Shoes
Once there was a girl who lived with her stepfather in a house on the edge of the wood. “Your mother has left us both alone. It is your fault she is gone,” the stepfather told the girl. On a table next to the girl’s bed sat a lamp in the shape of a tree with roots for legs and a leaf-painted shade. The girl had a small memory of her mother giving her the tree-lamp. So at night before sleeping, the girl talked to the lamp: “You are my light. Please protect me.”
One day on her way home from school, the girl stopped by the stream that ran by the path. The sun shone down through tree limbs, and the stream called out to the girl. So the girl took off her shoes and waded in. The sky grew dark, and the girl, forgetting her shoes, ran home.
“You have lost your shoes?” The stepfather looked through narrowed eyes at the girl. The girl tried to explain through her tears, but the stepfather sent her to bed without supper.
By the light of her lamp, before going to sleep, the girl said, “You are my light. Please protect me.”
The next morning, the girl walked barefoot down the path. She shivered in the morning air. She found her shoes by the stream and slipped her feet into them. But when she tried to walk, she could not move. She looked down to see that the shoes had rooted themselves into the dirt. Their roots extended out toward the stream as if they had always been there. And she noticed how the sun sent rays down to warm her. “You are my light,” she said to the sky. She stayed there, her feet inside the shoes. Her body became a trunk and her arms became branches. The girl had grown into her rooted shoes. She had become a tree.
One day a woman walked down the path. Her eyes dripped tears as she looked to the sky, saying, “I have lost my light.” She sat herself down by the stream in the cradle of the shoes’ roots. And as her tears landed on the ground, the roots loosened.
The tree became a little girl, and there by the stream, she curled into her mother’s lap.
And the sun warmed them.
The end.
Comments
Oh, Guri! I revised the story, and now the verb “sneaked” is no longer there. I’m sorry. I appreciate your comment about the “sanity of the grammatical universe.”
Jan 18 March 09
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I like this story. And I am grateful that you wrote “sneaked” and not “snuck.” There is still some sanity in the grammatical universe.
G
Guri 18 March 09