All The Mermaids In The Sea

by Robert W Cabell

  She loved to dance. Where Helmi was shy and leery of mankind, Miranda adored dressing up in long, flowing gowns and going to parties, especially masked balls, in ballrooms flooded with music! To Miranda music was the most amazing thing. That these tiny little objects of wood or metal made music as big as a whale seemed incredible.

  Despite all the things she loved about mankind, which her father called two-leggers, Miranda still loved the sea with a great passion. In fact, passion was the word that described Miranda best. She either had a passion for something or she ignored it completely, something a ruler couldn’t afford to do.

  Helmi always scolded her when she spent too much time learning about the fish of the deep trenches and the abyssal plains, and insisted that she focus on understanding the effects of salt density and the temperatures of currents. Miranda could create or control a rip tide, disperse a red tide, or diffuse the sedimentary intrusions from fresh water rivers into the sea without a thought. But the “why” and the “way” of it didn’t interest her at all. She would simply yawn and create little whirlpools to spin the fish about, shift into different shapes and colors as her pet grouper did, or tug on her tail. She would do anything but pay attention.

  When Miranda entered her second century, Valdemar told Helmi it was time they let her take an adventure on her own and learn a little responsibility, so they sent her off to visit the archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. Miranda was supposed to learn all about the variations of fish from Hawaii to Tahiti, and they gave her a century to do it. Of course they also planned annual visits home, or Helmi would simply never have allowed it.

  When it comes to raising children, royal or common, divine or mortal, certain things never change. Like many parents before them, when they decided to surprise Miranda by visiting her to see how she was doing, she had more than one surprise of her own waiting for them.

  The people of the Pacific islands were some of Helmi’s favorite two-leggers. They were very gentle and lived their lives in tune with the sea. She felt it was a safe place for Miranda to stretch her fins and be on her own, with the local corylians to look out for her and guide her, of course.

  Unfortunately, the corylians were excruciatingly shy creatures and had no idea Miranda was running around with the wrong kind of selkies. She was singing in the moonlight until the sun began to rise, rising up out of the water to talk in front of the natives, and riding dolphins in their lagoons like some wild little river nymph! Helmi and Valdemar quickly put a stop to that kind of behavior, but the legend of Hina Lau Limu Kala had already spread far and wide across the islands of the Pacific by that time.

  Helmi was just grateful that, with all that contact with young native men, Miranda hadn’t lost her heart and taken some poor islander into the sea with her. “A child of two centuries has no business frolicking, let alone talking to mankind in her mermaid form until she is at least a thousand years old!” her mother, Queen Amphitrite, had always maintained.

  Even gods made mistakes when it came to being parents. Helmi’s mother had given birth to each of her sisters several centuries apart, and Helmi had told Valdemar she could see the sense in that. One little mermaid at a time was quite a handful. When a mermaid could talk to all the creatures in the ocean, become invisible, move water and wind any way she wanted, the level of mischief she could get into was endless. Not to mention the fact that each mermaid needed to learn and explore the entire ocean before she retired to live in one particular sea.

  Since all of the palaces were now empty because Helmi’s sisters had left, Miranda really did need to see and learn about them all in order to make a choice. Just swimming that much took several centuries, not to mention meeting and greeting all the local fish, crustaceans, mammals, and plants. And if she slighted the starfish and anemones, she’d never hear the end of it.

  Not all the palaces in the sea were coral palaces. A few, like Helmi’s, and her father’s summer palace off the east coast of Denmark, were caverns carved out of underwater mountains. Whenever the royal family stayed in one of the family coral palaces, the residents went crazy, gilding, decorating, and vying for the new little mermaid to choose their sea palace as her own. Miranda’s portrait was carved in every coral palace throne room and in every ocean before her fourth century!

