All The Mermaids In The Sea

by Robert W Cabell

  There was a knock on her door, the one separating her room from her parents’ room. Now that she was becoming a young woman, they had treated her to a room of her own. “Come in,” she said feeling so grown up.

  “Do you like your room, Princess?” Her dad smiled as they entered.

  Her mother handed her three packages beautifully wrapped with paper and ribbon. “The top package is the gift you wanted for the professor at Dolphin Quest. I do hope he’ll like it!” Lina beamed. Pearl’s mother was a simple woman with very plain tastes, but her smile was simply gorgeous, and what she could create with her paints and brushes bordered on magical as far as Pearl was concerned. “The other two are for you,” Lina explained.

  “Oh, no, Mama, you shouldn’t have. You and Papa have given me so much already. Did you see the view from the balcony? It looks like one of your paintings, Mama. I can see the fish and mermaids swimming in the lagoon below if I just squint a little. I don’t need any more presents. Really!”

  “Well, you need these. You’re going to wear them this morning and all the time you’re here, so open them up and enjoy them.” Lina brushed some hair from Pearl’s face and gave her a peck on the brow.

  “You may get nothing but a birthday card next year, but this year we’re doing it right!” her dad added with a laugh. His laugh was like chocolate—thick and rich—and he always added a warm hug to go with it.

  “All right. Thank you again, but promise, no more presents!” Pearl scolded them. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother bought herself something new, and her father liked to wear the same three or four shirts all the time. Luckily one of those was an old Hawaiian one. With his red-and-yellow hibiscus print shirt and straw sun cap, he looked practically native today.

  Pearl sat on her bed and opened up the smallest box. Inside was a beautiful Citizen Promaster Hyper Aqualand Dive Watch with a compass and a depth gauge that went up to five hundred feet.

  “Wow! This is just like the ones the marine biologists wear at the NOAA aquarium! It’s beautiful! Oh, but, Mama, it must have cost—”

  “Not another word about costs, Pearl!” her mother cautioned. “What’s bought is bought, so just say thank you.” It filled Lina’s heart with pride that her daughter was so thoughtful and really cared about others. The child did have lots of little mermaid things and stuffed animals, but so many of those had been bought at garage sales and with Pearl’s baby-sitting money. She was a loving and thoughtful daughter, not like many of the children her age who expected everything and were grateful for nothing.

  “Open the last one,” her father urged. Pearl could tell this was something he must have found for her and that made it all the more precious! She tugged the ribbon off with one quick jerk and flipped the lid off the box.

  “Oh! I don’t believe it!” she cried. She pulled the object out of the box and danced around holding it up in the air. It was a diver’s belt with a nylon net sample bag. Neatly arranged inside was a set of collector’s tools—a brush, a small titanium knife with a five-inch blade, and a small writing slate and grease pen. There was a bottle with a squeeze tube for fresh water, along with three small sample bottles. And there was a 1st Scuba CA-2 deluxe underwater camera.

  All of the equipment folded up and fit into the small mesh catch bag that belted around the waist and nestled in the curve of the wearer’s back. Pearl was ready, willing, and able to be a marine biologist, or at least a summer assistant. She was going to go home with an amazing collection of shells and tons of pictures to show all of her friends.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She danced back and forth between them giving them kiss after kiss.

  “Well, we’d better hurry if we don’t want to be late for the dolphins,” her father said, laughing.

  “Group hug!” Pearl shouted with glee. Lina and Ivan crossed their arms around her and kissed her on the forehead, giving her a good solid hug. Then Ivan swept her up into his arms

  and carried her out the door to the elevator as Lina gathered her purse and the rest of their things and locked the hotel room door behind her.

  To Sleep or Not to Sleep

  Helmi was turning to stone. The Mermaid Queen had ignored her whales and turned her back on her kingdom to sit and gaze into the Orb of Nerus, day after day, year after year, as her father had. She now understood after all these centuries how she had lost him. His grief had turned inward every time one of her sisters had taken to land and chosen a mortal’s death. Her mother’s choice to seek oblivion and disappear into the sand rather than mourn another lost child had shattered him.

