Chapter 43- Terra Coppersmith
Woof taps at the screen that shows how much pecuniae we have left. "Prices went up overnight."
"What does that mean?" I ask, trying to keep the shaking out of my voice. Even still, when I lean forward on the table, my hands and legs shake so hard they rattle my chair. Shuttle looks over at me, but she doesn't say anything.
Woof sits back hard in his chair and hits the table, like it's the cause of all his troubles. "It means we don't have enough money to send anything in."
"But she needs a weapon," I tell him. Iry needs to be able to fight against the mutts she's up against; without something to fight with she'll be hurt or-
Iry just needs a weapon.
"I can't conjure pecuniae out of thin air, Terra," Woof snaps, rubbing his face roughly. "Much as I'd like to."
"I thought we got new sponsors," I say, trying to watch Iry and Woof at the same time. Iry sobs as a mutt hits her and knocks her sideways before backing off. I run my fingers over and over the places where my fingers were before my Games.
"We did. Neither of their contributions is enough to get anything useful."
"How useful are we talking?" Shuttle asks, biting at one of her nails. I can feel the tension radiating off of her; if she's tense, I must be a brick wall. My sister is going to die, and we're just sitting here arguing about what weapons are more useful than others.
"I doubt she's going to fend off that flock with a pocket knife the size of my thumb," Woof says sarcastically.
"So what then?" Shuttle continues, looking agitatedly at Iry. The volume on the screen is turned down low, but I can hear Iry screaming, and it feels like someone's punching me repeatedly. She's there, she's hurting, and she could die in minutes, all because of me. I know it's because of me! If I hadn't been reaped, if I hadn't won, if I had mentored to begin with, she could be safe. It's my fault she's dying.
"Woof, help her!" I whisper; my voice won't come out any louder. "We have to send her something."
Woof's face goes bright red. "I already told you that we don't have the money, Terra. Unless you want to throw her a hunk of bread, we've got nothing."
"So that's it. We're just going to let her die," I say, my voice finally coming out louder. He told me he would help me, that Iry would come out of the arena, and he's not even trying to get something to her.
"What do you want me to do?" Woof asks, half yelling at me. "I don't control how much money we get; we don't have enough. What do you expect me to do?"
"Help Iry!" I yell, jumping up from my chair. "She's going to die! Don't just sit there and watch her; help her!"
"With what money?" Woof shouts, shoving his chair backwards as he stands up and faces me down. "Don't you start in on me; we're all doing our best here to keep her alive."
"We're not doing enough!"
I can hear Iry's terrified screams coming through the screen; I want to launch myself through the glass, straight into the arena and take her out, get her home. I don't know where my sister is, but I need to find her, need to find her now! She must think that we've abandoned her, that we're just going to leave her to the mutts and choose Azlon instead.
I can't have her think that I've left her. I can't let her die; not after everything I've done to keep her alive. Iry has to be the victor, and that plan is going so wrong. She wasn't supposed to kill anyone, she wasn't supposed to be attacked by mutts- what else is going to go wrong? Iry's hurting, and I can't save her. This is worse than losing my legs, worse than losing any part of me, because Iry is a part of me. I can't let her die.
"Will you keep it down? Nobody else wants to hear your screeching."
I whip around to see the District 2 victor, Athena, glaring at us with a haughty expression on her face.
"Nobody likes you, Athena," Shuttle calls back, not even bothering to turn around to look at her. Athena's pale face turns pink, and she sits down hard, swiveling away back to her screen. Her fellow mentors glare at me for a moment before they too look back to see what crimes their tributes are committing.
"Ignore her; her tributes won't win anyway," Shuttle mutters to me, keeping her eyes focused on Iry. Iry's standing ankle deep in a pool of water; I can see a trickle of blood running down her arm where a bird scratched her.
"She can't die, Shuttle," I whisper. Shuttle grabs my arm and pulls me closer, then wraps her arm around me in an awkward hug, bringing me down and back to sitting. Woof stands a moment more, then sinks down into his own seat, his face losing its angry red hue.
"They'll let her go. They won't kill her; there's no fun in that for them," Shuttle whispers back, but I can hear the uncertainty in her voice. If she thinks Iry's going to die, then any hope I have is quickly diminishing.
Iry, you're fine. You can get away. Just run.
Iry is my whole life; I've tried to keep her safe, tried to give her everything. I've done everything to keep her safe, and it's not enough; the Capitol's going to kill her, and me too. If Iry dies, I'm not going to be alive anymore, not the way I am now. There's no real life to be lived without my sister.
"I thought we didn't have money," Shuttle says suddenly, straightening up and letting me go. Woof looks at her out of the corner of his eye.
"We don't."
