Chapter 16 – Day 9 – 10 Tributes
The birds wake me up once more. Delly is already awake, sitting on the ground and closing her arms around her legs.
"You ready?" she asks.
"For what?"
"I don't know. Walking?"
"Yeah." I stand up and notice her bag is packed and ready to go.
I'm wide-awake today. Last night was one of the best sleeps I've had since the Games started. Delly and I keep a consistent stride. There is so much silence but there are still a lot of people left. Well, maybe not. Ten people isn't too many, especially for this big of an arena. I think to myself that if someone doesn't die soon, there'll be another event created by the Gamemakers. I get sick to my stomach when I think about the birds. Then, I look at my leg. I've completely forgotten about the bird that lodged itself into my thigh. What I see is disturbing. My thigh is swollen and there is a ton of redness around where the beak punctured my skin. My heart races and I start to panic.
"Delly…"
"What?"
"We—we… have to go back to the pond, I have to wash this out." I sputter out.
Delly looks at my wound and tries to keep a straight face while saying it'll be okay. I hope she's right. We walk back to the pond and I wash the wound. My hands shake and my eyes tear. Pus begins to pour out the wound and I clean it up with a leaf that Delly gets me. She sits to the side, close enough for comfort but far enough away so she won't have to see anything.
I begin to cry. The pain becomes all too real. Somehow I've completely left this wound unnoticed. Maybe it was from all the time I spent worrying about Delly. I don't blame her but I'm upset with myself for not even caring about my health.
After a while, the wound is clean and the swelling has gone down just slightly. I cover it with a few clean leaves, hoping they'll cure it or something. I ask Delly about her back and when she shows me, all the little cuts and scratches are covered with scabs. She should be fine.
We walk again and I find my leg in a ton of pain. I just keep walking. It's such a strange thing, how my body decided to ignore my injury. I was so focused on something else I didn't even pick up the fact that I was walking with an infected wound on my leg.
Finally, Delly and I reach a tall hill. I immediately recognize this as part of the hill I fell down at the start of the Games. I tell Delly about how I just kept falling down it and she smiles and laughs. She's finally getting better.
We trudge up it and reach the clearing with the Cornucopia. The two of us stare at it in silence. I can see the pedestal I rose up on only nine days ago. It seems so foreign to me. I point it out to Delly and she points out her pedestal, which was almost completely opposite to mine. Then, Delly picks up on something strange.
"Where are all the weapons?"
I look around and see no weapons at the Cornucopia. Everything around it is gone. We don't have a direct view of the inside of the Cornucopia, though.
"Maybe they're all inside it."
"Should we go check it out?"
"No, wait." I tell her. I peek my head out of the trees and bushes for a second and look around. The sun is beating down on the gold of the Cornucopia. I don't see any movement around the area, so I decide for the both of us that it's okay to go.
We walk out a few feet. The air is warm refreshing. It's odd, noticing the difference between the air in the woods and the air in the open. With the comparison, I can tell that the air in the woods is much more moist and cold. In the open though, it's beautiful.
I take the lead and walk towards the mouth of the Cornucopia. Judging by the sun, it's around 2 o'clock. I keep my head up and take in the sun. Then, I put my head down and look at the Cornucopia. It's only about five feet away before a girl runs out of the thing and knocks me over.
I fall to the hard ground and look up. The girl that ran me over is attacking Delly, throwing slashes of a dagger but just barely missing her each time. I get up and pull the girl off Delly and throw her on the floor. I get my knife out from my back pocket and dive to the ground and take a stab. The girl rolls to the side and my knife is driven into the dirt. She gets up quickly and knocks Delly down, who is trying to position her arrow. I yank my knife from the dirt and lunge towards the girl. I recognize her as Thyme from the interviews. A shiny, silver "4" glows on her jacket sleeve. Before she can kill Delly with her dagger, I push her off with the weight of my body. We roll around for a second but Thyme ends up on top of me. I've lost my knife while we rolled around, so now I force her hands back as she forces them forward, pointing her dagger at me. Thyme is smart but not strong, so I do a good job of pushing the dagger back, but then it gets difficult. She begins to slowly edge the dagger closer and closer until finally she stops trying completely. I push the dagger back as far as possible and look at her eyes. They stare blankly at me and then roll back. The canon booms. Her dead body slumps forward and I push it to the side. There's an arrow directly in the back of her head. Delly stands there, holding her bow in her shaky right hand.
