Gradually, eventually, the downpour lessened, the rough river calmed, and the water from above and below grew quiet. The rain stopped and the river slowed and Mowgli felt the log come to a stop, the sounds of the shore creeping into his ears. It was a long time before Mowgli opened his eyes. But when he did, he didn’t recognize anything.
Mowgli didn’t dare move, still clinging firmly to the tree limb. Only his eyes moved, darting back and forth, looking, searching, trying to find something familiar. He was terrified of what else could be in such a dark corner of the Jungle. He was still wet but now with sweat and fear. He’d never been so afraid in his life, and it bloomed in little beads of water all over his body. Sounds, strange and new, called out to Mowgli. It was the first time the man-cub had felt truly alone.
He had been bold, had tried to do what was right for his family, but it hadn’t worked the way he had hoped. This was much, much worse. Like a nightmare he couldn’t wake from. No wolf pack, no cubs, no Bagheera, no Raksha.
And now not even the Jungle wanted him.
MOWGLI COULDN’T TELL if he was awake or asleep.
He blinked, then shut his eyes as hard as he could. When he opened them again, nothing had changed.
The Jungle is not right here, he thought.
After he’d climbed off the broken tree limb, it had sunk back into the river. Now Mowgli felt small on the strange shore. The air was thick and wet and gray and he could almost touch it. He passed his hands through the fog, and it moved like floating water, then disappeared. All around him, animals cried and the trees audibly ached, stretching their limbs in the wind. Shadows moved behind the brush, then vanished as if they’d never been there at all.
Mowgli stumbled around the Jungle, not sure of a single step. He was too tired to run but too scared to sleep. He was lost. He called out the name of the one animal he wanted to see, hoping the old cat was okay and close by.
“Bagheera? Bagheera?” said Mowgli. “Come on, Bagheera…where are you?”
Suddenly, Mowgli heard something in the brush nearby. It was close. Too close.
Mowgli spun in place, squinting hard in the mist. Then he saw movement in the trees. More moving shadows. Thin but frightening. He couldn’t quite tell what they were.
But as Mowgli’s eyes adjusted to the light he started to make out horrifying images. Fierce glowing eyes. Jagged yellow teeth. In the dark, in the rain, in a part of the Jungle where the man-cub was a stranger, these creatures seemed menacing. Everything seemed menacing.
Mowgli dove under a tree stump. A lump grew in his throat and a burn boiled in his belly. He was sweating again.
Mowgli could feel that something was still there. Silent. Then more rustling. He waited, hiding, barely breathing.
When it finally grew quiet again, Mowgli swallowed the fear and looked out of his hiding spot. The trees were empty.
The creatures were gone, but Mowgli wasn’t relieved. If anything, he was more scared than before.
Mowgli ran.
Wet leaves slapped his arms and face, but he didn’t care. He just had to get away. He ran blind. Mowgli didn’t know how long he could run or how far; he was quickly growing tired. Tired of being beaten up by the Jungle, tired of being hunted. He needed help.
“Bagheera!” cried Mowgli.
He waited. No one answered.
Soon he grew too fatigued to run farther. There was no one to help him. He was utterly alone. He dropped his head, as close to despair as he’d ever been.
At his feet, Mowgli noticed something. He squatted on his haunches and spread his toes wide to support his weight. His arms hung to the ground, hands picking at the flaky and see-through skin someone had left behind.
Mowgli stood and held it up, stretching it wide between his arms. The skin sagged low, his arms not long enough to stretch it all the way out. Whoever had shed it, thought Mowgli, was huge. He dropped it suddenly, growing nervous again. He backed away.
A grumbling in Mowgli’s stomach turned his mind to more pressing matters. He realized he hadn’t eaten since he had left the Wolf Den, and home or no home, he had to find food sooner rather than later.
Searching the ground and surrounding foliage, Mowgli noticed creeper vines choking a tree in their embrace and found they were covered in figs.
Mowgli used a vine to make a loop and with the loop tamed the branch, pulling it down. Once it bent low enough, Mowgli could grab the figs comfortably, and he did, filling his mouth.
