At the Ternpan Vlei Count, a bird heard by two people was worth one tick. A bird seen by one person was worth an argument.
Last year, Mara and Gareth had finished on nineteen species. Their target this year was twenty, a round number Gareth had proposed and Mara had since treated as a binding contract.
They made a formidable team because Mara could identify a bird at distance and Gareth could identify one before it arrived. They were difficult company for everyone who shared a car with them.
“We’re not arguing about the reed warbler again,” Gareth said as they signed in.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You’ve written it on your card already.”
“It’s a forecast.”
The marshal gave them each a map, a scorecard and a pencil, and a radio to share. “No playback. No leaving the paths. If you’re unsure, mark it heard only. At the whistle, everyone returns to the start.”
“A generous category,” Gareth said.
“A necessary one,” Mara said. “For people who can’t see birds.”
“Or for birds who understand camouflage.”
At the edge of the car park, a wire gate stood open in a two-metre mesh fence that enclosed the reserve. The boardwalk began beyond it.
They set off along the boardwalk. The morning was cold enough to make their breath visible and warm enough to make them regret the jackets they had carried. Across the water, the reeds stood in close, green ranks. A call came from somewhere inside them: three clear notes, then a pause. Neither could see its source.
Gareth lifted his binoculars. “That’s the one.”
“Which one?”
“The one we came for.”
“That narrows it down to all of them.”
He lowered the binoculars. “You’ll know it when you hear it.”
“That’s how you lost us a point last year. We still won because I saw the bird you heard.”
“A team effort.”
“A team correction.”
The boardwalk widened beside a small hide with three viewing slots and a bench built for two people who had never met. A low maintenance hatch sat behind a faded sign on its rear wall. They took turns at the middle slot, each insisting the other was standing in the best place.
For an hour, they saw ordinary birds doing ordinary things. A pair of ducks disagreed over a patch of water. A heron stood on one leg, apparently waiting for a more interesting meeting. Gareth counted a call from the far shore. Mara wrote it down, then added a question mark. By 7.38 their confirmed tally was nineteen.
“You can’t put punctuation in a species count,” he said.
“I can put it anywhere I like.”
Then a new call came from the reeds behind the hide.
It began with the three notes they had heard before, but the last one bent down into a sound like a glass rim being rubbed with a wet finger. The hair lifted along Mara’s arms.
On the last line in the Heard Only column, Mara pencilled the three notes and added a question mark.
Gareth had already raised his binoculars. “There.”
“Where?”
“In the reeds.”
“That is a direction, not a location.”
The call came again. Mara checked the level on her phone. She had been recording; a small waveform rose and fell across the screen.
“Play it back,” Gareth said.
“No playback.”
“Quietly?”
“The marsh would still hear it.”
Mara kept the recording. She did not play it.
The call came a third time, from the other side of the hide. Then a voice said, “You’ll know it when you hear it.”
Gareth’s smile disappeared.
The words had come in his voice. Not a voice like his. His exact voice: the small rasp on know, the amused lift on hear it, even the breath he took at the end.
He looked towards the reeds. “Did you say that?”
“You said it.”
“Not just now.”
“No.”
The voice came again. “Not just now.”
Mara put her phone in her pocket. “We’re going back.”
“There might be a person in there.”
“There might be a bird. Stay on the path.”
They stepped out of the hide. The boardwalk ran ahead to the car park. Behind them, the reeds shifted though there was no wind. The copied voice said, in Mara’s voice, “Stay on the path.”
Gareth looked at her. “You did say that.”
“Yes.”
“I’m just establishing the evidence.”
“Establish it while walking.”
They moved. The boardwalk gave a small, hollow bounce under their feet. Gareth used his radio to call the marshal. “Base, Mara and Gareth at the north boardwalk. We’re returning.” Static answered. He released the button.
From the reeds ahead, the marshal’s voice said, “Stay where you are.”
The marshal had been at the starting point, nearly a kilometre away.
