All The Mermaids In The Sea

by Robert W Cabell

“Now if only the military would buy that, we might have a chance,” Holger muttered. But he knew better.

  The Search Begins

  Admiral Greystone was in his command center staring at a world map displaying the exact locations of all the ships and submarines at his disposal.

  “How can we find her when we have no idea which way she went?” he muttered as he paced back and forth while his staff waited for orders. So far he’d directed his entire fleet to close in on the Pacific Ocean from every direction because the damn Hawaiian Islands were smack dab in the middle of it. What a logistical nightmare! The girl could have gone anywhere, in any direction, or be hiding in some of the deepest waters in the world.

  How deep can a mermaid go anyway? Does anybody know? Is this creature real or just a stupid joke, or did that missing scientist really conduct some crazy secret experiment and create the very first mermaid? How in the world was he supposed to figure this thing out?

  “Sir!” the lieutenant came rushing in clutching a satellite photo. “Admiral, we’ve got something.” He was panting as if he’d run all the way there from the twelfth floor, which he probably had.

  “What is it?” snapped the admiral as the lieutenant crossed the room and laid the large photo across his desk.

  “Look here, Admiral, at 11°09’24.60” North by 118°12’28.00” West. See this dark area?” He pointed to a black circle in the middle of the open sea.

  “It looks like a spot in the water,” the admiral growled.

  “That spot, sir, is two miles across,” the lieutenant stated, and then placed a second picture on top of it. The second picture was greatly enhanced and showed that the spot was made up of many shadowy shapes of different kinds of fish and sea mammals.

  “It seems that literally every fish, whale, and dolphin, possibly every living creature in the area for miles around, assembled for about ten minutes in a perfect sphere.” The lieutenant placed a third photo on the desktop that showed the spot losing its shape. “Then abruptly, they dispersed.”

  “That’s got to be her!” roared the admiral. “Yes!” He snatched the photo up, strode over to the world map, and drew a circle where the photo had been taken. Next he drew a circle around the Hawaiian Islands, and then a line connecting them.

  “She’s headed southeast toward South America! Now that we know where she’s going, we can box her in and grab her! Okay, men, let’s get to work. Order the fleet to close in on the west coast of South America!”

  Mermaid Powers

  “There is much to tell and much for you to learn, Princess,” Patches began. “Most of that will come in good time. First and foremost, the queen requires that you learn the power of invisibility.”

  “Mermaids can become invisible?” Pearl gasped. “I’ve never heard that legend before!”

  “Of course they can, or nearly invisible.” Patches twisted his beak in chagrin as he glanced across at her. They were swimming along a strong current that ran about two hundred feet deep, and carried them at a fast pace with very little effort.

  The kits, Coral and Prickle, were having a great time flaring their wings in a way that sent them spiraling along. Slammer and Jumper had to struggle to keep up as they followed in a much shallower path, higher up, where they had quick access to air. There they could keep a lookout for any vessels that might cross their path. Pearl was learning to communicate with them using only one small part of her mind. Their connection was becoming rhythmic and gentle, like music playing in the background, so she was still able to focus on swimming and listening to Patches.

  The name Patches doesn’t fit him, Pearl thought. He is too officious, and Patches sounds cute and disrespectful. Then she realized, I’m a princess now, so maybe it’s okay to call him by his first name. Wait … do sea turtles even have last names?

  “Not really, Your Highness,” Patches responded to her thoughts. “We recognize each other by our distinctive shell patterns.”

  “Sorry, Patches. There I go again, thinking too loud!”

  “We actually use names only when we talk to selkies or mermaids.”

  “Are there a lot of selkies and mermaids?” Pearl smiled at the very thought of swimming with other mermaids and sunning herself on the rocks with the very selkies her mother had told her so many stories about.

  “There are quite a few selkies left in the northern seas, Your Highness, but very few mermaids,” Patches responded politely.

  “Well, how many mermaids are there?” Pearl asked.

