Chapter Twenty
I blink up at the pink sky, where the sun, directly overhead, shines like a white-hot spotlight. As the countdown begins to the start of the games, I try to get my bearings, but I'm on alien ground. I'm standing on water - that is, the metal plate is in the middle of some kind of large lake. Well, more accurately the cornucopia is in the middle of the lake, on a small island of sorts. From the cornucopia, long strips of land radiate, like spokes from the middle of a wheel, to the lake shore. Between cornucopia and shore, in the wedge of water between each spoke, are two tributes. Mags, the elderly tribute from District 4, is in the wedge next to me. Katniss is nowhere near me - probably on the other side of the cornucopia. Of course.
The water is dark blue, hinting at its depth. When the timer hits zero, signifying that it is safe to leave the metal plates, I bend down and let the water splash on my hand so I can taste it. Salt water - it just keeps getting better and better.
So far, no one in my immediate vicinity has taken to the water, so I have some time to ponder my situation. Like me, they probably don't know how to swim. There isn't even so much as a pond in District 12. Wait … I glance over and see that Mags is, in fact, getting ready to jump in. She would know how to swim - or at least keep herself afloat. I'm going to have to get in the water at some point, and try to float myself over to the land strip. But even that's problematic, because - I need to find Katniss. She could be on the opposite side of me, and her land strip would lead her to shore on the far side of the arena. Which means - what? Getting to the cornucopia, to the bloodbath, and hoping to find her there.
I look at Mags again - worried about what she's going to do - and she looks right up at me, points to herself, then back at me, then holds out her palm, as if to say "stop."
I hear the shouting and first sound of weapons hitting each other in the direction of the cornucopia. Well, that didn't take long. Pretty soon, for my own protection, I'm going to have to move, probably just launch myself as far as I can into the direction of the land spoke, then hope I've got enough buoyancy to carry me the rest of the way. Mags slides into the water and disappears for a bit, before her head pops out near the other land spoke.
"Peeta!"
They come from the cornucopia, racing toward me. Katniss - and, of all people, Finnick Odair. Katniss pulls a bow and arrow and aims it, while Finnick dives into the water, coming toward me. I slide off the metal plate and clutch it, waiting for him. The water is surprisingly warm, like bathwater. When he emerges next to me, he holds out a wrist and I see the gold bracelet that Effie gave to Haymitch. So that means ...
I clutch his neck as Finnick swims through the water toward the beach and when we get there, Katniss hauls me up and hugs me.
"Hello, again," I say, kissing her. "We've got allies."
"Yes, just as Haymitch intended," she responds dryly.
"Remind me, did we make deals with anyone else?"
"Only Mags, I think" she says, nodding toward the water. I turn back and see Mags patiently making her way toward us.
"Well, I can't leave Mags behind," says Finnick. "She's one of the few people who actually likes me."
"I've got no problem with Mags," says Katniss, though with a coolness in her voice; she never did warm up to Finnick. "Especially now that I see the arena. Her fish hooks are probably our best chance of getting a meal."
"Katniss wanted her on the first day," I tell Finnick, a little more diplomatically.
"Katniss has remarkably good judgment," he replies, helping Mags onto the beach. She pats her belt and garbles out a nearly unintelligible phrase.
"Look, she's right - someone figured it out." He points out to the water and we see someone, I think Beetee by the flash of light on his glasses, bobbing along in the water a couple of spokes away.
"What?" asks Katniss.
"The belts. They're flotation devices. I mean, you have to propel yourself, but they'll keep you from drowning."
Katniss watches Beetee for a while, then shrugs to herself. She and Finnick distribute the weapons they picked up in the cornucopia. She keeps a bow for herself and several knives. She hands me a machete that is the perfect size for me, a second bow and extra set of arrows and gives Mags an awl. Finnick has a net and several tridents. The net he flings over his shoulders and then he stoops down to let Mags onto his back. Then we run from the open beach into the jungle that surrounds it. Tall trees - smooth, with their fronds of palm leaves clustered up high. There are vines everywhere - snaking across the soft, black earth - hanging in loops from the trees - make walking more of a chore. Humidity - like what it feels like back home right before a summer rain, but multiplied several times - is a warm steam all around us. It's possible we sweat - it's just not possible to be sure that it is our sweat or the sweat of the air.
We decide to go straight up as far as we can, and I take the lead, cutting away creeping vines and vegetation. Finnick's behind me with his trident, but with Mags on his back, it should slow him up if he decides to attack, and Katniss is behind him with her bow drawn.
