The Little Mermaid

Far out at sea the water is as blue as a cornflower, and so deep that no anchor can reach the bottom. There, on the very bottom, stands the palace of the Sea King. Its walls are made of coral, its windows of amber, and its roof of shells that open and close as the current drifts past. In every shell lies a pearl.

The King had been a widower for many years, and his old mother kept house for him. She wore twelve oysters on her tail, because she was the noblest lady in the sea, and she was very fond of her granddaughters, the six little sea princesses.

All six were beautiful, but the youngest was the loveliest of all: her skin as soft as a rose petal, her eyes as blue as the sea on a clear day. Like her sisters, she had no legs. Instead she had a fish’s tail.

Each princess had her own little flower bed in the royal garden. One shaped hers like a whale, another like a mermaid. But the youngest made hers round like the sun, and planted only red flowers in it, because the sun looked red to her through the water. In the middle stood a white marble statue of a boy, which the sea had carried off from a sunken ship. Beside it she planted a rose-colored willow, and it swayed a violet shadow over the sand.

She was quiet and thoughtful. While her sisters played with treasures from sunken ships, she listened to her grandmother’s stories about the world above: about cities and ships, about flowers that have a scent, and about fishes that sing in the trees. That was what Grandmother called birds, because otherwise the little ones would not have understood her.

“When you turn fifteen,” Grandmother used to say, “you may swim up, sit on a rock in the moonlight, and watch the ships sail by.”

The sisters grew up one after another, one each year. The eldest told of a city with twinkling lights and bells. The second saw a sunset, when the clouds drifted like golden swans. The third saw children splashing in a river, and a little dog that barked at her so loudly that she dived to the very bottom in fright. The fourth saw dolphins and whales, and the fifth swam up in winter and sat on an iceberg.

But the youngest had to wait the longest. In the evenings she stood by the window and gazed up through the dark water. The black shadows of ships passed overhead, and she thought she could already hear human voices.

At last she turned fifteen too.

“Well, now you are grown up as well,” said Grandmother, and she wove white lilies into her hair. “Off you go.”

The Little Mermaid rose as lightly as a bubble. The sun had just set, the sky still glowed pink, and a great ship rocked on the waves. Music was playing on deck, and hundreds of lanterns were lit. The Little Mermaid swam up to a cabin window and peeped inside.

The room was full of splendidly dressed people, and the handsomest of them all was a young prince with black eyes. It was his sixteenth birthday, and in his honor fireworks shot into the sky, bang! bang!, and scattered into stars. The Little Mermaid dived in fright, but at once popped up again. She could not take her eyes off the prince.

Late that night the sea began to roar. The waves rose like black mountains. The ship creaked, crack!, the mast snapped, and the ship fell on its side. People rushed this way and that. At first the Little Mermaid was even glad: now the prince would sink down to her, to the bottom! But in the same moment she remembered that people cannot live in water. He would reach the bottom only if he were dead.

“No!” And she darted in among the wreckage, though the timbers nearly crushed her.

The prince had no strength left to swim, and his eyes had closed. The Little Mermaid caught him and held his head above the water all night long, until the storm died down.

In the morning a shore came into view: blue mountains with snow on their peaks, a green forest, and, right by the water, a white building with a bell tower. The Little Mermaid laid the prince on the warm sand with his head toward the sun and kissed his forehead. Then she hid behind some rocks and covered herself with sea foam so that no one would see her.

Soon some girls came out of the building. One of them noticed the prince, gasped and called for help. The prince opened his eyes and smiled, at her, not at the Little Mermaid. How could he have known who had saved him?

The Little Mermaid dived sadly and returned home.

After that she grew even quieter. Her sisters asked what she had seen, but she said nothing. Morning and evening she swam to that shore, but the prince was never there. She hugged the marble boy in her garden and no longer tended her flowers, and they grew wild, right across the paths.

