Onyx
The trees are talking, whispering over my head. I don’t know what they’re saying and can’t hear them properly anyway over the nearby shouting. My leg aches from crouching behind the tree for so long, and my heart is still hammering even though the girl from Seven is long vanished into the trees. I’m just lucky that she wasn’t paying proper attention.
I’m lucky too that I’m used to being uncomfortable. All my nerves are painfully aware that the slightest twitch at the wrong moment could alert the group to my presence, even though they’re making a lot of noise. It’s no different to hiding out back home and trying to get some sleep, only this time I’ll get killed rather than just injured.
If Ami could see me now…
If Ami could see me now, she'd be telling me that I'm not stupid and that I can survive, easily. After all, that's what I've been doing my whole life.
"You've been surviving better than the others," she says, "You've basically been dodging the Careers your whole life."
"Not quite my whole life," I reply, "Before the cave-in..."
"But you can't remember that," she reminds me, "Look, I never had to dodge anybody, did I, and look where it got me!" And then I remember that Ami is dead. I remember her running, and the boy with the curved sword, and then him slicing through her back.
I don't remember her screams, though.
I shake the thoughts of Ami from my head but it doesn’t shake away the stone that settled in my stomach when my name was called out. I don’t even know why I’m doing this, why I’m not limping away for my life. It’s probably a good thing or the girl from Seven would have got me and it wouldn’t have been painless, I’m sure of it. I’m used to pain, but the dull aching kind that comes from inside. Bile burns the inside of my throat at the idea of even a small cut, the thought of a drop of deep red blood trickling wetly down my neck. I had to turn away when the bodies were winched up.
Maybe if I’d been to training I’d be able to cope. But training was never an option, not with my leg. I was laughed out of the door. It’s their fault, their laughing and taunting that left me like this. Luxury, she was one of the worst. How many times have I looked up from the floor, from scraped knees, to see her perfectly structured smile beaming down at me, sneering some insult or another? How many times has she told me I’m weak and should have been left to die at birth?
“She’s a nasty piece of work,” Ami had said the day I met her, as if I hadn’t noticed that myself, “Her and that Diamond both. Shame they hate each other. If they were friends, they’d have ripped each other’s heads off by now and One would be a better place for it.”
And now her and Diamond are parading around the Cornucopia in front of me, talking like friends after what they must have seen as a successful bloodbath. Physical specimens of the finest kind, not a blip in their fitness or an imperfection on their faces. One doesn’t tolerate that sort of nonsense, not for its tributes. And even if you’re not going to be a tribute, you have to at least look like you want to be. There’s no pride in being weak, in not being able to work, in not having the luxury of caring for your appearance. Ami’s freckles were enough to make her stand out. And even Jasper, terrified stiff, made it clear what he thought of me. I’m a waste of time, a waste of somebody’s place in the Games.
Why did nobody volunteer? I’ll never know. Maybe they’d run out of sport teasing me, tired of trying to find whichever empty house or pile of rocks I was sleeping in that night.
This is the bit you don’t get to see on screen, back when I used to watch. Two hours, maybe even two and a half, have passed since the frenzy. Two hours at least that I’ve been crouched here, watching the Careers with the sun trudging across the sky. Time just seems to stretch on and on. Usually they’d be showing bloodbath repeats by now, going over the statistics of those who had died, those who are alive, taking bets. But in the arena, this is the calm, everybody settling down. Elsewhere the other tributes are panicking, crying, running, taking stock. The Careers are stockpiling.
And I’m neither one nor the other, so I sit between the two, waiting for something, some kind of sign to tell me what to do.
Luxury, in charge, of course, wanders around the Cornucopia twirling a mace, probably for the sponsors in case any are watching, because there’s no danger around now, not even me. She’s almost dancing with it, spinning mesmerising patterns into the air so casually that it’s hard to believe she’s carrying a deadly weapon.
Perched on her head is the red cap that seemed so bright in the training centre. On her it just looks grimy and unclean, with her ponytail poking through it. A trophy.
Diamond walks next to her, just out of reach of the swirling mace, her hand gripping the sword that she used to kill the boy from Four. My empty stomach turns just remembering it. The pair of them are speaking to each other, but I can’t hear a word and don’t want to because they’re probably comparing kills.
The rest are rifling through everything left out, searching around the podiums for anything that could be of use. Through the gap between the tree and the bush I see Venus snatch up a small bag and shout, “Bread!”
“Yes!” Luxury calls back, and Venus scurries over to the Cornucopia and places the bag on a sizeable pile, enough food and useful items to last me a month. But I’m only one person and I’m used to going hungry. All the while that she moves, her brother shadows her, watching Diamond carefully with a machete ready in case she attacks.
