"Shit."
I bend to pick up the shell of tree bark I've just dropped, thankful none of the sap inside has spilled out. The pack I'm carrying is full of herbs I don't have to worry about spilling because of the wonderful invention called zippers. I have my canteen slung over my shoulders sloshing with fresh spring water, and there's iodine waiting next to a sleeping Hades back in the cave, as well as flint to make fire that I took from the cornucopia during the Pantheon and slipped in my pack. I have everything I need, it seems, except for real medicine.
For about the hundredth time since I woke up this afternoon, I think about climbing the face of the mountain and calling out to the sky for my sponsors to take pity and send me what I need. It's not as if I have to worry that they've spent their money on Pan anymore.
The thought makes me wince, wounds on my back pulling with split blood. I grit my teeth and weave back through the forest, searching with my feet for the trap door that leads down into the cave I left Hades sleeping in.
When I woke up after we fell last night, I couldn't tell what time it was. The place we were in was pitch black and all of my senses were strained. The wounds I'd sustained from Aphrodite and Pan had long dried closed, but they burned with the threat of infection. Not to mention my broken left wrist throbbed. I was hot all over, not just from setting fever but because I was pressed so close to Hades' sleeping body that I was soaking up his heat too.
The fever he had was enough to let me know he wasn't dead, and I thanked the stars for it, pressing my hand to his forehead and finding him able of speech when I tried to shake him awake. "Kore?" he whispered, and I smiled at him in the darkness even though neither one of us could see it. "Where are we?"
"I don't know," I told him, looking around for any sign of light. "When we fell last night, I was too out of it to check."
"Me too," he said, smacked his lips together and groaned. "Do we still have any water?"
"Yeah," I told him, trying not to cry out as I moved off of my pack, happy I'd had enough sense to grab it and my scythe last night before we walked away from Aphrodite's bloody, beautiful corpse. "I think I almost impaled myself," I said aloud to Hades, finding my scythe just off to the side of the pack.
He tried to laugh but all that came out was a choked groan. "My side split back open," he said.
"I need to get you medicine," I told him, lifting his head into my lap, though not without trouble– I accidentally poked him in the eye once, cursing the darkness around us all the while.
"You need it too," he said. "Your back looked like hell last night, Kore."
"I'll be fine," I lied, tipping the canteen towards his mouth for him to drink.
"You better be," he said around swigs of water.
We didn't speak much after that, Hades dozing to sleep. I used the rest of the water and mixed it with a few drops of iodine before dousing his wound in it, startling him back awake from the sting. I hadn't known that would happen and apologized profusely as he writhed in pain, clutching at my right wrist to the point I thought he would break this one and I'd be left without either to use.
Finally Hades had passed out again, and I'd left him lying there with the supplies in my pack for safe keeping, praying he stayed alive until I came back with help.
Some crawling in the dark had taken me up the slope we'd fallen down the night before, rocks and dirt above my head until I'd shoved hard enough and the earth had simply given way, taking my pack and scythe with me into the sun.
Apparently the Gamesmakers built a trapdoor into the side of the mountain and we'd fallen into the night before, stuck in a cavern that ran beneath the golden structure with no natural light. I realized upon just a moment in aboveground that it was afternoon, and the cavern was much, much cooler than the arena above.
What felt like a half-an-hour of scouring and sweating led me to a twisting spring falling down the mountainside, which I guessed was the start of the spring that I spent the first half of the Games camping by. Weary of monstrous fish women, I waded in cautiously, washed the wounds on my skin with broken sobs of pain even though the cold water felt inexplicably good on the unmarred patches of my heated skin.
When I looked closer, I found my wounds weren't as deep as I had worried about. I realized they only hurt so much because they're on top of the flesh, pulling nerves with every flex that I make. There is however one long slice down my right shoulder I have to worry about with infection, and the fever I thought was from such a thing earlier was just thanks to swelling and nothing more.
Once I waded out of the spring, I found, to my astonishing luck, a grove of witch hazel. I wasted no time in taking off my boots and ripping the ends of my leggings off, splinting my broken wrist with the herb. I smashed some up and put it on my wounds for good measure, stuffing handfuls of the herb into my pack afterwards to take back to Hades.
A little more searching landed me generous helpings of aloe leaves, yarrow flowers, sage, and a maple tree to drain sap from. I also grabbed tinder and broken branches to make a fire with to light the cavern. It was like the surrounding area had sprouted up just for my benefit, and I whispered a small, "Thank you," to anyone listening for it.
Which lands me where I am now, carrying my findings back to the cavern to help Hades as best I can. After everything he did for me yesterday, I'm not just going to leave him to die, no matter how easy it would be now that the witch hazel has me feeling as if my injuries are just a scratch. Even if I killed Pan last night, I won't let that turn me into a murderer. That's exactly what the people who designed these Games want, and I won't give into their will any more than I already have.
