No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical: including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, and incidents in this book are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Published by Oceanus Books, and available in book stores
or through www.OceanusBooks.com
Edited by S. C. Moore and Jan Howarth
Copyright 2008 and 2011. 2013 All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9889698-7-2 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-9889698-8-9 (e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011944501
Printed in the United States of America.
This book is dedicated to
Rudy and Jackie
and all their little mermaids.
Foreword
The Mermaid
The moonlight bathed her golden hair
as she rose on a wave from the sea.
On a rocky ledge, sat the mystical being,
known as the Mermaid Queen.
She sang a song with her lovely voice
which wafted on the breeze.
Her heart longed for her true love
who she saw each night in dreams.
By S. C. Moore
Prologue: The Little Mermaid
I am too old for this, Amphitrite thought, which made her smile. The baby inside her kicked, and that made her smile again. “Today will be the day,” she whispered. “I cannot wait to hold you, little one.”
It hadn’t taken a prophecy to tell the goddess that this would be her last child. Her ninth child—a daughter—would be very special. “The first true queen of the oceans and seas,” the Oracle of Delphi had whispered. He had come to the northern waters of the Atlantic to honor the child in the sanctuary of Poseidon, proclaiming her birth, even before Amphitrite had been certain she was with child. That was the problem with prophecies and prophets. They were always popping up out of nowhere telling people what was going to happen to them before it did. It was such an invasion of privacy!
Suddenly the massive, carved, golden, double doors to her sea palace bedroom swung open without so much as a knock. It could only mean the king himself was about to enter, as he did a moment later. Several thousand years had not dimmed the aura that crowned his proud head. He still had long, tangled curls. In his youth, the curls had been golden and had made him look like the young rebel he was. Now they had turned white and iridescent like the pearls of his oceans, and they gave him an air of wisdom. In fact, most of that wisdom had been given to him by Amphitrite in dribs and drabs, the way most wives pass on information to their husbands. But no matter what color the curls, he still turned her head and sent a rush to her heart every time he entered a room. She blushed from the tip of her toes to the top of her copper-colored head. Feeling every bit as girlish and excited as she had when she gave birth to their very first child, she was both proud and sad that this would be the last of their many daughters.
“Amphitrite, my love, look what has come home to us at last,” Poseidon rumbled with a voice that shook the earth and her heart all at once. With a proud sparkling smile, he thrust a massive closed fist toward her. A pulse of gleaming lavender light shot through his fingers, infusing the water around them with a soft glow. He uncurled them to reveal a treasure nestled in the palm of his hand. The object shimmered with an inner light of soothing color as if it were alive.
“My pearl!” she gasped. “You found my last lavender pearl!” Amphitrite squealed with delight. This was generally not becoming behavior for such a pregnant goddess, but Poseidon had always thought his eternal love was the most beautiful when she was with child. As a wedding present, ten thousand years ago, her father, Oceanus, had given her a necklace of lavender pearls which he’d had created just for her. The necklace had broken during a violent storm a thousand years later, and the pearls had been scattered throughout the oceans. For several millennia, Poseidon had searched the world over and found every pearl but one. And now, nine thousand years later, on the day of the birth of their ninth daughter, the last pearl had been found.
“How did you find it after all this time?” she whispered with joy.
“I did not.” Poseidon smiled ruefully. “This little fellow did.” He pointed to the young grouper that was swimming anxiously in circles just inside the archway to her chambers.
“Come here, little grouper, and receive the gratitude of your queen.” Amphitrite gestured grandly to him and then steadied herself as the child inside her seemed to respond to her excitement by kicking up a storm of her own.
“Oh, Gracious Goddess,” the young grouper burbled. “I am not worthy to be in your divine presence.”
“You have no idea how great a gift you have brought me, young grouper. You are most worthy, and you shall not leave my presence until I can thank you properly and give you a gift in return.”
“Just those words of kindness are a gift beyond belief,” the grouper burbled back with a squeak.
Amphitrite was sure he would have blushed if he could. “Is there nothing I can give or grant you in reward for this?”
“What gift can a goddess grant a fish?” Poseidon laughed heartily.
Once again, Amphitrite thought the little grouper would have blushed if he could, which gave her an idea. “As a goddess, I can give a gift of power. If you could do anything that you cannot do now, what would it be, my little finned friend?” She smiled as she reached her hand forward and stroked his dorsal fin gently.
The young grouper swelled with awe and pride for a moment and then blurted his secret heart’s desire in a stream of blubs and burbles that gushed from deep within his briny soul. “I would hide!” he said. “Hide in plain sight so the bigger fish would not eat me!” The idea, finally released from his deep secret dreams, propelled him backwards in circles, and he kept burbling excitedly. “Yes! I would like to hide! Help me hide!” Amphitrite and Poseidon clapped their hands and laughed at his gilled glee. “Then hide you shall.” Amphitrite beamed, and with a snap of her fingers he began to change colors to match the walls around him.
