My name is Sparrow. Here on the dusty red of our home planet, people name their children after things in the Before World, where they used to bear meanings. My brother is Wren, and many more called Panther and Lilac, Evergreen and Oak, Maple and Tulip and Honeybee.

It began when the winds rose. A howling, persistent wind that shivered and moaned in the air. The fine particles of red dust swirled up, drifted into mountains and sand dunes, and they did not go away. New inventions began to arrive, embedded in the flashy colors of the supermarket, all wanting to be owned. All claiming to filter the air to be clean and pure. At first there were many, all worth not more than a few dollars, but as the demand  rose, just like the wind, so did the price. At long last we could hardly afford our food in competition with the filters, the last floating log on an ocean of endless perils.

It became a plague. It was known as Acute Respiratory Syndrome 235 (ARS235), throughout the planet Mars, and it was feared so greatly that the world shut down. School closed; we were too busy fitting our homes for survival. We stopped going outside or visiting people; ARS235 became mysteriously contagious and no one could explain. And as the world came to a still, fear was gradually devoured by sadness. The sad, the fearful, and the cautious survived.

And then It took him. My brother. Wren. 

And really, that took part of me, too.

***

There is no night here, because when the sun sets the ground glows red. The scarlet fire burns behind eyelids long after they have closed.

We live in small domes, huddled in a grain of sand against the Martian winds. We live in filtered places, the dust trickling out of conditioners, we live together yet alone.

And amidst all, we live in fear. We live in isolation and loneliness, sadness and uncertainty, but most of all - fear.

We fear the future. We fear the unknown. We fear this place, this murky red landscape of something else we do not care for. We fear the Martians, mysterious native creatures that we have been struggling with since memory started.

The world is always still. Waiting.

While we remain, the things we forget increase day by day.

And maybe, just maybe, one day we’ll have forgotten ourselves.

***

The portrait of Wren sits high on the wall, cheerful and warm, always ready to tell me a secret. Mother smooths over tattered clothes over and over, over and over, but the wrinkles are persistent. They are deep and have gathered over the years. Coughs rack her lungs, the product of the fine Martian dust. What remains of the air filters is pitiful, only there as a memory of the times when we could still afford them. 

I pull restlessly at the shawl covering my nose and mouth, knowing that the dust has long seeped through and entered my lungs. But again, a memory. A mere memory.

“Little one, Sparrow,” Mother calls me, but her voice trails off. These days nothing stays for too long, even Mother’s mind, which wanders far, and sometimes too far that for days on end she is distant. She sits on Wren’s clothes and mutters his name, wondering where he has been and when he would come home for his favorite soup. 

I do not have the heart to tell her otherwise.

A little more than a year ago, Wren caught It. He wandered a little to the horizon, and then, he was gone. Mother worships him, in a weird way now, staring at his face in the picture frame. Mostly I cannot speak, or she will be even sadder, those sorrowful eyes cast upon the face of my only brother.

The afternoon is cast into yellowish shades by the dimming sky lights. Mother has fallen into one of her rants, and so I put my hair in a bun and leave the house, hoping silently that she will come back soon. Outside, a few people gather, and this is odd, because ever since It started we have all been inside. I faintly remember their quiet whispers to the other elders, rumors and sightings about the recent appearance of a Martian.

“The Martians, have you heard…are back!”

“All this plague, they are behind It…”

“My son…”

At this, an overwhelming desire to know wells up within me, the tidal waves pushing to and fro the restless abandon of unquenchable thirst. Gathering my jacket and skirt closely in, I approach the group of people. They stare at me with tired eyes.

“And who, might the red wind bring, a little girl in search of her home?” An old woman stands up, holding her cane. She does not wear a cover for her mouth, nor a filtration mask.

“I-” I begin, but I am lost for words. “I am looking for my brother.”

The words slip out, and I know that they cannot be taken back, just like the winds of no return. It is silly, in a way, because I already know of the fate of my brother, who caught It and wandered away. But I fear, that they might know more.

She tilts her head curiously, then says, “Wren?”

I nod, a shiver with the memory of my brother arriving, but quickly I push it away, closing out the memories.

For a long time, they do not speak. Finally the old woman says quietly, “The Martians took him.”

The Martians took him. The words ring in my ears as my vision fades into black, then red.

“The… Martians?” my voice is small.

