INTERVIEW WITH THE MOCKINGJAY – Chapter 36
Archer flips on his TV player, and we see before us the opening moments of the 74th Hunger Games, a wide shot of the Tributes rising on their pedestals out of the ground, in a semi-circle, in front of the metal-and-fiberglass Cornucopia. Atop it is a digital clock, which starts counting down the seconds before the Tributes can jump off of their pedestals.
"It didn't look like that to me," Katniss says. "I had a very different view."
"This is what they saw on TV," Archer says.
We watch 24 teenagers stand on their pedestals, ready to jump off, with varying degrees of emotion. Some are excited and ready to go. Others are utterly baffled. Some are terrified. Katniss looks nervous. The terrain is an open field before a forest, with a lake on the right.
The camera shot takes a long look at the Cornucopia. I study the supplies on display. I'm not an expert on The Hunger Games like Archer, but I can tell at a glance that the supplies scattered about are deployed in reverse order of importance. Closest to the Tributes are trivial supplies, like a three-foot square sheet of plastic to use as a rain covering and a tent pack. Behind that array are food ration packs, water containers, clothing, medical kits, and firelighters.
Meredith and I look at each other with expressions of recognition. Nearly every type of that gear is familiar to us – most of our supplies either came from District 13 or from captured Peacekeeper dumps and lockers. Either way, we used the same equipment as the Peacekeepers and the Tributes.
Behind that lie, scattered around, are deadly weapons for hand-to-hand or slightly ranged combat, all of it of the direct and gruesome variety – swords, maces, lances, pikes, knives, axes, and, at the very back, a magnificent, shining iron bow, with a bag of gleaming arrows next to it. It's the only such one in the array. No firearms, I see.
"Anything unusual in this layout?" I ask Archer.
"No," he says, shaking his head. "The only difference is that massive bow-and-arrow set at the back. They rarely offered an archery kit that impressive."
"They knew Katniss was coming," Meredith says. "I only realized when I was doing the logistics class in our training that these Cornucopia arrays were not configured for combat readiness. The weapons aren't deployed up front, the minor supplies are."
"That's to encourage Tributes to charge deep into the Cornucopia area and really fight hard to claim the weapons," I say. "I bet it adds to the show."
"Causes more action," Archer nods. "and it cuts down on competition early. They can get rid of the obvious losers."
"The fewer the storylines the audience has to follow, the easier it gets," I say.
Katniss looks at me, puzzled. Meredith and I, familiar with the concepts of good writing, share a glance with each other.
"There are only so many subplots and characters an audience can take," I explain. I don't want to get into a condescending lecture to her about all the complex lineages, connections, and characters in Shakespeare's plays about the Plantagenets.
"But people have bets down on nearly everybody," Peeta says. "The audience will follow who they bet on."
"It doesn't matter," I say. "You have 24 separate stories. It's far too many. They want to get rid of the boring and pointless ones at the start, so people follow the most compelling dramas."
I look over the terrain for a moment…behind Katniss are piney woods, to the right a lake. "I guess you wanted to grab that bow and arrow kit," I say.
"I just thought, 'that's mine. It's meant for me,'" she responds. "I knew I could get there first, ahead of the others, and they might be too busy beating each other up to stop me, but I wasn't sure if I could get in and out. So I was planning my strategy for that whole minute.
"While I was doing that, I looked over at Peeta and I thought he was shaking his head," she finishes.
"And I was shaking my head," Peeta picks up. "I knew that if Katniss followed her instinct and went straight for that bow and arrow set, she'd get killed before she reached it. I knew that nobody would be able to use that like she could, so she would likely be able to pick it up off a dead Tribute later."
"And that threw me off," Katniss picks up, almost seamlessly. "I missed my chance, because when the gong rang, I hadn't decided on anything. So I just lunged forward and grabbed the sheet of plastic and a scoop of bread. I was mad at Peeta for distracting me so I almost couldn't grab a backpack that was near me."
"It was the bread my family baked," Peeta says. "I recognized it."
