Chapter Text
“There are twelve of us and only one of them, we outnumber them by at least two hundred to one. Why are we letting them ship twenty-three of us to our deaths every single year? They can't stop all of us if we fight back.”
- Demeter Virtanen, 16, District Nine Female turned Victor, Day 5 of the Sixty-Eighth Annual Hunger Games
Jessamine squatted behind a row of wheat stalks, where the endless rows of beige, yellow and green curved around the banks of a river, the slight winding of the arrangement forming a small blind spot she’d taken full advantage of on scorching summer days. Wiping the sweat off her brow, she laid her sickle on the soil, her hands firmly clasped on her knees as she tried to catch her breath, searching for the faintest glimpse of respite before the Peacekeepers brought their whips out again.
“Rumbling rye,” she panted, dabbing a sheen of perspiration off the side of her face. “It’s fucking hot out here.”
As if on cue, the small cover of clouds that had shielded the worst of the sun’s glares moved, unveiling the colossal, angry yellow orb of exponential excruciation in its fullest glory, a blinding beam of light slamming into her face like a battering ram.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she seethed, her head downturned towards the earth, trampled upon by a million footsteps over the years, the fresh traces of the most recent shoe prints still vaguely visible. Jessamine was sure her neck was soaked, her hair a putrid stench of sweat and body odour, but in District Nine, one could walk around soaked to the bone and smelling more awful than a century-old piece of ham bread infested with all manner of critters marinated in decaying matter, and no one would bat an eye.
Everyone was too busy living, no, that wasn’t the word, surviving.
“You alright there?”
Jessamine blinked, the searing hot sun making little dots dance around her field of vision. The voice tingled in her head, close, yet oddly distant. For a small fraction of a petrifying heartbeat, she could imagine a Peacekeeper in their silvery white uniform courtesy of the Capitol, looming over her with their hawk-like eyes, a rifle pointed with its tip mere inches from her forehead, silently beckoning for a fellow Peacekeeper with a large bullwhip of hellish proportions and a barbed tip to come forward and rip her body to shreds.
Jessamine angled her face upward, squinting as she shielded her eyes with the palm of her hand.
“Tired, huh?”
A heavy sigh of relief flowed out of Jessamine’s lips, her muscles relaxing at the sight of Farro's chestnut brown hair and soil-coloured eyes. Her friend gave her a wry smile, the bag of harvested grains he was holding crashing to the ground as he flopped beside her, letting out an exhausted puff of air.
“Thought you were a Peacekeeper there for a second,” Jessamine said, jabbing Farro lightly on the shoulder.
Farro rolled his eyes, fiddling with a small piece of nylon cloth that had come loose from his shirt. “How flattering, my closest friend mistakes the sound of my voice for that of a lowly Peacekeeper barking for President Snow's love and affection. Truly the mark of a great partnership, eh, Jessamine?” he remarked dryly.
“Hey, that's kinda a compliment, it means you've got that leadership aura,” Jessamine said with a shrug. “Also that you're a bit of a bitch.”
“Takes one to know one,” Farro quipped, shooting her a sly smirk.
Jessamine chuckled, swatting his arm. “Touché.” She stretched her neck out, listening carefully for the telltale crunch of Peacekeeper boots, heavier and in more orderly strides than those of regular worker shoes, or even the tiny little clings of the metal bits of their white Peacekeeper uniforms tinking against one another.
Thankfully, Jessamine could only hear the soft rustling of wheat stalks, the faint, distant calls of birdsong and the slow, uneven shuffle of downtrodden workers trudging across the wheat fields.
She leaned in, her eyes constantly darting around to make sure the coast was clear, one could never be too paranoid even in the fragile silent intermissions, after all. “How much grain have you taken today?”
Farro’s hand reached for his pockets, five of them across his bottle green shirt and weathered brown trousers. Jessamine lowered her head, peering closer at the dark fissures in his clothing as he pulled aside the small flaps of cloth he had stitched on as protective measures. Sure enough, there it was, nearly full to the tops of his deep pockets, a whole bounty of stolen golden grain, enough for a light, simple meal.
Jessamine grinned, nodding in approval as he patted down the cloth flaps, hiding the grains back from the prying eyes of nearby Peacekeepers. “Not bad,” she murmured. “I think I’ve got about as much as you do, but I’ve got nine pockets and none of them are nearly as full as yours.”
“Nine pockets, how very District Nine of you,” Farro commented, his arms reaching out to stretch a little, his tan skin baked by the scorching heat of the summer sun.
“Eh, it’s my lucky number,” Jessamine said, glancing behind her at the thick rows of wheat, imagining the river just beyond them and wondering if it would be too much of a risk to steal a drink from the rushing rapids.
