The Island of the
Turtle King
Although Pearl thought Patches’ heavy breathing and occasional grunting was a bit over dramatic, riding on the back of his shell made for a lovely journey. The strip of sand on the small island they’d emerged onto was fairly narrow, and, as they crawled along, the warm equatorial breezes were drying her off quite quickly. Pearl had learned all about the Galapagos Islands in school. Her father had even gotten her a great photographic “coffee table book” about the islands in the Pacific off the coast of Ecuador.
The trees Patches was crawling along under, that looked like cactus, were called prickly pear trees, and their fruit was a favorite food of the giant tortoises living here. And sea turtles must like them, too, as Patches had grabbed one and was munching on it as he slowly moved along. There were also sunflower trees on the Galapagos Islands. When Pearl had read about them, she’d hugged herself and thought, if there are fairies that live in the Pacific, that’s where they would dance at night beneath a full moon.
Suddenly, Pearl’s tail began to itch and tingle all over. She looked down, and her skin seemed to grow clear and soft like Jell-O. Her tail turned a solid fleshy pink, and the dolphin-like skin sank down into her pores. As it evaporated, she felt her bones start to harden and thicken. She could feel her tail flute separating into toes, and her skin crimped down the length of her tail as her legs began to form. Finally, the skin slowly split apart the way a zipper opens up the front of a coat.
The whole effect felt rather like the experience of waking up and finding both legs have gone to sleep, and you have to shake them around to get the blood flowing before you walk on them, or you’ll fall. It just felt awkward and tingly, not painful at all. The whole process only took about a minute once she was nice and dry.
Still sitting on Patches’ back, Pearl suddenly realized that without her tail, she was now naked from the waist down. “Oh no! I can’t meet anybody like this!” she squealed. She was in a panic. She scrunched her legs up to her chest and threw her arms around them to hide her nakedness.
“Princess, what is the problem?” Patches turned his head to see why she was moving around and squealing so much.
“Stop! Keep your eyes straight ahead or I’ll turn you into something!” Pearl shouted. “What am I gonna do now? Wear a grass skirt?” she snapped as she looked around and saw no palm trees or grasses she could use. “Where the heck is a fig leaf when a girl needs a wardrobe?” she muttered as she reached down and absent-mindedly adjusted the strap on her sample bag around her waist, because the buckle was now digging into her hip.
“Wait!” she jerked up straight. “I think I put my swimsuit bottom in my bag!” Pearl remembered she had found it dangling around the base of her tail the first time she’d stopped to talk to the old whale. She reached around her back and dug into her bag with one hand while still clutching her legs to her chest with the other, desperately trying to cover herself and not fall off Patches at the same time. Her fingers touched a piece of wet fabric, and she grabbed it and yanked it out.
“Yes!” she shouted in triumph, and slipped quickly into it. “Okay, fashion emergency solved!” Pearl giggled.
“I am a bit confused.” Patches clearly humphed this time as he began to crawl again.
“Oh, Patches, if you knew a few more girls like me you’d understand.”
“I don’t know, Your Highness. I know a lot of female turtles, and I don’t understand them any better,” he said with a grunt.
Pearl could balance a little more comfortably on Patches’ back with two legs than she could with one tail, so she leaned back and spread her hair out behind her in a wide arc of copper to dry. She could swear it had grown almost a foot longer than it had been before her transformation. It was now down below her waist. She had planned to have her hair cut off just above her shoulders when they returned from Hawaii and donate it to a foundation that takes human hair and makes wigs for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
“Wow,” she thought. “If mermaid hair grows this fast, I could donate hair three or four times a month!”
The sun and the warm breeze felt wonderful against her skin. She noticed she didn’t feel much different in hot or cold as a mermaid, but her sensitivity to temperature had returned once she grew legs again and her gills had sealed shut. She hadn’t even noticed that happening. She turned her head to try and look for them on her shoulders and all she saw were very thin blue lines that formed a feathery-looking pattern where they had been.
