Snatches of sleep breed nightmares, and the dawn finds me weak and weary, like the guy in Lenore Dove’s poem. The arena leaves no time to properly grieve anyone and I’m left feeling cheated, shallow, and coldhearted. Louella, Ampert, Maysilee, everybody deserves far better. I just can’t generate it.
I check on Wellie, who sleeps peacefully on her branch. No need to wake her yet.
Silka’s gone. Not that I expected some grand alliance forming between us. She had a vulnerable moment, accepted the chocolate, and then probably felt ashamed for doing so. I’m guessing District 1 doesn’t reward its Careers for being only human. Yeah, Silka’s out there and likely nearby unless she’s scavenging for food. She could’ve thought to try the
Cornucopia or gone back for Maritte’s supplies. But she knows where we are and she’ll be back to kill us.
I reach up over my tarp to rub the gunk from my eyes and notice black smudges on my fingers. Not sure where those came from; they didn’t really register in the dark last night. I don’t think it’s the tree bark,
though . . . or the tarp . . . something with the potato battery? It doesn’t matter really. Unless . . .
Suddenly, a whole bunch of light bulbs turn on all at once. Me working the copper flower medallion out of Maysilee’s necklace. The black residue on my hands after I rigged the fuse at the tank. And Beetee’s final words to me at the buffet —
“And if Ampert fails to show — we’ve also replaced the —”
But then Wellie had walked up and I never learned what else besides the District 9 tokens had been replaced. A spare. A backup to Ampert’s lone fuse. Is that what I have around my neck in the guise of Maysilee’s token
necklace? Pretending to focus on the sunrise, I nonchalantly rub a bit of the braided cord between my thumb and index finger, then casually fiddle with the water jug lid. No question. The smudges came from her token.
One last chance. One final opportunity to ruin the Games in a way the Capitol can’t conceal. I can’t be one hundred percent sure until I can
unwind the cord and check for the blasting cap, but if I’m right, I must not waste this good-bye gift.
I lean back against the trunk, trying to look indifferent, while my mind races. What possible targets remain? The tank’s blown, the generator’s off-limits, access to Sub-A will be hard to finagle a second time. That
leaves the Cornucopia. And why not? Isn’t it the very symbol of their
despicable show? And isn’t the gesture left to me purely symbolic, given that the machinery lies beyond my grasp? I could still blow a nice, big hole in the side of their shiny, golden horn. Leave it smoldering and defaced in
the center of their pretty little meadow. A twisted and ugly reminder of the history of the Hunger Games. A horn of plenty for the few. Desperation for many. Destruction for all.
Once again, the trick will be to get them to show it on-screen. But with only three of us left, it just might be possible. If I could revive Wellie a bit more, get enough calories in her that I’d be sure she could last, then tuck her somewhere safe, I could stage a showdown with Silka at the Cornucopia. Try and take out her and the Cornucopia in the same explosion. If we were directly beside it, how could they not show it? And then, if I survive, Snow will have the Gamemakers kill me, and Wellie will get the crown.
A peek of her haggard little face gives me pause. Wellie’s on the brink of starving to death. Even if she can hang on, the lack of food leaves her
vulnerable to a host of other dangers, from physical weakness to dehydration to illness. We’ve got some chocolate left, but dumping that straight into her shrunken stomach might result in the reverse of the intended effect. There’s the last potato — it’s good and bland but it needs baking. All right. That’s my priority. Bake the potato. Feed up Wellie. Hide Wellie. Lure Silka to the Cornucopia. Blow her up with the Cornucopia.
How could anything go wrong?
Well, here’s a problem for starters: After the tank incident, if the
Gamemakers see me unwinding a token, I’m going to have every mutt in the arena coming at my head. I need an off-camera moment.
No time like the present. As if blocking the sun, I pull the tarp up over my head. With minimal movements, I unclasp Maysilee’s necklace and unravel the cord. I get a boost when I expose the blasting cap, securely attached to the end. Perhaps I’m not entirely hopeless. After wrapping the
fuse tightly around it, I conceal it in my pocket and rub my hands really good on my pants to clean them. Will the Gamemakers notice the token’s disappearance? When Wellie wakes, maybe I should pretend I lost it. It could have gone the way of the brass medallion. Then again, drawing attention to its absence might backfire.
