Chapter Thirty-Seven
It was almost the last quarter of the moon, and so there was far less moonlight than there had been when Clark had flown above the storm almost a week earlier. There was still enough light for him to see well, though, so he set his mother and her precious cargo down in a spot some distance from the creek. After checking to make sure there were no predators nearby, he flew back to the farm to get the lantern and shovel.
When Clark returned, he and Martha walked across the broad, flat plain, looking for the right spot to bury Tess. Clark broke a path through the snow, taking the casket from Martha so she could concentrate upon walking and looking for the right spot.
Finally, they stopped atop a slight rise that overlooked the frozen creek. In the summer, there would be a good view of the creek from there and the wildflowers would bloom in profusion.
“Here,” Martha told Clark. “She’ll never be able to see it, but if she had been anything like me, she would have liked this spot.”
Clark nodded. “Sure.” He handed the casket back to Martha and focused his heat vision on the ground for a moment, then started digging.
A few minutes later, the grave was deep enough. Gently, Clark took the casket from his once again teary-eyed mother and placed it carefully at the bottom of the grave. Martha stepped forward, taking a handful of the cold dirt, and squeezed it in her gloved hand for a moment before dropping it on the casket. Clark followed suit, dropping his own handful of soil on his sister’s casket. He took care not to squeeze the dirt too hard — at his father’s funeral, he had squeezed his handful of dirt so hard it had turned into a stone-like mass.
Clark waited for a moment as Martha held the lantern over the grave, looking down at the casket, before she nodded and he filled the hole back in, tamping the dirt down and covering it with snow to hide it. Even this far from District 9, they couldn’t be too careful.
Martha sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Clark put an arm around her, giving her time to compose herself. Finally, he asked a question that had been weighing on his mind since his mother had asked him to help rebury her daughter.
“Mom, what would you have done if Tess had lived? With me, I mean?” His parents had never given him any indication that they loved him any less because he was adopted, or made him think that he wasn’t quite what they wanted. Still, the question had occurred to him more than once over the years since they’d told him how he had come to live with them.
“We would have found a way to keep you,” Martha told him. She, too, had thought of just that scenario many times over the years. “Midwives can’t always tell if a woman is expecting twins. Sometimes one will be hidden behind the other, making them hard to detect. If Tess had lived, your father and I would have claimed I had twins.”
“It would have been hard on you, having to nurse two of us.”
“It would have been worth it.” Martha smiled sadly. “Clark, the moment I saw you lying in that rocket, I knew you were meant to be my son. When I picked you up, you snuggled right up to me. You weren’t afraid at all, even though I was a complete stranger. Your father was afraid to let me take you back to the house at first — he was afraid of what the Capitol would do both to us and to you if we took you. He changed his mind pretty quickly, though — he wanted a child as much as I did, and there was this sweet little baby who had been placed in a rocket and sent off for who knows what reason.
“We took you back to the house, and I dressed you, fed you, and put you to bed in the crib. Before the sun rose, your father and I buried Tess under the trees. You were there, but you slept soundly in my arms the whole time. After we went back to the house, I was so exhausted from everything that had happened that I barely stayed awake long enough to feed you again. When I woke up, I went to the crib to see to you — and found that it was empty.” Martha looked at Clark in the darkness. “I had very vivid dreams after the loss of my babies, so my first thought was that I’d dreamed everything — finding you in the rocket, bringing you back to the house, burying the stillborn baby. My heart broke at the thought that it had all been a dream, but then I stepped into the main room of the house, and your father was sitting in the rocking chair he got for me when I was expecting my first baby. He was holding you, cradling you in his arms. You had your hand wrapped firmly around his finger — you were strong even then — and he was looking at you in a way I can only describe as adoringly. You were looking back at him, completely calm and content. I knew then that your father loved you as much as I did, and he would do whatever it would take to keep you safe.
“We were so lucky that you came when you did — we had everything we needed for a baby, and I had milk to feed you. Had you arrived a day sooner or a day later, I don’t know what we would have done. We might have been able to hide you if you’d arrived shortly before Tess’s birth, though I wouldn’t have been able to feed you, but if you’d arrived more than a day or so later, we couldn’t have claimed you were our child, because Tess would have been buried in the cemetery and there would be no way to explain another baby. The people from the Capitol would have taken you away, and there’s no telling what would have happened to you.”
“I sometimes wonder why I was sent here,” Clark told her. “Did someone snatch me away from my parents, leaving them to believe me dead or to wonder what happened to me, or was I sent away to protect me? I know I’m not a normal person, but what exactly am I? Am I a muttation, some Capitol experiment that got away from them, or am I something else?”
