A Circus of Eagles [An HG Fanfic]

Avox - Milo

I move silently - at my last placement it was that or get beaten - so I'm not sure how she knows I've arrived, but she sits up and grins, her entire little face lighting up. I'm not up on the science behind how Ani came into being but she looks so much like Cornelius that he had to be involved somehow, probably in ways I'd rather not think about. She has the same wide, trusting mouth, the same smooth hair, the same kind eyes. And she likes me. I think.

"Milo!"

I tap two fingers to my forehead, the usual gesture of salute towards a Capitol citizen when they address us for the first time in a meeting, but Ani won't care if I do it right so I allow my elbow to sag. She giggles.

"Has Poppa told you to come and check that I'm getting ready?"

Poppa is Cornelius. To her Falcon is Father; the idea of anybody calling him Poppa, Pops, Pa or any other kind of diminutive makes me feel slightly queasy. I shake my head. Like Cornelius, Ani likes to leave everything to the very last minute, and as proof of this her reaping dress is still hung up over her holoscreen, shimmering silver in the dim lights. I take one last glance at the stars and press the lighting sensor and the ceiling fades, replaced by soft glowing yellow light.

Ani sighs and rolls off the bed, landing with a thump. "It doesn't fit me."

I nod. I know for a fact that it fits her. I'm the one who fitted it.

"It fitted me last week," she tries, "but it doesn't now. I've grown. Here." She gestures vaguely to her chest without any sign of embarrassment. And why would she be embarrassed? I'm an Avox. Hardly human.

Don't be daft, Ani, you're still flat as Ten. Every so often the urge to talk, the need to speak, seizes me so strongly that I open my mouth, the tongue that isn't there forming words that can't be made. All that comes out is an animalistic gurgling that makes Ani jump and turn white.

"Don't do that, Milo, it's scary."

I hang my head, the best I can do to apologise. I can't hug her, or even pat her on the arm as I would have done to the sister I might have had. She might be only just ten but she's above me in so many ways, intelligence being one of them, that all I can do is listen. At least I'm good at that.

She glances towards the door, where we can hear Cornelius and Falcon having a conversation, as I fetch down her dress and hunt the matching shoes from her wardrobe. Like I said, she's not stupid. At first glance her room looks spotless, until you open the wardrobe and realise that all the mess that would be on the floor has been swept in there. I find one shoe and start digging through the piles of toys to find the other.

"Having dads is no fun," she says to herself; Ani often talks to herself. "They're so bossy. Ani do this. Anistar do that. Ani can't go to the flicks, she's too young, Ani can't go out past eight, it's dangerous out there. Ani can't have friends, they might be bad people. Ani can't."

There's a thump as she kicks something. Probably the bed. In a moment Cornelius will come to see what the noise is, so I wriggle out of the wardrobe and throw the shoe at her. She catches it deftly, sidetracked. Sort of.

"You must have a dad, Milo. What's he like?"

How to explain? You can't answer a question like that with 'yes' or 'no' and Ani doesn't speak Avox. And I can't tell her about the last time I saw my Pa, which was running with a wriggling bundle strapped to his chest, throwing himself under the electric fence, missing, screaming...

And I can't tell her that I saw all that on a screen and couldn't even cry because by then my tongue had been stolen.

"Oh," she says, and her lips wobble as she works out what my gestureless silence means. "I'm sorry. I didn't know...I suppose he must have loved you very much, though." This is said firmly, with the childish certainty that I used to have that the fact is both true and should be a comfort to me. But it isn't, because I remember...