Divide et impera. Divide and rule. The Capitol fought a war – and rebuilt a nation – on these words.
Its significance in the defeat of the districts was so prominent that it had almost, almost been adopted as the state motto of Panem. The rage of the loyalist leaders and patriots, or Thorn's Men, certainly warranted it. A roomful of lieutenants and commanders and politicians debated it unto the early hours of the morning, until a clear, cool-as-ice voice cut the chaos short. It was far too provocative a phrase in the current climate, they said. A cleaner, stately, more patriotic slogan was chosen in the end. It was a bit on the nose, but it felt appropriate.
Of course, their emboldened use of the technique didn't stop there. It had been at the heart of the Hunger Games since their inception. The Capitol needed to instil mistrust and doubt, deter solidarity and empathy. They wanted the districts to blame the children on the screens, not the scheming adults behind the camera lens; it was of paramount importance to draw the focus away from the real problem and sew discord among the rabble.
They targeted each district uniquely. It wasn't difficult for them to worm their way into a community, identify a flaw, exacerbate it and then use it to their advantage.
In District 3, the scientists and engineers and geneticists had their progress and genius lauded and rewarded, as the unskilled labourers slumped back to their filthy quarters, feeling overworked, unacknowledged and, more than anything, stupid. The constant reminder of their low status and lack of intellectualism and innovation made them resentful, a feeling that only festered over time.
The separation in District 7 was done on religious grounds – half of the populous held an unshakeable, rigorous belief in their monotheistic worship of an ancient earth-goddess. The remaining citizens worshipped the numerous traditional gods that most of the other districts did. The two faiths were oft at one another's throats, burning down temples and engaging in bouts of tit-for-tat sectarian violence. The Peacekeepers held it at bay – when they weren't told to encourage it.
District 12 had faced an influx of exiled families from wealthier districts, by the Capitol's forced hand. In fact, so grave was the prospect, that the ultimatum resulted in a popular saying: "To hells or to Twelve." A disproportionate number of those that relocated came from District 1, and their angelic, light features clashed with the olive skin and dark complexion of the rest of the district. The newcomers had once been cobblers and herbalists, confectioners and dressmakers, bakers and brewers; their ancestral labor became the source of their income in their new home, and those descendants set up what became the merchant class in the coal mining district. They distinguished themselves from the malnourished, poverty-stricken Seam folk and the two classes kept their distance, rarely mixing or socializing in any context.
And then there was District 10.
In District 10, the Capitol didn't have to interfere.
The animosity had been present for generations across the dry, dusty landscape of the livestock district. It was more than memory; it was an old hatred, ingrained in the people's flesh, blood and souls. Their bitterness and indignation had not ended with the Dark Days, or the introduction of the Games. The explosive events of the past twelve years had not subdued the pain that existed among the three main communities. Their history was complicated.
Nobody can trace the conflict back to a single, isolated event. The only recorded information on the subject was cataloged in the Great Library of Panem, a once-celebrated institution of historical preservation, that deteriorated into a cesspit of censorship and propaganda under the supervision of Coriolanus Snow. A handful of mindless Mockingjay rebels later torched it, much to the president's chagrin. As he repeatedly said, he was many things, but he was not wasteful. A millennium of scripture, texts and records had been lost forever. There was something about it that wasn't right.
And yet, somehow, through the shared oral and aural accounts, the story survived. Of course, each rendition was shaped and embroidered with bias and hyperbole, depending on who you asked. It took a multitude of transcripts from several interviews commissioned by President Paylor to present a clear, researched and somewhat accurate timeline of where it all began.
Before the end of the Dark Days, the district had been colonised by three main groups.
The Karankawa had founded District 10, seeding its enormous and expansive pastures for years beyond count. They bred the first of the lowing cattle, snorting swine, flapping poultry and wide range of livestock that would go on to feed, clothe and nourish the nation with their skins, meat and milk. Descended from the nomadic tribes that had made their way from the other side of the world prior to the Catastrophes, they had retained many of their hunter-gatherer instincts. Their faith was animistic, and they maintained a deep respect and reverence for all living things, shunning superficiality and material goods. While some opted for more permanent settlements – fixed pueblos made of stone and adobe – others moved from place to place, fashioning hogans from natural resources such as mud and bark, logs and earth, and drawing strength from the soil. They remained unperturbed for a long, long time.
Then, there came the Mejoravida, commonly referred to as the Mejo, who arrived in District 10 as wayfaring laborers, searching for refuge or work that had been denied them in their home districts. They lived in dingy encampments, aiding the Karankawa as grooms and shepherds and stable hands in exchange for lessons on survival and self-sustenance. At first, they worked in harmony and open collaboration with the native people, who – despite the language barrier – taught them how to sew the fertile land, find water in a dry-spell and grow a range of crops in the district's unforgivably hot climate. Before long, children of mixed descent were born, bringing the two communities together and creating a new bloodline.
