The next day I prepare to go out again to get us food and water, wood for the fire and new herbs and sap to dress Hades' wound.
It doesn't look as bad as it did yesterday, a bit of runoff infection and the blistering has gone down, but only just. I am still weary of it; if the infection keeps coming back and we have to drain it anymore then his flesh won't scab over. And we can't stay in this cavern forever; I fear the Gamesmakers interfering and chasing us out with Gods' know what, or another tribute finding where we are and attacking. With his wound still so open, Hades can't walk or fight without making it any worse, especially after the trip we made in running from Aphrodite the other night. I have to get him fixed, but I don't know how.
"I still can't believe you're staying with me," he says, guessing at my thoughts as I sling the empty pack over my shoulder along with my scythe, preparing to depart. My own injuries have scabbed by now, the swelling in my wrist minimal and the bone splinted. "You could just go and let the animals finish me off."
"What animals?" I ask him, suddenly on alert. "Is there something down here with us?"
He laughs at my panic, shaking his head as he rests back against the mound of dirt he gathered up last night as a makeshift pillow. "No, no. It was just a suggestion."
"I'm not gonna leave you, Hades," I say anyways, heart aching at the prospect.
"Why?" he asks, and he seems so astounded, so unbelieving of my loyalty that I lean in and kiss him. Unlike the day before though, I let my lips linger against his, enough he gets the chance to tangle a hand in my hair, kissing me right back with an audible sigh after I pull away, eyes shining in the firelight.
"Because you didn't leave me," I tell him, just as I told him the other night. "Don't think I won't forget it."
I kiss him one last time before I leave, a quick peck of lips.
"I take it back!" he calls after me as I start heading up the slope that leads out of the cavern.
"Take what back?" I ask.
"What I said about you bein' real," he calls. "You're too good to be real. You must be a dream."
"Well, I say otherwise and I'm always right so," I laugh, reach for the trapdoor's opening and walk into the light.
I wonder to the stream, weary of the wounds on my back in the thickets of the trees since I have no covering. Normally I would be self-conscious that all I have is my breast bindings to cover the top half of myself, but there are bigger worries on my mind than my half-nakedness. Hades doesn't seem to mind that he doesn't have a shirt anymore, so I won't either.
"Though it would be helpful so I wouldn't get stabbed so freaking much," I grumble aloud, pushing a particularly prickly branch aside as I step onto the stream's bank.
Slowly, I wade into the water again and wash the dirt and sweat off of me that I accumulated from the cavern, drink my weight in water and refill the canteen. After my skin no longer burns from dirt and heat, I go on the search of food. If it comes down to it I'll eat the cattails at the stream's edge– my stomach is grumbling so much it physically hurts and I know Hades must not be faring much better, especially when his body is using everything it has to stave the infection off.
We both need fuel, and I become very disappointed when indeed all I can bring back for us is the cattails.
Choosing not to let it deter me too much, I head back to where I remember the witch hazel grove being, picking up wood for the cavern fire on the way. Only, when I get to the grove, there is no witch hazel. There are none of the other herbs I need either, and just the maple tree for use.
"No," I whisper, drop to my knees frantically and look around, pulling at the ground helplessly. There is nothing to use, just tall grass swaying in the breeze. "No, no nononono, no."
A sob rips from my chest before I can stop it, hands battering against the ground. "Fuck," I say. "Fucking hell!"
My eyes water and my body threatens to go into hysterics. Because of course they would do this to me– of course they would give me hope and rip its roots out the moment it starts to blossom. I thought, if nothing else, I could help Hades not be in pain for the time being, that I could fix him. Somehow, someway, I could make him better.
When the trample and tear of weeds sounds from my right, I don't bother to stand, go on the offensive. What's even the point? I think hopelessly. If I live, that doesn't mean anything. Hades is going to die, Hestia, Artemis and Apollo are lost, and I killed a boy with my bare hands. I'm not going to make it home from these Games, and even if I did I'd be looked at as a monster. I'd be the Capital's little whore to do with as they please and I couldn't say anything about it if I wanted to live, to keep my family safe.
Prometheus said they would own me if I win, but they own me even if I lose.
We're all just pawns in the Capital's hands, little things of flesh and bone that they can do with as they please to keep their precious order. Even if the wise tales say there was Chaos in the beginning, that that is the resolute, the Capital will have none of it. Kronus will sit on his throne like a false deity and bend the world to his will.
What's the point of living if all I have to look forwards to is that?
"Feeling sorry for yourself won't get you anywhere," says a gruff voice then, steps measured and calm.
