bookcomb for every mention/reference to burdock everdeen in sotr and throughout the original trilogy, back when he was nameless.
It was the fall after Iâd turned ten and the first time Iâd ever snuck under the fence that surrounds our district. Iâd been deterred by both the law and the threat of wild predators, which are rare but real. My friend Burdock had finally worn me down, saying he did it all the time and there was nothing to it and there were still apples if you could climb. And I could climb and I loved apples. Plus, him being younger than me made me feel like a big scaredy-cat if I didnât.
âWant to hear something?â Burdock asked as we ventured deep into the woods. He tilted back his head and sang out in that remarkable voice of his. High and sweet like a grown-up womanâs but cleaner, nothing warbly about it. Everything seemed to go still, and then the mockingjays began to pick it up. I knew theyâd sing for other birds, but Iâd never heard them sing for a person before. Pretty impressive stuff. Until an apple dropped smack on Burdockâs head, cutting him off.
âWhoâs squawking at my birds?â a girlâs voice demanded. [âŠ]
Burdock cocked his head and laughed. âHey, cuz. You allowed out here alone? âCause Iâm sure not.â
âWell, I didnât see you,â she said.
âMe you either. Toss us down some, would you?â
In answer she stood up on her branch and began to bounce up and down, showering us with apples.
âHang on, Iâve got a sack with my bow.â Burdock ran off. She scooted down the branches and swung to the ground. She wasnât one of Burdockâs Everdeen cousins, but I knew he had some distant ones on his maâs side.
Besides playing a crazy good mandolin, Tam Amberâs the best hand forger in District 12. Heâs the go-to blacksmith for new gadgets or broken parts for old machines. Burdock has a dozen of his arrow tips that he treats like gold, and some of the richer folks in town have jewelry he made from actual gold or silver, melted down from heirlooms and refashioned.
In contrast, a faint, sweet scent comes from a bunch of chamomile flowers resting in a jar, waiting to become tea and medicine. I know Burdock collected these in the woods. Of late, heâs added wildcrafting to his game business.
I guess Asterid has more substance than her pack of snooty town friends suggests. Besides, Burdockâs nuts about her, so I try to be nice even though heâs got about as much chance with her as a mockingjay with a swan.
Asterid gives me a fair price and throws in a sprig of chamomile. âFor today. They say itâs good luck.â
I slide the stem into a buttonhole. âWho says? Burdock?â
She blushes a bit, and I wonder if Iâm wrong about his chances.
âHappy birthday.â Someone bumps my shoulder and thereâs Burdock, in a frayed suit, and our friend Blair, whoâs inherited a dress shirt three sizes too big from his older brother.
âThanks.â I pocket the nuts and my gumdrops. âYou two didnât have to dress up for me.â
âWell, we wanted your day to be special,â says Blair. âWhat kind of idiot gets born on reaping day anyway?â
âThe kind that likes a challenge,â says Burdock with appreciation.
âJust playing the hand I was dealt. But you know what they say, unlucky at cards, lucky in love.â I arrange my chamomile. âHey, look what your girlfriend gave me, Burdie.â
âHer friends know about you, Everdeen?â asks Blair.
âNothing to know,â says Burdock with a grin. âWell, not yet anyway.â
An angry murmur ripples across the crowd, and I can feel Blair and Burdock tensing up beside me as Louella climbs the steps onto the stage, flipping her black pigtails over her shoulders and scowling hard as she tries to look tough.
âOn the ground! On the ground, everybody! Now!â Automatically, I fall on my knees and assume the position â hands linked behind my neck, forehead pressed to the sooty bricks of the square. Out of the corner of my eye, I see almost everybody around me follow suit, but Otho Mellark, a big lug of a guy whose folks own the bakery, seems bewildered. His meaty hands dangle loosely at his sides and his feet shuffle back and forth, and then I notice his blond hairâs splattered with someoneâs blood. Burdock punches him hard in the back of his knee and itâs enough to get him down on the ground and out of the line of fire.
I reach for Burdock and Blair to steady myself, but, of course, theyâre not there. Just a couple of younger kids who are giving me plenty of room.
The Peacekeeper gives a signal and the soldiers begin pushing the crowd back. While I see Burdock and Blair put up a struggle, most people rush to the side streets, only too happy to escape the ordeal of the reaping, to hurry home, embrace their children, and, for those who patronize Hattieâs stall, get good and drunk.
