, since hours of open water can't be worth the footage. When I tell him so, he laughs and agrees, but admits he likes filling out the map he's making as accurately as possible, within reason of course. He also informs me that Paylor and Plutarch are making the 10th Games public today. They've already played a recap as a preview this morning, dedicating it to the memory and the mystery of Lucy Gray, but they'll be doing a full news special later in the day and putting out my request for more information. Beetee has already made his own request that anything they learn should be reported straight to him.
"Whether we learn anything or not… today, August 18th, will be one for the history books," Beetee says seriously. "A month after the true anniversary of the 10th Games, but better late than never. Lucy Gray's song will finally be sung for the first time in sixty-six years. And this time, all of Panem will get to hear it."
I appreciate Beetee's semi-subtle way of reminding me what day it is there – one small way I let myself feel still rooted to Panem – but I can't help wondering what was really going on around this time in Twelve all those years ago. What kind of trouble Snow might have been stirring up back then, for himself, for his Peacekeeper buddies, for Lucy Gray and the Covey. Was he already planning a betrayal? Did she have any idea yet what kind of person he really was? Or did the realization not come until it was too late, when he finally showed her his true colors?
Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself with the speculations. Poorly masked distractions from my multiple other concerns, that's all they are. I don't hear from Gale until three days after they left, and even then, understandably, he doesn't pass the mic off to Shireen. He waited three days until he dared wander away from the army and talk to me, to avoid suspicion. We agree, me begrudgingly so, that Shireen's not ready for the communication devices. Instead, Gale assures me that she's fine, that they've been getting along pretty well and she's been alternating between talking to him about her books and asking him stuff about me. She particularly likes the story of how we got Prim her goat.
He also says that Ser Davos overheard him telling her about my fight with the black bear over a beehive, and had joked that he had no idea the song "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" was based on a true story. Shireen had laughed so hard at that. I laugh too just hearing about it, happy that both Davos and Gale are with her when I can't be. And meanwhile, he and Stannis have spoken some more, mostly about war and Westeros and Panem, and there have been a couple of moments of world-related confusion but he's talked his way out of them. Once with Melisandre's help. When prodded, Gale laughingly – albeit awkwardly – describes her as "very forward."
"Be careful," I warn him, nudging the bag with the compressed Mockingjay suit I received from Beetee this morning under my bed. "I think she and Stannis have some sort of thing."
"Isn't he married with a kid?" he points out.
"Wasn't I engaged and pregnant?" I say wryly, then glance at my door to ensure it's not ajar.
Gale snorts in my ear. "Fair enough. I'm not interested, anyway," he says, prompting my scoff of disbelief. "Really. I'm a bit skeptical of her motives. It's like she's trying to divert me somehow."
"Well, don't let her," I say. "You're a soldier, not her plaything. Princesses take priority over sexy witches."
"I know, Catnip," says Gale, and I can't tell if he sounds more amused or annoyed. "I'm pretty sure she already knows what I'm capable of."
Annoyed it is, then. I brush it off and let him go, so he can get back to wherever it is Stannis and company are staying and I can head to the dining hall for supper.
I'm grateful for the update, though. Beetee's doing a sweep of the Haunted Forest and going back towards Craster's Keep like I suggested before he goes north to the Fist of the First Men, and there's no news from yesterday's footage, so this morning was mostly about receiving the Mockingjay suit and getting in some riding practice. But word has gotten around that I'm coming along for the Hardhome trip, so I start getting some unreadable looks from the Night's Watch brothers who don't like Jon.
It's an added stressor I don't need, so I continue to find refuge in the library and the maester's quarters with Sam and Gilly. Moreso in the latter, as contrary to what he claimed in the rookery, Maester Aemon's health is in fact on its decline. Despite this, he remains cheerful as ever, and I find myself taking over whenever Sam has other steward duties or Gilly has to care for Baby Sam and they need to leave him with someone.
Like Shireen, Aemon is easy to talk to, and enjoys listening to me share about my life back in Panem and my mother's apothecary business. But since he's much older than Shireen, and a maester at that, I'm able to get a bit more candid and clinical about some of the grisly details. He's seen it all before, back when he had his vision, and treated worse cases since he lost it. He even laughs when I admit to bolting from the house all the way to the woods at the sight of the one miner's charred, gaping thigh wound. Or maybe he's laughing about how my nine-year-old sister was the one who stayed with my mother to help.
