Chapter Twenty-One
The phones are already starting to ring, and I'm forced to let Glass answer the first one, since he gets to it first. I listen warily, but he takes the pledge with no nonsense attached to it. He's not exactly warm and convivial, but I don't have to hurt him, anyway.
When he hangs up, he says, "A miniscule sum from, of all things, a maintenance worker in the Training Center. I am to tell you that the 'little boy' assisted him, in some manner, with a piece of machinery. I am not at all sure what he was talking about, but he was moved to tell the entire story of your tribute's ability to do menial labor."
I bite my tongue. He's not talking to the sponsor or to the tributes or to their families. I guess I can take it without escalating. I check the sum, which is about the same size as the contribution from the Astronomy Club. A few more, and I might be able to get some bread later, if they don't find anything else to eat.
The breakfast they serve on the second day - in addition to the pastries and coffee in the lounge - isn't quite as festive. Eggs. Sausage. Orange juice, which I feel like I could drink by the gallon. Everyone is grumbling and tired. Chaff shuffles out of the lounge in his pajamas and plants himself in his chair, breathing in fumes from a large cup of coffee. Seeder is dressed and quite impeccable, as usual, but she doesn't seem talkative. Brutus looks pretty chipper, but kind of out of place. We settle in over the next hour or so and grunt greetings at each other, even though we haven't really been away. It seems to be everyone's habit to check the supply list, so I do it, too. I don't see anything I didn't expect. Everything has at least doubled in price. Blankets quintupled.
There are some perfunctory checks to see if everyone's remaining tributes lived through the night, but I guess no one thinks, once the Careers bedded down, that anything of import would be allowed to happen.
It's nine o'clock, and everyone is still warming up when the screens suddenly come to life, with no Games prelude at all, except for a quick blare of music.
"Our tributes are up early today!" Claudius Templesmith announces gleefully. "The alliance of Districts One, Two, and Four has been up for an hour, spreading out for the hunt… and, like the lions of old, they've scented their prey!"
"Aw, no!" the male mentor from the District Nine table shouts. "Aw, crap, run!"
But of course, his tribute doesn't hear him. The boy, Oscar Yoder, is just waking up when the Career pack lands on him in full force. The cannon goes off before he could possibly know what hit him. The camera lingers on the spreading pool of blood, as the Careers rejoice in the background.
It fades to the Hunger Games logo and the morning fanfare. Majestic, sweeping shots of the arena fill the screens, along with the pictures and names of the tributes. The dead ones twinkle away in a fairy dust effect. I don't know whether or not this is new. Viewing may have been mandatory before, but paying attention to the special effects wasn't. Now, watching Ginger turn into a little shower of glitter, like she's off to become a sprite in a pretty fairy tale, makes me a little ill. They switch coverage to the Career pack, which is heavily involved in their usual fascinating conversation about who needs to be killed next. They decide to stay along the river, since they figure - unfortunately correctly - that most of the tributes will stay near the water source. No one mentions any of our alliance's tributes as a major threat needing to be hunted down.
Glass, apparently considering this sufficient protection for them, goes off to a conference room, where he seems to be meeting with the media. I don't care, as long as it keeps him away from the phones.
On my screen, I see that the cannon has woken up Elmer. He shakes Wiress and Ikris. Simon is on the last guard. The angle is slightly different today. I wonder if the cameras are built into the environment, or if the Gamemakers have some way of moving unseen cameras around in the arena. I'm getting used to identifying the nano-cam shots of Elmer, which tend to be oddly skewed if it's too close, and somewhat shaky. But I can't for the life of me figure out where the other shots are coming from. Maybe Plutarch would tell me if I asked. I can't think why I couldn't know something like that. There's no use for it in the arena, and I couldn't use it as a mentor to send a message, since the kids don't see the broadcast.
They gather around their little water catchment. Wiress hands out large leaves (I guess she found them during her guard shift), and they huddle together, sipping out of the leaves just like we're huddled over our coffee.
"What's next?" Ikris asks.
"Food, I hope," Elmer says. "Do you think we can eat the plants?"
"Yes," Wiress says. "I…" She sticks her tongue out and points to the side of it. "The leaves… no numbness, no sores. I feel fine." She's gathered a large pile of the leaves in question.
"You just decided to try it out? What if it had been poison?" Elmer asks.
"I'd be dead," Wiress says calmly. "I'm not."
"Not yet, anyway," Ikris mutters. "I'll do the next test."
"Well, let's bring on the salad, anyway," Simon says. He tears off a piece of the leaf he's been soaking in water, and shrugs. "It's pretty good. Tastes better than dead nettle, anyway. This is more like dandelion."