I shuffle around where I think the entrance to the cavern is for a good ten minutes before I feel the ground give in, stumble back so I don't spill the sap in my makeshift bowl everywhere, instead fumble my way down the slope with slow movement. The trapdoor closes behind me with no sound, darkness invading my senses. It's even more disorientating now that I've been in the sun for over an hour and I cannot see anything, praying to the Gods that I don't fall and break something else.
Finally the ground begins to level out at my feet. "Hades?" I whisper into the darkness, wondering if he's awake.
"Over here," he calls back, voice coming from just a few feet away.
I clear the distance until to toe of my boot catches on something.
"Ow," he croaks. "That was my shin."
"Sorry," I say, blushing though I know he can't see it in the dark.
I kneel down next to him and set my makeshift bowl at his side, careful not to spill any sap before handing him the canteen. Hades drinks eagerly, sighing when he's finished and handing the canteen back.
"You look better," he says after a moment.
"How can you tell?" I ask him.
"My eyes have adjusted to the darkness," he explains, and I nod in acceptance of his answer as I take the wood and tinder from my pack, moving a few feet away from him to dig a hole in the floor, glad it's made of dirt and not rock like the rest of the cavern. "What's in here?" Hades asks as I'm doing so, poking at my pack with curiosity– I can tell by the rustle of fabric under his fingers' insistence.
I arrange the tinder in a careful bundle below the wood, feel around in the darkness for the flint I sat beside him and strike it with my knife as I answer, "Medicine."
"It feels like leaves," he says.
"Exactly," I smile, the flint sparking and tinder catching with a flare. I blow on it to get the flames to take, light rising up as the fire catches the wood and comes to life. I lean back from it and risk a glance at Hades, finding him watching me with curious eyes.
"Okay," he says after a moment. "I take my earlier statement back. You look like shit."
"Mashed witch hazel isn't exactly couture, Hades," I tell him, touching at the slimy plant on my skin with chagrin. "Besides, look who's talking."
He glances down at himself in question, grimacing at the crusting wound in his right side. The burned flesh around it where Aphrodite tried to burn it closed last night has bubbled into blisters, skin in webs of honey-comb pattern where it has split open again after all of our running and wrestling and falling last night. The flesh around the wound bears no better itself, red and swollen. When I look closer I can see a bit of pus leaking out, infection setting in on the top of the wound.
"Shit," I say, not having realized it was so bad before I left earlier.
"I wouldn't blame you if you puked again," Hades says, paling as he inspects the wound with an unhopeful stare.
"I'm not going to puke," I promise him, though it is tempting even if all I have to expel is spring water and stomach acid. "I'm just worried about blood poisoning. Do you still have a fever?"
"A bit," he admits, propping up on his elbows and grimacing as a yellowish liquid leaks from his wound. "Okay, that's just fucking gross."
Nose wrinkling, I nod. "I can't believe what Aphrodite did," I tell him with honesty, because I have seen brutality in these Games before, but never like this. Usually tributes kill each other quick; drawing out the suffering isn't good on anyone because those who are inflicting the torture have other tributes they should be killing.
Apparently none of that mattered to Aphrodite though.
"I didn't even know I'd killed her ally," Hades says, shaking his head. "When the chaos at the Pantheon broke out orig'nally, I thought I could get Hestia away from all of those animals by getting her on the cornucopia or somethin'. The Demigods were still there trying to fight some of the animals off, and one of them– the boy who must've been Aphrodite's republic mate– just came after me. So I…killed him. It wasn't long after that before the bull-monsters started chasing us and I lost track of Hestia."
"Had you killed anyone in the Games before Poseidon?" I find myself asking softly at the look of guilt in his expression.
"Yeah," he says, voice wavering. "The boy from Eptá. We ran into him on the fourth day in here, and it led to a fight…"
"And you won," I say, causing Hades to nod grimly. "Why didn't you say so at the Pantheon? Everyone else said if they'd killed someone." It was part of the 'Tell a Little about Yourself' segment Dionysus had insisted on after the no-kill law had been enacted.
"Why gloat about it?" Hades asks. "There's nothing worth gloating about."
I look at him softly for the answer, don't hesitate to lean forwards and press my lips to his this time. It only lasts a moment, resounding fear I'll be pulled away from him like the day before. When I pull back, I see that his eyes are closed; they stay like that for a little bit before blinking open in shock.
Hades clears his throat, hands flexing against the dirt floor of the cavern where he still has himself propped up by the elbows. "What was that for?" he asks.
"I like you more than I should," I say, his own words copied. "They're not going to cut off my wings, Hades, and I won't let them cut off yours either."
I turn away from him then, stoke the fire once more and take out the herbs I need to treat his wounds, getting to work, but not before I hear him whisper, "Don't make promises you can't keep, Kore."
