Chapter Text
A certain kind of woman is always slightly posing, even if she's also at rest. Lips and eyes and bones in a line as she crunches everything in her head. Its family or vomit or the socioeconomic status of society but none of it really matters, because it's just who I am.
A feminine air, a colourful corset which I am told my grandmother wore as part of her performance dress, tailored to fit me specially for Reaping Day. A light voice, perfectly designed for singing. A slim figure, yet the soft outline of strength in my arms and legs, formed from years of lugging around my guitar in its heavy case. The slight curve of my body, as is expected of any 15 year old being fed. I'm arguably one of the more beautiful girls in District 12.
Still, taking out those tesserae grains for myself, my younger sister, my mother and my father each year has meant my name is in that reaping bowl a total of 19 times. It's still not enough, which is why I am glad my father has taught me to gather. Fruits and nuts are safe. Stay away from mushrooms. They are rarely safe, and you’re more likely to get sick, suffer hallucinations or be running every five minutes to the nearest bathroom, which isn’t a pleasant experience for someone who lives in the Seam. Fish at the lake for some easy pickings of protein. Meat is hard to get, but if you can find a weapon and are agile, you can very easily collect a few turkeys or squirrels to trade for whatever you want down at the Hob. It's where I got my flask a year ago, and the white liquor I have been storing inside it since.
I didn’t always drink. Just since my father was executed for suspicion of rebel activity last year, and I took on my role as head of the household. I needed courage to sing without my mother. I needed to stay warm to hunt. I needed to stay numb enough to make sure my family's needs came before my own. I took Sylvia Lilac to performances when she was old enough and had learnt to play notes on her instruments. I sang and played guitar and she worked a tune on a piano, or a lute, or whatever instrument that the listeners could rustle up. Mother stopped singing after Father died. Said she didn’t have the wherewithal. She took in laundry, as most women do when they are not strong enough to work in the mines. Many people do not have money, but most can scrape together a few pennies or some scrip to pawn off their household chores on someone else. Singing and music is not so much in demand nowadays. We don’t believe that people should pay for entertainment, but a nice tune wouldn’t put food on the table. Each of us is doing something, gathering, laundry, performing, but we get by. Barely. Thankfully. Many people less fortunate than us don't.
I’m mulling this over as I lay, curled up in front of the fire like a cat worn out from chasing mice. I come here every year, on the same exact day, as soon as I wake up. I light the fire and I curl up in front of it. I sit in the warmth until Sylvia Lilac or Mother inevitably wakes up and pulls me out of my own head. “No Capitol, No Peace” reads every single one of the banners thrown hastily up for Reaping Day. But then why are we all starving to death? They’ll say it’s pneumonia or influenza but it's not. They fool no-one, except perhaps the higher ups in the Capitol who are too busy gorging themselves on whatever fancy food they eat there. Throw away whole meals while the country is dying because nobody has enough to go around. Kids being born and dying in infancy because there's simply no food left. Tell us that it’s not true, that the parents were simply not working hard enough. They have us kneeling before their throne despite the fact we all know its woven of lies.
After all, where else would we kneel?
Fake a smile like they taught me to as Sylvia Lilac sits next to me, scared out of her wits. Not for herself. She’s only 11. She’s safe another year. For me. She knows I have 19 slips. 19 chances of my name being called out. Still, it was worth the 4 years worth of grain for each of us I got in return. Father died before I could take out the twentieth slip for his tessara. Sylvia Lilac is shaking, so I sing the two quiet verses from her poem to soothe her.
“Sylvia's hair is like the night,
Touched with glancing starry beams;
Such a face as drifts through dreams,
This is Sylvia to the sight.
And the touch of Sylvia's hand
Is as light as milkweed down,
When the meads are golden brown,
And autumn fills the land.
“Sylvia:- just the echoing
Of her voice brings back to me,
From the depths of memory,
All the loveliness of spring:
Sylvia! Sylvia!
Such a face as drifts through dreams,
This is Sylvia to the sight.”
A strange poem to name her after, as when she was born, she had just a fluff of mouse-brown hair upon her head. My singing must have stirred Mother, as I hear her pattering about the bedroom, getting dressed for the Reaping. It’s already almost ten, but on a day such as this, nobody except the merchants are working, so many sleep in if they can. Why not? It's the closest to a holiday anyone will get in this forsaken place.