"Eat a lot of dandelions in Six?" Elmer asks.
"They grow in the cracks of the sidewalks. We eat whatever we can get our hands on. Dandelions, nettles, cress…"
I will him to stop talking, but he doesn't. Telepathy apparently is not a useful way of getting messages through. By the end of the day, someone will undoubtedly send in a crew to get rid of all the unsightly weeds. Thankfully, Elmer acts as though he's never heard of anything so crazy, even though dandelion soup is a springtime staple on the Seam and pine bark has gotten us through more than one winter.
"We could hunt," Ikris suggests. "I mean, I don't know how, but I guess people always end up learning, don't they?"
"If they don't die first," Elmer says.
Wiress has mostly been ignoring the conversation, peeking up over the side of the hollow. She finally sighs, comes down into the hollow, and says, "We're pretty small."
"And he's probably still dizzy." Simon points at Elmer. "Are you still feeling bad?"
Elmer shrugs. "I have a headache. I've had worse. The ointment worked. Thanks, Haymitch."
I smile.
Simon rolls his eyes. "Don't I get a thank you for killing the guy who was going to kill you?"
"Thanks, Simon," Elmer says.
"You're welcome."
Wiress frowns deeply. "We need…" She mimes throwing a spear. "You know… ranged weapons."
"She seems a little better this morning," I say.
"She didn't get any sleep the night before last," Beetee explains. "She's always, well, a little more odd when she's tired. You should have seen her at the invention fair last year."
Drake looks up. "She was more nervous about that than the Hunger Games?"
"She slept less the few days before, anyway." Beetee looks down at his screen fondly. "She was so tired out by training that she just fell asleep most of the time after the parade. It wasn't until after the interviews that she was too scared to sleep. I stayed up with her. We built little machines out of the silverware."
"Do you have something going on with her?" Drake asks.
Beetee's look of disgust ought to be answer enough, but Drake just keeps looking at him quizzically.
I give him a little shove. "Not everyone hits on their tributes, you know."
"Hey, up until last year, my tributes were hitting on me. Yours will, too. You'll see."
"You're not actually contractually obligated to have sex with them just because they ask you to, you know," Beetee points out.
There is a long silence, then Drake cracks a smile and puts his arm over my shoulders. "But how could I have denied Haymitch his last wish?" He makes a loud smacking noise in my direction.
"You're real damned lucky I don't have my knife," I say.
Beetee looks at both of us like we're wayward children, then goes back to watching his screens.
I push Drake's arm off me. "Honestly, you might try a little shame sometime. Maysilee didn't think you were all that funny."
"I don't need shame, when I'm clearly reformed." He puts his hand over his heart. "Reformed, I tell you. Transformed at the very core of my being, by the wisdom and kindness and generosity of that saintly kid from Twelve, who's always treading the upward path, eyes fixed skyward -"
"Shut up, Drake."
"Main reason you don't like me is that I'm you, six years down the line." He considers this. "Of course, that's pretty much the reason I don't like you, either."
"You're full of it, Albinus," Chaff says from the next table. "Haymitch has more brains in his toenail clippings than you've got in your whole skull."
"We're not talking brainwork," Drake says.
They continue a back and forth on the subject of brains and how they might or might not be used in the process of sexual conquests (I see Seeder conspicuously covering her ears), and I slide my chair over to Beetee's. "Sorry about that."
He smiles. "Actually, this is Albinus on the best behavior I've ever seen. I think he actually is trying to be decent. It just doesn't come naturally to him. He's spent a long time cultivating his party-boy act. He's starting to believe it. That's a danger you should avoid, by the way. The Capitol can control how you're presented, but you shouldn't let it control who you believe you are." He looks at Drake. "Albinus isn't actually stupid, you know," he says. "No matter what he says - and probably thinks - his spear-arm didn't win the Games for him. The Career pack went into melee early that year, and he barely got away. He never would have survived that fight if he hadn't run. After that, it was a lot of careful tracking and trapping. He's not stupid. Don't make the mistake of thinking anyone who ever got out of the arena is stupid."
"What about Brutus?"
"Even Brutus, though he does give a good impression, doesn't he?"
I look around the room again. The mentors at their stations are mostly exhausted and stressed, but even so, they all have a look I recognize pretty well. Their fingers are tapping on the tables, their eyes going from screen to screen. Some of them can't seem to stay in their chairs. Brutus keeps getting up and walking around in a circle, then coming back and glaring at the screens again. Mags is obsessively reading the supply list and checking with her district partner. Blight is tugging on his lip and tapping a stylus against some kind of checklist he's keeping.
