Chapter 49- Shore Seawind
The boy from 8's face fades out of the sky, briefly replaced by the Capitol seal, before the lights go out and the whole arena is black again, and completely quiet except for the rush of the ocean behind us.
Aggie grabs another roll out of the cannister that got sent down with the parachute just before sunset, and bites into it like she's mad at it. I hold my hand out, and she snatches up another roll before throwing it at me, hard.
"I don't see why you're mad at me," I say. Aggie just glares at me.
"Making District 2 proud," Dominicus says with a snort of laughter.
"Shut up, Dommie!" Aggie snaps; Dominicus raises his eyebrows in mock astonishment.
"You're in a bad mood, aren't you?"
"I swear, Dommie, if you ever throw anything at something that isn't a tribute again, I'll kill you where you stand."
"You're still on about that?" Dominicus asks, shifting himself so he can lie down next to the fire.
"No, I'm bringing it up for fun," Aggie says sarcastically.
"Stop it, both of you," I say. The last thing I want to hear is those two arguing, again. Keeping this alliance together is hard enough without them antagonizing each other.
"What do you mean, stop it?" Aggie asks, rounding on me. "We almost died because he decided to rile up a pack of mutts."
"To be fair, you egged him on," I point out, and Aggie's eyes flash in the firelight.
"You and your tiny tributes," Dominicus says, through a fit of snorting laughter.
"I will kill you," Aggie warns.
"Nobody's killing each other tonight," I say, keeping one eye on where my trident is. If somebody is going to die tonight, I'm going to make damn well sure it's not me.
"Speak for yourself," Aggie says, finally letting herself lie down, one hand on a knife. "Serves you right that you got bit, Dommie," she mutters, dodging a spark that flies at her from the spitting fire.
Dominicus holds up his left arm that's currently bandaged in white cloth. "I've had worse."
"Have you?"
"Aulus got me one time in the leg, remember that?" Dominicus says, lying down flat and looking up at the sky. "And that kid Quintus gave me that scar last year."
"What an idiot," Aggie says, finally laughing. The tension on the beach is fading, but I'm keeping my trident close anyway. And I'll take first watch tonight; I don't trust either of them this far into the Games. Five more tributes and the alliance will collapse completely. And then I'll win, and they'll lose.
I should kill them now, but I won't. Not yet. I still need the strength in numbers; once the rest are down to three or four, then I'll think about it, but tonight we can still be an alliance of three; three tributes against five.
"You're still an idiot for hitting those mutts, Dommie," Aggie says, her hand still closed around the hilt of her knife.
"Got rid of them in the end, didn't we?"
"No thanks to you."
"I was helpful!" Dominicus protests, and Aggie crow laughs.
"Just don't throw shells at mutts anymore," I tell him, and Dominicus nods vigorously.
"Have to obey the leader," he says, mockingly saluting me.
"Oh shut up." Aggie laughs again, this time at me, then rolls onto her back to look up at the star filled sky. Right now, right here, the tension's disappeared and it feels like the dynamic we had back in Training, when we were all making shelters and laughing about it. Half of us are gone, but the feeling is still the same. It's the same as when Hake and I jest at home, or when we're all working on the docks together. Like we're friends.
I can't have Aggie and Dominicus as my friends; I know they're not even going to be my allies two days from now, because I have to use them to win, just like Mags told me. But tonight, after the mutt attack earlier, I'm alright with being friends with them for just one night.
Da once told me, "Shore, the schools of fish are the ones that get along in this world. Together, we're stronger than we are alone, because we are the same as the fish."
"But there are fish that work alone," I told him, pulling in a net full of the very fish we were discussing. "And we don't catch them."
"Schools of fish are caught," Da said, helping me pull the net onboard. "But they are never alone. A few may be lost, but the whole species remains intact. The predators, those are the ones that escape our nets and go far. But it's lonely being a shark, Shore. Be a fish and pull the District along with the rest of us. There's more of them than of the sharks."
As soon as I was chosen to volunteer, I became a shark. And sharks don't wait for anyone else; they just take what they need to survive. Da was right, though. It is lonely being a shark, because I'm looking at my next meal, and they're right in front of me, laughing around the fire.