Mara switched the radio off. “It heard us.”
Something hit the underside of the boardwalk.
The planks bucked. Gareth fell hard on his knee. A long, grey hand closed around the edge between his boots. It had four fingers and a fifth joint that bent the wrong way.
Mara grabbed the back of his jacket and hauled. The hand kept its grip. Gareth kicked at it. The thing under the boards pulled once, with a strength that moved both of them a few centimetres towards the water.
Mara stamped on the fingers. They were cold and soft, like wet gloves filled with fish bones. As the hand let go, one bent claw raked Gareth’s shin through his trousers.
Gareth scrambled up. Blood ran from a tear in his trousers and down his shin.
“Can you walk?” Mara asked.
“Of course.”
He tried. His injured leg buckled.
Mara got his arm over her shoulders. “Keep your weight on me.”
The reeds parted ahead of them, between the boardwalk and the car park. Something unfolded itself across the path.
It was taller than Mara and bent in too many places. Grey feathers clung to a body that looked both drowned and freshly fed. Its head was narrow, the beak a dark seam. The eyes were pale and set too far forward. When it opened its mouth, the beak split into two wet halves and showed a row of small, blunt teeth.
For one second, nobody spoke.
Then, from inside the thing, the marshal said, “Stay where you are.”
Gareth leaned on Mara. They turned back towards the hide. Behind them, the creature hauled itself out of the reeds and caught a wing on the rail as it tried to get onto the boards. The delay gave them time to reach the door. Mara half-carried Gareth inside and slammed it shut.
The hide had been built to keep people from disturbing the birds, not to withstand anything with hands. Its wooden walls shook as the creature struck them from outside.
Gareth sat down hard against the bench. His leg was bleeding through his trousers.
Mara pressed her folded jacket against the cut. “Keep pressure on that.”
Gareth held it there with both hands. His breathing was fast, but he stayed conscious and answered when she spoke to him.
The thing scraped along the hide’s wall. Its beak clicked against the narrow viewing slot. Through the other slot, Mara could see a strip of water and the empty boardwalk.
From outside the hide, Gareth’s voice said, “Mara, I’m outside.”
Gareth stared at the door. “I’m not outside.”
“I know.”
“It could have picked a better line.”
“It picked one that might work.”
From outside, Mara’s voice said, “Open the door.”
Gareth’s hand went to the latch on reflex, answering the familiar voice before he could check its source.
Mara caught his wrist. “That wasn’t me.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you reaching?”
“I’m not proud of it.”
The scrape stopped. They listened. The marsh made its ordinary morning noises: water touching reeds, small wings flicking at the edge of sight. Then came a sound from the far end of the boardwalk: three clear notes, followed by the bent, glassy one.
Something moved away from the hide towards the sound. Mara could not tell whether it was the creature or another caller.
“It moved when that sounded,” she whispered.
“It might have been following a bird.”
“Or any noise.”
They waited until the boards stopped shaking. “The radio brought it towards us,” Gareth said. “The other sound drew it away.”
“That’s enough to try.”
At the back of the hide, a maintenance hatch opened onto a narrow path that led to the causeway. From there, they could reach the car park without passing the reeds. The route was longer, and Gareth could barely put weight on his leg.
“The phone,” he said.
Mara took it from her pocket. The screen showed the recorded call, a tidy green line.
“The speaker isn’t very loud,” she said.
“The call might draw it anyway.”
“That’s a large maybe.”
“It’s what we’ve got.”
“You want me to play it?”
“I want you to leave it on the ledge, away from the hatch.”
“It’s my phone.”
“It’s also our loudest option.”
The creature spoke outside the hide in the marshal’s voice: “At the whistle, everyone returns to the start.”
Gareth leaned towards the door. Mara held the phone between them. The marshal had been at the start when they last saw her. The voice was a lure.
The call from the reeds came again: three notes, then the glassy bend.