Two ways to die in that scenario, Jessamine, she reminded herself. Option A, get shot by Peacekeepers for trying to ‘escape’, Option B, get poisoned by whatever foul chemicals are being dumped into that river, all because we’ve got to ruin nature to feed the Capitol’s fat, stupid stomachs.
Her throat burned, a meek cry to be graced by the cooling quench of a sip, but Jessamine ignored it, focusing instead on her sickle, the rusted, curved lump of metal with only a few flecks of its original golden coating remaining. The more she thought about what she needed to do to stay alive in these wheat fields, the less time she would spend fussing and whining mentally over such needless luxuries as food or water, an appetising remedy for her parched lips and the constant, low grumble of her stomach, still yearning for a decent breakfast even after seventeen years of her life.
Jessamine’s hand slid down her shirt, resting gingerly on one of the pockets in which she hid her stolen grains. For the younger, more moral Jessamine, the thought of putting herself in danger to steal what was not hers would have sent a clump of bile wriggling and writhing up her throat, the reality of poverty in District Nine not exactly settling in just yet for her toddler self.
But now, she understood it to be the currency of survival here in Panem. The art of thievery was in these parts of the Outlier Districts a skill more crucial to the survival of one’s entire bloodline than sword-wielding, spear-throwing or whatever else a Career child from Districts One, Two or Four would be toying around with at their age. Stealth and trickery in the wheat fields could, and had in so many heartbreaking cases Jessamine had seen in her lifetime, be the difference between living to see another day and ending up as a nameless gravestone in the far-flung corners of the prairie.
She still remembered, never able to forget, the hollow cheeks and desperate eyes of that blonde boy in her class when she was twelve, Milton, was that his name? She wished she had bothered to learn it, instead of quietly shuffling alongside him as he roamed the halls of their school, a broken shell of a ghost, skeletal to the touch, simply awaiting death each time he showed up to a Math class. Jessamine never remembered him paying attention, what was the point? Would addition or subtraction or fractions provide a panacea for his starvation? Could a good grade and top marks earn him the food he so desperately needed to function as a living person? Milton collapsed in a field not long after, Jessamine recalled standing in the back row of his funeral, not really paying attention as she was ushered forward to lay flowers on his grave, instead dreading the possibility that she could be next, only mumbling sullen condolences to his family when prompted, never actually knowing how his name was spelt, or what his middle, or even last name could possibly be.
The crunch of a boot, approximately a couple of rows away from her and Farro, shook her out of her thoughts. Deep, in orderly steps, as though marching to the beat of one of District Nine’s signature wooden drums, the low thuds of a rifle smacking against thick metal leg armour.
Peacekeepers.
She nudged Farro, holding up an upside-down three-fingered salute, a downward version of the famous call for rebellion Demeter had revived during her Reaping and subsequent Victory Tour, and one that she and Farro had begun to use as a secret signal for incoming Peacekeepers.
Farro’s eyes glistened with understanding. The pair of them jumped to their feet in unison, careful to avoid rustling the wheatstalks or kicking up too much dirt, their heads bowed just below the tops of the wheat gently swaying in a small, light breeze. Jessamine bent back down to pick up both of their sickles, handing the larger one to Farro, who took it with a nod of thanks. Scooping up their bags of wheat, they returned their attention to the harvest, their foreheads scrunching to imitate a worker hard at work out in the fields, their act kept perfectly immaculate just as a burly Peacekeeper burst through the grains, his head swivelling around as though to survey the area, before finally swerving towards them. Jessamine held her breath, clutching a sheaf of wheat tightly in her hand as she swept her sickle, slicing the stalks cleanly, all too keenly aware of the angry glower piercing holes into the side of her head, watching, waiting for her to make a mistake, to give him the excuse of whipping or flogging her.
But Jessamine was a professional at playing the part of District Nine’s perfect little worker.
She tucked the harvested wheat into her bag, carrying on to the next stalk in total silence, not daring to even look up at the Peacekeeper behind her, fearing that if she did, if she were to lock eyes with the big cronie of the Capitol, she would find herself in a heap of trouble that she was not looking for on such a sweltering day.
Please go away, she silently begged the Peacekeeper in her head as she moved down the rows of wheat, harvesting the stalks as she went. Just leave us alone, please, Mr Big and Scary Peacekeeper.
Right beside her, she was aware that Farro too was busy keeping his head down and doing his work, his eyes glancing at her every so often.
He’s probably making sure I don’t do something stupid, Jessamine reasoned. Like, punch the Peacekeeper, or, steal some grain from right under his nose.
She heard a low grunt from behind her, the slow, steady huff as the imposing presence of the Peacekeeper seemed to dim a little with each step forward she took.
