17. Found At Last

       A drop of rain attacked my face; I wrinkled my nose and buried my face into the blanket. Another drop landed on me. Growling, I yawned, poking my head out from the blanket. The skies threatened rain. It wasn’t a downpour right now, just a light trickle. I was just glad it was rain and not something disgusting like monkey poop. The intensity of the rain fall would easily change, the weather would become worse.

            Wait, I’m out in the open. With this quick realization, I sprang to my feet—too fast. I wobbled and fell against a mossy tree for support. I shook myself awake. I needed to get moving. For all I knew, thunder and lightning could come soon. I didn’t want to be in that sort of bad weather. Rain alone I could handle, but if it was a storm, count me out. I preferred to be indoors admiring the storms from a window…but not pressed up against the window, of course. I’m not stupid.

            I picked a random direction and hoped to find a better shelter than a hollow tree. What I really needed was a small cave. It’d be perfect: lightning wouldn’t set it on fire, I would be sheltered from the rain, and if there were bushes hiding the entrance, it’d be concealed, like my first temporary haven for all of a day had been. I mean, I had been lucky so far, so why not have my luck get a little better in the Games?

            A shiver ran up my spine, and I was sure it wasn’t from the rain. I got the feeling that somebody was following me. Nervously, I looked over my shoulder. I didn’t see anybody, but that didn’t mean my feeling was wrong. There was a lot of cover by plants and trees, so tributes could be hiding from me when I turned around.

 I fastened my grip on the hatchet; I’d use it if necessary. True, a hatchet may not be capable of killing somebody…well; it probably could if it was used properly.

            My nerves were getting the better of me. I didn’t want to stay down on the ground; I didn’t want to be vulnerable. I looked up at the tall trees. Heights were my enemy, and I was going to have to conquer them today. It was either I faced heights or a tribute. Honestly, I’d take heights any day of the week. Heights could only hurt me if I fell from them.

            I snorted through my nostrils, glaring up at the tree closest to me. It had some low limbs I could hold onto as I would make the climb of my life. Just treat it like you’re back in the Training Center. It’s the Ropes Course, only sturdier and more dangerous.

Yeah, that was a good way to convince myself to climb the tree.

            I tucked the hatchet in the pack. I bounced a few times before leaping for the lowest branch above my head. I hissed as the bark rubbed against my palms, but I pushed past it. I shimmied close to the base of the tree and swung myself over the branch. I hugged the base of the tree, looking up again. Rain continued to sprinkle from the skies; I blinked a few drops that poked me in my eyes.

            The rain wasn’t much of a setback in terms of climbing. My fingers never slipped and never felt like it, but I kept a steel grip. I wasn’t taking any chances. If I was being followed, odds were that it was one of the Careers. And if it was one of them, I really hoped that they couldn’t climb. I mean, I wasn’t one for climbing either, but this was a necessary precaution I was willing to take.

            Higher and higher I climbed. The branches seemed to be wider and sturdier the higher I went. My pack never slipped off my shoulder so I wasn’t worried about it. I noticed that there were thick vines in addition to the leaves and monkeys that lurked up here. I had not encountered any monkeys, and I didn’t plan to. I wasn’t a tree jumper, so if my pursuer gave up and moved on, I’d climb down from this tree and move in the opposite direction they were going.

            I panted slightly as I took a seat on the thick branch. I closed my eyes, telling myself not to look down. That was the last thing I needed. I didn’t want to look down only to freak out and possibly fall. It was a long way down with many branches.

A rustle from a tree not even two feet from me made me whip out the hatchet from my pack.

            Don’t call out and ask who’s there, I reminded myself. I stood up shakily, feeling a little weak from hunger and thirst. I didn’t dare try to take out the food and water from my pack, because if it was a tribute that was after me, they’d see it as an opportunity for them to catch me off guard and strike. I wasn’t about to let it happen.

            I squinted to see across to the other tree. I looked through the leaves. I thought I saw nothing in there until my eyes made a second sweep of the leaves. There, almost totally concealed, was a pair of bright blue, menacing eyes. My heart skipped a bit. I knew exactly who it was.

Kaya.

            Who else would track me down? Eric? He was after Noah. Meeka? He had a different shade of blue eyes, his were darker. It wasn’t Daniel, either, because he never showed any malice in his eyes when gazing at me.

 I swallowed.

            “I found you at last,” Kaya purred, snickering. She emerged from the leaves and limbs. Her blonde hair was layered in twigs and leaves, she had dirt smudged on her cheeks, and I happened to notice her lip was bruised and her neck looked a little red. It didn’t take a tree to figure out what Kaya had done: she had found Noah. “Finally.”

