KRIKKIT’S SHOES : D’ARRAGON PROPHECY

The Saturday morning sun shone through Krikkit’s window, awakening her. She had been dreaming about the mysterious old man with the silvery grey beard again. He was kind, telling her many stories and fables. In each dream, just as he was about to tell her his name, she awoke. It had happened every time.

Krikkit stretched and climbed out of bed, going right away to her bookshelf. She would read for a while, as she did every day. She had a brand new book. She loved her books which were full of fantasy, sorcerers and magic. She sighed as she read, wishing her real life was full of the same kind of magic.

When she heard the knock on her door, she scurried to put the book out of sight. Her mother walked in carrying her breakfast on a tray. “Your room, Krikkit. As soon as you have eaten. It’s Saturday, you know.” She sighed and shook her head as she surveyed the chaos of her only daughter’s room.

The ten year old winced at the look of disgust on her mother’s face. She kicked an empty chocolate box under the bed, hoping her mother had not seen it. Krikkit sat on the end of her bed, and ate quickly. Her mother’s words, as she left the house for her shopping trip, rang sharply in her ears. She had heard them a million times.

“When I return, I expect to find your room as neat as a pin and everything in it shining and clean.”

Looking around, Krikkit sighed at the task that lay ahead. Several pairs of jeans lay in a heap in one corner of the room where she had tossed them. Tee shirts and blouses adorned almost every piece of furniture. Fingerprints and smudges covered the mirror. In front of it lay topless tubes of the colored lip gloss that Krikkit loved because of its strawberry flavor.

She stood making faces at herself in the mirror, sweeping her long glossy brown hair into a ponytail. She wished with all her heart that her mother would someday give in to her frequent requests for a few purple streaks in her hair.

“When you are older,” was her mother’s usual answer.

Krikkit’s dark brown eyes stared at her reflection for a moment as she tried to picture exactly where the streaks should go. She rubbed at the band of freckles that spanned her small nose, wishing them gone. “I guess I can’t really complain about a couple of hours cleaning my room,” she muttered to herself.

Krikkit and her mother had quarreled many times about her messy room. Finally her mother came up with a plan. She did not complain about her room all week and Krikkit could mess it up as much as she wanted to. Saturday was the big clean up, however. The young girl knew she could not get out of it.

Krikkit finally found the energy necessary to start her chores and began by dragging all her stuff out from under the bed. She pulled out a sweater and her favorite bright yellow socks which had been missing since Monday.

A few books came next, along with a pile of school papers. Among them lay her math test she was supposed to correct and hand in to her teacher. Krikkit smoothed out the wrinkles, putting it carefully on her dresser, ready for school on Monday.

She peeked under the bed and found that there was only one item left. It was a small, oblong, wooden box that she could just barely reach. Puzzled, she dragged it out. With a start, she remembered putting the box there. Finding it buried in the sand at the beach one day, Krikkit had loved its mystical carved figures and now wondered how it had been forgotten.

It opened easily. A smile lit up her face. Before her lay a pair of the most beautifully different shoes she had ever seen. They were made of shiny black leather and looked brand new. The soles were purple. The wooden box had protected them from the water, it seemed and Krikkit turned the shoes this way and that, admiring the sheen of the fine black leather. She had never seen a pair of shoes like these, which fascinated her even more.

Krikkit glanced quickly at the dolphin clock that adorned one wall. If she cleaned her room in a hurry, there would still be time to try on the shoes before her mother returned. Krikkit had never worked so fast in all her young life. She put everything back in its rightful place in less than thirty minutes.

Down to the family room she went, the box tucked under her arm. Sipping on a forbidden can of coke, Krikkit felt she had more than earned the reward. “Your teeth will rot if you drink too many,” her mother always said, so Krikkit was allowed only a few.

Taking the shoes from the box again, she stared at them in admiration. Kicking off her shabby old running shoes, she slowly donned the shiny black leather ones. The girl was thrilled to feel them on her feet. They fit so well and felt so right. Krikkit loved them.

Excitement filling her, she proudly pranced around the room. It almost felt as if the shoes were doing the walking all by themselves. At first Krikkit liked the feeling that she was following them. However, after a while, the child came to realize that she could not stop her feet from moving. They just kept going. Krikkit tried to slow herself to a stop to remove the shoes. It just did not work. “These shoes really are walking all by themselves!” she cried out loud, filled with disbelief.

The shoes, Krikkit was beginning to find out, had a will of their own and she wished she had never put them on. It was becoming all too clear that she would have to go wherever the shoes decided to take her. Krikkit was afraid there was just nothing else she could do.

Suddenly, Krikkit felt her body jerk and her feet leave the floor. She began to rise straight toward the ceiling. Fearful that she would crash into it, she covered as much of her face and head as she could. After what seemed to her to be a dreadfully long time, Krikkit realized she had not hit anything. Cautiously spreading her fingers apart, she peeked through them.

Shocked by what was happening to her, Krikkit discovered she was surrounded by a misty purple cloud. Sparks and bursts of a strange white light passed through it, making sharp crackling sounds.

Mystified and frightened at the thought of falling, Krikkit reached out for something to hold onto. There was nothing however, and she felt herself begin to descend. The young girl became even more fearful at the thought of injury. To her vast relief, she was set gently on the ground, the purple mist falling away and the white bursts of light disappearing.

At that moment, Krikkit felt a cool breeze cross her face. Discovering she was standing in the middle of a road, Krikkit felt dazed and quite bewildered. “Where am I?” she whispered.

A few moments ago she had been in her own living room and now, somewhere else. It was a place she did not know. The room she had been in a few moments ago had disappeared. In fact, the whole house was no longer there. Krikkit rubbed her eyes several times. Where on earth was she? Nothing was familiar to the young girl who, it seemed, had left her ordinary life far behind her. No matter how many times she looked, her home did not reappear. She finally became aware that the shoes were now still and she was not moving at all. She could now walk easily she discovered, much to her relief. The madness had ended. Krikkit looked behind her once more, only to find that her house had still not reappeared as she had hoped it would.

“I must have fallen asleep and I’m dreaming.” The sound of her own voice made her jump as it echoed eerily through the countryside. She felt very much alone. How she wished she were back in her own messy room. At least it was a familiar place and she knew every inch of it.