by Jim Hanas
A young girl approached the spot where he lay. She looked frightened at first, not knowing whether she regarded a lost soul or a saved one. Then she turned and ran to fetch some friends to help her. A small crowd quickly gathered around the beautiful boy and the seamaid saw that he opened his eyes and coughed up water and came to life again. The crowd murmured with pleasure and smiled upon the young girl and the beautiful boy. Without ever looking towards the seamaid the beautiful boy left the beach and she knew that he did not know she had saved him. This made her very unhappy and when he was led away into the great building, she dived down and returned to the library where she spent hours by the rosebush, watching the silhouettes of land beings embrace and dance, come together and separate.
She wept all those hours and more. She had always been more silent and thoughtful than her sisters, but now she retreated into herself so that it seemed as if she were asleep more often than awake. Her sisters asked her what she had seen during her first visit to the surface of the water. But she refused to speak of her journey. Over and over again she rose to the place where she had first seen the beautiful boy inside his doomed vessel. Many an evening and morning did she return to the place where she had left him. But she never saw him and each time she returned home more sorrowful than before. Her only comfort was to sit by the statue in her little garden and fling her arms around the silent replica of her obsession. But she gave up tending her flowers, and her garden grew wild, covering all her other treasures and obscuring the paths that led back to the library. The garden became gloomy, disturbing. But still it was the only place where she felt any better.
At length she could bear it no longer, and she told one of her sisters all about it. Then the others heard the secret, and very soon it became known to two seamaids, then another who happened to know who the boy was. She had also seen the festival onboard the ship, and she told them where the beautiful boy came from, and where his house stood.
“Come, little sister,” said the other seamaids. They entwined their arms and rose up in a long row to the surface of the water, emerging close by the spot where they knew the beautiful boy’s home stood. It was a house the size of a great reef, built of bright yellow shining stone, flanked by shining windows and spun about with long flights of marble steps, one of which reached down to the sea. The front door would admit an elephant and the roof sported a dome that opened so that one could view the sky at night without leaving the interior of the building. Pillars that seemed like thick bars supported the front of the house. And between the pillars that surrounded the whole building stood lifelike statues of land people in various states of undress. Through the clear crystal of the enormous windows could be seen rooms that were swathed with costly silk curtains, hanging tapestries and oil paintings of men on horses engaged in battle. In the center of the largest saloon a fountain threw sparkling jets of water high up into the glass cupola of the ceiling. The sun shone down upon the water and upon the plants growing round the basin of the fountain. Everywhere there were severed flowers in vases. The little seamaid understood nothing of what she saw, except that this was where the beautiful boy lived.
Now that she had found his home she spent most of her time swimming in and out of the narrow channel under the marble balcony, which threw a broad shadow on the water. At times she watched the beautiful boy, who thought himself quite alone standing over her in the bright moonlight. She remembered his head resting on her bosom, his cool lips beneath her hearty kiss, his hair flowing into her eyes. But as she watched him being romantic and melancholy, sighing on his own and talking to himself, she was certain that he knew nothing of what they had shared and that he did not dream of her. She watched him read and play his odd little instrument, humming along to the music he plucked from its strings. She watched him until she became fond of land beings. She began to fantasize about walking up the steps from the sea to his bedroom and laying her head on the pillow beside his and kissing him until he awoke and returned her kisses.
She imagined traveling with him to see the land and what it held and who its creatures were. When she looked at him there was so much that she wished to know. Finally, when the itch of her longing became overwhelming she applied to her grandmothers and aunties, who knew all about that upper world.
“Oh dear child, you must stop looking at him. Do not think of that world as better than your own. We are happier and better off to stay away from them, those human beings.” The grandmothers and aunties replied to the seamaid’s prying questions about the upper world.
But the little seamaid persisted. She had gone so far in her imaginings that she now felt she must enter the other world and discover its workings, that she must be joined with the beautiful boy and be like him.
“He wouldn’t love you,” said all the other seamaids. “He would see your tail and think you were some exotic pet. He would keep you in an aquarium, a vase for living beings, and you would waste away and die because you need to move miles in a day. You were not meant to float in one place and stare at a human.”
The little seamaid sighed and stared down at her tail, which shimmered green and violet as it flowed beneath her waist.
“He would never put me in an aquarium,” she said. “He would love me. He would marry me. He would make me his equal.”
“His equal,” scoffed the older seamaids. “This marriage you speak of, this is what they do to make each other stay one way, as only men and only women, for all their days. You would never get to be a man with him or he a woman with you. You would be forever trapped in dresses and knitting and piano lessons. You would split in half to have his babies — only one at a time, imagine! And he would never bring you on his journeys, but would only bring you back pins to poke through your clothing as remembrances of things he had seen. Let us be happy away from him,” said the seamaids, “and dart and spring about during the three hundred years that we have to live. We will school about the ocean and be lovely together.”
