The afternoon is wearing long, but if the Gamemakers have any say in things, I think that sun may be slow to set. Some clouds have gathered while I was resting, so there's moisture in the air to refract the light. If there's going to be a showdown, they're going to want everyone to see it. Blood doesn't look nearly so flashy after dark. Violence is so much more jarring when every second is visible before you. The nauseating use of a slow-motion play-by-play, with every gasp and jab and bite pointed out and commented on for you, doesn't have the same impact as the initial action, occurring before you as it would have occurred to an onlooker right on the sidelines.
The element of surprise still remains if I stick it out in a hiding place, but with only myself and one another tribute left, its value does lessen somewhat. That other person is going to be looking for me and I'm going to be looking for them.
I wish I knew who it was.
Unless, of course, it's Beanpole. In that case it would be hard to say whether or not I want to know.
But the wheels in my mind are turning. I don't feel like I can stand to merely continue to wait. I am back in this game. I it owe to Beanpole, to Papa, to Apple and Aulie and Faline and anyone else out there who might be hoping for me. To anyone who believes in me.
Even Sparrow believed in me.
The longer this drags out, the weaker I'm going to get. Salt water is going to rush up into the pools and creek. I doubt there's any packaged food left anywhere and the foraging was slim from the get-go. I need to be better supplied before I clash with my one remaining opponent (and if it's Beanpole, well, I'll give the people a better, more shocking show by casting my new weapons away than meeting him nearly empty-handed, won't I?). So, what kinds of tools can I add reasonably and quickly to my arsenal?
"Well," I say very softly to myself, "What materials are available to you to use, Mags? …The exact same materials as before!" Sparrow and I had made a fairly thorough assessment of what we had to use when we worked on the net and fishing lines before. There are pebbles and other slivers of rock, a variety of grasses, branches, and poles of bamboo. It's the same materials and I have the same skills for using them.
My hook is a prime candidate for some kind of use and I'm thinking as a spear. I may not have the necessary line left for a makeshift fishing rod, but simply to tie my hook to the end of a bamboo pole? Why not? A spear is a better weapon than a fishing pool will ever be against anything but fish. I make the whole thing into a rowdy mess of loops and knots. Might as well be careful. How can I possibly be accused of overdoing things when my life is at stake?
Because, with a hook for a blade, the point of my spear isn't pointing straight out, it will have to be wielded a bit differently than an ordinary weapon. Of course, since I have next to no experience with ordinary spears, that shouldn't be a problem. I have no training to unlearn and nothing but time and natural stupidity working against me.
I practice swinging my spear around a bit, snagging and poking at bamboo stalks, although I'm careful to keep my back to the rock formation at all times. I don't want anyone sneaking into there behind my back. If anyone is going to get to hole up like a hermit crab, it's going to be me.
The thing I've made looks like a boat hook, but I think it will serve. …Well, to bludgeon or scrape or snag a person. When it comes to making some kind of killing blow I don't have the best bit of equipment. Unless my opponent has something deadlier I can wrest from their grasp, I apologize in advance. It's not going to be quick. …which is unfortunate for both of us (unless maybe I am on the losing end and my foe has deadlier weapons than I do).
Now what to do? I drink some more water (two sips). I consider making another net, though I'm not sure I could say what good it would do me. Just something else to do while I wait. Something to keep my hands busy. There's a game like this. It's called "chicken."
It drizzles. I wait. I think. I over-think. Haakon or Beanpole or Meridew? The rain is warm and sort of unpleasant, but I would probably dislike colder rain more. I pick up some pebbles and put them in my pants pockets. You never know, they might help me. Maybe I can be like Beanpole and rely on the shark.
It's been about fifteen minutes when the clouds decide they've dropped enough of their load for the drizzle to stop. I feel tense and blasé almost at the same time. I don't know if it's a sign that I'm going crazy.
"Hey ho, I like the ocean," I sing to myself, "Hey ho, I like the ocean early in the morning."
Further down from my current location, this ocean, which I'm not sure I can honestly claim to like, is coming up higher. I can hear it. Waves are approaching from all sides, crashing against the steeper rock face and lapping their way up the rolling land. It almost feels like I'm the only person in the entire world.
