Shy's arm hurt again.
The sun, just beginning to tuck itself away for the night, was casting a soft orange glow over the snow on the forest floor. It must have been beautiful. Or at least, she thought so. Hidden away in a small hollow beneath a tree, the only glimpse she caught of the outside was a couple centimeters past the slowly growing wall of snow in the entrance a foot over her head. Maybe that was a good thing. If she couldn't see them, they couldn't see her, right? That's what she was hoping for anyway.
Carefully, quietly, she peeled the half-ruined parka, Capitol-issued for the Games, off and set it aside. It had been snowing since her accidental tumble in here two days ago so she figured – hoped – that the snow she'd kicked up had been replaced, good as new. Still, it would have sucked to have her little hidie hole found out for so stupid a reason as she'd been too loud. Still, given her luck recently, it wouldn't have surprised her if that had actually happened.
But, coat off and no signs of anyone about to stick their ugly mug under her tree, Shy relaxed. Or tried to, at least. The hollow was warmer than outside for certain, but she was still cold. Not the kind of bone-chilling cold these winter winds brought on, but a feverish sort of cold that no number of coats or blankets would fix. And at the center of all of that cold? The only part of her to feel any warmth, and not even of the pleasant variety, was her left arm. The bandages – applied haphazardly two nights before and held on by the belt meant to be holding her pants – had gotten crusty and discoloured with old dried up blood. She ought to change them. And she really ought to clean the nasty gash they covered. But curse her rotten luck when she went to do just that.
If it had just been swollen Shy wouldn't have cared. She could shove her arm into the snow and leave it there a while. She wished now that she'd bothered to stick around at the first aid station back in the Capitol longer than she had. As if being bit by the axe weren't bad enough, the wound had gone an angry red. Parts had scabbed over and broken open again, leaking a mix of blood and pus.
Shy didn't have anything to clean it, only cover it back up.
She tried draining it, and then melted snow to wash it, but that was the best she could do. It was already infected. If she had some maggots she would have dumped them in there to eat all of the dead stuff. But she didn't. So she wrapped it anew and tied it tight with her belt. She could already feel her slighty-too-big pants sliding. She could put her belt back on proper, but she'd sooner go streaking through the snow, her pale behind on full display, than surrender the meager protection those bandages provided.
The orange evening glow was gone now, replaced by the faint green of the Capitol's nightly death toll, accompanied by a tune as cheery as the subject matter. Shy refused to go out and take a look at the day's list of faces. She didn't dare leave any tracks in the snow, and she didn't need to. Boag was already dead – butchered by the Careers two days earlier. And his was the only face she would have been interested in seeing.
Their parents were old friends and, by extension, so were they. Well, perhaps it wasn't quite right to just call them friends. For all of his fifteen years Boag had never been the brightest, but he'd been a good-natured boy. And while he wasn't an artist of a lover, he'd been good to Shy.
The two of them had never applied for tesserae. They'd never needed to. They were both only children, with no younger siblings to fret over and care for, so that helped some. So the chances of one of Boag's four slips, or one of Shy's six being pulled had been slim. Still, a world like that, where you could just as easily be dead as not before you hit nineteen – because no matter how good your chances, someone always had to be reaped – made some people a little more loose with their morals.
Speaking to the irony of her name, Shy had been one such person.
Boag had been good looking for his age. A boyish face and light grey eyes, both hidden half the time beneath a head of curly brown hair a few shades darker than Shy's own filthy blonde. She'd loved running her fingers through it and just feeling how soft it was. He was shorter than most boys his age – which was still a good few inches taller than her – but he was no less a proper woodsman for it. He could handle an axe as well as most adults, lugged just as much wood and had the lean muscle to prove it.
But for all his strength, he was unexpectedly gentle.
Shy had never disliked herself or her body, but there was a fine line between not disliking one's self and liking it. She had her little grievances with her body as anyone would with theirs. Too scrawny, too pale, nearly flat as a board. Hair forever too long and in her face. She entertained the thoughts often enough. Boag would hear none of it.
"You're beautiful, Kitten."
He was no charmer. But he tried. And he'd made her love this body of hers, even if only under his hands.
So when they'd both been reaped, no tricks, no volunteers, Shy had become even less shy.
