It's not even noon, and I'm already tired of today. I didn't want to finish off the little boy whose blood is still on my knife. I didn't want to make an emergency tourniquet to stifle the blood flowing out of Blade's nearly detached arm. I didn't want to make Osten mad or get a death threat from Kim. And I certainly don't want to carry Blade back to the Cornucopia when every movement puts him at risk of bleeding again.
Kai is helping me hold up Blade. Kim would probably be better suited to helping carry him than I am since she is bigger and stronger, but she seems reluctant to make eye contact with us after her little breakdown. Instead, she is leading the way back, at least twenty steps ahead of us at all times. It takes a while to make it back because we have to stop often to reposition Blade's arm. Every now and then, he regains consciousness and looks around in a daze, only to fade out seconds later.
I see Osten's face register surprise when he sees us. Part of me hopes he will admit he was wrong to storm out, but that's a little much to hope for. Still, it's hard to resist saying "I told you so."
We have just settled Blade down on his sleeping bag when Osten makes an angry announcement.
"Someone stole a lot of our food!," he shouts. "Whose idea was it for us to all leave at the same time, anyway?"
I bite my tongue and keep quiet because saying that it was his idea would be a suicidal move.
"That's just fantastic!" Kim says, her voice laced heavily with sarcasm. She kicks a few packs then leans against the Cornucopia.
I peer over to our food pile. Sure enough, at least half of it is gone. The amount we have left won't last us long at all.
"Just eat now. I'll catch some fish before dinner," I say tiredly. All I want to do now is rest. It doesn't help that I barely slept last night.
Besides Blade's occasional moan, it's uncomfortably quiet. Kai brings me some pecans and crackers to snack on, and we eat in silence. About an hour passes before Kim suggests I go fish. I nod heavily and grab the fishing pole and nets I crafted last night. I'm kind of nervous about leaving Kai right now, but he hasn't done anything to make Osten want to kill him.
The next few hours are about as relaxing as the Hunger Games can get. When fishing, I can at least pretend I'm safe at home. Feel the sun wrap around me and listen to birds overhead. It takes patience, but I'm in no hurry to get anywhere. I end up with a pretty good haul.
It's not until I lean over and look at my reflection in the water that I feel awful. I can't identify the girl peering back at me. Even though I still feel like myself on the inside, my reflection looks feral. The worst part is the bloodstains. Dried blood is blotted all over my pale green outfit and is smeared over my cheeks. It makes me feel sick to have the blood of others caked onto me, so I lower myself into the lake and scrub my skin violently until it's red and sore. I can clean the blood off my face and hands, but it's still stained onto my clothes. I just barely resist the urge to tear them off and throw them in the water.
When I get back to camp, I see Blade has regained consciousness. Kai and Kim are sitting by him, trying to hold a conversation. Osten is sitting several feet away, digging through weapons.
"I'm glad to see you've rejoined us," I tell Blade with a genuine smile. He still looks sickly and weak, but at least he's alive.
"Me too," he strains to say.
"Did you catch any fish?" Kai asks hopefully.
"Sure did," I say, holding out the bag. "Help me gut them."
We carefully dig knifes through the fish, knowing the right spots to target. Osten and Kim wait impatiently, and we tell them to start a fire so we can cook the meat. It smells delicious.
Neither Kim or Osten thank me, but I can tell they are grateful for the food. Unlike the rest of the items in the food pile, this is a meal, not a meager snack. Blade doesn't look up to eating, so I kneel next to him and try to get some water into his system. One time back in Four, I donated blood to the district hospital and the nurse made me drink a lot of water. I'm sure Blade has lost much more blood than I did, so it is imperative he gets replenished with water.
"Do we have any more morphling tablets?" he asks, desperate and weak.
I frown a bit. "I think we only have one left. You might as well take it," I say. There weren't many in the bottle because morphling is costly.
After I help him swallow it, I run my hand over his face to find he is hot with fever. There's no telling what his temperature is for his forehead to feel steamy under my already warm hand.
Kim must take in my uneasy expression because she sounds concerned when she asks, "Is everything alright over there?" It still amazes me how Kim can go from hostile to caring so fast.
"I'm not sure," I reply, but the way my voice picks up at the end makes it sound like a question. "He has a fever."
Kim purses her lips, then picks up my knife and starts sawing through my sleeping bag.
"What are you…" I start before she cuts me off.
"What does it look like I'm doing, Four?" she snaps. Her tone makes me jump. She finally rips off a piece of the bag and dunks it in a bowl of water before laying it across Blade's forehead. "I'm breaking his fever," she says more calmly.
"Oh," is all I can say. Do I trust Kim? No. But I might respect her a little more after today.
