The Little Mermaid

Far out in the ocean, the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the purest glass.

In the deepest expanses of the ocean, there lie miraculous palaces carved out of sea crystals. Dazzling temples and palaces built from gargantuan pearls forged from clams larger than any known to mankind. Bioluminescent jade and emerald jewels decorate magnificent halls far older than the memory of those that live on the surface.

In these halls are found fish of every species. Brilliant octopuses and cuttlefish can paint dazzling arrays of colors across their bodies as they fly through the vast watery fields. Clams and oysters sparkling in their own secret light. Coral of every color, watery skies whose clouds are the titanic form of whales drifting above, and a celestial sphere of starlight made of millions of moon jellies, who drift and spiral in the currents and form new constellations each night as they do.

It is in this world that the sea folk live.

The sea folk live in the deep, vast beauty of the open ocean, swimming alongside the sea turtles and dolphins, singing with the whales who drift above them, bathing themselves in the bioluminescent plankton that illuminate the eternal evening of the seafloor. But the sea folk live in complete harmony with the ocean. They are born from the inexhaustible bubbling of the sea foam and sand. When they die their bodies return to the sea foam and the minerals that wash up on the Earth’s shorelines.

The sea folk are ruled by the Sea King, who reigns in the most magnificent palace to be found anywhere in all the world’s oceans. The pearl and onyx towers of his palace rise from the most beautiful of the ocean’s mountains, painted with a glorious array of moon jellies and glowing plankton, and topped with wonderous mussel shells that open and shut with the tide.

The Sea King’s daughters were the six most beautiful mermaids found anywhere in the vast underwater kingdom. Each of them had hair that seemed to shine out with its own lights in the deep ocean depth. Each wore the shiniest pearls and decorated her hair face and hair with starfish of every color.

And all six mermaid princesses were renowned across the world’s oceans for their beautiful voices. Each night they would sing together in harmony, their voices echoing through the waters and traveling miles and miles in all directions. Each had a voice that was as unique as every single grain of sand on the world’s beaches. After a time all of the citizens of the ocean kingdom came to recognize each mermaid princess’s voice for its unique, beautiful flavor.

But all came to agree that of the six mermaid princesses, the youngest had the most beautiful voice by far. At night the youngest mermaid princess would sometimes ascend to the coral tower in her palace, look up at the vast constellations of jellyfish and illuminated plankton in the night sky, and sing a soft, sad melody that rested on the ocean currents and flowed like a gentle river to every corner of the seas. It is said that fish and sea creatures from all over the world would swim to her palace at night just to hear her singing. Some saw frightful sharks descending from their hunting grounds to gently roll over next to her tower and let themselves be soothed by her voice. Others saw hideous eels wrap themselves around her and allow her soft fingers to pet their scaly flesh. Octopuses and cuttlefish drift next to her and let their polychromatic skin paint in colors the sounds she sang, sometimes conjuring colors never before seen in sea or land from nothing more than the guiding light of her voice.

The sea folk saw her leaning out of her tower window, gazing up above her, and wondered if she might be tracing new constellations formed by the jellyfish stars, or imagining herself flying in the vast schools of herring and sardines that crossed endlessly through the blue expanse and caught the corridors of sunlight passing through the blue waters.

But, though the little mermaid did all of these things, on those sad, lonely nights, when she sang her most beautiful songs, her eyes were not cast on any of those things at all. She instead looked past them, up through the columns of sunlight, into the highest stratosphere of the ocean where the water grows light blue and filters through marble impressions of blue-silver sunlight. She looked past even that, and imagined the surface world.

You see, the Sea King was very protective of his daughters, but he did allow each of them to visit the surface world once in their lives. As our story begins, all of the Sea King’s daughters had been able to visit the surface world except for the youngest. She had listened to her sisters tell her the strange and wondrous stories of what they had seen up there. But each time she asked her father when it would be her turn, he brushed her off without answering.

“It’s not fair,” she said one night to her older sister. This sister was the second youngest of the six, only older than the little mermaid herself. That night the sister had heard the little mermaid’s song emanating from her coral tower and thought it sounded sadder than usual.

“What isn’t fair?” the sister asked. She couldn’t miss how her little sister’s eyes were cast up towards the surface world.

“You and the other four have all gone up to the surface,” the little mermaid complained. “But every time I ask father, he doesn't answer.”

