DISTRICT ONE // LEO GRIMM

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INFORMATION

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BIOGRAPHY

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I have a lion-heart. In my chest it thunders like the hummingbirds who live in my closet. When I fall asleep at night, it purrs beneath my breast. In the morning, when I awaken to a tarantula on my cheek and a smile on my lips, it continues to do my bidding. So well behaved is this organ - never faltering, even when I tumble down from the back of a moving train, clutching a snake around my neck or stare a wildcat in the eyes. They say I should be afraid, but what good would endless money be if it did not allow me to do what I please?

The rich seem to lay about endlessly, refusing to dirty their frocks or laugh for fear of smile-lines. For what it is worth - I know better. Always, I can purchase another frock, or ten if I so desire. As for the creases in my pale face - in eighteen years they have not appeared, so I am probably immune to these miserable side-affects of time. What a desolate life to live - to awake solitary, without the comforting breath of a vulture reminding you exactly how many small rodents you will have to slaughter to provide breakfast for your friends. (The answer is fifteen, plus five cups of kibble, a bale of hay and a tuna fish.) Personally, I prefer cereal.

. . .


The loneliness is not, however, the thing for which I most pity my peers. Their weak arms and slow, ambling walk would be no match for a moving train. How could they possibly explore and enjoy the world with their noses tucked between the pages of a book? Although I've never tried, I can imagine the struggle in wriggling through a fence without getting tangles in your hair. Amira tells me off sometimes - "Don't speak to the poor people, Leonora, they're dirty." There are two reasons why I reject this. Firstly, Leonora is no name for the girl with the lion heart. To be fierce and wild and carefree and at one with the creatures in your bookshelves, you need a name that suits. "It's Leo," I insist, as Pantalamion growls.

The second reason is because the people without frivolities and allowances and clothes that jingle from the gold in the pockets are ever so interesting. In an alley I once wandered down a family lived with a mischief of rats and an infestation of lice. Thrilled, I began to gather them - prospects of training them for a glorious flea circus dancing in my mind. Amira and Cerberus scowled and snatched me away, scorning me like a wayward child. Although I like to think that that description suits me well, I hissed at them, baring my teeth, and scuttled off to find more insects for my collection.

The bugs are other reason they call me weird. Inside my chest of drawers, at the back of my bedroom, jars sit in carefully labelled lines. Usually I am not orderly at all - assorted clothes lie in piles on my floor, pieces of ribbon and small squeaky toys are scattered across the carpet. If you pull out the top, you'll find jars labelled everything from American Burying Beetle to Dragonfly and in the very last draw eighteen more and a small cardboard box entitled Walkingstick to Zenat. They're mostly insects or spiders, painstakingly identified by an ancient book I bought from a man who refused to sell. At twelve, I already knew if I pulled enough money from my pocket, it would be mine. The ones in the boxes are mostly alive - it's pressed between the pages of the few, thick books I stole from my cousin Xanthus that the poor animals are without air in their lungs. (Rest in peace, darlings.)

. . .


"Really, sugar, you should get yourself some friends," says the lady at the petshop in town when I come in to demand an order of Opossums or a Polar Bear Cub. She says she can't get them, that only people in the Capitol can get exotic pets, I tell her all about mine back at home. Her name is Esmerelda, and she says I have a wonderful imagination. That's funny, because my family always shouts that I have none whatsoever. "I have lots of friends!" I tell her indignantly, tugging another frozen mouse from the bottom of the freezer. Usually she just nods and looks sad, but once she pressed the issue. "Friends from school? Or the training center?" she sounded hopeful. School was ever so boring, and Pan wasn't allowed even though I'm sure he'd only bite if someone was trying to hurt me. The training center I frequent whenever I must because in the plant identification area they sometimes accidentally ship in spiders and fire ants with the stock.

There was an old fairy-tale they used to tell us back in infants school. I'd fidget and growl and kick and bite, mostly, but this story made me sit quite still. A girl - Snow White - would sing a shrill song and the animals would flutter around her, carrying plates and tying ribbons in her hair. At this point, every member of my class turned to stare at me. Perhaps it was because I was trying to silently chase an escaped tortoise across the floor. I tried to explain to them that I was different - my animals did what I said because I trained them to come on command or fetch my slippers. Even the sloth I was patient with, helping him across the floor when I got impatient.

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Once, I was sitting in the darkness with Xanthus, Pan waiting quietly on the chair beside me. (Pan's an ocelot, pay attention, please.) Shivering in the sudden cold of the mansion, I scowled when my cousin asked to take my coat. With Pan helpfully relocating himself around my shoulders and the shakes that coursed through me like a hornet fading, I allowed him to. "I'm going to inventory this," he declared, and I nodded. For a long while I watched him pull out all manner of things from the countless pockets. Then I fell asleep, noting that he never really seemed to use the lights. When I awoke, I was presented with a list, my coat, and Pan and then hurriedly shown out. On the way home, I used Columbine the firefly to read it.