I do an inventory of my equipment. Fuse. Check. Blasting cap. Check.
Explosive. Check. Flint striker. Check. I’ve got everything I need, even a handful of oily candy wrappers for tinder. Eager to get going, I toss off the tarp, give a big stretch, and free myself from the tarp strips.
Wellie’s eyes fly open. She takes me in, as if weighing my worth, then frowns.
“Don’t leave me again,” she whispers.
No doubt I am, from where she sits, the great abandoner of the Newcomers. She’s not wrong. I had bigger fish to fry, but she’s still not wrong.
I try to sound chipper. “Hey, Wellie. How about I climb down and bake you a potato? Think you could handle that?”
“Don’t leave me.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure Silka’s in the vicinity. Feels like you’d be safer up here.”
“No. Can’t be alone again.” She begins to struggle against her restraints. “I’ll follow you.”
“Okay, okay!” I settle her back down. “Let me untie you.” This is not ideal, but I can’t risk her trying to climb down after me; she’d certainly fall to her death. I carefully remove the tarp strips and the blanket and store all our stuff in the pack. “I’m going to need you to hold on. Can you do that?”
She nods, but when she puts her arms around my neck, they’re as limp as boiled noodles. It will have to be over my shoulders. “Better try the miner’s carry,” I tell her, tossing the pack to the ground. I gingerly hoist her up and around my shoulders, getting a tight grip on the arm that falls across my chest, the way we’re taught to do if we have to haul the injured out of the
mine after an accident. There was never much to her, but I doubt she can tip the scale at sixty pounds now. I inch our way down the tree, nearly falling
twice as branches snap beneath my boots. When I reach the forest floor, I gently lay her on the pine needles.
Giving her a chocolate ball to gnaw on, I fashion a nest for her out of the blanket. When I check her for fever, her forehead’s as cool as marble.
“You cold?”
“A little,” she says. I note the purple tint to her lips.
“Well, a fire will warm you up. And then we can bake your potato.”
A cursory examination of the local brush shows that this will prove a challenge. Last night’s rain, while relatively brief, fell heavily, dampening the available fuel. In a few hours, the sun will have lent me a hand, but at
the moment, dry fuel seems scarce. Now I’m going to have to forage for
some that’s been protected by thick overhanging limbs or rock formations.
What to do with Wellie? Carry her? That will be difficult if I’m collecting wood. Cross my fingers and hope that Silka’s far off? Too risky.
That means trying to hide her. “Wellie, I’m going to have to travel a bit for fuel.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“It won’t be for long and I won’t go far. I’ll make sure you’re good and hidden.”
“Don’t.”
“We need fire. It’s okay. Look what I’ve got for you.” I hang Maysilee’s blowgun around her neck. “This was Maysilee’s. It’s all loaded.
All you do is take a deep breath, blow really hard in this end, and a
poisonous dart comes flying out. She killed Panache with this. Saved my life.”
“Maysilee left us, too,” says Wellie sadly.
“No, she got separated looking for Lou Lou. Couldn’t get back to you.
She’d want you to have this. She told me she thought you’d be a good victor.”
“She did?” Her eyes widen. “What did she mean? A good victor?” Great question. “It means, I think, that you never stop being a
Newcomer.”
Wellie tears up, then steels herself with determination. “I can do that.
For the others,” she says. “Hide me.” She reaches out her arms for me to carry her.
Nearby, I discover a tree almost hidden by cascading wild grapevines. Tucking Wellie behind them and arranging the leafy curtain is the best I can do, with the dual pressures of time and geography. She’ll await my return, armed with her paring knife and her blowgun. “Remember,” I tell her.