Her sister tried to look sympathetic, but a troubled feeling rose in her chest. “You must know,” she began, “that father loves you above all. He only wants to protect you.”

“But protect me from what!” the little mermaid cried. “I look up every night, past the jellyfish stars and the whale clouds and the shimmering sunlight, and I feel something there pulling at my heart! But here I am, stuck in this coral palace!”

The little mermaid turned to her sister. “Tell me again what you saw when you went to the surface.”

Her sister frowned. “You know, my love, all of us have seen different things up there. It would only confuse you.”

“But I want to hear! I want to hear!” her sister pleaded.

Here, it may be a good idea to describe the lives of the sea folk. The natives of the underwater kingdom do not have lives like those who live on the surface. While a mortal human who lives on land may live to 70 or 80 years, or maybe even 100 years if they are prudent and of good character, sea folk live much long. A mermaid may end up living hundreds or even a thousand years older than a human. And for this reason, mermaids and other sea-folk experience the passage of time differently from those on the surface. To the little mermaid’s sisters, it seemed like only a short people of time passed between each of their visits to the surface. But those periods spanned beyond the entire lifetime of a single human being. Entire generations had come and gone in the time each of the mermaid princesses visited the surface world.

And so the little mermaid’s sister told her story. “Well, love, like you I grew up hearing the stories that my older sisters told me. Our father’s eldest born was the first to go up there. She, as you may recall, was rather unimpressed. In the nights above water, she saw a sky filled with small, unmoving stars that looked like nothing more than tiny pinpricks of light. Nothing like the dancing colors of our jellyfish constellations. She thought she saw a few small, distant lights on the land far beyond the shore, but they were too far away and too small to worry about, so she returned to the ocean floor unimpressed. Our next sister to go had more luck. She swam up and down the shoreline and saw many fires burning there in the human encampments. A few humans came down to the beach to cast crude nets and catch some of the stupider fish that live in the shallow waters. But the rest of the humans were too far away inland to see, so she too returned without seeing much of interest.

“Now, our middle two sisters, being so close together in age, went up to the surface together. You’ve heard the strange and wonderful tales they told. The humans they saw were no longer far away in the land beyond the shore. Our sisters saw the humans riding the waves in their wooden ships, some as big as a whale, that flowed along the winds encircling the water with vast white sails that billowed like the clouds drifting across the sky of the surface world. And they heard them sing songs of the sea, and fire cannons that roared like the loudest thunder that billows from those surface clouds. But then, in a storm, they saw their wooden ships taken and tossed like nothing more than lost driftwood. They heard those human sailors cry out to their god and weep and howl, and they saw some taken overboard and surrendered into the hungry waves of the sea. Saw their sad, weak bodies flailing and struggling in waves that you or I could swim through so easily. They heard those humans cry out and struggle for the briefest time until the waters took them under and they were still.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard all of that!” the little mermaid cried. As always when she heard this tale she wondered why her two sisters had not tried to save the poor humans thrown off of their boats in the storm. “But tell me again what you saw!”

Her sister swam up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Well, I’ve told you before some of the things I saw.” Here her sister paused. The memory of what she had seen on her brief trip to the surface some time ago still echoed through her most unsettled dreams. Like their father, she always felt a need to protect her younger sister, and so had spared her many of the more frightening details of what she had seen on the surface.

But the little mermaid was persistent. “You never told me anything! You only gave me little pictures, like you ‘saw big boats’ and ‘heard thunder’ and ‘smelled something bad.’ I want to know what you saw!”

Her sister pursed her lips and tried to hide the unease that was creeping on her face. But she saw in her sister’s eyes that the little mermaid would not be deterred this time. That without hearing the truth of what her sister had seen, she may do something she would come to regret.

“Well,” the sister began, considering her words carefully. “Like our two older sisters, I also saw humans riding the waves on their ships. Only…” Here she paused, trying to think of how to convey in words the image that came to her mind and made her shudder.

“Only what?” her sister whined.

“Only, these ships weren’t made of wood, as our sisters had described. They were made of metal. Not shiny metal like the veins of minerals that shimmer along the seabed, but gray, ugly metal that cut through the water like a blunt knife. And these ships were not the size of a whale, you see.”

“Smaller than a whale?” the little mermaid said, disappointed.

