“The Little Mermaid” - who is not familiar with this good fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen? More than one generation of children around the world was raised on it. It tells the touching story of the Little Mermaid's love for a handsome prince, whom she once saw and saved from death. To gain a human form and the love of a prince, in exchange for her voice she receives a potion from a witch, which makes her a beautiful girl. The prince becomes interested in her, but the Little Mermaid's happiness does not last long. The prince enters into a dynastic marriage, and the Little Mermaid turns into sea foam, and then into a daughter of the air. The fairy tale tells that love, selflessness and joy for others are what distinguishes people from other creatures.

In the open sea, the water is as blue as cornflowers and as clear as clear glass - but it’s also deep there! So deep that not a single anchor would reach the bottom, and to measure this depth one would have to pile who knows how many bell towers to the bottom of the sea, and that’s where mermaids live.

Don’t think that there, at the bottom, there is only bare white sand; no, unprecedented trees and flowers grow there with such flexible stems and leaves that they move as if alive at the slightest movement of water. Small and large fish dart between the branches, just like the birds we have here. In the deepest place stands the coral palace of the sea king with high pointed windows of the purest amber and a roof of shells that open and close depending on the tide; it comes out very beautifully, since in the middle of each shell lies a pearl of such beauty that each of them would adorn the crown of any queen.

The sea king was widowed a long time ago, and his old mother, an intelligent woman, but very proud of her family, ran the household; she carried a whole dozen oysters on her tail, while nobles had the right to carry only six. In general, she was a worthy person, especially because she loved her little granddaughters very much. All six princesses were very pretty mermaids, but the best of all was the youngest, tender and transparent, like a rose petal, with deep, blue eyes like the sea. But she, like other mermaids, had no legs, but only a fish tail.

Most of all, the little mermaid loved to listen to stories about people living above, on earth. The old grandmother had to tell her everything she knew about ships and cities, about people and animals.

“When you turn fifteen years old,” said the grandmother, “you will also be allowed to float to the surface of the sea, sit, in the light of the moon, on the rocks and look at the huge ships sailing past, at the forests and cities!”

- Oh, when will I be fifteen years old? - she said. “I know that I will really love that world and the people who live there!”

Finally, she turned fifteen!

- Well, they raised you too! said Grandmother, the Queen Dowager. “Come here, we need to dress you up like the other sisters!”

And she put a crown of white pearl lilies on the little mermaid’s head - each petal was half a pearl, then, to indicate the high rank of the princess, she ordered eight oysters to cling to her tail.

- Yes, it hurts! - said the little mermaid.

- For the sake of beauty, you have to endure a little! - said the old woman.

Oh, with what pleasure the little mermaid would throw off all these dresses and heavy crown: the red flowers from her garden suited her much better, but there is nothing to do!

- Goodbye! - she said and easily and smoothly, like a transparent water bubble, rose to the surface.

The sun had just set, but the clouds still shone with purple and gold, while clear evening stars were already shining in the reddish sky; the air was soft and fresh, and the sea was like a mirror. Not far from the place where the little mermaid emerged, there was a three-masted ship, with only one raised sail: there was not the slightest breeze; the sounds of music and songs rushed from the deck; when it became completely dark, the ship was illuminated by hundreds of multi-colored lanterns. The little mermaid swam to the very windows of the cabin and, when the waves lifted her slightly, she could look into the cabin. There were many dressed people there, but the best of all was a young prince with large black eyes. He was probably no more than sixteen years old; His birth was celebrated that day, which is why there was such fun on the ship. Oh, how good the young prince was! He shook hands with people, smiled and laughed, and the music thundered and thundered in the silence of a clear night.

It was getting late, but the little mermaid could not take her eyes off the ship and the handsome prince. The colorful lights went out, the rockets no longer flew into the air, and cannon shots were no longer heard, but the sea itself began to hum and groan. The little mermaid swayed on the waves next to the ship and kept looking into the cabin, and the ship rushed faster and faster, the sails unfurled one after another, the wind grew stronger, the waves set in, the clouds thickened, and lightning flashed. The storm was starting! The sailors began to remove the sails; the huge ship rocked terribly, and the wind kept rushing it along the raging waves; High mountains of water rose around the ship, threatening to close over the masts of the ship, but he dived between the water walls like a swan and again flew up to the crest of the waves. The storm only amused the little mermaid, but the sailors had a bad time: the ship cracked, thick logs flew into splinters, waves rolled across the deck, masts broke like reeds, the ship turned over on its side, and water poured into the hold. Then the little mermaid realized the danger - she herself had to beware of logs and debris rushing along the waves. For a minute it suddenly became so dark, it would be like pricking out your eyes; but then lightning flashed again, and the little mermaid again saw all the people on the ship; everyone saved themselves as best they could. The little mermaid looked for the prince and saw how he plunged into the water when the ship broke into pieces. At first the little mermaid was very happy that he would now fall to their bottom, but then she remembered that people cannot live in water and that he could only sail to her father’s palace dead. No, no, he shouldn't die! And she swam between the logs and boards, completely forgetting that they could crush her at any moment. I had to dive into the very depths and then fly up with the waves; but finally she overtook the prince, who was almost completely exhausted and could no longer swim on the stormy sea; his arms and legs refused to serve him, and his lovely eyes closed; he would have died if the little mermaid had not come to his aid. She lifted his head above the water and let the waves carry them both wherever they wanted.

By morning the bad weather had subsided; not a sliver of the ship remained; the sun shone again over the water, and its bright rays seemed to return their vibrant color to the prince’s cheeks, but his eyes still did not open.

The little mermaid brushed back the prince's hair and kissed his high, beautiful forehead; it seemed to her that he looked like the marble boy who stood in her garden; she kissed him again and wished with all her heart that he would remain alive.

Finally, she saw solid ground and high mountains stretching into the sky, on the tops of which snow was white, like a flock of swans. Near the very shore there was a wonderful green grove, and higher up there was some kind of building, like a church or monastery. There were orange and lemon trees in the grove, and tall palm trees at the gate of the building. The sea cut into the white sandy shore in a small bay, where the water was very calm but deep; It was here that the little mermaid swam and laid the prince on the sand, making sure that his head lay higher and in the very sun.

At this time, bells rang in a tall white building and a whole crowd of young girls poured into the garden. The little mermaid swam away behind the tall stones that stuck out of the water, covered her hair and chest with sea foam - now no one would have seen her little white face in this foam - and began to wait to see if anyone would come to the aid of the poor prince.

They didn’t have to wait long: one of the young girls approached the prince and was very frightened at first, but soon gathered her courage and called people for help. Then the little mermaid saw that the prince came to life and smiled at everyone who was near him. But he didn’t smile at her and didn’t even know that she saved his life! The little mermaid felt sad, and when the prince was taken to a large white building, she sadly dived into the water and swam home.

And before she was quiet and thoughtful, but now she became even quieter, even more thoughtful. The sisters asked her what she saw for the first time on the surface of the sea, but she did not tell them anything.

Often in the evening and in the morning she sailed to the place where she left the prince, saw how the fruits ripened and were picked in the gardens, how the snow melted on the high mountains, but she never saw the prince again and returned home each time sadder and sadder. Her only joy was to sit in her garden, wrapping her arms around a beautiful marble statue that looked like a prince, but she no longer looked after the flowers; They grew as they wanted, along paths and paths, intertwining their stems and leaves with the branches of the tree, and it became completely dark in the garden.

Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore and told one of her sisters about everything; All the other sisters recognized her, but no one else, except maybe two or three more mermaids and their closest friends. One of the mermaids also knew the prince, saw the celebration on the ship and even knew where the prince’s kingdom lay.

- Come with us, sister! - the sisters said to the mermaid, and hand in hand they all rose to the surface of the sea near the place where the prince’s palace lay.

The palace was made of light yellow shiny stone, with large marble staircases; one of them descended directly into the sea. Magnificent gilded domes rose above the roof, and in the niches, between the columns that surrounded the entire building, stood marble statues, just like life. Luxurious chambers could be seen through the high mirrored windows; Expensive silk curtains hung everywhere, carpets were laid out, and the walls were decorated with large paintings. A sight for sore eyes, and that’s all! In the middle of the largest hall a large fountain gurgled; streams of water beat high, high up to the very glass domed ceiling, through which the rays of the sun poured onto the water and onto the wonderful plants growing in the wide pool.

Now the little mermaid knew where the prince lived, and began to swim to the palace almost every evening or every night. None of the sisters dared to swim as close to the ground as she did; she also swam into a narrow channel, which ran just under a magnificent marble balcony that cast a long shadow on the water. Here she stopped and looked for a long time at the young prince, but he thought that he was walking alone in the light of the moon.

Many times she saw him ride with musicians on his beautiful boat, decorated with waving flags: the little mermaid looked out from the green reeds, and if people sometimes noticed her long silver-white veil fluttering in the wind, they thought that it was a swan fluttering its wing .

Many times she also heard fishermen talking about the prince as they fished at night; they told a lot of good things about him, and the little mermaid was glad that she saved his life when he was rushing half-dead through the waves; she remembered those moments when his head rested on her chest and when she so tenderly kissed his white, beautiful forehead. But he knew nothing about her, he never even dreamed of her!

The little mermaid began to love people more and more, she was drawn to them more and more; their earthly world seemed to her much larger than her underwater one: after all, they could sail across the sea on their ships, climb high mountains to the very clouds, and the expanses of land that were in their possession with forests and fields stretched far, far away, and their eyes could not see take a look! She so wanted to know more about people and their lives, but the sisters could not answer all her questions, and she turned to her old grandmother; This one knew well the “high society,” as she rightly called the land that lay above the sea.

“If people don’t drown,” asked the little mermaid, “then they live forever, don’t die, like us?”

- Of course! - answered the old woman. “They also die, and their lives are even shorter than ours.” We live for three hundred years, but when the end comes, all that remains of us is sea foam, we don’t even have graves close to us. We are not given an immortal soul, and we will never be resurrected for a new life; We are like this green reed: once uprooted, it will never turn green again! People, on the contrary, have an immortal soul that lives forever, even after the body turns to dust; She then flies away into the blue sky, there, to the clear stars! Just as we can rise from the bottom of the sea and see the land where people live, so they can rise after death to unknown blissful countries that we will never see!

- Why don’t we have an immortal soul! - the little mermaid said sadly. “I would give all my hundreds of years for one day of human life, in order to later take part in the heavenly bliss of people.”

- There’s no point in thinking about it! - said the old woman. “We live much better here than people on earth!”

“So I too will die, become sea foam, no longer hear the music of the waves, no longer see wonderful flowers and the red sun!” Is it really impossible for me to acquire an immortal soul?

“You can,” said the grandmother, “if only one of the people loves you so much that you become dearer to him than his father and mother, let him devote himself to you with all his heart and all his thoughts and tell the priest to join your hands as a sign of eternal fidelity to each other; then a particle of his soul will be communicated to you, and you will participate in the eternal bliss of man. He will give you his soul and keep his own. But this will never happen! After all, what is considered beautiful here - your fish tail, people find ugly: they understand little about beauty; in their opinion, in order to be beautiful, you must certainly have two clumsy supports - legs, as they call them.

The little mermaid took a deep breath and sadly looked at her fish tail.

- We will live - don’t bother! - said the old woman. “Let’s have fun to our heart’s content for three hundred years—that’s a decent amount of time, the sweeter the rest after death will be!” Tonight we are having a ball at our court!

This was a magnificence that you will not see on earth! The walls and ceiling of the dance hall were made of thick but transparent glass; along the walls lay hundreds of huge purple and grass-green shells in rows with blue lights in the middle: these lights brightly illuminated the entire hall, and through the glass walls - the sea itself; it was visible how schools of large and small fish, sparkling with purple-golden and silver scales, swam up to the walls.

A wide stream ran in the middle of the hall, and mermaids and mermaids danced on it to their wonderful singing. People don't have such wonderful voices. The little mermaid sang best of all, and everyone clapped her hands. For a moment she felt cheerful at the thought that no one and nowhere—neither at sea nor on land—had such a wonderful voice as hers; but then she again began to think about the above-water world, about the handsome prince, and to be sad that she did not have an immortal soul. She slipped out of the palace unnoticed and, while they were singing and having fun, sat sadly in her garden; the sounds of French horns reached her across the water, and she thought: “Here he is riding in a boat again! How I love him! More than father and mother! I belong to him with all my heart, with all my thoughts, I would willingly give him the happiness of my whole life! I would do anything for the sake of him and the immortal soul! While the sisters are dancing in my father's palace, I will sail to the sea witch; I was always afraid of her, but maybe she will advise something or help me in some way!”

And the little mermaid swam from her garden to the stormy whirlpools behind which the witch lived. She had never sailed this way before; There were no flowers growing here, not even grass - just bare gray sand; The water in the whirlpools bubbled and rustled, as if under mill wheels, and carried with it into the depths everything it encountered along the way. The little mermaid had to swim just between such seething whirlpools; then on the way to the witch's dwelling lay a large space covered with hot bubbling silt; The witch called this place her peat bog. Behind him, the witch’s dwelling itself appeared, surrounded by some strange forest: the trees and bushes were polyps, half-animals, half-plants, similar to hundred-headed snakes growing straight out of the sand; their branches were long slimy arms with fingers wriggling like worms; The polyps did not stop moving all their joints for a minute, from the root to the very top, with flexible fingers they grabbed everything they came across and never let go back. The little mermaid paused in fear, her heart beat with fear, she was ready to return, but she remembered the prince, the immortal soul, and gathered her courage: she tightly tied her long hair around her head so that the polyps would not grab it, crossed her arms on her chest, and, as the fish swam between the nasty polyps, stretching out their writhing hands towards it. She saw how tightly, as if with iron pincers, they held with their fingers everything that they managed to grab: the white skeletons of drowned people, ship rudders, boxes, animal skeletons, even one little mermaid. The polyps caught and strangled her. This was the worst thing!

But then she found herself in a slippery forest clearing, where large fat water snakes were tumbling and showing their disgusting light yellow bellies. In the middle of the clearing a house was built from white human bones; The sea witch herself was sitting right there, feeding the toad from her mouth, like people feed sugar to little canaries. She called the ugly fat snakes her chicks and let them roll on her large, spongy chest.

- I know, I know why you came! - the sea witch said to the little mermaid. “You’re up to nonsense, but I’ll still help you, it’s bad luck for you, my beauty!” You want to get two supports instead of your fish tail so that you can walk like people; Do you want the young prince to love you, and you would receive an immortal soul!

And the witch laughed so loudly and disgustingly that both the toad and the snakes fell off her and stretched out on the ground.

- Okay, you came on time! - the witch continued. “If you had come tomorrow morning, it would have been late, and I wouldn’t have been able to help you until next year.” I will make a drink for you, you will take it, swim with it to the shore before sunrise, sit there and drink every drop; then your tail will fork in two and turn into a pair of wonderful, as people will say, legs. But it will hurt you as much as if you were pierced through with a sharp sword. But everyone who sees you will say that they have never seen such a lovely girl! You will retain your airy gliding gait - not a single dancer can compare with you; but remember that you will walk as if on sharp knives, so that your legs will bleed. Do you agree? Do you want my help?

“Remember,” said the witch, “that once you take on a human form, you will never become a mermaid again!” You will no longer see the seabed, your father’s house, or your sisters. And if the prince does not love you so much that he forgets both father and mother for you, does not give himself to you with all his heart and does not order the priest to join your hands so that you become husband and wife, you will not receive an immortal soul. From the very first dawn, after his marriage to another, your heart will break into pieces, and you will become the foam of the sea!

- Let be! - said the little mermaid and turned pale as death.

“You still have to pay me for my help!” - said the witch. - And I won’t take it cheap! You have a wonderful voice, and with it you think to charm the prince, but you must give your voice to me. I will take the best you have for my precious drink: after all, I must mix my own blood into the drink in order for it to become as sharp as a sword blade!

“Your pretty face, your sliding gait and your talking eyes are enough to win the human heart!” Well, that's it, don't be afraid, stick out your tongue and I'll cut it off in payment for the magic drink!

- Fine! - said the little mermaid, and the witch put a cauldron on the fire to brew a drink.

- Cleanliness is the best beauty! - she said, wiped the cauldron with a bunch of live snakes and then scratched her chest; Black blood dripped into the cauldron, from which clouds of steam soon began to rise, taking on such bizarre shapes that it was simply terrifying to look at them. The witch continually added more and more drugs to the cauldron, and when the drink began to boil, the cry of a crocodile was heard. Finally the drink was ready and looked like the clearest spring water!

- It is for you! - said the witch, giving the little mermaid the drink; then she cut off her tongue, and the little mermaid became mute, she could no longer sing or speak!

“If the polyps want to grab you when you swim back,” said the witch, “sprinkle a drop of this drink on them, and their hands and fingers will fly into thousands of pieces!”

But the little mermaid did not have to do this: the polyps turned away in horror at the mere sight of the drink, sparkling in her hands like a bright star. She quickly swam through the forest, passed the swamp and seething whirlpools.

Here is my father's palace; the lights in the dance hall are out, everyone is sleeping; she did not dare to enter there anymore - she was dumb and was about to leave her father's house forever. Her heart was ready to burst from melancholy and sadness. She slipped into the garden, took a flower from each sister's garden, sent thousands of kisses to her family with her hand, and rose to the dark blue surface of the sea.

The sun had not yet risen when she saw the prince's palace in front of her and sat down on the magnificent marble staircase. The moon illuminated her with its wonderful blue radiance. The little mermaid drank the sparkling, spicy drink, and it seemed to her that she had been pierced through with a double-edged sword; she lost consciousness and fell as if dead.

When she woke up, the sun was already shining over the sea; she felt a burning pain throughout her body, but a handsome prince stood in front of her and looked at her with his eyes black as night; she looked down and saw that instead of a fish tail she had two most wonderful little white legs, like a child’s. But she was completely naked and therefore wrapped herself in her long thick hair. The prince asked who she was and how she got here, but she only meekly and sadly looked at him with her dark blue eyes: she could not speak. Then he took her hand and led her to the palace. The witch told the truth: with every step the little mermaid seemed to be stepping on sharp knives and needles, but she patiently endured the pain and walked hand in hand with the prince, light and airy, like a water bubble; the prince and everyone around only marveled at her wonderful sliding gait.

The little mermaid was dressed in silk and muslin, and she became the first beauty at court, but she remained dumb as before - she could neither sing nor speak. Beautiful slave girls, all dressed in silk and gold, appeared before the prince and his royal parents and began to sing. One of them sang especially well, and the prince clapped his hands and smiled at her; The little mermaid felt very sad: once upon a time she could sing, and much better! “Oh, if only he knew that I had given up my voice forever just to be near him!”

Then the slaves began to dance to the sounds of the most wonderful music; here the little mermaid raised her pretty white hands, stood on tiptoes and rushed in a light airy dance - no one had ever danced like that! Every movement only increased her beauty; Her eyes alone spoke more to the heart than the singing of all the slaves.

Everyone was delighted, especially the prince, who called the little mermaid his little foundling, and the little mermaid danced and danced, although every time her feet touched the ground, she felt as much pain as if she were stepping on sharp knives. The prince said that she should always be near him, and she was allowed to sleep on a velvet pillow in front of the door of his room.

He ordered a man's suit to be sewn for her so that she could accompany him on horseback rides. They drove through fragrant forests, where birds sang in the fresh leaves, and green branches hit her shoulders; climbed high mountains, and although blood oozed from her legs so that everyone could see it, she laughed and continued to follow the prince to the very tops; there they admired the clouds floating at their feet, like flocks of birds flying away to foreign lands.

When they stayed at home, the little mermaid went to the seashore at night, went down the marble stairs, put her feet, burning as if on fire, into the cold water and thought about her home and about the bottom of the sea.