There doesn't seem to be much to do now. Evening falls and no one is up for any more action today. I'm laying on my torn up sleeping back and starting to nod off when I feel a drop on my cheek. It's delightfully cold, but I have no idea where it came from. Another drop on my arm makes me realize it must be drizzling. Of course. All the tributes who know better than to venture out to the lake are undoubtedly dehydrated by now. This is their source of water.
"I never thought rain could feel so good," Osten says, and for once, I agree with him.
The drops start falling down hard enough to where it can no longer be considered a drizzle. The five of us are lying down and laughing as if the rain is some luxury, but then it starts coming down even harder. Too hard. The wind picks up, too, and suddenly I feel like I'm standing in the middle of a hurricane. There's no way a hurricane would hit here, though, so the storm is clearly gamemaker fabricated. Everything has to be a nightmare.
Before long, the rain is slanting and hits me in sheets with so much force that it's painful. The wind howls so loud that I can't hear Kai's voice, even though he is only three feet away. I feel like I might fall over backwards from the gust. The high grass is whipping forward in waves that make it look like an angry ocean. At least we are far away from the trees. I can see some of them toppling over already and leaves and sticks are flying everywhere.
Some of our packs and sleeping bags are flying away. We grab at the desperately and make a mad dash for the Cornucopia. I'm almost to safety when I realize Blade can't get up. I run back to him and try to pull him against the wind. Kai comes back and helps me.
The rain still hits us inside the Cornucopia, but it is a big improvement over being outside. I'm about to curl up next to my cousin when I notice my hand is covered in blood. The color drains from my face when I see Blade is bleeding again. We were too rough with his arm when we dragged him here.
"Blade!" I shriek. "Kai! Kim! Blade's losing blood!" I'm screaming as loudly as I can, but the rain is so loud against the sides of the golden horn.
"What?" Kai yells. I can't hear his voice well, but I can tell that's what he's saying. I give up on talking and point hurriedly to Blade's arm. The puddle of blood is growing bigger by the second. I notice Blade has slipped into unconsciousness again.
I think I hear Kim scream. All of us, except for Osten, of course, are clawing at Blade's arm, desperately trying to fix the ruined tourniquet, but we are only making it worse. I'm feeling nauseous and light headed again. Too much blood. Way too much blood.
I hear a loud noise over the rain. At first I assume it's thunder, but then a terrifying thought strikes me. I lean against Blade's chest and listen for a heart beat, but I can't hear anything. I hold my hand there to see if I can at least feel something, not caring that I'm getting soaked in blood again. Still nothing.
The sound was Blade's canon. I'm sobbing now, and it's getting hard to breathe. This is my fault. I should have been more careful with the arm. I messed up the tourniquet and let him bleed to death. Kai and Kim slowly put together what happened. I see Kai's face grow pale. Kim is slamming her fists against the rounded metal walls and trying to hide her tears. Osten just looks unimpressed. He's saying something to us. I think it might be words of disapproval or an "I told you so", but no one can hear him, so it doesn't matter anyway.
It takes an hour for the hurricane-like storm to stop. I still have my shaking arms wrapped around Kai's body.
"We need to drag out the corpse so they can pick it up," Kim says glumly. Her voice is lacking it's usual ferocity and she looks young and innocent without the façade.
"I've got it," Osten says. He pulls out the body forcefully, and I'm tempted to tell him to be more gentle, but I guess there's no point anymore. It's just a corpse.
He peeks back through the opening when he's done. "What are all of you waiting for? He's gone. Get over it."
There are three faces in the sky tonight. I saw all three dead bodies and was involved in the deaths of two of them. I've never been more miserable.
It's harder to stay awake tonight. It's not that I trust them to not kill me in my sleep; I'm just too drained. Still, I wake up every hour from nightmares. The next morning, Osten and Kim go collect firewood from the forest so we can cook more fish later. It's just Kai and I at the camp when we hear a girl's scream from the edge of the woods.
"Do you think that was one of your traps?" Kai asks.
"Maybe," I say. I hope not. "Let's go check it out."
We walk closer until we can make out the figure entangled in the net. "I think that's the girl from One. Osten and Kim will be happy about this," he says. He doesn't sound happy.
"Go get them," I order. He complies and runs off into the distance.
I walk closer to Crystal and she makes eye contact with me. All I see is fear in her hazel eyes. I realize how I must look to her, so I drop the knife in my hand.
"Are you okay?' I ask. She upside down and her limbs are stuck in strange positions.
"Not at all," she says. How can she keep her voice steady? "They're going to drag it out, aren't they? Take their time killing me."
I grimace because I know it's true. Both Osten and Kim have been out to get her just for having a different opinion on the Games than they do. I don't want to see them kill her. No one deserves to die that way. If I let it happen, I'm equally responsible for her death.