"And meanwhile, all hell is breaking loose around you," I say.
"I don't even remember hearing it," Katniss says. "I just remember the violence."
"I guess we had better watch it," I say, nodding to Archer, who hits the "play" button.
Once again, the Tributes are running around, trying to grab supplies or kill each other or both. We focus on Katniss, watching her reach that pack at the same time as a boy from District 9. He coughs and splatters Katniss's face with blood, and crumples to the ground, having been hit in the back by a knife thrown by District 2's female Tribute, Clove.
"She hit that guy from 10 yards away," Archer says. "It was like nailing a runner from deep right field at the plate."
Once again, the baseball reference escapes me. "Try again," I say.
"It was like a javelin throw," Archer says, using a metaphor that anyone who has watched The Hunger Games understands. "Anyway, her stock went up. People next to me were making new bets. Or making payoffs on losing if they betted on that District 9 kid."
"I was terrified of that girl. She was like the predator who could kill me in seconds," Katniss says. "And she hurled another knife at me…"
"Which landed in your backpack, which probably saved your life," Meredith says.
Meanwhile, the screen shows continued bloodshed at the Cornucopia. The curly-haired boy who had no chance dies in a matter of seconds. The large Career Tributes have sliced up most of the weaker and less motivated Tributes, leaving blood-covered corpses in the field. On the video, we can see flies already hovering over them. It's a familiar and unpleasant sight to me.
Meredith too. She looks down at the ground, waiting for the battle images to end. Archer stares at the dying Tributes. "Y'know, when I used to watch this stuff, I thought it was exciting and cool…" His voice fades out. He seems to have got the idea. I let the silence hang for a moment, then go back to the video.
None of us have to mention it, but that initial bloodbath killed off 11 Tributes, leaving 13 standing.
Katniss is gone, as the cameras are focusing on the gore. The surviving Tributes are either fleeing with equipment or dividing up the spoils from the Cornucopia. Cato and Clove have taken command of some of the Tributes still on the scene and are turning the area into a base camp with authority and some expertise. One of the Tributes is digging up the mines to re-plant them around the supplies.
"Most of the suspects are there," I say. "Cato, Glimmer, Clove. Foxface, Thresh, and Rue all took off. Where's Peeta?"
"I'm right there," he says, pointing at himself, on the screen, on the ground, pleading with Cato.
"What was going on there?" I ask him.
"Well, I think it's no surprise by now that you know I was running with that alliance for a while," he says. "I mean, everybody saw it on TV."
"It was a huge shock to me," Katniss says.
"But not to the TV audience," Archer says. "We all saw it was going on, and we wondered what it was about…one guy said he was trying to sell you out so that he could go home."
"Let me guess," I say. "It messed up the odds again."
Archer nods. "Sure did."
"So what were you saying to Cato?" I ask Peeta.
"Well, he beat me pretty severely, and just as he was about to kill me, I told him that if he wanted to nail Katniss early, he should include me in his party. I told him that I knew her very well, and that I could lead them straight to her. And he and Clove agreed that they would let me stay in their party until that was done. After that, I was on my own," Peeta says.
I absorb that for a long moment.
"And why would you do that," I ask.
"Because when people are going out to hunt, and you're the animal they are hunting, the best way to hide is to disguise yourself and be one of the hunters. Being with Cato and Clove was the safest place I could be until Katniss was the winner was with them."
I sit back in my chair, impressed with Peeta's skill. For a baker who never actually hunted, he knows a lot about the subject. "And you fooled them."
"I was surprised at how easy it was," he says.
I try to hold down a smile, musing on being 10 years older than him provides some insight. If you're the fox, the best place to avoid detection is to run with the hounds, Gus Lewis would sometimes say.
"We've seen this before," I say.
"And done this before," Meredith adds, referring to her battles with Cassius Gray. "I fooled Gray, and he fooled me."
"They were teenagers," I say. "They may have been trained to kill people, but they couldn't read people. They could be easily fooled."
Peeta nods.
