The Hunger Games Trilogy

by Suzanne Collins

“What’s going on down there, Katniss? Have they all joined hands? Taken a vow of nonviolence? Tossed the weapons in the sea in defiance of the Capitol?” Finnick asks. “No,” I say. “No,” Finnick repeats. “Because whatever happened in the past is in the past. And no one in this arena was a victor by chance.” He eyes Peeta for a moment. “Except maybe Peeta.”

Around the time that I’m deciding it’s too late, that Peeta’s dead, moved on, unreachable forever, he gives a small cough and Finnick sits back.

I go forward, wondering about Finnick, who saved old Mags but will let her eat strange nuts. Who Haymitch has stamped with his seal of approval. Who brought Peeta back from the dead. Why didn’t he just let him die? He would have been blameless. I never would have guessed it was in his power to revive him. Why could he possibly have wanted to save Peeta? And why was he so determined to team up with me? Willing to kill me, too, if it comes to that. But leaving the choice of if we fight to me.

Mags hauls herself up, plants a kiss on Finnick’s lips, and then hobbles straight into the fog.

“Hey, Haymitch, if you’re not too drunk, we could use a little something for our skin.” It’s almost funny how quickly the parachute appears above me. I reach up and the tube lands squarely in my open hand. “About time,” I say, but I can’t keep the scowl on my face. Haymitch. What I wouldn’t give for five minutes of conversation with him.

A memory struggles to surface in my brain. I see a clock. No, it’s a watch, resting in Plutarch Heavensbee’s palm. “It starts at midnight,” Plutarch said. And then my mockingjay lit up briefly and vanished. In retrospect, it’s like he was giving me a clue about the arena. But why would he? At the time, I was no more a tribute in these Games than he was. Maybe he thought it would help me as a mentor. Or maybe this had been the plan all along.

“It’s a bird that we take down into the mines to warn us if there’s bad air,” I say. “What’s it do, die?” asks Johanna. “It stops singing first. That’s when you should get out. But if the air’s too bad, it dies, yes. And so do you.” I don’t want to talk about dying songbirds. They bring up thoughts of my father’s death and Rue’s death and Maysilee Donner’s death and my mother inheriting her songbird.

It’s like Finnick with his trident. Or Beetee with his wire. Rue with her knowledge of plants. I realize it’s just another disadvantage the District 12 tributes have faced over the years. We don’t go down in the mines until we’re eighteen. It looks like most of the other tributes learn something about their trades early on. There are things you do in a mine that could come in handy in the Games. Wielding a pick. Blowing things up. Give you an edge. The way my hunting did. But we learn them too late.

“They can’t hurt me. I’m not like the rest of you. There’s no one left I love,” Johanna says, and frees her hand with an impatient shake.

I feel that thing again. The thing I only felt once before. In the cave last year, when I was trying to get Haymitch to send us food. I kissed Peeta about a thousand times during those Games and after. But there was only one kiss that made me feel something stir deep inside. Only one that made me want more. But my head wound started bleeding and he made me lie down. This time, there is nothing but us to interrupt us. And after a few attempts, Peeta gives up on talking. The sensation inside me grows warmer and spreads out from my chest, down through my body, out along my arms and legs, to the tips of my being. Instead of satisfying me, the kisses have the opposite effect, of making my need greater. I thought I was something of an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind.

Because for one thing, that’s never been part of my plan. And for another, if only one of us can be a parent, anyone can see it should be Peeta. As I drift off, I try to imagine that world, somewhere in the future, with no Games, no Capitol. A place like the meadow in the song I sang to Rue as she died. Where Peeta’s child could be safe.

“You know, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls,” he says earnestly to Finnick. “No, it doesn’t,” says Finnick dismissively. But I crack up, remembering that’s how a clueless Effie Trinket presented us to the people of the Capitol last year, before anyone knew us. As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain. Peeta rinses the pearl off in the water and hands it to me. “For you.” I hold it out on my palm and examine its iridescent surface in the sunlight. Yes, I will keep it.

I can’t reach Peeta. I can’t even reach my pearl. My eyes strain to capture one last image of beauty to take with me. Right before the explosions begin, I find a star.

“Done knocking yourself out, sweetheart?” says Haymitch, the annoyance clear in his voice. But as I careen forward he steps up and catches my wrists, steadying me. He looks at my hand. “So it’s you and a syringe against the Capitol? See, this is why no one lets you make the plans.”

It’s an awful lot to take in, this elaborate plan in which I was a piece, just as I was meant to be a piece in the Hunger Games. Used without consent, without knowledge. At least in the Hunger Games, I knew I was being played with. My supposed friends have been a lot more secretive.

