Litta struggles to keep a grip on me as I fight to try to go outside and kill deep voice and Lulu right here and now. How could they do that? They didn't even give Ellis a fair warning—they just murdered him! I want to scream, but Litta's hand is covering my mouth tightly so I can't utter more than a high-pitched whine. I don't even know why I feel so strongly about this—Ellis and I were never friends, the most he ever said to me was, "Good luck," before my training session—and yet, I'm hungering for the blood of his killers. I guess he was the last thing connected to District 12 that remained here in the arena for me.
After about thirty minutes, the large alliance moves away, and when she's sure they're gone, Litta releases me. She allows me to sit hunched over in the corner of the cave for as long as I like without disturbing me. I stay curled up there for the rest of the day. I don't eat dinner, although Litta saves half of the last frog for me, and I definitely don't watch the recap of deaths tonight.
Eventually, I fall asleep to the soothing sound of the waterfall. And I have my nightmare again. It starts out the same way, with me walking down the icy street to school, and the peacekeeper's van drives past me and turns a corner. I hear the crash, and run towards it, as usual. But when I fight my way through the crowd, I don't see my parents lying on the street. Next to the overturned van with the Capitol emblem on it, are the dead bodies of Ellis and the girl from District 3—the one who I personally killed. I'd gotten used to seeing by parents lying bloody and dismembered in the road, but this variation shocked me and it just makes the dream scarier.
Surprisingly, I feel much better in the morning, and I eat the last of the frog. "We're going to have to get more food," I say to Litta.
"Yeah," she agrees, "but how?"
"I can set some snares, but that won't get us anything until at least a couple hours have passed, but I bet we could use this waterfall to catch some fish." I then explain to her how to construct a simple trap for catching fish in a waterfall. Basically, a good amount of sticks have to be tied together into a box form with some spaces in between them. The spaces have to be large enough to let the small fish through, but keep the ones large enough to eat. When it's held under the waterfall, the water goes straight through the holes, and any fish that are falling down the waterfall land in the box.
"Good idea," says Litta. "We have something very similar in District 4; I bet I could make one of those." We head out of the cave, making sure to keep our hoods tightly clenched around our faces so the water can't get to our hair and freeze there. I start looking for relatively straight sticks in the wooded area about twenty meters from the waterfall. I've gathered a few when the first icicle falls.
Shook! I hear a strange sound and look around. Then my eyes widen as they fall on the source of the noise: a three-foot-tall icicle half buried in the snow less than a meter away from me. Its edges are unnaturally sharp. I step away from it—maybe the tree it fell from is harboring more icicles of its size. Shook! Another icicle falls—this time clipping off a piece of my parka with it. I start to run. Shook! Shook! Shook! More and more icicles—just as razor-sharp as the first—are falling as I try to dodge their assault.
"Litta!" I scream. "Litta, help!" Shook! Shook! One icicle grazes my hand as it plummets, leaving a bleeding gash.
"I'm coming Freia!" I hear Litta yell from behind me. But then she gives a high-pitched scream as an icicle almost hits her. Why did I have to call her over here? She could get killed as easily as me. Shook! Shook! Shook! Shook! We keep running through the forest trying to dodge the plunging icicles. We're in an unrecognizable area when I finally don't hear the noises of falling ice anymore.
It takes minutes before I have enough breath to talk. "I've never seen so many icicles before!"
"That's because they weren't real," says Litta matter-of-factly.
"What?" I'm confused—they seemed like real ice to me.
"They were created by the Capitol and strategically placed to give the Games some excitement," she explains. "You must have been in an area of the woods armed with icicles and triggered an attack somehow."
"Wow," I say, "so I guess nothing in this arena is real, then."
"Right," agrees Litta. "It's completely Capitol-made. The Gamemakers just sit in a control room and make things happen in the arena. And there're also millions of cameras following our every move. They're hidden in certain places in the arena. Didn't your escort tell you that?"
"No…." I don't remember Decima telling me anything of the sort. I mean, I knew the Hunger Games were going to be televised, but the idea of cameras just never entered my mind.
Litta continues. "Even the deaths are manufactured by the Capitol. Do you really think any one of us tributes wants to kill one another? We're just forced into this Game by the Capitol. The Capitol is killing us—we're not murderers."
We're not murderers. Of course—I can't believe I have already forgotten everything that Grandpa had told me. His words run through my mind again, "This is the Capitol we're dealing with. You don't have any idea what they're up to—none of us do. Trust me, the only way to survive is not to trust any of them." And now I know that I should have nothing against deep voice and Lulu for killing Ellis, and I should have nothing against myself, because I am not a murderer. The Capitol is my real enemy, but I know from experience that they are hard to fight against.
Wow, my chapters are definitely getting longer. Review please!