The Lion of Mars Read online

  I had to force my legs to keep moving. Take a few steps. Hold out the glow stick. Make sure there was nothing in the shadows ahead. Take a few more steps. Repeat. It was like a digi-reel playing the same scene over and over. How had I ever thought this was a good idea? Why hadn’t I just waited with Trey to be rescued? What was I—

  I tripped over my own foot and fell.

  My knee hit the ground hard, and something in me snapped. Before I could think it through, I was up and rushing the other way, to the train. Back to Trey and safety. This was too much. Like Albie had said.

  I was just a kid, and I wasn’t brave.

  So I ran as fast as I could down the dark tunnel, my heart pounding and pain shooting up my knee. I don’t know how far I’d gotten when an image of Meems’s face flashed in front of my eyes, and I stumbled. I pictured Sai’s beard and heard Darby’s belly laugh, and my feet slowed. I smelled Salty Bill’s cooking and finally stopped.

  They were my family.

  And I would lose them—just like I’d lost Phinneus—if I didn’t get help.

  So I took a deep breath. Then I turned around and started walking toward the next settlement.

  * * *

  My knee was throbbing now and my glow stick had started to fade. I didn’t know how much farther I had to walk. The tunnel stretched for kilometers around all the settlements. In places, it curved because of some obstacle. As the tunnel slowly grew darker, everything seemed louder: my footsteps, my breathing, even my rumbling stomach. But there was also a sound I couldn’t quite identify: a brief, high-pitched cry that echoed down the tunnel.

  It sounded eerily like a small child crying.

  Was someone else in the tunnel? Maybe one of those kids from the Finnish settlement? Were they hurt?

  “Hello?” I called. “Is someone there?”

  I heard the cry again, and it sounded closer.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. “My name’s Bell, and I’m from the American settlement.”

  As I walked around a curve, I saw the eyes in the darkness. But they didn’t belong to a child.

  Because children didn’t have glowing green eyes.

  They were the same alien eyes I’d seen on dust duty!

  I gasped and the alien disappeared in the darkness. In the next heartbeat, it reappeared, closer. What did you say to an alien?

  “Uh, hi, nice alien,” I babbled. “Don’t eat me. I’m not very tasty and, uh, I’m probably pretty smelly, too, since I haven’t had a hot shower in a while.”

  The alien didn’t seem to care, because it kept coming.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, too terrified to move.

  “Meow.”

  Leo stood in the tunnel like it was something he did every day.

  “Leo!” I cried, grabbing him.

  How did he get here? Had he followed me? Then I decided I didn’t care because I had my little buddy! I hugged Leo tight. He purred, his tail flapping lazily. For a brief moment, everything seemed better in the world because I wasn’t alone anymore.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” I told him.

  He rubbed his nose against my chin, marking me as his. I was part of his pride. Or maybe he was part of mine.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  He squirmed out of my grasp and leapt gracefully to the ground.

  “Meeee-ow!” Leo said. I’m hungry!

  “Me too,” I said. “But I don’t have any um-yums for you.”

  He stalked down the tunnel.

  “Hey! Wait for me!” I called.

  I didn’t have much choice but to follow my cat. At least he seemed to know where he was going. Once in a while, Leo looked back at me, and I saw his green eyes flash in the dark. And I’d thought he was an alien! How did he get into the tunnel? Was he chasing some of the mice that had gotten away?

  We walked for a while, and as we approached a curve, I saw a trickle of light spilling out. Then I saw it: a red-white-and-blue flag hanging next to a door with a light.

  I’d made it to the French settlement!

  Leo leapt up on the landing and started meowing at the door.

  I didn’t know what to do. Was it more dangerous to keep walking? Would the French attack me with their stick weapons if they saw me?

  Leo pawed at the door, meowing to be let in.

  Could I trust my cat? Surely he wouldn’t lead me into a dangerous situation, right? After all, I’d been following him around my whole life.

  “Mwar!” Leo said insistently. Let me in!

  “Okay,” I told him. “I sure hope you’re right.”

  I opened the door and followed Leo inside.

  * * *

  Unlike at the Finnish settlement, there were clear signs of life everywhere—from bright daytime lighting to toasty-warm air. And there was music. Old-fashioned Earth music, the kind with violins. If Albie was here, he would know what it was called. As we got closer to the source of the music, I heard laughing and clapping. Someone shouted, “Bisou bisou!”

  What did that mean? What was a bisou?

  Leo stopped in front of a door and meowed. I pushed it open and looked around in wonder. Or maybe shock. Festive decorations hung everywhere. The room was full of grown-ups and kids wearing colored-paper hats. A woman and a man were dancing in the middle of the floor. The woman wore a long, fluttery white dress Flossy would have loved. The man spun and dipped the woman, and everyone clapped.

  Off to the side was a table piled high with all sorts of food. In the center was the tallest cake I’d ever seen. It was three levels high, and on top were two tiny dolls.

