At the same time, the door opened, and a customer walked in, dancing around the man with the box with a laugh and an apology. Sarah was still focused on the box, and she watched as it was loaded on the truck, the big metal door coming down with a muffled clang.
“Excuse me.” The customer placed a coat on the counter.
Sarah looked down. It was a well-made coat, from a high-end designer. Warm and thick, with deep pockets. She reached out to touch it.
“You want to sell this?” She was still oddly distracted. There was something familiar about the coat.
“No,” came a warm, deep voice that carried a hint of laughter. “Actually, I found it, and your business card was in the pocket, so I brought-”
It was the coat that she’d given away, a year and a day ago! It had to be.
“Where did you get this?” She looked up into a smiling face and the warmest pair of brown eyes she’d ever seen.
The man laughed again. “Well, that’s kind of a strange story, truth be told.” He smiled even wider, and Sarah caught her breath. “I’ll tell you,” he continued, then hesitated for a moment as he seemed to study her. “I’ll tell you, but only over some dinner. Do you like Chinese?”
THE RED SHOES by Sarah Zettel
Once there was a clergyman who had a stout wife and a fine family of children. He was a kind man, though in the great dark church on solemn Sundays he preached sermons warning against all sins-great and small.
One day the clergyman came home accompanied by a young girl just in the first flush of her woman’s beauty. He called his wife and children into the parlor and said to them: “This is Karen. She is in need, and God has sent her to us. She will help you watch the children, my wife, and do such other tasks as may make her useful. Make your greetings, my children.”
One by one, the children all said hello, for they were all raised to be polite. But they were also children, and they could not help but stare. For though Karen was a pretty girl, she had no feet. At the ends of her legs were two crudely carved wooden slats, and she got about on two wooden crutches.
The children were naturally very curious as to how she came to lose her feet. Their mother, though, hushed and scolded them so that they eventually stopped trying to ask. But still they wondered, especially the youngest girl, whose name was Elsa.
Karen tended the fire and stirred the kettle. She sewed and she knitted. She rocked the cradle and sang a lullaby when the baby boy was lonesome, and she did any other thing that was asked of her. But she never spoke of her feet. Elsa sometimes stood in the shadows of the chimney corner and watched Karen move about. Thump, thump went her crutches. Creak, creak went the wooden slats, and tears of pain ran down Karen’s pretty face.
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.