  “Counting you?” Patches inquired.

  “Yes, counting me,” Pearl replied.

  “Then there are two,” he answered.

  “Two?” Pearl slammed her tail downward in shock. It turned out to be a very un-mermaid like move, because it didn’t stop her. Instead, the current picked her up and sent her spinning head over fins. She flung her arms out and flailed them around to catch her balance, and Echo’s humming cut off like a burst of static. It was very difficult for a mermaid to be ungraceful underwater, but she had somehow managed to do so.

  “How can there just be two?” Pearl snapped as she struggled to gain equilibrium as well as decorum.

  “Well, there is the Queen of the Oceans—your grandmother—and now there is you. That makes two,” he answered calmly.

  “But there must be others! Where are my mother and my father? Aren’t there any mermen or merkids someplace else? Isn’t there a mercity?”

  “No, Your Highness,” Patches said with a sigh. “There were never more than the nine daughters of Poseidon. They were the first true mermaids. Some chose to go on land and take mortal lives, grow old, and die, then rise to heaven and become angels for the Creator. Others grew weary and turned to stone only your grandmother, the Little Mermaid, remained in the sea and changed her land prince into a merman, your grandfather, King Valdemar I of Denmark.”

  “Where is he?” Pearl asked.

  “He died over a hundred of your years ago, during the Battle of the Skarzs, when the volcano on Krakatau exploded and sealed the Titans back in Tartarus.”

  “The Titans were real?” Pearl asked in shock.

  “Of course, Princess, they are your ancestors.”

  “That’s just too weird!” Pearl floated along and tugged at her tail absent mindedly, which caused Echo, who had reattached herself, to skip a beat.

  “Who are the skarzs?”

  “All in good time Princess.”

  “Well, what about my mother?”

  “Princess Miranda died at the tender age of eight hundred three.”

  “Years?” Pearl gaped.

  “Years,” Patches affirmed. “Just a mere child, and far too young to be a mother, but she was always such a hasty princess.”

  “It sounds creepy and old to me!”

  “A mermaid stays young and can live forever if she wants to.” Patches sniffed. “Your grandmother is almost three thousand years old, and she is the Little Mermaid.”

  “You mean the Little Mermaid, like in the book?” Pearl gasped. It was really more like a gargle, but that would be very unladylike for a princess, even if she were underwater. “My grandmother is the real Little Mermaid, and my grandfather was the prince she saved from drowning?”

  “Precisely,” Patches nodded.

  “But I read the book. He dumped her! He married another princess and broke the Little Mermaid’s heart!”

  “Writers never get things right, Princess. Besides, we need to stick to your lessons.”

  “You can’t just tell a girl her mother was eight hundred three years old and that her grandmother is the—and I mean the—Little Mermaid and expect her to go on with her lessons! I was nervous about my first mid-term exams next week, and this is way, way more difficult to deal with then that!” Pearl huffed.

  “I see you’re going to be hasty, just like your mother was.”

  “What really happened to my mother and father? Tell me that, and we’ll get back to the lessons.”

  “Very well!” Pat
ches humphed and rolled his eyes in frustration. “You were born on land. Your father was a mortal two-legger who took the golden lichen of Poseidon and transformed into a merman. The princess and your father were creating something on land to protect the oceans and seas and help save their creatures from the world of men. What exactly that was, I do not know, but that is the reason they were on land when you were born.”

  “Gosh, my family is strange,” Pearl muttered. “The kids at school made fun of me before because I had webbed feet. What will they think when they see me with a tail and hear that my mother was over eight hundred years old?”

  “I think you can leave that to worry about until later, Princess,” Patches said with yet another sniff.

  “Yah, right!” She tugged at her tail again in frustration.

  “Getting back to your lesson, Your Highness …”

  “You still didn’t tell me what happened to my parents!”

  “We do not know,” Patches said softly. “Your mother gave birth to you on land in the world of men. She did immerse you in the sea the day you were born to seal you to Gaia and send your image to your grandmother, the queen.”

