The Shattered Shoe

By Erin Evans

For those who like their fantasy twisted and darkly humorous, The Shattered Shoe is a mixture of the traditional Grimm Brother’s tale with the Wizard of Oz and a touch of Russian demonology.
Trapped in a hostile land, imbued with the powers of an evil godmother, and befriended by a monstrous beast, Morgan searches for a way home through a fairytale realm where the princesses are anything but kind-hearted and good.
Struggling to learn survival skills, she travels to seek the aid of the “beloved” princess, Cinderella, but is little prepared to face the dark magic holding the kingdom spellbound. Only Morgan can right the evil plaguing the land, but the sacrifice of her own happily-ever-after might prove too costly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erin Evans
• Release date: Sep 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370034314

Erin Evans

Erin Evans is a stay-at-home mom of eight (!), wonderful, little children. When she's not chasing after children, changing diapers, teaching school, cooking, chauffeuring, or potty training, she is writing, playing drums at her church or crashed out dead asleep. In urban fantasy, she loves Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, and Kim Harrison. All time favorite authors would be Robin Hobb and Jasper Fforde. Jim Butcher's Codex Alera has become one of her favorite series. BOOKS: - In her first series, "The Rhine Maiden", Erin based her character Piper Cavanaugh on her own life, but decided to have pity on Piper and only gave her two kids to start off with. - Erin's latest work, the "Pernicious Princess Trilogy" is a take on twisted fairy tales. - Her other works include "Food For Love", a foodie romantic comedy with a twist.

Book preview

Book One

by Erin Evans

Copyright 2013 by Erin Evans

Smashwords Edition

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Rook di goo, rook di goo!

There’s blood in the shoe.

"Cinderella," by Joseph and Wilhelm Grimm

Chapter One

The minute hand on the clock quivered, moving straight up with a tick. Five o’clock.

Yes! I cheered in a whisper, pumping my fist in the air. My eyes were dry from the unblinking stare, but I was pretty certain I was getting somewhere with the mind-control. That last second had seemed just a hair shorter than normal.

Closing time, Morgan, my boss yelled from the other room where he had been, presumably, working.

I glanced over my shoulder at his partially opened door, my purse slung on my shoulder, car keys in hand. Umm ... yeah ... I guess it is. I shuffled some papers around on my desk and slammed a few drawers. For extra believability I tapped some nonsense on my keyboard. That about does it for me! I called.

Feed Milton before you go, will you?

I made a face, gritted my teeth, waved my arms in the air and said sweetly, Sure!

Throwing my purse down I stomped over to the corner of the small office, where a water cooler shared space with two cat bowls and a litter box. Also my responsibility.

Come here ... you mangy ferret, I whispered the last bit under my breath. I’m not sure if anyone else had applied for this minimum wage, secretarial job, but I liked to think I beat them out by gushing over the flea ridden beast. Mom had always said that people loved it when you praised their kids and pets.

She’d also said that I was destined for greatness and that Dad would finally find one of the elusive artifacts he was always chasing and we would buy our own island in the Caribbean. Guess you can’t be right a hundred percent of the time.

I scooped some noxious smelling goop into the bowl and set it gingerly down on the floor, jumping back just in time to avoid the swipe of claws from the monster hidden behind the water cooler.

Not this time! I jeered quietly.

Milton growled like an earthquake and moved to chow down, still rumbling away.

You’re welcome, your royal crankiness, I hissed. I’m heading out! I called and heard a distracted grunt from the other room.

The heat was still heavy in the air, radiating upward from the concrete. The inside of my car was one of the levels of hell. I’d forgotten to put up the sun shield. I debated rolling the window down to let out some of the hot air but decided to just let the a/c go to work. I was always sure that the inside air would invite in all its outside buddies and just make matters worse.

There was a colorful sticky note in my handwriting, taped to the steering wheel. It said: Flowers. I groaned and banged the side of my head on the widow a few times, giving myself a third degree burn.

Ouch! I rubbed the skin and pointed all the air vents at my face, waiting for the sauna to dissipate.

I finally felt like I wasn’t in danger of dehydrating and pulled out into traffic. I had to make a decision at the fourth intersection. Left or right? Home ... or duty. I was in the left turn lane when I saw my Nana’s face hovering in my vision.

"How was your mother’s grave, Morgan? she asked. Are they mowing it properly? I thought I saw some weeds the last time I was there."

What I wanted to do was drive to my little third story, studio apartment, put on my pjs, and eat the half gallon of ice cream in my freezer while finishing off the novel I was reading.

I groaned and jerked the wheel to the right, cutting off a truck whose driver laid on the horn and gave me the finger as we came within millimeters of swapping paint.