The Gamemakers won't let it end this way though. It would make terrible television. For me, at least, it'd be kind of peaceful, the complete opposite of the murderous rage that gripped me before.
It's…possible, technically, isn't it? Maybe we're not playing chicken like I think we are. Maybe all three of my last competitors were involved in a struggle and the remaining tribute is badly wounded and barely hanging on and not even looking for me at all. Maybe.
Sloosh. Sloosh.
It's a sound. Just a sound, right? But it fills my heart with dread.
Sloosh, sloosh.
Someone is wading through the surf. I should basically know what I'm going to see, right? There are only three options. I have seen all these people before. They're tough, but I know that each of them is only a kid like me deep down. Haakon, Beanpole, Meridew.
My legs feel weak. I'm trembling. Whatever it's going to be, this is it, this is final. It's almost too frightening to breathe. Is this what that slightly strange aspect is in Beto Ernst or Emmy Pollack? Did they survive every sort of terror their Games could throw at them only to never shake the crazy sinking fear that settles down deep in your bones?
Not all the victors seem that way though. Jack Umber never looks crazy or afraid. Maybe thinking about this helps a bit. It's not part of my current situation. It's kind of unreal, really, part of some other world and some other life. I gain enough control of myself to start backing away, one tiny half-step at a time, until my elbow touches rock. The shark-thing didn't have legs, but I half imagine that it's gone through some hyper-evolution and grown them, only to begin to waddle through the lowest of shallows in search of prey. I don't know how the last two tributes died, but to have eaten up my bloody jacket the other day it had to have been pretty hungry. A hungry shark is a dangerous shark.
I can hear the wading and the movement of the tide both picking up speed, nearly in sync with one another. It's to my advantage that my opponent is out there having to contend with the rising water while I'm able to stay on dry ground and conserve my strength. Adrenaline must be pulsing through me. I pull myself together enough to rearrange my grip on my hook-spear and I crouch back between the rock faces instead of standing awkwardly plastered against the front of one.
It's hard to tell at this point if it's an insight stemming from instinct or logic, but I don't think it's Beanpole coming to meet me. This person is far too concerned about keeping ahead of the rising water level. This is someone who can't swim and unless I turn tail and decide to try and swim away, the water is the means of forcing our confrontation.
I see the first creeping foam of the ocean slip up along the slope in front of (down the hill from) me.
After that, wearily trudging along, I see Haakon. Within a split second of this, he also sees me. He has a hand axe in one hand and that saw blade in another. He's wearing his jacket, which retains its left arm, but the right arm has been cut off and he has that knotted around his forehead as a headband. He's thinner than I remember from training (but, then again, so am I) and his hair has made the transition from artfully tousled to sort of long and sloppy.
"Hey, Haakon," I say. I want to say something.
"Hey," he responds. Clearly an exchange for the ages. No one would ever wrongly believe that the Hunger Games were scripted. "You're Mags, right?"
"Yeah, I am." I'm sort of pleased that he remembers; that he wants to know. Haakon is my opponent, but he's no villain. He and I are about the same. We're hungry and tired and scarred and we want to go home.
"Who are you going home to, Mags?" he asks and catches me off guard. The tide is dancing around his ankles, but we're locked in place in a cautious stalemate. "Chicken," again, only this time we can see one another.
"I've got a dad," I answer.
"I have a sister," Haakon replies.
"Older or younger?"
"Younger. She's ten."
Haakon and I are hardly natural enemies. I doubt the animosity between us could get much more artificial. I wonder if Beanpole killed Meridew. I wonder if Haakon is sad and grateful over it at the exact same time because that's kind of how I feel about Beanpole. I don't have to kill him; I don't have to die for him.
So, between the two of us remaining, who's going to make the first move? I stick my left hand into my pocket and grasp two sones between my fingers. I might as well have them ready. I can easily drop them if having my hand filled will be a hindrance.
"I just want to go home," I say at last, "I'm sorry."
"There isn't any need for "sorry"s in the Hunger Games," Haakon shoots back, "But I appreciate the sentiment."
Isn't there something we should say now? Shouldn't I announce that I'm ready and going to engage? I am sure there's an expression for this… It's… Oh. "En garde!" I yell as I rush him. I need two hands for this maneuver. I toss the pebbles away and ahead of me (well, that was a waste) and grip the shaft of my spear with both hands. This is an awfully hard thing to convince myself to do.