  “How? Do mermaids have the Internet, or a post office?”

  “I don’t know what those things are, Princess, but the sea is made up of saltwater and is full of light. Mermaids can manipulate salt crystals, water, sound, and light. That is the source of their power. Messages and images can be sent around the world with these powers wherever a sea or ocean exists. Your essence—your personal signature—was recorded by the sea the instant you were submerged into its waters.”

  “That is so cool!” Pearl giggled. “But why didn’t my mother just swim back into the ocean with me once I was born?”

  “We don’t know. We only know that a short time after she presented you to the sea, she died. Her light in her Mirror of Atargatis went out forever.”

  “Her what?”

  “Her light,” Patches repeated. “There are nine Mirrors of Atargatis for the nine daughters of Poseidon, all once imbued with the light of their immorality. All but one had grown dark until your mother was born, then one more shone again with her light and power. On the day you were born, another returned to life, next to your mother’s. Three mirrors glowed again for the first time in almost a thousand years. Shortly after your birth, your mother’s went dark, and we knew she had died,” Patches said mournfully.

  “The car accident!” Pearl gasped. “They found me as a baby near a car crash that killed the couple driving, but I was thrown clear. I thought after I transformed that it must have been a mistake, and my real parents would be in the sea, waiting for me. I’ve dreamed that so many times, I thought it must be true. But my parents are dead. They’re really gone!” And Pearl wept.

  The Story of Miranda

  Of all the days in all the centuries of Helmi’s life, the birth of her daughter Miranda had been the most joyous! Valdemar, her husband and consort king, was also radiant with pride. The sea sang out the news of the birth of the first new mermaid in two thousand years.

  It had only taken a century to teach Valdemar all about the oceans and the seas. Being an adult and having known the responsibilities of kingship, he had been an avid pupil and learned three times as fast as Helmi had, absorbing every detail that passed by him.

  The killer whales became his favorite because of their savage beauty and clear hunter minds. “They have the minds of warriors,” Valdemar told her, “minds I can relate to. They are fierce, loyal, and clever.”

  He also loved the giant whale sharks. He called them his gentle Goliaths. They were actually his favorite to ride. Valdemar found them deeply philosophical. They watched and remembered all that happened around them, and he often took their counsel before he made decisions on certain issues. Helmi had needed him to be confident as a ruler before they began a family, but they had not wanted to wait any longer.

  It was Valdemar who chose Eulilmene’s Palace in the Caribbean Sea as the nursery for Miranda. He loved the Coral Palace there created by the corylians and thought the beauty of the coral reefs would be a paradise for a merchild. The Caribbean, in those centuries, was also free of the constant crossings of merchant ships, unlike most of the other seas.

  The currents of the Sargasso Sea made the migration to and from the Faeroe Islands easier for Helmi, for she could never abandon her duties to the narwhals and belugas in the summer season. Using the Mirrors of Atargatis, they could travel back and forth instantly to her father’s summer palace in the Northern Sea off the coast of Denmark and then just have a leisurely two day swim to the Faeroes. But Helmi took her duties as queen seriously and felt it was necessary to pass through the waters of the ocean of her watery kingdom to see that all was well.

  The Sargasso seaweed, for which the sea current was named, was also one of Valdemar’s favorite foods. Sea grapes, he called them.

  How happy they were, and what a beautiful child Miranda was. All mermaids were said to be beautiful, but Miranda was extraordinarily so. Her hair was an exotic mixture of pale-white blonde and light-reddish gold that seemed to carry sunlight inside it. Her eyes were very large and changed colors with her moods ranging from lavender to aqua blue. They were also rimmed around the outer edge by a deep indigo blue, and she had thick eyelashes that were long and luxurious.

  Her neck was long and as slender as a swan’s. She had a heart-shaped face with high, angular cheekbones. Her lips were round and full, with a natural deep red color to them.

