Day ten. I had seen tributes suddenly look like they were weighed down with bricks before and today it seemed to be my turn. It was cold and I was exposed. I guessed they were trying to make the arena more unbearable, to make us suffer in a different way to the carnage we had been inflicting on each other.
I built a fire. At this point, no one would be drawn to smoke because it would seem too much like an obvious lure. I made it into an especially large blaze to properly warm up and in all honesty, I had never made a fire before; it was a lot of fun to build it up. I wandered around, gathering all the wood I could find and feeding it in until anyone could have crept up on me and I would never have heard them over the crackling and occasional roaring as the breeze caught the flames.
After waking with a chill in my bones, I was actually scorched now. It made a pleasant change…
I thought about my cache but decided, not today. I would finish what I had left and gnaw on some more pine. That was if I didn't just burn it all. The other tributes would be watching the smoke, wondering what it meant. Perhaps some would be thinking it was a trap that had been triggered and some tribute was staggering around with serious burns. Others would think it was a lure, the Careers probably. How would they be doing? The three of them would eying each other warily now, thinking continuously that it was three against one, one and one. If they had kept count. Either way though, they had to know that their alliance was just about done.
Had M1 been enjoying F1 and F4's company over the last few days? Had F4 grieved over M4's death on the first day? Had they been angry at Sulla for dying and losing them all their supplies? They would have had no idea what had happened to him and might still have been blaming him now. Had they mourned Alba? Was F4 thinking that any moment the two from District 1 would turn on her for the last instance of District loyalty before going their separate ways? It seemed likely. Perhaps she had already taken off, leaving the pair from District 1 with a burning tension.
Hunger Games politics… It wasn't my concern at all, mine was staying alive. But these were the questions they would be asking in the Capitol and even across the rest of Panem. Even if we hated the Games, you were still drawn in, still made to wonder who would become Victor and why. Every Games where two tributes from the same District were forced to fight had been a new level of horror. The two from District 1 were the only ones who could still face it. All the rest of us were entirely alone.
Little F3 was thirteen years old. She was from the technology producing District, what did she know about survival? She was still alive though. They said everyone from District 3 was smart so that had to be it; she was playing smart, not vicious. I was playing smart, or I had been at the beginning. Now I was playing reckless. For all I knew, Kayla was watching me right now, drawn by the blaze and now wondering what the hell I was doing pacing around it. Maybe it was M6, the transport boy. What did that even mean? What threat was he to me? What was I to him? Perhaps they all still thought of me as a harmless millboy. That was the thing about being in here. On the screen you knew everything but in here, you knew nothing about what anybody had done unless you saw it with your own eyes. You never knew who the real threats were.
My side began to hurt so I smeared some more of the medicine on it. It already looked almost healed. I had seen people working with severe injuries and if the Capitol could provide me with medicine that healed a gash made by a sword practically overnight, why the hell had I seen men with a crutch in one hand and a sack of flour in the other hobbling about? Why had there been men tending to the grindstones with thick bandages on their arms to cover where the vicious machinery had cut them? We weren't worth it; that was why. We were resources, just as much as the grain my District grew.
I couldn't even have my own thoughts. I was already playing their Games and I was playing them in my head as well.
Day eleven. It was chill again. Chill and quiet. It was silent except for the sound of the river. There was no breeze, nothing to disturb the trees and no bird sounds. I was up immediately.
I listened intently but it seemed that it was just quiet. No one was around. No one was about to attack me. The silence meant nothing, nothing at all.
I put my sleeping bag away, trying and failing not to think about the fact that Sora had died in it. It was still quiet so I headed toward the river, toward reassuring sound.
Also toward my cache. That was the last of my food and then I would be left with pine and nothing else. Not unless I got something off someone else. That was probably the Careers' strategy… though as they didn't have a choice it wasn't actually a strategy.
I felt lazy walking along the river, spear loose in my hands. It was all so peaceful and would be until it wasn't. There were only six of us left in this vast arena and we might have been miles from each other or the audience might have been on the edge of their seats because we were almost on top of each other. There was no way of knowing.
I had left prints in the mud from every other trip I had made this way. It only proved I had been this way, it didn't reveal anything. My cache was where I had left it and I was even surprised the Gamemakers hadn't tampered with it. It would not have surprised me if they had planted a nest of tracker jackers in there. Or set the entire tree toppling into the river while I climbed.
I settled against the tree, letting one of the strips of dried meat bounce off my teeth as I gazed at one of my biscuits. What went into this to make it sustain me as much as it did? It was a dry tasteless thing and not particularly big but they had kept me going more than they should have between rolls and apples. Another Capitol wonder…
A bird sang suddenly, twittering away and breaking the silence and making my whole body loosen up.