"I guess Peeta fooled me, too," Katniss says. "I thought all along he was after me." She sighs. "That went right on going through the whole thing."
"The whole 74th Hunger Games?" I ask.
"And the 75th, and after that," she says, nodding.
"We'll get to that," I say. "So while all that was going on, what did you do?"
"Well, I just ran off into the woods. It was different from District 12, with different trees, a lot of valleys. I just kept going."
That evening, Katniss says, the gunners started firing the salvoes for the 11 dead Tributes. "I was overwhelmed at the thought that Peeta might be dead," she says. I thought would be better if he was dead. "He had no confidence he would win. And I didn't want to have the task of killing him."
"And I was with the people I knew who wanted to kill me," Peeta responds. "It was a strange situation. But I felt completely secure for the moment – I knew they would not kill me until they had killed Katniss, but I was going to make sure they didn't."
"Did you know how you were going to do that?" I ask Peeta.
"Truthfully, I wasn't quite sure yet. But I had some ideas," he says. "I figured I'd find ways to whittle down their numbers somehow. Eventually I'd have to sacrifice myself."
I think about that for a while. Peeta was ready to die for his beloved. And kill for her. I want to get there, but I have to actually get there. "So what were you doing?" I ask Katniss.
"After I got away from the Cornucopia, I went through my pack," she says.
"You inventoried the contents," I say. "And they were?"
"A back sleeping bag that reflected body heat, a pack of crackers, a pack of dried beef strips, a bottle of iodine, a box of wooden matches, a small coil of wire, a pair of sunglasses, and a half-gallon plastic bottle with a cap for carrying water, and it was bone-dry. How hard would it have been for them to fill up the bottle?" Katniss responds.
"Well, the stuff sounds like the usual kit even in our field packs," I say. "But we usually went in with full canteens. They obviously did that to make it tougher on you. I mean, if you don't have water, you have to go find some, and that means you'll run into your fellow Tributes and have a nice fatal fight."
"In my case, I figured that the only source of water was that lake, so I'd have to go back there, which would take a day, and the Career Tributes would be guarding it. So I had to find somewhere else."
Katniss tells me that she headed down into a valley, and cut away some soft inner bark from a pine tree to eat.
"After a week of the finest food in the world, that was a little hard to take down," she says. "But I was used to it."
"Meanwhile your buddies had set up their base camp at the Cornucopia and formed a party to hunt for you," I say. I want to move on, and not get bogged down in detail. "So you just kept going, to put distance between you and them."
"Only for a few more minutes. Then I set up snares for food, picked out a tree, climbed it, and set up my sleeping bag," Katniss says.
"That was fully covered on TV," Archer says. He shows a shot of Katniss looping her belt around a branch and her sleeping bag and re-fastening it at her waist.
"Good grade of bag," Meredith says. "That must have kept you warm."
"We had sleeping bags just like that," I say. "I think it was issued to Peacekeepers when they had to go out in the wilderness to hunt down people who had escaped their Districts. We had a pile of them in the Nut and they issued them to everybody in the rebel army."
Katniss shrugs. "It was just a good sleeping bag," she says. "So then they played the Panem anthem and showed the faces of the 11 dead Tributes."
"And so far," I say, looking at my notes and briefing material, "We have the girl from District 3, the boy from District 4, the boy from District 5, both Tributes from 6 and 7, the boy from 8, both from 9, and the girl from 10, all dead. That left…what?"
"Five Careers, Foxface, Thresh, Rue, Peeta, and me," Katniss says briskly. "That's a listing I'll never forget. Where were they?"
"Well, the pack was hunting for you, pretty much. Thresh was off by himself, separated from Rue," I say, nodding to Archer, who nods back in confirmation.
"Why were Rue and Thresh separated?" Katniss asks.
"Thresh didn't want to ally with anybody – and he didn't want to be in a situation where he had to kill the other Tribute from District 11," Meredith says.
"So now we're down to 10," I say.
