Maze and Camilee continued on into the labyrinth.
This time, there was less of a sense of urgency. Maze's nerves dissipated as she and Camilee wove deeper and deeper into the labyrinth.
She even found herself starting to relax. There were a few varieties of moss in the labyrinth that emitted different-colored light. The most common was the gold moss, but there was also teal, pink, and lime varieties. The combination of colors gave the labyrinth a peaceful, otherworldly atmosphere, as did the sound of rushing water echoing through the stone corridors.
Rushing water. Water. There was water.
Maze and Camilee locked eyes at the same time. They shared grins, before racing towards the source of the sound.
The source of the sound turned out to be only about fifty yards ahead of them — a small waterfall cascading out of the ceiling and down into a hole carved out of the floor. The nearby clumps of moss illuminated the water in gold, teal, pink, and lime.
Both Camilee and Maze eyed the stream of water with caution. After their experience at the river, they weren't so quick to trust it.
"Do you think it's safe?" Maze asked.
Camilee stuck her pinky out. "Let's find out."
She held it to the stream of water, fingertip hovering mere centimeters from the stream itself. She pushed her hand forward, letting her fingertip hit the water. Unlike last time, she didn't flinch and snatch her hand back.
"Doesn't hurt at all. I think it's safe."
Maze couldn't stop the smile that came to her face. "Nice."
Camilee grinned and unclipped the water bottle from the carabiner attached to her belt, a greedy glint in her eyes. "I knew there was water in here."
She filled the water bottle up, and the two girls took turns drinking from it, passing the bottle back and forth as they took a few gulps each until it was empty. Maze hadn't realized just how thirsty she was, but it made sense, with humidity of the arena, their constant movement, and their constant exposure to a heat source in the form of the torch.
Once it was empty, Camilee refilled it, and then the two continued on their way.
Fifteen minutes of walking later, they encountered a strange moss formation growing on the wall.
The moss grew in a ten-by-ten grid pattern in straight lines, glowing gold. In each column of the grid, one square was covered completely in moss. Surrounding each side of the square the grid created was a clump of gold, teal, pink, and lime moss.
"This is weird," Camilee commented as the two of them examined the formation. "I don't think moss grows naturally in this type of pattern, but I'm no moss expert."
Maze shrugged. The formation — it looked almost like a diagram — itself looked vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn't place what it was or where she knew it from. She decided not to say anything. She and Camilee continued down the corridor.
Five minutes later, the corridor opened into a massive chamber. The walls of the chamber, like the labyrinth walls, were covered in moss, but this time, it glowed a sinister red, washing the chamber in red light. At the far end of the chamber sat what looked to be a wooden chest, inlaid with gold trim. The ground itself was made of large square stone tiles, arranged in rows and columns of ten.
Rows and columns of ten.
At that moment, Maze realized what the room was — and what the diagram was. The room was a puzzle. The diagram showed the proper tiles to step on to be able to safely get across the room to the chest. Stepping on the wrong tile meant death, most likely. Maze remembered now. In history class, they had watched parts of Wiress' Games — the 44th Hunger Games. In her arena, there was a similar puzzle. Wiress managed to clear it, but a boy before her had worse luck. He got scorched to death by intense laser beams.
As Maze opened her mouth to tell Camilee what the room was, Camilee placed her foot upon one of the tiles.
The tile beneath her collapsed, falling into an abyss. Camilee stumbled, and Maze, quick as a flash, grabbed the back of her jacket and pulled her back. The sound of the tile exploding apart somewhere below them reached their ears.
Camilee whipped her head towards Maze, eyes wide in terror. "What—"
"It's a trap," Maze explained. "A puzzle. Only one of these tiles is safe to walk on. That moss formation we saw earlier told us which ones were safe. There was something like this in Wiress' Games."
She scoffed and rolled her eyes, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Real original, Gamemakers."
Camilee nodded, looking over the ninety-nine remaining tiles, rubbing her chin in thought. "We should probably go back and look at it, then."
The two girls turned around and trotted the way they came, not wanting to waste a single moment. It took them only a few minutes to reach the diagram again.
"Which way is it oriented?" Camilee asked as the two of them looked it over again. "It's square-shaped, so it can be any way."
She frowned, thinking. "Although, since there's one tile in each column rather than in each row, and they make a rough path from the center of one side to the center of the other side, I think this diagram might be flipped on its side."
Maze nodded. "Yeah. That makes sense. But the question is, which side is the side we entered on?"
She eyed the diagram again, taking in the multicolored moss lights on each side of the square. The teal moss was on the left side of the diagram, while the gold moss was on the right side.
Gold moss. The chest had gold trim on it. Gold, like the moss.
"I think we entered on the teal side," Maze said, pointing to the gold moss clump on the right. "The chest had gold on it."
Camilee's eyes followed Maze's finger, narrowed in thought. "Yeah. Maybe. There's a fifty-fifty chance of us being right."
"We should try it from the teal side first," Maze suggested, and Camilee nodded.