Haakon avoids me and I fall forward toward the surf, thankfully catching myself with the spearhead instead of slamming my face into the muddy mix of water and dirt.
Haakon regards me as I stagger to regain my balance, and then the weapons in his hands. He keeps them both, but seems to settle his attention on the hand axe.
I proceed with less reckless abandon when I throw myself back at him. He's ready for it now (he didn't understand "en grade") and I've gotten a better feel for the weight and balance of my weapon.
How do you like this show, Capitol?
I hit Haakon's shoulder, but with the smooth side of my hook as opposed snagging him with the point, so while it's a blow that visibly moves him, he was probably only bruised. Out of the corner of my eye I see the swing of his arm (which weapon? which arm?) and side-backstep fast enough to take some of the edge off an attack that was meant to connect higher up my skull and instead meets my cheek.
Oh!
Damn!
I fall down to my knees and my spear clatters into the grass and stony dirt. If Haakon had been trying to cut me, my cheek would be split open right now. He hit me with the blunt side of the metal. It wasn't a mistake. He wanted to use that side first. To knock me out, or at least daze me, before he put either blade to my skin.
Whether for his sake or mine, it's made me lucky.
The sharp, metallic taste of blood spreads throughout my mouth and I wonder how my rattled teeth are holding up. My tongue touches something raw and loose. Oh gosh.
After a second it hurts more than it had on the initial impact as areas that were temporarily numb spring into fully feeling agony.
I stand up and spit into the tide. The water swirls and sucks away the angry red ribbon of my blood and tugs less successfully at the molar that went with it. This should hardly get me worked up when I'm trying to find it within myself to kill rather than be killed, but teeth…and blood…my stomach roils in a way that makes me sort of relieved that I haven't had anything to eat today.
Haakon doesn't look particularly comfortable either, but he brings back his arm for another swing.
Instead of suavely sidestepping the blow, I fling myself down again into the tidal froth and avoid the attack. I grab my spear and scramble backwards, deeper into the water, awkward and quick, raising myself up with the spear as a prop as soon as I think the distance between us is safe enough.
Haakon takes several steps, but hesitates before the water reaches his knees.
I'm not far ahead, but it's enough for the gaps in our height to make a difference. Where I'm standing, the sea has filled my boots and is seeping up through the fabric of pants past my thighs. I could dive in and swim away. Haakon's going to have greater maneuverability in his upper body longer and deeper than I will on my feet.
If all I do is escape though, then I'm merely delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later, there has to be a conclusive end to things between me and Haakon, doesn't there?
The tension between us ebbs and flows. Who will move first? What will happen now? At least the water is warm enough that standing in it isn't uncomfortable.
Even if we're disengaging only for a period of seconds that's enough time for my mind to wonder and for me to think. The blood in my mouth just doesn't seem to want to give up completely. I suppose that reflects on how squarely Haakon clocked me. If I hadn't moved, I would've been out like a light. At least the rest of my teeth are staying in place. Jack Umber, if I live, please refer me to whoever it was that fixed your teeth (at least mine was lost from the back, not the front). I hate to do it, but this seems too gross to swallow. I spit again and a bit of blood sticks to my lip.
Something about the way it hangs together a bit holds my eye. Haakon looks at it too, this glop of blood mixing with the water. Why? What is he thinking? That this is the Shy Evert strategy and I'm going to give him some kind of disease? Or there's the shark. What does he know about the shark and the luring effect of blood?
But I must be over-thinking it. He wades a step closer, testing the heft of the small axe he's carrying as though he's considering throwing it. Haakon is probably feeling just like me. The situation is difficult. There's so much on the line. What move is the right one? Which will end my life? We're both thinking things like that. He's nervous.
It's not going to be pretty and it feels like it treads a thin line of fairness, but aside from escaping and seeing who the arena will kill first (dehydration, drowning, starvation, exhaustion, act of shark), I can only think of one strategy that will give the advantage to me. Blood is the bait. Flailing about is the lure. I won't need a net or a line for this catch and release scenario. Just a hook and some luck.
And even back home, when it comes to fishing, there's a large component that's merely luck.
