He tried not to spend copious amounts of time alone, because when he did, he heard that terrible beating sound that would raise goosebumps all over his flesh. He began to fear the dark, and ordered his servants to move one of the great orbs of light, a gift from the beings long ago, into his quarters. His only solace was sleep, and if he were human, he would have been haunted by nightmares.
The third exception was that the King ordered all the looking-glasses in the palace to be destroyed. There were many complaints about this from the female staff who enjoyed their vanities, but not so much as the six princesses, who were the most beautiful in the realm and so loved to look upon themselves.
Three months passed without incident, until one day, a mysterious delivery arrived for the King. When he entered his throne room and saw it there, he was gripped with fear. He ordered it to be brought to the birthing chamber, and there it remained. The staff asked no questions of this curious event, and soon everyone forgot about the delivery and what lay in the chamber below. Everyone except the nanny, who was more maternal than other merfolk, and knew there was a child waiting to be born.
She crept down to the birthing chamber one day and peeked into the room. It was the same as always, but the water smelled stale, as if it hadn’t been penetrated for months. It was the strangest egg she had ever seen. In her long career, the nanny had always worked in child-bearing. She had played midwife to the larger mammals, abandoned by their mates. She had delivered eggs of the unicorn-fish. She collected the little male seahorses, stomachs bulging with their young, and studied the ways and means of insemination. But never in her experience had she seen an egg like this.
It had a brittle shell around it, glowing warm-brown like amber, as if it had been underwater for a very long time. Inside, the ovum itself was a healthy pink colour, and the foetus filled it completely, gently swaying in its cocoon of jelly. It had a large head, and a healthy body and – the nanny shuddered – no fins whatsoever. Although the amber hid it well, the nanny swore she saw legs, human legs, in the place of a fish tail. Bursting to tell the King, but knowing to do so would be to give herself up, she fled from the chamber in a hurry.
The nanny did not forget about the egg. She calculated its delivery and accordingly, its arrival, and was present the moment the child was born. She held it in her arms, a perfectly normal little mermaid, and the nanny shook her head with disbelief, for it was clear that sorcery had been at work. She knew what she saw, or at least, she thought she did. And these very fins the nanny now stroked, examining them for a sign, a clue. There was nothing. But the child was hungry and the nanny could not feed her with her own barren breasts.
After a wet-nurse had been found, the nanny set herself to the task of informing the King of the birth. She anticipated his reaction: indifference, possible displeasure, and the nanny hoped he would not reject the child, as animals often reject young that is not their own.
“Your Majesty,” she said, bowing low when she found him, “the egg in the birthing chamber is hatched.”
“Is it…alive?” asked the Sea King, who had wished it to die like another before him.
“Yes, your Majesty. It is a healthy baby girl.”
And the King uprooted himself and made his way to the nursery, and when he saw the nursemaid feeding the little mermaid, he tore her from the breast and stared at her.
“I see,” he said after a while, and returned her to the nursemaid.
After that, the King began to visit the new arrival often, and from a distance, would watch her closely for signs of himself. He started to visit the others too, and after a time became his old self again. The witch was forgotten, and so was the mysterious delivery, and the little princesses adopted their new sister immediately, and all was well once more.
She grew like her sisters, but there was something strange about her appearance, for she did not shine as brightly as they, and her movements were not the same. She was prone to clumsiness, and often injured herself on common objects. She was not as strong a swimmer, tiring quickly. Her face would transform when her sisters’ remained deadpan and still. Her hair always tangled into messy reeds, and her hide was so thick you could not see her veins beneath. She scratched herself frequently, for her gills troubled her, and she was often found staring at her tail as if she didn’t know what it was for. She was disobedient, wilful, and rebellious, and because no merfolk had ever seen these characteristics before, the nanny did not know what to do with her. Every time she tried to mention it to the King, he would stare at her as if she were mad. Indeed, she often wondered if she was, for the little mermaid was one of her kind in all the ways that mattered, and to deny it after all these years seemed insane.
But the child was insatiably curious, always questioning everything, until she had exhausted all around her, who could not fathom the meaning of her questions.
“Nanny, what happens when you sleep?”
“Your body rests.”
“What about your mind?”
“I’m sure your mind rests too, my sweet.”
“Not mine. I see pictures in my head. They say things and do things. What is it called?”
“I don’t know, my dear.”
“Do you see things when you sleep?”
“No.”
“Does Father?”
“You will have to ask him.”
And of the answers the nanny did know, she kept them to herself, for she did not want to excite the little creature, who was far too excitable as it was. Until one day, even the old woman had to acknowledge that it was time, for the little mermaid had reached her most special birthday, and was ready to surface for her rite of passage.
“Nanny, what happens to the humans when they die?”
“Their bodies rot and decay into the ground.”
“What about the other thing, the thing that lives inside them?”
“Why, it lives forever, my sweet, and never dies.”
The little mermaid’s eyes widened and for once, she forgot to conceal her emotion. “Forever?” she squeaked. “But where? And why? And what is it called?”
The nanny flinched, but answered nonetheless. “It is called the Immortal Soul. And it lives not on earth, but in heaven.”
Something was hammering inside the little mermaid’s chest now, a sensation she had mostly forgotten about. “Why?” she gushed, as if she were waiting all of her life for this moment.
“The humans are the most fortunate species, because they were created by God. He breathed into them his own breath, and his own breath lives inside them, as their Immortal Souls.”
The little princess closed her eyes and tried to imagine this, as she had never heard anything so glorious and beautiful in her life.
“And when their bodies die,” continued the nanny, “their souls are called up to heaven itself, where God lives, and they live with him forever.”
The little mermaid’s wild excitement soon faded into a melancholy sadness as she realised the momentum of the old lady’s words. “But if humans were created by God, who were we created by?”
“I don’t think anybody knows,” said the nanny.
“And we don’t have Immortal Souls, do we?”
“No, my precious.”
“Can we somehow get Immortal Souls?” inquired the little mermaid, although she already knew the answer.