The Mermaid And The Beast Read online

  The Mermaid And The Beast.

  Fairytales In Collision. Part II.

  By Walleye

  I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Hans Christian Andersen because in his tale The Little Mermaid he gave her sister Maryellen’s history and she turned out to be even more daring and adventuresome than the Little Mermaid herself with her daring explorations of the human lands and the rivers. I felt that this spirit and daring would drive her back to the human lands to continue her adventures and that such spirit should be rewarded. Thus came about the tale you are about to read

  Contents

  Prolog

  Turning Fifteen

  The Journey

  Testing

  First Meeting With The Beast

  Getting To Know You

  The Curser Strikes Back

  Arrivals

  The Games Begin

  The Boar Hunt

  Getting To Know You

  Attack of the Senas

  Aftermath

  The Queen Arrives

  The Toad Prince

  The Meetings

  Ever A Surprise

  Epilog

  All characters here are fictional and are not based on real people. Walleye reserves all rights to this novel.

  Prolog

  We have all have seen, read or heard fairytales such as Beauty And The Beast and The Little Mermaid as portrayed in books or in movies. What no one realized was that all of these fairytales existed as separate story kingdoms in a place called Fairytaleland which is a mystic and magic place created by the power of the human imagination. In its own unique way Fairytaleland is like another more well-known mystic land called Neverland which gathers together tales of pirates, a boy who never grows up, Indians, mermaids, and fairies.

  For several hundred years everything went as expected in these fairytale kingdoms in Fairytaleland. Then one day without warning everything changed. On that day in that far away land time and space suddenly bent under unknown magic forces. As a result barriers fell and abruptly fairytales began merging and creating new fairytales.

  This caused great consternation among the fairies and fairy godmothers overseeing these tales as they struggled to restore order. In the end they found that all they could do was to shepherd the new tales along to their conclusions.

  This is the story of the merger of two of these tales the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast to create a new one called The Mermaid and the Beast. This is also the continuation of the adventures of the daughters Belle, Gwen, and Ella along with their Father Thomas Fontaine appeared in the merged fairytale The Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin when Beauty and The Beast collided with Rumpelstiltskin.

  Turning Fifteen

  In the story of the Little Mermaid she had four older sisters who each on their fifteenth birthday were allowed to go up to the surface of the sea alone and observe the humans. They each brought back tales of the human world and its wonders to tell their sisters as they swam in the beautiful gardens surrounding their Father the Sea King’s magnificent coral palace.

  “The most wonderful thing I got to experience.” The eldest born told them after she had returned from her journey. “Was to lie on a sandbank in the quiet waters near the entrance to the harbor at night and to gaze on the town where lights gleamed and twinkled and voices were raised in song.”

  “And in the morning as I slipped back into the sea I could hear the ringing of the beautiful church bells as the town awoke to a new day.” She finished with a flourish and her younger sisters marveled at what she had done.

  However, the second sister was not as adventuresome as the first had been when her turn came. She just went to the surface of the sea and while the waves had gently rocked her she had watched the sunset in all its violet and rose-colored glory and observed a V-pattern of wild swans flying towards it. She then described how the full moon came up and turned the waves from grey to silver with its gentle touch.

  This made the three remaining sisters even more anxious to experience this beauty for themselves, especially the third one whose turn it would be to go next. In her heart she wanted to do more than her older sisters had done

  Maryellen, the third sister, was even bolder than the Little Mermaid would be later. Encouraged by what her sisters had told her, she actually swam up the large river that emptied into the sea through the harbor of the city, a place which her eldest sister had observed only from afar.

  She entered the river in the morning at first light by swimming up the middle of the harbor where the great sailing ships were moored while loading and unloading people and cargo. She stayed close to the bottom so that she wouldn’t be seen and finally she left the harbor behind her as she entered the river channel. After swimming for a while and seeing the river was free of boats for the moment she cautiously poked her head out of the water and looked around.

  She was awe struck by what she saw: green hills with their vineyards, fields filled with waving stalks of grain, houses with their straw-thatched roofs, roaming flocks of chickens, and busy people all of which were overlooked by castles with their white parapets and towers flying their colorful flags. However, these scenes changed as she progressed up the river.

  The next time she stopped the fields, houses, and castles were now almost gone. In their places she saw green-leaved trees whose branches arched over the banks of the river and in these trees were birds which chirped or sang as they flitted from branch to branch. She found them to be wondrous to behold and listen to as they sang their happy little songs. There was nothing like them under the sea.

  In one place she observed naked children at joyous play, splashing and shouting at each other in a creek that entered the river. Their companion was a black, four-legged creature who ran around and barked at them. She was later told by her dowager grandmother that this strange yapping creature was called a dog. But on that day she got to meet him up close.

