Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl called Ariana. She had long, shiny brown hair, hazel eyes and lips as plump and pink as raspberries. She lived with her father in a small wooden house in a village at the edge of a huge forest.
Ariana’s mother had died when she was very small, and she had no brothers or sisters, not an aunt, uncle or grandparent. It was just her and her dad – and her cat, Mouser. Sometimes Ariana felt like Mouser was her only friend in the world and he often seemed more interested in hunting small rodents than sitting on her lap.
Ariana’s father was a kind and loving man, but he worked very hard to make a living as a woodchopper in the forest. When he came home he was often too tired to do anything except sit by the fire while Ariana cooked his dinner.
And that was another reason Ariana didn’t have any friends. Her father couldn’t afford to send her to the village school for more than three mornings a week, so she always felt left out. The other kids would talk and laugh about the funny things that had happened the day before, which she could never be part of.
Even on the days she did go in, at lunchtime, when all the other kids would hang out together to eat and chat, Ariana had to rush home to grab some food for her father’s lunch and take it to him at the wood chopping yard. He left so early every day and he didn’t want to wake her up making it.
But that wasn’t the only problem. The other children at the school weren’t kind to Ariana and had a name they chanted at her when she came into the playground. They called her ‘Two Shoes’. It might not sound like a very bad name, but Ariana hated it and hung her head in shame whenever she heard it.
The reason they called her that was because while they all wore normal shoes and sandals and boots to school, the only shoes she had were a pair of wooden clogs her father had carved for her – and one was pink and one was blue. They were different colours because the only paint he had was a little bit left in two pots – one pink, one blue – and there wasn’t enough of either of them to paint both shoes. So, he’d come up with the idea to paint each clog a different colour.
‘You can start a new fashion,’ he’s said to her, proudly presenting her with the clogs, which he’d made specially for her 11th birthday. He’d looked so pleased to give her a rare treat, Ariana hadn’t had the heart to tell him how much heartache the odd-coloured clogs caused her.
One day the kids at school were particularly horrible to her. It happened because she’d come top in every subject in the end of term exams. This made the other children furious – how could the weird girl with the odd shoes, who didn’t even come to school every day, come top? It must have been rigged, they decided, by teachers feeling sorry for her. Either that, or it was a mistake. Or she’d cheated. That was the answer, they decided – she must have cheated. What could you expect from someone who wore different-coloured shoes?
In fact, the reason Ariana had come top was that she studied on her own at home every moment she could between cleaning and cooking, using books a kind teacher allowed her to borrow. Her efforts had put her far ahead of the other children who wasted a lot of their time joking and fooling around. Indeed, she was already reading the books for the next year up.
The children teased Ariana very cruelly the day the exam results came out, skipping behind her in a long row, holding hands and chanting, ‘Two Shoes, Two Shoes, silly pink and blue shoes. Exam cheat, exam cheat, doesn’t see her own feet.’
When the village clock struck twelve Ariana was very relieved to be able to run home, but she didn’t allow herself to cry until she got back to the little wooden house. Safely inside, she leaned against the closed door, kicked off the hated clogs and began to sob. Why were the children so mean to her? She’d never done anything bad to them. She couldn’t understand it.
As she wept, she felt a sudden warmth around her ankles and looked down to see Mouser walking back and forth, rubbing his thick fur against her legs and looking up at her.
‘Oh, Mouser,’ said Ariana, crouching down to stroke him, ‘you are such a good friend to me. What would I do without you?’
She picked him up and carried him in her arms like a baby, rocking him back and forth, and she sang him a lullaby she remembered her mother singing to her. It was about the only thing Ariana could remember of her.
Mouser shut his eyes with pleasure and when she stopped singing he butted his head against her arm as if he wanted her to carry on. She did and he blinked slowly at her, in a way Ariana always thought was his way of saying thank you.
She was sure Mouser communicated with her using his eyes because he never meowed or purred or made any other noises. He was a completely silent cat. He still managed to let her know what he wanted though, and when he got it he always gave her one of those slow, deliberate winks.
