Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was night when they realized Lucy Gray was gone, but it would be months before Clerk Carmine accepted that she wasn’t coming back. Tam Amber had been the last one to see her, early in the morning before daybreak. He caught her heading towards town, a bag hauled over her shoulder and her hair bundled up in a bright orange scarf he had never seen before. She told him that she was going to see about buying a new goat, a kid from the litter the Mellark’s just birthed. She wanted to head out before Mayor Lipp came in to wait outside their home and avoid all his hollering. She’d be back before nightfall, she promised.

She wasn’t. The long August day turned into deep night and there was still no sign of her. Mayor Lipp demanded to see her, claiming she fled to escape prosecution. She was responsible for his daughter’s death, according to him. He’d been this way for a week now, stalking them and harassing them about his daughter. As the day went on, the Covey’s anxiety grew, and by night, they began to wonder if Lucy Gray had really fled.

Clerk Carmine refused to believe it. How could Lucy Gray, who had served as his mother, his big sister, his best friend, leave him so unceremoniously? If she had fled, she was hiding out somewhere, terrified of the mayor’s wrath.

The next morning, there was still no sign of Lucy Gray. Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine went to Mellark’s to ask about her. But the Mellark’s insisted that they hadn’t seen Lucy Gray yesterday, that she had never come to them about buying a kid, that they didn’t have any new litter of goats to begin with. Clerk Carmine felt a scream lodge itself in his throat, but he refused to let it out. He interrogated Tam Amber about how Lucy Gray was yesterday. Did she seem off? But Tam Amber said he hadn’t noticed anything new about her. She had seemed a bit shaky and tense, sure, but she had been that way since the arena, and even more so since Billy Taupe’s death.

Billy Taupe’s death — Clerk Carmine had barely begun to process his own brother. They had buried him only a few days ago. For that reason, in Clerk Carmine’s mind, that meant that Lucy Gray couldn’t be gone, not forever. It just didn’t make sense for them both to leave his life in the span of a week. Clerk Carmine was determined to find her.

While the mayor sent out Peacekeepers into the district to interrogate anyone who knew anything about Lucy Gray’s disappearance, Clerk Carmine and the Covey went past Twelve’s borders to look for her. They found things missing from their supply room, keying them into her running away. Then, by the Hanging Tree, they found their old wagon parked. Lucy Gray brought it there, Clerk Carmine asserted.

They wove into the forest past the Hanging Tree; Barb Azure had the idea to check the lake. Clerk Carmine and Maude Ivory both agreed that Lucy Gray would be there, hiding. Heck, the kids even came up with a plan to keep Lucy Gray there in the house by the lake, where they’d bring her food and clothes and whatever she needed, until Mayfair Lipp’s true killer was found. Safe and out of harm’s way, that’s what she was in that house by the lake.

Lucy Gray was all over the house — what they were missing in their supply room was wrapped in bundles, laying on its floor; the bag Tam Amber has seen her carrying was set by the door, filled with her clothes and trinkets; and by the fireplace were rotting fish, wrapped in leaves, as if they were about to be cooked by someone but had been abruptly stopped.

Barb Azure broke at the sight of the fish. She squatted down, burying her face in her knees, rocking herself back and forth in despair. “She’s gone,” she wept. “She’s gone.”

Maude Ivory was red faced with anger. “Stop it! She might just be out hunting or gathering fruit!”

“If she did do that, something might have gotten her,” Tam Amber said carefully. Everything about him seemed strained.

“Why would you say that!” Maude Ivory screeched. Her hands were balled into little fists, her eyes sparkling with tears.

“Maude Ivory, baby,” Barb Azure looked up and sobbed, “why in the world would Lucy Gray leave fish behind to rot if she needed food? She’s—“ Barb Azure was overcome with tears once more.

Clerk Carmine clenched his jaw. He refused to believe it, even with the reek of decomposing fish drenching the cabin’s air. “She’s probably out there, hurt,” he said. “We need to go find her!”

“Wait,” Tam Amber started, “Wait!”

But Clerk Carmine and Maude Ivory were already bounding out of the cabin and into the woods.

“Lucy Gray!” they both cried. “Lucy Gray, it’s us! We’re here!”

They ran wildly through the forest, searching every which way for their beloved Lucy Gray. They screamed until their voices began to give out, ran until their legs were sore and wobbling. Jabberjays picked up their cries and repeated “Lucy Gray! Lucy Gray!” back to them as they swarmed. Clerk Carmine felt delirious, but he was determined.

His search stopped when he ran into Tam Amber as he came around a tree. His face slammed hard into Tam Amber’s chest, and he staggered back, holding his nose. Tam Amber stood quietly, his face so stoic, so ancient, though he was only nineteen. Maude Ivory caught up to them, catching her breath.

“We can’t find any sign of her!” Maude Ivory croaked hopelessly. Her voice was hoarse, her cheeks red, her hair wild and falling out of their braids.

Clerk Carmine noticed the sadness in Tam Amber’s eyes, the resignation. “I’m sorry,” the older boy said.

Tam Amber extended his hand out to them, opening his palm to reveal three bullet casings. Maude Ivory gasped, and Clerk Carmine’s stomach dropped.

“Where did you find those?” Clerk Carmine demanded.

“A few yards back,” Tam Amber said. His voice became soft, barely a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

“Those could’ve been there for ages!” Clerk Carmine insisted.

Tam Amber’s face crumbled. “If they were, they’d be rusted.”

“No!” Clerk Carmine cried. “You don’t know that!”

He looked to Maude Ivory for reassurance, but the little girl stared wide eyed at the bullet casings, shivering.

“If she’s dead, then where’s her body, huh?” Clerk Carmine continued. “She’d be around here, somewhere! There’d be vultures pecking at her!”

Maude Ivory began to cry then. Tam Amber scooped her up in his arms like a baby, rubbing her back as she wept into his shirt. Tam Amber gave Clerk Carmine a gentle look, as if to say, “Come on,” before beginning back to the cabin. That animal-feral scream that was lodged against Clerk Carmine’s heart threatened to erupt. He stood there, tense, hot faced, heavy breathing and angry at the world. He wanted to fight someone, anyone.

Instead, heavy tears began rolling down his cheeks. Suddenly he was three years old again. He ran after Tam Amber, saying nothing.

After his investigation into Lucy Gray’s disappearance was inconclusive, Mayor Lipp stopped coming by their house each day. The guns used on Mayfair and Billy Taupe were never found, either, making each of their deaths a permanent cold case. Rumors swirled around the district that Mayor Lipp sent some men to stalk Lucy Gray into the woods and gun her down, and bury her body somewhere secret. Barb Azure believed this, and Tam Amber said his gut told him that was the likely case. They could never know for sure, though; everyone involved in the case was either dead or missing.

But one, Clerk Carmine knew. There was Coriolanus Snow, the boy from the Capitol. Clerk Carmine never quite trusted him, no matter how much Lucy Gray raved about him. He found it more creepy than romantic that Coriolanus had come all the way from the Capitol to Twelve just for Lucy Gray, a girl he had known for a few weeks. He didn’t like the way Coriolanus looked at or talked to Lucy Gray, either, how he snapped at her for differing opinions and how he stared at her like he owned her. But she had trusted him, whether Clerk Carmine liked it or not. If anyone knew where Lucy Gray was, it was Coriolanus Snow.

Clerk Carmine asked any patrolling Peacekeeper he saw about Coriolanus. Most of them, being of a higher rank, did not know him. One claimed that the name “sounded familiar”, but couldn’t say anything more. Frustrated, Clerk Carmine walked himself all the way to the Peacekeeper base’s guest lobby, where he demanded from the young man behind the front desk to speak to Cadet Snow. The young man told him that unless Coriolanus had placed a formal request to speak to Clerk Carmine, he could not call in any Peacekeeper away from duty to see him.

“I’m not leaving until you bring him to me!” Clerk Carmine said.

The young man flipped through his booklet again. “You aren’t anywhere on the guest list. Beat it, kid. Before I have you forcibly removed.”

Clerk Carmine wasn’t afraid of his threats. Not after everything that had happened since Lucy Gray’s name had been called in the Reaping. “No! Call Coriolanus Snow and tell him that I need to speak to him, NOW!”

Another Peacekeeper peaked his head through the door behind the front desk. “What’s all the commotion?”

“This kid is trying to meet with a cadet without invitation. He won’t get off my ass,” the first Peacekeeper said, glaring at Clerk Carmine.

The second Peacekeeper came out from the door. He analyzed Clerk Carmine for a moment. “You one of those Covey kids, right?”

Clerk Carmine nodded.

“You related to that Billy boy who got killed? You look just like him,” he said.

Clerk Carmine’s cheeks went hot. “Yes! And I need to talk to Coriolanus Snow!”

“Coriola– you mean Gent? Well, kid, you’re gonna have to write him a letter if you wanna talk to him. ‘Cause he’s nowhere near Twelve now,” the second said.

“What do you mean? Where is he?” Clerk Carmine asked, softer now, disbelieving.

“He got stationed to District Two like a week ago,” the second said. “Was sad to see him go. Nice guy, I worked with him on a few assignments.”

Dread filled Clerk Carmine’s nervous system like poison. “A week?”

“Last Monday, I think,” the second shrugged. “Why? He owe you money?”

Clerk Carmine’s feet took him out of the lobby faster than he could think to reply. He raced away from the base, towards nowhere in particular, trying only to outrun his fears. A week ago — last Monday — the day after Lucy Gray went missing — the day after Peacekeeper’s free day — NO. It was a coincidence. It had to be. Why would Coriolanus lure Lucy Gray out into the woods and kill her? Why would he do that and then run to Two? Why would he do that after Billy Taupe and Mayfair’s deaths, after his own friend Sejanus was hanged —

No. Nevermind the fact that Coriolanus was the only one other than the Covey who knew about the lake house. Nevermind the fact that Coriolanus was the only one who was close to Lucy Gray that had access to a gun. Nevermind the fact that he had motive to kill Billy Taupe –jealousy– and Mayfair Lipp – revenge for Lucy Gray.

Lucy Gray said that she had gotten Coriolanus in trouble because of how her games ended. That’s why he became a Peacekeeper — that’s why he asked for Twelve — that’s why he followed a girl he barely knew across the country —

“No, no, no,” the words escaped Clerk Carmine’s lips, and his vision was blurry and his knees were buckling, and he couldn’t breathe, and the ground was rushing up to him —

On the ground, Clerk Carmine fought back a scream. He refused to believe it. He refused. Lucy Gray was still out there.

Summer faded into autumn. Now that all musical performances were banned at the Hob (another consequence of Mayfair’s death), Tam Amber began working in the mines, while Barb Azure took on odd jobs. Housecleaning for merchant families, cleaning pigstyes, lugging boxes onto crates when the train stopped in with goods. They still made money on the side working weddings, but people in District Twelve didn’t like getting married in the winter. Plus, there was the fact that the Covey were now short two incomes without Lucy Gray and Billy Taupe. The Capitol money Lucy Gray had left them was a temporary cushion, one that would go fast. Clerk Carmine made Barb Azure promise not to sell herself, not ever, but he could see the hesitation in her eyes.

The leaves fell from the trees, and it was as if life lost all its color. The Covey were so full of grief that they were drowning. The ever quiet Tam Amber practically went mute, communicating with glances, grunts, nods. Every night, Maude Ivory woke up screaming from her nightmares, all revolving around Lucy Gray’s absence, Billy Taupe’s death. Barb Azure became sullen, snappy. She broke up with her girlfriend in mid October over nothing in particular. “She was smothering me,” was her excuse. A lie. Barb Azure always wanted to be drenched in love.

And then, Clerk Carmine. He begged Tam Amber and Barb Azure to let him quit school so he could work, but they refused. He got free lunch at school, one less meal for them to worry about, and they wanted him to look after Maude Ivory. And, anyway, Clerk Carmine was legally required to go to school until age fourteen. No business wanted to put themselves at risk of being shut down for employing a thirteen-year-old. But Clerk Carmine couldn’t stand being in the classroom, even with the guarantee of free soup and bread. He felt locked up, claustrophobic, the way he imagined it felt to be in the mines, the way Lucy Gray described the train ride to the Capitol. So he skipped school, almost everyday. He became like how his brother had been, wandering around the district, stealing and scamming, whatever he could do to get a bit of pocket change. He was routinely berated by merchant families for going through their trash, and got chased out of the Hob a few times for causing trouble. Typical Covey, they’d all say, always thieving, can’t ever be trusted.

But mostly, he spent his time in the woods. Making traps, shooting squirrels with Tam Amber’s bow, gathering whatever roots and fruits and nuts he could find to feed his family. He preferred it out there, alone in the woods, away from the world. Sometimes he’d just sit in a tree for hours and whistle his brother’s favorite tunes, and would listen to the mockingjays sing them back to him. During those fleeting October days, when the forest canopy was made up of vibrant shades of yellow and orange and red, he thought of Lucy Gray, who he associated with any spectacularly bright color.

At night, his sorrows caught up with him. Sleep evaded him no matter what he did, how he willed it to come. He’d stare up at the ceiling, listen to the sound of wind from the outside. Eventually Maude Ivory would wake up sobbing, and he’d pull her into his bed and hold her until she calmed down. He’d sing her back to sleep, the song that Lucy Gray used to sing her. “Deep in the meadow, under the willow…” She’d be asleep in his arms, and his own sobs would wrack his chest. He’d muffle his cries by burying his face into his flat pillow, missing his brother so much he felt like he would die from the pain. Despite all of the horrible things Billy Taupe had done at the end of his life, Clerk Carmine loved him like all-fire, he always would. Clerk Carmine had no memories of his parents, of their life before District Twelve. All the memories, the intimate details, of what their parents looked like, sounded like, acted like, how they had loved him, had gone with Billy Taupe. And Clerk Carmine feared his own memory wasn’t as strong as his brother’s. He could already feel Billy Taupe slipping away from him. He couldn’t picture the way he sounded when he sang anymore, his clothes didn’t smell like him anymore. Time was passing, taking him whether he liked it or not.

On the ground, the leaves rotted. The first snow came late November, and now the past summer was nothing but a painful knot in Clerk Carmine’s chest. He wore his brother’s sweaters, pretended that they were his arms holding him. With all the snow, all of the dead earth, there was nothing to gather, and hardly anything to hunt. He roamed those woods anyway, singing the ballads that Lucy Gray and Billy Taupe were named for, hoping for the sound of mockingjays.

He kept telling himself that Lucy Gray was out there somewhere. She spent the fall season hiding, living off the land, and now that it was winter, she’d return to them. Because, of course, she couldn’t survive the winter alone. She had to come back. And she would.

Tam Amber spent his Sundays practicing his new hobby, stone engraving. He wrote simple things at first, things like “Hi CC” and “We love Shamus”, to practice and to make the others smile. Clerk Carmine asked him one day, “What made you wanna carve up stones?”

“I wanna make some gravestones for Billy Taupe and Lucy Gray,” Tam Amber said. “I’d mark them with some lyrics from their ballads.”

Clerk Carmine staggered back, coiling in on himself. “No,” Clerk Carmine said, shaking his head vehemently.

Tam Amber shut his eyes, sighed. “CC –”

“No! You have my permission to make one for Billy Taupe. Fine. But you can’t make one for Lucy Gray!”

“CC, I know it’s hard to accept –”

“Of course I’m not accepting it! How would you feel if that were you? Out there, scared and hiding, and everyone at home just said you were dead. Your own family making a gravestone for you. It’s not right!” Clerk Carmine was trembling now. He wanted to smack Tam Amber across the head.

Tam Amber closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He said nothing for a while. Then, “Well, I’ll get started on Billy Taupe’s.”

He did, and the topic did not come up again for a while. The Covey trudged into the last month of the year, and an inch of snow buried them farther each day. Every sunset, Clerk Carmine set a chair by the window that looked out upon the cold, white meadow, and the barren forest in the distance. He sat there and watched, awaiting to see Lucy Gray, clad in deerskin and that mysterious orange scarf, walking home.

There was so much snow that winter, the air was always frigid. Even with a fire roaring inside their hearth, it was painfully cold inside their home; Clerk Carmine always wore several layers under his sweaters and trousers, along with wool socks, gloves, and a hat. Grating on the edge of his mind was a voice that said, “It’s too cold for Lucy Gray to survive out there, alone with no shelter. She’s not coming back.” He’d swat it away like a mosquito.

January, Tam Amber finished Billy Taupe’s gravestone. On a sleek, smooth surfaced stone, read:

“Is there room at your head, Billy
Or room here at your feet?
Or room here by your side, Billy,
Wherein that I may sleep?”

They agreed that when spring came, they would return to the grove where they buried Billy Taupe, and would set the engraved stone at the head of his burial spot. They discussed it over bowls of stew. Blowing on a spoonful, Barb Azure asked, “And Lucy Gray?”

Again, the same fight. Clerk Carmine threw a fit, saying that they couldn’t give up hope. Tam Amber sighed, Barb Azure insisted that this wasn’t healthy. Maude Ivory eventually ended up crying from stress, stopping the conversation. Barb Azure consoled Maude Ivory, and Clerk Carmine angrily went upstairs to his bed.

The hills of snow that covered District Twelve began to melt in March. The Covey had managed to get through the worst of winter relatively healthy, with even young Maude Ivory not getting anything worse than a sniffle. Yet just when the promise of spring neared, Clerk Carmine fell ill. Fever, chills, fatigue, congestion, cough. Barb Azure stayed home with him while Tam Amber worked and Maude Ivory went to school, much to Clerk Carmine’s chagrin.

“You need to work,” he told her as he shivered under three heavy quilts. “I’m fine. We need money more than I need you with me.” She ignored him. She made him drink endless cups of tea and bowls of squash soup, and bought him a much too expensive bottle of cough syrup from the apothecary. The syrup made him drowsy and confused; he hated it.

