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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.
My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Peeta was taken prisoner. He is thought to be dead. Most likely he is dead. It is probably best if he is dead. . . .
He understands I don’t want anyone with me today. Not even him. Some walks you have to take alone.
“Katniss Everdeen, the girl who was on fire, you have provided a spark that, left unattended, may grow to an inferno that destroys Panem.”
Peeta being tortured — drowned, burned, lacerated, shocked, maimed, beaten — as the Capitol tries to get information about the rebellion that he doesn’t know. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to reach for him across the hundreds and hundreds of miles, to send my thoughts into his mind, to let him know he is not alone. But he is. And I can’t help him.
The Mockingjay.
as if that doesn’t sound horribly familiar
And it takes too much energy to stay angry with someone who cries so much.
Brilliant, enigmatic, lovely Cinna is dead because of me.
“Buttercup,”
I can find you. I can reach you. Perhaps I am watching you now.
somewhere hidden. An abandoned air duct.
Peeta doesn’t need a brush to paint images from the Games. He works just as well in words.
“Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people?”
“It costs everything you are.”
“Katniss . . . he’s still trying to keep you alive.”
“Katniss, I’m not arguing. If I could hit a button and kill every living soul working for the Capitol, I would do it. Without hesitation.”
“I’m going to be the Mockingjay.”
In some ways, District 13 is even more controlling than the Capitol.
You could ask for the moon and they’d have to find some way to get it.”
He is alive. He is a traitor but alive. I have to keep him alive. .
I’m still betting on you.
This must be the right decision. If Cinna wanted it.
Another power player who has decided to use me as a piece in her games, although things never seem to go according to plan.
“I think you’d be pretty in any color.”
“May the odds be ever in your favor!”
“And that, my friends, is how a revolution dies.”
I finally meet Haymitch’s eyes. Seam eyes. Gray and deep and ringed with the circles of sleepless nights.
“Well, don’t expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear.”
Then there’s the problem of recruiting Capitol-raised citizens for a dull life of deprivation in the districts. A twenty-year commitment to the Peacekeepers, no marriage, no children allowed. Some buy into it for the honor of the thing, others take it on as an alternative to punishment. For instance, join the Peacekeepers and your debts are forgiven. Many people are swamped in debt in the Capitol, but not all of them are fit for military duty. So District Two is where we turn for additional troops. It’s a way for their people to escape poverty and a life in the quarries. They’re raised with a
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“That’s a mixed bag.”
“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?”
“Fire is catching!”
“And if we burn, you burn with us!”
Coin and Gale are in the midst of some exchange that seems positively chummy.
“Fire is catching! And if we burn, you burn with us!”
IF WE BURN YOU BURN WITH US
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.
I have not sung “The Hanging Tree” out loud for ten years, because it’s forbidden, but I remember every word. I begin softly, sweetly, as my father did.
“Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where they strung up a man they say murdered three. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.”
“Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where the dead man called out for his love to flee. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.”
“Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where I told you to run, so we’d both be free. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.”
“Are you, are you Coming to the tree Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.”
At the beginning, it sounds like a guy is trying to get his girlfriend to secretly meet up with him at midnight. But it’s an odd place for a tryst, a hanging tree, where a man was hung for murder.
The murderer’s lover must have had something to do with the killing, or maybe they were just going to punish her anyway, because his corpse called out for her to flee. That’s weird obviously, the talking-corpse bit, but it’s not until the third verse that “The Hanging Tree” begins to get unnerving. You realize the singer of the song is the dead murderer.
He’s still in the hanging tree. And even though he told his lover to flee, he keeps asking if she’s coming to meet him. The phrase Where I told you to run, so we’d both be free is the most troubling because at first you think he’s talking about when he told her to flee, presumably to safety. But then you wonder if he meant for her to run to him. To death. In the final stanza, it’s clear that...
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The glue of mutual need that bonded us so tightly together for all those years is melting away.
“Maybe I’ll be like that man in ‘The Hanging Tree.’ Still waiting for an answer.”
“That I knew I’d misjudged you. That you do love him. I’m not saying in what way. Maybe you don’t know yourself. But anyone paying attention could see how much you care about him,”
It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.”