Ariana had made up her own name for them: ‘blink you’.
‘And blink you very much too,’ she said, closing her eyes at him. She kissed his head and put him gently back on the ground.
While Ariana set to preparing her father’s lunch – a piece of cheese, a hunk of bread and an apple – Mouser stayed close, winding around her legs as she cut the cheese on the rough wooden table.
‘You greedy boy,’ she said, smiling down at him. ‘I know you’ve eaten a mouse this morning, but you can smell the cheese, can’t you?’
She cut a tiny sliver from the block and knelt to give it to him.
‘It’s lucky you can’t tell Father that I’m wasting his favourite cheese on you,’ she said, scratching his head behind the ears. ‘But you deserve it, because you’re always here to keep me company and cheer me up, aren’t you, Mousie Moo?’
Mouser rubbed his head hard against her hand and looked up at her again with what seemed like a loving expression in his eyes. Ariana laughed and picked him up again, waltzing him around the room and singing. She stopped when the little wooden bird shot out of her father’s cuckoo clock, reminding her with its harsh cry that it was time for her to get going with the lunch.
‘Oops,’ said Ariana, turning suddenly to look at the clock, the abrupt movement making Mouser jump out of her grasp. ‘I mustn’t be late, or father’s break will be over before he’s had his lunch and he’ll be too hungry to cut all the logs this afternoon.’
Grabbing the food off the table and putting it into a basket, she slid her feet quickly into her clogs – a frown crossing her face as she did so – and ran out of the house. Before she could shut the front door, Mouser shot out of it, as he often did, running between her legs and making her laugh again.
To get to the path into the forest Ariana had to walk past the school and was distressed to see that all the kids were out in the playground. She hurried past with her head down, hoping no one would notice her, but no such luck – the meanest girl of them all spotted her and started loudly chanting the catty rhyme. Her horrible friends rushed over to join her, and Ariana started to run, unable to stop the tears pouring down her cheeks.
She didn’t stop until she came out on the other side of the village, where she put the basket on the ground and wiped her face with her apron. As she did so she was surprised to feel a familiar warmth around her legs. When she looked down she saw Mouser’s very distinctive thick, bushy tail.
‘Hello, my lovely boy,’ she said, surprised. He’d never followed her this far before. ‘Have you come with me to cheer me up? How lovely.’
He looked up at her with what she thought of as his smiling expression and Ariana tickled his neck.
‘Well, I mustn’t be late, Mousie. I’ll see you when I get back and you can have another piece of cheese.’
She picked up the basket and set off again and was surprised to see Mouser was coming with her. He trotted along beside her for a little while, but once they entered the forest he started dashing off to the sides of the path, exploring the trees and bushes. Then, he would dart out and wait for her to catch up before setting off again.
Ariana grinned, delighted to have company on her lonely walk through the woods. She’d been doing it every day since her mother died, and although she’d come to know the forest well and her father reassured her there was nothing to be afraid of there, she still felt a little nervous every time she ventured into it.
The trees were so tall that it was really quite dark even on the sunniest days, and while it wasn’t silent, because there was always a breeze rustling the leaves and birds calling, she couldn’t stop feeling as if she was being watched, however silly she told herself it was.
She hurried on, knowing she’d left later than she should have, when she suddenly realised she couldn’t see Mouser anymore. He’d darted off to the right side of the path but hadn’t come back out again as he had before.
Ariana stopped and chewed her lower lip, wondering what to do. Should she wait for him? Would he be able to find his way back to the house on his own? What if he was lost in the forest, or was attacked by a bigger animal?
She was already late with her father’s lunch, but she couldn’t bear the thought of her little cat, her only friend, all alone in the unfamiliar forest as night fell. Ariana turned right off the path by a bush with big white flowers she’d seen him disappear under.
‘Mousie!’ she called out, ‘Mousie, where are you? Please come back, I’m going to be late with father’s lunch!’