On the fourth day of his illness, he felt somewhat better. Still fatigued and sniffly, but his cough had subsided, as had his fever and chills. He insisted that Barb Azure go back to work today. “I just need to sleep off the rest of this cold,” he told her. “I’ll be perfect by the end of the day. Please, Barb Azure, we have to pay off that cough syrup!”

She reluctantly obliged, only after fixing him another pot of squash soup that she instructed him to reheat and eat four times a day. She also told him to keep taking his cough syrup, even though his cough was gone. Then, she slipped on her wool coat and headed off to the town square to see if anyone was hiring day laborers.

Billy Taupe had a bowl of the squash soup, which was still warm in the pot, along with a slice of seedy bread. After he had his fill, he grabbed the bottle of cough syrup from the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet. In his adolescent carelessness, he decided to take a swig of it, thinking that would be easier than measuring it in a spoon before drinking. The thick, disgustingly sugary syrup oozed down his throat, and he shuddered. Then, he laid down on a mat in front of their old, tiny television set. He wrapped a quilt around his shoulders, turned on the TV to play a Capitol documentary about livestock production in DIstrict Ten, and quickly felt himself drift off.

His dreams were dark, hazy. Images of the last Hunger Games played, static-y and black and white as they had been on their TV. A hanging tribute, struck down by a girl with an axe. The boy from Twelve chasing Lucy Gray. Snakes dropping down from the sky, killing several, swarming Lucy Gray, calmed only by her singing.

“You’re headed to heaven
The sweet old hereafter
And I’ve got one foot in the door.
But before I can fly up,
I’ve loose ends to tie up,
Right here in
The old therebefore.”

Clerk Carmine eased out of sleep, his body feeling heavy, his vision a bit distorted when he first blinked open his eyes. The TV was still playing. And, distantly, he could still hear Lucy Gray, singing as she had in the arena:

“I’ll be along,
When I’ve finished my song,
When I’ve shut down the band,
When I’ve played out my hand,
When I’ve paid all my debts,
When I have no regrets,
Right here,
In the old therebefore.”

Clerk Carmine jumped up to his feet, his heart racing. He looked around the room, for the source of Lucy Gray’s voice. “Lucy Gray?” he croaked.

She continued:

“When nothing
Is left anymore…”

Her voice, it was coming from outside! Quickly, Clerk Carmine pulled on his boots, a jacket and hat, and scrambled outside. There were still spots of gray snow, but for the most part, the earth was made up of mud and dead grass. The bare branches of the trees dripped, the ice that had coated them melting. It was cold enough for Clerk Carmine to see his breath, but the chill in the air was exhilarating. The world smelled fresh, clean. Of course Lucy Gray would come on such a day!

Clerk Carmine looked around, and spotted a figure far away in the meadow. Rainbow, he could see it! Lucy Gray in her mother’s ruffled rainbow dress!

“Lucy Gray!” Clerk Carmine cried, his eyes filling with happy tears. “It’s me! I’ve been waiting for you!”

She waved to him, then turned her back, and began running in the direction of the forest. Hurt, confusion, filled Clerk Carmine’s chest. Hot tears poured down his cold cheeks.

“Wait!” he cried. She didn’t, bounding farther to the forest. He started towards her, too, running as fast as his weak legs would take him.

As he ran through the meadow, Clerk Carmine watched Lucy Gray slip into the forest. “No, Lucy Gray! You don’t have to hide anymore! Come back!”

Inside the forest, Clerk Carmine slowed his pace, afraid of darting right past her, in case she was hiding behind a bush or tree. He looked around everything in his path, and craned his neck to scan the tops of the trees from below, hoping to see a flash of rainbow hanging over a sturdy branch.

 

“It’s me, Lucy Gray! Please, you don’t need to hide!”

The forest was silent, but he wouldn’t let that fool him. Lucy Gray had been second only to Tam Amber with her ability to silently move through a forest. He went deeper into the forest, calling out for her.

“It’s okay to be scared, Lucy Gray,” he said. “But no one’s going to hurt you anymore. I won’t let them!”

Silence again.

He thought for a moment. “Sing if you’re nearby!”

Then, her voice streamed through the forest:

“When I’m pure like a dove
When I’ve learned how to love
Right here in,
The old therebefore —”

Forward, her voice was coming forward! Clerk Carmine started running again, in the direction of her voice. He ran and ran, until he saw her standing there, waiting for him.

Her rainbow dress was bright, almost sparkling, against the dull gray trees. Her cheeks were full, her bouncy black curls were decorated with wildflowers. She was here, she was alive! She outstretched her arms for a hug. Clerk Carmine’s heart burst, and he practically leapt into her embrace. He held her tightly, and closed his eyes as he rested his cheek against her chest. Against her chest? He hadn’t been able to rest his head against her chest like that since he was eight, when she was still taller than him. Last he had seen her, they were the same height. She had grown so much since she’d been gone…

He squeezed onto her, but felt nothing holding him back. Why had she dropped her arms? Then, he realized how cold she felt, how rough, like bark. He opened his eyes, drew back his head, and realized he wasn’t hugging Lucy Gray, but was holding onto the trunk of a tree.

He pulled back harshly, as if he had touched something hot. He looked at the tree, up and down, and it was so obviously there, and had so obviously been there the whole time. He spun around, searching for Lucy Gray, but she was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t miss her with that rainbow dress, there was no way.

He had been imagining things, he realized. He took too much cough syrup.

Then the worst realization of all finally hit him. Winter had come and gone, and Lucy Gray was still missing. She had left all of her belongings at the lake house, left behind good fish that she was clearly intending to eat—

Clerk Carmine sank to his knees and sobbed. It was as if someone had shoved a dagger into his chest and carved deep into him. His wails of anguish were the only sounds for miles. Lucy Gray was gone, Lucy Gray was gone. Whatever had happened to her, she wasn’t coming back from it. Not ever.

The sun had just dipped under the horizon by the time Clerk Carmine made it back home. He was weak, shivering, covered in mud. Barb Azure, Tam Amber, and Maude Ivory were all sitting at the kitchen table, faces knit with concern. They sighed with relief as he walked through the side door. Barb Azure embraced him and kissed his forehead.

“Oh my stars! Where have you been, CC?” Barb Azure asked, her voice choked up.

A fat tear rolled down his cheek. He only replied, “I’m ready to make her gravestone now.”

Chapter Text

In his sleep, Clerk Carmine felt a soft, tiny hand grasp at his arm, giving him a light shake. He drew in a sharp breath as he rocked out of slumber, lifting up his head but unable to open his eyes. “Mm?”

“CC,” a high, delicate voice whispered. “CC.”

Lenore Dove. She had been experiencing a bout of sleep regression for the past month; every morning she woke at around three am, ready to bother Clerk Carmine, Tam Amber, or both. According to Barb Azure, who was now a grandmother, this was common for four-year-olds. “She’s uncommon in every other way,” Clerk Carmine had replied, “but not with sleep?”

Lenore Dove shook Clerk Carmine again with her chubby toddler hands. “CC,” she said again, in a louder whisper.

“You’re killing me, Len,” Clerk Carmine groaned, not bothering to open his eyes.

He reached out and gently pulled her into bed with him. She nuzzled herself into his chest, and she was so warm and snuggly that Clerk Carmine felt himself quickly falling back asleep.

Then, Lenore Dove said into his night shirt, “Tell me about Lucy Gray.”

Lenore Dove was always asking about Lucy Gray, as much as she asked about her mama, Maude Ivory. Clerk Carmine turned their lives into folklore. It was easier that way, to pretend that they had been written by Wordsworth and Rossetti all along. Not that they had been real people he centered his life around, whom he was forced to live without.

“Not now, baby,” Clerk Carmine yawned. “In the morning.”

“Please,” she said, so sweetly it made Clerk Carmine ache.

Clerk Carmine sighed. “How ‘bout I sing you her ballad?”

He felt her nod against him. In his low, groggy voice, he began:

“When I was a babe I fell down in the holler
When I was a girl I fell into your arms
We fell on hard times and we lost our bright color
You went to the dogs and I lived by my charms…”

-

After Lucy Gray, life was quiet and little. District Twelve forgot about her. They were all too concerned with their own children taken by the Hunger Games. The years passed and dozens reaped children, all to end up dead, along with the casualties of the harsh conditions of Twelve — mine explosions, smallpox outbreaks, infection, dysentery, hunger, childbirth. This had reduced Lucy Gray to a number, another dead girl. People died all the time in District Twelve. No one cared about some Covey girl who disappeared in the woods.

Barb Azure had been the first to leave home. She fell in love with a young man from the Seam, Jaymes Everdeen. He was a typical coal miner, polite and reserved, but he made Barb Azure brighten. They married and she moved into his little shack a few streets away from the Covey home. Together they had five children, though only two lived past the age of six: Iris and Jasper.

After Barb Azure wed, Tam Amber tried his hand at love. Mill Goodwin, the cobbler’s daughter. They only dated a few months before she became pregnant. They wed and birthed a baby girl they named Clementine Ash. The birth was long and arduous. Clementine Ash lived for about fifty hours, while Mill succumbed to fever and infection. The Goodwin family asked Tam Amber to allow them to bury Mill in their slot in the District Twelve graveyard, and Tam Amber obliged; Clementine Ash was buried in the Covey graveyard, with Lucy Gray and Billy Taupe and all of Barb Azure’s dead children. Clerk Carmine remembered the long nights after Tam Amber lost his new family. He became mute and an insomniac. He spent all hours of the day working on his daughter’s gravestone, lovingly engraving it with her ballad. “Oh my darling, Clementine,” it read. “You are lost and gone forever.”

And then, Maude Ivory. Who Clerk Carmine still couldn’t think too long about without choking up. Whenever Lenore Dove asked about her mother, Clerk Carmine let Tam Amber fill in the details. After that summer, when Lucy Gray was sent to the Capitol, when Maude Ivory stumbled upon Billy Taupe’s freshly dead body, when Lucy Gray was ripped away from them, without reason, right after they had just gotten her back, lively little Maude Ivory fell apart. Her life was plagued by chronic panic attacks, bouts of depression, and alcoholism. You wouldn’t know it, looking twice at her. She was beautiful, even the merchant boys flirted with her, and possessed a sunny demeanor that she performed for strangers. She was the best dancer in the district, and by far the best singer, with her voice surpassing even Lucy Gray’s strength. She never lacked in friends and romantic interests.

But there was a void in her that had formed that summer, that she could never quite fill. Beauty, clothes, friends, lovers, drinks, gifts. Nothing was enough. Even as an adult, she would wake up in the middle of the night, sobbing from nightmares. Clerk Carmine would rush to her side and console her.

“I can’t do this anymore, CC, I can’t,” she’d weep. “I can’t keep hearing her voice in my dreams. Her voice, and that song.”

She needn’t say the song’s name. It was the ballad she and Lucy Gray had written for Coriolanus Snow.

When Maude Ivory entered her teen years, she finally accepted what Clerk Carmine knew to be true, that Coriolanus Snow had something to do with Lucy Gray’s disappearance. For that reason, Maude Ivory refused to ever perform that ballad, not that Tam Amber or Barb Azure cared to play it. Clerk Carmine didn’t know how she endured it, hearing Lucy Gray sing, “You asked for a reason, I got three and twenty, For why I trust you, You’re as pure as the driven snow,” every night. It would’ve made him go insane.

Coriolanus Snow was elected president the year before Lenore Dove’s birth. Elected by Capitol citizens, of course; it was illegal for District folk to vote. That didn’t stop election night from being a national holiday. The broadcast of the results was a mandated watch. Clerk Carmine, Maude Ivory, and Tam Amber joined Barb Azure’s family in front of the Justice Building to watch the broadcast, played on the enormous screen they used to showcase the Hunger Games. When Coriolanus Snow’s face came on the screen, Clerk Carmine was engulfed in a sinking, dizzying feeling, one similar to suddenly becoming too drunk. He had to play that name in his head over and over again, as if it was one that he could ever forget. Maybe it was a different Coriolanus Snow, maybe it had been spelled differently, pronounced differently. And the man on the screen, he looked so different. His stiff face, both from seriousness and botox, his artificially enhanced lips. But it was him, Clerk Carmine knew. Those pale blue eyes, cold, unfeeling, snakelike, were his. It was him. Lucy Gray’s killer was the president of Panem.

Clerk Carmine was so caught up in his shock that he hadn’t realized that Maude Ivory had sunk to her knees. He saw Barb Azure cradling her like she had when they found Billy Taupe’s body. Barb Azure tried shushing her, soothing her, but Maude Ivory was wailing, inconsolable. “No! No! No!”

Maude Ivory fell into another bout of depression. She stayed at home often, lethargic and asocial, bathed irregularly, and cried often. The only times she would leave the house would be at night, when she’d go out to the Hob and would drink far too much. However, as the weeks went on, Clerk Carmine noticed slight changes in her behavior. Maude Ivory began to complain about frequent headaches and bodily pains. “My whole being feels sore,” she’d whine after a day in bed. Then, sickliness. Everything seemed to make her nauseous, even her favorite foods. She couldn’t so much as be near their trio of goats without running to the other side of the house and vomiting into the grass. Something about their smell, she’d say.

After one of these fits of nausea, Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber confronted her. Tam Amber held her hair, rubbing her back, as she heaved into the grass. She took in deep, shaky breaths once her stomach was emptied. Clerk Carmine analyzed her for a few moments, and then broke the silence. “So, when are you gonna tell us you’re pregnant?”

Maude Ivory coughed, leaning back to balance herself on her heels. She gave him an incredulous look. “I’m not.”

“So you keep getting sick just because…?”

“Guess so,” she said, her cheeks flushed. She rose then, retreating back into the house. Clerk Carmine looked to Tam Amber, waiting for him to say something. He didn't, he just sighed and shook his head.

Maude Ivory didn’t believe she could get pregnant. She didn’t get regular periods, and, like she always said, “If I could, I would’ve by now.” She had never been shy to discuss her sex life with Clerk Carmine, who she shared absolutely everything with, and so for the longest time, Clerk Carmine believed what she said about her fertility. Because it was true, she would’ve by now; she’d gone her entire twenties without so much as a surprise miscarriage. By District Twelve standards, being childless at thirty-two, she was practically an old maid, a lost cause in terms of motherhood. But Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber both knew the symptoms from Barb Azure and Mill. So they contacted one of the district’s midwives, Fan, to examine Maude Ivory, who reluctantly agreed to the test.

“You’re definitely pregnant, dear,” Fan assessed. “It looks like you’re about eleven weeks in.”

Shock was Maude Ivory’s first reaction. Then, embarrassment. She didn’t know who the father was, she admitted. It could’ve been a Peacekeeper or Cartwright Chance, whose wife birthed a boy named Woodbine eleven months ago.

“Do you want either of them in the baby’s life?” Clerk Carmine asked her. Maude Ivory shook her head. “Then it doesn’t matter. That’s your baby, nobody else’s.”

Then, elation. Barb Azure burst into happy tears when Maude Ivory told her the news. “Our miracle baby!” Barb Azure wept. She pulled her younger sister into an embrace, rocking her back and forth. In her sister’s arms, Maude Ivory’s fears seemed to melt away. She began crying, too, appearing the most joyous she’d been since Lucy Gray returned from the Capitol.

The Covey and all their extended family pampered Maude Ivory. They gave her the largest servings of food each meal, and made sure she drank plenty of herbal teas to keep her hydrated and strong. On his days off from the mines, Tam Amber got their house ready for a baby, building a crib, sewing blankets and baby clothes. Clerk Carmine and Maude Ivory both made their incomes as housecleaners for merchant families, but Clerk Carmine took many of her shifts to ensure that she was getting enough rest for herself and the baby. While Clerk Carmine worked overtime, Barb Azure visited Maude Ivory once a day to cook for her and keep the old Covey home tidy. Barb Azure’s daughter-in-law, Harriet, was pregnant, too, and Harriet and Maude Ivory would bond over their excitement and stresses of pregnancy.

Harriet gave birth to Burdock Everdeen in mid October. It was an easy birth that she recovered from quickly, and Burdock was born strong and healthy. Maude Ivory went into labor in late December during a snowstorm. As Maude Ivory writhed in agony from her contractions, Tam Amber wrapped himself in a deerskin pelt and went out into the storm to fetch Fan. Clerk Carmine couldn’t see more than a few feet outside of their window. Everything was shielded by the blinding white snow.

Clerk Carmine had no idea how to help Maude Ivory. He knelt by her, dabbing her sweat drenched face with a cloth, feeling utterly powerless.

“Just focus on your breathing,” he told her. He remembered a midwife saying that to Barb Azure.

“Where are they?” Maude Ivory sobbed.

“They’re on their way,” he tried to assure her.

But time was slipping away from them. The snowstorm was not letting up, and the longer Tam Amber was away, the more Clerk Carmine feared the worst. He imagined Tam Amber slipping on a sheet of ice, freezing to death in front of Fan’s house as Maude Ivory tried to push the babe out.

Just as Clerk Carmine began to lose all hope, the door swung open, and in rushed Tam Amber and Fan, covered head to toe in snow. As Tam Amber slammed the door shut, needing tremendous force due to the severity of the wind, Fan tossed off her cloak and crouched next to Maude Ivory. “Give us some space,” she commanded, and Clerk Carmine did.

The labor spanned past the entirety of the night. As the dawn came, Maude Ivory had lost so much blood, so much blood – Clerk Carmine hadn’t seen such a scene since they stumbled upon Billy Taupe and Mayfair Lipp all those years ago. “Please, just keep my baby alive,” Maude Ivory said weakly, pushing for what felt like the millionth time.

