6. The Expelled River

Simmo and his group ripped the tree apart to reveal the rocket underneath—until they heard footsteps. Not human feet, but a collection of animal paws. Here we go again. There’s nothing here to hide behind, he thought.

So he pulled himself up on a branch. Vaia did the same on a lower branch, so her daughter could come along. With bulging muscles and gritted teeth, they hoisted up their companions into the sparse, leafless tree.

Of course it was barren—this tree’s insides formed a rocket. Simmo could only hope it was enough.

A group of rabbits hopped right up to the tree. They looked all around but didn’t seem to spot the humans. No, not just rabbits, Simmo thought. A few of those creatures look exactly like the drawing on the rocket.

Then they closed their eyes and touched the roots with their snouts. They hummed something like a song. It was beautiful yet frightening—sad yet divine.

This is their only tree, Simmo realized. They’re praying to it. They see this tree as sacred.

He was disappointed that life on this planet wasn’t as bizarre and unexpected as he’d hoped. But it also gave him comfort. He needn’t fear singing purple rabbits.

The animals opened their eyes and saw that parts of the tree had been ripped apart. Their song twisted into shrieks and high whistles.

“Te Loely Tree! Te Loely Tree as bee ruied!”

“Wic oster would do suc a ting—wait, I ow alread.”

“Uas,” they chorused.

Uas? Oster? Loely Tree?

He didn’t know what surprised him more—that he could understand the creatures, or that they spoke such strange words.

The longer they talked, the more he understood. They called it the Lonely Tree. Uas were humans, and they were monsters.

If Vaia hadn’t clamped a hand over his mouth, he would’ve shouted down that humans weren’t monsters. Too scared to breathe, just meters above dozens of long ears, they waited for the rabbits to leave.

“We ust tell Idi. Se will puis tose uas!”

All the animals agreed. Simmo waited as they hopped back toward the nature reserve they’d found earlier.

Instead, however, they bounded in an entirely different direction. Why aren’t they walking in a straight line? Simmo wondered. Perhaps life here was stranger than he thought.

Until he saw they were following a path—a thin trickle of inky black water winding through cracks in the hard stone. I haven’t seen a drop of water on this whole planet, Simmo realized. We get our water from the air and our food.

That revealed the answer: it wasn’t water, but a stream of gasoline leaking from the rocket. With the rabbits a safe distance away, everyone jumped down from the tree and followed the river too.

“It has to pool up at the end,” Simmo whispered. “Then we’ll have enough fuel to finally leave.”

Vaia smiled. “And then?”

Simmo slowed. “Then we leave.”

“Yeah, duh. But what will you do after that? Where will you go?”

He sighed deeply. “Still have to figure that out. I have no talents. No purpose.” He stared into the gasoline stream. “Except running away, apparently.”

Vaia gripped his shoulder. “You’ve kept us alive with your running. You know rocket systems inside and out, and you were the first to uncover the truth about the tree. I’d say you have plenty of talents.”

Then you’re wrong, thought Simmo. He was still glad to hear it, smiled back, and gripped her shoulder too. “Let’s just focus on surviving this planet. Then maybe I can think about what I want to do.”

They came upon another fenced-off area, this one mostly stone, buildings, and rivers. The bizarre plants and animals were replaced with just a few species and fields of purple grass. Fires, fireflies, and a few human lanterns lit up the entrance in the dark night.

This is an entirely different group than the ones who attacked our camp, Simmo realized. All these alien creatures didn’t evolve here together. They arrived separately, somehow, ages ago.

“Do you think there’s conflict between these two groups?” Simmo whispered.

“I don’t think we can even assume there are two groups.”

Simmo thought she was right. He knew rabbits, but those other hares were new. A gray being with human-like hands hugged a branch above him.

He yelped when the branch bent downwards and tickled his ear.

The creature awoke. The whole area awoke. They kept their distance, the small beings facing the giant humans.

Simmo knelt and dipped his fingers gingerly into the water. Yes, he was right. This entire place was built on waterfalls of fuel. It had to be more than enough to escape.

The older man in their group voiced Simmo’s thoughts. “We need to turn this place upside down and take all the fuel. You know it’s true, Simmo. Don’t start making friends.”

The rabbits and hares bristled their fur.

“I think you’ve forgotten they can somewhat understand us,” Simmo said over his shoulder.

The grey being climbed down from the branch and stood by a hare’s side. It whistled a high, piercing tone that had to be some kind of alarm.

The image before his eyes matched the drawing on the rocket tree exactly.

“Mindy!” Simmo exclaimed before catching himself.

He made himself small, as to not frighten the animals, and continued more softly.

“That crashed rocket belonged to the legendary astronaut Mindy. She went on a journey with a … a … creature like that one over there. And that one next to it.”

“A koala and a whistling hare,” a rabbit said grumpily.

“Ah! So you do speak normally.”

“One more insult and we’ll kick you out of our territory. Yes, we talk like you. We rabbits are new here and direct descendants of Kurin, so we can talk to everyone.”

Vaia looked grave. “Simmo, have you seen any signs of human life here? Before us? Few survive a rocket crash. Even if it’s true, and Mindy crash-landed, I don’t think they are still—”

Simmo shook his head. It has to be, he thought. Mindy has to be alive. I’ll meet her and she’ll tell me to become an astronaut, and then I’ll know what to do.

“Why don’t you live with the others?” Vaia asked.

“When we arrived, they nearly killed us all. Turns out animals kept arriving on this planet and they were sick of it.”

“But how?” Simmo asked. “There’s only one rocket. Can you teleport? Float through space? Is there a secret connection between planets? Is that why you gather fuel?”

If the koala hadn’t fallen asleep and snored loudly, Simmo probably would have asked twenty more questions.

The place was beautiful, bare as it was. The animals happily hopped along the rivers, hugging each other or dangling from branches.

Of course there were cliques—adult rabbits were notoriously territorial, even within their own families. But there was enough space to give each group their own section of the inky waterfalls. Some had even tried planting trees that were currently just thin sticks in the dirt.

“Wait, rabbits could talk this whole time?”

Vaia hadn’t blinked for a full minute. The surreal experience hit everyone delayed. Talking animals. The fairytales they’d dismissed as make-believe were true.

“Not all of us. Only Kurin’s direct descendants.”

Another rabbit elbowed her.

“I mean, yes, we talk! If you’d ever listened! But listen to this—we don’t want you. Our leader has decreed you must leave, or there will be war.”

“We want to leave too, but the others don’t. And to be honest, the animals aren’t making it any easier. Could you tell your leader that we—”

Simmo realized Idi sounded an awful lot like Mindy if you couldn’t pronounce a couple letters specifically.