Everyone, say Hi to chapter 12.
Disclaimer (for the last two chapters…): I don't own Rue or The Hunger Games, or she would have survived somehow. However...
Chapter 12: Staying Alive
The sun is already beating down when I wake up. I bet the Gamemakers are controlling the temperature, making it scalding during the day and cold at night.
I climb down my tree, my pack over my shoulder. I still have most of my berries left, so I cut more roots. Containing food and water, they are a great thing to have. I need real water, though. To fill my water skin.
After wandering for an hour or two, I don't find even a puddle. Reaching into my pack, I pull out a root and bite into the watery part. I sit down and scratch patterns into the dirt with a twig. When I'm done, I drag my boot across them so no one would see that I've been here. I feel like I'm forgetting something. My traps! I left them on the tree.
I yank the vines, and the berries and rocks fall to the ground. I roll up the vines and hang them from a tree about ten yards away. Then I walk to a small clearing with a large boulder in the middle of it. I sit down, and peel the shells of the nuts I gathered last night. Before I can stop myself, I eat a small handful. They are salty on the outside, and have a sweet aftertaste. I don't know what these are called, and I'm too absorbed in eating them to come up with one.
The food dries out my mouth again, and I remember why I even left the safety of my tree in the first place. Water. I jog for about an hour before I see mud. Where there's mud, there's usually water. Sure enough, a small pond surrounded my bushes sits behind the mud. Just in case, I smear a layer of mud across my pack to camouflage it. I don't have iodine, so the water will need to boil before I can drink it. I hope that will be enough to remove the bacteria.
I fill my water skin with cool water and pour it over my arms to remove the dirt. I also let it run through my hair and brush out knots with my fingers. Ow, not trying that again.
Boiling water will inevitably require a fire, so I hack out the inside of a tall bush with my rock and spend half an hour trying to light a fire. Then there are footsteps. I stand up, grab my pack, kick away my footprints, and run. I've just reached the safety of a tree branch again when I see my follower. It's the girl from District 5, with the red hair and squinty eyes.
She's smart, and she can tell someone was at the pond. I learn that she's also easily scared off. I slingshot a twig at her, and after a nervous glance, she darts away in the direction she came.
Then I begin the slow jog that will bring me back to my tree in an hour or so. I manage to find the right tree before climbing to the safe branch I've spent so much time in.
Tomorrow I will get the water. I want my hair to dry, so I inch forward, as far as I'm willing to go on my branch, into sunlight. It's afternoon now, and I'm tempted by the apple in my pack. The reason I end up eating it is that I'm afraid it will rot before I get to it.
The skin breaks under my teeth, and I'm rewarded with the taste my sisters and I love so much. Apples have always been a favorite of mine, next to the shiny pink fruits I resembled in the opening ceremony. I find another hidden pouch of my pack to put it in, but am surprised to find a pack of crackers and a tiny bottle of juice.
This is almost considered spoiling even at home, and here I am where I could die any second with richer food than at my home. I decide to rip off pieces of apple, which is no easy task, and pile them on crackers. I now have nine of the original twelve crackers left, and half an apple.
Since the amount of food in my pack is enough for at least three days, I want to set traps. Meat would be great right now, even if I don't get much anyway. My family has never, at least since I was born, had so much as a groosling leg to themselves. Besides Aspen and Willow. They are at an age where they are growing, and need that much food. On the nights where they're really hungry, I don't eat unless there are some berries in the cupboards.
I doubt I'd have the courage to kill an animal right now, but if I was really starving, I might. However, right now I have a chance to eat just as much as I do at home. Giving a resigned sigh, I sit back against the tree trunk.
I start to fall asleep, and in my wavering state of consciousness, I hallucinate. The forest moves in waves like the ones they show District 4 having on TV. That was a beautiful picture. I watched that with Rosie.
District 4's oceans also contain creatures called dolphins. Before the Dark Days, what we call the war that created these Games, people traveled far to play with them. The dolphins had swooped through waves like silver rafts. In one picture, a girl had been riding one, an ecstatic smile on her face. Rosie had invented some song about dolphins that I think just said, "Dolphin, dolphin, pretty dolphin..." over and over. She was three then, so I have a vague memory of the show. I had been Lilac's age, in no danger of the Hunger Games, when now I was living them.
The rest of my afternoon is spent taking small naps that only last about twenty minutes each. I slip in and out of awareness, dreaming of my sisters. I see all their birthdays, the day Lilac started work in the orchards, Rosie's first day of school, Aspen deciding she wanted the spot next to me in our bed, Willow's drawings of us, and Lavender's first words. A lump forms in my throat when my final flashback is my parents, smiling proudly.
Then I truly wake up, shivering even though the temperature had to be at least 85 degrees. Those images played in the back of my mind hauntingly.
I climb down from my tree, wanting to do something productive before the anthem comes on and I will sleep. My promise to myself was to try to sleep after the anthem each night.
It's not worth returning to the pond, so I chew some mint leaves I find on a nearby bush. I stuff more into my rapidly filling backpack.
