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Glass slippers to fit a pair of small feet—blown glass, etched with ribbons and lines to make them look as if they’d been sewn. Flashing, they caught the scant light, which seemed to shine deep within the glass. Evie picked them up; they were light, fragile. She couldn’t imagine dancing in them.
    Then, without her own volition—like a character in a story, she thought wildly—she was walking to the door. The glass slippers were drawn to the old woman. They led Evie back to her, and Evie let them guide her. She didn’t have a choice.
    Holding them in both hands, she presented them to the woman. With both hands, the woman took them from her.
    “Oh! Not even a scratch on them. They might have been made yesterday. Better than I had hoped.” She cradled them to her breast and turned a wondering gaze on Evie. “Thank you so much.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    Evie saw the woman to the door. Scratching Mab’s ears, she watched her walk down the driveway to the road, but turned away rather than see if the old woman was going to walk allthe way to town, or if she’d simply disappear into thin air, back to where she came from. Evie didn’t want to know. Her hands were shaking.
    Like something from a story. A golden fleece. A pair of glass slippers. The slippers
knew
that the old woman had come for them, as if they had a sentience of their own. Did every object in the storeroom have that same sense of
knowing
?
    She didn’t even know how to ask that question.
    When her father returned, she was sitting at the kitchen table, hands pressed flat to its surface. It was how she finally got them to stop trembling.
    “Evie? What’s wrong.”
    Carefully, she explained. “An old woman came to the door. She asked for glass slippers. I found them in the basement, so I gave them to her. Is that okay?”
    He sat across from her. “That isn’t the right question. Tell me: Could you have
not
given them to her?”
    She shook her head. “They
wanted
to be with her.” She winced, knowing how odd it sounded, knowing it made no sense, but she had no other words to say. She could still feel the shoes pulling at her grasp.
    “Then it’s okay.” He reached across and touched her hand.
    “It wasn’t me, Dad. It was something else, like someone was moving my arms and making me talk—”
    His lips thinned. His eyes were sad, though, making his whole expression grim, resigned. “I knew there was a reason you needed to come home. The Storeroom will be yours when I’m gone.”
    No. She wanted to deny it, but there was a power pressing down on him. On her. The same sense, the same charge that led her to the glass slippers prevented the word
no
from leaving her mouth. She had her own life, she didn’t want this . . . this
weight
.
    She didn’t want her father to ever be
gone.
    “I don’t understand,” she said simply.
    “You will, in time.” He sounded like a mystic sage. A wizard, not her father. Another character from a story, and she couldn’t turn the page to see what happened next.

     
     
     
     
     
    W
hen Irving Walker left Saint Louis with his wife, Amelia, they took only three horses—two to ride and one to pack. What the packhorse couldn’t carry, they didn’t bring. The folk who saw them off thought it scandalous, Irving Walker putting his wife through that, not giving her the safety of a wagon train, making her ride in the open, exposed to the elements and all the dangers inherent in the crossing of the Great Plains. But they didn’t know it was Amelia’s idea. Irving asked her what she needed to bring, and she showed him one bag. “That’s all?” he said. “All the important things, yes.” They’d have a freedom they wouldn’t have with a wagon and oxen. They needed to be free, away from people and civilization. That was why they were leaving Missouri in the first place. It had gotten too crowded.
    Along the Arkansas River, where the Santa Fe Trail turned south to Mexico, an enterprising businessman