I tell him about my grandparents' apothecary shop where my mother worked before she married my father, about her being Grandma Rosemary's own little assistant at Prim's age and using her healing skills to tend to whipping and burn victims at mine, and about my father's wooing her through his songs and the medicinal herbs he gathered in the woods to sell to her. He's intrigued when I mention our family plant book, started ages ago by Grandpa Comfrey's herbalist cousin, passed on to Grandma Rosemary when she expressed interest, and continued by my father with entries on plants for eating rather than healing. One day, I bring my handheld device that has the pages saved on them and read a few things to him. Some things he's familiar with, other details he's impressed by, but he seems to like my personal stories best. Harvesting dandelions in the Meadow with Prim, searching the woods for plants while using my father's illustrations as a guide, and finding katniss tubers in a pond late that summer.
Aemon also has just as much of a fondness for music as Shireen does, so I sing to him sometimes. One of his favorite songs, he says, is "Rose of Gold," which is apparently a common song in the Reach.
"I don't think I know that one yet," I say apologetically, when he requests it.
"My mother and sister Talla used to sing it all the time back in Horn Hill," Sam chimes in. "I could teach you."
And that's how I find out Sam can sing a little and has a younger sister – well, sisters, plural – but teach me he does. It's a romantic song, merry and warm, about a girl from House Tyrell with something of an identity crisis. She doesn't want to be loved for her wealth or beauty, since it's only gotten her pricked by thorns, so she uproots herself from Highgarden and takes on a disguise, fleeing the Reach to see the world. She travels from the Rose Road to the Kingsroad, where she meets a guy from King's Landing who is headed north. They share the road and she falls in love with him along the way, but believes she has finally found someone that money can't buy – a man with his heart set on joining the Night's Watch.
It turns out he's in love with her too, but he has his reasons for wanting to take the black. Then their pasts catch up with them at an inn, ravens and bards alike having spread the word of their disappearances, and both of their identities are revealed to each other. He's secretly a prince who would rather marry for love or not at all. She's not a commoner, but a highborn lady. This, of course, is a match their parents would have gladly arranged for them, but instead the lovers are glad to have gotten to know each other truly beforehand and fallen for each other this way. Though, they amend at their wedding, they should have known all along, for he was noble as a prince, and she had a golden heart and flowers in her hair.
I like the song. It's a ballad, longer than "The Hanging Tree" or the Meadow song, but its melody is simple and sweet and I'm not only able to learn it fast but hit all the high notes smoothly. It's also one of the happier ballads I know, a familiar and charming fairytale aspect with an ending that's satisfying instead of tragic or gruesome.
"I hear they played it at King Joffrey and Queen Margaery's wedding," Sam had noted, the first time he'd sung it and I'd shared my thoughts.
"Oh," I'd said, and shrugged. "Well, so much for that."
Sam had laughed, and Gilly knew as much about Joffrey as I did, so enough to crack a grin. Whether his uncle killed him or not, the word is that it's called the Purple Wedding because Joffrey met his death by poison that looked like choking, clawing at his own throat until he was purple in the face. Happy ending for that Tyrell girl, at least, since she ended up marrying his younger brother. Though, according to the ravens, that marriage hasn't been without its own challenges.
One thing that stands out about the song, though, is the message at the end about seeing the rose of gold for her "true" beauty and worth, or the lovers falling for the more authentic versions of each other. It eats at me, and I can't help speaking up once after I've finished singing it to Aemon while we're alone.
"The song says they got to know and love the real versions of each other," I say. "But isn't the point kind of that they had to lie about who they were first? Names, titles, backgrounds… I mean, if they had to hide things from each other to fall in love – if it would have mattered, made a difference, if he knew where she came from or she knew about his claim to the throne…" I'm rambling and anxious, so I let out a slow sigh. "Were they wrong not to say anything?"
Aemon thinks for a moment. "Perhaps it's just my King's Landing upbringing," he says. "But the lies in the song never bothered me. Never even struck me as lies." He finds my hand and gives it a pat. "The girl's secrets were her own, and the real her was whoever she wanted it to be. The one I loved kept a great many things to herself, and yet I loved her still. It was no more dishonest of her to snuff out a painful past than it was for me to renounce my claims as a Targaryen and choose a maester's chain over a crown."
I smile weakly. His response is reassuring in some respects, but I wonder if he'd feel the same if the secrets involved his family. "What happened between the two of you, Maester Aemon?" I ask, curious yet also wanting to change the subject.
"A rather different ending, I'm afraid," he answers honestly, which I already guessed with him being at Castle Black. "At her encouragement, I chose to commit to my vows as a maester of the Citadel, and later as a brother of the Night's Watch. We parted ways, and I never saw her again."
