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Chapter Twenty-One: Tended To
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I'm startled awake what feels like seconds later by another kiss, just as cool and silky as the last one.
"Peeta," Katniss trills in my ear, "Wake up…"
I blink groggily, finding her smiling, eager face above me, still wreathed in a silver haze, and I automatically grin in return.
What's she so happy about? I wonder.
Then she holds up a little chrome cook pot, from which a thin spiral of steam wavers. "Peeta, look what Haymitch sent you."
"Haymitch?" I murmur, confused. How did Haymitch make it into this equation?
She makes a sound of assent, and then the scent reaches me—soup. She dips the spoon in and holds it toward my lips. The amber liquid is thin, and appears quite manageable by all means, but still my stomach turns uneasily at the smell.
"Thanks, really," I say, "But…"
"No buts," she retorts severely, prodding my bottom lip with the tip of the utensil. "We need to get this into you."
I survey the serious expression on her face, and then sigh, reluctantly opening my mouth and letting her slide the spoon past my lips. The broth is salty and tastes richly of chicken. I swallow one spoonful, and then two more. I lay my head back, and Katniss groans.
"Peeta, please," she wheedles. "You won't get better if you don't eat."
"This hardly counts as—" She shoves the spoon in my mouth, and I'm forced to accept another portion of the broth. "That was just unfair," I complain once I've swallowed.
"I know, I'm sorry." She leans in and gives me a kiss on the cheek. "I won't do that again. One more?"
I eye the shimmering liquid, and then reluctantly accept it.
"There you go." She kisses me once more, this time full on the lips. Her lips are almost overwhelmingly sweet after the saltiness of the soup.
"That makes up for it," I murmur, smiling.
She laughs, swishing the spoon through the pot again. In this way, she manages to convince me to finish the meal, charming me with her smiles, guilt-tripping me with her pleas, bolstering me with her praises, and momentarily disarming me with her surprise kisses. When it's gone, she gives me permission to go back to sleep, which I gratefully and immediately do.
But this night is far from the long cycles of dreamless rest I had while buried in mud on the riverbank, after the effects of the venom had faded away. I dream of floating in ice baths, I dream of being back home in the bakery kitchen on a sweltering summer day, but the back door is stuck—it won't prop open, so I'm stuck working with the domineering ovens in the smothering heat. I dream of my hands growing to five times their usual size, so that I can't feasibly hold a thing. I dream of being back in my bed in my family's apartment, except that when I wake up there's a maze at the foot of it—but it's not any old grassy hedge maze. It's a maze composed out of interlocking aquariums, and I'm somehow looking down on it, from an aerial view, and there's a mermaid with bronze hair and sea foam eyes leaping over the separate maze dividers. For long, indeterminable moments, I watch the mermaid leap and twirl and dive, and then suddenly Rye's there next to me in the bed, telling me to go back to sleep. I dream I'm standing in the middle of District Twelve's town square, but I've been set on fire and ordered to lap its perimeter a dozen times—and then I'm tasked with the job of finding the dead man hidden among the row of fifty Peacekeepers lined up along the edge within five minutes. Failure will mean restarting the trial, which I undoubtedly do, time and time again. This dream laps over and over again, the pain of the fire bewildering, the heat suffocating. Finally, someone douses me in a bucket of icy water, and I burst into wakefulness.
The first thing I notice is that I feel, somehow, more like myself. More normal, I suppose. Not as out of it. The fever must have broken. The second thing I notice is that I'm alone. My body instinctively pulls me upright—an improvement in and of itself—and my head both pounds and spins in rejection. I groan, dropping it in my hands and wait for just a second to recover. But my heart is pounding with anxiety.
Where is she, where is she?! I slept all night—is she nocturnal like Cato and Clove?
I am just shifting onto my left hip when agony flares through my leg. A hiss of pain slides through my clenched teeth, but I ignore it, pushing past it, more focused on Katniss right now. She could be in danger, my assistance could very well mean the difference between her life and death, right this very moment—
A shadow drops over the opening of the cave, and it's her, her braid swinging over one shoulder, the broth pot in one hand. The nimbus of silver mist from last night is gone.
