The Law of Soles

 

The bare foot man

In the valley of Varnholt, the ground itself is hungry.

No one remembers when the Law was written; only that it is older than the oldest grave.

Every child is taught the same three sentences before they can walk:

“Skin must never touch soil.

Soil must never taste skin.

If it does, the Barefoot Man comes.”

The Barefoot Man has no face that anyone has lived to describe.

He leaves no footprints, because he wears nothing on his feet.

He simply arrives, barefoot, silent, and the mist arrives with him.

People wear shoes from cradle to coffin.

Newborns are swaddled in leather booties.

Corpses buried in iron-soled boots so heavy the pallbearers stagger.

Even the animals are shod: dogs in stitched paws, horses in silver, goats in tiny clogs that clack like bones on the cobbles.

To be barefoot is to be dead, or worse than dead.

Elara was eight when she first felt the ground breathe.

She had lost a sandal in the river.

The current stole it, and her mother screamed louder than she had ever screamed in childbirth.

They found the sandal downstream, torn to ribbons, as though something with teeth had worried it apart.

That night her mother sewed the remaining sandal to Elara’s foot with fishing line, through skin and all, so it could never come off again.

The stitches scarred white.

Elara never cried.

She learned early that crying wastes water the ground might drink.

Years passed.

Elara grew tall and quiet, the village seamstress, the one who mended every sole and heel in Varnholt.

She knew the weight of every foot by heart.

She could tell, by the wear pattern on a boot, whether its owner was afraid of the dark, or in love, or dying.

She also knew the mist.

It lay a mile beyond the last house, thick as wool, moving like something alive.

No one crossed it and returned with eyes or tongue.

Old Tamas tried, thirty winters ago.

He came back three days later, barefoot, soles black as clean as a baby’s, eyes milky, mouth sewn shut with black thread.

He lived another week, rocking and drooling, before they buried him upright so the ground could not pull him down faster.

Everyone said the mist was the Barefoot Man’s breath.

Elara’s little brother, Milo, was born with twisted ankles.

No boot fit him properly.

By twelve he walked in constant pain, the leather rubbing his skin raw until it bled.

At night he soaked his feet in salt water and whimpered that the ground was calling him, soft as a lullaby.

One spring evening, the pain became too much.

Milo waited until the house slept.

He took the kitchen knife and cut the boots from his feet.

The stitches his mother had put in years ago ripped open like wet paper.

Blood pattered on the floorboards, dark coins the ground could smell even through wood.

He walked outside barefoot.

The mist came instantly, rolling over the village like a tide.

Lanterns dimmed.

Dogs howled and would not stop.

Elara woke to the sound of her brother screaming, a sound that started human and ended like an animal being skinned.

She ran into the night still wearing only her nightclothes and house slippers.

She found Milo in the square, standing in the moonlight, feet bare and bleeding.

The mist curled around his ankles like cats.

And there, behind him, stood the Barefoot Man.

He was tall, thin, made of night itself.

His feet were black with earth, wet and shining, as though he had walked up from the underworld.

Where his face should have been there was only a raw, red hollow that drank the starlight.

Milo turned to Elara.

His eyes were already clouding.

He tried to speak, but his tongue swelled and blackened in his mouth.

The Barefoot Man placed one hand on Milo’s shoulder, gentle as a father, and the boy’s feet sank an inch into the soil, as though it had turned to quicksand made of teeth.

Elara screamed her brother’s name.

She lunged forward, but the mist filled her lungs like cold water.

The Barefoot Man looked at her, if a hollow can look, and the ground rippled under her slippers, hungry.

She ran.

She ran until her slippers tore and her soles bled through the cloth.

She did not stop until she reached the edge of the mist.

There she collapsed, half-blind, half-mute, tongue thick, eyes burning.

She understood then why no one ever spoke of what lay beyond: the mist takes your words and your sight so the secret stays buried.

Years later, travelers sometimes glimpse a woman wandering the border of Varnholt, barefoot, feet black as pitch.

She cannot speak.

She cannot see.

But if you are foolish enough to follow her into the mist, she will turn, open her sewn-shut mouth, and try to warn you with the only sound she has left:

the soft, wet slap of bare soles on hungry ground.

And then the mist takes you too.

In Varnholt they still wear their boots.

They nail them to their feet if they must.

And every spring, when the river runs high, mothers check their children’s stitches twice.

Because the ground is always listening.

And it is still hungry.

The end.

The mist never lifts.

And somewhere, barefoot, Elara walks forever, trying to lead the next child away before the soil can taste them.

But the soil always wins.

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