This is Macy Mayhew.

Macy Mayhew can zip up her cardigan. It looks like a crocodile’s smile.

Macy Mayhew can button her coat. It looks like five red ladybirds resting on soft green moss.

Macy Mayhew can pin up her hair. It looks like a freshly made nest filled with sleeping baby birds.

Macy Mayhew can do lots of clever things. She can put on her hat, fasten her skirt, pull up her socks and slip on her shoes.

But Macy Mayhew CANNOT tie her laces.

Macy’s laces do not like to be tied.

Macy’s laces are long and lazy.

They would rather lie on the floor than sit cross-legged.

They would rather skip or straggle than fold their arms.

Macy’s laces would rather do anything than stay tied neatly in a bow. Bows aren’t adventurous. Bows aren’t fun.

Macy Mayhew does not like her laces. She does not like them at all.

Macy’s laces need to be taught a lesson.

Macy takes hold of her laces, kicks off her shoes and runs outside.

Macy Mayhew spins her laces and whips up a wild wind which whisks her high in the air like a dandelion seed. Over the houses and over the hills, Macy flies. She kicks her legs and holds her laces tightly.

After miles and miles, the wind calms to a whisper and Macy must whirl her laces above her head to stay in the air. She hovers like a helicopter above the clouds and her socks get wet. The clouds look like an unmade bed and Macy Mayhew feels a little bit tired.

The clouds get tired too and drift away and Macy Mayhew throws her laces around a dragon’s neck and jumps upon its back. Macy rides the dragon over forests and through storms until its great wings slow and it comes to rest in a big green field.

Macy Mayhew can’t stay in the big green field. It’s miles from anywhere and close to nowhere. Macy Mayhew loops her laces to lasso a tiger who carries her far and carries her wide to the banks of a stream which giggles and gurgles beneath a bright, hot sun.

Under the bright hot sun, Macy Mayhew sits a while and casts her laces into the water. She fishes for the Sparkles which skitter and scatter on the skin of the stream. But the Sparkles are quick and cannot be caught and Macy thinks it’s time to go home.

If Macy Mayhew is to get home the stream must be crossed. But the stream is wide and the stream is deep and Macy has to walk on her laces like a tightrope in a circus. Slowly and surely she crosses the stream to reach the other side.

And there she stops. Macy Mayhew isn’t sure which way to go. Macy Mayhew is a little bit lost. She flew too high, she travelled too far all to teach her laces a lesson. They should have stayed fastened. They should have stayed tied. Now what will Macy Mayhew do?

Maces laces know what to do. They leap and lap like dogs on a lead, eager to find their way home. Macy Mayhew holds on tight as her laces race over a path that snakes and winds this way and that to the mouth of a deep dark cave.

In she must go, without any light, hoping her laces are true. The mouth of the cave yawns wide.

Onward they run. Into the deep dark cave. The laces lead Macy Mayhew back home. They couldn’t stay fastened. They couldn’t stay tied but Macy’s laces know the way home.

After hours and hours and five minutes more, Macy’s laces come to a stop. They come to a stop so sudden and short that Macy Mayhew trips over. From down on the floor she sees a long, thin well with a light glowing right at the top.

Up she must go. Up she must climb. Her laces are ropes stretching up the thin well and Macy Mayhew pulls herself up inch by inch.

Up she must go. Up she must climb. Macy Mayhew pulls herself up.

After miles and miles and an inch or two more, at the top of the long thin well, Macy Mayhew reaches the end of her marvellous laces and sees a white wooden door.

She knows this door, this white wooden door, it’s the door beneath her stairs.

So she opens this door, this white wooden door, and steps into her home.

And there in her home, beside her shoes on the floor, Macy drops her laces.

And there in her home, beside her shoes on the floor Macy Mayhew unbuttons her coat. Button by button, one by one, the ladybirds fly away home.

Then Macy Mayhew unzips her cardigan and the crocodile yawns a big yawn.

Macy Mayhew unpins her hair and the baby birds fly into her pocket.

Macy Mayhew sits down on the floor next to her shoes and her laces.

After dandelion seeds and helicopters and dragons and tigers and dogs and sparkles and streams and paths and caves and a long thin well, Macy’s laces are tired.

Tomorrow, they think, they will sit in their shoes and do exactly as Macy says.

Probably.

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Illustration courtesy of, and copyright, Suzanne Henderson. Follow her on Twitter.