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Alison Littlewood
In memory of David Bowie (1947–2016)
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BLOOD RED AND magnificent, the shoes rested on A cushion of the deepest midnight velvet. They shone beneath the light of a thousand lamps, suspended from the ceiling like stars. The red shoes, magnified by the general aura of pomp and ceremony, looked large enough to fit anyone, but I knew that such was not the case. Legend had it that they would fit only those who deserved to be chosen by a prince for his future queen. It was all exaggeration, I was certain, and yet the stories lingered.
The shoes were set by the door, where all the fine young ladies of the land paused to stare as they entered, each standing a little taller as they did so, pulling in their waists and pouting. The prince sat upon his dais and appeared to be in conversation with his ministers, but one never knew when he might be watching, when he might be judging. I did not trouble to smile. I had barely merited a ticket and had no expectation. The prince would choose a dancing partner; the shoes would be presented to her; she would don them and they would whirl about the room, the object of everyone’s envy or delight, depending on their relationship with the young lady, and then he would choose again. Upon the morrow, if the fates smiled, he would announce his choice of bride.
Finally, it was my turn to stare up at the shoes. It was curious that they looked so very lovely. I knew their history. They had been in the court for centuries, though they had not always been red. They were white, once; white for a wedding. Now they were incarnadined with the blood of broad-footed maidens, or long-toed, or clumsy-heeled, harrowing their flesh in their effort to win their prize. Even their very first wearer, it was said, had suffered for the love of dancing. She had danced so long and so far she found herself lost in the forest and had begged a woodcutter to cut off her feet, to make it stop; her heart too was lily white, and she could not bear the wilderness, the moonlight. And the woodcutter had done it—he took up his axe and struck them off, instead of simply removing the shoes, maybe giving her a quiet talking to, pointing out the path homeward. They were red inside and out, those shoes, and I did not stand long before them, though I caught a glimpse of the prince as I turned away. His hair was shaggy and yellow, his smile white and brilliant, as I moved to take in my surroundings for what must surely be the first and only time.
The finery was dazzling. The Celestial Ball they had named it, and celestial it was. The ceiling and the floor were painted with what must have been the movement of the stars; of fate itself. It was crowded with young ladies wearing their most splendid gowns, bedecked with diamonds white and yellow, and sapphires all the colours of the sky. Their brothers and fathers had clouds painted on their cheeks, or raindrops that fell like tears from their eyes.
The song-master was the best of all: at once terrifying and thrilling, he was adorned with a lightning bolt that ran from his forehead to the edge of his lip, and his hair stood out in points as if he’d already been struck. Some said that he lived with the goblins in a castle of his own, and in that moment I could believe it, for what a spell he wove with his music! He gestured to his orchestra and the violins rose, yearning and pleading, so that I could not help but shift my feet, though no one had asked me to dance.
And then I started, for a courtier was at my shoulder, bearing aloft a soft velvet cushion, and upon that cushion—
Everything stopped. I drew back, moving aside for him to pass, but he did not pass; instead he held the cushion out towards me and bowed. The breath stopped in my throat. I had nothing to recommend me; my dress was plain grey satin; I had no jewels; my hair, although golden, was not preened and sheened like the rest, and my hands were coarsened with housework.
Behind the courtier stood the prince, a golden sun embroidered and glittering upon his chest. He was waiting; I suddenly realised he was waiting, and I hastily bowed in turn and bent to remove my plain old shoes, knowing that the red ones would not fit. Of course they would not. My heart thudded; I could scarcely catch my breath. I was no one, a poor shadow, a Cinderella, and soon he would realise his mistake. One shoe was passed to me and I saw, briefly, that I had been right. Inside, it was darkened to a dull purple-brown, mottled and stained. And as it passed under my nose I realised there was a smell, not just of sweat but a meat-scent redolent of the butcher’s.
But the shoes did fit. First one and then the other slipped onto my feet as if they belonged to me. Or perhaps it was me that fit them: I did not know. Whichever it was, I was outwardly the right shape, and in the next moment I was held in the prince’s arms and a dart of something like joy pierced me. I did not look anywhere except into his eyes but I felt the stares from all around, the envy—perhaps, even, the admiration.
He led me to the space left empty for him—for us—and I glanced around to see all the surrounding faces lit up with the colours of jewels and the burning lamps—greedy, eager faces, angry faces, closed faces, crimson and golden and emerald. They floated against the oncoming darkness outside the window, and I floated too as the music carried me, the prince’s arms lending me a grace I had never possessed before. And why not? The other women were gaudy, overly adorned, made heavy with the burden of their gorgeous dresses and their elaborate manners, but I was lightness itself as we whirled and dipped and turned. As we went, the prince made some little conversation about the woods, the wilderness, about hunting; and then I saw a face among the rest that was not gaudy, and it smiled upon me, though its expression was somehow sad, and I smiled back.
