HOW IT ALL BEGAN

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

THE MYSTERY OF THE LITTLE BLACK FOOTPRINTS

It was Sunday afternoon, and Mommy was tidying up the house as usual. Suddenly, out from behind the door jumped MICHAEL! "SURPRISE!" he shouted. Mommy jumped high in the air. She really WAS surprised. And then she laughed. "What are you doing here, Michael my funny boy? You were upstairs playing with your train!"

"Not playing, Mommy! I was RealPretending. It’s a real train, and I was riding in it. I went around and around and around. Then I got out to look at the bridge. But then the train went away."

"Went away? You mean it kept going around and around?"

"No, Mommy," said Michael. "It went into the tunnel and didn’t come out! So I came downstairs and surprised you."

"You mean your train is stuck in the tunnel?"

"No, Mommy, it just went away, it really did! Come upstairs and look!"

So Michael and Mommy went upstairs to look at the electric train, and sure enough it wasn’t on its tracks. Mommy and Michael looked in the tunnel. It wasn’t there. They looked under the table the train tracks were on, but it wasn’t there!

"Now, Michael! What did you do with the train?" Mommy shook her finger at him.

"Honest, Mommy! I didn’t put it anywhere! It was really gone, all by itself!"

"You silly boy, playing tricks on your Mommy!" She laughed, and went back downstairs to tidy up the house some more. But Michael stayed upstairs in his room, thinking.

"Now that train couldn’t just disappear! It had to go someplace!" he thought. "I’m gonna look for it!" And he went over to look at the train tracks again. He looked at the front of the tunnel, then inside the tunnel, and then at the end of the tunnel. And there, right at the end of the tunnel, he saw something that made him stop.

"What’s this?" he asked himself in surprise. "LITTLE BLACK FOOTPRINTS!" and sure enough, leading away from the tunnel’s end were the unmistakable marks of a pair of tiny feet, black and wet as if the feet had been dipped in ink, leading to the end of the table and up onto the window sill.

"I’ve got to follow these," he thought, "and find out what’s going on here." So he went over to the window to see where the footprints led.

First of all, they went to the other side of the window, then onto the dresser, down the dresser, onto the carpet, and under Michael’s own bed, to right where his slippers always were. Only now, he noticed, they weren’t there! Not only that, but the trail of tiny prints stopped right there, where his slippers used to be. Quick as a wink he jumped up and ran downstairs. "Mommy!" he shouted, "where are my slippers?"

"Your slippers?" she said, "aren’t they right by your bed where they’re supposed to be?"

"No, Mommy, they aren’t! And I found all these little black footprints!"

"LITTLE BLACK FOOTPRINTS!?" she exclaimed, "What on earth do you mean by that? You haven’t been making a mess up there, have you?"

"Really, no, Mom! Just come look!"

And so Mommy and Michael went upstairs to try and solve this new mystery. But when they got there, Mommy said, "what do you mean, you funny boy? Your slippers are right there!!" And so they were, right where Michael had left them the night before. And of the little black footprints there was no trace at all.

"But," said Michael, "I saw them there, just a minute ago, and the footprints, too!"

"Michael," said Mommy, "you played one trick on me, with the train, and that was funny. Now you’re trying to fool me about the slippers, and that’s O.K., too, because even two tricks is a little bit funny. But don’t do it again. Three tricks would be too much, and I might get mad, because I have work to do and I don’t want to keep running upstairs."

"But Mom," said Michael, and then stopped, because he knew his mother wouldn’t understand. How could she? She hadn’t seen the little black footprints. Just the same, he knew they had been there, because he really had seen them. So he just said, "Well . . . O.K., Mom," and decided that this mystery was one he had to solve himself. So he waited till Mommy went downstairs, and then looked around to see if he could find some more clues.

Meanwhile, Mommy went out in the garden to pick some roses. She found three beautiful ones: a red, a yellow, and a pink one. Then, humming happily to herself, she brought them back into the dining room to put in her favorite vase. But when she looked on the mantlepiece, where she usually kept it, all she saw was . . .

LITTLE BLACK FOOTPRINTS!

