(2) Katnis Swan: Moved On?

Chapter: 19 Clock Tower

It didn't take long for Alice and Katnis to find a car after leaving the airport and take off to where Alice had seen Edward last.

By the big clock tower.

"Edward will be under the clock tower, to the north of the square. There's a narrow alleyway on the right, and he'll be in the shadow there. You have to get his attention before he can move into the sun."

Katnis nodded.

She drove in quick spurts and sudden stops, and the people in the crowd shook their fists at them and said angry words that Katnis did not understand. Alice then turned onto a little path that couldn't have been meant for cars; shocked people had to squeeze into doorways as they scraped by. She found another street at the end. The buildings were taller here; they leaned together overhead so that no sunlight touched the pavement-the thrashing red flags on either side nearly met. The crowd was thicker here than anywhere else. Alice stopped the car. Katnis had the door open before they were at a standstill.

She pointed to where the street widened into a patch of bright openness. "There-we're at the southern end of the square. Run straight across, to the right of the clock tower. I'll find a way around-" Her breath caught suddenly, and when she spoke again, her voice was a hiss. "They're everywhere?"

Katnis groaned while standing in place, but Alice pushed her out of the car. "Forget about them. You have two minutes. Go, Katnis, please!" she shouted, climbing out of the car as she spoke.

Katnis didn't pause to watch Alice melt into the shadows, nor did she stop to close the door behind her. She shoved a heavy woman out of her way and ran flat out, head down, paying little attention to anything but the uneven stones beneath her feet. Coming out of the dark lane, she was blinded by the brilliant sunlight beating down into the principal plaza.There was no pathway, no crevice between the close pressed bodies. She pushed against them furiously, fighting the hands that shoved back. She only heard exclamations of irritation and even pain as she battled her way through, but none were in a language she understood. The faces were a blur of anger and surprise, surrounded by the ever-present red. A blond woman scowled at her, and the red scarf coiled around her neck looked like a gruesome wound. A child, lifted on a man's shoulders to see over the crowd, grinned down at her, his lips distended over a set of plastic vampire fangs.

Behind his head the clock was so visible, both hands on the clock pointed up toward the pitiless sun, and, though she shoved viciously against the crowd, she knew she was too late. She wasn't halfway across. She wasn't going to make it in time.

She closed her eyes and listened, above the angry exclamations, trying to hear the sound of discovery: the gasp, maybe the scream, as Edward came into someone's view. But there was a break in the crowd-she could see a bubble of space ahead. She then pushed, angrily, toward it, not realizing till she bruised her shins against the bricks that there was a wide, square fountain set into the center of the plaza.

"Oh, come on! You've got to be shitting me! Really?" She hissed.

Shaking her head in irritation, she flung her leg over the edge and ran through the knee-deep water. It sprayed all around her as she thrashed her way across the pool. Even in the sun, the wind was glacial, and the wet made the cold actually painful. But the fountain was very wide; it let her cross the center of the square and then some in mere seconds. She didn't pause when she hit the far edge-she used the low wall as a springboard, throwing herself into the crowd.

They moved more readily for her now, avoiding the icy water that splattered from her dripping clothes as she ran. She glanced up at the clock again. A deep, booming chime echoed through the square. It throbbed in the stones under her feet. Children cried, covering their ears.