My heart sinks a little, slowly cracking on his behalf. Yes, that sounds like the more realistic ending. "You told Jon once that love is the death of duty," I say softly. "It sounds more like duty is the death of love."
Aemon contemplates this silently, then harrumphs with a slight smile. "Tell that to Samwell Tarly," he replies. "I doubt he'd let anyone send Gilly and her child through that gate again unless he was going with her." A few seconds pass as I mull over how true that is, before Aemon's mouth pulls into a sly grin. "Remind me again, my dear, when will you and Jon Snow be departing for Hardhome?"
Despite myself, I laugh, because Aemon's surprisingly clever wit has not yet left him.
That particular conversation happened on the fifth day since Shireen left, but I already had a lot on my mind from the day before. Beetee's drone was still soaring over the Haunted Forest with no sign of an undead army, but he did have a different update for me. Greasy Sae had watched the 10th Games, he said, and hearing Lucy Gray's interview song had jogged enough memories for her to reach out to him using the number I left in my letter. He proceeded to connect me to her, and after gushing over how good it is to hear my voice, she divulged what she had remembered.
The song was likely about Billy Taupe Clade, she told me. A name that only faintly rings a bell, on top of it being her last name, but definitely Covey. She was married to his little brother, Clerk Carmine Clade, once fondly known as the CC to her Greasy – and yes, the jokes got old. Unlike Billy Taupe, who as she recalls was shot dead that summer, along with Mayfair Lipp, the mayor's daughter from the reaping. Apparently, in Greasy Sae's words, he had been "going around with her" that summer.
The line from the interview song, "Too bad I'm the bet that you lost in the reaping," made a lot more sense after that. The way the mayor didn't look at the name on the paper, the snake down Mayfair's dress, the relationship between her and Billy Taupe… they definitely rigged it. And the Covey knew, hence the rehearsed song and the fact that I've heard so little about him.
"So her ex-boyfriend and the girl he left her for? They were both murdered that summer?" I'd asked cautiously. There was an obvious culprit at the front of my mind, but I couldn't ignore the fact that Lucy Gray had just come back from the arena. Then again, her weapon of choice was poison.
"It happened while the rest of the Covey were onstage for a performance," Greasy Sae assured me. "Your grandma found the bodies after. Mayor Lipp still blamed Lucy Gray, of course, but you saw what he was like. No, I promise you, that girl had had enough of death. And who could blame her, after that whole bloody year? The coal mine explosion, the Games, the hangings. I must've blocked it out of my mind until now. If you ask me, if Mayor Lipp didn't kill her, I say she just ran for it. Even if it was with just the clothes on her back…"
My mind raced at all this new information. I wanted to ask her about the explosion and the hangings, but I was stuck on the truth. Snow did it. It had to be Snow. And if the mayor thought I had killed his daughter, I would want to make a run for it too. It made me wonder if Snow did kill Lucy Gray, just indirectly. She fled into the woods, into the hungry jaws of a bear or the ironic venomous snake, and he left behind the mess he'd caused for the comforts of the Capitol.
I still had questions, but it was something. When I asked Greasy Sae how I could thank her, her response was swift.
"Call your mother," she'd said. "Don't think I don't remember your daddy's birthday is coming up. You reach out to her on that day, if not sooner. She's probably thinking of you."
"Sooner" didn't happen since other things came up, like obsessively rewatching the 10th Games footage for more clues and learning "Rose of Gold" and other songs from the Reach and singing to Maester Aemon. Not to mention, the sixth day comes with a bizarre update from Beetee that his drone got knocked down somehow. Whether it be by a bird, a terrible icy gust of wind, a rock or an arrow, he couldn't immediately tell, but it got damaged and plummeted to the ground, its blades harmed or rusty and unable to function. Before he could recall it, the camera spied a girl in the distance. Noticing it, she walked over, hesitantly picked it up and examined it, then brought it with her into a very strange-looking cave.
The still-working camera had showed him an old man tangled up in what looked like the branches of a tree, a boy who appeared to be sleeping, a peculiar young girl with cat-like eyes – gold-green and glowing – wearing a cloak of leaves, and what he thought was a direwolf resting inside. When the first girl asked what it was, the man in the tree claimed it was "a raven in its own regard" that seemed to have damaged its wings, and it would be wise to take it back outside. Before she could do that, unfortunately, someone off-camera with large, clumsy hands grabbed it and broke it further. While Beetee does find the footage fascinating, he ends up having to program a new drone and release it the next morning.
