The Hunger Games Part 2: The Games
Chapter 15
I enter a nightmare from which I wake repeatedly only to find a greater terror
awaiting me. All the things I dread most, all the things I dread for others manifest
in such vivid detail I can’t help but believe they’re real. Each time I wake, I think,
At last, this is over, but it isn’t. It’s only the beginning of a new chapter of torture.
How many ways do I watch Prim die? Relive my father’s last moments? Feel my
own body ripped apart? This is the nature of the tracker jacker venom, so carefully
created to target the place where fear lives in your brain.
When I finally do come to my senses, I lie still, waiting for the next onslaught of
imagery. But eventually I accept that the poison must have finally worked its way
out of my system, leaving my body wracked and feeble. I’m still lying on my side,
locked in the fetal position. I lift a hand to my eyes to find them sound, untouched
by ants that never existed. Simply stretching out my limbs requires an enormous
effort. So many parts of me hurt, it doesn’t seem worthwhile taking inventory of
them. Very, very slowly I manage to sit up. I’m in a shallow hole, not filled with the
humming orange bubbles of my hallucination but with old, dead leaves. My
clothing’s damp, but I don’t know whether pond water, dew, rain, or sweat is the
cause. For a long time, all I can do is take tiny sips from my bottle and watch a
beetle crawl up the side of a honeysuckle bush.
How long have I been out? It was morning when I lost reason. Now it’s
afternoon. But the stiffness in my joints suggests more than a day has passed,
even two possibly. If so, I’ll have no way of knowing which tributes survived that
tracker jacker attack. Not Glimmer or the girl from District 4. But there was the
boy from District 1, both tributes from District 2, and Peeta. Did they die from the
stings? Certainly if they lived, their last days must have been as horrid as my own.
And what about Rue? She’s so small, it wouldn’t take much venom to do her in.
But then again . . . the tracker jackers would’ve had to catch her, and she had a
good head start.
A foul, rotten taste pervades my mouth, and the water has little effect on it. I
drag myself over to the honeysuckle bush and pluck a flower. I gently pull the
stamen through the blossom and set the drop of nectar on my tongue. The
sweetness spreads through my mouth, down my throat, warming my veins with
memories of summer, and my home woods and Gale’s presence beside me. For
some reason, our discussion from that last morning comes back to me.
“We could do it, you know.”
“What?”
“Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it.”
And suddenly, I’m not thinking of Gale but of Peeta and . . . Peeta! He saved
my life! I think. Because by the time we met up, I couldn’t tell what was real and
what the tracker jacker venom had caused me to imagine. But if he did, and my
instincts tell me he did, what for? Is he simply working the Lover Boy angle he
initiated at the interview? Or was he actually trying to protect me? And if he was,
what was he doing with those Careers in the first place? None of it makes sense.
I wonder what Gale made of the incident for a moment and then I push the
whole thing out of my mind because for some reason Gale and Peeta do not
coexist well together in my thoughts.
So I focus on the one really good thing that’s happened since I landed in the
arena. I have a bow and arrows! A full dozen arrows if you count the one I
retrieved in the tree. They bear no trace of the noxious green slime that came
retrieved in the tree. They bear no trace of the noxious green slime that came
from Glimmer’s body — which leads me to believe that might not have been wholly
real — but they have a fair amount of dried blood on them. I can clean them later,
but I do take a minute to shoot a few into a nearby tree. They are more like the
weapons in the Training Center than my ones at home, but who cares? That I can
work with.
The weapons give me an entirely new perspective on the Games. I know I have
tough opponents left to face. But I am no longer merely prey that runs and hides
or takes desperate measures. If Cato broke through the trees right now, I wouldn’t
flee, I’d shoot. I find I’m actually anticipating the moment with pleasure.