“Shrimp and scallops!” the little grouper glubbed.
“I have given you the gift of camouflage so you may blend into your surroundings and hide in plain sight. Return to your home now with my eternal gratitude, and live a long and happy life.” And that’s exactly what the young grouper did. When he returned home to the waters of Nassau in the Caribbean Ocean, where he had found the last lavender pearl, he passed the gift of the goddess down to all his children and each generation of groupers thereafter.
No sooner had the doors to her chambers closed behind the grateful little grouper, than Queen Amphitrite’s water broke, mixing with the saltwater around her, glowing with divine power. The sea rang out with song as the little mermaid inside her swam out into the light of the ocean.
A few moments later, Poseidon and Amphitrite held their newborn daughter as her long silvery tail swished between them. A stream of long, rose-gold locks floated up from her tiny head in all directions. They decided to name her Helmi, which meant “pearl” in the northern waters of the Atlantic where she was born. The sea had recorded her birth, for the sea was simply Gaia, the Mother Goddess of them all, daughter of the Creator himself
Gaia swelled with joy at the arrival of her new great-granddaughter and sang out the news of the birth of the last and littlest mermaid. Soon the Mirrors of Atargatis began to glow, and all of the other daughters of Poseidon a
nd Amphitrite began to swim through the magic portals from their own sea palaces around the world. They returned home to greet their new little sister. For another thousand years, they were blessed with wonders and adventures to share with each other as the littlest mermaid grew into a great beauty with a heart as big, bright, and glowing as the lavender pearl she wore around her neck, a watery gem that matched her lavender eyes.
The Story of Pearl
She awoke, as always, to the sound of receding waves from her alarm clock, and a mellifluous voice singing in some unknown tongue lingering in her mind. She awoke … surrounded by her mermaids. Mermaids of every color, shape, and size.
There were mermaids on rocks, mermaids in waves, mermaids riding dolphins, playing with unicorns, floating on kelp, and dangling in mid air as iridescent mobiles. She had plush mermaids with painted, gilded scales; plastic mermaids to play with in a bubble bath; and porcelain mermaids with filmy fairy wings. There were mermaids on shells and in coral. There were mermaids printed on pillowcases, sheets, backpacks, T-shirts, calendars, and posters. There were even watercolor mermaid paintings. Dozens of jeweled and filigreed frames arranged on her bedside table and desk held photographs of her in mermaid costumes. The room was scattered with mermaid pins, rings, stickers, books, and videos.
Her mother indulged her every whim to swim in the fantasy world of the sirens of the sea. She had seen “The Little Mermaid” hundreds of times and the sequels almost as many. She loved Daryl Hanna in “Splash,” and was the proud owner of the vintage film “Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid.” She’d read every book she could find about mermaids, and she’d searched the Internet for even more information about them. She had even picked “mermaid_princess” as her online screen name. More than anything, though, she truly was a princess in her parents’ eyes.
Her pale, almost transparent skin, huge lavender eyes, and long, wavy copper-colored hair gave her a gothic beauty that set her apart from other girls her age. She was as slim and lithe as a water sprite and loved the water and all things of the sea with a passion. They were precious to her, and her name was just as precious, for she was named after the jewel of the sea.
Her name was Pearl, because that was what had been suspended by a fine gold chain around her tiny neck the day she was found, barely a week old if that, strapped in a car seat. The seat was lodged in a tangle of rhododendron branches thirty feet from the burning wreckage of a car. She’d apparently been flung out of harm’s way by an explosion that consumed the man and woman trapped inside.
Ivan and Lina Sorenson, a forty-something childless couple who had always wanted a family, stopped to help at the site of the car crash and found Pearl’s car seat lodged in the shrub. Lina took her inside their car to comfort her while Ivan called the police to report the accident. They kept the child hidden from the authorities, and when the identity of the dead couple could not be discovered, they decided to raise Pearl as their own. They simply told their neighbors that the adoption papers had finally come through.
A child grows curious as she grows older, and when Pearl was seven, they told her the truth. She didn’t love them any less, and they could not have loved her more, but she did often wonder at night and in her dreams who she really was and where she had come from.
The fact that no one knew her story gave her free reign to fantasize, and Pearl created a vivid magical world deep beneath the sea. A beautiful mermaid queen would often visit her in her dreams to tell her she was her lost granddaughter. She would talk to Pearl of her faraway home, and tell Pearl she was waiting for her return. Pearl dreamed of narwhals, the unicorns of the sea; of seals that became humans; and of dolphins that leapt high above the waves with laughing children upon their backs. She saw herself drifting through underwater palaces of coral and gold, gliding down ancient rock-hewn staircases, swimming through underwater tunnels, spinning into giant whirlpools, and soaring out of magic mirrors.
