第82章
foxface? the boy tri-
bute from her district is dead. she’s operating alone, at night.
and her strategy has been to evade, not attack. i don’t really
think that, even if she heard my voice, she’d do anything but
hope someone else would kill me.
then there’s thresh. all right, he’s a distinct threat. but i
haven’t seen him, not once, since the games began. i think
about how foxface grew alarmed when she heard a sound at
the site of the explosion. but she didn’t turn to the woods, she
turned to whatever lies across from it. to that area of the are-
na that drops off into i don’t know what. i feel almost certain
that the person she ran from was thresh and that is his do-
main. he’d never have heard me from there and, even if he
did, i’m up too high for someone his size to reach.
so that leaves cato and the girl from district 2, who are
now surely celebrating the new rule. they’re the only ones left
who benefit from it besides peeta and myself. do i run from
them now, on the chance they heard me call peeta’s name? no,
i think. let them come. let them come with their night-vision
glasses and their heavy, branch-breaking bodies.
right into the range of my arrows. but i know they won’t. if
they didn’t come in daylight to my fire, they won’t risk what
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could be another trap at night. when they come, it will be on
their own terms, not because i’ve let them know my wherea-
bouts.
stay put and get some sleep, katniss, i instruct myself, al-
though i wish i could start tracking peeta now. tomorrow,
you’ll find him.
i do sleep, but in the morning i’m extra-cautious, thinking
that while the careers might hesitate to attack me in a tree,
they’re completely capable of setting an ambush for me. i
make sure to fully prepare myself for the day — eating a big
breakfast, securing my pack, readying my weapons — before i
descend. but all seems peaceful and undisturbed on the
ground.
today i’ll have to be scrupulously careful. the careers will
know i’m trying to locate peeta. they may well want to wait
until i do before they move in. if he’s as badly wounded as ca-
to thinks, i’d be in the position of having to defend us both
without any assistance. but if he’s that incapacitated, how has
he managed to stay alive? and how on earth will i find him?
i try to think of anything peeta ever said that might give me
an indication as to where he’s hiding out, but nothing rings a
bell. so i go back to the last moment i saw him sparkling in the
sunlight, yelling at me to run. then cato appeared, his sword
drawn. and after i was gone, he wounded peeta. but how did
peeta get away? maybe he’d held out better against the track-
er jacker poison than cato.
maybe that was the variable that allowed him to escape.
but he’d been stung, too. so how far could he have gotten,
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stabbed and filled with venom? and how has he stayed alive
all these days since? if the wound and the stingers haven’t
killed him, surely thirst would have taken him by now.
and that’s when i get my first clue to his whereabouts. he
couldn’t have survived without water. i know that from my
first few days here. he must be hidden somewhere near a
source. there’s the lake, but i find that an unlikely option
since it’s so close to the careers’ base camp. a few spring-fed
pools. but you’d really be a sitting duck at one of those. and
the stream. the one that leads from the camp rue and i made
all the way down near the lake and beyond. if he stuck to the
stream, he could change his location and always be near wa-
ter. he could walk in the current and erase any tracks. he
might even be able to get a fish or two.
well, it’s a place to start, anyway.
to confuse my enemies’ minds, i start a fire with plenty of
green wood. even if they think it’s a ruse, i hope they’ll decide
i’m hidden somewhere near it. while in reality, i’ll be tracking
peeta.
the sun burns off the morning haze almost immediately
and i can tell the day will be hotter than usual. the waters
cool and pleasant on my bare feet as i head downstream. i’m
tempted to call out peeta’s name as i go but decide against it. i
will have to find him with my eyes and one good ear or he will
have to find me. but he’ll know i’ll be looking, right?