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And then the little mermaid went out from her garden, and took the
road to the foaming whirlpools, behind which the sorceress lived. She
had never been that way before: neither flowers nor grass grew there;
nothing but bare, gray, sandy ground stretched out to the whirlpool,
where the water, like foaming mill-wheels, whirled round everything
that it seized, and cast it into the fathomless deep. Through the midst of
these crushing whirlpools the little mermaid was obliged to pass, to
reach the dominions of the sea witch; and also for a long distance the
only road lay right across a quantity of warm, bubbling mire, called by
the witch her turfmoor. Beyond this stood her house, in the centre of a
strange forest, in which all the trees and flowers were polypi, half
animals and half plants; they looked like serpents with a hundred heads
growing out of the ground. The branches were long slimy arms, with
fingers like flexible worms, moving limb after limb from the root to the
top. All that could be reached in the sea they seized upon, and held
fast, so that it never escaped from their clutches. The little mermaid was
so alarmed at what she saw, that she stood still, and her heart beat
with fear, and she was very nearly turning back; but she thought of the
prince, and of the human soul for which she longed, and her courage
returned. She fastened her long flowing hair round her head, so that
the polypi might not seize hold of it. She laid her hands together across
her bosom, and then she darted forward as a fish shoots through the
water, between the supple arms and fingers of the ugly polypi, which
were stretched out on each side of her. She saw that each held in its
grasp something it had seized with its numerous little arms, as if they
were iron bands. The white skeletons of human beings who had
perished at sea, and had sunk down into the deep waters, skeletons of
land animals, oars, rudders, and chests of ships were lying tightly
grasped by their clinging arms; even a little mermaid, whom they had
caught and strangled; and this seemed the most shocking of all to the
little princess.
She now came to a space of marshy ground in the wood, where
large, fat water-snakes were rolling in the mire, and showing their ugly,
drab-colored bodies. In the midst of this spot stood a house, built with
the bones of shipwrecked human beings. There sat the sea witch,
allowing a toad to eat from her mouth, just as people sometimes feed a
canary with a piece of sugar. She called the ugly water-snakes her little
chickens, and allowed them to crawl all over her bosom.
“I know what you want,” said the sea witch; “it is very stupid of you,
but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty
princess. You want to get rid of your fish's tail, and to have two
supports instead of it, like human beings on earth, so that the young
prince may fall in love with you, and that you may have an immortal
soul.” And then the witch laughed so loud and disgustingly, that the
toad and the snakes fell to the ground, and lay there wriggling
about. “You are but just in time,” said the witch; “for after sunrise to-
morrow I should not be able to help you till the end of another year. I
will prepare a draught for you, with which you must swim to land
tomorrow before sunrise, and sit down on the shore and drink it. Your
tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what mankind calls legs, and
you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all
who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they
ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of
movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly; but at every step
you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that
the blood must flow. If you will bear all this, I will help you.”
“Yes, I will,” said the little princess in a trembling voice, as she
thought of the prince and the immortal soul.
“But think again,” said the witch; “for when once your shape has
become like a human being, you can no more be a mermaid. You will
never return through the water to your sisters, or to your father's
palace again; and if you do not win the love of the prince, so that he is
willing to forget his father and mother for your sake, and to love you
with his whole soul, and allow the priest to join your hands that you
may be man and wife, then you will never have an immortal soul. The
first morning after he marries another your heart will break, and you will
become foam on the crest of the waves.”
“I will do it,” said the little mermaid, and she became pale as death.
“But I must be paid also,” said the witch, “and it is not a trifle that I
ask. You have the sweetest voice of any who dwell here in the depths
of the sea, and you believe that you will be able to charm the prince
with it also, but this voice you must give to me; the best thing you
possess will I have for the price of my draught. My own blood must be
mixed with it, that it may be as sharp as a two-edged sword.”
“But if you take away my voice,” said the little mermaid, “what is left
for me?”
“Your beautiful form, your graceful walk, and your expressive eyes;
surely with these you can enchain a man's heart. Well, have you lost
your courage? Put out your little tongue that I may cut it off as my
payment; then you shall have the powerful draught.”
“It shall be,” said the little mermaid.
Then the witch placed her cauldron on the fire, to prepare the magic
draught.
“Cleanliness is a good thing,” said she, scouring the vessel with
snakes, which she had tied together in a large knot; then she pricked
herself in the breast, and let the black blood drop into it. The steam that
rose formed itself into such horrible shapes that no one could look at
them without fear. Every moment the witch threw something else into
the vessel, and when it began to boil, the sound was like the weeping
of a crocodile. When at last the magic draught was ready, it looked like
the clearest water. “There it is for you,” said the witch. Then she cut off
the mermaid's tongue, so that she became dumb, and would never
again speak or sing. “If the polypi should seize hold of you as you
return through the wood,” said the witch, “throw over them a few drops
of the potion, and their fingers will be torn into a thousand pieces.” But
the little mermaid had no occasion to do this, for the polypi sprang back
in terror when they caught sight of the glittering draught, which shone
in her hand like a twinkling star.
So she passed quickly through the wood and the marsh, and
between the rushing whirlpools. She saw that in her father's palace the
torches in the ballroom were extinguished, and all within asleep; but
she did not venture to go in to them, for now she was dumb and going
to leave them forever, she felt as if her heart would break. She stole
into the garden, took a flower from the flower-beds of each of her
sisters, kissed her hand a thousand times towards the palace, and then
rose up through the dark blue waters. The sun had not risen when she
came in sight of the prince's palace, and approached the beautiful
marble steps, but the moon shone clear and bright. Then the little
mermaid drank the magic draught, and it seemed as if a two-edged
sword went through her delicate body: she fell into a swoon, and lay
like one dead.
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