Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
“Still are, technically,” says Plutarch. “Thirty years and counting! She says it’s a tax thing, but who really knows? Shall we go?”
Mags and Wiress weren’t invited, but the rest of us land in Plutarch’s library with Trajan Heavensbee watching over us. Everybody almost looks at home in the Trinkets’ wardrobe. Effie touches up our makeup and even adds a flower to my lapel from an arrangement in a replica of the golden staircase.
Plutarch suggests he take us off one at a time to the conservatory to practice for the video footage. “District Twelve’s gone from nobodies to a hot commodity among the more daring sponsors,” he says brightly. “That’s a breakthrough. But let’s try and get everybody to jump on that bandwagon.” I go with him first, while Drusilla oversees Maysilee’s photo shoot and Wyatt keeps an eye on Lou Lou, who stares in fascination at a candelabra while she cuddles her snake.
We left the Peacekeepers at the entrance, since Plutarch said his private security team would be sufficient, so we’re as unguarded as on my earlier visit to the mansion.
Plutarch seems in a hurry, and I’m practically jogging to keep up with him. “I was thinking, like you said, about people who think we’re too risky, and I -“
He cuts me off. “Listen, Haymitch, I know you don’t like me, and you certainly don’t trust me, but you should know that, despite appearances, a desire for freedom is not limited to the districts. And your misfortune does not give you the right to assume so. I hope after tonight you’ll consider this.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. “What?”
The warm air of the conservatory hits my face. He crosses over to the swan telephone, lifts the receiver, and says, “Ready on this end.” He listens for a moment more, then hands it to me. “Someone wants to talk to you.” Then he walks a discreet distance away.
Oh. Now I get it. President Snow. I overdid it in the interview and I’m about to hear about my gory demise. And Plutarch, who likes to think of himself as a decent guy, is upset about throwing me to the wolves again. Figures. With trepidation, I lift the receiver to my ear, brace myself, and manage to get out a “Yeah?”
“Haymitch? Is that really you?” The breathless voice, rough with recent tears, cuts right through to my heart.
Lenore Dove.
I grip the phone, eyes shut tight. I am back in the mountains. Arms wrapped around her, the scent of honeysuckle in her hair. She’d been crying then, too. Not at anything I did, but because they’d hung a man that morning and made the rest of us watch. But there we were, high in the hills, with not one but two rainbows arching across the sky. Sometimes she cries because things are so beautiful and we keep messing them up. Because the world doesn’t have to be so terrifying. That’s on people, not the world.
“Haymitch?”
“Yeah, it’s me. I’m here. Where are you calling from?”
“I’m on the Peacekeepers’ base. They arrested me.”
This jolts me back to the conservatory. It’s not honeysuckle I’m smelling, but the faint mix of roses and decaying meat drifting off the nepenthes. My arms can’t protect her, only embrace the empty air. “Arrested you? When? What for?” Is this because I just joked about the Peacekeepers buying white liquor? Are they taking out my waywardness on her?
“Last night. For playing music. I guess I went a little crazy when they gave you that one in training. I took my tune box over to the Justice Building. They hadn’t pulled the stage down yet, and I did a few songs.”
She doesn’t have to tell me which songs. “The Goose and the Common.” “The Capitol Store.” “The Hanging Tree.” All the ones she’s forbidden to play in public. Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber must be going nuts right now. And I share their exasperation and fear. “Oh, Lenore Dove . . . are you all right? Did they hurt you?”
“No. Just hauled me in. Less about what I played, more about how it drew people. Everybody’s real upset this year, so many kids. They needed a place to be together, to raise their voices. Sometimes the hurt’s too bad to bear alone.”
So it wasn’t just her, playing her heart out in front of the Justice Building. A crowd had gathered. Sung the forbidden songs. “Did they say the charges?”
“Disrupting the peace or something. And you know, ‘No Peace, No Anything.'”
My mind races. Disrupting the peace isn’t sedition. They can lay that on you for getting drunk and busting up a few bottles, which happens all the time in 12. It’s not like she’s part of some big conspiracy, so, hopefully, they won’t use methods to force her to talk. Just view her as an emotional sixteen-year-old whose boyfriend got reaped. Maybe take away her tune box for a while or keep her locked up until after the Hunger Games when things have died down. I hope they don’t put her in the stocks on the square, which is what they threatened to do when she was twelve. But that was four years ago, and the Covey have some Peacekeepers among their fans, so that could work in her favor. A lot will depend on how rowdy the audience got and how the base commander views it. I sure didn’t do her any favors by bragging about selling him white liquor tonight. Now he may feel obliged to come down harder on her.
“Was there fighting? Did anything get broke?” I ask.
“Oh, who cares? They’re letting me out tomorrow morning, but you’re going into the arena.” Relief surges through me. They’re letting her out. Just a slap on the wrist. “None of my stuff matters a whit,” she continues. “And I sure don’t want to spend our last moments talking about what’s broken. Except my heart . . . how about that?”
She’s mad and probably near tears again. “Oh, Lenore Dove . . . I’m so sorry I messed everything up.” And I did, too. The Peacekeepers wouldn’t have targeted her just for trying to help Woodbine’s ma. At least, not as a rule.
“You? It’s entirely my fault you’re there! And I know I’m why you got that score. I as good as killed you, and that’s not something I can live with.”
And so she’s doing what she can to get herself killed? Now
I’m mad. “That’s just a lie you’ve got to stop telling yourself! If I’d kept my head, you might’ve gotten a few bruises, but we’d both still be in Twelve.”
“No, darling, that’s not how it went down at all. I overstepped, just like my uncles always warn me about. I lost my temper and started hollering and now you’re – oh, Haymitch . . . I don’t want to be on this earth without you.”
“So now you’re trying to get them to hang you? You do, and I swear I’ll – I’ll -” I’ll what? I’ll be dead and gone is what, in no position to do anything. But I feel so helpless now, I’ve got to try whatever I can to change her mind. I have no idea what happens when we die, but Lenore Dove believes nothing ever dies, and we just move from one world to the next like the Covey did from town to town. “Like in one of your songs, my ghost will hunt down your ghost and never give it a moment’s rest.”
“Promise?” She sounds a little more hopeful. “Because if I could count on that, I think I could bear it. But what I can’t bear is . . . what if we’re never together again?”
“We will be together always,” I say with conviction. “I don’t know how, and I don’t know where, I don’t know anything, but I feel that in my heart. You and me, we will find each other, as many times as it takes.”
“You think?”
“I do. But not if you do something stupid like getting yourself killed on purpose. I feel like that could throw the whole thing out of whack. You stay alive, play your songs, love your people, live the best life you can. And I’ll be there in the Meadow waiting for you. It’s a promise. Okay?”
“Okay,” she whispers. “I’ll try. That’s my promise back.”
Plutarch waves his hand to get my attention, taps his watch. Time has run out.
“Lenore Dove, I love you like all-fire. That’s for always.”
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.