  She had gone up to the shore to observe the strange cloth pieces lying on the bank that the children had discarded for their swim. Her grandmother told her later that this was called clothing and all humans wore it. For what reason she wasn’t sure.

  Maryellen was fingering a shirt when the little black dog ran up to her. He growled as she froze there with one hand on the bank of the creek and the other on the piece of clothing, fearful he might hurt her. But his hair settled back down and he trotted forward and sniffed her.

  Then he’d done the strangest thing. He had panted, looking like he was smiling, and then he’d licked her cheek with his soft red tongue and wagged his tail at her. She realized that this had to mean that he liked her.

  But at that moment the children had returned and she had to dive back into the water. Regretfully she watched from the deeper waters in the river as the children put their clothing back on and with the little dog running yapping around them they had gone back up the hill through the trees to the unseen village from which delicious odors were wafting to have what they called dinner.

  When she got home she told her sisters in the under the sea gardens that fish had kissed her on her body before but it had been nothing like the little black dog had done with his wet, red tongue. Her sisters found all of this to be marvelous and her two younger sisters looked forward to their turns and the younger of these two sisters was she who became known later as the Little Mermaid.

  The two oldest sisters quickly forgot about their adventures in the surface world. They loved their lives under the sea too much to ever want to leave. But the third sister, Maryellen, found that she couldn’t forget about the marvelous human lands. She found that she kept dreaming about her marvelous adventure.

  As more time passed she found herself remembering the beauty of the lands up the river
and the boisterous, fun-loving human children and their friendly little black dog who had so happily licked her cheek.

  She recalled the smells of the river which were so different from the salty smell of the sea. She remembered the strange and attractive odors of what the children had said was dinner cooking back at the village. She wanted to try some of that food and see what it actually tasted like. She wanted to feel the wind blowing through her hair again, streaming it over her shoulders. She wanted to experience everything so much that she resolved to go back and see more.

  But she realized that this would also mean she would be more exposed to the warm sun which had made her face and shoulders feel like they had been scraped with a shell that one time she’d gone up the river. It had taken days for the feeling to go away and then strangely the skin on her shoulders had peeled off.

  How could she handle the sun exposure? She realized that some of her father’s guards spent a lot of time on the surface of the sea. They had to know a trick or two.

  She then asked one of them how they protected themselves from the sun. The merman had shown her how his skin had been darkened by the sun through exposure. It was constant exposure that did the trick he told her. He warned her that she should do it gradually if she wanted a tan like he had She was told she should expose herself each day a little longer than the day before

  She remembered her eldest sister telling them about lying on the sand dune outside the harbor when she had gone to the surface and Maryellen decided she would go there during the day and get a tan. She found a corpse of dune grass on the highest part of the island that could hide her during the day while she was tanning.

  As she laid there on the warm sand with a breeze gently stirring the green and brown dune grass concealing her she could hear the sounds of the ships and the people on them as they by passed the sandbar where she laid hidden from view. These sounds just made her want to go exploring up the river even more.

  As a result she got nicely tanned and when she turned seventeen and was of age in the mermaid world to make her own choices she decided to explore the river more and see the wonders she now missed so much.

  She left about a month before the Little Mermaid started her own adventures when she turned fifteen. The tale of The Little Mermaid is well known, but this is not her story. It is the story of her sister Maryellen and what she found up the river and what happened when she encountered the cursed Beast in his lonely exile.

  The Journey

  Maryellen began her new journey of discovery by once more swimming through the harbor in order to reach the mouth of the river. Previously she had swum across the bottom of the harbor to avoid being detected during the day, but this time she went at night as she wanted to spend more time on the surface.

  Even if it was dark she hoped to see and hear more than she had the time before. This had mostly consisted of the view of the bottoms of the ships and the sounds of waves striking the ship hulls as they made their way out to sea.

  At this time of night the boats were docked, awaiting for the light of dawn to put to sea. As she swam she could hear bells softly ringing on some of the ships where the lights from their lamps reflected off the waves that were sloshing against their sides.

  She at first avoided these ships and their lights as she didn’t want to be seen by the sailors but her curiosity urged her to get closer to one of the tied up ships. Finally she approached the mouth of the river but instead of entering she decided to give into her curiosity and get a closer look at one of the ships without any lights.

  She swam over to one of the darkened ships which was anchored near the mouth of the river and put her hand on its side to steady herself. She was glad that it was dark as that made her with her long blond hair difficult for anyone on the ship to see her at night if they happened to look over the side of the ship.

  She’d never been this close to a ship on the surface before but she found the sea life clinging to its wooden sides such as barnacles, mussels, sea worms in their little castles, and algae very familiar. As the waves gently lifted her up and down she could hear human sailors talking above her. Apparently being dark didn’t mean a ship was deserted.