Nine buttons
Four bottles of hair dye
Eighteen gold coins and twelve paper notes
Prescription pill packet; full
Lipgloss, in three flavours
A baby bird
Various bones
Assorted small, shiny objects
A mirror shard
A pocketknife
The Pocket-guide to Insects
Kitten Notebook, A6
Approximately three cups of glitter

Noticing that the list doesn't end for a long way down the page, I pulled a pen from somewhere about my person, added 'Pocket Inventory' to the list, and added both to the surprising weight of my jacket. It was only then, as I arrived on my own diamond-encrusted doorstep that I decided I was bored. It was time for an adventure. Taking a deep breath of the slightly fishy air - (Sea breezes from Four, perhaps? Or did I leave some kibble in my coat?) I set out on my way to the train-station. The signs say it's forbidden, but I'm sure by that they don't mean me. The best hauls are found in the day. Anything they urgently want to get to the Capitol goes then, but some nights I get lucky, and a train is running late. When I arrived, the familiar, low rumble of the rails greeted me like an old friend.

Workers were still loading produce of District One on to an almost full, blood-red affair. I let Pan go first - his eyes can see in the dark better than mine, his ears more sensitive to sound. Within minutes, we're past the slightly crowded loading yard and down on the tracks. Cerberus rolls his eyes when I tell my tales, but there is no danger in the chase for me. Only thrill. With the fish in my mind swimming furiously, we managed to climb up the wall and let ourselves aboard. The first carriage held nothing alive - I've learned to look for the telltale signs of tufts of fur and faint mews - so we made our way onto the roof. I didn't tell Pan that I swiped a shiny bauble from a crate, for he disapproves of frivolous taking when you have all the money in the world.

. . .


On the final carriage, we found what we were looking for. Opening a small box, I discovered a tiny Squirrel Monkey, Capitol-bound. My cousin Nero wishes he lived in the Capitol, but I like it here. Scooping it up quickly, I made sure the piles of other boxes were closed and clambered upwards just as the train began to move. For a moment I flew like the birds who perch along my dressing table, but then I landed with a satisfying thump and lost the breath in my lungs. Lying on my back, I watched the blur hang in the air. "I shall call you Monkey," I said, not very creatively.

That night I did not run into any Peacekeepers, but sometimes I do. When met with an accusation about the origins of my ocelot, my story is simple. It's all planned out. He's a moggie I found in a box in the street when I was six years old and he eats fish imported from Four and plays with a little sewn mouse on the end of a string in the evenings and has absolutely never attacked my sister, not at all. Sometimes I don't get time to explain that before a fierce urge to pounce upon the officer like prey bubbles and my claws outstretch and I am tossing money at him and scampering off with Pan to declare my love for him to my siblings. Despite his lack of opposable thumbs, Pantalaimon is my very best friend.

. . .

I fall asleep each night the same way I awaken - surrounded by a world with endless possibilities, an invincibility that only money can buy and that lion heart roars it's eager appreciation. I bounce upward, greet my wild family with wide eyes and doll out the meat I have purchased along with various other meals and dishes of lactose-free milk. For a few hours, I train them as I wish - the stupid sloth still can't understand the concept of roll over. Adventure time arrives soon enough - it's not always to the train-yard I go. Often I walk without a compass through the gardens of strangers, always ready to buy my way out of trouble and extremely excited by everything I see. Pan follows. Sometimes, I let creatures free, or give them to others if I know they cannot survive in the wild. I couldn't bare to neglect a single one, and so they must sometimes be moved on.

Nero doesn't like me. Pan refuses to stop growling at his robots - I think perhaps the never-ending tick-tocking of their insides unnerves him. I myself am fearless - always begging him to let me train one, although my creatures keep swallowing various parts. Challenges like that don't daunt me. Amira is always insiting that I try to better myself in various ways - "Wipe that mud off your face! Don't you know that your clothes are torn? Darling, I simply must find you a necklace or something, you look ever so plain." I've taken to running and hiding when she walks into a room, pretending to be a leopard hunting it's prey or sea cow staying below the waves without coming up for breath.

Sometimes, I try hard to concentrate on the things my brother says I should. My hopscotch mind wonders if the goat can see me out of his rectangular pupils, even from the corner in which he is devouring my scarf. Is my snail, Helga, going to sleep for three years? Perhaps Xanthus should know that houseflies only ever hum in the key F? If there are fifty thousand spiders per acre, why can I never find more than a few at a time? Ants never sleep. For a while, I wonder if I could do the same - holding my eyes open with my fingers and keeping on living without ever pausing, never having to stop and letting my mind and words and feet run on forever. And then Pan uncoils himself from around my neck and leads me into my bed and I am floating away, just as alive in my dreams.

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COMPLETE

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