The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

by Suzanne Collins

Mayfair appeared and closed the window. Then she drew the curtain, blocking the light and concealing Billy Taupe. The bushes rustled, and the moment had passed.

  “Coryo?” Sejanus had returned for him. “You coming?”

  “Sorry, just lost in thought,” said Coriolanus.

  Sejanus nodded to the house. “It reminds me of the Capitol.”

  “You don’t say home,” Coriolanus pointed out.

  “No. For me, that will always be District Two,” Sejanus confirmed. “But it doesn’t matter. I’ll probably never see either place again.”

  As they walked back, Coriolanus wondered about his own odds of seeing the Capitol again. Before Sejanus came, he’d thought they were zero. But if he could return as an officer, maybe even a war hero, things might be different. Of course, then he’d need a war to excel in, just as Sejanus needed one in order to be a medic.

  Coriolanus’s shoulders relaxed when the gates of the base closed behind him. He washed his face and crawled into his bunk above Beanpole’s inebriated snores. His pulse beat in his swollen lip as he replayed the evening. It had all gone like a dream — seeing Lucy Gray, hearing her sing, her joy at the sight of him — until Billy Taupe had showed up and spoiled the reunion. It was just another reason to hate Billy Taupe, although seeing the Covey’s rejection of him was deeply satisfying. It confirmed that Lucy Gray belonged to him.

  Sunday breakfast brought the bad news that, because of the previous evening’s altercation, no soldier was to leave the base alone. The higher-ups were even considering placing the Hob off-limits. Smiley, Bug, and Beanpole, although hungover and bruised from the night before, bemoaned the state of things, having nothing to look forward to if their Saturday outings were canceled. Sejanus only cared because Coriolanus cared, recognizing that this was just one more hurdle to seeing Lucy Gray.

  “Maybe she’ll visit you here?” he suggested as they cleared their trays.

  “Can she do that?” Coriolanus asked, but then hoped she wouldn’t, even if she could. He had little unscheduled time, and where would they even be allowed to talk? Through the fence? How would that be viewed? Caught up as he had been in the romance of the previous evening, he’d been planning to greet her publicly with a kiss, but in hindsight, that would’ve brought on a barrage of questions from his bunkmates, and doubtless raised a few eyebrows among the officers. Their whole history, including his forced enlistment, would come out, and with it his cheating in the Games. In addition, given the troubles between the locals and the Peacekeepers, it would be wise to keep the relationship private. Whispering through the fence might encourage rumors that he was a rebel sympathizer or, even worse, a spy. No, if they were going to meet, he would have to go to her. Secretly. Today would be a rare opportunity to track her down, but he’d need a buddy to leave the base.

  “I think we’d better keep things between us a secret. She might get in trouble if she came here. Sejanus, did you have plans today, or —” he began.

  “She lives in a place called the Seam,” said Sejanus. “Near the woods.”

  “What?” said Coriolanus.

  “I asked one of the miners last night. Very casually.” Sejanus smiled. “Don’t worry, he was too drunk to remember. And yes, I’d be happy to go with you.”

  Sejanus told their bunkmates they were heading into town to see if they could swap a pack of Capitol chewing gum for letter paper, but the ruse proved unnecessary, as all the mates took their abused bodies back to their bunks right after breakfast. Coriolanus wished he had money for a gift of some kind, but he had nary a cent. As they passed the mess hall on the way out, his eyes fell on the ice machine, and he had an idea. In this hot weather, the soldiers were permitted to take the ice freely for their drinks, or to cool off. Rubbing cubes over their bodies provided a little relief in the sauna of a kitchen.

  Cookie, who he’d won over with his diligent dish washing, gave Coriolanus an old plastic bag. The day being so hot, he agreed it would be all right to take some ice on their outing to ward off heatstroke. Coriolanus didn’t know if the Covey had a freezer, but by the looks of the houses he’d passed on his way to the hanging, he thought that might be a luxury few could afford. Anyway, the ice was free, and he didn’t want to go empty-handed.

