The 53rd Hunger Games- Two Words

23. Talking To The Jabberjays

Sunlight.

It hurts. It’s bright, a harsh midday spotlight. A spotlight that stretches around the arena. I remember where I am, and sit up suddenly. I can see the bank I fell down. It’s a good ten fifteen metres high, and very steep. I’m in a ditch of sorts. Debris from the forest is laid on top of me, stuck in my hair. I pull the worst out of my hair. It takes me a few seconds to freeze.

My axe.

My weapon. My only weapon.

Where is it?

I search frantically through the debris. I need to find it. It’s the only thing that I can fight with. Where is it?

I see a glinting under dead leaves. I push them aside in such eager that I almost cut my fingers off. My axe has never felt so comfortable in my hand. If I had lost it...the Games would have been over.

Where are the Careers? I’m not dead, meaning they haven’t found me. I only just avoided a run-in with them. Could I have fought them? All five of them? No. The tribute they killed must have found that out the hard way.

If I’d heard a cannon, I would have woken up. I’ve been a light sleeper at the best of times, but in the arena, it seems that I’m always awake. I feel slightly drained; fatigue has started to creep up on me.

The crooks of my elbows are badly bruised. The boy from Five has left his marks. My arms are torn up, bruised and bloody. The rest of me isn’t so bad; I roll up the legs of my unitard to see what state my shin is in. A round bruise the size of an apple. The material of my unitard hasn’t let anything cut though. The garment itself is damaged. It is ripped in some places,I give myself a quick brush-off, trying to get rid of the worst of the forest fragments. It doesn’t matter how I look. What matters is that I get out of this ditch.

It looks like I’ll be able to run up it, as long as I stay low. There isn’t much of a run-up, but I take it anyway. I make it halfway up the bank before I run out of steam. There are shrubs and rocks burrowed into the bank, and they serve as handholds. I pull myself up, and roll onto the ground on the other side of the bank. I made it. The rise and fall of my chest is laboured, and my legs ache, but I’m out of the ditch. I’m half surprised that someone didn’t find me and kill me. It would have been easy. Even if they’d found me awake, I would have been cornered in the ditch. There wasn’t anything to duck behind.

I look up to the sky, trying to gauge the time. It seems to be past midday, around one or two in the afternoon. I must have been asleep for some time.

I check in my pack for something to eat. I still have the district Eight rolls, strips of meat, and another loaf of bread. I’m not sure how long the meat will keep for, so I eat that.

Ten of us left. And it’s only the third day. Of course, the battle at the cornucopia took lives, as did the battles after it. There were three deaths yesterday. Two of them were because of me. The rest of us must be spread far and wide across the arena. I’m not sure how long it would take to get to the other side of the lake. It looks like a hike that would take days. These Games started with tributes being killed left and right. Now everyone is hiding. Yesterday, I would have banked that the Games would be over in a week. But because everyone has miles and miles to hide, I could be in the arena for an indefinite amount of time.

However big the arena, I would expect the Careers to have killed someone else. Are they still on the prowl, killing anyone in their path? Maybe they’re resting, figuring out a plan? No. The most likely option is that they’re looking for me.

To them, I’m just a moving target.

For them, it’s still a game.

I need to decide on where to go. I can’t stay here. I ran from the Careers. They could be a hundred metres away, or a dozen miles.