Tenderly, the little mermaid reached out and traced the line of his brow with her fingertips. Her fingers fell over his lips that had once so entranced her and his smooth angular jaw. She would not forget the way he explored her mouth, searching for answers. She would not forget that hair could fall like that.
Knowing what had to be done, the little mermaid left the chamber and closed the door gently behind her. She made her way to the railings of the deck, and looked out over the still emerald sea. With one perfect movement, she pitched the dagger into the ocean, where it became lost amidst the depths, never to be recovered. And without a second thought, she hurled herself over the edge.
They say your life flashes before your eyes upon the moment of your death. But for our heroine, it was as if her life as a mermaid had not existed, for all she saw were images of the human world. As she relived every moment in those last futile, eternal minutes, a sickeningly salty taste flooded her mouth and the sound of a mourning violin filled her ears.
A face arose in her memory, a care-worn, brutal, beloved face and suddenly, her arms began to move and her legs began to kick and her body yearned for the surface. Hope filled her and she smelled his skin upon her own and she could taste a lifetime held in this man’s arms.
It came to her, suspended like a pendulum in the whispering water, that she had been deceived. As the pale luminescence of the moon shattered beneath the clear water, tracing fractured patterns over her skin, she remembered the God who was coming in the morning, who had planned for her to be there. Different and set apart from the moment of her birth, the little mermaid finally realised that she did not have to wed the Prince to gain an Immortal Soul – that she had her own all along. She did not know how it was possible, but surely humanity had been hers from the beginning, as she had recognised the fluttering weight of her soul from the moment of her birth. The knowledge flooded her with warmth and her heart continued its slow, steady beat as if it had known the truth all this time. Filled with joy, she clambered with all her might for the surface, as her lungs were constricting with lack of air and black shadows merged on the edge of her consciousness.
But as she struggled in the water, sinking further into the depths, the little mermaid remembered that in her human form, she had not learned how to swim. She began to panic as water gradually filled her mouth and lungs. Her vision blurred and became black, and all the joy, hope and love she ever felt shut down, like a theatre after closing night. And as she comprehended the consequence of this one stupid, minute detail in the progress of her life, she finally experienced humanity’s Great Condition. Enveloped in the coldest sorrow, her heart broke in pieces and ceased its fateful beating. The ocean swallowed her up and she drowned.
Epilogue
Just as love had birthed it, it was love that eliminated the race of merfolk in the end.
Her remaining sisters would have said that she was beautiful in death, floating to the ocean floor like a lost feather of a flying-fish. It need not have happened at all. If they had been present, as promised, beneath the depths of the wedding ship, they would have caught the little mermaid in their arms and brought her to shore. Her lungs would have expanded with air and gratefulness as they hoisted her onto the stone steps. She would have run into the palace and to the man who loved her, who had done everything in his power to prove it. She would have married him and produced one olive-skinned son with ringlets and a hot temper. They would have grown old, hides like crisp, dry leaves, and their graves would have been dug side-by-side in the royal cemetery. Her sisters could have prevented her untimely death, had they not died themselves sometime between midday and midnight.
Every dead heart in the underwater kingdom had been awakened, and the dreaded word festered amongst the merfolk until their minds blew open from too many thoughts, and their hearts exploded from too many beats. The disease became so advanced that even the tiniest flare of light in an eye would cause the toxins to be transmitted from one to another. Even the unborn, seemingly safe in their eggs, became infected, their tiny dead hearts snapping inside them. The Sea King himself, the strongest of all, was the last to die, gazing out of his window at the eerily still kingdom, remembering his wife.
The only trace now left of the species is the mother of all merfolk, who began the race with a broken heart and a boon. She wanders amidst the empty ruins and shells of old ships, aimless and bored. Even the beings refuse to admit her, tired of requests they have not the power to grant. She tries to kill herself twice a year but the bargain will not allow her. She is still there now, an eternal phantom, fruitlessly trying to abandon her Immortal Soul which follows her about like a mocking spectre. Sometimes she becomes so desperate for companionship that she comes to visit me, with her dry tears and empty lament. Usually, I pretend to be nothing but the ruins of an old lighthouse and she soon leaves me be.
Lately, she stays longer, as if she has realised that I have ears and all I can do is listen. She talks endlessly of days gone by, recalling the glory and the greatness of her creation. About a man I vaguely remember, and a basket of red tomatoes. She mourns her beloved Sirens, the most perfect of creatures, and asks me if I think she will have the strength to one day create again.
But most of all, she talks about a daughter she once had, who she initially despised as the offspring of one who betrayed her. How the beings bought the baby’s life, and in exchange had granted her the opportunity to choose the child’s form and time of birth. How she had waited countless years and plotted an intricate plan, beginning with the slaying of the Sea King’s useless, bled-out wife. The assurance that the girl’s true heritage would eventually upset the delicate balance of animal and human, lending to its ruin. How she greatly longed for the destruction of the merfolk, and how her broken heart had deceived her. It had whispered promises to her in the blackest of nights, none of which came true.
She feels regret now in her old age. She often wonders what could have been had she not deceived her daughter, if she had aided her just a little. If she had first used the girl for her own purposes, but afterwards released her to her own human right to life.
Call me a fool, but I believe her to be genuine. She still wears a braided necklace of her daughter’s hair around her neck. I imagine her sometimes, discovering the corpse on the ocean floor. I wonder if her heart stopped, just for a moment, like an ordinary person. But it probably went on beating as usual, as if nothing momentous had occurred. I wonder what she did with the body, whether she buried it humanely or if she ground the bones into a poultice and swallowed it down in an attempt to keep her daughter within. My eyesight grows weaker and I cannot see as far into her cave, you see, so I must dream up these things.
As for the little mermaid, I like to imagine her a happier end. I sometimes envision her own Immortal Soul rising from the grey dawn of death and bursting through the surface of the ocean, golden and perfectly whole. She travels toward the magnificent palace of glass and limestone where she lightly kisses the new King and Queen of the land. Then she enters the bedchamber of the King’s Uncle and spends one night beside him, resting against his beaten, second-hand body. All around him are neatly packed bags containing his possessions, waiting to leave in the morning. She whispers and caresses him until he falls asleep.
Now, I know I am just a lighthouse, a man-made structure and a ruined one at that, who knows nothing of religion and science like you do. But I imagine her then travelling toward the great light of heaven. And as her soul flies up into the clouds, the God himself is waiting to greet her. He holds out his arms and she runs inside them. He touches her face and says, “I know your name.”