Lucy's eyes fluttered open to the muted murmur of voices, punctuated by the occasional clatter of stone or dink of metal, filtering so slowly into her senses that for a moment she almost thought she was back at home, waking to the bustle of the family below the attic.
But then she shifted, squinted, and peeled her cheek from Caspian's jacket where she'd fallen asleep after passing the watch off to him, and her memory trickled back as she blinked blearily around the cavern.
Jill sat a few yards away, sizing up a small object between her fingers and tossing it at the wall, clattering as it bounced off and skittered over the floor.
"Not even close," murmured Edmund, seated across from her, poised with a pebble in his own hand. He launched it loosely toward the same wall, and it bounced off, too.
A small metallic figure skittered away.
"You're one to talk," said Jill, and he pursed his lips.
Lucy blinked, straightening suddenly up from the wall. "You're not dead," she blurted, in what was probably not the most tactful moment of her life.
Caspian stirred at her movement.
Edmund glanced over his shoulder, tousled black hair overshadowing his eyes. "Your skills of observation never cease to astound me."
His skin no longer glistened with sweat, only the same grimy sheen as the rest of them. His fever must have broken in the night, and to already be sitting up… forget an antibiotic, that must have been some cocktail of Capitol miracle drugs.
Even his voice sounded clearer, and the water bottle sat a little away from Jill, now nearly empty.
Caspian rubbed his eyes and shifted beside Lucy, glancing around but offering no comment on the scene.
"Sleep alright?" she asked.
He grunted something incoherent, and that about summed it up.
Lucy's own back ached as she moved away from the wall and Caspian stood to stretch his legs, black spots creeping into her vision, head fuzzy, not quite as bad as yesterday.
Jill handed them the water bottle and they finished it off easily, packing it into the bag along with the food they'd moved into one of the smaller containers. Caspian and Lucy split a grain and nut bar, but all the while, she couldn't keep her eyes off Edmund.
"Do you think you can walk?" she asked, unable to fathom how he was even still breathing, let alone… normal. Or at least, normal for Edmund.
"Well, I made it all the way up here, didn't I? I'm not stopping now."
She nodded slowly, though that didn't really answer any of her questions.
He barely met her eyes, struggling to his feet and steadying himself against the wall as she shouldered her bag and at last they got back on the move.
Caspian said nothing as he took the lead through the new tunnel at the back of the mountaintop cavern, and for a while Lucy could only focus on putting one foot in front of the other as her sore calf muscles pulled and strained in protest after yesterday's long climb.
Edmund trailed at the back, chucking small stones at the scuttling shadows that followed them, and Jill copied him.
"Three," she muttered when her stone bounced off metal.
Edmund's next shot struck a red glint on the ceiling, and the sharp scuttle of pincers took it quickly out of sight.
"Twelve."
"Show off," hissed Jill.
The clicking shadows bobbed all around them now, more than Lucy had ever seen in one place. Perhaps she hadn't been paying attention before. Or perhaps they really had become that much more interesting to the outside world, cameras crowding in to capture every angle just like they had at the train station.
Their little group must be quite the spectacle now; the star-crossed orphans, a girl carrying the soul of a dead boy, and a walking corpse the Capitol had single-handedly brought back to life overnight.
How could they not be watching?
A flash of reflective red scurried up the wall to Lucy's right and she glanced over at it.
"How did you figure out they were cameras?" she asked, voice echoing hollow down the passage. "That red stuff, what did you call it? Scoto…ro…?"
"Scotopic lens," Edmund corrected, slightly breathless. "Capitol tech. You know, night vision?"
Lucy shook her head.
"Well, I suppose you wouldn't. But it's obvious enough once you've seen it up close. We install night vision cameras on hovercraft."
Of course. District Six was transportation, it made sense he would know that kind of thing. They built the trains that traveled the whole country.
Lucy glanced back at Edmund, but again he avoided her eyes.
