Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
“She did?” Her eyes widen. “What did she mean? A good victor?”
Great question. “It means, I think, that you never stop being a Newcomer.”
Wellie tears up, then steels herself with determination. “I can do that. For the others,” she says. “Hide me.” She reaches out her arms for me to carry her.
Nearby, I discover a tree almost hidden by cascading wild grapevines. Tucking Wellie behind them and arranging the leafy curtain is the best I can do, with the dual pressures of time and geography. She’ll await my return, armed with her paring knife and her blowgun. “Remember,” I tell her. “You’ve only got one dart, so make it count. Now, sit tight and I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”
I intend this to be true, but as I search in a widening circle, I feel my confidence waning. The available wood would smoke like crazy even if I could get it lit with my handful of candy wrappers, which is doubtful. The whole idea of baking a potato loses its appeal. Perhaps if I slice it paper thin while it’s raw, she’d be able to stomach it. What would really help – hello, sponsors! – would be a nice basket full of food. I mean, what are they saving it for? Surely, two of the last three tributes in the arena have enough in their combined accounts for a cup of chicken back broth. I think Mags must read my mind, because as I’m making a beeline back to my ally, a parachute practically brushes my nose as it floats to my boots. I squat down to tear it open and find an ornate picnic basket. A card of thick paper rests atop it with the words courtesy of the capitol. What isn’t, in the arena? Inside, nestled in a snowy linen napkin, I find a pitcher. A chill goes through me as I lift it into the sunlight. The white cylinder resting in the spiral staircase. The golden eagle perched on the lid. My thumb depresses its tail, flipping it open, revealing the cool, creamy milk. If this is not the pitcher from Plutarch’s library, it’s an exact replica.
I stuff the card in my pocket and return the pitcher to the basket to conceal the trembling in my hands. What am I to make of this new arrival? There are only two possibilities, as opposite as day and night.
On the positive-thinking side, this could be a genuine gift from Plutarch by way of Mags. A pint of sustenance, a draft of encouragement. It could mean,
Well done, Haymitch. Through the fog of propaganda, the card-stacking, and the lies, I can see that you succeeded with your mission. You did your bit. And if the tank explosion failed to drown the brain entirely, which is not your fault, it threw everything into a tailspin. Take this milk to Wellie, keep her alive, play out your hand as best you can.
But on the flip side, maybe Mags had nothing to do with this gift, and the evil message goes like this:
Greetings from your president. You didn’t think I saw your little stunt with the milk pitcher in the library, but you were wrong. Because I see everything. Your bombs, your plots, even your flint striker from your pretty little bird. And now you have a choice. Do you drink the milk? Give it to your sickly ally? Pour it into the ground? Because naturally you suspect it’s laced with poison. What do you do, Haymitch Abernathy? You must know that the eyes of Panem, and mine in particular, are watching your every move.
Yes, everyone is watching. If I do not immediately take this milk back to Wellie and attempt to save her, it will look as if I’m playing nice to her but actually trying to kill her so that I can be one step closer to being District 12’s second victor. However, I am almost certain that it’s poisonous and came from Snow. I don’t believe Plutarch would be careless enough to link himself so publicly to me since I bombed the tank. Surely, many people, many Gamemakers on the inside, are familiar with this symbol of the golden staircase that’s so often displayed in the Heavensbee mansion. Matchy-matchy. Given that he was assigned to cover the District 12 tributes, it’s probably against the rules for Plutarch to back us. Like Proserpina said it was for her and Vitus.
It’s from Snow, this milky death. The fate I have been trying to defy ever since I saw that perverse birthday cake on the train has come home to roost like the raven in the poem, forever perched above my chamber door. I am completely in Snow’s power and his to manipulate. His puppet. His pawn. His plaything. It is his poster I am painting. His propaganda. I am trapped into doing his bidding in the Hunger Games, the best propaganda the Capitol has.
My pa must be rolling in his grave.
The proud district alliance, the Newcomers, will never be allowed to win. Wellie will die of poisoning, or starvation, or Career. Silka, that Capitol wannabe, will take the crown.
And me? There’s only one thing left for me to do if I don’t want to die as a traitor to the districts – as Wellie’s killer by neglect since I refuse to go poison her – and Snow knows it. He has followed my every move down to this final resolution and awaits my inevitable surrender. I must drink the milk. The time is now. Game over.
I retrieve the pitcher, flip the lid, and examine the contents. Every cell in my body resists capitulating to this end. I’m wondering if I could pretend to trip and drop the pitcher, at least postponing the moment of Silka’s victory, when the cannon fires. I freeze, mystified. Was this not the moment for the president to savor my defeat? What’s going on? Who has interfered with his game plan?
I hurl the pitcher aside, hearing it crack open on a rock, as I take off for the wild grapevines. As promised, I am not far. I’m hoping against hope that somehow Silka has met a mutty end. That would make everything so much simpler.
Rounding a final clump of saplings, I freeze in horror at what awaits. Silka stands like a statue, her snot-green outfit splattered in bright red. In her right hand, her ax. Her left holds Wellie’s head, eyes still open, mouth agape. The only movement, the only sound, comes from the blood dripping into the pine needles on the forest floor. Wellie’s body lies crumpled in a heap a few feet away. The shiny silver bicycle bell. The blowgun. The child-sized boots. The tiny knife in her bird claw. Dove-colored feathers. Headless baby chick. I could live ten thousand years and never erase this sight from my memory.
