The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)

by Suzanne Collins

Tigris had said to trust her, and he did. Only his cousin’s cleverness with a needle had saved him so far. Still, he couldn’t expect miracles.

Watching the bright pages of his picture books — the very ones he’d pored over with his mother — reduced to ashes had never failed to bring him to tears. But better off sad than dead.

As if controlling one element of his world would keep him from ruin. It was a bad habit that blinded him to other things that could harm him. A tendency toward obsession was hardwired into his brain and would likely be his undoing if he couldn’t learn to outsmart it.

Sometimes Coriolanus wondered if the debris had been left there to remind the citizens of what they had endured. People had short memories. They needed to navigate the rubble, peel off the grubby ration coupons, and witness the Hunger Games to keep the war fresh in their minds. Forgetting could lead to complacency, and then they’d all be back at square one.

This reaping day, like most, was shaping up to be a scorcher. But what else could you expect on July 4th?

“And last but least, District Twelve girl . . . she belongs to Coriolanus Snow.”

One way or another, their fates were irrevocably linked.

“Hey!” she said with a certain urgency. He turned back. “Hey, I want you to know I don’t really believe you’re here for grades or glory. You’re a rare bird, Coriolanus.” “You, too,” he said.

“But they say hardly anyone in the districts saw it, Grandma’am,” Tigris countered. “The people there don’t like to watch the Hunger Games coverage.” “It will only take a handful to get the word out,” said the Grandma’am. “It’s just the kind of story that catches fire.”

Coriolanus shook his head. “You can joke, but it won’t change what you did for me. I hope I can repay you in some way.” “I hope so, too,” she said. In those few words he sensed a shift in their dynamic. As her mentor, he’d been the gracious giver of gifts, always to be met with gratitude. Now she’d upended things by giving him a gift beyond compare. On the surface, everything looked the same. Chained girl, boy offering food, Peacekeepers guarding that status quo. But deep down, things could never be the same between them. He would always be in her debt. She had the right to demand things.

He should’ve been trying to preserve her life, to help her become the victor, no matter the odds.

“I understand. I do. But you must learn to harness and contain them. Wars are won with heads, not hearts.”

“I think your odds get better by the minute,” said Coriolanus, adjusting a hot pink rosebud in her hair. It matched the one on his lapel, just in case anyone needed a reminder of who Lucy Gray belonged to. “Well, you know what they say. The show’s not over until the mockingjay sings,” she said. “The mockingjay?” He laughed. “Really, I think you’re just making these things up.” “Not that one. A mockingjay’s a bona fide bird,” she assured him.

What he desired had little to do with nobility and everything to do with being in control.

If she could survive — oh, sweet only if — how could they help but have a lifelong connection? But for all his positive talk, he knew the odds were not in her favor, and a heavy melancholy descended upon him.

“Like last night Reaper apologized to each of us personally for having to kill us,” she explained. “He says he’ll make it up to us when he wins. He’s going to take revenge on the Capitol, although that part wasn’t as clear as the killing us part.” Coriolanus’s glance flitted over to Reaper, who was not only powerful but apparently good at mind games. “What was the response to that?” “Most people just stared at him. Jessup spit in his eye. I told him it wasn’t over until the mockingjay sang, but that only confused him. It’s his way of making sense of all this, I guess. We’re all reeling. It’s not easy . . . saying good-bye to your life.”

“Well, as they say, it’s not over until the mockingjay sings.” He felt satisfaction at the puzzlement on their faces.

“I think I underestimated how much they hate us,” said Coriolanus. “And when you realized that, what was your response?” she asked. He thought back to Bobbin, to the escape, to the tributes’ bloodlust even after he’d cleared the bars. “I wanted them dead. I wanted every one of them dead.”

Coriolanus stared down at the blood and felt the impact of the beam on Bobbin’s head. “Tigris . . .” She rubbed her temple. “And I keep wondering how it came to this. That my baby cousin, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, has to fight for his life in the arena.”

“In fact, it was your girl who gave me the idea.” His girl. Lucy Gray. Who’d made an entrance into the Hunger Games by dropping a snake down the mayor’s daughter’s back. “If she wins, we should compare notes.” Notes about what? How to use snakes as weapons? He stared into the undulating reptiles, imagining them being let loose in the arena. What would they do? Hide? Hunt? Attack? Even if he knew how snakes behaved, which he didn’t, he doubted these would conform to any norms, as they were genetically designed by Dr. Gaul.

Lucy Gray would scream and fall to the ground, her lips turning purple, then bloodless, while bright pink and blue and yellow pus oozed onto her ruffled dress — That was it! The thing the snakes had reminded him of the first time he’d seen them. They matched her dress. As if they had always been her destiny . . .

Coriolanus thought about what it had felt like to be in the arena, where there were no rules, no laws, no consequences to one’s actions. The needle of his moral compass had swung madly without direction. Fueled by the terror of being prey, how quickly he himself had become a predator, with no reservations about smashing Bobbin to death. He’d transformed, all right, but not into anything he was proud of — and being a Snow, he had more self-control than most. He tried to imagine what it would be like if the whole world played by those same rules. No consequences. People taking what they wanted, when they wanted, and killing for it if it came to that. Survival driving everything. There had been days during the war when they’d all been too scared to leave the apartment. Days when the lawlessness had made even the Capitol an arena.

“Exactly. I think that’s how she thinks we all are. Natural-born killers. Inherently violent,” Coriolanus said. “The Hunger Games are a reminder of what monsters we are and how we need the Capitol to keep us from chaos.”

