Chapter Text
The day is glorious, with a blue sky and soft breeze. From the nook in the rocks, we are invisible to prying eyes but have a clear view of the valley, which is teeming with the summer life, greens to gather, roots to dig, and fish iridescent in the sunlight. Despite the looming dread of having to be standing in the square at two o’clock waiting for names to be called out, Gale and I do our best to appreciate Prim’s goat cheese seeping into the fresh warm bread from the baker and the blackberries I stripped from the surrounding bushes. For some time we sat silently. The valley below captivates my eyes even though I have seen it hundreds of times before and will see it thousands of times more… if the odds are in my favor.
“We could do it, you know,” Gale says quietly.
“What?” I ask.
“Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it,” says Gale.
I don’t know how to respond. The idea is so preposterous. Living in the woods alone with Gale for the rest of my life, despite him being the one person I can be myself around, there is something about the idea that tightens my chest.
“If we didn’t have so many kids,” he adds quickly.
Yes, of course the children are what’s holding me back. They’re not our kids of course. Gale’s two little brothers and little sister. My Prim. Our mothers also rely on our daily hunting and gathering, they too, need their mouths fed as much as the children and they cannot be expected to do it all on their own after the loss of their husbands. Even though Gale and I have been living without our fathers for so long, our mothers are used to us standing in their place. To leave our families to go into the woods would be the equivalent of another explosion in the mines. I almost shudder at the thought of Prim being left alone. There are still nights we go to bed hungry as I’ve had to swap game for other essentials.
Yes. Of course. Leaving the children behind is the only thing holding me back.
“I never want to have kids,” I say.
“I might. If I didn’t live here,” says Gale.
“But you do,” I say, irritated, though I can’t pinpoint exactly what I’m irritated at. That he’s still alluding to the idea of leaving the district, then, having children? Or that he just suggested that I leave with him.
“Forget it,” he snaps back.
The conversation feels wrong. I don’t understand why he is insistent on having it when we both are devoted to our families. I’m certain Gale knows I love my sister more than anything. In fact she’s the only person on the planet that I’m certain I love. Even if I did leave… even if we go together, where did this idea of having kids come from?
I look at Gale from the corner of my eye. He’s good looking, sure. And strong enough to handle working in the mines on top of hunting. I’ve seen the girls whisper and giggle as he walks by in school, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t try to see what they saw. But I always found that he looked too similar to my own appearance, that you could mistake us for brother and sister. We both share the same straight black hair, dark olive skin, and gray eyes. Even though I get jealous at the whispers coming from beautiful merchant girls' lips, it's not for the reason people would think. Good hunting partners are hard to come by.
My eyes flick back to the valley. If Gale wants kids it should be no trouble, he’s almost got an army of girls ready to throw themselves at him. But there has never been anything romantic between us. It took some time for us to even become friends despite meeting when I was a scrawny twelve-year-old and he was a fourteen-year-old looking as though he was going on twenty. It was mostly my fault for how long it took for us, I never had warmed up to people quickly.
“What do you want to do?” I ask. We can hunt, fish, or gather. Anything besides talking about whatever lays behind this topic of kids.
“Let’s fish at the lake. We can leave our poles and gather in the woods. Get something nice for tonight,” he says.
Tonight. After the reaping, everyone is supposed to celebrate. And a lot of people do, out of relief that their children have been spared for another year. But at least two families will pull their shutters, lock their doors, and try to figure out how they will survive the painful weeks to come.
We make it out well. The predators ignore us on a day when easier, tastier prey abounds. By the late morning, we have a dozen fish, a bag of greens and, best of all, a gallon of strawberries. I found the patch a few years ago, but Gale had the idea to string mesh nets around it to keep out the animals. I was grateful to preserve the spot, but goes beyond having a reliant source of food to trade and eat.
The mayor’s daughter, Madge Undersee, has had an eye for them ever since I brought them in the first few weeks of the school year in my lunch pale years ago. Madge is my year in school. A quiet girl who prefers solitude, but has surprisingly quick wits to almost any situation and a tongue that is as sharp as her mind. She always had the top scores in class, but she never bragged. She’s beautiful, too, long blonde hair with loose curls, soft-delicate features, and warm brown eyes. Being the mayor’s daughter mixed with brains and looks, you’d expect her to be a snob, but she’s alright.
There is one thing Madge and I share, our desire to be alone. Yet we always manage to share that quiet peace with each other at school. I saw a girl sitting by herself at lunch and decided the quiet girl would be my preferred company. Ever since we seemed to end up together a lot at school. Eating lunch, assemblies, and partners for sports activities. We rarely talk, which suits us both fine.
Though I don’t mind when she breaks the silence, how could I after the silver ring?
It was in our peaceful silence that Madge took off her silver ring one day, a simple-plain ring that I cannot recall ever seeing before that moment, and broke that same silence by asking if I would be interested in taking it in exchange for the strawberries in my lunch pail. The question threw me off guard, surely she understood that I would try to sell it?
