When I was out hunting a boar one day, I ran down a hill in my sandals and caught a thorn in my foot. The thorn festered and my foot became so swollen and sore than I couldn’t put any weight on it at all.

I was bedridden. Then I heard about an illustrious physician and I summoned him to my chamber. He made me a white slipper with a medicinal balsam that he promised would stop the pain in my foot. So it did. So it did!

I could move and walk and I could even dance! You can imagine how much I relied on that slipper.

Then one day when I was stepping into a boat, the strap of the slipper caught on a nail, and before I knew it, the river was carrying my slipper away; far, far away.

King With a Slipper in The White Slipper, Orange Fairy Book. Illustration by H.J. Ford.