  Helmi did not want that to go to Miranda’s head. All of this was really just normal behavior for a pre-millennium mermaid. It was when Miranda met her first submarine and tried to talk to it as if it was a whale that Helmi truly began to worry. The world of man was intruding into the realm of the ocean in a way that had not happened in the previous twenty thousand years her family had been ruling the oceans and seas.

  Princess Miranda’s Memories

  Miranda saw the strange-looking whale many leagues ahead. It was monstrous in size and swimming oddly. It had little glowing spots on its hide like many of the fish from the abyssal plains. “It must be one of the demons of the deep Mother is always warning me not to ignore,” Miranda told Shifter. Of course he was the seventh or eighth Nassau Grouper she had given that name to since she’d had her first pet grouper. Keeping the same name made life less confusing for her, and she could pretend her new friends were her same beloved Shifter all over again.

  Being immortal was hard on friendships. Even friends who didn’t get eaten by a shark were often caught in a man net before their time. That was actually easier for her than to see them age to the point they could age no more and sink to the bottom of the sea to be crab food.

  This was why Miranda was not terribly fond of crabs. She seldom talked to them or made friends with them. Friendships with turtles and whales were much easier because they lived long lives and had great stories to tell.

  Judging by the size of this whale, she thought, it must be very, very old and should be very interesting. She called out to it as she swam toward it, with Shifter scurrying behind her.

  “Hello,” she sang her greeting to the whale, which quite rudely ignored her.

  “I said hello! What’s the matter with you?” she sang again. Miranda was really quite mystified at being disregarded. That was something that just didn’t happen to a mermaid. Still, the strange whale continued to ignore her. It was a very odd whale indeed.

  The closer it got, the stranger it looked. Its skin was a color she’d never seen on a whale before. It had weird markings, and the shape of its body was completely wrong. It didn’t swim right either. This was simply not acceptable.

  Miranda drew herself up, and in a very loud, regal voice, she sang out her demand for the whale to answer her and tell her who or what it was and from where it had come. The whale finally seemed to notice her. It spun around and headed toward her, but still it didn’t sing. She reached out to mind-speak to it and found it was not a living thing, but there were many living things inside. Men were inside, like swallowed fish inside a whale, but alive and well.

  A memory came flooding back to her. “The man at the masked ball!” she cried, and clapped her hands in delight as the man-whale headed toward her.

  It had been many man years ago, before the Battle of the Skarzs and the explosion of Krakatoa. She and her father had gone to a masked ball in Venice as the Duke Valdemar and the Duchess Miranda Brahe-Sinkel-Laurvig of Egeskov. The family kept a lovely palace in Venice with steps inside that went right down into the sea. That made coming and going much easier in Venice than in any other European city. It was only a few streets away from St. Mark’s Square. Miranda loved the square with all the little shops and cafés and the cathedral clock tower that was fitted with all the figurines and pageantry she so much enjoyed in the world of men.

  They had arrived in October, when Venice was full of operas and parties, and everyone was dressed in the most magnificent gowns and elaborate masks. You could be anyone from a princess to a scullery maid, and no one would know as long as your dress was fanciful and your mask mysterious.

  Due to the mystery that surrounded Miranda’s family and their great wealth, they were al
ways invited to the grandest events and occasions. It was quite exciting, but often a bit wearing, as people surrounded her and her father, Valdemar, vying for attention and information about their lives and lands.

  At one particular ball, Miranda had taken the first opportunity she found to slip off and explore the lovely estate. She found herself in a large library with tall French doors that opened onto a balcony overlooking the Grand Canal. A delicious breeze blew through the doors, and a full moon lit the night sky, glittering on the water like a net of golden light. With a sigh of peaceful bliss, she’d shut the library door behind her softly and strolled onto the balcony with her arms outstretched welcoming the moon.

  “A sea goddess on land?” a smoky voice with a French accent intoned from her left, as a shadow seemed to solidify and move forward to the opened French doors.

  “I’m sorry, monsieur,” she apologized as she swirled around to face him. “I did not mean to disturb anyone. I thought I was alone.”

