When Mica eventually knocks on the door to summon me to dinner, I get up and take off my suit, fold it neatly, and set it on the table with my crown. In the bathroom, I wash the dark streaks of makeup from my face. I dress in a simple shirt and pants and go down the hall to the dining room.
Mica, Willow, Teak, and Nolan are all there, talking about the opening ceremonies, I suppose. But the only time I really feel present is when I purposely knock a dish of peas to the floor and, before anyone can stop me, crouch down to clean them up. An Avox is right by me when I send the dish over, and we two are briefly side by side, obscured from view, as we scoop up the peas. For just one moment our hands meet. I can feel his skin, rough under the buttery sauce from the dish. Then Mica's clucking at me from behind about how "That isn't your job, Ember!" and he lets go.
When we go in to watch the recap of the opening ceremonies, I wedge myself in between Willow and Nolan on the couch because I don't want to be next to Teak. As I watch the procession to the City Circle, I think how it's bad enough that they dress us all up in costumes and parade us through the streets in chariots on a regular year. Kids in costumes are silly, but aging victors, it turns out, are pitiful. A few who are on the younger side, like Johanna and Finnick, or whose bodies haven't fallen into disrepair, like Seeder and Brutus, can still manage to maintain a little dignity. But the majority, who are in the clutches of drink or morphling or illness, look grotesque in their costumes, depicting cows and trees and loaves of bread. Small wonder the crowd goes wild when Nolan and I appear, looking so young and strong and beautiful in our brilliant costumes.
As soon as it's over, I stand up and thank Teak for their amazing work and head off to bed, because I know I'm supposed to. Mica calls a reminder to meet early for breakfast to work out our training strategy, but even her voice sounds hollow. Poor Mica. She finally had a decent few years in the Games with me, and now it's all broken down into a mess that even she can't put a positive spin on. In Capitol terms, I'm guessing this counts as a true tragedy.
Nightmares plague my sleep, I'm at a party where everyone wears masks and someone with a flicking, wet tongue, who I suppose is Finnick, stalks me, but when he catches me and pulls off his mask, it's President Snow, and his puffy lips are dripping in bloody saliva. Finally I'm back in the arena, my own tongue as dry as sandpaper, while I try to reach a pool of water that recedes every time I'm about to touch it.
When I wake, I stumble to the bathroom and gulp water from the faucet until I can hold no more. I strip off my sweaty clothes and fall back into bed, naked, and somehow find sleep again.
I delay going down to breakfast as long as possible the next morning because I really don't want to discuss our training strategy. What's to discuss? Every victor already knows what everybody else can do. Or used to be able to do, anyway. Somehow I'm just not up to talking about it. I take a long shower, dress slowly in the outfit Teak has left for training, and order food from the menu in my room by speaking into a mouthpiece. In a minute, sausage, eggs, potatoes, bread, juice, and hot chocolate appear. I eat my fill, trying to drag out the minutes until ten o'clock, when we have to go down to the Training Center. By nine- thirty, Willow is pounding on my door, obviously fed up with me, ordering me to the dining room NOW! Still, I brush my teeth before meandering down the hall, effectively killing another five minutes.
The dining room's empty except for Nolan and Willow, whose face is flushed with drink and anger. On her wrist she wears a solid-gold bangle with a pattern of flames — this must be her concession to the alliance — that she twists unhappily. It's a very pretty bangle, really, but the movement makes it seem like something confining, a shackle, rather than a piece of jewelry. "You're late," she snarls at me.
"Sorry. I slept in after the nightmares kept me up half the night." I mean to sound hostile, but my voice catches at the end of the sentence.
Willow gives me a scowl, then relents. "All right, never mind. Today, in training, you've got two jobs. Make friends." I'm okay with that, I've made plenty of friends over the years, I got to know quite a few of the victors.
Mica shows up a bit early to take us down because my first games, even though we were on time, we were the last two tributes to show up. But Willow tells her she doesn't want her taking us down to the gym. None of the other victors will be showing up with a babysitter. So she has to satisfy herself with taking us to the elevator, fussing over our hair, and pushing the button for us.
It's such a short ride that there's no real time for conversation, but when Nolan takes my hand, I don't pull it away. I may have ignored him last night in private, but in training we must appear as an inseparable team.
Mica needn't have worried about us being the last to arrive. Only Brutus and the woman from District 2, Enobaria, are present. Enobaria looks to be about thirty and all I can remember about her is that, in hand-to-hand combat, she killed one tribute by ripping open his throat with her teeth. She became so famous for this act that, after she was a victor, she had her teeth cosmetically altered so each one ends in a sharp point like a fang and is inlaid with gold. She has no shortage of admirers in the Capitol.