Good, she thought. Perhaps that means he’s leaving us alone.
A bootstep, but not in their direction. The slow crunching of earth underneath heavy boots and an even heavier ego, the familiar rough swish of the dirt. Jessamine exhaled, knowing in her heart even before she could hear the Peacekeeper stomping away from them that she was now, at least relatively, in a moment of safety and calmer waters. She slowed her pace, muttering, “Bumbling barley,” under her breath, the weight of the sickle starting to strain on her shoulder muscles, constant, repetitive motions of grabbing a sheaf and slicing the stalks dulling her senses, aching her body from the sheer exhaustion of the work.
But this was just the first part of Jessamine’s job for the day, her more important work would come later under the cover of night in District Nine.
Just then, a choked gasp erupted from somewhere near her, just up ahead along a different row of wheat stalks, further away from the river and closer to the granaries.
She frowned, pausing at that moment to crane her neck over the tops of the wheat fields, trying to get a look into what was going on, but Farro reached out a hand, pushing gently on her shoulders.
“Not worth the risk,” he hissed, looking over his shoulder, checking for any Peacekeepers, though there seemed to be none nearby. He shook his head firmly, biting one side of his cheek as he raised his sickle by just a fraction, as though anticipating a mutt to come charging from between the wheat stalks.
Jessamine, though, would not be dissuaded.
“Jessamine, wait!” Farro hissed.
Jessamine shrugged off his hand, shooting him a cold, icy look as she crept through the golden husks of wheat, the choked gasps growing into quiet pleas for help, interspersed with periods of silence, perhaps ensuring that they would not attract the attention of the roaming Peacekeepers around the fields.
The voice sounded younger to Jessamine, maybe it was a rookie worker who’d made a novice’s mistake while harvesting the wheat.
She pushed through a final row of wheat stalks, her face popping into a small clearing. Almost immediately, her hand flew to her mouth, stifling the scream of horror gurgling inside her throat, her eyes bulging out of her head as she gaped at the gory scene before her, laid out among the fallen husks of wheat in crystal-clear, sunlit definition.
Lying on a slab of sizzling metal was a boy who looked no older than maybe twelve, his light brown hair drizzled in blood still dripping slowly, one drip, one drop at a time, staining the metal and the soil beneath in an ugly shade of crimson red. His arms, knees and neck were bound by scalding hot metal wires to the metal slab, his clothes missing except for his underwear as he lay there, groaning in agony.
A broken sickle lay at his side, the boy’s mistake that had fuelled the Peacekeepers’ ire, the destruction of property that was courtesy of the Capitol, a brutal error in District Nine.
Farro jogged up beside her, coughing out a head of wheat that had lodged itself in his mouth in his rush. “What are you-” he began, but then his eyes landed on the boy in his bloodied anguish, and only a hushed gag could escape his lips then. “W-withering w-w-wheat,” he stammered, staggering backwards as he gazed upon the scene, turning briefly to Jessamine as if to confirm that he wasn’t simply imagining the tortured newbie wheat farmer on the metal slab.
“Come on,” Jessamine urged, tugging his sleeve. “We have to take him to the infirmary!”
“They’ll kill us if we help him!” Farro protested, dragging her back into the cover of the taller wheat stalks.
“We can’t just leave him to die!” Jessamine countered, rounding up on Farro with a blazing look of determination in her eyes. She put her hands on her hips, narrowing her eyes as she stared down her closest friend. “We have to help him, somehow. I don’t know how, but we just have to, Farro!”
Why was she so adamant about helping this nameless worker, who would likely end up dead soon enough anyway?
It would be so easy to just walk away, pretend she hadn’t seen anything, leave the poor boy to his fate and potential death at the hands of the Peacekeepers and their brutal visions of torturous grandeur.
Yet, Jessamine couldn’t shake off that nagging voice in her head, reminding her of all the horrible atrocities committed across Panem in the name of Capitolite supremacy, and how she was simply a grain of rice in a large granary, too small to be of significance, too hapless to help the nation rise up and rid itself of their poverty and hunger. That nagging voice fed into the squeamish, squealing squeak in her chest, that primal need to help out wherever she could, the age-old tugging at her heartstrings prompting her to move forward and, in her own District, at least, be of some assistance to those in need.
“You go and distract the Peacekeepers,” she declared, her voice carrying such a tone of finality that Farro simply shut his gaping mouth and listened. “I'll go and carry him off to the infirmary.”
“But won’t they notice he’s gone?” Farro asked, raising an eyebrow.
