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“I always hoped he would settle as a snake,” Lucy Gray said, stroking her dæmon’s head. “But a songbird’s not so bad. Most of the Covey end up with a songbird of some kind or another, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.”
“No, a songbird’s not so bad at all,” Coriolanus agreed, watching her pet the little brown bird in question. The Covey, it seemed, extended their strange conventions to their dæmons, naming them for the authors of the songs that their humans took their names from, and so Lucy Gray’s dæmon was called Wordsworth. He bore the name with a sense of dignity, however, so Coriolanus tried not to judge too harshly. “But, a snake, really? People with snake dæmons aren’t looked upon very highly.”
Lucy Gray scoffed. “Well, people here don’t think much of me, or any of the Covey, as it is. They like our songs well enough, but we’re still outsiders. What shape our dæmons take don’t matter much either way.”
“Besides,” she continued, “it’s silly, anyhow. Thinking you know everything about a person just ‘cause you know what kind of creature their dæmon is. If that was true, there’d be no point in getting to know each other at all.”
Coriolanus was surprised. “You don’t think dæmons say something about our true nature?” He thought everyone agreed on that. Not always to the extent Dr. Gaul took it, taking them for the inescapable proof of humanity’s base, beastly nature. But rather in the smaller, personal things. Whether someone was courageous or cowardly, reliable or untrustworthy, hardworking or lazy…the true form of a dæmon could tell you these things, and many other things besides.
“I think they say something,” Lucy Gray conceded. “But who’s to say we’re understanding it right, or that there’s only one way to understand it? A dæmon’s like my song, a mystery with no answers, or many answers, depending on how you look at it. Clerk Carmine thinks it means one thing and Maude Ivory thinks another. It’s the same when people look at dæmons, too.”
“Sure,” he said, though he wasn’t sure he agreed. That someone could misunderstand a dæmon’s form, sure, that made sense, but he didn’t like the idea that there was an inherent uncertainty to it. Didn’t that just make it meaningless, if it could mean a million different things? “But there are some things people know about dæmons that everyone agrees on. Wouldn’t you say that a snake is untrustworthy, too?”
“A real snake, yes,” Lucy Gray said. “An animal doesn’t understand good and evil, so you can’t ever trust it. But dæmons are part of us, so they know the difference.”
“But then why choose a snake? Isn’t that choosing to be evil?”
“Snakes aren’t evil,” she said, and Wordsworth fluttered his wings unhappily as he hopped out of her hands. “Just because I can’t trust them doesn’t make them bad, even the venomous ones. They just react when they feel threatened, that’s all. People have to be cautious around them, because we know better. And, anyway, that’s not why people judge snake dæmons so harshly. That all comes from stories that they don’t even want us telling anymore, so people don’t even remember why they think so badly of snake dæmons.”
Coriolanus traded a look with his own dæmon to see what she thought of that. After a moment of deliberation, he admitted to Lucy Gray that Angerona had favored snakes for a while before settling. He had never admitted that to anyone, before. Tigris and the Grandma’am knew, of course, but at that age he’d been careful to avoid letting his classmates or teachers see too much of Angerona when she was in one of her snake forms. Still unsettled, the judgment wouldn’t have been so harsh, but people might have started giving him odd looks if she seemed to be spending a particularly long time in such an undesirable form, and when all the Snows had were their reputations, it was something that Coriolanus, even at twelve, could not afford to take a hit on. It would not have ostracized him from society entirely, of course, but it would have made things more difficult for him. Made his flattery and networking with others more suspect. Ambition was all well and good, but a snake indicated too much ambition, too obvious for others to be comfortable with. Jockeying for power and influence was one of those things that everyone did, but it was uncouth to do so without subtlety, and so the obvious snake was not rewarded.
It had been a relief when Angerona had settled as something completely different. Though that too, unfortunately, had some embarrassing connotations, but at least they weren’t so obvious upon a cursory glance.
“I wouldn’t have minded if she had settled as a snake,” Lucy Gray said, and smiled. “I probably would’ve fallen for you even faster, truly.”
That made him smile, too, and Angerona swept over to Wordsworth in a show of affection. It was such an impossible thing to believe, but from Lucy Gray, he believed it.
“But I can’t say I’m unhappy that she’s a bird, either,” she said with a laugh. “Maude Ivory certainly thinks that makes you one of us already.”
“Well, if she’s won us Maude Ivory’s regard, then I must be glad that Angerona settled as she did,” Coriolanus teased. “No matter the reputation she might otherwise give me.”
Lucy Gray hummed thoughtfully. “I suppose it’s easy for me to say it don’t matter so much what kind of dæmon you’ve got when nobody’s ever had a bad word to say about a nightingale. But a nest-stealer like yours? I bet people get a little out of sorts about that, don’t they?”
“A nest-stealer?” he echoed. Another Covey expression, he figured.
“Sure,” she said. “They’re clever birds that lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, making the other birds raise them and crowding out the original chicks.”
Yes, he’d read as much when Angerona had settled. Many books had been destroyed during the war, but the prestigious schools of the Capitol had held onto as much as they can, and that was invaluable when identifying unusual dæmons like his own. But he’d never really given much thought to what the actual bird did, as a dæmon was not a true animal. He’d been much more concerned with what people would think of him because of it.