And so they walked, and walked, and any further attempt at conversation died before it began as the magnetic force of exhaustion dragged them down, and the minutes lengthened into hours.
The occasional clatter of rock and muttered tallies slowed, and then stopped, and Lucy thought they would need to rest before someone passed out.
"Is it just me," panted Jill before she could voice this concern, "or is the light different here?"
Caspian glanced back and then glanced around, and Lucy blinked.
Was it different?
"Dimmer, I think," said Edmund, supporting himself against the wall but still managing to keep up. Barely.
And as they moved further, his theory rang true, the greenish ghost-glow that had haunted their steps for what felt like years slowly fading into a dull grey, their path darkening ahead.
"It hasn't been this dark since…"
"The beginning," finished Caspian, glancing back at her, and she could only just make out the glint of his eyes from his silhouette.
Her steps quickened.
Something almost akin to hope leapt painfully into her chest, aching deeper and deeper with every step until it nearly suffocated her, and at last, impossibly, the tunnel up ahead turned paler.
They rounded a bend and Lucy's heart hammered so loud the others must have heard it, and all at once a splash of light dazzled her eyes, pouring in from another corridor, and Caspian broke into a sprint.
Lucy followed, energy surging into her veins as she skidded around the next corner into brilliant, blinding daylight.
She gave a squeak of a cheer and nearly collapsed in relief.
Jill gasped and sighed behind her, and Caspian slammed into the wall at the end of the tunnel and boosted himself up to the jagged hole cut several feet above the ground, flinging one leg over the edge and hauling himself up beyond the light.
He disappeared for a second and reappeared a moment later, silhouetted in knife-sharp whiteness as Lucy reached the wall and blinked up at him.
"It's okay," he gasped, "it's safe, come on."
Lucy grasped his outstretched hand and pulled herself up, fingers catching hold of the sharp ridge as she scrambled out onto the piercing raw surface world.
Caspian reached down for Jill next, and Lucy clambered away from the opening, hands pressing into soft grass, an earthy hill running down away from the stone, brilliant green flooding in from every direction.
Jill came blinking out into the sunlight, face grubby and hair matted, and at last Caspian took Edmund's pale hand and the boy hauled himself out with a stifled grunt, clutching the soil as Caspian turned around, and Lucy fully took in their surroundings.
A green clearing sprawled out around them, rich and lush and utterly unlike any other part of the arena she'd yet seen, walled in by thick trees, summer singing through the air and rustling in overhanging branches, and above it all, a crisp, clear, babbling rush registered with the glitter of sunlight on a rippling pool, fed by a crystal stream pouring down from above the stony hill they'd just climbed out of.
Lucy moved before she could think.
Her knees struck the damp earth at the pool's edge and she plunged her hands into the icy water, fresh and cool and heavenly, cupping handfuls of it and gulping it down.
Caspian crashed at her side, splashing his face and then shedding his jacket and kicking off his boots and splashing fully into the water, socks and all, ducking beneath its surface and coming back up to whip the hair out of his face, panting, splashing himself again and drinking.
Lucy tugged off her own boots and dumped the bag with her jacket, slipping into the achingly cool water, soaking it in, running it through her hair, smooth riverbed gliding beneath her feet, the gentle current washing clean her grimy skin, rippling through the fabric of her tunic.
They looked at each other and Caspian's face split into a grin, a laugh breaking from his throat just as Jill splashed into the water behind them, and Lucy smiled, confused.
"What are you laughing at?"
"I don't know," he gasped, and Lucy grinned and splashed him.
He ducked and retaliated, a sharp spray striking her square in the face, and she gasped in melodramatic shock as the battle turned into a war.
One small tidal wave clapped over Jill, who spun and shot her own wave right back, and Caspian sent water after both of them, the girls shrieking with giggles as Lucy dove behind Jill and clambered up onto shore.
