domus aurea { day eight }

You slept without issue.

This world was not one in which you found solace, but there was no fear. There was nothing but black between your eyes that night, no visions of home. Beyond that, no remorse. You remember the voices of the dead dripping down your checks and through your throat, swallowing up each one as though they were a part of you. This brought pain—the unmistakable heartache—when you took a sword to Fallon, or a flail to Castor and Elettra. You had stepped beyond Benat and killed in cold blood, ended a life that was innocent (too young) as her ending was explosive.

The anthem revealed six more deaths. Wylla was first and you imagine that she had gone down as a warrior. A child, but mighty. Elettra next, and where you should find pain in your heart, you find only a still burning flame. Sweet Rio swirls past—the king of fools drowned by someone else’s fury. There is no love lost for Eva, but—you wonder who could have snuffed out her flame. Riven’s face has you inhale. She could have gone home. You would have trusted her to tell your story, to be a decent human being even with a shower of scars. Sage is last, and you shake your head. At least he could be at peace with whoever he had lost.

Which left eight—seven other souls that were striving to wear a crown and to be bathed in applause. What a waste, you think, to have stumbled through the mansion and still be standing. You think of those that remain—the twos (two girls and a boy), Castor, the other eight (her name escapes you), the one from nine, and your district partner. None of you have come this far to lay down and die. Perhaps some were fighting for glory (they hid behind the veneer of their families, or to avenge), others to wake another day. And you?

The whimper of a crawling whale awakens you from your spot in the planes. You smile as the thing coos, dragging a satchel of crayons. “Larry—we’ve got a friend!” And the word seems foreign at this point, but the cute little blue whale flops into your lap with a gurgle. “She looks like a Valentina to me, no?” You kneel, moving toward the satchel, ignoring the shadow that slips over your form.

The spikes enter your flesh and you let out a grunt.
He has no words, no foolish rambling about why he’s here to kill you (you’re thankful, because you know the reason). Instead he mouths out a word that cuts deeper than the spikes into your skin.

Sorry.

You move to place your hands around the hilt of his weapon and pull the spikes out of you with a yell. You reach for your pitchfork and spit blood at his feet. Saummerand was not one that you knew intimately. The boy had been with Diorite on the third day—you can barely recall it now—but you knew little else about him. Except, of course, that this boy still felt the heavy weight of guilt for what he was bound to do. Unlucky for him, you did not.

“Sorry?” You bring the pole of the pitchfork across your chest with a sneer. You thought about Magdalena (you got yourself into this, now get yourself out). Of your grandmother (your soul is strong). You think about how you may not have cared about wearing a crown, but that you hadn’t come this far to fall to someone that was sorry. That was the trouble with these boys—none of them fought you like a real man, or like the women that had entered the arena with you.

“You come at me with that weak shit—” You spit again. “Sorry? I ain’t sorry.” You put one foot behind the other.

“Boy, bye.”

[Salome attacks Saummerand with pitchfork (spear)]
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What will they say at your funeral?

Saummerand is as much a career as he is a boy—you can see the earnestness in the curve of his hip and the thickness of his calves. There is nothing remarkable about him, but then, you think this makes you like him more than you did before. He turns on you after you slash across his thighs. It’s as though he comes alive, whether by your words or from the blow you landed. He’s ready to kill you now, whether or not you are.

But that is where you might surprise (do you ever not?)—the joke that has been funny to you has gone on for so many days longer, you suppose your life might be so funny to anyone else. There was the laughable reason, when you stood in front of the rest of your district, saving them from certain doom (didn’t Tamron also step up, too?). Then there was you mission to save each of the tributes, the martyr you were (Gentian, then Molly, then Atlas, Fallon, and Tamron—how well had that gone?). Then you forgave, because that was noble (Riven was dead now). Your nihilism had made a joke out of Elettra (boom, went the cannon… where was Castor?).

They will say that you struggled to know your own story. You were unraveling with each passing moment—poor Salome, don’t you see your life slipping away from you? She was a good sister, a friend, someone who stepped up in time of need. She was—

“Ha. Ha.” You laugh, the breath coming out of you as he breaks your collar bone. You feel the warmth flush through your shoulder and you struggle not to fall over. You look back to Larry (was there hope in his eyes?).

But it’s funny, you think. You couldn’t take death seriously, not after watching all the boys and girls that had fallen before you. Didn’t you have any tears for them? Oh—you were a monster after all, laughing at death. She would laugh with you, too. They took themselves so seriously, as though one life was all that mattered (but it was their life, not yours!). Somehow you still found the joke funny—your life—enough that you couldn’t stop the laughter eking out of your throat. Saummerand was going to kill you, crush you, and perhaps spit on your body (was that anger in his eyes).

But you could still laugh—they would never take that away from you. As you had said to Castor, you didn’t decide who lived or died, but you did decide how it made you feel.

“Don’t go getting too excited.” You give a smile, your eyes wide. You giggle again. “We aren’t at the big finish just yet—are we?”

[Salome attacks Saummerand with her pitchfork (spear)]
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He hits again in the same spot, with few words.

