One day, Elsa could contain herself no longer. “Oh, Karen!” she clasping her hands together. “Tell me how it is you have no feet! I’ll give you Clarissa, my best doll, if you tell me. Please, Karen!”
Karen looked at little Elsa with the tears shining in her eyes. Thump, thump, creak, creak, Karen moved to the chair by the fire and pointed to the spot on the hearth next to the cradle. Elsa sat on the hearthstone at once, drawing her own feet under her skirts and hugging her knees to her chest.
When Karen spoke, she spoke to the fire and did not look at Elsa at all. “When I was a little girl, I was very poor and I had no shoes. A shoemaker’s widow made me a pair of shoes from scraps of red leather. They did not fit well, but they were the only gift I had ever been given. When my mother died, a kind old lady saw me and took me in. She called my red shoes ugly and had them burned.
“I lived with the old lady, and she was very good to me, and when it came time for me to be confirmed, she took me to a shoemaker’s to have new shoes made. This man had a pair of red shoes in his case that would fit my feet. They were so very beautiful. The old lady could not see their color, and she bought them for me when I begged her. I wore them to church, and everyone looked at me. That made me very proud. When she was told, my old lady said I was wicked to wear red shoes to church. She ordered me to always wear black.
“I did not listen. Next Sunday I wore my red shoes again. There was an old soldier outside the church door. He wiped people’s shoes as they passed to get alms. He bent down to wipe my shoes, and he said, ‘What pretty dancing shoes! They fit so tightly when you dance!’
“I did not think much on it. I was just proud someone had noticed my beautiful shoes. We went into the church. The whole world saw my red shoes, and pride swelled my heart. When we came out, the old soldier with his red beard was still there. He said again. ‘What pretty dancing shoes! They fit so tightly when you dance!’
“And the shoes began to dance. They danced me up and down and would not stop. No matter how I cried and begged and tore at my stockings, they would not stop and I could not get them off. The shoes danced me out into the woods. They danced me through the graveyard and back to the church. There was an angel in a white robe, and he said to me I could not enter the church, but must dance and dance.
“At last, the shoes danced me to the house where the executioner lives. I begged him to strike off my feet, and he did, and my feet in the red shoes danced away through the woods.”
Elsa sat hugging her knees so tightly with her mouth open and her eyes wide. “Then what?” she asked.
Karen just shook her head. “Then I came here, and I wait until God may grant me mercy.”
Elsa jumped to her feet. “That’s not a proper story!” she cried out. “There should be a prince, or a fairy. They should have made you feet of silver so you could walk through the king’s orchard at night and eat pears until the prince sees you and falls in love.”
Karen shook her head again. “That is not my story, Elsa. You must not be wicked and say so. I must try to be patient and good and wait for the mercy only God can give.”
But Elsa burst into tears. “It’s not a proper story!” she cried again and rushed from the kitchen.
All that week, Elsa brooded about the red shoes and about Karen’s story. She would not play with her best doll, Clarissa. She would not eat her supper, and when her father read from the big Bible at night, all she saw were the tears of pain on Karen’s face, and all she heard was the thump, thump, creak, creak, of her crutches and the wooden slats.
“It is not a proper story,” she told herself over and over again.
At last, her father grew concerned. He came to sit at the foot of Elsa’s little bed, where she lay in her white nightgown all tucked up under the colorful quilts her mother had made. He asked Elsa what troubled her. Elsa, who was by nature a truthful child, told her father the whole tale. When she ran out of other words, she whispered. “Papa, I wish I could go find the red shoes and bring Karen’s feet back to her!”
Her father thought on this for a long moment. “You know that it was wrong to ask Karen what became of her feet,” he said. “Your mother has told you so many times.”
“I know but…”
“Karen is right. She must wait for God’s mercy. Leave her to God, my child.” He smoothed Elsa’s hair back from her brow.
At these pious words, Elsa stuck out her little chin and said, “But God is in the church, and her feet cannot go there.”
Her father scolded her then and told her she should have no dessert tomorrow for her impiety. He left, and Elsa lay in the darkness with the moonbeams shining through the curtains, until she made a decision.
“I will go find the red shoes,” she said. “I will make them give Karen her feet back. It was not right that they stole them from her.”
Carefully, so as not to wake the other children, Elsa crept from her bed. She wrapped some bread in a pretty handkerchief her mother had given her, and poured some milk into a silver cup her father had given her, and took her best doll, Clarissa, for company. Then she went out into the darkness to look for the red shoes.
The night was vast and cold. The houses looked quite unlike themselves, being only velvet shadows beneath the thousand stars. The Moon, however, took pity on the little girl walking alone and spared some of its best silver beams to light the street, making the cobblestones gleam so that she might see her way.
First, Elsa went to the church, as that was where Karen said she first began to dance and where she had seen the angel. As this was God’s house and her father’s, Elsa knew no fear of the church, even in darkness. The spires and arches rose up stern and hard against the silvered night.
Elsa climbed the broad, shallow steps and gazed at the closed doors with their knockers held in the mouths of lions. Above them waited the carving of the angel Michael with his wings spread open and his sword held up high.
“I am looking for the red shoes,” said Elsa to the doors. “Have you seen them?”
But the lions only shook their heads until the knockers swung as if blown by the wind. The angel above them, though, cried out, “She shall dance! She shall dance from door to door; and where proud and haughty children dwell, she shall knock, that they may hear her and be afraid of her!”
“I am not afraid of Karen!” cried out Elsa, stamping her foot. “And she cannot dance anymore! All she can do is thump and creak on wooden feet, and it is not right!”
“Don’t mind him,” mumbled the right-hand lion around his knocker. “It is just his way.”
“The executioner might know where the red shoes have gone,” said the left-hand lion. “It was he who saw them last.” The left-hand lion gave Elsa directions to the executioner’s house. Elsa said thank you and made her curtsy, even to the angel.
It was a long way to the executioner’s house. No one wished to have the man who might one day hurry them to the grave living beside them. Elsa walked on. The sun came up to warm her. She ate a little of her bread and drank a little of her milk. As she struggled across the plowed fields and into the tangled fields lying fallow for the year, she hugged Clarissa to her breast and went doggedly on.
The executioner’s house was small and mean, cramped and crooked. A raven perched on the roof beam and sang a harsh song as she walked beneath the eaves. Holding Clarissa close, Elsa knocked on the door.
“Who is that!” cried a gruff and terrible voice from within.
“It is Elsa!” Elsa answered. “I am looking for the red shoes!”
The door flew open and the executioner came out. He seemed bigger than his house, and his bald head gleamed in the sun. His hands were hard and stained from his work. In one, he held the great, notched axe that had sent so many condemned from the world.