Paralysed

Pain. Like a white hot flame burning up and down my arm. I can't move… I can't think… I am curled in a foetal position on the damp ground, clutching my hand into my chest.

Footsteps. I try to roll onto my knees so that I can face my attacker but the movement causes my stomach to contract and I lose what little food remains in my stomach from my meagre lunch.

'Maya!' Somewhere, in the midst of the pain, I feel myself relaxing; it's just Sheb. 'What's wrong? Where does it hurt?' I resist feebly as he pulls my arms away from my body because the movement is excruciating.

'Nettles… poison…' I cough weakly, spitting out the foul tasting liquid that still fills my mouth.

'Let me see.' Gently he pulls my bad arm towards him. 'This is bad Maya.' I try to nod but my head spins and black dots start to crowd across my eyes, blurring Sheb's concerned face.

'Let me see… in the first aid…' His voice crackles and fades like a badly tuned radio. 'Hang…' I fight to hold onto the things that tell me that I am still here; the smell of pine needles… the hard tree roots digging into my back… the sound of birdsong… even the pain radiating up and down my arm. As these things get further away the harder I fight. I am unwilling to give in to the darkness... I am afraid that I might never wake up...

My senses return slowly, one by one. I smell damp earth and green things and the sharp smell of wood smoke. I hear the rustle and snap as something moves through the undergrowth nearby and the snap and crackle of a fire. I taste the bitterness of bile on my tongue.

'Maya?' I open my eyes to find my brother's face inches from my own. I am lying in one of the sleeping bags underneath a pine tree on a soft bed of dry pine needles. 'Oh Maya! Thank God…' He wraps his arms tightly around me before pulling me into a sitting up position. The second that his hands leave me, I topple over again, caught off balance.

'How do you feel?' I push myself upright again with my good arm but I nearly lose my balance again.

'What?' Fear thrills through me; I feel lopsided as though my arm is missing. I look down, surprised to see it hanging limply in its sleeve. Near my wrist, Sheb has wound back both the jacket and the under top and there is a crisp new bandage wrapped over my arm and hand. My good hand prods the stiff white linen, gently at first and then harder; I feel nothing. Truly alarmed, I try to move my fingers; nothing.

'My hand!'

'What's wrong?' Sheb picks up my hand with both of his own, and looks at it closely. My arm moves as he pulls it closer to his face for inspection but I feel nothing.

'I can't feel it, Sheb! I can't feel it at all.' Tears blur my vision; how long will I survive in this arena if I'm semi-paralysed?

'Maya…' Sheb seems to be as speechless as I am. We stare wordlessly at my arm, almost as if we are hoping for a miracle. There's no point crying about something you can't fix but it still takes me some time to calm myself.

'How long… was I unconscious?' I fight to keep my voice steady; I will not go to pieces in front of the Capitol.

'Nearly…' Sheb swallows and reaches out as if to caress my face. He appears to think better of it and his hand drops to his side. 'About a day and a half, I think; I carried you here after you passed out. It's evening now.' I look around me; we are still near the pocket of oak and beech trees where the deadly stinging nettles grow. Sheb has attached the tarpaulins to the trees behind us but we aren't well hidden and I feel vulnerable. It would be all too easy for another tribute, following the stream up or down the valley to stumble onto us. I shiver at the thought and look up through the branches above me to distract myself; it isn't raining but there's a certain foreboding heaviness in the air around us that suggests we are in for more bad weather.

'Did… did I miss anything?' I am trying to keep the conversation neutral but my mind is whirling faster and faster, unable to believe… unable to accept the harsh truth that I have woken up to. Sheb shakes his head, biting his lip. I can see a brightness in the corner of his eye as he answers but the tears stay unshed.

'There was another thunderstorm last night though which could've masked the cannon. Oh and Seeder and Chaff sent you some medicine, some sort of salve.' He hands me a thin metal tube. The metal is rolled up and crooked where Sheb squeezed it to get out every last drop of the ointment inside. I turn it over in my hand, barely listening as Sheb continues to talk.

Paralysed… I try to flex my fingers, concentrating so hard that my head starts to ache. Nothing… the feeling will come back… it has to… but there's no guarantee. This is the arena and the Gamemakers want as much drama as possible. There's no has to about it.

'We should be prepared,' I look up to find my brother looking at me intently and I try to smooth out my desperate expression. 'We know that it's been nearly two days since the last death which means that the Gamemakers will be thinking of some way of pushing us closer together. I shudder, thinking of the possibilities; it could be fire or fog or some sort of muttation. Something is coming; I can feel it in my bones.

'Maya…' Sheb begins, his voice soft and full of emotion.

'We should probably move on…' I continue; I don't want to hear it… his pity won't help… I don't want to… I push my legs out of the sleeping bag; I don't want to stay here. It seems as if there is some horror lurking in the trees around us.

'Maya, your arm is paralysed… do you really think that it's a good idea…?'

'Sheb please…' I interrupt, shaking my head and staggering to my feet; my balance is still off and I have to grasp the spiky branch above us. A shower of dry pine needles cascades over us and I shake them out of my hair.