By ten o'clock, only about half of the tributes have shown up. Atala, the woman who runs training, begins her spiel right on time, unfazed by the poor attendance. Maybe she expected it. I'm sort of relieved, because that means there are a dozen people I don't have to pretend to make friends with. Atala runs through the list of stations, which include both combat and survival skills, and releases us to train.
I tell Nolan I think we'd do best to split up, thus covering more territory. When he goes off to chuck spears with Brutus and Chaff, I head over to the knot-tying station, hardly anyone ever bothers to visit it. I ask the trainer to review every kind of knot that might come in handy and a few that I'll probably never use, just as Katniss comes over and joins me. I'd be content to spend the morning alone with him, but after about an hour and a half, someone puts his arms around me from behind, his fingers easily finishing the complicated knot I've been sweating over. Of course it's Finnick, who seems to have spent his childhood doing nothing but wielding tridents and manipulating ropes into fancy knots for nets, I guess. I watch for a minute while he picks up a length of rope, makes a noose, and then pretends to hang himself for my amusement.
I smile at him while Katniss rolls her eyes and heads over to another vacant station where tributes can learn to build fires. I turn to Finnick and shrug, "I don't think she likes us that much." I tell him before heading over to the station that describes the edible and poisonous plants.
I glance around the Training Center. Peeta is at the center of a circle of knife throwers. The morphing's from District 6 are in the camouflage station, painting each other's faces with bright pink swirls. The male tribute from District 5 is vomiting wine on the sword-fighting floor. Finnick and the old woman from his district are using the archery station. Johanna Mason is naked again and oiling her skin down for a wrestling lesson. I see Katniss and the tributes from 3 in the fire building station and quickly head over there.
"Hey," I greet them as I take a seat beside Wiress. I don't know her or Beetee that well, but they both give me a kind smile. They seem friendly enough but don't pry. We talk about our talents; they tell me they both invent things, which makes my supposed interest in fashion seem pretty weak. Wiress brings up some sort of stitching device she's working on.
"It senses the density of the fabric and selects the strength," she says, and then becomes absorbed in a bit of dry straw before she can go on.
"The strength of the thread," Beetee finishes explaining. "Automatically. It rules out human error." Then he talks about his recent success creating a musical chip that's tiny enough to be concealed in a flake of glitter but can hold hours of songs.
"Oh, yeah. My prep team was all upset a few months ago, I think, because they couldn't get hold of that," Katniss says casually. "I guess a lot of orders from District Three were getting backed up."
Beetee examines her under his glasses. "Yes. Did you have any similar backups in coal production, this year?" he asks.
"No. Well, we lost a couple of weeks when they brought in a new Head Peacekeeper and his crew, but nothing major," She says. "To production, I mean. Two weeks sitting around your house doing nothing just means two weeks of being hungry for most people."
"Well, in 9, we had some backup on grain, people have been taking it home with them instead of shipping it off to the Capitol." I speak up, twisting a stick in my hands that I am supposed to use to start a fire.
As we move over to the shelter station, Wiress stops and gazes up at the stands where the Gamemakers are roaming around, eating and drinking, sometimes taking notice of us. "Look,"
she says, giving her head a slight nod in their direction. I look up and see Plutarch Heavensbee in the magnificent purple robe with the fur-trimmed collar that designates him as Head Gamemaker. He's eating a turkey leg.
I don't see why this merits comment, but I say, "Yes, he's been promoted to Head Gamemaker this year."
"No, no. There by the corner of the table. You can just ..." says Wiress.
Beetee squints under his glasses. "Just make it out."
I stare in that direction, perplexed. But then I see it. A patch of space about six inches square at the corner of the table seems almost to be vibrating. It's as if the air is rippling in tiny visible waves, distorting the sharp edges of the wood and a goblet of wine someone has set there.
"A force field. They've set one up between the Game-makers and us. I wonder what brought that on," Beetee says.
"Me, probably," Katniss confesses. "Last year I shot an arrow at them during my private training session." Beetee, Wiress, and I look at her curiously. "I was provoked. So, do all force fields have a spot like that?"
"Chink," says Wiress vaguely.
"In the armor, as it were," finishes Beetee. "Ideally it'd be invisible, wouldn't it?"
I want to ask them more, but lunch is announced. I look for Nolan, but he's hanging with a group of about ten other victors, so I decide just to eat with District 3. When we make our way into the dining area, I see some of Nolan's gang have other ideas. They're dragging all the smaller tables to form one large table so that we all have to eat together. Now I don't know what to do. Even at school I used to avoid eating at a crowded table. Frankly, I'd probably have sat alone.