"And I hadn't slept in days, so I tried to sleep," Katniss says. "The next thing I heard was the sound of branches snapping. It was someone starting a fire. I saw hands warming over flames. It was one of the other Tributes, trying to keep warm."
"The girl from District 8," Archer says. "She had virtually no supplies, and she must have been fucking cold. Pretty dumb, what she did."
I know this, but I let Archer continue.
"In the Arena, you're basically waving a flag that says 'come get me' if you start a fire," he says. You fall asleep by the fire, and the next thing you know there are five Tributes standing over you, killing you. Or you don't feel a thing, because they kill you in your sleep."
"I regarded her as being stupid, a hazard, and dangerous," Katniss says. "She would bring that pack on me, and they'd kill both of us."
"Which is what happened," I say.
"Purely by chance," Peeta says. "The original plan was to find Katniss. That girl just happened to be lying there when we arrived just before dawn. We just ran up to her, and she tried to run away. They were on her before she could move."
"They?" I ask, just to be sure.
"They," Peeta says, nodding. "I didn't touch her. It was five of us now, the two from District 1, the pair from District 2, and the girl from District 4. The District 2 kid, Cato, he was the leader. He just beat her bloody. Somebody yelled, '12 down and 11 to go!' They were keeping count."
I wonder what they were going to say and do when the numbers dropped to five or six, I think. Nor am I sure their numbers are right, but I'll check that later. "Then what?" I say.
"Well, I stayed up in the tree," Katniss says. "I didn't even dare to breathe. I was afraid they'd spot me. They were standing below me, talking about why the cannon hadn't gone off yet to mark her death. They needed to be sure."
"And that's when I spoke up," Peeta chimes in. "I said, 'We're wasting time! I'll go finish her and let's move on!' See, I was pretty sure that Katniss was nearby, if not actually up that particular tree."
"Why was that?" I ask Peeta. "It doesn't seem obvious."
"I saw one of Katniss's snares as we were walking along. I recognized it because it's a standard snare in use in the woods around District 12. I moved our group around it, without saying anything, but knew that she had to be nearby," Peeta says.
"You were trying to steer them off-track," I say.
Peeta nods. "So that meant we had to get away from that area," he says.
Archer grins. "It's like when we'd have to move a tour group at an Arena before the war," he says. "They'd linger too long at some site and fall behind schedule."
"I'm impressed," I say. "But what about the dying Tribute, Did you…" My voice trails off.
"I didn't kill her," he says. "I put my hand on her neck and she was dead already. I walked back to the group and told them she was dead, and we camped out."
"How'd you react to all this?" I ask Katniss.
"Well, I could understand him charging the Cornucopia, but teaming up with those vicious, arrogant, well-fed Capitol lapdogs, that was just too much. I guess that noble scene on the rooftop meant nothing. It was just a game, and I was going to pay him back by killing him myself," Katniss says.
"Little did you know," I say.
"I had no idea," she says, with a shrug.
"What were those guys doing while Peeta went off to check on the dead Tribute?" Meredith asks.
"They were discussing whether they should kill him now or later. They decided to let him tag along – he was their best chance of finding me. They were all annoyed at how I got that high score and our lover routine. One of them said Peeta was 'handy with a knife.'" Katniss rolls her eyes. "I figured he'd killed somebody."
"I just cut off some pine nuts efficiently," Peeta says, shrugging. "When I got back, I told the pack that Tribute was dead, and suggested we move out, as it was nearly dawn. So we did. They followed me because they really thought I would lead them right to Katniss."
"You sort of did," Archer says.
"Well, again, you want to hide from the bad guys, best place to do so is to be among them," Peeta says. "So I had Katniss hide right over us."
"Slick," I say. "And the whole country was watching."
"It was," Archer says.
"It's not like anybody had any choice in the matter," Meredith responds tartly. "My grandfather told me that many, many years ago, there were multiple TV networks in this country. People could watch hundreds of networks, with all kinds of different programming. Panem made it just one channel. So what choice did we have?"
