The Little Mermaid

A retelling

George Nash
Aug 26, 2017 · 9 min read

Far out in the depths of the Pacific ocean, deep down in the clear water, in a castle carved out of coral, lived six beautiful mermaids. Daughters of the Sea-King, they were gifted with fish-like tails that reflected a spectrum of colours unable to be perceived by the human eye, colours which would perplex even the most intelligent of minds. The incessant desire of humans and their constant wanting and destruction was why the mermaids resided at the bottom of the ocean; safe from the evil eyes that could not penetrate the fathoms of water that separated them. One day, the sisters were away from their castle ensuring order to the surrounding waters, delivering lost Clown fish back to their parents, tending and pruning the sea flowers, when they heard and unfamiliar hum reverberate in the water. The sisters all stopped and looked at each other.

“Well, what on earth is that noise?” inquired the youngest sister, the only one to have unusually bright red hair, which in the darkness of night, looked as if she was bleeding profusely from her scalp.

“It is an evil noise” replied the oldest sister. “One which tells us we have gone too far into other’s waters”.

“We should head back to our home” suggested the middle sister.

“Father told us we shouldn’t be out this far. It is far too dangerous for us” said another.

“Let us swim back as fast as our tails will take us”

The sisters all nodded in agreement, apart from the youngest, who stayed motionless listening intently as the other sisters started on their way back. For her, the noise was intriguing, unlike anything she had heard before. Despite the great amount of respect she held for her sisters, she could not draw herself away from the inviting noise, and soon found herself being pulled closer and closer to the source of the hum. As the eldest sister turned to check all her siblings were following, she saw the youngest swimming up and up, edging closely to the surface. She screamed for her sister to return to her, and soon the sea was filled with the shrills and screeches of the sisters calling for her to come back. Crabs and shrimps and all other animals crawled out of their homes to see what the commotion was about. As the youngest mermaid edged closer and closer to the surface the screams of her sisters were drowned out by the hum which increased in intensity, until she could feel the water on her skin reverberating to the slow pulsing.

The other sisters had started after her but were too late by the time she had broken through the surface of their world. What she saw took her breath away. On the sea, bobbing slowly on the waves was a ship unlike any she had seen before. It was uniform in colour, a hulking great metal ship with wires and cranes on its deck. But this one was much closer than the other ships she had seen before; and unlike the other ships, this one had lights hanging from the wires and cranes. These coloured bulbs were brighter than anything she had seen before, for although the sea was full of a great number of colours, none had the luminosity of the bulbs which adorned that ship. All images of her home had left her head, all that occupied her mind was how much she wanted to see the bright lights even closer.

As she made her way closer to the ship, cries came out from its deck. Humans stood leaning over the side, calling out in their native tongue to others. Soon more and more scrambled to the side to see what the men were shouting and pointing at. When the young mermaid saw that it was her they were pointing at she felt an overwhelming sense of joy. All the men on the ship had come to the deck to see the mermaid’s presence, even the Captain, who was easy to spot because of the flamboyant hat he wore. Excited to see all of the attention on her, she decided to call out to the men on the ship. She rose further out the water and called to them in a voice which could only be heard and never described, a voice so melodic that after the utterance had finished, it seemed to echo on the waves. Suddenly, she noticed the men had scrambled away at the sound of her voice.

“Have I offended them in some way? I did not mean them any harm” she thought. Quickly, she plunged into the water, racing towards the ship, in the hope she could convey to the men that she was only greeting them. All of a sudden, she felt a tug at her tail. Her oldest sister had caught a hold of her, flanked by her four other sisters who all covered their ears to keep out the hum. They gave her a look of stern disapproval. “What do you think you are doing little one? The men on that ship are dangerous. You are not to go near them, father said so”, commanded the oldest sister.

“Listen to her, she is the wisest of all of us” shouted the next oldest.

“You know nothing of what they are” echoed the other sisters.

“They are not dangerous!” exclaimed the little mermaid as she writhed and kicked away the hands of her sister. “They wanted to see me, but I scared them away with my call”. And with that the youngest sister burst ahead as her siblings chased after her. Once again she broke through the surface, only this time she rose fully out of the water and much closer to the ship. Whilst out of the water, as if in suspended animation, the little mermaid saw for the first time the faces of the men on the ship. Lit up by the bulbs on the ship, each face had a different hue, each one a unique colour on the same canvas of a man’s face. She saw also, as they gasped in amazement at her incredible features, as droplets of water fell from her figure like shining diamonds. Quickly, she returned to the water and turned to find her sisters pursuing her, calling out her name. She turned back around and focused on the pleasant pulsing hum which tuned out the cries from her sisters. She rose out of the water once again, even higher than before and saw this time only one man staring back at her. All the others had their backs to her and were operating some contraption which swung the crane in her direction. As the mermaid made her descent back into the water she smiled at the single man staring at her. As she slipped back into the water the man smiled back, only she noticed his smile was not like hers; it was a sinister smile.