One night her sisters emerged from the water hand in hand and sang a sad song; She nodded to them, they recognized her and told her how she had upset them all. Since then, they visited her every night, and once she saw in the distance even her old grandmother, who had not risen from the water for many, many years, and the sea king himself with a crown on his head; they stretched out their hands to her, but did not dare to swim to the ground as close as the sisters.

Day by day, the prince became more and more attached to the little mermaid, but he loved her only as a sweet, kind child, and it never occurred to him to make her his wife and queen, and yet she had to become his wife, otherwise she would not could acquire an immortal soul and was supposed, in the event of his marriage to another, to turn into sea foam.

“Do you love me more than anyone in the world”? - the eyes of the little mermaid seemed to ask while the prince hugged her and kissed her forehead.

- Yes I love you! - said the prince. “You have a kind heart, you are more devoted to me than anyone else, and you look like a young girl whom I saw once and probably will never see again!” I was sailing on a ship, the ship crashed, the waves threw me ashore near a wonderful temple where young girls serve God; the youngest of them found me on the shore and saved my life; I saw her only twice, but I could love her alone in the whole world! But you look like her and have almost driven her image out of my heart. It belongs to the holy temple, and my lucky star sent you to me; I will never part with you!

“Alas, he does not know that it was I who saved his life! - thought the little mermaid. “I carried him out of the sea waves to the shore and laid him in the grove where there was a temple, and I myself hid in the sea foam and watched to see if anyone would come to his aid. I saw this beautiful girl whom he loves more than me! - And the little mermaid sighed deeply, deeply, she could not cry. “But that girl belongs to the temple, she will never appear in the world, and they will never meet!” I’m next to him, I see him every day, I can look after him, love him, give my life for him!”

But then they began to say that the prince was marrying the lovely daughter of a neighboring king and therefore was equipping his magnificent ship for voyage. The prince will go to the neighboring king, as if to get acquainted with his country, but in fact to see the princess; A large retinue also travels with him. The little mermaid just shook her head and laughed at all these speeches: after all, she knew the prince’s thoughts better than anyone.

- I have to go! - he told her. “I need to see the beautiful princess: my parents demand this, but they will not force me to marry her, I will never love her!” She doesn't look like the beauty you look like. If I finally have to choose a bride for myself, I will most likely choose you, my dumb foundling with talking eyes!

And he kissed her pink lips, played with her long hair and laid his head on her chest, where her heart beat, yearning for human bliss and the immortal human soul.

“You’re not afraid of the sea, are you, my dumb baby?” - he said when they were already standing on a magnificent ship, which was supposed to take them to the land of the neighboring king.

And the prince told her about storms and calms, about the different fish that live in the depths of the sea, and about the miracles that divers saw there, and she just smiled, listening to his stories: she knew better than anyone what was at the bottom of the sea .

On a clear moonlit night, when everyone except one helmsman was asleep, she sat down at the very side and began to look into the transparent waves; and then it seemed to her that she saw her father’s palace; The old grandmother stood on the tower and looked through the rippling streams of water at the keel of the ship. Then her sisters floated to the surface of the sea; they sadly looked at her and wrung their white hands, and she nodded her head to them, smiled and wanted to tell them how good she was here, but at that time the ship's cabin boy approached her, and the sisters dived into the water, but the cabin boy thought that it was white sea foam flashing in the waves.

The next morning the ship entered the harbor of the magnificent capital of the neighboring kingdom. And then the bells began to ring in the city, the sounds of horns began to be heard from the high towers, and regiments of soldiers with shining bayonets and waving banners began to gather in the squares. The festivities began, balls followed balls, but the princess was not there yet: she was brought up somewhere far away in a monastery, where she was sent to learn all the royal virtues. Finally she arrived.

The little mermaid looked at her greedily and had to admit that she had never seen a sweeter and more beautiful face. The skin on the princess’s face was so soft and transparent, and from behind long dark eyelashes a pair of dark blue gentle eyes smiled.

- It's you! - said the prince. “You saved my life when I was lying half-dead on the seashore!”

And he pressed his blushing bride tightly to his heart.

- Oh, I'm too happy! - he said to the little mermaid. “What I didn’t even dare to dream about has come true!” You will rejoice at my happiness, you love me so much!

The little mermaid kissed his hand, and it seemed to her that her heart was about to burst with pain: his wedding should kill her, turn her into sea foam!

The bells in the churches rang, heralds rode through the streets, notifying the people of the princess's engagement. Fragrant incense flowed from the priests' censers; the bride and groom shook hands and received the bishop's blessing. The little mermaid, dressed in silk and gold, held the bride's train, but her ears did not hear the festive music, her eyes did not see the brilliant ceremony: she was thinking about her hour of death and what she was losing with her life.

That same evening, the bride and groom were supposed to sail to the prince's homeland; guns were firing, flags were fluttering, and a luxurious tent of gold and purple was spread on the deck of the ship; in the tent there was a wonderful bed for the newlyweds.

The sails inflated from the wind, the ship easily and without the slightest shake glided over the waves and rushed forward.

When it got dark, hundreds of colorful lanterns lit up on the ship, and the sailors began to dance merrily on the deck. The little mermaid remembered the holiday that she saw on the ship on the day when she first floated to the surface of the sea, and so she rushed in a fast aerial dance, like a swallow pursued by a kite. Everyone was delighted: she had never danced so wonderfully! Her tender legs were cut as if by knives, but she did not feel this pain - her heart was even more painful. Only one evening remained for her to spend with the one for whom she left her family and her father's house, gave her wonderful voice and daily endured endless torment, while he did not notice them. She still had only one night left to breathe the same air with him, to see the blue sea and starry sky, and then eternal night would come for her, without thoughts, without dreams. She was not given an immortal soul! Long after midnight, dancing and music continued on the ship, and the little mermaid laughed and danced with mortal torment in her heart; the prince kissed the beautiful bride, and she played with his black hair; Finally, hand in hand, they retired to their magnificent tent.

Everything on the ship became quiet; one navigator remained at the helm. The little mermaid leaned her white hands on the side and, turning to face the east, began to wait for the first ray of the sun, which, as she knew, was supposed to kill her. And suddenly she saw her sisters in the sea; they were pale, like her, but their long luxurious hair no longer fluttered in the wind: it was cut.

“We gave our hair to the witch so that she could help us save you from death!” She gave us this knife; see how sharp it is? Before the sun rises, you must thrust it into the heart of the prince, and when his warm blood splashes on your feet, they will grow together again into a fish tail, you will again become a mermaid, go down to us in the sea and live your three hundred years before you become salty sea foam. But hurry! Either he or you - one of you must die before the sun rises! Our old grandmother is so sad that she lost all her gray hair from grief, and we gave ours to the witch! Kill the prince and return to us! Hurry up - do you see a red stripe appearing in the sky? Soon the sun will rise and you will die! With these words, they took a deep, deep breath and plunged into the sea.

The little mermaid lifted the purple curtain of the tent and saw that the head of the lovely bride was resting on the prince’s chest. The little mermaid bent down and kissed his beautiful forehead, looked at the sky, where the morning dawn was flaring up, then looked at the sharp knife and again fixed her gaze on the prince, who at that time uttered the name of his bride in his sleep - she was the only one in his thoughts! — and the knife trembled in the hands of the little mermaid. But another minute - and she threw him into the waves, which turned red, as if stained with blood, in the place where he fell. Once again she looked at the prince with half-extinguished gaze, rushed from the ship into the sea and felt her body dissolve into foam.

The sun rose over the sea; its rays lovingly warmed the deathly cold sea foam, and the little mermaid did not feel death; she saw the clear sun and some transparent, wonderful creatures hovering above her in hundreds. She could see through them the white sails of the ship and the red clouds in the sky; their voice sounded like music, but so airy that no human ear could hear it, just as no human eye could see them. They did not have wings, and they flew through the air thanks to their own lightness and airiness. The little mermaid saw that she had the same body as theirs, and that she was becoming more and more separated from the sea foam.

- Who am I going to? - she asked, rising into the air, and her voice sounded like the same wondrous airy music that no earthly sounds can convey.

- To the daughters of the air! - the air creatures answered her. “The mermaid does not have an immortal soul, and she cannot acquire it except through the love of a person for her.” Its eternal existence depends on someone else's will. The daughters of the air also do not have an immortal soul, but they themselves can acquire it for themselves through good deeds. We fly to hot countries, where people die from the sultry, plague-ridden air, and bring coolness. We spread the scent of flowers in the air and bring healing and joy to people. After three hundred years, during which we do all the good we can, we receive an immortal soul as a reward and can take part in the eternal bliss of man. You, poor little mermaid, with all your heart strove for the same thing as us, you loved and suffered, rise with us to the transcendental world; Now you yourself can find an immortal soul!

And the little mermaid stretched out her transparent hands to the sun and for the first time felt tears in her eyes. During this time, everything on the ship began to move again, and the little mermaid saw how the prince and the bride were looking for her. They looked sadly at the wavering sea foam, as if they knew that the little mermaid had thrown herself into the waves. Invisible, the little mermaid kissed the beautiful bride on the forehead, smiled at the prince and rose together with other children of the air to the pink clouds...

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Hans Christian Andersen
Mermaid

In the open sea, the water is blue, like the petals of the most beautiful cornflowers, and transparent, like the thinnest glass. But it’s also deep there! So deep that no anchors would reach the bottom, and many bell towers would have to be placed on top of one another so that the top one would stick out of the water. Mermaids live at the bottom of the sea.

Don’t think that there is only bare white sand - no, amazing trees and flowers grow at the bottom, with such flexible stems and leaves that they move as if alive at the slightest movement of water. In this thicket small and large fish dart about, just like our birds in the forest. At the deepest place stands the coral palace of the sea king with tall lancet windows made of the purest amber and a roof made of shells that open and close depending on the tide. It is a wondrous sight, for in each shell lie brilliant pearls of such beauty that any one of them would adorn the crown of any queen.

The sea king had been widowed a long time ago, and the royal household was run by his old mother, an intelligent woman, but very proud of her nobility - a whole dozen oysters sat on her tail, while the nobles were entitled to only six. In general, she was a worthy woman, especially because she really loved the little sea princesses, her granddaughters. There were six of them, and all of them were very pretty, and the youngest was the best: her skin was soft and transparent, like a rose petal, and her eyes were blue, like the deep sea. But she, like other mermaids, did not have legs; they were replaced by a fish tail.

The princesses played all day in the huge palace halls, where fresh flowers grew on the walls. Fish swam into the open amber windows, just as swallows sometimes fly into our windows. The fish swam up to the little princesses, ate from their hands and allowed themselves to be stroked.

In front of the palace there was a large garden in which many fiery red and blue trees grew; their branches and leaves always swayed, their fruits sparkled like gold, and their flowers burned like a fire. The ground itself was strewn with fine sand the color of a sulfur flame, and therefore the seabed shone with some amazing bluish shine - one would think that you were soaring high, high in the air, with the sky not only above your head, but also under your feet. When there was no wind, you could see the sun from the bottom; it seemed like a purple flower, the corolla of which radiated light.

Each princess had her own place in the garden; here they dug the ground and planted the flowers they wanted. One made herself a flower bed in the shape of a whale; another wanted her flowerbed to look like a little mermaid; and the younger sister made a flowerbed as round as the sun, and planted it with bright red flowers. This little mermaid was a strange girl - so quiet, thoughtful... The other sisters decorated their gardens with various varieties obtained from sunken ships, and in her garden there were only scarlet flowers, similar to the distant sun, and a beautiful statue of a boy made of pure white marble, which fell to the bottom sea ​​from some lost ship. The little mermaid planted a pink weeping willow near the statue, and it grew magnificently: its long thin branches, enveloping the statue, almost touched the blue sand, on which their purple shadow swayed. So, the top and roots seemed to be playing, trying to kiss each other.

Most of all, the little mermaid loved to hear about the people who live above, on earth, and her grandmother had to tell her everything she knew about ships and cities, about people and animals. The little mermaid was especially interested and surprised by the fact that flowers smell on earth, not like here in the sea! - that the forests there are green, and the fish that live on the trees of the earth sing very loudly and beautifully. The grandmother called the birds “fish,” otherwise her granddaughters would not have understood her: they had never seen birds in their lives.

“As soon as one of you is fifteen years old,” said the grandmother, “she will be allowed to rise to the surface of the sea, sit on the rocks in the light of the moon and look at the ships sailing past; she will see the earth's forests and cities.

That year, the eldest princess just turned fifteen years old, and the other sisters - they were all the same age - still had to wait for the day when they would be allowed to float up; and the youngest had to wait the longest. But each one promised to tell her sisters what she would like most on the first day - they couldn’t get enough of their grandmother’s stories and wanted to know about everything in the world in as much detail as possible.

No one was more drawn to the surface of the sea than her younger sister, the quiet, thoughtful little mermaid, who had to wait the longest. How many nights did she spend at the open window, looking up through the blue sea water, in which schools of fish moved their fins and tails! She could even see the moon and the stars: they, of course, shone very dimly, but they seemed much larger than they seem to us. It happened that they were overshadowed by something like a large cloud, but the little mermaid knew that it was a whale swimming above her or a ship with crowds of people passing by. These people had no idea that there, in the depths of the sea, a lovely little mermaid was standing and stretching out her white hands to the keel of the ship.

But then the eldest princess turned fifteen years old, and she was allowed to float to the surface of the sea.

There were so many stories when she came back! But most of all she liked to lie on a sandbank in the moonlight and bask, admiring the city spread out on the shore: there, like hundreds of stars, the lights were shining, music was playing, carts were rattling, people were making noise, bell towers rose and bells were ringing. She couldn’t get there, that’s why she was so attracted to this sight.

How eagerly her younger sister listened! Standing at the open window in the evening and looking up through the dark blue water, she could only think about the big noisy city, and she even heard the ringing of bells.

A year passed, and the second sister was also allowed to rise to the surface of the sea and swim anywhere. She emerged from the water just as the sun was setting, and found that nothing could be better than this spectacle. The sky shone like molten gold, she said, and the clouds... she didn’t even have enough words! Purple and violet, they quickly flew across the sky, but a flock of swans, looking like a long white veil, rushed even faster towards the sun. The little mermaid also swam towards the sun, but it sank into the sea, and the pink glow went out on the water and on the clouds.

Another year passed and the third sister surfaced. This one was bolder than everyone else and swam into a wide river that flowed into the sea. Then she saw green hills covered with vineyards, palaces and houses surrounded by beautiful groves in which birds sang. The sun shone brightly and was so hot that she had to dive into the water more than once to cool her burning face. A whole crowd of naked human children splashed in a small bay. The mermaid wanted to play with them, but they got scared and ran away, and instead of them some black animal appeared and began to yelp at her, so threateningly that she swam away in fear. This animal was simply a dog, but the mermaid had never seen a dog yet. Returning home, she never ceased to remember the wonderful forests, green hills and lovely children who knew how to swim, even though they did not have fish tails.

The fourth sister turned out to be not so brave - she stayed more in the open sea and then said that this was the best: wherever you look, for many, many miles around there is only water and the sky, overturned above the water, like a huge glass dome. She saw large ships only from a distance, and to her they seemed like seagulls; Funny dolphins played and tumbled around her, and huge whales blew fountains from their nostrils.

Then it was the turn of the fifth sister; her birthday was in winter, and she saw something that others did not see. The sea was now greenish in color, ice mountains floated everywhere, looking like huge pearls, but they were much higher than the tallest bell towers built by people. Some of them were very strangely shaped and shone like diamonds. She sat down on the largest ice mountain, and the wind blew her long hair, and the sailors fearfully walked around this mountain. By evening, the sky became cloudy, lightning flashed, thunder roared, and the dark sea began to throw ice blocks that sparkled brightly in the red light of lightning. The sails were removed on the ships, people rushed about in fear and trembling, and the mermaid calmly swam into the distance, sitting on an icy mountain and admiring the fiery zigzags of lightning that, cutting through the sky, fell into the shimmering sea.

And all the sisters admired what they saw for the first time - it was all new and therefore they liked it. But when they became adult girls and were allowed to swim everywhere, they soon took a closer look at everything they saw, and after a month they began to say that everywhere was good, but at home it was better.

In the evenings, all five sisters rose hand in hand to the surface of the water. They were gifted with magnificent voices that people do not have - and when a storm began and danger loomed over the ships, the mermaids swam up to them and sang songs about the wonders of the underwater kingdom, persuading the sailors not to be afraid of falling to their bottom. But the sailors could not make out the words - it seemed to them that it was just the noise of a storm. However, even if they had fallen to the bottom of the sea, they still would not have been able to see any miracles there - after all, when the ship sank to the bottom, people drowned and sailed to the palace of the sea king already dead.

While the mermaids floated to the surface of the sea hand in hand, their youngest sister sat alone, looking after them, and she really wanted to cry. But mermaids cannot cry, and this makes it even harder for them to endure suffering.

“Oh, if only I were already fifteen years old!” - she said. – I know that I will really love that upper world and the people who live in it!

Finally, she turned fifteen!

- Well, they raised you too! - Her grandmother, the Queen Dowager, told her. “Come here, we need to dress you up like the other sisters.”

And she put a crown of white pearl lilies on the little mermaid’s head, each petal was made of half a pearl; then she ordered eight oysters to cling to her tail - this was the insignia of her rank.

- It hurts! - said the little mermaid.

– It’s worth being patient for beauty’s sake! - said the old woman.

Oh, with what pleasure the little mermaid would throw off all these decorations and heavy crown - the scarlet flowers from her garden suited her much better. But there is nothing to do!

- Goodbye! - she said and easily and smoothly, like a transparent air bubble, rose to the surface.

The sun had just set, but the clouds were still glowing, purple and gold, and an evening star was shining in the pink sky. The air was soft and fresh, and the sea seemed to be frozen. Not far from the place where the little mermaid emerged, there was a three-masted ship with only one raised sail - there was not the slightest breeze on the sea. Sailors sat on the shrouds and yards, the sounds of music and songs were heard from the deck; when it became completely dark, the ship was illuminated by hundreds of multi-colored lanterns - it seemed as if the flags of all nations were flashing in the air. The little mermaid swam to the mirrored portholes of the wardroom and looked in there every time a wave lifted her. Many smart people gathered in the wardroom, but the most handsome of all was the black-eyed prince, a young man of about sixteen, no more. That day they celebrated his birth, which is why there was such fun on the ship. The sailors were dancing on the deck, and when the young prince came out to them, hundreds of rockets soared up, and it became as bright as day - the little mermaid even got scared and dived into the water, but soon she stuck her head out again, and it seemed to her as if stars had fallen from the sky to her in the sea. She had never seen such a play of lights: large suns were spinning like a wheel, magnificent fiery fish were twisting their tails in the air - and all this was reflected in the motionless light water. It was so light on the ship that one could distinguish the rope in its rigging, and even more so the people. Oh, how handsome the young prince was! He shook hands with people and smiled, and the music thundered and thundered in the silence of a clear night.

The time was already late, but the little mermaid could not take her eyes off the ship and the handsome prince. The colorful lights went out, the rockets no longer flew into the air, and the cannon shots no longer thundered - but the sea itself hummed and groaned. The little mermaid swayed on the waves next to the ship, every now and then looking into the wardroom, and the ship rushed faster and faster, the sails unfurled one after another. But then excitement began, clouds thickened and lightning flashed. A storm broke out, and the sailors rushed to remove the sails. A strong rocking motion shook the huge ship, and the wind rushed it along the raging waves. Tall black water mountains grew around, threatening to close over the masts, but the ship, like a swan, fell into the abyss between the water walls, then again took off onto the ramparts, piled on top of each other. The little mermaid really liked this kind of swimming, but the sailors had a hard time. The ship creaked and crackled, thick planks bent under strong blows, waves rolled over the deck. The mainmast broke like a reed, the ship lay on its side, and water poured into the hold. Then the little mermaid realized the danger facing the ship; she herself had to beware of logs and debris rushing along the waves. How dark it suddenly became, you could put your eyes out! But then lightning flashed again, and the little mermaid again saw all the people on the ship: everyone was saving themselves as best they could. She tried to look for the prince with her eyes and saw, when the ship fell apart, that the young man was drowning. At first, the little mermaid was very happy, realizing that now he would fall to the bottom, but then she remembered that people cannot live in water and if he ends up in her father’s palace, it will only be dead. No, no, he must not die! And she swam between the logs and boards, forgetting that they could crush her at any moment. She had to dive deep and then fly high with the waves, but finally she caught up with the prince, who was almost exhausted and could no longer swim on the stormy sea. His arms and legs refused to serve him, his eyes closed, and he would have died if the little mermaid had not come to his aid. She lifted his head above the water and rushed along with him according to the will of the waves.