“Like an alien, you mean?” Martha asked.
“I don’t look like the aliens in legends, but then, no one’s ever seen one of them — if they’re even real. What if aliens are real, and they look like people?”
“I don’t know, Clark. I think the odds would be against it.” Martha knew enough of biology to know that it was unlikely that another species would have evolved entirely separately from life on Earth, yet still look exactly like humans. “Still … Adra told me that the device used to clamp your umbilical cord was unlike anything she’d ever seen, and she’s worked with Dr. Greenlaw, who has access to some Capitol technology. The rocket you arrived in had a seal on it, but not one from the Capitol or any of the districts — it was an ‘S’ in a diamond shape.”
Clark frowned. “District 1, maybe?” Diamonds were a luxury, something District 1 specialized in, but they weren’t on District 1’s seal.
“What would District 1 be doing with a muttation baby?” Martha asked. “District 3, maybe, but they don’t have diamonds in their seal, either. Neither does the Capitol. If you are a muttation, someone took pains to hide where you came from — or maybe the odds
were favorable for an alien race to look like humans.
“I don’t know exactly
what you are, Clark, but no matter what the answer is, you’re still my son. Your father and I were so lucky to find you.” Martha paused for a moment, then went on. “Your dad loved you very much, you know. I know you two didn’t always agree about things, especially your strange abilities, but …”
“Do kids and parents ever agree on everything?” Clark shook his head. “We compromised eventually. I still wish I had stayed out of the Capitol, though.”
“You learned a hard lesson,” Martha agreed, “and your dad wouldn’t have been happy if he’d known, but he wouldn’t have loved you any less — or blamed you for the heart attack.”
“Mom …” Clark turned away from Martha.
“No, Clark. I want you to listen to me.” Martha grabbed his shoulders, turning him around. “Clark, look at me.” When he finally looked up, she went on, “Your dad’s heart problems started long before you were Reaped. In fact, you were a little boy when they started. Do you remember the diphtheria epidemic? You were only three then.”
“Some of it,” Clark told her. “I remember that you and Dad got sick, but I didn’t.”
“You had a runny nose,” Martha corrected him, “which you’d never had before — or since, for that matter. We were grateful that that was as far as it went with you, especially since quite a few people, including young children, died from the disease. Your father and I recovered, though Adra suspects that my bout with diphtheria may have caused my fourth baby, who I was expecting at the time I got sick, to come far too early to have any chance of surviving. She might not have lived anyway, but at six months, it was too soon for her to be born.
“In spite of everything, though, I made a full recovery. Your dad, on the other hand — diphtheria can damage the heart, and it was while he was sick that your father first showed signs of heart trouble. He recovered from the illness, but the damage was done, and we couldn’t afford the sort of medicines or surgery that might have fixed things. He refused to slow down, either, even when he should have — and in all honesty, I don’t think he wanted to admit that there was a problem.
“He didn’t have his first heart attack until you were in the arena — but that wasn’t your fault, either. You didn’t choose to take part in the Games, and you were fighting for your life — or so it appeared to us.”
“At first, I thought Lois meant to kill me, too,” Clark admitted. “I still didn’t want to hurt her, though.”
“No … you’re a good, decent young man. We were both very proud of you while you were in the arena — you didn’t deliberately harm anyone, and you tried to help where you could.”
“Up until the end,” Clark said quietly. “I couldn’t let Lois die like Mayson did — she was in so much pain, and there was nothing I could do.” Changing the subject, he said, “Mom, why didn’t you and Dad tell me something was wrong with his heart? I could have helped more. I can do so much …”
“We didn’t want to burden you unnecessarily. You were a child, Clark, too young to have so much responsibility.”
“I could have done it, at least after I started developing my powers.”
“To a certain extent, we did let you do more. Your dad was afraid of what would happen if anyone found out about what you can do. Part of why he finally compromised and let you use your special abilities to help around the farm was because he knew he needed your help. He wasn’t about to let you do everything, though — he was raised to do his share, and he was determined to do so — and to let you have a childhood. Adulthood comes all too fast, and we both wanted to you to have a chance to enjoy being young.”
Clark thought of the Rasens, all of whom worked in the factory except the youngest child. In most factory families, children started working at about the age of four, and younger children played amongst the machines or rode on their mothers’ backs. To be sure, none of them had the huge amount of responsibility that came with running a farm, but their lives were still characterized by hard work from a young age.
“A lot of kids don’t have the chance to enjoy childhood,” Clark pointed out.
