Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
Now that Lenore Dove has said her piece, other ghosts, filled with hate and rage, visit me in the night. Panache seems to have little to do but hunt me down and Silka thinks I owe her a crown. The terror bleeds into my waking hours. I start sleeping with a knife in my hand.
It’s Effie Trinket who finds me thus, the morning of the Victory Tour. I come to, startled, to discover she’s taken possession of my knife. “I’m so sorry about your family’s accident, Haymitch. And then your girl’s appendicitis right after? Tragic. But this just won’t do. We have a responsibility to carry on.”
My family’s accident? Lenore Dove’s appendicitis? She’s right. I do have a responsibility to carry on. But how can I?
I let Effie pour coffee down me. Send me to the tub until Proserpina and Vitus can stomach me. Button me into a paisley suit that Great-Uncle Silius never had occasion to wear, and somehow make me presentable as I board the train to District 11.
“Word got out. Magno was fired for negligence and Drusilla broke her hip falling down an escalator,” Plutarch tells me in confidence. “It seems Maysilee was right about those heels. Anyway, I pitched Effie last-minute and they jumped on the idea. Especially since she brought the depraved uncle’s wardrobe with her.”
“How are you here, Plutarch?” I ask. It’s a question that could be answered on many levels. He chooses the most superficial.
“I’m here to record your Victory Tour. It’s in my contract. Hey, you look like you could do with a sandwich. Tibby!”
A different train than I rode before. Fancier. Lots of steel and chrome. Dove-colored velvet upholstery, lest I forget. Trying to forget is my full-time job now.
Effie does her best to keep me sober, but the train’s loaded with booze.
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee – by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite – respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
In District 11, I stand on the steps of their Justice Building facing the grief-stricken families of Hull, Tile, Chicory, and the other girl, Blossom. I search the wider sea of faces for Lou Lou’s kin and come up empty.
The party begins. I drink my way through the festivities, which run far into the night. When the Justice Building finally sleeps, Plutarch spirits me up multiple stairways and into the attic.
“Respite and nepenthe,” I mutter into my bottle.
Plutarch yanks it from my hand. “Listen, Haymitch, we don’t have long. This attic is the only spot in the entire Justice Building that isn’t bugged.”
Well, he might be right about that. The place looks like it hasn’t been disturbed in a hundred years. There’s a coat of dust so thick you could comfortably sleep on it. Why you’d sneak off to this place for privacy instead of stepping outside the Justice Building, I don’t know and I don’t care. There’s nothing left they can do to me. Unlike Plutarch.
“How is it you’re looking so well, Plutarch? Wiress and Mags were tortured, right? And I’m guessing Beetee’s dead.”
“Beetee’s too valuable to kill.”
“I thought he’d have killed himself.”
“He can’t. His wife’s pregnant. Besides, he wouldn’t let Ampert down that way.”
“Oh, I see. He’s going to overthrow the Capitol, is he?”
“Maybe one day. But we can’t any of us do it alone. You demonstrated a lot of nerve and intelligence in that arena. We need your help.”
“Me?” I say in disbelief. “I am living proof that the Capitol always wins. I tried to keep that sun from rising on another reaping day, I tried to change things, and now everybody’s dead. You don’t want me.” And I don’t want him. I don’t want help from anybody in the Capitol ever again. I could never trust them.
“We do want you. You shook up the Capitol, both figuratively and literally, with that earthquake. You were capable of imagining a different future. And maybe it won’t be realized today, maybe not in our lifetime. Maybe it will take generations. We’re all part of a continuum. Does that make it pointless?”
“I just don’t know. But I do know, you need someone different from me.”
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.