"So where is that parachute coming from?" Shuttle points to the screen, to where a silver parachute is descending down towards my sobbing sister. Seeing Iry crying and terrified makes my stomach sink to my knees and my arms feel like they're filled with lead. I want to save her more than anything, and I can't. But somebody can, and they are.
"I didn't send anything," Woof snaps, throwing his hands up in the air. "Don't look at me."
"If you didn't, then who did?"
The parachute lands in the water right next to Iry; one of those stupid birds tries to fly over and snatch it from her, but she grabs it just in time; quickly she pulls off the parachute to reveal a short sword, shining silver in the arena sunlight. Woof whistles through his teeth.
"We'd never have the funds for that," he says. "Somebody's bloody rich."
Somebody sent that parachute. Somebody in this room; nobody else has the access to the funds or the technology needed to do that. While Iry starts fighting back against the birds, I turn in my chair and look around the room.
The Viewing Hall looks very different than it did before; Stations 9 and 1 are newly dark and abandoned; their victors gone to wherever they go when all their tributes are dead. Seeder's still sitting with her head in her hands, watching Nell on her own screen; Corinna is missing from next to us, leaving Elm to watch over their last tribute, their girl.
Nobody from District 6 would ever help my sister; not after the argument we had earlier with Fabian. And nobody from the Career districts would help us. Nobody except-
Almost on a premonition, I make eye contact with Mags, who seems to have been waiting for me to look at her. She gives me a quick smile, a nod, then turns back to her screen to watch her last tribute.
"Mags sent it," I whisper to Shuttle, leaning in close so that nobody else can hear me. Shuttle startles back, and I can see the confusion in her eyes.
"Why would she do that?"
I think back to Mags's and my conversation in the Training Center garden, which feels like it was a hundred years ago now. She told me to bring Iry home, and that my sister would surprise me. Mags was right about Iry, but why would she help a tribute that isn't her own?
"She likes me," is all I say to Shuttle. I don't have to hear it being said that it's unheard of for a mentor to send a gift to a tribute that's not her own. I suppose Mags is the exception in a lot of things.
"Don't let the others know, or they'll be shouting about fairness and cheating," Shuttle whispers to me. I nod at her, then turn my full attention to Iry again. Mags's helped Iry, and I feel I owe her a huge debt.
Iry's got the silver sword clenched tightly in her hands, her knuckles turning white on the hilt. Somehow, seeing her hold a weapon for the first time, it brings me back five years, back to when I held a knife as tight as I could, that final morning at the Cornucopia.
Calypso haunts my dreams; will Celosia haunt my sister's?
"She's fine," Shuttle murmurs, more for my benefit than anyone else, I think. Woof has a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, so I can tell he's not worried. I grab Shuttle's hand with my own, and together we watch as Iry stabs at the mutts, killing two of them. She's not crying anymore; instead, when the camera closes in on her, I can see a hardened look in her eyes and her mouth drawn tight.
Where is the little girl who played with kittens and laughed when she saw Postumius arrive home drunk? Where is the sister I know? My Iry has bright eyes, not shiny ones that are as hard as rock. I knew she was gone when she killed Celosia, I knew that the arena would take the girl I loved and change her, so why does seeing her eyes like that hurt so much?
"She's different already, isn't she?" I ask Shuttle. She chews on the corner of her lip, and nods briefly.
"She is. But we all changed in the arena, Terra."
"Fletcher didn't." He didn't change at all in the Games. He gave me five days, five beautiful days in the arena, and broke me apart when he died for me.
"There's a reason why you're sitting here, and not him," Shuttle tells me quietly.
"He didn't want to kill anyone. He didn't," I whisper.
"He didn't. The arena didn't change him, and he's not a victor. Look around you, Terra." Shuttle looks at me hard, and I see through her cracks again, through to the tribute she was. "We all changed in the arena, every single one of us. There's not a victor alive who didn't."
Shuttle looks back at the screen, and it's like a shutter goes down over her eyes, blocking out her past and leaving her as she is now, a victor. "Iry's changed. Good."
If the arena's changed Iry, molded her into a stone tribute, then she could be a stone victor too. I watch my sister fight off the last of the mutts, so tall for thirteen, and I see the victor she can become.
And it kills me inside to see it.
Woof claps his hands, and gives us one of his rare smiles. "She's done it," he says, pushing his chair back to stand up. Shuttle wraps me up in a hug, both of us starting to grin when we watch the last of the mutts fly back into the trees and disappear, leaving behind at least seven dead on the beach, and a great number of multicolored feathers strewn across the sand. Iry breathes hard, still standing in the shallow pool of water, holding the silver sword loosely in one hand.
She's safe. The mutts didn't kill her; she killed them, and she's safe. As far as mutts go, these ones weren't that bad; not like the lion five years ago. Or the pythons that've been chasing Nell and Trestle around the arena. She's safe.