"What are you doing? Lie back down," she demands when she sees me trying to get up.
"I woke up and you were gone," I explain as she tucks me back in. "I was worried about you."
But she laughs as she pulls the sleeping bag up over my chest. "You were worried about me? Have you taken a look at yourself lately?"
For some reason, this annoys me. "I thought Cato and Clove might have found you. They like to hunt at night."
"Clove?" she repeats. "Which one is that?"
"The girl from District Two. She's still alive, right?"
"Yes," she says, concentrating on stirring whatever's in the pot. "There's just them and us, and Thresh and Foxface. That's what I nicknamed the girl from Five."
There's a beat of silence as I comprehend what she's saying. Pixel's gone, I realize with a small pang of grief. And Rue—I know Katniss was fond of her, but she looks so unutterably heartbroken; there's some unmatchable grief in her face that I can't comprehend. Is it simply because she was so unforgivably young, and so closely resembled Prim?
"How do you feel?" she asks now.
"Better than yesterday. This is an enormous improvement over the mud. Clean clothes and medicine and a sleeping bag… And you."
She blinks, her eyes meeting mine, and then she lifts her hand to stroke my cheek. I catch her fingers, bringing them to my lips. I know the chances are high that the cameras are on us, and so I try to communicate with my eyes and lips what my words cannot say. That I'm sorry for her loss, for whatever degree of friendship was established between the two of them. I don't remember Rue's cannon, her picture in the sky. I must have slept through that. Pixel's as well. Did they die on the same day, then? Must have.
But she misinterprets my look and says, "No more kisses until you've eaten."
I sigh, not even having to pretend to act bummed. "I guess that's a deal."
She helps me sit up against the wall and feeds me what she's prepared in the pot, berries that she's smashed with the back of a spoon. When I reject the meat again, though, she sighs with exasperation.
"You need protein," she growls, setting it aside.
It's then that I notice how exhausted she looks, the dark shadows that have blossomed under her eyes, her pale face.
"You didn't sleep."
"I'm all right," she disputes, but her movements are slowed as she puts the meat away and wipes out the pot with a damp piece of bandage.
"Sleep now," I tell her. "I'll keep watch. I'll wake you if anything happens."
She hesitates, clearly torn between her desire for sleep and her need to keep us safe.
"Katniss, you can't stay up forever," I insist.
She sighs, relenting, and I watch as her shoulders relax. "All right. But just for a few hours. Then you wake me."
"Sure."
She finishes up her cleaning duties and then lays down on top of the sleeping bag after loading her bow, keeping one hand on it. She gestures toward the filled water bottles next to me, tells me to keep drinking. I promise her that I will, but still her eyes don't close. I think it must be that I'm watching her, so I turn my gaze on the cave entrance, but I can still feel the stiffness of her prone body next to me, her eyes on my face.
"Go to sleep," I urge her gently, and in a way that my father used to do for us boys when we were scared or upset, having just woken from a nightmare or had trouble falling asleep when we were ill, I reach down to stroke her hair, the silky strands soft under my palm. I watch with a prideful sort of satisfaction out of the corner of my eye as her lids slide shut, her body relaxes, and her breath evens out.
At first, I enjoy the quiet. The sounds of the forest outside the cave are peaceful, even cheery. And the fact that I'm able to stay awake for more than a few minutes in a row for the first time in days makes it even better. I try to drink some of the water, but the act only makes my stomach feel uneasy, and it becomes more difficult to do the more time passes. There is no sign of a threat, no footsteps, no cannons, no human voices shouting to each other or sounds of combat. In fact, if I didn't know any better, it could just be the two of us out here, in some arbitrary forest, camping or something. I allow myself to imagine that it is, try to ignore my throbbing leg and my pounding head—try to pretend that Katniss has somehow convinced me to go along with her on one of her hunting trips, that she's teaching me how to set snares and track creatures in the woods. For awhile, I watch her face—so placid in sleep, not a hint of the trouble she shows so often in her waking hours. It's no wonder she does, given our circumstances, but it's nice to see her so peaceful regardless.