It was my sister—one of my ugly step-sisters. Her face was lit by the one jewel she possessed: a moonstone. Some said that such stones were made of solidified moonbeams and it appeared so now, its glow simple and white. The light it gave was subtle, serious even, and it lent a dignity to her gaze. She was never really ugly, not to me, though she wore her dark hair short and refused to curl it and usually disdained any ornament. She preferred to wander beneath the trees than to join in such parades of artificiality and show.
I realised the music was fading, slowing, dying. The prince swung me about in one final circle and bowed; I remembered to give a deep curtsy as the courtier rushed forward with his cushion, and it was all over. I gave a smile, a real smile, one which I felt must glow upon my features as I anticipated the delight of talking over what had happened with my sister, and then the prince waved the courtier away; the man withdrew with his cushion; the red shoes remained on my feet.
A collective sigh rose up as the song-master signalled the commencement of the azure waltz. The prince’s arm seized my waist and off we went again, blind now to all the faces around us, caught up only in the glory of it, the triumph of being chosen, of being elevated above all the rest; it felt for a moment as if I belonged, and as if all the world smiled upon me.
We danced the cobalt waltz and the aquamarine, the palatinate allemande, the periwinkle gavotte and the indigo courante. I could feel the shoes dampening beneath my soles and I knew that my feet must be ripped and bleeding. I wasn’t used to the inflexible straps, the soaring heels, but the stories were true: I didn’t feel it, not then. I did not stop, could not. I did not even want to.
Then the music was fading, the song-master giving his bow, and the night was over. The prince had danced with no one but me. Now that we had stopped I felt only confusion, and then he clasped both my hands in his and fell to his knee.
I froze in horror. This was not what was supposed to happen; it was not the rule. And yet everyone gathered around us, all sighs and gasps and eager exclamations as my blood turned to ice in my veins. This was no longer a dance, some fantasy brought to brief life by the goblin-master’s airs; there was too much of reality in it, and I did not know what to think.
I tried to draw my hand away, but the prince would not release his grip. He made some jovial comment about my fitting shyness, about how it was only to be expected, desired even, and then his lips moved as he made his proposal, and I could not hear a word. It was as if sound had stopped, at least for me, and then it returned all at once, rushing in upon me. Everyone clapped and cheered, and I did not know what to do; I could only turn and flee from him and all of them, and so I did. I darted a glance back over my shoulder as I went, and saw his stare, half-confused and half-angry as I ran.
I careered out into the cold night air and at last sensation began to return, bringing pain in its wake. Suddenly, the torture in my feet was exquisite. I tore the red shoes from me and left them abandoned on the palace steps as I entered the shadows and hurried towards home, lit only by the face of the ancient and knowing moon.
––––––––
I had been right: I had seen the palace for the first and last time. The announcement of the prince’s hasty engagement to the daughter of an earl made my fall from grace complete. And it hurt, I cannot deny it. The looks I was given in the street...the names that were hissed after me. I did not dance again for a long time. I did not even want to go out of doors. But beneath it all, I knew that loving him would have broken me. I was not meant to be a princess. I was no acquiescent maiden, no tender flower; I couldn’t have simply fallen into his arms.
There was only one person in the world who did not spurn me: my sister, Elise. We shut ourselves away in a ruin of a tower in the forest, and there we stayed, until we were old enough for the village children to think us witches instead of princesses; someone to fear, not to rescue. They would throw stones as we passed. Their parents behaved as if we weren’t there. Even my other step-sister, the truly ugly one, her meanness concealed beneath gleaming ringlets and becoming blushes, averted her face when we went by. I heard her say once that the shame would kill her, but it did not; eventually, she married and moved away.
My sister and I remained. Elise spent her days cultivating a garden about the tower, and at night she showed me the stars and the moonlight. She named the constellations and sang to me and finally we danced again, barefoot, where no one could see. I felt the stars looking down and the moonlight on my skin and I knew what the villagers would say: that the moon had made us mad, or that we danced because we were already mad, or both, and I did not care. We made up our own steps and they were out of time with all the world, but we fit each other.
Of course, she wasn’t actually my sister, not really. Not in any way that mattered.
We held each other beneath the full moon and we took it in turns to place the moonstone in our mouths, to try to see the future. I saw nothing, and Elise only looked sad. She would try to cheer me then by telling stories of the moon and the stone that was its namesake. She said the moonstone was for luck, for healing. She said it was a comfort where love must be kept a secret. She said that its mother, the moon, was driven in a silver chariot across the heavens, drawn by snow-white horses, and that the sun god desired her. He chased her for ever across the sky, but he never could catch her.
Despite her story, one day, a man came. He was a woodcutter. He was not yet old but his wife had died and he said he wanted a mother for his children. He looked at my sister when he said it—what did she know about motherhood? But he was a blockhead, maybe even an ancestor of the same damned fool who cut off a girl’s feet because she didn’t know when to stop dancing.
He came one day when Elise had gone to market, her face covered by a hood. He didn’t seem to notice the difference, though my hair had always been golden where hers was dark—or perhaps he did not care, or perhaps he thought he could possess us both. I went to the highest window in the tower and he called to me, his voice part persuasive, part mocking, to let down my hair. Did he think me an imprisoned princess in a story, waiting for him to free me? Did he think he could climb my tresses like a rope without ripping it by the roots from my head?