  They signed out at the gate, where the guard cautioned them to be careful, and walked off in what they remembered to be the general direction of the town square. Coriolanus felt apprehensive. With the mines shut down for the day, though, a hush lay over the district, and the few people they passed ignored them. Only a small bakery stood open in the town square, its doors propped wide to allow a breeze to temper the heat of the ovens. The owner, a beet-faced woman, had little interest in providing directions to nonpaying customers, so Sejanus bartered his fancy chewing gum for a loaf of bread. Relenting, she took them out on the square and pointed at the street they were to follow to the Seam.

  Beyond the town center, the Seam sprawled out for miles, the regular streets quickly dissolving into a web of smaller, unmarked lanes that rose up and then petered out for no discernible reason. Some boasted rows of worn, identical houses; others had makeshift structures it would be generous to call shacks. Many homes were so shored up, patched up, or broken down that their original framework was nothing but a memory. Many others had been abandoned and scavenged for their parts.

  With no grid, no landmark of note, Coriolanus lost his bearings almost immediately, and his unease returned. Once in a while, they’d pass someone sitting on their stoop or in the shade of their homes. None of them looked the least bit friendly. The only sociable creatures were the gnats, whose fascination with his injured lip required constant shooing. As the sun beat down on them, condensation from the melting bag of ice left a splotch on his pant leg. Coriolanus’s enthusiasm began dissolving as well. The intoxication he’d experienced the night before in the Hob, the heady mix of liquor and yearning, seemed like a feverish dream now. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

  “Really?” asked Sejanus. “I’m pretty sure we’re headed in the right direction. See the trees over there?”

  Coriolanus made out a fringe of green in the distance. He trudged along thinking with fondness of his bunk and remembering that Sunday meant fried baloney and potatoes. Maybe he was not cut out to be a lover. Maybe he was more of a loner at heart. Coriolanus Snow, more loner than lover. One thing about Billy Taupe, he reeked of passionate feelings. Is that what Lucy Gray wanted? Passion, music, liquor, moonlight, and a wild boy who embraced them all? Not a perspiring Peacekeeper showing up at her door on a Sunday morning with a split lip and a sagging bag of ice.

  He gave over the lead to Sejanus, following him up and down cinder paths without comment. Eventually, his companion would grow tired, and they could go back and catch up on their letter writing. Sejanus, Tigris, his friends, the faculty, all of them had been dead wrong about him. He’d never been motivated by love or ambition, only a desire to get his prize and a nice, quiet bureaucratic job pushing papers around and leaving him plenty of time to attend tea parties. Cowardly and . . . what had Dean Highbottom called her? Oh, yes, vapid. Vapid, like his mother. What a disappointment he’d have been to Crassus Xanthos Snow.

  “Listen,” said Sejanus, catching his arm.

  Coriolanus paused and lifted his head. A high-pitched voice pierced the morning air with a melancholy tune. Maude Ivory? They made for the source of the music. At the end of a path at the edge of the Seam, a small wooden house tilted at a precarious angle, like a tree in a stiff wind. The dirt patch of a front yard was deserted, so they picked their way around the clumps of wildflowers, in various states of bloom and decay, that appeared to have been transplanted without much rhyme or reason. When they reached the back of the house, they discovered Maude Ivory sitting on a makeshift stoop in an old dress two sizes too big for her. She was cracking nuts on a cinder block with a rock, beating time to her song.

  “Oh, my darling” —
crack — “Oh, my darling” — crack — “Oh, my darling, Clementine!” — crack. She looked up and grinned when she saw them. “I know you!” Brushing the stray nutshells from her frock, she ran into the house.

  Coriolanus wiped his face on his sleeve, hoping his lip wouldn’t look too bad when Lucy Gray appeared. Instead Maude Ivory came out with a sleepy Barb Azure, who had twisted her hair up in a hasty knot. Like Maude Ivory, she’d changed her costume for a dress you might see on anyone in District 12. “Good morning,” she said. “You looking for Lucy Gray?”

  “He’s her friend from the Capitol,” Maude Ivory reminded her. “The one who introduced her on the television, only he’s near bald now. He gave me the popcorn balls.”

  “Well, we certainly enjoyed those and appreciate all you did for Lucy Gray,” said Barb Azure. “I expect you’ll find her down in the Meadow. That’s where she goes early to work, so as not to disturb the neighbors.”

