Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”
Merely this and nothing more.
I lie on her grave and remain there as night falls, dawn breaks, and blackness descends again. I tell her everything and beg her to return to me, to wait for me, to forgive me for all the ways in which I have failed.
When dawn breaks on the second day, she has not come. I bury the flint striker, snake and bird, in front of her headstone. I ask her to free me from my final promise. I ask her to let me come to her now. I ask her for a sign. Then I somehow make my way home and fall asleep . . . where I feed her another gumdrop.
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly.
Though its answer little meaning – little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door –
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered – not a feather then he fluttered –
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before –
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said “Nevermore.”
I hit the bottle even harder. Drinking, disappearing into the night, regaining consciousness in the forgotten places of District 12. One morning, at the crack of dawn, I snap awake, shivering, in a back alley in town. I’m staring at a message sprayed in bright orange paint.
NO CAPITOL, NO HANGING TREE! It’s a rebel play on the Capitol’s propaganda.
NO CAPITOL, NO REAPING! Tucked away in this alley, a rallying cry beyond the Peacekeepers’ radar.
A memory tugs at me . . . Maysilee in the arena . . . after she killed the Gamemaker . . . spider silk and her mamaw’s song . . .
“Well, your gal’s full of surprises. Guess she got the jump on us after all.”
Full of surprises. Full of secrets, even from me. But Maysilee had put it together. Orange paint on her fingernails. This is Lenore Dove’s work. Her sign. Her message to me now. Her reminder that I must prevent another sunrise on the reaping.
And it says,
“You promised me.”
With that, she condemns me to life.
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore –
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore –
Of ‘Never – nevermore.'”
But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore –
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.