The Girl Who Sparked the Capitol - Book 2 - Peeta

Chapter 7

A leather bag filled with food and a flask of hot tea. A pair of fur-lined gloves that Cinna left behind. Three twigs, broken from the naked trees, lying in the snow, pointing in the direction Alessia will travel. This is what she leaves for Gale at their usual meeting place on the first Sunday after the Harvest Festival.

Alessia has continued on through the cold, misty woods, breaking a path that will be unfamiliar to Gale but is simple for her feet to find. It leads to the lake. Alessia no longer trusts that their regular rendezvous spot offers privacy, and she'll need that and more to spill her guts to Gale today. But will he even come? If he doesn't, she'll have no choice but to risk going to his house in the dead of night. There are things he has to know... things Alessia needs him to help her figure out...

Once the implications of what Alessia was seeing on Mayor Undersee's television hit her, she made for the door and started down the hall. Just intime, too, because the mayor came up the steps moments later. Alessia gave him a wave.

"Looking for Madge?" he said in a friendly tone.

"Yes. I want to show her my dress," Alessia said.

"Well, you know where to find her." Just then, another round of beeping came from his study. His face turned grave. "Excuse me," he said. He went into his study and closed the door tightly.

Alessia waited in the hall until she had composed herself. Reminded herself she must act naturally. Then she found Madge in her room, sitting at her dressing table, brushing out her wavy blond hair before a mirror. Madge was in the same pretty white dress she'd worn on reaping day. Shesaw Alessia's reflection behind her and smiled. "Look at you. Like you came right off the streets of the Capitol."

Alessia stepped in closer. Her fingers touched the mockingjay. "Even my pin now. Mockingjays are all the rage in the Capitol, thanks to you.Are you sure you don't want it back?" Alessia asked.

"Don't be silly, it was a gift," said Madge. She tied back her hair in a festive gold ribbon.

"Where did you get it, anyway?" Alessia asked. "Because I found it at the Seam and a lady had given it to me, then I found out it was yours, and now I am just confused."

"It was my aunt's," Madge said. "But I think it's been in the family a long time. I had it for awhile but then I got upset about something in my family... and I gave it away to the Seam so someone else could have it."

"It's a funny choice, a mockingjay," Alessia said. "I mean, because of what happened in the rebellion. With the jabberjays backfiring on the Capitol and all."

The jabberjays were muttations, genetically enhanced male birds created by the Capitol as weapons to spy on rebels in the districts. They Could remember and repeat long passages of human speech, so they were sent into rebel areas to capture their words and return them to the Capitol. The rebels caught on and turned them against the Capitol by sending them home loaded with lies. When this was discovered, the jabberjays were left to die. In a few years, they became extinct in the wild, but not before they had mated with female mockingbirds, creating an entirely new species.

"But mockingjays were never a weapon," said Madge. "They're just songbirds. Right?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Alessia said. But it's not true. A mockingbird is just a songbird. A mockingjay is a creature the Capitol never intended to exist. They hadn't counted on the highly controlled jabberjay having the brains to adapt to the wild, to pass on its genetic code, to thrive in a new form. They hadn't anticipated its will to live.

Now, as Alessia trudges through the snow, she sees the mockingjays hopping about on branches as they pick up on other birds' melodies, replicate them, and then transform them into something new. As always, they remind Alessia of Rue. Alessia thinks of the dream she had the last night on the train,where she followed Rue in mockingjay form. Alessia wishes she could have stayed asleep just a bit longer and found out where Rue was trying to take her.