By morning the bad weather had subsided. There wasn’t even a sliver left of the ship, and the sun, red and blazing, shone again over the water, and its bright rays seemed to return their vibrant color to the prince’s cheeks, but the young man’s eyes still did not open.

The little mermaid brushed the wet hair from his forehead and kissed that high, beautiful forehead. It seemed to her that the prince looked like a marble boy decorating her garden. She kissed him again and wished with all her heart that he would live.

Finally, the shore appeared and the high, bluish mountains rising on it, stretching into the sky, on the tops of which, like a flock of swans, the snow was white. Below, near the shore, dense forests were green, and some building rose nearby - apparently a church or monastery. Orange and lemon trees grew in the garden surrounding the building, and tall palm trees stood at the gate. The sea jutted out into the white sandy shore as a small deep bay, where the water was completely calm. This is where the little mermaid swam. She laid the prince on the sand and made sure that his head lay higher, illuminated by the warm rays of the sun.

At this time, the bells in the tall white building rang, and a whole crowd of young girls poured into the garden. The little mermaid swam away behind the tall stones sticking out of the water, covered her hair and chest with sea foam - now no one would distinguish her bright face in this foam - and began to wait to see if anyone would come to the aid of the poor prince.

We didn’t have to wait long: a young girl approached the prince and was very scared at first, but quickly calmed down and called people together. Then the little mermaid saw that the prince came to life and smiled at all those who stood around him. But he didn’t smile at her - he didn’t know that it was she who saved his life! The little mermaid felt sad. And when the prince was taken into a large white building, she, sad, dived into the water and swam home.

She had always been quiet and thoughtful, and now she became even more thoughtful. The sisters asked her what she saw at sea, but she was silent.

More than once, both in the evening and in the morning, she swam to the place where she had left the prince; I saw how the fruits in the gardens ripened and were picked, I saw how the snow melted on the high mountains - but the prince did not appear; and each time, more and more sad, she returned home. Her only joy was sitting in her garden, wrapping her arms around a beautiful marble statue that looked like a prince. She no longer looked after the flowers, they grew of their own free will, even on paths, intertwining long stems and leaves with tree branches; and soon the light completely stopped penetrating into the neglected garden.

Finally, the mermaid could not stand it - she told one of the sisters about everything; From her, all the other sisters immediately learned about the prince. But no one else, not counting two or three more mermaids, who did not tell anyone about this except their closest friends. One of the mermaids also saw the celebration on the ship, and the prince himself, and even knew where his possessions were.

- Let's swim together, sister! - the sisters said to the mermaid and hand in hand they rose to the surface of the sea near the place where the prince’s palace was located.

The palace was made of light yellow shiny stone, with large marble staircases; one of them went straight down to the sea. Magnificent gilded domes rose above the roof, and in the niches between the columns that surrounded the entire building stood marble statues, just like life. Through the transparent glass of the high windows, luxurious chambers were visible; Expensive silk curtains hung everywhere, carpets were spread everywhere, and the walls were decorated with large paintings that were so interesting to look at. In the middle of the huge hall, a large fountain gurgled, and its jets hit high, high to the ceiling. The ceiling was in the form of a glass dome, and the rays of the sun penetrated inside, illuminating the water and the wonderful plants that grew in the vast reservoir.

Now the little mermaid knew where the prince lived; and so she began to often sail to the palace in the evenings or at night. None of the sisters dared to swim as close to the ground as the younger one - she even swam into the narrow channel that flowed directly under the magnificent marble balcony, which cast a long shadow on the water. Here she stopped and looked at the young prince for a long time; and he was sure that he was sitting in the light of the moon, completely alone.

Many times the little mermaid saw him ride with musicians on his elegant boat, decorated with flying flags. She looked out from the thickets of green reeds, and if people sometimes noticed her long silver-white veil fluttering in the wind, they mistook her for a swan spreading its wings.

More than once she also heard fishermen talking about the prince as they fished at night; they said a lot of good things about him. And the little mermaid, rejoicing that she saved his life when he, half-dead, was tossed about by the waves, remembered how tightly she then pressed his head to her chest and how tenderly she kissed him. But he knew nothing about it, he couldn’t even dream about it.

The little mermaid began to love people more and more, she was drawn to them more and more. Their world seemed to her much wider than her world: they could sail across the sea on their ships, could climb high mountains to the very clouds, and the lands they owned, their forests and fields stretched so far that she could not embrace them glance. She so wanted to know more about people, but the sisters could not answer all her questions, and she turned to her grandmother. The old woman knew well the “higher world,” as she correctly called the land that lay above the sea.

“And those people who don’t drown,” asked the little mermaid, “do they live forever?” They don't die like we die down here in the sea?

- Not at all! - answered the old woman. - They die too. And their age is even shorter than ours. But even though we live for three hundred years, and when the end comes, all that remains of us is sea foam, and we do not have the graves of our loved ones, we are not gifted with an immortal soul, and our mermaid life ends with the death of the body. We are like this reed: once its stem is cut it will never turn green again! But people have a soul that lives forever, it lives even after the body turns to dust, and then flies into the transparent heights, to the sparkling stars. Just as we float to the surface of the sea and see the land where people live, so they rise to unknown blissful countries that we will never see!

- Oh, why don’t we have an immortal soul! – the little mermaid said sadly. “I would give all my hundreds of years for one day of human life, so that later I could taste heavenly bliss.”

- What nonsense! - said the old woman. – Don’t even think about it. We live much better here than people on earth.

- Will I really turn into sea foam after death and no longer hear the music of the waves, no longer see beautiful flowers and the fiery sun! Is there really no way I can find an eternal soul?

“No,” answered the grandmother. - But if one of the people loves you so much that you become dearer to him than his father and mother, if he surrenders to you with all his heart and all his thoughts and asks the priest to join your hands as a sign of eternal fidelity to each other - then his soul will pass into yours body and you too will experience the heavenly bliss available to people. This person will breathe your soul and keep his. But this will never happen to you: your fish tail, which we consider beautiful, people find ugly. After all, they understand little about beauty; in their opinion, one cannot be beautiful without two clumsy supports - “legs”, as they call them.

The little mermaid took a deep breath and sadly looked at her fish tail.

- Let's live and be happy! - said the old woman. “Let’s have fun to our heart’s content for three hundred years, and that’s a long time!” The sweeter the rest after death will seem to us. Tonight we will have a ball at our court!

This was a magnificence that you will not see on earth! The walls and ceiling of the huge dance hall were made of thick but transparent glass, and along the walls lay hundreds of huge pink and grass-green shells with blue lights inside in rows. These lights brightly illuminated the entire hall and, penetrating through the glass walls, illuminated the sea itself. One could see schools of large and small fish swimming up to the walls, sparkling with purple, golden or silver scales.

In the middle of the hall, water rushed in a wide stream, and mermen and mermaids danced in it to their wonderful singing. People don't have such wonderful voices. The little mermaid sang best of all, and the whole court applauded her. For a minute she felt cheerful when she thought that no one anywhere, neither in the sea nor on land, had such a wonderful voice as hers; but then she again began to remember the above-water world, about the handsome prince and feel sad that she did not have an immortal soul. Soon she quietly slipped out of the palace and, while they sang and had fun, sat sadly in her garden; through the thickness of the water the sounds of music reached her. And she thought: “Here he is again, probably riding in a boat!” How I love him! More than father and mother! Mentally, I am constantly with him, I would willingly entrust my happiness to him, my whole life! For the sake of him and the immortal soul, I would do anything! While the sisters are dancing in their father's palace, I'll swim to the sea witch. I’ve always been afraid of her, but maybe now she’ll advise something and help me somehow.”

And the little mermaid swam from her garden to the stormy whirlpools behind which the witch lived. She had never had to swim this road before. There were no flowers or even algae growing here, there was only bare gray sand everywhere. The water in the whirlpools bubbled and rustled, as if under mill wheels, carrying with it into the depths everything it encountered on the way. The little mermaid had to swim just between these seething whirlpools. Then, on the way to the witch’s lair, she encountered an even larger space covered with hot, bubbling silt; The witch called this place her peat bog. Behind it, the witch’s dwelling appeared, surrounded by some strange forest: instead of trees and bushes, there were polyps in it - half-animals, half-plants, similar to hundred-headed snakes that grew straight out of the sand; their branches were like long slimy arms, and their fingers wriggled like worms. The polyps did not stop moving all their branches from the root to the very top for a minute; with flexible tentacles they dug into everything they came across and did not release their prey. The little mermaid stopped in fear, and her heart began to pound with fear. She was ready to swim back, but she remembered the prince, the immortal soul - and her courage returned to her. Wrapping her long hair tightly around her head so that the polyps would not catch them, she crossed her arms over her chest and, like a fish, swam between the monsters, which stretched out their writhing tentacles towards her. She saw how tightly, as if with iron pincers, they held everything that they managed to grab: the white skeletons of drowned people, ship rudders, boxes, animal carcasses, even one little mermaid: the polyps caught and strangled her. This was perhaps the worst thing!

But then our little mermaid found herself in a swampy forest clearing, where large fat water snakes were tumbling, showing their nasty light yellow belly. In the middle of the clearing stood a house built from white human bones; The sea witch herself was sitting right there, feeding the toad from her mouth, like people feed sugar to little canaries. She called the ugly fat snakes “chickens” and allowed them to crawl across her large, spongy chest.

- I know, I know why you came! – the sea witch said to the little mermaid. - You're up to nonsense! Well, yes, I will fulfill your wish, because it will bring you grief, beauty! Instead of a fish tail, you want to get two supports and walk like people; you want the young prince to love you, and you get both him and the immortal soul!

And the witch laughed so loudly and ugly that both the toad and the snakes fell off her and stretched out on the sand.

- Well, okay, you came on time! – the witch continued. “And if you had come tomorrow morning, it would have been too late, and I couldn’t have helped you earlier than next year.” I will prepare a drink for you, and you take it, swim with it to the shore before sunrise, sit there and drink every drop. Then your tail will fork and turn into two charming legs, as people will say, but you will feel as much pain as if you were pierced through with a sharp sword. But everyone who sees you will say that he has never seen such a lovely girl in his life! You will retain your light, gliding gait - not a single dancer can compare with you; but know that every step you take will cause you such pain, as if you were walking on sharp knives, as if blood was oozing from your legs. If you agree to endure all this, I will help you.

“Know also,” the witch continued, “that if you take on a human form, you will never be a mermaid again.” You will no longer be able to go down to your sisters and your father's palace. And if the prince does not love you so much that for your sake he will forget his father and mother, if he does not cleave to you soul and body and does not ask the priest to join your hands so that you can become husband and wife, you will not find an immortal soul. If he takes another wife, then at the very first dawn after their marriage your heart will break into pieces and you will turn into sea foam.

- Let be! - said the little mermaid and turned pale as death.

“Besides, you have to pay me for my help!” - said the witch. - And I won’t take it cheap. Here, at the bottom of the sea, no one has a more beautiful voice than yours, and with it you hope to charm the prince, but you must give your voice to me. For my precious drink, I will take the best you have: I must season this drink with my own blood so that it becomes sharp, like a sword blade!

“Your charming face, your sliding gait and your talking eyes are quite enough to win the human heart.” Well, don’t be afraid: you stick out your tongue, and I’ll cut it off in payment for the magic drink.

- So be it! - said the little mermaid.

And the witch put a cauldron on the fire to brew a drink.

– Cleanliness is the best beauty! - she said and wiped the cauldron with a bunch of live snakes, then scratched her chest, and black blood dripped into the cauldron, over which steam soon swirled, taking on such bizarre shapes that it was scary to look at it. The witch constantly threw more and more new drugs into the cauldron; and when the drink began to boil, sounds similar to the crying of a crocodile were heard. Finally the potion was brewed; it looked like clear water.

- Here, take it! - the witch muttered, giving it to the little mermaid, who could no longer sing or speak.

“If the polyps want to grab you when you swim back through my forest,” said the witch, “sprinkle just one drop of this drink on them, and their hands and fingers will fly into a thousand pieces.”

But the little mermaid didn’t need this: the polyps turned away in horror as soon as they saw the drink sparkling in her hands like a bright star. She quickly swam through the forest, passing a swampy lowland and seething whirlpools.

But here is my father's palace; the lights in the large hall were extinguished: everyone was probably already asleep. The little mermaid did not dare to enter the palace - after all, she was mute and was about to leave her father’s house forever. Her heart was ready to burst from melancholy and sadness. She slipped into the garden and, having picked a flower from each of her sisters’ flowerbeds, sent her family a thousand air kisses, then began to climb up through the thickness of the dark blue water.

The sun had not yet risen when she saw the prince's palace in front of her and sat down on the bottom step of the magnificent marble staircase, illuminated by the magical blue glow of the moon. The little mermaid drank a fiery, spicy drink, and it seemed to her that her tender body was pierced by a double-edged sword; she lost consciousness and fell dead. She woke up when the sun was already shining over the sea, and immediately felt a burning pain; but a handsome young prince stood in front of her and looked at her with his coal-black eyes. The little mermaid looked down and saw that instead of a fish tail, she now had two delightful white legs, small, like a girl’s. But she was completely naked and quickly wrapped herself in her long thick hair. The prince asked who she was and how she got here, but she only sadly and meekly looked at him with her dark blue eyes - she could not speak. Then he took her hand and led her to the palace. The witch told the truth: with every step the little mermaid felt as if she was stepping on needles or sharp knives; but she patiently endured the pain and walked hand in hand with the prince, light and bright, like a soap bubble; the prince and everyone around could not marvel at her lovely, sliding gait.

Today we will read the fairy tale “The Little Mermaid”. The fairy tale “The Little Mermaid” by H.H. Andersen was written in 1837. And since then it has remained an example of a story about true love. “This is a very sad story, very sad and very beautiful! This is a story about love that knows no barriers, about courage and kindness.” Read the story of the Little Mermaid to your children. With illustrations by B. Diodorov

G.H. Andersen.

Mermaid

Far out in the sea, the water is blue, blue, like the petals of the most beautiful cornflowers, and transparent, transparent, like the purest glass, only it is very deep, so deep that no anchor rope is enough. Many bell towers must be placed one on top of the other, then only the top one will appear on the surface. There are underwater people living at the bottom.

Just don’t think that the bottom is bare, just white sand. No, unprecedented trees and flowers grow there with such flexible stems and leaves that they move, as if alive, at the slightest movement of water. And fish, large and small, scurry between the branches, just like the birds in the air above us. In the deepest place stands the palace of the sea king - its walls are made of coral, tall lancet windows are made of the purest amber, and the roof is entirely shells; they open and close, depending on the ebb or flow of the tide, and it is very beautiful, because each one contains shining pearls - just one would be a great decoration in the crown of any queen.

The king of the sea was widowed a long time ago, and his old mother, an intelligent woman, was in charge of his household, but she was painfully proud of her birth: she carried as many as twelve oysters on her tail, while other nobles were entitled to only six. For the rest, she deserved all praise, especially because she doted on her little granddaughters, the princesses. There were six of them, all very pretty, but the youngest was the cutest of all, with skin as clear and tender as a rose petal, with eyes as blue and deep as the sea. Only she, like the others, did not have legs, but instead had a tail, like a fish.

All day long the princesses played in the palace, in spacious chambers where fresh flowers grew from the walls. Large amber windows opened, and fish swam inside, just like swallows fly into our house when the windows are wide open, only the fish swam right up to the little princesses, took food from their hands and allowed themselves to be stroked.

In front of the palace there was a large garden, in which fiery red and dark blue trees grew, their fruits sparkled with gold, their flowers sparkled with hot fire, and their stems and leaves swayed incessantly. The ground was entirely fine sand, only bluish, like a sulfur flame. Everything down there had a special blue feel to it—you could almost think that you were standing not on the bottom of the sea, but in the heights of the air, and the sky was not only above your head, but also under your feet. In the calm, the sun was visible from the bottom; it seemed like a purple flower, from the bowl of which light was pouring.

Each princess had her own place in the garden, here they could dig and plant anything. One made herself a flower bed in the shape of a whale, another wanted her bed to look like a mermaid, and the youngest made herself a bed as round as the sun, and planted flowers on it as scarlet as the sun itself. This little mermaid was a strange child, quiet and thoughtful. The other sisters decorated themselves with various varieties that were found on sunken ships, but she only loved that the flowers were bright red, like the sun up there, and even a beautiful marble statue. He was a beautiful boy, carved from pure white stone and descended to the bottom of the sea after a shipwreck. Near the statue, the little mermaid planted a pink weeping willow; it grew luxuriantly and hung its branches over the statue to the blue sandy bottom, where a purple shadow was formed, swaying in harmony with the swaying of the branches, and from this it seemed as if the top and roots were caressing each other.

Most of all, the little mermaid loved to listen to stories about the world of people up there. The old grandmother had to tell her everything she knew about ships and cities, about people and animals. It seemed especially wonderful and surprising to the little mermaid that the flowers smelled on earth - not like here, on the seabed - the forests there are green, and the fish among the branches sing so loudly and beautifully that you can simply hear them. Grandmother called birds fish, otherwise her granddaughters would not have understood her: after all, they had never seen birds.

“When you turn fifteen,” said my grandmother, “you will be allowed to float to the surface, sit on the rocks in the moonlight and look at the huge ships sailing past, at the forests and cities!”

That year, the eldest princess just turned fifteen years old, but the sisters were the same age, and it turned out that only after five years the youngest would be able to rise from the bottom of the sea and see how we live here, above. But each promised to tell the others what she saw and what she liked most on the first day - grandmother’s stories were not enough for them, they wanted to know more.

None of the sisters were more drawn to the surface than the youngest, quiet, thoughtful little mermaid, who had to wait the longest. She spent night after night at the open window and kept looking up through the dark blue water in which fish splashed with their tails and fins. She saw the moon and the stars, and although they shone very palely, they seemed much larger through the water than they did to us. And if something like a dark cloud slid beneath them, she knew that it was either a whale swimming by, or a ship, and there were many people on it, and, of course, it never occurred to them that below them a pretty little mermaid was reaching out to the ship with her white hands.

And then the eldest princess turned fifteen years old, and she was allowed to float to the surface.

There were so many stories when she came back! Well, the best thing, she said, was to lie in the moonlight on the shallows, when the sea was calm, and look at the big city on the shore: like hundreds of stars, lights twinkled there, music was heard, the noise and hum of carriages and people, bell towers and spiers were visible , the bells were ringing. And precisely because she wasn’t allowed to go there, that’s where she was drawn most of all.

How eagerly the youngest sister listened to her stories! And then, in the evening, she stood at the open window and looked up through the dark blue water and thought about the big city, noisy and lively, and it even seemed to her that she could hear the ringing of bells.

A year later, the second sister was allowed to rise to the surface and swim anywhere. She emerged from the water just as the sun was setting, and decided that there was no more beautiful sight in the world. The sky was completely golden, she said, and the clouds - oh, she simply has no words to describe how beautiful they are! Red and purple, they floated across the sky, but even faster rushed towards the sun, like a long white veil, a flock of wild swans. She also swam towards the sun, but it sank into the water, and the pink glow on the sea and clouds went out.

