by Day Leitao
The woman broke the silence. “You know why I’m here.”
Karina thought she did, but thinking and saying are different things, and plus she didn’t want to mention the shoes. “Uh, not really…”
The woman stared at Karina for a few long seconds, then said, “The silver shoes you have, I need them.”
Karina closed her eyes, heaviness in her chest.
“Don’t worry,” the woman said. “I won’t take them from you. In fact, that’s something you should know already. The shoes cannot be stolen.”
Or even borrowed. That explained what happened to Zoe.
The woman continued without moving her stare, “Those shoes were created by me, and they are magical, as I believe you noticed. Now you see, you might think magical shoes are a good thing to have, but that’s not true unless you know how to use them. I am the only person who can take full advantage of the power of the silver shoes. Sure, other people have worn them and thought a tiny fraction of their power was good enough. But the problem lies in all the power they don’t know how to control.”
Karina didn’t like where the conversation was going. She didn’t plan on wearing the shoes again or letting anyone see them, but she still wanted to keep them, just to know that she had something rare and special. “So you’re saying I should give you the shoes?”
The woman shook her head. “By no means. I want you to sell me the shoes. In exchange for them, I’ll grant you a wish.”
Karina almost scoffed but held herself back. The woman looked otherworldly and all, but she didn’t look like a genie or anything. “And how can you do that?”
“Well, if I don’t grant your wish, I’ll be stealing the shoes. As I explained before, and as you witnessed yourself, the shoes cannot be stolen.”
“But they’re yours. Doesn’t that have, like, a different rule?”
“They belong to you now. Now tell me: what is it that you want?”
Did she think Karina was that stupid? But on the other hand, the woman had said it with such conviction and power that it was almost contagious. It was hard not to trust the woman’s voice and calm eyes. The idea was fair enough, even if a little crazy. No harm in trying. “World peace.”
The woman looked confused and stared down for the first time. She was barefoot. “No, no, no, you have to wish something for yourself.”
“Why? That’s a good wish.”
“It is. But you see, you cannot mess with other people’s free will.”
Oh well, that meant there would be no new era on Earth thanks to her. Still, she had to protest. “But you said I could wish anything.”
“I said you could make a wish, and I forgot you people on this world don’t know how to make wishes. Now wish something for you.”
That meant ending poverty and pollution were out of the question. Karina had an idea. She almost hated herself for the stupid, silly thing she was about to ask, but it was the only thing she could think that would not affect other people, and her conscience was clear that she had tried to wish for something more important. “I… I would like to be popular. Not necessarily in school but be recognized, I guess.”
The woman sighed. “You see, that’s still about other people, because you want to change their perception of you.”
Karina didn’t agree. “No, people will perceive me as popular if I’m different, so the change is in me.”
Again the woman thought for a moment before answering. “Yes and no. Right now what you want is only to change their perception of you. Think of something else, quickly, because my time’s running out.”
Karina waved her hands. “What can I wish? Everything I come up with you say doesn’t work.”
“I can’t tell you what to wish, or I’d be wishing for you. It shouldn’t be that complicated.”
“It is. Everything I say is wrong…”
“It’s not wrong. You just have to learn. Listen, I don’t have any more time here. Let’s do this: I’ll come back tomorrow evening. I’ll think of another way to buy the shoes from you. Ah, the shoes—try not to wear them. Keep them safe. There are other creatures in many worlds who want them, and not all of them are good. They can’t steal the shoes from you or take them by force. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try.”
Karina gulped at the thought of evil creatures looking for her and the shoes.
The woman continued, “I’ll be back tomorrow. I have to go now.”
Instead of disappearing in a cloud of smoke or flying out of the window, the woman simply walked to the front door and left. Perhaps she was just a great actress playing a trick, but then Karina noticed there was some sparkly dust floating on the place the woman had been seated. The woman—she had forgotten to ask her name.
3
Getting Real
Slowly, the sense of reality came back to Karina. Sparkly dust. Yeah, that was from blinking or whatever. Grant a wish. Was Karina still at the age of believing in fairy tales? She was a normal, logical person. Most fairy tales she knew were from a time when she had no word on the kind of entertainment assigned to her.
I want to be popular. Really? No. Really? That was the cherry on top of her stupidity. How could she have fallen for such crap? Thankfully she didn’t sell the shoes for an empty promise. Wait. Did the woman have the nerve to steal the shoes right under her nose? Karina hurried to the closet and picked up her purse. The shoes were still there. What had this visit been all about then? Maybe Karina was just tired and seeing things, but what troubled her most was not having visions, but believing what they said. She went back to the kitchen, finished her toast, then returned to the bedroom, put on her pajamas, turned off all the lights, and lay on her bed. If she was going to believe in fairy tales, she’d better sleep before nine.
While midway on her journey between being awake and asleep, Karina heard what seemed to be something heavy falling in her bedroom. The sound would have startled her, had she not had enough of weird stuff and decided just to convince herself she was dreaming. Then she heard girls’ voices.