  I had walked right into the middle of a…party?

  Across the room, my eyes met those of a little girl clutching a teddy bear. She tugged on the arm of the man next to her and pointed at me. His mouth dropped open. One by one, people stopped talking to stare at me. Finally, everyone—even the couple, who had stopped dancing—was staring as I stood there nervously, the music playing on.

  A woman stepped forward. Her gray hair was cut in a sharp bob. I couldn’t look away from the ragged white scar on her forehead: that had to have hurt.

  “D’où viens-tu, mon cher?” she said, tilting her head questioningly.

  “Um, bonjour?” I said.

  She gave me an odd look. “Es-tu blessé?”

  But my brain short-circuited, and I couldn’t remember any other French words.

  “Bonjour.”

  “As-tu des problèmes?” she asked, her gaze serious.

  “Bonjour.”

  She shook her head as if mystified. Then, to my complete shock, she asked, “Are you American?”

  I nodded.

  “What is your name?”

  “Bell.”

  “One last question,” she said.

  I swallowed. This was it. It was going to be bad.

  “Do you like cake?”

  I smiled.

  * * *

  The woman told me her name was Commander Sylvie Laurent. She sat me at a table and handed me a slice of cake and a glass of water. Then she sat down across from me.

  “Now tell me what happened, Bell,” she said in a gentle voice.

  It all spilled out of me in a rush. The mice. Phinneus dying. The storm. The grown-ups being sick. Running out of medicine. The response from Earth. Everything falling apart. Us going for help. Trey stuck in the train. Following Leo.

  “What about Commander Sai?” she asked, looking at me steadily.

  “He’s sick, too,” I said.

  Her expression didn’t change. “I see.”

  I took a bite of the cake. It was chocolate and delicious. Probably the most delicious cake I’d ever eaten.

  “How long have you children been managing things on your own?” she asked.

  “
Um, a few weeks, I think? You know, this is really good cake!”

  Her eyes closed briefly.

  “You don’t have to worry anymore, mon cher,” she said, and it sounded like a promise. “We’ll take care of everything.”

  I watched in a daze as she calmly gave orders, organizing a party to take medicine to our settlement and another group to rescue Trey.

  A girl with two braids walked over, carrying Leo.

  “Is this your cat?” she asked.

  But all I could do was stare at her hair. It was red!

  “Is it real?” I whispered.

  She scrunched her eyes. “Is what real?”

  “Your hair,” I said.

  “Of course it’s real!” she huffed.

  I shook my head in amazement. Flossy was right.

  “So is this your cat?” she asked me.

  “Yes, this is Leo,” I said.

  “Do you feed him?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “Why?”

  “He’s been coming here for months, and we give him food,” she explained. “We were wondering who he belonged to and why they were not feeding him.”

  “He just likes to eat,” I explained.

  “I’m Amélie,” she said. “What’s your name?”

  “Bell,” I said.

  “Are you really an American? I’ve never seen one,” she admitted.

  “Yes,” I said. “What are you?”

  “French, of course,” she said, like I should know. She reminded me of Vera.

  A boy with straight black hair joined us. He couldn’t take his eyes off Leo. “That’s your cat, then?”

  “I told you, Wei,” Amélie said in an important voice. “The cat belongs to the Americans.”

  “You don’t have any cats?” I asked him.

  “The Chinese have chickens,” Amélie said, like it was perfectly obvious.

  I remembered the eggs.

  “You know,” Wei said, “you don’t look like what I imagined an American would look like.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “They say the Americans always wear their uniforms.”

  “Just Sai,” I said. “He’s our commander.”

  “This party is boring!” Amélie complained.

  “It’s true,” Wei agreed. Then he smiled at me. “You’re the most exciting thing that’s happened!”

  “All they’ve been doing is bisou bisou,” Amélie said.

  “What’s bisou bisou?” I asked.

  “Kiss kiss,” she said, making a kissing face. “Blech!”

  “What is the party for?” I asked.

  “It’s a wedding,” Amélie said. “Brigitte, who’s from our settlement, is marrying Oskar, who’s Finnish.”

  “The Finnish settlement? Does that mean they haven’t been eaten or abducted by the aliens?” I asked.

  Amélie gave me a funny look. “Aliens? Are Americans crazy?”

  “You don’t understand! We were just at the Finnish settlement, and no one was there!” I told her.

  “That’s because they’re all here for the wedding,” Wei explained.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Do you like Ping-Pong?” Amélie asked me.

  “What’s Ping-Pong?”

  “You don’t know what Ping-Pong is?” Wei asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Come on,” Amélie said in a bossy voice. “We’ll show you.”

  * * *

  Everywhere I looked, there was something to see. Colorful posters. Tiny blinking lights that hung from the ceiling. They even had real musical instruments. Albie was going to explode when he saw them.

  “Is that a violin?” I asked.