But again there came the sound of movement.
Mowgli almost choked. He spun around to face his “visitor.” At first, he feared it was the shadow creatures again or, worse, whatever had shed that skin, but he quickly saw there was no reason to be alarmed.
This was no hunter, no monster. This was only a silly little furry creature barely bigger than a squirrel—a civet. It was brown with white markings, its bushy tail waving and its pink nose twitching as it whistled at Mowgli through the small gap in its teeth.
There was a part of Mowgli that wanted to cheer and howl and jump for joy at seeing the little animal. He hadn’t realized how lonely he’d become.
“Oh,” said Mowgli, smiling. “Hey there.”
The little civet turned its head to the side.
“Do you have a language?”
The civet put its paws to its mouth, making a motion like it was eating or wanted to eat.
Of course, thought Mowgli. The little guy must be hungry, too.
Mowgli grabbed a fig and held it out for the animal. “Wanna share?”
The civet nibbled at it, swallowed, then nodded.
“You’re welcome,” said Mowgli.
The man-cub watched as the civet licked its paws and smoothed its fur, putting on a show. Mowgli chuckled at the little rascal, not noticing that over a dozen other mischievous civets were at work behind him, using the distraction to steal the rest of Mowgli’s figs.
Then a branch snapped and Mowgli spun around, catching them in the act.
“Hey!”
They squealed and scattered, taking the fruit with them. Mowgli chased them up a branch and into the trees, but they scrambled away, just out of reach.
“Hey,” said Mowgli. “Those are mine!”
Suddenly, the civets were gone, disappearing as quickly as they’d come, almost as if they’d been spooked. Mowgli was left alone up the tall tree, surrounded by silence and mist.
“But I’m still hungry,” he said to no one. He sighed, contemplating how to get more to eat.
Suddenly, a vine slithered along a higher branch behind Mowgli.
Mowgli turned but saw nothing in the mist.
“Hello?”
From nearby, there came a strange sound, like hairless hide scraping ever so slowly across tree bark. Mowgli could feel his heart beating hard.
“Who’s out there? I’m all out of figs!”
Suddenly, a slow, smooth voice cut lightly through the mist.
“I’m not here for figs, little cub.”
Behind Mowgli, something huge shifted. The man-cub turned and his breath drained from his chest as he watched an unimaginably massive python uncoil from above, its giant head pushing through the air directly toward him.
MOWGLI COULDN’T BREATHE.
The python moved closer and Mowgli tried to scoot away, but there was nowhere to go. The creature was literally all around him; its intricately scaled body stretched from one branch to the next to the next, encircling the entire area. Mowgli shivered as he realized he couldn’t even see where the python’s slowly undulating body ended.
“Oh, no,” said the snake. “Don’t be scared. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The snake’s voice was sweet. It reminded Mowgli of honey for the ears. Against all reason, he relaxed a little, and his eyelids suddenly felt heavy. He shook his head to clear it. Something about the voice of the snake made Mowgli sleepy.
“I was just passing through,” said Mowgli. “I don’t want any trouble.”
�
�There’s no trouble,” said the snake. Her beautiful eyes stayed locked on Mowgli’s. “Are you alone out here? That’s not good. We should never be alone.”
Mowgli hugged himself, his fear moving his body reflexively.
“I’m, uh, waiting for my friend,” said Mowgli. “He shouldn’t be too long now.” Mowgli tried to mask his alarm, but that only made it more obvious. He wasn’t sure, but the more uncomfortable he got, the more pleased the snake seemed, a small smile curling up the corners of her large mouth.
“I can stay here with you. Until he gets here.”
The snake moved closer and Mowgli shrank deeper into his own skin.
“Would that be all right?” asked the snake.
“Please, I—I…” stammered Mowgli.
The snake’s head stopped swaying, hovering directly in front of the man-cub’s face, her eyes dancing in front of his, changing shape, color shifting like the sky at night—only faster, much faster. Mowgli felt dizzy and warm.
“I’ll keep you safe,” she said, her tone darker now. “Just you and me, sweet thing.”
