“She can't, she's—” begins the woman with the cracker.
“Come around!” I shout. There's a step and a dragging sound. I can hear the effort the movement requires. Another woman, or maybe I should call her a girl since she looks about my age, limps into view. She's dressed in an ill-fitting Peacekeeper's uniform complete with the white fur cloak, but it's several sizes too large for her slight frame. She carries no visible weapon. Her hands are occupied with steadying a rough crutch made from a broken branch. The toe of her right boot can't clear the snow, hence the dragging.
I examine the girl's face, which is bright red from the cold. Her teeth are crooked and there's a strawberry birthmark over one of her chocolate brown eyes. This is no Peacekeeper. No citizen of the Capitol, either.
“Who are you?” I ask warily but less belligerently.
“My name's Twill,” says the woman. She's older. Maybe thirty-five or so. “And this is Bonnie. We've run away from District Eight.”
District 8! Then they must know about the uprising!
“Where'd you get the uniforms?” I ask.
“I stole them from the factory,” says Bonnie. “We make them there. Only I thought this one would be for… for someone else. That's why it fits so poorly.”
“The gun came from a dead Peacekeeper,” says Twill, following my eyes.
“That cracker in your hand. With the bird. What's that about?” I ask.
“Don't you know, Katniss?” Bonnie appears genuinely surprised.
They recognize me. Of course they recognize me. My face is uncovered and I'm standing here outside of District 12 pointing an arrow at them. Who else would I be? “I know it matches the pin I wore in the arena.”
“She doesn't know,” says Bonnie softly. “Maybe not about any of it.”
Suddenly I feel the need to appear on top of things. “I know you had an uprising in Eight.”
“Yes, that's why we had to get out,” says Twill.
“Well, you're good and out now. What are you going to do?” I ask.
“We're headed for District Thirteen,” Twill replies.
“Thirteen?” I say. “There's no Thirteen. It got blown off the map.”
“Seventy-five years ago,” says Twill.
Bonnie shifts on her crutch and winces.
“What's wrong with your leg?” I ask.
“I twisted my ankle. My boots are too big,” says Bonnie.
I bite my lip. My instinct tells me they're telling the truth. And behind that truth is a whole lot of information I'd like to get. I step forward and retrieve Twill's gun before lowering my bow, though. Then I hesitate a moment, thinking of another day in this woods, when Gale and I watched a hovercraft appear out of thin air and capture two escapees from the Capitol. The boy was speared and killed. The redheaded girl, I found out when I went to the Capitol, was mutilated and turned into a mute servant called an Avox. “Anyone after you?”
“We don't think so. We think they believe we were killed in a factory explosion,” says Twill. “Only a fluke that we weren't.”
“All right, let's go inside,” I say, nodding at the cement house. I follow them in, carrying the gun.
Bonnie makes straight for the hearth and lowers herself onto a Peacekeeper's cloak that has been spread before it. She holds her hands to the feeble flame that burns on one end of a charred log. Her skin is so pale as to be translucent and I can see the fire glow through her flesh. Twill tries to arrange the cloak, which must have been her own, around the shivering girl.
A tin gallon can has been cut in half, the lip ragged and dangerous. It sits in the ashes, filled with a handful of pine needles steaming in water.
“Making tea?” I ask.
“We're not sure, really. I remember seeing someone do this with pine needles on the Hunger Games a few years back. At least, I think it was pine needles,” says Twill with a frown.
I remember District 8, an ugly urban place stinking of industrial fumes, the people housed in run-down tenements. Barely a blade of grass in sight. No opportunity, ever, to learn the ways of nature. It's a miracle these two have made it this far.
“Out of food?” I ask.
Bonnie nods. “We took what we could, but food's been so scarce. That's been gone for a while.” The quaver in her voice melts my remaining defenses. She is just a malnourished, injured girl fleeing the Capitol.
“Well, then this is your lucky day,” I say, dropping my game bag on the floor. People are starving all over the district and we still have more than enough. So I've been spreading things around a little. I have my own priorities: Gale's family, Greasy Sae, some of the other Hob traders who were shut down. My mother has other people, patients mostly, who she wants to help. This morning I purposely overstuffed my game bag with food, knowing my mother would see the depleted pantry and assume I was making my rounds to the hungry. I was actually buying time to go to the lake without her worrying. I intended to deliver the food this evening on my return, but now I can see that won't be happening.
From the bag I pull two fresh buns with a layer of cheese baked into the top. We always seem to have a supply of these since Peeta found out they were my favorite. I toss one to Twill but cross over and place the other on Bonnie's lap since her hand-eye coordination seems a little questionable at the moment and I don't want the thing ending up in the fire.
“Oh,” says Bonnie. “Oh, is this all for me?”
Something inside me twists as I remember another voice. Rue. In the arena. When I gave her the leg of groosling. “Oh, I've never had a whole leg to myself before.” The disbelief of the chronically hungry.
“Yeah, eat up,” I say. Bonnie holds the bun as if she can't quite believe it's real and then sinks her teeth into it again and again, unable to stop. “It's better if you chew it.” She nods, trying to slow down, but I know how hard it is when you're that hollow. “I think your tea's done.” I scoot the tin can from the ashes. Twill finds two tin cups in her pack and I dip out the tea, setting it on the floor to cool. They huddle together, eating, blowing on their tea, and taking tiny, scalding sips as I build up the fire. I wait until they are sucking the grease from their fingers to ask, “So, what's your story?” And they tell me.
Ever since the Hunger Games, the discontent in District 8 had been growing. It was always there, of course, to some degree. But what differed was that talk was no longer sufficient, and the idea of taking action went from a wish to a reality. The textile factories that service Panem are loud with machinery, and the din also allowed word to pass safely, a pair of lips close to an ear, words unnoticed, unchecked. Twill taught at school, Bonnie was one of her pupils, and when the final bell had rung, both of them spent a four-hour shift at the factory that specialized in the Peacekeeper uniforms. It took months for Bonnie, who worked in the chilly inspection dock, to secure the two uniforms, a boot here, a pair of pants there. They were intended for Twill and her husband because it was understood that, once the uprising began, it would be crucial to get word of it out beyond District 8 if it were to spread and be successful.
The day Peeta and I came through and made our Victory Tour appearance was actually a rehearsal of sorts. People in the crowd positioned themselves according to their teams, next to the buildings they would target when the rebellion broke out. That was the plan: to take over the centers of power in the city like the Justice Building, the Peacekeepers' Headquarters, and the Communication Center in the square. And at other locations in the district: the railroad, the granary, the power station, and the armory.
The night of my engagement, the night Peeta fell to his knees and proclaimed his undying love for me in front of the cameras in the Capitol, was the night the uprising began. It was an ideal cover. Our Victory Tour interview with Caesar Flickerman was mandatory viewing. It gave the people of District 8 a reason to be out on the streets after dark, gathering either in the square or in various community centers around the city to watch. Ordinarily such activity would have been too suspicious. Instead everyone was in place by the appointed hour, eight o'clock, when the masks went on and all hell broke loose.