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Best Australian Yarn: Nest by Josephine Sarvaas

Josephine SarvaasBest Australian Yarn
Best Australian Yarn: Nest by Josephine Sarvaas
Camera IconBest Australian Yarn: Nest by Josephine Sarvaas Credit: Supplied

My name is Lavender Marigold Smythe. I’m nine years old. In my previous life I was an owl. I know this because my father told me in a dream.

My father is dead, but he’s all around me. His spirit hasn’t settled into a new body, so sometimes he’s a bird and sometimes a butterfly and sometimes a tree, but he’s usually somewhere nearby. I don’t think people know you can end up as a tree, because at school we watched a video of a rainforest being torn down. It made me cry to think of all the spirits being killed, and Ethan McKenzie, who weed his pants on an excursion to Taronga Zoo, laughed at me. So I bit him. I bit him until I tasted blood, and the owl in me really liked that. She wanted a taste of the hunt.

That was at my old school in the mountains. I’m at a new school now, living with Aunty Arlene. She’s my father’s sister, but she’s nothing like him. Back when my father was a human, he was long and thin and hard, and Aunty Arlene is short and round and soft. If my father got lost in the wilderness, he would construct a lean-to and spear fish and survive for years off the land. He taught me to tie strong knots and forage bush grapes.

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