            “I knew you were following me,” I growled at her. I was still pressed against the tree. “I suspected you were watching me.”

            “But you didn’t expect me to be such a good climber, did you?” She scooted closer to the edge of her branch. She could almost leap to my branch if she wanted to. I knew she was going to do it, but not yet.

            “I see you broke away from your pack,” I mused. I messed with the hatchet in my hand. “What happened there? Got tired of your brother’s threats to kill Noah?”

            “How do you know about that?” she seethed.

            “I overheard you and him fighting on day one.” I snorted a laugh. “You could have found me and killed me, you know.”

            “Where were you?” she demanded.

            “Hiding. So…I assume you found Noah, judging by your lovely appearance.”

            “He found me. We’ve been together since yesterday.” Oh, good, so you hadn’t suspected Sutton trying to cover for me.

            “Let me guess: you two think you’re going to win the Games with that relationship you two have going on.” I barked a laugh. “Dear, Noah’s going to be dead once your brother finds him.”

            “Shut up!” she roared. I saw her branch quiver. “He’s never going to find us! Forget him, Noah and I are going to come out alive.”

            So she had been lying to Caesar about keeping her brother alive with her to become victors in the Games.

“Oh, wow,” I murmured. “So you’d sacrifice your own brother to come out alive with your boyfriend. I bet your parents would love you after that if you managed to pull it off—which you won’t.”

            Kaya looked to be fuming; I expected smoke to pour out of her ears.

            “We’ve got a better shot at making it happen than anybody else, including you and your boy toy.”

            “Back off,” I snarled. “He’s my best friend, not my boy toy. That’s a nickname you should give Noah. Tell me, where is your precious boyfriend? He’s not with you to protect you from me?” I crooned. This voice of mine wasn’t natural at all. This was how Kaya was supposed to sound: taunting with a falsely innocent voice.

            Where had this voice come from?

            “I left him this morning,” Kaya snapped. “He’ll know where I am, I left a trail. I wouldn’t dare dream of leaving him without a way to find me. Any minute now he’ll be awake and follow the trail. He’ll come help me dispose of you.” She spat. I made a face.

            If what Kaya said was true, I knew I wasn’t going to get away with running, because she and Noah would never stop until I was dead. I was going to have to kill her. This wasn’t something I wanted to do, yet I felt like I should be the one to do it. After all, she had a vendetta against me. Of course, she wouldn’t have had one to begin with if she and Eric hadn’t decided to create an episode in the Training Center that day.

            Kaya leapt from her branch onto mine. The branch groaned under the added weight. Kaya’s lips curled into a sneer as she stalked forward like a wild cat. I tensed, ready to strike at her. I saw her whip out a knife.

            I panicked. I didn’t know why I did it, but there happened to be vines nearby me, so naturally, I threw them on Kaya. She gave a screech of outrage, lunging for me. I swung the hatchet at her, forcing her back. She kept trying to pounce on me; the knife came awfully close to slicing me a few times. The blade of my hatchet slid across her cheek, digging into it.

            Kaya’s eyes were full of bloodlust. I saw the vines on her tighten around her wrists and one around her neck. She never once thought to cut them off her with the knife she held in her hand. I guess rage blinded common sense.

            The branch wobbled dangerously under our feet. I tottered, yipping and desperately regaining my balance. I panted and steadied myself, but it didn’t matter. The branch cracked and broke under our feet. Our screams echoed in unison as the branch fell and us with it.

            I curled into a ball in midair. Branches whacked my back and my arms. I crashed into one so hard that I was knocked out of my ball position. I hit the base of the tree before rolling down to the ground. I was on my back, my vision blurred by the rain drops that covered my eyes. I blinked them away, shaking my head. I looked around for Kaya.

            I didn’t hear her body thump against tree branches or hit the jungle ground. I panted, searching the trees for her. Above me, she was still up there all right. A clap of thunder rolled above, and the clouds became dark. I saw Kaya hanging from the vine around her neck. I shook my head. If only she had cut it when she had the knife…

            Her body swung ghostly above me. Her head was resting against one of her shoulders eerily. I was glad I hadn’t actually seen her get hanged like that. I was surprised I hadn’t heard a quick snap of her neck. I guess I was too busy crashing into tree branches to really hear it.

I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Another clap of thunder made me yelp in fright—wait, no, that was the cannon for Kaya. I scooted back against the tree, looking up at her.

            The call of monkeys made me go pale. There were a few of them inching closer to her. When one monkey pounced on her, they all did. A strike of lightning lit up Kaya’s horrible post-mortem torture. I would never wish such a fate on any of my enemies, including her.

