At first the Little Mermaid decided to keep her love for the Prince a secret. "I will tell no one," she thought. "Maybe I will forget about him if I don’t speak of him." But she could think of nothing else.
Finally she told her eldest sister, "I have fallen in love with someone from the Upper World."
"Oh no!" cried her sister. "Who?"
"He is a prince," said the Little Mermaid. "But I don’t know where his kingdom is or where he lives."
Her sister told other sea folk what the Little Mermaid had said. Soon one mermaid heard the tale and visited the lovesick princess.
"I know where he lives," she told her. "His palace is on a hill, just beyond the sea cliffs."
"Please take me there," begged the Little Mermaid.
"We have no legs to walk to his door," the other mermaid said. "But we can swim to the cliffs. From the high rocks, we can see the little balcony where the Prince sometimes stands."
With her guide the Little Mermaid swam to the cliffs and climbed onto the nearby rocks. From there she saw a palace built of golden stones. A steep stairway led from the ocean to the palace entrance. And sure enough, on one side of the palace was a balcony.
"Oh, maybe I will see him!" cried the Little Mermaid, peering from behind a rock. She forgot all about her guide, who soon swam away.
From that day on, the Little Mermaid visited the cliffs every evening. She sat on a rock and waited for her handsome Prince. Once in a while, she caught sight of him standing alone in the bright moonlight.
"Oh, Prince, I long to talk to you," she said. "But I can’t reach you. So I’ll sing to you instead."
The Little Mermaid thought the Prince would notice her if he heard her voice. In the Sea Kingdom, everyone said she had the sweetest voice of all the mermaids.
My home is in the sea,
Your home is in a place I cannot be.
But your handsome face is in my heart,
And my whole heart is in your hands.
Come to me, my Prince, come to me!
But he was on land and she was in the waves. Under the stars the ocean breeze carried her voice away—too far away to be heard. So she watched him from afar.
Some nights the Little Mermaid would swim to the harbor, hoping to see him on the dock. But most of the time, she saw only fishermen with their nets, talking and laughing.
"What a smart and kind young prince," a fisherman said. "He will make a great ruler some day."
The Little Mermaid thought about her time with the Prince as he lay on the shore.
"And to think—it was I who saved his life!" She shivered with pride and love. The Little Mermaid remembered how she had kissed his eyelids.
But the Prince knew nothing of what had happened.
"I hope he’ll learn the truth some day," she thought wistfully.