Сьюзен Коллинз: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Perhaps Tigris had gone to ask help from her employer, Fabricia Whatnot, a woman as ridiculous as her name but with a certain talent for derivative fashion. Whether the trend was feathers or leathers, plastics or plush, she could find a way to incorporate it at a reasonable rate. Not much of a student, Tigris had forgone university when she’d graduated from the Academy to pursue her dream of becoming a designer. She was supposed to be an apprentice, although Fabricia used her more as slave labor, requiring her to give foot massages and clean clumps of her long magenta hair from the drains. But Tigris never complained and would hear no criticism of her boss, so pleased and grateful was she to have a position in fashion.

Gem of Panem,

Seat of power,

Strength in peacetime, shield in strife.

Coriolanus opened the refrigerator, hoping for something to liven up the cabbage soup. The sole occupant was a metal saucepan. When he removed the lid, a mush of congealed, shredded potatoes stared back at him. Had his grandmother finally made good her threat of learning to cook? Was the stuff even edible? He replaced the lid until he had more information to work with. What a luxury it would be to toss it in the trash without a second thought. What a luxury trash would be. He remembered, or thought he did, being very small and watching garbage trucks operated by Avoxes — tongueless workers made the best workers, or so his grandmother said — humming down the streets, emptying large bags of discarded food, containers, worn household items. Then came the time when nothing was disposable, no calorie unwanted, and no item unable to be traded, or burned for heat, or tucked against a wall for insulation. Everyone had learned to despise waste. It was creeping back into fashion, though. A sign of prosperity, like a decent shirt.

Protect our land

With armored hand,

The shirt. The shirt. His mind could fixate on a problem like that — anything, really — and not let go. As if controlling one element of his world would keep him from ruin. It was a bad habit that blinded him to other things that could harm him. A tendency toward obsession was hardwired into his brain and would likely be his undoing if he couldn’t learn to outsmart it.

His grandmother’s voice squeaked out the final crescendo.

Our Capitol, our life!

Crazy old woman, still clinging to the prewar days. He loved her, but she’d lost touch with reality years ago. Every meal, she’d rattle on about the Snows’ legendary grandeur, even when their fare consisted of watery bean soup and stale crackers. And to hear her tell it, it was a given that his future would be glorious. “When Coriolanus is president . . .” she often began. “When Coriolanus is president . . .” everything from the rickety Capitol air force to the exorbitant price of pork chops would be magically corrected. Thank goodness the broken elevator and her arthritic knees prevented her from going out much, and her infrequent visitors were as fossilized as she.

The cabbage began to boil, filling the kitchen with the smell of poverty. Coriolanus jabbed at it with a wooden spoon. Still no Tigris. Soon it would be too late to call and make an excuse. Everyone would have assembled at the Academy’s Heavensbee Hall. There would be anger to deal with as well as disappointment from his communications professor, Satyria Click, who had campaigned for him to receive one of the twenty-four coveted mentorships in the Hunger Games. Besides being Satyria’s favorite, he was her teaching aide, and doubtless she would need him for something today. She could be unpredictable, especially when she’d been drinking, and that was a given on the day of the reaping. He’d better call and warn her, say he couldn’t stop vomiting or something but would do his best to recover. He steeled himself and picked up the phone to plead dire illness when another thought hit him: If he failed to show, would she allow them to replace him as a mentor? And if she did, would that weaken his chance for one of the Academy prizes presented at graduation? Without such a prize, he had no way to afford to go to university, which meant no career, which meant no future, not for him, and who knew what would happen to the family, and —

The front door, warped and complaining, scraped open.

“Coryo!” Tigris cried out, and he slammed the phone down. The nickname she’d given him when he was a newborn had stuck. He flew out of the kitchen, almost knocking her over, but she was too excited to reproach him. “I did it! I did it! Well, I did something.” Her feet did a rapid little run in place as she held up a hanger draped in an old dress bag. “Look, look, look!”

Coriolanus unzipped the bag and stripped it from the shirt.

It was gorgeous. No, even better, it was classy. The thick linen was neither the original white nor the yellow of age, but a delicious cream. The cuffs and collar had been replaced with black velvet, and the buttons were gold and ebony cubes. Tesserae. Each had two tiny holes drilled through it for the thread.

“You’re brilliant,” he said earnestly. “And the best cousin ever.” Careful to hold the shirt out of harm’s way, he hugged her with his free arm. “Snow lands on top!”

“Snow lands on top!” Tigris crowed. It was the saying that had gotten them through the war, when it was a constant struggle not to be ground into the earth.

“Tell me everything,” he said, knowing she would want to. She so loved to talk clothes.

Tigris threw up her hands and gave a breathy laugh. “Where to begin?”

She began with the bleach. Tigris had suggested the white curtains in Fabricia’s bedroom looked dingy and, while soaking them in bleach water, had slipped in the shirt. It had responded beautifully, but no amount of soaking could entirely erase the stains. So she’d boiled the shirt with dead marigolds she’d found in the bin outside Fabricia’s neighbor’s, and the blossoms had dyed the linen just enough to conceal the stains. The velvet for the cuffs was from a large drawstring pouch that had held some now-meaningless plaque of their grandfather’s. The tesserae she had pried from the interior of a cabinet in the maid’s bathroom. She’d gotten the building maintenance man to drill the holes in exchange for mending his coveralls.

“Was that this morning?” he asked.

“Oh, no, yesterday. Sunday. This morning, I — Did you find my potatoes?” He followed her into the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator and pulled out the pan. “I was up until all hours making starch from them. Then I ran down to the Dolittles’ so I could have a proper iron. Saved these for the soup!” Tigris upended the mess into the boiling cabbage and stirred it around.

He noticed the lilac circles under her golden brown eyes and couldn’t help feeling a pang of guilt. “When was the last time you slept?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m fine. I ate the potato skins. They say that’s where the vitamins are anyway. And today’s the reaping, so it’s practically a holiday!” she said cheerfully.

“Not at Fabricia’s,” he said. Not anywhere, really. Reaping day was terrible in the districts, but not much of a celebration in the Capitol either. Like him, most people took no pleasure in remembering the war. Tigris would spend the day waiting hand and foot on her employer and her motley crew of guests while they exchanged morose tales of the deprivation they’d experienced during the siege and drank themselves senseless. Tomorrow, nursing them through hangovers, would be worse.

“Stop worrying. Here, you better hurry up and eat!” Tigris ladled some soup into a bowl and set it on the table.

Coriolanus glanced at the clock, gulped down the soup without caring that it burned his mouth, and ran to his room with the shirt. He had already showered and shaved, and his fair skin was, thankfully, blemish-free today. The school-issued underwear and black socks were fine. He pulled on the dress pants, which were more than acceptable, and crammed his feet into a pair of laced leather boots. They were too small, but he could bear it. Then he pulled the shirt on gingerly, tucked in the tails, and turned to the mirror. He was not as tall as he should have been. As for so many of his generation, a poor diet had likely compromised his growth. But he was athletically trim, with excellent posture, and the shirt emphasized the finer points of his physique. Not since he was little, when his grandmother would parade him through the streets in a purple velvet suit, had he looked so regal. He smoothed back his blond curls as he mockingly whispered to his image, “Coriolanus Snow, future president of Panem, I salute you.”