Instead, I ran for the scissors and I cut off my hair. I threw it down to him with words of contempt and he retreated with his prize; he did not return to the tower.
He found my sister, though. He found Elise one day in the forest as she gathered firewood. She refused him. He tried to force her and she beat him with a branch. She was no trembling flower either but he beat her too and she told me of it through swollen lips, her bruised eyes staring unblinking at the ground.
Then he accused her of witchcraft, for real this time, and no one had any difficulty in believing that. The fire burned high. Soon only the moonstone remained and I gathered it to my heart, still warm from the pyre, and I retreated to my tower. I stayed there, while the garden grew into a tangle of thorns. For a long time, I slept.
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Years went by and the thorns grew thick about the tower. It was a voice that woke me one morning, crying faintly from the other side of their tangled darkness, and I sat up, brushing the sleep from my eyes. I did not know how many years had passed. I did not know what marks they had left upon my face. We had no mirror in our tower, my step-sister and I; our eyes had been the other’s mirror, each of us believing the other the most beautiful of all.
The voice wasn’t harsh, wasn’t threatening, though it was a man’s voice, and that gave me caution as I pulled my robe about me and made my way down the spiral staircase. The stone was crumbling; birds had nested within, and I stepped over their abandoned and broken eggs.
When I went out into the sunshine there was no one. Only the bees danced; only birds sang. The sun was high and the sky was the palest blue, and there before me, set upon what had once been a bed of strawberries, was a large white box.
I walked slowly towards it. There was a symbol on the box, embossed and foiled with gold: a glowing sun, the emblem of the king. It was tied with a purple velvet ribbon. There was nothing else, no letter, no one to explain, and yet it was with a sense of inevitability that I pulled the bow and released the cord. As if choreographed, the sides of the box folded in on themselves and fell open. There before me were the red shoes, strangely diminished, their colour faded at the heel, the straps frayed, though still carrying that smell; still possessing that aura of allurement, and glory, and perhaps, a little, of danger.
I knelt on the ground and stared at them. After a time I picked one up and turned it in my hands. I remembered wearing it, the crowds standing back from me, their faces turning as I turned, smiling as I smiled. And I remembered the prince, his arms strong, his demeanour so very certain as he looked upon me.
I peered down at the purple cushion at the bottom of the box. There was a card resting on it. I set down the shoe and picked it up. Printed there, in the same gold as the sign of the sun, were seven words: It is never too late to dance.
The card was edged in black. She had died then, his queen, the earl’s daughter he had married so precipitately.
I closed my eyes. I need no longer be alone. I remembered the marble hall, the thousand lamps, the music. I remembered it all so clearly I could almost hear the strains of the orchestra, a hundred violins crying together, and the image of my sister’s face appeared before me: her serious face lit by a serious light, and smiling.
I realised too that I could be revenged. The people who had made her run must run. Those who had forced her to hide must hide. Those who had burned her would burn, their flesh scorching and blackening, the smoke of it rising to where she watched, in heaven...
I sighed and let the card fall from my hand. And I realised it was not all; something else was in the box, a little bundle of photographs. I picked them up and leafed through them. He had sent pictures of the ballroom, all fitted with some new kind of light, and a grand stage. There was the garden, the roses torn asunder to make room for a pool with bright awnings and more of those brilliant lights that must surely block out the stars. Another picture showed the prince, now a king, with two little children in his arms, their smiles matching his own. The last showed a capacious wardrobe, hung thickly with silken dresses, and velvet, and brocade, and the finest lace. I imagined the form that must have worn them. What must he have been thinking, to show me this? And yet I could almost feel the touch of fur, the smoothness of silk. How we had danced, the lights colouring our faces as we whirled—how those dresses would sway and swing! How beautiful it all was, and could be again.
But of course, I knew why he had sent the pictures. He had wanted to make certain of me this time. A prince never could bear the idea of the one who got away, after all. It was like the hunt: he had told me all about it, hadn’t he? As we danced—that was what he had spoken of, the way he had found a white stag, the thing of legend. He had shot and wounded it, pursuing it for days before he finally brought it down. He had boasted of his perseverance, his implacability, and I had only been able to imagine the poor creature’s terror as the baying dogs closed in.
I replaced the pictures in the box, and the card, and the red shoes, and I closed the lid. I reminded myself that I was not meant to be a princess. I was no acquiescent maiden, no tender flower. I could not live in a palace. Instead, I would remain in my tower; I would bury the moonstone in the garden, at midnight, by the light of a full moon. My sister had told me that was the way to increase fertility. And it was Elise who always tended the garden, but I would do so now. I would cut down the thorns and watch the moonflowers grow. They would open their petals in the darkest hours with only me to see them, and I would raise my eyes to the moon goddess and swear to remember always.
I left the red shoes where they lay. I would not wear them again. I was protected by good sense and old knowledge and the silver in my hair. But I could not destroy them either, no matter if it was the right thing. Even if they were dangerous, and tempered with pain, and smelled of blood, they were still so very, very beautiful.