Sorry! I yelled, stepping on the gas and spinning around the turn. I was planning to visit Nana at the home tomorrow, and while she was no longer able to make our yearly pilgrimage to Mom’s gravestone, that wouldn’t stop her from asking. I just couldn’t lie to her.

The florist kept shooting me anxious looks from behind the counter, maybe because I was muttering to myself, but I made my selection and was back on the road in record time. I glanced at the clock. It was way too hot to go now. I’d have to wait until after dinner, which meant my plans of a quiet evening in pjs were gone.

I sighed.

Someone had parked in my space at the apartment complex, and while rear-ending them would be satisfying, I doubted it would feel as good in the morning. I parked down the street like a model citizen and restricted myself to evil glares as I passed the thief.

It didn’t matter. I would be inside in a few minutes. I could get out of this ridiculous pencil skirt and heels, that I thought made me look more professional, and into some jeans and flip flops.

I counted the stairs as I climbed, trying to enjoy the exercise. It was good for my calves and it saved me gym fees. Other people paid to climb stairs! I got to do it for free.

I was in the home stretch, my door in sight, when I noticed the yellow sticky on my door. UPS had tried to deliver a package. I slumped. I wasn’t expecting anything. I could pick it up tomorrow.

But the complex manager hated it when he had to store packages for any length of time and I really wanted him to get someone out to fix my leaky faucet. I turned around, trudged back down the stairs and across the blistering asphalt to the office.

The package was long and narrow, like a rolled up poster, and had a wide variety of international stamps on it. The return address was blurred, but I recognized the handwriting. It was from my dad.

I sighed. My birthday had been two months ago. It figured that he was just now remembering. And with no return address I wouldn’t have anywhere to send his yearly Father’s Day card that invariably would come back to me with Return to Sender: No Such Resident marked in large red ink.

It had always been like this. He wasn’t so much neglectful as just MIA. He sent presents every year at the appropriate times … or around the appropriate times. He called on my birthday … or the month after. He showed up for important dates in my life, like my college graduation. Granted, he showed up a week late and at the wrong college, but it was the thought that counted.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care. It was just that he cared too much about too many things. Nana called him a dreamer in the tone of voice she reserved for phone salesmen and TV evangelists.

Dad was always on the hunt for something. Usually things that the rest of the rational world agreed did not exist. This didn’t stop Dad from looking for them though. In fact, he said it gave him an advantage, less competition.

I never got what Mom had seen in him. He was hardly ever around, and when he was he was just marking time until the next big idea struck. But she had looked at him with shining eyes and never once complained about the two part time jobs she had to work to support him.

When I was little I had worshipped him. He could take a fairytale and make it come alive. It was alive for him. In fact, I was pretty sure he still believed in mermaids and unicorns and other mythical things.

I think the moment it changed for me was the night I found my mother twisting her newly naked ring finger, and crying her eyes out at the kitchen table. Our power and water stayed on that month, but there were months when they didn’t, and although my dad made heartfelt promises, he never did get her wedding rings back from the pawn shop.

The shine wore off his charm for me. I kept quiet out of respect for my mother. In some ways she had been the worst dreamer of the two, for she had believed in him with her whole heart. I think she was sure, up to the very second she died, that he would somehow come back to be at her side. Like always, he arrived four days after her funeral.

I took after my Nana, my mother’s mother. Sure, I got my athletic build and thick brown hair from my father, and my wide smile and perky nose from my mother, but my personality was from Nana. We were practical, sensible, realistic people. The flowers for Mom’s grave were the only fanciful thing she indulged in.

I did it to humor her. In my mind, flowers were for the living. Mom couldn’t care less what was going on above the rectangle of earth where she’d been buried. If people did have spirits, I saw no reason for them to hang around a place as dreary as a cemetery.

I gave the box a shake and a squeeze and finally decided to just open it. I grabbed up a pair of kitchen shears and sliced open the box. For the last three years Dad had sent me different editions of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, either forgetting that he already gifted me with it, or laboring under the misapprehension that I wanted to collect them. This at least did not look like a book.

It wasn’t a book.

What in the world? I said softly to myself.

I carefully drew the tarnished, corroded object out of the box. Even age and misuse could not hide its true nature. It was a sword.

I hefted it in one hand. Since I was female, I didn’t have that male urge to go hacking and slashing and pretending until I broke something or hurt myself. Still, there was something about this blade that demanded at least a token swipe at something.

Unlike the thin fencing blades I had practiced with one semester in college, this was a thick, two-handed design. It was heavier than I expected and slipped in my hands as I tried an elegant swordsman-like pose.

It bit a chunk out of my table.

Crap! I swore, examining the splintered wood. Look what you’ve done! I scolded myself.

As I bent to pick pieces of table off the floor I finally noticed the note that had come with the sword.