Caspian caught her by the waist before she could escape, yanking her back and dunking her underwater in the middle of the pool, where she came up squealing, laughing, floundering to catch onto him.
"Aren't we making too much noise?" asked Jill suddenly. "What if someone's nearby?"
Lucy wiped her eyes, still laughing and clinging to Caspian's sleeve to steady herself, the thrill of freedom rushing through her blood as if they'd come up into heaven. "Oh, I don't care."
"It hardly matters," cut in Edmund from the other side of the pool, soaking wet and perched on the edge, running a hand through dripping hair. "There are four of us, at any rate."
They all glanced at him, bloodstained shirt running pink into the water, exhaustion washing the haughty pride from his posture, loose dark hair falling over his cheekbones as he glanced through it with dark eyes, and Lucy sighed as his words sank in.
Four of us.
She glanced at Caspian, and he glanced back, reading her eyes for a moment.
"It would seem there are."
She smiled.
The next several minutes were filled with splashing and rushing as they drenched themselves and each other, washing every last speck of grime from their skin and their clothes, and no one seemed to be in any great hurry to get out after that.
They drank, and swam, and soaked, and Lucy only climbed out after her fingers began to turn pruney, weighed down by soaked clothes that clung to her body as she squeezed the water from her hair, thick and tangled but finally clean, and the hot sun felt good on her back.
Even through the exhaustion, she felt almost invincible now.
She glanced down at Caspian, resting against the edge of the pool and tilting his head up so that golden sunlight splashed across his face, lashes sparkling with water droplets, loose hair dripping, and she thought for a moment that this was where he belonged, here beneath the willow trees with sunlight in his hair and springwater trickling down his collarbones.
"Shouldn't we do something about food?" she asked, and his eyes fluttered open.
For a moment he said nothing, gazing up at her as if she were part of the scenery, and then he blinked, but before he could speak, Edmund cut in.
"We should probably scout somewhere else to camp, too, I'm not too keen on sleeping with my back to that hole."
Lucy glanced at the rocky hillside, broken by the crumbling black pit they'd just crawled out from, and she had to agree.
Already the tunnels felt like a strange, hellish lifetime of their own.
"Alright," said Caspian, hauling himself out of the water onto dry ground, "let's go, then."
Jill climbed out of the pool and Edmund stood, all pulling their boots back onto soggy feet but carrying their jackets, filling their water bottles in the babbling pool and taking one last drink before setting off into the woods.
It took only a few minutes to cross a patch of berry bushes they happily snacked on, and eventually they found another clearing much deeper into the trees, but still a reasonable walking distance from the stream.
Jill shimmied out of her soaking wet pants and cast them over a low hanging branch to dry, her tunic now untucked and hanging a good few inches over her pale thighs, no worse than some of the shortest skirts Anne Fatherstone got away with at school.
Edmund peeled his shirt off and tossed it over the same branch, gingerly untaping the now-soaked bandage from his side to reveal the gash across his midsection, and Lucy raised her eyebrows.
The flushed red inflammation had vanished completely, leaving only a jagged tear through smooth, pale flesh, scabbing over as if it had been healing for days.
"What on earth did they put in that stuff?" she muttered, and he glanced at her.
"They build an arena the size of a small country and this is what impresses you?"
She opened her mouth to argue, but shut it again, and conceded with a shrug.
He lowered himself gingerly to the ground. "Let me have it again."
She shed her bag and pulled the cylinder out, tossed it to him, then pulled out the arrow and her twine. "Fancy making some traps?" she asked Jill, twirling the arrow in her fingers, and the girl clapped her hands.
"Oh, yes, let's!"
They struck out into the forest, purpose lending energy to Lucy's steps, refreshed even as her soggy clothes clung to her starved frame, already drying in the warm air.
For the first time in the arena, she truly relaxed. It may have been foolish, but confidence bubbled up inside her chest, and it seemed if they could get out of those caves, they could do anything.