A year later, the third sister rose to the surface. This one was bolder than everyone else and swam into a wide river that flowed into the sea. She saw there green hills with vineyards, and palaces and estates peeking out from the thicket of a wonderful forest. She heard the birds singing, and the sun was so hot that she had to dive into the water more than once to cool her burning face. In the bay she came across a whole flock of small human children, they were running naked and splashing in the water. She wanted to play with them, but they were frightened of her and ran away, and instead of them some black animal appeared - it was a dog, only she had never seen a dog before - and barked at her so terribly that she got scared and swam away back to sea. But she will never forget the wonderful forest, green hills and lovely children who can swim, although they do not have a fish tail.

The fourth sister was not so brave, she stayed in the open sea and believed that it was the best there: the sea can be seen around for many, many miles, the sky above is like a huge glass dome. She also saw ships, only from very far away, and they looked just like seagulls, and also playful dolphins were tumbling in the sea and whales were releasing water from their nostrils, so that it seemed as if hundreds of fountains were flowing around.

It was the turn of the fifth sister. Her birthday was in winter, and so she saw something that others could not see. The sea was completely green, she said, huge ice mountains floated everywhere, each like a pearl, only much higher than any bell tower built by people. They were of the most bizarre appearance and sparkled like diamonds. She sat down on the largest of them, the wind blew her long hair, and the sailors fearfully walked away from this place. By evening, the sky became cloudy, lightning flashed, thunder roared, the blackened sea heaved huge blocks of ice, illuminated by flashes of lightning. The sails were being removed on the ships, there was fear and horror all around, and she, as if nothing had happened, sailed on her icy mountain and watched as lightning struck the sea in blue zigzags.

And so it went: one of the sisters will swim to the surface for the first time, admire everything new and beautiful, and then, when an adult girl can go upstairs at any minute, everything becomes uninteresting to her and she strives to go home and a month later she says, that downstairs is the best place, only here you feel at home.

Often in the evenings, the five sisters would float to the surface, hugging each other. They all had wondrous voices, like no other person, and when a storm gathered, threatening the destruction of the ships, they sailed in front of the ships and sang so sweetly about how good it was on the seabed, persuading the sailors to go down without fear. Only the sailors could not make out the words, it seemed to them that it was just the noise of a storm, and they would not have seen any miracles at the bottom - when the ship sank, the people choked and ended up in the palace of the sea king already dead.

The youngest mermaid, when her sisters floated to the surface like that, was left alone and looked after them, and she had the time to cry, but mermaids are not given tears, and this made her even more bitter.

- Oh, when will I be fifteen years old! - she said. “I know that I will really love that world and the people who live there!”

Finally, she turned fifteen years old.

- Well, they raised you too! said Grandmother, the Queen Dowager.

“Come here, I’ll decorate you like the rest of the sisters!”

And she put a wreath of white lilies on the little mermaid’s head, only each petal was half a pearl, and then she put eight oysters on her tail as a sign of her high rank.

- Yes, it hurts! - said the little mermaid.

- To be beautiful, you can be patient! - said the grandmother.

Oh, how willingly the little mermaid would throw off all this splendor and heavy wreath! Red flowers from her garden would suit her much better, but nothing can be done.

- Goodbye! - she said and easily and smoothly, like an air bubble, rose to the surface.

When she raised her head above the water, the sun had just set, but the clouds still glowed pink and gold, and clear evening stars were already shining in the pale red sky; the air was soft and fresh, the sea was calm. Nearby stood a three-masted ship with only one sail raised - there was not the slightest breeze. Everywhere there were sailors sitting on the rigging and yards. Music and singing could be heard from the deck, and when it became completely dark, the ship was illuminated with hundreds of multi-colored lanterns and the flags of all nations seemed to flash in the air. The little mermaid swam straight to the cabin window, and every time she was lifted by a wave, she could look inside through the transparent glass. There were many smartly dressed people there, but the most handsome of all was the young prince with large black eyes. He was probably no more than sixteen years old. It was his birthday, which is why there was so much fun on the ship. The sailors danced on the deck, and when the young prince came out there, hundreds of rockets soared into the sky, and it became as bright as day, so the little mermaid was completely frightened and dived into the water, but then she stuck her head out again, and it was as if all the stars were with the sky falls towards her into the sea. She had never seen such fireworks before. Huge suns spun like wheels, wonderful fiery fish soared into the blue heights, and all this was reflected in the quiet, clear water. It was so light on the ship itself that every rope could be distinguished, and even more so the people. Oh, how good the young prince was! He shook hands with everyone, smiled and laughed, and the music thundered and thundered in a wonderful night.

It was already late, but the little mermaid still could not take her eyes off the ship and the handsome prince. The multi-colored lanterns went out, the rockets no longer took off, the cannons no longer thundered, but there was a hum and growl in the depths of the sea. The little mermaid swayed on the waves and kept looking into the cabin, and the ship began to pick up speed, the sails unfurled one after another, the waves rose higher and higher, clouds gathered, lightning flashed in the distance.

A storm was approaching, the sailors began to remove the sails. The ship, rocking, flew across the raging sea, the waves rose in huge black mountains, trying to roll over the mast, and the ship dived like a swan between the tall ramparts and again rose to the crest of the piling wave. It all seemed like a pleasant walk to the little mermaid, but not to the sailors. The ship groaned and crackled; Then the thick plating of the sides gave way under the blows of the waves, the waves swept over the ship, the mast broke in half like a reed, the ship lay on its side, and water poured into the hold. At this point the little mermaid realized the danger that threatened people - she herself had to dodge logs and debris rushing along the waves. For a minute it became dark, almost like an eye-hole, but then lightning flashed, and the little mermaid again saw the people on the ship. Everyone saved themselves as best they could. She looked for the prince and saw him fall into the water as the ship fell apart. At first she was very happy - after all, he would now fall to her bottom, but then she remembered that people cannot live in water and he would only sail to her father’s palace dead. No, no, he shouldn't die! And she swam between the logs and boards, not at all thinking that they could crush her. She dived deeply, then flew up onto the wave and finally swam to the young prince. He was almost completely exhausted and could not swim on the stormy sea. His arms and legs refused to serve him, his beautiful eyes closed, and he would have died if the little mermaid had not come to his aid. She lifted his head above the water and let the waves carry them both wherever they wanted...

By morning the storm had subsided. There wasn't even a sliver left of the ship. The sun sparkled over the water again and seemed to return color to the prince’s cheeks, but his eyes were still closed.

The little mermaid brushed the hair off the prince’s forehead, kissed his high, beautiful forehead, and it seemed to her that he looked like the marble boy standing in her garden. She kissed him again and wished him to live.

Finally she saw land, high blue mountains, on the tops of which the snow was white, like a flock of swans. Near the very shore there were wonderful green forests, and in front of them stood either a church or a monastery - she couldn’t say for sure, she only knew that it was a building. There were orange and lemon trees in the garden, and tall palm trees near the gate. The sea jutted out into the shore here as a small bay, quiet but very deep, with a cliff near which the sea had washed up fine white sand. It was here that the little mermaid sailed with the prince and laid him on the sand, so that his head was higher in the sun.

Then the bells rang in the tall white building, and a whole crowd of young girls poured into the garden. The little mermaid swam away behind the high stones sticking out of the water, covered her hair and chest with sea foam, so that now no one would distinguish her face, and began to wait to see if anyone would come to the aid of the poor prince.

Soon a young girl approached the cliff and at first she was very scared, but she immediately gathered her courage and called other people, and the little mermaid saw that the prince had come to life and smiled at everyone who was near him. But he didn’t smile at her, he didn’t even know that she saved his life. The little mermaid felt sad, and when the prince was taken to a large building, she sadly dived into the water and swam home.

Now she became even quieter, even more thoughtful than before. The sisters asked her what she saw for the first time on the surface of the sea, but she did not tell them anything.

Often in the mornings and evenings she sailed to the place where she had left the prince. She saw how the fruits ripened in the garden, how they were then collected, she saw how the snow melted on the high mountains, but she never saw the prince again and returned home more and more sad each time. Her only joy was sitting in her garden, her arms wrapped around a beautiful marble statue that looked like a prince, but she no longer looked after her flowers. They went wild and grew along the paths, intertwined stems and leaves with tree branches, and it became completely dark in the garden.

Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore and told one of the sisters about everything. The rest of the sisters recognized her, but no one else, except perhaps two or three more mermaids and their closest friends. One of them also knew about the prince, saw the celebration on the ship and even knew where the prince was from and where his kingdom was.

- Let's swim together, sister! - the sisters said to the little mermaid and, hugging, rose to the surface of the sea near the place where the prince’s palace stood.

The palace was made of light yellow shiny stone, with large marble staircases; one of them went straight down to the sea. Magnificent gilded domes rose above the roof, and between the columns surrounding the building stood marble statues, just like living people. Through the high mirrored windows luxurious chambers were visible; Expensive silk curtains hung everywhere, carpets were laid out, and the walls were decorated with large paintings. A sight for sore eyes, and that’s all! In the middle of the largest hall a large fountain gurgled; jets of water beat high, high under the glass dome of the ceiling, through which the sun illuminated the water and the strange plants growing along the edges of the pool.

Now the little mermaid knew where the prince lived, and began to swim to the palace almost every evening or every night. None of the sisters dared to swim so close to the land, but she even swam into the narrow channel, which passed just under the marble balcony, which cast a long shadow on the water. Here she stopped and looked at the young prince for a long time, but he thought that he was walking alone in the light of the moon.

Many times she saw him riding with musicians on his elegant boat, decorated with waving flags. The little mermaid looked out from the green reeds, and if people sometimes noticed how her long silver-white veil fluttered in the wind, it seemed to them that it was a swan splashing its wings.

Many times she heard fishermen talking about the prince as they caught fish at night with a torch; they told a lot of good things about him, and the little mermaid was glad that she saved his life when he, half-dead, was carried along the waves; she remembered how his head rested on her chest and how tenderly she kissed him then. But he didn’t know anything about her, he couldn’t even dream of her!

The little mermaid began to love people more and more, she was drawn more and more to them; their earthly world seemed to her much larger than her underwater one; After all, they could sail across the sea on their ships, climb high mountains above the clouds, and their countries with forests and fields spread out so widely that you couldn’t even see them with your eyes! The little mermaid really wanted to know more about people, about their lives, but the sisters could not answer all her questions, and she turned to her grandmother: the old woman knew well the “high society,” as she rightly called the land that lay above the sea.

“If people don’t drown,” asked the little mermaid, “then they live forever, don’t die, like us?”

- Well, what are you talking about! - answered the old woman. “They also die, their lifespan is even shorter than ours.” We live for three hundred years; only when we cease to be, we are not buried, we don’t even have graves, we simply turn into sea foam.

“I would give all my hundreds of years for one day of human life,” said the little mermaid.

- Nonsense! There is no need to even think about it! - said the old woman. “We live much better here than people on earth!”

“That means I too will die, become sea foam, will no longer hear the music of the waves, will not see either wonderful flowers or the red sun!” Is there really no way I can live among people?

“You can,” said the grandmother, “if only one of the people loves you so much that you become dearer to him than his father and mother, let him give himself to you with all his heart and all his thoughts, make you his wife and swear eternal fidelity.” But this will never happen! After all, what we consider beautiful—your fish tail, for example—people find ugly. They don't know anything about beauty; in their opinion, in order to be beautiful, you must certainly have two clumsy supports, or legs, as they call them.

The little mermaid took a deep breath and sadly looked at her fish tail.

- We will live - don’t bother! - said the old woman. “Let’s have fun to our heart’s content, three hundred years is a long time.” We're having a ball at the palace tonight!

This was a magnificence that you will not see on earth! The walls and ceiling of the dance hall were made of thick but transparent glass; along the walls lay hundreds of huge purple and grass-green shells with blue lights in the middle; These lights brightly illuminated the entire hall, and through the glass walls - the sea around. One could see schools of large and small fish swimming up to the walls, and their scales shimmering with gold, silver, and purple.

In the middle of the hall, water ran in a wide stream, and mermaids and mermaids danced in it to their wonderful singing. People don't have such beautiful voices. The little mermaid sang the best, and everyone clapped her hands. For a moment she felt cheerful at the thought that no one anywhere, neither in the sea nor on land, had such a wonderful voice as hers; but then she again began to think about the above-water world, about the handsome prince, and she felt sad. She slipped out of the palace unnoticed and, while they were singing and having fun, sat sadly in her garden. Suddenly the sounds of horns came from above, and she thought: “Here he is riding a boat again!” How I love him! More than father and mother! I belong to him with all my heart, with all my thoughts, I would willingly give him the happiness of my whole life! I would do anything - just to be with him. While the sisters are dancing in their father's palace, I'll swim to the sea witch. I was always afraid of her, but maybe she will advise something or help me in some way!”

And the little mermaid swam from her garden to the stormy whirlpools behind which the witch lived. She had never sailed this road before; neither flowers nor even grass grew here - there was only bare gray sand all around; The water behind him bubbled and rustled, as if under a mill wheel, and carried with it into the abyss everything it encountered on its way. It was precisely between such seething whirlpools that the little mermaid had to swim in order to get to the land where the witch ruled. Further the path lay through hot bubbling silt; the witch called this place her peat bog. And there it was just a stone's throw away from her home, surrounded by a strange forest: instead of trees and bushes, polyps grew in it - half-animals, half-plants, similar to hundred-headed snakes that grew straight out of the sand; their branches were like long slimy arms with fingers writhing like worms; The polyps did not stop moving for a minute from the root to the very top and with flexible fingers grabbed everything they came across and never let go. The little mermaid stopped in fright, her heart beat with fear, she was ready to return, but she remembered the prince and gathered her courage: she tied her long hair tightly around her head so that the polyps would not grab them, crossed her arms over her chest and, like a fish, swam between the disgusting polyps that reached out to her with their writhing hands. She saw how tightly, as if with iron pincers, they held with their fingers everything that they managed to grab: the white skeletons of drowned people, ship rudders, boxes, animal bones, even one little mermaid. The polyps caught and strangled her. This was the worst thing!

But then she found herself in a slippery forest clearing, where large, fat water snakes were tumbling, showing a nasty yellowish belly. In the middle of the clearing a house was built from white human bones; The sea witch herself sat right there and fed the toad from her mouth, like people feed sugar to little canaries. She called the disgusting snakes her chicks and allowed them to crawl across her large, spongy chest.

- I know, I know why you came! - the sea witch said to the little mermaid. “You’re up to nonsense, but I’ll still help you—to your misfortune, my beauty!” You want to get rid of your tail and get two supports instead so you can walk like people. Do you want the young prince to love you?

And the witch laughed so loudly and disgustingly that both the toad and the snakes fell off her and splashed onto the sand.

- Well, okay, you came at the right time! - the witch continued. “If you had come tomorrow morning, it would have been late, and I wouldn’t have been able to help you until next year.” I will make you a drink, you will take it, swim with it to the shore before sunrise, sit there and drink every drop; then your tail will fork and turn into a pair of slender, as people would say, legs. But it will hurt you as if you were pierced with a sharp sword. But everyone who sees you will say that they have never met such a lovely girl! You will maintain your smooth gait - no dancer can compare with you; but remember: you will walk as if on sharp knives, and your feet will bleed. Will you endure all this? Then I will help you.

“Remember,” said the witch, “once you take human form, you will never become a mermaid again!” You will not see the bottom of the sea, nor your father’s house, nor your sisters! And if the prince does not love you so much that he forgets both father and mother for your sake, does not give himself to you with all his heart and does not make you his wife, you will perish; from the very first dawn after his marriage to another, your heart will break into pieces and you will become foam of the sea.

- Let be! - said the little mermaid and turned pale as death.

“And you must pay me for my help,” said the witch. - And I won’t take it cheap! You have a wonderful voice, and you think to charm the prince with it, but you must give this voice to me. I will take the best you have for my priceless drink: after all, I must mix my own blood into the drink so that it becomes as sharp as a sword blade.

- Your lovely face, your smooth gait and your talking eyes - this is enough to conquer the human heart! Well, don’t be afraid: stick out your tongue, and I’ll cut it off in payment for the magic drink!

- Fine! - said the little mermaid, and the witch put a cauldron on the fire to brew a drink.

- Cleanliness is the best beauty! - she said and wiped the cauldron with a bunch of live snakes.

Then she scratched her chest; Black blood dripped into the cauldron, and soon clouds of steam began to rise, taking on such bizarre shapes that it was simply terrifying. The witch constantly added new and new drugs to the cauldron, and when the drink began to boil, it gurgled as if a crocodile was crying. Finally the drink was ready; it looked like the clearest spring water.

- Take it! - said the witch, giving the little mermaid the drink.

Then she cut out her tongue, and the little mermaid became mute - she could no longer sing or speak.

“The polyps will grab you when you swim back,” the witch admonished,

- splash a drop of drink on them, and their hands and fingers will shatter into a thousand pieces.

But the little mermaid did not have to do this - the polyps turned away in horror at the mere sight of the drink, sparkling in her hands like a bright star. She quickly swam through the forest, passed the swamp and seething whirlpools.

Here is my father's palace; The lights in the dance hall are off, everyone is sleeping. The little mermaid did not dare to enter there anymore - after all, she was mute and was going to leave her father’s house forever. Her heart was ready to burst from melancholy. She slipped into the garden, took a flower from each sister's garden, sent thousands of air kisses to her family, and rose to the dark blue surface of the sea.

The sun had not yet risen when she saw the prince's palace in front of her and sat down on the wide marble staircase. The moon illuminated her with its wonderful blue radiance. The little mermaid drank a scalding drink, and it seemed to her as if she had been pierced by a double-edged sword; she lost consciousness and fell dead. When she woke up, the sun was already shining over the sea: she felt a burning pain throughout her body. A handsome prince stood in front of her and looked at her in surprise. She looked down and saw that the fish tail had disappeared, and in its place she had two small white legs. But she was completely naked and therefore wrapped herself in her long, thick hair. The prince asked who she was and how she got here, but she only looked at him meekly and sadly with her dark blue eyes: she couldn’t speak. Then he took her hand and led her to the palace. The witch said the truth: every step caused the little mermaid such pain, as if she were walking on sharp knives and needles; but she patiently endured the pain and walked hand in hand with the prince easily, as if walking on air. The prince and his retinue only marveled at her wonderful, smooth gait.

The little mermaid was dressed in silk and muslin, and she became the first beauty at court, but she remained mute and could neither sing nor speak. One day, slave girls dressed in silk and gold were called to the prince and his royal parents. They began to sing, one of them sang especially well, and the prince clapped his hands and smiled at her. The little mermaid felt sad: once upon a time she could sing, and much better! “Oh, if only he knew that I had given up my voice forever, just to be near him!”

Then the girls began to dance to the sounds of the most wonderful music, and then the little mermaid raised her beautiful white hands, stood on tiptoe and rushed in a light, airy dance; No one has danced like that before! Every movement emphasized her beauty, and her eyes spoke more to the heart than the singing of slaves.

Everyone was delighted, especially the prince; he called the little mermaid his little foundling, and the little mermaid danced and danced, although every time her feet touched the ground, she felt as much pain as if she were walking on sharp knives. The prince said that she should always be near him, and she was allowed to sleep on a velvet pillow in front of the door of his room.

He ordered a man's suit to be sewn for her so that she could accompany him on horseback rides. They drove through fragrant forests, where birds sang in the fresh leaves, and green branches touched her shoulders. They climbed high mountains, and although blood oozed from her legs and everyone saw it, she laughed and continued to follow the prince to the very tops; there they admired the clouds floating at their feet, like flocks of birds flying to foreign lands.

And at night in the prince’s palace, when everyone was asleep, the little mermaid went down the marble stairs, put her feet, burning as if on fire, into the cold water and thought about her home and about the bottom of the sea.