My legs grew back, she thought. What an odd thought that was. She was like a starfish with regenerating limbs! Just as her mind started to wander in that direction, Patches passed between two trees into a wide clearing. A huge moss-covered boulder—about the size of a small house—stood in the center, and it was surrounded by a mass of turtles of every size.
“Wow, is that the rock the Turtle King lives on?” Pearl asked as she looked at the huge, round boulder.
“No,” Patches replied smugly, “that is the Turtle King.”
Suddenly a head as big as Pearl’s entire body emerged out of the neck hole she had taken for a cave entrance!
“Whoa! That’s some turtle!” she gasped.
“Greetings, Sea Princess,” a deep bass voice rumbled. “I have a message for you from Queen Helmi, your grandmother. She must travel from the faraway Faeroe Islands to meet you. She will use the Mirrors of Atargatis to travel to the Coral Palace off the Somers Islands, what you now call Bermuda. That is the closest palace portal between here and the Faeroes. So, you must swim all the way around the lowest tip of the land mass you call South America, into the Atlantic, and back up to the Caribbean Sea to where the palace is to join the queen there. We will send as many companions as you need to protect you,” he concluded.
“How long will it take Queen Helmi to get to Bermuda?” Pearl asked. She suddenly felt very excited at the idea of meeting her real grandmother. She also suddenly realized just how lonely she was and how very far she still had to travel to meet her. My mother wouldn’t even let me go alone to the mall, she thought. Now she was traveling thousands of miles by herself.
“The queen can travel through the Mirrors of Atargatis portals and be in Bermuda instantaneously, as soon as she is well.”
“She’s sick?” Pearl felt a wave of panic. She’d finally learned about her real parents when she turned into a mermaid only to find they were dead. Now her only living relative was sick?
“No, she is simply regenerating back into a mermaid. She was weary of life without her father, her husband, and her daughter. When she thought she had lost you too, she gave up and stopped caring and was turning into stone.”
“Turning into stone?”
“That is what sea gods do when they grow weary of life after many thousands of years. They slowly withdraw from the world. Some turn to stone, or do as your great grandmother Queen Amphitrite did. She turned herself into a wave and sank into the sand. Zeus spread himself out into the wind, Hera turned herself into a field of wheat, Mars dissolved inside a volcano, Athena became a beam of light that melted into the moon, and Apollo flew his chariot into the sun. One by one they went the way of their own choosing in their own time. Poseidon, your grandfather, was the last to go. The sea is eternal, so he did not have the need for adoration as the others did. It was the death of eight of his nine daughters and his wife that made him withdraw and turn to stone.”
“Okay, some … some of this information is just too much for me to deal with right now,” Pearl stammered at the implications of her family history. Talk about dysfunctional.
“Then do not ask so many questions, child,” he rumbled back at her.
“I thought I was supposed to come to you for answers!” She stamped her foot in exasperation. Oh, she thought, that felt good. And she stopped to look at her feet and wriggle her toes. It really is the simple things you miss the most. She giggled.
“Humph,” the Turtle King replied to her.
Turtles seem to do a lot of humphing when they want to avoid talking about something, she thought.
“Yes,” the Turtle King rumbled a bit more kindly. “Ask me any question you wish and I will answer the best I can.”
“Well …” Pearl thought for a moment. “If she can travel quickly through some magic portal or mirror to this palace in Bermuda, why don’t I just save time by swimming through the Panama Canal? It would be a lot faster than swimming around Cape Horn!”
“The man-link?” he roared, if a loud deep rumble that shook the ground was a turtle’s way of roaring. “That would be much too dangerous. Men are dangerous. They catch us and kill us for sport and for food. Their giant ships might crush you, and they have magic walls that change and move that control the waters the way the old king of the sea used to do. They are not to be trusted and must be avoided at all cost!”
“Trust me, I know all about the Panama Canal, and I’ve studied Spanish in school, so I can get around when I need to.”
“Get around? Spanish? What are these things? What do they have to do with swimming in dangerous man waters?” rumbled the Turtle King.
