The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Page 49
I protect Prim in every way I can, but I’m powerless against the reaping. The anguish I always feel when she’s in pain wells up in my chest and threatens to register on my face. I notice her blouse has pulled out of her skirt in the back again and force myself to stay calm. “Tuck your tail in, little duck,” I say, smoothing the blouse back in place.
Prim giggles and gives me a small “Quack.”
“Quack yourself,” I say with a light laugh. The kind only Prim can draw out of me. “Come on, let’s eat,” I say and plant a quick kiss on the top of her head.
The fish and greens are already cooking in a stew, but that will be for supper. We decide to save the strawberries and bakery bread for this evening’s meal, to make it special we say. Instead we drink milk from Prim’s goat, Lady, and eat the rough bread made from the tessera grain, although no one has much appetite anyway.
At one o’clock, we head for the square. Attendance is mandatory unless you are on death’s door. This evening, officials will come around and check to see if this is the case. If not, you’ll be imprisoned.
It’s too bad, really, that they hold the reaping in the square — one of the few places in District 12 that can be pleasant. The square’s surrounded by shops, and on public market days, especially if there’s good weather, it has a holiday feel to it. But today, despite the bright banners hanging on the buildings, there’s an air of grimness. The camera crews, perched like buzzards on rooftops, only add to the effect.
People file in silently and sign in. The reaping is a good opportunity for the Capitol to keep tabs on the population as well. Twelve- through eighteen-year-olds are herded into roped areas marked off by ages, the oldest in the front, the young ones, like Prim, toward the back. Family members line up around the perimeter, holding tightly to one another’s hands. But there are others, too, who have no one they love at stake, or who no longer care, who slip among the crowd, taking bets on the two kids whose names will be drawn. Odds are given on their ages, whether they’re Seam or merchant, if they will break down and weep. Most refuse dealing with the racketeers but carefully, carefully. These same people tend to be informers, and who hasn’t broken the law? I could be shot on a daily basis for hunting, but the appetites of those in charge protect me. Not everyone can claim the same.
Anyway, Gale and I agree that if we have to choose between dying of hunger and a bullet in the head, the bullet would be much quicker.
The space gets tighter, more claustrophobic as people arrive. The square’s quite large, but not enough to hold District 12’s population of about eight thousand. Latecomers are directed to the adjacent streets, where they can watch the event on screens as it’s televised live by the state.
I find myself standing in a clump of sixteens from the Seam. We all exchange terse nods then focus our attention on the temporary stage that is set up before the Justice Building. It holds three chairs, a podium, and two large glass balls, one for the boys and one for the girls. I stare at the paper slips in the girls’ ball. Twenty of them have Katniss Everdeen written on them in careful handwriting.
Two of the three chairs fill with Madge’s father, Mayor Undersee, who’s a tall, balding man, and Effie Trinket, District 12’s escort, fresh from the Capitol with her scary white grin, pinkish hair, and spring green suit. They murmur to each other and then look with concern at the empty seat.
Just as the town clock strikes two, the mayor steps up to the podium and begins to read. It’s the same story every year. He tells of the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America. He lists the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol. Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games.
The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.
Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch — this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion. Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. “Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen.”
To make it humiliating as well as torturous, the Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a sporting event pitting every district against the others. The last tribute alive receives a life of ease back home, and their district will be showered with prizes, largely consisting of food. All year, the Capitol will show the winning district gifts of grain and oil and even delicacies like sugar while the rest of us battle starvation.
“It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks,” intones the mayor.
Then he reads the list of past District 12 victors. In seventy-four years, we have had exactly two. Only one is still alive. Haymitch Abernathy, a paunchy, middle-aged man, who at this moment appears hollering something unintelligible, staggers onto the stage, and falls into the third chair. He’s drunk. Very. The crowd responds with its token applause, but he’s confused and tries to give Effie Trinket a big hug, which she barely manages to fend off.
The mayor looks distressed. Since all of this is being televised, right now District 12 is the laughingstock of Panem, and he knows it. He quickly tries to pull the attention back to the reaping by introducing Effie Trinket.
Bright and bubbly as ever, Effie Trinket trots to the podium and gives her signature, “Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!” Her pink hair must be a wig because her curls have shifted slightly off-center since her encounter with Haymitch. She goes on a bit about what an honor it is to be here, although everyone knows she’s just aching to get bumped up to a better district where they have proper victors, not drunks who molest you in front of the entire nation.