Tam Amber taught Lenore Dove about the stars, as the Covey used to navigate by them long ago, and she taught Sid. On a clear night, he drags us all outside to see the pictures they make. âThereâs the water dipper, just like ours in the bucket. That over thereâs the bowhunter. He looks like Burdock, donât you think?â
Lenore Dove saw red when she heard about the twins, feeling they neither appreciated nor deserved Tam Amberâs craftsmanship, and for a time, she spoke about breaking into the Donnersâ and stealing that mockingjay pin back. Burdock and I talked her out of it. What with two recent arrests, it seemed unwise.
Weâre marched into a large, open room with blue tiles on the floor and showerheads spaced around the walls. Iâm no prude â Iâve skinny-dipped plenty out at the lake with Burdock â but Iâm not used to standing around naked eyeballing twenty-three other guys.
We have a Victorâs Village in 12, too. A dozen fancy houses you get to live in for the rest of your life if you win the Games. Burdock and I used to steal over there and peek in the windows on a summerâs night. In the moonlight, we could see enough to tell they had furniture and hanging lights and bathtubs like the ones here.
Once, over at Burdockâs, his ma mixed up some white flour, salt, and water into dough, and all us kids made little animals and stars and things. Too wasteful for my family, but the Everdeens could afford it on account of being hunters and having a little more disposable income. Nothing like the Donners, though.
I should be planning my strategy in the arena, but I just keep thinking about Lenore Dove, and how much I love her, and wondering if sheâs home by now and how sheâs doing. And Ma. And Sid. Burdock and Blair. Hattie. Before I know it, weâre descending.
As I lean against my pack, a dove-colored rabbit hops up across the stream from me and helps itself to a good, long drink. It sits on the bank, ears twitching, reminding me that Iâve helped Burdock set snares on occasion.
I spot the nameplate and relax a bit. I know this plant, recognize the faint minty scent. Iâve even helped Burdock gather some for Asterid to make into medicines at the apothecary shop. Bee balm. A healing plant. It grows wild in our mountains and Lou Lou clearly recognizes it as well.
I say my good-byes to those I love. Burdock and Blair. Hattie. Ma and Sid. And finally, Lenore Dove, my rare and radiant girl.
There it is again. Not natural. Man-made. Decidedly metal on metal. I know that sound from a summer day long ago. I was still young enough to have free time. A bunch of us â me, Lenore Dove, Blair, Burdock, and a couple of the McCoy kids â were playing freeze tag in a field. We stumbled upon a Peacekeeperâs bicycle hidden in the bramble bushes by the road. [âŠ]
Bicycles are coveted in District 12. A few of the merchantsâ kids in town have them. [âŠ] But they were a pipe dream for kids in the Seam. For us to find a Peacekeeperâs bike so shiny and unattended was like a litter of kittens rolling smack-dab into a patch of catnip. We swore one another to secrecy, posted guards, and for the next week, every one of us learned to ride.
Another song surfaces unbidden. Also forbidden. Lenore Dove plays it for Burdock sometimes. . . .
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three?
Strange things did happen here
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.
Temporarily blinded, I make for the house again, when Iâm yanked backward. My patent leather shoes with their slick soles betray me as Iâm dragged into the yard and pinned to the ground. With one man on every limb and Burdock on my chest, all I can do is holler. âLet me up! Let me loose, you ââ
Burdockâs hand clamps over my mouth. âItâs too late, Haymitch. We tried. Itâs too late.â
I get some teeth into his palm and he jerks his hand back, but Iâm only free enough to yell. âMa! Sid! Maaaaa!â
âNo! Let me go!â I fight to free myself, but Iâm so out-numbered, still so weak from the long days of recovery, that Iâm overpowered. âLet me go with them. Please!â But they donât, they hold on to me tight. I lie there, sobbing, begging, calling for Ma and Sid, until no more sounds come out.
âCan you help him?â I hear Burdock ask.
Burdock, Blair, and a couple of Maâs customers carry the coffin. The McCoys bring Louellaâs from behind the house and the two groups move forward, side by side. I limp along behind them.
Then Burdock begins to sing, in that clear, sweet voice of his:
Youâre headed for heaven,
And Iâve got one foot in the door.
Iâve loose ends to tie up,
Burdock and Blair catch me as I start to fall and carry me around the bend before they set me on a stump to recover. They try to coax me to their homes, but the thought of their families, when I have none, is unbearable.
âWell,â says Burdock grimly, âthereâs your new house, then.â
Only now do I remember the Victorâs Village. Desperate to be alone, I let them take me there, to this strange Capitol cage, which I instantly hate. In the bedroom, they lay me down in the artificially chilled air, and I stare at the wall.
