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When the oldest of the sisters was fifteen, she was allowed to swim to the surface to gaze once at the human world. There was a great castle by the shore, one which shone in every color when the sun struck it just right. There were colors hidden in the marble, but the mermaid’s keen eyes could pick out every one. She saw white and ivory, silver and pale gold. It was nothing compared to the great reefs which she had seen, but there was wonder in the delicacy of it all. It made her think of the snowflakes which fell in winter, melting just as they touched the waves.
But the castle was not made from snowflakes. It could not be, and that only increased its wonder. It was carved from stone, hard and firm and yet not unyielding anymore, for it had yielded to the work of human hands.
What else might, given time? Could they shape the very seas in which the mermaids live? Could they shape the skies? The mermaid turned her gaze up and out and all around, fascinated and alarmed. She knew now why so many of her kin were drawn to peer at the surface, and why so many were just as eager to never see it past that first glimpse. She wondered whether any merfolk dared to venture onto land at all.
But that was a foolish thought. They would not be able to do much more than drag themselves onto the rocks of the shore. Without some dark magic to change their bodies or their very nature, they could only linger at the edges of the human world for a little while before having to return to the water.
The eldest sister was not a foolish girl. She had no wish to change herself, either to explore or to fit into some other world. The carved stones she saw before her were wondrous, but she did not need to see them more closely to be content.
She did not need to see them at all, she realized. She could create something of her own, something which would rival the humans’ creations.
That the humans would never see them didn’t matter to her one bit. All that mattered was that she would make something of her own, touched by them but not theirs at all.
With an eager smile, she dove back into the water, content for the moment.
The second sister heard stories of the first sister’s adventure. All the sisters did; the upper world was a strange and mysterious place, one which they could only imagine until they were fifteen. The older mermaids hardly spoke of it; their wonder had long since faded as their attention turned to adult affairs beneath the waves.
But the children found it fascinating, almost enthralling. Just above the surface of the water, there was another world, one which was filled with strangeness and mystery. Never mind that beneath the sea were coral palaces which grew themselves and creatures which could never exist outside the water. The world of the shore had structures built by hands and minds rather than simply shaped and grown, and creatures which could not survive beneath the waves. It was a world of mystery and fascination.
The second sister could hardly wait until she turned fifteen.
On the day she did, as soon as she was allowed, she swam up to the surface and pulled herself onto the stone the sisters habitually used to watch the surface. It was warmed by the sun and burned her hands a little, but she didn’t mind. The pain was momentary, easily ignored. More than that, it was worthwhile for a memory of an alien world.
The castle was precisely where her older sister had seen it. The second sister looked at it for a moment, but it did not entrance her as it had her older sister. The lines were too straight and even, without the chaos and wonder of coral palaces. The sun shining on it was beautiful, but the second sister’s eyes were drawn down to the shore instead, where she saw figures getting into small boats.
The second sister had seen boats before. All the sisters had, though they had not been allowed to approach them due to their youth. The second sister could have swum up to these boats if she dared, but she remained on the stone. Today was meant for watching, to satisfy her curiosity. She would allow them to go about their business as they pleased.
Besides, she didn’t know what business they had in the boats. She wanted to know. She wanted to understand them.
The boats were smaller than the ships the mermaid had seen passing overhead. Those were great hulking things, all creaking wood and rope and heavy anchors. These were smaller, like a pair of cupped hands together, and in each pair sat two or three men. They rowed out, into the water, and once they were a good stretch away from the land, they cast out first anchors, then nets into the water.
Then they sat.
They sat for a long time, longer than the mermaid had thought humans could sit. She had always believed them to be creatures of fire and air, barely tempered by earth, always needing to move and create and do. These men might have been beings of earth and water, for all their patience and calm upon the waves.
But they did not just sit. After a time, she saw that they spoke, their words passing across the water as quickly as their hands might have to build or fight on the land. They laughed, and joked, and told one another things they would never have dared to say aloud on land, if there were anyone else to hear them. The sea brought out a different side to them, one the mermaid was honored to see, for no one else would have been allowed to see it. On her rock, she swelled with pride, and she would have sung if it would not have given her away and caused the men to fall silent.
So she thought, but then as the boats turned back to shore, one of the men raised his hand to wave to her, and he called out a greeting. He complimented her, but she did not care about that. She cared that she had been seen, that she was not the secret observer she had thought herself. The mermaid was proud, and fond of her fancies, and she dove back into the waves to hide her embarrassment.
Still, she thought fondly of the men as she swam back to her home, and she told her sisters all about what she had seen, about the men drawing sustenance from the deep. Her sisters listened, and the littlest sister listened most keenly, her thoughts turning to the knots their clever fingers must have woven in the nets.
The third sister was bold, or perhaps emboldened by the second sister’s daring. Few of their kind dared to be seen by the humans, but the second sister had watched them eagerly, allowed them to see her in turn. She acted as though she was embarrassed by their attentions, but the third sister knew better.
She told herself she knew better, at least. She told herself that her sister would feel the same as she did.
The third sister wanted to see the humans. She also wanted to be seen by them.
So when she had reached fifteen, she swam not to the rock her sisters had perched on (and her mother and aunts, and her grandmothers and great-aunts, and on and on through generational memory) but past it, closer to the rocks of the shores. She did not haul herself up onto the shores – she did not dare – but she waited beneath the waves for the fishing boats to come out.
