The Hanging Tree

Prologue: The Mocking Jay

I will be twelve. 

I am eleven for now. Eleven until the Reaping in just two hours. 

I haven't stopped shaking since I woke up this morning. I told Mom it was because of the unexpectedly cool month. 

But I think we can all guess the reason why. 

"Steady now, Jay," Dad says, peering over my shoulder at the knots I make. "Let's just focus on what we need to do."

It was Dad's idea that we go trapping before the Reaping. It's not like our family doesn't need the money. But I know that in reality he is doing this for me. I need this. I need this silence before the world drowns me in noise. 

I suppose Dad and I are alike in many ways, even beyond our physical similarities - that dark brown hair and green eyes that no one else seems to have for miles around. We both like nature far more than we ever liked humans and we'd both rather have silence than words. 

The wind rises again, shrieking like a mockingjay through the air as I twist up the last snare. I try to close my eyes and focus on this wind and the trees and this place that I love more than anywhere else. But no matter what I do, I can't stop shaking. 

We catch a rabbit not ten minutes later, its leg all twisted and bloodied. Dad hands me the knife and I go to kill, finding its small pulse beating so rapidly under my hand, the body going lax, eyes glazed over as if already accepting its fate. I raise my hand but I am shaking so badly that I can barely keep my hand raised, let alone kill this creature. 

I lower the knife. "I'm sorry, Dad. I can't."

He takes both items from my fingers without a word and a moment later I hear the gurgle of the creature's dying breath. Dad hands me the corpse and I skin it in silence. 

"There's nothing wrong with not being able to kill," he says once I'm finished. 

I blink back at him. "Didn't say that there was."

We don't return home quite yet instead venturing deeper into the forest, farther than I've ever walked before, until we sit down at the edge of a cliff that peers out into the rolling land, nothing but trees and wilderness for miles and miles. 

And any other day this would be enough. But today is still the Reaping. 

Dad starts to whistle, the mockingjays repeating it back lovingly as if they know what a great treasure they are dealing with. And they are, everyone around here says that Dad has the best voice they've ever heard. He is always bent on trying to teach me some song or tune as if teaching them to me will also hand over his gift. 

Today, after a few familiar tunes, he sings something else, something very strange:

Are you, Are you 

Coming to the tree 

Where they strung up a man they say murdered three 

Strange things did happen here 

No stranger would it be 

If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree

Are you, Are you 

Coming to the tree 

Where the dead man called out for his love to flee 

Strange things did happen here 

No stranger would it be 

If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree