Chapter 54- Astrid Clearwater
The cannon shatters the brief silence, sending another flock of screeching birds skywards.
"That makes two," I say, holding onto a tree and looking up, watching the last of the brightly colored feathers disappear up and through the treetops.
"So we're down to six?" Elowyn asks uncertainly. I nod. Six left and five to go. Including my ally. "What now?"
"I think that camp must have been abandoned," I say, now that we're distanced from it. Somebody camped there, and if they left their weapon behind, they died there. Just another cannon. "We should keep moving."
"Any idea where we're headed?" Elowyn pushes her hair behind her ears; it's too matted to braid now. Not that mine is any better; I've kept it in its salt-stiff braid for days now. If I thought I looked queer while we were at the Cornucopia, I must look a thousand times worse today.
It doesn't matter. I'm going to win these Games, tangled hair or not, and the Capitol can repair all the damage they've done to me when I return.
"Let the others fight it out; with two deaths today, and the arena flooding, we're not the biggest targets in the arena." Two deaths, six people left; if I had to guess, I would say that the Career alliance is splintering, and they'll kill each other by the end of the day.
I can fight one Career, not three, so they better kill each other.
"We need water and food," Elowyn points out.
Food I can live without finding; the Games will be over by tomorrow anyway. But she's right about the water. The heat in this jungle is suffocating, and if I could just drink the moisture in the air, I would never need to drink again. But I can't, and I do, so where are Beetee and the District 7s when we need them?
"I'm not hunting around for them, not when we're so close together."
"We need water, though."
I rub my forehead. "We do. But I'm not dying for it."
Elowyn looks at me for a long moment, and something flickers behind her eyes, some strange emotion that I saw this morning too; a flickering that I can't quite place before it fades, replaced by the dizzy look she's worn all day.
"Let's make camp somewhere they can't find us," I say after a few moments of silence.
"Up high then," she says.
"Where are you suggesting?"
"A tree would be perfect," she continues. "They can't see us, and if the water rises again, we'll be safe."
I don't know how to climb trees; I'm a city girl not a District 7 girl, and besides I doubt my leg is in good enough condition to scale a tree. On the other hand, Elowyn is from District 7, and she might be right.
"Fine. You pick a tree."
Elowyn nods, blinking her eyes like Circuit did back in Training, then starts off, weaving back and forth. If she's tired, she'll be easier to kill when the time comes, but if we run into the Careers first, I'd rather she be rested. I know she's thinking about me dying too, because the alliance is going to break at some point. So, as I follow my ally, this girl I met two weeks ago and has saved my life several times since, I keep my hand on my axe.
She looks at several trees, examining them for some quality that means nothing to me, before running her fingers over a rough mahogany red tree. The tiredness in her eyes clears for a moment as she turns to me, and I know that seeing the trees, knowing the trees, is helping her more in this moment than any amount of sleep could.
"This one. This one is right," she says, and for just that second she sounds like the Elowyn I met in Training; the one that I didn't know was gone until she came back. The arena's changed us, hasn't it? It's changed us all into something we weren't before, and I can only hope that it's changed me into a victor.
I gesture at the tree and watch the old Elowyn fade away again, replaced by this tired and worn girl in front of me. "After you."
Before I came here, I'd never seen a tree before; there's nothing like this in District 3. Just buildings and slums and factories, and sometimes somebody has a tiny garden in their window with seeds they traded for. But there's nothing like this arena there. That's what I think about as I watch Elowyn climb up the tree, then copy her movements; as my leg shakes under me and the rough bark scrapes my hands, until we're both sitting on thick branches facing each other, and surrounded by brilliantly green leaves.
Elowyn settles herself in a fork between two branches and leans against the thick trunk, while I perch a little more precariously over leaves and the ground below. As soon as she's steady, her eyes drift shut, then fly open again, startled.
"You can sleep. I'll keep watch," I say, moving myself so I'm straddling my branch; it might be safer.