Fortunately, for the most part, a bird was a respectable and inoffensive enough dæmon that few people were interested in looking into the specifics. Still, he’d spent a good amount of time in dread that Livia Cardew would learn that Coriolanus had a cuckoo for a dæmon, and the inevitable mockery that would fall from her lips as a result. None had ever reached his ears, from Livia or anyone else, but he still had a persistent concern about what his classmates might be saying or assuming behind his back.
That was all behind him now, banished as he was to the districts and as far from that world as one could get. But that same concern suddenly gripped him now, fiercer and even more urgent in the face of the realization that of course Lucy Gray knew all about that little bird.
Well. As dreadfully embarrassing as it was, he had to make sure to lay things out very clearly.
“Yes,” he said, awkwardly, as Angerona smoothed her feathers nervously. “There are a few… unpleasant associations with her form. Ones I assure you are incorrect. I have no interest in… sharing.”
Lucy Gray furrowed her brow for a moment as she worked out what he was saying, then huffed out a little laugh.
“Now that’s sure a silly thing for people to assume,” she said. “The cuckoo’s not the one getting fooled, she’s the one doing the fooling! Not that I think you’d do either; not in that sense, anyway.”
He relaxed a bit, and Angerona did too as Wordsworth took over grooming her feathers for her.
“Yes, well, as you said, people don’t always get it right, about dæmons.” He was starting to see the appeal of her point of view on the matter, of a dæmon’s meaning not being so inflexible. “You know a lot about those birds. Did you see them in the wild, on your travels?”
“Oh no, not your bird,” she said. “Other nest-stealers, sure; there’s cowbirds everywhere. But you and I, we’ve got Old World birds.”
“Old World?” he echoed. “You mean, from before Panem?”
“Mh-hm,” she agreed. “From across the ocean. Maybe they still live out there somewhere, but they never lived here.”
That made their dæmons rather special, then, didn’t it? ‘A rare bird’ she had called him once, and Coriolanus now realized there’d been a double meaning in that. Well, it was to be expected, after all. Exceptional people had exceptional dæmons.
“How do you know so much about them, then?” he asked. Dæmon identification reference books, like the ones he’d consulted as a child, were filled with details and pictures of creatures of all sorts, from the mundane to the exotic and extinct. But few enough of those books had survived the war in the Capitol, so he doubted any had in the districts. If they’d ever had any to begin with. He could hardly see the dull people here mining and drinking away their days being much interested in reading anything. And their equally small-minded dæmons likely never thought to take any form they hadn’t seen with their own eyes.
“From songs,” Lucy Gray said, matter-of-fact, as though that was as typical a source as any book. As if to prove her point, she opened her mouth and began to sing:
Oh the cuckoo’s a pretty bird, she sings as she flies
She brings us glad tidings and she tells us no lies
She sucks the little birds’ eggs in the nests where they lie
And she never sings ‘cuckoo’ till the fourth of July
“Really?” Coriolanus laughed. Angerona, however, had puffed up her feathers, pleased by the compliments.
“That’s how the song goes!” Lucy Gray insisted, but she was grinning too. “I didn’t write that one.”
“Quite the coincidence, then.”
“Well, I think ‘coincidence’ is just another word for fate,” she retorted.
Alright, he’d indulge that. “So, you think the truth of Angerona’s form is that we were fated to meet as we did?”
“Why not? Fate gave us dæmons, and fate brought us together. So they’re one and the same. But I don’t think that’s all she says about you.”
“Oh?” Coriolanus asked. He decided he liked when Lucy Gray talked about him, and he wanted to hear more.
“I think,” she said, reaching over to brush the dirt from his clothes, “she says that you’re clever. Resourceful. Different from the others, but good at blending in with them. Someone who wants to fly your own path freely, like all birds. Someone who’s good at tricking people in order to protect something or someone important to you.”
“That’s all very flattering,” he said, but Angerona gave away just how pleased they both were. “One might think she only has good things to say about me, and nothing bad. Though I don’t know how well that last one applies. I did get caught for how I helped you in the arena.”
“You still got me out,” she countered. “That’s what matters. And maybe she’s got a bad thing to say or two, but I’d rather see a person’s dæmon as all their best qualities. No point in looking for the bad.”
“And what about your dæmon?” he asked. “What does he say about you?”
At this, she gave a mischievous little smile. “Well, now, you’ll just have to find that out for yourself, won’t you?”
That, he felt was a little unfair. He wasn’t good at this interpretation stuff, and he didn’t know much about birds. About all he could think of was that she was good at singing, but that was such a lackluster answer. He didn’t have to look at her dæmon to know that!
“I like that part about our fated meeting,” he said instead. “So that had better go for your dæmon as well.”
“Yes,” Lucy Gray agreed, watching with him as their dæmons curled up together. “I think that must be true for us both.”
.
.
There were more words to the song Lucy Gray had sung, but she never thought to sing any of those later verses.
Oh meeting is a pleasure but parting a grief
An inconstant lover is worse than a thief
For a thief will but rob you and take all you have
But an inconstant lover will send you to the grave
And in the end, Coriolanus decided that Lucy Gray was wrong, and Dr. Gaul was right: dæmons were the proof of the beasts all humans were at heart, and they could not avoid their own natures. He was the nest-stealer, the parasite and deceiver, and that would be how he would not only survive, but outwit all the others. Coriolanus and Angerona had taken up roost with the Plinth fortune; their future secured. Not just for himself, but for all of Panem. He would contain their beastly natures, redirect them; the truth of their souls bared to those, like him, who possessed the ability to understand them for what they truly were.
And no more would war threaten to destabilize his world, grasped in his iron control.