Chapter 7

(Part 1)

A Single Ray of Light

Peeta gently dozes beside me and I watch the faint morning light creep though the shades. My thoughts are preoccupied with one person. A boy who answers to the name of Gale Hawthorn.

We were children together living in the same village. And for the first years of our lives the relationship between us amounted to no more than I knew of him and he knew of me. Then the day came when a weeping Gale half carried his father into our burned out husk of a home. He must have been no more than fourteen summers old and had the face and build of a man. The most boyish thing about him was that he was weeping like a child.

Somehow as his father was plowing a field the blade of the plow had broken loose and caught his leg. A bloody gash was opened around his mid-calve. My twelve-year-old mind recalls thinking about how he was draining more blood than a pail of water full of holes. My mother and sister did their best to patch him up, working all night to knit the jagged rip back together again, but to no avail.

For once I stayed in the home as they worked. Normally I would flee on sight of another wounded person, but this time I did not leave. Perhaps it was because we bared such a striking resemblance to each other. Identical heads of sooty hair, twin smoke gray eyes. I saw myself in him. I saw my father in him. As if the world had taken one man from me and given me another one. The acorn that sprouted after the wild fire.

As his father neared the end Gail began to scream. He screamed at us to work harder, to move faster, to do something, any thing to keep him alive. The last words his father told him were to hush and that Gale owed us a great debt for how hard we worked. The image of Gale sobbing as he clutched his dead father's hand to his face is burned into my mind. I never saw him shed a single tear again after that day.

Gale must have taken his father's last words to heart and soon after his father's body was buried he sought me out. I was in the woods that day trying to teach myself to hunt. I had been given the most rudimentary lessons on shooting wild game by my father, but I was always more of a companion than an apprentice.

I can remember nearly jumping out of my skin when I felt Gale's hand tap my shoulder that day. Even then he had a hunter's stride and I did not hear a sound until he was right behind me.

"Do you know how to bring down game with that or are you only playacting?" He asked me in all seriousness as hew eyed my bow and arrows.

"I can bring down game." I answered curtly. Not even realizing until much later how dangerous these words would have been if I had said them to someone who wanted to turn me in for poaching. "Let me show you." I said as I lifted up my bow and notched an arrow.

His hands flew up and yanked my bow down breaking my stance. "Not here," he whispered, "we're too close to the tree line."

I looked back and realized he was right. I could still see some of the homes in my village. I had never thought of this before and it was almost like distance was skewed by the trees. I could have sworn I was deep enough in the woods to be fully concealed.

We walked deeper into the woods. Deeper than I had ever dared to go without my father. When we came to a stop I knew it was finally time to prove my worth and a prepared my bow again.

"Throw a rock to stir up game." I whispered to Gale.

He complied and when a dozen birds burst from scrubby forest floor I brought one down with a perfect shot to the heart. I know now looking back that it was mostly dumb luck that caused my arrow to fly true. I was not as skilled an archer then, but either way I had proved that I could indeed hunt and had justified my worth.

From that day on not many words were spoken to each other though we saw each other almost daily. A comfortable understanding passed between us. We knew that neither one of us wanted to be here, but that we needed each other because we were all we had left.

There were so many mouths to feed between us. I had my mother and Prim, and he had his mother and two younger brothers. As I recall we were quite a pair in the beginning, both of us had a general idea of what we were doing, but the craft of hunting was still illusive to us. I missed about every other shot, and his snares failed about the same amount of times. Then a year or two past and almost by magic we were good at what we did. I can even remember some two weeks in one particular June when we had to be some of the best fed people in our village. Then things changed.

A harsh winter came and the wild game left the woods for fairer lands. There was no food anywhere. I still shudder at the thought of Prim's hollow cheeks during that time. It was as if I could almost feel that the heavenly kingdom was not far off for my family. And for however bad things were for me I knew they had to be almost twice as bad at the Hawthorne's who had so many other to look after.

After the third day of coming out of the woods empty handed I knew something was wrong. His silence was no longer the comfortable kind, some how I could feel the wild thing within him becoming agitated and wanting to run.

"You need to leave here if you want your family to live. There's no food here any more."

I remember snorting at his ridiculousness, "Leave? We can't leave. We are pledged to land just like our fathers before us. They would surely stop us before we even made it five miles."

"Very soon I will go even farther than five miles. You need to leave if you want to feed your family."

"Give it another day Gale. We will find food soon, there is no need to run just yet. It is not worth the risk."

"I am not taking any risk. Katniss, I have pledged myself in service to the Lord of the land. My family must eat. That is why you must leave here. There is no food left in these woods and I will not be able to help you any longer."

My insides felt as cold as the grave as he spoke these words and for the briefest of moments I hoped that this was some kind of bazar jest. That he would break the impression he had left on me for the last few years and burst out laughing, and tell me how foolish I was for believing him. But his face was too solemn and I knew in that moment every word he had spoken was true.

"So be it." I said and began to walk aimlessly away. My mind could not seem to stitch two thoughts together. He called something after me, but to this day I have no recollection of what he said.

I never asked where he was going or what he intended to do. What did it matter to me if he was no longer willing to help me and my family?

Months later I realized the true reason for his departure. Hazel gave birth to another child. An illegitimate child, a child she must have conceived in an effort to keep her family fed. I could not persecute Gale so much in my mind any longer. I do not think he could bear what he had done to his family by not being able to provide for them.

A small rustling noise distracts me from my thoughts and I roll over to find Peeta's gaze trained on me. For a moment I wonder if he knew my mind; if he knew I was thinking about my past life before I was brought here.

He gives me a weak smile, and said, "Someday I wish to know all the deep thoughts that fill up your mind."

My mouth involuntarily twitches up at his comment, "Then you will have to wait a long time, for my mind is very shallow and bleak."

He lets out a sound that could be a weak sort of laugh and said, "No Katniss, I have the suspicion that your mind is many things, but it is not that."

Author's Note: Sorry for the unforgivably long delay and for this only being half a chapter. I have not abandoned this work as some have feared, though it is not hard to understand why they have come to this conclusion. I am currently in the midst of one of the darkest times of my life and am spending most of my time working different odd jobs. I wanted to post now even if it is only half a chapter because the writing has been so slow lately. Some days I could only write three or four words. I will try my best to post the other half of the chapter soon, but please forgive me if I can't.