Growing up, Pearl was not very popular at school. The other children called her “duck girl” because she had slight webbing between her toes that they didn’t. Other children in Seattle didn’t anyway, her mother Lina told her. But it was not so strange or uncommon a trait for children in the Faeroe Islands where Lina was born. It was considered a sign that there was selkie blood in the family. Selkies were female seals who could shed their skin and become human, and they were the handmaidens to the Queen of the Oceans, or the Mermaid Queen as they often called her, Pearl’s mother explained to her.
So Pearl grew up delighted by all the stories her mother knew of mermaids, which were many and fanciful. Once she was no longer bothered by being called duck girl, the taunting and teasing eventually stopped.
Pearl was on the swim team, and her coach called her an “Olympic hopeful,” both as a diver and a speed swimmer. The other kids on the team called Pearl “the swan,” and cheered her along at the meets. From the time she started school, until she was nine years old, life had been somewhat socially traumatizing for her, but turning ten and becoming popular was wonderful. Well ... popular with the swim team anyway.
She also did well with her singing voice in the school choir. Her teacher said she was a bright, clear soprano, and she gave Pearl all the solos. Pearl loved being in the spotlight.
In science class, the kids called her the “sea geek” because all she ever wanted to study were fish, sea plants, and aquatic animals. She could name over a hundred different fish and sea creatures by sight, and she knew about dozens of varieties of shells, coral, and seaweed. She even won two scholarships for summer camp at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Her mother was Danish and had met her father while he was in the Navy. She had come to America as his young bride. She came from the land of the Vikings where the sea was everything, and she had grown up with tales of the Little Mermaid, whose statue graced the harbor of Copenhagen. As a child, Lina loved the stories of the Faeroe Islands where legends claimed the merfolk still lived and narwhals could be seen swimming in the winter seas.
Someday Pearl would go there and see the mystic islands, but today her parents were taking her to Hawaii for her thirteenth birthday. She was going to go to Dolphin Quest and actually swim with live dolphins in the warm waters of the Hawaiian Islands. It was her dream come true!
Ivan and Lina were the best parents a little girl could ever have, though they didn’t have a lot of money. Her mother had a nice little business selling her watercolor paintings of mermaids. What money Lina had to spare, she used to buy lovely dresses, mermaid figurines and dolls for Pearl. Her father was retired from the Navy where he had worked repairing engines on ships and submarines, and also spent some time in the Seabees. His pension and the income from her mother’s paintings were all they had to live on. They had saved for three years to take her to Hawaii and to Dolphin Quest for her birthday, and she was so happy, so grateful, and oh, so, so, so excited!
A Sea of Clouds
Pearl gazed out the airplane window spellbound by the clouds. They shimmered and looked like frothy whipped cream floating in the sunlight—waves for angels to swim through or ride on the way mermaids played on the waves of the sea. If she squished up close to the glass and looked down, she could see the ocean below. The water of Puget Sound around Seattle was very cold. That didn’t bother Pearl, but her parents wouldn’t let her swim there. They couldn’t afford a sail boat or scuba diving lessons, so going to Hawaii for two weeks was going to be the answer to so many of her dreams. She was going to go snorkeling!
There were beautiful fish in Hawaii, and lush coral reefs teaming with all sorts of life that could be seen without the expense of scuba diving. And the water was warm! After Dolphin Quest, they were going to take a whale watching cruise, and that night at the hotel they were going to a hookilau, where they would participate in an ancient Hawaiian fishing tradition. Fishermen wade out into the ocean with flaming torches and nets and then draw the nets together and drag them up on the beach. Then they cook all the fish
over coals and seaweed while people play ukuleles and everybody dances in grass skirts.
Best of all, Pearl was going to swim with and touch real live dolphins. Could anyone ever have a better birthday than she was going to? Pearl thought she was the luckiest thirteen-year-old girl in the whole world. She brushed her fingers softly across the lavender pearl around her neck, as she habitually did whenever she was pensive or lost it thought. It seemed to glow at her touch and to mirror her longing for something she didn’t know, yet knew was missing. She was snapped out of her reverie as a land mass appeared on the horizon below.
“Oh look! There it is, Mama. I can see the big island of Hawaii! We’re almost there!” she cried. She was so excited she wanted to hug herself. She wanted to embrace the whole world because she felt all of her secret dreams would somehow come true in a place as beautiful and magical as Hawaii.
Wild Anticipation
Pearl hummed and danced as she unpacked her clothes from her suitcase. She put them all away, nice and neat, in the dresser drawers and in the closet of her hotel room. She had also packed a few of her favorite mermaid figurines and stuffed dolls, which she scattered on her bed and placed on the bedside tables.
Ever since her parents told her she had been adopted, Pearl was usually a little sad on her birthday. Her parents didn’t know her actual date of birth, so they called the day of the accident, when they’d found her crying near the burning wreck, her birthday, since that was the day she had arrived in their lives.
This was to be her thirteenth birthday, and all day, every day, for the next two weeks, she was going to be surrounded by the most beautiful fish, coral, and dolphins. She was even going to have lessons in surfing, take a ride on a glass-bottom boat, and go see a live volcano!
All The Mermaids In The Sea Page 1