Music: "Wolf" by First Aid Kit.
Moonlight
I knew this would happen. I can't sleep. I toss and turn. The silk of my gown tangles around my legs because I didn't remove it after all, the vulnerability of being naked in this palace stopping me from ripping it over my head.
Our time in the atrium thrashes in my mind like a wild thing. Peeta's words about not letting the Faerie Court own us. The girl he yearns for. That he and I could have been friends.
I'd wanted to hug him. I'd wanted us to console each other because, for a moment, it seemed like that's what we were meant to do, what we were made for. Yet another thing that doesn't make sense.
The fireplace glazes a patch of the floor in an orange film, a faint horizon line that doesn't stretch far, failing to reach other parts of the room. Everything else is dark.
My heart shifts to a new domain. I think of Sunset and feel guilty for wanting to embrace someone else the way I used to embrace him. I feel guilty for every non-violent reaction I've had toward Peeta. I feel guilty for Peeta's penetrating smile. I feel guilty for how easily he can sway me. I can't allow my emotions to weaken me like this.
Be careful, Katniss.
The nerves mount with each passing minute. What will happen tomorrow? What if I never make it out of the Labyrinth?
Sunset always beat me at board games. I wish he were here to mentor me. I let my thoughts wander to a memory of him rocking me to sleep. I dip into that memory and allow it to melt me like a marshmallow in hot chocolate. The metaphor makes me chuckle, and the chuckle relaxes me, because I can't stop associating my best friend with sweet things.
I chuckle so much that...that...that's when I start crying. It's like a volcano erupting, and I don't fully register that it's happening until my cheeks and chin are soaked. Melancholy and fear drown me. I try keeping the noise down by wheezing into my pillow.
I'm scared. I'm so scared. I'm so alone.
No one hears me, but I wish someone did. I wish someone could hear me.
At least the tears work as a balm to my insomnia. I exhaust myself. The drowsiness mounts as my eyelids become heavy, my weeping offering me release. As I fall under, I pretend my best friend's there, comforting me once more.
The fantasy expands. It becomes so real that I smell, hear, and taste it. In my haze, the door to my room sighs open, his sure footsteps seeking me out while trying to be quiet. He halts beside me, hesitating, because it's been a long time since we've done this, and he's unsure if I'll want him, which is funny. Doesn't he know better?
My eyes are cemented shut. I refuse to open them, afraid that he'll just disappear if I do, or that I'll wake up entirely. I want to live in this dream.
A compassionate set of fingers smoothes the hair from my forehead. Those fingers are thicker and broader and seven years older than they once were. I whimper and strain into his touch.
"Shhh," he whispers.
I've always wondered what his voice would sound like if he'd lived to be my age. He's here now. I can find out.
I mumble, "Where have you been?"
Sadly, he doesn't answer. But his silence is raw. Without shame, I follow the weight of his presence, dragging my arms from the covers and spreading them out, welcoming him back to me. I mewl. A wordless, needy plea that causes his breath to hitch. I communicate my thoughts.
I've been waiting. Come here. Come to me.
He battles with indecision for a terribly long time. But in the end, he releases a spent, debilitated noise. The bed slumps beneath his weight.
I exhale, curious and nervous to feel him alive beside me. He still wavers, but my affection reassures him. He gathers me to the sculpted wall of his body, with its fleecy warmth, its pulse. Our bodies rest on our sides, linking around each other. He comforts me, takes the fears away, soothes me with whispers.
"You're safe," he promises. "You're not alone. Everything will be okay."
I'm unable to hear his voice as clearly as I would like. It's too fuzzy. But I do understand his words, and for now, I believe him. As he protects me with his arms, I'm relieved to learn that nothing has changed between us. We belong to each other. This is how it should be.
Still, I'm surprised it's this simple for us to reunite. I know that he's surprised, too.
I'm also amazed by how much he's grown, expanded really, into this bulkier person. I wonder what he thinks of me. Is my figure is foreign, with its curves and new breasts?
Do you like my body?
He gasps. This dream is perfect. I can speak without speaking, which is nice, because I'm drained and cozy and lazy now that he's here.
You have no idea how much I've missed you.
My knee skims the split in his thighs. His limbs are resistant, but I'm determined. I slip through them and then slant my head upward, tracking the scent of him like a huntress.
The hand cupping my head stills. The other palms my shoulder, an anticipatory but defensive gesture that tries to stop my progress.
"Don't," he cautions.
He sounds as though my actions have momentarily shocked him. As if this isn't what he wants from me. I'm perplexed, but I also don't care. I need solace. I need forget about tomorrow, just for a little while.