It was around noon. The storm had ended, and finally, the babe emerged from Maude Ivory’s body. A little girl, crying her heart out. Maude Ivory had settled upon the color for her child’s name, the color “dove”. As for the ballad, she wanted Daniel if the child was a boy, after “Danny Boy”, or Lenore if the child was a girl, the name of the narrator’s beloved in “The Raven”. And so there she was, Lenore Dove Baird, pink skinned and dark haired, cradled in the arms of Fan.

Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber could barely acknowledge the beauty of the child; they were too preoccupied with the state of Maude Ivory. She was pale, almost grayish, as if she had bled out all of the color in her skin. Her eyes were sunken and dull, and her breathing was shallow. Clerk Carmine petted her hair, and asked her if she would like to hold Lenore Dove. “Ughn,” was all she could say, too weak to even fully open her eyes.

Clerk Carmine grasped her hand then. It was limp, and felt cold. “Just rest now, honey,” he whispered to her. She nodded ever so slightly and closed her eyes. A few minutes later, her chest stilled. No breath exited her nose, no heart beat under her ribs.

Still holding her hand, Clerk Carmine looked up at Fan, who bounced the swaddled child to soothe its crying. That horribly familiar feeling crept up on him, the same one he felt when he saw Billy Taupe’s lifeless body, when he realized that Lucy Gray was never coming back.

“What do we do?” Clerk Carmine asked the midwife. Thirteen-years-old, he felt.

“You have to find a way to feed her,” Fan said. She looked younger now, too, her face so twisted with grief.

“Harriet,” Clerk Carmine said. He set Maude Ivory’s hand across her belly, as round as it had been when she was pregnant. He rose, shaking terribly, and took Lenore Dove from Fan’s arms, feeling so disconnected from his body, like his spirit were rising from it the way Maude Ivory’s surely was.

He glanced down at Lenore Dove’s face, barely registering it, and then looked at Tam Amber, who was crying. “Go,” Tam Amber said. “I’ll start cleaning up.”

Clerk Carmine nodded, and wrapped Tam Amber’s deerskin around himself. Lenore Dove pressed to his breast, he ran out into the snow. District Twelve looked so beautiful; the snow went up to Clerk Carmine’s knees, soft and sparkling and untouched, and the bright sky was as white as the earth below it, as white as ivory. Everyone was inside, it seemed. The cold air bit Clerk Carmine’s exposed skin, his tears blisteringly hot in comparison. Lenore Dove kept crying, her voice echoing in the empty streets. Clerk Carmine felt like he and this child were the only people remaining in the world.

He didn’t bother knocking when he approached Jasper and Harriet Everdeen’s door, he simply burst inside, crying out, “Harriet! Harriet!”

Jasper rushed to him, bright with alarm. “What? What is it?” He looked over Clerk Carmine and the baby swaddled in his arms, and the reality of the situation seemed to register in him immediately. “Maude Ivory –”

“She didn’t make it. The baby, she needs milk,” Clerk Carmine said, and it occurred to him that he was sobbing.

Jasper nodded and brought Clerk Carmine to the bedroom, where Harriet rested with little Burdock next to her. She understood immediately, and took Lenore Dove and began teaching the child how to latch. Clerk Carmine fell apart there, sinking to the ground and wailing, “Maude Ivory! Maude Ivory!” As if crying for her would bring her back.

Because it was winter, the earth was too frozen to bury Maude Ivory. They did what people did in Twelve when dealing with a winter death: after cleaning up Maude Ivory’s body, they took her to a secluded room in their home, this being the Covey’s toolshed, and laid her on a table, covering her with a blanket. It was so cold in the shed that Maude Ivory’s body froze, preserving her until spring came and she could be buried.

Life was a distorted haze after the birth. Grief, combined with the stress of caring for a newborn, turned the Covey into dissociated zombies. Barb Azure temporarily moved back in with Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber, mainly to be with her sister’s corpse. She’d spend hours in the shed, weeping over the body, singing to her, telling her about how Lenore Dove was growing. Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine brought Lenore Dove over to Harriet and Jasper’s home everyday so she could feed. Harriet tried pumping her milk so they would have a supply to bring home with them, but she struggled with producing enough. Lenore Dove spent many nights over at the Everdeen’s to ensure that she would get a proper amount of food; Clerk Carmine couldn’t stand her hungry wails when they were alone at home. Tam Amber asked Fan if goat’s milk would be okay for a baby her age, but Fan said she wouldn’t risk it, that it could make the child sick.

Clerk Carmine became delirious, paranoid. He constantly feared that Lenore Dove was not eating enough, that Harriet did not have enough milk for two children. He feared that Harriet was giving Lenore Dove too much milk, and that little Burdock would die from neglect. He feared that both children would die. It was all he could think about, that there would be three bodies for them to bury once the earth melted. The haze he lived in was so strong that he could barely decipher what was real around him. That was the only thing that felt real to him, fear.

But neither happened. Lenore Dove and Burdock both grew into big, chubby babies. The snow melted, little flowers popping up in the meadow in its place. They were able to bury Maude Ivory, next to Lucy Gray, her gravestone reading:

‘“Lady,” he said, – “Maude Clare,” he said –
“Maude Clare”: – and hid his face.’

Lenore Dove grew old enough to eat solid foods, giving Harriet a rest from all that nursing. She began to smile and laugh, too. She was such a lively, expressive baby, like how Tam Amber and Barb Azure said Maude Ivory had been. When she was finally able to detach from Harriet’s breast, Clerk Carmine took Lenore Dove with him everywhere. He wrapped her in a swaddle, secured tightly to his chest, so no matter where he went, his Lenore Dove was safe. She slept like that as he cleaned, looked up at him curiously when he went to the Hob to sell goat cheese.

The despair of that winter grew farther away. He still missed Maude Ivory, of course. He knew that the pain of her death would always linger in him, no matter what. She had been his friend, his best friend, for thirty-three years. It was still hard walking around the district without her, her arm tucked in his arm, gossiping together the way they always had. It killed him to watch Lenore Dove grow without her. But he knew that Maude Ivory would not want him to lose himself to grief. “No matter how hard it gets, I somehow always know that there’s still life to keep living,” Maude Ivory used to. “Despite everything.”

Despite everything. It was true for Maude Ivory; no matter how deep her bouts of depression would become, she would always find her way out of them. Clerk Carmine would do the same. There was so much life left to be lived, Lenore Dove’s life, and he wanted to see every moment of it.

One summer’s day, Clerk Carmine walked back from cleaning the mayor’s home. Lenore Dove slept against his chest, snoring softly. It was warm, with a gorgeous breeze, and he could hear mockingjays singing in the distance. The sun was sinking down into the horizon, turning the sky pink and purple. In a few hours, Tam Amber would return from the mines, and Clerk Carmine would cook them dinner and sing to Lenore Dove.

Behind him, he heard a voice call out. “Hey, you!” He recognized it immediately. Henry Waldron, the fellow in town that replaced busted windows. Clerk Carmine first met Henry years ago when the sodomy laws in District Twelve weren’t enforced and cruising was still permitted. Clerk Carmine had been perched beneath the designated meet up tree, reading one of his brother’s old books. When he looked up, there was Henry, his straight black hair messy from the wind, his flannel shirt battered and faded.

Clerk Carmine frowned when he saw him. Just a year ago, he and the Covey performed at Henry’s wedding. “Does your wife know you’re here?” Clerk Carmine asked him.

“Oh, yea. This was her idea. She felt bad that I’m so lonesome now, since she’s always with her girlfriend and all,” Henry said with an easy shrug. He extended his hand to Clerk Carmine. “Will you have me?”

That had been fifteen years ago. They had been on and off since then, sometimes seeing other men, but always finding their way back to each other. Clerk Carmine hadn’t spoken to Henry in over a year, because of some stupid fight that he could barely remember.

Clerk Carmine waited for Henry to catch up with him. Henry was grinning, and his hair was messy like it had been the day they met. “Mr. Saunders!” Henry said, placing a tender hand on Clerk Carmine’s shoulder. Mr. Saunders, Henry’s nickname for Clerk Carmine. In their early years together, Clerk Carmine liked to sing Henry his namesake song, Clerk Saunders, a dark ballad about a forbidden love between Clerk and his love May Margaret, resulting in Clerk’s murder. It had started as a sort of joke, as Henry was horrified that Clerk Carmine’s parents would have named him after such a story. Clerk Carmine liked to sing it to get a rise out of him, and eventually made a habit of only singing one lyric that he found to be rather flirty:

‘“Oh, a bed, a bed,” Clerk Saunders cried,
“A bed, a bed for you and me!”’

That lyric played in his head as Henry approached him. “Mr. Waldron,” Clerk Carmine replied, smiling despite himself.

“It’s been too long,” Henry said. He peered into the swaddle on Clerk Carmine’s chest. “You’re an uncle now.”

“Something like that,” Clerk Carmine said, looking at Henry, more beautiful than ever in the fading sunlight. Yes, there was still a lot of life left to live.

-

Clerk Carmine woke a few hours later to the smell of bacon. It was Sunday, the day Tam Amber liked to cook for them. He must have let Clerk Carmine and Lenore Dove both sleep in, as the sun was already up when he woke. He could hear the sizzling sounds coming from the kitchen, and Tam Amber singing to himself. Barb Azure and her husband would be coming over soon, with eggs to fry and fresh strawberry jam to slather on toast. Toast, made from the bread that Henry said he’d pick up from Mellark’s. He was surely on his way over, too.

Clerk Carmine looked down at Lenore Dove, who was still sleeping. Sunlight poured in through the window above them, making her curly dark hair turn a radiant shade of red. She was pure, not like snow, but like a dove. Despite everything, Clerk Carmine had never been so happy. And he knew this was only the beginning.

Chapter Text

It was a well known fact of life that in District Twelve one third of children did not live past the age of five. In Twelve, people did not have many protections against disease and hunger, and the youngest of the population were the most vulnerable to such afflictions. If a child lived past five, then they were considered safe from death, as long as a parent could keep the child relatively fed, and as long as the child was not reaped.

Clerk Carmine took this fact of life very seriously. He knew what a blessing it was for his little Lenore Dove to make it to her sixth birthday. He swore that no matter what, he would protect her from the ravenous world. She would never, ever go without food, and she would never step in one of Snow’s arenas. Above anything else, this was his life’s mission.

He worked long hours as a housecleaner for the merchant families. He started the profession in his early thirties with Maude Ivory, both of them sworn against going into the mines and having become exhausted with the inconsistency of working as day laborers. They responded to an advertisement for employment as a housecleaner, posted by the Allister family. The Allister’s took quite the liking to them, finding Clerk Carmine and Maude Ivory to be thorough cleaners and incredibly personable — they loved how Clerk Carmine and Maude Ivory would crack jokes and sing while they cleaned. The Allister’s boasted about them to the other merchant families, and soon enough, Clerk Carmine and Maude Ivory were cleaning just about every merchant’s house. The Allister’s, the Undersee’s, and the Donner’s were the kindest to Clerk Carmine. They had been particularly affected by Maude Ivory's death, and even gave Clerk Carmine paid days off to grieve and to handle her funeral. If Clerk Carmine needed anything — baby formula, medicine, new socks and shoes — he knew that he just had to mention it and they’d give him it. The Undersee’s and Donner’s both had children around Lenore Dove’s age, so Lenore Dove would play with them while Clerk Carmine cleaned. The Allister’s let her use their grand piano, clapping joyfully at her pensive attempts at playing. With the generous wages and care for his niece, Clerk Carmine knew that Lenore Dove would be able to live a safe, sheltered life.

Still, he didn’t want to risk it. Outside of work, he bred a small herd of goats. He sold their milk and the cheese they made with it, and on occasion would sell their meat and pelt, at the Hob. On weekends he went into the woods and hunted and gathered, keeping half to feed himself, Lenore Dove, and Tam Amber, and selling the other half. All of this, along with the earnings he made performing at weddings, made Clerk Carmine rich by Seam standards. They might not have had much, but they rarely were in want, which meant Lenore Dove would never fall from hunger, never have to take out tesserae for the Reaping.

When Lenore Dove was eight, Barb Azure discovered a lump on her breast. She knew that it was fatal; she said that her grandmother died from such a cancer as well. Apparently there were treatments for this in the Capitol, but nothing like that existed in Twelve, where there wasn’t even a hospital. So, Barb Azure prepared her will, and slowly withered away. She was bed ridden the last few weeks of her life, and Clerk Carmine made sure to visit her everyday, holding her hand and singing to her the lullabies she used to sing him when he was little.

Barb Azure passed in her sleep after six months of suffering. Lenore Dove inherited some of her aunt’s belongings, most precious of all being the rainbow dress Lucy Gray wore during her Hunger Games. After her disappearance, it was never worn again, but Barb Azure still kept it after all those years. With permission from Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine, Lenore Dove cut up the dress, using the ruffly fabric to stitch onto blankets and her own clothes. She even made herself a pretty scarf out of the bottom hemline that she liked to wear for special occasions.

Barb Azure’s death brought a new routine to the Covey. Burdock walked home with Lenore Dove from school each day, and spent an hour or two at the Covey’s home before heading back to his own home. The pair of children leaned on each other as they mourned. Clerk Carmine was happy to host the boy, who was so eager to learn about the Covey’s culture, to hear stories about Grandma Barb Azure’s childhood. He took an interest in hunting, too. On Sundays, the Covey would invite Burdock on their outings to the woods. They taught him how to hunt with a bow and arrow, how to gather nuts and roots and fruits and herbs, how to walk through the forest without making a sound, how to camp out in a tree, and how to use the stars for direction. Burdock was a fast learner, and within a few months he was proving to be as resourceful and skilled as Tam Amber.

Burdock was never in need of friends. He had the kind of charm that made everyone gravitate towards him. He won over adults with his manners and wit, could riff with the rowdiest of children, and always could make quieter, more reserved kids like Lenore Dove feel included. He had a flock of Seam boys that followed him around. Many of these boys tagged along when Burdock stopped by at the Covey’s, much to Clerk Carmine’s dismay. While Burdock proved himself to be a good soul, Clerk Carmine was wary of the rest. His brother Billy Taupe had had a similar posse, who liked to steal and gamble and get into other sorts of trouble. As much as Clerk Carmine loved his brother, he didn’t want those kinds of boys around Lenore Dove.

Then Lenore Dove turned twelve. That year, Clerk Carmine realized that he’d been so preoccupied with the neighborhood boys being like Billy Taupe, that he hadn’t realized Lenore Dove was the one following Billy Taupe’s path. Like Billy Taupe, Lenore Dove convinced herself that there were free people up north, past Panem’s borders. She began speaking darkly about the country, telling her uncles that they needed to figure out a way to stop the Hunger Games for good. They couldn’t just keep living like this, so passively, permitting the Capitol to subjugate them whatever way they liked.

The story of Lucy Gray only fueled this spark in Lenore Dove. They hadn’t thought twice before about telling the girl about her long gone relative, but with Lucy Gray being the source of many Lenore Dove’s rebellious musings, Clerk Carmine started to wonder if it had been a mistake. He got the worst sense of deja vu when he heard his niece ramble this way, transporting him back to his days as a boy, listening to his older brother curse the Capitol for what they did to the Covey.

“It’s like Billy Taupe’s ghost transported itself into Lenore Dove through that accordion,” Tam Amber once remarked.

“Do not ever say these things outside of this house,” Clerk Carmine would say to his niece. “You have to promise me.”

Lenore Dove would respond with a Peacekeeper’s salute. “Sir, yes, sir!”

Perhaps she took his words too literally. It’s true, she never said these rebellious thoughts loud enough for anyone else to hear. Instead, she spoke through her actions, Billy Taupe’s fire burning bright in her chest. Clerk Carmine didn’t notice it at first. His niece, for the most part, was still quite quiet and overall reserved, but she was becoming more impulsive, more quick to anger. He thought it was the usual growing pains of being an adolescent – he recalled, even before the dreaded Tenth Games, he had been quite sullen and snappy at that age. Then came the day of Clay Chance’s hanging.

The Chance’s were perhaps the most troubled family in Twelve. They were prominent rebels during the war, harshly punished for their treason, and that darkness followed them through the generations. Clerk Carmine could still vividly picture Arlo Chance, Clay’s great uncle, swaying on that rope on the Hanging Tree. Now, Clay was condemned to death, too. The day before he was scheduled to hang, Lenore Dove begged Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber to spend the night at Burdock’s. They were working on a song together, she’d said. The uncles said yes, foolhearted. That night, when they thought she was at her cousin’s, she was out at the square, where she shinnied up the gallows and filed halfway through the rope. The next morning, the rope snapped and Clay fell to the ground; Peacekeepers shot him to death to prevent him from fleeing. It had been too dark and snowy for the security cameras to catch who’d sabotaged the rope, but Lenore Dove had been unlucky enough to be spotted walking from the square by a townsmen, who reported her to the authorities. She was hauled to the base for questioning and would only say she hadn’t done anything wrong. Binnie Chance, Clay’s sister with a bad heart, fessed up to the crime to spare the child. The woman was arrested and died in her cell three days later. Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber were allowed to collect Lenore Dove then, and they promised the Peacekeepers they would keep her home at night.

At first, Clerk Carmine believed that Lenore Dove had been framed. Even after all this time, the Covey were still seen as outsiders. As well liked Clerk Carmine, Tam Amber, Barb Azure, and Maude Ivory had been, there were many people who continued to believe that Covey people were naturally scheming and untrustworthy. Lenore Dove was accused because she was Covey, it was as simple as that. But the night Lenore Dove was brought home, she confessed to her uncles that she had done it.

Tam Amber began pacing the room, rubbing his forehead. Clerk Carmine stared at the girl, who was still so small, her feet didn’t even touch the floor when she sat in a chair, with complete disbelief. Her green eyes begged him to forgive her, as wide and watery as they were when she was a babe.

“Was Burdock in on this?” Tam Amber asked.

“No. I snuck out while he slept,” she replied.