Despite being the wealthiest family in the district, even the Undersee’s could use the extra wealth in case the nation experienced a famine or some other disaster, which wasn’t uncommon. Just two years before I was born, District Eleven, the agricultural district, experienced a freak epidemic across almost all their crops. It was one of the few times in District Twelve’s history that the number of merchant kids to Seam children were comparable in regards to being lost to starvation. Food prices ran too high for even the more fortunate in Twelve. Jewelry had always been used as a rainy day fund for those who still had precious family heirlooms.
I will never forget how my hands trembled when we exchanged our goods, as I silently cursed at myself for not being able to control the shaking. The last thing I wanted was for her to realize how uneven the deal was, she only getting a few moments of pleasure while my family would be able to enjoy fresh bread for weeks.
We then returned to silence as she chewed the berries and I gently stroked the ring in my palm before slipping it on to the only finger it would fit on my hand without being too tight, my pinky. The realization that my hands were bigger than Madge’s made me turn and watch her hands closely. Instead of seeing her sifting through the cloth the berries were wrapped in, her body was still. I looked up and saw that her eyes were trained on my pinky with the ring. For a brief moment I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was, the difference in size of our hands. I never got my answer, instead Madge’s eyes looked up to mine and slightly widened for some reason before she gave me a soft smile. It was then that I learned she had dimples. It was the first time I saw her truly smile.
“It doesn’t fit well,” she said quietly, eyes flashing back to the ring.
I could only nod my head, I was afraid it would offend her if I told her my plan for the ring.
She turned her attention back to the berries and plopped one into her mouth. Slowly she chewed and savored the berry for almost too long as her eyes were directed towards the cloth in her hands with the berries, yet she had a hundred yard stare.
“I don’t think it would fit your sister,” Madge said.
It was true, Prim was only eight at the time with hands petite like Madge’s, only smaller.
“You’ll probably have to sell it,” she said, her smile returning but she didn’t face me.
We returned to silence. Madge tried to give me back my cloth the berries were in after lunch but I refused to take it. She had given me so much more. After school, I went straight to the jeweler in the merchant area of Twelve, practically dragging poor Prim behind me as her shorter legs could barely keep up. We went home with more money than our father ever brought after a month of being in the mines, and a small cake from the bakery.
Yes, Madge is alright.
After the ring she never made such a trade again, but all my attempts of trying to share strawberries at lunch were met with her asserting that I should sell them to her father. Then, she wouldn’t talk or look in my direction for the rest of lunch. Eventually, I gave up and found myself at the back of the mayor’s house one day.
My moments of reflection are interrupted as Gale turns to me after securing the mesh nets around the strawberry bushes and suggests going to the Hob on our way home, the black market that operates in an abandoned warehouse that once held coal. When they came up with a more efficient system that transported the coal directly from the mines to the trains, the Hob gradually took over the space. Most businesses are closed by this time on reaping day, but the black market’s still fairly busy. We easily trade six of the fish for good bread, the other two for salt. Greasy Sae, the bony old woman who sells bowls of hot soup from a large kettle, takes half the greens off our hands in exchange for a couple of chunks of paraffin. We might do a tad better elsewhere, but we make an effort to keep on good terms with Greasy Sae. She’s the only one who can consistently be counted on to buy a wild dog. We don’t hunt them on purpose, but if you’re attacked and you take a dog or two, well, meat is meat. “Once it’s the soup, I’ll call it beef,” Greasy Sae says with a wink. No one in the Seam would turn up their nose at a good leg of wild dog, but the Peacekeepers who come to the Hob can afford to be a bit picky.
When we finish our business at the market, we go to the back door of the mayor’s house to sell half the strawberries, knowing he has a particular fondness for them and can afford our price. I never bothered telling Gale about the ring, it happened before I had met him and I never saw a reason to tell him it was actually Madge’s idea that I sell them to her father. Besides, knowing Gale he would find some reason to get fired up over it, probably by ranting on about how people of the Seam shouldn’t have to rely on handouts or something along those lines.
Today Madge opens the door. Which isn’t surprising considering her father is most likely busy with the last bits of preparation for the reaping. I should’ve known better than to expect her to be in a drab school outfit and hair let down, a sight that I grew accustomed to seeing almost everyday for years, but still I’m struck by her appearance. She stands before us in an expensive white dress that compliments her warm ivory skin and her long blonde hair is done up with a pink ribbon. Reaping clothes. A few strands of hair frame her face, instead of being distracting, they draw my attention to her cheekbones which have the faintest freckles from the summer sun. I find myself almost disappointed that I can only see her like this on such a day.
“Pretty dress,” says Gale.
Madge shoots him a look, trying to see if it’s a genuine compliment or if he’s being ironic. It is a pretty dress, but she would never be wearing it ordinarily. Still, Gale can be difficult to be around if you are a merchant kid, or worse, the mayor’s daughter. Madge presses her lips together and then smiles. “Well, if I end up going to the Capitol, I want to look nice, don’t I?”
