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

by Suzanne Collins

“Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things; — We murder to dissect.” — William Wordsworth,

He thought of people putting a price on her. With her long, pointed nose and skinny body, Tigris was no great beauty, but she had a sweetness, a vulnerability that invited abuse. She would find takers, if she had a mind to. The idea made him feel sick and helpless and, consequently, disgusted with himself.

The first year of the war, she’d played the recording on national holidays for five-year-old Coriolanus and eight-year-old Tigris in order to build their sense of patriotism. The daily recital hadn’t begun until that black day when the district rebels had surrounded the Capitol, cutting it off from supplies for the remaining two years of the war. “Remember, children,” she’d say, “we are but besieged — we have not surrendered!” Then she would warble the anthem out of the penthouse window as the bombs rained down. Her small act of defiance.

operated by Avoxes — tongueless workers made the best workers, or so his grandmother said

His mind could fixate on a problem like that — anything, really — and not let go. 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.

“Coryo!” Tigris cried out, and he slammed the phone down. The nickname she’d given him when he was a newborn had stuck. He flew out of the kitchen, almost knocking her over, but she was too excited to reproach him.

“Snow lands on top!” Tigris crowed. It was the saying that had gotten them through the war, when it was a constant struggle not to be ground into the earth.

Reaping day was terrible in the districts, but not much of a celebration in the Capitol either. Like him, most people took no pleasure in remembering the war.

Ten years after the victory, and he was dodging between chunks of marble and granite as he wove his way to the Academy. 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.

As in the past, the tributes would be dumped into the Capitol Arena, a now-dilapidated amphitheater that had been used for sports and entertainment events before the war, along with some weapons to murder one another. Viewing was encouraged in the Capitol, but a lot of people avoided it. How to make it more engaging was the challenge.

Everyone agreed that if the Hunger Games were to continue, they needed to evolve into a more meaningful experience, and the pairing of the Capitol youth with the district tributes had people intrigued.

You can’t take my sass. You can’t take my talking. You can kiss my ass And then keep on walking. Nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping.

No, sir, Nothing you can take from me is worth dirt. Take it, ’cause I’d give it free. It won’t hurt. Nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping!

Lucy Gray Baird. She was a gift, he knew it, and he must treat her as such. But how best to exploit her showstopping entrance? How to wrangle some success from a dress, a snake, a song?

The endless dance with hunger had defined his life. Not the very early years, before the war, but every day since had been a battle, a negotiation, a game. How was it best to stave off hunger? Eat all the food at one meal? Spread it through the day in dribs and drabs? Wolf it down or chew every morsel to liquid? It was all just a mind game to distract himself from the fact that it was never enough. No one would ever let him have enough.

Amid the violence of the Games, there was a silent agony that everyone in Panem had experienced, the desperation for enough sustenance to bring you to the following sunrise.

“When I was little, they used to bathe me in buttermilk and rose petals,” she said in a manner that, despite the unlikeliness of her claim, seemed totally believable. She ran her thumb over the glossy, white surface and slipped the petal into her mouth, closing her eyes to savor the flavor. “Tastes like bedtime.”

“Ah, a rebel,” she said. That word was poison in the mouths of Capitol citizens, but she had said it approvingly, as a compliment. Or, was she mocking him? He remembered she carried snakes in her pocket and the usual rules didn’t apply to her.

“It’s Lucy Gray and I’m not really from Twelve,” she said. “My people are Covey. Musicians by trade. We just took a wrong turn one day and were obliged to stay.”

“So you didn’t have a second thought about diving into a cage of tributes?” prompted the reporter. “A second, a third, and I imagine the fourth and fifth will be hitting me sometime soon,”

Boy Apollo Ring Girl Diana Ring

Hilarius Heavensbee

Go write me a letter, send it by mail. Bake it and stamp it to the Capitol jail.

“I know. I know. I’m so blameless I’m choking on it,” said Sejanus. Coriolanus was trying to unravel that thought

If having Marcus as a tribute made Sejanus squirm, then good. Let him squirm. Lucy Gray was one thing belonging to Coriolanus that he would never, ever get.

“I have a couple of cousins. And the rest of the Covey.” She leaned in to check the paper. “Is there a space for them?” There wasn’t. But there should be, he thought, given how fractured families were by the war. There should be a place for anyone who cared for you at all. In fact, maybe that should be the question to start with: Who cares about you? Or even better, Who can you count on?