Both girls set to collecting twigs and snapping small branches, and as they worked, Jill glanced back in the direction they'd come from.
"You trust Edmund?"
Lucy met her soft brown eyes, splashed gold in the light, just like that first day they'd traipsed through the woods together, when it had been Eustace waiting for them back at camp, and not Caspian and the volatile District Six boy.
"I trust him to take care of himself."
Jill nodded.
Edmund would be dead by now without their help, and he knew that. If Digory and Polly were willing to take on his sponsors just for the sake of publicity, it seemed they all needed each other, in some strange way.
"Did you know that would happen?" asked Jill. "Back at the cathedral?"
Lucy shrugged, and sobered, stomach sinking at the memory of the confrontation at the edge of the destroyed chasm. "Maybe. I don't know."
Truthfully, she hadn't. She'd only seen a boy bracing for his life and couldn't keep her big mouth shut. But it hadn't worked out too badly, so far.
Against all odds.
She pushed the thought away, but just as quickly, another crashed down in its place.
"If you hadn't been hunting Caspian in the first place, Scrubb might still be alive right now!"
Caspian hadn't been the only one Lucy had failed to take into account with her rash actions.
They'd barely even mentioned Eustace since it all happened, the pressure of his absence building the longer it remained unspoken.
At last, Lucy managed "Are you okay?"
A flash of pain snapped so viscerally through Jill's golden eyes that Lucy almost flinched, raw and real and immediate, glinting as if with the ghost of tears and yet with an unyielding strength, so unlike the babyish pout Lucy had once known that she almost didn't recognize the girl in front of her.
"Yeah," breathed Jill, and averted her eyes, but something heavy and unfinished hung in her tone. "I…" She swallowed, and a little wry smile tugged at her lips as if she were holding back tears. "I just know it should have been me, you know? After everything, it should have been me…"
Lucy reached out and took her hand, interlocking their pale, calloused fingers, and Jill's shining eyes flickered back up to meet hers.
"He sacrificed so much for us, and I still didn't realize… I wish I'd known what he… how much he was willing to…" She shook her head. "I misjudged him, so badly, all this time, and I only wish I'd known… I had a real friend."
Lucy forced a small smile and squeezed her hand. "Well, now you've had at least two."
Jill sighed, and gave a sad smile in return. "You be careful, Lu. This isn't exactly the best place for friends."
Something flipped in Lucy's stomach.
"I am glad you're here, though. I don't know what I'd do alone. I still want to do something. Scrubb didn't want to go down without a fight, and I'm not giving that up, not for anything."
Her resolve settled in the sturdy poise of her shoulders, and again she looked, to Lucy, almost like a stranger.
"What if you win?" asked Lucy. "You talk like you've no other choice but to die here."
Jill breathed a weak smirk. "I… don't think I could ever really leave the arena. Not now. Not without… Winning was never the goal, I guess. He just didn't want the people who sent us here to be right. He didn't want to be pathetic."
Lucy nodded. She understood that determination, to prove wrong Anne's cruel laughter, to erase the smirks the career girls threw her way. That had been her goal from the beginning, too.
"We can prove them wrong together," she said, ignoring the faint churning in her gut. "And I think Eustace Scrubb was about as far from pathetic as it's possible to be. So are you, as far as I'm concerned."
Jill smiled almost sheepishly, cheeks turning pink as she scratched her head to hide her face. When she looked back up, she said "Maybe you could win."
"Me?"
"Yeah, why not? You've made it this far."
"Well, so have you."
"Only because you helped me."
Lucy shook her head, brushing the argument aside. "There are still a dozen other tributes out here."
Jill fell silent for a moment. Then she cocked her head. "How do you know?"
"What?"
"I mean… we were down in the caves for an awfully long time. Who knows how many cannons we might have missed?"
Lucy blinked. "I hadn't thought of that."
How many tributes were still alive? Suddenly she didn't fancy not knowing.