But first, I have to get some strength back in my body. I’m very dehydrated
again and my water supply is dangerously low. The little padding I was able to put
on by gorging myself during prep time in the Capitol is gone, plus several more
pounds as well. My hip bones and ribs are more prominent than I remember them
being since those awful months after my father’s death. And then there are my
wounds to contend with — burns, cuts, and bruises from smashing into the trees,
and three tracker jacker stings, which are as sore and swollen as ever. I treat my
burns with the ointment and try dabbing a bit on my stings as well, but it has no
effect on them. My mother knew a treatment for them, some type of leaf that
could draw out the poison, but she seldom had cause to use it, and I don’t even
remember its name let alone its appearance.
Water first, I think. You can hunt along the way now. It’s easy to see the
direction I came from by the path of destruction my crazed body made through the
foliage. So I walk off in the other direction, hoping my enemies still lie locked in
the surreal world of tracker jacker venom.
I can’t move too quickly, my joints reject any abrupt motions. But I establish
the slow hunter’s tread I use when tracking game. Within a few minutes, I spot a
rabbit and make my first kill with the bow and arrow. It’s not my usual clean shot
through the eye, but I’ll take it. After about an hour, I find a stream, shallow but
wide, and more than sufficient for my needs. The sun’s hot and severe, so while I
wait for my water to purify I strip down to my underclothes and wade into the mild
current. I’m filthy from head to toe, I try splashing myself but eventually just lay
down in the water for a few minutes, letting it wash off the soot and blood and skin
that has started to peel off my burns. After rinsing out my clothes and hanging
them on bushes to dry, I sit on the bank in the sun for a bit, untangling my hair
with my fingers. My appetite returns and I eat a cracker and a strip of beef. With a
handful of moss, I polish the blood from my silver weapons.
Refreshed, I treat my burns again, braid back my hair, and dress in the damp
clothes, knowing the sun will dry them soon enough. Following the stream against
its current seems the smartest course of action. I’m traveling uphill now, which I
prefer, with a source of fresh water not only for myself but possible game. I easily
take out a strange bird that must be some form of wild turkey. Anyway, it looks
plenty edible to me. By late afternoon, I decide to build a small fire to cook the
meat, betting that dusk will help conceal the smoke and I can quench the fire by
nightfall. I clean the game, taking extra care with the bird, but there’s nothing
alarming about it. Once the feathers are plucked, it’s no bigger than a chicken, but
it’s plump and firm. I’ve just placed the first lot over the coals when I hear the twig
snap.
In one motion, I turn to the sound, bringing the bow and arrow to my shoulder.
There’s no one there. No one I can see anyway. Then I spot the tip of a child’s
boot just peeking out from behind the trunk of a tree. My shoulders relax and I
grin. She can move through the woods like a shadow, you have to give her that.
How else could she have followed me? The words come out of my mouth before I
can stop them.
“You know, they’re not the only ones who can form alliances,” I say.
For a moment, no response. Then one of Rue’s eyes edges around the trunk.
“You want me for an ally?”
“Why not? You saved me with those tracker jackers. You’re smart enough to
still be alive. And I can’t seem to shake you anyway,” I say. She blinks at me,
trying to decide. “You hungry?” I can see her swallow hard, her eye flickering to
the meat. “Come on then, I’ve had two kills today.”
Rue tentatively steps out into the open. “I can fix your stings.”
“Can you?” I ask. “How?”
She digs in the pack she carries and pulls out a handful of leaves. I’m almost
certain they’re the ones my mother uses. “Where’d you find those?”
“Just around. We all carry them when we work in the orchards. They left a lot
of nests there,” says Rue. “There are a lot here, too.”
“That’s right. You’re District Eleven. Agriculture,” I say. “Orchards, huh? That
must be how you can fly around the trees like you’ve got wings.” Rue smiles. I’ve
landed on one of the few things she’ll admit pride in. “Well, come on, then. Fix me
up.”
I plunk down by the fire and roll up my pant leg to reveal the sting on my knee.
To my surprise, Rue places the handful of leaves into her mouth and begins to
chew them. My mother would use other methods, but it’s not like we have a lot of
options. After a minute or so, Rue presses a gloppy green wad of chewed leaves
and spit on my knee.
“Ohhh.” The sound comes out of my mouth before I can stop it. It’s as if the
leaves are actually leaching the pain right out of the sting.
