Chapter Text
Lucy Gray Baird was born in the north, far beyond the borders of Panem. For over a hundred years, her people, called the Covey, had lived a nomadic lifestyle. Through spring and summer, the Covey roamed the free lands of the north, where they lived off of the earth. As the leaves turned into the colors of sunset, the Covey made their way down south to Panem, where winters were much more forgiving. There, they made their living through trade and performing for District folk.
Lucy Gray had no memories of what life was like before war broke out in Panem. Her memory of the war, later called the Dark Days, was hazy. She remembered frost covered rubble, smoldering, half collapsed buildings. She remembered the hungry hands of District folk, begging the Covey to let them trade things like cotton rags and broken children’s toys for goat’s milk or horse meat. Lucy Gray hated the wintertime, and wondered how waiting out battles and scavenging the miserable Districts could have possibly been preferable to enduring the fearsome northern winters. The only source of light during winters in the Districts came from her mother, who would brighten the spirits of shell shocked soldiers with her incredible singing voice. “Nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping,” she’d sing, spinning around in her rainbow dance as the audience clapped along. “Nothing you can take was ever worth keeping!”
When the Dark Days ended and the Capitol regained control of Panem, the Covey were no longer free to wander as they had been. The Covey decided to stay up north, away from Panem, but the Capitol would not allow it. The Capitol thought that having free people, even outside of their borders, was too risky. The Covey’s very existence threatened the Capitol’s power.
Lucy Gray’s caravan was able to evade the claws of the Capitol for some years. But when she was eight years old, she and her family woke in the middle of the night to find that their caravan had been surrounded by Capitol militia. The men of the Covey fought back against the Peacekeepers, sending the women and the children to flee into the forest. Lucy Gray’s father was one of these fighters. He swung an axe at two Peacekeepers, screaming at his wife and children to go. Lucy Gray hesitated. Her oldest brother picked her up as bullets pummeled into their father’s body.
After the men were killed, the Peacekeepers found the women and the children, using their guns to force the remaining Covey into submission. The Covey were informed that they were going to give up their nomadic lifestyle and walk back to Panem’s territory, where they would become proper District citizens. At dawn, the long walk began. The Peacekeepers rode in their cars and trucks, while the Covey, their horses having been slaughtered, were made to walk at gunpoint.
For months, they walked regardless of the weather, from sunrise until sunset. Lucy Gray watched as her caravan of hundreds shrunk to dozens. Young children, the elderly, and the disabled were the first to go. People collapsed from exhaustion, never to stand again. In the mornings after nights of thunderstorms, they would wake to find the rigid bodies of those who died of hypothermia. The Covey withered away from starvation. Hunger took both of Lucy Gray’s older brothers. The boys insisted on giving all of their food to their mother, the aunt, and their little cousins –especially Maude Ivory, who was one of the only babies still, miraculously, alive. Lucy Gray watched her strong, lively brothers turn to weak, shivering bones, dying in their sleep.
Lucy Gray’s aunt eventually died of dysentery. Little Maude Ivory had only been kept alive by her mother’s milk. Lucy Gray’s own mother cried, clutching Maude Ivory’s tiny body to her chest, believing that the baby girl with the sunken eyes, frail limbs, and swollen belly would soon perish, too. It was then they were approached by a little boy, about Lucy Gray’s age, with black hair and tired eyes, his head too big on his skeletal body.
“I’m Billy Taupe,” he said to Lucy Gray, Barb Azure, and Lucy Gray’s mother. “My grandpa was friends with y’alls’. My baby sister just died, but my mama still has milk. She can feed your baby.”
They brought Maude Ivory to Billy Taupe’s mother, who was nursing her toddler son, Clerk Carmine. She latched Maude Ivory onto her free breast, and the girl drank.
The two families stayed close to one another for the remainder of the long walk. They shared food, stories, and songs, anything they could to keep their spirits high. By the time they made it to the train station, there were only six children and thirty-eight adults, mainly women, remaining of the originally six hundred person caravan. When Lucy Gray saw the train station, she wanted to drop to her knees and scream to the sky with joy. Their walk was over. She imagined that the trains would take them to cozy homes with warm beds, where they could sleep and eat as much as they wanted to.
But when it came time to board, the Covey were instructed to separate themselves into two groups, one for the adults, one for the children. The Peacekeepers explained that the children would be taken to District Twelve, while the adults would be taken to District Four.
Lucy Gray’s mother fell into a fit of hysteria. “You can’t take these kids away from us,” she wailed. “Please, we’ve already lost everyone else! You can’t just take them. Please, please!”
A Peacekeeper pulled Maude Ivory from her arms. The babe began to scream, and Lucy Gray’s mother lunged at the Peacekeeper, trying to take back her niece.
“You can’t take them! You can’t take them!” she screamed.
