The Little Snake Read online

  ‘I thought you were weak with hunger.’

  ‘I am worried about you. But you are also full of remarkable wisdom – you should write down the things I tell you so you won’t forget.’ The snake blinked. ‘But, yes, I am very hungry, too. Do you have, at least, some cheese? I might be able to survive on cheese. A little Gruyère, perhaps?’

  Mary leaned in very close and kissed the snake on its nose. (Although, of course, it didn’t quite have a nose.)

  ‘You are very forward,’ the snake mumbled. But he also – like poured gold – slipped himself around and around her arm in a pleased way that sparkled his scales delightfully. Then he came to rest peaceably in her hand again. ‘You maybe could call me Camatayon, or Bas, or Lanmo, or . . .’

  Because the snake seemed to have a great many names and because Mary liked the sound of that one she told him, ‘Lanmo. I will call you Lanmo.’

  ‘Yes, that will be good.’ The snake nodded.

  ‘Thank you for your name.’ Mary realised she was a little bit hungry herself. ‘Shall we go indoors? I can toast some cheese on bread. I know how to toast cheese.’

  The snake angled his head as if he were thinking. ‘I think I would have to have cold cheese with no bread – because of my teeth. Toasted cheese would be too sticky.’ He opened his dark mouth carefully and slowly so that Mary could see his teeth, which were as white as bones and pointed. To the left and to the right of his front teeth he had a longer fang that was most especially pointed.

  ‘Goodness.’

  ‘I eeth ill oh ur oooh,’ said Lanmo the snake.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Mary had been taught to be polite.

  Lanmo closed his mouth and his needly teeth fitted together perfectly for an instant, before he tried again to speak. ‘My teeth will not hurt you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘And what kind of snake are you?’

  ‘The kind that is never in books.’ And he nuzzled his head against the back of her hand and flickered his tongue.

  Mary did find the snake some little pieces of cheese and he ate them daintily before telling her thank you and disappearing in his fast and snaky way.

  This made Mary feel a little lonely for the rest of the afternoon, until she was eating her own dinner that evening – which was vegetable stew and then more vegetable stew – and noticed that the glow of two red eyes was blinking out from under her napkin.

  ‘Oh,’ she said out loud and then, because her mother and father had turned to look at her, she had to continue. ‘What lovely stew. Yes. Oh. What lovely stew.’ She did this because she realised that her parents might well wave their arms about and scream a lot if she said out loud, ‘Oh, I have a beautiful snake called Lanmo under my napkin. He has come back to see me again and so maybe he is going to be my friend.’

  Lanmo, faster than a silky whisper, slipped into the pocket of her dress and she could feel him moving very slightly in a way that might mean he was giggling. This made her smile and she had to turn her smile into one that looked as if it could be about stews and not snakes.

  Later, when Mary was by herself in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, she looked in her pocket, but there was no one there. Lanmo had gone again. She guessed, correctly, that he had done this so she could change into her pyjamas and brush her teeth in private. When she opened her bedroom door, there was the snake, curled on her pillow, tasting the air with his forked tongue and looking at her with his sharp red eyes. They shone in the tiny, dim room, which had no window because it was really a cupboard. He was trying to look domestic. ‘Hello, Mary. I am going to watch over you until you are asleep. I will keep away your nightmares.’

  ‘But I don’t have nightmares.’

  ‘You might now – you have a snake on your pillow.’ Lanmo grinned and rippled over so that Mary could get into bed and be snug. Then he lay very flat on top of her covers so that he could look into her eyes. ‘You will always be safe when I am here. Because I am your friend and I will come and visit you many, many times.’

  ‘Good,’ said Mary into her blankets, because she was very drowsy. She thought that Lanmo’s eyes reminded her of sunsets and somehow this made her very really extremely sleepy.

