The Little Mermaid

Far out at sea the water is as blue as the petals of a cornflower, and as clear as glass. But it is also very deep, deeper than any anchor can reach. There, on the bottom, stands the palace of the sea king. Its walls are coral and its windows of clear amber. The roof is made of mussel shells that open and close as the water moves.

The sea king was a widower. His old mother kept his house. He had six daughters, and the youngest was the most beautiful, with skin as smooth as a rose petal and eyes as blue as the sea on a still day. Like all the mermaids, she had no feet. Her body ended in a fishtail.

Each daughter had her own little garden in the courtyard, and they grew what they pleased. The little mermaid would have nothing in her garden but flowers as red as the sun, and a marble statue of a young man, fallen from a wreck, that she had brought home through the water.

Her grandmother told the sisters about the world above the surface. About cities, forests, ships, the smell of grass, the singing of birds. The little mermaid loved these stories more than anything. When you are fifteen, her grandmother said, you can rise to the surface and look for yourself.

Each sister took her turn. The little mermaid waited her years and then her day came. She rose. The sea was calm. She put her head above the water at sunset. A ship was nearby, and on its deck, lit by lamps, people were dancing. There was a young man, a prince, with dark eyes and a kind face, and it was his birthday. She watched until the lamps grew dim and the music stopped.

Then a storm came. It came suddenly, as storms do at sea. The ship cracked apart. People fell screaming into the water. The little mermaid, who could swim through any sea, found the prince among the wreckage, only just alive, his face below the surface. She held him up. She held him through the rest of the night. At dawn she brought him to a shore. She laid him on the sand where he would be found, and hid herself behind some rocks. Girls came down from a temple on the cliff and saw him there. They thought it was they who had saved him. He woke and looked at the eldest of them. The little mermaid swam home.

After that she had no peace. She rose every evening to look for him. She went back to the same shore, but she never saw him again. She became thin. She would not eat. At last she went to the sea-witch's house in the dark current beyond the whirlpools, where the polypi grew that catch any swimmer.

"I know what you want," said the sea-witch. "It is a foolish thing. I will give you legs. They will be the most beautiful legs ever seen, and you will dance better than any human girl. But every step will feel as if you are walking on knives. The pain will not stop. And you will not be able to come back to the sea. If your prince marries another, on the morning after his wedding, your heart will break, and you will turn into foam on the water. That is the bargain."

"I will pay it," said the little mermaid.

"And there is a price. I want your voice."

"My voice is all I have. He has not heard me yet. If I lose it, how will I make him love me?"

"You have your beautiful face. You have your eyes. You have your dancing. Use those."

The little mermaid hesitated only a moment. She nodded. The witch took a knife and cut out her tongue.

She drank the potion at dawn. The pain split her down to the tail. She fainted. When she woke, she was lying on the shore. The prince came down the cliff path and found her, naked and beautiful, unable to speak. He took her up to his palace and dressed her in silks. She danced for him. He loved to watch her. He had her sleep on a velvet cushion outside his door.

He told her one day, in confidence, that there was a girl from a temple far away who had saved his life. He could not forget her face. If he could find her, he would marry her. He would marry no other.

Soon the temple girl was found. The two royal houses arranged the wedding. The prince was happy. He kept the little mermaid by him, his strange silent dancer, his sister now, he said. She danced at the wedding feast on the deck of the ship that took them home. Each step cut her like a knife. She smiled.

That night she stood at the rail of the ship. The prince and his bride had gone to bed. The sky was beginning to lighten. Soon the sun would rise, and she would be foam.

Her sisters came up out of the water. Their hair was cut short. They had bargained with the witch. "Take this knife. Plunge it into the prince's heart while he sleeps. When his blood touches your feet, they will join into a tail again, and you will come back to us. You can live three hundred years, the lifetime of mermaids. Hurry."

The little mermaid took the knife. She went into the cabin. The prince and his bride were sleeping in each other's arms. She raised the knife. She looked at his face.

She could not do it. She came out and threw the knife into the sea. The water flashed red where it fell. Then she stepped over the rail and threw herself in.

She did not become foam, exactly. She felt herself being lifted by something else, something light. Spirits of the air, who had loved without being loved, were rising around her. They told her: those who love and bear pain without giving pain in return become daughters of the air. They drift between the living and the gone. They do good in the world, unseen, for three hundred years, and at the end they are given a soul.

She went up. The sun rose. She felt warm wind on her face. Below, the ship was sailing on, and the prince was waking, and looking at the sea, and thinking he had seen something white go up into the sky, like a sea-bird flying.