Mara looked through the slot. The boardwalk was empty. Beyond the maintenance path, the causeway crossed the mud towards the car park. At its car-park end, a rusted chain was anchored to one post and held back against it with yellow tape, leaving the entrance open. The marshal had pointed out the chain on their way in and told them to leave it tied back until the count ended.
“If it gets past the causeway,” Gareth said, “it’ll reach the other groups.”
“If we stay here, it’ll reach us.”
“We are an impressive team.”
“You’re the one who wanted a bird.”
Mara set the phone on the outer ledge beneath the viewing slot, away from the maintenance hatch. She set the recording to repeat and started it. The call began, thin and bright through the phone speaker.
The creature went silent.
Mara turned the volume up. The call sounded again.
Outside, something rushed across the boards. The hide shook as it passed. Its feet struck the planks in an uneven rhythm, one-two-three, pause, one-two-three-four.
Mara opened the hatch. She took Gareth’s arm over her shoulders again, and they slipped out as quietly as his leg allowed. The phone kept singing behind them. Then came a scrape at the ledge and a muffled burst of the call.
They took the maintenance path to the causeway. The recording continued behind them, its loop a thin thread of sound across the water.
The creature’s voice came from the hide: “You’ll know it when you hear it.”
Gareth looked at Mara. She was already moving.
The thing burst through the reeds behind them. It had the phone in its mouth. The screen glowed between its teeth, the repeated call muffled but still playing. Its head jerked from side to side as if trying to locate the sound inside itself.
The open chain at the car-park end of the causeway was still tied to its post with yellow tape. Mara reached it first and tore away the tape. Gareth limped past her.
The creature charged. Mara swung the chain across the causeway and caught it around the opposite post. It was not a gate, only a boundary chain meant to keep visitors out of the mud. The creature struck it at full speed. The chain snapped tight, caught under one of its wings and turned its charge sideways.
It hit the boards and slid. The phone fell from its mouth. Its screen cracked against the planks; the call stopped.
Behind them, the creature called in Gareth’s voice.
“Mara.”
She did not turn.
“Mara, wait.”
Gareth limped beside her. “That one was almost convincing.”
“It was you.”
“I know. I was grading it.”
The car-park gate came into view. Beyond it stood the check-in tent, where the marshal was packing away the spare pencils. Two other teams were arguing about a bird near the water.
Mara waved both arms. “Get everyone off the path!”
The marshal looked at the scorecards in their hands, then at Gareth’s bloodied leg. She dropped the pencils and reached for her whistle.
The marshal blew her whistle once, then shouted, “All teams to the car park.”
From the reeds, the creature repeated her words in her voice.
The other teams turned towards the marsh. Mara shouted, “That isn’t her.” The real marshal pointed to the car-park gate. The teams came in quickly, carrying their binoculars and their arguments. Mara got Gareth through the gate and pulled it shut after the last team. The creature tore its wing free from the chain and charged the last few metres to the fence. It struck the two-metre mesh from the boardwalk side; the fence shuddered, and the latch held. Once they were clear, Mara told the marshal what had happened and showed her the route. The marshal counted every team before she called the ranger.
By late morning, the reserve ranger had taken Gareth to the clinic and closed the footpath. The contest was cancelled. Mara sat on the back step of the first-aid tent with the damp scorecard she had kept in her jacket.
When Gareth returned from the clinic with a bandage on his leg and a paper cup of tea, he asked, “Did you get the call?”
“The recording?”
“The bird.”
Mara looked at the damp scorecard. The recording was gone with her phone. The creature had repeated the call, but she could not tell whether it had made it first. The three notes in the Heard Only column still had a question mark.
“We both heard it,” Gareth said.
“We did.”
“That’s the rule.”
“We don’t know it was a bird.”
“It had feathers.”
“It had our voices.”
Gareth took a sip of tea. “Does that count as a call?”
“Only if you want to hear it again.”
He put the cup down. “I don’t.”
Mara tore the scorecard in half.
“That’s a shame,” Gareth said. “We were one short of twenty.”
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