Chapter Text
My sister Prim dips a cloth into a bucket of cool water and places it on my forehead. I shiver, not wanting even more cold on top of the chills wracking my feverish body, even as Prim tells me I’m burning up and need to cool down.
“Maybe I should get someone to help,” she says. “Mother’s just as sick as you are, and I can’t take care of both of you by myself.”
I shake my head. “You can’t, Prim. Nobody can know we’re struggling like this.”
“Please, Katniss,” she insists. “I can go over to the neighbours just across the way. I’m sure they’d be happy to help. I won’t even need you or Mother to come with me.”
“No,” I say firmly. “We just need to rest. I’m sure we’ll be up on our feet again in just a couple days.”
Her eyes dart back and forth anxiously. “But Katniss—”
“No.”
She sighs and tucks the blanket closer around me. “Okay. I won’t. You get some rest, okay?”
I nod. She kisses my forehead and tiptoes out of the room as I drift into an uneasy, feverish sleep.
I’m awakened from my daze by a foreign hand resting on my forehead—larger and cooler than Prim’s but too soft to be my mother’s. The allure of sleep is tempting, but I drag my eyes open and stare blearily at the face of this strange woman who sits by my bed. Middle-aged, clad in a simple calico work dress, auburn hair pulled back into a bun with a few strands wisping at her hairline.
She smiles at me. “Hello, my dear. I’m Marmee, Marmee March. I live just across the street. Your sister sent for me, saying you and your mother were ill.”
“Prim—no—” I struggle to sit up, to get out of bed and find my sister so I can reprimand her, but Marmee pushes me back down onto the bed, her touch gentle but firm.
She mistakes my anger for concern. “You need rest, my dear. You can worry about your sister when you’re well again. In the meantime, why don’t I help you sit up a little and you can have some broth we’ve brought for you. Jo, bring the basket in here, please!”
As she’s helping me to sit up (and even that gesture leaves me dizzy, I really am in no state to be finding and scolding Prim), a girl bounds into the room. She’s tall and gangly, my age or a bit younger, wearing a ragged green cloak and carrying a basket.
“It’s positively splendid to meet you!” she exclaims. “I’ve wanted to introduce myself for ever so long, only Marmee said I shouldn’t intrude since we’d tried to meet your family a few times and you’d never seemed to want to get to know us. You don’t know how wonderful it is to finally meet someone my age. All we have in the neighbourhood are little ones, and Meg is a dear, but…”
“Jo,” Marmee scolds gently, “you are here to take care of her. You can get to know each other once she’s better, so please hold off on the chatter and give her some broth.”
Just as well. Her nattering is making my already-pounding head ache even worse.
Jo retrieves a flask from the basket, uncorks it, and promptly spills half of it on the bedclothes when in her eagerness to feed me she tips it a bit too far. I sigh.
“Oh, what a blunderbuss I am!” she exclaims, scrubbing at the spill on the blanket with an already-stained sleeve. “I’m terribly sorry, I’m so clumsy. I get into so many scrapes, you have no idea. Maybe I’ll let Marmee give you the rest of the broth and I’ll see what I can do to build up the fire.” She whisks from the room, skirts swirling.
Marmee shakes her head, smiling, as she guides the flask to my lips. “That girl of mine. I can only hope she’ll manage to calm her antics eventually.”
I sip at the broth. My stomach is rocky and I fear it’ll only come back up, but the saltiness seems to soothe it. Sip by sip, I finish what’s left in the flask and manage a few bites of bread besides. Marmee coaxes me into drinking a cup of water, too, and by the time I’ve finished I’m feeling stronger than I have in days. My brain has cleared, the chills have subsided, and I’m able to hold the water cup in my hand without shaking.
“I’ve got some medicine for you, too, to bring down that fever,” Marmee says. “I need you to take as much as you can, all right?”
I nod. She pours a spoonful of thick brownish liquid and holds it out to me, and I swallow it in one go, steeling myself for the bitter, foul taste I associate with my mother’s herbal concoctions. But there’s a sweetness that cuts the taste of the herbs and makes it palatable enough to get down.
“Good girl,” Marmee says. “I’m just going to check on your mother, and then I’ll be back tomorrow morning to see how you’re doing, all right?”
I manage a nod. She brushes her cool fingers over my forehead one last time and leaves.
Whatever herbs she gave me seem to have not only fever-reducing but calming properties, because it isn’t long before I drift off into a deliciously fever-free sleep that lasts the whole night and well into the next morning.
