Claire Ryan- Letters From Venus, To Whom it May Concern
Found Object: A pink Venus shell
North Keppel Island's reef beach about four metres from a large boulder facing the mainland.
Dear Human,
I'm a member of the Lettered Venus clam shell family ... a rose- pink fan shaped shell about two and a half centimetres wide fully grown. My underside is silky parchment white with one right upper cleft and another deeper lower cleft bearing lacy cream traces of the mollusc that once lived inside me. It kindly excreted enough calcium to help me grow my two shell halves from tiny fingernail beginnings. There's a glowing blood red rim flowing round my internal shell edge. "Fresh dead" they call it. It's a sign that a shell life has ended recently. The coloured rim usually fades away with time, but magically, mine has remained.
* * *
Early life started well, beneath a wedge shaped parent rock near Securis, Emu Park. This land overlooked rocky granite cliffs, plunging deep, into the strong sea currents of Keppel Bay. As each full moon rose, I'd watch the silver flash of whiting running on an incoming tide and when daylight broke, I'd look for the gold, underwater shadows of green sea turtles swimming near my rock home. Some sleepy, older wrinklies always missed their turn off to sea grass food chains near The Bluff. You could never say I was lonely. In fact, the moon was great company most nights. She'd often make me smile by showering night shapes around me with patches of silver. I grew to love the beaming grace of sunflowers, and the high rising sun that created hot dry sand, giving larger shells and cuttlefish a white-bleached porous look. However, my daily joys always centered on the toil of sand crabs. Who couldn't but admire their crazy, resilient, lifestyle? They constantly regrouped to rebuild bobble shaped sand colonies on each ebb tide.
* * *
My journey to where you found me began one fine spring morning in 1865. A young Woppaburra man made an arch of saplings then tied them together with long strands of plaited grass twine. The island's south-eastern bay had an open bright blue look to it and he smiled at a young Woppaburra woman sitting beside the midden site. He watched concentrated effort gather in her diminutive frame, as she sat crossed legged, dark eyes focused on the target. Her slight arms and hands deftly, scooped and settled oysters in a vice of heavy stone and her brown eyes narrowed slightly just before she rammed the shell mouths open. Shucking oysters with a sharp stick and stone hammer was a way of life for her. It felt good to gather food for her mob. She twisted around and muttered softly to the old woman lying beside her on a bed of ti-tree bark. Crooning wordlessly, she fed six plump, juicy oysters into a lopsided mouth of wrinkles. Then she held a half coconut shell of rainwater to those wizened lips, trickling it in slowly. "Drink a little more," she said in her own Woppaburra tongue. Young Man continued making a strong cross shape of bent saplings lashed tightly together. His dark fingers worked steadily with long grass strands and sheets of ti tree bark for the roof-thatching task. It had to be the best rain proofed roof he could provide. Young Woman cast furtive, velvet glances at his rust brown curls, marveling at the proud, dark angle of his cheeks. When he raised his head again, and nodded eagerly towards her, tiny sunrays dazzled and danced in his wide smile. She felt an urgent need to reach out and touch him, while striving to ignore that invisible warmth, that unspoken, cordless connection. She knew it burned deeply within them both and tomorrow she would enter the new sapling shelter. Laughing quietly to herself, she watched him began piling earth and rocks around the outer walls of ti-tree bark.
A cacophony of bird sounds distracted them and several honeyeaters flew in a cloud of wings from a small she-oak. The older 'Look Out' man usually stayed on the bald headed top ridge, but now he appeared silently beside Young Man. Together they scooped up Old Woman, as if she were as light as ten twigs. Young Woman caught fear and urgency in their eyes and followed them along nimbly, with her basket of oysters and roots. They headed in a north-westerly direction and were just parallel to a long northern beach, when the older man in front suddenly dropped Old Woman from his back, mid stride. His frozen surprise changed to a blank fixed stare as the first bullets hit. His life curled itself up and crumpled into a small heap. Two more bullets hit the ground, shattering the skull bones of Old Woman, as she lay beside him. Young Man and Woman never had a chance to glimpse four, large, dark skinned hands swinging wooden clubs in deadly silence, aiming blows at their heads.