Then, the Shawnee arrived.
Nobody knows where they originated from. Some believed they had come from the elite and high-profile inner district socialites, judging by their pale skin and light eyes. Others claimed they were from the Capitol, due to their airy, whimsical accents. Perhaps it was a mixture of both. Either way, when they came, they brought machines and control and fear with them. They took the land that the Karankawa had lived on for years and displaced them from it. The natives were a non-violent, pacifistic people, and did not have the weaponry or warring attitude to resist their expulsion, much less fight back against them. Some were slaughtered.
What the Karankawa lacked in manpower, the Mejo more than made up for. They fought with fists, clubs and words, they spat curses and oaths and damnation to the Shawnee and their ancestors and their children. It did no good. Words and crooks and slingshots are of no use against a small army equipped with rubber bullets and tear gas and electric fences.
The Shawnee took the land and built plantations and ranches and corrals upon it, hiring servants from the throngs of now incapacitated and homeless Karankawa and Mejo. They reinvented and redistributed the district, assigning a pitiful amount of land to each of the groups. The borders of their newly assigned territories remained unclear, and from their skirmishes and squabbles arose an ongoing turf war. Midnight ambushes and forcible removal became commonplace. The Karankawa shrunk back from the crude tomahawks of the strangers that had once been their friends. The Mejo awoke to the settlement of tribes-people that had come to reclaim what had been theirs not weeks before.
Meanwhile, the Shawnee that owned the grazing grounds and slaughterhouses and animal laboratories erected a towering, red-brick wall sixty-feet high around their largest settlement. The gated community, known as the Pale, held its occupants in wooden carriage houses, designed to keep out the heat and the brutal savagery of the supplanted natives. The Shawnee watched on, unfeeling, as the district began its descent into self-destruction. They didn't care if the sparring peoples obliterated one another, once they got what was left over.
Inevitably, outgoing productivity suffered, and the Capitol had to step in.
The entire north-east of the district was split cleanly in two; the Karankawa were lumped into one half, the Mejo in the other. The active hostilities and attacks ceased, but a deep loathing lingered, and their former alliance was largely forgotten. The karanmejo children denied their lineage, for fear of rejection. The only thing that either side of their families had in common was their abhorrence of the Shawnee, who they vehemently despised in no uncertain terms.
During the Dark Days, the district had a storm of fury to unleash upon the loyalist forces (led by prominent members of the Pale and Shawnee landholders), but their inability to convene and assemble together as a single, united force made the revolution in District 10 nigh impossible; the Mejo put up a good fight, but their brittle defenses, combined with the leaking of information by members of their own militia, put down their rebellion swiftly and decisively. A more solitary campaign in the Second Rebellion, with the implementation of a non-violent but a well thought-out Karankawa strategy proved to be extremely successful.
The traitors that had given up their brethren in exchange for post-war immunity and acres of countryside were disowned and cast out from their encampments, into a part of the district that became the Porla Riqueza, so named by the Mejo, to signify the fiscal ambitions and self-preserving, self-serving disposition of the turncoats and sell-outs that called it home.
It is no surprise, then, that the district's reaction to Kine Villanueva was less than favorable.
He was everything that the district hated. His tough, intuitive father had escaped from District 11, taken up work as a swine herder, and met his mother – the fearless, fiery daughter of a Karankawa chieftain. By the time of Kine's birth, the Shawnee had claimed the district for their own, and his parents' relationship had been deemed taboo and immoral. After the Dark Days, the Villanuevas were outed as a part of the Riqueza double-crossers, chased out of their former homes and forced into the factories that sorted good oats from bad for cattle.
At the reaping ceremony for the Fifth Annual Hunger Games, the Shawnee children pointed and laughed behind their hands at the turquoise string and tinkling bells braided into Kine's hair. The Karankawa glared at the deerskin and moccasin boots, their traditional cloth, that adorned his light brown skin. A few of the older, angrier Mejo stared into his dark, round eyes and spat on the ground in disdain. Slurs and insults began to ripple throughout the crowd.
"El mulo," the Mejo whispered.
Mule. Half-breed. Bastard. The words, and the meaning behind them, did not upset Kine.
They were, after all, just words. He had dealt with them for years. It began with the swarm of fair, freckled children that pinned him down, pushing their button-noses against his bulbous one and braying as loudly as they could. Kine had cried about it then, for the first and last time. His mother wiped away his tears with an oak leaf and set up a dreamcatcher by his bed, promising him that a day would come that he would realize the power in his individuality.
"People may hate you for being different, little one. They wish they had the same courage."
