Catching Fire

than smart,” says Beetee. “She’s intuitive.” We all turn to look at Beetee, who seems to be coming back to life. “She can sense things before anyone else. Like a canary in one of your coal mines.”
    “What’s that?” Finnick asks me.
    “It’s a bird that we take down into the mines to warn us if there’s bad air,” I say.
    “What’s it do, die?” asks Johanna.
    “It stops singing first. That’s when you should get out. But if the air’s too bad, it dies, yes. And so do you.” I don’t want to talk about dying songbirds. They bring up thoughts of my father’s death and Rue’s death and Maysilee Donner’s death and my mother inheriting her songbird. Oh, great, and now I’m thinking of Gale, deep down in that horrible mine, with President Snow’s threat hanging over his head. So easy to make it look like an accident down there. A silent canary, a spark, and nothing more.
    I go back to imagining killing the president.
    Despite her annoyance at Wiress, Johanna’s as happy as I’ve seen her in the arena. While I’m adding to my stock of arrows, she pokes around until she comes up with a pair of lethal-looking axes. It seems an odd choice until I see her throw one with such force it sticks in the sun-softened gold of the Cornucopia. Of course. Johanna Mason. District 7. Lumber. I bet she’s been tossing around axes since she could toddle. It’s like Finnick with his trident. Or Beetee with his wire. Rue with her knowledge of plants. I realize it’s just another disadvantage the District 12 tributes have faced over the years. We don’t go down in the mines until we’re eighteen. It looks like most of the other tributes learn something about their trades early on. There are things you do in a mine that could come in handy in the Games. Wielding a pick. Blowing things up. Give you an edge. The way my hunting did. But we learn them too late.
    While I’ve been messing with the weapons, Peeta’s been squatting on the ground, drawing something with the tip of his knife on a large, smooth leaf he brought from the jungle. I look over his shoulder and see he’s creating a map of the arena. In the center is the Cornucopia on its circle of sand with the twelve strips branching out from it. It looks like a pie sliced into twelve equal wedges. There’s another circle representing the waterline and a slightly larger one indicating the edge of the jungle. “Look how the Cornucopia’s positioned,” he says to me.
    I examine the Cornucopia and see what he means. “The tail points toward twelve o’clock,” I say.
    “Right, so this is the top of our clock,” he says, and quickly scratches the numbers one through twelve around the clock face. “Twelve to one is the lightning zone.” He writes lightning in tiny print in the corresponding wedge, then works clockwise adding blood , fog , and monkeys in the following sections.
    “And ten to eleven is the wave,” I say. He adds it. Finnick and Johanna join us at this point, armed to the teeth with tridents, axes, and knives.
    “Did you notice anything unusual in the others?” I ask Johanna and Beetee, since they might have seen something we didn’t. But all they’ve seen is a lot of blood. “I guess they could hold anything.”
    “I’m going to mark the ones where we know the Gamemakers’ weapon follows us out past the jungle, so we’ll stay clear of those,” says Peeta, drawing diagonal lines on the fog and wave beaches. Then he sits back. “Well, it’s a lot more than we knew this morning, anyway.”
    We all nod in agreement, and that’s when I notice it. The silence. Our canary has stopped singing.
    I don’t wait. I load an arrow as I twist and get a glimpse of a dripping-wet Gloss letting Wiress slide to the ground, her throat slit open in a bright red smile. The point of my arrow disappears into his right temple, and in the instant it takes to reload, Johanna has buried an ax blade in Cashmere’s chest. Finnick knocks away a spear Brutus throws at Peeta and takes Enobaria’s knife in his thigh. If there wasn’t a Cornucopia to duck behind, they’d be dead, both of the tributes from District 2. I spring forward in pursuit. Boom! Boom! Boom! The cannon confirms there’s no way to help Wiress, no need to finish off Gloss or Cashmere. My allies and I are rounding the horn, starting to give chase to Brutus and Enobaria, who are sprinting down a sand strip toward the jungle.
    Suddenly the ground jerks beneath my feet and I’m