“What did you do?” I hiss.
Silka makes an effort to focus on me. She holds up Wellie’s head defensively. “She attacked me.”
Now I notice the poison dart hanging harmlessly from Silka’s blousy sleeve. Wellie tried to protect herself. Upheld the Newcomer honor. Probably barely had the air to get the dart free of the gun. I abandoned her, as she feared I would. Blinded by my desire to paint my poster, I left the real treasure unattended.
“She had to go. You have to go,” Silka continues. “It’s the only way I get back to my people.”
“We all have people,” I say. “You think yours will ever be able to forget this? I know mine won’t.” Write me off, Sid. Disown me. Spit when you hear my name. Failing at breaking the arena is nothing in the face of this.
“I’ll tell how it was, when I get home,” she says.
“Oh, you’re not going home, Silka.” I pull the ax from my belt. We’re neither of us going home. I will kill her, and Snow will kill me. These Games will have no victor.
The second Quarter Quell poster.
It helps, the way she tosses Wellie’s head aside, with no regard or compassion for her even in death. Helps, too, to see a smear of chocolate high on her cheekbone, where she must have wiped the tears away last night during our one-sided truce. And finally, it helps when she says, “I will be the one to honor the Capitol!”
Ax to ax, we go at it. I wish I could claim greater speed or strength, but we’re fairly matched. Her training’s superior, but I have an advantage she can never hope for. Those thirty-one allies I boasted of to the Head Gamemaker? I can feel every one of them at my back.
Her first stroke comes straight down at my head, as if to cleave my body into two equal parts. I just manage to block it. My counter-attack clips her leg, drawing blood. A flicker of surprise crosses her face. She didn’t expect I could get through her defenses. Well, I may not be trained, Miss Silka, but I bet I’ve spent more time wielding an ax than you have, and I’ve got the white liquor and clean laundry to prove it. My time chopping up the arena after Ampert’s death didn’t hurt either. This weapon feels right at home in my hands.
Barbaric. Brutal. Bloody. There’s no way to pretty up what follows. As we rain blows on each other, some begin to connect. Our ax heads lock, we grapple, and she knees me so hard I see stars. I dodge an attack that buries her ax into a tree trunk, and as she struggles to free it, my blade bites into the flesh near her hip. A few moves later, she spins toward me and slices my thigh. As our weapons entangle, I bash her in the face with the handle, knocking out a couple teeth. But eventually, Silka’s training pays off. When she wields the ax over her head in an intricate looping pattern, I’m distracted. The blade comes down unexpectedly, and before I have time to recoil, she opens a gash across my gut.
I gasp. She strikes again, knocking my ax from my grip. My hands find the damage. It’s bad. She’s coming at me. I turn to flee and she traps me in a headlock, cutting off my wind. Black flecks pepper the edges of my vision, I can feel myself disappearing when my eyes land on Wellie’s decapitated body. I cannot let Silka win. In a last-ditch effort, I yank my knife from my belt and drive it back over my shoulder. A shriek. Neck released, I take to my heels, oblivious to whatever harm I’ve done her.
Both hands pressed against my wound, I zigzag through the woods, knowing I have to make a stand, certain this is impossible, crazed with pain and fear. Branches whip my face, roots catch my boots as I ricochet from one tree to the next. My one goal is to increase the space between Silka’s screams and my being. But she is coming. My legs are beginning to buckle when the smell of burnt insects alerts me and I find myself at the opening to the holly hedge. Ladybug, ladybug, here I am again! But now their home offers both refuge and a chance to regroup. Perhaps that Capitol-loving, rule-abiding, snot-green-wearing Career will be afraid to follow me beyond the established boundaries of the arena.
As the hot air rising from the canyon washes over me, I stagger to the cliff’s edge. Unable to run any farther, I turn to face my opponent. Boundary or no, Silka stumbles out of the hedge after me. Now I can assess the damage my knife did, own the empty socket where I gouged out her eyeball. Seems minor compared to keeping my innards contained. Without hesitation, she raises the ax and lets it fly. My knees, already on the verge of giving way, fold like wet cardboard and I collapse to the dirt as the ax whistles over my head into the canyon.
That’s when I remember the force field. And what happens to dropped objects. I watch, breathless, for what the love of my life would call poetic justice.
Silka stands there, her hand against her gushing eye socket. Her good eye squints at my gut, estimating the arrival time of my death. Then there’s the return of the whistle, her moment of confusion as the spinning ax catches the sunlight, and the dull sickening sound as it lodges in her head.
Now we’re both on the ground. I roll on my back, watching the hovercraft that floats above us. Silka’s refusing to die – a strangled gurgle seeps from her lips. I just have to wait her out. My hand fumbles in my pocket, searching for a handkerchief to help stem my bleeding. But instead, I unearth the relics of my last, or second-to-last, or I don’t know which plan. The tools I needed to blow a hole in the Cornucopia. Well, obviously, that’s out. Dying outside the arena will have to be sufficient. Although it seems an awful shame not to try for one more poster. Perhaps there’s still a chance to go out with a bang? Yes. It’s all become clear now. I know what to do.
It’s okay, Pa. It’s okay, Ma. Lift up your head, Sid. No one but me will paint this poster.
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.