The teenagers brought their boat to a stop. This water-risen heron was unlike any other they’d seen before — any other heron, any other living creature. Its blue-grey feathers were so pale, they claimed later, that they could see straight through the bird. Its body was pierced by strands of dusky light, and the tree was clearly visible directly behind its sharp, moist beak. A ghost, one claimed. A mirage, said another. But before they could get closer the heron hunched its neck, flapped its wings and leapt into the sky. A thick spray of water fell from its wings, far more water than could have been resting on its feathers. Then it disappeared into the remnants of the storm.
The Rain Heron begins with a fable: Heralded by the arrival of flood and black storms, sometimes this mythical bird made of cloud and rain will choose a person to attach to, granting their land the perfect conditions for a harvest of abundance. But like many fables, that of the Rain Heron contains a dark lesson: woe betide he who might seek to harm or exploit this mythical creature out of greed or spite. After this intriguing opener, author Robbie Arnott introduces us to a world gone sideways: Post ecological disaster, post resulting military coup, the residents of this unnamed country (most likely Arnott’s native Australia) are forced to make hard choices about survival (whether becoming involuntary conscripts in the military or finding ways to feed oneself while hiding from patrolling soldiers). The people on both sides are hard and impassive, but we eventually learn that everyone has a backstory, no one is the worst thing they have ever done, and while history might explain individual actions, it doesn’t excuse them: we always have a choice, and attempting to control the Rain Heron — to exploit and deplete the Earth for selfish gain — comes at a high price. Arnott’s landscape writing is lush and lyrical, even the “reality” of his post-disaster world has a hint of the fabulous to it, and as ecolit, the lesson of the Rain Heron is one we should all keep close to heart. I enjoyed the writing — from the sentences to the overall effect — very much and think this should be widely read. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
She shrugged. Men want things. They hear about something and pretty soon they’re convinced it belongs to them.
After recounting the legend of the Rain Heron, the story introduces us to Ren: a grey-haired, cave-dwelling survivalist who finds everything she needs on her patch of mountainside. But eventually, like the Nazis and their storied search for magical artefacts, whatever remote military structure is (chaotically) governing this country sends soldiers into the mountains to see if they can actually capture a Rain Heron. It’s unclear whether the Generals believe that possessing and somehow controlling the mythical bird will reverse years of countrywide drought — or whether they aim to have one simply because “men want things” — but soldiers follow orders and those that go into the mountains sow fear and wreckage and pain.
This ends when you let it.
And as I wrote above, we eventually learn the backstories for some of the characters, but ultimately, what we learn is that they ought to know better: cycles of exploitation of nature and wildlife lead to collapse; lead to putting pressures on individuals to make questionable choices (accidents are no accident) that initiate further cycles of pain and loss. If the fable of the Rain Heron is an analogy for how humanity exploits and depletes the Earth, and how the planet might fight back, the lesson truly is: we ought to know better. The temporary, immediate gain isn’t worth the longterm ecological effects. That’s the big picture stuff — which all worked for me — and I also really appreciated Arnott’s small-scale word choices:
With no river to follow the road blanded out into a long, turnless ribbon. The lack of water changed the landscape; as the hours stacked up, the pastures lost their greenness, fading into beige and hazel. They flattened, losing the humps and rocks of the foothills, and their fences straightened and strengthened, gridding the land into stiff fields. There was still no sign of people. The fields poured on, yellow and dry, and their blondness began to feel eternal. No mountains rose in the distance now, no hills, just a weak tide of golden crests undulating towards the fuzz of the horizon.
(Google Docs does not like the word “blanded” and I can’t completely picture what is meant by “fading into beige and hazel” [like the colour of hazel eyes?], but quirky/invented vocabulary always works for me.) For the most part, The Rain Heron centres on the experiences of individuals — we don’t see the workings of the military government or learn how (or exactly why) the coup played out, we only see the effects of this system on the people; we don’t see how the climate has changed, we only see the pressures this puts on individual survival — but near the end, we are shown how things are getting worse (in ways that are sadly familiar to us):
That summer millions of fish rose to the surface of the country’s largest river, bloating the banks with rot. Dry lightning licked once-wet forests into infernos. Peat fires burned underground in the marshes of the highlands, fires that might not go out for centuries. A few months later, frost entombed the roots of palm trees on the coasts. So much was ruined, either slowly or in red instants, and nothing was getting better, and nobody was doing enough about it. And through the quiet carnage of the world, I kept moving.
So, do we just keep moving through the quiet carnage of our world, business as usual, even as a pandemic tries to thin our number? I believe the lesson is: we ought to know better.
