How Wonderful That You Are What I Cannot Be

A flock of strangers descended upon the marshes. Winter is never kind to the Parana Delta, but whence the birds came, winters are harsher. These swallows glided low in the air across the veins of emerald waters shrouded in lush ceibo. The trees wouldn’t have them, and the bushes belonged to creatures best left unbothered. So the swallows made their abode in a weathered barn by a slow river.

The barn was a vacant husk of wood and straw. The roof had yielded to a storm long ago, and its floors, broken and flooded, had been reclaimed by tall milkweed. In the corners where the decaying beams met the darkened walls, the migrant birds made their nests. They built their homes with mud and grass, and strengthened them with steely blue feathers that they plucked from each others’ bodies.

The swallows celebrated their arrival with a song the marshes had never heard. And none were more perturbed than the fish in the neighbouring river. The pacu were the proudest of the nine families of fish that inhabited the waters of Parana, and they could not help but bare their pearly teeth at the cacophony above. They convened at the riverbed and spoke their discontent. The pacu with the sharpest teeth – the biggest and most indignant of them all – was chosen to have a word with the strangers.

The big pacu zipped through the river up to the surface, launched himself through the milkweed, and landed into a long, shallow pool of stagnant water. He swam towards the barn, as far as he could reach, and called out to the swallows huddled in their nests.

'We wish for you to know who we are, and who we are not,' said the big pacu. A few tiny swallows hopped on to the beam closest to the pacu.

'We are the ones with many teeth and no feathers. We have no use for feathers because here in the delta, we swim. Here, we gnaw on broken stalks that the wind blows into the river. And we eat the nuts and the fruit that the overhanging trees obediently shed into our rivers. We know the branches of these waters like we know the patterns of our scales. We know the shape of our riverbeds and all life that clings to them. You ignore the bounties and the limits of the river. This is not who we are.'

The swallows cocked their heads as the big pacu continued, 'You settle on unsightly ruins made by outsiders who came before you. You live by the river, but not in it. Pacu cannot live in the muddy pools beside your ghastly settlement. This is not who we are.'

The birds exchanged curious glances and chirped excitedly to one another.

The big pacu grimaced. 'Your song is inscrutable, and frankly, wrong. We do not know these sounds. We cannot make them. And we don’t care for them. This is not who we are.'

A young swallow spread its wings, soared clumsily through the air, and settled on an exposed root half a yard away from the big pacu.

'How wonderful!' said the little swallow.

'What?' The big pacu demanded.

'To meet a bird with no feathers and many teeth.'

'I am not a bird,' said the fish.

The swallows shared loud, happy chirps. 'How wonderful to meet a friend who is not a bird,' said the little winged creature. 'To bring these winds to your currents. And this old barn back to your river. How magnificent that we span the world both above and below your waters; to see you spring from its surface with stories of things deep below that my little beak cannot reach. And to regale you with songs of distant lands where your pretty river doesn’t flow.'

The swallow flapped its wings in delight. 'What a joy to find you in places that I’ll never see. And how wonderful that you are what I cannot be.'