'I can walk,' I let go of the branch and test my balance; it's still dodgy but I'm already getting used to the lopsided feel of my body. 'We can go slowly,' I say, more confidently than I feel.

'At least have some food Maya. My snare caught a baby rabbit.' Sheb points towards the metal pot that sits by the ashes of a long-dead fire. I analyse my body's needs; my stomach feels unsettled but not hungry which is surprising since I haven't had anything to eat for over a day.

I dig my knife experimentally into the pot of cold rabbit stew; the stew has congealed slightly around the edges and as I stir it, the aromas of garlic and mushrooms rise up to meet me. Although this would be a feast back at home, my stomach contracts slightly and I shake my head; I'll wait until I feel less nauseous.

We continue on down the stream for about two miles. At first the slope is gradual but then we come to a place where the ground descends sharply, the stream turning into a series of steep, rocky waterfalls and small ravines. The trees here are all conifers; pine, spruce and fir because the ground is too steep for any other variety to be able to take root and grow.

By the time we make camp for the night in the hollow behind a fallen pine tree, the weather has deteriorated; the wind is howling through the branches around us and despite being cocooned close enough to touch each other in our sleeping bags, it is impossible to have a conversation. We eat the rest of the rabbit stew with the end of the loaf, taking it in turns to mop up the juice with slices of bread. By the time we have finished the food, the wind is so violent that we are forced to take down the tarpaulins above us for fear of losing them. Instead we wrap them around the sleeping bags, covering ourselves completely in a sort of two man bivouac. Although I feel trapped with my face covered by the tarpaulin, it actually feels quite snug and safe. The huge mass of earth and tree roots behind us protects us from the lashing rain and although the tarpaulins are thrashing in the wind, they are keeping us dry at the very least.

I don't know exactly when I slide into unconsciousness. All I know is that I am thrown violently into reality again as the earth seems to explode around me. I fight to free myself from the tarpaulin only to realise that the actuality of the situation is worse than being trapped under the plastic. Deafening cracks echo around us, some from the thunder above but, more terrifyingly, most from the trees around us as the wind snaps them as if they were matchsticks. Earth and branches rain down on us as the trees are picked up and then tossed aside. Lightning flashes give us brief glimpses of the tree-carnage around us.

I cower against Sheb, pulling the tarpaulin up around my ears. I want to run while we still can but at the same time I can see that would be just as dangerous as staying here, if not more so.

'Maya!' Sheb bellows, his mouth so close to my ear that his lips touch my hair. 'We have to stay here. If we try to move…!' Another crack, louder and closer than the rest interrupts him. My scream is drowned out as a thin streak of lightning hits a tree beside us, joining sky and earth by a line of fire. Rain douses the fire almost as soon as it ignites. The tree groans and then, as if in slow motion, it starts to fall. It's going to crush us…

Sheb throws his body over mine, knocking the air out of my lungs. Earth showers us. Wood clatters against wood above our entwined bodies. And then it's all over as quickly as it started. Sheb gradually moves his body off mine and I stare into the darkness above before reaching out gingerly with my good hand. My groping fingers find branches and wood.

It isn't until the morning, that daylight tells us the true horror of last night's storm. Fallen trees surround us, their roots torn up in huge rafts of earth. We were saved from being crushed by the roots of the tree that we made camp behind; the huge circle of earth and entwined roots prevented the lightning struck tree from falling on us. For the first time since we entered the arena, the sky is clear and the temperature has dropped accordingly; the water lingering from last night's storm has frozen where it stands so our surroundings are both macabre and beautiful. The two contrast starkly with each other.

Neither of us want to linger in this valley but escaping it is easier said than done; where there was once thick pine forest is now an almost impenetrable mess of roots, branches and fallen tree trunks. Navigating this obstacle course would be hard enough with two working hands but is next to impossible in my situation. It takes us all morning but then we finally reach a grove of standing oak trees and further on the unbroken line of green woodland. By now we are heading uphill and this worries me because we are heading back up over the ridge into the valley where the Games began and where the Careers have almost certainly made their encampment.

The temperature increases gradually as the day goes on and, mid-afternoon, I actually stop to remove my jumper and stuff it into the top of my pack to keep it dry; the little sky that I can see through the branches above looks thick with rain clouds again.

'Do you think the storm had the desired effect? To drive the tributes together.' I ask, speaking for the first time in hours. We have stopped by a small pond that contains a small crop of katniss roots and Sheb is filling his bag while I refill the water containers. The water is freezing on my bare hands.

'I don't know,' Sheb looks up, scratching his cheek without thinking and I suddenly find myself grinning; his hands were covered with mud from the bottom of the pond so he now looks like he's wearing an odd sort of war-paint. 'I don't see how anybody could've moved through that. I think it's far more likely that the storm was just the Gamemakers' way of livening things up a bit. The 'driving together' bit is still to come.' Sheb snorts before plunging his face into the pond. He resurfaces quickly and beckons me forward. 'Come on Maya; it's cold but good.'