Maybe when I get home, I can become one of the school again, because I need them. I need my District more than ever. I'm a shark here, so maybe I can help lead at home too. I can help my District, because I'm not sure I'll ever stop being a shark after this.
The only problem is that Aggie and Dominicus are sharks too, and sharks can't swim alongside each other for long. Something will break in the next few days, and one of us will stay standing, while the others will leave the arena for good.
"Whatcha thinking about, Ocean Boy?" Aggie calls out in a singsong tune. "Your girlfriend back home?"
"She's my fiancée," I correct her.
"Even better." Aggie turns herself so she's on her stomach facing me, and starts batting her eyelashes. "Do you miss her terribly, Ocean Boy?"
"Of course I do." How could I not miss Thalassa? I'd give anything to see her or hear her voice again.
"Aww, you're sweet. I don't miss anyone back home."
"Not even your parents?" I ask, and Dominicus guffaws.
"If you had parents like hers, you wouldn't miss yours either," he says.
"Shut up, Dommie. Putting my business out there like that," Aggie tells him.
"You put it out there yourself."
"How's your arm?" I interrupt, because I can see Aggie's eyes starting to flash again, and the last thing I want is for her to go off on a tirade. Dominicus raises an eyebrow at me, but he holds his bandaged arm up anyway.
"Again, I've had worse."
"Good."
The mutts swarmed at us after Dominicus threw the shell at the first one, screeching and howling and beating at the ground, sending sand spraying in every direction.
"Too many of them!" I shouted, getting into an attack position, trident held high. Aggie's forehead was furrowed with concentration, and I caught a flicker of fear go across Dominicus's face before it was replaced with an attempt at intimidation.
"You understand what they're saying, so what's the plan, Ocean Boy?" Aggie snapped, pointing her knife at the pack of approaching monkeys.
"Where're the rest of your knives?"
"In my bag."
"Well get them out!" I yelled. Aggie glared at me, but she whipped her pack off in one swift motion, and pulled out three more knives, just as the monkeys reached us in a sea of red-gold fur. Aggie tossed one knife in front of me, and Dominicus caught it easily.
I stabbed down with my trident, killing two mutts in one blow, then tossed them away before stabbing again, and again. On either side of me, Aggie and Dominicus slashed at the mutts, bringing down two or three in each swipe.
"Just kill them all," I said, tossing the body of one monkey over my head; I heard it land in the water behind me.
"Say something that's not obvious," Aggie muttered, her hands red with mutt blood. The largest mutt kept just out of reach, screeching at us with bared and pointed teeth, pounding the sand over and over. The rest of the mutts answered back, until all you could hear was the screaming of the dying mutts, and the howling of the living ones as they attacked us.
"Ah shit! Shit!" Dominicus shouted; I stabbed again before looking over at him. He had a mutt hanging limp and stabbed through the heart to the hilt of his knife, and blood trickling down his arm. "The thing bit me!"
"You should kill them before they do that!" I called, throwing a monkey body off of my trident and stabbing again, this time killing two more. Farther back on the beach, towards the trees, the lead monkey howled and pounded the ground, and the rest of the mutts answered back.
"Aggie!"
"What?" she snapped back, barely glancing in my direction.
"The leader. You never miss," I said, and this time she looked at me at the same time she stabbed another mutt through the heart. The sand around her feet was soaked with blood, coating her boots and pants to her knees. "I'll cover you."
As the leader screamed again, I pinned three monkeys to the sand at Aggie's feet, just as she threw one of her knives. I think we all paused to watch the blade's flight, in a moment like Reaper's attack, when time sped up and slowed down all at once. When time started back up again, the beach was somewhat quieter, and the mutt had a knife through its throat.
"Nice throw," I said, and Aggie nodded her head to me. "Knew you wouldn't miss."
Aggie shook her hair out of her face and stabbed another monkey through the eye, before throwing it aside. "I never do," she said.