"Good idea." She traced down the diagram in the air with her index finger. "It looks like the correct tile on the first column from the teal side is fourth from the top. We can go and try that one. And if that one doesn't work, we'll try the one from the gold side, which is the seventh from the top."
"We should probably try and memorize the order," Maze said, lifting her hand to count on her fingers. "From left to right, there's the fourth one from the top, then the fifth one, then the fifth one again...actually, let's just assign them numbers. Four, five, five. Seven, eight, nine. Six, seven, eight, seven."
She counted the numbers off on each finger, assigning each one a number. Four. Five. Five. Seven. Eight. Nine. Six. Seven. Eight. Seven. It was easy enough to memorize. She just had to remember which finger was which number.
She listed them off again, Camilee joining her. They repeated it a few more times until they knew the order by heart before setting off again to the chamber.
When they reached the chamber, the two of them stood on the edge of the floor, looking out across it. Each tile was about three feet by three feet, just big enough for one person, maybe two if they were careful.
"I'll go first, then you can follow," Camilee said. "Although maybe you should be close enough to me for this first one so you can steady me again if I fall."
Maze nodded. "Good idea."
She leaned her spear against the wall, then joined Camilee at the fourth tile from the top. Her spear would only encumber her.
Camilee had initially stepped onto the fifth tile. Maze peered down into the abyss the tile had left. Ten feet down, at the bottom, what looked to be sharp metal spikes glinted in the red light. She shuddered. If she hadn't been there to catch Camilee, she would have fallen and impaled herself on the spikes. Those spikes were what awaited them if they messed this up.
"Ready?" She asked Camilee, who nodded.
"Ready."
Camilee took a deep breath, then placed a foot gingerly on the fourth tile.
Nothing happened.
Moving slowly and carefully, Camilee leaned her full weight onto the tile and put her other foot on it.
Again, nothing happened. The tile stayed intact.
She smiled. "Looks like we were right about the order."
Going to the bottom right corner of the tile, Camilee stepped onto the fifth tile of the second row. Neither of the tiles did anything.
Camilee stopped, beckoning for Maze to come forward. Maze complied, stepping onto the fourth tile. She half expected it to collapse under her feet and her heart jolted as her feet landed on it.
Camilee stepped forward to the next tile, and Maze stepped to where Camilee had just stood. The two were now next to each other.
The next tile for Camilee was two away from her current tile. She stepped back a bit, winding herself up, then took another deep breath and leapt. She landed safely on the tile, before stepping across to the next time diagonal to her.
Maze did the same thing, stepping back before taking a deep breath and leaping to the next one. She too made it safe onto the tile, to her relief.
But there was still worse ahead. Camilee moved diagonally again. Maze moved to the tile she just left. And now, Camilee's next tile was three away from her current tile. She was on the ninth tile from the top, and she had to jump to the sixth tile.
Camilee visibly grew nervous as she stared at the next tile. Her shoulders tensed, and in the red light, Maze could see her brow furrowing.
"Can you make the jump?" Maze asked. Camilee gave a slow nod, although her brow remained furrowed.
"I think so."
She backed up to the edge of the tile, careful to place her heel so that not a single bit of it hung off the edge of it. She stayed there for a few moments, eyeing the distance between the tiles for a while longer, before Camilee took another deep breath. She ran forward for a step, then pushed off the tile and leapt through the air. She seemed to hang in the air for a few moments, suspended above the tiles, before landing on the sixth tile safe and sound.
Camilee smiled, triumphant, and let out a relieved huff of breath, before turning around to Maze. "I'll stay on this tile in case you don't make it. I can catch you."
"But what if we both end up falling?" Maze asked. "Then we're both dead. At least if you're off the tile and I end up falling, then it's just me who's dead, and you can still win."
Camilee shook her head. "If we both fall, then we both fall. I'm not going to let you fall by yourself. I'm not gonna even risk it. Either we both live or we both die. I'm not moving, and you can't make me move."
"But—"
"No buts. I'm staying here."
It was futile arguing. Maze acquiesced with a sigh and a nod. "Alright. Your decision, I guess."
Truth be told, she did feel more comfortable knowing that Camilee was there to help her if she fell, even if she knew that it was illogical for her to do so. They could both easily fall into one of the other tiles if they lost their balance, and then Titania and Milly would both have to see their daughters die on national television.
Maze took in the distance between her and the tile Camilee stood on. Six feet. She had three feet of running room. She didn't know if she could clear it. Camilee had the advantage of being taller and having longer legs than her. Plus, she was still weakened from the infection. The shot had cured her, but the infection — coupled with being in the arena so long without sufficient nutrition — had still taken a toll on her.
Maze backed up to the edge of the tile, placing the heels of her boots with great caution. If even a centimeter of them hung off, she could be in big trouble.
She had to take even more care with her next moves. Build up just enough energy and speed to carry her over the six feet and onto Camilee's tile. It had to be perfect.
Over on her tile, Camilee gave Maze an encouraging smile and held her arms out, like she wanted to give Maze a hug.
Maze took a deep breath. She tensed the muscles in her legs, took a quick stride forward, and then propelled herself through the air with all her might.