You suppose it’s for the best. Neither of you want to know one another—does he have brothers or sisters? Is it important? He’s go on without you, when you fall. Your cousins must all be breathless seeing their little cousin go up against a career. But the fight has not left your eyes, nor your hands. The pitchfork is a reminder that you have not given up on what was truly important—this is bigger than yourself. Could you find the strength to push forward even after all the blows to your body.

The tines of your pitchfork had found his armor, but not his skin. You had gotten caught, and this gave him the opening to hit you once again. Much like hot hands against your baby sister, you’d been slapped away. Maybe that was why you thought this was so telling, were you the child and he showing you what it meant to be grown? The blood rushes to your face and you laugh again. The warmth flushes once more, and where you should find fear and anger, you can only feel a strange sort of satisfaction. Eight days and you finally stepped toward death without regret.

“You’re a good shot.” You say, coughing. A sharp pain runs through your chest. You are happy you came to the paper planes—at least now you had seen almost the entire arena. Was that important? You laugh again, and wonder if Benat or Iago will greet you if you fall. But somehow, you still put one foot in front of another. Through all the pain, and the odds as long as they were—Salome Izar would not quit. After all, you could continue to surprise, until your time had run out.

Do you believe in god?

You can hear your grandmother now, and you look Saummerand up and down. The ringing doesn’t leave your ears. If god had been real—but you stop there, because in spite of it all, you still believe. Perhaps that’s what kept you tethered, or made you childish. But even after all the death and destruction, the pain and suffering—you still liked the idea that there was something far more powerful than the men and women on earth. You believed in something bigger than yourself, something that could connect you to a world beyond here and now.

“This one’s for you, Benat and Iago.”

[Salome attacks Saummerand with pitchfork (spear)]
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You feel the stab into your back and shudder.

Death seems to grip you now, and you are warm.

And tired.

The world spins in colors, and you cough, blood in your throat. You wonder what it must look like to the rest of the world, the foolish Izar girl staring down a career who hasn’t missed a single shot. You smile a dreamy smile, unable to let go of who you have been, and who you have become. It is no bitter disappointment for you to have come so far, to stare into the eyes of death and say,

“I suppose I’m ready to go home.”

You manage to prop yourself up by your spear, body aching. You know there is a cannon here for one of you but—he looks just as strong and brave as when he started. And the fire that is awoke in him beams; he whispers out that he is fighting for someone, anyone. Not just because he has to, not to make a fool of you, and not in spite of everything. You still smile, blood dripping down between your two lips, eyes holding onto him.

What would your grandmother have you do?

With the world fading and the lights growing dim, you think, and think, and think and think that perhaps, you should still dance. You tap a foot on the ground, and stagger back and forth in a weak show that you haven’t been beaten just yet. He’ll have to kill the mad woman, the girl that laughed at death and welcomed into this place—now her home—until at last the two of you could go away old friends. And my, you have seen it all, have you not? The love between others, the anger, the pain, the bad, the good. You have seen enough to have lived your life, sweet Salome. A world that did not belong to you, where you stretched your existence and became more real than shadow, more human than apparition.

But you do not give in just yet. He would have to kill you, instead of you laying down to die.

“Care to have a final dance, stranger?” You manage a curtsy, your dress now slashed, your body riddled with wounds. You laugh again, and spit out another hack of blood. You ease forward and hiss at the pain that you have. You slide backward and then, with a giggle, step forward. You lock eyes with Saummerand, your hands slipping along the hilt of your spear. One foot catches another and you trip, your spear angling itself up rather than down, your body down, rather than up.

“Oops—”

[Salome attacks Saummerand with pitchfork (spear)]

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You half expected that he would hit you and that the world would shatter into a million stars.

Instead, he smacks your gloves and shatters them into shards of the polyurethane they are made from, and you give him as much side-eye as you can muster. You hope that at the least they can bury you with a pretty dress, or flowers in your hair. You remember thinking that even Iago looked regal when his body was placed into the ground—if they could turn a monster into an angel, surely you could do him one better.

You blink.

The world is awash in color, just as it had been the day before. Perhaps from loss of blood the extreme pain pulsing through your body, but you could hear the thumping and pounding of music. A wild rhythm that seemed to make you grin, and spit out another laugh. After all, he had all the power in the world, but you were still here, still struggling to get up off the ground. And where had your little pitchfork gone, but deep into his stomach. You dragged one foot in front of the other, and whipped your head back with as much flair as you could muster.

“You don’t think I got this far without being able to dance my away from death, did you?” You grin, blood trickling out of your mouth. It isn’t so much a taunt as a declaration that now is the time, that he would ascend and rise above you toward glory, or you would claw yourself back to life. Somehow, you were on fire, not cold and shaken, but bursting with the same gleeful energy as you always had. They could shatter your bones and rip you to pieces, but you wouldn’t let them change how you felt.

He doesn’t want to dance, and it makes you frown.

We’ll see each other again sometime, and we could become the world’s most fantastic dancers.

You step forward and backward, renewed with all the vigor of a madwoman. You sway from side to side, giving a low laugh, one that hurts your chest but makes you feel warm all the same. Even as your lungs fill up with blood, you haven’t lost your smile. You point your pitchfork at his legs this time, hoping to find a spot without much of anything. At least then he might show you if he had the same sort of moves a victor needed.

“Don’t worry—I’ll save a dance for you on the other side.”