Song of the Sea

A/N This is the story of Jullanar the mermaid, who found herself in the world above the sea. The story was originally a part of the ArabianNights, which were the stories that Queen Shaharazad told her husband to extend her life and save the lives of the women inher husband's kingdom. I will try as hard as I can to keep the story as accurate as possible to the original story. And just to let you known, I do not own Jullanar or Salih or the King.I hope you will enjoy this fairy tale.

Chapter One: Jullanar

I will always remember those days spent in the open sea, gliding from place to place, swimming with a pod of dolphins, without a care in the world. My world was that of the sea and the things that lived in it. I was a part of the sea, and it was a part of me.

I was a mermaid.

My father was one of the seven kings of the seven seas, ruling over the Arabian Sea and the ocean a joining it. He himself was a merman, and as known for his swiftness and strength. He was a wise and fair man, and ruled his realm justly. At the tender age of 37 (37 might not seem young to you, but you age twice as fast as we do), he had taken the throne due to the untimely death of his older brother. 25 years later, he met my mother.

My mother was Diya, a woman of the sea. Some would call her a nymph, but she was a mermaid with indescribable beauty. The daughter of a noble, she was sought after by all the mermen in the kingdom, as well as by many others from surrounding kingdoms. My father first set eyes upon her when she had been caught in a fishing net. She tried to free herself, but kept getting caught, so that she was finally surrounded by the thick net. It was then that my father came to her rescue. It was love at first sight for them, and my mother was quickly married to my father, for in the sea, no one comes between true loves. My mother bore my father two children, Salih, my older brother, and I, whom they called Jullanar, the Princess of the sea.

None could compare to my beauty. I was by far the fairest maiden of the sea. All other mermaids looked like plain seaweed whenever I would enter a room. I had eyes the color of the azure sea and hair as black as the night sky. My skin was fair, so fair that I was almost the color of the white coral, bleached ivory by the sun. My brother was beautiful too, for we shared the same parents.

The day my father died will forever be etched into my mind. Though we were a people of myth, we were not immortal. We did live longer than a mortal though, but we could never escape death. Like the world above us, we suffered pain and grief.

I was 45 at the time, though in mortal years, it would me more like eighteen. We do age slower than you mortals. My father had lived to the age of 150, which would be about sixty in your years. For us, that was like dying in the height of your youth. Our people usually live to be at least 300 before we return to the sea foam that we are formed from.

Anyway, one day he was well, and the next, he was lying on his bed, struggling to stay alive. I remember sitting at his bedside, trying with all my might not to cry. I loved my father with all my heart, and seeing him like this tore my heart out. But I stayed, even though I felt the urge to run.

Then, he was gone.

I can still hear the mournful songs our people sang at the death of my father. But I could no hear them, for I was too lost in my sorrow. I could not possibly understand why my father was gone.

The oddity of his death assailed me, and I began to search for answers. I searched everywhere, considering the possibilities. I checked every book on poisons, for I knew that there was no sickness that could attack us people of the sea, for we were a strong people. Finally I reached the answer.

I discovered that my father had somehow ingested almonds. Unlike humans, we cannot eat almonds nor have the oil put on our skin, otherwise, we die. It contains a deadly poison for us merpeople. The symptoms are the loss of color to the skin and a raging fever that all but kills the mind.

Then, the king of a part of the sea to the south of us came, and usurped the throne from my brother, and married my mother. Suddenly, the pieces that I had uncovered over long hours of thinking and gathering as much information as I could, fell in to place. This foreign king wanted our kingdom and my mother as his wife, and me as the wife to his son, as I soon found out.

My brother, who would still remain heir to our own kingdom, supported the marriage fully, because he knew that that was the only way he was going to be able to keep his throne. It was then that I became angry at him.

You see, it wasn't that this merman was ill favored, but it was that he had a tendency to lust after many other mermaids. I didn't want to be the wife of a merman who would never be faithful to me. What I really wanted was the love my parents had, a love that was strong and would endure all time. Even though my mother was married to another man, her eyes no longer shone with the happiness that had flooded from them when my father had been alive. She still loved my father, though the sea had taken him back to her self.

My anger led to my downfall, and my story above the water.

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