One night her sisters emerged from the water hand in hand and sang a sad song; She nodded to them, they recognized her and told her how she had upset them all. Since then, they visited her every night, and once she even saw in the distance her old grandmother, who had not risen from pain for many years, and the king of the sea himself with a crown on his head; they stretched out their hands to her, but did not dare to swim to the ground as close as the sisters.

Day by day, the prince became more and more attached to the little mermaid, but he loved her only as a sweet, kind child, and it never occurred to him to make her his wife and princess, and yet she had to become his wife, otherwise, if If he gave his heart and hand to another, she would become sea foam.

“Do you love me more than anyone in the world?” - the little mermaid’s eyes seemed to ask as the prince hugged her and kissed her forehead.

- Yes I love you! - said the prince. “You have a kind heart, you are more devoted to me than anyone else, and you look like a young girl whom I saw once and, probably, will never see again!” I was sailing on a ship, the ship sank, the waves threw me ashore near some temple where young girls serve God; the youngest of them found me on the shore and saved my life; I saw her only twice, but she was the only one in the whole world I could love! You look like her and have almost driven her image out of my heart. It belongs to the holy temple, and my lucky star sent you to me; I will never part with you!

"Alas! He doesn't know that it was I who saved his life! - thought the little mermaid. “I carried him out of the sea waves to the shore and laid him in a grove, near the temple, and I myself hid in the sea foam and watched to see if anyone would come to his aid. I saw this beautiful girl whom he loves more than me! - And the little mermaid sighed deeply, she could not cry. “But that girl belongs to the temple, will never return to the world, and they will never meet!” I’m next to him, I see him every day, I can look after him, love him, give my life for him!”

But then they began to say that the prince was marrying the lovely daughter of a neighboring king and therefore was equipping his magnificent ship to sail. The prince will go to the neighboring king, as if to get acquainted with his country, but in fact to see the princess; a large retinue travels with him. The little mermaid just shook her head and laughed at all these speeches - after all, she knew the prince’s thoughts better than anyone else.

- I have to go! - he told her. - I need to see the beautiful princess; my parents demand this, but they will not force me to marry her, and I will never love her! She doesn't look like the beauty you look like. If I finally have to choose a bride for myself, I’d rather choose you, my dumb foundling with talking eyes!

And he kissed her pink lips, played with her long hair and laid his head on her chest, where her heart beat, yearning for human happiness and love.

“You’re not afraid of the sea, are you, my dumb baby?” - he said when they were already standing on the ship that was supposed to take them to the country of the neighboring king.

And the prince began to tell her about storms and calms, about the strange fish that live in the abyss, and about what the divers saw there, and she just smiled, listening to his stories - she knew better than anyone what was at the bottom sea

On a clear moonlit night, when everyone except the helmsman was asleep, she sat down at the very side and began to look into the transparent waves, and it seemed to her that she saw her father’s palace; An old grandmother in a silver crown stood on a tower and looked through the rippling streams of water at the keel of the ship. Then her sisters floated to the surface of the sea: they sadly looked at her and extended their white hands to her, and she nodded her head to them, smiled and wanted to tell them how good she felt here, but then the ship’s cabin boy approached her, and the sisters dived into the water, and the cabin boy thought that it was white sea foam flashing in the waves.

The next morning the ship entered the harbor of the elegant capital of the neighboring kingdom. The bells rang in the city, the sounds of horns were heard from the high towers; regiments of soldiers with shining bayonets and waving banners stood in the squares. The festivities began, balls followed balls, but the princess was not there yet - she was brought up somewhere far away in a monastery, where she was sent to learn all the royal virtues. Finally she arrived.

The little mermaid looked at her greedily and could not help but admit that she had never seen a sweeter and more beautiful face. The skin on the princess’s face was so soft and transparent, and from behind her long dark eyelashes her meek blue eyes smiled.

- It's you! - said the prince. “You saved my life when I was lying half-dead on the seashore!”

And he pressed his blushing bride tightly to his heart.

- Oh, I'm so happy! - he said to the little mermaid. “What I didn’t even dare to dream about has come true!” You will rejoice at my happiness, you love me so much.

The little mermaid kissed his hand, and her heart seemed about to burst with pain: his wedding was supposed to kill her, turn her into sea foam.

That same evening the prince and his young wife were to sail to the prince's homeland; guns were firing, flags were fluttering, a tent of gold and purple, covered with soft pillows, was spread on the deck; They were supposed to spend this quiet, cool night in the tent.

The sails inflated from the wind, the ship easily and smoothly glided over the waves and rushed into the open sea.

As soon as it got dark, colorful lanterns lit up on the ship, and the sailors began dancing merrily on the deck. The little mermaid remembered how she first rose to the surface of the sea and saw the same fun on the ship. And so she flew in a fast airy dance, like a swallow pursued by a kite. Everyone was delighted: she had never danced so wonderfully! Her tender legs were cut as if by knives, but she did not feel this pain - her heart was even more painful. She knew that she had only one evening left to spend with the one for whom she left her family and her father’s house, gave her wonderful voice and endured unbearable torment, which the prince had no idea about. She had only one night left to breathe the same air with him, to see the blue sea and starry sky, and then eternal night would come for her, without thoughts, without dreams. Long after midnight, dancing and music continued on the ship, and the little mermaid laughed and danced with mortal torment in her heart; the prince kissed his beautiful wife, and she played with his black curls; Finally, hand in hand, they retired to their magnificent tent.

Everything on the ship was silent, only the helmsman remained at the helm. The little mermaid leaned on the railing and, turning her face to the east, began to wait for the first ray of the sun, which, she knew, was supposed to kill her. And suddenly she saw her sisters rise from the sea; they were pale, like her, but their long luxurious hair no longer fluttered in the wind - it was cut.

“We gave our hair to the witch so that she could help us save you from death!” And she gave us this knife - see how sharp it is? Before the sun rises, you must thrust it into the heart of the prince, and when his warm blood splashes on your feet, they will grow together again into a fish tail and you will again become a mermaid, go down to our sea and live your three hundred years before you turn into salty sea foam. But hurry! Either he or you - one of you must die before the sun rises. Kill the prince and return to us! Hurry up. Do you see a red stripe appearing in the sky? Soon the sun will rise and you will die!

With these words they took a deep breath and plunged into the sea.

The little mermaid lifted the purple curtain of the tent and saw that the young wife’s head was resting on the prince’s chest. The little mermaid bent down and kissed his beautiful forehead, looked at the sky where the morning dawn was flaring up, then looked at the sharp knife and again fixed her gaze on the prince, who in his sleep uttered the name of his wife - she was the only one in his thoughts!

- and the knife trembled in the hands of the little mermaid. Another minute - and she threw him into the waves, and they turned red, as if drops of blood appeared from the sea where he fell.

For the last time she looked at the prince with half-extinguished gaze, rushed from the ship into the sea and felt her body dissolve into foam.

The sun rose over the sea; its rays lovingly warmed the deathly cold sea foam, and the little mermaid did not feel death; she saw the clear sun and some transparent, wonderful creatures hovering above her in hundreds. She saw through them the white sails of the ship and the red clouds in the sky; their voice sounded like music, but so sublime that the human ear would not have heard it, just as human eyes could not see them. They had no wings, but they flew in the air, light and transparent. The little mermaid noticed that she too became the same after breaking away from the sea foam.

- Who am I going to? - she asked, rising in the air, and her voice sounded like the same wondrous music.

- To the daughters of the air! - the air creatures answered her. We fly everywhere and try to bring joy to everyone. In hot countries, where people die from the sultry, plague-ridden air, we bring coolness. We spread the fragrance of flowers in the air and bring healing and joy to people... Fly with us to the transcendental world! There you will find love and happiness that you have not found on earth.

And the little mermaid stretched out her transparent hands to the sun and for the first time felt tears in her eyes.

During this time, everything on the ship began to move again, and the little mermaid saw the prince and his young wife looking for her. They looked sadly at the wavering sea foam, as if they knew that the little mermaid had thrown herself into the waves. Invisible, the little mermaid kissed the beauty on the forehead, smiled at the prince and ascended along with other children of the air to the pink clouds floating in the sky.

In the open sea, the water is completely blue, like the petals of pretty cornflowers, and transparent, like crystal - but it’s also deep there! Not a single anchor will reach the bottom: at the bottom of the sea, many, many bell towers would have to be stacked one on top of the other so that they could stick out of the water. Mermaids live at the very bottom.

Don’t think that there, at the bottom, there is only bare white sand; no, the most amazing trees and flowers grow there with such flexible stems and leaves that they move as if they were alive at the slightest movement of water. Small and large fish dart between their branches, just like the birds we have here. In the deepest place stands the coral palace of the sea king with large pointed windows of the purest amber and a roof of shells that open and close depending on the ebb and flow of the tide; it comes out very beautifully, since in the middle of each shell lies a pearl of such beauty that one of them would adorn the crown of any queen.

The sea king was widowed a long time ago, and his old mother, an intelligent woman, but very proud of her family, ran the household; she carried a whole dozen oysters on her tail, while nobles had the right to carry only six. In general, she was a worthy person, especially because she loved her little granddaughters very much. All six princesses were very pretty mermaids, but the best of all was the youngest, tender and transparent, like a rose petal, with deep, blue eyes like the sea. But she, like other mermaids, had no legs, but only a fish tail.

The princesses played all day in the huge palace halls, where fresh flowers grew along the walls. Fish swam through the open amber windows, just as swallows sometimes fly in with us; the fish swam up to the little princesses, ate from their hands and allowed themselves to be stroked.

There was a large garden near the palace; there grew many fiery red and dark blue trees with ever-swaying branches and leaves; During this movement, their fruits sparkled like gold, and their flowers - like lights. The ground itself was strewn with fine bluish sand, like a sulfur flame; at the bottom of the sea, there was some amazing bluish glow on everything - one could rather think that you were soaring high, high in the air, and the sky was not only above your head, but also under your feet. When there was no wind, one could also see the sun; it looked like a purple flower, from the cup of which light poured.

Each princess had her own place in the garden; here they could dig and plant whatever they wanted. One made herself a flower bed in the shape of a whale, another wanted her bed to look like a little mermaid, and the youngest made herself a round bed, like the sun, and planted it with the same bright red flowers. This little mermaid was a strange child: so quiet, thoughtful... The other sisters decorated themselves with various things that were delivered to them from broken ships, but she loved only her flowers, red as the sun, and a beautiful white marble boy who fell to the bottom of the sea from some lost ship. The Little Mermaid planted a red weeping willow near the statue, which grew wonderfully; its branches hung over the statue and bent down onto the blue sand, where their violet shadow swayed: the top and roots seemed to be playing and kissing each other!

Most of all, the little mermaid loved to listen to stories about people living above, on earth. The old grandmother had to tell her everything she knew about ships and cities, about people and animals. The little mermaid was especially interested and surprised that the flowers smelled on earth - not like here in the sea! - that the forests there were green, and the fish that lived in the branches sang wonderfully. Grandmother called birds fish, otherwise her granddaughters would not have understood her: after all, they had never seen birds.

When you turn fifteen years old, - said your grandmother, - you, too, will be able to float to the surface of the sea, sit, in the light of the moon, on the rocks and look at the huge ships sailing past, at the forests and cities!

This year, the eldest princess was just about to turn fifteen years old, but the other sisters - and they were all the same age - still had to wait, and the youngest one had to wait the longest - a whole five years. But each promised to tell the other sisters what she would like most on the first day: grandmother’s stories did little to satisfy their curiosity; they wanted to know about everything in more detail.

No one was drawn more to the surface of the sea than the youngest, quiet, thoughtful little mermaid, who had to wait the longest. How many nights did she spend at the open window, peering into the blue of the sea, where whole schools of fish moved their fins and tails! She could see the moon and the stars through the water; they, of course, did not shine so brightly, but they seemed much larger than they seem to us. It happened that a large cloud seemed to be gliding beneath them, and the little mermaid knew that it was either a whale swimming above her, or a ship with hundreds of people passing by; They did not even think about the pretty little mermaid who stood there, in the depths of the sea, and stretched out her white hands to the keel of the ship.

But then the eldest princess turned fifteen years old, and she was allowed to float to the surface of the sea.

There were stories when she came back! The best thing, according to her, was to lie on a sandbank in calm weather and bask in the light of the moon, admiring the city stretched along the shore: there, like hundreds of stars, lights were burning, music was heard, the noise and roar of carriages, towers with spires were visible , the bells were ringing. Yes, it was precisely because she could not get there that this sight attracted her most of all.

How eagerly the youngest sister listened to her stories. Standing at the open window in the evening and peering into the blue sea, she could only think about the big noisy city, and it even seemed to her that she could hear the ringing of bells.

A year later, the second sister received permission to rise to the surface of the sea and swim wherever she wanted. She emerged from the water just as the sun was setting, and found that nothing could be better than this spectacle. The sky shone like molten gold, she said, and the clouds... well, she really didn’t have enough words for that! Painted in purple and violet colors, they quickly rushed across the sky, but even faster than them a flock of swans rushed towards the sun, like a long white veil; The little mermaid also swam towards the sun, but it sank into the sea, and a pink evening dawn spread across the sky and water.

A year later, the third princess floated to the surface of the sea; This one was bolder than all of them and swam into a wide river that flowed into the sea. Then she saw green hills covered with vineyards, palaces and houses surrounded by wonderful groves where birds sang; the sun was shining and warming so much that she had to dive into the water more than once to refresh her burning face. In a small bay she saw a whole crowd of naked people splashing in the water; she wanted to play with them, but they were frightened of her and ran away, and instead of them some black animal appeared and began to paw at her so terribly that the mermaid got scared and swam back into the sea; This animal was a dog, but the mermaid had never seen a dog before.

And so the princess kept remembering these wonderful forests, green hills and lovely children who knew how to swim, even though they did not have a fish tail!

The fourth sister was not so brave; she stayed more in the open sea and said that it was the best: wherever you look, for many, many miles around there is only water and the sky, overturned over the water, like a huge glass dome; In the distance, large ships rushed past like seagulls, funny dolphins played and tumbled, and huge whales released hundreds of fountains from their nostrils.

Then it was the turn of the penultimate sister; her birthday was in the winter, and therefore she saw for the first time something that others had not seen: the sea was greenish in color, large ice mountains floated everywhere: like pearls, she said, but so huge, higher than the highest bell towers! Some of them were very strangely shaped and shone like diamonds. She sat down on the largest one, the wind blew her long hair, and the sailors fearfully walked around the mountain further. By evening, the sky was covered with clouds, lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, and the dark sea began to throw ice blocks from side to side, and they sparkled in the glare of the lightning. The sails were being removed on the ships, people were rushing about in fear and horror, and she calmly floated on her icy mountain and watched as the fiery zigzags of lightning, cutting through the sky, fell into the sea.

In general, each of the sisters was delighted with what she saw for the first time: everything was new to them and therefore they liked it; but, having received, as grown-up girls, permission to swim everywhere, they soon took a closer look at everything and after a month began to say that everywhere was good, but at home it was better.

Often in the evenings all five sisters intertwined their arms and rose to the surface of the water; everyone had the most wonderful voices, the likes of which do not exist among people on earth, and so, when a storm began and they saw that the ships were in danger, they swam up to them, sang about the wonders of the underwater kingdom and asked the sailors not to be afraid to sink to the bottom; but the sailors could not make out the words; it seemed to them that it was just the noise of a storm; Yes, they still would not have been able to see any miracles at the bottom: if the ship died, the people drowned and sailed to the palace of the sea king already dead.

The youngest mermaid, while her sisters floated up hand in hand to the surface of the sea, remained alone and looked after them, ready to cry, but mermaids cannot cry, and that made it even harder for her.

Oh, when will I be fifteen years old? - she said. - I know that I will really love both that world and the people who live there!

Finally, she turned fifteen!

Well, they raised you too! - said the grandmother, the dowager queen. - Come here, we need to dress you up like the other sisters!

And she put a crown of white pearl lilies on the little mermaid’s head - each petal was half a pearl, then, to indicate the high rank of the princess, she ordered eight oysters to cling to her tail.

Yes it hurts! - said the little mermaid.

For the sake of beauty, you have to be patient a little! - said the old woman.

Oh, with what pleasure the little mermaid would throw off all these dresses and heavy crown: the red flowers from her garden suited her much better, but there is nothing to do!

Farewell! - she said and easily and smoothly, like a transparent water bubble, rose to the surface.

The sun had just set, but the clouds still shone with purple and gold, while wonderful clear evening stars were already shining in the reddish sky; the air was soft and fresh, and the sea lay like a mirror. Not far from the place where the little mermaid emerged, there was a three-masted ship with only one raised sail: there was not the slightest breeze; sailors were sitting on the shrouds and masts, the sounds of music and songs were heard from the deck; when it became completely dark, the ship was illuminated by hundreds of multi-colored lanterns; it seemed as if the flags of all nations were flashing in the air. The little mermaid swam to the very windows of the cabin and, when the waves lifted her slightly, she could look into the cabin. There were many dressed people there, but the best of all was a young prince with large black eyes. He was probably no more than sixteen years old; His birth was celebrated that day, which is why there was such fun on the ship. The sailors danced on the deck, and when the young prince came out there, hundreds of rockets soared up, and it became as bright as day, so the little mermaid was completely frightened and dived into the water, but soon she stuck her head out again, and it seemed to her that all the stars in heaven were falling towards her in the sea. Never before had she seen such fiery fun: large suns were spinning like wheels, magnificent fiery fish were twisting their tails in the air, and all this was reflected in the quiet, clear water. On the ship itself it was so light that every rope could be distinguished, and even more so the people. Oh, how good the young prince was! He shook hands with people, smiled and laughed, and the music thundered and thundered in the silence of a wonderful night.

It was getting late, but the little mermaid could not take her eyes off the ship and the handsome prince. The multi-colored lights went out, the rockets no longer flew into the air, and no cannon shots were heard, but the sea itself hummed and groaned. The little mermaid swayed on the waves next to the ship and kept looking into the cabin, and the ship rushed faster and faster, the sails unfurled one after another, the wind grew stronger, the waves set in, the clouds thickened, and lightning flashed. The storm was starting! The sailors began to remove the sails; the huge ship rocked terribly, and the wind kept rushing it along the raging waves; High mountains of water rose around the ship, threatening to close over the masts of the ship, but he dived between the water walls like a swan and again flew up to the crest of the waves. The storm only amused the little mermaid, but the sailors had a bad time: the ship cracked, thick logs flew into splinters, waves rolled across the deck, masts broke like reeds, the ship turned over on its side, and water poured into the hold. Then the little mermaid realized the danger - she herself had to beware of logs and debris rushing along the waves. For a minute it suddenly became so dark, it would be like pricking out your eyes; but then lightning flashed again, and the little mermaid again saw all the people on the ship; everyone saved themselves as best they could. The little mermaid looked for the prince and saw how he plunged into the water when the ship broke into pieces. At first the little mermaid was very happy that he would now fall to their bottom, but then she remembered that people cannot live in water and that he could only sail to her father’s palace dead. No, no, he shouldn't die! And she swam between the logs and boards, completely forgetting that they could crush her at any moment. I had to dive into the very depths and then fly up with the waves; but finally she overtook the prince, who was almost completely exhausted and could no longer swim on the stormy sea; his arms and legs refused to serve him, and his lovely eyes closed; he would have died if the little mermaid had not come to his aid. She lifted his head above the water and let the waves carry them both wherever they wanted.

By morning the bad weather had subsided; not a sliver of the ship remained; the sun shone again over the water, and its bright rays seemed to return their vibrant color to the prince’s cheeks, but his eyes still did not open.

The little mermaid brushed back the prince's hair and kissed his high, beautiful forehead; it seemed to her that he looked like the marble boy who stood in her garden; she kissed him again and wished with all her heart that he would remain alive.