“They won’t,” she said with complete confidence, straightening her shoulders. “They didn’t check back on Grita when she was tied to a pole, Ebba and Holzia had to bring her down in the middle of the night because the Peacekeepers just forgot about her. Same when Damien and Cresco were strapped to a jagged boulder. They escaped, hauled themselves to the infirmary at midday, a remarkable feat, by the way, but I digress, and showed up to work on the wheat fields the next day good as new, the Peacekeepers didn’t even bat an eye. They can’t remember every worker, and besides, they see us as vermin anyway, they won’t remember every wheat worker here.”
Farro nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Then good luck, Jessamine. Don’t worry, I'll make sure those wannabe thugs are tripping over their own asses like a bunch of stale breadcrumbs.”
They exchanged a fist bump, a rather casual and non-clandestine gesture given the nature of their rebelliousness. But Jessamine reasoned that it was nice to feel like a normal teenager for once and not a struggling bunch of slaves to the Capitol in District Nine.
As Farro disappeared into the sea of agricultural gold, Jessamine turned her attention back to the boy on the metal slab. She crept forward, crouching until her chin was just above his pale, anguished face. “What's your name?” she whispered.
“Foca,” he croaked, his voice raspy, barely audible now. “Help, please.”
“It's gonna be okay,” she reassured him, grabbing her sickle and moving towards Foca's rope bindings. “You're gonna be okay, Foca.”
Jessamine worked with the swift, precise efficiency of a seasoned sickle wielder. Raising her curved blade, she brought it down on the rope bindings, the familiar swish across thin air echoing softly as she sliced Foca free.
Sliding her hands underneath him, she gritted her teeth, taking a deep breath for an extra boost of confidence, an additional jolt of strength she could churn up. With a loud groan, she lifted him into her arms, the initial burden of weight slowly giving way as she realised just how lightweight this poor boy was, the toll of starvation and malnutrition doing a number on his body. Jessamine gritted her teeth, trying to keep her footsteps as quiet and unassuming as possible as her head wrestled with just how wrong it was for Foca to suffer like this, for his body to be this light, while surrounded by so much excess around him, a surplus of food that could feed an empire, so tantalisingly close yet so far away all the same.
A loud bang erupted from behind her, quickly followed by the frantic shouts of the Peacekeepers. Footsteps peppered through the wheat fields, blurs and flashes of faces glinting like a mirage between the wheat stalks as workers rushed to get as far away from a panicked, warmongering Peacekeeper as possible. There were disgruntled cries Jessamine recognised belonged to the section commanders of the Capitolite soldiers, though the only cry she heard loud and clear was, “This way, come on!”, each syllable a more distant echo than the last.
Good, Jessamine thought, quickening her pace as she broke into a half-run towards the edge of the fields, where she knew a small, District Nine-run infirmary had been set up.
Once she was out of the Peacekeepers' earshot, Jessamine tried to run faster, her feet stumbling through the soil as her arms began to feel the toil of carrying a groaning boy in her arms. She wheezed, narrowly avoiding a large slab of stone half-buried in the dirt as in the distance, puffs of smoke came into view, the mark of buildings, including that blasted infirmary, finally within reach.
Almost there, she told herself, huffing and puffing all the way. Just a little more.
There it was, as she burst out of the field, a shack held up with an ancient stone foundation, though its humble exterior hid a well-oiled, professional band of medics within.
Jessamine heaved a sigh of relief, knowing now that Foca- and she- were safe.
-
“Night is your biggest friend, Jessamine,” her father had once told her as she lay in bed, a thin sheet she used as a makeshift blanket yanked up to the bridge of her nose, her teeth chattering from both the frigid winter chill and the haunting howls of wind that swooshed and groaned through the night. “In the daytime, you are always being watched by the Capitol. At night, it's fair game.”
Jessamine crouched behind a small crate, one hand tucking her dark brown braids underneath the hood of her cloak, the other pressed against her chest, willing her heart to stop thundering like a panicked drummer, to still to a relaxed pace, lest she do something entirely stupid out of sheer fear and misdirection. Ahead of her, she could see nothing beyond the brick wall of her small alleyway where she hid, her little corner of secrecy well-hidden, though not quite ideal as a scouting spot. She took deep breaths, taking her time when inhaling, letting her breath hold for a little longer than she normally would, and then exhaling slowly, copying the exact method Gwendolyn Whitfield, District Nine's first-ever Victor, had always taught the people of District Nine.
“You've done this a million times over, Jessamine,” she tried to tell herself, quelling the queasiness in her gut. “Nothing to worry about, just trust Farro.”
The soft taps of plastic against metal drew her attention skyward, at the dark night hanging above her, blanketed and peppered with a million stars, each one shining brighter than the other. The moon, pale blue and in full, perfect, circular glory, beamed among the galaxies, illuminating Jessamine's surroundings.
