Nightmare Fuel, Day the Twenty-Fifth - Shoes of Silk, Shoes of Wood

This is a great picture, which could have gone in different ways. Samantha Dunaway Bryant has a nice, delicate fairy-tale feel, while Kary Gaul and others wrote short poems and vignettes directly in the comments here.

Mine follows. Day 25 of 31. This looks like a successful month.

Shoes of Silk, Shoes of Wood

Long ago, in a place forgotten to time a lived a woman who wished to become a Dancer.

She had grace, beauty, and a fine sense of balance. What she lacked was simply knowledge; how to hold her arms, which foot went where, how her legs were to move. Other young women would search for tutors or instructors or even an older dancer to serve as a mentor, but this Dancer chose an easier, more treacherous path.

She went in search of the Djinn, and begged for a wish.

She knew of him, knew that he lived deep in the Forbidden Woods, that he was known as the Harvest Djinn. That he could grant wishes to one who was bold in deeds and strong in desire. This is all she knew.

"I wish to be a great Dancer, oh Djinn. It is told that you can grant such things"

The Djinn smiled at her. It appeared as a man-like thing, though far larger and more powerful than any man she'd met. Swarthy and tall, with a well-oiled dark moustache and darker eyes.

He handed her a pair of shoes, lovely red silk shoes with ribbons that tie up her ankles. You know the kind. "You may have these until the next harvest moon, but no longer. When you wear them, you shall be a dancer".

So she wore them and she danced.

She danced all the way back to her village, she danced in the village square. She danced with the skills of a thousand thousand dancers who before her had worn them.

Her dancing was graceful, fluid. Not a missed step, not a missed turn. The shoes guided her, her body knew what to do, each foot touching down in just the right place without a thought.

And of course, a traveler noticed. As oft happens in these tales, he was an emissary for the King, seeking entertainments for next years' Harvest Ball, to be held the night of the Harvest Moon.

"I'll go and dance there," she thought, "and gain fame and riches. The Djinn can have my shoes back the next day. I know he'd not begrudge me this chance." It's easy to fool ourselves, is it not?

The rout to the palace goes through the Forbidden Forest. The Dancer walked quickly, keeping her feet on the path and away from the trackless wood where the Djinn lived. As she stepped through the forest, those silk shoes guided her in a light skipping, dancing step, whirling along the path until, quite without her volition, they led her off it entirely. She threw her arms around a treetrunk to arrest her progress and fight the treacherous shoes, but they'd already taken her to far.

They'd already taken her to the Djinn.

"You disappoint me. It could have been easier, but now... now is the time of the harvest."

She felt rough hands on her ankle, heard the swish of a scythe, her body falling to the forest floor as her silken shoe hung from his hand by the strap, her foot still in it and quite detached from her body. She barely felt him take the other one.

They found her the next night, bleeding and half-delirious, but she survived. Survived to hire a woodcutter and go back to that forest, to the very tree stained by her blood, to tear it down.

Survived to hire a woodcutter to build from its heartwood a cunning and lovely pair of wooden feet.

Survived to learn, painfully, to walk and then to dance. No longer with magic shoes to guide her, but with memory and thought, tempered by the pain of her loss.

Years later the emissary returned to her village, saw her dancing in measured and graceful steps on her feet of wood and wondered how the wooden footfalls would sound on the King's marble dancefloor.