"Shy Cartwright."
She could still hear the Capitol representative's honeyed voice, sickly sweet in Shy's ears, calling her to the stage. The woman had been puny. Shy swore half her size came from the volume of her hair and clothes. And as the Capitolite pitter-pattered her way to the boy's glass bowl, Shy wondered idly how easy it would be snap her in two. Judging by the multitude of black looks directed at the woman, she likely wasn't the only one in the square asking the question.
"Boag Wharton."
That had been the first black cat to cross her path. She wished now that it had been the last.
.
.
Their mentor didn't take kindly to her, or she to him. He was an angry balding man in his late thirties with a strong distaste for sarcasm and he believed wholeheartedly that sharing a blown up version of his experiences in the arena from twenty some-odd years ago would better their chances.
"I was a wee lad, see? Made 'em think I couldna lift me own axe. Idjiits, the lot of 'em! Hacked off all their blighted heids, I did!"
Shy was willing to bet that last part wasn't entirely true. But as much as she disliked him, he was a fair mentor. He answered all of their questions, devised strategies (for in and outside the arena) for the both of them, and prepared them as best he could. After the training scores were released, revealing a dismal three for Shy and a five for Boag, Shy approached their mentor.
"There's something I want you to hold onto for me."
He had thrown her a suspicious look then. It was the first she had approached him for help since their arrival in the Capitol six days earlier. She handed him a blank envelope still unsealed and its contents poking out. He took it and his look turned questioning. She assented, and slowly he removed the letter and began reading.
"If he comes back, will you give it to him?"
Perhaps he understood, for his features softened and without further comment returned the letter, sealed it and tucked it away. Boag had given him something similar, he told her. Asked that he submit it as Shy's token. He had read it as well, of course, and agreed.
"Thirty years I watched these games. Ain't never seen anythin' like this. I'm sorry, lass. I really am."
He threw her more looks at dinner the next day, all of them wavering between mild disgust with her behaviour and sympathy for knowing the reason behind it. He called her shameless when she asked plainly to stay with Boag that night – their last night – but nothing else.
It was Boag who mentioned tokens first. The night was well underway, and the only light in the room came from the television panels lining the walls. Boag had changed them to show images of District Seven's thick forests. Shy could almost smell the hickory wood smoke of her family's fireplace. She told herself that she could and the memory tickled her nose. For this one night they would pretend they were home.
"I heard you swapped mine."
He didn't deny it.
"I want you to read it. If I die."
"Hatcher has yours." She told him. "Read it if you come back."
They laid together in a tangle of limbs until their mentor came to fetch them early the next morning. In the short span between waking and being shipped out to the arena they talked strategy. Shy and Boag were to stay together at all costs. They wouldn't hold out any hope for generous sponsors, not after their uninspiring performances in the interview and training both. They'd stick together, wait for the number of tributes to whittle down, and then they'd go their separate ways, no hard feelings. If all went well then one of them would be boarding the train home in as little as a week.
Maybe the parka should have tipped her off, but it didn't. Snowy mountain peaks and sprawling green and white forests had filled her vision upon entering the arena. And then they went blurry as the wind bit at her face and made her eyes water. Nothing went according to their plan after that and she thought herself a fool for believing that it could ever have worked out so nicely. When the timer hit zero and the gong sounded Shy still hadn't spotted the boy's face.
Without attempting a grab at even the most useless junk scattered in the snow around the Cornucopia Shy fled. And just as well that she did. Each step buried her leg more than halfway up her calf in snow. There would have been no running from the bloodbath if she'd been caught in it. She only hoped Boag had the same idea and that she found him soon.
She spent the better part of her first two days in search of the boy, keeping his letter, her token, folded in the pocket over her left breast. But it wasn't easy. The snow never stopped and even the Capitol-issued parka, easily the warmest piece of clothing Shy had ever worn, couldn't keep the wind out entirely. Finding a place to sleep safely without fear of freezing was difficult, but not as difficult as it was to find something to eat. Blast it all, Shy was starving! Maybe if she didn't have to worry so much about covering her tracks or if she could light a fire without it being extinguished by the wind or found out by another tribute then she could have put herself in a better mood. But, whether unable or unwilling to risk a fire, Shy huddled up into her parka and endured the cold.
