The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

by Suzanne Collins

  He didn’t like the way her rage against Billy Taupe had faded. “Is he trying to get back with you?”

  She picked up the feather and twirled it between her thumb and forefinger before she answered. “Oh, sure. Came to my meadow yesterday. Big plans. Wants me to meet him at the hanging tree and run off.”

  “The hanging tree?” Coriolanus thought of Arlo swinging while the birds mocked his final words. “Why there?”

  “That’s where we used to go. It’s the one place in District Twelve you’re guaranteed some privacy,” she said. “Wants us to go north. He thinks there’s people up there. Free people. Says we’ll find them and then come back for the others. He’s piling up supplies, not sure with what. But what does it matter? I can’t ever trust him again.”

  Coriolanus felt jealousy tighten his throat. He thought she’d banished Billy Taupe, and here she was casually telling him about some chance meeting in the Meadow. Only it hadn’t been chance. He’d known where to find her. How long had they been there, with him pouring on the charm, tempting her to run away? Why had she stayed to listen? “Trust is important.”

  “I think it’s more important than love. I mean, I love all kinds of things I don’t trust. Thunderstorms . . . white liquor . . . snakes. Sometimes I think I love them because I can’t trust them, and how mixed up is that?” Lucy Gray took a deep breath. “I trust you, though.”

  He sensed this was a difficult admission for her to make, perhaps harder than a declaration of love, but it didn’t erase the image of Billy Taupe wooing her in the Meadow. “Why?”

  “Why? Well, I’ll have to give that one some thought.” When she kissed him, he kissed her back, but without much conviction. These new developments upset him. Maybe it was a mistake to be getting so attached to her. And something else bothered him, too. It was the song she’d been playing in the Meadow that first day. About the hanging, he’d thought then, but it had mentioned meeting up at the hanging tree as well. If that was their old place, why was she still singing about it? Maybe she was only using him to get Billy Taupe back. Playing the two of them off each other.

  Maude Ivory awoke and admired her feather, which she had Lucy Gray fix in her hair. They readied themselves to go back, collecting the blanket, the jug, and the bucket. Coriolanus volunteered to carry the little girl for the first leg of the trip. When they’d left the lake, he dropped back behind the others to ask her, “So, do you see Billy Taupe these days?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “He’s not one of us anymore.” That pleased him, but it also suggested that Lucy Gray had kept her meeting with him a secret from the Covey, which made him suspicious again. Maude Ivory bent over his ear and whispered, “Don’t let him around Sejanus. He’s sweet, and Billy Taupe feeds on sweet.”

  Coriolanus bet he fed on money, too. Just how was he paying for supplies for his escape?

  Tam Amber took a slightly different route, detouring to berry patches so they could fill the bucket along the way. When they’d almost reached the town, Clerk Carmine spotted a tree loaded with apples just beginning to ripen. Tam Amber and Sejanus went on, carrying Maude Ivory and the gear between them. Clerk Carmine climbed the tree and threw down apples, and Coriolanus piled them into Lucy Gray’s skirt. It was early evening by the time they reached the house. Coriolanus felt exhausted and ready to return to the base, but Barb Azure sat alone at the kitchen table, picking through berries. “Tam Amber took Maude Ivory to the Hob to see if they could trade some berries for some shoes. I told them to go ahead and get warm ones, it’ll be cold before you know it.”

  “And Sejanus?” Coriolanus looked into the backyard.

  “He left a few minutes after. Said he’d meet you there, too,” she said.

  The Hob. Coriolanus said his good-byes immediately. “I’ve got to go. If they see Sejanus there without another Peacekeeper, he’ll get written up. So will I, for that matter. We have to stay in pairs. He knows that — I don’t know what he’s thinking.” But in truth, he thought he knew exactly what Sejanus was thinking. What a great opportunity to visit the Hob without Coriolanus policing him. He pulled Lucy Gray in for a kiss. “Today was wonderful. Thank you for it. I’ll see you next Saturday at the shed?” He shot out the door before she could reply.