But what drew her attention was not this beautiful display of a natural tapestry, rather, it was the mop of chestnut brown hair dangling from a thin ledge on the building in front of her, a casual smirk set upon his face, obscured by the shadow of a shattered window.
Granary has three guards today, Farro signed, Jessamine having to squint to see the motion of his fingers and mouth through the darkness. The Liu siblings and Durum Fernandes are at the front ready to distract them while we move out the grain.
Jessamine nodded, giving him a thumbs-up. She scooted closer to the edge of the crate, peering through shadow and mist to see the entrance to the granary, only partially obscured from the view at her angle. Two figures were standing by the granary entrance, dressed in their usual white Peacekeeper uniforms, a third likely roaming the grounds nearby in search of sneaky little thieves or, more likely, any signs of the gangs that roamed these streets at night, robbing people and Peacekeepers alike and orchestrating the small but flourishing drug trade. Miller Thompson, after all, was still an active gang leader, prowling the night as he'd always done from before his brutal stint in the Hunger Games, and Jessamine knew that both she and the Capitol had him and his gang as a common obstacle.
Jessamine, however, had overheard from her little snooping at the wheat fields that tonight, Miller's notorious Red Devils gang were perched up in their headquarters, anticipating a gang battle with two other rival factions, all three based far away from this granary in particular.
She slunk back into the shadows, trying her best to summon the mental map of the granary's layout in her head from the few times she'd ventured in. There was a back entrance, poorly guarded, on the ground floor, down a smaller staircase, that was where their friends would be waiting to help transport the grain. Speaking of the grain, there were plenty of bags and crates on the far left side of the granary wall, they could easily take some of those. Two blind spots just underneath the big windows on the front-facing wall, they would have to make use of those if things went awry. Jessamine took another deep breath, satisfied with her quick mental prep, bringing forth an image of a day spent playing hopscotch with her siblings as kids, underneath a shimmering rainbow, their bellies full from the recent influx of supplies that had poured in following Demeter Virtanen's Victory in the Sixty-Eighth Annual Hunger Games.
What Jessamine would give to go back to simpler times.
Then again, perhaps back then, she was simply still too young to realise that no time of her life had ever been simple, at least, not since her father was executed by the very Peacekeepers she felt vindicated to steal from.
And there she was again, what had begun as an exercise to ease her pre-thievery nerves had once again evolved into something much darker, something she could scarcely afford to think of in such a pivotal moment.
Remembrance.
She remembered sitting at the breakfast table, waiting for a meal that would never come, her stomach growling as she sniffled on the wrecked wooden stool she used as a seat, clutching her starving belly as she stared ahead, hoping that by some miracle, a morsel would float its way towards her.
Her mother was in the living room, busying herself with dusting some of the old cupboards, now empty, washing plates that didn't need to be washed, anything to stave off the doom and gloom growling from her five children. She sang as she danced around, a brilliant smile Jessamine hadn't seen in a long time dazzling across her face as she whispered a few puns here and there, sometimes one or two jokes too at her own expense, fighting tooth and nail to lighten up the mood.
“Baguette ready, because I loaf puns and naan of you can keep up with my half-baked jokes that can at yeast make you laugh!” she sang softly, her voice chirpy yet low to save up some of her own energy.
Just then, a flash swept across Jessamine's line of sight. A whoosh of dark skin in beige clothing, a swirl of dark brown hair flying across the living room. “Why are you hurrying so much?” she wanted to call out, wanted so desperately to ask and know.
But just as quickly as Jessamine's father had burst onto the scene, he was gone, off to work again, working double shifts to try and get more coin and grain for the family.
And from the age of five, Jessamine would never see him in still calmness, never see what he looked like without motion, when he wasn't always in such a buzz.
Well, she did see him calm and still one time.
When he slumped against the wooden pole he had been tied to with vines topped with wilted flowers, his body going limp as blood oozed from the bullet holes puncturing his skin, another corpse claimed by the Peacekeepers who demanded obedience to the Capitol. She never saw the exact scene play out, never knew if he looked scared in the face of death. Her mother had covered her eyes, but not her ears, no, in District Nine, the sounds of disloyalty and disobedience to Panem must always ring loud and true.
“Jessamine,” Farro's voice called out, etched with concern. “Come on, we have to focus, we-"
A shuffle of movement from somewhere beyond the granary caught both of their attention, the rustling of leaves followed by what Jessamine could only describe as the soft, faint trickle of liquid from a fountain.
“Who's there?” a Peacekeeper barked.