What was happening at home? What would they be saying to the Capitol people looking for someone to interview about me? There wasn't anyone. I didn't know if my parents had any family; perhaps some obscure relative would find themselves being pressed on details about me that they couldn't hope to provide.
Perhaps they would simply invent a life for me. I wasn't going to leave after all and who would dispute whatever they said? There was no one to disagree at home and the Capitol and the other Districts, they would believe whatever they were told. My mentor, my stylists, Flickerman; they had already made me something I wasn't.
And then they had put us all in here and we were all no longer who we had once been. Once I had spent half the hours of the day making flour go into hoppers or sacks and now I was the one who had killed both tributes from District 2 and if by some strange miracle I did survive, that was who I would always be; plus who else I killed to win. Whenever they interviewed that years mentors they would always replay their kills, question them about them and make them relive them. They wouldn't ask me about moments like this. Moments spent peacefully sitting against a tree by a river, listening to birdsong. They would ask me about Sulla and Alba and then about Sora.
Now I understood why some Victors were famous alcoholics and drug addicts. Even if they survived, they were never allowed to forget. The reward for winning was a comfortable life and the punishment for winning was a comfortable life remembering everything you had done to earn it.
Perhaps the only luck you could have after being Reaped was a quick death. The ones who had died in the Cornucopia Bloodbath, most had died with no blood on their hands. None of them had suffered through the cold nights, gone hungry, spent hours and hours and hours alone with just themselves and their thoughts.
"What are you doing?"
I scratched at my head. I seemed to have finally snapped.
"Over here."
I followed the sound and looked up to see F3. Little Kayla was stood well away from me, more than far enough away that she could be far away before I could stand. It also meant that she could have crept up and killed me easily… maybe.
"What are you doing?"
"Resting."
"You got your food." She glanced up above me momentarily.
"You knew it was there?"
"I saw you put it there."
"You were watching me?"
"I've been watching everybody." Her eyes widened momentarily and my skin crawled.
"And you didn't take it?"
"I thought you might need it."
"Might need it?"
"You killed the boy from District 2. I saw you. I stole from him without him seeing and you killed him. And you burned everything." She rubbed her throat and I wondered if she had made a sound since entering the arena. "Then you came here and hid some of your food. I lost you after that. I saw the Careers though. They passed right by here, looking for you I guess. They didn't see me but I saw them kill your friend."
She could only mean June. "Which one?"
"Does it matter?"
"Not really." I sighed. "Which one?"
"The girl from District 1." Her eyes drifted away from me. "They thought she killed the boy from District 2, they thought she set the fire, they thought she destroyed all their food. They kept punching her and kicking her and telling her to admit it. She didn't. She kept saying it wasn't her. They broke her legs."
A harsh cry rang out, tearing into me and a few seconds later I understood that I had made that sound. June, the girl Ellis had put all attentions to, the girl from the barley fields who had asked me questions on the train, where in District 9 I had come from, what I had done, if I had brothers and sisters, if I thought I could win, if I thought our mentor would be helpful, if I had any plan to win sponsors. I had grunted answers to all her questions, ignored her. She had been friendly and kind and I had shown her nothing but indifference.
"The boy from District 1 said he believed her and he broke her arm and they left her. But the girl from District 1… She cut her throat. I think-"
Kayla leapt back in fright as the rock clattered off the tree beside her.
"WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS?" I was looking for another rock, scrabbling in the leaves. "I DIDN'T NEED TO KNOW! Why, you little bitch?!" I hurled another rock and it barely made it to her, skittering along and stopping a couple of metres from her feet.
Kayla looked petrified but she swallowed and more words tumbled out of her little form. "Because I saw it! And I couldn't do anything to stop it! But you, you can make it right."
The trees and the water and Kayla were spinning around me now, and the rumbling, the endless rumbling of the grindstones was filling my ears. "What are you… What… Who do you think I am?"
"I saw what you did for the District 2 girl after you killed her, I saw you with the District 8 girl. You're going to win. You have to win. What they did to her; you can't let them win!"
The grindstones were pounding in my ears now and my throat was thick with the pale dust that constantly choked the air. "Go away."
"You have to-"
The stick skimmed her hair and it flew by and she dived away from the second.
"Go away! LEAVE ME ALONE! FUCK OFF!" I scrambled to my feet and Kayla ran, taking off through the trees before I could manage a step as my spinning, grinding world thundered around and through me.