During the terror of watching her being torn apart by the monkeys, my attention got diverted from the awful scene by a dull thud in the grass. I looked to see Kaya’s knife gleaming from the drops of rain. I was tempted to pick it up but decided differently and ran for it. Seeing her knife made me find my hatchet and hold it tight before I fled. If Kaya was true about leaving Noah a trail, for all I knew he could be just coming onto the scene. And if he saw me…he’d think that I had killed her. Just hope he doesn’t find that knife.

            The thought of being killed by Noah for his girlfriend’s accidental death made me run faster in the rain. Each clap of thunder made my heart sprint another high speed. If I didn’t stop, I was afraid I’d die of a heart attack. Have to find shelter, have to.

            The rain became thicker; there were more lightning strikes now. This jungle was a dangerous place. I almost slipped on the slick floor beneath my feet. I made all sorts of twists and turns, sometimes looking over my shoulder.

            I bumped into something hard, ricocheted off it, and had a pratfall. Now my butt was sore in addition to my back. It was dark, so I couldn’t tell who I had run into. My heart dropped into my stomach. It had to be Noah. He had found Kaya’s trail, and I happened to be running in it.

            I fumbled for the grip on my hatchet; I was ready to fight the lovesick kid.

 Lightning flashed again, exposing the identity of the shadow before me. My heart had risen back into its normal spot. I felt like screaming to the world in joy. My hunt for him was over!

            “Daniel!” I squeaked. Our eyes met, and I dropped my hatchet and ran into his arms. I let out a sob of joy. “I-I thought I was never going to find you! I thought—”

            “Easy, Bri,” he cooed. “Easy.”

            “Where have you been?”

            A loud boom of thunder made Dan and me jump.

            “Can we talk somewhere out of this mess?” he suggested.

            “Sure. Do you have any shelter? I haven’t had any since a hollow tree from day one.” I had to yell over the rain.

            “It’s not far from here, trust me.”

I hastily grabbed my hatchet from the ground before Dan took my hand and led me further away from Kaya’s hanging scene.

            We didn’t travel long. It seemed like five minutes had gone by before Dan had found a mossy cave. He led me into the dark cavern. I yelped when I thought I saw something move.

            “Easy,” he whispered. The rain plunked against the cave roof. “It’s just a fake snake I made to scare people off. Nothing to worry about.”

            The cave Daniel had found surpassed my hollow tree hideout from day one by a lot. It felt cramped, but I was sure that was only because it was dark and my eyes hadn’t adjusted yet. I bumped my head a few times against the ceiling, so I crawled the rest of the way.

            Once we were through the long way, I stepped down into a much larger area. My eyes were somewhat adjusted, so I could see the space was larger. There were a few huge rocks that made a home in the cave besides Dan. From what I could see, Dan hadn’t been successful in gaining anything from the Cornucopia bloodbath. I saw no wood inside, so a fire wasn’t possible.

            “This place is amazing,” I whispered. My voice slightly echoed.

            “I found it two days ago,” Dan explained.

            “Where were you the first day of the Games?” I sat down on the cool cave ground. I heard Dan sit somewhere close to me.

            “I ran straight into the jungle. It was really intimidating actually. The monkeys wouldn’t shut up, and I saw a few snakes.” I shuddered. Good to know that there actually were snakes now—I had come across a snake only once since being in the jungle. “But I found this cave the next day. Nobody found it before me, so I claimed it. Where were you?”

            “I ended up in the woods,” I told him. “And…I got a little too close to danger that night.”

            “The District Twelve boy.” Dan sighed. “The poor kid.”

            “You have no idea,” I mumbled. “I watched him get stabbed by Eric. The entire pack was there. They ruined the kid’s camp.”

            “And they never saw you?”

            “Sutton did, but she protected me.” I shrugged. “She has to trust me, otherwise she would have ratted me out to the pack that night.”

            “I had been afraid that night, Bri. I thought it had been you.”

            “I was afraid yesterday when Devlin got killed and I thought it was you.”

            “Devlin?”

            “District Ten’s girl,” I said.

            “Oh. How’d she die?”

            “I assume it was poison. She got shot with a dart. Her killer had a blowgun. I wasn’t sure if they fled or not, but I didn’t stick around.”

            “Was I imagining things when I thought I heard a cannon go off not long ago? It’s hard to tell with the storm.”

            “Oh, you weren’t imagining things.” I laughed nervously.

            “Who got killed?”

            “Kaya.”

            “District One’s girl?”

            “Yup.”

            “How’d that happen? Careers don’t normally get killed off early.”

            “Well, I’ve got a story to that,” I confessed. I raked my fingers through my disgusting ponytail.