"Reaper doesn't agree!" Dominicus called over. I could see the trickle of blood running down his arm and dripping onto the sand, but he didn't seem bothered about it.
"Shut it, Dommie!"
I stabbed down again and again, dodging mutts leaping at me on all sides with sharpened claws and pointed teeth. Even with their leader dead, the monkeys seemed determined to kill all three of us. And then, just as suddenly as they had appeared in the trees in the first place, the monkeys backed away and retreated back into the jungle as we watched. The last mutt screeched at us, then disappeared, leaving us alone on a beach covered in blood and the bodies of the dead mutts.
"It's a good thing Shore's a bloody medic or we'd have to take off your arm," Aggie says.
"I'm not a medic; we just have a lot of accidents in 4," I say. It's true; people come back hurt from fishing almost every day.
"You're not the only District with accidents," Aggie challenges.
"I wasn't aware this was a competition between accident prone districts," I say.
"It's not. I'm just saying that we get hurt too."
"So does everyone," Dominicus puts in. "I'll be willing to bet you that every district has some work accidents every day."
Aggie grins. "Except District 3."
"Like they'd leave their inventions long enough to get hurt!" Dominicus laughs. He didn't clean his pants well enough; while Aggie's and my pants are still damp from seawater, they're not blood spattered anymore. I can see mutt blood up by his knees that he didn't bother to scrub away.
Something hoots off in the jungle, making us all start. Aggie relaxes after a moment, and crow laughs. "Look at us, all on edge!"
"After those mutts today? We should be," I say.
"They're way behind us now, Leader," she says, mock saluting me. "After your expert leading today, we won't be having any more problems, now will we, Dommie?"
Dominicus salutes me again, smirking. "All sunshine and rainbows from here on out, with Ocean Boy in the lead."
I want to tell them off, but that'll just make them keep at it for a few more hours. "We should get some sleep. I'll take first watch."
"No, I think I'll take it," Aggie says, sitting upright. She's challenging me, and I'm not going to let her win.
"You two can figure it out; I'm going to sleep," Dominicus says, scooping sand into a pile and patting it down to make a pillow. "Wake me up when something happens." With that, he rolls away from us, his back to the fire, and goes quiet.
With Dominicus pretending to sleep, it's just Aggie and me facing each other. I don't trust her enough to take the night shift; for all I know she'll kill me in my sleep, and then I'll never go home to Thalassa and my family.
"Looks like it's you and me, Ocean Boy," she says quietly, tilting her head to one side.
"You and me," I agree, and toss another piece of firewood into the blaze beside me.
For a while, everything's quiet except for the waves washing up behind me. It's soothing; it reminds me of home, of the Jewel, of everyone I've left behind. And even though this isn't my ocean, how much worse would I feel if I had been dropped into a desert, completely out of my element?
"What's it about the ocean that you like so much?" Aggie asks quietly, scooting over to sit next to me. I turn around so that my back is to the fire, and I'm looking out onto the black space where the ocean should be.
"It's home. I basically grew up in the ocean, so it's the most familiar place to me."
"You make it sound like you were born a fish," Aggie says.
"Or a shark," I reply, smiling. I am a shark; I go my own way, I lead when I have to, and I will take what I need to get back home. "What do you have in District 2 anyway?"
"Not much water," Aggie says, chewing one of her nails. "Mountains. Rock quarries. That's where my family works, out at one of the villages."
"You don't live with them?" Aggie shakes her head.
"I got picked back when I was a kid to train with Athena Whitesand. Won the 20th Games. The victors all live in the main village, with the reaping square and everything, so I've been living with a family there since I was eight."
"Does everyone do that?" I ask. We don't train like they do in 2, and nobody leaves their family either. 4's smaller than 2, though.
"If you don't live in the main village, you have to." Aggie shrugs. "Couple kids every few years that live in the main village are lucky and get picked. Makes things easier for them. Girl from the 36th is first one that comes to mind."
"Do you miss being at home?"
Aggie looks out at the dark, where the ocean is. She looks young right now; barely thirteen if I had to guess. It's her eyes, they're not angry or hard, and it occurs to me that I might be seeing the real Agrippina Crass for the first time. That maybe the rest of her act is just that: an act.