I need to satisfy this ache. I need to worship him the way he deserved to be worshipped in life.
So when my lips sketch his bobbing throat, and his chest pumps shallowly against me, I take control and sample his neck. I map delicate, leisurely, open-mouthed kisses over the skin, which flares with goosebumps. The sound he makes, the shadow of a conflicted sigh, sparks a frenzy in me, funneling down to the spot between my legs.
We were too young to do anything like this. We're not children anymore.
I locate the supple flesh where his throat merges with his collarbone and suckle it. This time, the crinkled moan spills from his mouth, unbidden. It's the befuddled response of someone who's never been touched or kissed. Someone who is trapped by my actions.
God, you taste like melted sugar. I knew you would.
His heartbeat quickens beneath my palm as my thumb outlines his pec, and even as he attempts to retreat, his back arches nonetheless. My agonized breathing flows into the tight space between us. My hands grasp for things I can't have but am desperate to take.
My free hand musses his hair, also different from what I remember, not as shaggy. It doesn't matter. I'm glad to rediscover this aged version of him.
My mouth stamps across his jaw. My lips search for his.
He reels away so quickly that I don't put up a fight. "Please...please go to sleep," he begs. "I'm just here to hold you."
Instantly, I'm wounded. He doesn't want me to kiss him. Not even after all these years.
I'm on the verge of crying again. He's with me, but not with me. In reality, he would never push me away.
I expect him to disappear, to get up and saunter off like a ghost. Instead, he strokes my back, lower and lower, reaching the scoop where I have a beauty mark—didn't someone else compliment this part of me?—and circles it with his finger. It calms me down.
I don't want to end this dream feeling embittered or disappointed. I'm too depleted for that, so I do as he says. I surrender to other dreams while traces of him spice my lips.
kpkpkpkpkp
When I wake up, the hearth is gray and caked with ash, the remnants of a toasty night. A significant dent marks one side of the bed, but judging from how wrinkled my green gown is, I conclude it's the result of a fitful sleep.
It wasn't real. Of course, it wasn't real. I'd known the whole time it wasn't real.
Twisting onto my stomach, I grab my pillow and sob quietly into it. Maybe my mother and Prim are right. Maybe I can't let go. Maybe I'm damaged beyond repair.
Of all people, my mind takes refuge in Peeta. His imperfect, lopsided walk. His off-key whistle and his grin when the mockingjay landed on his shoulder. His honesty. His remorse. His acceptance of our two worlds, the good and bad of them, and his belief that each realm is necessary no matter how much loss exists in both.
His hope. Hope that someone he doesn't completely remember is waiting for him.
How crazy. How amazing.
I get up and let Rue brush my hair when she arrives. I ask her (politely) to open the window. Fueling up for the day, I stuff fruit and pastries down my throat. I armor myself in the dark green leggings, ivory tunic, and leather tie-belt Cinna has provided me. I want to refuse the outfit, but it'll do me no good to insult the Court. At least I still get to don my lace-up boots.
I hate having to leave my backpack and Prim's sandals behind, but Rue assures me that she'll give them to my sister. If I lose this game but survive it, Prim and I will be stuck here together. But if I don't even make it out of the maze, that means our fight in the auditorium was the last time we ever saw each other.
Realizing this, I practically hyperventilate for a good five minutes while Rue rubs my back. Then she leads me through the palace, skipping and chattering on about things I pay no attention to.
We halt in an ivy-covered quad as a team of footsteps emerge from the opposite wing. The rest of the Court arrives, along with Peeta, who's wearing fitted charcoal pants and a blue shirt that matches his irises. Dark half-moons taint the skin beneath his eyes. Apparently, his sleep was just as crappy.
When his gaze finds mine, it brims with...confusion? Concern? It's hard to say.
What isn't hard to recognize is the way his features swelter as they take me in, intensified by an emotional longing, an awareness of something. Those eyes fasten onto my side braid. My fingers reach for it, and when they do, I notice how his own fingers start twitching.
He looks away, tuning me out in a manner that seems more than physical. I shouldn't be thinking of him like this, so my mind latches onto my best friend for protection. In my dream, it was easy holding him like we used to. He tasted as I imagined he would.
But his words and hesitant responses were all different. And ultimately he rejected me. Why? What had that meant? Had it been a sign? Maybe he was telling me there were limits to how much I could cling to him.
Because he can't fully come back. Because he's dead.
While Peeta is not. He's alive and right in front of me. He's also my opponent.
"You look splendid, precious thing," Finnick says, seizing my attention.
"Whatever," I say.
In other words, Fuck you.