And landed just a few inches short of the tile.
Maze barely had time to register the sensation of her boot hitting the tile before it collapsed beneath her feet. She plummeted with a scream.
Before she could plunge into the darkness —to the spikes below and to her death — arms wrapped around her torso, keeping her from falling further.
"I got ya." Camilee had captured Maze in the form of a hug around her arms and shoulders, nails digging into her skin through her jacket as she gripped her. She had fallen to her knees in her effort to save Maze. Maze could feel her arms trembling with exertion beneath her jacket sleeves as she held Maze above the chasm. "I told you I'd catch you."
With a grunt, she started to pull Maze upwards, her arms shaking even more from the exertion. Maze placed her feet against the side of the wall beneath the tile and tried to get a foothold in an effort to propel herself upward. Her boots scrambled against the smooth material and gave her a bit of propulsion, but Camilee did most of the work to pull her up. As soon as Camilee raised enough of her torso above the tile, Maze flopped forward onto it and swung her legs up with all her core strength.
As soon as Maze was safely on the tile, Camilee collapsed diagonally backwards, flopping between the current tile and the next safe tile. Her chest heaved up and down as she caught her breath.
Maze didn't move either, still laying on the tile and letting her heart rate return to normal. The tile was cool and soothing against her cheek.
Again, she had almost died. But Camilee had saved her. That made it what, three times now?
Sooner rather than later, their luck would run out. Maze was certain of it. But for now, they lived.
Camilee was the first to speak. "Are you okay?"
Maze nodded, before remembering Camilee couldn't see her. "Yeah. Are you?"
"I'll be fine," Camilee answered. "My knees might be a bit bruised, though, but I'll live."
Maze nodded again, before finally standing up. Camilee followed her cue and stood up as well, and together, the two of them stepped over the two remaining tiles and made it to the other side of the chamber.
As soon as their boots touched the floor, green light flooded the chamber. The moss that had previously emitted red light had inexplicably changed color. The new green light made the chamber feel a lot less sinister than it did. Like the floor was no longer a deadly trap but a silly puzzle that they completed. Like it had turned from the Hunger Games to that game show Philomena had watched the day of the interviews.
Philomena. Maze had not thought of her since she last saw her. Truth be told, with everything that had happened, she had nearly forgotten about her and Harmonia. She wondered what they thought of everything that had happened since then. Were they proud? Or were they horrified by what Maze had done in the arena?
Maze also wondered if their parents' money was among the funds that sponsored the cake or the shot or even both.
She couldn't wonder about things forever, though. Right now, there was an unopened chest in front of her and Camilee, full of who-knows-what.
She and Camilee approached it with the greed of wealthy Capitolites, eager to see what was inside. The latch thankfully wasn't locked. Camilee unlatched it with a deft movement of her fingers.
The chest top swung open, revealing a feast. The scent of hot, freshly cooked food overwhelmed their senses.
The centerpiece of the chest was the vat of soup. It sat nestled among a basket of little bread rolls, two cans of beans, and a few packets of beef jerky. Two apples accentuated each side of the feast. Two sets of silverware sat on each side of the vat. Somehow, the soup and bread looked and smelled freshly cooked. Perhaps the Gamemakers had just placed the food in the chest, or the chest had some property that kept the food in a hot state.
Maze couldn't care less about how the food remained hot. Both she and Camilee couldn't help but squeal with delight upon seeing the food. Real food. An actual meal.
Maze hadn't eaten one since the Capitol.
Maze took a bread roll from the basket and stuffed it in her mouth. The feeling of its warmth against her tongue, as well as its heavenly scent and taste, filled her with indescribable joy. After two weeks of being in the arena, living mostly off animal meat and berries, she hadn't realized just how desperate she was for cooked food. And she had definitely forgotten just how good it tasted.
Camilee removed the soup from the chest, placing it down on the ground in front of the chest and removing the lid, starry-eyed.
A heavenly aroma engulfed the two of them the moment the lid left the pot. The scent of meat cooked in some kind of sauce — it smelled similar to the lamb stew with the plum sauce Maze recalled eating in the Capitol — and garnished with herbs filled the air.
Maze was certain she was drooling with hunger and anticipation, but she didn't care. From the looks of it, Camilee felt the same.
The two made eye contact, and an unseen message passed between them. Camilee slowly grinned, which Maze returned, then the two of them retrieved spoons from the chest and sat cross-legged in front of the soup. Then, they dug in.
It was the lamb stew from the Capitol — or at least something very similar. It tasted just as fresh as it had while being served to her in the Capitol.
Maze devoured it. She scooped spoonful after spoonful into her mouth, hardly chewing the solid parts before gulping it down. On the other side of the pot, Camilee did the same. Every once in a while, their spoons would clink together as they shoveled around for soup in the pot.
When the two of them were full and the soup was almost gone, they sat back, breathing heavy with contentment. For the first time since she had her birthday cake, Maze didn't have the constant empty feeling in her stomach that she'd felt every day since the effects of the cake wore off. The berries and the meat she'd eaten since managed to lessen the ache, but it never quite went away. Until now.
