A Long-Forgotten Story with Shoes - Short Story by Tom Holmes

 

A Long-Forgotten Story with Shoes

Short Story

by Tom Holmes

for Stacia

I: Idle Hands

             Before Saint Patrick wished the snakes out of Ireland, there lived the tiniest cobbler who ever lived. She often crafted shoes that fit a customer perfectly but were often large enough for her to sleep in. She used a variety of materials, beads, and colours. Most often, though, people wanted green shoes, but occasionally people from the north wanted orange, so she obliged.

             She was an active member in the Ireland cobbling community. And while most cobblers thought she was the most excellent maker of shoes they had ever known, no cobbler was jealous of her talents. And anyone who met her would smile for days afterwards. She was the kindest and most accommodating person in the land, and maybe beyond.

              Because she was such an active member of this community, she knew who was doing well, who was getting by, and who was sick and falling behind on their obligations. She didn’t let anyone know she knew of the cobblers’ financial or health situations, but she did keep notes. If she noticed a fellow shoemaker was sick and struggling for over two months and the moon was full, she would put on a hooded cape and a mask and travel under the moonlight to the poor cobbler’s house when he or she was asleep. She would usually crawl through a hole that only a mouse could fit through and enter the cobbler’s workshop. She would then repair all the shoes the ill cobbler was behind on repairing. In addition, she was so talented that she could mimic the cobbler’s style and tastes so that nobody would know it was her who mended the shoes. Even the cobbler, when he or she awoke, assumed they had completed their tasks in their sleep and might think, “This is excellent work. I should do repairs more often when I am asleep.” In the following days, customers would pick up their newly repaired shoes and pay the cobbler, who then would purchase medicine to feel better again and continue with their noble profession.

            The mysterious cobbler with red hair carried out this practice for years. In fact, throughout the known-world, Ireland gained the reputation for having the most outstanding shoes, even northern Ireland agreed.

 

II: Idle Claws

           One night under a full moon, Stella (the tiny cobbler) was performing her generous task for another cobbler who lived on the Beara Peninsula. Most of his customers had waterproof boots, which meant they were painted with tar. Painting with tar was not a problem for the skilled Stella. What was a problem was finding a way into the cobbler’s workshop because this particular cobbler had rivals in the area. Unlike the accomplished Stella, these cobblers were not nearly as skilful at their jobs, and they would set out to sabotage one another or tell lies about each other to their customers. One time a cobbler stole all the shoelaces from another cobbler, which rendered the latter cobbler’s shoes useless. On a different occasion, a cobbler stole another cobbler’s tar and used it to waterproof his roof, and then went into business as a roofer.

 On this occasion, however, another one of the cobblers had emptied a burlap bag of mice around an ill cobbler’s leaky home that would flood on the rainiest of nights or day because he did not have the money for the roofer to waterproof his home. Nights were the worst, and it was because of the rainstorm one night a few months ago when the rain dripped through holes in the roof and seeped through holes at the base of the walls, the house was transformed into a cold, damp, and mouldy dwelling. And within days, the cobbler grew terribly ill and his wife became bed-ridden.

Through those leaky holes, the mice entered the workshop. The mice gnawed on shoes needing repair, and they guarded the holes of egress and ingress. These particular mice were also the type that sharpened their teeth in the morning and tied the sharpest of blades to the ends of their tails. They had even replaced their bony claws with tungsten. These mice were hired to perform harm to the cobbler’s goods as well as to anyone or anything that tried to prevent them from doing so.

Some people believed Stella came from the Land of Fairies, some thought she was the Fairy Queen, but most suspected she was the Fairy Queen’s cobbler who was allowed to freelance for human foot needs. Perhaps it was the fairy materials Stella used that prevented any of her shoes from tearing, ripping, or falling apart. Tonight, though, she needed a different type of material, or weapon, to bypass these dreaded mice.

She thought of drawing water from Bantry Bay to drown the despicable mice. Then she thought of fire. But she realized that either idea might completely destroy the cobbler’s currently fragile home. She wished she was like the Fairy Queen and had her magical powers to send the mice away, like Saint Patrick would do with snakes, but not knowing this similar wish had been asked for by Saint Patrick in the future and that all wishes once made extend into the past and the future and cannot be made again even in the past, her wish did not come true.

While she was wishing, the mice threw eyelets at her, but the holes fell over her like hula hoops, even though hula hoops had not been invented in Ireland, but fear had been, and Stella was scared.