I'm curious about it as well, but the "cloak of leaves" part instantly gets the Meadow song stuck in my head, reminding me of my grandmother and subsequently of Lucy Gray, whose footage takes priority right now. By the seventh day, I've watched it so frequently and listened so closely for clues that I accidentally start picking up her accent, which is stronger than mine with more of a drawl to it, like Grandma Maude's. Some of the Night's Watch brothers notice and tease me about it. Well, Edd, Halder, and Jeren tease, but Jon is quick to agree and does a poor job of fighting back a grin.
"Oh, you think this is an accent? You never heard Grandma Maude lecture me when I was little. It sounded more like…" I say, and conjure up my best embellished impersonation of her high-pitched chickadee-like voice. "Katniss Everdeen, now what're you doin' out of bed so late? I keep tellin' you, you've got to go to bed with the birds if you want to greet them at dawn." I pause, letting them laugh while the memory of my freshly four-year-old self creeps back to me. "I know you want to see the baby. Sweetheart, Primrose is three days old. And in a crib. That child is behind bars, she's not goin' nowhere." I give a dramatic lift of my eyebrows for good measure, just as Grandma Maude had done. "Now if you see her climb out of that thing and go for a walk, let me know... that would be a damn miracle..." They laugh harder as I pretend to flinch. "Don't tell your mama and daddy I said that in front of you. My stars, listen to me. Cursing in front of my own grandchild..." I pretend to look at them hopefully. "You want a sweet? 'Cause I could go for a sweet."
Her infamous sweet tooth. How could I forget? Back then, Grandma Rosemary would usually have something sugary for her whenever they both visited, which I guess makes more sense after my mother told me last year that her friend Maysilee's parents owned the sweet shop. Probably Grandma was still close with the Donners or something. But it always struck me as funny since Maude was clearly over a decade older than her. Even so, after Grandpa Comfrey died, Grandma Rosemary took to visiting us more, so she and Grandma Maude would sit down to tea together, looking for all the world – despite Rosemary's fair skin and blue eyes – like they might as well be sisters.
I'm pondering this flood of memories when I register that Edd is still snickering over my pronunciation of "grandchild," so I promptly hit him with my sternest, no-nonsense Maude Ivory Everdeen squint. "Don't you be makin' fun of me now, Dolorous Edd," I say lowly.
Edd looks thrown for all of two seconds, until neither of us can keep a straight face anymore and I start cracking up. Though I'm mildly concerned that her old warning of "you keep wearing your face like that and it's going to freeze that way" applies to accents as well because I can't seem to shake myself of it.
"Well, Rosemary, two grandbabies in four years, both of them born in the month of May… Honey, does your daughter know she can just get Gary a shaving kit for his birthday?" I say, and then my eyes go wide with shock as I clamp a hand over my mouth. "Oh, I just realized what she meant by that."
Westeros, I'm certain, doesn't have month names like Panem does, but Jon and Edd can still put the pieces together a lot faster than Younger Katniss can. It's either that or the scandalized look on my face – or the way the mortification instantly knocked the accent out of me – that gets them cackling and guffawing while I blush and avert my eyes at the epiphany. It doesn't help that I spot Olly from not that far away, staring at me like I've grown an extra head. He glances away when I catch him, but the confusion is still etched on his face. Confusion and a furrowed brow, as if thinking hard. I'm guessing he's not trying to decipher my grandmother's comment, but I don't know what to make of his reaction, so I shift my eyes back to Jon.
"Now that is a proper Appalachian accent, Jon Snow," I say, and then make a face at myself and enunciate again. "Jon – Snow. Sorry, I need to stop talking like that. It's like she possessed me for a moment."
Jon grins. "I've never heard anything quite like it in Westeros," he says.
A light laugh escapes me. "Probably for the best."
Shaking his head, he echoes the chuckle. "It has its charm," he offers.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Edd turn to Halder and Jeren. "Are we still here?" he asks under his breath.
We take the hint and get back on track, but the change in energy is a little embarrassing, so I flee with Gilly as soon as she passes by to help Hobb in the kitchens. Before supper, I hear from Beetee and then Gale. The drone has seen what Beetee assumes is the Fist of the First Men and is now exploring more mountainous areas. My guess is he'll be in the Frostfangs soon if the drone can navigate the area safely. Gale's closer to a place called the Last Hearth, having gotten away from the army to hunt. He tells me Shireen's been sharing her books with him and asking about his siblings, seeming wistful when he told her about his two little brothers and a sister. I'm just telling him about Jon's five siblings, and he's making some sort of comment when suddenly I hear a woman's voice in the background and he cuts me off quickly. Selyse, maybe, or Melisandre coming to find him.