"It's hard to imagine all of Panem up at dawn to watch this action, but that was the case," I say. "I was up myself, with everybody on my newspaper next to me."
Katniss shakes her head. "Glad to know I was so much entertainment," she says.
I want to get her out of her funk. She won this war, almost singlehandedly. "So what did you do?"
"I got tired of playing their game, and decided to make them play mine. I saw one of their cameras, gave one of them a knowing smile, and then went off to check my snares."
"I remember that," Archer says. "Everybody was asking what that was all about. The bookies went nuts. The betting was insane on that Hunger Games."
"I bet it got more interesting when the bettors found out I had snared rabbits and could cook them that morning," Katniss says.
"It did," Archer answers. "Like I said, the betting was crazy all through the games."
"You must have been in pretty poor shape, though," I say.
"Dehydrating fast," Katniss says. "I saw some blueberries that looked good, but inside, they were blood red. So I just kept on going, even though I felt like I was going to pass out. I had to find water."
"You spent the whole day doing that," I say, "looking at my notes.
"And didn't find any water," Katniss says. "I was more concerned about finding water than Peeta and the Careers."
"You guys were all together?" I ask Peeta.
"We were all together," he says. "I was trying to keep them in the opposite direction from Katniss, and anybody else, for that matter. We didn't meet anybody."
"I hid in a tree that night," Katniss says, "and was completely exhausted when I woke up. My head was throbbing. Simple movements sent stabs of pain through my joints. I fell from the tree, and tried to figure out what to do."
"Which was?" I ask.
"I could return to the lake, but I'd never make it. I could hope for rain, but there was not a cloud in the sky, or keep looking. Then it hit me that I could get Haymitch to have sponsors deliver water to me," Katniss says.
"You needed a parachute," Archer says.
"Did anybody else get parachutes?" I ask Archer.
He shakes his head. "No, nobody really needed anything. As far as I know, Haymitch was working rich people to pony up money to purchase supplies for Katniss, building up her resilience."
"Nothing happened, though," Katniss says. "I felt like Haymitch was trying to make me suffer. Or he was supporting Peeta. Or he just wanted me to die. Or he was just too drunk to care.
"Then it occurred to me that he wasn't sending it because I'd nearly found it. But I was wrong…I just kept going all day long, feeling like I was alone."
"Only you weren't," Meredith says. "When the cameras weren't on the Career pack, they were on you, and everybody was marveling at how some of the toughest Tributes in the history of The Hunger Games couldn't find you."
"I found out that even Prim was watching her," Peeta says. "At lunch in her school."
"I was nearly done by afternoon…my legs were shaking and my heart was too quick. I couldn't remember what I was doing. I just fell down to the ground and thought this was a good place to die, among lilies.
"Then I started making swirling patterns in mud, and realized that if there was mud and lilies, there had to be water, and I started dragging myself, through a tangle of plants into a pond."
"I saw that on TV," I say. "You did the right thing – you filled your flask with water, put in the iodine to purify it, and waited half an hour before drinking it. I think that's all you did for the rest of the afternoon – make water, drink it, make water, drink it, and eat a rabbit."
"Everybody was watching you," Archer says. "It was more interesting than those other guys. And there were no deaths. It ratcheted up the tension."
"And then you got into your sleeping bag that evening and hit the sack in a tree," I continue. "The only problem was, you were sleeping a little too close to the edge of the Arena, and the Gamemakers wanted you to head back to the center."
"Now that you were filled up with food, they wanted some action," Archer says.
Katniss gives him an enquiring look, and Archer says, "They had giant flame throwers that could launch a wall of fire where they wanted."
"I shoved everything in the bag, put it over my shoulder, and fled. There were rabbits and deer running from the fire, even a pack of dogs, so I just ran." She pauses. "I guess things were too quiet that day."
"They wanted to heat things up," Archer says, trying to make the lame pun. "But, yeah, it was getting dull. Also, I think you were moving near the edge of the Arena, and they don't like things getting to the edges – fewer cameras and camera angles."
That makes sense, I think.
