PART THREE: THE ENEMY
CHATPER TWENTY-FIVE
For breakfast, we eat the rest of the rolls. Katniss is close to me, not wanting to leave my side, but not wanting to look at me in the eye. I wonder, for a moment, if this really means that the kiss meant something to her.
That morning, she takes my hand and tugs me toward the water. "Come on. I'll teach you how to swim."
I shrug my shoulders and follow her into the water, where she teaches me some sort of basic stroke movements. I go up and down in the water, wondering what this whole thing is really about. At some point, she stops me, showing me how the salt water rubs off the rest of her remaining scabs and encourages me to do the same. I see fresh, pale skin underneath. As we're scrubbing ourselves, Katniss begins to open up about what she's really been wanting to talk about.
"Look, the pool is down to eight. I think it's time we too off," she says, under her breath.
I nod. Her eyes are fervent, worried. I consider the odds of the situation. We're an ally five, and there's three against us. What if we kill those three and we're all still... together? Would we just start killing each other?
But then again, I think to myself, Brutus and Enobaria are still together. They're likely still allied. And they'll be deadly. There's little way either Katniss or I could take them ourselves. I have to do what's best for Katniss, what is most likely to keep her alive. Even if she doesn't like it.
"Tell you what," I offer. "Let's stick around until Brutus and Enobaria are dead. I think Beetee's trying to put together some kind of trap for them now. Then, I promise, we'll go."
Katniss doesn't look entirely happy, but goes along with it. It's the best of a bad situation, we both agree.
"All right," Katniss says. "We'll stay until the Careers are dead. But that's the end of it." And then, closing off the discussion between us, she turns to the beach and shouts: "Hey, Finnick, come on in! We've figured out how to make you pretty again!"
Finnick bounds over, joining us in peeling off the scabs in the salty water, helping us out with our backs and us with his. We apply more medicine, the fresh skin still pink and delicate.
Beetee calls us over, and it turns out that while we've been fixing ourselves, he's come up with a plan. "I think we'll all agree that our next job is to kill Brutus and Enobaria," he says, his voice so toneless. It scares me, for a second. "I doubt they'll attack us openly again, now that they're so outnumbered. We could track them down, I suppose, but it's dangerous, exhausting work."
"Do you think they've figured out about the clock?" Katniss asks.
"If they haven't, they'll figure it out soon enough. Perhaps not as specifically as we have. But they know at least some of the zones are wired for attacks and that they're reoccurring in a circular fashion. Also, the fact that our last fight was cut off by Gamemaker intervention will not have gone unnnoticed by them. We know it was an attempt to disorient us, but they must be asking themselves why it was done, and this, too, my lead them to the realisation that the arena's a clock," Beetee explains, barely stopping for breath. "So I think our best bet will be setting our own trap."
"Wait, let me get Johanna up," Finnick says, nodding in the direction of a sleeping Johanna. "She'll be rabid if she thinks she missed something this important."
"Or not," Katniss mutters to herself. I try to raise an eyebrow at her, but she doesn't look over at me.
When Johanna joins us, rubbing her eyes, Beetee shoos us all back a bit away from him so he has room to work in the sand. He draws a circle, dividing it into twelve wedges. I joke to myself that it's got nothing on my map.
"If you were Brutus and Enobaria, knowing what you do now about the jungle, where would you feel the safest?" Beetee asks.
"Where we are now. On the beach," I say. "It's the safest place."
"So why aren't they on the beach?"
"Because we're here," Johanna says, impatient.
Beetee grins. "Exactly. We're here, claiming the beach. Now where would you go?"
Everyone is quiet, stuck in thought.
"I'd hide just at the edge of the jungle. So I could escape if an attack came. And so I could spy on us." Katniss says.
"Also to eat," Finnick adds. "The jungle's full of strange creatures and plants. But by watching us, I'd know the seafood's safe."
"Yes, good. You do see. Now here's what I propose: a twelve o'clock strike. What happens exactly at noon and midnight?" Beetee asks. Something about his tone reminds me of my schoolteachers, back in District Twelve.