  “I’ll show you. Let me!” Maude Ivory hopped off the porch and took Coriolanus’s hand, as if they were old friends. “It’s this way.”

  With no younger siblings or other relatives, Coriolanus had little experience with kids, but it made him feel special, the way she’d attached herself to him, the cool little hand pressed trustingly in his. “So, you saw me on the television?”

  “Just the one night. It was clear and Tam Amber used a lot of foil. Usually, we can’t get anything but static, but it’s special we even have a television,” explained Maude Ivory. “Most don’t. Not that there’s much to watch but that boring old news anyway.”

  Dr. Gaul could go on all she wanted about engaging people in the Hunger Games, but if practically no one in the districts had a working television, the impact would be confined to the reaping, when everyone gathered in public.

  While they walked toward the woods, Maude Ivory rattled on about their show the night before and the fight that followed. “Sorry you got punched,” she said, pointing to his lip. “That’s Billy Taupe, though. Where he goes, trouble follows.”

  “Is he your brother?” asked Sejanus.

  “Oh, no, he’s a Clade. Him and Clerk Carmine are brothers. The rest of us are all Baird cousins. The girls, I mean. And Tam Amber’s a lost soul,” said Maude Ivory matter-of-factly.

  So Lucy Gray didn’t have a monopoly on the strange manner of talking. It must be a Covey thing. “A lost soul?” asked Coriolanus.

  “Sure. The Covey found Tam Amber when he was just a baby. Somebody left him in a cardboard box on the side of the road, so he’s ours. Joke’s on them, too, because he’s the finest picker alive,” Maude Ivory declared. “Not much of a talker, though. Is that ice?”

  Coriolanus swung the diminishing clump of cubes. “What’s left of it.”

  “Oh, Lucy Gray will like that. We’ve got a fridge, but the freezer’s long broke,” said Maude Ivory. “Seems fancy to have ice in summertime. Like flowers in wintertime. Rare.”

  Coriolanus agreed. “My grandmother grows roses in winter. People make a big fuss over them.”

  “Lucy Gray said you smelled like roses,” said Maude Ivory. “Is your whole house full of them?”

  “She grows them on the roof,” Coriolanus told her.

  “The roof?” giggled Maude Ivory. “That’s a silly place for flowers. Don’t they slide off?”

  “It’s a flat roof, up very high. With lots of sunlight,” he said. “You can see the whole Capitol from there.”

  “Lucy Gray didn’t like the Capitol. They tried to kill her,” said Maude Ivory.

  “Yes,” he acknowledged. “It couldn’t have been very nice for her.”

  “She said you were the only good thing about it, and now you’re here.” Maude Ivory gave his hand a tug. “You’re going to stay here, right?”

  “That’s the plan,” said Coriolanus.

  “I’m glad. I like you, and that will make her happy,” she said.

  By this time, the three had reached the edge of a large field that dipped down to the woods. Unlike the weedy expanse in front of the hanging tree, this one had clean, fresh, high grass and swaths of bright wildflowers. “There she is, with Shamus.” Maude Ivory pointed to a lone figure on a rock. Wearing a dress of her namesake color, Lucy Gray sat with her back to them, her head bent over her guitar.

  Shamus? Who was Shamus? Another member of the Covey? Or had he misread Billy Taupe’s role in her life, and Shamus was the lover? Coriolanus put a hand above his eyes to shield them from the sunlight but could make out only her figure. “Shamus?”

  “She’s our goat. Don’t be fooled by the boy’s name; she can give a gallon a day when she’s fresh,” said Maude Ivory. “We’re trying to skim enough cream for butter, but it takes forever.”

  “Oh, I love butter,” said Sejanus. “That reminds me, I forgot to give you this bread. Did you have your breakfast already?”

  “It’s a fact, I didn’t,” said Maude Ivory, eyeing the loaf with interest.

  Sejanus handed it over. “What do you say we head back to the house and break into this now?”

  Maude Ivory tucked the bread under her arm. “What about Lucy Gray and this one?” she asked, nodding at Coriolanus.

  “They can join us after they’ve caught up,” said Sejanus.

  “Okay,” she agreed, transferring her hand to Sejanus’s. “Barb Azure might make us wait for them. You could help me shell nuts first, if you want. They’re last year’s, but nobody’s gotten sick yet.”

