Chapter Text
“Clip stems close to the ground, cut off dead buds and leaves, and throw any slugs and bugs into the waste buckets, you know the drill.” A young freckly peacekeeper stands up at the back of the truck bed to finish up yelling our orders for the day over the engine after dropping off half of the neighborhood kids. We ride through the shaded apple orchards for a while before pulling into the hot flower fields just beyond them.
Kids in the neighborhood who work the orchards like to say flower duty is easy work, picking and smelling flowers all day, but they don't get it. They're protected up in the trees. Especially this time of year, you can be whipped for bruising a rose petal. They track every bloom. These flowers get sent straight to the Capital, so they must be perfect. A wormy apple can still be turned to cider or horse feed, and isn't blamed on the child who found it. It's just tossed in a different bin.
And it could just be coincidence, but kids on flower duty seem to get reaped more often, at least that's what the adults have always said. Making the tributes take the same train to the Capital as the last flowers they'll ever harvest, just to come back home to be buried in the same soil. It's the second quarter quell this year, double the odds. No room for mistakes.
As the truck stops, all the momentum shoves us back into each other. My head collides into my neighbor's shoulder and as I try to sit back up my braid is yanked to the side, pushing me back down into the truck bed.
“What is wrong with you Lilac? Every single day, pay attention you little brat!” Ledger is staring down at me. She's 3 years older than me and the tallest in the truck, her dark auburn hair kept short with a braid circling her head like a crown giving her a glowing halo above me. We've been neighbors and on the same harvest rotations for 5 years and she hasn't liked me a single day of it. She misses the cherry orchards. Don't we all. Unfortunately for her they stack us into the trucks alphabetically so we're stuck bruising each other every morning, I just don't complain about her boots hitting my ankles, or her elbows digging into my sides.
“Like she can control how hard the truck stops.” A hand reaches down in front of me, pulling me up as we get ready to unload from the truck.
“Thank you Heather,” I whisper to my sister, “you'd think she'd be used to it by now, we all get a little beat up in these damn trucks” we link arms to hop off the truck and line up to get our duties for the day. When we were younger people often mistook us for twins, Mah would cut the fabric for our dresses at the same time so people could only tell us apart by our colors until Heather finally hit her growth spurt 4 years ago. Now she's much taller, her face is sharper, and her hair gets loose curls without having to braid it. I can't wait till I catch up and get to be as beautiful as her.
Heather is assigned to picking sunflowers and I'm on beebalm weeding and pruning. I grab a bucket and load it with old rusted garden tools that are just sharp enough for cutting stems and nothing else. As I head to the beebalm rows I hear Heather and the other sunflower girls start to sing through the tall stalks.
“Flower there beside my feet
Growing up between the corn
Combine's here so duck your head
Duck your head
Duck your head
Combine's here so duck your head
To see another morn.”
It's a little morbid but it helps the time go by. I've never seen a combine up close, they haven't used a combine in the flower fields for decades, even for turning the soil after harvest, they make us do that by hand to not damage bulbs. The adults still use combines out in the grain fields, far out away from the city center. Capital citizens visiting to pick apples and flowers don't want to see or hear loud machinery, so adults travel hours away everyday to work those fields. I've never been past the maternity cherry orchards mom worked when we were little. All you can see out there for thousands of acres is wheat. Beyond that it's corn and oats, vegetables are somewhere to the East. Some fields are so far away from the city they've just built neighborhoods out there, some people spend their entire life surrounded by rows and rows of cabbage and nothing else. When any of those families gets transferred to our neighborhood it takes them a while to adjust. Even the lavender that grows between shacks is mesmerizing to them, it can be too much, the bright flowers and beautiful trees overstimulate their senses. But I guess that's how any of us would react if transferred to the modified fields.
