The Mermaid’s Quest

The Mer City Scallop swam up to the gate, followed by Sarah and Lily. When the guards saw Scallop, she motioned to Sarah and Lily and spoke something silently to them. Two of the mermen with tridents put the shell horns to their lips and blew four short blasts, a signal perhaps to King Triton that his invited guests had arrived. One of the guards called out to the crowd at the gate, “Everybody move!” and gestured with his hands to separate, and people quickly made a lane for them to enter. They passed a line of merpeople of all shapes and sizes, as well as various carts being drawn by fish or other creatures. Scallop, Sarah, and Lily passed up through the middle and past the gate until they stood within the city walls. It was like some magical dream Lily had when watching her fish tank at home. She used to pretend that her fish were in the ocean and that the castle at the bottom was an underwater kingdom. She used to imagine that they all lived in a city under a log or in the plants, where they raised their children and swam and played. When they swam in schools, she used to believe they were really in school, swimming around learning lessons about the ocean. When they swam up to the surface, she pretended they were coming up to talk to her, and she sometimes even talked back. Sometimes when she swam she used to pretend she was a fish doing the same things. Now, here all her dreams came true, except that instead of fish they were mermaids and mermen. The mer city stretched before them. There were tall spires of coral in the distance like skyscrapers. Closer, there were rough apartments built into coral or stone walls, with small huts of wound driftwood twigs and houses made of large shells or sand bricks around the edge. It was relatively flat here, and they were fairly close to the surface – certainly no more than a hundred yards – and they could clearly see the sun above them, seemingly just above the surface of the water. This made the entire city a very bright place, even when clouds passed over the sun, for the water was as clear as in a pool, and the crystalline nature of the surface magnified and intensified the sunlight as it sparkled throughout the deep. Although there was a slight blue tint, as there was everywhere they went in the undersea world, here it was near to the bright yellow or orange of the outside world. It really made them feel close to home and a little lighter at heart than the dark depths they would later see. Although they were on the bottom of the sea, and sand was everywhere, it was by no means a desert. In some places, seaweed or underwater lichen grew instead of grass, with larger plants, anemones, coral, or sea urchins serving as trees and bushes. There were plants, fungi, algae, and other sea creatures with flowers and thorns, leaves and branches. There were as many colors or even more than you would see in a flower bed at home. Some plants were obviously growing wild on the sides of the thoroughfare; others were part of sculpted gardens or were in rows like cultivated vegetables, in front of or behind the various houses. Smooth stones and ground shells formed the street, which went nearly straight through the middle of the town with avenues running off to the side every so often. Along the streets flowed every manner of conveyance they had ever considered at the bottom of the sea. Mermen and mermaids swam along the streets as though walking, but there were often two or three levels of traffic, with some swimming pretty near the bottom, some swimming ten or fifteen feet over their heads in a different direction, and some swimming ten or fifteen feet above that. There were some who swam far above, but no one, Sarah noticed, swam directly out of the city without going through the gate. She would later learn that some magic protected the city and prevented anyone from entering or leaving from above. In addition to those merpeople on ‘foot,’ there were some riding on sea horses, some on horses with fins instead of hoofs – the hippocampi – and some on eels, rays, or large fish. There were some driving carts pulled by seahorses or manta rays. Most seemed to be very busy, taking goods to market or traveling to and from jobs. About half seemed to be soldiers, riding on hippocampi or walking, all armed with tridents. There were also undersea chariots of great wealth, made of shell, coral, and gold, which carried the wealthier merpeople to their homes. The merpeople themselves were as different as one person to another. There were some with blond hair, some with brown, some with black, and some with red. Some had dark-colored skin, some light. Although they did not have clothes to separate them – for no one needed clothes in that warm water, and they would hardly last unless made of some water-resistant material – some did wear different hats or jewelry or bikini tops and vests made of shells or other materials. They also had different-colored tails. Some were plain green, blue, or gray; some were white with red splashes or red with white splashes. Some had stripes of fluorescent blue or red. It was really amazing the amount of variety in their colors. Sarah and Lily had never before considered that it would be so, since movies always depicted mermaids as being more or less the same.