She figured it to be around mid afternoon (it was hard to tell with a permanently grey sky over her head) on the third day when she found him. She wished now that she hadn't. It would have been kinder to just see Boag's face in the sky that night. She saw him first, and then dipped away into hiding when she spotted the pack of Careers giving chase.
They got closer, until Shy could hear the snow crunch like styrofoam beneath them. She chanced a glance around her hiding tree and saw the boy clambering to his feet. He dropped his bag in the process and left it. He didn't make it five feet before the first two Careers caught up – these guys had the good fortune to be wearing snowshoes – and Boag splintered like old wood under their axes.
Shy heard the cannon, saw the snow begin to bleed red and turned to make her silent escape even as her stomach knotted and churned. She probably should have stayed put and waited for them to pass. They'd snatch up Boag's pack and be on their way, never knowing she was there. A spiteful conifer, its branches heavy-laden with snow, chose the moment she stepped beneath it to let one of those branches dip with the wind.
One sharp gasp at the cold against her skin was all it took.
She heard shouts over the wind, then crunching snow. Shy broke out of there, long uneven steps carrying her over the snow in a clumsy run. She heard another shout. Then a grunt. Metal whistled through the air and Shy's arm felt cold. Something wet warmed it for a moment, and then the chill settled into her bones. She heard a wooden snap from behind and more shouting.
"You bloody, feckin' idjiit! You broke it!"
Shy stooped down without stopping to scoop up the bloodied hand-axe from the snow. Beneath the cold she could feel the pain in her upper arm now. But it felt disconnected somehow. It was nothing more than a little beastie, glaring at her from the distant corner of a room.
At some point Shy stopped hearing the Careers tromping along behind her. She'd heard a cannon, though. They'd probably killed one of the snowshoe boys. That snap she'd heard had probably been the shoe breaking. She didn't pity him. A part of her said he'd deserved it. The other part didn't spare him a single thought. Both scared her.
When she felt it safe, Shy tried to loop back around, back to where she'd encountered the Careers. Boag had dropped his pack back there. If she was lucky it might still be there. If she was really lucky, there might be food in it, or something to bind and cover the new hole in her left arm. She kept a firm hold on the axe in her right.
By the time she spotted the pink and red bleeding out through a thin new blanket of snow Shy's hair was stiff with ice and she was about ready to keel over. The pack was still there. Shy nearly cried when she dusted the snow off it. She did cry when she opened it up to look inside. It was nearly empty, but not quite. On her knees in the snow, Shy clutched the pack to her chest and hot tears spilled unashamedly down her face.
"Thank you, Boag."
There was no body left for her to thank or apologize to. One of the Capitol hover crafts would have come to fetch it once she and the Careers had cleared out of there. Her mouth watered as she caught a whiff of the salted beef strips inside the pack and she placed a hand over the pocket with his crumpled letter.
.
.
It was purely luck that when Shy did finally keel over from a mix of hunger, pain and light-headedness, that it was a hollow she fell into. She brained herself on the rock-solid dirt and roots at the bottom but the impact cleared all the fuzz from her head. Her axe had clattered down with her and she thanked her lucky stars she hadn't fallen on it instead.
Shy gathered Boag's pack in her lap and pulled out what was left of its contents. There were only a small handful of beef strips left, not that she cared. She would have been grateful for just one. She placed one between her lips and ate it slowly while she addressed her arm. The axe had bitten deep. The sheer cold outside had helped to stop the bleeding, but her tumble in here and all her sudden movement fixed that. Shy tried carefully to clean the space around it and then bound it using the small roll of gauze from the pack. There wasn't much left on it once she was done. The knot kept coming undone, too. After the second time, Shy fastened her belt around it.
That hollow became Shy's home for the next two days. She didn't dare leave it. She was safe in here. She could stay here and wait until the rest of the tributes froze to death. It would be a boring victory in the eyes of the Capitolites, though that bothered Shy none. Of course, that all depended on her arm healing properly.
Once she'd been made aware that infection had set in, Shy's plan fell apart. She could maybe survive in here until the final two but she'd die before the other tribute froze.
The morning of the sixth day rolled in without a sound. With the four deaths from yesterday – Shy had been keeping close track of every cannon fired – there were seven tributes left, Shy included. She didn't much like those odds. She sat up, her parka falling into her lap as she did. The crinkled corner of an envelope poked out from one of the pockets.