  And the snake watched her until he knew she was dreaming safely and then he told her again, ‘I will visit you many, many times.’ He nodded his head sadly. ‘And then I will visit you one time more.’ He licked the air to be sure that she was happy and he tasted truth and bravery and toothpaste and soap that smelled of flowers and it made him sneeze one short, snake sneeze. ‘Pffs.’ And he could taste that in her dream she was already canoeing down a mighty river that wound between tall jungle trees with a pet lion at her feet. He felt a little jealous that she wasn’t imagining him with her in the canoe.

  But then again, the snake was not any kind of pet.

  Once Mary was fast asleep, the snake travelled invisibly and quicker than a thought across the city until he was in the basement of a man called Mr Meininger. The basement stretched away for miles in many directions. It was the most magnificent and impressive of all the city’s millionaire caverns and had taken two hundred imported Bolivian miners a year to excavate. It had a lake for swimming, although Mr Meininger couldn’t swim, and it had many ice cream machines, although Mr Meininger didn’t like ice cream. It had wonderful statues and fountains, although Mr Meininger wasn’t especially interested in art or in dancing water. It had an orchard that was supplied with electric light so the apples and plums and peaches planted in it had to grow all the time and could never rest in darkness. They could never feel the little feet of animals, or birds, or insects tickling them, because no living things were allowed in the basement without Mr Meininger’s permission. He had only ever given his permission to the two hundred imported Bolivian miners, the trees, his many servants and the tumblers and comedians he sometimes paid to try to make him smile.

  He didn’t smile. He thought it was a foolish waste of effort and almost as stupid as wanting to make someone else smile. He also thought it was a good punishment for the tumblers and comedians if they had to keep on balancing and falling and doing tricks and telling him funny stories and jokes while he stared at them like a giant, solemn frog in a big silk dressing gown. He made them keep on and on until they cried, and if they didn’t cry he refused to pay them.

  All this meant that Mr Meininger was both surprised and irritated when he looked up from reading a report on how fast his wealth was growing and saw the face of our friend the snake.

  I think we can call him our friend, because we are surely Mary’s friends and her friends must therefore be our friends, as long as they are nice and kind.

  ‘Ugh,’ said Mr Meininger. (He was too fat to wave his arms about and too dignified to scream.) ‘A snake.’

  ‘I know,’ said the snake and flickered his tongue and slipped around the sleeve of Mr Meininger’s dressing gown like a gold braid decoration – except with teeth.

  ‘Ugh,’ said Mr Meininger. ‘A talking snake.’

  The snake blinked. ‘I know that, too.’ He angled his head to one side, as if he were studying Mr Meininger very hard indeed. ‘Now, perhaps you could tell me something I don’t know.’

  Mr Meininger was used to being surrounded by extremely respectful servants and sad, exhausted trees. When he met people beyond his cavern they were deferential and gave him gifts, because you will always be given gifts if you already have too much. And if he wasn’t bowed to and petted and coddled he would usually go very red in the face and bellow, or go very white in the face and growl that everyone should be fired at once. And everyone would be. This happened even if the people being fired were prime ministers, film stars or kings. Mr Meininger practised his growl sometimes when he was in the bathroom and would look at himself in the mirror to make sure he had perfected his chilling stare. An unauthorised animal in his cavern would usually have been the cause of bellows and stares and all kinds of redundancies. But Mr Meininger could
n’t say a word and it seemed to him that his skin was becoming clammy and too tight.

  ‘Well . . . ?’ asked the snake and waited politely.

  And even though the snake’s voice was like buttered velvet and even though the snake was being very quiet and courteous, Mr Meininger found that he was very frightened of that sleek golden body and that delicate golden head.

  ‘I have come a long way to meet you,’ said the snake. His tongue tested the air and allowed him to taste Mr Meininger’s cramped, dark thoughts and his shallow, dim heart and his calculating brain. He could also taste fear that was thick as fog. ‘You might at least tell me your name.’

  And Mr Meininger couldn’t help but say, ‘Karl Otto Meininger’. If you had been there to hear him you would have noticed he sounded as if he were answering a schoolteacher or filling in a form. Then he blurted out, ‘I am the third wealthiest man in the world.’ He mentioned this because it had always impressed people before, although he already felt that he knew the snake was not people and would not be impressed.

