There were six of them, the Sea King's daughters, but only five of them left. First came the eldest, who loved the moon, music, and the sound of human's daily life. Then came the second sister, who loved nothing more than the sky and sea's colours. The third sister loved the forest's coolness and children's laughter. The fourth sister loved desert places and all sea animals. The fifth sister had fallen in love with winter and storms.
And the sixth sister? She was no longer among them. She had fallen in love, not for a something of nature but for someone. Such a strange thing. Mermaids are daughters of the waves. Or maybe it wasn't. They have the same fickleness the sea possesses and maybe not that surprising that the little mermaid abandoned what little wisdom her kind possessed to fall madly in love with a human. Others had made a deal with the Witch for much less important reasons.
They all missed their sister terribly. Grief was no longer a foreign feeling to them. Sometimes, they still saw her walking on the beach with her prince. When they did, their hearts bled like their sister's feet. The little mermaid was so in love that she did not see the truth they saw clearly. The prince didn't love her the way she wanted him to, and that would never change.
"He does not know what she is, but he still feels something's not right," the eldest sighed. "A Human can never love a fish woman."
"Men are as fickle as the waves," the third one said, she who dared to venture closer than the coast than the other did. "Even if he loved her tomorrow, what of next year? Unlasting love won't be enough to save her."
The three others nodded in sorrow. Unaware of their torment, the little mermaid smiled at them from the beach and raised her hand in their direction. The prince narrowed his eyes but only saw capricious waves hitting a rock lost on the sea.
They made their father and grandmother come to help convince her to join them in the depths, to no avail. The fourth sister cried, asking what they could d, hoping they could do something, anything really. The third one, the boldest, ventured as close to the coast as she dared and lured children to her with her songs. She sang to them about this child so in love with the world that she risked her life for a prince's smile. She sang of urgency and danger, hoping her song would reach the prince's ears and change his heart. Alas, these were fishermen's children and their stories would never reach the court. It would be a long time before the story of the Little Mermaid would be told through human mouths, long after they were all foam.
A few days later, the second sister noticed movement in the port. There were pennants of all colours hanging from the ships, and people dancing and singing on the bridges. Everyone was talking about the prince's upcoming wedding. The heart of the second sister rejoiced until she heard the prince would go look for her in a foreign country.
The little mermaid was not who he desired.
Wailing in pain, she dived to warn her sisters, who were watching their youngest from afar. The news triggered another chorus of wails.
"We cannot let him do that to her! Our sister will die if he marries another!"
"Should we sink his ship?" asked the fourth sister.
They all turned toward her. She had never been belligerent, but fear for her sister had turned to anger.
"If he dies, she will too," the third sister answered. "I heard he plans to take her with him to witness his wedding."
"Can we stand him on an island or a glacier and talk to him until he agrees to love her?" the fifth sister asked.
"Or maybe our father could?" the second sister asked. "He is a king. A prince should listen to him. Let him order the prince to love our sister or return her to us or our waves will drag all his ships to the bottom of the ocean!"
"False love wouldn't save her," the eldest sighed. "He must love her deeply for the enchantment to be satisfied, enough to take her before a priest, and none of these would bless a daughter of the sea. Also, we cannot draw human attention to our presence in these waters. They would fear us more and use nets to capture us. No. Our father may be king, but he cannot act."
The others nodded. The eldest knew better, for their father trained her to take over from him one day. Alas, that left them out of options.
The third sister frowned.
"How do we know how the enchantment works?"
"The Witch told our grandmother who said it to our father, the king."
"What the Witch has done, she cannot undo," the second sister sighed. "Everyone knows that."
"But she can guide us to another solution," the third one insisted. "I'm ready to give anything I have so that our sisters live. Are you?"
A movement on the shore caught their attention. Their sister walked with the prince, who was speaking to her in an exalted voice. Their sister was keeping her head down in defeat. The sun illuminated a tear on her cheek, invisible to the prince, but not to her grieving sisters.
"So be it," the eldest decreed. "But only those who agree to pay the price may come. May our poor sister be an example to us of what can happen if we're not careful in our words! Those who wish to, follow me, but none of us will be angry if one stays behind. I do not want to make a deal. I wouldn't blame anyone for refusing to come and you will not either."
She dived with a powerful swipe of her tail and didn't turn around to see who followed, other than her third sister. She let the currents carry her to the Witch's home. Twenty times on the way, she almost gave up. The memory of her sister's tear, that human tear she couldn't understand, gave her the courage her kind usually missed.
All her sisters had followed. The Witch's door opened by itself.
"Come in!" shouted the Witch inside. "Come in! My humble hut is quite small for five princesses and their servants, but we'll make do!"
Trembling with fear, the five sisters entered. They tried to ignore the vials and ingredients nailed to the wall.
"What do you want, noble princesses?," the Witch asked. "Of course, I already know. What kind of Witch would I be if I didn't? Unfortunately, I'll have to disappoint you, poor things, for I cannot undo what has been done. Besides, why would I want to?"
"You helped our sister."
"That's a weakness of mine. I take some pleasure in the misfortune of others."
"But you'd hate to fall in misfortune yourself," the eldest supposed. "You have no interest in our father, the Sea King chasing you from here or arresting you."
The Witch smiled coldly.
"For that, he would need to have the power to stop me, sweeting."
The eldest leaned back, and her throat suddenly dried. The third one rushed to her head.
