Chapter 27
I wake up once but decide that it is still too early for my shift. Closing my eyes again, I allow myself to sleep some more.
Haymitch eventually wakes me and that is when I sit up, rubbing the sleep for my eyes.
Haymitch lies down and is soon sleeping. I turn my attention to the seemingly pitch black woods, drawing my knife and scanning the area.
Nothing to see, I soon let my mind wander. In doing so, I come to realise that we have been in the arena for fourteen days now. It has been exactly a fortnight ago since we first stepped foot into this poison paradise.
It has been a very long two weeks.
I begin to wonder how much longer we will be in the arena for, choosing not to dwell on the fact that four people will be dead before the fifth can escape.
As the night progresses, I alternate between sitting down and pacing about the area, even climbing trees to keep myself awake.
When it is light enough, I take out each letter from yesterday and reread them.
Dawn arrives and Haymitch wakes up to me still huddled over the letters.
"Don't dwell too much on those," he advises. "Remember what Konrad said."
"Right," I say, putting them away. "I was just using them to keep myself awake."
We decide to eat half the remaining boar meat and to have one drop biscuit each, seeing as how the meat alone won't be enough to sustain us. Lastly, we drink some more water before leaving.
While we walk, I take sips from a 600ml bottle, the other one having gone completely empty since breakfast.
As we trek through a clearing, we spot a brown rabbit of good size at the other end. I am almost sorry to see Haymitch's knife lodge itself unexpectedly in one of its eye, until I remember we are almost completely out of food.
We walk over to the corpse of the rabbit.
I think Haymitch is going to gut and skin the rabbit and so am completely caught off guard when he says that I should give it a go.
"You've seen me do it twice now," he is saying. "You should have a general idea of what to do."
"A rabbit is no different in structure and anatomy to a raccoon," he continues when he sees that I am about to protest. "You'll be fine."
And so with great reluctance, I begin by putting my hunting knife into the rabbit under Haymitch's watchful eyes.
I drag the knife down its soft body and cringe internally when blood starts pouring out.
Then I am gutting and disposing of the pieces we don't want under Haymitch's guidance.
Next I use the side of the opening as a starting point to skin the rabbit just as I saw Haymitch do with the raccoon. I have a little trouble with the head and skull for a while but fortunately he patiently guides me through that process as well.
Finally done with gutting and skinning, the last thing I do spilt the meat in half.
"How was that?" I ask, handing Haymitch a piece.
He takes and inspects it thoroughly.
And suddenly I'm back in shop class, presenting my teacher with the finished piece of work and waiting for him to inspect and give me a mark for it.
Haymitch looks up at me and nods in approval. "Not bad," he remarks.
I smile in relief.
Together, we get a small cooking fire started and are soon roasting our halves of the rabbit.
We have a taste once it has cooked properly, wanting to eat it while it is still hot.
The moment we've had enough and put out the fire, we pack everything up before moving off.
Hours pass and the woods keep on stretching on. We hike onwards, determined to travel to the end of the woods today. Haymitch and I don't say it out loud but there is an unspoken agreement that that is our goal.
The going is tough and I'm beginning to already feel the strain on my legs and shoulders. Nevertheless, I wipe the sweat gathered at my forehead and push on to keep pace with Haymitch.
Trees and rocks and ponds all pass by in a blur as we hike through the woods.
I soon get tired but don't ask Haymitch for any rests. I've gotten out of the annoying habit of asking for them and just decide to take them as they come.
It turns out that isn't long.
Three hours had pass since our last rest before we sit in a tree for another.
I poke my head out of the top of the trees and see that the strange wall of green is indeed closer. In fact, I'm willing to bet that we'll be there midafternoon by the pace we're going.
Pushing away a horrible feeling that comes with knowing every step brings us closer to the end of our alliance, I then duck back into the tree and force myself to cheerfully update Haymitch on our current situation.
He is obviously pleased with the progress report but insists we get moving.
Back on the ground and we plod through the woods.
My head begins to ache and a heavy weight is crushing down on me.
My mother had told me to say with Haymitch. Jasmine pointed out what a great team we make. Konrad kindly instructed us to keep an eye on each other. Even so, they all failed to mention what should then happen if it were to come down to the two of us.
Confused and frustrated, I know the only way is to end this alliance. Despite what they all say.
I drink some more water to cool myself and to give my head some time to cool down.
Looking around as trees pass us begins to make my head spin so I decide to look down. I focus on the sight of my foot taking a step, then another, and then another.