  He walked, double time, straight to the Hob, and looked in the open door. A dozen or so people wandered around, turning over merchandise at the stalls. Maude Ivory sat on a barrel while Tam Amber laced up a boot for her. At the far end of the warehouse, Sejanus stood at a counter, engaged in conversation with a woman. As Coriolanus approached, he made note of her wares. Miners’ lamps. Picks. Axes. Knives. Suddenly, he realized what Sejanus could buy with all that Capitol money. Weapons. And not just the ones laid out before him. He could buy guns. As if to confirm shady dealings, the woman broke off talking when he came into earshot. Sejanus joined him directly.

  “Shopping?” Coriolanus asked.

  “I was thinking of getting a pocketknife,” said Sejanus. “But she’s out at the moment.”

  Perfect. A lot of the soldiers carried them. There was even a game they played when they were off duty, where they bet money on who could hit a target. “I was thinking of getting one myself. Once we get paid.”

  “Of course, once we get paid,” agreed Sejanus, as if that had been understood.

  Suppressing an impulse to strike him, Coriolanus strode out of the Hob without acknowledging Maude Ivory and Tam Amber. He barely spoke on the way back as he revised his strategy. He had to find out what Sejanus was mixed up in. Logic had failed to induce a confidence. Would intimacy work? It wouldn’t hurt to try. A few blocks from the base, he laid a hand on Sejanus’s shoulder, bringing them both to a stop. “You know, Sejanus, I’m your friend. More than a friend. You’re the closest thing I’ll ever have to a brother. And there are special rules for family. If you need help . . . I mean, if you get into something you can’t handle . . . I’m here.”

  Tears welled up in Sejanus’s eyes. “Thank you, Coryo. That means a lot. You may be the only person in the world who I actually trust.”

  Ah, trust again. The air was full of it.

  “Come here.” He pulled Sejanus into an embrace. “Just promise not to do anything stupid, okay?” He felt him nod in assent but knew the likelihood of his keeping that promise was almost nil.

  At least their busy schedule kept Sejanus under constant supervision, even when they left the base. Monday afternoon, they retrieved the traps from the trees again. Although they’d been undisturbed for the entire weekend, not one contained a mockingjay. Contrary to expectations, Dr. Kay seemed pleased by the birds. “It seems they’ve inherited more than advanced mimicry. They’ve evolved their survival skills as well. Forget replacing the cages; we have plenty of jabberjays. Tomorrow we’ll try the mist nets.”

  By the time the soldiers got out of the trucks on Tuesday afternoon, the scientists had chosen locations with heavy mockingjay traffic. They broke into groups — Coriolanus and Bug were with Dr. Kay again — and helped erect sets of poles. Between each was stretched a finely woven mist net designed to capture the mockingjays. Nearly invisible, the nets began to yield results almost immediately, entangling the birds and dropping them into horizontal rows of pockets in their mesh surfaces. Dr. Kay had given instructions that the nets were never to be left unsupervised and that the birds were to be removed immediately, to keep them from becoming too snarled and to make the experience as trauma-free as possible. She personally removed the first three mockingjays from their nets, carefully freeing the birds while holding them securely in her hand. When given the go-ahead, Bug proved to be a natural, gently untangling his mockingjay and placing it in a waiting cage. Coriolanus’s bird began a tortured screaming the minute he touched it, and when he gave it a squeeze designed to dissuade it, it drove its beak into his palm. He reflexively dropped it, and in moments it had vanished into the foliage. Noxious creature. Dr. Kay cleaned and ba
ndaged his hand, which reminded him of how Tigris had done the same on reaping day when the thorn on the Grandma’am’s rose had punctured him. Not even two months ago. What hopes he’d had that day, and now look at him. Rounding up mutt spawn in the districts. He spent the rest of the afternoon carrying the caged birds to the truck. The hand didn’t excuse him from bird duty, though, and he resumed cleaning cages back at the hangar.

  Coriolanus began to warm up to the jabberjays. They really were impressive pieces of engineering. A few of the remotes lay around the lab, and the scientists allowed him to play with the birds once they’d been cataloged. “It won’t hurt anything,” one said. “In fact, they seem to enjoy the interaction.” Bug wouldn’t participate, but when he grew bored, Coriolanus made them record silly phrases and sing bits of the anthem, seeing how many he could operate with one remote click. Up to four sometimes, if their cages were close together. He always took care to erase them by doing a final quick recording in which he was silent, ensuring his voice would not end up back in the Citadel lab. He stopped with the singing entirely when the mockingjays began to pick it up, even if there was a certain satisfaction in hearing them pipe out praise for the Capitol. He had no way to silence them, and they could string one melody out endlessly.