Rue gives a giggle. “Lucky you had the sense to pull the stingers out or you’d
be a lot worse.”
“Do my neck! Do my cheek!” I almost beg.
Rue stuffs another handful of leaves in her mouth, and soon I’m laughing
because the relief is so sweet. I notice a long burn on Rue’s forearm. “I’ve got
something for that.” I set aside my weapons and anoint her arm with the burn
medicine.
“You have good sponsors,” she says longingly.
“Have you gotten anything yet?” I ask. She shakes her head. “You will, though.
Watch. The closer we get to the end, the more people will realize how clever you
are.” I turn the meat over.
“You weren’t joking, about wanting me for an ally?” she asks.
“No, I meant it,” I say. I can almost hear Haymitch groaning as I team up with
this wispy child. But I want her. Because she’s a survivor, and I trust her, and why
not admit it? She reminds me of Prim.
“Okay,” she says, and holds out her hand. We shake. “It’s a deal.”
Of course, this kind of deal can only be temporary, but neither of us mentions
that.
Rue contributes a big handful of some sort of starchy root to the meal. Roasted
over the fire, they have the sharp sweet taste of a parsnip. She recognizes the
bird, too, some wild thing they call a groosling in her district. She says sometimes
a flock will wander into the orchard and they get a decent lunch that day. For a
while, all conversation stops as we fill our stomachs. The groosling has delicious
meal that’s so fatty, the grease drips down your face when you bite into it.
“Oh,” says Rue with a sigh. “I’ve never had a whole leg to myself before.”
I’ll bet she hasn’t. I’ll bet meat hardly ever comes her way. “Take the other,” I
say.
“Really?” she asks.
“Take whatever you want. Now that I’ve got a bow and arrows, I can get more.
Plus I’ve got snares. I can show you how to set them,” I say. Rue still looks
uncertainly at the leg. “Oh, take it,” I say, putting the drumstick in her hands. “It
will only keep a few days anyway, and we’ve got the whole bird plus the rabbit.”
Once she’s got hold of it, her appetite wins out and she takes a huge mouthful.
“I’d have thought, in District Eleven, you’d have a bit more to eat than us. You
know, since you grow the food,” I say.
Rue’s eyes widen. “Oh, no, we’re not allowed to eat the crops.”
“They arrest you or something?” I ask.
“They whip you and make everyone else watch,” says Rue. “The mayor’s very
strict about it.”
I can tell by her expression that it’s not that uncommon an occurrence. A
public whipping’s a rare thing in District 12, although occasionally one occurs.
Technically, Gale and I could be whipped on a daily basis for poaching in the
woods — well, technically, we could get a whole lot worse — except all the
officials buy our meat. Besides, our mayor, Madge’s father, doesn’t seem to have
much taste for such events. Maybe being the least prestigious, poorest, most
ridiculed district in the country has its advantages. Such as, being largely ignored
by the Capitol as long as we produce our coal quotas.
“Do you get all the coal you want?” Rue asks.
“No,” I answer. “Just what we buy and whatever we track in on our boots.”
“They feed us a bit extra during harvest, so that people can keep going
longer,” says Rue.
“Don’t you have to be in school?” I ask.
“Not during harvest. Everyone works then,” says Rue.
It’s interesting, hearing about her life. We have so little communication with
anyone outside our district. In fact, I wonder if the Gamemakers are blocking out
our conversation, because even though the information seems harmless, they
don’t want people in different districts to know about one another.
At Rue’s suggestion, we lay out all our food to plan ahead. She’s seen most of
mine, but I add the last couple of crackers and beef strips to the pile. She’s
gathered quite a collection of roots, nuts, greens, and even some berries.
I roll an unfamiliar berry in my fingers. “You sure this is safe?”
“Oh, yes, we have them back home. I’ve been eating them for days,” she says,
popping a handful in her mouth. I tentatively bite into one, and it’s as good as our
blackberries. Taking Rue on as an ally seems a better choice all the time. We
divide up our food supplies, so in case we’re separated, we’ll both be set for a few
days. Apart from the food, Rue has a small water skin, a homemade slingshot, and
an extra pair of socks. She also has a sharp shard of rock she uses as a knife. “I
know it’s not much,” she says as if embarrassed, “but I had to get away from the
Cornucopia fast.”