“What on earth possessed you to do this?” Clerk Carmine asked.

Her mouth twisted to the side, appearing close to tears. “I didn’t want him to die,” she said in a small voice.

“I understand, honey,” Clerk Carmine said, clasping the child’s hand. “That’s a noble feeling. But what did you think was going to happen? They’d just let him go? And what if they decided to implicate all of us? You know how people view us Covey, especially Peacekeepers. We’ve had our trouble with Lucy Gray and Billy Taupe. They could’ve arrested us all. Is that what you want? To see all of us hanging?”

She broke then, the tears pouring down her ruddy cheeks. “No,” she croaked.

“Come here, sweet dove,” Clerk Carmine said, pulling her into a hug. She wept into his arms.

New rules were instated. Under no circumstances could Lenore Dove stay over at anyone’s house, not even family like Burdock’s. She had to return from school immediately, and if she wasn’t home by a certain time, she’d be grounded. She could only go out with specific people with permission of both of her uncles. She agreed to it all. For a few months, Clerk Carmine believed she’d learned her lesson.

Then, the Reaping of the 46th Hunger Games came, the first year Lenore Dove was eligible. Clerk Carmine hadn’t slept a wink the night before, and had been plagued with nightmares the weeks prior. Images of Lucy Gray’s name being called out, Mayor Lipp beating her on stage, Peacekeepers dragging her away — the grainy scenes on their TV of her running for her life in the arena, barely dodging death — the replay of Clerk Carmine wandering the woods, looking for her. It was all he could think about, Lucy Gray, and the chance that Lenore Dove’s slip of paper would be the one pulled that afternoon.

He was caught off guard when the smoke began rising beneath the Reaping stage as the crowd gathered. Lenore Dove had already gone off to the girl’s section, so he couldn’t see her reaction. As the crowd murmured, Peacekeepers pulled out a wad of smoking cloth that turned out to be the flag of Panem, an offense that would land you at least ten years in prison. They had no witnesses to who set the fire, so they rounded up all those with a history of suspicious behavior. Lenore Dove was, of course, not reaped that day, so she was taken to base by Peacekeepers. Her alibi had been that she’d been home all day yesterday, writing her will in case her name got called in the reaping. Tam Amber provided proof of the will, not admitting that she had written it a week before.

Corporal punishment had never been on the table for Clerk Carmine. He didn’t think it taught a kid anything, and he’d never understood how adults could have the desire to hit their own. Until that day. He held it in as he and Tam Amber silently walked Lenore Dove home. Then, right when they made it inside, Clerk Carmine slapped Lenore Dove hard across her face. It nearly knocked her off her feet, and brought him the stunned stare of Tam Amber.

Lenore Dove held her cheek, her expression crumbling. For some reason, that innocent look made Clerk Carmine even angrier. “How dare you,” he said. He was shaking. Lenore Dove’s expression hardened. She opened her mouth to say something, but he stopped her. “Are you really gonna tell me that you weren’t behind this?”

“No,” Lenore Dove said.

“Fucking hell, Len!” Clerk Carmine bellowed. “Are you out of your damn mind? What were you thinking? No, don’t tell me! I already know, you weren’t thinking, that’s what!”

“I was trying to make a statement,” Lenore Dove insisted.

“I don’t give a fuck about your statement!” he continued. “You could’ve landed in jail, hanged even! And what would you have done if you’d been reaped? You think they’re gonna let a flag burner win the Games? It’d be a death sentence!”

“Being reaped is already a death sentence around here,” Lenore Dove said. “And, anyways, I already thought about all that. Lucy Gray made a statement when she was reaped!”

“Yea, and look what happened to Lucy Gray,” Clerk Carmine retorted.

“Why don’t you want to change things?” Lenore Dove said.

“You think you can change things? Little you, with your flock of geese? Sure, you look so fearsome to the Capitol!”

“Let’s just stop,” Tam Amber interjected.

Clerk Carmine ignored him. “Of course I want things to change! I’d tear the whole system down if I knew it could happen! But you’re not going to do that by burning down a fucking flag!”

“Says who?” Lenore Dove said. “What if that was the spark for the fire?”

“It won’t be, you know why? You’re selfish. You’re only thinking about yourself. YOUR statement to the Capitol, as if they give a fuck about what you think. Never mind what harm that brings the people around you. You wanna help people? Stop causing us trouble!”

“You aren’t listening to me!”

“I don’t need to! I’ve heard it all before, from my brother!”

Lenore Dove let out a wordless cry, storming up to her bed in the attic. Tam Amber followed her to console her. Clerk Carmine went outside, so wound up with anger he felt the need to break something. He chopped wood for the rest of the afternoon, until his arms ached. Each time the axe cracked into the log, he imagined Billy Taupe’s heart bursting open from the bullet.

Weeks passed without Clerk Carmine and Lenore Dove speaking to each other. Clerk Carmine complained about it incessantly to Henry. Eventually, Henry snapped.

“Do you have the same maturity as a twelve year old?” Henry said. “Enough of this! Apologize and make up with her already!”

Clerk Carmine knew he was right, and left to talk with his niece. Clerk Carmine found Lenore Dove in the meadow, on the rock that Lucy Gray liked to perch upon decades ago. She lazily threw feed to her flock of geese. Her back was to Clerk Carmine; the geese signalled his arrival by hissing at him, as they did to every human but her. She looked back, her green eyes sparkling in the sunlight, and frowned at him before turning her back to him.

The geese shuffled away from them as Clerk Carmine came closer. He approached the rock, and from behind he gathered his little niece into his arms. He felt her stiffen and then, reluctantly, relax, as he nuzzled his chin onto her shoulder. She felt so small and warm in his arms, so vulnerable and delicate. He held her like this for a few silent moments, rocking her back and forth, the warmth of the sunshine and the sounds of birdsong lulling him into a peaceful, sleepy state.

Eventually, he murmured to her, “I’m sorry for hitting you. I was angry, and scared, but that still doesn’t excuse it.”

The child began to tremble, and made choked crying sounds. Clerk Carmine turned her around, and she pressed her face into his chest, her skinny arms wrapped tightly around his middle. He rubbed her back and shushed her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “I’m sorry, baby.”

“I thought you hated me,” she sobbed.

Now, Clerk Carmine’s eyes welled up with tears. “No. Never. Never, ever. I love you more than anything, little dove. What’s a word stronger than all-fire? Because that’s how much I love you.”

Lenore Dove began to cry harder, and Clerk Carmine tightened his hug.

“Nothing in my life would make sense without you in it. Everything I do is for you,” Clerk Carmine said. “I was so scared about losing you that it made me angry. I didn’t handle it right.”

“You promise?”

“I do,” he said. “I just want you safe. Can you understand that?” He felt her nod against him. “Then can you promise me you won’t do anything to put yourself in danger?”

“I’ll try,” she croaked. “But it’s unfair. How can we live like this?”

“Well, I’ll tell you how I do it. I do it because you’re in this world with me. That’s how I know there’s good, there’s a bright future ahead.”

From then on, Lenore Dove settled down with her rebellious antics, and Clerk Carmine had a gentler approach to parenting. He still did what he could to maintain structure and order in Lenore Dove’s life, and still wasn’t afraid of being the “mean uncle” to Tam Amber’s “nice uncle”. But he never hit Lenore Dove again, and whenever he yelled at her, he would come to her with a hug to talk it out.

At thirteen, Lenore Dove’s interests swayed; she still cared about emancipating the districts, but she now also cared about things more typical for a teenage girl, like her appearance, her social standing, and romance. Clerk Carmine hoped that Lenore Dove would be a late bloomer in terms of romance, like he and Tam Amber had been. Tam Amber hadn’t expressed any romantic interest in anyone until Mill, and hadn’t again since she passed. Clerk Carmine spent his teenage years trying to follow his brother’s footsteps, flirting and wooing Seam girls, even bringing some into his bed. It all felt like an act to him, one that he couldn’t keep up. He’d only successfully slept with two girls, and each time he had to be completely drunk. It wasn’t until he entered his twenties that he accepted the fact that he liked men, and men only.

So he hoped that Lenore Dove would take after him and Tam Amber, minus his own experiments with the opposite sex. But he had no such luck; like her mother, her aunt, Lucy Gray, and Billy Taupe, Lenore Dove was a lovesick teenager. And she only had eyes for Haymitch Abernathy.

Haymitch was part of Burdock’s friend group. His great-grandparents had been big in the resistance during the Dark Days, but his family was well liked and regarded nowadays. His mother, Willamae, ran a laundry, and his father had worked in the mines until he killed him. Haymitch was known to rally the younger boys in the Seam with Burdock to play sports and games. He had a cheerful demeanor, and was sweet to his ma and his baby brother Sid. He had great manners, calling his superiors “sir” and “ma’am”, “mister” and “miss”. He knew how to have fun, too. Burdock would sometimes invite Haymitch to Covey family gatherings, where they drank and danced to Clerk Carmine’s fiddle, Tam Amber’s mandolin, and Lenore Dove on Billy Taupe’s accordion. Haymitch was always dancing – though his version of dancing was more like skipping and hopping – and singing off-key whenever he came. At the end of each night, sweaty and red-faced, Haymitch would thank Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine for having him over.

Clerk Carmine noticed Haymitch’s name pop up more and more from Lenore Dove. Haymitch said this, Haymitch did that, me and Haymitch saw the funniest thing today. Pretty soon, Haymitch was coming by the house with Burdock every day. Clerk Carmine noticed how Lenore Dove would brighten around Haymitch, how sad she seemed whenever he had to go back home. And then there was the way Haymitch would look at Lenore Dove. When she’d ramble on about something she was passionate about, he would stare at her as if she hung the stars in the sky.

It put Clerk Carmine on edge, and he didn’t know why. There was just something about Haymitch that he didn’t quite like. Maybe it was the fact that he came from a notorious rebel family. Maybe it was something about Haymitch’s curly dark hair, his mischievous smile, that subconsciously reminded Clerk Carmine of Billy Taupe. He tried to hide it, having no desire to be cruel to a little boy. Still, he hoped this crush would pass.

Then, one night, after Lenore Dove went to bed, while Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber sat in their rocking chairs around the fireplace, sipping on glasses of moonshine while the fire crackled before them, Tam Amber said to him, “Now, I don’t want you to get upset.”

Clerk Carmine closed his eyes and sighed. “What now?”

“See, you’re getting upset.”

“Well, whatever this is, you don’t sound happy about.”

“I’m fine with it. I’m worried about how you’ll take it.”

“Just tell me.”

“Alright,” Tam Amber sighed. He looked at the fire for a while. Then, he continued, “Earlier today, Lenore Dove told me that she was seeing that Abernathy boy. Haymitch.”

“Seeing? Like, dating?”

“Yes, like dating.” Tam Amber finally looked at Clerk Carmine. “Now you’re upset. That’s why Lenore Dove was afraid to tell you.”

“I’m not upset, I’m just clarifying,” Clerk Carmine said defensively. “But don’t you think she’s too young to be dating? Thirteen, she’s just a baby. She shouldn’t be thinking about stuff like that yet.”

“She’s young, sure. But your brother and Lucy Gray started dating that age.”

“Well I definitely don’t want her like Billy Taupe and Lucy Gray,” Clerk Carmine scoffed. He rubbed his face, and took a long drink from his glass. “How long they been dating?”

“Few weeks now.”

“Few weeks! She’s only now telling us?”

“Telling me,” Tam Amber emphasized. “She was afraid of our reactions. ‘Specially yours.”

“Because she knows better. She knows she’s way too young for that kinda thing.”

“No, because she knows you don’t like Haymitch.”

“Who says I don’t like Haymitch?”

Tam Amber rolled his eyes. “Oh, c’mon, CC. You never liked that boy. Least of all of Burdock’s friends.”

“Well, he’s troublesome. He gets into stuff.”

“Gets into stuff?” Tam Amber repeated. “He’s got a cleaner record than our niece.”

“His family were rebels.”

“And ours are Covey. What difference does that make? And you know his ma, she’s a fine woman. His pa, too, we got along well with him, rest his spirit.”

“Fine! I’m not okay with it, and I don’t like that boy!” Clerk Carmine said, his voice rising with his anger. “What do you want me to do? Lie?”

Tam Amber’s eyes narrowed. “No, I want you to support our niece. If you don’t, you gotta know that she’s gonna keep hiding stuff like this from you. And how can you help her then?”

Clerk Carmine sighed, and took another sip.

“You know all she wants is your approval,” Tam Amber said. “She’s dying for it, always.”

Clerk Carmine thought it over, listening to the crackle of the fire. “Alright, alright, fine. I won’t make too much fuss. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna let her go over to that boy’s house, or anything like that. They can date… with supervision.”

Tam Amber smiled. “Never expected otherwise. And I’m sure Willamae would agree.”

The next morning, Clerk Carmine walked with Lenore Dove to school, something he hadn’t done since she was small. Lenore Dove whistled to herself while they walked, but kept eyeing Clerk Carmine. “So, what’d you gotta tell me?” she asked when they were halfway there.

Clerk Carmine ran his hand over his hair, then returned it into the pocket of his overalls. He relayed what Tam Amber had told him the night before, and said that while he had his reservations about this relationship, he wasn’t going to stop them from seeing each other. Lenore Dove gasped, lighting up. She grasped her uncle’s hand, and gushed, “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Clerk Carmine couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her so happy; he felt guilty for even considering denying her this. Still, he proceeded to lecture her about the rules that she had to abide by. It didn’t matter to Lenore Dove. She was practically skipping the rest of the way there.

In front of the school, leaning against an oak tree, was Haymitch, his little brother Sid standing next to him, chattering on about something. Lenore Dove called out his name, waving enthusiastically. Haymitch perked up and grinned from ear to ear when he saw her. Lenore Dove gave Clerk Carmine a quick kiss on the cheek before she ran to Haymitch. “Guess what!” Clerk Carmine could hear her say.

Haymitch brightened as she had when he heard the news. He raised his hand to Clerk Carmine, and called, “Thank you!”

“I’m talking to your ma about this after school!” Clerk Carmine replied sternly.

Haymitch’s happiness was unwavering. “Okay!”

Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine talked with Willamae about the relationship. The three of them agreed that, while the kids were too young to date, it would only cause more problems to prohibit them from seeing each other. They’d keep certain boundaries to keep the two safe.

“I’d be shocked if this lasted more than another month or two,” Willamae said. “First loves are always so fickle.”

But Lenore Dove was no ordinary girl; she loved in a way that shook the whole world. A month passed, and then another, and Lenore Dove’s love for Haymitch only grew. It was clear that it was the same on Haymitch’s end. Suddenly, two years had passed, and they were still suckers for each other.

Even as the time passed, Clerk Carmine fretted over his niece. The kids seemed to have a healthy, communicative relationship – they rarely squabbled, and when they did, they were always able to resolve it by the next day – yet Clerk Carmine was paranoid that something would inevitably go wrong. But how could he not fear for the state of Lenore Dove’s heart? First loves were at best, fickle, like Willamae said. Barb Azure had a few partners before settling down with Jaymes, and Clerk Carmine couldn’t even remember the first guy Maude Ivory crushed on. At worst, first loves were disasters. Billy Taupe and Lucy Gray, Tam Amber and Mill. Clerk Carmine feared that Haymitch would switch up on Lenore Dove one day, devastating her beyond repair. The longer their relationship went on, the more likely Clerk Carmine believed disaster would come. He’d express this to Henry, who was ever patient with these rehashes. Henry told Clerk Carmine that he needed to trust Lenore Dove, that no matter what happened, she would be able to handle it. Clerk Carmine knew Henry was right, but he couldn’t quite digest this truth.

And then there was his other fear. It had been fifteen years, and Clerk Carmine still could vividly picture the way Maude Ivory bled out on the mattress. It was irrational, Clerk Carmine knew, but he was terrified of his niece falling to the same fate.

“I just don’t want her to get pregnant,” Clerk Carmine stressed to Henry. “That’s probably the worst thing that could happen.”

Henry gave him a wry smile. “You say that about everything, everything’s the worst thing that could happen.”

“But it’s true. You know teenagers are more likely to have complications during birth.”

“Sure. But Maude Ivory was far from a teen when she had her.”

Clerk Carmine buried his face in his hands. “I don’t know what to do. You know she came home with a hickey the other day? I wanted to kill that boy.”

Henry laughed. “You and I have done worse.”

Clerk Carmine lifted his face and glared at him. “Not funny!”

“I’m just saying. It’s human. And it’s no good obsessing over these things. It’ll drive you mad,” Henry said.

“And I suppose I can’t just tell her not to do it?”

“You could, like my papa told me I could never be with a man. Didn’t sway me much.”

Clerk Carmine concocted a plan later that day. He was already in need of buying a new box of condoms, so he swung by the apothecary’s shop to buy some. They were mighty expensive, but the March’s couldn’t do anything about the price; they said that the Capitol was trying to prevent low birth rates in the districts. Anyways, as expensive as they were, they were the only birth control and sexually transmitted disease prevention available in Twelve, so Clerk Carmine would cough up some cash on occasion for them. Before, he’d only bought them for him and Henry. Today, he bought them for his niece. When he got home, he haphazardly hid them by the wash bin, where he knew it would be easy enough for Lenore Dove to find. If she needed one, she’d take one.

A few days later, he checked the box, and found it short one condom. Clerk Carmine cringed at the thought of that Abernathy boy touching his niece. He wanted to give them both an earful for breaking their agreement of not being alone together. But he knew he needed to give that up, and that it was better this way. As long as Lenore Dove was safe and healthy and happy, he could tolerate anything.

-

The week before Lenore Dove turned sixteen, the rules for the Second Quarter Quell were announced. Clerk Carmine huddled around their television set with Tam Amber and Lenore Dove, watching Coriolanus Snow’s puffy lips read off a cream-colored slip of paper. “For the First Quarter Quell, as a reminder to the rebels that their children were dying because of their choice to initiate violence, every district was made to hold an election and vote on the tributes who would represent it. For this Quell, as a reminder that two rebels died for each Capitol citizen, every district is required to send twice as many tributes.”

