Among the mermaids of the blue reefA long barrier of rock and coral, just below the surface of the sea., there was a song for everything. To call the dolphins, to send the babies to sleep, to greet the whales passing far out. Singing was like breathing.
Nérine, the youngest, had a problem. When she opened her mouth, a sound came out. One sound. A small flat sound, perfectly straight, like a creaking door. Her three sisters, meanwhile, made the water tremble with happiness.
“It will come,” her mother said every evening. But the great tide concert was approaching, and Nérine knew perfectly well that it would not come.
In the evenings, hidden behind a rock, Nérine listened to her sisters rehearse. They climbed so high that the lantern fish lit up all by themselves. Nérine tried quietly in her corner, and the small flat sound came out all the same.
So she spent her days far from the reefA long barrier of rock and coral, just below the surface of the sea., digging through the sand. And there, one morning, under an old rusted anchorThe heavy metal weight dropped to the seabed to stop a boat drifting away., she found the shell. It was pearly, twisted, and not especially pretty.
Nérine blew into it, the way you blow out a candle. And the shell began to sing. Not a whistle: a real voice, round and warm, rising and falling like the swellThe slow steady movement of the sea, rising and falling without breaking..
On the evening of the concert, Nérine hid the shell behind her back. When her turn came, she blew. The voice rose above the reefA long barrier of rock and coral, just below the surface of the sea., and everyone fell silent. Even the old turtles stopped chewing.
The whole reefA long barrier of rock and coral, just below the surface of the sea. was holding its breath. The seahorses had stopped circling the weed. Right at the bottom, two crabs who had been arguing since morning broke off in the middle of a raised claw.
“Nérine!” cried her mother, eyes shining. Her sisters stared at her, understanding nothing. And Nérine, in the middle of the applause, felt herself turn very cold.
She waited for the silence to come back. Then she brought her hands round in front of her and showed the shell to everyone. “It isn't me,” she said in her small flat voice. “It's him. I found him under the anchorThe heavy metal weight dropped to the seabed to stop a boat drifting away..”
There was a long moment of nothing at all. Then the oldest mermaid of the reefA long barrier of rock and coral, just below the surface of the sea. came forward, took the shell, turned it in the light and asked: “You found this by yourself? Under the sand?”
The old mermaid held the shell to her ear, then to the light, then to her ear again. She was two hundred years old and had never seen anything like it in the whole ocean.
“Yes,” said Nérine. “There are a hundred of us on this reefA long barrier of rock and coral, just below the surface of the sea.,” said the old mermaid. “A hundred of us swimming past that anchorThe heavy metal weight dropped to the seabed to stop a boat drifting away. for fifty years. Not one of us ever found a single thing.”
Since that day, Nérine has a job all of her own. She searches. She has brought back a silver comb, a ship's bell, a stone that glows in the dark and two more shells that sing.
They built her a little workshop in a hollow of the reefA long barrier of rock and coral, just below the surface of the sea., with shelves of packed sand. Every object lies on a bed of seaweed, with a small scale label saying exactly where it was found.
She still does not sing very well. But when the tide concert begins, she is the one who brings the voices. A talent is not always the family one: sometimes it waits, all alone, under an old anchorThe heavy metal weight dropped to the seabed to stop a boat drifting away..
The end, sweet dreams.
