Chapter 10: A Challenge

The Arena - Day 5

My eyes burst open as something cold touches my skin, and I sit up, realizing I fell asleep on the bin Bale and I had been sitting on. Removing the blanket he'd given me, I squint towards the mountains where gray clouds are rolling. Above our camp, thinner clouds are dusting us in snow.

I reach up to my cheek where the snowflakes that woke me have melted.

The clouds in the distance move quicker than should be possible. The Gamemakers are up to up something. "Guys!" I call loudly. Half of me is glad Porcelain didn't wake up before me and saw me asleep on guard.

I hear two tents unzip.

Bale and Porcelain both emerge, hurrying to my side.

"What's wron-" Bale freezes mid-sentence, seeing the storm clouds rushing towards us.

"The Gamemakers are bored I guess," Porcelain mutters, sounding nearly bored herself. But her sleepy eyes have a tinge of fear that I haven't seen on her before.

Bale immediately moves, gathering up supplies. "Hurry! Grab everything you can!"

I spin, grabbing a backpack and a few weapons. I follow Bale as he throws his collected items into an empty tent. I toss the backpack and knives in as well, turning. Porcelain has begun to collect supplies too.

Wind suddenly rushes by, kicking up the snow around our feet, throwing my messy braids behind me. The cold makes me squint. A blue tarp near me gets ripped up into the sky and blown away.

We move faster, collecting supplies and throwing them into the tent. The wind gets worse, howling in my ears. The snowflakes falling sting as they're whipped around.

"Wait! What about Luna?" I yell as I remember our ally.

But Bale and Porcelain don't hear me over the wind, collecting the last supplies they can manage. Porcelain loses her balance in the wind and falls, dropping the knapsack of iodine. She's up in a flash, staggering her way to the tent.

Bale turns, motioning to me urgently.

"But Luna!" I scream

I turn and take a step towards Luna's tent, the wind getting so fierce my eyes water, salty tears freezing to my lashes. And then a hand grabs my wrist, and I know it's Bale. He pulls me back towards the tent Porcelain goes into. With an apologetic look I can barely see as the snow whips up, he gently pushes me inside. I fall onto a pile of blankets, Porcelain moving to sit in the corner. Bale steps in and zips up the flap.

Outside, the wind roars, beating the side of the tent.

"Is this going to hold up?" Porcelain says loudly.

Neither Bale nor I answer.

The blizzard lasts through the day. And the night. A cannon goes off, just loud enough to hear. None of us look outside to see who it was. We sleep, huddled together to keep warm. We don't really speak. The blizzard lasts throughout the next day. I clean the weapons to keep busy and not go stir-crazy. The next night, I fall asleep and don't rest well, dreaming of being out on the ocean. Storm clouds cover the sunny sky and snow falls on the water, ice slicking the boat, piling up so high on the waves that when I fall off the boat I drown in snow.

The Arena - Day 7

A cannon goes off in the morning.

Half-asleep, I don't even think to get up. The nightmares have finally subsided. Instead I snuggle back down in the warm blankets. It's so nice and warm here. This whole Arena is so cold, but this is comforting.

Footsteps approach the tent. I peek an eye open as the flap unzips and Porcelain's face is visible. She sets her jaw. "It's Luna. She's dead."

I blink my eyes, my mind swirling. Did Porcelain kill her?

Bale puts a hand on my shoulder, his blue focused on Porcelain. "How?"

Porcelain shrugs, and walks away from our tent. Bale doesn't say a word as I rub my tired eyes, sitting up. We didn't have a chance to talk about what happened before the blizzard. Maybe it doesn't even matter. He kissed me but maybe it's just the Games getting to him. Well. They must be getting to me too because I kissed back.

I shake my head once. It's not the time to think about this.

Luna's dead.

"You should've let me go get her," I find myself telling Bale without looking at him.

I feel him glance at me. "You would've died in that blizzard if I had, Sea-Pearl."

He's right. We both know it. But I don't reply.

We both climb out of our tent silently and follow Porcelain as she leads us to the District 2 girl's tent. When we unzip the orange flap, I see Luna's stiff body, her eyes open, skin blue and swollen. Hypothermia. I stare at her corpse, my mind sluggishly trying to accept that she is dead.

It was just a couple days ago she was guarding camp with me.

Of course, the hovercraft can't pick her up in a tent, so we have to get her out. Shrinking back, I leave Bale and Porcelain to do the gruesome work.

Porcelain doesn't seem care, and drags her former ally's body from the small tent, dropping her carelessly in the snow a little ways from our camp. Bale goes and washes his hands with some fresh snow, but Porcelain does nothing.

"Better her than us," she says.

Bale nods warily as a hovercraft materializes in the sky. The claw falls down. For some reason, my heart yanks when I see one of Luna's arms sticking out from the metal teeth as she's lifted up. Luna had said she volunteered for her sick sister. Now her sister will die.

"Well," Porcelain says, hands on her hips. "I think we should try to find dry branches or something to make a fire with. We have no matches."

I nod, glancing around our camp. Everything is covered in a layer of snow. The orange tents look like igloos with only the front flaps visible. Crates that we left behind are now buried in mounds. The forest behind us has snow weighing down its tree branches, and even the river has a thin layer of ice over it. Without a fire we'll be unable to survive much longer. We can't all stay huddled together the whole Games.

"Bale and I will go one way, and you stay here to guard," I find myself suggesting.