Finally, she saw solid ground and high mountains stretching into the sky, on the tops of which snow was white, like a flock of swans. Near the very shore there was a wonderful green grove, and higher up there was some kind of building, like a church or monastery. There were orange and lemon trees in the grove, and tall palm trees at the gate of the building. The sea cut into the white sandy shore in a small bay, where the water was very calm but deep; It was here that the little mermaid swam and laid the prince on the sand, making sure that his head lay higher and in the very sun.

At this time, bells rang in a tall white building and a whole crowd of young girls poured into the garden. The little mermaid swam away behind the tall stones that stuck out of the water, covered her hair and chest with sea foam - now no one would have seen her little white face in this foam - and began to wait to see if anyone would come to the aid of the poor prince.

They didn’t have to wait long: one of the young girls approached the prince and was very frightened at first, but soon gathered her courage and called people for help. Then the little mermaid saw that the prince came to life and smiled at everyone who was near him. But he didn’t smile at her and didn’t even know that she saved his life! The little mermaid felt sad, and when the prince was taken to a large white building, she sadly dived into the water and swam home.

And before she was quiet and thoughtful, but now she became even quieter, even more thoughtful. The sisters asked her what she saw for the first time on the surface of the sea, but she did not tell them anything.

Often in the evening and in the morning she sailed to the place where she left the prince, saw how the fruits ripened and were picked in the gardens, how the snow melted on the high mountains, but she never saw the prince again and returned home each time sadder and sadder. Her only joy was to sit in her garden, wrapping her arms around a beautiful marble statue that looked like a prince, but she no longer looked after the flowers; They grew as they wanted, along paths and paths, intertwining their stems and leaves with the branches of the tree, and it became completely dark in the garden.

Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore and told one of her sisters about everything; All the other sisters recognized her, but no one else, except maybe two or three more mermaids and their closest friends. One of the mermaids also knew the prince, saw the celebration on the ship and even knew where the prince’s kingdom lay.

Come with us, sister! - the sisters said to the mermaid, and hand in hand they all rose to the surface of the sea near the place where the prince’s palace lay.

The palace was made of light yellow shiny stone, with large marble staircases; one of them descended directly into the sea. Magnificent gilded domes rose above the roof, and in the niches, between the columns that surrounded the entire building, stood marble statues, just like life. Luxurious chambers could be seen through the high mirrored windows; Expensive silk curtains hung everywhere, carpets were laid out, and the walls were decorated with large paintings. A sight for sore eyes, and that’s all! In the middle of the largest hall a large fountain gurgled; streams of water beat high, high up to the very glass domed ceiling, through which the rays of the sun poured onto the water and onto the wonderful plants growing in the wide pool.

Now the little mermaid knew where the prince lived, and began to swim to the palace almost every evening or every night. None of the sisters dared to swim as close to the ground as she did; she also swam into a narrow channel, which ran just under a magnificent marble balcony that cast a long shadow on the water. Here she stopped and looked for a long time at the young prince, but he thought that he was walking alone in the light of the moon.

Many times she saw him ride with musicians on his beautiful boat, decorated with waving flags: the little mermaid looked out from the green reeds, and if people sometimes noticed her long silver-white veil fluttering in the wind, they thought that it was a swan fluttering its wing .

Many times she also heard fishermen talking about the prince as they fished at night; they told a lot of good things about him, and the little mermaid was glad that she saved his life when he was rushing half-dead through the waves; she remembered those moments when his head rested on her chest and when she so tenderly kissed his white, beautiful forehead. But he knew nothing about her, he never even dreamed of her!

The little mermaid began to love people more and more, she was drawn to them more and more; their earthly world seemed to her much larger than her underwater one: after all, they could sail across the sea on their ships, climb high mountains to the very clouds, and the expanses of land that were in their possession with forests and fields stretched far, far away, and their eyes could not see take a look! She so wanted to know more about people and their lives, but the sisters could not answer all her questions, and she turned to her old grandmother; This one knew well the “high society,” as she rightly called the land that lay above the sea.

If people don’t drown, asked the little mermaid, then they live forever, don’t die, like us?

Why! - answered the old woman. - They also die, and their life is even shorter than ours. We live for three hundred years, but when the end comes, all that remains of us is sea foam, we don’t even have graves close to us. We are not given an immortal soul, and we will never be resurrected for a new life; We are like this green reed: once uprooted, it will never turn green again! People, on the contrary, have an immortal soul that lives forever, even after the body turns to dust; She then flies away into the blue sky, there, to the clear stars! Just as we can rise from the bottom of the sea and see the land where people live, so they can rise after death to unknown blissful countries that we will never see!

Why don't we have an immortal soul? - the little mermaid said sadly. “I would give all my hundreds of years for one day of human life, in order to later take part in the heavenly bliss of people.”

There is no need to even think about it! - said the old woman. - We live much better here than people on earth!

So I will die, I will become sea foam, I will no longer hear the music of the waves, I will not see wonderful flowers and the red sun! Is it really impossible for me to acquire an immortal soul?

You can,” said the grandmother, “if only one of the people loves you so much that you become dearer to him than his father and mother, let him devote himself to you with all his heart and all his thoughts and tell the priest to join your hands as a sign of eternal fidelity to each other; then a particle of his soul will be communicated to you, and you will participate in the eternal bliss of man. He will give you his soul and keep his own. But this will never happen! After all, what is considered beautiful here - your fish tail, people find ugly: they understand little about beauty; in their opinion, in order to be beautiful, you must certainly have two clumsy supports - legs, as they call them.

The little mermaid took a deep breath and sadly looked at her fish tail.

Let's live - don't bother! - said the old woman. - Let's have fun to our heart's content for three hundred years - this is a decent period of time, the sweeter the rest will be after death! Tonight we are having a ball at our court!

This was a magnificence that you will not see on earth! The walls and ceiling of the dance hall were made of thick but transparent glass; along the walls lay hundreds of huge purple and grass-green shells in rows with blue lights in the middle: these lights brightly illuminated the entire hall, and through the glass walls - the sea itself; it was visible how schools of large and small fish, sparkling with purple-golden and silver scales, swam up to the walls.

A wide stream ran in the middle of the hall, and mermaids and mermaids danced on it to their wonderful singing. People don't have such wonderful voices. The little mermaid sang best of all, and everyone clapped her hands. For a moment she felt cheerful at the thought that no one and nowhere - neither in the sea nor on land - had such a wonderful voice as hers; but then she again began to think about the above-water world, about the handsome prince, and to be sad that she did not have an immortal soul. She slipped out of the palace unnoticed and, while they were singing and having fun, sat sadly in her garden; the sounds of French horns reached her across the water, and she thought: “Here he is riding in a boat again! How I love him! More than father and mother! I belong to him with all my heart, with all my thoughts, I would willingly give him the happiness of my whole life! I would do anything for the sake of him and the immortal soul! While the sisters are dancing in my father's palace, I will sail to the sea witch; I was always afraid of her, but maybe she will advise something or help me in some way!”

And the little mermaid swam from her garden to the stormy whirlpools behind which the witch lived. She had never sailed this way before; There were no flowers growing here, not even grass - just bare gray sand; The water in the whirlpools bubbled and rustled, as if under mill wheels, and carried with it into the depths everything it encountered along the way. The little mermaid had to swim just between such seething whirlpools; then on the way to the witch's dwelling lay a large space covered with hot bubbling silt; The witch called this place her peat bog. Behind him, the witch’s dwelling itself appeared, surrounded by some strange forest: the trees and bushes were polyps, half-animals, half-plants, similar to hundred-headed snakes growing straight out of the sand; their branches were long slimy arms with fingers wriggling like worms; The polyps did not stop moving all their joints for a minute, from the root to the very top, with flexible fingers they grabbed everything they came across and never let go back. The little mermaid paused in fear, her heart beat with fear, she was ready to return, but she remembered the prince, the immortal soul, and gathered her courage: she tightly tied her long hair around her head so that the polyps would not grab it, crossed her arms on her chest, and, as the fish swam between the nasty polyps, stretching out their writhing hands towards it. She saw how tightly, as if with iron pincers, they held with their fingers everything that they managed to grab: the white skeletons of drowned people, ship rudders, boxes, animal skeletons, even one little mermaid. The polyps caught and strangled her. This was the worst thing!

But then she found herself in a slippery forest clearing, where large fat water snakes were tumbling and showing their disgusting light yellow bellies. In the middle of the clearing a house was built from white human bones; The sea witch herself was sitting right there, feeding the toad from her mouth, like people feed sugar to little canaries. She called the ugly fat snakes her chicks and let them roll on her large, spongy chest.

I know, I know why you came! - the sea witch said to the little mermaid. “You’re up to nonsense, but I’ll still help you, it’s bad for you, my beauty!” You want to get two supports instead of your fish tail so that you can walk like people; Do you want the young prince to love you, and you would receive an immortal soul!

And the witch laughed so loudly and disgustingly that both the toad and the snakes fell off her and stretched out on the ground.

Okay, you came on time! - the witch continued. “If you had come tomorrow morning, it would have been late, and I wouldn’t have been able to help you until next year.” I will make a drink for you, you will take it, swim with it to the shore before sunrise, sit there and drink every drop; then your tail will fork in two and turn into a pair of wonderful, as people will say, legs. But it will hurt you as much as if you were pierced through with a sharp sword. But everyone who sees you will say that they have never seen such a lovely girl! You will retain your airy gliding gait - not a single dancer can compare with you; but remember that you will walk as if on sharp knives, so that your legs will bleed. Do you agree? Do you want my help?

Remember,” said the witch, “that once you take on a human form, you will never become a mermaid again!” You will no longer see the seabed, your father’s house, or your sisters. And if the prince does not love you so much that he forgets both father and mother for you, does not give himself to you with all his heart and does not order the priest to join your hands so that you become husband and wife, you will not receive an immortal soul. From the very first dawn, after his marriage to another, your heart will break into pieces, and you will become the foam of the sea!

Let be! - said the little mermaid and turned pale as death.

You still have to pay me for my help! - said the witch. - And I won’t take it cheap! You have a wonderful voice, and with it you think to charm the prince, but you must give your voice to me. I will take the best you have for my precious drink: after all, I must mix my own blood into the drink in order for it to become as sharp as a sword blade!

Your pretty face, your sliding gait and your talking eyes are enough to win the human heart! Well, that's it, don't be afraid, stick out your tongue and I'll cut it off in payment for the magic drink!

Fine! - said the little mermaid, and the witch put a cauldron on the fire to brew a drink.

Cleanliness is the best beauty! - she said, wiped the cauldron with a bunch of live snakes and then scratched her chest; Black blood dripped into the cauldron, from which clouds of steam soon began to rise, taking on such bizarre shapes that it was simply terrifying to look at them. The witch continually added more and more drugs to the cauldron, and when the drink began to boil, the cry of a crocodile was heard. Finally the drink was ready and looked like the clearest spring water!

It is for you! - said the witch, giving the little mermaid the drink; then she cut off her tongue, and the little mermaid became mute, she could no longer sing or speak!

If the polyps want to grab you when you swim back, said the witch, sprinkle a drop of this drink on them, and their hands and fingers will fly into thousands of pieces!

But the little mermaid did not have to do this: the polyps turned away in horror at the mere sight of the drink, sparkling in her hands like a bright star. She quickly swam through the forest, passed the swamp and seething whirlpools.

Here is my father's palace; the lights in the dance hall are out, everyone is sleeping; she did not dare to enter there anymore - she was dumb and was about to leave her father's house forever. Her heart was ready to burst from melancholy and sadness. She slipped into the garden, took a flower from each sister's garden, sent thousands of kisses to her family with her hand, and rose to the dark blue surface of the sea.

The sun had not yet risen when she saw the prince's palace in front of her and sat down on the magnificent marble staircase. The moon illuminated her with its wonderful blue radiance. The little mermaid drank the sparkling, spicy drink, and it seemed to her that she had been pierced through with a double-edged sword; she lost consciousness and fell as if dead.

When she woke up, the sun was already shining over the sea; she felt a burning pain throughout her body, but a handsome prince stood in front of her and looked at her with his eyes black as night; she looked down and saw that instead of a fish tail she had two most wonderful little white legs, like a child’s. But she was completely naked and therefore wrapped herself in her long thick hair. The prince asked who she was and how she got here, but she only meekly and sadly looked at him with her dark blue eyes: she could not speak. Then he took her hand and led her to the palace. The witch told the truth: with every step the little mermaid seemed to be stepping on sharp knives and needles, but she patiently endured the pain and walked hand in hand with the prince, light and airy, like a water bubble; the prince and everyone around only marveled at her wonderful sliding gait.

The little mermaid was dressed in silk and muslin, and she became the first beauty at court, but she remained dumb as before - she could neither sing nor speak. Beautiful slave girls, all dressed in silk and gold, appeared before the prince and his royal parents and began to sing. One of them sang especially well, and the prince clapped his hands and smiled at her; The little mermaid felt very sad: once upon a time she could sing, and much better! “Oh, if only he knew that I had given up my voice forever just to be near him!”

Then the slaves began to dance to the sounds of the most wonderful music; here the little mermaid raised her pretty white hands, stood on tiptoes and rushed in a light airy dance - no one had ever danced like that! Every movement only increased her beauty; Her eyes alone spoke more to the heart than the singing of all the slaves.

Everyone was delighted, especially the prince, who called the little mermaid his little foundling, and the little mermaid danced and danced, although every time her feet touched the ground, she felt as much pain as if she were stepping on sharp knives. The prince said that she should always be near him, and she was allowed to sleep on a velvet pillow in front of the door of his room.

He ordered a man's suit to be sewn for her so that she could accompany him on horseback rides. They drove through fragrant forests, where birds sang in the fresh leaves, and green branches hit her shoulders; climbed high mountains, and although blood oozed from her legs so that everyone could see it, she laughed and continued to follow the prince to the very tops; there they admired the clouds floating at their feet, like flocks of birds flying away to foreign lands.

When they stayed at home, the little mermaid went to the seashore at night, went down the marble stairs, put her feet, burning as if on fire, into the cold water and thought about her home and about the bottom of the sea.

One night her sisters emerged from the water hand in hand and sang a sad song; She nodded to them, they recognized her and told her how she had upset them all. Since then, they visited her every night, and once she saw in the distance even her old grandmother, who had not risen from the water for many, many years, and the sea king himself with a crown on his head; they stretched out their hands to her, but did not dare to swim to the ground as close as the sisters.

Day by day, the prince became more and more attached to the little mermaid, but he loved her only as a sweet, kind child, and it never occurred to him to make her his wife and queen, and yet she had to become his wife, otherwise she would not could acquire an immortal soul and was supposed, in the event of his marriage to another, to turn into sea foam.

“Do you love me more than anyone in the world”? - the little mermaid’s eyes seemed to ask while the prince hugged her and kissed her forehead.

Yes I love you! - said the prince. “You have a kind heart, you are more devoted to me than anyone else and you look like a young girl whom I saw once and probably will never see again!” I was sailing on a ship, the ship crashed, the waves threw me ashore near a wonderful temple where young girls serve God; the youngest of them found me on the shore and saved my life; I saw her only twice, but I could love her alone in the whole world! But you look like her and have almost driven her image out of my heart. It belongs to the holy temple, and my lucky star sent you to me; I will never part with you!

“Alas, he does not know that it was I who saved his life! - thought the little mermaid. “I carried him out of the sea waves to the shore and laid him in the grove where there was a temple, and I myself hid in the sea foam and watched to see if anyone would come to his aid. I saw this beautiful girl whom he loves more than me! - And the little mermaid sighed deeply, deeply, she could not cry. - But that girl belongs to the temple, will never appear in the world, and they will never meet! I’m next to him, I see him every day, I can look after him, love him, give my life for him!”

But then they began to say that the prince was marrying the lovely daughter of a neighboring king and therefore was equipping his magnificent ship for voyage. The prince will go to the neighboring king, as if to get acquainted with his country, but in fact to see the princess; A large retinue also travels with him. The little mermaid just shook her head and laughed at all these speeches: after all, she knew the prince’s thoughts better than anyone.

I have to go! - he told her. - I need to see the beautiful princess: my parents demand this, but they will not force me to marry her, I will never love her! She doesn't look like the beauty you look like. If I finally have to choose a bride for myself, I will most likely choose you, my dumb foundling with talking eyes!

And he kissed her pink lips, played with her long hair and laid his head on her chest, where her heart beat, yearning for human bliss and the immortal human soul.

You're not afraid of the sea, are you, my dumb baby? - he said when they were already standing on a magnificent ship, which was supposed to take them to the land of the neighboring king.

And the prince told her about storms and calms, about the different fish that live in the depths of the sea, and about the miracles that divers saw there, and she just smiled, listening to his stories: she knew better than anyone what was at the bottom of the sea .

On a clear moonlit night, when everyone except one helmsman was asleep, she sat down at the very side and began to look into the transparent waves; and then it seemed to her that she saw her father’s palace; The old grandmother stood on the tower and looked through the rippling streams of water at the keel of the ship. Then her sisters floated to the surface of the sea; they sadly looked at her and wrung their white hands, and she nodded her head to them, smiled and wanted to tell them how good she was here, but at that time the ship's cabin boy approached her, and the sisters dived into the water, but the cabin boy thought that it was white sea foam flashing in the waves.

The next morning the ship entered the harbor of the magnificent capital of the neighboring kingdom. And then the bells began to ring in the city, the sounds of horns began to be heard from the high towers, and regiments of soldiers with shining bayonets and waving banners began to gather in the squares. The festivities began, balls followed balls, but the princess was not there yet: she was brought up somewhere far away in a monastery, where she was sent to learn all the royal virtues. Finally she arrived.

The little mermaid looked at her greedily and had to admit that she had never seen a sweeter and more beautiful face. The skin on the princess’s face was so soft and transparent, and from behind long dark eyelashes a pair of dark blue gentle eyes smiled.

It's you! - said the prince. - You saved my life when I, half-dead, lay on the seashore!

And he pressed his blushing bride tightly to his heart.

Oh, I'm too happy! - he said to the little mermaid. - What I didn’t even dare to dream about has come true! You will rejoice at my happiness, you love me so much!

The little mermaid kissed his hand, and it seemed to her that her heart was about to burst with pain: his wedding should kill her, turn her into sea foam!

The bells in the churches rang, heralds rode through the streets, notifying the people of the princess's engagement. Fragrant incense flowed from the priests' censers; the bride and groom shook hands and received the bishop's blessing. The little mermaid, dressed in silk and gold, held the bride's train, but her ears did not hear the festive music, her eyes did not see the brilliant ceremony: she was thinking about her hour of death and what she was losing with her life.

That same evening, the bride and groom were supposed to sail to the prince's homeland; guns were firing, flags were fluttering, and a luxurious tent of gold and purple was spread on the deck of the ship; in the tent there was a wonderful bed for the newlyweds.

The sails inflated from the wind, the ship easily and without the slightest shake glided over the waves and rushed forward.

When it got dark, hundreds of colorful lanterns lit up on the ship, and the sailors began to dance merrily on the deck. The little mermaid remembered the holiday that she saw on the ship on the day when she first floated to the surface of the sea, and so she rushed in a fast aerial dance, like a swallow pursued by a kite. Everyone was delighted: she had never danced so wonderfully! Her tender legs were cut as if by knives, but she did not feel this pain - her heart was even more painful. Only one evening remained for her to spend with the one for whom she left her family and her father's house, gave her wonderful voice and daily endured endless torment, while he did not notice them. She still had only one night left to breathe the same air with him, to see the blue sea and starry sky, and then eternal night would come for her, without thoughts, without dreams. She was not given an immortal soul! Long after midnight, dancing and music continued on the ship, and the little mermaid laughed and danced with mortal torment in her heart; the prince kissed the beautiful bride, and she played with his black hair; Finally, hand in hand, they retired to their magnificent tent.