âIâm going to find Asterid,â I hear Burdock whisper. âSee about more syrup.â
Through the crack in the door, I make out Burdock and Blair, asleep on the couches in the living room.
But where is there to run? Only Snowâs âghastly wilderness.â I love it, but I donât live in it. Iâm no Burdock, with his trusty bow and knowledge of plants. Iâm not even a bona fide bootlegger yet. Iâm nothing.
And so, I drive away anyone and everyone who could ever have been considered dear to me. Old neighbors. Hattie. Customers. Schoolmates. Blair and Burdock hang on the hardest. Blair finally acknowledges the truth of my position, gives me one final hug and leaves sobbing. Even then, Burdock insists on showing up, sometimes along with Asterid, who bears bottles of sleep syrup. Defiant. Deaf to my pleas. I resort to throwing rocks, hard, at them. It takes one hitting Asterid on the forehead, blood pouring down her perfect face, to finally get them to leave me alone. Hurting her that way feels worse than anything I did in the arena.
I am a man on a mission. For weeks, I wander through the trees, circle the lake, examine the soil under the apple trees, looking for any sign of her. Entreating the mockingjays for a clue to her whereabouts. Calling her name into the wind. The leaves turn scarlet and gold, crunching beneath my feet. âLenore Dove! Lenore Dove!â I cry, but she doesnât reveal herself.
Burdock comes, though, appearing out of the mist. His leather jacket fastened against the frost, his bow in hand, a brace of wild turkey at his hip. He has not forgiven me, will never, but is not beyond pity. Perhaps because he knows what it is to love. âIf you want her, come on,â is all he says. And I do want her, just as long ago I wanted the apples he promised, and so I follow him far, far into the woods. Beyond the lake, beyond my ken, to a hidden grove no normal human eye could detect. And here he leaves me.
I first saw the girl at the Hob when she was just a baby. Burdock was so proud of her, he toted her around everywhere. After he died in that mine explosion, she started coming alone, trading the odd squirrel or rabbit.
I didnât want to have anything to do with their memorial book after the war. What use? What point? To relive all the loss. But when Burdockâs page came up, I had to mention him showing me the grave.
Electrified or not, the fence has been successful at keeping the flesh-eaters out of District 12. Inside the woods they roam freely, and there are added concerns like venomous snakes, rabid animals, and no real paths to follow. But thereâs also food if you know how to find it. My father knew and he taught me some before he was blown to bits in a mine explosion. There was nothing even to bury. I was eleven then. Five years later, I still wake up screaming for him to run.
My bow is a rarity, crafted by my father along with a few others that I keep well hidden in the woods, carefully wrapped in waterproof covers. My father could have made good money selling them, but if the officials found out he would have been publicly executed for inciting a rebellion.
My father got to know my mother because on his hunts he would sometimes collect medicinal herbs and sell them to her shop to be brewed into remedies. She must have really loved him to leave her home for the Seam. I try to remember that when all I can see is the woman who sat by, blank and unreachable, while her children turned to skin and bones. I try to forgive her for my fatherâs sake. But to be honest, Iâm not the forgiving type.
It was during the worst time. My father had been killed in the mine accident three months earlier in the bitterest January anyone could remember. The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.
Sweet, tiny Prim who cried when I cried before she even knew the reason, who brushed and plaited my motherâs hair before we left for school, who still polished my fatherâs shaving mirror each night because heâd hated the layer of coal dust that settled on everything in the Seam.
Although I had been to the Hob on several occasions with my father, I was too frightened to venture into that rough, gritty place alone.
My father was particularly fond of mockingjays. When we went hunting, he would whistle or sing complicated songs to them and, after a polite pause, theyâd always sing back. Not everyone is treated with such respect. But whenever my father sang, all the birds in the area would fall silent and listen. His voice was that beautiful, high and clear and so filled with life it made you want to laugh and cry at the same time. I could never bring myself to continue the practice after he was gone. Still, thereâs something comforting about the little bird. Itâs like having a piece of my father with me, protecting me.
My mother had a book sheâd brought with her from the apothecary shop. The pages were made of old parchment and covered in ink drawings of plants. Neat handwritten blocks told their names, where to gather them, when they came in bloom, their medical uses. But my father added other entries to the book. Plants for eating, not healing. Dandelions, pokeweed, wild onions, pines. Prim and I spent the rest of the night pouring over those pages.
