The Seven-League Boot Goes to Be Mended
Once there was a castle with too many stairs. In it lived a king, seven princesses, a wizard, a great many guards, and one pair of seven-league boots.
Whoever put on the boots and took one step was seven leagues away. That was how the royal family got about. The King wore the boots, and the seven princesses held hands in a line behind him, tallest to smallest. Off they all went over the hills like washing on a line in a high wind.
The smallest was Princess Dot. She had a tiny book, no bigger than a biscuit, and she wrote everything down in it. She wrote down that there were two hundred and twelve stairs from her bed to breakfast. She wrote down that the cook sneezed in threes. She wrote down that on an ordinary day the King said “Hm” eleven times, and four of those were before his egg.
Nobody ever asked to see the book. Dot was the youngest, and in castles nobody listens to the youngest. It is the same in most kitchens.
One morning, a week before Aunt Queen’s birthday party, there was only one boot by the front door.
Aunt Queen lived forty-nine leagues away. That is seven steps in seven-league boots, or about a year on foot, and the party was on Saturday. It was the best party of the year. Aunt Queen always let the youngest blow out the candles, and there were a great many candles. Dot had been practising on the breakfast candles for a month.
“Hm,” said the King.
Dot wrote it down.
On Monday the guard captain searched the castle. The captain’s way of searching was to open every door and shout “Boot!” into the room, in case the boot answered. There were one thousand and twelve stairs in the castle (Dot had counted) and a room at the top of most of them. By the last attic the captain could only whisper it. The boot did not answer.
“Hm,” said the King. That night Dot wrote: Hm, 30.
On Tuesday the Wizard Osgood cast a finding spell. Osgood stood in the great hall with both arms up and said a word so long it went round two corners. Osgood’s finding spells always found a great many things. This one found every boot in the castle.
They came down all the stairs at once, thump, thump, thump. There were riding boots and wellingtons, the cook’s kitchen boots, the guards’ marching boots, the princesses’ dancing boots, and a pair of wading boots nobody had worn since the moat was last cleaned. They filled the great hall right up to the windows. On the very top, like a cherry on a cake, sat one baby’s bootee made of soft blue leather.
“Whose is that?” said the King.
Nobody knew. All seven princesses said it was not theirs.
It took the rest of Tuesday to carry the boots back up the stairs, and the seven-league boot was not one of them.
“Then it isn’t in the castle,” said Osgood, sitting on a heap of riding boots and quite out of breath. “The spell found every boot there was. That one wasn’t here to be found.”
Dot wrote that down, because it was the first useful thing anyone had said all week. She put the bootee in her pocket, because somebody ought to look after it. That night she wrote: Hm, 64.
On Wednesday the King tried the boot that was left.
Now, you might think one seven-league boot is half as good as two. It is not. It is worse. One foot goes seven leagues and the other foot goes one ordinary step, and so whoever wears it goes round and round in enormous circles.
The King put on the boot, said “To Aunt Queen’s!” and hopped. All day the castle watched him go by on the edge of the world. He got smaller, then bigger, then smaller again, and he waved every time he passed. At teatime he came round for the last time and landed in the cabbages. He sat there saying “Hm” so fast that Dot could not keep up.
That night Dot read her tiny book from the very first page, where the letters were large and wobbly from when she was four.
On the ninth page she found something she had copied down from the old housekeeper, who had been old even when the King was small. It said: Every hundred years the boots go to be mended. They know the way. Last time was the week they finished the bell tower.
On the last page but one, from the Tuesday before, she found this: Bell tower 100 years old today. Cake. Lemon.
Dot turned from one page to the other and back again, a great many times.
In the morning she tried to tell the King, and he said, “Hm. Not now, Dot.” She tried to tell her sisters, and they said, “Not now, Dot.” She tried to tell Osgood, who was asleep in a chair.
So she wrote a note and leaned it against the King’s egg. It said: Gone to get the boot mended. Back for the party. Love, Dot.
Then she went down the two hundred and twelve stairs, and nine more to the front door, where the single boot stood by itself. It was a left boot, black and enormous and very old, and it came up past her knee. She pulled it on. She did not tell it where to go, the way the King had. She bent down and said, “Go where the other one went.”
Then she hopped.
She went seven leagues and one ordinary step. The ordinary step put her exactly on the doormat of a very small house in a very small village. The door opened before she could knock.
“There you are,” said Mrs. Stitch. “A hundred years, I said, and a hundred years it is.”
Mrs. Stitch was the oldest person Dot had ever met, and the only grown-up exactly as tall as Dot. By her fire stood the other boot, with a brand-new sole. On the mantelpiece lay an old worn sole with a label tied to it, in writing even smaller than Dot’s: Off the royal boots. Due back in a hundred years. Have soup ready.
“The right one always comes on its own,” said Mrs. Stitch. “Keen. The left one has to be brought. Every time. Sit down.”
So Dot had soup, and Mrs. Stitch mended the left boot while Dot waited. It was a big job, because a hundred years of royal walking had gone into that sole. It took all of Thursday and most of Friday, tap, tap, tap. Dot slept in between in Mrs. Stitch’s spare bed, which fitted her perfectly. She asked a great many questions, and Mrs. Stitch answered every one, and Dot wrote all the answers down.
“How many stairs have you got?” said Dot.
“None,” said Mrs. Stitch. “I can’t be doing with stairs.”
Dot wrote that down too.
On Friday evening Dot remembered the bootee and took it out of her pocket.
“Well!” said Mrs. Stitch. “I made that for your father when he was born. He lost the other one the very same afternoon.”
“Hm,” said Dot, before she could stop herself.
Mrs. Stitch laughed until she had to sit down.
On Saturday morning the whole royal family stood in the hall in their party clothes, holding hands in a line. Dot’s note had said she would be back for the party, and for once, everybody had listened to Dot.
Dot came home in one step, in both boots.
“We missed you,” said all six sisters at once.
“Hm,” said the King, and picked her up, boots and all.
Then Dot took the front of the line, and her six sisters held hands behind her, and the King held on at the very end. They went over the hills to Aunt Queen’s in seven steps, like washing in a high wind, and they were not even late. Dot blew out every one of the candles.
Between the cake and the dancing, the King stood up and said “Hm” to get everyone’s attention.
“From now on,” he said, “when anything in this kingdom is lost, somebody asks Dot first.” And he made her Keeper of the Boots, for good.
That night in bed, Dot opened her tiny book. She wrote: Hm today, 3. All pleased. Then underneath, in her smallest and most careful writing, she wrote: Boots mended. Next time: in a hundred years. Tell someone.