The town had decided the Covey were witches long before Lenore Dove ever learned what the word meant. They arrived in District 12 when she was small, their wagons creaking down the ridge road like they had done in a hundred other places before. A nomadic family of singers and healers, fiddle players and storytellers, they carried their lives in instrument cases and patched trunks. They stayed where the music was wanted, where the forests were kind, where the people were desperate enough to listen.

District 12 was all three.

At first, the townsfolk tolerated them. The Covey sang at weddings and wakes. They played at harvest festivals and church fundraisers. Lenore’s uncles mended broken fences in exchange for eggs. Her aunt brewed teas for coughing children. Lenore learned harmonies before she learned to write her name. But it didn’t take long for things to sour.

Milk didn’t spoil when the Covey were near. Crops grew greener in the fields they walked through. Storms bent strangely around their land. Animals followed Lenore like she carried something gentle inside her. People noticed. They always do.

Whispers began first. Then crossed fingers. Then doors quietly closing when Covey voices drifted too close. They said Lenore sang to the woods. They said she knew old mountain ways, how to stop bleeding with leaves, how to calm fever with humming, how to speak to water when floods came. They said she left charms in tree hollows and carved protection marks into doorframes. They said she’d been born with the veil and could see what others couldn’t.

They said witch. By the time Lenore was grown, the Covey lived apart from town, tucked into a fold of forest near the creek. Outsiders rarely visited unless they were desperate. Sick children still arrived in the night. Injured miners still showed up at their door. But gratitude was quieter than fear, and fear had a louder voice. Lenore learned early not to flinch when people stared. She learned to keep her head high. She learned that kindness did not guarantee safety.

Then Haymitch Abernathy came back to district 12 from the war. Nineteen years old. Sixteen when he’d been sent away. He returned with a damaged leg, a brace under his trousers, and a silence that followed him like smoke. He worked whatever jobs he could find, hauling timber, repairing roofs, clearing land. He sent money home to his mother and his little brother. He slept lightly. He drank when sleep wouldn’t come. The council men approached him quietly.

There’s trouble near the ridge road, they said. That Covey girl walks alone at night. Folks are getting uneasy.

They didn’t say witch. They didn’t say mob. They just slid coins across the table. Haymitch took the work because he needed it. He didn’t believe in curses. He believed in hungry families. That was why he was limping home through the woods when he first saw her. Fog hugged the ground, moonlight slipping through bare branches. His leg burned with every step, the brace rubbing raw against old scars. He was tired in the way only someone too young to be this tired can be. The forest shifted. He stopped.

His hand went to the knife at his belt.

She stepped out of the mist like she’d been part of it. Barefoot on damp moss. Dark hair loose. A shawl stitched with faded symbols draped across her shoulders. Her presence felt less like an arrival and more like something revealing itself. She studied him openly. The fog parted. She didn’t even step out. She simply appeared. One moment there was only shadow and wet leaves. The next, Lenore Dove stood ten feet away.

Haymitch swallowed. He had not heard her approach. He hadn’t heard anything. Her eyes met his, and for a moment, his vision tunneled. The air felt thicker. Heavy in his lungs.

“You shouldn’t walk these roads after sundown,” she said. Her voice did not echo.