"I'm getting coffee after that," Woof says, smoothing his hair back with one hand. "Anyone else?"
Shuttle shakes her head, and Woof looks expectantly at me. "Yes please," I tell him.
"Back in a moment," he says, and starts off out of the Viewing Hall.
The scream stops him in his tracks.
"No!" Shuttle half rises out of her chair when Seeder screams; the rest of the room freezes and watches as the victor from 11 loses control. Her fellow victor, the skittish boy, stands next to her and watches too, his eyes wide.
"What the hell is going on?" Woof says, making his way back to our station in two quick strides. When I look at the big screen, it no longer shows Iry; instead, it's featuring Seeder's tribute, Nell, being dragged down to the ground by what appears to be vines.
"Not good for her, is it?" I murmur to Shuttle. She shakes her head, her fingers going to her mouth as she stares wide eyed at the suffocating girl.
I've never thought about who designed my arena, but now I remember the jungle on the far side of it, where I never went. Sand and snow, although deadly, are less terrifying than vines that attack at will.
Stay out of the jungle, Iry.
"Don't get over attached to your tributes," Elm says, leaning over from Station 7. "Trust me, it never works out."
The whole room is watching Seeder break down over Nell, everyone except Shuttle. She has her tear-filled eyes fixed on the District 11 girl, and I know enough not to ask why she's crying for a tribute she doesn't even know.
I cried enough for the tributes in my own Games; if I mourned every tribute that entered the arena I would collapse and never get back up.
"They're going to play with her for a bit before they kill her," Elm continues, pointing up at the screen where the vines are releasing Nell, letting her struggle to her feet, alone. Her idiot ally, the one who attacked Azlon, the one who's been causing trouble since he was reaped, ran for it and left her behind.
"I'm not one for vendettas against tributes," Woof says, crossing his arms again, "But I want the little cretin from 6 dead."
"You're not the only one," Shuttle says, brushing tears from her eyes.
I hear Seeder hit some buttons, presumably sending down the parachute to Nell that lands in her hand. The girl only has a few minutes to rest before she's assaulted again, and I feel my stomach clench painfully. She's not my tribute, and she's annoying, but she's just a girl. They're all children in that arena.
"Is this the end for Firecracker Nell?" The screen divides in two, letting the idiotic face of Caius, the announcer, poke through with a moronic smile on his face. "Sure looks like it, but she's given us quite a run. Oh, look at her there- doesn't look too good for her, does it now?"
"No!" Seeder screams again, her face barely inches away from her screen.
"Best don't look, Terra," Woof says quietly, his mouth drawn as tight as Iry's was. Soft mutterings come from around the room, but there's nothing happy in watching a girl being strangled to death by another tribute. Especially that one.
I don't watch her die; I've seen enough death for a lifetime. Instead, I stare at Iry's screen and watch her gather her supplies up and sit back down on the pink beach to admire her new weapon. I don't look over until I see Nell's face disappear from the tribute roster, and I know she's dead.
"You bastard!" Shuttle and I both jump when Seeder shouts. "You evil little-"
She doesn't go for the victor I thought she would have gone for though; instead Seeder storms across the room from her newly black station, straight past me, and slaps Fabian across the face.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" he shouts, shoving her backwards, but Seeder doesn't miss a step.
"I told my girl she shouldn't trust your boy! I knew that he was a sneaky, conniving little demon, and I knew he would leave her! He's good as killed her!"
"Wake up, woman! This is the Hunger Games; did you think that he'd get all sweet on your brat and keep her around to let her win? Trestle's in it for the crown."
"I hope he goes back to your district in a box, just like my girl is going home," Seeder says, the anger in her voice getting choked up with tears.
"He'll go home having been better than everyone else in that damn arena."
"Break it up," Woof says, getting up and standing in between Fabian and Seeder. "That's enough."
"Shut up and get back to your place, 8," Fabian snaps at Woof, who doesn't even raise an eyebrow.
"Your moron won't win. They won't let him," Woof says. "The Capitol doesn't like criminals winning their Games."
Fabian opens his mouth to retort, but his fellow mentor, Lexa, grabs his shirt and pulls hard.
"Just shut up, Fabian, and sit down."
Shuttle makes a noise in her throat that sounds almost like a choked laugh. "Only one who can make him listen, that's Lexa," she whispers to me.
"Seeder." The victor from 11 brushes tears from her face, but doesn't fight any longer once Mags comes up behind her and touches her arm. "Seeder, I know. Let's get you upstairs."
"She was a gem," Seeder says roughly; I can see her hands shaking. "A beautiful, smart mouthed gem."
"She was," Mags agrees, beginning to lead Seeder away towards the door. "My girl was a gem too."
"It's not fair."
As Mags and Seeder reach the doorway, I barely catch Mags's response.
"It never is."