"I was thinking, maybe that's why we didn't meet anything worse than Edmund down there. Something else must have been entertaining enough out here."
It all clicked in Lucy's head, and she drew a short breath. She'd been positive they would meet something awful down there, too, but if Jill was right, perhaps the gamemakers' attention had been drawn elsewhere. "You're brilliant, you know that?"
Jill scoffed, but grinned. "It's only logical."
Lucy grinned, too, and then remembered what they were supposed to be doing and stooped to pick up another stick, the two of them spreading out to set up their traps, and then rejoining to scour the area for any other kind of food.
By the time they set out back to camp, they'd spent almost three hours stripping bushes of berries and digging up starchy roots that Lucy recognized from her time in training.
Jill proved an excellent scavenger, and the moment she knew what she was looking for she could find whole patches of roots in loose soil, as well as a stretch of tree-nuts they thought they might need to roast before eating, but which Lucy stuffed her pockets with anyway.
Shadows lengthened and afternoon waxed as they returned at last to their clearing, now well shaded under thick trees, and Lucy's clothes had thoroughly dried.
Jill pulled her pants back on as Lucy packed their scavenged findings away into her bag, and the girls flopped over onto the ground, resting their aching joints, the turf practically a Capitol mattress after days of unrelenting cave stone.
Eventually Edmund made his way back into the clearing, too.
"Where've you been?" asked Lucy.
"Scouting up the hill. The trees don't go too much further in that direction, I think the forest is pretty small. No sign of anyone else around."
She watched as he dropped cross-legged to the ground, as if he'd never burned up under her touch, as if his eyes had never glazed over with such a dangerous, unfocused distance. Clean hair curled behind his ears, fluffy and soft, and a thick corded necklace hung against his pale chest, each and every rib still showing beneath his skin, but the lean muscle flexed in his arms, too, and it seemed he had regained a great deal of strength even since that morning.
Caspian came back through the trees from the other direction, setting down an old sponsor container filled with freshly picked berries, and flopped down beside Lucy, his hand freshly bound with clean white bandages, the edges of his long, scabbed cut peeking out beneath it.
Lucy rolled onto her stomach to grab a handful of wild raspberries.
"Where do you suppose we are?" she asked after they'd all settled in and eaten, propping her head on Jill's leg. "I mean, we could be anywhere by now, right?"
"The tunnels led mostly south," said Edmund, "And a little west, I think." He pulled something silver out of his pants pocket and popped it open to reveal a compass.
Caspian sat up straighter. "You've had that the whole time?"
Edmund smirked. "You never asked."
"I'm not sure you quite grasp the concept of an alliance," said Jill. "And put a shirt on, it's dry now."
"Why? Somebody around here's gotta earn the sponsors."
Jill scoffed in disgust. "Oh, boys." She stood up, inadvertently dislodging Lucy from her lap, and snatched his shirt from the branch, tossing it over him.
He shot her a dry smile and pulled it on, but even through his sarcasm he seemed to be almost… in a good mood? Was that even possible? "It's him they really want to see, anyway," he drawled, motioning toward Caspian, who instantly twirled his knife over his shoulder.
"Touch me and I kill you."
Edmund rolled his eyes. "Real team player, that one."
Jill plopped back down, and Lucy glanced around at their little group.
Team player.
It struck her suddenly that they might really be popular. At least, it certainly seemed like Edmund had fans, if he'd attracted enough money to send that miracle drug, and how would he ever have managed that without someone to talk to?
How would any of them have put on a show without anyone else around?
She'd seen the Capitol's madness for their favorite tributes, she'd seen fundraising parties in Capitol flats on TV, fans parading around with their tribute's hairstyle or repeating some memorable line from the interviews or the arena, plastering their faces across the city to raise support, even if it would be forgotten in a week's time.
She'd even known the kids back home to gossip about them, especially the most attractive male tributes, which in itself was often a topic of debate.