“You’ve only got one dart, so make it count. Now, sit tight and I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”
I intend this to be true, but as I search in a widening circle, I feel my confidence waning. The available wood would smoke like crazy even if I could get it lit with my handful of candy wrappers, which is doubtful. The
whole idea of baking a potato loses its appeal. Perhaps if I slice it paper thin while it’s raw, she’d be able to stomach it. What would really help — hello, sponsors! — would be a nice basket full of food. I mean, what are they saving it for? Surely, two of the last three tributes in the arena have enough in their combined accounts for a cup of chicken back broth. I think Mags must read my mind, because as I’m making a beeline back to my ally, a
parachute practically brushes my nose as it floats to my boots. I squat down to tear it open and find an ornate picnic basket. A card of thick paper rests atop it with the words COURTESY OF THE CAPITOL. What isn’t, in the arena?
Inside, nestled in a snowy linen napkin, I find a pitcher. A chill goes through me as I lift it into the sunlight. The white cylinder resting in the spiral staircase. The golden eagle perched on the lid. My thumb depresses its tail,
flipping it open, revealing the cool, creamy milk. If this is not the pitcher from Plutarch’s library, it’s an exact replica.
I stuff the card in my pocket and return the pitcher to the basket to conceal the trembling in my hands. What am I to make of this new arrival? There are only two possibilities, as opposite as day and night.
On the positive-thinking side, this could be a genuine gift from Plutarch by way of Mags. A pint of sustenance, a draft of encouragement. It could mean, Well done, Haymitch. Through the fog of propaganda, the
card-stacking, and the lies, I can see that you succeeded with your mission. You did your bit. And if the tank explosion failed to drown the brain entirely, which is not your fault, it threw everything into a tailspin. Take this milk to Wellie, keep her alive, play out your hand as best you can.
But on the flip side, maybe Mags had nothing to do with this gift, and the evil message goes like this: Greetings from your president. You didn’t
think I saw your little stunt with the milk pitcher in the library, but you were wrong. Because I see everything. Your bombs, your plots, even your flint
striker from your pretty little bird. And now you have a choice. Do you drink the milk? Give it to your sickly ally? Pour it into the ground? Because
naturally you suspect it’s laced with poison. What do you do, Haymitch Abernathy? You must know that the eyes of Panem, and mine in particular, are watching your every move.
Yes, everyone is watching. If I do not immediately take this milk back to Wellie and attempt to save her, it will look as if I’m playing nice to her but actually trying to kill her so that I can be one step closer to being District 12’s second victor. However, I am almost certain that it’s poisonous and came from Snow. I don’t believe Plutarch would be careless enough to link himself so publicly to me since I bombed the tank. Surely, many people, many Gamemakers on the inside, are familiar with this symbol of
the golden staircase that’s so often displayed in the Heavensbee mansion. Matchy-matchy. Given that he was assigned to cover the District 12 tributes, it’s probably against the rules for Plutarch to back us. Like
Proserpina said it was for her and Vitus.
It’s from Snow, this milky death. The fate I have been trying to defy ever since I saw that perverse birthday cake on the train has come home to roost like the raven in the poem, forever perched above my chamber door. I am completely in Snow’s power and his to manipulate. His puppet. His pawn. His plaything. It is his poster I am painting. His propaganda. I am trapped into doing his bidding in the Hunger Games, the best propaganda
the Capitol has.
My pa must be rolling in his grave.
The proud district alliance, the Newcomers, will never be allowed to win. Wellie will die of poisoning, or starvation, or Career. Silka, that
Capitol wannabe, will take the crown.
And me? There’s only one thing left for me to do if I don’t want to die as a traitor to the districts — as Wellie’s killer by neglect since I refuse to go poison her — and Snow knows it. He has followed my every move down to this final resolution and awaits my inevitable surrender. I must drink the milk. The time is now. Game over.
I retrieve the pitcher, flip the lid, and examine the contents. Every cell in my body resists capitulating to this end. I’m wondering if I could pretend to trip and drop the pitcher, at least postponing the moment of Silka’s victory, when the cannon fires. I freeze, mystified. Was this not the moment for the president to savor my defeat? What’s going on? Who has interfered with his game plan?
