Conilogues - Words

Magic short story, characters

"Blah-de-blah, blah, blah, yada-yada wheeeeee!"

Marshana looked at me like my head was turning into a rabbit, but I was too caught up in the spell to care. I lifted my arms, pinwheeled them wildly, and then pretended I was conducting an orchestra.

Out of thin air, the knitting began to form. There were no needles or spools, the yarn just unraveled from another dimension and twisted itself into a scarf. It came out rainbow-colored.

When it was done, it flumped limply onto the table. I dragged it around my neck and showed it off to Marshana.

"Ta-da!"

She still looked like I'd eaten her cat. I offered her the scarf, but she wouldn't touch it. She backed away from it, shaking her head.

"You— you're— you're insane!"

Now I knew I was in for it. I sat back down with my scarf and leaned into it for comfort as Marshana launched right in.

"What the hell kind of incantation was that?? What happened to the hand movements, the body positioning, the wand... Seriously, 'blah blah blah'?! How can you even— How did it even work?? You literally didn't do anything! You can't possibly— That's not a spell!"

I sank deeper into my scarf and squeezed my eyes shut. I should've known that Miss By-the-Books wouldn't approve. I was just so excited to show her the spell that I didn't think. A year ago I'd followed all her lectures about hand positions and enunciation, and the best I could manage was a lumpy foot of yarn that unraveled instantly. Now I'd just made an entire scarf, and she still couldn't be happy for me.

"Are you even listening to me??"

Do I ever?

"What did you say??"

"Oops, did I say that out loud? Here look at this." I started another spell just to distract her. "Awoooo, awooooooooooo, cockadoodleDOO!"

I did a princess wave with both hands, then flung them into a gymnastics victory pose. Instantly a living bonsai sprang up from the wood of the table.

Marshana looked like she was going to faint. She stared first at the tree, then at me. Finally she whispered, "I can't even do that."

"Want me to show you? You just—"

"No! Nononononono! This isn't magic, this is— it's insanity!"

"Yes it is! I mean, no, it's not!"

"Elenus eturi pluria!

The tree burst into bright green flames that consumed it without touching the table. I made a noise as it died.

"That is magic! Not this— this 'hocus pocus' shit—"

"I didn't even say 'hocus pocus'! I just go with what feels right—"

"There are no feelings in magic! It's about technique!"

"Oh your 'techniques' never work anyway!"

"They work for me!"

"Yeah, for you!"

"And every other witch in the history of the universe!"

"Except me! Argle blargle fnargle!"

"What—"

I made aggressive jazz hands and Marshana's mouth snapped shut. She clawed at her face, screeching through her closed lips.

"Mm mm mm!"

"No! I won't let you go until you apologize!"

"Mmmmm!"

I crossed my arms and stared her down. She swore at me, then scolded me, then tried to cast some spells, then went back to swearing. Some of it was hard to make out, but I got the idea.

She still refused to apologize, so I started humming along to her swearing. When she mm-ed high, I went low. When she m-m-m-ed fast, I held my note.

I could tell when she felt the spell take hold. Her mms got high-pitched and frantic, which made the spell go even faster. It burst out of her at the same time that I released her lips.

"TICK TOCK FLIP FLOP!"

Marshana clamped her hands over her mouth, looking like she'd just stepped on an elephant's turd. The motion completed the spell, and her skirt started twirling on its own. It spun faster and higher as she tried in vain to hold it down, until it was spinning upside-down and covering her face. Then it abruptly stopped and flopped back into place, now dyed a violent shade of pink.

I waited for the yelling to start, but it never did. Marshana just stared at her pink skirt like it had turned into a duck and started quacking. I distinctly saw her mouth the words "tick tock flip flop."

Finally, she straightened up and declared, "Tiriana ilia eribus." Her skirt reverted to a dull crimson without so much as a flourish. Smoothing it out matter-of-factly, she spun on her heels and marched out the door.

As the last flash of crimson disappeared around the corner, I muttered some swear words and snapped my fingers in a Z formation. Somewhere down the hall, Marshana squawked.

The Alignment short story, setting

On the second day of Ursis, the waves reached our front steps at High Tide. By Low Tide the water was so far gone that we could see distant shipwrecks from the observatory. The orderlies worked day and night to move our equipment upstairs, before fleeing the Peninsula for higher ground.

The next morning, the waters drowned the first floor and cut off those who remained. There were only five of us, the senior scientists, the most renowned researchers on the planet. We were the world's greatest hope, trapped in a water-bound fortress.

We continued our work amidst the rising waters. We monitored the hurricanes developing over the Ocean, long chains of storms that fed on each other before battering the Shore. When the earthquakes started, we tracked their magnitude as they progressed along the Chasm. We sent our predictions to the Council, and in return we received maps of the planned evacuations. We slept in shifts, and each time we woke another city was gone.

At least, for once, it was easy to chart the Tides. The three of us who were Oceanographers had abandoned our posts completely. The observatory was closed to the howling winds, and the astronomical equipment sat unused. It would only tell us the one thing we knew anyway: the Alignment was upon us.

On the eighth day of Ursis, the water burst through the second story windows. Amnion went down to salvage some equipment and was swept away by the receding current. He was gone before we could say a word. We quietly moved our remaining tools up another floor, abandoning what we couldn't carry or use. Amnion was our only seismologist, so we left his machinery behind.

We lost communication with the Council on the tenth day of Ursis. The battering winds had finally snapped the only external feature of the fortress, the communicator to the outside world. Our work had saved millions, but now they were flying blind. The Council would employ their second-rate meteorologists, kept safe in the heart of the Continent, but their knowledge and equipment were no match to ours. To truly understand the Ocean, we had to be a part of it.

There was nothing left for us to do, but we did something anyway. Each day we faithfully charted the Tides and the storms, using whatever equipment we could still operate without power. We documented our findings in great thick binders that we locked away in waterproof safes. We knew that even if we did not survive, the fortress would. Our best measurements told us that it had already withstood three Alignments. If any shred of civilization survived, they would come here to rebuild.

On the fourteenth day of Ursis, the Alignment happened. Larios, Eurios, and Arkios unified in our sky, blocking all light from Helios. Even within the fortress, the world went dark. The earth shook, the water roared, and the wind howled around us. During the ten minutes of the Alignment, we measured nothing and simply prayed.

We knew from our predictions that the eye of a storm would sweep overhead just as the Alignment was ending. Against all of our advice, Samara climbed up to the observatory and pulled the lever to open the dome. It split to reveal the darkened sky and swirling clouds. From the stairwell, we caught a fleeting glimpse of the moons separating and the sun shining through. Then a gust of wind carried Samara away without a sound. Her last act was to grasp the lever, and the dome closed up behind her, blocking out the sunlight once more.

The three of us that remained turned back to our charts and measurements. The waters receded and returned to their chaotic Tides. The earth groaned and shifted, settling into its new topology. And on the first day of Sendis, we opened the dome again and returned to charting the skies. Eurios and Arkos traveled west together, but Larios arced away into southern skies.

Two years later, the orderlies found us. By then only Erthus and I were left, and we had used up almost half the supplies. The orderlies set about restoring the power, and they told us how the Continent had fared. Less than half the population had survived, but most of the Council and almost two-thirds of the apprentices were alive and well. They arrived on a ship several days later.

I stayed at the fortress, the only one to do so, to teach the apprentices and restore the supplies. The next Alignment would not be for thousands of years, but it would take that long to prepare. Generations would come and go, and each would do their duty to weather the next storm.

The first time that my apprentice charted a year of Tides correctly, I knew that my work was done. She would become the next Head Oceanographer, and she would train future generations of scientists. They would have forgotten the experience of this Alignment, but they would have learned how to survive the next one.

It is not a comforting thought, as I look past the dome and out to the endless waters. Society is still recovering almost four decades later, and we have lost so many things forever. Every night, that brief glimpse of the sun haunts my dreams. I see now why Samara opened the dome, and why Amnion went down to the second floor. It's time for me to join the others and return to the Ocean. The world must take its first steps toward forgetting.

Faces microfiction, dream

Dr. May warned me against the dangers of makeup as she carefully scraped the caked foundation from my face. Then she gently peeled away layers of old skin, showing me each one as it came off. There was my Facebook profile, where I was a jock. Then it was my Twitter profile, where I was an intellectual. I couldn't even look at my Instagram photos. Finally the skin was gone, but Dr. May kept going. She cut into my flesh and raw emotion bled out. I cried and screamed and pleaded, but she dug deeper and deeper until she hit bone. Then she scraped and peeled and cut away all the anger and fear and resentment. With my skull completely exposed, she handed me a mirror to see. In it, I looked like I was twelve years old, about to start on my first day of school. My mom had just died, and my dad was dropping me off for the first time. He rubbed his face and some skin came off, letting a single tear leak through. That day, I took his skin and put it on my face before I ran into the building.

The Great Evacuation short story, setting

My phone buzzed against my leg in a daring attempt to escape my pocket. I juggled my coffee and my suitcase to reach for it, but it stopped ringing before I could take it out. Leaving it as a lost cause, I wiped a streak of coffee off my jacket.

Somewhere in the building behind me, an old-fashioned landline shrilled loudly without response. The sound got annoying, so I moved away from it toward the curb. I looked for the car that was supposed to pick me up, squinting at passing car models and license plates.

Across the street, I noticed two separate people answering their cell phones at the same time. One put his to his ear a few times, looked at it in confusion, and then returned it to his pocket. The other person said hello once, then went back to scrolling on it while walking.

It reminded me of my missed call, and I risked another coffee bath to pull out my phone. But I didn't have any missed calls or messages, even though I could've sworn I felt it buzzing. The only notification I had was to take my turn in Pictionary.

As I was drawing a porcupine, someone walked by behind me saying, "Hello? Hello?"

I checked on my ride again, but it looked like they'd been caught in some nasty traffic nearby. I debated walking or taking a bus, but I still had my suitcase with me. So I stayed put and craned my neck to look down the street, bouncing with impatience.

Then suddenly it felt quiet. The landline behind me had finally given up, leaving a little pocket of silence. At the same time, there happened to be a lull in street traffic. For a moment, there was just the shuffle of people walking by.

As I was listening to the quiet, I noticed a beeping sound in the distance. A bright flash caught my eye, and I turned to look at a building down the street. A light on its side was blinking in time with the sound, which gradually resolved into a fire alarm.

The alarm spread quickly to nearby buildings, the slightly offset beeps ruining the quiet. People on the street stopped and looked for the fire, but I couldn't see anything wrong. Still, the alarms continued to spread all the way down the street, until it even reached the building behind me. I tried in vain to plug my ear with my coffee cup as the air filled with shrill ringing.

People began trickling out to the sidewalk from every building on the block. Soon the street was overcrowded with disrupted office workers wondering what was going on and when they could go back inside. I pulled my suitcase closer to myself, trying not to get jostled off the curb.

Soon, the sound of sirens began to compete with the continued shrilling of the alarms and the people shouting over each other. The last thing I heard before the sirens drowned everything out was the woman standing next to me complaining that her phone didn't work.

Before long, the street was lit up in red and blue as an entire fleet of emergency vehicles blazed down its center. I counted at least six ambulances and six fire trucks and wondered how they had all responded on such short notice. Then I wondered even more when all twelve of them sped right past us, ignoring the shrieking alarms.

Behind the emergency vehicles came what looked like every city bus and shuttle service in town. They barrelled down the street in a rumbling herd, taking up every available lane. One grazed a car parked on the shoulder, and its tiny car alarm joined the cacophony of sound around it.

Then, almost as one, the buses began to slow. Down the street, some of them peeled away and pulled up to the sidewalk. Near me, an unmarked tour bus pulled in at a crazy angle, butting its nose between two parked cars. The driver flashed the lights and honked the horn, then opened the door.

At first everyone near the bus stepped back, intimidated by the press of vehicles. The people closest to the open door were shouting something back and forth with the driver, but all I could hear were the others around me asking what was being said.

Eventually, the people shouting to the driver started boarding the bus. Those behind them were still shouting back and forth in confusion, wondering what was going on, but the movement started a mass panic. Soon everyone was shoving each other to get on board first, and the press of people reversed direction to surge toward the vehicles.

Someone tripped over my suitcase and I lost my grip on it. When I tried to grab it, someone elbowed me and I spilled my coffee all over my arm. By the time I turned back, I couldn't even see my suitcase through the crowd. I had no choice but to let myself get funneled onto the bus.

I stumbled into the first seat I found, next to a woman with a wailing baby on her lap. Even sitting next to them, I could barely hear the baby over the shouting, honking, and beeping. I tried to cover my ears and realized that I was still clutching my newly empty coffee cup. Looking around, I couldn't see a good place to dispose of it. Eventually I just put it under the seat in front of me. The floor of the bus was already littered with dropped belongings anyway.

Once we couldn't shove anyone else on board, the driver closed the door and pulled away from the curb. We left behind a huge crowd of people still waiting for buses, with more still coming out of the buildings. A city bus pulled in behind us, and the crowd surged forward to meet it as our bus accelerated away.

We sped down the middle of the four-lane road, past block after block of people and buses. Every building we passed had its fire alarm ringing, like the whole city was trying to drive us out. When we passed into a smaller neighborhood, the alarms were replaced by an air-raid siren that blasted every thought out of my head.

The blaring was audible until we were well out of city limits. Even then, the echo of it continued in my head, filling in the sudden quiet. Despite the crowded bus, everything seemed hushed and muted. Nobody spoke above a whisper, and even the baby next to me was silent. It felt like I had gone partly deaf.

The bus continued down the rural highway until the daylight faded. I checked my phone a couple times, but I couldn't get a signal. All I had was the same notification that it was my turn in Pictionary. But the app wouldn't work without an internet connection, so I put my phone away and drifted off to sleep.

I woke when the bus peeled off the highway and pulled over at a rest stop in the mountains. The driver cut the engines, and we were plunged into an eerie silence. His voice sounded tinny and far away as he informed us that we would all stay here tonight.

Without a word, everyone filed off of the bus and into a motel at the side of the highway. For a while, the silence was kept at bay by the gentle shuffle of people moving and interacting without talking. But once I got to my motel room, the quiet settled back in. It took a long time for me to fall asleep.

The next morning, I was woken by people talking in the hallways. The chattering continued throughout breakfast, packing, and checking out, with barely a lull for the bus driver honking at us to get on board. Everyone seemed to be talking about everything at once, and the bus was filled with the constant hum of conversation.

As we got closer to the city, people began turning to the windows. By the time we reached the suburbs, the chatter had died out. The city was also quiet, like it was holding its breath with us. All the fire alarms had gone silent, and there was no one on the streets to shout or honk. The air-raid siren was a distant echo in my memory.

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out. I had several missed messages from my dad, and a notification that my driver had canceled my ride. And it was still my turn in Pictionary. I looked up and saw that everyone around me was on their phones too. The bus filled with the sound of buzzing and pinging, and people began making calls. Soon it was hard to hear anything over the talking and ringing.

I tried to search up what happened, but nobody seemed to know. The further I scrolled, the wilder the theories became. But nobody could say for sure what had happened, and some people claimed it didn't happen at all. It was like the alarms and sirens from earlier were a fever dream that was already being forgotten.

Our bus meandered through the city until we got back to the block we'd come from. Without ceremony, the driver pulled up to the side of the road and opened the door. Silently, we all filed off and went our separate ways.

I pulled out my phone again and called another ride. The app told me it would take a while due to "unusually high demand." As I waited, I wandered the sidewalk looking for my suitcase. The scattered belongings strewn all over the ground were one of the few indications that anything strange had happened here. All around me, the city was settling into its usual daily rhythm. Even the sound of traffic was starting back up.

I didn't find my suitcase by the time my ride pulled up, so I gave it up as a lost cause and got into the back seat of the car. The driver didn't look at all curious about what had happened, so I let him drive me home in silence. On the way, I pulled out my phone and finished drawing a porcupine.

Landing microfiction, setting

The aliens arrived in a spaceship filled with water. Recognizing a habitable environment, they landed in the middle of the ocean. Their ship transformed, and they sank beneath the surface. They sampled the water and found primitive life forms but no sign of higher technology. They pulsed messages out into the deep, but the only replies were distorted echoes. After a time, they changed the ship again and launched back into space. Despite the promise of so much water, the planet had no intelligent life.

Dunes microfiction, dream

The boy stood between the dunes of garbage, watering his tiny garden. He sprinkled each flower generously, gripping the watering can with both hands. Once it was empty, he set it aside and knelt on the ground. He leaned in until his nose brushed the petals and took a deep breath. But no matter how much perfume he poured on the flowers, all he could smell was garbage.

Puppies short story, setting

The moment we saw the deer, Nami squealed in delight and ran over.

"Reindeer puppies!" she squeaked.

Casey and I chuckled. "No honey," Casey corrected her, "these are elk puppies. You see the sign? It says the girls don't grow antlers."

But Nami wasn't paying any attention. She'd found a dalmatian and was petting it gently, whispering, "Spotty puppy!"

We chatted with the zoo attendant while Nami played with the puppies. Casey let slip that she loved the bunny puppies, and the attendant brought some over for us to pet. She explained that they had to keep them separate, because once they grew into bunny dogs they started copulating like crazy. When Nami came over to ask us why we were laughing, we told her it was nothing and asked her if she wanted to see the leopard puppies.

The zoo was holding a special show with the leopard puppies. They were explaining how leopard dogs used to be leopard cats, until humans stepped in with their breeding programs. Afterward, everyone got to pet the leopard puppies and feed them treats. Nami hugged one of them and whispered, "Spotty kitty puppy!"

After that it was the exotic kennels, with tapir puppies, okapi puppies, and capybara puppies. Casey really liked the capybara puppies, but Nami caught sight of the peccary puppies and we were off. By the time we caught up, she was waist deep in them, petting them all and whispering, "Spotty piggy puppies!"

We spent the rest of the afternoon going from puppy to puppy, petting them and feeding them and whispering to them. There were bat puppies and lizard puppies and monkey puppies and seal puppies. Nami petted them all while we chased after her.

Finally we ran out of puppies. Nami wanted to start all over again, but Casey put her foot down.

"Come on, honey, we have to go," she insisted. "Come on, they're closing. No, we can't see any more puppies!"

"Momma's right, sweetie," I backed her up. "There are no more puppies. Hey, you know where there's another puppy? At home!"

Nami scoffed. "Yeah, but that's just a doggy puppy, Daddy. That's boring!"

Casey and I chuckled wearily, scooped her up, and took her home.

Penny short story, setting

"That's the last of it!"

Monty put his tow truck in reverse, and its shrill beeping blasted away the quiet morning. He backed out carefully down the entire length of the forest road, the beeping taking a long time to fade. Once we couldn't hear its echoes any more, we knew we were well and truly alone.

My manager Tom came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. Together we looked up at the fruits of a week's labor. A house-sized pile of pennies glittered in the early morning light. It dominated our field of view, choking out everything around and beneath it.

Somehow, the pile didn't look at all odd in the forest setting. Most of the pennies had a greenish tint that matched the moss on the trees perfectly. Every one of them had come from the deceptively harmless-looking well next to me. It was older than the forest itself, and it looked like it would've collapsed ages ago if it weren't for the pennies inside. Without the coins, the water level was a long-lost memory.

"Well," Tom said with a slap to my shoulder.

"Sure is," I replied.

"Guess you better get to work. I'll come check on you in the afternoon."

With that, he dropped a bucket and a lunchbox at my feet and got into his own pickup.

"Remember," he called as he drove away, "you get to keep any nickels and dimes that you find!"

Unpaid internships sucked.

I turned over the bucket, sat on it, and looked up at the pile of coins. I'd be spending the next whole week going through it one penny at a time. My job was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard: take each penny, chuck it into the well, and make a wish. Any wish*.

*Terms and conditions applied.

It was all because little Martha came home last month with a unicorn. Supposedly it was pearly white, with a horn as long as her arm. Some even said it pooped rainbows and talked, though that was mostly Martha's 'uncle' Jimmy. But the vet claimed that the horn was real, or at least indistinguishable from a rhino's horn. Nobody seemed to notice or care that the vet specialized in cats. Everyone was too excited about the world's very first miracle.

For weeks, "friendly neighbors" came by to interrogate the six-year-old about how she had acquired a unicorn. One mention of a wishing well, and well-wishing became the new national pastime. Overnight, pink became the latest fashion after her neighbor remembered seeing what she was wearing that day. The whole country went unicorn crazy.

But it was Tom who got Uncle Jimmy drunk and heard the real story of Martha's adventure. Jimmy knew exactly which well Martha had wished at, but he couldn't figure out how to trigger it again. As he whined to Tom's sympathetic ear, he mentioned something that he was too stupid to realize was important: Martha claimed that she had made the wish using her special lucky penny.

A day later, Tom hired me.

I got up and walked straight out onto the heap of pennies. The outer edge was no more than a foot deep, but I climbed right over it and tried to grab a handful straight out of the side. But the pile was too dense, and I couldn't even get a finger under one layer. By prying and heaving, I managed to cause a small avalanche and bruise my arms up to the elbows.

After that I just grabbed handfuls of pennies from the fringes, pulling up fistfuls of grass with them. Then I chucked them in one at a time, wishing fervently for a fifth of Jack Daniel's.

Halfway through the morning, my fingers were turning purple and I'd changed my wish to a fifth of Fireball. I had made exactly zero progress on the pile, mostly because I had to wait for the splash before making each wish—Tom was very specific about this point. But since half the time I couldn't hear the splash, I would space out for ages between every wish.

Eventually I ate my lunch out of boredom, though I continued tossing pennies in with one hand. I kept thinking how nice it would be to wash down the food with some whiskey, but the stubborn well wouldn't oblige.

Late in the afternoon, I found my first nickel. I whooped and bit it like it was gold, nearly chipping a tooth. Then I tucked it into my pocket and spent the next half hour searching fruitlessly for more. The only thing I found was a crushed bottle cap, which could've come from a bottle of beer. After that I spent an hour wishing for a boilermaker.

By the time Tom drove back up in his truck, I was standing on the well, throwing the pennies in overhand and shouting my wishes out loud. I was back to wishing for a fifth of Jack Daniel's.

The next day, I changed tacks. Taking the bucket, I filled the whole thing with pennies and hauled it to the well. Then I lay down on the crumbling wall and flipped the pennies in like I was tossing for heads. I imagined that I could hear the splashes a little better, like the water level was slowly rising.

I spent the whole day wishing for wild, impossible things. Forget Martha and her unicorn, I wanted a dragon. Or a magical sword. Or a fairy godmother. For a while I wished for a tyrannosaurus rex, but then I realized it would probably just eat me. So I started working my way through Lord of the Rings characters, which lasted me all the way through lunch.

Partway through the afternoon, a horrible thought occurred to me. What if it wasn't even the penny that was special? What if it was the time of day, or the alignment of the planets, or the exact combination of Cheerios and Captain Crunch that was for breakfast? What if Martha was the chosen one, or the well only granted wishes for unicorns? I refused to wish for a unicorn.

Then I realized I was being ridiculous. There was no such thing as a magical well. For the rest of the day I went back to wishing for whiskey.

When Tom dropped me off on the third morning, I looked at the heap of pennies and instantly gave up. The pile looked no smaller than it did two days ago. And yet my whole body ached from hauling coins around, and my fingers were stiff and bruised. Even my throat had a little tingle from saying all my wishes out loud. I turned around to beg Tom to take me back, but he had already driven back down the forest road.

I spent that day listlessly dropping pennies over the side of the well, wishing for things like loving parents and my husband back from the war. I wasn't even married. But I kept wishing, escalating to world peace and perpetual motion. It was all just as likely to happen anyway.

By the fifth day, I had gone a little crazy. After spending an entire day wishing for a blue Ferrari, I was now completely out of things to wish for. Unless I wanted a yellow Ferrari. Yelling incoherently, I started chucking in pennies by the handful. Screw Tom and his rules. I wished Tom had never existed.

On the sixth day, I realized I could see the water level in the well. If I squinted really hard, I thought I could make out the glimmer of pennies below it. Maybe the pile behind me was a little smaller, too. Cackling madly, I started pouring in pennies by the bucketload. For a while I forgot to even wish for anything.

On the seventh morning, the pile was the size of a car. All morning, I sat on my bucket and stared at it. I would've stared past lunch, but around then it started raining. Getting up, I walked over to the pile and selected a single penny. Then I took it to the well, tossed it in, and wished for a swift end to me, this job, and the rest of the world with it. When I turned around, there was a bottle of Jack Daniel's sitting on the forest floor.

Wordlessly, I turned back to the well and peered into its depths. There must have been thousands upon thousands of pennies in there. And there was no way to tell which one I had just tossed in.