This goes on for about an hour before it's time for another break.
As we lounge against a tree, I am reminded of the bandage on Haymitch's neck. Curious, I turn my head towards him.
Sure enough, he is still wearing it.
"What?" he asks.
"You should really have changed that," I say nodding at his throat.
He hand goes up to it, remembering it for the first time in who knows how long. His eyes go to the knife at my side and I'm reminded of the fact that it was my knife which did that to him. Not that I wielded it at the time, of course.
"Okay," he says, taking his eyes off the knife.
His hand reaches around his neck and unties the knot holding the bandage together.
Once it is off, I am surprised by how well-healed it looks. Given the fact that he completely neglected it, I would have expected some sort of infection.
"How bad is it?" Haymitch asks.
I look from his throat to his face, giving him a small smile. "Not bad at all."
"Seriously?" he asks.
"Seriously," I reply. "Just wash away the dry blood and all that will be left is a light scar."
Sparing a little water from his bottle, Haymitch does just that.
That being done, it is time to get going again.
It's now early afternoon and we make considerably good time. I'd climb up a tree every so often, so I can say with great confidence that the time we are making is good.
As we're hiking on, I try to distract my racing mind by coming up with possible theories about what is at the end of the arena.
It's difficult because when it comes to the Gamemakers, you can never know exactly what to expect.
As my father would say, all you can do is expect the unexpected.
When I picture the end of the arena, I can't help but conjure up the silly image of a steel door, with lots of huge round bolts around the edges, placed into a rock. This rock is leaning at the very edge of the arena and leads to the outside world. Of course that isn't likely to be the case.
Rarely anything in this world is ever that simple.
Haymitch and I trudge along the woods when light up ahead catches our attention.
It is dim at first, but gets brighter by the second as we continue walking.
Excitedly, I turn to Haymitch. "Do you see that?"
"Yeah," he replies, grinning, "let's hurry."
We pick up the pace. With every step Haymitch and I take, we are that much closer to the light peeking out through the line of trees directly in front of us.
When we pass through them, my eyes are forced to adjust to the sheer intensity of direct sunlight.
Once it does, I am able to see that on the ground in front of us is a stretch of grassland that extends left to right as far as the eye can see. One metre in front of us towers a massive green hedge. This hedge also stretches left and right far out of view. I recognise it as being the thing at the end of the woods that I had constantly been looking at. By staring at it now, I can tell that climbing it isn't an option.
I can feel my hopes extinguishing. Surely we didn't walk all that way for nothing.
Absurdly, my mind brings up the image of a steel door placed into the hedge.
I actually look around, half expecting to find one.
Without a word, Haymitch kneels down and rummages through his pack. He soon comes out with the blowtorch I recognise as once belonging to Hunter.
Haymitch crosses the stretch of grass and begins using the blowtorch on the hedge.
Walking up to join him in front of the massive green wall of shrubbery, I remember his look of intense concentration as he held the blowtorch in his hand that night the log cabin caught fire.
It was odd that he would keep such an item. Now, it occurs to me that he may have had a use for it all along.
"Have you been here before, Haymitch?" I ask him, watching as he slowly burns a hole into the hedge.
"Yeah," he replies, not looking up. "I had put a good distance between the volcano and myself, when this maze of tightly woven hedges forced me to turn back to the centre of the woods."
"That's not like you to give up so easily," I tease.
Haymitch shrugs, undeterred, "There wasn't anything else I could have done at the time."
"Until you got your hands on that blowtorch," I point out.
"Right," he agrees.
I watch as he works away at the hedge with the blowtorch. Then a thought occurs to me.
"So where were you leading us before you got the blowtorch?" I ask. "You had no way of knowing how to overcome the hedge, and it wasn't until later that you finally got the means."
"I was planning to head back to the meadows and going around the volcano."
I stare at him in disbelief. "Good thing you got your hands on a blowtorch and lead us back to the other end of the arena, then."
Noticing that Haymitch is beginning to look tired, I offer to take over.
He hands me the blowtorch and sits by the hedge, leaning against it.
The hedge is a lot thicker than I had thought. Even with Haymitch and me taking turns burning a hole through it, several hours pass before we finally make it through to the other side.
I'm sitting outside, eating some rabbit by the hedge when Haymitch is calling me.
"Donner!" he calls, his voice muffled by the hedge between us.
I poke my head through the hole and can make out Haymitch on the other side.
Excitedly, I crawl through the thick hedge to where he is waiting.
