Catching Fire

twisted my ankle. My boots are too big,” says Bonnie.
    I bite my lip. My instinct tells me they’re telling the truth. And behind that truth is a whole lot of information I’d like to get. I step forward and retrieve Twill’s gun before lowering my bow, though. Then I hesitate a moment, thinking of another day in this woods, when Gale and I watched a hovercraft appear out of thin air and capture two escapees from the Capitol. The boy was speared and killed. The redheaded girl, I found out when I went to the Capitol, was mutilated and turned into a mute servant called an Avox. “Anyone after you?”
    “We don’t think so. We think they believe we were killed in a factory explosion,” says Twill. “Only a fluke that we weren’t.”
    “All right, let’s go inside,” I say, nodding at the cement house. I follow them in, carrying the gun.
    Bonnie makes straight for the hearth and lowers herself onto a Peacekeeper’s cloak that has been spread before it. She holds her hands to the feeble flame that burns on one end of a charred log. Her skin is so pale as to be translucent and I can see the fire glow through her flesh. Twill tries to arrange the cloak, which must have been her own, around the shivering girl.
    A tin gallon can has been cut in half, the lip ragged and dangerous. It sits in the ashes, filled with a handful of pine needles steaming in water.
    “Making tea?” I ask.
    “We’re not sure, really. I remember seeing someone do this with pine needles on the Hunger Games a few years back. At least, I think it was pine needles,” says Twill with a frown.
    I remember District 8, an ugly urban place stinking of industrial fumes, the people housed in run-down tenements. Barely a blade of grass in sight. No opportunity, ever, to learn the ways of nature. It’s a miracle these two have made it this far.
    “Out of food?” I ask.
    Bonnie nods. “We took what we could, but food’s been so scarce. That’s been gone for a while.” The quaver in her voice melts my remaining defenses. She is just a malnourished, injured girl fleeing the Capitol.
    “Well, then this is your lucky day,” I say, dropping my game bag on the floor. People are starving all over the district and we still have more than enough. So I’ve been spreading things around a little. I have my own priorities: Gale’s family, Greasy Sae, some of the other Hob traders who were shut down. My mother has other people, patients mostly, who she wants to help. This morning I purposely overstuffed my game bag with food, knowing my mother would see the depleted pantry and assume I was making my rounds to the hungry. I was actually buying time to go to the lake without her worrying. I intended to deliver the food this evening on my return, but now I can see that won’t be happening.
    From the bag I pull two fresh buns with a layer of cheese baked into the top. We always seem to have a supply of these since Peeta found out they were my favorite. I toss one to Twill but cross over and place the other on Bonnie’s lap since her hand-eye coordination seems a little questionable at the moment and I don’t want the thing ending up in the fire.
    “Oh,” says Bonnie. “Oh, is this all for me?”
    Something inside me twists as I remember another voice. Rue. In the arena. When I gave her the leg of groosling. “Oh, I’ve never had a whole leg to myself before.” The disbelief of the chronically hungry.
    “Yeah, eat up,” I say. Bonnie holds the bun as if she can’t quite believe it’s real and then sinks her teeth into it again and again, unable to stop. “It’s better if you chew it.” She nods, trying to slow down, but I know how hard it is when you’re that hollow. “I think your tea’s done.” I scoot the tin can from the ashes. Twill finds two tin cups in her pack and I dip out the tea, setting it on the floor to cool. They huddle together, eating, blowing on their tea, and taking tiny, scalding sips as I build up the fire. I wait until they are sucking the grease from their fingers to ask, “So, what’s your story?” And they tell me.
    Ever since the Hunger Games, the discontent in District 8 had been growing. It was always there, of course, to some degree. But what differed was that talk was no longer sufficient, and the idea of taking action went from a wish to a reality. The textile factories that service Panem are loud with machinery, and the din also allowed word to pass safely, a pair of lips close to an ear, words