The Painted Slippers, An Undercurse Fable

The Land of Stories (CH5)

The time when Rowena had to say goodbye to her parents came too quickly for her liking. Never before did she imagine herself kissing them goodbye, but there she was, seeing them for the last time for a couple of months. She stood there waving with all her might as their carriage set on its course out of the village of Twine to who knows where. There was no knowing of what lurked beyond the borders of the village. There were wolves.

Both her mother and father cried with less denial. Tansy cried and so did Rowena who had by now, come to the realisation of what this all meant. I will miss them so much, more than anyone else in the world, she thought as she screwed her fists into her eyes rather than into her handkerchief.

Then the carriage that would take her and Tansy to Farforth pulled up outside of the cottage and they got in without a moment's hesitation. To distract herself from it all, Rowena did what she thought was best: draw.

"Now," Tansy interposed with an expression of pure bafflement, "I don't know how you expect to be able to draw whilst inside a carriage that will drive over rough terrain at some point."

Rowena couldn't have cared less. "It shan't matter," she argued as she bent over her scrapbook, scribbling away mercilessly on the paper, "I just have to capture their faces."

"Who's faces?" Asked the perplexed Tansy.

"Mother and father's," explained Rowena with great concentration, "so I don't forget them."

"We are going to see them again you know..." She tried to tell her but it was no use, the child wasn't listening. Tansy took a peek at what was being formed at the tip of this nine-year old's pencil. At first, it was just a face, but as she stared at it in closer detail, she noted that it really did look like her good friend Iribelle. And then, how the face next to it did really look like her good friend Gideon. "Rowena...how did you...?"

"How did I do what?"

Tansy prodded an almost terrified finger at the page, "How have you drawn them so that It's almost as if they were there on the page when you haven't even looked at them? I know you are good at drawing, missus, but this is unbelievable."

She thought for a moment, lifting her pencil to her lip as the two jostled along in the carriage. "I don't know really. In my mind I can see mother, her healthy beaming freckled face with graceful dark eyes. She has dimples when she smiles and she scrunches her nose. Father has the same nose as me, as round as a button. He has quite strong cheekbones but the kindest of smiles. His golden-brown hair has the tendency to stick up where as mother's black hair is sleek and shining as if it were taken from a unicorn. I just think about that and then draw what I think."

Tansy stuttered "Almost like there's a painting of them in your mind?"

"Yes, I suppose," Shrugged Rowena, "I could do one of you too. Your hair is grey and curly and your cheeks and elbows are as red as the apples growing in the village orchard. You have quite beady eyes but they twinkle and you have lines by the side of your eyes and mouth and- "

"Alright Rowena, you don't need to make me feel old!" Tansy exclaimed as she was impressed with what this child came out with, "Anyway, are you excited to go to Farforth...regardless of...them?"

She nodded her head assuredly and beamed to Tansy with all her might, "Of course I am, it's the place where all of my favourite stories are set! I can't wait to see the places that seem only a figment of my imagination/ The sea is such a wonderful thing too, it's like a sky that we can enter and floating is the closest thing to flying..."

"Are those favourite stories the ones I used to tell you when you were a nipper, by any chance?" Asked Tansy proudly.

Being referred to as a nipper made Rowena break out into a giggle. "Yes Tansy, the ones you read to me when I was a nipper, though that wasn't so long ago."