All The Mermaids In The Sea

by Robert W Cabell

So, while he made his arrangements, he spent many nights in long, private conversations with his sons. Then, on the night of the solstice, Valdemar secretly abdicated his throne to his eldest son, bid both of them farewell, and in the same little boat he had returned in many years ago, he rowed out of the harbor, and out of the world of man, to be declared lost at sea. The country mourned, for he had been a strong and just king, but they celebrated their new king, Valdemar II, and soon forgot his father.

  But, the Little Mermaid had not forgotten him. When he stood upon the same island of rock years later on the eve of the summer solstice, he was still strong and virile, for that was the magic of the ring she’d given him. With a silent prayer, he threw the ring into the sea, and a moment later she was there. Helmi rose up out of the water as young and as beautiful as ever, his very own goddess of the sea. They embraced and wept with joy to be together once more.

  “I didn’t know if you would still remember me and come, or if you would have found another to love after all this time,” he whispered to her.

  “No, my love. I have waited every year by this rock, for the Orb promised me one day you would come. And today you did. Now our life can truly begin.” Helmi took a large gold ring from a small pouch on her girdle and slipped it upon Valdemar’s finger. “With this ring, I make you my husband to rule by my side as king of all the oceans.” The ring flashed hot and then shrank tightly on his finger. Valdemar gazed down at it and saw the symbol of the Trident engraved upon its octagon-shaped face.

  Next the Mermaid Queen handed him a small patch of moss with tiny lavender blossoms that smelled like cardamom and mint. “Eat this, my love, and we shall return to the sea and live there together in peace.”

  Valdemar ate the moss and felt his blood flush with fire as his legs transformed into fins, though not together in a single tail like Helmi’s. On each side of his neck gills appeared and cried out for water. As he gasped his last lung full of air, Helmi pulled him into the sea where the cool water flooded his gills and filled his body with a rich tangy air that tasted of power and mystery.

  And so Helmi, the Little Mermaid, and queen of all the oceans and seas, returned there with her one true love, King Valdemar I of Denmark, to rule beside her.

  The Call of the Sea

  The Mermaid Queen gasped as the clouded vision of Pearl suddenly snapped clear. “Adara is in the waters of the ocean!” Helmi could sense her now. The image of her granddaughter grew sharp and clear and filled the surface of the Orb of Nerus. “There is still time!”

  The water in the Dolphin Quest lagoon, where Pearl was swimming, was directly connected to the ocean through the sea gate. It was not too late if she would just stay in the water for a few moments longer.

  The queen’s arms felt like stone as she tried to turn the giant pearl toward her. Her tail couldn’t move. She needed to regenerate, to heal and to go to her granddaughter the moment the girl “became.”

  Helmi could feel where Pearl was now. She was halfway around the world! Suddenly the vision pulled back and the queen could see that Pearl was not alone. She was surrounded by two-leggers. If she “became” in front of them, they would see her. They would capture her or kill her.

  “Adara! No! Get out of the water!” Helmi screamed with her mind. It was better that she live on land as one of them than die in a cage or at the hands of some scientist, as Miranda had called them.

  “Get out of the water!” she screamed again, praying to be heard, but it was too late. The gift of Gaia had begun.

  The earth echoed deep within, and a vibration from the heart of the sea burst forth with a spell so old, a force so powerful, that it soaked the earth with the very scent of magic. It was a pungent smell of rich dark loam, of air charged with lightening, of dense water chilled from the arctic sea, heavy with salt and brine and colored with the exotic fragrances of wildflowers. It was the scent of an enchantment that had not been evoked in thousands of years, not since Atargatis, the first true mermaid, was consecrated in Samaria.

  “No!” gasped the queen. “Oh Great Creator, please protect her! Save my granddaughter!”