“Mockingjays,” grumbled a soldier in front of him. “Stinking mutts.” Coriolanus remembered talking to Lucy Gray before the interview. “Well, you know what they say. The show’s not over until the mockingjay sings.” “The mockingjay? Really, I think you’re just making these things up.” “Not that one. A mockingjay’s a bona fide bird.” “And it sings in your show?” “Not my show, sweetheart. Yours. The Capitol’s anyway.”

Coriolanus felt sure he’d spotted his first mockingjay, and he disliked the thing on sight.

Even now, when his imagined persecutor was long dead. Let it go, can’t you? he thought. How can it still be of consequence?

That’s her when she’s happy, he thought. She’s beautiful! Beautiful in a way anyone could see, not just him. That could be a problem. Jealousy pricked his heart. But no. She was his girl, wasn’t she?

“You found me,” she said. In District 12? In Panem? In the world itself? Never mind, it didn’t matter. “You knew I would.” “Hoped you would. Didn’t know. The odds didn’t seem in my favor.”

He didn’t mind the jabberjays so much — they seemed rather interesting from a military standpoint — but something about the mockingjays repelled him. He distrusted their spontaneous creation. Nature running amok. They should die out, and die out soon. At the end of the day, though they found themselves in possession of over thirty jabberjays, not one mockingjay had been caught in the traps.

“Thanks, but I meant the song. Do you think people really see Lucy Gray, or they’re just dreaming her?” she said. “Because I think they really see her. Only now, she flies like a bird.”

“People have been around a long time without the Capitol. I expect they’ll be here a long time after,” she concluded. Coriolanus thought of the dead cities he’d passed on the journey to District 12. She claimed the Covey had traveled, so she must have seen them as well. “Not many of them. Panem used to be magnificent. Look at it now.” Clerk Carmine brought Lucy Gray a plant he’d uprooted from the lake, with pointy leaves and small white flowers. “Hey, you found some katniss. Good work, CC.” Coriolanus wondered if he meant it to be decorative, like the Grandma’am’s roses, but she immediately examined the roots, from which small tubers hung. “Little too early yet.” “Yeah,” Clerk Carmine agreed. “For what?” asked Coriolanus. “For eating. In a few weeks, these will grow into decent-sized potatoes, and we can roast them,” said Lucy Gray. “Some people call them swamp potatoes, but I like katniss better. Has a nice ring to it.”

Deep in the meadow, under the willow A bed of grass, a soft green pillow Lay down your head, and close your sleepy eyes And when again they open, the sun will rise. Here it’s safe, here it’s warm Here the daisies guard you from every harm Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true Here is the place where I love you.

An overwhelming flush of love ran through him at her reminder that he was not alone in this tragedy. They were back in the arena, fighting for survival, just the two of them against the world. He felt a bittersweet pang at the thought of her watching him die, but gratitude that she would survive.

Whatever happened to him, there was comfort in knowing she would live on for the both of them.

Lucy Gray gazed back at the town, although the only thing Coriolanus could make out was the gallows. “Good-bye, District Twelve. Good-bye, hanging tree and Hunger Games and Mayor Lipp. Someday something will kill me, but it won’t be you.” She turned and headed deeper into the woods.

“I think I’ll go dig up some katniss, since we got the fire going anyway. There’s a good patch by the lake.” “I thought they weren’t ready,” he said.

He took a step in her direction just as a mockingjay picked up her song. Then a second. Then a third. The woods came alive with their melody as dozens joined in. He dove through the trees and then opened fire on the spot the voice had come from. Had he hit her? He couldn’t tell, because the birdsong filled his ears, disorienting him. Little black specks swam in his field of vision, and his arm began to throb. “Lucy Gray!” he bellowed in frustration. Clever, devious, deadly girl. She knew they’d cover for her. He lifted the rifle and machine-gunned the trees, trying to wipe out the birds. Many fluttered into the sky, but the song had spread, and the woods were alive with it. “Lucy Gray! Lucy Gray!” Furious, he turned this way and that and finally blasted the woods in a full circle, going around and around until his bullets were spent. He collapsed on the ground, dizzy and nauseous, as the woods exploded, every bird of every kind screaming its head off while the mockingjays continued their rendition of “The Hanging Tree.” Nature gone mad. Genes gone bad. Chaos.

“You erased it?” he asked. “Every last copy gone, never to be aired again.” She grinned. “I’ve a master in the vault, of course, but that’s just for my own amusement.” He was glad about the erasure. It was just one more way to eliminate Lucy Gray from the world. The Capitol would forget her, the districts barely knew her, and District 12 had never accepted her as one of their own. In a few years, there would be a vague memory that a girl had once sung in the arena. And then that would be forgotten, too. Good-bye, Lucy Gray, we hardly knew you.

Lucy Gray’s fate was a mystery, then, just like the little girl who shared her name in that maddening song. Was she alive, dead, a ghost who haunted the wilderness? Perhaps no one would ever really know. No matter — snow had been the ruination of them both. Poor Lucy Gray. Poor ghost girl singing away with her birds.

She could fly around District 12 all she liked, but she and her mockingjays could never harm him again.

Sometimes he would remember a moment of sweetness and almost wish things had ended differently. But it would never have worked out between them, even if he’d stayed. They were simply too different. And he didn’t like love, the way it had made him feel stupid and vulnerable. If he ever married, he’d choose someone incapable of swaying his heart. Someone he hated, even, so they could never manipulate him the way Lucy Gray had. Never make him feel jealous. Or weak.