Swan on the Moor

Chapter 9

Jessie felt like a little girl as the taxi whisked her through tiny country roads through to the heart of the moor, goggling with wonder at the sheer expanse of space. Living mostly on completely flat ground, the curves and sweeps of hills and the criss-cross network of fields marking out the land seemed to her as if she had stepped into another, far older, world. She had been caught in wonder spotting kestrels hovering, a fox running through a hedgerow. Every field trip she felt the same joyful excitement at seeing places and scenes that most people, stuck in their city dwellings, would never see. Remembering family holidays in other countryside settings and her confusion and amusement at the bizarreness of the features of a living farm, she had to supress a giggle as the taxi bumped reluctantly over a cattle grid, making the whole car vibrate.

She had picked an early time to avoid the traffic, but the taxi driver was nonetheless unimpressed at having to drag his car through the tiny roads, encased either side with scratching brambles. Eventually he dropped her off by an inn – not a pub, she smiled to herself, an inn – and, shouldering her pack of notebooks and field equipment, Jessie was left to her own devices.

She took a brief map-check to confirm her location. As well as some minor starting and ending points, there were several major points of interest marked on the map by her supervisor, where rare birds of nesting colonies had been spotted earlier in the year. Her role was to check any signs of development of these colonies, and take a count of the other birds in the area over the period of two hours. She also had to collect samples of water, various plants and bird faeces to check the health of the birds and the area in which they lived.

Breathing the clear, fresh, unpolluted air with delight, lungful after delicious lungful, she couldn't believe it could be anything less than completely healthy.

Well, no time like the present; might as well make a start. She glanced at the first site marked on the map, a sample from the east stretch of the river Dart. A short trudge through the inn's car park (rather a misnomer to Jessie's eyes, since it was nothing more than a tiny gravelled area looking out of place in the greenery) and past an ice cream kiosk and she would be on the banks of the river. It was a good place to start since it became a popular tourist spot for its beauty as soon as the early morning was out; to get any meaningful work done, she preferred to be alone. She could take some samples, do a little observation, and move further into the moor, towards Haytor. The taxi had driven her past it on the way in, about twenty-five minutes ago – with that and the hills, this was certainly no job for the unfit! The bulk of her work would take place in the open ground of the moor rather than the river area or the villages, but as it was her first day, it didn't seem a bad idea to start with something light, some wading, some water study, some duck-spotting. Perhaps even a swan or two – and if she was very lucky, a black swan might have drifted out this far from their home town of Dawlish. That would have been noteworthy, because the swans were generally territorial, but now and again they popped up even this far out. It all made for further information into the study of their behaviour – why would they travel so far out?

At the riverbank, Jessie estimated she could easily slither down one of the large, flat rocks and be able to crouch in the edge of the water to catch some samples without disturbing the flow too much. The water was startlingly clear, and the sharp sunlight threw a faint, wobbly reflection of her face onto the surface – long black hair tied back in a sensible ponytail, a big puffy jacket to protect her from the autumnal winds, and inquisitive brown eyes. She paused, keeping quite still, to watch the quick flow of the river ripple her image out of the water, a water-skater skimming out behind a rock to keep from being swept away. A feeling of peace crept over her in the strange way that water always brought to most people, soothing her, and she reached for a plastic tube to dip into the water. A sudden movement on the opposite bank, accompanied by a rustle of leaves, caught her eye and ear, and she froze, years of practice at not startling wildlife

coming to her aid. The rustle stopped almost instantaneously, a sure sign that there was something more than a gust of wind over there. Fascinated, Jessie very slowly inched her fingers towards her binoculars, thankfully out of her bag, and she drew them, so slowly, smoothly, no startling movements, up to her face, studied the bush in great detail. She frowned. Yes, there was something there, something large. It flickered in and out of her sight without seeming to even move, making her eyes water. She squinted a little further, and as the figure began to take form, she nearly fell off her rock into the water with concentration. It was, more or less, the shape of a human, looking like they were trying to hide away from her. She dropped the binoculars, caught her balance, and shrugged. An early tourist trying to catch a little early morning peace, perhaps? She doubted anyone more sinister, like a poacher, would dare to be in an area as popular as this. She had run into trouble with poachers before, but they always picked very remote areas. The occasional early morning person she startled tended to be fellow nature enthusiasts or dog-walkers, or even the odd pagan-type. Harmless enough.

"Don't worry," she called, as softly as she could in case of actual wildlife, while trying to still be heard over the rushing water. "I'm just doing an environmental survey. Sorry to interrupt!"

There was a long, pregnant moment, during which she could almost feel a senses of shock emitting over the water, in the same, strange way that you could sense the emotions of a wild bird from the way they tilted their head or held themselves completely still. Stillness meant nerves, the flight-response about to kick in.

"Sorry," she called again, feeling a little awkward, as though she had interrupted something special, sacred. She didn't even know what they person had been doing. "Um...I won't be long, don't worry. If you want to finish up...anything..."

The bushes parted, shyly, and a figure emerged. The first thing Jessie noticed was the look of shock on her face. The second thing...well, was everything.

She couldn't have formed a comment if she had tried.