All three of them let out horrified cries. Lenore Dove leapt to her feet and began screaming at the TV, about the injustice of it all. Tam Amber tried to calm her. Clerk Carmine sank back into his chair, feeling as though he were drowning. Two girls, two girls would be going into the arena – he could only see Lenore Dove as one of them, dragged away by Peacekeepers as Lucy Gray had been–

Clerk Carmine realized that he really couldn’t breathe anymore, and that Lenore Dove and Tam Amber were staring at him with such concern. He waved them away, staggered outside into the snow, and vomited.

Clerk Carmine’s nightmares returned. Every night, he turned back into a teenage boy, haunted by the forgotten Tenth Hunger Games. Images of Lucy Gray, her rainbow dress, her snakes, her soaring voice, bled together as he tossed in and out of sleep. The forty years since Lucy Gray’s disappearance made her hazy in Clerk Carmine’s memory; when he dreamt of her, she was so distant, so out of reach, a mockingjay’s feather blowing away in the wind that he couldn’t quite catch.

July Fourth came. Clerk Carmine, Lenore Dove, and Tam Amber headed off to the Justice Building, wearing their finest clothing, silent and somber. A knot of anxiety tied itself in Clerk Carmine’s throat as they reached the designated area for reaping aged children. Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber each gave Lenore Dove a long hug before parting.

“My heart won’t stop racing,” Clerk Carmine whispered as they headed to the audience section.

“Focus on your breath,” Tam Amber advised. “We’ll get through this.”

Clerk Carmine nodded, and began taking in deep breaths, though he didn’t feel any bit calmed by them. They spotted Mr. and Mrs. Donner in the audience, and took their sides. Mr. Donner kept biting his nails, and dark circles hung under his eyes. His wife was heavily made up, but even under all the creams and powders, Clerk Carmine could see how pale she was.

“I haven’t been able to sleep a wink all week,” Mrs. Donner told him. “I keep having dreams that both my girls’ names get pulled.”

Clerk Carmine hadn’t even considered that possibility, and shuddered at the thought.

The ceremony began, girls first. Clerk Carmine closed his eyes, willing that horrid district escort of theirs, Drusilla Something, not to pick Lenore Dove’s name. The only sound for miles were the cicadas.

“Louella Mccoy!”

They couldn’t help but groan as they watched the tiny girl walk up to the stage. She was barely thirteen if Clerk Carmine remembered correctly, so small and skinny that she didn’t stand a chance against forty-seven others.

Drusilla reached back into the bowl of name slips. Clerk Carmine tapped his foot, his only way of getting out all the tension inside of him. In the moments before Drusilla read off the paper, Clerk Carmine felt like he was going to vomit.

“Maysilee Donner!”

Besides him, Mrs. Donner erupted into hysterics, screaming, “No! No! No!” She clung to her husband’s arm, her knees buckling. Mr. Donner stared forward, white faced, frozen, seemingly uncomprehending of the state his wife was in. His eyes were locked on his daughter, who held her head up high as she marched up to the stage.

“I’m going to faint, I’m going to faint,” Mrs. Donner gasped, holding her chest with her free hand. She was falling farther to the ground, and her eyes were glazing over. Tam Amber pulled her off of her husband, who continued to stare forwards, and hoisted her up, so that she could lean her weight on him to stay up. She clung to Tam Amber’s shirt, grasping the fabric by the fistful, hyperventilating.

A merchant woman passed through the crowd to Mrs. Donner. It was Mrs. March, the mother of Asterid, Maysilee’s best friend. Mrs. March said to Mrs. Donner, “Let’s get you to the medic tent.”

“No, no,” Mrs. Donner sobbed.

“Come with me,” Mrs. March said.

“I got her,” Tam Amber said. He picked her up off her feet and began carrying her away.

Before she followed, Mrs. March said to Clerk Carmine, “Watch him for me,” gesturing to Mr. Donner. Her eyes sparkled with tears.

Mr. Donner wouldn’t take his eyes off of his daughter. He was shaking, wringing his hands. Clerk Carmine rubbed the man’s back, feeling utterly useless. He looked at Maysilee, too. She and her sister Merrilee were only a month younger than Lenore Dove; he had known the girls since they were born, watching them grow up through his weekly cleanings of their house. Lenore Dove never liked Maysilee much; she called her “stuck up”, and the two of them bickered often, even when they were really little. But Clerk Carmine was fond of the girl just the same.

Drusilla moved onto the boys. Distantly, Clerk Carmine could still hear Mrs. Donner wailing.

“Wyatt Callow!”

The boy walked up to the stage calmly. Clerk Carmine didn’t know the Callows well, other than that they were big into betting on the Games.

Finally, the second boy’s name was called: “Woodbine Chance!”

It was over. Clerk Carmine rubbed his forehead; as sorry as he felt for the three other kids on stage, he was focused on only himself and the Donner’s. Lenore Dove was safe for another year. Now he needed to figure out how to help his friends get through this tough time, and hope to hell that Maysilee Donner had the luck and wit to win this.

Clerk Carmine was wrapping his arm around Mr. Donner’s shoulder, about to say something, when the crowd in front of him gasped. Clerk Carmine’s eyes went back to the reaping section, and saw Woodbine running away from the stage. Before he could really process what was happening, a shot rang out from the top of the Justice Building from a Peacekeeper’s rifle, and Woodbine’s head exploded.

Chaos erupted. Most people screamed, some people began to run. Clerk Carmine and Mr. Donner held onto each other for dear life. A male voice boomed over the sound system, “On the ground! On the ground, everybody! Now!” They did as they were told. Crouched down, his hands clasped over his neck, Clerk Carmine stared at a ladybug crawling lazily across the pebbled ground. He was shaking, and could hear people around him whimpering and young children crying. It reminded him so much of Tam Amber’s stories about how the Peacekeepers rounded up the Covey.

Angry shouts then came from the stage area. They needed another boy tribute, it was clear. Shuffling noises, and then a woman’s wail. “Don’t take him!”

Then, Lenore Dove’s voice. “Leave her alone!”

All his survival instincts disappeared. Clerk Carmine shot up to his feet, caught a glimpse of the scene by the stage: Woodbine’s mother, trying to prevent Peacekeepers from carrying away her boy’s body, and Lenore Dove tugging on a Peacekeeper’s sleeve, begging them to stop. The Peacekeepers got rougher with the Chance woman, causing her to shriek louder. Lenore Dove, in turn, grabbed at Woodbine’s leg, trying to extract him from the Peacekeepers.

It all happened in a matter of seconds. Clerk Carmine began stepping over the cowering bodies in pursuit of Lenore Dove. Several Peacekeepers pointed their rifles at him, one threatened to shoot. But he didn’t listen. A Peacekeeper was about to smack Lenore Dove with his gun. Then, Haymitch jumped to his feet and ran to Lenore Dove. He jumped in between the girl and the Peacekeeper, arms raised to shield her. Another Peacekeeper behind him kicked him to the ground, boot pinning the boy down.

A firm set of hands grabbed Clerk Carmine, and suddenly he was in the oppressive bear hug of a Peacekeeper. Against his ear, the Peacekeeper hissed, “Stop or they’ll kill you both.” Clerk Carmine recognized the voice. He was a friend, someone who frequented his booth at the Hob and lingered to crack jokes. Clerk Carmine didn’t fight his restraint.

Clerk Carmine watched Haymitch get pulled back up to his feet and brushed off a bit by a crew member of the Capitol production. Drusilla seemed to be directing the camera crew, making a lot of gestures to Haymitch. Lenore Dove was sobbing, but Clerk Carmine couldn’t really hear her. The front of the crowd was murmuring, and the chatter trailed back until the whole audience shouted out in anger when they received the news. Haymitch was taking the place of Woodbine.

Clerk Carmine deflated in the Peacekeeper’s arms, head hanging as the audience jeered. They were silenced by another round of gunfire and Drusilla’s screams to be quiet. Then, the boys’ reaping was redone; Drusilla marched back up stage, calling out Wyatt Callow’s name again, and then pretended to read off a slip that said “Haymitch Abernathy.”

Haymitch walked up the stage, his gray eyes boring out of his face. He looked half his age.

The ceremony finished. Clerk Carmine’s Peacekeeper friend let him go, and he started back to Lenore Dove, who was still being accosted by Peacekeepers. Tam Amber caught up with him; they bribed the Peacekeepers with a little cash to get them to lay off. Mr. Donner had made his way up stage and desperately waved money in the air, as if he could buy Maysilee’s freedom. Maysilee sobbed, telling him to stop. Meanwhile, some idiot with a camera tried to recreate footage of Haymitch’s family reacting to his reaping.

Lenore Dove started for Haymitch again, but Clerk Carmine pulled her back by the waist, hauling her away from the square and into a side street. Tam Amber followed. The girl buckled and thrashed until they rounded a corner and secluded themselves behind the apothecary’s shop. There, Lenore Dove went limp in Clerk Carmine’s arms, and sobbed helplessly. Clerk Carmine sat down on the bottom stairs to the back door, where Tam Amber joined him. He cradled Lenore Dove like a baby. Tam Amber smoothed the girl’s hair back, over and over. Tears streamed silently down Tam Amber’s brown cheeks, and Clerk Carmine realized that he was crying, too. The realization made him break down further. He did his best to choke back his sobs, but it was too much, all of it was too much. Thirteen-year-old Louella Mccoy, Maysilee and her mother’s hysterics and her father’s desperation, Woodbine Chance bleeding on the concrete, Wyatt Callow marching up twice, Haymitch —

Lenore Dove finally collected herself, as much as she could. She extracted herself from Clerk Carmine’s arms, her face puffy from her tears, and said in a definitive, but quivering, voice, “I’m going to see the train off.”

Normally, Clerk Carmine would have protested. But he would have done anything to see Lucy Gray off for the last time, even from the window of a train. So he nodded. Tam Amber told her, “Stay safe.”

Clerk Carmine stared at the ground, vacantly, and then another sob burst from his chest. “I’m worried she’ll hurt herself,” Clerk Carmine admitted.

The sound of Lenore Dove’s footsteps hitting the cobblestone faded. “She won’t,” Tam Amber said. “Nothing could ever make that girl stop fighting.”

Chapter Text

The unrest in Twelve was immediate. The killing of Woodbine Chance and Haymitch’s illegal reaping, along with the expected trauma of watching three other children be stripped from their families, was too much for people to bear. A small riot broke out in front of the Justice Building. It was hard to say who started it — some blamed one of Woodbine’s cousins, though there was no actual proof. Either way, an angry crowd formed that afternoon, hooting and hollering about injustice. The Peacekeepers said people were getting violent, and that’s why they attacked. Peacekeepers and citizens fought; some blood was drawn, several people were arrested, but thankfully no one was killed.

Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber spent the rest of the day cooking. Tam Amber was the one to suggest it; he said he remembered how hard it had been when Lucy Gray was reaped, none of the Covey had the will to cook for themselves. So, he thought it would be nice for them to make something for the Donner’s and the Abernathy’s, since the former were old friends, and the latter for their connection to Lenore Dove. They made a venison stew with onions, turnips, and potatoes, along with cornbread.

Lenore Dove returned as they set the cornbread on the table to cool. The bottom of her red dress was covered in grass, and her cheeks were wet. She ran into Clerk Carmine’s arms as soon as they connected eyes. Lenore Dove was always bursting with emotion; Clerk Carmine knew that she’d be weeping all throughout the Games. She only was able to collect herself once he asked her if she would like to help them bring over the food to the Abernathy’s.

As a result of the previous day’s riot, Peacekeepers began patrolling all areas of the district. Usually, if a Peacekeeper was off base, you’d only see them around the district square or at the Hob, and even then they’d laze around as opposed to actually patrolling. You were more likely to crack a joke with a Peacekeeper than be accosted by one. Now, they marched up and down every street, with perfect military posture and a hand on their rifles at all times.

The Covey joined the Abernathy’s at the Mccoy’s house to watch the parade, since they had the biggest house. Clerk Carmine walked with Lenore Dove’s arm linked in his, afraid that any distance his niece kept from him increased her chances of being stopped by a Peacekeeper. He eyed all of them as they walked down the street to the Mccoy’s, regarding them with the same caution he would a coyote or bobcat.

To all their disappointment, they only get a few quick shots of District Twelve on their chariot. The four kids wore what Twelve’s tributes always wore, those hideous coal miners outfits. Haymitch, Wyatt, and Louella all looked rather awkward and shy. Maysilee, on the other hand, appeared bored. One, two, three shots from different angles, none lasting longer than two seconds. That was all.

The following days were for the tributes to train for the arena. This was something that Clerk Carmine never understood. What could a child possibly learn in a few days that would prepare them for a death match? At best, maybe they could learn a couple of tricks, like tying a specific knot or making a fire without a match. But anything that was actually useful, like swimming, climbing, hunting, and hand to hand combat, took years to master.

Since training wasn’t televised, they experienced the Hunger Games’ intermission. During this period, Lenore Dove became restless. She paced around their house, cleaning and rearranging things, keeping their television on to play the mindless talk shows that centered on Hunger Games gossip and speculations. She pestered her uncles frequently about what they thought was happening to Haymitch. “Do you think the train they took was clean? Do you think they’re giving him enough to eat and drink? Do you think any of the tributes will try to hurt him? Do you think he has a bed? Do you think they’ll give him a mentor?”

Clerk Carmine understood why Lenore Dove asked them all these questions. After all, what happened to tributes after the reaping was a mystery to all of Twelve. Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber were the only ones to have gotten a first hand account of a tribute’s experience. But, at least according to what they saw on TV, Lucy Gray’s experience was incredibly outdated. Clerk Carmine’s guess was as good as anyone else’s at this point.

The day of the interviews arrived. That morning, as they ate breakfast, Lenore Dove asked if she could go over to the Abernathy’s to spend time with Sid. Before Clerk Carmine could respond, Tam Amber said yes. Tam Amber gave Clerk Carmine a look, as if to say, “let her have this.”

Hours later, three Peacekeepers came to their house. Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber were both outside then, enjoying the breeze that relieved them of the hot, muggy summer air. Clerk Carmine milked one of their goats, while Tam Amber rested against the trunk of a tree, whittling a figurine out of wood.

“Are you the Bairds?” one of the Peacekeepers asked them.

Both Covey men rose to their feet. They hesitated, analyzed the Peacekeepers walking up the hill. Clerk Carmine didn’t recognize any of them, but that was becoming normal; since the chaos at the Reaping, dozens of Peacekeepers had been shipped in from District Two.

Dread filled Clerk Carmine. He knew this was about Lenore Dove. He straightened his posture, tucked his hands in the pockets of his overalls. “Close to it,” Clerk Carmine replied. “I’m Clerk Carmine Clade, and this is Tam Amber. Practically my brother. We’re raising a Baird, we’re her uncles.”

The three men joined Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine at the top of the hill. The same Peacekeeper continued, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Clade, Mr. Amber. So, your niece is Lenore, yes?”

“Lenore Dove,” Clerk Carmine corrected.

“What happened?” Tam Amber asked, quietly, but with authority.

“Well, she’s caused quite the ruckus at the Reaping stage,” the Peacekeeper said. “Got on top and started singing illegal songs. She’s been arrested.”

Fueled by fear, Clerk Carmine stammered, “Does she have bail? How much is it? We’ll pay anything.”

Another Peacekeeper spoke. “No bail.” He interrupted Clerk Carmine, who was on the verge of losing it now. “Just relax, Mr. Clade. It’s a minor charge, so you needn’t worry. Even with her prior history, she only has to serve twenty-four hours. She’ll be out, same time tomorrow.”

Clerk Carmine deflated with relief. Tam Amber asked, “Can we see her?”

“After the interviews. You’d end up with her in that jail cell if you skip those,” the Peacekeeper said. “But afterwards, you can come by, certainly.”

So they watched those stupid interviews, keeping the first forty-four on mute while they ate their dinner. Wyatt droned on about odds, Maysilee made fun of how people in the Capitol dressed, while Haymitch came off as an arrogant asshole. Physically, the three looked fantastic. They sported vintage evening wear, all black and reminding Clerk Carmine of how the richest merchants dressed themselves back when he was a child. However, the appearance of Louella disturbed both him and Tam Amber. It wasn’t that she looked bad, just off, like they had given the child botox or a facelift. Worse of all was the way she acted. Clerk Carmine knew Louella Mccoy to be a spunky, lively child. Now, she had a faraway, glossy look in her eyes. She had a snake wrapped around her shoulders, as if she needed the creature to keep herself emotionally grounded, though Clerk Carmine remembered Louella to be rather averse to animals. She spent most of the interview talking about it, and then out of nowhere became hysterical.

“You’ll murder us! You’ll murder us!” she screeched. Even her voice sounded off, not quite like how it normally did.

Her interview ended shortly after her outburst, with the obnoxious Ceasar Flickerman finding some way to pass off her behavior as a joke. But it deeply disturbed Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber. They agreed that something happened to the girl, and it wasn’t just botox. They could only guess, but they began thinking of Lucy Gray’s Games and the horrible conditions the tributes endured. Almost half of the tributes died before the Games actually began, so poor were their conditions. Louella must have seen or endured something truly horrific to make her act this way.

Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber set off to the Peacekeeper base as soon as the last interview finished. No one except them and patrolling Peacekeepers walked the night streets; everyone else was too scared to go out now. The two Covey men were stopped several times to be asked why they were out now, and every time were only allowed to resume their journey when they said they were going to base.

At the front lobby, they signed in as visitors. They would be given fifteen minutes to see Lenore Dove. As he signed his name, Tam Amber asked the front desk man what time Lenore Dove would be released tomorrow, so they knew when to pick her up.