  On the whole, he was beginning to weary of the infusion of music into his life. Invasion might be a better word. It seemed to be everywhere these days: birdsong, Covey song, bird-and-Covey song. Perhaps he did not share his mother’s love of music after all. At least, such a quantity of it. It consumed his attention greedily, demanding to be listened to and making it hard to think.

  By midafternoon Wednesday, they’d collected fifty mockingjays in total, enough to satisfy Dr. Kay. Coriolanus and Bug spent the rest of the day attending to the birds and shuttling the new mockingjays over to the lab table to be numbered and tagged. They finished before dinner and returned after to prepare the birds for travel to the Capitol. The scientists showed Coriolanus and Bug how to fasten the cloth covers on the cages, and then they relocated to the hovercraft, trusting the pair to take care of it. Coriolanus volunteered to do the covers while Bug carried the birds to the hovercraft and helped settle them in for their journey.

  Coriolanus started with the mockingjays, happy to see them go. He moved the cages one at a time to his work table, snapped on their covers, wrote the letter M and the bird’s number in chalk on the cloth, and handed them off. Bug was just leaving with the fiftieth cage, which contained a madly chirping mockingjay, when Sejanus bounced in the door, sounding a bit hyper. “Good news! Another delivery from my ma!”

  Bug, who’d been down about the birds leaving, cheered up a bit. “She’s the best.”

  “I’ll tell her you said so.” Sejanus watched Bug move off and turned to Coriolanus, who’d just collected the jabberjay tagged with the number 1. The bird twittered away in its cage, still imitating the last mockingjay. Sejanus’s grin had vanished, and an anguished expression had taken its place. His eyes swept the hangar to ensure they were alone, and he spoke in a hushed voice. “Listen, we’ve only got a few minutes. I know you won’t approve of what I’m going to do, but I need you to at least understand it. After what you said the other day, about us being like brothers, well, I feel I owe you an explanation. Please, just hear me out.”

  This was it, then. The confession. Coriolanus’s entreaties for sanity and caution had been weighed and found insufficient. Misguided passion had won the day. Now was the time for the pieces to be explained. The money. The guns. The base map. The moment the whole treasonous rebel plot would be revealed. Once Coriolanus heard it, he’d be as good as a rebel himself. A traitor to the Capitol. He should panic, or run, or at least try to shut Sejanus up. But he did none of these things.

  Instead his hands acted on their own. Like the time he’d dropped the handkerchief into the tank of snakes before he’d been aware of deciding to do it. Now his left hand adjusted the cover of the jabberjay cage while his right, concealed from Sejanus’s view by his body, dropped to the counter, where a remote sat. Coriolanus pressed record, and the jabberjay fell silent.

  Coriolanus turned his back to the cage, leaning on the table with his hands, waiting.

  “It’s like this,” said Sejanus, his voice rising with emotion. “Some of the rebels are leaving District Twelve for good. Heading north to start a life away from Panem. They said if I help them with Lil, I can go, too.”

  As if questioning the claim, Coriolanus raised his eyebrows.

  Sejanus’s words tumbled out. “I know, I know, but they need me. The thing is, they’re determined to free Lil and take her with them. If they don’t, the Capitol will hang her with the next lot of rebels they bring in. The plan is simple, really. The prison guards work in four-hour shifts. I’m going to drug a couple of my ma’s treats and give them to the outside guards. This medicine they gave me in the Capitol, it knocks you out like that —” Sejanus snapped his fingers. “I’ll take one of their guns. The inside guards are unarmed, so I can force them into the interrogation room at gunpoint. It’s soundproof, so no one can hear them yell. Then I’ll get Lil. Her brother can get us through the fence. We’ll head north immediately. We should have hours before they discover the guards. Since we’re not going through the gate, they’ll assume we’re hiding on base, so they’ll lock it down and search here first. By the time they figure it out, we’ll be long gone. No one hurt. And no one the wiser.”

  Coriolanus dropped his head and rubbed his brow with his fingertips, as if trying to collect his thoughts, unsure how long he could refrain from talking without seeming suspicious.