  ‘No,’ the snake murmured in his sweetest voice. ‘You are only the fourth wealthiest. Ten minutes ago the copper mines of Lembit Quartak made him the third wealthiest.’ The snake eased higher up Karl’s sleeve. (We can call Mr Meininger Karl, now that he has told us his name.) Lanmo’s body came to rest on Karl’s left shoulder and he whispered, ‘And it really doesn’t matter, anyway. It never did.’

  Karl swallowed while the gentle breath of the snake pressed against his neck. ‘Please.’ Karl hadn’t said please for years and years – there had been no one he’d thought it was worth saying to.

  ‘Please what?’ asked the snake and the question made Karl’s skin shiver from head to foot. ‘What would you like, Karl Otto Meininger, who is the fourth wealthiest man in the world?’

  ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ The snake slipped around the back of Karl’s neck and came to rest on his other shoulder. He breathed into Karl’s right ear. ‘I think I can taste how many times other people have said that to you and how many times you have ignored them.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ purred the snake. ‘You can be honest with me. You might as well. You ignored them every time, didn’t you?’

  Karl made a kind of garckling noise that he recalled other people making when he forced them to work all night on their children’s birthdays, or fired them the day before Christmas, or decided to knock down their homes just to prove he could. Then he said, ‘I’ll give you everything I have.’ Other people had told him that, too.

  The snake rubbed his head against Karl’s ear and Karl heard the rustle of immaculate scales. ‘I cannot take everything you have.’ The snake paused. ‘. . . I will only take everything you are.’

  And then the snake opened his beautiful mouth and his tiny needle teeth shone white as bone.

  In the morning Mary woke up early and discovered that she felt more rested and cosy than she ever had before. When she rolled on to her side there was Lanmo coiled on her pillow. He may or may not have been sleeping, but certainly his eyes were closed and he was making small th-th-th noises which might have been the way that a snake snores. Mary smiled at him and kissed the smooth, warm top of his head where it glimmered in the dull light of an autumn dawn which was shuffling in around the closed door. ‘Good morning, Lanmo.’

  The snake – who was in fact perfectly awake – opened his ruby eyes and licked the end of Mary’s nose to make her laugh. ‘Good morning, Mary. Did you sleep better and deeper than you ever have?’ Then he sleeked along the blanket and wriggled and tied himself in knots and untangled himself out very straight and then curled his body into a nice curve and raised his head. ‘That is how a snake wakes up,’ he explained. ‘If you ever see another snake doing that do not interrupt her, or him. In fact . . . do not have anything to do with snakes who are not me. One never knows.’

  ‘What if I see a very lovely snake?’ asked Mary, teasing.

  ‘There are no snakes lovelier than me,’ said Lanmo firmly. ‘May I have some more cheese for breakfast? I am tired.’

  ‘Didn’t you sleep well?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Mary did sneak a nubbin of cheese out of the larder for the snake and fed him while he rode on the top of her satchel, peering about over her shoulder as she walked along in the frosty air, all the way to school.

  ‘Snakes do not go to school. Everything important in the world is written on the inside of our eggs. When we have finished reading and memorising what is written, we break our eggs and hatch.’

  ‘Really?’ said Mary as she strolled across the playground, feeling much less lonely than usual.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the snake, looking absolutely just like a snake and licking the interesting air very quickly, because it had so much to tell him. Several teachers looked straight at Lanmo, but because a small girl never does have a golden snake calmly reclining on her satchel they assumed that they were looking at a strange kind of handle, or that their glasses were dirty, or that they were mistaken. None of the children spotted the snake, because they were busy with each other and, as usual, had no time for Mary.

  While Mary sat in a number of classrooms and learned about the colours of money and the lengths of different silences and the average weights of heights, the snake nipped and slipped from classroom to classroom and explored.