"The air was full of smoke, and my jacket caught fire. I had to rip it off my body, stamp out the flames, and put it into my sleeping bag," Katniss says. "I was just able to take cover under a stone outcropping, and I vomited up my super and water from the smoke in my lungs."
"I guess you were vomiting until you had nothing left," I say, hoping I'm sounding sympathetic.
"I gave myself a minute to rest," Katniss continues, "and then I kept running. I didn't know where I was or where I the Gamemakers were sending me. And they were sending more fireballs, which were exploding trees."
"They're not supposed to kill you directly," Archer says. "But they can push you around, to shove Tributes together for the big fight. They're constantly tinkering with the process, because of some of the problems they've had. Like that Games where all the Tributes froze instead of fighting."
"Well, I just knew from watching the Games that certain areas were rigged for certain attacks, and I just kept running. After a while, when my pants leg got caught on fire, I heard Cinna's voice, and thought that the Gamemakers were having a good laugh with the 'Girl on Fire.,'" Katniss says.
"They did say that," Meredith says. "I remember Claudius Templesmith and Caesar Flickerman joking about that on the broadcast, and saying you had to avoid getting really burned up, but you had good experience with fire."
"Nice guys," Katniss says.
I want to say something, but what can one say? "Go on," I fall back on.
"The whole forest with a wall of smoke and flame, stinking black clouds, and then the sunbeams came through. I had burns on my hands and on my left calf, and it was some of the worst pain I ever felt. Then I fell into this pool and it was blissfully cool.
"I tried to remember what my mother told me about caring for burns, and she said use cold water for minor burns," Katniss says.
"That's correct," Meredith says. "Cold water and ice. I had to deal with that myself." She pauses. "When my APC got hit." She stops. She can't talk any further. We all know the rest.
I move on. It's getting toward lunchtime, and sure enough, Greasy Sae's food staff are deploying cold cuts and Peeta's fresh bread for that purpose. We could all use a break, I think, but I also want to keep going."
"I didn't know what to do then," Katniss says. "I just bathed my feet. I remembered how a family brought a badly burned miner to my mother for herbal treatment after the mine doctor wrote him off."
"What did you remember about it?" I ask.
"It was a gruesome injury, and I ran from the house. But Prim stayed right by my mother and helped take care of the injury. That was funny, somehow," Katniss says.
"What made it funny?"
"Prim was always scared of her own shadow, but she was able to stand there and help. My mother said she'd be a great healer someday – they weren't born, they're made."
"What happened to the patient?" Meredith asks.
Katniss shakes her head. "It was hopeless. He died. The doctor was right." She sighs.
Katniss describes how she filled her bottle with water from the little pool, treats it, and rehydrated her body. After that, she sat there for a while, recovering from exhaustion.
"I was overcome with drowsiness…it was like, 'if the Careers find me, let them find me.'"
"We were watching that all day," Archer says. "They were sort of groping around in the forest. By then, they'd set up their little supply base around the Cornucopia. They assigned the weakest of their group to inventory and guard the supplies, while the tougher ones hunted for Katniss and Thresh."
"I recall that someone had that perfect bow-and-arrow set," Meredith says.
"The girl from District 1 was carrying it around. Her name was Glimmer," Archer says. "Somebody in the group I was with told me that girl clearly had no idea how to use it, but I didn't understand the explanation as to why."
"She picked it up the moment the battle at the Cornucopia ended," Peeta says. "The first thing she did. She stood there and said, pretty stupidly, 'How does this thing work?' So a few guys grinned at each other, knowing that they would be able to use her weapon against her later, and let her carry it."
"Did they set up the minefield around the Cornucopia at that point?" I ask Archer.
"They had it in place," he answers.
"But everybody was just watching these tough guys playing hide-and-seek with you," I say to Katniss.
"And Peeta," she says.
"And what were you doing?" I ask the baker.
