Chapter 3- Oak Peacewood
I swing the axe and it meets the tree exactly where I intended it to go. The blade sticks in the wood and I let go of the axe's handle, kicking the tree as hard as I can. Goddamn trees; I never want to see another of them, let alone cut one down. I'll never leave District 7 again, though, no matter how much I want to. I'm stuck here, whether I like it or not.
"What's wrong with you?" Sable looks up at me from where she sits on the ground, holding a piece of tesserae grain bread. She's aged out of the reapings, but her little brother took tesserae out for her whole family.
"Three guesses," I snap, yanking the axe out of the tree. I've been working with Sable for four months or so now, and my dislike of the girl has only grown since I first met her. I don't like any of my teammates, but that's to be expected. I have nothing in common with them, not like who I worked alongside of before. Grief bites at my insides, but I refuse to acknowledge it. Not now.
"Get a handle on yourself," she says, shoving the last of the bread in her mouth, brushing the crumbs off her hands and standing up. I could kill her for the food she has; it's been rough finding anything to eat for months now. It's been even harder since I got evicted from the house I grew up in. "You're only making it more difficult for us to reach quota. I'm sure you have self control, don't you?"
"Shut up," I say, gripping the handle tighter. "Just shut up. You don't even know me."
"Really?" Sable folds her arms. "I've worked with you for a few months; I should know something about you by now, don't you think? Let's see. You're a rebel, or you were, anyway. And as for your parents-"
I feel all the blood rush to my face. "Don't you dare say a word about my parents!" I shout, my hands shaking. "You can't say anything about what they did, because you did shit all during the war." I have never liked Sable, not when we were put into this work crew together, and not at any point since, but I hate her now, just hate her.
"And I'm still here, aren't I, pretty much the same as before?" Sable says with a smug smile. "Compared to you, I'm living the high life. I still have my job, a house, a family. Last I heard about you, you're living in the Sap. There's some sticky people down there." Sable chuckles at her joke, but her smugness is washed off her face when I slap her with every ounce of strength I have.
"Screw you, Sable," I say before walking away deeper into the woods, leaving her behind. I hope she gets a bruise to remind her to shut up from time to time.
Once I can't hear her or the others in my work team talking, or the axes and saws biting into the trees, I stop walking and sink to the ground, shaking all over. I don't know if it's from grief, hunger, or anger, or a mixture of all three.
Katya, where are you?
Dropping my axe, I bury my face in my hands and sob. Everything we worked for for three years is gone. My family, my hopes and dreams, the better future we were supposed to fight for and build. It's all gone, and I can't get any of it back. I don't know what's left for me.
"Oak?"
At the sound of my name, I push my curtain of dark hair out of my face and look up through blurry eyes.
"Aldar?" I push my hair back further and wipe my eyes free of tears. What's he doing here?
Aldar leans against a tree, not saying anything, just looking at me. I don't blame him; I've changed a lot in the year since I saw him last. He's a bit taller, but otherwise he's the same as before. Aldar Grovepath. My best friend. Ex-best friend? I have no idea.
"It's been a long time," he says finally, not smiling or showing any sign that he's actually happy to see me.
"Yeah. It has." I'm honestly shocked to see him. I thought we were done a year ago, that our friendship was over. Still might be, but this is the first time he's made contact since our fight. What does he want?
"I'm sorry about your parents." There it is, there's the reason why he's here; the red hot poker drives its way through my chest and twists, like it always does when I think about my parents.
"Me too," I say through my choked throat. I really don't want to keep crying in front of him, but the tears come by themselves.
"But I'm happy to see you still alive. Didn't think you'd come back," Aldar says.
"I didn't think so either. Mom wanted me back here, though. To wait for Katya." Their names choke my throat. Mom. Katya. Dad. Names I spoke every day for seventeen years, and now it's as though they never existed.
"I haven't seen Katya," Aldar says lightly. Of course he hasn't. Nobody has.
"Me either," I admit. I'm scared of telling him too much. I know too much about what happened during the rebellion, and I'm torn between not wanting to tell him about it because I don't trust him, and because I don't want to put him in danger too.
"I'm sorry." Aldar pauses a second more, then shifts his feet to leave.
"You- you can come and sit down if you want," I blurt out. Stupid. After everything that's happened, why should he want to sit with me? Still, I remember the first time he sat with me, on the third day of school when I was six and he was seven. I used to play alone during recess, and he came one day to join me. And every day after that. Things were so simple when we were kids.
"Um, alright," Aldar says, turning back and striding over to where I am, sitting down cross legged across from me.
"Why'd you come out here?" I ask. "How did you find me?"
"You're not that difficult to find," Aldar says, laughing a little. "Your voice carries a long way when you're angry. Besides that, I thought we should make contact again. We're all on the same side, after all. Now."