  The Birth of a Princess

  The moment Pearl slipped into the lagoon at Dolphin Quest, the dolphins all swam toward her and away from the other children. They were fighting to reach Pearl. Splash after splash began to sound behind her as she swirled around to see dolphins from the ocean soaring over the seawall into the lagoon. These wild dolphins were shoving their way through the more docile domesticated ones, snapping at them with their maws, clicking and hissing them into submission as they swam to encircle her. Their body mass was actually raising the water level of the lagoon. Pearl was aware of all of this, and aware of a sound … or a song … that was surging through and around her all at once, as if it was part of the earth, water, and sky.

  The other children started to cry out in frustration and disappointment as the waters filled with more and more dolphins that did nothing but ignore them. Dr. Holger Thorsen was frozen—deaf and dumb to everything else around him—as his mind locked down in awe.

  “What’s going on here?” one of the dads sitting on the beach shouted as he stood up to watch.

  “We don’t know,” sputtered Hal, who was struggling to push some of the wild dolphins back and away from Pearl. “Dad!” he called to his father. “Dad! What’s happening?” But Holger just stood there with his eyes drinking in the enchantment, his lungs drawing deep breathes of the scent of power.

  “Dad!” Hal shouted again over the wail of the wind and the ever-increasing clicking from the dolphins. But neither Holger nor Pearl nor anyone else could hear him.

  As they all watched, a circle of water like a whirlpool began to swirl and serge around Pearl. The dolphins struggled to stay beside her as the current pushed everything and everyone else backwards.

  The sky went dark as thunderclouds instantaneously formed a dome above the lagoon. Hundreds of flickering tongues of lightening illuminated the dome, charging the air within. Hal’s breath grew short, as if the oxygen was being consumed by the fiery sky. It seemed as if the lagoon itself began to spin.

  Circles of water, dolphins, clouds, and lightening—circle upon circle—spun in alternate directions like a kaleidoscope, impossible as that was. Hall, Holger, and the children were swept back, pinned in amazement against the stone walls of the lagoon, which could no longer contain the mass of swirling water.

  Faster, louder, wilder, each circle grew. Pearl obliviously closed her eyes and tipped her face up to a luscious beam of sunlight that stabbed down from the heavens. The intense ray of light soared down like a golden arrow to a target, to halt gently, and kiss her face. It seemed to bring Pearl to life. She flung her arms wide to embrace it.

  The light spread outward like a golden wave above the dolphins, as the swell of their welcoming song rang through her. Pearl was drenched with tremendous joy as the whirlwind lashed her hair out around her like a sea of auburn waves.

  A column of water rose from the whirlpool, lifting Pearl higher and closer to the light that poured down on her from the dome of clouds. It was as if the column of water was raising her up to greet the sun. She felt fearless and completely safe as lightening flashed all around her and thunder roared through her. The wind spun her, as she laughed with uncontrollable delight, enraptured by the elemental opulence of it all.

  Above it all, Pearl heard a voice calling to her with joy, calling her by another name … a voice as immense as the ocean, claiming her as its own.

  The fiery dome above her burst apart like a wave crashing against a cliff. Its energy erupted in three blazing fingers, lifting Pearl higher into the air as dolphins continued to circle around her in the water below in ever-increasing numbers.

  The three streams of water wrapped around her body like crystal ribbons. One plunged over her jaw and down her throat, pouring into her lungs as the pressure squeezed every ounce of air out. Pearl felt her neck and shoulders split in a dozen places as water rushed back out of
her body through her new gills, after replenishing her lungs with oxygen.

  Another stream surged between her legs and coursed through her womb. Her legs slapped together with a snap that made them tingle, sting, and stretch tight.

  The third stream spun like a flying water funnel all around her, rising up, and then circling around the length of her arms, spinning her madly in mid air.

  Then there was silence … a sudden, perfect, indescribable silence.

  Pearl struggled to open her eyes as she felt herself slowly descend. She couldn’t see clearly through the soft, fused sunlight all around her. It was like being in the center of a pearl.

  She was inside a transparent sphere of opalescent light. It floated gently down atop the column of water, and then dissipated into the ocean. The dolphins watched her in hushed adulation. Then the light around Pearl shimmered and faded, revealing her transformation for the world to see.