At last she told her sisters everything, and one of them knew where the prince lived. After that the Little Mermaid often swam up to his palace and watched him sail in his boat with its little flags.

“Grandmother,” she asked one day, “if people don’t drown, do they live forever?”

“No, child. They live even less long than we do. We live for three hundred years, and then we turn into foam on the waves. But people have a soul. When a person dies, the soul rises into the sky, to the stars, and lives forever. We have no soul.”

“I would give all my three hundred years for just one day as a human being,” whispered the Little Mermaid. “Is there really no way?”

“There is, but only if a human loves you more than his own father and mother and takes you for his wife. Then a part of his soul will pass into you. But that will never happen. The tail that we think so beautiful looks ugly on land. There people need two clumsy props, which they call legs.”

The Little Mermaid looked at her tail and sighed.

That evening there was a ball in the palace. The sisters sang, and the youngest sang best of all, for her voice was the loveliest in the sea and on land. For a moment she was almost happy. Then she thought of the prince and slipped quietly out of the palace.

“I will go to the sea witch,” she thought. “I have always been afraid of her. But perhaps she will help.”

The witch lived beyond the boiling whirlpools, where not a single flower grew. The way to her led through a forest of polyps, half plant and half animal. They stretched out their thin, bendy arms toward everything that swam past, and never let go. The Little Mermaid braided her hair tightly, pressed her hands to her chest and darted through that forest as fast as a little fish.

The witch sat in a house made of white sand, and around her, like kittens, fat water snakes lazily wriggled.

“I know why you have come,” said the witch. “It is a foolish business, but you shall have your way. You want to get rid of your tail and walk on two props, so that the prince will love you.”

She laughed so hard that the snakes tumbled off her lap.

“I will brew you a potion. Before dawn, swim to the shore, sit down and drink it. Your tail will split into legs. You will walk more lightly than any human being, but every step will hurt as if you were walking on sharp knives. Can you bear it?”

“I can,” answered the Little Mermaid in a trembling voice.

“And remember: once you become human, you can never come back to the sea. And if the prince marries someone else, on the very first morning after the wedding your heart will break and you will turn into foam on the waves.”

“So be it,” said the Little Mermaid, and she turned pale.

“And you will pay me with your voice. It is the best in the sea, and you hope to charm the prince with it. So that is what you will give me.”

“But then what will I have left?”

“Your beauty, your light step and your eyes, which can speak. That is enough to win a human heart. Well, are you frightened?”

“No,” said the Little Mermaid.

The witch set a cauldron on the fire, and the potion in it boiled and began to glow like water under the moon. The Little Mermaid sang one last time. Her voice, thin and clear, floated into the witch’s black shell. The witch closed the shell, click!, and everything went very, very quiet.

The Little Mermaid looked back at her father’s palace, where the lights had already gone out, blew it a hundred kisses and swam up.

The sun had not yet risen when she sat down on the marble steps of the prince’s palace and drank the potion. It was as if a sharp sword had run through her, and she fainted. When she opened her eyes, the prince was standing in front of her. The Little Mermaid looked down and saw that her tail was gone, and in its place were two slender white legs. She wrapped herself in her long hair.

“Who are you? Where did you come from?” asked the prince.

She could only look at him with her sad blue eyes. She could no longer speak.

The prince took her by the hand and led her to the palace. Every step was like walking on knives, but she walked so lightly, as if she were swimming, and everyone marveled at her gait. They dressed her in silk and muslin, and in the whole palace there was no girl lovelier than she.

That evening girls sang for the prince, and he clapped for the one who sang best. The Little Mermaid felt sad: once she had sung even better. “If only he knew that I gave up my voice just to be near him,” she thought.

Then music began to play, and the Little Mermaid started to dance. No one had ever danced like that. She glided over the floor, and with every movement she grew lovelier still. No one guessed that every step she took was on knives.

“You will stay with me forever, my little foundling,” said the prince.

