Mockingjay

if the birds stopped singing,” says Haymitch. “Guess they did.”
    Six or seven. That would have been before my mother banned the song. Maybe even right around the time I was learning it. “Was I there, too?”
    “Don’t think so. No mention of you anyway. But it’s the first connection to you that hasn’t triggered some mental meltdown,” says Haymitch. “It’s something, at least, Katniss.”
    My father. He seems to be everywhere today. Dying in the mine. Singing his way into Peeta’s muddled consciousness. Flickering in the look Boggs gives me as he protectively wraps the blanket around my shoulders. I miss him so badly it hurts.
    The gunfire’s really picking up outside. Gale hurries by with a group of rebels, eagerly headed for the battle. I don’t petition to join the fighters, not that they would let me. I have no stomach for it anyway, no heat in my blood. I wish Peeta was here — the old Peeta — because he would be able to articulate why it is so wrong to be exchanging fire when people, any people, are trying to claw their way out of the mountain. Or is my own history making me too sensitive? Aren’t we at war? Isn’t this just another way to kill our enemies?
    Night falls quickly. Huge, bright spotlights are turned on, illuminating the square. Every bulb must be burning at full wattage inside the train station as well. Even from my position across the square, I can see clearly through the plate-glass front of the long, narrow building. It would be impossible to miss the arrival of a train, or even a single person. But hours pass and no one comes. With each minute, it becomes harder to imagine that anyone survived the assault on the Nut.
    It’s well after midnight when Cressida comes to attach a special microphone to my costume. “What’s this for?” I ask.
    Haymitch’s voice comes on to explain. “I know you’re not going to like this, but we need you to make a speech.”
    “A speech?” I say, immediately feeling queasy.
    “I’ll feed it to you, line by line,” he assures me. “You’ll just have to repeat what I say. Look, there’s no sign of life from that mountain. We’ve won, but the fighting’s continuing. So we thought if you went out on the steps of the Justice Building and laid it out — told everybody that the Nut’s defeated, that the Capitol’s presence in District Two is finished — you might be able to get the rest of their forces to surrender.”
    I peer at the darkness beyond the square. “I can’t even see their forces.”
    “That’s what the mike’s for,” he says. “You’ll be broadcast, both your voice through their emergency audio system, and your image wherever people have access to a screen.”
    I know there are a couple of huge screens here on the square. I saw them on the Victory Tour. It might work, if I were good at this sort of thing. Which I’m not. They tried to feed me lines in those early experiments with the propos, too, and it was a flop.
    “You could save a lot of lives, Katniss,” Haymitch says finally.
    “All right. I’ll give it a try,” I tell him.
    It’s strange standing outside at the top of the stairs, fully costumed, brightly lit, but with no visible audience to deliver my speech to. Like I’m doing a show for the moon.
    “Let’s make this quick,” says Haymitch. “You’re too exposed.”
    My television crew, positioned out in the square with special cameras, indicates that they’re ready. I tell Haymitch to go ahead, then click on my mike and listen carefully to him dictate the first line of the speech. A huge image of me lights up one of the screens over the square as I begin. “People of District Two, this is Katniss Everdeen speaking to you from the steps of your Justice Building, where —”
    The pair of trains comes screeching into the train station side by side. As the doors slide open, people tumble out in a cloud of smoke they’ve brought from the Nut. They must have had at least an inkling of what would await them at the square, because you can see them trying to act evasively. Most of them flatten on the floor, and a spray of bullets inside the station takes out the lights. They’ve come armed, as Gale predicted, but they’ve come wounded as well. The moans can be heard in the otherwise silent night air.
    Someone kills the lights on the stairs, leaving me in the protection of shadow. A flame blooms inside the station — one of the trains must actually be on fire — and a thick, black