Everything on the ship became quiet; one navigator remained at the helm. The little mermaid leaned her white hands on the side and, turning to face the east, began to wait for the first ray of the sun, which, as she knew, was supposed to kill her. And suddenly she saw her sisters in the sea; they were pale, like her, but their long luxurious hair no longer fluttered in the wind: it was cut.

We gave our hair to the witch so that she could help us save you from death! She gave us this knife; see how sharp it is? Before the sun rises, you must thrust it into the heart of the prince, and when his warm blood splashes on your feet, they will grow together again into a fish tail, you will again become a mermaid, go down to us in the sea and live your three hundred years before you become salty sea foam. But hurry! Either he or you - one of you must die before the sun rises! Our old grandmother is so sad that she lost all her gray hair from grief, and we gave ours to the witch! Kill the prince and return to us! Hurry up - do you see a red stripe appearing in the sky? Soon the sun will rise and you will die! With these words, they took a deep, deep breath and plunged into the sea.

The little mermaid lifted the purple curtain of the tent and saw that the head of the lovely bride was resting on the prince’s chest. The little mermaid bent down and kissed his beautiful forehead, looked at the sky, where the morning dawn was flaring up, then looked at the sharp knife and again fixed her gaze on the prince, who at that time uttered the name of his bride in his sleep - she was the only one in his thoughts! - and the knife trembled in the hands of the little mermaid. But another minute - and she threw him into the waves, which turned red, as if stained with blood, in the place where he fell. Once again she looked at the prince with half-extinguished gaze, rushed from the ship into the sea and felt her body dissolve into foam.

The sun rose over the sea; its rays lovingly warmed the deathly cold sea foam, and the little mermaid did not feel death; she saw the clear sun and some transparent, wonderful creatures hovering above her in hundreds. She could see through them the white sails of the ship and the red clouds in the sky; their voice sounded like music, but so airy that no human ear could hear it, just as no human eye could see them. They did not have wings, and they flew through the air thanks to their own lightness and airiness. The little mermaid saw that she had the same body as theirs, and that she was becoming more and more separated from the sea foam.

Who am I going to? - she asked, rising into the air, and her voice sounded like the same wondrous airy music that no earthly sounds can convey.

To the daughters of the air! - the air creatures answered her. - The mermaid does not have an immortal soul, and she cannot acquire it except through the love of a person for her. Its eternal existence depends on someone else's will. The daughters of the air also do not have an immortal soul, but they themselves can acquire it for themselves through good deeds. We fly to hot countries, where people die from the sultry, plague-ridden air, and bring coolness. We spread the scent of flowers in the air and bring healing and joy to people. After three hundred years, during which we do all the good we can, we receive an immortal soul as a reward and can take part in the eternal bliss of man. You, poor little mermaid, with all your heart strove for the same thing as us, you loved and suffered, rise with us to the transcendental world; Now you yourself can find an immortal soul!

And the little mermaid stretched out her transparent hands to God’s sun and for the first time felt tears in her eyes.

During this time, everything on the ship began to move again, and the little mermaid saw how the prince and the bride were looking for her. They looked sadly at the wavering sea foam, as if they knew that the little mermaid had thrown herself into the waves. Invisible, the little mermaid kissed the beautiful bride on the forehead, smiled at the prince and rose with the other children of the air to the pink clouds floating in the sky.

In three hundred years we will enter God's kingdom! Maybe even earlier! - whispered one of the daughters of the air. “We fly invisible into people’s homes where there are children, and if we find there a kind, obedient child who pleases her parents and is worthy of their love, we smile, and the period of our trial is shortened by a whole year; If we meet an angry, disobedient child there, we cry bitterly, and each tear adds another day to the long period of our trial!

About the fairy tale

The Little Mermaid - a fairy tale about great and pure love

The world-famous fairy tale of the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen “The Little Mermaid” is actually called “Den Lille Havfrue”. If literally translated into Russian, you get “Little Sea Lady”. The story tells of a beautiful mermaid who was ready to sacrifice her life in order to find a human soul and the love of a handsome prince.

The children's book "The Little Mermaid" was first published in 1837. Since then, over the course of 2 centuries, it has been republished and filmed many times by directors from around the world. Children and adults know the Little Mermaid from Disney cartoons, but many films have been made about this immortal heroine, plays, musicals and ballets have been staged.

In Copenhagen there is a monument to the beautiful Little Mermaid. This is a real symbol of the city, which tourists from different parts of the world come to admire. The sea maiden was created by sculptor Edward Eriksen and presented to the world in August 1913. And the statue of the Little Mermaid was ordered by the owner of the brewery, Carl Jacobsen, who fell in love with the heroine after watching the ballet of the same name. The model for the beautiful statue was the ballerina Ellen Price, who performed the role of the Mermaid in a magnificent performance.

Briefly about the plot of the fairy tale

In one underwater country there lived a sea king and he had 6 beautiful daughters. Nobody knows for sure whether mermaids really existed, only on the pages of Andersen’s children’s book they lived happily ever after. The sea king doted on his tailed babies, and the girls' mother was replaced by a grandmother - a noble mermaid with 12 oysters on her tail. She told her granddaughters fairy tales about the wonderful world of people and mermaids dreamed of seeing it since childhood.

The girls really wanted to rise to the surface and one day watch the sunrise. But in the sea kingdom there was a law: until the age of 15, not a single mermaid could leave the underwater harbor. The youngest sister was in despair! She will have to wait a long time for her 15th birthday, but she really wants to get a glimpse of two-legged people.

The Little Mermaid’s sisters have already been to the surface and told real miracles. On earth there are cities sparkling with lights, flowers, trees, children's laughter and the barking of funny puppies. So beautiful that it’s just a sight for sore eyes! And finally, it was the baby’s turn to see everything with her own eyes. The girl put herself in order, rose above the waves and froze at the magnificent view. She liked the land and the setting sun, but her special attention was drawn to the ship on which the handsome prince celebrated his 16th birthday.

Soon night fell on the sea surface, and a strong wind suddenly blew up. The ship began to swing dangerously and hit the reefs, and the sailors fled for their lives. The mermaid only watched the prince, and when he fell overboard, she decided to save the boy at the cost of her life. Breaking his body against the rocks, the sea maiden carried the handsome man to the shore and left his almost lifeless body at the door of the monastery.

Time passed, the Little Mermaid lived in her underwater home and suffered from depressing melancholy. She fell in love with the handsome prince and dreamed of looking into his bottomless eyes again. The girl was ready to do anything just to be close to her beloved, and the terrible witch could help her with this!

What will the loving Mermaid agree to in order to find happiness with an earthly prince? For all! Readers will find out how this beautiful and slightly sad story ends on our page. Read the fairy tale aloud with your children, imagine living characters and mentally transport yourself to the scene of the events. Let the fairy tale help children develop their weapons, and reading it at night will allow them to see vivid magical dreams.

Far out in the sea, the water is blue, blue, like the petals of the most beautiful cornflowers, and transparent, transparent, like the purest glass, only it is very deep, so deep that no anchor rope is enough. Many bell towers must be placed one on top of the other, then only the top one will appear on the surface. There are underwater people living at the bottom.

Just don’t think that the bottom is bare, just white sand. No, unprecedented trees and flowers grow there with such flexible stems and leaves that they move, as if alive, at the slightest movement of water. And fish, large and small, scurry between the branches, just like the birds in the air above us. In the deepest place stands the palace of the sea king - its walls are made of coral, tall lancet windows are made of the purest amber, and the roof is entirely shells; they open and close, depending on the ebb or flow of the tide, and it is very beautiful, because each one contains shining pearls - just one would be a great decoration in the crown of any queen.

The king of the sea was widowed a long time ago, and his old mother, an intelligent woman, was in charge of his household, but she was painfully proud of her birth: she carried as many as twelve oysters on her tail, while other nobles were entitled to only six. For the rest, she deserved all praise, especially because she doted on her little granddaughters, the princesses. There were six of them, all very pretty, but the youngest was the cutest of all, with skin as clear and tender as a rose petal, with eyes as blue and deep as the sea. Only she, like the others, did not have legs, but instead had a tail, like a fish.

All day long the princesses played in the palace, in spacious chambers where fresh flowers grew from the walls. Large amber windows opened, and fish swam inside, just like swallows fly into our house when the windows are wide open, only the fish swam right up to the little princesses, took food from their hands and allowed themselves to be stroked.

In front of the palace there was a large garden, in which fiery red and dark blue trees grew, their fruits sparkled with gold, their flowers sparkled with hot fire, and their stems and leaves swayed incessantly. The ground was entirely fine sand, only bluish, like a sulfur flame. Everything down there had a special blue feel to it—you could almost think that you were standing not on the bottom of the sea, but in the heights of the air, and the sky was not only above your head, but also under your feet. In the calm, the sun was visible from the bottom; it seemed like a purple flower, from the bowl of which light was pouring.

Each princess had her own place in the garden, here they could dig and plant anything. One made herself a flower bed in the shape of a whale, another wanted her bed to look like a mermaid, and the youngest made herself a bed as round as the sun, and planted flowers on it as scarlet as the sun itself. This little mermaid was a strange child, quiet and thoughtful. The other sisters decorated themselves with various varieties that were found on sunken ships, but she only loved that the flowers were bright red, like the sun up there, and even a beautiful marble statue. He was a beautiful boy, carved from pure white stone and descended to the bottom of the sea after a shipwreck. Near the statue, the little mermaid planted a pink weeping willow; it grew luxuriantly and hung its branches over the statue to the blue sandy bottom, where a purple shadow was formed, swaying in harmony with the swaying of the branches, and from this it seemed as if the top and roots were caressing each other.

Most of all, the little mermaid loved to listen to stories about the world of people up there. The old grandmother had to tell her everything she knew about ships and cities, about people and animals. It seemed especially wonderful and surprising to the little mermaid that the flowers smelled on earth - not like here, on the seabed - the forests there are green, and the fish among the branches sing so loudly and beautifully that you can simply hear them. Grandmother called birds fish, otherwise her granddaughters would not have understood her: after all, they had never seen birds.

When you turn fifteen years old, - said your grandmother, - you will be allowed to float to the surface, sit on the rocks in the moonlight and look at the huge ships sailing past, at the forests and cities!

That year, the eldest princess just turned fifteen years old, but the sisters were the same age, and it turned out that only after five years the youngest would be able to rise from the bottom of the sea and see how we live here, above. But each promised to tell the others what she saw and what she liked most on the first day - grandmother’s stories were not enough for them, they wanted to know more.

None of the sisters were more drawn to the surface than the youngest, quiet, thoughtful little mermaid, who had to wait the longest. She spent night after night at the open window and kept looking up through the dark blue water in which fish splashed with their tails and fins. She saw the moon and the stars, and although they shone very palely, they seemed much larger through the water than they did to us. And if something like a dark cloud slid beneath them, she knew that it was either a whale swimming by, or a ship, and there were many people on it, and, of course, it never occurred to them that below them a pretty little mermaid was reaching out to the ship with her white hands.

And then the eldest princess turned fifteen years old, and she was allowed to float to the surface.

There were so many stories when she came back! Well, the best thing, she said, was to lie in the moonlight on the shallows, when the sea was calm, and look at the big city on the shore: like hundreds of stars, lights twinkled there, music was heard, the noise and hum of carriages and people, bell towers and spiers were visible , the bells were ringing. And precisely because she wasn’t allowed to go there, that’s where she was drawn most of all.

How eagerly the youngest sister listened to her stories! And then, in the evening, she stood at the open window and looked up through the dark blue water and thought about the big city, noisy and lively, and it even seemed to her that she could hear the ringing of bells.

A year later, the second sister was allowed to rise to the surface and swim anywhere. She emerged from the water just as the sun was setting, and decided that there was no more beautiful sight in the world. The sky was completely golden, she said, and the clouds - oh, she simply has no words to describe how beautiful they are! Red and purple, they floated across the sky, but even faster rushed towards the sun, like a long white veil, a flock of wild swans. She also swam towards the sun, but it sank into the water, and the pink glow on the sea and clouds went out.

A year later, the third sister rose to the surface. This one was bolder than everyone else and swam into a wide river that flowed into the sea. She saw there green hills with vineyards, and palaces and estates peeking out from the thicket of a wonderful forest. She heard the birds singing, and the sun was so hot that she had to dive into the water more than once to cool her burning face. In the bay she came across a whole flock of small human children, they were running naked and splashing in the water. She wanted to play with them, but they were frightened of her and ran away, and instead of them some black animal appeared - it was a dog, only she had never seen a dog before - and barked at her so terribly that she got scared and swam away back to sea. But she will never forget the wonderful forest, green hills and lovely children who can swim, although they do not have a fish tail.

The fourth sister was not so brave, she stayed in the open sea and believed that it was the best there: the sea can be seen around for many, many miles, the sky above is like a huge glass dome. She also saw ships, only from very far away, and they looked just like seagulls, and also playful dolphins were tumbling in the sea and whales were releasing water from their nostrils, so that it seemed as if hundreds of fountains were flowing around.

It was the turn of the fifth sister. Her birthday was in winter, and so she saw something that others could not see. The sea was completely green, she said, huge ice mountains floated everywhere, each like a pearl, only much higher than any bell tower built by people. They were of the most bizarre appearance and sparkled like diamonds. She sat down on the largest of them, the wind blew her long hair, and the sailors fearfully walked away from this place. By evening, the sky became cloudy, lightning flashed, thunder roared, the blackened sea heaved huge blocks of ice, illuminated by flashes of lightning. The sails were being removed on the ships, there was fear and horror all around, and she, as if nothing had happened, sailed on her icy mountain and watched as lightning struck the sea in blue zigzags.

And so it went: one of the sisters will swim to the surface for the first time, admire everything new and beautiful, and then, when an adult girl can go upstairs at any minute, everything becomes uninteresting to her and she strives to go home and a month later she says, that downstairs is the best place, only here you feel at home.

Often in the evenings, the five sisters would float to the surface, hugging each other. They all had wondrous voices, like no other person, and when a storm gathered, threatening the destruction of the ships, they sailed in front of the ships and sang so sweetly about how good it was on the seabed, persuading the sailors to go down without fear. Only the sailors could not make out the words, it seemed to them that it was just the noise of a storm, and they would not have seen any miracles at the bottom - when the ship sank, the people choked and ended up in the palace of the sea king already dead.

The youngest mermaid, when her sisters floated to the surface like that, was left alone and looked after them, and she had the time to cry, but mermaids are not given tears, and this made her even more bitter.

Oh, when will I be fifteen years old! - she said. - I know that I will really love that world and the people who live there!

Finally, she turned fifteen years old.

Well, they raised you too! - said the grandmother, the dowager queen.

Come here, I will decorate you like the rest of the sisters!

And she put a wreath of white lilies on the little mermaid’s head, only each petal was half a pearl, and then she put eight oysters on her tail as a sign of her high rank.

Yes it hurts! - said the little mermaid.

To be beautiful, you can be patient! - said the grandmother.

Oh, how willingly the little mermaid would throw off all this splendor and heavy wreath! Red flowers from her garden would suit her much better, but nothing can be done.

Farewell! - she said and easily and smoothly, like an air bubble, rose to the surface.

When she raised her head above the water, the sun had just set, but the clouds still glowed pink and gold, and clear evening stars were already shining in the pale red sky; the air was soft and fresh, the sea was calm. Nearby stood a three-masted ship with only one sail raised - there was not the slightest breeze. Everywhere there were sailors sitting on the rigging and yards. Music and singing could be heard from the deck, and when it became completely dark, the ship was illuminated with hundreds of multi-colored lanterns and the flags of all nations seemed to flash in the air. The little mermaid swam straight to the cabin window, and every time she was lifted by a wave, she could look inside through the transparent glass. There were many smartly dressed people there, but the most handsome of all was the young prince with large black eyes. He was probably no more than sixteen years old. It was his birthday, which is why there was so much fun on the ship. The sailors danced on the deck, and when the young prince came out there, hundreds of rockets soared into the sky, and it became as bright as day, so the little mermaid was completely frightened and dived into the water, but then she stuck her head out again, and it was as if all the stars were with the sky falls towards her into the sea. She had never seen such fireworks before. Huge suns spun like wheels, wonderful fiery fish soared into the blue heights, and all this was reflected in the quiet, clear water. It was so light on the ship itself that every rope could be distinguished, and even more so the people. Oh, how good the young prince was! He shook hands with everyone, smiled and laughed, and the music thundered and thundered in a wonderful night.

It was already late, but the little mermaid still could not take her eyes off the ship and the handsome prince. The multi-colored lanterns went out, the rockets no longer took off, the cannons no longer thundered, but there was a hum and growl in the depths of the sea. The little mermaid swayed on the waves and kept looking into the cabin, and the ship began to pick up speed, the sails unfurled one after another, the waves rose higher and higher, clouds gathered, lightning flashed in the distance.

A storm was approaching, the sailors began to remove the sails. The ship, rocking, flew across the raging sea, the waves rose in huge black mountains, trying to roll over the mast, and the ship dived like a swan between the tall ramparts and again rose to the crest of the piling wave. It all seemed like a pleasant walk to the little mermaid, but not to the sailors. The ship groaned and crackled; Then the thick plating of the sides gave way under the blows of the waves, the waves swept over the ship, the mast broke in half like a reed, the ship lay on its side, and water poured into the hold. At this point the little mermaid realized the danger that threatened people - she herself had to dodge logs and debris rushing along the waves. For a minute it became dark, almost like an eye-hole, but then lightning flashed, and the little mermaid again saw the people on the ship.

Everyone saved themselves as best they could. She looked for the prince and saw him fall into the water as the ship fell apart. At first she was very happy - after all, he would now fall to her bottom, but then she remembered that people cannot live in water and he would only sail to her father’s palace dead. No, no, he must not die! And she swam between the logs and boards, not at all thinking that they could crush her. She dived deeply, then flew up onto the wave and finally swam to the young prince. He was almost completely exhausted and could not swim on the stormy sea. His arms and legs refused to serve him, his beautiful eyes closed, and he would have died if the little mermaid had not come to his aid. She lifted his head above the water and let the waves carry them both wherever they wanted...

By morning the storm had subsided. There wasn't even a sliver left of the ship. The sun sparkled over the water again and seemed to return color to the prince’s cheeks, but his eyes were still closed.

The little mermaid brushed the hair off the prince’s forehead, kissed his high, beautiful forehead, and it seemed to her that he looked like the marble boy standing in her garden. She kissed him again and wished him to live.

Finally she saw land, high blue mountains, on the tops of which the snow was white, like a flock of swans. Near the very shore there were wonderful green forests, and in front of them stood either a church or a monastery - she couldn’t say for sure, she only knew that it was a building. There were orange and lemon trees in the garden, and tall palm trees near the gate. The sea jutted out into the shore here as a small bay, quiet but very deep, with a cliff near which the sea had washed up fine white sand. It was here that the little mermaid sailed with the prince and laid him on the sand, so that his head was higher in the sun.

Then the bells rang in the tall white building, and a whole crowd of young girls poured into the garden. The little mermaid swam away behind the high stones sticking out of the water, covered her hair and chest with sea foam, so that now no one would distinguish her face, and began to wait to see if anyone would come to the aid of the poor prince.

Soon a young girl approached the cliff and at first she was very scared, but she immediately gathered her courage and called other people, and the little mermaid saw that the prince had come to life and smiled at everyone who was near him. But he didn’t smile at her, he didn’t even know that she saved his life. The little mermaid felt sad, and when the prince was taken to a large building, she sadly dived into the water and swam home.

Now she became even quieter, even more thoughtful than before. The sisters asked her what she saw for the first time on the surface of the sea, but she did not tell them anything.

