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.’
Naturally, this kind of thing always made Mary feel horrible and if she hadn’t tried very hard not to she would have burst into tears. Today she was with her friend Lanmo and so she just stood very still and folded her arms and looked at her scuffed old shoes that were a bit too small. She was sad and her shoes made her even sadder.
But on her shoulder, Lanmo was bristling his scales with fury. This sounded like someone dragging a sword along stones in the far, far distance. He was so furious that he actually began to rattle and he wasn’t that kind of snake at all. He lifted his head and said in his most persuasive voice, loudly and clearly, ‘You should start skipping again, girls who are not beautiful. That’s what you would like to do right now.’
Although the Very Attractive Girls weren’t exactly sure who had suggested this, they stopped dancing and chanting and did indeed organise themselves into a line waiting to skip while a pair of girls held the ends of a big skipping rope.
Except, of course, they were not holding the ends of a big skipping rope, because the snake had rushed down from Mary’s shoulder and grown into an extremely long and flexible shape and he had made sure that he appeared to be a much more persuasive rope than the real rope. Because sometimes magnificent lies are much easier to believe than boring truths, the girls had duly picked him up and now began to swing him back and forth and round and round and to leap across him. He found this rather delightful and, as Mary watched, he glittered and glistened in the winter sunlight and flickered his tongue while he gathered up news of how mean and tiny the Very Attractive Girls were inside.
This made Mary laugh and clap her hands together.
Now, skipping over a snake is a strange game and has special rules. It makes odd things happen. Without in any way meaning to, the Very Attractive Girls found that they were skipping faster and faster and faster. Their tiny, shapely feet were kicking and stepping in ways that they never had and the arms of the Very Attractive Girls who were turning what they thought was a rope were impossible to see clearly any more, because their arms were swirling round so high and low and terribly quickly. The snake shone and chuckled as the Very Attractive Girls’ arms and legs and bodies jumped and flapped and twirled and windmilled, and they all grew hot and tired and worried. But then the Very Attractive Girls became scared.
Mary saw their Very Attractive Faces change, and although it pleased her a tiny bit that they were unhappy, she also felt sorry for them. ‘Lanmo, perhaps you should stop now.’
But the snake was having too much fun. He was also still furious.
Slowly, everyone in the playground stopped what they were doing and stared in amazement at the huge, strange, glittering, blurring shape which the pelting girls and the lashing snake now made. Even Paul stopped running around with his jumper pulled over his head because he had scored yet another goal – which made three.
‘Lanmo, please,’ Mary said, extra quietly.
And because Mary had said please and meant it and because she was his friend, Lanmo did stop, extremely suddenly, by changing his shape again and sliding out of the Very Attractive Girls’ sore and weary hands. At this, the girls mostly fell over, or stumbled about as if they must be dizzy. One of them was sick. And, to be honest, they no longer looked even a Tiny Bit Attractive. Their perfectly formed faces were red and sweaty, their carefully-prepared-this-morning hair was knotted and tangled and their willowy limbs were jangled and twitchy. Not one of the Very Attractive Girls mentioned this, but they knew it in their hearts, and when they looked at each other they were dismayed.