  But Sejanus hurried on. “I couldn’t go without telling you. You’re as good to me as any brother could be. I’ll never forget what you did for me in the arena. I’ll try to figure out some way to let Ma know what happened to me. And my father, I suppose. Let him know the Plinth name lives on, if only in obscurity.”

  There it was. The Plinth name. It was enough. His left hand found the remote and he pressed the neutral button with his thumb. The jabberjay resumed the song it had been singing earlier.

  Something caught Coriolanus’s eye. “Here comes Bug.”

  “Here comes Bug,” the bird repeated in his voice.

  “Hush, you silly thing,” he told the bird, inwardly pleased it had resumed its normal, neutral pattern. Nothing to alert Sejanus there. He quickly snapped the cloth in place and marked it with J1.

  “We need another water bottle. One broke,” said Bug as he entered the hangar.

  “One broke,” said the bird in Bug’s voice, and then it began to imitate a passing crow.

  “I’ll find one.” Coriolanus handed him the cage. As Bug left, Coriolanus crossed over to a bin where they kept supplies and began to dig around. Better to stay away from the other jabberjays while the conversation continued. If they started mimicking too much, Sejanus might wonder why the first bird had been so silent. Not that he really knew how the birds worked. Dr. Kay had not explained that to the group at large.

  “It sounds crazy, Sejanus. So many things could go wrong.” Coriolanus rattled off a list. “What if the guards don’t want your ma’s treats? Or one does, and collapses with the other watching? What if the inside guards call for help before you get them in the room? What if you can’t find the key to Lil’s cell? And what do you mean, her brother will get you through the fence? No one’s going to notice him, what, cutting through it?”

  “No, there’s a weak spot in the fence behind the generator. It’s already loose or something. Look, I know a lot of things have to go right, but I think they will.” Sejanus sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. “They have to. And if they don’t, then they’ll arrest me now instead of later, right? When I’m wrapped up in something worse?”

  Coriolanus shook his head unhappily. “I can’t change your mind?”

  Sejanus was adamant. “No, I’ve decided. I can’t stay here. W
e both know it. Sooner or later I’ll snap. I can’t do the Peacekeeping work in good conscience, and I can’t keep endangering you with my crazy plans.”

  “But how will you live out there?” Coriolanus found a box with a new water bottle.

  “We have some supplies. I’m a good shot,” said Sejanus.

  He had not mentioned the rebels having guns, but apparently they did. “And when the bullets run out?”

  “We’ll figure something out. Fish, net birds. They say there are people in the north,” Sejanus told him.

  Coriolanus thought of Billy Taupe luring Lucy Gray to that imaginary outpost in the wilderness. Had he heard about it from the rebels, or had they heard about it from him?

  “But even if there aren’t, there’s no Capitol,” Sejanus continued. “And that’s the main thing for me, isn’t it? Not this district or that. Not student or Peacekeeper. It’s living in a place where they can’t control my life. I know it seems cowardly running away, but I’m hoping that once I’m out of here, maybe I can think straighter and come up with some way I can help the districts.”

  Fat chance, thought Coriolanus. It will be amazing if you survive the winter. He pulled the water bottle from its packaging. “Well, I guess all there is to say is I’ll miss you. And good luck.” He felt Sejanus moving in for an embrace when Bug came through the door. He held up the bottle. “Found one.”

  “I’ll let you get back to your work.” Sejanus gave a wave and left.

  Coriolanus went on mechanically covering and marking cages while his mind raced. What should he do? Part of him wanted to run to the hovercraft and erase jabberjay number 1. Put it on play, then neutral, then record, then neutral again in swift succession so that it would have nothing memorized but the distant shouts of the soldiers on the tarmac. But then what would his options be? To try to dissuade Sejanus from his plan? He had no confidence that he could, and even if he did, it was only a matter of time before Sejanus came up with another scheme. To rat him out to the base commander? He would likely deny it, and as the only proof lay in the jabberjay’s memory bank, Coriolanus would have nothing to back up his accusation. He didn’t even know the time of the breakout, so no trap could be set. And where would that leave him with Sejanus? Or if it got out, the entire base? As a snitch, an unreliable one at that, and a troublemaker?