The next day, we were off school. For a while I hung around the edges of the Meadow, but finally I worked up the courage to go under the fence. It was the first time Iâd been there alone, without my fatherâs weapons to protect me. But I retrieved the small bow and arrows heâd made me from a hollow tree. I probably didnât go more than twenty yards into the woods that day. Most of the time, I perched up in the branches of an old oak, hoping for game to come by. After several hours, I had the good luck to kill a rabbit. Iâd shot a few rabbits before, with my fatherâs guidance. But this Iâd done on my own.
What we didnât absolutely have to eat, I began to trade at the Hob. It was frightening to enter that place without my father at my side, but people had respected him, and they accepted me. Game was game after all, no matter whoâd shot it. I also sold at the back doors of the wealthier clients in town, trying to remember what my father had told me and learning a few new tricks as well. The butcher would buy my rabbits but not squirrels. The baker enjoyed squirrel but would only trade for one if his wife wasnât around. The Head Peacekeeper loved wild turkey. The mayor had a passion for strawberries.
I knelt down in the water, my fingers digging into the soft mud, and I pulled up handfuls of the roots. Small, bluish tubers that donât look like much but boiled or baked are as good as any potato. âKatniss,â I said aloud. Itâs the plant I was named for. And I heard my fatherâs voice joking, âAs long as you can find yourself, youâll never starve.â
Thereâs an elegant glass of orange juice. At least, I think itâs orange juice. Iâve only even tasted an orange once, at New Yearâs when my father bought one as a special treat.
Peeta Mellark and I stand in silence as the train speeds along. The tunnel goes on and on and I think of the tons of rock separating me from the sky, and my chest tightens. I hate being encased in stone this way. It reminds me of the mines and my father, trapped, unable to reach sunlight, buried forever in the darkness.
My slumbers are filled with disturbing dreams. The face of the redheaded girl intertwines with gory images from earlier Hunger Games, with my mother withdrawn and unreachable, with Prim emaciated and terrified. I bolt up screaming for my father to run as the mine explodes into a million deadly bits of light.
âKatniss. I already know youâre handy with a knife,â says Haymitch.
âNot really. But I can hunt,â I say. âWith a bow and arrow.â
âAnd youâre good?â asks Haymitch.
I have to think about it. Iâve been putting food on the table for four years. Thatâs no small task. Iâm not as good as my father was, but heâd had more practice.
What on earth does he mean? People help me? When we were dying of starvation, no one helped me! No one except Peeta. Once I had something to barter with, things changed. Iâm a tough trader. Or am I? What effect do I have? That Iâm weak and needy? Is he suggesting that I got good deals because people pitied me? I try to think if this is true. Perhaps some of the merchants were a little generous in their trades, but I always attributed that to their long-standing relationship with my father. Besides, my game is first-class. No one pitied me!
Having strayed farther afield than usual, I was hurrying back home, lugging my burlap sacks, when I came across a dead rabbit. It was hanging by its neck in a thin wire a foot above my head. About fifteen yards away was another. I recognized the twitch-up snares because my father had used them.
He scowled at me, not convinced. âSo whereâd you get the squirrel?â
âI shot it.â I pulled my bow off my shoulder. I was still using the small version my father had made me, but Iâd been practicing with the full-size one when I could. I was hoping that by spring I might be able to bring down some bigger game.
Gale gave me a sense of security Iâd lacked since my fatherâs death.
âSing,â she says, but I barely catch the word.
Sing? I think. Sing what? I do know a few songs. Believe it or not, there was once music in my house, too. Music I helped make. My father pulled me in with that remarkable voice â but I havenât sung much since he died.
Sometimes when things are particularly bad, my brain will give me a happy dream. A visit with my father in the woods. An hour of sunlight and cake with Prim. Tonight it sends me Rue, still decked in her flowers, perched in a high sea of trees, trying to teach me to talk to the mockingjays.
Never having been in love, this is going to be a real trick. I think of my parents. The way my father never failed to bring her gifts from the woods. The way my motherâs face would light up at the sound of his boots at the door. The way she almost stopped living when he died.
I reach out to touch his cheek and he catches my hand and presses it against his lips. I remember my father doing this very thing to my mother and I wonder where Peeta picked it up.
No one has held me like this in such a long time. Since my father died and I stopped trusting my mother, no one elseâs arms have made me feel this safe.