"MICHAEL!!!" she shouted upstairs.

Now you have to understand that Mommy, being a grownup, couldn’t imagine any other answer to the disappearance of the vase than that somebody had taken it. And since Michael was the only one besides her in the house right then, she thought it must have been him. After all, hadn’t he just been trying to fool her, and even talking about those footprints? So when Michael came downstairs, even though he said he didn’t take the vase, Mommy didn’t believe him and got a little bit mad. She said he had to go stay in his room until he told her where the vase was.

Now Michael is a good boy, and he really wasn’t playing tricks on Mommy, after all; so when she told him to go to his room he got kind of sad. But since she said to go upstairs, he went. And so he was lying on his bed, feeling a little bit bad, when he remembered about Saki. Saki, the wise-eyed piggybank with the big eyeglasses, was special to Michael: sometimes when he was sad he would go Saki and tell Saki what the trouble was.And though Saki never said anything back, he always gave a friendly look as if to say, "There, there, Michael, everything will be O.K. very soon. Just think about how many people love you." And Michael would start to feel better.

So he got up, went over to his piggybank and said, "Saki, why is Mommy not being nice to me? I didn’t do anything wrong! It’s all because of those little black footprints!! I wish she would believe me that I didn’t make them, and I didn’t take her vase!" But just as he started pouring out the whole story, something very strange happened. Saki started to talk!

At least he thought it was Saki. The voice was coming from Saki. But Saki’s mouth was not moving, and the voice sounded tiny and far away, almost as if . . . as if it were coming from inside, in the hollow place where Saki kept his money for him. And it was a tiny little voice.

"Help! Help!" he thought he heard it cry.

Of course Michael was a little scared, because he had never heard anything like this before, but being a brave boy he just thought to himself, "That voice called for help. Maybe somebody’s in trouble and I’m the only one who can hear. I’d better find out what’s going on!"

So he shouted back, "Do you need help?"

And, amazingly, the tiny voice answered back! "Yes, oh, help, please help me!"

Michael called back, "Who are you?"

"I’m Michael," said the voice.

Michael was flabbergasted. "No, I’m Michael!" he shouted.

"Well, I’m Michael, too, then, and I need help!"

"You really have the same name as me?"

"If your name is Michael, then I do!"

"Wow! And you need help? What can I do to help you?" asked the Michael who had been talking to Saki.

"You can open up this doggone piggy bank and let me out!" said the tiny voice.

"Oh, that’s easy!" said Michael. And he picked up Saki and very carefully moved him over to the bed. Then he reached underneath Saki’s tummy and very gently pulled loose the big rubber stopper which was there. And then he saw the most amazing thing he had ever seen.

First a few dimes and pennies fell out of the space in Saki’s tummy, and then he saw a pair of tiny, tiny feet showing, then a pudgy little body squeezing its way out, and at last arms, hands, shoulders, and head of what appeared to be--what was it?--a miniature little boy(!) slowly emerged from the opening. The tiny figure was wearing a blue and white sailor suit, and sported floppy hair and a big silly grin. "He’s a cute little guy!" thought Michael to himself.

"Hi!" said the tiny person.

"Hi!" said Michael.

"You must be big Michael!" said the small one.

"And you must be little Michael," said his rescuer.

"That’s great!" said little Michael. "Now we won’t get mixed up by calling each other the same name. You will always be Big Michael and I will be Little Michael. That’s a great idea, if I do say so myself!"

"Yes, that is a good idea," agreed big Michael. "But that still doesn’t answer my biggest questions."

"What are those?"

"How did you get so tiny, and what are you doing here in my room, anyway?" blurted out big Michael. "I don’t understand what’s going on here at all!"

"Well . . . that’s a long story. But I’ll try to make it short," said little Michael. "You see, I come from another world."

"Another world?"

"Yes, another world, and there are no people or anything elses there as big as you. But there are lots of things there that you don’t have in this world."

"Like what?"

"Like real dragons, and wishing wells that work, and flying cats, and elephants, and . . . "

"Wait a minute, little Michael! We have elephants here! I saw some at the zoo!"

"Yes, but your elephants aren’t real elephants because yours have trunks."