  The proud and mighty Poseidon was too much a warrior to seek that kind of end. He was also too deeply devoted to his family to shake off his sorrow, so he had sought the solace of the Orb more and more to see the loved ones he had lost. Over the years, he had slowly turned to stone.

  That would be Helmi’s fate too. She could no longer feel her tail fins or lift her hands from the Orb. If she lost her granddaughter to the land, if Adara did not receive the gifts of Gaia and return to the sea, Helmi would truly be the last mermaid. Her heart would shatter as her father’s had, and she would sit and gaze at the Orb for eternity to see the loved ones she had lost. Her daughter Miranda had been so young when she’d lost her heart to a mortal—the tender age of four hundred eighty years to be precise. That had been her doom. She had died because of him before she was halfway through her first millennium. On land mermaids could die as easily as any man. In the sea, they were immortal, but the land held such allure for a young mermaid. How well Helmi still remembered.

  The Lost Journals

  Helmi was the last to be born and the last to leave. Her father was known by many names, had many palaces, and had fathered many children with many goddesses and spirits. He had been called “Poseidon” by the Greeks, “Neptune” by the Romans, “Manannan” or “Manawydau” by the Celts, “Tangaroa” in the islands of the South Seas, and “Aegir” in the Northern Sea where he kept his summer palace. In the north, among the fierce Viking people, Aegir was still the greatest god. There his Trident still made the winds roar, the sea swell, and the earth tremble.

  Deep off the coast of Hlesey Island, now known as Laeso Island, in Kattegat Bay, off the east coast of what is today known as Denmark, laid a palace. It was beyond the reach of men, hidden from sight inside an underwater mountain. It had been carved from the very heart of that mountain, from a core composed of little more than rose quarts that was riddled with veins of pure gold as wide as a man is tall.

  In this temple of magnificence sat Poseidon, the divine ruler of all the oceans. Thrice the height of a man, his massive frame of godly perfection belied the millenniums of his age. The throne of the mighty sea god, carved in the shape of a frozen wave, was made of pure opal that looked like fiery ice.

  Beside him in equal perfection and immortal beauty sat his wife, Queen Amphitrite. Her throne of pink coral was delicately carved in the likeness of a school of fish swimming upward to merge into the waters of his wave, forming the symbolic union of fish and water, woman and man. In the center of the room, on the steps below them, on a couch carved from one single blue aquamarine, dwarfed in size but echoing their perfection, their daughter Helmi sat with joy and awe.

  She was the youngest of Poseidon’s nine daughters by her mother, who also had many names. She was “Amphitrite” to the Greeks, “Tethys” to the Macedonians, “Varanani” to the Hindus, “Hina” goddess of the moon and tides to the Polynesians, and “Ran” to the Vikings in the cold, deep oceans of the north. But to Helmi, she was simply, Mother.

  Since neither Poseidon nor Amphitrite was aquatic by birth, but had won their domain in the battle of the Titans, in addition to the underwater chambers of the palace, there were the private rooms that were open to the air. Their mermaid daughters liked to slip out of their fins, stretch their legs, and enjoy certain creature comforts from the land above.

  In the days when the Olympians and other elemental rela
tives came to visit or seek sanctuary for some debauchery or dalliance, Poseidon wanted them to be comfortable and treated with all due respect, but kept away from his daughters as much as possible. This was also the area in each palace where many of the seas’ greatest treasures were kept free from the wear and tear of water and salt.

  Being the littlest mermaid had made Helmi’s childhood lonely. Her sisters were all grown and off living in sea palaces of their own, where they could swim freely in their waters as mermaids, or walk on land in their human form. They were hundreds of years older than Helmi and had little time to play with her, except on the summer solstice each year when they came home to pay their respects to their father.