I hurl the pitcher aside, hearing it crack open on a rock, as I take off for the wild grapevines. As promised, I am not far. I’m hoping against hope that somehow Silka has met a mutty end. That would make everything so much simpler.
Rounding a final clump of saplings, I freeze in horror at what awaits.
Silka stands like a statue, her snot-green outfit splattered in bright red. In her right hand, her ax. Her left holds Wellie’s head, eyes still open, mouth agape. The only movement, the only sound, comes from the blood dripping into the pine needles on the forest floor. Wellie’s body lies crumpled in a
heap a few feet away. The shiny silver bicycle bell. The blowgun. The child-sized boots. The tiny knife in her bird claw. Dove-colored feathers. Headless baby chick. I could live ten thousand years and never erase this sight from my memory.
“What did you do?” I hiss.
Silka makes an effort to focus on me. She holds up Wellie’s head defensively. “She attacked me.”
Now I notice the poison dart hanging harmlessly from Silka’s blousy sleeve. Wellie tried to protect herself. Upheld the Newcomer honor.
Probably barely had the air to get the dart free of the gun. I abandoned her, as she feared I would. Blinded by my desire to paint my poster, I left the real treasure unattended.
“She had to go. You have to go,” Silka continues. “It’s the only way I get back to my people.”
“We all have people,” I say. “You think yours will ever be able to forget this? I know mine won’t.” Write me off, Sid. Disown me. Spit when you hear my name. Failing at breaking the arena is nothing in the face of this.
“I’ll tell how it was, when I get home,” she says.
“Oh, you’re not going home, Silka.” I pull the ax from my belt. We’re neither of us going home. I will kill her, and Snow will kill me. These
Games will have no victor.
The second Quarter Quell poster.
It helps, the way she tosses Wellie’s head aside, with no regard or compassion for her even in death. Helps, too, to see a smear of chocolate high on her cheekbone, where she must have wiped the tears away last night during our one-sided truce. And finally, it helps when she says, “I will be the one to honor the Capitol!”
Ax to ax, we go at it. I wish I could claim greater speed or strength, but we’re fairly matched. Her training’s superior, but I have an advantage she can never hope for. Those thirty-one allies I boasted of to the Head
Gamemaker? I can feel every one of them at my back.
Her first stroke comes straight down at my head, as if to cleave my body into two equal parts. I just manage to block it. My counter-attack clips her leg, drawing blood. A flicker of surprise crosses her face. She didn’t expect I could get through her defenses. Well, I may not be trained, Miss Silka, but I bet I’ve spent more time wielding an ax than you have, and I’ve got the white liquor and clean laundry to prove it. My time chopping up the arena after Ampert’s death didn’t hurt either. This weapon feels right at
home in my hands.
Barbaric. Brutal. Bloody. There’s no way to pretty up what follows.
As we rain blows on each other, some begin to connect. Our ax heads lock,
we grapple, and she knees me so hard I see stars. I dodge an attack that
buries her ax into a tree trunk, and as she struggles to free it, my blade bites into the flesh near her hip. A few moves later, she spins toward me and
slices my thigh. As our weapons entangle, I bash her in the face with the handle, knocking out a couple teeth. But eventually, Silka’s training pays off. When she wields the ax over her head in an intricate looping pattern, I’m distracted. The blade comes down unexpectedly, and before I have time to recoil, she opens a gash across my gut.
I gasp. She strikes again, knocking my ax from my grip. My hands find the damage. It’s bad. She’s coming at me. I turn to flee and she traps
me in a headlock, cutting off my wind. Black flecks pepper the edges of my vision, I can feel myself disappearing when my eyes land on Wellie’s decapitated body. I cannot let Silka win. In a last-ditch effort, I yank my
knife from my belt and drive it back over my shoulder. A shriek. Neck released, I take to my heels, oblivious to whatever harm I’ve done her.