Up North past the barley and lentils fields, as far from the regular crop species as possible, the Capital has its scientists experimenting with new and improved plants every year. Only a select few district 3 and 11 families live out there and manage those fields. I've only been lucky enough to see a petal of an iris flower from out there. One of the girls found it stuck to the tire of a transport truck. Even in that beaten and bruised state it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. A heart shaped petal the size of my palm, electric yellow with deep blue veining that turned neon orange where it was bruised or torn. We passed it around the truck in the morning for almost a week before it was confiscated by a peacekeeper. Ledger was the unfortunate recipient of the back end of a rifle to the face for being caught with it. I can't imagine what would happen if she were caught with a full flower. Even taking a regular flower home can get you beaten or put in the stocks depending on the flower. I can wear the lavender stalks Mah puts in my braids and only get glares from peacekeepers because they grow wild by our shacks, but take a rose this time of year from anywhere and you'll be jailed and starved til after the games are over. Thankfully we don't have any use for beebalm at home right now, so I just get to enjoy their beautiful smell while weeding. They're my favorite flower this time of year, the only thing I can look forward to.
After I find my assigned row I sit down and pull my trowel and snippers out of the bucket. I start digging up an oak sapling at the base of a bush and join in the song while the next verse begins.
“Mockingjay up on the branch
Nesting in this apple tree
Picking time so fly away
Fly away
Fly away
Picking time so fly away
Fly away with me.”
As I sing and weed I can see slithering in the corner of my eye, by the end of the verse a garter snake is already circling the beebalm stalks in front of me. I don't know what it is, but snakes love me, every time I sing outside they quickly appear. It terrified me when I was little, I would refuse to sing outside our shack unless I was being held. But once I was no longer being carried on my mom's back in the orchards and actually harvesting myself, I realized the peacekeepers were more scared of them than I was. They stayed clear of me while monitoring the orchard to avoid my snakes so I quickly became the family forager. I can get away with picking herbs and the small plants growing between the flowers, tucking them into hidden pockets in my clothing that Mah sewed in.
I find a few short asparagus stocks as I pull weeds but it's too hot for most crops to survive this time of year without tending. This soil is fertilized for exactly what the flowers need to avoid this, but nature persists, and I find enough to add to dinner tonight.
By lunch break I'm no longer sweating, I feel it boiling away immediately, my skin is covered in salt and dirt. When a peacekeeper blows the whistle to release us I grab 2 cups of water and go find Heather. She's sitting in the shade of one of the trucks already holding two lunch sacks with our names on them.
“Lilac Lavender” “Heather Sage”
Our lunch consists of a boiled potato and a hunk of salty jerky. I slip Heather an asparagus stalk and take one for myself, holding it under my jerky to discreetly take bites of it. She tells me about a crazy double sunflower head she really wanted to snag but the peacekeepers spotted it and cut the flower for themselves. “Her own personal mutt she called it, so disrespectful, it was beautiful! It reminded me of a goat's eye.” Heather says wistfully, she keeps a small collection of dried irregular flowers in our bedroom. I would have loved to see the sunflower. We wash our lunch down with as much water as our stomachs can take before heading back into the field for the rest of the smoldering afternoon.
Once the sun starts to get too low to safely work, peacekeepers come down the rows checking our pockets and collecting our tools and waste buckets. As they release us we all go over and load the cargo trucks with the last of the sunflowers bundles. Just as the sun starts to dip below the horizon we're loaded back into our truck and head back through the orchards and head to the neighborhood as the sky turns a soft orange, lighting our way home.
Ledger, Heather, and I are some of the last ones home, our shacks were some of the first built in this area, far from the shacks made for new families as they move in. Our shack has to be at least 3 times older than the average in the neighborhood, but we try our best to keep up with the leaks and creaks. Pasting holes and hanging fabric is the best we can usually do. Not like the Capital is gonna help, as long as they can't see us through the wood it's fine with them.
By the time we get inside it seems like the adults have been home for hours. Fully washed and dressed down for the night, sitting around the main room winding down and fiddling with instruments. How is that fair? I never have time to play music at home anymore. But as I walk in the smells of dinner pull me out of my mood fast. It should be almost ready so I don't complain, out loud.
“Anything good for the soup tonight Lilac Lavender?” I hear shouted from the kitchen as we walk in. Mah has to make herself heard over the boys drumming in the main room between us.
“Just some asparagus Mah!” I yell back, as I try to make my way through the mess of wood planks Jay must have stolen to make whatever he's slapping on. “Jay Indigo what is all of this mess?” I say almost tripping on a mallet in the center of the room.
