Leave that lark alone!”

I met Jo climbing over the paddock fence.

“What’s the old bitch got in the store?” he asked.

“Don’t know—didn’t look.”

“What have you been doing all the time?”

“She couldn’t find this stuff. Oh, my shakes, you are looking smart!”

Jo had washed, combed his wet hair in a line across his forehead, and buttoned a coat over his shirt. He grinned.

Jim snatched the embrocation from me. I went to the end of the paddock where the willows grew, and bathed in the creek. The water was clear and soft as oil. Along the edges held by the grass and rushes, white foam tumbled and bubbled. I lay in the water and looked up at the trees that were still a moment, then quivered lightly as though whispering a secret in their rustling leaves, and again were still. The air smelt of rain. A lark alighted on a branch, pecked at the bare bark, and sang out in its shrill voice.

I splashed water over my face, and then looked up again as a shadow fell over the water and the lark took flight from the branch with a cry. Another bird swooped down and landed with a rough bump on the bank of the creek. It took me a moment to realize why the lark hit the ground with such unbalanced force; it was missing one leg. I edged back in the water, wondering whether perhaps a trap or a ferret had caused two larks to have sustained such similar injuries, reducing their left limbs to no more than nubs of flayed bone. The bird turned its head to face me with a seemingly intelligent malevolence, revealing the gruesome, indented wound on the side of its face where the skull had been bashed in. It shook its head and ruffled its feathers, spraying dust and specks of loose dirt like a dog shaking itself dry after a swim.

I scrambled back toward the edge of the opposite side of the creek. The hideous lark started limping along the other side as though trying to keep pace with me. I pushed myself up onto the bank of the creek. The creature let out a shriek and thrashed its bony wings. I felt a throbbing pain in my ears and was taken by a dizzy spell, but shaking my head I grabbed my clothes and started to run. I heard its beating wings lifting up into the air. I looked back over my shoulder. The lark’s beady eyes were glaring at me as it flew over the creek.

Another shriek tore through my head as I ran. At the base of an old macrocarpa-tree I turned back to face the lark. I gripped my shirt by the sleeves and swung it up over my head, thrashing it at the bird as it swooped towards me. The dizziness and pain in my ears grew until the lark became tangled in my shirt and fell silent. I swung it hard against the tree trunk a few times and finally it ceased to move. I shook it out of my shirt, feathers and dirt dropping around it, and brushed the shirt clean as best I could. Something in the mangled little bag of broken bones must have been uncurling after death, for I swear it was still twitching when I left.

Shaking, I came back to the tent. Jim lay by the fire, watching the billy boil.

I took a long, shaking breath and asked where Jo was, and if the kid had brought our supper.

“Pooh,” said Jim, rolling over and looking up at the darkening sky. “Didn’t you see how Jo had been titivating? He said to me before he went up to the whare, ‘Dang it! she’ll look better by night light. At any rate, my buck, she’s female flesh!’ ”

Back in Jim’s company, away from the creek, I almost laughed at how scared of the lark I’d been.