Ariana didn’t expect him to reply, but she did hope he might come running out of the undergrowth. But there was no sign of him. She decided to keep going on the small, well-defined path, knowing she only had to turn around and go back the way she’d come to get back to the main track through the forest.
She kept going a little longer, calling Mouser’s name with increasing desperation, until the sudden call of a cuckoo reminded her of the clock at home. With a start, she realised she must turn back immediately and run the rest of the way to the logging camp.
She spun around to head back along the path she’d come down and nearly fell over with surprise. It wasn’t there anymore. Where she was sure she’d walked was a tight thicket of bushes.
Ariana tried to push through them, thinking she could get back to the path somehow, but they were covered with sharp thorns. She cried out in pain as they scratched the skin on her arms.
‘Mouser!’ she cried out again, this time in fear. ‘Mouser, are you here?’
But still there was no sign of him. She turned around in a circle to check she hadn’t missed the way, but she realised she had no choice. There was only one path, and though she was sure it was in the opposite direction from the way back to the main forest track again, she had no choice but to continue along it.
Off she set, very close to tears, constantly looking out for Mouser or for a way through to turn back, but there were no gaps between the thorny bushes and towering trees.
After what seemed like ages, the path widened a little. Bluebells were growing where more light could get through the forest canopy, first just a few here and there but gradually getting thicker, with mostly blue flowers and a few pretty pink ones mixed in as well.
Although she knew she was lost and was very afraid, Ariana couldn’t help enjoying the lovely flowers and, cheered up by them, she kept going, walking as fast as she could until suddenly the trees opened up and she came to an abrupt halt.
She was standing at the edge of a round clearing absolutely carpeted with bluebells, surrounded by trees.
It was so beautiful. Sunshine poured down through the large gap in the tree canopy, and the heavenly smell of the flowers floated on the breeze. Then something extraordinary struck her. There was a mix of blue and pink bluebells in the clearing, as there had been on the path – but all the blue flowers were on one side and all the pink ones on the other.
‘How unusual,’ said Ariana to herself, her clever mind racing as she wondered whether it was to do with different rock underlying the soil, releasing different minerals, or maybe the amount of sun that got through on each side.
But before she could ponder any further reasons, she noticed something else. Sitting right in the middle of the clearing, smiling at her, was Mouser. And now it did seem as though he were really smiling at her. It wasn’t her interpreting his cat features as it suited her – he was definitely smiling.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he said.
Ariana dropped her basket and took a step back. Mouser laughed.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, putting his head on one side. ‘I know it’s a surprise, because I don’t normally make any noise, let alone talk human, but in very special circumstances, I can. Come over here and we can chat.’
Ariana was so surprised she didn’t think she’d be able to say anything, but found herself walking towards him.
‘Do sit down,’ said Mouser, looking up at her as she stood awkwardly a few feet away. ‘I’m still me. I’d love you to scratch behind my ears.’
Ariana happily did as he asked.
‘Ooh lovely,’ said the cat. ‘Yes, just there, that’s the spot. Oops, left a bit, down … ah … okay, that’s enough.’
Ariana found herself laughing, although she did wonder if she’d caught a cold and had a fever and was dreaming the whole thing. But she decided she might as well enjoy it, whatever was happening. Who knew when she would get the chance to talk to Mouser again? But what did you say to a cat?
‘Er, how are you today, Mr Mouser?’ she asked. ‘Are you enjoying the forest?’
Mouser smiled at her again.
‘I love it,’ he said. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve been here. At night, you know, we cats like to roam … And thank you for asking, I am very well. I couldn’t be better actually, because I’ve been waiting for this day all my life …’
‘Gosh,’ said Ariana, ‘do explain.’
‘Well,’ said Mouser, sitting down like a sphinx with his front paws folded under him and looking up at Ariana with his steady gaze, ‘as you know, I’m a silent cat. And I’ve been waiting all my life for the one day when I would be able to talk – and this is the day.’
‘How come it’s today?’
‘Because you have been kind to me for 3333 days today. Without a single break or lapse, from when you first started to walk, you’ve been kind to me. You’ve never chased me or pulled my tail. You haven’t picked me up roughly, shoved me rudely off a seat or tried to dress me up.’