  Helmi was barely into her seventeenth century—still a young girl in her family—when her world began to diminish. Born long after the glory of Atlantis, after the reign of Cleopatra, and before the coming of the great God’s son, she was a mere child when the old gods began to slumber and turn to water, wind, and stone. The earth gods, once held above the angels, were forgotten and abandoned upon the coming of the Son. The ancient altars grew bare, and the ancient sacred fires grew cold. One by one the gods and goddesses went the ways of their own choosing.

  They left behind their children, the lesser spirits of the earth—water, wood, and air—to dwindle as the time of men encircled the earth. Then one summer, Helmi’s sister Ploto did not come home. Word was sent to her parents that, weary of the centuries, she had taken legs and gone onshore to take a mortal life and have a mortal end. Her choice broke her mother’s heart.

  That same year several of the gods from Olympus and Asgaard did not return, but chose to fade into the earth or turn to stone. Every century or so after that, another sister did not return, and more gods sought a stony sleep or faded into the earth or air. Soon, the summer solstice, once the happiest time of year, became a time of dread for Helmi and her parents. Finally, one year after the gods had all stopped coming, and when only two of her sisters were due to return, Helmi’s mother could bear no more.

  “My babies have left me behind and stepped through the veil,” Amphitrite sobbed. “I need to go and find them on the other side to see that they are all right.” She burst into tears and collapsed weeping against Poseidon’s chest. He cradled her in his arms and rocked her gently.

  “I know, my love,” he whispered. “But you know you cannot follow them without leaving the rest of us behind. What would I do without you? What about our other two daughters and little Helmi?”

  “You are as strong as the world beneath your feet, my love. You will never shatter or break,” Amphitrite continued. “Six of our daughters lost their will to live and have left this world behind. They need me. I need to know they are happy … that they have joined the Creator.”

  “Of course they are fine. The Creator will be happy to have their voices,” he murmured softly against her cheek. “If you listen closely you will hear them,” he whispered as he tenderly wiped the tears that were streaming down her face. “Can’t you hear their beauty deep within the cosmic song?”

  “I don’t know!” wailed Amphitrite. “I only know that now the cosmic song is calling to me. I hear it all around me, and I know I need to join it. You will be here for Helmi, and will rule until it is your time to cross the veil. But my time is now.”

  Then, as if the resolve had blossomed from deep within her like a rod of iron, she rose to her feet without another word and pushed his arms away from her. Firmly she silenced whatever words he had left to say with a wave of her hand. Then she kissed Helmi and hugged her tight for the last time before she transformed herself into a wave and spread herself across the sands of the cavern and dissolved into the earth, never to be seen again.

  Helmi’s father was devastated. No longer was he the mighty “Neptune” shaking and rattling the earth, or the vengeful “Poseidon” of the deep, or the fierce “Aegir” of the warrior Vikings. He was but a sad, old, lonely man who mourned the loss of his children, his brothers and sisters, his friends, and now his wife. He sat and stared for hours at the Mirrors of Atargatis that once shown with images of his daughters’ palaces, now one by one grown dim and empty with their passing. He brought forth the Orb of Nerus, the giant pearl created by the birth of Venus when she stepped from the colossal oyster shell onto the waves of

  the sea. To gaze into its depths was to see ones heart’s desire, anywhere at any time.

  Helmi would wait months for her father to utter a word or even a sound. When her last two sisters returned that year and found their mother gone and their father lost in sorrow, they kissed his brow, hugged Helmi, and returned to their homes, never to be seen again.

  The Little Mermaid was now alone with a father who would sit still as stone for years at a time gazing into the Orb to see the loved ones he had lost. Her playful dolphins, whales, and selkies, were now her only companions. But sea mammals and selkies could not truly breathe beneath the waves, swim within its deepest depths, or share in the powers of the ocean. She was the last of the merfolk, and she felt so alone. Still her friends gave Helmi love and companionship and helped her care for the baby narwhals as she prayed for her father to get better.