Gold short story, setting

I gently rocked the pan, letting the water sweep more silt away. My assistant watched closely as I picked out some pebbles, then swirled the rest in the pan. We could already see a glint of yellow under the reddish silt.

"See, there, that's a four-hole," I told him. I picked it out of the material and wiped it on my pants. "A bit small for the jacket, but I bet we could use it in that plaid shirt. Here."

I handed it to my assistant, who dropped it in the appropriate bucket. Then I returned to rocking and swirling the pan, pointing out flats whenever I saw them. I even picked out a half-inch two-hole that was perfect for our latest cardigan. That went into the smallest pile we'd collected today.

As I picked out the last of the decently-sized flats, Bill ran up from the mines, waving his fist.

"We did it!" he yelled. "We struck gold! Look at these!"

He opened his hand, revealing a fistful of studs in every color and size imaginable. Every one of them had both parts intact, some even with bejeweled knots. They were fit for the type of high-end suits that we hadn't manufactured in years.

"Jeez!" I exclaimed, jumping to my feet. "You hit a whole vein of this stuff? Thank our lucky stars!"

We clasped arms, and I sent up a brief prayer. "Okay, go get the guys with the detectors and give them pickaxes instead. They haven't found any good toggles in ages anyway. And I'll go check with the drillers, see if the shanks have run dry. C'mon, we'll have cufflinks for days!"

Everyone sprang into action. I handed the pan to my assistant and patted him on the knee. He looked a bit disappointed, but it couldn't be helped—every bunter started off panning for flats. I left him to his practice and took off to find the others.

As I ran, I couldn't help but imagine the peacoats and suit jackets we could make. We could even try a wedding dress, if the vein was big enough. After years of living off polos and cardigans, all our hard work and perseverance would finally pay off. We could actually eat a proper meal, and I could buy my daughter a new doll. Who knows, I might even keep one of the studs for myself and sew it into the doll's dress.

Smiling to myself at the thought, I flagged down the nearest bunter and got down to work.

Blessing microfiction, dream

The newly minted deity rose from the holy waters as naked as the day She was born. She gazed upon Her land with the eyes of a god and was pleased with what She saw. Smiling down at Her beloved people, She opened Her arms to bestow Her first blessing. But a twinge in Her throat caused a twitch in Her hand, and She mistakenly blessed a cow. As She tried to correct Her wayward aim, another spasm wracked Her chest. With a jerk of an arm, She rained meteors and tsunamis down upon Her land. Embarrassed, She brought a hand to Her lips and burped a swarm of locusts. "Oh dear," She said with a sudden twinge, "I seem to have the hiccups."

Fountain microfiction, dream

The drinking fountain has a face. The fountainhead is a tiny bust, its lips puckered up in an "O". You turn the knob, and the mouth vomits a lumpy yarn of water. Drinking it feels like you are trying to kiss the fountainhead. At the first taste, you cough and pull back. The water tastes like wasabi. You release the knob, and the stream sputters to a stop. The fountainhead coughs and makes a face. "Was that wasabi?" it demands. You nod and tell it, "Yeah."

The Soldier short story, character

When I touched the soldier for the first time, his death changed. I had never seen anything like it before. He was already dying, coughing up blood from the wound in his chest. I didn't bother confirming it, I just waited for his soul. But in his final moments he seemed to see me, and he reached out. We touched hands, and his death changed.

His death changed from bleeding out on the battlefield that day to drowning in a river three years later. Right before my eyes, he pulled his soul back and clung to it. I didn't know what to do. My master would not be happy, but I couldn't take his soul if his death had changed. So instead, I touched a healer and she came to save him. Her death would be at the hands of her lover, three months later.

After that I followed him. I admit, I was curious. I'd been reaping souls for millennia, and I'd never seen anyone like him. Most people's deaths were straightforward. They died on the battlefield, or from an accident. Sometimes, they died from old age. One time, I spent a whole decade floating through a city, touching everyone I saw. Only one person had an interesting death, and that was because I killed her. Everyone else had a regular death, and I claimed their souls when their time came.

So I followed the soldier back to his home, where he greeted his wife and infant child. I touched them and saw both of their deaths, from the same factory accident twenty years later. I watched as they wept with joy for his survival, and I watched each time he went down to the river for water. I didn't follow him constantly, but I could never quite leave him alone. Sometimes I would lose track of him for months at a time, only to find myself back there again when the season turned.

Then one winter his death changed again. I came back to find him lost in the woods, starving, bleeding, and slowly freezing to death. When I touched him he was icy, and he had hours before he would die. That made me angry. His death wasn't for another year, when he should have drowned in the river. I already gave up his soul once, and I expected him to die properly the second time. So I touched a wolf, who came and licked his wounds and kept him warm. The wolf's death would be the next winter, defending her pups from a starving bear.

After that, instead of drowning, his death changed to poison. This time I was so angry that I didn't come to reap his soul at all. I could feel it leaving his body, but I was across the world, watching the death of the oldest living tree. It, too, was dying of poison. After hours of suffering, the tree died and the soldier recovered, the poison leaving him weakened but alive.

For as long as I could, I resisted returning to him. If I couldn't see his death, then I couldn't be angered by it. But in the end my curiosity got the best of me, and I went looking for him again. He wasn't in his home, which was empty and broken-down. He also wasn't in his town, which was deserted and overgrown. When I finally found him, he was in a mountain cabin, alone. He had become an old man while I was away.

When I floated into his cabin, he looked right at me. He was bent and wrinkled and blind with old age, but he stood up to greet me. Then he reached inside himself and pulled out his own soul. He held it in his shaking fingers, and it was as young and perfect as the first time I saw it. With a smile, he held it out to me. I reached for it, but I didn't touch him. I couldn't risk watching his death change again. He seemed to understand, so he turned his hand over and gave it to me. Thus I reaped his soul, and he died.

Midsummer novella, fantasy (synopsis only)

Pitch

Imagine everyone in the Mario games suddenly lost their memories—except for Luigi. Player 2 is now suddenly the hero, and there's only one life left. But Princess Peach is still somewhere in Bowser's Castle, and there's no one else to rescue her. What will Luigi do?

Blurb

Halfway through a quest to save the beautiful Princess Aliya from the evil wizard Mordeval, Prince Charles and the rest of the questing party abruptly lose their memories. Sir Logan of Everwind, the only one who still remembers, must find a way to become the hero and save the day. But soon it becomes clear that heroism is less about heroics and more about sheer dumb luck. At least, that's what it seems like when everything instantly goes horribly wrong.

Stats

Version history: Idea conceived 2019; First draft completed 2019; Second draft completed 2019
Word count: ~25,000
Auxiliary word count (notes, outline, etc.): ~200

He misses
He wakes
She drinks
He remembers
He heals
She throws
It asks
She intrudes
He leads
She loves
She leaves
He dies
She retries
She remembers

Preview: Chapter 3 exerpt

          "Why are we doing this again?"
          It's the fifth time Bard has asked this, and I can tell from the look on his face that he knows this and is just trying to be difficult. I answer him anyway, which is probably a mistake.
          "For the eighth time, Bard, it's for the princess. We are on a quest."
          "Is she pretty?" one of the knights asks. "Can I marry her?"
          "No, fool, only His Highness gets to marry her, weren't you listening?"
          "How come only he gets to marry her?"
          "What's my name again? I forget because everyone calls me My Highness."
          "Shut up, Your Highness. Nobody remembers your name either."
          "For the love of— BE QUIET!" I finally yell. This is about the seventeenth time that everyone has started talking all over each other.
          "We. Are. On. A. Quest," I explain yet again. "Princess Aliya needs rescuing from the evil wizard Mordeval. She is to marry Prince Charles."
          "Is she pretty?"
          This time it's His Highness asking, and I can't ignore his question.
          "She's beautiful," I tell him. "And she's smart and kind, too, not like that trollop who— nevermind. The point is, she deserves rescue. She deserves her happy ending. And right now, you're the only person who can give it to her."
          His Highness thinks about this a bit, then puffs up with his own importance. "We need to rescue the princess!" he declares.
          This feels like progress, even though it puts a sour taste in my mouth. I'm beginning to realize that Princess Aliya may not want an empty-headed prince. Still, at least the others are talking about the right things now. Sort of.
          "So how do we get to— what was it, Modeville?"
          "I think it was Mortidell."
          "Wait, is that a person or a place?"
          "Both, I thought he named the castle after himself."
          "Now I'm confused."
          "Are there dragons? We fought dragons before, didn't we?"
          I look for the person who mentioned dragons. It's one of the knights, either Clovis or Clemis. I remember one of them getting scorched by the dragon we fought last week—maybe he's remembering, too.
          "Yes," I interrupt hastily, "there was a dragon! We fought and defeated it in valiant battle. Your Highness, you killed it in one fell swoop with your magical sword! Where did you put it?"
          The prince looks down at where his scabbard usually is and frowns. He took the sword off at some point, and I don't see it nearby.
          "Nevermind, we'll find it later—"
          "I need my magic sword!" His Highness declares. He has apparently grown fond of declarations.
          Before I can stop them, everyone descends into chaos, flipping through packs and turning out tents. The camp quickly becomes buried in leather armor, travel food, and underclothes.
          Someone—I think it's Bard—yells, "I found it!" but at the same time someone else yells, "LOOK WHAT I FOUND!"
          Everyone immediately abandons their search, His Highness included, to gravitate to the second speaker, who is holding up a skin of liquor.

Ground Zero novel, sci-fi (synopsis only)

Pitch

The future is not a terrible place. It's also not a particularly great one. We've made some advances in technology, and we've solved some problems of scarcity. But we've also overcrowded the earth and sold it out to corporations. In an attempt to solve the former, the latter have built out layers of infrastructure that allow society to expand upward. Each layer is newer bigger, and more expensive than the last. But what happens when there's a problem at the bottom?

Blurb

Archer Gray is one of the millions of folks who live and work on Levels One and Two. Most of his time is spent on construction work, but he also takes a shift as a handyman each day. His work sometimes takes him to the sub-Level, where old, forgotten infrastructure still remains. Everything is routine inspections and small-time repairs, until one day he finds a crack. If it widens, it could bring down all sixteen Levels above. But is it up to him to fix it?

Stats

Version history: Idea conceived 2017; First draft completed 2018 (NaNoWriMo); Extended first draft completed 2018-2019
Word count: ~100,000
Auxiliary word count (notes, outline, etc.): ~8,600

Part 1
Part 2
Epilogue

Preview: Chapter 2 exerpt

          The warden yelled for Archer the moment he emerged from the hatch. She must have been watching and waiting to catch him coming up.
          "There's a leak in the eastern facilities," she called. "Fourth toilet."
          "Got it, Dara," Archer called back.
          He shrugged and headed straight for the eastern bathrooms. Dara had been giving him grunge work ever since she was denied sub-Level access. Technically she wasn't his boss, but as the warden she could dictate most of the work in the prison.
          The thought gave him an idea, and he paused for a moment.
          "Hey, Dara," he yelled. When she turned to look, he asked, "Who would you report an infrastructure issue to? One that needs some investigation, maybe tools."
          Dara raised an eyebrow, obviously surprised and irritated.
          "Well, I suppose that would be you," she replied sardonically. "I don't remember asking you to fix infrastructure, though."
          Archer took the hint and turned back east. He didn't bother to call out an apology, knowing it would just irritate her more. He would have to think on his question later.
          On his way to the bathrooms, he waved to some of the inmates heading from one facility to the next. He'd been contracting here long enough to recognize some faces. The friendlier ones even knew his name, if only because they could get their burnt bulbs replaced faster when they knew who to yell for.
          Another familiar face was the young temp working the eastern bathrooms. When Archer got there he could see the problem immediately. What Dara had described as a leak was more like a fountain, and not everything it was spewing was water. The temp, Perry, was desperately trying to fight back the flood without touching it, using a mop.
          Archer sighed and waded in. He put a hand on Perry's shoulder, and the temp startled wildly. When he saw Archer, his look of alarm was taken over by one of profound relief, which he quickly tried to cover up with a stern nod. Archer waved him off and took his mop.
          By the time Archer was done fixing the piping, he was soaked through and covered in all sorts of unsavory, awful-smelling gunk. He stuck around long enough to try to wipe himself off, taking off his shirt to scrub his pants. Then, before Dara could find him again, he made his way north to the laundry. There he dropped his filthy uniform in the chute and put on a new one that was the same gray color as the other prison workers. He stood in front of one of the UV lights for a while, using the warmth to dry off his tools and his hair.
          While he was there, he asked Laura, one of the laundry workers, who she would report infrastructure issues to. She shrugged and suggested the warden. Then she wrinkled her nose and told him that he smelled. Archer grimaced, thanked her, and headed off to the yard where most of the inmates took recreation time.
          Dara found him while he was talking to inmates and gave him three more tasks fixing lighting, plumbing, and comms. The comms issue took him the longest because he didn't understand electrical systems nearly as well as concrete or steel. But he got his most useful lead from talking to Jared, who made the PA announcements for shift changes. Any changes to those announcements went through the district director, who was probably the warden's boss.
          By the end of First shift, Archer had fixed another leak, two doors, a ventilation issue, and a broken basketball hoop. He'd also discovered how to contact the director, from talking with an inmate who really loved basketball. Near the end of the shift, he sent a quick message to the director's office, using a tablet in the prison ConnectionPoint. He didn't have time for much more before he had to be on Two.
          Archer scanned out and headed for an elevator. He skipped past the nearest ones, which were always overcrowded with prison workers changing shifts. Instead, he walked an extra block to the one just outside prison walls. This one still had a line, but it tended to go faster. The elevator was slow but large, and there were separate chutes for materials and equipment. It wasn't long before he shuffled on with thirty others and headed up.

          Even just going from One to Two, everything was slightly newer, slightly cleaner, and slightly nicer, including the people. Even the ceiling was higher, though only by a couple feet. One was just tall enough to handle old-style street lamps and wiring, but Two left a little room for trees and some smaller private buildings.
          Outside the prison there was also more activity. Pods zipped by regularly on the roads, containing both people and equipment. Here they still ran on tracks, but it was definitely a step up from the slow, wired buses that inched along on One. At least the pods had been replaced sometime this century.
          Still, cheap as they were, Archer couldn't afford to take a pod. He joined the workers traveling on foot, jogging a bit to make up for lost time. Even with his delays at the ConnectionPoint earlier, he managed to get there and scan himself in one minute early. With a wave to the overseer, he grabbed his hat and went straight to work.

Prey novel, fantasy (synopsis only)

Pitch

When was the last time you read high fantasy that was not set during the Middle Ages? Prey takes the reader back to hunter-gatherer times, when people and animals still live off the earth, society and technology are yet unnamed concepts, and the greatest challenge is survival. The fast-paced free-for-all is like Game of Thrones, but with sword and shield replaced by wits and bone.

Blurb

The Canines, Felines, and Avians have lived with a tentative peace for years. Ever since Talloak became chieftain of the Avian flock, the greater species have kept a fragile balance of power. But Feline land on the delta is limited, and Canine prey in the mountains is scarce. Both Iris and Blackfoot, the Feline and Canine chieftains, are eyeing the Avian forest as their means of ensuring survival. But just as they circle in, the stranger Alvarek shatters the peace by setting the forest on fire.

Stats

Version history: Idea conceived 2006; First draft completed 2016 (NaNoWriMo); Second draft completed 2017-2018
Word count: ~73,000
Auxiliary word count (notes, outline, etc.): ~7,000 + map

Prologue
Book 1: Forest
1. Outlanders
2. Felines
3. Outlanders
4. Canines
5. Outlanders
6. Avians
7. Surds
8. Canines
9. Outlanders
10. Felines
11. Avians
12. Outlanders
13. Felines
14. Canines
15. Outlanders
16. Surds
17. Felines
18. Surds
19. Coda
Book 2: Mountains
1. Canines
2. Outlanders
3. Avians
4. Canines
5. Surds
6. Felines
7. Canines
8. Felines
9. Avians
10. Surds
11. Outlanders
12. Avians
13. Surds
14. Felines
15. Canines
16. Outlanders
17. Avians
18. Coda
Book 3: Plains
1. Outlanders
2. Avians
3. Avians
4. Felines
5. Outlanders
6. Surds
7. Canines
8. Felines
9. Avians
10. Canines
11. Avians
12. Surds
13. Outlanders
14. Outlanders
15. Coda
Epilogue

Preview: Prologue

          The low murmur of human voices was familiar, but it still made the magpie nervous. He flitted from branch to branch, flashing a pattern of black and white against the dark green.
          Here.
          The thought stopped him from flying, and he rustled his feathers in protest. He shrugged the familiar mind away.
          Come here, the human repeated.
          The magpie opened his beak in a silent caw. Then he dropped from the leaves to a waiting hand, swooping the last few wingspans. He pecked at the hand, but there was no food.
          Stay, the human told him. Food soon.
          Talloak stroked the magpie's neck, keeping him calm. The bird wasn't any happier to be here than he was.
          "They'll just hunt us down," Swiftwing was saying. "We've got nothing protecting us here."
          Food, the magpie insisted.
          Talloak sent him an image of the winter seed store. It had more seed in it than a magpie could eat in a lifetime. Soon, he promised. Listen.
          "We've dealt with four-legs before," Twistedtree replied dismissively. "It'll be the same as every summer. They'll come here, sniff around, decide we're too tough to swallow, and then leave."
          "What if they don't?" Swiftwing shot back. "What if this is the time they stay?
          "Look," she continued. "The riverlands are dying. The mountains are dead. But our forest is alive and well. How long do you think it will be before they decide to risk everything?"
          "We'll be ready for them," Twistedtree insisted.
          "No!"
          Swiftwing pounded the greattree.
          "The only way we're going to get ahead of this is to go. Go now, and fight on our own terms."
          Her urge to fly nearly sent the magpie off again.
          Where are you going? Talloak asked him, amused. Listen.
          The magpie couldn't understand the human speech, but he could feel their emotions. Talloak wanted that insight for himself. The council was too busy arguing to pay any attention to the bird right now.
          "You said it yourself," Oakheart said, "the forest is alive. Why should we leave it? We can thrive here and get stronger. Right now we have fewer hunters than both of them."
          "We can make up for that," Talloak spoke up. "They underestimate us. And we have Alvarek's weapons."
          "That man is trouble," Twistedtree spat. "He's more likely to get us killed than all of them combined. We already have weapons that don't have to be butchered from people."
          There was a rumble of agreement around the council.
          Talloak shrugged and kept his reply to himself. He returned to listening, sharing thoughts with the magpie.
          The argument continued, with the words lost on both the magpie and Talloak. The humans chattered like jays and fought over food, except that there was no food. The yellow-furred one snatched what the others had, even if it wasn't food. Nobody had any food.
          Swiftwing, Talloak offered. Her name is Swiftwing.
          Female crow, the magpie replied. Talloak couldn't tell if that was good or bad.
          And Twistedtree? The tall thin one.
          Also crow.
          Interesting. Not a jay?
          No jays! The magpie squawked in protest.
          There was a moment of quiet in Talloak's mind.
          The round one is a rat.
          Talloak shifted a bit in surprise. How do you know what a rat is? he asked the magpie.
          Big. Tasty. Claws that fight. Eats rats.
          Who eats rats? Talloak asked, confused.
          Crows! the magpie crowed, suddenly elated. He took off and flew around the greattree.
          Talloak jerked himself back into his own mind and examined his council. The magpie was right—Swiftwing had talked down Twistedtree and Oakheart. Or maybe just Twistedtree, Talloak amended. Oakheart looked furious.
          "This is your own death that you're creating," he threatened. "I'll have nothing to do with it."
          He stood and left the cover of the greattree, disappearing into the forest. The others muttered a little at the outburst, but soon enough they turned to Talloak.
          Without Oakheart the vote was easy: seven in favor of war. All the other council members wanted to fight. Talloak looked at them and wondered if he would vote the same way, given a vote. But in the end the council spoke, and the remaining task was his.
          He gestured the magpie back to his hand.
          "This is to the lakeside flock, then eastern, then back. Not deepforest." He paused to make sure the magpie understood. "Call for hunters. Call for hunters. Call for hunters. At summer's peak we move for war."
          The magpie cawed loudly. He had his message. He knew the way. He squawked with pleasure, and the humans told him, Fly!
          He took off through the greattree's branches and entered the forest, weaving through the trees. He had his message. He knew the way. Call for hunters. At summer's peak we move for war.
          He flew swiftly, but he didn't go far before a glimpse of a familiar face caught his attention. The memory of good seed and stroking fingers brought him around to investigate. But with those memories came caution. The face belonged to a stoneman.
          The magpie circled closer and thought, Food.
          The stoneman was silent. It had no thoughts or memories. But it extended a branch, and in its hand it had the good seed. The magpie circled and watched the hand until his hunger was greater than his fear. Then he swooped to claim the seed for himself.
          He snatched at the food and scattered as much as he ate. Then he pecked at the stoneman's hand. More, he thought.
          When the stoneman didn't understand, he cawed at it. The hand moved underneath him, and he saw the stoneman's face again. It made a human sound, then it reached up with its other hand. The magpie investigated it eagerly for more food, but it held nothing. Instead it came around and pinched his neck painfully.
          The magpie cawed in protest and flapped away from the hand. But it came back and clutched him even tighter. Though the magpie struggled, it wouldn't let go.
          No more! he whined. He pecked at the stoneman with his beak and his thoughts. With a wild caw, he demanded, Free!
          But the stoneman had no thoughts, and it wouldn't understand. Its fingers tightened around his neck, and they twisted more and more painfully. With a tiy snap, the magpie's thoughts became still as stone.
          Varek slung the limp bird onto his waistband and dusted the seeds from his hands. He knew the magpie by its notched beak, which Talloak himself had pointed out to him once. Its presence meant the council had decided on war.
          But Varek already knew they would. All the Avian chiefs were the same: obsessed with prey, the other species, and themselves. Not one of them remembered a time of war, but they all salivated for it anyway. It was fitting that they chose it now.
          Varek checked for winged watchers and waved the others in. They appeared as a group from the bushes. They knew what his plan was and, more importantly, how not to interfere. They all looked at him with the same determined expressions. Then Ezre went wide-eyed.
          Varek spun around to face Yellowleaf, one of the young messengers that was always afoot. She was brandishing a child-sized stone spear that only trembled a little at the tip.
          "What did you do to the magpie, surd?" she demanded bravely. "He had a message. Why'd you kill him?"
          Varek cursed his own stupidity. The bird must have sent a distress call. He sould have anticipated that and been ready.
          "That's not your concern," he snapped at the girl. If he was lucky, the right tone would send the youngster scurrying. "The chieftain didn't want the message, I act on his orders."
          He wasn't lucky with this one. "Liar!" Yellowleaf accused him. "Talloak would never ask that of a surd."
          She spat the last word at him like it left a bad taste in her mouth. Varek looked back at her flatly. The hatred was nothing new, but for some reason it bothered him more than usual this sun. He distracted himself by thinking about how long it would take for the girl to wise up and call for help. Maybe she already had.
          That thought spurred Varek into action. He casually sidestepped the spear and grabbed Yellowleaf by the shoulder. She barely had the chance to protest, "Hey!" before he slammed his fist backhanded into her forehead. The stone that he held dented Yellowleaf's temple, and she crumpled to the floor.
          He left her where she fell and waved the others forward. Without glancing back, he took off through the forest. He was making up for lost time now. They weren't far from the greattree, and they all took up their positions silently. Varek shot Ezre a final look and took the leap. He stood straight and put a grin on his face. Then he drew a long, thin knife and stepped into the clearing of the greattree.
          He had caught the council as they were leaving. At the sight of him, they all stopped and turned to glare. Varek ignored them all and walked right up to Talloak. As the chieftain extended the standard greeting, Varek slapped it aside and brought up his blade. It gleamed whitely against Talloak's throat.
          "Your messenger is dead," he announced calmly. "Send a new one for me."
          The council seemed at a loss for what to do. Talloak made a lot of half-sounds in his throat but couldn't seem to find any words.
          "That's okay," Varek answered him as if he'd spoken. "I'll tell you what to think. Just send a bird with a spring flower, and we'll all walk away from this."
          Talloak's eyes went wide, but he still didn't respond.
          "Die, surd!" The cry came from somewhere behind him, and he rolled his eyes at the man's stupidity. Before Twistedtree could get his hands on Varek, Jina appeared from the undergrowth and intercepted him. In a quick movement, she punched the councilmember in the stomach and disappeared again. Twistedtree doubled over and moaned in agony.
          "Sorry," Varek called, "I lied. None of you will walk away from this. You really shouldn't have put us in charge of skinning prey."
          As he spoke, he backed Talloak up against the greattree. On the other side of the enormous trunk, Ezre was working away at a stone and a bed of needles.
          "I can see none of you are going to be useful for this," Varek said. "In that case we'll just take what we need."
          Varek looked around. Twistedtree was still moaning on the ground. The others were staring at him. Swiftwing was clutching her stomach in horror. Talloak stood very still under Varek's knife.
          "Jina, grab the tablets," Varek called. "Get ready to go."
          He ignored the scene and backed Talloak around the greattree and away from the council.
          "Why?" Talloak managed to croak out through the knife on his throat.
          "Because you sent that message," Varek answered. "And because you have a weakness."
          As he leaned into the knife at Talloak's throat, the first tendrils of smoke wound their way up from the base of the greattree.