Morgan, it read. I’ve found it!! She tried to stop me, but I found it!! I need you to keep this safe for me till I come. Don’t trust Anyone!! I’ll meet you and your mother on her birthday. Love, Dad.

I scratched my head. That was Dad. Excessive punctuation and cryptic references. I had no idea what it was he had found, unless he was referring to the sword, but why anyone would be trying to stop him, I had no idea.

I examined the sword again. To my untrained eye it appeared well-made if in need of a good cleaning. The handle was a simple design with a dark stone in the hilt. Could it be worth something? Had my father stolen it?

I read the note again. Since my mother was dead, I could assume that he meant for us to meet at her grave. And her birthday was today. Hence the flowers. I checked the note a third time. Dad had written the date in the upper right hand corner. It was three weeks ago. The sword had taken its own sweet time in getting to me.

I picked it up again and carefully swung it. I didn’t know why Dad had sent it to me, and frankly, I really didn’t care. It sounded like some plot to pique my interest and gain a face to face meeting. I had carefully avoided him the last two times he was in town and I didn’t want to see him now. It would just end badly.

But then, it was the anniversary of my mother’s birth, and I had promised Nana that I would leave flowers on her grave. If only the post office had taken just one more day ...

I gritted my teeth. It looked like I would be meeting him after all.

I took my time over dinner, finished my novel, did the dishes, and finally was ready to get it over with. There was a crack of thunder as I opened the front door and the skies let loose.

Great, I muttered, kicking the door shut behind me. Just great.

So, there I was, standing in the cemetery, hair being plastered to my scalp, water squishing between my toes in my flip-flops, waiting for my loser father.

I had put the sword back in its cardboard box, not wanting to explain to a passing police officer what I was doing with a weapon on the front seat of my car. The cardboard was turning to mush in the rain, the bouquet I had placed on the headstone was flattened, and still I waited.

C’mon, Morgan! I said to myself. "You knew he wouldn’t be here! You knew he would be late. Days late! He always is! Why would you think this time would be different?"

Some of the water streaming down my face was salty.

That was it. I wasn’t waiting a second more. I tapped a squelching foot in the mud. Okay. Two seconds more and I was done.

I thought I heard someone call my name.

The cemetery was dark, the nearest lamppost a half block away. Clouds were obscuring what little moonlight there was, and if I hadn’t been so focused on meeting my Dad, I would have thought the place creepy and hightailed it out of there.

It took me a couple of seconds, scanning the area around me, before I saw a dark shape approaching through the tombstones. It ducked and weaved and occasionally rolled behind the granite stones.

It had to be my Dad.

Dad? I called, exasperated. What are you doing?

He was ten yards away and I was just beginning to move towards him when a bright light split the air.

Like a door being cut open in a scenery backdrop, the rainy night was sliced open showing a sunlit wood in the quickly widening gap.

Dad stumbled to a stop, closer to the phenomenon than I was.

Run, Morgan! he screamed.

I blinked. This couldn’t be happening!

"Morgan, run!" Dad yelled again.

A figure was stepping through the bright gap in the air. It appeared to be a woman, dressed in trailing black. Her eyes blazed like tiny suns; her fingers were reaching for my father.

I started to run, but not away. I had no idea what was happening, but I had to do something. Dad was frozen in terror, his hands thrown up in a warding gesture.

Time slowed. The mud sucked at my feet as I tried to dash towards the two figures who were now locked in an embrace. I saw the woman draw back her hand, fingers clawed, then, screaming, she drove her fist down into my father’s chest. With a triumphant howl she held his beating heart aloft.

No! I screamed.

Dad’s head turned towards me. His mouth moved feebly.

Run, he said again, and then his eyes glazed as he sagged in the woman’s grip.

I kept running full tilt at the woman. I’m not sure what I intended to do. It was too late to save my father, but I couldn’t stop.

"No!" I screamed again.

She was just turning towards me as I plowed into her, knocking my father from her grasp. I was trying to grab him when there was a whooshing sound, like air rushing into a vacuum, and the world around me spun and contracted.

Chapter Two

I landed on my knees, totally disoriented. The sudden switch from night to day was confusing my brain, not to mention the location change. I was now in the midst of a wood. Tall trees seemed to brush the sky, looming high above me.

I was kneeling on a large flat rock, covered with a carpet of green moss. Two feet away the woman was just pulling herself to her feet, my father’s bloody heart still gripped in her hand.

Wha— I gurgled, scooting frantically away.

Her eyes narrowed as she spotted me.

What have you done? she spat at me.

I held up my hands in a placating gesture. With the change of scenery I had also experienced a change of heart. I no longer had any desire to confront this woman. In fact, I just wanted to go home and pretend that this entire evening had never happened.