âOh, letâs see. I guess the first day of school. We were five. You had on a red plaid dress and your hair . . . it was in two braids instead of one. My father pointed you out when we were waiting to line up,â Peeta says. [âŠ] âHe said, âSee that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner.ââ [âŠ] âAnd I said, âA coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she couldâve had you?â And he said, âBecause when he sings . . . even the birds stop to listen.ââ
âThatâs true. They do. I mean, they did,â I say. Iâm stunned and surprisingly moved, thinking of the baker telling this to Peeta. It strikes me that my own reluctance to sing, my own dismissal of music might not really be that I think itâs a waste of time. It might be because it reminds me too much of my father.
These arenât Rueâs berries, although they resemble them. Nor do they match any I learned about in training. I lean down and scoop up a few, rolling them between my fingers.
My fatherâs voice comes back to me. âNot these, Katniss. Never these. Theyâre nightlock. Youâll be dead before they reach your stomach.â
Every year in school, as part of our training, my class had to tour the mines. When I was little, it was just unpleasant. The claustrophobic tunnels, foul air, suffocating darkness on all sides. But after my father and several other miners were killed in an explosion, I could barely force myself onto the elevator. The annual trip became an enormous source of anxiety. Twice I made myself so sick in anticipation of it that my mother kept me home because she thought I had contracted the flu.
I slide down into the water, letting it block out the sounds around me. I wish the tub would expand so I could go swimming, like I used to on hot summer Sundays in the woods with my father. Those days were a special treat. We would leave early in the morning and hike farther into the woods than usual to a small lake heâd found while hunting. I donât even remember learning to swim, I was so young when he taught me. I just remember diving, turning somersaults, and paddling around. The muddy bottom of the lake beneath my toes. The smell of blossoms and greenery. Floating on my back, as I am now, staring at the blue sky while the chatter of the woods was muted by the water. Heâd bag the waterfowl that nested around the shore, Iâd hunt for eggs in the grasses, and weâd both dig for katniss roots, the plant for which he named me, in the shallows.
Itâs a place Iâve never really wanted to share with anyone, though, a place that belonged only to my father and me.
My father thought that a long time ago there were a lot of buildings â you can still see some of the foundations â and people came to them to play and fish in the lake. This house outlasted the others because itâs made of concrete. Floor, roof, ceiling. Only one of four glass windows remains, wavy and yellowed by time. Thereâs no plumbing and no electricity, but the fireplace still works and thereâs a woodpile in the corner that my father and I collected years ago. I start a small fire, counting on the mist to obscure any telltale smoke. While the fire catches, I sweep out the snow that has accumulated under the empty windows, using a twig broom my father made me when I was about eight and I played house here.
Dawn is just breaking as I retrieve a set of bow and arrows and begin to force a path through the drifted snow in the woods. Iâm determined, for some reason, to get to the lake. Maybe to say good-bye to the place, to my father and the happy times we spent there, because I know Iâll probably never return. Maybe just so I can draw a complete breath again. Part of me doesnât really care if they catch me, if I can see it one more time.
Peeta comes by every day to bring me cheese buns and begins to help me work on the family book. Itâs an old thing, made of parchment and leather. Some herbalist on my motherâs side of the family started it ages ago. The bookâs composed of page after page of ink drawings of plants with descriptions of their medical uses. My father added a section on edible plants that was my guidebook to keeping us alive after his death.
Where the sand ends, woods begin to rise sharply. No, not really woods. At least not the kind I know. Jungle. The foreign, almost obsolete word comes to mind. Something I heard from another Hunger Games or learned from my father.
âA spile!â I exclaim, sitting bolt upright.
âWhat?â asks Finnick.
I wrestle the thing from the ground and brush it clean. Cup my hand around the tapered end, concealing it, and look at the lip. Yes, Iâve seen one of these before. On a cold, windy day long ago, when I was out in the woods with my father. Inserted snugly into a hole drilled in the side of a maple. A pathway for the sap to follow as it flowed into our bucket. Maple syrup could make even our dull bread a treat. After my father died, I didnât know what happened to the handful of spiles he had. Hidden out in the woods somewhere, probably. Never to be found.
âI think thatâs all we can do,â I say.
âItâs good. Youâre good with this healing stuff,â he says. âItâs in your blood.â
âNo,â I say, shaking my head. âI got my fatherâs blood.â The kind that quickens during a hunt, not an epidemic.
Itâs a horrifying sensation being pinned against the wall as the bombs rain down. What was that expression my father used for easy kills? Like shooting fish in a barrel. We are the fish, the street the barrel.