"Still, helping our sister would help you get back in his good graces. Isn't that enough to find a way?"
The Witch's laugh made them all step back.
"Maybe. Maybe. You're brave, even if you lack judgment. Would you like some, my dear?"
"I want my sister back."
"And what would you give for her? Your voice, like she did? Your courage?"
The second sister stepped forward. She loved colours and all nuances so much she had learned to see the nuance in people's speech. It was a useful talent for a princess, but never more so than now.
"We want our sister, alive, able to swim with a tail like us and to breathe water like we do. We want her to live the life she would have led if she had never come to the surface, devoid of sorrow. We want her to find her voice again."
"No. It's too late for her voice. But I can give you what you need to make her become a mermaid again. She would live her long life as a mermaid, without that humanity mess she picked up on the land. All she'll have to do in return is to kill her prince."
The five sisters nodded. They had no souls and regarded the murder of a man with the same indifference as the death of plankton. For them, it was a cheap price to pay. They would have given many more lives to get their youngest back.
"We accept," the eldest said after consulting the others in silence.
The Witch smiled and raised a finger. The second sister had been smarter than she expected, but she could still weave some nastiness into her spells and the little mermaid would return to them devoid of sorrow, fear, sadness, and indifferent to everything. But it was more than likely she probably wouldn't return at all. Humanity was a trap, for it came with compassion and remorse. The mermaid wouldn't kill her prince.
"You know the price she must pay. But you need to pay too. Let's see, let's see..."
"We'll only pay once our sister returns to us!"
"My dears, it doesn't work that way, and you've already accepted the deal. First, I'm going to need your hair."
"Our hair?"
"Yes, this beautiful hair of which you are all so proud, this beautiful hair which will never grow back and which will tell everyone about the deal you made with me."
Despite themselves, the princesses' hands reached out to their hair. They were indeed very proud of it, but they already knew that there would be a price to pay.
"If we must," the fourth sister said, closing her eyes.
The Witch flicked a finger and their hair fell around them, twisting and weaving together until they formed a thick, multi-coloured rope with blond, brown, red and dark sparkles, echoes of their beautiful hairs. Behind the Witch, a cauldron was already boiling. The Witch threw the rope in and added a little of this and a little of that while chanting. What came out was no longer a rope, but a sharp knife whose metal reflected the thousand shades of the five sisters' hair.
"Give this knife to your dear little mermaid and tell her to kill her prince before the sunrise after his wedding. When his blood falls on her feet, she will become a mermaid again for three hundred years before becoming foam."
The eldest took the knife in her trembling hands.
"And what price will we pay?"
"There are five of you, so the cost will be shared, but one of you will pay a greater price. For the first four, the price is guilt. For the last one, death will come by this knife, tonight, tomorrow, or in two hundred years, wherever she goes."
"Who will it be? Who among us will die?"
"Why would I know? Now go, before I change my mind. The price could be much more expensive!"
The five princesses didn't have to be told twice. They ran as fast as the wave and rose to the surface. The eldest held the knife carefully, keeping the tip as far away as possible.
"Our sister will never know the price we paid except for our hairs," she said when they stopped. "Do we all agree? When the prince is dead, we'll hide this knife in the deepest pit or inferno we can find, never to be seen again."
They all agreed before continuing their journey toward the neighbouring human kingdom. When they lifted their heads above the water, they knew they had arrived just in time. People were dancing, singing, and laughing on the decks of the ships. Worse, daylight was peeking over the horizon. Soon it would be too late.
Their sister appeared and leaned against the railing, paler and sadder than the last time they saw her. The sisters rushed to give her the knife and the Witch's instructions. Immediately, they rushed to give him the knife and the witch's instructions. The little mermaid received everything with a painful smile and disappeared inside the ship. Her sisters, too, disappeared beneath the waves, out of human sight. They held hands and waited for their little sister to jump off the ship, a mermaid once again. It was time. The sun was going to appear any minute now. But she wasn't there. It was a long time for killing a man. Was it too late?
At last, something pierced the waves just above them. They looked up, confident it was her, but instead of a little mermaid, a knife pierced the waves to plant itself into the eldest's heart. The others only had time to see the surprise on her face before she dissolved in foam. Droplets of blood in the water were the only sign left of the tragedy. The dagger was no more, replaced by hairs coming loose, which the currents soon separated forever. The next moment, the little mermaid threw herself into the sea. Her feet, her legs, and her torso, and then her head disappeared too, leaving only foam behind.
From six, the Sea King's daughter had become five, and now they were four. The eldest and the youngest were gone forever. The second sister watched in disbelief these few blood droplets mixing with the water while the sun bathed them in their terrible glory. It was the most beautiful and terrible thing she would ever see. The third sister shouted her rage and anger into the water. The fourth dived in, never to surface again or look toward that bay. The fifth alone didn't look away. She though she saw the foam rising to the sky and becoming air, but perhaps it was only the pain that made her imagine that. If she could have cried, her tears would have made the ocean rise, but she was just a mermaid without tears.
She alone, when the breeze touched the glaciers where she loved to take refuge, believed sometimes she felt a light wing caressing her face tenderly. She sang then, her eyes closed, and could almost hear the echo of a voice more beautiful and loving than even a mermaid's voice. But she could never see the little mermaid who had become a daughter of the air, for foam and breeze live closely, but can only ever brush against each other.