“We wanted you to have that chance, and you did work — you helped with the housework and took care of the chickens from the time you were two years old, and we gave you more to do as you got older — but you had time to play, too. You were our only child, and so we indulged you a bit.”
“You were the best parents a kid could ask for. I’m lucky I wound up with you,” Clark told Martha. “Mom … if you ever get to the point where you need help with things, please tell me. I’ll help you with anything you need. If I can’t be there, I’ll hire someone to help. There’s plenty of money now. Don’t push yourself like Dad did.”
“Your dad lived his life the way he wanted to. He never wanted to be a burden to others, or to sit around doing nothing.”
“Mom, please!”
Martha relented. “All right, Clark. If I ever need help with anything, I’ll tell you. Life is already much easier than it was, now that I live in Victor’s Village with you, but if I need more than you’ve already given me, I promise that I’ll tell you.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Clark gave her a hug. “I want you to live a long, comfortable life, and I’ll do whatever I can to make that happen.”
Martha hugged him back. “There’s no guarantees, Clark, for anyone, but I won’t keep you in the dark about things. In retrospect, your father and I probably should have told you about his heart problems, at least when you got old enough to understand, but at the time, it seemed best not to worry you.”
Martha looked at her son seriously. “It works both ways, Clark. I’ll tell you if anything is wrong, but in return, I need you to tell me if anything happens — if anyone threatens you, or if you’re having a hard time dealing with things. Trying to hide problems won’t protect me or keep me from worrying — in fact, it worries me when you’re obviously having trouble coping but refuse to say anything. I have noticed that you’ve been calmer over the past week, and that you’ve been sleeping better since the night you went off on your own.
“Where did you go that night, Clark? Did you stay at the farm, or did you go somewhere else?”
Clark was silent for a moment, thinking about what to tell her. In spite of her request that he be honest with her, he had no intention of telling her about his flight to the Capitol, or the way he had spied on Snow and his family — or how close he had come to letting his anger get the better of him.
Stepping away from his mother, he put his hands in his pockets and looked up at the sky. “I didn’t stay at the farm,” he said. “It was too small, too closed in, and I needed to get away. I went up above the storm and … I flew around for a while. I ended up on a beach on the west coast of Panem — where, I’m not exactly sure. I kept looking at the moon, which was full and bright … and I kept thinking about what one of my teachers said, that people had once gone to the moon.” He didn’t mention the dangerously large wave he had caused by throwing a rock into the water, or how upset with himself he had been when he had landed on the beach.
“I already knew that I could hold my breath for a long time — about twenty minutes. I’d already been high in atmosphere, so I knew there was less pressure up there, but it had never bothered me. I wanted to be completely alone — away from everyone and everything — and I was also curious about whether people had really been to the moon, so … I decided to see if I could fly there.”
Martha gave him a horrified look. “What were you thinking, Clark?! That was really dangerous … supposedly, there’s not just less atmosphere on the moon, there’s none at all.”
“It’s true. There’s no atmosphere on the moon — and the Earth’s atmosphere runs out thousands of miles away from the moon. It didn’t bother me, though. I had enough air in my lungs to last for a while, and the lack of pressure — it felt strange, but it didn’t hurt me, and I could fly so much faster without it, because I wasn’t kicking up strong winds or destroying my clothes.”
“What if you couldn’t have withstood the lack of pressure, or the lack of air? Did you even stop to think about that?!”
“No … not really. I decided that if it was too much, I would go back to Earth. I wasn’t thinking about … about disappearing, or anything else. I just wanted to get away for a while … and I was curious. In fact, I’d been curious about the moon for a while, and I’d been thinking about trying to fly there for a while — pretty much since I started flying.
“Mom, I promised that I wouldn’t do anything to harm myself, and I meant it. I decided before I flew into space that if I started running out of breath, I’d go back. I can breathe well even in thin air. I wanted to visit the moon, though. I wanted to see what it was like and if people had ever been there.”
“Going to the moon was incredibly dangerous, Clark — reckless, even. What if you’d run out of air before you could get back?”
Seeing that his mother wasn’t going to let it go, Clark sighed and said, “Mom, I was fine. Nothing happened. I got there quickly — in fact, I don’t think it took me more than two minutes to get there, even though I slowed down enough to examine some of the junk up there in space. There’s no life on the moon — it’s completely barren, with no air or water. There’s dust and rocks and mountains, and lots of craters, and the sunlight is so intense, it’s almost too much.”
At Martha’s alarmed look, he added, “Almost, but not quite. I felt really strong as I floated around in it. It was like eating a rich meal — heavy, but good.” He went on, “I found some machines that had been sent there — some of them were still working, sending data like the devices the Capitol uses to spy on people.”
