I got a book of traditional Breton fairy tales from the library, and this evening I sat in the sun with the book, some bread, a wedge of cheese, and a can of tuna. It was good fairy tale reading circumstances.
Once there was a girl who was so beautiful that people in her village whispered she must have been fathered by a merperson. She didn't quite believe it, but it is always nice to think of yourself as somehow different from all the rest.
She would sit and stare into the sea, wishing to see down to the depths to the marvelous country of the merpeople. One day she uttered her wish out loud, which is always a dangerous thing to do. The king of the merpeople showed up on the beach right then and there and absconded with her. She was kind of freaked out, but then she met the prince. They both fell in love with each other at once, but the king was not happy with that. He had stolen Mona (that was her name) to be a servant, not a daughter-in-law.
He fixed his son up with a nice mergirl and practically dragged them off to get married. In the meantime, he gave Mona some impossible tasks that she had to complete or he would have an excuse to kill her. Why the king of the merpeople didn't have the juristiction to off a land-lubber with no questions asked is beyond me, but anyway. The prince managed to sneak away from his own wedding, found Mona in tears and despair, and used magic to help her complete her impossible tasks. Again, the prince's utter refusal to imagine how else he could use his magic to be with his true love is mind-boggling. But this is a fairy tale. There are rules.
The king was not happy at finding the impossible tasks completed; he told Mona that, this time, she had to stand in the corridor outside of the prince's honeymoon suite (that is gastly torture, in and of itself) and hold a lit candle. If the candle ever blew out, he would cut her head off. The prince knows something is up, and he sends his wife out to tell Mona to go get something from the kitchens. Mona gives the bride the candle, of course, and the bride (a truly innocent party, I might add) is the one holding the stupid thing when it blows out. And, you guessed it, she gets decapitated.
The prince freaks out at his dad for killing his wife and then grabs Mona's hand, and they head off to the church to get married (scant hours after his first marriage, imagine that! Fairy tales aren't very sensitive).
They live happily ever after.
But wait! There is a second act! And this is the part that tugs on a part of me.
One day, after years of married bliss and growing to love her merprince more and more each day, Mona asks him if she can go home for a visit, the first she's had since she disappeared under the waves years before. He is sad but lets her go, telling her not to forget him. She promises, but as she starts her journey, she meets the bitter old king (remember him?) who tells her that she had better not kiss any male people, or she won't be able to return to the sea.
She says she won't, but when she is greeted joyfully and incredulously by her parents who thought she was dead, she kisses her dad. And in that moment, she forgets everything about her life in the land of the merpeople and about her true love, waiting for her in the deep.
She picks her life up where she left it. She had grown more and more beautiful living with the merpeople (which is saying a lot, since she was beautiful to begin with), and young men come from far and wide to seek her hand. But she is not interested in any of them. She can't really say why, can't put a finger on her reasons, but she isn't drawn to them. Her heart doesn't seem to care enough. So she remains single, living and working with her parents.
Then one night a huge storm rises. It wakes her up in the middle of the night and, for some reason, the sound of the wind draws her outside. She stands on the beach, soaked to the skin with the driving rain, and in the gale she hears the cries of the mourning merprince. Suddenly it all comes back to her, her life and her love under the sea. The joy of remembering and the sorrow of time lost flood through her. There is only one life she wants, and it is far below. She throws herself into the waves and is never seen again.
The villagers say she went mad and drowned herself, but her parents know better. Every once in a while, they take long walks along the cliffs, looking down at the sea. They miss their daughter but they are happy to know that she is happy.
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