The old woman puts a hand on my shoulder. “The time shall come. We will find them.”

Hate. I feel hate. Tears come first.

But I am not sorrowful. The tears are red-hot. 

I

am

a ngr y.

The world fades into a redder landscape than I have ever seen, redder than the furious dust storms and the blood coughed up by victims of It.

And I head home, not to Mother, but to gather what I need before I go.

Dust falls like rain around me, and I am silent until the broken part of me begins to weep.

***

When I get home, Mother has torn the clothes, papers, and things from the cabinet in the living room. Her hair is tangled and her eyes are wild.

“Wren!” She cries, seeing me, and I pull away, frightful. A funny part of me pities her. “You came home!”

And the words come tumbling out.

“I am not Wren!” I scream, throwing his portrait to the ground. It shatters into a thousand pieces, and a shard of glass cuts into my palm. “Wren is gone! Wren is dead!”

I watch as Mother’s face becomes blank and she slumps to the ground, as if all the life has been drained out of her. And she weeps into the dusty red glass.

I want to cry, too, but the monster in my stomach compulses and sours like curdled milk, and I take what is left of his picture, and Mother’s cane too, stuff it into my bag, and run.

Run, 

run, 

run...

Run away from Mother. Run away from that old, dusty home. Run away from quiet evenings full of weeping. Run away from coughs with jagged edges. Run away from the blood that comes from lungs.

Into the dusty winds I run, I chase, I embrace. I run until my lungs catch fire, the joints in my knees giving way, until at long last they fall and my eyes close.

Blackness.

Bliss.

Singing.

Did I die?

I open my eyes hopefully, but the fiery red is the same. But where did the singing come from, I wonder. My head swivels around, and then I see.

Monsters.

Their skin is a bluish gray, pure and free from the scarlet landscape. They are tall and slender, and probing tentacles bounce in the wind from their head, something like hair. They have long and delicate fingers that intertwine with each other to make the haunting music, but their bright green eyes remind me of those a curious child could have.

How could monsters look like this? I think, the red-skinned Martians in my mind, with monstrous yellow eyes and showing ribs and slit pupils.

At once their heads turn towards me, and I realize that they do not have mouths. A piercing scream fills the air, and then I realize it is mine. Their head tentacles contract at the sound as they approach me and I tremble with fear.

“Get away from me!” I shriek, swatting at them. 

But they do not come much closer, and I can tell that they do not plan to. So with a shaking hand, I pick up the long cane I carried from home and wave it in their faces.

“And give me my brother back!”

Their tentacles jitter, as if laughing. Then one of them, in the center, who reminds me of - Leader, the voice emerges in my mind, and I shiver - takes the cane in his tentacles—and it floats high up in the air.

I gape and the tentacles laugh, laugh and giggle at me.

Weaponless now, I stand in front of them. They still do not come closer. Instead they examine me. “Green eyes,” the voice in my mind says, shaking its heads, if voices could shake their heads. Then I realize that they are talking about my eyes, and I cast them downward to stare at their spindly hands and feet.

“Come with me,” the leader Martian says in my mind, and with no other choice, I follow it into an opening in the sand.

It is dim, and I reach around for a Martian light switch of some sort, but then I realize that they must not need them. It is neither cool nor warm in the darkness, but somewhere in-between, where I feel as if my body is floating in lukewarm water. What is this? I think, why am I making friends with the Martians?

The air vibrates with a strange power that I do not understand.

“You heard that the Martians took him?” The lead Martian stops and the voice echoes in my head. It says “him” like we both know who it’s talking about. Of course I do. It means Wren.

I nod. 

The Martian puts a finger on my head.

And Wren put his finger on my head, in the weird way he always did when he was trying to see what was wrong.

“You have got It,” it says quietly.

I jerk my head back. “No, I don’t!” 

The coughs have wracked Mother’s lungs, and Father’s lungs, and Wren’s lungs, but no, not mine, no, never my lungs.

Ignoring me, it continues in the voice in my head: “Yes, ARS235, but there is a cure.”

I hold my breath.

But it doesn’t continue.

“What is it?” I whisper.

“You must become a Martian,” says the voice.

“You will never enslave me, never!” I fight back, “Show me my brother!”

The tentacles freeze for a second, and the green eyes appear hesitantly: “I am."