“Prim, we need to talk,” I say, walking into the kitchen three days later, temperature back to normal and wearing proper clothes for the first time in a week. “Prim?”
“She’s not here,” my mother says. She is wrapped in a blanket at the table, still pale, but on her feet and looking resolute. “Do you want breakfast? I could make you something. Eggs? Porridge?”
“I’m fine.” I grab a roll from the basket on the table. “Do you know where Prim is?”
“Went to talk to the Marches,” my mother says. “You know, you ought to as well, tell them thank you for all the care they gave us when you and I were sick…”
“I’m going hunting,” I snap. I grab my bow and game bag from their place by the door, throw on my boots and my father’s hunting jacket, and stalk outside, slamming the door behind me as I leave. I hear my mother yelp at the noise. I honestly couldn’t care less.
I’m fuming as I trudge through the snow. Unfortunately, the path to the woods leads me directly past the Marches’ house, and who do I see but Prim, coming along the path towards me.
“Katniss!” she says. “You’re up! Are you feeling bet—”
I don’t let her finish. “What did I say about asking the Marches for help?”
I expect her to cower, as she always does whenever anyone raises their voice even a hair louder than normal volume, but she stands straighter and glares at me. “I didn’t have a choice! What was I supposed to do, let you and Mother burn up with fever forever? I know you’re independent, Katniss, but sometimes it seems like you would rather die than let anybody help you!” And with a defiant toss of her head, she strides past me towards home.
I huff and continue down the path into the forest. I know my angry stomping is sure to scare off prey, but I let myself crunch through the snow as loudly and angrily as I please. Damn them all! Prim admitting our struggles to a perfect stranger and that stranger and her clumsy daughter coming into my house and getting broth on our best sheets and my mother allowing it all to happen! Nobody seems to respect me and my wishes in this house, nobody appreciates all that I’ve done to keep us alive!
Eventually my anger does abate (I’m sure every squirrel in a ten-mile radius has fled at this point) and I cease my stomping and fall into my practised stealthy tread. After a week or more without me going hunting, and my mother too sick to provide her usual doctoring services, we cannot afford to go any longer without fresh meat.
My mind is still distracted by Prim’s words and my body is still weak, so my aim isn’t what it usually is. As a result I miss three clear shots in a row, and I’m tempted to stomp around some more, but my brain is still rational enough to realize that that would only scare off more prey. Instead I focus on slowing my breathing, tuning out my own thoughts, narrowing my focus to only the woods around me. I must come home with meat tonight.
A rabbit hops into view. I carefully, silently hoist my bow to my shoulder. Draw back the string. Aim. And release.
My arrow hits the rabbit beautifully—right through the eye—and I’m heading over to retrieve it when I hear a gasp. I whirl around to see Jo March staring open-mouthed at me, eyes shining like stars.
“That was incredible!” she gasps. “I had no idea you could shoot like that. It’s always been my greatest ambition to learn how to hunt, but Marmee says it’s far too boyish. I’ve tried to fashion my own bows before, but they’ve never amounted to much. Yours is amazing. Did you make it?”
“It was my father’s,” I say. “And you’re scaring off all the prey. So either shut up or leave me alone.”
She’s silent for about five seconds. Then: “Can I try it?”
“I have to hunt. I really don’t have time for this.”
“Please, Katniss? Just once? Then I’ll leave you alone, I swear.”
“I don’t even know you.” I focus on retrieving the arrow from the rabbit, carefully wiping it clean before placing it back in my quiver. “How do I know you wouldn’t seize the bow and run away with it as soon as you had it in your grasp?”
“Well, you know Marmee,” Jo says. “Do you think Marmee would raise any child to steal?”
She has a point. I hardly know Marmee, but everything I’ve witnessed tells me she’s sickeningly moral. And I get the feeling Jo won’t leave me alone until I relent. “Fine. But only once. And I’ll be watching you the whole time.”
Jo claps for joy and bounds over to me, reaching for the bow. I show her how to place her feet, how to hold the bow, and how to place her fingers on the arrow and bowstring.
“Now raise it high—higher—and pull back the string. Look where you want the arrow to go—and release.”
Jo optimistically aims for a tree thirty feet away. She raises the bow high, pulls back the string and releases. The arrow falls limply from the string and drops into a snowbank not two feet away.
She bursts out laughing at her own clumsiness. “I should have known. I can barely manage to knit, let alone shoot as deftly as you do. But thank you ever so much for letting me try. You’re a dear.”
And she gives me a smile that’s so radiant, I can’t help smiling in return.