“You did just right,” I say. When I spread out my gear, she gasps a little when
she sees the sunglasses.
“How did you get those?” she asks.
“In my pack. They’ve been useless so far. They don’t block the sun and they
make it harder to see,” I say with a shrug.
“These aren’t for sun, they’re for darkness,” exclaims Rue. “Sometimes, when
we harvest through the night, they’ll pass out a few pairs to those of us highest in
the trees. Where the torchlight doesn’t reach. One time, this boy Martin, he tried
to keep his pair. Hid it in his pants. They killed him on the spot.”
“They killed a boy for taking these?” I say.
“Yes, and everyone knew he was no danger. Martin wasn’t right in the head. I
mean, he still acted like a three-year-old. He just wanted the glasses to play with,”
says Rue.
Hearing this makes me feel like District 12 is some sort of safe haven. Of
course, people keel over from starvation all the time, but I can’t imagine the
Peacekeepers murdering a simpleminded child. There’s a little girl, one of Greasy
Sae’s grandkids, who wanders around the Hob. She’s not quite right, but she’s
treated as a sort of pet. People toss her scraps and things.
“So what do these do?” I ask Rue, taking the glasses.
“They let you see in complete darkness,” says Rue. “Try them tonight when the
sun goes down.”
I give Rue some matches and she makes sure I have plenty of leaves in case
my stings flare up again. We extinguish our fire and head upstream until it’s
almost nightfall.
“Where do you sleep?” I ask her. “In the trees?” She nods. “In just your
jacket?”
Rue holds up her extra pair of socks. “I have these for my hands.”
I think of how cold the nights have been. “You can share my sleeping bag if you
want. We’ll both easily fit.” Her face lights up. I can tell this is more than she
dared hope for.
We pick a fork high in a tree and settle in for the night just as the anthem
begins to play. There were no deaths today.
“Rue, I only woke up today. How many nights did I miss?” The anthem should
block out our words, but still I whisper. I even take the precaution of covering my
lips with my hand. I don’t want the audience to know what I’m planning to tell her
about Peeta. Taking a cue from me, she does the same.
“Two,” she says. “The girls from Districts One and Four are dead. There’s ten
of us left.”
“Something strange happened. At least, I think it did. It might have been the
tracker jacker venom making me imagine things,” I say. “You know the boy from
my district? Peeta? I think he saved my life. But he was with the Careers.”
“He’s not with them now,” she says. “I’ve spied on their base camp by the
lake. They made it back before they collapsed from the stingers. But he’s not
there. Maybe he did save you and had to run.”
I don’t answer. If, in fact, Peeta did save me, I’m in his debt again. And this
can’t be paid back. “If he did, it was all probably just part of his act. You know, to
make people think he’s in love with me.”
“Oh,” says Rue thoughtfully. “I didn’t think that was an act.”
“Course it is,” I say. “He worked it out with our mentor.” The anthem ends and
the sky goes dark. “Let’s try out these glasses.” I pull out the glasses and slip
them on. Rue wasn’t kidding. I can see everything from the leaves on the trees to
a skunk strolling through the bushes a good fifty feet away. I could kill it from here
if I had a mind to. I could kill anyone.
“I wonder who else got a pair of these,” I say.
“The Careers have two pairs. But they’ve got everything down by the lake,”
Rue says. “And they’re so strong.”
“We’re strong, too,” I say. “Just in a different way.”
“You are. You can shoot,” she says. “What can I do?”
“You can feed yourself. Can they?” I ask.
“They don’t need to. They have all those supplies,” Rue says.
“Say they didn’t. Say the supplies were gone. How long would they last?” I say.
“I mean, it’s the Hunger Games, right?”
“But, Katniss, they’re not hungry,” says Rue.
“No, they’re not. That’s the problem,” I agree. And for the first time, I have a
plan. A plan that isn’t motivated by the need for flight and evasion. An offensive
plan. “I think we’re going to have to fix that, Rue.”