Camilee was the first to break the silence. "Whew, we sure ate that fast. I hope we don't end up with stomachaches from it."
Maze chuckled. Her full stomach made her jovial. "Couldn't be any worse than when I ate those pokeweed berries. At least we had a proper meal."
"True."
The girls stood up and dusted themselves off. After that, they began to put the rest of the food into their pockets. Maze stuffed an apple, the packets of beef jerky, and one of the cans of beans into her pockets, while Camilee put the other apple and can of beans into her own pockets. The two wrapped the remaining bread rolls into the cloth napkins provided and split them between the two of them. They opted to leave the pot of what remained of the soup behind. They couldn't carry it back, and it could serve as a small reward — or rather, consolation prize — if any of the six remaining tributes ended up completing the puzzle.
They made their way back out onto the tiles. The moss light had turned green, but Maze and Camilee didn't trust that to mean that the trap was disabled. Camilee made the big jump again, barely clearing it, then turned to Maze.
"Take your jacket off and swing it over to me. It'll weigh you down less. I'll catch you again if I need to, though."
Maze followed her instructions and took her jacket off, before swinging it across the gap to Camilee. The can of beans in her pocket acted as a weight, turning her jacket into a pendulum. Her jacket easily swung across to Camilee's outstretched hand.
Maze did the same set-up she did before, then took a deep breath and leapt. Despite having more weight to her, she cleared it this time, landing on the tile with a slight wobble. The soup in her stomach did uncomfortable somersaults as she did so, and she winced.
Camilee handed Maze her jacket back, and the two made their way back across the rest of the chamber with ease.
As soon as they set foot on the other side, the moss light turned red once more. The sound of mechanical clicking and whirring filled the chamber. Maze and Camilee watched as two new tiles appeared in the spaces where they had almost fallen. At the far end of the chamber, the chest and pot of soup slowly disappeared down into the floor, as if being lowered down somehow.
"Creepy," Camilee commented.
Maze nodded. "Yeah. Let's get out of here."
Maze picked her spear back up, and the two of them headed back the way they came, eventually passing the moss diagram they had used to figure out the puzzle. Maze swore that the squares filled with moss had changed.
Camilee led them back out of the labyrinth. The two figured they'd spent enough time in there, and they had what they needed — food and water. There was no further reason to explore the labyrinth.
On the way out, Maze ended up peeling some of the moss off the wall and stuffing it in her pocket to mess with later. It kept its glow after being peeled off the wall.
By the time the girls emerged from the labyrinth, some thirty or so minutes of walking later, the sun indicated that it was afternoon.
Maze and Camilee didn't do much the rest of the day. They walked back to camp, where they emptied their pockets of food and put them in the bags for safekeeping. They rested their legs for a while, then strolled around the nearby forest.
During their stroll, they passed a huckleberry bush. Camilee picked a few berries and placed them in the palm of her hand, examining them.
"Hm. These could make a nice blue dye. Or maybe purple. I don't know."
"What would you even dye?" Maze asked. "And could you even make dye in here?"
Camilee shrugged. "Probably not. You need water to boil it and then cheesecloth to filter it and then salt or vinegar to set it. We only have so much water, and we sure as hell don't have cheesecloth, salt, or vinegar."
She tossed the berries onto the ground in a dismissive movement.
One thing no one ever told Maze about the Hunger Games was how much doing nothing there was. How much waiting around there was, waiting for something to happen. And there wasn't anything in the arena to entertain the tributes. The Capitol audience? Sure, there was plenty of entertainment to be found in the arena. If there wasn't, then the Gamemakers could always manufacture some inside the arena or pull some new guests to do commentary on the Games outside the arena or whatever. But for the tributes, when they weren't doing necessary survival tasks, there was nothing to entertain them.
Maze supposed it was by design. Make all the tributes bored so they did things like look for other tributes to kill, or do stuff that leads to them being killed and whatnot. Make it so they had nothing to distract them from the thought that they wouldn't make it out of the arena alive. But good gadgets, it sucked, waiting around for her inevitable death.
This boredom is what gave Maze a random idea.
"Could you use the berries to dye my hair?" She asked Camilee. "Like, could you smash them up and use the juices to dye my hair?"
"Hm." Camilee looked back at the berry bush, then back at Maze. "Your hair is light enough that I could do something like that. It'll come out as soon as your hair gets wet, though, and it won't look very good." She shrugged her shoulders. "It's something to do, at least."
"Can I get a streak like yours?" Maze asked, pointing to Camilee's red hair streak. Despite their time in the arena, it had only faded to a light, muted red. Maze was pretty sure it was only like that because of the poison rain.
Camilee's eyes lit up. "Of course! We can match."
She started plucking berries off the bush. Maze helped her, and as soon as they each picked a few handfuls, they stuffed them in their pockets and headed back to camp.
They dumped the berries in the pot, and Camilee began mashing the berries with her fist and heel of her wrist. Once the berries were mashed to a paste, Camilee scooped it out onto her fingers and started applying it to a strand of Maze's hair.