The eighth day is my father's birthday, so I do as Greasy Sae advised and have Beetee connect me to my mother. Sitting at the edge of the green lake beyond the Wall, I hear her voice for the first time in over a month and remember how helpless I felt at eleven when she was lost to me. Thanks to Beetee, I don't have to be lost to her. Not completely.
I'm vague about the details of Westeros, but I do tell her that the place where I'm staying has a massive library, which draws her attention. My mother has always loved books, a trait she inherited from her own mother. Her parents had a small collection of them, ranging from plant and medicine books to fairytales and old legends. With Grandma Maude's tattered old books of songs, poetry, and folklore from her homeschooled Covey days, we practically had a meager library of our own. After Grandma Rosemary died, we ended up having to sell and trade most of her books to get by, which deeply upset me, but my father knew many of the stories by heart and promised to tell them to me at bedtime.
Of course, then he died less than a year later, and the plant book became the only book that mattered to me, as I had to focus on more important things like not starving to death. But after I won the Games, books were the first things I bought for us. Some of our old copies were actually on the Undersees' bookshelves, which I noticed when I started visiting Madge that year. She gave them back to me free of charge, as thanks for wearing her pin, and my mother happily stacked them on the shelves in the study of our house in the Victor's Village.
She's seen the 10th Games, and luckily is more than glad to talk primarily about Lucy Gray. I tell her what Greasy Sae mentioned, and remember to ask her if she's heard about the coal mine explosions and hangings. She notes that it happened over two decades before she was born, but she believes she remembers her grandfather saying that a man tried to sabotage coal production that summer and accidentally killed three people as a result. Her grandfather had been the healer at the time, and thought the whole thing was terribly sad, but the man's hanging was even sadder. He said he would never forget the way the mockingjays echoed his last cries to his lover, who just three weeks later was hanged along with a young Peacekeeper for treason.
A chill runs through me at her story. For some reason, it sounds terribly familiar, but I can't put my finger on why. I change the subject and give her my thoughts on the Games, and we both agree that Wovey – the girl from Eight – and Reaper died of poison. It's extremely validating to get confirmation from a healer's perspective. She updates me on the hospital and I tell her about Gilly's exceptional wound-stitching and Maester Aemon being impressed by the entries in the plant book. I mention Sam, Jon, and Shireen too, but Shireen only vaguely. I can't risk the reminder of Prim today. It's too painful, too fresh. The talk of healers is risky enough. At least her husband's death was over six years ago. We fill our conversation with warm memories and I tell her I love her before the connection breaks.
When I'm done, I switch back to Beetee and let him know, and he says, "Speaking of birthdays..."
By the time I've returned to the weirwood, and the parachute is floating to the ground, I still can't believe it. Not even when I open the shell and hold the chip in the palm of my hand. But he's done it. He's found the footage. Or somebody has procured it for him. I barely hear the explanation. Something about an archive, and a Peacekeeper from Three who snuck a camera along when he was assigned to Twelve. If Commander Hoff had a problem with it, he must've let it slide in exchange for filming his birthday celebration. Unless it got confiscated afterwards. Thanking Beetee profusely, I ride back to Castle Black to watch it on the projector in my room.
The footage isn't as pristine as it would be for the Games, but it's more than decent considering the circumstances. Looks like they set it up all the way at the back, discreetly positioned on top of something so you can see the stage and the audience. Still close enough to get a good look at each Covey member as they take to the stage. It's somewhat of a shock to see a young version of Grandma Maude Ivory. With her buttercup-yellow dress, fresh face, and tiny frame, if it weren't for the complexion and nose and brown hair, she would be the spitting image of Prim. The rest of the Covey join her in the happy birthday song, one by one. Tam Amber, tall and nearly expressionless like his great-grandson. Clerk Carmine, modestly clutching his fiddle. Barb Azure Baird, striding onto the stage with a wave. And Lucy Gray herself, wearing the rainbow dress from the arena.
Surely she hasn't been wearing it all summer? Since she mentioned it was her mother's, it must be her special occasion dress.
The first thirty minutes of footage are an absolute treasure trove of Covey songs. All the ballads and mountain airs they carried down from their families, picked up during their travels, or even wrote themselves. Some I know well, having sung them in captivity after the assassination of Coin. Others I've forgotten until just now. Folk songs and toe-tappers and ditties, and some just instrumental. Old favorites such as "Crawling to You," "Tomorrow Will Be Kinder," "Wild Horses," and "Kingdom Come" snag my interest for a bit, but when Maude starts up with "Oh my Darling, Clementine," I tune out and search for Snow, lest that one get stuck in my head again.
