SWAMP MAGIC
by Ann Morven
© copyright Ann Morven
ann.morven@optusnet.com.au
Smashwords Edition 2009
Published by Darling
Newspaper Press
http://www.booktaste.com
danpress@optusnet.com.au
PO
box 176, Kalamunda, Western Australia 6926.
First published Darling Newspaper Press 2006
in
"Short Trips, tales that entertain" isbn 095906303X
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SLURP, burp, heh heh, hic! The chuckles skitter over the Australian wetlands where Chief Munday, back in the Dreamtime, had often dined on tortoise. Snickers riffle the reeds at the edge of Perth Airport, mingling with the dialogue of water-birds, and some folk accept it as the sound of a morning breeze. Which is how Lucy heard it, as she waded into the ooze to complete her crime.
Hanging on her elbow was a laden plastic bucket while thigh-length rubber waders squelched sniggers of their own from the mire. Plunk-kirup went the frogs, and a thousand little eyes were watching. So was a tall man beside a flashy car on the bitumen road.
Guiltily, Lucy hoisted her green-hooded anorak and faded into mangrove shadows.
“Never enter Munday Swamp with a young man,” her Scottish gran had warned, owning many such tales. “There’s an old Aboriginal legend. The Noongar tribe says stars will dazzle your eyes and your heart flips.”
That may have been Chief Munday’s magic: instant romance. But it was not fear of losing her heart that made Lucy furtive; it was simply that she mustn’t be found out. She jiggled her bucket and crooned to tiny reptilian heads and webbed pygmy claws. She arranged a nest of reeds.
“Come out, darlings.” She took one of the four from her bucket and introduced its new home. “You lovely!” Rarest species in all Australia, the short-neck tortoises were strictly protected, yet her conscience was clear. She had stolen them from the National Park for a noble purpose.
“You’re my little pioneers for a cause.” With mother-care she placed them in the nest she had made. “You are overlanders of the Urban Age. You’ll save the Munday Swamp.”
Round backshells gleamed as the blunt snouts probed and the crusted toes scrabbled to explore the new territory, a midden of leaf mould.
“Go forth, my dears, and multiply,” Lucy whispered. “You’re the last hope.” She paused to wash a mangrove bloom which her approach had spattered with silt. At the college where she lectured, Lucy was known as a caring conservationist; some others just called her a greeny nut.
This swamp had been both playground and education for her while growing up. She knew its butterflies and insects, its crawlers, divers and burrowers, its chirpers and squealers, its vivid wildflowers and its ancient mosses. She knew the whole magic. She loved describing it to anyone who’d listen: “Around the edge are peaceful paths where courting couples stroll, and every year the air grows heavy with the scent of nectar as honeybirds celebrate the summer.”
Now developers were coming: 400 houses, industrial complex, major shopping centre, all finalised and approved. The swamp would be swamped by urban growth, its wonders polluted, its ancient wilderness lost. The greenies had marched in vain, the public petitions doomed to the wastebaskets of Progress. “But just suppose . . .”
Lucy had pondered, then had devised her plan. Now her swamp would be protected by Pseudemydura umbrina. This smallest Australian tortoise, a mere 140mm long when fully grown, occurred only in Western Australia, and fewer than 25 existed.
Through the spread of a red-flowering melaleuca, Lucy noted the distant airport expanse and a jumbo 747, and she growled. “Far too close! Homes this near the airport will have their doors almost on the tarmac. Landing lights will beam through bedroom windows. Noisy! Dangerous!” All the old, loud arguments. But the “Munday Lakes Housing Estate” had been sanctioned.
When Lucy sploshed back to dry land, she saw the young man again, silhouetted against shafts of sunlight that glinted from his shoulders like golden chainmail. She blinked and her heart skipped and her foot splashed clumsily.
“Oops!” called the cause of her confusion, approaching to offer his hand. She saw only her handsome Prince Tortoise, released from a hundred year spell, and she could not tear her gaze away. Their eyes met. Click, and the breeze skittered merrily, heh heh.
“Hi, I’m Tony,” said the golden knight, hauling her to dry land with one strong but tender heave. Wooden marker stakes surrounded him, some pressed deep into the earth. There was a viewing gizmo on a tripod. And then, even as she gave him her most dazzling smile, she saw remains of a zamia bush. Hacked. Its great flower was crimson debris.
“Y...you?” she pointed to the ruin.