He shuddered slightly as he said the last thing and Ariana couldn’t help giggling.
‘You even learned how to say thank you properly to a cat,’ said Mouser, looking at her with a serious expression.
Ariana blinked at him slowly, and with great gravity he did the same back.
‘Blink you,’ he said.
‘Blink you,’ said Ariana, grinning with delight. ‘So, you’ve been able to understand me saying that all this time. How wonderful. But tell me, Mouser, can all cats talk if someone is kind to them for 3333 days?’
‘Only silent ones,’ said Mouser, raising his little nose in the air, ‘because we’re magic.’
Ariana felt her eyebrows shoot up. She did realise it was pretty unusual to be talking to a cat in any circumstance, but to hear the word ‘magic’ mentioned like it was the most normal thing in the world was something else again.
‘My mother was a witch’s cat,’ said Mouser, casually, stretching out his front legs. ‘I was one of eight kittens in her litter – witch’s cats only ever have one litter – and she gave each of us a special power. One could fly, another could shapeshift and so on, but she chose to make me the most special thing, which is silent.’
Ariana listened in silence herself, wondering if that was what it felt like to be a silent cat.
‘The thing about silent cats, like me,’ continued Mouser, ‘is that because we aren’t making a big racket ourselves the whole time – really, some cats never shut up – we can listen more closely on different wavelengths and we can tune in to human feelings. This means that if we find a human special enough to be kind to us for 3333 consecutive days – and not all silent cats are lucky enough, by any means – we know what their heart’s desire is and on our special day, we can grant it.’
‘Can you only speak today, then?’ said Ariana, sadly.
‘I’m afraid so,’ replied Mouser. ‘It’s just on the 3333rd day, but I don’t think that matters. We could already communicate very well without words, couldn’t we? And how like you, my dear girl, to think about me and not the bit I mentioned about your heart’s desire …’
Ariana felt herself blush. It was an idea so far removed from her normal life, she could hardly bear to hope it might be true – and she didn’t really know what her heart’s desire was.
‘Do I have to tell you what it is?’ she asked.
Mouser shook his head.
‘No, no,’ he said, ‘I’ve always known.’
‘What is it?’ asked Ariana, cautiously.
‘I can’t tell you, but just be patient. It will unfold,’ he said.
They sat in silence for a few moments, Ariana stroking his silky back, when the cuckoo suddenly started calling again and she sprang to her feet, accidentally pushing Mouser away.
‘My father’s lunch!’ she said. ‘I’ve been so enjoying talking to you, I completely forgot about it. He’ll be so hungry; he could have an accident with his axe and it will all be my fault …’
‘Don’t panic,’ said Mouser, turning around to lick the fur on his shoulders a couple of times, before saying, ‘it’s lucky you didn’t surprise me like that before today, it might have broken the magic.’
‘Oh, sorry, Mouser,’ said Ariana, immediately crouching down to stroke his head, ‘but I must get going. Do you know the way?’
‘I do,’ he said, ‘but you don’t need to go. Your father has had his lunch. He’s had mutton stew with vegetables and dumplings, and apple pie. He’s very happy.’
Ariana looked at her beloved cat with a puzzled frown on her face. How was that possible? What if Mouser was making it up?
‘Do you think you can trust me on that?’ said Mouser.
She thought for a moment. If she could accept that she was talking to her cat in a forest glade with pink bluebells on one side and blue on the other, she could believe anything.
She sat down again. ‘I trust you,’ she said, realising as she said it that she really did trust him.
‘Good,’ said Mouser, ‘because if you didn’t, the heart’s desire thing won’t work, so now I can get started on that. This is what we have to do. Close your eyes and imagine yourself happy and smiling. Don’t think about what’s made you that way, just feel it. Not happy for the odd moment, as you are when you dance with me or have time to read your schoolbooks, but really happy all the time, as your normal state.’