"Well, we saw the fireballs near us, so I figured that they were aimed at Katniss. I couldn't say, 'don't follow the routes the fireballs took,' because obviously they were fired to pursue Katniss across the woods. So I just shut my trap for a while, and hoped that Katniss could somehow maintain her awareness or I could let her know when we got near her."
"And you did," Meredith says. She is beginning to do some journalistic probing, I see.
"When I saw the end of the fireball trail, I started making noise – kicking leaves, banging wood, stuff like that," he says.
"That woke me up, so I took my kit, picked a high tree, and climbed up. I was about 20 feet up when they arrived. And they saw me," Katniss says.
"Katniss was cheery. She just said, 'How's everything with you,'" Peeta says.
"I knew it would play well on television," Katniss says.
"Cato, the guy from District 2, answered Katniss, saying, 'Well enough. Yourself?'" Peeta says. Now they can start picking up each other's portions, I note. They have really meshed as a couple. "Katniss answered, 'It's been a bit warm for my taste. The air's better up here. Why don't you come on up?'"
"I remember the laughter in the Capitol," says Archer.
"Doubtless both sides admired the bravado being shown on both sides," Meredith says.
"Anyway, Cato said, 'I think I will,'" and Glimmer handed over the silver bow and sheath of arrows. I was furious with Peeta," Katniss says. "I knew he'd given them the bow-and-arrow set."
"Well, I hadn't, but she didn't know that," Peeta says. "Anyway, I knew that Cato was not going to do too well at archery, because I'd watched him in training."
"Which he didn't," Katniss says. "He said, 'I'll do better with the sword,' and pushed the kit aside. Then he tried to climb the tree, and it was clear he didn't know how."
"All he was good at was close combat," Peeta says. "You have to realize, during training, I was watching the other guys pretty closely, to see what their weaknesses were, to see who would get killed first, and how to take down those who wouldn't get killed first. I knew Cato couldn't climb that tree. He just had no ability to do any climbing."
"You have to know where to place your hands and feet," Katniss says. "part of it's my weight, and part of it is practice," Katniss says. "Cato broke a branch and hit the ground, cursing."
"So Glimmer tried to climb up and she failed," Peeta says. "By now, Katniss was like 80 feet up. So Glimmer stopped and shot an arrow at her, and everyone could see she didn't have the slightest idea how to use a bow and arrow, because it lodged in the tree right near Katniss. She just yanked it out."
"We all saw that," Archer says. "Everybody was laughing at Glimmer. The tote boards went crazy on the betting."
"Katniss pulled the arrow out of the tree and held it up over them to taunt them," Peeta says. "Actually she was just showing that she would use it on them when she got the chance."
"By now it was twilight," I say. "You guys were losing a window of opportunity to attack Katniss."
"Which is exactly what I pointed out to those guys," Peeta says.
"He said, 'Oh, let her stay up there. It's not like she's going anywhere. We'll deal with her in the morning.'"
"What was your plan?" I ask Peeta. "You must have been planning something."
"I wasn't quite sure yet, but I had a few ideas – one was to give Katniss some time to sleep and rest. Maybe she would come down while these guys were asleep and we'd kill them."
"Not likely at that point," she says.
"Or she'd come down and run away," Peeta says.
"But then they'd blame you for letting that happen," I say. "So it looks like you just let her stay up there and get some rest."
"Well, I couldn't climb the tree and tell Katniss to jump down and attack," Peeta says. "I would have woken up the whole forest. And she wouldn't have believed me."
"No way," Katniss says. "I would have thought he was setting me up. I would have kicked him down the tree."
"So we both tried to sleep," Peeta says.
"I just lay there, hungry, tired, wounded, and tried to sleep. But I couldn't. I was too weak from pain and hunger to sleep. Then I saw what looked like a possum's eyes staring at me through the firelight of the torches below," Katniss says. "I got up on one elbow. It wasn't a possum. I recognized those eyes, staring at me silently through the branches."
"Rue," Meredith says, drawing out the name, as if invoking it.
Katniss nods.
"Where the heck was she all this time?" I hear myself ask. "I guess she was the subplot the producers and audience couldn't take."