4. World Turned Upside-Down

After finding one tree, Simmo eagerly looked for more. Yet he was astonished when his group stumbled across something resembling a forest. Apart from the fact that he hadn’t seen this many plants in one place yet, nature on this planet looked nothing like that of his home planet.

All the plants had different colors. Daisies had pink leaves and a red center. Dandelions were almost black and so big that you had to grab their fluffy heads with both hands. Plants grew much more crooked, crisscrossing each other, as if they wanted to form a wall around this one forest on an otherwise barren planet.

It was wild and unkempt. His mother would have hated the mess and immediately laid down a straight path. And when he thought that, he noticed there did seem to be a path.

His group stuck together as they walked, constantly looking over their shoulders at the camp. Now they stood under a ring of intertwined ivy, blue and with leaves that looked like wings, as if it were the gate to this forest.

“If there are other beings,” Vaia began carefully, “this is their home, don’t you think?”

“But if those other beings exist,” said Simmo pensively, “are they now in the camp, or not?”

“Why did we run away?” said an older man. “What are we going to do now? If those beings have the camp, then they also have the rocket. Pretty pointless if we find fuel now.”

“If they see us leaving, maybe they’ll leave us alone.”

The man shook his head. “Youthful naivety.”

Vaia placed a toe through the gate. There was no electric wall. No trap that went off. No alarm that immediately brought ten animals onto their necks.

It does seem like there’s nothing here, thought Simmo. Just a bunch of purple rocks with colorful plants around them. So why does my whole body want to run away?

He placed his toes through the gate. The rest of the group followed. Here, there had to be enough fuel to at least take off.

But the wall in his head remained too strong. While the group cautiously walked on, he stayed behind.

Voices sounded. He thought he recognized Hera’s, but she was drowned out by much gruffer voices. In the distance, a herd of animals returned—

—with tied-up humans in their midst.

They ran at high speed towards another gate.

He pulled Vaia back. She pulled the others back. As they fell backwards through the gate, Simmo saw the sun rise and the rocks shake as if they were waking from their sleep.

The group ran away, again, in silence. As far away as possible from all the danger, to the only fixed point they had: that one tree.

At that one point of safety, they fell to the ground in exhaustion.

“We might as well call ourselves the Cowards,” mumbled Simmo. He looked at the tree upside down and thought it resembled something.

“What you did was wise,” said Vaia. Her daughter lay on her stomach, giggling about living rocks. “Nevertheless, this way we’re not getting anywhere either.”

“Better the Cowards than the Aggressives.”

The tree had rings on the outside: orange, blue and yellow. Simmo thought it was another strangely colored plant, but he couldn’t see any stem or leaves. It was as if the ring was inside the tree.

He looked around. The tree roots curled against the rocky ground, but didn’t seem to go through it. How do you get water from stone? Where do those roots lead?

With both hands he grabbed a root and pulled on it. It didn’t budge. The group looked at him strangely.

“I think this tree might not actually be a tree.”

With the help of ten strong hands, he pulled the root from the ground. At the end there were no tiny root hairs, no strands of natural material, but electronic cables.

He looked down. Buried under the layer of rock stood a tub of water, fastened with metal to something nearby.

Everyone dove down to further dig out the tree. The hard rock made this difficult, so they only loosened a few roots and scraped off a piece of the side.

But that was enough.

They looked at a drawing they didn’t understand. Maybe a rabbit, but not really either. A small animal with human hands. It did had the same style and design as the drawings on their own human spaceship.

It wasn’t a tree; it was a crashed rocket, with the pointy end down.

Hera slapped Casjara away in irritation, scared to death that she would do something stupid and start a war with alien beings. “We won’t hurt you. She doesn’t mean it. We only want to talk.”

The panda looked at the rest. The snakes hissed angrily. The elephants trumpeted something. The rabbits turned their ears, or folded one over, only to straighten it again. Their sign that it doesn’t matter to them, Hera knew. Mindy’s research also said something about that trumpeting, but I’ve forgotten.

“Go with us to our est.”

The captain scraped his shoulder past Hera. “What’s the beast saying?”

His gun lay in his hand, but he had just enough braincells to point it downward.

“They’re inviting us into their nest.”

Casjara pulled her spear from the snake she had killed. “Fine. Let’s go talk.”

“Ot ou.”

Ot ou? Oh, not you. “Sorry, Casjara, you can’t come.”

She wasn’t really sorry. She was relieved that the animals kept Casjara away. She’s always looking for reasons to fight, she thought. Even when they’re not there.

“Oh fud off to hell,” Casjara yelled.

Hera didn’t know if it was meant for her or the animals. She turned around and walked away, her army increased in size after the attack.

The captain was similarly turned away by the panda.

Hera didn’t know exactly how the animals made their choice, but a group of ten specific humans were selected and escorted to their nest.

Hera didn’t want to celebrate too soon. They were intelligent animals. Maybe they would be eaten immediately, once in the nest. She tried not to think about it, scared her heart would stop altogether.

She could hardly believe, though, that the animals were hostile. Threat disappears when she could have a conversation with it. Mindy also said animals trust you much more if you talk to them—even if they don’t understand you. Because a beast that just wants to eat you, will do so without first asking how your day went.

“You speak our language,” she started. “Or something that sounds like Ancient Dovish. But how? Did you live somewhere else before? Have doves flown to your world too?”

“I thi that questio is better for ou to aswer. What are ou?”

“Oh. We are humans.” Hera felt almost insulted that this animal species had never heard of humans before. “Humans from Somnia, that’s a planet in the solar system—”

Her mouth fell open when the endless purple plain transitioned into a colorful lively forest. The gate was decorated as if they were receiving royalty, and led to a winding beige path.

Although everything was slightly different, she also recognized a lot from home. It smelled of flowers and freshly mowed grass, mixed with scents she didn’t recognize.

The animals sounded mostly like home. Their sounds were only modified to better reflect off the rocky stones of this planet and carry longer distances.

She finally relaxed and dared to walk right past the panda. “It’s gorgeous—”

“Soia! Alwas tat stupid Soia!” shouted the panda.

“Somnia. With -m and -n.”

The panda slapped his soft claw in her face. “Do ot moc us.”

“Oh! Oh! No, I’m not making fun of you. I’m trying to understand your language.”

“It is the sae laguage as ours. If ou are fro Soia, ou a spea to all the oter aials fro Soia.”

“No, sadly not.” The panda paused right under the gate. Hera had to duck. “Something happened. Because of the Babbling Brothers, animal species lost the power to talk to each other.”

When Hera stepped into their nest and saw all the other animal species, she knew immediately. They also came from Somnia and had landed here before the Babbling Brothers came.

That soft elephant wasn’t an elephant; it was a mammoth. But they were already extinct faaaar before we had spaceships, she thought.

“How did you get here!?”

“Magi of gods an padas. Toug we all lived apart before Idi brougt us togeter.”

They can’t pronounce the N, K, M, H, or Y or anymore, she thought.

Hera didn’t know what or who Idi was, but it felt like more answers awaited there.