By the time she stirs, I'm beginning to feel sort of lousy again, but I can't deny that I'm pleased to see her rested. When she sits up and sees the angle of the light coming in through the cave, she turns on me, defensive.
"Peeta, you were supposed to wake me up after a couple of hours!"
"For what?" I ask. "Nothing's going on here. Besides, I like watching you sleep. You don't scowl. Improves your looks a lot."
As if to spite me, she scowls fiercely, and I grin.
There it is, I think to myself, pleased.
Then her eyes narrow in a different expression, suspicious, and she leans forward to touch my cheek. Her fingers are cold against my skin, and I blink innocently, but I know as well as she does what this means.
"Have you been drinking?"
"Yes."
Her eyes are mere slits now, and she picks a bottle up, shaking it, and then the other. "You have not."
Shaking her head and muttering angrily to herself, she dives back into her first aid kit, and produces more fever-reducing pills. I wash them down, and then she kneels in front of me, hands on her hips, watching as I force the contents of the first bottle down my throat, and then half of another.
"Please," I beg, feeling as if I'm about to burst or throw up, one of the two, "No more."
She sighs, easing me back onto the sleeping bag. "Alright—let me take another look at these wounds."
She puts more burn ointment on my chest, applies more leaves to my tracker jacker lumps, which have shrunken amazingly in the last day, and then unwraps my thigh. There's an extended moment of silence, only the sound of our breathing as we bow our heads together, light and dark, to examine it. The crevice is clean of purulence, but the flesh around it is glistening and taut with the reemergence of the swelling, and there are angry, telling red streaks extending upwards toward my hip.
"Well, there's more swelling, but the pus is gone," she reports in a tone that tries for casualness but betrays her fear.
I set my jaw. "I know what blood poisoning is, Katniss. Even if my mother isn't a healer."
A somber mood has thickened the air in our little hideout. There's no hope now. I don't stand a chance of getting out of here alive. I knew it from the start, but somehow, now, it opens a pit in my stomach. She's tried so hard to reverse the effects, to bring me back… I hate so much to disappoint her.
"You're just going to have to outlast the others, Peeta," she says stubbornly, hearing the resignation in my voice. "They'll cure it back at the Capitol when we win."
"Yes," I say, confused by her sudden unwillingness to let me go, and feeling very, very tired. "That's a good plan."
She takes a breath. "You have to eat. Keep your strength up. I'm going to make you soup."
"Don't light a fire. It's not worth it."
"We'll see."
Before I can stop her, she's taken the broth pot and swept out of the cave, disappearing from view.
I sigh, trying not to think as I pull my t-shirt back on, and then recline back on the floor because that simple act has taken so much out of me. I want to sleep, but I'm too worried about her to close my eyes. And it's hot—too hot.
Would it be easier on both of us if I had the courage to just end it all right now? But… no. She's taken her bow and her knife with her. How much longer will it take now, for the infection to reach my heart? Will it be painful? She won't let me sleep through the worst of it, that much I know; I also know her obstinacy won't be enough to save me.
When she returns, the silver haze is back, enshrouding her like a veil, or angel's wings. For a long moment, she just gazes at me, concern etched in her face. Then she lays a cool strip of bandage across my forehead, which feels nice—for maybe five seconds.
I sigh, letting my eyelids fall shut.
"Do you want anything?" she murmurs.
"No, thank you… Wait—yes. Tell me a story."
"A… Story?" This seems to have been the last thing she would have thought of. "What about?"
"Something… happy. Tell me about the happiest day you can remember."