This helped Kine to handle playground jibes and uninformed comments. He could put up with a schoolyard ambush or a petty scrap. The years didn't make life easier, but they made it bearable, although the more he pushed the anger down, the greater the pressure became. He felt it bubbling just beneath the surface, but he wanted to be good, and so he never acted on it.
As Kine entered adolescence, his gained muscle and growth spurt made him a less desirable target. Just in case, he wanted to be handy with a knife, and arranged a weekend with an old Shawnee farmer that needed a hand in slaughtering his hogs. It was just for a few extra denares. His mother hated the idea and found it sacrilegious ('blood money' was the exact term that she not-so-lovingly and quite ironically used), but his father quietly encouraged him.
Unfortunately, when the time came. Kine failed his task miserably. The high-pitched squeals of the encased pig made his hands shake. Its eyes widened in terror, and it bucked and reared as Kine tried to hold it down. He held the rusty blade to its neck for what felt like hours, until the farmer gave an impatient grunt, snatched the knife back and slit the hog's throat himself.
"How did it go, mijo?" his father asked him upon his return.
"It was fine," Kine lied. "A lotta blood."
"You'll get used to that," he said with a laugh.
It was strange, being their only son. Kine always felt as if his parents had split him at birth and taken a piece each. To his padre, he was the salt-of-the-earth, only as good as the fruits of his honest day's work. And for his kaninma, his mother, he was a sensitive soul, as gentle and harmless as a breath of summer wind. He always felt that he had to be one or the other.
The more Kine thought about it, the more it weighed on him. He tried to forget about it.
Unfortunately, the rest of the district had not.
For a time, Kine swallowed their beneath-the-breath insults and hard, presumptuous stares. He ignored the dubious, unconvinced expression of the man behind the counter at the Tesserae Hall when he stated his Mejo surname. It all began to meld into a dreary palette of expectations and stereotypes, and their ignorance washed over him as a brook does pebbles.
That was before the escort announced his name.
They called the girl up beside him, a heavy-browed and full-lipped meja that could barely look at him. She limply shook his hand, then wiped it on her long, agave skirt, as if he were a wild dog that had rolled about in its own filth. Kine didn't understand her reproach. He hadn't asked for this, any of this, no more than she had. It wasn't his fault he was what he was.
Kine looked out at the assembly in the square, a sea of unwelcoming, vengeful faces. In that moment, his impending doom provided a bout of clarity, and he understood that they would never claim him as one of their own. His sorrow quickly burned into a fierce determination.
As he boarded the tribute train, the jeers and slander rang in Kine's ears. They didn't want him to come back. A karamejo victor lording about the Village? No way.
Despite this, Kine had other plans. He was coming back. And when he did, they would cheer for him – whether they wanted to or not.
Kine did not know what to expect from the Capitol. He had heard tell of its soaring skyscrapers and lush parks, the explicit nature of the clubs inside its buzzing under city. People walked about in outlandish wigs and impractical, garish day wear, resembling colourful, chirping parakeets. He didn't belong on the same planet as them.
He imagined that, to them, he was an insect. A dangerous insect, which must be squashed quickly.
So, when the Capitol put them up in a fancy hotel, Kine was pleasantly surprised.
On the first day of training, Kine and the twenty-three other tributes looked around the gymnasium. It was filled to the brim with an ample amount of equipment – long-swords, rapiers, javelins, maces, daggers, throwing knives – and the teachers who would provide the tools to wield them. There were shooting ranges of varying lengths and real-size mannequins, perfect for target exercise. A designated area had been set up just for hand-to-hand combat. It was basic and stripped back, compared to the later training centers, but it was a good start.
The Games Committee - colloquially referred to as the Gamemakers - kept an eye on the burlier, more capable tributes that they suspected had the upper hand. They stuck to what they knew; the goliath of a boy from District 11 stomped about, showcasing an unconstrained strength and short temper. His display was hotly contested by the male tribute from District 2, who proved to be a weapons quick study. Less fortuitously, the mentorship scheme had had less practical benefit for the Ones who, like many of the others, just hung about the gymnasium, dripping snot and sniffling into their sleeves, completely and utterly out of their depth.
Out of the lot of them, Kine – the intense, interesting boy from District 10 – turned out to be the biggest surprise. He floated from station to station, chatting good-naturedly and laughing heartily with the teachers. In the end, he built up a good rapport with the martial-combat and knife instructors, who he developed a routine with over the course of the training days. In the Capitol, he was not a mulo, or a riqueza – he was just a tribute, just Kine. He didn't find an issue in fighting with people, he told them. In the Games, he could justify it. It didn't count as murder to kill a person if they wanted you dead. It was nothing like trying to hurt an animal.
By the night of the Games, Kine was no warrior, but he was ready as he was ever going to be.
Or so he thought.