Sometime later, when I have his wounds treated to the best of my knowledge and we're sitting there eating the dried fruit I've had stored in my pack for a while, I look over to Hades to see the red in his skin around the wound has reduced, if only a little.
When I initially put the yarrow on his wound, it had the infection running out in streams. It was probably the grossest thing either one of us have seen before– even when the infection had set into Plutus' wounds after he'd been whipped, it hadn't looked like that coming back out. Bits of flayed skin fell off of Hades' wound too, as well as infected blood that smelled so sickly I had to plug my nose to continue.
But finally, the blood ran a clean red before stopping all together. I spread aloe over the rest of the wound, pressing witch hazel against the swollen flesh. After a few hours of repeating the cycle I cleaned the wound with fresh iodine water, spreading hot sap over the direct gash to keep anymore infection from setting in.
Hades helped me with the wound on my back after that, cleaning and sealing it for me. What was unexpected was the way he kissed my neck afterwards, lingering and soft. When I asked him what it was for he didn't tell me, just laid back down and smiled.
"Your side looks better," I tell Hades then, licking the residue of dried apricot off of my fingers.
"Thanks to you," Hades says with a hum. "Who'd have known you were such a whiz in healing?"
"I told you my mother has a garden," I say to him. "She grows every herb she can in it, and we have a book that says what they're used for. I used to read it during school when they were teaching history."
"Not much one for learning about the Capital bullshit?" he asks.
And at the words, a fear I haven't felt since yesterday begins to set in. It's then I remember infection isn't our only concern right now– there have to be cameras down here in this cavern with us, otherwise the Gamesmakers wouldn't have built it. The Capital is watching from beyond somewhere, and so is Prometheus, who already must be so disappointed in me for everything I've done since teaming up with Hades.
Script takes root in my bones, words mirroring what I have been taught to say. "Oh, no, it isn't that. It's just that I was a bit of a space-case in school. I always dreamed of adventures."
"What kind of adventures?" Hades asks, brows raised.
I watch the smoke of the fire curl down into the cavern behind us– when I had a break from cleaning Hades' wounds I explored a bit and found this place goes back for what looks like miles, so we don't have to worry about smoke asphyxiation anytime soon, luckily. "All kinds," I tell him, trying to make him see that I am lying for a purpose. Then again, it isn't a complete lie; I often dreamed of other lives in school, in the fields even, like those of the epic heroes in oral myths told around the bonfires we have in Énteka every year to celebrate the end of the harvest. "Mainly seeing the ocean," I say.
"Why the ocean?" Hades asks, eyes wide and fascinated as he looks at me.
"I don't know," I tell him, done with the lying and apt to honesty. "I guess I just like the idea of it– some say it's infinite to the east, that it goes on and on with no end. I always wondered that if I just took a boat and sailed away, I'd ever make it back? There's this old story we have back home about this hero named Odysseus who went away to war, and it took him years and years to make it across the ocean and back home."
"Why did it take him so long?" Hades asks.
"He angered the Gods," I say, messing with my hands and shrugging. "He did some stupid things, and so they challenged him. At one point, he got trapped in the cave of a giant who tried to eat all of him and his men…"
"A giant?" Hades asks.
"Yes," I tell him, waving my hands dramatically over my head as for emphasis as I reiterate, "A giant. With just one eye. The giant trapped Odysseus and some of his men in his cave after they took refuge there, eating six of Odysseus' men in the process. But while he was away one day, the men took the giant's club and turned it into a spear that they hid when the giant came back. That night Odysseus got the giant drunk on wine he'd gotten from the Gods, and when the giant asked Odysseus' name, Odysseus told him 'no one'–"
"Why did he say his name was 'no one'?" Hades asks, brows drawing together. "
"Let me finish!" I tell him with a teasing glare; Hades shuts his mouth with a clack of teeth and nods. "As I was saying: the giant now thinks Odysseus' name is no one, okay, and so he falls asleep since he is drunk, and Odysseus and his men stab him in the eye with the spear they had earlier made.
"The giant wakes up screaming and unblocks the entrance to his cave, screaming out to his giant brothers beyond that he has been stabbed and blinded. When the brothers ask who he has been blinded by, he then says 'No one! No one blinded me!' making his brothers think that there isn't anyone in the cave with the giant and allowing Odysseus and his men to escape," I finish, knowing if the Capital has chosen to air these words, that Despoina is sitting eagerly in front of the television screen back home listening; it always was her favorite story.
"That's actually kinda brilliant," Hades says, tapping his fingers to his chin. "But what happened after? How did Odysseus get back home?"