“Who are you?” mumbled Mowgli. There was hardly a question in his voice at all; his fear was being replaced by that sleepy feeling again.
“Kaa…” said the snake, exhaling her own name like a razor-sharp whisper, tongue cutting the air quick enough to leave a scar in the mist.
Kaa the snake coiled closer to Mowgli, her scales bristling in anticipation.
“Poor, sweet little cub. What are you doing so deep in the Jungle?”
Mowgli’s head was swimming.
“This is my home,” said Mowgli. The words came but only barely, falling from his lips as if he’d forgotten how to speak.
“Don’t you know what you are?” asked Kaa. “I know what you are. I know where you came from.”
“You do?”
“Yes,” said Kaa. “Would you like to see?”
The snake put her forehead to Mowgli’s. All the man-cub could see were Kaa’s eyes, spinning and flashing; there was no place else to look.
“Yes,” said Mowgli.
Mowgli felt his body tumbling forward without ever moving, falling down and down and down into the eyes of the snake.
MOWGLI NO LONGER saw with his own eyes.
Where once he had seen the Jungle, now he saw only blackness, and out of the darkness winked stars. And a trail of gray clouds leading to a cave. But the clouds were odd and small. Not clouds at all. They were smoke.
Mowgli heard Kaa’s voice in his head. “Mostly men stay in their village—far from the dark of the Jungle.”
Mowgli moved closer to the pictures that hung behind his eyes. He watched the smoke rise from the cave, its mouth glowing red. It felt like a dream, but Mowgli thought he was awake.
“But sometimes they travel,” continued Kaa. “And when they do, their caves breathe in the dark.”
Mowgli could see better now and he noticed the smoke rising not from the cave but from a circle of wood on the ground. Suddenly, he was there, not just looking at it, but standing near the bright, hot glowing circle. Drawn to it.
“They call it the Red Flower,” said Kaa, her voice louder now, closer. “Fire. Man’s creation. It brings warmth, and light, and destruction to all that it touches.”
Just then, a man’s shadow moved within the cave. Mowgli froze, fascinated, then whispered to the snake in his head.
“Who is that?”
“A traveler, protecting his cub.”
Behind Mowgli, two amber eyes burned in the shadows of the brush—the eyes of Shere Khan. There was a roar and the tiger leapt past Mowgli and into the cave.
Mowgli shuddered. Shere Khan, there, in that place? Was nowhere safe?
The man-cub watched the shadows of the man and the tiger grapple. The man wielded a stick of wood, fire dancing from the tip, and he struck the tiger with it. Mowgli watched as the tiger became one with the Red Flower, howling and roaring in pain, the flower’s red-and-orange petals growing and licking at the dark night, driving Shere Khan into the Jungle, blinking out of sight.
“Shere Khan ended the man’s life that night,” continued Kaa. “But not before he was burned by the Red Flower’s touch. He ran so fast he didn’t notice the cub he’d left behind….”
Mowgli stared at the cave, noticing a crying man-cub, much smaller than Mowgli, barely more than a babe, for the first time.
“And that cub was you.”
He couldn’t believe what he was looking at.
“Me?”
Suddenly, there was a stirring behind the little Mowgli. Out of the dark stepped the night on four legs: a panther.
“Bagheera,” whispered Mowgli.
Bagheera stared at the tiny man-cub, then approached, cautious. The little one stopped crying and reached out to the panther. He grabbed the panther’s nose and squeezed. Bagheera sneezed and the little man-cub giggled.
“The panther found you,” said Kaa, “but he couldn’t change what you would become.”
Mowgli watched the scene shift and burn as the flames from the cave grew and grew, until they obscured his view of anything else.
And there, standing wrapped in the Red Flower like a second skin, Mowgli saw himself. Older, harder, wearing a face that hadn’t smiled in seasons. Behind that fearsome Mowgli, the Jungle burned like the tiger.
“The man-cub becomes man. And man brings destruction to all.”
Mowgli closed his eyes, but the images wouldn’t leave.
“That’s not me….”
“Oh, you poor sweet thing.”