Another Peacekeeper pulled Lucy Gray’s mother away. He held up his gun and slammed it into her temple, knocking her onto her knees. He slammed it again into her head, and the blood flowed from her as she dropped to the ground, trembling and gurgling as her life bled out of her.
Chaos ensued. Some Covey adults tried to flee, while others tried to hold onto the children. Billy Taupe’s mother was shot as she reached for her sons, her blood splattering all over the sobbing boys. Lucy Gray screamed like an animal, grasping at her mother’s limp body. A Peacekeeper hoisted her up and tossed her into the train with the other children. The door slid shut, and off the train went, straight towards District Twelve.
They reached Twelve the next day. The six children, consisting of the Bairds –Lucy Gray, Barb Azure, and Maude Ivory– the Clades –Billy Taupe and Clerk Carmine– and a foundling named Tam Amber, were escorted to the mayor’s office in the Justice Building.
“I wanted to welcome you properly to District Twelve,” Mayor Lipp, a squat and freckled man, said from behind his desk. He gave each child a small roll of bread and a glass of water. “Now, I want you to know, first and foremost, that I do not care for your kind. When I first heard that a shipment of Covey was being sent to my district, I was repulsed. We may not look like much, but I believe Twelve to be a respectable district, and I don’t want Covey vermin infecting it. However, after it was explained to me that we would only be receiving children, I felt obliged to take you in. I believe that you are all young enough to be taught out of your Covey ways. So, you are welcome here, so long as you abide by the rules of our society. That means no singing, no bartering, no travelling. None of it. Do I make myself clear?”
The Covey children nodded.
“Good,” Mayor Lipp said. “Outside of my office is a man named Frank Mcclair. You’ll be under his care from now on. He’s going to rear you all up as proper children, make sure you go to school and are well fed. You treat him nicely, you hear?”
Frank lived in a small house in the meadow that was just on the outskirts of the poorest neighborhood in Twelve, a place called the Seam. Frank had the typical Seam look: straight black hair, grey eyes, and olive skin. He had no family, no wife, and few friends. He was a quiet and gentle man. Each month he received a stipend from the Capitol which was just enough to pay for the Covey children’s basic needs.
Frank worked thirteen hour shifts in the mines, each day excluding Sunday. Thus, the Covey children raised themselves. They cooked their own meals, mended their own clothes, and the oldest four took turns taking care of Maude Ivory and Clerk Carmine, who were initially both too young to help themselves. Excluding the summer months, they went to school until they were fourteen years old, which at the time was the age District children were required to be educated until. Maude Ivory and Clerk Carmine were dropped off at the school’s daycare for young children who did not have figures at home to tend to them.
Despite the many horrors the children endured in their short lives, the Covey children learned how to embrace peace. They wandered the meadow and the woods past it, far beyond the district’s borders. They hunted and gathered their food, taught themselves how to swim, climbed trees, and chased each other through the long grass. Out in the wild, they were allowed to act as Covey as they wanted to be. They sang, they danced, and after Tam Amber learned how to hunt deer and geese, they traded in meat on the black market. The Covey knew they would age out of Frank’s stipend after they graduated school, and so when the eldest four entered their teens, they began performing at the Hob as a way to earn their living. It wasn’t good money, but it was better than working in the mines.
While they weren’t related by family, Lucy Gray considered the Covey boys as close to her as family. But no one held her heart like Billy Taupe did. As kids, people called them “Big” and “Little” –Big Billy Taupe, Little Lucy Gray. They were inseparable, two parts of one person, just the big and little versions of each other. They were the most daring of the Covey, always joining older Seam kids on troublesome midnight adventures. At eleven years old, Lucy Gray stole a bottle of moonshine, and she and Billy Taupe snuck off the lake to drink it. The liquor burned their stomachs, but they drank until they were drunk and silly, laughing at the way they couldn’t stand up or walk straight. The two of them had their own inside jokes, and could know what the other was thinking just from a quick glance. Barb Azure said that they spoke their own language, one that they couldn’t speak with anyone else.
In all of Lucy Gray’s life, she only felt truly understood by Billy Taupe. She knew from an early age that she never wanted to be parted from his side. When she was fourteen, she realized that she was in love with him. They were behind the hanging tree, their go-to place to drink and talk by themselves. It was the one place in Twelve they could guarantee would have no visitors. It was late November, a silver skied day. They were huddled together on the ground, sharing a quilt wrapped around their shoulders, sipping on whiskey. They talked about nothing of importance. Soft, fat snowflakes lazily trickled down from the sky. It was the first snow of the season. It was the way Billy Taupe’s face brightened as the snow fell, how he giggled and pointed at them with delight like a little kid. Lucy Gray knew she was done for. Without thinking, she kissed him. She would forever be his.