Author's Note: I owe thanks to Danny Barefoot and GypsyWitchBaby for their reviews on the previous chapter. Your enthusiasm for that one motivated me to post this update even faster than I know I've been posting and to write with even more fervor.

Btw, mother tongues were inspired by kudzu; it's just as ubiquitous in the South. Since this chapter includes statements directly from the book, I wanted to add that none of the characters, locations, and very few of their words are my property. They belong to Suzanne Collins and Scholastic, Inc. I don't even make money off the story.

Thanks to everyone reading: Please continue to review and follow!

Chapter 19

I struggled against the thin vine and tried to pull it from my neck. The vine grew tighter. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. When my fingertips touched the vine, more vines crept around my wrists and pulled them over my head. Then I knew what was happening.

Back home, there was no one old enough to remember the Dark Days, but Nana and a few other elders had heard of it from their parents. The Capitol had defeated the Districts because it had better tech and it was protected by mountains that the Districts' armies could not climb. It could not be invaded. The Districts could.

The Capitol had developed muttations—plants and animals made from something in the blood of other animals and plants—to reach and destroy the Districts, and put them in places throughout each District. We had a lot of tracker jackers and mother tongues, two of the only muttations that thrived instead of dying like jabberjays.

I was caught in a mother tongue.

Mother tongues were thin vines that grew almost everywhere back home. We had to cut them off trees in orchards and away from white and corn fields, but mother tongue grew back quickly. It was dangerous work because they reacted to the slightest touch. When mother tongue grabbed a man, it wrapped around his body and strangled him to death. It would cover him in vines and slowly eat him. Only fire made mother tongue retreat from a victim. Nana said that the Capitol used it to torture the leaders of the rebellion by feeding their families to the vines.

I could see red spots in my eyes. Mother tongue had wrapped around my chest and arms. I couldn't fight any longer. The way it held me, I could see the ground. The last thing I would see would be two containers of water, side-by-side on the ground. We were both going to die, and Nana would have to watch.

Suddenly I felt heat on my face. The mother tongue suddenly pulled away, and I fell to the forest floor. I landed on my left side. Pain shot through my arm. I gasped for air, thankful that I could feel pain and I could gasp for air.

And I could hear running footsteps. I could smell burning wood.

Looking up, I saw Katniss run through the bushes only a few inches away. Her braided brown hair trailed behind her. She looked terrified. I could have reached out and touched her, if I had fully recovered from almost dying. I could have touched her. When I saw the flames following Katniss through the forest, I had to recover immediately. I had to run.

Picking up the water containers, I stood and tried to run. The world was still spinning around me. My legs felt weak. Smoke stung my eyes and made them water. It was so thick that the air was gray. A cough took my breath away. I tripped and fell to my knees as the heat from the flames increased. I couldn't breathe, and if I couldn't breathe, I couldn't run.

The fire was leaping from tree to tree all around me. If I died at that moment, it might be less painful than what I had seen the Careers do to Verona Mars. I had killed people. Didn't I deserve to die? But there were two water containers side-by-side in front of me.

If I died, Rue would die too. Or the Tributes would cut her down.

I held back another cough. It burned in my chest, but I couldn't let it out. Another cough would have slowed me down. My eyes were still burning and watering, but I ran from the heat of the fire. It followed me for a short while then stopped. The Gamesmasters were behind it. There had to be Tributes nearby.

Tucking my containers into my tunic, I kept running to the nearest tree that looked strong enough to support me and climbed it. Then I heard Rue's four note song. It was weak enough that I was surprised I had heard it.

Afraid that it was mockingjay imitating Rue's song, I looked around the trees with their thick green leaves. Then I heard the song again. I looked up, and there was Rue, sitting in the highest branch of the same tree. Sunlight came through the leaves and surrounded her, until her head was like a light brown circle. Even though she smiled at me, I could tell she was barely holding on. Her eyes were bright red. I called her to come down.

"Can't you climb up? I'm too tired to climb down."

"Not when I have all this water. I barely got this far."

It was kind of true; I was tired, and Rue would have an easier time of climbing down the tree than I would have trying to climb up. The water containers were heavy. If one fell I wasn't sure how quickly I could get more.

Rue was very careful when she climbed down the tree. I was angry, seeing her like that. I had failed to protect my sister. When she reached the branch I was on, Rue's lips were white, and her eyes were shiny like glass. She leaned against me. Her breathing was desperate. I had to force her to drink water from a container. When her water was halfway gone, I pulled the bottle away.

"That's enough."

"It's really good water." Rue wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her tunic and smiled.

"We have to make sure there's going to be more. The lake is kind of far away." I told her about the mother tongues and the fire that had driven Katniss away from the water. She looked disappointed. I would have traded that look even for Chaff's angry look. When I Volunteered, it was to protect my sister. My protection might get Rue killed instead. What would I do then?

"She must be so scared." Did she mean Nana? Or Katniss? "She needs our help. We need hers."