  “I am just a humble writer hiding out in the library, mistress.” A bearded man with questing eyes and the crimp of a smile to his lips had risen up from the chair he’d been sitting in, cloaked by the shadows of the darkened room and joined her on the balcony. “Whom do I have the honor of addressing, mademoiselle?” he asked with a polite bow.

  “I am the Duchess of Egeskov,” Miranda replied politely, with a dainty curtsey of her own. “I am here as a guest with my father, the Duke of Egeskov.”

  “So, you are the mysterious Duchess of Egeskov about whom everyone is always talking.”

  Miranda laughed. It was a clear crystal laugh that hinted of a golden voice. “And just what do they say, monsieur?” She smiled back at him with eyes that searched and questioned in return as she snatched off her crown of shells encrusted with pearls and sapphires. “What do ‘they’ find so mysterious?” she said giggling as she plopped the priceless circlet upon the head of a marble cherub sculpted into the balustrade of the balcony.

  “Oh, such scandalous, marvelous things,” he said, mocking her with a comical caricature of a gossiping old woman.

  “Oh dear,” she responded in her own mocked shock, “you must tell me everything!” Then, with a flick of her fingers and a graceful shake of her head, she sent her hair falling loose, floating down around her shoulders to the small of her back.

  His breath caught in his throat as the cascading hair caught fire in the moonlight. It seemed to glow from within as it wreathed her in a nimbus of opalescent radiance.

  “You are the very vision of a goddess—on land or in the sea,” he whispered.

  “Is that what they are saying about me?” She giggled behind her mask, making her seem even more ethereal and unreal.

  “No, mademoiselle, please forgive my irreverence. The moon does strange things to a man.” And then he stroked his beard absentmindedly in thought before he spoke again. “They say that your duchy has been peaceful and prosperous for several hundred years and that you are somehow related to the throne of Denmark. They say that for generations the Duke and Duchess of Egeskov have appeared and disappeared throughout the courts and palaces of Europe but never married within them. It is also said that you are fantastically wealthy, your family palaces are meticulously maintained but seldom occupied, and that the duchess of your line always wears a veil in public and seldom attends anything but masked balls. And here you are at the very same such event, masquerading as a mermaid.” He smiled as he indicated her costume. “That is easily the most spectacular gown I have ever seen.”

  “Thank you, monsieur. My mother designed it for me. She selected all the pearls and jewels herself and supervised every detail.”

  Indeed no detail had been spared in the making of the magnificent gown. First a full skirt of translucent silk in varying shades of the palest ice blue to the deepest aqua had been spun to create the sea surrounding the mermaid. Then, floating above and upon the sea of silk, a tail of emerald green velvet had been fashioned from the waist down to the hip. It swept back into a long tail riding on a gathered train of sea-blue silk in waves beneath it.

  Each scale of the tail was delineated with tiny diamonds set into delicate gold chains that were hand stitched, link by link, in row after row of scale-shaped arcs. Glistening in the center of each scale was a large, perfect, pink pearl. At the top of the tail, below the waist, the green color of the tail was slowly blended up into a flesh tone satin bodice, and the emeralds gradated down in size as they dispersed into pale pink Venetian spun glass beads. Starfish made from beads of amethyst and contrasting garnets created the décolletage, and sheer silver silk tulle scattered with dewdrop-shaped seed pearls completed the sleeves of the gown.

  “Are those pearls and diamonds real?” He looked at them closely in disbelief.

  “Yes they are.” She nodded simply.

  “That dress must be worth more than the Crown Jewels of England!” he gasped.

  “Why anyone thinks a pretty piece of shell or a clear-colored rock is of great value, I’ve never understood.” Miranda shrugged. “They are only useful for decoration. You can’t eat them, plant them, ride on them, or do anything of value with them, and yet they are so highly prized in a world that would go on splendidly without them.”

  “You are a very strange and beautiful young woman,” he said, and then sighed.