When I was small, Daddy used to take us all to the Meadow on Sundays. He'd bring a box of scraps from around the house. Broken pieces of wood, mostly, and string, and empty food cans. Sometimes, he'd bring some of his booze, and a box of matches. It didn't matter what he brought. He'd just put the box down and say, "Today, we're going to build a catapult. Where do we start?" Or maybe it would be making up a game, or in one instance, seeing how high we could make a single column of flame go. Lacklen was only big enough to hit the trigger, usually, but the rest of us all worked together. Once, Mom got really excited about how high a rock went with our makeshift launcher, and proceeded to run all over the Meadow, looking for new things to burn in the ignition.
"See that?" Daddy said, looking at her in that way he had sometimes, like she was some kind of fabulous magical creature who just chose to wander the earth out of kindness to him. "That's why your momma's the best girl in the world. It was the same in our mine engineering class."
I frowned. "Really?"
"Yeah. See, Haymitch, stupid people let things blow up by accident. Regular people learn to follow the instructions so nothing blows up. Smart people - like your momma - are the ones who run around looking for new things to put together to make a louder boom. You can memorize a hundred facts, but being smart means figuring out which of the ones floating around in your head can be put together some unexpected way. And most of the time, smart people can't help it. They're always trying to see how everything can fit."
Looking around the Viewing Center, I see all of the victors doing that, in their own ways. Looking for a new way to put the puzzle together. Maybe the worst part of it is that, as puzzles go, it's a real challenge, and my brain has been firing up more since I was reaped than it ever did in school. And it feels good to work the puzzle, when I can set aside what's really happening. I hate that it feels good. It makes me feel dirty that it feels good. But it does.
But the puzzle is rigged against all of us - there's no real solution - and the stakes are the lives of kids from our districts.
Just after ten, the kids from District Seven appear on the main screen. I know they will a moment before they do, because I see Blight's eyes go wide. They've found the first cave anyone has come across.
Henry Cutler is excited - they were cold last night - but Louisa Meadows draws back, her brain obviously firing a little more than his.
"Henry… there'll be animals in there." She points at a big footprint on the ground.
He doesn't argue with her about this obvious point, at least, but instead of backing away, he picks up a knife. "So, maybe we can kill them and eat them. Lulu, we need someplace to get warm. Get some sleep."
"What if it's a big animal? We can't do that with a knife. We'd need something to throw or shoot or something. What if it's a bear, like the one that got old Vera at camp last year? Do you think we could kill and eat a bear with that little knife?"
He crouches by the entrance to the cave and frowns. "Maybe… maybe if we smoke it out, it'll run, and we get past it, then barricade the mouth."
I give him credit for a better idea than I'd have expected, and maybe it would work with a real animal, but mutts aren't real. I cringe as I watch them put this plan together. Claudius comes on, with a split screen, to talk about an animal called a hyena, always a fearsome hunter, now much improved by Capitol genetic technicians. They live in a pack, and there are two in the cave.
The kids manage to get a fire lit. The smoke draws out the hyena mutts. They go straight for Henry - I remember the Gamemakers complaining about the sex imbalance among the remaining tributes - but Louisa rushes in, grabbing one of the mutts off of him.
It rips her throat out.
The cannon goes off. The other mutt backs off, leaving Henry bleeding in the grass, gashed across the face. I can see his teeth through his cheek. No one will sponsor him for his pretty face anymore.
Blight's escort is away on an errand and he looks up, anguished, at the booths. I remember him in District Seven, with Gia, on a dock by the raging river.
"Beetee," I say. "Could you watch for a few minutes? Get me if you have to."
He nods.
I go over to the District Seven table. "Hey."
Blight looks up. "What?"
"I'll watch your sponsor phone. Favor to Gia."
He nods and goes off to the booths. I mostly keep an eye on Henry's screen, since the phone doesn't ring at all. He's stunned and bleeding, but doesn't seem to have any vital injuries, unless the cuts get infected. Blight has enough money for the antibiotic ointment. No more, of course, but enough. I suggest it to him when he gets back.
He rubs his head. "Yeah. Thanks. That's cheaper this year than usual. I guess they don't want the kids just lying around dying from infection. Not very good television." He puts his face in his hands. "They were cousins. Their families are waiting together."
"Well, um… if you need help… I guess Gia'd want me to help you if I can."
"She thought the world of you, you know."
"She was drugging me."
"I told her it was a bad idea to do it without telling you. But she did it because she believes - believed - you were… she believed in you. She loved you."