She comes out in a pale orange dress from many years ago, when she and my father were lovers rather than spouses. I suppose one day it’ll be mine, or Sylvia Lilac’s. I’m already dressed. I woke up almost 3 hours ago and have been curled up in front of the fire since. Mother always says it’s a waste of my time, as if there’s much to do on Reaping Day, when the district is dead and, soon enough, 2 of our children likely will be too. Happy Happy Happy Hunger Games, as Effie Trinket would say. And I suppose it is, for all but 2 families who miss out on celebrations that their children are safe another year. They’ll shut the windows, bolt the door and hole down in their homes as they deal with the imminent probability of their child's death. It’s hardly unimaginable when I’ve seen it happen to 33 families. It should be an even number, but during the second Quarter Quell, Woodbine Chance bolted and gave way to our district victor, Haymitch Abernathy. He speaks to nobody. Not my uncle Burdock, not Tam Amber or Clerk Carmine.
He asked me to stop bringing him blackberries when I went out to gather.
Mother blames him for what happened to Lenore Dove. Red gumdrops. Empty stomach. Poison. You connect the dots. I think she would have been killed at some point anyway. Burdock says that her pa is from the Chance family.
I’m taken out of my own thoughts again as Mother tells Sylvia to go get dressed in my old outfit. She’s a little taller than I was at her age, so rather than wearing the drab gray dress I did when I was 11, she wears the Reaping Outfit I wore during my first Hunger Games, the 52nd. She emerges a few minutes later in a white blouse, tucked carefully into a light blue skirt that falls just below her knees. If she looks that young, I must look seriously old. My eyes are framed with dark black lines, made of charcoal dust and carefully painted on to make them look bigger. The lids are smeared with purple juice from berries that I’ve learnt will stain my skin temporarily. I use a red paint, swiped from my mother’s meagre makeup supplies many years ago, as both rouge and lipstick. Normally, Mother would tell me to take it off but today she just looks at me and sighs.
“You look like your grandmother did, Annabel Lee.” She never calls me by my full name. Says “Annabel Lee Sage” is too much of a mouthful. Does the same to Sylvia Lilac, and her name’s quick as quick to speak. I suppose it’s good that she took Father’s last name. At least Fernn is short.
I never met my grandmother. My mother hasn’t either, but she’s seen photos from her aunt, Barb Azure. Or so she says. I’ve never once looked at these photos, but I expect I do look at least a little like her, in her old corset and my makeup. Lenore Dove got the rest of the fabric from her dress, so I wear a similarly bright, green and blue coloured skirt with the corset, clipped up at the waist to make it fit.
It flows down as I stand, making my way to the meadow to gather plants for tonight's supper. I’ve no doubt Burdock will be bringing us some of his fresh game, so I don’t bother with hunting. Instead, I pick through the bushes, and when those don’t turn up necessary profits, I creep under the fence to go into the woods. It used to be uniform trees, set out and planted in long rows, but as time passed they grew wider, and now the forest is dense and gorgeous, trees and bushes and flowers covering any dirt and placed wildly, as if someone attached those seed packets the gardening store sells to a group of turkeys and shot a peacekeepers gun to set them running. I pick over the strawberry bushes and blackberry I find, pluck sprigs of chamomile, collect flowers and leaves until I fill almost 2 baskets of plants. Enough to trade and keep some for dinner tonight.
I then make my way to the lake, snapping a sharp branch off of a tree and then taking off my skirt so I can wade into the water. I stand as silently and still as I can in a shallow spot, until fish begin to get curious and swim up near me. Then I attack. I spear 4 fish, all reasonably sized, and lay them under the plants in my second basket, wrapping them in a large leaf stolen from a tree. By this point, my legs have dried in the warm July heat, and so I pin my skirt back around my waist and trot off to the Hob so I can sell whatever I don’t need.
Some berries to Hattie, in exchange for white liquor, 2 fish to Greasy Sae, who returns the favor with a bowl of soup and a few coins. Dandelions and violets towards the tables that will accept them. Another fish to the butcher’s son, who frequently comes around looking for a cheap, non-meaty meal (as if meat is a bad thing!). Strawberries set aside for Merillee Donner, who isn’t seen around much since Maysillee was reaped. Blackberries to go to the baker’s daughter. A few sprigs of chamomile for tea for Asterid, who I visit on my way back to see if Burdock will be coming by for supper.