When the gong sounded, Kine sprung from his plate and bolted for the first dagger he saw. No sooner had he wrapped his hand around it, than a giant, dark blur crashed into him. Kine went flying and crashed into the dirt. His blade lay several feet away. He went to grab it, but a foot came down and shattered his wrist. Kine cried out in pain, and the shadow of the boy from District 11 looked down at him. He picked up the dropped knife and held it to Kine's throat. It bit into his neck, then stopped. A hesitation.
The combat instructor's voice resonated in Kine's mind.
If they got you pinned, just keep them talking.
"Go ahead," Kine said. "District wants me dead, anyhow. You'll be doing them a favor."
Eleven looked uncomfortable.
"Why they want you dead?" he asked.
"My father is from your district… mother's not… makes me a mutt to them."
Eleven's mouth tightened. "You're part Eleven?"
Kine nodded, struggling to breathe. "Dad… worked the persimmon crops… in Zone B."
The larger boy frowned. Kine had told him the truth. How else would he know the zones?
In the agriculture district, they held their blood ties in high regard. Kine's padre had told him; district honor, an unspoken law, did more harm than good, but it was the default there.
Suddenly, Eleven's expression softened, and he relaxed the pressure of his knife.
For years, Kine's heritage, his skin, the choices his family had made before him, had caused him a lifetime of pain. Now, it had spared him his life.
Unfortunately, it didn't save the boy from District 11 when Kine clawed out his eyes. The larger boy swore, clutching at his mangled eye socket.
He writhed in pain as Kine bore down on him and plunged the knife into his throat.
Suddenly, there was a shrill screech. The meja from his district launched herself at him. She was wild and feral, but Kine was able to intercept her and knock her flat on her back. Adrenaline had given her a terrific strength and she fought against him with every fibre of her being, hissing and scratching and growling. It was a horrible sight.
"Let go of me!" she screamed.
"I don't want to hurt you!" Kine told her.
"Liar! Traitor!"
"Please, just stop!"
"Curse you, you mulo!"
Kine saw red.
His knife came down. Behind every thrust was an insult, or a slur. The pent up rage that came from repressing eighteen years worth of hatred and segregation.
The trumpets rang and Kine couldn't hear them. They had to pull him off of her. It wasn't easy. He was trying to find the apology in her eyes.
Somehow, everything seemed to go upward from there.
His designated luncheon with Thorn went swimmingly. He got to see the best of the city before his trip home. He tasted fruity wines and rich, sourdough bread. He got to meet raving fans that demanded his autograph, and they practically salivated in hysterical excitement as he scribbled down a short, sharp signature. They were boys, girls, men, women, the elderly, toddlers in their prams. For the first time, he was in a place where nobody cared that he was a karamejo mule. People liked him, admired him, wanted to be him. They would pay to look like him, go out of their way to seduce and sleep with him. Nobody had done that before.
Kine was the first tribute and victor to kill his district partner. The Capitol had praised him for it. He did not expect District 10 to do the same.
The thing was, Kine had thought that winning the Games might give him something he needed. Self-confidence. Peace of mind. A validity, or respect, to his existence.
He should have known better. Kine never got the acceptance he so desperately craved.
At his homecoming, he expected a plethora of vitriol. The sound of gunshots. Riots, protests, the lot. The DERC had made threats on his life. Wouldn't the district?
But the people in District 10 didn't bay for his blood. There was no booing. No spitting at his feet. You see, Kine could've handled that. He was used to it, prepared for it.
His words rang out across the square, uninterrupted, as he thanked the people for their staunch support. It was part of the suitably clean script he had been given.
Kine thanked the Capitol for their eternal generosity. He honoured the fallen meja, her dark eyes narrowed in anger on the large screen behind him. He celebrated her courageous sacrifice as her family glowered up at him, their faces contorted with inexplicable grief. He found his own parents in the crowd. They couldn't look at him.
When the escort tried to lead them in applause, they did as Kine promised himself they would. They applauded.
It was not a happy sound. It was cold, short, and as biting as any silence could be.
Kine's speech was brief. He hardly touched the extravagant banquet laid out for his entourage and family. Those assembled tried their best to make idle chit-chat over the sound of the whippings and arrests that took place outside. He excused himself early, citing exhaustion, and requested to be escorted to the Victor's Village. He couldn't bare to be here, in this place, any longer.
As he was given a tour of his new home, Kine met the array of house staff that would wait on him day and night. Capitol-selected, well-mannered and obedient. Some of them were Karankawa, others Mejo. There was a Shawnee girl that even gave a half-hearted curtsy. He made to shake their hands, hesitated, and then decided not to.
He caught the relief on their faces before any of them could hide it.
The problems persisted, the people resented, and District 10, already heavily divided by years of oppression and segregation, had turned further against itself.
As he got into bed that night, Kine realised that nothing had changed.
It wouldn't change for a long, long time.