The Little Snake

by A. L. Kennedy

  After that the friends took turns licking while they sat and watched people pass.

  ‘Mmmnnnmmmnnn,’ Lanmo remarked. The treat had completely numbed his tongue. This had never, ever happened, and, although it was inconvenient, he quite liked it. He licked at the warm air for a while, as if he were a panting dog, but then he went right back to eating. ‘Sslllsmmsnnnmllllmmm.’ This was because he had never before encountered anything so delicious and also so much fun.

  Once they had finished eating and Mary had crunched the cornet – which Lanmo thought sounded a bit like mouse bones – the snake lolled upside down from her shoulder, just holding on to her arm with his clever tail. He was so happy to have new things happen after such a long life and so happy to be with his friend and to see her so happy. ‘Wibbibb wubbly.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Ibbibb lubby.’

  ‘Oh, Lanmo, your tongue has frozen.’ And Mary giggled and the sound tasted of strawberries.

  ‘Thifff iff lovely,’ he managed and chuckled. ‘I have freezy frozey tongue.’

  ‘There’s no such thing.’

  ‘There must be. I have it.’

  Lanmo could have spent all afternoon like this, but he felt Mary turn and catch her breath as she looked up the avenue. Walking towards them he could see an almost familiar figure. ‘That looks like Paul, only he is taller and older.’

  Mary was waving at Paul, as if they had agreed to meet here. ‘Of course he is taller and older. Time has passed.’

  ‘Oh, but this is terrible.’

  Paul was quite close now and Lanmo realised that letting his tongue get freezy frozen was a disaster. It might be hours before he could taste anyone properly. If Mary loved Paul and wanted perhaps to marry him, or go kayaking in the Arctic wastes with him, then the snake absolutely had to be able to taste him clearly and find out if he were reliable and if he loved Mary back and perhaps if he would be a good kayak paddler. Lanmo thought to himself, this is what it must be like to be a human, to never really know or understand the inside of anyone else. And their eggs tell them nothing . . . They are poor, abandoned creatures.

  Because his tongue was of no use to him, the snake settled for staring very hard at Paul in an examining way.

  ‘Ah. The snake is back.’ And Paul looked almost angry as he continued, ‘Snake, the last time you were here you bit Mary, and I have been told that you did not mean to, but I must tell you that if you bite her again then you will also have to bite me, because I will fight you.’ And Paul’s blue eyes shone very brightly in a brave way and his gingery hair became more ginger and he tried to stand so that he seemed big, even though he was still quite skinny and someone you would probably take for granted if you passed him in the street. That is, if you weren’t Mary.

  Mary – who was Mary – took Paul’s arm on the side that was furthest from Lanmo and shushed him. ‘No fighting. Please. I forbid it.’

  Lanmo craned his neck (which was also his back and some of his middle) all the way along Mary’s shoulders so that he could face Paul and say, ‘If you fought me you would fight no one else, forever after.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind. If Mary were safe I wouldn’t mind a bit,’ said Paul and, although his hands shook and his voice sounded wobbly, he stared into the snake’s deep, deep eyes and didn’t blink.

  Then Lanmo nodded and winked and licked Paul’s ear quickly with a slightly rubbery tongue and (while Paul squealed) the snake spoke to him in a voice like being hugged with warm towels after a long bath. ‘You are a fine person, Paul. I think you will guard Mary almost as well as I could and, as I must travel a great deal about the world, you will have to do your best without me on some occasions.’

  ‘I can look after myself, thank you,’ said Mary, but she also squeezed Paul’s hand so hard it nearly hurt him and kissed the one of his ears that Lanmo had not licked. ‘We will look after each other.’

  ‘Remember,’ the snake told them as they strolled in the dusty old sunshine past the empty shops, ‘remember that you must always lay your eggs in warm, dry sand, far from humans and their stupidity and angriness.’