After about twenty minutes of climbing, Finnick requests a rest and Mags clambers off his back. She's sweating and pale, and I glance at her anxiously, but her concern is for Finnick, and with various hand signals and gestures, she seems to be confirming that he's all right.
"I'm going to try to get a look at the cornucopia," says Katniss, eyeing a tree with bark roughed up enough to provide footholds. She shoots me a glance before she leaves, as if to remind me to be wary of Finnick, before she goes up.
Although I understand why Katniss doesn't trust Finnick, I surprisingly do not have that difficulty. Perhaps it is because now I fully understand Haymitch's message - don't jump right into heroics. And then he sent us Finnick. A better, more eager fighter than me.
And Finnick seems perfectly at ease with me. It's when Katniss slithers down the tree that he tenses and slightly raises his trident. And Katniss' face - set, emotionless - is not encouraging. She almost casually refits an arrow to her bow as soon as she hits the ground, and she stares at him.
"What's going on down there, Katniss?" he asks her in his slightly mocking tone. "Have they all joined hands? Taken a vow of nonviolence? Tossed the weapons in the sea in defiance of the Capitol?"
"No," she answers sullenly.
"No. Because, whatever happened in the past is in the past. And no one in this arena was a victor by chance. Except maybe Peeta," he adds, looking over at me.
He has not convinced her. She is still staring at him, and her thoughts are deadly. I honestly think it might be 50-50 who will be able to strike first, so I rise, calmly walk between the arrow and the trident, and look at Katniss.
"How many are dead?" I ask her.
She glares at me. "Hard to say. At least six, I think. And they're still fighting."
"Let's keep moving," I say, calmly. "We need water."
"Better find some soon," agrees Finnick. "We need to be undercover when the others come hunting us tonight."
Uncertainty passes over Katniss' face and then she finally relaxes. "Let's get going then," she says.
We head back up again, and the trees start bunching together, along with the vegetation, but we keep as close to our straight line as possible. We find no sign of water; it's all just trees and vines, really. Another twenty or thirty minutes in, Katniss points out that we have almost reached the crest of the hill as the tree-line seems to suddenly end just up ahead. I swing the machete back and forth to clear the path. But up at the top of the hill, there is something wrong. I can sense it before understanding it. The jungle up ahead of me does not seem to be stopping. It's no longer climbing, and it's not going downhill. It seems unnaturally - flat. I take one more swing, and the machete hits something that doesn't yield right. The faint, electrical zap is the last thing I hear.
I come to in darkness. I'm holding my breath. The voices around me are muffled. It's like I'm in a bathtub, holding my nose as I dunk underwater. But the water is light as air. I try to expel it - expel the air in my lungs - but there is something blocking me, a pressure on my mouth. I battle against it, fighting, fighting - and then my breath comes out as a hoarse cough - and suddenly there is Katniss' voice.
"Peeta?"
I blink and light floods my eyes. In a moment of confusion, I think to myself that it is the bird who has found me again. Katniss' golden pin is reflecting the sunlight and her face fills all of my vision, her eyes sparkling, silver bright. It feels so much like waking from a nightmare, or out of death again - paralyzed and tingling. But I can move my fingers. They are still gripped around the knife.
"Careful," I say. "There's a force field up ahead."
She laughs, but tears spill from her eyes, trail down her cheeks and land on my face. She usually doesn't cry like this, and certainly never in public. She's always been fairly stoic in the arena.
"Must be a lot stronger than the one on the Training Center roof," I continue, puzzled. "I'm all right, though. Just a little shaken."
"You were dead!" she exclaims. "Your heart stopped!" Then she puts her hand over her mouth and I can see she's trying to contain her sobs, but they are escaping her anyway, a choking sound.
Oh - well. Oh. "Well, it seems to be working now," I say soothingly. "It's all right, Katniss." She nods, but she won't take her hand off of her mouth and I feel the anxiety of the arena around me, the need to keep moving. "Katniss?"
"It's OK. It's just her hormones," says Finnick, who is kneeling on the ground behind her.
"No. It's not -" she starts. And then she really starts to cry. I just hold on to her hand, not sure what else to do. This is not a Katniss that I know. No amount of playing to the camera would ever draw out such a performance from her. I must have genuinely frightened her. And now I'm uneasy. I'm going to have to die at some point - and yes, of course, she won't be happy about it. But she must also not be so vulnerable.
