Shade was standing with his front paws leaning against Mary so he could reach up and begin licking the end of Lanmo’s tail and purring proudly. Lanmo permitted this, but when the cat gently nipped him, the snake had to give him a sharp look. ‘I am not a toy,’ he said. The cat did not entirely understand this; nevertheless he trotted away to look for something he might eat. The humans could not feed him any more, so he now had to hunt for himself.
For some time, the snake simply lay along Mary’s shoulders and enjoyed her company. It had been such a while since he saw her. ‘Time has passed,’ he said.
‘It has. It always does.’ Mary nodded. ‘We cannot stop it.’
He also flippery-flickered his tongue extremely fast so that he could learn about how many dusty and muddy and stony miles she had travelled and how sad she had often been.
When both our friends had closed their eyes and breathed a while and been content, Mary asked, ‘Lanmo, have you met my parents?’
‘They were not in your house when I visited there. Your letter said they had left with you.’
‘They came with us as far as the edge of the city, but then they said they were too tired and had brought too much to carry and would miss their home too much. And so they told us to go on without them. For three days and three nights, we camped together beside the ancient city wall and tried to change their minds, but every time we asked them to come with us, they refused. And when Paul and I and Shade woke up on the fourth day, we could not find them anywhere. They had left their parcels of food with us and a note that said they thought they would be too slow on the journey and would hold us back. And they left me this . . .’ Mary showed Lanmo a golden chain which she wore around her neck. ‘This was my mother’s – she wore it on her wedding day.’ And she had to wait for a while until she could speak again, because of the sadness in this. ‘Paul and Shade and I looked but we could not find them. And how could they eat with no food? How would they do that? Why would they not come with me when I know all about exploring and journeys?’ Lanmo felt his friend’s tears drop onto his scales, heavy and stinging, with a strange new kind of love which turned his heart to an ache and made its beating stumble.
Mary’s voice was very quiet when she asked, ‘But it is your work to meet humans, isn’t it? And once you have met them, they will have reached the end of their lives.’ Her hand trembled against Lanmo’s side.
‘Well . . .’ whispered the snake, ‘that is true. I am sorry for it, I think. I never was sorry, but now I am. Still, a snake is a snake is a snake. And I am this kind of snake.’
‘But you have never met my mother and father and let them see you and know your teeth?’ Her voice was even quieter.
‘I have not, Mary.’ The snake nuzzled her cheek with his head. ‘I saw them when I was with you in your house, but they did not see me. It was not their time to see me.’
And then Mary said no more, but Lanmo could taste that she wanted to ask him, ‘And do you know if my parents are still in this world?’
So the snake tasted the air to see if he could find Mary’s mother and father. His tongue searched in the air for a long time and would have gone on searching if Mary had not said, ‘Lanmo, you cannot find them, can you?’
‘No, I cannot.’
‘And you have the cleverest tongue in the world, haven’t you? And you can find anyone or anything?’
‘That is true.’
‘So if you cannot find them, then they cannot be found any longer in the world. And humans have done your work for you.’
The snake did not answer this.
‘I would rather not be human,’ Mary said and she cried for a while and Lanmo cried with her. And this was the only time he had ever cried with a human.
Our two friends were simply sitting together quietly when Paul returned with the mushrooms. He was whistling merrily as he came along and doing his best to be happy that he had his gathering bag and all his pockets full of mushrooms. Mary leaped to her feet and hugged him, and Lanmo – who was riding on her shoulder – also enjoyed the hug.
Paul was startled to see the golden glimmer of the snake, but then he smiled and asked him, ‘I suppose that you don’t eat mushrooms or rice – and that is all we have to offer you.’ He also whispered, ‘I am doing my best to take care of Mary and she is doing her best to take care of me.’ And then he shook Lanmo’s tail in the way that a human might shake another human’s hand.
Lanmo wasn’t expecting this and it made him lose his balance. For a while he found himself upside down and being shaken. ‘Woo-hoo-oh.’ But he quite liked the feelings this gave him and so he bounced up and down while Paul held him and chuckled. He had guessed that perhaps being silly for a while would cheer Mary up. And he was right.
Then Shade returned with a mouse. Although the snake was a little jealous of the cat’s tender snack, he did not really need to eat to keep himself alive – it was only a habit that he sometimes enjoyed – and so he did not insist on sharing the furry little meal. He only looked at the cat with an upside-down look and said, ‘There is a great deal of grass in the sky and the ground has become very blue and red with a sunset in it.’ Shade put down his meal for a moment and licked Lanmo with a tongue that tasted of mouse. Lanmo chuckled again but then looked as serious as a snake can look and slipped out of Paul’s hand and swung gently from a branch overhead.
After that, the cat ate its mouse and the humans ate their rice and mushrooms, and then Mary put out their fire very carefully so that it would show no smoke and they all climbed up high into the biggest tree they could find. From there they could see the lights of large fires and small fires, but mostly the land was in darkness. There were no lights from houses to be seen, even far away.
Lanmo said, ‘You may all go to sleep tonight for the whole night because I will watch over you and keep you safe.’
This meant that Mary and Paul could snuggle together on a wide, old branch while Shade curled up by himself on a higher, smaller branch. Before she closed her eyes to sleep in her canvas sleeping sack, Lanmo slipped along in the dark to Mary, his wise eyes shining redly. ‘I have never known a human like you.’
‘Well, I have never known a snake like you.’
‘That is true.’ His red eyes blinked. ‘The world has never known a night when I have not been passing from one land to another doing my work. But I will stay here and no one will meet me and no one will leave their life because of me – and this is for you.’
‘Are you allowed to do that?’ murmured Mary, who was feeling very comfortable because of having had such a good meal and was gently falling into all the good, warm dreams that Lanmo was already sending her to make her feel happy and refreshed. He was also sending Paul, who was already asleep, dreams about being useful and kind and attentive. And he gave Shade a dream about skipping up and down a huge mountain of cat food, chasing very slow, fat mice.
‘I do not know if I am allowed to let all the humans live who would have left the world tonight. Perhaps they will have to stay in the world for a very long time as a result. But I do not mind. No one has ever told me what to do under these circumstances, because I think I was never supposed to have a friend and to understand love and . . .’ Lanmo rested his thin, snaky chest against Mary’s hand, ‘my heart is beating.’