Thirty-Six novella, fanfiction

Kelsie twisted her wooden charm in her fingers until the woven band dug deep into her wrist. She could count each metal screw on the wall as it passed by beneath her. The glass tube rose with the platform, and she smeared a sweaty pattern on it with her finger. A small memento. Nobody would ever know.

Then the glass was falling away, the screws and walls replaced by bare rock. Something was wrong with the lighting, and the smell. Noise crowded up in a confined space, beating away the silence from the prep room below. The announcement echoed and doubled back on itself until it spelled out Kelsie's doom. "Ladies and gentlemen. Let the thirty-sixth Hunger Games begin!"

In District 11, Kestin slammed his fist into the door. It added a third dent to the splintering wood. In the last week, he'd watched his sister get dragged into the Capitol's biggest, grandest festival yet. They'd paraded her every movement on screen and analyzed her every flaw as they turned her into a doll for slaughter. Kestin was tired of watching. If it weren't for his idiot friend—. He clenched his fist again, then opened the door instead.

The last echoes of the announcement chased themselves out of the cavern. The shuffling and cries of live creatures filled the space it left behind.

Kelsie blinked. Slowly, she waved a hand in front of her face. Then she raised the same hand until it scraped against stone. Soon she had both palms pressed to the rough rock above her, as if maybe she could push hard enough to float through to her familiar sky.

The boom of the cannon caught her by surprise. She stumbled off her plate, reeling in a sea of sound. She tried to remember the direction she faced coming out of the tube. With her hands pressed to her ears, she ran for the cornucopia that must be there. An instant later, pain blossomed in her head. She sank into an even deeper blackness.

Kestin's mother sat against the wall of the shack, as she had since the reaping. Kestin glanced at her for a moment before he marched out the door again. This time he didn't even make it to the road before he stomped back inside. With one hand, he hauled his mother to her feet and shoved her at a kitchen chair. She swayed and remained standing at arm's length.

Kestin had tried everything. He'd shaken her and pleaded with her and even dumped a bucket of precious clean water on her, and none of it did any good. Now her week of leave was almost up, and he couldn't get her awake enough to eat, much less return to work. He should have been out there now, watching the Games from screens that were mounted on trees. Instead he was punching holes in doors.

With a heavy thud, Kestin collapsed into the chair meant for his mother. They couldn't hide here forever. If neither of them returned to work tomorrow, they would be hunted down and punished, possibly executed. Hora's parents were both already out there, trying to make up his quota. He couldn't let them keep doing that, not with their son gone and their daughter sick. How had he gotten into this mess?

Kestin punched a dent into the table.

When Kelsie woke it was to a considerably quieter darkness. The frantic rush of movement was gone, replaced by the tiny skittering and squeaking of animals. She imagined that her head was spinning, but she couldn't tell in the pressing blackness. She reached out and scraped her knuckles against the stalactite (or was it a stalagmite?) that had claimed a portion of her scalp.

Gingerly, Kelsie pushed herself up and groped around to get her bearings. Even kneeling, she could almost brush the ceiling with her fingertips. The vague beginnings of claustrophobia gnawed at her, kept at bay by the expansive darkness.

A flurry of movement exploded near her. Something large moaned and shifted in the darkness, shedding small creatures and sounds that rushed over Kelsie, leaving behind scratches and goosebumps. She clamped a hand to her mouth to keep from screaming, and instead knocked her teeth against her wooden charm. Clutching it to her chin, she scrambled to a crouching position and stared desperately into the unknown.

A cannon shot shook the cavern. This time Kelsie did scream, the sound swallowed by another rocking boom. All together five blasts, ending in a scrabble of tiny rocks knocked from the surrounding stone. Silence fell briefly.

Before she could lose her nerve, Keslie began inching around the stalactite, toward the biggest echoes in the chamber. Almost immediately, her foot caught on a starting plate, and she fell with a clang. She landed in something solid and wet and still warm. A rodent crawled over her hands to gnaw at the body. She screamed again.

Hora's father Emmar showed up around noon. Normally he would eat in the fields, whatever rations they could scrounge. Instead he'd spent his only ten-minute break trudging to Kestin's unit.

"She lives," Emmar greeted him. "He does too."

Kestin nodded and continued to stare at his mother, who was quietly sobbing at the table, holding a potato. The whole situation seemed ridiculous to him now. Or it would, if he weren't so angry.

"It's a cave," Emmar continued. He probably saw the murder in Kestin's eyes. "Well, a maze of caves, I think. It's dark, and the cornucopia was filled with flashlights and torches and things. Also everything's a weird orange-ish color, they've got some sort of new cameras..." He seemed to be rambling for Kestin's benefit, but he trailed off on a memory.

Kestin nodded and took a breath. "How are they?" His mother was hiccuping now.

Emmar closed his eyes for a moment. "Alive. Hora made it out with some kind of torch weapon, but he was attacked by these bat things. Kelsie's still at the cornucopia, she was out for a bit." He made a face. "They haven't really figured out the removal thing in the caves, there's still bodies lying around. Five from the bloodbath, not as many as we'd hoped."

Emmar rubbed his temples and winced. Kestin understood. What kind of people would hope for something awful like that?

Only the truly desperate.

Kelsie clamped a bloody hand to her mouth as she let out a strangled cry. She stumbled around blindly, sobbing and running into things, until she realized she could see something reflective up ahead. The cornucopia. Kelsie reached it just as she realized the significance of her discovery. Smearing bloody handprints down its weave, she stumbled around to the cornucopia's mouth just as a light bobbed into view.

Excited whispers bounced their way to Kelsie's ears, resonating strangely in the cornucopia's mouth. If she could hear that, it wasn't hard to imagine the attention her scream had drawn. Keeping a hand on her mouth, Kelsie struggled between suffocating and hyperventilating. To distract herself, she climbed into the cornucopia.

It was empty. Picked clean of anything useful or even deadly, and in places looking charred and scratched. The interior gave off a tangy, metallic gasoline smell. As a place to hide, it was worthless. Panic grayed out Kelsie's vision. The voices were getting louder, the light almost blinding. Kelsie squeezed her eyes shut and crouched into a ball.

Then her eyes popped open again. Something glinted silver against the metallic gray. Reaching out, she swept the tiny object off the floor. Then she dug her boots into the metal and took a running leap straight out of the cornucopia's mouth.

Kestin dug his nails into his shovel's handle. It was a mistake for him to be out in the fields. He'd only wanted to take his work back from Emmar, but he hadn't thought what it would mean to see Kelsie up on those giant screens. It was a mistake. He couldn't watch this.

Eight startled faces—this year's unusually large Career pack—flashed by in a whirl before Kelsie ducked into a gaping hole in the wall of the cavern. A metallic clang followed her escape, and a shower of rock and dust darkened the entrance to what she hoped was a tunnel. A loud round of arguments chased her into the opening, the sound oppressive in the confined space. Their distorted echoes gave her hope that this particular cave had a second mouth.

After a quick glance behind her, Kelsie ran for the darkest part of the tunnel.

"Hoi!"

Kestin jerked his attention away from the screens in time to hear his shovel clatter to the ground. Before he could grab it, a peacekeeper's boot crunched it into the earth. The other boot met his chin as he stumbled backward, still crouched to retrieve the shovel. His jaw clacked painfully and he landed hard on his rear. Still, Kestin scrambled up to stand at attention.

The peacekeeper's high-heeled boots made him a couple inches taller than Kestin. As Kestin stood at attention, the peacekeeper's weapon rested on his collarbone.

"Name."

"Kestin Riverstone." Kestin continued to stare straight ahead, but he could tell the peacekeeper recognized his name. After all, the reaping was only a week ago.

"Riverstone." The peacekeeper shifted as he considered the boy, then tossed his head. "Y'never seen a Games before? Fancy screens, pretty pictures? 'Cause thata be a good excuse, y'know, for gawking like a pinkie."

Kestin shook his head. Nothing was ever a good excuse.

"Well. Maybe you're tired then. Didn't sleep? Mommy not feeling good?" The peacekeeper sneered.

Kestin held himself still, but he must have stiffened or shifted. The peacekeeper lost his sneer and glared.

"You got your week's leave from the reaping. Botha you did. You ask me, that's plentya time to rest up 'n' get back to serving the community." He drew out the word into com-YOO-nitty. "What're you out here for, Riverstone?"

"Clearing rocks."

"Then get to it." The peacekeeper swung his weapon to clip Kestin in the head. As he collapsed to the ground, he thought back to the first time that week that somebody had knocked him out.

The tunnel narrowed rapidly beyond the entrance. Soon Kelsie was edging sideways into a tall but narrow crack no wider than she was, relying on touch more than sight. Still she inched doggedly forward, more afraid of the light behind her than the darkness ahead. As long as she could keep ahead of that glow, she'd be safe. At least from the Careers.

Kelsie could hear arguments and shuffling behind her as the tunnel got steadily narrower. Squeezing through the rock made the going slow, but most of the Careers were bigger than she was. Before long, she left the sound of voices behind her. But one light continued to throw craggy shadows across the walls. The ragged breath of someone female—probably District 4, judging by her size—kept pace with Kelsie's progress down the tunnel. Gritting her teeth, Kelsie scraped her way forward.

Kestin was in shock. His mind raged against his skull, furious at the Capitol, the reaping, and the peacekeepers dragging his sister up the steps of the Justice Building. His body had the opposite reaction. As he watched the scene unfold—his sister crying, his mother screaming, a peacekeeper beating her to the ground—Kestin fell to his knees, unable to feel his legs.

Something blocked his view of the steps and his sister, and he pushed it away impatiently. Instead of moving, it took him by the shoulders and shook him, making it harder to see what was going on. Kestin frowned.

Some incessant noise was making it hard to concentrate, and he needed to concentrate if he was going to do something stupid. With renewed strength, Kestin shoved the annoyance aside and rose. Nothing stood in his way as he walked right up to the steps, intent on a single detail: the name of the male tribute.

The reaping had continued despite the fuss, as it always did. Kelsie was center stage, shaking silently, but Kestin had eyes only for the Capitol representative. She snagged a tiny slip of paper from an enormous vat and unfolded it.

"Tomas Agarwald."

The name was not one Kestin recognized, but it didn't matter much. He opened his mouth to volunteer, and the world went black.

Kelsie continued on for some time, steadily rubbing herself raw and wearing herself down. Behind her came District 4, always a few steps behind, her torch occasionally clanging against the rock. The sounds of the Career pack were long lost in the twisting tunnel, but still she chased her prey to the end.

That end came unexpectedly for Kelsie, who suddenly found herself wedged firmly between two walls and unable to move. Too weary to panic, she simply stopped. A little ways behind, hearing the halt in motion, District 4 also paused where she was. For a moment, the only sound in the tunnel was their breathing.

Then Kelsie heard a series of mechanical clicks, and the torchlight behind her wavered wildly. Roused by some feeble instinct, she made a renewed attempt to force her way through the rock. Hot pain lit up her hip, and she cried out. Still she struggled as her cry was drowned out by a swelling roar.

When Kestin woke in the fields, he looked up into Emid's face. He couldn't tell how long he'd been out, but his head still smarted where the peacekeeper had clipped it. Emid reached out to help him up and handed him a shovel. Time to get back to work.

Light and sound surged as white flames bloomed from the narrow crack behind Kelsie. Blistering heat licked at her side and warmed the walls she was trapped between. Kelsie struggled to find purchase on the walls and lever herself out. Her exposed skin felt uncomfortably tight, and her tears dried on her cheeks as she beat at the rock with her fists. Gritting her teeth, she set one boot against a jutting rock lit up by flames. She thrust herself forward and felt her hip wrench loose even as the sole of her foot blistered. Free of the stone walls, she stumbled away from the clawing flames.

The next stretch of tunnel was Kelsie's personal hell. Every step met her with shooting pain and offered only more rock pressing in from both sides. But stopping wasn't an option, because the flames advanced with her down the narrow passage to death. Twice Kelsie squeezed through sections too narrow to breathe in, afraid of getting stuck but more afraid of burning alive.

But the second bottleneck afforded her some time. District 4 struggled and swore as she forced herself and her weapon through the crack. Temporarily free of the flames, Kelsie continued down a section of tunnel that was gradually, almost imperceptibly getting wider. By the time District 4 fired up her torch again, Kelsie was half jogging, half stumbling in a region where she could almost bring both shoulders level.

Then the rock around her disappeared. Kelsie stumbled from the sudden change, abruptly disoriented. She found herself in a cavern larger than her living complex. The hot glow from the tunnel entrance barely reached the opposite wall.

Without the rock walls to guide her flight, Kelsie found herself directionless. Soon District 4 emerged from the tunnel, her staff-like torch back in lighting mode. Kelsie turned and limped toward the far wall, where she could just make out the openings to several larger tunnels. If she could distract District 4 long enough, maybe she could slip into one of those openings without her knowing which.

Before Kelsie could formulate a plan, a blinding pain knocked her vision askew and sent her tumbling to the ground. District 4 had knocked her already tender head with the torch. Now the girl stood over her, contemplating her prey. From close up, District 4 was even smaller than Kelsie remembered, though she was wiry with muscle and looked comfortable with a weapon. Her name was Rina, Kelsie recalled. Sixteen. The wavering torchlight made her look much older.

As Rina readied her weapon, something strange happened: the small flame flickered of its own accord, dancing briefly in its holder. Kelsie turned her head and caught the faintest draft of air, rich with the scent of something acrid and metallic. It came from one of the tunnels behind her, and it reminded Kelsie of fire.

Too late, Rina caught a whiff of the moving air as she lit up her torch. In a dazzling explosion, flames engulfed her head and torso. She cried out and tried to extinguish the flames, but the fire licked greedily at her skin. Kelsie clutched her face in horror and realized that her skin was covered in a thin residue that smelled like the air.

Rina shrieked and writhed as the flames spread and consumed her. Her screams followed Kelsie all the way down the tunnel she chose.

Kestin couldn't breathe. His shovel felt like lead in his hands, and his legs were shaking. From the corner of his eye, he could see Emid shooting him concerned looks. In the other corner, he tracked his peacekeeper friend leaning against a tree, leering at him. Kestin didn't miss the white flash of the peacekeeper's casually swinging gun.

As Kestin swung his shovel mechanically, he refused to look at the screens glaring down at him. Everyone in the sector was sneaking glances for him anyway. They all knew his sister was the star of the show today.

Kelsie ran blindly, Rina's silhouette still burning in her mind, and her cannon blast echoing in her ears. The tunnel began to branch, and she ran into one wall after another. Still she groped for a new direction and continued to run.

Eventually, she collided with a surface that gave way. Rock shards came away in her hands, and she instinctively snatched one up. That was when she realized she still held something else.

The tiny object she had taken from the cornucopia dug deep into her palm. Even when she forced open her hand and pried it out, she could feel its imprint like a solid object. She filled the gaping spot with her wooden charm and sat to examine her find.

The object was rectangular, no bigger than a matchbook but somewhat thicker. It was metallic, warm from her hand, and didn't really have a smell. When she shook it, it made a tiny swishing sound. With a sudden inkling of what the object might be, Kelsie felt around for a thin seam and dug a broken fingernail into the gap.

The top of the object popped up, and a tiny orange flame blinked to life. The burst of light lit up Rina's silhouette in Kelsie's mind, the vision flashing briefly but vividly. Then the horror faded and Kelsie was left staring into a flame smaller than that of a candle. But it was enough. Standing again, Kelsie held the lighter at arms length and began to explore around herself. She could see where she had crashed into the loose rock directly in front of a tunnel entrance. With new purpose, she grabbed some of the fallen shards and stuffed them in her jacket pockets. Then she set off again.

Kestin's dinner turned to dirt in his mouth as he chewed it, taking a brief sanctioned break out in the fields. Emid's friends sat around him eating silently and shooting glances at the screens, while Hora's friends ate further afield and shot glances at Kestin. Kestin wondered if any of them were his friends, too.

He was glad for the company, if only because it kept the peacekeepers from singling him out too easily. He got his first good look at the Games now that he could watch the screens from relative safety.

A helpful 3D diagram of the arena was rotating slowly on-screen while a Capitol woman in a skimpy dress pointed into various parts of it. The whole setup was a rabbit's warren of tunnels and caves, with color-coded regions and pulsing red dots where the tributes were. In the middle of the diagram, directly below the cornucopia room, was a large blue chamber that the woman was pointing out. The weren't many speakers out here to go with the screens, so Kestin could only guess at what she was saying. Probably something about combat tactics in the open space.

Kestin shook his head and forced the last bit of his dinner down his throat. He glanced over at Emid, and the two stood up to return to their post. Behind them, the other groups broke up and returned to work as well.

The tunnel that Kelsie found herself in was round, wide, and unnaturally straight. Once she got a good look around, she capped her lighter and wrapped it in her woven charm bracelet for easy reach. Then she closed her eyes and continued on, trailing her fingertips against the wall as she went.

Without the excitement of a chase, Kelsie's body gradually began to complain.

At first it was of pain. Every bit of her exposed skin was burned or rubbed raw. In places, her clothing had torn or worn down, and angry red skin peeked out from underneath. The rest of her was mostly uncooked—her clothing seemed to be fire resistant—but her hip and arms were badly bruised and her foot felt numb. Plus her head still throbbed from ramming into the rock and then getting knocked with a torch.

Once Kelsie had taken inventory of all her pains, a second need began to gnaw at her attention: thirst. She wasn't sure how long it had been since she'd risen into this nightmare, but her body was already protesting the loss of rich food and sweet drinks. The fire had leeched away all the moisture she could spare and left her tottering and groggy. She didn't even feel hungry. It was all she could do to keep walking.

The way home from Sector 8 took Kestin on Justice Road. The way was not lit, but faint moonlight filtered down to the wide dirt path. Regardless, Kestin knew the way by heart, and he let his mind wander as he walked.

All day he had watched horrors unfold in the arena, but only in bits and pieces. He couldn't stare openly with the nasty peacekeeper on patrol, but at times Kestin caught him watching too. Games week was known to be the least productive time of the year.

The horrible scene with Kelsie and that girl from District 4 wasn't even the worst of it, though that was pretty bad. At least Kelsie had gotten out of that one alive, though District 4 was not so lucky. The boy from District 10 was ripped apart by a swarm of bloodthirsty rats, and both tributes from District 12 were eaten by some sort of giant grotesque worm that chewed through the rock, creating long, straight tunnels.

Hora was generally absent on screen, though from what Kestin could see it was because he was fine, and not imminently dying. Kestin wondered if Hora knew where Kelsie was, and why he didn't look for her. Maybe he thought she was dead.

Kestin looked up to find himself staring at the arena itself, not just thinking about it. His feet had taken him into Justice Square, where enormous screens were mounted on the surrounding buildings for a panoramic view. For once, Kelsie was not front and center. Instead, the Capitol was preparing the first night's Death Viewing and firework show.

The announcer's voice echoed eerily in the empty square, blasting from slightly out-of-sync speakers on all sides. He was detailing the highlights of the day, the ups and the downs, how exciting the kickoff was for this year's Games. But wait—just wait!—for this upcoming show, it is not to be missed! New technology, new choreography, and we hear the President will make an appearance! It's coming right up after tonight's Viewing, so don't go away!

Kestin ground his teeth, but he stayed to make sure his sister was alive. The anthem began to play, and the camera cut to the nine horrible deaths that had happened that day, starting with the bloodbath. Kelsie didn't make an appearance, until the announcers began their pre-show recap of the biggest moments. Kestin spun on his heels and left the Square.

After some time, Kelsie shook herself and jerked to a stop. Unable to fight her discomforts, she'd fallen into a doze as she walked. Even periodic booms of the cannon hadn't woken her from her stupor. But something was different now. Fumbling with cold fingers, she found her lighter, still tied to her wrist, and popped the top. The wall she'd been following had changed to a sandy color, where before it was dark. Loose rock cluttered the tunnel, which had grown much wider. And there was a faint sound of running water.

Abandoning her wall, Kelsie stumbled toward the life-saving sound, down another stretch of sandy tunnel. She capped and secured her lighter and relied on her other senses instead. The sound and smell of water filled up the space. She was almost there.

Without warning, the ground underneath her suddenly gave way. The sound of rushing water roared up from beneath her, and with a squeal Kelsie plummeted into an underground river and was swept away.

The light was on in Kestin's unit. He opened the door to find what looked like half the complex squeezed into the shack-like space, where somebody industrious had dragged the community viewing screen. Hora's parents were there, and Emid, and some of the older residents of the sprawling, one-story complex that Kestin's unit was a part of. Evidently they had watched the nightly show together, then stayed around for support.

Kestin found a free bit of table space next to Emid and sat there silently. Emid had been the one to tell Kestin that Hora had volunteered in his place. His best friend and partner had knocked him out to help his sister, leaving behind his own little Emilee. When Kestin woke, Emid was standing over him as his new partner in the fields.

Then the bastards had done something cruel, crueler than the reaping and the Games combined. He still remembered the peacekeeper's face as she told him he couldn't visit both tributes. They were running behind schedule, he'd been unconscious for too long. Her sneer betrayed the thinly-veiled lie. Still, they made him choose. His partner, or his sister. He couldn't say goodbye to both.

Kestin was roused from his recollections by an animal's cry. It came from his mother, who knelt directly in front of the screen, her hands pressed to its surface. Her precious Kelsie was there.

The camera switched between a wild, bobbing, half-submerged close-up and a steady overhead view that followed Kelsie's progress down a turbulent black river. Kestin scrambled over someone's legs and dragged his mother out of the way for a better view. Acid fear clawed down his spine as he leaned inches from the screen. Kelsie didn't know how to swim.

Kelsie didn't know how to swim. The icy water sucked her breath away and refilled her lungs with liquid. Her tumbling race downstream kept her disoriented, and the rapid current yanked her flailing limbs out of her control. But the water was not deep, and the bed was solid rock. No obstacles stood in the way of the single-minded river, which carried Kelsie ever faster down a gradually sharper decline.

Suddenly the river released her from its icy grip, and she found herself blessedly free of the mad rush of water. Space felt empty around her after her brief struggle with the current. Then she slammed into the water once more with enough force to drive the liquid from her lungs and the thoughts from her mind.

The water was deep, and even colder than the river. From all directions, the roar of waterfalls filled the space as the water filled the pool. Kelsie heard the sound from underwater, a deep-seated rumble that stirred the water and threatened to bury her. But the river had thrown her far toward the center of the pool, and the water around her was calm. Too exhausted to struggle, Kelsie quietly sank.

The air outside was cool. The stars had come out in force, twinkling brightly without shedding any light. The moon had dipped below the horizon, which suited Kestin fine. Kelsie had always like starlight better anyway.

Kestin felt strangely calm. He thought of Kelsie, buried deep where she couldn't see her precious stars, and he felt empty. He remembered her last days in the Capitol, cute as a button, dressed as a daffodil for the opening ceremony—her favorite flower. He remembered back to the days when she was too small to work, and she would play in the daisies as he and his mother plowed the fields. He remembered the peaceful look on her face as she drowned.

From behind him, Kestin was roused by the sound of frantic shouting.

Kelsie woke up coughing. A warm hand clapped her on the back as she ejected water from every available orifice. After an endless time of retching Kelsie sat back, only to feel her muscles seize in violent shivers. It hurt to breathe and her body was a numb, tingling mess.

At least she wasn't thirsty any more.

Kelsie doubled over in hysterical giggles even as she continued to shake. She knew she should be wary, and that she had almost died, and that death was still a very real possibility. But as she shivered and rocked and giggled, she just couldn't begin to care.

A brown-skinned hand thrust something slimy and rubbery into her hands, startling her into relatively tranquil hiccups. Kelsie looked up into a familiar face.

Kestin couldn't fathom where Hora had learned how to swim. All of District 11 had been in a state of drought for as long as he could remember, and any body of water bigger than a puddle had long been sucked dry to tend the dying crops. Every day somebody died from heatstroke or dehydration, yet somehow the bastard had access to enough water to make out like a fish.