Ariana reached out and put one hand on his furry back for reassurance and pictured herself standing in her father’s house feeling happy. Then she imagined herself walking out of the door and still feeling happy.
She opened one eye.
‘Can I really imagine myself happy anywhere?’ she asked.
‘Anywhere at all,’ said Mouser. ‘The more places the better.’
So, summoning up all her strength, Ariana imagined herself feeling happy walking through the village, into the schoolyard and sitting in the classroom. It took a lot of courage to do it, but she managed, all the while pushing down thoughts telling her that thinking like this would just make it worse the next time she went to school and it wasn’t like that.
‘Try to silence those doubts, Ariana, my dear,’ said Mouser. ‘I can feel them coming off you. I know it’s hard to go against what you’ve experienced all these years, but if you can block it out, we can do this together.’
Ariana started again, picturing herself waking up happy, having breakfast happy, getting dressed happy and so on, until she got into the swing of it. She could even imagine herself talking to the nastiest girl at the school and feeling happy.
‘Excellent!’ said Mouser. ‘You’ve done it. Look around you.’
Ariana opened her eyes and saw that the blue and pink bluebells were now randomly mixed together, not divided into two separate areas anymore. She gasped and looked down at her clogs – was that the magic? Would they be the same colour? But no. They were exactly the same – one pink, one blue.
Mouser laughed. ‘I know what you were thinking,’ he said, ‘and it would be nice for you to have shoes of one colour, but this is bigger than that. You’ll have to wait and see. As I said, it will unfold.’
‘Thank you,’ said Ariana, hoping her disappointment hadn’t been too obvious, ‘or rather, blink you.’
‘You are very welcome,’ said Mouser, ‘and it’s been so lovely to talk to you, but now my time as a talking cat is coming to an end and I will have to go back to my old silent ways.’
‘But at least I’ll know I’m not imagining it, when I think I know what you’re telling me,’ said Ariana.
‘You never were,’ said Mouser, butting his head against her hand in search of another ear scratch, which Ariana happily supplied. ‘But now we must go. You know the way to the main path, back the way you came.’
Ariana turned around and saw that the path that had closed up behind her earlier had opened again. She could see all the way back to the main track.
‘I’m almost not surprised anymore,’ she said, turning back to Mouser, but as she spoke he ran off at a gallop.
‘See you at home,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’ve got a rodent to attend to first.’
Ariana didn’t see him again on the walk home and while she kept looking out for signs of a change in her life with every step, she didn’t see any. She passed three girls from school coming out of the village shop and they pulled rude faces at her, so no change there. But she wasn’t ready to give up hope yet. If a cat could talk to you, there was every chance it could grant you your heart’s desire as well.
When she got home, she was pleased to find she hadn’t been away from home as long as she’d feared, and her father didn’t come back until his dinner was nearly ready. As he came through the door, she put down her wooden spoon and ran to meet him.
‘Oh Father, I’m so sorry I didn’t bring your lunch today. I got, er, waylaid …’
‘Don’t worry, my dear, it’s time for me to tell you I didn’t actually need you to bring my lunch today. In fact, you don’t need to bring it ever again. I’ve made different arrangements for my lunch.’
‘Gosh, that’s exciting,’ said Ariana, thrilled that Mouser had been right and very happy that she wouldn’t have to make that long walk every day anymore – it meant she would have more time to study.
‘And I have more good news for you,’ said her father. ‘You are going to go to school every day, for the full day, from tomorrow onwards. Your teacher stopped me as I was walking past the school just now and told me you had come top of your year and that you’ve been granted a special scholarship, so I won’t have to pay for you to go to school anymore.’
Ariana was so happy, she jumped up and hugged her father and then held out her skirts and polkaed round the room. As she was doing it, Mouser walked in through the front door and she scooped him up and danced him around with her. Now she knew his black furry face really was smiling up at her. She stopped dancing and blinked at him very slowly three times.
Blink you. Blink you. Blink you.
When Ariana and her father sat down to eat dinner, she could see he was looking more serious than usual and it didn’t take long before he told her why.