“We had to save you because you’re the mockingjay, Katniss,” says Plutarch. “While you live, the revolution lives.” The bird, the pin, the song, the berries, the watch, the cracker, the dress that burst into flames. I am the mockingjay. The one that survived despite the Capitol’s plans. The symbol of the rebellion.

Also, the drugs they use to control my pain and mood sometimes make me see things. I guess. I’m still not entirely convinced that I was hallucinating the night the floor of my hospital room transformed into a carpet of writhing snakes.

He took them to the only place he could think of, the lake my father had shown me as a child. And it was from there they watched the distant flames eat up everything they knew in the world.

I must now become the actual leader, the face, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution. The person who the districts — most of which are now openly at war with the Capitol — can count on to blaze the path to victory. I won’t have to do it alone. They have a whole team of people to make me over, dress me, write my speeches, orchestrate my appearances — as if that doesn’t sound horribly familiar — and all I have to do is play my part.

And who did they fish out of the arena instead? Me, who won’t cooperate. Beetee, an older inventor from 3, who I rarely see because he was pulled into weapons development the minute he could sit upright. Literally, they wheeled his hospital bed into some top secret area and now he only occasionally shows up for meals.

No one will fully understand — how it’s not just a flower, not even just President Snow’s flower, but a promise of revenge — because no one else sat in the study with him when he threatened me before the Victory Tour. Positioned on my dresser, that white-as-snow rose is a personal message to me. It speaks of unfinished business. It whispers, I can find you. I can reach you. Perhaps I am watching you now.

“I think it was clear to all of us what your plan was. To sacrifice yourself in the arena so that Katniss Everdeen and your child could survive.” “That was it. Clear and simple.” Peeta’s fingers trace the upholstered pattern on the arm of the chair. “But other people had plans as well.” Yes, other people had plans, I think. Has Peeta guessed, then, how the rebels used us as pawns? How my rescue was arranged from the beginning? And finally, how our mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, betrayed us both for a cause he pretended to have no interest in?

For a couple of people like Gale and me, who’ve been in charge of our families’ food supply for years, it doesn’t sit well. We know how to be hungry, but not how to be told how to handle what provisions we have. In some ways, District 13 is even more controlling than the Capitol.

The implications that I could so readily dispose of Peeta, that I’m in love with Gale, that the whole thing has been an act. My cheeks begin to burn. The very notion that I’m devoting any thought to who I want presented as my lover, given our current circumstances, is demeaning.

“You know what I miss? More than anything? Coffee. I ask you, would it be so unthinkable to have something to wash down the gruel and turnips?” “We didn’t think it would be quite so rigid here,” Fulvia explains to us as she massages Plutarch’s shoulders. “Not in the higher ranks.” “Or at least there’d be the option of a little side action,” says Plutarch. “I mean, even Twelve had a black market, right?” “Yeah, the Hob,” says Gale. “It’s where we traded.” “There, you see? And look how moral you two are! Virtually incorruptible.” Plutarch sighs. “Oh, well, wars don’t last forever. So, glad to have you on the team.”

“Cinna,” I whisper. “Yes. He made me promise not to show you this book until you’d decided to be the Mockingjay on your own. Believe me, I was very tempted,” says Plutarch.

On the final page, under a sketch of my mockingjay pin, Cinna’s written, I’m still betting on you. “When did he . . .” My voice fails me. “Let’s see. Well, after the Quarter Quell announcement. A few weeks before the Games maybe?

In the hospital, I find my mother, the only one I trust to care for them. It takes her a minute to place the three, given their current condition, but already she wears a look of consternation. And I know it’s not a result of seeing abused bodies, because they were her daily fare in District 12, but the realization that this sort of thing goes on in 13 as well.

“Punishing my prep team’s a warning,” I tell her. “Not just to me. But to you, too. About who’s really in control and what happens if she’s not obeyed. If you had any delusions about having power, I’d let them go now. Apparently, a Capitol pedigree is no protection here. Maybe it’s even a liability.”

“Perhaps we’re a little more necessary to the war effort than you give us credit for,” says Plutarch, unconcerned. “Of course you are. The tributes were necessary to the Games, too. Until they weren’t,” I say. “And then we were very disposable — right, Plutarch?”

“Katniss, why do you care so much about your prep team?” I open my eyes to see if he’s joking, but he’s frowning down at the rabbit he’s skinning. “Why shouldn’t I?”