“No,” her sister began. “Bigger. Much bigger. As big as an underwater mountain, almost.”

The little mermaid’s eyes lit up. “But how big were the sails that carried ships that big?” she asked.

“I…” her sister began. “…I didn’t see any sails. These ships, they were carried by something else. Something invisible. Only, it wasn’t invisible. Not quite. There was this roar that came from deep in their bowels. Like they had captured the thunder from the sky and imprisoned it in their metal hulls. And these ships spewed out something smoky and noxious, like a poisonous smoke burning the air around them, flooding up into their sky and poisoning the world. And these ships had guns, guns so big they dwarfed the humans onboard. And they fired with a furious eruption of smoke and fire like hundreds of our geothermal vents going off at once! And they roared like thunder I had never heard before, so loud it almost deafened me! And I heard the scream, and the alarms! And…oh! Oh! It was so dreadful!”

The little mermaid saw the distress in her sister’s face, she was too curious to stop.

“Is that all you saw?”

Her sister tried to turn her uneasy mind through all the flashing and terrible images that she remembered from that time. “I…I don’t know. I was so overwhelmed with it all. I kind of blacked out. I don’t know how long I was up there, how much time had passed in human lives. But, I remember seeing other ships. Ships even bigger, so big they couldn’t be real. I saw them hauling hundreds, maybe thousands of humans out across the sea. I saw vast stacks on top of them spewing toxic smoke into the air. I saw them pouring their toxic chemicals into the pure blue waters of the sea. I saw them carrying their garbage, their toxins, their pollution out into the sea. I saw their titanic platforms, so massive I couldn’t see the top of them from where I swam, and from those platforms I saw them sending drills down into the ocean depths, down until they hit the seabed, and then farther. Farther until they hit something buried deep under the ocean and sucked it up to the surface. I saw their smoke and their fire and their poison gas, spilling into the air and the water! And…and I smelled it!”

Here the little mermaid’s sister grew so distraught at the memory she had to stop to reclaim her senses. The little mermaid knew she shouldn’t press on. But her voice sputtered from her mouth before she could stop herself.

“What did it smell like?”

“It smelled like death!” her sister moaned. “Not just the death of what they had killed, but something deeper. Like they had found the very essence of their surface-level death, distilled it to something physical, and spilled it across the world! Like I could smell the stench of the world itself dying!”

Her sister didn’t go on. The little mermaid felt her curiosity fade at last, but she was troubled by what she had heard.

“But how can that be?” she blurted out. “How can humans do that? Don’t they have immortal souls?”

Just as she said this she shut her mouth. But it was too late. Her sister’s look of distress suddenly flipped to a look of alarm.

“What?” her sister shouted. “Who told you about immortal souls?”

The little mermaid knew she had made a big mistake, but she had no way to take it back.

“I’ve heard about immortal souls,” she tried. “Here and there.”

Her sister swam closer to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “What did you hear about them?”

“Well,” the little mermaid began. “Just that human, they don’t live as long as us sea-folk. Not nearly as long. But, when they die, they have an immortal soul that goes up to live forever in heaven. But when we die…”

She bit her lip, not knowing how to continue. Her sister looked her right in the eye as if she already knew what the little mermaid was going to say.

“When we die…”

“When we die our bodies just become the sea foam and the sand and the water that circles through all of the oceans of the world. We go back to the sea and replenish it like we never left.”

Her sister’s look of alarm changed to one of sadness.

“You heard this from the sea witch.”

This wasn’t a question. But the little mermaid was shocked all the same.

“What, no!” she tried to say, knowing she could never deceive her sister. “I didn’t…”

“It’s okay,” her sister said. “I heard it from the sea witch too.”

They both looked down at the floor of the little mermaid’s room without speaking for a few moments. Both knew that their father had forbidden them from ever visiting the dreaded sea witch. But both knew that they had done so all the same.

The low, sad song of a whale passing overhead broke the silence. The little mermaid was the first to speak.

“When the sea witch told me about the human’s immortal souls, it sounded like the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. I thought that I would do anything to have an immortal soul of my own.”

Her sister gave her a sad but knowing look. The little mermaid didn’t have to study that look too hard to understand that her sister had had the same thoughts.

“How could creatures with something as beautiful as a soul do something like that to the world?” the little mermaid asked.