I probably scan the audience for his recognizable blond curls for two whole minutes before I realize I'm an idiot. New Peacekeepers get their heads shaved. I won't be able to find him that way. I might be able to detect his snake-like eyes if all heads weren't facing the Covey. Maude Ivory makes a joke about how hot it's been lately and tells the audience they're going to throw in some fall and winter songs to make everyone feel a lot cooler, and they start singing "The Cremation of Sam McGee." Resigned, I'm about to give up and just listen to the music, when one Peacekeeper suddenly sticks out to me. The one at the very back, at the end of the row, holding a box in his arms. I'm squinting at him – the height is right, the color of the sparse amount of hair – but it's only when he stands even straighter and I see that Lucy Gray is the only one left on the stage that I know it has to be Snow.
She sits on a stool with her guitar and gently pats the pocket of her dress, something I rewind a couple of times because I think I'm seeing things. It's too soft and slow to be a nervous tic. My quiet ventures with Gale in the woods tell me it's got to be some sort of gesture, or a signal.
And then, strumming a steady yet dreamy melody, she starts to sing a song I've never heard before.
"Everyone's born as clean as a whistle
As fresh as a daisy
And not a bit crazy.
Staying that way's a hard row for hoeing
As rough as a briar,
Like walking through fire.
This world, it's dark,
And this world, it's scary.
I've taken some hits, so
No wonder I'm wary.
It's why I
Need you
You're pure as the driven snow…"
I have to pause the footage just to give myself a moment, but the surrealness of the situation soaks in anyway. My grandmother's cousin wrote Snow a love song.
The more I listen to the lyrics, the more indignant I get. Coriolanus Snow is not pure. "This world goes blind when children are dying"? Children would continue to die horribly because this Snow was not pure. And then she sings about him seeing the ideal her, and even worse – about how she trusts him.
My heart clenches in dismay, knowing what lies ahead for her. I've said it before and I'll say it again – trusting people wholeheartedly is a mistake. That's the kind of thing that can get you blindsided… even killed. I want to believe Lucy Gray was clever enough to see the light before it was too late, but knowing this is the night my grandmother went to bed and never saw her again... the odds don't seem in her favor.
"You asked for a reason, I've got three and twenty, for why I trust you. You're pure as the driven snow."
Twenty-three tributes. She saved his life in that arena, so he did the same in the Games. And she trusted him because of it. But all I can think of is that his life debt has already been paid.
After her love song ends and is met with applause, the other Covey members run onstage and Lucy Gray disappears behind the blanket curtain they've set up. While my grandmother starts singing "Keep on the Sunny Side," I spot Snow leaving too, clutching his box. The timing is too close for it to be a coincidence. They're meeting up somewhere. I hate that I can't know what they're talking about. Instead, I listen as the Covey joyously praises sunshine for a couple of minutes.
Finally, Snow sneaks back in without the box during the last chorus, the sun-praising song ends, and they transition to a more a capella number. CC and Tam Amber start it off with a low and solemn but sweet sort of chant, and Barb Azure and Maude Ivory chime in, blending beautifully with high notes that are perfect for Maude's voice. I've heard this kind of thing before, sung under my grandmother's breath sometimes or by my father when we were in the woods. The words are unintelligible, I think they're just syllables and vocalizations, so I never picked it up myself. I asked my father what they meant once and he said he didn't know, only that his mother and her cousin Barb told him it was from another time. But now I hear the beauty in it. It was meant to be sung as a group, all of them coming together and building their harmonies into something magnificent.
Lucy Gray emerges, placing a hand on Tam Amber's shoulder – all five of them joined in this way – as she contributes her own vocals to the melody, and a shiver spreads through my skin, tingling with gooseflesh, as I realize why this is so familiar.
Mockingjays. They sound like the mockingjays in the trees. Their arms are the branches, their syllables the sounds. The imperfect but euphonious imitation of human speech, as a collective, a flock. A covey.
Hidden in the back, the magic is clearly lost on Snow. He doesn't look like he's paying one bit of attention to it.
The song ends with a flourish, accompanied by applause. The Covey members are going to fetch their instruments when Lucy Gray gestures, says something, and sits down on the stool again. "I almost forgot. I promised to sing this for one of you," she says, and there it is again. The pocket pat. I quickly find Snow in the crowd, who straightens up like he's noticed it too and is alert once more.