Kestin clenched his fists against his unreasonable anger, but try as he might, he couldn't muster up anything to replace it. Most of the others in his tiny unit looked desperately relieved, or even downright happy. But Hora's parents looked stunned. They hadn't known either. Somehow that made Kestin feel better.

The slimy mass turned out to be edible, and Kelsie wolfed it down as she examined her new surroundings.

She was still in the waterfall cavern, looking down on the great black pool that had almost swallowed her whole. The cave walls were peppered with tunnel openings, about half of which were actively vomiting water into the massive pool. Some waterfalls even fell straight from the ceiling, where Kelsie could see just as many openings. The whole place reminded her of cheese.

Hora's torch gave her warmth and sight, but she soon realized she could see much farther in the cavern than the torchlight should allow. The reason was obvious: all throughout the cavern, wherever the waterfalls landed, the churning water glowed.

"Bacteria," Hora shouted by way of explanation. The sound in the cavern was overwhelming. Kelsie couldn't imagine what germs had to do with that beautiful blue light, but she recognized that whatever it was had saved her life. The disturbance her body made in the water must have lit her up like a lantern.

That mystery solved, Kelsie focused her attention on Hora as she continued to eat. Her big brother's best friend was always something of a mystery to her, though definitely not in a bad way. He was big and strong, but he was also quiet. She thought of him as a gentle giant. Part of her was unreasonably glad that he was there with her.

Hora caught her looking at him and offered her another chunk of slimy mushroom. Kelsie took it and nibbled more slowly, looking for the right question to ask. Finally she settled on, "How did you get here?"

Hora shrugged. Then he hesitated and reached into a rock cubby, pulling out what looked like a compass. "Got it off 10," he shouted.

Kelsie swallowed as she took the device, remembering the wet warmth of someone's body. "Is— Is he dead?" The shouting hurt her throat.

Hora nodded and held up a fist with a hooked index finger raised. "You missed the anthem."

Kelsie considered this for a moment. Nine dead already. Before she could figure out what that meant for her, the object in her hands danced to life. It was a compass, but it was behaving erratically. It spun and stopped in no particular rhythm, direction, or pattern. Hora scooted over and pointed at a round blue symbol.

"It led me here," he said into her ear. His breath tickled. "I think they all come here." He jerked his head to indicate the numerous tunnel openings visible from all sides.

Kelsie nodded and returned the compass. She sat back against the wall of the recess they perched on and unexpectedly yawned. Before she could ask Hora about swimming, she fell into an exhausted sleep.

Kestin slept like a dead man all night. He woke with the summer sun, feeling unfairly well-rested. He glanced at the screen still in his unit. Yesterday's recaps were still playing—nothing interesting had happened during the night.

His mother slept fitfully in front of the screen. As Kestin tiptoed around her and prepared for a day of work, he watched the miraculous rescue of his sister in slow motion and three different spectrums of light. Clearly the glowing chamber was the pride and joy of the gamemakers, along with their fancy new cameras. Kestin shook his head and knelt to wake his mother.

A deep rumbling shook Kelsie awake. Already alert, Hora paused, looking out on the water. Kelsie felt more than heard the groaning of rock over the continued pounding of the waterfalls. As she drew herself up she gasped and stared over the ledge.

The entire cavern vibrated and stirred the water, which began glowing a uniform, brilliant blue. Kelsie could see almost as many tunnel entrances underwater as there were riddling the walls high and low.

As Kelsie stared, the blue light wavered and the water level began to drop, draining through the openings. Like soft clay, the tunnel entrances riddling the cavern began to shift and twist. She watched disbelievingly as openings moved and shrank and appeared on the cavern walls. Solid rock warped as easily as mud as the cavern rearranged itself.

The movement and the harsh blue light made Kelsie dizzy, and she sat to keep from falling. But Hora was tugging at her arm, dragging her attention away from the mesmerizing shift of rock. Looking around in alarm, Kelsie realized the alcove they were sheltered in was also caught up in the shift. The surface they stood on was steadily shrinking.

Kestin paused on his way out the door with his mother in tow. Something was happening on screen, and it looked like Kelsie was involved. Kestin swore and glanced at the sun, then at his mother. Gritting his teeth, Kestin blocked her view of the screen and ushered her out the door. He couldn't risk earning a whipping for either of them today.

Scrambling to her feet, Kelsie clung to Hora's arm as he shoved her toward a narrow ledge that ran along the cavern wall. Looking at it, Kelsie balked. The water had already retreated several hundred feet, and the ledge looked down on a nasty, rocky death. She definitely did not like this plan. But their resting spot was rapidly disappearing, and she didn't have much choice. As she stepped onto the narrow strip, she vaguely hoped that the ledge wouldn't decide to rearrange itself too.

Their destination was a tunnel entrance just reachable from across the ledge. To distract herself from the idea of falling, Kelsie kept her eyes on her feet. She inched forward with her face pressed against the wall, but Hora kept shoving her and making her stumble. She looked up to yell at him, and stopped when she saw with horror that the tunnel entrance was shrinking.

Kelsie nearly sent them both tumbling to their deaths as she grabbed at Hora with both arms. With a grim determination, Hora kept his footing and shoved her forward even more roughly. The two marched toward the closing entrance with a death wish, choosing the constricting rock over the fatal drop.

The opening was barely a yard across when they reached it. Eyes squeezed shut, Kelsie tumbled through the opening and scrambled forward blindly. Hora crawled in after her, shoving her along from behind whenever she collapsed. The tunnel shook violently around them before the sides met with a sickening crunch, and the world went black.

The same peacekeeper was waiting for Kestin at his new station. He was chatting with a female counterpart as the workers arrived, but he took the time to stop and point out Kestin. Kestin made the mistake of noticing, and the peacekeeper sneered. The woman looked less than impressed, but she shrugged and watched as the workers lined up to receive their details.

Kestin and Emid were handed a large gathering basket by a surly-looking fellow worker. The routine was familiar—fill the basket with berries, or earn a lash for every missing quart. The wide basket would hold 25 gallons of the tiny bloodberries they were told to pick.

The work was boring and hard on the back, but Kestin was young and angry enough to attack it with a vengeance. At least the thick berry bushes—perhaps not as thick nowadays with the drought—provided some shelter for whispered conversation. Kestin chose a spot far from the peacekeepers that afforded him a sidelong view of a couple screens. Emid followed silently and bent to his work.

Hora's torch flared up with a whoosh. Kelsie looked up at a solid wall of rock where they had come through. From the other side, she could still hear the faint rumbling of dozens of waterfalls. With a hysterical laugh, she collapsed against what used to be the tunnel opening.

Hora dusted debris from his pants and shook his head at Kelsie, who couldn't stop laughing. She flung herself at him and kissed him on the cheek, whooping. Hora absently kept her hair from lighting in the torch and set her aside at arm's length. He approached the dead end.

"We have to get back there," he murmured, knocking his knuckles against the rock.

"What? Why?" Kelsie sobered up abruptly and stared at him incredulously. "That's insane."

Hora glanced at her but didn't answer. He ran his hands over the very solid rock, which felt like any other rock he knew.

Kelsie tried again. "We just nearly died!"

Hora shrugged and turned on his heels. "C'mon," he told her. "I'd rather not die here."

He set off down the other end of the tunnel. After a few wordless protests, Kelsie ran to catch up with the light.

After some time, Kestin realized he'd crushed more than one of the juicy red berries in his fingers. The pink stain would earn him a couple of lashes later, for a mistake he hadn't made in years. He rolled his shoulders and twiddled his fingers, trying to relax.

"Why is he helping her?" he hissed into the bush.

Until he said it, Kestin hadn't realized he was grinding his teeth over Hora. The guy had worked next to Kestin for six years, watching his back and making snide comments when the peacekeepers weren't looking. But thinking back, Kestin couldn't remember a single thing about him. He knew about Hora's family because he also had a little sister and it was something they could talk about. But the surest thing he knew about Hora was his love for Emilee, and for his parents. So why the hell would he throw all that away for Kelsie?

Kestin looked up to see Emid examining him, looking oddly like he was trying to sniff out a trick question. Kestin glanced away uncomfortably and dropped another handful of berries into the basket. After a while, Emid seemed to make up his mind about something and shifted closer to talk.

Kelsie and Hora paused in a cavern as a tribute's cannon boomed. They looked at each other, but nothing happened. They shrugged and continued on, both peering more intently into the darkness around them.

"You've heard of the Wildflowers."

Kestin raised an eyebrow, effectively distracted from his thoughts about Hora. "What, the crazies living in the woods? I heard the peacekeepers bang on trees at night to scare us with their ghost stories."

Emid shook his head. "Maybe crazy, but they don't live in the woods. It's too dangerous."

Kestin rolled back on his heels for a moment to stare at Emid. He couldn't tell if the older boy was pulling his leg. Emid glanced from him to the peacekeepers, and Kestin reached for another patch of berries.

"You can't be serious," he hedged.

Emid shrugged. "I could be wrong," he said, though he sounded like he was just humoring Kestin.

Kestin frowned at what Emid was suggesting. The Wildflowers were crazy fugitives, or escaped convicts or something—they all knew the like, though nobody had ever met any. It was a miracle that they survived in the deep woods, if they existed at all. What could Hora possibly have to do with them?

There were other stories too, even less likely to be true—stories that the Wildflowers were a band of rebels, gathering resources to overthrow the Capitol and building a military base in the wilderness. Is that what Emid meant?

Kestin tried to think back on everything Hora had said before, and whether any of it hinted that Hora was a secret rebel looking to overthrow the government. At the thought, Kestin forgot himself and snorted loudly, drawing a glare from a nearby peacekeeper. The peacekeeper sauntered over, and Kestin bent his head back down to his work.

Kelsie watched Hora's back resentfully as they trudged through the tunnels. The waterfall chamber was pretty and all, but today was the second time she'd nearly died there, and she didn't really want to go for a third round.

Plus, they were clearly lost. She could've sworn they'd passed the same jutting rock three times now, and they'd already been walking for hours. Her hip hurt, and her foot, too. Also, she was hungry. The only thing they had with them was a flask of water that Hora carried, and she wasn't about to ask for it.

Kelsie shot another glare at Hora's back as he paused again to check that damned compass. Clearly the thing didn't work, and they needed food and water now. She made a "get on with it" gesture at him, earning her a raised eyebrow and a shrug. She was beginning to hate his maddening indifference to anything that she did.

They were approaching yet another bend in the tunnel when Hora's torch fizzed out, plunging them into sudden darkness. Kelsie opened her mouth to protest, only to feel a hand clamp it shut. Before she could take a bite out of it and scream, Hora's voice hissed into her ear.

"Quiet," he warned.

Kelsie held still and breathed through the hand on her face. She heard it now—something large and alive was shuffling in the tunnel ahead. Hora whispered again in her ear. "Do you still have the little light?"

Kelsie tugged his hand from her mouth. "What?" Her whisper came out harsher and louder than she expected.

Hora clamped his hand back down and hissed, "The lighter."

Surprised, Kelsie reached for her woven band and clasped two objects there—her charm, and the lighter she had tied to it a lifetime ago. Silently, she nodded against the hand on her mouth.

Hora's hand found hers and deftly untangled the lighter. Kelsie heard the metallic click of the top and a slight sputtering. After a moment, the tiny flame blinked to life between Hora's cupped palms. He gave her a look that said, Stay put, and disappeared around the bend.

Kestin brought up the Wildflowers again at lunch. Half-jokingly, he asked if Emid's parents had ever told him stories about them to get him to stay inside at night. But for all his previous talkativeness, Emid was evasive. He pointed instead to the viewing screens, where some disturbance was breaking out.

A scream echoed down the tunnel, and Kelsie jumped. Hora's torch flared up full-force and Kelsie scrambled around the corner, only to find Hora's torch brandished at her chest.

"Move!" Hora yelled. Kelsie dove around the side of the torch as Hora hurled a rock past her. It made a fleshy thunk as it found its target, and the wounded animal responded with a snarl. Squinting past the glare of the torch, Kelsie could just make out the creature. It sidled along the wall of the tunnel, which opened into a large chamber just around the bend.

Hora grabbed another rock as the animal shied away, swerving and lunging unpredictably. Its movements were erratic and frightening, punctuated with growls and screeching. Hora waved his torch to see if he could get it to back off, and Kelsie caught a brief glimpse of the creature as the light swung away. It was smaller than she'd first thought, and something about it looked familiar. She leaned forward to see it better, and she caught a snippet of its growling.

It was arguing with itself.

With a squeal, Kelsie leapt backwards into Hora. At the same time, the creature settled its argument and lunged fearlessly for the torch. Off-balance, Hora flung Kelsie away and swung his long torch like a club.

The boy from District 6 caught the hot end of the torch, howling in pain but not letting go. He fought for the weapon with a furious disregard for his own safety. His eyes were wild, his mouth open and drooling. Hora struggled with him in a deadly tug-of-war.

Pressed up against the wall of the cave, Kelsie scrambled to find a rock to throw. Her movements caught the fickle attention of the tribute, who dropped the torch and leapt after Kelsie. The sudden release sent Hora tumbling backward to the floor.

Kelsie dove sideways too slowly and collapsed in a heap under the maddened tribute. She screamed and scrabbled at the rock, but the boy had her legs pinned and was clawing his way toward her head. The pressure on her legs increased as Hora joined the pile, pressing his torch flame-first into the tribute's back. The boy roared, a guttural animal sound too big for his skinny frame. But as Kelsie had found, the tribute outfit was flame retardant, and it took many moments for the boy's struggling and clawing to stop. The moment it did, Hora reached out and flung the tribute off Kelsie's back. His cannon boomed as he crunched against the wall and collapsed to the floor in a broken pile.

A peacekeeper grabbed Kestin by the ear and began hauling him back to his station. Eyes streaming in protest, Kestin stumbled along as Emid followed silently with the basket.

Back at their bush, the peacekeeper gave his ear an extra twist before dropping him on the ground. She turned to leave, then changed her mind and kneed him in the head to get his attention.

"I don't care whose brother you are," she stated loudly, "I still expect the same amount of work."

She turned and shot a, "You too," as an afterthought to Emid, then strode off to make her exit.

Kestin held his throbbing ear and swore over the many times his poor head had been abused that week. He reached for another patch of berries, tears flowing now from relief.

Kelsie's head spun from when she'd cracked it against the floor. Hora kept shaking her by the shoulders, not helping matters at all. He was yelling something, too, about whether the boy had bitten her? Movement set her head spinning again, but she shook it anyway, frightened by Hora's intensity. He dropped her, and she leaned her head thankfully on the cool, solid ground.

Hora went back to the body, which still lay unclaimed near the entrance they had come through. With the butt of his torch, he turned over what was left of the boy from District 6. He looked frail in death, though no less wild. As Hora nudged him, his head lolled over to stare Kelsie in the eyes.

Kelsie screeched and sat up too quickly, reinforcing her throbbing headache. Hora jumped at the noise and looked around a little wildly.

"The girl," he muttered. "I have to get rid of her."

"What?" Kelsie was still holding her head, but she looked up to see Hora already striding away. She scrambled to her feet and skittered in a wide circle around the body to follow Hora's fading light. Behind her, the stone floor of the tunnel opened up, swallowing the remains of District 6 forever.

Kestin's thoughts swam in circles around the Games while his hands continued to work. The knowledge of madness running rampant in the arena put lead in his chest. Whatever secret underground society Hora was a part of, Kestin hoped they knew how to deal with madness, too.

Kestin scowled at the thought of Hora. He couldn't decide whether to be suspicious or relieved or just to laugh at the whole thing, which made him feel a little mad himself. It didn't help that Emid was still placidly plucking berries, acting like the world wasn't falling apart. Kestin had an overwhelming urge to throw something at his head.

With an effort, Kestin unclenched his hands, which shook as he continued to gather berries. It didn't matter, he decided. Hora was helping Kelsie, and that had to be a good thing. Forget Emid and his insane ideas. The world was mad enough already.

Kelsie walked quickly to keep up with Hora's long stride. He was acting strangely, swinging his torch at shadows and tapping the rock periodically. Still too dizzy to talk and walk at the same time, Kelsie stayed silent and tried to hold her head together, despite its apparent need to split apart.

But eventually the headache became too much, and Kelsie stopped to sit next to a jutting boulder. It took Hora a while to notice, and his torch light bobbed almost out of view as Kelsie watched blearily. When he returned for her, it was to scold.

"Come on," he insisted. "We have to keep moving!"

Kelsie moaned something incoherent, and Hora finally seemed to notice her condition. He knelt by her and poked at her head, making it throb.

"Well," he commented, "at least you're not vomiting. You've probably got a minor concussion." Strangely, he sounded a lot calmer than he had since their struggle.

Reaching into a pocket somewhere, Hora produced something small and pressed it into Kelsie's hand. "Here," he told her. "We'll rest a bit then find something to eat."

Kelsie opened her hand to find her little lighter. There was a ding in a corner and a scratch down one side, but otherwise it had somehow survived unscathed. She flipped the cap briefly just to see the little flame, then tied it back onto her charm. She leaned her head on the boulder she was sitting against and closed her eyes to rest, just for a moment.

To distract himself from thoughts about Hora and Emid and the Wildflowers, Kestin tried to keep tabs on what was happening in the arena. If nothing else, the Games were an excellent distraction.

The latest bit of entertainment was taking place in a huge vertical shaft where a tribute—male or female, Kestin couldn't tell—struggled to climb up the sheer rock as the bottom filled with layers and layers of giant swarming rats. Higher up there was another tribute shouting something that was barely audible out in the fields. A slide-in caption identified them as the pair from District 3.

The boy, a scrawny-looking 14-year-old like Kelsie, was offering the butt end of a torch for his district partner to grab onto. The girl, 18, was clawing frantically at the rock to stay above the rising tide of rats. She grabbed the torch and the two scrambled up a few more feet out of sheer panic.

From his vantage point in the berry bushes, Kestin could faintly hear a speaker farther afield, which was playing an appropriately percussive soundtrack to the scene. But for just a moment, he imagined he could hear the horrible clawing and squealing and snapping of the rats below. He shook his head and focused on the screen.

The girl was clearly struggling now, her strength fading as she clung to the rock. The rats began jumping and nipping at her feet and legs, making her lose her footing as soon as she could regain it. She grabbed for a jutting rock that came loose in her hands, and she and the boy both slid down several inches before he regained his purchase on the wall. One hand still gripped the torch, supporting the girl on the other end. But she was heavy, and an instant later a rat sank its teeth into her leg and began dragging her down.

For just a second, the boy froze. Kestin could see the moment of his realization that they would both die in that pit. He didn't fight the weight of the girl and the rat, though he hung on to the torch for just a moment longer. Then he let it slip out of his fingers and scrambled up the rock, reaching for a tunnel opening as the rats tore up the girl below.

The scene ended with an artfully dramatic cut of the girl sinking into a well of rats as the boy fled down the tunnel. Kestin could hear the final boom of her cannon from the speakers. His face twisted into a scowl as he continued to strip a bush of berries. If it were Kestin, he would have tried to keep the torch.

Kelsie's stomach finally woke her with a loud complaint. Hora glanced up, distracted. He'd been checking his compass, marking directions on the tunnel floor with a piece of chalky brown rock. Kelsie crawled over to take a look, taking care not to jostle her head.

Hora handed her the water flask, now dangerously low, and told her, "C'mon, let's go."

He gathered his things to leave, but Kelsie balked. She realized she still had no idea what the plan was.

"Wait," she ventured. "What are we even— Where are we going?"

"Away from here," Hora returned. "That's all you need to know."

That didn't sit well with Kelsie. "Hey, wait a second, how— what are you— just wait!" Kelsie stamped her foot and glared at Hora, searching for the right words. Hora raised an eyebrow at her but set down his torch and waited, at least.

Kelsie took a breath and tried to articulate her thoughts. "Where are we going?" she started. Before Hora could answer, she continued, "How does your compass work? What kind of a map is this? What are we going to eat? Why—"

Hora cut her off then with a hand over her mouth. "Okay, okay," he shushed her. "Here, I'll show you."

He took out his compass and held it flat in one palm. "I think the rock around us has magnetic veins pointing the way, and the needle reacts to that. Except the rock isn't all solid, and the needle is twitchier around big caves where there's less magnetic rock. Also it's been getting more humid as we go, so I think we're getting closer to that waterfall place, or at least there should be more fungus growing around soon, especially if there's a cave. So we'll keep going, okay?"

Kelsie nodded, though reluctantly. Hora talked to her like she was still a kid, and it made her feel stupid. She should've just shut up and observed more closely, instead of taking naps.

"C'mon," Hora said again. "And if you don't have any more questions, let's go quietly. Sound carries in these tunnels."

By the time Kestin had filled his basket, night had fallen. He presented the basket to the Peacekeepers, standing stoically as they lashed him thrice across the shoulders for the berries he'd wasted. He barely noticed the sting, and would have fallen asleep if it weren't for the peacekeeper gripping his hair. His walk back was longer today. He set off with his feet dragging and his head spinning from exhaustion. He dozed as he walked. There was a commotion in Justice Square as Kestin neared it on the Justice Road. Kestin wondered briefly if it had anything to do with his sister, but through his exhaustion and hopelessness he couldn't bring himself to care. Turning back to the road, Kestin bypassed the Square and continued on his way home.

At some point, Hora stopped so abruptly that Kelsie smacked into his broad back. Gingerly, she sat on the rough floor and rubbed her head. Hora put a hand on her shoulder and drew her attention up to the ceiling.

The rock was shifting to reveal a set of screens, just like those they had back home. The anthem began to play, and Hora sat beside Kelsie. Craning her neck made her head hurt, so Kelsie lay back to watch the show.

The girl from District 3 appeared first. Kelsie looked at Hora, but he shrugged, too. "Might've been the one from when you were out," he guessed. "Or maybe from this morning."

The boy from District 6 looked nice in his picture, hair neatly combed, dressed like the first day of school. The girl from District 7 also made an appearance, a Career. That rounded up the three deaths Hora was aware of, though Kelsie wondered what could have taken District 7 out. She was a brute of a girl, with arms like logs.

Seeing her picture reminded Kelsie of something Hora had said.

"Is that the girl you were talking about?" she turned her head to look at him. Hora shook his head and got to his feet, offering her a hand. The moment Kelsie got up, he turned again and resumed his search down the tunnels. This time Kelsie shut up and followed.

When Kestin arrived at his unit, his mother's entire team waited there. The six women turned to him as he entered. Sucking in a breath, Kestin looked for his mother.

She sat on the bed, one arm held up to her face. Her sleeve hid much of the damage, but even from his angle Kestin could see the blooming red-purple bruise that mottled her dark skin. She looked up at Kestin and lowered her arm to reveal the mangled, bloody mess that was her eye.

His mother's partner Marnie was trying to fix her face without damaging it further. Kestin's hands were shaking too badly to help, so he turned away from the gruesome sight.

"What happened." Kestin spoke flatly to the room at large.

Nobody answered at first. Kestin looked around at the other women and noticed the welts and bruises that many of them sported on their arms, legs, and faces. An icy rage settled in his stomach and began to boil.

"What. Happened."

One of the women—Bridget? or Bristol?—held a sleeping infant. She shifted her weight in a way that suggested a hurt leg.

"She dropped her fruit, when he— when it attacked the girl," she offered. "The fruits bruised. Safi made it worse."

A young woman barely older than Kestin turned to her in protest. "They were whipping her! What were we supposed to do?"

"Shut your mouth and keep working!" The older woman jogged her infant, who'd begun to cry. "You got us all beat for her, you idiot!"

"How can you say that! That was her kid!"

"Shut. Up." Kestin glowered around at the women. Safi clamped her mouth shut and looked at Kestin pleadingly. He ignored her. "Who did this."

Six pairs of eyes looked back at Kestin. Bristol's infant wailed, and she pulled up her shirt to feed him.

"Who did this!" Kestin slammed his palm into the table. "Safi!" He whirled on the girl.

Safi opened her mouth, only to shut it again under the glares of her team. She shook her head and shied away from Kestin's fury, hunching a shoulder reflexively.

Disgusted, Kestin spun on his heel and flung open the door. "Get out."

When no one reacted, he slammed the table again. "Get. Out!"

Bristol hiked her baby up on her hip and marched out, followed by a few of the younger women. Kestin ignored their sympathetic looks. Safi hesitated, then flinched when Kestin glared. She quickly reached up her sleeve and placed something on the table, then scuttled out the door.

Kestin let the door swing shut behind her and turned to his mother. Absently, he picked up Safi's gift and rolled it in his palm. It was a pristine, bright green apple.