"No. I don't," she says finally, and I leave it at that.
"You got reaped too early, right?" I ask.
"Stupid Minerva Lampright," she snaps, and the hard edge comes back into her voice. "I'll kill her for it. When you're supposed to volunteer, you volunteer, and you don't back out of it. And if I don't kill her, then her mentor will. Ten years of training, you don't just throw that away."
"Kelpie was supposed to have someone volunteer for her too," I say. "They'll shun the girl pretty bad at home."
"Guess I have something in common with her," Aggie says, laughing slightly before turning serious again. "It's the honor of the thing, though. You're supposed to volunteer, so you do it. And even if someone else volunteers against you and wins, then you still did the honorable thing and tried."
"Honor's a big thing for you."
"It's everything."
"So you would have volunteered later if you had the chance."
Aggie breathes out hard and pushes her hair back from her face. "Of course I would have. I got picked to be trained; I would be an idiot to not volunteer after ten years of work."
"I was chosen to volunteer too," I say, quieter. The Capitol might know about the District 2s training before the Games, but we try to keep the way we choose our volunteers in 4 a secret. I'm not going to bring hell down on my District with some careless words. It's the way our world works, and who am I to question it?
"Well aren't we the same," Aggie says, but she smirks when she says it.
"What'll you do if you win?" I ask her. I'm going to win, I have to, but I want to hear what she has to say. It might make her more human to me, and harder to kill later, but I don't really care right now. Right now, it's just Aggie and me on an arena beach, thousands of miles away from home, and the real world doesn't exist for us.
"Kill Minerva," she says straight away. "And after that- I'll go live in Victor's Village. I'll get to pick from the next batch of kids to train up. Maybe I'll go back home and see my parents, I don't know." She shrugs. "I'll have brought honor to my District, and that's the most important thing for everyone at home."
"Hope that works out for you," I say. Aggie smiles again, dragging her fingers through the sand next to her.
"Yeah? You'd better watch out, Shore," she says, pushing my arm gently. For a moment more, I can see through to the real Aggie Crass, where her caring side is her true self; to a girl who actually can be kind. Then her eyes harden over again, and she grabs her knife up, holding it tight in her palm.
"Tomorrow we better find that District 3 girl."
"I can't believe both of them are still out there," I say, stretching my legs out in front of me.
"They won't be for long," Aggie says, and the cruelty in her eyes is back, returning her to the girl I first met in Training. "Just you wait until I get my hands on the girl."
"Don't expect me to watch the whole thing," I tell her, trying to make the conversation lighter.
"Doesn't matter if you're watching. Everyone else in Panem will be." Silence falls over both of us, and all I can hear is the waves washing onto the shore.
"Get some sleep, Ocean Boy," Aggie finally says, poking me in the side. Her use of the nickname tells me that our talk is over, and so is the truce. We're back to being tentative allies; allies where one will kill the other within three days. There's no room for friendship in here.
"You sleep; I'll stay on watch," I tell her, and she gives me a look that clearly says she thinks I'm an idiot.
"You're going to have to do some hardcore leading tomorrow. So go to bed."
"Aggie-" I start, but she cuts me off.
"I'm not going to kill you, you idiot. So go get some sleep."
I don't want to listen to her, but my eyelids are drooping shut. I'm going to have to sleep some time. "Fine. Wake me up in a few hours."
"Sure thing, Ocean Boy," she tells me.
As I lie down beside the fire, I stare directly into the flames. I wonder if everyone at home is sleeping, or if they're watching me right now. Am I making Da proud?
I hope the District thinks they did right by choosing me to come here. I can win, I know I can win; it's just a matter of eliminating the last tributes in the arena. That's all. They're all just fish, and I'm the shark, and the shark will always win against the fish.
Mags said I will be her champion, and I trust that she told me the truth. I'm not facing my mortality yet; I'm alive. I'm going to stay alive until I'm the last one standing. Me, and only me.
The only trouble is, the girl who's keeping watch a few steps away from me, thinks that about herself too.