“It's called a slap top Lavey, I saw a picture of them from an old magazine one of the guys found the other week, I finally got the materials to make some!” Jay Indigo says with a huge grin, pushing his long black hair out of his face as he leans back on his crate to pull the drum fully into his lap and face me as I reach the doorway to the kitchen.
“And how did you get those materials?” I say while digging the asparagus out of my pockets and handing them to Mah.
“It was given to me, by the peacekeepers” Jay Indigo says smugly, “they’re tearing down a couple shacks out by the buckwheat fields and they gave it to me and Chicory Smoke to fix up our shack, and music helps the work go faster so these count as part of fixing the shack.”
“Well as long as you actually fix this place up I'm happy.” Mah says from the kitchen, chopping up the asparagus and dropping it into the pot. “Dinner should be ready in 20 minutes, you girls go wash up.”
I grab my small tattered purple, almost grey, towel and Heather's worn green one from their hooks by the back door and head out to the well. Heather catches up to me a minute later with a bucket and our lantern. We could have just used water from the trough behind the shack but it's hot as our sweat in the summer so it's worth the walk to the shared well for cold water.
“I'm scared Lavey,” Heather says as we crest the hill and spot the well up ahead. She waited to make sure no one else was going to it either, I don't have to ask her what she's talking about. “My name is going to be in that bowl 38 times this year, with the quell that means I have 76 chances to be pulled. I can't stop seeing that number in my head. I know Chicory Smoke had more slips than me when he was 18 but he didn't have to deal with a quell! And he was never a flower harvester!” Heather drops the bucket and lantern to the ground as we reach the small brick well, throwing her head into it, and screaming.
“No, you're supposed to wish into the well, not scream” I jab, righting the lantern on the ground and grabbing the bucket as it tries to roll away.
“I think the well understands my wish, everyone here makes the same wish.” Her voice echoes around the wet bricks below her, “We don't want to live like this anymore.” She pulls her head out of the well and slides her back down its side to sit down in the dirt. I sit down beside her and run my hands through the cool grass.
“We're going to be fine, like you said, Chic had 49 slips in that bowl when he was 18, and he was never reaped. I don't like how Mah and Dad decided for you guys to take tesserae, it's not fair to you and Chicory that Jay only ever had 13 slips in that bowl,” Our father only allowed the eldest child who qualified to take out tesserae, making Chicory Smoke take it out all 7 years he was able to, so Jay Indigo only had to take it out his last year. Heather Sage has been taking it out since she was 14. I'll have to start taking it out next month now that this is Heather's last reaping. “But this district is huge, lots of kids have 70 slips by 18 and are never reaped. We haven't even known someone who was reaped since Murphy 6 years ago.”
“Oh, poor Murphy.” She whispers, I shouldn't have brought him up. Murphy was a year above Heather, and only 13 when he was reaped. He was caught by the Career pack on the second day of his games, falling into a trap they dug out. They kept him down there for days using his suffering as entertainment, asking for sponsor gifts to inflict different tortures on him. He finally died from a seizure after being struck in the neck with an electric cattle prod.
“I'm sorry, I was just trying to ease your mind, I shouldn't have mentioned him.” I wrap my arms around her shoulders, I feel her collapse into my chest. I can feel her tears pooling on my arm evaporating as she whimpers the last sobs out and pulls herself together. She pushes out of my hold and picks up the bucket before standing up to tie it to the well rope.
“You're right, we're going to be fine”, she says sniffling and whipping her nose as she lowers the bucket. “Nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping, like Mah says, we'll always have each other, no matter what happens, or where we are.” We grab the full bucket and walk back home in silence guided by the lantern in the now dark night. I watch the stars appear in the sky as we take turns rinsing ourselves off in the outhouse, wiping away the dirt and sweat from the day and changing into our night gowns Mah placed in there for us.
When we walk back in, the soup is already done and cooling on the stovetop, and all the guys are gathering up Jay's wooden planks into piles near where they'll probably be put to use tomorrow evening.
I help Mah pour bowls for everyone and carry them out to the table while Heather Sage grabs water and bread. Chicory grabs the rest of the pile of crates for us and we all sit down around the table to eat. Mah and Pah talk about having to use sickles to harvest the barley this week because the blades on the combine out there were sabotaged so they have to harvest by hand til they can get engineers out to attach and calibrate new blades.
