10. Sirena Shyly Stays at Sea

     By the time Sirena reached the right age, she had had plenty of time to think about Eeba’s story about the terrors to be found on land. Sirena firmly decided that she would stay as far from land as she possibly could. 

      When her turn came, she stayed in the midst of the sea. To her mind, the sea was just as interesting as anything she’d ever heard about the land. 

     Dolphins sported in the water and occasionally swam up to her, inviting her to join them in dolphin games. Of course, she joined them in their sport, and it was as much fun for Sirena as it was for the dolphins. Flying fish also flitted by her. Flying fish are fun to watch, but they’re more serious and less sociable than dolphins.

      Sirena saw distant ships with billowed sails. The seemed a bit like the softly billowing clouds overhead. As the ships slowly passed along the turquoise-colored sea, so the clouds slowly passed along the blue heavens above her. 
      The clouds were as far from her as the ships were. But the ships, being much smaller than the clouds, looked farther much farther away. Somehow, the distance made the ships seem more pleasing to her. 
At the close of day, Sirena decided to bid farewell to her new-found friends, the dolphins. She promised them that she’d look for them the next time she returned to the surface. By their actions and dolphin sounds, the dolphins made it clear to Sirena that they’d like to visit her in the Kingdom of Marbella.

9. Eeba's Bold Adventure

     Eeba’s birthday came during the middle of summer.  Eeba was the boldest of the mermaid sisters. She hurriedly prepared herself for her big adventure and left for the surface by mid morning. 

      In the distance, she saw a large cluster of something that must have been forty shades of green. She knew that she had sighted land. 

        Eeba swam so close to the land that she could see the sand crabs and birds called plovers running along the beach. Wondering how she could get closer, she swam along the coastline until she sighted a creek flowing into the sea.  

     Her heart thrilled at the thought of swimming up the creek for a closer look at the land. None of her sisters or friends had ever swum that far before. At the same time, she feared what may happen to her if she swam too far and the tide went out. 

    Could she even get back? Hesitating a few minutes, her curiosity and sense of adventure got the better of her fears. She swam farther and farther up the creek.

       She saw birds of many sizes and colors. She saw butterflies and flowers, and she basked in the coolness and smells of the forest: wildflowers, wild onions, and wild hickory trees, to name a few. 

She saw what looked like a tiny little forest covering a rock by the creek. Eeba had never heard of moss and didn’t understand what it was. As she touched it, some of it came loose from the rock, and the aroma of fresh soil filled her nostrils.

       All along her journey up the creek, she noticed that she was being followed and watched by fairies that flitted about in the forest. Mermaids and fairies have no trouble seeing each other, just as children have little trouble seeing fairies. 

     One of the fairies said to her, “We don’t get very many melusines around here.”
      “What’s a melusine?” Eeba asked.
      “A melusine is like a mermaid, only it lives in creeks and rivers.”
      “Oh, I’m not a melusine. I’m a mermaid; and I don’t really live in this creek. I came here only for a visit.”
      “So you’re a tourist! While you’re here, you must go see the children.”

      At that moment, Eeba heard some splashing and laughter somewhere farther up the creek. She immediately recognized it as the musical-sounding laughter of children, for children of the land and merchildren laugh in similar ways. Eeba wanted very much to meet some human children. She cheerfully swam toward the sound of laughter and playing.

      Eeba had always heard that humans wore something called clothing, but what she saw came as a surprise to her. These human children were quite naked as they frolicked in the water. Even more surprising, they swam and dived and frolicked as skillfully as merchildren. Eeba was delighted to see that human children and merchildren had much more in common with each other than she had always believed.

      Eeba watched them for several minutes, wondering if she should swim closer and try to get to know them. On one hand, she didn’t know how to speak any human languages. On the other hand, it seemed that children were basically the same everywhere—beneath the sea and on land. Surely, these human children would be happy to find a new friend. Finally, Eeba decided to swim close enough to speak to them.

       Speaking in the melodious mermaid language, Eeba greeted them and waved. Suddenly, all playing stopped. Children pointed and screamed at her, scrambling for the safety of the creek bank. Without pausing to put on their clothes, they grabbed their clothes and ran into the forest.
      Eeba called for them to come back, trying to tell them that she wanted only to be friends; but none of them would listen to her. 

     As she called out to them, a small, black, furry animal (for she had never seen a dog) ran to the creek bank and placed itself between Eeba and the disappearing children. She couldn’t understand what the dog was saying to her, but she was sure that the dog was angrily warning her about something. Eeba spoke kindly to the animal, but it continued its noisy complaining. 

     The sheer anger and bad manners of the animal frightened Eeba. She quickly turned, swam out to sea, and headed for the security of home.  

Her fondest memory of her visit to the surface would always be the children she saw. She would always marvel that they were able to swim as well as any merchild, even though they didn’t have tails like mermaids. 

8. Ayon and the Sunset

     Ayon’s birthday came toward the beginning of autumn. As it had been with her older sister N’Shal, the family made a big fuss over decorating Ayon with seashells of various sizes, species, and colors.

