HungerGames72

Chapter four

A rather loud crow squawks behind me and it makes me jump about eighteen feet into the air.
Well, that might have been a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea.
I turn around a flap my arms. "SHhhhhhhHHH!"
The crow squawks angrily once more, then flies away.
I stand at the edge of the forest, alone again.
I'd been up here since around five in the evening, ever since the mayor of the district, Francisco D'Everlange, 'popped in' to see how my dad is getting on with the lab, editing cow cells and stuff to improve the genetic diversity of the herd.
I knew it wasn't really for that. No doubt D'Everlange would drop hints about how strong the peacekeeper force is, and how preparation for the hunger games are starting, and how it would be such a shame if someone missed out on them.
I'm sure he knew about us conspiring to leave.
I don't hate many people, but every time I see that man my blood boils and I can hear my pulse in my ears.
Best I stay away from the house for a while.
          I walk through the edge of the forest for a while, brushing my hands lightly through the shrubs and leaping up to tap the leaves hanging closest to me. Then, coming across a small stump, I decide to sit down and watch the sun go down.
The forest marks the start of the hilly region, so it gives me the perfect view of the crimson skies.
I gaze at the small village, the only place I've ever known.
Everyone- well, almost everyone- I loved was down there, down in that tiny little matchbox town, surrounded by patchwork fields dotted with cows.
We're all so small.
All my history, every word, every tear, every laugh is contained in this small valley.
Such a sad existence, being contained in a five metre tall fence with barbed wire.
No one had tried to leave, not since my mother wanted to and then-
My mother.
           I was nine, still a child, when the annual hunger games arrived. My brother, August, a small and rather fragile boy, only had his name in the pot once. He had just turned twelve a week ago, and nothing could prepare my small, happy family for what happened that day.
The capitol host, Cinnamon Farley, a rather vampire-ish looking woman, stood on the stage. Her hand, rummaging around inside that cursed glass bowl. Her slender fingers pick out a hastily folded piece of paper.
She opens it.
"And the boy, from district 10,"she says, simpering disgustingly as she does every stupid year, "August Hardcastle"
A shriek escapes my mother's lips as her knees buckle and she falls to the floor.
I was quite small, so couldn't see over everyone else, but I still tried to shove past the residents of District 10, crying and yelling.
I got to the front of the crowd just in time to see my brother, shake the hand of the other tribute weakly. His eyes are glued to to floor, his limbs trembling.
"AUGUST!" I cried, my legs shaking. Cinnamon smiles in what she supposes is a comforting and sympathetic way.The flash of her sharp, capitol teeth sends a jolt of fury through my body, and next thing I know, I'm trying to clamber past the line of heavily armed peacekeepers, my nails trying to scrape past their impenetrable suits.
"Now now, little one" says a middle aged lady with kind eyes, gently patting my head.
I remember turning to face her, my face a picture of anguish and grief, crying "HE'S MY BROTHER! MY BROTHER!"
She tried to subdue me with an attempted hug, but I keep running, searching for my dad.
He's standing, holding my mother, a silent tear rolling down his face as he stares at the stage.
I turn and see August getting guided by cinnamon and the district 10 mentor, away from the stage, to wherever they put them before the train arrives.
My mouth goes dry.

Saying goodbye to him was one of the hardest things I've ever done.
It's hard to put something like that into words, knowing you'll never see the boy you've grown up with again.
He was always there, helping to feed the cows and putting bows in their hair,or lending me a hug after the nasty girls at school teased me mercilessly.He was such a sweet boy. Innocent, never done one thing evil in his life. August didn't have a malicious or murderous bone in his body.
How could he come home?

He didn't.
August died on the third day, after drinking from a pond that the gamemakers had laced with a poison.
If only he had noticed the dead fish floating in it. But my poor, sweet brother was so numb with thirst and hunger, he couldn't control himself.
I'd rather he died that way, rather than being slaughtered by one of the brutal Career tributes.
In the week that followed,my mother started wasting away. What was once a radiant, smiling woman was now an empty, shrivelled shell of a person. She no longer ate, or drank.
After two days she stopped speaking. She just lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling.
    Ten days after August died, my mother did too.
Then it was just me and my father. He'd cry and cry some days, but on others he'd continue working. For about six months life was like this. Then one day, dad slowly started to mend.
The pain never goes away entirely, of course. The pain of missing them.
The pain of knowing that I'll never walk into the kitchen to see August pored over a recipe book, stirring odd plants I'd never seen before that he'd found in the woods into a soup, my mother in the corner, knitting a blanket for her sister's child.
This was his place, the woods.
He'd come up here for hours, searching for plants to make into interesting soups and concoctions,or sometimes he'd make paint with them, and cover large chunks of bark in beautiful swirling colours.
I sit on the tree stump where he sat so long ago.
My head in my hands.
I miss them.