Part 3

"The Crown"

Crown (definition):

1. (noun) the top or highest part of something.
2. (noun) an ornamental symbol of distinction (gained by a victory or achievement)
3. (verb) be the triumphant culmination of (an effort or endeavor, especially a prolonged one)

Chapter 19

Every step I take feels heavy, as if my body is trying to prevent me from leaving Rory. I feel like my mind and my body are separated from one another. I barely know what I am doing right now. I wonder if I am going through shock? Or if maybe I am just too exhausted to care anymore.

My mind is running on a loop. Over and over I see Rory with the spear in his back. I see Heather's viscous glare. I see Foster's look of betrayal. I see Rory's last breath.

I can't walk anymore. I collapse to my knees and crawl towards the biggest collection of bushes nearby. It is still dark and difficult to see but I recognize the bushes's leaves as Poison Ivy, so I drag myself past them. Poison Ivy is bad enough but the Capitol has probably engineered them to spread a disease or even catch on fire for all I know.

I continue crawling, trying to find another good collection of shrubbery, when my hand catches on an edge. I look down and in the dark I can make out a small drop off in front of me. I peer my head over it, and realize I am atop an overhanging rock. I maneuver to the side and slide myself under the ledge. It is a perfect, cozy shelter.

Once I find a decent angle, I take my pack off and set it up to be my pillow. My shoulder injury aches and makes every movement difficult in the tight space. The shoulder has started to swell up and everything is so painfully stiff that it is difficult to move my arm. I slide my sling back on to rest my arm. I lay face down on the bag and drape my good arm over my head. I do not want my tears to show up on camera.

I fall asleep and when I wake up it is daytime again. For a moment, I do not remember where I am, thinking I am just in the woods outside of District 12. I roll my eyes at myself. Gosh, Rory is going to tease me so much when-

And there it is. The memory comes back to me, more painful than any physical wound could ever be.

I exhale sharply and force myself not to think about that. I should probably keep moving but I like my little grotto. I don't feel like doing anything and I doubt I could even if I wanted to. Besides, my shoulder is in bad shape after last night and I should not be straining it.

I lounge about as the day passes. I am glad I had refilled my canteen before everything that happened last night. I rummage around in my pack for some breakfast. I pull out some berries. I try to enjoy them but I am not very hungry.

I could just lie here forever. I allow myself to imagine that, me winning by not moving from this spot. That could work actually, the tribute from the coal mines wins by hiding in a hole. I giggle deliriously to myself.

My mind can't help but go back to Rory. That horrible feeling when Heather showed her true colors. To think I had defended her when she killed Paisley! She probably would have done that regardless of Paisley's injuries. Then I tried to keep peace between her and Sprig.

With a jolt, I remember Sprig's death. In the middle of our fight with the Careers, Heather joined me and Rory with Opaline, which left Sprig alone against Gusto. Even if Gusto was as badly injured as it seemed, Heather knew he could overpower her. So she had left Sprig behind while helping us.

She left behind the person in our alliance who was the most against her.

After the fight, Heather said she had hurt her ribs but she didn't show much discomfort. In fact, she had seemed fine beforehand while Foster set my arm. I recall that light groaning noise before Heather called out in pain. It was almost as if she wanted to keep us distracted from Sprig a while longer.

I feel horribly sick and bile rises in my throat. I scamper out of my shelter and heave up the berries I ate earlier. Great. All that work to gather food and I just wasted it all. I return to my shelter and attempt to eat more but I am still too queasy.

Before I know it, it is evening. The anthem plays but I don't even glance at the sky. I can't bear to see Rory up there. But I am reminded that there are only four of us now: me, Foster, Heather and Gusto.

It is an unusual final four. I wonder what the betting pool is like now. I would say I don't stand a chance in a fight against any of the others but then I never thought I would be able to fight Opaline or kill Truss-

My stomach drops. As hurtful as everything with Rory has been, it managed to distract me from the terrible thing I have done.

I killed someone.

I drop my head into my hand and feel the tears welling up again. In my mind, I see myself on top of Truss, stabbing him over and over. The worst part is that I barely even realized I was doing it at the time. Some primal urge had come over me. I could rationalize this if it had been to protect Rory but it wasn't.

It was because I wanted to hurt him.

The next day the weather is dank and foggy. It makes me want to curl up tighter in my shelter and fall back asleep. But I am running low on water so I crawl out of my hole and travel to the stream to refill my canteen.

When I get to the stream I glance down at my body and cringe. I am covered in dried blood and I have no idea if it is mine or someone else's. The thought of Truss or Rory's blood on me makes me feel nauseous again.

I set my pack down and try to wash up. I slide my sling off to wash it out before it starts to smell. There is a tingling feeling around the wounded area and down my arm. Worst of all, every now and then my muscles will spasm painfully. All this stress has been making me ache so much. It is not helped by me crawling around on a craggy ground and attacking someone with a knife-

Killing someone with a knife, I correct myself. Just like that, I am about to cry again.

Stop, I tell myself firmly, Stop. Stop thinking about that.

I blink my tears back forcefully. For once my tears obey me and I don't start crying. I keep my head straight and focus determinedly on washing my sling.

I am so focused that I am slow to notice a strange sound. Once I hear it, I pause and look around the arena. The sound is a low hum, like something is tumbling down the mountainside.