Both hands pressed against my wound, I zigzag through the woods, knowing I have to make a stand, certain this is impossible, crazed with pain and fear. Branches whip my face, roots catch my boots as I ricochet from
one tree to the next. My one goal is to increase the space between Silka’s
screams and my being. But she is coming. My legs are beginning to buckle when the smell of burnt insects alerts me and I find myself at the opening to
the holly hedge. Ladybug, ladybug, here I am again! But now their home offers both refuge and a chance to regroup. Perhaps that Capitol-loving, rule-abiding, snot-green-wearing Career will be afraid to follow me beyond the established boundaries of the arena.
As the hot air rising from the canyon washes over me, I stagger to the cliff’s edge. Unable to run any farther, I turn to face my opponent.
Boundary or no, Silka stumbles out of the hedge after me. Now I can assess the damage my knife did, own the empty socket where I gouged out her eyeball. Seems minor compared to keeping my innards contained. Without hesitation, she raises the ax and lets it fly. My knees, already on the verge of giving way, fold like wet cardboard and I collapse to the dirt as the ax
whistles over my head into the canyon.
That’s when I remember the force field. And what happens to dropped objects. I watch, breathless, for what the love of my life would call poetic justice.
Silka stands there, her hand against her gushing eye socket. Her good eye squints at my gut, estimating the arrival time of my death. Then there’s the return of the whistle, her moment of confusion as the spinning ax
catches the sunlight, and the dull sickening sound as it lodges in her head.
Now we’re both on the ground. I roll on my back, watching the hovercraft that floats above us. Silka’s refusing to die — a strangled gurgle
seeps from her lips. I just have to wait her out. My hand fumbles in my pocket, searching for a handkerchief to help stem my bleeding. But instead, I unearth the relics of my last, or second-to-last, or I don’t know which plan. The tools I needed to blow a hole in the Cornucopia. Well, obviously, that’s out. Dying outside the arena will have to be sufficient. Although it
seems an awful shame not to try for one more poster. Perhaps there’s still a chance to go out with a bang? Yes. It’s all become clear now. I know what to do.
It’s okay, Pa. It’s okay, Ma. Lift up your head, Sid. No one but me will paint this poster.
I can feel consciousness threatening to slip away as I free the sunflower from my neck and place the blasting cap in it. I bite off the fuse with my teeth, leaving a few inches, and toss the remainder aside.
This time it works, Ampert. Loose cannon going off, Louella. Wyatt.
Lou Lou. Wellie. I pinkie swear, Maysilee. Pay attention, Panem. Newcomers land on top.
The president’s card, courtesy of the Capitol, tears easily. I crumble the pieces and pile them with the candy wrappers. Finally, I pull the flint striker over my head and give it one long kiss.
Oh, Lenore Dove. Oh, love of my life. I am with you before, now, and always. And I will find you. I will find you.
“Haymitch. Haymitch Abernathy. You are to stop all activity immediately.”
The quartz settles in one shaky hand, the other closes over the heads of the snake, the songbird. Such fine workmanship. Pretty with a purpose, she said. It has found its true purpose now.
A cannon fires. No victor’s crown for you, Silka. Just the claw. Listen, those trumpets must be for me.
A spray of sparks flies to the pile and blossoms into a little flame. A spray of bullets dance around my hands. Ha. Missed me.
“Freeze! Haymitch Abernathy, you have been — Drop that! Drop that now!”
The flame’s already dying as I hold out the bomb. It kisses the tip of the short fuse, then hungrily begins to eat up the black cord.
“You don’t know what you’re doing! Stop! Don’t throw it!”
But I do. With my last ounce of strength, I launch the sunflower into the canyon. If nothing else, there should be an impressive boom. But the Gamemaker’s panicked voice has allowed me to hope for more. What will
happen when the explosion meets the force field? I have absolutely no idea. Only that they seem to fear it. The quartz slips to the ground, blending into the other rocks. I slide the flint striker under my collar, where it can rest on my heart. She’ll understand.
The wind scatters the last bits of ash, carrying them into oblivion. Black specks flood my eyes, forming a cloud that blocks the sunlight. A blast rocks the world.
My last sensations are of the slippery coils of my intestines in one hand, the songbird pressing against my skin, and the earth quaking beneath me.
I die happy.