The paste congealed onto Maze's hair in clumps. Camilee spread it out, coating the chunk of hair in the huckleberry paste. She did this until the entire strand of hair was covered in it, from the tip to the root. The strand felt slimy yet stiff against Maze's scalp, like what she imagined a slug would feel like.
"We should go sit in the sun for a while," Camilee said. "Heat helps set the color."
The two left the camp and went to go sit by the river rocks. The late afternoon sun beat down on them, cutting through the chill in the air that had begun creeping in soon after they left the labyrinth. The river churned beneath the sun-warmed rocks, presumably still full of poison rain.
They sat for about twenty minutes, maybe more — time had mostly ceased to have all meaning in the arena — before Camilee thought it was sufficient to start taking the paste out of Maze's hair. She used her hand to scrape the paste out, wiping it onto her jacket. The skin of her hands was stained purple.
"Looks like the color stuck," Camilee commented as she scraped the paste off. "Like I said, it'll probably wash out the next time you get your hair wet, but the color's there."
Maze grinned. "Does it look good?"
"It does, but I could do better if I had the right things to properly dye hair with," Camilee answered. "Back home in District 12, I dyed plenty of people's hair. Many coal miners in Twelve have a side job of sorts to supplement their income. Like record-keeping, or animal-rearing, or doing other people's laundry. Pa's was wood carving, which he taught me. But I also learned to dye hair. Even though I hadn't started working in the mines yet, my side job was dyeing hair. In the year before I got Reaped, people — mostly women — started coming to me to have me dye their hair."
An impish smirk made its way onto Camilee's lips. "So, in Twelve, our merchant class tends to be blonde. But here's a secret — some aren't." Her smirk grew wider. "And those ones have started coming to me to cover their roots. And some even come to me wanting to be even blonder."
Maze raised her eyebrows. "Blonder?"
Camilee chuckled, scraping out more of the paste from Maze's hair. "Blonder. Sometimes it doesn't work, though. Once, I tried to lighten this lady's hair when I was just starting out, and it turned bright orange instead. She got so upset at me."
She laughed at the memory, and Maze gave a mischievous chuckle. "You didn't turn my hair orange, did you?"
Camilee removed a few more fingerfuls of paste from Maze's hair, then spoke. "Nope. It turned out a nice bluish-purple color. Mostly purple. The berries are out. You can see for yourself if you want."
Maze reached tentative fingers towards the strand of hair Camilee had dyed and pulled it towards her face. Purple hair greeted her, interspersed with undertones of blue, and blonde patches that Camilee had missed. The dye wasn't as intense as the dye she had gotten for her chariot ride back in the Capitol, and the hair still felt sticky, but Maze didn't care.
"I love it," she breathed, continuing to admire it. "Thank you."
Camilee beamed. "I'm glad you like it. Dyeing your hair sure beats sitting around waiting for something else bad to happen."
"Definitely."
After that, the girls headed back to camp, where they spent the rest of the day. As day turned to night, they gathered more wood and kindle for the campfire and ignited it. The night was freezing cold, and even though they had nothing to cook, they needed the fire's warmth. They ate the apples and bread from the labyrinth for dinner and heated a can of beans in the pot to share. The warm beans helped warm them up, although they had the faint taste of huckleberry that sweetened them. Maze liked it.
The night sky yielded only the Panem national anthem and seal. There were no tribute deaths that day. Just the half-bull, half-human mutt's. Maze shivered at the memory of the creature's burning corpse and its awful scent.
Maze and Camilee finished their beans, then sat and stared into the fire in content silence.
Eventually, a conversation topic popped into Maze's head.
"Camilee?"
"Hmm?"
"What's my mother like?" Maze's voice was uncharacteristically soft. "Like, I know she looks like me. But what's her personality like?"
Camilee took a few moments to respond. "Well, I'll say she's quiet and shy. Neither one of our mas are very social, but my ma at least has her little circle of friends. Aunt Milly doesn't really have any friends. Sometimes she'll hang out with Ma and her friends if she's around, but she doesn't really have any friends of her own. I don't remember if she's always been like this or if losing you made her like this. It doesn't make sense for a quiet and shy person like her to join such a violent rebel group like the Sparksetters, but I guess you can't always predict what a person will do."
Camilee stared into the fire. The flickering light and shadows danced across her face. A wistful smile slowly spread across her lips.
"She's a kind person, though. Always sweet, and patient. Rarely has anything bad to say about anyone. She kicks you in your sleep sometimes, though. I shared a bed with her back at home. She also likes singing under her breath while she works on things and feeding stray cats and the cheese bread we sometimes can get at the bakery. She's pretty good at chess and checkers, and she wears eye makeup when we can afford it or find a way to make some ourselves."
Camilee's words painted a nice picture of Maze's mother in her head. She could visualize her, almost as clear as a photograph, existing in District 12. Singing under her breath as she repaired someone's radio. Far away, safe and sound. Alive. Alive without her.