Was anyone at school watching them right now? The thought gave her a strange and wild feeling, almost like the thrill of the Opening Ceremony, but now real, grounded in the knowledge that she'd survived a full week in the arena. Likely a week longer than anyone had expected.
"We've gotta be in the southern half of the arena by now," said Lucy, as no one had yet answered her first question, "At least if the distance is the same lengthwise as it is across. Eustace figured it was about sixty miles, give or take. The entrance to the caves wasn't too far from the eastern edge."
"Edge?" asked Caspian, "You saw the edge?"
Lucy nodded. "It was an illusion, I think, a cliff and then nothing but sky. And a force field. We couldn't have been more than a mile from it when you met us."
"Pity," said Caspian, "I would have liked to see that. I wonder if it's the same on the south side."
"We're not here for sightseeing," said Edmund. "I'm more interested to know where everybody else is. You'd think if they found this bit of real estate they wouldn't be too keen on leaving in a hurry, what with the state of the rest of the place. Unless there's somewhere better."
"Or they just haven't found it," said Jill, "Maybe it's kind of a hidden oasis."
"Who else is left?" asked Lucy, "Assuming everyone still is."
"The careers," said Caspian. "I've already forgotten the rest. Oh, except for Emeth. Not sure which way he went."
"Aravis and Lasaraleen went south from the cornucopia," said Lucy, the memory of the two girls disappearing over the hill away from the bloodbath flashing back into her head for the first time since it had happened. "They might be around here somewhere."
"That would be my luck," muttered Edmund.
"Oh, and the Sevens," said Jill. "I don't remember their names."
"Peridan and Lilliandil," Lucy filled in, and Jill nodded.
Caspian counted on his fingers. "So… those five, plus four of us… that leaves six."
"The careers are six," said Edmund, "Now that they're down two, so that's everyone."
"Down two?" asked Jill. "Edith and—?"
"Me, obviously."
She scoffed. "I hardly think that counts."
He rolled his eyes. "Who killed the old hag, anyway? Edith, I mean?"
Caspian raised his hand, leaning casually back against the trunk of a thick tree.
Edmund smirked faintly to himself.
"Does that make Peter the leader, now?" asked Caspian.
Edmund flopped onto his back with an arm behind his head. "He'd probably say so if you asked him, but if you want power, you're looking for Susan. That's what Rhince would tell you, anyway, and he's the one I tried to keep away from."
"Who?"
"District Four," said Lucy.
"You know him," said Edmund, "the one Susan's always draping herself over and whispering to? He does whatever she wants, but I think he'd stab her in the back as soon as snog her. I wonder if Rabadash is still preening for her, too."
Lucy breathed out and glanced at Caspian. "You really dodged a bullet with that lot."
Edmund glanced between them. "Wait, they offered?"
Caspian hummed to the affirmative, and Edmund scoffed, shaking his head.
"So that's why Peter hates you so much. Gosh, I had to swear I'd kill you just to get a sword off him."
They all looked at him, and Lucy raised an eyebrow.
"Not all of us get invited, okay? It's not like killing you gets me anywhere now."
"Thanks," said Caspian.
The afternoon turned golden as they relaxed in their clearing, deepening hours later to a tangerine orange color that seeped through the canopy overhead and edged each individual leaf as if it were lit by flame.
"I can take the first watch," said Jill as the light faded and dusk crept in at last, "I'm not tired yet."
Lucy nodded. "Wake me next."
"What about me?" asked Edmund.
"Absolutely not," said Caspian.
"What do you think I'm gonna do?"
"I'm really not in the mood to find out, honestly."
Edmund rolled his eyes, but made no complaint about a full night's sleep, and Lucy curled up at the foot of a tree on the springy turf as the shadows lengthened. Even the odd nightly noises couldn't bother her now.
She woke some time later to Jill's soft touch, and sat up groggily to lean against the rough trunk of her tree, the ache of the past several days still lingering in her limbs as Jill nestled down a few yards away.
