第90章

  i ask. pee-
  ta shakes his head, and looks at me expectantly. so i begin. but
  carefully. because my words are going out all over panem.
  and while people have no doubt put two and two together
  that i hunt illegally, i don’t want to hurt gale or greasy sae or
  the butcher or even the peacekeepers back home who are my
  customers by publicly announcing they’d breaking the law,
  too.
  here’s the real story of how i got the money for prim’s goat,
  lady. it was a friday evening, the day before prim’s tenth
  birthday in late may. as soon as school ended, gale and i hit
  the woods, because i wanted to get enough to trade for a
  present for prim. maybe some new cloth for a dress or a hair-
  brush. our snares had done well enough and the woods were
  flush with greens, but this was really no more than our aver-
  age friday-night haul. i was disappointed as we headed back,
  even though gale said we’d be sure to do better tomorrow. we
  were resting a moment by a stream when we saw him. a
  young buck, probably a yearling by his size. his antlers were
  264
  just growing in, still small and coated in velvet. poised to run
  but unsure of us, unfamiliar with humans. beautiful.
  less beautiful perhaps when the two arrows caught him,
  one in the neck, the other in the chest. gale and i had shot at
  the same time. the buck tried to run but stumbled, and gale’s
  knife slit his throat before he knew what had happened. mo-
  mentarily, i’d felt a pang at killing something so fresh and in-
  nocent. and then my stomach rumbled at the thought of all
  that fresh and innocent meat.
  a deer! gale and i have only brought down three in all. the
  first one, a doe that had injured her leg somehow, almost
  didn’t count. but we knew from that experience not to go
  dragging the carcass into the hob. it had caused chaos with
  people bidding on parts and actually trying to hack off pieces
  themselves. greasy sae had intervened and sent us with our
  deer to the butcher, but not before it’d been badly damaged,
  hunks of meat taken, the hide riddled with holes. although
  everybody paid up fairly, it had lowered the value of the kill.
  this time, we waited until dark fell and slipped under a
  hole in the fence close to the butcher. even though we were
  known hunters, it wouldn’t have been good to go carrying a
  150-pound deer through the streets of district 12 in daylight
  like we were rubbing it in the officials’ faces.
  the butcher, a short, chunky woman named rooba, came to
  the back door when we knocked. you don’t haggle with rooba.
  she gives you one price, which you can take or leave, but it’s a
  fair price. we took her offer on the deer and she threw in a
  couple of venison steaks we could pick up after the butcher-
  265
  ing. even with the money divided in two, neither gale nor i
  had held so much at one time in our lives. we decided to keep
  it a secret and surprise our families with the meat and money
  at the end of the next day.
  this is where i really got the money for the goat, but i tell
  peeta i sold an old silver locket of my mother’s. that can’t hurt
  anyone. then i pick up the story in the late afternoon of prim’s
  birthday.
  gale and i went to the market on the square so that i could
  buy dress materials. as i was running my fingers over a length
  of thick blue cotton cloth, something caught my eye. there’s
  an old man who keeps a small herd of goats on the other side
  of the seam. i don’t know his real name, everyone just calls
  him the goat man. his joints are swollen and twisted in pain-
  ful angles, and he’s got a hacking cough that proves he spent
  years in the mines. but he’s lucky. somewhere along the way
  he saved up enough for these goats and now has something to
  do in his old age besides slowly starve to death. he’s filthy and
  impatient, but the goats are clean and their milk is rich if you
  can afford it.
  one of the goats, a white one with black patches, was lying
  down in a cart. it was easy to see why. something, probably a
  dog, had mauled her shoulder and infection had set in. it was
  bad, the goat man had to hold her up to milk her. but i
  thought i knew someone who could fix it.
  “gale,” i whispered. “i want that goat for prim.”
  owning a nanny goat can change your life in district 12.
  the animals can live off almost anything, the meadow’s a per-
  266
  fect feeding place, and they can give four quarts of milk a day.
  to drink, to make into cheese, to sell. it’s not even against the
  law.
  “she’s hurt pretty bad,” said gale. “we better take a closer
  look.”
  we went over and bought a cup of milk to share, then stood
  over the goat as if idly curious.
  “let her be,” said the man.
  “just looking,” said gale.
  “well, look fast. she goes to the butcher soon. hardly any-
  one will buy her milk, and then they only pay half price,” said
  the man.
  “what’s the butcher giving for her?”