But the little seamaid remained unconvinced and her doubt set her apart from the other seamaids and left her feeling quite alone, quite alien from her sisters.
A few nights a month the seamaids held a ball. It is one of those splendid sights, which we can never see on land. The ballroom was an open space where the sand was combed flat. Hundreds of colossal shells, some of a deep red, others of a grass green, some of a luminous blue-white stood on each side in rows. The animals in the shells applauded by opening and closing the shells, releasing bubbles like strands of pearls. Innumerable fishes swam in sweet formation around the waving anemones. The seamaids danced to the music of their own sweet singing. On this night the little seamaid sang more sweetly than them all. The whole community applauded her with hands and tails; for a moment her heart felt quite gay. But she soon thought again of the world above her.
After the ball, she drifted to the surface and there she heard a bugle sounding and thought, “He is certainly sailing nearby, he on whom my wishes depend, and in whose hands I should like to place the happiness of my life. I will go to the sea witch. She can give me counsel and help.”
And then the little seamaid went out from her garden, and took the route to the foaming whirlpools, behind which the evil sorceress lived. The little seamaid had never been that way before: neither flowers nor grass grew there; nothing but bare, gray, sandy ground stretched out to the whirlpool, where the water seized everything and cast all together into a fathomless deep. The route lay right across a quantity of warm, bubbling mire. Beyond this stood a strange forest of polypi: half animals and half plants who looked like serpents or medusas, each with a hundred heads growing out of the ground. The long slimy arms of the polypi had fingers like flexible worms that constantly clutched. All that could be reached in the sea they seized upon and held fast until if it had lived it died. The little seamaid was so alarmed at what she saw, that she stood still, and her heart palpitated with fear.
“This is the worst place in
the world,” she said out loud. “What am I doing here?”
She very nearly turned back, but she thought of the beautiful boy and the mysteries of the beautiful upper world and her courage returned. She fastened her long flowing hair round her head, so that the polypi might not seize hold of it. She laid her hands together across her bosom, and then she darted forward between the grasping arms and fingers of the ugly polypi, which were reaching for her. As she swam she saw that each held in its grasp something it had seized. In some were the white bones of human beings who had perished at sea, in others the skeletons of land animals, oars, rudders, and chests of ships. At last she saw the body of the lost seamaid, whom they had caught and strangled; and this seemed the most shocking of any sight she ever could see.
At last she came to a space where fat water snakes rolled over each other in disgusting union. In the midst of this orgy sat the sea witch, allowing a toad to eat from her gaping maw. She called the ugly water snakes her little chickens, her little loves, and allowed them to crawl all over her bosom and shoulders.
“I know what you want,” said the sea witch; “you are a very stupid creature. It is so very stupid of you, but you shall have your way. It will bring you to sorrow, my pretty little cookie. You want to get rid of your fish’s tail, and to have two supports instead of it, like human beings on earth. You want the boy to fall in love with you, and to show you what life is like above the water.” At this the witch laughed so loud and disgustingly that the toad and the all snakes fled away from her. “Alright then. I will prepare a draught for you, with which you must swim to land tomorrow before sunrise, and sit down on the shore and drink it all. Your tail will then shrivel and dry up and fall off. Two legs will stab through the place where your tail had been and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you twice. But you will have your legs and all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human girl they ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement that you have now and this no one land-born will be able to match. No dancer will ever tread so lightly, but at every step you take it will feel as if you might die. If this is what you want, then say it. You can have what you want if you will bear all this from me and if you are prepared to find out what your boy and his world are really like. Because it amuses me, I will help you.”
“Yes, I will,” said the little seamaid so quietly the witch demanded she repeat herself. “I will,” said the seamaid.
“Say, I do,” said the witch. “That’s what they say. Remember you will not be able to breathe underwater. You will not be able to return. You are still very young, remember, you can live for hundreds more years. Your aunties and your sisters and your grandmother will never recover from the grief.”
“I will do it,” said the little seamaid, “I do,” and all her color washed away.
“And I must be paid. You will soon learn about prices,” said the witch, “You must give me your voice. It is the best thing you possess and I will I have it as the price of my draught.”
“But if you take away my voice,” said the little seamaid, “How will I tell him who I am? How will I make him love me? How will I share my thoughts with him?”
“He will not care to hear your thoughts. You will have your beautiful form and your expressive eyes. You will be able to touch him with your hands and he will be able to touch you with his; surely you believe he will love you and know you as his savior when you are in front of him? Well, have you lost your courage? Put out your little tongue that I may cut it off as my payment; then you shall have the draught.”
“I must,” said the little seamaid and she put her sweet little tongue into the hideous barbed hand of the witch.
The witch drew a blade quickly across the seamaid’s tongue and slipped the severed, bleeding organ into her pocket. The little seamaid held her mouth shut with her hands to keep from screaming. And then the witch placed her cauldron on the fire, to prepare the magic draught.