"Well, what do yours have?" asked big Michael.

"Oh, an elephant in my world has a long arm, with a hand, where yours has a trunk. That way they can shake hands and hammer nails and write letters and do lots of things."

"Your elephants can read and write? Can they talk, too?"

"Oh, yes!" exclaimed little Michael. "Our elephants are more talkative than anybody else there. They talk so much that sometimes you just have to ask them to stop just so you can have it quiet enough to think."

"Oh," said Michael. "Can I go there and talk to them?"

"I’m sorry," answered his tiny friend. "You’re just too big. You wouldn’t fit in my world."

"But I wanta go there!" he complained.

"Well, I don’t see how you can," said little Michael.

"But I’ll tell you what. How about if, since we’re friends, I can come and visit you lots and lots, and then I’ll tell you about my world and all my adventures there. That’s almost as good as going there!"

"Well . . . O.K. --but I still wanta go. Do you think you can figure out a way, little Michael?"

"I can’t think of any way right now. But maybe someday we’ll think of something." Suddenly, he pulled from his pocket a beautiful gold watch on a long silver chain, and looked at it closely. "My goodness, I have to hurry," he said. The gate will close soon, and I have to get that train back here."

"Train?" exclaimed Michael. "Do you mean my train, the one that disappeared in the tunnel?"

"Oh, yes, that’s right--you weren’t supposed to see that. I just needed to borrow it for one of my adventures. I didn’t mean to keep it so long. Here, put me up on the train tracks. I’ll bring it right back."

So big Michael very carefully lifted his new friend up onto the table where the train tracks were. little Michael scrambled onto the tracks and quickly disappeared into the dark of the tunnel. There was an instant of silence, and then . . . a faraway but familiar sound, a clicking, clacking, humming noise that seemed to get closer, ever closer till at last, with a whistle blast, Michael’s electric freight train came chugging out from the tunnel’s far end, then around the tracks to stop right in front of Michael! And then out of the tunnel bounced little Michael, with that same old silly grin on his face, leaving behind him a trail of--could it be? Yes!!--little black footprints!

"LITTLE BLACK FOOTPRINTS!" shouted big Michael.

Little Michael looked down at his feet, then behind him. Oh, I’m sorry!" he said. "I got your floor dirty. I keep forgetting. Every time I come here I have to cross the Black River, and my feet get all muddy. But I always clean up my mess when I remember about it. See?" And he reached into another pocket and pulled, and pulled, and pulled out a huge handkerchief that looked much too big to have fit there; then he turned around and used it to mop up the footprints, afterwards carefully wiping each of his feet. Following this he tossed the handkerchief in the air, and--it just disappeared into thin air!

Big Michael was so astounded he didn’t know what to say. "So . . . so you were the one who took my slippers? And Mommy’s vase?"

"Oh, I just borrowed them for a little while. You see, on my last adventure it was very cold, and one of my friends and I needed someplace warm to sleep. And your slippers were toasty warm. Thank you. I brought them back, didn’t you see?"

"Yes, but what about the vase? My mom got really mad at me because she thought I took it! And then I got really sad."

"Oh, I’m sorry, Big Michael!" said little Michael. Anyhow, she won’t be mad any more, because I already put it back, and I put a beautiful blue flower in it, too!"

"Thank you, thank you! I’m gonna go show her, and tell her how it wasn’t me who did it!"

"No, Big Michael, don’t do that! Because if a grownup finds out about me, then the gate from my world will be closed forever, and I won’t be able to come here any more. So you have to promise to keep my secret."

"Well . . . I guess I will. But you have to promise that if you want to take something you’ll always ask me first. And I want you to come visit me every time you have an adventure, so I can find out what it’s like where you come from. O.K.?"

"I promise," said little Michael. "But now I have to go back. There’s a big feast in the Golden Forest today, and I have to be there."

"Oh, I wish I could go too! When are you going to come back?"

"How about tonight, when you take a bath? I’ll get in one of your little boats and come visit you then. I’ll tell you everything that happened, O.K.? It’s so great to have a big friend I can talk to!!"

THE END