Dumb ass flattery and a waste of hotness. I'm beginning to think he's more of an asshole than Peeta. The green-eyed goblin thinks I'm that easy, does he? He should ask pickleball-playing Gale or popcorn-for-brains Cato or my shitty virginity-taking homecoming date how miserable of a conquest I can be.
No one speaks the rest of the way as we head out, mounting a fleet of hulking brown horses and riding to the garden. Beyond that, we crest a hill.
My legs steel themselves. In the valley below, clustered beneath the lilac sky—lighter shades of purple in the morning, darker at night—is a hexagonal maze of fat green hedges crisscrossing and intersecting like the world's toughest geometry lesson.
Poised in what I guess to be the center is a spiraling column of wood with something glimmering at the top. Peeta mutters that it's a bell tower.
That's our goal. It seems impossible to get to. I'm screwed.
"It's not as bad as it looks," he offers.
"Are you trying to make her feel better, Peet?" Finnick asks.
"Shut up. Both of you," I say, not caring about etiquette.
As we approach, the walls of the Labyrinth rise to around ten feet. Peeta and I are positioned in front of separate stone entrances. Effie pats down her hair in anticipation. Rue twiddles her thumbs. Buttercup laps at his paw.
Finnick keeps his distance, a murky and remote expression on his face, which surprises me since I assumed he'd be doing a jig.
What happened between him and Peeta? What brought all this on?
Although Haymitch is flapping his arms like mad and trying to give him pointers, Peeta keeps staring over at me. Despite how bad he feels about it, he's going to try his best to win. I understand what he's fighting for. This wish for a real home. This need to know himself. This hope for a lost love. Oh boy, do I understand, and it makes me depressed. Depressed because now that friendship is out of the question, he only sees me as the person standing in his way.
We face off across the distance. My personality runs its natural course. I scowl at him.
Even though he hikes up his chin, his features are doleful. The glint at his hip snags my attention. It's the second time since meeting him that I notice the sheath and dagger tethered to his pants.
"That's so not fair!" I protest. "He gets to take his—"
Cinna materializes in front of me, his finger poised against his lips, instructing me to be quiet. "Prim told us you have a skill," he says, presenting me with a gift that makes my throat raw, as if it's been run through a cheese grater.
It's a bow and a fully-stocked quiver. Just seeing it, gliding my hands over it, restores my confidence. "Thank you," I whisper.
Cinna rests a hand on my shoulder. "The more you resist our world, the harder the Labyrinth will be for you. The more you believe, the greater the odds in your favor. Keep your heart open but always take a second look. It's the faerie way and will serve you well."
"Why are you advising me?"
He just smiles and walks away. I follow his movements until it directs me to Finnick's sidelong glance.
"Easy as a peach," Finnick says, winking at me.
I check to make sure no one else is looking, then give him the finger. He throws his head back and laughs.
Each set of the Labyrinth's stone double-doors open without anyone touching them. I'm not even going to ask.
Cinna leads me to my threshold, while Haymitch swaggers with Peeta toward his end of the maze. We swap one more thorough look. He nods and mouths, Be careful.
I fight to stay neutral but am the first to glance away. And then I cross inside.
The doors sweep closed behind me.
I jump as the sound reverberates up and down a path branching on either side of me.
When the echoes fade, it's quiet. So quiet that that I may as well be isolated in this world. My shaky breaths ring in my ears. Suddenly, the arrow pack is dead weight on my shoulders, digging into the tail of my back. My fingers find the tie in my belt, which I unknot and reknot, feeling the coarse leather rub my skin. My heels skim the bronze cobblestone floor, jagged as rock in some areas. I could perish from magic or break my neck from a simple fall.
The path stretches its green arms to the left and right. Stately hedges bookend me. I get the sickly sense they can hear my knees knocking.
Gaps in the hedges notify me of sporadic turns and corners. I consider the sky, but I remember there's no sun here to help navigate east or west. There are only stars to signal day and night.
"No sun. No moon," I murmur to myself, feeling bereft.
I need something to mark my direction in case I have to retrace my steps...I could drop a trail of leaves. So thinking, I drive my hand into the bush.
I instantly regret it. A sharp point slices through me like a razor. Squeaking, I yank my arm back and wedge my thumb into my mouth, tasting the salt of my blood.
"Dammit," I choke out. It's a clean cut right down the middle of my thumb, from nail to finger. It's not deep, but it's burning. I sink my teeth into my upper lip to stop myself from making another horrible noise, because this hurts the way a chef's knife would hurt. I lap up the blood as best I can until it stops, which takes a while.
