The Swan Book Read Online Free Page A

covered in dust. When the weather patterns began levelling out after some years, both ends of the country looked as though normal weather was being generated from the previously dry centre of Australia. With the heart of the country locked into a tempestuous affair, hot and sticky, what was once the south’s cool temperate climate mixed with the north’s tropical humidity until the whole country was shrouded in days of dust – Jundurr! Jundurr! – or, all the time in heavy cyclonic rain.
    Its journey took the black swan over the place where hungry warrki dingos, foxes and dara kurrijbi buju wild dogs had dug out shelters away from the dust, and lay in over-crowded burrows in the soil; and in the grasses, up in the rooftops, in the forests of dead trees, all the fine and fancy birds that had once lived in stories of marsh country, migrating swallows and plains-dancing brolgas, were busy shelving the passing years into a lacy webbed labyrinth of mud-caked stickling nests brimmed by knick-knacks, and waves of flimsy old plastic threads dancing the wind’s crazy dance with their faded partners of silvery-white lolly cellophane, that crowded the shores of the overused swamp.
    Up you too , Oblivia snarls under her breath after being reminded of the people she suspected were keeping an eye on her, after they saw the swan looking at her.
    The swan had swung into shock-locked wings when human voices interrupted its nostalgia, but still it kept flying over the dust-covered landscape. This child! The swan could not take its eyes away from the little girl far down on the red earth. The musicbroke as if the strings had been broken, and the swan fell earthwards through the air for several moments. Maybe, it was in those moments of falling, that the big bird placed itself within the stories of this country, before it restored the rhythm of its flapping wings, and continued on its flight.
    Oblivia gave the swan no greater thought after it had disappeared, other than to think that it was heading in the right direction – towards water, to reach the sea, the place that she knew existed from stories she had heard of what was beyond the northern horizon. She thinks people are talking about her and glares unkindly towards the multitude of residential shacks jammed cheek to jowl like a sleeping snake ringing the swamp: a multi-coloured spectacle in the bright glare of sunlight, of over-crowding and overuse, confusion in love, happiness, sorrow and rage, in this slice of humanity living the life of the overcome. All about, birds squabbled noisily, chasing one another over the rooftops for space in air thick with the high cost of living for a view of a dead lake.
    These people keep looking at me , the girl mouths the words – read my lips , centimetres from Bella Donna’s face. No sound comes out of her mouth since she had decided not to speak, that it was not worth speaking. She would rather be silent since the last word she had spoken when scared out of her wits, the day when her tongue had screeched to a halt with dust flying everywhere, and was left screaming Ahhhhhh! throughout the bushland, when she fell down the hollow of the tree.
    Bella Donna felt invaded by Oblivia’s hot breath striking her face. In an instant, her sense of privacy diminishes into the spoils of war flattened over the barren field of herself, even though she recognises the girl’s clumsy attempts to communicate with her. That the girl has never recovered from being raped. But feeling and knowing are two different things: she retaliates all the same,and like any other long-standing conflict around the world, one act of violation becomes a story of another. Remember who it was who rescued you with her bare hands. Did you see anyone else digging you out of that tree? Out there in the heat? Sun pouring down on my head in the middle of the day? Did you hear anyone else calling out for someone to come and help me to pull you out before you