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.’