Porcelain nods, tossing Bale a half-frozen spear sticking up from the ground. I don't go back to the tent to retrieve any weapon, my belt of throwing knives with me permanently now. Instead of walking through the valley, we go to the evergreen forest. Stepping inside, the bright sun is hidden. It doesn't even seem like there was a blizzard in the first place at all. Beneath the tree branches, everything is shady and tranquil. The scent of evergreens is crisp.

Bale picks at lower sticks on the trees, the ones untouched by snow. "So."

"So," I respond quietly, getting a knife from my belt.

He fiddles with some of the strange evergreen leaves, seeming just curious about the trees we don't have in District 4. "Do you know who's left?"

I nod, thinking. "Porcelain, Elegance, you, me, the girl from Six, the boy from Seven, the pair from Nine, and the girl from Ten. Oh." The cannon shot we all barely heard comes to mind. "One of them is actually dead. Not sure who, though. But... that's eight people left."

He smiles, pulling some branches from a tree. "Do you what that means? The interviews. The ones they do for the final eight Tributes. They're probably going to interview our families right now."

I choke when I think of my family. My eleven siblings, and my poor mother. If I could do this all over again, would I volunteer?

I wasn't chosen for the Games. I could've stayed in my District. Now, I'm freezing and surrounded by killers. And I chose this. "These Games are sick."

Bale laughs. How can he even seem remotely happy? "I agree. Cruel and cold. Our Hunger Games."

I don't smile, but adjust my coat mindlessly. "I wish they were over. I want to go home."

"Only one person will," he says softly.

My breath catches. Is he saying that he's going to kill me? I try to analyze the sound of his voice, thinking over his words carefully. Why would he, exactly? Save my life, then murder me? What sense does that make? I don't believe it. If I have anyone to be the least threatened by here, it's Bale.

"Why did you volunteer?" I blurt. He pauses for a moment, and then continues walking.

"I had to," he responds calmly. "My parents have always expected me to. My teacher as well. It's just something I knew was expected of me. They want a Victor in the family. This year, they said that they would disown me if I didn't. I'd waited too long. So, I did."

I bite my lip, gingerly running the palm of my glove along my knife's edge. "I'm sorry..."

He shrugs. "Me too... But there's a silver lining, at least."

I cock my head. "What's that?"

He grins, a look that's becoming more and more familiar. "I got to meet you. If I hadn't volunteered, I wouldn't know who you are. If I have to be stuck here in this Arena, at least my District partner is someone I like."

I give a laugh I hope sounds sarcastic but it just sounds hollow. "Well if that isn't the most cliché thing I've heard in awhile."

He shrugs, smiling. His smile falls as bit and he turns to me. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?"

"I should've asked to kiss you," he replies. "So I'm sorry."

Through the cold wind, I can feel the pink spread across my pale cheeks. "I'm not," I murmur.

He smiles a bit again.

"It was my first kiss," I say quietly, watching him.

He lifts his eyebrows. "Really?"

I nod, not sure what to say. We stand there for a moment awkwardly, the wind going through the trees around us. "So."

"So."

"We need kindling," I say, stepping into a fresh spot of snow and hunting for the branches. Bale moves away too, a few branches snapping. After a few moments, I glance over, out of curiosity. I'm embarrassed to find Bale peeking over at me.

"Um, I just needed to give you this," I say, picking up a branch and stepping over to him. I know it's stupid, but I'm too embarrassed to be caught looking at him to care. I hand the branch to him, adding it to the small pile accumulating in his arms.

"Thanks."

"No problem."

We both stand there again. I wonder how much this is going to happen. Bale stares down at me. He leans in, and the warmth flares up again. My fingertips feel as if they're glowing, electricity springing off. I close my eyes, and for a moment let myself drift off into another world where the Arena doesn't exist.

Until, that is, a scream pierces the frosty air. My eyes fly open, my face two inches from Bale's. His own ocean-colored eyes glance from side to side, both of us frozen.

Curses sound, someone yelling expletives in a voice I could recognize anywhere.

It's Porcelain.

She screams again. Bale drops all the kindling and we take off sprinting - or as much as one can in the deep snow here. My heart races, my mind wondering what could be happening, a knife gripped tightly in my gloved fingers. But in the back of my mind, a voice whines. Why couldn't it have waited a few seconds longer? Just a few seconds? I'm almost angry at Porcelain for interrupting. Then I remember where I am.

This is not a place to feel something for anyone. It's a place to survive and kill. I'm in the Hunger Games. In the Arena.

Bale hurtles through the forest and I sprint faster than I knew I could run. A thought flashes through my head: why are we saving her? She tried to kill me.

Bale reaches the edge of the forest first, glancing back once to make sure I'm still behind, and then runs out of the woods. I follow, swatting away low-hanging evergreen branches, snow from the trees dripping into my hair and down my neck.

When I run through the final trees and camp comes into view, I gasp. Porcelain is single-handedly fighting off Elegance and the girl from District 9. Porcelain's sword - the replacement for the one she lost to District 9 days ago - is six feet away, on a little patch of ice. In her hands are two daggers now, her thigh cut and bleeding.

The snow around her is slightly pink in spots from the wound. Well, her and the girl from 9 are both injured. I notice the large cut on District 9's face and the anger in her blue eyes. Her brown hair flutters over her cheeks, covering the additional gash near her neck.

Elegance turns, spotting us, holding his mace. From the looks of it, Maxx's blood has been cleaned off it. But Maxx's blood is still splashed across his jacket and pants in rusty stains.

The girl from 9 notices us a second later. She raises her sword as if in a challenge. Come and get us.

And we do.