"A long time ago there was one night when a secret word was passed around to all the shoes standing in the bedrooms and closets. "The whisper of the secret was: 'To-night all the shoes and the slippers and the boots of the world are going walking without any feet in them. To-night when those who put us on their feet in the daytime, are sleeping in their beds, we all get up and walk and go walking where we walk in the daytime.' "And in the middle of the night, when the people in the beds were sleeping, the shoes and the slippers and the boots everywhere walked out of the bedrooms and the closets. Along the sidewalks on the streets, up and down stairways, along hallways, the shoes and slippers and the boots tramped and marched and stumbled. "Some walked pussyfoot, sliding easy and soft just like people in the daytime. Some walked clumping and clumping, coming down heavy on the heels and slow on the toes, just like people in the daytime. "Some turned their toes in and walked pigeon-toe, some spread their toes out and held their heels in, just like people in the daytime. Some ran glad and fast, some lagged slow and sorry. "Now there was a little girl in the Village of Cream Puffs who came home from a dance that night. And she was tired from dancing round dances and square dances, one steps and two steps, toe dances and toe and heel dances, dances close up and dances far apart, she was so tired she took off only one slipper, tumbled onto her bed and went to sleep with one slipper on. "She woke up in the morning when it was yet dark. And she went to the window and looked up in the sky and saw a Dancing Slipper Moon dancing far and high in the deep blue sea of the moon sky. "'Oh--what a moon--what a dancing slipper of a moon!' she cried with a little song to herself. "She opened the window, saying again, 'Oh! what a moon!'--and kicked her foot with the slipper on it straight toward the moon. "The slipper flew off and flew up and went on and on and up and up in the moonshine. "It never came back, that slipper. It was never seen again. When they asked the girl about it she said, 'It slipped off my foot and went up and up and the last I saw of it the slipper was going on straight to the moon.'" And these are the explanations why fathers and mothers in the Rootabaga Country say to their girls growing up, "Never kick a slipper at the moon if it is the time of the Dancing Slipper Moon when the ends of the moon look like the toe and the heel of a dancer's foot." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. One Story--"Only the Fire-Born Understand Blue" _People_: Fire the Goat Flim the Goose Shadows [Illustration] Sand Flat Shadows Fire the Goat and Flim the Goose slept out. Stub pines stood over them. And away up next over the stub pines were stars.