For a second I hate him, but I fight the feeling down.
"Why didn't you help me when I needed you?" I whisper.
Aldar breathes out and stares off into the distance. I love him, I hate him; he is my past, but I don't know if he's my future. My best friend, who swore he would never let me down, until he did. And I don't know if I can forgive him for it.
In the end, he doesn't answer my question. "How do you feel about next month?" he says instead.
"What, the reapings?"
"Yeah."
I laugh harshly. "Being the daughter of Sky and Ash Peacewood, I think I have a pretty good shot at getting my name called."
"I hope not," Aldar says, and he actually sounds sincere.
I shrug. "What will happen will happen. Killing my parents wasn't enough; they'll want me next. And Katya…" I can't stop the tears from coming this time, and I double over with renewed crying. The pain is like a weight on my back, a weight I've been carrying since the uprising ended.
"Hey, hey I'm sorry," Aldar says, grabbing my hand. "Oak. I'm sorry. For everything."
"Doesn't really matter now, does it?" I mutter. "It's been a year since I saw you; everything's changed. It can't go back to the way it was."
Aldar sighs, letting go of my hand and looking past me into the trees. "The rebellion was reckless. It shouldn't have happened, and it's no wonder it failed. No offense, but it's true."
"If more people believed in it, we would have won," I snap. "It's not my fault."
"I didn't say it was. I told you before that keeping the peace was our duty, and I still stand by that."
I scramble to my feet, my hands in fists at my sides. "You're one to talk, Alder Grovepath!" I say, my voice rising. "You did nothing in the war, while I fought and lost everything. Maybe if you, and all the others like you, had gotten up off your asses and not just stayed in the woods like good slaves, things would be different, my family wouldn't be dead, and there would be no Hunger Games!"
"And maybe if your lot hadn't riled up trouble throughout the districts, we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with!" Aldar says, getting up and facing me, his face flushing pink. I'm tall, but in the last year, he's grown a head taller than me. It's odd that I notice that now, when I hate him so much.
"My lot? My parents, that's who you're talking about!" I say. "Your neighbors, your relatives, your district! We wanted to be free, and if we could have just gotten into the Capitol, this whole thing could have been finished the right way!" Memories of the fight at the Capitol swarm my memories, but I push them away.
Aldar rubs his face in his hands, then looks at me tiredly. "I don't want to fight with you, Oak. It's over now, and whatever sides we took, they don't exist anymore."
I keep my mouth shut, clenching my jaw so hard it pops on one side.
"Can't we be friends again?" he asks. A year ago I would have said no, six months ago I would have considered it; four months ago I might have said yes. He was my best friend, but best friends don't betray each other.
"No. No, I can't trust you anymore, Aldar," I say, picking up my axe and walking away, leaving him amongst the trees.
"There you are! Jareth came through and asked where you were, and I had to lie and say you went to relieve yourself. I'm not lying for you again, Peacewood," Forest says as I walk into my teammates' midst. There're four of us in this work team, and I dislike every single one of them, from Forest who's obsessed with order and must be in his late twenties, to Kida, who's married with two kids and is the most serious person in District 7. Add to them Sable, who I'm pleased to see still has a red mark on her face where I slapped her, and you have an insufferable team.
"Whatever," I say, marching past him to get to the tree I was trying to fell before Sable got talkative.
"You really need an attitude adjustment," Forest says behind me. I won't rise to the bait. I could kill them all, right here and now, but that's considered illegal in 7. War time tactics don't fly here.
"Oh, let her go, Forest. She's a lost cause anyway," Kida says in her low monotone. When I hear her voice, I think of the color grey; the color of storm clouds and ash. I don't respond to her either; I just attack the tree with all the anger and grief and frustration that's built up inside me since I lost everything. The axe bites into the wood again and again and again, until my arms ache and tears run down my cheeks, only stopping when the tree falls, crashing to the ground in the middle of the District 7 forest.
If this is all my life is going to be, I don't want to live it.
When the sunlight fades from the forest, sending odd shadows here and there and the leaves turn a greyish green, the horn that signals the end of the day blares through the trees.
"Get here bright and early tomorrow, Peacewood," Forest says, slinging his axe over his shoulder. Sable glares at me as she leaves behind Forest, but Kida doesn't even give me a glance. I'm dangerous to them; I'm the rebel; I saw action, I killed people whose names I didn't know and didn't care to know. All for nothing.
The Peacekeeper named Jareth walks through and gestures with his gun for me to leave. I give him a short nod as I go; I don't want to be on the Peacekeepers' bad sides. I'm in enough trouble as it is.