Then, strumming her guitar, she begins to sing. And I know this song. The arrangement is different, sounds bolder set to a string instrument, but I know it.
It's The Hanging Tree.
"Are you, are you,
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three?
Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree."
The hanging. The coal mine explosion that killed three people. That happened this year, the year of her Games. She wrote it. And now she's singing to him. A song about lovers meeting in secret, about telling the other to run so they'd both be free.
And it hits me – they're going to run away together. Or she's planning to. She's telling him where to meet her – at the old hanging tree.
I try to make sense of it in my head. Of course she wants to run away. She's been through the Games and probably seen the hangings and now her ex-lover and the girl he left her for are dead and the mayor blames her. And Snow... well, he was a Peacekeeper at the time. That's a definite step down in life, at least for him. It's kind of like the Night's Watch in that you're not allowed to marry or have children. The term of servitude ends after twenty years instead of at death, but still, losing a chance at a legacy for that long must not have appealed to Snow.
Except he only served for little over a month, and by September, he had found his path to glory again. So if they did run north into the woods together, and only one of them returned… that can mean one of two things.
One, he changed his mind, unable to bear the thought of roughing it in the wilderness if there was any shred of hope to go back to the Capitol, and she went on without him. Explaining why there was never a body to be found.
Or two, he betrayed her, and her corpse is lying at the bottom of the lake.
Part of me hopes that the former is true, that she did wind up somewhere north and found a life of freedom and a purer love. Maybe with grandchildren or even great-grandchildren by now, because why should Snow be the one to have that and not her?
But another part knows, deep down… something terrible happened in the forests of District Twelve.
As soon as Lucy Gray wraps up the song, the Covey come back onstage with their instruments to a round of applause. She nods to them, and they look appeased as she starts to pick out a different tune on her guitar. With CC coming in next playing a recognizable note on his fiddle, the Covey follows up with their version of the river song. It seems I was right all along – this is the first time I've heard it played by an entire band, and if I thought my parents singing it sounded good, the Covey musicians take it to a whole new level. Barb sings solo initially, but the others come in at just the right times. The way all five come together for the line, "Dive down deep into her sound, but not too far or you'll be drowned" is hauntingly beautiful and sets off not just gooseflesh, but pins and needles throughout my body.
As CC plays a fiddle solo for the part where my father used to whistle, I think of Shireen, who would get a kick out of this version. And all of Lucy Gray's songs, for that matter. If only I could play this footage for her, I know she would be mesmerized.
They perform a few more songs, before ending on "The Parting Glass," an old song that, along with Lucy Gray's bittersweet smiles to her fellow Covey members, only furthers my suspicions that my theory is correct.
"Of all the comrades that e'er I had
They're sorry for my going away
And all the sweethearts that e'er I had
Would wish me one more day to stay…
But since it fell into my lot
That I should rise and you should not
I'll gently rise and softly call
Goodnight and joy be with you all."
Goodnight, and joy be with you all… I look at Maude Ivory, smiling back at Lucy Gray. Blissfully unaware that it's not the audience she's singing it to, but the Covey on that stage.
When the song ends, once the clapping and whistling have faded enough, Lucy Gray says that thing about going to bed with the birds, and she calls for a final "Happy Birthday" chorus to Commander Hoff before she and the Covey take their final bows. Never to play together again. I glare untrustingly at Snow as he and another Peacekeeper help their drunken friend out of the gymnasium. What kind of lies did he feed her that, mere hours after this footage, she would willingly go into the woods alone with him? That she would trust him like this? Didn't she know that, even back then, he was probably a murderer already? And still she thought him pure. Pure as the driven snow.
Maybe she did know, and trusted him anyway, because she had killed people too. She had killed, and survived, in the arena. Thanks to him.
But because of that, he had paid her back his life debt. They were even; he owed her nothing now. The only thing left was his love, but how true was that to him? Not enough to endure those woods with her, that much is clear.
Maybe knowing the truth is the reason she never left those woods…
The epiphany floods me with a renewed surge of fury. Makes me wish I could use Beetee's portal to go back in time, back to the arena bombing, so I can stop Lucy Gray from saving Snow if he's only going to end up betraying her. But then, if he died in that arena, there's no telling if she would've made it back to District 12 alive. Instead, it would be better to go to the woods that day and kill Snow then. Mystery solved, Lucy Gray lives, and Snow never becomes president.
