Carolyn Turgeon - Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale

Magical and mysterious, Mermaids twist on a classic tale is as ingenious as it is delightful.

C AROLINE L EAVITT , author of Pictures of You

There is a part of every reader that longs to return to the days of reading fairy tales and myths, when imagination had no limits and stories were spellbinding. Carolyn Turgeons Mermaid evokes just that feeling. She is one of my new favorite writers.

J O -A NN M APSON , author of Solomons Oak and the Bad Girl Creek trilogy

This Mermaid is resplendent with shimmering details, the dark and thrilling story behind that comforting childhood memory. At once fresh and familiar, heartbreaking and full of hope, this dark retelling of Hans Christian Andersens The Little Mermaid is like a gorgeous dream remembered.

J EANINE C UMMINS , bestselling author of A Rip in Heaven and The Outside Boy

As moody and atmospheric as a Gothic novel, Mermaid is a heartfelt portrait of young love and all its sweet complications. Sweeping and lush, an inspired and imaginative reimagining of my favorite fairy tale.

T IMOTHY S CHAFFERT , author of The Coffins of Little Hope

Turgeons ability to breathe new life into the old bones of a beloved story we all think we know is unparalleled.

A NTON S TROUT , author of the Simon Canderous series

A LSO BY C AROLYN T URGEON

Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story
Rain Village

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Carolyn Turgeon

All rights reserved.
Published in the United S All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com

Broadway Paperbacks and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, for permission to reprint an excerpt from Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks from Extravagaria by Pablo Neruda, translated by Alastair Reid. Translation copyright 1974 by Alastair Reid.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Turgeon, Carolyn.
Mermaid: a novel / by Carolyn Turgeon.1st trade paperback ed.
p. cm.
1. MermaidsFiction. 2. PrincessesFiction. I. Title.
PS3620.U75M47 2011
813.6dc22 2010017038

eISBN: 978-0-307-58998-9

Cover photograph Andrea Buso/Gallery Stock
Mermaids tail Gary Braasch/Corbis

v3.1

For my parents and sister

Scarcely had she entered the river than she was cleansed
gleaming once more like a white stone in the rain,
and without a backward look, she swam once more,
swam toward nothingness, swam to her dying.

P ABLO N ERUDA

I T WAS A GLOOMY, OVERCAST DAY, LIKE ALL DAYS WERE, WHEN the princess first saw them. The two of them, who would change her life. There was nothing to herald their appearance, no collection of birds or arrangement of tea leaves to mark their arrival. If anything, the convent was more quiet than usual. The nuns had just finished the midmorning service and scattered to their cells for private prayer. The abbess was shut in her chamber. Only the princess was out in the garden, wandering along the stone wall that overlooked the sea. Here, near the old well, the wall dipped down to her knees, and an ancient gate led to a stairway that curved to the rocky beach below. She was bundled in furs, wincing against the blast of wind that swept up from the sea and made the bare trees rattle around her.

She was not supposed to be out here. She should have been in her cell, too, but she did not follow the rules the way the others did, and the abbess had instructed them to give her wide berth. No one knew why, only that shed arrived one night on horseback accompanied by three armed guards, who carried in a large chest, placed it in a private double cell in the novices wing, and disappeared as quietly as theyd come.

No one but the abbess herself knew that she was the Northern kings daughter, that she was in hiding after secret reports that the South would be renewing its attacks. The others knew her simply by the name Mira, which was short for her given name, Margrethe. Most assumed she suffered some kind of ailment or melancholy, and the less committed novices had spent hours over the last months trying to guess which one. A few days after Margrethes arrival, another new tenant had appeared: a bright, flame-haired girl named Edele, who became fast friends with Margrethe, almost as if theyd known each other for years.

Margrethe had never wanted to come to this desolate outpost, was not used to the barren loneliness of this part of the world. She missed the castle, the long dinners lit by fire and dancing, the sleigh rides, her childhood room with its little fireplace in which pinecones burned, the mantel lined with books. She especially missed thoseher books, and the long hours she had spent with her fathers adviser and old tutor, Gregor, poring over them, learning of ancient battles and loves and philosophies. But the kingdom was under threat, and this was the safest place for her, her father had said, here at the edge of the world, in the convent that her late grandmother had helped found and that her mother had been schooled in as a girl.

She thought of her mother now, as she stared out at this desolate sea. It had been two years since the queens death, but sometimes it felt as fresh as a new wound. Margrethe pulled her furs close and stood stark against the wind, breathing in the thick air, which coated her tongue in salt. She wondered how her mother had felt staring out at this same sea. Was it like this back then? The ocean dark, wild? It seemed, to Margrethe, the color of grief.

Before coming here she had never seen the sea like this, as a living thing. Some trees had been uprooted by a recent storm, and they reached toward the water like gnarled fingers. She strained against the wind, hoping to catch sight of a Viking ship, a square flag, a dragon prow, but she was at the end of the world now, at the most northern point in the kingdom, and no ships came here.

How was she to know that this would be the most singular moment of her life? How can any of us tell when that thing comes that will make everything different? It seemed, to Margrethe, a moment like any other: waiting to return to her fathers castle, looking over the gloomy sea, waiting for private prayer to be over and the convent workday to start. Strangely, she found herself looking forward to the hours shed spend weaving that afternoon, listening to the clacking of the looms, the hum of the spinning wheels nearby, the voice of one of the sisters reading scripture moving over them. At first shed hated the dull hours of work, but lately shed found a certain comfort in them. She could forget everything, watching the wool transform in front of her.