Is it another avalanche or earthquake?

The hum gets louder and it sounds like pebbles clacking against one another. Through the thinning woodland, I see a collection of rocks cascading down the side of the mountain. It could be another avalanche but these are not boulders but rather rocks about the size of a baseball.

In fact, all of them are almost the exact same size. Something feels off about them. They are too smooth and their surface is a polished shine.

I realize that these stones are not just rolling down the hill but rather towards one another, grouping together. I can't move, I am too intrigued despite myself.

As the stones collect in a clump, they stop. For a beat, it is quiet. Then, all together, rows of short, spindly crab-like legs burst out of the individual rocks. Dozens of muttations are gathered together. Then the legs begin walking and they start moving towards me.

I feel my sling drop from my hands. In the same breath, I turn and start running as fast as I can.

Behind me, I hear a clacking sound getting increasingly louder. It is the patter of the mutt's legs clicking across the stony ground as they follow.

My mind is distracted as I rush into a more wooded area. I tromp gracelessly, too exhausted to keep a steady pace but too afraid to quit moving. The land is getting less steep the lower down I go so it is easier to run but I don't know how to use this terrain to my advantage. I don't think finding a cliff edge would stop these mutts the same way it stopped the bear muttations. There are so many of them and they can move so easily.

I am rushing forward into a forest clearing when I am abruptly stopped as I slam into a solid object. I bounce back in surprise. I look up to see I have collided with another body.

It is Gusto. He is trekking uphill with a large pack on his back. He was also taken aback by our run in but he recovers his footing easily. He smiles when he spots me.

"Well, what have we here-" He starts to say but I cut him off.

"Run! Go!" I shout to him, not pausing as I begin running again. "They're behind me! We have to move!"

"What are you-"

"Mutts! Mutts! Run!" I screech desperately. I can hear the humming noise of the mutts closing in on me again. I don't look back to see anything else but Gusto swears loudly. He sprints after me, catching up to me in a few long strides. He gains a few paces on me and makes a sharp turn to the right. I follow him, hoping that since he had just been traveling through this area he might have recognized something.

"What the hell are those things?" He shouts to me.

I don't have an answer beyond 'mutts' so I just say, "I don't know! They just started chasing."

Gusto swears again. "You know how to kill 'em?"

I don't. But I know there are way too many of them to go on the offensive so I can't let Gusto try something like that.

"We have to just get away from them," I reply.

"What, like climb up a tree or something?"

I tell him no. The mutts's legs look adaptable. They could probably climb up after us.

The woodland is getting thicker again, which hopefully should slow the mutts down. I wish there was a way to use the area to escape. I start searching for some ideas as we keep running.

The arena is mostly rock but the mutts are definitely fine with stone, if they aren't actually made of stone already. The stream or water didn't seem to bother them since they followed me along the riverbank when they first started chasing me. Maybe something like fire? It's the only element I can think of that might be able to hurt a large amount of them at once. But how can I possibly set a fire?

Then I remember that I have matches. The matches I took from Truss's pack are still in my pocket.

"Hey!" I call out to Gusto, starting to slow my steps. He pauses and looks back at me.

"I'm starting a fire. Here!" I grab a dry branch from the ground with leaves still attached to it. I hand it to Gusto as I take the matches from my pocket.

I try to steady my hands as I fumble with the matches. Gusto is restless beside me with impatience. I ready my match but my arm spasms painfully, shaking my hand and making everything more difficult as I try to light the match.

"Hurry up!" Gusto shouts as the mutts get louder. My arm spasms again and tears of frustration pick at my eyes as I try to strike the match.

Gusto yells out in terror as the mutts come within view. I pull my bad arm against my chest and use it to steady everything as I finally spark up a flame. I reach out and light the branch in Gusto's hand. The fire spreads quickly and Gusto takes it and begins brandishing at the mutts nearest to us. They scamper back from the flame, making an inhuman, almost mechanical-sounding squeal.

I find another twig and set it ablaze and throw it at the mutts. More squeals cry out as the flame lands in their path. My match is near its end so I drop it in a bush. It catches flame and begins burning up.

"Burn their path!" I tell Gusto, forcing my arm back to light the next match. He takes his branch and passes its flame to bushes near him. I take my new match and light another twig before dropping the match in another bush.

"Come on!" I call out to Gusto again. We begin running again. I hold my stick to the side and start lighting fires against the shrubbery we pass. Gusto copies me and soon I can taste the smoke billowing around us as fire spreads. We keep this up for minutes until our branches get close to their ends and I am forced to drop mine. Gusto follows, yelling out in annoyance as he burns his hand.

I gesture to him and we turn right and begin to climb uphill. Behind us the fire spreads down in the opposite direction. The crackling of the flames begins to drown out the mutts screeching and the sounds die down as we get away from the scene.

Slowly, we are reaching the higher points where the land starts to get rocky again. We keep running but after a few minutes my exhaustion catches up with me and I slow down to a stop. I drop my hands to my knees as I breathe heavily, my lungs gasping between exhaustion and smoke inhalation.

I sigh loudly and straighten back up. I have barely had a moment of relief when I realize Gusto is still beside me, his large hunting knife at the ready.