Chapter 15
I enter a nightmare from which I wake repeatedly only to find a greater terror
awaiting me. All the things I dread most, all the things I dread for others manifest
in such vivid detail I can’t help but believe they’re real. Each time I wake, I think,
At last, this is over, but it isn’t. It’s only the beginning of a new chapter of torture.
How many ways do I watch Prim die? Relive my father’s last moments? Feel my
own body ripped apart? This is the nature of the tracker jacker venom, so carefully
created to target the place where fear lives in your brain.
When I finally do come to my senses, I lie still, waiting for the next onslaught of
imagery. But eventually I accept that the poison must have finally worked its way
out of my system, leaving my body wracked and feeble. I’m still lying on my side,
locked in the fetal position. I lift a hand to my eyes to find them sound, untouched
by ants that never existed. Simply stretching out my limbs requires an enormous
effort. So many parts of me hurt, it doesn’t seem worthwhile taking inventory of
them. Very, very slowly I manage to sit up. I’m in a shallow hole, not filled with the
humming orange bubbles of my hallucination but with old, dead leaves. My
clothing’s damp, but I don’t know whether pond water, dew, rain, or sweat is the
cause. For a long time, all I can do is take tiny sips from my bottle and watch a
beetle crawl up the side of a honeysuckle bush.
How long have I been out? It was morning when I lost reason. Now it’s
afternoon. But the stiffness in my joints suggests more than a day has passed,
even two possibly. If so, I’ll have no way of knowing which tributes survived that
tracker jacker attack. Not Glimmer or the girl from District 4. But there was the
boy from District 1, both tributes from District 2, and Peeta. Did they die from the
stings? Certainly if they lived, their last days must have been as horrid as my own.
And what about Rue? She’s so small, it wouldn’t take much venom to do her in.
But then again . . . the tracker jackers would’ve had to catch her, and she had a
good head start.
A foul, rotten taste pervades my mouth, and the water has little effect on it. I
drag myself over to the honeysuckle bush and pluck a flower. I gently pull the
stamen through the blossom and set the drop of nectar on my tongue. The
sweetness spreads through my mouth, down my throat, warming my veins with
memories of summer, and my home woods and Gale’s presence beside me. For
some reason, our discussion from that last morning comes back to me.
“We could do it, you know.”
“What?”
“Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it.”
And suddenly, I’m not thinking of Gale but of Peeta and . . . Peeta! He saved
my life! I think. Because by the time we met up, I couldn’t tell what was real and
what the tracker jacker venom had caused me to imagine. But if he did, and my
instincts tell me he did, what for? Is he simply working the Lover Boy angle he
initiated at the interview? Or was he actually trying to protect me? And if he was,
what was he doing with those Careers in the first place? None of it makes sense.
I wonder what Gale made of the incident for a moment and then I push the
whole thing out of my mind because for some reason Gale and Peeta do not
coexist well together in my thoughts.
So I focus on the one really good thing that’s happened since I landed in the
arena. I have a bow and arrows! A full dozen arrows if you count the one I
retrieved in the tree. They bear no trace of the noxious green slime that came
retrieved in the tree. They bear no trace of the noxious green slime that came
from Glimmer’s body — which leads me to believe that might not have been wholly
real — but they have a fair amount of dried blood on them. I can clean them later,
but I do take a minute to shoot a few into a nearby tree. They are more like the
weapons in the Training Center than my ones at home, but who cares? That I can
work with.
The weapons give me an entirely new perspective on the Games. I know I have
tough opponents left to face. But I am no longer merely prey that runs and hides
or takes desperate measures. If Cato broke through the trees right now, I wouldn’t
flee, I’d shoot. I find I’m actually anticipating the moment with pleasure.
But first, I have to get some strength back in my body. I’m very dehydrated
again and my water supply is dangerously low. The little padding I was able to put
on by gorging myself during prep time in the Capitol is gone, plus several more
pounds as well. My hip bones and ribs are more prominent than I remember them
being since those awful months after my father’s death. And then there are my
wounds to contend with — burns, cuts, and bruises from smashing into the trees,
and three tracker jacker stings, which are as sore and swollen as ever. I treat my
burns with the ointment and try dabbing a bit on my stings as well, but it has no
effect on them. My mother knew a treatment for them, some type of leaf that
could draw out the poison, but she seldom had cause to use it, and I don’t even
remember its name let alone its appearance.
