In that deep kingdom lived six mermaid princesses with their grandmother and their father, the Sea King. The youngest was the quietest of them all, yet she watched and listened more than the others. While her sisters braided pearls into one another’s hair and let bright fish follow their hands, the youngest kept a little garden of red flowers around a white marble statue of a boy. She had never seen the world above the water, yet she asked about it so often that her grandmother would smile and smooth her long hair. “When each of you is fifteen,” the old queen said, “you may rise to the surface and see it for yourself.”
One by one, the elder sisters reached that age and came back with stories. One had seen a city shining at dusk, while another had watched white birds standing on rocks, and a third had floated under the moonlight to hear church bells ringing across the water. The youngest listened to every word, counting the days by laying one shell after another in a row beside her garden. At last, the row was complete. On the evening she turned fifteen, she rose through the dark blue water and lifted her head into the open sea.
The sky was clear at first. A great ship moved over the water with lanterns strung along its sides, and music drifted down from the deck in bright, cheerful strains. As the young mermaid swam nearer, she saw people dressed in …
6 chapters