After lunch I do the edible-insect station, again but with the District 8 tributes — Cecelia, who's got three kids at home, and Woof, a really old guy who's hard of hearing and doesn't seem to know what's going on since he keeps trying to stuff poisonous bugs in his mouth.
Cashmere and Gloss, the sister and brother from District 1, invite me and Katniss over and we make hammocks for a while. They're polite but cool, and I spend the whole time thinking about how I killed both the tributes from their district, during my Games, and that they probably knew them and might even have been their mentors. Both my hammock and my attempt to connect with them are mediocre at best. We join Enobaria at sword training and exchange a few comments, but it's clear neither of us wants to team up.
Finnick appears again when I'm picking up fishing tips, but mostly just to introduce Katniss to Mags, the elderly woman who's also from District 4. Between her district accent and her garbled speech— possibly she's had a stroke — I can't make out more than one in four words. But I swear she can make a decent fish hook out of anything—a thorn, a wishbone, an earring. After a while I tune out the trainer and simply try to copy whatever Mags does. When I make a pretty good hook out of a bent nail and fasten it to some strands of my hair, she gives me a toothless smile and an unintelligible comment I think might be praise. Suddenly I remember how she volunteered to replace the young, hysterical woman in her district. It couldn't be because she thought she had any chance of winning. She did it to save the girl.
I see Katniss give up trying to make friends and go over to the archery range. I follow behind her, not just because I want her as an ally and that we have sworn to protect her but because I like archery as well. It's wonderful there, getting to try out all the different bows and arrows. "You want to practice together?" I ask her as I pick up a bow and a quiver of arrows.
Katniss gives me a polite smile, "If you think you can keep up." The trainer, Tax, seeing that the standing targets offer no challenge for us, begins to launch these silly fake birds high into the air for us to hit. At first it seems stupid, but it turns out to be kind of fun. Much more like hunting a moving creature. Since we're hitting everything he throws up, he starts increasing the number of birds he sends airborne. I forget the rest of the gym and the victors and how miserable I am and lose myself in the shooting. When I manage to take down five birds in one round, I realize it's so quiet I can hear each one hit the floor. I turn and see the majority of the victors have stopped to watch us. Their faces show everything from envy to hatred to admiration.
After training me and Nolan head back up to our floor. During the next two days, I spend time with almost everybody headed for the arena. Even the morphlings, who, with Peeta's help, paint me into a field of yellow flowers. Even Finnick, who gives me an hour of trident lessons in exchange for an hour of archery instruction. And the more I come to know these people, the worse it is. Because, on the whole, I don't hate them. And some I like. And a lot of them are so damaged that my natural instinct would be to protect them. But all of them must die if we are to save Katniss.
The final day of training ends with our private sessions. We each get fifteen minutes before the Gamemakers to amaze them with our skills, but I don't know what any of us might have to show them. There's a lot of kidding about it at lunch. What we might do. Sing, dance, strip, tell jokes. Mags, who I can understand a little better now, decides she's just going to take a nap. I don't know what I'm going to do. Shoot some arrows, I guess. Willow said to surprise them if we could, but I'm fresh out of ideas.
As the girl from 9, I'm scheduled to go closer to the end. The dining room gets quieter and quieter as the tributes file out and go perform. It's easier to keep up the irreverent, invincible manner we've all adopted when there are more of us. As people disappear through the door, all I can think is that they have a matter of days to live.
Nolan reaches across the table to take my hands. "Decided what to do for the Gamemakers yet?"
I shake my head. Maybe make some fish hooks. What about you?"
"Not a clue," he says.
They call Nolan shortly after, so I wait at the table by myself. The others all sat at their own tables. Fifteen minutes pass and then I hear my name being called.
As I go in I try to catch Plutarch Heavensbee's eye, but he seems to be intentionally ignoring me, as he has the entire training period. His friendly manner has no place here. How could it, when I'm a mere tribute and he's the Head Gamemaker? So powerful, so removed, so safe ...
Suddenly I know just what I'm going to do. I'm not much of a painter but I grab some of the paint that is left and take a seat on the ground. The image in my mind is clear, as I get to work. Knowing that I only have fifteen minutes I have to work quickly.
After a while I hear them announce my time is up just as I place the finishing touches on the paining. I stand back so that they can see. I glance down at it myself and see the little boy running through the snow and a girl building a snowman. They were meant to represent Money and Calyptus, how he was so happy when it first started to snow in the arena and how Calyptus said she wanted to build a snowman but never got to. I know the Gamemakers probably won't understand it but as I look up at them I see Plutarch smile down at me as if he knows. I'm dismissed shortly after.