The Girl With the Bread

The Fire

His first impulse is to scramble from the tree, but he's belted in. Somehow his fumbling fingers release the buckle and he falls to the ground in a heap, still snarled in his sleeping bag. There's no time for any kind of packing. Fortunately, his backpack and water bottle are already in the bag. He shoves in the belt, hoists the bag over his shoulder, and flees.

The world has transformed to flame and smoke. Buying branches crack from trees and fall in showers of sparks at his feet. All he can do is follow the others, the rabbits and deer, and he even spots a wild dog pack shooting through the woods. He trusts their sense of direction because their instincts are sharper than his. But they are much faster, flying through the underbrush so gracefully as his boots catch on roofs and fallen tree limbs, that there is no way he can keep up with them.

The heat is horrible, but worse than the heat is the smoke, which threatens to suffocate him at any moment. He pulls the top of his shirt up over his nose, grateful to find it soaked in sweat, and it offers a thin veil of protection. And he runs, choking, his bag banging against his back, his face cut with branches that materialize from the gray haze without warning, because he knows he's supposed to run.

This was no tribute's campfire gone out of control, no accidental occurrence. The flames that beat down on him have an unnatural height, a uniformity that marks them as human-made, machine-made, Gamemaker-made. Things have been too quiet today. No deaths, perhaps no fights today at all. The audience in the Air Temples will be getting bored, claiming that these Games are verging on dullness. This is the one thing the Game must not do.

It's not hard to follow the Gamemakers' motivation. There is the Career pack and then there are the rest of them, probably spread far and thin across the arena. This fire is designed to flush them out, to drive them together. It may not be the most original device he's ever seen, but it's very, very effective.

He hurdles over a burning log. Not high enough. The tail end of his jacket catches on fire and he has to stop to rip it from his body and stamp out the flames. But he doesn't dare leave the jacket, scorched and smoldering as it is. He takes the risk of shoving it into his sleeping bag, hoping the lack of air will quell what he hasn't extinguished. This is all he has, what he carries on his back, and it's little enough to survive with.

In a matter of minutes, his throat and nose and burning. The coughing begins soon after and his lungs begin to feel as if they are actually being cooked. Discomfort turns to distress until each breath sends a searing pain through his chest. He manages to take cancer under a stone outcropping just as the vomiting begins, and he loses his meager supper and whatever water has remained in his stomach. Crouching on his hands and knees, he retches until there's nothing left to come up.

He knows he needs to get moving, but he's trembling and lightheaded now, gasping for air. He allows himself about a spoonful of water to rinse his mouth and spit, then takes a few swallows from his bottle.

One minute, he tells himself. You get one minute to rest.

He takes the time to reorder his supplies, wad up the sleeping bags and messily stuff everything into the backpack. His minute's up. He knows it's time to move on, but the smoke has clouded his thoughts. The swift-footed animals that were his compass have left him behind. He knows he hasn't been in this part of the woods before there were no sizable rocks like the ones he's sheltering against on his earlier travels.

Where are the Gamemakers driving him? Back to the lake? To a whole new terrain filled with new dangers? He had just found a few hours of peace at the pond when the attack began. Would there be any way he could travel parallel to the fire and work his way back there, to a source of water at least? The wall of fire must have an end and it won't burn indefinitely. Not because the Gamemakers couldn't keep it fueled, but because, again, that would invite accusations of boredom from the audience.