Once in a land unknown to the rest of the world, lived a creature nine metres long and very dangerous, which in our time we know as the anaconda. The anaconda lived in the Dark Forest, an enchanted land protected from outsiders.

Despite its massive size and weight, it was a kind and generous snake. A father of two and a brother of four, the anaconda had a big family.

One day something strange happened. The anaconda went out for food and on his way back, he found a man-cub. He took the man-cub back home with him and raised him as one of their own. The boy now had a family, but one who were different from him. After some time the boy started to understand them. They named him Alexander.

Meanwhile in the other part of the land where humans lived, there lived a child named Samuel. He was very adventurous and he always dreamed of becoming an explorer. Twenty years went by and both the boys grew up in very different environments, with very different attitudes. Samuel became an explorer and Alexander became an expert in communicating with animals of all kind, and surprisingly even learned the languages of humans.

Samuel explored a lot of places, but never the Dark Forest where Alexander lived with his anaconda family. After sometime, Samuel had the urge to explore the Dark Forest because no one had been there or knew anything about it. It was an unknown territory that he became impatient to explore. He decided to go there with a well-equipped team of three more men — Maxwell (a master hunter), Evan (a master navigator) and Baxter (a good tracker). Accompanied by his teammates, Samuel began his journey.

Meanwhile in the dark forest, Alexander had a lot of friends, all animals but who took them as one of their own. Among them were jaguars, cheetahs and cobras. He learned a lot of things from them. He learned to be faster with the help of the cheetahs, gained strength with the help of jaguars and he learned to scare off others with the help of the cobras.

After travelling for a few days, Samuel and his team reached the Dark Forest and saw something they could not have even imagine. They saw beautiful timid and dangerous creatures living together in perfect harmony. They went further into the forest and saw Alexander surrounded by his friends, who they thought were about to eat him.

They pointed their arrows at the animals and tried to scare them. Alexander and his friends ran towards their enchanted house, went in and closed the entrance. Samuel and his teammates thought that they disappeared into thin air because the house became invisible to them the moment Alexander and the animals went into it.

They started to walk away when Alexander called out to them and asked, “Why you hurt Alexander’s friends?”

Samuel was surprised to see that a human calling wild animals his friends. He asked, “Are those your friends?”

Alexander said, “Alexander grow up with friends!”

Samuel asked about his family and Alexander said he lived with large snakes who call themselves anacondas. Samuel wanted to explore this new species so he asked if he could see Alexander’s family. Alexander called them outside and when they came out, Samuel and his team got scared and backed away.

Then Samuel had a thought, that if he could kill one and take it home, he would be famous and rich by this new discovery. So he tricked Alexander into coming closer and then caught him. The snakes, seeing their friend in danger, moved towards the group to rescue him but Samuel shot one of the snakes and killed it. At the loud sound, the rest of the animals got scared and backed off. Samuel then knocked Alexander to the ground so hard that he fainted.

Quickly, Samuel and his group took the dead snake and fled. Two hours later, when Alexander woke up, he found all the animals of the forest gathered around him and they were staring at him in concern. When he got to know what happened, he angrily set off in the direction where Samuel had gone.

Meanwhile, Samuel was enjoying his fame and fortune by showing off the new kind snake he had caught. But he was also afraid at the same time, because he knew that Alexander would come for him.

Finally, Alexander entered the city of York and searched for Samuel. Finally his search was over when he saw Samuel outside his house one day. Alexander called out to him, but as soon as Samuel saw Alexander, he ran inside his house and shouted to the guards to close the gates and stop Alexander from coming in. But the poor guards were no match for the powerful Alexander who simply climbed over the metal gates and pushed aside anyone who tried to stop him. He then broke the main door and went inside.

Samuel was trembling with fear so he grabbed his sword and tried to scare Alexander away, but Alexander kicked him so hard that he fell down and couldn’t get up. Alexander could have just killed him, but he didn’t. He thought that if he killed him, he would be no different than Samuel.

Instead, Alexander took the sword and hit Samuel on the legs and Samuel let out a sharp painful cry. After that day, Samuel wasn’t able to walk again, which ended his career and Alexander went back to his life in the jungle without any regret.

No one heard of Alexander again, nor did anyone try to go into the Dark Forest too. They had realised that it was best to leave things in their natural state and not disturb nature.

Published in Dawn, Young World, July 18th, 2020