I look up, find the lame boy from Pénte– Hephaestus, Hebe had said his name is– looking at me cautiously, as if I am a mouse and he is the hawk. Yet not a hawk on hunt, but rather a hawk in search. In search of what exactly, I don't know. He simply takes another careful step towards me, afraid that I'll finally gain some whit and be spooked off.
"What do you want?" I ask him instead, stay kneeling in the swaying grass, sweat rolling down my skin in rivers from the heat and my temper tantrum.
"Nothing," Hephaestus says, bronze eyes twinkling. He's a stalky kind of figure, strong limbs despite his limp and wild, fiery hair that shines in the afternoon light. He uses a spear as a walking stick. "I was just wondering if I may have a moment of your time?"
"Where else am I going to go?" I ask, waving my hands to the empty space around us.
"Point taken," he says, squinting as he looks at me a little closer. "You're not as pretty as they made you out to be."
"Thanks," I say to him dryly, sitting back and pulling my knees to my chest. "Is that all you had to say?"
Hephaestus shakes his head, bends down ungracefully to sit by me a few feet away. "I was going to say that your nickname doesn't suit you."
"What?" I ask him, brows drawing together at the strange statement.
"You aren't really a maiden," he says, mouth evening into a flat line. "Maidens are frivolous little things, and you're not that."
"Then what am I?" I ask him sardonically. "In case you haven't noticed, the rest of Elláda seems to disagree with you."
"They're idiots," he says blatantly, and I don't know whether to laugh because it reminds me of Hades, or to run now because this is some kind of trick. Now that my head has began to wind down a bit, I can feel the basic instinct to survive taking root once more; badmouthing the Capital won't follow along with it.
In the end I pick to stay where I am, wanting to hear Hephaestus out another moment. "You're too dark to be a maiden, too much of a survivor. Tell me, what was your father's surname?" he asks, eyes crinkling at the corners when he looks at me expectantly.
"Why do you want to know?" I ask him suspiciously, hand twitching that is connected to the arm my scythe is looped around.
"Humor me," Hephaestus smiles, and in that moment he looks far older than a teenager, like he extends the limits of time.
"Proserpina," I say, tongue getting ahead of my mouth.
"So your name should not be Kore," he says with a smile.
"What?" I ask him, brows drawing together. "What does that have to do–"
"It should be Persephone," he interrupts me, and I don't have the breath to continue my question after that. "She who brings death. A maiden you certainly are not, but a woman who enacts curses upon men– hmm, that's more fitting."
All I can do is blink at him, watch as he stands with a grunt and his lame leg tries to buckle. He smiles down at me once steady, one front tooth missing and the rest character crooked. "Don't forget about the change, Persephone," he says, turns on his heel and begins to limp away, as calm as when he came.
I open my mouth to call after him, find out what he means by the statement, but he turns as if he knows, eyes twinkling. "I almost forgot," he says, reaches into the satchel at his side and pulls out a metal tin sealed tight, the perfect thing to distract me. "For your friend," he says, tossing it my way.
I catch the object with a startled squeak, so intrigued by it that immediately I twist the cap open, look inside and sniff. It smells of the medicine I remember Artemis using on Apollo and me, the one that healed our wounds within seconds of being administered. My eyes go wide, chest ceasing with pure hope as I realize what it means.
When I look up, Hephaestus has already gone, disappeared into the forest like a ghost. "Thank you," I say.
What it earns is a chuckle on the afternoon breeze, a silent 'You're welcome' as I close the tin and stash it in my pack, rushing in steps to get back to Hades.
It is as I near the trapdoor again that I hear it, the metallic ping I remember the last parachute making as it dropped before me.
This one falls at my feet, larger than the last. I kneel down to it with wonder, open the latch and watch as two tunics spill out. Wrapped inside of them are two loaves of bread, two apples and cured meat as well as a new vial of iodine.
"Oh so now you're trying to butter me up," I mutter, glaring up at the sky.
It's only when I go to tuck the container into my pack do I see that the parachute is not the plain white it should be, but that there are symbols marked on it in ink. Symbols Prometheus knows only I would recognize– the writing we use in the fields in Eleusinian to mark directions, a forbidden dialect you are not to supposed to write nor speak any longer since Dekatría burned to the ground, taking the old language with them.
It isn't uncommon for sponsors to drop hints in the Games, so I am not overly weary about reading the message in the open, ducking under a nearby tree for shade from the heat as I twist the parachute until the symbols face up correctly.