They'd only gone a bit further when Hora shut off his torch and whispered, "Look!"

Once Kelsie's eyes had adjusted to the relative darkness, she could see there was a deep blue glow coming from up ahead. They must have found the waterfall chamber after all.

But Hora was shaking his head like he could read her mind. Kelsie could barely see the gesture in the gloom, but she could make out Hora reaching up to twist one ear.

He was right, there was no sound here from the crashing waterfalls. Only now did Kelsie realize that it was eerily silent, without even the tiny skittering and squeaking of animals that had accompanied them down all the tunnels before.

"Another tribute?" Kelsie breathed into Hora's ear.

Hora shrugged and put a finger to his lips, irritating Kelsie. Obviously she would be quiet. But before she could even glare Hora was off, inching toward the blue glow. Kelsie gripped her lighter and charm and followed.

Marnie stayed behind to care for Kestin's mother. Kestin didn't mind the help, not from Marnie. The old woman had been a presence in his life since before he was born, as his mother's midwife. For as long as he could remember, Marnie had looked just as she did now—withered and thin, but also tall, wiry, and poised. Only now, an angry red welt licked up her arm and kissed her neck. The two worked in silence.

After some time, Marnie spoke up. "Don't mind Brisa," she murmured without looking up from the bandage she was applying. "When the whip came down on Saf, she took three lashes without a word. She's just worried about the babe."

Kestin nodded. He was still too angry to think well of anything, but he let Marnie's voice wash over him as his hands worked at the stiffness in his mother's back. His own fresh lashes twinged in sympathy at his mother's welts, though he knew it must be infinitely worse for her.

Marnie's lips were pursed as she dipped a bandage into their clean water ration. "It's not the end for her at least," she said bitterly. "There is still plenty of work she can do with only one eye."

Sudden rage made it hard for Kestin to see what he was doing. He stepped aside and braced himself on the table, breathing hard. Marnie paused briefly in her work to rub his back as he started half-sobbing. Eventually he lurched to the door for some air.

When he returned, Marnie had finished bandaging and his mother was sleeping fitfully. When Marnie turned to him, he looked her in the eye and asked, "What do you know about the Wildflowers?"

Kelsie gasped when they found the source of the beautiful blue glow. Embedded deep into the surrounding rock were veins of cloudy crystal, all glowing a steady brilliant blue. The veins grew thicker as they continued on, until they reached a large chamber filled with crystal jutting from the walls, floor, and ceiling alike.

Delighted, Kelsie searched the walls for a piece she could break off and keep. The crystal was cold to the touch, and rougher than Kelsie expected. She gathered a generous handful of plum-sized crystal chunks, which she held out to Hora for inspection.

Hora offered her something in return: more of the slimy mushroom that grew in the caves. Abandoning her crystals, Kelsie snatched up the food and began wolfing it down. Hora was eating his own share and stuffing another handful into a pocket when he froze. An instant later, he was making big gestures at Kelsie to move back. He snatched up his torch and backed up with her as a skinny tribute ambled into view around a tower of crystals.

Something was clearly wrong with her, like the boy from District 6. She was stumbling around and mumbling to herself, seemingly fascinated by the blue light. Her wispy hair was everywhere, and she reminded Kelsie of a confused moth.

Kelsie absently stepped forward to get a better look, only to have Hora shove her back against a wall of crystal. Before Kelsie could protest, he made a giant leap and swung the torch at the girl's head with a sickening crunch. Her cannon sounded before she even hit the floor.

Horrified, Kelsie pressed herself back against the crystal and stared wide-eyed at Hora. When she finally found her voice, she choked out, "What the hell, Hora!"

"Shut up!" he hissed at her. He disappeared around from where the girl came from and made a quick loop around the cavern. Behind him, the ground swallowed up the girl without so much as a rumble.

When Hora returned he glanced briefly at where the girl had been before reporting, "Only two other exits, the area's clear. We should scatter some pebbles and be more careful."

Kelsie was still shocked at Hora's brutality. Her mouth worked a couple times before she could get any sound out. Her voice was tiny when she asked, "Why did you have to do that? She didn't look dangerous!"

Hora was busy following his own advice and gathering pebbles to scatter at the entrances to the cave. "Don't be an idiot," he told her. "Madness is a bigger danger to us than anything else we could find in this hellhole."

"We don't even know who she was!" Kelsie cried. She was crying now, though she couldn't articulate why.

Hora finally stopped and faced her. "Look," he reasoned, "we can't risk madness and we can't afford to let other tributes live, because we need this chance. Okay? She was probably also District 6 like the boy, which is why we heard her scream and why she'd also gone mad. It's probably spread by some of the creatures here, so stay away from them. Alright?"

Kelsie shook her head and fled deeper into the cavern. Hora let her go.

Kestin slept badly that night. He rose every half-hour to adjust his mother's bandages and check for fever. Then he returned to bed, and as he lay there his head was filled thoughts of the Wildflowers.

Kelsie found her discarded crystals and gathered them back up, taking comfort in their steady glow. When she still couldn't stop shaking, she eased herself into a large crack in the crystal and let the blue light wash over her from all around. She pressed her cheek against the rough rock and closed her eyes, the blue still glowing through her eyelids. Exhausted, Kelsie fell asleep wedged into the cavern wall.

She woke a moment later to a rumbling roar. Her head was groggy with sleep and her back was uncomfortably cramped, but she didn't feel like she'd slept at all. The blue light around her was blinding now, and she groped blearily for the opening of the crack. At the same time, she shouted for Hora.

Hora's reply seemed to filter in from some distance away. There was still a pervasive roar filling up the cavern, punctuated by strange metallic clangs. Groping her way out, Kelsie stopped short when she reached a wall of crystal that wasn't there before.

Wide awake now, Kelsie ran her hands all along the rock. It was as if the opening in the crystal had shrunk until the two sides met. She could barely see through a thin seam that still ran up the wall where the wide crack used to be.

Kelsie tried turning back and seeing how deep the cave went, but she barely had room to maneuver in the cramped space. Suddenly feeling claustrophobic and panicked, she yelled and beat at the seam in the wall with her fists.

Hora also yelled something from the other side, and a loud metallic clang sounded again on the other side of the seam. The impact jarred Kelsie's hands, and she fell back against the rough rock. Hora was knocking at the crystal with his torch.

Rubbing her bruised hands, Kelsie yelled at him to stop for a minute. She could barely hear his reply over the continued roaring, but he finally stopped and peered into the crack.

"I've almost got you out!" he called into the seam. "Stand back!"

Kelsie pressed herself back into the narrow space and shielded her eyes. Several loud clangs later, Hora had widened the seam into a crack wide enough to stick an arm through in most places. Then he stopped battering it and began chipping at the rock instead, slowly widening the opening.

Once Kelsie could fit through the crack she scrambled out. The crystal cave was still much like it was before, with maybe a bit more loose rock scattered across the ground. Hora handed her some mushroom and went back to chipping at the opening.

"What's that sound?" Kelsie asked. The roaring was quieter from properly inside the cave, but it seemed to be coming from the crack she was trapped in.

Hora looked up from his chipping and grinned. "It sounds like waterfalls!"

Now it made sense. Everything must have rearranged again, trapping Kelsie in the walls but also bringing the crystal cave adjacent to the waterfall chamber. Grabbing a rock, Kelsie began chipping away as well.

Eventually Hora worked his way into the crack in the wall and used the butt of his torch to smash into the crystal at the back. The roaring got louder as pieces of the wall began falling away. With a final swing, Hora brought a huge chunk of the wall crumbling off and nearly followed the pieces down himself.

Peering into the opening, Kelsie could see that the hole in the wall actually looked down on the water from near the ceiling of the chamber. Hora inched back a bit from the lip of the hole he'd just smashed open, causing some of the rock at his feet to crumble into the water. Strangely, the sight of that great black pool was comforting.

Emid sighed when he spotted Kestin getting off the train at Sector 16. Kestin had always been like this, slow to commit but insatiable once he'd sunk his teeth in. To head off the flood of questions and keep him out of trouble, Emid trekked ahead to find their latest foraging spot. Kestin followed, groggy from lack of sleep but ready to do battle.

It had taken Marnie a while to stop blabbing about common myths and ghost tales. She was too wise to open up to Kestin, and he knew it. But he waited her out, and eventually she realized that he was serious. Finally she relented and began telling him something real.

To Kestin's surprise, Marnie's story began in the Dark Days. Even though the war had happened in his mother's lifetime, few people alive in District 11 were old enough to remember it, let alone brave enough to speak of it. Marnie glossed over most of the details, but she made it clear that she understood Kestin's reasons for digging up the truth.

As she'd discovered, most of what Kestin knew about the Wildflowers was smoke. They weren't convicts, though they'd be considered criminals if discovered. They also weren't a secret society or a rebel force. Those theories were wishful fantasies.

The Wildflowers were a network. It was built on a historical underground railroad, originally used to smuggle war refugees out of the region. Eventually it was rediscovered and repurposed to move people and supplies in and out of Panem. Many of the routes had been forgotten or abandoned over the years, but at least one still remained in District 11.

At first Kestin had been disappointed. He wanted a way to fight, to make the peacekeepers regret laying a hand on his mother. But as he thought about it he realized that this was better than he could have hoped for. This was something real.

But Marnie had stopped short of telling him how to find a route. When he'd insisted, she'd punched him hard enough to bruise. Her words still gnawed at him the next morning:

"I used to have a sister, too. She thought she was clever, since she'd figured out where a route was. She was executed the next day, along with seventeen Wildflowers. This is bigger than you, boy."

And yet, Emid had decided to tell him about it. Kestin would take Marnie's warning seriously, but her tragedy had happened thirty-six years ago. Kestin needed this now. When he'd caught up to Emid, he found that they were already in a relatively secluded grove of trees and bushes. Hunkering down to work, he considered what he would ask.

Kelsie and Hora spent several minutes climbing down to a relatively safe perch, with only a few close calls along the way. Kelsie was panting with exertion by the time they reached a wide enough ledge, but the two spent some time running up and down the tunnels reachable from it. They were determined not to get caught flat footed by either a tribute or the daily tunnel rearrangement.

That done, Kelsie settled down in a small recess and tried to stay awake long enough to figure out the next part of the plan. Hora seemed to be getting more anxious, despite making it back to the waterfall cavern. He kept pacing up and down the ledge, adjusting and readjusting his grip on the torch.

Kelsie mumbled something about relaxing, but Hora didn't seem to notice. She could hear him talking to himself over the roar of the waterfalls, counting something off on his fingers and muttering questions. Eventually Kelsie left him to it and drifted off to sleep.

Emid looked like he was regretting ever bringing up the Wildflowers. He was evasive about all the details Kestin wanted, like membership, routes, and size of the network. Emid claimed not to know most of the details, but he looked dismayed at how much Kestin had figured out for himself.

"What were you going to do," Emid hissed, "find a route and take off? Leaving everything and everyone behind?"

"Yeah." Kestin hadn't actually thought about a real plan yet, but the moment he said it he realized it was the truth. He was going to leave.

Emid clearly didn't believe he'd do it. He shook his head and tried to reason with Kestin. "What about your mom? And Kelsie? And Hora's family?"

The thought of Hora's family brought Kestin up short. He knew he'd take his mom with him, and though he tried not to think about Kelsie, the reality was that she would either be dead or a victor, and either way she wouldn't need him. But Hora's family was another matter, and Kestin was ashamed that he hadn't thought of them already.

Kestin had no doubt that Hora was planning on spiriting Emilee out of District 11. Ill as she was, she would never survive hard labor in the fields. Though it would be nearly impossible to get her out safely, Hora would still try. But he would also have remembered Kelsie and included her in his plans.

Emid took Kestin's shameful silence as acquiescence and stopped pushing the point. But Kestin's mind still raced as he tried to come up with a plan that would save them all.

Hora woke Kelsie up several times by firing up the torch and swinging it around at some perceived threat. The third time, Kelsie got up for good and went to see what was wrong.

Hora started a little when she tapped him on the shoulder, but he extinguished the torch and came back to the little recess with their things. Kelsie could see the exhaustion in his face, and the wildness around his eyes from trying to be too alert. She got him to lie down, and he was out like a torch.

Determined to be useful for once, Kelsie grabbed a couple crystals she'd kept for light and considered what should could do while Hora slept. She searched through their gear and found a small sheet of burlap, perfect for holding mushrooms. She also found the flask, which had been empty for a while. She considered climbing down to the water to fill it, but settled instead for leaning all the way out past one end of the ledge, where she could barely reach the water falling from a tunnel opening there.

Once the flask, the burlap, and her stomach were all full, Kelsie was out of useful things to do. She rearranged her crystals in a flower pattern and drew on the wall by scraping rocks across it. For a while she patrolled up and down the ledge and peered suspiciously into the tunnel openings, holding a large rock as a weapon. But nobody came, and they'd have plenty of warning if anything happened anyway. Returning to the recess, Kelsie sat near Hora and drifted into a doze.

Eventually Kestin gave up on figuring out the logistics of an escape from District 11. Without details like the route they'd take or the distance they'd travel, all other plans were useless. He just needed to figure that out first, and they could deal with the rest from there.

"You know this is your death, right? And your sister's death, too, do you think they would leave her alone? And your mom?" Emid could tell Kestin was still thinking about it, and he tried again to make him see sense.

"Dead out there is better than living here." Kestin said it with surprising conviction, and he realized that he believed it. If they stayed here, his mother would live a little longer, then die crippled and broken from years of hard work and abuse. Emilee would be forced into the fields and fall either to the work or the punishment for not being able to work. Kestin would be okay for a while longer, surviving alone and getting kicked around by peacekeepers for another decade until he lashed out and got shot for his troubles.

Either Kelsie would come back a victor and she wouldn't have to work another day of her life, or she wouldn't come back and the effect was the same. As for Hora, he wouldn't be able to help them as either a victor or a martyr. He'd either be too visible, or dead. He could only help Kelsie now.

So it was up to Kestin, and Emid if he had the information that Kestin needed. One way or another, he was going to get out.

Hora woke up feeling much better rested. Alarmed that he'd slept for so long, he grabbed his torch and lurched to his feet. When he couldn't see Kelsie anywhere nearby, he nearly went hurtling down the tunnels looking for her. Instead he found her leaning precariously off one end of the ledge, trying to catch some water to splash on her face. Hora grabbed her by the waist and swung her back onto the ledge, causing her to squeal and beat at him with her fists.

After that, the rest of the day was remarkably boring. Hora kept quizzing Kelsie on what she'd seen or heard—movement, lights, cannons, anything. But she just chalked it up to being a calm day, which made Hora uneasy. He couldn't tell if she was right, or just ignorant of everything that had happened.

Eventually the anthem blared over the roar of the waterfalls, and the day's recap confirmed what Kelsie was saying—nothing had happened. The mad girl was the only death, and a huge image of her face was projected onto the surface of the pool below. The only surprise was that Hora was wrong—the girl was from District 8, not 6.

That didn't help to calm Hora's nerves. A boring day always meant an interesting sequel, but Hora wasn't particularly interested in the gamemakers' idea of interesting. Still, there was nothing they could do about it besides being as prepared as possible. That included getting enough rest, so they settled in to wait the night out.

Kestin didn't get on the train back to his unit that night. Only the mostly-empty Sector 21 separated his current working sector from the Eastern Woods. A couple miles north of that was the dry lakebed, and that was where Kestin's hunt would start.

Emid had finally relented and told Kestin what he knew, probably because he also knew that Kestin would get himself into all kinds of trouble trying to find it himself. Emid didn't know exactly where the route was, but he knew the trail sign and a general direction to look in. Plus he probably thought Kestin would never make it out of the fields anyway.

Unlike the interior sectors, Sector 21 was lit up by bright floodlights every night. It was the wrong time of year for crops, so a large expanse of empty, well-lit field stood between Kestin and his target.

But here Kestin met with a bit of luck. Everyone knew that the peacekeepers delegated to District 11 had drawn the short straw in the Capitol. Most of them were bitter and nasty, but also second-rate and lazy. Tonight was no exception.

The peacekeepers always changed shifts an hour after the workers got off duty, and most peacekeepers didn't wait the full hour before knocking off. When the shift was called in, Kestin was already positioned at the edge of Sector 21. The nearest peacekeepers, who'd been chatting in small groups, headed as one toward their stations to muster out. Kestin steeled himself and sprinted across the field.

Kelsie woke from a doze, feeling weirdly disturbed. She got up to shake off the feeling and became aware of a strange sound echoing faintly through the roaring waterfalls. The sound rapidly got louder and sharper as she listened. Alarmed, Kelsie was gathering their things and frantically gesturing at Hora when a screaming tribute fell out of the ceiling and into the pool.

Kelsie and Hora both peered over the ledge. The tribute was lit up in bright blue, thrashing at the water in panic. He was eerily silent after yelling so loudly, with the waterfalls drowning out his splashing and his head barely staying above the water. Before Hora or Kelsie could do anything, he bobbed once or twice and went under.

Kelsie cried out and grabbed Hora's arm, about to ask him to go after the boy. Then she looked at him and realized that the best thing they could do was nothing. Hora had already turned away to go back to sleep.

The tribute's cannon fired, and Kelsie buried her face in her hands.

Kestin plunged straight into the forest without stopping. The well-tended fields went straight up to the forest edge, then abruptly gave way to a tangled mass of undergrowth. Kestin crashed into this with an undignified flail, heart banging out of his throat. For a while he lay where he landed, tangled in a bush just outside the floodlights, waiting for the alarm to be raised.

Long minutes passed, and the sounds of peacekeeper voices drifted to him as the new shift ambled out. He'd made it. Slowly he began extricating himself from the bush, trying not to move too much and draw any attention. Once free, he inched deeper into the forest.

Kestin knew that, in theory, it was about a mile east to the fence, past the forest. He'd never actually seen it, not being in the habit of taking illegal trips to the outskirts. He probably wouldn't get to see it today, either, because he was following this strip of forest parallel to the fence.

The moonlight was barely enough to see by as Kestin stumbled through the trees. By the time he reached the former lake, his eyes were nearly gummed shut from exhaustion, and he had long stopped avoiding the branches that clawed at his clothes and hair. It gradually caught up to him that he'd barely slept in two days.

Still, he trekked around the lake to its eastern shore. He stood there for some time, too exhausted to figure out what he'd meant to do next. Why was he here again?

In the end he found it surprisingly easily. It almost made Kestin laugh to see it so close. On a good year the lake would be swarming with peacekeepers overseeing the use of its water, and here was the railroad's first outpost right under their noses.

Not even a mile up the river that fed the lake was a contraption that must usually sit just under the water level. An anchored cable ran as far upstream as Kestin could see in the moonlight, hugging the dry riverbank. Kestin sprawled flat on his stomach to examine it and found a metal piece that clearly hooked onto something else.

It took him two hours to find the corresponding part. He searched half a mile up and down both sides of the river, and even in the dry riverbed. Finally he fought his way through some thick brambles and came across supplies, firewood, and the missing piece. Kestin sat on the wooden raft and cried.

When the arena rearranged itself again, Kelsie and Hora found a safe vantage point and watched as the cavern twisted, drained, and then filled again with the glowing water. Kelsie spent the ordeal pressed up against the wall of the cavern and could feel the rock shifting under her shoulder blades.

After several long minutes, the cavern settled in with a groan and solidified. The waterfalls all jerked in unison as they continued to spout water into the pool.

Before Kelsie or Hora had a chance to do anything, a cannon shot shook the cavern. Then another, and immediately another. Kelsie barely had a chance to look at Hora in surprise before yet another cannon shot rang out.

The two stood frozen for a minute, but no other cannons went off. They stared at each other, each counting in their heads. With four more dead, that brought the total to eighteen.

They had made it past the final eight.

Kestin was late. He'd already had to skirt the long way around several working sectors, trying to make his way back to his unit without getting caught. They'd be missing him at his shift already, and he'd probably get at least six lashes for that, depending on how quickly he could get back. He hoped his mom thought he was working early and was already in the fields. He'd hate to earn her even more lashes after—

The sight of his unit brought Kestin up short. The place was swarming with peacekeepers and crewmen, and several people who must have been from the Capitol.

Before Kestin could backpedal and run, one of the Capitol people spotted him and snapped his fingers imperiously.

"There he is," he clipped in a surprisingly flimsy voice. "Come, come, it's about time. Let's get on with it now."

His manner threw Kestin off guard, enough to stop him from fighting the peacekeepers who grabbed him by the arms and hauled him into his unit. They wouldn't just execute him in here, would they?

To his horror, his mother sat inside his unit. She got up to gesture something at him, but it was too late. The peacekeepers marched him to the center of the small room and stood him at attention. The Capitol representative had followed them in, making the space feel very cramped.

"Come now," he said mildly. "You needn't have dragged yourself through every bush to the outhouse."

The man began plucking at Kestin's shirt, trying to tug the hopelessly mangled cloth into shape. He also lifted a lock of hair here or there, occasionally flicking out some leaves. A peacekeeper started twisting Kestin's arm back, but the Capitol man waved him off. They backed away a bit, shooting Kestin suspicious glares. At least there was something that made sense.

Kestin's mother shocked him by stepping forward and brushing him off with her hands. "Such a dirty boy," she scolded. "Why are you always like this, getting into muck when I told you there would be cameras!"

"Of course he is," the Capitol man commented, which seemed like an odd response. He stepped back a little and examined Kestin from there, walking around slowly. He didn't seem to notice the peacekeepers he nearly bumped into, even when they scuttled away.

Kestin felt a grip on his arm and looked down into his mother's face. She looked surprisingly calm, and she asked him quietly, "Ready for your interview?" He suddenly noticed that she was wearing an embroidered silk eye patch.

Understanding finally washed over Kestin's sleep-deprived brain. Something had happened in the night, and all this fuss must be because Kelsie had made it to the final eight. And maybe Hora, too. They weren't here to punish him, he was going to have an interview.

Hora looked surprisingly anxious for someone who was just handed a windfall. He'd been explaining how at least two of those deaths had to be Careers, since only two non-Careers were left besides them. And if it was two Careers then it was probably all Careers, because which of the others could have taken two of them down? He kept repeating this and counting off the deaths on his fingers, as if to reassure himself that his logic was sound.

But Kelsie was done thinking about it and ready to do something about it. For the first time she felt like she had a fighting chance, and that motivated her to fight. She began packing their things and filling up on food and water, until Hora stopped her with a hand on her arm.

"They'll have to drive the rest of them to the water," he told her. "Maybe shrink the arena or something. We should probably just stay here."

After a moment, Kelsie agreed and settled in to wait, trying not to fidget.

The Capitol man whisked Kestin out of the unit, his long, bony fingers cutting off the circulation in Kestin's upper arm. He deposited Kestin just inside a shining white tent and gave a few clipped instructions to a much shorter Capitol woman. She took over and began stripping him down and sanding off his skin, from the feel of it.

She was much chattier than the man, and from her rapidfire chirping Kestin roughly gathered that several tributes had died all at once. According to her, it was "so shocking! So very shocking! But you know these things happen sometimes and then we have to work overtime to get the interviews ready and really it's all so much to do but don't worry! You'll look great! Turn please!"

Within fifteen minutes Kestin was feeling clean and two layers thinner, though his head had begun to pound with two sleepless nights and the sudden threat of hanging, just as suddenly taken away. Then came a lot of handshaking and congratulations and trying desperately to look like he hadn't been breaking the law all night. The makeup helped a little, but the peacekeepers were definitely suspicious.

Still, it was the Capitol crowd that ran this show, and so they got their interview. They sat Kestin down and pointed a light in his face, and they asked him about his sister and best friend. Kestin tried to be as vague as possible about what had happened in the arena, which wasn't hard because he had no clue what it was. He carefully steered all thoughts away from the Wildflowers, afraid that his bleary mind would push some of those thoughts out of his mouth by accident. Instead he tried to concentrate on what the Capitol reporter was saying to the camera.

"Let's have a look, shall we?" she asked the audience. She clicked a handheld device, and a screen that Kestin hadn't noticed until now flickered to life.

The scene showed the six remaining Careers, camped in a large, boring-looking cave. Everything was shaking like there was an earthquake, and two of the boys were struggling to move a large boulder. One of them stumbled into the other and earned himself a violent shove, which sent him careening into the cave wall with an unpleasant-looking impact to his head.

The other boy continued his impressive attempt to lift the boulder, bringing it nearly upright before the fallen boy leaped onto his back, howling. The attacker had grabbed a hefty metal flashlight, and he beat on the other boy's head with the butt. A girl stepped in to stop him, and he lashed out with a huge swing.

The ground suddenly stopped shaking, and all three tributes tumbled to the ground. The crazed one was the only one who got back up, and he went after the last girl. She seemed to be trying to reason with him, yelling, "It's me! It's me!"