"No, I'm fine," Elowyn says, pushing herself to sit up, but her eyes have that dazed and tired look in them that reminds me of someone, but I don't know who.
"Just go to sleep, Elowyn. The Games aren't going to end without you."
"And what if the others come and I'm asleep?"
"I'll wake you up. Go to bed and I'll wake you up in a few hours."
Elowyn hesitates, then nods, letting herself fall back against the trunk. I watch her breathing, watch it change until I know she's asleep.
I'm effectively alone.
Carefully, I pull down some hanging vines near me and tie both my backpack and myself to the branch I'm sitting on, then settle my axe handle up in my partially opened pack. I don't need it now, but I will, and soon. How soon, I don't know.
Once I'm satisfied that I'm not going to fall off and die, I pull my braid over my shoulder and undo it; my hair feels as though it'll break if I pull on it too hard, and crackles when I get another portion of it unbraided.
I don't like District 3 at the best of times, but I'm satisfied that we're nowhere near saltwater. When I get myself out of here, I'll never have to see another body of water again, and that's enough incentive to win. Of course, if I die tonight or tomorrow, I won't see water again either, but I want to go home. I want to prove that I could do it, to everyone.
I know Beetee in my dream wasn't real, but the idea that he's chosen Circuit has been nagging at me since I woke up this morning on the beach. Why Circuit and not me?
Finally, I get my hair free from its braid, letting it hang around my shoulders in crunchy waves for a moment before I start running my fingers through it, trying to comb out the worst of the tangles. I looked more presentable in my reaping clothes than I do here.
The reaping. That one slip of paper that took me away and dropped me here to kill and die; just one chance in a whole bowl of names. And remembering the morning of the reaping brings me back to our leaking apartment and braiding my mother's hair.
That's who Elowyn reminded me of. My mother; that dazed and tired look she wore after my stepfather Saul wandered on the tracks dead drunk and was hit. When she had to take washing in and would stay up past when Axel and I were asleep, finishing it every night. When she had to endure the looks of our neighbours, judging and unfriendly.
"See that woman? Involved with a Peacekeeper she was, then married a drunk. Easy with no taste, that's what she is."
I heard all that and more. My mother, who deserves any happiness she can get, listened to that too; I know she did. And maybe she was involved with a Peacekeeper; maybe she did love him, and maybe he is my father, whoever he is or was, but she deserved whatever happiness it brought her. Because, as much as I know she loves me too, I've brought her nothing but pain.
So I'll win. I'll prove to District 3 and the whole of Panem that I'm not worthless, that my family isn't worthless and full of drunkards and criminals. I'll be the first female victor of District 3, and if they remember me for nothing else, they'll remember me for that, red hair and green eyes too.
And if Beetee's watching me now, he should know that I'm the one who's leaving this arena alive. Not the Careers. Not Elowyn. And not Circuit either. Me.
I'm going to win for my family, to get Mama and Axel out of that apartment, to get Axel food to eat and medicine when he gets sick. And I'm going to win to prove a point; that District 3 girls aren't all useless and weak. Forty District 3 girls have died in their arenas. I'm going to be the first to make it out of mine alive.
Elowyn breathes deeper and lets out a sigh; the sudden sound makes my head whip around to look at her. Elowyn, my ally. She's saved my life in this arena more times than I would like her to have, and I have no way of paying her back for it, except with a quick and painless death.
Someplace, somewhere else, we would have been friends, not just allies. But we're here now, and only one of the two of us is leaving this arena alive. And I'm sorry for it. I'm sorry she has to die, and if I could, I would let her leave right now and go home to her family.
I'm not sorry enough for me to die instead, though. I might be winning the crown for my family, but I'm winning it for myself too. Despite everything that's happened, and no matter how many allies I've lost, I don't want to die in this jungle.
They can hate me, ignore me, curse my name for a hundred years.
I still don't want to die.