Often in the mornings and evenings she sailed to the place where she had left the prince. She saw how the fruits ripened in the garden, how they were then collected, she saw how the snow melted on the high mountains, but she never saw the prince again and returned home more and more sad each time. Her only joy was sitting in her garden, her arms wrapped around a beautiful marble statue that looked like a prince, but she no longer looked after her flowers. They went wild and grew along the paths, intertwined stems and leaves with tree branches, and it became completely dark in the garden.

Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore and told one of the sisters about everything. The rest of the sisters recognized her, but no one else, except perhaps two or three more mermaids and their closest friends. One of them also knew about the prince, saw the celebration on the ship and even knew where the prince was from and where his kingdom was.

Let's swim together, sister! - the sisters said to the little mermaid and, hugging, rose to the surface of the sea near the place where the prince’s palace stood.

The palace was made of light yellow shiny stone, with large marble staircases; one of them went straight down to the sea. Magnificent gilded domes rose above the roof, and between the columns surrounding the building stood marble statues, just like living people. Through the high mirrored windows luxurious chambers were visible; Expensive silk curtains hung everywhere, carpets were laid out, and the walls were decorated with large paintings. A sight for sore eyes, and that’s all! In the middle of the largest hall a large fountain gurgled; jets of water beat high, high under the glass dome of the ceiling, through which the sun illuminated the water and the strange plants growing along the edges of the pool.

Now the little mermaid knew where the prince lived, and began to swim to the palace almost every evening or every night. None of the sisters dared to swim so close to the land, but she even swam into the narrow channel, which passed just under the marble balcony, which cast a long shadow on the water. Here she stopped and looked at the young prince for a long time, but he thought that he was walking alone in the light of the moon.

Many times she saw him riding with musicians on his elegant boat, decorated with waving flags. The little mermaid looked out from the green reeds, and if people sometimes noticed how her long silver-white veil fluttered in the wind, it seemed to them that it was a swan splashing its wings.

Many times she heard fishermen talking about the prince as they caught fish at night with a torch; they told a lot of good things about him, and the little mermaid was glad that she saved his life when he, half-dead, was carried along the waves; she remembered how his head rested on her chest and how tenderly she kissed him then. But he didn’t know anything about her, he couldn’t even dream of her!

The little mermaid began to love people more and more, she was drawn more and more to them; their earthly world seemed to her much larger than her underwater one; After all, they could sail across the sea on their ships, climb high mountains above the clouds, and their countries with forests and fields spread out so widely that you couldn’t even see them with your eyes! The little mermaid really wanted to know more about people, about their lives, but the sisters could not answer all her questions, and she turned to her grandmother: the old woman knew well the “high society,” as she rightly called the land that lay above the sea.

If people don’t drown, asked the little mermaid, then they live forever, don’t die, like us?

What are you doing! - answered the old woman. - They also die, their life is even shorter than ours. We live for three hundred years; only when we cease to be, we are not buried, we don’t even have graves, we simply turn into sea foam.

“I would give all my hundreds of years for one day of human life,” said the little mermaid.

Nonsense! There is no need to even think about it! - said the old woman. - We live much better here than people on earth!

This means that I too will die, become sea foam, will no longer hear the music of the waves, will not see either wonderful flowers or the red sun! Is there really no way I can live among people?

You can, - said the grandmother, - just let one of the people love you so much that you become dearer to him than his father and mother, let him give himself to you with all his heart and all his thoughts, make you his wife and swear eternal fidelity. But this will never happen! After all, what we consider beautiful - your fish tail, for example - people find ugly. They don't know anything about beauty; in their opinion, in order to be beautiful, you must certainly have two clumsy supports, or legs, as they call them.

The little mermaid took a deep breath and sadly looked at her fish tail.

Let's live - don't bother! - said the old woman. - Let's have fun to our heart's content, three hundred years is a long time. We're having a ball at the palace tonight!

This was a magnificence that you will not see on earth! The walls and ceiling of the dance hall were made of thick but transparent glass; along the walls lay hundreds of huge purple and grass-green shells with blue lights in the middle; These lights brightly illuminated the entire hall, and through the glass walls - the sea around. One could see schools of large and small fish swimming up to the walls, and their scales shimmering with gold, silver, and purple.

In the middle of the hall, water ran in a wide stream, and mermaids and mermaids danced in it to their wonderful singing. People don't have such beautiful voices. The little mermaid sang the best, and everyone clapped her hands. For a moment she felt cheerful at the thought that no one anywhere, neither in the sea nor on land, had such a wonderful voice as hers; but then she again began to think about the above-water world, about the handsome prince, and she felt sad. She slipped out of the palace unnoticed and, while they were singing and having fun, sat sadly in her garden. Suddenly the sounds of horns came from above, and she thought: “Here he is riding a boat again!” How I love him! More than father and mother! I belong to him with all my heart, with all my thoughts, I would willingly give him the happiness of my whole life! I would do anything - just to be with him. While the sisters are dancing in their father's palace, I'll swim to the sea witch. I was always afraid of her, but maybe she will advise something or help me in some way!”

And the little mermaid swam from her garden to the stormy whirlpools behind which the witch lived. She had never sailed this road before; neither flowers nor even grass grew here - there was only bare gray sand all around; The water behind him bubbled and rustled, as if under a mill wheel, and carried with it into the abyss everything it encountered on its way. It was precisely between such seething whirlpools that the little mermaid had to swim in order to get to the land where the witch ruled. Further the path lay through hot bubbling silt; the witch called this place her peat bog. And there it was just a stone’s throw away from her home, surrounded by a strange forest: instead of trees and bushes, polyps grew in it - half-animals, half-plants, similar to hundred-headed snakes that grew straight out of the sand; their branches were like long slimy arms with fingers writhing like worms; The polyps did not stop moving for a minute from the root to the very top and with flexible fingers grabbed everything they came across and never let go. The little mermaid stopped in fright, her heart beat with fear, she was ready to return, but she remembered the prince and gathered her courage: she tied her long hair tightly around her head so that the polyps would not grab them, crossed her arms over her chest and, like a fish, swam between the disgusting polyps that reached out to her with their writhing hands. She saw how tightly, as if with iron pincers, they held with their fingers everything that they managed to grab: the white skeletons of drowned people, ship rudders, boxes, animal bones, even one little mermaid. The polyps caught and strangled her. This was the worst thing!

But then she found herself in a slippery forest clearing, where large, fat water snakes were tumbling, showing a nasty yellowish belly. In the middle of the clearing a house was built from white human bones; The sea witch herself sat right there and fed the toad from her mouth, like people feed sugar to little canaries. She called the disgusting snakes her chicks and allowed them to crawl across her large, spongy chest.

I know, I know why you came! - the sea witch said to the little mermaid. - You’re up to nonsense, but I’ll still help you - to your misfortune, my beauty! You want to get rid of your tail and get two supports instead so you can walk like people. Do you want the young prince to love you?

And the witch laughed so loudly and disgustingly that both the toad and the snakes fell off her and splashed onto the sand.

Okay, you came at the right time! - the witch continued. “If you had come tomorrow morning, it would have been late, and I wouldn’t have been able to help you until next year.” I will make you a drink, you will take it, swim with it to the shore before sunrise, sit there and drink every drop; then your tail will fork and turn into a pair of slender, as people would say, legs. But it will hurt you as if you were pierced with a sharp sword. But everyone who sees you will say that they have never met such a lovely girl! You will maintain your smooth gait - no dancer can compare with you; but remember: you will walk as if on sharp knives, and your feet will bleed. Will you endure all this? Then I will help you.

Remember,” said the witch, “once you take human form, you will never become a mermaid again!” You will not see the bottom of the sea, nor your father’s house, nor your sisters! And if the prince does not love you so much that he forgets both father and mother for your sake, does not give himself to you with all his heart and does not make you his wife, you will perish; from the very first dawn after his marriage to another, your heart will break into pieces and you will become foam of the sea.

Let be! - said the little mermaid and turned pale as death.

“And you must pay me for my help,” said the witch. - And I won’t take it cheap! You have a wonderful voice, and you think to charm the prince with it, but you must give this voice to me. I will take the best you have for my priceless drink: after all, I must mix my own blood into the drink so that it becomes as sharp as a sword blade.

Your lovely face, your smooth gait and your talking eyes - this is enough to conquer the human heart! Well, don’t be afraid: stick out your tongue, and I’ll cut it off in payment for the magic drink!

Fine! - said the little mermaid, and the witch put a cauldron on the fire to brew a drink.

Cleanliness is the best beauty! - she said and wiped the cauldron with a bunch of live snakes.

Then she scratched her chest; Black blood dripped into the cauldron, and soon clouds of steam began to rise, taking on such bizarre shapes that it was simply terrifying. The witch constantly added new and new drugs to the cauldron, and when the drink began to boil, it gurgled as if a crocodile was crying. Finally the drink was ready; it looked like the clearest spring water.

Take it! - said the witch, giving the little mermaid the drink.

Then she cut out her tongue, and the little mermaid became mute - she could no longer sing or speak.

The polyps will grab you when you swim back,” the witch admonished, “sprinkle a drop of drink on them, and their hands and fingers will fly into a thousand pieces.”

But the little mermaid did not have to do this - the polyps turned away in horror at the mere sight of the drink, sparkling in her hands like a bright star. She quickly swam through the forest, passed the swamp and seething whirlpools.

Here is my father's palace; The lights in the dance hall are off, everyone is sleeping. The little mermaid did not dare to enter there anymore - after all, she was mute and was going to leave her father's house forever. Her heart was ready to burst from melancholy. She slipped into the garden, took a flower from each sister's garden, sent thousands of air kisses to her family, and rose to the dark blue surface of the sea.

The sun had not yet risen when she saw the prince's palace in front of her and sat down on the wide marble staircase. The moon illuminated her with its wonderful blue radiance. The little mermaid drank a scalding drink, and it seemed to her as if she had been pierced by a double-edged sword; she lost consciousness and fell dead. When she woke up, the sun was already shining over the sea: she felt a burning pain throughout her body. A handsome prince stood in front of her and looked at her in surprise. She looked down and saw that the fish tail had disappeared, and in its place she had two small white legs. But she was completely naked and therefore wrapped herself in her long, thick hair. The prince asked who she was and how she got here, but she only looked at him meekly and sadly with her dark blue eyes: she couldn’t speak. Then he took her hand and led her to the palace. The witch said the truth: every step caused the little mermaid such pain, as if she were walking on sharp knives and needles; but she patiently endured the pain and walked hand in hand with the prince easily, as if walking on air. The prince and his retinue only marveled at her wonderful, smooth gait.

The little mermaid was dressed in silk and muslin, and she became the first beauty at court, but she remained mute and could neither sing nor speak. One day, slave girls dressed in silk and gold were called to the prince and his royal parents. They began to sing, one of them sang especially well, and the prince clapped his hands and smiled at her. The little mermaid felt sad: once upon a time she could sing, and much better! “Oh, if only he knew that I had given up my voice forever, just to be near him!”

Then the girls began to dance to the sounds of the most wonderful music, and then the little mermaid raised her beautiful white hands, stood on tiptoe and rushed in a light, airy dance; No one has danced like that before! Every movement emphasized her beauty, and her eyes spoke more to the heart than the singing of slaves.

Everyone was delighted, especially the prince; he called the little mermaid his little foundling, and the little mermaid danced and danced, although every time her feet touched the ground, she felt as much pain as if she were walking on sharp knives. The prince said that she should always be near him, and she was allowed to sleep on a velvet pillow in front of the door of his room.

He ordered a man's suit to be sewn for her so that she could accompany him on horseback rides. They drove through fragrant forests, where birds sang in the fresh leaves, and green branches touched her shoulders. They climbed high mountains, and although blood oozed from her legs and everyone saw it, she laughed and continued to follow the prince to the very tops; there they admired the clouds floating at their feet, like flocks of birds flying to foreign lands.

And at night in the prince’s palace, when everyone was asleep, the little mermaid went down the marble stairs, put her feet, burning as if on fire, into the cold water and thought about her home and about the bottom of the sea.

One night her sisters emerged from the water hand in hand and sang a sad song; She nodded to them, they recognized her and told her how she had upset them all. Since then, they visited her every night, and once she even saw in the distance her old grandmother, who had not risen from pain for many years, and the king of the sea himself with a crown on his head; they stretched out their hands to her, but did not dare to swim to the ground as close as the sisters.

Day by day, the prince became more and more attached to the little mermaid, but he loved her only as a sweet, kind child, and it never occurred to him to make her his wife and princess, and yet she had to become his wife, otherwise, if If he gave his heart and hand to another, she would become sea foam.

“Do you love me more than anyone in the world?” - the little mermaid’s eyes seemed to ask when the prince hugged her and kissed her forehead.

Yes I love you! - said the prince. “You have a kind heart, you are more devoted to me than anyone else, and you look like a young girl whom I saw once and, probably, will never see again!” I was sailing on a ship, the ship sank, the waves threw me ashore near some temple where young girls serve God; the youngest of them found me on the shore and saved my life; I saw her only twice, but she was the only one in the whole world I could love! You look like her and have almost driven her image out of my heart. It belongs to the holy temple, and my lucky star sent you to me; I will never part with you!

"Alas! He doesn't know that it was I who saved his life! - thought the little mermaid. “I carried him out of the sea waves to the shore and laid him in a grove, near the temple, and I myself hid in the sea foam and watched to see if anyone would come to his aid. I saw this beautiful girl whom he loves more than me! - And the little mermaid sighed deeply, she could not cry. - But that girl belongs to the temple, will never return to the world, and they will never meet! I’m next to him, I see him every day, I can look after him, love him, give my life for him!”

But then they began to say that the prince was marrying the lovely daughter of a neighboring king and therefore was equipping his magnificent ship to sail. The prince will go to the neighboring king, as if to get acquainted with his country, but in fact to see the princess; a large retinue travels with him. The little mermaid just shook her head and laughed at all these speeches - after all, she knew the prince’s thoughts better than anyone.

I have to go! - he told her. - I need to see the beautiful princess; my parents demand this, but they will not force me to marry her, and I will never love her! She doesn't look like the beauty you look like. If I finally have to choose a bride for myself, I’d rather choose you, my dumb foundling with talking eyes!

And he kissed her pink lips, played with her long hair and laid his head on her chest, where her heart beat, yearning for human happiness and love.

You're not afraid of the sea, are you, my dumb baby? - he said when they were already standing on the ship that was supposed to take them to the country of the neighboring king.

And the prince began to tell her about storms and calms, about the strange fish that live in the abyss, and about what the divers saw there, and she just smiled, listening to his stories - she knew better than anyone what was at the bottom sea

On a clear moonlit night, when everyone except the helmsman was asleep, she sat down at the very side and began to look into the transparent waves, and it seemed to her that she saw her father’s palace; An old grandmother in a silver crown stood on a tower and looked through the rippling streams of water at the keel of the ship. Then her sisters floated to the surface of the sea: they sadly looked at her and extended their white hands to her, and she nodded her head to them, smiled and wanted to tell them how good she felt here, but then the ship’s cabin boy approached her, and the sisters dived into the water, and the cabin boy thought that it was white sea foam flashing in the waves.

The next morning the ship entered the harbor of the elegant capital of the neighboring kingdom. The bells rang in the city, the sounds of horns were heard from the high towers; regiments of soldiers with shining bayonets and waving banners stood in the squares. The festivities began, balls followed balls, but the princess was not there yet - she was brought up somewhere far away in a monastery, where she was sent to learn all the royal virtues. Finally she arrived.

The little mermaid looked at her greedily and could not help but admit that she had never seen a sweeter and more beautiful face. The skin on the princess’s face was so soft and transparent, and from behind her long dark eyelashes her meek blue eyes smiled.

It's you! - said the prince. - You saved my life when I was lying half-dead on the seashore!

And he pressed his blushing bride tightly to his heart.

Ah, I'm so happy! - he said to the little mermaid. - What I didn’t even dare to dream about has come true! You will rejoice at my happiness, you love me so much.

The little mermaid kissed his hand, and her heart seemed about to burst from pain: his wedding was supposed to kill her, turn her into sea foam.

That same evening the prince and his young wife were to sail to the prince's homeland; guns were firing, flags were fluttering, a tent of gold and purple, covered with soft pillows, was spread on the deck; They were supposed to spend this quiet, cool night in the tent.

The sails inflated from the wind, the ship easily and smoothly glided over the waves and rushed into the open sea.

As soon as it got dark, colorful lanterns lit up on the ship, and the sailors began dancing merrily on the deck. The little mermaid remembered how she first rose to the surface of the sea and saw the same fun on the ship. And so she flew in a fast airy dance, like a swallow pursued by a kite. Everyone was delighted: she had never danced so wonderfully! Her tender legs were cut as if by knives, but she did not feel this pain - her heart was even more painful. She knew that she had only one evening left to spend with the one for whom she left her family and her father’s house, gave her wonderful voice and endured unbearable torment, which the prince had no idea about. She had only one night left to breathe the same air with him, to see the blue sea and starry sky, and then eternal night would come for her, without thoughts, without dreams. Long after midnight, dancing and music continued on the ship, and the little mermaid laughed and danced with mortal torment in her heart; the prince kissed his beautiful wife, and she played with his black curls; Finally, hand in hand, they retired to their magnificent tent.

Everything on the ship was silent, only the helmsman remained at the helm. The little mermaid leaned on the railing and, turning her face to the east, began to wait for the first ray of the sun, which, she knew, was supposed to kill her. And suddenly she saw her sisters rise from the sea; they were pale, like her, but their long luxurious hair no longer fluttered in the wind - it was cut off.

We gave our hair to the witch so that she could help us save you from death! And she gave us this knife - see how sharp it is? Before the sun rises, you must thrust it into the heart of the prince, and when his warm blood splashes on your feet, they will grow together again into a fish tail and you will again become a mermaid, go down to our sea and live your three hundred years before you turn into salty sea foam. But hurry! Either he or you - one of you must die before the sun rises. Kill the prince and return to us! Hurry up. Do you see a red stripe appearing in the sky? Soon the sun will rise and you will die!

With these words they took a deep breath and plunged into the sea.

The little mermaid lifted the purple curtain of the tent and saw that the young wife’s head was resting on the prince’s chest. The little mermaid bent down and kissed his beautiful forehead, looked at the sky where the morning dawn was flaring up, then looked at the sharp knife and again fixed her gaze on the prince, who in his sleep uttered the name of his wife - she was the only one in his thoughts!

And the knife trembled in the hands of the little mermaid. Another minute - and she threw him into the waves, and they turned red, as if drops of blood appeared from the sea where he fell.

For the last time she looked at the prince with half-extinguished gaze, rushed from the ship into the sea and felt her body dissolve into foam.

The sun rose over the sea; its rays lovingly warmed the deathly cold sea foam, and the little mermaid did not feel death; she saw the clear sun and some transparent, wonderful creatures hovering above her in hundreds. She saw through them the white sails of the ship and the red clouds in the sky; their voice sounded like music, but so sublime that the human ear would not have heard it, just as human eyes could not see them. They had no wings, but they flew in the air, light and transparent. The little mermaid noticed that she too became the same after breaking away from the sea foam.

Who am I going to? - she asked, rising in the air, and her voice sounded like the same wondrous music.

To the daughters of the air! - the air creatures answered her. We fly everywhere and try to bring joy to everyone. In hot countries, where people die from the sultry, plague-ridden air, we bring coolness. We spread the fragrance of flowers in the air and bring healing and joy to people... Fly with us to the transcendental world! There you will find love and happiness that you have not found on earth.

And the little mermaid stretched out her transparent hands to the sun and for the first time felt tears in her eyes.

During this time, everything on the ship began to move again, and the little mermaid saw the prince and his young wife looking for her. They looked sadly at the wavering sea foam, as if they knew that the little mermaid had thrown herself into the waves. Invisible, the little mermaid kissed the beauty on the forehead, smiled at the prince and ascended along with other children of the air to the pink clouds floating in the sky.