Far out in the sea, where the water is as blue as the petals of the cornflower and as clear as glass, and very, very deep, there stands the palace of the Sea King. He was a widower, and his old mother kept his house, and he had six daughters, mermaids all, with fishes’ tails and the sweetest voices in the world. The youngest was the loveliest of them, and the quietest, and the one who longed most to know what lay above the water.
Each of the sisters, when she came of age, was allowed to rise to the surface and see the world of men, and each came back with wondrous tales, of ships and towns and forests and the sound of church bells. And the youngest listened, and longed, and counted the years until her turn should come.
At last she was old enough, and she rose up through the water and lifted her head above the waves for the first time. It was evening, and a great ship lay near, hung with lanterns, and on its deck a feast was held, for it was the birthday of a young prince, as beautiful as the day. The little mermaid gazed at him and could not look away. Then a storm rose, and the ship was broken, and the prince was flung into the sea; and the little mermaid, careless of the danger, held his head above the water through the long night, and at dawn bore him to the shore of his own land, and laid him on the sand where he would be found. She hid among the rocks, and saw a young girl come and find him, and saw him open his eyes and smile upon that girl, thinking her his rescuer; and he never knew it was the little mermaid who had saved his life. And she went back down into the sea with the first true grief of her life in her heart.
She could think of nothing but the prince, and of the world above, and of the immortal soul her grandmother had told her of, which men possessed, that lived on after death, while a mermaid, though she lived three hundred years, must in the end dissolve into foam upon the water and be no more. And she longed, more even than for the prince, for such a soul of her own.
At last, in her longing, she went to the Sea Witch, in her dreadful house among the whirlpools, past the grasping polyps that clutched at all who passed. The witch knew her wish before she spoke it. “I will make you a draught,” she said, “and you shall drink it on the shore, and your tail shall become two legs, and you shall walk among men, though every step will be as if you trod upon knives. And you may win an immortal soul, but only if the prince loves you above all others and makes you his wife; for then a part of his soul would flow into you. But if he marries another, then the morning after that wedding your heart will break, and you will become foam upon the sea. And there is a price for the draught: your voice, which is the sweetest in all the sea. That I will have, and you shall be dumb forever.” The little mermaid, thinking of the prince and of the soul, agreed, and gave up her voice, and took the draught.
She swam to the prince’s shore and drank it, and it was as if a sword went through her; and she woke to find herself a girl, with two legs, and no voice, and the prince standing over her. He took her to his palace, and was kind to her, and loved to have her near, for she was graceful and gentle beyond any he had known, and she danced for him though every step was agony. But he loved her as one loves a dear child, not as a wife; and always he spoke of the maiden who, he believed, had saved him from the sea, and whom he could never find, and whom alone he could ever marry.
Then it was arranged that the prince should marry a princess of a neighbouring land; and when he went to meet her, behold, it was the very girl who had found him upon the sand, whom he took for his rescuer. “It is you!” he cried in joy. “You who saved my life!” And he loved her, and the wedding was set, and the little mermaid felt her heart beginning to break.
On the night before the wedding, as the little mermaid stood on the deck of the ship gazing at the sea that would soon be her grave, her sisters rose from the water. They had cut off their long hair and given it to the Sea Witch, and in return the witch had given them a knife. “Strike it into the prince’s heart before the sun rises,” they told her, “and let his warm blood fall upon your feet, and they will grow together into a tail again, and you may come back to us and live your three hundred years.” And they gave her the knife and sank down weeping.
The little mermaid drew back the curtain and looked at the prince, sleeping with the name of his bride upon his lips, and she raised the knife, and her hand trembled. But she could not do it. She loved him too well to buy her own life with his. And she flung the knife far out into the waves, and cast herself into the sea after it, and felt her body dissolving into foam.
But she did not cease to be. She felt herself lifted, light and rising, up into the warm air; and about her floated bright transparent beings, lovely beyond telling. “Who are you?” she asked, and found she had a voice again. “We are the daughters of the air,” they answered. “A mermaid has no immortal soul, and can win one only through the love of a man. But we may win one for ourselves by our own good deeds; and you, who have suffered and been faithful and chosen kindness over your own life, have risen to be one of us. Do good among men for three hundred years, and you too shall gain an immortal soul at the last.” And the little mermaid lifted her freed eyes toward the sun, and for the first time felt them fill with tears of joy.
The greatest love is the kind that will not save itself at another’s cost; and a faithful heart, though it seems to lose everything, is never truly lost.