She looks up at Finnick with a strange mix of resentment and gratitude - by which I take it that I have him to thank for reviving me - and he looks from her to me with more of a puzzled look, then shakes his head.
"How are you?" he asks me. "Do you think you can move on?"
"No, he has to rest," says Katniss, firmly, before I can say a word. Mags brings her a handful of moss, which she uses to wipe her face. She blows her nose and wipes all the tears and snot away. Then, she looks back at me and frowns. She reaches over and pulls the locket out from under the undershirt and stares at it for a second. I hold my breath, but she doesn't open it. "Is this your token?" she asks.
"Yes. Do you mind that I used your mockingjay? I wanted us to match."
"No, of course I don't mind," she says with something of a forced smile. I suppress a smile of my own - I thought she might find the matching thing a bit too cute. Thank goodness she didn't seem to realize it was a locket.
I spend a moment reflecting on how much I love her utter lack of sentimentalism. I really do. I always admired it and I have come to take strength in it. Certainly, as with most things, its absence is as telling as its presence. So, I know that when she weeps for me, I am witnessing something real - and incredibly rare. (She, on the other hand, must find my own sentiments hard to follow. As real as my feelings are, I've had to dress them up and parade them around so much, sometimes even I forget what part I'm playing at any given moment - friend, lover, husband, ally … it all gets to be a jumble, sometimes.)
"So, do you want to make camp here, then?" asks Finnick, with a touch of exasperation.
"I don't think that's an option," I say, before Katniss can speak. "Staying here. With no water. No protection. I feel all right, really. If we could just go slowly."
"Slowly would be better than not at all," says Finnick, and he helps me up.
Katniss starts picking over her weapons. Counting her arrows. Checking her knives. Finally, she stands. "I'll take the lead."
"No," I say, "it's too -."
"No, let her do it," says Finnick. "You knew that force field was there, didn't you? Right at the last second? You started to give a warning." Katniss nods. "How did you know?"
Katniss hesitates. It might not be obvious to Finnick, because it's so brief, but I've seen it too many times - she's trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth. "I don't know," she says at last. "It's almost as if I could hear it. Listen."
We stand still for a while, but I hear nothing but chattering insects and the wind rustling the vines. "I don't hear anything."
"Yes," she insists, looking at me very earnestly. "It's like when the fence around District 12 is on, only much, much quieter." We pause to listen again. I squint at Katniss, wondering what game she's playing. "There! Can't you hear it? It's coming from right where Peeta got shocked."
"I don't hear it, either, but if you do, by all means, take the lead," says Finnick.
"That's weird," Katniss responds. She cocks first her right then her left ear in the direction of the force field. "I can only hear it out of my left ear."
"The one the doctors reconstructed?" I ask,
"Yeah," she shrugs. "Maybe they did a better job than they thought."
I wish I could say the same thing about my prosthetic leg, which feels off now, probably because my muscles are still quivering and it needs strong support from my upper leg. Finnick finds me a stick to use for walking. But my left foot drags and I catch on every single vine.
Katniss grabs a bunch of nuts from one of the smaller trees and uses them to periodically toss to her left side, to make sure we are keeping free of the force field. Just ahead of me, Mags collects the nuts she throws, which are blackened from the shock. After a while, Katniss turns around in consternation. "Mags! Spit that out! It could be poisonous."
Mags shakes her head and says something unintelligible. Katniss looks back to Finnick, who is now bringing up the rear, but he just laughs. "I guess we'll find out," he shrugs.
Mags seems OK, so we keep plodding on. I know Katniss is hoping that there is a place where the force field will allow us to turn left, crest the hill and leave the trees, but I'm beginning to think that there is no way this is going to happen. We seem to be following a curved path, as far as I can tell.
After an hour, we have made no progress beyond the trees and, in frustration, Katniss calls for a break and says she needs to take another look from above. She finds a tall tree and shimmies up it, while the rest of us sit down. We're all panting - even the exertion of walking slowly has winded us and we are absolutely leeching body moisture. My tongue feels swollen and dry.
"Feeling OK, Mags?" asks Finnick with a laugh.
Mags returns the laugh and rubs her belly.
I squint at Finnick. "Uh - thanks, by the way. That might be an arena first - bringing your opponent back to life."
He shrugs. "Ally," he says shortly. "So - just don't pull that stunt again at the end of the game."
"I'll try."
At that point, Katniss slithers back down the tree and, huffing a little, sits down next to me. "The force field has us trapped in a circle. A dome, really. I don't know how high it goes. There's the cornucopia, the sea, and then the jungle all around. Very exact. Very symmetrical. And not very large."
