Indigo Lantern

For Lisa

When she was born, her fairy godmother gifted her with a pair of red shoes, for when she was grown.

Her mother died when she was a toddler. Her father remarried.

Her father died a few years later, and her stepmother remarried.

After years of unhappiness, she ran away from home. She fled to a distant town, where she apprenticed with a dressmaker. She learned the trade and did well. Met a young man and married. Kept working as a dressmaker. Was happy. Had a baby, then a second. Happy.

Yet something was missing.

She returned to the village of her birth and went to her old house. Her stepmother, an old woman now, recognized her immediately. “I suppose you’ve come for the shoes,” her stepmother said.

“Yes,” she answered, not knowing what her stepmother was talking about.

“They’re not yours anymore, fairy godmother or no,” her stepmother said. “I took care of you when your mother died. I took care of you when your father left me behind. So they’re not yours, they’re mine.”

“I want to see them,” she said.

“Well all right, but they’re not yours.”

Both women knew you can’t hold a fairy gift hostage. They always find their way to their rightful owners.

The stepmother brought out the dusty shoes. The red was faded, yet they were finely made, with fur-lined leather and a sturdy heel. They looked just her size.

“I want to try them on,” she said. She took off her scuffed, misshapen shoes and stepped into the red shoes.

Immediately three memories came to her. First, she remembered her mother, holding her and singing to her. Second, she remembered her father smiling at her as he picked her up and swung her around. Third, she remembered the coldness that had settled in her heart after her parents had died.

Her stepmother fidgeted. “Take them off. They should be mine.”

“All right,” she said. She took off the red shoes and placed them in her stepmother’s waiting hands. She put her shapeless shoes back on, turned away, and began the walk home.

She didn’t look back, and she didn’t see the red shoes crumble to dust in her stepmother’s hands.

As she made the long walk home, she began to hum her mother’s song, smiling.