“No one in custody will be released until the end of the Hunger Games,” the front desk man said.

“But we were told –” Clerk Carmine began.

“We received these orders an hour ago. Sorry, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

Clerk Carmine held his tongue, afraid of an outburst prohibiting him from seeing his niece. They waited almost an hour before they were guided to the women’s section of the jail. Lenore Dove was the only occupant. She ran over to the bars when she saw them, grasping onto them, tears filling her eyes.

“Please don’t be upset,” she begged.

Tam Amber reached his fingers through the bars and stroked her cheek. “We aren’t, love. We only want to know you’re safe.”

“I am,” she insisted.

Clerk Carmine looked over the cell. There was only a flat mat and a waste bucket inside. She was not, in fact, safe in these conditions, but he chose not to say anything.

“They let me talk to Haymitch,” Lenore Dove said.

“How?” asked Clerk Carmine.

Lenore Dove shrugged. “I dunno. They let me talk to him on the phone for a bit. Didn’t explain anything. But it was nice. I got to actually say goodbye.” The tears flowed down her cheeks. “I don’t want him to die.”

Tam Amber flicked her tears away. “I know, baby.”

“He has a chance of winning. I know he does. He’s strong and fast and smart. I’ve taught him how to read the stars,” she wept. “But I know for him to come back, he has to be a killer. I don’t know if he’s a killer. And it’s destroying me not to be able to watch him. They just told me the news right before y’all came in. Did you watch his interview? How was he?”

“He was fantastic,” Tam Amber said. “He had the crowd roaring with laughter.”

Lenore Dove managed out a little laugh, but then grew serious. “Promise me,” Lenore Dove begged. “Promise me you’ll watch, and everyday you’ll come back here and tell me everything. I won’t be able to sleep a wink until I know what happens to Haymitch.”

This was no small request from Lenore Dove, and Clerk Carmine knew it. Clerk Carmine hadn’t watched a single Hunger Games since Lucy Gray’s. He refused. Even after they made it legally mandated to watch, he wouldn’t. He’d just turn their television on, put it on mute, and toss a blanket over it so he couldn’t look at the screen. That was the extent of the law, anyways, for every house to have at least one functioning television on at all times during the Games.

He knew if he watched the Games he’d turn back into that little boy he was forty years ago, so scared and helpless, everything he swore he’d never be again. And still, he told his niece, “I promise.”

The Games began at ten o’clock in the morning. Clerk Carmine felt so sick with anxiety that he stopped by Henry’s house beforehand, and begged him to watch the Games with him and Tam Amber. The three huddled around the Covey’s television set, and Clerk Carmine clasped Henry’s hand like a vice. They watched through the point of view of one of the tributes rising up from below the ground and into the arena – Clerk Carmine briefly wondered how they were able to achieve such a feat. Then, there was a long display of the arena. It was incredible. The golden Cornucopia sat in the middle of a green meadow patched with flowers. The sky was the most vibrant shade of blue, with perfect puffy white clouds. Brightly colored songbirds fluttered overhead. They then showed an aerial shot; far in the distance were the woods, and in the other direction were snowcapped mountains.

The countdown began. Quick flashes of each tributes’ face. Most of them were enamored by the arena’s beauty. Haymitch’s eyebrows raised before immediately knitting themselves into a scowl. Maysilee did not look ahead, only forward, a fiery determination in her eyes. Three, two, one, and the gong rang, but that seemed unable to break the tributes from their trance. Most stood in their place, but not Haymitch. He sprinted to the Cornucopia, grabbing weapons and a backpack of choice supplies. He was able to make it away before most of the bloodbath began. Eighteen dead, including Wyatt Callow, dying while shielding little Louella from an attack, who herself died not much later. Maysilee made it out with a small backpack and no serious injuries.

Clerk Carmine assumed that with such a large number of tributes, the Gamemakers would want to drag out the Games as long as possible, but the Second Quarter Quell ended up lasting only seven days. Perhaps they did it for shock value; there wasn’t ever a moment of peace, with at least one tribute falling over dead every hour.

It quickly became clear that almost everything in the arena was poisonous. The fruit, the river water, even the scent of the flowers when inhaled too directly, all resulting in numerous children’s deaths. There was a moment when Clerk Carmine swore Haymitch was gone, after he swallowed a big gulp of river water. He writhed in pain for almost half a day, but he somehow made it. Maysilee found a way to utilize the poison, having a small blowgun with two dozen darts in her backpack. On day two, she took down another tribute this way. The girl died quickly.

Unlike most of the tributes, Haymitch stayed in the woods, far away from the mountains. Despite having to fight off different, horrible variations of mutts, the woods prove to be the safest choice. On day four, the picturesque mountain erupted into a volcano that wiped out another dozen players, including all but five of the Career pack. With the mountain spewing liquid fire, and the meadow offering no means of concealment, twelve of the thirteen remaining tributes joined Haymitch in the woods.

Haymitch seemed bent on continuing in the same direction, away from the volcano, but a maze of tightly woven hedges forced him to circle back into the center of the woods, where he encountered three of the Careers. Haymitch, who had never been in a serious fight in his life before now, proved himself to be a fast and cunning warrior. With his knife he was able to kill two of the Careers, when the third disarmed him. The battle was bloody and gruesome, nothing like how Maysilee or Lucy Gray killed their victims. Clerk Carmine felt himself shaking profusely, and Tam Amber had to turn his back to the television. Henry’s arm wrapped around his shoulder, Clerk Carmine waited for Haymitch to be struck down.

The boy was about to slit Haymitch’s throat when a dart dropped him to the ground. Haymitch looked around, the whites of his eyes so bright in comparison to the dark gore covering his face.

Maysilee stepped out of the woods. “We’d live longer with two of us.”

“Guess you just proved that,” said Haymitch, rubbing his neck. “Allies?”

Maysilee nodded. The moment was incredible, like holding a butterfly in your hand. The rest of the country couldn’t possibly understand how so. No one in District Twelve had heard Haymitch Abernathy and Maysilee Donner say one good thing about each other, ever. But whatever negative feelings the two once held were gone. They took turns sleeping, worked out a system to salvage rainwater, fought as a team, and shared the food from the dead tributes’ packs. In the moments they weren’t in complete survival mode, they seemed to share a real friendship, a real love for another. Clerk Carmine couldn’t pry his eyes away from the screen. He had to admit, it was beautiful to watch.

Haymitch was determined to keep moving farther into the arena. Maysilee kept asking him why, and he always brushed her off, until she refused to move any farther without an answer.

“Because it has to end somewhere, right?” said Haymitch. “The arena can’t go on forever.”

“What do you expect to find?” Maysilee asked.

“I don’t know. But maybe there’s something we can use,” he said.

When they finally made it through that impossible hedge, using a blowtorch from one of the dead Careers’ packs, they found themselves on flat, dry earth that led to a cliff. Far below, there were jagged rocks.

“That’s all there is, Haymitch. Let’s go back,” said Maysilee.

“No, I’m staying here,” he said.

A flash of pain slapped across Maysilee’s face. Then, acceptance. “All right. There’s only five of us left. Might as well say goodbye now, anyway,” she said. “I don’t want it to come down to you and me.”

“Okay,” he agreed. That was all. He didn’t offer to shake her hand, he didn’t look at her. Maysilee waited for a moment, and when she realized he wasn’t going to say goodbye, she gave him a curt nod and walked away.

Clerk Carmine never hated Haymitch as much as he did then. After everything, he couldn’t even look back? How could he part with her so unceremoniously? Like time wasn’t running away from him, as fast as a Capitol train?

If he felt anything at all about Maysilee’s departure, Haymitch expressed none of it. Instead, he was fixated on the cliff. He skirted along the edge, as if trying to figure something out. His foot dislodged a pebble and it fell into the abyss. But a minute later, as he sat to rest, the pebble shot back up beside him. Haymitch stared at it, as puzzled as Clerk Carmine felt, and then his face took on a strange intensity. He chucked a rock the size of a fist over the edge and waited. When it flew back out and into his hand, he burst out laughing.

“He found a glitch in the arena?” Tam Amber asked.

“Looks like it,” Henry said. “Seems like a forcefield, meant to keep them all in.”

Before they could continue pondering, a scream blared across the television’s speakers. The camera switched to Maysilee. A flock of candy pink birds with long, thin beaks were mauling her. Haymitch ran to her, without hesitation. But it was still too late. He caught her as a bird skewered her through the neck.

Haymitch held her hand, his tears finally flowing, as Maysilee Donner choked until her bulging eyes closed.

Clerk Carmine dropped Henry’s hand the same time Haymitch dropped Maysilee’s. He buried his face in his hands, remembering all the times he held Maysilee as a baby, and wept.

Even Lenore Dove wept for Maysilee. When they visited her that night, it took the girl a few minutes to collect herself enough to speak again. “It sounds awful,” was all she could manage.

“I don’t think she suffered much,” Clerk Carmine lied.

“And for Haymitch to watch it… he’s okay, right? They didn’t hurt him?”

“No, little one, they didn’t hurt him. Last I saw he found another tribute, a young girl who looks on the verge of death. Wellie is her name, I can’t remember the district. It’s them and another girl, a career. Final three.”

“He teamed up with her? Wellie?”

“Yes. He told her he wants her to win. That he’ll protect her from the career.”

Lenore Dove managed to laugh. “Oh, that’s Haymitch. So selfless. I think I could maybe forgive him for dying, if he died for that reason. But only maybe.”

The next morning, Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber awoke to the sound of a Peacekeeper truck driving down the dirt road outside. On a loud speaker, a male voice kept repeating, “Everyone out to the square by ten!” Clerk Carmine peaked out of his window and watched the truck pass their home. Many people came out of their homes, still in their sleeping clothes, equally confused and concerned.

Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber dressed themselves, and walked to the district square with everyone else. They tried to gather information from others on what was going on, but no one had any. It only became clear when they entered the square. Cameras and other equipment, along with uniformed Capitolites, were littered all around the square like they were for Reapings. A massive screen was set up at the top half of the Justice Building, along with two smaller screens on the buildings to the nearest right and left. Peacekeepers kept shouting for people to file into the square. “We start rolling at ten!” they said.

Clerk Carmine caught a glimpse of the Abernathy’s as he and Tam Amber shuffled in. Willamae wore her finest dress, and Sid sported a shirt and pants that once belonged to Haymitch. They were up front by the Justice Building, being fussed over by uniformed people. A camera was set up a few feet away from them, pointing in their direction. A woman with pink hair started brushing Willamae’s cheeks with powder. The Gamemakers intended this to be a big day for the Quell, if not the final day, and they wanted reaction shots of the Abernathy’s and of Twelve’s citizens for their show.

At ten o’clock, all of the screens turned on. They displayed Haymitch kneeling over the frail little girl, Wellie, who laid beneath a bush. The girl was trembling, so thin she looked skeletal. Haymitch gave her Maysilee’s dart gun, and told Wellie that he was going to try to find some dry wood to make a little fire. He spoke to her in a very gentle, soothing tone, similar to the one he used with Sid when he was being fussy. But Wellie wasn’t having it.

“No, don’t leave me,” the girl pleaded. Haymitch tried to assure her, to no avail. “Don’t leave me.”

Even her voice sounded like death itself. Clerk Carmine couldn’t stand it. The state of the girl disturbed him so much that his whole body went cold, even in the sweltering heat.

Haymitch left anyway. Every fear that Wellie had about being left alone was proven right. The Career girl appeared, axe in hand. Clerk Carmine closed his eyes as the entire audience groaned, hating Haymitch with every fiber of his being. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Stupid boy, how could he have not guessed that this would happen? Is he that foolish, or was he only pretending to care about Wellie’s wellbeing? He just prayed that Wellie’s death would be quick.

Wellie was too weak to move. With what strength she had, she shot a poisoned dart at the Career. Her aim was good, but not good enough; it hit the Career’s arm, but didn’t seem to break skin, and instead hung off of her sleeve. The Career had a crazed look in her eyes; wild, feral, like she wasn’t there in reality anymore. She raised her axe, and Clerk Carmine’s whole body became tight, like he was the one bracing for the blow. She brought down the axe onto Wellie’s neck. Wellie convulsed, blood spewing everywhere. The audience cried out.

The injury wasn’t anything Wellie could survive, but that did not seem to occur to the Career. She struck the axe down again and again, until she had fully decapitated Wellie. She was heaving. Then, she picked up Wellie’s head by her hair, staring at it with an intense curiosity. The audience lost it then. Everyone screamed; some people fainted, some people vomited. Tam Amber held onto Clerk Carmine’s arm, pressing his face into his shoulder, repeating, “Tell me when it’s over.” Clerk Carmine was grateful for the support of Tam Amber’s hold; he was fighting hard against the urge to run away and puke.

Finally, Haymitch returned. His face went pale when he saw the Career. She was covered in splatterings of Wellie’s blood, holding the dripping severed head over its small limp body. He took a step back, said in a quivering voice, “What did you do?” The Career insisted that Wellie had attacked her first, and by the sound of her voice, how unearthly and disconnected it was, Clerk Carmine knew his assessment of her had been right, she wasn’t all there anymore.

There was a shift in Haymitch. Something inside of him had snapped. A rageful insanity seemed to take hold of him. With that, the crazed children lifted their weapons and charged at each other.

Once, when Clerk Carmine was ten, and Billy Taupe fourteen, his older brother took him in the woods to practice hunting from trees. It was an autumn day, and most of the leaves had fallen to the ground. They scaled up an oak tree, where Billy Taupe showed him how to aim the arrow on his bow at potential prey below.

Clerk Carmine spotted a small black bear cub a few meters away, trotting over in their direction. He pointed out the creature to his brother. Billy Taupe gasped and clamped his hand over Clerk Carmine’s mouth.

“Don’t fucking move,” Billy Taupe whispered. “If there’s a cub, there’s a mom nearby. And she’ll come after us.”

Clerk Carmine went silent, frozen with fear. Coming from behind them, the load growl of a bear sent shivers through his body. He listened to the sound of the bear running. The cub let out a shout, and started running away as the bear chased after it. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, another adult black bear sprinted to the one below them. The animals roared and jumped up on their hind legs. They bit, scratched, smacked, and wrestled each other until they were each reduced to a bloody pulp.

The way Haymitch and the Career fought reminded Clerk Carmine of those bears. It was pure, animalistic rage unleashed. No one held back their strength. Haymitch gouged the girl’s eye out with his knife, the girl slashed Haymitch’s stomach open with her axe. Clerk Carmine could hear Willamae scream even over the thunderous sound of the crowd. He was sure the camera was pointed right at her, displaying her maternal horror to the entire country. Haymitch’s intestines started to tumble out, held in place only by his hand. Clerk Carmine thought it had to be over, but he was wrong once more. Haymitch fled from the Career, staggering with what remaining energy he had. The Career chased him until they came to the edge of the cliff, the end of the arena.

With Haymitch cornered, she threw her axe, a perfect aim to his head. Haymitch dropped down to the ground and the axe flew past him. It ricocheted against the force field, flying back and lodging into her forehead. The Career collapsed, emitted a gurgling sound, and stilled. The camera panned to Haymitch, whose intestines slid out from his hand and onto the dirt besides him. Then, the broadcast went black.

For a split moment, the only sound that could be heard was of Willamae Abernathy crying for her boy. Then, the audience stirred, as if waking from a dream. Everyone murmured, their collective confusion apparent. The Career surely died instantly – no one could survive a blow to the head like that. But Haymitch had also looked dead before the cameras cut. People debated whether or not they had seen him breathing in those last few seconds. And if he was still miraculously alive when the cameras cut, how much longer would he have? In Twelve, his injuries would be an immediate death sentence. But perhaps the Capitol could conduct a miracle.

Clerk Carmine was skeptical. They had their show, did it really matter if the last tribute standing stood for much longer? He knew firsthand that Coriolanus Snow did not care if a victor lived.

They were told to remain put until further notice. The crowd stood restlessly for over an hour, when the screens flickered back on, and the Head Gamemaker addressed the nation.

“Phew! What a fight, huh?” he said, with a jovialness that was more suited for a horse race. “I’m sure you’re all sitting on the edge of your seats to find out who won this spectacular Quarter Quell! Well, it was a close call. I mean, who could survive an axe to a head, or being disemboweled?” He laughed. “I’m happy to tell you that our victor’s condition has been stabilized by our very best doctors. Which means, the winner of the 50th Hunger Games is… our favorite rascal, District Twelve’s Haymitch Abernathy!”

All of District Twelve roared. People hugged, kissed each other, jumped up and down and pumped up their fists. Willamae and Sid were displayed on the big screen, their tears of joy for all to see. Clerk Carmine felt himself crying, too.

It wasn’t until Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber went to the base that they realized that the Games were far from over. They intended to retrieve their niece, but they were told by the man at the front desk that she hadn’t been given permission to be freed yet.

“Permission by who?” Clerk Carmine demanded. “We were told by YOU GUYS that she’d be let go once the Games were over!”

“That’s beyond my scope of knowledge,” the Peacekeeper said.

“Well, we aren’t leaving here until we know what’s going on,” Clerk Carmine said.

The Peacekeeper sighed, and said that he would make a few calls. A few minutes later, he told them, “Nothing is set on when your niece will be freed, I’m afraid. Commander says its orders from the Capitol. That’s all I can say, I’m afraid.”

“Can we see her, at least?” Tam Amber asked.

“I’m afraid not,” the Peacekeeper said.

“This is bullshit!” Clerk Carmine bellowed. He started towards the Peacekeeper, violence pumping through his veins.

Tam Amber pressed his hand against Clerk Carmine’s chest, gently pushing him back. Clerk Carmine didn’t resist. “We understand,” Tam Amber said to the Peacekeeper carefully. “Can you at least tell her about Haymitch winning? She’s been sick with worry.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” the Peacekeeper said.