"It wasn't easy," I say, watching Hades' eyes light up at the prospect of the story continuing; it makes me that much more eager to tell it. "The Gods challenged him a lot. There were sea monsters and cursed cattle and there was even a witch named Circe who tried to seduce Odysseus into staying with her and turned his men to pigs, but Odysseus refused, because he had a beloved wife and son he wanted to go home to. All of his men eventually died on the journey even after Odysseus tricked Circe into turning them back into humans. But, somehow, in the end, Odysseus made it back home again."
"What happened when he came home?" Hades asks; in the slanted light of the fire he looks so much like an excited child, hearing this story for the first time with innocent wonder.
I smile as I continue. "His wife was waiting for him, but since she had been waiting so long, there were many suitors trying to force her hand in marriage. Only Odysseus' son believed that it was really his father who'd come home, and so when Penelope, his wife, announced there would be a tournament to decide which suitor she would choose, Odysseus won. He and his son killed all the other competitors for trying to force Penelope to remarry.
"And then, after all of this, Penelope was weary it was really her lost husband come home after so long. She told her maids to move her bed onto the porch so she and the man claiming to be her husband could talk comfortably, only Odysseus knew what she was saying was a test. You see, he'd had their bed built into a tree at the heart of the house that could not be moved," I say, drawing the picture of such tree in the dirt beneath me, weary of my broken wrist. "When he said as much, Penelope knew it was really him, and they lived happily together once more."
"You sure have interesting stories in Énteka," Hades says, laying back with his hands folded behind his head and staring at the ceiling dreamily.
"What stories do you hear in Dodéka?" I ask him curiously, taking a sip from my canteen and realizing it will have to be refilled soon at how empty it feels it has become.
Hades shrugs, crossing his feet at the ankles with a small sigh. "There's this one about a man named Oedipus, but it isn't so great."
"Why not?" I ask him.
"Well, it's kind of sad," Hades says, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.
"I wanna hear it," I tell him anyways.
Hades chuckles, nodding his head. "I figured you would." Drawing in a deep breath, he begins with, "Oedipus' father was a king who had heard a prophecy his son would kill him and couple his own mother. Fearing it to come true, the king ordered Oedipus to be killed. The babe was left on the side of a mountain to die after havin' a spike driven through his ankles, but he didn't die. Instead he was adopted by a peasant and grew up not knowing he was a prince. Until one night this drunk guy at a feast told Oedipus he didn't know who his real father was.
"And Oedipus couldn't leave the idea alone afterwards and went to this oracle to ask who his real parents were, but instead of telling him the oracle told him simply said Oedipus would kill his father and couple with his mother. Not waintin' this to happen, Oedipus did not go home to his adoptive parents which he still thought were his real parents, but rather to the nearby kingdom– his real father's kingdom. On the way, Oedipus ran into a cart goin' the opposite way. The driver struck him to move, and, enraged, Oedipus killed him and the man he was transporting– the King, Oedipus' real father, unwittingly fulfilling half the prophecy."
"Oh," I say, and Hades chuckles.
"Yeah," he drawls, smiling at me with warmth; I feel my cheeks heat. "But, see, Oedipus kept going to the kingdom afterwards. It was said there was a monster there terrorizing the kingdom with the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle and the head of a woman. For anyone to get into the kingdom, they had to answer the creature's riddle correctly otherwise she would devour them–"
I interrupt Hades then, asking eagerly, "What was the riddle?"
He purses his lips at the question, scar more prominent in the shadows of the cavern. "It was…hmm– oh, yeah. 'What has four legs, then two legs, then three?"
"What?" I ask him.
Hades grins, shakes his head a little. "Man," he answers. "First they crawl, then they walk, then use a cane when old. Oedipus knew the answer unlike the rest, and the creature went mad when her riddle had been broken, throwing herself from a cliff and dying. This freed the kingdom of her terrors, and the people were so grateful that they made Oedipus king, as apparently the last one– Oedipus' real father– had died mysteriously on the road, not knowing it was Oedipus who'd killed him. They suggested he marry the queen and–"
"He fulfilled the prophecy!" I say, gasping.
"He did," Hades nods. "I think the worst thing though is that Oedipus didn't known his wife was also his ma, and they had a bunch of kids before finding out. The queen could not take the news that she had married her own son who had killed her last husband and his own father, and committed suicide. Supposedly Oedipus ended up gouging out his own eyes and becoming a wanderer, leaving his kingdom behind."
"That's a bit of an awful story," I tell Hades softly, blinking in the darkness.
Hades sighs, reaching out to grab my hand in a move I don't expect, warmth spreading through my veins at his touch. "Not all things have a happy ending, Kore," he says softly, and I know that he means the words as an answer to more than just the story.
And I've been so lost in the fantasy world we've created here together with our wise tales I again forgot where we are, forgot that waiting on the surface are tributes who want to kill us, a world outside of this arena who want to kill us. Hades and I can't stay down here together forever after all, and by the end of these Games at least one of us will be dead.
A tragedy all our own.