* * *
Noonday sun woke them on Yeppoon's main beach. It was bad news. They'd been banished from their island home to make way for white man's sheep. Late afternoon light guided them in my direction and they gathered up others of their own kin to make a twilight campfire. Young Man spied my wet, pink colour first. Scooping me up, he made a small hole in my shell eye then fastened me into a necklace of grass twine. He stood very close to his woman and placed me around her neck. Then they melted together, chest to chest and I felt gloriously alive even though I knew I was 'fresh dead.' That's how I discovered a golden living light that humans call love.
The second attack was deadly. A stunned, hurt shadow passed over the face of Young Woman. She cringed down on her haunches with a whimper, arms folded over her ears and head. The next club blow tipped her off balance and together, we rolled over the cliff edge, to savage rocks and churning seas. It happened in a sudden rain of bullets, screams and blood and yes, I was part of it all, a hapless shell, on a string of plaited grass held fast around her neck. I felt the surprising force of those final physical blows and my shell shape drew out Young Woman's blood, as we welded together. Fresh blood trickled down upon those who lay so still at the bottom of the rock face and setting sun closed early to find solace in the night.
Young Man then crawled to his woman's side. He took off her necklace and split my mouth open with a sharp piece of stick and a flat stone. Very gently, he placed one shell half into Young Woman's right hand, then replaced the other half shell necklace around his own neck. She touched my heart, that silky underside of parchment white, framed in a blood red rim. Her right thumb moved forwards, backwards and around, tracing my atrium and ventricle chambers, until she was very sure of the right pathway. The faintest trace of a smile started playing at the corners of her mouth, and then she was gone.
* * *
White she-oak arms pointed towards the greener channels, as they dipped to seven metres at low tide. Young Man thought again of the unfathomable blue water and granite rock clearly visible under the surface on his island's eastern side. In earlier times, his tribe had hidden there in secret cave locations, to escape the hunting parties. Another ten metre channel ran south to north, about two hundred paces from the island's mainland face. The danger of sharks would be greatest there, especially now that whale families had already migrated north. The male whale always came first, followed by the mother and baby calf with an auntie swimming at the rear to help when mother whale rested. Such thoughts of family started a fresh stream of tears, so Young Man turned his attention to a small, straight, coconut palm around three metres long. Its beach roots had severed in sand bank erosions caused by the violence of a summer storm. It was the perfect gift. As night lightened to a calm, grey dawn, Young Man prepared to start the seven-mile journey home at low tide, with only a palm log for guidance.
He dogpaddled into a two metre swell and focused on the island hills, which had remained above the water line since the last ice age. Early sunrays touched the water trails ahead, as a northern current tugged at his legs, swirling dead coral north eastwards, towards the continental shelf. He watched terns and cormorants hunting waves for fish, while two circling seagulls soared and dived, but never left his side. At a depth of eight metres, Young Man sat astride his log to rest awhile, and choose the quickest route to those long rocky outcrops, stretching out to greet him from the island's face. The sun mesmerized him and he found himself sliding through blue, green shadows, before the final drift into dark blue water. Here, every underwater shape made his heart race.
Sometimes, he even forgot to breathe as fear made him lie prone along the log in a semi -submerged position. His sole comfort was the sight of looming grasslands and heathlands with their colonies of honey-eaters, pheasant coucals and friarbirds. Young Man hungered for the shape of hills and plunging granite cliffs. He clearly saw the bora ring and burial site in his own heart and this gave him courage. The moment arrived; he burst through a cowl of seaweed and creaming surf, then staggered over coarse sand, shell bits and smooth pebbles to my beach boulder. Young Man removed his necklace and freed my half - shell self from the grass twine strands. He settled me gently, turning my face and his towards Securis and the mainland. And together, we watched a golden glow settle peaceably over the cliff face. Only then, did Young Man scoop sand into a pillow and close his eyes for sleep.
* * *
Nowadays, half of my shell is missing and I've spent over a century partially buried behind a beach boulder. Yes, I'm calm and resolute. I always knew you'd pick me up, if I used wind and tidal power to work my way down towards high water mark. My rose colour glistens in a stone washed tide, so I knew the timing had to be perfect. When you stooped to touch me, I showed you my sweetest pinkness, in order to stand out among the wash of odd shell fragments and old, brown pebbles.
