The Hanging Tree

Before: Becoming the Hunter

No matter what Danila says - no matter what he does - I won't be calmed down. 

"Don't you understand? She was screaming my name before she died! She was calling to me to save her and I didn't!" 

"Look you couldn't have known, okay? It's just some messed up trick by the Gamemakers to get you all riled up." 

"But she had to have said it. Jabberjays only copy. Danila..." 

"Jay," he says, grabbing my shoulders like I'm thirteen and he's the seventeen-year-old, "get yourself together. The feast is in just under an hour. Are you ready or should we call it off?" 

"Oh," I say, pulling out my knife, "I'm ready." 

I know I must look insane, I feel insane, that darkness within me now having a target to place all its energy on. 

"Jay..." Danila says, looking a little worried. 

But for whatever reason, my bloodlust isn't scaring me. It's making me glad, let's go against the rest of the tributes, they damn well should fear me. "Trust me, Danila. We have a much better chance of surviving if I'm a little crazy, okay?" 

"Yeah, I guess." 

"Do you trust me?" 

"I trust you." 

"C'mon then, let's go." 

We tramp through the forest, reaching the edge just as dawn begins to light up the sky. Without even a sound a platform is raised out of the bottom floor of the Cornucopia. Despite there being only twelve tributes left, there are only seven objects on table. Nothing for 1 or 2 and frustratingly nothing for 4 but there is some sort of strange contraption for 3. If we want Shard's bow and arrows we'd better hope that this will lead all the Careers here. To Danila's (and probably the Career's) dismay, there is also no food. 

But that is where the famine ends and the bounty begins. Unlike previous Games where Districts 1 through 6 would be doing quite well right now, this time around Districts 7 through 12 all have one tribute alive each and all of us have one object on that table. It almost makes me want to laugh, the fact that they probably put so little food in this arena this time around just because Capitol citizens must be saying how repetitive the Games have gotten with the Careers winning almost every year. But I don't because the thought is equally horrifying. 

My eyes skim across all these brutal weapons for the outlier districts until I reach the end, that weapon surely meant for me with a 12 stamped on it. 

Throwing knives. 

I can't see everything from here - they seem to be connected to something else for some reason - but I can tell they're the best money can buy, even for a Capitol citizen. 

And that they're meant for me. 

Someone thinks I'm doing well enough in the Games to sponsor me. Someone wants to see me win. 

The thought gives me all the more adrenaline. 

"What's the plan?" Danila whispers after a full minute of silence, the arena seemingly devoid of its twelve contestants. 

A plan? All I can think is how I want to sink one of those knives into whoever killed Anna... 

"Let's wait it out and see what happens," I say, trying to refocus my mind. "I don't want us going in there only to get picked off by the Careers." 

The more I think about it, the more I realize how badly the odds are against us. Once I have those knives in my hand, I'm sure we're going to be fine but until then I have pretty much no way of defending myself, much less Danila. My knife is good for close combat and I could try to use the bomb in a desperate situation when I have no other choice but for something like this I need long range and the only thing I have is right smack dab in the center of the Cornucopia.