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

by Suzanne Collins

“Anyway, she’s dead and she’s haunting the place. How can she fly without wings?”

It’s just, I can’t pretend I’m someone I’m not. I don’t agree with everything the Capitol does, but I am Capitol, and on the whole I think we’re right about needing order,”

“So, your family were rebels after all.” Coriolanus wasn’t really surprised. “My family were Covey, first and last,” Lucy Gray asserted. “Not district, not Capitol, not rebel, not Peacekeeper, just us. And you’re like us. You want to think for yourself. You push back. I know because of what you did for me in the Games.”

“Some people call them swamp potatoes, but I like katniss better. Has a nice ring to it.”

“Like Barb Azure. That’s her color.” “Her color?” asked Coriolanus. “Sure. We each get our first name from a ballad and our second from a color.” She popped up to explain. “Barb is from ‘Barbara Allen’ and azure blue like the sky. Me, I’m ‘Maude Clare’ and ivory like piano keys. And Lucy Gray is special, because her whole name came right from her ballad. Lucy and Gray.”

This elimination of the Capitol birds from the equation deeply disturbed him. Here they were, multiplying like rabbits, completely unchecked. Unauthorized. Co-opting Capitol technology. He didn’t like it one bit.

Lucy Gray took a deep breath. “I trust you, though.” He sensed this was a difficult admission for her to make, perhaps harder than a declaration of love, but it didn’t erase the image of Billy Taupe wooing her in the Meadow.

He barely spoke on the way back as he revised his strategy. He had to find out what Sejanus was mixed up in. Logic had failed to induce a confidence. Would intimacy work? It wouldn’t hurt to try.

You may be the only person in the world who I actually trust.” Ah, trust again. The air was full of it.

On the whole, he was beginning to weary of the infusion of music into his life. Invasion might be a better word. It seemed to be everywhere these days: birdsong, Covey song, bird-and-Covey song. Perhaps he did not share his mother’s love of music after all. At least, such a quantity of it. It consumed his attention greedily, demanding to be listened to and making it hard to think.

“We have some supplies. I’m a good shot,” said Sejanus. He had not mentioned the rebels having guns, but apparently they did. “And when the bullets run out?” “We’ll figure something out. Fish, net birds. They say there are people in the north,” Sejanus told him.

The whole idea of the rebels having secret access to the base. It frightened and infuriated him. This breaking of the contract. This invitation to chaos and all that could follow. Didn’t these people understand that the whole system would collapse without the Capitol’s control? That they all might as well run away to the north and live like animals, because that’s what they’d be reduced to?

Perhaps because he hadn’t actually seen her die, or even had a good look at the body, he felt less emotional than when he’d killed Bobbin. Or perhaps the second killing was just easier than the first. At any rate, he knew that he’d shoot her again if he had it all to do over, and somehow that supported the rightness of his actions.

But even as the vileness of the act threatened to drown him, a tiny voice kept asking, What choice did you have? What choice? No choice. Sejanus had been bent on self-destruction, and Coriolanus had been swept along in his wake, only to be deposited at the foot of the hanging tree himself.

Everyone’s born as clean as a whistle — As fresh as a daisy And not a bit crazy. Staying that way’s a hard row for hoeing — As rough as a briar, Like walking through fire. This world, it’s dark, And this world, it’s scary. I’ve taken some hits, so No wonder I’m wary.

Everyone wants to be like a hero — The cake with the cream, or The doer not dreamer. Doing’s hard work, It takes some to change things — Like goat’s milk to butter, Like ice blocks to water. This world goes blind When children are dying. I turn into dust, but You never stop trying.

“I think there’s a natural goodness built into human beings. You know when you’ve stepped across the line into evil, and it’s your life’s challenge to try and stay on the right side of that line.”

This was his life now. Digging for worms and being at the mercy of the weather. Elemental. Like an animal. He knew this would be easier if he wasn’t such an exceptional person. The best and the brightest humanity had to offer. The youngest to pass the officer candidate test. If he’d been useless and stupid, the loss of civilization would not have hollowed out his insides in this manner. He’d have taken it in stride.

Although, if he ditched her in the woods to claw out an existence alone, no doubt she would consider that a breach of faith. He had to think of just the right way to break the news. But what would that be? “I love you deeply, but I love officers’ school more?” That wasn’t going to go over well. And he did love her! He did! It was just that, only a few hours into his new life in the wilderness, he knew he hated it. The heat, and the worms, and those birds yakking nonstop

No, Lucy Gray was no lamb. She was not made of sugar. She was a victor.

He looked down at the loaded gun in his hands. Maybe he should’ve left it in the shed. It looked bad coming after her armed. As if he was hunting her. But he wasn’t really going to kill her. Just talk to her and make sure she saw sense. Put down the gun, he told himself, but his hands refused to cooperate. All she has is a knife. A big knife. The best he could manage was to sling the gun onto his back.

Still no sign of her. She was giving him no choice but to hunt her down in the woods.

Panic and disbelief. Lucy Gray had tried to kill him! This was no coincidence. The trailing scarf. The poised snake. Maude Ivory had said she always knew where to find them.

Nature gone mad. Genes gone bad. Chaos.

The assignment was to create a punishment for one’s enemies so extreme that they would never be allowed to forget how they had wronged you. It was like a puzzle, which I excel at, and like all good creations, absurdly simple at its core. The Hunger Games. The evilest impulse, cleverly packaged into a sporting event. An entertainment. I was drunk and your father got me drunker still, playing on my vanity as I fleshed the thing out, assuring me it was just a private joke. The next morning, I awoke, horrified by what I’d made, meaning to rip it to shreds, but it was too late. Without my permission, your father had given it to Dr. Gaul. He wanted the grade, you see. I never forgave him.”

“It was never meant to be anything more than theoretical. And who but the vilest monster would stage it? After the war, she pulled my proposal out, and me with it, introducing me to Panem as the architect of the Hunger Games. That night, I tried morphling for the first time. I thought the thing would die out, it was so ghastly. It didn’t. Dr. Gaul took it and ran, and she has dragged me along with it for the last ten years.”

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