‘I’ve got something else to tell you,’ he said.
Ariana put down her soup spoon and gave him her full attention.
‘My new lunch arrangement is with a very nice lady I’ve come to know over the past few months. Her brother is another woodcutter and he introduced me to her. She’s a widow. Her name is Marianne and her husband died in an accident. Like me, she has just one child: a boy, who is exactly your age.’
Ariana said nothing, just looked at him expectantly. This sounded interesting. She glanced around to see if she could spot Mouser. She wanted to see the expression on his face. She suspected it would be the satisfied smile he had whenever she gave him a treat.
‘I’ve known Marianne a few months now, Ariana, and I must be honest and tell you that many times I’ve fed the food you so faithfully brought me to her dog, because I was shy to tell you that a beautiful woman, who I was falling in love with, was giving me lunch now.’
Now Ariana’s eyes were open very wide.
‘If you would be happy with the idea, I would like to marry her, and have her and her son come and live here with us. He’s a fine young man, called Ian, with a good heart and a merry sense of fun. I think you will be very good friends.’
‘Oh Father,’ said Ariana, jumping to her feet and running around the table to hug him. ‘There’s nothing I’d like more.’
As she rested her head on her father’s shoulder, she looked around again for Mouser to blink at him and saw him stalking out of the front door, his bushy tail held proudly aloft like a fine plume.
Ariana’s father and Marianne got married and, as he had predicted, Ariana and Ian quickly became close friends – and the best thing of all was that he went to school with her every day.
He wasn’t brainy like she was, but he was funny and kind and really good at drawing pictures, and everyone liked him. In no time the children stopped calling Ariana names and accepted her as one of the gang.
Making it even better, the nastiest girl and her family moved away. After she’d gone, many of the other children said sorry to Ariana, explaining they’d only gone along with the name-calling because they’d been scared of the girl.
Ariana forgave them all immediately and soon had a fine circle of friends, although she still walked to and from school every day with Ian and they never ran out of things to talk about.
One morning Ariana was dressed and ready to leave the house, but she couldn’t find her clogs anywhere. She ran outside to ask Ian if he’d seen them and found him sitting on the edge of the porch with a paintbrush in his hand – and one of her clogs in the other hand. The two practically empty pots of paint were next to him.
Ariana stared as she realised what he was doing. He was painting pink stripes onto the blue clogs and blue stripes onto the pink clogs – so she would have two matching shoes.
‘Oh, thank you, Ian,’ she said, rushing to sit beside him. ‘Why did I never think of that?’
‘Well, I found these two old pots of paint, with just a tiny bit in the bottom of each one,’ he said. ‘My first idea was that there might just be enough to mix together to give you purple clogs, but there wasn’t. And then I thought stripes would be much more fun anyway …’
He put the second clog on the ground next to her.
‘Here you are then, try them on.’
Ariana slid her feet into the clogs and laughed with joy. She loved her stripey clogs and danced and skipped all the way to school in them.
The next day one of the mothers from the school arrived at Ariana’s house and asked her father if he would make some of his stripey clogs for her son and her daughter, who had been pestering her for them ever since they’d seen Ariana’s. The mother paid in advance and he used the money to buy more paint.
By the end of the week every child in the school had placed an order for stripey clogs with Ariana’s father and he’d had to ask the village shop to order more paint.
Two weeks later, the first parents arrived with their children from a neighbouring village, and so it went on until people were coming from far and wide. Ariana’s father was able to give up his job in the forest and work at home with Marianne, carving and painting clogs together all day long.
‘We need a name for our clogs,’ he said at the dinner table one evening, ‘so people will know they’re ours. Shall we put our family name on them, or do you have any other ideas, Ariana?’
‘Oh yes, Father,’ she said, smiling broadly. ‘I’d like to call them “Two Shoes”.’
So, from that day on, every pair of clogs they made had the words ‘Two Shoes’ painted inside them, one word in pink, the other in blue. And Mouser had as much cheese to eat as he wanted.
THE END