"So long as there is love in your heart, I will never leave you."

These were the last things my father said to me before he was taken away. Mother followed him shortly, leaving my younger sister, Bianca, and me to live on our own in our forest home. We lived on our own for years, with a total of two neighbors living within ten miles of our home.

Oh. You believe that our parents were dead? Fool. They were arrested after having been on the run from the Censorship Police, as Papa called them. Neither he nor Mama are dead. Both are very much alive, I think. Hard labor could not kill my parents. Not Mama, who was tough and muscular, who helped build our little house even as she was pregnant with me. Nor Papa, though he preferred scholarly pursuits to physical labor. He would always persevere in the end, like Bianca and me.

In a good memoir, I suppose I would start out with my birth, move on to first memories, and tales of childhood, nut you don't want to hear that, I'm sure. It was very boring in any case. We lived outside--only meals and sleep occurred inside. Bianca and I both became skilled in climbing trees and making our ways through the deep forests of our land.

The life we lived was quiet and simple. At night, Papa recited to us in various languages and taught me to understand five spoken languages aside from my own. He left me illiterate, though, for we owned no books. Even if we had, I doubt that Papa would have taught me to read. It would have taken too long to teach me six different alphabets, and in any case, Papa thought it dangerous for little girls to know too much. I think that's part of why he loved Mama: she was not learned, but she was kind and good. I did not love Mama so much as I loved Papa, though.

Papa was everything I have ever hoped to be. He was good to Bianca to me, even if we weren't allowed to do anything he considered a man's duty, and he was smart. There was never a soul smarter than my father. He had entire books memorized and told us stories in all sorts of languages. Even when I didn't know a single word of what he was saying, I could follow along the tale his face and hands told. Papa was the embodiment of everything I thought to be goold in the world.

Mama was kind and loving, and she was entertaining, too. She sang wonderfully and tried to teach me, but I was--and still am--hopelessly tonedeaf. Bianca picked it up all right, but she never sang like Mama did. No one else had Mama's eerie, piercing voice.

Papa and Mama were angelic in my mind. Now, I am sure that they must have had faults, deadly flaws for which they suffered, but when I was eight, they were perfect. If they argued, if they slapped me, I never noticed and I don't remember.

On my eighth birthday, the trouble began. The Blacksands, a wanted family like ours, walked the three hilly miles from their hideout to ours. Madame Blacksand brought me a doll with a pretty red dress. My best friend, Karekare, gave me a ribbon necklace with a brass key on it, and Ranyel, Karekare's little sister, gave me a hug and whispered, "Happy birthday, Melly."

Before you can even try, let me say that no one but my family may call me Melly, just as no one other than I can call my sister Anca. Our nicknames were private things. In fact, the first time someone who was not a Blacksand or a Voren called my sister "Anca," I jumped at them and tried to scratch their eyes out.

That night, after our celebrations and Bianca and Ranyel were asleep, Mama and Papa and the Blacksands talked around the fire. Karekare and I lay around our parents, pretending not to listen to their conversation.

"Heard they've been combing the area twenty miles south of us--"

"But that's south of us and they never--"

"Doesn't matter. It's so close--"

"Who told you, anyway?" Mama's hands began to shake, and she leaned against Papa.

"Greenleaf. He came right from the city when he heard--"

"Do you really think it's safe for Greenleaf to know where we are?"

"He's my brother, Theo. I trust him with my life." Madame Blacksand sniffed haughtily.

"Don't be a prig about it, Cassia," Papa told her. "You know it's a security risk."

"But still, family should be trustworthy," she replied.

"Not necessarily."

"Cosette, your parents were the exception, not the rule!"

"They still told of my marriage to the government. If the Police found me here, I'd be locked away for the rest of my life! And I'd be lucky." Mama looked angry. If people could burn things with their eyes, I think Madame Blacksand would have had a big hole in her head at that moment.

"In any case," said Mr. Blacksand, "this isn't the point. The point is that the Police are on our shadows right now. We need to disappear."

Papa looked down then and noticed Karekare and me trying not to listen, or at least try not to appear to listen.

"Off to bed for you two!" he said, and we had no choice but to trudge inside and fall asleep. I tried to listen to the conversation from where I lay, but their words were too quiet now that they knew we were listening.

From then on, Papa and Mama began stockpiling food and water. Mama also began making better clothes for us. Bianca and I continued life as usual, visiting Karekare and Ranyel, helping Mama and Papa, and playing our usual games. Bianca's fifth birthday came and went. Our food and supplies increased, and often I was sent out into the woods to hide food where the animals couldn't get it.

In the summer, Mama and I built a fort--"to play in"--deep in the forest a mile and a half away from the house. It was mostly underground, and the entrance was buried under fallen boughs and pine needles. Bianca and I carried food and water and clothing out there, too. When we played there with Karekare and Ranyel, though, we weren't allowed to touch the supplies.

Every once in a while, Mama and Papa would wake Bianca and me in the middle of the night. The two of us were sent to our fort and told not to leave until someone came to get us. We sat silently, cold and fightened and wet, in the dark. Hours, once even a day, later, Mama or Papa or one of the Blacksands came to get us.

The first time we sat there, Bianca cried the entire time. She had forgotten her shoes and her feet were bleeding. I tried to shush her, offering her some berries and slapping her in frustration. She wouldn't stop, though, and wailed until dawn. After that, she was always silent, though she shook like mad.

Summer disappeared quickly as a thief in shadows. We were sent out to our fort more and more often, sometimes with Karekare and Ranyel. At night, we ate our food cold, because Papa refused to light a fire. I was always cold then, no matter how many layers I wore.

At night, Papa didn't often tell stories and Mama wouldn't sing. They spent most of their time talking quietly with each other and the Blacksands. All they said was in hushed voices, unless they got on the topic of Mr. Greenleaf, in which case they shouted at each other until Bianca and Ranyel began crying.

One night it was especially bad. Mama and Mr. Blacksand had both stood up and screamed at each other.

"How can you?" Mama yelled. "We will all die because you trusted that awful, horrible brother-in-law!"

"Calm down, Eliza!" he had replied, just as loudly. "We have no proof that anything happened to Greenleaf."

"He was supposed to see you two days ago, and he hasn't come yet. He's never done this before--"

"Maybe he's taken sick," Madame Blacksand said quietly. In the darkness--for tonight we were at the Blacksand's home and they weren't lighting fires, either--I couldn't see her face, but I knew she had her apologetic face on.

"Or maybe he's being tortured for information," Mama said. "Maybe he's dead."

"Don't say that, Eliza!" Madame Blacksand cried.

"Why not? It's probably true."

Papa stood and put his hand on Mama's arm. "I think it's time we leave. We can talk about it tomorrow."

On the way home, I made the mistake of asking, "When do I get new shoes?" Mr. Greenleaf had always brought them around this time every year.

"You don't," Mama said shortly. "Now be quiet, Melisande."

I was quiet then, and only thought about how small the shoes I had were. I believe that I was most bitter about my lack of new shoes. I wasn't at all frightened of Mama and Papa going away, because I knew they couldn't. Mama and Papa would never leave me alone.

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