I thought about Katniss in all the different ways I had seen her. On the broadcast announcing the Tributes, she looked determined and strong. She was beautiful beyond words in her chariot and on the night of the interviews. When Peeta told Panem that he loved her, she was surprised. At the lake, she seemed understanding.

Now that Peeta was with the Tributes, would she even notice me? Maybe, if Rue and I saved her life, she would. Maybe she would still care for him. Or would she turn and kill both of us?

"We can help her, but we can't risk being hurt?"

Night approached quickly, and it was getting harder to read Rue's face. But she moved her head, and it was a nod. I looked around the ground below us. There was no one after us. Rue and I could settle down for the night. We were safe, as safe as we could be in the Arena.

"Where is the pack?"

Rue pointed over our heads. She had tied the pack to a tree branch just within reach of my hands. I stood on the branch, untied it, and brought it down. "Did you eat?"

"No, I waited for you to come back. I was too thirsty and scared to eat anything."

I opened the pack. There were a few strips of dried meat left, a couple of portions of crackers, and some of the dried fruit. Rue and I had survived on less than that back home, but my stomach expected more. It would have to adjust. We weren't in the Capitol any more.

We split a strip of dried meat and two crackers each. We ate in silence and vanishing light, and drank a few sips of our waters. Then I made sure Rue was tied to the trunk of the tree with the pack, and leaned her against the rough bark of the tree trunk. "Tell me a story, Thresh?"

I started to tell her a story about the princess and her brother. After their escape from the dragon, they were lost in a desert and dying of water. Before I could tell her about the magic fairy who let them to water, Rue nodded off to sleep. There was just enough light to keep me awake. And the forest was filled with noises of animals and the disgusting smell of another.

What would I do for Rue's water tomorrow? If I was lucky, I had broken enough branches and bushes to make a trail to follow. The fire might have burned them all. I couldn't risk another run-in with mother tongues. What if there was another fire, or a nest of tracker jackers, or if the Careers had found the lake? Would my sister die of thirst?

My feet still hurt from all the branches I had stepped on. When I looked at them in the last light, there were splinters in the bottoms of my bare feet. They hurt but no blood—that was a good sign. Back home, there was always a risk of infection when people had run-ins with bricklebrack bushes, or a risk of poisoning with a mother tongue.

I started to pull out the splinters, if I could. It was hard because they were so small, but I couldn't let them stay in. They could dig deeper. That could slow me down, or cause an infection. I couldn't get an infection and die, not in the Arena, not now.

Then I heard, "How's everything with you?"

It was Katniss, and she was close by. My heart started racing in my chest like I was running. But I sat perfectly still on the branch. I glanced at Rue. Katniss' voice had awaken her. I looked around, but I didn't see Katniss. Maybe it was something else.

"Well enough. Yourself?"

I knew the voice too well. It was Cato, but he sounded further away, lower in the trees. Katniss sounded like she was just over my head. I kept trying to see her through the leaves.

"It's been a bit warm for my taste. The air is better up here. Why don't you come on up?"

"Think I will," Cato responded.

I tried to make my way through the trees, to see what was happening. Rue was faster. Above the ground, her light weight made for height and speed. I tried to move smoothly with as little sound as possible, but I had barely recovered. When I heard the crashing of branches below, I thought Katniss had fallen. When I looked down, it was only Cato.

"Here, take this Cato." That sounded like Glimmer, the girl from District One. My heart pounded harder. Katniss was facing at least two Careers, but no one had died the night before. Was she facing all six Careers? No. I had killed Nereus, the boy from District Four. Peeta had taken his place.

I stopped on a heavy branch just below Rue. She stared through the leaves, so I imitated her. On a branch, almost at Rue's level, Katniss sat on a branch. She was perfectly balanced on a tree limb without strapping in. Then I saw three silver things shoot through the trees near Katniss. Someone was shooting at her!

Just as I thought, the Careers for Districts 1, 2, and 4 were far below Katniss. Glimmer threw down a silver weapon and the silver things she was shooting at Katniss. She must not have been very good with them. And none of the Careers could reach her. I had to keep from laughing.

"Oh, let her stay up there. It's not like she's going anywhere. We'll deal with her in the morning," Peeta said.

I watched Katniss and the Careers prepare for the night. They had torches, and the fires made their faces look strange, like the first time I had seen Capitolites In person. Katniss had to climb down to set in part of the tree shaped like a fork. She moved slowly and was settled in before the light finally vanished.

Katniss was hurt. I could tell from the slow way she moved. Maybe the fire had burned her like it had burned me. Maybe she had gotten hurt climbing or running. Peeta had showed who he really was. If Rue had done it to me, it would hurt me too. At the moment, she was without friends.

A green leaf drifted past my face on its way to the ground. Back home, leaves never fell if they were green, even if the tree was sick. I looked up and saw Rue staring at me. Without a word, she pointed at a spot above Katniss' head then at the ground. I followed her pointing and saw a wasp nest, and the Careers sleeping just below it.

If those wasps had gold bodies, they weren't normal wasps. They were tracker jackers.