But the tribute was obviously past reason. He swung the flashlight at her again and again, and Kestin could see her bones breaking with every hit. Just before she fell, another bigger boy grabbed a torch of his own and put a sizable dent in the mad tribute's head. Then he swept up some random equipment and left the chamber. The last Career had disappeared after the earth stopped shaking, and the cave was left still and lifeless.

The Capitol reporter turned to Kestin and remarked, "Well, now isn't that just amazing. So, now that your sister is in the top eight, how are you going to celebrate?"

Without a fight to let off some steam, Kelsie had a lot of excess energy to spend. In the time it took for anything interesting to happen, she'd refilled their food and water, gathered an impressive pile of loose rocks to throw, and jogged down each of the tunnels twice.

She'd just climbed her way down to the water and was washing her face when the whole cavern jerked, and all the waterfalls stopped flowing all at once. The final columns of water crashed into the pool, then the cavern was filled with ringing silence.

Kelsie waited for something else to happen. Her ears felt like they hadn't popped, and she snapped her fingers a few times to confirm they were still working. Hora joined her by the water and commented, "Now we should get ready to fight."

His voice sounded small in the huge void of the silent cavern.

Kestin had the rest of the day to himself, something completely unheard of since he'd turned eight. He was wide awake with anxious anticipation, mixed with lingering disgust and growing hope that Kelsie could make it back after all.

But regardless of what happened, he had to think practically. His mind was back on the Wildflowers and a plan for escape, but he was beginning to realize that he couldn't realistically take more than one person with him. It had been difficult enough to sneak out by himself, and he couldn't imagine doing it while carrying a sick Emilee or supporting his aging mom, much less both.

Still, his first stop was Hora's unit. Hora's parents also had the day off, having endured their own interviews. They greeted him with tired smiles and invited him in.

Emilee was having a rare good day, and she was seated at the table instead of lying propped up in bed. Kestin hadn't seen her in a while, but it always surprised him how small she was, even for her age. It made his conscience twinge to realize that she would be turning eight this year, and after that she'd be put to work in the fields just like everyone else.

For a while, Kestin talked about idle nothings with Hora's parents. He didn't know how to bring up his plans, especially with Emilee sitting there and looking so hopeful for her brother to come back. Hora's parents were nice enough to wish for Kelsie to come back instead, which made Kestin feel guilty.

By the end of his stay, Kestin was conflicted. Emilee deserved better than a short, hard life in the fields, and probably a dead brother to boot. Kestin's mother was already old by District 11 standards, and even though it would break her to lose two children at once, she'd understand why he did it and be happy for his freedom. Either one presented a huge problem for him, as they would slow him down and require extra care.

As Kestin walked back to his unit, he considered what he would tell his mom, and how he would break the news.

It took surprisingly long for anything to happen after the waterfalls shut off. Hora and Kelsie were both hyperaware and on edge, making the time crawl. When nothing happened for several hours, the tension began to stretch. Kelsie returned to gathering food, though she still twitched at every sound. Hora grabbed the torch and swung it around to loosen up. They took turns napping and gorging themselves until they'd almost forgotten what must come next.

The tribute burst straight into their camp, right between Hora and Kelsie. He arrived silently and without light, swinging an unlit torch straight at Hora's head. Hora grabbed his own torch and managed to block the tribute's swing. The metallic clang echoed jarringly in the silent chamber.

Kelsie scrambled for some rocks to throw, but Hora extinguished his torch and plunged the cavern into relative darkness. Some scattered glowing crystals still provided minimal backlight on the two boys, but not enough for Kelsie to really see what she was aiming at.

The tribute was making a frenzied attack, swinging his torch in wide arcs with both arms. Hora was trying to avoid a beating by closing in and hooking one of the tribute's arms with his elbow. The two began awkwardly trying to beat each other on the backs with torches, while struggling to maintain a grip so the other couldn't break away.

Kelsie's limbs had turned to jelly, and she backed away as far as she could get. The tribute kept trying to trip Hora up, while Hora grabbed at the boy's hair and pulled his head back. The two were inching toward the ledge, with the tribute steering. Kelsie swallowed hard and squeaked twice before she could get out a warning.

Hora saw his danger and kneed upward with the leg the tribute was trying to trip him by. He only managed to hit thigh muscle, but he simultaneously drove his head forward into the tribute's nose. The tribute howled as Hora got a better grip on his hair and shoved him out over the ledge.

Kelsie ran forward to look, only to have Hora shove her back. Their camp was only a couple yards above the water since the rearrangement, and the tribute, lit in blue, was already swimming around to a much lower ledge off to the side. He must have been District 4, Rina's district partner.

Hora surprised Kelsie by running over to intercept the tribute before he could get out of the water. Hora took a running leap straight off the ledge and down eight feet to the lower one, stumbling a bit in pain. But he kept a hold of his torch and jammed the butt of it into District 4's face. District 4 had also managed to keep his own torch, but finding it useless from his vantage point in the water, he dropped it and lunged for Hora's instead. Hora wrestled for control and kicked at the tribute, but the tribute scrabbled at Hora's kicking leg and yanked him into the water.

As the two struggled, Kelsie scrambled down from the higher ledge. Hora had managed to fling his torch onto land at the last second, and she grabbed for it with shaky hands. She inched toward the water with the unlit torch raised, only to see the glowing blue water clouded with blood. Hora had the tribute's head locked in his grip from behind, and he'd ripped one of his ears off with his teeth. With one hand he was still clawing at the tribute's face, ignoring his flailing attempts to shake him off.

Hora couldn't hold District 4 under without also drowning himself, but he kept an iron grip as the two thrashed wildly in the water. The tribute was losing a surprising amount of blood, and his struggles got weaker. Eventually Hora got a good grip on his hair and held him under until his cannon announced his death.

Before nightfall, Kestin had settled on a day. The season was just turning, and the weather was prime. They'd have to walk instead of using the ferry, but that was better than waiting for the rain to return.

The Games would be over in a couple days, and whether or not District 11 had a victor, they would be forced to celebrate for a day and a night. There would be mandatory merrymaking and loud announcements, and nobody would notice if two people went missing.

If Kelsie or Hora made it back, it would extend the festivities and give them even more time to travel before they were missed. The prospect suddenly put a lump in Kestin's throat. Until now, Kestin had tried to think purely practically, without any expectations. But as he continued to plan for his own future, he'd been callously throwing away his sister's, and Hora's. The thought that one of them might make it back wasn't terribly farfetched any more.

But Kestin couldn't think about that. If he saw Kelsie back home, glowing with her victory, he would never set foot outside of District 11 again. And if she never made it, life would be worse for him, not better. He had to make plans now, while they all still had a future.

It took Hora a couple tries to lever himself out of the water. His face was a mask of blood that hadn't fully washed off, while the rest of him dripped with a very faint blue glow. He shook, from exertion or cold, Kelsie didn't know.

He swayed a little on his feet and stumbled forward. Kelsie tried to help, stepping in and offering support. If she hadn't still been holding the torch, she would have died right then.

Hora lunged for her throat, wrapping both hands around her neck. With barely an effort, he lifted her bodily and smashed her against the cavern wall.

Kelsie panicked. Hora's eyes were wild, and his grip was unmovable. Her scrabbling and kicking did nothing, even when she tried to beat at Hora with the torch she still held. But in her struggles she hit a switch, and the flame on the torch flared to life.

The cavern had been dark since the previous fight, with no waterfalls to churn up the blue glow. The sudden light made Hora roar and flinch away. Kelsie collapsed to the ground and tried to suck in air, holding the torch aloft weakly between Hora and herself.

Hora was holding his head like it was about to split apart, hissing to himself and twitching. He lunged and checked a couple times before grabbing for Kelsie again. She squawked and scrambled away on her butt, trying to keep the torch between them. She alternated between using her free hand to scoot back, and fumbling at the torch to find the switch again.

When she finally found it, she accidentally turned the torch off. Hora took the chance to dive in, but Kelsie shakily reversed the switch and turned the torch into a flamethrower. Hora landed on the bonfire-sized flame and let out a bloodcurdling howl.

Without waiting to see what would happen, Kelsie dropped the torch and fled down a tunnel. With one hand she followed the wall, and with the other she tried to block out the sound of Hora's cannon.

There was silence in Kestin's unit. Somebody had turned off the viewing screen, though everyone continued staring at it dully.

It was dinner time, and Emid had come to check that Kestin was still alive, bringing some of his friends along. Those friends now stood and left, gripping Kestin's shoulder on their way out. Emid, Kestin, Kestin's mother, and Hora's mother Anna remained. Emmar was watching from home, with Emilee.

The silence continued. Anna wept soundlessly, and Kestin watched her cry. This was what a broken person looked like. Kestin's mom had her eyes squeezed shut, and she kept shaking her head back and forth.

Finally Emid had to return to the fields. He stood and gripped Kestin's shoulder and headed off.

"I'm getting out." Emid paused at the door, and Kestin continued, "I found it. I'm getting out. And I'm taking Emilee if I can, and my mom."

Emid regarded him for a moment before telling him, "I know."

Kelsie's world collapsed into a nightmare. Shadows leapt out of the pressing darkness and grabbed her. Creatures squawked at her in fury and dropped on her from the ceiling, digging unseen claws into her scalp. Kelsie screamed and tried to fend them off, and when that didn't work she ran.

Kestin had never seen Anna raise her voice before, but she did so now. She had said everything she could to make him stay, and when none of it worked she yelled at him. She screamed at him for his selfishness and his callousness and his stupidity as he threw her son's life away with both hands. His sister was still alive, and she needed him to be waiting for her when she came back. Emilee would never have that chance to see her brother again, and he wanted to take Kelsie's chance, too? He was a selfish little fool.

Kestin's mom caught Anna as she collapsed sobbing into her arms. Kestin's determination hadn't faded, and he marched out the door. He hadn't gotten to the end of the complex before Anna caught up and dragged him back by the shirt.

"Where are you going!" she screamed at him, incredulous.

Kestin pulled away and told her, "To get Emilee."

He turned to go, only to feel Anna slap him hard in the ear. He stumbled a bit but tried to ignore her and keep walking. Anna screeched incoherently and grabbed him by the hair, slapping him repeatedly with surprising strength.

Kestin's mom rescued him from a sound whipping, coaxing Anna away from him and restraining her with a gentle hand on her arm. Anna was heaving with exertion and fury, tears streaming down her face.

"Don't you dare touch Emilee!" she gasped at him. "If you go, then you go alone!"

Kelsie ran endlessly in the pitch blackness, down tunnel after tunnel. Sometimes she saw a faint blue glow pulsing in the distance, and she fled from it in fear. Things followed her through the dark, clutching at her clothes and whispering in her ear. They wouldn't leave her alone, even when she screamed at them to go away.

Little by little, a steady, solid thumping drowned out the phantoms. It was a real sound, of something large and living keeping pace with Kelsie. She could hear ragged breathing—real this time—and see a faint orange glow.

All of Kelsie's fears solidified into a need to get away from this new opponent. Darting down a side tunnel that she found by touch, Kelsie put on a silent burst of speed and left the light behind.

Kestin packed his things. His mother packed alongside him, though neither of them had many things to bring. Once or twice he tried to say something to her, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm and smiled wearily at him.

He gathered everything he could think of into a sack with straps and slung it onto his back. Then he looked to his mother, at a bit of a loss. She was gathering a couple final things he hadn't thought of, ripping the bed sheet into strips for bandages and grabbing a dull knife that she kept in the cupboard.

Finally she looked up at him with her one good eye and gestured at him to lead the way. Kestin kept feeling like there was more to do that they'd forgotten, because this couldn't just be it? But he couldn't think of anything else, so he steeled himself and walked out of his unit for the last time.

Eventually Kelsie ducked into a side tunnel, only to find herself wedged into a large crack in the rock. Kelsie stopped there for a while, her panting breath sounding loud in the small space. She turned to face the direction she'd come in from, squinting in the darkness to see if she could make out any approaching light.

It was somehow comforting to wedge herself tightly into the rock. It felt safe and hidden in the darkness, and the rock was reassuringly solid. Gradually Kelsie's pulse stopped thundering in her ears, and her breathing returned to normal.

Without the cloud of panic dominating her thoughts, Kelsie began to realize that she'd acted like a fool. She hadn't taken anything with her from the waterfall cavern, and now she didn't know how to get back. They'd even spent the entire day preparing supplies, and she hadn't taken a single bit of it.

That train of thought led back to her last moments in that cavern. Kelsie could feel her pulse racing again, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the darkness. She tried to calm herself down with a plan, but she kept coming up empty. She had nothing to work with, besides the clothes on her back and her little wooden charm—and the little lighter that was still tied to it.

Kestin almost immediately regretted bringing his mother along. She was doing her best to keep up, but she was as tired as he was, and significantly older. Despite long years of work in the fields, a life of malnutrition made her skinny and weak and slow.

And there was a lot to worry about at this time of day, when workers and peacekeepers still swarmed the fields and the trains weren't running yet. They started off heading the long way around toward the south, which added several miles to their trip on top of the distance that Kestin had covered by train yesterday morning. He wasn't really sure his mother could make it that far, and it rankled him to stop so often and rest.

Some part of him was glad that he wasn't alone, but he couldn't help thinking that he should've had Emilee with him. Anna was wrong, he wasn't throwing Hora's life away—he was trying to make it worthwhile. What was the point of protecting Emilee if that just earned her the same miserable lot as everyone else?

But that was all done. Kestin was stuck with his mother now, and at least she was able to walk on her own and carry a pack. He would try not to drive himself crazy over every one of their numerous delays.

Kelsie barely had a chance to appreciate her luck before the sudden blare of the anthem startled her and set her heart to racing again.

Just outside her little hiding spot, a screen flickered to life in the ceiling, shining like a banner declaring her location. It even played sound directly from the screen, broadcasting her spot to everyone nearby.

Kelsie scrambled out of the crack in the wall, half convinced that another tribute would be waiting for her in the main tunnel. She took off running immediately, back the way that she'd originally come. She'd gone about a hundred yards before she realized that she could still see by the light of the screen, which had followed her in the ceiling.

Kelsie looked up straight into Hora's face. Letting out a horrified shriek, she dove down a side tunnel to try to escape him. She barely noticed when the music played again and the light from the screen disappeared. She kept running like before, groping for the wall with one hand and holding the other out front.

Only after she'd collapsed from exhaustion did she realize that that was probably the last time she'd ever see Hora's face again.

By the time they reached Sector 21 again it was well after dark and the night shift of peacekeepers was in place. Kestin was debating what to tell his mom when she clasped him on the shoulder and led him further north.

Not willing to make a fuss and risk attracting attention, Kestin followed her silently. They continued another mile or so, all the way to Sector 22. There, at the border between fields, a mess of hay piles marched from the inner road out to the edge of the forest. Kestin's mom must have known they would be there at this time of year. When she got to them she ducked between the piles, making her way out toward the trees.

Kestin paused a moment to scout for peacekeepers, then realized even he couldn't see his mother. Shaking his head at her, he stooped and followed her into the forest.

It took Kelsie a while to work up the nerve to light her little lighter. She was still half-convinced the shadows would jump out and attack her the moment she did. But she also knew that was crazy, and she'd had enough crazy for a lifetime.

Finally she held it out at arm's length, closed one eye, turned her head away, and flipped the top. The result made her feel a little silly. The little light revealed layered reddish-brown rock, different from the areas she'd been in thus far. It also didn't reveal much else. Kelsie was in a tunnel just like every other tunnel, curving tightly to the right and slightly sloped.

Taking a deep breath, Kelsie put a hand on the wall, capped her lighter, and continued on.

An awkward silence persisted between Kestin and his mom. He wasn't really sure what to say to her, or what she thought of his plan. It didn't help that his brain was turning to mush from lack of sleep, either. They probably shouldn't make too much noise anyway, and he had plenty to worry about without stirring up more trouble.

Even accounting for his mother's pace, their journey to the lake seemed to take much longer than last night. Once or twice Kestin wondered nervously whether they had lost their way and wandered too far east. Still, they should have hit the river even if they wandered off course.

Kestin suddenly stopped short at the sight of a spotlight sweeping the woods. Grabbing for his mother, he shoved them both into a clump of bushes and ordered her to sling her backpack over her head and face.

To Kestin's disbelief, his mom was shaking her head and tugging him back out of the bush. Panic made him rougher than necessary as he dragged her back in and forced her head down. He was trembling too hard to hold his own pack up, but he hoped that the bush was thick enough to hide them anyway.

But Kestin's mom reached up to cuff him on the ear and told him, "Relax, boy. It's fake."

Kestin stared at her incredulously, unsure whether to shush her violently or just knock her unconscious to prevent them from getting caught. But Kestin's mom was waving at the roving spotlight dismissively. "Look," she told him as he made frantic 'volume down!' gestures, "it hasn't moved. They used to have these near my unit, they're attached to a camera that just spins around without recording anything."

When Kestin still wouldn't calm down, she repeated, "They're fake. They just want to scare you into turning back, or panicking and making a scene."

Kestin looked around a bit frantically, but it was true that the spotlight hadn't moved from the spot where it was swinging in a figure eight. He still didn't really trust his mother's confidence that it was fake, but nothing seemed to be descending on them from the sky. Yet. With a mixture of fear and embarrassment, he grabbed her wrist and steered her far to the right of the spotlight, circling back around to the north before continuing onward.

The tunnel took her in a widening downward spiral until she found herself in a large, conical cavern. It was made of the same reddish-brown stuff, and the only entrance was the one Kelsie came in from.

Kelsie's stomach growled loudly, protesting the cave's lack of anything edible-looking. Her throat was dry and her legs shook from exertion, plus her arms and legs were cut up and bruised from flailing around in the dark. Cold sweat made her shiver in the cool tunnels.

For a while Kelsie stood and hugged herself in the middle of the cavern, lamenting her various complaints and beating herself up for being so stupid. Without Hora she was useless. The thought of him made her throat close up, but she forced herself to continue along that line of thought. How would Hora have handled this? Better than she had.

Kelsie shook herself and decided she needed to rest first. Everything else sounded too hard to even think about fixing, so she curled up against the cavern wall. First she had to brush aside a lot of loose rocks digging into her bruises, then she shivered until her exhaustion took over and plunged her into sleep.

Kestin never reached the lake. Yards short of exiting the forest, he pulled up in surprise and dismay at the scene in front of them. In stark contrast to the previous night, the lake was swarming with people and lights. Peacekeepers were calling instructions to each other, and large equipment had been brought in to dig up the dry lakebed.

The difference from last night was startling, and Kestin didn't know what to think. At first he thought they'd been discovered, but there was a lot going on here that didn't seem at all related to him. Chances were that this was a badly-timed coincidence, and they'd just have to circle around. No one had noticed them yet, so they could still probably make it around to the river and follow it out to safety.

Kestin had just turned eastward when a bright spotlight blinded them both from above. Kestin froze for an instant, then dove to his right, out of the light. He dug his toes in to take off, but a gunshot rang out over the lake and everything went quiet for a moment.

Kestin turned to see his mother wreathed in light, her mouth open to tell him something, a surprised look on her face. She coughed once, and collapsed.

Kelsie woke to the snuffling of a small creature investigating her hair, considering her for a midnight snack. Remembering the madness that came from the animals, Kelsie's first instinct was to get away if she could. She reached out to lever herself up and run, only to put her hand down onto a large, loose rock that she could just wrap her fingers around.

Trying not to think about it, Kelsie abruptly changed course and swung the rock over her head, smashing it down where she could hear the creature's noises. She immediately yelped and yanked her hand away, having accidentally smashed a finger. But she'd also felt the creature's bones cracking under her swing, and its snuffling had stopped. As she sucked on her bruised and bleeding finger, she considered what she could do with the dead thing.

She popped open her lighter to take a look, and at the sight of the mangled, rat-like critter, her stomach growled.

Kestin's thoughts deserted him. His mind filled up with sheer panic, seizing up his legs and his lungs. He stood frozen as the lights found him again, and he waited for a gunshot that never came.

He stood there long enough to start registering a lot of angry yelling flying back and forth between the peacekeepers by the lake. Kestin tried to locate his mother's shooter, but the bright light in his face made it nearly impossible to see details at that distance. Kestin looked instead at her body, which was lying face-down half inside the circle of light. A spot high on her back was stained a deep black.

At some point, Kestin realized that the yelling had quieted. The peacekeepers had stopped blaming each other for whatever problem they'd created, and they were watching a particular person in trepidation. The sight of him as he walked over scared Kestin like nothing had before then.

The peacekeeper was in his late twenties, well-groomed and handsome. He was helmetless and wearing a dress uniform with a shining badge that marked him as a Capitol liaison. His polished high-heeled boots crunched through the undergrowth as he trekked out toward where Kestin stood.

Kestin scrambled away out of pure terror, half-turning to run. Before he could even make it out of the spotlight, the peacekeeper snapped his gloved fingers and a buzzing flash of blue seized him up and knocked him out.

It took Kelsie forever to skin the little rat-like creature with a rock, scraping off as much meat as she did fur. She was trying not to look at it too much during the process, or to acknowledge the slimy feel of its blood everywhere. This was especially true as she dug at the internal organs.

Finally she was down to the much-abused meat and bones, and she fumbled at her lighter with slippery fingers to get it open. Slowly she moved bits of the carcass over the lighter, leaving a slightly charred track on the mostly uncooked meat.

After a while she gave up on this, closed her eyes, hoped she wouldn't get sick, and bit into the meat. After days of eating slimy mushrooms, the meat actually didn't seem too bad. She was sucking on the bones before she realized she was done, wishing for more.

She also became aware of a skittering fight happening over the remains she'd discarded. She backed away from the mess she'd made as she gnawed on her final bits of meat. Luckily the creatures didn't seem interested in what she held and left her alone.

The meal left her thirsty but reinvigorated. She felt ready to face the Games now, though she really wished she had some way to wash her hands. She rubbed them on her pants as she considered how she could find her way back to water.

Kestin woke up bound and gagged, lying on his side. His muscles were still rubbery, his cheek was covered in drool, and it smelled like he'd voided his bowels into his pants. He groaned in pain and mortification.

The Capitol liaison sat on a wooden chair nearby, looking out-of-place next to Kestin's filth and the griminess of the boxcar that they were in. Kestin could hear and feel the steady clattering of the worker train as it presumably took them back to Justice Square. It was just getting light enough to see by outside.

The peacekeeper had one glove off and was examining his hand. When Kestin shifted and groaned again, he sighed. "I suppose you are wondering why you are not dead," he said to his fingernails.

He paused as if to give Kestin a chance to answer through his gag, but when nothing was forthcoming the peacekeeper continued, "We know about your little adventure last night."

Another pause. Kestin knew this man could do whatever he wanted to him, and that he would enjoy it. The fact that they hadn't killed him yet meant they had more suffering in store, not less. He jerked at his bonds, as if to try and break them. Really he was inching toward the open door of the boxcar.

"You see," the peacekeeper continued, "we have been attempting to chase down a ragabond group that calls themselves the Wildflowers."

At that Kestin twitched, and the peacekeeper smiled. "Now, many of us were all for culling the entire lot, ridding District 11 of the problem entirely. But—" he paused dramatically to examine his fingers, "there are some in the Capitol who are very interested in you, my friend. Or more precisely, your sister."

Kestin squeezed his eyes shut and tried to drown out the peacekeeper's voice. He continued twitching and jerking, gradually inching toward the door.

"Now, it is my job to bring you to those people alive, and when I do I will get rewarded. I have worked hard for that reward, and anything that makes my job more difficult will not be tolerated." The peacekeeper's boot stomped onto Kestin's hair as he got up to close the boxcar door.

Kestin winced as the peacekeeper gave his head a kick and returned to his seat. Kestin's hair left a greasy streak of dirt on those otherwise perfect boots.

"So, before we begin—" Kestin bit down on his gag and slammed his head repeatedly on the floor, interrupting the peacekeeper's monologue. The peacekeeper frowned and tsked before picking up a device and once again knocking Kestin out.

The initial jerk of the rearrangement knocked Kelsie off her feet. She'd just left the conical cavern, and she hurried back to avoid the confinement of the tunnel. In the middle of the open space, she stood with her feet wide apart and her lighter out, watching the walls apprehensively for any sign of constriction.

The shaking this time seemed more violent than before, and Kelsie noticed the unpleasant sensation of falling with her feet still solidly planted. She looked down, only to see something weird happening to the rock on her left. It looked like it was crumpling in on itself, and suddenly a gaping hole opened in the floor.

