"Ayla," someone says. I think for a minute that maybe it's my bother, but then it clicks and I realize where I am. "Ayla," the person says again. "Ayla, are you awake?" His face comes into my view. It's Kirwan. He didn't kill me after all. But that's no reason to trust him. I reach for my sword before I remember that it went over the cliff.
"Hey," he says, sensing my distress. "I saved you. No need for weapons. Anyway, if you want it, I've got your boomerang right here." He holds it up. I sit up, ignoring my little friend extreme pain, and reach for it. He gives it to me and I take it quickly, stroking it, making sure there's no damage done. "I found it in the water, lodged under a rock, and I assumed it was yours. I guess I was right."
I realize that this is time for a thank you. "Thanks," I croak, then cough. "Oh, do you want some water?" Kirwan asks. I clear my throat. "Sure. But you know what would be great? Tea." Right on cue, a silver parachute drops in front of my face. I clumsily open it to find...tea. Six packets of it. "Great," I say. I look back up. "Some dynamite would be great, too, if you can spare it!" As is expected, no silver parachute appears. Kirwan laughs. "Worth a shot," he says. "But then, they wouldn't give us anything that could be used against them."
"What do you mean?" I ask, interested. He takes a tea packet and starts to heat up water over the small fire. "Nothing," he says. "Just something I was thinking about."
"Okay." I don't pry. Just sit up and rub down my muscles. Without speaking, we've come to an agreement. We are allies, at least for a little. while. After the tea is done, I ask what I've missed. "Not much," he says. "You were out for a day, though. That girl that you pushed off the cliff died, obviously, so District 10's out. The guy from District 1 and 8 are dead too. I think they killed each other."
"Let's hope the rest do that too," I said. "That's a couple less to worry about."
In the afternoon, I'm ready to get out of this place. At the beginning of the Games, Kirwan found this shelter. It's a shallow cave, actually it's more like a ledge, that he surrounded with boulders to keep out other tributes. The wind on the mountain takes the smoke from his fire and disposes of it quickly, so he--or, we, don't need to worry about being discovered from the smoke.
Kirwan's gone hunting. He says he'll be back soon, so I set out to take stock of our supplies. I have my boomerang, and he has a few spears and a few lengths of rope. He's done hunting before I joined up with him, so his catch adds to my crackers and cheese to make a good amount of food. I have my medicine kit, he has an extra blanket that he lends me. When it gets dark outside, I wrap myself up in a blanket and wait for him to come back.
A few hours later, he's nowhere to be found and I feel stupid just sitting around. I get up, douse the fire, take my boomerang, and head down the mountain by the use of a path that goes behind the waterfall.
The woods are dark and silent. I don't dare to call out his name: I don't know if anyone's near me. Tensions are rising among the Careers and they're bound to shoot anything that moves without bothering to see who it is.
I hear voices, and I flatten against a tree. It's not Kirwan. It sounds like a girl instead. The District 1 female. I can remember Kirwan calling her Carama. He said that at first, the Careers wanted him to join up with them after they had seen his skills with the spear. The boy with her isn't Kirwan or Ebb, so it must be the one from 4.
They're obviously looking for someone. I hear Carama speak first. "She has to be around here somewhere. Ebb said he heard her run this way." They're talking about me. I keep absolutely still and breathe quietly. Next, the boy says something. "Yeah, well, Ebb's judgement isn't something to trust right now, is it?"
"What do you mean?" Carama asks.
"I mean that ever since Valzen hit him in the head because he tried to stop Scall and Illan from fighting, he's been a little off." He laughs a little bit, but she doesn't say anything. Valzen must be the cold-eyed girl from 4. Finally, she answers him. "Maybe your judgement isn't something to trust, either."
"Why not? I'm just as sane as--" But I don't get to hear how sane he is, because there's the thwing of a bowstring, and then a cannon. There goes the boy from District 4. Carama laughs now, a half-crazed sound. The sound echoes through the forest, and suddenly I can't take it anymore. I jump out from behind the tree. Carama is standing over the body, her head tilted back, her long brown hair flowing in the light breeze.
I throw my boomerang. It slices through her stomach, and she chokes, then goes down. The boomerang zooms back to my hand, and the cannon tolls again. "You died laughing," I whisper to her. "You died beautiful. You don't deserve it."
I walk away as the hovercars appear to take the tributes away. I count on my fingers. Two more tributes gone. That means twenty dead. Four left: me, Kirwan, Ebb, and Valzen.
Suddenly, I'm tackled from behind. I start to make a sound, but a hand covers my mouth. "It's me," Kirwan whispers in my ear. I tell him to get off me, but it comes out as a muffled sound. "I ran into the Careers," he continues. "They never saw who I was, but they're coming after me. I think I lost them, though." He gets up and dusts himself off. He offers me his hand, and I take it and heave myself up. "What happened here?" he asks, looking back at the hovercars circling. "I mean, how did they die?"
"That was the boy from 4 and the girl from 1." I explain. "They were talking about how Ebb had been it in the head by Valzen, and then Carama killed him. And then she stood there laughing. And as she was, I took my boomerang and killed her."
"Good thinking," he says. "Get them while they're distracted. Now there's only two of them left. Good job, Ayla." In spite of myself, I swell with his praise. I even blush a little, and I pray that he can't see me in this darkness. "We'd better get out of here," I say. "Valzen and Ebb will be coming to see who died." We head off, back to the cliff, with the silent whirring of hovercars behind us.
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