“Ouch.”
“It’s all dark in here. I didn’t think it’d be like that.”
“Ayanna, you weren’t even supposed to come. We need lights.”
“We can try to find them.”
“No, I’ll take care of that.”
“Cayla, you’re not supposed to!”
“Shhh. Nobody will know about it.”
“That’s so cool.”
At this point, Karina had the notion that she was awake and the voices were in fact in her bedroom. Her eyes were still closed in the hopes the voices would fade away on their own, but instead, they only got clearer and more real, to a point she could no longer hold her curiosity and had to look. She opened her eyes just enough to see without being noticed. A strange, orange glow illuminated the room. Two teenage girls stood near the window, reminding her of the woman she had previously seen, but dressed in simple green and orange summer dresses. Karina’s study lamp lay broken on the floor.
This was getting to be too much. Arguing in her room was one thing, but starting to break things? No. Karina sat up. “Hey, what are you doing here?”
The girls looked surprised and scared. The oldest composed herself quickly, then walked to Karina and bowed.
“Our apologies for disturbing your sleep and breaking your, um, thing.”
The younger girl hesitated at first, then also bowed. Their formality was artificial and almost comical. Still, Karina was so puzzled at having more strange visitors that she just kept listening.
The oldest girl continued, “My name is Cayla. I’m a Whyland Princess. This is my little sister Ayanna.”
Ayanna rolled her eyes. “Little sister?” She then turned to Karina and said, “Whyland princess as well. And your name is?”
Cayla pushed her sister back. “I ask.” She turned to Karina. “Who are you?”
Karina just stared in amazement. After the phony genie, now it was time for two princesses. Special shoes can
really make one feel important. In the dim glow, all she could see was their shapes, their dresses, and their dark hair. The situation was too strange to be real but too real to be a dream. She didn’t know what to make of this visit and had no idea where that light was coming from.
Karina looked around puzzled. “What’s with the orange glow?”
The room fell dark.
“What orange glow?” a voice asked in the darkness.
Some nerve these girls had. The light from the window would have been enough to make shapes distinguishable in the dark, but not right after a light had been turned off. Still, Karina knew her room well enough to walk up to the switch on the wall.
Now clearly visible for the first time, the girls were simply two normal looking teenagers. They both had dark hair but looked different. The older girl, Cayla, seemed about fifteen or sixteen, wore a beige dress and had sharp facial features. In a plain blue dress, not green, Ayanna had a pleasant round face with bright eyes. She seemed around twelve.
“What are you doing here?” Karina asked.
Ayanna jumped ahead and talked fast. “We’re really sorry. We didn’t mean to disturb you. It’s important. We need your help. It’s the sh—” She noticed her sister’s stare and looked down.
“Continue,” Karina said.
“Right.” Ayanna looked at her sister, who nodded, then took a deep breath and started, “Sometime ago, a day or two, Lylah, the witch, came here.” She almost stumbled over her own words as she went without pausing to catch air. “We think she came here, to this room, and talked to you. We think she wanted her shoes. We think you still have them. And if she gets them, it is bad, like, really bad—the end of the world.” Then she breathed again.
End of the world? A day before? That wasn’t making much sense. The girl’s fear and urgency were probably contagious, because Karina felt a chill in her stomach as she sat on her bed.
Cayla crouched in front of Karina, looking right in her eyes. “Do you still have the shoes?”
“Yes.” It was no occasion for lies. “But, no. I mean, the only visit I received was tonight, and she didn’t seem to be a witch. I mean, I don’t know. But still, it was a little less than an hour ago, not yesterday.”
Cayla’s eyes widened. “The time difference. It’s greater… So you’re saying she came tonight?”
“Yes. But, I’m not sure she’s this witch you are talking about. She seemed nice.”
Ayanna rolled her eyes. “She had to seem nice! She’s cunning.”
“We followed her path to get here, so we know it was her,” Cayla said. “Was she really convincing?”
Spot on. Karina nodded. She remembered with embarrassment her delight at the opportunity of making a wish. But one thing bewildered her. “If she’s evil, why didn’t she take the shoes?”
Cayla snorted. “Whatever protection she placed on them is backfiring.”
That made sense. “She said she’s coming back tomorrow evening.”
“She’ll have a plan by then,” Ayanna said, sounding scared.
Cayla paced back and forth as she ran her hands through her long dark hair. “Yes, but that will give us plenty of time to act. If she’s coming one day from now, and if one hour here is a day and a half back home, that should give us—”
“Over a month, in whatever you are thinking.” Karina had no idea of which time difference they were talking about, but she was sure that if one hour equaled one and a half days, one day minus one hour equaled 34 and a half days.
“Right,” Cayla said, apparently not pleased at the interruption.
“It can’t be that much,” her sister said.
Cayla scratched her chin and looked down, addressing no one. “It seems right, I think. We’ll have to ask when we get back, but if we have at least one month, we’ll be able to beat Lylah.”