My blood's just a taste of what's to come, shark. Something to whet your appetite. You're invited to dinner. Please arrive promptly.
I am the one who makes the next move.
It's like pulling a boat up to the pier.
The hook scrapes Haakon's arm and chest and catches the edge of his jacket. I have the advantage of surprise, as small as that is in this situation, but he's a solid sort of guy and the water around us doesn't make moving him any easier. He stumbles forward, splashing seawater up with both the bulk of his body and the wavering saw. The blade makes a nick in my bamboo pole, but doesn't make it through because he's trying harder to straighten up than break free.
My hook is bad for cutting and even I have trouble dislodging it from Haakon's clothes, jerking it back and forth until it tears loose.
What I need is to get my hands on one of his weapons or jar him into slicing himself with one of them. It doesn't need to be a mortal wound. It just needs to bleed seriously enough.
Haakon and I posture at one another with our weapons- me poking him uselessly in the chest with the curved side of the hook and him trying to cut through the pole or reach past it to swipe at my hands. It's a graceless dance as we stir the dirt into mud beneath us, treading the same foot or so of soil over and over (one foot beneath him, one beneath me).
With a powerful slice, the stalemate breaks. The front third of my spear splashes into the water, where it floats at an angle, the heavy end with the hook attached dipped down into the water like it's on the end of a line.
There's a grim smile on Haakon's face.
Because unless I pull them back very fast, his next swipe is going to cut through my clenched fingers. Because the water is at my hips and low around his thighs and I'm going to move too slowly whether I try to run or swim.
But I have the forward-facing point now that I need.
I can't go back.
I can only go forward.
I push off the bottom in a desperate lunge. Aim for something soft- lower will be easier to fling my force at than higher.
It's as much fear as pain that has me yelling as the beautiful point that Haakon has sliced for me jabs through his shirt and into his abdomen and I know that with blood what I'm looking for I can't just leave it in- I have to pull it out- but the jagged saw is first scratching, then scraping, then actually cutting through the skin down the back of my right hand and lower arm and who knows how well he can wield the axe and saw at the same time and where the axe is now.
I don't have the momentum to move back fast and blood is running from my knuckles down to my elbow and into the water. I wrench the bamboo free and see the dark stain of blood ripple quicker along the already water-darkened fabric of Haakon's shirt and pants. The side of the saw blade strikes my cheek, leaving a string of small snag-cuts and I'm knocked to my left into the water. A second, smaller splash follows me into the waves. The salty stuff rushes into my mouth and up my nose and I struggle to compromise my deeper instinct not to swallow it with my concern over holding my right arm above the waterline to slow my contribution to our human red tide.
That shark is big enough and fast enough that there could be victor at this rate. …Or only what the Gamemakers can salvage of one.
I turn my head out of the water and back to Haakon, who has one hand on the saw's handle and the other hand free.
So what does a person do to survive?
I spit the water into his face and a few dregs of clotting blood go with it.
If he isn't holding the hand axe, where is it? I can't see it from this position, floating on my back, and visibility is hardly helped by all the silt and soil that we've stirred up. I kick back a few strokes for the distance to think and the depth to challenge him. I'm keeping my right arm up over my chest, but gravity still pulls my blood to the sea.
Something bumps against the underside of my shoulder.
Haakon lets out a gasp.
I know exactly what touched me.
The dorsal fin passes between Haakon and me. Haakon takes a step back. Fear is whitening his face faster than blood loss. The shark bumps its nose up against the side of my right boot. What is this thing? Is it good to eat? That's what sharks think. The fisherman is now being fished.
The contact breaks for a second. The shark bumps my boot again (stay as still as possible or try to wriggle out?). I already know that its tastes aren't too discriminating. With dried blood for flavoring, I saw it eat my jacket. The boots seem awfully plastic-y, but for all I know, they're just as good.
With the tiniest kick I can manage, I shake off the boot.
Ring upon ring of expendable weaponized teeth open and take the boot in with barely a swallow.
For its next mouthful, it clamps down on my foot and pulls down.
I scream and my mouth is flooded with water.
Do I really hear what I think I hear as the ocean rushes past and through my ears or do I only imagine it because of what I see? "The axe is right there!" Haakon tells me - frantic, altruistic.