"Good job." Is all I can say to her. She walks to me and holds her hand out, pulling me up. I find my knife in the grass and then we walk to the Cornucopia and look inside. There are two blankets rumpled up and a few book bags strewn around.
"She's been living here." I think aloud.
"Well let's see what she had." Delly says to me. I look at her and she's smiling. I've never noticed this about her, but she has freckles. They run over her nose and reach each cheekbone. She's beautiful.
Delly walks over to one of the book bags and pulls out another water bottle and finds a blanket.
"Here, this'll be your book bag." I take it. Now we have our own.
Inside the other book bags are some dry food and more full water bottles. We divvy them up and walk out, about to leave. Then, Delly grabs my shoulder.
"Wait, did we open this bag?" I look at the floor and see the one she's talking about. We missed it somehow. Delly opens it up and gasps. There are six or seven medicines and ointments in it, and they're very valuable. We find an ointment for wounds and I rub it all over my leg. I then proceed to put it on Delly's back. We put all of the medications in Delly's bag and we walk out of the Cornucopia. Delly turns right but I stop her.
"Why don't go to the other side of the arena?"
"I don't know. Should we?"
"Well, yeah, why not?"
We take a left instead and walk to the other side of the arena. It's the same thing there as it was on the other side: all forest. However, on this side of the forest, there are leaves on the trees. Everything here seems so much nicer. The other side of the arena was dark and depressing while this side had a summery vibe to it. We were fighting to the death, but that didn't change the fact that this place was beautiful. Maybe the reason for my feelings about the two sides has to do with the fact that Jack died on the other side and nothing bad happened here yet. I'm not sure.
Delly and I keep walking straight. We come to the decision that walking all over the place will get us lost again, so we just continue straight.
Eventually, the thin and tall grass becomes short and mossy. More and more rocks are on the ground. Then, finally, all rocks on the ground and few trees. This area of land leads us to the most astonishing thing: a waterfall.
We stand at the bottom of it, but it's a huge one. There's just tons of fresh water parading down dark, almost black, smooth rocks. Reach down and touch the stream of water and I get an instant sensation of calmness. The water's cold and thin and perfect. Once again, this water is clearly edible. Delly and I pour out our old water and fill our bottles up with the new one. Then, we trek up the stream and climb up the rocks that create the waterfall. When we reach the top, we find that there's a clearing in the trees and the stream gets wider, causing the water to be very shallow. The two of us wash our hair and then find a good spot in the woods to sleep. There's a clearing with tall grass and huge boulders, so we seek refuge tucked almost underneath one of the boulders. The two of us are barely visible with our jackets. Mine's a plum red and Delly's is what I can only describe as a bottle green. The darkness makes us blend in easily.
While we lay there, trying to fall asleep, Delly whispers to me.
"What next?" she asks, but not looking directly at me. I turn to look at her.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," she begins. I hear her swallow. "I mean, what happens when there's less and less of us? What if we end up being the only two? There has to be a time when we split up, right?"
I honestly hadn't thought of this.
"Well, yeah." I reply, sitting up from my sleeping position.
"So..?"
"So… we'll figure it out as we go along. Okay?"
"You're right." She whispers and turns to her other side. I lie back down and face the other way, pulling my jacket closed. I think about the process of the Games. Delly always seems to think ahead and have a plan. I would have never thought of that, let alone us being close to that point, but if you think about it, almost two out of every three tributes are dead. We are at that point where we should consider separating. But, I don't want to separate. I like her company and her thought process. On my own, I can barely do shit. With her, I can get a lot done. But then again, she has to be against me, right? In the moment, she's working with me, but soon she'll have to turn against me. Like, if it was the two of us in the end, I can't imagine her not turning against me, no matter how young she is.
These thoughts keep me up way past the anthem, but eventually I clear my mind and fall asleep.