It landed on his horse’s back. The horse reared and bolted for home, the bridle trailing and the megarrity clinging to its back and throat and saddle with its bright, sharp claws.

The farmer had a long walk from there. The bush was empty of echoes, but at every sound, he jumped and looked around.

It was dark when he left the scrub and saw, across the moon-white bowl of the cleared paddocks, a friendly yellow light through the little windows and the long gaps in the walls of his slab hut.

He went to the window and, looking in, saw two sitting to dinner: his wife and himself. And himself looked up at the farmer in the window, and smiled with sharp, gleaming teeth.

“What shall I do?” thought the farmer. “I do not wish to frighten my wife, but I must get that creature with its long, bright claws out of there.”

For whatever lies he told himself of being a man of peace, he knew at his heart, I think, that the megarrity loved cleverness and blood. It would settle comfortably into his own life, in his friendly slab hut with his golden bride and his whip and his guns.

The baby murmured in the room behind the curtain.

“It is the child,” ventured the farmer outside the window.

“The child?” his wife echoed.

“It is the child,” confirmed the megarrity, and watched the woman turn to the other room, where the infant twitched in its sleep.

“You are very clever,” whispered the farmer through the gaps in the wall.

“I am very clever,” said the megarrity.

“But it is a simple thing to be a farmer,” whispered the man.

“A simple thing.”

“I think you could not fool me that you are the jug of cream on the table.”

“Fool you,” giggled the megarrity, and turned into a jug of cream, just as blue, and hung about with the same fringe of beads. The farmer tried the door, but it was latched from within. The megarrity leaped off the table and prowled around, eye to eye with him through the gaps in the walls. The farmer could hear his wife singing an old, old lullaby.

He said, “Or that you are the fire.”

Then the fire burned twice as hot, twice as fast in the hearth, and sparks roared up the chimney.

“Dear heart, the fire!” called his wife.

“I think you could not fool her that you are a snake,” whispered the farmer.

“Fool her,” agreed the megarrity. Next moment, the fire sank to ash. A snake, gleaming blue-black and beaded red, glided dust-dry from the hearth, with unblinking yellow eyes.

“Sso you see,” it hissed, flickering its way along the packed-earth floor. “I am cleverer than you or her. I am the megarrity. Your people brought me here, but I ssshall be here after you vanissh into the treess.”