Lucy watched for a while as her breaths deepened and slowed, and eventually she dug into her pack and pulled out a handful of the nuts they'd roasted on a small fire earlier, nibbling slowly to pass the time.
Her eyes wandered to Caspian, asleep on his back with an arm over his eyes.
You be careful, Lu. This isn't exactly the best place for friends.
Something uneasy settled inside her, but it did not take hold quite like it otherwise might have, the night too calm, the relief still too fresh, the future as bright as it could reasonably be expected to look in such a place.
Of course nothing lasted here, of course it would all end, sooner or later, but it hardly seemed fair to think about that now, when everything at last had begun to look up.
And why not enjoy herself if this was how she had to end?
Maybe you could win.
Her stomach plunged, feverish chills flushing over her body.
No, she couldn't think about that, she couldn't afford the luxury of thinking more than one step ahead.
Dangerous, exotic visions of a future under skyscraper skylines danced through her mind for one single instant, and she shook her head to dispel them.
Moonlight played over the slow rise and fall of Caspian's chest, hours dwindling into a cool, breezy silence, until pale grey pre-dawn light crept over the folds of his tunic and dewdrops glittered in the shallow underbrush, ensnaring his body as if in gossamer thread.
Caspian stirred, shifting an arm and lifting the other to run both hands over his face, eyes shining silver as he blinked up into the pale haze clinging to the canopy, and lifted his head to look around the campsite.
He sat up when he spotted her, moving stiffly to pick himself off the ground and step closer to crouch beside her tree, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, hair mussed and falling at odd angles over his face. "Why didn't you wake me?" he rasped.
She shrugged. Perhaps she simply hadn't found it in herself to disturb him when he looked so peaceful. "We could all do with a bit of extra sleep."
"That includes you, too, you know."
She smiled, but something very serious slipped through his light tone, and he settled in and leaned back against the rough bark beside her.
"I don't ever want you sacrificing for my sake," he murmured, and Lucy glanced up to meet earnest black eyes sharp as daggers. "You don't need to be a hero."
Something clenched in her chest. Now he was the third person to call her that, and she bristled involuntarily.
"I'm not—"
"Just promise you won't put yourself at risk for me, okay?"
She furrowed her brow. "Aren't you the one who told me to save your life?"
Just save my life out there and we'll call it even.
He'd said it with a smile, the night they'd formed the alliance, skirting any real answer to the questions jumbling up inside her head so tight she thought she might burst.
"That's not the same thing."
"How isn't it?"
"I meant, you know, like the berries. I got a bit distracted that last day of training, didn't pay attention to that station at all. Any shrub out here could kill me."
Lucy pursed her lips. "You would have eaten those whether or not I told you they weren't nightlock."
"No I wouldn't."
"Caspian, I'm not an idiot."
He smirked, eyes shimmering, but earnestness still lurked underneath. "Just promise, okay?"
Why, she wanted to ask, why are we like this? What are you playing at? What am I supposed to be to you?
She wanted to argue, to push for answers, but frustration and sleepiness clouded her thoughts, and at last she only said "Fine."
He drew a deep breath, and let it out again.
A few minutes later, he asked "You sure you don't want to get a bit more sleep?"
The grayish haze hung over the clearing like a blanket, misty dewdrops yet unbroken by the light of dawn.
Again she wanted to argue, but this lasted only a second before she gave in. "I suppose… if you're already up."
He smiled, and she shifted to lean against his shoulder, already a familiar gesture, tucking into the safety of his sturdy figure in spite of the rift of questions and words unspoken between them. Her sleepiness and his warmth overcame it all.
When she woke again, golden sunlight pierced the canopy overhead, and Jill traipsed back into camp carrying a chicken-sized bird strung up by its feet in one hand, and in the other, a whole rabbit.
