The Alternative Little Mermaid

Author’s note: This is, I freely admit, not entirely all my own work.  I have borrowed  heavily from the original story 'The Little Mermaid', written by Hans Christian Anderson in 1836.  I read this story when I was a child.  By some miracle it didn't actually give  me nightmares (if your knowledge of this story is mainly based on the Disney version, I suggest you read the original, which you can find here http://hca.gilead.org.il/li_merma.html - but perhaps not if you want to sleep peacefully tonight), however even at that young age I was pretty unhappy with the whole thing on principle.  This is my preferred version of events. 

 Once upon a time, deep under the sea...

“Wait,” said the youngest daughter of the Sea King, “you’re saying that you’ll prepare a draught for me, and when I drink it my tail will disappear and I’ll look like a human woman?”

“Yes,” cackled the sea witch, sitting in her house built with the bones of shipwrecked human beings, “but it will be very painful.”  She continued, almost as though reading from a script, “you shall feel as if a sword were passing through you.  But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly; but at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow.”

“All right...” said the mermaid slowly, “but I’ll have legs so I’ll be able to meet the prince?”

“Indeed,” replied the evil sorceress, “but if you do not win his love, so that he is willing to forget his father and mother for your sake, and to love you with his whole soul, and allow the priest to join your hands that you may be man and wife, then you will never have an immortal soul. The first morning after he marries another your heart will break.”

“Well, I can take a little pain,” said the mermaid.  “I’ll be beautiful, and an incredible dancer.  And I’m already a fabulous singer.  How can he resist?  Let’s do it!”

“But I must be paid also,” continued the witch, “and it is not a trifle that I ask. You have the sweetest voice of any who dwell here in the depths of the sea, and you believe that you will be able to charm the prince with it also, but this voice you must give to me; the best thing you possess will I have for the price of my draught. My own blood must be mixed with it, that it may be as sharp as a two-edged sword.”

“You want to take away my voice?”

“You will still have your beautiful form, your graceful walk, and your expressive eyes; surely with these you can enchain a man’s heart. Well, have you lost your courage?  Put out your little tongue that I may cut it off as my payment.”

“Wait.  Taking my voice involves cutting off my tongue?  And this, ‘my heart will break’ thing – that’s figurative, right?”

“No,” said the witch impatiently, “you will become foam on the crest of the waves .”

“So, I’ll die?”

“You have no immortal soul.  Death means nothing.”

“Actually, I think it does.”

“Well – “

“ At the moment I’ve got three hundred years before I turn into sea foam.  If he doesn’t fall in love with me – I mean it’s unlikely but you never know – I might be bubbles in a matter of weeks.  Isn’t there another option?”

The witch thought for a moment.  “I’ve always admired your sisters’ hair.  I’ll compromise.  If you fail and if they agree to give me their hair I’ll exchange it for a magical knife.  Before the sun rises after the prince’s wedding day, you must plunge it into his heart.  When the warm blood falls upon your feet they will grow together again, and form into a fish’s tail, and you will be once more a mermaid, and return to us to live out your three hundred years before you die and change into the salt sea foam.”

“That’s pretty gruesome,” replied the little mermaid.

“I am an evil witch,” replied the witch.

“Yes but come on, evil witches turn people into toads who turn back completely unharmed when kissed by royalty. They don’t threaten unbearable pain with, I might add, graphic descriptions of the sensation of knifes cutting into your feet.  And frankly the whole hair thing is just weird.  Plus, plunging a knife into his heart and letting the blood flow over my feet?  Ugh.”

“You don’t have to do that part.  That’s only if you fail.  And as I understand it, if you fail and choose the sea foam route you actually become a daughter of the air.  If you strive for three hundred years to do good deeds for mankind you may obtain an immortal soul and eventually float into the kingdom of heaven.”

“MAY obtain?”

“Well, apparently daughters of the air can enter the houses of men, where there are children, and for every day on which you find a good child, who is the joy of his parents and deserves their love, your time of probation is shortened.  But when you see a naughty or a wicked child, you shed tears of sorrow, and for every tear a day is added to your time of trial.”

“Yes.  I hear there are quite a few naughty kids out there.”

“Anyway,” said the witch brusquely, “put out your little tongue that I may cut it off as my payment; then you shall have the powerful draught.”

“You know... “ said the little mermaid, “I’m starting to think my grandmother had a point when she said that thing about pride and pain.  The prince is handsome, and he IS a prince, but tongue amputation, knives-through-the-feet, and a high chance of death?  He’s probably an idiot anyway.  I mean I don’t know, I’ve never actually had a conversation with him – and now I come to think about it I’m not entirely sure why I’m so in love with the guy in the first place – but you hear a lot of stories about royal families marrying their cousins .”

The witch frowned.  “So, you don’t want to give up everything for the chance to marry a handsome prince anymore?”

“Nah,” said the mermaid, who was really a sensible girl at heart. Flicking her beautiful fish tail, she left the scowling witch and swam away from the creepy bone house in the centre of polypi forest, through the whirlpools and back to the King’s palace with the crystal ballroom and the rows of beautiful shells.

And she lived happily ever after, being grateful for what she had.

~ The End ~