The Fifth Annual Writer Games: The Fall

The Fall of Man - Tucker Steppe

How does it end?

With a boy killing his district partner, shaking all the while. With Wolves and lions and war. With Tucker sobbing beneath a snow-sworn tree, choking on the echoes of things he'd never said.

How does it end?

Not with a fall, but with a landing.

Tucker remembers--he always remembers. He collects memories like they're tangible, like they can be found in feathers or metal or bits of string. A pinecone for the bravest boy he'd ever met, who had told Tucker to save himself. A clump of fur for a girl with mismatched eyes, who'd spilled sweetly into snow. A square of bark for his father, a man who he'd watched burn.

Tucker isn't meant for this place. He was supposed to die in the bloodbath, in an earth-crack, in a flurry of fangs and ice. He still could. The thought brings both joy and sorrow, but when he counts his heartbeats, they're far too slow.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Climbing the fir tree had been far more trouble than he'd anticipated. There are no trees to climb in Eight, and even the sight of branches parting from wood is too unfamiliar to properly gauge. He'll have to jump from this tree. He'll have to jump over the clamping jaws and lolling tongues of lions and he'll have to run--both towards and away. It's far too reckless, but he's so sick of surviving.

The world is far too quiet.

And then there's the warbringer, the silence-breaker, the culmination of heartache and hope. A cannon. The second-to-last cannon.

He's already heard so many cannons--enough to last more than one lifetime. He isn't sure if he wants to hear one more, but he'll have to. For his mother, for Lacie, for Aunt Twyla. For hearts that will break without him, for the worlds he has yet to explore, for the memories he has yet to confess, for the things he'll see and do and create.

But most of all, for them. His mother. Lacie. Aunt Twyla. He thinks that maybe, if he repeats them often enough, he'll forget the final step toward going home.

He holds his yarn in one hand, but he holds his knife in the other, and he knows he'll never forget.

When the boy from Four comes for him, Tucker's heart is beating faster than it has in days. With fear, with dread, with anticipation. The mouths of mountain lions suddenly seem too close, and they snarl as Four passes, spearpoint still bloody with the life of his resurrection. They are all drowning, Tucker knows. He shuts his eyes, and exhales grey.

When he opens them, the boy from Four looks up.

Tucker jumps.

He lands with a shoulder cracking against the ground and a face bruised and bloody against the snow and a rush of air escaping him as he fights for breath, for life, for eternity. He can't get up. His arm is numb and he's forgotten how to breathe and his mind is fuzzy with things he should omit. He can't get up, but he has to, because something yips and growls and turns around. Jaws snap near his ankles as he scrambles to his feet, and he cries out when his shoulder moves and there's a knife in one hand and a bundle of unraveled yarn in the other and oh, if only he knew how to breathe.

The mountain lions chase him, yes, but they chase another boy as well. Even at the end of the world, Tucker Steppe is not alone.

His footsteps are sure, but only because he knows where he's headed. There's a crack too-wide in the ice, where a boy named Ares nearly fell to his death. Every living thing in the Arena is quicker and stronger and smarter than Tucker. But Tucker knows war and starvation and fear and desperation. He's tasted the ashes of his father and the blood of his best friend. He knows how to survive.