  “I am masked!” she said in surprise. “How do you know I am beautiful?”

  “Because only a great beauty would feel secure enough to wear such a gown and not think its wealth and luxury was important.”

  “Do you write about great beauties in your books, monsieur, or of great battles and romances?”

  “No, I write of men and sciences, and of great minds creating new wonders for the world,” he said with a passion that Miranda responded to.

  “Do you ever write about the sea?” she asked.

  “I want to write about all its marvels, the secrets of it depths, and all of its exotic locations and myths. But, alas, I am a researcher, not an adventurer, and there is so little we really know about it.”

  “Perhaps I can help you there.” Miranda smiled as she lowered her mask, and tilted her head back to let the moonlight fully drench her in its glow.

  “Mademoiselle,” he gasped, “you cannot be a mere mortal with such beauty!” He paused then whispered, “For if God truly created angels, they could not be more glorious than you.” And he knelt at her feet.

  “No, monsieur, I am no angel, but I am of the sea, and so are my people. There is little you wish to know that I cannot tell you.” Miranda reached for his hand and helped him to rise, then motioned him to sit beside her. “Tell me of the story you wish to write about the sea. Ask me anything you wish to know, and I will tell you,” Miranda promised.

  Emboldened by such attention from what could only be some divine creature, he told her his story. It was the story of a brilliant but damaged man who hated war and the generals and kings who used it as a tool for greed … a story of how this man turned his back on humanity and chose to abandon the world above and enter the ocean in a mysterious ship that swam through the depths, instead of across its surface. It was a story of a man who went on a quest to seek the wonders of the sea.

  As they talked, Miranda told him of her world—places, creatures, and legends of the sea. She described them with the depth and conviction of one who had seen such places and held such treasures in her hand.

  “How can you know such things?” he asked her more than once in wonder.

  “Just believe that I do, just as you believe in your vision of the future, and I promise you, all will be well.”

  And so they sat and talked until a man of great poise and authority, one who moved like a king among kings, strode quietly but confidently out onto the balcony and called her by name, beckoning her to him. “It is time to go, Miranda,” he said, smiling.

  “Yes, Father.” She smiled back as she swept her hair up into a pile on her head. “I will be right there.” The man nodded an
d walked back into the library.

  As Miranda reached for her jeweled sea crown, she quickly plucked off four giant pink pearls and several large sapphires, and placed them in the writer’s hands. “Please see that these silly baubles are sold to help the poor and orphaned. Then, they may truly be of worth.”

  “I swear to you, Duchess, that I will use every penny for the poor,” he replied reverently.

  She smiled at him again. “As you heard my father call me, my name is Miranda, should we meet again. What name should I look for when this marvelous book of yours is written?”

  “Jules,” he said shyly. “Jules Verne.”

  “Good night, and adieu, Monsieur Verne,” she said as she nodded graciously.

  Miranda scooped up her mask and swept out through the library, leaving the moonlight-drenched balcony pale and inadequate, where a moment before it had been flooded with her divine light.

  A gentle nudge from Shifter snapped Miranda out of her reverie to notice the proximity of the man-whale and the speed with which it was rushing toward her. Suddenly, two shark-shaped objects hissed out of the belly of the man-whale and streaked toward her with streaming trails of water behind them. She didn’t know their purpose, but didn’t care for their behavior, so she made the water solid on either side of them and pushed them out of her way.

  As they zoomed past her they crashed into the canyon walls beyond and exploded. The sound of the explosion smashed into her brain like a hammer into an anvil, searing her mind with hot, red sparks. Waves of water came crashing into her from both directions, yanking her viciously upward and sending her spinning head over tail.

  Crying out in agony, Miranda flailed her arms out, struggling, and finally gained her balance. When she opened her eyes, she found she was caught in a beam of light directed at her from the man-whale. Many faces pressed against clear glass windows were staring out at her. Then she noticed Shifter, floating belly up with dead eyes, slowly sinking down to the ocean floor below.