Once through, I eagerly take in our surroundings.
Haymitch and I are standing on flat, dry earth where not a single blade of grass grows. There is a dusty path that leads off somewhere.
We follow the path and find that it leads to a cliff with jagged sides.
There is no possibility of climbing down it.
I peek down and can just make out sharp rocks protruding down the bottom.
There is nothing down there to see, even if there was some sort of way down.
"That's all there is, Haymitch. Let's go back," I say, forgetting that this is the end of the arena and that I had decided to end the alliance once we made it here.
It had completely slipped my mind that this is the end, seeing as I didn't get that feeling of accomplishment I thought I would.
"No, I'm staying here," Haymitch replies, staring down into the abyss of the cliff.
My heart stinks with a heavy weight and I know this is it.
It's now or never.
"All right," I say, forcing my voice to stay steady. "There's only five of us left. May as well say goodbye now, anyway."
When he doesn't say anything, I continue.
"I don't want it to come down to you and me."
"Ok," he agrees, still looking down the cliff.
I wait for a moment to see if Haymitch will turn around and just look at me before I leave.
He doesn't.
I turn and walk back through the hedge.
Back on the other side, I lean against the hedge and look up to the blue sky, sighing.
That's it. It's over.
The moment I collect my thoughts, I walk off again.
I walk along the hedge for a while before heading back into the woods.
A small distance in and I come across a clearing.
It feels unusually empty.
Honestly, I find it hard to determine whether the actual clearing feels empty or if it's because Haymitch is no longer here.
Clearings may look empty but still teem with hidden life.
Haymitch and I had been in this arena together for such a long time its hard not to notice the disappearance of the presence of another person.
Standing in the clearing, drifting off in space, I fail to notice death descending from the sky in the form of pink birds.
Before I can react, they have me surrounded.
I see their impossibly sharp beak and recognise them as being the same birds Haymitch and I hid from once a long time ago.
Slowly I reach for my knife.
The moment my hand touches the handle, the birds all swoop in on their wings.
Unable to help myself, I scream as they begin pecking at me.
I use one hand to shoo them away and my other to draw out my knife.
Undeterred by my shooing, the candy-pink birds close in on me.
As I fight them off, my arms begin to feel heavy.
There are more mutts then I can handle, but I still manage to take several down.
I am vaguely aware of the pile of dead birds on the floor and the severe wounds the live ones inflict on me.
Pink feathers fall everywhere, causing my vision to become impaired. And yet through it all, and my frantic slashing, I see a figure emerge into the clearing.
Frightened, I continue to fend off the last of the candy-pink birds just as one manages to slip past my knife and stab me right through the neck with its long thin beak.
I freeze as pain after pain washes over me. Dropping my knife and clutching at my throat, I fall to the ground.
Their job done, the rest of the pink birds fly away. They could almost pass for flamingos if their beaks weren't all shaped wrong.
I stare up at them and vaguely register the sound of someone running to me.
Not wanting to see the tribute that was attracted by my scream and came running to finish me off, I close my eyes.
I begin to feel cold as my heart works in overdrive to frantically pump blood through my body only to have it all escape through my fingers from the hole in my throat.
"Maysilee?" a voice calls softly.
And I know that voice; had grown accustomed to hearing it for the past ten days.
Slowly I open my eyes with all the energy I can muster.
Piercing grey eyes meet my blue ones.
I open my mouth, wanting to say his name but am cut off by my own blood choking me.
Haymitch immediately tells me not to try and talk, his eyes full of concern and I know this is it.
This is where I die.
I grasp weakly at the mockingjay pin on my top with one hand, willing for him to understand without words.
It has to go to my sister; my sister who is probably watching as I die right now. My parents and Jasmine are likely watching too.
"Hey, it's okay," Haymitch is saying, putting a hand over mine to stop it fiddling. "I get it."
I stop in relief at his words and lay waiting for the inevitable.
Suddenly afraid, I twist my hand over to grab hold of his.
Surprisingly he brings his other hand up too, holding my hand with both of his. And it's oh so warm.
So full of life.
We stay like that, Haymitch remaining silent as I continue to slowly die.
He doesn't tell me that I'll be okay, that I'll survive this somehow. He doesn't bother with false comforts for which I am grateful.
I don't think I could handle it.
After what feels like hours of staying where we are, grey spots start appearing in my vision.
The spots spread slowly, the colour getting darker and darker until it becomes black.
As the blackness completely overtakes my vision, I draw my last breath.