'Maiden is out.' the first part of the message reads, or that is what I think it reads. I recheck my translation five times before reading the second part. 'Love that boy if you want to live.' The last few words are sketchy in my head, unpracticed. I haven't written this language myself since my father died, haven't read it since the last harvest season on the posts of the fields, telling me where the guards were thinnest and the work not too hot.
'Love that boy if you want to live.' Does he mean Hades?
With a nervous bite of the lip, I shove the parachute into my pack and start walking towards the cavern entrance again, wondering if I'm right. Because if the maiden bit really is out– I pull up short when my encounter with Hephaestus slams to the forefront. "You aren't really a maiden." Did he know? Did he know what was happening, that things were changing and that's why he said that?
But how?
And how did he know about Hades, that I needed the medicine he gave me to fix Hades' wounds? 'Persephone,' Hephaestus called me. 'She who brings death; who enacts curses upon men.' But then to give me something to save a life?
But he also said, "Don't forget about the change, Persephone." And I remember that day on the back of the train when we were headed to the Capital, Prometheus saying that things need to change and when I asked why he simply smiled. When I brought it up again with him in front of Atlas before the parade he told me not to talk about it in the open. "Does she know?" Atlas had asked while I was walking away. "Only about her family," Prometheus had answered him. But if my family is just the first part, then what is the second?
What does any of this mean?
I clench my hands into fists, shake my head and close my eyes, taking a deep breath. When I open them again I walk, find the entrance to the cavern and glance around to make sure no other stray tributes come wondering along before stepping into the darkness.
I find Hades sitting up by the fire when I come in, his color still pale and his wound having improved none.
Still wrapped in suspicion I can't bring myself to thank Hephaestus again even unsaid, instead setting my pack down next to Hades and pulling out the wood I collected to stoke the waning fire before us.
"Did you get anything to eat?" he asks.
I nod, still fogged from what has just happened.
"What is it?" he asks, poking around in the pack and at his intake of breath, I know he's found the parachute container and tin of medicine. "Kore…?"
I can't tell him, I realize with a sudden start. Even if I trust Hades, that note wasn't meant for him, and I know it will turn him suspicious if he finds out Hephaestus and I conversed so easily. And I don't want that; I don't want that because I know that I am going to listen to Prometheus, because the last time I didn't it nearly got me killed. I am going to listen and I am going to 'love' Hades, because it was bound to happen anyways, but now there is extra incentive.
Even underneath my feelings for Hades, I am still a human being and I have instinct for survival. Now that there is hope, there is need to know what is happening, what this change is, I don't want to die. Not yet. And what is going to happen with Hades, I'm not going to be faking it, not necessarily. But I am going to be keeping us alive; at least I hope I am.
"I got a present," I say then, trying to shake myself from the fog of fitting puzzle pieces together and smiling at Hades with wide-gapped teeth. "They gave us food and clothes and medicine." The lie spills easily from my lips, a protective sort of taint.
"Holy shit," Hades says, eyes lighting up. "Will the– will the medicine work?"
"It will," I say breathily, leaning towards him and feeling my heart break a little as his breath speeds up when I say, "You're gonna be good as new. Ready for anything."
Hades stutters, lays back with a blush when I tell him to. I rip the edge of one of the new tunics we've been given to use as a rag, douse it in water and iodine and clean Hades' wound, watching infection clear away. He grits his teeth and digs his fingers into the dirt, but the moment I open the tin of medicine and begin dabbing it on the stab wound, he gives a soft sigh, entire frame relaxing.
A few moments later he abruptly reaches out for my hand with a yelp. "It burns," he says, squeezing my fingers tight between his own.
"But it's working," I tell him, watching in rapt fascination as his skin begins to fuse together just like that. Any traces of infection bubble off, even the blisters from where Aphrodite tried to burn the wound closed fade. In a matter of minutes the wound is healed over, a thin, puckered red line left where a gaping cut once was.
Hades' breath comes in rapid pants, slow movements as he sits up to look at the wound and blinks. "Shit," he breathes, and I turn to him with a shaky smile, relieved and joyed at the same time. "Kore, it worked!"
At his full confirmation I give a small cry, throw myself into his arms and squeeze tight. He holds me back just as desperately, face buried into the crown of my head. We stay like that for a bit before I pull back, find him staring at me in this strange way I've never seen before, like I am the sun and he is a boy that has been in the darkness far too long.
And this is real and I will ruin it.
I want to tell him then, tell him about Hephaestus and the message and what we have to do because I want both of us to live– I want to love him not because I have to but because I want to. But I know that won't work, that both of us can't win these Games.
He said I was like a dream, but in that moment I want to tell him I am a nightmare.