  “Well, that’s the best offer I’ve had in a long time.” Sejanus turned to Coriolanus. “We’ll see you later?”

  Coriolanus felt self-conscious. “Do I look okay?”

  “Gorgeous. Trust me, that lip’s working for you, soldier,” said Sejanus, and he headed back toward the house with Maude Ivory.

  Coriolanus gave his hair a swipe and waded into the Meadow. He’d never walked in such high grass, and the sensation of it tickling his fingertips added to his nervousness. It far exceeded his hopes, getting to meet up with her in private, in a flower-filled field, with the whole day ahead. Just the opposite of what the rushed encounter in the filthy Hob would’ve been. This was, for lack of a better word, romantic. He moved forward as quietly as possible. As a rule, she mystified him, and he welcomed the chance to observe her without her usual defenses in place.

  Drawing close, he took in the song she sang as she quietly strummed her guitar.

  Are you, are you

  Coming to the tree

  Where they strung up a man they say murdered three?

  Strange things did happen here

  No stranger would it be

  If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

  He didn’t recognize it, but it brought to mind the hanging of the rebel two days before. Had she been there? Had it prompted this?

  Are you, are you

  Coming to the tree

  Where the dead man called out for his love to flee?

  Strange things did happen here

  No stranger would it be

  If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

  Ah, yes. It was Arlo’s hanging, because where else would a dead man call out for his love to flee? “Run! Run, Lil! Ru — !” You’d need those unnatural mockingjays for that. But who was she inviting to meet her in the tree? Could it be him? Maybe she planned to sing this next Saturday as a secret message for him to meet her at midnight in the hanging tree? Not that he could, as he’d never be allowed off base at that hour. But she probably didn’t know that.

  Lucy Gray hummed now, testing out different chords behind the melody, while he admired the curve of her neck, the fineness of her skin. As he drew nearer, his foot landed on an old branch, which broke with a sharp snap. She sprang from the rock, twisting her body as she rose, her eyes wide with fear and the guitar held out as if to block a blow. For a moment, he thought s
he’d flee, but her alarm shifted to relief at the sight of him. She shook her head, as close as he’d ever seen her to embarrassed, as she propped her guitar against the rock. “Sorry. Still got one foot in the arena.”

  If his brief foray in the Games had left him nervous and nightmarish, he could only imagine how damaged she was. The last month had upended their lives and changed them irrevocably. Sad, really, as they were both rather exceptional people, for whom the world had reserved its harshest treatment.

  “Yes, it leaves quite an impression,” he said. They stood for a moment, drinking each other in, before they moved together. The bag of ice slid from his hand as she wrapped her arms around him, melting her body into his. He locked her in an embrace, remembering how scared he’d been for her, for himself, and how he hadn’t dared fantasize about this moment as it had seemed so unattainable. But here they were, safe in a beautiful meadow. Two thousand miles away from the arena. Awash in daylight, but none between them.

  “You found me,” she said.

  In District 12? In Panem? In the world itself? Never mind, it didn’t matter. “You knew I would.”

  “Hoped you would. Didn’t know. The odds didn’t seem in my favor.” She leaned back enough to free a hand and brushed his lips with her fingers. He felt the calluses from her guitar strings, the soft surrounding skin, as she examined the previous night’s injury. Then, almost shyly, she kissed him, sending shock waves through his body. Ignoring the pain in his lips, he responded, hungry and curious, every nerve in his body awake. He kissed her until his lip started to bleed a little, and would have kept going had she not pulled away.

  “Here,” she said. “Come in the shade.”

  The remaining ice cracked under his foot, and he retrieved it. “For you.”

  “Why thank you.” Lucy Gray drew him over to sit at the base of the rock. Taking the bag, she bit off a corner of the plastic to make a tiny hole and lifted it high to let the melted ice water drip into her mouth. “Ah. This must be the only cold thing this side of November.” Her hand squeezed the bag, sending a light spray over her face. “It’s wonderful; lean back.” He tilted his head back and felt the stuff drizzle over his lips, licking it off just in time for another long kiss. Then she drew up her knees and said, “So, Coriolanus Snow, what are you doing in my meadow?”