“We should be,” she doesn’t smile, her hair in a low braided bun for her reaping outfit as she stirs a pot of foul smelling liquid spotted with plants. I hand her a clump of eucalyptus leaves, and she sprinkles them in. She often uses her services as a healer for free for the people in the Seam, typically after a whipping or a particularly traumatic injury. She murmurs a thanks as I slip out of the door, carrying just one full basket of fruits, nuts, flowers and a singular fish for our supper. The white liquor I bought from Hattie, the scrip coins from Greasy Sae and the Capitol currency I got from the merchants are in the other basket, alongside the leaves I used to wrap the fish.
About twenty paces from my house I stop, take my flask out from my corseted bodice and fill it with the white liquor. It's foul stuff, designed to make your throat and chest burn, but it keeps me from the cold sweats I get and it numbs me just enough to deal with the turmoil of my everyday life. I take a deep swig and shudder, before stuffing the flask back down my corset and carrying on walking. I have to shove the door open with my foot, and lay my baskets down on the counter before I pull off my hard leather boots I usually wear for school and gathering. This irritates Mother, who will now have to sweep once more after the Reaping to get rid of the muddy footprints.
“Where have you been?” Her voice is angrier than usual, and when I look up at the clock, smeared with the coal dust that settles on everything in the Seam, I notice it's much later than I thought. I don’t bother answering her. I know her question is rhetorical. Instead, I distract her with the berries and the fish that I know she is eager to fry right that moment, but she must settle for simply placing it with the ice we have stashed in the cooler so that it doesn’t succumb to rot in the unbearable heat. After all, July 4th is constantly setting records for being the hottest day of the year.
“We have to leave right now. It’s already 1:30,” she shouts to Sylvia Lilac. If you are not at the reaping by 2PM sharp, peacekeepers will be knocking down your door tonight to lock you up. Unless you're on the brink of death, because what's the point in sending a tribute who’s already dying to a pageant of murder and insanity? The Capitol doesn’t want to spend so much money feeding and clothing and styling a tribute who’s just going to slowly suffocate to death on the fluid building in their own lungs before the Games even start. Where’s the pageantry in that?
She rushes so quickly out of the door, dragging Sylvia Lilac with her. They’re a solid 40 paces in front by the time I pull on my uncomfortable reaping shoes, black leather boots with slight heels that have been broken in wrong by either my mother or one of her cousins, that I feel safe to take another gulp from my flask. It burns my stomach, but it cools me down. I haven’t had a drink of any other cold thing since winter, when the pumps freeze shut and you have to use all your strength to get that little dribble to come out. “District 12: the coal miners that keep us warm”? More like “District 12: where you can freeze to death covered in soot”
My mother looks back at me, and I have the good sense to hide my flask behind my back and speed up, as if I’m trying to catch up to her. Doing this gives me the time to stuff it back down my chest, and when I do finally walk in step with her and Sylvia Lilac, I’m able to play off my flushed cheeks and breathlessness on the sudden upstep in exercise. As we arrive in the square, Mother and Sylvia Lilac are taken to the separate viewing area for those either too young or too old to be reaped, behind the rows and rows of potential tributes. I sign in, make my way to the area designated for children aged 14-15 and wait. My friend, Maybelle, whose parents run the grocers where I sometimes sell potatoes, comes to find me. She has a late birthday, so her name is only in the reaping bowl 3 times. Her parents never let her take out tesserae. They don’t need it.
“How many times is your name in?” she asks me quietly.
“19,” I say, just loud enough for her to hear. There must be thousands of names in that bowl. Her chances of getting picked are slim. Much slimmer than mine. She grips my hand tightly as Effie Trinket walks onstage in a bright crimson outfit and an equally garish wig. Her face is painted scarlet, swirling around her eyes and framing her lips, and when she opens her mouth I see her teeth are stained with lipstick. I glance at Maybelle and bare my own teeth, silently asking if I too have painted my mouth. She shakes her head and smiles weakly.
After we all stumble through the anthem, a grim and boring song, she talks about the Treaty Of Treason, how 13 districts rebelled against the Capitol and how only 12 survived. How the Hunger Games save us from such a thing happening again. The Dark Days. She then claps her hands and smiles, baring her bright red teeth.
“As always,” she booms with glee. “Ladies first!”
Her hand swirls around the bowl for a few seconds, picking up a handful and letting all but one drop down. My breathing becomes shallow in the few moments she reads out the name, and I feel my eyes closing and my hand gripping Maybelle’s in a silent prayer that neither of us will be chosen.
“District 12’s female tribute:”
I open my eyes, hoping my prayer has worked
“Annabel Lee Sage Fernn!” Effie shouts, slightly out of breath.
Mother was right. My full name is rather a mouthful to say