Ariel and others

Usage examples of mermaids.

Maybe Anastasia would mend enough, in a few days, to fly them to land, one at a time, while the mermaids were showing Carole how to scout for ships or taking her on tours of their past conquests, wrecks sunk far beneath the waves.

Carole, she was, with one part of her mind at least, not surprised to see mermaids waiting for her instead of her mother.

Since the mermaids had stopped singing, Carole was able to swim to shore and greet them while standing on her own two feet.

If Lorelei thought Carole could swim well enough to protect herself against mermaids, then that was good enough for Carole.

Somehow she knew from that song that schooling was something marvelous, and she felt she must learn what the mermaids wanted her to know.

All she had to do was mimic the mermaids and submerge herself to feel comfortable.

To demonstrate she puckered up and whistled a jig that made the mermaids first pat their hands and slap their tails against the rocks, then dive into the sea and frolic like porpoises, who were diving and frolicking a little further out.

Both mermaids managed to hoist themselves onto the rocks, though they were still hand-patting and tail-bobbling most alarmingly, while molting iridescent scales onto the rocks as they writhed rhythmically against them.

Cordelia was forced to capitulate and after that, for a time, the mermaids ignored Bronwyn and Jack, though they were rather more severe than before with Carole, insisting that she sing instead of whistle, if she were to be a proper mermaid, and endeavor to learn the bubbling language in which the mermaids spoke to Ollie and the other sea creatures, and master particular songs of calling in those languages.

It protected you from the mermaid magic and let us stop dancing while Carole was still jigging the mermaids about.

She was pretty sure the stories told about mermaids by other people were nothing but jealous lies because the sirens were so beautiful and fascinating.

They met Cordelia just before dawn, the leagues between her and them having been easily spanned by the rhythmic swimming stroke in which the mermaids had tutored Carole.

While the ship was still a tiny dot in the distance, the mermaids began casting a mist ahead of them.

Feet scuffled back and forth in a non-musical, routine way, the mermaids continued to shriek apparently unheeded except for the odd guffaw here and there.

The mermaids had stopped shrieking and Carole wondered for a moment if they were dead.