“What to do? What to do?” Stella thought as she paced the dirt yard between the house and the forest she had just crossed through. “These mice are my size and I am outnumbered. If only I had a cat, but as everyone knows, cats at night during a full moon escape into the land of moon shadows until sunrise. Perhaps, I can find a way into those shadows or maybe! I could cover the moon so the cats will think it is a new moon instead of a full moon and return to this world. If only I had a large enough sack cloth.”

Stella grew angry with herself and yelled, “Why do these stupid people not leave this waterlogged peninsula? I mean really, no one should own a pair of tar-covered shoes and especially not wear them. They are so terrifically gauche. No one. Even if stylishly covered with feathers.”

In her unknown-to-her-future, she would use sap from dandelions and hevea brasiliensis trees in the town of Wellington to create waterproof shoes. But like her wish, she struggled in ignorance of today.

In the meanwhile, Stella decided to use her magnanimity to talk to and persuade the mice to cease the vandalous acts and depart the home of this fair cobbler and his wife. She opened her backpack and pulled out a ball of cloth, which she unrolled. Inside were cheese and bread. She offered the mice some of her cheese. The soldier mice were quick to nibble on the cheese. The head mouse, however, did not succumb. He knew his duty and he struck her with his tungsten claw and drew blood across her chest.

She had never been struck before with anything other than a hug or kiss. She trembled. She ran away and returned to the forest.

She needed a new strategy. She needed a way to evade the mice or for them to evade her.

“Or I could make them stay!”

 

III: Idle Mice

In the following days, Stella’s red hair turned grey. Anger, an emotion unfamiliar to Stella, overcame her. This anger evolved to violent thoughts. These violent thoughts evolved a plan.

“I need a barrel of hot tar,” she vengefully thought.

Stella didn’t recognize herself, but she recognized how this plan could solve her mouse problem and enable her to restore the cobbler’s livelihood. Stella also recognized the mouse’s tungsten claw must have been poisoned with evil thoughts. Thoughts that also motivated the ravaged mice to harm and destroy without discretion.

Stella dug furrows from each hole where the wall met the ground to the edge of the forest, where she had courageously returned to with a barrel of hot, liquid tar.

She tipped the barrel, and watched the boiling tar roll down the furrows into the holes and onto the floor of the workshop. She laughed in anticipation. She gnawed on strands of her now grey hair. Stella was no longer herself anymore. She enjoyed a new type of delight – watching the mice’s claws stick to the tar and unable to move. She relished in their squeaks. And then after a few days, in their silence.  

Even after the days of silence, Stella was still overcome with her poisoned anger. She was glad the mice were trapped in the slowly cooled tar.

“It is not enough!” she cackled.

Just as the tar had cooled, her violent thoughts drew to a boil. She sought out the head mouse and chopped off his feet. Then skinned his hide, which was surprisingly supple and soft.

“This hide will make for the best pair of shoes. They will be worthy of the Queen’s feet. I will become her favourite.”

And so Stella stretched and carved and moulded the hide into a pair of shoes to perfectly fit the Queen’s feet. She even used the mouse’s tail as laces to thread the eyelets of the royal shoes.

“She will be so happy!”

 

IV: Idle Shoes

The Queen was sitting on her throne when Stella entered.

“My dearest, Stella. It has been a while. What brings you home today?”

“My Lady, My Lord, I have for you the most unique of gifts. Nothing like them exists in all the world and, I suspect, never will. I have made them specifically for you.”

“I am most intrigued. Whatever do you have for me, my dear Stella?”

“Shoes.”

“Of course you do, dear. How could it be otherwise? But shoes are not unique.”

        “True. True. But every pair of shoes I make is unique and customer specific. These shoes, too, are also customer and Queen-specific. But unlike all the other shoes I have ever made, you and no one has ever had shoes made like these.”

          “Oh, I see. A special material, I assume. A new fabric? Leather? Cloth? Canvas? Let us have a go. Provide my feet with a new home.”

Stella slid the shoes onto the Queen’s feet and securely tied them.

The Queen rose from her throne, stepped down the stairs, and strutted atop the oak, parquet floor.

“These are the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn. I do not even need to break them. How ever did you come across such a comfortable material?”

 

V: Idle Salutations

Stella was escorted from the palace to the edge of the Land of Fairies and told to never return. They threw the mice shoes at her. She looked down upon them for a moment or two and thought about her actions and whether she could keep the shoes.

“These shoes are cursed. I must leave them behind. But since they are cursed, I must not leave them behind for someone else to discover. I must carry them as a reminder. It is my burden now.”

Once she crossed the boundary separating the Land of Fairies from the lands of humans, once she entered the lands of humans, the poisonous effects wore off. Her face turned red and her head throbbed.

