Chapter Text
When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Sokka’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. He must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our father. Of course, he did. This is the day of the reaping.
I prop myself up on one elbow. There’s enough light in the bedroom to see them. My older brother, Sokka, curled up on his side next to my father. In sleep, my father looks peaceful, even with the old scars that mark his forearm. Sokka’s face is as young as fresh rain, despite being 2 years older than me.
Above them both on the window frame is the world’s ugliest hawk. Red, like the symbol of the Fire Nation, is missing one eye. Sokka named him Hawkie, which tells you everything you need to know about his imagination. I dislike his presence as much as he hates my guts, or at least distrusts me. The last thing I needed was another body to keep alive. But Sokka begged so hard, I had to let him stay.
I swing my legs off the bed and slide into my snow boots. I pull on trousers, a shirt, braid my long brown hair, and grab my water skin.
Our part of the Southern District, nicknamed Kivuq Bay, is usually crawling with hunters and fishermen at this hour. Since no one in the Southern Tribe could waterbend anymore, water pollution was hard to manage. Men and women have been struggling to feed their families for decades. But today the streets are empty. The reaping isn’t until two. May as well sleep in. If you can.
I knew waking up this early meant that I didn’t need to run to the edge of the island to find a quiet space with water. Still, just to be safe, I went to hide behind abandoned ships where no one could see me waterbend. Waterbending isn’t something that I should show off to the village. It could put my family in trouble, as it did ten years ago.
I never told anyone I could waterbend except my mother before she was killed protecting me and my gift. It was a Fire Nation soldier who did it. From that day forward, I loathed the people who ruled our country, the Fire Nation, from the far-off city called the Capitol. But I understood that saying so would lead me into more trouble. So I learned to hold my tongue and never waterbend again.
But I started learning again when I met Jet. He thinks I could use waterbending to find more food and secretly help with the pollution. Of course, that would be illegal, but rules were never set about waterbending since no one in the district could do it. He’s already waiting for me when I arrive at our usual spot. The sight of him brings on a smile. Jet says I never smile except by the bay.
“Hey, Kat,” says Jet. My real name is Katara, but when I first told him, he thought I’d said Tara. When I got angry, he said I looked like a cat, and it became his official nickname for me.
I respond with a nudge, walk past him, and press my fingers to the sea to begin the day’s practice. I start with pushing and pulling small tides, letting Jet watch me warm up while setting up a fire to cook breakfast. When I get my rhythm, I start cleaning off the pollution, catching fish in the water, and putting them in a big pot that Jet brought. I was never much of a cook, but Jet has always known his way around a fire and has been cooking fish perfectly ever since we started doing this two years ago. When I finished, Jet had already prepared two fish for us to eat.
“Those are big ones,” I say, sitting down next to him. Big fish often sell better for us.
“I figured we deserved it today. Maybe for more luck,” says Jet.
I watch as Jet pulls out his knife and slices the fish. He could be my brother, I say to myself. It wasn’t like anyone who saw us together thought I had more than one. Dark hair, tan skin. He’d look identical to Sokka if he tied his hair like my perky brother. But we’re not related at all, because he’s from the southern part of a place that was once called the Earth Kingdom. My family is one of the remaining citizens of the old Southern Water Tribe. We were merged to become the Southern District, along with the Southern Air Nomads, but they were exterminated by the Fire Nation a long time ago.
We settle back in a nook in the snow. From this place, we are invisible but have a clear view of the blue sea reflecting the sky and the soft, cool breeze of everlasting winter. Everything would be perfect if this were a normal day. But instead, we have to be standing in the square at two o’clock waiting for the names to be called out.
“We could do it, you know,” Jet says quietly.
“What?” I ask.
“Leave the district. Run off. Live in the wild. You and I, we could make it,” says Jet.
“If you didn’t have kids,” I added quickly. “And if Sokka could sew his own clothes.”
They’re not his kids, of course. But they might as well be. Jet has 4 younger siblings who aren’t even related to him. But they stick with each other because they were all orphaned the same year my mother died. My situation wasn’t the same, but who would fill Sokka and my father’s mouths with freshly caught fish? Who would clean dirty laundry and heal their wounds?
“I’ll never have kids,” I say.
“I might. If I didn’t live here,” says Jet.
After our meal, we swing by the market. We easily trade most of the fish for good bread, farm meat, and spices. We divided our spoils and went separately to our homes.
At home, I find my father and brother are ready to go. My father wears a traditional Southern Wolf Armor from his war days. Sokka is in a similar uniform that he wears every reaping day, but it is now noticeably fitted for his size this time. I get myself ready, putting on a blue dress and styling my hair in a braid. I leave two strands of hair to frame my face. They’re called qilliqti, but my brother calls them hair loopies.