“I’m not going to swim through.” Pearl giggled. “It only takes about eight hours to sail through. I’ll stow away on one of those big cruise ships and ride through the locks like a human girl would. Besides, that’s the whole fun of it. I’d miss all the good stuff if I was underwater, and I might get crushed against a wall or sucked into a drainage pipe if I tried to swim through the canal.”
“It is too dangerous to be around man things!” he warned her.
“Don’t be silly. I’ve spent my whole life with ‘man things,’” Pearl reassured him. “It’s the mermaid stuff I’m klutzy at.”
“How will you get on one of their ships?” he asked.
“I’ll use my dolphin pals to create a diversion, then raise myself up on a water spout and slip under the tarp of one of the life boats they have mounted on the side of the ship. I can stay in there until we get through the first lock. If I need to get out of the lifeboat for any reason, I’ll be dressed like this, in my bathing suit, and I can just mingle with the natives. Once we’re through the last lock, I’ll just slip overboard, turn back into a mermaid, and swim off to the palace in Bermuda.”
“It can’t be as simple as that,” the Turtle King said, and punctuated his sentence with yet another humph.
“Yes it can!” Pearl was starting to get annoyed at all the humphing these turtles did. “My mother always told me that simple plans are the best.”
“Princess Miranda told you that?” he looked at her in surprise.
“No, my adoptive mother, Lina. She might not have been a princess like my real mother, but she’s really smart and really wonderful!” Pearl sighed as her eyes began to fill with tears. She’d tried not to think about them, but she really missed her parents terribly. Suddenly the turtles all around her started making distressing sounds.
“Oh, darn!” she stamped her foot really hard. “I’m doing it again.”
“Don’t cry, Princess,” the Turtle King blubbered, which is really sloppy behavior for a turtle.
“Okay, Pearl,” she muttered to herself. “Think happy thoughts! Happy, happy thoughts!”
She scrunched up her eyes and thought about dolphins leaping and pretty shells sparkling in the sand, rocky road candy, and ice cream. Yes, lots and lots of ice cream with caramel and nuts, chocolate chip cookies, Boston cream pie, and raspberries with whipped cream. Her stomach started to growl so loud at the thought of it all, she stopped and opened her eyes to apologize to find all the turtles were gazing up at her with glassy stares, smacking their lips.
“All right, Princess,” the Turtle King spoke, slightly dazed. “But you must be careful not to dive off the ship until you are back in saltwater. You cannot transform into a mermaid unless you are in saltwater.”
“Really?” Pearl asked in total surprise.
“Yes,” the Turtle King rumbled. “That is how Princess Speio met her demise.”
“Was she a mermaid?” Pearl asked.
“She was the mermaid who drowned,” he whispered.
The Mermaid Who Drowned
Pearl was shocked and confused by what the Turtle King had said. “If Princess Speio was the daughter of Poseidon and a mermaid like my grandmother, how could she have drowned?”
So the Turtle King told Pearl the story.
“Once you have taken legs, you cannot transform back into a mermaid unless you are in saltwater. Princess Speio lived in the China Sea, and many legends of the splendor of her palace and its horde of treasure had spread throughout the region. Her love of earthly jewels and finely crafted gold were well known among the fishermen, who would often drop trinkets as offerings in the waters of her domain. It is never wise to care too much about material objects or to let others know too much about your weaknesses, and that proved very true for Princess Speio.
“A great wizard used the knowledge of her obsession to set a trap. He cast a spell and caused a small ship with a large chest of treasure to rise up on a wave and crash against the rocks near Speio’s palace. Then he scattered a few smaller trinkets across the bay like breadcrumbs marking the way from her palace to the rocks. With childish delight, she followed the trail and rose up out of the water to search for the rest of the treasure. The wizard had set a net there to capture her, and she became ensnared.
