The Pledge by Derting Kimberly

mother handed my sister over to me, and I took her, my feet trembling as I stepped into my unlaced boots.
    “What about you? You’re not coming with us?”
    My father dropped to his knees and tied my laces, while my mother petted Angelina’s hair. She kissed us both, tears in her eyes.
    “No, we’ll stay here, in case the troops come. If your mother and I are here, maybe they’ll believe that it’s just the two of us, that we live alone.” He stood as he finished, meeting my worried expression. “Then maybe they won’t come looking for you and your sister.”
    His words didn’t make sense to me, but none of this did. Why would the troops be interested in us at all, with or without our parents? Why would they bother searching for two girls, children who’d escaped into the night?
    I shook my head, wanting to protest, to tell him that I wouldn’t go without them, but couldn’t find my voice.
    “Go, Charlaina. Now.” He pushed me toward the door. “We don’t have time to argue.”
    I dug in my heels, but he was stronger than me and pushed harder than I could. Angelina clung to me, her arms wrapped tightly around my neck, Muffin dangling from her white-knuckled fist. Her eyes were wide and terror-filled.
    I relented as the sirens outside assailed my ears; I had to get Angelina to safety.
    “We’ll come for you when it’s safe.” My father’s voice softened when he realized that I was moving, finally, toward the door.
    Behind me, I heard my mother’s sobs.

    When I hit the streets, I drifted into a sea of hundreds—maybe thousands—of others who were also evacuating their homes. I was pushed and shoved from every direction, and I could feel panic coming off the crowd.
    The siren’s blast was earsplitting out here in the open—theloudspeakers were set up every hundred feet or so, and in an emergency like this they were converted to an alarm system. Angelina buried her head inside my jacket, trying to shield herself from the shrill noise. Above the blare, I could hear cries of fear and desperation, but nothing that indicated the city was under siege. There was no roar of engines overhead, no bombing, no sound of gunfire in the distance.
    It didn’t matter, though; the sirens were enough to keep me moving.
    There were designated bomb shelters throughout the city, in churches, schools, and even abandoned passageways beneath the streets. That was where most of the people were headed. That was where families had arranged to meet in the event that the battles came close to home.
    Yet Angelina and I wouldn’t go to the shelters like the others, because our father feared that the shelters were too exposed. He worried that there was nothing secret about those hiding places. Safe from attack maybe, but not from the troops that could march into the city from the east, or from rebel forces fighting to overthrow Queen Sabara. And sometimes men—at least those in the midst of war—were to be feared more than any weapons. Men could be brutal, ruthless, deadly.
    We were to hide someplace else. In the mine shafts just outside the city.
    My boots pounded heavily against the ground as I shoved my way through the crowds, gripping Angelina as I leaned forward, battering body against body at times. The farther we moved away from the city’s core, the thinner the masses grew,until it was just the two of us, and the occasional straggler, who remained in the night.
    I knew we were close. I could see the walls that encircled the city—walls that had been constructed to keep us safe, to keep our enemies at bay, yet now contained us and trapped us inside. They were the only thing separating us from the mine shafts beyond.
    I watched as others climbed those walls, others who probably had mind-sets similar to my father’s.
    We reached the perimeter, where the tall concrete barricade stood between us and our destination, and I untangled Angelina from my arms, forcing her to stand on her own two feet. “You have to go first,”