The grain had been disappearing for three nights, and only the moon knew why.
In a village at the edge of wide green rice fields, the storeroom jars were lighter every morning. Tiny footprints dusted the floor. Something small and quick and hungry was helping itself.
At the far edge of the fields stood an old termite mound, tall and crumbly like a sandcastle after rain. Inside it lived a cobra.
The villagers knew about her. They spoke of her in whispers, the way people speak of thunder. Children were told to walk the long way around the mound, and they did, at top speed.
The cobra knew about the whispers too. Snakes listen with their bodies, feeling footsteps through the earth, and hers told her the same story every day: everyone hurries away.
She wondered about that sometimes. She was a quiet neighbor. She kept to her mound. And she wore, though she had never once seen it, a marking on the back of her hood like two little moons joined together, or a pair of round spectacles for a very serious reader.
Everyone in the village had seen it. She never would. Some gifts face outward.
At dusk she went to work.
Her tongue flicked out, tasting the air, and the air was busy with news. Rat. Rat. More rat. She poured herself between the rice stalks like slow water and followed the scent trails toward the village, because rats were her favorite dinner, and the fields were suddenly full of them.
That night, a boy came down the path with a water jug.
He saw the grass move. She felt his footsteps stop.
She rose.
Her ribs spread wide, and her hood opened like a dark umbrella with two moons on the back. She swayed, tall and shining, and gave a long, steady hiss.
This is the cobra's finest manner. She announces herself first. Her hood says, plainly and grandly, I am here. This path is busy tonight. Please choose another. Her venom is precious, saved for dinner, and a warning costs her nothing at all.
The boy took one slow step back. Then another. Then he ran home so fast his shadow arrived late.
The cobra lowered her hood and went back to work. By morning she had done more for the storeroom than any lock in the village.
The jars stayed full that week. And the next. The tiny footprints in the flour grew rare, then rarer, then stopped.
The whispers about the mound continued, of course. Whispers are stubborn. But the boy's grandmother, who had lived beside the fields longer than anyone, only smiled when she heard them.
"Count the rats," she said, "then thank the one who wears spectacles."
Out at the edge of the fields, the moon rose over the old termite mound.
And between the rice stalks, two little moons glided quietly home.