Water first, I think. You can hunt along the way now. It’s easy to see the
direction I came from by the path of destruction my crazed body made through the
foliage. So I walk off in the other direction, hoping my enemies still lie locked in
the surreal world of tracker jacker venom.
I can’t move too quickly, my joints reject any abrupt motions. But I establish
the slow hunter’s tread I use when tracking game. Within a few minutes, I spot a
rabbit and make my first kill with the bow and arrow. It’s not my usual clean shot
through the eye, but I’ll take it. After about an hour, I find a stream, shallow but
wide, and more than sufficient for my needs. The sun’s hot and severe, so while I
wait for my water to purify I strip down to my underclothes and wade into the mild
current. I’m filthy from head to toe, I try splashing myself but eventually just lay
down in the water for a few minutes, letting it wash off the soot and blood and skin
that has started to peel off my burns. After rinsing out my clothes and hanging
them on bushes to dry, I sit on the bank in the sun for a bit, untangling my hair
with my fingers. My appetite returns and I eat a cracker and a strip of beef. With a
handful of moss, I polish the blood from my silver weapons.
Refreshed, I treat my burns again, braid back my hair, and dress in the damp
clothes, knowing the sun will dry them soon enough. Following the stream against
its current seems the smartest course of action. I’m traveling uphill now, which I
prefer, with a source of fresh water not only for myself but possible game. I easily
take out a strange bird that must be some form of wild turkey. Anyway, it looks
plenty edible to me. By late afternoon, I decide to build a small fire to cook the
meat, betting that dusk will help conceal the smoke and I can quench the fire by
nightfall. I clean the game, taking extra care with the bird, but there’s nothing
alarming about it. Once the feathers are plucked, it’s no bigger than a chicken, but
it’s plump and firm. I’ve just placed the first lot over the coals when I hear the twig
snap.
In one motion, I turn to the sound, bringing the bow and arrow to my shoulder.
There’s no one there. No one I can see anyway. Then I spot the tip of a child’s
boot just peeking out from behind the trunk of a tree. My shoulders relax and I
grin. She can move through the woods like a shadow, you have to give her that.
How else could she have followed me? The words come out of my mouth before I
can stop them.
“You know, they’re not the only ones who can form alliances,” I say.
For a moment, no response. Then one of Rue’s eyes edges around the trunk.
“You want me for an ally?”
“Why not? You saved me with those tracker jackers. You’re smart enough to
still be alive. And I can’t seem to shake you anyway,” I say. She blinks at me,
trying to decide. “You hungry?” I can see her swallow hard, her eye flickering to
the meat. “Come on then, I’ve had two kills today.”
Rue tentatively steps out into the open. “I can fix your stings.”
“Can you?” I ask. “How?”
She digs in the pack she carries and pulls out a handful of leaves. I’m almost
certain they’re the ones my mother uses. “Where’d you find those?”
“Just around. We all carry them when we work in the orchards. They left a lot
of nests there,” says Rue. “There are a lot here, too.”
“That’s right. You’re District Eleven. Agriculture,” I say. “Orchards, huh? That
must be how you can fly around the trees like you’ve got wings.” Rue smiles. I’ve
landed on one of the few things she’ll admit pride in. “Well, come on, then. Fix me
up.”
I plunk down by the fire and roll up my pant leg to reveal the sting on my knee.
To my surprise, Rue places the handful of leaves into her mouth and begins to
chew them. My mother would use other methods, but it’s not like we have a lot of
options. After a minute or so, Rue presses a gloppy green wad of chewed leaves
and spit on my knee.
“Ohhh.” The sound comes out of my mouth before I can stop it. It’s as if the
leaves are actually leaching the pain right out of the sting.
Rue gives a giggle. “Lucky you had the sense to pull the stingers out or you’d
be a lot worse.”
