We walk for around half an hour, all up hill in mostly silence. My little sister, who's name is Christina, falls a few times but I think she realizes that crying won't get her anywhere, so she's silent.

My mother and father say very little.

I asked them a few questions about Beleg- how much different is their language from ours? - Very different. Where are we going?- Somewhere. You'll see soon. Why is out of the way? - Elizabeth. We'll discuss this later.

I sigh and shake my head.

“How much further?” My sister asks tiredly. I forget that she's only 8 years old, and it must be hard for her to keep up.

“We should be there soon,” My father says, blundering through brush, pushing aside small bushes and saplings.

“Are you sure you know where you're going?” I ask. We are't even following a trail. Just my father, who seemed to have some small map in his hand. I didn't think it could be of much use though, because everything on it looked like a bunch of scribbles to me.

“Yes,” My father says sternly, “And we will be there soon.”

I sigh and adjust the bag I'm wearing on my back.

It was heavy.

~

Not even five minutes later, we crest the top of the hill we had been climbing for half an hour. My father heaves a big sigh and looks back at me and my mother.

“This is the right place,” He says confidently, pointing to the small dirt trail a few meters to our right. Should be less than a minute now.

We follow the trail, which then in turn leads to a small clearing. My father drops his bag.

“We're here,” He says. I raise an eyebrow.

“You mean we seriously just walked up hill for two miles so we could see some stupid patch of dirt!?” I explode at him, “If you're gonna do something this stupid, at least tell us what it's about!”

My dad glances upward and then puts a finger to his lips impatiently. “Please, Liz, I can explain in just a second. Just be quiet. I promise it'll be explained.” I give him a death glare and wait for the explanation.
It doesn't come. Instead, my dad just looks up and yells something. It sounds like the same language he used earlier. I expect him to look back down at me but he doesn't.

I look up and my breath catches in my throat.

The trees are insanely tall, with huge, branches stretching at least 25 feet in every direction.I feel like I'm about to pass out from dizzyness.

But not only that- there are tree houses and bridges strung everywhere. I take a step backward to steady myself and take a deep breath.

Those houses were at least 20 feet up in the air, some even higher, and they were camoflauged so well that unless you were standing at my vantage point, you'd never see them. I squint upwards to try and see how many there were, but I can't count because they're too far away. I assume there's maybe twenty or thirty of them.

I glance in awe over at my father. “Wh-what is this? Are we seriously going to live here?” He looks nervously over at my mother and sister, then to me.

He doesn't have time to answer though. Things from above are being shouted down at us. It's too faint for me to hear, but I can't understand it anyways.

My father yells back up. A few seconds of silence pass, then a whizzing sound shoots strait past my head. I gulp and look behind me.

An arrow with a note tied around it is stuck in the decaying leaves just a few feet away from my little sister's foot.

“Dad,” I whisper harshly, “What if that hurt one of us?” My dad shakes his head.

“These people know what they're doing, Liz. Don't worry.” I glare down at my shoes as my mother picks up the arrow and unties the note around it.

I hated this. All I could do right now was trust my Dad, who really wasn't all that trustworthy. He was too impulsive for that. He never thought anything through.

“These are directions,” My mother says after reading the note. My father looks over my mother's shoulder at the note and nods.

“Okay. We're supposed to go over to this tree...” Dad picks his bag back up and motions for us to do the same. We do.

Then we follow him over to the nearest tree, which he walks around, feeling up and down for something. His hand catches on a well hidden string, which he pulls carefully.
The huge piece of hard bark the size of a grown human man falls out. I jump slightly, thinking it will fall to the forest floor. It doesn't though. It seems to be on hinges.

Then I realize what it is.

“A door in a tree?” I wonder aloud. 'We really are going to live here,' I think. It's so weird though. In a few months I'll be living in these trees like a gigantic monkey or something.

My father lets my mother go inside first. Then my goes in. Then I do. My dad follows after me.

Inside the tree, it's dark and damp and very musty. I see that there are steep stairs leading up for as far as I can see in the darkness. I start climbing after my little sister.

After 5 minutes, I'm panting. The bag on my back is so heavy, and I can feel the back of my neck bristling with sweat.

Finally, my mother stops. My sister bumps into her back and almost falls on me.

“We're here,” My mother says, and I can see in the darkness that she looks back at me. The little light that leeks through some crack just ahead of us gives the faint outline of a door.

My mother opens it and light seeps in through the doorway. My sister lets out a faint gasp.

I hurry her forward and step out into the light.

 

~

We step out onto a small platform lined with railings. Bridges branch out from every side like a maze.

Just across from us lays a huge expanse of quaint little cottages built on tree branches.

It's utterly amazing.

A tall man about my father's age comes out from the cottage across the nearest bridge and waves to us.

In accented English he says, “Hello James. Good to see you again.”

My father nods and shakes his hand. “Sorry for the sudden intrusion.”
“No problem,” The man says, smiling in understanding. I notice then that he looks the same as us- He's Landish, not Belegian. “We're always happy to take in more family's. It broadens the rebellion.”

Rebelion? Rebelion. We're fighting against... Beleg? I think, trying to puzzle everything out.

“This is your family?” The man asks, gesturing to us. I snap out of my thoughts and give him a bright smile.

