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You will remember that Mowgli had gone to the village and world of Men, after defeating the Dhole and saving both the Jungle and the village.

The Seonnee wolf-pack returned to its usual, single-specie affairs, with the usual, skull-smashing teaching from Baloo. Bagheera stalked his pet, but only so that none but the frog (who had grown himself some fur at last) could see him.

Mowgli helped the village to hunt without incident in the Jungle. He made sure the cattle were healthy enough that this was generally not necessary. The villagers almost accepted him, for his usefulness, for he could always tell when the Tiger was about. The Men believed Mowgli when he said he'd killed the creature with his bare hands. They'd seen him tear an antelope's throat out with his teeth, as the leopard would have, and he talked to animals, as he was a witch. Why couldn't he have killed a tiger?

The truth of the matter was that Mowgli isolated the village from the Jungle more and more, advising all to steer clear of the village hunting grounds before they went out, and the Tigers which passed were politely greeted and left to their business. The villagers could not tell whether or not a Tiger was about, so it was something the Jungle man could make up with impunity.

Mowgli did not much like his own kind, even now that he was one of them. Separation and civilisation were hard. He was separated, but not civilised, you see. Mowgli had adapted to village life, but their ways were strange and wrong to one raised by half the animals in the Jungle.

The Men of the village wed their children to one another to exchange 'property', land, so on. Marriage and property were not unfamiliar concepts to Mowgli, as the Seonnee had their territory and mating was often monogamous and for life, but the extent to which Men applied ownership was ludicrous. Being casteless, moneyless, kinless and well over marrying age when he came to the village (about twenty), Mowgli had no worry of their intentions to wed him off. Then, he had left the Jungle in the hopes of finding a mate. Not finding a spouse.

The pallid British, who passed through occasionally, traded with villagers as if famished, and the stories they told hinted at numbers and hunger for resources like that of the Red Dogs, at enslavement of other 'colonies'. There was a sense from them of haughtiness, glory and hierarchy at the same time, a stout, racial pride - the Jungle has a word for that, and Mowgli knew it was the very worst and most dangerous of Men's traits.

Mowgli would, at night, remove the extra skins the Men gave him and run through the Jungle, bare as he ever was. He hunted. He gossipped. He learned that some packs' grounds were shifting, and what Hathi's troop had been seeing, and where his friends were. Baloo was nearing old age, now, which is essentially old age in the Jungle. He was still strong but likely to miss a blow at some point - Mowgli spent time with his old teacher. Bagheera seemed to go from strength to strength, and never lost his urge to spoil the boy he had bought for a bull.

Kaa sometimes needed reminding of who Mowgli was. The Python had lived many centuries, so he sometimes had to concentrate backwards to make sense of his vast memory. Mowgli took no offence at this.

Often their meetings would start the same way, with Kaa striking at Mowgli and winding him in his coils - Kaa was as wide around in his middle as Mowgli was in his own. Mowgli would somehow choke out the master words - "we be of one blood, ye and I". As the snake meditated to find Mowgli among the many people he had loved, Mowgli would sit in a comfortable pile of his friend. The game was never lethal - Kaa just liked doing this.

"Little brother," Kaa began, one of these times, upon finding the Frog in his memory. "It has been a rain since you came to old Kaa. Have you started becoming a Man? Have you believed their stories of Hisser the Dragon, who steals their cattle after turning into a mist, who leaves their women with dragon-eggs after just a look?"

"I am sorry, brother. Disease came to their flocks and herds," Mowgli said, with an apologetic smile. "And I was the one who told *those* stories in the first place."

"Cunning and unscrupulous apes, all of you," Kaa said, coiling his neck around Mowgli's, and resting his flat head on the Man's chest. Mowgli had stayed as vital and lean as when he left the Jungle, if anything growing more muscular as he aged. Kaa could, as his friend's bed, feel the tone and scars of every inch of the Frog, from his hair and beard down to the soles of his feet. "If I'd visit them as I do the Bandar-Log, I may not even have acquired a Man of my own. I may have eaten all of them."