I meet Sokka and my father at the dining table to eat, a cooked fish and a side of bread prepared by both of them, it appears. I could see the smiley faces on the bread that I knew Sokka must’ve carved in them. He’s trying to cheer us up, I suppose. It did help my appetite as we eat.
We head for the square at one o’clock. Even though the people eligible for the reaping are aged 12-18, attendance is mandatory. The population of the district isn’t as large. Still, the space gets more claustrophobic as people arrive. I find myself standing in a clump of sixteens from the bay. We all exchange terse nods, then focus our attention on the temporary stage that is set up before the Air Temple. It holds a podium and two large glass balls, one for the boys and one for the girls. I stare at the glass paper slips in the girls’ ball. Every year, your chances of getting reaped increase twice, which means sixteen of them have Katara written on them in careful handwriting.
Just as the town clock strikes two, the mayor of the district, Bumi, steps up to the podium and begins to read. It’s the same story every year.
He tells of the history of the Fire Nation, which was once just a country among three others that decided to share its prosperity with the world. They created four districts regardless of the nation’s original territory: Northern, Western, Eastern, and Southern. Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the Earth Kingdom, Water Tribe, and Air Nomads against the Fire Nation colonies. The Great War resulted in the extermination of the Air Nomads. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games.
The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the four districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The eight ributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.
Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch—this is the Capitol's way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion.
To make it humiliating as well as torturous, the Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a sporting event pitting every district against the others. The last tribute alive receives a life of ease back home, and their district will be showered with prizes, largely consisting of food. All year, the Capitol will show the winning district gifts of grain and oil and even delicacies like sugar, while the rest of us battle starvation.
Through the crowd, I spot Jet looking back at me with a ghost of a smile. As reapings go, this one at least has a slight entertainment factor. But suddenly I am thinking of Jet and his sixty-four names in that big glass ball and how the odds are not in his favor. Not compared to a lot of the boys. This is his last reaping, though, I say to myself. I regret not wishing him good luck before we went home.
It's time for the drawing. Ming Lin, our district escort, says, as she always does, "Happy Hunger Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor!" and crosses to the glass ball with the girls' names first. She reaches in, digs her hand deep into the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper. The crowd draws in a collective breath, and I start to feel more nauseous.
Ming Lin crosses back to the podium, smooths the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice.
“Katara, daughter of Hakoda.”
The silence was deafening. I could hear whispers around me as I try to remember how to breathe. My body stood frozen, like that day when I found my mother’s still body in my own home. It took Ming Lin to call up my name and the crowd moving aside for me to start walking to the stage. My head feels hollow, nothing but the thought of Sokka and my father bouncing around the inside of my skull.
I keep walking until I reach the stage to meet Ming Lin with that bubbly smile of hers. She calls for applause from the district, but to the everlasting credit of the people of the Southern District, not one person claps. Possibly because they know me from the market, or knew my mother, or have been commanded by my father. I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.
It’s time to choose the boy tribute. Ming Lin grabs the first slip she encounters. I don’t even have time to wish for Jet’s safety when she reads out the name in a clear voice. And it’s not Jet.
It’s Sokka.
The odds are not in our favor today.
I can hear gasps of the crowd, everyone looking for my father, who had dropped to his knees in disbelief. And then I see him, the blood drained from his face, hands clenched in fists at his sides, walking with stiff, small steps up toward the stage.
“I volunteer as tribute!” the voice cuts through the square. A boy pushes past my father. His robes are too large for him, the hood shadowing most of his face.
There’s some confusion on the stage. The word tribute in the Southern District is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse. The boy comes up to the stage to meet Ming Lin.
“What is your name, boy?” Ming Lin asks.
“My name is Aang,” He reaches for his hood. The fabric falls away, followed by his headband. A collective gasp ripples through the crowd. Blue arrow tattoos gleam against his skin. My stomach drops. There’s only one kind of people who bear those markings.
“I’m from the Southern Air Temple.”
The square erupts. Gasps. Shouts. Questions. I barely hear any of them. All I can see is Sokka standing at the foot of the stage, alive. Alive because of him. A strange feeling settles in my chest, but it is far from relief. It’s Debt.
The boy has just saved my brother’s life. I owe him for the safety of my family; instead, I have to repay him by wishing for his death. Or worse, kill him off by myself.
I turn to meet his gray eyes, and he gives my hand what I think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze. That I don’t need to thank him. Or maybe it’s just a nervous spasm.
We turn back to face the crowd as the anthem of the Fire Nation plays.
Oh, well, I think. There will be eight of us. Odds are someone else will kill him before I do.
Of course, the odds have not been very dependable of late.