When she looked down to her left she saw that, snugly fitted around her neatly darned woollen stocking, a golden bangle had appeared. There were two jewels in the bangle that glittered, and from time to time the bangle itself seemed to shimmer, almost as if it were moving.
It was immensely handsome.
She knew this because it told her so. Because she was very sensible, the little girl had not yet acquired the silly habit of talking only to people and would happily address objects and animals that seemed to be in need of conversation or company. ‘Good heavens,’ she said to the bangle. And then, ‘Where did you come from?’ And after that, ‘Hello.’
‘Hello,’ replied the bangle. ‘I am immensely handsome.’
‘Oh,’ said the girl. ‘Hello, Mr Handsome.’
The bangle rippled round her ankle and glistened and its two jewels gleamed like two pieces of jet or perhaps very dark rubies. ‘No, no. I am not called Immensely Handsome – that is just one of my many qualities. I am handsome, wise and agile. I also have a beautiful speaking voice. And I am extremely fast.’
At this point Mary thought that the bangle was also rather boastful and she interrupted it, even though it did have a very lovely speaking voice.
‘What is your name, then? And you don’t seem that fast to me.’
‘Oh, don’t I . . . ?’ And at once the bangle disappeared.
It moved so quickly that Mary was still listening to its delightful voice, chuckling to itself and left behind, while its body had gone somewhere further away. She had to search about before she saw the bangle hanging from one of the rose bushes’ branches. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t do that – the rose might not like it.’
‘Oh, the rose won’t mind me,’ said the bangle, grinning a tiny grin and swaying slightly. ‘I am the fastest thing you will ever meet,’ the bangle confided, once again right there on her ankle and not even slightly out of breath.
‘That is impressive,’ admitted Mary.
‘I know.’
‘But what is your name?’
‘Maybe I will tell you in a while. You should always be careful about giving your name to anyone and not do it straight away.’
‘Well, if you won’t tell me your name, what kind of bracelet are you?’ Mary sat down very carefully under one of the rose bushes to look more closely at her talkative new friend.
‘I’m not.’ The bangle unfastened itself and – quickly, but not so quickly that Mary couldn’t watch – shifted its golden shape along until it was wound around her wrist a few times as if it were a bracelet after all.
‘Ah,’ Mary said, ‘I see.’
The bangle slid and wriggled and tickled until she was cupping most of it, neatly coiled in her palm, and the two flecks of colour which she had thought of as jewels were looking at her from a slender, gilded head.
The red jewels blinked like clever, tiny eyes. This was because they were clever, tiny eyes.
‘Yes,’ said the snake, ‘I am a snake.’ And he smiled for an instant as much as someone can with no lips and flickered out an elegant bright red tongue that was forked at the end and licked the air around it. ‘You taste of sweets and soap and being good.’
Mary stuck out her own tongue, but couldn’t taste anything about the snake.
‘I taste of nothing,’ the snake told her. ‘Aren’t you afraid? People usually are afraid of snakes. When they see me they frequently run up and down and wave their arms and scream.’
‘Would you like me to do that?’
‘Not especially,’ purred the snake. ‘But shouldn’t you be terribly afraid?’
‘Why? Are you terribly frightening?’
The snake waggled his tongue and sampled the air again. ‘Well, I could be . . . Snakes can be incredibly dangerous. Some of us crush large animals in our muscular convolutions and slowly swallow whole crocodiles, or maybe canoes, or canoes with people in them.’
‘But you’re only small.’
‘I can get bigger.’
Mary thought this might be a lie, but she didn’t want to hurt the snake’s feelings.
The snake stretched up his little spine and raised his small head so that he could look straight at her. He swayed his neck back and forth as if he were listening to music and stared into her blue eyes with his dark red eyes and his strange narrow pupils which were blacker than the back of a raven and which seemed to go on for ever if you concentrated on them and really paid attention. ‘Some snakes can bite you once and fill you with enough poison to kill twenty men, fifty men, maybe even a hundred men.’
‘I’m not a man,’ said Mary. ‘I’m a little girl.’
The snake blinked. ‘You are being difficult. A snake could poison you even faster than a man because the poison would have less far to travel.’
Mary nodded. ‘I know. Although I think even a very huge and ferocious snake might not kill a hundred men.’
‘Definitely at least twenty.’ The snake sounded slightly cross.
‘But I have learned all the poisonous snakes and their stripes and their habits in case I travel to faraway lands and have adventures when I am older. Your kind of snake is not in any of my books about snakes. And I have read a lot.’
This was true – Mary had read a great many books about snakes. She had borrowed them from the library and taken notes.
‘Some snakes have feathers and drink the blood of warriors and some live in the Underworld in Egypt. And others darken the sun when they fly and crack their tails like thunder,’ boasted the snake.
‘That sounds like stories about snakes, not real snakes at all. And the last one seems more like a dragon than a snake. Dragons are in the books of things that don’t exist,’ said Mary sternly.
The snake sighed and lowered himself to lounge in her hand, suddenly seeming as soft as a piece of silky rope. ‘Oh, well . . . Perhaps I seem less impressive than usual because I am hungry. Would you happen to have a mouse that I could eat?’ The snake’s head lolled off her palm as if he were almost faint with hunger, but his eyes watched her carefully and glowed.
‘If I did have a mouse, it would be my pet mouse and I wouldn’t ever give it to anyone so they could eat it.’
‘But I suppose that you eat fried fishes and grilled cutlets of lambs and stews of cow pieces and goose’s legs . . .’ He lolled again, wheezing as if he were famished.
‘Well, yes, but I had never met the lambs and cows and geese,’ explained Mary. ‘It would be rude to eat somebody I had met. And mostly we eat stews with vegetables and beans and things which don’t cost as much as meat. And we’re very far away from the sea here, so we don’t eat very many fishes. Do you live in a jungle?’
‘No.’
‘I would love to know what a jungle is really like.’
‘Your mind is wandering. I am very hungry.’
‘Tomorrow – which is Monday – we have sewing lessons at school. Mrs Kohlhoffer who teaches sewing always says my mind wanders. She doesn’t understand that I already know enough about sewing for the rest of my life. I am not going to embroider little covers for the backs of chairs ever again. I shall not embellish more slippers, or sew another bag to keep my sewing things in. I am not even going to be a surgeon – which would mean I had to sew my patients back together once I had sliced them open. No surgeon would be very popular if she embroidered flowers on her patient’s operation scars. I am going to explore the world and maybe a lion will bite off my leg, or an arm, or something, or I will need to sew up a wound caused by a machete – but I already know the right stitches for wounds, and for making tidy stumps after amputations.’