It was the second year after the great fight with the Red Dog. Mowgli was nearly 17 years old now, and things had changed. The Jungle-People had once respected him for his wits. Now they respected him for his strength. But the look in his eyes was always gentle.
It was spring in the jungle, the Time of New Talk. All the smells were new and wonderful. Day and night you could hear a deep hum—not the hum of bees or falling water or the wind in the treetops. It was the purring of the warm, happy world.
One day Bagheera, too, was purring and singing to himself.
"Why are you singing?" asked Mowgli. "There is no game here."
Bagheera laughed. "Little Brother, are both your ears stopped? This is no killing song. It is the song I will sing to my mate."
Mowgli frowned and said, "I had forgotten itwas the Time of New Talk. You and the others always run away and leave me alone. Remember last spring? When I sent for Hathi?"
"It took him only two days to come to you," Bagheera said patiently.
"He should have come on the night I sent for him. I am master of the jungle!" Mowgli cried out boastfully.
For some reason, Mowgli was in a bad temper. He had always loved the turn of the seasons. Spring was the season he made his long runs, just for the joy of it. Between twilight and the morning star, Mowgli would often dash 30, 40, or 50 miles. Then he would come back, panting and laughing, wearing strange flowers around his neck.
But this spring something was wrong. Mowgli felt hot and cold at the same time—and angry with something he could not see. Tonight, he decided, he would make a run to the distant marshes of the north and back again.
When he called to his four wolf brothers, however, not one of them answered. A couple of young wolves ran by, looking for a place to fight. Mowgli had never interfered in a spring fight before. Now he did, just to keep them quiet. He caught both wolves by the throat. But they knocked him down without a word and started to fight again.
In a flash, Mowgli was on his feet, his knife drawn. But suddenly the strength seemed to go out of his body. "I must have eaten poison," he said to himself. "Soon I may die!" He felt a sharp sadness he had never known before.
Still, he made his run to the marshes. As he ran through the jungle, he found himself singing out in pure joy. All the creatures of the jungle seemed to be singing or fighting around him.
Yet when Mowgli reached the marshes, the strange unhappiness came over him again—ten times worse than before!
Seeing Mysa the Wild Buffalo at the marshes, Mowgli could not resist teasing him. Sneaking up behind him, Mowgli pricked him with the point of his knife. The great bull broke out of the mud like a volcano exploding.
Mowgli laughed. "Now you can say that Mowgli, the hairless wolf, has herded you."
"Wolf? You?" snorted Mysa angrily. "All the jungle knows you once herded tame cattle. You are just like those men in the village nearby."
"What village, Mysa?" Mowgli asked.
"To the north," said Mysa. "Go tell them the kind of foolish jokes you play!"
"I will see this village," said Mowgli. He ran on toward the end of the marsh, where he saw a light. The glow of the Red Flower drew him on as if it were fresh game.
As Mowgli came near to the village, dogs began to bark. The door of a hut opened, and a woman looked out into the darkness. Then a child cried, and the woman whispered, "Sleep! It was only a jackal that woke the dogs."
Mowgli began to shake. He knew that voice. In man-talk he cried out, "Messua!
"Who calls?" the woman answered in a shaking voice. "If it is you—what name did I give you?"
"Nathoo!" said Mowgli as he stepped forward into the light.
"My son!" she cried. "But I see you are no longer my boy. You are a god of the woods!"
At 17, Mowgli was indeed strong and tall and beautiful. His long black hair fell over his shoulders. His knife swung at his neck.
As he stepped into the hut, Messua said, "Are you really the one I called Nathoo?"
"I am," said Mowgli, with a soft smile. "I did not know you were here."
"A new English law allowed us to return to the village," explained Messua. "But when we went back, the village was no more to be found."
"I remember that," said Mowgli. "But tell me, Mother—where is your man?"
"He is dead—a year ago."
"And he?" Mowgli pointed to the child.
"My son was born two rains ago. If you really are a god, you must give him the protection of the jungle—just as you blessed us that long ago night when we went to Khanhiwara."
Messua lifted up the child, who tried to reach Mowgli's knife. Gently, Mowgli pushed away the little fingers.
"What do I know of this thing called a blessing?" Mowgli cried. "I am not a god, and—Mother, my heart is heavy in me." He shivered as he put the child down on the cot.
Then Messua gave Mowgli warm milk, which made him sleepy. He lay down on the floor and slept the rest of the night and the next day. When he woke, he was ready to finish his spring running. But now the baby wanted to sit in his arms again. Messua insisted on combing out Mowgli's long, blue-black hair and singing to him.
Then Mowgli heard Gray Brother whining outside the hut. Messua's jaw dropped in horror.
"Do not worry. Think of the night on the road to Khanhiwara," said Mowgli. "I see that even in the spring, the Jungle-People do not forget me. Mother, I must go now."
Messua threw her arms around Mowgli's neck.
"Son or no son, come back again—for I love you," she said. "Look! The baby will miss you, too!"
The child was crying because the man with the shiny knife was going away.
Mowgli's throat hurt. "I will, Mother," he said. "I will come back."
Then Mowgli and Gray Brother left, following a path away from the village. When a girl in white came down the path, Mowgli and Gray Brother disappeared into a field of tall crops. Thinking she had seen evil spirits, the girl screamed. Then she gave out a deep sigh. Mowgli watched her until she had hurried out of sight.
"Bagheera was right," Gray Brother said. "Man goes to man at last."
Mowgli said, "What do you say?"
"Man cast you out once," Gray Brother explained. "They sent Buldeo to kill you. But it was you, not I, who said they were evil. You, and not I, let the jungle into their village."
"I don't know what you are saying," Mowgli said.
"I say you are master of the jungle," Gray Brother went on. "Even though I forget a little in the spring, your trail is my trail. Your kill is my kill. And your death fight is my death fight. But what will you say to the jungle?"
"Tell them all to come around to the Council Rock tonight," Mowgli answered. "There I will tell them what is in my stomach."
Gray Brother ran to the Jungle-People, calling out, "The master of the jungle goes back to man! Come to the Council Rock!" In any other season, they would have come. But it was spring.
"We will return in the summer heat," they called out to Gray Brother. "Come! Run and sing with us!"
Only the four wolves, Baloo, and Kaa came to the Council Rock that night.
"So your trail ends here, manling?" Kaa asked.
Mowgli threw himself down, his face in his hands. "I would not go," he sobbed, "but I am pulled by both feet. How shall I leave these nights?"
Old Baloo said, "You must mark your own trail— make your lair with your own blood. But when there is need of foot or tooth or eye, remember that the jungle is yours at your call. It is no longer the man-cub that asks leave of his pack. It is the master of the jungle who changes his trail. Who shall question man and his ways?"
Mowgli said, "But when I was still just a cub, Bagheera bought my place in the pack with the dead bull—"
His words were cut short by a roar in the brush below. Bagheera stretched out a dripping paw.
"A bull lies dead in the bushes now—a bull in his second year. This is the bull that frees you, Little Brother." Then he bounded away, crying, "Good hunting on your new trail, master of the jungle! Remember that Bagheera loved you!"
And this is the last of the Mowgli stories.
Thanks you for reading... 😇