The burning is another matter. It doesn't stop. Embedded in the stomach of the hedges are tiny thorns. Bunching my injured hand, I try my best to ignore the pain and use my free fingers to carefully pluck the leaves, stuffing them into my quiver. Then I choose the left path.
The rest of the way, the maze is suspiciously sedate. It's nothing but wall after wall of perfectly-cut shrubbery that seems to be closing in on me. No surprises jump out. No floors open up and swallow me. It's just bland corner after bland corner as I periodically release a leaf to the ground.
The bell tower tolls what I assume is every hour.
Hour one: I suck on my wounded finger.
Hour two: I make a dozen wrong turns and hit too many dead-ends.
Hour three: Those ticklish white lights come out of nowhere and swarm me like bubbles. My skepticism offends them, because when I'm not expecting it, the little bitches nosedive and raid the leaf trail I'd made on the ground. They whiz away before I can catch them.
Hour four: This isn't the time to get hungry.
Hour five: Or thirsty.
Hour six: My thumb burn has traveled through my hand up to my forearm. This maze is bone dry.
Hour seven: The bell tower still looks the same distance away. And I'm still freaking looking at the same side of it. Which I can't be after changing paths endlessly.
When nightfall comes, a package tethered to a parachute drops from the sky. Tied to it is an obnoxiously hypocritical greeting card from Effie.
Perhaps a little treat after your first big, big, big day will help you see clearer. Can't have you famished on our account. It wouldn't be polite of us. - E
Inside the parachute are a canteen of water, fruit and cheese, and a cake probably containing half my daily calorie allowance. I nearly sob for joy. I split the cake in half and gobble it without tasting. I wash it down with the water and ration the rest. Then, on the hard ground, surrounded by thorny green hedges, I curl up and pass out.
kpkpkpkpkp
The next day, I roll my stiff neck and munch on leftovers. I procrastinate getting up, then finally dust myself off, the canteen dangling from a strap off my shoulder, alongside my quiver. I hate this place.
As I thread through the never-ending, never-changing maze, I worry about the burning in my arm, which has now progressed to my shoulder. Not only is it spreading, it's getting worse. I have to stop several times, hissing, gasping, and massaging it.
With each pause, I spend forever trying to orientate myself. Sometimes I halt for no reason and just stare. More nothingness.
Reaching another dead-end, I turn around and then stop. Did the hedges change position behind me? It didn't look like this before. There are supposed to be two parallel ones, with a lane between them. But now, there's only one long wall of shrubbery stretching out from the sides.
Suspicious, I twist back toward the way I was headed. The dead-end is no longer there. Instead, it's the path I just came the fuck from. Did the Labyrinth do a complete revolution on me? Yes, dammit all, it did!
Okay. I'm baffled. I've never been this baffled about direction.
Am I going in circles? Or maybe squares?
What's Peeta doing? What's he dealing with? Will he be waiting around the next corner? Why am I thinking about him? Why do I care if he's okay?
At first, I'd judged the maze for not packing more of a punch. But now, I get it. This monotony is torture in and of itself. It's enough to drive a person mad.
Am I already mad? Maybe this is what madness looks like.
Hedge. Hedge. Hedge.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
The bell tower tolls and tolls and tolls. Stupid tower. Must be a big, fat bell if I can hear it from here. I'm not any closer to it. I'm pathetic. I'm probably already losing.
The sun is setting again. Sun setting. Sunset.
A hint of his ten-year-old face appears before me, blurry as a watercolor. The image begs me to focus. Focus, focus, focus.
I blink. I pinch myself. I move forward. Whew.
And then this: Her soft voice whispering to me. It comes from the left, where the leaves are quivering, as though she's speaking to me through them. It's Prim.
This way, she says, urging me toward her echoing chant. This way, Katniss. This way.
Stepping toward the sound, another voice tempts me to the right. No, this way, my girl. Follow me.
It's my father. I haven't heard his voice in years, and even though I don't recognize it, I know it's him. I know from his lisp. I used to giggle at it.
I'll show you where to go, he says. This way. Come this way.
I twist and head in the direction of his words. But then Prim calls to me again.
No, Katniss. Dad's lying. You have to follow me.
No, Katniss. Don't listen to your sister. I know best.
It hurts. I don't want to have to choose. I gape to right. I gape to the left.
Come on, Kat. Trust me. I'm your sister.
No, my girl. Over here.
No, here!
No!
I crouch onto the ground and slam my palms on my ears, but they don't stop. They get more demanding. They argue with each other, their voices escalating to shrieks, which hammer into my ears.
That's not Dad, Kat!
That's not Prim!
He's trying to trick—
She's trying to trick—
"Stop" I shout. "Please! Stop!"