The hole grew outward and engulfed much of the wall on her left. Kelsie realized that she could see an entire cave on the other side. It rose to meet her falling chamber, and black and brown rock mixed turbulently at the intersection. There was a light in the other cave, coming from a tribute's lantern. The tribute had her back to Kelsie, and by the time she turned and noticed her, the other cave had risen above Kelsie's floor level and was passing through the ceiling.

That hole had barely closed when the wall in front of Kelsie suddenly collapsed into tiny pebbles that sank through the floor. Another tribute, this time a scrawny boy, stood on the other side. He was ready and lunged straight at Kelsie, but the floor shook and sent him tumbling. As he was scrambling up, a wide chasm opened between them, and the two sections drifted out of sight from one another.

The rock continued to shift and change, giving Kelsie glimpses of the other tributes. A burly boy with olive skin watched her calmly as he slid by, and the girl with the lantern grinned on her second pass through. Sometimes Kelsie thought she saw dead tributes, like Rina from District 4 or the wispy mad girl from 8. Once she was sure she locked eyes with Hora. Finally the wall behind her swept her up and accelerated wildly, then abruptly deposited her at a tunnel crossroads before everything went still.

Two brutish female peacekeepers took charge of Kestin once the train arrived. They held him at arm's length until he was stripped of all this clothing, hosed off with jets of cold water, and checked for hidden weapons. Then they frog-marched him down the hall naked before issuing him a new worker uniform in a puke-y yellow color. He was a prisoner now.

There weren't many others in the Justice Prison. Punishment for most transgressors was swift and brutal. Kestin was getting the royal treatment. The peacekeepers dragged him down an empty hall of padded cells and deposited him in the last one without a word.

Kestin lay there quietly, too exhausted to spit at the retreating peacekeepers. He was dreaming deliriously of a normal work day when a lone prisoner stirred in the cell across the hall. Kestin lifted his head and recognized Emid.

In an instant Kestin flew at the door of his cell, reaching uselessly through the bars to grasp at Emid's throat. He was making a dreadful, incoherent roaring sound as he beat at the bars in fury.

Until he saw Emid in that cell, looking pampered and clean and bored, Kestin had been convinced that it was Anna who'd sold him out. How else had they known where he would be, and when, and why? Anna must have known about the Wildflowers if Hora was a part of it, and clearly she hated Kestin enough to wish him ill. But Anna hadn't known about his previous trip to the lake. Emid would have noticed his absence from the train that night, and the bastard had set him up in a neat little trap.

Kestin slammed his hands into the cell bars until they broke and bled. He was an idiot to have trusted Emid. Why else would he have said anything about the Wildflowers in the first place? He was so stupid! He leaned his head against the bars and winced in pain.

"You realize I'm in here, too, right?" Emid's voice stirred up Kestin's fury again, and he chucked his piss bucket at Emid. Fortunately—or unfortunately—it was empty and only made an unsatisfying clang against the bars. Kestin sucked air in like he'd been running hard and glared his hatred at Emid.

For his part, Emid looked regretful but not sorry. He obviously had an explanation all prepared, and Kestin obviously wasn't interested. But since the two cells faced each other with only bars and a hallway to separate them, there was no way for Kestin to avoid it.

"They threatened to kill you," Emid started off. Kestin snorted at this. Emid read his mind and continued, "You may think it would've been better, but I guarantee you it's not. Your sister—"

"Shut up!" Kestin roared, rattling the door with his broken hands.

"—Your sister is in the top four of the Games, she could still make it back alive. Some say they want her to. Then think. What would happen to her if we were discovered? What about her children in ten years? Do you think they'd be spared? This is bigger than us, Kestin, and those people know nothing right now!" Emid was getting heated, too, and Kestin noted bitterly that even while angry Emid refrained from identifying the Wildflowers or the peacekeepers.

Emid gave up and returned to a corner of his cell, shaking his head and not looking at Kestin. Kestin fell back to nurse his hands, thinking about Emid's words despite himself. They reminded Kestin of Marnie's anger, and frustratingly enough, everything he said rang of truth. Something had given Kestin away, possibly on the morning of the interview, and when threatened, Emid had sold him out in a way that left him alive in a cell with the peacekeepers uselessly digging up the dry lake. It was infuriating how conveniently it had all worked out. All Kestin had had to give up was his freedom and his mom.

Kestin slung his piss bucket at Emid again, and it made another loud, empty clang.

Kelsie found herself in a thick web of tunnels with an intersection every couple yards. The branching paths led in every direction, including up and down and back and everywhere in between. Kelsie wandered for a while, sometimes crawling on hands and knees up steep chutes or through hourglass necks. Finally she gave up on finding a consistent direction to go and stopped to consider what she could do.

Her mouth was parched, and the rat she'd eaten had not been very big. She swallowed hard against the discomfort and tried to concentrate on how to get back to the waterfall chamber.

For a while she tried using her nose and seeing if any of the tunnels smelled different. When that didn't yield much, she started patting and knocking on the rock, listening for any difference in consistency. But everything smelled and felt and sounded the same, and Kelsie couldn't tell if she'd made any progress out of the tunnel maze. All she could do was keep picking directions to try.

Emid's insistence that Kelsie could win the Games seemed like a pathetic joke. Part of Kestin's new amenities included a large screen in the hallway that gave them both front-row seats to the arena. Without anything better to do than stew on his own anger, Kestin forced himself to watch instead.

Kelsie had just spent the last hour going in fruitless circles in a web-like sphere of tunnels barely a mile in diameter. She looked like she was going crazy, sniffing at the air and patting the rock like it was her friend.

In contrast, the other tributes were preparing to fight. Two of them had made it to opposite sides of the big chamber in the middle, and they were engaged in some sort of comically tense standoff because neither knew how to swim to the other side of the huge pool that separated them.

The last tribute was the remaining Career from District 7, and he was clearly on a hunt. He prowled with a pair of high-tech glasses that let him see in the dark, killing anything that got too close to him. Part of it seemed to be a fear of the spreading madness, but Kestin would bet that he also enjoyed the killing. The idea of Kelsie defeating him was laughable.

Eventually Kestin gave up on watching and sat with his back to the wall that the screen was on. Suddenly bone-tired, he closed his eyes and dreamt of a flowing river.

Kelsie tumbled out of the maze by chance, straight into a colony of bats. Her arrival caused a flurry of activity that made her squeal and duck. The bats moved nothing like the birds she was used to, and she fled in fear of their erratic movements and potential madness.

She'd only gone a couple yards down a large side tunnel when she came face to face with the scrawny boy from before. They stared at each other for a moment before the boy snatched an extra flashlight from his belt and came at her with it in one hand and a lit torch in the other.

Short of reaching her, the tribute suddenly skidded to a halt and his eyes went wide. Like an idiot, Kelsie she turned around to look behind her.

There was a flurry of activity in the dark. The bats had followed Kelsie down the side tunnel, and they now came streaming around the corner in droves. A loud exclamation brought Kelsie's attention back to the tribute, who was scrambling backward in alarm. Kelsie ducked as the bats flew straight past her and swarmed around the boy and his light.

The boy flinched at the bats as he tried to fend them off with his weapons. He swung wildly, evidently afraid of the quick-moving creatures. His flashlight was completely useless, but occasionally he caught one in the flame of his torch.

Kelsie took the opportunity to duck around the tribute and run. But a chance swing of the tribute's flashlight caught her in the belly before she could get past, and she doubled over in pain. She instinctively clutched at her stomach and inadvertently wrenched the flashlight out of the tribute's surprised hand.

Kelsie stumbled back from the boy, arms wrapped around her stomach and the flashlight still in her grip. She sucked in air but stayed bent in two, propping herself up against the tunnel wall. At least the blow had been more surprising than hard, otherwise the hefty metal flashlight could have done serious damage.

The boy had turned toward her with his torch, still flinching at the bats but unwilling to let another tribute get the better of him. With his newly free hand he swatted at the bats and protected his face, while he inched closer to Kelsie.

Kelsie tried to force a quick recovery, straightening as much as she could and getting a good grip on the flashlight. She wouldn't be able to outrun the tribute in this condition, even with the bats distracting him. But she couldn't imagine surviving a clubbing fight with their weapons, either.

Taking some inspiration from her fight with Hora, Kelsie turned on the flashlight and aimed it at the boy's face. The harsh white light was designed to illuminate over distance, so the bulk of the light was concentrated on the tribute. The boy was effectively blinded, though some of the bats took notice of the light and flitted around Kelsie. She could hear their tiny squeaks as she ducked her head and tried to concentrate on the tribute's movements.

The flightlight was heavy, with a lot of its weight at the head. Kelsie needed both hands to keep it pointed at the boy's head, which left her no way to throw rocks or do anything else. The tribute was shielding his eyes and waving his stubby torch, which kept her from closing in.

Out of options, Kelsie tried to buy some time to flee. Hefting the flashlight in both hands, she lifted it over her head and flung it overhand at the tribute. Its light flashed wildly around the tunnel as it spun in the air and hit with a loud thunk. Kelsie made her second dash around the tribute, assured in her escape.

But once again she was stopped by the flashlight, which rolled into her path and nearly tripped her. Kelsie reflexively snatched it up and paused. She considered the tribute, who was groaning in pain on the tunnel floor, torch discarded to one side. Weighing the flashlight in her hands, Kelsie turned back and smashed it into his skull.

Emid had called Kestin awake to watch Kelsie's encounter with the boy from District 9. Kestin spent almost as much time watching Emid instead, who ticked another life off and nodded in approval at Kelsie.

Kestin wondered at the older boy's calculated judgment and hated him a little more. But he was glad that Kelsie seemed to have found a backbone, though if he knew her at all, she'd lose it once she thought about it too hard like she always did.

Kelsie stepped away from the tribute's body as his cannon shot rang down the tunnels. She dropped the flashlight in his lap, suddenly a bit queasy. Thankfully the rock claimed his body and the flashlight before she could stare at them for too long.

The dropped torch remained after he was gone, still lit. After a while, Kelsie worked up the nerve to pick it up. As she stooped to grab it, she noticed the charred bodies of several bats scattered around the area. These had been the victims of the boy's wild swatting. Smiling at her luck, Kelsie grabbed any that she could find.

She'd just bitten into one when she suddenly became aware of her open position in the wide tunnel. Gathering up the bats and the torch, she set off down the tunnel as she ate.

She hadn't gone far before the tunnel widened and opened straight onto a jutting platform over the great, still pool. Here she found the boy's camp, though it was sadly under-stocked. Kelsie wondered at how the tribute could have survived so long, when all he carried was some matches and a cup of water.

Kelsie tipped the cup to her mouth, but there were only a couple drops in it. Frowning in annoyance at the dead tribute, she stuck the matches and the cup in her belt and started looking for a way down to the water. She climbed down to a huge sloping rock that was mostly submerged and drank her fill by lying on her stomach and putting her face in the pool.

Thirst satisfied, Kelsie sat back to take stock. She had some equipment now, and she was back in the waterfall chamber. No one else seemed to have made it yet, so she was in a good position to rest, eat, and wait.

For the first time, it occurred to her that the Games were almost over. One way or another, she was about to get out of this dark, infested hole in the ground. Kelsie grinned to herself and put out the torch to wait.

A peacekeeper rattled the door of Kestin's cell, interrupting his thoughts about his mother. Kestin glowered up at him, not about to entertain his captors by reacting to the humiliation. But the boy just grinned and deposited two trays in Kestin's cell before leaving.

Kestin looked at the trays: two identical meals, each enough to satisfy a worker after a long day. The food looked a bit colorless and didn't have much smell, but it also didn't look terrible.

Kestin looked up at Emid, who watched with mild interest. He hadn't received any trays, and Kestin had two. Slowly, Kestin reached out and slid one tray closer to himself. Then he did the same with the other, and deliberately took a bite out of each of the identical loaves of bread. Ignoring Emid, he sat back and enjoyed his first full meal in as long as he could remember.

Kelsie woke with a start, unsure if she'd dozed off for a moment or an hour. She groped around for her torch and was alarmed to find it wasn't within arm's reach. She fumbled for her lighter and flipped the cap.

She found the torch floating in the pool, bumping against the smooth rock she'd been resting on. She fished it out and tried to shake off some of the water, grimacing at her carelessness. This torch was very different from Hora's sleek metal staff, which would have sunk in the pool but probably kept working. Kelsie didn't know if this one would still light after getting dunked.

Setting the torch safely aside to dry, Kelsie settled back with her lighter to keep an alert watch, determined not to fall asleep again.

Around late afternoon, the peacekeeper shift at Justice Prison changed. An unfamiliar young woman took both empty trays from Kestin's cell and gave him a look that was either reproof or amusement. Kestin glared back.

Minutes later, a second peacekeeper casually strolled by, with nothing more interesting to do than to examine Kestin and Emid. He gave Kestin the same look as the woman, and Kestin glowered.

For the rest of the evening, Kestin caught several peacekeepers watching the Games in the hallway. The guards had an office with their own separate screen, but for some reason they preferred to watch out here. It bothered Kestin that they stood silently and stole glances at him and Emid. Maybe they were just a novelty, or the screen was bigger or something.

At some point Kestin realized that they weren't looking at him and Emid, they were just looking at him. After the third peacekeeper gave him the same look as the first, he began paying attention instead of being mad. That look was the same one that Capitol tourists gave the Mayor. She was someone nominally important, but in the end just pitiable.

Once he realized this, Kestin couldn't stop noticing it all the time. It occurred to him that he was a curiosity. By all rights he should be dead, and his sister, too. The fact that they weren't was a joke of a miracle, but it made for an interesting gawking point with the peacekeepers. They probably had bets on how long he and Kelsie would last.

Kestin retreated back in his cell, fixing his glare on the screens. Once again he was pissed at everyone in this stupid place.

The whispers started as Kelsie began nodding off again. She shook herself awake again and again, forcing her eyes open and staring into the darkness. A wind picked up and whistled past her ear, bringing with it a familiar smell of chemicals and fire. It also carried a little voice.

"Hair." The drawn-out hiss came out of nowhere, and Kelsie jumped a little, trying to shake off the sleepiness. She got to her feet, wobbling a little on the sloped rock.

"Hands." Another whisper rasped past her ears.

Kelsie startled violently as something warm and sharp rammed into her head. The little creature tangled in her hair, and squeaks and beating wings filled the air. Bats swarmed around her in the darkness and plucked at her clothing, though she couldn't catch any with her wild swatting. She reached for her torch and felt an unpleasant rip as the first bat freed itself and took a chunk of her hair with it.

Finally Kelsie found the torch, nearly knocking it back into the water with her clumsy groping. She grabbed it and fumbled with the switch, too late remembering the smell of gas. The torch sputtered then flared as the air lit up in blue. Flash burns seared both of Kelsie's arms as she dropped the torch and stumbled back blindly. The torch went out, a testament to being dunked in the pool, and it rolled back in with a splash. Kelsie followed it, collapsing on her hands and knees.

She cried out when her hands hit the rock, but she landed in the mercifully cool water. She was crying now from fear and pain, and she shivered as the smell of gasoline became stronger. Forgetting her hands for a moment, she reached up to wipe away her tears.

"Eyes." The hiss made her jump again, and she stared wildly into the darkness. Then she blinked rapidly. Soon her eyes were burning, feeling eaten away at by a chemical fire. Rubbing them made it worse, and it hurt her burned hands to take them out of the water. Tears seared down her cheeks, adding fuel to the flames.

"Heart." Kelsie flinched and cowered from the voices, which began calling out in earnest.

"Ears!" She curled into a ball and screeched, trying to drown them out. Her whole body felt like it was burning, and she slapped wildly to try to put herself out.

"Ribs! Feet! Arms!" She shook her head, denying the cackling voices and the crawling sensation that she could feel all over. Her limbs twitched spastically, and the water ate like acid through her skin. Pain and panic took over until she finally blacked out.

In her dreams, someone whispered, "Mind."

The Career found the lantern girl before the day was done. To everyone's surprise—Kestin could hear the peacekeepers roaring in appreciation—the girl was ready for him.

She was scrawny, like most of the tributes, but she was also fierce and clever. She knew the Career had her beat in strength and equipment, but she'd had time to prepare since she left the central cave.

The Career stumbled straight into the first of her traps, which sent a rain of fist-size rocks onto his head. They were more of a nuisance than a threat, but it soon became evident that they were meant as a distraction more than a weapon.

The girl was waiting for him on a ledge higher than his head, playing it by ear in the dark. As he swore and swept huge piles of pebbles out of his way, she dropped one tiny match into the mess.

Surprisingly, the flame caught, then rapidly grew until it was crackling and licking at the entire rock pile, with the boy still half-buried in the center. He swore again and reached for a torch at his belt, using it to shove aside burning piles of rock. By the time he'd freed himself, parts of his clothing were burning and the girl had closed in with twin metal weapons of some sort.

These she used like long knives, slashing at the boy as he tried to parry and put himself out at the same time. Kestin wondered at the weird flame until the Capitol commentator, speaking from a small pane in the bottom-right, brought up footage of the girl dismantling her lantern and dousing her trap in oil.

Kestin found himself admiring the girl despite himself. She was everything that Kelsie was not, from ruthless to quick-witted. She dodged the Career's swings and stuck him with her lantern rods again and again. She also shattered his glasses and dealt him a blow on the ear that made him howl in pain.

But her fuel was running out, and the tunnel was getting darker as the flames died down. Her lantern rods weren't deadly weapons, and the Career was beginning to get over his annoyance and fight back with full intent to kill. He leveraged his greater size and strength and drove at the girl with his longer torch weapon.

The moment the fight began to turn, the girl turned and fled. She seemed to have an escape route already planned, and she eeled through the narrow tunnels in pitch darkness. The Career started up his torch to follow, but she was already long gone.

Kestin was about to turn away when the girl gave him one last surprise to admire. Her escape route took her through a maze of tunnels, right back to the high ledge she'd started on. There she had the pieces of her lantern, lit by the Career's torch. He hadn't moved, assuming she had fled beyond reach.

Reaching down, the girl plucked a thin, evil-looking rod from the pieces of lantern. She must have made a noise, because the Career turned toward her in surprise. With a flick of her wrist, the girl sent the rod flying straight into the Career's eye. He doubled over and roared, and she disappeared for good.

As she ran down the tunnels, the Anthem blared and the recap showed only the boy from District 9.

Kelsie woke up coughing and sputtering, still half-submerged in the pool. She snorted painfully and hacked out brackish-tasting water, along with streams of mucus. Then she scrambled out of the water, which glowed a faint blue and lapped gently at her ankles.

Kelsie fumbled for her lighter and flipped the cap. The little orange flame illuminated her quiet corner of the underground pool. She looked around slowly, taking inventory.

Her torch bobbed almost out of sight in the center of the great black pool. The cup also floated in the water, still close enough to rescue. Kelsie hesitated without reaching for it and kept looking around instead.

Her head smarted, and she reached up to rub it where she'd first skinned it on a stalactite. She brought her hand away to check for blood and gasped.

Her hands were mottled in a lighter shade, all the way up to her elbows. It looked as if she'd dipped her arms in a pool of acid, which had eaten away the topmost layer of dark skin. Kelsie examined her feet and legs, but they looked normal. Gingerly she rubbed at the back of one hand with a finger, and the only difference she could feel was maybe a slight numbness.

Wondering at the weird change, Kelsie grabbed the cup, scrounged up some mushrooms, and settled in to sleep.

Kestin couldn't sleep. His thoughts chased themselves around in circles as he lay curled up on his side. The Games were almost over, but he had no idea what that meant. He didn't want to know what would happen, but he'd find out soon enough. Shouldn't he be ready for that?

He took a shaky breath and tried to think about the consequences of Kelsie's fate. Instead, he got bogged down in calculations over what would happen if she fought the girl first, or the boy, or if the girl and the boy fought each other again, and who he'd want to win. None of his speculations helped, and he let his thoughts run themselves to the ground.

Light from the screen flickered through the bars of his cell, though the sound was turned off for the night. It showed snippets from the entire Games, recapping the most interesting tidbits. The three remaining tributes featured heavily, but there were other moments, too.

Some were familiar, and Kestin re-watched the fight of the Careers, the madness of the boy from District 6, and the flames that engulfed the girl from District 4. Other scenes were new to him, and his mind latched onto these. A tiny boy died before he could make it to the cornucopia. A panicked girl dove off a cliff to escape a swarm of bugs, only to die from the fall. A Career helped another up a steep climb as the cavern shook and fell apart around them.

Kestin blinked away unexpected tears. He shifted and looked over to Emid's cell, and found to his surprise that Emid was awake and looking back. They stared at each other silently for some time. Then Kestin reached out and gripped one of the bars of his own cell, putting all his strength into it. After a moment, Emid made the same gesture. Kestin squeezed his eyes shut and turned away, finally ready to sleep.

Kelsie nearly slept through the entire rearrangement. She woke up in time to scramble up to higher ground as the rock she rested on sank below water level. The whole chamber glowed an intense blue, and Kelsie squinted at it stupidly from her ledge. She yawned as the cavern settled and the blue glow faded.

A sharp crack made her jump, and a large body splashed into the pool. Kelsie tried to shake off her grogginess and focus on what was happening.

The person in the pool was rapidly splashing his way closer. He had no grace or skill, but his sheer strength was enough to propel him through the water. The churning pool lit up a nightmare face masked in dark blood around his missing eye. His good eye glinted with pain and rage.

The Career was nearly to the rock before Kelsie collected her wits enough to run. She fought against the drag of sleepiness and ducked into the nearest tunnel. Almost immediately, the path took a sharp left, then rejoined the central chamber. Trying again, Kelsie groped along a wall and fell into the first opening she found.

Two turns later, she splashed straight into the central pool. Scrambling out, Kelsie grabbed her lighter and looked around desperately. She had no choice but to keep running, with the Career breathing heavily just behind her. He was moving strangely slowly, but Kelsie still barely kept ahead.

Kelsie was in trouble. The arena had shrunk to the size of a pea, and there was nowhere to go. A 3D map rotated in the corner of the screen, showing Kelsie's halting progress through the tunnels. The Career's marker partially overlapped hers as he followed.

Kelsie had her little lighter out, but the Career was stumbling around in the dark, relying on touch and sound. Kestin watched the scene in the orange tint of the special cameras and wondered why the boy didn't use some sort of lighting.

After their fifth time back to the central chamber, Kelsie made a bold call and started scaling the cavern wall. She had to put away her lighter to get a good grip on the wall, and even with her head start she barely made it out of arm's reach before the Career barreled in and tried to drag her off the wall. She shrieked and kicked at him, and managed to haul herself onto a ledge.

Kelsie made better progress once she'd reached higher ground and scouted a new tunnel from there. At least this tunnel didn't immediately rejoin the central cave. It even branched a couple times, though one branch usually led uphill while the other went down. For a while she ran alone and couldn't hear any sound of pursuit.

She was just feeling safe when a crash and a shower of rock announced the arrival of the Career again. Light flooded the tunnel from his lit torch, which he'd used to smash through a thin wall. On the other side the same black pool glinted from far below.

Kelsie changed course and fled down a tunnel headed away from the water chamber. She realized too late that that was a mistake. With nowhere to go, the tunnel ended abruptly at a perfectly smooth, artificial-looking wall. She'd reached the edge of the arena.

Kelsie turned to dart back out of the short tunnel, but the Career stood in her path. He seemed even bigger than when she'd seen him glide by the morning before. With a collection of nasty burns and a missing eye, he looked more like a nightmare creature than a boy.

He was winding up to swing his torch when he froze. He turned slightly, cocking his head, then disappeared down the tunnel Kelsie had come by.

The girl had made a noise, and the Career was after her now. The three converging markers on the 3D display now split off again, and camera views from the tributes' perspectives showed the girl running for her life, with the boy pursuing in a fit of vengeful rage.

Kelsie was forgotten as the boy chased his prey through the darkness. The girl was using matches to guide her way, lighting one every couple seconds to illuminate the next stretch of tunnel. At every chance she got, she scrambled up loose cascades of rock or jumped lightly down to lower ledges. Both obstacles slowed the heavier and torch-burdened Career.

She'd just reached the central chamber again when she turned a corner and ran straight into the boy. Without breaking stride, he reversed his grip on his torch and thrust the narrow handle into the girl's belly. She let out a tiny, startled squeak and dropped like a stone.

A cannon shot jolted Kelsie out of her stunned stillness. Like an idiot, she'd stayed frozen where she was, listening desperately for the Career's return and hearing only the return of cavern sounds instead. Rats or bats squeaked and skittered softly in the echoing silence.

Those sounds disappeared again as she took off running down the tunnels, heading uphill and away from the direction the Career had gone. Kelsie only had a few minutes' head start if she assumed the Career had gone consistently in the opposite direction.

