The storyteller is alone, and the weather has turned. He doesn’t mind the cold wind off the sea as much as he minds the solitude. It is like this sometimes. If no one stops for him, then he becomes invisible, as if the people have collectively given themselves permission to look away.

People are like sheep, he thinks. There is either a crowd of them or there is no one, and when no one is there, stories suffocate, and the man fails to earn what he needs to eat.

He winds the key on the monkey’s back. His mechanical friend opens its mouth and shrieks.

That stops them. Nothing like a cry of pain to capture the attention of people who suddenly remember they are not suffering.

“I hear your footsteps,” the storyteller says, quietly so that they must come closer. “Tell me, are any among you wearing red shoes?”

No one speaks. No one ever does. Red shoes are rare, even though the stuff that makes the color—iron—is everywhere. Blood reeks of it. Weapons are made of it.

“Not a one among you wears red shoes,” the storyteller says. “And I shall tell you why that is wise.

“Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl. She knew her beauty set her above all the rest, and she became consumed by vanity. She wanted shoes that set her further apart.

“Red shoes. Red, the color of blood, of lips, of flowers asking for bees to dip deep into their throats.”

He pauses. The audience is breathing, curling their toes, imagining blood and combat and lips and the stings of bees—all things that set human hearts to race, things that churn the red river inside all living bodies.

This is what he wants people to feel when they listen to him: to be carried on a river of blood to the sea where he’s set up his nets. People are fish to him. They are something to catch.

“Whenever the girl wore the shoes, she thought of nothing but her own beauty. Beauty is a fine thing for a girl to have, but when it is all that she thinks of, she becomes useless.”

“Useless,” the audience whispers. They sound like the tide coming in.

The storyteller tugs the line. “A boy asked her to dance with him, but she would not keep step. She would not follow his lead. Instead the shoes, given life by the vanity inside her, danced to their own tune. They took their own steps. And they danced the girl away from the boy.”

He lets his words crescendo. He is making music now, writing a song on the air.

“She could not stop dancing. She could not stop! Many people tried to help, but they could not touch her feet without slicing their hands. Her dancing even caused injury to the king. The king!

“The girl, consumed with her own vanity, danced herself out of the kingdom. She danced into a place of trees and wild animals. She danced until her skin turned dry as bark. Until her bones were branches. She danced herself to death. The only thing that remained were her shoes.”

He has reeled them in from the sea of blood, red-drenched fish, gasping for breath. He winds the monkey again. The mouth opens. Shrieks. Coins fall in.

He will eat well tonight. He does not feel so alone.