63rd Reaping [D12]

The first time I met you, I had come for your sister. You surprised me, Meela, because you saw me coming. You saw me reach into her chest, try to take her away from your world, and you wouldn’t let her go. She was an infant, fresh out of the womb, one who broke without warning, one who was already shattered. Her brittle bone condition made her someone I could play with for a little while, between your world and the next one, until it was time for her to move on. However, fragile though she was, you kept your grip firm around Sierra’s matchstick fingers, and wouldn’t let me take her. I decided I liked you in that moment. I like someone who looks me straight in the eyes and tells me, in no uncertain terms, to go away.

People often think of me as evil; masochistic, even. The truth could not be further. I’m just lonely. As you can imagine, it’s not easy doing my job – being the ferryman, the angel, the forever-young old woman. I’m the eternal cab driver; picking people up and dropping them off. Those that do not look cannot see me, and very few people look. You looked, Meela. You looked.

And so I watched for you. As you counted in months and years and I counted in the breaths I took away, I traced your footprints. You glimpsed me when I strolled into your neighbour’s open door to silence the old mans shrieks of pain. You watched as I invited cows and cats and ants to come with me; sometimes in your garden, sometimes in the town square. Out of the corner of your tear-reddened eye, you stared a hole into me when I took your grandfather away. He was an easy one; willing and ready to come with me, only regretful about leaving his wife behind. That day was the first that I began to hear what was going on inside your head, and realised just how special you were. Listening to your thoughts pulsing, I really thought that we could be friends, though not just yet. Your day was still a ways off, still yet to come.

Every reaping, when I came to take stock of those who I was about to make acquaintance with, I kept an eye out for you. Or perhaps I should say an ear, as I could hear your thoughts as if they were being broadcasted over the loudspeaker, the crackly old one that was used only at the reaping. I heard you pity Arbor at the first reaping in which you realised what his fate would be. I knew looking at him that day that I would not get my hands on him for a while. I made a brief visit to him this year, but he was still not my type. I hardly tried.

Your exact thoughts that accompanied the reaping of little deaf Ocean Jones a couple of years later were ’at least she won’t hear her own death.’ That’s how interested I was in you, Meela: there have only been a purseful of times at which I can quote people’s thoughts, and I’ve been around for a while.

Sometimes, if I wasn’t too busy, I’d stop by and watch you and your sister play. Jealous of your relationship though I was, I appreciated the way you let her have adventures. You let her break, because – and you have never admitted this to yourself, let alone anyone else – you knew it would not be long until I took her away. It did not matter if she broke, so long as she was not broken. You made her smile with your stories, even though at the same time your withdrawn eyes spelt ’pity, pity, pity’ in copperplate writing. Still, I envied you so much. I’ve never had a sister. I’ve never had anyone.

I watched you cut, too. I’d like to think that you were trying to dig entrances in your thighs to let me in, but you weren’t. You unintentionally shouted in my ears about the hate of your health, about how you didn’t deserve to be alive when Sierra soon enough would not be. ‘She’s the better person,’ you said, in anger and in pensiveness and in your sleep. It was tempting to make you my friend then, but then was not your time either.

We made eye contact for the first time in the morning of the sixty-third reaping. I was hunched over the warm body of a starling as its heart slowly faded to grey, as its breath cooled. I heard you and your sister walking hip-to-hip, and I lingered for long enough to turn my head towards you. Our eyes touched like two candle-wicks. ‘I know you,’ you thought, but the erratic rational part of your brain extinguished that piece of logic as I let myself disappear. Your sister leant over the bird and verbally expressed her sorrow for the creature, but you stood by her side and let yourself compare the two overly fragile beasts. ‘The only difference,’ you thought, ‘is that one can fly, and one cannot.’ You were more worried about her not making the walk to the town square than the actual reaping, weren’t you? Your family was wealthy enough not to take tesserae, and she was much more liable to shatter her spine on the cobbled stones than you were of getting reaped. Still, the burning flame in the back right corner of your mind wrote in smoke that perhaps, getting reaped would be somewhat of a relief.

Sierra plucked a feather off that bird. It was from its wing, dappled with four hundred shades of brown and looking almost golden in the morning light. You appreciated the beauty of it, but also the irony of the situation: one feather would not enable the bird-boned girl to fly.

“Here, Meela” she said, handing the wisp to you. “It’s good luck, see. The bird gave its life so that we’re going to be safe.”

“That’s not how it works,” you and I both wanted to shout: you; because neither of you were safe, and me; because that’s not how it works. But you kept your mouth shut, accepted the token, and walked Sierra into the square. I could tell, just looking at your face, that your heart was heavy, but your hopes were high.

I do not choose who I take, Meela, and even if I could I would not have had you reaped. I’m sorry, I truly am, because I know what it’s like to see all the things you will never be able to have skitter before you like dropped jelly beans. If I could, I would have left you and your sister in your comfy little cottage to live comfy little lives, with knitted rugs and milky teas and high-quality dentures. I can’t do that. I don’t have a say. I can only choose how much effort I put in to taking someone with me, and they chose whether or not they want to come away.

There were no nervous thoughts in your head as the same old words were repeated on that stage, only heavy ones. Then, as the Capitol-lady with a bleached accent dipped her hand into the goldfish-bowl of breaths to be taken, the back right corner of your mind said the words at the same time as her:

‘Meela Birdbrook’

Bird, meaning the possession of wings, feathers and a spine; brook meaning either a rivulet, or to endure, and Meela, meaning nothing at all.

You know, you really should listen to that corner of your brain more often.

It was tempting to lead you by the hand right then, but I could wait. Each of your fingers felt like winter branches as you walked to the shoddily erected platform, overly-appreciative of the silence that the relieved other children gave you. Your jaw had set like cold gravy, and you felt stupid because you did not feel afraid. Your mind was trying to yell out to your sister that you would come back for her, but you knew better than that. You knew that you would not return.

Climbing those steps, you walked towards me, and I took my first strides towards taking you.