Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
“Well, I didn’t see you,” she said.
“Me you either. Toss us down some, would you?”
In answer she stood up on her branch and began to bounce up and down, showering us with apples.
“Hang on, I’ve got a sack with my bow.” Burdock ran off. She scooted down the branches and swung to the ground. She wasn’t one of Burdock’s Everdeen cousins, but I knew he had some distant ones on his ma’s side. I’d seen her around at school – kind of shy, I thought, but I didn’t know her to speak to. She didn’t seem in a rush to change that, just stood there looking me over until I broke the silence.
“I’m Haymitch.”
“I’m Lenore Dove.”
“Dove like the bird?”
“No. Dove like the color.”
“What color’s that?”
“Same as the bird.”
That started my head spinning and I guess it’s never quite stopped. Soon after at school, she waved me over to a dog-eared dictionary and pointed.
Dove color: Warm gray with a slight purplish or pinkish tint.
Her color. Her bird. Her name.
After that, I started to notice things about her. How her faded overalls and shirts concealed snips of color, a bright blue handkerchief peeking from her pocket, a raspberry ribbon stitched inside her cuff. How she finished up her lessons quick, but didn’t make a fuss about it, just stared out the window. Then I spotted her fingers moving, pressing down imaginary keys. Playing songs. Her foot slipped from her shoe, her stockinged heel keeping time, silent against the wood floor. Like all the Covey, music in her blood. But not like them, too. Less interested in pretty melodies, more in dangerous words. The kind that lead to rebel acts. The kind that got her arrested twice. She was only twelve then, and they let her go. Now it would be different.
As I reach the Meadow, I slip under the fence and pause to catch my breath and drink in the sight of Lenore Dove perched on her favorite rock. The sunlight picks up the hint of red in her hair as she bends over an ancient piano accordion. She coaxes a melody out of the wheezy old thing, serenading a dozen geese grazing on the grass, her voice as soft and haunting as moonlight.
They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
Yet let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
It’s a treat to hear her sing, since she never does it in public. None of the Covey do. Her uncles are really more musicians than singers, so they just play tunes and leave the singing to the audience if they’re so inclined. Lenore Dove likes this better anyway. Says it makes her too nervous to sing in front of people. Her throat closes up.
Clerk Carmine and her other uncle, Tam Amber, have raised her since her ma died in childbirth, seeing her pa’s always been something of a mystery. They’re not blood kin, her being a Baird, but the Covey look out for their own. They worked out a deal with the mayor, whose house boasts the only real piano in District 12. Lenore Dove can practice on it if she plays during an occasional dinner or gathering. Her in a faded green dress, an ivory ribbon tying back her hair, lips tinted orange. When her family performs around District 12 for money, she makes do with the instrument she is playing now, which she calls her tune box.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own,
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
This is not a song her uncles let her play at the mayor’s house. Or even when she performs around District 12. There’s the danger that some people might know the words and start a ruckus. Too rebellious. And I have to say I agree with Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber. Why go around asking for trouble? Plenty to be had without inviting it in.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break.
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
I scan the Meadow. It’s secluded, but we all know there are eyes everywhere. And eyes generally come with a pair of ears.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common.
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.
Lenore Dove explained to me once that the common was land anyone could use. Sometimes the Peacekeepers chase her and the geese off the Meadow for no reason. She says that’s just a teaspoon of trouble in a river of wrong. She worries me, and I’m an Abernathy.
A few of the geese hiss to announce my arrival. Lenore Dove’s was the first face they saw when they hatched, and they don’t love anyone but her. But since I’ve got corn, they’ll tolerate me today. I toss it a ways away to call off her bodyguards and lean in to kiss her. Then I kiss her again. And again. And she kisses me right back.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.