  Helmi’s own palace beneath the Isle of Lila Ditma in the Faeroes seemed so far away from her father. He had created it just for her with golden walls, columns of pink coral, and a ceiling of mother-of-pearl. It had been a happy place before everything changed. She could swim with ease from her palace to the caverns beneath Fugloy Island. The narwhals that needed to bear their calves late in the season, when the waters around Greenland were too cold for their babies, swam south to deliver them in her sacred waters. There, far away from the cold, fierce winter of their homeland, safe within her cavern, where the heart of the old volcano heated the waters making them lush with food, she would tend the late-born calves. The old and sick narwhals would also come to stay. Some came so she could heal them. Others just felt their time to pass was near. They came to give their mighty horns as gifts. They would be made into naricorns—the magic spears Poseidon needed to guard the undersea world.

  Just like unicorns’ horns had magical powers on land, so did the horns of the narwhals at sea. As always and sadly, both horns had magical powers only when they were gifted to someone at the moment of a unicorn’s or narwhal’s death, a fact that was never understood by mortals. A unicorn or narwhal could choose at that moment to leave a portion of his or her soul behind inside the horn. That gift, that blessing, that piece of an eternal soul, was what gave each horn its power. It was a gift that could never be taken by force or violence.

  Over the past few centuries, Helmi had collected many, many naricorns, for the magic whales loved her dearly. But it was the love of her father she hungered for, and that love was the reason she still returned each year to his underwater palace off the coast of Laeso Island to sit in his stony lap and cling to him, her lithe arms encircling his neck. She would sit and sing to him the songs she’d composed of brighter times, dancing dolphins, bold young narwhals, and silly seal games. Seldom did she even feel his heart beat, and Helmi was never sure he even knew she was there.

  So another century passed as she tended the narwhals beneath the Isle of Fugloy. It was the northern-most island of the Faeroes, which faced toward Greenland. When one gazed at the island from the water, it looked like a gigantic whale sunning itself on the surface of the ocean on its way back to Greenland.

  Greenland was the ice continent where the last of the elves still dwelt in palaces beneath the mountains and off whose coast the narwhals could still be found in abundance. It was where they made their summer home, though in far fewer numbers than in Helmi’s youth, for men still sought their power and hunted them in the seas. She often visited them there to attend the births of the new calves and playfully tease the young bulls as they gathered their courage to court a young cow.

  As summer drew to an end, Helmi would hurry back to visit her father before the narwhals migrated down to her warmer waters, pray
ing she would find him well again and waiting for her. But Poseidon was always still and silent.

  Then one year when she went to his undersea palace to see him, he had turned to solid stone. It was a dark gray stone the color of volcanic cliffs, and all across his body he was covered with a golden moss that was sprinkled with pale lavender blossoms. Helmi was overwhelmed with grief and collapsed in his hard, cold lap, weeping and wailing until she cried herself to sleep. When she awoke, her father was there, sitting beside her, dressed in his flowing sea robes with watery sapphires in his crown of pink coral and gold, smiling as of old.

  “Do not fret, my little Helmi. Death is only the beginning of a new life, and now your mother and I can be together, and I can seek out your sisters and see them all once more. Your time on earth is still spiraling out ahead of you like a long and winding road, and you must travel to its end before you join us.”

  “Don’t leave me alone, Father,” she cried.

  “You will never be alone, Helmi, for my love is always with you. To ease your journey and give you companionship, take this golden moss from my body and keep it with you always. Any mortal who eats of it will be able to live and breathe beneath the waters of the sea for hundreds of years—not an immortal life, but a much longer one than the normal span of a mortal life. Once they eat of it, they may never live on land again. If they remain more than one cycle of the moon away from the sea, they will wither and die. Still, it is a great gift that you must not give lightly.”

  “But I want you, Father, and I want Mother to come back, and my sisters,” she whimpered.

  “We both want that, my child, but that we cannot have. So I go to them now and leave you, whom I love most, behind to bring new life to my kingdom.”