Part 3

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

The most eager of them all was the youngest, the very one who was so quiet and wistful. Many a night she stood by her open window and looked up through the dark blue water where the fish waved their fins and tails. She could just see the moon and stars. To be sure, their light was quite dim, but looked at through the water they seemed much bigger than they appear to us. Whenever a cloud-like shadow swept across them, she knew that it was either a whale swimming overhead, or a ship with many human beings aboard it. Little did they dream that a pretty young mermaid was down below, stretching her white arms up toward the kneel of their ship.

The eldest princess had her fifteen birthday, so now she received premission to rise up out of the water. When she got back she had a hundred things to tell her sisters about, but the most marvelous thing of all, she said, was to lie on a sand bar in the moonlight, when the sea was calm, and to gaze at the large city on the shore, where the lights twinkled like hundreds of stars; to listen to music; to hear the chatter and calmor of carriages and people; to see so many church towers and spires; and to hear the ringing bells. Because she could not enter the city, that was just what she most dearly longed to do.

Oh, how intently the youngest sister listened. After this, whenever she stood at her open window at night and looked up through the dark blue waters, she thought of the great city with all of its clatter and calmor, and even fancied that in these depths she could hear the church bells ring.

The next year, her second sister had permission to rise up to the surface and swim wherever she pleased. She came up just at sunset, and she that this spectacle was the most marvelous sight she had ever seen. The heavens had a golden glow, and as for the clouds - she could not find words to describe their beauty. Splashed with red and tinted wirh violet, they sailed over her head. But much faster than the sailing clouds were wild swans in flock.
Like a long white veil trailing above the sea, they flew toward the setting sun.
She too swam toward it, but down it went, and all the rose-colored glow faded from the sea and sky.

The following year, her thitd sister ascended, and as she was the boldest of them all she swam up a broad river that flowed into the ocean.
She saw gloriously green,vine-colored hills. Palaces and manor houses could be glimpsed through the splendid woods. She heard all the birds sing,
And the sun shone so brightly that often she had to dive under the water to cool her burning face. In a small cove she found a whole school of mortal children, paddling about in the water quite naked.
She wanted to play with them, but they took fright and ran away. Than along came a little black animal-it was a dog, but she had never seen a dog before.
It barked at her so ferociously that she took fright herself,and fled to the open sea. But never could she forget the splendid woods, the green hills, and the nice children who could swim in the water although they didn't wear fish tails.

The fourth sister was not so venturesome. She stayed far out among the rough waves, which she said was a marvelous place. You could see all around you for miles and miles, and the heavens up above you were like a vast dome of glass. She had seen ships, but they were so far away that they looked like sea gulls. Playful dolphins had turned somersaults, and monstrous whales had spouted water through their nostrils so that it looked as if hundreds of fountains were playing all around them.

Now the fifth had her turn.

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net