The Little Snake Read online

  The snake tasted the air again with his wise, quick tongue. ‘Your daughter is in the land which is four lands to the left of here and two lands higher.’

  ‘And is she safe?’

  The snake’s tongue flickered again, fast as fast can be. He thought for a moment. ‘She is safe and comfortable and content. There is only one part of her that is sad and that is the part which remembers you. Your other children told her they would harm you if she didn’t go away and never write and never try to send you any messages. But on the first day of January every year she has sent you roses to make your new year sweet and fill it with colours.’

  ‘Ah.’ Granny Higginbottom’s eyes became a deeper blue and she shed tears which tasted to Lanmo of the moon and other wildernesses. Then she smiled. ‘That explains it.’ She patted the quilt near Lanmo’s head. ‘Is it time for us to begin?’

  ‘Well . . . usually . . . yes.’ But Lanmo paused and thought; the old lady had lived so long she might know many things. So he asked her, ‘I have lately been very angry. And I have also felt guilt for the first time. This troubles me. And I have wandered the earth, and the anger and the guilt have not left me. They have been as close as my shadow.’

  ‘Hmmm . . .’ Granny Higginbottom tickled behind his ear, which he normally wouldn’t have allowed, but it seemed to comfort him. ‘Then you love someone. How strange. I didn’t think you would.’

  ‘Love?’

  ‘To be very angry, you must first have loved very much, or have been very much afraid. Now, I do not think you could be afraid of anything or anyone . . .’

  ‘That is true,’ Lanmo nodded. ‘At least, I think that is true.’

  When Granny Higginbottom heard doubt in Lanmo’s voice she added, ‘Not unless perhaps you were afraid for that which you love . . . Is there something you love, snake?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah. Then there is someone you love.’

  At this, Lanmo found he could not manage to say anything in his wonderful voice. He simply leaned against the old lady’s hand and let her gently rub his golden scales in a way that he liked and that reminded him of his friend Mary. Granny Higginbottom told him quietly, ‘Love is a terrible thing.’

  ‘So it seems,’ whispered Lanmo.

  ‘But it is also wonderful.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He eased a little nearer Granny Higginbottom. ‘Perhaps it is.’ Then he looked into her eyes with great seriousness. ‘I promise that I will take your three rings and your four jewels and your sixteen gold pieces away with me before anyone else can find them. I will carry them to your daughter’s house. She will recognise your rings and she will know you sent them.’

  ‘And will you meet with her?’ Granny Higginbottom sounded worried.

  ‘No. I will not meet with your daughter for a long while yet,’ said Lanmo. ‘But I swear that I will give her your treasures.’

  ‘I would not have thought you were the kind of snake to make promises.’

  ‘I am not.’ The snake came as close to smiling as he could. ‘But maybe I am changing,’ he explained. ‘I am not sure.’

  The old lady smiled and laid her head back against her pillows and closed her eyes. Then she let Lanmo, who had made himself very small, tuck in under her chin.

  ‘Good night, snake, and thank you.’

  ‘I need not be thanked,’ whispered the snake.

  ‘Will this be quick?’

  ‘This will be quick and this will be for ever,’ said the snake. ‘Good night, Granny Higginbottom.’

  And when he was done the snake took up the old lady’s treasures and wriggled them onto his back which he made very broad and safe, like a golden dish, and he rushed over the lands between him and the lost daughter’s house. When he reached her threshold he tested the air one last time and was sure that the daughter had a heart as good and deep as her mother had once had until it fell still. Then Lanmo whisked, faster than anyone could have seen, in under doors and behind furniture and he left the three rings, the four jewels and the sixteen gold pieces on the kitchen table.

  In the morning, Granny Higginbottom’s lost daughter came downstairs to discover her twin girls playing with bright gold pieces and jewels and with three rings that she recognised at once as belonging to her mother.