When at last the magic draught was ready, it looked like golden liquor. “There it is for you,” said the witch. “If the polypi should seize hold of you as you return through the wood,” said the witch, “that is not my problem.” But the polypi sprang back in terror from the little seamaid when they caught sight of the glittering draught, which weighed in her hand like a bomb.
Before the little seamaid left, she stole into the garden, took a flower from the flowerbeds of each of her sisters, kissed her hand a thousand times towards the library, and then rose up through the dark blue waters. Dawn was still distant when she came in sight of the beautiful boy’s home, and approached the marble steps that led into the water. At the base of the steps the little seamaid drank the magic draught. It burned her mouth and throat and as it passed through her it seemed as if a double-edged sword had struck her down. She fell into a swoon, and lay as if dead on the bottom step.
As the sun rose she recovered. She felt consumed by the pain in her tail until she realized the legs had emerged. Before her stood the beautiful boy. He fixed his flat black eyes upon her. She looked down upon her own body and saw as pretty a pair of white legs and tiny feet as any young girl could have; she saw as well that she was naked and she felt a stab of embarrassment under his inscrutable gaze. She lowered her head and wrapped herself as best she could with her own long hair. The beautiful boy stood over her and asked her who she was, and where she came from. His tone was cold. She looked at him mildly and sorrowfully; she could not speak. He called behind him to a man to carry her up the stairs into the great house.
It was true what the witch had said; every step was agony. She might have been treading with needles pushed through her feet. But she stepped lightly by the beautiful boy’s side, thinking all the while, “I did it! I did it!”
He and his parents and all who saw her wondered at her gracefulness. She was very soon arrayed in costly robes of silk and muslin, and was the most beautiful creature in the house; this pleased her. The clothes were soft and she knew she impressed. But she never forgot that she was dumb, and could neither speak nor sing to give her thanks.
Upon her introduction to the council of the boy, his parents and the other important men and women of the land, she was asked to sit and watch a performance. Beautiful female slaves, dressed in silk and gold, stepped forward and sang before the council: one sang better than all the others, and the boy clapped his hands and smiled at her. This was great sorrow to the little seamaid for she saw that the woman had chains about her ankles and she knew how much more sweetly she would sing if she were free. “But I can’t tell him what he does is wrong,” she thought. “I have given away my voice forever, to be with him.”
The slaves next performed several pretty dances. The council laughed and the little seamaid became aware that there was something pathetic about the dances, but she could not understand what. One slave tripped and was dragged away by guards while the boy clucked his tongue with disapproval. The slaves looked so tired, so defeated to the little seamaid. They could barely raise their heads. The little seamaid felt such compassion for the slaves that she raised her lovely white arms, stood on the tips of her toes, and glided over the floor, and danced as no one yet had been able to dance. As she danced the slaves rested.
The little seamaid’s expressive eyes were fixed upon the boy and his parents, appealing. “Release them,” she begged with her gaze. “Let them return to their families.”
Everyone was enchanted by the dance, especially the boy, who began to speak of her in endearments, calling her his little foundling, his dolly, his discovery; she, not understanding what he said and seeing only that she seemed to reach him, danced again quite readily, to please him, to appeal to him, and she ignored the fact that the slaves were still in chains and the extraordinary pain she felt each time her feet touched the floor.
The boy said she should remain with him always, and he gave permission to her to sleep at his door, on a velve
t cushion. She would have preferred a bed, any bed if not his. But she liked the cushion and he had a sweet dog who slept by her and licked her face and snuggled against her and kept her warm. The boy had a uniform made for her, his name was embroidered across the back, so that she might accompany him on horseback and be identified as his. They rode together around his lands. The little seamaid noted the sweet-scented woods, the green shadows of trees, the high voices of songbirds trilling in their boughs, but the boy spoke of plans to destroy the forest and build a market. This market would showcase goods from around the world bought abroad very cheaply and resold at a premium. The boy spoke of villages in Asia where fabrics of the most elusive brilliance could be bought for less than the price of a coffee from a family too dumb to speak the real value of their own talents. At last the little seamaid saw an opening in the trees and in the opening she saw a village where women and men in torn clothing were playing with their children, and cooking around an open fire and talking loudly and laughing amongst themselves. Before she could stop herself she pointed to the village and tried to show her delight to the boy. The boy scowled and assured her that the village would be burned down by the morning. The seamaid was horrified. She waved her arms and shook her head and stomped her feet.
“My little darling,” the boy exclaimed. “How worried you are for me! You are the most loyal of doves, and the sweetest of cupcakes. Tonight you can sleep on the floor of my room.”
The next day the little seamaid climbed with the boy to the tops of high mountains; her tender feet bled so that every step was marked, but the boy only laughed and announced how invigorating was the view. She followed him until she could see the clouds beneath them and she thought of leaping from the mountainside and falling through those clouds back into the sea and down and down until she was at home again.