ARK CLOUDS GATHERED OVER THE hills of the outback and a dry wind blew A thousand spiderwebs shimmered at the mouth of a rocky cave Inside the cave dozens of pale forms dangled from the ceiling When the breeze touched them they twisted and stretched then dropped from the craggy roof Spreading their wings they took flight a swarm of ghost bats with huge ears and white bellies and teeth sharp enough to kill They poured from the cave in a swirling cloud swooping past the glowing spiderwebs It’s the spider queen a scowling bat said in a whispery voice She commands us to hunt A red-eyed bat hissed Queen Jarrah is an eight-legged No no the red-eyed bat whispered It is the queen who is in charge now And she’ll kill anyone who stands against her Like the wallaby troop she dried up their springs with her nightcasting They died of thirst the scowling bat asked with a guano-head lord is the real power She does only what Lord Marmoo tells her The scorpion
nervous shiver The other bat nodded Jarrah’s power comes from dust and dryness Now that the turtle king is dead she’ll turn the whole outback into a desert fit only for spiders and scorps But she’ll let us have water Enough to survive if we obey With a tremor of fear they joined the pale cloud of bats flitting through the evening following the hill downward toward the swamp Looking for prey Deep in her snug burrow Okipippi woke early which for a platypus meant before sunset and yawned and stretched her tail She drowsed in her comfy twig nest for a few minutes listening to her parents snoring away in the other room
Then she rubbed her eyes and noticed that her sister’s nest was empty Pirra was probably already on the river floating around with her friends Pippi wasn’t old enough to swim in the river before dark but that didn’t bother her She liked to spend most of her time with the Stargazer anyway The platypus tribe didn’t have a chief or a king or a queen If they needed advice they went to the Stargazer an old gray furred platypus with notched ears and bright eyes She taught the newborn pups after they hatched in the deep mud-walled nurseries and she had her own kind of magic Not dreamcasting like the turtles Not nightcasting like the spiders The Stargazer simply twirled herself into a trance then focused on the distant whispering of the Rainbow Serpent the ancient god who’d brought life to the Australian outback Pippi loved the legends of the Rainbow Serpent She liked the one about the colors of the Serpent dripping onto the Kulipari to give them power and the one about her great-great grandparents digging endless burrows beneath the outback tunnels that connected the deep waters of the Amphibilands to the rest of the land But her favorite story explained how the Serpent had created the platypuses in its own image Just as a rainbow contained many different colors a platypus contained many different parts a duck-like bill webbed feet thick waterproof fur and a chunky tail The males even had a poison spur on one ankle Maybe that’s why the platypuses followed the Serpent more closely than anyone else At least the Stargazer did She didn’t actually talk to the Rainbow Serpent but she deciphered messages in the ripples and splashes of the river’s current There were a hundred myths and tales and legends about the