Through the crowd, I spot Gale looking back at me with a ghost of a smile. As reapings go, this one at least has a slight entertainment factor. But suddenly I am thinking of Gale and his forty-two names in that big glass ball and how the odds are not in his favor. Not compared to a lot of the boys. And maybe he’s thinking the same thing about me because his face darkens and he turns away. “But there are still thousands of slips,” I wish I could whisper to him.
It’s time for the drawing. Effie Trinket says as she always does, “Ladies first!” and crosses to the glass ball with the girls’ names. She reaches in, digs her hand deep into the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper. The crowd draws in a collective breath and then you can hear a pin drop, and I’m feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping that it’s not me, that it’s not me, that it’s not me.
Effie Trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it’s not me.
It’s Primrose Everdeen.
I’d like to thank my parents for their love and for always supporting my writing: my dad, for teaching me about the Enlightenment thinkers and the state of nature debate from an early age; and my mom, the English major, for nurturing the reader in me and for all those happy hours around the piano.
My husband, Cap Pryor, and my literary agent, Rosemary Stimola, have long been my first readers. Their input on the early drafts of this novel was invaluable in the develop
ment of young Coriolanus Snow and his postwar world and no doubt saved my editors all kinds of headaches. And speaking of editors, never did an author have such a deep and talented bench. This time, they arrived in waves, starting with the amazing Kate Egan, who has so skillfully guided me through ten books, along with David Levithan, my most excellent editorial director, who was everywhere at once —forging that title, trimming those unwieldy passages, and arranging clandestine manuscript handoffs at (where else?) the Shakespeare in the Park production of Coriolanus. The second wave brought the gifted and insightful pair of Jen Rees and Emily Seife, followed by my eagle-eyed copy editors, Rachel Stark and Joy Simpkins, who left no stone unturned. I am deeply grateful to you all for helping me shape this story with your beautiful brains and hearts.
Such a pleasure to be back in the hands of the terrific team at Scholastic Press. Rachel Coun, Lizette Serrano, Tracy van Straaten, Ellie Berger, Dick Robinson, Mark Seidenfeld, Leslie Garych, Josh Berlowitz, Erin O’Connor, Maeve Norton, Stephanie Jones, JoAnne Mojica, Andrea Davis Pinkney, Billy DiMichele, and the entire Scholastic sales force — a big thanks to you all.
A special shout-out goes to Elizabeth B. Parisi and Tim O’Brien, who have dazzled me once again with their fabulous cover, consistent with their Hunger Games trilogy visions, but unique to this new book as well.
Much admiration and gratitude goes to all the artists who created songs that appear in the world of Panem. Three of the songs are classics in the public domain: “Down in the Valley,” “Oh, My Darling, Clementine,” and “Keep on the Sunny Side,” which was written by Ada Blenkhorn and J. Howard Entwisle. The poem “Lucy Gray” was penned in 1799 by William Wordsworth and appeared in his Lyrical Ballads. The words in the above songs have been tweaked to fit the Covey. The rest of the lyrics are original. “The Ballad of Lucy Gray Baird” is meant to be sung to a variation of a traditional ballad tune that has long accompanied tales of the unfortunate ends of rakes, bards, soldiers, cowboys, and the like. Two other numbers first appeared in the Hunger Games trilogy. In the film version, the music for “Deep in the Meadow” was composed by T Bone Burnett and Simone Burnett, and “The Hanging Tree” music was composed by Jeremiah Caleb Fraites and Wesley Keith Schultz of The Lumineers and arranged by James Newton Howard.
Ongoing thanks to my wonderful agents, the aforementioned Rosemary Stimola and my entertainment representative, Jason Dravis, on whom I rely completely to help me navigate the publishing and film worlds with the aid of our legal eagles, Janis C. Nelson, Eleanor Lackman, and Diane Golden.
I’d like to send love to my friends and family, particularly Richard Register, who is always one text away, and to Cap, Charlie, and Izzy, who have ridden this ride with perspective, patience, and humor.
And finally, to all the readers who have invested in first Katniss’s and now Coriolanus’s tales: I sincerely thank you for traveling this road with me.
Suzanne Collins is the author of the bestselling Underland Chronicles series, which started with Gregor the Overlander. Her groundbreaking young adult novels, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay, were New York Times bestsellers, received wide praise, and were the basis for four popular films. Year of the Jungle, her picture book based on the year her father was deployed in Vietnam, was published in 2013 to great critical acclaim. To date, her books have been published in fifty-three languages around the world.
Copyright © 2020 by Suzanne Collins
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
e-ISBN 978-1-338-63518-8
First edition, May 2020
Jacket design by Elizabeth B. Parisi
Jacket art by Tim O’Brien, © 2020 Scholastic Inc.