Catching Fire

us the board that serves as her countertop. “Just don’t tell where you got it,” she says, packing up the rest of her goods quickly. Most of the square has emptied, fear getting the better of compassion. But after what just happened, I can’t blame anyone.
    By the time we’ve laid Gale facedown on the board, there’s only a handful of people left to carry him. Haymitch, Peeta, and a couple of miners who work on the same crew as Gale lift him up.
    Leevy, a girl who lives a few houses down from mine in the Seam, takes my arm. My mother kept her little brother alive last year when he caught the measles. “Need help getting back?” Her gray eyes are scared but determined.
    “No, but can you get Hazelle? Send her over?” I ask.
    “Yeah,” says Leevy, turning on her heel.
    “Leevy!” I say. “Don’t let her bring the kids.”
    “No. I’ll stay with them myself,” she says.
    “Thanks.” I grab Gale’s jacket and hurry after the others.
    “Get some snow on that,” Haymitch orders over his shoulder. I scoop up a handful of snow and press it against my cheek, numbing a bit of the pain. My left eye’s tearing heavily now, and in the dimming light it’s all I can do to follow the boots in front of me.
    As we walk I hear Bristel and Thom, Gale’s crewmates, piece together the story of what happened. Gale must’ve gone to Cray’s house, as he’s done a hundred times, knowing Cray always pays well for a wild turkey. Instead he found the new Head Peacekeeper, a man they heard someone call Romulus Thread. No one knows what happened to Cray. He was buying white liquor in the Hob just this morning, apparently still in command of the district, but now he’s nowhere to be found. Thread put Gale under immediate arrest and, of course, since he was standing there holding a dead turkey, there was little Gale could say in his own defense. Word of his predicament spread quickly. He was brought to the square, forced to plead guilty to his crime, and sentenced to a whipping to be carried out immediately. By the time I showed up, he’d been lashed at least forty times. He passed out around thirty.
    “Lucky he only had the turkey on him,” says Bristel. “If he’d had his usual haul, would’ve been much worse.”
    “He told Thread he found it wandering around the Seam. Said it got over the fence and he’d stabbed it with a stick. Still a crime. But if they’d known he’d been in the woods with weapons, they’d have killed him for sure,” says Thom.
    “What about Darius?” Peeta asks.
    “After about twenty lashes, he stepped in, saying that was enough. Only he didn’t do it smart and official, like Purnia did. He grabbed Thread’s arm and Thread hit him in the head with the butt of the whip. Nothing good waiting for him,” says Bristel.
    “Doesn’t sound like much good for any of us,” says Haymitch.
    Snow begins, thick and wet, making visibility even more difficult. I stumble up the walk to my house behind the others, using my ears more than my eyes to guide me. A golden light colors the snow as the door opens. My mother, who was no doubt waiting for me after a long day of unexplained absence, takes in the scene.
    “New Head,” Haymitch says, and she gives him a curt nod as if no other explanation is needed.
    I’m filled with awe, as I always am, as I watch her transform from a woman who calls me to kill a spider to a woman immune to fear. When a sick or dying person is brought to her . . . this is the only time I think my mother knows who she is. In moments, the long kitchen table has been cleared, a sterile white cloth spread across it, and Gale hoisted onto it. My mother pours water from a kettle into a basin while ordering Prim to pull a series of her remedies from the medicine cabinet. Dried herbs and tinctures and store-bought bottles. I watch her hands, the long, tapered fingers crumbling this, adding drops of that, into the basin. Soaking a cloth in the hot liquid as she gives Prim instructions to prepare a second brew.
    My mother glances my way. “Did it cut your eye?”
    “No, it’s just swelled shut,” I say.
    “Get more snow on it,” she instructs. But I am clearly not a priority.
    “Can you save him?” I ask my mother. She says nothing as she wrings out the cloth and holds it in the air to cool somewhat.
    “Don’t worry,” says Haymitch. “Used to be a lot of whipping before Cray. She’s the one we took them to.”
    I can’t remember a time before Cray, a time when