Rashid had to look twice to make sure his eyes did not deceive him. Was that really a sheep he saw crawling uphill towards him? Actually, the crawling wasn’t even the strangest part about the creature that was coming towards him in a vast pace; it had the legs of a turtle and the solid shell of one on its back as well.
The boy wiped his eyes fiercely, yet it proofed useless – that same weird mixture of a sheep and a turtle was still there. “A sheep and a turtle, it’s a shurtle!” thought Rashid in disbelieve. It was now so close, he could hear it huffing and puffing as it exerted itself with the rather steep climb. The boy shook his head. If he told Rikky about this, his friend would most definitely call him as mad as a cut snake!
Seven months ago, Rashid had to move to the Australian Outback with his parents; his mother had been offered a job as a nurse in Alice Springs. His father was able to work from anywhere as an app developer, and since money had been tight since the loss of his company, the family had jumped on the opportunity. Seeing how happy the move made mom and dad, Rashid had swallowed the deep dislike he felt himself about the prospect of leaving the metropolitan Sydney for a dusty desert settlement in the Northern Territory. To say he had not been keen on forty degree weather and red sand would be an understatement, but in time he had adapted and would begrudgingly admit to having grown rather fond the his barren surroundings.
That morning, he had called on Rikky. The friends spent every weekend together ever since Rikky had saved Rashid from a venomous snake in the first week after his arrival. The two boys went to different schools, so there was only Saturdays and Sundays for them to indulge into trouble. Rikky could talk the legs of an iron pot and had a quirky sense of humour which only Rashid seemed to appreciate. The lads enjoyed exploring the area and making up games.
“Rikky sick. Not out today,” his mother had told an extremely disappointed Rashid at the door. One hand leaned against the doorpost, her other was planted against her hip. Through that triangle, Rashid could see Rikky laying on the couch, pulling faces and trying to make him laugh. He looked sweaty and pale. He also got caught up in a nasty coughing trip, that made his mother turn worriedly and smash the door into Rashid’s face. Rashid had to fend for himself today.
Bored out of his mind, he wandered through town. After scoffing some sand and kicking some stones, he had flip-flopped himself near the viewing platform of the Heavitree Gap, at which point he had looked back and became aware of the shurtle.
“You are a peculiar looking thing,” Rashid mumbled to himself more than to the animal. The shurtle stopped in its tracks and looked up, its sheepish head having anything but a sheepish expression. Its nostrils trembled for a moment as its eyes glanced over Rashid as if he were merely a testy insect along the way to its destination. “I bet you are a rare species, aren’t you?” Rashid did not care any longer that whatever was nearing, was not supposed to exist. He sat down on a rock and stared at the shurtle. “Are you even from this continent?” he asked curiously. “I bet you are. I bet you are ancient, with ancestors going all the way back to the dinosaurs. Or… or Dreamtime!” He chuckled, congratulating himself with his cleverness. Rikky was an expert on indigenous matters and had told him all about Dreamtime. Rikky knew all about Dreamtime. Now he did too.
A laid-back smile crept onto Rashid’s face. “You are from the Great Barrier Area, from the Coral Reefs. But when the tourists destroyed your natural habitat… No. When climate change did, you were forced to flee into more remote areas, surviving on gum tree bark and beetroot.” The shurtle had continued its upward journey. Its flippers sweeping the red, rocky sand behind its hard shell. “And now you have come to your end, because my friend, there is no way down from this side. Tough luck!” He started laughing a little at the cruelty of his fantasy, but then he squeezed his eyes with a thought. “Unless… Yes! Unless you have come all the way here to lay your eggs! And then, when they hatch, there’ll be lots of little shurtles, crawling all through the desert, and you won’t be lonely anymore!”
The odd creature was now close enough for Rashid to touch. He could reach out and stroke it. He wanted to, but he felt it would be wrong to do so. Touching the shurlte would cross the line between magic and reality, a force he was not ready to break. Again, the shurtle stopped; this time it looked straight at Rashid. Its soft, round, woolly head shook slightly, either from effort or focus. Then it opened its mouth and spoke.
“Do not presume to understand, when there is life yet to acquire the knowledge.”
Rashid stared at the shurtle. It did not wait for him to comprehend what had happened; it turned around slowly and travelled back from whence it came. Rashid pinched himself, then wiped his eyes again; this time when he looked back up again, the shurtle had vanished into thin air, without a trace.
“A cut snake…” he said to himself firmly, and ran down the Heavitree Gap to tell Rikky the tale of the shurtle.