They're overlapping. They're hurting me, stabbing my ear drums and making them bleed. I'm going to lose my hearing. My temple throbs as I wail for them to leave me alone.
Katniss, listen—
No, Katniss, listen—
To me!
No, me!
I can't tell them apart anymore. Their voices grow teeth and snap at me from every direction, the same way a nightmare does. Why is my family fighting? Why won't it stop? What have I done wrong for them to be so mad?
Desperate for a lifeline, I rapidly pluck the string of my bow, force myself to concentrate on its shape. Keep looking. Don't listen. Keep looking. I peer at it more closely than before and...more closely than before.
Take a second look.
My memory bursts through the cacophony. That's what many faeries have said to me since I got to this world. Finnick. Peeta. Cinna. Have I listened to that advice? No, I haven't.
What I see around me is the obvious way through the maze. Which must mean it's not the right way.
And what I hear is not my father or my sister.
The more you resist our world, the harder the Labyrinth will be for you.
Shuffling Cinna's tip through my mind like a deck of cards, I figure it out. This is the maze my consciousness is expecting. The fake one. It's not real. I need to believe in the real one.
I ignore the shrieking voices and close my eyes. Oddly, my thoughts float to my childhood bedroom, with its ruffled sheets and paper-lamp and toys. How it felt to wake up there. How the sheets smelled. How much bigger the world seemed outside the window. How awed I used to be.
How much I miss it.
Silence. It's like a device has been turned off. A channel changed. The voices are gone, vacuumed from existence.
When I open my eyes, the landscape is also different. I stumble to my feet. The hedges ahead of me have disappeared, replaced by a forest.
It worked! For once, I can't feel my arm burning. Tears of relief sneak up on me, rising like a tide at the backs of my eyes and pausing there, on the cusp of overflowing.
My sidekick mockingjay arrives in time to stop me from weeping. It pops out from one of the trees and flaps its golden wings in my face. My reward.
"It's about time," I lecture, but it comes out as a sniffling chuckle. I really need this chuckle. I envelope myself in it and ascend into a maniacal laugh.
While I'm in the middle of euphorically losing my marbles yet again, the bird pecks me.
"Okay," I snap and follow it into the woods.
Once we're over the threshold, an army of trees converge and form a barrier behind us, bough and roots snarling together, caging us inside the woodland. The bell tower is out of sight. I glance at the mockingjay, but it doesn't seem surprised by this turn of events, only alert, its beady eyes skipping everywhere as it perches on my shoulder.
My burning shoulder. I feel it again. I must have been so caught up in the bird's appearance that I hadn't noticed the pain anymore, but now it returns to the forefront of my mind. Rubbing only seems to make it worse.
I tap on my opposite shoulder and joke humorlessly, "Mind hopping onto the other side?"
The mockingjay does as asked. It flicks my braid with its beak. I think it knows I'm not doing well and is trying to be a buddy. I'm not a pet person, but this guy has turned out all right. He's blessed, according to Peeta, so he can't be too bad a good luck charm to carry around.
Peeta. Where is he? Has he gotten farther than me? Is he hurt? Is he safe?
As the mockingjay and I keep going, fatigue suddenly slaps me in the face. Now that I'm in new territory and have company, I can literally feel how long I've been moving without rest. Somehow, the day has progressed into night. I fight away thoughts of nocturnal animals like the dog-wolf that tried to eat me.
Deeper into the forest, I'm struck dumb. Garlands of glittering blue spiderwebs swaddle the trees, from trunk to canopy, glinting so brightly you'd think they were precious necklaces. Their silken threads spin around gigantic coconut-shaped pods dangling from the higher branches.
I halt. The bird catches my sleeve in its elongated beak and tugs, urging me to hurry, but I don't listen. My huntress ears have perked. I hear the ferocious buzz of something inside the pods. A lot of somethings. The pods are nests. Of what?
I set my bow and move deftly, but it's not an impressive sight. I'm tired and hungry.
A lone fizzing alerts me. Sacred or not, the golden mockingjay doesn't notice its predator. But I do. Some kind of rabid wasp hones in on my little friend. It's abnormally big, a mutant as big as my fist. Big enough to strike down.
I shoot it in the dark. The arrow gorges the creature against a web-strewn trunk, disintegrating on impact. My kill incites a chain reaction. The buzzing magnifies into full-blown, collective chaos from the pods above.
I recall Peeta's words in the atrium: I always know what you're doing.
We're in trouble. The mockingjay and I are in trouble. And somehow, somewhere out there, Peeta knows this.
I'm at: andshewaits (d0t) tumblr (d0t) com.