  Mary said nothing to this, only blushed. But Paul said quietly, ‘I think perhaps human children do not require sand. Or laying eggs.’

  The snake shook his head and thought how foolish the young pair were – they had a great deal to learn about parenthood. But perhaps they would have time to learn. ‘I feel you might check that with a more experienced human to be sure,’ he said. ‘And now, Mary, you must tell Paul about adventuring and ask him whether he would enjoy sleeping in tents with spiders, or in caves with bats, or in jungles with panthers. And whether he would be able to wrestle a crocodile, or tickle a hippo, and all of the other things that any proper explorer has to do. Because if he is to spend his life with you then he will need to know about many such things.’

  ‘He shall not at all wrestle any crocodile,’ Mary told Lanmo. ‘Don’t tease him.’

  ‘And I would rather not tickle a hippo,’ nodded Paul. ‘But I can light a fire with two pieces of wood and a bootlace. And I can find the North Star. And I have always wanted to go on adventures and swim beside whales and ride over prairies and—’

  At this, he was interrupted by Mary kissing him on his mouth, because she was so delighted that they shared this large dream along with the so many other things they had in common. And he and she spun and spun in each other’s arms until they were almost dancing along the uneven, grubby paving stones. Everyone who saw them never forgot how perfect Mary and Paul looked – two humans devoting themselves to each other in joy and tenderness. As the days to come descended, it was something to remember. When matters became grey, or hard, or uncertain there would often be a face in this or that crowd which was smiling slightly, thinking of the girl and her boy and their dancing and the light caught in their hair.

  Of course, when Mary and Paul stopped dancing – although he loved dancing himself – the snake had gone.

  And the snake passed, faster than threats or rumours, over the world. He met with many humans to do his work. He met a woman who loved the shape of bicycles leaning against walls and he met a boy who loved apples and a young woman who played the violin and who loved a young woman who played the flute and he met an old man who hated everyone he saw for reasons he told no one. And Lanmo sometimes met little girls, and they would remind him of Mary, and on those days, at the time when the snake knew it would be sunset in her country, Lanmo would send his friend especially wonderful dreams.

  One evening, Lanmo met a man who was dancing. The sun in this particular land was slipping behind little, rounded hills and the long, rosy light it threw across the grass made the man seem taller and thinner than he was. His wife watched him from the kitchen window and loved him so much that the snake could feel it gathering in the grass like a stream of tickling water. And the radio in the kitchen pushed its music out into the air and the man danced and threw his arms over his head and danced even more. He looked like happiness.

  The snake was about to open his mouth and show his teeth, but then, as he felt the tickle of the music and the tickle of the love, he began to dance instead. Between the man’s stepping and shuffling and turning feet, the snake danced – hither and thither and to and fro. The snake wriggled on his belly – which he didn’t often do – and shimmied on his back – which he never did. He balanced on his tail and swayed, he bobbed his head and closed his eyes, and felt, for a while, contented.

  ‘Are you having fun?’

  When Lanmo heard the voice, he opened his eyes and looked up. The man was standing still and studying him with a smile.

  ‘You are an unusual fellow.’

  Lanmo was strangely out of breath and had wanted to dance more, so he sounded whistly and slightly cross when he said, ‘Yes, I am. You will never meet my like again.’

  At this, the man frowned and sat down very quickly on the grass. ‘Ah, I understand.’ And he nodded very often and looked at the way the sun
was dipping closer and closer to the hills as if it wanted to warm them very much. ‘Yes, I see.’ The man pulled his hand through his hair and then nodded again. ‘I see.’

  The snake should then have shown the man his teeth, but instead he smoothed along to sit on the man’s knee and study him. It had been a long time since any human had noticed the snake and Lanmo had not spoken to a human since he had been with Mary.

  The man gently rubbed the snake’s neck. ‘Well, my friend, I have thought of you often.’

  ‘I am not exactly your friend,’ said the snake.

  ‘Well, my guest, then.’

