‘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 none. 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.