When she was back in the water she paused to reflect on the nature of the man’s expression. Suddenly, from above, a great rope monstrosity descended on her. She tried swimming away but now she was so close to the ship the once pleasant hum had turned into a screeching which pierced her entire body, rendering her incapable of using her limbs. Soon she could feel nothing as she was entangled in the net which swept across the side of the ship. With the rest of her body paralysed, the little mermaid cast her eyes around her to find her sisters. She discovered that they had followed her so close to the ship that they were also paralysed, unable to move, the sisters floated in the water as the net swung closer and closer towards them. As the net collected the mermaids one by one, they were piled against each other. The net tightened around them and they were slowly crushed closer together. Next, they were pulled up out of the water, removed from all they had known, and held above the sea in a net, as the men gazed menacingly at the mermaid sisters. The crane was swung around until the net was over the rusted deck of the ship. A man pressed a button and the crane released the net and collapsed on to the deck. The piercing noise had relented, but its effect still lingered in the limp bodies of the mermaids. Now, the once pleasing luminous lights that had originally seemed so inviting, burned the eyes of the sisters.

The men on the ship scrambled around their capture and admired their work. Soon they were all shouting commands to one another. The net was removed from the bodies and the sisters were all laid out next to each other in order of size. As this happened, a group of five men brought out a tank filled with water which sloshed as they moved it. The mermaids were gasping for water, but were still unable to move. As the men discussed what to do they soon discerned that the tank would not fit all of their haul in. The mermaids could not understand the language they spoke, but from their tone they deciphered that their agenda was not a pleasant one. There was a pause in the men’s conversation. The oldest sister had managed to turn her head to face all her younger siblings. With her last will of energy she mouthed one word in the sister’s native tongue.

“Fishermen”

And the severity of the situation dawned on the little mermaid. With that, all of the men brandished the machetes they pulled from their sides and proceeded to butcher the mermaids. Limbs were severed, heads were bashed in and separated from their necks. The five older sisters were tended to first, as the littlest one observed with horror the situation she had been the cause of. As the deck pooled with the blood of her sisters, she saw their severed limbs and torsos thrown off the side. When only the tails of the sisters remained the men gathered them and threw them into the tank. Soon, the solution turned bloody, and the men’s attention was turned to the little mermaid. Unlike the others, she was spared for a special reason. Her beauty was unparalleled to those of her sisters. The men tried to tie her up in ropes when all of a sudden she regained the use of her body. She writhed and thrashed and did everything in her power to keep the hands of the men off her.

But all was futile. The men stamped on her until she ceased to give up moving. With annoyance in their voices the men started shouting at each other. All the little mermaid could decipher was that some of them wished for her to be kept alive whilst others wanted her dead. One man decided to take the responsibility into his own hands and approached the little mermaid and gazed into her eyes. She looked back longingly, trying to convey some sort of universal language they could both understand. She realised it was the face of the young man who had stared at her from the deck of the ship when she had risen out the water. How that had seemed so long ago. A smile passed across her face as the man appeared to deliberate what to do. He smiled back at her as he brought down the cleaver which parted her neck from her shoulders. Grabbing her head by her hair he cast it into the ocean. The blood from her neck seeped into her hair as she joined the other heads and limbs of her sisters as they descended to the bottom of the ocean floor leaving a trail of blood which led back to that murderous ship. The lights had faded, and the piercing noise returned to a pleasant hum, and the souls of the mermaids returned once more to the sea-foam from whence they came.

The Sea-King, disturbed that his daughters had not returned from their errands, set out to look for them. Upon hearing a distance hum he knew to be the fateful sound of humans he feared the worst. He swam as fast as he could, and soon he spied the pillars of blood that descended from the surface. As he reached the pillars’ origins he discovered the limbs of all his beloved daughters scattered among the ocean floor. Delirious, he collected the parts of all his offspring and burst into tears. He wept and wept, so much so, that the ocean swelled, and soon there was too much water for the tides to handle. With all his might, he pushed the oceans towards the murderous ship that housed the butchered corpses of the mermaids. The ship was engulfed and was capsized casting the shimmering tails of the Sea-King’s daughters out into the vastness of the sea. The Sea-King, grieving over his loss, resolved to look forever for the missing parts of his children. So great his grief however, that as he scours the ocean floor, a storm rages on above him, forever punishing men in ships for the injustice that was done to him.


Originally published at fadingtored.tumblr.com.

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