  Lanmo liked the gentle and sad way the man was touching his scales and found himself becoming drowsy. In fact, he fell asleep.

  When he woke, he found he had been carried and coiled into a hollow that someone had made in some sweet, long grass left uncut to shelter wild flowers. It was not like him to sleep, especially when he was meeting a human, and he wondered if he were perhaps ill in some way. When he raised himself to look about, he saw that he was at the edge of the dancing man’s lawn and that the man and his wife were dancing there together, their arms tight around each other, while music poured from their window and down into the closely clipped grass in that part of the garden. And a new taste of love raced between the blades of grass and the currents of the air as if everyone were under a waterfall. The love and music were both so thick now that the wife and the husband could only move very slowly. This was perhaps why the snake had been lulled to sleep – this excess of love and music.

  Then the couple looked over towards the snake and saw he was watching them. ‘We would prefer to be together,’ said the wife and she put her hand over her husband’s mouth so that he could not speak.

  And the snake shook his head, because being together when the snake came for only one person was not allowed.

  But the humans looked so sad.

  ‘One of you has only a little time, the other has very much more.’

  ‘We don’t mind,’ said the wife and she stared straight at Lanmo, because her love for her husband meant she could see the snake very clearly. ‘I don’t mind. You are a most beautiful snake and we are asking that you behave in a most beautiful manner. Please.’

  Lanmo tasted the air and knew that what she said was true, that all of it was true. ‘You would rather leave now?’ he asked her.

  ‘With my husband. Yes. I would rather not stay behind in a world with no colours and no music and no dancing any more. Which is the world it would become for me without him.’

  The husband and wife looked at Lanmo. They held hands. And they waited.

  And so the snake agreed they could leave together. But before that had to happen, Lanmo danced with them both until the sun set behind the hills and it was fully dark. Then, when the North Star was bright, he nodded to them, and everyone sat down on the grass, which remained warm with sunshine, love and dancing. And the snake let the wife and the husband meet him both together. While the couple held hands and looked up at the stars, the snake opened his mouth with his needle-sharp teeth that were as white as bones.

  Afterwards, he slept in the hollow they had made for him in the grass, because this was the first home that had been built only for him. And when he woke he wept. This had never happened before and, because it was all so strange, Lanmo knew he must go and see Mary. He would ask her to explain.

  When the snake returned to Mary’s city he saw that, once again, much more time had passed than he had realised. There were no longer any kites flying over the rooftops. The streets were almost silent, apart from the barking of thin yellow dogs. The luxurious towers that had thrown their shadows over more and more of the neighbourhoods had been abandoned and become tall, thin ruins, or had been reduced to no more than rubble and foundations. It seemed that the hands of giants had reached down and punished them. The snake, because he was wise, knew that the hands of humans and the machines and devices of humans had caused the damage. Usually, this would not have concerned him. He had seen many cities and nations rise and fall. But this time, as he rushed to Mary’s home, he discovered that he was terribly worried. He wished never to arrive but also to be in her garden already, pleasing her and making her laugh. He felt that he was being torn into two pieces and this made him think, love truly is a terrible thing. And yet it makes lovers never want to leave each other and hold hands while they look at stars and be happy all the way to their ending. And that is wonderful. Love is strange.

  When he reached what had been Mary’s house – far slower than he usually would have, because he was distracted – the snake found that the building had no windows any more and that none of its humans were still there. The snake’s friend the kitten had also gone. The rooms in the tiny apartment were almost bare. Out in the garden the plants were growing as best they could without anybody to water and care for them. The roses looked tired and as if they missed Mary.