Jessamine froze, holding her breath as she waited, listening in as the noises stopped, then resumed once again, louder this time, followed by the distant chatter of voices that Jessamine could barely make out, talking about revolution and ‘following the path of the Virtanens'. She chewed on her lip, remembering that recording she'd done just a few days prior with Farro and her little sister Cressida, who had insisted on getting involved despite Jessamine's greatest protests. Those voices were theirs, discussing all the dangerous, taboo topics her older siblings Yohan and Keziah had always implored them to remain silent on, though obviously their voice recordings were heavily distorted, expertly twisted by Jessamine such that no one would even guess the voices belonged to them.
The Peacekeepers turned to one another, and though Jessamine couldn't see their faces in the cover of night's darkness and their thick helmets, she imagined they were probably panicking. The stories of violent attacks and bombings in Districts Seven, Eight and Ten, which she'd heard of thanks again to some sneaky little snooping when their captains thought they were out of the workers' earshot, had probably spooked them to no end.
She waited for just a moment longer, watching as three bright purple orbs flew into the sky, crashing back down onto the ground with loud thuds. The Peacekeepers grumbled to one another, grabbing their batons and rifles as they jogged off into the town, leaving the granary abandoned and free for Jessamine and Farro to enter.
Easy as cake, she told herself, quietly tiptoeing out of her hiding spot and creeping towards the granary. Farro, meanwhile, had leapt off the ledge he was perched on, landing on the ground with a graceful thud that even he looked surprised at. “Surprised you're not lying in the dirt groaning in pain,” she quipped as she reached the granary entrance, slipping inside with ease.
“Takes a klutz to know another,” Farro muttered, but Jessamine was already racing for the empty cloth bags slumped beneath a rack of tools on the wall, slinging a few over her shoulders as she made a beeline for the grain.
Jessamine plucked out one of the cloth bags, stretching it open with one hand as the other reached for the grain pile on the granary floor, her stomach churning with excitement as she slipped her fingers into the precious pile of gold, letting the grain run from her hand back into the pile like it was a treasured liquid of life she had to touch to believe was real.
Food for the families of District Nine.
With hungry, greedy hands, she scooped up as much of the grain as she could, dumping it into the cloth bag at breakneck pace, quickly overflowing the limited space inside it. Dumping it on the ground, she pulled out her second bag and repeated the process. She could feel Farro's sleeve brush against her arm as he slid next to her, bag in hand, helping her chuck as much of the precious lifeblood as he could into their stashes of grain loot.
Jessamine used to wonder if this meant people elsewhere would have less grain to feed their families with, if stealing from the tesserae granaries would impact the amount given out on Reaping Day around Panem. But the pangs in her heart had long since been overpowered by the pangs in her empty stomach, any real care for the far-reaching implications of stealing a small chunk of the huge swathes of grain available in these granaries dashed at the thought of her four siblings and widowed mother sitting at home in the Dusk household, their faces ashen and hollow from years of starvation.
Jessamine knew she was doing the right thing then.
And besides, the tesserae quantities had never diminished, not even in months when many families came together to cart entire granaries' worth of supplies away to be redistributed among the poorer populace.
Once she'd filled up her fifth bag, she dumped it on the jumbled mess of grain bags stocked to the brim on the floor, taking a moment to stretch her back and shoulders as she wiped some sweat off her forehead. She turned to Farro, watching him dutifully tie up his sixth bag of grain, a stern, no-nonsense look etched on his face, his brows furrowed in deep concentration as he worked.
Got to keep working then, she thought with a bite of her lip, shrugging aside any muscular fatigue as she kept hustling, kept shovelling grain into bags, one eye always trained on Farro and the windows beyond, simultaneously keeping a lookout for Peacekeepers and watching Farro work with bittersweetness crawling into her chest.
Why does he work like he's running out of time? Hustling day and night like he's running out of time? Every day he fights like he's running out of time?
Maybe it was Jessamine who wasn't doing enough, wasn't contributing as much as she could in theory to the cause, wasn't as committed to it as Farro was.
So Jessamine would work harder, hustle harder, fight harder, if it meant more families could help fight starvation tonight, then Jessamine would do all that it took.
By the time Farro had tied up his tenth bag of the night, Jessamine couldn't help but feel a slight triumphant leap in her chest as she thrust her eleventh bag onto the ground.
“Why are you so obsessed with trying to get yourself killed?” she could hear her brother Yohan's voice demanding at the dinner table, small pieces of rye bread topped with salad and chunks of plain chicken on their plates, a welcome change from empty air and glasses of water. “Jess, there's a million other ways to earn your keep without stealing eleven fucking bags of grain from the Capitol's precious granaries! Don't you remember what happened to our father when he tried to steal some grain?”