“I know,” her sister began. “But you need to be careful. Immortal souls may not be what you think.”

“But,” the little mermaid began. But before she could speak they heard the voice of their lady-in-waiting calling to the sister to prepare for bed.

“I have to go,” the sister said. “But remember what I told you the next time you’re looking up toward the surface.”

And with that, she swam away. The little mermaid was left there with nothing but her troubled thoughts. But her heart was still longing for even one single view of the surface world. One single moment in the company of a creature with an immortal soul. And as she watched the surface above the ocean sky, she saw the sunbeams begin to tilt at an angle and slowly fade in a red-orange light. She knew this meant evening was approaching above the surface. The thought of the sun setting into the vast horizon of the surface stifled the rest of her thoughts and flamed the fires burning in her heart. Disregarding both her father’s orders and her sister’s warning, she swam from her coral tower, up through the vast schools of fish, up through the jellyfish stars, past the whale clouds and their low, sad songs, and towards the long-dreamed point where the water gave way to the open air of the human world.

When she breached the surface the sun was already setting. She peaked her head above the water and looked around. The waters were calm. The skies were clear. Off in the distance, she could make out the gray blur of the shore, though it was too dark by then to make out the land. She looked above her. She could see the stars in the sky, but like her sisters had said they were small and immobile, only dim pinpricks of light compared to constellations of jellyfish and bioluminescence under the sea.

But, then she saw the boat. It was big, as big as a whale, anchored nearby in a small cove. But it didn’t look like the terrifying metal ships her sister had described. She didn’t see any guns, or smoke, or heard any terrible thunder of its engines. In the evening light, it shone out in a pleasant white color, with smooth edges and windows in which vibrant lights shone out.

And on the deck of the ship, the little mermaid saw the humans. They were human men, by the look. As far as she could tell they were young. They stood in a small circle at the front of the deck, drinking liquid from glass bottles and laughing with voices that carried over to her. And at the front of the circle, she saw a man, his blonde hair shining in the evening light. From her distance, she could see his smile, and even imagine his eyes sparkling in the surface-level sunlight. And as she watched he suddenly raised from his pocket something small and square in his hand. From where she was floating, the little mermaid could see a bright light shine out from that square. The human and his friends looked into it and made goofy faces as they raised their hands and their glasses against the background of the sun setting over the sea.

Is this from their immortal soul? The little mermaid thought to herself. They can capture the stars and hold them in their hands.

And as she watched the young man at the front of the boat laugh into the square of light he held in his hands, she thought: Is this my human prince?

“Dude, who’s that?”

The little mermaid opened her eyes in the direction of the voice. Her head spun, and she for a moment all she could focus on was the pain radiating across her body. At first, all she could see was a gray blur. But soon her eyes adjusted to the light, and she saw that she was lying on a sandy beach, with the tide rolling and out lazily around her.

And then, she looked down in the direction of the ocean, and saw, with a sudden horror, that her beautiful blue-green fishtail was gone, and in its place lay two thin, pale human legs.

And then she remembered what the sea witch had told her the night before as she gave her the potion.

Drink this, my love, and you will grow human legs and walk among the humans in the surface world. But you will not be of them. Not yet. To gain a human soul, you must earn the love of the man who has your heart.

The little mermaid remembered taking the potion, surfacing under the full moon. Drinking it, feeling its bitterness burn down her throat. Feeling the pain go through her like a sword being passed through her whole body. Watching the world and the heavens spin around her.

“Is that one of Tyler’s girls”

“I dunno. I think she was on the boat last night, though.”

The little mermaid looked up. Around her three humans stood. All men, still quite young by the look. At the center was the prince she had seen the night before, with his shiny blonde hair, smooth skin, and the eyes that seemed to glow even though he hid them behind sunglasses. He looked down at her. “What was your name again?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but only a fragile, soft moan came out of her mouth.

Then she recalled the sea witch’s words once more.

To join the human world you must sacrifice something. You must give up your voice.

The price chuckled. “I think she’s still wasted from last night.” He turned to her. “I don’t know if I told you but we got my dad’s villa all weekend. He’s at Davos in Switzerland or something, so we’re going to have this massive fuckin’ party. If you thought you got wasted last night, wait to you see shit my dad’s got in his wine cellar.”