âWant to hear them do a real song?â I burst out. Anything to stop those memories. Iâm on my feet, moving back into the trees, resting my hand on the rough trunk of a maple where the birds perch. I have not sung âThe Hanging Treeâ out loud for ten years, because itâs forbidden, but I remember every word. I begin softly, sweetly, as my father did.
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three.
Strange things did happen here
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.â
A hush in the trees. Just the rustle of leaves in the breeze. But no birds, mockingjay or other. Peetaâs right. They do fall silent when I sing. Just as they did for my father.
In the stillness I remember the scene. I was home from a day in the woods with my father. Sitting on the floor with Prim, who was just a toddler, singing âThe Hanging Tree.â Making us necklaces out of scraps of old rope like it said in the song, not knowing the real meaning of the words. The tune was simple and easy to harmonize to, though, and back then I could memorize almost anything set to music after a round or two. Suddenly, my mother snatched the rope necklaces away and was yelling at my father. I started to cry because my mother never yelled, and then Prim was wailing and I ran outside to hide. As I had exactly one hiding spot â in the Meadow under a honeysuckle bush â my father found me immediately. He calmed me down and told me everything was fine, only weâd better not sing that song anymore. My mother just wanted me to forget it. So, of course, every word was immediately, irrevocably branded into my brain.
We didnât sing it anymore, my father and I, or even speak of it. After he died, it used to come back to me a lot.
I look at my little sister and think how she has inherited the best qualities our family has to offer: my motherâs healing hands, my fatherâs level head, and my fight.
On the day my father died, the sirens went off during my school lunch. No one waited for dismissal, or was expected to. The response to a mine accident was something outside the control of even the Capitol. I ran to Primâs class. [âŠ] She sprang out of her seat, grabbed my coat sleeve, and we wove through the streams of people pouring out onto the streets to pool at the main entrance of the mine. [âŠ]
The elevators were screeching, burning up and down their cables as they vomited smoke-blackened miners into the light of day. With each group came cries of relief, relatives diving under the rope to lead off their husbands, wives, children, parents, siblings. We stood in the freezing air as the afternoon turned overcast, a light snow dusted the earth. The elevators moved more slowly now and disgorged fewer beings. I knelt on the ground and pressed my hands into the cinders, wanting so badly to pull my father free. If thereâs a more helpless feeling than trying to reach someone you love whoâs trapped underground, I donât know it. The wounded. The bodies. The waiting through the night. Blankets put around your shoulders by strangers. A mug of something hot that you donât drink. And then finally, at dawn, the grieved expression on the face of the mine captain that could only mean one thing.
âWe showed him that clip of you singing âThe Hanging Tree.â It was never aired, so the Capitol couldnât use it when he was being hijacked. He says he recognized the song.â
For a moment, my heart skips a beat. Then I realize itâs just more tracker jacker serum confusion. âHe couldnât, Haymitch. He never heard me sing that song.â
âNot you. Your father. He heard him singing it one day when he came to trade at the bakery. Peeta was small, probably six or seven, but he remembered it because he was specially listening to see if the birds stopped singing,â says Haymitch. âGuess they did.â
My father. He seems to be everywhere today. Dying in the mine. Singing his way into Peetaâs muddled consciousness. Flickering in the look Boggs gives me as he protectively wraps the blanket around my shoulders. I miss him so badly it hurts.
When my tender skin has toughened enough to withstand the pressure of sheets, more visitors arrive. The morphling opens the door to the dead and alive alike. Haymitch, yellow and unsmiling. Cinna, stitching a new wedding dress. Delly, prattling on about the niceness of people. My father sings all four stanzas of âThe Hanging Treeâ and reminds me that my mother â who sleeps in a chair between shifts â isnât to know about it.
I begin to sing. At the window, in the shower, in my sleep. Hour after hour of ballads, love songs, mountain airs. All the songs my father taught me before he died, for certainly there has been very little music in my life since. Whatâs amazing is how clearly I remember them. The tunes, the lyrics. My voice, at first rough and breaking on the high notes, warms up into something splendid. A voice that would make the mockingjays fall silent and then tumble over themselves to join in. Days pass, weeks. I watch the snows fall on the ledge outside my window. And in all that time, mine is the only voice I hear.
I got the idea from our familyâs plant book. The place where we recorded those things you cannot trust to memory. The page begins with the personâs picture. A photo if we can find it. If not, a sketch or painting by Peeta. Then, in my most careful handwriting, come all the details it would be a crime to forget. Lady licking Primâs cheek. My fatherâs laugh. Peetaâs father with the cookies.