The daydream, honeyed with justice, loses its flavor after a few hours. Gale contacts me that evening and I get an answer out of him as to what happened yesterday. Some woman, after interrogating him about who he was talking to, said she'd heard him mention Jon Snow and asked him if he was back at Castle Black. Gale told her he was, but that he'd be leaving again in a few days. She seemed disappointed. Gale jokingly asks me if Jon has another former girlfriend out there. I get mad and almost cut him off but decide to tell him what I've learned about Lucy Gray, along with my speculations and imaginary vengeance plan. Quietly, of course. I'm aware the privacy of my room has its limits, and even in a what-if situation, conspiring to assassinate a younger Snow feels weird on my tongue.
I thought Gale might be the best one to understand this wistful feeling of hypothetical justice, but no, he decides to do what he does best in Westeros – rain on my parade.
"Remember what I said about interfering with things?" he says. "If Lucy Gray lives and Snow dies, maybe she gets incriminated for another murder and you've doomed her anyway. Yeah, Snow would never become president, but someone else would. Maybe you change everything, maybe you change nothing. Maybe you change things for your grandmother so that you're never even born." He pauses, as if unsure, then presses further. "Who would end the Hunger Games then?"
His point is so annoying that I do cut off the connection then, but try as I might, I can't shake it from my head. What would killing a mere Peacekeeper do except get Lucy Gray and the rest of Twelve in trouble? According to my mother, one already got executed for treason that summer. Another one's death would turn a few heads. And while Ravenstill was in power, there was no Victor's Village, there were no monetary winnings, and the children were starved and sick by the time they entered the arena. It's possible that improved treatment of tributes and victors wouldn't exist without Snow. Obviously because he wanted the Capitol to appear reasonable and merciful, and it doesn't change the devastation he caused, but how well would I have fared in my first arena if I'd been stuck in a cage in the zoo with no food for days?
Actually, for that part, I decide I owe Lucy Gray my life. Her and that Plinth guy handing out sandwiches. Or at least, I'll silently thank them rather than Snow for the lamb stew with plums. But these thoughts still plague me well into the ninth and tenth day, get me tossing and turning at night as I wonder what happened in the woods with Lucy Gray and what would've happened if Snow was never president. I need the sleep because we're definitely leaving for Hardhome soon, so on the tenth night, I make hot chocolate and bring a cup and a flagon of it into my room to settle my nerves.
While it cools, I contact Beetee for an update on the drone. He's still exploring way out north. He was blown away by the Frostfangs, but they got a little hard to navigate and made it difficult for him to recall the drone, so he started going northeast a day or two ago. He's seen a few groups moving but wasn't certain if they were living or dead. Now he's exploring the northern stretch of the Haunted Forest. I ever-so-subtly suggest that he start heading back south to make sure he hasn't missed anything.
"Try to remember the initial objective of this whole drone project," I tell him, as nicely as possible considering the state I'm in. I appreciate that he's getting to fly over a whole new world, but he sounds like he's getting pretty far away. I'd prefer it if he comes back around to Hardhome before I get there myself.
He agrees, saying he probably won't be out there for much longer. Hopefully "much longer" only means a couple of days. When I say this to him, his reply is "It should be." Which isn't totally reassuring, but I let it slide. As an afterthought, I tell him what my mother said about a Peacekeeper getting executed in Twelve for treason, and he agrees to look into it because we both think it's strange this happened during the same exact summer as everything else.
We end the connection, and I turn off my devices for the night, putting them away in the parachute shell under my bed. Then I reach for the cup of hot chocolate, warming my hands as I take a long, careful sip.
I almost choke at the sound of a sudden knock on the door. It's not Jon's knock, so I'm wary as I put the cup down on the nightstand next to the flagon. Who else would come by at this hour?
Getting up from my bed, I cross slowly to the front of the room and crack open the door to peek outside, before opening it all the way as I lower my gaze to take in the person standing there. My lips part in surprise as his name briefly gets stuck in my throat.
Because my visitor is the last Night's Watch brother I would've expected, eyebrows drawn together and shoulders squared, with a look of troubled determination on his young face.
"Olly?" I say.
A/N: Thanks to all new faves, follows, and (re)views! Another long one, but next chapter should not only be shorter but include the departure for Hardhome, finally, if all goes well! In the meantime, hope you enjoyed a few more glimpses into the Baird and Everdeen family history. ZainR: There should be at least one more Aemon scene after this, never fear! And correct, the Games would continue without Snow. But since he's always been the man behind the curtain for her, Katniss hasn't considered until now that there could've been someone worse!