  The snake found the school very odd. In one room the teacher was telling the class, ‘You will see on the board all of the answers for today’s National Test. You will spend this period copying down the answers on to your National Test Papers. If you have copied down the answers correctly you will then be clever enough to take next week’s National Test.’

  A small boy with ginger hair who sat at the back of the classroom put up his hand and asked, ‘But shouldn’t we be learning things like why the wind blows and which way is up and how to tie our shoe-laces and what is love?’

  ‘No,’ said the teacher. ‘We should be proving that we are clever so that the National Test Assessors can assess us, and when we have been assessed we can move on to our next assessment.’

  The small boy with ginger hair – his name was Paul – then asked, ‘Why is there a golden snake lying along the front of your desk pretending to be a ruler?’

  It’s true, our friend Lanmo was lying very still on the teacher’s desk so that he could listen and find out how humans taught their young without the help of educational eggs.

  The teacher looked at her desk and, of course, could not see the wonderful snake, because wonderful snakes are not permitted on desks and do not form any part of National Tests and are therefore invisible. She was, however, puzzled and quiet for a moment and had a chilly feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  While the teacher felt uneasy, the snake raised his slender and perfect head and looked directly at Paul.

  Paul gazed back into those two tiny eyes, red as bravery and sunsets, and deep as chasms. The boy felt his heart beating flipperty-pipperty in his chest and understood – because he was an extremely sensible boy – that something remarkable was happening, something educational, something he would have to remember.

  And the snake flickered his tongue out and tasted the teacher’s bewilderment and the emptiness of the classroom and the dreaming of the children. And he tasted the bright and growing and puzzling brain whirling away inside Paul’s head and the light and clean and flipperty-pipperty heart in his chest.

  Then the snake winked at Paul.

  This made Paul giggle.

  And while Paul was giggling, the snake vanished, just as Paul had guessed a wonderful snake might. This made Paul giggle even more.

  ‘Why are you giggling, you silly boy?’ shouted the teacher. Whenever she felt unsure or foolish she would cheer herself up by shouting. All the children understood this; it was part of their education.

  ‘I’m not,’ said Paul. He wasn’t lying, because he had stopped giggling now. He said
this with great certainty, because suddenly he felt certain of all kinds of things and a little bit taller. And somehow his certainty made the teacher recall that she had to make sure the class copied down the National Answers to the National Questions exactly as they should and so she left him be and did some more shouting.

  Once she was distracted, Paul grinned a big grin, one he could feel right down in his toes.

  When it was time for the lunch break all the children went out into the playground and played various games. Over by the fence Paul surprised himself by scoring a goal in his football game. And near the outside of the Measuring Department two little girls with Very Attractive curly blonde hair were skipping with their Very Attractive Friends.

  Lanmo was perched on Mary’s shoulder, curled up small like a brooch with only one of his ruby eyes showing. He wanted to learn about playing and what children were like when they were away from teachers and out in the wild. ‘Mary, your school is a very strange place.’

  Mary whispered to him out of the side of her mouth, ‘I think it’s quite a normal kind of school, really.’

  Lanmo thought for a moment. ‘That explains a great deal.’

  Mary was in a happy mood because she had a friend and, although usually she wouldn’t have tried any such thing, she walked up to the tallest of the Very Attractive Girls gathered beside the Measuring Department and asked, ‘May I play at skipping with you?’ She was a polite girl.

  ‘Fffuh,’ said the Very Attractive Girl. We won’t bother with her name. She isn’t nice.

  Mary didn’t know what ‘fffuh’ meant, so she asked again, ‘May I, please?’ And waited quietly.

  ‘No, of course you can’t. You’re weird and you smell of vegetables and your dress is old-old-old, and we all saw you whispering to your shoulder like a mad witch.’

  At this, every one of the other Very Attractive Girls began to dance and hop prettily round Mary and to chant, ‘Mad witch, mad witch, Mary, Mary, mad witch. Mad witch, mad witch, Mary, Mary, mad witch.’