Venus is odd, for a Career, for Two. Smaller than Ami even with her hair piled into plaits on the top of her head, and with a thin, almost gawky build, she looks out of place. When they spoke she hovered on the edge of the group, looking up at the sky, and her mouth moves silently as she hunts through the stuff. She left Aspen alive. Perhaps, if I could speak to her, entice her away from the Careers, she could help keep me alive and I could provide her with some company, someone to talk to who will listen.
I banish this thought as soon as I think it; she might not look like it but she’s probably as loyal to the Careers as any of them. And she has her brother, who killed Jasper – just a kid, albeit an obnoxious one – without even blinking. He’d do the same to me if I went anywhere near his sister, I’m sure.
The boy from Four? He can’t trust them, much less be loyal to them, not after Diamond killed his partner and smiled while she was doing it. If I was him I’d have run then. But beneath that stupid hair and cocky attitude there’s got to be intelligence, because he’s stuck with their protection, safety in numbers. And I remember the grin on his face as he twisted the boy from Three’s head and…
Not him.
The others aren’t even worth a thought. Adrienne, who makes me shudder every time she looks this way because she just seems more aware than the others, is lean and stunning and her companion, who wouldn’t look out of place back home, hovers closely by her shoulders even when she snaps at him. Not long ago they were close enough for me to hear what they were saying, their accents rolling like how I imagine the waves.
“I don’t need protecting!”
“I’m not taking any chances.”
“What, wouldn’t want anything to happen to the light of your life?” she’d teased, in that voice that means it’s an in-joke, “Come off it. You’d be more use searching too.”
“I’m keeping guard. Besides, Diamond worries me…”
And they’d moved out of hearing again and I’d dared to peek through the branches. She carries a net; he holds the spear. A team, perfectly self-sufficient and capable and not likely to have anything to do with me apart from holding me down while I die. After all, there’s got to be brutality in her, even though she looks more like her ferocity comes from character. She volunteered.
The boy from Two, he’s a Career through and through. All muscle, loud and confident and probably convinced he’s the best thing to have ever happened to his district. Two must be proud of him. He’s scouring the far side of the bloodbath, or more accurately his companion is. Currently she’s crouched over, searching through a bag of sorts, and looks ready to run at the slightest provocation. He stands over her, bow held ready and an arrow waiting on the string in case anything comes near them. It’s hard to tell but they appear to be speaking to each other, which makes a change.
“Sleeping bag!” Adrienne shouts, holding up a sleeping bag that would have made my rough nights so much more comfortable, possibly even warm. Diamond shakes her head; Luxury cries back “Yes!”
Snap!
The breaths stop in my throat and every single muscle freezes. No, not now. Whoever it is can’t have seen me; I’m wedged into the smallest gap between a tree and a bush, the branches of the bush tugging at my hair whenever I move, my warped leg trapped underneath me. I can’t see out into the wood, so they can’t see me, but they could know I’m here if I’m making a noise, which I think I’m not.
I daren’t let the breath go, though my lungs scream for it.
There’s no sound of any other footsteps; I must have been imagining it. It sounded like it came from close by my left, perhaps even just in front of me, where the trees and bushes stop as if they’ve been stamped into a perfect circle. If I reach my head forwards, I can just about see…
“Tribute!” a voice calls from right next to me. I don’t even have time to register this before I’m staring down at a pair of thick black boots, enough to keep your feet warm even on cold nights and almost identical to mine, with a hand gripping my collar, a faint ripping noise starting to stretch across my back.
The stone in my stomach plummets below the ground, numbness racing through my limbs. I’m going to die. Whatever death is, it’s going to happen to me. And it’s going to be painful because this is the Careers and they hate me because I’m a disgrace to them. People are probably cheering back home; there’s nobody to feel sad because I’m gone. The Peacekeepers will be relieved that the nuisance is off their hands.
It can’t be just black, can it? I’m going to see Ami again and she’s going to laugh and ask what kind of scrape I got myself into, and is she watching right now? I had to watch her die, it’s only fair for it to be the other way around too.
Life’s not fair.
A scream rips itself from my throat as the arrow tears through my neck, and inside my chest feels damp and sticky and wrong and the world spins around so I’m looking up from the floor at the clear blue sky. Someone is shouting and they’re not calling for help. There should be more pain. Instead, I just feel my own blood salty in my mouth and I want to spit it out but I can’t and there’s no point anyway.
“Don’t fight about it, finish him off,” snaps a harsh, cold voice, and the next thing is Diamond shouting at the voice and Luxury and her red hat which isn’t hers – where have I seen it before – and the spiked ball of the mace.
Then Ami.
Then nothing.