I nod to myself. This makes a certain sense, given our experiences, so far. Still, it's disconcerting to be trapped in such a small space with a bunch of tributes who you can't really trust.
"Did you see any water?" asks Finnick.
"Only the saltwater where we started the Games."
"There must be some other source," I say. "Or we'll all be dead in a matter of days."
Katniss shakes her head. "Well, the foliage is thick. Maybe there are ponds or springs somewhere." But she sounds unenthusiastic. "At any rate, there's no point in trying to find out what's over the edge of this hill, because the answer's nothing."
Just like Haymitch's cliff. "There must be drinkable water between the force field and the wheel," I insist.
Katniss considers me for a moment, and then sighs. Because she knows I'm right. Either there is no water, and we have to return to the center of the arena and finish the fight as soon as possible before dying of thirst - or there is water hidden in here and we have to find it. "Let's be logical about this. We'll move down the slope a couple hundred yards and continue going around the circle."
We spend the rest of the day on this exercise, but it's slow going. Mags can go only so fast - and I'm little faster. I don't want to tell Katniss, because I don't want to be the one to trap her in any one location, again, but my nausea is kept in check only by the fact that I don't have much in my stomach to expel.
After a couple of hours of this, though, with no luck, anyway, Katniss at one point turns around to check on us, and she immediately calls a halt to the day. "We need to rest," she says.
"Let's hike a little ways back up," says Finnick. "If we camp just below the force field, we know that's one direction we don't have to watch, plus we can use it as a weapon - deflect attackers into it."
Katniss glances at me and I think we have the same thought - Finnick is an incredibly useful ally. I nod, and she says, "OK, sounds good."
Once we find a place to rest, Finnick starts picking armfuls of the large grasses that grow all around us, and he and Mags start weaving them together. I see a bunch of the nuts that Katniss was using to test the force field, cut them down and fry them against the force field. As I peel and pile the nuts, Katniss stands over me, leaning on her bow.
"Finnick," she says at last. "Why don't you stand guard and I'll hunt around for some water."
"No," I start. "Not alone."
"Don't worry, I won't go far.
"I'll go, too."
"No," she says, staring me down. "I'm going to do some hunting if I can."
She knows I have no good argument against this, since I'm too loud to go with her when she hunts. Although, I really think she means to leave me behind because I need to rest. I start to insist she take Finnick with her, but I know she won't go for that, because in our current condition, Mags and I are even more vulnerable than she is. Damn it.
I watch her dissolve into the trees with an uneasy feeling, which is not helped by the sudden sound of the cannon. But it's just the announcement - finally - of the end of the bloodbath. Hours, that took, although I suppose, with the water and the island, it makes sense that the initial fighting might have taken a lot longer than usual. Eight. Quick flashes of last year's bloodbath - the dead children lying in the plain. Quick flashes of the training center - how we laughed, ate, had fun with each other.
Finnick shakes his head. "Kumbaya," he says, wryly - a word with no meaning to me - and Mags shakes her head in turn.
Mags and Finnick go back to work on their weaving. The tall grasses make mats three or four feet high, and after they have made four big mats - with such speed that I know they must do this all the time - Finnick loosens up some tall, thin, sturdy reeds and constructs a frame. The mats, secured on the top and three sides of the frame, complete a small hut - not tall enough to stand in, but wide enough for the four of us to sit in. And they're not done. While Finnick constructs the hut, Mags weaves smaller grasses into bowls. She hands them to me, and I start filling them with nuts.
After what seems like far too long, Katniss comes back, so silently that we don't hear her until she's almost upon us. She takes in the transformation of the camp, and we take in her hands, in which she is carrying a very large, almost beaver-sized, rodent.
"No, no water," she says, looking at our hopeful faces. "It's out there though," she says, looking at me with a small smile. "He knew where it was," she adds, indicating the rat. "He'd been drinking recently when I shot him out of a tree, but I couldn't find his source. I swear, I covered every inch of ground in a thirty-yard radius."
"Can we eat him?" I ask her.
"I don't know for sure. But his meat doesn't look that different from a squirrel's. He should be cooked …." She frowns at this.
I'm good at starting fires in even damp conditions, but it would be a horrible risk to take when heat is not even needed. Then I look down at my hands. "Let's use the force field."