She expels a breath, but complies—she must know how important this is to me, how heavy, how pressing, the proclivity is. So she begins a tale about the goat she got Prim for her tenth birthday. I phase in and out of the beginning parts, lapsing between states of consciousness so I'm not quite sure which parts of it are truth and dream, but it doesn't really matter anyway. It's the sound of her voice and the occasional touch of her cool hands that soothes me anyway. Eventually I latch onto the end bit, where she explains the purchase of the sick goat, and buying the pink ribbon on a whim, to tie around its neck.
"You should have seen Prim's reaction when we walked in with that goat," she says, laughing a little through what I think might be tears. "Remember, this is a girl who wept to save a cat, Peeta. She was so excited she started crying and laughing all at once. My mother was less sure, seeing the injury, but the pair of them went to work on it, grinding up herbs and coaxing brews down its throat."
"They sound like you," I comment.
"Oh, no, Peeta," she argues, "They work magic. That thing couldn't have died if it tried."
"Don't worry. I'm not trying," I joke, seeing the horrified expression of guilt on her face. "Finish the story."
"Well, that's it," she says. "Only I remember that night, Prim insisted on sleeping with Lady on a blanket next to the fire. And just before they drifted off, the goat licked her cheek, like it was giving her a good night kiss or something… It was already mad about her."
"Was it still wearing the pink ribbon?"
"I think so. Why?"
"I'm just trying to get a picture. I can see why that day made you happy," I muse, thinking of Prim's happiness… Katniss's joy in that happiness.
"Well, I knew that goat would be a little gold mine," she retorts defensively.
I snort quietly. "Yes, of course I was referring to that, not the lasting joy you gave the sister you love so much you took her place in the reaping."
"The goat has paid for itself," she continues defensively, "Several times over."
"Well, it wouldn't dare do anything else after you saved its life. I intend to do the same thing," I say, grinning lazily.
"Really? What did you cost me again?"
The grin abruptly falls away. "A lot of trouble," I admit with a sigh. "Don't worry. You'll get it all back…"
"You're not making sense," she murmurs. I feel her hand brush against my forehead. "You're a little cooler though."
With a suddenness that startles us both, the fanfare of trumpets fills the sky. I try to grip her wrist, but either my aim is off or she's too fast, because I miss and she's already bounding for the cave entrance. Once more, Claudius Templesmith's voice reverberates all around us.
"Attention, tributes, attention! Commencing at sunrise tomorrow, there will be a feast at the Cornucopia." Katniss only scoffs at this, beginning to turn away. Everyone knows that the reason for a feast—whether a true banquet or a single biscuit—is really an ulterior motive to draw the tributes together in order to force their hand in combat. But then Claudius continues: "Now hold on… Some of you may already be declining my invitation… But this is no ordinary feast. Each of you needs something desperately." From where she's half turned toward me, her eyes light on mine for half a second, and then she turns back around.
No, Katniss, I think.
"Each of you will find that something in a backpack, marked with your district number, near the Cornucopia at dawn. Think hard about refusing to attend. For some of you, this will be your last chance." His words turn ominous in the way of a true villain, and there's nothing else.
I force myself to my feet and across the small space between us. Katniss stands frozen in the mouth of the cave, her eyes fixed on the evening sky, her expression pensive. I grip her shoulder, as much to get her attention as to steady myself. She jumps.
"No," I say firmly. "You're not risking your life for me."
"Who said I was?" she asks, a little too innocently. Her eyes are wide mirrors again.
"So, you're not going?"
"Of course, I'm not going," she says, refusing to meet my gaze. "Give me some credit. Do you think I'm running straight into some free-for-all against Cato and Clove and Thresh? Don't be stupid. Now, get back to bed." She turns, nudging me back toward the sleeping bag. "I'll let them fight it out, we'll see who's in the sky tomorrow night and work out a plan from there."
I shake my head at her as she eases me back into the sleeping bag. "You're such a bad liar, Katniss. I don't know how you've survived this long. "I knew that goat would be a little gold mine.", "You're a little cooler though.", "Of course, I'm not going." … Never gamble at cards," I advise her, "You'll lose your last coin."
Her face flushes flame red, her eyes glinting with fury. "All right," she bursts out, "I am going, and you can't stop me!"
