First posted December 2020.

In the kingdom of the sea king, coral towers rise into the sparkling azure heights, little fish glide through dancing curtains of dark seaweed, and merfolk gaze in wonder at the underwater world they are so fortunate to inhabit. It is hard to appreciate beauty when one has nothing with which to compare it, and on their fifteenth birthdays the merfolk rise to view the world above the waves, to see what life is like for the mortals on land. Children are told they will only be disappointed, that they will see nothing above that surpasses what is below, but as long as that world remains unseen, the children will not believe it. The world created by imagination can only be marvellous. It was with this naive sense of wonder that the eldest daughter of the sea king swam to the surface on the occasion of her fifteenth birthday, hardly able to contain her excitement.

The cold morning air hit her face hard as she broke out of the sea’s warm embrace, but the momentary shock dissipated as she caught her first glimpse of the shore. The bright, golden sand against the lush, emerald trees gently waving against the blue sky did not look so different from the realm she knew. Beyond the edge of the land, she saw lights in the distance, sparkling like clusters of colourful stars, and the jovial sound of music filled the air. On the beach, small humans danced on their strange and fascinating legs, causing her to wonder how they managed to stay upright while moving so vigorously. Their laughter charmed her, and she echoed their sound.

However, the enchanting spell quickly ended and her regard for the human world was forever lost, as always happened with merfolk on this occasion. Her further observations showed her humans left cold and hungry by other humans with shelter and food to spare. She saw humans viciously fight each other until one or both of them dropped dead, and still others throwing foul refuse into the sea, defiling her home with thoughtless abandon. The more she looked at the mortal world, the less good in it she saw. Out of the sea, there was only violence, and hatred, and corruption. It was with great relief and pleasure that she turned back beneath the waves, back to her beloved family and their beautiful palace in the tranquil, peaceful underwater world. Somehow, even home was not quite far enough away from that distasteful land above.

Her next four sisters each rose to the surface on their birthdays and returned just as disillusioned. They held each other more tightly after their journeys, and with more appreciation for the love-filled life they shared. Together they commiserated the unfortunate beings fated to live in such a world. When they saw the wreckage of ships lost at sea fall down to them, they no longer felt sorrow for the sailors escaping their world of pain and suffering. They began journeying to the surface when a storm rolled in to sing comfort to the panicking sailors of the loveliness that awaited them below. ‘How lucky you are,’ they would sing, ‘to leave all horror behind you and gain beauty beyond your imagining!’ They could not understand why the mortals did not seem soothed by their promises of watery splendour.

Their youngest sister, however, did not share their disappointment in the world above. When her sisters discovered she had gone to the sea witch to trade her beautiful tail for human legs, they were astonished, and none more than her eldest sister. How could their sister have seen the same disgusting, repulsive world they had seen and fallen in love with it? The thought of her forever amongst the hateful, thoughtless humans filled the eldest princess’s heart with grief that seemed to pull her down through the seafloor.

She followed her heart down to the bottom of the sea, further down from her father’s sun-touched kingdom to the depths where no light penetrated. As she swam through dark, silent waters, she thought of her sister having so recently made this journey through the cold, dead forest of seaweed and bones toward the sea witch’s lair. She knew enough about the sea witch to know there was no bargain she could make to retrieve her sister without her consent, but she knew there was something she could do for the littlest mermaid.

The sea witch smiled as the princess swam through her door. “I know what you want,” she said.

The mermaid lifted her chin and looked down at the witch. “And you’ll help me?”

“It’s what I do.” She pursed her lips and leaned her head in, lowering her voice to speak in confidence. “I must warn you, however, that you cannot save her.”

“I know. But I can make it easier for her.”

The eldest mermaid princess was a quick learner. Though it would take a lifetime to become as well-studied a witch as the one to whom she apprenticed herself, her own magic was powered by passion, by love and by rage, by desperation and anger, which made it formidable from the start. Soon she established her own lair in the dark depths the sea witches called home. It was a modest abode at first, but it grew every day with the addition of bones and wreckage from the world above.

She felt the force of the water resist her hand as she raised it upwards, fingers clawed into grasping talons, and she whispered the storm to her. The tiny eddy swirled in her palm and grew as it rose, becoming a roaring whirlpool as it approached the surface. Splinters of breaking ships struck her outstretched arms and her black blood spilled in invisible rivulets, diffusing into the dark water around her. She pulled down tangled fishermen’s nets and mashed newspaper pulp, thick sludge and grease and candle wax, swaths of sail fabric and sharp, metallic-tasting blood, and laughed bubbles into their place at the surface. She devoured all the bad from the world above, so that her sister might be left with the good.

“Come down, come down, it is loveliest down here,” she crooned, her voice no longer the trilling of sweet bells, but hoarse and scratchy as the bleached coral of her walls. “How lucky you are,” she sang as she crunched their bones and cracked the wooden planks, “to leave all horror behind you.”

It is part of the deal all sea witches make to never again rise from the sea. It was, to her, no great loss, but she could not see the little mermaid to learn how she found the world her witch sister created for her. From her pitch-dark abode she hoped the sun shone bright on her sister. She hoped every good thing her sister saw in the world above was made more brilliant by the absence of the evil she took out of it. In the blackest depths of the bottom of the sea, the witch dreamed of her sister high above in a kingdom bathed in golden light.