“It's awful on our backs but it's nice to be able to hear each other without the loud engines. I've really missed singing everyday in the orchards.” Mah says “I miss being able to hear you girls singing too.” There's very little time nowadays to sing together, the neighborhood is patrolled after dusk by peacekeepers to keep the noise down, anything louder than a lullaby is a risk. And the adults leave for the outer fields before we even wake up. It's been years since we've sung a full song together as a family, instruments and all.
“We shouldn't let peacekeeper rules get in the way of us making music, I'll gladly take a whipping to play on my drum some more tonight!” Jay Indigo says with a mouthful of bread.
“What are you talking about Jay Indigo?” Pah sits up on his crate and stares at Jay, “Do you want peacekeepers ransacking this place?”
“Oh they wouldn't do that,” Jay dismisses Pah
“And how would you know what? You really think you know everything about them, don't you Jay? They aren't your friends just because they give you old wood and let you get away with foraging. You really think they don't have a list of every single violation you've committed just waiting for you to really slip up?”
“Pah leave him alone!” Heather Sage interjects, “he just wants us to sing together.”
“And so do I, Sagey,” Pah says as his voice softens, “but when it's safe to, we can't afford to have extra eyes on us right now.” No one really knows what to say after that, I'm not really sure what Pah means by that anyways. Sure we forage more than the average family but that doesn't warrant extra secrecy. Seems like no one else understood him either, or doesn't want to ask about it, we just all silently finish our soup and bread.
Mah finally speaks up after I've been swirling my spoon around in my empty bowl, dragging the last of the broth around, “If you girls are done eating I can save you some cherry cobbler for the morning, you can head to bed don't worry about the dishes tonight,” Mah gives me a small smile and nod. I didn't know we had dessert, I didn't see her making it, maybe a neighbor dropped it off while we were at the well. But she's right, I'm in no mood for it anyways and I don't think Heather Sage is either, I don't even think she hears Mah, she's still staring at a lone slice of celery in her bowl. I thank Mah for dinner and I grab Heather's arm and I head to our room for bed.
I love Jay Indigo but he just doesn't get it, he doesn't have the right perspective to be saying things like that. He's had it the best among all of us, I don't even think he's been whipped by peacekeepers. The rest of us have though, Heather Sage especially. She has scars all down her back from many, many whippings. The worst of which was when she risked taking a dead pheasant we found by the well. Turned out it was a setup, the moment she picked it up she was dragged to the center of the neighborhood and whipped for an hour. She was only 13.
I tuck Heather Sage into her bed and crawl into my own. I try to get some sleep but I toss and turn constantly under my sheets in the hot night air. I'm plagued by weird dreams of flowers and snakes, coiling around each other, indistinguishable from one another. Colors so bright they cause pain. I run for the cover of some trees but the shadows on the ground turn into kaleidoscope patterns that disorientate me. I try to find a way out but I trip over a tree's roots and bright yellow and purple birds descend on me on the ground, peaking at my skin. I wake up in a sweat, I try to calm my heart and breathe so I can go back to sleep but I can't. It's no use.
My mouth is so dry, I need to go to the kitchen for a drink. I move as quietly as I can to not wake Heather Sage, avoiding all the creaky worn planks to not wake anyone up on my way. When I reach the kitchen I can hear voices beyond it in the main room. Jay and Chicory stay up late talking new songs all the time, it's best not to get roped in or else you're also up til sunrise writing lyrics about the sunset. Though as I creep across the kitchen to the water pitcher I don't hear Jay or Chicory. Pah is talking, and there's another man, someone I can't see around the doorway. I catch a glimpse of his arm placing something on the table. I almost drop the water pitcher when I see what it is. I shakily pour my glass and go back to my room as quickly and quietly as possible.
A bright purple apple.
Who is that? Where did he get that? What are they talking about? I couldn't hear what they were actually saying, Pah’s voice can get so soft and still be clear as day to those close enough. I loved when he would sing lullabies to us in that tone. Now it's just used for secret keeping. And this is a dangerous secret. They'll murder us in the town square for having that.