A profound sense of sorrow overtook Maze, unlike anything she'd ever felt. Sorrow that she didn't get to grow up with her mother and get to know her. Sorrow that her mother had to spend the last thirteen, almost fourteen, years without her and not getting to know the person she became. It burned deep in her chest. Was sorrow meant to burn this bad?
Maze wondered what her mother thought of her now, watching her in the arena. Was she concerned for her? Scared?
Was she proud?
"Do you think she and I would have gotten along?" Maze asked, hoping Camilee didn't see the thin layer of tears pooling into her eyes.
"I think you two would have," Camilee replied, the smile returning to her face. "She's your mother, and you're her daughter."
She chuckled. "Although mothers and daughters don't get along all the time. I still love her, and she still loves me, don't get me wrong, but Ma and I butt heads a lot. Pa and Milly both say it's because I'm just like her." She gave enough chuckle, although Maze sensed a hint of sadness beneath it.
"Hm, maybe we'd get along then, because I'm only kinda like her," Maze rambled. "I don't think I'm very sweet or patient, I rarely sing, I do like cheese bread, I don't feed stray cats, I'm alright at chess, and I don't wear eye makeup."
She crossed her arms over her chest, looking away into the shadows that surrounded the camp. "Like her, I didn't have friends. I tried to make friends. But no one was interested."
Other than the girls in her room at the community home, who sometimes talked to Maze, Maze had only one other girl she could maybe consider an acquaintance. When they were all in primary school, this girl — Gadgetta Southfield, but she liked to be called Getta — had been a boy. As soon as they reached secondary school, however, Getta declared that she was a girl, and everyone subsequently ostracized her. Her friends ditched her, and she became the subject of side-eyes and whispers whenever she'd enter a room. She and Maze were in the same class at school, and as a result, whenever the teachers assigned a project or assignment to be done in pairs, Getta and Maze would pair up, since they were the only two in class that didn't have anyone to pair up with. It got to the point where whenever a teacher even mentioned that they'd be getting into pairs, they'd immediately lock eyes.
The two of them would chat in class sometimes, but they weren't friends. No. Perhaps if they were friends, Getta would have shown up after the Reaping to see her off to the Games. But she didn't.
Camilee nodded, understanding. "Yeah. I get that. I only had two friends back in Twelve. Searsha and Aggy. We were seen as kinda weird. But we had each other."
"At least you had friends." Maze tried not to let the bitterness creep into her voice, but it was hard not to.
There was so much she was deprived of in her short life. Parents. Friends. Having anyone to give a shit about her, really. It wasn't fair.
How ironic that it took being sent to her literal death for anyone to give a damn about her. For her to actually find friends — and family.
Maze would be more bitter about it, but at least she got to die finally knowing the warmth of having someone that loved her.
The temperature dipped even further as the night advanced — well below freezing, if Maze had to guess.
Eventually, she and Camilee had to leave the warmth of their campfire and retreat into the shelter to sleep. They wrapped themselves in the blanket as tight as they could and attempted to sleep. Even in the shelter, protected from the wind, the freezing air still nipped at any exposed skin.
The night was long and miserable. Maze was too cold to sleep even while snuggling against Camilee under the blanket with her hood up, but at the same time, her body was exhausted. She needed rest. So she laid there for majority of the night with her eyes closed, mind entering a stupor similar to the one she entered during her pokeweed poisoning. Sometime during the night, she must have dozed off, because before she knew it, gray light filtered through the cracks in the shelter wall.
She and Camilee stayed in the shelter a while longer, neither wanting to get up. Maze could tell Camilee was awake based on her shallow breathing pattern and the way she stayed unnaturally still, trying not to wake Maze.
Maze ended up dozing off again for a while. This time, when she opened her eyes, the gray had turned to yellow sunshine and Camilee was outside the shelter, starting the campfire back up.
Blinking her bleary eyes, Maze crawled out of the shelter to join Camilee at the fire. The temperature was no longer freezing like it was last night, but there was still a chill to the air. Maze sighed in pleasure as the heat of the flames buffeted her cold skin as she sat next to Camilee.
She and Camilee retrieved the napkin-wrapped bread rolls they had gotten the day before in the labyrinth, and after holding them over the fire to melt away their staleness, ate them. The bread helped warm Maze up even more, and she sighed again in contentment as she and Camilee ate the rolls.
As they were finishing up the last of the rolls, a rattling sound reached their ears. Their metal pot, laying next to them, had begun trembling. Maze and Camilee looked at it, confused. A few milliseconds later, the entire arena itself began shaking. In the forest around them, surprised flocks of birds took flight from the trembling trees. The fire in front of them leapt back and forth. All traces of sleepiness gone, Maze and Camilee jumped back from it.
"Is this an earthquake?" Maze asked. She had never experienced an earthquake for herself — District 3 was not an area prone to them — but this event very much fit the description. A dull rumble echoed in her ears, getting louder as the seconds went by.
Camilee opened her mouth to respond, but something caught her eye through the trees, down towards the river. Her eyes narrowed to slits, then popped wide open.
"We need to go. Now." Her tone was dead serious.