“Do my neck! Do my cheek!” I almost beg.
Rue stuffs another handful of leaves in her mouth, and soon I’m laughing
because the relief is so sweet. I notice a long burn on Rue’s forearm. “I’ve got
something for that.” I set aside my weapons and anoint her arm with the burn
medicine.
“You have good sponsors,” she says longingly.
“Have you gotten anything yet?” I ask. She shakes her head. “You will, though.
Watch. The closer we get to the end, the more people will realize how clever you
are.” I turn the meat over.
“You weren’t joking, about wanting me for an ally?” she asks.
“No, I meant it,” I say. I can almost hear Haymitch groaning as I team up with
this wispy child. But I want her. Because she’s a survivor, and I trust her, and why
not admit it? She reminds me of Prim.
“Okay,” she says, and holds out her hand. We shake. “It’s a deal.”
Of course, this kind of deal can only be temporary, but neither of us mentions
that.
Rue contributes a big handful of some sort of starchy root to the meal. Roasted
over the fire, they have the sharp sweet taste of a parsnip. She recognizes the
bird, too, some wild thing they call a groosling in her district. She says sometimes
a flock will wander into the orchard and they get a decent lunch that day. For a
while, all conversation stops as we fill our stomachs. The groosling has delicious
meal that’s so fatty, the grease drips down your face when you bite into it.
“Oh,” says Rue with a sigh. “I’ve never had a whole leg to myself before.”
I’ll bet she hasn’t. I’ll bet meat hardly ever comes her way. “Take the other,” I
say.
“Really?” she asks.
“Take whatever you want. Now that I’ve got a bow and arrows, I can get more.
Plus I’ve got snares. I can show you how to set them,” I say. Rue still looks
uncertainly at the leg. “Oh, take it,” I say, putting the drumstick in her hands. “It
will only keep a few days anyway, and we’ve got the whole bird plus the rabbit.”
Once she’s got hold of it, her appetite wins out and she takes a huge mouthful.
“I’d have thought, in District Eleven, you’d have a bit more to eat than us. You
know, since you grow the food,” I say.
Rue’s eyes widen. “Oh, no, we’re not allowed to eat the crops.”
“They arrest you or something?” I ask.
“They whip you and make everyone else watch,” says Rue. “The mayor’s very
strict about it.”
I can tell by her expression that it’s not that uncommon an occurrence. A
public whipping’s a rare thing in District 12, although occasionally one occurs.
Technically, Gale and I could be whipped on a daily basis for poaching in the
woods — well, technically, we could get a whole lot worse — except all the
officials buy our meat. Besides, our mayor, Madge’s father, doesn’t seem to have
much taste for such events. Maybe being the least prestigious, poorest, most
ridiculed district in the country has its advantages. Such as, being largely ignored
by the Capitol as long as we produce our coal quotas.
“Do you get all the coal you want?” Rue asks.
“No,” I answer. “Just what we buy and whatever we track in on our boots.”
“They feed us a bit extra during harvest, so that people can keep going
longer,” says Rue.
“Don’t you have to be in school?” I ask.
“Not during harvest. Everyone works then,” says Rue.
It’s interesting, hearing about her life. We have so little communication with
anyone outside our district. In fact, I wonder if the Gamemakers are blocking out
our conversation, because even though the information seems harmless, they
don’t want people in different districts to know about one another.
At Rue’s suggestion, we lay out all our food to plan ahead. She’s seen most of
mine, but I add the last couple of crackers and beef strips to the pile. She’s
gathered quite a collection of roots, nuts, greens, and even some berries.
I roll an unfamiliar berry in my fingers. “You sure this is safe?”
“Oh, yes, we have them back home. I’ve been eating them for days,” she says,
popping a handful in her mouth. I tentatively bite into one, and it’s as good as our
blackberries. Taking Rue on as an ally seems a better choice all the time. We
divide up our food supplies, so in case we’re separated, we’ll both be set for a few
days. Apart from the food, Rue has a small water skin, a homemade slingshot, and
an extra pair of socks. She also has a sharp shard of rock she uses as a knife. “I
know it’s not much,” she says as if embarrassed, “but I had to get away from the
Cornucopia fast.”