Another force to contend with. Another power player who has decided to use me as a piece in her games, although things never seem to go according to plan. First there were the Gamemakers, making me their star and then scrambling to recover from that handful of poisonous berries. Then President Snow, trying to use me to put out the flames of rebellion, only to have my every move become inflammatory. Next, the rebels ensnaring me in the metal claw that lifted me from the arena, designating me to be their Mockingjay, and then having to recover from the shock that I might not want the wings. And now Coin, with her fistful of precious nukes and her well-oiled machine of a district, finding it’s even harder to groom a Mockingjay than to catch one. But she has been the quickest to determine that I have an agenda of my own and am therefore not to be trusted. She has been the first to publicly brand me as a threat.

“I still stand by what I said. Do you want me to lie about it?” he asks. “No, I want you to rethink it and come up with the right opinion,”

“Here one second, gone the next. Can you bring a hummingbird down with an arrow?” he asks. “I’ve never tried. Not much meat on them,” I answer. “No. And you’re not one to kill for sport,” he says. “I bet they’d be hard to shoot, though.” “You could snare them maybe,” Gale says. His face takes on that distant look it wears when he’s working something out. “Take a net with a very fine mesh. Enclose an area and leave a mouth of a couple square feet. Bait the inside with nectar flowers. While they’re feeding, snap the mouth shut. They’d fly away from the noise but only encounter the far side of the net.”

But you’re playing on their natural instincts to flee danger. Thinking like your prey . . . that’s where you find their vulnerabilities,” says Beetee.

“That doesn’t seem very fair to the deer,” I say. “Wouldn’t be using it on deer, would I?” he answers.

So I hold my bow over my head and yell with all the anger I can muster, “People of Panem, we fight, we dare, we end our hunger for justice!” There’s dead silence on the set. It goes on. And on. Finally, the intercom crackles and Haymitch’s acerbic laugh fills the studio. He contains himself just long enough to say, “And that, my friends, is how a revolution dies.”

However, it’s Haymitch who welcomes everyone, and by his words I understand that they have come at his personal invitation.

when I held out those berries that meant different things to different people. Love for Peeta. Refusal to give in under impossible odds. Defiance of the Capitol’s inhumanity.

“Wash her face,” says Dalton. Everyone turns to him. “She’s still a girl and you made her look thirty-five. Feels wrong. Like something the Capitol would do.”

“Isn’t he handsome?” Gale does look striking in the uniform, I guess. But the question just embarrasses us both, given our history. I’m trying to think of a witty comeback, when Boggs says brusquely, “Well, don’t expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear.” I decide to go ahead and like Boggs.

“You mean . . . some of the Peacekeepers are born in Two?” I ask. “I thought they all came from the Capitol.” Plutarch nods. “That’s what you’re supposed to think. And some do come from the Capitol. But its population could never sustain a force that size.

Frankly, our ancestors don’t seem much to brag about. I mean, look at the state they left us in, with the wars and the broken planet. Clearly, they didn’t care about what would happen to the people who came after them. But this republic idea sounds like an improvement over our current government. “And if we lose?” I ask. “If we lose?” Plutarch looks out at the clouds, and an ironic smile twists his lips. “Then I would expect next year’s Hunger Games to be quite unforgettable.

I have had thousands upon thousands of people from the districts at my side. I was their Mockingjay long before I accepted the role.

Power. I have a kind of power I never knew I possessed. Snow knew it, as soon as I held out those berries. Plutarch knew when he rescued me from the arena. And Coin knows now. So much so that she must publicly remind her people that I am not in control.

“I want to tell the rebels that I am alive. That I’m right here in District Eight, where the Capitol has just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women, and children. There will be no survivors.” The shock I’ve been feeling begins to give way to fury. “I want to tell people that if you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly if there’s a cease-fire, you’re deluding yourself. Because you know who they are and what they do.” My hands go out automatically, as if to indicate the whole horror around me. “This is what they do! And we must fight back!” I’m moving in toward the camera now, carried forward by my rage. “President Snow says he’s sending us a message? Well, I have one for him. You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?” One of the cameras follows as I point to the planes burning on the roof of the warehouse across from us. The Capitol seal on a wing glows clearly through the flames. “Fire is catching!” I am shouting now, determined that he will not miss a word. “And if we burn, you burn with us!”

My breakfast is disappointingly small. Just a few cubes of bread soaking in warm milk.

I remember that Plutarch is a Head Gamemaker, not a member of the crew. Not a piece in the Games. Therefore, his worth is not defined by a single element, but by the overall success of the production. If we win the war, that’s when Plutarch will take his bow. And expect his reward.

Haymitch rises to go. “While I was waiting . . . I ate your lunch.” My eyes take in the empty stew bowl and tray on my bed table. “I’m going to report you,” I mumble into my pillow. “You do that, sweetheart.” He goes out, safe in the knowledge that I’m not the reporting kind.

For a moment, real hurt registers on his face. Then cold anger replaces it.