One of his friends spoke up. “Doesn’t he have that cognac that’s like 5K a bottle?”

“Whatever he’s got,” the prince said, “we’re doing Jello shots with it.”

The little mermaid did not understand any of these words, but she nodded and rose to her new feet. Immediately upon standing horrible pain shot through her legs, making her teeth clench and tears well up in her eyes. But the prince and his friends didn’t notice. They had already turned and walked back away from the shore. The little mermaid went to follow, but before she did she turned and took one last look at the ocean. And as she did, she remembered what else the sea witch had told her.

Once you drink this you can never return living to the sea.

And

If you get him to love you, you will gain your immortal soul. But if he loves another, you will die of a broken heart and dissolve back into the sea foam from where you came.

Though she could no longer speak, she could dance.

Each night she danced for him. At his father’s villa, they blasted loud, strange music through electronic boxes, and she danced. Each step brought new pain searing through her feet like knives were cutting into her human skin and muscles. But still, she danced on, and the prince and his friends laughed at her and captured pictures and moving images on the glowing squares they held in their hands.

They said things to her like:

I just posted that to TikTok. You’re famous!

And

Got a bunch more Twitter likes for that vid of you dancing to BTS. Hashtag mute dancing lady!

And

You’ve gone viral!

Are her feet bleeding?

I dunno. Hashtag bloody feet dancer.

She could never speak to ask what any of this meant. She could only moan her sad, incoherent moan and keep on dancing.

And each night, the prince kissed a new woman. Sometimes more than one at the same time. And though he laughed along with her dancing, though he gave her a strange, ugly drink that burned her through when she drank it, though he captured moving images more than anyone, he never kissed her.

And she could not tell him how she loved him, how all she wanted was to be loved by him.

As she danced the pain burned through her feet and up her body. But in that felt she felt more than her own aching feet. She felt the pain of the atmosphere burning. She felt the pain of the ocean poisoned with the pollution of men like her prince. She felt the pain of the animals crying in their destroyed homes, of the Earth as it was drilled and bled of its resources.

And she remembered what her sister had told her when she had gone to the surface.

That night she rested her legs on the balcony of the villa while everyone else was passed out inside. She looked back at her prince, lying asleep on a cough with two women draped over him. She felt tears well in her eyes.

“He will never love me,” she thought. She looked down at the water that lay under the balcony. “I should just cast myself back into the sea and become nothing but sea foam like I was always meant to.”

But before she could, something disrupted the water below her.

It was her sister. She floated there in the water, looking up at the little mermaid in the hollow moonlight.

What are you doing here? The little mermaid tried to say.

It was as if her sister read her thoughts.

“I’ve been looking for you,” her sister said. “I went to the sea witch. I made a deal with her. You can become a mermaid again, return to the sea as if you had never left.”

The little mermaid’s eyes grew wide with hope.

“But,” her sister said. “You must kill him.” She produced a sword from under the murky water. “If you spill his blood, take his soul from him, only then can you return.”

Her sister threw the sword up to the balcony, where it landed with a clang. When the little mermaid turned back, her sister was gone.

She picked up the sword. It was sharp and sturdy, foraged no doubt from a shipwreck. She looked at her prince. He snored on the couch, asleep and oblivious to the world burning around him.

The little mermaid felt the blade of the sword. It was cold.

I cannot kill him, she thought.

But why?

She took one last look at her prince.

Because I don’t have a soul.

Without further noise, she flung herself over the balcony and into the cold waters of the sea.

Did she dissolve into nothing more than the sea foam from whence she came? Perhaps.

But perhaps she did live on in her own way. Perhaps her spirit remained in those shining squares of light where her moving images danced and twirled in front of millions of eyes all around the world.

The people who saw it knew, even if only in their deepest dreams, that this was the dance of one who knew what it meant to have a soul. How humans were born from the earth, but unlike all other creatures had the fires of creation in them. How they could shape the world to their image, alter the atmosphere, destroy species, and change the very face of the earth. How the hands of creation burned hottest in those who can wield it, but who can not yet see beyond their animal needs.

And how that burning causes the worst pain of all.

And perhaps if you see such a dancing creature on your screen, recognize her beauty, and feel it move you, perhaps you could help her achieve the soul she longed for, that she gave up so much to achieve.

If you let her remind you of the cost of a soul in hands that only know how to destroy.