Things were getting clearer now. Karina got up and asked the dreaded question, “Is it the shoes you want?”
Ayanna shook her hands in front of her. “We don’t want the shoes! They’re evil.”
Well, yeah. Karina knew that, but then she was confused as to the reason the girls were there. “What is it that you want, then?”
Cayla took a deep breath. “I’m gonna try to explain this from the beginning. That’s why we came here.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Lylah is very powerful—”
“I get it,” Karina interrupted. “She wants the shoes. You’re saying she can’t have them, so I won’t give them to her. Does that solve your problem?”
Ayanna shook her head. “She’ll find a way to get them. You’ll be in danger, and us too.”
“She can find you,” Cayla added. “Then she’ll steal them from you, or worse, make you give them to her. Next time she might not be nice about it.”
Karina sat on her armchair and rested her head on her hand, with a slightly sick feeling in her stomach. Something didn’t sound right in this story. The girls seemed fine, maybe a little annoying, but certainly not any of the so-called evil creatures that would come looking for the shoes—if it was true that evil creatures would come looking for the shoes. Unknowingly Karina still believed in what the woman had told her, and she was getting confused.
“Listen,” Cayla said. “You don’t want to keep those shoes; they’ll only bring disaster into your life.” She knelt and took one of Karina’s hands in hers. “Lylah wants to take control of my father’s kingdom. She is already gathering followers, but without the shoes, her plans can’t go very far. My father has a strong army and can defend our people. But with the shoes, she’ll be invincible. And there’s more; with the shoes, she’ll be able to cross over to different worlds easily, and that’ll allow her to expand her dominion all over the universe. That means even the very world you live in might fall under her dark reign.”
That sounded scary, but perhaps over-the-top, exaggerated scary. And something didn’t make sense. “She just came. I mean, she just crossed over, didn’t she?”
“Uh, yes,” Cayla squinted. “But I think it would be different then. She would have power.”
Fair enough. “And what do you want me to do?”
“Help us destroy the shoes,” Cayla answered.
As Karina feared.
“You need to come to our father’s castle,” Cayla continued. “From there we’ll set off. I’ll help you, don’t worry.”
“Me too,” Ayanna said.
Cayla scowled.
Did Karina hear right? “So, you mean, I have to go to your, uh, kingdom, place or whatever?”
Cayla blinked slowly and nodded. “Yes, you need to go to our kingdom. It’s in a different vibrational frequency, so you can call it another world or dimension, for lack of a better definition.”
Karina had a big smile. The idea of different parallel worlds was not that impossible in scientific terms, and if she could see it, she could perhaps try to understand the logic behind it. Why hadn’t the girls mentioned this earlier?
Cayla returned her smile. “So, do you agree to come and help us?”
Karina shrugged. “Yeah, I think I could make, you know, the effort.”
The right thing to say would have been “of course!” but Karina didn’t want to sound too eager. The girls looked at each other, seeming hopeful and relaxed for the first time. Karina was also happy and excited, but suddenly, the thought of leaving her room in the middle of the night bothered her. “Wait… do you mean, now?”
“We can’t waste time,” Cayla replied.
“How long is it going to take?”
The girls looked at each other, and Cayla answered, “In our world, about a week or two, we think.”
“Are the shoes that complicated to destroy?”
Ayanna opened her mouth to speak, but closed it when she noticed her sister’s look.
Cayla answered, “Yes, a little complicated, but nothing we can’t manage. But if she came yesterday, it means that a few days in our world will be just a few hours here.”
That was true. What if not? Maybe the whole time difference talk was a way to convince Karina to go. Still, curiosity itched to the point of being unbearable.
Cayla insisted, “You’ll be back in a few hours. We need to hurry.”
“How will we get there?”
“Through the portal.”
Karina was puzzled, and Cayla added, “It’s hard to explain, you have to experience it.”
Curiosity won in Karina’s heart. A few hours could never hurt her. It would be like dreaming. Some cushions under the blankets would hopefully fool her parents in case they opened the door. All she had to do was get dressed and pack. From her wardrobe, she pulled her backpack, threw the books and notebooks on the floor, then realized it could be almost a week. “Can I bring a suitcase?”
“What for?”
“Clothes.”
“We’ll lend you some. Bring only what’s absolutely necessary.”
Karina packed socks and underwear and the small purse with the shoes. She ran to the bathroom for her toothbrush, face wash, moisturizer. Should she take shampoo, conditioner?
“Hurry, we can’t take long.” Cayla’s voice came from the bedroom.
Fine, no shampoo then. Back in the bedroom, Karina changed into jeans, a t-shirt, and tennis shoes. A good thing Karina was not Zoe, because for her, the strictly necessary would never fit into one small backpack. It was better this way; she felt light and free. Very light indeed—she felt as if she had no abdomen and if the floor below her was about to collapse. Was she being brave or insane? Well, she could always justify her decision with a perfectly logical desire for scientific inquiry. No one could argue against that.
