isabella einstein | district three | fin

It started one night when the power went out. Her mother, father, and three younger sisters scrambled around the house to find candles. Izzy had found the box of old candles first, hidden in the back of the closet behind some threadbare blankets. Their wicks dark and short. The wax from the used candles sticking to the cardboard as Harry (short for Harriet), Ripley, and Tess (short for Teresa) crowded around her. Their voices filtered through the upstairs corridor of the large house - Father's wages guaranteed that the four girls had bedrooms of their own, but not much else. 

Her father lit a fire in the fireplace with some newspapers that weren't wet from the storm that had taken days to pass, the wind howling against the trees. Izzy gave the candles to her mother, the older woman clutching Izzy's cheeks in thanks. A swift kiss to her forehead. But the young brunette was drawn back to the closet. Behind the blankets sat an old alarm clock, the face dusty and worn, the internal mechanisms falling out of the clock. She was nine years old at the time. Nine years old when she picked up the broken timeteller and sat in the light of the fire, wind whipping past the windows of their house, and put it back together.  

Things can be put back together but people can't. People can be hurt and broken and wounded and maybe they weren't the same as they were the day before. Their scars, their souls, not quite whole. 

Her hands worked of their own accord and she conducted a symphony of movement, fingers blurring in the reds and orange hues of the fire like shadows dancing off the walls. 

It was not difficult to discern the nature of the problem - a screw had worked it’s self loose and the entire mechanism had failed. A bit of tinkering and some duct tape and it the clock was as good as new. However, the moment it chimed nine o’clock - perfectly on time and in sync with the old grandfather clock in their living room, Izzy was hooked.

She was older now, but her love of machines never wavered. Her father would bring home broken things and she would retreat to the study - a table lined with odds and ends and any tool that she could afford to fix things. Her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her freckled face screwed up in concentration, the young brunette bit her lip, her tongue sticking out as she worked and tinkered.

Thoughts of the games never crossed her mind and why would they? Her sisters were not yet reaping age but Harry was fast approaching the threshold and all Izzy had to do was hold out for two more years. What good could she even offer District Three? A girl too tall and too thin and only good with her hands when they were in the bowels of a machine couldn't fight and win against whatever machinations the Capitol engineers could come up with. No, the Games were far from her mind. A tendril of a thought that was never fully formed.

She was methodic and thoughtful, more likely to bite back a retort than to reply. Ideas, sketches of machines covering the walls of her bedroom. Days spent figuring out the best way to make chores easier for Mama, the light brighter for Ripley so she could finish her homework. Gentle words to her sisters, father, and mother. People - thinks you couldn't take apart and put back together correctly. Sacred for their brokenness and a mystery for her to figure out.

Izzy had never tasted nicotine, never stepped a toe out of line. A straight arrow and she was always pulled taut. Ready to strike. Her father called her Lucky, for reasons she could not comprehend.  She's never felt lucky. Not here. Not when life was monotonous and grey. Not when the only colors she can ever see are the reds, blues, and greens of the wire to the radio she was fixing up for Tess for the younger girl's birthday that was fast approaching. 

She thinks herself an artist, a creator. A maker of worlds if only given the chance. She desires and she craves. She makes. Each night. She has the look of a girl who wants a greater and all consuming passion. A love, an idea, an escape. Something more, something not quite here. Something not quite tangible. She wonders, she craves, she dreams, she hopes. 

When one is nothing, one invents. It fills a void.
- Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale