Orithyia // District 4 // fin

I did not know of the mainland for the first few years of my life.
Before that my life was sweet fruit from trees bent over from the weight of their bounty and watching the older girls train in the fields. I didn't even know there was such a thing called "man." Those were the happiest times, before I was cold. Before I ever touched a spear.

I watched the girls ages twelve through eighteen, along with their mothers, push off the shore in hand carved boats. The wood of the hulls were decorated in scenes of battle and conquest. They did this every year, and secretly I was waiting for the day I got to board the gorgeous boats and see what the rest of the world had to offer. I was seven when I tugged on my mother's tunic and asked "Mother, where are they going?"

I should have never asked.

They came back, their mouths in tight lines. A few of the younger ones had tears dried to their cheeks, their eyes red. They had been looked over for the sacrifice this time.

I know now it is called the Reaping, but for most of my life I've thought of it as a sacrifice. It has shaped me into who I am, for Orithyia is not a lamb whose blood is spilled for peace. She is a force of nature to be stopped.

From that day forward I trained as hard as I could. Drill after drill, fall after fall, I got up again and again. I listened to my trainers religiously. I would creep out of bed before dawn even broke to watch the best warriors of the island train and try to copy their movements. I thought myself ready.

With my new found love of the art of war, I set off on my first boat ride. A scrawny twelve year old going over drills in her head as the waves crashed against the hull and mist sprayed over her.

My sandal touched down on the dock of District Four and suddenly I felt vastly unprepared. This mainland that I had dreamed of, like the boats, had been soiled with reality. There were buildings everywhere. No fields or meadows like the island. Rickety wooden docks filled with boats made of metal and covered in grease and fish guts lined the shore, and the land was overtaken with huts made of stone and wood and seemingly any other material they could get their hands on. All the mainlanders' eyes were on us, watching as we marched through the district to the square to be counted. Besides the stink of rotten fish and buildings, the other constant was people. There were so many of them! All crowded in on every side, I thought I may run out of air with this many people trying to gasp for the same breath. I was the first in line when we approached a small table to be recorded for the sacrifice The woman at it had her hair trimmed close to her scalp and had wide shoulders extenuated by a jacket of white fabric. She spoke with a low voice like the rumbling of a wave.

"First name?"

"Orithyia."

"Last name?"

"Hu? I- It's just Orithyia."

They sighed and scratched their pen hard into the paper.

"Age?"

"Twelve, ma'am," I said, always the respectful daughter.

She looked at me with hard brown eyes filled with a kind of anger I had not seen before.

"Sir."

"What?"

"You will call me sir."

I looked to the back of our little line to my mother, confused by the word.

"Just go."

I waited for my other sisters before entering a small pin labeled for twelve year olds. I steadied my breath trying to focus for when the ceremony began when a mainland girl stuck her face straight into mine.

"Is it true you don't have boys on the island?"

"What is a boy?"

"Those!" she pointed across the aisle to the other set of pens. They looked like my sisters by nearly all of them had their hair cropped like the sir at the table. I looked further down the line and even the older ones had strangely flat chests.

I wasn't reaped that day. I also did not find the new creature called boy very impressive.

What did strike me that day was the moving picture they showed us on a large screen. It was clips of the sacrificial games. Young children getting their heads smashed in with clubs, an arrow piercing a girl's eyeball, a "boy" cutting open another tribute's throat.

Suddenly, my little early morning training endeavors did not seem to cut it.

After that I trained even harder. Even when the spears and knives were hung up for the day, I climbed boulders and cliffs around the island, I swam against the raging waves. I lifted sacks of grain and occasionally one of my many sisters of the islands. I forwent every thing else in life but muscle and sweat and blood.

I gave up friendship to survive until I was nineteen. While other girls sat in dim doorways and hid behind trees to whisper sweet nothings into each other's ears I put in another two hours of training. I'm not going to say I didn't envy them occasionally, but I wouldn't give up the power I feel in my body for any woman's kiss.

Maybe that makes me heartless, many sisters have said so.

After my eighteenth birthday I was free from my yearly visits to the mainland and trained alongside the other women who had come of age.

At my twenty four years I can proudly call myself an Amazon Warrior. I am as quick as any sister, and certainly as strong as any. My younger self always preferred to train with a spear, but I found that my talent lies in the viciousness of my bare hands. I can twist limbs into painful, bone cracking contortions and disarm any warrior who dares charge me. I forsook all other pleasures in life for the ability to protect my island and my sisters.

I think back to my younger self, who was so naive at that first Reaping. I know exactly who men are now, and I have trained myself to kill them.