The rest of them leapt into action at once, delegating the boys to skin and pluck their catches, while the girls collected dry matchwood and built a decent fire, roasting their breakfast with some of the seasoning Lucy and Jill had received all those days ago.
And when at last the meat came off its skewers, they all forgot about talking, or indeed even about thinking, and Lucy felt as if all those days in the dark had simply been some kind of bad dream, so distant from this world of sun-dappled faces and full stomachs that it couldn't possibly be real.
They finished eating in much higher spirits than they had begun, and packed the rest away before taking a vote on the day's exploits, with a vague idea to explore the area, perhaps to see if they could spot any sign of other tributes.
Caspian wanted to go further south, but the rest decided to try west, and so his hopes of coming to another edge were dashed as they set out into the wood, and passed the stream, filling their bottles before moving deeper into unknown territory.
It took only about thirty minutes to come to the edge of the forest, trees falling away suddenly into barren wasteland, though this time they could spot further patches of green scattered up and down their line of sight in the distance.
Earth and stone sloped slowly uphill away from them to the west under a clear, cloudless azure sky, and they followed it with little deliberation, the slope holding some promise of a better view of the area.
The sun arched over their shoulders as they walked, beating down from the noonday position as the ground rose and fell intermittently with scattered hillocks and crevices, but always rose steadily upward again, and behind them sprawled endless rocky country, scattered with clumps of green like moss crawling over pebbles as their forest fell away into the distance.
And almost two hours later, they reached the peak of the ridge.
Lucy blinked, dazzled by a splash of vibrant green, and in the glare of the sun the rocky ground rolled down before her, falling off into a sharp basin: a rich green forested valley, stretching out for what must have been several miles, cut through with silver threads where rivers sparkled in the distance.
She let out a low breath as the others stopped beside her. "Well… that's something."
"Look," said Caspian after he'd caught his breath, pointing across the valley to a pillar of smoke rising up from behind a dark mass of forest.
"Someone else is already down there," murmured Lucy.
"Careers," said Edmund, and both girls looked at him, but Caspian nodded.
"That's gotta be a bonfire if we can see it from here. No one else would risk something like that out in the open."
"Strange," said Edmund. "They were based at the stone table when I left them."
"The what?" asked Jill.
"The cornucopia. You know, that altar thing? Bet they moved the second they found this place, though."
"You really suppose it's them?" asked Lucy.
"Unless someone else is a lot braver than we are," said Caspian.
Edmund shook his head. "No way could anyone else keep that territory. It's them, for sure."
Lucy gazed out at the dark, curling pillar of smoke, drifting like a black thread into the cloudless sky. A symbol of power. Of domination. "But… if they're down here… then… does that mean the stone table's abandoned?"
Caspian glanced at her, the same thought echoed behind his eyes. "You don't suppose they left anything worth taking?"
"Even if they did," said Jill, "don't you think someone else will have gotten to it by now?"
"Maybe not," said Edmund. "Could be no one else knows they're gone yet. I don't think anyone was hanging around close enough to find out."
They all looked at each other.
"Worth a shot, right?" asked Lucy.
"How would we even get there?" asked Jill, shifting on her feet. "We don't actually know where we are."
"Well," said Edmund, in a tone that said it should really be obvious as he flipped out his compass. "If we came mostly south, from the northwest side of the arena, and we've been bearing west since then, I say we head north and we're bound to hit it eventually, or at least find a better clue."
Lucy glanced at Caspian.
"I'm game if you are," he shrugged.
"Why not?" asked Lucy.
Jill's eyes lingered reluctantly on the paradise valley, a prickly wariness lacing her posture, but to Lucy this looked less like her old crippling fear, and more like a healthy distrust of the arena.
"Let's go, if we're going." Edmund tilted his compass, shiny silver glinting in the sunlight, and turned to follow it north.
Lucy skipped down the rocks after him, an extra spring in her step along with the new directive; a real goal, at last, and perhaps even one with a prize at the end of it.
In the stories, they called that a quest.