  The daughter sat down then and cried although her children did not know why, and she hugged them very close. And when her husband came downstairs, ready for his breakfast, she held him, too, and she called out a loud and red and towering word from no language that any of them spoke and yet they understood it. They clung to each other and the snake tasted that they were sad and also that they were covered in love.

  The snake watched them from a shadow between the saucepans and then he went away and was busy in the many different countries that humans had marked out across the earth to keep themselves divided.

  While Lanmo carried out his duties among the peoples of the world, Mary performed her duties as a little girl. She grew older and taller and her arms and legs were sometimes exceptionally clumsy and sometimes exceptionally graceful – she just didn’t know which would happen when and that was rather tiresome for her. Mary performed her duties as a schoolgirl, too, and learned the National Limits of Happiness and the Leisure Percentages and the names of prominent generals, living and dead, and the movements of troops during various famous campaigns. She taught herself how to spell marvellously long and interesting words like photolithography and also tasty words like peristalsis and reticulatus. And she also taught herself how to hop on the spot without stopping (she could get up to nearly three hundred and fifty) and how to burn toast. She had learned all of her mother’s smiles and all of her father’s hugs and vice versa. She was quite happy. When she had spare moments, she would play in the tiny garden and daydream about exploring. When it was cold, she would imagine standing on the back of a sledge and asking her huskies to pull her – padpadpadpadpadpadpad – across snowfields and past polar bears and penguins who would admire her caribou-skin parka and her look of determination. When it was hot, she imagined walking in desert mountains the colour of biscuits in sturdy boots and talking to lizards, or squeezing through the gaps in jungles.

  ‘You must never squeeze through gaps in jungles.’ Mary looked down and there was the neat shape of Lanmo around her wrist, blinking at her, maybe a little nervously. The snake angled his head as if he would like to nuzzle her palm, but didn’t know if she would like it. ‘You are longer than I remember. And your hair has swelled. You are very changeable.’

  Mary was delighted to see her friend, but also annoyed because more than two years had passed since the snake had last appeared and she felt it was inconsiderate of him to be away for such a large amount of time. ‘And you are very late. You haven’t been to visit me for eight hundred and twelve days, three hours and several minutes. I have written out the days in my notebook, if you would like to check.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Lanmo did look sorry. ‘I lost track of the time.’

  ‘That’s no excuse,’ Mary said.

  ‘And I had a great deal to do.’

  The snake was mumbling because he felt ashamed, but even so Mary couldn’t help enjoying his beautiful voice and being glad that he was there. She decided to sound cross a little longer, though, to teach him a lesson. ‘Now you sound like a grown-up. They are always being busy instead of doing the things that are important.’

  ‘Promise me with all your heart and your entire attention that you will not ever squeeze through gaps in the jungle – they might contain poisonous spiders, or sharp thorns, or impolite and unpleasant and shockingly ugly snakes. And be careful in deserts because the sands also contain spiders and rude and horrifying snakes and scorpions and mountain lions. Be careful everywhere. In fact, perhaps you should stay in your city instead.’

  Mary lifted her hand so that the snake was level with her face and smiled at her friend and kissed his head with great solemnity. ‘Welcome back, Lanmo. I would offer you some cheese, but we have n
one. There has been a difficulty with the railway lines that go to the countryside where they keep the cows and the milk.’ She spun round and round after that, because she was so full of happiness, and she laughed in a way that Lanmo was sure no other human could laugh. He shivered his scales so that they made a silvery noise, like someone with cool fingers playing a crystal harp far away in a peaceful place. He found that he was as happy as his friend.

  Still, as he and Mary spun round, he noticed that the city looked a good deal sadder than he remembered. There were angry words painted on some of the walls and the pavements were broken in places and not clean. There were fewer kites flying and the ones that did fly looked as if they had simply been forgotten and left alone on the rooftops and balconies with no one caring. He licked the air and it no longer tasted of laughter. In the direction of the shining towers there were even more high buildings with even more sharp edges cutting at the sky. The new towers tasted empty.

