I wrote this as an entry essay into a college.� The Powers That Be asked for an essay about yourself, and this came out.� So, in a way, this could be seen as the story of a part of my life that affected me pretty deeply.
...Okay, so, it IS that story.� But seriously exaggerated.
I like fairy tales a lot, mainly because the whole magical realism aspect of it allows quite a bit of flux and creativity with writing.� Most of my short stories are magical realistic in fashion, come to think of it.� I donapos;t think I could do a whole book in that style, but itapos;s glorious in short bursts.
Colleen Means Girl
Once upon a time, there was a girl who wore green shoes.� She lived in a small cottage on the edge of the woods with a yard that was carpeted in clover and soft moss.� She appeared young, but in actuality, she was hundreds of years old.� She happened to have been born with a name that had a curse of na�vet� ndash; she would live until the world died but could never become any wiser no matter how many years passed through her bones.
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She had been to see many witch doctors and psychics and traveling doctors who claimed to hold utmost truth in an opaque bottle.� All of them, from the fakers to the real mystics, told her that her curse of a name would be broken if she ever fell in love.� It sounded simple enough, but it was far easier said than done considering the spell kept her heart in the state of a childrsquo;s.� She could never look into the eyes of another human being and see anything but a reason to speak out loud for the sake of speaking.
For that reason, she lived alone.� The only friends she had were a band of gypsies that would come by her house every few months, traveling from far away lands with kisses laced with foreign culture, and a white mist that followed them wherever they might go to shield them from the evils that lurked.� The women were goddesses who had no fear, and the men had so much playfulness in them they could put it into bottles and sell it.� They were strong and happy and ready to share their world-wise ways to those who actually listened.� For this reason, they all loved the girl with green shoes since she was just as fervent about hearing what they had to say, even if the curse made sure that none of it stayed with her.�
The mornings when she would wake up and see her windowed coated in fog were the happiest for her.� She would rush outside, half-naked in her eagerness, and join them in their tents and wagons as they camped out on her yard of clover.� Unfortunately, they never stayed long.� Only a few days of warmth greater than the sun, and they would pack up to follow the winds they would unleash from wooden boxes hidden in their luggage.� She once tried to follow them as they left, but the fog confused her and she ended up walking in circles until she found herself in the sun again, the mist disappearing over a hill.� After that, she resigned herself to waiting for their next visit, silently watching the sun appear over the woods behind her house and watching again as it set across the grass-swept field out her front door.
One day a new visitor appeared on her clover, and he was nothing like the gypsies.� It was a boy of the sea, a wanderer with hair and eyes as brown as the earth he craved to learn about, and skin as musky as the pages of books.� And books he loved dearly.� He ate them ravenously, hardly stopping to see what they were before he bore them into himself so he could remember them.� He consumed everything in his path in order to find out everything there was to know.� The girl with green shoes had never seen the sea or been anywhere near it, but she heard the far-off rhythmic fizzing of waves, and realized that she was hearing it from this boy, this earthy boy whose heart beat like the ocean.
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Curious, she invited him inside her house, and he was astonished to find she had no books.� To fill the frothy void inside of his sea-born body he usually tamed with libraries, he began teaching the girl with green shoes everything he had learned in his journey on the land, reciting and explaining and nit-picking it all apart only to put it back together again.� The girl with green shoes listened closely since she had never heard of such things in her long life, not even from the gypsies.� It opened her eyes to beauty and horrors and all that lay laced between the two.�
He ended up staying that night, and the next, and for many more, all the time talking while the girl with green shoes listened adamantly.� Before they knew it, a season had passed, and the boy was still there.� The knowledge he gave her opened her heart, and the longer he stayed, the more it spread out inside her chest until it folded inside out into love.� In the utter innocence of her name, she revealed her reshaped heart to him only to find he could not return her feelings.
And so, at long last, the curse was lifted, but there was no rejoicing.� He continued to stay at her house and tell her wonderful things.� The more she saw him, the more her heart began to turn to hollow lead, quivering under the weight of itself.� He hurt her constantly with his voice from morning to night and she began to age rapidly from the pain ndash; but compared to the metallic blistering her heart was going through, she never noticed the way her bones creaked or how her skin became papery stained glass.
One day the winds changed.� Within the span of a sunset, an African princess came to the land with an entourage of elephants and gold.� She built a palace in the woods next to the girl with green shoesrsquo; cottage.� While on a walk, the African princess stopped for a visit.� The girl with green shoes saw her as a glowing creature of wonder with faraway stories like her gypsy friends had.� The boy from the sea, though, instantly fell in love with the sands of her deserts that were so much like the sands of his beaches, and he followed her out the door, never to look back or break the hold his hand held on the African princessrsquo; delicate bejeweled wrist.
The girl with green shoes felt like she had never cried before that day.� All the tears from all the aches and scrapes and sad stories she has collected over her vast lifespan could never compare to the waves that flowed out of her when the boy from the sea, who was her sea, who was her ebb and flow and her spellbreaker and as much a source of her life as the ocean was to the world, left her.� Her heart accepted its broken syndrome and began to wither, taking the rest of her with it as she almost instantly aged into a brittle old woman whose mouth was so dry she couldnrsquo;t speak, and yet still cried with saltwater day and night.
She had been flooding her house for a few months when a white mist settled in her yard of clover and the gypsies began singing at her windows.� It wasnrsquo;t long before they found her hiding in her bathtub, the sides overflowing since the drain wasnrsquo;t fast enough to carry her sorrows away, and they brought her hobbled body out amongst them with the solemnity of a funeral.� They began feeding her all the liveliness and happiness and beauty they had been bottling up for sale since they had realized they were deities.� As their music and their faces became more cheerful, their warmth and love building up like a spell being cast, her wrinkles smoothed out, her back straightened, and within a few daysrsquo; time she had become youthful again.� The glow she had had when under the curse was gone, though, and for the first time, the gypsies saw her as the human being she was ndash; just as dark and full of secret thoughts as anyone else.� The gypsies knew what had happened, but didnrsquo;t ask, and before they left each and every one of them gave her a kiss, merrily waving over their shoulders as they and their mist faded away into the distance.
Once they were gone, the girl with the green shoes sat on her front porch and watched the skies for a long time.� The fields began to sway with the change of seasons, just as they always did.� Then, one day, the girl stood up, took off her green shoes, and abandoned them next to the front door.� She walked barefoot through the grass and circled around the house until she was facing the woods.� Without a thought and without hesitation, the girl walked into the trees, gingerly touching every trunk within reach, and disappeared.
A few months later, the white mists came back to an empty cottage with wilting clover in the yard.� When they left, the house remained as it had since the girl left ndash; untouched and lonely and devoid of life ndash; save for the space on the porch where green shoes used to be.
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