  “Are you planning on sailing up the river to Selton this trip?” One voice asked. This was followed by a small splash as one of them threw something into the water.

  Another voice replied. “I considered it, but I don’t think I will this time, Red. The risks outweigh the rewards for me, especially with all the talk of magic running wild in the spice lands. It’d do me no good to take a cargo up there and have some pixie turn it into sludge because they took offense at me and my ship.”

  “I agree.” The first voice replied. “Even if the prices of goods have climbed in recent days due to shortages, the risk is also too great for me. I wouldn’t go near the mouth of the Shane River which flows charged with magic out of those cursed magic lands.”

  “They say.” He continued. “That so much has changed due to the wild magic that you wouldn’t recognize the place. They say that it’s exotically beautiful now and filled with hidden treasures, but I still wouldn’t go there.”

  Maryellen was intrigued by this as except for the Sea Witch whom she and her sisters had spied on one time she had never seen the results of magic being used and that one time the Sea Witch had used it to cure a baby mermaid of the croup. And when that had happened there had only been a blue flash of light. It seemed to have worked because the baby mermaid completely recovered.

  Maryellen wasn’t afraid of magic itself. In the one case she’d seen magic, it had been used to heal. But some kept saying magic was evil. Puzzled she’d asked her grandmother if magic was evil.

  She remembered what her grandmother had proclaimed. “Magic itself is not evil, child, evil in magic comes from the intent of the ones who uses it and for what they use it for.”

  ‘What a wise woman my grandmother is.’ She thought. ‘Magic is not something to be feared but should be approached with caution.’

  Maryellen figured if she was cautious she could observe the effects of magic from the river without endangering herself as she had been told by her Father that water tended to dampen the effects of magic. In fact on hearing that there was magic up river made her more anxious to see the results for herself.

  She sniffed and wrinkled her nose as a sharp and peculiar odor struck it. It seemed to be coming from the ship above her head. It almost made her cough it was so sharp.

  “What type of tobacco is that you filled your pipe with there?” One of the unseen men asked. “Does it taste as good as it smells?”

  “It’s a new blend from Virginia. Here. Try some.”

  Maryellen slipped silently beneath the waves pumping her gills to expel the taste of tobacco smoke from her nose and mouth. Whatever tobacco was, she was sure she didn’t want anything to do with it.

  She swam quietly along towards the mouth of the river. The tied up ships became fewer here as the river currents were much stronger. The wooden piers gave way to stonewalls as she swam into the mouth of the river. As she swam along she noticed that on either side of her were houses with flickering lights inside them.

  From one or two houses came the sounds of voices raised in song. She paused to listen a minute with her hand on the stone wall and as she took in the words she blushed. These men were certainly not what her grandmother would call gentlemen.

  She shoved away from the stone wall and began swimming again. The push back from the current as she swam was strong but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. She swam for about an hour and the stone walls vanished to be replaced with rushes and other plants growing profusely along the river banks. The few houses there were left had retreated farther up the hillsides and away from the waters of the river.

  A silvery light flickered on these waters ahead of her and she looked up to see a new moon rising over the hills to her left. She had chosen this time of month so the moon would not have risen by the time she had passed through
the harbor town and now the moon was up and lighting her way. Maryellen continued stroking, each stroke eating up more distance.

  Finally as the first light of dawn lit up the clouds to the east in red and purple bursts of color she decided that it was time to rest and she swam into a cluster of rushes and settled to the bottom. She had taken a small pouch with fresh food in it which had enough in it to last her for a couple of days and she got some fish out that she had caught yesterday.

  She ate a quick breakfast while using her hand to bat away the hungry minnows who gathered around her trying to steal her food. She then rewrapped her remaining food and sank to the bottom to sleep.

  Twice she was awakened by bigger fish trying to get her food out of the pouch. The third time she wasn’t sleeping and when the fish darted in quickly she was much faster and the would-be lunch stealer became lunch.

  No longer feeling sleepy she watched with curious eyes the parade of traffic passing by her on the surface of the river. Even if cargo ships weren’t going up river there were still boats going up and down river. Most were fishing boats, some of who were trolling with nets which she would avoid if at all possible.

  She saw a couple of flat-bottom boats and when she poked her head up cautiously amongst the rushes she could see that they were filled with bags of what looked like grain and vegetables. She surmised since the men didn’t look like the sailors she was used to seeing that these were farmers bringing the labors of their fields to sell just like the under the sea farmers did back home whom they dressed like.

  She decided to continue up the river and to go at least as far as she had last time. Thus, she slipped back into the channel to continue her journey under water. After a couple of hours when she poked her head above the surface she finally found herself amongst the same green hills she’d visited in her previous journey. She saw to her delight that she was very close to the entrance to the creek where last time the children had played and she’d met the friendly little black dog.