“You did just right,” I say. When I spread out my gear, she gasps a little when
she sees the sunglasses.
“How did you get those?” she asks.
“In my pack. They’ve been useless so far. They don’t block the sun and they
make it harder to see,” I say with a shrug.
“These aren’t for sun, they’re for darkness,” exclaims Rue. “Sometimes, when
we harvest through the night, they’ll pass out a few pairs to those of us highest in
the trees. Where the torchlight doesn’t reach. One time, this boy Martin, he tried
to keep his pair. Hid it in his pants. They killed him on the spot.”
“They killed a boy for taking these?” I say.
“Yes, and everyone knew he was no danger. Martin wasn’t right in the head. I
mean, he still acted like a three-year-old. He just wanted the glasses to play with,”
says Rue.
Hearing this makes me feel like District 12 is some sort of safe haven. Of
course, people keel over from starvation all the time, but I can’t imagine the
Peacekeepers murdering a simpleminded child. There’s a little girl, one of Greasy
Sae’s grandkids, who wanders around the Hob. She’s not quite right, but she’s
treated as a sort of pet. People toss her scraps and things.
“So what do these do?” I ask Rue, taking the glasses.
“They let you see in complete darkness,” says Rue. “Try them tonight when the
sun goes down.”
I give Rue some matches and she makes sure I have plenty of leaves in case
my stings flare up again. We extinguish our fire and head upstream until it’s
almost nightfall.
“Where do you sleep?” I ask her. “In the trees?” She nods. “In just your
jacket?”
Rue holds up her extra pair of socks. “I have these for my hands.”
I think of how cold the nights have been. “You can share my sleeping bag if you
want. We’ll both easily fit.” Her face lights up. I can tell this is more than she
dared hope for.
We pick a fork high in a tree and settle in for the night just as the anthem
begins to play. There were no deaths today.
“Rue, I only woke up today. How many nights did I miss?” The anthem should
block out our words, but still I whisper. I even take the precaution of covering my
lips with my hand. I don’t want the audience to know what I’m planning to tell her
about Peeta. Taking a cue from me, she does the same.
“Two,” she says. “The girls from Districts One and Four are dead. There’s ten
of us left.”
“Something strange happened. At least, I think it did. It might have been the
tracker jacker venom making me imagine things,” I say. “You know the boy from
my district? Peeta? I think he saved my life. But he was with the Careers.”
“He’s not with them now,” she says. “I’ve spied on their base camp by the
lake. They made it back before they collapsed from the stingers. But he’s not
there. Maybe he did save you and had to run.”
I don’t answer. If, in fact, Peeta did save me, I’m in his debt again. And this
can’t be paid back. “If he did, it was all probably just part of his act. You know, to
make people think he’s in love with me.”
“Oh,” says Rue thoughtfully. “I didn’t think that was an act.”
“Course it is,” I say. “He worked it out with our mentor.” The anthem ends and
the sky goes dark. “Let’s try out these glasses.” I pull out the glasses and slip
them on. Rue wasn’t kidding. I can see everything from the leaves on the trees to
a skunk strolling through the bushes a good fifty feet away. I could kill it from here
if I had a mind to. I could kill anyone.
“I wonder who else got a pair of these,” I say.
“The Careers have two pairs. But they’ve got everything down by the lake,”
Rue says. “And they’re so strong.”
“We’re strong, too,” I say. “Just in a different way.”
“You are. You can shoot,” she says. “What can I do?”
“You can feed yourself. Can they?” I ask.
“They don’t need to. They have all those supplies,” Rue says.
“Say they didn’t. Say the supplies were gone. How long would they last?” I say.
“I mean, it’s the Hunger Games, right?”
“But, Katniss, they’re not hungry,” says Rue.
“No, they’re not. That’s the problem,” I agree. And for the first time, I have a
plan. A plan that isn’t motivated by the need for flight and evasion. An offensive
plan. “I think we’re going to have to fix that, Rue.”
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