As I walk out of the woods into the proper district town, I'm just as shocked as I was when I came back months ago. Nothing much has been done to repair the town, so a lot of the buildings are still rubble, and people all over are living in shanty houses built from whatever scraps they could gather up. The ones in the center of town are better made, and the houses there are slowly being repaired, for the merchant class of District 7. Around the outskirts, it's rough.
That's where I live.
I walk in the dying sun through the narrow and ruined streets, taking care to step over the rubble as I go. Off to the right, where there's an overhang from the buildings above, there's a small shape in the gutter. I keep my eyes averted, because I know it's a child. Death isn't uncommon here, from illness or starvation. I can't feel anything for those who die every day, because if I started feeling for everyone I would crack and shatter everywhere. I have three names I mourn for, and that's all I can hold inside me without breaking.
Where the streets turn to complete rubble, someone's put up a sign saying The Sap. No idea why they decided to name it that, but that's what it is. And here is where I live.
On either side of the destroyed road there are shanties, most just debris covered with tin or tarps or shattered wood. Hollow eyes watch me as I walk; sharp boned children with sunken faces, gaunt mothers nursing babies that look barely alive. This is where the lowest of the low live, those who have no other place to go, or who had family who fought against the Capitol.
These should be my people, but they won't talk to me either. Nobody wants to be the one to get close to the daughter of Sky and Ash Peacewood. As soon as District 13 fell, I became a pariah in my own district.
My shanty is on the right; I rigged it up out of broken wood, some scraps of metal, and an old tarp with a hole in it that I found. When it rains, it leaks, but it's the best I can get. The people next door have it worse, but most of the people here aren't completely lawless. It's a taboo to steal from your neighbors, but I keep my valuables buried under my bed anyway. I don't trust anyone, not anymore.
There's not much in my home, if you can call it that; a few planks laid out makes my bed; a wooden box is a table or a chair, and a ring of stones underneath the tear in the tarp makes my firepit. That's all I have furniture wise.
I kneel down and reach under the bed planks, pulling out a box of broken matches. Using a few pieces of scrap wood and a few pages from a wrecked book I found, I start the fire. It's small, but it helps keep the cold away at night. And the rats.
While the fire grows taller, I lift the planks out of the way, digging into the dirt until my fingers brush wood. With a little effort, I pull the small chest out of the ground and set it in front of the fire, brushing the dirt off the lid before I open it.
I didn't always live in the Sap. Even though it hurts to think about it, I let my mind wander back to when I lived on Cherry Lane, in the big house made of wood, painted blue, with flowers hanging off the windowsills. My room the color of lavender I shared with Katya. The kitchen with the iron stove, the living room with the brick fireplace. The cat we called Lily. The chairs and table that my father made; sanded smooth and stained dark.
My home, the place where I grew up, the place where I left all my happy memories. When I got back to District 7, I got into the work crew right away. I could pay the rent for one month, but I didn't make enough to keep the house. So they threw me out, and I landed here in the Sap, where I've been ever since. No other place to go.
In this chest is everything I managed to take with me. My fingers shake a little when I unlatch it, lifting the lid to reveal my few treasures. A tiny doll my mother made me when I was four. A necklace she always wore, that I managed to hold onto. My father's pocket watch, Katya's silver ring. A hair ribbon the color of the sky. A few coins that I save, just in case. A dry chunk of bread I stored in here to keep safe, which is my only supper tonight. And a photo, black and white in a tarnished silver frame, of the four of us together.
The photo was taken before the uprising, so I must have been fourteen and Katya sixteen in it. My mother and father stand behind us, Mom smiling at the camera, my father with his mustache that he was so proud of, looking slightly at her, with a smile on his face. Katya's mouth is open in a grin, like she's about to say something funny. I'm sitting next to her; I look young and peaceful and happy.
Where is my sister? Why hasn't she come back for me? She said she would, she promised she would come back, but she hasn't. The rumors can't be true, they can't be. Not my sister.
I pack everything back away, save for the bread, which I lay down beside the fire. I close the lid of the small trunk and rebury it underneath the bed planks. I put the planks down and smooth the quilt back over it; that's something I saved too; the quilt from my bed, and the pillow stuffed with goose feathers.
"Shit!" When I turn back to grab my bread, it's too late. A rat's taken it whole and scampered off with it, too fast for me to catch. How did it all end like this? I'm here, we lost, and next month the reapings happen. With my luck, and with who I am, I'm almost guaranteed a place in the first Hunger Games.
My stomach rumbles hollowly, but I ignore it. I've gone hungry before; it's just unpleasant. Instead of eating or going to sleep, I sit in front of the fire while the world goes dark outside the shanty. I stare into the flames so long that they become imprinted on my eyes, and when I look away all I see are flames.
Please don't let the rumors be true, Katya. Please tell me you're alright. Please come back for me.
My sister can't be an Avox, can she?