I’m sorry! I babbled. I didn’t mean … I don’t know …

I looked around for the slit in the air. Maybe I could jump back through.

It was gone.

The woman lifted my father’s heart to her mouth and took a long, slow bite. Blood dripped down her chin.

Okay, I said, feeling faint. I … uh … urk …

I bumped into a thick tree, not realizing that I had been slowly backing away the entire time my mouth was blurting things out on its own.

She smiled at me and licked a drop of blood off the corner of her lips. Not breaking eye contact, she took another juicy bite.

Umm … I quivered, looking frantically around. I’ll just ... Yeah … I, umm …. I’ll just …

I turned to run and came face to face with the woman. She had instantly closed the distance between us.

Agghh! I yelped.

I was backing away again, across the rock, when I stumbled and fell on top of the cardboard box that had somehow made it through the slit with me.

I cried out, pulling it from underneath me.

Her eyes lit up with fiendish delight.

At last! she hissed.

Umm, I cradled the box to my chest. What …?

Give it to me, she commanded in round tones, her hand outstretched.

I blinked.

Now! she screamed.

I was getting upset. I had no clue what was going on, but I was pretty sure that I was either on the worse drug trip of my life, or this lady had actually murdered and eaten my father right in front of me.

I stood up, still holding the the box. One end had been squished in my fall and the sword hilt was poking through.

Give me the sword! she snarled, slinking towards me with all the grace and menace of a jungle cat.

No! I said, surprising myself. "You killed my dad!" Hot tears were choking my voice.

She laughed, not a pleasant sound at all.

I backed up some more. "Yeah, uh, how about I don’t give you the sword and you … I reached down into the box and jerked the sword free, holding it pointed at her in what I hoped was a threatening manner, … you stay back, you freak!"

She stopped and cocked her head to one side, studying me. She looked like a giant bird, studying a worm it was about to skewer with its beak.

You don’t want to do that, she said in a low voice.

I could barely hear her over the pounding of my heart. "No, I’m pretty sure this is exactly what I want to do!"

Give me the sword, she said again, undeterred, honey dripping from her lips.

You killed him, I said again, not quite a question, but almost. My brain was shutting down with shock.

She lifted a stained finger to her lips and gave it a slow lick.

It was time to either vomit or get angry. I took a firm, two-handed grip on the sword and felt a surge of electricity surge up my arms.

Time’s up, she said, her eyes flashing.

Stay away! I snarled.

She took one last slow bite of the heart before throwing it contemptuously to the ground, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

I met the woman’s sweet smile with a grimace.

"You are sick," I told her.

She took another step forward, laughing merrily as she held her hand out. One second there was nothing, the next she held a silvery spike between her fingers.

"Mutatio in gladius!" she cried, and the silver wand transformed into a wickedly sharp sword, longer and heavier looking than my own.

I gulped. The woman was holding her weapon like a practiced extension of her arm, and I had only a single semester of fencing to pull from. If you wanted me to get my feet in the correct position and shuffle backwards and forwards a couple of times I was your girl, anything beyond that …

Lucky for me, it was going to be a short fight. I saw her slash the blade towards my head and knew that there was no way I was blocking that blow. I was so dead.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try. I was a Shipton, and we didn’t go down without a fight. Halfway into my attempted block I felt like my arms were being jerked out of their sockets. The sword in my hand leaped up, faster than I could have moved, and met the woman’s blade in a bone jarring crash.

Quick as a snake she brought her sword around again to take a bite out of my side, and once more I was whirled about like a puppet, deflecting her blade at the last second. Then my sword flashed out towards her legs in what turned out to be a feint. As she moved to block, my arms were violently pulled in the opposite direction, nipping in with deadly speed to cut a deep gash into her arm.

We both stumbled back, breathing hard. I stared at her in shock. Ten seconds ago I had been prepared to die. Now I was unscathed, and had scored a serious point in her skin.

The woman’s beautiful face twisted into a hideous mask. With a snarl of rage she sprang forward, her blade moving faster than I could follow. Each time she swung my own blade rose to meet her and the resulting crash set my teeth vibrating in my skull. All I could do was hold on for dear life and hope that whatever magic was at work here would be the better swordsman.

Unfortunately for me, a magic sword will only get you so far. Without the footwork to go with it, I was severely handicapped. I tried to spin and dance with the sword’s movements, but the best I could do was stumbling and tripping over the uneven ground.

The woman’s movements were sure and controlled and each confrontation brought her millimeters from drawing blood. I was getting tired and losing my grip on the hilt when I slid on the moss and fell heavily onto my tailbone.

Her eyes lit up with glee and she moved forward to offer the coup de grace. I had fallen half on my own blade and although it struggled to free itself from under my leg, it would be too late.