Pandora's Closet Part 25

And the clothes kept coming.

A christening gown of linen and lace.

A slinky little black dress.

A x.x.xL wedding dress, with veil and slippers. Sarah waited all day to see who would show up for that one.

And sure enough, close to the end of the day, in walked a large woman with her groom-to-be. She fit the dress perfectly. And never blinked at the price. Once the sale was made and Pam had left for the day, Sarah stood in front of the rack and stared at the hanger.

"I don't suppose you could find me a man? I'm not fussy, although I prefer brown eyes to blue."

The hanger just hung there in silence.

Sarah laughed, and shook her head. "That's okay. I'm grateful for the clothes and the help." She eyed the hanger seriously. "But it won't last forever, will it?"

The hanger remained silent.

And so it went.

Sarah's Closet became the in place to shop, with both the society crowd and the young people looking for bargains. Sarah had enough stock that she was starting to think about the Internet, getting a website, and putting pictures of the clothing on-line. But something deep within made her hesitate. "Nothing good lasts forever" echoed in the depths of her brain. "Wait and see" was another thought. After all, magic never lasted, now did it? In all those stories. She took the prudent and cautious route.

So she wasn't really surprised the morning she opened the shop, a year and a day later, to find that there was nothing on the hanger.

The cold air and snow blew in as she stood there in the doorway, staring at the rack. It was indeed empty, swaying slightly in the draft.

She stomped the snow off her boots, stepped in, and let the door close behind her.

A year and a day.

It had been a year and a day since she'd seen that odd man and given him a coat. He'd handed her the hanger in exchange, a more than fair exchange for the magic that it had brought with it.

Magic that had saved her dreams.

Sarah sighed, mild disappointment flowing through her like a wave. She'd expected it, but it still hurt. It had been a wonderful year, and she was in good shape financially. The store would still need hard work, but she knew that she could make it, after this year.

The magic was over and done.

But to see the hanger just... hanging there...

It hurt.

She sighed, and went about the day.

Business was brisk in the morning, but the snow kept falling all day, large wet flakes. Customers slowed to a trickle, and the radio spoke of businesses closing early. Sarah let Pam go home and settled behind the counter and watched the snow. She tried to ignore the hanger, which was still on the rack.

Once or twice it occurred to Sarah to pack it in and treat herself to a bubble bath, but she had the oddest sense of waiting, as if something was going to happen.

There were no more customers, and the only call she got was from the Salvation Army, asking if she had anything to be picked up. She said she did, and they'd be by shortly.

Sarah'd wait for the truck and then close the store and go home. Yes, a bubble bath, that new hardbound romance she'd just bought, some General Tso's from the Chinese place next door. Good plan for a snowy night.

The Salvation Army truck pulled up; it was the regular guy, so he went in back and carried out the box crammed full of clothing. He set it down on the floor and handed Sarah the clipboard with the paperwork. She signed off, and he put it under his arm and reached back down.

When he lifted the box up, the hanger was tucked in among the clothes.

Sarah darted a look at the rack, and sure enough, her hanger wasn't there. She looked back as the man headed for the door.

She could just see the wooden corner of the hanger, as if it were waving goodbye over his shoulder. It seemed right somehow. Fitting, even.

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 m.u.f.fled 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 G.o.d 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 h.e.l.lo, 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d's mercy. Leave her to G.o.d, my child." He smoothed Elsa's hair back from her brow.

At these pious words, Elsa stuck out her little chin and said, "But G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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.

"Who are you that you ask after the red shoes?" he roared.

He is trying to scare me, thought Elsa, and she would not be scared. She told him of Karen and her story, and as she did, he seemed to grow smaller and sadder.

"I remember her," he said, hunching his shoulders up. "She came to my door. She was only skin and bones. Her legs were scratched and b.l.o.o.d.y. She could not stop dancing although she could barely breathe and could no longer hold her head up straight. She begged me to strike the shoes from her body, and I could see nothing else to do. I used my axe as best I could, and she bled terribly and fell against me. The red shoes danced away into the woods, carrying her feet with them." He looked off towards the north, to where the woods loomed dark and green, and the sunlight feared to go. "I have never been afraid of what I do until I did that thing. Nor yet have I ever been able to forget that sight of her feet set free to dance in the red shoes."

"The shoes stole her feet," said Elsa firmly. "And I am going to find them."

The executioner looked into her eyes for a long moment. Then he nodded. He took her into his cramped, crooked house. He fed her thin soup and black bread and replenished her milk. He found a comb so that she might straighten her hair and retie her doll's ribbons. Then he took her to the path that led into the woods.

"Further I dare not go," he said. "I have killed too many men. Though I only did as the laws required, they do not know that, and they wait for me in the woods. But you are a good child, and they cannot touch you."

Elsa thanked the executioner and walked down the rutted path into the woods. All the while, the executioner watched her go.

In the deep woods, it quickly became dark as night. The few sunbeams were paler than the moon's had ever been. The path was pitted with the tracks of deer and the wolves that followed them. The roots of trees crisscrossed the way and caught at Elsa's toes to trip her up. Overhead, invisible in the branches, the crows called to one another to come see this new thing. They laughed hard and harsh when she stumbled. The wind wormed its way between the tree trunks to make her shiver and tease her hair. The whole world smelled of moss and old graves.

Elsa walked on. She looked this way and that for some sign of the red shoes in the gloom, but she saw only the white ghosts of the dead men, their heads lolling on their shoulders, waiting for the executioner to come to them. But they did not come onto the path, and they did not touch her.

Elsa walked on. She ate her bread and drank her milk, and she held her doll. The path grew narrower until it was only a winding thread. Gnarled trees and unkind bracken reached out their crooked twigs to poke and prod her. They tore at Clarissa's dress and tried to s.n.a.t.c.h away her ribbons.

At last, when Elsa was so tired she was afraid she could go no further, she saw a woman sitting on a great, arching tree root. She was as brown, k.n.o.bby and gnarled as that root, with a great hump over her left shoulder. Indeed, Elsa might have thought she was just another part of the tree if her eyes had not gleamed so brightly in the darkness.

"h.e.l.lo, my little maid," the old woman said in a voice as soft and rich as loam. "Where are you going all alone?"

"I am going to find the red shoes," replied Elsa. "Have you seen them?"

"Well, now." The old woman tapped her chin. "That is a large question. Let us have some of that bread and milk and think about it."

So, Elsa sat beside the old woman and shared out her bread and milk, which the old woman took with great smackings of her lips and slurpings of her tongue. She belched and rubbed at her wagging dew-lap and scratched herself about the body and the head. Elsa did her best to remember her manners and not stare, but it was very difficult.

"Now then," said the old woman, when all the food was gone. "You say you are looking for the red shoes? They are here."