“I'm Sam,” The man says, extending his hand to me. I shake his hand and introduce myself.

“I'm Elizabeth, it's nice to meet you.”

Then Sam introduces himself to the rest of my family.

“Well,” He says, “I guess you'll want me to show you your new house now. This way, be careful.”
He walks steadily along the unstable bridges connecting us to the rest of the town, and I wonder how he doesn't make the bridge shake.

When I walk I make the bridge shake.

Sam nods in acknowledgement as an older women walks past him, but she gives our family a dirty look, like we're not welcomed here

“Don't worry about that,” Sam says, addressing father's concerns, “Nobody likes newcomemers at first because, well.... They're new. It'll go away in a few days. Anyways, though, Here you are.”
Sam points to a wooden hut just like the one from earlier, but it's in a row with a bunch of other little huts that form a circle around the tree.

“There's going to be a meeting tonight in the room over there,” Sam points to a huge platform on the next tree over. “To introduce you guys to this place. Please, make yourself comfortable here.”

We dropped our stuff off in our new house. It was really weird. It looked so small on the outside, but so big and clean on the inside.

Although that may be because there aren't any beds. I look around and notice a pile of blankets and pillows in the corner though, which is nice. But there isn't a kitchen?

Or a washroom?
I gulp and decide even though this was totally awesome at first (the whole being- 25 -feet - in- the- air thing), but there was so much I was going to have to give up.

As if reading my mind my father says, "There's a stream a few hundred meters away, and everyone here eats together."
"Oh," I say, and look at Christina to see how she's taking this.

Her face is pale but other than that she looks ok, so I continue talking.

"So we're part of a rebellion now?" I ask warily. I knew my dad hated Beleg, but I never thought he hated it so much he'd move here just to try and overthrow the government.

My father looks at me sternly but then says, "Yes. I'd say you and Christina are more than me, though."
"W-what does that mean?" I ask. Why wouldn't he give me a straight answer?

"Sit down, Liz. You too Christina. I'll tell you now."
I sit down and put Christina on my lap.

"You know that there's war brewing," Me and Christina both nod. "You also know that the Prince of Beleg himself is behind it. The only way to stop the war is to stop the Prince. And to stop the Prince we need to get rid of him. That means infiltrating the castle.

That's what this whole community is about. They train you to learn this forest better than the back of your hand, they train you on how to use weapons. They also train you on how to kill." I gulp. I was going to be trained on how to kill. I was going to learn how to be an assasin.

"The people here that are getting trained are the heart of the rebellion. If an old man like myself tried to get through the Palace's gates, it wouldn't work. I'm too old. But you... you're young. Young and healthy and strong. So that's why you're here."

We sit in silence and my mom watches sadly. I know she probably hates this idea, but it's safer than anywhere else in the world right now.

A knock on the front door to our house sounds and echoes through our empty home. Nobody makes a move towards the door, so I ask Chris to move off my lap and I go open the door.

A girl that looks about my age is standing on the platform outside, looking at me curiously.

She's shorter than I am, with big brown eyes.

"Hi," She says a little bit apprehensively, "Umm, I'm Hazel. I live nextdoor, and I heard there was a girl my age moving in so..."

"Ah!" I say happily. I thought I was going to be the only 15 year old, although I guess that's illogical. "I'm Elizabeth, nice to meet you."
"Umm, also.... I was wondering if you wanted to come over to my place and meet Abigail, she's my roommate." I nod excitedly and look back at my parents.

"Hey, umm, Mom, Dad, I'll come back soon." They smile for the first time in ages and wave me out of the house.

~

"Wow, so you two live together?" I ask happily, looking around the room. The walls were covered in wanted posters and potraits of people I didn't know. A few boxes of clothes lined the walls, and blankets were strewn about. I sat down and made myself comfy.

"Yeah. Since our parents died a few years ago," Abigail says. Her and Hazel could have been sisters, they looked so alike.

"Oh," I say. "Sorry to hear that."

"Naw, it's okay. So how do you like this place?" Hazel asks.

"It's pretty cool," I say. "But sort of weird, too. We're going to be trained as assasins?"

"Well," Abigail says, "I'm already 16 so I've started. It's pretty intense stuff."

"Wow," I say in awe. Smilng, I look up at the wall accross from me, then stand up and go over to look at a wanted poster. "Who's this?" I ask, trying to puzzle out the strange characters on the paper. I couldn't read them at all.

"The prince," Abigail and Hazel say at the same time. Abigail continues. "His name is Lee Taemin. He's the one we're trying to kill."

"Wow," I say, and study the picture. Lee Taemin. He's smirking, and his eyes are smiling. He's very handsome, and he looks so innocent. How could he be responsible for starting a war, and for killing so many people? My heart drops for some reason. I have to kill him. I gulp.

I have to kill him. I trace his face with my fingertips, feeling regretful. I didn't want to kill him.

"You okay?" Hazel asks. I look over at her and see that she's standing next to me.

"Yeah," I say. "I- I just...."

"Don't worry about it," Abigail says. "Nobody wants to kill him at first, but once you see what he's done... You'll have nerves of steel." I nod.

I have to trust these people. I have to trust Sam, and I have to trust Abi and Hazel.

And I have to trust myself.