Somewhat reluctantly, I move in and scoop up some water so that I can wash my face; I feel as if I'm covered from head to toe in grime and filth and I would dearly love to strip off and wash myself all over but that's impossible without catching hypothermia. My hands ache from the cold… I freeze… my hands ache… both of them. I am using both of my hands and I didn't even realise. I twitch the fingers of my left hand experimentally sucking in a deep, shaky, breath of pure relief as they move in response to my thought. It hurts and the movement is stiff and jerky but it's there.

My breath leaves in a sigh as I turn to Sheb. He can tell from my expression that something's happened.

'What?' Instead of telling him the good news, I burst into tears.

By early evening the rain has started again and we stop to cook the katniss tubers, trusting that the thick drizzle and rapidly falling dusk will hide any smoke from the fire. I wrap each one in a dock leaf before using one of my throwing knives to push it into the ashes of the fire. My left hand is stiff and clumsy and every movement sends a spike of pain through my hand and arm but I don't care; I have feeling again and that's the main thing.

While I cook, Sheb finds a damp leafy hollow ringed by tall fern and oak saplings. By now he is so practised in setting up our hide that it only takes him a couple of minutes to rig the tarpaulins. It looks cosy and I'm exhausted after last night's drama; I can feel my eyes closing as I stare into the flames of the fire. I hold my left hand out towards the warmth; it's still a novelty to feel heat on my fingertips.

Our fourth night in the arena: It seems almost ominous that we haven't yet seen hide nor hair of any other tribute. I can't imagine that this peace will last much longer; the audience in the Capitol must be chomping at the bit. The storm last night will have appeased them for a time but even if a tribute was killed last night, Capitol citizens much prefer tributes to die at the hands of one another.

By the time the food is ready, my stomach is growling; this is the first thing that I've eaten in twenty-four hours and I can't get the food into my mouth quickly enough. The tubers are piping hot and I burn my mouth and lips but it's almost impossible to slow down. It takes a lot of self-restraint to stop at two and to keep the remaining roots for breakfast tomorrow.

I use a handful of damp earth to douse the flames; even with the rain and darkness it's best not to take the chance that there's nobody nearby to see it. I stand up as a long, jaw-breaking yawn racks through me; I'm exhausted.

We settle down in our hollow and wait for the anthem; both of us are eager to know if anyone was killed in last night's crisis. I swallow saliva, suddenly feeling sickened at myself; I'm eager to find out if a child was killed or not. The thought is repellent and with it comes a horrible consideration; if I'm this eager to find out about the death of a fellow tribute, how am I really any different from the Capitol citizens? My dismal thoughts are interrupted by the anthem.

The Fallen.

To my surprise, a picture of the boy from District Four shines down at us. I shudder; does that mean that the Careers were close to us last night? Having looked down at the scene of the destruction as we climbed up the hillside, I know that the area of tree carnage was only about a mile across. Could they really have been so close to us and we didn't realise? The thought is terrifying but there's also an undertone of pure relief; somehow we escaped unnoticed. Perhaps they were too caught up in the death of their fellow Career.

I fully expect District Four to be the only face up there tonight so I'm surprised when his picture is followed by the girl from Five. I can't remember anything about her. Not her name, her training score or even her interview and somehow this makes me sad; a girl has just died and I never even knew her name.

'Well two deaths ought to buy us one night's rest,' Sheb comments, pulling his sleeping bag up round his ears. I bite back the snappy retort that comes to my tongue; Sheb is thinking strategically but I know that deep down he must feel like I do. He's just better at pretending than I am. 'I'll take the first watch Maya.'

'Promise that you'll wake me up this time,' I say and Sheb nods soberly.

It's still dark when Sheb shakes me gently awake. I shudder; even with the sleeping bag, waterproof cover and jumper it's freezing and, surprise surprise, it's raining.

'I can't keep my eyes open any longer, Maya.' Sheb yawns widely and I start to yawn too; I've always believed that yawning is catching. 'Give me an hour or two.' I nod and prop myself up, biting back another yawn.

Sheb is unconscious in seconds and although he's close enough for me to touch I feel so alone now that he's no longer awake. I resist the temptation to reach out and touch him as I stare out into the inky blackness that surrounds us. It presses on my eyeballs and I shudder; back at home darkness never frightened me but this seems to have changed since I entered the arena.

I start to think of home; I imagine Rue high up in the trees and Dad smiling again, the smile that we haven't seen for so long. I imagine Sheb and I sitting at the scrubbed table eating bowls of mush before we leave for school. I wonder whether Saffron's baby is here yet. Then I remember that it's only been just over a week since we left home although it feels more like several months.

Grey light starts to seep under the branches above and the birds start to sing heralding the dawn. My eyes start to close but I prop them open; I want to give Sheb as long as possible.

The noise begins so gradually that I don't even notice it and when I do, I take it for the rustling of the wind through the leaves. At first it's a hushed whisper, but as it grows I stand up, trying to see what's making the noise. At first I can't see anything because the ferns shield us so completely. I push them aside and scream.

As always, please let me know what you think.

THE FALLEN

Boy from Four (Urchin)

Girl from Five (Leena)