     When Ayon reached the surface of the sea, the sun was just beginning to set. From her grandmother’s stories, she knew it as the hot ball of light and not the cool one. But, at that time of day, it didn’t really seem hot or especially bright; and it wasn’t bright yellow, as Ayon had been led to expect it to be. The sun was as much orange as it was yellow.

     Except for the area near the sun, the sky was a bright blue; it was a brighter and richer shade of blue than the ocean itself. In the area of the sun, now nearing the horizon, the sky was changing to deep shades of orange. The sun itself was changing from orange to red. As half the sun dipped below the horizon, the sky around it became a dazzling panorama of burning orange and flaming crimson.

     She felt that the sun was slipping away from her. She had to see more! With all her strength, Ayon swam in the direction of the sun, hoping to catch up with it before it could escape from her sight. Either the sun was too fast or Ayon was too slow. The sun finally slipped completely beneath the horizon, leaving a pale, reddish glow.

     At that moment, Ayon realized that the sky behind her was becoming dark. As the sun surrendered its claim to the sky, the darkness rushed in to fill the sky. In a few minutes, even the pale, reddish glow had faded from the horizon. 

     With the coming of twilight, a single star appeared somewhere to the north of Ayon. Then two others appeared: one in the eastern sky, the other in the west. 

     The twilight of evening, in its turn, surrendered to the dark of night, other stars appeared a few at a time, until the whole sky was garnished with thousands of twinkling pinpoints of light.

     Ayon noticed the moon. At least, she thought it was the moon. It wasn’t round, as N’Shal had described it. It looked more like a glowing cockle shell as viewed from the side.

     For the next few hours, she dreamily gazed upon the stars and the moon and watched the play of moonlight on the ocean waves. At length, she flipped her tail and turned toward home.

7. N'Shal Observes the City

     Finally, the first of the mermaid princesses reached proper age. N’Shal’s grandmother prepared her for the occasion by decorating her tail with six scallop shells and adorning her hair with more than a dozen smaller shells: cowries, periwinkles, and wentletraps. She also wore a necklace of even smaller seashells.

     Her whole family and many other mermen and mermaids waved farewell as she swam from the palace and rose toward the surface.
     When N’Shal reached the surface of the sea, she stopped and looked around. Along the horizon, she was surrounded by darkness. Above her, the sky looked like a dark bowl garnished with pinpoints of light. 

     She had never seen stars before, and she marveled at how they merrily twinkled. In one direction, a cool ball of light hung dreamily over the horizon; it was the full moon, and N’Shal had never seen the moon before.
       Presently, she noticed what appeared to be a ribbon of stars stretched along a small area along the horizon. She knew from her grandmother’s stories that this must be a city—one of those places where humans lived.

     Eagerly, she swam for more than an hour and came to rest on a sand bar in a bay. She sat on the sand bar and watched the boats sail to and from the harbor. She listened to the gentle murmur of the ocean waves lapping on the shore. Listening very carefully, N’Shal could hear the sound of horse-drawn carriages as they moved along cobblestone streets. 

   She could hear the “clop, clop, clop” of the horses’ hooves and the rattling, grinding sound of the carriage wheels bouncing across the cobblestones.

      Twice as she sat there watching and listening, she heard the tolling of a brass bell. The first time, it tolled eight times. The second time, it tolled nine times.
     Afterward, the sounds of the city gradually grew quieter until not a sound was heard—that is, not a sound except the murmur of the ocean waves lapping against the shore.

     N’Shal turned and swam out to sea, toward Marbella. She was filled with excitement and could hardly wait to tell her sisters what she had seen.

6. Grandmother's Stories

     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 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.

5. Merfolk, People of the Sea, and Landsmen

    Merchildren don’t have classrooms the way children on land do. They sit around older merfolk and learn from them. Since the merfolk usually live three hundred years, they gain much more learning than most teachers on land.

     For the six mermaid princesses, school consisted of learning from their grandmother. Oh, how they enjoyed listening to their grandmother’s stories!

That’s the form that education usually took. Instead of studying geography from books, they listened to grandmother’s stories about other places and the people who lived there. They eagerly listened, asked questions, and discussed what grandmother told them.

     Oh, and history wasn’t some dull litany that involved memorizing who did what, when, and where. Oh, no! It was oral tradition; it was the stories of people of every sort in every known culture on land, on the sea, or beneath the sea. It was the stories of struggles and triumphs and failures and moral lessons to guide merchildren to responsible futures.

     Whenever possible, biology lessons involved hands-on, interactive experiences with real plants and real animals. When it wasn’t possible, the merchildren would listen to Grandmother’s stories.
     In short, education consisted of field trips, stories, first-hand experiences, and discussions. The six mermaid princesses eagerly listened, participated, and asked questions about the world around them and the world beyond them.

     When the mermaid princesses were small, they had thought that there were only three kinds of folk in the world: cetaceans, who live in the sea and have bodies similar to fish; merfolk, who have lower bodies like fish, live in the sea and could breathe underwater as well as in the open air; and people with legs, who lived on land and could not breathe underwater. You probably thought the same. Grandmother taught them otherwise.