Fear coursed through Maze. "What is it?"
Camilee pointed between the trees. "That."
Between the trees, just within viewing distance, the ground was collapsing in on itself, falling away into a river of churning rock. Trees stuck out of it like toothpicks, completely at the mercy of the moving earth. A cloud of dust hung suspended in the air above it.
The collapse was barreling uphill. Barreling towards Maze and Camilee.
"Run!"
Maze wasted no time. She snatched her spear and slung one of the backpacks over her shoulder. Camilee snatched up another backpack, and the two fled.
The rumble had turned into a deafening roar. Maze could practically feel the collapse's breath on her back as she and Camilee sprinted uphill towards the pokeweed meadow. Behind them, Maze heard the dull clanging of their metal pot as it smacked against the falling rocks.
The collapse showed no sign of stopping as Maze and Camilee reached the meadow. In fact, it even seemed to move faster now that it was unencumbered by the slope.
Maze and Camilee tore through the meadow. The branches of the pokeweed bushes tore at their face and clothes. Neither of them had any time to maneuver through the bushes carefully. They'd die if they slowed down.
Maze's legs and lungs already burned from the effort of sprinting just the short distance. She pushed through the burning the best she could. The bread in her stomach churned like the ground of the collapse itself. She prayed she didn't vomit. That would definitely slow her down and kill her.
Around them, more startled birds took flight as Maze and Camilee barreled through the meadow. Maze swore she saw woodland creatures running through the meadow alongside them in brown streaks at the corner of her eyes.
Up ahead, the roaring grew even louder. More collapsing appeared in front of them, at the far end of the meadow. The collapse stretched around the edges of the meadow in an arc shape.
Seeing the shape made Maze realize the purpose of the collapse. The Gamemakers were drawing the tributes towards the center of the arena by collapsing the edges. And perhaps they were trying to get rid of a few tributes while doing so.
Maze and Camilee turned, running away from the arc of destruction barreling towards them. Pokeweed berries burst underfoot as they sprinted towards the center of the arena.
They soon reached the edge of the meadow, plunging into unfamiliar forest. Camilee had pulled slightly ahead, her longer legs once more giving her advantage. Maze was not far behind, huffing and puffing and trying to keep up. Every inhalation felt like fire in her windpipe. Behind her, the ground continued to collapse in a cacophony of destruction.
They ran. And ran. And ran. The collapse was relentless, continuing to lap at their heels.
Maze didn't know how long she could keep running for. Her body was reaching exhaustion. Her heart hammered in her chest and every cell in her body screamed for rest.
She couldn't rest, though. She'd die if she slowed down even a bit.
But her body couldn't run forever.
She had outrun the bloodbath. She had outrun the boy from District 4. She had outrun the poison rain. But could she outrun the collapse? Her body was so weakened from days of having less than optimal nutrition, not to mention illness and injury.
Maze didn't think so.
The end was near. She had no more strength left to outrun the collapse. The pain of sprinting was becoming overwhelming. She couldn't go on anymore.
She had half a thought to call out to Camilee, to tell her she couldn't run anymore. But she didn't want to distract her from her own running. Camilee could still outrun the collapse. Camilee could still survive. That, and she didn't want Camilee to see her fall into the sea of churning rock and die.
She didn't want Camilee to see her die.
She wouldn't die, then.
Renewed strength flooded through her. No. She wouldn't die. Not yet. She wouldn't let some stupid ground kill her.
Maze pushed forward. She kept running, despite her aching, heavy body and the burning of her lungs and trachea. The collapse behind her still gave chase.
But eventually, it became too much. A ringing entered her ears above the collapse's rumble, like the ringing she heard after her spear shocked her. Black spots covered the edges of her periphery. Despite the weight of her aching, strained limbs, her head felt light as a feather.
Her body genuinely couldn't do it anymore. She couldn't go on.
But then the rumbling ceased.
The collapse had stopped. The Gamemakers felt like they were sufficiently towards the center of the arena. Or perhaps they had decided to take mercy on them.
Maze collapsed onto the ground, unable to take a single step further. Her cheek slid and scraped against the ground, but she didn't care. She was just so relieved to rest. Up ahead of her, Maze heard Camilee do the same, slumping to the ground with a groan.
For a few moments, there was silence as Maze and Camilee both caught their breath. Maze managed to summon the strength to roll onto her back to catch her breath.
Then, the cannons sounded.
One.
Two.
Three.
Three tributes died in the collapse. There were now five left. Three, besides Maze and Camilee.
Maze didn't care at the moment. She needed to breathe before she could have any more thoughts.
The dark spots in her vision, as well as the ringing sound, eventually vanished. Breathing started to feel more like breathing again and less like inhaling fire. The burning of her leg and chest muscles subsided, replaced by a dull ache and shakiness.
Maze and Camilee laid on the forest floor for who knows how long. The fallen pine needles provided some cushioning for their tired, aching bodies. Eventually, birds began singing again, concluding that the danger had passed.