"The lightning bolt hits the tree," I say."
"Yes. So what I'm suggesting is that after the bolt hits at noon, but before it hits at midnight, we run my wire from that tree all the way down into the saltwater, which is, of course, highly conductive. When the bolt strikes, the electricity will travel down the wire and into not only the water but also the surrounding beach, which will still be damp from the ten o'clock wave. Anyone in contact with those surfaces at that moment will be electrocuted," Beetee explains.
There's a long pause while we all try to take in what Beetee says. Something about it seems too perfect, too put together. It hinges on so many what ifs and possibilities that I'm sure it wouldn't work.
"Will that wire really be able to conduct that much power, Beetee?" I ask. "It looks so fragile, like it would just burn up."
"Oh, it will. But not until the current has passed through it. It will act something like a fuse, in fact. Except the electricity will travel along it," Beetee answers.
"How do you know?" Johanna adds in, clearly not convinced, just like me.
"Because I invented it," Beetee says, his face aglow in the dawning sun. "It's not actually wire in the usual sense. Nor is the lightning natural lightning nor the tree a real tree. You know trees better than any of us, Johanna. It would be destroyed by now, wouldn't it?"
"Yes," she replies.
"Don't worry about the wire - it will do just what I say," Beetee assures us.
Finnick butts in. "And where we will be when this happens?"
"Far enough up in the jungle to be safe," Beetee replies.
"The Careers will be safe, too, the, unless they're in the vicinity of the water," Katniss points out. It's the biggest flaw in his plan, for sure.
But all Beetee says is, "That's right."
"But all the seafood will be cooked," I also point out.
"Probably more than cooked," Beetee says, slight humour to his voice. "We will most likely be eliminating that as a food source for good. But you found other edible things in the jungle, right, Katniss?"
"Yes. Nuts and rats," she says. "And we have sponsors."
"Well, then. I don't see that as a problem," Beetee says. "But as we are allies and this will require all our efforts, the decision of whether or not to attempt it is up to you four."
Everyone looks at each other until Katniss breaks the silence. "Why not?" she says. "If it fails, there's no harm done. If it works, there's a decent chance we'll kill them. And even if we don't and just kill the seafood, Brutus and Enobaria lose it as a food source, too."
"I say we try it," I say. "Katniss is right."
Finnick looks over at Johanna, raising his eyebrows. They're as much as a duo at this point as Katniss and I are. "All right," she says, finally. "It's better than hunting them down in the jungle, anyway. And I doubt they'll figure out our plan, since we can barely understand it ourselves."
I smile a little. She's right.
Beetee wants to inspect the lightning tree before we go ahead and rig it, so we leave the beach altogether. Judging by the sun, Katniss estimates it's around nine in the morning, so we have plenty of time to get the plan into action.
We break camp, packing anything valuable and set off toward the wedge with the tree. Finnick and I take it in turns to carry Beetee, who is still to weak to hike up the slope on his own. Johanna leads us up the straight shot to the tree and Katniss protects the rear.
The air is dense and muggy, full of humidity. It makes carrying Beetee a difficult task. I sweat through the absorbent suit, and I'm sure that I smell awful.
When we're nearer the tree, I feel incredibly grateful. Finnick suggests that Katniss takes the lead. "Katniss can hear the force field," he explains to Beetee and Johanna.
"Hear it?" Beetee asks.
"Only with the ear the Capitol reconstructed," she says.
"Then by all means, let Katniss go first," Beetee agrees, wiping the sweaty steam off his round glasses. "Force fields are nothing to play around with."
A moment passes between them. I try to give a questioning look to Katniss, but she ignores my stare, walking past me to the front of our little group.
The lightning tree is unmistakable. It towers above the others, the trunk so thick that we could all put our arms around it and still not touch each other. Katniss find a bunch of nuts, making us all wait while she slowly moves up the slope, throwing the ahead of her. The force field sizzles a nut, and we realise that it's barely fifteen yards away from us.
"Just stay below the lightning tree," she instructs us.