Out of the grit and into my hand without seeing which end is which aside from the fact that I'm gripping wood, I smash the axe against the shark's nose as hard as I can beneath the water. My foot is ripped up but at least it's still in one piece. Blood flows freely from the tooth-marked wound.
I cough and spit and breathe. It's going to come back for another try. I wasn't forceful enough to overcome the starvation (and instincts, maybe) that's driving it. I only have the smallest bit of attention to spare now for Haakon, trying to exit this quagmire of salt and anger and destruction as fast as he can without turning his back and taking his eyes off the things that threaten him. The shark turns back, cool and determined.
When I slash it with the axe blade, the shallows erupt with rage.
The shark's own blood makes it as wild- or even wilder- than ours. It reels about with such ire that the axe, still stuck in its side, is ripped from my hand. There's only one place of safety now. The small stretch of dirt and rocks that makes up the highest point in the arena. It's even shrunk since Haakon and I abandoned it to battle it out in the sea.
This plan I had- was it inspired or insane?
There's nothing to be done for trailing my blood in the water now. My foot shrills out in agony, exacerbated by the sting of salt, but my limbs all work just as I want them to. I am tiny and slim. I can go in further faster if I swim. Until the sand scrapes my stomach. I shake off my other boot.
I don't look back.
Nothing speeds like fear.
I swim.
Running backwards in water wasn't the best strategy, but he'd had the advantage to the shore, hadn't he? How could Haakon know, between the two of us, that the raging shark would try its luck next with the person who hadn't attacked it and not have a third go at me?
When he screams, I am crawling on my hands and knees through inches of water.
I can hear the thundering rattle of the saw blade wavering back and forth through the air. Haakon fights. He doesn't go down easy. And what am I doing? Not looking. Sand and mud are coating my frontside like breadcrumbs on a fried fish.
What thing have I wished on another person? A person who forgot he was trying to kill me to try and save me.
And instead I'm looking ahead, away.
I can't turn my eyes all at once. First, the saw wound to my hand and arm, then the trail of blood following my tattered foot along the newly delineated beach. Haakon comes next. He's spattered with blood, but the determination of the shark is matched double in the boy from 7. That's what it is to be brave.
So I'm looking. Is that how I allow this to end? Myself a cruel and silent witness?
I am balanced unevenly on my knees and something in my pocket is digging into my thigh. One last rock. My eyes are tearing up with the sting of salt and frustration as I throw it. Smack! It hits home.
The shark is dazed for just a second. That's enough for Haakon, with his strong upper body, to pull himself away and free.
He saves himself from that particular pain. It breaks whatever spell that's gripped me. I rise and start to run, nearly falling when I try to step normally on my torn foot, stumbling gradually to Haakon's side and help him drag himself out of the blood-stained spray, further and further from the dampening dirt, until we're backed up to the stone. The saw blade has fallen from his hand and lays halfway in, halfway out of the gently rising water.
If we don't fight any longer, if it ends like this, Haakon is going to bleed out long before me.
"Where's that thing? What's that monster doing now?" Haakon asks me, as soon as he's stopped breathing too heavily to talk.
The shark, in its hunger and wild, thrashing anger, has gone for anything it could get. I tell him this; that it's an especially nasty version of a fish that I know. That it's called a shark. I see the cut-away third of my bamboo pole poking up just an inch or two out of the water. The big hook I found days ago dropped among the tidal pools is stuck in its lip.
The shark sulks about in its fury a while longer, moving between the sunken shoots of bamboo and tall rocks, before it finally calms, finding nothing left on which to take out its anger, and swims back out into deeper water, the hook wedged firm- just another one that got away.
"I hate sharks," says Haakon, who'd probably never even encountered salt water before he entered the arena and didn't know what a shark was called until I told him.
I wipe some of the blood and dirt from his face with my uninjured hand. "Yeah," I agree, "So do I."
It takes a long time for him to actually die. He's pale and passed out for some time before that. I sit beside him the whole time, staring out at the water, applying pressure to my wounded foot with one hand, poking my tongue in and out of the spot vacated by my lost tooth.
The tide never stops rising until the final cannon is sounded.
I stand up, slowly, almost hypnotically, for the final announcement. The sunset shines bright on an arena filled with water.
"Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you Mags Gaudet, the victor of the Twelfth Hunger Games!"