She slept on a velvet cushion outside his door. She rode with him on horseback through green forests, and together they climbed high mountains. Her feet ached, but she only smiled. And at night, when everyone was asleep, she went down the marble steps to the sea and cooled her feet in the cold water. Then her sisters rose from the deep and sang her sad songs. Once even Grandmother and the Sea King himself, wearing his crown, came. They stretched their hands out to her, but did not swim any closer to the shore.

The prince grew fonder and fonder of her, but the way one is fond of a dear child. It never crossed his mind to marry her.

“You are the most devoted of all,” he would say. “And you are so like a girl I saw only once. I was caught in a storm, and the waves washed me ashore near a temple. A girl found me there. She is the only one I could ever love. But she lives at the temple, and I shall never see her again.”

“He does not know that it was I who saved his life,” thought the Little Mermaid, and her heart ached.

Soon people began to say that the prince was sailing to a neighboring king to look at his daughter.

“I must, because my parents wish it,” he whispered to the Little Mermaid. “But I will never love her. And if I had to choose a bride, I would choose you, my silent foundling.”

The ship carried them to a foreign city. And when the princess came out, the prince cried out:

“It is you! You saved me when I lay on the shore!”

It truly was the girl from the white building by the sea. She had been studying there, and now she had come home.

“I am so happy!” the prince said to the Little Mermaid. “You will be glad for me, won’t you? You love me best of all.”

The Little Mermaid kissed his hand. It felt as if her heart were already breaking.

The wedding was held that very day, and in the evening the newlyweds set sail for home. Lanterns glowed on the deck, the sailors danced, and the Little Mermaid danced too, as she had never danced before. She knew it was the last night she would see the prince. For him she had left her home, given up her voice and endured pain every day. And he had never found out.

At midnight everything fell quiet. The newlyweds went to sleep in a splendid tent on the deck, and the Little Mermaid stood by the rail and looked east, where the dawn would rise. The first ray of sun was to take her.

Suddenly her sisters rose from the waves. They were pale, and their long hair was gone, only short strands were left.

“We gave our braids to the witch so that she would help you,” said the eldest. “She gave us a knife. If, before sunrise, the prince’s life ends by this knife, your tail will come back to you. You will be a mermaid again and live out your three hundred years. Hurry! It is him or you. Do you see how the sky is already turning pink?”

The sisters sighed heavily and dived into the waves.

The Little Mermaid drew back the curtain of the tent. The princess lay asleep with her head on the prince’s chest, and in his sleep he whispered her name. The knife trembled in the Little Mermaid’s hand.

She looked at the prince for a long time. Then she turned and flung the knife far out into the sea. She looked once more at the one she loved and threw herself from the ship into the waves.

She felt herself melting, growing light as foam.

But now the sun rose over the sea. Its warm rays fell on the water, and the Little Mermaid did not feel death. Hundreds of clear, bright beings hovered around her, and their voices sounded like the softest music. And she saw that she, too, had become like them, light, and was rising higher and higher.

“Where am I flying?” she asked, and she had a voice again, only now it was like a breath of wind.

“To the daughters of the air,” they answered. “A mermaid has no immortal soul. Neither have the daughters of the air, but we can earn one through good deeds. We fly to hot lands and bring people cool breezes. We carry the scent of flowers so that the sick feel better. After three hundred years of kindness we receive a soul. You longed for the same with all your heart. You loved, you endured, and you did not hurt the one you love. That is why you are with us now.”

The Little Mermaid stretched her clear hands toward the sun and for the first time in her life felt tears in her eyes.

On the ship there was already a bustle. The prince and his young wife were looking for her, and they gazed sadly at the white foam on the waves, as if they guessed where she had gone. Unseen, the Little Mermaid kissed the princess on the forehead, smiled at the prince and, together with the other daughters of the air, flew up to a pink cloud.

And the prince never learned that on that night the Little Mermaid had saved him a second time.