PART I
“THE SPARK”
I clasp the flask between my hands even though the warmth from the tea has long since
leached into the frozen air. My muscles are clenched tight against the cold. If a pack of wild
dogs were to appear at this moment, the odds of scaling a tree before they attacked are not in
my favor. I should get up, move around, and work the stiffness from my limbs. But instead I
sit, as motionless as the rock beneath me, while the dawn begins to lighten the woods. I can't
fight the sun. I can only watch helplessly as it drags me into a day that I've been dreading for
months.
By noon they will all be at my new house in the Victor's Village. The reporters, the
camera crews, even Effie Trinket, my old escort, will have made their way to District 12 from
the Capitol. I wonder if Effie will still be wearing that silly pink wig, or if she'll be sporting
some other unnatural color especially for the Victory Tour. There will be others waiting, too.
A staff to cater to my every need on the long train trip. A prep team to beautify me for public
appearances. My stylist and friend, Cinna, who designed the gorgeous outfits that first made
the audience take notice of me in the Hunger Games.
If it were up to me, I would try to forget the Hunger Games entirely. Never speak of them.
Pretend they were nothing but a bad dream. But the Victory Tour makes that impossible.
Strategically placed almost midway between the annual Games, it is the Capitol's way of
keeping the horror fresh and immediate. Not only are we in the districts forced to remember
the iron grip of the Capitol's power each year, we are forced to celebrate it. And this year, I
am one of the stars of the show. I will have to travel from district to district, to stand before
the cheering crowds who secretly loathe me, to look down into the faces of the families
whose children I have killed...
The sun persists in rising, so I make myself stand. All my joints complain and my left leg
has been asleep for so long that it takes several minutes of pacing to bring the feeling back
into it. I've been in the woods three hours, but as I've made no real attempt at hunting, I have
nothing to show for it. It doesn't matter for my mother and little sister, Prim, anymore. They
can afford to buy butcher meat in town, although none of us likes it any better than fresh
game. But my best friend, Gale Hawthorne, and his family will be depending on today's haul
and I can't let them down. I start the hour-and-a-half trek it will take to cover our snare line.
Back when we were in school, we had time in the afternoons to check the line and hunt and
gather and still get back to trade in town. But now that Gale has gone to work in the coal
mines — and I have nothing to do all day—I've taken over the job.
By this time Gale will have clocked in at the mines, taken the stomach-churning elevator
ride into the depths of the earth, and be pounding away at a coal seam. I know what it's like
down there. Every year in school, as part of our training, my class had to tour the mines.
When I was little, it was just unpleasant. The claustrophobic tunnels, foul air, suffocating
darkness on all sides. But after my father and several other miners were killed in an
explosion, I could barely force myself onto the elevator. The annual trip became an enormous