     Oh, there were cetaceans, merfolk, melusines, undines, river nymphs, Moken, amas, bayou dwellers, and landsmen.

     Cetaceans, like people and mermaids, are mammals. They include whales, dolphins (including freshwater dolphins), and porpoises. Unlike fish, cetaceans breathe only air; but they can hold their breath underwater for many minutes. For the most part, cetaceans are gentle creatures; and dolphins are the noblest of them all. Dolphins are helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, cheerful, and brave. Just as people on land consider it a compliment to be called true ladies or gentlemen, merfolk consider it a compliment to be compared to dolphins.

      You already know about mermen and mermaids, but let me correct one mistaken belief about mermaids. The merfolk aren’t really half man (or woman) and half fish. That would be quite impossible, and it’s just a fairy tale. The lower half of a mermaid’s body is like that of a cetacean.  A mermaid's tail sways up and down like a cetacean's tail rather than side to side like a fish's tail. 

     Melusines are very much like mermen, except that they live in fresh water. A melusine can change herself (or himself) into a person with legs, but only temporarily. If a melusine marries a human, she becomes fully human and can remain human until death. 
     An undine has two legs, lives in the sea, and can breathe underwater as well as in the open air. 
     A river nymph is like an undine, except that it lives in rivers, creeks, and other fresh-water areas. 
     Moken live in boats on the sea.   They’re not able to breathe underwater, but, like cetaceans, they are able to hold their breath for many minutes at a time. 

  Many of the Moken have no country, and they only occasionally set foot on land. When they do, it’s only to harvest shallow-water clams, seaweeds, and other things they need to survive. They don’t associate with landsmen any more than they must.

      An ama sleeps on land at night but spends most of her days in the sea and under the sea. Like Moken, amas are able to hold their breath for surprisingly long periods of time. 

     Amas are always women because women can resist the colder temperatures of the water better than men can, and they can hold their breath longer. Their men folk usually operate boats or help the amas in other ways.
     Sometimes amas are seen carrying small wooden buckets to the sea. The buckets are left to float on the water while the amas dive underwater in search of foodstuffs or other items to harvest.
       When they go farther out to sea, they sometimes attach weights to help them to sink, and ropes to get back to their boats.  
     At the end of each day, they wash the salt water off their bodies and return to their homes in villages on land.

      Bayou dwellers live in swampy areas on or by creeks, and they get much of their food from the hunting and gathering of fish, crawfish, and land animals. Many of them live in floating houses on the creeks. Like the merfolk, they’re generally peaceful.
      You know, of course, about the people who live entirely on land. Many of them try to set themselves apart from nature and even above nature. As a result, they’re the greediest and most warlike of the creatures grandmother could describe.

     Many of the landsmen, of course, are harmless. Nonetheless, Grandmother cautioned her precious mermaid princesses to beware of them.

      The land does have nobler creatures than men, and the land does have other man-like creatures. On the land, one can find dogs, horses, and elephants, which are far nobler than men.      
     The land is also home to great apes and Sasquatches, which, unlike men, tend to be more responsibly behaved, generally having a live-and-let-live way of regarding their neighbors and surroundings.

     These other land creatures, though, are another lesson for another time.

4. The Mermaid Sisters' Gardens

      Each of the six mermaid princesses had her own little garden plot to decorate as she saw fit.

         N’Shal patterned her garden plot after the shape of a dolphin and kept her garden plot fairly simple.
     Ayon made hers into a wide arc, so that she could turn her head and see it on three sides of herself. She arranged the plants and items in her garden according to size. The smallest items and plants were placed closest to the inside of the arc, and the largest plants and items were placed at the back. Others were placed in between. Here and there, a rock or larger item would be placed to make the arrangement look more natural.

     Eeba preferred a complex arrangement of passageways rising to eye level or above. Anyone swimming through it would discover a different arrangement each time he turned a corner.


     Sirena kept a small garden plot, in which she created an imaginary, miniature sea kingdom. Rocks, for example, represented mountains; and small plants represented much larger plants.

     Makki patterned her garden plot in the shape of an S. To her, this shape traced the movement of a mermaid when she is swimming through the water. At least that’s what Makki said after she had completed her garden. Not having the imagination of her sisters, she just wanted her garden to look like a garden. Fitting the garden to the space available to her, it ended up shaped like an S.

     All of the mermaid princesses adorned their little garden plots with things they had found after ships had sunk into their kingdom. They especially liked things that sparkled and shone: gold and silver coins, jewelry, watch chains—even broken glass—as long as they were beautiful.

     Don’t let me forget to mention Momo’s little garden plot. Hers was in the shape of the sun. She chose red and gold and orange sea plants to adorn her garden. As for decorations from wreckage,

      Momo chose only one thing: A life-sized statue of a human boy stood in the very center of her garden. At times when she was daydreaming, Momo would occasionally imagine that he was a real boy.
   Entering her world of imagination, she would ask him about himself and about his life on land.