The Lover From an Icy Sea (54 page)

Daneka looked appreciatively at Kit—her prince of almost coal-black eyes and jet-black hair—as he continued to narrate the story.

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At one point, the ship set sail, ran into a terrible storm and broke apart. Everything and everyone went overboard—including the prince. At first, she was happy because she thought she’d now have him all to herself. Then, however, she reflected. Humans, she knew, couldn’t live underwater—and so, she decided to risk life and limb to find him in the wreckage. She dove deep into the sea where she finally spotted him, eyes closed, sinking. She brought him back up to the surface and kept his head aloft until morning, letting the waves take them where- and however the waves would.

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By morning, they’d come within sight of land. The prince’s eyes were still closed, so the little mermaid took him to shore and laid him out on the beach, then went back into the water to wait and watch. Soon, a number of young girls came to the beach and found him. He eventually opened his eyes and then left with them—ignorant of his real rescuer. The little mermaid, now even sadder than before, swam back down to the sea castle. She told her sisters nothing—and continued to say nothing to anyone as she returned each night over the coming months to the place on the beach where she’d laid the prince out. She found consolation only in her garden and with the marble likeness of another handsome prince.

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She eventually told one of her sisters … who told another … who knew someone … who knew where the prince kept his castle—and took her to see it. From that time on, she went every night—to see the castle, of course, but also to see the prince, who liked to sit on the beach in the moonlight.

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She overheard many stories from fishermen about the prince’s benevolence—and she grew fonder of him, and of human beings, by the day. She asked her grandmother, who’d spent a great deal of time up above, and who consequently knew all about humans. The woman explained that mermaids lived much longer than humans, but that when they died, they merely became ocean foam. Humans, she explained, had a body that died and then turned to dust. But they also had a soul, which lived on forever. The little mermaid asked how she might win such a soul. Her grandmother explained that there was only one way to acquire it—and that that was through the never-ending love of one man.

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She resolved to seek the help of the Sea Witch, who lived in a house made of the bones of shipwrecked humans. In exchange for her voice as payment, the Sea Witch prepared a draught that would replace her tail with legs—and then cut off her tongue.

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The little mermaid, now and forevermore mute, took the draught and swam to the prince’s palace, crawled up on land and drank it. The pain was so great, she swooned, fainted and remained unconscious until morning. When she awoke, the prince was standing next to her. She was naked—and so, hid herself in her long, thick hair. The prince asked her her name and also where she’d come from—but she couldn’t answer as she had no tongue, and therefore no voice.

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In the coming weeks and months, he came to love her and would take her everywhere with him—but he loved her only as a child and not as a potential mate. Without that kind of love, of course, she wouldn’t win an immortal soul—and, as the Sea Witch had instructed her, she would die the day after he married another.

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Finally, it was decided that the prince should visit the daughter of a neighboring king. He traveled over sea with the little mermaid to the king’s castle, where he was greeted by the sounds of trumpets and merry-making. After a week’s celebration, he finally met the king’s daughter. Believing her to be the woman who’d saved him from certain death that one stormy night at sea, he resolved on the spot to marry her.

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At dawn on the prince’s wedding day—and so the day on which she was to die—the little mermaid stood at the railing of the bridal ship and looked out to sea, where she saw her sisters. In exchange for their hair, the Sea Witch had given them a dagger, which they now instructed the little mermaid to plunge into the prince’s heart. When his warm blood then fell upon her feet—her sisters explained—they’d grow together into a tail, and she’d once again be able to return to the sea as a mermaid.

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But she loved the prince even more than she loved her own life. She hurled the knife into the sea and jumped in after it—believing she was jumping to a certain death. She was indeed transported, but it didn’t feel anything like death. Instead, she felt that her body was rising higher and higher out of the foam. When she finally asked where she was, the answer she received came from the daughters of the air. They told her that, as a mermaid, she couldn’t win an immortal soul; alternatively, but only as a human, that she would first have to gain the unconditional love of another human. ‘On the power of another hangs your eternal destiny,’ they said. Like mermaids, daughters of the air didn’t possess immortal souls either. They could win one, however, through good deeds. They’d watched her sacrifice for her prince. They’d seen her devotion. And so, they’d allow her to become one of them and to win an immortal soul—but only, like them, after three hundred years.”

Kit was out of breath. Daneka looked at him with genuine admiration. “You have an extraordinary memory, darling. You remember far more of that fairytale than even I do—and I must’ve read it a hundred times. You also have a talent for story-telling. You could be that, you know—a story-teller. You could still do your photography, but you could first be a teller of stories. It’s a worthy ambition—and a rare talent.”

Kit blushed. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d paid him a direct compliment, if ever. The heat of his blush was like a warm bath; the wash of it, heavenly. In the meantime, they’d arrived at a four-lane highway and had to cross over by means of a pedestrian walkway into a park. Kit could see the harbor and a wide expanse of water not far from where they now stood. He then saw, just off the seawall, a large rock and a bronze figure sitting on top of it and staring out to sea.

They walked to the seawall and peered out at the figure of an ageless little mermaid who’d known—Daneka next told him—probably more attacks of vandalism than any other statue in the world—save those, collectively, of Lenin and Stalin. What—Kit wondered—was there about this little mermaid, this bronze water nymph, that could possibly incite vandalism? It simply made no sense to him. Could Daneka explain it?

She attempted a grim smile as she asked him: “Kit, you know Andersen’s version of the story. But do you know the other version—the NC-17 version?”

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I didn’t know there was one.”

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Oh, but indeed. I don’t know that it’s ever been published, but it’s very much alive—and lives in the hearts and nights of many, many women.”

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Would you tell me that version, Daneka?”

