Besides tending to their gardens and sporting about the palace, the six mermaid princesses delighted in hearing their grandmother’s stories. They especially liked to hear her stories about what things were like on land. Since they had not yet come of age—the age at which mermaids are allowed to go to the surface of the sea—they yearned for knowledge about life beyond their undersea kingdom.
No doubt you’re wondering how old a mermaid has to be when she’s considered “of age.” Since you’ve probably read another version of this story someplace else—or have seen a sickeningly sweet cartoon somewhat similar to the story—you’re probably wondering how old a mermaid has to be before she can leave home without telling her parents and pursue a romantic interest.
(Actually, no one knows. Since the life under the sea can’t experience the same seasons as life on land, the merfolk must measure time by a means unknown to those of us on land. Hans Christian Andersen set the age at fifteen; William Shakespeare would have set it at thirteen; more recent writers have said sixteen.
(We do know from the story, though, that merfolk live three hundred years, and that the oldest mermaid in the “little mermaid’s” family was her grandmother. This would lead us to believe that a mermaid comes of age sometime between the ages of eighty and a hundred twenty. Certainly, this calculation would make the story less pleasing to children and teenagers but more pleasing to their parents. For the sake of preserving the romance in the story, let’s just say that we don’t really know when a mermaid comes of age.)
The six mermaid princesses were thrilled to learn that flowers on land had pleasant aromas, and that each flower had its own scent and its own season for blooming. Grandmother also told them about birds that were almost as varied in their size, shape, and color as the fishes of the sea. As she described how some of them flew among the trees and others flitted from flower to flower, she called them “fishes.” Because the six mermaid princesses had never seen birds, this seemed the best way to describe them.
The six mermaid princesses were thrilled to learn that flowers on land had pleasant aromas, and that each flower had its own scent and its own season for blooming. Grandmother also told them about birds that were almost as varied in their size, shape, and color as the fishes of the sea. As she described how some of them flew among the trees and others flitted from flower to flower, she called them “fishes.” Because the six mermaid princesses had never seen birds, this seemed the best way to describe them.
The six mermaid princesses especially delighted in hearing the kind of tales that human parents tell their children at bedtime and other occasions. You wonder, no doubt, how mermaids can know what kind of stories human parents tell their children. When merfolk venture close to land, they sometimes meet fairies. Over the centuries, mermaids and fairies have sometimes been friendly enough to swap information. Mermaids tell about life beneath the sea, and fairies tell about life on and above the land.
The stories that the fairies pass along to the merfolk always begin with the words, “Once upon a time,” and they end with, “…and they lived happily ever after.” Because the merfolk learn these stories only from the fairies, you can imagine what mermaids call these tales.
Humans must have very happy lives, thought Momo: No matter how dangerous or hard things become for them, there’s always a happy ending. She could hardly wait come of age, so that she could see what happy lives people lived on land.
Since Momo was the youngest of six mermaid princesses, and the oldest was not yet of age, she would have to wait a long time before she would get her chance. Each of the mermaid princesses made a promise to each other: As soon as they returned from their first visit to the surface, they would tell the others everything about their experiences.
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