I rush back up my tree when the anthem starts to play. The person who was killed last night was the girl from 8.
I wake up the next morning and go on a search for the pond I saw yesterday. It takes me longer than yesterday, because I ran out of the roots containing water last night. I sink the skin under the sparkly surface of the water and hear the growling in my stomach when I notice I caught a little fish in it. But no matter how hungry I am, I have more food and can't bring myself to kill and eat this little fish. Twigs are all over, so I grab two and pick up the fish between them. Then I place its wriggling body back into the water.
I finally get water with no fish in it and bring it to the bush I hollowed out. I grab dry wood and spend a long time lighting a fire. Good thing I tried the fire-making station during training. The water boils quickly, but it needs to cool, so I set the skin down in the shade and sit next to it. These activities take me the whole day, and it's dark by the time I sit to rest.
That night, I discover an entertaining past-time of dreaming up my dress if I win. I'm nowhere near sure that I will win, but it's fun to pretend. My mind gives me an especially disturbing idea:
"No, Rue, don't! I'm sorry!" Cato from District 2 is on his knees begging. I have to win, but I don't want to kill him. Somehow, Cato turns into a beautiful blue dress covered in embroidered berries. To make sure there's no Cato left in it, I take his sword-it fell when he transformed-and stab it down the neck of the dress, then into the dress itself. It lets out a horrible scream, and I retreat. A cannon fires, announcing my victory.
When Birch shows me the dress that I will wear to be crowned victor, I turn away. It's the same one that Cato turned into. As I walk out of the room in it after being forced into the dress, I swear it tries its best to trip me.
I can't believe myself for having those thoughts. It's concerning, actually. Maybe that apple was rotten.
I drink the rest of the cooled water, and boil more. There's a faint smell of smoke. Is it my fire, now put out? Probably.
But there are footsteps now. And screaming. The smoky smell gets stronger. Fire! The Gamemakers must have set this up, because there were no deaths yesterday or today, and boring is the one thing the Games can never be. Brutal, sad, violent, gory, and deadly are perfectly fine to the Capitol.
I tell myself it's not a fire, even though I know it is. I have to stay calm, or it will kill me. Running sounds like a good idea. I hate having to leave my tree, but it's better than leaving my life behind. Much better. I stand up and run as fast as my legs will let me, away from the footsteps. They're really more of a stampede.
The last thing I see before I sprint away is a willow tree, burning. My heart sinks. Willow has to live, she's already outlasted her namesake. And if I make it to the final eight, they will interview my family. Willow, Aspen, maybe even Poppy. There are no aspens here, as far as I can see, but there could be, since they originated near the Capitol. The fire I'm running from is no regular campfire. No human could have started this, even if they wanted to. This is a Gamemaker fire, caused by machines carefully crafted to do just this.
It's a tiring run with no time to pause for water, though I finally have it. The smoke fills my lungs, and I bend over in a coughing fit after about half an hour. My body tries to take deep breaths after every cough, but my chest just fills with more smoke. I pull my pack from my shoulders and hold it to my mouth. The clean air inside lets my heart beat slightly slower, as it no longer has to fight to keep blood moving. I gasp in the fresh air from the leaves and berries, dreading the moment when it runs out.
The fire is long gone now, but a thick layer of smoke coats both my lungs and the forest. I'm glad I was farther away from it than the others, or I'd be dead. They are not trying to kill us, the Gamemakers, just trying to bring us together. I guess they'd rather watch us kill each other. It's sad to think that the entertainment of a whole country revolves around homicidal kids, but it does.
Lilac had once asked why we had the Hunger Games.
"We lost the war, Lilac, and to show us how weak they think we are, they invented them," I told her.
"But why do they wanna watch kids die?" It had been getting late, and she was tired, meaning she did not talk to her full ability.
"I don't know," I'd admitted. "I really don't." Usually I could answer all Lilac's questions, but now I had no reply.
"Oh…" She said, and fell asleep next to me. Innocent Lilac, who now had to take on being the oldest child.
A whistling next to my ear shakes me from my thoughts. Firebombs? Creative and effective is all they need to be, and besides dangerous, that's all they are.
I end up doing an awkward dance, trying to dodge the flaming fireballs. They are small, but packed with force. A squeal nearby tells me not only do the fireballs hurt, but that someone is here. It's the fox-like girl from District 5. I doubt she'll kill me now, with her own life at stake. In my distraction, a hot fireball grazes my left forearm.
"Ow! Ow, ow, ow!" I mutter, but don't say more than that, in hopes of earning sponsors. They do not want to spend money on someone who cries at a small burn. But they do have to realize that I'm human, and feel pain.
The skin is an angry red, and one layer is already swelling. Medicine would be great, but if sponsors won't even send a blanket, I doubt very much that they will buy me something to heal this.
I stumble around, angry that the smoke is back, cursing the ache in my chest. Why fire? They could have set up a flood instead. Then I'd have water; the days wouldn't be so dry. But fire is a lot less scary when your life is all you have to lose.