  And in the little garden, Mary’s parents had planted beans and cabbages around the roses. They had also added pots containing herbs and tomatoes and a deep tub which was trying to hold potato plants. The plants looked quite angry and as if they didn’t want to make potatoes this year, or maybe ever.

  ‘Oh, but let me show you this,’ said Mary and ran into her house, carrying the snake balanced on her palm like a tiny emperor with no arms and legs. ‘There,’ she announced, coming to a halt. (There was never far to run in Mary’s apartment.) In the corner of the tiny kitchen, playing with a little wooden ball, was a kitten that Mary’s parents had allowed her to have. The kind lady who owned the bakery had a mother cat who had given birth to four kittens: a white and orange and brown one, a white and grey and brown one, a ginger and white one and a black-all-over one. The black-all-over one had the cleverest eyes and so Mary had picked it.

  The bakery lady needed cats to stop the mice and rats from eating the flour. There were a lot of rats now, but she couldn’t afford to feed more than two cats to chase them, so she had to give away all but two of the kittens. She could also no longer afford to give away bread.

  The snake studied the kitten for a moment, ‘Wonderful,’ he said and then, before Mary could say anything at all, Lanmo had sleeked down from her hand and onto the floor, opening his mouth wider and wider as he went. He then began to swallow the kitten, beginning with its head and its front paws.

  ‘No!’ cried Mary.

  At this, the snake frowned and stopped moving. The kitten’s back legs wriggled as they poked out of Lanmo’s mouth and Mary could hear a quizzical meooommh? from inside the snake as the kitten tried to ask what was happening, because it had never been swallowed by anything before.

  ‘Gnnnph?’ asked the snake in return.

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Mary. ‘That is Shade and he is my kitten and you are not to eat him, not even a bit.’

  ‘Gmmngn?’

  ‘You are not to eat my kitten.’

  The snake sighed as well as a snake can with its mouth full of kitten. ‘Gngngn-agh-agh-kkkahh,’ he said as he gradually coughed up the kitten. The snake then wriggled his head and shook, until the kitten dropped out of his mouth and ended up sitting – looking rather surprised and wet – on the kitchen floor. The kitten blinked and then sneezed – meooff – and started to lick its fur back into the proper order.

  Lanmo used his most formal and embarrassed voice, standing up so that he looked very slightly like a short, respectable gentleman made of gold with some of the bits missing. ‘I am sorry, Mary. I misunderstood. I thought because you had no cheese that you were giving me this delicious . . . I mean this lovely kitten to . . . um . . .’ He said this last word very softly, ‘Eat.’

  ‘I was introducing you.’

  ‘Mary, you should never introduce kittens to snakes.’

  ‘But you’re not a snake – you’re my friend.’

  Lanmo slid carefully away from the kitten, who was now lying on his back and playing with his own paws, just as if he hadn’t nearly been dinner only a few moments before. ‘I am your friend.’ He cleared his throat. ‘But I am also a snake. And a snake is a snake is a snake.’ He flickered out his tongue to taste if he was forgiven and then he darted forwards like poured metal and reappeared on Mary’s hand and reached up to tickle her eyebrows with his tongue. ‘I think it made me sad not to see you.’

  ‘Well, I know it made me sad not to see you.’

  After this, Mary explained that she had an appointment and that she wished she had known the snake was coming, but that it was Saturday and Saturday was a day for appointments.

  ‘May I come with you?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Mary told him and then she went away to her little room and came back smelling of lilies and wearing an extremely pleasant dress which she had bought from a neighbour and altered herself, because she did, after all, know how to sew quite well, even though learning how had been irritating.

