that to you and how many times you have ignored them.’
‘I didn’t mean it.’
‘Of course you did,’ purred the snake. ‘You can be honest with me. You might as well. You ignored them every time, didn’t you?’
Karl made a kind of garckling noise that he recalled other people making when he forced them to work all night on their children’s birthdays, or fired them the day before Christmas, or decided to knock down their homes just to prove he could. Then he said, ‘I’ll give you everything I have.’ Other people had told him that, too.
The snake rubbed his head against Karl’s ear and Karl heard the rustle of immaculate scales. ‘I cannot take everything you have.’ The snake paused. ‘. . . I will only take everything you are.’
And then the snake opened his beautiful mouth and his tiny needle teeth shone white as bone.
In the morning Mary woke up early and discovered that she felt more rested and cosy than she ever had before. When she rolled on to her side there was Lanmo coiled on her pillow. He may or may not have been sleeping, but certainly his eyes were closed and he was making small th-th-th noises which might have been the way that a snake snores. Mary smiled at him and kissed the smooth, warm top of his head where it glimmered in the dull light of an autumn dawn which was shuffling in around the closed door. ‘Good morning, Lanmo.’
The snake – who was in fact perfectly awake – opened his ruby eyes and licked the end of Mary’s nose to make her laugh. ‘Good morning, Mary. Did you sleep better and deeper than you ever have?’ Then he sleeked along the blanket and wriggled and tied himself in knots and untangled himself out very straight and then curled his body into a nice curve and raised his head. ‘That is how a snake wakes up,’ he explained. ‘If you ever see another snake doing that do not interrupt her, or him. In fact . . . do not have anything to do with snakes who are not me. One never knows.’
‘What if I see a very lovely snake?’ asked Mary, teasing.
‘There are no snakes lovelier than me,’ said Lanmo firmly. ‘May I have some more cheese for breakfast? I am tired.’
‘Didn’t you sleep well?’
‘Not really.’
Mary did sneak a nubbin of cheese out of the larder for the snake and fed him while he rode on the top of her satchel, peering about over her shoulder as she walked along in the frosty air, all the way to school.
‘Snakes do not go to school. Everything important in the world is written on the inside of our eggs. When we have finished reading and memorising what is written, we break our eggs and hatch.’
‘Really?’ said Mary as she strolled across the playground, feeling much less lonely than usual.
‘Perhaps,’ said the snake, looking absolutely just like a snake and licking the interesting air very quickly, because it had so much to tell him. Several teachers looked straight at Lanmo, but because a small girl never does have a golden snake calmly reclining on her satchel they assumed that they were looking at a strange kind of handle, or that their glasses were dirty, or that they were mistaken. None of the children spotted the snake, because they were busy with each other and, as usual, had no time for Mary.
While Mary sat in a number of classrooms and learned about the colours of money and the lengths of different silences and the average weights of heights, the snake nipped and slipped from classroom to classroom and explored.
The snake found the school very odd. In one room the teacher was telling the class, ‘You will see on the board all of the answers for today’s National Test. You will spend this period copying down the answers on to your National Test Papers. If you have copied down the answers correctly you will then be clever enough to take next week’s National Test.’
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.
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