  That was when the screaming began.

  “She’s a mermaid!” someone yelled to the left of her.

  “A real mermaid!” another person shouted.

  “This is unbelievable!” a man cried from the beach behind her.

  Cameras flashed from the beach and the bleachers. The air was shattered by the piercing sound of a siren going off, and Pearl tried to spin to see who everyone was shouting about.

  As she floated in the water, she was flooded with feelings and sensations that were all new, and she didn’t understand what was happening. When she tried to make her legs kick, her body responded in an undulating motion. She couldn’t feel her legs, her feet, or her toes. Not until a long, scaly, glistening tail came up out of the water where her legs should be did she have an inkling that they were shouting about her. For the first time since the spell began, Pearl was frightened and confused.

  Ivan and Lina stared unable to speak.

  “Daddy, she’s got a tail!” a little girl cried.

  “Zoom in on the mermaid, you idiot!” shouted the director of the Animal Planet TV crew.

  “That beam of light must have been a ray gun from a space ship!” the chubby little rich kid bellowed as he spun around in circles, staring up at the sky, ignoring all the amazing things around him.

  “This is unbelievable!” a cameraman grunted as he shoved past Ivan, nearly knocking Lina to the ground.

  The woman next to them, who’d been chatting with Lina a moment before, jumped up and screamed, “These are her parents! They must be mermaids too!”

  “Lina, are you all right?” Ivan asked as he lifted her to her feet.

  “Forget about me, Ivan, you must help Pearl!” she cried in anguish. They could no longer see Pearl through the crowd.

  “Pearl!” Ivan cried as he sprang to his feet and tried to force his way through the people and into the lagoon. “Let me through!” he yelled. “I need to get to my daughter. Please let me get to my daughter!”

  “Pearl!” Lina screamed over the crowd, “Daddy’s coming!” Then, like a strong riptide, the crowd turned on them. Hands started grabbing at them from every direction.

  “Hold them!” yelled one of the other fathers.

  “Don’t let them get away!” screamed the chubby rich kid’s mother.

  “Keep them away from the water!” The crowd swung its attention to Ivan and Lina, face after face staring at them with fear, awe, and greed.

  The towering wave of clutching hands crashed down around them along with blinding, stabbing camera flashes from every direction. Lina screamed—a loud, terrorized, heart-rending scream—as more sirens went off and the mass of bodies crushed in around her. Then, everything went black.

  “Save the princess!” Pearl heard the words inside her head as she gasped and swallowed water. “You must swim, Princess, swim as fast as you can, and follow us to safety,” the dolphin at her side urged.

  The dolphin beside Pearl was speaking to her. How was that possible?

  “Mermaid!” Everyone around the lagoon was pointing and shouting.

  “Mermaid! Mermaid!” Greedy, startled, snarling faces were everywhere.

  “Catch the mermaid! Someone grab her tail!” A large burly man ordered.

  “Get a net!” a woman’s voice called. “You need a net to catch a mermaid!” The mob rushed into the water toward Pearl.

  A fierce roar of screeches and clicks erupted from the dolphins surrounding her. Her water guardians turned to face the approaching horde, snapping their maws defiantly.

  “Mermaid?” Pearl gasped as a wall of hands, nets, and cameras swept toward her. Instinctively, the dolphins on either side of her seized her arms in their maws, and in one powerful surge, flung her up and over the seawall into the open ocean.

  All Pearl could think was, swim! As if her thought alone had created it, a current formed behind her to speed her on her way. She coursed through an ocean teeming with dolphins, whales, and fish of every kind. Her new finned friends formed a protective channel that closed behind Pearl, blocking all pursuit, leading her deep into the ocean.

  As she reached the sanctity of the deep, the whales and dolphins sang out the news that she who had been lost was now found. The littlest mermaid had returned to the sea.