We divide up duties between us. Finnick guards Beetee while he does his examinations of the tree. Johanna taps water. Katniss hunts. I gather nuts.
Katniss returns with three tree rats and we settle down next to each other, knees touching and my skin burning with it, as we sort out the food. Katniss sears cubes of rat and I roast the nuts.
We complete he tasks in silence, watching Beetee doing who knows what. He takes measurements, snaps off pieces of bark and throws it at the field. When it bounces back and lands on the ground, glowing, he says: "Well, that explains a lot."
Katniss looks over at me, biting her lip to keep from laughing. It explains absolutely nothing to anyone but Beetee. The look of pure laughter desperate to burst from her mouth is intoxicating, and I smile with her, barely able to contain my own giggles. Heat rises in my chest, desperate for a lifetime of moments like this with her.
A few minutes pass, and we begin to hear a sound of clicking rising from the sector adjacent to us. That means, by our estimations, it's eleven o'clock. The deadly cricket hour, we all guess. It's incredibly loud.
"It's not mechanical," Beetee says.
"I'd guess insects," Katniss says. "Maybe beetles."
"Something with pincers," adds Finnick.
"We should get out of here, anyway," Johanna says. "There's less than an hour before the lightning starts."
We walk off into the next section to the identical tree. We have a picnic of sorts, squatting on the ground and eating our jungle food. At Beetee's request, Katniss climbs up into the canopy when the clicking begins to fade away. When she gets back, she tells Beetee about the lightning and the crackles of electricity. He seems satisfied with her report.
We take a circuitous route back to the ten o'clock beach, finding the sand smooth and damp, swept clean by the recent wave. Beetee tells us he has to work with the wire and leaves us to do whatever we want.
At first, we're slightly unsure what to do with our sudden free time, so we take naps in the shaded parts of the afternoon edge of the jungle. But by the late afternoon, everyone is awake and restless, full of nerves about Beetee's plan. Finnick decides it's one of our last chances for seafood, so we all spear fish and gather shellfish, even diving for oysters.
Johanna keeps watch while we clean our gatherings, laying out the seafood. I pry open one of the oysters to find a small, glimmering pearl. "Hey, look at this!" I say, holding it up, watching it sparkle in the sunlight. "You know, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls."
"No, it doesn't," Finnick says, dismissive, at the same time as Katniss starts to crack up. We both collapse into a fit of giggles, remembering how Effie presented us in that same way to the Capitol. As coal pressured into pearls, beauty that arose out of pain.
Watching Katniss laughs warms my chest. The way her forehead and eyes crinkle, her white teeth biting her lip.
I wash the pearl off into the water and hold out my palm. "For you."
"Thanks," Katniss says, taking it gently from my hand. She holds it for a second, admiring it's beauty, before closing her fist around it protectively.
We look into each others eyes for a moment, her cool grey grasping onto my blue, and I know in that second. "The lock didn't work, did it?" I say, not caring that everyone is around me and can hear us. "Katniss?"
"It worked," she says.
"But not the way I wanted it to," I say. I break the stare we're holding, unable to keep contact with the girl who's eyes are betraying me.
In some ways, I understand that she doesn't want me to die. I know she cares for me, perhaps not in the same way I care for her, but she does. In her own way. And maybe, she does love me a little bit. Some things we've had together remind me of this. Our kiss on the beach. That felt real.
And even though she doesn't want this, even though she's stubborn and wants to keep me alive, I won't let her. There is no way.
In silence, perhaps awkwardness I sense, we gather around to eat the fish we've gathered. At that moment, a parachute appears bearing some extras for our meal. There's a small pot of red, spicy sauce that I've never tasted before; and yet another round of rolls from District Three.
"Twenty-four again," he says, counting them.
We each take five, leaving seven, which will never divide equally. We eat everything that we can, stuffing our increasingly small stomachs with the delights.
There's little to do after but wait. Katniss and I sit on the edge of the water, hand in hand, wordless. I stroke the back of her palm with my thumb, my rough skin against her softness.
I think of the pearl, tucked away safely in her belt somewhere. I think of how she'll look at it, when I'm gone, and think of me.