“Do you think the Capitol sent them there?” Martha was fascinated by Clark’s story in spite of herself.
“I don’t know — I doubt it. The machines looked … old. They were bleached from the sunlight, and I touched one and it had some writing engraved on it that I couldn’t read, like it had come from someplace other than Panem. I stayed away from the cameras, though — if someone
is watching them, I don’t want them to see me on the moon.
“Mom, it turns out that Mrs. Faser was right! People did go to the moon a long time ago. I found footprints, and a flag — maybe from the United States — and a plaque with the names of astronauts and the president on it. It said the year was 1969, and they came in peace for all mankind. There was a map of the world on the plaque, too. I recognized North America on it, even though it looks a little different now. And just before I left, I saw something else — a bit of land in the sunlight that wasn’t North America.”
Martha frowned, shaking her head. “That’s impossible, Clark. North America is the only land left above water. I think you just saw an area with bright lights in Panem.”
“This wasn’t the kind of light you see at night in towns and cities. This was sunlight, and it wasn’t North America. North America was completely in darkness at that hour, and this was too far south anyway. I think it was another continent, maybe the smallest one on the map, from the location and shape.”
Martha was still shaking her head. “It just doesn’t seem possible. I had some of the same teachers as you, used the same textbooks … I’ve never heard of any land being left except North America.”
“I heard the same thing in school … but now I’ve seen that it isn’t true.” He paused for a moment, thinking, then whispered, “Maybe the Capitol lied. Maybe people like Snow know about this, but don’t want people in the districts to know.”
“It wouldn’t be the first lie they’ve told us,” Martha replied, just as quietly. They both looked around, half-afraid of being overheard, though there was no one else for miles around.
Clark pushed his glasses down and quickly scanned the area for cameras and listening devices. “We’re safe,” he told Martha after a moment. “I don’t think the Capitol expects anyone to go this far from the fence, so they didn’t put any surveillance devices here.” He listened carefully for a moment, then added, “There’s some animals around, but no people except us. We weren’t followed.”
“You’d be hard to follow, anyway, except in a hovercraft, and we’d both have heard one if it were here.” Relieved that no one was listening, Martha continued, “Clark, did you try to visit this place that you saw?”
Clark shook his head. “No. I thought about it, but it occurred to me that if there was other land above water, there might also be other people in the world outside of Panem. I didn’t want to take the risk. I just went back to Panem after I came back from the moon. I flew off by myself into the desert, where I could think about things without being disturbed. I had a piece of rock I picked up on the moon with me — it’s on the fireplace mantel now — and I kept looking at it and thinking about what I’d seen.
“I kept thinking about that plaque, the words on it — it was such a hopeful statement — and I wondered where things went wrong. I don’t even know how long ago that was, or what the world was like in 1969, or if things were already starting to go bad. I don’t think there’s much hope in the world now — how can people be hopeful when they know their kids might be killed for entertainment, or when they’re always on the verge of starving to death? Maybe in the Capitol things are different, but … I don’t know.”
Martha looked at Clark for a moment, thinking, before speaking. “Clark, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone — but you must promise to never repeat it to anyone … not for any reason.”
“I can keep a secret, Mom.” Clark looked at her, intrigued.
“Promise, Clark.”
“I promise, Mom.” Clark gave her an exasperated look, wondering what she wanted to tell him. He’d been keeping a dangerous secret since he was eleven years old. Could this secret really be any more dangerous?
“There’s a scattered, underground movement to overthrow the Capitol, to stop the Games. It’s disjointed and few people know about it, but it exists.”
Clark stared at her, his expression reflecting his astonishment. This was indeed a dangerous secret, perhaps even more dangerous than the secret of his powers.
He’d known that not everyone approved of the Games or the way Snow ran Panem, but he’d never really thought there was anything that could be done. “Mom, are you … part of this?”
Martha shook her head. “No, but your father was. He didn’t know I knew. I found out not long after we married. You see, I was very young, living in a strange place with people I barely knew, and I was somewhat insecure. Your father sometimes slipped out at night when he thought I was asleep, and I wondered what was going on — if perhaps there was another woman.
“One night, I followed him and overheard him discussing the abuses heaped on the districts by the Capitol. Snow had just become president of Panem, and there was a lot of speculation whether things might change — and they did, but for the worse.
