𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 || Narnia x The Hunger Games Crossover

Chapter Nineteen

It didn't take long to sort through the treasure hoard, as Lucy didn't fancy it a very nice adventure anymore, though she did reload her quiver and take a dagger on a nice belt.

Most of the food they found had either rotted or been crushed, but Edmund pulled out a few decent packages of dried fruit and dried meat still sealed away. He stuffed his findings into a new single-strap backpack, blue and a bit smaller than Lucy's, just adequate for carrying the bare provisions he managed to dig up.

Lucy tiptoed carefully around the ditch and avoided the rotting arm she'd stumbled upon yesterday, but Edmund investigated thoroughly enough to determine that the arm and the torn jacket were the only human remains left behind.

It seemed clear enough that the careers had not moved camp solely of their own volition, though the bonfire they'd spotted in the valley proved at least some of them were still alive.

That was their theory, anyway. As it turned out, Edmund had camped here with them for his first night in the arena, so that was how he knew the woods, at least as far as the river. And he also knew that there'd been no sign of a dragon back then. It must have come from somewhere else in the arena, or been set loose by the gamemakers when things needed spicing up.

Jill had been right when she'd said something else must have been entertaining enough out here.

"I suppose, on the bright side," said Lucy, "If this thing attacked out of nowhere, they must not have been prepared to leave. I mean, they couldn't have carried much off."

"Serves them right," said Edmund, "They can hunt their own food for a change."

Lucy nodded. "Maybe that's why it's been so quiet. They've been too busy for any other kind of hunting."

"I wonder how many of them it got," mused Edmund. "I hope it got Peter."

Caspian said nothing, perched atop the lip of the gully, making no effort to join in the search, and Lucy only handed him up a fresh sword so that they wouldn't have to retrieve his first from the dragon's mouth.

He remained quiet and detached even when they moved to the stream and Lucy insisted on checking his wound, unsure whether he should even really be walking, though he said again that he was fine, just tired.

When she peeled back the bandages she found the wound heavily scabbed over as if several days of healing had happened overnight. The tooth marks still dug deep through his shoulder, but they did not look in danger of infection, and she applied the cream again before bandaging much more lightly to save on supplies.

Edmund wandered off in search of berries, and Lucy splashed her face while Caspian washed the residual blood from his neck and collarbone.

By the time Edmund returned, Lucy had dug around in the undergrowth and found the same flowering tubers they'd been eating for days, and washed the dirt from their bulbous roots while Edmund tucked a fresh tin of berries into her bag along with the others.

Little white flowers piled up at her feet as she stripped them from the roots, reminding her unbidden of Jill, and an emptiness panged in her chest at the repeated realization that she was gone. Not just off wandering, not just checking some traps and about to reappear with a spring in her step and a fresh catch in her hands. She was gone, and she wasn't coming back.

Lucy wished her fingers knew the same skill that had made that flower crown. She wanted to at least return the favor.

When they walked back through the forest to their little clearing, she clutched a handful of the leafy baby lillies, and laid them beside Edmund's cross.

Now it looked like a proper grave.

"Where to next?" asked Edmund, breaking the oppressive silence as he glanced out past the trees, down into the south of the arena. "I've half a mind to try that valley, see how many careers are actually down there."