She stopped. She felt dizzy. A haze glossed her vision. She sat down with crossed legs.

“What have I done? The fairies hate me. And once the humans find out, they will hate me too. Everything I accomplished is pointless. All my friendships stuck in the past. . . .”

Stella was for the first time experiencing shame and regret.

For over 1400 years, she dwelled in those feelings.

For over 1400 years, the images of mice and tar repeated over and over in her mind.

For over 1400 years, she could barely sleep.

 

VI: Idle While

           For over 1400 years, she was lost in her mind and lost somewhere in the world.

Shoes continued to be made, but not by her. Shoe fashions evolved, but she did not.

Everyone assumed she died in the forest and was eaten by mice.

Perhaps she was.

 

VII: Idle Rubber

           Over 1400 years later, Stella gained clarity of mind but could not forgive herself even though her actions were the direct result of poison. For over 1400 years, Stella carried the cursed mouse shoes, but now it was time part ways. She knew she could not just leave them anywhere for they still might be cursed. So she dug a hole and buried them. The hole digging reminded her of digging the furrows for the tar to run down. She paused. She sighed. She pushed the thought away.

            “Enough of this self pity. I have paid my penance. It is time to return.”

         She made haste out of the forest, walked to the coast, and rode a boat to England, where she hoped no one had ever heard of her story with shoes.

            She eventually made new beginnings in the town of Wellington. The Wellingtonians were kind to her, and she returned the kindness as she could by repairing shoes.

            She made enough money to rent a flat, feed herself, and purchase a few books about plants and trees. She studied those books. She learned about dandelions and hevea brasiliensis trees and the sap that can be drawn from them. She wasn’t quite sure what sap was, so she learned how to tap a hevea brasiliensis tree. And she did.

            “This sap is sticky like tar, but much cooler. If I heat this, stretch it into a foot shape, and cool it, I could make shoes resistant to water.”

            Through trial and error, she perfected the process and the “rubber shoes.” She called the vulcanized sap “rubber” because it sounded bouncy like the rubber.

“This is the perfect shoe for rainy days and for everyone who lives on the Beara Peninsula. And best of all, I have hurt no animals, and I never will again.” And she never harmed another living creature for as long as she existed.

But like on the Beara Peninsula, there was a Wellingtonian cobbler who was aggressive, competitive, and profit driven. 

Hiram Hutchinson was this cobbler. He learned of the rain boots, and realized how much money he could make. This greed was a learned behaviour he had not unlearned, which is why he was despised in the town despite his excellent work with shoes. He had the feet of all the customers, but once the town learned of Stella’s rain boots, his business dropped off drastically.

One night, he broke into her workshop and stole her notes on how to make rubber boots. He couldn’t believe how simple it was. He was angered at his ignorance of such an obvious creation. He smashed everything she owned and set it on fire and fled.

 

The sky had no rain for days, and eventually Stella’s residence was only ashes upon ashes.

Hutchinson regained sole control of the local shoe business, and he renamed the boots “wellies” after the town and in tribute to the duke, his most prized customer.

He did one right thing in changing the name, and that was the only proper action he ever did.

 

VIII: Idleness

          No one heard from Stella again, and no one learned of her contribution to the most wonderful of shoes – those rain boots, those rubbers, those wellies you wear to keep your feet dry on rainy days and that protect you from growing ill, like the cobbler and his bed-ridden wife.

 

IX: Idle Memories

Over 200 years later, the mouse shoes were discovered. They were so unique, so odd that people wondered what they were made of.

Shoe scientists were soon involved. They used the most sophisticated methods to determine the shoe material, which they learned was made from the hide of a mouse. They wondered why someone would make tiny shoes out of such materials. More importantly they asked, “If these were made by human hands, then why were they abandoned in the woods? Why does it appear they were only worn once?”

No one would ever know because Stella was never heard from again.

 

X: Idle Nights

           If you look at the sky on a clear night, you will believe you are looking at stars. But you are not. Those stars are eyelets Stella has yet to sow into the newest of shoes.

Tom Holmes -For over twenty years, Tom Holmes is the founding editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics. Holmes is also the author of five full-length collections of poetry, including The Book of Incurable Dreams (forthcoming from Xavier Review Press) and The Cave, which won The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award for 2013, as well as four chapbooks. He teaches at Nashville State Community College (Clarksville). His writings about wine, poetry book reviews, and poetry can be found at his blog, The Line Break: thelinebreak.wordpress.com/. Follow him on Twitter: @TheLineBreak