Katniss skins the tree-rat and I cut the meat into cubes, skewer the cubes on a sharp stick, and toss it into the force field. After a second or two of sizzle against the field, the stick flies back at me and I catch it. The rodent meat is blackened on all sides, but cooked nicely inside. The next time, I try it with slightly larger cubes of flesh, and that works the same, but gives us much more meat to chew on.
We gather together inside the little hut to eat tree rat and fried nuts. It's a strange meal - but actually, not bad, all things considered, the rat tasting like muddy chicken, the nuts slightly sweet, slightly bitter - and that takes care of hunger. But hunger's not the real problem.
After we eat, Finnick interrogates Katniss a little bit about the rat - where it was going, how high it was, what it was doing when she shot it. Katniss' answers are brief, and she occasionally gives Finnick a distrustful look - he's being a little too aggressive, again - but I think that he's just detail-oriented, that he likes to understand things, even if he doesn't see them.
Beyond the border of the trees, the sun sets and, as it does, the light of a large, pale moon starts shining through the trees on the other side of the sky. As darkness descends, the anthem of Panem sounds, and the Capitol seal appears in the sky above us. Followed by the faces of today's dead.
The man from District 5. The male morphling from 6. Cecelia and Woof, the tributes from 8. Both from 9. The woman from 10. Seeder from 11. I'm surprised to find a lump in my throat. I don't want to know how they died - the gentle, drugged-out artist; the tough 60-year-old woman. The mother of three.
No one speaks. Katniss looks tense and on the verge of tears again. I'm about to try to say something comforting to her, when we see it all of a sudden. A silver parachute - a gift from our sponsors - glides down to rest in the nearby foliage.
"Whose is it?" asks Katniss.
Finnick shrugs. "No telling. Why don't we let Peeta claim it, since he died today?"
I go over and pick it up. The gift we have been sent is very small. It's a small, hollow, metal object, a little longer than a finger, with a tapered end - kind of like the mouth-end of a whistle. None of us can place it. We blow on it, ask Mags if she can fish with it,consider its merits as a weapon.
Katniss takes it, finally, and spends a lot of time just looking at it, as if trying to read the mind of the sender. I guess I'm seeing it in action, then - her silent communication game with Haymitch. Where he sends her gifts and she figures out the meaning of them. Only, this time, neither the meaning nor purpose come to her.
She finally lays her head on a grass mat and sticks the object in the sand with a grunt. "I give up. Maybe if we hook up with Beetee or Wiress they can figure it out."
I sit down behind her and rub her shoulders, which are tense with her frustration. The motion of my fingers helps keep my mind off of the headache that is starting to pound behind my eyes. Surely, I think, when it comes down to it, Haymitch will eventually make sure we get water. And forget us - Finnick's legions of wealthy fans won't let him die this way.
Suddenly, Katniss sits straight up. "A spile!"
"What?" asks Finnick.
Katniss pulls it out of the ground. "It's a spile. Sort of like a faucet you put in a tree - and sap comes out." She looks around. "Well, the right kind of tree."
"Sap?" asks Finnick.
"To make syrup," I explain hastily, because I understand now … "But there must be something else inside these trees."
The rat, nuzzling the tree, as Katniss described so carefully to Finnick. Its mouth wet with recent drinking.
We jump up and go to a thick, green tree. Finnick takes the spile and starts to drive into the bark with a rock, but Katniss stops him. "Wait, you might damage it. Let's drill the hole, first."
Mags offers her awl and I drive it into the bark. It's nice and sharp and goes in two inches with little difficulty. I try to widen the hole by moving the awl around in it, and then Finnick helps with a knife, and eventually, we get the spile into the tree.
After a few tense seconds, water begins to drip from the end of it. Mags catches the first drops and licks them off her palm. She nods and holds her hands out for more.
After some wiggling and adjusting of the spile, a thin stream of water pours out of it. We take turns drinking right from it, then Mags brings over one of her woven baskets, which is watertight. The water is warm - a little earthy - but so delicious. My headache retreats and the only thing I feel once I've had my fill of it is sleepy.
Katniss lets Finnick take the first watch and lies beside me, our heads covered by the hut. "How are you doing?" she whispers to me.
"Fine - just so tired."
She adjusts herself so that her body is spooning mine. Her rhythmic breathing calms and relaxes me, as hypnotic as a lullaby. "You'll be better in the morning," she tells me gently.
I slip away, slip towards unconsciousness, wondering what dreams will come to me my first night in the arena. Will they be regular nightmares? The ones that paralyze me upon waking? My last waking moments are spent listening to my own heartbeat.