Come they did, creaking and salty wood cutting through the water. The third sister watched them eagerly, imagining the men above her, imagining how different they were and yet how the same. The greatest difference, she remembered her grandmother saying, was that the humans had souls within them, while merfolk were nothing more than seafoam given shape for a little time, which they would use as well as they could, for as long as they could.
“What is a soul?” the mermaid had asked, all wide-eyed curiosity.
“No one knows,” her grandmother had replied. “Not even the humans, though it’s as much a part of them as their own fingers and toes.”
That had only left the mermaid more confused than before. “What are toes?”
Her grandmother had not answered. Perhaps she herself had not known.
She had a chance to find out now. The boats bobbed above her, waiting for her to swim to the surface. She could try to speak to them, could try to speak their language, if only they would put it in her mouth somehow. She could ask what a soul was, what toes were, whether either might be something she could see.
In the end, her heart failed her. She was not so bold as she might have been. The mermaid sank down below the reach of their nets and watched them snag fishes out of the water and drag them up to drown in the air. For several minutes, she watched. Then she swam away.
The fourth sister would never admit it, but she had little interest in the human world. All her sisters were eager to see it – and the younger two grew more eager with every passing year – but the fourth sister found her thoughts turning elsewhere.
Why should she only get a chance to look at something which she would never be able to enter? It only seemed a way to breed discontent. (At only fourteen, she had become something of a philosopher. The humans, if they could have met her, would have been fascinated.) She could see the edges of their world and either forget it or spend the rest of her life wondering what it must be like, letting herself be consumed by fascination and desire.
Or she could do something far more interesting.
On her fifteenth birthday, the fourth sister swam to the rock where her other sisters had perched with the rest of her family. They bid her fond watching and then swam away, giving her the space she needed to enjoy her birthday and find what wonder she could in the human world.
That was exactly the chance she had been looking for. As soon as she was alone, the fourth sister dove under the waves again and swam as deep as she could.
Her family would know she had swam off by the time she returned. That didn’t matter. What mattered more was that she would see what she most wanted to see.
What she wanted to see were the wonders of the deep.
She did see them, or at least a few. She only had a day to explore as much as she wished. She saw a great trench, opening well below the last flickering bits of sunlight that could make their way through the heavy layers of water. She saw luminescent beings, things she had heard some explorers speak of, but which she had never seen for herself. She had never thought she would ever see them for herself.
She wondered what else she might see, given the chance. Perhaps she could break herself free from the twilight city where she lived and explore the depths. It was dangerous, but no more so than traveling to the surface might be, and it was far more reachable. Her body was built for this. She was built for this.
Down deep, very deep, the fourth sister heard a low, echoing song. It wasn’t the whalesong she knew, nor was it like the songs of her own people. It was something strange and foreign, something she could not recall even hearing of before.
This, she knew, was what she had to understand. This was what she had to see more of.
Someday, she promised herself, she would return here.
The fifth sister (last but one) was vaguely interested in seeing the human world, though from the stories of her older sisters, she felt as though she knew it already. The humans built grand things, and they went out to sea in boats, and they sang and they laughed like real living people, because of course they were, she supposed. They were not so different from merfolk, save in their lower halves, and perhaps somewhat in their insides. She could not imagine a human was crafted quite like a mermaid was. She could not think they were filled with seafoam as she was.
Not that she had any real wish to discover what lay inside a human. It was one thing to bite into a fish for food. It was quite another to consider doing so to something that could create.
To tell the truth, the fifth sister hardly knew what she wanted. Her older sisters had already begun their adult lives, now that they’d had their glimpse of the world above. Some were settling into lives in their own community, shaping the great reef they lived in. The fourth sister had already begun exploring, though she had not yet traveled far. She was young still, and there was a great deal to see even by their own home.
As for herself, she hardly knew what she wanted. To see the human world, she supposed, but did she really want that for herself, or did she only want it because everyone seemed to think she wanted it, because everyone told her she wanted it?
She didn’t know. She didn’t even know how to answer that question.
What she did know was that when her fifteenth birthday came and she swam up to the stone to look out at the human world, the castle did not entice her as it had her eldest sister. The boats did not exhilarate her. She had no desire to look at the men in the boats or their nets. Their mundanity might entice her older sisters, but it held no allure for her.
But then she turned her head up and saw the sky without a veil of water for the first time.
It was blue.
That wasn’t the part that surprised her. The surprise came from how deep and rich the blue was, even with its brilliance. It seemed to stretch on and on and on, reaching out further than the sea itself. There was no telling what might live up there, what might make its home in such an expanse. As far as the fifth sister knew, there was another girl perched on some cloud, staring down at the sea, wondering what might make a home in the waves.
The fifth sister stretched a hand up, waving her arm, though she quickly pulled it back. Even if there were some other girl up there, she would never see her. They were too far apart to know whether the other was real.
But she could pretend. She could hope, and hope she did, that there was more to the world than the humans and the merfolk. There might be more wonders than she or any of her sisters could dream of.
The fifth sister lay on the rock, devoting her entire attention to the sky. Above her, a seabird swooped, not marring the depth of the blue but enhancing it.
If this was how she spent her birthday, she would be very happy indeed.
When it was time for the youngest sister of all to swim to the surface and see the human world, she already had an idea of what she was going to see. She had heard stories from four of her sisters (she had largely ignored the fourth sister’s story, uninterested in exploring deeper into the sea) and hungered for what else she might have, what she might gain from swimming out so far and so deep.
But her story has already been told, many times over. What facets of it are not yet known?
What facets of it do you still wish to see?