in a forest of legs

[she_sells_seashells]

The second time ever Bell finds to Milliways, she is better prepared. She has a bigger bag of shells with her, and she knows that she'll need to pace herself with the food to stay as long as she can.

She is still six. As far as she can tell, she is the only child in the place - everyone else is an adult or at least in their mid to late teens.

Except - oh, there is a girl her age, over there. (Only maybe not. Last time she was warned that appearances can be deceiving.) But she's certainly worth investigating.

Bell drags her shells over in that direction.

Comments

[she_sells_seashells]

"Oh," says Bell, clearly finding this explanation all much more sensible than the idea of an otherwise unfunded single parent teacher. "My dad would have made a lot of money but he messed up his knee and couldn't afford to get it fixed since he hadn't had much time to save up. So he couldn't be a Peacekeeper anymore. Now he does the salmon boat job. But that's okay because Peacekeepers aren't allowed to get married or have kids, so he would have had to wait for his contract to be up otherwise."

[missnicegirl]

"What's a Peacekeeper?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"They keep things peaceful," Bell says. "If people are poaching or getting into fights or trying to run away from District Four they're the ones who stop them. I can poach a little bit and nobody stops me because Dad made friends with them when he was one, though. And because I'm little. So I can bring home clams without officially working on a clam boat yet."

[missnicegirl]

"Like cops," she says, enlightened. "Okay."

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell shrugs. "Sure. Most of them come from District Two but people from other districts sometimes get into the academy if they try. I don't want to be one, though. I'm going to do clams." She sounds resigned to, rather than enthusiastic about, clams.

[missnicegirl]

"Why clams?"

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell starts ticking off fingers. "The boats don't go out too far, so I won't get eaten by a squid-mutt." (Bell is too young for anyone to be routinely saying "kraken" in her hearing.) "I can poach clams now, to practice and learn about them, so I can probably start getting bonuses faster than if I start not knowing what I'm doing on shrimp or lobsters or something. Even besides squid-mutts clam boats are some of the least dangerous kinds. I mean, I can swim, but anybody can drown in bad enough weather, especially when they're eight. And, now that I come here, I want the shells, because Bar will take shells like they're money, and that means I can buy food here."

[missnicegirl]

Something seems... off... about this, but Matilda can't figure out exactly what.

"I dunno what I'm going to do when I grow up," she says. "I bet it'll involve math somehow, though. I really like math."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Math is okay. They don't do very much of it in the regular schools in District Four. If I passed a lot of tests they might move me to someplace with better schools, like District Three where people have to know how to do electronics, but then I'd just live in the school and probably never see my parents again. I don't try very hard on the tests."

[missnicegirl]

"...I don't think I like where you live very much," says Matilda.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Oh, District Four isn't bad," Bell says earnestly. "I mean, at least we have Career Tributes. District Three doesn't. If I moved there I might have to go on TV."

Bell is fully unaware that this paragraph is incomprehensible.

[missnicegirl]

"Huh?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"Which part?"

[missnicegirl]

"What's a Career Tribute?" is what she settles on after a moment.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Oh, okay, yeah, most places don't have them. See, in Four - and One and Two but I don't know if they do it the same way - when kids are four years old we go to a camp thing, unless our parents pay a lot of money to keep us out of it and mine couldn't afford that. And the camp thing tries to figure out if you're healthy and smart and fast and stuff. And if you're the healthiest smartest fastest four-year-old, you go to a special school up in Crabclaw Point, and then you get trained to be in the Hunger Games, so that whoever gets picked in the lottery doesn't have to and you go instead. There's a girl and a boy from every district every year. But they don't tell the four-year-olds what it's for, and if they think that your parents told you, or told you to try to do badly on the testing, then your parents get punished. Because they need accurate results to give the District Four tributes the best chance of having a winner. But I'm really clumsy, so even though I didn't know what was going on I didn't get picked. So if the lottery person ever says when I'm twelve or thirteen or whatever age up to eighteen -" She does a terrible imitation of a Capitol accent. "'Bell Swan!'" - she drops the accent - "then instead of me having to go up, the Career who's eighteen that year will volunteer instead so I don't have to go."

[missnicegirl]

"...Go up and do what," says Matilda.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Be on TV," says Bell. "And compete in the Hunger Games and try to win, because if you win you get rich and famous."

It does not occur to Bell that it might be anything other than obvious what happens if you lose.

[missnicegirl]

"What's the Hunger Games?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"It's..." What a good question. Bell has obviously never been asked this before. "Well, it's different every year, but every year two kids from every District, One through Twelve, go to the Capitol, and they go in the arena and try not to die, and whoever doesn't die the longest wins and gets rich and famous."

[missnicegirl]

"That's a bad game," she says authoritatively. "Whoever made that up is a bad person."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Well, I think whoever made it up is probably dead, since it started like sixty years ago after the rebellion was put down to teach the Districts a lesson," says Bell, in an eminently reasonable voice.

[missnicegirl]

"I don't like your world at all," says Matilda. "When I grow up I'm going to find it and make it not awful anymore."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Really? How?" Bell asks.

[missnicegirl]

"I don't know yet," she says. "If I knew how now, I'd do it now."

[she_sells_seashells]

"The rebellion had lots and lots of people from all the districts - and there were thirteen then, District Thirteen got destroyed in the war - and it still didn't work, and now the Capitol has more stuff and the Districts have less stuff. So it'd be harder. I don't think one or two people could do much, unless they had a lot of magic or something," says Bell frankly.