Now it’s Gale’s turn to be confused. Does she mean it? Or is she messing with him? After years of witnessing Madge’s responses when some of the other kids would go out of their way and make jabs at her for being “a sheltered little princess,” I’m guessing the second.
“You won’t be going to the Capitol,” says Gale coolly. His eyes land on a small, circular pin that adorns her dress. Real gold. Beautifully crafted. From what I can see the pin is that of a bird, though I can't make out which bird because Gale continues. “What can you have? Five entries? I had six when I was just twelve years old.”
“That’s not her fault,” I say sharply. Yes, what he says is somewhat true, but to act as though Madge has no reason to fear the reaping is ludicrous. The odds are small, but she can still be thrown into the games as well.
Gale flashes me a brief look, one that I cannot read but I’m sure has to do with the edge in my voice. I almost feel bad, maybe Reaping Day has tugged more at our frustration and anxieties than we originally thought, making us more irritable with each other starting with the conversation of running away to the woods. But Madge has only ever given me peace and Gale always seems like he’s picking an argument every chance he speaks to her. So, my face stays stone cold as he looks at me.
“No, it’s no one’s fault. Just the way it is,” says Gale as he looks away from me.
Madge’s face has become closed off, reminding me that we share the same ability of becoming unreadable. She puts the money for the berries in my hand. “Good luck, Katniss.”
“You, too,” I say, and the door closes. My mouth feels dry. It is a beautiful dress.
We walk toward the Seam in silence. I don’t like that Gale took a dig at Madge. I have always admired that he is never afraid of letting people know what he thinks of them, but sometimes it feels too personal with Madge, I can never understand where the extra spit fire is coming from when it comes to her. It’s no secret between us that she is the person who I have spent the most time with outside of my family and him, even if it’s all at school. So, you would think after years of me never saying anything ill about her and the occasional complement of her problem solving skills over classwork he wouldn’t have a bone to pick. But yet it feels like we both look forward to giving the mayor strawberries for different reasons, he almost prepares in advance for what he’ll poke at. I stopped telling him about how Madge helps me with schoolwork in study hall because one time he used our delivery as the perfect time to ask how school was going only to then assert that the reason she gets good grades is because she never has to think about how to put food on the table.
However, he’s right about the reaping, of course. The reaping system is unfair, with the poor getting the worst of it. You become eligible for reaping the day you turn twelve. That year, your name is entered once. At thirteen, twice. And so on and so on until you reach the age of eighteen, the final year of eligibility, when your name goes into the pool seven times. That’s true for every citizen in all twelve districts in the entire country of Panem.
But here’s the catch. Say you are poor and starving as we were. You can opt to add your name more times in exchange for tesserae. Each tessera is worth a meager year’s supply of grain and oil for one person. You may do this for each of your family members as well. So, at the age of twelve, I had my name entered four times. In fact, every year I have needed to do this. And entries are cumulative. So now, at the age of sixteen, my name will be in the reaping twenty times. Gale, who is eighteen and has been feeding a family of five, will have his name in forty-two times.
You can see why someone like Madge, who has never been at risk of needing a tessera, can set him off. It’s not impossible for her to get drawn, but slim compared to those who live in the Seam. And even though the rules were set up by the Capitol, not the districts, certainly not Madge’s family, it’s hard not to resent those who don’t have to sign up for tesserae. I am guilty of looking at some merchant kids and wishing their odds were as grim as mine or Gale’s, but I could never look at Madge the same way, especially after the silver ring. Rather, it brings me a small amount of comfort to know the girl with the rare dimpled smile will most likely not be drawn. There’s so little I can find comfort in, I prefer not to tarnish it with envy.
Gale knows his anger at Madge is misdirected, at least with the reaping. On other days, deep in the woods, I’ve listened to him rant about how the tesserae are just another tool to cause misery in our district. A way to plant hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another… which made his jab at Madge for good grades after hearing she helped me with school work even more confusing at the moment. “It’s to the Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves,” he might say if there were no ears to hear but mine.
As we walk, glance over at Gale’s face, still smoldering underneath his stony expression. His rage seems pointless to me, although I never say so. It’s not that I don’t agree with him. I do. But what good is yelling about the Capitol in the middle of the woods? It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t make things fair, especially when he later directs his anger at the mayor’s daughter for wanting to wear a pretty dress in case her name gets called. It doesn’t fill our stomachs. In fact, it scares off the nearby game. I let him yell though. Better he does it in the woods than in the district.
Gale and I divide our spoils, leaving two fish, a couple of loaves of good bread, greens, a quart of strawberries, salt, paraffin, and a bit of money for each.
“See you in the square,” I say.
“Wear something pretty,” he says flatly.
Pretty.
I make my way home in silence. The word pretty stuck in my head, and the image of Madge standing in the doorway in her reaping clothes stuck along with the word as if it were the very definition of it. I take a strawberry and crush it between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, letting the sweetness linger for as long as possible. I rarely get jealous of other girls. I don’t care to look like Madge, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. So… why can’t I stop thinking of her in that dress?