Jessamine thumped her fork against the table, trying her very best to quell the sudden onslaught of memories of that fateful day at the Reaping Square, hearing the gunshots fired at her father for daring to pocket some spare barley from the fields he was working on. “Don't speak of him, you have no right,” she seethed, her grip tightening on the fork as she raised it into the air, just a little bit, but enough for the subtle threat to carry across the now-hushed dinner table. “I'm helping to put food on our tables, Yohan.”
“And it could very well end with you getting shot!” Yohan shouted back, his face now red with rage as he stared Jessamine down. “Or they'll send in a tornado that wipes us all out because of you!”
“Yohan, that's enough,” their mother snapped, breaking the silent daze Jessamine often found her in whenever she wasn't busying herself at home or out in the fields, a far cry from the woman she'd known as a child. “Let's just eat,” she continued, returning to her food without so much as a glance in Jessamine's direction, like she no longer existed and was just a piece of the furniture.
But she never protested Jessamine's decisions, her silence the only form of acceptance Jessamine had ever known from her since Harvey Dusk's execution.
Her sister Keziah laid her hand on Jessamine's, her deep brown eyes staring into hers, placating the rumble of emotions that still jumbled up and clouded over her thoughts. “We can talk about this later, Jess,” Keziah reassured softly.
Jessamine knew Keziah's idea of a ‘talk’ would likely involve some form of an attempt to convince her to cease her rebellious activities, but at least she was willing to hear Jessamine out.
“Once we finish doing the dishes later, I've got a new story idea I want to run through you,” Keziah told her, smiling warmly as she bit into her bread, clearly trying to steer the conversation into calmer pastures. “I think you'll like this one. It involves a charming rogue mutt trapper who goes on adventures all around Panem.”
“Why don't you ever actually write those ideas out, Kez?” Jessamine asked her, turning to her sister with a pleading look on her face. “Come on, you'd be great at it!”
Keziah's smile faltered into something sad, wistful, longing. “It's too dangerous, if the Capitol doesn't approve-"
“Who cares what the Capitol thinks?” Jessamine asked. “You could cheer a load of kids up with your stories.”
Keziah sighed. “You're as big a dreamer as I am, Jess. But you work and toil and push yourself way too much. I'm not sure I'll ever understand why.”
Jessamine tossed her fifteenth bag of grain, already about to wade further into the stockpile for a sixteenth bag, trying to mask the victorious look on her face as she glimpsed Farro halfway through his fourteenth bag, when suddenly, a loud whistle coming from the granary's back entrance shattered her bubble of thoughts, dragging Jessamine back to her precarious present and the Peacekeepers that, in all likelihood, were now returning to the granary.
She let out a small yelp, her eyes widening in alarm. “Oh, fumbling focaccia,” she murmured, her head swivelling frantically around the bags of grain that surrounded them, now suddenly seeming like far too many for the two of them to handle and an almost certain death sentence. “Oh no, oh no, oh no,” she stammered, shaking her head in a sudden surge of fright, that hammering in her chest now returning with renewed vigour.
Was Yohan about to be proven right then?
Was her destiny truly to be one among many shot by a firing squad, a lesson for the future Jessamines and Farros of District Nine?
Was this the end of the road for Jessamine Dusk?
“Jessamine, come on, snap out of it!” Farro implored, shaking her shoulders roughly, fixing her with a firm look. “Come on, a few bags at a time.”
Jessamine nodded, the numbness in her mind thawing as she grabbed three sacks of grain in each hand, gritting her teeth as her fists shook with each step she took, the weight of the grains threatening to send her tumbling to the floor.
The rear entrance creaked open, and through the dim bluish moonlight, Jessamine could see three dusty figures standing in the doorway of the granary.
For a minute, Jessamine's heart nearly stopped, her brain overheating at the thought of the three Peacekeepers Farro had said were on guard at the granary, mentally preparing herself to hurl the sacks at the Peacekeepers and hope they would be knocked out cold with their memory of her and Farro breaking in completely lost in a sea of twinkling stars and wheat ears.
“Jessamine,” a familiar voice squeaked. “It's us, we're here to help.”
“Cressida?” Jessamine gasped, staring now much more clearly at the three figures, fear turning into incredulity at the sight of her little sister, the one she'd specifically told to stay at home and to stay out of trouble, especially when Peacekeepers were roaming around Wichita in greater numbers these days. “What are you doing here? You should be at home with Keziah and Eli!”
“Farro said I could come along,” Cressida replied sheepishly as, on either side of her, Topeka Liu and Durum Fernandes stepped forward, their faces partially obscured by cloaks and masks as they briskly walked towards the remaining grain sacks, hauling a few over their shoulders.
