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 there was a Head Peacekeeper who used the whip freely. But my mother must have been around my age and still working at the apothecary shop with her parents. Even back then, she must have had healer's hands.
Ever so gently, she begins to clean the mutilated flesh on Gale's back. I feel sick to my stomach, useless, the remaining snow dripping from my glove into a puddle on the floor. Peeta puts me in a chair and holds a cloth filled with fresh snow to my cheek.
Haymitch tells Bristel and Thorn to get home, and I see him press coins into their hands before they leave. “Don't know what will happen with your crew,” he says. They nod and accept the money.
Hazelle arrives, breathless and flushed, fresh snow in her hair. Wordlessly, she sits on a stool next to the table, takes Gale's hand, and holds it against her lips. My mother doesn't acknowledge even her. She's gone into that special zone that includes only herself and the patient and occasionally Prim. The rest of us can wait.
Even in her expert hands, it takes a long time to clean the wounds, arrange what shredded skin can be saved, apply a salve and a light bandage. As the blood clears, I can see where every stroke of the lash landed and feel it resonate in the single cut on my face. I multiply my own pain once, twice, forty times and can only hope that Gale remains unconscious. Of course, that's too much to ask for. As the final bandages are being placed, a moan escapes his lips. Hazelle strokes his hair and whispers something while my mother and Prim go through their meager store of painkillers, the kind usually accessible only to doctors. They are hard to come by, expensive, and always in demand. My mother has to save the strongest for the worst pain, but what is the worst pain? To me, it's always the pain that is present. If I were in charge, those painkillers would be gone in a day because I have so little ability to watch suffering. My mother tries to save them for those who are actually in the process of dying, to ease them out of the world.
Since Gale is regaining consciousness, they decide on an herbal concoction he can take by mouth. “That won't be enough,” I say. They stare at me. “That won't be enough, I know how it feels. That will barely knock out a headache.”
“We'll combine it with sleep syrup, Katniss, and he'll manage it. The herbs are more for the inflammation —” my mother begins calmly.
“Just give him the medicine!” I scream at her. “Give it to him! Who are you, anyway, to decide how much pain he can stand!”
Gale begins stirring at my voice, trying to reach me. The movement causes fresh blood to stain his bandages and an agonized sound to come from his mouth.
“Take her out,” says my mother. Haymitch and Peeta literally carry me from the room while I shout obscenities at her. They pin me down on a bed in one of the extra bedrooms until I stop fighting.
While I lie there, sobbing, tears trying to squeeze out of the slit of my eye, I hear Peeta whisper to Haymitch about President Snow, about the uprising in District 8. “She wants us all to run,” he says, but if Haymitch has an opinion on this, he doesn't offer it.
After a while, my mother comes in and treats my face. Then she holds my hand, stroking my arm, while Haymitch fills her in on what happened with Gale.
“So it's starting again?” she says. “Like before?”
“By the looks of it,” he answers. “Who'd have thought we'd ever be sorry to see old Cray go?”
Cray would have been disliked, anyway, because of the uniform he wore, but it was his habit of luring starving young women into his bed for money that made him an object of loathing in the district. In really bad times, the hungriest would gather at his door at nightfall, vying for the chance to earn a few coins to feed their families by selling their bodies. Had I been older when my father died, I might have been among them. Instead I learned to hunt.
I don't know exactly what my mother means by things starting again, but I'm too angry and hurting to ask. It's registered, though, the idea of worse times returning, because when the doorbell rings, I shoot straight out of bed. Who could it be at this hour of the night? There's only one answer. Peacekeepers.
“They can't have him,” I say.
“Might be you they're after,” Haymitch reminds me.
“Or you,” I say.
“Not my house,” Haymitch points out. “But I'll get the door.”
“No, I'll get it,” says my mother quietly.
We all go, though, following her down the hallway to the insistent ring of the bell. When she opens it, there's not a squad of Peacekeepers but a single, snow-caked figure. Madge. She holds out a small, damp cardboard box to me.
“Use these for your friend,” she says. I take off the lid of the box, revealing half a dozen vials of clear liquid. “They're my mother's. She said I could take them. Use them, please.” She runs back into the storm before we can stop her.
“Crazy girl,” Haymitch mutters as we follow, my mother into the kitchen.
Whatever my mother had given Gale, I was right, it isn't enough. His teeth are gritted and his flesh shines with sweat. My mother fills a syringe with the clear liquid from one of the vials and shoots it into his arm. Almost immediately, his face begins to relax.
“What is that stuff?” asks Peeta.
“It's from the Capitol. It's called morphling,” my mother answers.
“I didn't even know Madge knew Gale,” says Peeta.
“We used to sell her strawberries,” I say almost angrily. What am I angry about, though? Not that she has brought the medicine, surely.
“She must have quite a taste for them,” says Haymitch.
That's what nettles me. It's the implication that there's something going on between Gale and Madge. And I
