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They say I took it for my soup – how absurd! Why on earth would anyone want to dine on something
that
tasted like feet? They call me grave robber too, but I stole not from a dead man, but a live one. Would you like to see it? I had the box specially made; ivory from Africa, rubies from India, emeralds from South America and mother-of-pearl from the New World. You can touch it if you’d like. No? Squeamish? Very well, I’ll put it away. I love that sound - that little snap - the box makes when it closes, it sounds so…final. Why did I take it? Well that’s quite simple really. Revenge.
He always had a thing for feet. When he was a child his mother caught him sniffing her shoes. She had him beaten so blue he couldn’t sit for a week! Of course that only made it worse, gave the whole thing an element of the forbidden. After that the mere sight of an ankle, the promise of a heel or a toe, would drive him into a frenzy. Not a desirable quality in a prince.
Not many were willing to indulge him. He could buy harlots by the dozen and serving girls had no choice, but for all his lust, he had discriminating tastes. He wanted a foot to be just so; slender, smooth and finely turned. He once told me that he dreamt of a room with thousands of feet cased in glass - like a sculptor’s gallery. Can you imagine that?
I, on the other hand, had few of the qualms that most of my peers did. They were chosen for him for their marriageability and child-bearing hips, not the slenderness and delicacy of their tarsals and phalanges. When he broached the subject, they simply ran.
I alone was willing to indulge him and even pay him back in kind. I would suck on his toes until he reached the very heights of ecstasy and he in turn would whisper such sweet words of poetry over my soles and arches that I….well, we don’t need to go into that now, do we?
And we would have been living happily ever after to this day if it hadn’t been for my hussy of a sister, well half-sister, step-sister really. But that’s not really the point. The point is that she stole him out from under my toes.
She always was a spoiled child, wanting what others had. To hear her tell it of course she was abused and downtrodden, but that was never the case. Her father doted on her, but you know what they say, history is written by the victors.
But where was I? Ah yes - my little slut of a sister saw what I had and she went mad with jealously. For all her protestations of purity, she knew more of the art of seduction than most concubines.
I can’t think where she got them, but somehow she managed to procure a pair of glass shoes! Can you imagine that? And in she waltzes, pretty as you please, flashing toes and tendons, leaving nothing to the imagination.
Of course the prince was smitten! What was I to do? He wouldn’t see reason. He would have none other than the girl who fit the shoe, which she so conveniently left behind.
I was beside myself, a momentary lapse if you will. I’m not usually given to fits of passion, but...
Of course I made a terrible mess of it. I didn’t dance at their wedding, for obvious reasons and suffice it to say, men aren’t exactly lining up to nibble on my nadirs anymore.
I don’t know whether they were happy together. I barely saw my sister after that day, but I never gave up the thought of revenge. I bided my time, oh yes, waited years so he wouldn’t suspect anything. I disguised myself as an old beggar woman, quite clever really. I know it’s been done, do you want to hear the story or not?
Really there isn’t much more to tell. I snuck in and snip snap with my little knife and there goes his big toe. What’s that? His whole foot was gone? Well, I can’t account for that - probably gangrene.
But I do go on. I’ve talked half way into the night. But where are my manners? Before you leave, may I offer you some soup?
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FEATURE STORY 