  In Mary’s room her bed remained, but without her blankets and sheets, or pillows. Resting on the bed were the embellished slippers that Mary had once been forced to make in her sewing class. They were placed neatly together on top of a folded note with ‘FOR LANMO’ written on it. The snake could read all the languages that ever were or could be and so he unfolded the paper and saw:

  Dear Lanmo,

  We have had to leave here and we do not exactly know where we are going, so I cannot tell you where you can find us. Even so, I really would like you to find us, because you are my best friend in all the world. Mother, Father, Paul, Shade and I will start walking to the north tomorrow where things are meant to be better. (Except Shade will not be walking because he only has quite little paws for making a big journey. We are going to carry him. He doesn’t weigh very much, even though he has grown up since you saw him last.)

  Please do come and visit me if you can. I know you are busy, but please do try.

  And Paul says hello.

  And thank you for the dreams.

  And I am sending really all my love to you apart from the love that is for Paul and Mother and Father and the little bit I give to Shade who is very sweet.

  Your friend,

  Mary

  The snake tasted the letter and, even though the paper and ink were quite old, they still held the flavour of love. He closed his eyes for a moment and remembered lying on this same bed and looking into his friend Mary’s eyes. The snake’s heart had always been still throughout his thousands upon thousands of years of existence, but now it began, for the first time, to beat. The sound of it puzzled him.

  He flickered his clever tongue into the air, so that he could taste exactly where Mary had gone to and then, faster than sadness, he made his way there. He moved too swiftly for anyone to see, but those humans he passed on his journey shivered and cried, or felt they must find those they loved at once and hold them and look at their faces with great attention and tell them kind and important things.

  When the snake stopped his journey he found that he was by the side of a small path through woods. It was evening, and all around him the dipping sun showed signs that many people had passed this way. There were abandoned suitcases and empty food cans lying about, along with worn-out shoes. Next to a little stream someone had left a piano, having pushed it for many miles. The instrument leaned at a strange angle against a willow tree’s trunk and when the wind blew the willow swayed and the piano’s strings played their own small tune to the tree.

  In the shadows under the branches of an oak, the snake saw a young woman with twenty-one white hairs and eyes that showed she was brave and kind and honest. She was wearing sturdy boots and sensible clothes that were cleverly sewn with tiny, strong stitches. She looked like someone who had always prepared herself to go travelling and to have adventures. But she did not look as if she were enjoying a pleasant journey. She seemed thin and tired and her boots were worn and dusty, as were her patched canvas trousers, and her shirt and coat were threadbare.

  But the snake hardly noticed how Mary loo
ked. (For the young woman was, of course, his friend.) He was in too much of a rush and too happy. ‘Hello, Mary.’ Lanmo flickered through the grass and sat on Mary’s shoulder, resting his head against her cheek. He felt that his heart was beating very quickly and strangely inside him.

  ‘Ah, Lanmo.’ Mary stopped stirring a little pot of rice which she had hung over her cooking fire and began to tickle the snake’s belly. The snake allowed this, even though it was a little undignified for so wonderful a snake as he. The tickling made him smile his almost invisible snaky smile and he realised that he had not smiled since he last was with his friend.

  Resting at Mary’s feet was Shade, who was now quite a grown-up cat. When he heard the snake’s voice, he flicked his ears and then stood up and began pouncing and capering about, as if he could recall being a kitten and playing with Lanmo’s tail.

  ‘I knew you would find me,’ said Mary. ‘Paul said you would not be able to, but I knew you would.’

  ‘And where is Paul?’ asked Lanmo, worried that Paul had not been helping Mary on the journey, as he should.

  Mary smiled. ‘We passed a glade with mushrooms in it a while ago and I sent him to gather them now we have camped. I know from my books they are a kind that are good to eat. We can dry some for later and eat some now with this rice. He’ll be back soon. And then it is his turn to make us a bed in the trees.’

  ‘You sleep in the trees?’

  ‘Of course. Where there are big trees we can climb, we always camp high up in the branches and keep away from any danger. And while I sleep Paul watches me and while Paul sleeps I watch him – in case we fall out and hurt ourselves. No one has to watch Shade because he is already very good at sleeping in trees. In fact, he has taught us a great deal about that. He is extremely wise for a small cat.’