Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
I’m feeling okay until bedtime, when Maysilee says to me, “Is it true? That you’re going off on your own?”
Wellie apparently got the word out. “I got a one, Maysilee. They’re gunning for me. You and Wyatt have a much better chance without me.” I don’t mention Lou Lou because I don’t think she stands a chance at all.
Wyatt nods, factoring odds, no doubt. “My head says you’re right but . . .”
“Trust your head. I’m a bad bet for you.” I wonder, if I wasn’t part of the flooding plot, would I be so selfless? Or would I cling to the safety of the group? It doesn’t make me happy to break from them. “Look, who knows what will happen in there? We may end up crossing paths. But I can’t make you pay for choices I’ve made.”
“Okay,” says Maysilee. “So we’re back to where we were on the train. You don’t want us for your allies.”
“I don’t want anybody,” I clarify.
It’s lonely going rogue. I wish I could tell them everything. About the plot. About speaking to Lenore Dove. About Snow’s warning and Plutarch’s rising sun. But all that would do is invite questions and ultimately cause trouble, so that’s where I leave it. I don’t want anybody. Lights off.
Lou Lou’s immediately dead to the world and the rest of us toss and turn a lot. I keep dreaming about Lenore Dove, then snapping awake. Her name song’s hitting way too close to home. In it, a guy loses the love of his life, Lenore, and he’s going crazy for missing her. Then this big old raven shows up at his house and won’t leave and whenever he asks the bird anything, it just says “Nevermore” – which, as you can imagine, just makes him crazier.
“Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore –
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Angels, Lenore Dove told me, are humans with wings, who live in a place called heaven. Some people believe, she said, it’s a possible destination after death. A good world for good people to go to. But Lenore Dove is the winged being on my mind at the moment. If there is anything after the life I’m about to lose, will I be with her again? Like the guy in her song, I’d sure like to know. But the Raven isn’t giving the answer either of us wants to hear.
The night seems both endless and way too short. I’m awake but exhausted when Mags comes to rouse us. We wash up and put on our old training outfits, since they won’t dress us until we’re in the holding pens at the arena. I know Maysilee’s unhappy with me for abandoning the Newcomers. As a peace offering, I slip Beetee’s birthday gift, the turn-a-potato-into-a-light packet, into her hand as we head to the kitchen. Although she doesn’t acknowledge me, it disappears into her pocket.
There’s a big hot breakfast, but it’s all Wyatt and I can do to swallow a few bites, the stuff sticks in our throats so, and Maysilee only wants coffee. Lou Lou, on the other hand, eats a stack of pancakes as high as her head and fistfuls of bacon, confirming that she’s too far gone to know what the next few days hold for her. That’s a blessing, I guess. She looks so defenseless without her snake.
Wiress gives us last-minute pointers and then seems to shut down. Mags hugs each of us and says that whatever happens, we have been remarkable. She knows at least three of us won’t be back. What else can she say?
All pretense is over. We are being propelled forward, faster and faster, to the inevitable moment when the gong sounds. All the tribute preparation – the costumes, the training, the interviews – was just a distraction from the real agenda. Today some of us will die.
Drusilla drops by the apartment to complete her last official escort duty, seeing we’re searched and loaded into the van. I don’t know where Maysilee stowed the packet, but she comes up clean. Once we’re chained in, a woman in a white coat and carrying a set of syringes shoots something into each of our forearms. She doesn’t have to tell us it’s our tracker, an electronic device that allows the Gamemakers to find us in the arena.
“What happens if we win? Do they take it out?” asks Wyatt.
“We collect all of them from the tributes, dead or alive,” says the woman. “They’re reusable. Of course, this year we needed twenty-four extra.”
Thanks for reminding us.
Drusilla stands at the back of the van. “All right, you lot,” she says. “Try not to embarrass me.”
Maysilee rallies one last time. “As if you needed our help.”
Drusilla slams the door shut on us.
We’re taken to some sort of runway where a half dozen hovercraft await, then loaded into a windowless compartment and strapped into our seats across from District 11. They look as terrif ied as we do. Only Lou Lou seems unbothered. She catches sight of the token that one of the girls, Chicory, wears – a flower woven of grass – and fixates on it. Then she begins to make little hand motions as she sings in a breathy voice:
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.
Chicory reacts with surprise. She addresses the rest of us, since Lou Lou’s mental state precludes answering. “How does she know that song? You sing it in Twelve?”
As something of an authority on songs in 12 by virtue of time spent with Lenore Dove, I shake my head.
“That’s a harvest song for kids,” Chicory continues. “That’s our song.” She peers at Lou Lou’s face, exchanges a look with her 11 tributes, then sings:
Mockingjay up on the branch –
Lou Lou takes over the song at once.
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