I pick up my knife and start slicing through the net. It's difficult because I made it strong, but I eventually power through the knots. With a final slice, I take out the bottom of the net and Crystal falls out, rustling the grass.
"Get out of here. Now," I plead. The others will be here any minute now.
Crystal rolls over on the ground and looks up at me quizzically. "They'll kill you for letting me go," she says.
"That's my problem, not your's. Now go!" I hiss.
She still looks confused. "Come with me then, Mags. I can't let you save me then leave you to die."
I look back frantically. I'll really be dead if Osten sees me now. It's tempting to go with her. The alliance I'm in now won't survive for much longer, anyway. But I have Kai to worry about. "I can't," I say sadly. "My cousin…"
She seems to understand now. "Thank you," she says before jumping up and running away.
"You're welcome," I say softly, even though she can't hear me. Not even a minute is passed before I see Osten, Kim, and Kai running to me. Every muscle in my body tightens in fear.
"What happened?" all three of the exclaim in unison.
"She had a knife," I lie. "I tried to chase her, but she had a head start and she got away."
Kim looks both angry and disappointed. "You really screwed up this time," she says.
Her anger is nothing compared to Osten's, though. I can almost feel his fury hanging around in the air. His voice is enraged but level when he speaks to me.
"I thought you said your nets were strong. If a knife can break through them, there's no point in even having you in this alliance is there?"
"Nets are made out of rope, not steel," I say with more attitude than I intended. My eyes immediately fall down to the spear in his left hand to see if he's going to attack me. I'm so focused on the weapon that I don't see it coming when his hand slaps me across the face with such force that my head whips to the side. It's already throbbing and I can tell without looking that a purple bruise is already blossoming over the area. I'm frozen in shock when he shoves me down into the grass and I land hard on my tailbone.
I'm furious. I expected his anger, but I'm not here to be pushed around. I grip my knife and open my mouth because I have a few choice words for Osten right now.
Kai beats me to it. Within seconds, they have spears aimed at each other and are screaming profanity back and forth. I'm still mad, but suddenly that's not the most important thing. Neither is my stinging face or tailbone.
"Kai! Stop!" I screech because I don't want him getting himself killed because of me.
They both disregard me, but then Kim steps in between them and brandishes her sword.
"Both of you shut up now! There's still seven people out there besides us that need to die and we need the numbers. Now isn't the time to kill each other off, you idiots!"
Both boys are still tense, but they lower their weapons.
"Let's go back to camp. Mags is going to go fishing and catch at least a dozen fish," Osten declares.
"How is she supposed guarantee twelve fish? That's not how fishing works!" Kai screams.
Osten looks like he might raise his weapon again. "That's the number it's going to take to put this little incident behind us…for now."
Kai relents and walks over to me. "Are you okay, Mags? Your face looks horrible."
"Gee, thanks!" I say, hoping an attempt at humor will calm him down.
"You know what I mean," he replies. Then his voice drops to a whisper. "Maybe you were right about Osten. I don't know who he thinks he is. He acts like he's stronger than the rest of us. I think he forgot I got the same training score as him."
I give a subtle shake of my head. "What's done is done. We'll talk about this later; you need to go now." He reluctantly begins moving away when I add something. "If they try to hurt you while I'm not there, run. Don't worry about me. Please, just run."
He nods solemnly and follows Osten and Kim back to camp.
Fishing isn't nearly as relaxing today. The side of my face is throbbing and it hurts to sit because my tailbone still aches. Sure enough, the entire right side of my face is an even deeper purple than the dark circles under my eyes. Even if I work past the pain, the pressure to catch a dozen fish still makes me anxious. What if I can't? Will Osten kill me and Kai?
After a few hours, I put down my pole and check the nets I have scattered around the lake. Eleven fish. More than I hoped for, but less than I need. I know I need to head back now, but my line isn't catching any more fish and I'm freaking out. I try to tell myself that I'm taking Osten's words too literally. I'm about to give up when a silver parachute drifts down. Inside is one fish and a letter that simply says Number 12.
Thank you, Alec! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I walk back across the grass plains and deliver the fish. Osten counts them carefully and seems almost disappointed. My guess is he was counting on this to be the perfect excuse to kill me. Guess he's out of luck for now. As the four of us sit and eat dinner, there is so much tension in the air that I'm feeling more nervous by the second.
Osten is glaring at both Kai and me. I'm pretending to study my food as if I have never seen a fish before and it's the most fascinating thing in the world. Kai is openly glaring at Osten. Kim just rolls her eyes at all of us before turning away and going eat by herself.
No, this alliance is not lasting much longer at all.
