Animal Activities #53

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And there was a snow leopard in the very lowest edge of a plateau blown away by the wind whose legs did not seem to make a sound at all even when the mountains moaned. Her mother made her learn the language of stone: what to do when you are patient on ledges, what to do when you are bold on thin air, how to read the cloud in a map, which was a different one every minute. Suri would go after shadows during the winter when the sky was twisted by winter winds and could hear avalanches beating in the background like thunder.

One morning she found a bell in the roots of a juniper-bush. It was small, of brass, and had a shy voice and was battered with travelling. The bell was hung to a goat of a shepherd, who had long since been killed. Suri tempted it, and put it in her mouth to a high cavern. She had left it there, as a toy, but as a pledge that she at one time had trusted to her mountains.

As the seasons changed the valley below started to change. There were fewer hoof tracks in the passes, more in the ridges, which were metal tracks. Tents new and new came to Suri; Saw shining men shine their glass eyes at her cliffs. She did not hate them. She had learnt only their rhythms, like she learnt wind.

On the ice one evening one of the cubs pitchedched down and sled onwards into a shallow gully. Suri moved faster than fear. She held the scruff of the cub and pulled him to the ledge. When she was in her cave she rang a bell, once, and softly, to indicate the moment when she was safe.

Suri, who had grown old many years afterwards, and whose fetters were not so great as formerly, taught the cub who then was great and grey in colour, in that place where the cave was. She had placed the bell in his paws, and had poked at his forehead. The cub did not recognize what had made the sound, but he had heard its weight, and that was all.

It was not long before Suri became a legend The mountains told The bell I heard still in a cave above the clouds, And gave each passing creature A silent warning that, needless guardianship cry, and needless clamour valour.

And so, every morning, strains his ears to the echo the young leopard, which continues upon a heritage of sweet power over the cold mountains.

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