"Forgive me, O Kaa," Mowgli managed - for with the snake around his neck it was hard to concentrate or make long sentences, "But your fascination does not work on our folk, does it?"

"More lies! You have forgotten your manners, little wolf." Kaa unwound the boy - for he would always be a boy, to one as old as Kaa - except for his ankle, to carry and deposit him on the other end of the clearing. "Watch, and feel my Hunger." Mowgli laughed, but had answered sincerely. When Kaa and he first met, the snake did a strange dance, enchanting the monkey people to walk towards the snake and into his throat. Kaa had instructed them to. It had been as if the snake had replaced their desires with his. Mowgli had thought often of that dance, and watched it sometimes when he was still a child, trying to work out how it worked.

That was as useless as trying to wrestle Kaa. You might as well have asked a real Frog to design a clock.

Kaa began his dance.

This wasn't, initially, apparent. His scales were naturally shiny, even when dry, and it was difficult to tell their gleaming from their slipping.

The great trunk of the python's body was at once one loop - then a helix, moving endlessly up - then a coil of a helix, all moving along the same path, in one shape one moment, another shape the next. Mowgli's view of Kaa's body was inconsistent, but he saw all of Kaa, which was good. The serpent was beautiful. And very big.

Mowgli was on his feet.

The dance had no music, and needed none. The shift of Kaa's slithering was percussion enough, and all else than the sight of Kaa's movement was --

Not ignored. It just wasn't important, you see. Mowgli had taken a step. He knelt in the moss, and watched, as he decided it would be good of him. His eyes half-lidded, and he swayed along with the dance, as it sped and slowed --

It wasn't speeding or slowing. Mowgli was just adjusting, just noticing the patterns more, noticing how in the impossible shapes Kaa made, his colours acquired new ones, his blotchy brown and gold patterns changed.

"Little brother," Kaa began, now lapped around his charge again. "Was that good enough to see?"

"It was, O Kaa." Mowgli felt as if he were aware of everything, of Kaa's voice in him and his frictionless scales around him. He was overstimulated and motionless - but he didn't remember the course of events leading to this.

"Then you are happy, with what you have?" Kaa's tongue flicked out at Mowgli's nose. The boy's mind began resisting the spell it was under, automatically - but Kaa being there was soothing enough that even his instincts started to feel drowsy.

"The village..." He trailed off. There was too much to say.

"There is no village here," Kaa said, quietly.

"But..." Mowgli's thoughts were cleared when Kaa hissed out:

"There is no Man village, Mowgli." (At that moment, Hathi was making it so.) "You spent some time there, but you have returned. Our strong and beautiful pet, Mowgli the Frog."

"Kaa..." Mowgli's big, dark eyes fluttered again, as one's do when bitten by the cobra, and closed. He relaxed into Kaa's hug, and into the sensations around him.

"Yes, Man-Cub, I am here." Kaa was affectionate like this. "You were too busy watching old Kaa make circles last time, Mowgli. You did not count the monkeys coming to me. Think back..."

"We see, O Kaa."

"They told stories of Kaa stealing their children. But do you remember?"

"There were no pups coming to you," Mowgli sighed, his voice now a whisper. He breathed deeply and slowly, as when asleep. He wished Kaa had shown him this dance years ago, the moment he was no longer a cub.

"Good boy. Correct." Kaa whispered to Mowgli in his own tongue - for a python's powers of fascination work best in their own language - and, wrapped in Kaa's coils and unable to leave, mind wrapped in Kaa's spell and unable to awaken, Mowgli began to forget.

Yes, he'd spent time there.

"But I don't want to go back to the Man village."

Yes, he'd helped Men there. There were friends.

"I want to stay in the Jungle."

But he'd been wrong.

"Yes. Helpless... Frog."

The Jungle was not a place of guarded, idyllic childhood, to be left to find partners, or his own.

"Keep me, Kaa."

Mowgli knew, then, that he belonged in the Jungle, and he would know it for the rest of his life.