“I’m not sure who he was talking to — a man and a woman is all I know — but when the meeting ended, I rushed away and returned home, pretending I’d been asleep the whole time. I thought about confronting your father about what I’d heard, maybe even joining him, but by that time I suspected that I was pregnant with my first child, and I felt that it was better if only one of us was doing something so dangerous — that way, if anything happened, the child would still have a parent.
“After we moved here, he stopped slipping out at night. I don’t know why — maybe there wasn’t any such group here, or maybe he didn’t trust them or they didn’t trust him. Your father wasn’t always quiet about his opinions. Maybe he’d decided that it was too dangerous. At any rate, there was never any sign that he was up to anything, though he was certainly willing to defy the Capitol when it came to taking you in or to making sure there was enough food for all of us.
“There was one thing that stood out in my mind, though. Shortly before we found you, we were watching television and there was a news report about District 13. There was a reporter wearing a protective suit, standing in front of the ruins of the Justice Building in 13, saying that District 13 was still too toxic to approach without special protection. Your father mumbled something about ‘there it is again.’ When I asked what he meant, he said the mockingjay in the footage was the same one every time.
“I didn’t understand, because I’d never paid all that much attention to such broadcasts. After that, though, I looked closer when there were news reports from District 13, and it was true — there’s always a mockingjay in the upper right hand corner, just for a second. The building was always the same, and so was the mockingjay. The reporters changed all the time, but the background never did.”
Clark thought about his mother’s words. He’d seen the news reports from District 13 but had seldom given them much thought. Restricted as he was to District 9 and the surrounding area, at least until he developed the ability to fly, District 13 might as well have been another world.
“They must be reusing the same footage,” he told Martha. “I think I wound up in District 13 once after I learned to fly, because I saw a building that looked like the one in the newscasts. It wasn’t a barren wasteland, though — it was surrounded by forest, and I could hear animals moving around. Then I landed, and an alarm went off, and I flew away.”
Martha gave him an exasperated look. “Did you listen to
anything your father and I told you about exploring Panem after you started flying?”
“I thought it was wilderness!” Clark told her defensively. “It wasn’t until I got close that I saw that the building looked like the one in the broadcasts. Besides, if a place is abandoned, what’s the harm in exploring it?”
“It may not be all that abandoned, if an alarm went off when you landed!”
“Maybe I was somewhere else, and just thought it was the building in District 13, or maybe there’s something the Capitol isn’t telling us. If District 13 is no longer a wasteland, why are they pretending it is?”
“Don’t go back there, Clark. It’s too dangerous.”
“Mom … what if there’s something there the Capitol doesn’t want us to know about?”
“I mean it, Clark. Don’t go looking for trouble. Snow has his eye on you. You don’t want to be seen someplace you shouldn’t be able to get to. The consequences … I don’t even want to think about what they might be.”
“I wonder if there’s people there …”
“Clark!”
Clark gave an aggravated sigh. “All right, Mom. I won’t go looking for District 13. I’ll try not to do anything that will get me into trouble.”
“It’s not that I want to restrict you, honey. I just don’t want you to get into trouble. Be careful what you do, and don’t go places you know are dangerous.”
“I’ll try, Mom. I don’t want anything to happen to you or to anyone else. I want to help, people, Mom. There are so many things I can do … but I don’t want to make things worse by trying to help. If I use my powers, it has to be in secret.”
“You helped people for years, Clark, once your ‘powers’ started developing. You were always good at keeping things a secret, too. I see no reason why you can’t keep doing those things. You just have to be careful.”
“It’s harder now that people know who I am. Most people in District 9 knew who I was before the Games, even if they didn’t know me well, but now … everyone in Panem knows who I am, and if I get caught someplace I shouldn’t be …”
“You’ve helped people since the Games, though. Look what you’ve done for the Rasens, and for Pete and Lana. They may not be entirely comfortable with the help you’ve given them, but they’ve accepted it anyway. You haven’t tried to act like you’re better than anyone else because you’re a victor.”
“I’m
not better than anyone else. I did things I shouldn’t have, and now I have to live with it. But I’m still alive, and I’m capable of helping people. I don’t need lots of attention or praise. I just want to do what’s right.”
Martha hugged him. “You’re a good person, Clark, whatever you might think, and while none of this has been easy for you, I think you’ll make it and come out better because of what you’ve experienced. You’re stronger than you know.”
Clark gave her a confused look. “Of course I’m strong, Mom. I can lift anything.”
“I don’t mean like that. I mean inside.” Martha stepped back, looking him in the eye. “You’re strong enough not to be broken by your experiences, and you’re strong enough to face whatever the future holds.
“No matter how hard it is, you’ll be okay, because you have the strength to endure.”
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