I sit on the edge of my bed and drink my water before curling into a ball under the covers and stare at the door trying to will myself back to sleep. After a couple minutes I think I'm in the clear and start to relax when I see the door move and slowly creak open. Chicory Smoke peaks his head through the doorway, we lock eyes and he gives me a knowing glare, like when I'd catch him hiding spiders in Jay Indigo's boots. They say everything and nothing. I pull my covers over my head. I didn't see him when I was in the kitchen, but he definitely saw me.
I hear his and Jay's door close moments later. I can barely sleep the rest of the night, fading in and out of thinking and dreaming, losing track of which is which. At some point I hear the trucks picking up the adults for the day and that unexpectedly relaxes me enough to catch a few minutes of calm rest. I'm still exhausted by the time I need to get up, but it's fine. Tomorrow is Sunday, just gotta make it through today then we can get some extra rest.
Breakfast is quiet, Heather Sage and I eat the barley meal and the soup from last night Mah has left out for us, no cobbler. Couldn't find it anywhere either. We get dressed and head outside to line up for the truck. With the reaping just 5 days out no one is in much of a mood to talk. No one knows what to expect from the quell. We silently bump and bruise each other on the way to the orchards and fields, and silently get our assignments, but as sure as the sun will rise, the singing starts up eventually. The sun in your skin will do that to you.
“Out in the meadows the grain has been cradled,
Rye and wheat are stacked and hay will soon be in the barn.
Trees have been shaken and fruit has been gathered,
Homeward now we wend our way upon the final load.”
I sing along as my snakes gather around the beebalm stems, tucking asparagus into my pockets as I find them. One curious snake rides a stalk all the way into a pocket and curls up for a nap. I only have a couple more bushes left before I can join the girls cutting sunflowers. There should be some mushrooms over there that should be ready to pick today. I love beebalm so much but I'm excited to get over with the others. Weeders are much more dispersed, we'd have to yell to talk, only our singing carries that far.
As I move over to my last bush I see a small van driving up and parking over the first row of beebalm, crushing 5 bushes. If one of us damaged that many flowers they'd never be seen again. A group of 3 peacekeepers get out of the van and march down the beebalm rows towards me.
I sit there staring as they get closer and closer, stunned and confused. I recognize our freckly peacekeeper pointing me out to the other I don't recognize. I think one is yelling something at me? Once they're 6 rows away I can finally hear them, the eldest one ahead of them is shouting “...lac Lavender? Lilac Lavender? Stand up, you're under arrest!” His silver hair falling in his face as their speed picks up.
All the singing has stopped, my snakes scatter as I shakily stand to my feet. What did I do, what did I do, what did I do? Under arrest? “I didn't do anything, I promise I didn't take anything, you've got to be mistaken, I didn't do anything, I didn't I promise I promise I-” I ramble and plead with them, but as soon as they reach me the last peacekeeper shoves me to the ground with one strong hand on my shoulder collapsing my legs under me.
“Shut up you little brat, you know exactly what you did. What your family did. Mason, get her in the van.” He glares down at me and spits right next to my face. “Talles, I'm going to go grab the other one, keep an eye out for runners.”
Heather Sage.
I struggle against the freckly peacekeeper trying to cuff me on the ground and scream as loud as I can “Heather!! Heather Sage run! Heath- ahhh!” I feel a knee in my back and hand pull at my braids to push my head back down into the dirt. I start to cry into the ground as my hands are wretched behind my back and cuffed. I can hear a commotion happening over the sunflowers, I can only hope that Heather Sage is getting away. The peacekeeper drags me up to my feet and walks me in the direction of the van. I keep tripping over my own feet so much he's basically carrying me. I can barely see through my sobs. What did the adults do? Does it have to do with that apple?
I'm tossed in the back of the van, the doors are slammed behind me and locked. I'm left alone. My tears hit the hot metal floor of the van for 20 minutes before they return, sweaty and panting, and mad. “Your sister got away from us in the cherry orchards, we have others looking for her now. So for her sake, you should try and cooperate and tell us where they've gone.” The old peacekeeper slams the van door behind him and starts the engine. I don't respond, I just sob harder as I'm tossed around the van on the long drive to the peacekeeper base.
Where have they gone?