I don't have anything to say to that, so I go back to my table. My team is working on ways to hunt. Digger tried to teach me to hunt once, but I was hopeless, and I can't think of a good way to help them. Instead, I start going through the supplies again.
"Haven't you got that thing memorized by now?" Beetee asks fondly.
I don't want to say out loud that I'm trying to think of a way to send a message into the arena under the Gamemakers' noses. It's pretty reasonable to assume that the place is bugged, even without Fulvia's little gadget to detect it. I wonder briefly if Chaff has managed to teach him our code, but I guess it wouldn't be a good idea in mixed company even he did. Drake might or might not be on his best behavior, but I'm pretty sure he's not a rebel, and he'd mention it if I had a secret way of communicating.
"I was just thinking… if they're in that hollow and those big mutts start sniffing around, they'll be trapped. I was trying to find something to help them." It's not really a pressing concern. The Gamemakers won't want to show the same kind of murder twice in the same day. But it's a perfectly reasonable test case.
Beetee closes his eyes - I guess scanning his mental version of the list - then shakes his head. "I can't think of anything."
I know there's no special point in trying to find a weapon for them, though. Instead, I try to think of something that will make them get out of the hole in the ground and move away from the mutts. They should go south. It's away from the mutts and the river, and it's only occupied by a few of the smaller remaining tributes. There's even a small stand of large bushes that could provide them with cover. It's a good target. I look first for a compass. I think Elmer knows how to use one. There isn't one listed, and subsequent thought tells me that it's not a great idea, since it wouldn't suggest any particular direction, except north, which is where both the mutts and the Careers are at the moment.
If they'd just get up and get moving, maybe I could use simple rewards, if they're going the right direction.
I guess maybe I should have set something like that up with them, back in the training center… except that I'm betting the Gamemakers' would have ways of knowing that and stopping it. Even if I found a way to make sure they weren't listening when I set it up, I couldn't guarantee that the tributes wouldn't tip them off somehow. I guess it'll just have to be a process of trial and error. See what they understand.
I go through and look for cheap things to send.
When they do finally decide to go, they spread out and start beating the bushes for small animals. I hope none of the bigger ones are there. Before next year, I decide to contact Glen Everdeen and get him to explain to me what I need to help with this.
Whatever else they're doing, they're moving south. I send Elmer a bit of bread.
He frowns at the parachute when it comes down, since none of them are starving right now.
They split the bread, then turn west.
So much for clues.
Drake frowns at me. I shrug.
"Did you ever do this before?" Simon asks Elmer.
"Nah. You can only hunt outside the fence, and no one can go there. Everyone knows that."
Simon grins. "Yeah. Same in District Six. And there's no cover out on the plains, so they'd have to be really tricky to do it."
"It's kind of like here, then?"
"Much colder. And, if we could hunt, nobody'd be hunting people."
Elmer holds up one hand and points at a bush that's jiggling slightly. Something bursts out and runs between them. Neither so much as takes a stab at it.
They look at each other awkwardly. I guess that, for all of their insinuations of illegal hunting, neither of them has ever tried it.
Simon shrugs. "I'm, um… better with bigger things. That are threatening people my mentor told me to be allies with."
I look at Drake.
"I figured your tributes might have a clue," he says. "And Simon would never survive the Careers."
Wiress loops over from her end of the line, and points ahead. They keep going.
I remember being bored in the arena, but it has nothing on being bored in the Viewing Center. It's not mandatory viewing now, so the Gamemakers are keeping their tricks to a minimum - better for those to be released live. My group manages to catch three mice, which none of them are hungry enough to eat yet. Henry Cutler gets his medicine and manages to limp to a hollow under a tree with spreading leaves. The Careers enjoy a picnic lunch, courtesy of their sponsors.
"I think we should go for the District Eleven girl," Garret Shanzy (District Four) says casually, picking at a sandwich. "She's pretty tough. We should get her while we're still strong."
Seeder mutters something under her breath about the Careers. I don't think it's the sort of thing the public expects to hear her say.
"I want the little shit from Six who killed Lapis," the girl from One says. The label identifies her as Peridot.
Anicia Culpepper sniffs. "Lapis was an idiot. He was supposed to join up before he started hunting. That's the way it's done. And he didn't even get that Twelve kid."
"He saw an opportunity."
"To die? Opportunity well taken."
Peridot continues to fume silently.
I get a few calls during the afternoon, from people watching the kind of hopeless hunt. Enough for an apple. I send it as soon as they turn south again. Elmer stares at it a long time, then looks at Wiress. "Let's keep going this way."