Mowgli tried to fight the lure of the snake’s voice, but the harder he struggled, the less he could fight. His chest felt tight, like a great hand was squeezing him. Mowgli tried to take a breath and found himself back in the Jungle, his Jungle, and the snake had wrapped him tightly in her coils. He was trapped.
But strangely, Mowgli wasn’t worried, wasn’t afraid. He knew it was wrong, but the snake made him feel so relaxed, so sleepy, he stopped fighting. He again had the feeling he was falling without moving, and then he could feel Kaa’s breath on his face.
As she spoke, every word gently blew the hair off Mowgli’s forehead.
“You want to stay here,” said Kaa.
“Yes,” said Mowgli. He was smiling.
“You can be with me if you want. I’ll keep you close.”
Kaa’s eyes turned deep black, and her mouth opened wide.
“Let go of your fear now. Trussst in me….”
Kaa lifted and tightened her coils, her scales brushing against Mowgli’s chin as she constricted more tightly around the man-cub. She opened her mouth wider still, unhinging her jaw on both sides, her tongue licking Mowgli’s face.
Suddenly, there was a great roar and a huge dark shape lunged out of the Jungle and threw itself on Kaa. With no time to strike, the great snake hissed and released Mowgli, who fell and landed in the dirt, waking from the living nightmare she had trapped him in.
Mowgli looked up in time to see Kaa rear back and hiss at the huge shadow looming over her. The great beast stood on its hind legs, roared again, and threw its huge hairy frame onto the lowest hanging loop of the snake’s endless body, pulling her from her perch.
That was the last thing Mowgli saw before he passed out in the mud.
THE NIGHT WAS STILL, but Raksha’s heart was not.
She lay with her litter, one eye on them as they played outside her den, another eye on Akela and the other wolves up on Council Rock. She was unsettled. Somewhere out there was another piece of her family, one of her own, whom she could not see, and it made her restless, eating at her insides like a bug.
A small commotion, just outside her line of sight, snapped Raksha from her melancholy. It was Gray. It was always Gray, wasn’t it? He was off on his own and he had something in his mouth.
“Gray, what’s wrong?” asked Raksha. “Why are you not playing with the others? What is that you have?”
Gray sauntered over to his mothe
r and dropped the object at her paws; it was Mowgli’s water pouch. Raksha’s muzzle fell, her emotions overtaking her strong face. Gray looked up.
“Why did he have to leave?” he asked.
Raksha closed her eyes.
“Gray…”
“We could have protected him. We shouldn’t have let him go.”
Raksha put her forehead against Gray’s and pushed gently.
“I miss him, too,” she said. “The important thing is that he is safe now.”
Gray pulled away, seeing something moving out of the brush behind his mother. His little mouth quivered and he dropped his head. Raksha turned, immediately on guard. All the members of the wolf pack rose to their feet, instantly alert, as Shere Khan confidently marched in.
Without turning her eyes from the tiger, Raksha spoke to her cub.
“Get inside.”
Gray moved quickly back into the den with his brothers and sisters.
Raksha watched, never blinking, as Shere Khan strode silently past the gathered wolf pack and all the way up to Council Rock, where Akela was waiting.
“Yes?” said Akela.
Shere Khan cracked a small smile, one of his great canines peeking past his lip.
“I suppose you know why I’ve come.”
Akela nodded, calm and strong. Raksha looked up and saw vultures circling overhead. They followed the tiger wherever he went. Disgusting creatures.
“The man-cub is no longer here,” said Akela.
Shere Khan chuffed in his throat and shook his head just so.
“I thought I made myself clear,” said the tiger. “I wanted him turned over to me.”
Akela moved toward Shere Khan.
“We no longer harbor him. He has left the pack.”
Raksha looked to Akela then, knowing that saying those words hurt him nearly as much as it hurt her to hear them.
“And where, may I ask, has he gone?”
Shere Khan still sounded amused, but his posture told an entirely different story. Raksha could read the angle of his shoulder blades and the position of his back paws. He was getting ready to move, and move quickly.
The leader of the pack spoke deliberately. “The Man-village,” Akela said. “He is with his people now.”
The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack Page 4