Shy still hadn't read Boag's letter.
It wasn't that she didn't want to. She wanted to know what he'd thought to be so important that he swapped out her token to give it to her. But she didn't read it because she felt like she already knew.
Her relationship with Boag had begun with a simple tryst maybe a little over a year ago. He'd been her friend so he didn't judge her. But as it carried on through the months she didn't think it strange to find herself wondering from time to time about all of the what ifs that could come if they escaped the reapings. She never spoke to Boag about them and he never brought the topic up either. Now she was glad for it.
Shy made up her mind then and withdrew the envelope from her coat pocket. She'd looked at it only once before this, when she was given it along with her Game uniform. She had seen Boag's chicken scratch spell out her name before she'd tucked it away. It was still there now, albeit very wrinkled.
Shy
She thought back to her own letter, written for Boag and still held by Hatcher, their mentor, even as she tore open the flimsy paper. She'd decided to write it shortly after they'd both been reaped. In it she'd written all the things she'd never said, and then those she'd never dared to think. She put them all to paper and then threw them out of her mind right up until she knew Boag was dead. She knew she wouldn't have been able to kill him if she didn't. They would have destroyed her.
"Hatcher has yours," Shy had told him. She'd said it like it was a charm. Like it would encourage him to make it back, despite knowing that she'd have to die for it to happen. He'd never get to read it.
Shy held his letter in her hands. It was a little ripped from rough handling but still legible. There were fewer than ten words written and she read them in his voice.
I loved you, Kitten. I always did.
Boag
.
.
Shy gave the axe a few test swings as she tromped through the forest. She was familiar with the tool, but she was no fighter. Again she began to wish she'd spent more time at one station or another during her week of training. Her only experience with an axe involved chopping trees. And trees were unyielding. They were no representative of a person, to say nothing of whether she could actually kill someone without either spilling everything in her stomach or keeling over.
Shy couldn't use her left arm for much, but she had other problems. She'd felt dizzy when she finally climbed out of that hollow, axe in hand and the letter in her pocket. Her breathing was shallow and the fog in her head had thickened. But she could do it. If she wanted to be on that train heading home then she would do it.
She almost didn't hear the shout at her left. The world spun about her as she turned her head, made her stumble, then came back into focus. It was one of the Career boys, a snowshoed one. He waved his arm about, signaling another who Shy couldn't see. She turned again, slower this time, and kept moving. She couldn't outrun him without tripping herself but if he came to her then maybe she could get him and then his friend after.
The girl came out of nowhere, really. One moment Shy saw trees and snow, next she was in the snow, clouds and an angry blonde face above her. The Career had her hands around Shy's throat before she could recover her reeling senses. She fumbled the axe in her hand, struggling between fixing her grip on it and getting air into her lungs. Her fingers curled back around it and Shy whipped it.
The girl's face twisted in a mask of pain and terror as the axe dug deep into her throat. Her grip loosened and she crumpled and fell like a dead leaf. A cannon shot confirmed she was dead. Shy shoved the girl off and tried to stand. Her throat hurt, and her heart hammered painfully against her ribs. Blood pulsed loudly in her ears. She couldn't hear a thing.
But she could feel it when her lower back exploded in white hot pain.
The ground rushed up to meet her and she found that the snow wasn't cold anymore. There was only a vague sensation of it against her hands and face. It didn't feel real. But the pain in her back did. And it was loud. She took a kick to the back of the head when she tried again to get up, to get away. A collection of black dots began to gather around the edges of her vision.
The Career boy shouted something at her and pulled the knife out of her back. She couldn't pick out the words through the static buzzing in her ears like a nest full of tracker jackers. She thought that was weird. The giant wasps liked warm places, like the forests back home.
Was she home? She thought she caught the sweet scent of hickory wood burning. She must be home.
Shy felt a dull thump in the middle of her back. The dots spread inward and the buzzing grew louder. She felt warm. Her pain melted away. She felt another blow, to her shoulder this time. And then another. The wasps' angry buzzing grew to a hitch-pitched whine and the dots closed in.
Everything went black. Then grey.
Then it was quiet.