"Why?"
"Just a feeling. I think it'll be pretty safe."
Around suppertime, I notice that the Careers are getting close to Seeder's tribute, Sparrow Mangan. Out of nowhere, a flock of mutt birds dives on them, forcing them east, where Garret finds a pristine water hole. They temporarily abandon the hunt to wash up, drink, and fish. The birds fly away without hurting anyone.
"They're saving her for mandatory viewing," I realize.
Chaff looks over, disturbed. "What?"
"The Gamemakers. They just led the Careers away so they can kill Sparrow when there's a bigger audience."
On Chaff's other side, Seeder's eyes go wide. "I have to get her out of there." She starts frantically making calls. I'm not sure what she thinks sponsors can do about this.
In the arena, I can tell that it's starting to get cold, because my team is beginning to shiver. Wiress takes Elmer under one of the blankets, and Ikris and Simon take the other one. They keep walking south, until they reach the edge of the moat that traces the force field. A quick glance in either direction is enough for them to figure out what it is.
"End of the line," Simon says, urging Ikris to sit down on a rock with him. Wiress and Elmer do the same. Simon grins at Elmer. "Hey, Parton, is this going to be Twelve's strategy every year?"
"Didn't even think about it. We should settle somewhere, though. Is there another hollow?"
"There won't be," Wiress says. "Here…" She holds her hand out for the second blanket.
"I don't think so!" Simon tells her.
"A tent," she says. "Thermal. The blankets hold heat."
They spend the next twenty minutes building a shelter, laughing at each other as though they're just camping in the Meadow. They may as well be. There are no other tributes within five miles of them, and, while it's nearly mandatory viewing time, the Gamemakers seem to be more interested in the tributes camping on the river.
The main evening coverage opens with a re-cap of the morning's events, and conversations on the street. Many young girls in District Seven shirts are weeping over Henry's mangled face. They don't seem to care that much that Louisa is dead. The murder of Oscar Yoder is seen as a brilliant bit of hunting by the Career pack. Anicia is becoming a fan favorite, apparently.
Since nothing much is happening, they start dragging us in for interviews, and I realize what Glass has been setting up in the media lounge all day. Claudius tries to trap me on the subject of my unprecedented attack on my escort. I tell him I was upset, and new, and strongly suggest that I might have been drunk. He concludes that this is typical district barbarism and lets me go. I think I managed to handle the narrative reasonably well. He didn't trap me into saying anything that would get me into trouble.
When I get back to the Viewing Center, I find Seeder in the booths - while I was in the car, the Career pack was allowed to catch up with Sparrow.
"I hate this," I say when I sit down.
"Really?" Drake asks. "I never would have guessed."
Coverage switches over to our group. Wiress and Elmer are in the little tent they've made. They're talking, but Claudius talks over them, about how they've spent the day. I'm guessing they're having the kind of conversation that would make the Astronomy Club want to spend the day with them, but probably no one else. Ikris and Simon are along the banks of the moat, hunting the brush for whatever they can eat.
"So what do you eat in District Three?" Simon asks.
"Stuff. Beans, a lot. A lot of people grow spices to make things taste better. What about District Six?"
"Fry bread. More beans. We have a lot of spices, too." Simon pushes apart the tall grass and heads closer to the moat.
"Careful. I bet that's poison," Ikris says. "I bet it's the poison from last year. Sigh Tomby's face about melted."
I shudder. I was holding onto Sigh Tomby when he died. It's not something I want to see again.
"I just want to see if something's hiding on the bank."
"So… how do people make money in Six?
"What?"
"Not everyone can be on the trains, right? So… what else do people do?"
"Oh, we can get a little… tricky."
Beside me, Drake stands up. "Oh, no…"
"What?" I ask.
On screen, Simon says, "You know, my mentor said to make an alliance with Twelve. He didn't mention Three."
"Everyone always forgets us. We're glad to have you."
"Yeah?"
"Sure."
Simon bends over, spotting something at the edge of the moat. "Hey, look here. I think it's some kind of birds' nest. There are eggs."
"Eggs?"
"Yeah. Come take a look."
Ikris comes through the grass and looks down at the spot where Simon is pointing. "I don't see it," he says. "What am I looking for? Is it camouflaged?"
"No," Simon says. "Just tricky."
"What?" Ikris looks up.
Simon brings his knife down in a brutal arc, slashing across Ikris's neck before he even knows what happened. He pushes the body into the water even as the cannon sounds, then cuts himself deeply across the chest, and starts screaming.