Jessamine spun around, glaring now at her friend, who, to his credit, dropped his grain bags and put his hands up apologetically. “Farro?” she hissed, her voice dangerously low. “Did you-"
“She was insistent, and we were in a hurry,” Farro said quickly, backing slightly away from her. “We are still in a hurry, actually,” he added, picking up his bags of grain again.
Jessamine scowled, but she knew Farro was right. Giving Cressida a tiny grunt of approval, she stormed out of the granary, Farro, Topeka, Durum and Cressida all trailing behind her as a flurry of voices, prerecorded ones using old radios and recording devices passed down several generations in District Nine, erupted across the night sky, the Peacekeepers nowhere to be seen, probably out on some wild goose chase courtesy of Topeka's brother Sumnero Liu. She headed towards a different building, the old, abandoned Ravinstill Mill, destroyed during an uprising several decades prior, her knees almost buckling from carrying the weight of the grain.
Ramming her way through the old mill's barricaded wooden doors, she stumbled inside, adjusting the placement of her fingers on the bags to try and alleviate the sheer burden of the weight.
Right beside an old, ruined tool shed, there it was. A small, nondescript opening in the floor, but one that would lead to safety for them all.
Kicking a small, hidden slab of wood aside, she threw the grain bags down into the opening before hopping in herself, her hand grabbing wildly against the walls of the tunnel she now found herself in to avoid an awkward landing and an even more awkward injury. The rest of the night's thieves followed suit behind her, each one slumping against the wall almost immediately as they tried to catch their breaths.
Jessamine cracked her knuckles, stretching her neck as Sumnero Liu dove headfirst into the hole, landing on the ground with a painful, “Ow!”, his sister Topeka slamming the opening shut behind him. “Man, those Peacekeepers from the Capitol were real pesky tonight, eh, Durum? Miss the days when we had lazy bums from Districts One and Four.”
“Well, they've been stepping up security since Demeter won,” Jessamine said with a sigh. “District Nine's a liability now, they can't afford to send Ones and Fours if they're going to just work with the rebels here anyway.”
She lifted her bags of grain, trudging her way through the ancient tunnel, lit only by a few dying lanterns, rekindled every night by a handful of other rebellious personalities in District Nine. Once she'd reached the other end, she gently tipped the wooden covering of the tunnel entrance, pressing her face close to the small opening she'd created, peering to try and spot any roaming Peacekeepers.
When she'd made sure that the coast was clear, she motioned for the others to follow, trotting up a small set of stairs and onto the street level, tucked in an old warehouse that belonged to the Liu family, though the place was almost always barren, without any of the crucial supplies it was designed to contain. Jessamine heaved a sigh of relief, the alarm bells screaming of danger finally ceasing in her chest, her heart rate finally returning to normal as she stepped into a safety zone.
“We'll take it from here,” Topeka told them, thrusting her sacks of grain onto the floor in a messy pile. “Once the noise dies down, we'll start distributing this grain to the families.”
Jessamine nodded, muttering a small word of goodbye to her allies and sharing a sideways hug with Farro before she and Cressida took a sack of grain each, sauntering out of the warehouse and towards the Dusk house at the end of the small side street.
“I don't care what Farro says, Cress,” Jessamine told her sister sternly. “Don't follow us, it's not safe. Stay home and help take care of Eli.”
Cresside pouted, her chin raised high in defiance. “I'm fifteen, Jess, I can help out instead of sitting at home and being just another fucking mouth to feed. I want to be like you, going around being the hero, saving lives and everything.”
Jessamine rolled her eyes, making a mental note to tell Yohan and Keziah about Cressida's stubbornness, in the hopes that maybe they could talk some sense into her. “Cress, you don't even know half of what's at stake here,” she muttered, stalking away as they neared the Dusk home, resisting the urge to look back and shoot her sister a final glare.
She's too young and naive for District Nine's clandestine activities, Jessamine thought. She's not cut out for it.
“I'm strong, and I'm tough, and I can be of at least some help!” Cressida insisted, resorting to dragging the heavy sack on the ground behind her, her breath turning into desperate pants as she tried to haul the sack, far too heavy for a small, bony girl like her.
Jessamine clucked her tongue, refusing to feed into her protests, hoping that if she simply ignored Cressida's insistence, it would die down eventually.
Even from a distance, Jessamine could see the Dusk family home, their weed-infested front yard empty at this hour, the only sign of life being a dim orange light emitting from one of the bedroom windows.
Jessamine's head dropped, her heart sinking just a little as she watched Keziah stare out the window toward her, an untouched stack of books on her bed, her expression the poster girl of anxiety and worry.
Jessamine could only hope that Keziah would one day understand her.