Clerk Carmine’s mind raced the entire way home. “Orders from the Capitol”. What did the Capitol care about some little girl from District Twelve?

Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber discussed the situation at length. They realized this had to do something with Haymitch’s usage of the force field. They couldn’t think of what else it could be. Haymitch probably assumed that if the force field was there, it was up to being used for his survival; but with how crazed Coriolanus Snow was, he probably saw that as cheating. And somehow, word got back to the Capitol that Haymitch was dating Lenore Dove. How else would Lenore Dove be able to call Haymitch before the night before the Games?

They recognized that they would sound paranoid and crazy to anyone else. But they knew, somehow, someway, Coriolanus was behind all of this. This was the same man who followed Lucy Gray across the country to punish her because HE got in trouble for cheating. Why wouldn’t he punish Haymitch and his Covey girlfriend for the same thing?

Their suspicions felt more verified as the days went on. Lucy Gray had been returned to District Twelve two days after her Hunger Games; they were going on a week and there was still no sign of Haymitch. And, there was the fact that they felt like they were being watched. The day after Haymitch won, the Peacekeeper patrols went back to normal. People weren’t being stopped in the streets at random; the familiar Peacekeepers were allowed to laze around the district as they had before. But this was not the case for the Coveys. Armed Peacekeepers marched by their home at the top of every hour, and a couple of times, Clerk Carmine caught them roaming the meadow.

A week had passed since the end of the Games. No Haymitch, and Lenore Dove was still locked up. Clerk Carmine walked back from trading at the Hob and noticed that armed Peacekeepers loitering around the Abernathy’s house. He knew his suspicions were right. Coriolanus was plotting something.

Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine agreed that they needed to talk to Willamae, despite the obvious dangers. It would be unfair and unsafe to keep her in the dark. They went to her house that night.

The Covey men sat down at the old chairs around Willamae’s dining table as she poured them glasses of water. She apologized for not having anything to give them to eat. “It’s so hard to afford food without Haymitch’s income,” she said as she handed them the glasses.

They told her not to worry. Clerk Carmine asked her where Sid was. She said he was sleeping.

“Good,” he said. “We need to tell you something, and you cannot repeat it to anyone. Not even Sid.”

She nodded, and they told her everything. About Lucy Gray, her Hunger Games and disappearance, her relationship to Coriolanus Snow, how they felt like they were being watched, how they believed Coriolanus was punishing Haymitch for cheating and was the reason Lenore Dove was still in custody.

It took a moment for Willamae to digest the information. Then, she began shivering, holding herself and pressing her lips together, as if to hold in a cry. When she spoke, her voice was soft, terrified. “He’s going to kill my baby. If he hasn’t already.”

Tam Amber put his hand on Willamae’s shoulder. “We don’t know that for sure. We just want you to know the whole situation. So we can both watch out for each other.”

“They won’t tell me anything. I have no idea when he’s coming back. And they’re not showing him on TV anymore. Usually the victors come home after a few days and they film the whole thing. Sid’s too afraid to leave the house. What do they want with us if they already have my first son?”

She held her face in her hands. Tam Amber rubbed her back.

“Tell me this is all a dream,” she whispered. “A long, horrible dream. And that when I wake up, Haymitch will be here, like he was always supposed to be.”

They couldn’t, and didn’t.

Another week passed. No Haymitch, no Lenore Dove, more patrolling. Then, on the fifteenth day, disaster. Early in the morning, the smoke coated the sky, the flames licked up so high they almost looked like sunrise. District Twelve hadn’t seen a fire beyond the mines this severe in decades. Clerk Carmine watched from the end of the hill his house stood on. Tam Amber watched alongside him, both men silent, petrified. More neighbors came out to watch. Then, minutes later, people from other streets filled in, shouting out, “Water, please, water!”

“What’s going on?” a neighbor asked.

“It’s the Abernathy’s!” they replied.

Clerk Carmine ran back into his home, a scared little boy once more. It was true, Coriolanus had found them again, his rage stronger than ever.

Henry came by later to tell them what happened. The Abernathy’s home caught fire, and Willamae and Sid were killed. Worst of all, Haymitch had returned just in time to see it all unfold. He’d been so hysterical that he could only be calmed by sleep syrup. His friends carried him to Victor’s Village, his new home.

Clerk Carmine pressed his head against the wall. He felt dizzy. He told Henry to go home, that he needed to rest. He’d told Henry a little bit about Lucy Gray before, but nothing about her relationship with Coriolanus Snow, and he refused to tell Henry about anything that was going on now. He didn’t want Henry caught up in their trouble. Clerk Carmine knew that his days on earth were limited; he wanted Henry to have a long, happy life after he was gone.

Tam Amber suggested that they see Haymitch, if only to console him. Clerk Carmine shook his head. “No, we need to stay away from him for now. We’re already being watched. We don’t need to be seen with him.”

They received a knock on the door early in the morning the following day. A Peacekeeper. “Your niece will be released from custody today. We’ll take you over to pick her up.”

Dazed, Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine followed the Peacekeeper into the big van parked outside of their home. Clerk Carmine wondered if they had been tricked, and they were being taken to be hanged. Truthfully, Clerk Carmine didn’t care, as long as he saw Lenore Dove once more.

It turned out, they weren’t being tricked. They were let out of the van and taken immediately to Lenore Dove. They opened her cell, and said, “She’s free to go.”

Disbelief, and then blinding happiness. Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine wrapped their arms around her at the same time, crying with relief. She was so, so small, her clothes hanging off of her in a way they hadn’t before. She’d lost a tremendous amount of weight in the two weeks since they’d last seen her, as if she hadn’t been given anything but water in that time. Oh, how Clerk Carmine wished he had brought some jerky to give her, or had a bit of cash on him to buy her some bread!

“Where’s Haymitch? Is he okay?” Lenore Dove asked.

“We’ll talk about it when we get home. Alright?” Clerk Carmine said.

They began their journey back, slowly, as Lenore Dove was so weak with hunger. It wasn’t until later that Clerk Carmine realized this was his niece’s death march.

Chapter Text

Mayor Allister had invited the Covey to perform for his birthday dinner. It was mid April and rained the entire evening. The pattering of rain against the windows, along with the crackle of the lit fireplace, accompanied the Covey’s music beautifully. Lenore Dove played the piano, Tam Amber strummed his mandolin, and Clerk Carmine used his fiddle, while Mayor Allister and his guests dined and chatted amongst themselves.

They played a lively song after dinner, one that had all of the guests clapping and stomping along. They applauded and cheered when the song finished. Then, Mayor Allister shouted, “I have a request!”

“Anything!” Clerk Carmine said, bowing playfully.

“Sing us something sad,” Mayor Allister. “I know it sounds strange, but I feel that sad songs are suited for the period between dinner and dessert.”

The Covey whispered to each other, deciding which song to play. Lenore Dove suggested an old one, from before the floods claimed most of what used to be North America. A few moments later, Lenore Dove tapped away on the piano, while Clerk Carmine’s voice filled the room:

“I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real.”

-

The day after Lenore Dove died, all of her geese flew away.

-

“The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
To try kill it all away
But I remember everything.”

-

Clerk Carmine had done everything he possibly could’ve to keep Lenore Dove safe. He knew that. And still, in the weeks after her death, all he could do was ruminate on where he went wrong. If he had done one thing different, would she still be here today?

Lenore Dove was the light of his life. His sun, his reason for living. Without her, there was no point in anything. He didn’t need to work all those shifts housecleaning, because he didn’t need the extra money. He didn’t need to trade goat cheese, milk, or pelts at the Hob, because he didn’t care if he skipped a meal or went without new shoes. He didn’t need to leave his house, because he knew when he returned, Lenore Dove still wouldn’t be there.

He clustered himself in his home, and spent copious amounts of time staring at the wall. He didn’t mean to, he just didn’t have the will or energy to get up or do anything. The roof could cave down on him and he wouldn’t care. He’d just lay there, pinned under the rotting wood, until he died of thirst.

He’d fought so hard to protect her. He’d been fighting since the moment she’d been born. “Please, just keep my baby alive,” Maude Ivory had begged him. Her dying request. All for it to end like this. Her baby, killed by the only man Maude Ivory ever hated.

Like the geese, Tam Amber left after Lenore Dove died. Packed a small bag and left. Clerk Carmine initially believed he’d gone into the woods to kill himself. He searched for a body for days, finding nothing. He resigned himself to the fact that Tam Amber had joined Lucy Gray to wherever she had gone.

A couple of weeks later, Tam Amber returned, carrying a deer carcass. He laid the creature on the kitchen table and began butchering it. He said nothing, and neither did Clerk Carmine. After spending the night cutting and salting the meat, Tam Amber left again the next morning. He returned about a week later, this time with a bucket of fish. Clerk Carmine realized where he was going then. Tam Amber was spending his days in that old cabin by the lake, living off the land, coming back with some of his catches to make sure Clerk Carmine was eating.

This became Tam Amber’s new routine. He’d come back every so often with food, spend the night, and would leave in the morning. During his short visits, Tam Amber wouldn’t utter a word. Clerk Carmine didn’t mind, in fact he understood. There wasn’t anything left to say.

-

“The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
To try kill it all away
But I remember everything.”

-

Henry came over once a day with a pot of food. He’d make Clerk Carmine eat while he tidied up the house. He talked about trivial, pleasant things, in an attempt to lighten Clerk Carmine’s mood. Only once did Henry bring up Haymitch.

“That relative of yours talked to me, Burdock,” Henry said. “He’s not sure how to talk to you about this, if you even want to hear it. But he’s worried about Haymitch. He’s locked himself in that big house of his, and refuses to see anyone.”

Clerk Carmine recalled the way Haymitch sobbed for Lenore Dove, the way he held her lifeless body. The way he ran away when Clerk Carmine screamed at him to go. “You’ve killed her!” Clerk Carmine told him.

Now, all Clerk Carmine could say: “Mm.”

-

“What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end

And you can have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt.”

-

His money ran out in October. He considered joining Tam Amber in the woods. He also considered hanging himself. He decided that he needed to start working again. He dressed himself nicely for the first time in months and started out to town.

Everything outside reminded him of Lenore Dove. The red and orange tree leaves, so similar to the color of her hair in sunlight. The dark grass, the same shade as her eyes. He passed by the field where she liked to run around with Burdock as a kid. He passed by the bench where she liked to sit and read. The smell of bread wafted over from Mellark’s, and he could only think of how she would’ve begged him for a couple of coins to buy a roll.

Clerk Carmine knocked on the door of the Donner’s. Mr. Donner answered. He was clean shaven, his graying blonde hair neat, his clothes crisply ironed. But he seemed aged somehow, the lines in his face much more pronounced.

“Clerk Carmine,” Mr. Donner said with soft surprise. He looked him over. “It feels like it’s been years.”

“I know,” he said. “I hate to ask. And it’s okay if you’re found another housecleaner. But, I need to start working again. Could I…?”

Without hesitation, Mr. Donner said, “Of course. You can start any time. We should catch up. Come in.”

Mr. Donner led him to the living room, and set a tray down on the coffee table that carried cookies and two cups of tea. Clerk Carmine sipped the tea. Mr. Donner sat down on the couch next to him.

“Where are the ladies?” Clerk Carmine asked.

“Upstairs, in their rooms,” Mr. Donner said, grabbing his cup. His face became tense. “They’ve both been rather ill lately. My wife, she gets these panic attacks now. The only thing that can soothe her is sleep syrup. She sleeps half of the day. And Merrilee… she’s just so different. More withdrawn and melancholic. And she gets migraines frequently. They hurt her so bad, all she can do is lay in her bed with the curtains drawn and all the lights off. She’s missed a lot of school because of them. The March’s say migraines can happen from stress. But Merrilee refuses the sleep syrup. I don’t blame her. I know how addictive that stuff is. My wife can’t go a day without taking some.”

Clerk Carmine stared down at the cookies, trying to process everything.

“And you? How are you?” asked Mr. Donner.

He was so in his own head that his vision split.

“Well, I haven’t killed myself yet.”

-

“I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar’s chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair.”

-

Clerk Carmine contracted his own unique illness. He woke up at least once a night, laying on his back, unable to move. In the corner of his room, blue eyes bright even in the dark, was Coriolanus Snow. Not the president, the Peacekeeper. A small teenage boy with a shaved head and face free of any alterations.

He saw him every night. No matter how hard he tried, Clerk Carmine couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. He was paralyzed, forced to look at Coriolanus looking at him.

Sometimes, instead of standing in the corner, Clerk Carmine would wake up feeling a pressure on his chest, and open his eyes to find Coriolanus sitting on top of him. The pressure would increase until Clerk Carmine couldn’t breathe.

Then, Clerk Carmine would blink, and Coriolanus would be gone, and he could move again. He’d curl up onto his side and cry.

-

“Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here.”

-

Clerk Carmine began playing the fiddle again. He didn’t have it in him to perform for others, not even Henry. Now, he played the fiddle like someone who had been bed ridden for weeks, and needed to learn to walk again. Slow, tentatively. The only song he played was “The Raven”, Lenore Dove’s ballad.

He had another dream of Coriolanus. When he was gone, Clerk Carmine sat up right, gasping for breath. He wiped the tears from his eyes, knew he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t calm himself. He turned on the lights, a childlike fear of the dark claiming him. He then grabbed his fiddle and played “The Raven”. His body relaxed, swaying with the melody.

Then, a banging on the door. Clerk Carmine practically dropped his fiddle. He stood up, and listened. Had he imagined it? Was he still dreaming?

More banging, even louder. And then, Haymitch’s voice, demanding. “Where is she? Where is she?” He was hysterical. Furious.

Clerk Carmine began to shake. Images of Haymitch in the area flooded his head, the way he killed so many mercilessly. Now, he was here to kill Clerk Carmine.

He told himself this wasn’t real, this was another dream. But the banging continued. And the yelling.

“Where is she!”

Clerk Carmine went downstairs and grabbed his largest knife. He waited for Haymitch to break down the door, to disarm him like he had the Careers, and slit his throat. Haymitch screamed and screamed, but never entered the house. Eventually, Haymitch gave up. Clerk Carmine could hear the boy sobbing as he walked back down the hill.
-

“What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end.”

-

Clerk Carmine began cutting again, too. It was something he’d done as a teenager, a way to cope with the loss of Billy Taupe and Lucy Gray. He’d run the edge of a knife across the soft flesh of his thigh, watch the crimson bubble up to the surface. Then, he’d clean it with a bit of white liquor, and wrap it with cloth.

He’d stopped when Barb Azure caught him. She’d been so sad, holding him and begging him not to do that again. “I can’t ever see you hurting,” she’d said.

More than ever, he wished he could talk to her. She’d lost several children, she’d know what to say, how to help him through this. He needed her.

But like the rest of the Covey, she wasn’t there. So he cut himself open again, tracing one of his old scars.

-

“And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt.”

 

-

Haymitch left in November for his Victory Tour. He was all they showed on TV, his picture was on the front of every newspaper and magazine. Handsome, smiling, wearing the finest clothes and a glittery crown. “Panem’s Rascal Celebrates the Greatest Win in Hunger Games History!” the headlines said.

On what would’ve been Lenore Dove’s seventeenth birthday, Clerk Carmine watched Haymitch laugh at a party in the Capitol, a cocktail in his hand. By his side was Coriolanus Snow, staring at him intently.

-

The crescendo of Lenore Dove’s piano. Clerk Carmine’s voice soared alongside.

“If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way.”

-

 

Tam Amber returned for good a week before the 51st Hunger Games. He began speaking again, though sparsely, like he had as a boy. He wasn’t the same, Clerk Carmine knew. He never would be.

They attended the Reaping, as was required. They quietly took their spots in the general quarter of the crowd. No one to wish luck to, no one to console.

Drusilla came on stage, cheery as ever. She introduced Haymitch, expecting a voracious response. Instead, Haymitch walked up to tepid applause. His face was displayed on the big screen; Clerk Carmine could tell by the way his eyes that he was drunk.

Two kids from the Seam were reaped. A fifteen-year-old girl and a boy from Haymitch’s grade. Haymitch wrapped his arms around the two of them, forcefully pressing them to his sides. He grinned that stupid, rascal grin the people of the Capitol found charming.

“Now the fun begins!” Haymitch shouted, his words slurred. The tributes, as well as the audience, grimaced.

Clerk Carmine felt panicky, like he couldn’t breathe, like his heart was about to stop beating. He rushed home, trying to gulp in air, feeling like his lungs could only fill up halfway. He paced around, spotted Billy Taupe’s, Lenore Dove’s accordion, and smacked it off of the shelf it sat upon. Its keys clanked against the floor. He screamed obscenities at it. He never wanted to see that stupid fucking accordion ever again. Clerk Carmine grabbed it off the floor, snatched a shovel from the shed, and made off to the woods.

It took him hours to get there. He cried, then calmed, then considered turning back, then told himself he made it this far, he might as well keep going. He reached the grove, and tears filled his eyes once more. He went inside, into the graveyard. He hadn’t been since Lenore Dove’s funeral.

He stood over Lenore Dove’s grave. To his surprise, a gravestone with lyrics from her ballad sat at the head. Tam Amber must’ve made it while he was alone at the cabin. A tear fell from his eye and plopped onto the stone, wetting a spot of it. He placed the accordion down beside it, and began digging. He made it an inch into the ground when he uncovered a metal object. Clerk Carmine crouched down, wiped away the dirt, and saw that it was the flint striker Tam Amber had welded for Haymitch. Lenore Dove’s birthday gift to him last year, his token in the arena.

How had Haymitch discovered her grave? Regardless, Clerk Carmine took this as a sign to leave it alone. He set the striker back in the earth and reburied it.