“Compassion is the key to the Games. Empathy, the thing we lack.

He made a wrong turn, then another, and found himself in a ghoulish section of the lab where the glass cases housed humans with animal parts grafted to their bodies. Tiny feathered ruffs around their necks; talons, or even tentacles, in place of fingers; and something — perhaps gills? — embedded in their chests.

If the people who were supposed to protect you played so fast and loose with your life . . . then how did you survive? Not by trusting them, that was for sure. And if you couldn’t trust them, who could you trust? All bets were off.

“Oh, Lucy Gray, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry about all of this.” “It’s not your fault,” she said. “You must hate me. You should. I would hate me,” he said. “I don’t hate you. The Hunger Games weren’t your idea,” she replied. “But I’m participating in them. I’m helping them happen!” His head dropped in shame. “I should be like Sejanus and at least try to quit.” “No, don’t! Please don’t. Don’t leave me to go through this alone!” She

“You do matter,” he said. “Well, there’s a lot of evidence to the contrary.” She rattled her chains and gave them a tug. And then, as if remembering something, she looked up at the sky. “You matter to me,” he insisted. The Capitol may not value her, but he did. Hadn’t he just poured his heart out to her?

At the end of every line she’d poke him in his ribs with a ruler and shout, “Breathe!” until he couldn’t imagine making any other choice. For the third time that week, she sacrificed one of her darlings to his future, pinning a light blue rosebud to his carefully pressed uniform jacket and saying, “There. It matches your eyes.” Looking sharp, with a belly full of oatmeal and a rib cage dotted with bruises reminding him to inhale, he set off for the Academy.

Coriolanus thought it was quite a display for Arachne, disproportionate to both her life and death, the latter of which could have been avoided if she’d refrained from being such an exhibitionist. So many people had died heroically in the war, with so little recognition, that it grated on him. He was relieved that he was singing instead of having to praise her talents, which, if memory served, were limited to being loud enough to fill the school auditorium without a mic and the ability to balance a spoon on her nose.

So now that loudmouth Arachne was a defender of a righteous and just land. Yes, she laid down her life taunting her tribute with a sandwich, thought Coriolanus. Maybe her gravestone could read, “Casualty of cheap laughs.”

As the crowd thinned, several people took the pained look on Coriolanus’s face as sorrow at Arachne’s death, when ironically he felt like killing her all over again.

“Thanks. You’re quite the rebel,” said Sejanus as they carried their trays to the conveyor belt that ran to the kitchen. “I’m bad news, all right,” said Coriolanus.

I’m embarrassed you heard me.” “I like your voice. My daddy would’ve said it had real authority. Just didn’t much care for the song,” Lucy Gray replied. “Thanks. That means a lot, coming from you,” he said. She nudged him with her elbow. “I wouldn’t broadcast that. Most people here think I’m lower than a snake’s belly.”

“Oh, the cake with the cream? You don’t say that?” she asked. “Well, it’s a compliment. Where I come from, cake can be pretty dry. And cream’s as scarce as hen’s teeth.”

“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.”

They split the sandwiches and then Tigris stroked his aching head until he dozed off, just as she had when headaches plagued him as a child.

It always ended with the whole lot of them, Rings included, laughing their heads off in a heap on the ground. Oh, to be seven again, in a happy pile with his friends, with nutritional crackers waiting at his desk.

Lucy Gray had been nibbling around the edges of his thoughts, but now he could think of no one else.

The savory layers of meat, potato, and cheese consoled him, as did Tigris’s gentle reminder that the situation with Lucy Gray was not of his making. They were both, after all, still children whose lives were dictated by powers above them.

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.

“They’re still doing the interviews, but on a voluntary basis. Are you up for it?” “Are you kidding? I’ve got a song that was made for this whiskey voice,”

You’ve no right to starve people, to punish them for no reason. No right to take away their life and freedom. Those are things everyone is born with, and they’re not yours for the taking. Winning a war doesn’t give you that right. Having more weapons doesn’t give you that right. Being from the Capitol doesn’t give you that right. Nothing does.

“You have to stop rescuing me.” Coriolanus shook his head. “I can’t seem to control it. It’s like a tic.”

“Being Capitol is going to kill me.”

The loving way she handled the guitar, as if it were a sentient being, gave him a hint of a past so unlike his own he had trouble imagining it.

She took her time tuning the instrument and then played song after song, seemingly as starved for the music as for the meals he brought.