Panic as much as retaliatory anger fills me. "I can follow you," I shoot back. "At least partway. I may not make it to the Cornucopia, but if I'm yelling your name, I bet someone can find me. And then I'll be dead for sure."
"You won't get a hundred yards from here on that leg," she hisses.
"Then I'll drag myself! You go and I'm going, too!"
I see her contemplate this, decide that what I've said must ring at least partly true. "What am I supposed to do?" she huffs. "Sit here and watch you die?"
"I won't die. I promise." The words are out of my mouth before I can think them through. How can I possibly guarantee that? "If you promise not to go."
She locks her eyes on mine, clearly measuring her capacity for stubbornness against mine, her skill for amateur healing against my inclination toward self-preservation. I can't tell what conclusion she comes to, but the best I can hope for is that the other tributes take Claudius's bait and attend the feast, take some of each other out, if not all of them falling from the injuries they sustain, so that the Games can end that much sooner. So it's a little far-fetched, but so are my chances, and I've just made my own unlikely promises.
"Then you have to do what I say," Katniss finally determines. "Drink your water, wake me when I tell you, and eat every bite of the soup no matter how disgusting it is!"
"Agreed. Is it ready?"
"Wait here."
She returns a few minutes later with the soup. She calls the meat in it groosling, which she's combined with some greens and some sort of root vegetable. Because I've made my promises, I eat it without complaint, sprinkling words of praise and enthusiasm throughout, but the truth is, I can hardly stand it, and my stomach feels pinched and strange—as if the very life-sustaining thing of food does not belong there, which is absolute absurdity. When I'm done, she gives me more pills and water, and then goes out to wash the pot. I'm feeling sleepy and ready to settle in for the night, but as a few more minutes tick by, I notice that she's been gone for an unwarranted amount of time. It doesn't take fifteen minutes to wash out a soup pot. It occurs to me that it would take her no effort at all to run off on me, and just as I begin to panic, she returns, the pot refilled.
"I've brought you a treat," she reports cheerily, and I suppress the urge to groan. I'm still full from the soup, and I just want to sleep. "I found a new patch of berries a little farther downstream."
I don't argue, parting my lips for the first bite—feeling bad that I've mistrusted her. The saccharine flavor coats my tongue, undeniably sweet and refusing to go unnoticed. The soup was one thing, but this I can't ignore. I swallow, and then comment on the flavor.
"They're sugar berries," she explains. "My mother makes jam from them. Haven't you ever had them before?" There's something about her tone, the fluttering of her eyelashes that makes me suspicious as she shoves the next spoonful into my mouth.
"No, but they taste familiar… Sugar berries, you said?" I try to think on that, ruminating over the vague, misty memories the taste conjures.
"Well, you can't get them in the market much, they only grow wild," she's rambling, scooping up another spoonful and poking it in. The mashed, honeyed berries go down easily. The thick taste reminds me of days spent reading in bed, and long naps… It's there, the answer, on the cusp of my memory.
"They're sweet as syrup," I say as she scrapes up the last of the dessert and feeds it to me. "Syrup!" I gasp, clarity striking home. These berries taste so much like the sleep medicine my brothers and I would take when sick with a fever or cold back at home in District Twelve—but how on earth would she have found that here?
I lean forward to spit them out, but she sees what I'm about to do and slaps her hands over my mouth and nose, blocking off my airways. I thrash for a minute at the lack of oxygen, thinking for a single, insane second that she means to suffocate me. But as soon as she sees my throat convulse as I reflexively swallow, she releases me—and the second realization hits. The feast. She means to go to the feast to retrieve what's so desperately needed, and leave me here. She tricked me!
Even as I tilt sideways toward the floor, I jam two of my fingers down my throat, hoping I'll be able to purge enough of the linctus in time to clear the swirling fog from my brain, but it's too late, too late—and the last thing I see before an eddy of deep purple and silver crash down over me is her face, set in a grim mask of contradictory guilt and determination.
And then I'm gone.