  The Return of the Queen

  Helmi’s granddaughter had received the gift of Gaia and joined her in the sea, yet Pearl would not be safe until Helmi could reach her. But she couldn’t move. The queen didn’t know how long she had lain gazing into the depths of the Orb. Its power had sustained her in one sense and drained her in another. Lying on a pallet of furs, with the Orb nestled in the crook of her arm; she had been lost for years in its power.

  Her hands and wrists had turned to stone. Her tail had been kept moist by the mist in the cavern, but the fin had crystallized so it was too heavy for Helmi to lift. Her long, wavy hair was slick and trailed down her back to the cavern floor, and the rest of her body seemed intact. She needed to immerse herself in the sea to heal and regenerate, to float in the shallow depths in the warmth of the sun. She must swim through the kelp forest to draw nourishment from the rich minerals they had drawn into their fibers from the depths of the earth. But she couldn’t rise.

  “Summon my selkies,” she commanded a large purplish starfish plump with eggs in her belly that was moving along the cavern ledge looking for the perfect place to lay them.

  My queen, it thought back slowly. What do you want?

  Helmi knew starfish were not the brightest creatures

  on the rocks, but she couldn’t reach out to her handmaidens in her weakened state. Since her father Poseidon had turned to stone over a millennium ago, only she had entered the palace’s hallowed halls. There were no loving corylians, the builders and caretakers of the coral palaces, to serve her here. Generations of

  selkies had come and gone without ever entering the Palace of Aegir. Once, long ago, their kind had served the gods in its silver halls and danced across the gold-strewn floors to the music of the Muses. Now Helmi needed them to enter its cavern hall again to lift her from her couch and carry her back into the sea.

  “Spread the word throughout the waters that the royal handmaidens of the queen must come to her at Aegir’s summer palace with all haste and speed,” she told the starfish. “The princess has returned to the sea, but there is no time for celebration. She is not safe from harm until she is by my side.”

  The plump purple starfish puffed up with a sense of self-importance and scurried—as fast as a starfish can scurry—to spread the news. The starfish told the snails, barnacles, and anemones, who gave the news to the clownfish, shrimp, crabs, and lobsters, who informed the flounders and the rays, who spread the word to the cod and the mackerel. They told the porpoises, who broadcast it to the dolphins, who squealed it to the whales, who sang it to the seals—Helmi’s handmaidens must hurry to their queen.

  The queen’s selkies cried with joy when the message arrived. It had been many seasons since they had attended her. The narwhals and belugas had mourned her absence too. Many of them were
injured, and many a sickly calf had died in the past several seasons because Helmi had not been there to use her healing skills and powers to save them. But none had dared to disturb Helmi in her sorrow.

  Since Princess Miranda died and the new princess had not returned to the sea, the queen had shut herself away. Many had given up hope that she would ever return, until today. Today the world had changed. Change is seldom good in the world of the ocean, especially when two-leggers from the land of man were involved. But today they learned that the new little princess had returned to the sea! Today the queen had called her selkies to serve her once more.

  “To the queen!” they barked as they transformed into seals and dove into the ocean. “To the Palace of Aegir!” the selkies sang to each other in wonder. They darted and soared through the currents of the sea, on the long journey from the Faeroe Islands to answer their queen’s call.

  Helmi lay in the palace helpless until her handmaidens arrived. Although she was a being who saw the passing of centuries as a human sees the passing of a season, each minute she waited seemed like an eternity. But finally her selkie attendants broke through the surface of the water of the palace pool and flopped up on to the ledge, shedding their sealskins as quickly as they could. When they saw her lying there, they began to weep. This supreme being was helpless with her tailfin and hands solid stone. Her lustrous hair was dark, slack, and covered with patches of moss.

  “Your Highness,” one of the selkies cried sadly, “why have you not called us to help you before? We have missed you so and would gladly have tended to your every need.”

  “No time for tears, my dear ones. Carry me into the water and swim me deep into the heart of the kelp forest. I will rest and regenerate there, where the sun will warm me and the plants will nourish my body.”

  “At once, Your Highness.” And they all wept again as they gathered around her.