I dived into my anecdote. Dan teased me about falling out of the tree I had climbed but commended me for my efforts. He listened intently when I told him about Kaya revealing herself to me. When I sheepishly told him about my foolish taunting, he didn’t hesitate to complain.

            “Aw, Bridget,” Dan groaned. I heard him smack his forehead.

            “Yeah, I know, it was stupid of me to piss off a Career who had a grudge against me,” I snapped.

I continued on with my tale, telling him about Kaya’s possible trail she left for Noah and the somewhat scuffle we got into. Dan cut me off when I mentioned Devlin’s hatchet.

            “You stole from Devlin?” he asked.

            “Hey, she was dead. What could she do to me? I mean, really, Dan,” I snapped.

            “It’s hard to believe that coming from someone who doesn’t believe in stealing, especially from dead people. You sound like a hypocrite since you stole someone’s possession when you don’t like the Careers stealing for themselves.”

            “Can we not talk about how I could be losing my humanity? I still haven’t finished the story,” I whined.

            “Fine. Sorry.”

            I rolled right into the part where the branch collapsed under our weight, and then I reluctantly told Dan about seeing Kaya hanging in the trees. I couldn’t leave out the part where the monkeys feasted on her, either

            “Ouch. She wasn’t alive then, was she?”

            “No, she was dead, I think. The monkeys finished her off. The storm was rolling in, so I ran and that’s how I ran into you.” I inhaled. “That took longer than I thought it would.”

            “I’ll say. So, are you taking credit for Kaya’s death?”

            “I can’t really, she killed herself.” I shrugged.

            “Ah-ah, you technically did kill her. You trapped her with the vines, and the vines killed her.”

            “No, the monkeys did,” I lied.

            “Bridget, just accept the fact that you killed someone—and of all the tributes to kill, a Career!”

            I hadn’t realized that, in a way, I had contributed to her death. Of course, Careers usually lasted a long time in the arena, so Kaya being killed off early would come as a shock to a lot of people. Wait, once Kaya’s face is shown up in the sky…oh God.

Color drained from my face. I started wheezing, holding my chest.

            “Bri?” Daniel panicked. I felt him hover over me. “What’s wrong?”

            “I killed a Career,” I whispered. “They’ll see that she died. They’ll probably think it was me. Eric’s going to kill me for killing his sister, and Noah will kill me if he had seen her die like she did!” I buried my face in my hands.

 I had just put a target on my back without realizing it in the beginning, not that I didn’t have a target on me before the Games started.

            “Shh, Bri.” Dan put an arm over my shoulders. “We’re fine where we are. Okay? We’re in the jungle part of the arena; the Careers are probably hanging around in the Cornucopia, shielding themselves from the weather. We’re safe.”

            “For now,” I grumbled.

            “Besides, they don’t show who killed the fallen. Maybe they’ll assume the wrong people.”

            “I wish, but I highly doubt it.”

            The weather didn’t let up until nighttime fell upon the arena. Daniel and I didn’t mind because we were enjoying being in each other’s company too much to really think about moving. Besides, Dan’s hiding place was a good spot; I didn’t want to leave anytime soon.

            We had crept to the entrance of the cave only to see the fallen tributes. It was only Kaya. Now everyone knew that a Career was dead. To the non-Career tributes, it would probably come as a shock, since they knew as well as I did that Careers usually lasted until the final six or so. The other five remaining Careers would definitely want to kill the tribute responsible for Kaya’s death.

            When the anthem played, Dan and I crawled back into the cave. I heard something rumble: Dan’s stomach.

            “Hey, you got anything to eat in that pack that you still have?” he asked me.

            “I’m sure I do.” I trotted to the pack, rummaging around in it. I found the canteen and the blanket, but I didn’t feel the fruit. I panicked, digging through it furiously. No, no! I let out a whine of exasperation.

            “What?”

            “I lost the food.” I sighed. “I must’ve lost it when I fell from the tree.”

            “What do you still have?”

            “A soaked pack, a half-full canteen, and a wet blanket. I’m actually glad I just lost only the food, I can’t imagine how much worse things would be if I lost the canteen or the blanket, or the entire pack with everything in it.”

            “Hmm, looks like we’ll have to start hunting.”

            “Lucky for us I bagged a hatchet,” I sang.

            “We’ll be lucky once we get some food. We can’t last on just water.”

            “True. But can we worry about that tomorrow? I’m bushed.” And scarred for life thanks to Kaya’s death, I added mentally.

            “Same.”

            I felt safer being in the cave. I wasn’t out in the open, but I was still freezing. I snuggled up against Daniel; he didn’t seem to mind at all. I felt content being next to him, I didn’t feel so alone now.

This was perhaps the best I had felt since the start of the Games.

**Kaya on the right. Love that picture**