He began digging up his brother’s grave. As he did, he realized he didn’t just want to dispose of the accordion. He also sought the comfort of a past loved one, a brief reconnection of a fleeting history. He dug until he found bone.

He reached into the earth and pulled it out. His brother’s skull, now in his two hands. His two warm, fleshy hands. He tried to scrub the dirt off, to make his brother clean and beautiful again. How long had it taken for Billy Taupe’s body to decompose? For his blood, skin, hair, organs, and even his clothes, to rot into the dirt, to be eaten away by worms? His bones had been laying in the cool, dark ground, longer than he had been alive.

Clerk Carmine held his brother’s mud caked skull against his chest, and wept in a way that felt like he was tearing in two. Everything had slipped away, everything had fallen apart.

When he was a teenager, he liked to look at himself in the mirror, not out of vanity, but because he looked so similar to his brother that he pretended he was staring at him instead of his own reflection. But he didn’t look like Billy Taupe anymore, and he hadn’t in a long, long time. His face sagged with age and was etched with wrinkles, his hair was more gray than brown now. And Billy Taupe was just bones.

Clerk Carmine placed Billy Taupe back into his grave, set his accordion on what would’ve been his belly, and shoveled the dirt on top of them.

Clerk Carmine was alone again. He set back to District Twelve.

-

A moment of silence, his last note still hanging in the air. Mayor Allister and his guests burst into applause. Clerk Carmine thanked them. He turned to look at his niece.

She was clapping, too. “Bravo!” Lenore Dove cheered. “Bravo!”

Chapter Text

Tam Amber’s health deteriorated after Lenore Dove’s death. The malnutrition he experienced as a child, along with the years of working in the mines, finally caught up to him. Clerk Carmine was in denial about it for a while. When Tam Amber said he didn’t have the strength to pull back a bow anymore, Clerk Carmine assured him that he just needed to do some more workouts to get back in shape. When Tam Amber struggled to keep up with him when they walked in the woods, Clerk Carmine brushed it off by saying he was walking too fast, anyways. When Tam Amber needed a cane to stand, or struggled to get out of bed or out of chairs, Clerk Carmine told him that this was a temporary injury.

It didn’t matter that Tam Amber had shrunk in height and weight, his hair turned white, and his eyes were now cloudy. Clerk Carmine still viewed Tam Amber as the older brother figure that took care of him after his parents died, who was there for his first steps, his first words. Who taught him everything about the world. The person that was always there to guide Clerk Carmine, to take care of him. Sure, Tam Amber certainly needed a lot more taking care of now, but again, that was temporary. He’d be back to normal soon.

It wasn’t until Tam Amber fell while trying to get out of his chair on his own. The way that Tam Amber laid on the floor, looking up at Clerk Carmine helplessly, saying with apparent embarrassment, “I can’t get up on my own.” That was when Clerk Carmine knew.

Tam Amber was completely unable to walk or stand after that fall, even with assistance. If he wanted to move out of his bed, Clerk Carmine had to carry him. After a week of this, he became increasingly incontinent, and lost his appetite. He’d eat a few bites of his meal to please Clerk Carmine and would refuse the rest.

Henry agreed to move in with them until Tam Amber passed, as Clerk Carmine felt too overwhelmed to handle this by himself. Tam Amber initially perked up with Henry’s presence, but fell into a melancholic state soon after. He slept often, and when he was awake, he spoke darkly, primarily about how he didn’t want to be alive anymore. “I want to be in the hereafter,” Tam Amber would say. “I want to see my daughter and Lenore Dove again.”

By this point, Tam Amber had to be spoonfed, and had to wear large cloth diapers that Clerk Carmine struggled to clean – the skin of this area was so thin now that it was prone to bleed. Henry began preparing for Tam Amber’s funeral. Clerk Carmine focused on keeping Tam Amber as comfortable as possible, and getting family and friends to come by and say their goodbyes.

After dinner one night, Clerk Carmine asked Tam Amber, “Any regrets?” He gave him a small smile, trying to figure out how to fill the silence.

He fully expected “no” to be his response. To his surprise, Tam Amber said, “Just one.”

His smile faded, and he drew in closer, having an overwhelming urge to embrace him, as if that would rid him of his regrets. “Tell me,” said Clerk Carmine.

“Haymitch,” Tam Amber said. “I can’t forgive myself, for the way we cast him out after.”

Clerk Carmine’s heart broke, so painfully and profoundly he felt weak. “Oh,” is all he said for a while. Then, upon great consideration, he said, “Would you like me to bring him to you?”

“If you can,” Tam Amber said with a light nod.

Clerk Carmine rose, his heart beating against his chest profusely. He clenched his jaw, and thought about asking Burdock to retrieve Haymitch. But he knew it would be no good, Burdock would say no, having never quite forgiven Haymitch for assaulting his wife Asterid. And would he really be so cowardly, refusing to be the one to do Tam Amber’s dying wish? Clerk Carmine looked to Henry for support, and his man told him that he’d watch Tam Amber while he was gone. With that, Clerk Carmine set to Victor’s Village.

Clerk Carmine always avoided Victor’s Village. It was easy enough to do, as it was so far off from anywhere he went, a twenty minute walk north of the merchant quarter of the District, and near nothing else. Clerk Carmine felt dread build within him as he approached the merchant quarter. He rehearsed in his head what he would say, over and over. He entered the town and began to feel nauseous, sweaty, and panicky. He told himself that it would be rude of him to show up empty handed, so he took a detour to the bakery.

A bell chimed when he opened the door; inside was warm and the air was fragrant with the smell of bread. Attached to the wall, at a corner by the ceiling, was a small box television playing the weekly weather report. It was empty inside besides Otho Mellark, who stood behind the register counting cash, and his eldest son, a blonde boy around four years old, sitting at a table coloring with crayons. Otho looked up when Clerk Carmine entered, and gave him a smile. “Afternoon,” he said.

Clerk Carmine nodded curtly, and cleared his throat. The initial pleasantness of the bakery’s warmth was beginning to suffocate him. “Does Haymitch Abernathy come in here much?”

Otho stuffed the cash back into the register, frowning. “No, never actually. But we deliver to him weekly. Why?”

“What does he usually like to get?”

“Sourdough, ham and cheese croissants, blueberry tarts when they’re in season… usually more of the savory stuff,” Otho said. “You getting him something?”

Clerk Carmine nodded, and Otho looked at him like he just said he was going to the moon.

“What business do you have with Haymitch?”

“I just need to see him,” Clerk Carmine said. “Anyways, whatever you think he’d like that isn’t too pricey, I’ll take.”

Otho filled a little box with half a dozen fluffy rolls, fresh out of the oven. Clerk Carmine began back towards Victor’s Village, feeling even sicker than before. Even in the cold air, he felt overly hot. He left the merchant district, following the pebbled path that led to Victor’s Village. It was guarded by an impressive, tall bronze fence, making entry feel grander than needed. Within the fence were around twelve houses, which surrounded a common area with a gazebo and a fountain with no water. Every single house was dark. Upon first look, Victor’s Village looked uninhabited. He noticed by the entrance a sign that read “residents”, with a list of the numbered houses. The only one with a name by it was number five.

Clerk Carmine walked up the white stairs of house number five, marvelling at the wrap around porch, which was covered in dirt and leaves. Clerk Carmine took a deep breath and pressed the button of the doorbell, hearing a ring echo inside of the house. Clerk Carmine waited, listening, but heard no footsteps. After a few minutes, he rang it again. And again, nothing.

“Haymitch?” Clerk Carmine called out. “It’s, uh, it’s me. Clerk Carmine. I really need to talk to you.”

Nothing. He knocked hard against the door.

“Please, Haymitch. It’s important.”

Nothing in the house stirred. Clerk Carmine got an image of Tam Amber dying while he waited for Haymitch to answer. He pounded against the door.

“Haymitch! Haymitch!”

Silence, and nothing more.

“Haymitch! I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry! For everything!” he pounded his fists against the door again. He felt almost delirious with how desperate he was. “Please, I need you! This is important!”

With still no response, Clerk Carmine left the porch and began scaling around the house, looking for a window to peer into. All were shut and shielded by black curtains, except one. There was a small opening in the curtains, allowing Clerk Carmine a glimpse inside. He could see the corner of a table, what looked like a dirty sock cast on the floor beside it. Then, an enormous black rat, the size of an adult cat, scurried by the window. Clerk Carmine was so startled by this that he leapt back from the window in fright, gasping loudly.

Something was wrong, he knew. He ran back to the front porch, practically screaming, “Haymitch! I’m coming inside!” He twisted the knob of the door, and to his relief, it was unlocked. He pushed open the door, and was slammed with a pungent, horrific odor, one of rot and mildew and vomit. Clerk Carmine gagged, but started into the house. He made it into the foyer, creeping quietly, his heart beating in his ears. The floors were filthy, coated with dust and muddy footprints. Further in, he found things thrown about, clothing and crumbled up greasy wrappers, and various broken items — a vase knocked over, shattered into pieces, a wooden chair splintered into fractions. The stench was so thick it made Clerk Carmine’s eyes water. He felt himself shaking violently, so great was his unease. A scream lodged itself in his throat.

Then, his imagination conjured up a horrible scene, of Clerk Carmine finding Haymitch dead on the floor, his decaying flesh feasted upon by rats. It was too much for him to bear; Clerk Carmine ran out of the home, crying, “I’ll get help!” Hoping there was someone there to actually hear him.

He ran out of Victor’s Village, taking himself to the first place he could think of, the Donner’s. As he bounded to the sweet shop, he saw Mr. Donner step out of the side door. Mr. Donner raised his hand for a wave, and then his face wrinkled with confusion.

“Clerk Carmine? What’s the matter?” the man asked.

Clerk Carmine stopped in front of him, panting and trembling, feeling near hysterical. “It’s Haymitch. I think something happened to him.”

“What do you mean? Why were you with Haymitch?”

Clerk Carmine told him everything.

“He’s probably sleeping,” Mr. Donner said. “He sleeps all day, and is awake at night. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.”

“I was screaming for him. How could he sleep through me screaming for him?” Clerk Carmine asked desperately. “Listen, you have to believe me, something’s wrong. I saw a rat through the window, and when I went inside, everything was wrecked, and it smelled like a dead body.”

“Are you sure it was a dead body?” Mr. Donner asked.

Truthfully, he was not sure, but the odor had been so sickly, he still didn’t want to rule it out. Clerk Carmine pleaded to the man with his eyes.

“How about I come by the house with you to check?” Mr. Donner offered. “Haymitch likes me. He might come down for me.”

“Haymitch likes you?” Clerk Carmine repeated. He hadn’t heard of Haymitch having a relationship with anyone for years.

“Well, I think so. He actually says hi to me when I see him, which is more than anyone else can get from him,” Mr. Donner said. “He’s probably waking up now. Let me call Merrilee real quick to tell her I’ll be late for dinner. She shouldn’t mind.”

Mr. Donner went back inside to make the call, then returned outside to follow Clerk Carmine to Victor’s Village. The sun had sunk under the horizon, the sky turning a deep navy color. The streetlights of the Village turned on, basking orange-gold light. Clerk Carmine braced himself for that awful smell.

Mr. Donner rang the doorbell a few times, and knocked a few more. They both tried calling out Haymitch’s name, to no avail. The house remained dark and quiet.

“Should we try going inside?” Clerk Carmine asked.

Mr. Donner shook his head definitively. “I’ve heard he sleeps with a knife, and startles easily. That’s why Hattie doesn’t deliver his liquor anymore. She went inside to drop it off, and he stabbed her.”

Clerk Carmine’s mouth fell open.

“But don’t go around telling people. Hattie was so embarrassed,” Mr. Donner said. “I only know from Merrilee, because Asterid and her parents treated Hattie’s wounds. It wasn’t anything serious, but it really shook Hattie up.”

There was a hard knot in Clerk Carmine’s throat that he couldn’t swallow. He could feel every hair on his arms standing up straight. “I had no idea, it was so bad…”

Mr. Donner nodded. “I know he’s not an easy person to like, but I can’t help but feel bad for him.”

Every inch of Clerk Carmine told him to run. He wanted to be away from this haunted house, and never return. But he forced himself to remain, waiting on that porch, occasionally knocking and ringing the doorbell. He made small talk with Mr. Donner, who told him about his new granddaughter, Madge, born eight weeks ago.

The sky grew darker, and there was still no sign of life in the house. Mr. Donner said they’d likely be waiting a while, and told Clerk Carmine that he would come back to Haymitch’s house to check on him later that night. In the meantime, Mr. Donner would drive Clerk Carmine home. Clerk Carmine creaked open the door and left the now cold box of rolls inside.

Clerk Carmine sat in the passenger’s seat on Mr. Donner’s car, watching Victor’s Village fade into the distance. He felt his nose run, and wiped it with the back of his hand. Mr. Donner handed him a handkerchief from his pocket, and when Clerk Carmine grasped it, a sob bubbled up from his chest and burst out of him. He had failed Tam Amber, and he had failed Haymitch. He pressed his face into the linen, futilely fighting to choke back his tears. Mr. Donner said nothing, only patting Clerk Carmine’s shoulder occasionally.

Tam Amber was still awake when they arrived. Mr. Donner went inside to say a few words to him; Clerk Carmine told him not to mention anything about Haymitch. After Mr. Donner left, Henry tried to ask Clerk Carmine about Haymitch, but Clerk Carmine shushed him, and shook his head. “Get some sleep,” he told Henry. “I want to spend some time with Tam Amber.”

Henry gave him a kiss goodnight and went up to the attic for bed. Clerk Carmine knelt down beside Tam Amber, fixing his head on his pillow and pulling his blanket up higher.

“Do you want tea?” Clerk Carmine asked.

Tam Amber shook his head. “Where’s Haymitch?”

A pang in his chest. “He has a bit of a cold,” Clerk Carmine said. “He didn’t want to get any of us sick.”

“Oh,” Tam Amber said softly. “But did you tell him?”

Clerk Carmine blinked back tears. “Yes. I told him everything. He said he forgives you.”

Tam Amber’s face relaxed. “Good. Then all is well.”

“All is well,” Clerk Carmine said, his voice breaking.

Mr. Donner was unable to reach Haymitch that night, not that it mattered. Tam Amber was dead by morning.

Clerk Carmine was inconsolable. This was unlike any other death for him. For every Covey he’d lost before, he had at least one other to help him through the grief. He always had Tam Amber. Billy Taupe, Lucy Gray, Maude Ivory, Barb Azure, Lenore Dove — Tam Amber had always been there, for him to lean on. Now he was all alone. “Just kill me too,” Clerk Carmine would wail into Henry’s arms. “Just kill me too!”

Barb Azure’s living relatives organized the funeral. It wasn’t until they buried him, between his daughter and Lenore Dove, that Clerk Carmine realized that he would have to be the one to make his gravestone. He didn’t know how, he’d never bothered to learn. Another way he had failed Tam Amber.

Clerk Carmine walked through life like a ghost. He said very little, and could barely force a smile. He couldn’t stand being in that house all alone, either; he stayed over at Henry’s each night, and only came by to feed and milk the goats. Grief clouded everything. He could barely think straight.

A few weeks after Tam Amber’s death, while Clerk Carmine sat at his booth at the Hob to sell goat cheese and milk, he finally saw Haymitch. He walked in slowly, his boots squeaking against the floor, wet from melted snow. He wore a big, puffy black winter jacket, one that no one else, not even the richest merchant families, could afford in District Twelve. He walked past Clerk Carmine’s booth without looking at him, and Clerk Carmine silently took in more of his appearance. Haymitch was barely an adult, only twenty-three, and yet he already looked like an old man. His face was saggy, and he had dark circles hanging below his eyes, which appeared, even from afar, bloodshot. His skin was yellowed and his beard was scraggly and rough looking. He walked with a slouch, hands buried deep in the pockets of his too expensive jacket. He made eye contact with no one.

Clerk Carmine watched him go to Hattie’s booth and order a few bottles of white liquor. He noticed how Hattie refused to look Haymitch in the face. This young man, who she used to rave about when he worked for her, she was now clearly terrified of.

“Have a good day,” Hattie said.

Haymitch grunted in reply. He began to pass by Clerk Carmine’s booth again. Clerk Carmine’s heart lunged up into his throat. He needed to tell him about Tam Amber, about how sorry he was. About how sorry they both were.

“Haymitch,” Clerk Carmine said.

Haymitch stopped, his head darting in the direction of Clerk Carmine’s voice. When was the last time he heard someone say his name? Clerk Carmine wondered. Haymitch’s eyes fell upon Clerk Carmine – his gray irises, ancient and piercing.

“Me?” Haymitch asked. Even the one, simple word coming from his mouth was so slurred. He hobbled over to Clerk Carmine’s booth, and as he came closer, Clerk Carmine could see just how drunk he was. He couldn’t coordinate his feet; he bumped into Clerk Carmine’s table, rattling his bottles of milk and knocking a glass over. Haymitch stared at the milk spilling onto the floor as if he were mesmerized. “Shit.”

“It’s okay,” Clerk Carmine said. He felt himself recoil from the young man; Haymitch reeked of liquor and body odor.

Haymitch stared as Clerk Carmine cleaned up the milk. He heard the young man muttering something incoherent.

“Sorry?” Clerk Carmine asked.

Haymitch spoke louder, but Clerk Carmine still could not make him out. Clerk Carmine gave him a polite smile, feigning like he understood. He resigned to the fact that he couldn’t tell him about Tam Amber. Was Haymitch even aware he was here? He easily could have been blacked out, a dead man walking.

Haymitch let out a wicked, chortled laugh, apparently pleased by Clerk Carmine’s response. “Some visitor,” Haymitch slurred.

Clerk Carmine’s stomach sank. “What?”

But Haymitch was already walking away to the Hob’s exit. “Some visitor!” he hollered to no one.