Catching Fire Page 0,76

finishing the complicated knot I've been sweating over. Of course it's Finnick, who seems to have spent his childhood doing nothing but wielding tridents and manipulating ropes into fancy knots for nets, I guess. I watch for a minute while he picks up a length of rope, makes a noose, and then pretends to hang himself for my amusement.

Rolling my eyes, I head over to another vacant station where tributes can learn to build fires. I already make excellent fires, but I'm still pretty dependent on matches for starting them. So the trainer has me work with flint, steel, and some charred cloth. This is much harder than it looks, and even working as intently as I can, it takes me about an hour to get a fire going. I look up with a triumphant smile only to find I have company.

The two tributes from District 3 are beside me, struggling to start a decent fire with matches. I think about leaving, but I really want to try using the flint again, and if I have to report back to Haymitch that I tried to make friends, these two might be a bearable choice. Both are small in stature with ashen skin and black hair. The woman, Wiress, is probably around my mother's age and speaks in a quiet, intelligent voice. But right away I notice she has a habit of dropping off her words in mid-sentence, as if she's forgotten you're there. Beetee, the man, is older and somewhat fidgety. He wears glasses but spends a lot of time looking under them. They're a little strange, but I'm pretty sure neither of them is going to try to make me uncomfortable by stripping naked. And they're from District 3. Maybe they can even confirm my suspicions of an uprising there.

I glance around the Training Center. Peeta is at the center of a ribald circle of knife throwers. The morphlings from District 6 are in the camouflage station, painting each other's faces with bright pink swirls. The male tribute from District 5 is vomiting wine on the sword-fighting floor. Finnick and the old woman from his district are using the archery station. Johanna Mason is naked again and oiling her skin down for a wrestling lesson. I decide to stay put.

Wiress and Beetee make decent company. They seem friendly enough but don't pry. We talk about our talents; they tell me they both invent things, which makes my supposed interest in fashion seem pretty weak. Wiress brings up some sort of stitching device she's working on.

"It senses the density of the fabric and selects the strength," she says, and then becomes absorbed in a bit of dry straw before she can go on.

"The strength of the thread," Beetee finishes explaining. "Automatically. It rules out human error." Then he talks about his recent success creating a musical chip that's tiny enough to be concealed in a flake of glitter but can hold hours of songs. I remember Octavia talking about this during the wedding shoot, and I see a possible chance to allude to the uprising.

"Oh, yeah. My prep team was all upset a few months ago, I think, because they couldn't get hold of that," I say casually. "I guess a lot of orders from District Three were getting backed up."

Beetee examines me under his glasses. "Yes. Did you have any similar backups in coal production, this year?" he asks.

"No. Well, we lost a couple of weeks when they brought in a new Head Peacekeeper and his crew, but nothing major," I say. "To production, I mean. Two weeks sitting around your house doing nothing just means two weeks of being hungry for most people."

I think they understand what I'm trying to say. That we've had no uprising. "Oh. That's a shame," says Wiress in a slightly disappointed voice. "I found your district very ..." She trails off, distracted by something in her head.

"Interesting," fills in Beetee. "We both did."

I feel bad, knowing that their district must have suffered much worse than ours. I feel I have to defend my people. "Well, there aren't very many of us in Twelve," I say. "Not that you'd know it nowadays by the size of the Peacekeeping force. But I guess we're interesting enough."

As we move over to the shelter station, Wiress stops and gazes up at the stands where the Gamemakers are roaming around, eating and drinking, sometimes taking notice of us. "Look," she says, giving her head a slight nod in