  Best of all was her smile, so quick to explode across her face with glee at each new creature or wonder she encountered. Her dimples appeared when she smiled, giving her exotic beauty a childish and innocent twist. One smile could conquer an army of men. It seemed to have that same effect on whales. They followed her everywhere and never stopped singing to her.

  Her favorite pet however, was not a whale, turtle, or dolphin, but a Nassau Grouper. He had been a little thing when she’d first found him shivering in a coral cave after a close encounter with a shark. He was so nervous; he kept changing from one color to another, which instead of keeping him hidden and camouflaged was attracting all kinds of attention, including hers. So Miranda took him gently by the fin and brought him back to the palace. The little fellow was so grateful he never left.

  Miranda decided to name him Shifter because he had a habit of shifting through his spectrum of colors whenever he got nervous. They became constant companions, chasing each other around the palace using their camouflage abilities to play hide and seek, which made the game much more interesting.

  So, little Shifter eventually got bigger than a dolphin, but never acquired a dolphin’s grace or charm. But to Miranda, he was always her little Shifter. One day she asked her mother why the Nassau Groupers were so good at camouflage when other fish their size were not.

  “It was a special gift from your grandmother, Queen Amphitrite,” Helmi responded. “You see the lavender pearls you and I both wear around our necks?”

  Miranda reached up absentmindedly and stroked the one object she could never remember being without.

  “Each mermaid is given one of these lavender pearls at her birth. A string of them was created by Nerus, the first god or guardian of the ocean, and your great-great-grandfather. He made them as a wedding gift to my mother, Amphitrite, when she married King Poseidon, your grandfather.” Helmi smiled with a sad little memory of her own loss.

  “One day while she was swimming through the ocean in a very bad storm, the necklace broke and the pearls where carried off in all directions. Mother was heartbroken. So, after the storm, Poseidon combed the oceans to find all the pearls. It took him two hundred years to locate them all, except one. That one single pearl, he simply could not find.

  Then, on the day I was born, a little Nassau grouper came swimming up to the palace with the last pearl in his mouth, and as a reward, Queen Amphitrite gave to him and to all his descendants the gift to hide in plain sight.”

  The
royals were always shooing Shifter out of the palace when Miranda wasn’t looking because he had a tendency to get stuck, once he got bigger, in some of the smaller passages and tunnels. The corylians constantly had to create new openings to get Shifter out. Once he got stuck in a side passageway, and to get him out, they created an opening through the wall into the throne room. Unfortunately, on the other side of that wall was a magnificent relief mural of Poseidon riding the waves with his Trident blazing, and the hole came out right in the middle of his forehead!

  “It makes Father look like Uncle Zeus when you’re cousin Athena was born escaping from his head,” Helmi said, laughing, when she saw it. “I never had much to do with that side of the family. Father always said they were far too full of themselves.”

  Helmi did, however, put her tail down after that particular incident and banished Shifter from anyplace but the main palace hall. It took the poor corylians weeks to repair the mural so all the lines in Poseidon’s face matched up again.

  The corylians were such a marvelous race. Helmi had many friends among them when she was a little merchild. They were consummate craftsmen, and the coral palaces of the sea could never have been created or maintained without them.

  The first time Helmi took Valdemar to a coral palace, he kept looking at the reef they were swimming toward saying, “Where is it? We’re almost there and I can’t see a hut on that reef, let alone a palace.”

  “It is the reef itself, my love,” Helmi said, giggling. “The palace is inside the reef, not on top.”

  She took his hand in hers, and with a smile, dove down under a coral ledge, then back up through the hidden opening of a coral cave. It would appear at first to anyone as a long tunnel, except it was lit by bioluminescent clumps of sea anemones spaced symmetrically along the walls like living, swaying candelabras. Then it curved up into a lagoon pool in the palace cavern. All the sea palaces were similar in construction, hidden inside an underwater mountain or coral reef, and were accessed through a cave and a pool. But inside, they were very different.