She looked hard at him. “Are you certain you want to hear it? Because I can assure you that once you do, you’ll never look at this statue again, never hear mention of the fairytale again, never even hear the name of H. C. Andersen again—in quite the same way.”

Kit looked at Daneka and noticed, as he’d noticed only one other time, how quickly her face could age when it lost its smile and when the laughter went out of her voice. She was looking at him now, and it was as if someone had chiseled years of grief into her eyes. “Yes, darling, tell me that version.”

Daneka fixed her stare once again upon the bronze statue in front of them.

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In the NC-17 version of the story, the characters looked very much like Andersen’s characters. The little mermaid was not, however, one of six sisters—she was an only child. The Sea Witch was in fact not a witch at all—at least not in the beginning. She was a simple mermaid married to a simple merman who, while he may’ve thought he was the Sea King, was just a merman—with a simple merman’s foibles. He had, if you will, a tail of clay.

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One day, he and the mermaid decided to make a baby. That baby is the little mermaid. Already in her infancy and toddler years, she’s unquestionably the most beautiful, the most graceful, the happiest and therefore the most delightful merbaby in the kingdom. Merman and merwife—now mermother—are ecstatic at their good fortune. With each passing year, she becomes only more of what she’d been the previous year—until, that is, she approaches mermaidenhood.”

Daneka paused in her storytelling—which allowed Kit to observe that she’d abruptly shifted tenses from the simple past to the present, and he wondered what significance that might have for this alternative version. He also found the “mer-“ prefix a tad cloying. But his eye told him what his ear could not—namely, that her insistence upon this peculiar prefix had the force of a mantra. That she was not unintentionally using it so much as it was quite intentionally using her. To what end was something he still needed to discover.

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Do you know, Kit, what happens to mermaids when they enter mermaidenhood? They may have tails instead of legs.  They may swim underwater rather than walk on land. But otherwise, they’re very much like humans. They have hormones—just like humans. They throw a teenager’s tantrums—just like humans. And, just like humans, they feel desire.

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The little mermaid is now no longer feeling little. She wants very much to become a merwoman and to find her own mermate. It’s something her mother—later the Sea Witch—can quite understand. It’s something the would-be Sea King, however, cannot even think about, much less tolerate.

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As this little mermaid is on her way through mermaidenhood to becoming a merwoman, she begins to slip out every night after dark to swim by the light of the moon. Before long, she finds a merboy with coal-dark eyes and jet-black hair who’s on his own way to mermanhood. They do what mermaids and mermen do—by the reflected light of a moon casting far above the surface of the ocean, but whose beams are magically magnified by the refraction of the water. They also do it deep within their own chosen house of coral—over and over again—until, that is, one night when the Sea King follows her out. She’s been doing it for so long now, she no longer thinks of being cautious and doesn’t once look back to see whether someone might be following her. Consequently, she doesn’t know that on this particular night, she has a stalker—and that that stalker is her father.

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As is her habit, she finds her way quickly to the coral bed and dives down deep. Her stalker stops and watches from the top of the coral shaft through which she’s descending, then sees that she’s joined by a budding merman. Her stalker proceeds cautiously—just far enough behind so as not to be seen, just close enough so as not to lose them from sight—until the mermaid and the budding merman come to settle in a coral cove on the sandy floor far below. He can’t actually see their bodies, which are partially hidden inside the cove. But the moon casts long shadows. Occasionally, too, their tails come into view. He notes that those tails are never more than the width of a dorsal fin apart.”

Kit noticed that Daneka’s telling of the story had been reduced to a monotone. At the same time—and although he couldn’t look directly into them—he sensed her eyes had glazed over in that all-too-familiar way. He liked neither what he heard nor what he saw, but it was too late to stop her.

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The stalker watches the two lovers until he can watch no longer. Then, in a fury, he leaves and returns home, but says nothing to his merwife.

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Towards the end of the next morning, and under the pretext of needing to do a bit of coral fence-mending, he manages to get the budding merman to accompany him. You see, Kit, the would-be Sea King knows that budding mermen need sleep to restore their mermanhood—and so, has allowed this merman to get all of the sleep he needs. As they approach the edge of their coral colony, beyond which all merfolk—young and old, male and female—know it’s dangerous to swim because of sharks, the would-be Sea King urges the budding merman on. He knows precisely where he wants to go because he’s been there once already this morning—to break the fence. The budding merman is wary, but he doesn’t dare show it. He eventually wants to ask the Sea King for his daughter’s hand in marriage, and he now needs to demonstrate one of his many manly virtues: courage.

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At last, they find the broken piece of fence. It’s a vertical piece of coral a good inch in diameter. The break is clean, though the tips of the two broken halves are jagged and razor-sharp. The budding merman thinks to himself that this can have been caused only by some very large, very angry, or very hungry fish. They must first gather seaweed—the would-be Sea King suggests—to bind the break. The Sea King is in no rush. He is, instead, methodical, precise, exacting and patient.

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They both swim off in opposite directions—though always within the protective barrier of the coral reef separating them from the open ocean in which, they both know, danger lurks. They each then return with an armful of seaweed. The Sea King, only too willing to acknowledge the budding merman’s greater strength, convinces him to do the harder business of pulling together and binding the two jagged ends of the broken coral fence. He—the Sea King—will meanwhile hold the seaweed and feed it to the younger man as needed to make the repair.

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The budding merman struggles in vain to get the two ends to budge. The Sea King instructs him on how he can get greater leverage with his tail if he first places himself between the broken shafts. This makes no sense to the budding merman, but he doesn’t want to question the wisdom of the older man—his future merfather—and so he positions himself as instructed.