“He knew a mermaid draws her power from the sea, so he kept her far from the ocean in a small saltwater pool at his fortress. Word of this great wonder spread far and wide, and one day a troop of imperial soldiers arrived with a proclamation from the Emperor of China himself. He too had heard of her unsurpassed beauty and her glorious voice, and demanded the mermaid as a gift. The wizard was outraged and protested in rage, but the imperial soldiers immediately seized him before he had a chance to escape.
“The soldiers then took Princes Speio and placed her in a curtained divan with handmaidens to attend her. They carried her back to the emperor’s summer palace high in the mountains. They also transported the wizard to the same palace, but they kept him bound and gagged to keep him from casting any spells.
“During the journey, Princess Speio’s mermaid tail dried and she grew legs. When they reached the palace, she appeared merely as a beautiful woman. Before the emperor could react, one of the handmaidens to Princess Speio explained to the emperor that she had transformed during the journey, and was in fact a true mermaid. This put the emperor at ease, and since the giant golden tank he had commissioned to hold such a magnificent gift was yet to be completed, the wizard and the princess were treated as royal guests while it was constructed, although both were watched very closely.
“They had arrived at the palace near the time of the full moon, a time when mermaids are drawn to sing to the goddess Athena, whose spirit fled to the moon to avoid all earthly suitors. Athena was a rarity among the gods, a great beauty who craved solitude and swore an oath of chastity, so she had sought the sanctity of the moon and had sunk into the pale orb to look down on the earth forever. The moon controls the tides and calls to mermaids with great power. The maidens of the water and the goddess of the night understand each other as few creatures divine or mortal ever do, and they celebrate and give voice to that relationship, especially on the full moon.
“Thus it was that the emperor heard Speio singing to her cousin, praising her beauty as she gazed out the window of her chambers on the night of her first full moon at the palace. He was so compelled by the sight and sound of her unearthly beauty, that he ordered one of his giant golden bird cages to be cleansed and elegantly appointed, then placed in the center of his palace garden. The next night he brought the princess there, where she could see the moon unobstructed and be surrounded by the sound of the fountains and the fragrant beauty of the garden. Speio was delighted to be out in the open again, even in a cage, and sang with joy to Athena, filling the palace with the majesty of her song. She asked to stay in the garde
n cage instead of her cloistered chambers, and the emperor granted her request. His youngest daughter became a devoted handmaiden to Princess Speio, bringing her the finest delicacies and scenting her with the rarest perfumes the kingdom had to offer.
“During this time, the wizard had been treated respectfully although kept under constant guard. He too asked to be allowed to sit in the garden, to be allowed to see and hear the beauty of the singing mermaid in her gilded cage. After careful consideration, the emperor agreed, as long as the wizard swore upon pain of death a vow of silence within the palace, and remained guarded at all times.
“And so for five nights, the princess enchanted them all with her glorious voice, serenading the silvery orb of the heavens until her giant tank was constructed and filled with water. The bottom of the tank was redesigned and terraced to resemble the place in the royal gardens where she had sung. The royal treasury was stripped of jewels and pearls, which were used to encrust the tank in honor of her beauty.
A divan in the shape of a dolphin was carved out of the largest piece of apple-green jade ever found, a piece of jade worth half the royal treasury, as the emperor wished to see Princess Speio reclining in divine splendor.
“When all was ready, a great banquet was held in honor of the emperor’s mermaid, to which all the heads of all the great houses of China were invited. At the end of the banquet, the princess entered dressed in flowing robes woven of the finest silk, with threads of silver that made the fabric sparkle like sunlight upon water. The robes had been painted by the most revered artist of the land with delicate scenes of the ocean truly fit for a goddess of the waves to wear.
“For one last time the princess sang. The moon appeared to swell, filling the night sky, as its rays grew bright. It seemed to reach down and embrace the princess in a blaze of divine light. The noble guests were hushed in awe by her immortal splendor. Envy swept through their hearts like a wave across the sands and sank deep into their souls. As the final note faded from her last song, the rays of the moon faded as well, and the spell was broken.
All The Mermaids In The Sea Page 22