  Amélie nodded. “Do you play?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then you’re lucky!” she said. “I am forced to practice three days a week. It is the bane of my existence!”

  Amélie opened a door, and I followed her and Wei into a room where a bunch of kids were standing around. In the middle of the room was a large rectangular table, and it had a net, like the one at the Finnish settlement. A boy and a girl were hitting a small white ball back and forth with the plate things. The ball bounced over the net.

  “That’s Ping-Pong,” Wei said.

  I guess the table in the Finnish settlement wasn’t for eating.

  “Everyone!” Amélie called. “This is Bell! He is a real, live American. He is the owner of the cat.”

  The blond boy at the table gasped. “That’s your cat? You should feed him!”

  “We do feed him,” I said. “He’s just always hungry.”

  “That’s Taavi,” Amélie told me. “He’s from the Finnish settlement. He loves cats.”

  I was pretty sure I had been in this kid’s room.

  “Do you want to play?” the cat-loving boy asked me.

  “I don’t know how,” I admitted.

  “It’s easy,” he said. “I’ll teach you.”

  It wasn’t hard to learn, and it was a lot of fun. We played game after game, switching partners, sometimes even playing with teams of two. Amélie introduced me to all the other kids, and I was surprised to learn that they were all from different countries—France, Russia, China, Finland.

  “Do you do this a lot?” I asked.

  “Play Ping-Pong?” Wei asked.

  I struggled to explain. “I meant get together with the other countries.”

  “Of course!” Amélie said. “I would go bonkers if I was here all the time. Do you have any idea how boring that would be? Also, I would have to practice the violin! Can you imagine anything worse?”

  “Besides,” Taavi said, “the Russian settlement has the best chocolate candies on Mars. There’s nothing more important than candy.”

  It was hard to argue with that.

  By that evening, Albie, Flossy, Vera, and Trey had joined me in the French settlement. Like me, they all seemed a little stunned to find themselves there.

  “Volunteers from the various countries will stay in your settlement to nurse the sick and manage the chores,” Commander Laurent told us. “You children have handled enough already, so you’ll remain here until everyone is healthy again.”

  The French fed us a big meal, then set us up in comfortable bedrooms. We even got to take hot showers, since they had a different energy technology than we did and weren’t affected by the storm as much.

  But despite being clean and fed and warm, we were uneasy. We’d never slept anywhere but our own home. Now we were in this foreign place with people we didn’t know.

  Vera seemed especially suspicious.

  “Why are they being so nice to us?” she asked as we all huddled in the bedroom I was sharing with Trey and Albie.

  Albie shrugged. “Maybe they are actually nice?”

  “You didn’t see them chasing us with those weapons!” Vera told him.

  “They did rescue me from the train,” Trey said.

  “But what if we’re wrong about them?” Vera asked. “What if they’re not good people?”

  Flossy, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, said, “Vera’s got a point. Remember what Sai told us, about how they left Lissa to die? I don’t know if we can trust them.”

  No one said anything for a moment.

  “They’ve been feeding Leo for months,” I told them.

  “Now we know why he’s been getting so fat,” Albie said with a wry look.

  “I think anyone who takes care of a cat is probably good,” I said.

  But Vera wasn’t convinced.

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  * * *

  Amélie showed me around the settlement. Things were different there. For one, it was much bigger, with more people. There was even a bab
y human. I had never seen one in real life, just in digi-reels.

  We watched as the baby shoveled algae porridge into his mouth with a spoon. Most of it ended up on his shirt or his face or the floor.

  “What’s the baby’s name?” I asked.

  “Theo,” his mother told me. She had algae porridge all over her shirt, courtesy of her child.

  Amélie turned to me. “They should’ve named him Poopoo. His diapers smell terrible.”

  As we walked down the corridors, we passed people from different countries coming and going. It was still hard to absorb that the other countries were in daily contact. They traded all sorts of goods, too. Which is how I got to try my first Earth chicken egg.

  The French cook “scrambled” it for me and served it with toast for breakfast. The egg looked fluffy, like yellow clouds.

  “Well?” Amélie asked. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s delicious,” I said.

  When I’d cleaned my plate, I asked the cook if I could have more.

  “Of course,” he told me.

  “Why does everyone speak English?” I asked him.

  “It’s the common language for space,” he said. “If a Russian ship and a Chinese ship need to communicate, they’ll use English. That’s why we all know it.”

  After breakfast, Amélie and I went upstairs to the communications room. We were both curious about the storm.

  “Bonjour, Armand,” Amélie said to a gray-haired man sitting behind a desk.

  “Bonjour, Amélie,” he said with a smile. But when he saw me, he turned pale, like he’d seen a ghost.

  “You!” he exclaimed. “You were the child I saw in the rover!”

  I stepped back nervously. “You were the one who chased us with those weapons?”

  “What weapons?” Amélie asked.

  “They were waving metal weapons at us! Like Earth swords!”