As she ran, she listened, straining to hear any signs of pursuit over her own rapid breathing and footfalls. She held her lighter in one fist, and her pumping arms threw wild shadows across the walls.

It was just the two of them now. Kestin had to remind himself to breathe.

With one perspective gone, the two remaining camera views shared screen space with a blown-up version of the 3D map. The arena was so small that Kelsie and the boy were almost on opposite sides of it now. If Kelsie went much farther, she'd be running toward the Career instead of away.

But the region she was moving into could work to her advantage. On the map it showed up as a series of sharp drop-offs that looked like giant stair steps leading down to the water. Kelsie was coming at it from the high end. If the Career came it at it from the low side she'd have a fighting advantage, and if he circled around she'd have time to escape.

When Kelsie reached the area, she nearly tumbled off the first drop-off just from not paying attention. It irritated Kestin to see her acting so stupidly in these final moments. If there was a time for getting her act together, it was obviously now.

Nobody was chasing Kelsie, as far as she could hear. She stopped for a moment at the edge of a small cliff to catch her breath. It wasn't a long jump down, but getting back up looked pretty impossible. She quickly got chilled after she stopped moving, but she didn't have much energy to keep going. She sat on the edge of the cliff to think.

As small as it was, the little orange light of her lighter made Kelsie feel horribly exposed at the top of that cliff. She capped it and cupped the lighter in her hands, trying to retain the tiny warmth that still lived inside it.

When her eyes adjusted back to the darkness, she noticed a faint light far below her and off to one side. She could see it better if she didn't look at it directly, but she still couldn't make out any details. The light flickered a lot, so it probably wasn't from a lantern. Kelsie wondered if that meant the lantern girl was dead.

Pushing herself to her feet, Kelsie re-lit her lighter behind a cupped hand and started off along the cliff's edge. The light stayed put, so she jumped down from the ledge and continued to move closer. She wasn't really sure why she kept going, but her feet brought her onward to the end.

He stood looking into the water, his face hidden in shadow. The lit torch stood behind him, protruding from the dead girl's ribs. He'd stayed close enough to keep them from claiming her body.

Kelsie looked down on him for a moment, from atop the last of a series of ledges that had brought her to this point. She hadn't tried to hide her approach, and he looked back up at her calmly.

Kelsie hefted a fist-sized rock in her hand that she'd picked up somewhere along the way. With sudden strength, she hurled it at him. She missed, but she hit the girl instead. In slow motion, the torch dislodged and tipped on its side. It landed in the water with a hiss, and the sudden darkness came alive with chaos.

The Career closed the distance to the ledge almost before Kelsie could light her lighter. Suddenly scared, she hurled the nearest thing she could find: her cup. By luck it hit his bad eye and bounced off with a hollow clunk. Surprised, he dropped back and clutched his face.

After a moment's hesitation, Kelsie took a running leap and landed on him in a heap. He managed to keep his feet, but he was doubled over and off-balance. Kelsie clung awkwardly to his shoulders, half upside-down. She swung her weight toward his head and brought him crashing down.

She landed mostly on her hands and knees, and she scrambled up and kicked his head savagely. When he started to push himself up, she swept another kick up and into his eye. He roared and scrambled away, splashing partly into the water.

Kelsie had dropped her lighter when she jumped, though the little light still shone bravely on the ground. In the near-dark Kelsie paused. In a moment she heard the Career splash out of the pool, and she turned and dove for her lighter. Her fingers closed around it just as the boy rammed into her, and she clutched it despite the painful burns to her hand.

They crashed to the ground together, though the boy had overestimated her height. He overshot and rolled past her, and she curled away to avoid getting kicked. She scrambled up with her lighter, but he was faster and shoved her down again, this time getting a grip on her neck.

He brought his full weight to bear, crushing Kelsie as Hora never got the chance to. Kelsie scrabbled at his face, trying to muster enough strength to jab him in the eye. She'd dropped her lighter again, but could see where its light was coming from.

As her strength faded, she groped toward the light. But the boy knocked her hand aside, sweeping the lighter out of reach. Still she strained desperately, knowing the little flame was her last hope. She kicked feebly and tried to turn her head under the crushing force. Her body spasmed and arched out of her control.

Then her vision filled with spots, and her body abruptly went limp. She looked at her hand, still outstretched toward the lighter. With the last of her will, she turned her wrist to look at the little wooden charm on its woven band. Then the crushing pressure increased, and her world went dark.

The prison was quiet for ten minutes. No one moved or uttered a word until the banging started. When no one answered the door, the head peacekeeper opened it herself. She strode in and opened Kestin's cell.

Like in a dream, she took him by the arm and hauled him out the door. Bright morning sunlight washed out the scene at Justice Square. Kestin saw the well-groomed liaison in the crowd, and he looked disappointed. As they bound his hands, Kestin muttered that he was sorry.

The lashes fell fast and hard, but steady as a ritual. Someone recited his crimes aloud, and the audience gasped. They would make an example of him to all of District 11, from his torture to his execution. But the gesture was wasted on him. He wasn't there.

Kestin stood in the visiting chamber of the Justice Building. His bare toes dug into the lush carpet, and he could smell a faint, flowery perfume. The peacekeepers had just told him he could only say goodbye to one of the two District 11 tributes.

"Please," he was saying. "Please, protect my little sister."

Something in him knew that he would never leave that room.

Page of

The Book Room vignette, imagery

The Book Room isn't a very interesting place to go, or to see. But it's the perfect place to be.

The building actually has several rooms, each a different shape and size and color. The only thing the rooms have in common are the books.

From wall to wall and ceiling to floor, the rooms are filled with books. And yet, the rooms are empty. The books cannot be seen or read.

The books fill the rooms, not with bindings and pages, but with sound. The sound of stories.

Every book has a story, and those stories speak from within the very walls. Characters argue from opposite sides, and horses clip-clop past. Dragons roar overhead, and voices whisper from every corner.

Each room has a perfect spot to listen, where the voices come together and the world is painted in sound. The story surrounds you with its chatter and music, and just for a while, you are a part of that world.

There is nowhere to go in the Book Room, and nothing to see. But if you find that magical spot in a room, it's the perfect place to be.

Written by an unknown American author in the nineteenth century, this short story is narrated by journalist Kinsey Ward and plays in the lobby of the Book Room in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Martha vignette, character

He only ever came to her deep in the bottle, talking to someone who wasn't there. Yearning for his Martha, who was dead two years. Always piss-ass drunk.

Still, she loved him, and she resented her sister. Her dead sister. As they made love, he would say her name rhythmically, over and over. Martha.

And she would try to be Martha. She would try to do what he would want. And she would wish that she were Martha.

He was gentle and kind, even piss-ass drunk. He could never hurt his Martha, and that was why she loved him.

Afterward she would cry, and he would yell. She looked like her, she made the same noises. He was drunk. She shouldn't have let him. And she would cry again.

Then one day he came to her, piss-ass drunk, and he cried. He said to her, Martha is dead. I will never see her again.

He still only comes to her deep in the bottle, yearning for his Martha. But as he moves and breathes and cries, he calls her name instead.

Mama vignette, dialogue

"Sweetie?"

Mama.

"Honey? It's time for dinner."

It's dark.

"Honey, where are you?"

Mama, I think I'm lost, and it's dark.

"Oh my God, sweetie, what happened!"

Mama, I'm scared. It's dark, Mama, I'm scared!

"Don't leave me, sweetie, please!"

I'm not! Mama, don't cry! I'm not!

"Oh my God, oh my God, what am I going to do!"

I'm sorry I'm bad, Mama! I promise I won't be bad any more!

"Oh, sweetie, no. Please, no..."

I'm sorry, Mama! I'm sorry!

"How am I supposed to go on like this?"

Go where, Mama? Can I go?

"I miss you, honey, every day. I wish you could be here."

I'm right here, Mama. See!

"I can't do this any more, sweetie, I can't. It's too hard!"

Mama, you can do anything!

"It's been so long, darling. Do you still think about me?"

I miss you, Mama. When can we play?

"Where are you! How could you leave me!"

Mama, I'm here! I'm sorry, Mama!

"I thought of you today, honey. I was happy, and I thought of you."

I'm happy too, Mama! I love you.

"Your Papa left today, darling. Do you see him? Is he there with you?"

Mama, who's that? Why didn't he say anything?

"I'm so tired, sweetie. It's been so long."

Mama, where are you going? Can I come, too?

"I feel so lonely."

Come play with me, Mama! I love you!

Mama?

Adrift vignette, imagery

I used to spend hours watching dust drift in front of the projector. The light turned the particles into dancing specks of fire. It drew me in, like running water or open flames.

Very little changed in that tiny room. The reel clattered on in its endless race to nowhere, and the machinery hummed contentedly, happy to be doing its familiar job. Time stood still in that distant space.

But where time was absent, movement took its place. The dust whirled in silent chaos, wild and alive. It was a flock of tiny birds, moving to a purpose, but none that I could perceive. It would chase itself in winding streams, only to still in the space of a breath, held in anticipation as the particles drifted quietly like settling snow.

I could never hold on to what was real in that darkened room. The countless dramas that accompanied the whirring machines never quite touched that dusty place above. Every so often, distant voices would sift through the glass window, tickling the very edges of my mind. They were familiar voices, voices I understood. They told me their stories. They questioned my past. They called for my death. They told me they loved me.

Then the dust would shift, lifted by an imperceptible breath of air, and just like that my mind would wander off, back to the place with no time. Thoughts would drift away, caught up in the flow of particles, never quite settling, never quite mattering. The world became that little patch of light and the tiny specks that danced across its glow.

But that world doesn't last. With the passage of time elsewhere comes the slowing of the reel, the quieting of the machines, and the dying of the light. The film ends. The projector flickers off, and the swirl of embers quietly winks out of existence. Reality returns as I open the door and step back into the flow of time.

Behind me, the churning dust begins to settle.

Home Videos short story, perspective

You roll back on your heels, fighting a sneeze from the thick layer of dust in the attic. As you rub out a crick in your neck, you wonder why you ever thought rummaging through your old things would be fun and nostalgic. After more than an hour of digging, all you've gotten is a sore back and a bad case of allergies. And great, a single ancient videocassette. You peer closely at the label, but the dust and the dim lighting make it impossible to read.

Giving up, you get up to see if you can find your VCR and promptly ram your head into the rafters. The impact forces out the sneeze building up in your nose, which rockets out with a couple of its friends. Muttering curses, you haul out the box containing old electronics, raising another cloud of dust and another round of sneezing. Fifteen minutes, another incident with the rafters, and several profanities later, you manage to find your VCR and untangle it from a mess of wires. Clutching that and the videocassette, you take them down to the kitchen and try futilely to clean off all the dust.

"Hon e Vi lcos" is written in neat black lettering on the peeling label. Home Videos. As you rub the lump forming on your head, you figure you might as well watch the video you nearly gave yourself a concussion over. You carry the equipment into the living room and unplug a tangle of cables from your DVD player. Weighing the cassette in your hand, you shrug and slide it into the VCR. You turn the TV to Video 3 and press Play.

After a confused burst of static-y, half-formed images, a hazel-eyed, curly-haired brunette winks into focus on the screen. She taps on the camera, peering into the lens from inches away.

"Is this on?" she asks the person behind the camera.

The camera dips down twice, nodding. You imagine the cameraperson giving a hearty thumbs-up to the brunette. She steps back, revealing a small, motherly-looking woman in her early forties. She stands on a concrete path in a well-watered lawn, squinting in the sunlight. If anything, she reminds you of a cheerful mouse.

"Great!" she squeaks, giving an exaggerated clap. "Well, I guess we'll start now!"

With a cheerful "come on!" wave, she bounces her way up the path, camera bobbing along after. She stops at a friendly wooden door, and after a moment you recognize the entrance to your own house. The color of the paint is different, and you never would've bought that hideous owl ornament, but it's definitely your house. It was probably taped sometime before you moved in, maybe for an open house tour.

"Hello!" The woman calls the cameraperson's attention and your wandering thoughts back to the door, which now stands open. Her head peeks out from around the frame. "Come on in!"

The camera crosses the threshold of the entrance, and the brightness adjusts automatically to the indoors gloom. You are now looking at some previous incarnation of the central hallway in your home. Certainly it's a lot cleaner than you ever kept it. As the cameraperson practices their smooth walk down the corridor, the woman is busy poking her head into each of the rooms and offering useless commentary like, "How quaint!" and, "There’s the bathroom!"

She ushers the cameraperson into each room with a cheery "Look at that!" then moves on before you can get a good look at "that." At one point, the camera swings into the living room you're sitting in, and the silly notion of seeing yourself on camera makes you briefly crane your neck around. As you mentally smack yourself for that, the camera moves on after a cursory sweep of the empty room.

When the woman reaches the bedroom she actually claps in delight. "Isn't this place adorable?" she squeaks. You're wondering what she's on to make her so darn happy. She practically skips inside, then into the attached closet and bathroom, chirping all the way. The cameraperson takes this chance to get a good look around at the blank walls and the puke-yellow carpet, which thankfully had been replaced sometime before you moved in.

Finishing up her squeaky inspection, the woman skips out of the room with the cameraperson in tow. The door swings shut behind them with a familiar squeak, and there is a moment of confusion as the woman and the cameraperson jostle in the narrow hallway.

When the camera straightens out and the woman comes back into view, you are facing an unfamiliar wing of the house. Instead of stairs leading up, the central hallway ends in a turn. This part of the house must have been taken out in favor of the garage.

The woman patters down the hallway, kicking up dust that coats the camera in a thin film. Your nose briefly threatens to sneeze at the memory of it, and you swipe at it with a hand. Looking around, you'd imagine cobwebs on the corners of the ceiling. But the camera resolution isn’t good enough to see any, even if they exist.

As the corridor stretches on, you notice that the light grows steadily dimmer. The murky darkness makes you want to wipe the camera lens, which doesn’t seem to be adjusting to the lighting. It feels like it's taking forever to get anywhere, but it's hard to tell because there aren't any doors to mark progress by.

“That’s odd.” The woman's muffled voice swims out from the darkness ahead. “I don’t remember this part from the floor plan, do you?”

The camera pans around briefly, trying to get more information from the empty hall. Then it jostles a bit as the cameraperson trots to catch up with the woman. She's stopped in front of a closed door, the only one you've seen so far. She fumbles with the doorknob and says, “I'm sure they just forgot!” As if people forget entire wings on floor plans?

The woman pushes open the door and pokes her head inside. A draft of wind blows a lock of her hair into the camera, and you can almost smell the dank mustiness that must be wafting from the room. The camera can’t see more than an arm’s length beyond the open door, which lets in the weakest shred of light possible.

“Oh dear,” the woman remarks, waving her hand in front of her face. Before you can grunt a useless protest, she disappears into the gloom, mumbling something about a light switch. The cameraperson hesitates a bit longer, then inches inside.

There is a moment of confused shuffling in the dark, and the cameraperson’s breathing rushes over the mic once or twice. Every few seconds, a dim rectangle of light swings into view then disappears again, as the cameraperson periodically turns to reorient with the still-open door.

The woman is still busily searching for a light, mumbling to herself. As the cameraperson tries to locate her, the detached sound of her voice floats around eerily in the dark. The whole scene is like some low-budget horror movie.

Right on cue, a tinny scratching sound briefly drowns out the woman's muttering. The cameraperson hears it, too, though you can't tell the direction from the shoddy mic. The camera swings again to the rectangle of light, which now fits completely in the frame. The scratching sounds repeat, and for an instant it looks like something large and furry is blocking the light from the door.

Evidently the cameraperson has seen what you have, because the darkness comes back, and the mic is overwhelmed with shuffling cloth and running footsteps. The woman's oblivious mumbling gets louder until the cameraperson is practically on top of her.

Then two things happen almost simultaneously: the woman gives a delighted “Aha!” as she flicks an invisible switch, and somewhere behind the cameraperson the door slams shut.

Bright light washes everything out, and you get a brief upside-down look of a garage-like space. Then the woman squeaks and the cameraperson is running, or maybe both of them are running, and the camera is tilting wildly out of control. Everything is a mess of motion blurs and pumping feet, all lit up by the harsh white light. Instead of a sound track, there's a bunch of scrabbling and some squeaky yelling from the woman, and behind it all there's a lot (do you hear three sets?) of heavy breathing. You’re itching to grab that camera and point it at something sane, but you can only watch the world careening wildly onscreen. What the hell is even going on?

Then everything stops with a loud CHUNK as someone or other runs into something else and the camera crashes to the floor. You get a brief glimpse of a pair of neat, buckled shoes before the video flickers off.

Before you can get up, the video flickers on again. It takes a second for you to parse the scene. Everything is perfectly still and washed out in the light. There's a buckled shoe still lying in view, with a foot inside it. It's weird, because the foot just sort of ends where the ankle is supposed to be.

There's also something wrong with the camera. Random pixels are out, and a neat band at the bottom edge is black. The blackness extends out into the scene, pooling around that weird detached foot.

A sudden thump makes you jump about a foot into the air. Your brain latches onto the new activity with desperate attention. There's a frantic scrambling, and the camera gets knocked to the right. It hangs for a moment balanced on one edge, then tips onto its side with a noisy splat. Your stomach does an acrobatic move up into your chest.

The cameraperson is thrashing around now, making a high-pitched animal noise. Nothing is happening on screen, except a slow oozing that you refuse to understand. At one point the cameraperson splashes down just behind the camera, and the high-pitched animal noise turns into words. "Please, please, please..."

Before you or the cameraperson have the chance to screech like a little girl, the camera dies with a final click, and the video is over.

You’re not sure how long you stare at the blank screen, listening to the steady whirring of the VCR. Eventually, the cassette reaches the end of the tape, and with a click and a whirr, the tape begins to rewind itself. The mechanical whine wakes you up with a little jolt, and you shake your head at your stupidity. Here in your well-lit living room, the video goes back to feeling like a low-budget horror film. Probably something that the previous owners left behind to freak out the new people. Besides, that wing of the house doesn't even exist any more, if it ever did.

Anyway, thinking about it happening in your house gives you the creeps, so you shake it off and get up to grab the tape. You reach over, but your finger freezes over the Eject button. Up close, the whir of the rewinding tape suddenly turns into a high-pitched animal noise. Your stomach falls from its newfound height in your chest, because "Please, please, please" is running through your head, and you're beginning to realize that the cameraperson's voice is the exact same vaguely familiar, not-quite-right voice that you have when caught on video.

Word of the Moment Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Words have a way of invoking sound, image, memory, emotion, sensation, and other words. Communicating with words is an inexact science – an experiment that can never be repeated the same way twice. This site hosts some of my bigger experiments, each one a work in progress. And one of the foundational building blocks of these experiments is the word.

Here are some of my favorite words:

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Ideas: Words

Muscle Memory 🔗

In the movies, characters who body swap exchange consciousness but not experience. In reality, the body holds as many memories as the mind does. A body-swapped individual may find themselves with subconscious ticks, habits, and skills, all coming from the body that they inhabit. A talented swapper can bring those experiences up into their conscious memory, to apply once they are back in their own body.

Regeneration 🔗

On Earth, certain species of flatworm can regenerate if they are injured. Severing a worm at the right location will cause two fully-formed worms to regenerate from the halves. The Stygians on planet 8A35F-G have similar capabilities. Like worms, they are soft and harmless, but they can regenerate new brains when their body is split. However, these aliens live in a hostile environment, and individuals are clumsy. They now suffer from severe overpopulation, and Earth's astronauts must intervene to prevent complete self-destruction.

The Messenger 🔗

At the graduation ceremony for Courier training, the certificate is a truth spell. That truth spell is burned into the new Courier's forehead, representing a lifetime of privilege, commitment, and burden. Couriers spend their lives alone, performing one of the realm's most important services. They are afforded the utmost respect and confidence, not only because people can't lie in their presence, but also because they themselves cannot lie. To this day, no Courier has ever failed to deliver a message.

Windblown 🔗

It was the first thing I noticed when I arrived in Renaver: everything looked windblown. Walls listed sideways and thatching bunched leeward, giving the impression that the whole town was falling over. It was all because of an erratic wind that blew constantly through the streets. With time, I came to hate that wind. Like an overenthusiastic lover, it tugged at your skirts and stole away your breath, without leaving behind the comfort of human contact. Even inside, it scrabbled at the walls and moaned through the foundation, never letting you forget that it was there. Still, it took me two years of living in Renaver to realize that the wind wasn't a wind at all. It was breathing.

The X Team 🔗

As the Megalith got to the first skyscraper, a squad of superheroes appeared. At first, many people mistook them for the Power Rangers. But when they sprang into action, we realized we were mistaken. They may have looked the same, but their powers were very different. The biggest one became almost as big as the Megalith, while the smallest one shrank to the size of a mouse. The one who was still the size of a person gestured for us to stay back and said, "Leave this to the X Team!"

Downfall 🔗

The zombie apocalypse didn't happen the way we thought it would. Nobody even noticed it for years, and when we finally did, we thought it was a good thing. Birth rates were declining in third world nations. So were infant deaths and sexually transmitted diseases. Our humanitarian programs were working. Then infertility skyrocketed in the West. Doctors noticed it first and suspected something in the water. It took another five years to discover the virus, by which time the birth rate was down to a tenth of a percent. It was a cruel joke. Nobody felt sick, but people continued to get old and die. Meanwhile, nothing worked to conceive or even create babies. Humanity's last viable egg and sperm were used up in a desperate experiment. Now we are all growing old without the hope of a future. We aren't the only humans left, but we will be the last.

Lovesick 🔗

You've been sober for four months. As you receive your chip, you can't help but reflect on the journey it took to get here. You finally hit rock bottom when your last relationship crumbled into fear and resentment. That night, you locked yourself in your apartment for a week. If you couldn't see anyone, you thought, then you couldn't fall in love again. Once the shaking and crying was over, you dragged yourself to a Lovers Anonymous meeting. There, you met others who were still in love and trying to get out. One of them urged you to see a love counselor, and you did. You learned how to resist that first temptation of a crush, and how to satisfy the craving for companionship. You relapsed once, but you stopped yourself before there was even a kiss. After that, nothing could make you love again. Now you are who you always wanted to be, and stronger than ever before. Society is ready to take you back, now that you've sworn off love forever. With a smile, you accept your chip and hold it up for everyone to see.

Timewarp 🔗

We finally cracked the theory of relativity centuries after Einstein's death. Mastery over gravity did not have the intended effects: instead of manipulating mass and space, our machines changed the density of time. We only realized it when we discovered that the city of Los Angeles, where our research facilities were based, was seven seconds behind the rest of the world. If you drove from downtown to the desert, you wouldn't notice anything different. But if you stood in the desert and observed a clock in the city, it would look like it took about an hour and twenty milliseconds to complete an hour. Yet in the city exactly one hour had passed. Somehow, we were slowly falling behind in time. So we opened two research facilities, exactly five hundred miles away from each other, and began experimenting with time. We discovered that we could create a time gradient over as much as two hundred miles, or as little as three feet. But the latter had catastrophic effects on any living creatures caught in its field: their bodies were torn apart by the forces of time, down to individual cells. A lesser form of warping sickness affected those who frequently traveled across time gradients, causing cancer rates similar to those of pilots. Some sensitive machinery also suffered ill effects, such as precise seismometers. But otherwise, moving between time densities had no discernible effects other than to make regions of other densities appear faster or slower to a local observer. It also made timezones a nightmare until we finally got Los Angeles fixed.

Like You 🔗

You woke to unbearable pain. You couldn't see, breathe, or move. Burns covered 80% of your body, which felt like it was still on fire. Doctors worked around the clock for what felt like decades. When your breath returned, you still couldn't use it to scream. When your sight returned, you couldn't bear to look at your ravaged body. Your mobility did not return. You stared at the ceiling, mute and still, for what felt like centuries. Then a different sort of doctor darkened your door and hauled you into a wheelchair. She talked endlessly down endless hallways, filling in for your silence as much as your immobility. Finally you arrived in a room full of people like you, missing hair and faces and limbs. Everywhere you saw burned skin, raw pain, and hope. The doctor said these were people like you, hurt and grieving from all they had lost. They were survivors like you, found in the aftermath of the same terrible bombing. They were fighters like you, relearning how to live after the fire took their livelihood. The only problem was, they weren't like you. They were victims, and you were the bomber.

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Preview: Chapter 3 exerpt

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Preview: Chapter 2 exerpt

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Preview: Prologue

Muscle Memory 🔗

Regeneration 🔗

The Messenger 🔗

Windblown 🔗

The X Team 🔗

Downfall 🔗

Lovesick 🔗

Timewarp 🔗

Like You 🔗