4. The Lost Shoes

The next time I saw Michael he waved to me and pointed to his feet.

“Yes, I have only one shoe on,” he said, “and it’s my father’s fault.”

Now this is more serious than it sounds because a leprechaun shoe is not just any shoe. It is the envy of every seven league boot. It can get you anywhere in no time. It takes two leprechauns to make a pair of these shoes. No leprechaun can make more than one shoe of a pair. The reason for this is so that leprechauns will remember how important it is to cooperate. They are rather solitary beings. Many are quite gruff and dour and prefer their own company to that of others. So they are in need of being reminded once in a while that others exist. But they do stand by the rest when they are reminded to.  

“In truth, I’ve lost both my leprechaun shoes,” said Michael. “But I was able to make myself a new one. The one I’m wearing, of course. But I’ve lost my original pair. We leprechauns never have more than one pair. We get our pair when we are born and they grow with us. It’s such a fuss to make these. I’ve made myself this new one. But my father is at odds with me and won’t complete the pair. So I have to go everywhere hopping.”

Michael’s father is Fergus MacLob O´Toora. He is a leprechaun of the old school. He enjoys a riot and is proud of it. Lately, he especially likes to act up in pubs during and after football games.Often, it is Michael’s task to go fetch him there in case he is too erh...tired to find his way back home alone.

On such occasions, Michael often plunges into lightless nights with only his firefly lantern to guide him.There are rarely less than a dozen fireflies in it. Four live there always.The rest are kith and kin that come visiting. These fay fireflies started out in life eating slugs and snails and similar stuff,  but since they live with Michael they have turned vegetarian. Now they are forever munching on bits of sugar cane and will thank you for any candy you might offer them. They’re awfully fond of that. 

On a particularly foul night a publican gave Michael a call and advised him to come fetch his father. Michael dutifully plunged into total darkness. There was no moon, fog and clouds covered the stars, and the rain was making up its mind if it wanted to go out that night. His fireflies had gone off  with Fergus to watch a bigtime football game earlier that evening, enticed by the promise of caramel corn. Although he couldn’t see a thing, Michael felt he would be alright because all he had to do was walk down a straight and narrow road counting up to a thousand five hundred. After so many steps, he would scry the lights of the pub.

He had counted up to four hundred and five when bellowing winds began to buffet him and soon were reinforced by peltering hailstones. When he had taken step eight hundred and nine, he was hit by something much larger. It sent him tumbling and shouting to a field on the side of the road where he landed with a very loud thump.

A glowworm lantern suddenly lit up and Michael saw he had been run over by his father’s jaunting car.  

“What do you mean by driving without lights in the dark?” cried Michael.

“No! What do you mean by creeping up in the dark without warning, like death or a thief?”

“You shouldtn’t be driving at all! You should have waited for me to fetch you. Didn’t they tell you I was coming?”

“And you taking your time!”

Michael got on his feet and saw he was on them, but not in his shoes. He looked around him and only saw it would be impossible for him to take the time he would need to find them. A worse accident had to be avoided. He decided to come for them at dawn.

Michael had been searching desperately for his lost shoes for some days and nights now, but there was no trace of them. He was not only tired of limping around. He was also very worried they might have fallen into the wrong hands.

Of course, I offered to help him in his search for them. We scoured all the fields on both sides of the whole of the road where the accident had happened. We checked out hundreds of fields that had nothing to do with that road, leaving different kinds of fairy rings all over them. We mystified the humans that saw the rings, but there was no finding the shoes.

We searched neighboring barns and farmhouses and even thrift shops and second hand stores. All to no avail. As we searched, we began to find all manner of strange things, but no, not the shoes.