Finally, Maze recovered the ability to form thoughts and to move. She sat up, her hands finding her spear, which laid beside her among the pine needles. Her spear. By some miracle, she hadn't dropped it during all the chaos.
Behind her, Camilee stirred, also sitting up and surveying their surroundings. Pine needles decorated her hair, and there was a scratch on her forehead. Her eyelids drooped, looking as exhausted as Maze felt.
For the first time, Maze looked beyond the trees to the field of absolute destruction in front of her. As far as she could see, the landscape was totally decimated. What had to be miles of upturned earth greeted her. Trees poked out from the rubble like flagpoles, and in the air, the cloud of dust had dissipated, leaving clear blue sky. The distant mountains still stood around the arena, unaffected by the collapse.
It was clear — most of the arena was gone.
"That was bad," Camilee groaned. Her voice was unusually raspy.
Maze nodded. "Yeah."
Bad was an understatement. Now they had barely any supplies and no idea where they were.
Maze and Camilee rested a while more on the forest floor, before the two of them eventually got up and started walking in a random direction. Neither of them felt safe staying on the edge of the arena. It felt too exposed. Someone — or something — could push them off the edge if they wanted to.
The two of them strolled through the forest for the rest of the morning, stopping for a break around midday, before continuing on. Maze's feet and legs ached, and her body still shook slightly, but the rest on the forest floor had restored some of her energy.
Around mid-afternoon, the two girls encountered a rock formation in a clearing. The formation had a flat, sunny rock that Maze recognized immediately.
"I know this place," she told Camilee. "I ran here after the bloodbath. It's not far from the Cornucopia."
She pointed at the flat rock. "I took a nap there. It's real warm in the sun."
Camilee quirked an eyebrow. "Warm, you say?"
"Yep. Warm."
"I bet it'll feel nice against my aching muscles." Camilee walked over to the flat rock, took her jacket off, and climbed on top of it, before laying down on her back. She outstretched her arms against the rock, breathing a content sigh. "Oh, yes. It does."
Maze joined her on the rock, taking her own jacket off and laying beside Camilee. She was right — the heat felt wonderful. The hard rock hurt as it dug into her back, but the heat was worth it.
The two girls rested on the rock, not saying a word, until the sun began going down. After that, they got to work.
Camilee went out to look for food or water, taking Maze's spear and their half-empty water bottle with her, leaving Maze her dagger to defend herself with. Meanwhile, Maze took inventory of what was in the two backpacks they managed to grab before the collapse.
To Maze's disappointment, the backpacks didn't have much in them. Just her spool of wire, the spare sock, a battery, a compass, a bungee cord, and Willow's knife. Maze swore she remembered putting the other can of beans into one of the bags, but it must have fallen out while she and Camilee ran.
All their other supplies were gone. Fallen away into the collapse.
Maze still had the beef jerky packets from the labyrinth in her pockets, and she snacked on a piece or two while Camilee was gone.
Just before dark, Camilee returned, empty-handed.
"There's nothing. I think the Gamemakers are wanting these Games done with."
Maze's heart sunk at her words, but she said nothing. Instead, she handed Camilee one of the jerky packets, and the two snacked as the arena plunged into darkness.
Before long, the anthem played, and the night sky was lit up with the faces of the tributes who died during the collapse. First was the boy from District 1. Then the girl from Two. Lastly, the face of the girl from Eight showed up in the sky, before the arena went dark once more.
For a few moments, the only noise was the sound of the crickets chirping.
Camilee spoke. "So it's us, the girls from One and Four, and the boy from Two left."
"The girl from One's name is Saphira, and the boy's name is Cassian," Maze supplied. She took the glowing moss from yesterday out of her pocket, fiddling with it in her hands. Its gentle teal glow gave them some light, but not enough to alert anyone else of their presence. "Not sure what the girl from Four's name is."
"The three scary ones," Camilee replied. "Those three especially gave me the creeps during the interviews. And I saw Saphira and Cassian killing kids during the bloodbath." She shuddered.
Maze recalled the sight of Cassian barreling towards her with his blood-soaked mace and also shuddered, squeezing the ball of moss she'd formed.
"There's three of them and two of us," Camilee continued, "And we don't know if they've splintered already or not. This is about the time in the Games that the Career pack splits, especially if there's tension in the group. Based on the sole member who was chasing you in the labyrinth, I don't think these ones were very cohesive."
Maze nodded. "Before he started chasing me, he mentioned something about leaving the others behind."
"I think one of us could go home," Camilee said, leaning forward towards Maze. Her eyes glimmered with something like hope. "If we play our cards right. But we gotta be careful."
You will be the one going home, Camilee, Maze thought. I'll make sure of it. Our mothers and your Pa need you.
The glinting of her spool of wire in the moss's light caught her eye. An idea came to life in her brain. A few seconds later, Maze knew how she would ensure Camilee went home.
She smirked, before also leaning forward.
"I think I have a plan."
This chapter ended up WAY longer than expected. 8.5K words, to be precise.
Next chapter is the grand finale of the 57th Hunger Games, so get hyped!
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and thank you for reading 3