  The snake did not wish to pry and so did not taste the air around her, but let her go. Then Lanmo pretended to be string all afternoon so that the kitten could play with him. At first this was slightly humiliating, but eventually the snake rather liked wriggling just the end of his tail and then dashing away when the kitten pounced, or rubbing the kitten’s tummy and making him purr, or darting underneath him, so that he fell over into a soft heap. Once the kitten was tired – and it takes a long time to tire out a kitten – the snake wound itself into coils like a basket and the kitten slept inside his warm scales with one soft paw lolling over the side. When Mary’s parents came home after spending the day at a market, selling a few ornaments and pictures they did not need, they simply saw the dozing kitten and assumed that it must be asleep on a blanket or in a basket, because kittens are never known to sleep in the arms of snakes. (Of course snakes don’t have arms, but they can hug people and animals if they choose to.)

  When Mary came back home, she seemed especially happy and was singing a little song under her breath.

  You are the night with sunshine

  You are the ocean with no shore

  You are the bird that sings wine

  You are the lion with no claw.

  And be my honour and be mine

  And be my glory and be mine

  And be my living and be mine

  My friend, my love, be mine.

  During dinner, the snake waited patiently under Mary’s napkin while she and her parents ate their bread made of apologetic flour with specks of sand in it and drank their soup made of cabbage leaves from the garden and water and a handful of rice.

  Then the little family sat together on the couch – which was most of their furniture – all snuggled and huddled under a big rug against the cold. Mary was tucked in between her parents and Lanmo was tucked in with her, his clever head and his observant eyes peeping over the top of the blanket. He liked being warm like this and feeling what a human home was like. The snake couldn’t help noticing, though, that the bright rug that used to cover the shabby floorboards of the living-room had disappeared and so had the vase that used to stand on the table with its wide mouth open, asking for flowers. And the table had gone, too.

  Mary’s father read to everyone by the yellowy glow of a tired lightbulb. He chose a story they all enjoyed and knew almost by heart about a lucky young woodcutter’s son who once gave a cup of water to a thirsty old lady who passed by his garden. The old lady appeared to be poor and scraggly and perhaps a little bit strange, but it turned out that she was a magical person and kept on granting the woodcutter wishes and making him have adventures and introducing him to knights in armour and wizards. The woodcutter found all this a bit alarming and wasn’t always pleased to wake up in a crystal mountain with a task to carry out, or to be sent off on a quest to find something impossible, but he was polite and just carried on anyway. In the end, while he was voyaging between peculiar islands in a talking boat, he met a very kind and lovely stonemason who ended up being his wife, so mostly he was glad that he had given the old
lady a drink when she needed it.

  Mary’s father decided to read out the passage where the woman on the island puts down her chisel and confesses her undying love. While he did this, Mary’s mother nudged her once or twice, and it was clear to the snake that both Mary’s parents were trying to suggest that she might herself have found someone she liked as much as a stonemason might love a woodcutter. Mary kept rather quiet about all this, but she did giggle now and then and squeeze the snake’s tail slightly too hard when a sentence involving a first kiss was recited.

  When the electricity was turned off at nine p.m., because of the rationing, everyone said goodnight and kissed and wished everyone sweet dreams and then got ready to sleep. Mother used the bathroom first and then Father and then Mary.

  Once she had turned out her light and slipped into bed, Lanmo settled on her pillow in a contented coil as he had wanted to for so long, his eyes glowing gently. He asked her, ‘Mary, can you tell me about love?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Mary and blushed so that the snake could feel it in the darkness. This was perhaps the only lie she ever told the snake, although probably we can forgive her, because very few humans understand all there is to know about love and maybe she didn’t want to say something wrong and mislead her friend.

  ‘Mary, for many, many centuries I have travelled in every land of the earth and I have met many, many humans. At one time I did my work amongst them without troubling myself to know or understand them. This was partly because they seem very complicated and strange creatures and partly because they do not last very long. Since I met you I have paid them more attention and I have been able to recognise the taste of love in a great number of them. Some of them love places and some of them love things and some of them love themselves and some of them love other people. You taste of the love of other people.’